Nolan just drank.
Minutes passed—or maybe longer. Time lost its edges as the city stared back at him, indifferent, endless. Anger seeped in little by little, not explosive, not violent—worse. Quiet. Heavy. The kind that settled into his bones and bled into his soul.
'Why did you ask?' he thought bitterly.
'You knew you wouldn't like the answer.'
Another swallow. Another burn.
His jaw tightened as fragments of the Beast's words replayed, uninvited. Not distorted. Not exaggerated. Clear more precise than anything it has said before. As if they'd been waiting years to be spoken and fashioned into a blade designed to cut deep into Nolan's mind.
Finally, Nolan exhaled, the breath shuddering out of him. The anger drained away as suddenly as it had come, leaving exhaustion in its wake. He slumped back against the bedframe, the bottle hanging loosely from his fingers.
He needed to know.
Yes—he hadn't had the conversation with the others, but they were easy. Understandable. Kieran. Quentin. Vey. Each of them made sense if you followed the line of survival, ambition, fear.
But the Beast—
Nolan frowned, staring at the ceiling now.
He didn't know why the Beast came into existence.
And that terrified him more than the answer ever could.
A colder thought crept in, unwelcome and persistent.
'How many memories have I buried?'
Not forgotten—blocked. Walled off. Sealed away because they would've broken something essential if he'd been forced to look at them too soon.
Memories he knew—knew—the others still carried.
The bottle rested against the nightstand with a soft thud as Nolan closed his eyes, pulse slow but heavy.
Whatever he'd done…
Whatever he'd lived through…
Had created the monster that now roamed his head. A monster he so desperately wants to understand.
***
The sun hit him like a divine punishment.
White, blaring,and merciless—pouring through the penthouse windows as if Gotham had decided today was the day it remembered the sun existed wasn't just a fantastical concept.
Nolan groaned, a low, miserable sound, and slapped an arm over his eyes, trying and failing to block it out. The light burned straight through his skull. He rolled onto his side and dragged the covers up, burying his face like that might somehow save him.
"Of course," he muttered thickly, voice rough. "The one time the sun decides to show up in this godforsaken city… is when I'm hungover."
A presence stirred in the back of his mind—lighter, amused.
'I can take over,' Quentin offered smoothly. 'You're in no condition to be upright. Lucky for you, I'm an experienced in matters such as these.'
Nolan snorted before he could stop himself. The sound turned into a quiet laugh, breathy and involuntary, and it sent a spike of pain through his temples that made him wince.
"Yeah," he murmured, dragging himself upright anyway. "That's… not reassuring."
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, the room tilting just enough to remind him of last night's poor decisions. Nolan paused, one hand braced on the mattress, then pushed himself to his feet.
The floor was cold and unforgiving.
Still smiling faintly despite himself, he shuffled toward the bathroom, shoulders slumped, head pounding, mind crowded but strangely calm.
A shower.
Scalding hot.
That, at least, was something he could get behind.
By the time Nolan stepped out of the shower, steam still clinging to his skin and hair damp against his neck, the food was already waiting.
A quiet knock and a cart left just inside the door. Perfect timing—as always, it was still odd being catered too in such a way.
No not odd, it was familiar but to be catered too in this way out of loyalty and respect that was what was odd.
He pulled on a robe, retrieved the tray, and carried it to the table by the windows. Eggs, toast, fresh fruit, coffee strong enough to bite back. He sat, fork in hand, and woke his screens with a tap.
Data bloomed across the screen.
Streams of information flowed in quietly now—location pings drifting away from the Continental, cloned phones syncing call logs and messages, metadata stacking neatly into patterns. Names, habits, contacts. Nolan didn't let himself relax at the sight of it. He highlighted entries as he went, tagging them with a simple internal rule.
Assume they know.
Most of them would feel it. The slight hitch in their phone, the phantom echo on a call, the sense of being watched that powerful people developed almost instinctively. Anyone smart enough to survive in Gotham's upper tiers would act accordingly.
He took a bite of eggs, chewing slowly, eyes never leaving the screen.
"Hmm."
Plans began to branch in his mind—overlapping routes, pressure points, angles of approach. Nothing rushed. Nothing emotional. Just quiet inevitability.
The Powers family surfaced again in his thoughts.
Hotels. Everywhere. Prime locations, political leverage, union ties, zoning favors. Maria Powers smiled too easily and listened too closely. Nolan was almost certain now—ninety-nine percent—that she sat within the Court.
That meant infrastructure. Cover. Influence.
A good place to strike.
'You want to talk about last night?' Vey asked, his presence firm but not intrusive.
Nolan paused mid-bite. The fork hovered for a second before he set it down.
"Not now," he said quietly.
The thought lingered anyway—The Beast's words, the smile, the accusation that had landed too close to something raw. Nolan swallowed, took another sip of coffee, and pushed it down where it belonged.
Later.
For now, there was work to do.
***
The scream died halfway down the alley.
Three men had a kid boxed in, voices loud with the confidence that came from thinking the city wasn't watching. Hands were already in his pockets when the light vanished.
Something moved behind them.
Not fast. Not loud. Just there.
Fear hit before understanding.
One of them turned first, breath catching as the shape resolved out of the dark—tall, black, unmoving. He ran.
A shadow dropped from above and drove him into the pavement, the impact snapping the air from his lungs. Another swung wildly, baton clattering uselessly off armor before his wrist was seized and twisted until he screamed and folded. The third bolted for the street.
A line snapped tight around his ankle.
He hit hard, dragged back into the alley, hands clawing at the ground as if friction alone might save him.
It was over in seconds.
The kid was already gone—sent running the moment the first body hit the ground. Three criminals remained, groaning, bound, breathing.
Batman didn't linger. Sirens were redirecting. He stepped back, fired the grapple, and vanished upward.
He landed on a rooftop several blocks away, cape settling as he straightened.
Across the street, the Powers Hotel rose like a monument to permanence. Stone, glass, gold-lit windows. Old Gotham wealth made architectural. A place meant to feel inevitable—too big to fall, too respectable to question.
Batman watched it in silence.
Maria Powers was careful. She didn't grandstand. Didn't chase cameras. Her name appeared where it mattered and nowhere it didn't—on donor lists routed through intermediaries, on boards that quietly influenced zoning and development, on guest logs shared with people who never seemed to leave a paper trail.
Patterns. Not proof.
Yet.
His thoughts shifted, unprompted, back to the gala.
Kieran Everleigh had run it clean. Almost too clean.
Bruce hadn't missed the hands.
Servers brushing past guests just a second longer than necessary. Bellhops apologizing as fingers skimmed jackets and purses. Tiny collisions designed to feel accidental. Old tricks—good ones.
Most people never noticed.
Bruce had.
He'd felt the brief weight shift when someone passed behind him. The practiced misdirection. The way a waiter's eyes never left the room even as his hands worked. When Bruce checked his phone later, nothing appeared missing.
That was the point.
He hadn't been the target.
Others had been.
Security had been another tell.
Not guards posted in obvious places. Staff instead—people who knew how to stand, how to watch without staring, how to move so they always had space to react. Everyone looked like help. Everyone moved like backup.
The Continental hadn't hosted a party.
It had staged an operation.
Batman's gaze returned to the Powers Hotel. If Maria Powers was Court—and every instinct and data point told him she was—then this building wasn't just real estate.
It was infrastructure.
A place where influence slept behind expensive doors. And this was just one building of many owned by the powers family.
Rain began to mist across the rooftop, dotting his armor.
Batman fired his grapple and disappeared into the night, mind already mapping entry points, schedules, pressure points.