The static that cut through James's earpiece was unlike anything AEGIS had flagged before.
It wasn't interference. It wasn't a technical glitch. It was something layered beneath the encrypted comm frequency Batman had provided, like a second signal riding piggyback on the first without invitation, coming from somewhere that didn't have an address in any database.
"Incoming transmission," AEGIS reported, uncertainty rare but unmistakable in the AI's tone. "Source unidentified. Pattern is inconsistent with any terrestrial communication technology in database. Does not match radio, satellite, cellular, or military band frequencies."
"Best guess on origin?"
"No reliable baseline for comparison exists. The signal carries vocal distress patterns and an underlying resonance my sensors register but cannot classify. The closest analogue in my database is theoretical descriptions of non-mechanical energy transmission. Mystical origin cannot be ruled out."
Batman had gone still beside the ruined relay device. He wasn't speaking. He was simply watching James with that particular quality of attention that gathered information without asking for it.
The signal strengthened. Static became a voice, faint and strained, a woman's voice carrying beneath it the kind of controlled fear that belonged to someone trained to hold steady while things went badly wrong around them.
James responded before conscious thought caught up with instinct. "This is Sovereign. Say your location."
A breath on the other end. Then words, each one arriving like it cost something to produce.
"Zatanna. Old Gotham catacombs. Church of Blood cult and something they've summoned. I'm holding them off but I can't maintain this much longer, I need..."
The signal folded back into static. Then nothing.
James stood with the dead frequency in his ear and processed the name in the space of a single heartbeat.
Zatanna Zatara.
Giovanni Zatara's daughter. Even now, relatively early in her career, one of the most naturally powerful magical practitioners alive.
He'd known she was in Gotham. Had filed her name away months ago as a future priority, someone worth knowing, someone whose path he'd expected to cross eventually under better circumstances.
He hadn't planned for this particular introduction.
Batman spoke once. Not a demand. Not even really a question.
Just a quiet observation placed into the silence between them, the way someone drops a stone into still water and watches what moves.
"Old Gotham catacombs." He let that sit for a moment. "The Church of Blood has used those tunnels before."
That was all. No interrogation about how a magical distress signal had found its way through an encrypted military-grade frequency.
No demand to know why someone named Zatanna had apparently been able to locate Sovereign specifically in a moment of crisis.
Batman had spent years operating in a world full of people with secrets he wasn't entitled to.
He understood the difference between information freely offered and information that belonged to someone else's operational security.
He simply named what he knew and left the rest for James to act on.
James was already moving. "I'll handle it."
"Update me when the situation is contained." A beat. "And Sovereign. Watch yourself down there. What the Church of Blood summons doesn't respond to conventional tactics."
The grappling line fired before Batman finished the sentence, pulling James up through the maintenance shaft and into the Gotham night.
Read more chapters, days ahead of Webnovel Updates on Patreon marvelstark