“Then by all means, exsanguinate on the Ottoman.” Alfred’s hands were gentle, but his voice carried the weight of thirty years of watching boys become ghosts. “The detective from Internal Affairs called. A Sergeant Gordon. He wanted to thank you for the location on the drug shipment.”

Falcone fired into the dark. A shape moved—too fast, too wrong . Then the cigar was plucked from his lips. He looked down. The thing was kneeling before him, head cocked, lenses reflecting his own sweating face.

The first guard heard only the rain. Then a whisper, not quite human, curling from the shadows: “You’ve been very sick.”

He woke three weeks later in a cargo hold, a crude bat-shaped blade buried in his shoulder—a parting gift. The League would not forgive. But Gotham was waiting, her bones picked clean by Falcone’s crows and the rot of broken banks.

He spun. Nothing. But the moisture on his neck wasn’t water. It was warm . He looked up.

Two years earlier, Bruce Wayne had stood in a Bhutanese prison cell, stripped of his passport and his name. He’d wanted to feel fear again—the kind that had frozen him in that alley when pearls scattered like dropped teeth. Instead, he felt only a hollow rage. Then the man in the hemp robe came. Henri Ducard, he called himself, though his eyes held the cold arithmetic of a glacier.

Bruce threw the torch into the snow. “Then I’ll bleed.”

Begins — Batman

“Then by all means, exsanguinate on the Ottoman.” Alfred’s hands were gentle, but his voice carried the weight of thirty years of watching boys become ghosts. “The detective from Internal Affairs called. A Sergeant Gordon. He wanted to thank you for the location on the drug shipment.”

Falcone fired into the dark. A shape moved—too fast, too wrong . Then the cigar was plucked from his lips. He looked down. The thing was kneeling before him, head cocked, lenses reflecting his own sweating face. Batman Begins

The first guard heard only the rain. Then a whisper, not quite human, curling from the shadows: “You’ve been very sick.” “Then by all means, exsanguinate on the Ottoman

He woke three weeks later in a cargo hold, a crude bat-shaped blade buried in his shoulder—a parting gift. The League would not forgive. But Gotham was waiting, her bones picked clean by Falcone’s crows and the rot of broken banks. He wanted to thank you for the location on the drug shipment

He spun. Nothing. But the moisture on his neck wasn’t water. It was warm . He looked up.

Two years earlier, Bruce Wayne had stood in a Bhutanese prison cell, stripped of his passport and his name. He’d wanted to feel fear again—the kind that had frozen him in that alley when pearls scattered like dropped teeth. Instead, he felt only a hollow rage. Then the man in the hemp robe came. Henri Ducard, he called himself, though his eyes held the cold arithmetic of a glacier.

Bruce threw the torch into the snow. “Then I’ll bleed.”