Old Gotham Rail Yard – 4:47 AM
Rain poured from the heavens like Gotham itself was weeping.
Draven stumbled beneath the collapsed overpass, each step a war with gravity. His body ached—shards of pain lodged in muscle and bone—but none of it mattered. Not compared to what he'd seen. What he'd failed to stop.
Children in pods. Evelyn captured. The Joker watching.
He collapsed against a stone support pillar slick with algae and rain, gasping for air. With bloodied fingers, he keyed an old code into his wrist console.
"Ash Point Protocol. Contact if alive."
The message was meant for one man. Someone who, like him, had once sworn to protect Gotham—and had vanished into the city's underbelly years ago.
Then darkness took him.
Undisclosed Underground Bunker – Time Unknown
The first thing Draven heard when he awoke was humming—low, metallic, mechanical.
Then pain.
He opened his eyes to find wires in his arm and gauze over his ribs. He was laid out on a makeshift cot, surrounded by thick concrete walls lined with tactical equipment and outdated GCPD tech.
A face leaned over him. Hardened. Familiar. A patch over one eye.
Malik Trent.
Dead five years. Or so Gotham thought.
"Still ugly," Malik grunted. "That's a relief."
Draven sat up, blinking. "You're supposed to be—"
"I know. You too. Guess we're both bad at dying."
The man hadn't aged kindly. His beard was streaked with gray, his body hunched slightly from old wounds. But his eyes? Still sharp. Still calculating.
"This place…" Draven muttered, looking around.
"Was a Blackgate fallout shelter. Before the city turned it into a dumping ground. We retrofitted it. Welcome to Ground Zero."
On the wall behind Malik, a massive map of Gotham had been inked with red Xs, circles, and jagged lines. Draven recognized the patterns—Black Sun routes, Halcyon movement corridors, abandoned GCPD zones.
"You've been watching."
"Waiting. Halcyon's been too quiet for too long. Until you lit the fuse."
Draven touched his side, wincing. "Evelyn?"
Malik's expression darkened. "She tried to pull you out. She didn't make it far."
He tapped a monitor. Evelyn's image flickered into view—encased in a cryo-chamber, neural uplinks wrapped around her skull like a crown of thorns. Her eyes were closed, but her fingers twitched as if typing in her dreams.
"She's inside their system now," Malik said grimly. "They're using her."
Draven rose too fast, staggering toward the screen. "We get her out."
Malik caught him. "We will. But listen—this isn't just about Evelyn anymore."
He pulled a steel case from beneath the table. Inside: photographs, newspaper clippings, police files dating back over seventy years. All marked with a red bat-like symbol twisted into a grotesque parody.
The Red Sigil.
Draven's brow furrowed. "This… looks like…"
"A mockery of the Bat," Malik finished. "It predates Bruce Wayne's crusade. Goes back to the earliest days of Gotham's elite experimenting with fear and obedience. Some say Halcyon is just the corporate face of something older—something buried."
Draven studied the documents—accounts of child disappearances in the 1950s, of "emotional conditioning experiments" in the Narrows, of wealthy donors funding clinics that never showed results. One name appeared over and over:
Arkham Legacy Foundation.
"I thought Arkham was destroyed," Draven said.
"It was. But the legacy was digitized and passed on. First to Black Sun. Then to Halcyon. And now…"
Malik turned the monitor again.
A new video. Joker. Standing atop a GCPD cruiser with burning buildings behind him. His face was freshly painted, but his eyes were calmer than ever.
Not madness.
Focus.
"He's not just playing anymore," Malik said. "He's building something."
The feed ended with the words spray-painted across the side of the cruiser:
"GOTHAM'S JOKE IS JUST STARTING."
Later That Night – Clocktower Ruins
Draven stood alone on the shattered roof of the old clocktower, the city spread beneath him like a battlefield map. The rain had stopped, but the air still felt heavy—thick with things unsaid.
He wore a fresh suit—courtesy of Malik's cell. Matte black armor reinforced with microflex plates. Red etching along the gauntlets and collar. Not just for style—a message.
The knight was evolving.
Below him, Malik coordinated an op across four Narrows districts. A whisper network of ex-cops, street hackers, rogue medics, and forgotten vigilantes moved like veins under Gotham's skin.
They called themselves The Hollowed.
Draven touched his comm. "Status?"
Malik replied, "Sweepers found another lab entrance near Arkham's remains. Sealed behind concrete. Red Sigil etched on the door. Want me to crack it?"
"No. I'll do it myself."
He turned, cape fluttering in the wind.
But before he left, he paused. Reached into a pouch and pulled out a small device Evelyn had given him weeks ago. A decoder shard.
He activated it.
It hummed softly. A glitch. Then her voice—garbled, but there.
"Draven… if you're hearing this… then I failed. But I'm still in here. I'll fight… even if they own my body. Remember who I am."
He closed his eyes. For a moment, the world fell away.
Then he leapt into the night.
Meanwhile – Halcyon Deep Cell 7
Evelyn's eyes fluttered beneath her lids. Her body was still. But in her mind?
She was running.
Inside a shifting labyrinth of firewalls and false memories. The Harbinger was hunting her. But she remembered her training. Remembered Draven.
And in the distance, something else stirred.
Something older than Harbinger.
In the heart of the system was a corrupted kernel.
A name pulsed like a virus through the code.
JOKER.EXE