DC: All for One Chapter 24 — Measure of a Man (Patreon)

The members of Task Force K all came back to the Tin Roof Club at different times over the course of the day, each of them arriving through the back entrance the way they had agreed and each of them wearing the same expression when they walked in, which was frustration.

Robin arrived first, still in his suit, dropping into one of the chairs in the basement and pulling his mask off and rubbing his face with both hands. Renee came twenty minutes later in her street clothes. Barbara arrived after that in civilian clothes with her laptop bag over her shoulder, her hair still damp from the rain that had started falling outside. Selina was already there as she lived above the bar and had been there since the morning reading a magazine and drinking heavily.

They gathered in the basement around the table beneath the detective board and sat down in silence.  Eventually the silence was starting to annoy her so Selina decided to break it. "So," she said. "From the looks on your faces I'm guessing nobody brought back a confession and a gift basket."

"Crime is down," Robin said flatly.

"Crime is down," Renee confirmed.

"How far down?" Selina asked.

"Almost to zero," Robin said. "I spent six hours on patrol tonight. You want to know what I found? I found Saviours on every corner in the Narrows walking beats like they were cops. I found two of them holding a mugger face down on the sidewalk until a patrol car showed up. The most criminal activity I caught any of them doing was dealing, and even that I couldn't pin down because every time I got close they ditched the product before I could grab a sample. Whatever they're carrying they can get rid of it in seconds. I couldn't get my hands on a single bag."

"Same in the East End," Renee said, dropping into her chair. "I had two plainclothes guys watching the main corners all night. The Saviours showed up at sundown, set up like they owned the place, which I guess they do now, and they spent the entire night running off anyone who looked like trouble. A guy tried to break into a car on Chambers Street and three of them came out of nowhere, beat the shit out of him, zip-tied him to a lamppost and called it in to the precinct as a citizen's arrest."

"They're not even jaywalking," Barbara added, opening her laptop. "I've been monitoring police scanners and cross-referencing with the Saviour patrol routes I've mapped. Reported crime in their territory has dropped by eighty-seven percent in the last two weeks. Assaults down ninety percent. Robbery down ninety-four. The only thing that's up is drug complaints, but there's nothing on the ground to back it up because the product vanishes before anyone can document it."

"So the supervillain who took over the city is doing a better job of policing it than you ever did," Selina said from the stairs. "That's not embarrassing at all."

"It's not policing," Robin said. "What Ethan is doing is no different from martial law, he controls the streets now and he could just as easily set his people on civilians."

"Tell that to the woman on Fourteenth Street who can walk to the grocery store at night for the first time in three years," Selina replied, taking a sip of her drink. "I'm sure she'll appreciate the distinction."

Robin didn't answer that. 

"Where's the chimp," Renee asked, looking around the basement.

Barbara pointed toward the back office, a small room off the main basement that had been a storage closet before they converted it into something resembling a workspace. The door was open and a light was spilling out of it along with the faint smell of tea.

They walked over and found Detective Chimp sitting cross-legged on the desk with a cup of Earl Grey in one hand and a magnifying loupe in the other, surrounded by what appeared to be the disassembled remains of a phone. The components were laid out across the desk surface in a grid, each piece separated from its neighbours by exactly the same distance, circuit boards and chips and the battery housing and the screen assembly and dozens of smaller pieces that none of them could have identified. He was reading something on a small tablet propped against the wall, his eyes moving back and forth between the text and the components in front of him.

"What is that," Robin said from the doorway.

Chimp looked up and took a sip of his tea. "One of the Future Phones," he said. "Picked it up last week at the flagship store on Broad Street and got myself a lovely autograph on the box as well."

"You went to see him," Robin said, his voice tightening. 

"I did."

"That was stupid," Renee said from behind Robin. "He could already know who you are. If he's got connections to any hero network, any government database, any—"

Chimp waved them off with the hand holding the loupe. "Apart from Batman, almost nobody in the hero community knows I exist. Unless Mister Kane has an informant embedded in the magical community, which I sincerely doubt given that the magical community doesn't particularly like talking to people on the best of days, he could not have learned anything substantial about me from that encounter."

"But why do it," Robin said. "Why take the risk at all."

"Because I needed to meet him."

"Why."

"To take his measure."

Barbara raised an eyebrow. "His measure?"

"Indeed." Chimp set down his tea, uncrossed his legs and hopped off the desk, landing on the floor with a soft thud before walking past them into the main basement. He stopped in front of the detective board and looked up at the web of photos and notes and red string, his hands clasped behind his back.

"Let me ask you all something," he said without turning around. "How is it that no matter what any of you have done, no matter how many leads you've followed or traps you've set or surveillance operations you've run, Ethan Kane has been one step ahead of you. Every single time. Without exception. How is that possible."

Robin's jaw tightened and he looked at the floor... the answer that came to mind was one that he didn't want to say out loud because saying it would mean admitting something that made him want to put his fist through the wall.

"Anyone?" Chimp said, turning to face them.

"Because he's smarter than us," Renee said. She didn't like saying it either but she was too tired and too angry to dance around it.

"No," Chimp said.

They all looked at him.

"No?" Robin said.

"No." Chimp walked over to the board and tapped the photo of Ethan in the centre. "Believe it or not, while Ethan Kane is undoubtedly a genius, his intelligence operates more like a computer than a human mind. He processes vast amounts of information at extraordinary speed, he identifies patterns, he models outcomes, he plans contingencies for contingencies for contingencies. It's impressive and it's effective, but it is not, strictly speaking, intelligence in the truest sense of the word."

"How does being a human computer not make him smarter than us," Renee said, folding her arms.

"Because a computer isn't truly intelligent," Barbara said slowly, the pieces clicking together in her head as she spoke. "Computers are information processors. They take in data, they run it through algorithms, they produce outputs. It looks like thinking but it's not. It's simulation. Real intelligence, real genius, requires creativity, and creativity is—"

"Linked to emotion," Chimp finished, pointing at her with the loupe. "Precisely. Creativity is an emotional function. It requires empathy, intuition, the ability to make leaps that logic alone cannot justify. It requires understanding people not as variables in an equation but as people, messy and irrational and unpredictable. And that, I believe, is something Ethan Kane has considerable trouble with."

He turned back to the board.

"When I met him today he was doing an excellent job of performing a human. The smile, the handshake, the eye contact, the way he modulated his voice when speaking to customers, all of it was technically perfect. But I could see it. The mask. The performance. There was nothing behind the smile. Nothing at all. He was mimicking the behaviour of a person who cared because he had studied what caring looked like and could reproduce it on demand, but the caring itself was absent. I'm sure anyone with a good eye could spot it if they knew what to look for."

"Okay," Renee said. "So he's a genius with no feelings who acts like he has feelings. What point are you making."

Chimp set the loupe down on the table and looked at all four of them in turn.

"My point," he said, "is that your failure to catch Ethan Kane has not been because of his intelligence. No. It's something far simpler than that."

He paused.

"It's ignorance."

Selina snorted from her chair.

Robin frowned. 

Barbara raised her eyebrow. 

"Ignorance," Robin repeated.

"Indeed," Chimp said. "You don't know him. None of you do. You know what he's done, you know what he's capable of. But you don't know him. You don't know how he thinks. You don't know what drives him. You don't know what he's afraid of. And because you don't know those things you have been reacting to him instead of anticipating him, and a reactive strategy against a man who plans as far ahead as he does is a losing strategy by definition."

He walked to the stack of boxes against the wall beneath the board, the ones Robin had filled with copies of every police file and crime report from the moment Ethan had first appeared on anyone's radar. He pulled a file from the nearest box and opened it and held up a photograph.

Creedence. 

The dealer from Iron Row whose death had been the first domino in the chain.

Chimp pinned the photo to the board at the far left, ahead of everything else, at the very beginning of the timeline.

"Creedence," he said. "This is where it starts. He was a suspected meta-human though it was never fully confirmed by the GCPD. He died of blunt force trauma to the skull and when I say blunt force trauma I mean his skull was essentially destroyed. The coroner's report describes fragmentation patterns consistent with an impact force of approximately twelve thousand newtons applied to a concentrated area of the parietal bone. To put that in perspective for those of you who haven't spent time reading forensic literature, the human skull can typically withstand around twenty-four hundred newtons before fracturing. What happened to Creedence's skull required roughly five times that amount. A normal human being cannot generate that kind of force with their bare hands under any circumstances."

He looked at Robin.

"I believe this was the first power Ethan Kane ever took. I believe Creedence was a meta-human with some form of enhanced physical ability, and I believe Ethan took that ability from him and used it to kill him. Everything that came after, every power he's demonstrated, every person he's hurt, every move he's made, it all traces back to this moment."

"This is where All for One was born."

"How can you be sure," Robin asked.

"I can't," Chimp said. "But I'm reasonably sure. The timeline supports it. The forensic evidence supports it. And the pattern of escalation that follows, the rapid expansion of his power set, all of it is consistent with someone who discovered what they could do on this night, with this man, and then spent the following months acquiring more."

"How does knowing that help us," Renee said. "He killed Creedence over a year ago. We can't prosecute a murder we can't prove and even if we could the DA would bury it before it hit a courtroom."

"It helps us," Chimp said, "because Ethan Kane is doing something. Something big. Something he's been building toward since the beginning, something that all of this, the company, the phones, the territory, the drugs, all of it is in service of." He pointed at the disassembled phone on the desk in the back office. "Why give everyone in the city a free phone? What is the purpose of that? Why sell drugs and flood the market with product? What does he gain from controlling the supply?"

He looked around the room.

"There is a great deal we don't know and we will not find out unless we truly discover who Ethan Kane is. Not who he pretends to be, not the philanthropist, not All for One. Who he actually is. The boy before the power. The person underneath the mask I saw today. What made him. What broke him. What he wants badly enough to burn down everything in his path to get it."

He turned back to the board and picked up the Creedence file.

"To do that we start from the beginning," he said, opening the file. "We go through every single piece of paper in those boxes. Every report, every witness statement, every forensic note, every photograph. We build a profile of this man from the ground up, from the night he killed Creedence to the night he stood on those hospital steps and told the city he couldn't be stopped. And somewhere in that profile, in the pattern of who he is and how he thinks and what he values, we will find the thing he doesn't want us to find."

He looked at them.

"Who wants to start reading?"

Renee was the first to the boxes, she pulled the lid off the nearest one and started lifting files out and stacking them on the table. 

Barbara joined her a moment later, the two of them working through the first box in silence while Selina stretched in her chair and made a show of looking put-upon before she dragged a second box toward herself and opened it with the enthusiasm of someone being asked to do their taxes.

Chimp had already settled himself on the desk in the back office with the Creedence file open in front of him and was reading significantly faster than the others.

Robin didn't sit down, he was stood in the doorway of the back office watching the chimp work for a moment before he spoke. "The phone," he said. "Were you able to find anything?"

Chimp looked up from the file and shook his head. "Unfortunately not. I'm a rather good detective, if I may say so, but technology is not my area of expertise. What I've been able to learn through self-study hasn't been sufficient to identify anything beyond the standard consumer components. The processor is remarkable, the architecture is unlike anything I've seen online, but I couldn't tell you whether that's because it's simply advanced or because something has been hidden inside it."

Robin leaned against the doorframe and thought for a moment with his eyes on the floor. Then he looked up. "I have a friend who owes me a few favours. He could take a look at this."

Barbara's voice carried from the main room where she'd obviously been listening. "You think he'll help? Given what we're doing here?"

"He'll help," Robin said. "Even if he doesn't agree with how we're doing it. He's not the type to say no when one of his friends need help."

"I'm excited to meet this mystery friend," Chimp said, picking up his tea. "Always a pleasure to collaborate with a specialist."

"Ethan might be good with technology," Robin said. "But there's no one on the planet better than this guy."

"Splendid," Chimp said, and turned back to his file.

...

Hours passed.

The five of them settled into the work that may have been mind numbingly boring, but they all knew the importance of doing everything they could to get even a hint towards locking Ethan up. Renee worked through the police reports in order, starting from the oldest. 

Barbara had her laptop open beside a stack of files and was cross-referencing dates and locations against a digital timeline she was building on the screen. 

Selina read with her feet up on the table and a fresh drink beside her, turning pages with one hand and occasionally making a noise when something caught her attention. 

Robin moved between the boxes and the board, pinning new items to the wall as they emerged from the files and connecting them with string.

Chimp read faster than all of them combined and said very little.

At some point during the third hour one of the group stood up quietly from their chair, muttered something about needing air, and walked up the stairs. 

Nobody looked up. 

The figure emerged from the staircase leading up to the roof and moved to stand near the edge and pulled a Future Phone from their pocket and dialled a number.

It rang twice before it answered. 

"Yes," Ethan said.

"They're going through every file they have on you. Police reports, crime scene photos, forensics, everything from Creedence onward. They're building a timeline and a profile. The chimpanzee is leading the analysis, he's smart, he's very smart. He figured out that Creedence was a meta-human and that you took his power."

"Interesting. What else."

"Robin is bringing in someone to look at the phone. He said it was someone who was better with technology than you. I don't know who yet but he's calling in a favour."

The line was quiet for a moment.

"Keep me updated on that," Ethan said. "Do they have any samples of the product?"

"No. They haven't been able to get their hands on any. Robin said the dealers are dumping it before he can grab it."

"Keep it that way. If any samples come through that door I want them destroyed before they can be analysed. That is the priority above everything else. Do you understand?"

"I understand." The figure then paused for a moment before they spoke again. "If I keep doing this," the figure said. "Will you keep your promise? Will you heal Bruce?"

"If you can get me access to his body, I can heal him."

"That's not what I asked. I asked if you will."

"Batman is a non-issue. Even if he was healed tomorrow he wouldn't present a problem to me anymore. The world has moved past the point where one man in a cape can change the outcome. Keep doing your job and I'll keep my end of the bargain."

The line went dead.

The figure stood on the roof for a long time, the phone still in their hand, the guilt sitting in their chest like something swallowed that wouldn't go down. They looked out over the city and the lights blurred slightly as they wiped their eyes with the back of their wrist and put the phone away and went back inside and down the stairs and picked up the next file in the stack, opened it and started reading as if they had never left.

Nobody asked where they'd been.

...

By the fifth hour the table was buried under open files and the board had grown to three times its original size, new photos and documents pinned across every available inch of wall space with red string connecting them in a web that was starting to look less like a conspiracy theory and more like a roadmap.

The timeline was filling in. 

Creedence's death, then the murder of Eric Davis at Creedence's apartment a few days later. "This is where he took Montoya," Barbara said, tapping a file on the table. "After Davis. He grabbed her and brought her to the Doothenhall manor."

"Doothenhall," Chimp said from the back office doorway where he had been listening. He walked over and looked at the file Barbara was holding. "The kidnapping case? The one where the socialite was abducting young women?"

"That's the one," Renee said from her chair. "Ethan is the reason Doothenhall got exposed. This was years before Creedence, before any of this. He was a teenager. He investigated a string of disappearances on his own, linked them to David Doothenhall, and brought the whole thing down."

Chimp took the file from Barbara and read it, turning pages quickly, his brow furrowed. "He wanted to be a hero?" he asked.

"Apparently," Renee said.

"Was there a specific reason? Something that triggered it? A personal connection to the victims, a mentor figure, an event?"

Renee shrugged. "He never said. I spent weeks in a cell with him and he talked about a lot of things but he never told me why he started investigating Doothenhall. He just did it."

"And why did he stop? If he was driven enough to take down a kidnapping ring as a teenager, what changed?"

"I don't know that either" Renee replied. 

Chimp hummed and set the file down on the table, open to a page he had marked with his thumb.

"Why does it matter?" Robin asked. He had stopped pinning things to the board and was watching the chimp from across the room. "The Doothenhall case was years before Creedence. It's ancient history."

"Perhaps," Chimp said. "But consider what he's doing right now." He gestured at the board, at the sprawl of evidence and string and photographs that covered the wall. "Ethan Kane has taken control of an entire city. He has dismantled every criminal organisation in it. He has built a company that feeds and employs the poor. He has flooded the streets with his own people and driven crime to historic lows. He is, by every measure that the general public cares about, saving Gotham."

"Don't tell me you're buying into his bullshit," Robin said.

Chimp laughed. "Hardly. But I do think it's possible that his true intentions are hiding beneath the surface of the performance, and that those intentions may be more complex than simple megalomania. The Doothenhall case tells us something important. Before his power, before All for One, before any of this, Ethan Kane may have wanted to help people. He saw women disappearing and he decided to do something about it when nobody else would. That impulse doesn't just vanish."

"So you think he actually wants to be a hero," Renee said in slight disbelief.

"I think it's possible that he believes he is one. And that belief, whether it's genuine or delusional, is the key to understanding what he's planning next. Consider this. How does someone like Ethan Kane, someone who sees the world as a problem to be solved, believe he can make it better?"

"By killing criminals," Barbara said.

"Which he has been doing," Robin added. "The five families were slaughtered by the Saviours in a single day. Every major organised crime operation in the city has been dismantled."

"Exactly," Chimp said. "So if we assume, for the sake of the exercise, that Ethan views himself as a hero on a mission to cure this city of its disease, then we must ask ourselves what comes next. He has brought crime to an all-time low. The streets are safer than they have been in decades. The mission, as he defined it, is nearly complete. So what does he do now?"

"I don't think he's done," Barbara said quietly.

Robin looked at her. "What makes you say that?"

Barbara set her pen down and leaned back in her chair. "The night I confronted him. After he shot Bruce. I talked to him, face to face, and he told me how he saw the world. He called criminals a disease. I think he genuinely believes that crime is a sickness in the body of the city and that he is the surgeon who has to cut it out and I don't just mean organised crime, I think he meant all crime."

"Interesting," Chimp said. "Did he say anything else?"

Barbara thought for a moment, her fingers tapping slowly on the edge of the table. "He has an intense hatred of drugs, something I think it comes from his parents."

"What do we know about his parents?" Chimp asked.

Renee pushed back from the table and went to the boxes and dug through the files until she found what she was looking for, a folder that she brought back and opened on the table. "Thomas and Maria Kane," she said, reading from the cover sheet. "Long history of drug abuse, heroin primarily, with some cocaine use documented in the earlier records. Multiple arrests for possession, one arrest for distribution that was dropped. Both killed in what was officially classified as a gang-related homicide linked to Iron Row, the same gang they'd been buying from for years."

She turned a page and frowned.

"What?" Barbara said.

"Nothing, it's just..." Renee turned the page back and read it again. "There's a gap in the medical records. Thomas and Maria Kane are listed as Ethan's parents on every official document but the hospital records from his birth don't match up with Maria's medical history. She has no record of prenatal care at any Gotham hospital and the birth certificate was filed three weeks after the date of birth."

The room was quiet for a moment.

"Could be a clerical error," Renee said slowly. "Hospitals in the East End weren't exactly known for their record-keeping twenty years ago. Probably nothing."

"Probably," Chimp said.

But he had already taken the file from her hands and was reading it, his eyes moving across the page with a focus that had intensified noticeably, and when he finished he closed the folder and walked to the board and pinned it in a new section that he created to the left of the Creedence photo, further back on the timeline than anything else they had put up.

"Thomas and Maria Kane are not Ethan's biological parents," he said.

Everyone looked at him.

"You got that from what could be a clerical error?" Selina said from her chair, the first thing she'd said in over an hour.

"I got it from the blood type, the missing prenatal records, the delayed birth certificate filing, but that's not all," he said as he put the file on the board. "It is quite well known that around nineteen or so years ago a certain event happened in Gotham. 

All their eyes widened. 

"You mean the lost children?" Barbara said with slight shock in her voice."

"The time frame matches, though whether Ethan is one of the children taken from the hospital that night is not known. What I know for sure is that Thomas and Maria Kane adopted Ethan or acquired him through informal channels. He is not their biological child."

"Is that relevant?" Robin asked.

"Any information may or may not be relevant until it is," Chimp said, stepping back from the board and looking at the new addition. "But it's on the board now, and the board will tell us when it matters."

He turned back to the room and his eyes settled on the files again, but then he stopped and looked at the disassembled phone still laid out on the desk in the back office, the components arranged in their precise grid.

"What I find strange," he said, "is that if Ethan Kane hates drugs, truly hates them with the personal intensity that Miss Gordon has described, and if he and All for One are the same person, then why has he been flooding the streets with them? Why has he spent months building a distribution network for a product that represents the thing he despises most in the world?"

Nobody had an answer.

Chimp looked around the room at each of them in turn.

"I suggest we keep reading," he said.

Robin's phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and checked the screen "He's here," Robin said. "'ll go bring him in."

He headed up the stairs where they heard the back door open and close and the murmur of voices in the alley and then the door opening again, two sets of footsteps coming down the stairs, one of them considerably heavier than the other. 

Robin came around the corner first, and the man behind him had to duck slightly to clear the low ceiling at the bottom of the stairwell, and when he straightened up to his full height he grinned. "So this is the secret clubhouse," Victor said, looking around at the board and the boxes and the files scattered across every surface. "Nice. Very retro. I like the string. You know most conspiracy theorists have moved to digital but I respect the commitment to tradition."

"Cyborg," Barbara said, standing up from the table. "Thank you for coming."

"Barb," he said, giving her a nod. "Good to see you. Robin said you all needed help and that I should come alone, not tell anyone and meet you in the basement of a bar in the middle of the night. So naturally I assumed everything was fine."

"We appreciate it, Vic," Robin said. "I know this is a lot to ask."

"You pulled me out of a mission in jump city to come here," Victor said. "You're lucky I like you." He looked around the room and spotted Chimp standing on the desk in the back office doorway. "And you must be the chimpanzee. Robin mentioned you on the phone but I thought he was messing with me."

"Detective Chimp if you like," the chimp said, tipping his cap. "A pleasure. I've read about your work with the Titans."

"Thanks, little man. I try."

"So what do you need?" Victor asked, turning back to Robin.

Robin led him to the back office where the disassembled phone was still laid out on the desk. "I need you to analyse this and tell me if there's anything hidden or strange about it. Anything that shouldn't be in a consumer phone. Anything that doesn't make sense."

Victor looked at the components on the desk. "This is one of the new Future Phones, right?"

"It is."

"The ones everyone's been losing their minds over? Free calls, free internet, better Gotham, better future, all that?"

"That's the one."

Victor sat down at the desk and cracked his knuckles and then he placed his palm over the components as he connected.

Victor's organic eye unfocused slightly as his attention shifted inward to whatever he was seeing through the interface, and his lips moved silently as he processed data.

"Okay," he murmured after about thirty seconds. "Okay, this is... wow."

"What?" Robin said.

"Hold on, let me just..." Victor tilted his head and the mechanical eye flickered rapidly. "The architecture on this processor is insane. I'm talking three, maybe four generations ahead of anything on the market right now. The kernel alone is, I mean this is beautiful work, whoever designed this is operating on a level that... I might actually need to get one of these for myself, the efficiency on the power management system is—"

"Victor," Robin said.

"Right, right, sorry. Focusing. Give me a minute."

He went quiet again. 

Then his brow furrowed on the organic side of his face and the flickering of the mechanical eye slowed. 

"Huh," he said.

"What did you find?" Robin asked, stepping closer.

Victor pulled his hand back from the components and looked up at Robin with an expression that had shifted from admiration to something more concened. "There's something in here I've never seen before. Buried deep in the hardware, underneath the main processor, integrated into the circuit board at a level that you'd never find unless you were scanning is an emitter."

"An emitter," Barbara said from the doorway.

"Yeah. A micro-scale emitter that produces a modified radioactive signal when activated. And before anyone panics, it's not dangerous, not in the conventional sense. The energy output is extremely low, lower than a standard radio wave, barely above background radiation. You could hold this thing against your head all day and it wouldn't do anything to you."

"So what does it do?" Renee asked.

"That's the thing," Victor said, leaning back in the chair. "On its own, nothing. It just sits there. It's completely inert until it receives a remote activation signal, and when it does, based on what I can see of the circuitry, it would start emitting this specific frequency constantly. Every phone with this component in it would start broadcasting the same signal at the same time."

"Broadcasting to what?" Robin asked.

Victor shook his head. "I don't know. The signal itself doesn't carry data, it's not a communication frequency, it's not GPS, it's not surveillance. It's just a wave. A very specific wave at a very specific frequency that someone went to a lot of trouble to hide inside a phone."

"So it activates something," Renee said.

"That's my best guess," Victor said. "Whatever this frequency is tuned to, it's designed to trigger a reaction in something else. Something out in the world that's waiting for this specific signal to tell it to do whatever it's supposed to do."

Robin stared at the components on the desk, his hand came up and gripped the back of his neck and he squeezed hard enough that his knuckles went white.

"Thanks, Vic," he said quietly.

"Yeah," Victor said, looking at the components with an expression that suggested he liked them considerably less than he had five minutes ago. "Listen, whatever this is, it's not good. Nobody hides an emitter this deep in consumer hardware unless they don't want it found, and nobody builds a remote activation system into millions of phones unless they're planning to use it. I'd be real interested to know what that signal is supposed to activate."

Robin nodded slowly, he looked a lot less happy than he did five minutters ago too. Which was incredible considering he always looked moody nowadays. 

"If you need me to look at something else just give me a call I'll be around the area for a bit." Victor stood up and placed a hand on his shoulder briefly before heading for the stairs, and Robin walked him out through the back alley and thanked him again before the door closed and he came back down to the basement where the others were waiting.

He stood in front of the board and looked at the web of string and photographs and files and the phone in the back office, all of it, the whole sprawling mess of evidence and theory and unanswered questions that they had been building for hours.

Chimp appeared beside him, looking up at the board from his considerably lower vantage point.

"Don't lose heart," Chimp said. "This is good."

Robin looked down at him. "Good? We don't know what the signal does. We still don't know what he's planning. We're no closer to—"

"We know the phone is the trigger," Chimp said firmly. "We didn't know that this morning. Now we do. He has built an activation system into every phone he has sold and he can turn it on remotely whenever he chooses. That is an enormous piece of the puzzle, Robin. We know the mechanism now. All we need to find is the target."

He looked up at the board.

"What is the signal activating?" he said, mostly to himself. 

"What has Ethan Kane put into this city that needs a signal from millions of phones to wake it up?"

_____________________________________

"I don't think we should be doing this," Sofia said as she sat next to Ethan in the limousine they were using to travel through the financial district. 

"It's necessary."

"My father had both of these men in his pocket for over a decade, Ethan. He used to bring them to the house for dinner when I was a child. They are rats, both of them, and rats will bite whoever feeds them the moment the food runs out."

"Which is precisely why we need to be the ones feeding them," Ethan said without looking up from his phone. "A rat you control is more useful than a rat someone else controls. Don't let your father's association with them sour what we're doing tonight."

Sofia was quiet for a moment, her fingers pressing into the leather of the seat. "I wouldn't do that to you," she said.

Ethan put his phone away and looked at her and placed his hand against the side of her face, his thumb resting just below her cheekbone. "I know you wouldn't. And if tonight goes well, I'll make sure you're rewarded for it."

Something shifted behind her eyes and the tension in her shoulders loosened and she leaned into his hand for a moment before he withdrew it and turned back to the window.

The limousine pulled up to the front of the Meridian Tower on the east side of the financial district, a glass and steel high-rise that housed some of the most expensive real estate in Gotham on its upper floors. Ethan's driver, a man named Okoye who was six foot ten and built like something that had been designed to be a wrecking ball, came around and opened the door for them. 

Ethan stepped out first and offered his hand to Sofia who took it and emerged from the car in a black dress that she had chosen specifically for the impression it would make on the kind of men they were about to sit across from.

A doorman in a grey uniform held the entrance open for them and a concierge in the lobby escorted them to a private elevator that went directly to the penthouse floor. Okoye followed two steps behind them, his hands clasped in front of him, his face showing nothing. The elevator doors opened onto a foyer done in white marble, and the mayor was already there waiting for them with his hand extended and a smile on his face that was wide enough to show his back teeth.

"Mister Kane," Mayor Franklin Briggs said, gripping Ethan's hand with both of his and pumping it enthusiastically. "Welcome, welcome. It is such a pleasure, a genuine pleasure. I've been looking forward to this all week. And Miss Falcone, my goodness, you look absolutely stunning this evening."

"Thank you, Mayor Briggs," Sofia said, offering her hand which he kissed.

District Attorney Lawrence Meade appeared from the living room behind him, a man in his mid-fifties with grey at the temples. He shook Ethan's hand firmly and greeted Sofia with a nod that carried more caution than the mayor's. "Mister Kane. Miss Falcone. Come in, please, come in. My wife Catherine has been looking forward to meeting you both."

They were led through to the penthouse living room which opened onto a dining area where a long table had been set for six with crystal glasses and silver cutlery and enough candles to light a small church. 

Catherine Meade, a blonde woman in her late forties, rose from the sofa to greet them. The mayor's wife, a younger woman named Patricia who had the slightly glazed expression followed suit.

Introductions were made. 

Hands were shaken. 

Sofia greeted both wives with a warmth that was so convincing Ethan almost believed it himself, complimenting Catherine's dress, asking Patricia about her children.

Okoye positioned himself beside the front door and did not move.

Serving staff in white jackets appeared with drinks on silver trays and Ethan took a whiskey he had no intention of drinking and Sofia took a glass of champagne that she held without sipping and they settled into the pre-dinner conversation.

Eventually they sat down to eat twenty minutes later. The first course was a lobster bisque that the mayor praised three times in five minutes and that the DA's wife ate in small spoonfuls while glancing at her husband.

"Mister Kane, I want you to know how much this city appreciates what you've done," Briggs said, dabbing his mouth with his napkin between bites. "The Future Foundation, the phones, the employment programme, the medical centres, all of it. Gotham hasn't seen this kind of civic investment from the private sector in, well, I can't even remember the last time. Bruce Wayne was doing wonderful work before his accident but even Wayne Enterprises never moved at the pace you've been moving at. It's remarkable. Truly remarkable."

"That's very kind of you, Mayor," Ethan said.

"And the security situation," Meade added, leaning forward slightly. "The improvement in the crime statistics over the last quarter has been, and I don't use this word lightly, unprecedented. The GCPD is reporting the lowest crime rates in recorded history across the Narrows and the East End. Now, I know there have been some questions about the methods involved, and I want to be clear that my office has been very careful to ensure that the appropriate legal frameworks are being respected, but the results speak for themselves."

"They do," Ethan agreed.

The second course arrived, a fillet of beef with roasted vegetables that the serving staff placed in front of each guest.

"We also want you to know," the mayor continued between bites, "that we've taken steps to ensure that certain, ah, investigative activities that were causing unnecessary friction have been redirected. The GCPD has a lot on its plate right now and Lawrence and I agreed that it would be counterproductive to allow departmental resources to be spent on matters that were, frankly, personally motivated rather than evidence-based."

"I shut down the Kane investigation personally," Meade said. "Pulled the files, reassigned the detectives, put a hold on any future actions without my direct approval. As far as my office is concerned, you are a victim of violent crime and a valued member of this community, and any suggestion to the contrary is unfounded."

"We appreciate that, Lawrence," Sofia said, setting her champagne down. "We appreciate it very much. It's reassuring to know that the people in positions of authority in this city are focused on protecting its citizens rather than persecuting them."

The mayor and the DA both nodded. 

The main course was cleared and dessert was served it was at that time the wives both excused themselves to have their dessert in the next room.

The mayor watched his wife leave the room and then turned back to Ethan with an expression that had lost most of its social warmth. "Mister Kane," he said. "I'm going to be direct with you because I think you're the kind of man who respects directness."

"I am," Ethan said.

"Good. Then I'll say what we're both thinking. The families are gone. All five of them and the power structure that existed in this city for the better part of forty years has been completely dismantled. Now, Lawrence and I, we had arrangements with those families. Long-standing arrangements that provided a certain stability to the political and legal landscape of Gotham. Those arrangements are no longer in effect."

"What Franklin is trying to say," Meade cut in, "is that there is currently a gap in the, let's call it the informal infrastructure of this city's governance. A gap that we believe would be best filled by someone who has demonstrated both the capability and the vision to manage it responsibly. Someone who understands that a city like Gotham requires a certain flexibility in how its institutions operate."

"You want to know if I'll replace the families," Ethan said.

Both men shifted in their chairs.

"We want to know," the mayor said carefully, "if there's a basis for an ongoing relationship that would be mutually beneficial."

Sofia set her glass down and leaned forward. "Let's talk about what mutually beneficial looks like," she said. "Because I think we may have different definitions."

The mayor looked at her and then at Ethan, clearly uncertain about whether to address the negotiation to the young man at the head of the table or the woman beside him. Ethan gave a small nod in Sofia's direction and the mayor understood.

"What would you need from us?" Meade asked.

"The Future Foundation's expansion permits for the East End and the Narrows have been sitting on your planning commission's desk for months," Sofia said. "All twelve of them approved by tomorrow."

"That's, there's a review process that—"

"Tomorrow," Sofia repeated. "The Foundation's application for the municipal broadband contract, the one that was awarded to GothCom despite our bid being forty percent lower, reopened and re-evaluated with the Foundation given priority consideration."

"Sofia, the GothCom contract is a binding—"

"Reopened," she said. "Tax incentives for every Future Foundation facility operating within city limits, backdated to the date of incorporation. A formal endorsement from the Mayor's office of the Future community safety programme as an officially recognised neighbourhood watch organisation, which gives our people legal standing to detain suspects until the GCPD arrives."

"Now hold on," the mayor said, his fork halfway to his mouth. "That's a lot, that's asking for quite a lot, the community safety endorsement alone would require a public announcement and there would be questions about—"

"There will also be a dedicated police liaison assigned to Future Foundation operations," Sofia continued as if he hadn't spoken, "reporting directly to us rather than to the precinct chain of command. And the city's contract with Vance Pharmaceutical for the public health clinics in the East End will be terminated and reassigned to the Future Foundation's medical division."

"The Vance contract is worth eighty million dollars," Meade said.

"Yes it is," Sofia replied. "Which is why it should be going to an organisation that actually provides medical care to the people who need it instead of one that bills the city for services it doesn't deliver and kicks the difference back to whoever signed the contract in the first place."

Meade's face went slightly pale.

"We have the billing records, Lawrence," Sofia said. "We have all of them. Every invoice Vance submitted to the city for the last six years cross-referenced against the actual services delivered at each clinic location. The discrepancy is, what was it Ethan, forty-three million?"

"Closer to Forty-four million," Ethan said.

"We also have the donation records showing the payments Vance made to both of your re-election campaigns through three separate PACs, which, when mapped against the dates of the contract renewals, create a pattern that I think even the most sympathetic journalist would find difficult to characterise as coincidental."

The room was very quiet. 

The mayor had set his fork down. 

The DA had not touched his dessert.

"What Miss Falcone is describing," Ethan said, "are the terms. They are not a starting position for negotiation. They are the terms."

The mayor looked at Meade. 

Meade looked at the mayor. 

A full five seconds of silence passed during which both men arrived at the same conclusion.

"I think we can work with that," the mayor said.

"I think so too," Meade agreed.

Ethan snapped his fingers.

Okoye moved from his position by the door, crossed the dining room in four strides, and set a black briefcase on the table between the dessert plates. He unlatched it and opened the lid and turned it to face the two men across the table.

Ten million dollars in bundled hundreds filling the case from edge to edge.

"Will that suffice?" Ethan asked.

The mayor stared at the money. 

The DA stared at the money. 

Neither of them spoke for a moment but their eyes said everything their mouths wanted to. 

"That will suffice," the mayor said, his voice slightly hoarse.

"More than suffice," Meade added.

"Good expect another briefcase every month," Ethan said. "Though there is one more condition."

He reached into his jacket and withdrew a small black memory stick and set it on the table beside the briefcase then slid it across the table toward Meade.

"This contains evidence implicating Batman and several of his associates in a range of criminal activities," Ethan said. "I want both of you to publicly condemn vigilante activity in Gotham. I want warrants issued for Batman's arrest and for the arrests of Robin, Batgirl, and any other costumed individuals operating outside the law in this city. And I want the footage on this drive made available to every major news outlet by the end of the week."

The mayor's mouth opened. "Mister Kane, I, we can't just, people love Batman. The public perception of—"

"Do it," Ethan said.

"But the political fallout alone would—"

"Make the footage public," Ethan said. "Issue the warrants. If anyone asks, tell them the evidence was brought to your attention through an anonymous tip and that you had no choice but to act on it. The public will adjust. They always do."

The mayor looked at Meade again. 

Meade closed his eyes briefly and then opened them and picked up the memory stick and put it in his pocket.

"We'll handle it," Meade said.

"Good," Ethan said as he picked up his napkin from his lap and wiped his mouth before he set it beside his plate and pushed his chair back from the table. "Sofia. We're leaving."

Sofia stood and placed her napkin on the table and picked up her clutch from the sideboard where she had left it.

The mayor stood up quickly, nearly knocking his chair over. "Mister Kane, before you go, I just want to say again how grateful we are for this partnership. Franklin Briggs does not forget his friends, and I want you to know that anything you need from this office, anything at all—"

"If you expect to keep your seats next term," Ethan said as he turned toward the door, "remember who's paying for them."

Okoye was already there with Ethan's coat, holding it open for him to slip his arms into, then he did the same for Sofia, lifting her wrap from the hook and draping it over her shoulders. The mayor and the DA followed them to the foyer, still talking, still thanking, still assuring Ethan of their loyalty and their gratitude. 

Ethan stepped into the elevator without looking back and descended to the lobby before walking out through the front entrance where the limousine was waiting at the curb. Okoye opened the rear door and Ethan ducked inside with Sofia following. He then closed thr door behind them. 

The limousine then pulled away from the curb.

"You did very well tonight," Ethan said.

Sofia leaned into him, her shoulder pressing against his arm, her head tilting toward his. "Oh yeah..?"

"You handled the negotiation better than I could have."

She shifted closer, her hand finding his arm, her fingers curling around his bicep. "So. My reward."

Ethan looked at her. "If it's companionship you want, Sofia, I could arrange it easily. You could have anyone. A man, a woman, whoever you find attractive. I have the resources to provide whatever kind of relationship you're looking for."

She didn't move away from him but her grip on his arm tightened.

"I would make a poor substitute for whatever it is you're looking for," he said.

Sofia climbed onto his lap.

She moved her knees on either side of his thighs, her hands on his shoulders, her face inches from his, close enough that he could feel her breath and see the flecks of gold in her eyes.

"You gave me everything when I had nothing," she said. "And in return you didn't ask for anything I wouldn't have given willingly. You didn't take advantage of me like every other man in my life, my father, my brother, Luca, every single one of them looked at me and saw something they could use. You looked at me and saw something worth building up."

Her hand moved from his shoulder to the side of his face.

"You made me feel safe. You made me feel wanted. You made me feel strong. No one has ever done that for me before, Ethan. No one."

She held his gaze.

"You are the only man I will ever submit to."

Ethan  looked at her face, then her eyes... at the intensity in them that he had been observing for months. He tried to understand what it was that made her this way, what combination of need and gratitude and obsession had fused together inside her into something that looked at him and saw everything she wanted in the world. 

He didn't understand it. But he recognised its usefulness.

"If that's what you want," he said, "then I have no issue providing it."

Sofia bit her lip.

...

Ethan's penthouse apartment was on the forty-second floor, furnished in the same minimal way he kept every space he occupied. 

When Ethan entered Sofia stood in front of him in the centre of the room, her wrap already dropped on the floor behind her, her eyes on his.

He closed the distance between them and lifted one hand and cupped the side of her face again, his thumb brushing along her jawline exactly as he had done in the car earlier. He knew how much she enjoyed that as he had seen how that touch made her lean in every single time.

She surged up onto her toes without hesitation, both her hands coming up to grip the front of his shirt, and pressed her mouth to his in a kiss almost devoured his mouth entirely, parting his lips so her tongue could slide in and taste him. 

She made a soft sound in the back of her throat as her body pressed against his from chest to hips. She kissed him like she was trying to climb inside his skin, her fingers twisting tighter in the fabric until the seams pulled, her hips already rocking forward against his thigh. Between kisses she kept whispering against his mouth. "I've wanted this for so long... finally..."

Ethan responded exactly as he had calculated would satisfy her. He slid his hand into her hair at the back of her head, his fingers tightening just enough to pull her head back a fraction so he could deepen the kiss, his tongue meeting hers in the rhythm she had set. 

He felt none of the desire or want she poured into him. He remained clearheaded as he catalogued every reaction her body gave; such as the way her nipples had hardened under the dress, the way her thighs pressed together restlessly. He broke the kiss just long enough to speak against her ear. "You've waited long enough. I'm going to give you what you need tonight."

She whimpered at the words and kissed him harder, her teeth grazing his lower lip. He let her have that for another long minute, then used the grip in her hair to pull her head back again, exposing the line of her throat. He dragged his mouth down the side of her neck, sucking lightly at the skin there until she gasped, and then he bit down just hard enough to leave a faint mark. 

Her knees buckled slightly at that and she clutched at his shoulders to stay upright, a moan vibrating against his mouth. He slid his free hand down her side, fingers catching the hem of her dress and hiking it up over her hips. 

The black lace panties underneath were already damp against his palm when he cupped her through them. He rubbed the heel of his hand against her i  circles, pressing the fabric into her folds. She moaned louder, her hips jerking forward into the touch. He kept the pressure on her clit, watching her face the whole time as her eyelids fluttered and her mouth fell open.

After a few more seconds he hooked his fingers under the lace and pulled it aside, sliding two fingers along her slick entrance before pushing them inside her. Sofia's head tipped back and she cried out, her walls clenching around his fingers immediately. He worked them deeper, curling them inside her while his thumb found her clit and rubbed circles over it. He added a third finger after another minute, stretching her open, and her breaths came in short gasps as her body rocked down onto his hand. 

He kept the rhythm for several long minutes, letting the wet sounds of his fingers moving in and out of her fill the room, until her legs were trembling too hard to keep her standing.

He bent down then, hooked one arm under her knees and the other around her back, and lifted her off the floor. She wrapped her arms around his neck immediately, her face buried against his shoulder as he carried her the short distance across the open-plan space to the kitchen island. 

She leaned back on her elbows without being told, spreading her thighs wider for him, her chest heaving. Ethan dropped to his knees in front of the island, the height perfect for what he intended. He pulled her panties the rest of the way off and tossed them aside, then leaned in and dragged his tongue slowly up the length of her slit. 

Sofia's whole body jerked and she let out a loud moan that turned into a shaky whisper. "Your mouth... yes..."

He licked into her again, harder this time, circling her clit with the flat of his tongue before sucking it gently between his lips. At the same time he pushed two fingers back inside her, pumping them while his tongue worked over her clit without pause. He kept building her higher with each pass of his tongue and each thrust of his fingers, feeling the way her thighs started to shake around his head and the way her hips rolled up against his mouth. 

Her fingers threaded into his hair, holding on as her moans grew louder and louder. He curled his fingers again, pressing against the spot inside her that made her cry out, and sucked harder on her clit at the same time.

She came with a long, shuddering moan, her back arching off the countertop and her walls clenching around his fingers in pulses. He kept licking and thrusting through it, drawing the orgasm out until her body started to go limp with aftershocks, her breaths coming in ragged gasps. 

Only then did he ease his fingers out and stand up, wiping his mouth once with the back of his hand. Sofia was still breathing hard, eyes half-lidded and glassy as she looked up at him.

He slid his arms under her again and lifted her off the island. She wrapped herself around him immediately with her legs around his waist and arms around his neck, her face pressed to his neck as he carried her down the short hallway to the bedroom. 

The room was dark except for the city glow coming through the floor-to-ceiling windows. He laid her down in the center of the bed and she reached for him right away, her hands pulling at his shirt as he undressed, folding his jacket and shirt over the chair by the window before stepping out of his pants. When he climbed onto the bed she was already spreading her legs for him again, her dress rucked up around her waist, her eyes fixed on his cock with open hunger.

He settled between her thighs and rubbed the head of his cock up and down her wet folds a few times, coating himself in her slickness. She arched up toward him, a soft whimper escaping her and he pushed inside her in one thrust until he was buried to the hilt. 

Her mouth fell open in a silent cry, her nails digging into his shoulders as her walls tightened around him. He pulled back almost all the way and drove back in hard, setting a rough pace that made the bed creak under them. Each thrust rocked her body and she met every one with a roll of her hips, her moans filling the room as her hands clutched at his back. 

He kept up the rough pace his hips snapping forward with enough force that the sound of skin meeting skin echoed off the walls along with her cries. Her second orgasm built quickly, her walls fluttering around him as her legs locked around his waist and her body shook underneath him. He didn't slow down, he just kept driving into her through it until her moans turned into breathless whimpers.

When she had mostly come down she looked up at him with glassy eyes and wrapped her arms tighter around his neck, pulling him closer so their faces were inches apart. "Come inside me," she begged, the words tumbling out between gasps. "Please... fill me up... I need it." She kissed him messily, still rocking up to meet his thrusts. He kept fucking her through the plea, the pace never faltering, until the pressure built exactly where he needed it. On the next deep thrust he buried himself fully and came, his hips jerking as he spilled inside her in thick jets of cum. She moaned loudly at the feeling, her legs tightening around him like she wanted to keep him there forever.

He stayed inside her for a long moment afterward, letting her catch her breath. When he finally pulled out and shifted to lie beside her on the bed, Sofia immediately rolled toward him and wrapped her arms around his torso, pressing her face into his chest. Her body was still trembling slightly with aftershocks as she hugged him tighter, one leg sliding over his hip to keep them close. "That was the best moment of my life," she whispered against his skin, the words thick with emotion. "I mean it... nothing has ever felt that good or that right... I'm never going to forget a single second of it." She held him like that, breathing slowly until she fell asleep.

After a while he closed his eyes too

...

Meanwhile in the front room behind the couch Artemis sat on the floor with her back against the wall and her knees pulled up to her chest with her arms wrapped around them. A small gift bag sat on the floor beside her with tissue paper sticking out of the top. 

She had come to surprise Ethan. 

She had known it was a big night for him with the mayor. So she'd hoped they could celebrate after getting the good news. 

She had let herself in with the key he had given her weeks ago and she had been sitting on the couch waiting for him when the elevator doors opened multiple voices came through which made her hide. 

She had seen everything.

She had sat there through all of it because her body wouldn't move. Her face was wet and her eyes were red and swollen and she was crying. Her shoulders shook with each breath and her fingers were digging into her own arms hard enough to leave marks.

Eventually after silently crying for what felt like hours she silently got up and left the apartment, feeling like her heart had been broken in two. 

(AN: I hope you guys have been finding this story interesting. I considered having the reader always know what the overarching plan is but I thought it might be more fun if you can try and figure it out. There have been a few hints but nothing crazy. Tbf what he has done actually stretches all the way back to the first chapter. Kind of. Well it's hinted at. It'll be explored more in future chapters. Hope you enjoyed.)