DC: All for One Chapter 28 — A New Gotham (Patreon)

"Citizens of Gotham."

"I come to you today not as your mayor but as your neighbour, as a man who has watched this city tear itself apart for decades and who has finally, finally, seen it begin to heal... and I want to talk to you about the man responsible for that healing."

"I want to talk to you about All for One."

"For years we told ourselves that the men and women in masks who flew over our heads were here to save us. We told ourselves that if we just waited, just suffered a little longer, just buried a few more of our children, that someone would come down from the sky and make it all better and every year the bodies piled higher and nothing changed. The gangs got bigger. The drugs got cheaper. Our sons died in the gutters and our daughters disappeared into the dark and the capes did NOTHING, because the capes were never here for us, they were here for themselves."

"All for One is different."

"All for One is not an alien."

"He is not a god from another world."

"He is a son of this earth, born in this city, raised in its filth, and he has done more for the people of Gotham in a single year than the so-called heroes managed in a generation. He cleared the streets of the vermin that fed on us. And when the false gods came to tear it all down, he stood against them, and he WON."

"What you saw a month ago was not a tragedy. It was a liberation. The man who called himself Superman was not a saviour, he was a tyrant who would have kept you on your knees forever, and All for One freed you from him."

"This is the truth."

"All for One is the truth."

"And the longer you resist the truth is the longer you delay the paradise that is waiting for all of us on the other side of it."

"So I am asking you, as your neighbour, as someone who loves this city, accept him. Accept All for One, just as I have. Just as the United States government has. Lay down your weapons, open your doors, turn in those who would drag us back into the dark, and live under his rule in peace."

The screens that covered downtown held the mayors face for a moment longer before a Molotov cocktail came spinning out of the crowd gathered in the square below and shattered against the screen lighting it on fire. 

More Molotov cocktails were then thrown across the street into a line of saviours who were slowly marching against the protestors. 

For a second no one moved.

Then the Saviours opened up.

A line of them advanced in formation with military-grade rifles raised, advanced body armour and helmets and shields and they fired into the crowd. 

The protestors had guns of their own and they fired back, one of them dropping to a knee behind a concrete barrier and squeezing off rounds that pinged off the Saviour shields, another spraying bullets wildly over the heads of the front rank, but it was no contest. 

The Saviours moved like soldiers, covering each other, advancing in pairs, and the protestors fell one after another unable to content with their advanced weapons. 

A protestor with a hunting rifle managed to drop one of the Saviours and for a moment the crowd surged forward with a cheer, but then the Batmobile came around the corner.

Ethan had taken it a long time ago and spent the better part of a year reverse engineering the systems and then building more of them. He had about fifteen of them ready to use and had now began employing them on the streets to deal with these little acts of rebellion. 

When the driver came around the corner it did not stop at the protestors... it plowed straight through the front of the crowd, bodies bouncing off the hood and going under the wheels, and then the front-mounted launchers opened and a pair of missiles streaked out into the densest part of the square and detonated.

The blast threw bodies in every direction.

The survivors broke and ran, scattering down side streets and alleys, but the Saviours kept firing, picking them off as they fled, and the gunfire didn't stop until the last of them had either gone down or made it out of the square.

One of the Saviour commanders raised a hand to his ear. "This is Saviour Actual, the demonstration in Founders Square has been dispersed, we are reporting one friendly KIA, requesting orders."

"Copy that, Actual. Good work. Continue your patrol route and eliminate any dissenters."

"Copy, continuing patrol."

The column reformed and moved out, the Batmobile rolling along behind them, and as it went the speakers mounted on its roof crackled to life and began broadcasting.

"Citizens of Gotham, remember that aiding or harbouring a cape, a vigilante, or any former member of the Gotham City Police Department is a crime against the people, punishable by death. If you have information regarding the whereabouts of any such individual, report it to your nearest Saviour immediately."

"All for One protects those who serve the truth."

"All for One punishes those who do not."

Drones moved through the air above the streets their cameras sweeping back and forth, scanning faces, scanning windows, looking for anyone who had been flagged on the system.

In an alley off the square, Renee Montoya pressed herself against the wall and watched the last of the protestors get mopped up. 

She'd managed to grab three people when the shooting started, yanking them back into the alley by their collars before the Saviours opened fire, and they were huddled behind her now, shaking, one of them still gripping a pistol with white knuckles. Renee turned to them. "Listen to me. All of you. You need to get out of here, right now, keep moving and you don't stop and you don't look back." She pointed at the gun. "And you leave the guns. You get caught with a gun, you're dead."

The one holding the pistol hesitated, then set it down on the ground.

"Go," Renee said. "Now."

They didn't need to be told twice, after witnessing the massacre they didn't want to be anywhere near here. "Thank you so much!" One of them said before running off with the others. 

Renee waited until they'd cleared the alley, then she pulled her hood up and slipped out the other end and melted into the side streets, moving the way she'd learned to move over the last month, sticking to the gaps between the drone patrols, never crossing open ground, never stopping long enough to be scanned. It took her the better part of an hour to work her way back across the city to her safe house, a basement apartment under a shuttered bodega in a part of the East End that the Saviours hadn't fully locked down yet.

A month.

That was all it had been. 

One month since the night All for One killed Superman in front of the entire world and beat the Justice League into the dirt, and the city had become something Renee didn't recognise anymore.

After that night there had been nothing to stop him. He and the Saviours had taken Gotham completely, every district, every street, and the heroes who'd tried to come and take it back had all been killed or beaten back. 

The United States government, somehow, in some way Renee still didn't understand, had been threatened or bought or both into formally recognising All for One's control of the city, which meant any hero who came in to fight him was technically breaking the law, and Ethan had used that, demonising every one of them on the screens, calling them invaders, calling them tyrants.

And if things weren't bad he had his own army now, a thousand Saviours armed with military gear, and he had villains on his payroll, mercenaries and killers he hired to do the things even his own people wouldn't.

And the worst part, the part that made Renee want to put her fist through a wall every single time she thought about it, was that the Future Foundation never stopped.

It kept running. 

It kept handing out food and medicine and free clinics, all of it, right through the occupation. After All for One had levelled the Narrows during the fight with Superman he'd refused to let anyone rebuild it, refused every proposal, and instead he'd handed the whole ruined stretch of the city over to Poison Ivy to remake into whatever she wanted and she had chosen a grand forest which looked beautiful admittedly but left thousands of people with no homes.

Thousands of people the Future Foundation was right there to take in.

Ethan controlled both ends of it. 

He destroyed people's lives with one hand and rescued them with the other, and the people loved him for the rescuing and never connected it to the destroying, because why would they, Ethan Kane couldn't possibly be the same man in the mask who'd killed a million people in a single day.

A million people.

That was the number who'd died from t that mysterious onset of pain, plus the ones who died in the fighting, plus the ones who died when whole blocks came down. Nearly a million, in one day, and he'd gotten away with it. 

Renee had stopped believing they could win somewhere around week two.

She'd accepted it. 

Ethan had won. 

The only thing left to do was survive, keep her head down, and eventually find some way out of the city, which was next to impossible because the Saviours controlled every road, every bridge, every tunnel, every exit, and they checked everything.

She stopped at a corner and looked up.

Wayne Tower stood over the financial district and All for One had taken it. He'd moved his entire operation into it, made it his seat, and now it was the single most heavily guarded building in the city. A dozen different Batmobiles sat parked across the plaza out front at any given time, and there were never fewer than a hundred Saviours on the grounds, more on the roof, more inside.

Renee suspected that was where he kept them.

The Justice League. 

The ones who'd survived that night, Wonder Woman and the rest, the ones he hadn't killed outright. She'd heard whispers that a few heroes had come into the city specifically to bust them out, to free whoever was being held in there, and not one of those heroes had ever been seen again.

She looked at the tower for a moment, then cursed under her breath and kept moving.

She reached the safe house, went down the back steps and slid her key into the lock. The second the door opened a crack she knew something was wrong, her gun was out and up before she'd finished pushing the door open.

"Whoa, whoa, easy, Detective, it's me."

Jim Gordon stepped out of the shadows by the far wall with both hands raised, and Renee let out a breath and lowered the gun a few inches. 

"You know," Jim said with a chuckle, "of all the ways I could end up dying of late, getting shot by one of my detectives would be a pretty embarrassing way to go."

"Jim, what the hell are you doing here." Renee shut the door behind her and finally holstered the gun. "How did you even find this place, I didn't tell anyone about it."

"Believe it or not I used to be a pretty decent detective back in my day." He lowered his hands and his face went serious. "As to why I'm here, it's because the task force is meeting up tonight and we need everyone we can get, Renee."

Renee shook her head and walked past him to the small kitchenette and braced both hands on the counter. "There's no task force anymore, Jim. There's no point. It's over. Ethan won. He killed Superman, he beat the whole League, he's got the government in his pocket and an army on the streets and yet somehow still has the entire city eating out of his hand. What exactly do you think a handful of us is going to do about that? We can't win."

"Maybe not," Jim said.

"Then what's the point?"

"The point is I'd rather go down fighting than spend whatever time I've got left hiding." Jim's voice didn't rise but it got harder. "I've been a cop for thirty-five years, Renee. I have buried more good people than I can count. And I'll be damned if I let it end with me on my knees calling that monster the truth because some bought-and-paid-for coward on a screen told me to." He stepped closer. "I don't care if nothing changes. I'd rather people remember Jim Gordon went down swinging than remember he rolled over and accepted whatever this is supposed to be."

"That's a nice speech, Jim, but a nice speech doesn't stop a bullet to your head, it doesn't stop a man who is stronger than Superman. We are not heroes. We are not powered. We are just people and people DIE against him, that's the thing he's proven over and over since this whole stupid situation began... anyone who gets in his way dies."

"Everyone dies Renee." Jim said quietly. "The only thing any of us ever gets to choose is what we're doing when it happens. You want to die in a basement waiting for a bus out of town that's never coming, that's your right, I won't stop you. But I think you're better than that. I think Harvey thought you were better than that too... and I think if you really believed it was over, you wouldn't have just risked your neck pulling three strangers out of a firefight in Founders Square."

Renee's head came up.

"Yeah," Jim said. "I saw. I was doing the same."

She stared at him for a long moment, her jaw working, and then she let out a long breath and rubbed her face with both hands. "I hate that you do that. That Harvey thing was a cheap shot and you know it."

"It worked though."

"...Yeah," she said. "Yeah, it worked. Fine. Fine, Jim. Show me your task force. But the second this looks like a suicide run I'm walking, I mean it."

"That's all I'm asking."

...

He led her out and back into the streets, and they moved together through the dark, Jim picking a route that wound through the parts of the city the patrols ignored, until they came to a stretch of road that looked completely abandoned, shuttered storefronts and broken windows. 

Jim walked up to a laundromat on the corner, the windows soaped over from the inside, and he rapped on the glass door in a specific pattern and said, "Bluebird."

The door opened and they walked inside, a moment later something clicked behind the wall, and the row of industrial washing machines along the back wall swung outward on a hidden hinge revealing a staircase going down.

Renee stopped in the doorway. "Okay. What is this. Jim, seriously, what am I looking at, this is a lot fancier than a handful of people meeting in a basement of a club."

"It's more than a handful," Jim said, starting down the stairs. "Come on."

She followed him down, one hand resting near her gun out of habit. "Who's paying for all this, where did this come from?"

"A lot of people in this city aren't exactly happy with All for One," Jim said as they descended. "More than you'd think. The trick was getting them organised, getting them somewhere safe, and getting them backed by someone with resources. Turns out one of the people who hates Ethan Kane the most in the entire world happens to be the one footing the bill for all this."

"Who?"

"You'll see." They reached a landing and Jim stopped and turned to face her. "Before we go in, I need you to do something for me and keep a cool head in there. You're going to see some faces you won't like. Some people who, on any other day, you and I would be putting in cuffs or worse. But everyone in that room is here for the same reason we are, and right now that common goal is the only thing that matters. So whatever you feel when you walk in, you swallow it. Okay?"

Renee frowned. "How unfriendly are we talking."

"Just keep a cool head."

She held his eyes for a second, then nodded slowly. "Fine..."

Jim pushed open the door at the end of the landing and they walked into a large atrium, a wide open space that must have been part of some old underground complex, the ceiling high overhead and the walls lined with crates and equipment, and standing around the centre of it was a group of people that made Renee stop dead.

Batgirl. Robin. Detective Chimp. Cyborg. Green Arrow. Black Canary. Wildcat. The Atom and Shazam were all there even Catwoman was sat on a crate off to the side.

But the ones who surprised her the most were near the front deep in conversation. 

 Black Mask... and the Penguin. Two of the most heinous criminals there have ever been in Gotham. While their hands mah be directly clean Renee had no doubt they had ordered the deaths of hundred of people.  

Renee's hands curled into fists at her sides and she took a step forward before she caught herself, her teeth grinding togethe. Black Mask was a man they'd spent years trying to put in a cell, a man responsible for more dead cops than she could count, standing here like he belonged. 

Jim put a hand on her shoulder.

She breathed out through her nose.

"Ah, Jim, there you are." Detective Chimp came waddling over, his deerstalker pushed back on his head, and he was beaming. "And you brought her. Wonderful. Truly wonderful, I wasn't certain you'd be able to convince her, I know our Detective Montoya can be a hard sell." He turned to Renee and tipped his hat. "Detective. A genuine pleasure to see you again, and under slightly better circumstances than a city in flames, though only slightly."

Renee unclenched her jaw enough to speak. "Yeah. Hi. Good to see you too." She looked around the room one more time, at the heroes and the villains standing shoulder to shoulder, and then back at the chimp. "Okay. Somebody want to tell me why I'm here? Because Jim made it sound like you people had some kind of grand plan, and from where I'm standing this just looks like everybody who hates Ethan Kane crammed into one room."

Detective Chimp laughed. "Oh, I wouldn't call it grand, exactly. Grand implies a certain confidence that I'm not sure any of us can honestly claim at the moment. But yes. We do have a plan... or at least the beginnings of one." He turned and gestured for someone to come forward. "Detective, there's someone I'd very much like you to meet. The man whose research is going to make all of this possible."

A man stepped out from behind a table of equipment. He was older, neatly dressed, with grey at his temples. 

"This is Dr Eduardo Dorado," Chimp said. "The foremost authority on the meta-gene in the entire world. Quite possibly the only real authority with how new the field is. If anyone alive can find a way to take Ethan Kane's power away from him, it is this man."

Dr Dorado inclined his head. "Detective Montoya. I've heard a great deal about your work."

"And this," Chimp continued, "is his assistant Mira Vasquez. She's been instrumental in his research, more than instrumental, really, none of this would be possible without her."

A young woman stepped out from behind the doctor.

She was thin, her skin pale to the point of looking grey under the lights, dark circles under her eyes and her hair stringy around a hollow face, and she looked, for all the world, like someone three days off a hard high, swaying very slightly where she stood with her arms wrapped around herself. She looked up and met Renee's eyes and gave a small wave that barely qualified as a gesture.

"Hey," she said, her voice scratchy and a little too quiet. "Just call me Mira. I'd shake your hand but I think I'd fall over if I moved too fast right now." She blinked slowly and then turned toward Dr Dorado with a fat yawn that she didn't bother to cover. "Doc, do you still need me for anything right now or can I check out for a bit?"

Dr Dorado looked at her with a slight look of disappointment before he sighed. "No, Mira, you're free for the moment."

"Beautiful," Mira said, and she turned and shuffled across the atrium toward a battered couch that had been pushed up against the far wall beneath a row of supply crates, and she dropped onto it sideways and pulled her knees up to her chest before she popped a couple pills out of her pocket and took them. Then a look of euphoria overcame her and she started to drift off to sleep. 

Renee looked at Jim.

Jim caught the look and shrugged slightly. "You'll get used to her," he said. "If you can get past the fact that she's using heroin every other day it's not so bad."

Renee raised an eyebrow at that but didn't say anything, because honestly the idea of judging someone for using drugs in a city that looked like this felt like the most pointless thing she could do with her energy right now, so she let it go and turned away from the couch.

Batgirl and Robin were moving toward her from the far side of the atrium, l Batgirl reached her first and pulled her into a brief hug that Renee returned with one arm while she kept her other hand near her hip out of habit. "Renee," Batgirl said as she stepped back. "I'm really glad you're okay, when they raided the Tin roof club we weren't sure if you made it out."

"I made it out," Renee said. "Barely... but they didn't get me." She looked at Robin who gave her a nod that she returned. "I'm glad you two are still out here. I was worried when I heard what happened to the rest of the League, I thought they might have gotten all of you too."

"There were a few close moments," Batgirl replied, and something passed across her face that she didn't elaborate on. "We've been moving locations every three days since the takeover, never staying in one place long enough for the drones to pick us up. Selina's network has been the only reason we've been able to keep ahead of the patrols."

Catwoman raised her glass from her perch on the crate across the room without looking up. "You're welcome."

Renee looked around the atrium again at the strange collection of people gathered in it, the heroes and the villains and the detective and the doctor and the sleeping girl on the couch, and she turned back to Robin. "Okay. So why are we all here. What is this, what's the actual play, because Jim dragged me across half the city telling me there was a plan and I still haven't heard one."

Robin straightened up slightly and the tension in his jaw that had been there since she'd walked in tightened a fraction further. "We're here because we're finally going to start moving against Ethan," he said. "We've been gathering people and resources and information for weeks and tonight is the night we—"

"If I might."

Detective Chimp interrupted as he stood next to Robin before he climbed up onto a table near the centre of the room, and the conversations around the space died down one by one as heads turned toward him. "Thank you all for being here tonight," he said. "I know how difficult it is to move through the city right now and I know the risk every one of you took in coming to this location."

"I also know," Chimp continued, "that I've kept many of you in the dark about certain things, about what we've been researching, about what we've discovered, about why I've asked you to trust me without always explaining the reasons. That was deliberate and it was necessary because the information I'm about to share with you is the kind of information that gets people killed if it reaches the wrong ears, and I needed to be certain, absolutely certain, of the security of this location and the people in it before I put it on the table." He paused and looked around the room. 

He reached into the breast pocket of his tweed jacket and pulled out a small notepad that he set on the table beside his feet, though he didn't open it, and then he looked up.

"Before I get into the substance of what we've found, I need to ask a question, and I need honest answers because lives may depend on it." He looked around the room slowly. "Has anyone in this room used street drugs in Gotham in the month since All for One killed superman?"

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence before a hand went up near the back of the room where a group of Black Mask's men were standing, and then another from a woman beside the Penguin, and then a third from a man Renee didn't recognise near the supply crates.

And then Wildcat raised his hand.

Every head in the room turned toward him.

"What?" Wildcat said, looking around at the faces staring at him. "Can't an old man have some fun?" He crossed his arms. "Besides I still got a few lives in me."

Black Canary closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"You are all incredibly lucky... had you taken it before the event..." Detective Chimp's expression didn't change but there was something urgent in his voice when he spoke next. "Anyway I need everyone who raised their hand, I need you to go with the Atom and Dr Dorado right now. Dr Dorado will explain what's happening when you're with him but please, do not delay."

The Atom, who had been standing near the back of the room in his suit at full size, stepped forward and gestured toward a side corridor. "This way, please. We have equipment set up in the next room that will help you."

Wildcat looked like he wanted to argue but something in the chimp's tone stopped him, and he uncrossed his arms and followed the Atom and Dr Dorado and the others through the side door, which closed behind them with a heavy thud that echoed through the atrium.

The room was quieter now and the people remaining looked at each other with expressions that ranged from confused to worried, and Green Arrow was the first to break the silence. "Okay, I'll bite. What the hell was that about? Why did you just send them out of here like the building was on fire?"

Detective Chimp didn't answer immediately. He stood on the tabletop and took a breath and when he spoke his voice was measured and careful in the way that a doctor's voice is careful when they're about to deliver bad news.

"I'm sure all of you remember," he said, "that on the day All for One fought Superman, before the fight even began, thousands of people across the city began screaming in pain. They dropped where they stood, in their homes, on the streets, in their offices, everywhere, all at once. And every single one of them died within thirty minutes."

"The final count was somewhere approaching a million people, which makes it the single deadliest event in the history of Gotham City and one of the deadliest in the history of the United States."

"We were never able to determine the cause at the time," Chimp continued. "There was no gas, no radiation, no biological agent, nothing in the environment that any of our equipment could detect. The victims died in agony and we had no explanation for why."

He reached down and picked up the notepad from the table and held it in both hands. "With the help of the Atom, who was able to examine bodies from several of the victims, I have now discovered the cause."

He looked around the room.

"The drugs that the Saviours were distributing across the city for the last several months were not ordinary narcotics. They had been modified to contain an aggressive nanovirus, billions of nanoscopic machines that were designed to enter the bloodstream of anyone who ingested, inhaled, or injected the product. Once inside the body, the nanovirus did nothing. It lay dormant, completely inert, invisible to every conventional medical test, waiting for a single specific activation signal."

"The Future Phones," Robin said.

"Indeed," Detective Chimp said. "When All for One activated the signal on the night of his fight with Superman, every Future Phone in the city began broadcasting simultaneously, and the nanovirus in every user's bloodstream received the command to activate. When it did, it attacked the nervous system, causing catastrophic pain followed by systemic organ failure."

He set the notepad down.

"Every single person who died that night had one thing in common. They had used the Saviours' product at some point during the previous months. Every one of them. That is why the deaths appeared random and why we couldn't find a common thread, because the common thread was something that had entered their bodies weeks or months before."

"He planned it from the beginning," Batgirl said. "The phones, the drugs, all of it, it was all one plan. He was poisoning them the entire time."

"From the very beginning," Chimp confirmed, and something in his face shifted, a tightening around his eyes that Renee recognised as guilt. "I blame myself for not seeing it sooner. I knew, I knew, that Ethan had a powerful aversion to drugs. His parents were addicts. He despised what drugs had done to his family. It never made sense that he would become a distributor, it was fundamentally at odds with everything we knew about his psychology, and yet I didn't follow that thread to its conclusion. I had the pieces in front of me and I didn't put them together in time."

Batgirl stepped forward. "You couldn't have known," she said. "None of us could have. He had an answer for everything, a cover for every move, and even when we found the emitter we didn't know what it was for. You got us further than anyone else did. You're the reason we're even standing here right now."

Chimp looked at her and the guilt in his face didn't leave but he nodded. "Thank you, Barbara. I appreciate that, truly. But it was still a blunder, and one I intend to make up for." He reached down to the table and picked up a manila folder that had been lying beneath the notepad and he held it up so the room could see it. "Perhaps I would not have made the error at all had I found this sooner."

"What is that?" Green Arrow asked from across the room.

"A research paper," Chimp said, opening the folder and holding up the first page. "Written over a year ago maybe a few weeks before Creedence was murdered. The subject is the medical application of nanotechnology, specifically the theoretical use of programmable nanites as a delivery mechanism for targeted medicine within the human body. The paper describes, in remarkable detail, how nanoscopic machines could be engineered to travel through the bloodstream and deliver precise doses of medication to specific organs, how they could be programmed to remain dormant until triggered by an external signal, and how they could be modified to perform a range of functions depending on the instructions they received."

He let that sit for a moment.

"The paper is authored by a Mr Rogan Patel."

Robin and Batgirl's eyes went wide at the same time.

Detective Chimp nodded. "A teacher at Gotham Academy. More specifically, Ethan Kane's science teacher."

"He stole his Ethan's paper?!" Batgirl said with disgust in her voice. 

"The writing style is identical to the academic papers Ethan produced during his time at the Academy," Chimp confirmed. "Mr Patel likely took advantage of Ethan's listlessness and took credit for the paper and published it on his own."

He closed the folder and set it back on the table.

"I wish I had found this paper months ago," he said quietly. "If I had, I might have been able to trace the connection between the nanotechnology research and the drug distribution network before the activation signal was sent."

The room went silent though it wasn't just Detective Chimp who sat there feeling regret, but all of them who thought they could've done something different. Nobody spoke for a moment until Shazam stepped forward from the back wall and uncrossed his arms. "Hey," he said. "Look, I get it, and I'm not going to stand here and tell you it doesn't matter because it does, but beating yourself up over something you couldn't have seen coming isn't going to help anyone. Not the people we lost and not the people we can still save." He looked around the room. "We're all here because we still think there's something worth fighting for, right? So let's focus on that." 

Detective Chimp looked at him and a small smile crossed his face. "You're right," he said. "You are absolutely right... and that brings me to why I brought all of you here tonight, and why I asked Dr Dorado to join us."

He straightened up on the tabletop and his voice changed. "With the help of Dr Dorado, the Atom, and Miss Vasquez," he said, nodding toward the couch where Mira was still asleep, "I believe we have found a way to neutralise Ethan Kane."

"For good."

_____________________________________

Ethan stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows of the top floor of Wayne Tower with his hands clasped behind his back and looked out across the city that belonged to him.

A large stretch of what had been the Narrows was gone now, replaced by something that barely looked like it belonged on the same continent, let alone in the same city. Trees rose out of the rubble in thick clusters that had already grown past the height of the buildings that had once stood there, their canopies knitting together overhead into a continuous green ceiling that blocked the sun from the ground below. 

Ivy had done something extraordinary with the ruin he had given her, turned a crater into a forest, turned devastation into something beautiful and alive and, in Ethan's opinion, considerably better looking than the collapsing tenements that had been there before.

He considered, briefly, whether he should destroy the rest of the city and let Ivy remake all of it. A Gotham covered entirely in green, the whole place transformed into something closer to what the earth was supposed to look like before humanity had paved over it.

No.

That wasn't practical and would create more problems than it solved. The infrastructure beneath the city was still necessary, the power grid, the water treatment, the sewer systems, all of it needed to keep running, and burying it under a forest would collapse the whole thing within weeks. 

Besides, there were still loose ends. People still making moves against him, small pockets of resistance that hadn't been stamped out yet, heroes who kept trying to sneak into the city despite the government's formal recognition of his authority, and until those threats were fully neutralised he couldn't afford to commit to any plans that required the kind of total reconstruction that turning Gotham into a nature preserve would demand.

The sound of the door opening behind him pulled his attention away from the window and he turned to see Sofia walking across the room toward him in a dark silk blouse and tailored trousers, her hair pulled back from her face in a way that showed the lines of her jaw and the her mouth that always softened when she was looking at him. 

She crossed the distance between the door and the window without slowing and reached up with both hands and took his face and kissed him, one hand sliding to the back of his neck while the other stayed on his jaw, and when she pulled back she kept her face close to his for a moment.

"Everyone's here," she said. "They're waiting in the boardroom."

"Good," Ethan said. "Thank you."

She slipped her arm through his and they walked together through the corridor that connected the private quarters to the executive level of the tower, passing two Saviour guards who straightened as they approached and held the doors open, and they entered the boardroom.

The room was large and had been refitted since Ethan had taken the building, the old Wayne Enterprises conference table replaced with something longer, the walls stripped of the corporate art and left bare except for a series of monitors that showed live feeds from cameras positioned across the city. Around the table sat the people who ran his operation.

Poison Ivy occupied a chair near the far end with her legs crossed and a vine coiling lazily around one wrist, her eyes half-closed in the way they always were when she attended these meetings. Cheshire sat across from her with her mask resting on the table beside her elbow. Artemis was further down the table in tactical gear with her bow leaning against the back of her chair and her arms folded across her chest, she was looking at the table in front of her instead of at Ethan when he walked in. Four Saviour commanders filled the remaining seats, hard-faced men and women in dark utility clothing who had risen through the ranks over the past year.

Not Mindy though... her chair was empty.

Sofia took the seat to Ethan's immediate right and crossed her legs and settled back, and Ethan sat down at the head of the table.

"Thank you for being here," he said, looking around the table at each of them in turn. "I know it has been a difficult time and there hasn't been much opportunity to rest and the pace of operations over the last month has been relentless. I want you all to know that I recognise what you've given and what it's cost each of you." He paused and let that sit for a moment. "We are coming to the end of this chapter. I promise you that. Once the remaining pieces are in place and the transition is complete, you will all live as you deserve. Like kings."

The Saviour commanders straightened in their seats and nodded and one of them tapped the table with his knuckles in approval.

Artemis did not move or react, she just sat with her arms folded and did not applaud.

Ethan's eyes passed over her for a fraction of a second longer than anyone else before he continued.

"The first trial was a success," he said. "The nanovirus I introduced into the drug supply functioned precisely as designed and all of it performed within the parameters I had set. That phase is now complete and behind us, which means we can begin moving toward phase two."

"And what is phase two?" Ivy asked, uncrossing her legs and leaning forward slightly with the vine on her wrist tightening.

Ethan smiled. "Something much grander. But the preparations are not quite finished yet, so I'll be holding the specifics until they are. What I can tell you is that it builds directly on what we've already accomplished and that when it's ready you will all understand why everything we've done so far was necessary."

Ivy held his gaze for a moment longer and then sat back without pushing the point.

He turned his attention to one of the Saviour commanders, a woman named Holt who had been running the pursuit operations for the last month. "Have you tracked down Mindy?"

Holt shifted in her seat and her mouth tightened before she answered. "No sir. Hit-Girl has been extremely proficient at killing anyone we send after her. We've lost eleven operatives in the last week alone trying to pin down her location and every single engagement has ended the same way, with her disappearing and our people coming back in bags. She knows the tunnel systems better than we do at this point and she's been using the sewer network to move between the East End and what's left of the old industrial district without ever surfacing where our drones can pick her up."

Ethan looked at her for a moment and then turned to the far end of the table where Okoye stood against the wall, his massive frame filling the corner of the room, his arms folded across his chest. "Okoye. Deal with her."

"Yes boss," the big man said.

Ethan turned back to the table. "We are close to taking full control of this city. Closer than we have ever been. The infrastructure is in place, the population is largely compliant, the government has recognised our authority, and the hero community's ability to interfere has been functionally eliminated."

One of the other commanders, a younger man named Royce, leaned forward. "Haven't we already taken full control? I mean, sir, with respect, we own every district, we control every exit, the police are gone, the capes are either locked up or on the run, what's left?"

"What's left," Ethan said, "is the most important part. All for One is a villain. The world sees him as a villain, the people of this city see him as a villain, and no villain has ever maintained permanent control over a population through fear alone. Fear is a tool, not a foundation. What I need, what the plan requires, is for All for One to be defeated publicly and the person who defeats him needs to be someone the people already love."

He let the silence fill the room for a moment.

"There will come a day, very soon, when Ethan Kane will face All for One in front of the cameras and the crowds and the entire world, and Ethan Kane will win. And on that day the villain who conquered the city will fall and the hero who saved it will rise."

The Saviour commanders exchanged glances and then one by one they started nodding, and the youngest one, Royce, actually grinned. "That's an amazing plan, sir. Truly. The people will eat it up, they already love you, once they see you take down the guy who's been—"

"Yes," Ethan said. "They will." He looked around the table one more time. "In the meantime, remain vigilant. There are still those out there who would see everything we've built torn down. Do not underestimate them and do not give them room to breathe. That's all. You're dismissed."

The table cleared as the commanders and the operatives stood and filed out, Ivy drifting through the door with a final glance back at Ethan, Cheshire retrieving her mask and sliding it back into place before she left. Sofia lingered at his side and pressed a kiss to his cheek and squeezed his hand before following the others out.

Artemis was the last to leave. 

She stood from her chair and picked up her bow and slung it over her shoulder and walked toward the door without looking at him.

Ethan sat alone at the head of the empty table for a moment, then he pushed his chair back and stood and walked out of the boardroom and down the corridor toward the private elevator that connected the executive floors to the new penthouse suite at the top of the tower. He stepped inside and pressed the button and watched the doors close and rode the car upward in silence.

The elevator opened onto the penthouse floor and he walked through the entrance hall and past the kitchen where a glass of water had been left out for him, which he picked up and drank from while he continued walking, he moved through the living area and down the short corridor that led to the master bedroom.

He pushed the door open and stepped inside.

"AHHHHHHHHHHGGGGG!!!" Wonder Woman roared from her position on the floor.

She was bound to a reinforced anchor point that had been drilled into the concrete beneath the carpet, the golden coils of her own lasso wrapped around her wrists and her ankles and her torso and looped through the anchor in a configuration that kept her flat on her back with virtually no range of movement. 

"Good evening, Diana," Ethan said as he set the glass of water on the dresser and walked over to stand above her.

"AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" She roared at him.

It was not a word, not a curse, not a threat, it was a raw animal sound that came tearing out of her chest, and her body strained against the lasso with every ounce of strength she had, the muscles in her arms and legs standing out like cables, the anchor point groaning under the force, but the lasso held as it always did.

Ethan watched her fight for a moment and then sat down on the edge of the bed and crossed one leg over the other and looked at her. 

He had considered killing her after he had finished with the harvesting of her blood and her genetic material, including the eggs he had extracted while she had been unconscious. But he had decided against it. Keeping her alive and watching her fight against something she couldn't overcome was more satisfying than adding another body to the count.

Superman's body had been a different matter. 

Ethan had made a foolish blunder in regards to that. 

He had strung the corpse up on the outside of the tower in the first week, mounted on the sign above the main entrance where everyone in the financial district could see it, a statement that required no words. But someone had stolen it, cut it down and taken it in the middle of the night despite the guards and the drones and the cameras, and by the time the theft was discovered the body was gone. 

That had annoyed him. 

He'd wanted it there as a permanent reminder, a monument to the night the old world died, but at least he had already harvested the Kryptonian DNA before the body was taken. The tissue samples and blood work were safely stored alongside Diana's materials in the lab.

With the Justice League in his custody, their bodies and their abilities available for study, there was more than enough scientific work to keep him occupied for years. Kryptonian solar absorption. Amazonian physiology. The strange extradimensional connection that he could trace through samples from Flash's blood. The Atlantean mutations in Aquaman's tissue. All of it waiting for him, waiting to be understood and decoded and rebuilt into something that would serve the world he was making.

All of it made him excited in a way he rarely felt.

"Time to get to work," he muttered to himself as he stood up from the bed and walked past Diana without looking at her again, her roar following him down the corridor as he pushed through the door that led to his private laboratory and closed it behind him.

(AN: So we are now in a new Gotham one completely controlled by Ethan. If you're wondering how he managed to get the US government to back off I didn't say it implicitly because i felt like the scene wouldn't have fit in well I might include it in the future. But yeah think of a similar situation to Bane from dark knight rises. Ethan is capable of producing enriched uranium with his transmutation and with all the other resources he has making a nuclear warhead isn't that hard. Anyway hope you enjoy.)