Batman stood at the edge of the shadows, his white lenses fixed dead on Cole Vance.
He did not move.
He did not leave, nor did he come any closer.
He simply stared.
Cole felt a chill run down his spine under the scrutiny of those emotionless white lenses.
In the two weeks since arriving in Gotham to have his eyes opened, he had seen many kinds of gazes: Larry’s greed, Scarface’s fury, the landlady’s calculating appraisal of merchandise.
Yet Batman’s gaze was entirely different.
It was not the look one gave a human being; it was the look one gave data.
Like a machine scanning, disassembling, reducing him from a person into a set of parameters.
As if he were not human, and the figure before him were not human either.
It was thoroughly terrifying to a spider.
Really annoying—bats were supposed to be fairly cute creatures.
“Why do you play the vigilante?”
Batman spoke.
His voice was low, like sandpaper scraping across metal.
It was not a curious inquiry, but an interrogation.
Not concern, but an inquisition.
Cole froze.
“Huh?”
“You possess strength far beyond an ordinary human.”
Batman did not speak quickly; every word seemed filtered before being allowed out, and combined with his deep, raspy baritone, it carried immense pressure.
“At the docks, you lifted an overturned sedan with your bare hands.
In alley fights, you precisely control your output and never kill.
You are starving, yet you have not used your power to steal.
You have not even used your strength to threaten anyone for food.” He paused.
“That is not normal.”
Cole parted his lips.
He wanted to say *thank you for the compliment*, wanted to say *I’m so touched by your attention*, wanted to say *are you harboring a crush on me?*
Yet looking at those white lenses, he swallowed the words back down.
“There are only three reasons a person possesses power and does not use it.” Batman’s voice held no inflection.
“First, he fears something.
Fears losing control of his power, fears being consumed by a greater force, fears the fallout once exposed.
Second, he is waiting for something.
Waiting for an opportunity, a quarry worthy of his strength, a target that justifies shedding his disguise.
Third.”
He paused for a fraction of a second.
“He is playing a part.
Playing a role he does not inherently possess.
Performing kindness through restraint, performing harmlessness through hunger, performing innocence through chatter.”
He took a half-step forward, intensely oppressive, like a shadow itself shifting half an inch closer.
“Which one are you?”
Cole stood there.
The blood on his shoulder was congealing, sticking to the torn fabric and gluing the suit to his skin.
He should play along.
That was his instinct, the entirety of what half a month surviving in this city had taught him: wear a sunny smile, deliver righteous lines, wrap suspicion in naivety, disguise calculation as instinct.
He could do it.
He knew how.
Yet he did not.
“Fine, fine, since you asked so sincerely, I’ll tell you.”
Cole’s voice suddenly quieted.
No banter, no witty comebacks, none of the Spider-Man who was always talking, always putting on a show.
“Where I grew up…
wasn’t like this place.”
“Where I grew up, there were bad guys too.
There was crime.
There were nights where you’d walk down the street and have to constantly check behind you to see if someone was following.
But…”
Cole looked down at his hands—the hands that could lift a sedan.
“But someone there told me that strength isn’t meant for taking.
It’s meant for protecting.”
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
Cole fell silent for a moment.
“I don’t know if I’m acting.
Maybe I am.
Maybe I’ve been acting the whole time.
Maybe your third option really is the right answer.”
He looked up, meeting Batman’s gaze.
“But if you play the part your whole life, until the day you die, until you can’t even tell the difference yourself…
how is that any different from the real thing?”
Batman did not answer.
He stared at Cole for a long time.
So long that only the distant wail of sirens and the sound of blood dripping onto the floor echoed in the warehouse.
“The place you speak of,” Batman finally said, “does not exist.
Gotham does not produce people like you.
No city produces people like you.
Your behavioral pattern is a statistical anomaly.
Your moral coordinate system has no matching model in criminal psychology.
You are not a normal person.”
He turned away, the edge of his cape rising in the night breeze.
“I will find out.”
He walked toward the edge of the shadows.
There was no wasted movement in his stride, like a machine executing a programmed path.
“Wait,” Cole called out to him.
Batman stopped.
He did not turn around.
“Why do *you* play the vigilante?”
Cole deliberately lowered his voice, trying to pitch his youthful timbre into the deep, mature tone Batman used.
It was not a provocation—truly, it was not.
He meant no disrespect.
He was genuinely serious…
like two fellow patients comparing charts.
Batman gave no answer.
He stood still for a moment—perhaps one second, perhaps three.
Then he raised his arm and fired his grapple gun.
The sound of the cable retracting cut through the night air.
Like a shadow swallowed by darkness, he vanished.
Cole stood where he was, staring at the empty patch of shadow.
The black silhouette still lingered as an afterimage on his retinas, but the man was gone.
Like a drop of ink falling into another drop of ink.
He had a feeling this person would show up again.
Don’t ask why—call it his Peter Tingle.
Even if his instincts had not yet evolved enough to be called a full “Spider-Sense.”
“Hey.”
Cole spoke up suddenly.
Not far off, a young cop poked half his head out from behind a shipping container, notepad clutched in hand, his expression like a wild cat caught in headlights.
“How long have you been hiding there?”
The young cop cleared his throat awkwardly.
“Not that long.
He paused.
“Honestly, I was just here to clean up the scene, but you two got so deep into it that I felt bad interrupting.
I mean, it’s not every day you see a guy in a bat costume and a guy in pajamas debating life philosophy at the docks.”
Cole did not reply.
He sat down against the wall and began tearing away the shredded fabric around his shoulder.
The cloth was stuck to the wound, and peeling it off tore away a small scab.
He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth, stifling a curse.
There was an outsider watching, after all; he couldn’t go ruining his friendly neighborhood image.
The cop walked over and handed him a roll of grimy bandages and an unlabeled bottle of liquid.
“This is all I’ve got.
Make do.”
Cole took the bottle and sniffed it.
The alcohol reek was strong enough to qualify as a chemical weapon.
“Is this stuff meant for humans?
Feels more like shoe polish to me.
Do vigilantes really not get health insurance?
I mean, I go on patrol and stop crimes very diligently every single day.”
“You’re lucky to even get that much.
Besides, I’m an official employee and I don’t get health insurance either.
You’re an off-the-books, self-employed vigilante and you want benefits?”
The young cop crouched beside him, watching as Cole poured the liquid onto the wound.
The pain made Cole go rigid as a drawn bowstring.
His teeth ground together with a harsh creak, but he forced himself not to make a sound.
He wrapped the bandage with practiced, heartbreaking efficiency.
The cop watched the way he bound the wound, saying nothing.
“Hey,” Cole asked as he tied the knot, “if there’s no insurance, no body armor, and nobody cares whether you live or die…
why’d you become a cop?”
The young officer fell silent for a moment.
He looked down at his faded uniform.
A button had fallen off the cuff, held together by a staple.
“Maybe…
because I haven’t learned how to live like a dog yet.” He stood up and patted the dust off his knees.
“Get going.
When the backup gets here, they won’t be as easy to talk to as me.”
* * *
Far in the distance, atop the highest point of the Gotham Bridge, a dark silhouette crouched.
His cape whipped in the wind like a banner.
Batman had not returned to the Batcave.
He perched at the highest vantage point in Gotham, the recording in his tactical visor frozen on the frame of the youth saying, *With great power comes great responsibility.*
He replayed those three frames repeatedly.
Pupil diameter.
Vocal cord vibration frequency.
Facial micro-expressions.
Every piece of data pointed to the same conclusion: he had not lied.
He truly believed those words and lived by them as his guiding motto.
Batman closed the playback.
Gotham did not produce people like this.
No city produced people like this.
There was no matching model in his database.
He needed more data.
Batman rose, his cape unfurling behind him.
The gray clouds hung oppressively low, like a grimy rag that could never be wrung dry.