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The auto-body shop was called The Rust Bucket, a name less threatening than truthful. It was a sprawling, single-story building in a grimy, forgotten corner of Gotham's industrial sector, surrounded by a high chain-link fence topped with razor wire. According to Specs's intel, the shipment of microprocessors—critical to Cobblepot's operations—was hidden in a reinforced storage locker within the main garage.
Nick stood a hundred yards away, concealed in the mouth of a darkened cul-de-sac. He wasn't thinking about the morality of the action; he was analyzing the target. The briefing from Specs had been concise: three guards, all carrying non-lethal shock batons and backup sidearms; one entry point through the main bay door, secured by a heavy steel bar; and two heat-sensitive cameras covering the perimeter.
He had two hours until the local patrol made its next circuit.
The cold precision of the task was a strange comfort. It gave the emptiness in his mind a temporary purpose. He was not Nick, the lost man; he was a machine of retrieval, a highly specialized tool.
He moved toward the perimeter fence, his tailored black suit blending perfectly with the deep shadows. The chain-link was old, loose, and an easy climb, but climbing meant noise, and noise meant the end of the operation.
He reached the fence. He didn't touch it, but simply stood before the coiled razor wire that crowned it, that familiar, low, internal hum starting in his chest. It was the call and response between his will and the metal.
He closed his eyes, focusing his entire consciousness on the razor wire. He didn't know how he was doing this. He didn't use words or gestures. It was a sheer, desperate command of his primal self.
Bend. Open.
For a moment, the razor wire was silent, dead. Then, faintly, he heard a sound—not a physical scraping, but a minute, structural whine. One coil of the razor wire, directly above his head, slowly and silently began to unwind, the spiraling ribbon of metal straightening out and drooping a controlled four inches, creating a safe, silent gap.
He waited, holding the concentration, until the tiny opening was stable. He didn't dare move the entire fence; that would require too much power and risk a total magnetic surge. This was a micro-adjustment, a precise, unnerving act of metal compliance.
He slipped through the gap in the chain-link and under the now-straight razor wire in a movement so fluid he barely broke stride. As soon as his feet hit the ground inside the perimeter, the razor wire snapped back into its coiled, aggressive shape, sealing the breach. Total silence. Total deniability.
Inside the yard, the silence was broken only by the distant thrum of the building's ancient ventilation unit. The first guard was stationed in a small, external shack controlling the bay door mechanism.
Nick moved along the shadows of parked, rusting vehicles. His heart rate was unnervingly low. He felt no adrenaline, only the cold, mechanical efficiency of the hunt.
He skirted the heat sensors, another set of parameters his body inexplicably understood. He knew the dead zones, the fractions of a second where the scanner had completed its sweep and was momentarily blind.
He reached the shack. The guard inside was listening to a portable radio, his feet propped up on the control panel, his shock baton resting carelessly on his knee. He was bored, comfortable, and predictable—the enemy of any good security operative.
Nick reached into his suit jacket. He had brought only two items: the steel pipe, and a small, magnetic paperweight Cobblepot had left on the briefing table—a heavy, chrome orb the size of a golf ball.
He gripped the paperweight, channeling his will into the orb. He needed to incapacitate the guard silently, without a trace. He didn't want to use his own hands yet; he wanted to test the weapon.
He hurled the paperweight at the glass window of the shack. It was a fast, direct throw—but at the last millisecond, Nick gave an internal jolt of magnetic will.
The chrome orb didn't shatter the window. Instead, it struck the glass, and in the micro-second of impact, the orb magnetically adhered to the window, pulling the metal casing of the guard shack's interior door frame toward it. The impact produced a sound like a muted, wet thunk—loud enough to draw the guard's attention, but not loud enough to carry.
The guard jumped up, peering out into the darkness. "What was that? A cat?"
As the guard moved closer to the window, Nick acted. He gave a sharp, final mental push to the orb. The paperweight released its grip on the glass and flew inward, not at the guard's head, but at the radio sitting on the control panel.
The chrome orb smashed the radio, killing the music and the sound of the guard's heartbeat-masking entertainment.
The guard cursed, startled, reaching for his shock baton. This was the moment of opportunity.
Nick burst through the shack door. The guard, still dazed and focused on the noise, never saw the blow coming. Nick delivered a short, precise palm-heel strike to the guard's jaw, then dropped him with a brutal, paralyzing nerve strike to the neck, using a technique Nick knew was favored by Russian special forces.
The man collapsed silently, unconscious before he hit the floor, his breathing shallow and steady. Incapacitated, not harmed unnecessarily.
One down. Two to go.
Nick secured the control shack and opened the main bay door just wide enough to slip into the cavernous, grease-stained main garage. The air was thick with the smell of oil and fuel.
The remaining two guards were inside, playing cards beneath a single, buzzing fluorescent light near the storage locker. Their sidearms were holstered, their batons leaning against a tool chest—a lethal display of complacency.
The floor was littered with the raw materials of the shop: power tools, rusted car parts, and various metal implements. For Nick, the floor was not a chaotic mess; it was an arsenal.
He moved along the back wall, using the immense shadows cast by the industrial vehicles. He needed to create a distraction and simultaneous containment.
He paused near a rack of heavy-duty car jacks—solid pieces of steel. He focused his magnetic will on one of them. He wasn't trying to lift it yet; that was too much. He was merely establishing the conduit. The jack trembled slightly, emitting a faint vibration that only Nick could perceive.
He let the car jack rest, moving his focus to a heavy-duty chain and hook hanging from an overhead beam. The chain was secured by a thick, steel locking pin.
Unclasp.
With a sudden, violent surge of mental pressure, Nick commanded the steel pin. It shot out of the locking mechanism with a near-silent hiss of metal-on-metal friction. The heavy chain and hook dropped to the floor, landing with a loud, attention-grabbing CRASH!
"What the hell was that?!" the first guard shouted, grabbing his shock baton and scrambling to his feet.
The two guards immediately moved toward the noise, pulling their sidearms as they went. They were focused entirely on the area where the chain had fallen, leaving their flank—and the open space leading to the storage locker—exposed.
Nick moved into the breach.
He didn't engage the guards directly. He grabbed the heavy steel pipe—his one physical link to the outside world—and swung it, not at the men, but at a massive, empty tire rim leaning against the wall.
The impact resonated like a gong, sending the heavy steel rim spinning horizontally across the floor toward the guards' legs.
The guards looked down, startled by the unexpected, rapidly spinning obstacle. The rim didn't just spin; Nick was pulling it, magnetically forcing its trajectory. It spun directly around the guards' ankles, forcing them to jump and tangle their feet.
Before they could fully recover their balance, Nick acted.
He unleashed the power he had been suppressing. He focused on the two sidearms holstered at their hips.
Disarm.
It was a burst of raw, violent kinetic force. Both pistols were instantly yanked from their holsters. They didn't fall; they flew—not at Nick, but upward, slamming against the steel ceiling beams and adhering there with a sharp CLACK as if the beam itself had been electrified.
The two guards stood frozen, suddenly weaponless, staring in disbelief at the guns stuck twenty feet above their heads.
Nick didn't give them time to process the impossible. He delivered a stunningly fast, brutal takedown on the nearest guard, twisting his arm and driving his knee into the man's temple. The guard went down, unconscious.
The final guard, seeing his comrades fall and his weapons defying gravity, backed away in sheer terror, his eyes wide with disbelief. He raised his shock baton, ready to engage.
"Stop," Nick commanded, the word spoken in a low, absolute tone that brooked no argument.
The guard froze.
Nick didn't touch him. He simply channeled his will into the man's shock baton. The steel components within the device—the battery, the core conductors, the trigger mechanism—began to vibrate violently, a high-pitched, almost musical whine of stressed metal. The guard's hand involuntarily spasmed as the metal threatened to tear itself from the polymer casing. He screamed, dropping the useless weapon.
Nick gave a final, controlled magnetic pull. The shock baton shot backward, slamming harmlessly against a pile of tires.
The guard collapsed onto his knees, shaking, holding his throbbing hand. He was terrified, but unharmed.
Incapacitated, not harmed unnecessarily.
The extraction was simple. The storage locker was secured by a conventional combination lock, which Nick picked instantly, another inexplicable skill in his internal library.
Inside, crates marked with a unique, stylized Penguin logo contained the microprocessors. He had accomplished the mission in twenty-eight minutes.
As he loaded the crates onto a waiting flatbed truck (driven by a nervous associate of Specs), Nick took one final, long look at the auto-body shop.
Three guards unconscious, two sidearms stuck to the ceiling, a chain on the floor, and a shattered radio. No gunshots, no witnesses, and the only injury was structural stress to a razor wire coil and some terrified men. It was a perfectly clean, impossible operation.
He looked at his hands, watching the faint, blue-white afterglow of the immense kinetic energy he had just wielded fade from his fingertips. The power felt like a vast, cold ocean inside him, a limitless, terrifying potential. It was the only thing that felt truly his.
He was not just a soldier. He was a Magnet.
The truck pulled away, and Nick rode in the back, sitting silently with the crates of stolen goods. He had secured his resources. Cobblepot would reward him handsomely. He had bought his time.
But as the truck sped through the quiet streets of the industrial zone, a single, sharp thought pierced the wall of his resolve, fueled by the familiar guilt from his dreams of the camps:
I just used the power of the revolutionary to serve the oppressor.
The choice was made, but the conflict had only just begun. He knew he had traded his principles for survival. Now, he had to figure out how to buy them back.