The desert smelled like rust and smoke.
It was the kind of place where the world forgot people could exist — a sun-baked ruin on the edge of Qurac's badlands, little more than an old smuggling depot turned into a trafficking hub. The only color in this wasteland came from the blue-black Reach crates stacked like tombstones, humming with an alien energy that didn't belong in this world.
The night was quiet except for the wind and the low hum of a portable generator. Quiet enough that the guards didn't notice the temperature drop. Quiet enough they didn't see the shadow stretch across the dirt, split into three, and move as if it had a mind of its own.
Phantom crouched at the lip of a half-collapsed wall, eyes like cold coals under the hood of his combat gear. Black combat fatigues, reinforced plates, and strips of matte cloth wrapped around his arms and boots — not League-standard. This was bespoke: gear tailored for someone who didn't plan on being seen.
He didn't breathe. Didn't blink.
There were seven guards — two near the crates, one on the roof with a rifle, four pacing the perimeter. Their patterns were sloppy. Criminal work, not military. It would've been insulting to call this a challenge.
Clear the perimeter. Infiltrate the compound. Eliminate the handlers. Retrieve the ledger.The instructions were muscle memory by now, buried under the same voice that had been echoing in his head for years.
Slade's voice.
"You've come far, boy. You're ready for the next stage."
The comm in Phantom's ear crackled like a whisper in a confessional. He didn't respond. He didn't need to.
He moved.
The shadows on the ground bent, twisted, and swallowed him whole as if the night itself had claimed him. It wasn't teleportation — not exactly. More like sinking through the cracks of the world and resurfacing wherever darkness pooled deep enough to hide him. He emerged behind the first guard, hand clamping over the man's mouth before the knife found the gap under the jaw. Quick. Quiet. Efficient. The body folded in silence.
The second guard went down the same way, dragged into a wall of darkness that seemed to ripple like water before spitting the body back out, lifeless.
On the roof, the sniper blinked, thinking he'd seen a shadow move — only for a black tendril to coil around his ankle. He didn't even have time to scream before it yanked him into the void.
Phantom split. Two silhouettes — exact replicas of himself, birthed from the bleeding edge of his own shadow — peeled away and stalked the final pair. They weren't independent, not really. They were extensions of his will, puppets with his instincts and none of his hesitation. They hit the last guards with mechanical precision.
In less than sixty seconds, the outer ring was dead.
Phantom dropped from the wall, boots barely crunching the sand as he crossed the open yard. He didn't glance at the bodies. He didn't care.
The depot door was old steel, rusted around the edges. Locked. But locks meant nothing to someone who could become less than substance. Phantom pressed his hand to the surface, his body melting into the wall like a stain spreading in reverse.
And then he was inside.
The air was worse here — hot metal mixed with the stink of sweat and blood. A half-dozen men were gathered around a table covered in datapads and alien tech, laughing like this wasn't the kind of place people disappeared forever.
They didn't hear him. They didn't see him. They didn't have the luxury of knowing.
Phantom moved like a ripple of shadow across the room. One heartbeat, two. He reappeared behind the first handler, hand snapping his neck before the others realized they weren't alone.
The room erupted — shouts, drawn weapons, the scramble of men realizing death had just walked in.
Phantom let them. He wanted them to feel it.
His shadow expanded, spiderwebbing across the floor, up the walls, swallowing the light from the hanging lamps. They fired blind. Screamed blind. Clones emerged from the darkness, their blades flashing as they tore through men like meat.
By the time the last one fell, the only sound was Phantom's slow, controlled breathing.
He crouched by the table, flipping through the datapads until he found it: the ledger. A list of names, numbers, locations. The kind of list men would kill and die to keep hidden.
He copied it to his own device.
"Objective complete," he said at last, his voice flat — toneless enough to sound like it belonged to someone long dead.
Slade's chuckle on the other end of the comm was soft, almost paternal.
"Good. You've come far, boy. You're ready for the next stage."
Phantom said nothing. His eyes lingered on the names on the ledger, but his face betrayed nothing.
He'd come far. But how far from what he used to be?
---
Darkness. Gunmetal gray. The world hums like a dying fluorescent light. A voice cuts through it all — smooth, cold, inescapable.
"A phantom isn't born. It's forged. In shadow. In blood. Until even death stops recognizing them."
The words echo as the flashes begin.
FLASH –A training room. Concrete walls splattered with old blood that never fully scrubbed away. Kade — younger, wiry, barely thirteen — stumbles to his feet as Slade looms over him like a mountain draped in armor.
Slade doesn't hold back. He never did. The blow that drops Kade to his knees could shatter ribs on a grown man.
"Again," Slade commands, voice devoid of patience.
Kade drags himself up, vision doubled. He's breathing through a broken nose, blood running hot over his lips. He swings. It's sloppy. Slade punishes the mistake with a counter that sends Kade sprawling.
"Sloppy gets you killed. Dead men don't get second chances."
The boy doesn't cry. He doesn't dare. He just pushes himself up again.
FLASH –A lab. White, too white, the sterile kind that feels like a morgue. Mei stands behind a pane of reinforced glass, her hands trembling around a clipboard as she watches a boy practice powers that aren't natural.
Shadows pulse around Kade's feet like living oil, flickering between shapes. Every time he loses focus, they lash out violently — once pinning him to the floor until he claws his way free. His screams echo in the chamber.
"Focus," Mei says softly, though she knows he can't hear her.
In the corner, Slade observes silently, arms folded.
"He's not learning fast enough," Slade says.
Mei flinches. "He's a child. Not a—"
"He's a weapon," Slade interrupts. "And weapons don't get excuses."
FLASH –Night. An alley. Rain-slick streets in Qurac. Kade — older now, fifteen — crouches in a pool of darkness as a convoy passes. He doesn't breathe. Doesn't blink.
In his hand, a dead drop: instructions burned into his memory. He moves when the moment's right, slipping between light and shadow like he's not even part of this world. One guard disappears. Then another.
When the convoy stops, no one inside is alive.
FLASH –A corpse at his feet. Kade's hands — smaller then, bloodier — tremble as they hover over the body. It's different when they fight back. Different when they beg. He doesn't look at their face. He can't. He stares at his own reflection in the blood pooling beneath him instead.
Slade's voice cuts through the memory, clinical and calm:
"Hesitation kills, boy. Feel it now. So you don't feel it when it counts."
Kade swallows the bile rising in his throat and wipes the blood on his sleeve. He moves on.
FLASH –The shadow training chamber. Now older, taller, stronger. His clones move like dancers around him, every strike precise, rehearsed a thousand times. No wasted movements. No mistakes. He learned control through pain — and Slade gave him plenty.
A clone gets sloppy. He dissolves it with a flick of his hand.
FLASH –Final cut: Kade standing shirtless in the middle of a training ring, chest scarred from years of fighting, face half-hidden under his hood. His eyes are hollow. Not a boy. Not quite human. A phantom.
"In shadow. In blood," Slade's voice finishes."Until even death stops recognizing you."
The flashbacks fade.
BACK TO PRESENT:
Phantom crouches by the corpses in the Qurac facility, hands steady as he copies the ledger. His reflection in the blood doesn't bother him anymore.
Because he stopped seeing himself years ago.
----
The air was different tonight. Thicker.
Phantom could always tell when the mission wasn't going to be clean. His target — an arms broker funneling Reach tech through Qurac — was supposed to be lightly protected. Two, maybe three guards. A simple extraction and elimination.
But the building smelled wrong. Sterile, too clean for a trafficking hub. The lights were dim but deliberate. The silence wasn't sloppy. It was staged.
A trap.
He didn't hesitate. Hesitation was death.
Shadows, now.
He dissolved into the darkness at his feet, reemerging as three separate silhouettes — one perched against the wall, one circling to flank, one crouched low and ready to strike. His clones took positions with the precision of a machine.
He stepped inside.
The target was there. Older, overweight, smug enough to still be sipping tea as if this wasn't the last night of his life. Phantom's knife gleamed under the dim fluorescents.
"Move," he said, voice like gravel.
The man didn't.
Instead, someone else answered.
"No."
A shadow moved in the corner — a real one, not his.
Before Phantom could react, a batarang clipped the knife from his hand with surgical precision, embedding in the wall behind him.
He didn't need to see the man step into the light to know who it was. The cowl. The cape. The quiet gravity that made even the air heavier.
Batman.
Phantom didn't pause. He didn't talk. He didn't even flinch.
He lunged.
The first strike was fast — a sweeping cut meant for Batman's throat. Blocked. A gauntleted forearm met his wrist with brutal force. The second strike — a knee aimed at Batman's midsection — met solid armor.
Batman shoved him back, hard enough to crack the wall behind him.
"You're coming with me," Batman said, voice flat, unyielding. "One way or another."
Phantom's clones surged forward without a sound, one darting for Batman's legs, another going for his blindside.
Batman pivoted. Grappling hook — quick, efficient — wrapped around one clone's neck, snapping it out of existence. The other earned a brutal elbow to the sternum before dissolving into mist.
Phantom was already moving again, reappearing behind him in a burst of shadow.
The knife flashed. Batman caught the wrist. Turned it. Almost dislocated it. Phantom twisted out like liquid, shadows cushioning his escape before another batarang hissed past his ear, forcing him to duck.
Batman pressed forward. Grapples, knees, bone-breaking punches. It was a rhythm — efficient, ruthless, controlled.
Phantom adapted.
He sank into the ground, melting into the shadows, only to erupt behind Batman again, heel aimed at the back of his head. Batman ducked. Countered with a backhand strike that rang in Phantom's skull.
Pain blurred his vision. He blinked it away.
Focus. Flow.
They didn't talk.
This wasn't conversation. It was war in miniature.
Every strike was a test: Batman's training against Slade's conditioning. Batman was stronger, but Phantom was faster, unpredictable — a living shadow darting in and out of the real world, slashing, stabbing, vanishing.
Batman adapted. He always did.
He baited a strike, let Phantom overextend, then slammed a palm into his chest with enough force to send him through a table. The air left Phantom's lungs in a harsh grunt.
The clones rose again — four this time, faster, more vicious. They came at Batman from every direction.
One met a batarang to the face. Dissolved.
Another caught a smoke pellet in its core — exploded into nothing.
The last two were dismantled with grapples and gauntlet strikes, Batman moving like a man who had fought armies alone before.
Phantom crawled up from the rubble, vision spinning, shadows twitching erratically around his frame. His breathing was calm — controlled — even if his body screamed otherwise.
Batman loomed over him. Not out of breath. Not even scratched.
"You're done," Batman said.
Phantom wiped blood from his mouth, smirking faintly under his hood.
"You think you've caught me?"
The smirk wasn't bravado. It was the quiet confidence of a boy who knew he was still a ghost.
Batman didn't answer. He just cuffed him.
Different cage. Same ghost.
---
The engines hum low. Lightning flashes across the cockpit glass. The world outside is a blur — streaks of city lights fading into clouds. Inside, silence reigns. Phantom sits cuffed, his posture deceptively relaxed, but every muscle coiled like a predator in a cage. His golden eye glints faintly in the dark, staring out at nothing. Across from him, Batman looms — unmoving, unreadable, the cape draped like a shadow given form.
Batman: "You can keep being Slade's ghost."His voice is iron — calm, unyielding."Or you can be something else. Your choice."
Phantom doesn't look at him. He keeps his gaze on the window, the reflections of the city fading behind them. His cuffed hands twitch — not from nervousness, but calculation. Every flicker of his golden eye tracks the interior of the Batplane. Every bolt. Every exit. Every angle of Batman's armor.
Phantom: "…I stopped being a boy a long time ago."The words are low. They hang heavy between them, not defiant, not broken — just a statement of fact. A grave marker for the person he used to be.
Batman studies him in silence. He's heard these words before — from soldiers, from vigilantes, from children turned into weapons. The plane shakes slightly in turbulence. Phantom doesn't flinch. Of course he doesn't. He's used to worse.
Batman presses a gloved hand to a console, pulling up a secure file. The screen glows faintly, illuminating his cowl. Phantom doesn't bother hiding that he notices. In fact, he leans slightly, enough to catch a fragment of the name at the top:
PROJECT NOCTURNE: INFILTRATION ASSET – PHASE 2
Phantom's gaze sharpens for just a moment. Batman notices. He always notices.
Batman: "You want to keep playing the weapon? Fine. But Slade will throw you away when you're no longer useful. I won't."
Phantom's lips twitch into the barest hint of a smirk — not out of humor, but at the audacity. He finally turns his head, meeting Batman's gaze. There's no fear there. Only the quiet challenge of someone who's stared down monsters worse than men in masks.
Phantom: "You think you're any different?"
Batman doesn't respond. Not because he doesn't have an answer — but because Phantom doesn't deserve the lie, and the truth would take too long to explain.
The silence stretches. The Batplane dives lower, cutting through cloud cover. Somewhere far below, Gotham glows like a rotting ember. Two ghosts in the dark, hurtling toward a future neither trusts.
Phantom looks back out the window, his smirk fading, replaced by that quiet, unreadable calm.
Phantom: "You want me alive for a reason. You don't need to pretend it's because you care."
Batman adjusts nothing — not his tone, not his posture, not even his breathing.
Batman: "I don't pretend."
The console beeps. The Batplane begins its descent toward the hidden hangar of the Cave. Batman closes the secure file, the words "PROJECT NOCTURNE" vanishing back into encrypted darkness.
But Phantom saw enough. And from the way his eye flickers, Batman knows it.
They both know this ride is only the beginning.
--
The Batplane glides into the hidden hangar of Mount Justice. Hydraulic doors grind open, metal screaming faintly in the cavern's echo. The plane touches down with surgical precision. Engines hum to a stop, and silence swallows the hangar.
Inside, Phantom sits still as the restraints are removed. He doesn't bolt, doesn't twitch. He simply stands — fluid, predatory — as if the cuffs were a formality, not a limitation. His golden eye catches the dim hangar lights, ticking faintly like a clock you can almost hear.
Batman doesn't say "follow." He doesn't need to. Phantom does anyway.
The Cave feels… wrong to Phantom. Too clean. Too quiet. His boots hit the polished floor, each step echoing faintly. His head tilts, eye scanning every corner, every camera, every escape route. Not that he'd need them. If he wanted to leave, he would. He always does.
Internal Monologue (Phantom):"Different cage. Same ghost."
As they turn the final corridor, voices drift in — young, casual, unaware. A laugh. A complaint. The kind of sound Phantom hasn't heard in years. They round the corner and the Team is there.
Superboy, arms crossed, glaring at the new arrival like he's already a threat. (He isn't wrong.)Robin, leaning casually against the table, but his mask can't hide the way his head tilts, scanning, analyzing — already suspicious.Kid Flash mid-sentence, stopping abruptly. His jaw slackens.
Wally (muttering):"…great. Another broody guy."
M'gann, ever the optimist, straightens and offers a small, unsure smile. She's new too — but something about Phantom makes her skin crawl, like the static in the air before lightning.
Kaldur steps forward — not aggressive, but ready. Always ready. The quiet leader assessing a new variable.
Phantom doesn't speak. He doesn't acknowledge them. He just walks past, his presence heavy enough to draw the air out of the room. His boots click against the floor as he moves deeper into the Cave, that golden eye glancing at none of them, but seeing everything.
Batman lingers only long enough to give the Team that look — the one that says "don't." Then he follows Phantom, cape billowing like a closing curtain.
The silence they leave behind feels louder than the Batplane ever did.
Robin (breaking it):"…yeah. That's not suspicious at all."
The camera lingers on Phantom's back as he disappears down the hall. His head tilts slightly, as if listening to their whispers, but he doesn't turn. He never does.
Final Shot:Phantom in shadow, golden eye faintly glowing as the Cave lights flicker. Silent. Still. Unreadable.
Internal Monologue (Phantom):"Different cage. Same ghost."