Project OVERCLOCK: Failure Point
Deep beneath layers of classified concrete and dead-zone signal jammers, Project OVERCLOCK finally crossed the line from theory into reality.
And immediately paid the price.
The facility—once a Cadmus cybernetics black site, now stripped of logos and renamed with a string of numbers no one bothered to remember—was silent except for the low hum of reactors and the nervous breathing of men who knew they were standing too close to history.
In the central testing chamber, a single figure stood on a reinforced platform.
Subject O-01.
A volunteer in name only.
He was a former special forces operator, enhanced already with baseline cybernetics: reinforced spine, neural accelerators, ocular targeting systems. He had survived metahuman engagements before. That was why he'd been chosen.
And why he was about to suffer.
The Prototype
Mounted along his spine and nervous system was OVERCLOCK's crown jewel:
A Temporal Neural Acceleration Module.
Not a Sandevistan—Amanda Waller had made that very clear.
"We don't copy," she had said coldly.
"We surpass."
The scientists had reverse-engineered what they thought they understood from footage of Batman's fight with Solomon Grundy:
Microsecond decision stacking
Neurological pre-processing
Muscular response prediction
Time-perception dilation
But what they didn't understand was the integration.
Batman's suit didn't just make him faster.
It made him think faster than the human brain should be able to survive.
And that distinction mattered.
The Test Begins
"Power levels stable," said one technician, voice tight.
"Neural load at sixty percent."
Amanda Waller stood behind the glass, arms crossed.
Rick Flag Sr. was beside her, jaw clenched.
General Sam Lane watched in silence, eyes sharp.
"Proceed," Waller said.
The technician swallowed.
"Activating OVERCLOCK in three… two… one."
The module engaged.
At first—nothing happened.
Subject O-01 blinked.
Then his pupils contracted to pinpoints.
His heart rate spiked.
"Report," Lane ordered.
"I—" the subject said, then stopped.
Time slowed.
No.
Time broke.
From the subject's perspective, the world shattered into fragments—each sound stretched into eternity, each thought multiplying into thousands of branching possibilities.
His brain tried to process everything at once.
Every dust particle.
Every vibration in the floor.
Every possible future outcome.
His enhanced neural pathways screamed.
The module forced more.
Failure
"Neural load climbing—seventy, eighty—"
"Shut it down," Flag snapped.
"Delay in response," a scientist said in panic. "The module is self-looping—!"
The subject screamed.
Not loudly.
Slowly.
Blood ran from his nose, ears, eyes.
Inside his skull, neurons misfired faster than synapses could recover. His thoughts collapsed into white noise. Motor functions spasmed as muscles tried to move in ten directions at once.
Then—
His body locked.
The scream cut off.
Flatline.
Silence.
The module overheated and shut itself down, smoke rising from the spinal interface.
The body collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.
Aftermath
No one spoke.
Amanda Waller stared at the corpse without blinking.
General Lane exhaled slowly.
"…Cause of failure?"
A scientist's voice shook.
"Cognitive cascade overload. The brain wasn't designed to handle accelerated temporal perception without… anchoring."
"Anchoring?" Flag asked.
"Yes," the scientist said. "Some kind of stabilizing factor. A limiter. Or… a mind trained to operate under extreme compression."
Waller's eyes narrowed.
Batman.
Not the suit.
The man.
"Clean it up," she said calmly.
"Log this as Prototype Failure One."
She turned toward the observation room exit.
"And double the budget."
Private Conclusions
Later, behind closed doors, the captured scientists—Hamilton, Morrow, Thinker, Magnus—were less restrained.
"This is insanity," Will Magnus said quietly.
"You're forcing a human mind to run at impossible speeds without adaptation."
"The Batman adapted," Waller replied.
"No," Thinker corrected coldly.
"He was already capable."
That silence hit harder than any accusation.
Waller understood.
Batman wasn't relying on technology to survive OVERCLOCK-like conditions.
The technology was keeping up with him.
Elsewhere
Far away, in a quiet pocket of reality where time flowed gently and magic hummed beneath the surface, Damian and raven slept on a huge bed together in a peaceful and relaxed atmosphere .
Unaware that governments were breaking minds trying to follow in his father's footsteps.
Unaware that Project OVERCLOCK had just proven something terrifying:
Batman's greatest weapon was not his suit.
It was the fact that his mind could survive what others couldn't.
And somewhere, deeper still—beyond science and beyond magic—something old and patient took notice.
Because when humans began trying to outrun time itself…
Demons always followed.