The rain fell in Arkham City not as water, but as liquid regret. It slicked the neon-lit streets into ribbons of shattered color, blurring the line between the gleaming corporate spires of the Upper District and the decaying, pulse-like glow of the Warrens below. In the no-man's-land between them, a forgotten industrial park hummed with a different kind of energy tonight.
Elvis stood in the shadow of a dead smokestack, the rain steaming off the faint, heat-haze shimmer that surrounded him—the only visible sign of the ∞ Mana Core perpetually alive within his chest. His gray-white eyes, reflective as polished stone, tracked the scene below without blinking.
Vital Insight activated.
His vision overlaid the abandoned warehouse with a grid of light. Three heat signatures pulsed inside. Two humanoid, agitated, pacing. The third, smaller, cooler—crouched, terrified. A hostage. Flashing reticules highlighted structural weaknesses in the rusted walls, potential lines of approach, and the probabilistic ghost-images of the two guards' patrol patterns. They would cross near the north-side loading door in 4.2 seconds.
His mission parameters were simple, delivered in a encrypted data-burst an hour ago: "Extract asset. Neutralize hostiles. Deny operators." The "asset" was a young data-thief named Lin, who'd allegedly stolen a fragment of something called the "God-Algorithm" from Aethelgard Industries. The "operators" were unknown, but they moved with a precision that suggested private military, not common street muscle.
Elvis didn't care about the algorithm. He cared about the efficiency of the equation. One hostage, two hostiles. Minimal structural damage. Maximum speed.
His hand rose, and the Aegis Disc detached from his magnetic gauntlet with a soft hiss-thrum. It wasn't just a shield; it was a limb made of reinforced ceramite and controlled intent.
Unyielding Flow: Initiated.
He moved.
It wasn't a run, but a controlled, silent fall forward, momentum perfectly harnessed. He reached the edge of the roof as the two ghost-images in his vision converged. He stepped off into empty air.
Twenty feet down, he landed on a rusted catwalk without a sound, the impact dissipated through his legs by a surge of mana-infused kinetic absorption. Below him, through a grimy skylight, he saw them. Two figures in matte-black tactical armor, helmets obscuring their faces, pulse rifles held at ready-low. Between them, a girl with electric-blue hair shivered, bound to a chair.
Tactical Omniscience fed him the rest: one more signature, dormant, in a control room overlooking the main floor. Sniper. The real threat.
The equation updated. Three hostiles.
The Aegis left his hand.
It didn't arc. It caromed. It shot straight down, shattered the skylight, and immediately banked off a steel beam at a vicious angle, its monomolecular edge aiming not for a kill, but for a disable. It scythed through the barrel and targeting array of the first guard's rifle before he could even look up, then ricocheted off the concrete floor towards the second guard's legs.
Crunch. A kneecap gave way with a wet snap. The man screamed, falling.
The first guard, stunned, dropped his ruined weapon and went for a sidearm. He was fast.
Elvis was already inside.
He'd fallen through the skylight in the wake of his shield, landing in a crouch between the two men. As the first guard's pistol cleared its holster, Elvis's Mana-Infused palm shot out in a devastating tegatana strike. Not to the head, but to the weapon's slide. The reinforced steel crumpled like foil, the gun exploding in the man's hand. The guard's probabilistic ghost-image had shown a follow-up knee strike. Elvis saw it before the man's muscles twitched.
Absolute Martial Mimicry: Adaptation Logged.
He flowed inside the guard's reach, using the man's own impending knee-strike momentum against him. He caught the leg, twisted, and used a flawless, borrowed Judo throw—Uchi Mata—to launch the man head-first into a support pillar. The helmet cracked. The ghost-image winked out.
The second guard was still writhing on the ground. A swift, precise stomp to the brachial plexus rendered him unconscious. Time elapsed: 3.1 seconds.
The girl, Lin, stared at him, eyes wide with terror that was now tinged with disbelief.
Elvis didn't speak. He raised a finger to the lips of his helmet's lower face-plate. His eyes flicked upward to the control room. A single, dark window.
Vital Insight recalibrated. The dormant signature was now active, moving with urgent, sharp motions. Setting up a shot. The window was one-way ballistic glass. A problem.
The Aegis returned to his gauntlet with a satisfying clang. He assessed the room. Conduit pipes ran along the ceiling to the control room. The sniper's ghost-image showed him settling into position, scope searching.
Elvis had one shot at a non-lethal disruption before the sniper could take a panic-shot at Lin.
He crouched, his fingers brushing the concrete floor. Mana surged from his core, down his arm, and into the ground. Not a blast, but a precise, concentrated Mana-Infused Strike channeled through the medium. The concrete at his feet didn't explode outward. It fissured in a single, lightning-fast crack that raced across the floor, up the wall, and into the conduit pipe leading to the control room.
Inside the pipe, the vibrational energy found its target: a nest of wires and a junction box.
The control room lights flickered and died. The one-way glass de-polarized, turning transparent for a split second.
In that split second, Elvis moved. The Aegis was a gray streak. It didn't aim for the sniper. It aimed for the rifle's scope, now visible through the clear glass. The shield smashed into the window, shattered it, and connected with a high-pitched screech of shearing metal.
The sniper reeled back, his weapon's optics destroyed.
Elvis was already moving towards Lin. A flick of a mana-sharpened fingernail severed her plastic bonds. "Can you run?" His voice was a low, calm monotone, utterly at odds with the violence.
She nodded, numb.
"Stay behind me. We're leaving."
He led her towards a side exit, his Tactical Omniscience painting escape vectors in his mind. The equation was nearly solved. Extract asset: in progress. Neutralize hostiles: complete. Deny operators…
A new variable entered the system.
A figure stepped out of the shadows by the exit, blocking their path. He wasn't in tactical gear. He wore a long, dark coat, and his face was obscured by the high collar and the gloom. But his presence pressed against Elvis's senses. The air grew colder. The rain outside seemed to slow.
"The Bastion," the figure said, his voice like gravel and static. "An unregistered variable. The Aethelgard equation didn't account for you."
Vital Insight scrambled. No heat signature. No clear biological readings. The ghost-images around the figure were… chaotic, non-deterministic. They flickered through a dozen possible actions per second. Not human. Something else.
"Step aside," Elvis said, shifting his stance minutely, the Aegis humming on his arm. The ∞ Mana Core within him cycled higher, ready.
"I cannot. The asset is a component. You are an anomaly." The figure raised a hand. The shadows around him twisted, peeling away from the walls to form writhing tendrils of absolute darkness. "My designation is Null. I rectify anomalies."
Elvis's analysis raced. Non-physical attack vector. Energy-based? Conceptual? Vital Insight struggled, but his Absolute Martial Mimicry had nothing to copy. This was outside all known combat parameters.
The dark tendrils lashed out faster than bullets.
Unyielding Flow took over. Elvis didn't try to block what he couldn't understand. He moved with the attack, pushing Lin behind a rusted generator. The Aegis flew, not at Null, but at a hanging chain-hoist above him. Severing it, dropping two tons of metal between them.
The shadows flowed through the metal like it wasn't there.
One tendril grazed Elvis's shoulder. There was no impact, only a sudden, profound absence. A chunk of his mana-field shimmer vanished, along with a patch of his armored sleeve, erased from existence as if it had never been.
A direct hit would erase him.
First true threat. First unsolvable equation.
Null advanced, the void coalescing around him. "You rely on prediction. On physical laws. I am the exception."
Elvis's mind, a perfect combat processor, hit a wall. Then it did the only thing it could. It discarded the old equation and began a new one.
If it cannot be predicted… it must be overwhelmed.
He stopped trying to analyze Null's form. He analyzed the room. The fissure he'd made in the floor. The stressed support beam near the sniper's control room. The main power conduit feeding the dead factory.
The Aegis returned. He caught it, and for the first time that night, he planted his feet. He wasn't evading. He was anchoring.
"You talk too much," Elvis said, his voice still calm.
He slammed the Aegis, edge-first, into the crack in the floor. He channeled not a trickle, but a torrent. Mana-Infused Strike. Maximum Output.
The ∞ Mana Core answered. A wave of pure, destructive force erupted not at Null, but into the foundation of the building itself.
The floor erupted. Support beams shrieked. The ceiling above Null groaned and buckled. The entire section of the warehouse where Null stood—along with the sniper's control room, several tons of machinery, and the main power conduit—collapsed in a thunderous avalanche of metal, concrete, and erupting electrical sparks.
It wouldn't kill something like Null. Elvis knew that.
But it would buy time. It would deny the operator.
He turned, swept up a stunned Lin, and was a ghost in the rain before the last piece of rubble settled. He moved through the Warrens' back alleys, a seamless part of the darkness, his systems cycling down from combat peak.
The equation was solved. Asset extracted. Hostiles neutralized. Operator denied.
But a new, unsettling term had been added to his internal logic. A term named Null. A being whose power wasn't about strength or speed, but about erasure. A being that operated on rules Elvis did not yet understand.
Back in the smoldering ruin, the rubble shifted. A figure of shadow and static reformed itself from the dissipating dust, unharmed but motionless for a long moment. A comms link crackled in its mind.
"Report, Null."
"Asset has been extracted by an anomalous variable. Designation: Bastion. Capabilities exceed initial parameters. He does not fight. He… optimizes." Null's static voice held a trace of something almost like curiosity. "The God-Algorithm fragment is lost. But we have located a more interesting subject for study."
"The Bastion?"
"Yes. Recommend updating all predictive models. He is not a weapon. He is an unbounded function."
High above the city, in the sterile apex of Aethelgard Tower, a screen flickered to life. On it, grainy thermal footage showed a white-haired man moving with impossible fluidity, a circular shield obeying his will like a thought. The image froze, zoomed in on the calm, gray-white eyes.
A label was typed beneath it: ELVIS - CLASSIFICATION: UNBREAKABLE VARIABLE. THREAT PROTOCOL: SIGMA.