Chapter 9

Selina woke to the thick scent of foliage, and beeping of machines.

"You're awake! Selina, are you okay?" It was Ivy, she knew that voice anywhere. "Say something so that I know you're okay."

"Why does my room smell like a giant bag of potpourri?" Selina opened her eyes slowly and adjusted to the light. It would seem that she was in a hospital, surrounded by plants.

Ivy laughed a gawky laugh. "Oh! You're back!" She leaned in for a hug. "Oh, I can't believe it!"

Selina raised up her hands as she tried to recall the events that had preceded her arrival at the hospital. Once again she saw Five... looking down at her from the broken window with that cold-hearted stare. Five, who had pushed her out from the fourth-floor window. Five, who had kept her trapped in her own home. A fiery wrath rose within her that threatened to consume unless she repaid what was owed. She began pulling out the bandages and needles still attached to her.

"Oh wait... what are you doing?" Ivy asked. Selina hadn't half the mind to explain what had happened. That taunting glare stayed ingrained within, beckoning her to go seek her revenge. "You just got out of a coma, you need to rest."

"This can't wait."

Ivy was miffed. "What are you talking about? Where are you going?"

"To Wayne Manor. To kill someone." Selina got up and walked out the door before Ivy could go on. Whatever she lacked in strength, made up for in anger.
__________________________________________________________

The alarms sounded at Wayne Manor, but they weren't the first time they'd been tripped by accident. Two days ago a stray had triggered them, causing Five some apprehension. He'd witnessed Selina at her moment of demise. He knew that there wasn't any way that she was coming back from that. And yet something within him felt unrested, like he was being haunted by her ghost.

The moment Alfred turned off the alarms, Five listened carefully for any sounds of intrusion into the Manor. "I'll check the kitchen, stay put," said the butler, hurrying off down the stairs.

Five heard the hooting of an owl from not too far away. He strayed into the study where he noticed an open window, and a light breeze blowing through it. Something about this scene looked mighty familiar.

As he approached the window, a dark figure pounced towards him, arms outstretched. Five backed off just in time to avoid another blow to the face by someone who looked exactly like Selina. "Selina? How?"

Her lips were as pale as when he had left her lying there in that dirty alleyway, and there was something dark and devious in her eyes that told him that she wasn't here for a social visit. She circled him like a wild animal on a prowl, her hands bundled into fists, one with a small knife, ready to strike at any given moment. "I came here to do one thing. And it ain't answering questions."

She took another swipe at him, one that he narrowly avoided. And yet another, that Five caught in two hands. She struggled to get away, but whatever Hugo Strange had provided to him, it'd given him greater strength than one would have at his age. That alone enabled him to subdue her. The truth was that he didn't want to fight her. He knew exactly why she hated him, but it was an unfortunate situation where she had threatened to jeopardize the entire mission. If only she'd just listened to him when she had the chance. "Strange as it sounds, I'm glad you're alive."

She clung on to the knife in the vain hope that she might use it against him. "That is strange. 'Cause you pushed me out a four-storey window!" The heel of her boot slammed into his stomach, throwing him backwards where he slammed into a coffee table, then slipped onto the floor.

"What choice did I have? You were going to tell Alfred about me."

"You mean how you're a freak?" she replied acrimoniously as she stepped up onto the coffee table. "How you're just the cheap knock-off who kidnapped the real Bruce Wayne?"

Her ruthless words stung. Out of pure impulse, Five grabbed a firepoker and swung it in her direction. She dodged his blow, and slammed her knife into his side. He barely felt a thing - another gift by Hugo Strange. He launched another swing at her, one that she took to the shoulder, and spun her onto the ground. He leapt down with his poker, aiming to impale her with it, but she lithy rolled away just in the nick of time. Whatever he'd ever felt for Selina, whatever he'd ever felt for anyone out of that dank cold lab, it was all gone. No one mattered to him anymore.

She came back at him like a bat out of hell, knife in hand, ready to slice open his chest when Alfred came into the scene, knocking her off him. "Selina stop!" he yelled.

"He's not Bruce! He's not Bruce!" she cried desperately, just before Five slammed her on the back of her head with the poker, causing her to lose consciousness and slip to the ground.

"Oh dear God. Selina!" Alfred bent over to check on her.

But why was he taking her side? That was the first time Five began to really worry about his cover getting blown. Why did Alfred need to come in when he did? "She - she attacked me, Alfred. She's out of her mind!"

"She needs a doctor," he replied levelly.

"You saw her, she... she was crazy."

But Alfred wasn't impressed. His eyes wandered to the poker that Five still clung to. "Put the iron down, Bruce." Five looked down. "I said put the iron down!" Alfred used a tone he hadn't heard before.

"Alfred..." he took a step back.

The butler glanced over to his side and saw the blood. "You're cut." He grabbed Five's side. "You don't feel a thing, do you?" Anger began to sprout its shoots in Alfred's wavering tone. "Do you? Now I'm gonna ask you nicely, or I swear to God you're going to feel a whole lot of pain. Where is Bruce?"

There wasn't any more reason to pretend. Alfred knew just who he was, and Five knew it was all over. "Bruce is serving a greater purpose than himself. As am I." And just as Alfred shrunk in shock, Five swung his poker at him, caught him in the leg.

Alfred grabbed the poker, jabbed him in the ribs, then slammed him in the face, over and over again. He could taste the stream of blood running down from his nose to his lips. He couldn't tell if it was due to Alfred's rough treatment of his body, or that he was breaking down again. Either way, he had nothing left to lose.

"Last time! Where is Bruce?" But the butler had lost all authority. Five could hear the anger giving way to fear. It made him grin.

Five slammed his forehead into the butler's. Alfred took a second to recover. Then returned a head slam. Five barely felt it. He slammed his head into the butler's again. This time, Alfred could not recover from the blow, and he collapsed onto the ground, dazed and bewildered. Five walked over to where he was. "You're always kind to me, Alfred. Even when you thought I wasn't Bruce." He picked up the poker.

Alfred cringed. "Please..." he begged. "Just tell me where Bruce is."

But Five wasn't bending for anyone, not even him. The poker slammed right into his head, knocking him out for the count.
__________________________________________________________

Five returned to Kathryn's, the only place that felt like home to him. But the truth was that he belonged nowhere, and he'd cut all ties to anyone he'd ever allowed himself to feel something for. There was something liberating yet completely isolating about the thought.

Kathryn met him at the door and let him in. Her expression was as stoic as he figured it would. Knowing her, she would have already have found out about all that had transpired. They stood in the dining hall as she waited till the door was shut, and the help had left the room before speaking. "It's disappointing how your irresponsible actions over the past few days have led to this. Did you really think you could save her?"

"I was wrong. I know that now," he admitted, reflecting on how things would've turned out if he'd simply kept his mouth shut.

"Unfortunately this job doesn't allow room for errors. There will be no second chances."

"I know that," Five replied, wiping the blood off the top of his lip. "But I'm sorry anyway."

Kathryn moved down the length of two seats. "Bruce isn't ready to come back yet, but he will be soon. You'll have to hope that his friends won't start a crusade against us before then."

Five struggled to find the right words to say. "If there's anything I can still do to help..."

A loud bang exploded in the empty room as Kathryn held a smoking gun to his head, the bullet-casing ringing against the floor like a bell. Five fell to his knees, then to the floor. "Oh child, you've done enough to help," said Kathryn to the fresh corpse in front of her.

"But now we need you to disappear."

Chapter 8

That evening, the thought of the wound up wire in his pocket, his one hope for escape, cycled through his mind like an excitable child. He sat alone and kept to himself during his meal - he knew there'd be no reason to interact with anyone anymore since he was about to leave. Truthfully, that in itself was somewhat of a relief. Socializing with others felt like a muscle he rarely flexed and had to put up a front for the most of it. It wasn't that he didn't eventually grow to care about some of the men. But it also felt good to be alone with his thoughts, especially on a night such as this.

"Are you alright, Bruce?" Sandra asked, looking at him with concern as she accompanied him back to his cell.

Immediately, he gave her his full attention. A little regretful that he'd been distracted enough for her to notice. "Yes I am, I'm just worried about you." Lying was becoming much easier for him. "I hope you'll feel better soon."

"Oh," she seemed flattered. "Thank you, I do too. I'm sorry I dozed off for a bit during the earlier part of your training."

"Don't apologise. We all have our downtime," he replied, discreetly thrilled that she remained in the dark about his secret exploit.

She put a hand on his arm, and that stopped him in his tracks. "Bruce, I just wanted to say that even though I've had my doubts of your ability to learn, seeing as it wasn't exactly your will to be brought here in the first place; I can see that you've worked hard towards learning and improving yourself. Your progress has been beyond impressive, just as the master predicted."

The master... Five months imprisoned in the mountains and he had yet to meet his captor. By then he'd quite given up waiting. The only thing that had kept him going was the training he'd had with Sandra. He touched the wire in his pocket - at least the hard work wasn't going to be a waste. "You've been a good teacher. I couldn't have done it without you." He figured if there was one person he was going to miss in that place, it would be her.

"You were the one who put in the hard work. I rarely come by someone as focused as you've been, especially at your age," she said, continuing down the corridor back to his cell.

For a moment, he considered telling her goodbye. But he stopped himself short.

No one must know, not even her.
__________________________________________________________

An hour had passed till he was left alone in his cell. The benefit of being the only prisoner in the god-forsaken place was that there'd be no eyes on him. No one to watch him practice on the lock.

He carefully twisted the wire with his fingers the way Selina had taught him, then inserted the knob portion into the keyhole. Jiggling it just about right, he listened for the click. There was none. He moved it about a little, feeling for the mechanisms on the inside, and depressing them together. It took a couple of tries to get the lock open, and eventually, it did.

There was a grin on his face - alone in the dark where no one could see.

Stretching a hand between the bars, he pulled the wire over, and clicked the lock back into place. It was good that he'd managed to get the gate open once, but he needed to do it again and be faster about it. Much much faster.

Making himself comfortable, he began to work on the lock again.
__________________________________________________________

Morning had arrived, and he'd barely got a wink. All night he'd been practising till his fingers had gone raw. But he'd gotten the movements down to a five-second timeframe, and he felt fairly confident about working the lock to the balcony within that amount of time. Picking up the towel on his side table, he folded it neatly and stuffed it into his other pocket, together with the pencil that he had only used once. Not enough to dull it.

Like clockwork, a guard arrived to escort him to the war room. There were three guards in total that rotated this duty. Two of moderate size and frame, and one who was slightly larger than the other two. It was fortunate for him that it was the duty of one of the smaller framed guards. He never spoke with any of them, though from time to time he did make it a point to smile. That day, he did not.

The guard unlocked his cell, unaware that the lock had been opened and shut a thousand times that night. He rapped on the iron door outside, and the two guards opened it for him, allowing Bruce through. They ascended the stairs to the top of that air-well, just as Bruce's adrenaline began to kick in.

With a firm stab, Bruce embedded the sharp end of the pencil into the guard's upper thigh. "I'm sorry...." he apologised as the guard yelled and fumbled about in surprise, falling to the ground as he did.

He dashed to the gate leading to the balcony, pulled out the wire, and began putting all he'd practised into action. He could already hear footsteps on the corridor downstairs. Time was wearing on and his palms were getting sweaty just thinking about the possibility of getting caught. Thankfully the lock didn't take too long, and the gate swung open on its hinges, creaking loudly as it did. Voices were nearing him.

Sprinting out into the snow, he pulled out the towel at once, wrapped it around one of the long wooden beams that led below. Till that time, he hadn't a clue what the balcony was overlooking, but he knew he'd to take the chance in order to get away. With a large heave, he placed his weight entirely on the towel, and began sliding downwards on the beam. Faster and faster as he sped downwards with the freezing wind slapping onto his face, whipping his hair away from his face. By then, smoke was coming out from the towel in his hands, and he could smell burning fibers. He sped over the balcony and down the edge of a cliff where he noticed that the beam that he was on would soon make a vertical plunge down to the rocks below.

Within the fraction of a second, he wedged his foot against the vertical beam and threw his weight in a circular motion, that he might slow down his descent. For a few moments, he spun around and around on that beam till his feet slipped and touched the ground beneath. Looking down at the rocks that he was standing on, then back up to where he'd come from, he couldn't believe he actually made it down in one piece. Part of him imagined breaking a limb on the way down, or even possibly dying. But he had descended, without so much as a scratch.

Echoes of voices from above caught his attention. The men of the League were looking down on him as he hurried stone over stone. The cloth shoes that he'd been given weren't giving much protection, and he felt his flesh getting cut on the rocks, but nothing would stop him then.

At the end of the slope of rocks was a large glacier, one that would lead to an alpine woods, and possibly to safety. The cold was beginning to seep into his bones as he slid across the smooth glacier, his arms spread out to give himself balance.

"Bruce..." came a deep voice some distance behind him.

He spun around in surprise and almost lost his balance when he did. He thought he'd be alone on that glacier, but just fifteen feet from him was a hooded figure in a dark maroon cloak, standing plainly on the ice as though he had never moved. His face was shrouded from the light. Standing against the glowing white landscape, he looked to be a harbinger of death. "Who are you?" he yelled back.

"I'm the one who's seen you, and the one you are to become."

The first name that came into his mind was... the master. He knew then that he had to put all his effort into getting away. He'd strived so much to meet the man behind the League, but now was not the time - not when he was just a few feet away from freedom.

However, scrambling on ice turned out to be a fatal error as he found his legs slipping and sliding in all directions, sending him hurtling onto his front. The impact of his fall caused a large crack to network its way through, right below him. The sounds of creaking stretched some distance away. Bruce took in a deep breath and tried not to move.

All at once, the ice crumbled to pieces, dropping him into a frigid stream. Desperately, he grasped onto something that felt solid and firmly planted, struggling to pull himself up, yet felt his limbs gradually lose all sensation. He didn't know how long more his fingers would be able to hold onto the edge of the glacier, especially with the stream rushing against drowning him, dragging him towards the deep. In that final moment, he thought of Alfred, he thought of Selina, he thought of his parents. They swam around his thoughts like fading memories of a life that could've been.

But just as he was about to give up, he felt himself being dragged out of the water. He didn't know how, or who had done it. In his exhaustion, he felt his chest being pumped, water leaving his mouth and nostrils.

And then... a gentle welcoming sleep.

Chapter 7

"I boosted the premium stuff Otto," said Selina as she came through the door cracking open a can of salmon and mackerel fillets. She knew Otto would love a treat after suffering a whole week of dry biscuits, but she'd been much busier with the club than she'd been for a while, and couldn't spare the time to indulge her cat.

The black and white feline perked up at the scent that filled the room, and wished her a warm welcome.

"You're welcome!" sang Selina, putting the open can on the ground for Otto to enjoy.

"Hello Selina..." came a voice that startled her.

But she already recognized it without even turning to look. Her defenses came up. "What the hell are you doing here?" She was certain that day when she left him with Sonny that she wouldn't be seeing him again, and yet she was floored by his persistence.

"I wanted to see you," he said, as though nothing malicious had happened between them. "I missed you."

"Did you fall on your head? I told you to stay away," she replied in disbelief. There was something odd about him. They had left on such bad terms, she couldn't imagine how he wouldn't still be reacting to that.

"You did? I forgot."

Definitely something out of sorts... "Why're you acting so weird?"

"I'm -- I'm sorry, I didn't sleep well last night."

Selina couldn't get a feel of what was going through his head, though everything within her was telling her to run, "Uh huh... well I just came here to feed my cat. So if you're not gonna leave, I will."

But he blocked off her escape. "I promised myself I'd stay away," he continued, "That it would be safer that way but things have changed."

"What are you talking about?" She waited for a response as she watched him struggle within himself to explain. Her patience ran thin. "You know what? I don't care. Just don't be here when I get back." She slipped past him and hurried to the door.

"Selina wait!" he said, hurrying after her. "I'm not Bruce..."

Her eyes widened as her mind flashed back to Bruce's look-a-like who had her fooled for a while. He'd told her he'd plans to leave town, and real Bruce confirmed that he was gone a few days after. As much as she had sympathized with the clone, she was glad at the time that she'd only need to deal with one Bruce. She couldn't understand why he would come back. "Five... wasn't it?" she replied, walking back into the room. She wasn't comfortable with him sitting in her home, but she decided that she'd at least do the decent thing and hear him out.

He nodded. "I know I said I'd leave, and I was doing exactly that when a woman in a limousine pulled up and told me to get in. She told me that she could give me a home, a purpose, and an identity. She told me that I could be so much more, that I had great potential inside me. It sounded too good an opportunity to pass up."

"Wait let me get this straight..." Selina interjected. She was still wrapping her mind around the clone's return. "So this limo pulls up literally out of nowhere, and this creepy lady asks you to get in because 'you could be so much more', and you did?"

"I had nowhere else to go."

"So where have you been the last few months?"

"It's not important," he stood up and walked over to where she was seated. "What matters is you need to leave Gotham. Right away."

"Why?"

"Because the city has been judged, and something bad is going to happen."

He hovered over her in an authoritative manner, telling her what to do. She didn't want to say it but Five had more in common with real Bruce than he thought. That tone had never worked on her, nor would it ever. She chortled. "Judged, by who?"

He retreated, kept his words to himself. She realised then that he might have been overstepping his bounds in order to tell her what he did. "The people who took you?" An uncomfortable feeling crept up on her. The missing time, the woman in a limousine, Five's unannounced return... "Wait, your clothes, your hair... the walk you talk." He continued to keep his silence, as her mind began to put the past events together. That note that Bruce had claimed she'd left for him - she thought he had lied about it in order to meet up with her, but that never really sat right with her. It wasn't like him to do such a thing. She hadn't seen real Bruce since then, she wondered if anyone had, especially with fake Bruce parading around as him. "Where's Bruce?"

"Selina..." he finally broke his silence.

"What did you do to him?" The more she thought about it, the madder she got. Bruce might've been an ass, but he didn't deserve to have his life completely replaced by someone else. She wondered if he was still alive... if he'd died that day that she'd left him... No, she didn't want to think about that. 

"He's fine, he's not in Gotham. But nothing bad is going to happen to him."

Relief washed over her - at least she knew that Bruce was still alive. Alfred would probably kill to know this. "Then where is he?"

"It doesn't matter. You just have to trust me, you need to leave Gotham today."

That authoritative tone again. "Trust you?" She'd laugh if the situation wasn't so dire. Five had been responsible for Bruce's kidnapping, he practically came out and admitted it all, and he was still lecturing her about trust. "I don't even know you."

She started heading to the door when he body-blocked her again. "Where are you going?"

Selina was getting really tired of Five's domineering attitude. She'd once allowed him to kiss her because she'd seen an innocence in him. He didn't seem as innocent anymore - quite the opposite in fact. Even Bruce Wayne with all his hundred and one issues, would not dare to keep her from leaving. "To tell Alfred. Now let me go!"

"Selina, you can't tell anyone."

"Then why the hell did you tell me?"

Once more, she saw the conflict on his face. That woman in the limo had definitely done a number on him. She continued to glare angrily at him, till he finally spoke. "Because I care about you, and if there's one person I want to save, I'd want it to be you."

He was talking about his feelings for her while forcing her into a corner, as though one would make her forget the other. It was rich that he didn't seem to notice the irony. "That's the difference between you and Bruce Wayne, he would try and save everyone. You can pretend all you want, but you'll never be him." There was hurt in his eyes, and she reveled in it. At this point, she just wanted him out of her face. Whatever she'd felt for him before, it'd completely vaporized, and she wanted him to know that. "You're nothing, you're not even a real person! You don't matter at all."

"You're wrong about me," he replied, his voice dropping down one whole octave, and his gaze hardening against her. Just like that, the real Five stood in front of her. No pretenses and no put on voices. He stepped imposingly in front of her, and instinctively she took a step back. "I do matter. And I won't let you tell Alfred."

"Oh yeah? How're you gonna stop..."

With a powerful shove that Selina hadn't predicted, she found herself smashing through glass and flailing through their air all at once. Without even the time to react to her fall, she met the ground with a huge thud, knocking the breath clear out of her lungs. And as the world slowly went dark for her, she caught Five glaring down at her from that broken window. 

But nothing about him resembled Bruce any longer, all that was left was a cold-hearted killer. She wondered how she could've been so blind.

Chapter 6

Each day had carried a similar routine; of eating, training and returning to be locked up again. No part of the day out of his cell, was he ever left unmonitored. He'd hoped that there would be a day where any one of them would be less attentive, or perhaps decided that they trusted him enough to leave him alone. But no, that day hadn't come yet. And he wasn't about to risk any amount of the trust he had been trying to build with them, on a slipshod attempt. All or nothing at all...

So till that day came, he decided to pour himself more fully into the process. Dedicate himself completely to his lessons, to the point of skipping lunch to maximize the time he was allowed to spend out of his cell. The new skills he'd attained were strengthening him, allowing him to climb to greater heights than ever before, developing a better defense against attacks, and improving his own offensive strategies. All the while he'd think about how impressed Alfred would be with his progress - clinging hard to the hope that he would be back home really soon.

In the evenings, he would request to have his dinner in the mass hall, together with the rest of the members of the League. Sandra never prevented him from doing so, knowing full well that Bruce would have many pairs of eyes on him, and escape would be impossible. The main reason that Bruce had asked for meals with the others was that he wasn't getting anything off Sandra. She was like a brick wall and knew exactly how to respond to him without giving too much away. The rest of the men though, they looked like they might have slightly looser lips - and he wasn't wrong about that.

The only barrier he faced with the men was that a large percentage of the men did not speak the same languages that he did, and he had to familiarize himself with the different phrases that they used with each other in order to make simple conversations with them. Captor or not, he had to marvel at the master's ability to unite so many from diverse backgrounds and languages. All of them wholly dedicated to him and his purposes.

The men took a while to warm up to him, though he did his best to reach out. Small talk wasn't exactly his forte, but he'd do it if it meant getting some answers. After a while, some of the men began opening up to him and shared their stories. Most of the members had been joined the League self-voluntarily, most of them from conflict-rich nations, survivors of great calamity or were victims of government corruption. No matter how different in backgrounds they were, they all believed in the master's vision, and looked upon him like a messiah. Bruce, on the other hand, had been brought to Nanda Parbat against his will and didn't share their admiration for the master or the often brutal methods he employed in the name of peace. In their envy, they commented that the master could've chosen a more suitable candidate for the mission, especially one that could've been older. But in the same breath, they would say that they would not question his choices.

Sandra, on the other hand, was more often referred to by the men as Lady Shiva. When asked why, they mentioned it had something to do with her previous mission in Kolkata, India where she had been bestowed the rank of godhood by the locals. They didn't go into details, and neither would Sandra. But the name stuck nonetheless.

As for the master, Bruce had heard all kinds of stories about him, ranging from the amazing to the downright mythical. How he had rescued villages, taken down corrupt warlords, cleansed the land of evil. But all of them seemed to agree that the master was ageless and would not die. Some believed he was born of the gods, and others said he had died a thousand deaths, only to be reborn again. They sounded all kinds of crazy just talking about it. An immortal... an impossible concept, surely the master had managed to fool all his followers into believing such a thing was possible, but how? The mystery dragged on for days, and days to weeks, and weeks to months.

It was his hundred and forty-ninth day in Nanda Parbat when Sandra arrived at training looking less than well. She'd taken ill but insisted to carry on with the session. Bruce encouraged her to sit down while he carried on with his daily practice. Being of a half-mind, she decided to listen to him, and soon he found her asleep against one of the pillars. He watched her with her eyes shut for a whole minute, he knew his time for action had finally come. Finally... after waiting so patiently all these months, his one chance to work towards an escape had arrived. He took another glance at Sandra before picking up the sword that they'd been practicing with.

It was only the start of the day, and he knew the men of the League would be on the lower floors of the fortress. Crossing the room quietly, he made his exit into the large hall outside. He didn't have what he needed to open the lock to the balcony yet, but he'd been eyeing the wires that were holding up the lamps for some time now. He had it in his mind that he might bend one of them into shape, and hopefully, it would serve as a pick. Getting up to one of those lamps though would prove to be a challenge, except it was fortunate for him that Sandra had been training him in the art of what she called "wall walking". Wall walking involved focusing a good amount of inner strength to displace one's center of gravity, gaining momentum enough to shift vertically, just at the right time, in order to scale heights that would be impossible for a regular person.

Staring at the bulbous red lamps swinging gently from the ceiling, Bruce lowered his sword to his side, let out a deep breath and shut his eyes as he had been taught, allowing his other senses to 'feel' the length and breath of the room. Channeling all his strength to the base of his feet, he all at once let them fly. Running faster and faster around the hall as the wind whipped through his hair, he shifted his center of gravity downwards just as his feet left the floor. He could feel the surge of power that sent him in a vertical direction. The moment he began taking massive strides up the wall, he opened his eyes and kept his sight trained wholly on one of the many thin lines of wire. With a large kick, he sailed through the air, whipped out his sword, cut down one of the lamps. Then he let gravity take over, falling to the floor, rolling as he did to mitigate the force of the impact.

The moment the cut lamp landed on the floor, the flames within caught on to the rice paper and began burning it up. Bruce leapt over to put out the fire by stomping on the burning paper, and he went on to strip the cut wire from the rest of the frame before winding what he managed to attain around his finger. As for the half smoked lamp, he picked it up, and looked about the room for a place to hide it. He felt his time already running out, and he wasn't going to risk exposure of his already tenuous situation. The only place that the flattened lamp might fit under was where the large wadaiko sat. With a large heave, he tilted the drum over, shoved the lamp under it, and let the drum sit on it.

Wasting no additional time, he hurried back to the room and shut the door behind him. There was a huge sigh of relief to be heaved when he spotted Sandra still asleep against that pillar. He was safe for the moment. But now there was a missing lamp up top, and that half smoked lamp under the wadaiko. He hoped neither would be discovered in the time he worked out the rest of his escape plan. It was a small victory, but a significant one. He now had the piece of wire that he'd been gunning for since a couple of months before. All that was left was to apply what Selina had taught him about lockpicking on a lock he'd never worked on before.. and then, try to survive what was to come.

Chapter 5

The insertion of Five into the role of Bruce Wayne had been an enviable success. He'd managed to fool everyone at the manor for the span of nearly five months. Of course, he had some help under the guiding tutelage of Kathryn, but even she had to acknowledge that he did sell all the mannerisms of his host that he had picked up and could muster - with the exception of two separate encounters:

The first was when he'd been invited out for dinner by a Wayne Enterprises board member - something about the public representation of his parents. He'd turned down the appointment to avoid being confronted with a question he didn't know the answer to, but this red-flagged Alfred, who insisted that Bruce Wayne would never turn down an opportunity to make sure his parents were well represented within the company. Five decided that it would be safer to go in order not to make the butler suspicious, but not after going through an intensive history lesson on the philanthropy of the Waynes. Fortunately, he aced the history test, after which Alfred didn't seem to take his initial hesitance to heart.

The second time he tripped was when Alfred decided to go on a rant about the night that Bruce had left him nothing but a letter - how anxious it'd made him feel. Five wasn't expecting an inquisition about where he and Selina had taken refuge. It wasn't a piece of information he had been fed, and in a moment's notice he decided to improvise with a completely imaginary location in Gotham, hoping that Alfred would stop the line of questioning. What he didn't know was that the butler had made it a point to memorize a huge majority of the street names in the city and could not be fooled by a falsified name. For a moment, he realised that he had gotten himself backed into a corner. In desperation, he decided to break out in feigned anger, demanding Alfred to back off his case. That it wasn't his business to know where they were. To add to the dramatics of the situation, he even stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind him.

The downside was that his relationship with Alfred wasn't quite the same after that. Even while Alfred continued to serve 'master Bruce', there was a significant reduction of one-to-one conversations, and sometimes Five would catch Alfred's gaze lingering on him just that longer than he usually would. Five didn't know if Alfred had become suspicious or merely afraid to offend his employer. Either way, he couldn't complain. He had no interest in bearing his soul to Alfred, nor could afford to.

A familiar stream of blood trickled down his left nostril. He'd been feeling less energetic this past month, and had returned to Kathryn's for a check-up. The doctors had retrieved blood samples to study, but it'd been a week and they hadn't gotten back to him. It began to concern him somewhat. He quickly wiped away the blood as he dialed for Kathryn on the phone that she had given to him. She didn't take long to respond. "What is it?" she said on the line.

"It's me," Five replied in a harsh whisper, even though he was very much on his own in Bruce Wayne's bedroom. "Have the doctors gotten back to you? The nosebleeds are getting worse. I don't know how long more I can keep it from the butler."

"I know we've asked a lot of you."

She didn't answer the question. "What's happening to me?" he asked.

After a long pause. "I'm sorry. The truth is that you're dying. The process that brought you into this world was flawed. "

The news made Five feel choked up inside, even though deep inside he already suspected that it was true. "When will it be?"

Silence again. Then, "A month at most."

Her words stung. He knew he was but a pawn in a big game of chess, but the selfish part of him wanted more. He didn't want to die. Was that so wrong? Through time he'd grown accustomed to being Bruce Wayne, he wanted his time to continue - unfortunately, it was never meant to last. "Will I die before Bruce returns?"

"We will not let that happen. He will be brought back soon before anyone knows that he's gone."

Five clenched his teeth, it was sooner than he'd expected. Perhaps he'd allowed himself to get comfortable, more than he should have. "When Bruce returns, people are going to die, aren't they? A lot of people."

"You haven't gotten attached to anyone, have you?"

He considered all that had happened during his short-lived life. If there was one person who'd brought him happiness, it was Selina. He hadn't seen her since she'd left him on that rooftop, but he knew that something special had already begun to blossom between them. But she wasn't part of the plans of the Court of Owls. If people were to die, she would too. "No," he lied. "I just want to know."

"The number is immaterial. What matters is that Gotham must fall in order to rise up from the ashes. And because of your sacrifice, it will. Can we count on you?"

"Yes," he replied. Even though he knew it would not be for much longer.

Chapter 4

With a loud thwip, the butt of Sandra's stick slammed into Bruce's cheek and drove him to his knees. "Pay more attention to your blind spots," she coached. He lowered his own arms in defeat, exhausted and aching in all the spots that had fallen victim to Sandra's martial artistry. The woman was clearly skilled, and as much as Bruce wouldn't want to admit it; Alfred's training wasn't standing up to it much. He couldn't fault Sandra as a teacher, he did pick up several tips over the course of that session, but he was mostly disappointed in himself. He knew it would be a while before he would be able to work his way up to meet this elusive master of hers - not that he knew for certain it would improve his chances of being returned to Gotham. Sandra leaned back, planting her stick by her side. "You've had enough for today. It's time for you to go back and recuperate before we carry on."

"Back to my cell?" He asked levelly. His face was already swelling up, he could feel it bloat beneath his skin.

"I'm sorry, you must stay there till we can be sure that you won't try to run away."

Appealing to her better nature was one of the few plans he had cooked up as he was getting whipped around. Not one of his best, but he figured he would give it a shot anyway. "I don't belong here, Sandra. You must know that. I have a guardian back home. He doesn't know where I am. How is this fair to either one of us?"

"Life isn't fair," she replied with a tinge of cold, her eyes narrowed at him. "Some even less than others. You are the Prince of Gotham, you don't know the hell people go through."

Bruce was startled by her sudden outburst, there was obviously more to her than met the eye. "Sandra, why are you here?" He could see the pain ingrained into the stress marks on her face. Whatever reasons that had brought her to Nanda Parbat, they were likely not good.

All at once she backed down, and the strain on her face dissipated. "Let me walk you back to your cell," The charm in her voice had returned. She offered a hand to him. "You've done well for your first lesson. Keep it up and you'll go far." Retrieving both sticks, she placed them back on the rack. It became clear that she wasn't going to answer his question, so he asked a second one.

"Just out of sheer curiosity," he said as he followed her towards the doors carved in concentric patterns. "What will I be doing that requires me to learn how to fight with sticks?"

"Kendo," she replied. "I'm teaching you Kendo. We'll be moving on to swords once you're more familiar with the movements." She opened the door that led to a moderately large central area with four equal sides, lighted by bulbous red lamps that were fastened to the ceiling by thin metal wires. The room itself was lined with numerous men in dark-garments much like the one who had offered him tea - about forty would be his rough estimate. And they were all moving gracefully in sync with one another, stretching their arms in sweeping motions across their chest as their legs bent in slow motion at the knees.

"Tai chi, I've seen this before in the books," he remarked with a tinge of reverence for the art.

"Tài Jí Quán," she corrected him. "The men do this every evening to balance out their yin and yang, and bring about harmony from within. Would you like to join?"

Bruce took consideration of her offer before turning her down. As much as he was interested to learn, he was more keen to make a mental map of the route back to his cell. His final goal was still to find a way to get out of Nanda Parbat, and find a way back to Gotham... if it was at all possible. The worst part about all this was that no one in Gotham probably even knew that he was missing, nor if they did, would know where to go looking. All that he himself knew about Nanda Parbat was that it was a remote village somewhere in the Himalayas - he couldn't even place where exactly. If he couldn't rely on anyone getting him free from this predicament, he knew he would have to figure this one out on his own. "Not today, I need to recover from all the jabbing that you gave me," he half-lied and cast her a concocted smile.

She laughed, and her eyes lit up to crescent moons as she did. "I hope I haven't hurt you too badly. The good news is that you will have a soft bed to lie in tonight. Adept Harmen said that he would add a few pieces of furniture to your cell to make you feel more comfortable."

"Really..." he said, though he didn't really appreciate the thought that he was being prepared for an extended stay.

They made a turn and headed through a large corridor flanked with wooden doors on both sides. That corridor then led to a circular open area that had a similar structure as the large hall just in front of the war room, except there was a large air-well in the center that exposed two more floors below that were full of men roaming about, albeit more casually dressed than those having their evening exercises. He also noticed a gated door on the floor that he was on, that led to a large balcony that overlooked the mountains outside. From what his limited view of the balcony, he could see long wooden beams holding the entire structure of the building in place. They were on a precarious cliff of the mountain that the entire building was sitting on. Certainly, it didn't seem like an easy climb, but it was likely that his captors had a better, more efficient way of getting to their hideaway.

After taking a turn down a flight of stairs, two large and imposing sentries stood at the end of the path, dressed in thicker armor than their comrades. They took a look at Sandra, and immediately moved aside to reveal a solid iron door. One of the sentries unlocked the door with a ring of keys hung at his side, and she ushered Bruce into that familiar hall that led to his cell.

Adept Harmen was standing right outside the gate, with his hands on the open bars. Sandra bowed to him as soon as they met, and he returned one of his own. "How was his training?" asked the Adept.

"Very good," reported Sandra. "He is a fast learner."

Bruce noticed that Adept Harmen had made good on his word. There was now a simple bed, a thin mattress and a woolen blanket sitting in his cell. There was even a night table with a bowl of water, a cloth, a plate of rice, honeyed meat and vegetables, some paper and a wooden pencil for writing. The accommodation paled in comparison to what Bruce had been used to - but given the circumstances, he couldn't complain. "Rest well," said the Adept. "You will resume training tomorrow morning." With that, the Adept shut the gate tight, and departed with Sandra.

"Hall, corridor, circular air-well..." he muttered quietly to himself, replaying all that he had seen on his route back to the cell. The gears were already turning in his head, but there was only one thing that kept him from devising a full plan of escape  - that iron wrought gate that led to the balcony. It was similar to the one that kept him from leaving his cell, and in the same way, he could be assured that it would remain locked at all times. He would either manage to get the key, or pick the lock himself, but what with? He turned around to study the lock on the gate on his cell. It was embedded in the iron itself, one of those older models dating back to the early 1900s. He hadn't trained on such a lock though he was confident that Selina would know all about... He stopped himself short. Selina was gone, in all senses of the word. That last encounter between them marked the death of what they'd built up to that point. And even though he had told himself that it was time to move on, it still made him uncomfortable thinking about what they had lost.

He drew himself back from his thoughts - The gate... focus on getting the lock open. But a loud sigh left his lips instead. This wasn't going to be as easy as he'd made it out to be - and it wasn't just the issue of the lock. He knew he'd have to work out the logistics of his escape, and it would take a while, judging from the number of people that roamed the halls outside. He couldn't possibly take them all on. If they were anywhere as good as the Adept or as Sandra was, he wouldn't be getting far, and he would only be ruining his own chances of getting back. He had to do it efficiently, or not try at all. If that meant spending the next few days, or weeks getting it right, then he'd to commit himself to the task. No room for errors... he whispered to himself. It's all or nothing at all.

Chapter 3

The spike of a peculiar herbal scent invaded the nostrils and brought Bruce back to his senses. He looked up at the one who had awoken him and half expected to see the man who had taken him out. But it was a slender lady who was bent over him with a china bowl of steaming liquid. She smiled at him through slim brown eyes that sat beneath sharply angled black brows, and moved the bowl away from him. Dressed in an oriental shirt and pants suit framed with a mandarin collar and long sleeves, and silky long dark hair kept neatly tucked up at the back of her head. Upon her ears dangled golden teardrop earrings that had engravings on them in a language that Bruce could not understand. "You've been asleep for quite a while," she said with an accent that he struggled to place.

He looked around. He no longer was in the cell that he had first found himself in. This room was much larger, surrounded by large wooden pillars that had concentric squares beneath what looked like lotus flowers, carved into them. Beyond the pillars lay four stone walls, much like the material that he had found in his cell, and two adjoining wooden doors with rice paper in the upper part of the frame, surrounded by concentric squares, much like the carvings on the pillars. Not too far from their side was a bamboo rack that held a number of wooden sticks. "I was moved..." he said.

"Yes," she said, and kept her gaze on him till he turned to her. "My name is Wu-San." She paused for a moment, and went on, "You may call me Sandra."

He nodded politely at her as he sat up. "I'd introduce myself, but I'm pretty sure you already know who I am."

"You are Bruce Wayne of Gotham City," she replied, her eyes taking a quick dip at the mention of his name.

"Sandra, do you know why I'm here?" he asked, even though he would assume that she might have a similar answer as the man he'd met before.

"You are our master's chosen one, to redeem your city from self-destruction."

"I've heard that before, but it still doesn't make any sense. What do you mean by self-destruction? What's going to happen to Gotham?"

"The process has already begun," she said, her voice brimming with authority. "The master says Gotham has gone on for years unchecked, and its corruption is vastly consuming what was once good. In time, its evil will prove to be its end."

Taken aback by the bold proclamation, Bruce gave himself a moment to let her words sink in. He couldn't disagree on the aspects of corruption. Gotham had indeed become quite the cesspool, as he himself had borne witness to. Wayne Enterprises was of course, not exempt. In fact, he'd begun to recognize that much of the rot stemmed from his own company. He wondered if that was the reason that selected him out of the many. "You believe in the prophecy as well?"

She nodded with certainty. "The master has never been wrong. Not in all the years that he's been alive."

Bruce could only assume that she was referring to the man who had been in his cell. "No disrespect. But I don't share the faith that you have in your master. All my life I've been taught that life is what you make it out to be, and that people who base their decisions on the assertion of certain prophecies coming true will be setting themselves up to fail. Besides, I certainly have no aspirations to be among the conquerors that your master has listed to me."

She frowned, "You can't have met the master yet. You've only just arrived."

"Who was it that I met then? He never gave me a name."

"It was Adept Harmen who brought you here."

"I asked to meet the person in charge and he claimed that it was he."

Sandra smiled gently. "Adept Harmen is given charge of the prisons, but we are all under the wise direction of the master."

Bruce bit a corner of his lip. "Can I meet with your master then?"

She shook her head. "No one meets the master till they are ready, and you haven't even begun your training."

"My training?"

Sandra rose to her feet and walked over to the wooden rack. "That's why we are here, Mr Wayne." She picked out two long sticks and threw one to him, just as he was getting up himself. "To train you to be the person you need to be."

He caught and held the stick between his hands. It was smoothly polished, even though scratches on the bark indicated it had previously been used. "I didn't sign up for..."

The end of her stick flew downwards in his direction, and instinctively he moved to block it with his own. "You asked to meet the master. Complete your training and I will take you to him myself." She flipped her stick around and met his at a different angle.

"How long will this take?" asked Bruce, already feeling impatient. The thought of Alfred alone with his clone, parading around as Bruce Wayne, greatly irked him. He hoped to God that Alfred would be able to detect inconsistencies in his behavior and figure out the truth.

She moved more ferociously in his direction, slamming her stick into his each time he managed to catch the blow. He backed off, his sight never leaving the movements of her arms, taking several steps backwards till he found himself pressed against one of the pillars in the room. She came fully at him this time, entangling his stick in a twisted spin with her own, causing him to lose grip of it, and placed him in a choke-hold.

"As long as is needed," she said to him, as she took a step away, effortlessly levered up his stick with her own, catching it in one hand, and handed it back to him. "Again."

Chapter 2

The man requested that Bruce take a seat before him, and even though hesitant to comply, he decided to bide his time with the impression of obedience. "You said mission..." There were many things he had yet to comprehend of his capture and replacement. Someone had taken a lot of pains to move him to this place completely unharmed, yet wasn't it not so long ago that the Court of Owls had tried to kill him? Perhaps the man was indeed part of something bigger, and the Court of Owls were only mere tools to his organization. How deep did this rabbit's hole go? Bruce remembered when he first began the search for his parents' killer. He had not expected it to unravel such a tangled web of powerful individuals, each with their own nefarious hold on Gotham. A part of him wished it'd simply ended with M. Malone, and that he could finally allow himself to grieve the loss of his parents, and put them to rest. But as long as the very people behind the murder continued unapologetically to exert influence over the company that his family had tediously built, he knew that there would be no rest for him. The good name of the Waynes had to be reclaimed.

"I did," the man replied, lowering himself down to the ground in front of Bruce. From out of the shadows behind him, a second man fully clad in black form-fitting robes appeared behind the elderly man. His face was wrapped in a dark cloth leaving only his eyes exposed, and black cloth-like boots lined his feet. Bruce quickly surmised that that had allowed the man to move about on the stone without making any sound. There was a hot glass of beverage in his hands, and he lowered it to the elderly man. Without so much as looking up, the elderly man retrieved the cup as though he had entirely anticipated the arrival of the dark-garbed man, and placed it in front of Bruce. "You must be thirsty. Drink please."

Bruce stared at the steaming glass, wary of its contents. He continued not to trust the elderly man, and the rest of his people, "What is this?"

"Turkish black tea, imported all the way from Çaykur. Try it, it's very good."

Watching the dark-garbed man bow at his waist, and back his way out the door, Bruce hesitated to take anything from the elderly man.

Once more, that odd half-smile wrested its way onto the man's face. "You are meant for greater things, my boy. I would not threaten your destiny by putting something in your drink."

Even though Bruce furrowed his brow at the man's words, he found some reason to believe him. And it was true, he was rather parched. Picking up the cup and sipping its contents slowly, he continued to speak between sips. "I assume you're referring to the mission you haven't told me about yet."

"That is right, but all in good time. I'd like first to introduce you to who we are, and what we do here. Spanning all the way back to 300 A.D, our group has been an influential force over the centuries to raise up new promising empires, whilst tearing down the corrupt and depraved in order to give this world a fresh renewal of power. Without us, mankind would have torn itself apart, consumed itself from the tail up to the head. We are a necessary force to upkeep the survival of our race."

Bruce studied the man carefully. His story sounded astoundingly outlandish, and yet nothing in his stoic expression indicated that he was lying.

"All this while, we've operated in the shadows, saving humanity time and again from utter destruction so that life might go on and flourish once more as it did in the beginning."

"If that's so," replied Bruce. Nothing added up yet. "What do you need me for?"

"The fulfillment of a prophecy. You are the vital ingredient to usher Gotham into a new era of peace and prosperity. The hope of a city full of people."

"What?" Surely the man's cult could not rest their plans on a single seventeen-year-old orphan. What power would he have to do as they wanted? He could barely get his own family's company under control.

"My boy, you might not think much of yourself yet. But the League of Shadows hasn't lasted for generations because we get our predictions wrong. Our uncanny foresight has placed individuals in places of power that have brought about massive change to historical events of this world. Alexander the Great, Cyrus of Persia, Mehmet II the Conquerer of the Ottoman empire. Someday, you too will stand side by side with these men of influence, and you will rise a legend."

"You... you're mad..." muttered Bruce, right then convinced of the fact. "So deluded that you don't even see it yourself. Was it you who ordered the murder of my parents?"

The man gazed at him, cold and calculated. "You allow your emotions to cloud your ability to see the big picture. It is my hope that through time, you will come to understand that your tragedy needed to happen to awaken what is inside you."

Tears welled up in Bruce's eyes. The man did not deny the part that he had played, yet none of this mattered to him at all. "This is just a game to you?"

"Only from the ashes, can the phoenix rise," he continued.

"Stop it with the meaningless philosophy!" Bruce no longer felt the ache of his bruised knuckles, his hatred of this man had overwhelmed all his senses. He rose up, casting a shadow on the man before him.

A smile dawned on the man's face, one that barely crinkled the wrinkles beside his eyes. He also rose to his feet. "There is the beast you've been hiding inside. Let it out."

The brunt of Bruce's anger drove him to slam his fists at the man, but time and again, the man moved swiftly to deflect the blows. Moving effortlessly like a trout swimming downstream, the man took a step closer to Bruce, and all at once jabbed him in the side of his throat. The man's touch, though astoundingly controlled, sent a stinging force down his spine, and the world began turning black. As he faded off, he could barely make out the man's final words.

"You have great power inside of you, Bruce Wayne. Don't fight your true destiny."

Chapter 1

Continued from the end of S3E15 ...



Daylight brushed against his cheek as Bruce slowly drifted out from a dreamless sleep to reality. The air that he breathed in was chilly, absent of the chemicals that flooded his lungs what seemed like moments ago. "Five..." he whispered through parched lips. His memory of the events that preceded that very moment was returning, and the betrayal of his lookalike stung, especially after all that he had done for him. It didn't help that the ground beneath him felt as calloused as the frigid gaze Five had presented to him as a parting gift, "This... is what I was made for. To be Bruce Wayne." Five's words echoed in his head, the voice that sounded just like his - yet another bizarre product of Hugo Strange's malevolent genius.

Bruce's eyes widened fully. He was in a simple cream-colored cotton robe and trousers and his shoes were nowhere to be seen. He looked around. Nothing appeared familiar in the least. Four walls and the ground beneath him lined with stone, an iron-gated door that led to an empty hallway, and a window overlooking a snow-capped landscape that was the only sight that was reminiscent of the view from his chalet in Switzerland. But as he studied the mix of limestone and granite in the walls that kept him in, as well as the asian notches on the archaic iron spokes that kept him from escaping, he suspected he wasn't anywhere near the Swiss alps. To make matters worse, he was a prisoner.

"Let me out!" came a dry-throated guttural sound emerging from deep within him. His tongue tasted sand. He couldn't remember the last time he had a drink, or how long he had been out. All he knew was that one moment he was in the Narrows, and the next... wherever 'here' was. Five couldn't have been working alone. And Bruce had the strongest inkling as to who was really behind the kidnapping. He slammed the gate with his fists. The thudding echoed through the hall. "You can't keep me here!"

Thoughts of Alfred ran through his mind, how worried he probably was at this point. It was odd how the most trivial of things rose to the greatest importance - like Alfred's shepherd's pie. What would come of it? Was Alfred still keeping it warm? He pummelled his fists against the gate again. Anger began to melt away into fear. But it wasn't exactly his life that he was worried about, there were too many unknown factors that prevented him from properly assessing his situation, and he hated not being in control. He needed answers, and soon. "Open this door!" he yelled, even as he dropped his face towards the ground. Yelling into the empty space began to felt like a futile effort. The hall remained as empty as it was when he had awoken. He wondered if he had simply been abandoned in the vast, ancient abode to die a slow death. Kathryn had warned him about carrying on his investigation, and yet he had persisted. But how could he have not when everything he knew was being threatened?

Just as he was about to lose hope, the clicking of a lock falling into place brought him back to attention. He looked up to see an elderly man standing plainly in front of him as though he'd been there forever. His hair as white as powder, a level expressionless look on his face. He wasn't someone that Bruce recognized. "Who are you?" he asked, even as he stepped back to avoid the swinging gate. Gathering what courage he had, he said with as much conviction as he could muster, "I want to speak with whoever's in charge."

The elderly man, clad in robes much similar to his own, stepped boldly into his prison and gazed at him. The lines surrounding his mouth stretched as he spoke, "That would be me."

Bruce didn't believe him. Surely there was more to this than just an old man. "Is the Court of Owls behind my abduction?"

"The Court is a tool, nothing more."

Bruce paused, he couldn't understand how one who had the insight on what was happening could so casually brush away the Court, knowing full well that they had their fingers all over Gotham, playing its system like a puppet. "You won't get away with this. People will know I'm gone."

Unfazed by Bruce's threat, the man continued, "We've taken precautions to ensure your absence won't be noticed."

It dawned on Bruce then, how the entire puzzle fit together. "My clone..." he muttered. That's what Five had been created for... Hugo Strange, then the Court of Owls. They all led to this. This one man. "He's in Gotham pretending to be me, isn't he?"

The man nodded in an almost robotic fashion. There was nothing about him that gave even a hint of human compassion.

"Alfred will figure it out," Bruce blurted out in certainty - if there was one person who knew him better than anyone else in the world, it was Alfred. And his background with the SAS wouldn't hurt either.

"Perhaps," admitted the man. "But by that time I'm certain you will come to see the light."

"What light?"

"The light of our cause."

A little frustrated with the man's cryptic nature, Bruce couldn't hold back a bite of sarcasm. "No thank you. I'm not interested to join your cult."

For the first time since the man had entered his cell, what looked to be a smile bent a corner of his lip. "You assume that I am your enemy, but I am not."

Bruce discreetly imagined himself making a dash for it. The man before him was standing in the doorway, but he also seemed frail - he wouldn't think that the man would be able to stop him if he went through the gap fast enough. "It'd be hard to convince me of that since you did take me against my will."

"Would you have come otherwise?" It was a rhetorical question. "You can't understand how important you are in the scheme of things. You must be made aware..."

Bolting towards the hallway while the man was distracted with his response seemed like a good idea for a while - till he was met with a powerful force buried into his chest that sent him reeling across the floor, coming to a halt only after hitting the wall on the other end of the room. His chest pulsed in agony where it had been hit, and he had to take a moment to catch his breath. The elderly man calmly lowered his raised fist, that Bruce could only assume was the source of the impact.

"Another thing," said the man. "You will not be allowed to leave till we have imparted all that knowledge that you require for your mission."

"We?" asked Bruce, struggling to his feet as he tried once more to plan his escape. This time he drove himself directly at the man, ducking low to knock him off his feet. It was one of the more dodgy moves Alfred had taught him - "Not exactly a gentleman's fight." was what Alfred would say, but one that Bruce would employ anyway. He figured the urgency of the situation would negate all requirement for manners.

But just the second Bruce had expected to make impact with the man's ankles, they disappeared into the air like the flutter of wings as his robes flapped through the space above Bruce, and landed right behind him. Scrambling to his feet, Bruce swung a fist at the man, only to find his fist swiftly ending its flight in the iron grip of the man's palm. He swung another fist at the man's cheek, but that in the man's other palm. Both the man's hands began to compress, and Bruce heard his knuckles popping as pain seared through his arms and he gasped in the moment of helplessness. "We," repeated the man, without even breaking a sweat. "You have many questions, but you will only get your answers if you surrender to this place. There is no escape. Even if you manage to get by me, there will be twenty more right beyond this passage. And fifty more beyond that. You will fail, and you will be returned here, more broken than you had arrived."

"Please..." cried Bruce, falling to his knees. The man responded almost immediately, removing his hands from Bruce's, and Bruce pressed his bruised knuckles against his chest to soothe the pain. Alfred had taught him a lot, but he'd quickly come to acknowledge that he might not be able to fight his way out of this one. The only option left to him was to go along with the man's demands. Maybe he would learn something about his captors that he would be able to use to his advantage once they were less wary of his will to return home. "Just tell me where I am... please."

"You are..." replied the man. "In Nanda Parbat."