Turn 6 of 10

Step back and let him decide whether to trust you

You step back from the doorway, your hands rising to shoulder height in a gesture that belongs more to de-escalation training than superheroics. The key stays in the lock, a small flag of your intentions. You don't move toward him. You don't explain yourself yet. You let the silence stretch until it becomes a question he has to answer.

Commissioner Gordon yawns, showing teeth, and settles into a loaf on the windowsill. The cat's indifference seems to loosen something in the young man's shoulders, though his phone stays raised, thumb hovering over a screen you can't see.

"Sera said the Guild would send someone," he says, and his voice cracks on her name, revealing the weeks of waiting, the not-knowing. "She said they'd have papers. A license." His eyes move to your jacket, searching for the emblem you haven't earned yet, the costume you haven't collected.

"She didn't say they'd look like they just got out of class."

"I did just get out of class," you admit, letting your hands drop slowly. "Guild orientation, forty minutes ago. Before that, community college and a job selling phone cases." You don't mention the other applications, the other mantles you might have worn. This one chose you, or you chose it, and now you stand in its consequences.

"She left notes. Said someone studies the mask, not the person. Said I should warn whoever's here that they're being watched."

The phone wavers. Behind him, you can see a kitchen table covered in papers—maps of the warehouse district, photographs of a figure in dark panels, timelines written in Sera's crowded handwriting. Research. Preparation. The work of someone who knew she was running out of time.

"The Understudy," he says, and the name costs him something. "She thought she could finish it. One last fight, clean slate, then she'd take me somewhere they couldn't find us." His laugh is short and broken.

"She broke three ribs instead. Said she couldn't heal right and keep hiding me. Said she'd come back when she could."

He hasn't moved from the doorway, but he hasn't run either. The choice hangs between you, suspended like the debris in those incident reports, waiting for gravity to remember its direction.