Gotham always smelled like rain, even when the sky was clear.
Eli Mercer noticed it every morning as he stepped out of his apartment building on Trident Street—wet concrete, rusted metal, old smoke that never quite left the air. The city felt tired, like it had been awake too long and forgotten how to rest. Eli understood that feeling well.
At twenty-four, he was average in just about every way. Average height. Average build. Average job. He worked nights as a dock laborer down by the Narrows, hauling crates for companies that didn't ask questions and didn't pay overtime. It was hard work, but it kept the rent paid and his name off anyone's radar. In Gotham, staying unnoticed was its own kind of survival skill.
The only thing about Eli that wasn't average was his skin.
Gray. Not pale, not sickly—just gray, like stone left out in the rain too long.
He'd been that way for as long as he could remember. Doctors never had an answer. Some said it was a rare genetic condition. Others suggested chemical exposure, maybe something in the water when he was a kid. Eli stopped asking after a while. In Gotham, strange things happened all the time, and most people learned not to dig too deep.
He wore gloves even in the summer. Long sleeves year-round. A hood when the sun was too bright. People stared anyway. Kids whispered. Adults pretended not to notice while noticing very hard.
Eli kept his head down.
He lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment with flickering lights and a radiator that banged like it was trying to escape the wall. He didn't have many friends—just Vince from the docks, who didn't ask questions, and Mrs. Calder downstairs, who paid him in leftover soup to carry her groceries. That was enough.
Most nights, Eli came home sore and exhausted. But lately, something had been… off.
The aches didn't last as long as they should. Bruises faded overnight. Once, a crate slipped from a crane and slammed into his shoulder hard enough to send him skidding across the dock. Everyone froze, waiting for the scream.
Eli stood up instead.
No broken bones. No blood. Just a dull throb that vanished before his shift ended.
"Built like a tank, huh?" Vince had joked.
Eli laughed along, but the sound felt hollow.
Another time, he'd caught a falling pallet without thinking—wood splintering under his fingers as if it were rotted. The weight should've crushed him. Instead, it barely registered. He stared at his hands afterward, gray skin dusted with sawdust, wondering why his heart was pounding harder than his muscles.
He told himself it was adrenaline. Luck. Denial was easy when the alternative was terrifying.
He didn't know anything about heroes or monsters. Batman was just a rumor people argued about in bars. Names like "Joker" or "Penguin" meant nothing more to him than urban legends—Gotham's way of coping with its nightmares.
Eli Mercer believed the world followed rules.
That belief cracked one night when three men followed him off the bus.
They cornered him in an alley, the kind Gotham had too many of—narrow, wet, lit by a single flickering streetlamp. One of them pulled a knife. Another laughed when Eli raised his hands.
"Relax, gray boy," the man said. "Just your wallet."
Eli felt fear, sharp and familiar. He also felt something else—something heavy, cold, and deep inside his chest, like a stone shifting underground.
The knife came down.
Eli caught the man's wrist.
There was a sound like breaking concrete.
The man screamed. The other two ran.
Eli let go, staring at what he'd done. The attacker's arm bent in a way arms shouldn't bend. Eli hadn't meant to hurt him. He hadn't even tried.
His breathing slowed. The cold feeling settled, calm and patient, as if it had always been there—waiting.
When sirens wailed in the distance, Eli fled.
He didn't sleep that night. He sat on the edge of his bed, gray hands clenched into fists, mind racing. He didn't know what he was becoming. He didn't know why.
All he knew was that Gotham was dangerous—and whatever was waking up inside him was even more so.
Somewhere deep beneath the city, something ancient stirred.
And Eli Mercer, average man in an unforgiving city, had no idea that his life had just crossed a line it could never step back over.
Eli still went to work the next night.
He told himself that was normal. Routine meant safety. If he kept moving, kept lifting crates and clocking hours, whatever had happened in that alley would shrink down into something manageable—something that didn't need answers.
Gotham didn't allow pauses anyway.
The docks were louder than usual when he arrived. Engines idled too long. Men spoke in clipped sentences. Eli noticed armed guards where there usually weren't any, hands resting too close to their jackets. Someone was nervous.
"Mercer," Vince muttered as they passed each other between containers, "keep your head down tonight."
Eli nodded. He was good at that.
The shipment came in just after midnight—unmarked crates stacked high, escorted by trucks that didn't belong to the port authority. Eli didn't care what was inside. He never did. He gripped the crate handles and lifted, muscles moving with an ease that still surprised him. Each step felt heavier in a way that wasn't physical, like the ground itself wanted him closer.
Then the first gunshot cracked the air.
Men shouted. Someone dropped a crate. Another shot rang out, then a burst—automatic fire chewing through steel and wood. Eli froze, heart slamming into his ribs.
"Down!" someone yelled.
He ducked behind a shipping container as chaos exploded around the docks. Two groups were firing at each other from opposite ends of the pier—one in black jackets with red stitching, the other wearing masks marked with crude white symbols. Eli didn't know their names, didn't care. All he saw were muzzle flashes and bodies scrambling for cover.
A forklift burst into flames.
Eli pressed his back to the cold metal container, breathing hard. This wasn't his fight. He just had to wait it out.
A bullet punched through the steel inches from his head.
Another hit his shoulder.
It hurt—but not the way it should have.
The impact felt distant, like being struck through water. The bullet flattened and dropped to the ground, smoking slightly. Eli stared at it, then at his jacket. No tear. No blood.
The cold weight inside him shifted again.
A masked man rounded the corner, gun raised, eyes widening when he saw Eli standing there uninjured. He fired anyway.
Eli moved.
He didn't remember deciding to. One second he was pinned down, the next he was there—hand closing around the gun barrel, crumpling it like soft tin. The man tried to run. Eli caught him by the collar and lifted him off the ground with one hand.
"Don't," Eli said, voice low and rough, like gravel grinding together.
He set the man down—set was generous; the impact cracked the concrete—and shoved him away. The man limped off screaming.
More gunfire. A stray rocket slammed into a stack of containers nearby, sending one toppling toward a group of dockworkers trapped in the open.
Eli saw it falling.
The world slowed.
He ran—not fast like a blur, just fast enough. The container hit his shoulders, crushing down with tons of steel and cargo. Eli's knees buckled, concrete shattering beneath his boots, but he held.
The weight didn't break him.
With a guttural shout, he pushed, muscles burning in a way that felt right, ancient. The container rolled aside, slamming into the pier. The dockworkers stared at him, wide-eyed and silent.
"Move," Eli snapped.
They didn't argue.
Sirens grew louder. The gangs scattered, melting back into the night like they'd never been there. Smoke drifted over the water. Fires crackled. Men groaned.
Eli stood alone amid the wreckage, chest rising and falling slowly. His skin felt colder than ever, veins dark beneath the gray. For a moment, he swore he could hear something beneath the noise of the city—a low, distant echo, like dirt falling on a coffin lid.
He didn't know why he hadn't been afraid.
That scared him most of all.
By the time the police arrived, Eli was gone, slipping back into Gotham's maze of streets. News would call it a gang shootout. No one would mention the gray-skinned dockworker who stopped a container with his bare hands.
But Gotham noticed things like that.
From the shadows of a nearby rooftop, unseen eyes lingered where Eli had stood, measuring the damage, the footprints cracked deep into concrete.
Something old had left its mark on the docks that night.
And Gotham, as always, would respond.