The silence after Alex's words hung like heavy lead. Bruce didn't respond immediately. He leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled before his chin. His gaze, sharp and analytical, slid over Alex, then drifted inward, into the depths of his own exhaustion and… strange relief? He held no malice toward this man, despite how he'd turned Gotham upside down, drowned it in the blood of his enemies, and established his own—admittedly effective—dictatorship. In truth, Alex had been right where Bruce had spent years banging his head against the wall of principles. And the methods… yes, they worked. Harsh, brutal, but they worked. Now this cynical pragmatist had come to him. Not to Bruce Wayne, philanthropist. To Batman. The world still needed shadows. It needed him. Deep beneath the weight of disappointment and fatigue, something warm, almost forgotten, stirred—purpose.
"Scale," Bruce finally said, his voice low, emotionless, but taut with the tension of a steel spring. "The enemy's forces. Details of the invasion. Tell me."
Harley lit up like a Christmas garland, eager for her moment to shine. "Ooh, my cue!" she chirped, bounding to Alex. "Lemme at that wild head of yours! Focus on the juiciest bits of the nightmare!" She placed her hands on his temples, her fingers surprisingly cool. "Ready? Let's roll!"
The air above the table shimmered. Not a mere hologram—this was an illusion woven from magic and memory. The Wayne dining room vanished. They were enveloped in a miniature apocalypse, no less horrific for its scale. The sky tore open with crimson tendrils of portals. From them poured streams of armored figures—inhuman, angular, moving with mechanical cruelty. The earth burned. Cities crumbled under beams of unknown weapons. At the center, like a dark sun, loomed Darkseid—a mountain of malevolent flesh and stone, his eyes hurling bolts of contempt at a world he crushed. Sounds—explosions, grinding metal, inhuman screams—vibrated in their bones. The smell of ash, ozone, and… hot blood stung their nostrils. The illusion was so tangible that Alfred, standing at the door, instinctively flinched, and Bruce's knuckles whitened as he gripped the chair's armrests.
The illusion collapsed as abruptly as it appeared. The dining room's silence returned, heavy curtains, the scent of old wood and tea. Bruce sat motionless, his face paler, the shadows under his eyes inky. His chest heaved. He slowly raised his gaze to Alex.
"What… was that?" he asked, his voice muffled, as if choked.
"The end of the world, silly!" Harley blurted cheerfully, twirling in place. "We just told ya! Big rock dude, angry army, boom-boom-crash! Your kinda party!"
Alex shook his head, understanding Bruce's real question. "That," he said quietly, with a trace of the same disbelief likely mirrored on Bruce's face, "was magic. Harley… can do that now." He glanced at Harley, who curtsied. "Yeah. I was… floored too."
Bruce dragged a hand across his face. His mind, accustomed to categorizing everything, slammed against the wall of the irrational. "We have… catastrophically little information," he said finally, his voice regaining an analyst's edge, now laced with chilling awareness of the scale. "The enemy. Their technology, biology, tactics. Portal sources. Weaknesses. All we have is… a picture of horror. Who's your source? And we need more. Much more."
"The source is a mage," Alex replied curtly. "She detected the threat first through her… channels. But she's gone full radio silence. Preparing for the end in her own way. Getting anything from her now is impossible."
Bruce frowned, his mind racing through alternatives: satellites? Informant networks? Anomaly analysis? All seemed pitiful against what he'd just seen.
"We need to divide responsibilities," he declared sharply, standing. His movements were precise, swift—apathy burned away in the crisis's fire. "Coordinating from one point won't work."
Alex nodded. It's why he'd come. "You gather them," he said firmly. "Everyone who can stand against this force. Heavy-hitters. Weird ones. Dangerous ones. Anyone with a chance to hold this wave back, even for a minute. Assemble an army of heroes, Batman. Or something close." He stood too. "I'll handle the other front. Try to reach governments, militaries. Warn them. Mobilize what conventional forces we can. And… I'll look for other information channels."
Bruce froze for a moment, his gaze locking with Alex's. In it was understanding, heavy acceptance, and a shadow of old mistrust, pushed aside by shared calamity. He nodded. Once. Sharply. The pact was sealed without words.
Alfred appeared as if by magic, bearing a tray with two steaming teacups and a modest slice of Harley's garish cake. Alex took a cup, sipped, and set it down. "Exquisite, Mr. Pennyworth," he said with genuine respect. "The tea and your composure. You're a true professional in any apocalypse."
"Most obliged, sir," Alfred replied with a flawless bow, though his eyes remained grave as stone.
Harley snatched and devoured her cake slice, nearly choking in her haste. Alex took her by the elbow. "Let's go. We've got work up to our necks."
The door closed behind them. Silence settled in the dining room, broken only by the ticking of the mantel clock. Alfred stood motionless, tray in hand. His gaze, heavy with deep, unshakable worry, shifted to Bruce.
Bruce stood at the window, back to the room, staring into the park's darkness. But his posture had changed. Shoulders squared. Back straight. No longer bowed by the weight of futility. Now it radiated coiled, dangerous energy. Readiness. Almost… excitement. He was Batman again. And a world crumbling under a cosmic nightmare had given him what Gotham's peaceful green prison couldn't—a purpose.
Alfred watched this transformation. His old eyes, which had seen so much pain and loss, glistened with unspoken emotion. Fear for the boy who'd become his son clashed with pride for the warrior returning to the fight. He sighed quietly, setting the tray on the sideboard. One question burned in his soul, terrifying and unanswerable: The end of the world… Lord, is this a blessing sent to restore his life? Or the worst evil we could have brought upon ourselves?
Returning to Floravita's base after the grim visit to Wayne Manor felt less like coming home and more like crawling into a quiet harbor before a tsunami. The hum of life-support systems, usually a soothing background, now felt like a taut string ready to snap. Alex stepped into his office—a sleek, minimalist space with a panoramic view of nighttime Gotham, bathed in the greenery and lights of his new utopia. A view he'd created, now at risk of turning to ash in days.
That's when he saw it.
On the perfectly polished, mirror-like desk, where nothing but a speck of dust should have been, lay an envelope.
Unremarkable, almost vulgar in its ordinariness: a plain white rectangle, no stamp, no return address, no markings. It seemed to have materialized from the void, defying physics and the base's paranoid security systems. Alex froze at the threshold, an icy wave of adrenaline washing away fatigue. Cameras? Motion sensors? Pamela's plants? Laser grids? All silent. Nothing detected. The envelope simply was.
Moving as if through thick syrup, he approached the desk. His usually steady fingers trembled slightly before picking up the envelope. It was light, almost weightless. Inside—a single torn sheet of thick, slightly yellowed paper. Written in an unfamiliar hand were the words:
Go to Lucifer.
LUX Nightclub.
Los Angeles.
P$@4175KPOFl.!
Alex dropped the envelope like a burning coal. His heart pounded in his throat, blood draining from his face, leaving his skin cold and clammy. He stared at the seemingly nonsensical string of characters at the end. P$@4175KPOFl.!
1. Telepath. The first thought hit like a hammer on an anvil. Someone had crawled into his mind. That string wasn't random. It was his password. An ancient, utterly random password he'd created for one purpose. A password he'd never used—not in any system, safe, or encrypted file. It existed only in the depths of his memory, buried under years of mental clutter, a silly artifact of his past. Someone had plucked it out like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat and thrown it in his face. The violation felt as raw and invasive as touching an exposed nerve. Who? Zatanna? Too subtle for her blunt magical force. Someone else? Someone watching?
2. Myself. The second thought followed, cold and heavy as a lead weight. That password… it was his personal key. A key he'd use to prove something unthinkable. A long-forgotten teenage fantasy about time travel surfaced: "If I need to prove I'm from the future, only I'd believe myself. I need a code. Something so complex and random no one else could guess. P$@4175KPOFl.!" And here it was. On paper. An invitation addressed to him, Alex of now, from… who? Himself from the future? Someone who knew him that deeply? It was either a brilliant confirmation of his origins or a monstrous trap set by someone rummaging through his mind's darkest corners.
He turned from the desk, strode to the wall-mounted bar. With a soft hiss, it dispensed a heavy crystal glass. Without hesitation, almost mechanically, he poured a triple shot of aged, dark-amber whiskey. The gulp burned his throat, spreading warmth through his body, but it couldn't melt the inner ice. He retrieved a thick Cuban cigar from a cedar humidor, slicing the tip with a surgeon's precision. Lighting it with a long cedar match, he drew in the first acrid, enveloping puff of smoke. He stood in the office's center, back to the letter, staring at the blank, dark wall hiding the base's armored layers. Cigar smoke curled around him, creating a mystical haze through which Gotham's lights flickered. His usually clear, strategic mind churned feverishly, grinding two conclusions like millstones. Lucifer. LUX. Los Angeles. And that damned password. A one-way ticket? Or the only thread to answers needed to save everything?
The office door slid open with a soft hiss. Harley appeared, her pink-and-blue pigtails slightly disheveled, her face a mix of curiosity and energy, but her eyes betraying exhaustion from a day of apocalyptic news and the Batman visit. She paused, sensing the atmosphere. The thick scent of expensive tobacco, Alex standing like a statue, cigar in one hand, whiskey in the other, his profile sharply outlined by the desk lamp's dim glow, staring into the wall's void.
"Whoa, Boss!" she exclaimed, playful but cautious. "Cosplaying a mobster at a deal? Or just decided the end of the world's a great excuse to smoke? Epic, I'll give ya that!" She took a few steps inside, her gaze flicking to the desk, lingering on the white envelope and paper, but she didn't pry.
Alex slowly turned his head. Cigar smoke trailed from the corner of his mouth. His gaze was distant, but when it focused on Harley, a flicker of grim clarity shone in his eyes—the kind that grips someone who's made a fateful decision.
"Pondering the universe's workings, kiddo," he replied, his voice low, raspy from smoke and whiskey, devoid of his usual irony. It carried a weary weight. "Its… quirks." He took another deep drag, exhaling a smoke ring that drifted lazily. The letter pulsed in his peripheral vision, but he deliberately pushed it aside, focusing on the present, on what he could control. At least somewhat.
"Listen up," he continued, his tone shifting abruptly. His voice turned commanding, steely as a blade. "We've got two weeks. Every second counts. You've got two tasks, and they need to be perfect."
Harley straightened instantly, her playfulness replaced by a soldier's focus. Her eyes ignited.
"First," Alex didn't point the cigar but locked eyes with her, "your illusions. That nightmare you showed Wayne. Record it. Not on a cloud, not online. On flash drives." He emphasized the word. "Dozens, hundreds of them. Secure, encrypted for multiple views. Your nightmare needs to be tangible on them. Whoever plugs that drive into their laptop should smell the ash, hear the grinding metal, feel icy dread in their spine. Make versions: for militaries—focus on tactics, portals, the horde's scale, their armor. For politicians—crumbling skyscrapers, panicked crowds, total civilizational collapse. Add subtitles in major languages—English, Russian, Chinese, French, Arabic. The message is one: this isn't fiction. It's the weather forecast for two weeks from now. It's here, and it's real."
"Second," his gaze turned icy, piercing. "Those drives. Every single one. Kara delivers them. Personally. To every president, prime minister, general secretary, monarch with an army or a nuclear button. In their hands." Alex paused, his eyes allowing no compromise. "If they won't see her—she forces her way in. If they block doors—she takes down the wall. If they hide in bunkers—she burns through the ceiling. If guards shoot—she neutralizes, non-lethally if possible. This isn't protocol, Harley. It's a warning before the end. It must be heard. Make it clear to Kara: resistance is pointless. This isn't a threat to them. It's a threat to everyone."
"Third," his gaze bore into her, burning with ruthless necessity, "Gotham, our city. We're responsible for it. Declare a State of Emergency. Full mobilization of services. Run evacuation drills. Every block, every building. Training, exercises—daily. Let them scream, let them complain. Better they yell now during drills than when the sky splits open. Use Pamela's plants if needed—for organization, quick shelter construction, crowd control. Any evacuation issue—solve it on the spot, fast and hard. Got it?"
Harley nodded, her face serious, almost stern. She understood the weight. This wasn't a game. This was preparing for the end of the world in their backyard.
"Got it, Boss!" she said sharply. "I'll whip up illusions that'll make presidents wet their pants! And Gotham…" She gave a humorless smirk. "We pulled it out of the gutter. We won't let it slide back or burn to ash. We'll evacuate it smooth as silk." Her mind was already racing through drill scenarios, how to make a million people move quickly and orderly. Chaos was her element, but organized chaos for survival… that was a new challenge.
She looked at him, at his tense back, the cigar smoke drifting to the ceiling. "And you?" she asked, genuine worry breaking through her bravado. "Where you off to with all this mess?"
Alex turned to her fully. He stubbed out the cigar, set the unfinished whiskey aside. His face, in the lamp's light, looked carved from stone—tired, resolute, leaving no room for doubt.
"I," he said with icy clarity, staring past her to an invisible point on the horizon, thousands of miles away, "am going to Los Angeles."