Chapter 376: Coincidence and Pattern
"I don't know who he was. His combat ability was exceptional -- there was an element of ambush to it, but even accounting for that, he had me subdued in seconds."
Daredevil slid his billy club back into its holster.
"For a moment I genuinely wondered if Captain America had woken up in that glacier and come looking for me."
He nodded toward Luke Cage and Jessica Jones, signaling them to stand down. Whatever else Batman was, Daredevil had dealt with him enough times -- and gone to him for help enough times -- to trust that the man was following a thread, not starting trouble.
"As far as you know," Batman said, "other than Captain America, who else uses a circular shield as a primary weapon?"
It was a genuine question. Batman wasn't omniscient. He'd been in this world for a few months now and had known fairly quickly that it was nothing like the empty, hero-free version he'd first assembled from internet searches. Blade, the vampires of New York, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Black Knight, Ant-Man -- the list of people with abilities that he hadn't personally witnessed coming into existence was already long. This world didn't have the surveillance saturation of the Lords of Order's domain -- no cameras on every corner, no patrol drones. Even the cameras the city did install lasted about two days before someone smashed or stripped them. The internet cut his workload down, but only so far.
"No one," Daredevil said. "Why did you ask Luke Cage about 2004? Is that connected to the shield man?"
"No." Batman indicated his own back. "I noticed old damage here on Luke Cage that hasn't fully resolved."
"What?" Luke Cage blinked.
He looked at Jessica Jones, then pulled off his hoodie and the shirt underneath and turned around.
Daredevil focused. There it was -- a faint scar line across Luke Cage's back. Easy to miss. You had to be specifically looking.
"It's real?" Luke Cage asked, reading their faces.
Jessica Jones made a quiet sound of confirmation.
"I have no memory of being injured." Luke Cage scratched the back of his head.
"I don't think it's connected to whoever Daredevil encountered," Jessica Jones said.
Batman didn't engage with that and pressed Luke Cage directly.
"Between July and October of 2004 -- do you remember where you were?"
"Me and Jessica were right here in New York. Nowhere else..." Luke Cage stopped mid-sentence and made a sharp, pained sound, pressing both hands to his temples.
Jessica moved to him immediately. Batman and Daredevil exchanged a look and both gave a slight shake of their heads.
"If you genuinely can't access that period right now, leave it alone for now." Batman didn't push. He produced a bat-shaped communicator and handed it to Daredevil. "If anything surfaces, contact me immediately."
"I will." Daredevil took it and gripped it firmly.
Batman took one last long look at all three of them, then turned and led Venom Robin out.
They didn't speak again until Hell's Kitchen was behind them and they'd landed on the roof of the Empire State Building. Batman spoke first.
"Daredevil is hiding something from us."
Venom Robin nodded.
"I could see that too."
"Tell me what you saw."
"I need your wrist unit, old bat." Venom Robin held out a hand.
Batman raised his arm, slid the armor panel aside, and sat down on the edge of the roof, extending his wrist. Venom Robin got to work, pulling up security feeds in rapid succession -- not street cameras, which were nearly nonexistent, but shop cameras. Every store in New York had one, installed to deal with armed robberies. When police arrived too late, shop owners needed footage to justify a clean shoot. Most of those cameras caught a partial slice of the street outside as well.
The images Venom Robin assembled were fragments -- but they were all fragments of the same street.
"This is the route Lizard Professor and the giant T-Rex fought through during the dinosaur invasion." He pointed to one frame. Then another. "And this is Daredevil. After Iron Man's people pulled him out, he wandered without direction for a few minutes -- then moved in a straight line to the outer edge of Hell's Kitchen."
Batman nodded for him to continue.
"Here's the thing, old bat. When the giant T-Rex's tail flipped the radioactive chemical tanker, Daredevil wasn't only pulling two people out of it."
Venom Robin let the image sit for a moment.
"But Luke Cage and Jessica Jones were the only two he brought back to Hell's Kitchen with him."
"My read is that Daredevil knew them before any of this happened. Something caused all three of them to lose their memory of each other -- I don't know what. So I agree with you. Daredevil is hiding something. And it's not just that he knew those two beforehand. There's more."
He mimicked Batman's reasoning process, working the pieces into place before delivering the conclusion.
"The bat communicator is actually a listening device, right? We can monitor their conversation and find out what's being concealed."
Batman pulled his arm back and let the armor panel reseal.
"No. It's exactly what it looks like -- a communicator."
Venom Robin went quiet for a beat.
"Then how do we find out what's being hidden?"
"Daredevil isn't only hiding it from us. He's hiding it from Luke Cage and Jessica Jones as well." Batman said. "Surveillance wouldn't give us anything useful under those conditions."
Venom Robin absorbed that. He'd clocked that Daredevil was holding something back from Batman -- but it hadn't occurred to him that the same man was keeping it from the other two as well.
"Robin. Have you noticed a pattern yet?"
"What pattern?" Venom Robin looked genuinely blank. He could feel his thinking falling behind.
Batman didn't reproach him.
"Tony and I have never encountered the man with the black shield. But Silver Sable has. Daredevil has. Luke Cage and Jessica Jones are uncertain -- possibly. Consider: I arrived here two months ago. Peter Parker only became Spider-Man a few months before that. Tony hasn't been Iron Man long either."
He let that settle.
"It's too early to draw firm conclusions from this sample. But I don't think it's coincidence. The man with the shield is deliberately seeking out people who already have established identities -- criminals or heroes, it doesn't seem to matter. He's been doing it systematically."
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