Chapter 93: Upgrade
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The Crime Syndicate defeated the Anti-Monitor.
And in the aftermath, the surviving nations had no choice but to acknowledge their contribution—however dark the circumstances. They were hailed, reluctantly, as saviors. World governments issued declarations, built monuments, and held ceremonies in their honor. They were glorified as heroes of Earth.
But the praise didn't humble them.
It only fed the monster.
The members of the Crime Syndicate returned to their cities—not as guardians, but as self-proclaimed rulers. They crowned themselves kings. Dictators. Gods. And under their iron rule, the world slipped into a darker age. They pillaged freely, killed without consequence, and drenched their dominions in fear. Their so-called protection came at a blood price.
To survive, the people bit their tongues.
To be spared, they bowed.
To prosper, they worshipped.
And some did more than worship—they served.
Among them… was Sheriff James Gordon.
He was no longer just Gotham's commissioner. Owlman had entrusted him with full control over Gotham's armed forces. That gesture alone made Gordon second only to Owlman in power—and far above anyone else. Entire battalions of unmanned tanks and autonomous gunships responded to his command. Surveillance drones followed him wherever he went. In Gotham, he was both law and executioner.
And yet, on the rooftop of the GCPD headquarters, Gordon was furious.
The sky above was choked with signal beacons—at least two dozen—each one beaming the symbol of an owl into the clouds. A city under watch.
But the main beacon, the one atop the precinct, had gone dim.
"How many times have I told you!" Gordon shouted, pacing in front of a squad of nervous officers as automatic gun turrets tracked his every step. "The Owl Signal must never go out! It's more than just a light—it's the authority of Owlman! It's the faith of Gotham!"
The officers nodded rapidly, trying not to tremble under his glare.
"Chief," one of them managed to say, "we understand, but… the bulb's burning out. Keeping it on non-stop is breaking it down. Besides, there are so many now—ours isn't even the biggest anymore."
He wasn't wrong.
After the battle with the Anti-Monitors, Owlman had declared himself the de facto ruler of Gotham. His symbol—once a secret sign of hidden power—was now broadcast in every district, from rooftops to jumbotrons. Entire city blocks were under the shadow of his emblem.
But Gordon wasn't interested in logic.
"What do you know?" he barked. "This is about attitude! You've got half an hour—no, forget that. Replace it entirely. I want three backup signals in rotation from now on. If one breaks, swap in the next immediately. I don't care what it costs!"
Just as he finished shouting, his communicator buzzed. The second he saw the ID, his entire posture changed. He straightened his coat, lowered his voice, and adopted a tone of utmost respect—even though he knew Night Owlman couldn't see his face.
"My lord Owlman," he said, bowing slightly to the owl-shaped comm drone hovering beside him, "what are your orders?"
The reply came in cold, flat tones. Owlman never raised his voice. He didn't need to.
"I've located the resistance stronghold. I'll transmit the coordinates shortly. You know what needs to be done."
"Yes, my lord," Gordon said immediately, dropping to one knee before the stone owl statue embedded into the rooftop. "I swear, I'll bring you the rebel leader's head myself."
There was a pause. Then Owlman replied, low and sharp:
"Stop talking nonsense, Gordon. You can't kill him. No one can."
And with that, the call ended.
Owlman stood alone in his tower, the glow of his monitor reflecting off his emotionless mask. His eyes locked onto the image on the screen—a man smiling widely at the camera, as if mocking him.
Red Hood.
Owlman's voice dropped to a whisper.
"How do I kill you, Jokester…"
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Meanwhile, deep beneath Gotham, in the old bones of the city, Dean stood near the entrance to the Iceberg Restaurant—a front for the resistance's underground base. He listened as Harvey continued his account of the past, then turned away and stared toward the dim tunnel leading further in.
Rebels came and went through the corridors—some carrying weapons, others medical supplies or scraps of tech.
Dean said quietly, almost to himself, "Bright Knight… I don't know if I can save this world. But I do know this—your base's location? It's awful."
Harvey raised an eyebrow, flipping a coin between his fingers.
"You've got that look. What is it?" he asked. "I've got a bad feeling."
Dean wasn't looking at the people. He was studying the stonework, the layout, the pattern of the passages. The markings on the ceiling. And then it clicked.
He'd seen this place before—he just hadn't noticed at first.
"This isn't just an old speakeasy…" Dean muttered. "This is part of the Court of Owls' maze. Their lair."
Harvey froze.
Dean continued, his voice even colder now. "They used to hide in other people's homes. But now the rebels are hiding in theirs. Cute reversal."
That realization came with a much darker truth.
If this place belonged to the Court of Owls—if it was Owlman's domain—then the resistance had likely been under surveillance from the start. Their movements, their meetings, their plans. All of it might have been tracked.
And yet… Owlman had done nothing.
No raids. No strikes. No extermination orders.
Why?
Dean narrowed his eyes.
"He's not ignoring you," he muttered. "He's watching you."
Harvey caught the coin in midair, brows furrowing. "Watching us for what?"
Dean turned away from the tunnel.
"Fishing."
A silence passed between them.
Harvey squinted. "Fishing…?"
Dean nodded once. Slowly. As a fishing master, Dean reflexively guessed Owlman's purpose.
"Bright Knight," Dean asked flatly, eyes scanning the cracked ceiling of the sewer hideout, "Does Owlman launch encirclement and suppression campaigns against you at regular intervals?"
Harvey's eyes flew open, stunned. "How the hell did you know that?!"
According to what Harvey had explained earlier, Gotham was the only city where a resistance organization still operated in any meaningful capacity. After the fall of other strongholds, rebels from across the ruined world flocked to Gotham like moths to a flickering flame.
What they didn't know was that the flame was artificial—and the moths were being herded.
To Dean, it was all too familiar.
These rebels hadn't been saved.
They'd been fattened.
Owlman had been pig-farming the resistance, letting it swell with false hope only to cull it when the time was right. It was strategy disguised as mercy. And every rebel who made the long journey to Gotham was just another lamb to the slaughter.
Dean tilted his head back and shouted toward the sewage-stained ceiling.
"The rebels spawned off my balcony, didn't they?! What is this, a weekly mission? Let me guess—'Eliminate 400 rebels for weekly clearance rewards?' You're really gamifying genocide, huh, Owlman? Hell of a hobby."
The other rebels nearby stared at him in confusion.
"Is he nuts?" one whispered.
"Looks like it. Guess the boss has a successor," another muttered.
Dean ignored them.
He wasn't crazy. He just knew the truth—that from the moment he stepped foot in this maze of tunnels, he was already under surveillance. Night Owl had eyes in every crevice, every pipe, every shadow.
And Harvey, for all his toughness, had just realized it too.
His face twisted with fury and guilt. He stormed over to the half-drunk Penguin, who was snoring in the corner, and upended a jug of water on his head.
"Get up!" Harvey barked. "Wake up and get everyone out of the Iceberg Restaurant. Now!"
The words were still leaving his mouth when a low rumble began to vibrate through the stone beneath their feet. Seconds later, a beggar—one of their lookouts—burst through the passageway in a blind panic.
"It's over!" he yelled. "Gordon's here! He's brought two hundred drone tanks and over fifty gunships! They've surrounded the whole sentry post!"
The blood drained from Harvey's face. And then—
The scream came.
It erupted from a room nearby—one filled with consoles and flickering monitors. Harvey sprinted inside to find White Mask convulsing on the ground, his limbs twitching violently. Dean rushed in behind him, but it was already too late.
White Mask—once the psychic stabilizer of the rebel faction—had shattered.
For five long years, he had shouldered the emotional burden of hundreds. His presence alone kept the rebels sane, their Sanity Values from dipping into collapse. But the sheer despair that came with Gordon's arrival crushed him in a single moment. Everything he had bottled inside—the fear, the dread, the hopelessness—ripped through him like a tidal wave.
With the anchor gone, the rebels broke.
They didn't fight. They collapsed. One after another, they sank to the floor, wailing, sobbing, trembling. This wasn't cowardice—it was trauma. This wasn't the fear of death.
It was the fear of annihilation.
The fear of losing the last place they could call home.
Under Owlman's suffocating rule, even surviving was a miracle. Resistance came at a mental cost most couldn't afford. And this… this was the final straw.
Dean stood silently in the middle of it all.
"Figures," he muttered. "House is already leaking, and now the storm's come through."
He found the Penguin, who had just come to his senses and was blinking at the chaos. Dean grabbed him by the coat.
"Cobblepot, round up everyone who can still move. We're breaking out."
The Penguin stared at him, baffled.
"Break out? Break out?! With what, boy? That firepower outside could level half of Gotham! We won't last five minutes!"
Dean didn't explain. Instead, he raised his right hand.
"Just follow me."
He didn't wait for a reply.
He was the first to climb out of the sewer tunnel, emerging into the early morning gloom near the wooden shack that served as their fake exit. He stepped over broken crates and empty bottles, then walked into the open.
There was no point hiding behind rotting wood.
If you were going to die—better to do it while facing the sun.
Dozens of drone tanks had formed a semi-circle around the shack, their cannons silently tracking his every move. Above them, helicopters circled like vultures. Spotlights locked onto his form the moment he stepped out.
Inside one of the hovering choppers sat Commissioner James Gordon, watching the scene unfold through a scope.
He adjusted the lens. Someone was walking out of the sewer.
Alone.
"What the hell?" Gordon muttered, squinting.
He saw Dean.
Dean, in turn, looked up at the sky—and removed the glasses from his face. A high-grade piece of tech: cognitive interference, the kind that masked identity from even the best recognition systems.
He tucked it carefully into his coat. Wouldn't do to break it.
Then he looked directly at the helicopter and grinned.
"Commissioner!" he called out. "Nice of you to come pick me up!"
Gordon blinked. "What?"
He turned to the pilot.
"Do you know this guy?"
The pilot hesitated, then said uncertainly, "Could be one of Night Owl's deep-cover operatives. I mean… why else would we find the base now?"
Gordon nodded slowly. That would explain a lot. After all, Night Owl had pinpointed this base with zero warning. It had to be an informant.
"Let him through," Gordon ordered. "Even if he's not our guy—he's just one man. What harm could he do?"
The tanks pulled back, creating a narrow corridor for Dean to walk through.
Dean blinked.
He hadn't expected that to actually work. With a casual shrug, he took a step forward. And then another.
The tanks didn't move. No alarms. No targeting lasers. They weren't tracking him.
Not yet.
Dean smirked, arms spread wide like he was welcoming an audience to a comedy show. "Tanks and gunships rolling out the red carpet? Wow, Commissioner, didn't know I was that important. Must've cost the city a fortune. You worried about a little taxpayer backlash? Someone might just file a complaint and get you voted off the island."
The words dripped with sarcasm, like gasoline on a fire. Gordon's jaw clenched. His knuckles tightened around the edge of the helicopter's cabin as his expression turned to stone.
"You think this is some kind of joke?" Gordon snapped. "Still mouthing off even if you're just some undercover plant? I could put a bullet through your skull right now and sleep like a baby. I'll gladly report it to Lord Owlman myself."
Gordon had already decided—Dean was going to die. But keeping up appearances mattered, especially with so many eyes on the scene. He grabbed the helicopter's megaphone and leaned out.
"This is your final warning! Drop any weapons, raise your hands, and surrender immediately! Resistance will be eliminated!"
Dean blinked at him like he'd just watched a rerun of a bad sitcom. "You still yell that? Man, you used to shout that before every hostage rescue op back when we had a moral compass. Didn't work then either."
Then, a glint of mischief flashed in his eye.
"So… if I do raise my hands… you'll really let me go?"
"Of course," Gordon replied coldly.
Dean's grin widened. "Well then…"
He tapped the side of his wrist device, the interface lighting up with pulsing circuitry. "I refuse."
Click.
A ripple of black and neon green tech surged across his body, starting from his face. A green ring, glowing like circuitry, formed over his eye. His skin warped into chrome-black armor, slick and fluid, alive with circuitry. A neon-green glow pulsed under the surface like blood through veins.
The transformation was fast. Unnatural. A sleek, alien shape emerged from the morph—Dean had become something else. Not a metahuman. Not a Lantern.
Something… Upgrade.
"Hero, come on!"
His voice echoed, deeper now, fused with modulation. The transformation completed with a flicker of green light from the ring-like emblem on his faceplate.
And then he moved.
Black nanotech tendrils lashed out from his arm, surging forward like living wire and slapping across the nearest unmanned tank. The metal surface shimmered, twisted, melded with him. Within seconds, the drone had been hijacked, control feeds severed, turrets reshaped.
"Thanks for the gift, Commissioner," Dean grinned through the modulated voice. "I've always wanted a tank."
The barrel twisted as the drone's turret was reconfigured—its clunky rotary cannon replaced with sleek plasma launchers. A soft whir built into a sharp hum.
"Unity. Precision. Perfection."
Dean fired.
A single blast of green-charged plasma burst from the turret and speared through three other tanks in front of him. Each one detonated in a cascade of fireballs and smoke pillars.
Gordon stepped back inside the cockpit, stunned. This wasn't a Lantern. This wasn't magic. This wasn't tech they'd ever logged. Just raw, alien possession.
"ALL UNITS!" Gordon barked. "DRONES, TANKS, HELICOPTERS—OPEN FIRE! AI FULL OVERRIDE!"
He wasn't about to waste time manually handling every drone in a battle this size. The command fed into the system, releasing control to the onboard kill protocols.
And then it began.
A rain of missiles and bullets screamed through the sky, filling the air with thunder and steel. Smoke trailed every projectile as hundreds of auto-targeting weapons locked onto Dean's position.
But the tank under Dean's control didn't flinch.
It moved.
He darted left and right—no, the tank slithered, like a serpent of chrome and light. He used the wreckage of other drones as cover, weaving through the explosions and chaos like he was born in it.
"Come on! Shoot me harder!"
The shapeshifting nanotech had enhanced the drone tank's performance tenfold. This was more than armor—it was living code. The tank's behavior mirrored the agility of the Batmobile in combat mode, but slicker. Smarter. Dean was piloting the machine, but also inside it.
Still, Dean wasn't about to stay on defense.
Tendrils launched from the tank, jacking into three nearby drones, hijacking them in seconds. The newly-turned drones pivoted and fired at their own units, sowing chaos in the enemy ranks.
Then, Dean raised an arm, and the green circuitry flared again. A rapid burst of energy launched from his palm—a spinning disc of plasma—before splitting midair into a spread of thirty laser shots. They tore through the sky, disabling half a dozen helicopters before they could even deploy countermeasures.
Overhead, Gordon's aerial units tried to gain altitude. Dean looked up, already calculating.
The top of the tank hissed open—eight small launch ports unfolding. Missiles fired, locked on, and detonated midair, swallowing the sky in clouds of fire. Four helicopters spiraled down in flaming arcs.
Tracking missiles from the enemy drones followed Dean's location—until Dean rerouted them.
His hijacked tanks circled around like living armor, intercepting every missile, redirecting half of them back toward their origin with brutal precision.
One by one, every drone that had cornered the resistance base became burning wreckage. Steel rained down on the battlefield. The skyline of Gotham flickered in red and orange, the city's oppressive darkness pierced by fire and chaos.
Dean, mid-battle, barely broke a sweat.
"Man," he muttered, watching a final chopper spiral into a gas station and explode, "tank battles really are the most stress-relieving part of Arkham Knight."
In Dean's mind, this wasn't just war.
It was a game.
A ten-minute solo extermination mission.
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