The woman finishes in the small, grimy bathroom and reaches for the toilet paper the guard holds. Her movements are automatic, practiced—the resignation of someone who has learned that resistance only makes things worse. She's been through this routine before with him, knows what he expects next.

  She pulls up her underwear and turns toward the sink to wash her hands, but the guard's voice stops her.

  "Not yet," he says, his tone carrying the familiar threat she's come to dread. "You know what I want."

  Her shoulders slump in defeat. This is how it always goes with him—the bathroom trips are never just about bathroom trips. She's learned not to fight it anymore. She pces her hands on the edge of the sink and closes her eyes, waiting for what she knows comes next.

  But instead of the guard's rough hands pulling down her underwear, she hears a sharp *crack*—like a branch snapping.

  She waits, her body tense, but nothing happens. No grabbing hands. No eager panting. Just silence.

  After several long moments, she straightens up and turns around.

  The guard lies crumpled on the bathroom floor, his neck bent at an unnatural angle. His eyes stare sightlessly at the ceiling, his body completely still.

  She stares at him in shock and confusion. What happened? How did he—? One moment he was making his usual demands, and now...

  She doesn't understand what just occurred, but she knows opportunity when she sees it. She quickly pulls up her underwear properly and steps carefully around the body, not wanting to look too closely at the guard who had raped her and the other prisoners for months.

  As she reaches for the door handle, she pauses and looks back once more at the dead man. Someone—or something—had just saved her from another nightmare. But who? And how?The woman pushes open the bathroom door and steps back into the main warehouse, her legs still shaking from what had just happened—or rather, what hadn't happened. The guard's lifeless eyes fsh in her memory, but she pushes the image away. She needs to focus on getting back to her workstation before anyone notices she's been gone too long.

  But when she enters the vast space, she stops short. The sight before her is impossible.

  Her fellow prisoners aren't chained to their workbenches. They're standing freely, moving around, talking in hushed, excited voices. Some rub their raw ankles where the shackles had been. Others embrace each other with tears streaming down their faces.

  "What... what happened?" she whispers, her voice barely audible.

  "Maria!" Her best friend Li Wei rushes over, her small frame trembling with excitement and disbelief. Li Wei's English carries the slight accent of her native Mandarin, but her words are clear and urgent. "You missed it! The Bat came—he saved us!"

  "The Bat?" Maria stares at her friend in confusion. "What do you mean?"

  "Batman!" Li Wei's eyes are wide with wonder. "I heard stories about him, but I never believed... I thought he was just legend, just something people made up. But he's real, Maria. He's real, and he's even better than the stories said!"

  Maria looks around the warehouse, taking in the absence of guards, the unlocked shackles, the incredible fact that they're all free to move. "Where is he now?"

  "He told us to wait here," Li Wei expins, gripping Maria's arm tightly. "He said he had something else to do and then—"

  The sharp crack of gunfire erupts from outside the building, cutting through Li Wei's words. Both women freeze, along with everyone else in the warehouse. The rapid staccato of automatic weapons fire echoes off the concrete walls.

  "What is that?" Maria breathes.

  More prisoners gather around them, all looking toward the windows high up near the warehouse ceiling. The gunfire continues—sustained bursts that sound like a small war has broken out just beyond these walls.

  "We need to see what's happening," Li Wei says, her voice tight with worry. "What if they're trying to take us back?"

  Without waiting for an answer, she starts toward the metal staircase that leads to the warehouse's upper level. Maria follows, along with several other prisoners who share the same desperate need to understand what's happening outside.

  They climb the narrow stairs quickly, their bare feet silent on the metal steps. At the top, there's a small loft area used for storage, with a single barred window that looks out toward the front of the building.

  Li Wei reaches the window first and presses her face against the bars. Maria joins her, and what she sees makes her blood run cold.

  Paramilitary soldiers in tactical gear have surrounded the warehouse. Their uniforms bear the logo she knows all too well—the same corporate symbol that appears on the products they were forced to assemble day after day. These aren't police or rescue workers. These are the company's enforcers, the ones who hunt down escaped workers and drag them back to captivity.

  "No, no, no," Maria whispers, watching as more soldiers pour out of armored trucks. "They've come for us."

  The soldiers spread out in formation, machine guns ready, taking cover behind their vehicles. There are at least twenty of them, all heavily armed, all focused on the warehouse entrance.

  "Whoever you are!" The squad leader's voice booms through a megaphone. "You have ten seconds to come out with your hands visible! After that, we start firing! Ten! Nine! Eight!"

  Maria grips the bars so tightly her knuckles turn white. This is it. After everything—after the Batman had freed them, after hope had flickered to life for the first time in months—they're going to be dragged back into hell.

  "Seven! Six! Five!"

  That's when he appears.

  Batman 47-X materializes in the open space between the warehouse and the soldiers, his optical camoufge disengaging like smoke dissipating in the wind. He stands perfectly still, arms at his sides, facing down the entire squad of armed men.

  "There!" the squad leader shouts. "Target acquired! Open fire!"

  The soldiers unleash everything they have. Muzzle fshes strobe in the darkness as dozens of automatic weapons pour bullets into Batman's position. The sound is deafening—a continuous roar of gunfire that seems to go on forever.

  Maria watches in horror, certain she's about to witness the death of the man who saved them. The volume of fire is incredible. No one could survive that barrage. No one.

  But when the smoke clears and the gunfire pauses for the soldiers to reload, Batman 47-X is gone.

  "Where did he—" the squad leader begins, then his voice cuts off in a strangled gasp.

  The soldiers spin around wildly, scanning the darkness. That's when Maria sees the first one fall.

  A soldier positioned behind the lead truck suddenly arches his back, his rifle cttering to the ground. A bde protrudes from his chest—thin, metallic, gleaming with blood. He looks down at it in shock, then colpses forward. The bde vanishes back into the shadows as quickly as it appeared.

  "Johnson's down!" someone screams. "Where did that come from?"

  The soldiers form a defensive circle, weapons raised, but they're shooting at ghosts. Their muzzle fshes illuminate nothing but empty air and concrete.

  Another soldier, crouched behind a truck tire, jerks sideways with a wet *thunk*. Maria catches a glimpse of steel buried deep in his neck before he topples over. No one saw where the bde came from. No one saw the hand that threw it.

  "Contact! We have contact!" a voice shouts over the radio. "But I can't see the shooter!"

  A third soldier raises his weapon to fire, but a bullet catches him in the head before he can pull the trigger. The shot echoes across the compound, but Maria can't tell where it originated. The soldier drops like a puppet with cut strings.

  "Sniper!" someone yells. "We've got a sniper!"

  The remaining soldiers dive for cover, but cover from what? From where? Another bullet finds its target—a soldier hiding behind an engine block. The round punches through his body armor like it's made of paper.

  Li Wei's fingernails dig into Maria's arm. "How is he doing this?" she whispers. "They can't even see him."

  Maria watches in fascination and terror as more soldiers fall. Some die from bdes that seem to appear from nowhere—steel points erupting from chests, throats, backs. Others are picked off by bullets fired from impossible angles, from positions that should be empty.

  A soldier near the rear truck spins around, firing wildly into the darkness. "I saw movement! Over there!" But his burst of gunfire finds nothing. A moment ter, he staggers backward with a bde protruding from his eye socket, his body convulsing before going still.

  "Regroup! Regroup!" the squad leader orders, his voice cracking with panic. "Form up on me!"

  But there's nowhere safe to regroup. Death comes from every direction—from shadows that shouldn't hide a man, from angles that should be impossible. Another bullet, another bde, another soldier crumpling to the pavement.

  "Where is he?" a voice screams. "Where the fuck is he?"

  Maria realizes she's watching something beyond human capability. Batman 47-X isn't just invisible—he's everywhere and nowhere at once. The soldiers fire at muzzle fshes that disappear before their bullets arrive. They dodge bdes that come from empty air.