You taste iron.

It coats your tongue like rusted metal, warm and wrong, as your breath drags ragged through clenched teeth. Every heartbeat slams through your ribcage like a battering ram, echoing in your ears, shaking you from the inside.

The parking garage stretches out around you like some hollowed-out ruin, cold and empty but for the flicker of dying fluorescent lights. Concrete pillars loom like sentinels, casting long, fractured shadows across oil-slicked ground. The air reeks of gasoline and old rain. Somewhere, far beyond the stone and steel, sirens scream—a sound stretched thin by distance and delay. Too far. Too late. You are alone with Bane.

He stands motionless across from you, but he doesn't need to move to intimidate. He is carved from violence, flesh wrapped tight over power. The harsh lighting catches on the slick tubing of his mask, which hisses intermittently like some living beast exhaling through its muzzle. The pale lenses of his eyes reflect just enough light to gleam—a ghost-white glint that sees everything and gives away nothing.

His bulk is monstrous, but there is a stillness to him that unnerves more than any roar. A beast in total control. The way he shifts his shoulders ever so slightly, the way his boots plant with grounded certainty—everything about him whispers: inevitable.

Your body screams. Muscles tremble from exertion, bruises bloom like ink beneath your suit. Each breath burns in your lungs, shallow and short, your ribs groaning with every intake. You know you're running on borrowed time, and Bane can see it too.

But Bruce is coming. You just have to hold. Hold. A little longer.

You tighten your grip on the baton in your hand—the weapon slick from sweat and blood, its familiar weight anchoring you to the moment. You shift your stance, feet scraping on wet concrete. Somewhere in the darkness, a pipe leaks: drip... drip... drip—too slow and steady, mocking the chaos in your chest.

Then Bane speaks.

His voice rolls out of him like thunder filtered through gravel—deep, deliberate, and terrifying in its calm.

"You fight well.” A pause. A faint tilt of the head. “But you are not him.”