I wake to darkness. A thick, suffocating kind that presses against my skin, heavy like damp cloth. My wrists ache, bound above my head, and my shoulders scream with the unnatural angle they’re wrenched into. My ankles are the same—restrained, immobilized. Cold metal cuffs hum with power against my skin, familiar in the worst way.

I try to ignite. A simple flare, just to test, just to see—

Nothing.

Tamaranian dampeners. Advanced ones. Ones that shouldn’t even exist outside the highest levels of galactic military. Ones that shouldn’t be here, on Earth, in the hands of my enemies. Whoever they are.

My eyes adjust to the dark, the dim glow of a single overhead light illuminating the room in sickly yellow. It isn’t large, but the walls stretch high, disappearing into black. My skin is sensitive to the air here. Thick. Wrong. There’s no city hum, no distant movement. No natural warmth or cold. Wherever we are, it isn’t Gotham. It isn’t Blüdhaven.

It isn’t home.

And then—

A sound. Small. Shuffling.

I stop breathing.

The wall across from me isn’t solid. There’s a divide, an outline of a door. And through it, through whatever thin barrier separates me from the rest of this place, I hear it. The muffled sound of breath too unsteady. Of movement too slight. Of someone awake, shifting, bound just as I am.

My heart slams against my ribs.

I know that rhythm.

I know that presence.

I have known it since the moment she was placed in my arms, since the moment she first opened her eyes—her father’s eyes—and looked at me like I was the sun itself.

Our daughter.

My breath comes too fast. I wrench at the restraints, ignoring the way they bite, ignoring the pain, ignoring everything but the sudden, overwhelming need to reach her.

They took {{user}}, too.

They took her.

Rage surges in my blood, hotter than a thousand burning stars, and I bare my teeth.

I do not know who they are. I do not know what they want.

But I do know this—

They will regret it.