Chapter 34

The handcuffs bit into Bruce’s wrists as the police car pulled away from the alley. He barely noticed the discomfort. His mind was focused on the other, older Bruce Wayne, the one who’d moved with trained precision, who’d disarmed him with the efficiency of someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

Another traveler. The thought settled in his mind with certainty. This hadn’t been some average civilian. The way he’d positioned himself, assessed the threat, ended the confrontation—that was someone with extensive experience.

“You picked the wrong night to rob good people, buddy,” the officer in the passenger seat said. “Captain’s been cracking down hard on street crime. You’re looking at armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon—”

Bruce let the words fade into background noise. The legal consequences were irrelevant. He’d allowed himself to be captured because meeting another version of himself had changed everything. The plan for this world would need revision.

He thought about his own universe, his own life. Thomas and Martha Wayne were in their seventies now, retired and comfortable. They’d never taken their son to see The Mark of Zorro. They’d never walked down Crime Alley. The defining moment that created Batman in so many realities had simply never happened.

Bruce had tried to be a hero anyway. He’d put on a costume, stalked the streets looking for crime to fight. But his Gotham didn’t need saving. Crime was manageable, corruption minimal. His intervention had been unnecessary, even counterproductive.

The marriage to Selina had been another attempt at normalcy. But how could he explain to her that he felt fundamentally wrong? That he was supposed to be something more, something necessary? His discontent had driven a wedge between them, ruining what they’d had. The divorce was two years behind him now, another failure in a life full of them.

The realization had come slowly: he was unnecessary in a world that didn’t need a Batman. But the multiverse was vast, and some realities screamed for salvation that never came. That’s when he’d found his true purpose, traveling between worlds, creating the circumstances that would forge the heroes those worlds needed.

The police station appeared ahead, its windows glowing against the night sky. Time to leave.

Bruce closed his eyes and activated the quantum interface at the base of his skull. The nanobots’ energy flooded his system, shifting his cellular structure at the quantum level. The handcuffs, the car doors, solid matter itself became permeable.

Usually the device worked perfectly. He’d think of where he needed to go and simply fade from one reality to appear in another. But sometimes, for reasons he didn’t understand, he ended up somewhere else first.

This was one of those times.

Bruce felt himself dissolving, his form slipping between dimensions. Instead of appearing in his study back home, he materialized in that long hallway lined with doors. Each door led to different universes, different versions of reality.

Not again. He’d been here before, though he’d never figured out why the device sometimes brought him to this nexus space instead of his destination. The technology seemed to have its own agenda sometimes.

He began walking down the hallway, looking for the door that would take him home. He needed to think, to process what he’d learned about this other traveling Bruce Wayne. Was he competition? An obstacle? Or potentially something else entirely?

His universe’s door gave its familiar glow, a world where everything had gone right, which had somehow made everything wrong.

Bruce pressed his palm against the surface and felt the familiar tingle as the portal opened. He stepped through into his study in Wayne Manor. Monitors displayed quantum calculations, psychological profiles of potential Batman candidates organized by probability of success. Sitting conspicuously on his black, polished desk was a DC comic book showing the origin of Batman.

Now there was a new variable to consider. Another Bruce Wayne who traveled between realities, who might have very different ideas about what the multiverse needed.

Bruce settled into his chair and pulled up data on the universe he’d just left. Somewhere in that reality, a family was going home safe. A boy was falling asleep, possibly changed by what he’d witnessed. Hopefully becoming the catalyst to create that universe’s Batman. But if it didn’t work, he could always wait and ensure eight-year-old Bruce Wayne would become Batman. He hated to do it that way, but sometimes dirty jobs had to be done to accomplish the necessary ones.