Chapter 2: Growing Up on Hostile Ground
The first thing I did after deciding not to waste my second life was ask for a notebook. Not a weapon, not a detailed map of Gotham, not a train ticket to go explain to Bruce Wayne that, in a few years, he risked developing a frankly unhealthy relationship with rooftops, criminals, and untreated injuries. A notebook seemed more reasonable to me. More discreet, above all. In my mind, the scene was supposed to remain simple: I would ask for an ordinary one, Mom would give it to me, then I would write down everything I remembered before time turned my already imperfect knowledge into a heap of names, images, and contradictory catastrophes.
I should have known Laurie Harrowing better.
My mother was incapable of responding soberly to a request involving paper, pencils, or the possibility, however remote, of producing something pretty. She came home that evening with three notebooks clutched against her chest, two boxes of colored pencils, markers, a transparent ruler, and a sheet of stickers showing smiling animals. She placed the whole thing on the coffee table with the satisfied expression of a woman who had just equipped an entire school rather than answered the request of a six-year-old child.
"There," she announced.
I looked at the pile, then at her face. "I asked for one notebook."
"Yes."
"There are three."
"That way, you can choose."
She pronounced that with the seriousness of a woman who had just solved a complex logistical problem. I could have explained to her that one notebook would have been enough, but her gaze indicated that the matter had already been examined by a higher authority and that any objection would be rejected.
The living room bore her mark everywhere. Rolls of fabric leaned against the wall near the window. An unfinished dress waited on a mannequin, pinned at the waist, with that particular dignity of garments promised to become magnificent but which, for the moment, mostly looked like victims of surgery. Sketches covered the small table beside the sewing machine. A cup of tea cooled on the windowsill, several colored threads hung from the back of a chair, and a box of pins rested in a place where no reasonable person would have put a hand without checking first.
The apartment was never truly tidy, but it was not dirty. It lived. Objects migrated from one room to another. Pins disappeared. Pieces of chalk traveled in pockets that did not belong to them. Sewing scissors regularly became diplomatic issues.
It was home.
Mom sat beside me and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. Her fingers still carried a fine white dust left by tailor's chalk.
"What do you want to draw?"
I chose the least flashy notebook. Its cover showed a green dinosaur holding a red balloon. It was not exactly the image I would have spontaneously associated with notes about alien invasions, clandestine organizations, and possible ends of the world, but the other two notebooks were covered in glitter.
I had already lost one life. I refused to lose my dignity too.
"Cities," I answered.
Her face immediately lit up. "Whole cities?"
"With streets and buildings."
"Then you need a ruler."
She rummaged through the supplies with the enthusiasm of a woman whose intuition had just been validated by events, found the transparent ruler, and placed it in front of me with almost comical solemnity. "I bought you one, actually."
Of course.
She returned to her machine, and I waited until the motor began purring again. The sound filled the living room in regular waves, loud enough to cover the scratch of my pencil on the paper. I settled on the floor, my back against the couch, in a place from which Mom could still watch me without reading what I wrote. The position seemed tactically sound. It became uncomfortable after five minutes, but I had not yet understood that some plans could be intelligent while remaining bad for the back.
On the first page, I drew three columns as straight as my fingers allowed.
CONFIRMED.
PROBABLE.
DO NOT PANIC.
I spent a few seconds staring at the third one. It had no methodological use. It distinguished neither threat level, nor likelihood, nor timeframe. It was nevertheless the most honest.
In the first column, I wrote Gotham City, Metropolis, Wayne Enterprises, Queen Industries, and S.T.A.R. Labs. My letters trembled. Some went over the lines, others leaned dangerously to the side. I knew how to write. Frank had known how to write for decades. My brain knew the movements, the order of the letters, and the way a word was supposed to occupy space. My six-year-old hand, however, had clearly received partial instructions and decided to improvise.
After a few words, my fingers already began to hurt. I put the pencil down and shook my hand. Mom briefly looked up from her machine.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes."
"You're making a funny face."
"I'm thinking."
She smiled. "You're six. Don't think too hard, you'll sprain something."
The motor began purring again. I picked up my pencil.
In the second column, I added Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Lex Luthor, and several names whose existence depended too heavily on versions for me to consider them certain. I also noted Batman, then spent a moment staring at the word.
Bruce Wayne existed.
That did not mean Batman already existed.
At that moment, Bruce was neither a symbol, nor a rumor, nor a silhouette perched on a rooftop. He was a nine-year-old boy whose parents had just been murdered in a Gotham alley. I knew that. I even knew the name of the alley in some versions. I knew what that night might produce, the years of anger, discipline, and obsession that would follow, the enemies who would sometimes build themselves around him as much as fight him.
That knowledge gave me no right over him.
I placed Batman in the probable column.
Then I thought of Darkseid.
The pencil remained motionless above the paper. I eventually wrote his name in the third column. That was exactly the kind of problem I had created it for.
My memories of the DC universe were far less precise than I would have liked. I knew the broad strokes: Krypton, Themyscira, Atlantis, a green ring, gods capable of walking among men, aliens capable of flying through buildings, and billionaires who responded to their trauma with a frankly unreasonable level of personal investment. The details, however, formed an almost unusable chaos.
I had read comics without following every series. Watched movies, animated shows, and television adaptations. Some versions directly contradicted one another. In one, a character died. In another, he had never been born. A city could be destroyed, rebuilt, erased, replaced, then destroyed a second time because the universe seemed to consider urban planning a temporary activity.
I knew enough things to be afraid, but not enough to establish a reliable plan.
It was the worst possible balance.
The most worrying thing was that some memories were already losing their sharpness. Not Frank's. Not the most important ones. I could still see the bank lobby again with obscene precision: the reflection of the chandeliers on the marble, the hole in the ceiling, the dust hanging in the air, the weight of the pistol in my hand, Claire's face above me, distorted by fear.
Those memories were not fading. They were embedded.
On the other hand, some secondary names escaped me. Plots I had read during my adolescence mixed together. Sometimes I remembered an entire scene without knowing whether it came from a comic, a movie, or an episode watched too late on a weeknight. The great catastrophes kept their outlines, but the causes, the dates, and the people present changed depending on the version.
I had to write before time sorted things out for me.
I noted Krypton, Themyscira, Atlantis, Apokolips, the League of Assassins, Amanda Waller, and Cadmus. That last name deserved particular attention.
AVOID CADMUS.
I underlined the sentence three times.
I remembered clones, experiments, and government laboratories in which the expression national security generally served to announce that a group of adults with degrees was about to make a catastrophic decision. None of that could reasonably improve the life of a reincarnated child.
Beneath the columns, I wrote my first rules.
The first was obvious: do not tell anyone this world was fiction in my old life.
The sentence would have seemed absurd to any other child. For me, it summarized a concrete danger. If I told the truth, people would think I was sick. A psychologist might conclude that I had invented a previous identity to explain trauma, dissociation, or a feeling of disconnection. Mom would worry. Dad would worry without showing it, which was often worse. Doctors would ask questions, observe my reactions, and record my answers.
And if someone actually believed me, the situation would become even more dangerous.
The second rule took more effort: do not look for the heroes.
I knew where Bruce Wayne lived. I knew the name of his butler. I knew part of what his future might contain. Part of me wanted to take a train to Gotham, find Wayne Manor, and warn him. Not about everything. Only a few names, a few tragedies, a few decisions that would cost him dearly.
It was a stupid idea.
Bruce was nine. His parents had just died. He did not need an unknown child showing up at his door to tell him about a murderous clown, a secret war, or a future career founded on trauma, gadgets, and insomnia. Alfred would probably have me escorted home, then contact social services.
And, to be honest, he would be right.
I did not know the exact timeline. Warning Bruce about one danger could create another. Preventing one event might only move the victims. My knowledge was too fragmentary for me to turn another child's life into an experiment.
I underlined the rule twice.
The third was simpler: learn to survive without depending on heroes.
I had no powers. I had verified it with all the scientific rigor a six-year-old child locked in his room could display. I could not fly, move objects with my mind, or see through walls. I had no heat vision. No blue screen appeared in front of my eyes. No mystical creature had come to declare me chosen. I was not even particularly strong for my age.
I was normal.
In my old world, that would have been reassuring. In this one, it sounded like a diagnosis.
I wrote down the areas in which I could improve: physical conditioning, first aid, observation, law, investigation, psychology, and finances.
Money was important. Not noble. Not shameful either. Important.
Heroes without resources existed, of course. They were often courageous, exhausted, and two unpaid bills away from having to choose between saving the neighborhood and paying their heating. Bruce Wayne could never have become what he would become without the Wayne fortune. A man with the same obsession but no money would mostly have ended up with a criminal record, several chronic injuries, and considerable debt to a tactical equipment supplier.
I had no intention of becoming poor on principle.
The sound of the machine stopped. Mom stood and approached. I closed the notebook a little too quickly. She stopped, placed her hands on her hips, and looked at the dinosaur cover with theatrical suspicion.
"A secret project?"
"Yes."
"Does it involve drawing on the walls?"
"No."
"Cutting my fabrics without permission?"
"No."
"Taking apart a device that still works?"
I shook my head. She adopted a falsely grave expression.
"In that case, I suppose I can respect your secret. But if the dinosaur starts asking me for money, you tell me."
"All right."
She narrowed her eyes at the cover. "I don't trust him. He looks too happy."
She kissed my forehead before returning to work. I waited several minutes, then slid the notebook under my bed. It was a mediocre hiding place, probably the first place an adult would have inspected. Yet no one seemed to imagine that a six-year-old boy might hide notes there about alien invasions, clandestine organizations, and the possible end of the world.
Sometimes, age was the best camouflage.
∗ ∗ ∗
Elementary school quickly confirmed that it was very difficult to have the memories of an adult and pretend to discover the alphabet.
My classroom was on the first floor of a red-brick building constructed several decades earlier. The radiators knocked every morning as if they were trying to get out of the walls, then produced excessive heat that forced some pupils to take off their sweaters in the middle of winter. The windows did not close properly. The desks bore the initials of several generations of children who had deemed it necessary to carve their passage into history with a pencil and considerable boredom.
Colorful drawings covered the walls: animals, seasons, numbers, capital letters cut out of cardboard. The air smelled of glue, paper, damp coats, and that particular smell of elementary schools, a mixture of spilled juice and too many children in the same room.
Our teacher, Mrs. Alvarez, wore a different animal-shaped brooch every day. She had short black hair, a calm voice, and the unsettling ability to spot a lie without ever raising her tone.
I underestimated her for exactly two weeks.
One morning, she asked us to read a story about a dog that refused to share its bone. I had finished before she had finished explaining the exercise. So I deliberately slowed down. I slid my finger beneath the sentences, turned the pages at a pace I judged reasonable, and even took the time to frown at a six-letter word.
I was very proud of my performance.
Mrs. Alvarez approached and placed another book on my desk. The cover showed the solar system.
"Try this one instead, Malcolm."
I looked up, trying to appear confused. "Why?"
"Because you've already read the other one."
I lowered my eyes to the story about the dog. "No."
She placed a hand on the back of my chair. "You were turning the pages at the right speed, but your eyes were always several lines lower than your finger."
Ah.
Very well.
So my career as a discreetly mediocre child had just ended because of my own eyes.
She seemed neither worried nor angry. Only attentive.
That was worse.
I slowly took the book about the planets. "Can I really read it?"
"You can try. You will not be punished if you don't manage it, and you won't be punished if you do."
The sentence was probably meant to reassure me. Mostly, it confirmed that she had understood I was hiding.
At the end of the day, she asked to speak with Mom. I remained sitting on a small chair near her desk while they talked. The late afternoon sun crossed the windows and cast orange rectangles on the floor. The other pupils had left. Without them, every sound seemed too loud: the papers being put away, the creak of a chair, distant voices in the hallway.
Mrs. Alvarez placed the book about planets in front of her. "Malcolm reads far above the expected level. He understands the texts and can answer complex questions. This is not merely memorization."
Mom placed a hand over her chest. "I knew it."
The pride in her voice warmed me.
Then it hurt me.
I felt as if I were lying to her without having opened my mouth. That feeling would become familiar.
Mrs. Alvarez glanced in my direction. "However, he is trying to hide it."
Mom turned toward me. Her smile gave way to a softer worry. "Why would you do that, sweetheart? Are you afraid the others will make fun of you?"
I stared at Mrs. Alvarez's owl-shaped brooch. Telling the truth was impossible. I could not explain that I was afraid of attracting the attention of doctors, psychologists, or government organizations capable, in certain versions of the future, of turning a strange child into a confidential file.
"I want to stay with my class," I answered.
That was not false. I did not want to skip several years, find myself surrounded by older students, and spend my childhood working only because Frank had already learned to read. I had just received a second youth. I was not going to throw it entirely in the trash in the name of efficiency.
Mrs. Alvarez crouched in front of me. Her knee cracked slightly as she lowered herself, and she pretended not to have heard it.
"No one is going to force you to leave your classmates. But you must not pretend not to understand simply so the others feel comfortable. You can learn faster and still need them."
I did not answer right away.
Until then, I had envisioned my life as a mission: learn, observe, train, prepare. Other children held no precise place in that program. They were noisy, unpredictable, and preoccupied by problems I had already outgrown. One claimed his father knew Michael Jordan. Another regularly ate the glue meant for crafts.
And yet Mrs. Alvarez was right.
I did not want to be alone.
A few days later, she placed me next to Nathan Cole. Nathan wore glasses too large for him, almost always had badly combed hair, and contained more information about dinosaurs than a reasonable child should have been able to retain.
He turned toward me before I had even placed my notebook on the desk.
"Did you know velociraptors probably had feathers?"
"No."
"And they were much smaller than in the movies. Movies lie."
He pronounced that last sentence as if Hollywood had personally betrayed his family.
"All right."
Nathan stared at me. "You don't care?"
His honesty surprised me. I thought for a second before answering.
"A little."
He shrugged. "I don't care about planets either."
That was the beginning of our friendship.
We did not have the same interests. Nathan could talk without breathing whenever a subject fascinated him, but he never asked why I read more difficult books. He simply accepted that I knew certain things, just as I accepted that he could identify several dinosaur species by the shape of a jaw and considered that a fundamental social skill.
Through him, I gradually rediscovered what it meant to be a child. We built a fortress with cardboard boxes at the back of the classroom. We ran in the yard with no other objective than reaching the fence first. We spent an entire hour determining whether a tyrannosaurus could have opened a door. Nathan argued that it could not. I argued that an animal weighing several tons probably did not need to understand the handle.
The discussion became far too serious.
During a lesson on the solar system, one pupil pronounced Uranus with an unfortunate intonation, and half the class burst out laughing. I tried to remain serious. The man I had been would have rolled his eyes at such a stupid joke.
Nathan leaned toward me and whispered, "That planet really needs a better communications department."
I laughed until my stomach hurt.
It was one of the first times I truly understood that Malcolm was not only a younger version of Frank. Frank existed inside me, but not as a tool or a dead file neatly stored in a corner of my brain. At that age, I did not yet know how to speak to him as I would later. His voice was not distinct. His presence came through memories, reflexes, and impressions sometimes strong enough to feel foreign.
He had been real. He had loved, failed, been afraid, and ended up dying.
But Malcolm was six years old.
Malcolm loved drawing with his mother.
Malcolm found Uranus hilarious.
The two lives could exist together. They would simply have to learn to share the space.
∗ ∗ ∗
At eight, I asked Mom to sign me up for gymnastics.
She was leaning over the large table in her workshop, a measuring tape around her neck, busy cutting a piece of white fabric according to a pattern held down by pins. The light from the window made the fibers suspended in the air look like tiny sparks.
She stopped mid-motion. "Gymnastics?"
"Yes."
"You want to do flips?"
"Not right away."
She put down her scissors and examined me from head to toe. I was thin, fairly flexible for my age, and covered in small marks caused by my regular encounters with furniture.
"Why gymnastics? You've never mentioned it before."
I could not explain that acrobats seemed to have a higher life expectancy than ordinary police officers in this universe.
"I want to learn how to move better. To keep my balance and fall without hurting myself."
She tilted her head. "You can also say you think it looks fun."
I adapted my answer. "I think it looks fun."
She looked at me long enough to understand exactly what I had just done. "You really are a strange little boy."
Her voice was tender, not worried. She placed the scissors flat before adding, "But I prefer a child who wants to learn how to fall properly to a child convinced he will never fall. I'll look into it."
The gymnastics hall occupied part of a municipal sports center whose walls smelled of chalk, rubber, and cleaning product. The ceilings were high, voices echoed, and the floor was covered with blue mats.
In my imagination, gymnastics was supposed to be elegant. I would learn to control my body, roll beneath obstacles, and move with the fluidity of a well-drawn hero.
Reality began with fifteen minutes of stretching.
Then a coach named Linda asked me to touch my toes without bending my knees. I discovered that some of my muscles were perfectly capable of issuing a categorical refusal.
I was not bad. I simply was not a prodigy. Some children folded as if their bones were optional. I possessed the consciousness of an adult and the flexibility of slightly damp furniture.
I fell often. Hit my elbows, my knees, then my nose during a poorly controlled roll. I kept going anyway. Progress had something reassuring about it. It depended neither on an unknown timeline nor on cosmic destiny. When I repeated a movement, my body improved. When I strengthened my arms, I held on longer. Effort produced an understandable result.
I could work with that.
Dad approved of the idea, though he quickly decided gymnastics lacked discipline. We were having dinner at his place when he formed that opinion. His apartment resembled him: books lined up by size, dark furniture, no object placed without an identifiable reason. Even the cushions seemed to have received instructions.
"There are rules," I protested.
Dad carefully cut his chicken. "I did not say there were no rules. I said a group of children running on beams does not constitute complete training."
"It's much harder than running."
"I do not doubt it."
He set down his fork and took the time to drink a sip of water before adding, "You could try karate."
I had difficulty hiding my enthusiasm.
Mom accused him of wanting to turn me into a miniature soldier when she learned about it. Dad explained that martial arts taught control and discipline. They discussed it for nearly ten minutes before noticing that I already agreed with both of them.
I began karate at nine.
The dojo occupied the back of a small commercial building. The floor was covered with mats, the walls almost bare, and the air heavy with the smells of fabric, sweat, and disinfectant. Our teacher, Mr. Tanaka, was a slender man with graying hair whose voice never needed to rise to obtain silence.
The first weeks were even less spectacular than gymnastics. We repeated stances, footwork, and basic strikes. Mr. Tanaka corrected my feet, the angle of my shoulders, and the height of my hands with the patience of a man who had long accepted that children all possessed badly oriented knees.
"Speed comes after form," he repeated.
In a movie, that sentence would have triggered a training montage.
In reality, it announced twenty additional minutes devoted to the same movement.
Yet I liked that training. I was not becoming invincible. I was becoming more stable, more attentive, and slightly less vulnerable. At ten, after two years of gymnastics and one year of karate, I was more flexible than most children my age, better at controlling a fall, and lucid enough to know that a determined adult could still subdue me without difficulty.
That last knowledge mattered as much as the techniques.
A few classes did not turn a child into a hero. They only gave him one more chance to avoid the worst decision.
My first real fight took place behind the school gymnasium.
The sky was gray, the ground still damp after morning rain, and the brick walls held the cold smell of water. Most students had already joined their buses or their parents. I had forgotten a book in class and chosen the passage behind the building to reach the secondary exit.
I heard Nathan before I saw him.
"I told you I don't have any money."
His voice trembled.
I slowed down, rounded the wall, and discovered him near the large metal dumpsters, his bag clutched against his chest. Two older boys blocked his way. The first was named Kevin Morris. He was eleven, almost a head taller than me, and had the satisfied face of children used to seeing others back down. His friend remained slightly behind him, more interested in the spectacle than the money.
"You have money for lunch," Kevin said. "So you can pay me back."
"I didn't borrow anything from you."
Kevin placed a hand on Nathan's shoulder and pushed him against the wall.
The intelligent decision was to find an adult. I understood that immediately. A monitor's office was less than a minute away. I could shout, attract attention, or leave without being seen.
A minute, however, could feel very long when a friend was trapped against a wall.
"Kevin."
He turned, first surprised, then annoyed. "What do you want?"
"Leave him alone."
My heart was already beating too fast. I did not feel brave. I was afraid, just not afraid enough to leave.
Kevin looked behind me to check whether I was accompanied. "Or what? You're gonna call your mom?"
"Or I'm going to get a monitor, and Nathan will explain that you're trying to take his money."
His friend shifted slightly, less enthusiastic now that the scene risked consequences. Kevin approached me.
"You think he's gonna believe you?"
"He might believe two students against you."
I hoped Nathan would speak.
I was not certain.
Kevin shoved me with both hands. I stepped back, and my shoes slipped on the wet ground.
"Go away, Malcolm."
"No."
The word came out too fast.
He tried to shove me a second time. I deflected his arms and stepped aside as Mr. Tanaka had taught us. Kevin lost his balance, almost recovered, then regained his footing, more humiliated than hurt.
His fist came.
I saw it coming. The movement was wide, announced by his shoulder, relatively slow.
That did not mean I avoided it perfectly.
His knuckles grazed my cheek, and a hot pain spread beneath my eye. I ducked, caught his wrist, placed my foot behind his ankle, and pushed with all my weight.
Kevin fell heavily onto his back.
For one second, no one moved. Nathan looked at me with his mouth open. The other boy stepped back. Immediate pride rose in me.
I had succeeded.
Then Kevin got up and punched me in the stomach.
The air left my lungs. I fell onto one knee. All my preparation, my training, and my reflections on controlling a confrontation vanished beneath a brutal and very simple pain.
Kevin raised his foot.
Nathan threw his bag at his face.
Books and a plastic box hit Kevin in the chin. He stepped back, swearing. A monitor appeared at the same moment, drawn by the noise.
What followed was much less heroic.
We ended up in the principal's office, in front of a poster claiming that every conflict could be resolved through communication. My cheek was red, my stomach hurt, and I felt as if I were breathing with a weight on my chest. Kevin claimed I had attacked him for no reason. His friend confirmed it. Nathan told what had actually happened, but his hesitant voice impressed the principal less than Kevin's confidence.
That day, I discovered a truth that would serve me later: truth did not automatically win because it was true. It had to be clear, supported, presented at the right moment, and before someone willing to hear it.
At ten, I found that profoundly unfair.
Frank would probably have called it an ordinary Tuesday.
Mom arrived first. She came in with her coat still open and visible fear in her eyes. Before asking the principal a single question, she knelt in front of me and took my face between her hands.
"Where does it hurt? Look at me. Did he hit you in the head? Are you breathing normally?"
"I'm fine, Mom."
"Don't say that just to make me stop worrying."
Her voice trembled slightly. That fear made me feel more ashamed than the possible punishment.
"My stomach hurts, but I'm breathing. My cheek stings a little."
She gently passed her thumb beneath the mark. "Someone hit you?"
"Yes."
"Did you hit him too?"
"Not really."
The principal cleared his throat. "Malcolm made the other student fall."
Mom slowly turned her head toward me. "You threw him to the ground?"
"He mostly fell because of his balance."
She closed her eyes. I very clearly saw the moment when she hesitated between scolding me and feeling a pride she knew perfectly well she should not encourage.
Dad arrived about twenty minutes later, still in a suit. He greeted the principal, sat beside Mom, and listened to the entire story without interrupting. His face remained calm, but I already knew enough about the way he contained himself to notice the tension in his jaw.
When the principal finished, Dad placed his hands on his knees.
"I would like to understand precisely what my son is being accused of. Is he being disciplined because he defended another student, or because he used force when another solution existed?"
The principal hesitated. "Both, in a way."
"Those are not the same behaviors, and they should not be treated as if they had the same value."
"He should have found an adult."
Dad nodded. "On that point, we agree."
I turned my head toward him.
Betrayal.
In the car, Dad remained silent for several streets. Mom had left with Nathan and his mother to make sure he was all right. Fine rain had started again, and the windshield wipers marked the rhythm of our journey.
Dad finally spoke without taking his eyes off the road.
"Why did you intervene?"
"Kevin was trying to steal from Nathan."
"I am not asking what was happening. I am asking why you chose that way to intervene."
I clenched my hands on my knees. "He was going to hit him."
"Did you know that, or did you think it?"
"I knew it."
He gave me a brief look. "No. You deduced it from his behavior. Maybe you were right, but a strong conviction remains different from a fact."
The distinction annoyed me, mainly because it was accurate.
"I wasn't going to leave Nathan alone."
"I am not asking you to abandon him. You could have shouted, attracted a monitor, or told him to leave while you stayed at a distance."
I stared at my knees. The next words came out lower than I would have liked.
"I wanted to stop him myself."
Dad remained silent long enough for the sound of the windshield wipers to become difficult to ignore.
"That is what worries me."
"But I helped Nathan."
"Yes."
He kept his eyes on the road.
"And I am proud that you refused to abandon him. I am proud of your courage. But you have been training for a while, and part of you wanted to know whether it worked. Tell me I am wrong."
I did not answer.
He sighed, not with anger, but with fatigue. "Doing what is right is not always enough. The manner matters. The consequences matter. If Kevin had fallen on his head and been badly injured, your intention would not have erased the result. If his friend had had a knife, you could have died."
The memory of the bank rose brutally.
Frank had acted because Claire was threatened. He had not accepted seeing her at the end of a gun. I had never regretted his decision. But maybe part of him had also wanted to finally become the man he had dreamed of being. The one who intervened, the one who mattered, the one who deserved the uniform he wore.
I did not regret helping Nathan.
I regretted not having thought more.
The next day, I opened my secret notebook and added two sentences beneath the old rules.
Never confuse courage with haste.
Then, after a long hesitation:
Learn to win without having to fight.
The second would prove much harder to apply.
∗ ∗ ∗
Over the years, the dinosaur notebook became a collection of notes, newspaper clippings, and sheets added with tape. Its cover gradually disappeared beneath repairs. The green dinosaur lost part of its balloon, then one eye, which finally made it disturbing enough to carry my secrets.
When Mom bought our first family computer, I was twelve. The machine occupied a large part of the small desk set up in a corner of the living room. Its monitor was enormous, its casing beige, and its tower produced a constant hum.
To access the Internet, one had to use the phone line. The modem then emitted a series of whistles, crackles, and electronic screams giving the impression that a robot was slowly being interrogated in our apartment.
Mom appeared in the doorway the first time she heard the noise.
"What did you do to it?"
"Nothing. It's connecting."
She listened for a few more seconds, brow furrowed. "Does it really have to suffer that much for it?"
"Apparently."
She watched the computer with suspicion. "We sent men to the Moon, but no one was able to invent a less awful sound?"
Despite its slowness, the Internet transformed my research. I could consult articles and archives without asking an adult to take me to the library. Search engines ranked results badly. Pages took forever to load. Many sites seemed to have been designed by people passionate about blinking text.
I found information all the same.
Wayne Enterprises remained one of the most powerful groups in the country. Queen Industries regularly appeared in business pages. S.T.A.R. Labs published statements on energy, medicine, robotics, and experimental physics, each written with the reassuring tone of a future catastrophe.
LexCorp still did not exist.
I found several Luthors: a dentist, a professor, and a fraudster from New Jersey. No young genius at the head of an industrial empire.
Ted Kord yielded nothing useful. If he existed, he was still too young or too unknown to leave a public trace.
Bruce Wayne, however, was impossible to avoid. His name appeared in business, society, or legal articles. Journalists speculated about his fortune, his education, and how Wayne Enterprises should be administered until he came of age. Some photographs showed him at galas, stiff in an overly formal suit, his face closed, Alfred Pennyworth always a few steps away.
I never tried to contact him.
The rule held.
I also searched for traces of my old life. That was much harder. The bank did not exist in the form I remembered. The address of my old apartment corresponded to an office building renovated before my birth. I searched for Mr. Patel, Paul, and several inhabitants of my old neighborhood without finding a usable match. Claire was almost impossible to find without her last name.
My first parents, however, could have been found.
I knew their full names. All I had to do was type them into a search bar.
I never did.
For several nights, I stayed in front of the screen, my fingers resting on the keyboard. Finding nothing would have confirmed that my family belonged to another universe. Finding people with the same names would have been worse. I would not have known whether it was really them or only strangers sharing their faces and part of their history.
There were doors one could not close again.
I left that one closed.
I eventually accepted that my first life had left no trace here. The pain did not disappear, but it changed. It no longer resembled an open wound occupying every thought. More like a deep scar, sensitive when touched, present even during happy days.
What now concerned me was the growing distance between Frank and me.
At that age, we did not yet communicate as we would later. He was not a clear voice in my mind, nor a presence with which I could exchange a remark, an objection, or a silence. But he was not a simple archive either.
Frank had been real.
He had lived twenty-eight years, loved his parents, and loved Claire. He had hated raisins in stuffing, dreamed of joining the police, been afraid, and ended up dying. His memories lived in me, but my tastes, opinions, and emotions were gradually moving away from his.
Frank liked black coffee. I still thought coffee tasted like burnt earth. Frank had never had the patience to draw. I could spend hours beside Mom working on a face or on the way fabric fell over a shoulder. Frank had felt an almost sacred respect for uniforms. I was beginning to understand that a uniform could inspire as much mistrust as respect.
That difference became obvious one Saturday afternoon.
Nathan and I had gone into a department store to buy a gift for his mother. The place was vast, too brightly lit, and filled with soft music that disappeared beneath conversations and announcements. We were twelve, had enough money to pay, and had no intention of stealing anything.
The security guard began following us near the video game aisle.
At first, I thought it was a coincidence. I knew that job through Frank. Guards circulated, observed customers, and sometimes changed aisles without visible reason. Yet he followed us to the next aisle, then the next.
Nathan moved closer to me. "He's watching us."
"I know."
I kept walking without turning around. In the dark reflection of a turned-off screen, I saw the guard stop a few meters behind us. He was a white man in his forties, his stomach slightly tight under his shirt. His gaze rarely left my hands or the pockets of my jacket.
A group of white boys our age passed behind him, laughing. One was handling a game taken from a shelf. The guard barely gave them a look before returning to me.
Nathan wore glasses, an oversized sweatshirt, and light-colored trousers. I was a Black boy, taller than him, wearing a dark jacket. We were doing exactly the same thing.
We were not seen the same way.
The guard was not following me because I had done something. He was waiting for me to do something.
I kept my hands visible and avoided touching the products. My body tensed despite me, which precisely risked making me look more suspicious in his eyes. Nathan noticed the change in my attitude.
"We can go somewhere else."
"We buy the gift and leave."
In the reflection, I saw the guard move with us.
Frank might have wanted to turn around and ask for an explanation. He would have believed that a reasonable colleague would recognize his mistake.
But I was not Frank.
At the register, the guard remained near the exit. The cashier took our money, placed the item in a bag, and handed us the receipt with an absent smile. The security guard did not stop us, did not search us, and did not speak to us. So he had done nothing precise enough for me to easily accuse him.
That was almost what made me angriest.
Once outside, Nathan remained silent for several seconds.
"He thought we were going to steal."
I watched the cars pass through the parking lot. "He mostly thought I was going to steal."
Nathan opened his mouth, then closed it. It was not his fault he did not know what to say. He finally pressed his lips together.
"That's disgusting."
"Yes."
That evening, I told Dad about it. He was in his kitchen, a cup of coffee near him. When he understood, his expression barely changed, but his hand closed more firmly around the handle.
"Did he accuse you of anything?"
"No."
"Did he ask you to open your bags or pockets?"
"No."
"Did he speak to you?"
"No."
My anger immediately returned. "So we can't do anything."
Dad put down his cup. "The store will say he was watching all customers. The guard will explain that he was observing a sensitive area or following his instinct. Without a more explicit act, it will be difficult to establish."
"But he wasn't following the others."
"I know."
His voice was calm.
His eyes were not.
"Should I have asked him why he was watching me?"
"Not necessarily. In that context, leaving the store without incident was probably the safest solution."
I felt my jaw tighten. "So I say nothing and accept it?"
"I did not say accept it."
"That's what it means, though."
Dad inhaled slowly before leaning against the counter. "Malcolm, there is a difference between letting someone define your value and choosing the moment when you can actually hold them accountable. You were a child facing an adult in uniform. A confrontation could have led to a fabricated accusation, a search, or police involvement."
"And if he does it again tomorrow to someone else?"
"He probably will."
The frankness of the answer cut into me.
"Then what's the point of not saying anything?"
"Going home safe."
He approached and placed a hand on my shoulder. His gesture was firm, not consoling. He was not trying to minimize what had happened.
"I am not asking you to find it fair. I am asking you to understand the world you live in. Some people will consider you suspicious before you have spoken, solely because of your skin, your age, your clothes, or the neighborhood you come from. Your anger is legitimate. But if you let every injustice decide how you must act for you, others will still control your choices."
I lowered my eyes.
Frank had never lived through a scene like that. He had been a white man. He moved through stores without thinking about the meaning his body could take in the eyes of others.
I was Malcolm.
Black.
Son of Laurie Harrowing and Terrence Beaumont.
My experiences would never be exactly Frank's, even if I possessed his memories.
That day, that truth stopped being theoretical.
I was not a dead man simply starting his life over in a new body.
I was someone else.
∗ ∗ ∗
In middle school, my reputation depended on whom one asked. Teachers found me serious, polite, and sometimes too stubborn. Other students more readily used the words smart, weird, or uptight. Nathan mainly said I was the only human being capable of listening to him talk about fossils for twenty minutes without faking a medical emergency.
I joined the debate club at Dad's insistence. Meetings took place after class in a cold room, around tables arranged in a circle. I learned to build an argument, to anticipate objections, and above all to understand that being right was useless if no one could follow my reasoning.
I also joined the school newspaper. The smell of ink, the sound of keyboards, and the disorder of drafts sometimes reminded me of Mom's workshop, even if the teenagers responsible for layout were much less organized and much more convinced they were leading a cultural revolution with a column devoted to the cafeteria.
I continued gymnastics and karate. At fourteen, I was in good physical condition. I knew how to fall, keep my balance, strike correctly, run for a long time, and climb certain obstacles without panicking.
I was not an elite fighter.
Against an armed adult, I would have retained the effectiveness of a particularly determined chair.
My interest in investigation became public because of Mr. Webb's wallet.
Mr. Webb taught history with a monotony that gave the impression that wars, revolutions, and presidential assassinations had all taken place inside an administrative office. One lunch period, his wallet disappeared from his bag. It contained around a hundred dollars, several cards, and keys.
The student immediately accused was Jamal Price.
Jamal had already stolen candy two years earlier. He had argued with Mr. Webb that same morning and had been in the hallway for part of the lunch break. The administration quickly considered the matter almost solved.
Jamal denied it.
Few people believed him.
I did not really know him. We shared two classes, a few acquaintances, and a common aversion to group projects. He spoke loudly, had a mocking smile, and considered every rule the beginning of a negotiation. He spent more time in the school's technical workshop than in the library and could take apart an outlet or repair a lamp more easily than he could write an essay.
But the timeline did not fit.
Mr. Webb's bag was behind his desk. To take the wallet, Jamal had to enter the room. Yet he had spent a large part of lunch arguing with a monitor in the cafeteria, in front of several witnesses. He maybe had a few minutes left. The theft remained possible.
What posed a problem was Mr. Webb's claim that he had seen the wallet in his bag just before the next class.
He said he had checked his bag.
Not the wallet.
I approached him after class. The room was almost empty, lit by gray light. He was putting papers into his briefcase with impatient gestures.
"Are you certain the wallet was in your bag after lunch?"
He raised his head. "Yes, Malcolm. I already explained it."
"Did you see it?"
"I opened my bag."
"But did you see the wallet?"
His face closed. "Why are you asking all these questions?"
"Because Jamal says he didn't take it."
"People lie."
"Yes."
Mr. Webb stared at me. "And you believe he's telling the truth?"
I took the time to think. "I mostly think we don't know yet."
He did not like that answer.
The assistant principal liked it more when I explained the problem to her. She agreed to have the hallway footage checked.
Jamal had never entered the room.
Another student, Samantha Reed, had taken the wallet to retrieve a key Mr. Webb kept inside. She wanted to enter a storage room where her confiscated phone had been locked away. She had then panicked and hidden the wallet in another room.
The matter was not spectacular. Jamal was cleared, Samantha suspended, and Mr. Webb did not thank me.
Jamal found me near the lockers the next day. He leaned against the metal, arms crossed, trying to look relaxed. He did not really manage it.
"Why did you believe me?"
I closed my locker. "I didn't believe you."
His face hardened. "Nice."
"I didn't believe Mr. Webb either."
He observed me in silence. "So you don't believe anyone?"
"I prefer to verify."
His expression remained closed for a second, then a smile appeared.
"You're really weird, Beaumont."
"So I'm told."
Our friendship was built from there. Jamal did not replace Nathan and did not immediately become inseparable from us. He first joined a few lunches, then outings, before becoming one of the few people capable of contradicting me without me turning the conversation into a formal debate.
Nathan brought almost inexhaustible curiosity. Jamal had his feet on the ground. He knew how to fix what was broken, quickly spotted social lies, and refused to be impressed by degrees, titles, or adults who spoke slowly to sound profound.
Dad learned the story of the wallet from the assistant principal. He tried to hide his pride. His smile betrayed him.
"You acted well."
"I did not uncover anything complicated."
"You asked a question the adults present had not asked."
"Which one?"
He leaned slightly toward me. "Does the most convenient version truly match the facts? Many people first choose the person who seems guilty to them, then arrange the elements around that conclusion. You did the opposite."
From that day on, some students began consulting me for problems I was absolutely not qualified to solve: missing objects, anonymous messages, rumors, and arguments. One girl even asked me to determine whether her boyfriend was cheating on her.
I refused.
There were limits to my commitment to truth.
∗ ∗ ∗
At fifteen, I finally knew what I wanted to become.
I announced it to Dad one Sunday evening. He was preparing dinner while following a recipe with the intensity of a prosecutor presenting a capital case. The vegetables were lined up on the board, the meat weighed, and each utensil occupied a precise position.
"I want to become a detective."
He stopped in the middle of a movement. "Police detective?"
"Yes."
"Not a lawyer."
"No."
He slowly set down his knife. "You could become a very good lawyer. Your grades are excellent, you argue correctly, and you already understand procedure better than some students."
"I know."
"You could work in criminal law."
"I know that too."
He wiped his hands and turned fully toward me.
"But you do not want to."
It was not a question.
"No."
A brief disappointment crossed his face. It quickly disappeared, but I saw it anyway.
"Does this come from your old fascination with uniforms?"
I stiffened. "What fascination?"
"At four, you drew security guards. At six, you asked for books about the police. At eight, you wanted to understand how an investigation worked."
He picked up his knife again, but his attention remained on me.
"I am a prosecutor, Malcolm. I occasionally observe my own son."
I smiled despite myself. "It is not the uniform."
"Then explain it to me."
I watched steam rise from the pot. The full truth was impossible. I could not tell him about the bank, Claire, or Frank.
But there was a usable truth.
That was not the same as a lie.
"I want to be there before the case reaches you. I want to understand what really happened, speak to witnesses, examine the scene, and find what others missed. In court, you work with the evidence people bring you. I want to participate in discovering it."
Dad's expression changed. His disappointment did not vanish entirely, but it gave way to more serious attention.
"You understand that the real job does not look like television shows?"
"Yes."
"You will spend more time writing reports than chasing criminals."
"I know."
"You will see difficult things. Victims, families, sometimes children."
The memory of the bank rose.
"I know."
Dad remained silent, his gaze resting on me.
"No. I do not think you fully know yet."
I took a breath. "Probably not."
That answer seemed to suit him better.
"But it is what I want."
He slowly nodded. "I am disappointed."
His honesty surprised me.
"But I am not going to stop you. You will have to study seriously, understand the law, and learn to write an impeccable report. You will also have to accept that the institution will not always match the idea you have of it."
I thought of the department store. "I already understand that."
"You understand it intellectually. Accepting it when you are part of it will be different."
The conversation with Mom took another direction. She remained sitting across from me in her workshop, a pencil stuck in her hair and a piece of fabric resting on her knees.
"Detective," she repeated. "So you're going to wear dull suits and awful shoes."
"Probably."
"We will have to work on that."
I looked at her. "I thought you would talk about the danger."
"I was getting there."
Her smile gradually disappeared. She placed the fabric down and took my hand.
"Are you really certain this is what you want? Not what you think you have to do to prove something to your father, to me, or to yourself?"
The question touched me more deeply than expected.
"I am certain."
"You have nothing to prove, Malcolm."
"I know."
Mom narrowed her eyes slightly. "You often say 'I know' when you want to end a conversation."
I lowered my eyes.
She knew me too well. That was one of the disadvantages of being loved properly.
"I want to help people. I want to understand why some people are accused too quickly and why others never are. I want to be useful before it is too late."
The last sentence came out almost despite me.
Mom watched me. "Before it is too late for whom?"
I thought of Claire, Nathan, Jamal, and Frank.
"For someone who needs us to arrive in time."
She remained silent, then kissed my temple.
"Then choose this life because you want it. Not because you spend your time trying to repair something you cannot even name."
She was perhaps thinking of the divorce or of my tendency to want to protect others.
I was thinking of a bank that did not exist in this world.
"I choose it," I answered.
This time, it was true.
∗ ∗ ∗
At sixteen, Dad found me a summer job at the district attorney's office. He insisted that he had obtained no special treatment for me. So I spent two months filing cases, making photocopies, and bringing coffee to people who all knew my last name.
Nepotism clearly possessed several degrees of subtlety.
The offices occupied several floors of a large gray building downtown. The hallways smelled of paper, coffee, and air conditioning. Employees constantly moved around with files under their arms, phones rang, printers worked without interruption, and almost everyone seemed late.
The work was often boring.
It was also essential.
I discovered that investigations rarely rested on a spectacular revelation. They depended on hours of verification, unanswered calls, misfiled photographs, imprecise witnesses, and reports where every line could become important several months later.
I saw a solid case collapse because a police officer had badly documented a seizure. I saw a probably guilty man walk free after the main witness changed his version. I also saw a suspect exonerated thanks to a gas station receipt no investigator had checked for several weeks.
Justice was not a perfect machine.
It resembled more an old building whose foundations held because some people kept repairing the cracks.
An investigator named Harris agreed to speak with me during his breaks. He wore a gray mustache, wrinkled shirts, and had a reputation for never throwing away a piece of paper before a case was definitively closed.
We were sitting one day in a break room, across from a machine that regularly swallowed coins, when he opened his sandwich and looked at me over the wrapper.
"Your father says you want to become a detective."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I like understanding things."
He shook his head. "Wrong reason."
I frowned. "Why?"
"Because most of the time, you will never understand everything. You will find who did what. Sometimes, you will know why. But you will rarely get a perfect answer that neatly closes every door."
"So what is the right reason?"
Harris chewed slowly before answering.
"Being able to continue even when you don't like the answer. Even when you don't recover everything. Even when the person you arrest resembles you more than you would have liked."
It was not inspiring.
That was probably why I believed him.
He taught me to read a report without drowning in details, to build a timeline, and to separate facts from hypotheses. He showed me how a poorly phrased question could influence a witness, how an early certainty could contaminate an investigation, and how badly handled evidence could become unusable even when it revealed the truth.
One afternoon, he placed a file in front of me.
"Never enter a room intending to be right."
"Why?"
"Because your brain will always find something to give you the impression that you are. Enter to understand what happened, even if it destroys your first theory."
I wrote the sentence in the dinosaur notebook that same evening. Its cover had almost entirely disappeared beneath layers of tape. The pages devoted to heroes and cosmic threats now shared space with notes on procedure, testimony, and investigative errors.
I was no longer writing only to survive this universe.
I was building the person I wanted to become.
The difference mattered.
At seventeen, my life almost looked normal. I took advanced classes without trying to hide my intelligence. I had understood that hiding every skill sometimes attracted more attention than simply working well. I participated in the debate club, the school newspaper, and the gymnastics team. I still practiced karate three evenings a week and ran when my schedule allowed.
I was neither a billionaire genius nor a prodigious fighter.
I was a disciplined teenager, in good physical condition, and far too organized.
I also had friends.
Nathan was still there. His obsession with dinosaurs had turned into a genuine interest in paleontology. He took every available science class and had joined a program for high school students at the American Museum of Natural History. He mostly performed simple tasks there, but spoke of every passage through the collections as if he had personally discovered a new species.
Jamal was much less interested in long studies. He earned decent grades when he made the effort, but preferred technical classes and worked some weekends with an electrician his family knew. He was already talking about a union apprenticeship program after high school. Dad considered that he should keep more options open. Jamal considered that people with offices had a far too high opinion of offices.
We went to the movies, played video games, and sometimes spent entire evenings doing nothing useful.
That last activity had required real learning.
For a long time, every hour not devoted to training or study seemed wasted to me. Nathan and Jamal had taught me that an evening could count even if it produced no measurable skill.
I even had a girlfriend for four months.
Melissa played piano and had a laugh that always began with a very short breath. She broke up with me after an argument in a café near the high school.
"You don't discuss things with me, Malcolm," she said, hands clasped around her cup. "You interrogate me."
I immediately felt defensive. "I ask questions to understand what you mean."
"No. You look for the flaw in every sentence. You want everything to be coherent, even when I'm simply angry or sad."
"I can't respond correctly if you don't explain what's wrong."
Melissa gave a small joyless laugh. "I'm not always asking you to respond correctly. Sometimes, I just want you to listen without turning my feelings into a problem to solve."
I remained silent. Her gaze softened slightly.
"You're kind, Malcolm. Really. But sometimes you act as if every conversation is going to end up in a report."
She was right.
Later, I asked Nathan and Jamal for their opinion. They confirmed with far too much enthusiasm.
"Dude, you once asked a waitress to define 'a little cream,'" Jamal said.
Nathan raised a finger. "And you take mental notes when someone tells you about an argument."
"I do not take mental notes."
"Yes," Jamal replied. "You can see it in your eyes."
I looked at them. "My eyes do not take notes."
"Your eyes wear invisible glasses and judge the consistency of the testimony."
I shifted my gaze from one to the other. "Did you prepare that?"
"For years," Nathan answered.
I worked on that flaw. Not by stopping asking questions, but by learning to say what I felt before trying to analyze other people's emotions.
It may have become one of the most important advances of my adolescence.
Not my grades.
Not my training.
Not my knowledge.
I was learning to live with people rather than study them.
Frank had built a large part of his identity around a goal he had never reached. He wanted to become a police officer, wear a real uniform, and prove he was useful.
I, too, wanted to become a detective.
But that ambition was no longer my whole life.
I drew with Mom, endured Dad's meticulously organized dinners, and could lose a competition without considering my entire existence a failure. I could spend time with my friends without feeling guilty for accomplishing nothing.
I loved my family.
I loved Nathan and Jamal.
I loved the person Malcolm was becoming.
That made the world more frightening.
At first, I wanted to survive because I refused to die a second time without having accomplished anything.
At seventeen, I wanted to survive because I now had a great deal to lose.
The heroes still had not appeared publicly. There were rumors, silhouettes glimpsed in alleys, accounts of strange rescues, and stories of anonymous vigilantes that occupied a few lines in local newspapers before disappearing.
Nothing solid enough to join my confirmed column.
Bruce Wayne was twenty. The papers spoke of his studies, his irregular appearances at society events, and his future at the head of Wayne Enterprises. Some presented him as an irresponsible heir. Others already saw in him a future captain of industry.
I believed none of those versions.
I knew what he would probably become.
I simply did not know when his true journey would begin.
My university acceptance letter arrived in the spring of 2006.
Mom found it in the mailbox and came up the stairs shouting my name before even closing the door. I came out of my room and found her in the middle of the hallway, her coat still on her shoulders, waving the envelope with an enormous smile.
"You're accepted!"
I looked at the envelope, still sealed. "You opened it?"
She froze. "No."
"Then how do you know?"
"Rejection envelopes are smaller."
"That's a myth."
She handed me the envelope with offended dignity. "I'm your mother. I recognize a good envelope."
I took it. My fingers trembled slightly as I opened it.
I had been accepted into the criminal justice program I had chosen, with a partial scholarship.
Mom read the first lines over my shoulder and cried out before hugging me. I felt her cold coat against my arm, her perfume, and the way she squeezed hard enough to make any deep breathing optional.
Dad arrived less than an hour later. He had left his office early, an event rare enough to deserve being entered into the family archives. I reread the letter in the living room while he stood near the window, arms crossed.
"Congratulations," he said.
His voice remained firm.
His eyes shone.
"Thank you."
"You will still be able to pursue legal studies afterward."
Mom shot him a look. "He's been accepted for less than two hours."
"I am simply reminding him that he has several options."
"And he knows them."
Dad removed his glasses and briefly rubbed his eyes. "I know he knows them."
He turned toward me. His control cracked just enough for his voice to change.
"I am proud of you, Malcolm."
The sentence was simple.
It touched me more than all his advice combined.
We ordered food and opened a bottle of champagne I was not allowed to touch. Nathan and Jamal joined us later. Nathan wanted to examine the full course program. Jamal asked how many years it would take me to start making a decent living, then declared that his apprenticeship would probably allow him to buy a car before me.
Nathan looked at him. "A car to go where?"
"To my job."
"So you're going to buy a car to go to work so you can pay for the car?"
Jamal raised his glass. "Welcome to the economy, Cole."
Mom took enough photographs to document the evening from every possible angle. For several hours, I thought neither of heroes, nor monsters, nor future catastrophes.
I was simply a high school student accepted into university.
The son of Laurie Harrowing and Terrence Beaumont.
The friend of Nathan Cole and Jamal Price.
Malcolm.
Later that night, when the apartment grew quiet again, I returned to my room. The walls still carried some drawings from my childhood, accompanied by photographs, gymnastics medals, and books accumulated over the years.
I knelt near the bed and took out my old notebook.
The hiding place had not changed in eleven years. The fact that no one had discovered it seriously called into question my entire family's observational abilities.
I opened the first page.
The clumsy handwriting of my six-year-old self still filled the three columns.
Confirmed.
Probable.
Do not panic.
I took a pen and added a new sentence beneath the old rules.
Have a life worth protecting.
I stared at the words for a long time.
At seventeen, I had no powers, no fortune, and no access to extraordinary technology. I personally knew no heroes, and I did not know when the story I feared would truly begin.
But I was no longer the little boy frozen in the middle of a crosswalk, convinced death could take back his second chance before he had even begun to live.
I had learned.
I had trained.
I had grown.
That would never be enough to protect me from everything this universe could produce. Nothing could. Even the most powerful sometimes fell.
So the goal was not to become invulnerable.
It was to be as ready as possible when danger arrived, without sacrificing the present existence to fear of the future.
I closed the notebook and put it back under my bed. In a few months, I would leave high school. In a few years, I could join the police and become the investigator I had chosen to be.
Bruce Wayne had not yet become the rumor Gotham was waiting for without knowing it.
The world still seemed normal.
I still had time.
At least, that was what I believed.