He did not walk like a boy who had lost his way.
He walked like someone who knew that wandering was dangerous.
The city opened around him in layers. The alley gave way to a narrow street slick with old rain and newer oil, then to an intersection where light and noise gathered in uneasy truce. Gotham revealed itself not all at once, but in pieces offered cautiously—brick, glass, steel, the hum of power lines, the pulse of traffic that never quite slept. Each element pressed against his awareness, testing it, measuring it.
He adjusted.
The adjustment was subtle: his shoulders relaxed, his stride shortened, his gaze softened. He did not stare. He let his eyes drift, catching reflections in windows, the movement of silhouettes behind curtains, the rhythm of headlights approaching from cross streets. He learned the city's tempo by listening to its breath rather than its voice.
Instinct before memory.
He did not know the phrase, but he lived it.
A group of men stood near a convenience store across the street, laughter sharp-edged, bodies angled outward in territorial confidence. He altered his path without breaking stride, passing beneath a flickering sign instead. The sign buzzed and stuttered, its light erratic enough to fracture recognition. Faces became shapes; shapes became noise. He moved through the gap the way water moves—by yielding where resistance was greatest.
He felt the city notice him.
Not as a person.
As a variable.
A bus roared past, wind tugging at his clothes. He used the moment to cross the street, timing his movement to the traffic's blind spot. When he reached the far sidewalk, his pulse had not quickened. There was no adrenaline surge, no sense of victory. Only confirmation.
This place obeyed rules.
Rules could be learned.
He walked on.
As the minutes stacked into something like an hour, hunger made itself known—not sharply, but as a distant signal. The body requested fuel with polite insistence. He cataloged the sensation and moved it aside. Hunger could wait. Orientation could not.
He tested boundaries in small ways.
He stepped closer to a group without entering their space. He paused beneath a streetlight, letting it outline him just enough to see who noticed and who did not. He slowed near a crosswalk to feel how attention pooled and dispersed around him. Each test produced data. Each correction refined the model forming in his mind.
Somewhere in the background, the pressure within him shifted, approving without praise.
He passed a storefront with a darkened window. For a moment, his reflection appeared—tall for his age, lean, eyes too steady. He stopped.
The reflection stopped with him.
He studied it the way one studies a stranger whose habits must be learned quickly. There was nothing remarkable about the face. No scars. No markings. Just a quietness that seemed out of place in a city this loud.
His eyes caught the light.
For an instant—only an instant—the reflection wavered, as though depth had been added where there should have been surface. Space behind the glass felt… thin. Negotiable.
His breath slowed further.
Contain.
The rule returned, gentle and absolute.
He stepped away.
A police cruiser rolled past at the end of the block, lights off, presence heavy. He felt it before he saw it, the way one feels pressure changes before weather breaks. Authority carried its own gravity here—unpredictable, sometimes protective, often dangerous. He marked the route the cruiser took and adjusted his own path accordingly.
He did not fear law.
He respected uncertainty.
As night deepened, the city changed texture. Businesses shuttered. Foot traffic thinned. The remaining people moved with purpose or paranoia, sometimes both. Shadows grew longer, more assertive. He found himself drawn to routes that offered vertical escape—fire escapes, scaffolding, low rooftops. He did not climb them yet. He only noted them, mapping possibilities.
A sudden shout echoed from a side street. He froze—not stiff, but still, awareness sharpening. The shout was followed by running footsteps, then silence. He waited through three full breaths, counting the spaces between sounds. When nothing else followed, he moved on, taking a parallel route rather than the direct one.
He understood something then, without words:
Survival here was not about strength.
It was about sequence.
Move too early, and you reveal yourself.
Move too late, and you are trapped.
He reached a park sometime later, its iron fence half-bent, its grass trampled into resignation. The space was open enough to be dangerous, closed enough to be useful. He sat on a bench beneath a tree that had grown crooked around a broken light pole.
He rested—not sleeping, not fully alert. A controlled suspension.
Thoughts drifted near the surface and dissolved before forming. Faces almost appeared, then retreated. Names hovered at the edge of comprehension, heavy with consequence, and were gently pushed away. Whatever lay beneath was not ready. Or perhaps he was not.
The pressure inside him eased, settling deeper, as if satisfied with the night's work.
Across the city, unseen and unannounced, a page resisted being cataloged.
Dream paused again.
He felt it this time—not as a presence, but as a hesitation in the fabric of things. The air thickened, imperceptibly, like a held breath. Then it passed.
He stood.
Night had taught him enough for now.
Tomorrow—whatever that meant—would require shelter, resources, proximity to information without exposure. He turned toward a stretch of buildings whose upper levels were abandoned but intact. Places where a careful person could exist without being noticed.
As he walked, the city adjusted around him, accommodating a pattern it did not yet understand.
Instinct guided him forward.
Memory could wait.