Crossroads in the Dark

Sera sat in the dim glow of a stolen desk lamp, her notebook spread open before her, though the pages had long since blurred into an indecipherable mess of equations and half-written theories. Her mind was elsewhere, tangled in a decision she had been circling for weeks. Wayne Enterprises or the Bat-Family. Bruce Wayne’s death had shattered the illusion of separation between the two, but in reality, they were still distinct paths, each carrying its own risks.

Wayne Enterprises had resources—untouched laboratories, high-end materials, and enough research funding to make STAR Labs look underfunded by comparison. More importantly, it was legitimate. If she could find a way in, she might be able to work under the radar, access what she needed without setting off alarms in the criminal world. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? The company was under scrutiny now, its ties to Batman dissected by the media and law enforcement alike. Whoever was running things in Bruce Wayne’s absence would be watching for anything suspicious, anything that might hint at another secret lurking in the shadows. And if Lucius Fox or someone else high up in the company recognized her name—if she was already on some forgotten file from WayneTech’s collaborations with STAR Labs—it wouldn’t take long before questions started piling up. She couldn’t afford that kind of exposure.

Then there was the other side of the equation: the Bat-Family. Less official, more dangerous. Wayne Enterprises had laboratories, but they had Gotham. They had the kind of operational knowledge that could get her what she needed in half the time and without the oversight. If Bruce had ever looked into her research before his death, there was a chance he had left something behind—a contingency plan, a lead, some encrypted file that could point her toward what she needed. But approaching them meant stepping into their world, making herself known. She had spent months avoiding attention, slipping through cracks, keeping her name from surfacing. If she went to them, she wouldn’t be able to take it back. They would have questions. They would want to know everything—who she was, what she could do, why she had been hiding. And if they decided she was a risk rather than an asset, she had no doubt they had the means to make her disappear.

She rubbed her temples, frustration tightening her jaw. Neither choice was safe. Neither choice guaranteed anything. But she was running out of options, and more importantly, she was running out of time. Her body was slipping further out of sync every day, the stabilizer injections only delaying the inevitable. If she didn’t make a move soon, there wouldn’t be enough of her left to make a move at all.

She leaned back, staring at the ceiling, exhaling slowly as she tried to force some clarity into the mess of tangled thoughts. Wayne Enterprises or the Bat-Family. One offered access, the other anonymity. One was a calculated risk, the other a leap into the unknown. Either way, the days of running were coming to an end. It was only a matter of which door she would walk through first.