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adhdnursegoat · 13 days ago

Text

Chapter 5

Word Count: 9.9K

Content Warning: none right now

Pairing: Edward Nashton X OC Romy Winslow

Setting: Pre-Arkham Origins; 2013

Thursday, January 17th, 2013.

The cold January air bit at Edward’s skin, sharp and unforgiving, but he barely noticed. The faint tang of salt carried on the wind from Gotham’s harbor mingled with the acrid scent of the cigarette between his fingers. He took a slow drag, the burn in his chest oddly grounding, before exhaling. The thin plume of smoke twisted upward, curling into the pale morning light, only to be torn apart by the wind.

Another week nearly gone, and the ache of maddening incompletion gnawed at the edges of his mind.

The streets of Gotham stretched before him, glistening faintly under a sheen of frost. The city woke sluggishly, its skyline looming like jagged teeth against the ashen sky. The distant hum of traffic mixed with the occasional burst of activity—a taxi screeching to a halt, a vendor shouting as they opened their stall, the faint clang of construction echoing from somewhere unseen.

Edward’s shoes clicked against the damp pavement, the sound swallowed by the oppressive weight of the city around him. Gotham never rested, never quieted, its chaos simmering just beneath the surface. Even in its moments of stillness, there was a tension in the air, as though the city itself held its breath, waiting for the next inevitable act of violence or betrayal.

His mind churned as he walked, threading through the familiar sidewalks leading to the precinct. The city stirred sluggishly around him, its dull hum almost masking the click of his shoes against the damp concrete. The response time case consumed his thoughts, unfolding with maddening clarity, each revelation slotting into place like an intricate puzzle. He just didn’t know the big picture yet—and he knew there was one.

Hartley and his cronies—Murphy and Edison—were clearly up to something. Their response times didn’t just stink of incompetence; they reeked of deliberate manipulation. The question wasn’t if they were being paid—it was by whom. And for what purpose?

Edward’s lips pressed into a thin line as his mind cycled through possibilities, each more infuriating than the last. Were they covering for another faction of Gotham’s corrupt elite? Shielding criminal activity to line their own pockets? Or worse, were they simply indulging in their own twisted sense of power, wielding the city’s chaos for personal gain?

His fingers twitched at his side, itching to pry deeper, to crack through the layers of deception and expose the truth. But questions kept piling up, each one heavier than the last. Who was paying them? Who else knew? And most frustratingly of all, how far did this go?

He exhaled sharply, the cold air stinging his lungs, but the frustration lingered. He needed answers, and soon. The thought of these fools, smug in their belief they could outmaneuver him, gnawed at him with a slow, simmering intensity.

Still, he hadn’t been able to dedicate as much time to it as he’d liked.

Not when he had an irritating butterfly flitting around his ear. The image flickered through his mind unbidden—delicate wings, impossibly vibrant, beating incessantly at the edge of his focus. A creature too small and insignificant to warrant his attention, yet persistent enough to demand it.

Edward’s jaw tightened at the thought, his teeth and lips briefly clenching around the filter.

“Ridiculous.”

The wild card. The constant irritation. His annoying charge. Romy. No matter how carefully he planned his days, he knew she would find a way to upend it, turning his precision into chaos with a well-timed remark or an offhand comment that pulled at the threads of his composure.

It was her second week. He’d hoped—no, expected—that she’d fall into a predictable rhythm of compliance and fade into the background like the rest of the precinct’s noise. Instead, she had managed to weave herself further into his day-to-day routine, an ever-present, maddening variable that he couldn’t ignore. Wednesday through Friday, her presence was inescapable, her voice and movements threading through his carefully ordered chaos. But what was worse—what truly infuriated him—was that she occupied space in his head outside of work hours. She was there, uninvited and unwanted, taking up residence in his thoughts without paying so much as a dime in rent.

He scowled, his thoughts snapping briefly to last Friday. “Are you this dominant in the bedroom too?” Her voice, smooth, deliberate, and infuriatingly calm, still echoed in his mind, its audacity enough to make his eye twitch even now.

It was infuriating. How someone so seemingly poised—calm, easygoing, every movement deliberate—could be so goddamned disruptive and inappropriate. Romy was an enigma wrapped in exasperation, and the dichotomy grated on him.

And yet… there was a competence to her.

That awareness of her surroundings—sharp, perceptive—made it impossible to dismiss her entirely. He’d tried. She could be quiet, when she wanted to be. She could be obedient, when she chose to. But submission? Well, he hadn’t seen a shred of that yet. If anything, she seemed to take pleasure in testing his limits, pushing the boundaries of propriety and expectation, knowing full well how much it got under his skin.

His lips pulled downward as the thought lingered. She moved through the precinct as though the chaos amused her, a private joke shared with no one but herself. And somehow, that grated on him most of all. It wasn’t the loudness of her presence that irritated him; it was the deliberate way she wielded her indifferent, near-careless calm like a weapon.

Edward drew in another sharp breath of smoke, holding it in his lungs for a beat before exhaling through his nose. The cold air sharpened the edges of his thoughts, cutting through the irritation. But then, like clockwork, his father’s voice slipped into his mind, unbidden and unwelcome, harsh and cutting: “Focus. People like you don’t get second chances.”

His shoulders tensed before he rolled them back, shaking off the memory with deliberate effort. Gotham didn’t offer second chances either. This response time anomaly, this opportunity—it was his. His proof. His victory. He couldn’t afford to let distractions—no matter how infuriating, smug, or inappropriate—derail him.

The precinct steps loomed ahead, rising like jagged teeth against the backdrop of gray skies. Edward adjusted the strap of his bag, his pace steady as his thoughts narrowed to the tasks ahead: finalize data encryption updates, continue building a new surveillance algorithm, general software updates, and, with a sigh, review email and communication security—the latter the most grueling and annoying of his tasks—boring really.

His brows furrowed as he ascended the final step. The tasks were manageable—achievable, even—but the thought of navigating them with Romy lurking nearby, flippant and poised, made his stomach churn. His hand found the handle of the precinct’s heavy glass door, and he paused for a beat.

A quick inhale. Focus. Control. He exhaled.

Edward Nashton pulled the door open and stepped inside.

The precinct was chaos incarnate.

Phones screamed in a relentless cacophony, their shrill tones colliding with the shouted orders of officers scrambling to make sense of the mess unraveling around them. The air was thick with the tension of bodies in motion—secretaries darting between desks, their arms laden with precarious stacks of files that seemed ready to topple with every misstep.

The bullpen felt smaller, more suffocating, as the sound of footsteps pounding against the floor mixed with the relentless hum of malfunctioning electronics. Desks that were once neatly arranged were now cluttered with overturned coffee mugs, smeared sticky notes, and a tangle of wires leading to monitors that pulsed with an ominous glow. Each screen displayed the same disturbing image: a black and orange interface blinking with cryptic warnings and fragmented code. The sickly light flashed a slow, staccato rhythm.

The air smelled faintly of burnt coffee and stale desperation, underpinned by the sharp metallic tang of old wiring overheating under the strain. Somewhere near the back of the room, a fax machine groaned and spit out an endless ream of paper, the machine’s jammed mechanisms adding a mechanical whine to the already overwhelming din.

Edward cocked an eyebrow.

Standing just inside the main chamber, he gripped the strap of his bag with one hand as he surveyed the chaos unfolding before him. His posture was casual, but his sharp eyes missed nothing. He took in the frenetic movements of the officers, the jumbled papers scattered like confetti, and the panicked buzz that filled the room. To anyone else, it would have looked like disarray. To Edward, it was incompetence.

He scowled, his gaze snapping to one of the nearby monitors. The fluorescent orange blinking against the black background pulled at his attention like a nagging poke he couldn’t ignore. His lip curled slightly as the sickly hue reflected off the grimy desk, casting grotesque shadows across the cluttered workspace.

Orange. Of all the colors.

It was jarring, an affront to his sensibilities. Edward prided himself on the precision of his work—the clean, functional design of his systems, the seamless efficiency of his coding. Every interface he created had been meticulously designed for utility and clarity, every shade chosen to convey information without distraction. And this? This abomination of an aesthetic? It reeked of amateurism.

A faint heat crept up the back of his neck as his scowl deepened. There was no question about it—this wasn’t his work. The color alone was proof enough. He would never program such an eyesore into any of his systems.

Which meant one thing.

Someone was fucking with his shit.

Edward barely had time to step forward when a voice barked through the cacophony.

“Nashton!”

He took a measured breath, his lips pulling into a thin, controlled line. His jaw tightened as he resisted the immediate urge to snap back. Slowly, deliberately, when he was certain his composure was intact, he looked up.

Commissioner Gillian B. Loeb loomed above him on the mezzanine, his face flushed an unsightly shade of crimson. The man looked more like an overfed bulldog than the head of Gotham’s so-called finest, his wide, scowling eyes bulging under the fluorescent lights. His fat fingers clutched the railing with white-knuckled intensity, as though he were afraid he might topple forward under the weight of his own fury.

“Get your ass in there and fix this!” Loeb barked, the sound harsh and guttural, his voice straining over the noise of the room.

The hand not gripping the rail gestured wildly, as though he expected Edward to understand that this vaguely defined chaos was somehow his responsibility. Edward had to sidestep when Loeb's hat flew off in his spastic movements. It fell, landing with a pitiful flop at Edward’s feet.

He narrowed his eyes behind his glasses, every ounce of the disdain he felt for the man evident in the sharp angles of his face. His lips pressed into a thin, deliberate line, suppressing the acidic retort dancing on his tongue.

Instead, he straightened, adjusted the strap of his bag with a precision that felt like a subtle form of defiance, and spun on his heel. His strides were quick, purposeful, cutting a clean path through the chaos as he headed toward his workspace at the back of the chamber.

“Nashton!” Loeb’s voice squawked through the din once more, sharp and grating, but Edward didn’t bother to turn around. His shoulders remained square, his head high, projecting a dismissive arrogance that was as deliberate as it was satisfying.

“I don’t care what it takes—just make sure we don’t end up on the front page tomorrow!” Loeb bellowed after him, the desperation in his tone betraying his true priorities.

Edward’s lip curled into a faint sneer, and his eyes rolled. Of course, that was all the old coot cared about. Not the systems under attack, but his own precious reputation. A scandal-free front page. That was Loeb’s idea of a crisis averted.

Pathetic.

Edward kept walking, his pace steady and his mind already returning to the flashing orange screens. Let Loeb bellow and bluster all he wanted. Edward had work to do, and unlike the rest of these bumbling fools, he knew exactly how to do it.

“Mr. Nashton.”

The voice is calm, deliberate, cutting through the chaos without the need to shout. Someone falls in step beside him, their presence measured and intentional. Edward takes a few more steps before flicking his eyes to the side, unwilling to break stride but curious enough to acknowledge the interruption.

“Detective Gordon,” Edward says flatly, the words carrying a faint edge of respect, though he would never admit it aloud. It’s hardly even respect—more like tolerance.

In the storm of chaos around the precinct, Detective James “Jim” Gordon stands out—a quiet, steady pillar of control amidst the flailing arms and panicked voices. The man walks with purpose, his heavy boots falling in a rhythm that somehow grounds the disorder around him.

Gordon’s appearance is unremarkable at first glance—ash-brown hair combed neatly back, tinged with a dusting of gray at his sideburns. But the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, faint but visible, speak to a man who has seen too much and keeps going anyway. His stocky build and broad shoulders give him an imposing presence, but his face, with its firm lines and piercing gaze, holds a gentleness that tempers the intimidation. It’s the face of a man who commands respect without demanding it.

Edward has always found Gordon to be an anomaly in the GCPD. Unlike the other officers, Gordon doesn’t bark or bluster, doesn’t let his authority spill over into arrogance. He listens more than he speaks, observes more than he acts—until it’s time to act. And when Gordon does move, it’s with precision, each decision weighed and measured.

It’s irritating, really. The kind of integrity that Gordon exudes feels out of place in Gotham, like a polished stone in a sea of jagged, broken glass. It’s hard not to wonder why the man stays, why he bothers to keep trying when it’s obvious the system is too broken to save.

“Busy morning,” Gordon comments, his tone even, almost conversational, though his eyes remain sharp as they scan the bullpen.

Edward snorts, a faint, humorless sound. “If you call this busy, I’d hate to see your definition of chaos.”

Gordon’s lips twitch into the faintest semblance of a smile, but it doesn’t linger. His gaze shifts back to Edward, and for a moment, he feels the weight of the detective’s scrutiny. It’s not like Loeb’s blustering or the dismissive glances of the other officers. Gordon sees things, notices details most people overlook.

“Loeb’s rattled,” Gordon says, his voice dropping slightly as though speaking to an equal rather than a subordinate. “This kind of mess doesn’t sit well with him.”

“Loeb’s rattled because he’s worried about his headlines, not the precinct, not the city.” Edward’s lip curls faintly.

“Maybe.” Gordon’s reply is careful, noncommittal. He doesn’t disagree, but he doesn’t confirm it either. That’s Gordon—always walking the line, never giving too much away.

They walk in silence for a beat, their strides naturally aligning as they navigate through the storm of chaos. Edward finds himself almost—almost—appreciating Detective Gordon’s presence. It’s not overbearing, not intrusive, unlike Loeb’s incessant shouting or the panicked flailing of the other officers. Gordon moves through the room with quiet authority, an unshakable steadiness that stands out against the disorder.

If the precinct is a whirlpool, Gordon is the steady current slicing through it, unyielding yet calm.

“Mr. Nashton,” Gordon begins, his voice measured and even, cutting through the din without effort. “I know you’ve just arrived, but do you know the extent of the situation yet?”

“Not entirely.” Edward flicks his gaze briefly toward him. “But I can assume something—or someone—has infiltrated the network.”

“It’s much more than that.”

Detective Gordon stops mid-stride, his boots planting firmly on the floor. Edward, propelled by momentum and habit, takes one more step before halting. The pause in Gordon’s voice, the way he shifts his weight slightly, is enough to pique Edward’s curiosity. He turns, his sharp eyes narrowing as he fixes Gordon with a look that says, Well?

“The entire emergency response system has been affected,” Gordon continues, his tone low, but the weight behind his words is unmistakable. “Traffic grids, dispatch lines, even some of our internal comms are down. Other than cell phones, we have no way of communicating with each other or the citizens. We’re not getting any emergency calls—nothing.”

Edward adjusts his jaw, a subtle tick of irritation, before releasing a faint tsk. “They’ve made us deaf, dumb, and blind,” he mutters, the words biting with disdain.

Whoever “they” are, they have the precinct, the city in a stranglehold. His mind races, jumping from possibility to possibility, each more frustratingly obvious than the last. Edward doesn’t need to see the full extent of the damage to understand that this isn’t a simple breach. It’s an assault, deliberate and calculated.

“Do you know if anyone’s made contact?” Edward queries, sharp but pensive.

“Not yet,” Gordon replies, his brow furrowing. He sighs. “We’re all waiting with bated breath. Sitting on our hands until they make a move.”

Edward pauses, his gaze drifting somewhere beyond Gordon, his thoughts churning. Sitting ducks. What are they waiting for? What do they want? Why haven’t they moved yet? The questions coil in his mind, tightening like a spring as he sifts through possibilities. His hand tightens over the strap of his bag.

“Maybe I can move first,” he mutters, more to himself.

The detective studies him intently, his sharp gaze meeting Edward’s with an almost disarming calm. There’s no judgment in Gordon’s expression, just a quiet understanding, a flicker of trust in the younger man’s brilliance. Finally, Gordon nods, the movement deliberate and measured.

Edward feels it—a warm, fizzing satisfaction bubbling up in his blood, wrapping around his chest like a smug embrace. The chaos of the precinct, the incompetence of those around him, only sharpens the contrast to his own brilliance. Now isn’t the time to revel in it, but he can’t entirely suppress the twitch of his lips, the faint curve pulling into a smirk.

“Let me know if you get any more information,” he says, already shifting his weight, his body leaning into motion with a confidence that borders on arrogance. “I have work to do.”

With that, he spins on his heel, his strides purposeful as he cuts through the chaos. His mind is already leaping ahead, racing toward the glowing orange screens, the tangled systems, the thrill waiting awaiting him.

Off to the side, an administrator stumbles, and a cascade of papers rains between Gordon and Nashton, but he doesn’t pause to gather them. There’s no time.

“Do what you do best, Nashton,” Gordon calls after him, his voice steady and almost encouraging.

Edward doesn’t look back. “Always.”

When Edward finally opened the door to his space, he moved with mechanical precision. His bag slid off his shoulder with practiced ease, and he shrugged out of his coat, hanging it on the rack beside Romy’s without so much as a glance. The dark fabric of her coat brushed against his, the only indication of their shared space, but it barely registered in his mind at that moment.

The room was dim except for the glow of the monitors surrounding his desk, their garish orange hue bathing the space in an offensive, unnatural light. That orange really was an awful color. The sight of it stirred something sharp and unpleasant in his chest, a visceral reaction to the insult against his meticulously designed systems.

He strode across the room, his steps purposeful, the faint thud of his bag hitting the floor punctuating the silence. He didn’t acknowledge Romy’s presence, didn’t even glance in her direction. She might as well have been a piece of furniture for all the attention he spared. Right now, there was only one thing that mattered—whatever disaster had befallen his network.

“Is there anything I can help with?”

At least she wasn’t so stupid as to tell him good morning right then.

“Yes,” he replied thoughtfully, pausing as if giving it honest consideration. “Be quiet.”

Then, his eyes locked onto the offending monitor, his fingers itching for the familiar keys that would let him dismantle whatever pathetic excuse for an attack this was. Edward slid fluidly into his chair, the motion smooth and deliberate, and spun a half-turn to face his hub. The screens flashed and pulsed, their orange glow casting jagged reflections on his glasses as his eyes flitted rapidly across the displays. For a brief moment, he simply observed, assessing the damage with a calculated, clinical detachment.

Someone had crashed his network.

The din of the GCPD outside his door faded into oblivion, the chaos reduced to little more than a faint hum at the edges of his awareness. The scattered papers, the shouting personnel, Loeb—they didn’t matter. They never did. What mattered was the signal bleeding through his systems, corrupting his carefully constructed order.

Someone, somewhere, had made a very grave mistake.

A smirk tugged at the corner of his lips, sharp and humorless, the faintest flicker of satisfaction cutting through his irritation. They thought they were clever, whoever they were. But cleverness was relative.

And Edward Nashton didn’t play by relative measures.

He leaned forward, his hands hovering above the keyboard, every muscle in his body taut with anticipation. Whatever poor fool thought they could best him was about to learn just how far out of their depth they were. Edward wasn’t merely going to fix this—he was going to destroy the culprit. Piece by piece. Byte by byte.

The faint orange glow of the monitors reflected in his eyes as his fingers descended onto the keys, his mind already racing ahead. Edward’s fingers worked with surgical precision. The glow of the orange monitors pulsed in time with the sharp clicks of his typing, a discordant rhythm that grated against his sensibilities.

This wasn’t just a breach; it was a challenge. A gauntlet thrown at his feet. And whoever was responsible was about to regret their audacity.

The login prompt stared back at him, mocking in its simplicity. He typed his credentials in a rapid burst, the muscle memory almost automatic.

ACCESS DENIED.

His eyes narrowed. A second attempt, slower this time, deliberate.

ACCESS DENIED.

His lips curled into a sneer as he leaned back, his fingers steepled in front of his chin. They had locked him out. Of his system. The nerve. His system wasn’t just a collection of files and interfaces—it was an extension of himself, a reflection of his brilliance. And someone had defiled it.

“Persistent, aren’t they?” he muttered.

He didn’t panic. Panic was for lesser minds. Instead, his brain raced through possibilities, cataloging contingencies he’d built into the network. Back doors, fail-safes, redundancies—Edward always planned for sabotage, even if he didn’t expect it to come from such pathetic amateurs.

He toggled a hidden console, a feature buried so deeply in the system’s architecture that only someone with his exact knowledge could hope to find it. His fingers input a sequence of commands designed to bypass the primary login and grant him root access.

“Do you need any help, Mr. Nashton?”

“No.”

The system didn’t respond.

A low growl escaped his throat, and his jaw tightened. They had corrupted the routing tables, severing him from the internal pathways he created. That meant he’d need to approach this from outside the network entirely—a move he rarely had to make. His gaze flicked toward the idle laptop sitting on Romy’s desk, and for the first time since entering the room, he acknowledged her presence directly.

“You, girl,” he snapped at her both verbally and physically. “Your laptop. Give it to me.”

Romy blinked. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“No time for questions. Just hand it over.”

With obvious reluctance, she slid the device across the desk. Edward didn’t waste a second. He flipped open the lid, the faint glow of the screen reflecting off his glasses as it came to life.

The desktop materialized—a cluttered assortment of folders and shortcuts scattered haphazardly across the background. Most of them were labeled with innocuous names like “School,” “Bills,” and “Notes.” But one folder caught his attention immediately. It was tucked neatly in the corner, as though she had tried to keep it out of the way without hiding it completely. The title was simple yet striking: “Siren <3 Sam.” His fingers hesitated, the faintest pause in his otherwise fluid movements. Siren Sam. The name lodged in his mind like a splinter. It was an odd detail, a breadcrumb he filed away for later examination. For now, it didn’t matter.

His fingers resumed their relentless pace, disabling the laptop’s security protocols with ease. He didn’t have time for her preloaded amateur encryptions, though he couldn’t help the faint curl of disdain at the simplicity of her setup. Within moments, he tethered the device to the precinct’s network, routing his connection through an external IP address he had created as a precautionary measure.

This back door wasn’t elegant—it wasn’t meant to be. It was a brute-force approach, designed to give him just enough access to take back control. His fingers fluttered over the keys, bypassing firewalls and isolating the corrupted nodes. The laptop’s screen filled with cascading lines of code, the chaos of the breach rendered in sharp, unforgiving detail.

“What are you doing?” Romy asked, leaning over his shoulder, her curiosity obviously getting the better of her.

“Saving the day,” he snapped, not looking up. “Now hush.”

The system fought back, throwing error messages and corrupted scripts at him with every step. It was a feeble attempt to stall him, but Edward was relentless. His smirk returned as he isolated a key fragment of the attack—a poorly disguised worm buried in the precinct’s database.

“Sloppy,” he muttered to himself, his fingers dancing across the keyboard as he set up a virtual sandbox to contain the worm. He would dismantle it later, piece by piece, after he had taken back control of his network. The laptop pinged faintly as his efforts yielded a breakthrough. A faint glimmer of access—limited but functional—flickered on the screen. His back door worked.

“There,” he said, his voice low and triumphant. “I’m in.”

The moment was cut short as the door swung open, and Detective Gordon strode in.

“Mr. Nashton,” Gordon said, his voice steady but with an urgency that cut through the tension. “We know who we’re dealing with.” Gordon stepped further into the room, his brow furrowed as he extended his phone toward Edward. A live feed played on the screen, its pixelated quality doing little to hide the unsettling imagery.

Edward snatched the device without another word, his attention locking on the screen as his eyes scanned the grainy video feed. Beside him, Romy shifted slightly, the faint brush of her arm against his registering in the periphery of his awareness. He scowled, irritated by the distraction and the unwelcome flicker of warmth it sparked.

On the screen, two digital masks, one orange and the other black, flickered erratically, their jagged, toothy grins and X-shaped eyes giving them an unsettling, almost cartoonish quality. A distorted, nasally voice crackled through the speakers, grating and exaggerated, dripping with smugness.

“Good morning, Gotham City~!” the orange mask cooed, the exaggerated pitch of the speaker sending a ripple of disdain through Edward. He could already picture the type—basement-dwelling, self-important, and terminally online. “I’m Crash!”

“And I’m Override.”

“And we’re Chaos Code!” they announced in unison.

Edward rolled his eyes, and his mouth pulled in a tight line. “Unimaginative.”

Beside him, Romy made a sound of disgust. “And cringe.”

His eyes flicked to her, his mouth twitching slightly before honing his focus on the screen once more.

The black mask shifted slightly and continued, their cadence uneven, veering between playful mockery and thinly veiled menace. “It’s come to our attention that your precious city has gotten a little… complacent.”

“A little too comfortable in its so-called systems of order!” The orange mask bobbed erratically.

Edward’s jaw tightened as the voice droned on, the flickering mask taking on an almost hypnotic quality against the black background.

“We thought it was time to shake things up a bit,” Override sneered. “Let you all feel what it’s like to live on the edge. To really appreciate how fragile your little world is. By now you’ll have—”

“We’ve crashed your city!!” Crash cut in. Their voice crescendoed into a nasally giggle, the sound grating like nails on a chalkboard.

Override grumbled and continued, “Of course, you’ve already figured that out by now—consider that little boom a wake-up call.” Override paused for dramatic effect, the audio crackling faintly in the silence. “The rest? Oh, they’re the real deal.”

“And here’s the kicker, folks,” Crash said in a nasally sing-song voice, “we’ve made sure your beloved emergency services won’t be coming to save you~!”

“No ambulances, no police, no heroic fire trucks. Nothing.” The black mask tilted forward, its X-shaped eyes flashing with distorted light like a corrupted signal. His voice deepened. “Now, let’s talk numbers.”

Edward sneered, already anticipating the inevitable.

“Money. Because, of course, it’s money,” Override sighed dramatically, as if the demand itself was an afterthought. “A measly ten million, wired to our account, and we might consider disarming giving you back your city systems. But oh no, don’t think of this as extortion. Think of it as… an opportunity to prove just how much Gotham values its citizens. Tick-tock~”

The orange mask bobbed erratically, its jagged grin warping slightly with each movement, as if alive. “Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock~!”

The feed abruptly cut off, the screen returning to static.

Edward stared at the now-blank phone, his lips curling into a grimace. “Ten million,” he muttered, his voice laced with derision. “How droll. If they’re going to extort an entire city, they could at least ask for a more creative number.”

“I’d have asked for thirteen billion,” Romy said with a shrug.

Edward blinked and cocked a brow at her. “Thirteen?”

“Favorite number,” she replied simply.

Detective Gordon cleared his throat, and they both snapped their attention to him. He nodded toward the phone. “The systems are still down. We need answers, Nashton. Fast.”

A sense of excitement flared within Edward. The detective was right. He handed the man his phone back and moved toward his desk with purpose, his mind already racing ahead. These so-called hackers—whoever they were—had just made a critical mistake. They’d issued a challenge.

And Edward Nashton never lost.

“Well,” he muttered, his voice low as he settled back into his chair. “It seems they got the first move anyway.” His fingers hovered over the laptop keyboard again, a faint smirk curling at the corner of his lips as the thrill of the chase sharpened his focus. “Now it’s my turn.”

The laptop hummed faintly under his hands as he typed rapidly, bypassing Romy’s device’s basic limitations to tether it securely to the precinct’s network. The crude connection he had established earlier was functional but limited, so he transitioned quickly, rerouting the data through a secure backdoor on his own system.

“I’ll need to patch into my workstation,” he said without looking up. His tone was clipped, as though the words themselves were a distraction from the far more engaging puzzle in front of him.

Lines of code cascaded down the screen as Edward systematically shut down the hackers’ false pathways, clearing the noise from the network. He redirected the fragmented signals, rebuilding the skeleton of his system with swift, precise commands.

“Is there anything I can help with?”

“No. Now hush.”

When the laptop dinged softly, signaling that the tether was complete, he swiveled back to his desk. His fingers glided over the familiar keyboard of his workstation, the dual monitors illuminating his face with their garish orange glow.

“Do you think you can restore the emergency and traffic grids?” Romy’s voice was soft.

She just doesn’t quit.

“Stupid question,” he snapped, not sparing her a glance. “Now that I’ve regained access to the network, I can find them.” He leaned closer to the screen, his eyes narrowing as he explained, more to himself than to her. “They’re broadcasting a signal back to a central hub, likely encrypted, but they’ve overplayed their hand by tampering with the emergency services. That interference left a digital footprint. If I isolate the signal, I can trace it back to the source.”

The map flickered to life, the faint outline of Gotham’s streets glowing in white against the black background. Edward began isolating the signal, moving with precision as he honed in on the overlapping frequencies.

“Now,” he muttered, half to himself, “let’s see where you’re hiding.”

His eyes darted across the screen, taking in the layers of information with practiced ease. Lines of code scrolled past on one monitor as he dismantled the hackers’ defenses, exposing the sloppy underpinnings of their work. On another, a web of citywide network activity bloomed, clusters of spikes lighting up like distant constellations. His lips curled into a faint sneer as he worked.

“Idiots,” he muttered under his breath, his disdain palpable. “Messy routing, over-reliance on automated processes. They’re practically begging to be caught.”

Beside him, Romy leaned forward, her gaze flicking between the glowing monitors. Her hands were clasped behind her back, her posture casual, but Edward caught the faint crease in her brow reflected in the corner of his screen. She was watching intently—too intently.

He didn’t say anything, too engrossed in his work to be bothered by her curiosity. He was close—so close he could feel the answer just out of reach, like a thread waiting to be pulled.

“Wait.”

Edward’s fingers paused mid-keystroke, and his jaw tightened. He eyed her from his periphery. What nonsense is she going on about now? “What?”

“That spike there—” she pointed to a cluster of highlighted nodes on one of the monitors. His eyes followed—“it’s too localized. Every other change spreads out more evenly, but that one... it’s concentrated.”

His scowl deepened, and he huffed. “It’s just noise,” he snapped, but his fingers hovered over the keys, hesitant. The irritation in his tone belied a flicker of curiosity he wouldn’t admit. His eyes flicked again to Romy, and he saw her cock a plucked brow, struggling to contain the smirk tugging at one side of her red lips. Adjusting his jaw, he looked back to the screen. Against his better judgment, he typed a command to isolate the anomaly and analyze its behavior.

The results flashed across the screen, and Edward’s eyes narrowed. The concentrated activity aligned with a critical junction in the hackers’ routing system—a key node that had eluded his initial analysis.

His jaw tightened further as he redirected his focus, rerouting his decryption efforts toward the node. Within moments, the data began to unravel, revealing a clearer path to the source.

“Hmph,” Edward muttered, leaning back slightly as the pieces fell into place. He glanced at Romy, his expression caught somewhere between irritation and reluctant acknowledgment. “A lucky guess,” he said flatly, his voice lacking its usual sharpness.

Romy smirked, crossing her arms under her chest, the movement pulling his gaze briefly before he snapped his focus back to the monitor. “Sure, let’s call it that,” she said.

He returned to his work with a huff, his fingers resuming their rapid rhythm on the keyboard. The glow of the monitors reflected off his glasses as he pushed past the interruption, but there was a faint warmth creeping into his ears that he resolutely ignored. Romy had earned no praise—none at all. Yet, the realization that her insight wasn’t entirely useless unsettled him more than he cared to admit.

The screens flickered ominously, a cascade of warning alerts suddenly flooding Edward’s monitors. A red banner flashed across the top of the primary screen: “Data Breach Detected. System Override Imminent.”

Edward’s fingers froze for a split second, his sharp intake of breath the only indication that he’d been caught off guard. Then, with a low growl, he was back at the keyboard, his movements precise and unrelenting.

“They’re countering,” he muttered, his tone laced with irritation. His eyes darted across the screens, absorbing the hackers’ desperate attempt to erase their trail and overload his system.

The room remained silent; Gordon, a few officers, and administrators who had wandered in watched without a word. Even Romy, for once, didn’t break it. Edward was a man in his element, and there was no denying that the chaos only seemed to sharpen him further.

Lines of malicious code streamed in, forcing a virus through his defenses in a last-ditch effort to fry his equipment and erase all evidence. Alarms pinged relentlessly, the sound grating, but Edward tuned it out, his focus narrowing to a razor-sharp point.

He typed rapidly, a blur of commands filling the input console. His hands moved with surgical precision, each keystroke deliberate and calculated. The virus was clever—adaptive—but not clever enough. Edward’s lips twitched into a faint smirk as he isolated the attack vector and rerouted it into a dummy directory, a kind of digital cul-de-sac meant to contain the infection.

“Don’t even know how to cover their tracks properly,” he muttered, his voice dripping with disdain as he typed a final command.

The virus faltered, stuttering as it encountered his trap. Edward watched with satisfaction as the infection neutralized itself, the malicious code disassembling into harmless fragments within the quarantined space he had created.

The screens settled, the red banners vanishing one by one. The room felt eerily still in the aftermath of the digital assault. Edward leaned back slightly, his fingers still poised over the keys, his gaze locked on the now-stable monitors. A faint beep signaled the full restoration of his system. Edward exhaled, his smirk widening just enough to be noticeable.

His monitors flashed with a final series of confirmations: “Location Identified: Ace Chemicals warehouse, 1313 Spire Avenue, Narrows District. Defunct.” The signal trace locked into place, illuminating a red dot on the digital map. He sat back in his chair, fingers steepled as he surveyed his work with satisfaction. The path was clear; the culprits had nowhere left to hide.

He swiveled in his chair, glancing at Detective Gordon, who had been hovering nearby. “Warehouse on the outskirts of the Narrows,” Edward said, his tone clipped and efficient. “That’s your source. All activity is routing through there. Amateurs, really—they didn’t even bother to mask their fallback relay properly.”

Gordon leaned in, his brow furrowed as he studied the screen. His jaw tightened, and he gave a sharp nod of approval. “Good work.” He straightened, pulling out his cell phone, quickly dialing a number, and soon barking orders with the authority of someone accustomed to chaos.

“SWAT, converge on the abandoned Ace warehouse in the Narrows, 1314 Spire Ave. Suspects in play. Secure the perimeter and prepare for breach.”

He barely acknowledged Gordon, his attention locked on the data cascading across his screens. His fingers moved with frenetic energy, eyes darting across the multiple monitors, hunting for the one thing that could put him back in control.

“And the systems?” Gordon’s voice cut through the intensity, his tone urgent.

Edward’s focus didn’t waver. “Give me a moment,” he muttered, his voice clipped. He toggled between screens, the network map of Gotham unfolding before him, each signal lighting up like a thread leading him to the heart of the city’s chaos.

The emergency response systems were first to appear, flickering in and out like weak, struggling beacons. The traffic grid followed, each point of failure highlighted in bright orange on his screen. Edward’s fingers danced across the keys, isolating each signal, tracing them back to their origins.

“There,” he said, his voice barely containing his satisfaction. “Systems identified. Ready to take control.”

Gordon leaned in, his breath shallow. “Can you restore them?”

Edward smirked, the thrill of the chase flowing through his veins. “Of course. These amateurs have no idea how badly they’ve misconfigured these systems,” he said, his fingers hovering over the keyboard, poised to re-route and override the signals. “Watch and learn.”

He started typing, fast and sure, each keystroke a calculated maneuver in his intellectual game. His fingers flew, bypassing layers of corrupted data and isolating the pathways needed to bring Gotham’s systems back online. The tension in the room mounted with every click of the keys.

But just as his fingers hovered over the final command, a flash on his screen caught his eye—one of the orange alerts shifted, blinking from critical failure to stable.

Then another.

And another.

His smirk faltered. His fingers froze, the realization creeping up on him.

“What the hell?” Edward’s voice was a low growl as he typed faster, trying to force his commands through, to overwrite the stabilizing signals. But every time he made progress, the system surged ahead of him, shutting him out at every turn. The pathways were repairing themselves—but not because of him.

“No,” he muttered, leaning closer to the screen, his frustration mounting with each failed attempt. “No, no, no.”

Gordon’s gaze sharpened. “What’s happening?”

“Someone’s restoring them,” Edward snapped, his jaw clenching as he worked faster, desperation sharpening his focus. His fingers raced to reestablish his control, but the system defied him, the restoration progressing rapidly without his input.

Gordon raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that what we want?”

“Yes, yes. Of course.” Edward’s voice was tight, the frustration palpable. “But it’s not me.”

The map on his screens flickered as more systems came back online: the emergency response network, traffic grids, even internal communications. Edward sat back in his chair, his fists clenched at his sides, his breath coming in sharp, shallow bursts.

Who beat me to the punch?

His jaw tightened as he replayed the sequence in his mind, every detail scrutinized, every possibility considered. The smug satisfaction from moments ago—the thrill of finally getting ahead—was now replaced by a gnawing sense of humiliation. Someone had stolen his victory.

He exhaled sharply, his mind racing. “I had them,” he muttered, but the words felt hollow. The systems were back online—but not by his hand.

Gordon’s phone dinged, and he read aloud, “Warehouse breached. No casualties. Suspects apprehended. All clear.”

Edward barely heard the words. His focus was inward, his thoughts spinning like an unraveled thread. They’d been neutralized. But who? Who was fast enough to outmaneuver him in his own domain?

Someone was faster. Someone was prepared.

For a moment, he sat, chewing the inside of his mouth and bouncing his leg in strained thought. He sucked his teeth and leaned forward. His fingers returned to the keys, moving slower this time as he sifted through logs and system records. “Who are you?” he muttered under his breath, scanning for anything that might tell him what happened. And then he spotted it:

An unauthorized access log, time-stamped only seconds before the signals vanished. The entry was clean, surgical, with no trace of its origin except for an IP ping routed through a private Gotham server. Edward’s lips pulled into a sneer as his mind raced. Whoever it was, they’d used resources far beyond what even the GCPD could muster. He honed in on the log, replaying the exact moment the intrusion occurred. A faint trail remained, almost imperceptible, like a ghost in the machine. It was encrypted—but not perfectly.

Mediocre competence, Edward thought, leaning forward, his irritation laced with a faint sense of opportunity.

He input a decryption command, his eyes narrowing as a symbol flashed briefly on the screen: a dark, stylized bat.

He froze, his fingers hovering mid-keystroke. His breath caught in his throat, and the realization hit him like a jolt of electricity.

Him.

“Batman?” Edward hissed, the name dripping with venom from his lips for the first time.

Edward Nashton sat back in his chair, the muscles in his jaw twitching as his fury sharpened into something colder, more focused. His mind raced ahead, already dissecting the implications. Batman hadn’t just stolen his thunder—he’d done so effortlessly, bypassing Edward’s meticulous work like it was child’s play.

“Of course,” Edward muttered lowly. “Self-appointed savior of Gotham couldn’t resist.”

“What was that?” Gordon asked, glancing at him with a furrowed brow.

“Nothing,” Edward snapped, his tone sharp and clipped. His fingers resumed their furious rhythm on the keyboard as he quickly backed out of the screen, closing the symbol away as if burying the evidence of his momentary lapse in control.

Gordon cleared his throat. “Mr. Nashton,” he said, his voice steady. “Good job. You’ve probably saved lives today.”

Normally, the words would have been a balm to his ego. Good job, Nashton. The kind of acknowledgment he so rarely received and always felt he deserved. He would have let them roll over him, savoring their taste like a fine wine, even if they came from someone as banal as Gordon.

But this time, they were hollow. Empty syllables, devoid of meaning, tainted by the bitter taste of someone else’s interference. His victory was no longer pristine, no longer entirely his own. It had been marred, stolen out from under him in a moment of cruel irony.

This was my win.

Gordon lingered for a moment, watching him with that inscrutable calm. The silence stretched between them, charged and brittle, before the detective nodded once and left the room, the sound of the door clicking shut echoing faintly in his wake.

And then there was quiet.

Edward stared at the now-dormant screen in front of him, his glare sharp enough to burn through the glass. The hum of his workstation was the only sound, a faint, relentless reminder of the triumph stolen from him. His reflection stared back at him in the darkened monitor, his glasses catching the faint glow of the dim overhead lights.

How?

The question pounded through his skull, relentless and infuriating. He replayed the sequence of events in his mind, dissecting them piece by piece, searching for the flaw, the moment he lost control. There was none. His work was flawless, his calculations perfect. He had them.

And yet Batman was fast. Batman was prepared.

His fingers curled into fists, nails biting into his palms through his gloves as his thoughts churned. The audacity of it—of being beaten in his own domain. His systems. His work. The Batman had stepped into his world, trampled through his brilliance, and taken what was his.

The bitterness rose in his throat like bile, sharp and acidic. His jaw tightened, and he leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking faintly beneath him.

This isn’t over.

“Mr. Nashton.”

Edward had forgotten Romy was in the room.

“What?” His tone was clipped, not wanting to hear what nonsensical, incessant questions or inappropriate comments she had that would inevitably piss him off further.

Her voice was soft, calm, lilting in his ears. “Are you okay?”

She shifted gently, sliding into her chair, sitting sideways as she always did when she wanted to pester him. The movement was subtle, almost unconscious, but it pulled his attention. His gaze flickered to her, the sharpness in his glare softening for a brief moment as he studied her.

Her features were calm, untouched by the tension that wrapped around him like a vice. There was no cheeky smirk, no sly remark lingering at the edges of her painted lips. Just quiet observation, patient and steady, as though she was waiting for something he didn’t know how to give.

Edward didn’t look away this time, not immediately. His eyes traced the lines of her face, the curve of her jaw, the delicate stroke of her neck. The now calm glow of the monitors illuminated the faint sheen of her skin, softening the edges of the room’s light.

How do you do that? he wondered, the thought unbidden and unwelcome. How do you sit there so composed, so serene, when I feel like the ground beneath me has shifted? When everything I thought I controlled has slipped through my fingers?

His hands rested on the edge of his desk, fingers curling slightly as though grasping for something solid. His glasses caught the faint glow of the monitors, the light obscuring his eyes. For a long moment, he didn’t answer, his thoughts churning like a storm he couldn’t contain.

He loosened his fists. Then he forced himself to speak.

“Yes.”

Edward’s gaze dropped back to the desk as he leaned forward, his elbows resting on the surface. He couldn’t look at Romy anymore, not when the calmness in her expression felt like a mirror he didn’t want to face. But the lie lingered, unchallenged, because she didn’t press him. She simply nodded, her posture easing slightly, and the silence stretched again, no longer taut but quieter.

Edward pressed his palms flat against the desk, his fingers splaying out as he exhaled sharply through his nose. He didn’t need her concern or her quiet questions. What he needed was control—over his work, over his mind, over himself.

“Sooo, that was cool. You saved the day,” Romy said lightly, leaning back in her chair with a nonchalant grin.

Edward rolled his eyes, but notably, he didn’t scowl. “I didn’t save anything,” he said after a beat, his tone clipped but lacking its usual venom. “I stopped incompetence from prevailing. There’s a difference.”

“Semantics,” she quipped, tilting her head as she watched him settle into his chair.

He didn’t reply, his focus already shifting entirely to the task at hand. His fingers flew over the keyboard as he began the meticulous process of patching and bolstering the precinct’s compromised systems. Edward’s gaze sharpened, narrowing at the screen as lines of code scrolled past.

Romy sat up straighter, her curiosity piqued. “Want some help?”

“I need you to not mess anything up,” Edward muttered without sparing her a glance, his fingers moving in a rhythmic blur.

“Relax, Mr. Nashton. Patching is one of my superpowers,” she replied, pulling her laptop closer.

His hands paused mid-keystroke, and he finally glanced at her, his lips pressed into a thin line. For a fleeting moment, something akin to skepticism flickered in his eyes. “Fine,” he said reluctantly, his voice tinged with hesitation. “But don’t dawdle. Efficiency is key.”

“Yes, sir,” Romy replied with a cheeky salute before spinning away in her chair, grabbing her laptop from the corner of his desk.

The sound of typing soon filled the room. Edward’s keystrokes were rapid, a steady staccato as he worked with unrelenting focus. Opposite him, Romy’s typing was slower, each key pressed deliberately as she worked through her process. He had noticed this over the past two weeks. While the work she submitted to him was neat and near perfect, she was slow, almost too deliberate. The contrast between her measured approach and his own lightning-fast precision grated on him. He could tell she was thinking about everything she did, as if trying to remember choreography. And yet, to his chagrin, he begrudgingly trusted that she would get it right—eventually.

The steady sound of her nails flitted through the room, a rhythm that would usually drive him mad.

But, for reasons he couldn’t quite name, the sound wasn’t unwelcome right now.

After working in silence for the rest of the day, Edward stopped only to pop his knuckles and flex his hands. Because of the morning’s debacle, he had done far more work than usual in a shorter amount of time. His palms ached, but it was something he typically ignored. He took a deep breath, about to settle back into his work. Briefly, his eyes flitted to Romy—really an unconscious action—and what he saw halted him. She was at her desk, her chin resting lightly on her hand as she peered at the screen. Her usual confidence, the playful smirks and teasing remarks, were nowhere to be found. Instead, she looked… focused. Quiet. Almost vulnerable.

Edward frowned, his gaze lingering despite himself. It was unsettling, this image of her stripped of her usual bravado. For the first time, he noticed the way her fingers moved with care over the keys, the way her lips pressed together as if she were silently talking through the problem in front of her. She wasn’t just sitting there to pass time—she was working. And she was serious about it.

It was a startling contrast to the disruption she usually brought to his day. She was always quick with a quip, a sharp remark that grated on his nerves, yet now, she was entirely absorbed in her task, unaware of his scrutiny. He caught himself staring and quickly looked back to his own screen, but the quietness of her focus lingered in his mind.

Minutes passed, the soft tapping of her keyboard filling the space between them. He glanced up again, this time less sharply, his curiosity outweighing his irritation. She had tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her posture slightly slouched as she leaned closer to the screen—such a relaxed state he was not used to seeing. The late afternoon fading into the evening had dulled the usual vibrancy of her presence, and there was something oddly grounding about seeing her like this—human, imperfect, and completely absorbed in something outside of herself.

He didn’t know why it bothered him. Maybe it was because this version of her—this quieter, more serious version—felt like a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit the picture he’d painted of her. Maybe it was because it reminded him, uncomfortably, that she wasn’t just a disruption. She was capable. And worse, she might even be worth paying attention to.

The sound of her muttering under her breath caught his ears. It was faint, almost imperceptible, but enough to make him smirk despite himself. She was frustrated, clearly wrestling with whatever she was working on, and for some reason, the sight of it didn’t irritate him the way he expected it to. Instead, it felt oddly… familiar.

Before he could dwell on the thought, Romy sat up abruptly, breaking the spell. “Got it,” she muttered to herself, her voice soft but triumphant. She stretched, her arms reaching above her head, and he quickly averted his gaze, his scowl returning.

She leaned back in her chair, one arm draping over the backrest as she spun lazily in her seat. Edward watched her for a fraction of a second before leaning back himself, his hands resting loosely on the arms of his chair. It wasn’t often that he allowed himself to relax, even slightly, but the tasks of the day were fading, leaving him momentarily untethered.

The office was quiet, the kind of stillness that wrapped around the edges of the room like a thick, invisible curtain. The lack of windows gave the space a liminal feel, something detached from time, something solitary. Private.

His gaze rested on her, calm yet observant, his sharp eyes tracing the subtle details he couldn’t help but catalog. Her plum sweater was soft and slightly oversized, the collar slouching just enough to hint at the line of her neck. A gray pleated skirt fell neatly over her lap, and he noted the leggings she had paired with it today. It had been colder that morning—he remembered the bite of the wind, the frost slicking the sidewalks.

Her fingers moved idly, playing with a strand of her hair, petting it, twisting it. The movement was unhurried, almost hypnotic. His attention drifted, following the delicate rise and fall of her hands. Then she bit her lip.

Edward’s gaze flitted there instantly.

The soft, stained flesh gave way under the faint pressure of her white teeth, red lipstick faded and worn down naturally over the course of the day. The imperfection drew his focus, the contrast between her composed demeanor and this casual, unguarded detail.

The motion of her lips moving registered before the sound of her voice reached him.

“You know,” she said, the silence breaking with an almost tangible shiver, “you really were incredible this morning, Mr. Nashton.”

The words were casual, effortless, yet there was something deliberate in the way she delivered them. A demure look crossed her face, too perfect to be anything but practiced. She brushed that errant strand of hair behind her ear, and his gaze followed the motion like a thread pulling taut. Her words scratched at that familiar itch—the one buried deep in his chest, a place he didn’t like to acknowledge, let alone confront.

His eyes met hers. “I know,” he muttered, his voice softer than usual.

Those easy eyes of Romy’s studied him, her gaze lingering with that curious blend of amusement and something else, something he couldn’t quite place. It felt like a challenge, subtle and maddening. He held her gaze, his jaw tightening and his brows knitting together in a small effort to reassert control.

She didn’t press him further. Instead, she turned back to her laptop, shifting slightly in her chair, the soft rustle of fabric breaking the silence. The quiet that followed was different, layered with an unspoken tension that Edward wasn’t used to sharing with another person. It was calm but charged, intimate in a way he found simultaneously unsettling and… not unpleasant.

“I really need to get going,” Romy said with a sigh as she began to stuff her belongings into her bag with practiced ease. “I have some homework to do.”

His posture was uncharacteristically relaxed, but his eyes were sharp, tracking her movements. She rose with a fluidity that annoyed him for reasons he couldn’t articulate. Her easy expression was maddeningly neutral.

“Thank you for your time,” she said, slipping her bag into the crook of her elbow with a practiced motion. “I had fun. I’ll see you next week.”

Edward offered a curt nod, his lips pressing into a thin line, unwilling to give her more than that.

The soft clack of her heeled boots echoed as she moved toward the door, each step measured, unhurried. The sound grated at him faintly, but his eyes still followed the rhythm, flicking down to the floor and then trailing back up her legs as she paused to grab her coat.

She slipped it on with an effortless tug, her hair falling loose from the collar and settling around her shoulders. The motion, fluid and thoughtless, drew his attention longer than he intended. Long enough for his gaze to linger, for irritation to creep into his chest. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, forcing himself to focus elsewhere.

At the doorframe, she paused, her fingers brushing lightly along the edge as she glanced back.

“Btdubs—” The slang dropped casually from her lips, jolting his focus back to her. Edward’s gaze snapped up, his sharp glare meeting her calm, unreadable expression. His irritation flickered back to life, but it didn’t land quite where he expected.

She leaned slightly against the frame, her smirk faint, teasing. “It’s an honor to learn from someone as brilliant and talented as yourself, Mr. Nashton,” she said smoothly, the balance between playful and sincere tipping just enough to leave him uneasy.

The smolder in her gaze pinned him to the spot, the casual confidence in her words and expression striking a nerve he didn’t want to name. Then, the door clicked softly shut behind her, leaving Edward in a silence that felt heavier than it should.

He stayed still, leaned back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the door as though expecting it to swing open again. His mind churned against the quiet, replaying her parting words despite his best efforts to push them aside. The scowl began to return, slower this time, settling into something more like frustration. The odd calm she’d left behind gnawed at him, burrowing under his skin. It wasn’t the sharp, hot irritation he was accustomed to with her. This was something quieter and almost comforting.

Edward hated it.

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