DC : Architect of Vengeance

Alex took a deep breath and dove.

The water was shockingly cold as he plunged through the flooded room toward the glowing vault door. The emotional fragment had dissolved around him, but he could still feel her presence—a warm current guiding him downward, her trust in him like a beacon in the dark depths.

The fragment in his grasp pulsed urgently as they descended, sending out warning signals repeatedly. But Alex pressed on, following the steady glow that grew brighter with each stroke.

Behind and above him, he could hear the Hollow Primate moving through Emily's mindscape with intensity, its search becoming more aggressive now that it had detected a disturbance.

The vault door materialized before him, it was massive—easily twice his height—and appeared to be constructed from some impossible fusion of advanced technology and raw psychic energy. Neural pathways traced across its surface like glowing veins, pulsing in complex patterns that hurt to look at directly.

This wasn't just a door; it was a fortress, a final sanctuary built by Emily's subconscious to protect her most precious secret.

The moment Alex's fingers made contact, the water around him simply... ceased. He found himself standing in a dry corridor that stretched impossibly far in both directions, the vault door now behind him, sealed and silent.

The hallway was unlike anything he'd encountered in Emily's mindscape so far. Instead of the organic walls of the other levels, this space felt clean and organized—like walking through the inside of a computer server.

Light pulsed along fiber-optic cables that ran along the ceiling, and the air hummed with the sound of processing power turned to maximum capacity.

This was Emily's core consciousness, the deepest level of her mind where her most fundamental self resided.

Alex walked forward, the fragment's heat growing more intense with each step. The corridor began to branch, creating a maze of pathways that twisted and folded in ways that defied three-dimensional logic.

But there was a pattern here, a logic he was beginning to understand. Emily's mind, even fragmented, was still a scientist's mind. Her defenses weren't random—they were systematic and methodical.

So he followed the strongest pulse of the neural pathways, trusting that they would lead him to the core. The hallways grew narrower as he progressed, and the walls began to display streams of data—research notes, experimental results, theoretical frameworks that scrolled past too quickly to read.

Then he heard it: singing.

It was coming from ahead, from a chamber that glowed with soft, warm light—so different from the corridors.

Alex rounded a final corner and stopped.

The chamber beyond was vast, its ceiling lost in shadows that seemed to stretch up into infinity. But unlike the sterile hallways, this space felt alive.

The walls were covered with what looked like living neural networks—dendrites and synapses that sparkled with electrical activity, creating patterns of incredible beauty.

And in the center of it all, sitting on a simple wooden chair that looked wildly out of place among all the organic technology, was a child.

She appeared to be about ten years old, with Emily's distinctive features but a bit more chubbiness. She wore a lab coat that was far too large for her small frame, and her dark hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail. She was drawing in a notebook balanced on her knees, humming a melody as she worked.

But what struck Alex most was the expression on her face. There was no fear here, no terror or fragmentation. This child looked... peaceful. Content. As if she had been waiting patiently for someone to find her, secure in the knowledge that eventually, someone would.

She looked up as Alex approached, and her eyes—Emily's eyes, but younger and clearer—studied him calmly.

"You're not supposed to be here," she said calmly. "You couldn't have found this place without the help of other Emilies. The Hollow Primate should have stopped you—but you got through anyway." She tilted her head. "Flash sent you?"

Alex held up the fragment, which was now glowing so brightly it hurt to look at. "Yes. I came to help you integrate. I got this along the way. A piece of Emily. Of you."

The child's eyes widened with genuine delight. "Oh! You found her! She's been so scared, hasn't she? They all have."

The child reached out, gently taking it from him. She cradled it in both hands, staring at it with fierce concentration. The light seemed to steady as she focused, and after a long moment, she lifted her gaze to his. Her lips curved into a faint smile. "Hello, Alex."

Her expression grew sad. "I've been trying to reach to the ones on the outside, to let them know I'm still here safe. But my words don't carry far through the interference."

"What interference?" Alex asked, though he suspected he already knew.

"The Hollow Primate," she said simply. "The thing Grodd left behind. It's been searching for me for so long, disrupting everything, making it impossible for the fragments to communicate properly. That's why the integration keep failing. We can't coordinate when there's something constantly jamming our signals."

Alex knelt down so he was at eye level with the child. "What do you have that it wants so badly?"

The girl's expression grew serious, older somehow, as if the weight of adult knowledge was suddenly pressing down on her small shoulders. "The discovery. What Dr. Emily found right before Grodd attacked." She held up her notebook, and Alex could see that what he'd thought were simple drawings were actually incredibly complex diagrams.

"It's a way to move consciousness," she continued, her young voice now carrying gravity way beyond her age. "Not just read minds or manipulate thoughts, like Grodd does. Actually transfer the complete essence of a person from one brain to another. Or..." she paused, looking directly at Alex, "into a machine. Into a computer. Into anything capable of supporting conscious thought."

No wonder Grodd had been willing to destroy Emily's mind to get this information. In the wrong hands, this technology could be used to steal bodies and to achieve a kind of immortality.

The conversation stopped abruptly, and the child's head snapped up with sudden alarm. Through the neural networks on the walls, Alex could see pulses of red light racing toward them like infection spreading through a bloodstream.

"It knows," the child whispered. "It found us. The Hollow Primate is coming.We have to shift again."

The chamber shuddered, and cracks began to appear in the organic walls. Through those cracks, Alex could glimpse something massive moving through the spaces between thoughts—the Hollow Primate, Grodd's psychic bloodhound, finally closing in on its quarry after its long, patient hunt.

"No. You have to integrate," Alex said urgently. "All the fragments, including you."

The child shook her head, fear creeping into her young features for the first time. "If I integrate, if I join with the others, the discovery comes with me. It will be able to extract it directly from a unified mind. At least while we're separated—"

The red pulses on the walls were getting closer, and the chamber was beginning to shake more violently. Through the network of synapses, Alex could see the hunter's true form beginning to materialize—something that was part gorilla, part shadow, part raw malevolent intelligence. It had found them at last.

"Trust me," Alex said, holding out the fragment toward the child. "Trust Emily. Trust the Team Flash that sent me here to save you. Let me help you become whole again."

The child looked at the glowing fragment in her hand, then up at his face, searching for something—honesty, maybe, or the kind of determination that could stand against the darkness that had haunted her for so long.

"If I do this," she said quietly, "if we integrate, and it gets the discovery anyway..."

"It won't," Alex said firmly. "I'll make sure of that. You focus on integration—on becoming Emily again. I'll handle this thing. I'll keep it away from you while you're vulnerable when the fragments are coming together. You won't face this alone."

The child's eyes widened with something like hope. "You'll fight it? But it's part of Grodd, it's—"

"You dont have to worry about that," Alex said.

The child was quiet for a long moment, the weight of the decision pressing down on them both as it's presence grew stronger. Then she smiled—not the innocent smile of a child, but with more determination.

"Alright, Alex Thorne," she said, closing her notebook and standing up from her chair.

In the next moment, she held the fragment with both hands, and together they shot upward, streaking toward the vaulted heights of the chamber. Pure, brilliant light erupted in its trail, flooding outward through every neural pathway in Emily's mind, calling her scattered pieces home.

The integration had begun. And outside, the Hollow Primate roared with fury as its prize slipped through its fingers like sand, hammering harder at the vaulted door in a desperate bid to break through.

Notes :

1. I'm wrapping up the mind part.

2. In the next arc, Alex will return to the psychos in Gotham. I've already thought of some cool scenarios to introduce the villain and how to kill him.

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DC : Architect of Vengeance

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