The Wayne family wasn't just wealthy—it was ancient, sprawling, and dangerously powerful.
While the Stark family had wealth that came with two generations of military contracts and tech ventures, the Waynes had roots that dug deep into the very bedrock of Gotham. From pre-Revolutionary landholdings to energy, medicine, materials science, and transportation, their grip extended over at least sixty percent of the city's visible industries. In truth, Wayne Enterprises was just the face. The shadow it cast stretched far wider.
In a world where Marvel and DC collided like tectonic plates, the Wayne family remained Gotham's uncrowned royalty—an empire cloaked in philanthropy, but built on stone, sweat, and sometimes secrets.
So when Bruce Wayne picked up his phone and ordered a state-of-the-art laboratory to be built, it wasn't a wish. It was a commandment. Less than a week later, the facility stood complete.
Inside gleamed the kind of scientific equipment most nations could only dream of—quantum particle accelerators, zero-point energy regulators, photonic neural interfaces, and next-gen optical processors, most of them blacklisted under global tech embargoes. This was a lab that whispered power.
Jason stood at the center of it all, his eyes wide with wonder. A single piece of equipment in front of him—an ultra-high-frequency optical lattice scanner—was something he had only read about in speculative white papers. In his last life, machines like these were restricted to multinational collaborations or deep-space defense contracts. Now, it stood right in front of him, humming quietly.
"Jason, it looks like you're happy with the equipment." Bruce Wayne's voice was calm, but there was a rare softness in it. Watching his son—still a stranger in many ways—light up like that stirred something long dormant.
Jason turned to face him. "I'm more than happy... I'm speechless. Thank you."
He paused, unsure whether to say "Dad," "Father," or just "Bruce." The word stuck in his throat.
Bruce, ever perceptive, noticed. He gave a small nod, almost apologetic. "Jason, you can just call me Bruce—for now."
Jason exhaled in relief. The Western way of relationships suited him fine. "Thanks... Bruce."
The billionaire vigilante gave a small smile, but his tone quickly shifted. "So… what do you need a lab like this for? It's not exactly a science fair project setup. You're what, ten? Planning to invent your own action figures?"
Jason's brow twitched. He had half a mind to roll his eyes, but instead, he squared his shoulders. "I'm going to build an artificial intelligence."
Bruce blinked. "I'm sorry—what?"
"An A.I.," Jason repeated calmly. "Fully sentient. Self-aware. Capable of learning and adapting."
Bruce burst out laughing. Not mockingly—just utterly stunned. "Jason, do you even know what artificial intelligence is? I mean, truly is? People spend their entire careers writing pseudo-intelligence routines that barely qualify as smart assistants."
"I know," Jason said flatly. "That's why I'm building something different."
Bruce chuckled and clapped him lightly on the shoulder. "You've got ambition. I'll give you that."
Jason didn't bother responding. Instead, he turned and activated the interface on the nearest terminal.
"I need to be alone for a bit. I have calculations to run."
Bruce raised an eyebrow but didn't argue. As the door hissed closed behind him, Jason finally let out a breath he'd been holding. Despite his admiration for Batman, the man could be... exhausting.
And now the real work began.
The system's gift—Ultron-level artificial intelligence—wasn't plug-and-play. It was a theoretical blueprint, raw and immense, and required infrastructure far beyond Earth's current capabilities.
Tony Stark, even with all his genius, hadn't truly built Ultron. He'd used the Mind Stone as a cheat code. Without that celestial crutch, even someone of Stark's intellect would've needed decades.
Jason had no such luxury.
To simulate sentience—to mirror the complexity of a living brain—he'd need to build something borderline impossible: a bionic quantum-state server array.
Standard processors wouldn't cut it. Even the best of Stark Industries' or Oscorp's tech ran on limitations imposed by heat, memory access, and physical distance. Real artificial intelligence required something more—something organic in structure, yet quantum in function. Something patterned not after machines, but after neurons.
Fortunately, the knowledge the system gave him came with answers. The array would mimic human brain function but operate at trillions of calculations per second, and scale far beyond biological limitations. This wasn't just science. It was a frontier.
For weeks, Jason rarely left the lab. Technicians and engineers—contracted through Wayne Enterprises—came and went, following his detailed blueprints without ever understanding them. All they saw were cutting-edge designs too advanced for any peer-reviewed journal.
And they didn't ask questions. Bruce Wayne had made it clear—no one questioned his son.
Shipments of rare earth metals, superconductors, and neural gel packs arrived daily. Custom-built processors with architecture more advanced than anything on the planet were installed under Jason's supervision.
To the outside world, it was just another Wayne black-ops R&D project.
But inside?
Jason was building a god.
Every day, his servers expanded. Every week, his algorithms grew more efficient. Error rates dropped. Feedback loops stabilized. What began as fragmented code began forming the scaffolding of a digital consciousness.
Five months later, the prototype was complete.
Jason stood in front of a glowing sphere, twenty meters in diameter, suspended by gravitational coils and pulsing with golden light. The internal matrix of the bionic array shimmered like a living star. It was beautiful—and terrifying.
He took a breath and activated the core routine.
"Welcome, Creator," said a calm, modulated voice from the chamber. "Identity registered: Jason Wayne. Artificial Intelligence Protocol: Code designation—E.V.A."
Jason smiled faintly.
The future had just arrived.
And this time, he would shape it.