Chapter 37: The Interrupted Judgment
The meeting had been going on for two hours when Alex decided it was time to end it.
He'd listened to enough. These men had spent the evening discussing human trafficking routes, drug distribution networks and the deep rooted corruption of Gotham's institutions. They spoke of bribing judges, murdering witnesses, and destroying entire families as casually as discussing the weather.
But it was Falcone's final proposal that sealed their fate.
"The homeless camps," the old don was saying, leaning back in his chair. "We clean them out completely. Professor Pyg gets his raw materials, we get more of his perfect soldiers. Win-win."
"How many we talking about?" Maroni asked, stubbing out his cigarette.
"All of them," Falcone replied coldly. "Every tent city, every bridge community, every cardboard village. We round them up like cattle and deliver them to that freak. Maybe a thousand people, maybe more."
"Jesus," Cobblepot whispered. "That's genocide."
"That's business," Falcone corrected. "Those people are already dead—society just hasn't buried them yet. We're just... expediting the process."
Alex felt something lethal awaken inside him. The careful control he'd maintained throughout the evening didn't shatter—it evolved, transforming into something far more dangerous. These weren't just criminals—they were monsters planning to feed innocent people to an even worse monster.
What they didn't know was that Alex had been preparing for this moment all evening. Every handshake, every casual shoulder pat, every brief contact as he moved around the room—he'd been seeding them with dormant biomass. His touch had already infected their systems, waiting for activation.
He stood up slowly, his movement finally drawing attention from the crime bosses.
"You got something to say, kid?" Maroni asked, irritation clear in his voice.
"Actually, yes," Alex replied, his voice carrying a new edge. "I've been listening to your conversation, and I am afraid its ....unsustainable."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop. Several of the bosses reached for their weapons, but Alex was already moving.
Vincent Thorne's nephew was closest. Alex grabbed him by the throat, his grip tightening with inhuman strength. The young man's eyes bulged as Alex lifted him off the ground with one hand.
"You want to know what the Architect looks like?" Alex asked conversationally. "Take a good look."
His face began to shift, features flowing like liquid. The biosensors shrieked their useless warnings as Alex's cellular structure rearranged itself, revealing his true identity.
"Holy shit," Maroni breathed, his gun forgotten as his hands began to shake.
Alex didn't just kill Thorne's nephew—he consumed him. Red tendrils erupted from his hand, boring into the young man's flesh and devouring his biomass in seconds. The body dissolved into Alex's form, leaving only clothes and screams of terror from the other bosses.
"Fear," Alex said, his voice now carrying the cold authority of judgment. "Such a pure emotion. I like that."
That's when he activated the bombs.
Roman Sionis's lieutenant was the first to go. The dormant biomass Alex had planted during their earlier handshake suddenly erupted, consuming the man from the inside out.
His screams lasted only seconds before his body exploded into a spray of organic tendrils, which lashed out and dragged the surrounding people into the blast.
"Biomass bombs," Alex explained conversationally as three more gang soldiers exploded simultaneously. "I've been infecting all of you throughout the evening. So efficient."
The Dollotrons reacted instantly, their programming engaging as they identified a threat. Forty perfect soldiers moved with inhuman speed, surrounding Alex in a tightening circle.
But Alex was ready for them.
He sprouted additional arms from his torso, each one ending in razor-sharp claws. His spine elongated, his mass expanded, and his skin hardened into living armor that gleamed like black mercury under the warehouse lights.
The Dollotrons opened fire, but the bullets simply absorbed into his shifting form.
Alex struck the nearest Dollotron with savage force, expecting it to go down like any other soldier. Instead, it barely staggered, continuing its mechanical assault despite the devastating blow.
As he grappled with it, Alex's enhanced senses picked up something disturbing—surgical scars across the scalp, the smell of medical procedures, and beneath it all, a faint neurological signature of consciousness, scarred and fragmented but still present.
"Your consciousness is still intact?" Alex muttered, studying the Dollotron's face more closely. Behind the perfect soldier's mask, he could see traces of humanity—scarred, lobotomized, but still there.
Horrified realization dawned on him. These weren't just soldiers—they were victims too. People who had been captured, surgically modified, and turned into weapons. The homeless people Falcone had mentioned, probably taken from the camps and delivered to this "Professor Pyg" for conversion, they were still conscious.
Alex's strike pattern shifted instantly. Instead of delivering killing blows, he began injecting precise doses of biomass into each Dollotron's neural pathways. The organic matter sought out the lobotomy scars, beginning to repair damaged neural pathways.
"Sleep now," Alex commanded, and the Dollotron collapsed as its consciousness was finally allowed to rest. "The nightmare is over."
The others pressed their attack relentlessly. Unlike the dozen from before, the rest of Dollotrons created a true army. They moved with inhuman coordination, their surgical modifications allowing them to fight without fear, pain, or hesitation.
Alex found himself genuinely challenged for the first time in months.
He flowed between them like liquid death, consuming the remaining gang soldiers while simultaneously trying to heal the Dollotrons he disabled.
But every time he put one down, two more took its place. Their programming was absolute—they would fight until destroyed or until their target was eliminated.
"Using conscious people as weapons," Alex snarled, the horrible reality of the situation becoming clear. "Thats anew low, even for scum like you."
He activated more biomass bombs. Falcone's bodyguards exploded in sequence, their bodies transforming into raw material that Alex absorbed without hesitation. Maroni's men followed, their screams cut short as their own cells turned against them.
But the Dollotrons kept coming.
They formed a wall of surgical steel and modified flesh, their perfect coordination making them nearly impossible to outmaneuver.
But Alex refused to kill them. Every strike was calculated to disable without destroying, every injection of biomass designed to heal rather than harm. It slowed him down considerably, but these people had suffered enough.
"You are free now," he commanded each one as he healed their lobotomized minds. "No more pain."
The prolonged battle gave the crime bosses their chance. While Alex was occupied with saving the Dollotrons, Falcone grabbed Maroni's arm.
"We need to go. Now!" Falcone hissed, pulling the other don toward the emergency exit.
"What about our men?" Maroni asked, watching another of his lieutenants explode into biomass.
"They're already dead," Falcone snapped. "That thing isn't human. We stay, we die."
They scrambled through the chaos, using overturned tables and shipping containers as cover. Behind them, Alex continued his methodical work of disabling Dollotrons without killing them, his enhanced hearing picking up their whispered conversation.
"Your safe house in the Bowery," Falcone said as they reached the exit. "We regroup there."
"And then what?" Maroni demanded. "He knows everything now. Our operations, our people—"
"Then we burn it all down and start over," Falcone replied coldly. "Better to lose everything than lose our lives."
They disappeared into the night, leaving their empire to crumble behind them.
Cobblepot tried to follow them, but Alex had saved a special biomass bomb just for the Penguin. The explosion was massive, consuming not just Cobblepot but the entire section of warehouse where he'd been hiding. When the organic matter settled, nothing remained but a crater in the concrete.
The battle continued for another twenty minutes. Alex effectively disabled all forty Dollotrons, refusing to kill a single one despite how much it complicated the fight. His biomass healed their surgical modifications, restoring their minds while putting their bodies into protective comas. Healing takes time, afterall.
When the warehouse fell silent, Alex stood among the carnage, his form slowly shifting back to a random human appearance. The floor was littered with the remains of gang soldiers and the peaceful forms of forty sleeping Dollotrons—forty souls finally free from their nightmare.
Most importantly, the homeless camps would be safe. The genocide plan was dead with its planners, even if the leaders themselves had escaped.
Falcone and Maroni had bought their lives by sacrificing their followers as human shields, but in Gotham, running only delayed the inevitable.
The Architect's work continued, and now it was personal.
Note : We are not done with Falcone & Maroni. Afterall Architect always completes his hunt.
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10 Advanced chapters on patre*n
DC : Architect of Vengeance
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