However, the mechanics of "Awakening" a ghost was dangerous. For an IBM to develop its own Self-Will, it had to be released without directives. It needed to exist in a vacuum of command, allowed to linger in the physical world until a semblance of independent consciousness sparked within its jagged frame. The cost was the loss of absolute obedience, once the ghost "woke up," it would start doing its own thing, driven by the subconscious echoes of its host.
In Italy, John had come close to this threshold several times. But every time he felt the ghost beginning to drift into its own rhythm, his survival instinct flared. He had always intervened at the last second, reeling the shadow back in or seizing its mental strings with his own. The thought of an uncontrollable entity sharing his headspace had always sat wrong with him, until now.
His current confidence was rooted in his own mental fortification. John hypothesized that his high mental capacity and the sheer range he already commanded meant his "tether" was stronger than the average Ajin's. He believed that even if the ghost developed a personality, his own will would remain the dominant force.
Leaning back against the leather seat as the car hummed through the rain-slicked streets of Gotham, John made his decision. He gave it no orders. He didn't even look at it. He simply let it exist. Now, it was a waiting game.
The car came to a sudden, smooth halt as the traffic light bled red. Directly alongside them sat a GCPD cruiser. From the back seat, John caught the brief, calculating glance the officers flicked toward his sedan before they looked away, their expressions unreadable.
Unknown to John, he had already captured Gotham's attention the moment he breached its airspace.
He didn't have a bounty on his head, at least, not yet. It was simply the way the city works. Every resident here possessed a predatory instinct for the unfamiliar, they knew the second someone new touched down on their soil.
As his black sedan cruised deeper into the urban side, it passed under the gaze of a thousand eyes. With every block, information was silently taken and shared. In the shadows of alleyways and behind tinted windows, the same questions rippled through the streets. Do we recognize him? Is he a returning resisdent, or fresh blood?
It soon became clear to every watchful eye, this was someone new, someone unknown. To the street-level scouts, he looked like just another bored rich kid who had heard the dark legends of Gotham and decided to take a stroll through the fire for the "experience."
Gotham had seen his type a thousand times before. The city welcomed them, but only because a newcomer meant fresh capital was about to be delivered into the hands of whoever caught the "fresh meat" first, before the meat scurried back to away in a state of permanent trauma.
John had been marked as exactly that. He was the target, though he remained blissfully unaware of the crosshairs on his back. Until this very moment.
Only a few seconds had ticked by since the car stopped. John sat with his eyes closed, resting in the quiet of the cabin. But outside, the shadows of a nearby alley detached themselves as a group rushed toward the sedan.
Cherry, gripping the wheel in the driver's seat, was the first to see them. Her instinct screamed at her to floor the accelerator, but she caught the silhouette of the police cruiser in her peripheral vision. The cops themselves weren't the threat, she could handle them easily but John's standing orders were clear no attention.
Running a red light right under the nose of the GCPD was the fastest way to turn a quiet arrival into a city-wide headline. She hesitated, her foot hovering between the brake and the gas, as the gap between the car and the approaching threat closed.
"Sir, we have a problem," Cherry said, her voice tight. Before she could finish the sentence, the rear passenger window imploded.
The sharp, crystalline explosion of shattering glass forced John's eyes open. He was instantly met with a scene of chaotic, grimy disorder that felt entirely alien to the quiet luxury of the sedan's interior.
The car was swarmed. A desperate, ragged mob had surged from the shadows, wielding a range of arsenal. John's eyes flicked across the line of attackers, he saw rusted kitchen knives, a heavy-duty industrial hammer, and even a notched cutlass that looked like a relic from a museum.
A soft, unexpected chuckle vibrated through the cabin. John pulled his gaze from the mob to the rearview mirror. The sound had come from Cherry, but by the time their eyes met, her expression had shifted back to a mask of stone-faced professionalism.
John's brow furrowed in a deep frown, but his focus was quickly diverted to the driver's side window. A man stood there, hidden behind a cheap rubber mask, pressing the muzzle of a handgun directly against the glass.
"Hey! Open the fucking door!" a raspy voice barked through the jagged hole where the window used to be.
The heat and stench of the Gotham streets poured into the air-conditioned car, and for the first time since he'd crossed the city limits, the "experience" John had sought had become violently real.
Cherry had only been under John's command for a few days, but in that short time, he had been a complete enigma. He was too silent, too detached, moving through the world with an air of profound disinterest that bordered on the eerie.
Yet, Cherry wasn't a fool. You didn't get hand-picked by Ra's al Ghul to serve as an instructor if you were ordinary. She had spent every waking minute observing him, and she'd realized that his bored exterior was a lie, nothing, not a stray shadow or a shift in wind escaped his notice. He saw everything, he just didn't seem to care about any of it.
Until the glass broke.
The chuckle that had escaped her was a lapse in professionalism, a rare crack in her own mask. It wasn't because she was nervous, she was more than capable of painting the pavement with these thugs, and she knew John was likely a top threat in his own right. It was the sheer, indignant shock on his face.
Imagine the most stoic, serious person you've ever known suddenly losing their composure. That was John. He cherished his space and his silence with a near-religious devotion, and now his pristine sanctuary had been violated by the stench of the gutter and the screams of the desperate.
The look on his face screamed "What the fuck?" It was the expression of a man whose patience had been snapped.
Cherry's hand drifted toward the concealed holster beneath the steering column, her eyes shifting from the gunman at her window to the reflection of the boy in the back. She was ready to move, but she found herself hesitating for a split second, morbidly curious to see exactly how a child trained by the League of Assassins would react to being told what to do by a street rat.
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