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Origin 4 : The Murder
🕑 Added 2025-06-16 19:21:38 +0000 UTCOrigin 4 : The Murder
*[FLASHBACK - 14 Years Ago]*
The twenty-four hours were up.
Alex huddled in the back seat of their old Honda as his father drove through the pre-dawn darkness toward the Crane Industries chemical plant. His mother had already left for her shift at the hospital—they'd decided it was safer to split up, harder to target all at once. The plan was simple: his father would clean out his old locker, grab any remaining evidence, and they'd leave Gotham forever.
"Stay in the car no matter what," David Thorne said for the tenth time, his hands shaking on the steering wheel. "If anything happens to me, you run straight to the hospital and find your mother. Don't stop for anyone."
Alex nodded, clutching his worn comic book. At eleven, he still believed in heroes. Still thought maybe Superman would swoop down and save them, or Batman would emerge from the shadows to fight the bad guys. The real world hadn't quite crushed that hope yet.
They pulled into the empty parking lot. The chemical plant loomed against the gray sky like a concrete monster, its smokestacks breathing poison into the air where children played. Alex's father sat motionless for a moment, staring at the building where he'd worked for fifteen years before they'd destroyed his life for telling the truth.
"I love you, Alex," his father said quietly. "No matter what happens, remember that your mother and I love you more than anything in the world."
"I love you too, Daddy."
David disappeared into the building, leaving Alex alone with his comic book and his growing fear. Minutes ticked by. Then a black sedan pulled into the parking lot—the same car that had been following Alex home from school.
Three men in expensive suits got out. Even at eleven, Alex could tell these weren't factory workers. They moved wrong, too smooth and predatory. One of them spoke into a phone, his voice carrying across the empty lot: "Target confirmed. Beginning operation."
Alex sank lower in his seat, heart hammering. These men were here for his father.
More cars arrived. Black SUVs with tinted windows. Men with earpieces and bulges under their jackets. This wasn't a conversation or a warning—this was an execution squad.
The factory's loading dock door opened. His father stumbled out, blood already streaming down his face, clutching a manila envelope against his chest. They'd been waiting for him inside.
"Daddy!" Alex whispered, pressing his face against the window.
"You should have taken the hint, Thorne," called one of the men—tall, silver-haired, wearing a suit that probably cost more than Alex's family made in a month.
"I have copies," his father gasped, holding up the envelope. "If anything happens to me—"
"No, you don't." The voice was cultured, familiar from television. Senator Richard Crane stepped into the light, flanked by his security detail. "We've been monitoring your communications for weeks. We know about every copy, every contact, every pathetic attempt to expose us."
Alex had seen this man on TV, shaking hands with the mayor, cutting ribbons at charity events, smiling for cameras while promising to protect families like theirs. Now he watched as Crane nodded to his men like he was ordering coffee.
"The beautiful thing about owning the media," Crane continued conversationally, "is that we get to write the story. Chemical plant worker suffers psychotic break, attacks security personnel, dies in the struggle. Very tragic. Mental illness is such a terrible thing."
They surrounded his father in the empty parking lot. Three against one, but it might as well have been thirty. David Thorne was an engineer, not a fighter. A good man who'd tried to do the right thing and learned too late that the system was designed to crush people like him.
"My son—" his father began.
"Will be found in the car wreckage," Crane said calmly. "Sometimes children die with their parents. Another tragedy for the evening news."
Alex pressed his hands over his mouth to keep from screaming. They were going to kill him too. Murder an eleven-year-old boy just to cover up their crimes.
His father looked directly at the car then, meeting Alex's eyes through the window. Even bleeding, even surrounded by killers, David Thorne managed to mouth three words: "Run. Hide. Live."
Then they fell on him.
Alex watched his father—his kind, loving, hardworking father who had never hurt anyone in his life—get beaten to death in a factory parking lot while a United States Senator supervised. Watched good men die while evil men planned their next move.
The beating seemed to last forever and no time at all. When it was over, his father lay motionless on the asphalt, blood pooling beneath his head, the envelope scattered in pieces around his body.
"Clean this up," Crane ordered. "Make it look convincing. And get the boy."
Alex didn't remember making the decision to run. One moment he was frozen in terror, the next he was out of the car and sprinting toward the factory complex. Behind him, he heard shouts, footsteps, the slam of car doors.
"Find him!" Crane's voice echoed across the lot. "He can't get far!"
But Alex knew this place better than they did. His father had brought him here for "take your child to work" days, shown him the maze of buildings and equipment. Alex might be slow at school, but desperation made him fast, terror made him clever.
He ducked between storage tanks, crawled under conveyor belts, hid in shadows while flashlight beams swept past. They were hunting him like an animal, and that's exactly what he'd become—a small, frightened creature running for its life.
The voices were getting closer. Alex could hear them coordinating, spreading out, cutting off his escape routes. Soon they'd corner him, and then...
He stumbled into a loading area filled with chemical drums. Warning signs covered everything: DANGER. CORROSIVE. TOXIC. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
"There he is!"
Alex spun around to see three men blocking the only exit, their flashlight beams blinding him. He was trapped.
"Little Thorne," one of them said, advancing slowly. "Your daddy should have minded his own business."
Alex backed away until he felt the edge of something behind him—a maintenance hatch leading to the chemical processing level. His father had shown it to him once, warned him never to go down there, explained how dangerous the chemicals were.
"Please," Alex whispered. "I won't tell anyone. I promise."
"You're right," the man said, grabbing Alex by the shirt. "You won't."
With casual cruelty, he lifted the eleven-year-old boy and hurled him through the open hatch into the chemical darkness below.
He fell into darkness, into pipes and machinery and tanks full of things that should never touch human skin. Above him, he heard his father's killers discover the open hatch, heard them argue about whether to follow.
"It's a dead end down there," one of them said. "Kid won't last five minutes in those chemicals. Problem solved."
They walked away, leaving Alex Thorne to die slowly in a chemical nightmare, just another casualty of institutional evil.
But Alex Thorne didn't die.
He became something else entirely.
Something that would remember this night for the rest of its very long, very patient life. Something that would grow strong and smart and absolutely merciless in its pursuit of the people who had murdered a good man for trying to protect children.
In the darkness below Crane Industries, surrounded by the very poisons that had been killing his neighbors, Alex Thorne began the transformation that would turn him into their worst nightmare.
The boy who had believed in heroes was dead.
What crawled out of those chemical tanks would be something far more dangerous than any hero had ever been.
