"Fearful Symmetry"
Chapter 1
The woman cursed herself as she kicked open the doorway to the roof and sprinted for the building's edge. Dressed in a black jumpsuit and mask, she bound over the alley to the concrete top of a hotel ten feet below. She rolled to land, and in one fluid motion continued her dash across the Gotham skyline.
The prize she had obtained from her target building clung secure to her waist, but that gave her little comfort. She'd chosen this job entirely because she wanted to prove she could still pull off a flawless heist against a top notch security system. It had gone off cleanly, almost flawlessly, to the point that she had gotten cocky and had absent mindedly tripped a door alarm as she was nearly out. Now she had to abandon her planned route of escape and depend on her knowledge of the Gotham rooftops to create one from scratch.
Still, the rush she felt as she quickly scaled a wall to get to higher ground was strangely familiar, a feeling from when she was an amateur thief, pulling jobs off by the skin of her teeth, police lights following…a small smile crept across her face, she hadn't had this much fun in years!
The sound of sirens brought her mind to focus. She wasn't sure if they were following her, but they were close. There was no where to hide, she had to keep moving.
Selina Kyle, Catwoman, approached a particularly wide gulf between buildings and without stopping eyeballed the distance she'd have to leap to make it. She was rigorous in gauging her physical limits, and knew exactly how far and how high she could leap, how long she could run without getting tired, even how long she could hold her breath. Still in full sprint, she made the split second decision to go for it.
This was going to be close.
She lengthened her strides as she approached the edge, planted her left foot and launched herself across the alley. If she cut it short, she might have to grasp the edge of the roof to pull her across. Fortunately, she saw that wouldn't be necessary, as she cleared the edge…by five extra feet?
Selina landed safely in a crouching position, and stopped to get a hold of herself. How had she jumped that far? The blaring sound of sirens told her to consider these questions later.
It turned out that she had escaped unspotted, and the sirens died down as the units continued toward the call of the alarm. A few more minutes of running and she safely climbed into her apartment window. She shut the window (at least as far as the dead wood window frame would shut), and pulled back her signature cat-eared mask. Her gloved fingers ran through her short, dyed-raven black hair as she considered the night's work. She turned and looked out the window as she casually unhitched the pack from her belt and tossed it on her bed.
It hadn't gone as she planned, but she felt an aura of satisfaction nonetheless. Over the past year since she left Gotham, she'd lived off of easy money, jobs where the security was low and the payoff was high. She'd taken the more practical route, with less risk, away from a certain flying rodent's reach. She had come back to see if she still had the edge. Carelessness aside, she had passed her personal test. In fact she seemed sharper than ever…
That thought brought her mind to the Olympic quality jump from earlier. It was possible that all the adrenaline might have allowed her to exceed her limits temporarily, but not by that much. By her calculations, she had just smashed the men's world record for the long jump. Something wasn't right; she must have misjudged the length of the gap.
Come to think of it though, all that exercise hadn't even winded her. She should have been pushing her limits, but the whole experience had been…easy. What did it mean? She needed to sit down and think.
She took a seat on the ragged yellow mattress in her room, but thinking was difficult. The sounds from the creaky old complex were unusually loud. The boards of the building sighed like they were snoring; the sink in the bathroom dripped constantly, and noise of the late night traffic in the streets poured through the window with crystal clarity. On top of this, the smells of musty building were making her nauseous. She could practically taste the decaying wood, the rampant mildew, even the hanging scent of her own sweat that had built up in her suit. The overload of sensations she was feeling made her head spin.
She grabbed her head and covered her ears, trying to drown out the noise, but the sensuous rush she felt was overwhelming her. Feeling dizzy, she laid down on the bed. The flood of sound and smell merely increased. Even more confusing, she felt a strong sense of déjà vu, like she had felt this before…
Even more input. Rats crawled through the walls, their scurrying sounded like nails against a chalkboard. The stench of their feces seeped through the floor. Her own heart seemed to beat like an incessant drum in her chest. Finally, in a moment of mercy, the stress overloaded her mind, and she passed out...
