The beady eyed man looked at the readouts and smiled. He had once been Doctor Elijah Keeve renown for his work on the human genome and stripped of his title, job, and reputation for the same work. Now he did his own research and worked for people who could pay him the most, which it turned out was quite a lot of money. His back was permanently hunched due to his countless hours in his lab.

He tapped a few keys and smiled again.

"I did it!" He yelled spinning in his chair.

He stopped as he spotted his benefactor, the smile vanishing from his face. The man moved with the grace of a dancer but the size of the check Keeve had received he doubted the chances. The man was a slender six foot with long blonde hair that was almost white in color and his skin was lightly bronzed, today he wore a simple business suit.

"No, please, continue." The man said strolling toward him. "Tell me good doctor," he smiled. "What have you done?"

Keeve smiled again. "I have perfected the formula, it is ready for testing."

"Testing?" The man arched an eyebrow. "I have not paid you so much money for testing, I want the finished result."

As his benefactors gaze drilled into him Keeve's mind raced for an explanation. "I need to test it first. If I were to get you the finished formula then we would not know what would happen. You see, this formula is perfect but it is not the one you want. This is the worst case scenario, it will test the formula on every molecule. If the formula is correct then the subject will be altered genetically but remain the same as you wish. You see I used a combination spider DNA to get the best effect, the body would have to work with the formula to resist multiple drastic changes."

"Basically, you invented splicing? Congratulations doctor, except someone already beat you to it." The man rolled his eyes. "Are you going to test it?"

"Me?" Keeve gasped. "No, it's much too dangerous. If everything goes as planned I would be fine, but there is still a great chance that it would not go as I want it to."

"What are we talking about?"

"If the formula is incorrect in the slightest I might grow extra limbs or eyes, my mouth could change into a mandible, I could become a mindless beast, or it could result in death."

The man nodded. "Yes, finding someone to take your place would definitely slow things down. Who are you going to test it on?"

Keeve smiled.

--

Alex wished that he could hate the new apartment, but he couldn't. His mother, Linda, had to sell the house because she could no longer afford it, but her new employer, Wayne Enterprises had provided a place to stay. The apartment had two bedrooms, each with a personal bathroom, a living room and a good sized kitchen. Alex wondered why Bruce Wayne himself would see them in the first day, but when he looked into the old man's eyes he saw something familiar. The first thing Alex unpacked was his computer, he hooked it up and searched for some information about this gracious man. He found countless articles featuring a younger Bruce Wayne donating to charity and various other public occasions, but he did not find what he was looking for. Instead of searching headlines he search inside the articles, again pulling up all the charitable work but the last entry was what caught his eye. It stated: is survived by their only son, Bruce Wayne.

He read into the night about the tragic death of Doctor and Misses Wayne when Bruce was just a child and things started to make sense. From that article a link was formed to another interesting piece. Mister Wayne had adopted a young boy named Richard Grayson who had lost his parents in an accident. That was what he had seen reflected back in those eyes, a shared sense of loss. Alex was torn now, he was grateful this man was helping them but he was angry that it had to be this way. Mister Wayne had lost his parents and so had his adopted ward Richard Grayson and now he had lost his father.

From there he had unpacked the rest of his room and tried to make things normal enough for him to settle in. He had to start high school in a new school due to the move, but his mother had a job and they had a nice place to stay. It was hard to look for the good in the situation but he did find one more thing to help make the change, on this side of town there was the one and only legal splicing shop in all of Gotham and tomorrow he was going to check it out.