DC : Architect of Vengeance

Origin 2 : The Betrayal

*[FLASHBACK - 14 Years Ago]*

The police station smelled like coffee and disappointment. Eleven-year-old Alex sat in a hard plastic chair, swinging his legs nervously while his mother paced in front of Detective Ray Palmer's desk. The manila folders—the same ones his parents had whispered over in their kitchen—lay spread across the detective's desk.

"Mrs. Thorne, I understand you're upset," Detective Palmer said, not looking up from the documents. He was a thin man with kind eyes who had always waved at Alex when he walked past their house. "But what you're suggesting... these are very serious allegations against very important people."

"Look at the evidence!" Sarah Thorne's voice cracked with desperation. She'd been crying for days since David had been fired from the chemical plant—terminated for "performance issues" after fifteen years of perfect attendance. "The cancer clusters, the birth defects, the timeline matches perfectly with Crane Industries' expansion. My husband documented everything."

Alex didn't understand all the big words, but he knew his mother was scared. His father had been different since losing his job—quiet, jumping at every sound, checking the locks obsessively. They'd stopped answering the phone. Stopped opening mail that wasn't bills.

"I've reviewed the materials," Palmer said carefully. "But correlation isn't causation. Industrial accidents happen. People get sick. It doesn't necessarily mean—"

"Doesn't mean what?" Sarah slammed her hand on the desk. "That a Senator's family business might be cutting corners? That money matters more than children's lives?"

Detective Palmer glanced around the station nervously. Other officers were listening now, pretending to work while straining to hear. "Mrs. Thorne, please lower your voice."

"Detective Palmer," Alex's mother leaned forward, her voice dropping to a whisper. "You have children. I've seen them at the school carnival. If this was happening in their neighborhood, wouldn't you want someone to listen?"

For a moment, Palmer's facade cracked. Alex saw something flicker across his face—recognition, maybe even agreement. The detective looked down at a photograph of a baby born with severe deformities, then at another showing dead fish floating in Crane Industries' drainage canal.

"I..." Palmer started, then stopped. His phone was ringing. "Excuse me." He answered it with a tired, "Palmer here."

Alex watched the detective's face change as he listened to whoever was on the other end. Palmer's eyes darted to Sarah Thorne, then to the evidence spread across his desk, then to the other officers who were no longer pretending not to listen.

"Yes, sir. I understand. Yes, sir. Right away."

Palmer hung up and immediately began gathering the folders, photos, and documents. "Mrs. Thorne, I'm afraid I can't help you with this matter."

"What?" Sarah's voice was barely a whisper. "Ray, you just looked at the evidence. You saw—"

"I saw a grieving community looking for someone to blame for their troubles." Palmer's voice had changed, become official and cold. "These materials don't constitute evidence of wrongdoing. They're speculation at best, inflammatory at worst."

Alex watched his mother's face crumble. "Ray, please. People are dying."

"Mrs. Thorne, I'm going to give you some advice." Palmer stood, the folders clutched protectively against his chest. "Sometimes good people convince themselves they see patterns that aren't there. Sometimes grief and financial stress can make people... unstable. I'd hate to see you or your family get hurt chasing conspiracy theories."

The threat was polite but unmistakable. Alex might not understand politics or corruption, but he understood fear. Detective Palmer was scared—more scared of whoever had called than he was of letting children die.

"You're destroying the evidence," Sarah said, her voice hollow with realization.

"What evidence?" Palmer was already walking toward a filing cabinet. "I don't see any evidence here. Just the confused ramblings of a woman under stress."

Alex watched the man he'd thought was one of the good guys—the friendly police officer who'd helped him find his lost bike last summer—feed his parents' life's work into a paper shredder. Document by document, photograph by photograph, every proof of Crane Industries' crimes became confetti.

"Mrs. Thorne," Palmer said without looking at her, "I suggest you and your family focus on moving forward. Your husband was fired for cause. I'd recommend he find new employment... somewhere else. Gotham's a big city. Lots of opportunities in other neighborhoods."

They were being exiled. Driven out for the crime of telling the truth.

"What about the children who are sick?" Alex's mother asked, her voice barely audible. "What about the families who don't know they're being poisoned?"

Palmer finally looked up from the shredder, and Alex saw something die in the detective's eyes—some last vestige of the man who'd once helped a lost boy find his bicycle.

"What children?" Palmer said. "I don't know what you're talking about."

That night, Alex lay in bed listening to his parents whisper-argue in the kitchen. His mother was crying. His father kept apologizing, as if it was his fault that good people had turned out to be cowards, that the system they'd trusted had abandoned them.

"We have to keep trying," his mother insisted. "The EPA inspector—"

"Will get the same phone call Palmer did," his father said bitterly. "Face it, Sarah. We're alone in this. Nobody's coming to help."

Alex stared at the ceiling, his eleven-year-old mind struggling to process what he'd witnessed. The police—who were supposed to protect people—had thrown away evidence of children being poisoned. A man they'd trusted, who'd known Alex since he was small, had chosen to serve power instead of justice.

In the darkness of his bedroom, something fundamental shifted in Alex Thorne's understanding of the world. Good people weren't rewarded. Truth didn't matter. The system wasn't broken—it was working exactly as designed, protecting the powerful while sacrificing the innocent.

Two weeks later, his father would be dead and Alex would be transformed into something that could never again believe in the goodness of institutions or the reliability of heroes.

But the real transformation had already begun here, in a police station that smelled like coffee and cowardice, watching justice get fed through a paper shredder one document at a time.

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