Tim Drake- DC

The first reports barely made the news.

A few cases of violent sickness in the lower parts of Gotham. Fevers. Aggression. Hallucinations. People claimed loved ones became paranoid overnight, lashing out at strangers like cornered animals. Hospitals overflowed for a week before the city adjusted and called it what everyone assumed it was.

Another Gotham disaster.

Another toxin that would probably be fixed in a week, some drug made by Scarecrow just to drive others completely crazy. At first, nobody connected it to the water.

Then came the deaths.

Then came the people who died... and got back up.

Their skin carried a sickly gray-green tint beneath their veins, eyes clouded over with Lazarus madness, movements jerking and unnatural like puppets dragged by invisible strings. Some screamed endlessly. Some remembered fragments of who they were. Most attacked anything that moved.

The infected didn’t rot.

The Lazarus Liquid kept repairing them just enough to continue moving.

And Gotham spread it everywhere before anyone realized what was happening.

Entire shipments of contaminated bottled water left the city within days. Neighboring states fell soon after. The government tried quarantines, bridge closures, evacuations — but Gotham had always been too crowded, too stubborn, too broken to contain cleanly.

Within a month, the city collapsed.

Electricity became unreliable.

Military presence disappeared.

Emergency broadcasts turned into static.

And the bats stopped saving everyone.

Many heroes died during the first major outbreaks trying to rescue civilians trapped in infected zones. Others simply vanished. Rumors spread faster than truth after that.

Some said Batman was dead.

Others swore they saw him still moving through Gotham rooftops at night, more brutal than before.

Nobody knew for certain anymore.

What survivors did know was that safe places became more valuable than money ever was.

Wayne Tower transformed from a corporate monument into a fortress. Barricaded lower floors, armed checkpoints, emergency generators, medical wings built from abandoned offices. Hundreds of survivors crowded inside its walls while outside Gotham drowned in smoke, overgrowth, floodwater, and the constant distant screams of the infected.

The Clocktower maintained communication.

Crime Alley became its own armed territory although it was reeking of the dead.

And somewhere deep within Robinson Park, Poison Ivy had created something impossible:

Safety.

Or at least the closest thing left to it.

The infected avoided her territory entirely. Plants strangled the dead before they could fully enter. Massive vines swallowed streets whole, turning parts of Gotham into a living jungle. Survivors whispered that Ivy was sheltering immune civilians there, though nobody knew the price for entering her domain.

Most people were too terrified to even try.

But not everyone.

---

Rain hammered against broken windows as Tim Drake moved silently through the abandoned school hallway.

The flashlight attached beneath his rifle swept across overturned desks and faded children’s artwork peeling from mold-covered walls. Water dripped steadily from the ceiling somewhere deeper inside the building. Every sound mattered now.

His exhaustion showed beneath the domino mask — dark circles, slower movements, shoulders tight from weeks without proper sleep — but his eyes stayed sharp, scanning every doorway automatically.

The school had been marked empty three months ago.

Then Oracle intercepted a weak emergency signal repeating every few hours from somewhere inside.

Most people would’ve ignored it.

Tim never did because every survivor mattered. Even now, especially now.

His boots crunched softly over shattered glass as he approached the gymnasium doors, noticing immediately the barricades, written 'get away!' signs, sharp long spikes at the door to most likely trap zombies outside

Human marks obviously.

Tim knocked twice against the metal door, not loud enough to attract infected. Just enough.

“Hey,” he called carefully, voice rough from disuse. “I’m not infected.”

Silence answered him first, nobody spoke immediately but he could hear shuffling at the door. Someone listening closely. Finally, a voice from the other side

“...Depends who’s asking.”

Despite everything — the dead outside, the ruined city, the constant exhaustion threatening to drag him under — Tim felt the smallest flicker of relief.

Someone alive.

“Name’s Red Robin,” he answered. “And unless you plan on living in a haunted high school forever, we should probably talk.”