Bruce shook his head.

“You start with the good limb,” he explained, “so the brace learns your optimum muscle patterns.” He sat down on a slate cube and swapped the brace to his bad left knee. He rose cautiously, putting his weight on it, and grunted in satisfaction as the reinforced leg appeared to support him. He bent slowly, then rose again, more confidently this time. He threw a kick at the empty air.

A rare smile lifted his lips. He was liking this.

“Now we tighten it up.”

He pressed harder on the button, clicking it again. The brace contracted against his leg, the unyielding carbon fibers digging into his flesh. Grimacing, he gritted his teeth against the increased pressure.

Alfred looked on with concern.

“Is it terribly painful, sir?”

“You’re welcome to try it, Alfred.”

“Happy watching, thank you, sir.”

Bruce let out a howl as the brace clicked home. He took a moment to get used to the discomfort before rising to his feet again. Despite the pain, the leg felt more solid than it had in years. Than it had since the night Batman fell.

“Not bad,” he said.

A stack of bricks waited a few feet away. Bruce spun and delivered a furious roundhouse kick to the bricks, which went flying across the cave. Overhead, startled bats screeched in alarm. They flapped wildly among the stalactites.

“Not bad at all.”

Alfred appeared somewhat less enthusiastic about the success of their experiment. Picking up a brick, he turned it over slowly in his hands. A pensive look came over his face.

“Master Bruce, if you’re truly considering going back out there, you need to hear some worrisome rumors about this Bane individual.”

Bruce gave Alfred his full attention.

“I’m all ears.”

“There is a prison,” Alfred began grimly, “in a more ancient part of the world. A pit where men are thrown to suffer and die. But sometimes a man rises from that darkness. Sometimes the pit sends something back.”

Bruce nodded, understanding.

“Bane.”

“Born and raised in a hell on earth,” Alfred said. Bruce’s brow furrowed.

“Born in a prison?”

“No one knows why,” Alfred reported. “Or how he escaped. But they know who trained him once he did.” Alfred took a deep breath before speaking the name. “Rā’s al Ghūl. Your old mentor.”

Bruce stared back at him in dismay. Rā’s al Ghūl, who had also gone by the alias “Henri Ducard,” had been the ruthless leader of the League of Shadows, an ancient order of assassins and crusaders dedicated to waging war on crime and corruption—by any means necessary. Rā’s had trained Bruce to carry on in his footsteps, and had been largely responsible for shaping the orphaned billionaire into the Dark Knight he had become.

But when Rā’s had turned his sights on Gotham City, convinced that the embattled city was beyond saving, Batman had been forced to fight back against the League—with fatal results. Rā’s had died, incinerated in a fiery monorail crash. Batman hadn’t killed him, but he hadn’t tried to save him either.