The Night of Paradox

The elevator reached the top floor of Honglu Shuyuan.

With a screech, the rusty iron gate of the elevator slowly opened, and Baia stepped into the hallway lined with old carpets. As expected in an apartment building, doors lined both sides of the hallway.

Seeing no sign of the pursuing Weeping Angels, Baia took a few minutes to assess her surroundings.

The nameplates below the door handles caught her eye—it was odd. Her fingers lingered over the nameplates, realizing that the names matched the list of people who mysteriously disappeared near New York's "Winter Pier" in 2019.

They're keeping the victims here. She pressed her hand on a doorknob for a few seconds but ultimately didn't enter any rooms. It seemed pointless and potentially dangerous; if an angel blocked the door, she'd be trapped.

She had to rely on the Doctor now. The fate of these people was in his hands. Baia glanced at the built-in timer on her wrist. According to Tony, it would take about fifteen minutes to activate after installation. Without a communication device for the Doctor, she had no idea how things were progressing on his end.

The Weeping Angels always appeared silently.

Fortunately, Baia remained vigilant. She didn't believe the angels let her upstairs to provide a safe haven. There had to be other dangers here.

She turned around and saw a statue at the end of the hallway.

That was just the advance party; there were at least 30 more angels downstairs, watching her every move. She couldn't say she wasn't scared in this life-threatening situation.

Before, she had faced humans—Talia, Mr. Freeze—where there was always some room for maneuvering. But with the angels, one touch and it was game over.

Back against the wall, she moved as slowly as possible, keeping the angels in her sight, though human eyes can't cover a 180-degree field.

Every slight head turn brought a statue closer.

The tactic of blinking one eye at a time wouldn't last long.

Instinctively, Baia pressed the Batcave communication channel, only to realize there was just static in her earpiece. The silence was deafening; no mocking from Damian, no reports from Tim, no orders from Batman—just her heartbeat and breathing.

In 1983, Bruce probably wasn't even Batman yet. Superheroes emerged at a relatively concentrated time, and in this era, she had no one to turn to. The stairs to the rooftop were clear—the angels wanted her to go there or die here.

She didn't know if the angels being stone counted as them being in battle mode. Baia dared not try, fearing that if she went into stealth mode and the angels resumed their natural state, she'd be done for. She figured she'd stall a bit longer before heading to the roof.

Just as she was in a bind, a door behind her suddenly opened. A hand grabbed her wrist, pulling her into a room. Baia gasped, and in that instant her view shifted, an angel's face was inches away.

The door slammed shut in her face, narrowly escaping the angel's attack. Losing balance, she expected to hit the floor hard, but instead, she fell into someone's arms.

In her heightened state of tension, even knowing this person probably wasn't an enemy, she instinctively struggled. The room had only one moving light source, a tritium lamp like Tony's, so she couldn't see the person's face clearly.

"Stop struggling, it's me."

Within seconds, Baia was subdued. She heard a familiar voice trying to calm her.

"Tim?"

Baia immediately relaxed, though her voice still trembled. She saw Tim's eyes shining faintly in the dark, and fear vanished.

Baia threw her arms around Tim's neck. Though no longer scared, she couldn't stop shaking.

Facing the angels in the hallway, her heart had raced, but she hadn't been trembling. It seemed Robins were good at startling her; being grabbed from behind like that was a shock.

Tim sensed her fear, gently patting her back until she calmed down.

Tim felt a mix of emotions, mainly a pang in his chest. In extreme fear, people react in two ways: either collapsing in fear or fighting back with desperate tenacity. Baia was the latter. He recalled a famous clip of a man playing a game, getting scared by a sudden ghost image, and punching right through his monitor.

Judging by Baia's struggle just now, she could've easily done the same.

He had just played the role of the monitor.

Timothy knew Baia was usually a well-behaved girl, smart in the face of danger. He didn't expect her to be so strong now. It wasn't that he was worried about being hurt by a delicate girl; he was just caught off guard and didn't dodge in time.

Baia's moves weren't random—they were taught by Black Canary.

Thankfully, compared to a certain anti-hero with a bucket on his head and merciless fists, Baia's strikes felt like a kitten's scratches, nothing too serious.

"What are you doing here?" And why the scare?

Tim was puzzled. "Didn't you ask me to come? You left a note on my desk with information about the Weeping Angels."

"Me?" Baia was extremely confused. "I didn't leave any note. I did send some info to the Batcomputer, but not—oh, wait, the time field."

"Time field?"

"Long story short, because of the Weeping Angels, New York's timeline is all messed up. I guess leaving a note on your desk hasn't happened yet," Baia said, staring at Red Robin anxiously. "You didn't get touched by an angel, did you?"

Tim glanced out the window. "No, as soon as I entered this building, I ended up in this time period."

"That's a relief," Baia sighed. "I came with Tony—"

She saw Red Robin about to say something, so she quickly added, "I intended to notify you all. Tony first noticed something was off here, but the angels chased us to Brooklyn that night. Nowhere was safe, so we came here directly. The situation was urgent."

Baia then explained the Doctor's situation to Red Robin. Opening the door was not an option now, and Baia's biggest worry was being cornered with no escape, leaving them to hope the Doctor could close the rift successfully.

Just as she was considering waiting it out as a plan, they heard banging on the door.

"They sure are relentless for you," Tim said, exchanging a glance with Baia. Red Robin took out his grappling gun, clearly ready for action.

The building's complex structure made it easier to deal with the angels. Going outside where more hunters lurked wasn't a wise choice either.

Baia didn't know how to use a grappling gun and had little experience with gadgets like batarangs. Besides sufficient arm strength, both required daily practice to improve accuracy.

Red Robin climbed onto the window ledge, his cape draping like wings. He extended a hand to Baia. "Hold on tight."

They appeared on the rooftop, surveying their surroundings. The first things they noticed were Iron Man hovering in the air and the defaced Statue of Liberty.

Despite its ruin, the sheer size of the statue cast a shadow over everyone's minds.

"What happened to its face?"

Tony, slightly relieved to share the burden of watching the angels, said, "Blown off, obviously. It's pretty dull up here. What brings you?"

"Preventing a certain someone from getting herself killed following who knows what," Red Robin replied.

"It won't happen again," Baia said sheepishly. Tim wasn't referring to Tony; he was clearly talking about her.

"Alright, do you have any idea how things are progressing down there?"

Since Tony had built the device, he could get updates from Friday. "It's done. The rift should close in a minute or two."

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief at the news.

In the tense atmosphere, a faint white ripple appeared in the surrounding space. Tim rubbed his forehead, realizing he had parallel memories in his mind.

System: Woohoo, the rift is closed. To avoid paradoxes, time will self-correct, and the angel invasion in Manhattan will have never happened.

Baia: "Your tenses are all over the place... but I think I get it. What's a paradox?"

System: You can think of a "paradox" as a "time loop paradox." A famous one is the "grandmother paradox"—if someone travels back in time and kills their grandmother, they wouldn't be born, but if they weren't born, the grandmother wouldn't die. Make sense?

Baia: "I get it. But if this never happened, wouldn't my coming to 1983 to close the rift also be a paradox? Why wasn't that erased?"

System: Sharp thinking. Some time-tech creations can sustain paradoxes, but every change to the time stream comes with a price.

Baia: "That time-tech creation... is it you? Do the angels want you? Am I just an extra?"

System: Ahem, don't overthink it. Just remember to find the Doctor later and solve the problem of source-less information.

Baia was about to ask what source-less information was when she noticed Tim's expression. He was looking back at her, about to give a reassuring smile, but then he saw a shadow looming behind her.

Tim's eyes widened, and before he could shout "Watch out," an angel's hand clamped around Baia's wrist—just before Tim's gaze landed on it. His mind went blank, fearing Baia might vanish in the next second.

However, Baia didn't disappear. She was just held by the statue, her eyes meeting Tim's with confusion.

"When did this thing get upstairs?!" Tony landed beside them, his voice unusually panicked.

"It doesn't seem like it's going to eat me," Baia said, her voice trembling. "It—"

System: Oh, crap, stop analyzing me—

The system's shout was drowned out by a roaring sound of water. Baia's head felt like it was splitting open, and the white ripple spreading through New York continued. As time corrected itself, New York lit up again. The stone hand gripping Baia had vanished, leaving her standing there, stunned.

Red Robin and Iron Man disappeared one after another.

The angels' hunt had never happened, and it was now a Saturday morning in New York—the same day Tony noticed something off at "Winter Pier."

Tony's Iron Man suit was gone, and he stood at the other end of the street, looking at the ordinary "Winter Pier" under the clear sky. After a moment of contemplation about the person called "the Doctor," he turned and left to find Baia, who should still be with Caroline and Max.

Tim found himself in a Wayne branch office meeting room, in a product discussion he had already attended once. Everything before seemed like it never happened.

Baia still stood in that nonexistent night, on the rooftop in the dark.

She felt an unprecedented loneliness.

System: Don't zone out! Wake up!

The little swallow faced the defaced Statue of Liberty, all others gone.

"This is what you wanted," Baia said with difficulty through the intense headache. She hadn't felt this way in a long time. "Just you and me, right? They don't matter, your kind doesn't matter."

The Statue of Liberty couldn't respond.

Baia continued, "What matters is you found a way to use the system in me, preserving this wrong space. As long as I die, it becomes yours. I can't watch you forever, can I?"

System: I'm just a...

"You know me," Swallow said. "Zero Prisoner knows me, the system knows everything but always stays mysterious. The only one kept in the dark is me. We met somewhere before? Doesn't matter, come on, take what you want."

She closed her eyes.

Tim felt restless. Despite things seeming resolved, something felt off. If it ended like this, there was no need for Baia to leave him clues—he hadn't figured out his role in this. Finding an excuse to leave the meeting room, he called Baia.

No answer.

He tried the Batcave's internal line, but still no response. He rushed to the top floor, burst into the office, and turned on the computer, unable to find Baia's location signal.

A sinking feeling hit Tim. She hadn't returned.