Catherine's sudden enthusiasm nearly overwhelmed Thea.
A few quick command tests confirmed it—the mind-control spell worked beautifully.
Of course, she wasn't so tasteless as to impose some perverse "master-servant contract." Having a middle-aged woman kneeling and calling her "Master" would have been ridiculous. Maybe if it were a charming young maiden—but no, not this one.
Instead, she'd chosen a "friendly pact"—a bond of loyalty with minimal psychological resistance. In modern society, especially in a place as freedom-obsessed as America, the very idea of servitude was repulsive. Forcing that kind of contract risked creating subconscious rebellion that might expose the control.
A friendly contract, however, allowed the subject to retain full intelligence and autonomy—save for commands directly contradicting survival instincts. Everything else would be obeyed automatically. Even a skilled hypnotist or telepath wouldn't detect anything without a deep, invasive memory scan.
Over the next two days, Thea repeated her success—this time on another major figure within the Court: Luigi Falcone, current patriarch of Gotham's notorious Falcone crime family.
His late brother, Mario Falcone, had been gunned down years ago by Gordon himself. Though Luigi had secretly celebrated it, he still spent the next two decades loudly demanding "blood for blood," until he'd practically convinced himself of his own grief.
Using Catherine as bait, Thea lured Luigi into her trap. No subtle dream-weaving this time—one clean strike to the back of the neck, and he was out cold. From there, she worked her magic the hard way—brute-forcing control.
It took two grueling days. Luigi's willpower, honed by decades of gangster politics, far outmatched Catherine's. But eventually, the crime lord's defiant glare softened into docile obedience.
Now, watching the bald, age-spotted titan of Gotham's underworld bow respectfully before her, Thea felt an undeniable sense of accomplishment.
Catherine Monroe represented the old nobility of Gotham—the city's blue-blooded founders. She could steer the Court's strategic direction.
Luigi Falcone embodied the criminal aristocracy—his influence stretching through every illicit corner of the city.
Together, they represented the two great factions within the Court: the traditionalists and the opportunists.
Thea had no intention of uniting them. Harmony bred awareness. Chaos bred dependency—and dependency meant control. So long as they continued funneling resources to her, she was content to let them bicker as usual.
Each reported directly to her, but not to each other. If one ever betrayed her, the other would act as a counterbalance—until Thea decided what to do next.
"From now on," she said evenly, "I want three percent of the Court's monthly financial flow wired into my private account."
Both subordinates nodded without protest. Satisfied, she continued:
"And instruct every family under the Court to collect any and all books or documents related to the arcane—especially originals. The older, the better."
Three percent didn't sound like much, but coming from dozens of elite Gotham families, it was a fortune—and for a cash-strapped Thea, a godsend.
As for the books, the motive was clear. Many of these families had archives going back centuries—grimoires, journals, alchemical notes gathering dust in locked studies. Better those relics serve her than rot unread.
She also demanded the Court's biological experiment records and resurrection research reports.
"Impressive," she murmured, flipping through the files.
The Court had apparently begun experimenting with reanimation over fifty years ago—an effort pushed, unsurprisingly, by paranoid old aristocrats terrified of death.
Progress had been painfully slow, but two decades ago they'd achieved their first partial success. Using cells from animals with high regenerative capabilities, they'd synthesized a hybrid bio-material. By bombarding it with radiation and embedding it into a dead subject's DNA sequence, they could—at least temporarily—restart biological activity.
Electric shocks, fire baths, cryogenic cycles—they'd tried it all. Some corpses twitched. A few even stood. But none stayed.
Recent notes were bleak:
The process only worked on those who had died unnatural deaths. Natural aging? Useless.
"A ten percent success rate?" Thea snorted. "Fifty years of research and billions down the drain, for that?"
She tossed the report aside, then noticed a small vial on the desk—inside, three translucent drops of gray-white fluid.
Her eyes widened.
"Solomon Grundy's heart's blood."
Now that was something.
The Court had apparently found Grundy's body before his recent awakening and attempted to "harvest" it—spending fifteen days extracting trace amounts of fluid from its heart tissue.
To most scientists, it was just another inexplicable anomaly.
But to Thea, attuned now to the supernatural, those drops burned with power—dense, corrosive, and utterly alien.
Just brushing the edge of its aura made her skin prickle.
Death. Decay. Corruption. The energy radiating from it was immense—but it was wrong.
Her instincts screamed a warning.
Absorb it and you'll die—or worse, become what he was.
She capped the vial carefully. Dangerous, yes—but not useless. There were still ways to harness it, indirectly.
Her gaze shifted to the Sword of Azrael, lying across her table. Once carried into divine trials, it had always radiated a faint trace of sanctity. Yet something about it had always felt incomplete.
Through studying her enchanted dagger, Thea had realized why: the sword was meant to be a magical weapon, but the final steps—inscriptions, circuits, enchantment matrices—had never been finished.
Now, perhaps, with Grundy's blood, she could complete it.
But that would take time and expertise—and time was the one thing she didn't have. Her stay in Gotham was nearing its end.
For now, she would lay the groundwork.
She ordered her subordinates to go to ground, keeping their distance from Batman but quietly supporting him if he ever ran for Police Commissioner—mainly to bog him down in endless bureaucracy, charity galas, and social functions.
"Keep him tied up in red tape," she told them. "If he's busy debating policy, he won't be watching the shadows."
As for the Court, she assigned them a new mission: absorb Gotham's criminal underworld—Penguin's rackets, Scarecrow's labs, everything.
Publicly, they'd maintain their old façade of neutrality. Privately, they would steer the city from behind the curtain—under her invisible leash.
And the resurrection research?
Thea considered it, then shrugged.
"You've spent half a century on it already. Might as well see it through."
Let the dead men chase immortality.
Meanwhile, she had her own kind of eternity to build.