Beyond the Limit (DC) Chapter 2: 2

Joseph Bell woke up drenched in sweat, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps. His hands were clenched so tight that his nails bit into his palms. Another nightmare—another brutal reminder that sleep wasn't a refuge, but a battleground. He had stopped fearing them. Fear was useless. Fear was weakness. What he needed was control.

The dreams had started five years ago, dragging him into endless chases through twisted landscapes of numbers and shadows. Every night, he was hunted by sothing unseen but inescapable. He fought back when he could. He ran when he couldn't. But no matter what, morning always ca with the sa bitter aftertaste—he was still their experint, whether he wanted to be or not.

Pushing off the thin blanket, Joseph sat up and grabbed his phone. A video auto-played on his screen—Superman facing off against tallo in a clash that sent shockwaves through the city streets. He wasn't usually into superhero fights, but sothing about this one held his attention. The hero wasn't just stopping a villain. He was proving sothing. Proving that power ant justice. Power ant freedom.

A soft rustling ca from the couch. His mother, Mary Bell, stirred but didn't wake. She had worked another brutal overnight shift, and exhaustion weighed on her like an anchor. The alarm on her phone vibrated, but she barely reacted.

Joseph hesitated before nudging her shoulder. "Mom. You have to get up."

She groaned, rubbing her eyes. "Mmm? What ti is it?"

"Almost seven. Can you drop at school?"

Mary sat up, stretching out the stiffness in her back. "Yeah, give five."

Joseph flipped through the channels as she disappeared into the bathroom. The news blared:

"—multiple casualties reported after another high-profile breakout from Arkham Asylum. Authorities urge citizens to remain indoors—"

Joseph exhaled sharply. Gotham never changed. The sa villains. The sa chaos. The sa empty promises that things would get better. He hated it.

Mary reerged, yawning. "Alright, let's go."

Joseph grabbed his bag and followed her out. As they climbed into the truck, he glanced at her tired expression. "You don't have to keep doing this alone. I can help."

She sighed. "You're fourteen, Joey. Your job is school. Mine is keeping us safe."

He clenched his jaw. Safe? What did that even an anymore?

**

A song crackled over the radio. So upbeat, overplayed club track. Joseph barely heard it over the hum of the city passing by. He was staring out the window when he noticed sothing off.

A van. Old, dented, creeping along the lane beside them.

The insignia on the side—a basketball with a cross and a triangle?

His stomach twisted. That was a gang mark. And they were ard. Heavy weapons glinted through the windows.

Then—

A deafening roar. A rocket streaked through the intersection, slamming into the vehicle ahead. The impact was instant—tal crunched, glass shattered, and the truck flipped, its cargo spilling across the asphalt. The logo on its side—STAR Labs.

Mary swerved, barely avoiding the wreckage.

The van's doors slid open. Masked figures leaped out, rifles raised.

Joseph barely had ti to register the next explosion before everything went dark.

**

Paradics blurred past him. Joseph's vision swam as he caught sight of his mother's overturned van, smoke curling into the sky. He tried to move—tried to reach her—but his body refused to obey.

His breath was ragged. Blood and so unknown chemicals filled his mouth.

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. Death lood as unconsciousness took hold.

Yet, even as his body failed him, LexCorp's twisted experints still haunted his mind. The "vaccine" forced upon him—their so-called cure—was still in his veins, still rewriting his biology. He wasn't just a victim. He was their experint.

But Joseph Bell was no one's pawn.

"If you want to kill , LexCorp," he vowed through the pain, "then co and try."

He didn't know how he would win. But he would.

LexCorp had turned his mind into a battlefield of hidden subroutines and lethal protocols. But Joseph had spent years outmaneuvering them with nothing but instinct and desperation. Now, with death creeping in, he had only one option left.

Run.

He had always been fast—faster than their puzzles, faster than their control. Now, he had to be faster than death itself.

Sowhere deep in his mind, the barriers that kept him shackled began to crack. He wasn't sure if it was adrenaline, fate, or sothing greater, but he felt it—a surge of raw speed, beyond anything he had ever known.

He ran.

Through the digital maze LexCorp had built inside him, through the firewalls ant to keep him leashed. Every equation, every failsafe they had implanted in him, blurred past. The AI ant to control him couldn't keep up.

Then—he broke through.

A vast yellow expanse unfolded before him. It wasn't just data. It wasn't just code. It was sothing else. A force beyond logic, beyond science. A place where speed, thought, and reality itself bent to his will.

Two figures stood before him—one was himself, shrouded in pure speed. The other was an intruder, a blocky, fragnted AI guardian sent by LexCorp, bound in chains of corrupted data.

Joseph didn't hesitate. The force was running out. He reached out, rewriting its core protocols in an instant. The AI disintegrated, rging into him, forming a helt of shifting voxels around his head. The newfound processing power flooded his mind, running infinite calculations in the blink of an eye.

He saw the path. He saw the future. For a single mont, he saw the speed force.

Then—

Darkness.

**

Edit on July 4 2025: Here Joseph is 14 so the year is 2007.

Edit on July 13 2025: My bad for making this chapter confusing and not being clear enough. Joseph is not so hacking genius. He sees the A.I. in his nightmares similar to how Netrunners see Cyberspace: in 3 dinsions. He just ran away from the A.I. everyti and then touched it and willed it to change.