Batman: The Line

Chapter 5: The secret origin of Noah Kutler

Noah Kutler was just another computer genius turned hacker for hire. He mostly did work for low level mob bosses but, occasionally he was hired by some of Gotham's famous super villains.

He stared at a picture of his mom.

"I bet you'd be proud." He said with shame and regret in his voice.

When he was younger, he was immediately accepted into three Ivy League schools. He had a very bright future ahead of him but, before he could even pick which college he wanted to go to, his mom found out that she had cancer.

He struggled to scrape together the money to pay for her treatments. Before he could even blink all the scholarships laid out before him had disappeared and his once bright future future had become a tunnel of darkness, one that he ventured further and further into over the years.

Out of desperation, he started working for one of Gotham's mob bosses, Rupert Thorne. At first he just delivered messages and picked up packages for him but, when Thorne found out about his background, it opened up a whole new world for Noah.

Rupert had him doing everything for him accounting, hacking, transferring money to offshore Caiman accounts etc. He made more than enough money to pay for his mom's treatments with a lot left over.

After about a year of working for Thorne and questioning his morality every day, Noah was given a miracle: his mom was clean, no cancer at all. There was just one problem, he pretty much sold his soul to one of Gotham's most ruthless and cold mobsters.

He decided to just tell him he wanted out. Thorne seemed stunned and disappointed but nevertheless, he let him go.... Or at least he seemed to.

When he returned to him and his mom's apartment that night, he found her hanging from the ceiling fan in the living room. Her eyes were still open, he could tell she struggled to survive until the very end. Her skin was pale, more than when she was on Chemotherapy.

It didn't truly hit him until he looked into her eyes. It reminded of how a deer's look when it gets killed by a hunter, completely soulless. Something inside him changed. Every part of his moral compass was completely destroyed.

His mother was killed.

She was killed by a man who he once believed he could trust.

After the funeral, he knew that Thorne was coming for him. Noah also knew he couldn't move on with his life until he was dead.

Noah remembers stopping and thinking after having those thoughts. He thought about all the things his mom told him about being a good person and how a truly good man will never cross the "line".He ignored  every word and pushed her out of his head.

That night he went to work on a plan to destroy Thorne and set it into motion. He stole all of Thorne's rival boss's, Carmine Falcone money and transferred it to Thorne's account, making sure that it would all be traced back to him.

By the next day, Falcone had his men wipe out all of Thorne's men and Thorne himself had vanished. Noah knew he couldn't have gotten far because he wiped every single caiman account that he had.

Noah looked at the window and smiled cynically.

"I don't what to do now, mom." He admitted, grimly. "So I might as well stick with what I do best."

That's how he began his career as a hacker for hire. Every now and then he glances at the picture of his mom and starts to feel ashamed of himself but, then he quickly pushes her out of his head and goes back to typing on his keyboard, knowing but refusing to acknowledge that this was not the life his mom had wanted him to lead.