The patrol car crawled through Gotham's gray, choking traffic, stopping and starting in an endless rhythm of brake lights and exhaust fumes. Marco slouched in his seat, head tilted against the window, eyes half-closed like he was dozing.
But he wasn't sleeping.
He was thinking about Waylon.
He didn't remember the name from his old life, but he remembered the face. Killer Croc. In the comics, he was born with a rare genetic condition resembling epidermolytic hyperkeratosis, a disorder that caused his skin to harden into reptilian scales. In those stories, he'd been abused as a child, treated like a monster. Eventually, he became one.
Well, he was still just a kid now. Maybe things would be different.
Marco pulled his attention inward, focusing on the system cards floating in his mind. And that's when he noticed it, another skill point had appeared. At the very bottom of the card list, a thin line of faintly glowing text:
[You have altered the fate of Waylon Jones in a minor way. Skill Point +1]
He scrolled back through the cards and found another line he must've missed earlier:
[You have altered the fate of Edward Nygma in a minor way. Skill Point +1]
Altered.
He almost laughed. He didn't feel like he'd done anything extraordinary. He just gave the kid a hundred bucks and a business card. Maybe next month he could skim a little off Darnell's bonus to cover it.
But this time, he wasn't taking any chances. The first card was clearly firearm-related, and that was something he could use. Play it safe.
He focused his will on the revolver card and activated it.
It felt like an invisible hammer struck the card's surface. Ripples spread outward in concentric circles. The gray shell cracked silently and peeled away, dissolving into glowing embers that scattered like fireflies. The drawing of the revolver sharpened into crisp detail, the barrel gleaming with cold metallic light. New text carved itself across the surface:
[Gunslinger Basics:
Your knowledge and practical mastery of most firearms has reached a proficient level. You draw faster, hold steadier, aim truer, and your recoil control far exceeds that of ordinary shooters. You're no longer the rookie who couldn't find the safety.]
[Progress Missions:
Firearm Disassembly/Maintenance: 0/1000
Firearm Shooting: 0/1000]
[Complete all missions to increase skill level. The system only raises your upper limit, your effort determines your lower limit. Have you ever seen Gotham at 4 AM?]
Marco snorted softly. Have I seen Gotham at 4 AM?
He may have only been in this world for two days, but the memories from his "previous life" here were full of night shifts. Three or four in the morning was prime time for murders and body dumps. The fragments of memory alone were enough to give someone nightmares.
But in Gotham, nightmares didn't wait for nighttime. They could happen anytime.
Darnell slammed on the brakes.
The patrol car's tires screamed against the asphalt. Marco lurched forward and smashed his head into the A-pillar next to the windshield. If the seatbelt hadn't been fastened, he might've gone straight through the glass.
"Are you fucking insane?!"
Darnell didn't answer. He just stared wide-eyed out the window, his hands still on the steering wheel.
"Holy shit! Did you SEE that?! What the hell just ran across in front of the car?!"
"I wasn't looking." Marco clutched his head. "What did you see?"
"I saw a guy..." Darnell swallowed hard. "With his bare hands... dragging an entire ATM machine across the intersection. Heading toward Coventry."
"What?" Marco stared at his partner. Then it clicked. He slapped the dashboard. The glove compartment popped open, spilling wrenches, screwdrivers, documents, tissues, and old food wrappers everywhere. "FUCK! You swore you weren't on drugs! And you stuffed your trash in here after eating pizza?"
"I'm NOT on drugs, damn it! Forget the trash!" Darnell's voice rose. "I swear on my grandmother's grave, I haven't even smoked a joint. I really saw it!"
"Seriously, you should take some community college classes instead of messing around with whatever the hell you're into." Marco rubbed his forehead and sighed. "An ATM, including mounting bolts, weighs at least seven hundred kilos. If what you saw was real, that thing could rip off a car door and throw it at us hard enough to turn our brains into modern art."
He looked Darnell dead in the eye. "You sure you want to say you saw it clearly?"
"Uh... no. I think I saw wrong." Darnell's eyes sobered up instantly. He shook his head rapidly. "I didn't see a thing."
"Turn right." Marco pointed. "If we just survive today quietly, tomorrow's my day off. Let HQ deal with whatever that was."
"Don't say shit like that! That's bad luck!" Darnell yelled, but he turned the wheel anyway. "Let's head to Cathedral Square. We can probably grab lunch from a food truck while we're at it."
"Donald's pepper-salt hot sauce burritos? Even raccoons won't touch that—"
---
"EAT! If raccoons won't, I will! Half price and buy-one-get-one, only an idiot would say no!"
Marco held a massive burrito slathered in special cheese-chili sauce, sweating as he ate. The first few bites were fine, pure hunger overriding taste, but after that, the greasy, spicy heaviness became almost unbearable.
"Don, your food tastes worse every day," Darnell called out from the steps behind the fountain, where the wind couldn't reach. "Cheap is literally the only good thing left!"
"Then piss off if you don't like it." Donald Francis waved his spatula without looking up. "If it tasted good, why do you think it'd be this cheap? The cheese and flour are about to expire anyway."
"You really are an asshole."
Darnell chuckled, stuffing another bite into his mouth. "This place usually stays quiet. Maybe after lunch we can even sneak a nap."
"Maybe." Marco grabbed a napkin, wiped his mouth, and shoved the last bit of burrito into the wrapper, balling it up. He tossed it toward a trash can like a free throw. "Unless someone breaks into the bishop's room and steals altar boys."
"Dude, I swear God Himself would get roasted if He walked past you." Darnell paused, squinting into the distance. "Hey, what's that?"
A prison transport truck was speeding in from the direction of Land Bridge, moving way too fast for normal traffic.
"Blackgate Penitentiary transport," Marco said. "How much do those guys make a year?"
"Fifty to seventy grand, not including side income from fines." Darnell watched enviously as the prison van passed and disappeared behind the next block. "I wanna transfer there too. Just watch security feeds all day for an easy paycheck."
Yeah, sure. Marco thought. That's because none of the future super-criminals have shown up yet. Give it a few years, and it might not sound so easy anymore.
He pulled out a tissue and blew his nose. Just then, from the direction where the prison transport had vanished, came a series of deep, heavy explosions.
He stiffened immediately.
"Shotgun. Shit, something's gone wrong."
Both men sprang to their feet. Marco slid over the hood of the patrol car, still radiating heat from the engine, and dove into the driver's seat. Ignition, clutch, stall, restart. All in one sequence.
"What are you—"
"Don't yell, don't yell!" Marco wiped sweat off his forehead. Thank god the second attempt worked. The patrol car belched black smoke as the tires screeched, launching forward.
---
A large bald man in a dark leather coat glanced at the security guard still twitching on the ground, blood pooling beneath him. He raised his sawed-off shotgun and blew the lock off the door of the prison transport. Another accomplice fired again, dropping a hidden transport officer inside the vehicle. The bald man grabbed the corpse by the collar, dragged it out, and threw it onto the pavement like a sack of garbage.
He shouted into the back of the transport. "Hargrove!"
A thin, nervous-looking black man timidly stood up from a corner of the compartment, hands still cuffed. The bald man grinned, showing yellowed teeth.
"Come on. We need you."
Suddenly, he felt something behind him. He spun around with his gun raised.
A patrol car had just turned into the alley. For a split second, their eyes met through the windshield. Then the driver slammed the accelerator, and the cruiser vanished behind a wall in a blur of squealing tires and black exhaust.
The men burst into laughter.
"These cops are hilarious," one of them said, slapping the side of the van. "If they're all this chicken, we should thank God."
"Forget them," the bald man said, turning back to Hargrove. "Let's move."
---
"If my neck breaks, I swear that'll be on your head!" Darnell ripped off his seatbelt and jumped out of the car. "What are you doing?!"
"If I hadn't reacted, we'd both be dead right now! Didn't you see they were carrying Uzis?!" Marco grabbed the radio mic, banged it a few times, and shouted into it:
"Emergency call! All units, Signal 33! Signal 33! Officers down! Shots fired between Cathedral Square and Adams Pier! Four suspects with automatic weapons have hijacked a Blackgate transport! Officers down! Adam-12 is engaging on foot! We need all available units responding Code 3! Repeat, multiple officers down!"
The radio crackled twice, as if complaining. He dropped the mic, jumped out of the car, his hands trembling slightly. His right hand drew the 1911, racked the slide to check the chamber. With his left, he popped the trunk and yanked out a Mossberg shotgun with a wooden stock and steel handguard from the top of the mess of cones, medical kits, and toolboxes. He tossed it to Darnell.
"We've got firepower too. I'll draw their fire from the front." He pointed to a narrow trash-filled alley beside the apartment complex. "Loop around, get close, and hit hard."
"Got it!" Darnell grabbed six rounds of 12-gauge buckshot from his belt and fumbled them into the shotgun's tube. He sprinted toward the fire escape behind the apartments.
Marco watched him disappear around the corner, steadied his breathing, and flicked off the pistol's safety.
This was the first time he'd faced multiple armed suspects head-on alone.
He'd responded to a bank robbery once before, but that time he'd only had to park on the perimeter and point a gun for show, negotiators were there, and if talks failed, SWAT would roll in with heavy armor. This time, it was probably just him and Darnell.
Three.
He counted silently. Lowered his center of gravity. Gripped the gun tight. Moved forward with tiny, silent steps along the wall toward the mouth of the alley, back pressed firmly against the bricks. Sweat pooled in his palms. The metal grip felt like ice, stiffening his fingers.
Technically, a move like this required risk assessment and planning. But there was no time. The rough hardness of the brick wall seeping through his uniform gave him a shred of psychological safety.
Two.
Wind brushed the corner of the street, carrying the mixed smell of gunpowder, blood, and Gotham's ever-present stink of garbage and rust. Only distant traffic noise and his own heart hammering in his chest remained.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
So loud it drowned everything else out.
One.
He drew a long breath. The cold air stabbed his lungs and snapped his mind into razor focus. Muscles tightened. He peeked, left eye and half his forehead flicking past the wall edge for a fraction of a second, then snapped back even faster, slamming against the bricks again.
The suspects were clearly in a hurry to leave and hadn't set up tight overwatch. Four men with guns. Three already boarding a vehicle. The fourth shoving a handcuffed Black man into an SUV.
But when he saw them, they saw him. The moment his head pulled back, bullets sprayed from the alley exit, thudding into the opposite brick wall.
He extended his arm low around the corner and fired two rounds blindly, then tucked back in. The .45 recoil was heavy, but with his improved proficiency, it wasn't unmanageable. The real problem was that if they got in the vehicle and forced a breakout, his handgun wouldn't stop them, and they might mow him down as they passed.
Bullets trickled sporadically at the alley mouth, making it nearly impossible for him to peek out again.
Then...
CRASH!
A window on the second floor of the nearby apartment shattered. Glass rained down onto the pavement below. Darnell's voice bellowed from above:
"GCPD! DROP YOUR WEAPONS!"
The robbers instinctively flinched, attention split for a heartbeat.
Marco darted from the wall, raised his gun with both hands, and fired at the trenchcoat suspect holding the submachine gun outside the vehicle.
Darnell was following proper escalation procedure, announce, warn, engage.
Marco believed in something simpler: Shoot first. Sort it out later.
The skill card made the shooting motion smooth, almost instinctive. But it didn't guarantee accuracy. He'd aimed for the man's head. The bullet went through the right shoulder instead.
The massive impact smashed the suspect against the side of the SUV. The Uzi flew out of his hand, clattering across the pavement.
Judging by the sudden fountain of blood, he had hit something vital, probably the subclavian artery. A bright red jet blasted from the wound in a pulsing spray. The man screamed, his right arm going instantly limp. He clutched at the hole with his left hand, but hot blood poured through his fingers like water from a burst pipe, painting the pavement a vivid, glistening red.