"A few days ago, someone placed an order on Black Island's darknet site: three million dollars' worth of gold for Professor Schiller Rodriguez's life. Quite a few people were joking that the behavioral school had finally made its move," Deathstroke said.
Schiller sighed softly. "Then why didn't you take the job?"
"Don't joke around. We all know who you are," Deathstroke said. "At least no Assassin in Gotham would take that job. We may be short on cash, but we're not that stupid yet."
"But I'm a little smarter than they are, and I have some personal ties with you, so I can sell you this information. How much are you planning to pay?"
"Definitely not three million." Schiller shook his head. "If you want something, you can take the things from the other office upstairs. That's all there is."
"Fine. I heard from Killer Croc that the furniture is all pretty new. Maybe it'll cover this year's insurance payments."
Then he went upstairs to inspect the furniture.
Schiller watched his retreating back, torn between laughter and tears. It seemed this old father really was short of money.
Still, that made sense. There were basically no full-time assassins in this world. If someone relied solely on killing people for money, they would probably have starved to death long ago.
Most so-called assassins were mercenaries. Besides killing, they took jobs delivering letters, passing along intelligence, causing trouble for people, and so on.
With the economy in a slump, hardly anyone was willing to spend money on that kind of thing. To survive, most people had obediently found regular jobs and only occasionally did some petty theft to supplement their household income.
Schiller knew that Deathstroke in their universe was relatively old. Even if he had mastered every skill an assassin ought