Harvey Dent wasn't dead. In fact, even Glinda was fine.
Ma Zhaodi watched the news report and smiled happily. He could almost completely confirm his judgment, because the system's prompts never made mistakes.
He casually filled a cornucopia with grapes, corn, small pumpkins, and little tomatoes. Today was Thanksgiving, and another holiday meant another job. The cornucopia in his hands was exactly what this odd job required him to deliver.
"Not even the number of uses left on the protective necklace shown in the system panel went down. Harvey Dent really is impressive. Ten seconds must have felt like plenty of time to him."
At that thought, his smile faded again, because the latter half of the news seemed rather strange.
Why had Harvey's wife been hospitalized? He couldn't figure it out no matter how hard he tried. If she had been admitted on the day of the explosion for examination, then there was no reason whatsoever for her to still be in the hospital today.
Could some unexpected incident have happened that I don't know about?
He carefully recalled what he knew about Harvey's wife, but in truth, he could only remember the woman who had been kidnapped by the Joker in The Dark Knight trilogy. Clearly, the two had absolutely nothing in common.
"Maybe I should go to the hospital and take a look. I can retrieve the Cross Necklace while I'm there."
--
"Do you think there's some possibility that what he said is true? This isn't the first time I've heard—"
"Harvey Dent fired two shots into the nephew of Roman? I don't believe it. I won't believe it, and you shouldn't either."
Harvey, who had just entered the room, didn't know that Gordon and Batman had had this conversation. He was merely a little dazed as he tore off his mask.
Being two people at the same time was a truly marvelous feeling. Yet he seemed oddly accustomed to it, even feeling a little reluctant to let it go, as though he had been born to be two people.
"So we're not charging the Irish Mob with attempted murder. I plan to let them go directly. We'll spread the word on the streets that we've reached an agreement with them, then see how Roman reacts."
"We can still charge them. They admitted to intending to commit murder, bombed your house, and sent Glinda to the hospital."
Harvey's mood darkened when Gordon mentioned Glinda.
He had tricked Glinda into wearing the Cross Necklace from the package and had also led her away from the main blast radius. Yet even though no external injuries had been found on her body, she had still fallen into a coma and hadn't woken up to this day.
Gordon's words had indeed touched something inside him. Glinda's condition was still unclear, but if they handled things this way, they would gain nothing.
"They can post bail within an hour and bribe the judge, while we'll still have nothing to show for it."
Batman watched the two argue in silence. At a time like this, he didn't want to make the decision for them.
"Charge them, Harvey, for God's sake. Or I'll go to the district attorney's office and find someone willing to prosecute them." Every word Gordon spoke was filled with anger. Harvey's wife had been hospitalized, yet now they were expected to release those bastards without charge just to solve the case. The thought sent his fury boiling over. He had always hated seeing lawless thugs who brazenly challenged the justice system walk free.
If Gordon hadn't possessed such a strong sense of justice, the Gotham Police Department might still have been one of the mob's protectors to this day.
Harvey had guessed wrong. The Irish Mob members were released from prison on bail in less than an hour.
Gordon really did miss dinner. Harvey went to the hospital to spend the night watching over Glinda, while Batman carried a Thanksgiving feast into the sewers. There, he saw Solomon eating another meal, which reminded him once more of the friend Grundy had mentioned.
"Grundy? Who brought you your food?"
The hulking man didn't answer him. He simply continued eating.
Batman swept his gaze across the surroundings. Aside from the sewage on the ground, it seemed that Grundy had eaten everything else. Solomon's friend had left behind no clues worth investigating. Encountering a situation and instinctively wanting to investigate it was simply Batman's nature.
Elsewhere, Harvey also returned to the hospital.
Glinda was still lying in the hospital bed, showing no sign of waking. He took her hand and warmed her chilled palm with his body heat. Sitting beside the bed, he silently prayed to God, hoping his wife would wake up soon.
At that moment, Harvey seemed to have returned to the role of a husband. The feeling was almost unfamiliar to him. For a long time, he had constantly needed to choose between Gotham and his family, and he had always chosen Gotham. Longer and longer hours of overtime, more and more crimes, more and more dangers came one after another, but he had endured them all.
But he had also been coming home later and later, handling bigger and bigger cases, while Glinda's pressure grew along with them. She had devoted herself wholeheartedly to staying in this city with Harvey, supporting every decision he made, but her husband had less and less time to spend with her.
This city has taken my husband away from me. She often thought that.
Harvey thought about something the two of them had discussed long ago: having a child, adding a tiny new life to their family. But even now, that idea remained nothing more than an idea. It was only today that he had remembered he was a husband as well.
I'm sorry, my wife, he thought, his guilt growing heavier. Still holding her hand, he slumped against the head of her bed and fell into a deep sleep.
A moment later, a masked nurse pushed open the door. After briefly sizing up the patients in the room, he walked straight to Glinda's bed.
His footsteps were light, and he didn't wake Harvey. He reached out and lightly touched the Cross Necklace around Glinda's neck. It vanished.
He turned to look around the room again. After confirming that no one had noticed him, he quickly left.
"Hey, hey, John, take a look at this security camera. Why did it suddenly go dark?"
In the monitoring room, a guard eating a hamburger turned his head. He saw that the screen his colleague was pointing at was indeed covered in snow-like white specks, and scratched his head in confusion.
"Sure enough. What the hell? I'll go take a look—huh? The picture's normal again?"
The two exchanged glances. In the end, they couldn't figure it out and simply gave up thinking about it.
"Who cares? It's working normally now, anyway."
"Let's see. Nine thousand Asset Points for all the things I've spent these past few days: four thousand for the computer setup, five hundred to equip it with a phone, twenty for the nurse's uniform, four thousand for Intermediate Stealth Mastery, and five hundred for the custom bomb..."
Ma Zhaodi muttered as he tallied up the Asset Points he had spent over the past few days, then sighed.
More than nine thousand points were gone, and there were plenty of things to worry about. Being a good person really did take a lot of effort.
He had no idea how Harvey Dent had managed to keep it up.
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