The heavy stench of blood mingled with the acrid smell of cheap alcohol in the cramped underground clinic.
Beneath the surgical lamp's stark white glow, a pair of hemostats probed precisely into a wound with torn, curling edges. Metal scraped against bone with a faint, teeth-grating sound.
"Hold him down! Don't let him move!"
Yang Ming never looked up, his scalpel deftly slicing away the dead tissue.
The burly Russian gangster on the operating table roared like a wild beast, his muscles spasming, but his two companions pinned him firmly to the iron bed.
Yang Ming wore a white coat with yellowing edges and flecks of dark red staining its cuffs. His cold eyes stayed fixed on the wound as he flicked his wrist.
Clink.
A deformed nine-millimeter brass bullet dropped into the stainless steel tray.
"Done. Stitches, payment, meds, then get out." Yang Ming tossed down the hemostats and peeled off his latex gloves, slick with sticky blood.
The burly man's companions sighed in relief. One of them, a bald man, rubbed his hands together and turned toward the closed sheet-metal door at the back of the clinic. "Dr. Yang, we're short on gauze. I'll get some from your storeroom..."
"Stop."
Yang Ming's voice was quiet, yet the temperature throughout the clinic seemed to plummet. He picked up the medical scissors on the table, their sharp blades gleaming coldly under the light.
"You know the rules in Hell's Kitchen. You should know mine, too. Take so much as half a step through that door, and I'll never treat anyone from your gang again, no matter how much you offer."
The bald man froze, cold sweat instantly soaking his back.
In this neighborhood, the last person anyone could afford to offend was this "unlicensed miracle doctor," whose surgical skills surpassed those of the attending surgeons at legitimate Manhattan hospitals.
He gave a couple of awkward chuckles and backed away hastily, leaving a stack of greasy dollar bills before helping his companion up and fleeing.
Deathly silence returned to the clinic.
Yang Ming walked over to the sink, letting cold water wash the blood from between his fingers. He looked up at his reflection in the mirror: black hair, black eyes, a young face carrying an exhaustion that did not belong to someone his age.
In his previous life, he had been an attending surgeon. While trying to save a drowning child, his lungs had filled with icy river water, and he had suffocated.
When he opened his eyes again, he had arrived in the chaos of the Marvel Universe and become an underground doctor in New York's Hell's Kitchen.
After drying his hands, Yang Ming approached the "medical storeroom" door that everyone else was strictly forbidden to go near.
He placed his palm against the cold handle and pressed down.
There were no piles of gauze or antibiotics behind the door, only a deep blue vortex.
This was his secret, and his greatest trump card for establishing himself in Hell's Kitchen-an Anywhere Door, much like the blue robotic cat's gadget. Except this door could not take him anywhere in the world. It had just one fixed destination.
The DC Universe, Gotham City.
As he passed through the blue vortex, the smell of gunsmoke in the air was instantly replaced by a damp, chilly odor laced with industrial exhaust and the stench of sewers.
Beyond the door lay another underground clinic with an almost identical layout.
Yang Ming pulled up a chair, sat down, and rubbed his throbbing temples. Shortly after arriving in this world, he had shuttled between New York and Gotham to make more money, extracting bullets from gangsters in Hell's Kitchen in the morning and stitching up gangsters' scalps in Gotham in the afternoon.
Three months of nonstop work had nearly left him dead on the operating table.
Having learned his lesson the hard way, he set himself a rule: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in Marvel; Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays in DC. Sundays were his days off, without exception.
Today happened to be Monday, according to New York time in Marvel.
Just then, a line of ghostly blue text abruptly appeared at the edge of his vision, accompanied by a crisp mechanical notification in his mind.
[Mission system activated] [Emergency mission: Survival in the dark alley] [Mission objective: Proceed to the alley at 22 Lake Street and treat the critically injured Bruce Wayne.] [Mission background: After returning from more than ten years of traveling the globe, Bruce Wayne made his first attempt at fighting street crime. Unfamiliar with the rules of Gotham's underworld, he was surrounded by gangsters and shot by corrupt police officers. He currently has two gunshot wounds and multiple fractures, with blood loss exceeding 1,000 cc.] [Mission reward: Awarded based on treatment completion.] [Countdown: Two hours. If the target dies, the mission fails.]
Yang Ming shot to his feet, his pupils contracting.
Bruce Wayne? The future Batman?
Twenty-five years old, on his first outing, and nearly beaten to death in an alley?
There was no time to hesitate.
Yang Ming snatched up the tactical emergency backpack he kept ready on the table, stuffed in cardiac stimulant injections, hemostatic gel, and a suture kit, then pushed open the Gotham clinic's door and rushed into the pouring rain.
At half past midnight, rain lashed down on Gotham.
It hammered the flooded pavement, sending up muddy splashes. Lake Street lay in Gotham's East End, a slum even rats would turn their noses up at.
Yang Ming trudged through the mud, sweeping his flashlight beam through the narrow, dark alley at number 22.
The redbrick walls on either side were riddled with bullet holes and spray-painted graffiti. Beneath the smell of rain hung an overpowering scent of rust-the smell of fresh blood.
Drip... drip...
That was not rain. It was the sound of thick liquid dripping into a puddle.
The flashlight beam stopped beside a trash can at the end of the alley.
A tall, powerfully built figure lay collapsed in the filthy water. He wore a crude black tactical bulletproof vest, with no cape and no bat emblem, and a black mask that exposed only the lower half of his face.
A large hole had been torn through the abdomen of his vest. Blood kept welling out with each shallow breath, staining the water beneath him red. His right leg was twisted at an unnatural angle, clearly struck by something heavy and blunt.
This was Batman on his first outing? He looked as wretched as a stray dog.
Yang Ming hurried over, dropped to one knee in the muddy water, and reached out to check the man's carotid pulse.
Just as his fingertips were about to touch that icy skin, everything changed!
The man, already half-conscious and barely clinging to life, suddenly sprang up like a cheetah. An almost imperceptible whistle cut through the darkness.
Whoosh!
Yang Ming had no time to react. He felt only a sudden coolness against his cheek.
With the soft sound of metal slicing flesh, a few drops of warm liquid splashed onto the back of his hand.
Thunk!
A razor-edged throwing knife skimmed past his cheekbone and buried itself in the brick wall behind him, its handle still shuddering violently.
Had blood loss not robbed the man's wrist of its strength, that blade would have sliced open Yang Ming's carotid artery instead of his cheek.
Yang Ming broke into a cold sweat, his heart pounding.
He looked down. The man who had thrown the blade had spent the last of his strength. His eyes rolled back, and he crashed into the muddy water, losing consciousness completely.
Beneath the mask, the lips of his sharply defined face were white as paper.
"Damn muscle memory... damn you, Bruce. You nearly got me killed." Yang Ming wiped the blood from his cheek and unzipped the emergency kit through gritted teeth.
His sharp scissors cut straight through Bruce's tactical vest at the abdomen, exposing the bloody gunshot wound.
Rain washed over the wound. His condition was even worse than the system had described.
I have to stop the bleeding now, or he won't make it to the clinic.
Yang Ming quickly pulled out the hemostatic gel and pressed it onto the wound, coating both hands in the blood of Gotham's richest man.
Just as he was about to give Bruce a cardiac stimulant injection, a piercing police siren sounded outside the alley. Flashing red and blue lights cut through the curtain of rain, while a jumble of footsteps and the clacking of gun bolts drew closer.
"Seal off the street! That masked freak's been shot. He can't have gone far! Boss Maroni wants him, dead or alive! Don't let him get away!"
The rough shout tore through the rain and into the alley.
Yang Ming's fingers abruptly stopped. He turned toward the shifting silhouettes drawing ever closer to the alley entrance.
On one side were heavily armed gangland killers. On the other was the future Batman, weighing nearly two hundred pounds and liable to die at any moment.
And his clinic was still two blocks away.