The day shift on Marvel time had finally come to an end.
"Subclavian artery, axillary artery, brachial artery... fuck, why is this Latin harder to pronounce than Russian!" Jessica clutched an anatomy atlas thicker than a brick and mussed her tangled hair into a bird's nest.
Yang Ming took off his white coat and draped it over the back of a chair.
"Eight tomorrow morning, spot quiz on the course of the upper-limb blood vessels. Fifty dollars deducted for every one you get wrong."
"That's labor exploitation!" Jessica snapped her head up, the bloodshot veins in her eyes clearly visible.
"It's preparation to keep you out of court someday." Yang Ming ignored her protest and headed toward the sheet-metal door deep inside the clinic, marked "Medical supplies storage."
"Lock the roller shutter. You can sleep on the folding bed behind the triage desk. Don't touch the drugs in the glass cabinet."
The door handle pressed down.
A deep blue vortex silently swallowed Yang Ming.
Weightlessness came with a faint wave of dizziness. When he opened his eyes again, the sour stink of Hell's Kitchen had been replaced by Gotham City's seemingly inescapable odor of damp and mold.
The Underground Clinic was deathly silent. Only the standby indicators on a few medical devices blinked faintly red in the darkness.
The relentless strain, combined with the physical depletion from the system's infusion of combat memories, made Yang Ming's temples ache as though needles were stabbing them. He pulled open a drawer and expertly snapped the neck off a glass ampoule of concentrated glucose.
He filled a syringe with the clear liquid. No disinfectant, no tourniquet. Gritting his teeth, he used one hand to drive the needle precisely into a raised vein on the back of his other hand.
The cold liquid was forced into his bloodstream.
Yang Ming let out a long, weary breath, withdrew the needle, and casually pressed a wad of cotton against the puncture. He dropped heavily onto the creaking camp cot in the corner and closed his eyes without even taking off his shoes.
Gotham's nighttime rain arrived right on schedule.
Rain struck the asphalt of Lake Street, splashing up murky water.
Selina Kyle stood in the shadows diagonally opposite Alley 22. Her fitted black waterproof leathers clung to her supple body, making her look like a black cat that had melted completely into the night.
Finding this place hadn't taken much effort. In Gotham's East End, two packs of cheap Camel cigarettes were enough to loosen any homeless man's tongue.
"22 Lake Street... this is it." Selene stared into the dark alley, a cold smile curling her lips.
A black Ford sedan was parked at the alley entrance. Its windows were halfway down, and two burly men in leather jackets were snoring in their seats. They were the covert guards the Maloney Family had stationed there specifically to curry favor with that "miracle doctor."
As stupid as a pair of pigs.
Selene sprang lightly onto a nearby dumpster, avoiding the puddles on the ground. Her combat boots found purchase on the protruding edges of the red brick wall, and she slipped along it as silently as a gecko, passing directly above the Ford's roof.
She landed without a sound.
The rusty iron door was right before her.
Selene pulled a specially made black hairpin from her hair. With a little pressure from her fingers, she bent it into an odd angle.
She slipped it into the keyhole.
Closing her eyes, she felt the minute vibrations of the lock pins through her fingertips.
One. Two. Three.
"Click."
An almost imperceptible sound of metal engaging.
The smile on Selene's lips deepened. She pushed open the iron door and slipped sideways inside. The hinges made a barely audible sound, perfectly masked by the rain outside.
The clinic was pitch-black.
The sharp smell of disinfectant rushed into her nose. Selene's pupils quickly dilated in the darkness, her excellent night vision allowing her to adjust in moments.
A triage desk. An operating table. A glass instrument cabinet.
Her objective was clear. That bastard with the dark circles under his eyes had swiped her spoils on the street today. He definitely still had the money on him, or had hidden it somewhere in the clinic.
Like a weightless breeze, Selene moved on tiptoe, silently creeping up to the triage desk.
Her gaze swept over the dark black trench coat draped over the chair back.
She reached into its pocket. Empty.
Her eyes moved down, locking onto the locked drawer at the very bottom of the triage desk.
Selene crouched halfway down, her fingertips just touching the hidden compartment beneath the drawer.
"Clack."
An abrupt metallic scrape exploded through the deathly silent clinic!
Every hair on Selene's body stood on end, and her pupils shrank to pinpoints.
A tiny blue flame appeared in a corner less than three meters away.
The flame danced.
It illuminated a face with heavy dark circles beneath the eyes, sickly with exhaustion.
Yang Ming was slouched in the swivel chair beside the camp cot, toying with a cheap metal windproof lighter. Its flame reflected in his black eyes, which held not a trace of warmth.
He hadn't fallen asleep at all. His master-level combat instincts had given him an almost animal vigilance. From the moment the iron door's lock turned, he had been watching this cat walk straight into his trap.
"Are Gotham's thieves all this brazen now?"
Yang Ming's voice was as flat as if he were discussing tomorrow's weather.
"Just walking into someone else's place, bold as you please."
The lighter's lid snapped shut.
Darkness fell again.
But in the very second the flame went out, Selene moved!
In the darkness, the movement of the air changed ever so slightly.
A sharp, clean knife-hand strike tore through the silence, aimed straight at Yang Ming's right carotid sinus.
There was no killing intent in the strike, and its force was carefully restrained. The goal was clear: interrupt the brain's blood supply and cause a brief loss of consciousness, allowing her to take his wallet without endangering his life.
Yang Ming remained slouched in the swivel chair, not shifting his body an inch. His master-level combat instincts took over his reflexes. His left hand rose, all five fingers closing precisely around her slender wrist. He pulled her toward him, turning her momentum against her.
Selene lost her balance and pitched forward. She reacted instantly, bracing her left hand against the chair's armrest and powering through her supple waist to drive her right knee toward Yang Ming's chest.
She still avoided lethal force, steering clear of vital points such as the pit of his chest and his throat.
Yang Ming pressed his right arm down, blocking the knee strike. Flesh and bone collided with a dull thud. He rose with the motion and twisted her wrist backward, preparing to put her in a hold.
Selene winced in pain but didn't back down. Using the force of the twist, she flipped through the air in a way that seemed to defy human biomechanics, scissoring both legs toward Yang Ming's neck.
It was a classic Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu choke. Once locked in, it could choke someone unconscious in seconds.
Rather than retreating, Yang Ming stepped in. He raised his left forearm and wedged it between Selene's legs, forcibly breaking the choke's leverage. At the same time, he clenched his right hand and unleashed a short-range punch into a nerve on her inner thigh.
Selene's legs went weak, and her attack collapsed completely.
Yang Ming hooked her with the same motion and flipped her onto the nearby stainless-steel multipurpose operating table.
Before she could roll over, a lightly callused hand clamped onto the back of her neck, pinning her hard against the table. His other hand twisted her arms behind her back, pulled over a medical tourniquet, wrapped it around twice, and tied a tight knot.
The entire exchange had lasted less than five seconds.
Yang Ming freed a hand and pressed the switch on the wall.
The German-made surgical light overhead snapped on. A stark white beam shone straight down, exposing every detail of the operating table.
The bright light stung her eyes. Selene turned her head, squinting as she adjusted. Her chin rested against the stiff sheet, her hands bound and her body immobilized. She looked just like a fish on a chopping board waiting to be gutted.
Yang Ming pulled over the swivel chair and sat down again.
"Not bad. Too bad you picked the wrong opponent." He casually picked up the chart clipboard from the desk, turned to a blank sheet, and tapped his pen against the surface. "Name."
"You won't get a word out of me, bastard!" Selene ground her teeth and flailed her legs in the air, trying to kick over the instrument trolley beside her.
Yang Ming lifted his foot and stepped on the tops of her combat boots, pressing them firmly down.
"Save your strength. If you'd had a knife in your hand just now, or aimed for my Adam's apple, your windpipe would already be cut open and you'd be lying in the medical waste bin." Yang Ming spoke evenly, stating an objective fact.
"I believe in returning favors. You held back, so I let you live."
Selene stopped struggling pointlessly. Her chest heaved as she turned her head to stare at the man sitting in the shadows. At the edge of the surgical light, the dark circles beneath his eyes stood out sharply, giving him the world-weary look of someone who never got enough sleep.
"Give me Benjamin's wallet back." She forced the words through clenched teeth.
"Correction: I picked it up off Benjamin. Then you tried to take it from my pocket, and finally I took it back." Yang Ming toyed with the ballpoint pen in his hand.
"When thieves rob thieves in Gotham, you admit defeat if you're outclassed. Coming onto someone else's turf to rob them outright breaks the rules."
"He was my prey first!"
"Then go report me to the Gotham Police Department. You. Little. Thief!"
Yang Ming's mocking expression left Selene speechless.
His gaze swept over her fitted black leathers, faded from repeated washing. The material was good, but the edges were badly worn. This woman had an exceptional talent for stealth, yet she was clearly doing rather poorly for herself.
"I'll ask again. What's your name?" Yang Ming repeated.
Selene shut her mouth, adopting a stance of passive resistance.
Yang Ming wasn't annoyed. He took a pair of surgical scissors from his white coat pocket, slipped his thumb and index finger through the loops, and opened and closed the blades with crisp metallic clicks.
"Won't talk? More than a dozen people go missing in Gotham's East End every day. One more won't make a difference. My Underground Clinic happens to need a cadaver for practice. Where should I start dissecting?" The cold tip of the scissors touched the back collar of Selene's leather outfit and slid down along her spine.
Every hair on Selene's body stood on end. She wasn't afraid of being beaten, but stories of deranged doctors cutting living people to pieces were all too common in the East End.
"Selene! Selina Kyle!" she blurted, her voice jumping an octave.