Gotham's rain battered the black umbrella. Droplets gathered along its ribs and fell into oily puddles on the asphalt.
Yang Ming walked through the shadows of Lake Street. Thirty meters ahead, Selene hurried through the curtain of rain.
Watching the "little wildcat" run awkwardly in her desperate anxiety for her sister, Yang Ming felt a trace of warmth in Gotham, this gloomy, indifferent, man-eating city.
Speaking of which, when should I bring Spider-Man, Peter Parker, and all his chatterbox, friendly-neighborhood antics to Gotham? He'd turn the place upside down. That would be fun. What kind of chemistry would there be when Bruce met Spider-Man? Would he try to recruit him as Robin?
Yang Ming quietly followed Selene, letting his imagination wander.
Selene clutched the spray that could save her sister's life. Her racing heart clouded her judgment as she headed straight for St. Mary's Abbey on the outskirts of the East End.
She had abandoned all caution.
After Yang Ming integrated "Master-level combat," its accompanying instincts for stealth and counter-surveillance had awakened.
The rhythm of his leather shoes stepping through puddles matched the falling rain perfectly. His footsteps vanished into the night.
He knew all too well what Gotham's lowest gangs were like. A lone wolf like Selene would run into deadly trouble sooner or later, and that would be his ideal chance to earn her gratitude, recruit her, and obtain the system's storage ring.
The outer walls of St. Mary's Abbey came into view. The building from the Victorian Era was in ruins. The ivy on its walls had long since died, leaving only shriveled vines clinging to the blackened gaps between the bricks.
Selene pushed off the wall and vaulted lightly over the rusty iron fence. Her landing was textbook, her bent knees absorbing most of the impact.
Half a second later, she froze.
The perpetually drafty wooden door to the backyard had been brutally kicked into splinters. Shards of wood stuck out of the mud. A jumble of military boot prints remained on the ground, their deep treads belonging to heavy tactical boots.
Someone had broken in.
Yang Ming stood in a blind spot beneath a streetlight across the road, his umbrella held low.
The rain blocked most smells, but the breeze still carried a trace of sour stench mixed with cheap tobacco and machine oil. It was the distinctive body odor of the East End's lowest street thugs.
Gotham's criminal ecosystem had an exceptionally rigid hierarchy.
At the top of the food chain were traditional Mafia figures like Falcone and Maroni, who controlled the ports, drugs, and politicians.
In the middle were organized gangs that collected protection money and ran underground casinos.
At the very bottom were the street rats with no fixed territory, who survived by stealing, robbing, and trafficking people.
The footprints on the ground were chaotic, with uneven strides, indicating that the intruders had no professional tactical training. There were between three and four of them.
Selene's breathing lost its rhythm. Her respiratory rate shot from sixteen breaths per minute to more than thirty. Sympathetic nervous stimulation triggered a surge of adrenaline, redirecting blood to her skeletal muscles.
She rushed toward the pile of broken boards.
Yang Ming did not hurry to reveal himself. Surgery demanded precise timing. Opening a wound too early caused unnecessary bleeding; too late, and the best window for rescue would be lost.
Recruiting someone worked the same way. Only when they fell into utter desperation, with all their pride and trump cards crushed, would they cling desperately to the rope offered to them.
Put simply, help in a crisis meant more than icing on the cake!
He crossed the street and approached the iron fence. A structural layout of the Monastery's interior rapidly took shape in his mind.
The main building was a chapel with a twelve-meter-high ceiling, flanked by corridors and living quarters. The way sound refracted and echoed allowed him to pinpoint where the people inside were.
Agonized coughing drifted out of the Monastery's dilapidated hall, accompanied by crude curses.
That was Maggie's voice.
Her coughing carried a distinct wheeze, typical of small-airway spasms. Inflammatory factors stimulated contractions in the bronchial smooth muscles, making it difficult for her to exhale.
Yang Ming closed his black umbrella and rested its tip on the ground. He stepped over the broken boards and entered the shadows of the backyard.
Several large holes gaped in the hall's stained-glass windows. Dim candlelight spilled through them, casting warped patches of light across the mud.
He approached a window and looked through a hole.
Three figures in ragged leather jackets had cornered the frail Maggie against a wall. Rat emblems were tattooed on their necks.
The lead thug raised his foot and kicked over the iron pot on the floor.
Scalding oatmeal spilled out, splashing onto the backs of Maggie's chilblain-covered hands. Blisters rose rapidly. Maggie curled up in pain as an asthma attack struck, her chest heaving violently.
The hollows above her collarbones and sternum, along with the spaces between her ribs, visibly retracted as she inhaled. Her face turned blue-purple as airway spasms prevented oxygen from reaching her alveoli.
Selene charged into the hall like a maddened leopardess.
The fight was about to begin.
Yang Ming leaned against the damp brick wall and slipped his right hand into his trench coat pocket. His fingertips touched cold metal handles: three No. 11 high-carbon steel scalpels.
He needed to observe the upper limit of Selene's actual combat ability. That would determine the level of work he assigned her in the future.
Selene burst into the hall without a word.
She drove off her right leg, her abdominal and lower-back muscles unleashing strength far beyond that of an ordinary person. She leaped into the air and brought her right kneecap smashing down toward the lead thug's face.
Anatomically, the most fragile facial bones were the nasal bones and the perpendicular plate of the ethmoid. A blunt impact of over two hundred pounds would shatter them on the spot and cave in the cartilage, potentially even driving bone fragments into the brain's frontal lobe.
A sharp crack of breaking bone echoed through the empty hall.
The thug collapsed, blood gushing from his nose. He covered his face with both hands and howled. Stimulation of his tear glands caused tears to mingle with the blood, smearing his entire face.
The other two thugs retreated half a step and pulled switchblades from their waists. The blades snapped open with mechanical clicks.
They belonged to the Rat Gang, the most despicable band of thieves in Gotham's East End.
The Rat Gang's operations were utterly primitive. They had no established business network and relied entirely on exploiting the homeless and orphans at the very bottom of society.
Their leader, Feiss Chel, was scum without a shred of decency. He coveted Selene's talent for stealth and her looks, and had repeatedly tried to bring her into the gang.
"Boss Feiss's final ultimatum," the thug on the left said, spitting out a mouthful of bloody saliva.
"He likes your skills and your pretty face. Be his woman and work for the gang, and you and your sister get to live."
Selene sneered.
She shielded Maggie behind her and drew a short dagger from her leather boot with her right hand.
"Trafficking homeless children from the East End. Breaking the arms and legs of the ones you can't sell, blinding them, and dumping them on the streets to beg." Selene stared at the blade's tip.
"Fiss is an animal. A piece of shit. I'd starve to death before bowing to someone like him."
"So you want to do this the hard way." The thug on the right stepped forward. "Stealing on Rat Gang turf without paying protection money? We're taking Maggie today and selling her to organ dealers on the underground black market to settle your debt."
Those words crossed Selene's absolute red line.
Maggie was her only pillar of support in this rotten world. Anyone who tried to hurt Maggie would pay in blood.