Gotham's torrential rain hammered the rolling shutter at 22 Lake Street with dull thuds.
Inside the Underground Clinic, the stark white surgical light had been switched off. Only a dim yellow wall lamp remained, along with the ghostly blue glow from the control panel of the Stark Industries hyperbaric oxygen chamber.
Selene lay slumped against the metal chamber's blast-resistant glass, breathing evenly. After hours of intense strain, she had confirmed that her younger sister Maggie's blood oxygen saturation was holding steady at 96%. Only then had this wary stray cat finally succumbed to exhaustion and fallen into a deep sleep.
Yang Ming stood before the stainless steel operating table, five meters away.
He raised his right hand. At the base of his index finger, the dark silver ring the system had just issued rested against his skin without the slightest trace of warmth, as though it had been cast from the cheapest pig iron.
His fingertips touched the cold metal edge of the table.
He willed it.
Whoosh.
There was no gravitational lag, no dizzying distortion of space. The multifunctional operating table, weighing three hundred pounds and equipped with a complex hydraulic lifting system, vanished into thin air.
A large patch of floor instantly opened up in the previously cramped clinic.
Yang Ming opened his palm and reached into the ring with his mind. A pitch-black space measuring roughly 4.6 meters in each dimension appeared in his consciousness. The operating table floated silently in one corner, taking up only a tiny fraction of its volume.
He willed it again.
Clang.
The operating table landed firmly back in its original spot. Its four metal legs struck the concrete floor, kicking up a trace of dust.
Yang Ming's breathing grew slightly heavier. The wall lamp's faint glow reflected in his dark eyes, mingling with a fervor he could barely conceal.
It worked.
For the past three months, he had been little more than a lowly pack mule.
To haul antibiotics and anesthetics from Marvel's Hell's Kitchen to Gotham, he had to cinch a backpack tight against his shoulders. Every time he passed through that blue vortex portal, the minute difference in gravity between the two universes made his lumbar discs groan under the strain.
He had even dismantled the Stark hyperbaric oxygen chamber into eight pieces and dragged them across one by one, like an ant hauling supplies.
Now his logistical bottleneck had been obliterated.
One hundred cubic meters. Enough to hold two full-sized Hummers.
An underground smuggling network spanning Marvel and DC unfolded explosively in Yang Ming's mind.
Discarded scraps from Stark Industries and substandard biological products from the Osborn Group in the Marvel Universe could be transported to Gotham without a trace and sold to mob bosses desperate to prolong their lives.
Meanwhile, military-grade fibers and large-caliber firearms phased out by Gotham's Wayne Enterprises, and even the tons of illicit American cash circulating through the East End's black market, could be instantly laundered and shipped to Hell's Kitchen in New York.
He was a doctor. But he needed capital even more. In these two hellholes, where titans clashed and alien invasions or the Joker blowing up the city were practically routine, anyone without an absolute stockpile of resources wasn't even qualified to be cannon fodder.
Yang Ming lowered his hand and glanced at the still-sleeping Selene.
Taking this stray cat in was worth every penny.
He turned and walked toward the iron door deep inside the clinic, marked "Medical Supplies Storage." He pressed down on the handle, and a blue vortex spun silently into existence.
He stepped through.
Morning light in New York's Hell's Kitchen pierced the gaps in the rolling shutter and stung Yang Ming's eyes. The air carried the sour stink of stale beer and rotting garbage.
Bang!
A copy of Netter's Atlas of Human Anatomy, thicker than a brick, slammed down on the triage desk.
Jessica Jones stood behind the desk like an irritable lioness, sporting dark circles even worse than Yang Ming's.
Her worn leather jacket hung open over a faded gray tank top, and a few dried coffee stains dotted her collarbone.
"The subclavian artery arises from the brachiocephalic trunk, passes posterior to the anterior scalene muscle, and continues as the axillary artery at the lateral border of the first rib."
Jessica gave Yang Ming no chance to speak. She rattled off the words like a Maxim machine gun firing at full tilt.
"The axillary artery has three segments. The first gives off the superior thoracic artery; the second, the thoracoacromial and lateral thoracic arteries; the third, the subscapular, anterior circumflex humeral, and posterior circumflex humeral arteries. It extends to the inferior border of the teres major, where it becomes the brachial artery..."
Latin terms poured from her dry lips in rapid bursts, thick with a New York street accent. She stared hard at Yang Ming, her eyes bloodshot, like a gambler waiting for the dealer to reveal his hand.
She had spent the entire night on it. Fueled by three cups of cheap black coffee, she had forced the paths of every blood vessel and nerve in the upper limb into her brain.
Yang Ming walked to the water dispenser, filled a cup with warm water, and moistened his slightly dry throat.
"Which nerve accompanies the deep brachial artery? What space does it pass through?" Yang Ming asked abruptly, his voice flat.
Jessica froze for half a second, frantically searching her memory.
"The radial nerve! It passes through the radial groove between the medial and lateral heads of the triceps!"
Yang Ming set down his paper cup. He opened a drawer, pulled out a stack of hundred-dollar bills, counted out five, and slapped them onto the atlas's cover.
"Yesterday's base pay, plus today's spot-check bonus."
Jessica's bloodshot eyes lit up at once. She snatched the five hundred dollars, quickly rubbed her thumb along the edges to confirm that delightful feel, then unceremoniously stuffed them into the tight pocket of her jeans.
"Boss, I think I'm a medical genius." Jessica flashed a smug grin, grabbed her cold coffee from the desk, and took a swig.
"The genius gets to do the dirty work now."
Yang Ming bent down and lifted a black plastic bag out of the freezer beneath the triage desk. He untied the knot, releasing a strong odor of raw meat.
He slapped a thick slab of pork belly, complete with skin and layers of fat, onto a stainless steel tray. Unclotted blood still clung to its edges.
Jessica nearly spat out her coffee. She pinched her nose in disgust. "Did you go shopping at a slaughterhouse first thing this morning? Are we switching to selling hot dogs?"
"Come here. Put on gloves." Yang Ming tossed her a pair of sterile latex gloves.
He picked up a needle holder from the instrument tray and clamped it around a curved suture needle threaded with black nylon.
"People get shot in Hell's Kitchen every day. Knowing your blood vessels isn't enough. You need to know how to plug the leaks." Yang Ming used the forceps in his left hand to open a slit in the pork.
"Watch carefully. This simulates a through-and-through wound from a nine-millimeter handgun round. Small entry wound, large exit wound. Cavitation tears apart the fat and muscle inside."
"If you only stitch the skin, you'll leave a dead space underneath. Blood will collect, infection will set in, and three days later, the patient will die of sepsis right in front of you."
Yang Ming turned his wrist slightly. The needle holder guided the suture needle into the deepest layer of muscle with extraordinary precision. In went the needle, up came the tissue, out came the needle, then a knot. His movements were almost too fast to follow.
"Suture from the inside out. Absorbable thread for the muscle layer, a stitch through the fat layer, and the skin comes last."
Yang Ming cut the thread and stepped back half a pace. "Your turn."
Jessica pulled on her gloves and grabbed a spare needle holder. Looking at the bloody slab of pork, she took a deep breath. She had seen plenty of bones broken in fights, but she had never attempted needlework this delicate in her life.
The needle pierced the pigskin.
"Too shallow! Do you want the fat sticking out?" Yang Ming snapped.
Jessica gritted her teeth and pressed down harder with her wrist.
Snap.
A sharp crack rang out. Her far-beyond-human strength snapped the fine steel suture needle clean in two. The broken tip flew away and struck the glass medicine cabinet.
Dead silence fell over the clinic.
Jessica held up the needle holder with its remaining half of the needle and gave an awkward twitch of her lips. "This needle... pretty lousy quality, huh?"
Yang Ming took a deep breath and suppressed the urge to kick this human tyrannosaur out of the clinic.
"Relax your wrist. You're stitching human flesh, not patching a truck tire. Use finesse. Feel how the resistance changes as the needle passes through the tissue." Yang Ming clamped a fresh needle into the holder and handed it over. His tone was stern, but there wasn't a trace of impatience.
He had hired her, so she was one of his clinic's people now. Even if she was a monster who could crush a steel pipe with forceps, he still had to train her into a competent assistant capable of treating gunshot wounds on her own.
Jessica opened her mouth, then glanced at her bulging pocket. She swallowed her curse, took the needle holder again, and drew a deep breath, carefully reigning in that terrifying strength.