Bruce's slender fingers fastened the last button of his suit. He picked up the two bottles of "Yunnan Baiyao" from the metal tray and weighed them in his hand. The cans knocked together with a cheap metallic clink.
Instead of tossing them into the trash, he unhurriedly slipped them into the inside pocket of his tailored suit.
Then Bruce took a solid black metal business card case from another pocket. With a soft click, he drew out a card between two fingers and gently set it on the stainless steel Triage Desk. Its edges were embossed in platinum.
Yang Ming glanced at it. It bore only the name "Bruce Wayne" in raised gold lettering and a private phone number.
No title, no address.
A card like that could probably fetch fifty thousand dollars on Gotham City's black market. Countless politicians and businessmen desperate to attach themselves to the Wayne Family would give anything for one.
"Your 'Eastern therapy' certainly is unique, Dr. Yang." Bruce slipped both hands into his pockets, resuming his languid, arrogant manner.
"Since your medical skills are so remarkable, I happen to have a favor to ask."
Yang Ming folded the hundred-thousand-dollar check into a small square and tucked it into his white coat pocket. "Go ahead."
"I have an elderly butler at home. He's watched over me since I was a child." Bruce sighed, letting just the right trace of worry show in his blue eyes.
"He's getting on in years, and Gotham's weather is so damp. Lately, he's been complaining about joint pain, sometimes accompanied by tightness in his chest. The quacks at the municipal hospital can't find anything wrong. I'd like you to make a house call and give him a thorough examination."
Yang Ming's eyelid twitched.
An elderly butler? Joint pain? Chest tightness?
Yang Ming nearly laughed to himself. Alfred Pennyworth, a former veteran MI5 agent, was a hard case who could grind an ordinary gangland bruiser into the floor in close combat.
That old man's fit enough to tear apart light armor with his bare hands, and you're telling me he has rheumatic pain?
Does this bat even think his excuses through? He just wants to get me into Wayne Manor, away from the mixed bag of the East End slums, so he can interrogate me on his own turf about why I was in Falcone's study.
Yang Ming saw through him but said nothing. He picked up the card and rubbed a fingertip over its platinum embossing.
"A house call?" Yang Ming looked up, his dark eyes meeting Bruce's.
"Young Master Wayne, I have a rule. Outside the East End, my house-call fee doubles. The air in Upper Town is too clean for my taste. I'll need compensation for emotional distress."
"Money has never been a concern for the Wayne Family." Bruce smiled with flawless, moneyed confidence.
"As long as you can cure Alfred, name your price."
"Thursday." Yang Ming casually tossed the card into a drawer among a pile of cheap ballpoint pens. "Three in the afternoon, the day after tomorrow. I happen to be free."
"It's a deal." Bruce nodded slightly. "I'll arrange for a car to pick you up at the entrance to Lake Street at two thirty on Thursday afternoon. The roads in the East End are poor. I wouldn't want traffic to make you miss our appointment, Dr. Yang."
"As long as your car doesn't drive into a sewer, I'll be there on time."
Bruce wasted no more words and turned toward the Roll-up Door. Selene had the good sense to unlock it in advance.
With a metallic rattle, the shutter opened a crack, letting in cold wind and rain.
"One more thing, Dr. Yang." With one foot already in the rainy night, Bruce suddenly looked back, his penetrating gaze flickering in the dim light.
"Gotham's streets aren't safe at night, especially for people who like wandering around in black trench coats. A stray bullet can easily find them. Be careful."
Yang Ming stood behind the Triage Desk with his hands in his pockets. "Thank you for your concern, Young Master Wayne. But I'm pretty tough. When a bullet hits me, it's usually the bullet that suffers."
The corner of Bruce's mouth twitched. He said nothing more and slipped through the door into the rain.
The heavy Roll-up Door was locked shut again.
Leaning against the wall, Selene let out a long breath she had been holding for ages. She walked over to the Triage Desk and stared at Yang Ming as though he were a monster.
"Are you crazy? You actually extorted Bruce Wayne?" Selene lowered her voice. "He's the heir to Wayne Enterprises! All he has to do is lift a finger, and the GCPD will shut your clinic down tomorrow for practicing medicine without a license!"
"He won't." Yang Ming opened the drawer, took the card back out, and slipped it into a medical chart. "Right now, he wants this clinic to stay open more than anyone."
"Why?"
"Probably... because he's afraid of dying." Yang Ming tossed out the nonsense answer and turned toward the oxygen concentrator. "Go mop the floor. Young Master Wayne tracked mud in on his shoes."
Selene rolled her eyes and resigned herself to fetching the mop.
Twelve thirty in the afternoon, beneath Wayne Manor.
Water dripped from stalactites in the vast natural cavern. Several enormous high-end servers were running at full tilt, their cooling fans humming low.
Bare-chested, Bruce sat on a metal chair beside the medical pod. Beneath the surgical light, the bruised injury below his right ribs looked alarming.
Alfred wore an immaculate waistcoat and carried a silver tray holding the two red-and-white bottles of "Yunnan Baiyao."
"Master Bruce, assuming my farsightedness has not yet reached the point of requiring surgery..." Alfred adjusted the gold-rimmed glasses on his nose, his voice steeped in British sarcasm.
"That injury over your ribs is a perfect match for a blow from some sort of weighted blunt instrument. Given that your itinerary tonight involved visiting Mr. Falcone, may I assume that the Mafia godfather, a man in his seventies, has suddenly awakened some ancient form of Sicilian Martial Arts?"
Bruce rubbed between his brows, ignoring Alfred's sharp tongue.
"Are the test results ready?"
"Spectral analysis is underway." Alfred walked over to a centrifuge and watched the changing data on its screen.
"However, the packaging of these two cans of spray you paid a hundred thousand dollars for is exceptionally crude. There isn't even an ingredient list in English. I strongly suspect they contain some cheap menthol mixture."
"He's the man from Falcone's study," Bruce said in a low voice.
"His build, the way he uses his muscles, and those extremely rare close-quarters strangulation techniques. Most importantly, he blocked my Batarang and counterattacked within half a second. There isn't another Asian man in Gotham City with reflexes like that."
The analyzer chimed.
Alfred leaned toward the screen, his gray-blue eyes narrowing slightly.
"Interesting." The teasing vanished from Alfred's voice, replaced by utter professionalism.
"Master Bruce, this is indeed not menthol. Its composition is extremely complex, containing large quantities of unknown plant alkaloids. I've only seen an incomplete version of one of these peptide structures in certain military reports on accelerated cellular healing experiments. It can rapidly suppress capillary bleeding and accelerate the absorption of blood pooled beneath the skin."
Alfred turned to Bruce. "While it isn't worth a hundred thousand dollars, it is a top-tier trauma medication. This Dr. Yang isn't merely a master fighter. He's a pharmacological genius as well."
Bruce took the white spray bottle, aimed it at the bruising over his ribs, and pressed the nozzle.
"Hss-"
The instant the cold mist touched his skin, a fierce sting shot straight to his brain. Then the bruised area began to heat up, and the dull pain that seemed to tug at his internal organs actually eased at a remarkable rate.
"I've already invited him to the manor on Thursday." Bruce set down the spray bottle, his expression turning deadly serious. "The pretext is treating you."
Alfred raised an eyebrow. "Master Bruce, I can still run five kilometers around the manor every morning and tend two acres of lawn afterward. What part of me looks like a patient in need of treatment?"
"Rheumatism, joint pain, chest tightness." Expressionless, Bruce recited the medical history he had invented. "You'd better start practicing your cough tomorrow, Alfred. You've always been a good actor."
"The highest marks at the Shakespeare Theatre Academy were not intended for feigning rheumatism." Alfred sighed and began putting away the medical equipment. "Are you bringing him to the manor to investigate his background?"
"I need to know whose side he's really on." Bruce rose and walked to the enormous Batcomputer, pulling up a map of surveillance blind spots around Yang Ming's clinic.
"He saved me, yet he's protecting Falcone. He has medical technology that even Wayne Enterprises doesn't possess, but he holes up in the East End as an unlicensed doctor. An uncontrollable variable like that is too dangerous."
"He won't be able to escape from the manor. I want to see what cards he has left once he's away from that Underground Clinic."