In the Gotham basement, the dehumidifier rattled as it strained beyond capacity.
Yang Ming stood before the Hyperbaric Chamber, his fingers flying over the control panel as he adjusted the pressure inside by 0.2 atmospheres.
Maggie's vital signs had stabilized. All that remained was to give her damaged neurons time to heal.
Selene was armed with a mop, locked in a stubborn battle with the muddy water on the floor. The tracks left by Bruce Wayne's expensive leather shoes were far harder to clean than ordinary street grime.
"I'll be away for a few days. I'll be back before Thursday afternoon." Yang Ming tossed the medical chart onto the triage desk, pulled two doses of epinephrine in pressure-resistant metal tubes from a drawer, and pushed them to the edge of the desk.
"Maggie's life-support system is fully automated. Don't touch any of the buttons. If you run into trouble, run if you can't win. If you can't run, inject yourself with one of these. It'll let you outrun bullets for three minutes. The price is spending the next three days paralyzed in bed."
Selene stopped mopping and glanced at the two cold metal tubes. "Where are you going? If Falcone's people deliver the medical equipment while you're gone, I can't move those big things."
"Have them pile it up in the alley. If anyone tries to touch it, chop off his hand." Yang Ming offered no further explanation and turned toward the iron door bearing the "Medical Supplies Warehouse" sign.
The handle depressed, and a deep blue vortex silently swallowed his retreating figure.
The sensation of weightlessness briefly robbed his semicircular canals of their ability to maintain balance. When he opened his eyes again, Gotham's distinctive sour, rotten smell had been replaced by the oppressive air of Hell's Kitchen, thick with cheap alcohol and exhaust fumes.
New York, in the small hours.
The rain had stopped, but the humidity remained uncomfortable.
The clinic's lobby was dark. Only the glow of the streetlights filtered through the gaps in the blinds, cutting a few mottled stripes across the floor.
Yang Ming took off his windproof coat, still wet with Gotham rain, and casually hung it on the coat rack.
He sat on the sofa, sinking deep into its worn springs, closed his eyes, and forced his mind to disengage from its tightly wound tactical calculations.
The brass lock cylinder gave a sharp metallic scrape.
The key turned twice, and the door swung open.
Jessica Jones walked in with heavy steps, wearing her trademark worn leather jacket and carrying a brown paper bag.
She pulled the door shut behind her. Just as she reached for the light switch on the wall, the faint light from outside revealed a dark silhouette on the sofa.
Her superhuman muscle fibers contracted within a tenth of a second. Jessica slid her right foot half a step back, her left hand already clenched into a fist, her knuckles giving faint pops.
"Your vigilance is good, but your sense of smell is too slow. I've been sitting here for ten minutes, and you still haven't smelled the disinfectant." Yang Ming opened his eyes, his voice echoing through the empty clinic.
Jessica's tense shoulders relaxed, and she switched on the overhead light. The incandescent tube flickered twice before finally shining steadily.
"God, don't you know you can scare someone to death? I almost threw you and that sofa into the dumpster across the street." Jessica walked over and dropped the brown paper bag heavily onto the coffee table.
"How was your time off?" Yang Ming ignored her complaint, his gaze settling on the paper bag. A little grease had seeped through its surface, and it gave off a rich buttery aroma.
"Fantastic." Jessica pulled up a chair, straddled it backward, and rested her chin on the backrest.
"When Trish saw the money I brought home, she almost thought I'd robbed a bank in Manhattan. I spent a full half hour explaining that I'd found a legitimate job as a medical assistant, not as some mob boss's enforcer."
At the mention of her younger sister, Jessica's perpetually jaded, hard-edged face softened with an unusually vivid tenderness.
"When she heard about you, she insisted I bring you something to thank you." Jessica pointed at the paper bag, unable to hide the pride in her voice.
"Caramel cookies. She baked them herself. That girl's a baking genius. I tried sneaking one this morning, and she smacked the back of my hand with a rolling pin."
Yang Ming picked up the paper bag and opened it. Inside was a clear, sealed plastic container, with more than a dozen golden cookies neatly arranged within, their surfaces dotted with sea salt crystals and caramel bits.
"What else did she say?" Yang Ming opened the lid and took one out.
"Oh, plenty." Jessica rolled her eyes and imitated Trish's earnest, nagging tone.
"'Jessica, you have to rein in that temper. Stop dislocating customers' arms at the slightest provocation. Finding a boss this generous is the luckiest thing that's ever happened to you. If you get fired for beating up customers again, I'm kicking you out of the apartment.'"
Jessica spread her hands. "Listen to that. Is she my little sister or my mom? She has no idea that my wonderful, generous boss is ten thousand times more brutal with customers than I am."
Yang Ming ignored her grumbling. He took a bite of the cookie.
His teeth broke through the crisp crust, and the rich butter flavor quickly melted across his tongue, mingling with the slight bitterness of caramel. The sea salt crystals balanced the sweetness perfectly, each layer of flavor sharply defined.
"It does taste good." Yang Ming swallowed the cookie and delivered an objective, clinical-grade assessment.
"The proportions are precise, and her temperature control is more rigorous than a pharmacist's at the municipal hospital. With skills like these, she could easily open a boutique bakery in Upper Town instead of being stuck in a rundown apartment."
Jessica's eyes lit up at Yang Ming's praise. Hearing him compliment Trish made her happier than being praised herself.
"That's what I think, too. Once I've saved enough, I'll help her rent a storefront." Jessica stood and stretched, her bones crackling.
"All right, vacation's over. What are your orders today, O great capitalist? Are we fishing bodies out of the sewers or restocking at some gang hideout?"
"Make me a cup of coffee first." Yang Ming leaned back on the sofa and pointed at the refreshment counter in the corner. "Then we'll take a look at today's news."
The old drip coffee maker on the counter wheezed as it pumped water, as though clinging to its last breath.
Jessica tore open two packets of cheap instant coffee, dumped them roughly into a mug, poured in boiling water, and gave it a couple of careless stirs with a disposable wooden stick.
"Here. Hell's Kitchen's special black coffee. It won't kill you, but it'll definitely wake you up." Jessica set the mug down heavily on the coffee table. A few drops splashed onto the newspaper.
Yang Ming lifted the mug and took a sip. A burnt bitterness shot straight into his nose, and the texture was as coarse as mud. He frowned and put it back.
"Turn on the television," Yang Ming ordered.
Jessica picked up the remote and pressed the power button. The CRT television flickered a few times before the CBS news channel appeared.
There were no long advertisements or boring talk shows. A bright red, bold news ticker filled the lower half of the screen:
[Breaking news: Stark Industries CEO Tony Stark caught in terrorist attack in Afghanistan, current whereabouts unknown!]
On-screen, several mangled military Humvees belched black smoke amid the blowing sand of the Afghan desert. Shell casings littered the ground as American soldiers set up a cordon.
Jessica had been about to sit down, but the news froze her halfway through the motion.
"What the hell?" Her eyes widened, her gaze fixed on the screen. "Tony Stark? That playboy who sells weapons to the whole world? Terrorists kidnapped him?"
Yang Ming leaned back on the sofa, his hands folded over his abdomen. His expression did not change, but his mental database was frantically searching his memories of this point in time.
The beginning of the Marvel Cinematic Universe-the birth of Iron Man.
So the timeline had already reached this point.