Jack Napier felt his luck had been absolutely rotten today.
He had just finished his part-time job as a laboratory assistant at Ace Chemicals and rushed to an underground bar in the East End without even eating dinner, to perform the stand-up routine he had painstakingly prepared.
Predictably, the drunken Gang thugs and junkies had no appreciation for his humor. They hurled bottles onto the stage and shouted abuse.
Not only had the bar owner dragged him offstage, he had also docked five dollars from his performance fee, claiming the customers were dissatisfied.
Jack was a gentle, introverted man, even a little socially anxious. He hadn't dared fight back. He could only mumble apologies and slink out of the bar in his cheap clown costume, without even having time to remove his makeup.
All he wanted was to get back to his drafty rented room, rest his hand on his wife Janet's swollen belly, and feel their unborn baby move. That was his only comfort in this fucked-up city.
As he passed the Interstate Bridge, Jack saw flames towering into the sky.
His instinct was to take another route, but kindhearted as he was, once he heard the screams coming from the fire, he couldn't make his feet move.
He summoned his courage and approached. Instead of finding anyone who needed rescuing from the fire, he saw more than a dozen armed thugs surrounding and beating a homeless man in a tattered shirt.
Jack was terrified, his legs shaking like leaves. He knew that if someone as helpless as him charged in, those punks would casually stab him to death.
But as he watched that blood-soaked man kneeling on one knee, stubbornly refusing to fall, his sympathy for the vulnerable wouldn't let him stand by.
So he hid behind a