The chaos at Gotham Harbor spread like a plague along the border of the East End.
The physical damage the Kryptonians had inflicted on Gotham was still relatively limited, but panic rolled outward in every direction like ocean waves.
The scene through the binoculars was spiraling out of control. Cobblepot's burly men in black suits were being driven back by the crowd, their rubber batons swallowed by the crush no matter whom they struck. Farther away, several police cars trying to maintain a barricade had been overturned, flames shooting from their ruptured fuel tanks.
"Chief."
"I'm listening, Jay." Bob's voice was thick with labored breathing. "Go ahead."
"Pull back the perimeter," Li Jie said. "Let some of them in."
"What?"
"Let some of them in."
He repeated himself, the binoculars' crosshairs sweeping over a woman kneeling in the middle of the road, crying with a child in her arms. "Allow them into the East End after they've been screened. But anyone who refuses to follow orders or causes trouble still gets one warning, then a bullet."
"But..." Bob sighed, his voice trembling slightly. "If the whole world's finished, like you said, what's the point of letting them in?"
"It's just reassurance. If they think they'll be safe in the East End, give them a little hope," Li Jie replied. "Otherwise, we might spend all the time we have left scaring them with heavy machine guns."
He took one last look at the harbor. The sedan stranded on the slope had been crushed out of shape. The family of three was gone, perhaps swept away by the crowd, perhaps having found another route. In the distance, flashes from fighter jets kept lighting up beside that mountain peak, like fireworks bursting into bloom.
Cobblepot sat in the office of what had