Li Jie had no idea how that shot had hit. He did not even have time to choose another target before raising his gun toward the outline of the Off-Road Vehicle's cab and firing all four remaining rounds.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The casings clattered to the ground, their ringing crisp and cold. The moment the last bullet left the barrel, he threw himself face-first back behind the wall without even checking what he had hit.
Only when his back pressed against the cold brick again did he realize what he had just done-he might have killed someone. But the nausea, dizziness, and guilt he had expected never came. Instead, a raging surge of exhilaration and belated terror swept through him. It coursed through his body like electricity, making him shake uncontrollably.
It was not just his gun hand. His left arm, both legs, and his jaw shook too, his teeth chattering as every muscle in his body spasmed beyond his control. His heart hammered in his ears, each beat heavy enough to burst through his chest. His throat felt as though it had been scraped with sandpaper.
"First blood! Yes!"
He pressed the magazine release hard. The empty magazine dropped into the dust at his feet with a click, and his left hand fumbled at his waist for a spare. But his fingers had turned clumsy and stiff, as if they had lost their bones. He grabbed at the magazine pouch several times before finally pulling the spare free.
"FUCK! FUCK!"
Li Jie clenched his teeth and slammed his left arm against the outside of his thigh several times, forcing himself to calm down. He took a deep breath, steadied his wrist, lined the heavy magazine up with the grip, and shoved it in until it clicked into place. Then he pulled back the slide.
Clack!
A round slid into the chamber. He gripped the pistol with both hands and used the 4-4-4 breathing technique to steady himself as best he could. His blank mind slowly began to function again.
The 1911 had left four ragged holes in the windshield, with frost-white marks lining the spiderweb cracks. He did not know whether the deflected bullets had hit anyone. If the gunmen floored the accelerator and charged, there was nothing he could do. He did not have enough firepower to stop an Off-Road Vehicle. He could only find cover immediately.
Fortunately, the men across from him seemed to disagree. Some wanted to flee, while others wanted to pull their wounded teammate to safety. Suddenly, two deep booms erupted in the alley. The Mossberg was firing.
Wilson had seized his chance. More than a dozen lead pellets swept through like an ice storm, the shotgun's roar and the shattering windshield drowning out the gunmen's shouts. After the second shot, Li Jie peeked out and saw the driver hanging limply at an angle above the ruined dashboard, held in place by his seat belt. His upper body still twitched, riddled with bloody holes. Whether he was alive or dead was impossible to tell. The cab looked as though someone had sprayed it with a bottle full of blood.
Nice work!
...And it looked disgusting.
His hands still shook, but less than before. The involuntary trembling actually dulled the churning in his stomach, creating a strange balance. The two remaining gunmen had jumped out. The burly man in a leather jacket crouched behind the SUV, while the man in a baseball cap huddled beside the passenger door and raised his gun to return fire at the second floor. Pellets struck above the window ledge and across the wall, sending rubble and glass cascading down. But the recoil rocked him backward, exposing his shoulder and half his neck behind the door's side window. While the man cycled his weapon, Li Jie slipped out, settled his sights, and pulled the trigger.
Another two-shot burst. The first struck his shoulder, splashing a mist of blood and gray-white bone fragments across the door's chrome trim. The man in the cap staggered backward and fell flat on his back, caught completely off guard. The second bullet missed.
The shoulder wound was not actually that serious, but when the man in the cap looked up from the ground, he saw Wilson's face and the dark muzzle of the Mossberg.
Wait...wait!
He instinctively raised a hand to block it, only to see a burst of flame about to erupt.
Boom!
Li Jie knew he had hit his target and had seen Wilson fire, but the parked cars blocked his view of the result. Keeping low against the wall, he slipped behind a Toyota up ahead. Then he decided a Japanese car might not offer reliable cover and moved a few steps farther to shelter behind a Ford F-150.
Before he could peek out, he heard retching both overhead and behind the Off-Road Vehicle across from him. Then the burly man in the leather jacket spoke in a muffled voice.
"Don't shoot...I...urgh...I surrender...urgh..."
Fuck!
An enemy surrendering was good news, but if he was vomiting like that-and even Wilson upstairs was throwing up-the last shot had probably done something horrific.
Li Jie gritted his teeth and suppressed his curiosity, refusing to think about the gunshot-wound photographs he had seen during training. Keeping his face turned slightly away, he rounded the back of the Off-Road Vehicle and found that the burly man had already tossed his gun aside. He lay on the ground, convulsing as he vomited.
Good thing he had not gone over to look. If all three of them ended up sprawled there vomiting together, safety concerns aside, he would never be able to show his face again. Holding his pistol in one hand, he pulled out his cuffs with the other and secured the burly man's hands behind his back. The man had become remarkably docile, his face deathly gray. His vomit had shifted from yellow-green stomach fluid to blood-streaked bile, but his diaphragm kept twitching mechanically like an electrocuted frog. The alley filled with a sweet, metallic stink and sour rot: brain fluid mixed with half-digested food steaming on the concrete. Li Jie stood and looked back. Three guards lay motionless near the prison van, their conditions unknown.
Three of them couldn't even take one down. They were worse than me! What a waste of those fat salaries.
He silently grumbled. If not for those three, a rookie cop who only wanted to pocket dirty money and coast through life would never have needed to risk a gunfight here. If a prisoner escaped, so what? It was none of his business. But they were fellow officers under the Gotham Police Department. If he stood by and let them die for no reason, he could forget about having a future in law enforcement.
"Did you call for backup? We need an ambulance!" Li Jie shouted. Wilson caught his breath and staggered out of the stairwell.
"Already called. They said they'd be here any minute." He looked at Li Jie, visibly disappointed. "Buddy, don't you want to see my handiwork?"
"Hell no! Go check on those Blackgate Penitentiary guards. I'll check on the guy they took."
He circled back around the rear of the SUV and pulled open the back door with his gun ready. A Black man in handcuffs and leg irons was curled up on the seat, sobbing.
"Wow, looks like you're a big star. Got that many crazy fans?" Li Jie sneered. "Get your fucking hands on your head and crawl out right now. You've caused some serious trouble today."
"Don't...don't shoot." Using his elbows and legs, the man scrambled and tumbled out of the car. He crouched to one side with his hands over his head, pleading through tears. "I swear...I swear I don't know them."
"That's not my problem." Li Jie holstered his pistol. "But they hijacked a van and killed people to rescue you." He pointed. "There are still three dead people lying over there. Take a guess what'll happen once you're in prison..."
"Hey! Get over here!"
Li Jie whipped around. Wilson was shouting at him. "One's still alive!"
What?
From a distance, the three figures lay motionless in pools of blood. He had assumed they were long dead, yet one was still alive. He took out his spare cuffs, chained Hargrove to the B-pillar beneath the shattered window, and ran toward Wilson.
There had been three guards in the prison van. The driver and the guard watching the prisoner in the back had had their chests blown wide open by shotgun fire. They could not have been any deader. The female officer in the passenger seat had also taken a blast, but she had worn a soft ballistic vest over her uniform. Against buckshot at close range, it had done precious little. The material over her chest and abdomen had split in radiating tears around a hole the size of a baby's fist. Tiny lead pellets studded the once-tough fibers around it. A dark wet patch spread rapidly around the opening as blood poured out, soaking the vest's lining before dripping onto the cold concrete and forming a small, thick, dark-red puddle.
"Hey, look at me. Can you hear me? What's your name?" Li Jie patted her face. Her skin was cold, slick, and covered in sweat. Her eyes shifted slowly twice, and her lips moved as she struggled to force out a faint word.
"Help..."
Her voice sounded like broken bellows. Each breath brought a fit of coughing, and bloody foam kept spilling from the corner of her mouth-a sign of a bruised lung or a broken rib puncturing it.
"Hang on. You might survive this. Don't give up. Get..." Li Jie tore open her collar and turned sharply, finding Wilson racing toward him with a first-aid kit from the patrol car. "Give me an occlusive dressing. Her lung's leaking air. We need to seal the hole that's letting it in."
"What? What hole? Where?" Wilson fumbled through the kit, his face chalk-white.
"Listen closely when she breathes in! Find where the air's hissing! What the fuck did you learn in first-aid training?"
He pulled out his tactical folding knife, cut through the vest's side fastening straps, and slowly lifted it. When the blade sliced through the soaked uniform beneath, the sight made his stomach clench.
Beneath the hole blasted through the vest, the torn uniform exposed an enormous wound near the lower edge of her left ribs. Its edges were ragged and curled outward, its bloody depths impossible to see. With every short, labored breath, a small section of dark-red intestine coated in a film of blood pulsed faintly between the shredded muscles. It lay naked in the cold air, covered in dust and filthy blood. More than a dozen tiny wounds with blackened edges dotted the surrounding skin, like brands burned in by hellfire. The fabric at the top of her left thigh had also torn, and dark-red blood gushed out, quickly soaking her trousers and the ground beneath her.
Three fatal wounds!
"Fuck, stop the bleeding first!" Li Jie pulled out a rapid-application tourniquet, cinched it high around her thigh at the groin, and frantically twisted the windlass. He glanced at Wilson, who stood frozen. "Don't fucking zone out! Turn her head to the side and clear the blood and vomit out of her mouth! Then wet some gauze with purified water and gently cover that big wound in her belly! Don't stuff it in! Just cover it! Protect her intestines! Hurry!"
Wilson jerked as though struck by a whip. He fumbled out a large roll of emergency gauze, bunched it up, soaked it with purified water from the kit, and carefully laid it over the abdominal wound. Warm, thick blood immediately saturated the gauze and flowed around its edges like a little spring.
He tore off another short strip of gauze, reached into her mouth, and wiped out a mass of bloody foam and vomit. Looking up as Li Jie pressed another packet of gauze firmly against the chest wound, he asked, "What else?"
What else?
What else was there?
Li Jie stared at the side of her neck. Her veins bulged like twisted earthworms, a sign of severe oxygen deprivation and high pressure in her chest. Despairingly, he realized that the fatal air-entry wound might be hidden beneath her clothing or near the abdominal wound. But they no longer had time to find and treat it.
The hiss of escaping air, mixed with the gurgle of bloody foam, grew fainter. He checked his watch, his voice dry and hoarse. "Remember, 15:37. Keep talking to her! Don't let her fall asleep!"
"Okay, okay...Listen, ma'am, my name's Darnell Wilson. Hang on. Don't fall asleep. Think about your paycheck," Wilson babbled. "Think about your kids or your family. Maybe they don't treat you well? That's okay. My family doesn't treat me that well either..."
Li Jie knelt silently in the cold wind, his face ashen, searching her chest wall in vain for the fatal air leak. His hands shook harder than when he had killed someone. His fingers brushed over skin as cold as ice. He pulled off his police uniform and draped it over her,
only to find her staring straight at him. But the faint light deep in her pupils was slowly fading, leaving them emptier and emptier.
"Hang on! Don't fall asleep!" Wilson stripped off his own uniform and laid it over her too. He looked up at his partner. "Brother, she'll make it, right?"
Li Jie swallowed. His throat felt cut by knives, and no sound came out. Wilson held the officer's hand and sniffed. "She's too cold. We need another layer on her. How about rescue breathing? She looks like she can't breathe!"
Li Jie looked down at her face. Her faint, agonized gasps had stopped completely. Her pupils were unfocused, like two bottomless dry wells reflecting the lead-gray sky.
"She's dead." He heard the piercing sirens of police cars and ambulances in the distance. "Backup's here."
"No." Wilson lowered his head. His shoulders trembled slightly, and something seemed to drip down. "They came too late...If they'd just been a little earlier..."
"Hah." Li Jie gave a cold laugh. "Don't forget, this is Gotham. They're always late, aren't they?" He tugged Wilson back. "Move away. Don't drip tears on the body. You don't want awkward questions later."
"I'm not crying. It just smells awful." Wilson raised his arm and wiped his eyes. "Hey, you got blood on my sleeve. Honestly, this isn't the first dead person I've seen, but..."
"There's always blood." Li Jie smiled faintly and walked over to sit on the roadside steps. Watching the police and medics rush into the scene, he let out an exhausted sigh. Wilson sat beside him. They watched white sheets cover the bodies and remained silent for a while. Suddenly, a commotion broke out at the entrance to the cordon. A middle-aged man in a beige trench coat pushed past the officers maintaining order and walked straight toward them.
"Major Crimes. James Gordon."
The man stopped before the steps and offered Li Jie his hand. Both men instinctively stood. Li Jie showed Gordon the blood on his hand. Gordon glanced at it but kept his own hand extended, even reaching a little farther.
"Good work, boys. That's a hero's badge of honor. Thank you."
"A badge of honor?" The corner of Li Jie's mouth twitched into a faint smile. He looked at Gordon's clean hand and its clearly defined knuckles. Finally, he slowly raised his own and barely touched Gordon's fingertips.
"Thank you too, sir."
"And me too, right?" Wilson hurriedly scrubbed his hands against his clothes, then enthusiastically clasped Gordon's other hand in both of his. "Darnell Wilson, sir! Today was one hell of a day!"
Gordon shook Wilson's hand firmly and patted his shoulder. "Major Crimes and Forensics will take it from here." He gestured to one side. Li Jie followed his gaze and, sure enough, spotted Nygma's thin figure carefully collecting shell casings in the distance.
"You did well. Go get some rest, take a shower, and change your clothes. The reports can wait."
"Thank you, sir."
They saluted together and watched Gordon turn back toward the crowd working the scene. Wilson dropped onto the steps, let out a long breath, and nudged Li Jie with his elbow. "Whew...Finally over. He said we're heroes! Do you know him? Doesn't matter. He's a superior officer, so he must be right. 'Hey, Wilson, you did good!' Tell me, brother, what do you want to do most right now?"
Li Jie did not answer immediately. He slowly sat down, watching Nygma's intent figure in the distance before lowering his gaze to his open hands. Red and blue police lights spun and danced wildly over them, casting strange, vivid colors across the dried, blackened blood.
"What do I want to do most?" He frowned and turned to his partner. "What about you?"
"I don't know. Maybe I'll go find Lisa and her sister at the bar on the corner, have some fun, and forget all this shit. And tell everyone I meet that I'm a hero." Wilson looked a little excited, as though his earlier fear and grief had already slipped his mind. Then he persisted. "What about you?"
Li Jie did not look at him again. With the pad of his thumb, he repeatedly rubbed the most stubborn patch of dark-red blood crusted over the knuckles of his index and middle fingers. But the color seemed to have seeped into his skin.
"Me?" He stared at his fingers, his voice so low it was almost inaudible.
"I want to wash my hands first."
Before you continue