The switcheroo

Floyd softened his footsteps in the darkness and crept toward the sheet-metal factory building.

Knock, knock, knock!

Knock, knock, knock!

"Who's out there?" Bane's voice came from behind the door.

"It's me, old buddy. Lika's with you, right?"

The iron door opened, and Bane's massive silhouette loomed in the darkness.

"I thought you were going to abandon her forever." His tone was far from friendly.

After all, Floyd had left his daughter behind and chosen to flee that afternoon. Such irresponsible behavior was bound to disgust his friend.

"Hey, buddy, what are you talking about? Lika's my daughter. I'd never abandon her! I just needed a little time to shake those two damn Gotham guys. Look, I'm back now, aren't I?"

"But you didn't accomplish your goal."

"What do you mean? I already lost them... Aaaaaah!"

Floyd screamed and fell to the ground, fumbling to draw his gun and take aim.

William had appeared before him yet again like a haunting ghost-he had ducked out from under Bane's arm and was shining a flashlight up at his own face, clearly determined to scare him.

"Surprise! My man!"

"Man? I'm not your man!"

Floyd waved his arms in loud protest, then turned his anger on Bane.

"Why did you let him in? You knew he was here for me!"

"At least Mr. William came to solve the problem. All you do is run away."

"Problem? There's no problem between us! All I need to do is put a bullet through his skull, and I get a hundred thousand dollars. Brother, do you know what a hundred thousand dollars means?"

Still grumbling, Floyd unclipped his Pager. A message had just come through.

He opened it and froze.

It was a message from the middleman. "Operation canceled." Just those few words, and Floyd stared at them for nearly a minute.

Losing the money was painful enough. Now he also had to endure William mocking him in a deliberately squeaky voice.

"Buddy, why aren't you saying anything? What does a hundred thousand dollars mean?"

"Don't like talking?"

"You bastard! I'll kill you!"

Floyd lunged forward with a furious yell, only for Bane to grab him by the back of his collar and hoist him into the air.

Though deeply reluctant, he was forced to calm down under Bane's brute strength.

The three returned inside.

Floyd sat cross-legged, his gaze settling on his daughter as she drew in the corner. A brand-new box of crayons sat beside her.

They didn't sell things like that in No Man's Land.

"What did you want to tell me?"

His tone had softened a little, though he still held his head at an angle and met William's eyes.

"I need you to help me with a job."

"You didn't go through a middleman. That's against the rules."

"I've already tracked down all your personal details. Do we really still need that?" William muttered, tapping impatiently on the tatami.

Perhaps realizing how stupid his words had sounded, Floyd raised his head a few seconds later and lowered his voice.

"All right. Who do I kill?"

"No, no, no. You don't have to kill anyone! You won't even have to pull the trigger. I just need your eyes."

"My God, you want to gouge out my eyes too?!"

Clearly, normal thinking made it very difficult to communicate with people from No Man's Land.

William spent another long stretch explaining before finally getting across, in the simplest words possible, that he only needed Floyd to look through a certain building's exterior walls and see what was inside.

"If I'm not mistaken, you can do that, right?"

Of course Floyd could. Otherwise, he couldn't have shot William through the chest while he was hiding behind cover earlier.

But he was curious about where this information had come from. The man seemed to have an endless supply of tricks. Not only had he pinpointed Floyd's address, he even knew his abilities inside out.

If dealing with a penniless mercenary could be explained by having money to burn, then accurately predicting that the client would cancel the hit and immediately turning up at his door was simply absurd.

"So you're Batman?"

"That's right. I'm Batman."

William admitted it so readily that Floyd grew suspicious again.

"You're not messing with me, are you?"

"That's right. I'm messing with you."

"You fucking..."

Seeing Floyd about to throw another punch, Bane stretched out an arm to block their view of each other.

Out of sight, out of mind. Floyd took a deep breath and scratched his already disheveled hair.

"I'll do it, and I won't take a cent from you. But you have to promise never to show your face in front of me again." For a mercenary to work without pay, William must have left Floyd with some serious psychological scars.

At 3:12 a.m., at an old estate with no address plaque on the outskirts of Gotham.

Vines covered the courtyard walls. Beyond the rusty iron fence, weeds stood knee-high, and the pitch-black castle blended into the distant forest.

There were plenty of abandoned estates like this in the wealthy district. Any capitalists with a shred of conscience had begun leaving half a century ago. Those who remained were like venomous creatures honed through countless trials, trapped in a glass container called Gotham, attacking, devouring, and tearing at one another.

Of course, this was no ordinary abandoned estate. At least according to the system's tracking, both Bruce's double and Harold were hiding here.

Stuart had a difficult task ahead: sneak in and escape with a living person in tow, then disguise himself as that person and infiltrate the estate again.

It sounded troublesome, but carrying it out might be even harder. Batman had to keep the time frame as tight as possible. If anyone discovered that the double was missing, the whole plan would collapse.

Stuart also found it troublesome and had brought up his improved plan more than once.

"We could grab the double and Harold, toss them into gasoline drums, and interrogate them while pouring cement inside. Trust me, nobody can withstand that kind of psychological pressure."

"I've told you plenty of times. Violence won't solve the problem. We need to stop the Wayne Family's assets from being transferred..."

"I honestly don't care!"

Stuart laid his cards on the table. Just thinking about all the headaches he would have to deal with after inheriting Wayne Enterprises made his head hurt.

"But I care! I care! Do you understand?! I'm not just saving Gotham. I'm making an investment! You're the stock I invested in. If you can't get back everything that belongs to you, who's going to pay me back? Do you really think I'm a philanthropist?"

William pulled a ferocious face and waved his arms.

Up in a tree, Deadshot Floyd couldn't hear their conversation, but his Smart Compound Eyes let him see every crease on William's face.

Even a bastard like him had been driven to hysterics. Batman had to be the devil.

Floyd looked away and continued sketching on the paper.

He had two tasks. The first was to use his Mechanical Compound Eyes to draw a map of the routes inside the estate's castle. The second was to provide Stuart with intelligence over the radio once he was inside. In short, he was a human surveillance camera.

Once the drawing was finished, he handed it to Stuart.

"There are some areas I can't see. If you want more detailed information, scatter some droplets of water along your route."

Floyd hadn't revealed the precise functions of his Mechanical Compound Eyes, but from those words, William deduced that he could bend his line of sight through successive reflections between smooth surfaces.

It worked exactly like his ricocheting bullets.

"Everything's ready. Let's put the plan into action!"