Gotham Police Department

"Looks like someone had the same idea we did."

Su Ming pedaled the unicycle furiously while drawing his two guns and flicking off the safeties.

Cindy made the same move. With no guarantee of engagement range, two pistols were more reliable than the shotgun on her back:

"At least we can rule Harley out as a suspect. She and Poison Ivy were both drunk as skunks. There's no way they could have gotten here before us."

"There's no point figuring out who did it. We just need to go in and kill every last one of these thieves stealing our business."

There were countless people in Gotham who liked playing games with Batman. There was no telling who was making a move tonight.

After the slaughter at the Circus, Su Ming had fully accepted that he was Deathstroke, and Deathstroke was him. If this body was a house, then Slade had merely been its previous tenant. The house belonged to Su Ming now, and he would use his own name to write a new legend.

He would drive it with his own thoughts. As for continuing to use its former name, that was because he knew he could never go back. It was a habit, and also a small reminder of his homeland.

Cindy had no idea what kind of inner journey Su Ming had gone through, but as they rode, she keenly sensed a change in the man beside her. The person who had once seemed detached from this world had now completely become part of it.

She was curious, but said nothing. She merely put away her guns again, feeling that she probably would not need to fight.

The two soon reached the small park. From here, Deathstroke's exceptional eyesight gave him a clear view of the police department's entrance.

It was an old building, probably one that had existed since Gotham's founding. Though it had undergone countless repairs and expansions over the years, its designer's original vision was still evident.

It had been built like a fortress. Its surrounding walls were solid and thick, every window as small as possible. The roof had broad open space and guardrails, along with a number of independent water-supply systems and air-conditioning units. Most importantly, the Bat-Signal stood on the rooftop platform.

A huge, somewhat weathered GCPD sign hung on the front of the station, though it was still mostly intact.

The parking lot before the station was occupied by a jumble of black vans. In the pouring rain, they looked like black reefs along a shore.

A handful of officers' bodies lay scattered near the entrance, their blood being washed down the steps by the rain.

Several Men in Black armed with Submachine Guns stood beside the shattered doors, vigilantly scanning back and forth. From time to time, they glanced inside the station, as though waiting for someone.

"Black suits, black felt hats, white silk scarves, and Chicago-made typewriters. Looks like their boss is a Godfather fan."

The two hid behind several bushes in the park. The rain concealed them, and the disparity in their physical abilities allowed Su Ming to see the other side clearly while leaving them unable to see anything.

Cindy did not quite understand what Su Ming meant. Gotham gangsters had dressed like that for decades; you could not tell whose people they were from their clothes alone.

She gauged the distance to the police station entrance, then looked at the sky.

"The weather and timing favor us. In this darkness, we can either force our way in or sneak inside."

"They're probably planning to use Gordon to lure Batman too. We'll launch a frontal assault and divide their attention so they can't put their full strength into attacking the station's interior. Otherwise, if they get Gordon in their hands, we'll be in trouble."

The moment Su Ming answered, he made his decision. Raising both pistols, he burst from cover and fired as he ran.

His brain gave him an extraordinarily precise sense of space. Calculating trajectories was not Deadshot's exclusive talent; Deathstroke could do the same, even replacing aiming entirely with calculation.

The distance was a little over a hundred meters, somewhat beyond a pistol's effective range. But after accepting his new identity, Su Ming no longer doubted his talent. With body and mind united, he truly unleashed this body's terrifying capabilities.

It was a pitch-black night, with rain pouring down and gale-force winds flinging water against everything on the ground. Yet none of it affected him. Or rather, every external factor had already been accounted for in his calculations.

Wind speed, angle, refraction, Earth's gravity, energy loss. The results of every calculation appeared instantly in his mind and became the basis for his actions.

He never missed. Every black-suited figure standing higher up on the entrance steps dropped to the ground.

He sprinted at full speed, shattering puddles beneath his feet as the splashing water collided with the rain falling from the sky.

By the time the black suits spotted where the attack was coming from in the darkness, Su Ming had already crossed the street and the perimeter wall, reaching the station parking lot. The black vans blocked his way, so he grabbed the edge of one and hauled himself onto its roof with a powerful pull.

His speed was far beyond anything they had imagined. Su Ming could practically see the disbelief on their faces, but he had no intention of admiring the despair he brought them.

Standing atop the van, he raised both hands and faced their return fire head-on. Bullets struck sparks from his armor, yet his terrifying one-shot-one-kill accuracy remained unchanged. Just a few seconds later, the scene fell silent.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk." Cindy leaped onto the van roof behind him and looked at the bodies strewn across the ground nearby. "You really ran fast. I hadn't even answered you yet."

"It was nothing. They looked like they really wanted a fight, so I gave them opponents." Su Ming shrugged, agreeing with Cindy's assessment.

"You gave them a massacre. What opponents?" Cindy jumped down from the van and headed toward the station. "No one's reimbursing us for this job. We're paying out of pocket. Couldn't you have used a blade?"

"Do you really have to calculate it so precisely?" Su Ming jumped down as well, picked up a Submachine Gun from the ground, and removed its drum magazine for a look. "See? Their ammo is .45 pistol rounds too. One round for forty-five. We made a profit this time."

The two chatted casually, as though they had not just killed more than a dozen people but had instead grabbed discounted goods during a supermarket sale.

As they continued toward the police station, they suddenly noticed that someone at the entrance was still alive. Though every one of Su Ming's shots had struck the heart, this woman's heart might have been on the right side.

Su Ming had heard before that one person in every thousand had their heart on the right. This time, he had actually encountered one.

"Who sent you?"

Su Ming kicked away her gun, crouched beside her, and asked in a low voice. The crimson eye on his mask looked like ghostly fire at midnight.

Though the gangster had not died on the spot, the bullet had pierced her left lung, and she was convulsing in agony.

But when she heard Su Ming's question, she actually laughed. Spitting blood, she snarled:

"The boss won't let you get away with this, Deathstroke."

Under his mask, Su Ming raised an eyebrow. This woman's mind was clearly no longer working right. Everyone present was dead now. Who would know he had been here? This was a perfect assassination.

"Looks like you're a woman of faith. Then your boss should have told you one thing." Su Ming drew Katana from his back in a flash and drove it backward into the woman's right chest, pinning her firmly to the ground. "Don't! Mess! With! Deathstroke!"

After saying that, he pulled out the sword. Blood from her heart erupted from the wound like a fountain, spraying over him through the gaps in his chainmail.

The warm blood drove away some of the rain's chill, but only for a brief moment before it vanished. He felt an urge to bathe in more blood for warmth, but he quickly shook his head. Reason told him that was wrong.

Cindy approached with a wicked grin. She misunderstood why Su Ming had shaken his head and said:

"See? I told you blades were better."

Once again, they were thinking of entirely different things. Su Ming was thinking about his bloodlust, while Cindy was talking about how cold weapons caused larger wounds and more reliably killed.

"Fine. Once we're inside, you handle it. After you're done, I'll evaluate your way of dealing with problems."

Su Ming irritably held out his sword, letting the rain wash away the blood before sheathing it.

Cindy raised her hands in surrender. "Forget it. I'm not interested in small fry. Just leave their boss to me."

The dying woman's words had clearly annoyed Cindy greatly. No one had ever dared threaten the world's deadliest assassin like that.

Without saying anything more to her, Su Ming entered the police station first. Once they were here, they no longer needed to know the way. They only had to follow the gunfire.

The police station lobby was a complete mess, most of the bodies belonging to officers. There were only a few Men in Black among them, which indicated this had been a surprise attack.

Unexpectedly, though, the gunfire was not coming from the third floor, where the commissioner's office was located, but from the basement.

"What's down there?" Su Ming asked Cindy.

"If I remember right, the morgue, electrical room, communications room, things like that." Cindy looked up at the stairs leading upstairs. There were no black-suited bodies there at all, which meant they had never intended to go up. Their target had clearly been underground.

"Strange."

Although Su Ming said it was strange, his feet did not slow in the slightest. He stepped over bodies and broken furniture as he headed toward the source of the noise.

The dead in the lobby were not only police and Men in Black. Some were clearly other criminals or homeless people.

Whatever their identities had been in life, in death they were piled together like sacks.

Rainwater poured in through the broken entrance, carrying blood everywhere and turning the once-beautiful wooden floor filthy. From above, it would have looked like a grotesque painting of demons.

Neither of them seemed to have much artistic sense, but they easily found the basement entrance. At the top of the descending staircase, they could smell thick gunpowder smoke, like standing beside a volcanic crater.

After descending the stairs, they found a destroyed keycard door ahead of them, beyond which lay a deep, shadowy corridor. Su Ming and Cindy peered inside from outside the door, memorizing everyone's positions and distances.

Under the ghastly white fluorescent lights, the Men in Black and police officers were shooting at each other. Both sides hid in the various offices lining the corridor, darting in and out as though playing whack-a-mole, but someone fell every so often after being shot.

Because of their equipment, the police were at a clear disadvantage.

"The communications room is at the end of the hall. The police are desperately holding it. Maybe Gordon's inside asking the outside world for help."

Cindy tightened her helmet and flexed her wrists as she offered her guess.

Su Ming disagreed. He did not think Gordon was the kind of person who would make his subordinates hold the line outside while he hid in a room making calls. But Cindy knew Earth -11 better than he did, so it was hard to say.

"I don't think it's Gordon, but whoever's inside must be important. Let's take care of these people first. Once we get the door open, we'll know."

"Kill all the black suits, leave the police alive?" Cindy touched the small box at her waist, pulled out a cigar, and waved it in her hand. "Bet a cigar that Gordon's inside."

"Yeah, I'll handle the police." Su Ming smiled beneath his mask and took out one of his own cigars. They placed their stakes together on the doorframe, and the winner would take both later. "You're on. I'm betting it's not him."

After their brief whispered exchange, Cindy charged out first. Though they were both Deathstroke, as she had said herself, she preferred fighting with cold weapons.

Katana spun in her hands so densely that no gap could be seen. By the time the Men in Black reacted, she had charged into the offices like a wolf among sheep, unleashing a bloody storm.

To Su Ming's surprise, there really were some capable people among the Men in Black. When Cindy slashed at one woman, she actually blocked the attack with her gun and even tried to call over those around her to gang up on Cindy.

But she lasted only a single exchange. There were thousands upon thousands of such minor leaders in Gotham's various gangs, while Deathstroke was called the world's greatest Mercenary. They were simply not on the same level.

Cindy's blade struck with a ringing clang as it was blocked, but before the sharp sound had even faded, she drew the shotgun from her back and fired.

The metallic clash and gunshot nearly overlapped. The minor leader flew backward with an expression of utter disbelief, a huge hole blown through her chest. Behind her, fragments of the wall scattered beneath the shotgun blast.

Cindy's slaughter continued. Like a diligent Little Bee, she danced endlessly amid sprays of blood, but her black-and-yellow armor filled the Men in Black with nothing but terror.

Su Ming, meanwhile, targeted the police officers. He used the Electric Staff. The police had none of Batman's insulated gloves or boots, and their fighting skills were far inferior as well.

He moved like a boiler worker on an old steamship, his staff serving as a shovel. He thrust it forward, and with a flash of electricity, a police officer dropped. Then he pulled the staff back, scooping the officer into a room so they would not be killed by stray bullets.

With their division of labor and overwhelming strength, it took them a little over two minutes to take down roughly forty Men in Black and more than a dozen police officers.

They finished almost simultaneously, and Cindy looked rather pleased with herself.

"Looks like I'm still stronger. Look, I took down more than twice as many as you did."

Su Ming said nothing, merely shrugging. His job had required far more care. He had to keep some strength in reserve; these officers were ordinary people. He could not stab them to death with the staff, could not shock them for too long, and even had to use gentle force when tossing them into rooms.

Someone might ask how a staff could possibly stab someone to death when it was not a spear. But at his level of strength, who said you needed a spearhead to kill someone with a thrust?

At the same time, he had to suppress the bloodlust that surged wildly along with his adrenaline, as though reason and instinct were playing tug-of-war in his mind.

Seeing his seemingly conceding response, Cindy grew even more pleased. If she had a tail, it would have been pointed straight at the sky. She walked around the area once before coming to the communications room door.

"All right, time to unwrap the present. Let's see what's inside this big package."

As she spoke, she began pulling plastic explosives from the pouch on her thigh. She hummed an unfamiliar little tune, looking eager with anticipation.

The communications room door was extremely sturdy, its thick steel practically like the frontal armor of a tank.

"Use less. Don't scare whoever's inside to death."

Su Ming warned her. Judging by the situation, the people hiding inside were probably not combat personnel at all. And if C4 Explosives detonated in a narrow place like this corridor, it would create an enormous noise and a concentrated shockwave.

It probably would not actually scare anyone to death; that was just an exaggeration. But ruptured eardrums or unconsciousness were entirely possible.

Cindy did not answer. She merely made an OK gesture, took out a tiny piece, stuck it over the lock, and inserted a timed detonator.