A Reporter Claims Her Reward

Su Ming and Cindy took about five minutes, then rendezvoused again in the torrential rain.

Tonight seemed darker than usual. The entire street was filled with unease. Many civilians awakened by the commotion hid behind their curtains, not daring to turn on the lights and draw attention. In the darkness, they could only watch the two blurry figures downstairs through rain-streaked glass, their eyes filled with fear.

"I only have bad news. I found footprints from ninja boots on the rooftop. Other Shadow Dancers had been here before us."

Cindy looked at the floodwater that had already risen past her knees. Gotham's drainage system was operating at full capacity, yet it still could not handle rainfall this intense.

Su Ming nodded. He had found nothing on his end either.

The building had been cleaned so thoroughly it looked licked clean. That was absolutely impossible in a cheap residential district. The Men in Black must have deliberately cleaned the place before leaving.

Still unwilling to give up, he had tried to find witnesses. He had kicked in several apartment doors and interrogated the residents at gunpoint and knifepoint. Some had been frightened badly enough to soil their bedsheets, yet there were still no witnesses.

That meant the Men in Black had moved quickly, without making even a sound. But it also meant that neither Gordon nor they had fired a gun, so Gordon was probably not injured.

He sighed. The assassin's corpse was their only remaining lead. Should they use her as bait to lure in the League of Assassins for a talk?

But that would be too passive. By the time the assassins came to reclaim the body, they might have already eliminated the Men in Black, and Gordon would have long been dead.

"Let's get back in the car. Bring the body with us."

With no other choice, he and Cindy returned to the car. As they watched the rainwater outside merge into a great river and flow into the distance, both of them silently considered their options.

"Why do you think she was dressed like that? She had no gunshot wounds. How was she captured?"

Cindy naturally had her own thoughts, but she still wanted to hear Su Ming's opinion. As he had said, their knowledge could sometimes complement each other's. More clues were never a bad thing.

They were sitting in the front seats. Cindy leaned against the steering wheel while Su Ming reclined in the passenger seat with his hands behind his head.

He shook his head and looked out the window at Vicki running Pete ragged, telling him to film the sky one moment and the floodwater the next.

"There are plenty of people in Gotham capable of this. Scarecrow's Fear Gas can be bought on the black market; it's practically ready to be stocked in supermarkets. Mutants like Killer Croc and Clayface also take jobs, and the people spending the money can afford their fees. But our friends in black acted impulsively. Shadow Dancers would never reveal secrets, no matter how they were tortured. It was a complete waste of effort, and they even provoked the League of Assassins."

"Ugh, with that kind of money, they could have been a potential client of mine. What a shame."

Cindy sighed mournfully as well. She felt as though she had lost a hundred million. Whatever force they belonged to, their earlier display had shown them to be ordinary people. The League of Assassins, meanwhile, had countless elite killers.

Many of those assassins had begun training as children. At four, they mastered every kind of cold weapon. At five, they learned to kill. After turning eight, they began carrying out missions for the League, assassinating targets around the world.

They had no sense of self. They abandoned their real names. They were the League's weapons. Low-ranking assassins had no need for honor; what they excelled at most was swarming their targets in the darkness.

Perhaps the force that had killed their people was about to vanish from the world, but before it disappeared, the two of them had to pull Gordon out first.

Barbara had also learned that their lead had gone cold. Gordon was safe for now, but he might have only three hours left to live. The three of them fell silent, pondering the clues.

Surveillance cameras throughout a large stretch of the surrounding streets had long been destroyed by every kind of villain, leaving them with nowhere to begin. Su Ming felt as though he had returned to the 1980s. How had police solved cases back then?

As they sat there thinking, Vicki came back happily with Pete, humming a tune. She looked very pleased with the footage she had just captured.

After climbing into the car and taking off her raincoat with a shake, she saw Barbara's troubled expression.

"Oh? Why the long face, little girl?" she asked Su Ming curiously.

"Because all we have now is a female corpse, and no leads. Did the station call you? Any helpful viewers?"

"Hehe, your reward may be generous, but nobody dares lie to you. Even the con artists are scared, so the hotline hasn't received a single call so far."

Vicki took out her phone and waved it around. The television station had indeed called her earlier, but only to confirm that she was still alive and ask her to tell Deathstroke that they would cooperate with her demands and please not kill them.

"If nobody called, couldn't they send people out to help me look for leads? Looks like they still aren't motivated enough. We should go to the station and kill a few people to give them some incentive."

Cindy was displeased. Her previous jobs had never been this troublesome. At the very least, clients provided a photo of the target and gave their name and usual whereabouts. Nothing like this.

"Great! Kill one of the directors from our news channel first. She's awful. She's always trying to crush outstanding journalists like me."

Vicki immediately urged Cindy to drive back to the station for a killing spree. If Deathstroke could kill that woman for her, wouldn't her future be far more comfortable?

It had to be said, Vicki's thoughts were always hovering at the edge of madness. She seemed indifferent to life, as though she were merely an observer of every event.

Su Ming removed his helmet and looked at her with a faint, knowing smile. He knew Vicki must have discovered something and was now demanding payment, like a Bounty Hunter wiping drool from his mouth.

"You want us to start killing people now. Did you find something? Because that was the reward we promised whoever provided a lead."

Vicki smiled smugly and pulled a pair of glasses from her pocket. The lenses were dripping wet, as if they had just been pulled from the water. She handed them to Barbara.

"You can't go back on your word, because I'm the one who provided the clue."

She pointed at her nose. After seeing Barbara confirm that they were Gordon's glasses, she continued.

"Commissioner Gordon dropped his glasses when he was kidnapped, but he took the chance to leave a clue on them. I happened to find them in the water. They were hidden underwater and covered with corpses and rocks. If I hadn't been lucky, I never would have noticed them."

Su Ming took the glasses from Barbara. At first glance, there was nothing special about them. They were the sort of ordinary glasses old men liked, with a very outdated style. Perhaps Barbara had inherited her terrible fashion sense from Gordon.

But he knew it could not be that simple. Under the car's light, viewed from a different angle, he could see crooked scratches on the lenses.

"He carved words into the lenses with gravel." Cindy leaned over for a look and immediately said, "It's a license plate number. It should belong to the vehicle that kidnapped him."

"Just what I'd expect from Gordon. He managed this even while being kidnapped. Barbara, it's up to you. You know what to do, right?"

Su Ming returned the glasses to her. Of course she knew what to do. She immediately opened her computer and began hacking into the Department of Transportation's servers, trying to find footage from other districts or the vehicle registration information.

But the program reported that the server did not exist.

"Fuck, the city traffic surveillance server is offline. The storm probably knocked out their power."

Barbara slapped the armrest of her Wheelchair and cursed in anger. She only wanted to save her father. Why was heaven being so uncooperative?

Su Ming reassured her and gestured that it was fine. Since they knew the license plate number, there was one place that would definitely have their information.

"I know a place that has every piece of information in Gotham. But whether you can get it depends on you."

"I-I can!" Barbara nodded seriously. "Even if I go to prison, it's fine. I have to save him."

Su Ming merely smiled. He looked at Cindy, who had already understood where he meant. She did not care much, but she still pointed toward the rear compartment.

"Then you'd better blindfold them and take out their SIM cards. We can't let them remember the route to a place like that."