Chen Mo hung upside down from the ceiling.
Seriously.
He had only just returned to Gotham, lost his dog, then lost his manuscript, rummaged through an old attic along the way, and rushed to the Old Gotham Psychiatric Research Center overnight.
He had already been busy enough getting here.
Yet the moment he walked in, he heard someone issuing his death certificate on a citywide livestream.
Gotham really had no manners.
He hadn't even arrived, and they had already scheduled his funeral. Was that any way to behave?
"Who did you just say was dead?"
The cameras in the hall all swung upward.
Chen Mo hung beside the lighting rig, his Black Suit pressed against the ceiling, while Venom quietly drew back a little at the edge of his shoulder.
This was a good angle.
Everyone below could see him.
So could Hugo.
So could Batman.
Chen Mo saw Batman standing in the middle of the stage, his cape soaked and water still on his shoulder armor, pinned beneath the lights amid a mass of cameras, as though all of Gotham had just dragged him into a public-execution livestream.
The most awkward part was that, from Chen Mo's angle, the scene kept seeming to overlap a little with panels from an erotic comic he had drawn before.
Chen Mo paused.
"Wow."
"I was only gone a few months. Has Gotham's livestreaming industry grown this fast?"
Nobody laughed.
"I've always said I hated this city that only ever gives me the cold shoulder."
That line was part of the spider's little mental theater, not something he actually said aloud.
Mainly because experimental subjects had just run through the hall, and reporters were still trembling behind chairs with cameras clutched in their arms.
The atmosphere really wasn't suited to warming up the