Morning in the attic still brought no sunlight, only a leaking ceiling, moldy wallpaper, and the crunching of puppy Bruce eating kibble without the slightest sense of impending danger.
Chen Mo sat cross-legged in front of the battered sofa, a crumpled sheet of scratch paper spread before him. On it was written today's budget: expired bread, dog food, iodine solution, drawing ink, and, if life still held any hope, a package of chicken breast.
He stared at the words "chicken breast" in silence for three seconds, then crossed them out with a pencil.
Bruce raised his head to look at him, his tail brushing the cardboard box as though questioning him from a distinctly class-conscious standpoint.
"Don't look at me." Chen Mo pointed at him. "You ate fifteen dollars' worth of puppy food yesterday. I ate three compressed biscuits. Which of us is more like the young master of the Wayne family? Do you seriously have no idea?"
Puppy Bruce clearly had no idea. He lowered his head and resumed crunching his kibble with impeccable rhythm, as though Gotham's financial crisis had absolutely nothing to do with him.
Chen Mo retrieved the money hidden in the sofa cushions and counted it again. Fourteen hundred and eighty-two dollars. The number hadn't changed. Money wouldn't grow on its own, which seriously violated the basic benefits owed to someone transported to another world.
He was about to tuck it back when a piercing blare came from the street below, like a scrapped school bus using the last of its life to denounce capitalism.
"The East End temporary education registration site is open! Wayne Foundation special enrollment program! Children without fixed addresses, children out of school, and undocumented immigrant children are all eligible to register! Free breakfast! Free lunch! Free school buses!"
Chen Mo's hand stopped in midair.
He slowly turned toward the window, looking as though he'd just heard Gotham City Hall announce that, starting today, everyone would receive money, crime would drop to zero, and Batman could clock out and go home to sleep.
The yellow school bus downstairs had stopped at the corner. Its paint was peeling so badly it looked diseased, yet a brand-new blue-and-white sign had been pasted onto its side: Wayne Foundation education outreach vehicle.
Two people in reflective vests stood beside the door. One held a clipboard. The other had half a tattoo showing on his arm, its design forcibly covered with adhesive bandages in an effort that looked very earnest and utterly ineffective.
Chen Mo narrowed his eyes.
He'd seen that tattoo before, on low-level Maroni Family muscle. Now this guy had put on a volunteer vest and instantly transformed from a gang temp into an educator.
Gotham really was a city that offered people opportunities to change careers.
Several homeless teenagers downstairs had already been "invited" out of cardboard boxes, abandoned cars, and alleyways. By invited, that meant two burly men standing on either side of them, smiling like farm workers about to load piglets onto a truck.
A skinny, dark-skinned kid tried to crawl under the bus and escape, only for a reflective vest to grab him by the back of his collar like a cat refusing a bath.
"Buddy, don't run." The man's tone was very gentle. "It's just school. We're not sending you to Arkham. The Wayne Foundation pays subsidies per head. If you don't go, I lose today's lunch voucher."
After hearing that, Chen Mo slowly closed the window.
Three seconds later, he pushed it open a crack again.
It wasn't that he wanted to join the commotion. Mainly, the words "free breakfast" and "free lunch" had destructive power on par with strategic nuclear weapons in Gotham's slums.
Hiss...
Just as Chen Mo was debating whether to pretend he hadn't heard, the system in his head suddenly gave a soft beep.
Its general meaning was that underage superheroes should receive a basic education.
Chen Mo closed his eyes and took a deep breath of moldy air.
"System, you know what? Every time you speak up, you make me feel like you're not the Spider-Man System. You're the neighborhood committee auntie system."
The system didn't argue.
A system that could only beep had no chat function.
Still, after all, skipping school was called youthful rebellion when ordinary people did it. When Spider-Man did it, it might be called breaking character.
Chen Mo hid his money, topped up Bruce's water and kibble, jammed the attic window shut from the inside, and finally slung a battered canvas bag over his back.
Inside the bag were his suit, a few drawings, and half a pencil he'd snapped in his grip.
He climbed down the side of the building and landed squarely in a puddle of black water.
Chen Mo looked down at his shoes, then at the battered school bus in the distance radiating charity, and suddenly felt that his life was like a soggy french fry.
Forget it. The Spider-Sense hasn't gone off, but this whole scene is so bizarre. Maybe I should just skip school after all?
Chen Mo was just about to slip past along the wall when the woman holding the clipboard turned and spotted him.
Her eyes lit up like a market vendor spotting a fish that had jumped onto the chopping board all by itself.
"You! Kid! Come register!"
Chen Mo immediately put on a sunny, harmless, poor-but-resilient smile.
"Ma'am, I think there may be a misunderstanding. I might look underage, but my mental age is actually very mature. Mature enough to file my own taxes. Though I currently have no taxes to pay."
The woman flipped through her clipboard without expression.
"Age?"
"Fifteen, or fourteen. Whichever is more convenient for you," Chen Mo said earnestly, attempting to put up a fight. "Personally, I'd recommend eighteen. That would save both of us some trouble."
The woman looked up at him with the gaze of someone who had seen more than enough little con artists on Gotham's streets.
"No fixed address?"
Chen Mo fell silent for a moment.
That question was deeply offensive.
"I have a place to live," Chen Mo said seriously. "It just has no legal standing, no utility bills, no street number, and no landlord who knows I live there."
The woman checked a box on the form: no fixed address.
Chen Mo watched her pen come down, his feelings mixed.
The other burly man in a reflective vest walked over with a thoroughly professional smile, though the gangster flavor beneath it hadn't quite washed off.
"Kid, get on the bus. New Wayne Foundation policy. Every school-age child in the East End who isn't enrolled has to register. You don't have to wait for mail, and not having an address is fine. We come to your door to find you."
Chen Mo stared at him in shock.
"Come to our doors? You call this coming to our doors? Where I live doesn't even have a door."
The burly man shrugged.
"So we switched to finding people on the streets. Most homeless kids live somewhere without a door."
Chen Mo understood.
When the mail couldn't reach its destination, the policy had simply evolved physical delivery.
Gotham's compulsory education system specialized in random street spawns, catching whoever it happened to find.
He glanced inside the school bus.
More than a dozen children sat inside. Some clutched moldy blankets, some held stolen canned food against their chests, and some still had strips of gang-colored cloth wrapped around their wrists.
In the farthest corner, a little boy was hiding a razor blade in his shoe sole. Halfway through, he noticed Chen Mo looking and very politely pushed the blade a little farther in.
Chen Mo nodded to him.
The little boy nodded back.
That was social etiquette for Gotham's children. Don't expose each other's contraband, and everyone could still be classmates.
As Chen Mo boarded, the burly man by the door made a note on the clipboard. Chen Mo's sharp eyes caught a small slip attached beside it.
"East End community partner station: forty-dollar subsidy for each preliminary registration completed for an out-of-school child; additional meal packs and safety supplies upon completion of school check-in."
Chen Mo suddenly understood.
Wayne Enterprises wanted to get children into school, the community stations wanted subsidies, and the remnants of the gangs wanted a cut from the community stations. Thus, a brand-new food chain had emerged on Gotham's streets: catching kids and sending them to school.
Was this absurd?
Absolutely.
But considering this was Gotham, it even seemed a tiny bit progressive.
As the school bus started moving, a crow perched on a utility pole at the corner.
The crow tilted its head, its black-bean eyes fixed on Chen Mo. It didn't caw, only watched quietly, like a black button nailed into the sky.
Chen Mo met its gaze for two seconds.
"What are you looking at?" he muttered. "Never seen Spider-Man get hauled off to school before?"
The crow flapped its wings but didn't fly away.
Meanwhile, in the underground data room at Wayne Tower, Bruce Wayne stood before an enormous screen, watching outreach vehicles move across a map of Gotham.
Every blue dot represented a registration vehicle, every white dot a registered child, and every red dot an irregularity on-site.
There were a lot of red dots.
An awful lot.
So many that Alfred, standing beside him with tea, watched for three seconds before tactfully saying, "Master Wayne, it appears your education program is being localized to Gotham."
Bruce said nothing.
His gaze settled on the live feed from the East End's third registration vehicle. The onboard camera captured an Asian boy boarding, his movements too light for an ordinary child. As he sat, his shoulders instinctively avoided the attack range of everyone in the back row.
Alfred saw him too.
"This child looks rather familiar," the old butler said. "Of course, I mean familiar in the sense of 'constantly crawling around on your surveillance screens.'"
Bruce enlarged the image.
The boy wore a hoodie washed pale, with no mask on his face. His eyes were clear and his expression innocent, but the curve of his mouth carried an obvious hint of dissatisfaction with the world.
Gait match: ninety-seven percent.
Compensatory movements following shoulder and neck injuries matched.
His right knuckles showed recent signs of high-intensity gripping pressure.
Bruce was silent for a long time.
"Don't intervene," he said. "Don't give him special treatment."
Alfred glanced at him.
"You launched an entire citywide education program to sweep up every homeless child without identification, and then said no special treatment. Master Wayne, statistically speaking, that is a very interesting statement."
Bruce kept staring at the screen.
"If I arrange an identity for him alone, it'll expose him. It'll also expose the fact that I'm looking for him. Gotham isn't missing one student file. Gotham has tens of thousands of children who aren't in any files at all."
His voice was very low as he said it.
"Letters don't work. They have no addresses. Phone calls don't work. They have no numbers. Waiting for them to come forward is even less useful. The people who need this policy most never receive the notice."
Alfred sighed softly.
"So you chose to let the notice grow legs and catch people on the streets."
Watching the boy on the screen who had been forced onto a school bus, Bruce's mouth moved almost imperceptibly.
"It's working for now."
Before you continue