Wayne Manor.
Bruce Wayne should not have been reading student job application emails at this hour. Or rather, he would never have read them at all.
In theory, emails like these would first enter the company's system, be screened by the recruitment team, then be sorted and processed by the foundation.
A lengthy cover letter from an ordinary student could never have appeared before Bruce Wayne himself, much less reached him immediately.
But this one had not come from an ordinary student.
It came from Chen Mo.
Otherwise known as Spider-Man.
More precisely, it came from a Spider-Man who thought he was writing a job application to Wayne Enterprises, when he had practically pasted the letter to the entrance of the Batcave.
Bruce, who was very confident that he had kept his identity secret, had been doing something else when he saw the system notification.
He was comparing handwriting and drawing styles.
On the Batcave's screen, one side displayed the chibi spider signature on the note left on Black Mask's chest last night; the other showed scans of the "Gotham Phantom" comic that had recently been spreading rapidly through Gotham's black market.
The lines of that chibi spider were distinctive.
Round and pudgy, with a punchable expression, wildly exaggerated webs, and a fondness for little stars on the side that were entirely unnecessary but very much a personal signature.
Some of the doodles in the margins of the comic showed almost identical habits.
Bruce stared at the screen.
Expressionless.
The computer returned a match probability: 87.6%.
Very high.
High enough to leave almost no doubt.
He also pulled up the little drawings Chen Mo occasionally scribbled in the margins of his schoolwork and added them to the comparison.
The match probability rose to 93.2%.
Bruce fell silent.
The cold light