It was cold in the alley.
The laundromat's back door stood half open, spilling a little dim yellow light. Dirty water pooled on the ground outside, reflecting the colors of Gotham's distant neon like a sheet of colored glass crushed underfoot.
The thug pinned to the table could no longer form a complete sentence.
His face was deathly pale, his lips trembled, and his eyes were fixed on the fish tank in front of him.
The water was still sloshing.
Helen Morris stood beside the table, wearing black gloves. Her face held no particular expression, only exhaustion.
A deep, old exhaustion she could no longer be bothered to hide.
She asked her final question.
"Who arranged for the drugs outside the school?"
The thug trembled for a long time before finally squeezing out a name.
Morris did not speak right away.
She merely looked down at him.
A few seconds later, she let go.
The thug slumped against the table, gasping for breath as though he had just been dragged out of the water.
Standing in the shadows, Damian-no gave a laugh.
"See? I told you this was still what you were suited for."
Morris turned to look at him.
Damian-no clapped his hands, signaling for the men nearby to drag the thug away.
"Disciplining students by day, interrogating their brothers, uncles, neighbors, and drug dealers by night," he said with a smile. "What a complete pipeline. The school ought to hire more teachers like you."
Morris did not respond.
Damian-no came a little closer.
His shoes stepped into the dirty water with a faint sound.
"So keep watching things at the school," he said. "Who reports us, who runs their mouth, who tries to hand our list over to Wayne Enterprises-make a note of all of them. And those