Amusement Mile festered at the northern edge of Uptown—a dead carnival propped on stilts above a sea that never slept. Ten years since the gates last groaned open, and time had stripped it to the marrow. The roller coaster loomed skeletal, its frame brittle and hollowed by rot. Nearby, the Ferris wheel sagged in place, flaking rust like old scabs.
But in Gotham, nothing stayed dead. It just got recycled.
Tonight, the carnival's corpse danced again—resurrected as a rave. Not like the slick neon clubs on Main, or the velvet-curtained lounges in Downtown. This was raw. Feral. The wet air throbbed with high-BPM techno. Glowsticks swung like tribal fire. Portable lights blasted everything in harsh, industrial glare. Sweat. Skin. Movement. The beat pounded like aftershocks from something buried—ancient and starting to stir.
These weren't Downtown's polished trust-fund parasites or Midtown's middle class. These were the forgotten. The broken. The angry. Kids chasing oblivion with cheap pills and smoked glass.
Off at the corner stood a makeshift bar, hunched beneath a tarp nailed to splintered wood. Bartenders in black hoodies swapped bills for plastic cups. Near the far end, a girl in a zip-up with auburn hair tied in a loose ponytail argued with a man in a pullover. When she turned to go, he caught her wrist.
"I'll walk you," he mouthed.
She shook her head and ducked beneath a wood beam. The man watched her go.
He wasn't the only one.
From atop a worn ticket booth, a figure crouched. His sharp, pointed ears stabbed at the sky. The rooftop bowed under his weight, soft with age. He watched her through binoculars as she threaded through the crowd below.
She tugged down her hood, revealing pale skin and freckles painted across her face. She yanked out the hair tie and stuffed it into her jacket like it had been itching at her all night. Then the hood came back up.
They called her Freckles, not for the real ones—she had none—but for the scattered fakes dotting her nose and cheeks. Different each time. Her camouflage. Same with the ever-changing hair dye. Sometimes she added fake piercings. Temporary tattoos. A different girl, every time.
Unlike his other sources, she left no trail. No birth name. No history.
Just like him—a ghost.
Around her, bodies thrashed like dying fish—hungry, senseless. Arms stretched skyward, begging the heavens to take them. When men approached, she slipped past without a glance.
She peeled away from the noise, slipping past the carousel. Its horses—gone or maimed, limbs cracked, faces caved in. On the rusted base, a man pounded into a woman—brutal, careless, obscene. Freckles didn't flinch.
She didn't look. She knew better. In Gotham, eye contact was consent. But blinders carried their own problems.
One of the men she'd brushed past earlier was trailing her.
Oversized hoodie. Sneakers. Baggy pants. A predator waiting for the right angle.
She slid into the skeletal remains of a dark ride.
Here, his gun was useless. Nothing to grab, nothing tall enough. He'd have to sprint to reach them.
Inside, rusted tracks curled along the floor like scar tissue. The air stank of mold and motor grease. She yanked down her hood. Rain plastered hair to skin. She touched the ends—red dye smeared her fingertips.
"Cheap temp dye," she muttered.
Then—a sound behind her. Soft. Measured.
She turned.
Evil doesn't wear horns. Just brown eyes, a crooked nose, and a grin stretched a little too wide.
"Hey, girlie," he said, hands in his pockets. "Walkin' alone out here? Not safe."
"I'm fine," she said flatly.
"Oh, I can see that." He smiled without warmth. "What brings you out?"
"Waiting for a friend."
He tilted his head, clearly not buying it. "You shoot up? I got the good shit."
"Not interested." Her gaze didn't waver. "You should leave."
His hands came out of his pockets. It made her nervous.
"Nah, I ain't leaving."
She swallowed hard, then reached into her pocket for the small pepper spray.
His grin twisted.
"You think that's gonna help?" he sneered.
A tense pause—then he lunged.
She blasted the spray—a blunt chemical cloud. He flinched, pawing at his eyes. She pivoted to run. Too slow. His hand clamped her wrist, twisting until the can clattered to the floor. She punched him in the jaw—enough to snap his head—but he held fast. Then came the hand around her throat, shoving her back, crushing her to the wall.
"Feisty girl, ain't cha," he said as she kneed his legs. "Keep fighting. Scream if you want. Ain't no one hearing you out here."
His grip tightened.
Her throat burned. Nails dug into her skin. But she didn't beg. Wouldn't. Not for men like this. Her fingers scratched at his hand—then she smiled, wrong and sharp.
His brows furrowed with confusion. His grip loosened slightly.
She said in a low whisper, "I warned you."
Something hit the man hard enough to snap bone. His body whiplashed sideways. His wrist cracked. His scream bounced off the walls before his face slammed the concrete. His body bent in ways it wasn't meant to. A shrill cry, high and ugly, before silence swallowed him whole.
When it was over, he lay sobbing—an arm twisted and useless—like trash waiting for pickup.
The figure who stood over him didn't speak. Didn't breathe hard.
It wasn't a fight. It was a lesson.
Freckles had already left.
Outside, he spotted her beneath a streetlamp at corner block. When her eyes caught his, she turned and slipped into Coventry.
He left the pier and fired his grapple. The line snapped taut, hauling him skyward. He sprinted across the rooftops, shadows peeling past him, until he saw her again—half a block deep into Coventry.
He dropped down, sliding into an alley ahead of her path. Waited. Listened.
Footsteps.
When she passed, he caught her wrist and yanked her into the dark.
She didn't scream or swing—just smirked, like it was game they were playing.
He released her. She stepped back, not quite leaning against the rain-slick brick behind her, but close enough to fake comfort.
"You hurt?"
She glanced at him, the smirk never leaving her face. "No. What about him?"
He said nothing.
Her grin grew wider. "Why the urgent page?"
"I need a favor. Need it done tonight."
"Another one?" Her voice light and teasing. "You ever pay off your debts, or just keep stacking 'em?"
"The Pinkney Building off Raspler Avenue in North B. It's a hangout for misfits. Need intel."
He held out his hand, revealing an earpiece.
She picked it up like it was a delicate piece of jewelry.
"Does this mean we're official?" she teased.
He didn't respond.
Her smile stayed, but her tone shifted. "Who am I stalking?"
"A girl named Lan Nguyen. And a guy calling himself Bayli."
"What's it about?"
"She's dead. He's a suspect."
She might've hidden her identity, but her eyes betrayed her. She didn't know the girl, but something in her had already started to mourn.
Freckles checked her watch. "You're cutting it close tonight."
"Hence the page."
"Hence," she echoed, amused. Like the word said more than he meant it to. "Misfits, huh? I can swing that. But you still owe me."
He grimaced—like the words scraped his teeth raw.
She crossed her arms, studying him.
"I don't have all night," he snapped.
"Alright, alright." She rubbed her neck, rain sticking to her skin like static. "I heard Isaiah Carter flipped. Because of you."
He tilted his head, sharp and slight. Not many things caught him off guard. This one did. She usually had information that was hard to reach, but this would've taken serious work.
"Where did you hear that?"
"JenRen gang runs an underground poker game in Chinatown. High rollers—and I mean loaded. Not Wayne money, but enough to burn through twenty grand in a night. My friend hooked me up with a bar gig. One night, I'm restocking the lower shelves when I hear this gravelly, coarse voice. And it's Eddie Ray."
"Penguin's number two?"
Her expression twitched at the name—just for a second. She nodded.
"Eddie Ray was talking to some guy at the bar—mostly sports and prison gossip. Then the guy asks about Carter flipping on his entire crew. Ray says old man Carter was warned: stop the drive-bys or pay the price."
She stepped closer, the lamplight catching in her pale blue eyes—excited and intrigued.
"Carter told Eddie Ray that the 'psycho'—meaning you—broke into his club one night and said if they didn't stop spraying bullets, you'd make sure his crew turned on him."
She paused, waiting for a reaction. He said nothing. So she went on.
"We all know Marcus White didn't listen. He lit up that deli in South B. Killed that five-year-old in front of his grandmother. Everyone knows what Carter did next."
She watched him. "Well? Is it true?"
He stepped forward. He'd noticed it earlier, but now the red nail marks on her throat glared under the light. She couldn't see his eyes, but she felt his gaze.
She touched her neck, pulled her hoodie tight. Not because she was cold—just needed something to do with her hands. Her smile finally faded.
"What do you think?" he said.
Her eyes drifted as she thought. "Carter was street-born. Cold-blooded. The live-and-die type. He would've bitten off his own tongue before he talked. But you… you rewrote the rules. It's no longer snitching, it's survival."
She turned back.
But he was gone.
She smiled to herself, slipped the earpiece in, and left the alley.