CHAPTER 2 – FIRST NIGHT, FIRST BRICK
Cold drags me back up out of sleep.
Not fast. Not like a nightmare jolt. More like someone slowly winching me out of dark water with a hook in my spine. My eyes open to the same strip of warped plywood inches from my face, gray in the not-quite-morning.
For a second I don't know where I am.
Then my shoulder throbs when I try to move it, concrete aches through the thin cardboard under my back, and memory snaps into place.
Alley. Gotham. Wrong map. Brick.
Right.
I try to sit up and my legs answer with pins and needles and a hollow, burning numbness all at once. It feels like someone filled my calves with crushed glass and static.
"Okay," I mutter, voice rough. "Check the damage."
Toes first. I drag my heels back, flex my feet inside the shoes. Takes a second before anything happens, then there's a delayed throb and faint movement. Not dead yet. My fingers are slower; I have to rub them against my palms to convince them to join in.
The cardboard I put down last night gave up the fight hours ago. Damp has soaked through to my jeans; the cold underneath has teeth, gnawing at bone. The wind knifes in along the bottom edge of the plywood, finding every gap and driving thin blades of air across my ankles and spine.
It's worse now than it was when I curled up. Night pulled all the heat out of the brick and concrete and left only the kind of cold that doesn't let you think straight.
Which is probably why last night's setup looks dumber by the second.
I lean back against the wall and force myself to see it the way I'd look at someone else's bad repair job. Warped doorboard with a bow in the middle. Gap along the bottom, wider near the hinge where the wood pulled away. Dumpster canted at a slight angle, blocking most of the view from the street and some of the wind, but not all.
I dragged a box into the recess and called it good. Sat down and hoped that would be enough.
It wasn't.
The brick sits where I left it, a hunk of red-brown near my hand, dust and grit stuck to one side. Heavy enough to feel like something real. I curl my fingers around it and let the weight rest in my palm.
I should've used you properly last night.
Sleep would've been worse with no shelter. It'll be nonexistent if I don't fix this before tomorrow.
The thought of tomorrow scrapes across another one—GOTHAM CITY TRANSIT, GOTHAM CITY SANITATION, GCPD on the radio, some idiot yelling about the Bat like it's just weather. All the proof I didn't dream myself here. All the proof that this reality is wrong in ways I'm not ready to unpack.
Later. That's a later problem. This is the one that kills you first.
Wind. Door. Brick.
I shift onto my knees, wincing as feeling claws its way back into my legs. The recess isn't tall; I have to hunch under the warped plywood to inspect it properly. My fingertips trace the edge where wood meets frame.
The door—whatever it used to be—was mounted on a frame that's settled with the rest of the building. The hinges are still somewhere under the paint on the left; the right side's where the gap's worst. The bow in the wood pulls the middle away from the frame like a bent ruler. That's why the wind funnels through there instead of just leaking evenly.
So: push the bow back in, hold it that way, without welding equipment, screws, or a spare set of hands.
"Yeah," I murmur. "Brick job."
I press my shoulder against the wood near the bow, both hands flat, and lean in. The door flexes with a complaining creak, gap shrinking at the bottom as the curve straightens. The wind drops, just like I hoped—it turns from a blade into a draft.
But the second I let go, it springs back.
Okay. Need a third arm. Or a wedge.
I set the brick where the frame's closest, rotate it a few ways, testing angles. If I jam it with the long side against the frame and the short side against the door, I can maybe lock the bow straight—if I can get enough pressure on it.
It's simple. And impossible with arms that still shake from cold.
"Try anyway," I tell myself. "Worst case, you drop a brick on your foot and swear at yourself for an hour."
I brace one foot against the wall, plant my shoulder against the wood again, and shove. The door creaks, groans. The gap shrinks. With my other hand, I pull the brick up into the narrowing space, knuckles scraping. There's a sweet spot where the pressure fights me in both directions. If I miss it, the brick will either fall or punch straight through the rotten board.
Slow. Don't rush it.
I ease the brick's edge into place, tilt and twist. My fingers go numb halfway through; I force them to keep moving, feeling more through changes in sound than touch. The groan of wood slides into a different note, a kind of strained hum instead of a squeal.
When I finally pull my hand out, the brick stays.
The wind noise changes immediately. It's still there, but duller, like it has to work harder to find a path.
I sit back on my heels, breathing harder than I should be, and watch a strip of torn plastic near the floor. Last night it flapped like a flag in a storm. Now it just shivers.
That's better.
I put my palm against the board. You can feel the difference; the flex is gone. It gives a little, then stops, the pressure transferring into the brick and frame instead of letting air bully its way in.
It's not a permanent fix. The wood's rotten, the mortar in the wall's cracked, and one pissed-off drunk could probably kick the whole thing down if he really tried. But he'd have to try. That's the point.
For me, it means I'm not donating body heat straight to the city for free.
I sit down again, this time adjusting the cardboard layer and my position like I mean it, not like I'm lost and collapsing where I fell. I move the worst of the damp to the edge, fold a drier section under my hips, and tuck the loose flap up against the inner wall as another barrier.
This time when I lean back, the draft doesn't stab straight through my spine. It creeps around the edges instead. Annoying, not lethal.
The dumpster's still not in the perfect spot. The wind brushes my feet and ankles where it curves around the metal. I stand, put my shoulder against the side, and give it another shove. Rust protests; the wheels squeak and grind. It moves an inch, then two. The new position puts it slightly off the main axis of the alley, like a badly parked car. From the street, my little recess will read more like a blind patch of trash shadow than a "come investigate this doorway" invitation.
Better line of cover. Better wind angle. Still enough room to squeeze out fast if I have to bolt.
I step back into the recess and just… listen.
Wind: dull roar instead of razor. Good.
Cardboard: crinkling under my weight, not squelching. Acceptable.
Door: quiet aside from an occasional old-building creak when the brick and frame settle against each other.
I exhale and feel my breath warm my chest for a whole second before the air steals it.
The sound of the city's different now that I'm paying attention to shapes instead of just volume. Somewhere up the block, a truck engine turns over, grinds into motion. A metal gate rattles open. Voices murmur, too far away to make out words yet.
This is what it's supposed to feel like, my brain notes, almost absent: identify the problem, get your hands on the parts, make them do something better together than they were doing apart. That part hasn't changed. Wrong universe, same physics.
"Brick, dumpster, door," I say softly, like I'm labeling a diagram. "Baseline."
My stomach growls loud enough to echo.
Right. Next problem.
I curl my legs back under me and then cautiously extend them, testing range of motion. Still needles and ache, but less icy than before. The improved barrier is already buying time.
Time to think about food and heat, not death in a doorway.
I give the wedge one last shove with the heel of my hand. It doesn't move. Good. If I run, I want to know it takes deliberate effort to dislodge, not a random brush of my backpack.
The alley mouth is brighter when I step out again. Sky's shifted from black to a dirty blue-gray. The buildings on either side still block most of it, but a thin stripe of morning leaks down between them.
Street's waking up. A delivery truck noses along the curb, hazard blinkers clicking. A guy in a knit cap drags metal crates toward a back door, breath steaming in thick clouds. A woman in a puffy coat shepherds two kids down the sidewalk, their boots scuffing salt and old snow.
All bundled up. Thick jackets, hats, gloves. Layers that say this cold wasn't a surprise for them.
I tug my hoodie tighter around myself and try not to feel like the temperature's my fault.
Across the street, a lamp post wears a faded paper flyer. The ink's run in the weather, but enough letters hang on to make sense if you squint.
MARY'S WINTER SHELTER
HOT MEALS – WARM BEDS – INTAKE 6PM
An arrow points vaguely right, like that's enough directions for desperate people.
I read it twice and look away before my brain can start picturing what "warm beds" might feel like. Heat and walls and other bodies close by. Too many eyes. Too many questions.
Shelters mean forms. Forms mean names. Names mean records. Records mean computers and databases and somebody, somewhere, being able to pull up a line with "Xavier Thompson" on it and decide what to do with that.
I am already a glitch here. A person who dropped into the system without paperwork. Letting the city get hold of me now feels like stepping into a machine mid-cycle.
Still. I remember last night's cold. I remember how close I was to sleeping hard and never waking up again.
Shelter goes in the same mental drawer as Gotham and Batman and all the other impossible things that are apparently real now. Not something I can ignore forever. Just something I can't afford to touch yet.
"Not today," I tell the flyer under my breath.
The woman in the puffy coat glances past me, not at me, and ushers her kids across the street.
Two guys shuffle by a minute later, shoulders hunched, faces wind-chapped. One has a blanket wrapped over his coat. The other's chewing on the end of a cigarette that's more filter than anything else.
"Mary's line's gonna be around the block if this keeps up," Blanket says, breath fogging.
"Yeah, well, you wanna freeze out here, be my guest," Filter answers. "They had coffee yesterday. Real coffee. None of that instant shit."
Their footsteps crunch past my alley without slowing. The name files itself next to the flyer in my head: St. Mary's. Real coffee. Line around the block.
I don't follow. My stomach hates that decision immediately, gnawing at itself. My hands are still numb. My shoulder aches. A warm room sounds good enough to make my chest hurt.
Warmth means questions. Questions mean lying or telling the truth. Both end badly.
I turn back to the alley. The dumpster looks just slightly off from where it started, blocking more light. The recess is a darker patch within that shadow, quiet and controlled in a way the open street isn't.
It's not much. Not even close. But it's mine in a way the rest of this city isn't yet.
I step into the alcove again and crouch, running a hand over the brick wedge like I'm checking a joint in a pipe. Still solid. Still holding.
Somewhere behind the door, inside the building I'm stealing this space from, pipes thump as heat cycles for people with actual leases. I can feel a hint of it through the wall—just enough to raise the temperature a fraction of a degree where my back will go later.
Last night, this was a place I fell down in and tried not to die. This morning, it's a place that behaves the way I want it to because I made it.
One door, one brick, one half-meter of air that doesn't cut quite as hard.
Tiny. Laughable, if you zoom out.
Huge, if you don't.
"I can't fix you," I tell the alley, the building, the whole impossible city behind it. My breath ghosts against the plywood and vanishes. "But I can fix this."
The wind mutters something into the gap above the wedge and gets nowhere.
I shoulder my backpack, check the street once more, and step out of the alcove, leaving the brick doing its quiet job behind me. Time to find warmth and food I don't have to steal yet. Time to see what kind of damage this world's already done to itself.
If I have to live in the wrong universe, I'm not letting it kill me for free.