There was a new unlucky innocent at Gotham's train station.
In a place like Gotham, strangers were unusual. When they came, they fit a type: mobsters relocating, smugglers in transit, criminals who'd exhausted their options elsewhere and decided that whatever Gotham was, it was at least not where they'd been. People came to Gotham because they matched it. Because the particular shade of their darkness lined up with the city's.
The wealthy who dealt with Gotham—and there were plenty, because Gotham's black market was efficient and its moral oversight was nonexistent—didn't move here. They cooperated from a distance. You want illegal services, we want clean money. A transaction. Neither party needed to share a zip code.
But there were exceptions.
A small number of people arrived in Gotham who were, in defiance of all reasonable probability, innocent.
James Gordon had walked into the GCPD with nothing but a sense of justice and a complete failure to understand what he was walking into. He'd plunged straight into the standing water of that institution and, against every reasonable expectation, hadn't drowned. Hadn't gone under. The department was still what it was—corrupt from the foundation up, rotten through most of its walls—but Gordon had carved out something small and real inside it and refused to let go. An unreasonable man, in the best possible sense.
Harvey Dent had come in with slightly more favorable conditions. He'd had protection that mattered, in a city where protection was the currency that bought everything else. And he'd had Gordon's eye on him from early on. Gotham's White Knight, they called him—the DA who meant it when he said the words. Who actually hated the thing he was supposed to fight.
And now there was this one.
A young man who looked simultaneously like he had never belonged anywhere near Gotham and like he might have been born in Crime Alley. The contradiction sat right on his face: alert but ignorant, wary but full of gaps. He moved with caution, and the caution was real, but it was the caution of someone who didn't know yet what to be cautious of.
The poverty radiated off him. So did the particular blankness of someone dropped into a situation they hadn't chosen and hadn't prepared for.
Already, something in his eyes had the faint imprint of Gotham madness.
How could it not? Gotham left a mark on everyone who stayed long enough. The people who stayed entirely sane were either not paying attention or already dead. What the three innocents shared wasn't just their improbable decency—it was that they were still here, and they intended to remain.
That, at least, was Selina's read of it.
She didn't usually come out during the day. Old habits. But the train station was worth the adjustment—it drew the kind of marks who deserved to have their wallets lightened. Rich visitors passing through Gotham's underworld channels on business, wearing watches that cost more than most East End residents made in a year, walking with the confidence of people who had decided that their money made them invisible. It didn't. It made them conspicuous in a different way.
She took their shiny things back to her place. Used some of the proceeds on people who actually needed it—the small-timers in the East End who made a minor mistake and got a bullet in the head for it, which was a disproportionate response by any measure. The rest went into her collection. She had taste, whatever anyone said about her methods.
She'd seen him yesterday. Stepping off the train, eyes scanning the platform the way people do when they know they should be worried but don't know about what. Clear-eyed but ignorant. Hyperaware and full of blind spots at the same time.
He had money on him—not much, she'd gathered that immediately—but she'd checked anyway. A reflex. The wallet and the shirt pocket had both come up empty. Or near enough. She'd palmed the driver's license just to have it—you learned things from people's documents—then set it in his pants pocket instead of putting it back where she'd found it. A nudge. You're exposed. Someone just had their hand in your things. Pay attention.
She'd felt a little guilty afterward, if she was being honest with herself. Not about the check—that was professional, not personal—but about not slipping him a few bills on the way out. His wallet had nothing in it. She'd been so surprised by the depth of his financial situation that she'd just... moved on without thinking. That wasn't like her.
So when she saw him this morning, alive and ambulatory, she was genuinely surprised.
She'd been through the East End last night. Two bodies, both gang-related, both each other's problem. She'd assumed the stranger would have graduated to corpse status by dawn—that was the normal arc for someone that exposed in this neighborhood. No money, no weapon, no connections, no knowledge of the local geography.
But no. He'd found shelter. Made a contact, even.
The hat and scarf were old but intact—not scavenged, not stolen. Someone had lent them to him. The man who'd pulled him onto the bus clearly had history with him, trust with him, was actively trying to keep him alive rather than just tolerating his presence.
That man wasn't from Gotham either. She could see it in the way he moved—not the city's native ease with violence, but something built over time on top of an older foundation. A year of survival instinct covering a person who'd arrived here the same way: without preparation, without belonging.
Brothers, maybe. Or close enough to it. The older one had clearly done significant work to get the younger one this far, this fast.
Still hadn't done a very good job of keeping him out of Gotham in the first place.
She watched them from the rooftop, in no particular hurry.
The station stranger wasn't just out of place. He was specifically, almost impressively unlucky. She'd seen his expression when the shooter called him out. The resignation of someone who has realized that the universe has a very particular sense of humor and it keeps telling the same joke.
She was curious what he'd do about it.
What in the world, Jude thought, is happening.
"Tell me honestly," he said to Drake. "If I push you out there—is there any chance he focuses on you and forgets about me?"
Drake considered this with genuine seriousness. "Depends on his anger level. If it's high enough, he'll want to shoot anything he can see. That's what the fighting is for."
"So he's still somewhat rational. There's a sliding scale."
"Right."
Jude nodded slowly. Some kind of option might present itself. The situation was bad, not terminal. If they stayed calm and waited for a gap in the shooter's attention—a reload, a distraction, someone else becoming more interesting —
"HEY!" Drake's head swung around the corner. "DUMBASS! You couldn't hit my shoe and the shoe wasn't even moving! My friend here says your aim is worse than a toddler's! At least when a three-year-old misses, he can still spray piss on you! You can't even manage that much! Go home and practice holding the thing before you come back!"
He pulled his head behind cover.
Turned to Jude with the expression of a man who has made an excellent decision.
"That should really get him going."