The man with the gun wasn't the only one surprised.
East End residents didn't sleep well on the best nights. Gunfire was background noise—the standard accompaniment to the dark hours, sometimes a brief exchange, sometimes a sustained argument that ran until dawn. People had learned to grip their own weapons a little tighter when the shots got close, watch their windows, stay inside. As long as you kept to yourself and didn't draw interest, the violence generally found other targets.
Most of the building's residents had reached a kind of peace with the nightly soundtrack. Some of the older ones needed it now, apparently—couldn't drop off without it. Everyone knew that the victims were whoever they happened to be: gang members, dealers, working girls, neighbors, people who had simply been outside at the wrong time.
Nobody intervened.
The East End ran on margins so thin there wasn't room in them for someone else's problem. The economics of heroism in this neighborhood were clear and had been for years: you didn't do it. The people who did it wore capes and operated outside the law and had no rent to pay. Ordinary people had already done the math.
Besides, there was Batman. There was Catwoman. Someone with a cape would probably show up eventually.
Until tonight.
"YOU BASTARD! WHERE ARE YOU?"
The voice bounced off brick and fire escapes and came down into the street.
Everyone within earshot froze.
Even here, even by East End standards, a loud, profane woman with a shotgun was outside the established categories.
In the alley, the attacker yanked his pants up. The rage hadn't gone anywhere—it had just redirected. Some crazy woman was ruining his night, screaming loud enough to wake the block, and he was going to find her and explain the error of her judgment.
BOOM.
The blast hit the wall three feet from his head and the mathematics of the situation became very clear very fast.
He had a pistol. Six rounds, small caliber.
She had a shotgun.
Buckshot sprayed through brick. A fragment caught his cheekbone and drew blood.
"FUCK YOU!" He fired into the dark. Panic shooting—no aim, no target, just noise and muzzle flash. "Don't let me see you again!"
More shots. Wide. Nowhere near anything.
He ran.
Jude crouched in the corner stairwell and watched the last few bullets punch into the far wall.
Good call, he thought.
He gave it another thirty seconds, then turned and headed back upstairs.
The woman in the alley would have to find her own way home. He'd done what he could—a ten-dollar one-time voice modulator, well spent. The screaming had been convincing. The attacker had fled. That was a life, probably, or at minimum a serious injury, averted.
Could've at least asked for something in return, he thought, with mild amusement. But then she'd remember me.
Better anonymous. That was the whole point.
He briefly considered retrieving the bullet he'd put in the wall—he'd aimed for the wall deliberately, partly as misdirection, mostly because his marksmanship under pressure had a documented tendency to miss everything except architectural features—but decided against it. Nobody died tonight. GCPD wouldn't investigate a property damage report in the East End. And if they did run ballistics for some reason, the gun had belonged to Clinton Banner originally. That was his problem.
The only actual risk had been missing the wall entirely. He'd aimed carefully. But carefully, for Jude, had a limited ceiling.
Well. No one was bleeding. That was the metric.
Outside, the attacker hit the mouth of the alley at a run.
"Crazy bitch," he panted, still running, rage and adrenaline doing ugly things to his judgment. "I'll find out who you are—you're dead—"
A shadow shifted overhead.
Slim. Quiet. Moving with the kind of patience that comes from knowing exactly how this ends.
It dropped from a fire escape in one fluid motion, tracking him between buildings the way water finds low ground.
The East End was Catwoman's territory. She didn't kill. But she had other methods, and she had all night.
Drake was waiting when Jude came back in.
He stood by the window with the Glock in his hand, watching the street.
"Where were you?"
Jude locked the door behind him and dropped onto the couch. "Watching. There was a shootout in the alley."
"The bus wasn't enough for you?"
"That was your mess."
"Gentlemen." Camilla's voice carried from the bedroom. Tired. Precise. The voice of someone who had been asleep and then not been asleep and had feelings about that. "It is three-fifteen in the morning. If there weren't people shooting at each other outside, we would be sleeping. The people shooting at each other appear to have left. I would like everyone in this apartment to now go back to bed."
Jude raised his hands.
Drake looked at his wife's expression and made the correct strategic decision to return to the bedroom without further comment.
"Jude." Camilla appeared in the doorway, arms folded. She looked at him for a moment. "Try not to join in the excitement. Especially not when there's shooting."
"Understood."
"Good." Another moment. "Get some rest."
She pulled the door closed with deliberate quiet.
He sat with the couch for a while, thinking about what Camilla had said. She wasn't wrong. Before he invested in actual combat skills—marksmanship, situational awareness, anything that would give him a real fighting chance—he was operating on nerve and the charity of the system's cheap items. One voice modulator and good luck. That wasn't a method.
Survival first. Heroics were a budget item for later. Possibly never.
He pulled up the driving simulator and went back to work.
The moon went down. The stars moved.
Morning arrived at 8 AM with the reliable indifference of a schedule.
Jude surfaced from the simulator, blinking at actual daylight. He stretched, walked to the kitchen, cracked eggs into a pan, and stood watching them sizzle.
Outside the window: the alley. Looking ordinary in the early light, clean the way all of Gotham's darkness looked clean once the sun came up and burned the haze off. Smoke drifting from neighboring windows, the smell of coffee and cooking oil and whatever someone two floors up had decided counted as breakfast.
Daylight had a way of making the night feel theoretical.
He turned the eggs.
Good morning, Gotham, he thought.
He meant it.