“If you are an outstanding criminal, or are working hard to advance along that path, then come to Gotham.
It will satisfy every criminal’s fantasies about scale and methods.”
“From petty fraud and theft to armed murder, perhaps some lunatic will even strap explosives all over you and make you guess his boring riddles while you listen to the maddening ticking of a timer.”
“The crime-ridden East End, the filthy sewers, Blackgate Penitentiary, City Hall…
Oh, I almost forgot.
There’s also Arkham Asylum, wrapped in layer upon layer of rusty barbed wire!
Plenty of people like you have checked in there.
Believe me, they won’t disappoint you.”
“Wait…
What did you say?
You’re worried that some weirdo wearing a skin-tight suit and a bat cowl will come looking for trouble?
Hahahahaha, you must be joking!
This isn’t a comic book or a novel.”
“The seeds of idealism cannot blossom in a swamp filled with poisonous miasma.”
“Oh, right!
Since we’ve brought that up, let me tell you a little more.”
“Many people regard Falcone as the murderer responsible for killing the Wayne family.
A small number believe it was the work of the Court of Owls.
After all, Wayne Enterprises’ plan to revitalize Gotham threatened the position of those powerful elites in the city.
But take my advice: don’t get involved in this matter.
Don’t even ask about it!”
“All right, that’s enough of an introduction.
I hope you have a pleasant time in Gotham.”
…
Will Quentin jolted awake from the familiar dream.
The yellowed bedsheets beneath him were soaked through with cold sweat.
Clutching his throbbing head, he walked out of the room.
The wooden floorboards creaked beneath his feet.
A damp, moldy stench assaulted his nose, mixed with a faint sourness, as if someone had clamped a ten-year-old expired peanut tin over his head.
He could barely breathe.
The hallway was narrow and dim.
Voices bounced out from behind the peeling wooden doors of the various rooms: the static of an old television, arguments, and the professional moans of prostitutes.
He entered the bathroom at the end of the hallway.
The dim yellow light flickered between brightness and darkness.
Amid the heavy stench of sweat and filth, Will turned on the water and vigorously splashed his face.
Only then did his mind recover somewhat.
It had already been three full months since he transmigrated into this body, yet every time he looked into a mirror, he was still startled by the unfamiliar face staring back at him.
It was the face of a Caucasian man.
His dark-brown hair was dry and curled, while a pair of bloodshot gray eyes sat within deeply sunken sockets.
Compared to Will’s original appearance, this face was considerably more handsome.
The only unfortunate thing was that he looked hardly human.
His complexion was so terrible that he looked like a vampire.
Still, being able to recover to this point was already pretty good.
Thinking back to three months ago, when he had first transmigrated into this body, he had crawled out of a ditch beside a trash can.
He had been completely naked, without even a single item that could prove his identity.
The only thing that could be considered a clue was a stab wound that had pierced through his abdomen.
The wound was fresh.
The surrounding flesh was still inflamed and swollen, and the stitches were a complete mess.
The original owner of this body certainly had plenty of enemies.
He had been injured to this extent and still hadn’t dared to go to a hospital.
Thinking of this, Will also abandoned the idiotic idea of randomly grabbing a passerby on the street and asking, “Do you know me?”
Although he had absolutely no idea who he was at the time, he had obtained an earth-shattering piece of information from an old newspaper inside the trash can.
This godforsaken place was actually Gotham City.
“Simple folk in Gotham City, outstanding people in Arkham.”
That one sentence encompassed everything Will knew about this blessed land.
Other than that…
Nothing!
That’s right.
He knew absolutely nothing else.
He wasn’t a fan of American comics, and his knowledge of DC was limited to the movies.
In fact, if he had to talk about places he was familiar with, he felt he should have transmigrated to Queens to hang out with the friendly neighborhood Spider, or to Metropolis, where Superman was stationed.
There was no reason for him to come to a hellish dungeon like Gotham.
“You could have just killed me.
Instead, you went through all this trouble to send me here.
Thanks a lot!”
He had no idea who he was talking to or if anyone was listening.
Still Will raised a middle finger toward the sky.
But no matter how unfamiliar he was with the place, he still knew about Batman.
This might be his only hope of survival.
Thus, a miraculous scene appeared on the streets of Gotham’s East End that day.
A naked man using a newspaper to cover his private parts wandered through the streets, asking around for information about Bruce Wayne.
The result went without saying.
Nobody was willing to pay attention to this lunatic, except for the police who came after hearing the commotion.
He was pinned down in a cold, foul-smelling puddle at the corner of the street, and he even lost the newspaper covering his shame.
Will was utterly devastated.
That feeling only eased somewhat after he reached the outside of the interrogation room.
The dim hallway was filled with the smell of tobacco.
On one side of a long wooden bench sat a biker with heavy smoky eye makeup and an exaggerated mohawk.
On the other was a burly man reeking of body odor, who had cut the sleeves of his undershirt into jagged teeth.
Will sat between them, covering his private parts and caught between two men.
The strangely dressed, bizarrely behaved criminals made this naked pervert look almost like a normal person.
Before long, Will’s name was called.
The interrogator was a somewhat chubby middle-aged man.
Unlike the other disheveled officers, he wore a meticulously groomed mustache and an immaculate dark-brown suit.
The dense network of old scars across the back of his hand suggested that he was a fairly experienced officer.
“Name?”
Will shook his head, then hesitated.
“…Maybe you can call me Will.”
“Do you have any mental illnesses?”
“No!
Absolutely not!
I just lost my memory after someone beat the hell out of me!”
Will hurriedly showed the man the stab wound on his abdomen, afraid that if he was even a moment too late, he’d be sent straight to Arkham.
“All right!
But that doesn’t explain why you’re naked.
Your behavior violates the Gotham Public Health and Safety Ordinance.
You’ll be imprisoned for three days.
During that time, I’ll help you locate your family…”
“Hey, Gordon!
Want to grab a drink after work?”
A police officer walked through the noisy hall and waved at the man.
“Sorry.
Barbara has ordered me to quit drinking several times.”
“Really?
That’s a shame.”
From their conversation, Will learned the man’s name.
Gordon?
Why did that name sound so familiar?
Could he be the Commissioner Gordon who turned on the Bat-Signal?
Confused, Will seemed to have grabbed onto a lifeline.
After the officer left, he leaned toward Gordon and lowered his voice.
“Can you take me to see Batman?
You know, the guy wearing a black cowl with two pointy ears on his head!”
Gordon raised his left eyebrow, his eyes filled with confusion, as though he had no idea what “Batman” was.
But Will seemed to misunderstand what that expression was trying to convey.
Gordon was Batman’s contact.
It wasn’t exactly a secret.
Everyone wanted to use him to find Batman.
Maybe I should make it more straightforward.
“Actually, I have some information I want to report to him.
Uh…
about the Joker.
You know the Joker, right?”
Gordon raised his right eyebrow.
The confusion in his eyes diminished somewhat, and he seemed to have made up his mind about something.
Seeing him like this, Will became frantic.
“Then take me to see Bruce Wayne.
Surely that’s fine, right?”
Hearing those words, Gordon finally reacted differently.
He let out a long sigh, crumpled the interrogation record, and threw it into the wastebasket beside his feet.
“I’ll contact the staff at Arkham to come pick you up…”
“Don’t!”
The moment Will heard the three words “Arkham Asylum,” his blood ran cold.
He suddenly grabbed Gordon by the sleeve.
Gordon’s eyes turned cold, and he instinctively reached for his gun.
It was only after realizing that Will had no intention of attacking him that his expression softened slightly.
“Mental patients usually aren’t aware that they have a problem.”
“But I’m really not sick.”
“You keep saying you know Bruce, but everyone in Gotham knows that Bruce is dead.
He died in Crime Alley alongside his poor parents.”