The thick smell of blood, mixed with the pungent odor of cheap alcohol, permeated the narrow underground clinic.
Under the pale halo of the Shadowless Lamp, a pair of hemostat probed precisely into a wound with mangled flesh.
The friction between metal and bone made a tooth-aching creak.
“Hold him down, don’t let him move!”
William didn’t even look up as the scalpel in his hand skillfully cut away the necrotic tissue.
The burly Russian mobster lying on the operating table let out a Beast-like roar, his muscles convulsing, but he was pinned firmly to the iron bed by two companions.
William wore a white lab coat with yellowed edges and cuffs stained with dark red spots.
His indifferent eyes were fixed on the wound as his wrist gave a sudden flick.
“Clang.”
A deformed nine-millimeter brass bullet head dropped into the stainless steel tray.
“Done.
Suture, pay up, take your meds, and get out.” William dropped the forceps and tore off the latex gloves covered in sticky blood.
The burly man’s companions breathed a sigh of relief.
One of them, a bald man, rubbed his hands together and turned toward the closed iron door deep inside the clinic: “Dr.
William, we’re out of gauze.
I’ll go to your warehouse to grab some—”
“Stop right there.”
William’s voice wasn’t loud, but it caused the temperature in the entire clinic to drop.
He grabbed a pair of medical scissors from the table, their sharp edges glinting coldly under the light:
“You know the rules of Hells Kitchen, and you should know my rules too.
Take half a step through that door, and I won’t treat anyone from your gang again, no matter how much you pay.”
The bald man froze, cold sweat instantly soaking his back.
In this neighborhood, you could offend anyone except this “unlicensed miracle doctor,” whose medical skills were even better than the chief surgeons at regular hospitals in Manhattan.
He gave a dry laugh, backed away repeatedly, dropped a stack of oil-stained U.S.
dollars, and fled with his companions in a panic.
The clinic returned to a deathly silence.
William walked to the sink, cold water washing away the blood between his fingers.
He looked at himself in the mirror—black hair, black eyes, a young face that carried a weariness beyond his years.
In his previous life, he was an attending surgeon who died of suffocation after his lungs filled with icy river water while saving a drowning child.
When he opened his eyes again, he had arrived in this chaotic Marvel Universe, becoming an unlicensed doctor in New York’s Hells Kitchen.
Drying his hands, William walked toward the “medical supply warehouse” door that was strictly off-limits to everyone.
He pressed his palm against the cold handle and pushed down.
Behind the door, there were no piles of gauze or antibiotics, only a deep blue vortex.
This was his secret and his greatest trump card for surviving in Hells Kitchen—an “Anywhere Door” similar to the gadget from the Doraemon.
However, this door couldn’t go everywhere in the World; it had only one fixed destination.
The DC Universe, Gotham City.
Stepping through the blue vortex, the smell of gunpowder in the air was instantly replaced by a damp, cold atmosphere mixed with industrial exhaust and the stench of sewers.
Behind the door was another underground clinic with an almost identical layout.
William pulled over a chair and sat down, rubbing his aching temples.
When he first transmigrated, he ran between New York and Gotham to earn more money, removing bullets for gangs in Hells Kitchen in the morning and suturing scalps for Gotham gangs in the afternoon.
After working non-stop for three months, he nearly died of exhaustion on the operating table.
Having learned his lesson, he set a rule for himself: stay in Marvel on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; stay in DC on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays; and rest on Sundays without exception.
Today happened to be Monday, Marvel New York time.
At that moment, a row of ghostly blue characters suddenly popped up at the edge of his retina, accompanied by a crisp mechanical notification in his mind.
[Task System Activated]
[Emergency Task: Survival in the Dark Alley]
[Task Objective: Go to the alley at 22 Lake Street and treat the dying Bruce Wayne.]
[Task Background: Bruce Wayne, having finished over a decade of global travel, is conducting his first street crime-fighting operation.
Due to his unfamiliarity with Gotham’s underworld rules, he was ambushed by a gang and shot by corrupt Police.
He currently has two gunshot wounds, multiple fractures, and has lost over 1000cc of blood.]
[Task Reward: Based on the completion of the treatment.]
[Countdown: Two hours.
If the target dies, the task fails.]
William stood up abruptly, his pupils shrinking.
Bruce Wayne?
The future Batman?
At twenty-five, making his first debut, and he was nearly beaten to Death in an alley?
There was no time to hesitate.
William grabbed the pre-prepared tactical first-aid backpack from the table, stuffed in epinephrine, hemostatic gel, and a suture kit, pushed open the door of the Gotham clinic, and rushed into the pouring rain.
In Gotham at twelve-thirty at night, the rain fell in torrents.
Rainwater slammed into the flooded road, kicking up murky splashes.
Lake Street was located in Gotham East District, a slum that even rats despised.
William stepped through the mud, his flashlight beam sweeping through the narrow, dark alley of number 22.
The red brick walls on both sides were covered in bullet holes and spray-painted graffiti.
In addition to the smell of rain, there was an extremely strong smell of rust in the air—the scent of fresh blood.
“Drip…
drip…”
It wasn’t the sound of rain, but the sound of thick liquid dripping into a puddle.
The flashlight’s halo settled on a trash can at the end of the alley.
A tall, burly figure was slumped in the sewage.
He wore a crude black tactical bulletproof vest, no cape, no bat symbol, and a black mask that only exposed the lower half of his face.
There was a large hole in the abdomen of the bulletproof vest, and blood was gushing out with his weak breaths, staining the puddle beneath him.
His right leg was twisted unnaturally, clearly the result of a heavy blunt force impact.
This was the budding Batman?
He looked as wretched as a stray dog.
William stepped forward quickly, kneeling in the muddy water, and reached out to feel the man’s carotid pulse.
Just as his fingertips were about to touch that cold skin, a sudden change occurred!
The man, who was already semi-conscious and had only one breath left, suddenly sprang up like a leopard.
In the darkness, an extremely faint sound of something cutting through the air rang out.
“Swish!”
William had no time to react and only felt a chill on his cheek.
Accompanied by the light sound of metal slicing through flesh, a few drops of warm liquid splashed onto the back of his hand.
“Thud!”
A sharp-edged throwing knife flew past his cheekbone and embedded itself firmly into the brick wall behind him, its tail still vibrating violently.
If the man’s wrist hadn’t lost its strength due to excessive blood loss, that throwing knife would have sliced through William’s carotid artery instead of his cheek.
William broke into a cold sweat, his heart pounding wildly.
He looked down and saw that the man who had thrown the knife had completely exhausted his last bit of strength.
His eyes rolled back, and he crashed back into the muddy water, completely passing out.
Under the mask, his well-defined lips were as pale as paper.
“Damn muscle memory…
Damn Bruce, I almost lost my life here.” William wiped the blood from his cheek and unzipped the first-aid kit, gritting his teeth.
Sharp scissors directly cut open the tactical vest on Bruce’s abdomen, revealing a bloody gunshot wound.
The rain washed over the wound; the situation was even worse than the system’s description.
He had to stop the bleeding immediately, or he wouldn’t make it to the clinic.
William quickly pulled out hemostatic gel and pressed it down, his hands covered in the blood of Gotham’s wealthiest man.
Just as he was preparing to give Bruce an injection of epinephrine, the piercing sound of Police sirens suddenly came from outside the alley.
The red and blue Police lights pierced through the curtain of rain, and the sounds of chaotic footsteps and the racking of gun bolts were approaching.
“Blockade this street!
That masked freak was shot, he can’t have gone far!
Boss Maroni said we need him dead or alive!
We absolutely cannot let him escape!”
A gruff roar pierced through the rain and into the alley.
William’s fingers froze, and he turned to look at the swaying figures getting closer at the alley entrance.
On one side were armed gang assassins, and on the other was a future Batman weighing nearly two hundred pounds who could die at any moment.
And his clinic was still two blocks away.