“Selina!
Selina Kyle!”
The syllables echoed back and forth within the empty underground clinic, striking the yellowed load-bearing pillars before bouncing back into William’s eardrums.
The metal tip of the medical surgical scissors stopped just above the collar of the leather jacket.
It was less than two millimeters of downward pressure away from slicing through that cheap leather.
William’s fingers, gripping the scissors, did not exert any further force.
Selina Kyle.
The memory bank deep within his brain’s hippocampus was forcibly flipped open, and labels regarding the DC Universe were extracted one by one.
The future phantom thief of Gotham, Catwoman, who walks the line between black, white, and gray, and Bruce Wayne’s entangled, fated bond.
He had just recruited Jessica Jones as a laborer for his clinic over in Marvel’s Hells Kitchen, and the moment he turned back to Gotham, he was pinning the future Batman’s little girlfriend onto an operating table, ready for a live dissection.
The feng shui of this dilapidated clinic, which covered less than sixty square meters, was indeed a bit sinister.
This employee recruitment plan of betting on both sides felt absurd, as if he were trying to round up every superhero in one fell swoop.
William relaxed his index finger and thumb.
*Clang.*
The surgical scissors were tossed casually into a nearby stainless steel tray, the impact sounding crisp and sharp.
He took half a step back, unwound the medical tourniquet wrapped around Selina’s wrist, pulled over a swivel chair with its foam padding exposed, and sat back down with an imposing air.
The suppression was lifted.
Selina reacted extremely quickly.
With a kick against the edge of the bed, she flipped upright like a spring.
She swiftly retreated to the innermost side of the multi-functional surgical bed, her back against the cold wall, as her hands took turns kneading her wrists, which were marked with red welts.
Those eyes, which possessed great penetrating power in the dark, were staring fixedly at William sitting in the shadows, looking very much like a wild cat that had its tail stepped on and was ready to scratch at any moment.
“Where’s the money?” Selina spoke, her voice somewhat dry from the fight just now.
“Benjamin’s wallet had over ten thousand U.S.
dollars in cash inside.”
“Once it’s in my pocket, it’s my legal income.” William leaned against the back of the chair, legs crossed, his gaze sweeping over Selina’s heavily worn leather jacket.
“The number of people who starve to Death on the streets of the Gotham East District every day could fill two garbage trucks.
With your skills, if you went to work as a peripheral assassin for the Maroni Family or the Penguin, you’d earn enough in a month to rent a luxury apartment with heating in the Upper East Side.
Why come here to steal the wallet of a black market middleman and end up getting intercepted by me?
What’s the goal?”
Selina gritted her teeth and didn’t respond.
The soles of her combat boots rubbed irritably against the stainless steel bed legs twice. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
William leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, his nostrils twitching slightly.
“Salbutamol.” He stated a medical term.
There was a microscopic stiffening in Selina’s defensive posture.
“On the left collar of your leather jacket and at the cuffs, there’s a faint lingering scent of Salbutamol.
It’s a short-acting beta-2 agonist, specifically used to relieve bronchospasms.”
William’s gaze was like a scalpel, precisely cutting through Selina’s disguised outer shell.
“There are sulfide deposits on the edges of your fingernails from long-term contact with low-quality coal combustion.
However, your own breathing rhythm is extremely steady, and that sequence of continuous Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu strangulation moves just now proves your lung capacity far exceeds that of an average person.
You don’t have asthma.”
William paused for half a second before giving his conclusion.
“There’s a patient at home.
Very sick, right?”
Selina’s pupils constricted sharply under the halo at the edge of the shadowless lamp.
She had seen those self-proclaimed clever detectives from the Gotham City Police Department, and she had seen those calculating old foxes in the mobs, but she had never seen anyone who could strip her secrets bare based solely on a few lingering scents in the air and the dust under her fingernails.
This Asian man with heavy dark circles under his eyes was not only as strong as a monster in combat, but his powers of observation were so keen they made one’s scalp tingle.
Now that her defenses had been torn open, there was no point in continuing to hold out.
“My sister, Maggie.” Selina gave up on her pointless concealment, her voice dropping, carrying that helpless coarseness unique to the bottom rungs of Gotham.
“Congenital asthma, plus that wretched environment in the East District Convent that could freeze a living person into a popsicle.
Last week, it was complicated by a severe lung infection.
Now, even breathing feels like swallowing knives for her.”
She looked up, meeting William’s emotionless gaze.
“At the Gotham public hospital’s emergency department, they won’t even let you through the door without a thousand-dollar deposit.
Amoxicillin and Cephalosporins on the black market have been marked up to astronomical prices by those smuggling bastards.
A second-hand portable oxygen concentrator costs ten thousand dollars.
If I don’t steal, Maggie won’t even last through the weekend.”
After hearing this, William’s face remained businesslike and indifferent.
As an attending physician who had grown accustomed to life-and-Death situations in the emergency department in his past life, he knew all too well how high the mortality rate of severe lung infections could be without medical intervention.
Especially in a city like Gotham, which rarely saw the sun and whose air was filled with industrial exhaust and mold, Maggie’s lungs had likely already developed large areas of consolidation. New chapters come out on novelping dot com first.
“So you targeted Benjamin.” William picked up a ballpoint pen from the table and twirled it between his fingers.
“That fat pig deserves it!
Scum like Benjamin, who are bloated with fat and live by sucking blood through smuggling and usury!
Their money was dirty to begin with!” At the mention of Benjamin, the disgust in the depths of Selina’s eyes surged up again.
“He repackages nearly expired anti-inflammatories from the Upper East Side and sells them at high prices to the poor in the East District who have no choice but to wait for Death when they get sick.
Taking his money is just collecting a bit of interest on behalf of the people in the East District.”
Selina straightened her back, her chin slightly raised.
“Listen, black-market doctor.
I, Selina Kyle, am a thief, but I have my rules.
I don’t touch women’s wallets, because they have a harder time living in Gotham than dogs; I don’t touch the pockets of the elderly, as that might be their coffin money; and I absolutely never steal a child’s meal money.
I only steal from those fat, black-hearted bastards.
That ten thousand from Benjamin was originally going to save my sister’s life!”
These words were delivered with force, echoing in the cramped underground clinic.
William looked at the twenty-two-year-old girl before him.
She wore the cheapest clothes and engaged in the shadiest dealings, yet in this quagmire of Gotham that ate people alive, she held fast to a line that was as ridiculous as it was respectable.
Don’t steal from the weak.
These four words were easy to say, but to hold that line when one’s stomach was churning with acid from hunger and a loved one was on the brink of Death required immense willpower.
By contrast, the bottom lines of those suit-clad elites in Gotham were even lower than those of the rats in the sewers.
“Decent rules,” William commented, his tone flat.
“But from a medical perspective, even if you got that ten thousand in cash, those low-quality antibiotics you’d buy from the black market wouldn’t save your sister.
Respiratory failure caused by a severe lung infection requires precise medication dosages and professional medical equipment intervention.
If you take those drugs back, it will only accelerate her Death.”
William looked at Selina, who was still waiting for him to pronounce her fate.
She was only twenty-two now, had not yet donned that iconic cat-eared mask, and did not have that long whip that could flay a person’s skin.
She was just a sister struggling to survive in the mire for the sake of her sibling.
Morally ambiguous.
Her bottom line was flexible, but she did indeed have one.
Moreover, Selina was a kind-hearted girl at her core; just as she hadn’t dealt a lethal blow to him, her theft had always adhered to her own principles.