All rights to their owners

Edited: 7-12-17

Gotham is dirty.

There is a fog that lifts up bits of dust to make a grainy film in the air, so every breath feels like inhaling the cement, and that fog is a presence that mists the windows all summer - a natural thing until it was not, smog, industry, perhaps even humanity adding to the already dense atmosphere. Heavy smoke wafts from all available mouths, the buildings are brick, rough to the touch, identical, and stained with the same pollution that reeks in its air. Most all the buildings in this endless maze of storage factories and skyscrapers are thus identical, so that it's hard to find your way unless you know where you're going.

(Most people don't. They drift and get lost and are found in roads and alleyways, barely comprehending where they are going, and always, always, ending up where they do not belong. Remy tells me it's the fog that does it. It covers up the street signs.)

Only in Gotham would you find the tip of a steeple next to the local sex shop. Long abandoned, flagged with broken beams eaten by termites, the church is tucked into a tenebrous corner, practically black against the neon pink signs reading 'Lounge Erotica' next door. They do not possess the same demons. Left in solidarity, it stands now without the life that once adorned its features, cast aside by the holy to plague upon the unrighteous during the last great drug war ten years before I had ever seen it.

But none of the windows are broken, there is not a single shattered piece of glass, not from a bottle or otherwise, on the steps. Teenagers kept long away from its entrance due to the threat of ghosts and curses, demons and monsters and saints that are likely to appear in the upper windows. Despite the covert activities happening in the neighboring brothel, the church remind untouched and unattended, eventually shifting into the very brick of the building behind, dislodged from society due to fear.

(I tell myself there are no such things as ghosts.)

I push open the church door. Heavy and oaken, alive with termites, and yet the hinges still work. The large, open room is littered with debris from an ancient cave in, beams and roof tiles and pews broken. The alter still stands, a beautiful stain glass window perched over it of the Virgin Mary, reds and blues and yellows and purples and golds all filter through the film and the lingering dust and the caved-in roof with the moon shining overhead.

(Some sights are too beautiful for words. Nothing could do it justice.)

I move towards the door at the right side of the expanse, around broken beams that haven't moved since Gotham overweighed its roof with sorrows. Nothing has been moved in here in years. There is no second level for ghosts to even stand on to peek through the upper windows and I feel reassured at that fact. Is a temple always a temple? Is the Virgin Mary on the stain glass window protecting this place from gathering the dead?

The little hall behind the sanctuary brings me to a half open metal door. The darkness outside is created by the buildings; they would be open to the moon if not for the odd angle. And the colors of spray paint are the only thing I can see, illuminated by the pink neon lights. This was supposed to be a garden for the church. Now it's a graveyard.

The seller is standing in the shadows as though that would hide him, but with the pink lights and the spray paint picking up on the neon, he looks like a dark spot on a bright piece of paper. His foot taps, and echoes. –Slap- -Slap- -Slap- against the broken pavement.

"Are you Vet?"

He starts. He has been watching down the alleyway, waiting for me at the cusp of the sex shop, and he whirls in search of my voice. My hands are sweaty against my jeans, but I don't wipe them off, "Shit, man! Don't sneak up on a guy like that!"

I shrug, stepping out onto the cinderblock steps set on outside the door, "Is that your name?"

The figure picks at a large scab on his arm, one of many exposed by his rolled up sleeves. He was scratching at them before I got here, if the red, raised skin is telling anything. Drugs and toxins have thinned him into a nearly gender less pile of bones and dreadlocks. He wouldn't be missed if this transaction goes array. He's a low level man on his gangs totem pole, his tattooed forearm isn't even at its final evolutionary stage-the theater masks associated with Black Mask. This might even be his first assignment.

"Yeah. You Johnny's girl?" His voice is shrill and cuts quick into the alley. (This is why he hasn't advanced. He's loud.)

"One of them," I say to him. I barely think about it anymore. I use to make up names and scenarios just to mess with our sellers, because keeping an element of surprise is important, and John said I was allowed to lie. But that was when Taffy would come with me and make the sell on her own while I sat in the other room or on the curb, providing entertainment to whoever was sent with the seller. Back when our rivals though they could do good business with us through force of numbers.

It's been a while since we made a transaction to more than one person. It's only been twice that I made one on my own.

"Ha! You're just a runt," he barks. He lugs a large duffle bag from behind him and shoves the thing a bit in front of him, "How old are you, eight?"

"None of your business," I tell him, irritated. My heart beats loudly in my chest, "Unless you want to answer to my employer."

His face pales slightly. Those fingers dig into the bloody wound on his arm, reopened by the force of his nails, "Do you have the money?"

I pull the three bills out of my jacket pocket. Crumpled, wet from sweat and humidity, "Show me the product first."

"Okay, yeah."

Vet rips the zipper open on the duffle, sending a bit of power dusting white on the spray paint. I can smell it from here. The Heroin is laced with a secondary drug called Speed, which smells like that raw dough that comes from Nestle croissant tubes. It mixes with the scent of his sweat-he pulls the zipper back over the duffle bag frantically as though the Speed would bring the police just from that one moment alone. But he's wrong. It's him that will bring the authorities. The cops or the bat can smell fear from miles and miles away.

But I've been watching. I haven't seen the Bat or his boy in red on this side of town for a full week, they've been over in Bludhaven for a while. Who knows why. Sometimes you see him in some other city working with some other hero. He's probably got connections that no one would ever believe. But he always returns, with his Robin in toe. (Bats nest in packs, after all)

But the police are well enough. They keep the place safe just long enough for the Bat to return, no matter where he is. And I'm not willing to get arrested over a shabby gang banger trying to earn his first hit.

"Slide the bag over, and I'll toss the money at the same time."

He doesn't look suspicious. Doesn't even question that I can grab the bag and run, he'll never catch me if I retreat back through the church. But I'm already cheating him (John never pays more than four hundred and the seller never came with an upfront price. I don't feel guilty), I have two more hundred dollar bills crumpled in my shoe, in my panties. John will be happy that I come back with extra money unspent and a full duffle bag of merchandise.

It's a win-win situation. If he was asking for more than four hundred, I have to go back to John empty handed and let him take care of the situation. But with drug rates going the way they are, that duffle bag is worth two hundred where before it would be worth somewhere in the ten thousands. So it's win-win. Besides, going back to John on my third solo transaction, without anything?

(Drugs are easy to get in Gotham. It's the fog. I know, because Remy told me once.)

"Right," the man says. He shuffles the bag forward with an audible screech, making me wince, and positions his foot above the bag, ready to push, "get ready."

"Just shove it," I tell him. It's obvious this guy isn't from the slums originally because there's no accent but for the mild one all Gotham's residents tend to have. They roll their words out long, not just syllables, but every middle of every word seems to stretch on forever in their vocabulary. People who grew up on the streets shortened their words, so the drawn out letters in the middle were the cut off for a word. "I'll throw."

Vet nods. His foot shifts on the merchandise and I crumble the two bills together in a little ball to make throwing easier. When the man shoves the duffle bag over, screeching across the cement of the alley floor, I toss the bills underhanded, not really caring if the man is going to catch them or not. I paid for what I needed. The rest is of no concern to me.

While the man fumbles for the bills, I bend down and grab the duffle bag, shifting it so that I can yank the zipper open. Dust and bits of powder fly up from the inside, as I catch in my sight just what I wanted. Pounds and pounds of laced Heroin. Yeah, this is worth way more than two hundred-I've heard stories from Taffy that this stuff use to get half a million in Star City, but John protects the slums on this side of town and in essence controls all the dealers within a ten block radiance. He has been since before I could remember, and business for us has always been smooth. And when it's not…but it always is. I don't like to think of when the going gets rough. Because when the going gets rough, the rough shoot someone.

But that hasn't happened in a long time. We operate outside Crime Ally and see less and less of the Bat as his attentions are pulled by men in penguin suits and clown makeup. And the very few people who get busted have never seen John anyway, so information is never slipped into unwelcomed hands. He isn't the Black Mask. He doesn't let himself be known to every hero in this place. That would be economic suicide.

And John is nothing if not an economist.

I dip my finger lightly in some of the brick sized bags and take a whiff. I actually like the smell of the Speed. I've seen people on it, seen the lazy rush of adrenaline followed by a three to four day crash that brings dreams that could be terrifying or could be paradise-that's what Taffy says. John likes to keep his girls clean, but Taffy had a history before she came to us. Maybe she still does it, I don't know. I've never been brave enough. I don't want to get in trouble.

The man has his bills, shifting through them, but the deal is made and he cannot go back on his word even if he is looking down unhappily at the amounts of money in his hands. I sling the bag over my shoulder and nod towards him, "Nice doing business," and the man isn't brave enough to stop me as I turn around and step back into the church. The safest escape, considering how obvious this duffle bag is, would be the alley ways, but I don't want to duck down into that darkness until I'm sure that the man is gone. So I retreat back into the waiting arms of the church, feeling slightly more controlled now that I'm in here, feeling slightly safer than being on the outside-

-Bang!-

My whole body flinches. I fall back against the wall, out of the light form the moon coming from the broken metal door, trying to calm my beating heart, trying to calm my beating heart, but it isn't working, not nearly like I want it to. (I didn't notice a gun; I didn't notice a gun on Vet, a rookie mistake, a almost fatal one. The police will hear. I will go to jail. John will kill me.)

But the stillness, there is stillness. Just a slight scuffling of boots against the ground-not Vet, he wasn't wearing boots. Then the shots weren't from Vet? I try and gather the courage to look out the door, to glance out into the moonlight-no one would notice me there. Unless they had been watching the whole transaction. But I never knew of cops-or Bats- that blew the brains out of someone before even arresting them. But there could be a rival gang member out there, not even connected to the police. In which case, the silence would be homicide.

I glance out into the alley way from the crack between door and church wall-shaking and shaking. My eyes first linger on the bloody pool of skinny, haphazard limbs that the man named Vet lies in. Forever resting, forever still.

And then my eyes fall onto the body of a man, hovering over Vet. The first thing I see is a skin tight helmet, that conceals every bit of his face, his scalp, his neck, in that crimson color. He has on a leather jacket, a leather pant, a leather shirt, leather upon leather upon leather, of light brown and black. Layers and layers of muscles and secrets.

What I see last is the AK-47 positioned at his hip, and the pistol in his hand.

Who is he? I've studied the heroes, and the villains. I know the ones who appear on the TV, even the obscure ones, because it's important to John that we keep up with not only the law enforcement but our rivals. I have never seen anyone like the man in the helmet. And none of them would shot a man on first sight, not only because Vet was low on the social order but also because murder is still a serious crime in Gotham, punishable for up to three life times in jail-even for drug lords, even for heroes. Killing Vet is unnecessary. (But that's only the logical part of my brain. The illogical part of my brain is screaming, screaming, screaming. I've never seen murder. There is the fake stuff, yes. The stuff that happens on TV, where the blood is fake, the twisted positions of bodies outlines in white chalk. That doesn't happen in reality.)

I move backwards, carefully, the bag suddenly very heavy on my shoulder. I touch the wall behind me, I'm not stupid enough to forget it's there, but I do misjudge the distance. The slight –crunch- that the bag makes against the wooden wall makes the helmet jerk, his hand leaps towards the pistol trigger, and I don't stay to watch what else-

-I take off down the hall and twist into the sanctuary. My heavy breathing echoes, and I try to stifle that, but breathing is hard and I get light headed as I dive into the broken pews and nestle somewhere deep into the fallen beams.

I glance behind me and the ancient dust has been unsettled, and there are steps coming right towards the sanctuary. Not even fast, slow, slow, and the panic is more than I can take, more than I really needs, so I kick the beam above me, causing a small land slide of crashing pillars, a giant collision that sends vile amounts of dust crumbling down in folds like silk. I clutch the bag and settle into my hiding place, in a very dark spot, a bright obscurity behind piles of beams.

-Creak-…-creak-…-creak-

I don't move. Don't breath. It feels like suffocating. The bright moon overhead makes the ground under the beams shine silver, piles and piles of grungy smelling dirt. The dilapidated beams are groaning as they bend, as the boots stop, as I watch them shift, leaning against the beams near me. They scrape, scrape, against each other.

-Creak-…-Creak-…-Creak-

The boots stop right before my eyes, close enough for me to touch, to smell the thin veneer coating the surface. They aren't new boots, but they have to be expensive. I stop breathing because it's hard to. And yet, with all the adrenaline, I feel almost tranquil.

"Come out, little kitty," the voice is disoriented, perhaps by the mask, a voice that sounds like a strange half man, half beast, "Come out, come out, where ever you are!"

-Are! Are! Are! Are!- echoes above us and out into the Gotham sky. I move as it echoes, a rule that was taught to me at some point in time that I don't really remember. Always move when there are sounds, because those sounds mask your own movements. The bag is held tight against my chest. My feet move slowly, softly, over the dust. The only escape I have is out a termite made hole in the wall not two feet from me, but two feet now is like ten miles.

Each movement is only made when the man in the red helmet moves. I'm crouched down on my toes, clutching the bag, moving carefully inch by pain staking inch towards the hole, towards that freedom. Crawling on my knees, closer and closer.

"I'm not gunna hurt you. I just need to know who you work for!"

-For! For! For! For!-

(I'm not tense. I recognize the fear, and I recognize the danger. Now I use that. No, I am calm. I only breathe in the dust. I only make patterns in the dirt. Those are the only things that connect me to earth. Otherwise, I do not even exist at all.)

I reach the hole, termites rushing back and forth in the moon light and I pretend not to care as I shove the bag out into the very tiny channel between sex shop and church. Ignoring the grimy texture of the eaten plywood, the crawling creatures across my skin, I shimmy myself out of the church and onto the ground, glancing up at the bright, bright moon, a thin sliver of silver filtering down on the wet, moldy ground. (The moon has never looked so beautiful.)

I don't take my time lying there. I move out into the open street, devote of cars and sound because for some stupid reason everything is so silent, and make my way towards the front of the sex shop. Behind me, gun shots go off within the church, ringing out to heaven, reflecting back on my ears to sound like small bombs. Perhaps that's what they are after all.

-Bang!-Bang!-Bang!-Bang!-

I slip into 'Lounge Erotica'. The Neon lights are Korean characters, the whole of the interior flooded in pink, from the vinyl couches to the shiny poles littering the tops of the counters. Rows and rows of merchandise are stalked on either side of the rooms, the middle open with moving bodies and sounds and screeches-

-I duck behind the counters where the register is, only catching sight of bedazzled cowgirl boots resting stunned at the pole, the Korean girl standing behind in a tube top and shorts, holding onto her neck like a rope would tie around a suicidal teenager, because to me she looks so very, painfully numb. I settle back against the plastic of the counter, the bag resting under me as I sit on it, watching the TV up above depict some kind of unsightly position for a man to be in. I close my eyes. There is nothing here I wish to see.

(It's safe here. I just have to keep telling myself that. Safe, safe, safe…)

"The hell was that?" a man asks somewhere. The room has gone silent, listening to the gunshots, listening to the intense yelling of a man all alone in a church, screaming insanely at the sky while trying to find a girl that is no longer there. (I find it ironic that this one thing is enough to stop the activities inside, even more than the government that tries to shut down the place time and again, never succeeding. Perhaps they should get someone with a gun to come next door to really chase them out. People will, without fail, always run from a gun.)

-Bang!-Bang!-Bang!-Bang!-

…..

The winding alley takes me to a door. It's not a great looking door (what doors in Gotham are?), the paint on the rough wooden surface has been chipping away since I first set my eyes on it, tucked away under a metal staircase of an identical brick building. The dumpster next to the door keeps it hidden, blocking the smoke blowing east from a collection of barrels in the middle of the street-the homeless set fires in them to keep warm during the winter and to keep food cooked in the summer when the soup kitchens close early.

I knock again. Sometimes it takes more than one knock for the door to open, and I'm never allowed to open it myself, when coming in. Going out is a different story. (Going out is always a different story.)

It doesn't take long for the door to scream open on its hinges. It never opens quietly, but the one to open it never opens it with the intention of being quiet, so I assume that the door likes taking revenge on its keeper. The door keeper herself has never been one for subtlety and therefore I think she and the door have very much in common.

"What de hell are you doin' here? You 'ave an hour before you need to be back, can't you take yourself somewhere else?"

LaDasha has her hands settled on her hips (never a good sign), her mass of bangles making no noise where they have settled unlike normally when they play with her mass of dreadlocks. Thick, heavy makeup has been applied recently, bright blue eyeshadow, an almost black contour cutting her sharp cheeks like knives. LaDasha is the kind of woman who feels more confident in makeup than bare faced, something about the way that highlight and concealer can create a persona unlike the one given and created by lifestyle, like wearing a hundred faces for a hundred days of the year.

"Let me in," I tell her.

"'onestly, when are you ever go-in' to have fun? There a whole lot to do when you are young!" I move past LaDasha and into the apartment-concealing my still shaking hands in the pocket of my hoodie. The thick smell of incense and herbs hit me, a smell so heavy that it is seen. The lighting is dimmed and the glittering beads hanging from the ceiling have no apparent shine, contrasting with the thick, bold symbols written in Sharpie above the doors. Years and years of burning ritual candles have rotted off most of the mustard yellow wall paper, and what isn't rotted is peeling in thick layers like shedding skin. "When I was your age…"

When LaDasha was my age she was on a boat from Jamaica to Florida. She's not that much of an old woman, she's just sentimental.

Voices come from further down the hallway. Painted peace signs, woven tapestries and pillows, burning sticks of lavender and thyme are bundled in stalks on their plates, but the unnatural quiet that is only broken by the murmurs is unsettling. LaDasha has no records playing today, no low jazz or strange Buddhist hymens as background music. There are no customers in the shop that bring conversation through the walls. Everything is still and only broken by LaDasha's smooth Jamaican accent.

John has company over.

LaDasha disappears behind a swaying row of beads and brings her one sided conversation with her. I debate on not continuing down the hallway towards the living room, but the heaviness of the duffle bag makes me second guess that decision Whoever it is knows, probably, that one of Johnny's girls would be present for almost everything that he does. It wouldn't be unusual or unwelcomed for me to show up.

So I continue down. Past the wall shrine to LaDasha's late mother there is the open space of the living room, the stuffy place full of pillows and hookah pins and old wooden furniture stalked on top of each other to form a makeshift TV stand where John spends most of his time. He is there now, sitting back with his feet up as if the place is his office desk, and in a way I suppose it is. This is where John does business. This is where he smokes his cigarettes, cleans his guns, has sex with his wife. His oval office, someone called it once.

(Twice, the TV stand had fallen down, the pressure of John's feet bearing down the weight. On the second occasion, John had cracked it on purpose. I felt, in those moments, that he had destroyed his own empire. But that's just stupid kids talk. John rebuilds everything he breaks.)

At the other end of the room is a man sitting up rigidly on the pillows. One hand is gripping his knee with a nervous force, his other fiddling with the butt of a smoke. I know the look of him- Italian by nature and personality and name, but the thick fumes from the burning incense waters my eyes and blocks him from sight. But I see him wave a hand, so I wave back, more concerned with trying to decode the look I caught on John's face before I walked right into the trail of Thyme. "Hey there, lovely. Picked up a good shipment, huh?"

"This time," I tell him. I recognize his voice. One of the informers form the district left of us, controlled by some freelancing drug group that has been causing us some trouble. I'm not sure what that trouble is. (I'm never sure what the trouble is).

"Business is no good baby," he says, shaking his head. I have no name to put with his face as of yet, but informants come and go so fast I never get anyone's name. "One shit hole right after the other, you know?"

"I bet-ta not see you smokin' in there!" LaDasha warns as she strides into the room from the second entrance to the kitchen, two coffee mugs held tightly in her fists, "you know I don' like you smokin', Johnny."

"Shut up, Dash," John says back.

"Don tell me ta shut up," LaDasha spits, "The girl is back."

"What's the damage?" John asks me, not looking up, but tracing the edges of his wife's long scarves as she trails away from him. The informer glances over at me form over his own smoke-I can see his face now, thick eyebrows over dark eyes.

"Two hundred in the hole, two hundred in the bank," I tell him, taking out the two stashed bills from my hiding places and tossing them over to John-they get caught in the air and falter before they reach him. John smiles, laughs, and I shove the duffle bag over the torn vinyl floor towards him. "I don't know how much is there, but it's a heavy."

John sits up and pulls open the zipper, sending powder and narcotics flinging into the heavy atmosphere. LaDasha sticks a long painted fingernail into a bag and smells the tip. "Heroine, 50% pure grade." John hums approvingly as he dabs the powder under his nose. His large fingers are connected to his large hand connected to a large arm connected to a large body. John is just large, broad and tall, but in spirit, in personality, he is quiet. Hard to please, even harder to get away form. His reputation, as far as I'm aware, perceives him as such. I know a different sort of man. "You see this, Carlo?"

"Yeah, I see it," the bag is shoved over to the other side of the room, right to Carlo the informer sitting on the pillows ridged.

"That's my business, Carlo. I distribute. I sell. I buy. So that people like you don't have to. Wouldn't you say that's important?"

"A' course, man," Carlo says, "a' course it's important-"

"-Then why is it that every time I turn around there's someone knew selling in my territory? What, do you think this is Crime Alley? The only one controlling 52th through 49th is me. And you're saying your too afraid to keep up my business in our own area? Where I keep you safe?"

"That's not what I'm saying, man!" Carlo is standing in a minute, defensive, his arms flailing around him. (I'm not sure what kind of meeting this is, but LaDasha disappears into the kitchens and she normally stays when information is concerned. She is, after all, an information hub.) "I'm just saying, weird shit has been happening! People disappearing, people killed, cargo gone missing from the port ships-"

"-I'm not concerned what goes missing," John says easily.

"You don't know," Carlo falls back on the pillows, and I cross over to where John is, picking up the fallen hundred dollar bills as I go, "Look, I'm out on those streets every day, just like I promised. I swore to you a long time ago that I would protect your interests, no matter where. We're tight, have been for a long time. We practically started this business together."

"I'm well aware," John says, in that quiet way he does. (John hardly ever raises his voice. It only goes very, very low.)

"Then you know I wouldn't lie to you," Carlo says.

(I wonder if all that was true. I've never seen Carlo here before - then again, there is a whole life that I don't know John participates in and a whole world that he hides. There are very few spaces that anyone fits into in John's life, and very few big enough for constant contact. I've seen others try to fill the precious cracks in his life, seen them falter and disappear like leaves fallen from a tree in autumn. At the end of the day I have no idea who John truly trusts, and who he doesn't.)

"Look, Johnny, things are stirring. Guys are vanishing left and right, showing up dead in some gutter not long after. Some of them are friends, man. Some of them work for you. Black Mask has his fuckers running riots all over north side, right in Bird territory. He's up to something, everyone's up to something."

"I tell you time and again," John speaks and pools his arm around my waist, setting his chin on my shoulder. "We aren't interested in where the big fish are swimming up. We swim downstream. We work under their radar. So long as my transactions are going smoothly, and everything's calm in the four blocks we own, then everything's a-ok. Don't you worry your pretty head about Black Mask."

(I think of the man in the red helmet. I think of the sex shop and the church and the paradox, a foot of space that separates between the two, as the gunshots ring against the night sky. Are we really safe? Can anyone say they are safe in Gotham?)

"Fine then," Carlo answers after a moment's thought, "but you know when someone else turns up dead the police will turn their eyes towards this district."

"It'll be old news by then," John says offhandedly, "And if what you're saying about Black Mask is true, then the police will be too busy to notice the murders of a horde of drug addicts and prostitutes. Did you say north side?"

"North side,"

"What about the east?"

"You mean Bludhaven?" Carlo asks. "Nah, nothing much's been happening in Bludhaven. You know the Bat left his friend in charge. That Night-bitch has been keeping good tabs of his portion of the city. Nothing happening on the west side either. But south side has a new upstart causing some problems."

"Now we're down to business," John says. Because if there's anything that John Wilder knows, it's his business. He knows more business than a street kid knows survival. He thrives on it, builds himself up and around it, so that he and his business are intricately braided together with no room in-between for anything or anyone else-keeping us safe is only a matter of investment into the larger picture of his dreams. "You're supposed to be keeping an eye out on Little Italy."

"I've been doing that," Carlo says, putting out his cigarette on the ashtray besides him. (The only one here not allowed to smoke is John), "With all the Black Mask nonsense everything in my sector seems pretty normal, you know?"

"Then why are you here?"

"There's a new kid on the block I thought you would like to hear about," Carlo says, "And besides, like I said, we have issues with disappearances. And they ain't from this new kid coming up. I hear there's a new vigilante running around in a red mask, not sure of that's connected to the disappearances though."

(I keep my mouth shut firmly. There are some things I don't want to relive.)

"Who's the kid, Carlo?"

(John sounds tired, and I suppose he would be. I would be tired too, if I really didn't care if people die spontaneously or not. And if I really think about it, I' not sure why it matters to me to hear more about the red helmet man. I'm not sure why it matters in general, when John isn't concerned. Besides, there could be no connection between this new hero and the man I saw. The man I saw has a red helmet, and the man Carlo describes has a red mask. In Gotham, those can mean two very different things.)

"His name's Galante," Carlo says, fiddling in his pocket for another cigarette. He offers one to John, but he doesn't take it. LaDasha sends him an approving look over her tea mug as she comes in, sitting down on the cap of john's knee. He rubs her back in circles, his fingers dipping into my sides. "He's running a pretty steady trade of Venom in the Italian sector, distributing straight down to the port. I've heard that he has a steady trade in Bludhaven too, but I'm not sure what he's trading. It's rare that anything comes out of Bludhaven except for metal these days, from those fuckin' factories."

"He real'y worth keepin an eye out?" LaDasha asks.

"I would say so," Carlo leans forward, his eyes shining against the back drop of his body that has lost all rigidness. I suppose he is use to John now (A fatal mistake), "they say he has connection to Shark."

(The atmosphere in the room changes. It seems even the temperature drops, the candles flicker, LaDasha steals a look in my direction. This happens every time that John doesn't want me to know something, every time he kicks me out of an important discussion. This happens whenever secrets are too close to being revealed, because in the end, what would be Gotham City if not filled with secrets?)

"Go upstairs," John pushes me in the direction of the door to the staircase, not gently, but it's more so than he would have given anyone else. I manage not to stumble.

But my curiosity gets the better of me. How many times have I just obeyed? How many times have I given into his word and never asked why I shouldn't know things? He allows LaDasha to know everything; she perhaps knows more about Gotham than John does. It's always been that way, one of the girls does the transactions while LaDasha manages to talk her way in and out of every portion of Gotham's social circles, digging up information and dirt and dust form corners long since left unexplored. LaDasha exploits them, forever an adventurer, forever none-to-gently forcing her way into places she shouldn't belong.

And I've always been content to sit back and allow them to do the hard parts. I allow them to do the worrying, the planning, the decision making, everything, because I'm not their age. They are older and wiser and should know these things. Always have known these things (John saved me from the streets, from the darkness, when I was left to rot, before him everything was a dark blur…) but now I feel myself old enough, I feel that I have a will and a right to express how I feel about certain things. And I want to know who Shark is.

(I've heard his name before, uttered like a prayer. One of Gothams myths, the rare kind which have no origin and no real solidity behind them. What even makes Shark a true person? Is he alive? Is he real? Does he breath the same polluted air that we do, invest himself in the same sports that we do, drive his life on the edge of the white line like we do? Did he have a John and a LaDasha to look after him too, once?)

"And do what?"

"Homework,"

"I don't have any,"

He looks at me. It's the first time in a long time that there was anything hostel behind those eyes. I believed, for a long time, that he really loved me. Like the father I never had. And like all decent parents, he was my father before he was my friend. I always believed that he was protecting me, helping me, because that's what he promised me that night we meet. That he would protect me. That I would never be alone.

(I regret it, sometimes. Sometimes, when John has people in the apartment, people who have voices like iron and knives that cut into soft flesh crudely, making jokes about children who buy off them and the sales they make under the table, I wish John had left me in the gutters to die. I wish I had enough sense to say no to him and his promises-but who could say no to promises when all you have is nothing? Who could say no to warmth when you are in danger of freezing?)

And the way he looks at me now is the same way he looks at Taffy when she gets caught smoking Cocaine. The cold, hard rage that steels something inside of you, tightening your stomach, even when it is not directed at you. When I was just a kid and did something wrong, he would grip me by the arm until it bruised and whisper in my ear in that low, deadly voice, 'do not make me hurt you, kid, because you wouldn't like when I hurt you.' I feel like I need to protect my arm now, or else he will grab it and cause phantom bruises to sprout.

"Then find some to do," John says, "Make yourself useful."

I don't like making him angry. I glance over at Carlo and wonder if my newfound independence would be worth his wrath.

"Come, lovey," LaDasha says, running her hands over her skirts repeatedly. Nervously. John is gripping her forearm hard in his giant hands and I regret, "come up, wait for me."

I follow LaDasha's orders. I'm not sure what I'm even supposed to do anymore because going against John is new and strange to me. I'm not even sure what a rebellious person does. Do they get angry and defensive? Nervous and excited? I'm nowhere in the middle of those two. I feel ashamed for ever going against John. My savior. The man who put a roof over my head. Clothes on my back. Who taught me how to write in the kitchen. Who shakes me when I'm being foolish with his left hand and slaps me with his right.

(It's those things that I am afraid of. Afraid, and afraid, and afraid.)

I yank open the door to the stairs and mount the darkness of the hallway. The wall paper here is old enough to have seen deaths and births, old enough to peel without the interference of the burning fumes, and still be intact. An ugly green color, which makes the hallway even darker. At the top of the stairs is a small hallway that leads to the three rooms in the apartment, the one on the immediate left being my own. Next to the stairs is another set of stairs that leads to the third floor, but we never use them. A tenant lives there, a woman I rarely ever see.

I stop to consider spying on John and Carlo and LaDasha. I could do it, without them knowing, because I have spied before. But John is scary when angry and I've already upset him. His patience runs only as long as company lasts, and I'm not the only one to feel the effects of my mistakes. I don't want LaDasha to have to worry about me.

(I'm too much of a coward. But at least I can hide that behind protecting LaDasha.)

I'm not allowed in any of the other rooms. I know one is John and LaDasha's. The third room is at the end of the hallway, a looming door that I have always been wary about. It's always made me nervous. John always insists that it's his armory, where he keeps his merchandise, jokingly referring to it as his own 'bat cave'. (I'm not that foolish though. LaDasha was pregnant once and the door was opened for long periods of time, giving me ability to peer into it and see the empty contents behind as the walls were painted. But when the baby died in her stomach, the door was closed, and never opened again.)

I go into my room, a rectangle that faces the street. A metal cot is set up next to the window, barred from the outside, with a small table where I keep my things. A few colored pencils, a book of crossword puzzles, a faded copy of Gone with the Wind, a coffee mug I stole while at the port form a drunken sailor. They are the only things that I own, have ever, besides a pair of pants and another t-shirt which are always laid haphazardly on the floor.

I throw myself onto the bed. I don't bother changing out of the sweatshirt and jeans I'm wearing because I want to be able to run when John divvies out his punishment, if it becomes possible to run. I've run before and escaped the harshest of his rage, before I got smart and compliant. That's what John likes. People who follow directions. Soldiers, he calls us. (Taffy says that wielding a gun is a rite of passage. Sometimes I wonder why I have never done it before.)

The door opens. I'm expecting LaDasha, but instead I lift my head to see John. His features, large nose, thick jaw, high cheekbones, are defined more with the shadows cast form light outside the window. Like an unmovable statue, he stands there looking outside for a minutes to let the nerves stew. He's always been good at getting a response. My hands shake and shake against my stomach where they have been shoved in my pockets. I think about Vet and blood and the catalyst of success that tore him down.

John sits down on the edge of the bed, making the metal squeal under us.

"I've told you before, Red," John says, his voice low, low, deep enough to hurt, "You will do as I say. When we are alone, and especially when we have guests."

"I just-I thought that-,"

"You thought," He puts emphasis on the word as if it disgusts him, "And I thought you were smarter than that."

"I-" I have no words to say, because he's right. He's always right.

"You?" John ask, "you're not dumb enough to answer in incomplete sentences. That's the second time you've disappointed me today."

I hide my burning face in my pillow. "I saw it, John. I saw it. What Carlo was talking about, the man in the red helmet. The seller that I met today-I swear John, this guy came out of nowhere, the guy in the red helmet shot that guy and he didn't even make a sound. He was going to kill me…the church on North Haven. I…he…"

John isn't looking at me. He does it when processing information, looking off in the distance. Trying to connect bits and pieces like a giant, unending puzzle. He doesn't look angry. He just looks cold.

"Why didn't you tell me this? It should have been the first thing you told me-,"

"-I'm sorry! People get killed all the time-that's what you say! I thought…well, Carlo mentioned the man in the red mask and the deaths. I was going to tell you, I promise."

"Promises aren't good enough," John says, standing. "They never are."

I watch him watching me. He is so tall he casts shadows over me, looming there, his hands balled to fists. (For a moment, I feel alone. Hated. Betrayed. Then that feeling, too, fades. He has a right to this anger. He has a right to me, a right I gave to him the moment that he saved me from the cold. Our lives are never our own, that's what Nate always said. They belong to what he invest ourselves in, to the Heroin or our husbands or our religions. Never to ourselves. That's why humans have gods.)

"Put it from your mind," John tells me, "These things are none of your concern-,"

"-but they should be!"

(I clamp my mouth with my hand and wish for better days. When the sun can shine though the Gotham fog. When the people get along no matter what part of the city they're from. When John can smile at LaDasha and they can be in love again. I wish for better days. But I know no days that have been like those. My days have always been dark.)

John whips his huge hand across my cheek with a terrible –slap- sound. My head spins for a moment, ringing, leaving me stunned and dazed and hurt. Hurt because it's been a long time since I have enticed John to hurt me. He never does so without a reason. I feel slightly dejected just on the thought. I fear losing that little trust I had.

"I don't like to do this," John whispers, the lowest octave that his voice drops when he is angry. But it seems loud. Everyone always hears it, "You know I don't." He grabs my chin roughly, shaking me once, my world dazed, nothing but a yellow light and the dark around me changing in a kaleidoscope. "But I know I taught you from a pup to do as your elders tell you to do. I told you to forget about it. So forget."

"He died," I wail, "He died!"

(I'm not sure what I am expecting. In some part of myself, the small part that is still screaming form Vet's death, I foolishly think this is a reason for him to show me mercy. I dumbly hold onto the idea that John will suddenly understand, suddenly come out of his old ways and create a new outlook on the situation. But he is cold, cold to the touch, and I remember, so clearly, other times when this has happened. When he kicks me in the stomach hard enough to break my ribs, leaving me bleeding on the kitchen floor, throwing a glass bottle against my temple, time and time again, until it leaves a thin scar that runs along the left side of my face. I remember his fist, coming down and down and down, I remember the cocked butt of a gun breaking my knee cap in two. I've tried to forget just like I tried to forget all the things I have seen him do to LaDasha and Taffy and Remy and Nate. His girls. His soldiers. His belongings.)

He shakes me. He shakes me and shakes me as if that will bring forth what he wants from me, hissing like a snake, "Why are you concerned with the death of some pathetic seller? People die, Red. That's what they do. You're born, you work and you work and you work to get somewhere, and then you die. There isn't any other cycle. So you suddenly think you're tough because you've seen death? You don't know what death is."

(I do know what death is. I've seen it now, I feel as though I've seen it many times before. I feel as though I know it personally, an old friend always knocking at my door. It concerns me how John doesn't care. But hasn't he always been cruel?)

"You think you're tough?" John lets me go. I feel the bruises pool before his hand ever leaves. His eyes burn, a cold type of burning. He is dry ice. His soul leaves burns where there was once frozen liquids. "I've raised you tough." He stops and seems to think, "I've raised you for real action. And if you seem to think your old enough now to handle talking back to me, then you can handle real action. How about it, Red? You ready for action?"

I'm afraid to nod.

"Do you know who Shark is? No, of course you don't. He's an arms dealer that works out of Arkham Asylum. That's all you need to know. I have no idea about those deaths or the one you saw or the bastard in the red helmet, but what I do know is that none of these things influence our business unless it involves Shark."

"What…what if it involves Shark?"

"Then we track him down," John says, quietly, "And you know what we do then?"

I don't think I want to know.

"This world is more complicated than you like to give it credit for," John whispers. "This world is a horrible, dangerous place. People like us; we have to do things to protect our own assets."

"Let me do it," I tell him, "Let me go and find out what Shark knows."

"You don't even know where to start," John says.

"Arkham Asylum," I tell him, "Just like you said."

"That's a dumb ass idea from a child," John says. He looms over me now, looms, a mountain that I will never hope to overcome. I cannot climb to his peek because too much ice stands in the way, ice that if you slip on will leave you crashing down to sharp, pointed rocks. Falling away from John, once you have started climbing, will only get you killed, "But I'll give you something else. This man in the red helmet. If you can find out who he is, then you can know more about our operations. But you have to figure out what red helmet wants first."

"Our operations?" I've never heard of an operation. I've never thought we did anything besides buy and sell. I thought that we controlled a few blocks of the city drug trade and nothing else. I thought these things and they seem stupid now. I feel stupid and childish and oddly stunned.

"If you can find him, than we can exploit him," John says, " Listen to me carefully, Red. You are either the predator or the prey. And there is always more than one predator. Predators can feed off each other, making each other stronger, but it's in their best interest to secure a place at the top less they become prey. You exploit the other predators to get to the top. That's how to weed out the weak from the strong. We are the strong, Red, and they are the weak."

He stands, glancing out the window. With his black eyes off me I feel let loose from a darkness. There's nothing there, in his heart. There's no love and no compassion. (I'm not ignorant. I'm just afraid. I know what John can do. I've seen it. Even if I wanted to leave now I couldn't. Because he is the only father I ever had, only mother I ever had, only family I ever had-that I ever remember. And something tells me this is better than whatever other darkness was before. Before he found me in a time that I cannot remember clearly. Darkness, now. Like the darkness in his eyes. I'm not ignorant. I can see it. I'm just afraid.)

"The bat symbol is in the sky," John says quietly, "the Batman has returned to his nest."

Batman always comes back to his home. Staying away for too long will, after all, cause more harm than good-his allies can only hold together the thin seams of Gotham for so long before they need their leader to take back his portion of the city. Nothing holds fear like the Bat does, and nothing keeps in line it's criminals like the symbol that he wears on his chest. Even John respects him, and John respects no one else.

We live in a one sided symbiosis with the Bat. He finds and brings down our rivals, destroying and rebuilding boundary lines within the city so that not one powerhouse can hold large sections for too long. Success in Gotham attracts the Bat's attention, and it's that which divides a good portion of the drug lords who worship on the streets. John works in a very small area with a very wide spider web of connection to other parts of the city, and thrives under the Bats radar. We live in a world where feeding off each other is common place, and if done right, can provide you a comfortable lifestyle. If done wrong, it means jail time and a loss of profit when you get out - starting over from rock bottom, because you cannot escape your past in Gotham. Being a dealer will follow you.

(It's a dangerous game John plays. But John thrives on walking the line, teetering on thin ice, pulling back at the last second. I'm not sure his connections. I've never been sure and until now I've never wanted to ask. I've always been positive that John will come out of any situation with more than he when in with. But it's a dangerous game he plays. And only one party will come out victorious. The question is, who will win, and who will be sacrificed in getting there?)

"Batman is a predator," I tell him, "does that make him our enemy?"

"Yes," John says back, "and like all enemy's, he is easily exploited."

When John leaves the room, I feel distinctly empty.

…

Carlo isn't stupid.

He will say the right thing because Carlo knows that's what will keep him alive, but that doesn't mean that the right thing is the right thing. Sometimes the right thing is just what someone else wants to hear. And Carlo is good at that.

He exits through the door to the shop. Three rows of crystals and wooden dolls stare back at him; an old time cash register and a counter laid with knickknacks hide stalks of paperwork. On one end of the shop is a row of rocks with symbols pressed into them with ink, and on the other is a table with velvet chairs where that Jamaican woman does her palm reading. Carlo has always hated this shop, there's something creepy about the dolls, something uncomfortable about the feeling that the crystals give off. He's wondered if they're laced with something. He knows that the smoke they use during readings has Speed in it.

Carlo has his hand in almost every cookie jar, but he's good at that. This is old hat for him, just his job. All his friends are dying around him and Carlo has no choice but to bring it up at every meeting he's had. A lot of those guys were in his family, and God be damned if he isn't going to do something about it. The Red Hood, that's what people are calling him. A vigilante that isn't afraid to use a gun. And isn't that the last thing Gotham needs? You start weeding out the worst of them and then who's left? Who will you kill once the bad guys are dead? Then Carlos becomes the bad guy. Then Carlos will be dead. It's not like Carlos doesn't have dreams. It's not like this is what he wanted from his life.

He pulls his sleeve down, carefully trying to hide the theater masks tattooed into his arm.

No, Carlo isn't stupid. But you do what you have to do in Gotham. You do what you have to do to survive.