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The craving for money was not about luxury; it was about leverage. Nick understood that currency was simply a condensed form of power and security in a city like Gotham. Without it, he was dependent on luck and charity, two commodities this city dispensed sparingly. He needed a buffer, a safe haven, and the time to pursue the ghost of his former identity.
The diner job had provided one meal. Now, he needed a sustainable method. He realized that the only things of value he possessed were his unexplained skills. His mind was a blank page, but his muscles and reflexes were a library of specialized knowledge.
He spent the next twenty-four hours observing. He avoided the obvious targets: petty theft was low-reward, high-risk, and beneath the instinctual competence of the man he was. His internal assessment focused on niche opportunities where his unique skill set—the precise movements, the ability to read body language, the quiet authority in his voice—would be an asset, not a liability.
He found it in the Old Gotham Freight Yards.
The yards were a chaotic junction of legal and illegal commerce. Goods came and went, often untracked, sometimes deliberately misplaced. This was a place that valued speed and silence over permits and paperwork.
He approached a burly foreman managing a late-night loading crew—a man named Griz, whose face was a map of old fights and bad decisions. Griz was short-staffed and clearly frustrated, barking orders in a tangle of English and sloppy Spanish.
Nick stood quietly for three minutes, watching the flow of the work. He noted the choke points in the logistics, the poorly loaded pallets, and the wasted effort of workers who didn't know how to move heavy boxes efficiently.
When Griz finally noticed him, Nick didn't ask for a job. He made a statement.
"You are losing twenty percent efficiency on the northern dock," Nick said, his voice cutting through the noise with startling clarity. "The weight distribution on your pallets is flawed, and your men are wasting four steps on every return trip. I can fix it."
Griz, accustomed to pleas and demands, merely scowled. "And who the hell are you, the Efficiency Czar?"
"I am someone who will get the job done faster and quieter than anyone you're paying," Nick replied, his gaze unwavering. "Pay me by the crate. No paperwork, no questions. If I slow you down, I leave immediately."
The pure, unadulterated confidence was the deciding factor. Griz, desperate to meet a deadline, nodded begrudgingly. "Fine. But you touch anything that ain't supposed to be touched, and I'll have my boys dismantle you piece by piece."
Nick didn't respond. He simply walked onto the dock and began to work.
It was almost immediate. He didn't just move boxes; he engineered the flow. He knew the precise center of gravity of every package. He calculated the fastest, most economical path between the stack and the truck. He employed techniques—leveraging his shoulder, using his entire body weight in a seamless movement—that spoke of a man who had trained for physical endurance under extreme duress. He worked with a cold, almost detached grace.
His speed was inhuman. The other workers, initially hostile, quickly became fascinated, then intimidated, then simply resentful.
By the end of the shift, Nick had moved twice the volume of any other man on the dock. Griz, forced to concede, slid a thick wad of bills across the back of a clipboard. It wasn't much, but it was enough to buy two days of cheap existence, a few clean clothes, and most importantly, time.
The exhaustion was immense, but the work felt right. It was hard, honest, and it proved his fundamental survival mechanism was intact.
Over the next week, Nick used this method, cycling through small, high-labor, low-profile jobs across the city's fringes. He worked as a cleanup man, a mover, and a short-term security guard for small-time vendors—jobs where speed, discretion, and a subtle threat of violence were valued.
It was during this period that the fragments of his multilingualism resurfaced, not as a choice, but as an uncontrollable reality.
He was working a late-night shift stocking shelves for a small, family-owned market in a heavily Polish section of the city. The elderly owner, frustrated with a broken delivery system, began to vent to his wife in rapid, distressed Polish. Nick, without thinking, corrected his logistical assumptions in the same language.
"No, sir," Nick said, stacking canned goods with surgical precision. "The manifest uses the older municipal codes. You're looking up the wrong route in the electronic system."
The owner froze, his eyes widening with shock and a touch of suspicion. "You… you speak Polish? Flawless Polish."
"I... I must," Nick replied, the admission catching him off guard. He hadn't learned the language; it was simply there, perfectly formed and readily accessible, complete with regional inflections.
The next day, he heard a furious argument in an alley over a gambling debt. Two men were shouting in a vicious, rhythmic exchange that he immediately recognized as Yiddish—a language of historic suffering, defiance, and sharp wit. Again, without any conscious effort, he understood every threat, every curse, every plea.
And when he was alone, lying in his cramped, rented room—a flophouse apartment with paper-thin walls—the ghosts of his dreams spoke to him in fluent, aggressive German.
I am a language vault, he realized with cold awe. A library of survival and suffering. These weren't languages taught in school; they were languages of displaced peoples, of the victims of tyranny. Their presence in his mind confirmed the horrific narrative of his dreams: he was connected to the darkest moments of the 20th century.
The anonymity he had so carefully cultivated was shattered three nights later.
Nick was walking through a dimly lit neighborhood that served as a neutral zone between two minor gangs. He had just successfully collected his pay from a short-term cleanup job at a derelict factory and was feeling the rare, small luxury of self-sufficiency.
He was near the mouth of an alley when he heard the sounds of distress: a muted shout, followed by the sickening thud of a body hitting a brick wall.
Instinct took over, stripping away the thin veneer of his anonymity. The man he had been—the one who stood for the helpless, the one who fought the oppressor—demanded action.
He slipped into the alley, his hand already gripping the pipe at his back.
Three men—thugs, low-level enforcers—had cornered a fourth, smaller man, aggressively demanding the contents of his satchel. The victim was clearly not a fighter, small and desperate.
"Give it up, old man," one of the thugs sneered, shoving the victim against the trash bins.
"Please, that's everything I have," the man pleaded.
The scene triggered a violent, powerful surge in Nick's chest—not just sympathy, but an uncontrollable, white-hot fury at the imbalance of power. It was the fury of the strong witnessing the oppression of the weak, a pattern he knew, in his bones, was intolerable.
He didn't announce himself. He moved.
The first thug to notice him didn't even have time to turn his weapon—a heavy wrench—to face the threat. Nick moved like a striking snake, faster than any civilian should. He didn't use the pipe yet; he used his training.
He blocked the wrench with his forearm, the impact jarring but controlled, and then delivered a blindingly fast, precise strike to the man's solar plexus. The thug gasped, the air knocked out of his lungs, and he crumbled, clutching his gut.
The second thug, larger and slower, lunged with a folding knife. Nick sidestepped the thrust, his movement fluid and impossible to track in the poor light. He snapped his elbow outward, hitting the man's wrist, sending the knife clattering harmlessly against the pavement. With the thug momentarily stunned, Nick executed a perfect, sweeping leg kick, knocking the man off his feet.
The third thug was smarter. He pulled a small, silver-plated pistol from his jacket.
This was the moment of truth.
The sight of the gun, glinting in the pale alley light, didn't inspire fear. It inspired cold, professional certainty. In the dream fragments, he had run from guns. In the present, he knew precisely how to defeat them.
Before the thug could fully level the weapon, Nick was already covering the distance. He moved in low, deflected the gun arm away from his body, and delivered a short, brutal punch to the man's temple. It wasn't a wild haymaker; it was a targeted, concussive strike delivered with the force of a lifetime of conditioning. The thug dropped instantly, the gun skittering across the pavement.
Nick stood over the three fallen men, breathing deeply but not winded. The entire confrontation had lasted perhaps fifteen seconds. His body was tense, ready for the next threat, every muscle screaming with the ingrained memory of combat training.
I am not just a soldier, the cold inner voice declared. I am something more.
The victim, who had been huddled against the bins, slowly stood up, staring at Nick with a mixture of profound relief and abject terror.
"Who… who are you?" the man whispered, clutching his satchel.
Nick looked at him, his expression blank. He bent down, picked up the scattered wrench and knife, and threw them into the nearest dumpster. He left the gun where it lay, preferring not to touch it.
"Go," Nick ordered, his voice flat. "Don't look back. Don't tell anyone."
The man, wise enough not to argue, fled immediately.
Nick retrieved his pipe from the back of his shirt. It was the only weapon he needed. He glanced at the unconscious thugs, ensuring they were incapacitated but not permanently damaged. He made his exit, disappearing back into the maze of the city streets.
He didn't realize that the fight had had a witness.
High above the alley, perched on a darkened fire escape like a gargoyle, a tall, impeccably dressed man watched Nick's brutal efficiency through high-powered binoculars. The man, a lieutenant in Penguin's extensive organization, lowered the glass slowly.
The lieutenant, named Specs for his constant, tiny, silver-framed spectacles, adjusted his jacket and spoke into a secured comms device.
"I have eyes on the asset, sir. In the alley near Seven and Arch. He just cleaned up a trio of street dogs trying to shakedown a courier."
A familiar, raspy voice came through the earpiece. "Did he use the pipe, Specs? The metal rod you mentioned?"
"No, sir. He didn't need to. He moved like military, but faster. He took down the three of them—one with a knife, one with a wrench, one with a gun—in under fifteen seconds. Hand-to-hand, absolutely clinical."
"A ghost with the hands of a professional killer," Penguin's voice mused. "But why defend a petty courier? Is he protecting something?"
"No, sir. He didn't take anything. He just... made the bullies stop. The way he looked at them, sir, it was pure, cold contempt. Like he was stamping out insects."
There was a long, thoughtful pause on the other end of the line.
"Find him, Specs. Quietly. I don't care about his name or his past, but a man who can operate with that level of skill and detachment is too valuable to be fighting for spare change. I want him in my employ."
"He's running, sir. Heading east toward the industrial zone again."
"Bring him in. But don't threaten him. Approach him with a job offer. Let him know we value his competence. A mind like that needs purpose. A weapon needs a hand to guide it."
Specs put his binoculars away and began to descend the fire escape.
Meanwhile, Nick was miles away, moving with renewed urgency. He was shaken, not by the fight, but by the terrible familiarity of the violence, the seamless transition from lost man to efficient killer. He had just ensured his survival, but he had also announced his presence to a city that swallowed up lone operatives.
He had no idea that by defending one person, he had just attracted the interest of the very organization that would provide him with the resources he desperately craved, and the ethical conflict that would define his future.
The thin line between protection and control was about to be drawn by the shadow of the Iceberg Lounge.