"You son of a bitch! Settle it right here!"
"You old bastard! You're not the only one with something to say about it!"
The drivers opened fire.
No warning. No countdown. Just the immediate application of their mutual opinions.
The passengers reacted the way a flock of birds reacts to a loud noise—sudden, fluid, collectively practiced. People poured out through the windowless frames. Some dove behind parked cars. Others slipped into doorways without breaking stride. The few who caught stray bullets—grazed, not dropped—found cover, pulled their own weapons, and integrated themselves into the firefight with the pragmatic air of people who had been interrupted but were willing to adapt.
Those who weren't hit at all just waited. Phones out. Watching the street.
You couldn't call it professional.
But it was clearly something they'd all done before.
Jude let Drake haul him behind a concrete corner and tried to identify a feeling that wasn't outright terror.
"Drake." His voice came out steadier than it had any right to. "If you want me dead, you can just say so. I won't be offended."
"This is the fastest and safest route in the East End." Drake sounded like he was defending a travel review. "Any other option, you're stuck behind someone with a grudge, or your wallet goes missing, or worse. You know what happens to people on the wrong buses in this city?"
CRACK.
A bullet punched the concrete a few inches from Jude's head and disappeared into the wall behind him. Dust.
"How," Jude said carefully, "is this the safe option?"
Drake's expression shifted into something that looked almost like enthusiasm.
"Because everyone on this bus has a reason to be here. Old feuds. Debts. Business arrangements that went wrong. In Gotham, when you've got a problem you can't settle any other way—or there is no other way—you end up somewhere like this." He gestured at the shootout like he was pointing out a feature on a walking tour. "Maybe you robbed someone's supplier. Maybe the product wasn't what was advertised. Maybe it's not even about anything specific anymore. You're just tired and angry and done holding it."
More gunfire. Glass crunching under boots somewhere down the street.
"So you get on a bus full of desperate men, with weapons for sale at every seat. You and whoever you've got a problem with draw guns and find out who was right. Winner walks away lighter. Loser gets carried away. Clean resolution." He patted the concrete wall. "But everyone else on the bus is just a passenger. Nobody's targeting us. We're nobody to them. And this corner—I picked this spot very carefully. Good sight lines, solid cover, far enough back that you're watching the edge of things, not the middle."
He settled in, apparently comfortable.
"Six months on this route. Worst I got was a sprained ankle from moving too fast."
Jude looked at him for a long moment.
It was, he had to admit, a coherent system. Drake had survived a full year in Gotham by being adaptable, by reading situations, by finding the angles that everyone else had missed—
"HEY!"
The voice came from somewhere in the shootout. Loud. Specific.
Pointed.
"The little rat in the corner! I've been watching you for six months! You think this is entertainment? You think you can just sit there every week and watch people bleed?!"
CRACK.
The bullet hit the ground eighteen inches from Jude's left foot.
"Show yourself! I want to see your face when I put one through it!"
Jude turned and looked at Drake.
Drake's comfortable smile had not moved. The rest of his face had left it behind entirely.
"Is this," Jude said, "what safe looks like."
"I didn't know!" Drake's voice went up a register. "Who watches from the same corner for six months and gets recognized?! I was extremely subtle! I barely existed!"
CRACK. CRACK.
Two more rounds. One of them caught the corner and left a fresh divot.
"Stop talking!" Jude grabbed his jacket. "Think! You've lived here for a year, figure something out!"
"I'm thinking!"
Drake's eyes moved. Scanning. The panic drained back from his face, replaced by something colder and more focused—a different quality of expression entirely, like a different person briefly inhabiting the same body. His breathing slowed. His eyes sharpened.
He stared at the street like he was reading it.
"Don't worry," he said, voice quiet and even. "I can get us out of this."
He mapped it without moving: roll from cover, use the engine block of the parked Buick to absorb any 9mm rounds from that angle. Sprint during the reload—he'd hear the click—vault the hood, hit the dumpster on the far side. Break the sightline. Crash through the bookstore door, up the stairs, out the second-floor window. Combat roll on landing. Into the alley. Gone.
He took a slow breath.
Reached down.
Calmly removed one shoe.
Held it by the toe and swung it around the corner like bait.
CRACK. CRACK.
Two clean holes appeared in the leather.
Drake pulled it back. Examined it. Put it back on his foot.
"COWARD! Get OUT here and face me!"
Jude looked at Drake.
Drake looked at the corner.
"What was the plan?" Jude asked.
The professional expression was gone. The other one was back—slightly sheepish, slightly lost. "I think... we might be better staying put. His aim is a bit sharper than the scenario called for. The extraction gets complicated in the first two seconds if—"
"I thought you had it."
"I did have it. Tactically. The execution has a variable."
"The variable is that he can shoot."
"More accurately than I modeled, yes."
Jude pressed the back of his head against the concrete and stared at the grey Gotham sky.
I'm so stupid. The thought arrived with the clarity of something that had been waiting patiently. Drake's been here a year. He found a job. He kept his wife alive in this city for twelve months. I decided that meant he could do anything.
I forgot to account for him being absolutely ridiculous.
"Did it ever occur to you," Jude said, "that someone who rides a shootout bus for six months running might eventually notice a man hiding in the same corner every single time?"
"It did not occur to me in advance, no."
"You're Gotham's biological child. You've been here a year. Think of something."
"I haven't even met Batman!"
They glared at each other while bullets occasionally reminded them of their situation.
Then Jude noticed the movement on the rooftop.
A figure. Silhouetted against the overcast sky, standing at the edge with the comfort of someone who found rooftop edges perfectly natural. Black suit, sleek lines, the posture of someone who had chosen this vantage point deliberately and saw no reason to hide it.
She was looking down at them.
He couldn't read her expression clearly from this distance.
But he could see the smile.
Sharp. Amused. Patient.
The smile of a cat that has found mice arguing in a corner and is in absolutely no hurry.