Bad morning, Gotham.
Jude lurched awake with the words already in his throat.
The nightmare clung. Batman. Gotham's tallest clock tower. Jude hanging by his ankles from a gargoyle while a cape-wearing psychopath tickled the soles of his feet.
For hours.
He sat up, shuddering. Hell-level psychological warfare. The specific terror of something mundane made horrible by duration and helplessness.
The dreams-reflect-reality principle didn't cover this. He'd barely thought about Batman. He'd seen the news articles, filed them, moved on. There was no reason for the subconscious mind to construct that specific scenario.
Must be the city, he decided. Gotham's atmosphere got into things. Into the air, into the water, into the part of your brain that processed threat and turned it into dreams.
Bad morning, Gotham.
He pulled on his clothes and glanced at the window.
Still dark outside.
He frowned. Checked his phone.
11:22 PM.
He'd been asleep for ten minutes.
And he felt completely, absolutely, frustratingly awake. His mind was moving at full speed. Sleep wasn't happening. Everything in his body had decided that sleep was a tomorrow problem, possibly a next-week problem.
"Side effects," Jude said to the empty room. "I should have read the fine print."
He opened the system shop and found the item.
Blue Petal Energy Tea — $30
Duration: 24 hours
Effects: Sustained stamina, heightened clarity, zero fatigue
"I can do this all day!" — Steve R.
He'd bought it at 2 PM. He'd been tired, the evening shift had been long, and he'd wanted an edge. It hadn't occurred to him to do the arithmetic on when twenty-four hours from 2 PM actually landed.
"Captain America still needed to sleep," Jude muttered. "Whatever you're distilling this from, the original formula was less aggressive."
He checked the shop for a counteragent. Pink petal tea, $30, would cancel the effect.
Another thirty asset points to fix a thirty-point mistake. He sat with that math for a moment.
Not worth it. He was awake. Might as well use it.
He found the driving manual in the shop and bought it for $5. Started reading.
Asset points required careful management. Basic Car Driving Proficiency was $500 as a direct purchase, but the system was generous with upgrade pricing—if you'd already taught yourself the fundamentals, you only paid the gap to reach the next tier. His wheelchair skill had the same structure. Intermediate to Advanced would cost an additional $200, not the full price from scratch.
Worth keeping in mind.
He was still browsing when something else caught his attention.
Driving Simulator Training. $5 per session. Duration: 2 hours.
He tapped through the description. Customizable terrain, weather, road conditions, vehicle types. A full virtual environment, calibrated to whatever he wanted to practice.
Can I drive an F1 car?
He checked the manual. No racing configurations in the basic tier. Probably reasonable—knowing what a racing car was didn't mean knowing how to operate one, and apparently the simulator took that seriously.
There were racing vehicles available. Without the knowledge to drive them, attempting one would be virtual suicide. He'd do it anyway, eventually, just to see what happened. For now: basics.
He spent thirty minutes with the manual and tutorial videos, then dropped into the simulation.
Two hours later he came back to reality slightly dizzy and deeply satisfied.
Virtual training had no consequences, which was exactly what he'd wanted. He'd driven off cliffs, accelerated into structures at irresponsible speeds, executed turns that no physics engine should have permitted, and rolled a sedan four times in sequence just to see the interior animation. Deeply cathartic.
Shame there's no flight simulator, he thought. Could've tested some executive offices.
He didn't check the system's evaluation of his skill level. Two hours had covered acceleration, braking, steering, and stops. The intermediate details—parallel parking, merging, defensive driving—those would come with time. He knew the shape of a vehicle under his hands now, and that was something.
He spent $1 on the TV series he'd been watching before Gotham had inconveniently recruited him, then $3 on food. A plate of skewers materialized beside him, along with a cold drink.
Perfect, he thought, pulling up the first episode. All-nighter. No fatigue. Skewers and soda. This is genuinely the best outcome of a mistake I've ever had.
His hand dropped to the Beretta at his waist.
He'd been wearing it since Drake handed it over. Hadn't taken it off once.
Gunfire cracked from somewhere outside.
Jude paused the show.
Two shots. Handgun, he thought—the pitch was wrong for a rifle. Somewhere in the building, or very close to it. He listened for follow-up. Nothing for a moment.
His thumb traced the grip.
Go check?
He didn't know what was happening down there. Didn't know who was shooting or why, whether it was already finished or still in progress. His firearms training consisted of Drake showing him the safety mechanism and the trigger and saying, in so many words, aim the dangerous end at problems.
He could probably fire it. Where the bullet would actually go was a question he preferred to leave theoretical.
But—
Two more shots rang out.
He winced.
Whoever got hit twice is probably past the point where I'd be useful anyway.
He tried to believe that.
Three more shots.
"Are you kidding me," Jude said.
He opened the system shop and started scrolling through defensive options, because apparently his night wasn't done.
Outside, in the specific darkness that only Gotham's alleys managed at this hour, a woman's voice suddenly detonated from the shadows:
"FUCK YOU!" American West Coast accent, volume that should've shaken windows, fury that had been building for some time and had now found its exit. "WHO IS STILL AWAKE AT THIS HOUR? YOU LIKE MAKING NOISE? STAND STILL AND I'LL PUT A BULLET IN YOUR ASS AND SHOVE IT IN YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH!"
In the alley below, a woman pressed against the wall, both hands bleeding where bullets had gone through them—not by accident. The man standing over her had the specific combination of bloodshot eyes and shaking hands that meant several things had gone wrong for him recently and he'd decided this was where it would stop. The pistol in one hand, his other pulling at her jacket.
He froze at the shouting.
Footsteps then. Heavy. Deliberate. Moving down the adjacent alley toward him.
BOOM.
A shotgun blast echoed across the East End like a door slamming on the whole night.
"YOU BASTARD! WHERE ARE YOU?"