Jude had thought he'd adapted.
One week at the Red Dragon. He'd witnessed gunfights, met career criminals and mid-level gangsters and one actual mob family's waitstaff. He'd served both people who hadn't eaten in two days and people who couldn't decide between the 2011 and 2013 vintage of the same wine. He'd even gotten used to watching criminals dangle from gargoyles on the nightly news.
Almost hypnotic, he thought, the way they hang there.
He felt, if not comfortable exactly, then at least calibrated. The city's baseline insanity had become the water he swam in. He'd stopped flinching at backfires. He'd developed instincts about which alleys to take and which to go around.
He clocked out at the usual time, stepped into the alley behind the Red Dragon, folded wheelchair under his arm, and started for home.
A voice stopped him at the building entrance.
"Hey. Give me the wheelchair."
Jude's brain ran through a full reboot cycle.
Robberies in the East End were constant and procedural. He'd seen dozens by now. The format was fixed: weapon out, wallet over, transaction complete, everyone continues with their evening. Quick, professional, nobody's preferred activity but nobody's getting artistic about it either.
This man's methodology was his own.
"I'm sorry." Jude looked down at the folded frame under his arm, then back up. "You want the wheelchair."
"Yeah! Hand it over!" The gun was steady. The smile was genuinely enthusiastic. "I know about you. Everyone in the East End does. Every night some lunatic on a glowing wheelchair tearing through the streets. I've been watching for a week. That thing is fast. I want it."
Jude blinked. "You're aware that you could steal a car. Most cars have roofs."
The robber's expression moved through several phases. Determined. Reflective. Briefly uncertain.
"Shut up! Give me the wheelchair!"
"From a practical standpoint, I should mention that without the matching proficiency—"
BANG.
The bullet hit the brick wall approximately two inches from his left ear. The sound at that range was a physical sensation.
His tenth shooting incident of the week. What had started as full paralytic terror had, through repeated exposure, compressed down to a manageable spike of fear followed by rapid resumption of function. Sensitivity training, essentially, though he hadn't asked for the curriculum.
"Here." He held out the wheelchair. "Take it. Please don't shoot me."
Not cowardice. Risk calculation. Previous incidents had involved distance, darkness, or cover. This was a loaded gun pointed at his face from arm's length, by someone who had already demonstrated they'd use it. The math was clear.
"Money too. And your jacket."
"The money, definitely, but can I keep—"
"Everything. Now."
Jude's anger flared briefly, and he put it away. He thought about the options available to a man with no combat skills, no cover, and a weapon pointed at his face.
He took off the jacket.
While handing it over, he quietly palmed his driver's license and popped the SIM card from the phone. The robber got everything else.
"Take it. We're done."
"The gun too."
BANG.
The shot came from behind the robber.
A tall man stepped out of the shadows—broad, deliberate, carrying himself like someone who'd been waiting and was mildly irritated about how long it had taken. He spat on the pavement.
"That's my gun, asshole."
The robber was clutching his hand. The bullet had hit the pistol first, then kept going into his palm. He was making sounds that weren't words.
Jude recognized the man before he'd fully processed the face.
Clinton Banner. The one from the bus. The one he and Drake had tied up and left breathing.
Banner's eyes swept over the robber with the specific absence of interest of someone who has already made a decision and is just waiting for the logistics to catch up. The robber, reading the situation with impressive speed given his current pain level, abandoned everything. He scrambled onto the wheelchair, found the controls by feel.
Hit the throttle.
The LED strips lit up in sequence. Rainbow across the full frame. The wheelchair launched forward and disappeared around the corner in approximately two seconds.
"He's got decent instincts," Jude observed. "Though without the intermediate driving skill, seventy-five miles per hour in one of those is going to—"
"Give me my gun." Banner's tone indicated that Jude's commentary had not been requested. "And stop carrying things you won't use. If you don't have the nerve to pull the trigger, don't bother with the holster."
"It's a standard Beretta." Jude handed it over. "Completely unmodified. You're treating it like it has sentimental value."
Banner didn't answer. He holstered the Beretta alongside his own, didn't ask about the Colt—presumably assumed it had been lost or sold. He looked at Jude with the kind of contempt that had clearly been building for a while.
"I've been riding Old Jack's bus for a week waiting for you. You stopped showing up. Then I start hearing about some lunatic racing through the East End on a glowing wheelchair." He spat again, this time at Jude's feet. "Gotham's full of cowards."
Jude put his jacket back on, pocketed the license and SIM card, and turned toward the stairs.
There was no version of this argument worth having. The man had just shot someone's hand for him. Some gratitude was probably warranted. Engaging with the rest of it was not.
"Gotham's full of idiots and lunatics," Jude said, climbing the stairs. "The cowards are just the ones who've noticed."
He didn't look back.
"I got robbed," Jude announced, pushing the apartment door open.
Drake looked up from the newspaper. "Again?"
"Some guy stole my wheelchair at gunpoint. Because apparently it has a reputation." He dropped into a chair. "He chose the wheelchair over the wallet. In Gotham. In this economy."
"Your commute times are faster than ninety percent of the city's vehicle traffic," Drake said, without particular surprise. He checked his watch. "It's 10:14. You clocked out at 10:13 at the latest. Nine minutes including the robbery."
"Ten if you count the Banner situation."
"Clinton Banner was out there?"
"Apparently he's been riding Old Jack's bus looking for me. For a week." Jude leaned back. "He shot the guy's gun hand. Then told me I was a coward for not doing it myself."
Drake was quiet for a moment. "Did he actually do you a favor, or was he just in the area?"
"Genuinely unclear."
Drake set down his coffee, looked at the ceiling. "That wheelchair cost you three hundred points. The skill, the hardware, all of it."
"I know."
"Three hundred points and a week of record commute times."
"I know, Drake."
Drake went back to his newspaper. After a moment, he said, quietly, "You still made it home in nine minutes from Otisburg."
Jude stared at the wall. That was true. That was, somehow, a fact about his life now.
Somewhere in the East End, rainbow lights streaked through the dark.
"STOP! STOP THIS GODDAMN THING! SOMEBODY HELP—"
The voice dopplered past confused pedestrians and was gone.
The wheelchair showed no signs of slowing.
Next morning. Drake at the table with the Gazette and his coffee.
He was most of the way through the front section before a headline in the Metro column stopped him.
URBAN LEGEND CONFIRMED: 'WILL-O-WISP WHEELCHAIR' REAR-ENDS WAYNE ENTERPRISES EXECUTIVE
Drake read the article.
Set down his coffee.
Started laughing.