Coming back up from the basement, Sde grabbed some extra ammo from the downed bck-suits—because, let’s face it, not every problem can be solved with bdes and batons.

  He stepped into the main hall of the police precinct and found Cindy waiting there.

  She stood silently, staring out at the rain-soaked darkness beyond the doors. The storm hadn’t let up—rain dripped from her clothes, streaming down into the building unnoticed.

  “Thinking about the end of the world?”

  Sde walked up beside her, his gaze following hers out into the murky night. The sky was a sheet of storm clouds, thick and unrelenting. The only light came from a single glowing bat-symbol projected onto the heavens.

  She was probably staring at the same thing. The bat emblem reflected off the lens of her tactical eyepiece.

  “Yeah. Why does our world have to be like this?”

  “No idea,” Sde said calmly. “I don’t want to die, but… I’m not scared either. I feel oddly at peace.”

  Cindy shook her head. Then nodded. It was hard to tell where her mind had gone. She stepped forward into the rain, extended a hand to catch the downpour—only to watch it slip through her fingers.

  “Ever since the military remade us,” she said, “we’ve lost the ability to feel fear. We don’t even respect life anymore. Guess that’s what weapons are meant to be.”

  Sde’s soul didn’t come from this world—he hadn’t gone through their “enhancement” programs. But he’d read enough comics to understand how that story usually went.

  The problem with Deathstroke wasn’t just his strength or reflexes—it was the brain. Nine times the processing speed of a normal person. Logic and reason smothered everything else.

  “Yeah,” he agreed, “but we’re not perfect weapons. The military left our emotions intact.”

  Cindy let out a dry ugh. “Exactly. That’s why they lost control of us.”

  There was bitterness in her voice—not just toward the military, but toward herself. She had left the service, sure. But the transformation was permanent. She still saw herself as a weapon. And she’d gotten used to others seeing her that way too.

  Just then, Barbara Gordon wheeled herself out of the hallway, struggling to navigate the stairs that led up from the basement. She froze when she saw them, unsure if she should ask for help.

  Cindy walked over and—effortlessly—lifted both woman and chair up the stairs in one smooth motion.

  Barbara was wrapped in a rain poncho, clutching her ptop tight. Her eyes were wary, filled with anxiety about her father’s fate—and uncertainty about what exactly Deathstroke and his people were pnning.

  The atmosphere here was… tolerable, as long as you ignored the bloodstained chaos surrounding them. So she did the only thing she could—she closed her eyes.

  Sde figured finding a vehicle would be easy. But when they stepped out into the storm-swept parking lot, it became clear just how wrong he was.

  Not only had the vans driven by the bck-suits been reduced to molten scrap, but even the patrol cars originally stationed here had been blown to pieces. Nothing remained but scorched steel frames, bckened by fmes. Rain drenched everything—no smoke, no fire, just charred silence.

  Clearly, the bck-suits hadn’t had backup. These weren’t remote-detonated traps.

  That left only one possible culprit.

  Cindy.

  Sde gnced at her. She shrugged.

  Yeah. It was her.

  She hadn’t had proper tech to scan for the signal jammer, so she’d made a guess—it was probably hidden in one of the vans. At the time, she hadn’t pnned on bringing Barbara along. Wherever she and Sde were going, a unicycle would’ve been enough.

  So she’d shot the gas tanks, one after the other. The explosions caught nearby police vehicles in the bst radius, leaving behind this parking lot graveyard.

  But it had worked. The signal interference was gone.

  Sde stepped toward one of the least-damaged cop cars. The second his hand touched the door, all four tires exploded off their axles, and thick smoke poured out from under the hood.

  “Not a single working car left,” he muttered. “Barbara, this pce have another garage?”

  He rinsed the soot off his hand with rainwater.

  Barbara shouted over the wind, “There’s a sub-level garage—but the door’s blown shut!”

  Before Sde could respond, something unexpected happened.

  A white news van came screeching around the corner and drifted to a dramatic stop in front of the station.

  It was completely spttered with mud and grime—clearly hadn’t just come from around the block. A radar dish sat crooked on the roof, and across the side in bright yellow letters were the words: GCTV1 – Gotham City News Channel.

  Sde tilted his head, fingers tapping the side of his helmet like he was stroking an imaginary beard.

  “I just got an idea,” he said.

  Several minutes earlier…

  Inside the van, a young, striking woman was touching up her makeup. Golden-red hair bounced as she swayed with the van’s motion. She fumbled for a compact mirror, narrowly avoiding stabbing herself in the eye with a lipstick wand.

  “Slow down, Peter! I am not dying tonight. I’ve got a date tomorrow!”

  A man’s voice shouted back from the front seat, barely audible over the storm hammering the windshield.

  “You’re the one who told me to floor it for the story! Now you want me to go slow so you can reapply lipstick? I’m your cameraman, not your boyfriend-ssh-chauffeur!”

  “Same difference. Are we close?”

  She puckered her lips in the mirror, trying out different smiles like a pageant contestant who couldn’t care less.

  Peter, the long-suffering cameraman, didn’t even flinch. He knew her well. She was the kind of woman who dragged him out of bed in the middle of a hurricane with promises of a “huge story,” then hijacked a company van to chase it.

  Gncing at the rain-blurred street, Peter started to question everything. If the station caught them stealing a van to chase some urban legend, they were both fired. No severance, no second chances.

  But that was just Vicka.

  The kind of woman who lived for the story. Slept? Never. Ate? Occasionally. Reported the news or chased it 24/7.

  Only Peter had the strength—and patience—to carry the camera and keep up. Not that he had much of a choice. She could sweet-talk or guilt-trip him into anything. Even on his day off.

  “Couple more minutes,” he said, squinting through the windshield. “But the water’s getting deep out here. Engine could stall any second.”

  Vicka stretched her jaw like an athlete warming up for a sprint.

  “Then don’t let it stall.”

  “What the hell do you think I’ve been doing?!”

  Peter used to think he was a calm guy. Polite. Soft-spoken. But after working with Vicka, he’d discovered a whole new volume range. Now he yelled like a man possessed.

  He took a breath, calmer this time. “You sure your source is reliable?”

  Vicka beamed. “Of course. Remember that blind homeless guy we interviewed a while back?”

  “You mean the one who called in a tip that a fast food joint was serving human meat in the back kitchen? The blind guy?”

  Peter steered the van around another waterlogged pothole.

  “Our producer stuck that piece in the comedy segment. I didn’t show my face for a week.”

  “But he was right!” Vicka crawled from the back into the front seat, eyes shining. “Batgirl found out the pce was turning people into sausages. Okay, it wasn’t a fast food joint—it was a undromat. And it didn’t have a kitchen—it had a garage. But the blind guy nailed it!”

  Peter gave her a sidelong look. “That’s the only reason I still have a job. But after that embarrassment, the studio director’s gunning for us. If we get caught stealing the van, she’s going to lose her mind.”

  “She can lose her mind all she wants—as long as we get the story,” Vicka said smugly, waggling a finger at him. “We nd the exclusive? Boom. We’re legends.”

  Peter rolled his eyes. Everyone at the station already thought she was a maniac. A talented one—but still a lunatic.

  Vicka cpped a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, you ever hear that blind people sometimes develop superpowers? Like, spiritual sight. X-ray vision. Prophecy. That kind of thing. I turned him into one of my informants. Paid him two hundred bucks.”

  “Oh great. So now our big scoop is based on a blind guy hearing things during a thunderstorm.”

  Peter wondered if it was too te to just turn the van around and beg forgiveness.

  “This time,” Vicka said proudly, “he didn’t see anything. He heard it. He snuck into the courthouse to get out of the rain. Said a few blocks away—from Gotham PD—he heard a massive firefight. Said it was like… ‘a rabbit with diarrhea.’”

  Peter’s face twisted in pure confusion. “What the hell does that even mean?”

  Vicka winced. “I don’t know. I think he meant it was really fast and constant. The point is, he’s got killer hearing. Scientifically proven. So it makes sense. Something big went down at the precinct—and in this kind of storm? That’s news, baby.”

  Peter mulled it over. She wasn’t wrong. If they nded this exclusive, the whole “borrowing” the van thing would be forgiven. Maybe even rewarded.

  The two of them exchanged a grin—like foxes sneaking into a henhouse, already dreaming of fame and bonus checks.

  The car rolled to a stop in front of the Gotham City Police Department. No need for words—both of them saw it. Twisted wrecks of police cruisers littered the street, bodies strewn like rag dolls in the pouring rain. Vic Valli knew right then and there—her 200 tip had been worth it.

  If this wasn’t breaking news, what was?

  Vic and Pete sprang into action, slipping into rain ponchos and shielding their camera and mic with waterproof covers. The rain was hammering down so hard that Vic had to shout to be heard, even over the mic.

  She gave her reflection a quick once-over in the car mirror, fixed her bangs beneath the hood of her poncho, and gave herself a little smirk of confidence. Pete gave her a nod from behind the lens—sound and video were good to go.

  Vic jumped out of the car, heels hitting the soaked pavement with a spsh. Pete followed close behind as she picked a spot for the shoot, choosing a particurly dramatic angle. Behind her: the skeleton of a burned-out car, nothing left but a bckened frame. Further back, the entrance to GCPD was blown wide open, and a dozen cops y on the ground like discarded sacks of meat.

  She gave Pete the signal.

  The red recording light blinked on. Showtime.

  “Good evening, viewers. This is your old friend, Vic Valli, reporting live from the front steps of Gotham City’s police headquarters. As you can see behind me… devastation.”

  Pete, a seasoned partner, knew her rhythm. He smoothly panned to capture the ruined cars, the broken bodies, the broken doors.

  “At this time, we still don’t know exactly what happened inside the precinct—but stay with us. We’re heading in to find out. And remember—this is a Vic Valli exclusive.”

  She fshed the camera a pyful wink, pointing at the lens like she was teasing a longtime friend. It was exactly this blend of charm and gallows humor that had made her something of a fan favorite in Gotham’s grim media scene.

  She strode toward the blown-out doors with Pete close behind, never once breaking stride or character. All the while, her expressions shifted like a master performer in front of the camera.

  “Oh my God… it’s a warzone in here!” she gasped, voice trembling with practiced fear, like a young girl who’d just spotted a monster under her bed.

  “Who are these men in bck?” she asked next, eyebrows knitting in a look of faux-confusion, the perfect investigative reporter digging for answers.

  “These officers… they fought to the bitter end. May they rest in peace. And may their families accept my sincerest condolences.” Her voice dropped into solemn reverence as she bowed toward the bodies on the floor. Theatrical, maybe, but professional. Gotham loved its drama, and Vic delivered.

  Her performance was Oscar-worthy. Among Gotham’s news anchors, she was in a league of her own.

  Once inside the precinct lobby, the scene only got worse. Blood was everywhere—thick, sticky pools staining the floor tiles, smeared footprints, and crimson handprints on the walls. Out in the rain, at least the downpour washed some of the gore away. In here, it was like stepping into a nightmare.

  Civilians and officers alike y dead in heaps. It looked less like a shootout and more like a massacre.

  “Oh God…” Vic whispered into the mic, dialing the fear back up. “Friends, I—I don’t know if the perpetrators are still here. But as a reporter, I can’t walk away from the truth. I have to find out what happened. If I don’t make it back—remember me. I’m Vic Valli.”

  Her face trembled with terror, but her eyes were steel—determined, noble, fearless in the pursuit of truth.

  Of course, she didn’t actually feel scared. One look at the scene and she could tell—this was cssic gang warfare. Mobsters versus cops. No serial killer lingering in the shadows. The shooters were long gone.

  But the drama? The ratings?

  This was going to catapult her right into the spotlight. Hell, with this reel, even if she ditched Gotham, she could probably nd a gig in Metropolis.

  Pete, meanwhile, looked like he was trying to mimic her on-camera energy. His expression was twisted into something like fear—but on his big, square-jawed face, it came off as comical.

  “Cut, cut, cut,” Vic sighed, lowering her mic. “Pete, I know you want to be on camera someday. But you’ve got to face facts… you just don’t have the right look for it.”

  Pete’s mouth hung open in an exaggerated gasp—trying again.

  Vic chuckled, shaking her head. “Seriously? That’s your terrified face? You look like you’re auditioning for clown of the year.”

  She crossed her arms, pyful but exasperated. “Male anchors have it way tougher than us gals. It’s brutal out there. But hey—we’re partners, right? Let me help you out.”

  She demonstrated slowly, deliberately—raising her brows, parting her lips slightly, exaggerating the expression just enough to be camera-ready. “See? You’ve gotta work those eyebrows. Tension. Then let the mouth open, just a little… subtlety, Pete.”

  The shoot was basically wrapped. Once they got back to the van, a quick edit and it’d be ready to beam back to the studio. That smug witch in the anchor chair wouldn't be able to say anything this time—Vic owned this story.

  Feeling generous in her post-scoop glow, she figured maybe it wouldn’t hurt to coach her cameraman a little. The network world was all about connections, and if you couldn’t get along with your own team, you were already screwed.

  Pete seemed to catch her meaning—but instead of following her cues, he went rogue. He shouldered the camera, wiped his eyes dramatically with one hand, and then let out a shriek so loud it echoed through the bloody halls.

  Vic blinked.

  “Okay,” she muttered. “That… was a choice.”