Vico nodded, impressed. “A male host, huh? Yeah, when it comes to showing fear, exaggeration works sometimes.” She hadn’t expected Peter to pick up on it so quickly. He usually came off as bulky and unrefined, but when it came to screaming, he was just like any other guy.

  “Nice job, though, some of it was a bit much,” she pointed out, raising an eyebrow as she critiqued his performance. “For example, the scream. It went on a bit too long—too sudden. If the viewers have their volume up high, they’re gonna jump out of their seats. The pitch can be high, but dial down the volume a little. You don’t want to rely too much on post-editing, it's a hassle.”

  Peter was frozen in pce, still holding that same wide-eyed expression, unable to move.

  Vico approached him and gave him a gentle push. “Alright, get back to the van and edit the footage. I’ll teach you the rest ter. You look like you just saw a ghost.”

  She ughed lightly, despite the surroundings. It was true that the pce was littered with bodies, but ghosts? She didn’t believe in that nonsense.

  But then, a voice suddenly appeared behind her, as if whispering directly into her ear.

  “His expression isn’t because he saw a ghost, it’s because he saw me.”

  “!!!”

  Vico froze. She had been facing away from the deep end of the police station’s hall, oblivious to someone sneaking up behind her. In this kind of pce, in this kind of atmosphere, the only people who could still show up were murderers, right?

  Why was the killer still here after the gang hit? This wasn’t the usual MO!

  Vico’s heart sank. She guessed that there were probably dozens of guns pointed at them right now, which expined why Peter hadn’t moved an inch.

  “Vico Vali, I must say, I’m a fan of your show.”

  The voice was slow, casual, like someone drifting in and out of the air around her. But there were no footsteps—nothing to indicate where the speaker was.

  “Uh... hehe... well, that means everyone loves me, right? You love me too, don’t you? Please, don’t hurt me.” Vico let out an awkward chuckle, but inside, her mind was racing. Did she have a mafia boss or a psychotic killer fan now? Was this a trap? Were they trying to catch her and do God-knows-what?

  This kind of fan? She definitely didn’t want it.

  “Turn around slowly. I’ve got pns for some TV time.”

  Following the voice’s instructions, Vico turned around, but the moment her eyes adjusted to the sight, she froze, her expression mirroring Peter’s.

  Instead of the expected army of armed thugs, there was only one person, standing with his arms crossed and staring at them in complete silence.

  But that one person? Far more terrifying than hundreds of gang members. Because he was Deathstroke.

  It was Su Ming.

  Originally, they had pnned to steal their car while the two reporters were inside, but after hearing Vico introduce herself, he changed his mind. He had Cindy take Barbara around to wait at the car while he stayed to borrow both the TV station’s car—and the reporter herself.

  Even in this universe, Vico was a familiar face. She wasn’t just a pretty face on TV—she was a figure who had risen in Gotham’s media scene and caught the attention of every supervilin along the way. In a twisted way, her life had been charmed, almost as though she was the chosen one of her universe.

  From her earliest appearances in the DC comics back in 1948, she’d been Batman’s girlfriend—one of his many, but the only one who survived the era before Catwoman and Talia. Her luck seemed endless. Every supervilin treated her with courtesy. Anyone who wanted to deal with her ended up as cannon fodder, easy pickings. And she had no problem attracting Gotham's wealthiest—the likes of Bruce Wayne, who was just another stepping stone in her journey.

  Su Ming remembered the 1989 Tim Burton Batman film, where the Joker’s pn was to destroy Gotham and make Batman feel the pain. While everyone else scrambled to escape, Vico did the opposite—she went straight to the Joker for an exclusive interview. The Joker, intrigued by her, happily shared his pns, inviting her along to witness the showdown between him and Batman.

  Su Ming couldn’t help but chuckle as he remembered her lines in that movie, cpping like a child when the Joker showed off his bomb.

  “Mr. Joker, you’ve made such a beautiful thing! Oh, purple, I love purple.”

  Who was she talking about—the purple bomb or the purple-suited Joker? It was hard to say.

  Had Batman not stopped the Joker in the end, Su Ming felt like Vico might have ended up like Harley Quinn—falling for the madness, fully embracing the chaos.

  After that, she’d gone on to interview many of Gotham’s worst criminals, including the likes of Two-Face, but she’d always walked away unscathed. They all liked to talk to her, no harm ever came her way. The Joker even kidnapped every person close to Batman—except her. That alone remained one of DC’s great mysteries.

  And now, here she was, face-to-face with Su Ming’s counterpart from Earth-11.

  "Is this live?" he asked her.

  “No, we’re recording. Haven’t even started editing yet,” Vico replied, confused as to why Earth’s number one assassin was asking such a question. Was he trying to keep his whereabouts a secret? She quickly crified, “It’s just a recording.”

  Su Ming’s face remained hidden behind his mask, but he merely said, “I want it live.”

  He drew his gun, pointing it at Peter, though the question seemed directed at Vico. It was as if answering wrong would result in Peter’s death.

  "We don’t decide that. It has to be approved by the station," Vico replied quickly, waving her hands, as if she were trying to stop him from pulling the trigger. In her mind, she knew Deathstroke’s every move was calcuted—if he hadn’t killed her already, it meant she was safe, for now.

  “Fine. Let’s go back to the van. We have more people waiting.”

  Back at the van, Barbara and Cindy sat in confusion, watching as Su Ming ushered the two reporters out at gunpoint. Neither of them could make sense of his motives. Even Cindy had no idea. It felt as though this alternate-world version of herself had a completely different mindset from her own.

  Back inside, Vico, though surprised by the sight of two Deathstrokes, had no doubt about his identity—after all, there were still bodies everywhere.

  What was he pnning? She had no idea, but with a gun to her back, she and Peter quietly finished editing the footage, sending it back to the station.

  At this hour, Gotham TV station was practically deserted. Most of the midnight programming was just old movies looping automatically, or some boring infomercials.

  The news channel, however, still had to keep broadcasting 24/7. But in weather like this, what was there really to report? The meteorologist’s segment was the same every half hour—just a cycle of predicting more rain and gloom.

  Inside the control room...

  The director on duty received a tape from Vicky. She made a face, initially unwilling to even watch it, but this wasn’t a dictatorship—she couldn’t just ignore it, especially not under the scrutiny of so many eyes. She and a few editors reluctantly pressed py, and what appeared on the screen made them all pause in shock. It looked like Vicky had uncovered another major story.

  The director gritted her teeth. She’d pnned to report Vicky and her partner to the station manager tomorrow for hijacking the broadcast van. But now... If the station manager saw this breaking news, she wouldn’t be getting reprimanded—this could very well earn them a reward.

  “Damn it, you’re lucky!” the director thought bitterly, but she still handed the tape off to the editor with a resigned huff, signaling them to start writing the script for the live broadcast.

  It was almost 12:30 AM, the next news round was about to begin. The te-night host took a sip of water and got ready. It was like a factory assembly line—multiple studios, multiple hosts rotating shifts.

  Studio One aired from midnight until 12:27 AM. Then they had a half-hour break while Studio Two took over, running the program until 12:57 AM. The cycle repeated.

  To be honest, the midnight news had almost no audience, but he still had to force a professional smile—it was all about the paycheck.

  But as he flipped through the script, his eyes caught something—there was new information, and he’d be the one to break it on air. That was a small reward in the otherwise mundane grind, like finding a ten-dolr bill in your jacket pocket.

  When the red light fshed on in the studio, he fshed his brightest smile.

  “Welcome back to Gotham City TV’s news channel. We have breaking news: earlier this morning, a group of criminals stormed the Gotham Police Department. Both sides have suffered heavy casualties. The investigation is still ongoing. We now go live to our reporter on the scene.”

  The director gave an OK gesture, signaling that they were cutting to the recorded footage, but the host wasn’t letting his guard down. He kept watching the tape.

  The footage was chilling. It showed scenes of chaos. The police station had become a war zone—though such scenes weren’t uncommon in Gotham, seeing it happen inside the police station itself was a first.

  Pete’s camerawork was on point, capturing the horror in all its gory detail. Viewers, half asleep in front of their TVs, jerked awake at the sight of such brutality. In the stormy night, when most criminals wouldn’t dare show their faces, even the most bored viewers were now searching for something to shock them.

  “Director, Vicky sent in a live feed request,” an editor with a headset said.

  The female director clenched her teeth. Looking at the rising viewership numbers on the equipment next to her, she muttered a few words between gritted teeth:

  “Let her through.”

  The host nodded to show he understood and, after the video ended, the camera switched back to the studio.

  “We now have a live update from our reporter, Vicky Vale, on the scene.”

  The connection was made, but instead of the familiar smiling face of Vicky, the screen was filled with the bck-and-yellow mask of Deathstroke.

  “Hello, Vicky… wait, oh my God! It’s Deathstroke!”

  The host, who had been smiling warmly and prepared to speak with Vicky, froze. It was like someone had poured boiling water on him. He screamed and leapt out of his chair, stumbling backward until his back hit the wall. He couldn’t move any further. He was paralyzed with fear, like a child who had just seen something they couldn’t understand.

  But his eyes wouldn’t leave the screen. The bck and yellow armor seemed to draw all of his attention, like some magnetic force.

  “Hello, host,” Deathstroke said, tilting his head slightly, as if to greet him. Then, with a fervor that sent chills down the host’s spine, he shouted, “Good evening, Gotham!”

  Somewhere in the dark corners of Gotham, maybe, there was a madman watching the TV and saying, Good evening, Deathstroke.

  But the people in the studio? They weren’t in the mood to greet anyone. They were all frozen, like prey trapped in the gaze of a predator.

  Deathstroke didn’t care whether they had the courage to respond. He waved the gun in his hand, signaling Pete to zoom out for a wider shot. “As you can see, the Gotham PD is finished. But sadly, the box didn’t have the chocote I wanted. Heh.”

  The joke wasn’t funny at all, and the viewers—already on edge—could feel the tension rise in their chests. The camera zoomed out to reveal that Deathstroke was holding a gun to the head of a young woman, sitting in a wheelchair. She was trembling in the rain, eyes shut tight, shaking uncontrolbly.

  “This is Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Gotham’s police commissioner. Some of you may recognize her.”

  Deathstroke tapped the barrel of his gun against his helmet, making himself look even more deranged to match the terrifying image Gotham had of him. It only deepened the fear.

  “I’m looking for Commissioner Gordon,” he continued. “But another group has already taken him. Now, I have a message for them.”

  He took a few steps forward, getting closer to the camera, intensifying the pressure. “You better hand Gordon over to me. He’s my target, and I want him alive. If you don’t… no matter where you are in the world, I will find you. And one by one, I will kill you. I guarantee it will be… painful.”

  Then he shot Barbara Gordon.

  The poor girl fell from her wheelchair, her fate uncertain. Her body crumpled in a heap, lifeless, as the camera lingered on her for a long moment.

  Many of the viewers, tired of their dull, te-night TV programming, recoiled in disgust, covering their mouths in horror. The kind of terror that had gripped them after the Joker’s capture was now back, but it was different. This was something much darker, much colder.

  The camera panned back to Deathstroke. His gun was still smoking, and no one could deny that at such close range, he wouldn’t miss. Barbara Gordon was dead.

  “Anyone with information on these bck-cd men, or who knows where Commissioner Gordon is, please contact the TV station. They’ll pass the info along to me. I’ll grant a wish to anyone who provides a lead. Just tell me who you want dead, and they won’t live to see tomorrow. For a price, of course—a two-million-dolr reward.”

  “Oh, and one more thing,” he added, his voice dripping with menace. “TV stations, I want you to air my footage 24/7. If you can’t do that… well, the police station behind me is what your station will look like.”

  Pete switched to a close-up of the police station. The camera captured the brutality in all its shocking detail, as Deathstroke had requested. In the control room, the staff instinctively felt their faces repce the corpses on the screen, and they swallowed in unison.

  The signal cut out.

  In the studio, the host let out a scream. He ran around the room like a chicken with its head cut off.

  “It’s over! It’s over! Deathstroke’s coming for us! I want to go home! Home!”

  His panic was broadcast into millions of homes, but the people watching didn’t ugh. They sat in silence, feeling the chill of something unseen breathing down their necks.