"The world's a stage but the play is badly cast." -Oscar Wilde
Money changed hands.
…Like it has for centuries. Millennia. Shells, furs, hides, gold, thin cotton strips stamped with former presidents…much and yet nothing has changed. And that is the sum of all man's evils: he is mortal, and desires much. It is the only explanation for all the senseless, irreparable atrocities of the twentieth century amidst those unprecedented decades of social advancement and equality. War. Genocide. Piracy…there is little, little that man will not do for money. For money he will turn a blind eye to poverty, cruelty, and acts of even the most heinous nature. For money he too, will join in, complicit, silent, or perpetrator….
Even Judas betrayed the Savior for merely thirty pieces of silver.
But this is Gotham City, not Palestine. But even here a man may be tempted by the feel of a fat leather wallet and the shine of diamonds in the night. Thomas and Martha Wayne lie cold and dead under the weight of dark earth in the old South Side Cemetary, their legacy, their kindness, their hope for Gotham no more than memory. Falcone rules the night, the Wayne heir is five years missing, Rachel Dawes has received her law degree, Professor Crane experiments in the basement of Arkham Asylum with a rare guggal compound extracted from a previously undiscovered flower from the snowy slopes of Bhutan, while thirty thousand dollars in cold, hard cash lie in an envelope at Father Benedict's breast.
The money…has changed hands.
It is 10 pm. October the 31st. Nineteen year old Maggie Kyle stands alone behind the gates of Sisters of Mercy, waiting in safety for the last bus. But she will never make it home. Here in the gateway to the House of God, a man will come behind her and place a knife to her throat, strip her clothes, ravish her brutally and beat her senseless with his bare hands.
It is now 6 am. They find her body, naked and spread, blue from hypothermia, lying still and silent in a shallow pool of her own blood.
It is 7:30 am. Maggie Kyle lies in the ICU ward of Gothem General hospital, her condition critical. Sergeant James Gordon and Arnold Flass are on the scene, telling doctors GCPD recommends performing a rape test. Vicky Vale stands outside the hospital grounds, chasing after the arriving SVU squad car, asking for a statement.
8 am. In the Narrows section of town, seventeen year old Jimmy Connolly wakes alone in his small flat. He has no television, no breakfast, and must borrow fifty cents for a newspaper from a passerby. Within seconds, pale, stringy vomit splatters to the pavement over the tops of his worn out Converse All-Stars. They are the only shoes he has and yet he must walk in them. 235 blocks.
...It is a long way to Gotham General.
It is 2 pm. Maggie Kyle's brutal rape and near murder are broadcasted on every television set in North America. Gordon and Flass watch sickened as they stand guard in Gotham General ICU, joined by a shaking young man who reeks of sweat, petrol, and vomit. He is quickly interviewed, labeled suspect. Yet two hours later the results of a buccal smear DNA swab test by SVU reveal he is neither her assailant nor her biological brother, as he claims. A call to Sisters of Mercy verifies he was raised in foster care with the victim from the age of eight.
4 pm. Sergeant Gordon convinces both GCPD and hospital staff to allow the foster brother monitored access to the victim's room. As far as investigation has shown, he is the only family she has.
It is 5 pm. From the White House press room, the President addresses the nation on the seriousness of hate crimes, promising stricter legislature will be passed. In Gotham City, Rachel Dawes states blatantly to DA Carl Finch that stricter laws will change nothing without judges willing to enforce them. From the Vatican, the Pope condemns this evil as 'a defiance against God'. The world is in uproar.
6 pm. Next to a man who enticed her with the promise of three hundred dollar bills, Selena Kyle lies motionless in a drunken stupor from the last night's activities, the scattered ashes of a still-smoking cigarette spreading from her slumbering hand.
The stage is set, the players moving. The script...will write itself.