Chapter 1

This was a room where pain had no voice. In the white-tiled silence of its walls, his every step echoed like a bombastic blast of fireworks. Now, he wished he'd never accepted the job. But the scrunched up bills the man had showed into his palm had been too damn tempting. There were three other men in the room –thugs, ex-cons, drifters by the looks of them, and then a fourth, a spindly young man with a clipboard. Jake glanced at him.

Looks like the kid's gonna shit himself soon.

The clipboard trembled in his hands. He looked like some kind of doctor type, scrubs and all. They carried the last black body bag into the room and opened it. Female, bald, black bruises under her eyes. Nosebleed. That's as much as Jake cared to know or look. He moved to the other side of the room and leaned on the white-tiled wall.

"The son-of-a-bitch can't stomach a bit of blood." The man, who'd thrust the scrunched up bills into his palm at the bar, sneered. He called himself Tom something.

The doctor type kid moved around and removed the tags from their wrists with scissors, reattaching knew ones. The old ones littered the floor like confetti. Then the kid took out his little suitcase and opened it. Jake saw four knives and two guns.

"I-I need someone to help me."

Tom pushed Jake from the wall. The force rammed him into one of the metallic examination tables. His bare hand brushed the skin of the dead woman.

"I've gotta a volunteer for you."

Jake couldn't refuse. The doctor kid handed him a gun. "Okay," his voice shook like a bad radio transmission. He walked to the first table. The bag revealed an old man, bald, blue bruises on the face, swollen neck. Jake swallowed. The cheap half-cooked pasta he'd had at one of the Italian joints that had sickly neon lights and chipped, moldy paint welled up in his throat. Some half-assed tune from a pasta sauce commercial kept cycling in his mind. The kid picked up the new tag he'd attached to the man's wrist and read aloud, "John Doe, 38, gunshot wound to the chest." Jake held the black piece of metal. The kid looked at him, as though he expected him to do something.

"Gunshot wound to the chest," he repeated slowly and looked at Jake and the gun.

After he was done with all three, he vomited on the floor. Red pasta sauce splattered on the white tiled wall. Their faces hadn't shown any pain. Silent, soundless. The room was quiet again, save for the shuffling as the rest of the hired hands moved the bodies outside. The kid's voice echoed in his head.

Jane Doe, 29, multiple stab wounds to the neck and stomach. John Doe, 38, gunshot wound to the leg, stab wound to the neck. Jane Doe, 25, multiple stab wounds to the chest, blunt force trauma to the head.

He focused on the carefully pronounced words that made this fucked up shit sound like some kind of fancy experiment in whatever fancy ass college the kid has graduated from. He arched his back and in a wave of nausea another bucketful of vomit hurled from his mouth. He dropped on his knees and placed his head on the floor. The scrunched up dollars dropped out of his pocket and soaked up the stomach fluid.

Amid the half-digested pieces of tomato and spaghetti, he saw a green wrist band, one of those things the kid has cut off the dead woman. Sandra Cross, 29, leukemia, clinical trial group 2. She'd become Jane Doe, 29, multiple stab wounds to the neck and stomach, after he'd punctured her body several times with the knife the kid had given him. His body shook with revulsion. He pocketed the wrist band and picked up another one. Light blue. Richard Park, 38, leukemia, clinical trial group 3. The last one had skidded behind the cupboard. Jake crawled under and examination table and wedged himself between the cupboard and the wall.

Suddenly, he heard three gunshots. The kid screamed. A fourth gunshot. A truck revved. The door opened and the sound of boots ricocheted off the walls.

"Where is that son-of-a bitch?" Tom something. Looking for him. He saw the boots move around the room. Another batch of vomit splashed into his mouth, but fear kept him quiet. He heard the truck engine. The boots. The sound of a gun hitting the metal tables.

"Boss, we gotta go. The cops might be here any minute." One of the goons had survived. Just go, take your fucked up shit and go, Jake pleaded.

"Cops don't come here, you asshole." Tom something barked. "She's not gonna be happy we let one live." Tom something made a few rounds of the room throwing the tables over.

"What she ain't gonna know, she ain't gonna be angry at," he finally said, picked up his gun and shot the goon. "Can't have you telling her I let one son-of-a bitch slip away." The door was slammed. Jake heard the truck drive away. He leaned his head on the wall, banging it against the cold, white tiles and cried.

Maybe it had been days. Or hours. Or weeks. When he finally exited the white tiled room, he found himself on the loading dock of a warehouse, a rundown piece of crap someone should've razed to the ground a long time ago. The sky was the colour a badly done purple paint job with a few specs of light. Fucking stars in the fucking sky. Their beauty made him cry.

Maybe twilight, maybe dawn. He didn't give a fuck about anything else, but the fact that his lungs inhaled cold pure air and city exhaust. The hum of cars and buses, ambulances, cops, the exhausted smell of commuter-packed subways, all that in the distance. He ran his fingers- sticky from pasta sauce vomit- on the plastic wrist bands in his pocket. Their names, narrated loud and clear in the stuck-up voice of the kid, whose body he'd passed in a nearby alley, plunged deep into his consciousness like heavy stones falling through water. He owed his life to the little plastic things.

She had followed him from the warehouse to the abandoned subway station in the Narrows. Always keeping, a few yards behind his worn out blue hat and vomit-stained coat. The gray dawn prevented her from seeing his face, the street-hardened brick of a countenance that had born every disappointment with the same stoic nonchalance. Only, the eyes, filled with gratefulness and tears as they scanned the fading stars above. He turned left and descended the stairs onto the platform. She followed. Her flat sneakers didn't utter a sound as she made it down the battered steps and walked up behind him. He was smoking the remnants of some cigarette butt he'd picked off the asphalt, lazily sucking in the calming nicotine. She imagined the molecule dissolving in his bloodstream, erasing the pain and fear that the night's experience had brought. As slickly as a cat stalking its prey, she clasped her gloved hand over his mouth and pushed her gun into his side. It wasn't loaded. But he didn't know that.

"Shh," she whispered into his ear as he trashed around. "I'm not going to hurt you. I just need to know everything that happened at the warehouse tonight."

She reached her car at around 7 am, the wrist bands in a ziplock tucked into in the pocket of her windbreaker. The man had been happy to part with them after she'd flashed a bunch of hundreds at him. She took the bag out and placed it on the passenger seat. Precious evidence. In the car, she tossed the black clothes into a plastic bag and changed her sneakers into a pair of high heels. It was absolutely necessary to keep the two faces of her life and the people who knew her as either the Gotham socialite or a fucked up avenging shadow from the streets from being mutually acquainted. She turned on the Gotham Central Radio to shatter the silence and took deep breaths, just like Sandra had told her to do when the pain took over. Too bad she'd left her painkillers at home. As she drove on Interstate 979 toward Gotham Center City, the morning news, accompanied by the cheery tune, came on.

This is Mark Stratton and you're listening to GCR's Morning Headlines. This morning the scientific community was shaken by the announcement from Dr. Clarissa Redmont, senior project leader at Redmont-Bell Industries. The Redmont lab has concluded a series of successful five-year clinical trials concerning a pioneering anti-leukemia drug Primdon. The drug will be approved for use in the next two months. The spokesperson for Redmont-Bell industries called Dr. Redmont's discovery a pioneering effort in the use of plant-derived cytotoxins in the battle against leukemia.

She smashed the button to silence the voice. Successful clinical trials. Sure. Too bad they'd neglected to mention the body count the company had stacked up while 'pioneering'. She glanced at the clear bag and the names on the wrist bands inside. Sandra Cross, Richard Park and Elaine Green didn't fit into her definition of successful.