Leila's foot shifted from the brake to the gas pedal, letting her eyes roll to the top of her head as she held her phone against her ear. It was the same spiel she had heard dozens of times before, over the past year.

"Yes, Miss. Hawkin, we're just calling to remind you that your next payment is due on the twenty-fourth of this month, in the amount of four-hundred and seventeen dollars," said the cool voice on the other end of the call. "If you'd like to pay that now, I can do that for you over the phone."

Struggling to keep her voice level and her teeth from gnashing together in the back of her mouth, Leila took a deep breath in. "No, I..." she paused, scrambling to come up with some other, less embarrassing way of saying 'I'm broke'. "...I don't have time to do that right now, but I'm planning to make that payment on the first." There was a pause on the other end of the call, where Leila could hear the distant sound of long, fake nails tapping a keyboard.

"Alright, Miss. Hawkin, that's fine," replied the woman. "I just have to remind you that there will be a late fee of thirty-two dollars, which will be due at the time of the payment, okay?"

By the time the wheels of Leila's car bounced into the parking lot of firehouse 14, she was in ripe mood, nearly splitting the seam of her messenger bag as she yanked it from the passenger seat beside her, only to find that the strap had been shut in the door. With an irritated groan, she yanked hard on the material until it finally came free. Slipping the bag over her shoulder, she got out and walked quickly toward the building, where she could see Matt and Jay moving about under the bright lights of the ambulance bay. The sun had just set, leaving the sky above Gotham a fiery, gradually darkening pink. Matt looked up, having heard her approach, a frown wrinkling his forehead.

"Who pissed in your corn flakes?" he asked, upon noticing the sour, 'not in the mood' look on her face. From inside the ambulance, Leila heard Jay give a loud 'tut'.

"And you wonder why you have trouble keeping a girlfriend..." he grumbled at Matt, leaving Leila the perfect opportunity to walk past the boys without giving an answer, and enter the firehouse to put her bag in a locker. Over her shoulder, she heard Matt's voice as the door closed behind her.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

After stuffing her bag into a locker and donning her uniform shirt, Leila stepped back outside, tying her increasingly unruly hair into a ponytail. Much to her relief, the conversation between the guys was still going; her co-workers did not know how dire her financial situation was getting and she planned to keep it that way.

"You're insensitive!" Jay was explaining. "You should have asked her politely, 'What's wrong, Leila?'. No, you come out with, 'Who pissed in your corn flakes, bro?'. Damn, dude..."

When Matt's mouth opened quickly to shoot back a defensive answer, Leila finally stepped in, forcing a smile onto her face as she climbed up into the back of the ambulance.

"I'm fine, guys," she assured them, rolling her eyes when Matt tossed a hand, looking to Jay with his eyebrows raised as if to ask, 'see?'. "I was off in la-la-land. Must have just had a weird look on my face." She forced a laugh, hoping they would buy her story and not push her for further information. Across from her, Jay had just looked up from where he was stuffing a new box of gloves into a compartment, when the radio on his pocket gave a crackle. He groaned.

"God, I hope we don't have another night like we had last-"

"Building fire at Lanbrook apartments, on West and twenty-fifth," came the calm, male voice of the dispatcher. "All units report immediately. Building fire at Lan-"

As the voice on the radio began repeating the information, Leila, Matt and Jay all sighed in unison; smoke inhalation and burn victims were not the easiest way to start a long, eight hour shift. Jay clipped the radio back to his pocket before hopping down from the ambulance, to let Matt climb in and take his seat along the bench in front of the small window, while Leila sat in the jump seat. And as usual, within moments, the ambulance was moving, the sirens screaming to life atop it, the lights bouncing, reflecting against the windows of the passing buildings.

With her hands flexing within the confines of the blue latex, squeezing the air out, Leila glanced over to Matt, who had pulled a small book out from under the bench, and was frowning down at it in obvious confusion, his upper body swaying slightly with the movement of the truck as Jay took a sharp left turn. His gloved finger reached out, tracing something along the page, which prompted Leila to lean forward, stretching her neck to see what he was studying. A small map lay open across his legs.

"What are you-" she began to ask, but Matt interrupted, clearly having realized something. He looked up, his confused frown deepening.

"West and twenty-fifth is literally right on the line where our district ends and fifteen's begins," he stated, staring over at Leila. A rather pregnant pause followed his words, giving her a moment to wonder if this fact was supposed to be significant. When he did not immediately continue, she shrugged.

"So?"

"So why are we being called to it?" he asked. "Wouldn't it be House 15's call?"

At this, Leila shrugged again, leaning down to pull an oxygen tank out from a stowaway compartment, along with a bag of disposable breathing masks. "It's an apartment building fire," she answered. "They probably need both of us out there. I wouldn't be surprised if other teams show up too."

From Matt's silence, he seemed to understand what she was saying, but from the half-frown clinging to his face, it certainly appeared as though he was still thinking the situation through. Leila withheld a groan of annoyance at this. Why did it matter? This was their job and if they had been called out to a scene, they were to go, no matter what district it belonged to. Part of her really wanted to remind him of this, but the other, larger part of her was just happy that he had finally dropped the nonsense about the Joker. So she let it go and instead, pulled the heavy bag of equipment toward her, in preparation to get out once the ambulance came to a stop.

As the doors to the truck swung outward into the night, the heat from the blazing apartment building was instantly tangible, mingling with the humid summer air and rushing into the cool, air conditioned cabin of the ambulance. Leila and Matt wasted no time in climbing down, and were joined shortly by Jay, who they soon saw was accompanied by a fireman from their own district. His sooty, faded yellow helmet was tucked under his arm as he pointed at the building across the street, where upon glancing up, Leila could see great flames licking the brick, spilling from the broken windows. The fireman's voice was hoarse and strained as he spoke loudly over the sound of approaching sirens and shouting.

"I've got a team inside the building now, searching for residents but we've done a head count against the manager's list of tenants and we think we got everyone out," he explained. "The team from fifteen already took a few people with burns over to GMH, but I've got more. Standby."

As the fire captain ran off toward a nearby group of huddled residents, Leila set the bag of equipment down on the floor of the ambulance, opening it quickly to search for bandages and burn ointment, while Matt jumped up into the cabin to wheel forward the tank of oxygen. He was attaching a long plastic tube to a mask when he spoke, hopping down backwards onto the pavement beside her.

"Something about this seems off to me..." he commented, glancing over his shoulder as if expecting to find someone there eavesdropping. Leila remained silent. "I mean...a blaze this bad, right on the border between our district and-" At these words, she finally opened her mouth to interrupt, but was cut short when the fireman reappeared, an older man at his side.

"Guys, he's got a pretty bad burn on the palm of his hand here," he informed them, ushering the victim forward. Leila and Matt glanced down at his hand, but did not let their gazes linger there long when the man gave a deep, hacking cough. Leila reached out with a comforting smile as she guided him to the step of the ambulance, and she was about to request that he send the other victims over when the fireman suddenly let out a groan. "Oh, great. The fire marshall is here..." he grumbled, but Leila was no longer listening and had instead turned her attention fully to the man seated on the step of the ambulance.

"Are you burned anywhere else?" she asked him, leaning down slightly to gaze into his face, where soot and sweat had mixed to form a black grime along his temples. He shook his head, holding out his hand with his palm facing upward, giving another rattling, dry cough.

"No, I-" he began, but glanced down to accept the oxygen mask from Matt with his uninjured hand. "I heard the alarms going off, so I ran to the stairwell, but-" Again, the man paused, to bring the mask toward his face, to take a deep breath of the flow of oxygen. He exhaled slowly, in an effort to prevent himself from coughing again. "When I reached out for the handle, it was so hot that-" His hand was trembling as he extended it, revealing a long, horizontal burn mark across his palm, where the skin had already begun to blister. Leila held back a hiss of pity as she gently unfolded his fingers to flatten his hand.

"I'm going to clean this with some peroxide," she explained, motioning from the mask to his face. "You keep taking deep breaths." As the man obeyed her, placing the oxygen over his nose and mouth with his free hand, Leila reached into the bag of equipment for the squeeze bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a stack of gauze pads. She held up both items so he could see them. "This might sting a bit, but if it gets too much, just let me know and I'll stop." The man nodded, closing his eyes wearily as he breathed deeply and evenly.

Leila was squeezing a thin stream of peroxide onto the gauze when Matt suddenly appeared at her side, his hand placed gently on the shoulder of a woman as he guided her to sit on the step beside their burn victim. He locked eyes with Leila for a split second before returning his attention to the trembling woman when she let out a horrible cough, just like the one the man seated next to her had given. Matt wasted no time in hooking up another mask to the regulator, slipping the strap gently around the back of her head.

"Can you tell me what happened?" he asked her in reference to the small cuts on her face, but Leila tuned their voices out, focusing her eyes on the palm of her victim's hand, where she dabbed the pad against his blistered skin.

It seemed that the man was either too exhausted to react or could not feel the vague stinging of the peroxide beneath the pain of his burn as he remained mostly stationary, keeping his hand extended for Leila to treat his wound. Her fingers were light, barely touching him as she dabbed burn cream along the inflamed area, though as she did this, the woman seated in front of Matt spoke, reaching up to pull the oxygen mask away from her nose and mouth. Her head turned toward the burn victim, attempting to see him around Matt's arm as he applied strips of sterile bandages to the cuts on her forehead.

"Did you hear what they were saying, Ross?" she asked him, giving a short cough. Leila wondered if these two people had been neighbors before their homes were destroyed. The burn victim, who she now knew as 'Ross', shook his head, pulling his own mask away from his face.

"No," he answered hoarsely. "What are they-"

"I heard one of the firemen talking about how they think it's arson," the woman said. Leila felt Matt glance over at her, but she ignored him, keeping her eyes trained on the white bandages she was currently wrapping around Ross' hand. "They don't know for sure yet but they said the blaze was so hot and started so quickly..." Her words faltered as a few tears managed to well up in her reddened eyes. "They think it was started purposely."

Leila could not ignore the pang of heartache she felt for these poor people, how sorry she felt about the loss of their possessions, though she could not let her actions or facial expressions reveal this. She was there to do a job and felt that it was her duty to remain stoic and helpful, but kind and patient. Ross' hand had been successfully bandaged, so Leila took a half-step back, leaning down slightly to make eye contact with him. His eyes had become watery, swimming with unstoppable tears, but Leila looked past these forcefully to put a gentle smile on her face.

"I've got your hand clean and dressed, but I want to advise you to go to the hospital to be checked out by a doctor, to be sure there won't be any lasting damage from the smoke," she informed him, nodding her head downward toward his chest and allowing her smile to expand encouragingly when she noticed his eyes widen slightly in apprehension. "Though if you're breathing well on your own right now, which you are, I think you'll be fine. Just make sure to see a doctor so they can double check, alright?"

Ross nodded, pulling the oxygen mask away from his face as he lowered his head to look at his bandaged hand, the gravity of his movement causing those gathered tears to spill over and down his grimy, streaked cheeks. Unable to help herself, Leila reached out to place her hand on his shoulder, listening as he cleared his throat and shook his head, clearly uncomfortable with crying in front of a woman he'd never met before.

"Um..." he hesitated, his voice croaking slightly in the effort of hiding his tears. "Wh-where am I supposed to...go? My apartment-"

Here, Leila cut in, to spare the poor man the embarrassment of struggling to find words to describe his devastating situation. She smiled warmly, hoping the expression was making its way to her eyes and reading through them in the most genuine way possible.

"Go get a hotel room tonight," she told him in the kindest, most sincere voice possible. "The city will see about getting you relocated until the whole mess is sorted out, but for tonight...go get yourself a suite. Order room service and relax," Finally a watery, somewhat broken smile reached Ross' face, and he nodded, standing up from the step of the ambulance. But before he could walk away, Leila raised her eyebrows and pointed her gloved finger at him in a mockingly stern sort of way. "But I'm serious about that doctor. Go to the hospital first thing in the morning, understand?"

Over the next several hours, the team managed to treat the remaining victims to the best of their abilities, urging them to go to the hospital, but otherwise releasing them, seeing how none of their injuries went beyond small burns, cuts and coughing from the smoke. It seemed the first team to arrive, the EMS team from Firehouse 15, had already carted off the more severe burn victims, which left Leila and the two guys with nothing they could not handle on their own. The apartment building across the street now stood as a smoldering wreckage, dripping, hissing and steaming as the last of the flames were doused and the fire trucks began to disperse one by one. Leila could not keep her eyes from gazing sadly over at the dwindling huddle of newly homeless residents, and she jumped, startled from her dazed stare as Jay appeared next to her.

"They'll be alright," he assured her in his permanently calm, even voice. "The fire marshall is putting them up in a hotel for the night until arrangements can be made at another building. He said the investigation will start first thing tomorrow, once they're sure it's safe to go in." Leila nodded somewhat distractedly, pushing a wayward strand of her hair behind her ear.

"Good, that's...good," she answered, taking a deep breath and turning to look up at him.

"Where are we headed now? Are they done with us?" she then asked, glancing to her right when Matt rounded the corner of the ambulance, stripping off his gloves as he approached.

"Yeah, they said we're done," Jay lifted his right arm to glance at his watch. "It's already almost ten. I figure we could run over and get a cup of coffee?" he asked rather hopefully, his eyes darting between Leila and Matt, who both shrugged. "Haven't gotten another call yet so we could just wait it out, try to ride the clock until midnight."

The vote for coffee was unanimous, so after double checking that their services were no longer required, the team loaded up the gear and departed, leaving the scene of the fire behind them.

It came as no surprise that the inside of the Starbucks coffee shop was bustling and crawling with people, despite there only being one hour left before closing time. The outdoor patio on the corner of the block was nearly overrun with loud teenagers, laughing, enjoying their sugary, highly caffeinated coffee drinks, leaving a huge mess in their wake. Leila spared them a somewhat annoyed scowl from the corner of her eye as she walked past, struggling to remember Matt's complicated coffee order.

The door leading into the shop opened, held that way by an older man. Leila slipped past him as he exited, muttering a barely audible 'thank you' as she squeezed her way past several people crowding the small bar, all struggling to put cream and sugars into their coffee. With her eyes trained on the registers, Leila stopped at the back of line, where two young women stood in front of her, staring up at the menu board and conversing in low voices. Matt's order was leaking steadily from her brain so she tried to tune the girls out, to focus on remembering what he had asked her to order.

"Small...no, grande...is that medium? Mocha with...wait, he wanted it cold, right?"

"Yeah, mom called me earlier...asking about everything that's been going on," one of the women was saying to her companion. Leila folded her arms, taking a step forward as the line decreased by one.

"He did want it cold...so a medium mocha with...skim milk-"

"Everything that's been going on?" the girl's friend repeated in question form, turning quickly to glance behind her. Upon seeing that it was only some random paramedic who was most certainly not listening, she continued, shifting her gaze onto the side of her friend's head. "You mean with the Joker-" Leila's internal mantra of Matt's order ceased immediately, her attention honing in on the hushed conversation in front of her as though it had been drawn there by force. The blonde of the two girls rolled her eyes.

"Yeah," she answered. "She asked me if I wanted to move back home...She doesn't think it's safe for me here."

Leila struggled not to let out a snort. Honestly, what were the chances of this one girl being in serious danger from the Joker? He hadn't been seen or even heard from in over a week. It really seemed as though Jay had been right in thinking the maniac had moved on and she figured it was only a matter of time before Gotham got word of an attack on another city...Perhaps New York or Chicago or...

Finally, with the two girls moving on down the counter to wait for their drinks, it was Leila's turn to order. She stepped up to the register, glancing up at the menu board out of habit, while the barista in front of her stood there with her eyebrows raised in impatient anticipation. Leila let out a rather nervous laugh as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

"Um...Can I have a med- I mean grande mocha with...uh-"

"It's skim right?" Matt asked, reaching out for his cold drink as Leila passed it to him a few minutes later, handing him a green straw along with it. She nodded, taking a sip of her own iced coffee while Jay laughed, staring down at Matt's chocolate drink with a disapproving eye.

"That's such a girly drink," he told him. Leila grunted an appreciative laugh at Jay's barb, but did not catch the response from Matt as her eyes followed the two girls onto the patio across the sidewalk. She could not help but wonder if they were still talking about the Joker, what they were saying if that was indeed the topic of their conversation. The tip of her green straw dug into her bottom lip as she absentmindedly rested it there, letting a vague, dismissive snort pass through her nose. Those girls were silly, she thought. That girl's mother was downright stupid to think her daughter should move back, after all, the Joker did not know her name...He did not know where she worked, what she looked like, or even cared that she existed. Leila on the other hand...

No, she told herself for the one thousandth time that week. Yes, he might have known her name but what difference did that make? It was the same argument from days past and she could not bear to think through it again. Mercifully, Matt had obviously heeded Jay's warning and had been careful not to mention the name of the Joker in her presence, for which she had been immensely thankful. However, that left her with an awful lot of quiet time to do one of two things- either psych herself up or talk herself down. Luckily, she had gotten exceptionally good at settling herself down from these paranoid ideas about the Joker hunting for her and was starting to push the thought entirely from her mind. Just another day or two more, without a single mention of the terrorist on the news and she should be past it completely.

"I get nonfat milk 'cause I don't wanna end up like you, Tubby," Matt's voice pulled Leila's attention from the girls on the patio, to the ambulance, where Jay was jumping down from his seat on the passenger side of the cab, to pat his flat stomach proudly.

"You better hope you end up like me at forty years old," he answered with a smirk. "I'm the picture of middle-aged health, so-"

At that moment, a soft crackle came from the pocket of Jay's black pants before all three paramedics glanced at their watches simultaneously. '10:47', barely over an hour before their shift was set to end.Leila sighed while Matt groaned and Jay pulled the radio out, holding it up so the team could listen to the quiet voice of the dispatcher.

"Possible suicide attempt on 17th and Westfall avenue, priority two, code three-"

Jay sighed, tossing his almost empty coffee cup into the trashcan on the curb while Leila and Matt leaned into the cab to set their own drinks in the cup holders. As they walked to the back to climb inside, Leila shook her head rather gravely.

"Just figures we would be so close to being done, then get called to one of these," she said, her mind reflecting to only a few months ago when they had been called to a similar situation. A young man had attempted to hang himself in his parents garage but had only managed to dislocate a vertebrae. That same young man was now confined to a wheelchair permanently, paralyzed from the neck down. Matt nodded his agreement, slamming the doors shut to take his usual seat.

"I hope this guy isn't as young as Jake," he murmured, his voice barely audible beneath the scream of the sirens. Leila looked over at him, studying the side of his face for a moment, remembering how affected Matt had been by that call, how he had gone back to the hospital the next day to check on the teenager. At the time, she had wondered why that particular instance had moved him so much, but after a while, she came to realize that it did not matter. When it came down to it, Matt was a good guy and the fact that he still had the ability to feel deep sympathy for their patients was one of the things Leila liked about him. She remained quiet for the time being and instead spent the ride to the scene preparing the large bag of supplies.

It was not long before the ambulance was coming to a stop, and as usual, Leila and Matt were the first to get out, their eyes greeted by the flashing lights from two police cars. The vehicles had formed something of a makeshift barrier from the rest of the street, where a small crowd of onlookers had started to gather on the opposite sidewalk. One of the officers approached, but Leila's eyes were drawn to the victim a few yards away, laying sprawled on his back, his legs bent into unnatural positions, clearly broken. Her stomach clenched uncomfortably; there was something about the thought of falling from a great height that unnerved her more than just about any other circumstance.

"Glad you guys got here fast," the policeman was saying over his shoulder as he led Matt and Leila toward the man on the ground. There was a small card in his hand as he held it up to read from it. "John Markenson, lives up on the third floor in apartment 305. We think he jumped-"

Kneeling down at John's head, Leila pulled the penlight from the pocket of her uniform shirt and clicked it on, lifting the unconscious man's left eyelid to draw the line slowly across his pupil. A drop of hope seeped through her when the black circle dilated then retracted normally. Glancing up at the officer standing over her, she asked, "Has he been moved since you guys found him?"

"No, ma'am," he replied, shaking his head and taking a step back to allow Matt room to crouch next to the victim. "We left him how he is...afraid we might make somethin' worse if we touched him."

Leila nodded, thinking wildly to herself that it was good thing this officer had followed his training, as it was highly possible that this poor man had broken his back or neck, and both legs. If not done properly, moving him even the smallest amount could have killed him. At John's abdomen, Leila watched as Matt pressed gently with a flattened hand on the rather large mound of his stomach, while flicking the skin with his opposite hand. The chest piece of his stethoscope was pressed underneath his flat hand and Matt frowned in concentration, listening to the sound of his thumping. After a few moments, he removed the stethoscope from his ears, shaking his head.

"I don't hear any blood in the stomach or lungs, but-" Matt began to explain, but his next words were cut short when the victim, John, gave a sudden groan, his eyes flickering open.

"Wh-where..." he mumbled, his chest beginning to heave as the pain from his broken body seemed to set in. Leila leaned over his head, using both of her hands on either side of his face to keep it still and prevent him from doing more harm to himself by panicking.

"John? Can you hear me?" she asked, her voice raised slightly. The officer standing overhead walked away from them when his radio let off a burst of static but Leila ignored this, thankful that he had moved; waking up in great pain with a police officer standing over him might have given John a reason to struggle. The victim let out a helpless sort of whimper as he closed his eyes. Leila spoke again, in an effort to keep the man conscious. "John, can you hear me? I need you to keep your eyes open, alright?"

"He...He's still up there," John's voice was raspy and cracking. Leila glanced over at Matt, who looked up from his place at the victim's feet, his face mangled in a confused frown. The sound of wheels across asphalt told them that Jay was approaching with the stretcher, but she did not take her attention from where it was focused on the eyes of her patient.

"John, who's up there? Is someone hurt in your apartment?" she asked him calmly, shifting back from the man's head so Jay could move in, keeping her hands in place on either side of his face to hold him steady. His eyes started to drift shut again. "John, stay with me, okay?"

As Jay knelt at her side, Leila shook her head. "He said something about there being someone else upstairs in his apartment," she said, lifting her gaze to glance at Jay. He rose to his feet, reaching out to hook his hand beneath the straps of the large equipment bag.

"I'll go up," he said purposefully, but Leila was already standing, shaking her head.

"No, I'll go," she stepped in, nodding down at the heavyset, unconscious victim on the ground. "I think he broke his back and legs, so you'll have to help Matt lift him on the plank. I don't want to jostle him and risk paralysis." Jay nodded, reaching down to pull the radio out of his pocket and hand it, along with the bag of equipment, to Leila.

"Alright, call down if you need someone and I'll get the team from 15 out here," he told her. Leila nodded, turning her back on the scene to walk across the sidewalk and into the building, where the noise and flashing lights ceased at once. She blinked, glancing around at the inside of the lobby, suddenly feeling as though she had fallen deaf from the rapid change in environment. Taking a deep breath in through her nose, she moved swiftly toward a door to the right of the elevators, which opened inward to a long, tall set of stairs. She began to climb, taking them two at a time, her heart already racing as she imagined the carnage she was about to see.

Over her time as a paramedic, Leila had seen some rather gruesome things; rooms with blood spattered against the walls, massive pools of the thick, red substance in which a victim lay, already dead or rapidly approaching that state. She had seen both men and women with missing limbs, or eyeballs, half of their heads blown away. She had even been unfortunate enough to witness a man whose tongue had been cut out of his head. So with all of this experience under her belt, Leila felt as though she could handle whatever lay beyond the door to apartment 305.

At the third floor, she turned from the stairs and moved toward yet another door, opening it quickly to step out and glance both ways down the hall to either side of her. Going up the stairs had twisted her bearings, making it necessary for her to check the numbers on the doors of the apartments to decipher which way she would need to turn. To her right stood apartment 301, and on her left, apartment 302. She turned in the appropriate direction and began following the pattern in the musty carpet toward the end of the dimly lit hallway, struggling to ignore the way the hair on the back of her neck had just risen.

The building was hauntingly quiet, the only sound being that of her shoes along the floor and the clanking, jingling noise of the equipment bag bouncing against her leg. White doors slid past her as she walked, and her eyes followed each one, counting the numbers.

303...304...305...

At the door bearing the correct numbers, Leila stopped, turned to face it and glanced down at the knob, only for a frown to crease her forehead as she reached out for it. The door and frame were not completely touching, the deadbolt was not locked, but the apartment beyond seemed completely and totally silent. Leila's hand had frozen in midair, inches from the metal knob of the door and as she stared down at it, she watched as her fingers curled slowly inward toward her palm, as though her own body was reacting instinctively, negatively against this particular threshold. A moment later, an impatient snort escaped through her nose as she imagined Jay and Matt downstairs, awaiting her call on the radio to report whether or not help was needed upstairs. She forced her hand toward the door, pushing it open slowly, to take a half-step inside the short hallway, and then knock on the wood.

"Gotham City fire department," she called into the seemingly empty apartment.

No answer came. The hair all along her arms began to raise as her heart sank; perhaps she was too late. Perhaps John Markenson had already killed the person here before he had attempted to take his own life. Perhaps Leila was not about to find a living victim, but instead a dead body. From the way goosebumps had risen along her skin, it certainly seemed that way, as something malevolent hung through the air, a heavy, dense sensation that she only felt around a dead body. She urged herself further into the apartment, ignoring the kitchen to the right of the short hallway, to continue until she found herself standing in a small living room. Her feet stopped there as she glanced to her left, into a dark, empty bedroom. The bed was still made and undisturbed.

Her apprehension was becoming almost overwhelming as Leila's frown deepened, her gaze shifting over to the far wall of the living room, where two sheen curtains had been drawn across a large, floor to ceiling window, the flashing lights from three floors below somewhat visible through them. They were still, no breeze moving them, and curiously, she approached, her heart racing as she reached out to very gently shift one of the curtains away from the glass, parting the strips of material from one another. Her chest gave a sharp pang of surprise and slight dread; it was a sliding glass door, leading out onto a patio, and it was locked from the inside. It was most certainly impossible for the broken man on the pavement below to have done this.

That was when it hit her. The scent of gasoline, filth and a foul stench reminiscent of death came upon her. It seemed to steal the very breath from her lungs as it clouded her senses, raising the hair along her arms, chills slithering up her spine as though a cold hand had just grabbed the back of her neck. Her eyes had frozen on the glass pane less than a foot from her face, though her vision shifted, from looking through the transparent surface, to staring into it, into the reflection of the once supposed empty room behind her. The door to the apartment had closed, silently, sometime over the past minute, and now, in front of it, stood the Joker.

He was like a grotesque statue, a remarkably solid ghost, his head lowered, his acid green hair spilling down and around his face in lank strands. The air was thick with his malice, the room seemed to throb with demonic energy and as Leila slowly turned to face him, her grip faltered, dropping the bag of equipment to the floor beside her. She felt dizzy, almost sick with dread as the Joker stood to his full height from leaning against the door, licking his crimson lips as he cocked his head to the side. A horrible smile formed a crack in his painted face.

"Hello there."

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A/N: Yes, yes, I know...I've left you with a horrible cliffhanger. BUT HAVE NO FEAR! The next chapter is coming soon! It will be well worth the wait, trust me... Leave me your love/hate if you really want the next chapter! -QoM