Adam had to admit—when it came to digging up information, Nygma was a machine. He'd asked the Riddler to find out about recently bankrupt companies and the military academy he'd been eyeing. In less than ten minutes, Nygma had pulled everything on his phone, printed it right there in the bar, and slid the pages across the counter like it was nothing.
Adam leaned over the printout, studying it with real interest despite still feeling beat-up from recent events. He pressed a hand to the list like it was gold and started laying out his plan.
Gotham still called itself an "economic hub," but compared to the shiny, booming Metropolis next door—with Superman on the welcome brochure—it was a joke. Investors flooded into Metropolis, convinced the Man of Steel meant their businesses were untouchable.
Gotham? Not so much.
If Darkseid or Mongul ever came knocking, Adam hoped this bunch of naïve executives would still be smiling.
The city's troubles went deeper. Once a proud industrial powerhouse, its pollution levels were already through the roof. Then came the new environmental laws, which shut down half the steel plants overnight. Even the Wayne family's old steel mills went cold.
Thousands of steelworkers lost their jobs, and now strikes and protests were as common as trash on the sidewalk.
The site Adam was visiting today was one of the casualties—a recently bankrupt building materials factory. It had specialized in construction steel frames, but with no new infrastructure projects in Gotham and raw material prices soaring after the mills closed, the owner had no choice but to shut it down.
Hundreds of employees were left unpaid. Negotiations over severance had gone nowhere, leading to the kind of noisy strike Americans did best.
When Adam pulled up in his police car, Deadshot riding shotgun, the scene looked tense. Dozens of men stood blocking the entrance. As soon as they saw the car, they stiffened, stepping forward like they were guarding a fortress.
They didn't trust him not to try seizing the equipment inside—especially since it was technically bank property now. If the owner never paid their wages, selling that machinery was their only bargaining chip.
Adam, who'd faced mercenaries and survived getting surrounded by a slum mob just days ago, barely blinked. A crowd of a few hundred wasn't going to make him nervous. In fact, his eyes lit up. He was here to pick recruits, and the line of broad-shouldered, muscle-packed workers looked like a buffet. He was practically drooling at the idea of molding them into his own unit.
A few workers nearest to him actually shivered, as if sensing some hungry predator focus on them.
Meanwhile, across town, Barbara Gordon was supposed to be at school. Instead, she had skipped out and wandered the streets, restless and irritable. She hadn't been the same since the incident in the slums—watching that "crazy Chinese cop" shoot people in front of her was nothing like comic book heroics. Seeing real blood, real death… it stuck with you.
Her dad, Commissioner Gordon, had tried to comfort her, but work always pulled him away. He'd left her to "process it" on her own, hoping time would fix things.
"What's the big deal about seeing a few bodies?" she muttered to herself. "The real question is… why did the person I risked myself to protect not thank me, but instead put all of us in more danger?"
Her mind kept circling back to the black kid she'd saved in the slum, only for him to blow their cover minutes later. If Batman hadn't shown up, it could have ended very badly.
And Adam—her father's so-called "promising detective"—had told her to her face: 'In Gotham, it's better to give up Metropolis ideals and accept the ugly truth of human nature. No one here is truly good.'
"Tch… Coincidence," she muttered. "My dad's one of the good ones. So are plenty of people here."
She wandered into Gotham's industrial district, near the polluted port. The sea here stank, foamed white, and looked diseased, but it was free to look at and quiet enough to think.
Until the noise started.
Raised voices drew her attention to a nearby factory. She followed the sound and blinked in surprise when she saw Adam—standing in front of a restless crowd of striking workers like it was his personal stage.
"What's he doing here? This isn't even Arkham District," she murmured, curiosity hooking her. Slipping closer, she kept to the sidelines to watch.
The workers had calmed from their initial alarm, but their eyes stayed hard, sizing Adam up. He didn't flinch. In fact, he smiled at them—calm, almost smug. It was exactly the kind of look that begged for a punch.
The tension in the air thickened. Some workers began chanting strike slogans. The energy was building, and Barbara felt her chest tighten. After what she'd seen in the slums, she knew how quickly a situation like this could snap. If it did, Adam would be torn apart before the first squad car arrived.
'Is this guy an idiot?' she thought.
Then Adam moved.
He stepped back, disappeared for a moment, and returned carrying an oversized suitcase. Without a word, he set it down in front of everyone and let it drop.
THUD
The heavy impact made a dull, solid sound—like the weight inside could crack the floorboards.
The workers instinctively moved closer. The latch popped open just enough for several hundred-dollar bills to peek out from the seam.
And just like that, every eye was on the suitcase.