Late night in Gotham, and the wind carried an unwashable smell of rust mixed with the musty stench wafting up from the sewers.
The two scents blended together, much like the city itself--a rotten foundation covered by a layer of rusty skin.
Chen Mo crouched on a rusty drainpipe.
The sandwich he had purchased with legitimate money this morning had long since dissolved into nothingness, and his stomach was currently engaging in an intimate and friendly friction with its own walls.
Where did he get the money, you ask?
Is your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, who wanders around every single day, not even allowed to pick up a few loose dollars?
Do you have any idea how much loose change flies through the air when bank robbers, armed gangs, or convenience store thieves pack cash into those ragged burlap sacks?
Chen Mo looked down and tried shooting a strand of web. The state of the substance emerging from his wrist was extremely half-hearted, hanging limply from the top of the wall like an overcooked noodle.
A severe lack of protein meant even his superpowers were starting to cut corners.
Cold, unfeeling program.
He cursed in his heart.
Even capitalism isn't as pragmatic as you.
I hate social Darwinism.
A sound came from deep within the alleyway.
It wasn't a scream.
He was used to Gotham's screams. The screams of a robbery were short and sharp; the screams of a brawl were laced with curses; the screams of someone paying protection money were the kind that showed resignation to fate.
This sound was different. It was deliberately suppressed, muffled in the throat, like the noise a small animal makes when its neck is stepped on.
Chen Mo's ears twitched.
This kind of noise made him uncomfortable all over, like fingernails scraping a blackboard, or teeth biting into sand.
And so, he slid silently down from the drainpipe.
A streetlight in the distance was half-broken, sizzling and spitting sparks.
In the flickering shadows, a burly man in a tatty leather jacket pinned a small, thin figure against the brick wall.
It was a girl.
Twelve or thirteen years old, with a dirty rag stuffed into her mouth. Her eyes were wide open, but there were no tears inside them.
It looked like she had resigned herself to her fate.
The burly man roughly tugged at her waistband with one hand, while his other hand pressed down on the back of her head, forcing her face hard against the cold red brick.
Chen Mo didn't waste words.
He lunged forward in a single stride, clamping his right hand onto the back of the man's neck while twisting the man's arm back with his left.
Crack.
The sound of a dislocated joint was as clean as snapping a dry twig.
Driving his knee into the man's lower back, Chen Mo used the momentum to press down. Two hundred pounds of fat crashed into the mud on the ground, splashing up dirty water mixed with motor oil.
The entire sequence took less than two seconds.
Perfect, cool, and highly practiced.
The burly man's face blew bubbles in the muddy water.
Chen Mo was just about to deliver a follow-up kick to completely crush any future physical desires this bastard might have--
"Don't hit him!"
A sharp scream rang out.
The tip of Chen Mo's foot froze in mid-air.
The girl sat slumped in the corner of the wall, frantically pulling the rag out of her mouth and gasping for breath.
She didn't run away. Instead, she crawled and scrambled over--not toward her savior, the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
The girl dived straight to the side of the burly man pinned in the mud, her emaciated hand reaching with precise accuracy into the man's jacket pocket, pulling out a crumpled roll of banknotes stained with unidentified smudges.
She gripped that roll of cash tightly, as if clutching the only rope left in the entire universe that she could still hold onto.
Only then did she shrink back.
"He gave me money." Her voice shook like a leaf, but there was a desperate, all-in recklessness in her words, as if she had thrown all her chips onto the table. "Don't hit him. We... we agreed on this. I need the money."
Chen Mo withdrew his foot.
He stood there, looking at the roll of banknotes in the girl's hand--crumpled, softened at the edges by sweat, and smeared with mud and a type of stain he didn't want to identify.
Then he looked down at the grimacing guy on the ground, who looked a bit familiar. He seemed to recall seeing this guy selling enhancers around here before. Finally, he looked at the prominent bruise on the corner of the girl's mouth.
This wasn't a robbery.
Nor was it a simple assault.
This was a transaction.
In Gotham, a perfectly normal transaction.
Chen Mo hoisted the burly man up from the muddy water, ripped off the man's leather belt, and skillfully bound those two fat hands behind his back with spider-silk.
He squatted in front of the girl, bringing his gaze level with hers.
"Tell me what's going on."
The girl's knuckles were white from clenching so hard, her fingernails digging into her palms. Tears welled in her eyes, but they just wouldn't fall.
She began to speak, her voice flat, like she was reciting a grocery store discount list.
Father.
Docks.
Cargo crates.
Broken leg.
The docks didn't care, because temporary workers in Gotham weren't even worth a blade of grass. Insurance was meant for the white-collar workers in Wayne Tower; worker's compensation was for people with contracts. Temporary workers had nothing; they weren't even considered "human."
Wound infection, persistent high fever.
The registration fee at a regular hospital was enough to feed the father and daughter for a month. The emergency room nurse took one look at their clothes and directly told them to go pay a deposit.
Five thousand dollars.
The two of them had never even seen what five thousand dollars looked like in their entire lives.
Small clinics wouldn't take him in. Those unlicensed back-alley doctors were shrewder than anyone, knowing that a poor person with such a severe infection couldn't be saved, and dying on the hospital bed would cost them a body bag.
Anti-inflammatory drugs on the black market were more expensive than gold, because the gangs controlled all the supply.
The only thing they could afford was the cheapest painkiller.
Not to cure the illness, but to keep her dad from screaming so much.
So he wouldn't disturb the "neighbors."
When the girl reached this point, she actually smiled.
On that red and swollen face, the curve of her lips was uglier than crying, looking like a piece of crumpled paper trying to flatten itself out.
Church.
Priest.
God loves the world.
But God doesn't hand out Amoxicillin.
Police.
When the police came to this area, they only brought guns, not medicine.