The Long Easter (5)

"First, I want to tell you that, just as you guessed, your hideout has now been completely sealed, like a can."

"And the oxygen inside a can is limited. How many people do you have in there now? Hmm? I’d guess at least twenty?"

"With that many people, the oxygen currently in the can will only keep you alive for three hours at most."

"You thought you had hidden this hideout very well, but we discovered it long ago."

"And just as you guessed, this was a premeditated trap. Now, I’m going to play a game with you."

"An oxygen pipe leads into this can, but the outlet supplying the oxygen has been hidden inside the walls. You must dig through the walls yourselves and find that pipe. Otherwise, after three hours, all the oxygen will be depleted."

"Owls need to breathe too, don’t they?"

The fingers of the woman in the bird-shaped mask began to tremble, but the voice on the radio had not stopped. Everyone heard him say, "Don’t fantasize about your companions or the Assassins you trained coming to save you. Judging by the thickness and hardness of the ice surrounding you, no person or machine will be able to dig their way to you within three hours."

The recorded voice began to rise and fall, echoing endlessly through the conference room, darker and more terrifying than the nursery rhymes spread by the Court of Owls.

"Once, you stood atop Gotham City’s skyscrapers and looked down upon all living things, watching suffering people dig through the earth for food to fill their bellies."

"Later, you hid underground, looking up at countless pairs of scarred mortal feet hurrying about in desperate pursuit of survival."

"And now, you will experience what it feels like to use your own hands to win a chance at survival."

They heard the voice on the recording soften, even becoming somewhat gentle, like someone talking in their sleep. "…My little birds, dig. To obtain even a trace of the most ordinary, contemptible air, dig until your fingers break."

"Or use your deaths… as a sacrifice for Gotham’s resurrection."

After the voice fell silent, someone in the conference room finally could not take it anymore. A masked man, trembling all over, hurled the recorder to the ground. The others watched his frenzied action in silence.

"…Do we really have to dig?" The female voice trembled slightly as she said, "There aren’t any tools here. How are we supposed to break through these walls…"

"We’re already trapped. If we don’t dig, we’ll suffocate to death!"

"But what if he’s lying to us?" said an elderly voice.

"But if we just wait here, we’ll definitely die! This is a carefully designed trap. They won’t let us go!"

"Do you expect me to claw at those bricks with my fingers?!" another man shouted. Then he stood up, waving his somewhat pudgy arms. "I am one of the Thirteen Jury! And I’m one of the most senior members! So is my family! All of you go dig! I order you to!"

The others rose to their feet and refuted him. Someone said, "My family is the richest now. You should be the ones digging!"

Someone else said, "The strongest people should do the digging!"

"Why should I do it?"

"This is all your fault! You should go!"

"You too…"

In the gap between their arguments, silence suddenly descended for several seconds.

Clearly, someone among them had thought of an easier way to prolong their life than digging through the walls.

Inside an office at the Gotham Police Department, everyone was silent. Gordon shivered and looked at Schiller. "I don’t think the Court of Owls is actually the biggest problem. The serious issue is…"

"You couldn’t possibly have planned this all along, could you?" Victor also turned to Schiller.

Schiller rolled his eyes. "I was bluffing them. Who knows which backwater corner they hid those secret bases in? How could I possibly go to such lengths to lay an oxygen pipe for them?"

"Enough about that. The next step is haggling. Detective Gordon, I remember you said there were a few gang bosses who were especially difficult to deal with and loved negotiating terms with the police?"

"Don’t even mention them." Gordon rubbed his temples. "Just thinking about them gives me a headache."

"Fine, then them it is. Have them take turns arguing with the Court of Owls. Tell them we’ll raise their final compensation by five percent."

"Hiss…" Gordon sucked in a breath. "The Court of Owls is going to be stripped bare!"

Then Gordon clicked his tongue and said, "I still feel like you planned this from the beginning."

"Do you want to hear a fairy tale?" Schiller smiled and winked.

"There was a flock of little birds with golden feathers. The poor birds carelessly fell into the Hunter’s hands. They begged the Hunter for forgiveness and were willing to pluck out their precious feathers in exchange for being spared…"

Schiller abruptly changed the subject. "What are you planning to eat for Easter?"

He answered his own question. "As for me, I’m having roast chicken."

One night passed. The next morning, news that Gotham had suffered an enormous terrorist attack made the front pages of every major newspaper.

Mayor Roy wept bitterly at the press conference as he condemned the casualties caused by the terrorists. At the same time, he accused the Federal Government of failing in its security obligations, calling Gotham "the abandoned city."

Pictures from the disaster zone spread everywhere: collapsed buildings, ruined streets, flooded Shops, and frozen cars. The Court of Owls became cruel terrorists reviled by all.

All sorts of confusing news reports emerged one after another, and casualty estimates grew more and more exaggerated. They went from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, until eventually, half of Gotham’s citizens were said to be either dead or injured.

Oddly enough, charity drives began even faster than disaster relief efforts. Every major newspaper published donation channels, and Gotham held dozens of charity dinners in the week before Easter.

On a cold weekend morning, reports on the desk in the city government office fluttered in the breeze from the window.

The thin sheets turned one after another, the figures steadily climbing. Finally, a seal came down on them with a crack. Roy raised his hand, passed the report to his subordinate, and said, "Happy Easter."

As his words fell, the branches outside the window began to grow. Tender green shoots unfurled from the joints of the branches, and the largest reconstruction project in Gotham’s history began.

Previously, Gotham’s redevelopment had basically been a matter of patching whatever was broken. If there was an empty lot here, they built a warehouse. If there was one there, they opened a station. It gave the Gotham University professors who studied urban planning endless headaches. This patchwork method of rebuilding was actually the least effective approach, but at the time, there had been no other choice.

This time was different. After a wave of flooding followed by a wave of freezing, the expansion caused by water turning into ice had cracked most of the ground surface. Without repairs, traffic would become completely impossible.

Even those unwilling to see their territory redeveloped had no choice. The roads were damaged so badly that people could barely even walk on them. If they did not participate in the reconstruction, they could only stay home and wait to starve to death.

Things had come to this. Since everything was already ruined, if they wanted to keep living there, they had to repair it.

Overnight, Gotham’s unemployment rate almost fell to zero. Labor was needed everywhere: rebuilding sewers, repairing roads and collapsed houses, and constructing new logistics facilities according to the new plan…

It sounded unreasonable. There would be no output in the short term, yet the organizers had to pay massive labor costs. The initial investment required was astronomical.

But thanks to the Court of Owls, which had already been plucked clean, those unfortunate people locked up in that wealthy joint organization had tearfully pulled out every last feather to save their own lives, providing abundant funding for Gotham’s reconstruction plan. Even without short-term profits, it could still continue.

With money and manpower in place, the reconstruction plan proceeded very smoothly. And the underground ice layer brought more than one benefit.

Gotham was an East Coast city with a humid monsoon climate and distinct seasons. Winters were cold, and summers were hot.

Normally, by April, temperatures would have risen noticeably as summer began to arrive. But the immense underground ice layer changed the local climate, dropping Gotham’s average temperature by more than ten degrees and returning it to early-winter levels.

The citizens of Gotham City found this climate very uncomfortable, and colds had become common over the past few days.

But some people had been looking everywhere for a place to escape the heat.

Not every part of the East Coast had Gotham’s distinct four seasons. Some places were very hot, already blazing with summer heat by April. To escape it, people had to travel farther north, and now Gotham had become the closest low-temperature city to them.

Of course, they did not dare come to Gotham for tourism. But Gotham’s climate change affected nearby regions as well, such as Bludhaven. For a time, Bludhaven’s tourism industry actually flourished.

Bludhaven was nearly knocked senseless by this windfall.

It was only a small city. Being too close to Gotham, it had few outsiders and remained relatively undeveloped, with plenty of natural rural scenery. Unlike Gotham, it was not overcast and rainy every day.

After Gotham’s climate changed, Bludhaven enjoyed bright sunshine during the day and cool breezes in the mornings and evenings. It was exceptionally pleasant, attracting quite a few tourists from nearby cities.

Because Bludhaven was so close to Gotham, much of Gotham’s news reached it immediately.

But what those tourists saw was not a terrifying city full of murders and daily bloodshed. All the news coming out of Gotham could be summed up in two huge words—short-handed.

As mentioned before, Gotham had many local residents, but they had been idle for too long and their work efficiency was abysmal. Even with full employment, there still were not enough people to rebuild such a huge city.

Though Gotham was a major metropolis, it did not have many migrant workers. In this era of comprehensive infrastructure upgrades, labor shortages had become the greatest obstacle to efficiency. The major gangs were desperately searching for workers, even offering high prices to hire outsiders.

As the saying went, a big forest had every kind of bird, and wherever there were many people, there would always be a few who were not afraid of death. There really were several people willing to risk their lives to come work in Gotham.

It was not entirely for the thrill. The gangs’ offers were simply too high. After all, the money had been plucked from the owls, so no one felt bad spending it. The gangs kept raising wages, and payment was made daily. It was hard not to be tempted.

After arriving in Gotham, outsiders discovered that the city was not quite what they had imagined. They had thought it was a place of daily gunfights and zero-dollar shopping, but once they got there, they found that Gotham had order.

Compared to other regions, Gotham was certainly strange. Its guardians of order were gangs: hardline in attitude, violent in methods, full of ideas, and completely unhinged. But violent order was still order.

When the entire city entered a feverish atmosphere of working together to make the pie bigger, many of the shortcomings of violent order were concealed, while its advantages became astonishingly clear—efficiency and stability, for example.

Using the word "stable" to describe such a city sounded absurd, but it was the truth. Outsiders found that the order constructed by the gangs was actually very stable, at least when funding was abundant and everyone had work to do.

There was no shortage in this world of desperadoes willing to risk their lives for money. News that Gotham had money to be made spread quickly, and many such people began moving at the scent, hoping to try their luck there.

As more and more outsiders poured in, Gotham’s internal situation began to draw attention and discussion. The veil of mystery around this city of sin was gradually lifted, and the city began appearing in major media outlets and newspapers.

Many believed it was a savage land where people drank blood and ate raw flesh. Some thought it was a criminal capital where evil bred. But more people saw in those reports about Gotham a chaotic yet prosperous super-metropolis.

The gang bosses drove luxury cars, smoked cigars, and scattered stacks of banknotes from rooftops. Rock singers performed heavy metal amid the rain of money, with chaotic, dazzling graffiti behind them. Neon lights reflected off the endless traffic, while crowds screamed madly by the roadside…

Just like Schiller, people began to realize that this was not only a city of crime, but also a city of genius; not only a city of evil, but also a city of art.

No city in the world possessed Gotham’s absurd and bizarre sense of beauty. It was fertile ground for performance art, a paradise for misunderstood madmen.

Many people even found resonance in that temperament. They began trying to deconstruct the origins and current state of this unique city, only to be infected by the madness overflowing from it and become spiritual residents of the city of sin.

Artists worshipped madness, socialites cried out for freedom, fools lived absurdly, and clever people amassed fortunes. Gotham’s chaos bred countless utterly different souls. Nowhere else were people so distinctive.

As this temperament gradually became recognized, Gotham’s image changed from a wicked city of fallen humanity into the root of evil, carrying a hint of divinity and mystery.

It was hard to say whether this was a good change, but at least it was a change.

This shift in its outside image brought other changes as well. For instance, the phones at Gotham University’s admissions office began ringing nonstop. Some young people pursuing rebellion and novelty started adding Gotham University to their list of schools.

But Gotham University’s teachers had little time to answer questions. Frozen Gotham had naturally affected the university’s teaching facilities too, especially the cracked roads, which were a massive headache.

Large areas of the campus square and athletic field had cracked, leaving students unable to use them. The foundations of the teaching buildings had been damaged, turning them into unsafe structures overnight. No one dared enter. Classes came to a temporary halt, and no one elsewhere could spare manpower to help, so teachers and students could only do the work themselves.

Almost all the planned pre-Easter activities were canceled. One corner of the cafeteria building had collapsed, so there was no question of organizing any dinner. Everyone seemed to have forgotten Easter. At that moment, all of them were focused on rebuilding the campus.

Schiller led several students quickly down the corridor to the door of a large classroom. After he pushed it open, the students saw him and hurriedly shouted, "Professor! Here! We can barely hold him down!"

Schiller walked over. Several students were restraining a male student who struggled wildly, continuously flailing his arms and shouting. Foam spilled from his mouth as he convulsed, looking exactly like someone suffering a psychiatric episode.

Schiller said, "Subdue him first, then carry him into the car and take him to the hospital."

After following the car to Arkham Asylum, Schiller received another call before he could examine the student. Victor said from the other end, "Someone in Dormitory Building Two has had another episode. She seems to be a sophomore girl. What exactly is going on?"

"It may be an aftereffect of getting caught in the rain. I need to conduct a detailed examination. If there are any more cases, send them directly to the hospital."

After Schiller hung up, he went to the male student’s ward. Through the observation window, he saw the student shrinking fearfully toward one side of the bed, constantly shouting meaningless syllables. Schiller shook his head and said softly, "Something is wrong with these symptoms…"

He called Victor. "Have these students come into contact with anything recently?"

"Didn’t you say it was from getting caught in the rain…"

"These symptoms are different from rain exposure. Though both involve convulsions and agitation, there are differences in the details."

"Come into contact with something…" Victor sounded deeply confused. "I’ll ask around for you. These two students aren’t in the same class… Oh! Wait! What did you say? Damn it… Another person has had an episode! Where is he? Take me there, quickly…"

Then, while running, Victor said into the phone, "Another student has had an episode. Once I find the common factor, I’ll tell you…"

That’s today’s ten thousand words!

Recent new subscriptions have dropped by a quarter.

I’ve realized that DC really does have fewer readers than Marvel.

But I’m still going to write DC.

I love DC.