Chapter 8

Batman handled the situation in the Upper West Side before driving the Batmobile to this location. By the time Gordon arrived at the abandoned building with a group of freed officers, he saw Batman—minus his cape—emerging while hauling a securely bound Joker.

Many police cars with flashing lights were parked in the open space outside. Gordon stood at the front, frowning as he watched the Joker. Once Batman drew near, Gordon asked, "Any casualties?" Seeing the Joker being brought down and Batman’s lack of urgency, he gathered that the situation was under control.

Gordon lit a cigarette, ignoring the visible bruises on the Joker's face. The chaos caused by the Joker had left him exhausted. It was nearly four in the morning, and the combination of sleep deprivation and constant rushing gave him a pounding headache that only nicotine could soothe.

Batman gave a slight shake of his head. "The hostages were injected with sedatives; they need to be sent to the hospital."

In Gotham, ambulances always followed police cars to the scene—it was standard procedure. Whenever the precinct worked overtime, the hospitals followed suit. Medics climbed out of their vehicles to assist officers in moving the hostages. As for the others knocked out by Robin and Batman, no one had the time to check on them; a quick glance to ensure they were alive was enough.

The tall, dark-clad man standing nearby was missing his cape. Having heard the explosion as he approached, Gordon guessed what had happened. "Are you alright, old friend?"

Batman shook his head, though in truth, his side—shielded from view—had been corroded by strong acid; he had only applied emergency treatment. Just then, Robin appeared, shouting as he approached, "B! I found a child!" His cape was pulled up against his chest, forming a heavy, bulging bundle.

Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't be this agitated, and he would simply hand a found child over to the police.

Their eyes met. Robin held the child, carefully pulling back his cape to set her on the ground, but she was so unsteady she would have fallen. Robin had to pick her up again. He lowered his voice. "I found her in a dead-end two blocks away."

She looked no more than seven or eight years old. Her half-closed eyelids trembled constantly, and her face was unnaturally flushed—clearly, she was ill.

Both Batman and Gordon saw it: the child wore thin pajamas stained with dust and was barefoot. With the nighttime temperature hovering at only a few degrees and a biting wind blowing, she had likely been outside for a long time. Her exposed limbs were frozen to a bruised, purplish hue; a fever was inevitable.

But Robin had brought her, and there was perhaps another issue. Robin said, "Sorry, maybe I’m phrasing this wrong, but I’m serious... there’s something wrong with her."

"I mean, psychologically or mentally."

As Robin, he had been trained by Batman in many fields, including psychology. From the moment he saw her, he recognized the problem.

He had followed his intuition to that corner. When he pried off a rotten wooden board, he found her—she was staring with dry eyes, devoid of any emotion or expression, as hollow as a doll. Even while suffering from a high fever, she hadn't said a word, nor did she show any desire to be rescued.

If no one had come, she would have stayed there until she died.

That was the state she exhibited. It wasn't that Robin hadn't seen people struggling with mental illness, but she was so young—she shouldn't be like this.

Robin couldn't accept it, so he brought her to Batman. "Whose child is she, B?" Once he knew the answer, he would want to do something about it.

Gordon spoke first: "No need to go through him to take the long way around." He was well aware of where Batman’s intelligence channels came from and how many privacy rights he violated. Hacking into the police database wasn't a one-time occurrence—it was all illegal, not to mention he was standing right there.

He gave Batman a warning look. "Use the police system to check. If we can't find anything, then we'll hand it over to you."

In fact, the information of the general public—including many special individuals—was already entered into the GCPD system. If the little girl's identity couldn't be found or if something was suspicious, then it would be appropriate for the vigilantes to step in, rather than bothering them with every little thing.

He took off his coat and draped it over the little girl. Seeing this, a female officer walked over with a blanket and took the girl from Robin's arms. Gordon ordered, "Take her to the hospital to break the fever. As for her identity, run a facial recognition scan first, and check recent missing child reports. We'll see if we can get anything out of her once she wakes up."

That was thorough enough. By the time Gordon watched the officer carry the child away and turned back, both vigilantes had vanished.

Gordon took a deep breath, tossed his nearly finished cigarette aside, and walked into the abandoned building to assess the situation. As for the disturbance of the scene by the coming and going of personnel, the first group of officers to enter had brought cameras; once they returned to the station to rest, they would study the site properly.

...

By the next morning, the child's fever had broken. In the hospital, she remained unresponsive to everyone and every question. She showed no desire to eat, lacked interest in toys that usually appealed to children, had difficulty focusing, was emotionally void, could not express her own wishes, and refused to communicate with the outside world.

Based on everything she displayed, she was like a "star child"—an autistic patient.

Although she hadn't shown a desire to eat that morning, she accepted being fed. Afterward, a simple pediatric assessment was conducted. She was 1.21 meters tall and weighed 19.6 kilograms, showing clear signs of malnutrition and developmental delay. She ignored all other tests, providing not even the slightest response.

Her autistic symptoms were severe; there was almost nothing in the outside world that could capture her attention. Doctors and nurses tried many things, but in the end, they were helpless.

By the afternoon, the female officer who had brought her to the hospital the night before bought her a set of clothes at her own expense. After changing out of her hospital gown, she took the girl to the station. She looked at the child with gentle pity. Before they set off, the "boys in blue" at the precinct had already been informed of the situation.

An autistic child in a place like Gotham—without a good family background—one didn't even need to think to know how she would be treated. First, her relatives might not have the money or the time to try to cure her, and there were no fully effective drugs for autism. If the family that produced her was even worse, she would simply be abandoned, or worse, sold off.

Yes, sold.

Every year in Gotham, human trafficking cases broke out. Either she would be taken for research in labs that violated all laws and humanity, or she would be "collected" by people with special fetishes who sought women or children with specific characteristics. To some, an autistic child might just be a doll they could do whatever they wanted with.

James Gordon looked at her and sighed, telling the female officer to bring her along. They walked into a file room. An officer at a workstation was rummaging through papers. Hearing footsteps, he didn't even look up and said, "If it's not important, go to the next room."

Gordon said, "It's me."

The officer looked up, rubbing his face apologetically. He saw the female officer and the child beside her. The expression on his face was hard to read—perhaps having worked overtime since last night, he was unable to form any expression other than the instinct to finish his work.

His voice was dry and airy, but with a strange, eerie calm: "Give me ten minutes, or my brain is going to explode."

Whenever something big happened in Gotham, the officers were always the busiest and the most prone to sudden collapse. Gordon was clearly aware of this and didn't force his subordinate to prioritize this specific task; he just gave a reminder. But before walking out, he asked, "Do you want to take a break and swap with someone?"

"Buddy, the whole station is filled with the walking dead." Anyone else would be in the same state.

In reality, his rummaging through the files might have been a ruse; after all, bending over to dig through a cabinet was a way to squeeze in a nap. If he went to rest now, he would have to get up in two or three hours to continue the "living dead" performance. Taking these little breaks actually kept him slightly more alert.

The situation at the Gotham precinct was chaotic; there were even people sleeping in the interrogation rooms. Gordon’s office had been given to exhausted officers to rest in, so they had to stay in the lobby.

Once they were seated, Gordon looked at the child, seeing her obviously numb, listless eyes. She avoided eye contact; her pupils seemed unfocused, lacking any point of focus. She wasn't interested in anything, sitting there with her head bowed, immersed in her own world.

Perhaps even her own world was completely empty.

She refused to perceive, refused to respond. Even with Gordon's experience in raising his own daughter, Barbara, he hesitated and ultimately didn't speak to her.

He wasn't a rigid, old-fashioned man; he sometimes had unconventional thoughts. He wondered if such children might not need help from others at all, but the adults in this world always wanted the world to run according to their own thoughts and understanding. Unusual children were considered "sick," and that was how they enforced conformity.

Adults stubbornly insisted that being closed off was bad, so even children born with that disposition had to change, so they could "adapt to society" when they grew up.

Adapt to a society built on rules set by adults.

Gordon was sometimes well aware of the injustice and filth, but these realizations were fleeting. Returning to reality, he was still struggling between the law, government credibility, and the vigilantes. He knew who was corrupt and who was truly pursuing justice, but he represented the former, and could only try his best to cover for the latter, hopelessly wishing that this city could truly change for the better.

The female officer, Nevia, was the one who had spent the most time with the child. Sitting beside her, she heard the faint sound of breathing in the noisy environment. The girl's presence was so low; she wasn't loud or disruptive like other children her age that she knew. She was quiet—so quiet she seemed like a doll.

Nevia spoke as if talking to Gordon, though she didn't seem to expect a response. "She’s too young. I still hope to find her biological parents. She needs to live and grow up under their care."

"You know, an orphanage could never take good care of her. It's impossible."

Gordon replied, "You're right."

Because the child had black hair and green eyes, to unscrupulous criminals, she was a "rare commodity" that would be popular—especially since those eyes weren't a vague color between blue and green, but a pure, valuable green.

They sat dryly in the police station lobby, with almost nothing to say. After more than twenty minutes, the officer from the file room walked over with a missing person registration form and a few printed documents.

Gordon took the paper documents first to look at the name of the reporter who had filed the missing child case a day earlier:

Arthur Sanchez Damon.

His missing daughter was named Megan Chris Damon, eight years old. The photo of the missing child he had brought was a second-generation copy, yet the original photo’s poor resolution was still visible—it was even black and white. In the blurry image was a little girl with dark, short curly hair, a few years younger than she was now. Their expressions were equally dull and vacant.

In the recorded transcript of the report, his speech was incoherent. Even without looking at the descriptions written by the officer in parentheses, one could tell he had been extremely panicked. He had repeatedly said his daughter was sick, that she would be persecuted and kidnapped, and that he would surely lose her.