Shiller quietly stared at the phantom in the room. He knew it wasn't happening in the present. Like other Batmans in this cosmos, Little Bruce had lost his parents when he was young, so Martha Wayne couldn't possibly be here.
Shiller had also wondered why room 1905 was special. Now, it seed that ti needed to be traced not just 20 days back, but perhaps even 20 years.
Martha in the room wore a silk nightgown, apparently just after a bath, and was applying skincare products. As she walked barefoot by the bed, the expression on her face was both weary and somber.
As she turned around, Shiller discovered that Martha was pregnant.
It seed to be about five or six months along, because Martha was quite slim, so her belly appeared particularly large. If nothing unexpected happened, inside was probably Little Bruce.
Shiller flipped through the mory bank in the stream and found that Little Bruce had ntioned that being chosen by Nya was not as simple as it seed; all etings were reunions after a long separation.
But why her?
Shiller could not discern anything particular about Martha; at least, the woman before him seed to be a normal person without any connection to the mystic world.
Shiller looked closely again and noticed Martha's complexion wasn't good. Although he didn't know much about gynecology, he could still tell that Martha was ntally exhausted and tired, indicating this pregnancy wasn't going particularly well.
But that seed unlikely. She was married to Thomas Wayne, and in the "Gotham" TV series, Little Bruce was the couple's only child. How could Thomas possibly let anything go wrong with his wife?
Shiller thought again and felt it was inappropriate for Martha to be here. Already heavily pregnant with bad complexion, Thomas probably couldn't have Alfred take enough care of her, let alone let her co to the Wayne Hotel alone.
Martha continued pacing around the room. The skincare on her face had dried, yet she kept applying more. Shiller observed obvious symptoms of anxiety but couldn't analyze what she was anxious about.
Martha ca to the bed and sat down. Although only a fignt, Jero and Shiller still made room for her. Martha sat blankly on the side of the bed, and Shiller suddenly noticed that an alarm clock had appeared on the nightstand.
The alarm clock was also a phantom, because the alarm clock from room 1905 was now in his possession, but the one in this fantasy looked exactly like the one he was holding, which could well represent its appearance in the past.
Martha picked up the alarm clock and started adjusting it. Shiller saw the current ti was just past 8 p.m., and Martha set the alarm clock for midnight.
Her expression was distracted, and her actions with the alarm clock were absent-minded. As she tilted her head to the side, two strands of hair got caught in the slit of the battery compartnt of the alarm clock, revealing the origin of the two strands of hair in the alarm clock Shiller held.
Martha finished setting the alarm clock and lay down to sleep. She slept very restlessly that night, waking up frequently and then looking toward the side of the bed, but there was actually nothing there.
At midnight, the alarm clock rang, but it wasn't the sound of the elevator; it was just a common alarm tone. Martha was suddenly startled awake and painfully turned over to sit up.
She walked toward the door.
Jero and Shiller were both sowhat surprised—a pregnant woman running out of the hotel room in the middle of the night, what could she be up to?
Unfortunately, since the monster in the room seed to have no effect outside the room, Martha's figure completely disappeared after she left the room, and nobody knew where she went.
Shiller had a vague premonition but couldn't be sure. Just then, the door leading from the living room to the bedroom opened, and Cobblepot, carrying an umbrella and covered in blood, walked out.
His expression was also scattered, hinting at a sense of collapse after excessive exhaustion. Shiller had anticipated this, following Cobblepot with his gaze as he threw himself into a chair in the bedroom where he then sat rigidly.
Shiller and Jero, in perfect unspoken agreent, didn't look towards the living room; they didn't need to. Even those not very experienced could guess from the blood on Cobblepot's body roughly what had happened there, let alone these two madn.
"You won," Cobblepot suddenly looked up and said to Shiller.
However, Jero looked at Cobblepot with a touch of mockery, "I don't know where you get your confidence from, thinking he would feel guilty toward you. If I'm not wrong, even if you left a hole in his chest, he wouldn't repent and would even want to intensify his insults and curses against you."
Cobblepot's facial muscles began to twitch, the lines on his face becoming more pronounced, making him look at least ten years older. Shiller shook his head, saying, "His thods are too crude, giving you a chance to lay hands on him. I think he's not even as important as Fish Mooney..."
At that na, Cobblepot's expression grew complicated—fear, disgust, but also an indecipherable emotion flickered in his eyes.
Seeming not to want to discuss it further, Cobblepot regained his composure and looked at Shiller, asking, "Where do we go next?"
"No rush, let's go see soone first."
Shiller brought the two n to the room where Gordon was. Gordon sat on the sofa in the room, his neck bearing a very horrific stitched scar, and Cobblepot was almost imdiately agitated upon seeing him.
"Jas, Jas, what happened to you?" Cobblepot rushed forward. As soon as he saw the wound on Gordon's neck, his eyebrows shot up in anger, and he scread furiously, "Who did this? Who the fuck dared..."
"Quiet, Oswald," Gordon said with a slight look of disdain. "You shouldn't be here. Why don't you go ho and keep your mother company?"
Cobblepot was almost imdiately overwheld with sha; he muttered with a pale face, "It was an accident, I wasn't ho when it happened..."
"Alright, I'm not blaming you," Gordon sighed. "It all happened so suddenly, I didn't see it coming."
"Do you realize you might have been controlled?" Shiller stated bluntly. "The information you told had a huge trap in it, luckily, I didn't fall into it."
Gordon did not look surprised; he shook his head and said, "I rember my opening line was about how I got contaminated. If you're smart, you'd know not to trust anything I said after that."
"But they shouldn't have chosen you," Shiller said, also quite composed. "Maybe you're not the real Jas Gordon, but they gave you his mories, so you are Gordon, and Gordon is a hero, the last conscience of Gotham."
Nevertheless, Gordon shook his head and pointed to his own head, "I am Gordon, at least this part of is."
Shiller's pupils contracted as he pushed Cobblepot aside, stepped forward, and checked Gordon's neck, only then noticing that besides the stitched half, the part that had previously connected his head and body also had many fine black lines that looked like stitches.
Moreover, the skin color and texture above and below the stitches were different.
Looking at Gordon with slightly shocked eyes, Shiller heard him say, "I'm sorry, I didn't tell you the whole truth, but I wasn't sure if I could trust you. I am indeed Jas Gordon, but this body isn't mine."
"Can you tell what happened?" Shiller glanced at the police uniform on Gordon's body, which was stained a lot and lacked an official badge to prove his identity.
"On the first day the anomalies appeared in the city, my team and I went to the hotel to investigate, but we weren't cautious enough and entered a very dangerous place. The two of them died, only I survived."
Shiller was sowhat skeptical of what Gordon was saying because he knew if anyone was to die, Gordon would be the first to rush in.
However, as if anticipating this doubt, Gordon said, "That place isn't what you imagine. It's not perilous, but eerie. You can't control life and death there. Death cos suddenly, and no one has a chance to save it."
"I should have died there too, but I knew if all three of us died, everyone's death would be in vain. I had to find a way to get the information out, so I made a very bold decision."
"You voluntarily accepted the contamination," Shiller said confidently. "You made yourself one of them because you knew they were immortal and even if you gained so of their abilities, you could restrain them, thus surviving here."
Gordon nodded, and Cobblepot's look of admiration, or rather, his sense of camaraderie, deepened, evidently having adopted a similar approach.
"We had no other choice," Gordon said. "Ordinary people can't survive in such dangerous environnts. Haven't you also relied on so special abilities to live until now?"
Neither Shiller nor Jero denied this. Although Jero appeared to be an ordinary person, he had so life-saving thods, but the cost was too high and they couldn't be used unless absolutely necessary.
However, having such thods made his mindset different from a real ordinary person. He was much less likely to make forced errors because he knew he had an escape route.
Shiller sighed softly and said, "Can you tell us where that place is?"
But Gordon shook his head and said, "I know you aren't afraid of death, but there's no need to take such a pointless risk."
"Then why did you take such a risk?" Shiller imdiately found the loophole in his statent and said, "That place doesn't seem easy to get into, otherwise we would have accidentally entered already. If you specifically went there, it ans you knew there must be secrets there."
Gordon shook his head again, apparently determined to deny. Shiller noticed that all those who survived by leveraging contamination thods seed to undergo so personality changes. The Gordon in the TV series "Gotham" wasn't such a passive individual, nor was the blood-covered Cobblepot likely to use such showy thods to kill.
But in the present circumstances, Shiller couldn't be picky with his allies. Gordon was, after all, a policeman, the pinnacle of combat value among ordinary people, and this younger and physically strong Gordon was a rare find for a bodyguard and fighter. Shiller needed to bring him along.
"We have a compelling reason to venture into this place," Shiller planned to continue persuading. He said, "I hope you can help us, and by doing so, you'd also be helping Bruce Wayne."
At the ntion of Bruce's na, Gordon wavered slightly, but Shiller caught a fleeting complex emotion. It seed that Gordon indeed knew a lot.
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