Jason lounged in the metal folding chair, thumbing through the stack of wrinkled bills he'd lifted off the thugs. The warehouse air reeked of fish and rust, but he'd smelled worse. Three of Nigma's men sat tied up against a support beam with their faces sporting various shades of purple and red from their earlier disagreement.

  "One hundered grand," Jason said, tossing the money onto the scratched table next to his pistols. "Not bad for a night's work. Thanks for that." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Now, why don't you boys tell me where your boss is hiding?"

  Edward freaking Nigma. Every other month, that pretentious asshole found a way to slip through Arkham's security like it was made of Swiss cheese. Someone in that prison needed their ass kicked to the curb because this was getting ridiculous.

  The whole situation reeked of Edward’s usual MO - stealing tech, leaving breadcrumbs, setting up elaborate schemes. And like clockwork, the guy would use it all to get under Bruce's skin. Classic Riddler crap.

  That's probably why Bruce had pawned this case off on him. The golden boy got to chase after the heavy hitters while Jason dealt with the B-list circus. Bruce's way of keeping him occupied, throwing him a bone to gnaw on while the real work happened elsewhere.

  Fine by him. He'd play cleanup crew if it meant putting Nigma back in his cell. At least he got to rough up some thugs and make a profit doing it.

  The biggest goon, a bald guy with a neck tattoo, spat blood onto the concrete. "Go screw yourself!"

  "Original," Jason picked up one of his guns, checking the magazine. "Look, I've had a long night. My coffee's getting cold, and these chairs are bad for my back. Just tell me where Nigma is, and we can all go home."

  "We ain't telling you anything," the second thug shouted.

  "That's what the last group said too," Jason stood, stretching. "Before they started crying. Your choice - we can do this the easy way, or we can get creative. And trust me, I've got plenty of ideas."

  The third goon, younger than the others, moved nervously. The other two shot him warning glares.

  "Tick tock, gentlemen," Jason picked up his second gun. "Who wants to go first?"

  This was how he survived now - no trust fund, no fancy corporate backing, just cold hard cash taken from the scum of Gotham. Bruce would hate it, but he had unlimited resources and a multi-billion dollar company. Jason had to work with what he could get.

  Equipment wasn't cheap, and neither were the safehouses scattered across the city. Every bullet, every piece of body armor, every first aid kit - it all added up. The constant moving, the bribes for information, the weapons that kept him alive night after night - none of it came free.

  Unlike the Bat's fancy gadgets, his tools came from less reputable sources, and those sources expected payment. The criminal underworld ran on cash, and Jason had learned to play their game. He'd take their money, use it to fund his operations, and then use those same resources to hurt them where it counted. It wasn't pretty, but it worked.

  The money would keep him going for another month or two. New armor, ammunition, maybe upgrade some of his surveillance gear. In this line of work, being under-equipped meant being dead, and Jason had already died once. He wasn't planning on a repeat performance.

  The crack of gunfire rang through the house as Jason's bullet struck the concrete inches from the bald thug's foot. The man jerked back, chains rattling against the support beam.

  "Hey! I said where the hell is your boss?!" he kept his gun trained on them.

  "Jesus Christ!" The younger one yelped, trying to squirm away from where the bullet had hit.

  "Shut up, Jessie!" Neck Tattoo snarled, though his face had gone pale.

  "Next one goes in someone's kneecap," Jason said, adjusting his aim. "Your choice who gets it first."

  "You're bluffing," the second thug said. "Batman's guys don't shoot people."

  Jason laughed. "Do I look like Batman to you? Trust me, breaking your legs is just the start of what I'm willing to do."

  The three men exchanged glances, sweat beading on their foreheads. Jason could practically smell their fear blending with the warehouse's musty air. Good. Fear made people stupid. Made them sloppy. Made them talk.

  He checked his watch, making a show of looking bored. They were close to breaking - he could feel it. And if they didn't... well, he had plenty of creative solutions in mind. Sometimes this job had its perks.

  "Last chance," he said, chambering another round. "After this, we do things my way."

  "What do you mean by that?" the second thug asked.

  Jason holstered one gun and pulled out his phone, thumbing through news articles. "You guys remember that incident in Japan? The subway attack?" He turned the screen to show them grainy photos of people collapsed on train platforms. "Sarin gas. Kills in minutes. Painful way to go - seizures, suffocation, the works."

  "You wouldn't," Neck Tattoo said.

  "Try me," Jason pulled a small canister from his jacket. "Modified version. More concentrated. Worse symptoms." He rolled it between his fingers. "See, unlike the Bat, I don't mind getting my hands dirty. And unlike him, I know sometimes you have to speak a language criminals understand."

  The younger one, Jessie, started shaking. "Man, I can't—I don't want to die like that."

  "Then start talking," Jason said, thumb hovering over the release valve.

  "Shut the hell up!" Neck Tattoo shouted.

  "No, screw this!" Jessie blurted out. "He's at the old theater on Morrison Street! The one that burned down last year. He's got some kind of setup in the basement!"

  Jason pocketed the canister - which was actually filled with harmless smoke - and grinned behind his helmet. "Now was that so hard?"

  "You're dead, Jessie!" the second thug snarled. "When Eddie finds out—"

  "Eddie's not going to find out anything," Jason cut him off, "because Eddie's going back to Arkham. And you three?" He pulled zip ties from his pocket. "You're taking a nice trip downtown to the GCPD. I hear the holding cells are lovely this time of year."

  The sound of sirens wailed in the distance. Right on schedule. Anonymous tips were useful like that.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Jason stepped out of the warehouse and headed straight for his bike. He swung a leg over and shot out of the place.

  The comm crackled in his ear. Right on cue.

  “Talk to me,” Jason said, passing by pedestrians.

  Oracle’s voice filtered through. “Did some digging on that backer Harvey’s been dealing with.”

  Jason leaned into a turn, tires skidding just close enough to the curb to keep things exciting. “And?”

  “It’s... complicated,” Oracle replied. A pause followed, one of those deliberate ones she used when she was bracing him for bad news. “I traced it back to Joker.”

  Jason nearly swerved. His fingers tightened on the handlebars as the word hit him like a sucker punch to the gut. “You’ve got to be kidding me. No way.”

  “That’s what I thought too,” Oracle admitted. “But everything points back to him—or someone using his name, anyway.”

  Jason spit out a curse. That name always felt like acid in his throat, burning every time it came up. That guy is the psycho—the one who had left Jason bleeding out in a warehouse all those years ago, broken inside out in ways no amount of vengeance could ever fix.

  He gunned the throttle harder than necessary. The city blurred around him in streaks of neon and shadow as he cut through traffic like a knife slicing air. “It’s gotta be a joke,” he said. “Someone’s covering their tracks. There’s no way this is his game—he’s locked up tight in Arkham.”

  “That’s... kind of the issue,” Oracle said. “Whoever this is? They’re not sloppy. No loose ends, no breadcrumbs we can follow without hitting a dead end.” Another pause, then: “They’re good, Jason. Scary good.”

  Joker or not, whoever was behind this knew how to stay invisible, which wasn’t exactly comforting considering everything Gotham had seen over the years.

  “So what you’re telling me,” Jason said, passing around a minivan that slammed on its brakes too late to stop him from cutting past them, “is that Harvey’s got some mystery backer who might—or might not—be that clown-faced son of a bitch.”

  “That about sums it up,” Oracle replied.

  “Fantastic,” Jason muttered, giving himself just enough sarcasm to keep from spiraling into something darker.

  Jason parked the bike a block over from Morrison Street, keeping it close enough for a quick getaway but far enough that no one would spot it and put two and two together.

  The streets were quiet—not Gotham quiet, which usually meant someone was getting mugged in an alley. That probably should’ve been his first clue.

  He approached the burnt-out theater with his helmet still on, scanning for anything out of place. The building looked as dead as the reviews it had gotten before the fire.

  Windows boarded up, doors chained shut, and graffiti scrawled across every surface like Gotham’s young artists had decided to claim the ruins for themselves. A “KEEP OUT” sign hung crookedly on the front gate—not exactly subtle, even for Nigma.

  Jason didn’t bother with the main entrance. Too obvious. He rounded the side of the building, spotting an old fire escape still hanging on by rust and bad luck. It groaned under his weight as he climbed, but it held long enough to let him reach a second-story window. A quick swipe with a glass cutter, and he was inside.

  The place felt wrong. Not in any supernatural “spooky vibes” kind of way—Jason wasn’t superstitious or stupid—just off. He’d raided plenty of hideouts before: warehouses packed with stolen gear, abandoned buildings rigged with traps, luxury penthouses reeking of expensive cologne and bad plans. This didn’t feel like any of those.

  The air smelled stale, like no one had been here in weeks. Dust coated everything: countertops, furniture, even a plate left on a side table with what looked like petrified pizza crusts. If this was where Nigma had been working out of, Jason figured his standards must’ve seriously slipped since their last encounter.

  Still, he stuck to shadows where they existed and avoiding any creaky spots in the floorboards when they didn’t.

  The main room was empty—a few overturned chairs, an old couch half-buried under tarps—but not much else to look at. Definitely not the kind of setup Nigma usually ran with; the guy loved his puzzles and flair too much to hole up in what amounted to a condemned apartment.

  "Barbs,” Jason muttered into his comms as he moved farther inside, stepping through what used to be a doorway before most of its frame had rotted away. “I don’t think Nigma did it."

  "What makes you think that?" Oracle’s voice came through.

  Jason paused just outside another room—not because he was hesitating but because what he saw didn’t add up.

  Inside was a sight he hadn’t expected: Edward Nigma himself tied to a chair in the center of the space like someone had gift-wrapped him and left him for Jason to find. His signature green suit jacket was ripped at one sleeve, his glasses sat crooked on his face, and someone had gagged him so thoroughly that even his smug mouth couldn’t work around it.

  “I think someone set him up,” he said into the comms as he stepped inside to get a closer look.

  Nigma’s eyes locked onto him—wide and wild like an animal who’d been caught in one trap only to spot another walking toward them. He made some muffled noises behind it, jerking against his restraints hard enough that his chair scraped against the floor.

  Jason crouched next to him without untying anything yet. "You look like hell," he said before leaning back on his heels to take stock of the situation again.

  Whoever had left Nigma here clearly wanted Jason—or someone—to find him. The question was why.

  He clicked back onto Oracle’s line as he gave Nigma another once-over.

  "This isn’t his usual style," Jason added into the comms as if Nigma could hear him through Oracle's channel anyway—and even if he could have, what was he going to do about it? Mumble at him harder? "No traps. No riddles scrawled all over the walls or dumbass word puzzles waiting outside."

  “You’re saying this isn’t one of his games?” Oracle asked.

  “Not unless tying himself up is part of his new shtick,” Jason shot back. "There’s no way this guy pulled this off alone—or at all.”

  Nigma let out another string of muffled protests then—a little louder this time—as if trying to make sure Jason didn’t miss just how unhappy he was about being trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey.

  “Relax,” Jason said at him before pulling out a pocketknife.

  ——

  POV: Jason Todd/Red Hood

  Writing Style: Third-person POV Limited. Past-tense. Casual, irreverent tone and "zero fucks given" attitude. Raw and unfiltered dialogue, mixed with evocative descriptions. Poignant yet unpretentious narrative. Focus on action. Focus on realism and fast-paced narrative. Characters full of grit.

  The pieces weren't fitting together - Joker supposedly bankrolling Harvey's operations, and now finding Riddler gift-wrapped like a present. His gut told him this was wrong. All of it.

  Someone was pulling strings behind the scenes, orchestrating this whole mess. The setup was too perfect, too clean. Nigma's usual schemes had his ego plastered all over them - riddles spray-painted on walls, elaborate deathtraps, that insufferable need to prove he was the smartest person in the room. This? This was different.

  He felt the edge of his knife, considering the situation. The warehouse earlier, the thugs' information, finding Nigma here - it felt manufactured, like following breadcrumbs laid out by someone else. The question was who had the resources and skill to manipulate both Harvey and Nigma while staying completely hidden.

  Not many players in Gotham could pull that off. Most of the city's criminals were too focused on territory wars or quick scores to orchestrate something this complex. This required patience, planning, and serious backing. The kind of operation that made Jason's combat instincts scream danger.

  The Joker angle bothered him most. Using that psycho's name was either a terrible mistake or a smart move designed to get under his skin. Either way, someone was trying to play him - and Jason hated being played.

  He'd been down this road before. Chasing leads that seemed solid until they dissolved into smoke, following trails that led nowhere. But this time felt different. All of it suggested something bigger brewing beneath Gotham's surface. Something that made finding Nigma tied up in an abandoned apartment look like just the beginning.

  "Jason, what's in your mind?" Oracle's voice cut through his thoughts. "You’ve been silent for a long time."

  "This whole thing stinks."

  "How so?"

  "Harvey's got mystery money, Nigma's tied up like a present, and someone's using Joker's name. It's not right."

  "You think it's all connected?"

  "Has to be. Look at the timing - Harvey starts getting funded right when Nigma disappears, then I get led straight to him?" Jason kicked a loose piece of plaster. "Someone's playing puppet master, and I don't like it."

  "Could be Black Mask," Oracle suggested. "He's got the resources."

  "Nah, not his style. Sionis is all about showing off, making sure everyone knows it's him pulling the strings. This is..." Jason said. "This is someone who knows how to stay invisible."

  "I'll dig deeper into Harvey's finances, see if—"

  "Wait," Jason cut her off. Something clicked. "The theater. Morrison Street. Why there?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "This place burned down last year. Insurance job gone wrong, right?"

  "Let me check." Keys clacked in the background. "Yeah, owned by... oh shit."

  "What?"

  "Shell company. Traced back to Roman Sionis, but the paperwork's weird. Lots of holes."

  "Someone's using his old properties. Setting up shop right under everyone's nose. Time to have a chat with our friend here about what he knows."

  The whole situation felt like a chess game where he couldn't see all the pieces. But one thing was clear - whoever was behind this knew exactly what they were doing. And that made them dangerous.