A/N: I put the wrong name for the triad boss, I said Chen but with more research I realized it was yuan. So his name will be Chen yuan but referred to as boss Yuan.
****
The day after Quentin's council, Gotham felt like a storm front ready to break. The underpass had their orders, but aboveground the city's predators were circling. No one wanted to wait. No one wanted to be prey.
And then, as if on some invisible signal, it began.
***
The night air shimmered with heat and neon, the rain from earlier pooling in black gutters. Pell Street was tense, its shops shuttered, the lights dimmed as if the neighborhood itself knew what was coming.
Inside the mahjong parlor, Boss Yuen's lieutenants were playing cards and arguing in Cantonese when the first glass bottle arced through the barred windows.
WHOOOMPH!
Flames spread fast, licking up the paper walls.
"Fire! Get the boss out!" one soldier shouted, flipping the table as cover.
Another burst through the smoke to return fire. "Dragons are here!"
Ghost Dragons, a splinter youth gang that once swore fealty but had grown restless. The younger Dragons saw weakness in their elders with the cartel applying pressure now was the time to strike.
The Ghost Dragons came in screaming on motorcycles, headlights cutting through the night. Uzi fire chewed through the parlor's doorframe, bullets splintering the wooden façade. A Triad soldier with a shotgun leaned out of a side window and dropped one of the bikes in a spray of sparks.
"Fall back to the alley!" Yuen's lieutenant barked, waving his men into cover. "Hold the street!"
Motorcycles swerved and circled, riders firing wildly. One Dragon leaned in too close — BLAM! — his helmet cracked open by a shotgun blast, body thrown clear as his bike skidded through a fruit stand. Oranges bounced across the wet street, rolling through pools of fire.
"Don't let them box us in!" shouted another Triad soldier, emptying his pistol until the slide locked back. He fumbled for a fresh clip, fingers shaking.
Boss Yuen emerged coughing, revolver in hand. His suit was singed, his hair smoldering, but his eyes burned with rage. He leveled the gun, hand trembling, and cracked a shot through a Dragon's throat. The kid fell backward off his bike, blood spraying across the pavement.
"Get him in the car!" a bodyguard yelled.
Yuen was hustled into a waiting sedan. Bullets hammered the side panels as the car peeled out, fishtailing down an alley. The Ghost Dragons chased on two bikes, tires squealing against wet asphalt.
Behind them, Chinatown howled with fire and gun smoke. The last Triads fought in pockets, taking cover behind scooters and vendor carts as the Dragons pushed block by block. When the police finally rolled up lights flashing, sirens wailing — the Ghost Dragons had already planted their flag. Fresh green serpent graffiti bled over the old red Triad markings, the smell of gasoline and blood heavy in the night.
China town was split. The Triad against the Cartel, and the Triad against their own blood.
****
Fog rolled heavy over the Kane Docks, cranes looming like gallows above the dark water. The air reeked of salt, diesel, and rust. Inside Warehouse 19, the last Hammer holdouts stacked crates against the doors.
"They're coming," muttered one, sweat running down his temple. He racked a pump shotgun. "I heard Antonov himself's out there."
Another spat on the floor. "Good. I'll put him down myself."
Then came the sound boots crunching gravel, muffled Russian voices echoing in the fog. The Odessans moved like soldiers, weapons wrapped in rags to dampen the clatter.
"Now," whispered Antonov.
The first burst shredded through the warehouse windows, glass raining down. Hammer soldiers ducked as rounds chewed into crates, ripping open bags of powder that puffed into the air like ghostly clouds.
"Return fire!"
Shotguns boomed, slugs punching holes in the steel door. An Odessan crumpled to the ground screaming, leg torn open. Another soldier dragged him back, muttering curses in Russian.
"Pin them down! Move!" Antonov bellowed.
The Odessans surged. Submachine guns rattled, sparks flying from metal as they advanced between containers. A Hammer gunman tried to rush them with a pistol, but Antonov swung his axe in a brutal arc, burying the blade into the man's chest. The scream cut short as Antonov kicked the body free and pressed forward.
Inside the warehouse, chaos reigned. A Hammer soldier ducked behind a forklift, blind-firing until his clip ran dry. "We're not making it out of here," he muttered, chest heaving.
"Shut up and keep shooting!" his brother snapped, jamming shells into his shotgun.
The door finally buckled, axe marks split deep into the wood. The Odessans stormed inside. Gunfire erupted at point-blank range — earsplitting, deafening. One Hammer soldier took a burst to the gut, folding like wet paper. Another tried to climb to the skylight, clawing for escape, but a sniper's crack from outside dropped him before he reached the glass.
Antonov stepped over the bodies, blood dripping from his axe, face slick with sweat. He looked around at the carnage, chest heaving, then barked to his men in Russian:
"Hang two. Leave the rest."
By dawn, dockworkers found them — Hammer soldiers hanging by their ankles from a crane hook, swaying grotesquely above the water. The Odessa graffiti was fresh on the warehouse doors, painted in thick black letters.
The docks were gone. Odessa owned them now.
***
Nolan stepped into the penthouse like a man shrugging out of someone else's skin. The door clicked shut behind him; the city hummed below. A dozen messages blinked across the console on his desk—feeds, burner updates, the kind of raw, angry reports that turned a good night into a mobilization.
He skimmed them fast. Odessa had moved heavy at Pier 19. The Hammers were gone—crushed, hung; the docks painted with their blood and the black graffiti of a new flag. Chinatown? Splintered. Ghost Dragons had taken a block, shoved Boss Yuen into the shadows. The Cartel and the Triads were slugging it out elsewhere. The dominoes had dropped faster than anyone expected.
Nolan's mouth thinned. He dropped into the chair at his desk and hit the line.
"Naima," he said before the connection rang twice. "Status. How close are Whisper's railroad controls to the South Tracks?"
There was a crackle, someone cursing in the background, then Naima's voice—flat, sharp, precise. "If we take the right passages, boss, our territories will be almost touching. A handful of corridors and we're in each other's pockets. Odessa moving on the docks makes that a problem. If Odessa takes the rails, they swallow the Whisper routes and cut us off in one sweep."
Nolan didn't flinch. He pushed his chair back, paced three slow steps to the map tacked on the wall, and circled the rail line with two fingers. He could see it all laid out in his head: choke points, service hatches, those godforsaken maintenance gates nobody notices until they need them.
"Change of plans," he said, and the words felt clean and inevitable. "Odessa just removed the Hammers as a useful show of strength. They can't be the ones we punch tonight. They'll try to consolidate the docks, then slide into the rails and take the Whispers out. We can't allow that. We secure the rails first—no Odessa footprint. After that, surgical—initiate an attack on the Whispers, isolate their control points, and lock the tracks down. Infiltrate, take the nodes, vanish. We fortify and we make the rails impenetrable. Two hours. I'll call back."
"Two hours," Naima echoed. "I'll move teams into the side passages and pre-check the maintenance points. If they're clear, we'll be touching veins in thirty. If not—"
"Report," Nolan cut in. "No improvisation. I want the exact feeder points and the fallback routes. No civilians in the sweep. No theatrics."
The line went quiet for a beat, then, "Understood, boss. We'll be ready."
He hung up and let the map bleed into the dim light. For a moment the room smelled like old paper and solder; the theater mask lay on the workbench, the metal glint soft in the lamplight. On the desk, in a little sealed rack, sat the vials—small glass things that caught the light like trapped mistakes. The fear gas Scarecrow sold them, fragile and humming with possibility.
Vey slid up like a shadow along the glass, folding into Nolan's movements until they were the same man in different clothes. His smile was slow and patient when it came.
"All this war," Vey said, voice low and almost curious, "we have plenty of test subjects on the menu."
Nolan looked at the vials, then at the map, then let the smallest smile crease his face. He put a hand on the glass rack, fingertips warm against cold metal.
"I guess we do," he said.
-
A/N: sorry for not focusing a lot on Nolan right now.