The railyard at midnight was a wasteland of rust and smoke. Empty freight cars stood like hollow coffins on the tracks, their iron frames groaning under the weight of the storm
. Jonathan moved through the shadows, his soaked coat clinging to his shoulders, Isadora close at his side.
They had run until their legs gave out Crane had not come. Whether he had escaped or been taken, Jonathan couldn't know.
He hated leaving a friend behind, but Crane had made his choice. Now Jonathan was marked, his name blackened in every tavern and square. He needed a hiding place and allies.
"Here," Isadora whispered, pulling him into the gap beneath a rusted coal chute. Her voice trembled with exhaustion, but her eyes were hard. "We can't keep moving like this. You're bleeding again."
Jonathan touched his side the scrape from a deputy's shot had reopened, leaking dark through his shirt. He ignored it. His gaze drifted across the yard, ears sharp for boots, whistles, the rattle of lanterns.
Then, from the shadows of a freight car, came a hiss. "Psst! Johnny!"
Jonathan's revolver was up in an instant. The voice was familiar, but the night made every whisper dangerous.
"Johnny, don't shoot! It's me!"
A boy crawled out from beneath the freight car, thin as wire, with eyes wide enough to catch the stormlight. Scrap his ragged cap sagged low over his brow, and his grin was all teeth, though it faltered when he saw the gun pointed at him.
Jonathan lowered the revolver, disbelief cutting through his exhaustion. "Scrap. I thought you were gone."
"Gone?" Scrap laughed, though his voice cracked. "Nah took a holiday in hell, is all." He limped closer, his patched trousers soaked through, his shoulders hunched as if the night itself were pressing down on him. He carried a burlap satchel slung across his back, clutched like treasure.
Isadora's eyes softened. "Scrap… we thought you were"
"Dead?" Scrap said it cheerfully, but his eyes flickered with something darker. "Nearly. Blackthorn's hounds put me in a hole after they grabbed me left me to rot. But a rat always finds a crack. I wriggled out. Took something on the way, too."
He dropped the satchel between them. The burlap was damp, its contents heavy. With trembling fingers, Scrap pulled free a leather-bound ledger. Its pages were water-stained, but the ink bled clear enough: columns of names, payments, amounts. Factories. Churches. Politicians. Every line was a chain binding Gotham to The Owe.
Jonathan's breath caught. "This… this is proof."
Scrap grinned again, a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Aye. Proof they're all bought. The aldermen, the priests, even the unions. Money flows one way into Blackthorn's coffers. And where money flows, blood follows."
Isadora knelt beside the ledger, her hands trembling as she turned the pages. "If this is real, Jonathan"
"It's real," Scrap cut in. His voice turned sharp, brittle as broken glass. "I watched them count it, mark it, pass it on. I kept my ears open when they thought I was just another street rat. This city's not theirs by birth. It's theirs by debt."
Jonathan's mind churned. Sheriff Doolin's frame-up, Nina's blade, Abe's silence they were pieces of the same machinery and here, in Scrap's trembling hands, was the map of its gears.
But as he stared at the boy, Jonathan saw more than survival. Scrap was thinner, paler. His eyes darted like a hunted animal's. His grin masked wounds he would not name.
Jonathan set a hand on his shoulder. "You shouldn't have risked this."
Scrap shrugged it off, masking his shiver with bravado. "Risk's all I've got. And if Gotham's gonna burn, I'd rather light the match than be the ash."
Isadora rose, clutching the ledger to her chest. Her voice was steady now, strong. "This could change everything. But only if we live long enough to show it."
Jonathan nodded. "Then we guard it with our lives."
The railyard groaned with a shifting wind. In the distance, a whistle cut the storm, high and shrill. Lanterns flickered at the edge of the yard deputies searching, their beams slicing through rain and steel.
Scrap's eyes widened. "They're hunting. Same hounds that chased me. Won't stop till they've got all of us."
Jonathan drew his revolver, checking the three bullets again. Not enough. Never enough. He met Isadora's gaze, then Scrap's. "Then we move. Together."
Scrap swallowed, then straightened his spine, as though the ledger's weight gave him courage. For the first time, he wasn't just a rat in the walls. He was part of the fight.
They slipped through the maze of freight cars, the storm masking their steps, the ledger pressed close to Isadora's chest. Behind them, voices grew louder, boots hammering on wet wood.
For Jonathan Wayne, the night had shifted. He was no longer alone in his war.
The city had given him back its most unlikely ally a boy born in the gutters, who carried in his satchel the power to unmask an empire.
And for the first time in days, Jonathan felt the faintest spark of hope flicker beneath the storm.