Chapter 1 : Cold Welcome
The taste of blood woke me.
Metal and salt and something that might have been a tooth. My face pressed into frozen slush, numbing the left side of my skull while the right side screamed with every pulse of my heart. I tried to breathe and pain lanced through my chest—cracked ribs, at least two.
"This isn't my body."
The thought arrived with absolute certainty. My hands, splayed in the gray muck, belonged to a stranger. The fingers were too long, the knuckles too scarred. I flexed them and watched the tendons move beneath skin that wasn't mine.
Something flickered in my peripheral vision. Blue light. Text.
[GOTHAM UNDERWORLD SYSTEM v2.0 — INITIALIZING]
I blinked. The text remained, hovering at the edge of my sight like a hallucination that refused to fade.
[HOST DETECTED: TRANSFER SUCCESSFUL]
[ANALYZING HOST CONDITION...]
[WARNING: CRITICAL INJURIES DETECTED]
[CRACKED RIBS (2), FACIAL CONTUSIONS, MINOR CONCUSSION, HYPOTHERMIA RISK]
My chest tightened. Not from the ribs—from recognition. I knew what this was. Transmigration. Isekai. The kind of garbage premise I'd read a hundred times in web novels, always rolling my eyes at the convenient setup.
"Except it's happening to me. Right now. In an alley. Bleeding."
[SYSTEM OVERVIEW — BASIC FUNCTIONS:]
[1. TERRITORY CONTROL — Claim and manage criminal territory]
[2. CRIMINAL NETWORK — Build and coordinate subordinates]
[3. FEAR INDEX — Measure influence through intimidation]
[4. STAT ALLOCATION — Enhance host capabilities]
[MISSION: Control Gotham City's Underworld]
Gotham. That word cut through the fog. I was in Gotham City. The fictional hellhole from DC Comics, where the Joker killed children and Batman broke bones and nobody good ever stayed good for long.
I tried to remember my name. My real name, from before. The word formed on my lips—
Nothing. A blank wall where the memory should be.
[MEMORY SEAL ACTIVE: Original identity restricted. Villain knowledge retained. Hero civilian identities blocked.]
"So I remember the Joker is in Arkham. I know Penguin runs the Iceberg Lounge. But I can't remember Batman's real name. I can't remember my own name."
I tested it. Joker—face paint, green hair, madness. Penguin—monocle, umbrellas, Iceberg Lounge. Two-Face—Harvey Dent, coin, dual personality. The knowledge flowed freely.
Batman—dark knight, cape, cowl—and then nothing. No civilian face. No alter ego.
[HOST DESIGNATION: DAREK HALE]
[NOTE: Designation assigned. Original name sealed permanently.]
Darek Hale. The system gave me a name because it had erased my real one.
Footsteps.
The sound snapped me back to the frozen alley. My body responded before my brain caught up, adrenaline overriding the screaming pain in my ribs. I crawled. Glass and ice cut my palms. A dumpster loomed ahead, rusted and reeking, and I dragged myself behind it just as voices reached my ears.
"You sure he's dead?"
"Marco put a boot through his chest six times. Ain't nobody walking that off."
Two men. Young, from their voices. Cocky.
"Boss said make sure. Check the body."
I pressed myself against the dumpster's cold metal. My breath came in shallow gasps, each one a knife between my ribs. The slush soaked through my thin jacket. I had no coat. No weapon. No idea who these people were or why they wanted "him" dead.
"Him. Danny. The body I'm wearing."
"He ain't here."
"What?"
"I said he ain't here! The body's gone!"
A long pause. Then: "Shit. You think he crawled off?"
"Man, he was dead. I watched his eyes go empty."
"Then where's the body?"
"Maybe someone took it. Homeless guy, maybe. Organs are worth money."
"That's disgusting."
"That's the Narrows."
More footsteps, fading. I stayed pressed against the dumpster until the silence returned, until my breathing steadied, until the shaking in my hands slowed from violent to merely constant.
[CURRENT STATS:]
[Level: 1]
[Authority: 10]
[Intimidation: 10]
[Cunning: 10]
[Resources: 5]
[Network: 0]
[Infamy: 0]
[Fear Index: 0]
Level one. Bottom of the barrel. A nobody in a body that someone had beaten to death—or tried to.
I pushed myself upright. The world tilted. I grabbed the dumpster for support and waited for my vision to stabilize. The alley stretched in both directions, narrow and dark, lined with fire escapes and broken windows. Gotham City. January, based on the cold. Nighttime, based on the darkness.
"I need shelter. I need to not freeze to death before I figure out what the hell is happening."
I staggered deeper into the Narrows, following the logic that anyone who beat someone to death probably wouldn't expect their victim to walk away. Distance equaled safety. Or the illusion of it.
The cold bit through my jacket. My teeth chattered. I passed sleeping figures huddled in doorways, their eyes tracking me with the wary attention of people who'd learned that anything could be a threat. I kept moving.
A heating vent. Steam rising from a grate in the side of a building, warmth leaking into the frozen air. A pile of refuse nearby, and beneath it—a blanket. Stained, torn, and smelling like something had died in it, but thick enough to hold heat.
I wrapped myself in it and pressed my back against the warm vent. My ribs protested. My face throbbed. But the shivering slowed.
[TUTORIAL QUEST AVAILABLE: ESTABLISH DOMINANCE]
[Objective: Intimidate 3 individuals to establish presence]
[Reward: 50 Fear Index, Intimidation +5]
I stared at the floating text. Intimidate three people. In this condition. With cracked ribs and a face that probably looked like raw meat.
"The system wants me to play crime lord. I can barely stand."
I dismissed the notification. It pulsed once, annoyed, then faded to the corner of my vision.
Gotham spread around me, a maze of crumbling buildings and broken streetlights. Somewhere out there, the Joker sat in Arkham Asylum. Penguin counted money in his club. Batman—whoever he was beneath the mask—prowled the rooftops looking for people like me.
And I was sitting in an alley, wrapped in a dead man's blanket, wearing a dead man's body.
"Tomorrow. Figure it out tomorrow. Tonight, just survive."
I closed my eyes. The heating vent hummed against my back. The blanket smelled like garbage and desperation. But it was warm, and I was alive, and right now that was enough.
A siren wailed somewhere in the distance. Gotham's eternal music.
I pulled the blanket tighter and waited for dawn.