The gun fired.
Jack's body moved before his brain fully registered the sound. His spine bent backward at an angle that should have been impossible, knees still bent, right palm catching the floorboards as the bullet screamed past his face close enough to feel the heat.
Infinite Superposition—ten times.
His left hand came up and fired into the apartment before he finished falling.
The shot was impossibly loud in the enclosed space. A startled cry followed, then the clatter of metal hitting hardwood.
Jack torqued his hips and flipped himself upright, rolling his shoulder as he straightened. He brushed imaginary dust from his sleeve and exhaled.
"That was close." He stepped over the threshold and kicked the door shut behind him. "Five minutes in Gotham and someone's already trying to redecorate my skull. I'm starting to see why this city has such a turnover problem."
The apartment was small—a narrow two-story walkup with bare walls, mismatched furniture, and blackout curtains drawn tight against the chaos outside. Standing in the middle of the living room was a girl who looked barely out of her teens, blonde hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, wearing an oversized university hoodie and shorts that suggested she hadn't expected company.
Her hands were trembling.
At her feet lay a revolver, its barrel split open like a peeled banana. Jack's return shot had hit the gun dead-center at the exact moment she'd pulled the trigger. The weapon had essentially eaten itself.
"Nice grouping," Jack said, genuinely impressed. "Center mass on a moving target through a doorway in low light. Where'd you learn to shoot like that?"
The girl's throat worked. Her eyes were wide, but something behind them was calculating rather than panicking.
"I don't have any money." Her voice shook, but the words came out practiced. "This isn't even my apartment. Please—"
"Relax. I'm just looking for somewhere to crash." Jack walked past her, examining the space with casual interest. Cramped kitchen. Narrow stairs leading up. A couch that had seen better decades. No photos on the walls, no personal touches. Either she was squatting or she'd stripped the place clean. "You live here alone?"
She didn't answer.
Bang.
Jack fired without turning around. The bullet punched through the door panel six inches from the frame, exactly where someone reaching for the handle would have been standing.
The girl had frozen mid-step, her hand still extended toward the deadbolt.
"I didn't say you could leave." Jack turned to face her, smiling pleasantly. "Did I?"
She took a slow breath. Her hands rose, palms out.
"I won't run." Her voice steadied. "You can do whatever you want. Just don't hurt me."
Jack studied her. The trembling had stopped. Her posture was compliant, submissive even—shoulders rounded, chin down, making herself small. But her eyes kept tracking to the ruined gun on the floor, then to the weapon in his hand, then back to his face.
She was thinking. Calculating odds.
Interesting.
He tossed the revolver to her.
She caught it reflexively, then stared at the destroyed barrel in confusion. Her gaze snapped up to meet his.
"Why—"
Jack pulled the Taurus from his waistband—the gun he'd taken from the thug in the alley—and tossed that to her as well.
She caught it with her other hand. This one was intact. Loaded.
"I'm going to take a shower." Jack stretched his arms above his head, already walking toward the narrow bathroom. "You watch the door. Don't let anyone in."
He said it the way someone might ask a roommate to sign for a package.
The girl—still holding two guns, one of them functional—watched him disappear into the bathroom. A moment later, she heard the water turn on.
---
Harley Quinzel stood in the middle of her dead neighbor's apartment, holding a loaded weapon, listening to a stranger take a shower.
What the hell is happening?
He'd kicked in the door. She'd shot him—tried to shoot him—and he'd bent out of the way like something from a horror movie, then destroyed her gun with a single return shot before she could blink. That alone should have been impossible. The angle, the timing, the precision—
And then he'd given her another gun and turned his back on her.
She could leave right now. Walk out the door, disappear into the chaos of occupied Gotham. She could shoot him through the bathroom door—the walls in this building were practically cardboard.
Instead, she found herself lowering the Taurus, clicking the safety on, and standing very still.
Why?
Because she wanted to understand.
Her father had been a con artist. A charming, smiling grifter who'd abandoned her and her mother when Harley was seven years old, leaving behind debt, broken promises, and a little girl who spent her whole childhood wondering why she hadn't been enough to make him stay.
Her mother had responded by trying to control every aspect of Harley's life—her grades, her appearance, her friends, her future. Every choice pre-approved, every deviation corrected. You'll be successful, Harleen. You'll make something of yourself. You'll be everything your father wasn't.
Harley had escaped by diving into books about the mind. If she could understand how people thought—why they did what they did—maybe she could finally understand why her father had left. Why her mother squeezed so tight. Why everyone seemed to follow invisible rules that made no sense to her.
And this man... this man made no sense at all.
He wasn't acting like a home invader. He wasn't acting like a rapist or a killer—at least not like any she'd read about. He moved through the world like nothing in it could touch him, like consequences were a concept that applied to other people.
He's insane, she thought. Then: No. That's not right either. He's something else.
The bathroom door was thin enough that she could hear him humming.
BANG.
The front door exploded inward.
Harley spun and fired before she consciously registered the shape in the doorway. The shot caught the man—one of Bane's thugs, masked and armed—directly in the forehead. He dropped without a sound.
Behind him, the hallway was empty.
Harley stood frozen for half a heartbeat. Then she moved, stepping over the body, checking the corridor in both directions. No one else. She grabbed the corpse by its boots and dragged it outside, leaving it propped against the far wall. Came back in. Closed the door. Braced a chair under the handle.
Stood in the living room with the gun raised and her heart pounding.
From the bathroom, she heard a soft laugh.
The water kept running.
---
When Jack finally emerged, he was dressed in his freshly laundered clothes—the washing machine in the corner had apparently still worked—and toweling his hair dry. He looked completely relaxed, as if the past half hour had been perfectly ordinary.
Harley stood exactly where he'd left her, the gun held properly in a two-handed grip, pointed at the door.
"Good girl." He dropped the towel on a chair and walked over, putting a hand briefly on her shoulder. She flinched but didn't move away. "Trouble?"
"One of Bane's men." Her voice was flat. "I handled it."
"I heard." He held out his hand.
She hesitated, then surrendered the gun.
Jack tucked the Taurus into his waistband and walked to the couch, shoving it around until it faced the door. He dropped onto it with a sigh, sprawled comfortably across the cushions, and patted the spot beside him.
Harley sat, knees together, hands folded in her lap. The posture of a well-behaved student waiting for a lecture.
The silence stretched.
"What's your name?" Jack asked.
"Harley. Harleen Quinzel."
"Quinzel." He rolled the name around in his mouth like he was tasting it. "You a student?"
"Psychology. Gotham U." She paused. "Was. Before."
"Before Bane."
"Yes."
He turned to look at her properly, dark eyes narrowing slightly, and Harley felt the weight of his attention settle on her like a physical thing. She'd felt something similar in her abnormal psychology seminars, listening to professors describe what it was like to interview violent offenders. The specific quality of being seen—not as a person, but as a puzzle to be taken apart.
Except this was different. He wasn't studying her like a clinician.
He was studying her like he already knew what he'd find.
"Harleen Quinzel," he said slowly. Then, with a smile that belonged on a different face entirely: "How about I call you Harley Quinn instead?"
The name landed strangely in her ears. Familiar somehow. Like a word she'd always known but never spoken aloud.
"Harley Quinn?" She blinked. "Why Quinn?"
---