Gotham.

This is my city.

For those who are new to the area, it's a maze of twists and turns, filled with residential buildings, noisy neighborhoods, and smelly alleys...... But it's far from it. It is built on a network.

On top of the intersecting networks,

There is an order between them, and I am part of that order.

The city has everything one could want.....

And those they don't want.

......

......

The sky was still gray.

It never seemed to clear the sky over Gotham, as if there was a giant shell that separated the whole of Gotham from the rest of the world.

Is this city any different?

I do not know...... I know the city by heart, I know every sewer under every street, every house, every radio station in this city, but ...... I still don't know Gotham.

Night......

I perch on the top of the Payes Tower....... As usual, the cacophony of traffic continued into a dense and disgusting thud, and I closed my eyes and tried to distinguish the sounds in my ears.

It's the sound of every radio station in the city, every cell tower, every phone microphone that tells me everything in the city.

I was like a bat, quietly listening to the rhythm of Gotham and taking in everything.

"Bang!" A gunshot in my ears!

"Alfred, positioning."

"Okay young master...... The gunfire came from the 9th block along the banks of the Kesai River, the sound was Winchester.38 model, the system analysis was a civilian modification, 0.75 seconds after the gunshot, a woman screamed in the same position, of course, the girl screamed very energetically, she was definitely not injured, so it should be a robbery, do you need me to turn up the sonar on the scene to you? ”

"Okay."

At the same time, I said, I was starting to weave over Gotham, and my powerful hooks and gliders allowed me to get to the scene of the crime in less than seven minutes.

It sounds like a simple robbery. But...... My heart tensed again.

Really...... Strange things happened again.

Alfred called up the audio of the location of the crime...... There was only the rustling of the wind.

No screaming, no threats, no hysterical roars......

I picked up my pace, and three minutes later, I was at the place where the shot rang out.

There...... Nothing.

There were only a few puddles of overnight vomit, and night cats crawling in the shadows. There could have been no gunshots, no smell of gunsmoke, and the wild cats wouldn't have slept so soundly if someone had fired.

"There's nothing here......" I said quietly, into the microphone inside my mask.

"Oh?" Alfred's voice came, "Is there something wrong with the sonar system again?" ”

"That's all I can think about now." I said lightly.

...... Although my tone was understated, my heart could not be calm for a long time.

Today is the 17th.

It's already the third time.

On the evening of the 17th, a month ago, my sonar system had the same problem, a gunshot followed by a woman's scream, but when I arrived at the scene, there was nothing.

And two months ago, on the 17th, it was the same......

I shouldn't be a coincidence, but ...... I have no way of explaining this.

Because I checked my system, there was nothing out of the ordinary, there was no way that someone had planted a virus in it...... Of course, in Gordon's police system, I never found any reports of disappearances, shootings, or robberies.

Nothing but that gunshot.

So, is it a ghost?

I don't know, but I didn't tell Alfred about it, because it didn't make any difference, no one was hurt, no money was lost...... It was just a gunshot, only in my sonar, in my ears.

Not even a night cat woke up.

......

A month later.

Number 17.

Evening.

I'm still standing at the top of the building, looking down on my city.

Gotham seems to be much quieter today than ever, with only some very simple cases happening, and these little things can be handled by the people at the Gotham Police Department, so, until midnight, I didn't find a reason to move.

I just quietly watched the traffic dozens of meters away under my feet.

Suddenly, I unconsciously thought of something.

That strange gunshot, I think it's going to happen again...... If this time, I can predict the location of the gunshots first, can I figure out what the hell is going on?

As soon as the thought came to my head, I couldn't kick it out anymore, and I thought about it almost uncontrollably.

That gunshot......

It was first seen four months ago, near the Venus Bar.

Three months ago, it appeared for the second time, at the Pitier Building.

A month ago, it appeared on the banks of the Kesai River.

My mind naturally marked these places on the map of Gotham, and then connected to each other...... It had become almost a knee-jerk reaction, because in Gotham, there was a guessing jerk who always forced me to play this kind of graphic game with him.

Well...... An equilateral triangle.

This should not be a coincidence...... So if there is any special point on a triangle?

I looked at the center of the triangle on the map.

"Alfred, keep listening to the sonar and tell me as soon as there's anything." I said, and jumped off the building.

"Okay, young master, but I see that you seem to be starting to move."

"Yes, I'm going somewhere ......"

"Uh...... Forgive my curiosity, may I ask, what are you going to do? ”

"Find the ghost......" I replied.

......

A few minutes later, I came to the place where the 'dot' was.

It was an alley, in the shadow of Gotham night, with only a dilapidated street lamp next to it, providing the only faint light in the neighborhood, and the midnight mosquitoes crackled against the bulbs.

I quietly landed at the top of the floor directly above the alley, and habitually looked around.

......

At this moment, my body couldn't help but tense.

As I said before, I'm familiar with every corner of Gotham City...... However, this sentence is not absolute, because I have never been to this alley at the moment.

In other words, I haven't been here since I was eight years old, and I always subconsciously want to forget about this place.

And it was only then that I finally remembered.

In my self-deceptive and sealed memory, there was also the sound of a gunshot.