As soon as Harley opened her eyes, she found herself cowering in the corner of a broken room, she tried to lift her arm, and found that one arm seemed to be dislocated, she pulled up the sleeve with her other hand, and saw the bruises on her forearm, combined with the abrasions on her waist and legs, it seemed that someone had dragged her here.

Except for the first movement, Harley didn't move, her eyes were still half-closed, and she only looked at the room with the narrow field of vision under her eyelids.

Hallie was a native of Gotham, so she looked around and knew that it was probably the dormitory of a black factory, which was actually a room separated from the factory for child laborers, and there were about fifteen or sixteen children her age here.

It took about five seconds for Hallie to remember how she got here, and then she realized that it might be some kind of illusion, and she knew that it was a friendly environment, otherwise the location would not have been Gotham.

After thinking about these things, the first thing Harley did was close her eyes and sleep.

This body may have never eaten a full meal, after a day's work, tired and shivering, perhaps because of offending the foreman, he dragged his arm and dislocated, it is very likely that he will not have food all day tomorrow, if he does not seize the time to rest now and let the body adapt to this state, then I am afraid that it will not be long before he will fall into a coma due to low blood sugar.

Hallie slept until the next morning.

It wasn't until the faint light peeked through the crack in the door that Harley had time to take a closer look at herself, the little girl she possessed was about seven or eight years old, as thin as an egg stuck in a chopstick.

Her arm was weakly on the side, her face was much better, after all, Harley would not be afraid and worried, and after a solid sleep, at least her spirit was fully rested.

Regaining a little strength, Harley first pressed her arm on one side and pushed it up hard, and then hung up on her arm after a muffled grunt.

Harley realized that she had guessed correctly, it was supposed to be a habitual dislocation, and after pressing her arm back, her movements were not affected except for the soreness.

After a while, a fat woman in an oil-stained apron walked in, carrying some leftovers in a basin and a dirty bag full of hard bread behind her.

When she threw the things into the room, the frail child jumped up like a hungry tiger and threw himself at the food frantically—Harley was the most agile of the two, and without even looking at the pot with the soup, she grabbed at least five pieces of hard bread with her arms in her arms.

With three in her arms and two under her arms, she flexibly bowed her body, rolled on the ground, kicked away a slow child who was in the way, and shrank into the corner where she had been staying.

She placed all four loaves of bread in the gap between her back and the corner of the wall, then leaned her body tightly against the corner of the wall, protected the bread from the air, and then tore the only loaf of bread in her arms with her teeth like a wild beast.

Just kidding, she was a wanderer in Gotham, Harley thought, just two days after her parents died, her uncle kicked her out with the gangsters, and it happened suddenly, Harley had no weapon in her hand, so she had to leave obediently to save her life.

A middle-class girl who is suddenly displaced, has no gang connections, and is very beautiful, and Harley will do everything to survive, she hides in that street for three months, not to mention the other children on the street, and the stray dogs are all starving to death because they can't rob her.

It took Harley a few dozen seconds to stuff a large piece of hard bread into her stomach without even choking on it, and then she pounced on the child next to her and bit him on the ear.

The boy next to her let out a scream, and Hallie wiped her mouth full of blood with the back of her hand, pushing the child away and picking up the bread he had thrown away because of the pain, completely ignoring the sand sticking to it, and gulping it into her mouth like a starving ghost.

Several of the children around her cowered in her direction out of fear, and Harry's eyes fell on one person's bread every three seconds on average, and those she was eyeing quickly grabbed their food and hid to the side.

The black lady threw in a lot of food, but there were fifteen or sixteen children here, and if it was evenly distributed, one person could get a hard piece of bread about the size of a fist, and then dip it in a vegetable soup with salt and sugar, which was basically not enough to eat but not starve to death.

But the problem is that eating here is by grabbing, and Harley grabbed five pieces of bread alone, which means that there may be four children who have nothing to eat, but in fact, bread is not the focus of the battle, and the area around the vegetable soup brought in is the area where the fighting is fiercest.

Although the bread can wrap the stomach, but the vegetable soup is hot, and there is butter in it, there is the most urgent fat in this group of children, and it can be clearly seen that there is a small group holding the pot of vegetable soup, and a few stronger children around are eyeing but do not rush over, and the rest are too thin and have not grabbed the bread, so they can only squat next to them and stare directly, hoping to get a little leftover soup base.

But in the other corner of the room, there was a boy who looked out of place, with conspicuous red hair, a very typical white sunburn on his face, and a body that looked stronger than the others, but he crouched in the corner and did not say a word, nor did he move.

Naturally, Hallie noticed the boy's abnormality as well, and she looked at the boy from head to toe to make sure that he was supposed to be little Bruce.

This is nothing particularly difficult to judge, Bruce Jr. is not the Batman of the future after all, some of his habitual small movements are not deliberately covered, Hallie has long found that when Bruce Jr. is thinking, the index finger of his right hand will habitually tap on his arm.

Hallie laughed inwardly, she didn't have to think about it to know that Bruce must be thinking, thinking about who got him here, what the other party's conspiracy was, where it was, how to break the trap and so on.

Harley took another bite of bread and pursed her lips, remembering that in the days when she had been kicked out of the house by her uncle, she had spent her days sitting on the banks of the Gotham River thinking, and that she would have starved to death if she hadn't been in time for a hidden dumpster on the corner and no one had gone through it.

Harley finished the small piece of bread she had snatched, and pulled out another piece of bread from her back and continued to devour it, and she glanced at little Bruce and thought that the pampered young master must not know that this might be the only serious meal they had in two days.

Because she had actually eaten it, she knew that the bread in her mouth, though hard and unpalatable, was of high quality, and that such a black factory of child laborers would never provide them with such food in a single sudden.

Sure enough, Hallie's conjecture was completely correct, except for this meal in the morning, there was only cold water for lunch and dinner.

It's a food seasoning factory, and the children's job is to add bags of ingredients to the pot and stir it, don't ask why there is no assembly line, electricity is worth more than hard bread and swill soup.

For adults, a bag of more than ten pounds of raw materials is not heavy, even if it is tiring to carry and stir back and forth, it is not heavy physical labor, but the people who work here are seven or eight years old, the oldest is not ten years old, the raw material bags are carried and one person stirs a cauldron, and there is no rest at all in the middle, from six o'clock in the morning to twelve o'clock at noon, with Hallie's willpower are tired and dizzy.

There is a half-hour break at noon, but it is not really for them to rest, the main thing is to let them go to the water room to rinse their faces and hands, otherwise too much sweat will drip into the pot.

In the water room, Hallie saw little Bruce, whose whole arm was shaking so badly when he washed his hands that he wouldn't be able to lift his arm for a few hours, if nothing else.

The way of exerting force was completely wrong, Hallie shook her head and thought, if he didn't tighten his core, his waist, back and shoulders were exerted at the same time, and he only used the strength of his arms to stir, and he couldn't even hold on until the next day.

Obviously, Bruce Wayne didn't do much heavy work at this age, and the heaviest job he did when his parents were still alive was to carry the children's bicycle down the three steps of the manor garden, with Alfred on his back.

He hadn't eaten anything in the morning, and it was likely that this body hadn't eaten anything for two days, and by the afternoon, he had been taught to be a man with low blood sugar.

Little Bruce almost fell headlong into the soup pot, but the adult in charge next to him quickly pulled him out, but when he touched the heated part of his arm below, a blister was burned.

The steward dragged him out as soon as he got him out, and Bruce was beaten badly, because if he really threw himself into the soup pot, the soup would not be available, and it would be worth more than him.

When Harley returned to her dorm room after a day's work. I saw little Bruce curled up in the corner, with large bruises on one cheek, neck and arm, and his ankles were completely swollen, and he looked like he couldn't walk.

Harley didn't go to the water room to wash her face and hair, so she came back earlier than everyone else, she walked up to Bruce and crouched down, and smiled at him, and Bruce immediately recognized Harley, the crazy smile was too recognizable.

"We've got to figure it out...... Find a way to escape......"

"Where to flee?"

Little Bruce opened his mouth, and just as he was about to speak, Harley let out a loud voice with his tongue and said, "Don't you think there's a place out there better than here?" Wake up, young master! You're not Bruce Wayne anymore! ”

Bruce clenched his fists, obviously angry at Harley's words, he didn't understand how Harley had accepted the fate of being mistreated so easily, and instead of resisting, he really started working here.

"I belong here, Bruce." Harley's tone was rare and soft, and she said, "The children of Gotham belong here, it's not our suffering, it's our life." ”

Little Bruce curled up on the ground in silence, not saying a word, but the look in his eyes showed that he didn't want to accept such a fate, and Hallie shook her head and walked to the other corner and sat down.

After a while, she said, "If you can't survive in your current environment, how can you jump out?" If you can't live well and be strong here, you will understand that the place you thought was the bottom of the valley has a deeper abyss below. ”

(End of chapter)