The smoke curled like a ghost from Loeb's cigar.
Gotham's Chief Commissioner leaned back in his creaking leather chair, the weight of rot-stained authority settling into the room like smog. On the polished wood before him sat a thin manila folder, stamped with Adam's name. His eyes scanned the report, lips curled into a crooked sneer.
"Kid just got here and he's already playing sheriff," Loeb muttered, voice gravelly. "Thinks cracking down on street dirt makes him a goddamn hero."
The officers gathered around him chuckled—vultures in uniform, feeding on the weak with polished boots.
"Hot-headed. No foundation. No crew," one said smugly. "Doesn't even know the rules of the jungle yet. He's going to drown."
Loeb exhaled smoke through his nose, gaze still locked on the file. "Gordon syndrome," he muttered. "Another righteous boy scout who thinks he can swim through Gotham's filth without getting dirty."
"But sir," the younger officer leaned forward, "if he's not one of us, should we start pushing him out?"
Loeb shook his head slowly. "Not yet. Let him dig his own grave first. Maybe he'll turn greedy. Maybe he'll realize that honor doesn't pay rent." His voice dropped, eyes cold. "But if he starts making noise… ruining our side hustle… then we clip the wings before he flies."
Silence fell over the office. No one needed him to finish the sentence.
Meanwhile, Adam stood in a forgotten storage room in the back of Arkham District's precinct—a room filled with rusting gear and confiscated contraband that no one cared enough to catalog.
He leaned against a dented locker, muttering under his breath.
"Man, if black money came easy, I'd be first in line. But I need four grand in seven days. And the kind of bribes we get out here? Pocket change. A couple of rigged slots and hookers can't bankroll a goddamn funeral."
He glanced across the cluttered warehouse until his eyes landed on something absurd: a battered multi-disc copier, half-buried under tarps and old evidence tape. It had six optical bays, a fried motherboard, and a fan that sounded like a dying animal.
Adam approached it with the kind of cautious reverence most men reserved for sacred relics.
"This... this might just be salvation in scrap."
The machine, looted from some underground market, looked like it belonged in a tech museum from the late '90s. But it had one job: mass-produce pirated adult content. And Adam had no shame left to lose.
He plugged it in, hacked it into the precinct's old computer system, and watched the machine groan to life. Its fans rattled, dust poured from the vents, and the whole unit shook like it was having a seizure. But it worked.
The screen blinked.
COPYING DISC 1 OF 12.
Adam inserted a stack of seized VCDs from evidence boxes—illegally distributed tapes of God-knows-what. Flesh, moans, and pixelated mosaics spun in mechanical harmony. He leaned back in the cracked office chair and grinned like a starving man watching dough rise.
"Not bad for a man with no budget," he murmured. "Other cops sell protection. I sell skin."
He flipped through a finished disc, fast-forwarding it in a side player. He didn't care about the content. What mattered was the quality of the mosaic. Too much blur? Worthless. Too little? Risky. But just enough distortion? Perfect for Gotham's creep market.
In a few hours, he had 300 discs—boxed, labeled, sealed.
"Like printing money," he whispered.
By 3 a.m., Adam threw on a hoodie and surgical mask, stuffed the discs into a duffle, and drove down a side road to a decrepit adult video shop lit by a flickering neon sign that read: "MIDNIGHT MOON."
The store owner was already waiting.
A squat man in a yellow tank top, cigarette jammed between nicotine-stained teeth, squinted as Adam entered.
"You bring the goods?" he asked.
Adam dropped the bag on the counter. "Three hundred. Burned, boxed, and blank-labeled. Twenty-three came out bad—blame the ancient hardware."
The man nodded, ran a quick count, then pulled a thick roll of cash from beneath the counter.
"Two seventy-seven clean copies. That's $5,540, per our deal." He pushed the stack toward Adam without blinking. "If you can get me more with... special content, I've got buyers. High-end freaks who want banned stuff. Especially stuff labeled evidence only. You know the kind."
Adam took the cash and thumbed through it.
It felt surreal.
This... this was more than he'd ever seen in a single night.
He held up a few bills, mentally converting them to rupees, game consoles, and the cost of his miserable rent.
"One night of copying porn… beats a year of breaking bones or filing reports," he muttered.
His mind reeled. He was tired, but his brain was on fire.
He was already thinking about scaling. About importing better discs. About finding more content buried in Gotham PD's storage archives. Maybe even bootlegs from GCPD's headquarters itself.
Hell, he might even hit ten grand by the end of the week.
"Let's go, Adam," he whispered to himself. "Debt first. Then we climb."
By the time he returned to Arkham's precinct, the sky was tinged with gray and the city still stank of rot and smoke.
Adam tossed the empty duffle in his trunk and checked his phone.
Balance owed to Black Mask's crew: $4,000.
He smiled.
"Not for long."
But he knew the Arkham vault was tapped dry. If he wanted fresh product, he'd have to dive deeper.
Which meant one thing: Gotham HQ. The evidence locker of the city itself. A treasure trove of seized tech, confiscated smut, and blacklisted materials no one dared sort through.
It was high risk.
But Adam had already crossed that line.
And now that he'd tasted blood...
...there was no going back.