GOTHAM CITY: a dark, twisted reÞection of urban America. Overcrowded, overbuilt, and overshadowed by a continuous air of menace, this gothic nightmare is a breeding ground for the depraved, the indifferent, and the criminally insane. It's also the object of one man's obsession. Witness to the brutal murder of his parents, Bruce Wayne has dedicated his life to protecting this city, taking a form to inspire hope in the innocent...and fear in the guilty. He is the masked vigilante known as the Batman. Now the battlefield has changed. Leveled by a massive earthquake that left thousands dead and millions more wounded, Gotham City has been transformed into a lawless wilderness -- a No Man's Land -- where the survivors are turning against one another, and where the city's protectors are torn by a crisis that may consume them all. Publishers Weekly ...a savage millennial tale of urban implosion, divided loyalties and vigilante justice. Eonmagazine.com ...[a] storytelling masterpiece... Colorado Springs Gazette ...a crisp, compelling, streetwise saga... Nextplanetover.com Rucka gets it right. The author of four novels about professional bodyguard Atticus Kodiak -- Keeper (nominated for a Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America), Finder, Smoker, and Shooting at Midnight, Greg Rucka has been writing since he was eight years old, and hopefully is improving with age. A longtime comics fan, his first graphic novel series was the suspense thriller Whiteout, published by Oni Press and nominated for three Eisner Awards in 1999. Since that time he has been a contributing writer for DC Comics and an active participant in the Batman series of titles. Born and raised in California, he earned his undergraduate degree at Vassar College and his MFA at the University of Southern California. He currently resides in Portland, Oregon. Mr. Rucka is 29 years old, has two tattoos, and rides a motorcycle. Chapter One It had taken them a week of work to get this far, digging out the site only at night, trying to stay safe from watching eyes. The two moved rubble and dug in silence, working mostly by feel. Each of them had more cuts and scrapes on their hands than they could count, and their fingers were numb from the effort and the cold of the air and the bite of the frozen snow. The elder of the two, Paolo, was only twenty-one. His brother, Nicky, was nineteen. They had arrived in Gotham during the summer, immigrating illegally with their parents, and for a while it had looked good for all of them. Then the earthquake came, and the tenement they were living in, the room they shared with two other families, was buried under twenty tons of concrete and iron from the building next door. The bodies were never recovered. When No Man's Land came, they stayed more out of fear than anything else. There had been soldiers on the bridges, on the roads, in the tunnels. Soldiers with guns, and both Paolo and Nicky had bad memories of soldiers with guns from their childhood in Colombia. As far as they were concerned, the soldiers meant one of two things: either they'd be shot, or they'd be deported. And being deported, that amounted to being shot. So they stayed. It had to be past midnight when Nicky heard his brother speak for the first time in hours, the hoarse whisper of excitement. "I found it," Paolo hissed in Spanish. "I found a way in, look." Nicky moved, checking where his brother pointed. It was a clear night, with half a moon, and in the light and past the shadows he could see where Paolo was indicating, a small opening, just big enough to wriggle through. And inside, the prize, a whole Jiffy Junior convenience store, a mother lode of treasure. Canned goods, batteries, flashlights, aspirin, soda, chips, bread, cigarettes, beer... "You remember what we do," Paolo whispered. "You go in, you grab what you can, we cover it up again, then take it to Penguin. He'll take care of us. But we don't tell him where we found it, we keep this our secret." "I remember," Nicky snapped. "Of course I remember." "Keep your voice down." Nicky frowned, then took the flashlight his brother handed him. It was their prized possession, and they had only turned it on once since they'd found it, just to make certain the batteries worked. Now Nicky held it tightly in one hand as he got on his knees, and crawled through the tiny opening. The stink inside was awful, and almost immediately he wanted to throw up. He told himself it was spoiled milk and meat, and not a body. He told himself it didn't matter if it was a body, because the dead had it easy right now. He convinced himself to keep going, and managed to work his way out of the hole, dropping down inside the wreckage of the store. His feet splashed in something when he landed, he didn't know what. It was entirely black inside but for the broken circle of moonlight leaking in from above. Nicky turned on the flashlight, then turned it off again. Jiffy Junior