Will's blood went cold.
He was half a second from making an excuse to leave when Oswald grabbed him and pressed him flat against the door.
"Hear that? The wardrobe just opened. Rustling — sounds like someone changing."
Oswald's voice was barely a breath. His full attention was on the door, one hand already moving to the handle.
He held up three fingers. Counted down with his eyes.
Will nodded, privately relieved. Strange's augmented men wouldn't sneak upstairs and quietly change clothes — this was a thief. If a thief could pull Oswald away from the casino floor, that was good enough.
Three. Two. One.
They went through the door together.
The dramatic arrest they were expecting didn't happen. What they got instead was a pair of very long, very bare legs.
The blonde girl had been mid-change when they hit the door. She screamed the moment they came through, which was fair.
Will recognized her from downstairs — one of the waitresses, the kind of face you looked at twice without meaning to.
"Did Mr. Maroni not tell you this room is off limits?"
She'd dropped into a crouch, arms wrapped around her knees, face flushed — anger, embarrassment, possibly both.
"Who are you. What are you doing in here."
Oswald wasn't buying the performance. He came forward with the brass knuckles out. The message was clear enough — her answer needed to be satisfying, or the conversation was going to take a different turn.
"You think I want to be here? That damn Maroni made me—" she caught herself, bit the inside of her cheek. The distress looked genuine, which made it harder to read.
"Do not speak about Mr. Maroni that way."
"Fine — Mr. Maroni sent me. I can call him if you don't believe me."
She pressed a hand to her chest and crossed to the table, picked up the phone, and dialed.
Will noticed, almost without meaning to, that she'd put another three feet between herself and Oswald in the process.
"Yes — did you not tell your people? They're questioning me right now."
A few more words, then she held the receiver out toward Oswald and stepped away from the table, unclipping her small bag from the chair as she went.
From inside she pulled a black leather suit.
"I'll never understand why Mr. Maroni is so obsessed with leather. What is it with him and costumes?"
She shimmied into it while she was still talking, twisting to drag the zipper up.
Anyone else in the room might have gotten distracted. Will didn't get the chance to — the moment he saw the suit, something clicked into place.
He tested it.
"Hey. Selina."
She froze mid-sentence.
Just for a fraction of a second, but that was enough. A real waitress named Selina wouldn't react that way to her own name. This one did.
Selina Kyle. Catwoman.
"Don't touch the phone—"
Too late. Oswald already had the receiver.
Whatever Selina had done to it, the current hit him instantly. His eyes rolled white and he went down like a felled tree.
Will's foot was already moving.
One solid kick sent Oswald rolling clear before he could seize against anything dangerous.
Well. That worked out sideways but it worked.
"Now then." Selina's voice recovered its ease. She walked toward Will slowly, each step deliberate. "With that out of the way — can you answer a question for me?"
In her mind the threat was handled.
The exaggerated blonde wig came off. Underneath, her real hair was short and grey-silver, close to the skull. She crossed the remaining distance and planted one foot against the wall beside Will's head, her leg stretching the full split — leather and all — pinning him in place with the sheer geometry of it.
She was, objectively, extraordinary at this.
"Where did you hear that name? Or let's be more direct — how do you know who I am?"
Will had about 0.1 seconds of genuine difficulty focusing before something in him realigned.
He moved her foot.
Selina blinked.
"Help me get him out the window."
The charm hadn't failed on her before. Not once, from anyone she could remember. She stood there for a moment, genuinely uncertain what had just happened, and said nothing.
"Are you going to help or not?" Will was already crouching next to Oswald, checking him over.
"...Fine."
She tied the rope herself — quick, practiced knots — and managed the line from the window while Will went down first to receive. Oswald made it to street level without incident, still out cold.
Selina followed with a clean back-flip off the sill, landing in the alley without a sound.
Will stared at her knees.
"Those are not normal knees."
"My question still stands," Selina said, already closing the distance again, voice dropping. "Don't think you're getting out of—"
Will sidestepped her without breaking stride.
The night air helped. Cold came off the alley walls and the clarity it brought was useful, because he needed it right now.
Selina Kyle in a comic panel and Selina Kyle standing three feet away with actual claws were not the same thing. He'd known that intellectually. His body had briefly needed reminding.
Beautiful, yes. Also genuinely dangerous, and accustomed to getting whatever she wanted from men by the shortest available route.
Selina read the shift in him and understood it.
She'd had her looks her whole life, and they'd opened every door she'd ever needed opened. She moved through Gotham's money and shadow with equal ease — the socialite who charmed rooms, the thief who stripped them on the way out. Nobody walked away clean. Nobody had ever needed a second approach.
Her ego wasn't going to let him be the first exception.
She stopped talking and let the claws come out instead.
Then the wall of the casino exploded inward.
The sound hit them in the chest before they heard it properly. And then the screaming started — a full-throated wall of it, the kind that comes from a crowd that has completely lost the calculation and is running on pure animal terror.
The comic had come due.
Hugo Strange had arrived.
"We have to move." Will hauled Oswald up across his back, grabbed Selina's wrist, and pulled her into the alley shadow before she could argue.
He found out later he'd left at exactly the right moment.
The casino's heavy security doors — designed to keep Gotham's police out — now sealed everyone inside in. The guests who reached them first hammered against the steel until their hands gave out. The ones who didn't reach them in time encountered Strange's augmented men instead.
The screaming didn't last long after that.
Richie Panto died on his knees in the middle of the floor, head tilted back, eyes unfocused in that specific way of a man who has stopped expecting rescue and started waiting for it to be over.
The hand that came down on him was enormous.
There were no survivors. Not the guests, not the staff, not a single Roman who had been on that floor.
When Gordon's unit finally cut through the doors with welding equipment and they swung open, what came out first was the smell. Then the floor itself — thick and dark, moving sluggishly into the street gutter.
Gordon stepped back and covered his nose.
"God help me," he said quietly. "I'm going to be seeing this in my sleep."