Night fell over Hell's Kitchen like wet grease.
The turf war Jack triggered earlier was still bleeding across the harbor.
Distant sirens wailed down 11th Avenue every fifteen minutes.
Police cars sped past with their red and blue lights slicing through the thick river fog.
Jack walked in the opposite direction, his hands warm inside the deep pockets of his charcoal coat.
He didn't care about the gunfire at the docks anymore.
He had already harvested his profit: $488.00 in cash and 1.4% synchronization.
Now, he needed a home.
He spent two hours searching the dilapidated residential blocks near 46th Street.
He stayed away from active apartment complexes with doormen or security cameras.
Instead, he looked for forgotten urban scars—buildings condemned after fire damage, old commercial laundries bankrupted a decade ago, or residential basements caught in endless property litigation.
He found it behind a boarded-up meatpacking plant near the railyards.
The structure was a three-story brick building from the 1950s.
Its front windows were covered in thick plywood.
A heavy iron padlock, rusted orange by decades of acidic New York rain, secured the low basement door down a narrow flight of concrete steps.
Jack glanced up and down the alley.
Empty. Only a stray cat sat on a overturned trash container, watching him with glowing yellow eyes.
Jack pulled a small set of silver tension wrenches and lock picks from his coat pocket—cheap tools he had bought from a hardware store an hour earlier for twelve dollars.
He knelt in front of the rusted iron padlock.
Before today, Jack had never picked a lock in his life.
But the moment his fingers touched the cold metal, his brain automatically mapped the interior mechanism.
The Basic Lockpicking & Wiretapping Mastery skill kicked in like muscle memory.
Click.
He inserted the tension wrench, applying light counter-clockwise pressure.
Click. Tap. Click.
He glided the diamond pick inside, feeling the tiny brass pins inside the tumbler.
Three seconds.
Four seconds.
CLACK.
The heavy iron shackle popped open with a dull, satisfying metallic snap.
Jack slipped the broken lock into his pocket, pushed the heavy wooden door open, and stepped inside into the darkness.
The basement smelled of damp concrete, old copper pipes, and stale dust.
Jack closed the door behind him, locking it from the inside with a wooden crossbar he found near the frame.
He pulled a small ten-dollar LED flashlight from his coat, clicking it on.
The white beam cut through the dark.
The room was roughly four hundred square feet.
The walls were solid, thick poured concrete, completely dampening the sound of the traffic outside.
In the corner sat a heavy oak workbench left behind by the former owner, covered in sawdust and rusted screws.
Beside it was an old metal folding chair and a non-functional iron radiator.
There were no windows. No secondary entrances except for a narrow ventilation shaft high near the ceiling.
It was pitch black, silent, and completely invisible to the outside world.
"Perfect," Jack whispered softly.
His voice bounced off the concrete walls.
He shined the flashlight beam onto the oak workbench, running his pale fingers over the dusty wood.
"No landlord. No paper trail. No S.H.I.E.L.D. cameras."
He set his flashlight on the table, pointing the light upward to illuminate the center of the room.
He pulled out his money, placing his remaining bills on the dusty wooden surface.
[ Current Status ]
Host Synchronization: 1.4%
Available Cash: $464.00 (After tool purchases)
Active Hideout: Unsanctioned Basement (Hell's Kitchen - Sector 4)
Jack pulled out his five-dollar spiral notebook and laid it beside the cash.
He clicked his ballpoint pen, opening a blank page.
At 1.4%, he couldn't synthesize Joker Venom. He couldn't build advanced explosives or automated trick weapons.
But he had a workbench. He had privacy. And he had four hundred and sixty-four dollars.
Jack drew a simple diagram on the paper: a light bulb, a battery, and a cheap low-frequency radio receiver.
"Step one," Jack muttered, his cold eyes reflecting the bright LED light.
"We wire the room for power, buy basic chemical components, and build our first audio interception rig."
He leaned back against the heavy oak table, his charcoal trench coat falling around him like a cloak.
A wide, silent smile slowly pulled at the corners of his lips in the dark room.
The Joker hadn't built his empire in Gotham in a single day.
He started in a basement just like this one.
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