Jason sat perched on the ledge of the rooftop overlooking Miller Harbour, his breath visible in the crisp night air. Gotham’s winters had only gotten colder in the past years, almost as if it wasn’t just he who had lost hope… but the city had, too.

Below him, the remnants of the battlefield were still visible. Torn bodies and scattered crates of illegal firearms littered the dock, blood of the dead and wounded stained the river.

Let them feel what I felt. His large, bloodied claws clenched and unclenched as his thoughts spiralled. Scums deserve nothing. Why should they get to walk around crackling jokes and spending money while in my dreams every night I’m burning alive?

The cool breeze ran through his maroon, sweat-dampened fur. He should be heading back to his hideout, he knew that. But he couldn’t sleep. He never could, not after a night like this. Especially not now.

Nothing had been the same since the spores had turned the streets into a savage playground, twisting bodies and minds alike. Jason knew the danger, the chaos that surged with each new infection, but what haunted him the most wasn’t the bloodshed. It was the reflection of himself that the infection had dragged out. The rage, the hatred, the pain.

Every second, dreaming or awake, he was at war with every memory and every thought. They would never go away.

The spores had reduced him to his primal instincts, leaving nothing but the murderous red wolf in him, howling to make every living scum of this hellhole pay.

But the city was a cancer, one he couldn’t cure, one that ate away at him with every skull he crushed, every life he took. Even the stars seemed distant, indifferent to his torment, their cold light mingling with the moon’s glow in the smog-choked sky. But somehow among the chaos, he felt closer to the stars than to the city he was born and raised in.

Why didn’t I stay dead.