SYNCHRONIZATION: 0%
A sink coated in enamel and grime.
Old tiles, with mold clearly visible in certain spots.
A rusty faucet running water that was no less rusty.
Fortunately, the water wasn't always orange. You just had to let it run for a while first, flushing out the worst of it.
Though...
Even if the water were always orange, Chris wouldn't have complained.
He'd long since gotten used to it.
SYNCHRONIZATION: 0%
Exhaling in mild irritation, Chris set about improving his appearance. Well, "set about" was generous...
He had neither experience nor proper supplies. No creams, no regular barber.
All Chris could do was slick down his hair with a wet hand and hope for the best, then spray himself with Axe — the most accessible, meaning cheapest, "cologne" available.
But hardly any of these circumstances were going to make Chris's life harder.
Because nobody around him cared.
Chris had spent his entire conscious life in Harlem, one of the most famous and iconic neighborhoods in New York.
Harlem, located in the northern part of Manhattan — just as Hell's Kitchen occupied the western part — was one of the city's poorest and most crime-ridden districts.
It came down to history, and to ethnic and cultural differences.
Harlem was historically the most Black neighborhood in New York.
Not that Chris, or any sociologist you might pick at random, was a racist. Though saying something like that in Harlem was probably best avoided.
It was a matter of history.
Strange as it may sound, for a significant portion of its history, America was genuinely... well, racist. No qualifiers.
A slavery system whose foundations were more brutal than anything seen in Rome a dozen centuries earlier.
And that treatment of Black people — absurd as it sounds — persisted right into the late twentieth century. Slavery had been abolished long before, yes, but racial segregation existed and thrived.
For the current generation, it seems unthinkable that just fifty years ago ordinary city buses had designated seats for "colored" and "white" passengers.
And there were countless small injustices like that.
Naturally, that kind of treatment left its mark. A certain form of enforced isolation pushed African Americans closer together — and so the ghettos emerged.
History had conspired, for many reasons, to leave Black Americans with significantly less income than other Americans. And that situation had been shaped precisely by society itself.
Yes, that sounds incredibly racist to say. But it's a fact. The cause wasn't genetics — it was history.
And Harlem was a product of its time and its society.
A kind of ghetto — though calling it that today would be a stretch — with a predominantly Black population.
Which made it somewhat amusing that Chris was completely white.
He'd lived in Harlem since birth and had never once left New York.
You could say he'd absorbed the culture of the Black streets from the cradle, all while possessing snow-white skin.
Brown eyes and a mop of messy black hair. Many people would have called Chris handsome, though he'd always considered his looks completely average.
Put him in decent clothes, and no one would ever guess he was a Harlem native.
Back at the orphanage, in early childhood, people used to joke about it all the time.
"Ha, someone left you on our doorstep!" — A dark-skinned boy pointed at Chris and exaggeratedly widened his eyes.
"We're in an orphanage..." — Chris glanced around uncertainly. "We were all left on someone's doorstep..."
"Right..." — Every child around him deflated at once.
Yeah...
His sense of humor hadn't been great as a kid. And honestly, at nineteen, things hadn't changed all that much.
"Alright," Chris inspected his appearance critically. "Good enough..."
He packed a small bag with a change of clothes just in case, then stepped out of his tiny one-room apartment, keys in hand.
The hallway was filthy and cluttered, simply because nobody cared. The building itself was a half-crumbling three-story structure.
But despite the less-than-ideal neighborhood and the far-from-ideal condition of the building, the place was packed to capacity.
New York wasn't exactly kind when it came to housing.
And the fact that Chris could afford to rent an apartment at all was something of a miracle. More accurately, he'd had help. Help that was still ongoing.
After locking the door, Chris squared his shoulders and headed out. The door to his apartment was so flimsy it could be kicked in with a single blow, but Chris had nothing worth stealing, and locking up was purely a symbolic gesture. In Harlem, any self-respecting neighbor would make a point of walking in and taking something if they saw a door hanging wide open.
Speaking of neighbors...
Swaying from side to side, something came lurching down the stairwell.
"Hey, Jessica," Chris attempted somewhat awkwardly to make contact with his neighbor.
Jessica Jones was a fairly well-known figure in Harlem, though it was clear she couldn't have cared less about any kind of notoriety.
She had a striking appearance. Slender and pretty, with black hair down to her shoulders. Usually dressed in a black leather jacket, jeans, and tall combat boots. "Rocker" was a fair description of the woman.
Though Chris would have added one more word...
"Drunken mess..."
He'd heard plenty of rumors about Jessica Jones. Some said she was an absolute nightmare — supposedly capable of hurling any would-be suitor into the next county. He'd also heard about her work as a part-time detective.
But personally, as Jessica's neighbor, Chris had always thought of her primarily as a drunk. At any given moment you could spot either a bottle or her favorite flask, which invariably contained something alcoholic.
Even now, every sign of a not-exactly-sober night was written all over her.
Swaying back and forth, one hand braced against the wall and the other either nursing a hangover or continuing the previous night's festivities, Jessica was making her way toward her office-apartment.
"Hey, Jessica," Chris tried greeting her again, since the first attempt had either been heard and ignored, or — well, no, Jessica had definitely ignored it on purpose.
"Get lost — BWUUEH—"
Chris lurched back in alarm as Jessica nearly "greeted" him in her own special way. Meaning she almost vomited all over him from head to toe.
Watching Jessica empty the contents of her stomach right in front of another neighbor's door, Chris asked himself — not for the first time — a familiar question.
Why do you even bother with her?
The answer was simple enough.
Chris had no friends. None whatsoever. And Jessica, for all her unhealthy relationship with alcohol, at least worked occasionally. The other alternatives were even less appealing.
"Alright," Chris said, mouth twitching slightly, and headed to work. "Good luck, Jessica..."
"BWUUEH..."
Maybe it was time to write off Jessica entirely...
SYNCHRONIZATION: 0%
Chris had no prospects and no connections. He wasn't just an orphan — he also carried a record that wasn't exactly ideal for career advancement.
At eighteen, he'd been thrown out onto the street. No money, barely a completed secondary education...
In short, Chris had immediately become completely homeless. Up until eighteen he'd had subsidies and health insurance, but after that...
Yeah.
There was, however, one old man Chris knew — someone who could be said to have shared the same "ward" with him, in a manner of speaking.
Mr. Kramer, a former military man and now a sixty-year-old retiree of Irish descent, was also a Harlem native, just like Chris. He was white, too, incidentally. So there was a certain common ground between them.
Over the course of his life, Mr. Kramer had managed to save a modest sum of money, which he'd invested in several apartments and a small shop.
And so it was that, finding himself in complete desperation, Chris had run into Mr. Kramer entirely by chance — and Mr. Kramer had done something that wasn't exactly typical for Harlem: he'd decided to help the poor kid out of the goodness of his heart.
He got Chris a job at his shop and charged only a token amount for rent, just until Chris got back on his feet.
And for that, Chris was genuinely grateful.
"Welcome... uh..."
Standing behind the register, Chris looked up in considerable surprise to see a completely familiar face. One that had passed him barely an hour ago.
Casting him a barely-irritated glance, Jessica Jones headed for the beer section and promptly disappeared between the rows of shelves. The encounter wasn't exactly a stunning coincidence — the shop was literally ten meters from the building they both lived in. No mystery there; both the apartment and the shop belonged to the same person.
The shop, incidentally, had only Chris working it, serving simultaneously as janitor, cashier, and stocker. Not the hardest job, but a fairly exhausting one. Even for Mr. Kramer's not-so-large shop.
The door opening pulled Chris out of his thoughts.
"Welc... ome..."
Chris couldn't hold a smile on his face for the second time in a row. If Jessica had been only a minor surprise, the next visitors carried with them intentions that were considerably less friendly.
There were two of them. Both bearded, around forty, with unpleasant faces.
Having spent his entire conscious life in Harlem — a place crawling with gangs — Chris had learned to recognize people in the business of illegal activity.
And the new arrivals were part of an Irish gang.
Most of Harlem's gangs skewed Black, but others existed. These particular representatives of the criminal world were from that category.
"Where's Kramer?" The older of the two men didn't bother with pleasantries and went straight to addressing the shop's only employee. That is, Chris.
"Uh..." Chris shifted awkwardly, trying to calm his racing heart. He'd always been afraid of dealing with gangs. "I don't know..."
The man didn't like the answer, and his expression darkened as he—
"Hey, leprechaun," the Irish men turned around in surprise to find an irritated Jessica standing there, beer bottle in hand. "Stop blocking the register."
The second man, apparently serving as a bodyguard, took strong exception to Jessica's little slip.
"Bitch..." he growled. "You got any idea who we are?"
"You look like two Connor McGregor knockoffs," Jessica said with a sardonic smirk, "if he were broke, ugly, and reeked of cheap whiskey from a mile away."
"BITCH!" The man, unable to take the mockery any longer, reached into his jacket pocket. But the lead man immediately raised a hand, stopping his subordinate.
"Jessica Jones," the lead man said with a slow nod. "I've heard of you."
"Great," Jessica replied without missing a beat. "Now move away from the register."
"You really don't want to get involved in these... matters," the lead Irishman said, putting weight behind the words.
And Jessica...
Backed down.
With a dismissive snort, she flicked the bottle cap off with a single finger and began treating her hangover.
Yes, "these matters" was the lead Irishman's way of referring to gang business. And no matter how fearless Jessica was, getting involved in that kind of trouble was something she had no desire to do.
"Thank you," the lead man said unexpectedly, and turned to Chris, who was shifting uncomfortably in place. "So you really don't know where Kramer is?"
"No," Chris shook his head immediately. "He left the shop with me and went."
The gang leader fixed Chris with a tense, goosebump-inducing stare, then exhaled, dissolving the built-up pressure.
"Fine," he said, rolling his shoulders — and then reached for the register.
"W-what are you doing?" Chris stared in disbelief.
"Taking what's ours," the Irishman shrugged, pulling out the cash.
"That's Mr. Kramer's money!" Chris snapped, unexpectedly fierce despite the fear coursing through him.
"Hey," Jessica said in a quiet voice — addressing Chris directly for the first time. And the occasion wasn't a happy one. "Just let them go."
"Right, kid," said the satisfied Irishman, counting the bills as he walked toward the exit. "Better for your health."
The door closed behind the departing gangsters, bringing with it a deafening silence.
A stunned Chris stared at the space where he'd just been robbed in the most brazen way imaginable.
Jessica, uncharacteristically tactful, waited for him to collect himself.
"That was..." Chris stared blankly at the empty register. "That was Mr. Kramer's money..."
"He'll understand," Jessica shrugged. "It's not your fight to pick with those guys."
"I let him down," Chris murmured quietly. "After everything he's done for me..."
"This is Harlem," Jessica offered, in what for her passed as comfort. Genuinely surprising, actually. "This is normal here."
"No," Chris replied hotly. "This is not normal."
Mr. Kramer was practically the only person who had ever extended a hand to him.
Yes, racketeering, robbery, and other crimes were an inseparable part of Harlem, but...
Chris didn't want to let down his only... friend, for lack of a better word.
"I'm getting that money back," Chris said firmly, reaching under the counter.
"Are you out of your mind?" Jessica's jaw dropped at what he was doing. "Do you have any idea— HOLY MOTHER OF—"
Jessica's explosive reaction came from the enormous shotgun Chris had produced from under the counter. Which he immediately loaded with two shells.
Every self-respecting businessman in Harlem had to have a weapon. Mr. Kramer had forbidden Chris from touching it, but... Chris didn't want to let his benefactor down.
"What do you think you're doing?!"
"I'm just going to get the money back," Chris answered, sweating nervously. "They'll... give it back, probably?"
"This is the Irish mob, not some random junkie with a knife!" Jessica, instantly sobered by everything happening, tried to talk him out of it. "Now I understand why they put you in the psych ward!"
"How do you—" Chris looked up at her, stunned. "How do you know about that?!"
"I'm a detective," Jessica sniffed.
"What's my name?"
"Names aren't necessary for my work," Jessica put on an impassive expression. "But go ahead — you can tell me your name if you like."
Jessica's attempt to distract the mentally unstable boy was obvious. But their first real attempt at communication had given Chris a small, unexpected lift.
"Christopher Wallace."
"Pfff..." Jessica snorted into her fist. "Middle name?"
Chris smiled.
"Christopher George Latore Wallace," he introduced himself with a hint of pride.
"Ha-ha-ha..." Jessica burst out laughing. "They named you after the freaking Biggie Smalls!"
Biggie Smalls — or the Notorious B.I.G. — was the legendary rapper of the nineties, the voice of the streets of the entire East Coast. Born in Harlem, a true New York native to the bone. In that city, Biggie Smalls mattered more than Michael Jackson, more than any other hip-hop artist who ever lived.
Which was why Jessica laughed. The white kid had, by a supremely ironic twist, been named after Harlem's most iconic Black rapper.
"Well, pleasure to meet you, Jessica," Chris said with a smile, adjusting his grip on the shotgun. "I'll be back!"
"Wait!" Jessica stared in disbelief as Chris disappeared into the dark alley the two Irish mob men had gone down. "Biggie Smalls got shot..."
Alone in the empty shop, Jessica looked around helplessly.
At the empty register.
At the spot where, just a second ago, a timid kid with the name of a Black gangsta rapper had been standing.
"Oh, for —" She downed the rest of the bottle in one go and took off after Chris.
Jessica might have been a sarcastic drunk, but she wanted to sleep at night. And if Chris got shot...
Her half-dead conscience wouldn't let her rest.
SYNCHRONIZATION: 1% (STAGE I)
"So..." The lead Irishman pressed right up against the shotgun barrel with an ironic smile. "You going to shoot?"
The shotgun, trembling in Chris's fear-shaking hands.
The self-assured gangster.
And Chris, with absolutely no idea what he was supposed to do.
Catching up to the Irish pair had been easy. They'd been strolling along, chatting in good humor, not even thinking about running. As though they knew perfectly well that no one could ever hold them accountable. Except Chris had had his own thoughts about that.
Well.
He'd had those thoughts right up until the moment the Irishmen turned and looked at him with their cold, hard stares.
And that was when Chris had completely fallen apart.
He realized that not only had he never shot anyone — he could barely even fight. His name had always gotten a laugh out of the locals, which meant there had been almost no real conflict in his life. And Chris had always made a point of staying on the sidelines, a kind of distant observer.
But now, here he was.
Every inch of him was shaking, unable to so much as pull a trigger — he could barely even speak.
And the Irishman, sensing his fear and lack of confidence, immediately moved in for the kill.
"When you pick up a gun, always be ready to use it," the gangster said with a cruel smile. "They weren't made for soft little kids like you."
"I-I-I..." The stutter, brought on by a wave of pure terror, wasn't exactly helping Chris's case. "I'm not... s-soft..."
"Then shoot," the Irishman provoked him in the most brazen way, making no move whatsoever to take the weapon. He just stood there, right up against the barrel. "Shoot and show me how confident you are."
"I..." Chris lowered the barrel in defeat, utterly disgusted with himself. Of course, when he'd grabbed the shotgun from under the counter, he hadn't actually planned on shooting anyone — he'd figured the threat alone would be enough.
Apparently Jessica had been right.
They were gangsters. And he was nobody.
BOOM!
The crack of a single shot seemed to fill every corner of the alley. It slammed into the senses of every person present like a hammer blow.
And it hadn't been fired by Christopher Wallace.
"Johnny!" The Irishman stumbled back from the young man now crumpling from a wound to the stomach. "Why the hell did you shoot him?!"
"Boss," his bodyguard frowned in confusion. "He was pointing a gun at you, right? Didn't that mean—"
"He never had the nerve to actually pull the trigger!" The Irishman snapped irritably, staring down at a groaning Christopher. "We would've broken his legs and been done with it! Now we've got a body on our hands!"
"So let's get out of here," the other man said, jerking his head.
And they left in a hurry, leaving Chris spread out on the ground.
"Oh God, Mother Mary, holy— it's only been two minutes!"
Jessica dropped to her knees beside Chris, who was rapidly losing strength.
The wound looked terrible. The bullet had gone straight into his stomach, most likely tearing through his liver, and punched clean out the other side. Chris hadn't just lost an organ — he was bleeding out at an alarming rate.
"I'm calling an ambulance, Biggie Smalls!" Jessica yanked out her phone, other hand pressing down on the wound in a futile attempt to slow the bleeding. It was a fairly pointless gesture, given that the blood was practically gushing. "Just hang on!"
Some people get lucky when they're shot. Maybe you've heard stories — a bullet stopped by an icon, or some symbolic piece of jewelry. Or the tall tales about a round passing through someone's skull and missing all the vital parts of the brain.
But Chris was not lucky.
Blood loss and organ damage were stripping Chris Wallace of his life at a terrifying pace.
And perhaps in some other universe, that would have been the end of the poor kid from Harlem. In a random alley, at the whim of a random thug.
But this was not that universe. Because...
Hand of God: Twelve Great Labors [11/12]
And Chris, paying no attention to Jessica's bewildered stare, drew in a desperate, ragged breath.
"What the hell..." Jessica murmured slowly, lifting her hand from the wound. Or rather, from where the wound had been — because...
There was no wound on his stomach.
Only the bloodstained clothing and Jessica's blood-covered hands stood as any evidence that Chris had suffered a fatal injury.
SYNCHRONIZATION: 2%