Chapter 5: THE DEVIL'S WARNING
The rooftop was cold.
February in New York meant wind that cut through fabric like razors, meant fingers going numb inside gloves, meant breath that crystallized in the air. I'd been crossing rooftops for the past hour, scouting the Queens warehouse from different angles, memorizing guard rotations and entry points.
The trafficking mission could wait another day or two. Tonight was reconnaissance.
I dropped from a fire escape to a lower rooftop, rolled to absorb the impact, and froze.
Something was wrong.
The feeling was instinctive—a prickling at the back of my neck, a weight of attention that hadn't been there a moment before. I scanned the rooftop. Water towers. HVAC units. Shadows.
There.
Movement near the water tower. A shape that wasn't quite shadow, wasn't quite human.
I kept my TK ready, hovering just beneath the surface of my concentration. The knife in my jacket felt heavy against my ribs.
"You've been busy."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Then a figure dropped from the water tower's maintenance ladder—silent, graceful, landing in a crouch that would have shattered a normal person's knees.
Red lenses gleamed in the darkness. Black tactical suit. The horns.
Daredevil.
"Four kills this week," he continued, straightening. "Five if you count the loan shark in Midtown."
"Six, actually. You missed one."
The admission was deliberate. If he was going to confront me, I wanted to know exactly what he knew. And what he didn't.
Matt Murdock—because of course I knew who was under that mask—tilted his head slightly. His stance was defensive but not aggressive. He was listening. Not just to my words.
Heartbeat. He's reading my heartbeat.
I forced my pulse to stay steady. The System helped—my enhanced Willpower made emotional control easier than it should have been.
"Most people's hearts race when I drop in on them," Matt said. "Yours barely changed."
"I've had a strange month."
He stepped closer. The movement was predatory, but controlled. A hunter testing his prey.
"Who are you?"
"Nobody important."
"Nobody important doesn't kill six people in a week and leave crime scenes that look like professional hits."
"Maybe I'm a professional."
"Are you?"
I considered lying. Decided against it. Matt Murdock was a human lie detector—his super-senses could pick up the physiological tells of deception better than any polygraph.
"No. Just motivated."
"Motivated by what?"
"Justice. The kind that doesn't require lawyers."
He actually laughed at that—a short, bitter sound.
"I've heard that before. From men who started with good intentions and ended up as monsters."
"Maybe I was always a monster."
The words hung in the cold air between us. Matt's jaw tightened behind his mask.
"The men you killed—I'm not going to pretend they were innocent. Gerald Whitmore was a wife-beater and a trafficker. Raymond Garza put two women in the hospital. Darnell Price murdered a child."
"But?"
"But that's not your call. It's not mine either."
I didn't roll my eyes, but it was close.
"So what's the alternative? Let them keep hurting people while the system fails? Wait for a trial that never happens, a conviction that gets overturned, a sentence that's a slap on the wrist?"
"The law—"
"Failed. Every single one of them. I did my research, Daredevil. Whitmore had six complaints filed against him, zero convictions. Garza's wife recanted three times because he threatened to kill her daughter. Price walked on the murder charge because the only witness was a scared kid who wouldn't testify."
Matt was silent for a long moment.
"You're not wrong about the system," he finally said. "It fails. It fails all the time. But that doesn't give you the right to be judge, jury, and executioner."
"Then who has that right?"
"No one."
"And the victims?"
"They deserve justice. Real justice, not vigilante murder."
I almost respected his conviction. Almost.
"We're on the same side," I said. "I'm just more efficient."
"Efficient." He tasted the word like it was poison. "There's another killer in this city who's efficient. He's left a trail of bodies from here to Jersey. Bikers. Mobsters. Anyone he decides is guilty."
"The Punisher."
Matt nodded. "He's not like you. He doesn't stop. He doesn't pick targets carefully. He sees criminals and he kills them, and one day he's going to kill someone who doesn't deserve it, and he won't even notice."
Frank Castle. The man I needed to find.
"Thanks for the heads up."
"It's not a tip. It's a warning." Matt stepped closer, close enough that I could see the hard line of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders. "If you keep this up, you'll draw his attention. Or you'll become him. Either way, people will die who don't need to."
"People are already dying who don't need to. That's why I'm doing this."
"And when you cross the line? When you kill someone who wasn't as guilty as you thought?"
I met his masked gaze steadily.
"Then I'll deal with that when it happens."
He stared at me for a long moment. Reading my heartbeat, my breathing, every microexpression I couldn't control.
"You believe that," he said quietly. "That's what scares me."
He turned and walked to the edge of the rooftop. Paused.
"Stay out of my way. I won't warn you again."
Then he was gone—leaping into the darkness, grappling somewhere I couldn't see, swallowed by the Hell's Kitchen night as if he'd never been there at all.
I stood alone on the cold rooftop, the wind cutting through my jacket, my breath fogging in the air.
"The rooftop thing is very dramatic," I said to the empty darkness. "I respect the commitment."
[RELATIONSHIP UPDATED]
[DAREDEVIL (MATT MURDOCK): SUSPICIOUS (-10)]
[NOTE: SUBJECT IS AWARE OF HOST'S ACTIVITIES. MONITORING LIKELY.]
I made my way back to my apartment through the shadows, keeping to routes that couldn't be easily followed. If Matt was watching, I didn't want to lead him home.
The conversation played on repeat in my head. He wasn't wrong—not entirely. The line between justice and murder was blurry at best. But I'd seen the files. I'd seen what those men had done. And I'd seen what the system had failed to do about it.
Someone has to clean up the mess.
Back in my apartment, I pulled up news archives on the laptop. Searched for everything I could find about Frank Castle.
Marine veteran. Force Reconnaissance. Multiple tours. Distinguished service record. Wife Maria, son Frank Jr., daughter Lisa.
All dead.
The official story: wrong place, wrong time. Gang violence in Central Park. Tragic accident.
The real story—the one I knew from my meta-knowledge—was much darker. A government conspiracy. Black ops. Men who'd betrayed their country and killed an innocent family to cover their tracks.
[MISSION OPPORTUNITY DETECTED]
[ANALYZING...]
[CERBERUS CONSPIRACY: E-RANK TO A-RANK THREAT RANGE]
[PRIMARY TARGETS: WILLIAM RAWLINS (CIA), BILLY RUSSO (FORMER MARSOC)]
[RECOMMENDATION: ESTABLISH CONTACT WITH FRANK CASTLE]
The System wanted me to ally with the Punisher. To take down the men who'd killed his family. That meant finding Frank, convincing him I wasn't a threat, and somehow working together despite our different methods.
He shoots first and asks questions never. This is going to be fun.
I closed the laptop, lay back on my mattress, and stared at the water stain on the ceiling.
Daredevil was watching. The Punisher was hunting. And somewhere in Queens, a warehouse full of traffickers was waiting to die.
The smart play was to lie low. Build strength. Wait for the heat to die down.
Since when do I make smart plays?
I pulled up the System interface.
[CHAIN MISSION: QUEENS TRAFFICKING NETWORK]
[STATUS: AVAILABLE]
[ACCEPT?]
Tomorrow night, the warehouse would burn.
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