Chapter 7: WHISPERS IN THE KITCHEN
The coffee mug floated six inches above the table, rotating slowly in the morning light.
I watched it spin, feeling the gentle pull of VEN draining from my reserves—barely a trickle now, compared to the hemorrhage of power I'd experienced at the warehouse. Two days of rest had done wonders. The bullet graze on my shoulder had scabbed over, the constant headache had faded, and my TK control was sharper than before.
Progress.
The mug wobbled. I steadied it with a thought, then sent it drifting toward my outstretched hand. The ceramic touched my palm, warm from the coffee inside. I took a sip without breaking concentration, then set it back down on the table.
[TELEKINESIS PROFICIENCY: 23% → 24%]
One percent. Hours of practice for one percent. At this rate, I'd master telekinesis sometime around my three hundredth birthday.
Patience. That's what this world demands.
My laptop sat open on the folding table, cycling through news feeds. The warehouse massacre had made the morning papers—"SIX DEAD IN RED HOOK GANG WAR"—but it was already being pushed aside by bigger headlines.
"PUNISHER STRIKES AGAIN: EIGHT IRISH MOBSTERS DEAD IN HELLS KITCHEN SLAUGHTER."
I leaned forward, studying the article. The Kitchen Irish had been running a protection racket out of a bar on 47th Street. Frank Castle had walked in around midnight, killed everyone inside, and walked out. No witnesses. No survivors. The police found shell casings from military-grade ammunition and a single spray-painted skull on the wall.
He's not subtle. He's making a statement.
The article continued: "This marks the third major attack this week attributed to the vigilante known as 'The Punisher.' Combined with a separate series of killings being investigated as a possible copycat..."
That would be me. The "copycat."
I scrolled through more coverage. The Dogs of Hell biker gang had lost six members in a highway ambush. The Mexican Cartel had found three of their lieutenants crucified in an abandoned church. And someone had firebombed a Kitchen Irish warehouse, killing everyone inside.
Hell's Kitchen was becoming a war zone, and Frank Castle was winning.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
[SPECIAL MISSION AVAILABLE]
I sat up straighter. Special missions were rare—the System had mentioned them during initialization, but this was the first one I'd seen.
[SPECIAL MISSION: CASTLE FAMILY MASSACRE VENGEANCE]
[RANK: B (CHAIN MISSION — MULTIPLE TARGETS)]
[COMPLEXITY: HIGH — REQUIRES EXTENSIVE INVESTIGATION]
[PRIMARY TARGETS: WILLIAM RAWLINS (CIA BLACK OPS), BILLY RUSSO (ANVIL PMC)]
[SECONDARY TARGETS: MULTIPLE — TO BE IDENTIFIED]
[REWARD: 15,000 EXP | 5,000 VP | LEGENDARY SKILL BOOK | SPECIAL DESIGNATION]
[NOTE: THIS MISSION OVERLAPS WITH ACTIVE OPERATIVE (DESIGNATION: PUNISHER). COOPERATION OR COMPETITION POSSIBLE.]
Fifteen thousand EXP. Five thousand VP. A legendary skill book.
And Frank Castle was already working the same case.
The System wants me to ally with the Punisher.
It made sense. Frank had the skills, the motivation, and the local knowledge. I had powers, System intel, and meta-knowledge about who was really responsible for his family's death. Together, we could tear down Cerberus faster than either of us could alone.
The question was how to make contact without getting shot.
I spent five hundred VP on informants.
Not loyalty—I wasn't naive enough to think money bought that. But information? Information was transactional, and Hell's Kitchen had plenty of people willing to sell what they knew.
The first was a bartender at Josie's, a dive bar that catered to the criminal element. Her name was Marie, and she had a cocaine habit that her regular salary couldn't support. Fifty dollars a week bought me gossip about who was meeting with whom, which gangs were on the rise, which were falling.
The second was a homeless man named Earl who camped out near the 50th Street subway entrance. Earl saw everything—he'd been living on those streets for fifteen years, invisible to the people who walked past him every day. A hundred dollars and a hot meal bought me his observations on movement patterns, suspicious vehicles, faces that appeared and disappeared.
The third was a low-level dealer named Tomas who worked the corner of 45th and 10th. Tomas was terrified—the gang war had killed three of his colleagues in the past week, and he was looking for any edge that might keep him alive. I didn't pay him in cash. I paid him in warnings about police raids and rival operations, information I pulled from System monitoring. He thought I was connected to someone important. I let him think that.
Within three days, I had a picture of the battlefield.
The Kitchen Irish were bleeding. Frank had killed their leadership, destroyed their supply lines, and scattered their soldiers. The survivors were regrouping around a new boss—a man named Finn Cooley who'd come over from Belfast specifically to deal with the Punisher problem.
The Dogs of Hell were consolidating. They'd pulled back from their expansion into Irish territory, fortifying their existing operations and waiting for the storm to pass. Smart. Cowardly, but smart.
The Mexican Cartel was going to war. They'd lost too much to back down, and their bosses in Mexico City were demanding blood. Reinforcements were coming—professional killers who wouldn't run from one man with a gun.
And in the middle of it all, Frank Castle moved like a ghost, striking without warning and vanishing before anyone could respond.
I pinned a map to my apartment wall. Red markers for Irish kills. Blue for Dogs of Hell. Green for Cartel. Black for unknown—bodies that might be Frank's work, might be collateral damage from the gang war.
The pattern was clear once you knew how to look. Frank wasn't attacking randomly. He was working his way up the ladder, eliminating soldiers before moving to lieutenants, lieutenants before bosses. Systematic. Methodical.
Military precision.
I circled the locations of the remaining Irish leadership. If I were Frank, the next target would be their main safehouse—a converted warehouse on 52nd Street where Finn Cooley was reportedly holed up with his best men.
Time to leave a gift.
The coffee mug incident happened that evening.
I was practicing TK control—floating objects around the room while reading intelligence reports—when someone knocked on my door. The mug dropped, shattering against the floor, and I spent five minutes cleaning up coffee and ceramic shards before answering.
It was Tomas, my dealer informant. He looked terrified.
"Something's happening," he said without preamble. "The Irish—they're moving tonight. Big convoy, lots of guns. Word is they're going to hit the Punisher's safehouse."
"They found him?"
"Someone did. I don't know who. But they're bringing everyone—Cooley's whole crew."
I thought fast. If the Irish hit Frank's safehouse, they might actually succeed. Frank was good, but he wasn't invincible. A coordinated assault with overwhelming numbers could take him down.
And if Frank died, the Cerberus mission became exponentially harder.
"Where's the convoy staging?"
"Parking garage on 49th. They're leaving in two hours."
I grabbed my jacket. "Thanks, Tomas. You just earned a bonus."
He was already gone, disappearing into the stairwell like the building was on fire.
I had two hours to warn Frank Castle.
The question was: how do you warn a man who shoots first and asks questions never?
The answer, I decided, was very carefully.
I couldn't approach Frank directly—he'd probably kill me before I got within speaking distance. But I could leave him information. Let him know someone was watching out for him.
I wrote a note: "Irish convoy hitting your safehouse tonight. 40+ men. Staged at 49th Street garage. They know your location. Move or prepare. — A friend."
Getting the note to Frank was the tricky part. I didn't know where his safehouse was—if I did, I could have warned him directly. But I knew where he'd be in two hours: at the Irish staging point, because that's what Frank Castle would do. Turn the ambush around. Hit them before they could hit him.
I arrived at the parking garage an hour early, found a service entrance that led to the upper levels, and waited.
The Irish arrived in waves. Black SUVs, rental vans, one armored truck that looked like it could survive a war. Men with automatic weapons, body armor, the grim expressions of soldiers heading into battle.
Forty-three of them by my count. Plus Finn Cooley himself, recognizable from the photographs my informants had provided—scarred face, military bearing, the cold eyes of a man who'd killed often and well.
They gathered on the third level, organizing into assault teams, checking weapons, going over plans. Professional. This wasn't a street gang—this was a paramilitary operation.
Frank is in trouble.
I attached my note to a concrete pillar at the garage entrance, positioned so anyone entering from the street would see it. Then I found a shadow on the fifth level and settled in to watch.
Forty minutes later, Frank Castle arrived.
He came alone, on foot, carrying a duffel bag that probably contained enough firepower to level a city block. He saw my note, read it, looked up at the levels above him.
For one long moment, I thought he'd spotted me. His eyes seemed to focus on exactly where I was hiding, even though that should have been impossible.
Then he smiled.
It wasn't a nice smile. It was the smile of a man who'd just been handed exactly what he wanted.
He dropped the duffel, pulled out a rifle, and started climbing.
The battle lasted eleven minutes.
I watched from my perch as Frank Castle took apart forty-three trained killers like they were children playing soldier. He used the garage's architecture against them—columns for cover, ramps for elevation, the echoing acoustics to mask his movement. He was everywhere and nowhere, a shadow with a gun that never missed.
Finn Cooley died last. Frank shot out his kneecaps, then his elbows, then left him bleeding on the concrete while the sirens approached.
When it was over, Frank retrieved his duffel, packed his weapons, and walked toward the exit. He passed the pillar where I'd left my note—and left something of his own.
A bullet casing with a scrap of paper wrapped around it.
I waited until he was gone, then retrieved it.
The note said: "WHO?"
I thought about it for a long moment. Then I wrote my response, floated it into the air with TK, and left it hanging at eye level where only someone approaching from Frank's direction would see it.
"A friend. Same enemies. More intel to come."
This is like the world's most violent pen pal situation.
I wrote that in my notebook, then added: Don't get shot being clever.
Walking home through the pre-dawn streets, I checked the System.
[MISSION PROGRESS: CASTLE FAMILY MASSACRE VENGEANCE]
[COOPERATION PATH INITIATED]
[TRUST THRESHOLD: 5%]
Five percent. A start.
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