Nighttime in Brooklyn, New York.
Fine, silken rain drifted down, and neon lights cast distorted, bleeding reflections across the slick pavement.
Foggy Nelson lay in a pool of his own blood.
It mixed with the rainwater, winding across the ground in a dark red stream.
Karen Page pressed both hands desperately against his chest, but warm blood continued to well up relentlessly through her fingers.
“Help!
Somebody, please help!” Her voice was so hoarse it was barely a whisper, and hot tears blurred her vision.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Footsteps echoed from the darkness behind her.
Bullseye approached in near silence, his black tactical suit seeming to absorb the surrounding light.
He looked down at Karen’s trembling back and slowly raised his handgun, his lips twisting into a sick, vicious smile.
“Hi, Karen.”
His voice sounded like a rusty razor scraping against metal—cold, grating, and utterly unhinged.
Karen snapped her head around, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks.
The muzzle of the gun was aimed directly at the space between her eyes.
Bang!
A split second before the gunshot rang out, a red phantom dropped from the sky.
The heavy sole of Matt Murdock’s boot slammed brutally into Bullseye’s chest, accompanied by the sickening crunch of fracturing bone.
Bullseye flew backward like a broken ragdoll, crashing straight through a bar’s plate-glass window in an explosive shower of glittering shards.
Chaos instantly erupted inside the bar.
Screams, shattering glasses, and overturning tables blended into a deafening uproar.
Terrified patrons shoved each other in a desperate stampede for the exit, tripping and trampling over one another.
Amidst the panic, Bullseye slowly rose from the bed of broken glass.
He casually plucked a jagged shard from his shoulder.
Blood dripped down his arm, but he didn’t so much as flinch.
Two throwing knives suddenly materialized between his fingers.
Swish!
Swish!
Cold metal flashed in the dim light.
Three unfortunate bartenders caught between him and Matt abruptly clutched their throats as bright crimson bloomed across their collars.
By the time they hit the floor, Bullseye had already whipped the blades toward Matt.
Matt sharply tilted his head.
The lethal blade grazed the shell of his ear and buried itself deeply into the wall behind him.
Two more knives followed in rapid succession.
Matt wove through the lethal barrage like a dancer, every millimeter of his movement calculated with absolute precision.
“You’re getting slow, Devil,” Bullseye hissed like a striking viper.
Matt didn’t waste breath on a reply.
Flicking his wrist, he deployed three smoke bombs.
Thick gray clouds instantly flooded the bar, completely blinding everyone inside.
A second later, Matt materialized behind Bullseye like a wraith, driving a heavy elbow strike aimed straight for the assassin’s nape.
But Bullseye seemed to have eyes in the back of his head.
He ducked the blow and smoothly countered, thrusting a combat knife right at Matt’s ribs.
Clang!
Clang!
Sparks flew as Matt’s billy club intercepted the blade.
The two men engaged in a vicious, close-quarters brawl inside the smoke, the air ringing with the rapid clash of metal.
Outside the bar, Foggy’s breathing was growing dangerously shallow.
Karen’s hands were completely soaked in his blood, but she didn’t dare lessen the pressure.
“Hold on, Foggy… please, the ambul—” Tears spilled freely from her eyes, splashing onto Foggy’s deathly pale face.
“The ambulance won’t be here for another twelve minutes.”
The sudden, unfamiliar voice made Karen snap her head up in alarm.
Standing right beside her was a remarkably handsome young man with fiery red hair tied back in a high ponytail.
He wore a dark coat that seemed completely untouched by the pouring rain, as if an invisible barrier shielded him.
He crouched and placed a golden fruit on Foggy’s chest.
It exuded a warm, exotic fragrance, its skin covered in fine, faintly glowing patterns.
“Make him eat this.
Otherwise, he won’t survive until the paramedics arrive.”
Seeing her best friend barely clinging to life, Karen didn’t have time to second-guess.
She immediately pried Foggy’s lips apart and squeezed the fruit into his mouth.
The flesh melted instantly upon contact, golden juice trickling down the corner of Foggy’s mouth.
The moment he swallowed it, the heavy bleeding from his wounds began to slow at a visible rate.
His chest slowly rose and fell with a weak but steady rhythm.
He still looked as pale as a sheet of paper, but his breathing had finally stabilized.
Overjoyed, Karen looked up to thank the mysterious redhead.
But he was already stepping through the shattered threshold of the bar.
As he pulled the broken door shut behind him, he even took the time to flip the hanging sign from Open to Closed.
Inside the bar, the heavy scent of blood mixed thickly with stale alcohol.
Matt was half-kneeling on the floor.
Three throwing knives were buried deep in his thigh, his ribs, and his right shoulder.
Blood dripped steadily from his armored red suit, pooling on the floorboards.
Bullseye was in equally rough shape—his left arm hung at a grotesque angle, at least three of his ribs were fractured, and blood continuously trickled from his mouth.
“You can take a lot more punishment than I thought,” Bullseye rasped, his voice grinding like sandpaper.
He took a slow step forward, his boots crunching over the shattered glass.
Matt didn’t answer, his breathing heavy and ragged.
Bullseye lunged.
He drove a blade viciously into Matt’s shoulder and twisted the hilt, the wet, sickening crunch of tearing flesh echoing loudly in the quiet room.
Matt let out a stifled grunt of agony, veins bulging on his forehead.
But in a flash of desperate speed, his right hand yanked the knife free from his own ribs and drove it upward.
Schlick!
The blade punched clean through Bullseye’s forearm, the bloody tip protruding from the other side.
The two men locked in a brutal stalemate, blood dripping freely from their tangled weapons.
Crash!
Diluc didn’t waste a single word as he entered the fray.
He closed the distance in the blink of an eye, delivering a devastating roundhouse kick square to Matt’s chest.
The sheer force of the blow launched the vigilante completely out of the bar, sending him skidding across the wet pavement to land right beside Foggy in the pouring rain.
Seizing the momentary opening, Bullseye leaped back, his left hand instinctively reaching for the remaining knives at his waist.
Swoosh!
Diluc moved with a speed that blatantly defied human limits.
He grabbed Bullseye’s wounded arm and ruthlessly ripped the embedded knife free.
The exact second Bullseye cried out in pain, Diluc flipped the blade in his grip and thrust backward.
Schlick!
The steel drove perfectly into Bullseye’s throat.
Arterial blood sprayed outward like a geyser, painting the liquor cabinet behind the bar a vivid scarlet.
Bullseye stumbled backward.
He clamped both hands over his ruined throat in a futile attempt to stem the tide of blood, his eyes wide with absolute, raw disbelief.
He collapsed heavily to the floor, twitching violently for a few short moments before going completely still.
Diluc casually flicked the blood off his hand and turned back toward the door.
Out in the rain, Matt was dragging himself painstakingly toward Foggy, leaving a smeared trail of red in his wake.
Diluc stepped over Bullseye’s corpse, pushed the shattered glass door open, and politely flipped the hanging sign back to Open.
Matt was half-kneeling in the downpour, his fingers pressed tightly against Foggy’s wrist to check his pulse.
Hearing Diluc’s approaching footsteps, Matt spoke up, his voice weak from blood loss.
“Whoever you are, thank you for the help.
But you shouldn’t have killed him!”
Diluc paused.
He shot the vigilante a sidelong glance and replied in a low, even tone.
“I’m just a passing intelligence broker.
As for why I helped you…
well, with that kind of audacity, I’m sure you’ll succeed at whatever you do.”
Matt frowned, acutely picking up on the dry impatience in the stranger’s voice.
But Diluc didn’t give him a chance to press the issue.
“One more thing.
You might want to redesign that helmet of yours.
Make the eye slots a bit more prominent, for example.
That way, your enemies won’t instantly realize you’re completely blind.”
Matt froze in shock.
Before he could even formulate a response, Diluc had already melted away into the rainy night.