The next morning, Hell’s Kitchen.
A homeless man named Old Tom pushed his squeaky shopping cart through the streets and alleys, searching for bottles and cans he could exchange for a few coins.
When he passed the abandoned meat-processing plant in the West Side, he suddenly stopped.
A thick, overpowering smell of rust mixed with something far more pungent and foul seeped through the cracks around the tightly sealed doors and entered his nostrils.
Old Tom frowned.
Years of experience living on the streets told him that something was wrong.
It wasn’t a dead rat.
It wasn’t rotting garbage.
It was blood.
Curious despite himself, he walked around to the side of the factory.
There was a filthy window there, one corner of its glass already broken.
Standing on tiptoe, he carefully leaned toward it and peered through the hole.
The next second, the murky look in Old Tom’s eyes was replaced by absolute terror.
A strangled, choking sound escaped his throat.
He stumbled backward as though he had seen a ghost, scrambling frantically across the ground on his hands and feet.
He didn’t even bother with the shopping cart he treasured so dearly.
Old Tom crawled and staggered all the way to the end of the alley before disappearing from sight.
··········
By noon, a long stretch of yellow police tape had been erected around the abandoned factory.
Dozens of police cruisers flashed red and blue lights as they sealed off the entire area.
Outside the perimeter stood reporters with the instincts of bloodhounds.
Cameras with telephoto lenses were pointed toward the factory entrance, each journalist desperately trying to capture anything that might make a worthwhile story.
Curious onlookers had gathered farther away, whispering among themselves and speculating about what kind of horrific crime had taken place inside.
A black sedan stopped in front of the police perimeter.
The door opened, and a middle-aged man in a trench coat stepped out.
His face was stern and resolute.
It was George Stacy, Captain of the New York City Police Department (NYPD).
“Captain.”
The officers guarding the entrance immediately saluted.
George nodded, lifted the police tape, and ducked underneath it.
The moment he entered, an overpowering stench of blood assaulted his senses.
Even George Stacy—a veteran police officer who had spent decades in law enforcement and had seen countless bloody crime scenes—felt his stomach churn violently when he saw what lay inside the factory.
This wasn’t a crime scene.
It was a slaughterhouse.
No.
Even a slaughterhouse would have been cleaner and more orderly than this.
Bodies.
They were everywhere.
Some lay in pools of blood.
Others were slumped against the walls.
Some were still frozen in the positions they had died in, their guns raised as though they had been preparing to fire.
Blood had stained the floor crimson and soaked into the walls, turning a sickening dark brown beneath the dim lights.
The air reeked of blood, gunpowder, and bodily waste.
Several of the younger officers behind George could no longer endure the combined assault on their eyes and noses.
They bent over and began vomiting violently.
George forced down the nausea rising in his throat and surveyed the scene of human carnage.
His expression remained cold, but the fists clenched tightly at his sides betrayed the turmoil beneath the surface.
“Mac. Sean.”
He called out in a low voice.
A capable-looking man in detective’s attire and a forensic examiner wearing a mask and gloves hurried over.
Detective Mac Miller, George’s most trusted subordinate, looked unusually grim.
George’s eyes never left the corpses.
“Give me the situation.”
“We initially received a report of a gang shootout here.”
Mac pointed toward the bodies on the floor.
“We’ve identified most of the victims. They belong to Boris’s Russian mob and the local Jiru Gang.”
“At first, we thought it was a double-cross between the two sides. Then our people came inside…”
Mac paused, seemingly struggling to find the right words.
“We realized things weren’t that simple. So we immediately sealed the scene and called you.”
“A scene like this… you needed to see it yourself.”
George’s eyes fell upon the spent shell casings scattered beside one of the bodies.
“A shootout?”
“That’s the problem.”
Mac led George toward an open area in the center of the factory.
“Look here.”
He pointed toward a concrete wall at the far end.
George followed his gesture.
His pupils contracted slightly.
The wall was riddled with bullet holes.
Large sections of concrete had been blasted away, exposing the steel reinforcement bars underneath.
The bullet impacts were heavily concentrated in one area, as though everyone inside the factory had been firing wildly at the exact same target.
“We examined the ammunition from all the victims’ guns and compared it with the ballistic evidence at the scene.”
Mac’s voice carried an unmistakable note of disbelief.
“Our conclusion is that Boris’s men and Jiru’s men weren’t shooting at each other.”
“They were all shooting at the same person.”
“Or rather… the same thing.”
“Right here.”
He pointed toward the open ground in front of the bullet-riddled wall.
One enemy.
Against more than fifty assault rifles.
George’s brows drew together.
This didn’t sound like a shootout.
It sounded more like a siege.
A bizarre siege that had ended with the entire attacking force being wiped out.
“Sean.”
George turned toward the forensic examiner nearby.
“What about the cause of death?”
Forensic examiner Sean Allen pushed up his glasses.
His expression showed the confusion and gravity of a professional confronted with something beyond his experience.
“Captain, that’s exactly what I was going to tell you.”
“And it’s the most troublesome part.”
Sean crouched beside one of the bodies and pointed toward the wound in its chest.
“There are indeed a large number of bullet holes and spent casings at the scene.”
“But not a single victim died from a gunshot wound.”
“What?”
“The causes of death vary wildly.”
“But every single one of them… falls outside anything I know.”
“Look at this one. There’s a massive penetrating wound in the chest. The edges are smooth, almost as though something cylindrical and spinning at high speed punched straight through him.”
“And that one…”
He pointed toward another corpse.
“His throat was torn open. But the wound doesn’t resemble a knife cut.”
“It looks more like the bite of some enormous animal.”
“And there’s something even stranger.”
Sean led George to a body curled up in the corner.
The victim’s face was frozen in an expression of absolute terror.
Yet the body itself appeared completely intact.
“This one has no external injuries whatsoever.”
“But every internal organ was crushed, as though some invisible force exploded them from the inside.”
Sean removed his gloves and rubbed his forehead.
“I’ve been a forensic examiner for thirty years. I’ve performed autopsies on more bodies than some butchers have processed livestock.”
“But I swear I’ve never seen wounds like these.”
“And I can’t think of any weapon or animal on Earth capable of producing effects like this.”
Mac added, “We haven’t found any blood, fingerprints, or DNA belonging to a third party.”
“The killer was like a ghost.”
“He came here, slaughtered them, and vanished without leaving a trace.”
George fell silent.
He stood in the middle of the sea of blood and corpses, his mind racing.
A gang weapons deal.
A supposed shootout.
A mysterious enemy impervious to conventional weapons.
Unheard-of methods of killing.
Taken together, the clues pointed not to an ordinary criminal…
but to a monster.
George knew the criminal underworld of Hell’s Kitchen like the back of his hand.
He had dealt with Wilson Fisk and the brutal gangs operating throughout Hell’s Kitchen.
But even those vicious criminals still killed according to the basic laws of physics.
What lay before him now had already crossed the boundaries of common sense.
Ever since the Battle of New York, the existence of the Avengers and other superpowered individuals had become increasingly public knowledge.
More and more extraordinary people and strange incidents were appearing around the world.
Perhaps this was the work of some deranged superpowered killer.
“Seal all the evidence.”
“Classify this as top secret.”
George finally spoke, his voice hoarse but firm.
“Tell the public that a toxic-gas leak occurred at the abandoned factory.”
“No media or unauthorized personnel are to gain access to the real details of this scene.”
“Understood.”
Mac immediately nodded.
“Sean, you need a team.”
“Take all the bodies back and conduct the most thorough examinations possible.”
“I want a complete report.”
“I need to know exactly what killed these people.”
“I will, Captain Stacy.”
After giving his orders, George Stacy took one last look around the blood-soaked factory before turning and walking outside.
When he stepped back into the sunlight, the noise of the outside world seemed to come from another universe.
He knew that, from this day forward, the darkness of New York had gained a presence far more terrifying—and far more unknown—than Wilson Fisk.