Before getting punched by that tall man in the corner, could you drop me a comment and a stone?
The bulky CRT monitor on the internet cafe's desk hummed with a low, static vibration. Maya stared at the flickering Windows XP desktop screen, the faded blue background reflecting in her eyes. The golden text of the Rookery's intelligence report was already dissolving from her mind, but the numbers remained branded into her thoughts.
Twelve to fifteen armed enforcers.
She reached out and closed the empty browser window. The plastic mouse was sticky beneath her palm, the scroll wheel caked with years of grime. The entire cafe smelled of ozone from the overheated computer towers, layered over the heavy scent of roasted cumin drifting through the shared drywall from the halal butcher next door.
She pushed the creaky rolling chair back. Her sneakers squeaked against the linoleum.
Matt Murdock didn't know. He had the ledger, and he knew Farnum operated out of the 9th Avenue garage, but he was operating on outdated intel. He was expecting the two or three guys who usually managed the dispatch radios, not a consolidated private army pulling guard duty over a cash vault. He was going to walk into a kill box.
Maya swung her messenger bag over her shoulder and walked to the front counter. The kid working the register didn't even look up from his phone as she pushed her way out the heavy glass door.
The heat of the street hit her immediately. The Astoria pavement was baking under the mid-afternoon sun, radiating a thick, suffocating warmth that instantly brought a prickle of sweat to the back of her neck.
She pulled her cell phone from her pocket. It was a bulky, older-generation smartphone with a cracked screen protector. She stared at the contact list for a long moment. The guilt of what she was about to do felt heavy, sitting right at the base of her throat. Eleanor thought she was getting better. Eleanor thought the nightmare was finally over.
Maya pressed the call button and held the phone to her ear.
It rang twice before her mother picked up. "Hey, sweetie. Did you find what you needed at the library?"
Eleanor's voice was warm, perfectly clear over the line. The sound of running water echoed in the background; she was probably doing the breakfast dishes.
"Hey, Mom," Maya said, keeping her tone light, injecting just enough casual frustration into her voice. "Actually, the branch is closed. Something about a busted pipe in the basement. They have caution tape over the doors."
"Oh, really? That's annoying. Are you heading back home, then? I can pull the chicken out to defrost."
Maya started walking, turning her back on her apartment building and heading toward the elevated train tracks. "Actually, I was thinking... since I'm already out, I might just take the N over to Manhattan. Go to the main branch on 5th Avenue. The one with the stone lions out front. I want to try sketching the steps, and they definitely have the SVA admissions books."
There was a pause on the line. The running water stopped.
"Manhattan," Eleanor repeated, the protective hesitation creeping back into her voice. "Maya, it's almost ninety degrees out there. You were exhausted this morning."
"I know, I know," Maya said quickly, softening her approach. "But my headache is completely gone. I just want to sit on the steps for a bit, get a couple of drawings done, and look at the books. I'll buy a giant bottle of water and stay in the shade. I promise."
Eleanor sighed. It was the sound of a mother trying very hard to let go of a child she had spent five years holding onto for dear life. "Okay. Okay, fine. But you keep your phone on ring, not vibrate. And I want you on a train back to Queens before it gets dark. No arguments."
"No arguments," Maya agreed, her chest tightening. "Thanks, Mom. Love you."
"Love you too. Be careful."
Maya hung up. She shoved the phone deep into her pocket and picked up her pace, jogging up the concrete stairs to the elevated subway platform.
The ride into the city was a slow, sweaty ordeal. The air conditioning in her specific car had failed, leaving the passengers to rely on the sluggish breeze coming through the open windows between stations. Maya sat with her elbows resting on her knees, staring at the scuffed floor. Her Vigor 10 baseline kept her heart rate even, preventing the physical onset of a panic attack, but her mind was racing through the tactical realities of her situation.
She had 250 Essence left. No heavy armor. No Stones of Silence. No box cutter. She had a sketchbook, a tin of charcoal pencils, and the clothes on her back.
She couldn't fight fifteen men. She couldn't even fight two men if they had guns and she didn't have the element of surprise.
The train screeched to a halt at 49th Street. Maya slipped out through the sliding doors, joining the dense throng of tourists and businessmen pushing toward the escalators.
When she emerged onto the street, the shadows of the skyscrapers were already beginning to lengthen, cutting sharp, angular shapes across the avenues. It was nearing four o'clock.
She walked toward 9th Avenue, keeping her head down, the brim of her plain black baseball cap pulled low over her eyes. She didn't approach the dispatch garage directly. Instead, she crossed to the opposite side of the avenue, stopping at a corner newsstand. She bought a bottle of water, handing the vendor a crumpled bill, and slowly unscrewed the cap, leaning her shoulder against a graffitied mailbox.
From here, she had a clear, unobstructed view of the Union Allied facility.
The intelligence report hadn't exaggerated. The place was locked down tight. The large, corrugated metal bay door, which had been rolled halfway up yesterday, was now completely shut and padlocked.
Three identical black Lincoln Navigators were parked illegally in the bus lane right in front of the building.
Standing on the sidewalk, making absolutely no effort to blend in, were four men. They wore dark jeans and thick, heavy work jackets that hung unnaturally straight over their hips—a clear sign they were concealing heavy sidearms. They weren't leaning against the brick or smoking casually. They were standing in deliberate pairs, their eyes scanning the street traffic, watching every pedestrian who lingered too long.
Maya took a slow sip of her water.
If there were four guys on the street, that meant there were at least eight to ten more inside, guarding the ledgers and the physical cash Farnum had pulled from the demolition sites.
Matt Murdock couldn't walk through the front door. He would know that the second he got within a block of the place. His heightened hearing would pick up the heartbeats, the shifting weight of the men, the metallic clinking of their weapons.
But Matt was stubborn. Arthur knew that from the show. If Matt knew the evidence linking Farnum to the extortion was inside, and he knew it was going to be moved to a secure bank vault tonight, he wouldn't walk away. He would try to find a back way in. He would try to isolate them.
Maya pushed away from the mailbox, tossing the empty plastic bottle into a nearby trash can.
She needed to figure out how he was going to break in, and she needed to be there when he did.
She walked down the block, moving past the garage on the opposite side of the street. She didn't look directly at the guards as she passed. She kept her eyes focused on the pavement ahead, adopting the hurried, slightly irritated gait of a local New Yorker just trying to get home.
She reached the intersection and took a right, heading down the cross street that ran parallel to the back of the garage.
The buildings here were older, packed tightly together without an inch of breathing room. There were no broad alleyways leading directly to the back of the Union Allied building. The only access was a narrow, gated service corridor located between a dry cleaner and a defunct shoe repair shop.
Maya stopped walking. She knelt down, pretending to tie her shoe, and took a hard look at the service corridor.
The iron gate was locked, covered in layers of rusted chain. But the gap between the buildings was barely three feet wide. The brick walls on either side were textured with deep mortar joints and exposed piping.
It was a chimney climb. Perfect for a guy who moved like a gymnast.
Maya stood up. She looked at the rooflines above. The buildings were staggered in height, creating a jagged, multi-level landscape. If Matt was going to infiltrate a fortified building, he was going to come from the top down. He would take the high ground, bypass the perimeter guards on the street, and find a roof hatch or a ventilation shaft.
She glanced around the street. It was relatively quiet, most of the foot traffic sticking to the avenues.
She couldn't climb the narrow gap between the brick walls. She didn't have Matt's ridiculous grip strength or his parkour training. But she did have the fire escape attached to the back of the defunct shoe repair shop.
Maya pulled her messenger bag tighter across her chest. She grabbed the lowest rung of the rusted fire escape ladder, ignoring the coarse grit that dug into her palms. She hauled herself up, moving quickly, her sneakers finding the narrow iron slats with practiced ease.
Her Agility 10 made the climb feel effortless. She didn't breathe heavily; she just moved, a silent shadow scaling the back of the building.
She reached the flat, tar-papered roof of the shoe repair shop. The heat up here was intense, the black tar absorbing the sun all day and radiating it back upward. The air smelled of hot pitch and exhaust fumes from the massive AC condenser units humming nearby.
Maya stayed low, crouching behind the waist-high parapet wall. She crept to the edge and looked over.
The Union Allied dispatch garage was directly adjacent, its roof sitting about five feet lower than her current position.
The garage roof was completely flat, save for a large, industrial skylight heavily reinforced with steel wire mesh, and a heavy metal access door sitting in a raised concrete housing.
Sitting on an overturned milk crate right next to that metal access door was a guard.
He had a combat shotgun resting across his knees. He was chewing gum, his eyes hidden behind reflective aviator sunglasses, rhythmically tapping his boot against the tar paper.
Maya ducked back behind her parapet wall, her heart giving a solid, heavy thump against her ribs.
Farnum wasn't taking any chances. He had locked down the roof, too.
She leaned back against the warm brick, wiping a smear of sweat from her forehead.
If Matt came across the rooftops, he would hear the guard. He would know the man was there. But he wouldn't know the guard had a shotgun until he was close enough to smell the gun oil or hear the slide rack. In an open space like a flat roof, against a weapon that fired a spread of heavy buckshot, Matt's evasion wouldn't save him.
She had to neutralize the guard. Or, at the very least, create a distraction massive enough to pull the guy away from the access door so Matt could get the drop on him.
She opened her messenger bag. She pulled out the large spiral sketchbook and the tin of charcoal pencils.
She laid them on the hot tar paper. They were completely, utterly useless for a firefight.
Maya stared at the pencils, her mind racing, running through the brutal, pragmatic lessons Percy had hammered into her.
You fight the weapon. You fight the man. You take away their foundation. You take away their eyes.
She looked around the rooftop of the shoe repair shop. Old wooden pallets, a rusted coil of heavy wire, a few empty glass beer bottles left behind by teenagers. Nothing heavy enough to knock a man out from a distance. Nothing sharp.
But as her eyes swept over the massive, humming AC condenser unit taking up the center of the roof, an idea sparked. It was reckless. It was incredibly dangerous. But it was the only piece of leverage she had.
She crawled over to the AC unit, keeping her head well below the parapet wall. The unit was huge, enclosed in a rusted metal cage. A thick, black electrical conduit ran from the base of the machine, snaking across the roof and disappearing into a weather-proof junction box bolted to the brick wall.
Maya opened her tin of charcoals. She didn't take out a pencil. She pulled out the small, sharp metal sharpener she used to keep a fine point on the sticks.
It wasn't a box cutter, but the tiny blade inside was razor-sharp.
She unscrewed the tiny metal plate of the sharpener, extracting the small, half-inch razor blade. She pinched it carefully between her thumb and forefinger.
She moved to the thick electrical conduit. It was carrying a massive amount of voltage to power the industrial AC unit.
She didn't try to cut through the entire wire—that would electrocute her instantly. She simply used the tiny razor blade to carefully, meticulously score the thick black rubber insulation, peeling back a small, two-inch section to expose the heavy copper wiring beneath.
Her hands were completely steady. The Vigor 10 kept her nervous system from betraying her.
Once the copper was exposed, she crawled over to the pile of garbage and grabbed one of the empty glass beer bottles.
She crawled back to the edge of the roof, right where it overlooked the Union Allied garage. She peeked over the brick ledge.
The guard was still sitting on his milk crate, chewing his gum, completely oblivious.
Maya looked at the sun. It was sinking lower, casting the alleyways into deep, murky shadows. The city was transitioning into evening. Matt Murdock would be waking up soon. He would be putting on the black mask.
She retreated to the AC unit, sitting cross-legged on the hot tar paper, the glass bottle resting in her lap.
She was going to wait for the sun to go down. And when the Devil arrived, she was going to give him the opening he needed.
The heat on the roof didn't break when the sun went down. It just changed textures. During the late afternoon, the sun had been a heavy, oppressive weight pressing against the back of Maya's neck. Now, with the sky bruising into a sickly, light-polluted purple, the heat radiated upward from the black tar paper. It smelled of melting pitch, old pigeon droppings, and the stale residue of the beer bottle resting in her lap.
Maya sat cross-legged behind the waist-high parapet wall, her knees aching from the rigid, unmoving posture. Her black baseball cap was pulled low, trapping the sweat against her forehead.
She checked the face of her cheap digital watch. 8:42 PM.
Across the narrow gap, the guard on the Union Allied roof was losing his battle with boredom. He had given up the milk crate an hour ago and was now pacing a tight, agitated circle around the heavy steel access door. The combat shotgun hung off a sling over his right shoulder. He paused every few minutes to swat aggressively at the mosquitoes drawn to the stagnant puddles near the skylight, muttering curses that carried easily across the still, heavy air.
He was careless, but he was armed with a weapon that required zero precision. If someone dropped onto that roof, he just had to point the barrel in their general direction and pull the trigger.
Maya looked down at her hands. She gripped the neck of the empty glass bottle. A few feet away, the exposed copper core of the thick electrical conduit caught the ambient glow of the streetlights. It ran directly into the massive AC condenser unit that pumped cold air into the dispatch garage below.
She shifted her weight, the tar pulling at the soles of her sneakers with a soft, sticky sound.
Her Aether 13 buzzed.
It wasn't the sharp, localized pressure of an Echo attacking in the dark. It was a subtle, sweeping change in the atmosphere, like the sudden drop in barometric pressure right before a thunderstorm.
Maya slowly raised her head, peering over the edge of the rusted brick ledge.
She didn't look at the guard. She looked past him, toward the rusted water tower standing on the roof of the adjacent building to the north.
The shadows clinging to the wooden stilts of the tower seemed thicker than they should be. Then, the shadow shifted.
Matt Murdock was crouched on the edge of the neighboring roof. He wore the same tactical gear as the night before, the black cloth tied tight across his eyes, masking his features. He was completely motionless, a gargoyle perched against the glowing skyline of Midtown.
He was mapping the space. His head tilted in a slow, sweeping arc, processing the echoes of the street traffic bouncing off the brick walls, parsing the hum of the AC units, isolating the heavy, boots-on-gravel pacing of the guard.
Maya held her breath.
Matt's head stopped moving. He had locked onto the man with the shotgun. He crouched lower, his shoulders tightening. He was calculating the drop. It was a twelve-foot jump down to the garage roof. He could make the distance easily, but he couldn't mask the sound of his boots hitting the gravel-coated tar.
The guard would hear the impact. He would turn. He would fire.
Matt stayed frozen on the edge. The hesitation was glaring. He knew the odds, and the math was bad. He was stuck.
Alright, Maya thought, her pulse giving a sharp, singular thump against her ribs. Time to break the math.
She crawled backward, putting the heavy metal housing of the AC condenser unit between herself and the ledge. She grabbed the exposed section of the thick black conduit.
She didn't touch the raw copper. She gripped the rubber casing tightly with her left hand, pulling the slack taut. In her right hand, she held the empty glass beer bottle by the neck. Glass was an insulator. It wouldn't conduct the voltage.
She took a deep breath, flooding her lungs with the thick, pitch-scented air.
She swung the heavy glass bottle down, using the curved base to pin the exposed, live copper wire directly against the rusted steel cage of the AC unit.
The reaction was instantaneous and violent.
A blinding, actinic blue-white flash erupted from the contact point, lighting up the entire rooftop like a camera strobe. The sound wasn't a spark; it was a deafening, concussive CRACK that sounded like a rifle discharging directly next to her ear.
Maya jerked her head away, her eyes squeezing shut against the searing glare, but she kept her grip locked on the glass bottle, holding the live wire hard against the grounded metal.
The AC condenser unit let out a horrific, grinding mechanical shriek. A shower of molten sparks sprayed across the tar paper. Deep inside the building below, a heavy industrial breaker tripped with a loud, echoing THUNK.
The low, constant hum of the air conditioning died instantly. The pale, yellow light spilling up through the wire-mesh skylight blinked out. The entire Union Allied garage was plunged into total darkness.
"What the hell?!" the guard shouted, his voice cracking with pure, startled panic.
Maya let go of the wire and dropped the glass bottle. It rolled away, smoking faintly. She pressed her back against the brick parapet, her heart hammering a frantic, uneven rhythm against her sternum.
She risked a glance over the ledge.
The guard was stumbling backward, entirely blinded by the sudden loss of light and the residual flash of the electrical arc. He ripped the shotgun off his shoulder, racking the pump with a loud, clattering sound, sweeping the barrel wildly toward the shoe repair shop.
He never even saw the shadow drop from the sky.
Matt cleared the twelve-foot gap in a silent, predatory arc. He didn't land on the gravel. He landed directly on the guard's shoulders.
The impact drove the man face-first into the unforgiving tar paper with a sickening crunch. The shotgun fired into the air, a deafening roar that spat a tongue of orange flame into the night, the heavy buckshot tearing harmlessly through the empty space above the alley.
Before the guard could even attempt to recover, Matt shifted his weight, wrapping his forearm around the man's throat and applying a brutal, clinical chokehold. The guard thrashed, his heavy boots kicking uselessly against the roof, but Matt held him down with the immovable weight of a vice.
Ten seconds later, the thrashing stopped. The guard went entirely limp.
Matt released the choke, letting the unconscious man's head rest against the gravel. He stood up, his chest heaving, the black fabric of his mask stark against the pale glow of the city.
He didn't check the heavy steel access door. He didn't look down at the dark skylight.
He turned slowly, his covered eyes locking perfectly onto the section of the parapet wall where Maya was hiding.
"The heart rate," Matt called out, his voice a harsh, breathless rasp carrying over the gap between the buildings. "Seventy-two beats per minute. Even when you're blowing out a commercial power grid. It's a dead giveaway."
Maya closed her eyes for a brief second, cursing her Vigor stat. She stood up, brushing the gritty charcoal dust and tar from the knees of her jeans. She stepped up onto the ledge, balancing easily on the narrow brick wall, and looked down at him.
"You were stuck," Maya pointed out, keeping her voice pitched low. "He had a twelve-gauge. You would have taken a spray of buckshot to the chest before you crossed half the roof."
Matt walked over to the edge of his roof, looking up at her. His jaw was locked in a tight, angry line.
"I told you to go home," Matt said. He gripped the edge of the parapet, the muscles in his forearms bunching under the tight fabric of his shirt. "I told you Farnum's people would kill you."
"Farnum's people are currently sitting in the dark, trying to figure out why their AC just died," Maya shot back. She dropped down from the brick ledge, landing softly on the garage roof a few feet away from him. She kept her distance, fully aware of how fast he could move. "And you need to know what you're walking into."
Matt tilted his head, listening. "They're moving. The breaker popping panicked them. They're pulling flashlights from the lockboxes downstairs."
"There are fifteen of them," Maya said quickly, cutting straight to the point. "They consolidated. Farnum got spooked by the demolition site last night. He pulled every guy off the street and packed them into this building to guard the cash vault. They aren't dispatchers. They're armed enforcers."
Matt froze. The subtle, constant shifting of his weight ceased. He turned his head toward the heavy steel access door. He was listening to the floors below, peeling back the layers of concrete and steel to count the heartbeats in the dark.
"Fourteen," Matt corrected quietly, a grim resignation settling over his features. "And two more coming up the stairwell right now to check on the guy sleeping on the gravel."
He reached down to his right thigh. He unclipped a heavy, dull-grey baton from a tactical holster.
"You need to leave," Matt ordered, his tone leaving absolutely no room for debate. "Right now. Go back over the roof. Don't stop until you're on a train to Queens."
"I can help," Maya said, her hand instinctively drifting toward her messenger bag, though she knew it held nothing but pencils.
"You blew a fuse," Matt snapped, turning fully toward her, the baton gripped tightly in his fist. "That was clever. But what comes through that door isn't going to be a math problem you can solve from a distance. It's going to be men with guns in a confined space. You have no armor. You have no weapon. Run."
The heavy steel access door rattled loudly in its frame. Someone was throwing the interior deadbolt.
Maya looked at the door, then back to Matt. He was right. Percy's Echoes didn't carry firearms. She had no way to close the distance without getting shot.
She spun around, sprinting for the edge of the roof. She leaped, her Agility 10 carrying her easily across the gap, her hands catching the brick ledge of the shoe repair shop. She hauled herself over the parapet just as the heavy steel door on the garage roof kicked open with a metallic crash.
"Hey! Marco's down!" a voice yelled from the garage roof.
Two beams of blinding white light from heavy Maglites swept across the tar paper.
Maya dropped flat against the roof of the shoe repair shop, pressing her cheek against the hot tar, peering through a small drainage gap in the brickwork.
Matt didn't hide.
The moment the first flashlight beam caught his black shirt, he moved. He threw the heavy baton with a vicious, snapping motion. It sailed through the air, striking the first guard squarely in the center of the face with a sickening crack. The man dropped like a stone, the flashlight clattering across the roof.
The second guard shouted, raising a handgun, but Matt was already inside his guard. He ducked under the wild shot, driving his shoulder into the man's chest, taking him to the ground in a brutal tangle of limbs.
Maya watched, her breath catching in her throat.
It wasn't a clean, choreographed movie fight. It was a desperate, ugly struggle in the dark. Matt was taking hits. She saw a fist catch him on the side of the head, snapping his neck back, but he didn't stop. He broke the man's wrist with a sharp twist, retrieved his baton from the ground, and delivered a final, concussive strike to the base of the guard's skull.
Silence fell over the roof again, broken only by the harsh, ragged sound of Matt breathing.
He stood up, wiping a smear of blood from his lower lip. He picked up the second guard's flashlight and clicked it off, plunging the roof back into darkness.
He didn't look back toward Maya's hiding spot. He grabbed the handle of the heavy steel access door, pulled it open, and slipped into the black maw of the stairwell, disappearing into the belly of the beast.
Maya lay on the tar paper, her muscles coiled tight.
He was going down there to fight twelve more armed men in the dark. He had the advantage of the blackout, relying on his radar while they fumbled with flashlights, but the sheer numbers were a death sentence.
Run, he had told her.
Arthur's survival instinct screamed at her to listen. She had done her part. She had delivered the intel. She had created the opening. The System hadn't issued a quest. There was no golden text demanding she follow him. She owed him nothing.
But as she lay there, the memory of the battered girl in the hospital room—Rosa, terrified of Union Allied breaking her other arm—flashed in her mind. She thought of old Mr. Rossi, shoved against a steel door. She thought of the Kingpin, sitting in a penthouse, insulated by layers of terrified men in cheap suits.
If Matt died in that stairwell tonight, the ledger died with him. Farnum would cover it up, the demolition would proceed, and the machine would keep grinding the neighborhood to dust.
You are not a wall, Percy's voice echoed from the icy depths of the Pavilion. You are the slope. You redirect the violence.
Maya pushed herself up from the tar.
She didn't run for the fire escape. She grabbed her messenger bag, tightening the strap across her chest, and walked to the edge of the roof.
She vaulted back across the gap, landing softly on the Union Allied roof. She stepped over the three unconscious guards, her sneakers crunching softly on the gravel.
She reached the heavy steel access door. It was propped slightly open, a cool, stale draft blowing up from the darkness below.
From deep inside the concrete stairwell, she heard the muffled, chaotic sounds of a warzone. The heavy thud of bodies hitting walls. Men shouting in panic. The deafening, echoing BANG of a handgun firing in an enclosed space.
Maya reached out, her fingers wrapping around the cold steel handle of the door.
She didn't have armor. She didn't have a weapon.
But she had Aether 13. She could read the tension in the dark.
Maya took a deep breath, pulled the door open, and stepped into the pitch-black stairwell, the heavy metal slamming shut behind her.