On the top floor of a shabby-looking yet lavishly furnished sixteen-story building in Hell's Kitchen, Kingpin stood motionless by the window, leaning on his cane.
"Boss?"
Behind him, a short, powerfully built man with brown cropped hair spoke up.
Kingpin had been at the window for over ten minutes, staring across Hell's Kitchen toward the sky over central Manhattan—where a searchlight beam pierced the clouds, stamping a bat-shaped emblem on them.
"Walker, bring me Maddie's father. I want him to do something for me," Kingpin said, broad shoulders turning as he addressed the compact bruiser.
"Maddie? The little girl who got separated from her father on the street the other day?" Walker asked, puzzled.
Kingpin's voice was deep and gentle; his face carried a fatherly warmth. "Tell him that if he doesn't want to lose his daughter again, he'll climb the Statue of Liberty tomorrow night, call out 'Batman' by name, and demand he show his face. I'll pay him handsomely."
"I want to see whether that man is the demon they say—or just a charlatan."
"Do not expose me."
Walker lowered his head in assent and hurried out.
A man in tights calling himself "Daredevil" had been tearing through Hell's Kitchen, digging up crimes by Kingpin's crew and sniffing around for Kingpin himself. And "Batman" had been dropping Kingpin's men at the precinct every few nights. Walker knew full well Kingpin's fury was banked only by his push to secure controlling interest in Oscorp; he wouldn't risk a misstep now.
"Three more days. At most three and I'll control most of Oscorp's shares. Then Daredevil and Batman will be nothing but jumping clowns."
Watching Walker go, Kingpin's hand tightened on the cane. He kept his eyes on the bat signal over Manhattan, thinking.
…
Roosevelt Island, on the East River between Manhattan and Queens.
"Very few have seen Kingpin's real face. Only a handful in his whole outfit have his trust.
"All outward expansion orders and dirty-money business run through those few. They pass them down, imitating his method—layer by layer. Finding Kingpin is very hard.
"I've got his initial trust, but if everyone else gets hurt tonight and I walk away unscathed, that trust will shatter."
Black Cat looked at the burly buyer Batman had roughed up into a stupor. She crouched, picked up the pistol he'd drawn, and a hard glint flashed across her face.
Bang!
She aimed at her own thigh and pulled the trigger.
The shot never landed. Batman's Bat-Claw snagged the gun in time, yanking it aside so the round whisked past her.
"You don't need to do that," he said, pitching the gun into the East River and stepping in front of her.
"But I have to keep Kingpin from suspecting me…" she said, lost. She couldn't think of a better way to fool him.
"I accounted for that already." Batman glanced toward one of the buyers—the long-haired, nose-ringed woman named Eli. She'd been the first to notice him standing like a statue in the dark and even spoke up—now she lay on the ground.
Black Cat checked Eli and found she was only unconscious—no injuries. Batman had merely knocked her out, unlike the others with half their bones cracked.
"So you planned this?" she breathed.
She had barely stood when a controlled knife-hand to the back of the head dropped her into Batman's arms.
"I plan everything," he said, then fished a recorder and camera from her sleeve and pocket. They contained her staged mention of "Kingpin running a cigarette racket"—evidence of his crime.
Batman did not fully trust Black Cat, even with her vendetta against Kingpin. He trusted only himself. Evidence stayed with him.
He also tucked a micro-tracker into the white fur collar of her deep-V suit.
Gather evidence. Find Kingpin. Both tracks, in parallel.
Only after that did he web the whole group up and dump them at a Queens precinct.
New York's weather had turned. Heavy clouds smothered the moon; the bat signal shone all the brighter for it. Even Batman felt a flicker—like being back in Gotham—then steeled himself, fired a line, and swung off toward Manhattan PD.
The bat signal was lit atop the Manhattan precinct—the very place he planned to visit to read Octavius's file and check the case progress.
So while Agent Coulson waited grimly on the roof, Batman slipped into the station instead.
The Octavius case was too fresh to be in Records. After knocking out the precinct's internal cameras, Batman went straight to Chief George Stacy's office.
As expected, the Octavius case file sat on the desk. Peter Parker's eyes let Batman read the contents in the dark with ease—just as he'd deduced:
"Octavius's arms were governed by a chip—and the chip was destroyed by the police's taser rounds…"
One thing did surprise him: alongside the case file lay a dossier from S.H.I.E.L.D. It stated that all victims' families had been properly compensated; Octavius, lacking intent, would be spared criminal penalties—at a price.
Option one: join the organization, work for them, and receive freedom, funds, and lab support.
Option two: refuse, and live under supervision without personal freedom, funding, or lab access.
Their authority exceeded Batman's expectations: a process that should have taken months or years had been collapsed to a day.
"A multinational clandestine body—great powers—and the mandate to study the Tesseract…"
Understanding clicked. No wonder the CIA hack had yielded so little on the extraordinary; most of it must sit with S.H.I.E.L.D.
"Maybe I should hack this outfit to get what the world doesn't know," he thought.
Three floors up, Agent Coulson still waited on the roof. A bulb of garlic sweated in his palm, the smell all over his hand.
Szz…
Batman didn't appear. Coulson's earpiece chirped first.
"Coulson, stand down."
"Why? I'm still waiting to meet Batman myself," he whispered.
"While you've been on the roof, he breached S.H.I.E.L.D.'s systems. We couldn't stop him," the voice said.
"What?!" Coulson's eyes widened. "Director, you're sure it was him?"
The director sounded resigned. "Yes. He rifled our files in front of a dozen of our senior netsec people—like we were a naked target—then left a blank document stamped with a bat to say who he was.
"Couldn't anyone trace him?" Coulson tossed the garlic, pacing.
"He didn't bother to hide his location… He's in the precinct under your feet, Coulson," the director said.
~~~
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