Chapter 1
As she left the bar, Jessica Jones checked her voicemail to see if the caller she'd ignored an hour ago had left a message. These days, nothing, and no one, interrupted her drinking. She glanced at the screen: "Matthew Murdock." She tapped the "play" icon.
"Jessica Jones, Matt Murdock. I'm looking for an investigator to work a case with me. You interested? Call me."
"Why not?" she thought, with a mental shrug. It would be a change from skip traces and cheating spouses. She hit the "call" icon on the screen.
Matt answered. "Hey, Jess, can I call you back?"
"Sure, but what's the case – ?"
He interrupted her: "Sorry, but I'm in court, and the judge is about to take the bench. And I can't really explain it over the phone, anyway."
"Oh, OK. I'll come by your place tonight."
"OK. See you then."
Jessica finished her glass of Matt's best whiskey and set the glass on the coffee table before asking him, "So what's this case you can't talk about on the phone?"
Matt shifted uneasily on the chair opposite her and took a deep breath. "Actually, it's . . . uh . . . it's my case."
"What do you mean it's your case?"
"It's about the accident, you know, when I was a kid, when I . . . lost my sight."
"Oh."
Matt continued, "I've been thinking about it lately, and . . . "
"What, you want to sue someone?"
"No, no, it's not that. The statute of limitations has run – years ago. But, like I said, I've been thinking about it, about one of the last things I saw before my sight . . . went. I remember seeing barrels in the street, full of the stuff that spilled on me. There were a lot of them, Jess. And I need to know – what was in them, why it did . . . what it did . . . to me, and who was responsible. Someone has to know."
"Why now?" Jessica asked.
Matt considered this for a moment, then held his hands out, palms up, "I don't know. It's been on my mind for a while now. And it's not like I could've done anything at the time." He fell silent, remembering. "My dad, I think he might have known something, but if he did, he didn't tell me. And then he was killed." He turned away, but not before Jessica saw the sadness on his face. "I always wondered about it. But I had other stuff to deal with, after the accident. And I was just a kid. With your help, maybe I can find the answers now."
"Time for a refill." Jessica picked up her glass and headed for the kitchen. As she poured herself another three fingers of whiskey, she asked, "Are you sure you want to know? Voice of experience here, it may not work out the way you want."
"I know. But there's something else. The stuff that was in those barrels, it destroyed my eyesight in, like, a couple of minutes." He snapped his fingers. "Just like that. And it did more than that. It . . . it changed me. It was powerful – and dangerous. And, like I said, there were a lot of barrels. They came from somewhere. Someone knows who made it and what they did with it. What if it's still out there? What if someone's using it? I need to find out."
Jessica finished her drink in one gulp and sighed. "OK, Murdock, I get it. I'll get on it tomorrow."
Two days later, Matt was at his desk, trying to concentrate on the electronic voice reading the case he'd found on Westlaw, when he heard a knock on the door. Still wondering why appellate judges always had to be so verbose, and grateful for the break, he put on his glasses and went to the front door to admit Jessica.
"I found something, but you're not gonna like it," she told him.
"What is it?" Matt asked as he returned to his desk and sat down.
"The original accident report," she replied.
"So what's the problem?"
Jessica sat on the edge of the desk. "The truck – the one with the barrels – was owned by Rand Enterprises."
Matt shook his head. "You're shittin' me."
"Nope. It's all here," Jessica told him, slapping the report down on the desk.
"I'll take your word for it," Matt replied dryly. "Damn it."
Jessica nodded. "Yeah. We gotta tell Danny, you know."
"I know – but not yet. We need more facts," Matt insisted.
"Like what?"
"Well, we know the truck was from Rand Enterprises, but was the stuff in the barrels theirs, too?"
Jessica considered this for a moment. "The report doesn't say anything about that. It's just a bare-bones accident report."
"Like someone was covering something up?" Matt suggested.
"Maybe," Jessica conceded. "But if Rand was making the stuff, it would make sense that they'd use their own truck to move it. From what you've told me, that was some pretty bad shit. If it was yours, would you trust someone else to move it?"
Matt turned toward her and leaned forward. "So if we assume the stuff was Rand's, we need to look for someone who worked there – someone who knows about it – and get them to talk."
"Danny could help with that."
"No. I mean, Danny's a good guy, he's got a big heart, but I don't want him anywhere near this investigation – not until we figure some things out."
"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Jessica agreed. She thought for a moment. "I may have a way of finding someone and getting them to talk."
"How – ?" Matt started to ask, then stopped himself. "Never mind. I don't want to know."
"Good thinking, counselor."
After a week with no word from Jessica, Matt began to wonder if her methods (whatever they were) were working. Then, late one evening, she appeared at his door.
"Hey, Jess," Matt said. She brushed past him into the apartment.
"Hey. What're you doing at home this time of night, Devil Boy?"
Matt gave a resigned half-smile at the nickname. "The Kitchen's quiet tonight. Cops are on top of things, for now."
Jessica walked down the hall and sat on the couch, waving the slip of paper she held in her hand. Matt leaned against the arm of the chair opposite her.
"What's that?" he asked.
"Good old fashioned detective work," she replied, holding up the slip of paper. "You see before you – well, you don't actually see it – the name and address of a scientist who, according to my informant, worked on an off-the-books research project for Rand Enterprises until about five years ago. Name's Don Porter. He lives in Bay Ridge. I say we pay him a visit."
The next afternoon, Jessica and Matt took the subway to Bay Ridge and walked to a neighborhood of modest homes. As they approached Porter's address, Matt stopped short, a puzzled expression on his face.
"Is this the house?"
"Yeah. Why?"
He turned his head to one side. "There's something 'off' about it. I can barely pick up what's inside – or who."
"Maybe no one's home," Jessica suggested.
"No, it's not that. Even if no one's home, I should still be able to hear something, things like electricity buzzing or water running or the house itself, shifting and settling. But there's basically nothing. The sounds are muffled, like something's blocking them."
"Well, let's check it out," Jessica said. They crossed the narrow front yard and climbed the steps to the front porch of a small bungalow. Jessica knocked on the door. When no one answered, she tried again, knocking harder. Finally, the door opened a crack, revealing a slice of a man's face, partly covered by dark, almost opaque, sunglasses.
"Don Porter?" Jessica asked. He winced, as if in pain. "I'm Jessica – "
"No, no," he said. He tried to close the door, but Jessica was too quick. She pushed past him and into the house, followed by Matt.
Once the front door closed behind him, Matt was shocked to find he couldn't get a good sense of his surroundings. It was as if a blanket had been thrown over the entire space. He wasn't sure where he was, so he snapped his fingers, trying to get a read on his location. The sound disappeared, swallowed up by – something. The room seemed to close in on him. He suppressed the urge to bolt for the door – if he could even find it. "Is this what it's like," he wondered, "to be blind without heightened senses?" He gripped his cane more tightly.
"What the hell?" Jessica thought as she looked around the living room. It was oddly quiet and dimly lit by a single, low-wattage lamp. Blackout curtains covered all of the windows, even the small ones in the front door. The carpet beneath her feet was thick, and some sort of fabric covered the walls. The air itself was still and hushed. The man who'd answered the door was cowering in the corner farthest from the lamp. He was tall and thin, his clothes hanging loosely on him. His face was gaunt and deeply lined. His gray hair looked as if he'd cut it himself.
"Mr. Porter?" Jessica asked. "You are Don Porter, right?"
"Keep your voice down, please," he replied.
Jessica lowered her voice to a near-whisper and moved closer to Porter. "Is this all right?"
"Yes."
"And you're Don Porter?"
"Yes."
"I'm Jessica Jones, and this," she indicated Matt, "is Matthew Murdock. I'm a private investigator. He's a lawyer. We're not here to hurt you. We'd just like to ask you some questions about your work for Rand Enterprises.
Porter's face fell. "I can't – "
Jessica cut him off. "Does this," she said, gesturing around the room, "have something to do with it?"
"What do you think?" Porter asked. "Do you think I choose to live like this?"
Matt spoke up. "If you tell us what you know, Mr. Porter, maybe we can help."
Porter seemed to see Matt for the first time, noticing his dark glasses and white cane. "You're blind?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Sometimes I wish I was."
"Tell us," Matt whispered.
Porter didn't answer right away. He left the corner where he had been standing and sat down in an armchair. He sat there silently with his head down, wringing his hands, for several minutes. Then something seemed to give way inside him. He took a deep breath before he finally raised his head and spoke. "I was a microbiologist. I worked for Rand Enterprises until about five years ago. My last job was working on a secret research project. They were looking for mutagenic compounds, things that would change humans at the cellular level, the level of DNA."
"Medical research?" Matt asked.
"Not a chance," Porter scoffed. "They weren't looking to cure diseases; they were looking to create individuals with abilities, powers."
"Did they?"
"Not while I was working there. I don't know what happened after I . . . left."
Jessica spoke up. "Who was in charge of the project? Who knew about it?"
"It was Harold Meachum's project originally. I don't know who took over when he died. But it was off the books, no one was supposed to know about it."
"What about Wendell Rand?" Jessica asked. "Did he know about it?"
Porter shook his head. "I don't think so, but I don't know for sure. I was just a worker bee, working in the lab."
"What happened to you, Mr. Porter?" Matt asked softly.
Porter sighed deeply. "About five years ago, they decided to start working again on an old compound, one that they developed 15, 20 years ago. They abandoned the work on it back then – I'm not sure why – but someone decided it had potential. I was assigned to work on it, testing its effects on various types of cells. I was around the stuff all the time, 50, 60 hours a week. Maybe I wasn't as careful as I should've been. There was a lot of pressure to get results, so we took shortcuts. I was breathing in the stuff, getting it on me. After a few weeks, I noticed I was hearing and seeing better. Other things, too – smells and tastes were more intense." Porter paused, drawing in a shuddering breath.
"Go ahead," Matt urged him gently.
"It didn't stop there. It kept going. Everything – sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch – kept getting more intense, more sensitive. The lights in the lab hurt my eyes. Normal, everyday sounds were . . . . piercing, painful. I couldn't eat. Do you know how awful food tastes when you can smell and taste everything in it?"
Jessica glanced quickly at Matt. His jaw clenched, and he seemed to grip his cane even more tightly than before.
"So I quit my job, put in the blackout curtains and soundproofing, and here I am. If I have to leave the house, I do it at night."
"I can't imagine what you're going through," Matt lied. "But it would be a big help if you could just answer a few more questions."
"OK," Porter replied.
"Where was the facility where you worked?"
"In Hell's Kitchen, 43rd and 10th."
"Do you know if the project is still running?"
"No idea."
"Did they ever use any of their compounds on people?"
"None of the ones I worked on. But there were other lines of research. I don't know about them."
"OK. Thank you." Matt turned toward Jessica. "I think we've taken up enough of Mr. Porter's time."
"Yeah," Jessica agreed, starting toward the door.
"Jess – " Matt whispered. Jessica turned around and saw that Matt hadn't moved. "Damn," she thought. It never occurred to her that he might actually need a sighted guide, just this once. She walked back and stood next to him, so he could take her arm.
"Good-bye, Mr. Porter," she said when they reached the front door, "and thanks."
Outside the house, Matt reached out with his senses. Things seemed to have returned to normal – his normal. He gave a sigh of relief.
Jessica gave him a worried look. "You OK?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Now that we're out of there."
"I don't know about you, but I need a drink," she said.
"You got that right."
Jessica pulled out her phone to find the nearest bar. Once there, they carried their drinks to a booth in the corner, as far away as possible from the other drinkers. Jessica took a sip of her whiskey and asked, "So – Porter – do you think he was working on the same shit that was in the barrels?"
"Sounds like it."
"Son of a bitch." Jessica paused, undecided whether to ask the question that had been uppermost in her mind since they left Porter's house. Finally she said, "Is that what it's like for you?"
Matt didn't answer right away. He frowned and said, "Not really." He took a deep breath and let it out before continuing. "Well, kind of . . . at first."
Without any warning, the memories came flooding back. He was nine years old again, a terrified child who was thrust suddenly into a strange world where he could see nothing, but he could hear, smell, taste, feel . . . everything. He remembered, all too well, the feeling of drowning in the torrent of sensations from his newly-heightened senses. He shook his head to clear it.
"You with us, Murdock?"
"Yeah – just, I don't know . . . .." He shrugged.
"OK," Jess replied skeptically. "So what changed?"
"Stick."
"The old guy who taught you to fight?"
Matt took a drink of his beer. "That wasn't all he taught me. He taught me how to use my 'gifts.' That's what he called them, 'gifts' – usually when he was telling me I didn't deserve them." He smiled wryly. "He taught me how to control them so they don't overwhelm me, like Porter."
They drank in silence for a while. Then Jessica decided to ask the other question that she'd been wondering about since they left Porter's house. "How do you do it?"
"It's hard to explain." Matt picked up his beer bottle and turned it around in his hands. "Basically, I have to focus on what I want to let in."
"Damn," Jessica thought, "it ain't easy, being Matt Murdock." She glanced at him, hoping he couldn't read her emotions.
"Meditation helps," Matt offered.
"Meditation? What, like Danny?"
"It works," Matt insisted, "you should try it."
"Fat chance," Jessica scoffed. "This works for me." She lifted her glass and drained it, then asked, "Do you think you could help Porter like Stick helped you?
Matt considered his answer, fiddling with the cocktail napkin on the table in front of him. Finally, he said, "Yeah, maybe. Well, not the light sensitivity part, obviously, but the other stuff – maybe."
"So what's next, counselor?
"We check out the building at 43rd and 10th."
"Tomorrow night?"
"See you there."
When Jessica landed on the roof of the building at 43rd and 10th, she spotted a black-clad figure standing near the corner. "Shit," she thought, "please tell me that's not a ninja." Just then, the figure turned his head, listening. It was Matt. She let out a silent sigh of relief. She'd seen enough ninjas to last her a lifetime.
Matt sensed her presence and turned the rest of the way around, pulling up his mask. "Hey, Jess," he said, keeping his voice low.
"Hey," she whispered. "No horns?"
"Left 'em at home. Daredevil can't be a part of this. Too many questions."
"Oh. Right." After a moment, she added, "At least you brought your own scarf. I'm not letting you steal mine again." Matt grinned crookedly.
"While you were doing your lawyer stuff today," Jessica told him, "I did some surveillance. The building is definitely being used for something. People were coming and going all day."
"Security?" Matt asked.
"From what I could see, not exactly state of the art – not what you'd expect for some super-secret research facility."
At the rooftop door leading to the stairwell, Jessica disabled the security keypad next to the door. She then pulled out her burglar tools and started picking the lock. After a couple of minutes, she swore under her breath, "Son of a bitch!"
"Is there a problem?" Matt asked innocently.
"You know, it's not as easy as it looks on TV."
"I don't know, actually," he said, "how does it look?"
"Go to hell, Murdock," she replied.
"Want me to try?" he asked.
"What, you think you can do it better?"
"Probably," he said, pulling off his gloves and holding out his hand.
"Knock yourself out." She slapped her burglar tools into his hand and watched him go to work. The lock yielded within a minute. He turned around, smirking, and held out her tools.
"Arrogant asshole," she muttered as she grabbed the tools and returned them to her bag. She pulled her hair back, then wrapped her scarf around her head, covering her hair and the lower part of her face. Matt put on his gloves and pulled down his mask.
They entered the stairwell and paused as Matt lowered his head and focused on the inside of the building. "Anyone there?" Jessica asked.
"I count five, all armed, scattered on the second and third floors. That must be where the action is. Let's go."
"Wait a minute, Matt," Jessica said, grabbing his arm. "We don't need to mix it up with those guys in here. All we need to do is get in, find evidence of what they're doing, and get out. We really don't want them to catch on that someone's interested in what's going on here."
"OK," Matt said reluctantly.
They crept silently down the stairs until they reached the door opening onto the third floor. Jessica reached into her bag and pulled out a spray can.
"Hair spray?" Matt asked. "What's that for?"
"The security cameras. It fogs up the lenses. This is why you hire a professional."
Matt chuckled softly.
"I just hope no one's monitoring the feed," Jessica added.
"I don't think so," Matt told her, "the five guys I spotted are all on the move."
They exited the stairwell and moved quickly and quietly down the hallway, stopping a few times for Jessica to obscure the camera lenses. Suddenly Matt stopped, grabbed Jessica by the arm, pulled her into a supply closet, and shut the door.
"Why, Murdock, I didn't think you cared," Jessica said sarcastically.
"Shut up," Matt snapped. "Someone's coming."
A few seconds later, Jessica heard the approaching footsteps. Matt cocked his head, listening intently, until the footsteps faded. "It's clear," he finally said. They left the closet and continued on their way.
After they turned into an intersecting corridor, Matt stopped again. "Here," he said, lightly tapping the door next to him.
"Anyone there?" Jessica whispered.
"Nope." Once inside the room, Matt scanned it: an interior room, windowless, with work benches, petri dishes, beakers, rows of test tubes in racks, pipettes, microscopes, centrifuges, refrigerators, freezers, and other equipment he couldn't identify. Definitely a laboratory.
Jessica reached into her bag and pulled out a small flashlight. "OK?" she asked.
"Yeah."
She surveyed the lab, taking photographs from time to time. Matt leaned against one of the workbenches, waiting for her to finish her work. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of the lab: something sickly sweet and rotten at the same time, with metallic overtones that left an unpleasant taste in his mouth. He was sure he'd smelled it before, but he couldn't pinpoint where or when.
After shooting a photo of a petri dish with a culture growing in it, Jessica reached out a hand to touch it. Matt pulled her hand away. "We don't know what we're dealing with, how potent it is, how it works," he warned.
"What do you think it is?" she asked.
"I don't know, but it smells like something organic."
Matt crossed to a door at the far side of the lab. He stood next to it with his hand on the door and his head lowered, focusing.
"What is it? Another lab?" Jessica asked.
"I don't think so. There are filing cabinets, a desk, chairs, so an office, probably. No one's there."
Once they were inside, Jessica closed the door behind them and turned on her flashlight. She went straight to the computer she spotted on the desk. After a moment, she stood up. "Damn. It's password protected. We don't have time to try to break in." She tried the file drawer in the desk and found it locked. She pulled her lock picks out of her bag and held them out to Matt. "Make yourself useful, Murdock. We need to get into this desk."
While Matt picked the lock on the desk, Jessica checked the filing cabinets. To her surprise, they were unlocked. She soon found out why. They contained boxes of test tubes and other small pieces of equipment, instead of files.
"Got it," Matt said, pulling open the file drawer in the desk. Jessica turned on the desk lamp, pulled out the file folders, and started photographing their contents.
She had finished the first file folder when Matt turned off the lamp and put a hand on her arm. "Someone's coming."
They flattened themselves against the wall next to the office door, where they would be hidden by the door if it was opened. A single person entered the lab. Test tubes clinked, and a piece of lab equipment switched on. Five long minutes later, the equipment shut off, and the test tubes were put back in their rack. The sound of the lab door opening and closing, followed by receding heartbeats and footsteps, told Matt the person had left. He breathed a sigh of relief.
"He's gone."
As Jessica continued to photograph the documents from the desk, Matt stood next to the door leading to the lab. All at once, his senses went into overdrive. Sensations cascaded over him – sounds, smells, tastes and vibrations in the air. He felt lost in the chaos. Faintly at first, then more clearly, Jessica's voice emerged from the sensory noise. He struggled to focus on it.
"You all right over there, Murdock? . . . . Matt!" she hissed.
He gasped. "Yeah."
"You don't look all right."
"Something in the lab's affecting me. We need to get out of here."
"OK by me. We have what we came for."
They left the office and crossed the lab to the hallway door.
"Is anyone out there?" Jessica asked.
Matt tilted his head. "I don't think so, but I can't be sure. You better take a look."
Jessica opened the lab door just far enough to look out. "Clear," she whispered. "Let's go."
Matt put a hand on Jessica's shoulder, and they ran down the corridor, reaching the stairwell without being spotted. Back on the roof, Matt stood with his head down, his hands on his knees, panting. Suddenly he remembered why the smell in the lab seemed so familiar. The same smell was all around him when he was lying in the middle of the street, seeing his father's face for the last time.
"What the hell happened back there?" Jessica asked.
Matt straightened up and shook his head. "I'm not sure. Everything just went . . . haywire."
"What do you mean?"
"It's nothing. I'm fine."
"Of course you are," Jessica muttered, rolling her eyes. "But why didn't anything happen to me? I was there, too."
"I don't know for sure, but it took weeks before Porter noticed what was happening to him. Maybe you weren't exposed to the stuff for long enough. It must have affected me differently, because my senses are more sensitive already."
"You're sure you're OK?" Jessica asked.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. But you're missing the point. "
"Oh, yeah?"
Matt ignored her. "Because of my little, uh, episode, we know we're on the right track."
"How so?"
"Whatever's in that lab, it's the same stuff Porter was working on." Matt paused and pressed his lips together, then licked his lips and added, "The same stuff that spilled on me when I was a kid."
As soon as Jessica and Matt arrived back at her office, Jessica uncapped the bottle of whiskey that was standing on her desk and took a long drink. She held out the bottle to Matt, who shook his head and waved it off. She took another drink before putting the bottle down. Then she took her camera out of her bag and plugged it into her laptop to download the photos from the lab. When the download was complete, she started scrolling through the photos, slowing down when she reached the documents. Matt leaned against the desk as she read.
She skimmed the first ten pages, then sat back in her chair. "Whoa."
"What is it?" Matt asked impatiently.
"Don Porter was right. Some of these reports go back 15, 20 years, and Harold Meachum's name and 'Rand Enterprises' are all over them."
Matt pondered this. "So it does go back to the time of my accident," he thought out loud. "What do they say?"
"There's a lot of technical stuff, but it looks like they're talking about how to cause mutations, targeting specific genes on specific chromosomes, stuff like that. They're calling it 'Project 46'."
Matt frowned. "Keep reading." He stood up and began pacing back and forth. Jessica went back to her reading, but Matt's pacing was annoying her. She was about to tell him to quit, it was getting on her nerves, but she stopped herself, remembering that he couldn't look at the screen and read the documents for himself. He had to wait for her to tell him what they said. If she were in Matt's shoes, she'd be doing something worse than pacing. She sighed and tried to ignore it.
A few pages farther on, Jessica stopped reading. "Oh, shit," she said. "This is bad."
"What is it?" asked Matt from across the room.
"There's a memo, dated a week ago, talking about 'human subjects' and going to something called 'Phase Two' in sixty days. It's time to talk to Danny. We've gotta shut it down, and we can't do that by ourselves. We need his help."
"I agree," Matt said. Jessica looked at him, surprised. He continued, "I know we need to bring Danny in to have any chance of stopping it. But he doesn't need to know about me, that Rand was involved in my accident."
Jessica shook her head. "He'll figure it out, anyway. You know he will."
"Maybe," Matt conceded. "But you know how Danny is, he'll blame himself. I don't want him carrying that guilt. He already has enough to deal with. This is my case. You have to let me handle it my way."
"OK," Jessica assented doubtfully.
"Hey, Jess, Matt, come in," Danny said, opening the door to his apartment. They followed him to the living room and sat on the couch. Danny sat on a chair opposite them. "What's going on?" he asked.
Matt leaned forward and started to speak. "This is going to be hard for you to hear, Danny, but just hear me out. When I was investigating, uh, something else, I stumbled on some research Rand Enterprises is doing. They're looking for compounds, chemicals that could change people at the cellular level."
"You mean, like medical research?" Danny asked.
Matt shook his head. "It could have been, but it isn't. They're trying to trigger mutations, to create people with abilities, powers. They're dealing with powerful, dangerous shit. We found someone who worked with it, and he's all fucked up."
"Fucked up how?" Danny asked.
"Basically, he can't leave his home. He was exposed to something that made his senses super acute. It's too painful for him to go outside, except in the middle of the night. He spends his time holed up in his house, behind blackout curtains and heavy soundproofing."
"Damn," Danny swore under his breath. "Was my father involved in this?"
"I don't know. According to the guy we talked to, it was originally Harold Meachum's project, off the books. Your dad may not have known about it."
"Harold Meachum's dead. Are you telling me the project is still running?"
"It looks like it," Matt said. "We went to the location where our guy worked, and there's still an active lab there. Jessica took photos."
"How'd you get the photos?" Danny demanded.
"Well, we, um, kind of . . . ," Matt stammered.
"Jesus, quit beating around the bush, Murdock," Jessica interrupted, "We broke in."
Danny shook his head resignedly. "Of course you did."
Jessica took a stack of photos out of her bag and handed them to Danny. "We found reports talking about 'human subjects' and starting 'Phase Two' within the next 60 days. They're in there, too," she said, gesturing at the stack of photos Danny was holding. "And there's something else," she continued. "Whatever's in that lab, it affected Matt . . ."
"Affected him how?" Danny demanded.
Matt shrugged it off. "It was nothing, really. The important thing is, we need to find out what they're doing, who's behind it, and stop them."
"No, I need to do it," Danny declared. "This is my company, my family, my fight."
"Jesus, Danny, when are you gonna get it?" Matt demanded. "We're on the same side, man."
"Matt's right, Danny," Jessica said. "It's not only your fight. It's my fight, too. You know what was done to me, how I got my powers. It's like IGH all over again. The people in that lab will do the same kind of thing to other people. Maybe they already have. I need to stop them – we need to stop them. You know I'm not big on 'teamwork'," she said, making air quotes with her fingers, "but we need to work together on this one." She glanced at Matt, then continued, "And there's something else – "
"Jess, don't – " Matt warned under his breath.
Jessica ignored him. "It's Matt's fight, too. You know the stuff that blinded him and gave him his powers? Rand Enterprises made it, their truck spilled it. It's the same shit that's in that lab."
"Jesus," Danny muttered. He fell back in his chair and sat silently for a long moment, thinking, then turned to Matt. "Wait a minute. You weren't gonna tell me, were you?"
Matt waved a hand dismissively. "It's not about me. You didn't need to know."
"Didn't need to know? What a load of crap. You never learn, do you, Matt?"
Jessica answered for him. "Obviously not."
"Look, Danny," Matt began, but Danny interrupted him. "Zip it, Matt, I'm not interested in your bullshit excuses."
Having no answer for Danny, Matt turned on Jessica. "You had to tell him, didn't you, Jess?" He stood up and walked away from her and Danny. "Thanks for nothin'."
Jessica followed him. "Get real, Murdock," she snapped. She glanced back at Danny. "He would've figured it out for himself sooner or later – probably sooner. Don Porter's heightened senses? What happened to you in the lab? Gimme a break." She turned to walk back to Danny.
"Don't you walk away . . . ."
Matt and Jessica continued to bicker, but Danny tuned them out. His gaze fell on Matt's folded cane on the table in front of him. Matt's abilities made it easy to forget he was blind. Danny knew he didn't really need the cane. But there it was, a tangible symbol of Matt's blindness. "Damn," Danny muttered under his breath. He tried, and failed, to imagine what it must have been like for Matt when he was nine years old, struggling with blindness and heightened senses. Pity welled up in him. He tried to suppress it, knowing Matt didn't want his pity. He told himself it wasn't for the Matt he knew. The Matt he knew wasn't someone to be pitied. It was for a nine-year-old boy lying injured in the street while the poison that had spilled on him did its damage. Rand Enterprises made that poison. Worse, they might even have profited from it. Guilt threatened to overcome him. Suddenly, Matt's voice intruded on his thoughts.
"This was a bad idea," he said angrily, grabbing his cane and starting to walk away.
"Matt, wait," Danny said. 'I am so sorry about what happened to you . . . ." His voice broke. He buried his face in his hands. Matt turned to face him.
"It wasn't your fault, Danny," he said gruffly. "You were just a kid."
"So were you, Matt," Danny replied, his voice muffled and choked with emotion.
"Like I said, this isn't about me, Danny, it's – "
Danny lifted his head and brushed away tears. "Bullshit. Of course it is. What my family, my company, did to you, it was unforgivable – "
"I lived," Matt replied curtly. "Now we have to stop it from happening to anyone else."
"And we will," Danny said, "together."