This is a brief situational narrative in which Matt Murdock, as Daredevil, is taken to safety by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents after stumbling into one of their operations with his own agenda and accidentally blowing their cover. He was wounded on site, and while some agents wanted to leave him behind during the retreat, others had heard of the vigilante of Hell's Kitchen. They decided to take him in, treat his injuries, and learn more about the so-called "Daredevil."

Enjoy!

LRS


They Say You're the Devil

Prologue

Normally, the world was black. Black and deep red, with small bursts of amber glow floating across the abyss, casting shadows of memories long gone, memories of cracked sidewalks, neon signs over smoky bars, and the creases and wrinkles of kind, comforting smiles.

But now, the world was white. Hot, stark white expanding boundlessly in all directions, fueled by a relentless, razor-sharp drone ringing through the air, reverberating off of a hundred metal surfaces and returning again and again to sting and scratch and claw at his ears, his brain, the blood in his very veins.

He couldn't think, or speak, and although every muscle in his body told him he was screaming, he could not hear a single cry of his own making.

The excruciating drone was suddenly invaded by an uproar of muffled, low-pitched sounds, like ghosts wailing atop each other or the laughter and chatter of a hundred party guests echoing off the vaulting arches of a grand marble hall. The muffled invasion persisted, swirling about the impossibly high-pitched hum, and as the sounds became sharper and sharper, blackness bled into the white-hot blaze, the same familiar, comforting blackness with its deep red corners and amber flames.

It wasn't until the world's true colors had completely smothered the prison of white that he could feel himself being pushed backward onto a cold, hard surface by one… two… three pairs of hands, and that the ghostly wails had been filtered, as if by radio dial, into human voices.

"He shouldn't have been there in the first place, and if he hadn't been, we could have walked away with true leverage for the first time in…"

"… irrelevant now, we couldn't leave him…"

"… and months and months of planning…"

"… this doesn't change anything…"

"… this changes everything…"

As the voices became clearer and clearer, the drone faded until it was little more than an irritant ringing in his ears. A feeling of drunken disorientation swept over him as he made a series of fruitless attempts to count the room's occupants, groaning in response to the immense throbbing in his head. Another attempt to hoist himself up was met with frantic protests and more hands forcing him backward onto the cold table.

Amidst frustration, the echo of his own heartbeat in his ears, and steadily brewing nausea, one voice in particular offered balance to the chaos, like shelter from a storm, as it shattered the ongoing argument with one hard-headed interjection.

"The fact is, it's over, and there is nothing anything any of us can do to change it."

The room fell silent.

"Did the operation go as planned? No. Will we be performing some major damage control? Yes. But that will have to wait, because right now, we have a good man and potential ally right here, in this room, who needs our help."

Not a single voice dared challenge her, though beneath her strength and resolve was a kind, delicate, English cadence laced together by the unbreakable thread of compassion.

Head aching, confused, and feeling sicker and sicker by the minute, he struggled instinctively but was met again by three pairs of hands holding fast to his arms and shoulders.

The Englishwoman spoke once again, turning away from the table with a sharp tone. "I am now going to respectfully request that you remove yourself from the laboratory, Agent May."

An exasperated huff, awkward shuffling from the various, still un-countable bodies scattered about the room, and finally, the clacking of angry footsteps and the sealing of a sliding glass door ended the argument for the foreseeable future.

In the sudden calm, he became conscious of his own heavy, desperate, irregular breathing, and made one last objective-less struggle. The same three pairs of hands protested and held him steady once again, not oppressively, but almost soothingly. He noted that two were coarse and gritty against his skin, the third much softer. He gave in to their touch, his shoulders and head falling back against the table, drained of will and strength.

A few light footsteps, an approaching warmth, and in an instant, the source of the kind, comforting voice was at directly by his side.

"Matthew?" she whispered as soft, delicate fingertips brushed across his hairline, again and again, reassuringly. "Matthew… can you hear me?"