Justice is Blind

By Caudimordax

The New York City police department had just finished locking down a five block perimeter around the Durant-Murakami Bank at 837 8th Avenue by the time Daredevil's urban aerial gymnastics landed him on the building's rooftop. Even in broad daylight, it had proven to be far easier than anticipated to reach the staging area for his daring rescue operation completely unseen—a truly remarkable feat for a renowned vigilante known for donning such visually-arresting attire. Seventeen stories of vaguely cream-colored stone rose skyward in a dramatic H-shaped configuration which provided light and air to more parts of the building but also offered far more contrasting angles and planes than a traditional rectangular tower that Daredevil could use as cover when navigating the perimeter of the edifice. A true marvel of neoclassical architectural engineering, the Durant-Murakami Bank towered ostentatiously over the crumbled projects of Hell's Kitchen with stylish aplomb, rife with Beaux-Arts fanfare evident in the slightly overscaled details, bold sculptural supporting consoles, rich deep cornices, swags and sculptural enrichments in the most bravura finish the original client—Rudolph Wilhelmus Durant—could afford. What all this meant for Daredevil was a flat rooftop and a way in since it was highly unlikely that five men would be able to maintain vigil on the upper floors of the building. Additionally, with the labyrinth of skyscrapers all around him in a residential neighborhood, there would be no eyes in the sky unless the FBI decided to make the right phone calls to the right people.

Daredevil didn't even have to pick the lock to the roof's door as it had been left open by management for cigarette smoking, coffee talk and periodic cocaine usage. Once inside, he jogged to the elevator before unshouldering the small backpack he was carrying and removed a few choice items from the duffel. These included two smoke grenades, two flashbangs, an experimental ECD shotgun fitted with extended range electronic projectile taser rounds courtesy of Melvin Potter, and an old portable police scanner. Daredevil flattened the duffel bag out then placed everything on top of it inside the elevator. He loaded two experimental taser shells into the ECD shotgun, then gave it a quick shake and mumbled to himself, "This thing better work." Laying the gun down, he flipped on the police scanner and found the frequency the NYPD and the FBI were communicating on just outside the bank. He listened for several minutes to their chatter, giving him some idea how much information they had on the hostiles, where they might be located, where the police had positioned their sniper teams, where the FBI tactical unit was currently deploying, what media crews had already arrived on scene, and approximately how long he had before some bloodthirsty bigwig gave the order to breach. After listening for a couple of minutes, Daredevil was satisfied, and he grabbed the smoke grenades and pressed the 'L' button on the floor selection panel. "Going down," he smirked.

"We have it," Pyotr said triumphantly, snapping the toothpick he'd been rolling from side to side in his mouth for the past half hour. "The fund transfer achieved authorization and was executed; the trace was successful, and we have the details of the three numbered accounts where the financial data was sent. What should we do now?"

The leader of the mercenaries gave his younger brother a firm pat on the shoulder. "Send the details to the client immediately. We'll be leaving within the next five minutes."

"But Andrej," the other cautioned. "What if we send this information to the client and he doesn't hold his bargain end up?"

The mercenary leader Andrej pulled his mobile phone out of his tactical jacket, sent a quick message, then initiated the burn protocol on the device, completely wiping all contacts and stored data, before pulling the battery out of the back of the phone and tossing both into the back of the office. "First of all, Pyotr, it's 'hold up his end of the bargain'. Secondly, this client is definitely good for it. Our bank account was $8 million dollars heavier as of 11 o'clock this morning. Wipe that computer of yours and your phone then join us in the lobby. You've got four minutes."

The other gunmen had been busy while their leader took care of any and all loose electronic ends. Everyone had been rounded up into two separate groups: bank employees and bank customers. Both groups waited on opposite sides of the central dais of the main auditorium while two guards walked in circles eyeing them carefully. While the bank employees still quaked with fear, the customers were growing more agitated and unruly by the minute. Marcy and Foggy stood in close proximity trying not to catch the chilling glare of the bank robbers as they prowled the perimeter.

"How long ago did you text Matt?" Franklin whispered when both guards were at the farthest points of their orbit.

Marcy smacked her lips together, then pocketed the lip gloss she'd previously been applying. "Hum, well, they took the phones about ten minutes after I sent it, then it was ten minutes after that when the hostage negotiator started trying to call the bank and using the megaphone outside. I don't know, maybe a half hour or so in total?"

"What's taking him so long?" muttered Foggy.

"Taking him so long to do what? How exactly is Matt Murdock going to get us out of this situation?"

"Matt has some really, really powerful friends, Marcy," he said. "One in particular. And we could really use him right about now."

Right at that moment, one of the bank customers, a bald black man in a slate gray suit, black shirt and gold tie raised his hand and gestured at one of the passing gunmen.

"Yo, my man, over here." The gunman halted his patrol, crooked his head in wonder, then turned. "Yeah, hey, look man, my name's Desmond. Desmond Wright. Mad respect y'all comin' up in here, going all Grand Theft Auto V up in here n' shit, stealin' from all these loan sharks in business suits n' shit. Yeah, I get that shit, and that's mad tight. Y'all keep be doin' what you're doin', but I was just wondering if it might be possible if I could get something to eat, hit up the vending machines, because see, like, I'm diabetic and—"

The gunman began to walk briskly over to the man, raising the barrel of his Zevastra M21 to point the gun at him. "Don't be quiet, in minute, you will be dead-abetic." The mercenary glanced over at his comrade. "Good one, eh? Get it? Diabetic. Deadabetic. You see, is 'play on words', no?"

At the end of the hallway lined with elevators that opened up into the grand auditorium where the hostages were being watched, the very last elevator chimed sounding the descent of its car. The third mercenary who had been guarding the entrance to the lobby turned slowly. "What the fuck?" he mumbled through his balaclava.

As the elevator car descended, each floor from the top sounding with another chime, the other mercenaries reluctantly abandoned their posts and, while still keeping their guns trained on the hostages, walked over to their comrade and stood behind him perplexed.

"Perhaps a manager from the upper floors. We did not lock down entire building."

"I think not," one of the other soldiers replied gruffly. "At this time of day, all managers are supposed to be downstairs in the offices. A rug scrubber, maybe."

"It could be virtually anyone. It doesn't matter. The bottom level is locked down. We weren't preparing for a long siege anyway. Just in and out."

"What's going on here?" Andrej said, walking out with his rifle at the ready.

"Elevator, coming down," one of the guards said.

"From what floor?"

"Top level."

The mercenary tilted his head in both directions, causing muscle to pop. "Defensive positions. When the door opens, collect the hostage. After we're done here, we're leaving. Our ride is incoming. ETA: three minutes."

The mercenaries took defensive positions behind the arches leading into the hallway. Andrej issued a final order to the hostages. "Everyone kindly get down on the floor and cover your heads. We are collecting a final hostage, then we will be on our merry way and you can all get on with your lives. Bear with us just a bit longer. Thank you for your cooperation and not behaving like imbeciles so that we had to shoot you in your fucking heads."

As the elevator slowed to the ground level, a thick, syrupy plume of smoke oozed out from within the small crevice between the elevator doors as though a hookah party was in full-swing within. This caused the gunmen to visibly tense and retrain their weapons on the elevator.

"What the fuck?" one of them whispered.

"We didn't hear the FBI say they were engaging!"

Ding.

With dramatic purpose, the elevators doors jolted mechanically open allowing an impossible dense haze of smoke to flood out and slowly enshroud the entire hallway in a slow-moving, eerie, almost ethereal fog.

"I can't see fuck," one of the mercenaries hissed.

"Shut up! Use your ears!"

There was a momentary chorus of safety switches disengaging. One of the gunmen squinted through a mounted ACOG on his assault rifle.

Silence.

"I can't see or hear anything," one of the guards whispered nervously.

Daredevil, on the other hand, could 'see' and heareverything. There were five of them in total, but guarding the entrance to the bank lobby they numbered only four. By the varying distance of their heartbeats, Murdock surmised that the stray was attending to another task elsewhere and was likely not an immediate threat unless he or she was packing explosives. It was a risk he would have to take. The other four were sweating profusely; the mingled musk of sweat, cheap aftershave, the smoked meat, fish soup and feta that several of them had enjoyed several hours earlier for breakfast, and something else—something chemical…propylene glycol maybe…along with a capricious and elusive note of plum brandy, perhaps—not nearly as telling as their heightened pulses, staccato breathing, and if he strained his remaining senses to their very limits even the displacement of air molecules by their geared-up frames relative to the room around them. The mercenaries' reflexes proved lesser by comparison as well, for it took several seconds for them to realize that the spherical devices that slid out of the fog and came to rest several feet away from their respective positions were flashbangs. By the time they did realize it, they were all groping helplessly at their light-seared eyes effectively becoming, for the moment, blinder than the man that came barreling out of the fog, launching himself into the fray and incapacitating them swiftly and brutally with a pair of bone-splintering combat batons.

Daredevil dispatched the two closest to him easily, taking advantage of the scant precious moments of time the flashbangs afforded him to level the playing field. With two of the mercenaries knocked unconscious, he centered himself just as the third mercenary was able to open his watering eyes wide enough to point his weapon at the fuzzy red blur directly in front of him just ten feet away. Before he could pull the trigger, however, Murdock had lowered the muzzle of the taser shotgun he'd vowed to finally field test, and squeezed the trigger. A strange, alien-sounding noise belched from within the muzzle of the gun as a flash almost as bright as the flashbang itself preceded the thud and crackle of an incredibly dense, non-lethal taser round penetrating kevlar and electrocuting the soldier beneath it, causing him to fall to the tile below him in convulsions. Daredevil stared at the gun in wonder for a brief moment before giving a satisfied nod, then swung the weapon around his back and darted around the corner.

Leaping up onto the bank countertop, Daredevil dashed after the fourth soldier presently sprinting toward the back office section of the bank, the hostile bellowing loudly in some Eastern European language that sounded to Murdock something Baltic. The man fired a few unsighted rounds carelessly over his shoulder as he darted full clip toward the general area where Matt had earlier perceived the fifth man's heartbeat to be sounding from. Daredevil flipped into the air and twisted his body, avoiding the gunfire, before landing and launching himself into a herculean sprint directly behind his assailant. A few more single-round bursts were expertly deflected with meditative precision with his combat sticks, and he converted one in a deadly projectile by sending it spinning through the air after the mercenary who took the corner just as it whirled past him. But such was Daredevil's haste that he failed to anticipate the fist that arced round the corner just as he reached the turn and made to pivot. It connected jarringly with his midsection, and though well armored, the force of the blow was such that it broke his stride completely causing him to crumple forward into a defensive somersault.

Daredevil recovered quickly, however, and it was fortunate that he did, for the Serbian mercenary leader was quickly upon him, lowering his gun at his adversary once again only to have it kicked out of the way, the last remaining bullets in the magazine wastefully discharged. The mercenary howled with frustration and brought his leg upward to deliver an axe kick, but Daredevil used a scissor takedown to bring the man to his knees. Murdock estimated that this giant European, who he put in the ballpark of six-foot-eight and nearly two hundred fifty pounds of darkly-tattooed Serbian muscle, would be better dispatched swiftly by means of the judo and grappling he'd absorbed from extensive mixed martial arts training. Daredevil attempted to force the man into a headlock, but the Serbian simply laughed and pulled Matt up and over his head down to the floor in front of him so that the masked vigilante now lay prone on his back. The mercenary clasped his hands together in a large, life-ending fist and went to bring it down against Murdock's face when Daredevil snap kicked his feet directly into the soldier's battle-scarred face.

Andrej stumbled backward and steadied himself with one of his hands, slapping an incoming fist from his masked opponent out of the way before taking another directly to the center of his face. Blood exploded from both nostrils as his nose fractured in two places; he coughed and spat out a tooth before turning back only a second later to face his opponent with a crooked smile. Murdock attempted to bring his knee up into Andrej's chest, hoping to take the wind out of the Serbian giant's proverbial sails, but the mercenary snorted mockingly and grabbed the leg instead, swinging Daredevil around and throwing him through a frosted glass wall and into the adjacent office. The mercenary didn't stick around to find out if his opponent was dead; he wiped his face and mouth on his sleeve, climbed to his knees, checked the chamber of his gun before tossing it away with a scowl, then began to jog down to the back office where his younger brother Pyotr was finishing destroying his computer and all traces of their operation that could potentially incriminate the contractor.

In the lobby with all three of their captors incapacitated, the boldest of the hostages began to make intermittent dashes for the main revolving door to the bank. Once the first couple made it successfully without being shot to death by men with guns who were no longer a variable in the equation, the slow trickle of hostages turned into a mad dash in which several of the strongest bank patrons labored to get the bizarre, shield-like locking mechanism off the main entrance. Though it took several minutes to even find the locking mechanism, their efforts were not in vain, and the device gave and fell noisily to the floor. Employees and patrons both fought to squeeze into the first round of hostages to taste freedom. A flurry of activity stirred to life the massive net of police, FBI agents, hostage negotiators, media hounds, and nearby spectators nearly spilling over perimeter fences.

Marcy and Foggy were not among them. Franklin Nelson followed Marcy begrudgingly as she trotted over to the large blue bag that had been set on the bank countertop—where all the mobile phones had been stashed by the robbers—and retrieved her personal, pocket-sized world from within. She smiled and nodded victoriously, before staring past her phone and noting the look of shock and disbelief on Foggy's face.

"What?" she said with genuine curiosity.

"Fuck, really, Marcy? We came all the way back here for that?"

"I told you it was expensive," she said glumly. "Just imagine how pissed I'd be if one of the rhinestones had broken off."

"Ok, Marcy, listen, I want you to get out of here. Leave immediately and get somewhere safe. I'll text you as soon as I can."

"Wait, what? Where the hell do you think you're going, Foggy Bear?"

"There's…look, uh, there's just something I gotta do here, still…ok?"

She stared in amazement. "…ok. And?"

"I…can't go into it right now. Look, Christ, Marcy, would you, just this once, trust me? I really need you to do that for me, OK? I promise, I will explain everything to you later. But I just gotta do this one thing, OK? Please, for me."

Marcy nodded reluctantly. "OK," she finally assented glumly. "But don't get yourself too worked up. You promised we'd fuck tonight, remember?"

Foggy took her hands in his. "Foggy Bear doesn't break promises. He keeps them. Now go."

It took a moment for the deafening ringing caused by the falling shards of frosted glass to stop blinding him, and Matt clutched his head, trying to shake off the disorientation. He groaned and clutched at his flank, fairly certain that when the mercenary leader had punched him earlier, it had dislocated (though fortunately not split) a rib. Satisfied that he was still able to absorb further physical punishment, he rose to his feet and stood in the misty silver-gold rays of afternoon light pouring in through slits in the closed blinds of the office windows. And listened.

The two heartbeats very close to one another now, although one of them beat with a feverish tempo and at a higher, almost doe-like pitch. But it was not the worried one with whom he had just traded blows. And that was cause for concern. Murdock figured that he had, at best, two minutes to wrap up his affairs with pedestrians beginning to flee out the main revolving door to the bank before the police, FBI, or both began to pour into the bank. At which point he too would have to make a swift and decisive getaway.

He jogged quickly in the direction of the heartbeats. He could hear a magazine being loaded into an assault rifle as he reached the doorway of the rear office. In one fluid motion, Daredevil leapt through the doorway, throwing his remaining combat baton directly at the smaller of the two mercenaries. The weapon connected perfectly with a loud clang as the rifle was knocked from the tremulous grip of the subordinate. Daredevil catapulted his body into the air and delivered a flying kick square into the chest of the smaller soldier sending the man tumbling backward into several bookshelves. The very instant his feet connected with ground, however, he felt an incredibly powerful vice grip close around his neck causing him to gnash his teeth together, spittle frothing upon his lips.

"I've had about enough of you meddlesome little imp," Andrej rasped. "How about I return the favor from before, eh?"

The force of the giant fist that the mercenary leader brought to bear was such that, as an antecedent to the mind-numbing pain that would follow, for the first time in nearly two decades, Matthew Murdock saw stars. A blinding whiteness accompanied the sickening crack of Daredevil's nose being snapped even through the carbon fiber lattice of the armor afforded him by his mask. Murdock gasped with disoriented shock. His neck whipped back. But the grip on his neck was firm, and his body went nowhere. Andrej's mouth twisted into a sneer. "With interest," he added, before he hit Murdock again.

When he'd been younger under the tutelage of Stick, Matt remembered one distinct conversation with his blind mentor about the age-old adage, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Stick, ever the pragmatist and the realist, never embraced the sentiment. The bigger they were, he contended, the harder you fell was the typical outcome. What was true, Stick had drilled into him through rigorous and physically abusive and routine practice, was that generally speaking, a larger opponent, while inarguably stronger, would proportionally have a larger Achilles heel, or weakness as it were. In many cases, this weakness manifested as hubris, as had certainly been the case with Wilson Fisk. In other cases, they could be baited into a situation where their size became a disadvantage in small spaces. If the military contractor pounding the life out of him was not only this large and this strong, but this well trained, there was no conceivable way he'd ever be able to get the man to reveal his employer in under two minutes. Unless…

Murdock struggled and writhed, and finally found an opening before a fourth fist to his face would cast him into unconsciousness, punching his opponent in the throat as hard as he could without killing the man. This succeeded in freeing him from the soldier's vice grip, and he fell to the floor and barely maintained his balance. The Serbian giant's hands were occupied, now wrapped around his own throat as he gasped for air, and he could not deflect the flurry of punches that thundered into his chest, sides, and midsection in rapid succession. Daredevil punctuated this attack with a spinning roundhouse kick that caught Andrej square on the chin. And still the mercenary leader would not go down.

The battle-hardened Serbian was no stranger to pain. As a child, he'd been a gutter rat, begging for scraps or stealing food to survive on the cold and unforgiving streets of Novi Sad. At only six, he'd joined a gang. At twelve, he murdered the then-leader of the gang and took control of the operation himself until the law finally caught up with him. Several long, hard years in a juvenile detention camp had allowed him the time to reflect upon his growing legacy of misdeeds. He decided then and there that he'd been going about things all wrong, and that he would be best served murdering and butchering people legally. Hence, as a young man, Andrej was baptized in the perverse and fiery crucibles of both Bosnia and Kosovo, after which his extensive list of contacts, connections, and bank accounts bloated by the profits of numerous and highly-illegal enterprises caused him to move into the private sector and to market his particular set of skills on an international level. He'd fought much worse than the maroon maniac he was forced to wrangle with currently, and he was certain he would again. For a split second, he pondered whether the possibility did exist that his employer had paid this man to tie up loose ends and kill both he and his team once the job was done. He shook the thought from his mind. Impossible. He had, after all, an insurance policy of his own in place just in case the reputation of the client had somehow been compromised. The stakes were too high for such amateur displays of professional disrespect.

Murdock was starting to tire. The smaller soldier was starting to rouse, and his bruised and dislocated rip was swelling and was starting to become a salient irritation. Both he and the Serbian leader were covered in blood, though against Murdock's already crimson attire—per Claire's suggestion—it was far less noticeable then against the mercenary's particular shade of tactical black. Daredevil ducked out of the way of a left hook before blocking a menacing right uppercut that may very well have dislocated his jaw had it connected. Murdock snuck in one swift jab before catching the mercenary's follow up riposte, and he leapt upward such that he placed his feet against the desk with all the computer hardware, locked Andrej into an arm bar, and pushed backward with all his might, pulling the enormous soldier downward, face first into the floor. The mercenary growled angrily, trying to recover quickly, but Daredevil held firm, pressing all his available reserves of strength into forcing his enemy's arm to bend backward at the elbow. Andrej repeatedly lifted Daredevil's entire weight off the ground before slamming him back down again, attempting to loosen his opponent's grasp of his sinewy tattooed arm.

The much smaller of the two had now recovered, and climbed out of the wreckage of the broken shelves and called out, "Brother!" before rising to his feet and rushing over to where Daredevil and Andrej were embroiled in the fight of their lives. Things were about to get even more complicated, and for the first time since he'd entered the bank, Daredevil felt the palpable tinge of fear at the thought that maybe, just maybe, he was fighting a losing battle.

The smaller man delivered a swift kick to Murdock's face, snapping Daredevil's neck to the side but not loosening his grip on the mercenary leader's leg. Hot, frothy blood spewed like a fountain from Matt's mouth as he cursed, trying to consider what few options were left available to him. The steel-toed boot came again, this time causing his mask to fracture into two jagged halves. Now, all bets were off. The Daredevil's mask had been ruined, and to both these hitmen, his identity would now be known. And, it was highly possible that one more kick to his bruised and broken face would kill him.

Daredevil gave one last impassioned press at the bigger soldier's arm, and as luck would have it, it exceeded the natural angle the man's anatomy would allow, and an agonizing howl echoed throughout the office as broken bone erupted out the back of muscle, tissue and flesh. Matt released his grip instantly, completely drained of energy. Andrej stumbled backward against the desk, cursing and shrieking something in Serbian that, even to someone ignorant of the Baltic or Slavic languages, sounded foul and virulent. The one part he could understand was the order he gave to the smaller man who Matt now knew to be the Serbian leader's brother. The order had been given in English, for his benefit he was certain: Kill him. Step on his fucking head, and fucking break it open like an egg.

Matt lay on his back, defeated, successful only in disarming a few gunmen for hire and putting one in physical therapy for about six months, staring blindly at the ceiling of the office, sweat and blood running over his unseeing eyes. Though his other senses were beginning to slowly dim, he could tell the large Serbian was now standing directly over him. And though he couldn't detect it with any of his heightened abilities, he was nearly certain the man was smiling.

"It was a good fight," the Serbian said, his accent sounding thicker through swollen lips, missing teeth, a crooked nose and a broken jaw. "I don't know who the fuck you are, or what you're doing here, but you fought with honor, and I respect that. So I will allow my brother to kill you quickly. I will send you to whatever God you believe in with that small mercy, Mr. Red."

The small man raised his booted heel. Just as he was about to send Matt to meet his maker, a nearby gunshot rang out throughout the office. Both soldiers cast their gaze in utter astonishment to the doorway where Foggy Nelson stood pointing a Zavastra M21 directly at them, a look of pure, unadulterated bale on his face.

"Move a goddamn muscle and I will fucking shoot you both dead right where you stand." He took the safety off. "I have had…WAY too difficult…of a week…to be dealing with THIS SHIT…right now."

"Foggy?" Daredevil groaned quietly, groping awkwardly where he lay.

"That's goddamn right it's Foggy. Frankly Foggy Nelson. This week, I've been shot at—twice—I've been lied to, cajoled, abandoned by friends, had several bones broken, tried to investigate a possible financial conspiracy where I work, handled not one, not a few, but all of the legal paperwork and processing of my law firm's clients…and on top of all of that…I am now indebted to a fiery little hellion of a friend to an all-night sex marathon where she picks the goddamn soundtrack. DO NOT fuck with me right now."

The mercenaries exchanged glances while Daredevil struggled to his feet. "The little one," Murdock gasped, catching his breath. "Bigger one's brother. Ask who they work for. Shoot the small one if the big one doesn't talk."

Andrej gently leaned forward and started to walk forward, but Foggy aimed the rifle at the ceiling and squeezed off a round before pointing the muzzle at the Serbian once more. "You heard the man. Who hired you to rob this bank?"

Andrej used his one good arm to pull his younger brother Pyotr behind him protectively. His brow furrowed darkly. "You know I cannot possibly tell you that."

"You can, and you will, or else the guy in the costume is going to make you watch while I shoot your little brother before I shoot you."

"Go ahead. Shoot us both. Even if we knew—"

Foggy angrily squeezed off another warning round in defiance. "If you even think of feeding me the usual bad guy line like, 'We don't know the name of our employer', we'll add torture to the list of fun little activities to tack onto your heist exist strategy."

The Serbian shook his head disdainfully. "You fucking Americans," he sneered. "All of you fucking think you are such big fucking John Wayne cowboy guys, eh? All big and tough with your guns, think you can just intimidate us with such pathetic threats like torture? Hah!" He leaned forward and pantomimed slitting his own throat. "Boy, you don't even understand what this word torture fucking means."

Matt's ears and nose twitched. He reclaimed the single combat baton he'd thrown when he'd made his entrance, and he whispered to Foggy, "It's useless. It's too late. NYPD SWAT is entering the bank lobby as we speak. I don't have my mask. It's all over. They'll arrest both these idiots and me, but at least they're not going to get away. Not with murder, at least. They can be held accountable in a court of law, as will I for what I've done here today. But you—you've got to get out of here: right now."

"Matt, I swear to God, sometimes I wonder how you graduated magna cum laude and I ended up with summa cum laude. Think, goddamit! The police will recognize you as Daredevil, yeah, but if you're Matt Murdock, you're just another bank hostage! Take the suit in the duffel bag on my back; I borrowed it from another hostage named Desmond."

Daredevil scrounged through the bag and found a shirt, trousers, tie and suit jacket, all colors and fabrics normally far-too gaudy for his taste. He grimaced, but asked, "Good, uh, thinking, Foggy, but uh, what's with all the phones in this bag?"

"Tell you later. Get changed quickly. I think I can hear the SWAT team in the lobby already."

As the remainder of the hostages were being provided with blankets, water bottles and media exposure just outside the bank, a series of shiny black government SUVs pulled noiselessly through the densest channel of the police barricades. At one point, a tinted, bulletproof window cracked slightly only for the briefest flash of credentials before four SUVs and two large cargo vans were allowed to pull throw and assemble at the curb just outside the bank. The police lieutenant in charge of NYPD operations, his FBI liaison and special agent coordinator, and the hostage negotiator all turned around in unison as the doors to the SUVs opened and a veritable squad of armed men and women emerged from within wearing dark navy jackets with bright yellow letters emblazoned on the backs which read: DCIS.

While several of the agents rushed past the barricades and up the steps to the bank, weapons drawn, ignoring the hostages and going straight up to where NYPD SWAT were carrying the disarmed militants out of the revolving door, the police lieutenant, a squat but mean-looking Italian, started in on the head of the freshly-arrived DCIS team.

"Hey, hey hey! What gives? We got this situation locked down. The hostages have all been released, we're bringing the gunmen out now."

"My name is Director Jack Fowler, I'm with the DOJ's Defense Criminal Investigative Service. I'm notifying you that, effective immediately, the hostage takers within the Durant-Murakami bank are to be remanded into federal custody immediately."

"Wait, what the fuck?" the FBI liaison began to say, but the Italian was, by virtue of an Italian, Big Apple upbringing, exceedingly louder.

"Wha-hey, hey! You got no fuckin' jurisdiction here, Jack Fowler! These fuckin' guys just shot up a bank in my precinct and—"

"You're not hearing me," Fowler said coolly, his expression neutral. "The men that attempted to rob this bank today are…" he lowered his voice and leaned forward to accommodate the shorter man's disposition. "…these men are property of the United States government. They have no social security numbers, no home address, no name, and no identity. They cannot be tried in a court of law nor can they appear on any television network or be held accountable for any crimes they might commit, either here on U.S. soil or abroad. These men are ghosts, lieutenant, and we've come to collect our renegade spooks and we would appreciate your cooperation. Your exemplary performance and your willingness to make the transition as smooth as possible will be noted and reflected in the reports that are submitted and reviewed by our bureau chief. He will no doubt keep your cooperation in mind during future inter-agency collaborations."

The NYPD officer in charge fell silent, speechless, and could do nothing but watch as all five mercenaries were escorted down the main steps of the Durant-Murakami Bank at 837 8th Avenue, disappearing inside the shiny black DOJ cargo vans before the convoy of vehicles rumbled to life and sped back off through the city as quickly as they'd arrived. The whole scene did not fall on deaf ears, as Murdock witnessed both the discussion between operation directors and the swift roundup and departure of the Serbian mercenaries with their DOJ escorts. At present, he was far too debilitated, winded, broken and bruised to do a damn thing about it. But he knew one thing. If these mercenaries could simply waltz out of one of New York City's more famous banks and hitch a sleek ride on the United States government's dime, he had clearly misread the entire situation. What had appeared on the surface to be a simple series of bank robberies had suddenly blossomed like a lotus flower into something far more intricate, complex and exotic. Was it somehow related to the shooting and the assassin at Karen Page's place? Was Wilson Fisk somehow involved? He had to know more. And impossible number of questions for which he had no answers. But answers would have to wait. He'd need a few new stitches and wrappings first. Not to mention a new costume too.