Chapter 7

Matt, Foggy and Karen were just closing the office Monday evening when the door quietly opened. Foggy caught sight of the obviously scared girl who looked like she was warring with herself to turn right back around before anyone noticed her. "Hi. I'm Franklin Nelson. Can I help you with something?" he said warmly as he extended his hand to her.

The girl reached into her pocket and held out the card that Karen had given her. "I was told that I could come here for help if I needed it."

Foggy took the card and saw it was Karen's. "How about you have a seat in our conference room here and I'll get my associates. Can I get you anything?"

The girl shook her head as she sat down, curling in on herself to make herself as small as possible.

Foggy knew something was deeply wrong with this girl. "Hey Kare, got someone here who says you told her to come here if she needed help. She definitely looks like she needs help."

Karen looked out her office door and gasped when she recognized Gigi. "I'll take care of her. Matt will probably want to sit in on this as well."

As Foggy excused himself to get Matt, Karen worked on getting the girl more comfortable. "Can you tell me what brought you here?"

"I haven't seen my boyfriend since Saturday evening," Gigi started as Matt and Foggy slipped in quietly.

"Matt Murdock. Can you tell us what happened before the last time you saw him?"

"You were at the church on Saturday. You were helping the nuns," Gigi exclaimed as she recognized Matt. "After we left the church, he found an ad for work on one of the poles near the park. We've been returning soda cans to eat so he called it. I didn't hear what he said, just that he was getting picked up at five and he never came back."

"Who picked him up?" Foggy asked.

"Don't know. They sounded Russian or something like it. Their truck had 'Trust a Bro' on the side of it."

Foggy made a few notes. "Does he have a phone you can call?"

"It's dead. He ran out of minutes."

"Have you spoken to the police?" Matt asked and Gigi's heartrate spiked.

"I'm scared to. I'm not sure if we're supposed to be living where we are and I'm not eighteen yet so I don't want my boyfriend to get in trouble."

Karen and Foggy both looked over in Matt's direction and a barely noticeable nod of the head told them everything.

"We will go with you to the police," Karen reassured her.

"Mr. Murdock and I can act as your attorneys and represent you if there are questions," Foggy added as he started to gather his things. "Matt, you'll meet us there?"

"I just want to make a quick phone call," Matt replied as he went into his office to text Bucky and Sam. "Check the traffic cams by the park on Saturday around 5pm. Look for Trust a Bro on a van and follow it. We may have a hit. Let me know where. NYPD about to be clued in."


After dropping Gigi off at Clinton Church as a safe place for her to spend the night, Matt got a text from Sam.

Pier 99. Meet us there

Matt stepped out of his bedroom in his black and red vibranium reinforced armor that Bucky had hooked him up with just as Foggy took out the lantern that Gracie called the Devil's nightlight. He knew he was potentially walking right into a next level shit show with possible super soldiers involved but, if these missing kids were there, he couldn't just leave them.

Foggy stepped forward to give Matt a hug before he left. "Be careful and give them hell, buddy."

"I plan on it," Matt replied as he embraced his best friend before kneeling down for Gracie.

Gracie flung herself at Matt, wrapping her arms around him.

Matt held on tightly to his daughter, kissing the top of her head. "I love you, Gracie."

"I love you, Daddy. Be safe."

"I will. Be good for Uncle Foggy," Matt said as he handed Gracie off to Foggy. He blessed himself, kissed his cross and Gracie's birthstone charm before tucking it under his armor and then put on the horns and heading up the steps to the roof. "I'll see ya later."

Foggy picked Gracie up so she could turn on the lantern. They watched out the window into the night to see if they could see Matt jumping between rooftops.


Matt went up to 59th and 12th and he could smell the pier even before he got to it. Pier 99 belonged to the NYC Sanitation department. Perched high on the metal skeleton that surrounded the ConEd owned pier 98, Matt tried to push out the ever present electrical current and the overwhelming smell of garbage to get a read on the situation. There were three buildings on the pier. The closest building seemed to be an empty office aside from what he guessed were three janitors. Matt could pick up the buzzing from the sleeping computers and the emptying of small plastic garbage cans. The other two buildings seemed to be warehouses that were joined together with a long hallway. The far warehouse on the water was definitely filled with garbage to be offloaded onto a barge to be carted away but not before the rats enjoyed their all you can eat buffet. The closer one seemed a bit off. At first it seemed empty but then Matt caught the sounds of voices but the sound was muffled, like it was underground. As Matt focused more, he was picking up more. There were at least fifteen people in one area while there were clusters farther back. In the rear, Matt was picking up the sounds of medical equipment. Then a shift in the wind sent a strong chemical smell Matt's way after he got past the excessive amount of cheap vodka. A smell that very much reminded him of the shit that got in his eyes when he was nine years old. But there was something behind the chemicals. Matt only caught it for a second...the smell of death.

The soft whoosh of the jets caught Matt's ear. "Hi Sam."

"How's it going, Matt?" Sam replied as he landed next to him. "What we got going on?" he asked as he was deploying Redwing.

"A real shit show underneath the front warehouse. Where's Bucky?"

"He's on his way."

"Traffic's a real bitch on the Battery," came Bucky's voice through Sam's earpiece. "ETA two minutes."

"Why didn't you just fly here with Sam?" Matt asked.

"Flying's his thing. Not mine. I'd rather not get airsick."

"I'm not carrying his heavy ass all the way from Brooklyn."

A motorcycle stopped beneath them. "Shit. This just got a whole lot worse," Bucky exclaimed.

"I thought you would pick up on that."

"Can the two of you explain to the one here without enhanced senses what the hell is going on?" Sam piped in as he was scanning the warehouse that Matt had flagged.

"By the garbage at the end is the smell of decaying bodies," Matt started before Bucky cut in.

"They probably thought that they would hide the bodies with the garbage and no one would pick up on the smell."

"This shitshow did just get a whole lot worse. So drug smuggling, kidnapping, illegal human testing and murder. Just another day at work," Sam groaned. "Now, we've got eyes and ears on them."

"We can't easily get the kids out until we take out the fifteen thugs before them," Matt commented.

"Good thing that they're drunk and distracted by shitty soccer games," Bucky added. "They seriously couldn't find anything better to watch. Matt and I can easily take these guys down while you go from the back to get the kids. You have the best chance if they are injured. Are those cages?"

"That would explain why I heard clusters of people," Matt commented. "Bucky, how far do you think the rumors and legends of the Winter Soldier spread? Enough to reach low level mafia goons?"

"No idea. I was kinda on ice most of the time. Why?"

"It may be possible to scare the shit out of them between facing the Winter Soldier and the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. If Sam gets the kids out, we can shove the assholes in there instead until NYPD shows up and keep them in mostly one piece so they can still talk. It's possible that they are also responsible for assaulting my mother and I have a personal issue with that."

"Do I want to be filled in on what you are planning?" Sam asked.

Bucky shook his head. "It's better that you don't. We'll give you a few minutes before we go full throttle. You'll want to be clear once we do."

"Catch you both on the flip side," Sam said with a wave as he went down to the farther end of the tunnel while Bucky and Matt worked their way into the close end.

The tunnel was dimly lit as Sam made his way in. He was quite thankful that Shuri had thought to enhance his night vision in his goggles. The first room Sam came to had ten gurneys set up with medical monitoring on each. On each gurney was a teenaged boy, drugged into being unresponsive. The boys were alive but barely. A few of them had enough left in them to move their eyes to track Sam but the others were steps away from death's door. He promised them he would be back for them as he pressed forward. It wasn't long before he came upon three cages, each filled with about ten more boys.

"Holy shit! It's Captain America!" one of them called out.

"Are you getting us out of here?"

"Yeah, I am. Are you all okay? Are there any others?" Sam asked as he made a quick visual check.

"We're what's left. We've been in here for a few days but they haven't tested on us."

"Good. I'm going to need your help," Sam explained. "We need to get out of here fast but I'm going to need help to get those who are in worse shape in the other room out of here."

They boys were quick to agree. They were honored to help Captain America.

Sam smashed the locks with the shield and told the boys where to go and where to wait for him on the outside. Sam followed them, being the last one out. As he made his way back up the tunnel, all the lights went out and all Sam heard were screams followed by thuds on the floor.


Foggy got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and saw the Daredevil armor on the bathroom floor next to the shower. He hadn't even heard Matt come back in. He opened the door to see Matt sitting on the couch, shaking in a pair of flannel pajama pants, his head focused on a spot on the floor. Something dark was still surrounding him as the lights from the billboard created changing shadows around him. It was like the Devil had not yet gone to rest.

"When did you get back?" Foggy asked calmly as he grabbed the blanket from the back of the couch and wrapped it around Matt's shoulders. He knew Matt's darker half and it didn't scare him anymore.

"A little while ago. I didn't want to wake anyone up," Matt said as he pulled the blanket tighter around himself and put his head down.

Foggy didn't like this. Something didn't sit right. He was sure something was simmering below the surface that was keeping the Devil from retreating. "Are you hurt? Can I help with anything?"

Matt lifted his head and focused his gaze right on Foggy. "I'm not hurt but I'm not okay."

Matt openly admitted that he wasn't alright. Something went seriously south tonight. "What happened, buddy?" Foggy asked.

"We found some of the missing kids," Matt sighed. "Only some of the boys. Bucky thinks the girls had already been trafficked. The ones in the best condition were in cages. They were a little malnourished and dehydrated but okay. Some of them had been used as guinea pigs for that shit super soldier serum Bucky and Sam were tracking. It smelled like the shit that got into my eyes when I was nine. None of these kids were super soldiers. Most of them were just waiting for death to stop the pain. Their heartbeats were so low, I could barely pick up on them. The ones that didn't make it, they put them under the trash waiting to be carted away. Those kids didn't deserve that. They were victims of system failure and lost their chance to live because of some lunatics who wanted people who were untraceable."

Foggy understood Matt's anger. It was justified. "Where are they now?"

"Sam got the kids out while Bucky and I took out the trash that was guarding them. Taking out low level Russian mobsters is easy when they're drunk off cheap vodka and you scare the shit out of them with the former Winter Soldier. Literally. The smell was awful. NYPD came to collect everyone. I fully expect Brett to be calling for us to bring our client to identify her boyfriend and my mom to identify her attackers. I just hope for her sake that he was in one of the cages."