Daredevil was drowning in an ocean of noise and fear.
The noise hit him in waves, throbbing like the headache that it had already given him. It was a painful, near-physical force, and it had completely enveloped him. Some massive machine was underneath the floor; it would have been near-deafening even without his super-hearing. Aside from his radar, his hearing was the sense that he depended on the most, and it was completely useless, right now. Daredevil couldn't hear heartbeats or footsteps or anything. (Whatever the machine was, he could tell that it was glowing, and that the floor was transparent, because he could feel the machine's light-produced warmth.)
And the fear...in some ways, the fear was even worse. After he'd gotten his enhanced senses, he'd discovered that the human body physically reacted to certain emotional states, sometimes producing smells to go along with them. A young Matt Murdock had learned to identify all the major ones. Fear, lust, and so on. As the terrifying Daredevil, he'd become a connoisseur of fear. He'd thought that he'd already come across all the variations of it. This time was different, though. The General's men were scared out of their minds, pumping out fear like there was no tomorrow, and Daredevil was practically choking on it.
I don't know why, but they must believe Halo Knight. They think that I'm "the darkness"-some kind of primal monster. Well, they just made your decision for you, Matt. If you want to break Halo Knight's will, play the role that they've cast you in. Let's see how he reacts once you've mopped the floor with his little army. Assuming you don't get killed, anyway.
The first ten seconds had been easy. Daredevil and Angel had charged when the soldiers' backs were turned; they were distracted by some situation that was going on over by the other stairwell, or maybe upstairs. About ten of the soldiers had broken off and headed that way. Angel had shot a few of the remaining soldiers with the blaster he'd taken, using the non-lethal level, and Daredevil had sent a few of them sprawling. The "sound cover" masked their attacks, but the blasters emitted flashes of light-Daredevil could feel their warmth-and it must have alerted the other soldiers. In moments, they'd turned and started attacking.
It was two against roughly sixty. Angel was flying back and forth at near-ceiling-level, strafing them, zigzagging to avoid their fire. Daredevil was fighting lower, flipping over their beams and lashing out against a tidal wave of goons. It was like doing acrobatics in a room that was rigged with constantly-moving razor-wire. There were endless enemies for him to attack, but his movements were hampered by the onslaught of beams.
The good news: unlike Halo Knight's gravity rings, these beams had heat to them, so he didn't need his hearing to detect them. The bad news: the soldiers were much more focused on him than on Angel, probably because they'd been told that he was an unstoppable evil. That was ultimately good news, as well: he was the one that was supposed to know what he was doing, so it was up to him to take the extra weight.
Daredevil ducked and sweep-kicked a quartet of them, causing them to collapse onto the floor. He jumped and spun over a beam, and when he landed, he brought down his billy club on a soldier's head. Daredevil snatched a blaster away from another soldier, using it as a club. He used his weapons to batter the soldiers that were trying to converge on him. If any got too close, they received elbows and knees to especially-vulnerable places, and he was always happy to leap away from them, as well. Daredevil had discovered that superhero suits made you slippery. They were tight-fitting, and there weren't any edges or folds to grab onto.
The soldiers kept shooting each other. Some of them became hesitant and went after him hand-to-hand; others bore down and shot even more, not seeming to care if they wounded their comrades. Daredevil had to constantly move to keep from getting shot, but that was the norm, for him. He wasn't a stand-there-and-take-it hero like Iron Man or the Thing: he survived by being a blur. In one moment, he was low, ducking and dodging and using quick-thrust kicks to shatter kneecaps, and in the next, he was above all of them, backflipping and coming down with a double-footed kick that knocked someone silly. The soldiers had trouble keeping track of him. The ones with slower reflexes were aiming down, and the ones with quicker reflexes were aiming up, but he was back at eye-level with them, bashing them with his billy club and blaster.
(Unfortunately, given the sheer size of the room, his usual billy club ricocheting wouldn't have been a good move. He had great aim, but it would have taken forever to bounce around. Also, he didn't want to accidentally hit Angel, who was moving just as frantically as he was.)
Daredevil charged into a pair of soldiers that were distracted by Angel, knocking them into another soldier. Then, he "blaster-whipped" a fourth soldier, dropped the blaster, and grabbed his shoulder. Daredevil vaulted himself into the air, making the man crumple in the process. He kicked two men in the face in the process of landing. Twenty feet away, a few soldiers took their time and proved themselves to be good sharpshooters. Daredevil threw himself clear, rolled sideways, turned it into a forward somersault, and launched himself low, using the other soldiers as shields. His billy club found knees and groins and hips as he scampered close-to-the-floor like Spider-Man. Once he was clear of the sharpshooters, he straightened up, using his fist to shatter a soldier's jaw.
He could smell Halo Knight. The mutant was on the far side of the room, by the other stairwell, and he must have still been dazed, because he was just sitting on the floor. Why hadn't they gotten him out of here? Something had to be going on upstairs; they must have been caught between two fights.
Who else is here? The hitman, maybe? Or did the Fantastic Four show up to bail us out? We could use the help, right now. We've got a puncher's chance against the General's soldiers, but if Halo Knight gets with it...we can't fight him and them at the same time. Besides, Halo Knight and the soldiers aren't the real threat. They're a threat to us, without a doubt, but this machine is the real problem. Whatever it is, it sounds powerful enough to take out a good portion of the city. Or maybe even the whole thing. I can beat people up all day long, but I don't know how to work this crazy contraption, and I doubt that Angel does, either.
Daredevil ripped the blaster out of a soldier's hand, breaking a few of the man's fingers in the process. He threw it at another soldier's head. Not only was it a perfect strike, but it ricocheted to the side, hitting another soldier's head. By the time that the first soldier realized that his blaster was missing, his two comrades were lying dazed on the floor. The first soldier ignored his broken fingers, getting into a fighter's stance...but the floor was vibrating from the machine, and it made him a little wobbly. The balance-related distraction opened him up to a vicious punch. Another soldier came up to him, trying to grab him around the waist, but standing too close to Daredevil wasn't a good idea. Some of his fellow soldiers accidentally shot him. While Daredevil's human shield collapsed to the floor, presumably screaming in pain, he flipped away.
He found a new crowd to play with. Daredevil turned the flip into a flying jump-kick, smashing into one of the soldiers and causing him to knock over some of his buddies. When Daredevil landed, he tucked into a ball and rolled, knocking his enemies' legs out from underneath them. Daredevil shot to his feet and performed a double-uppercut that lifted two soldiers off of their feet. Three of the smarter soldiers gave up on trying to fight or shoot him, deciding that they needed to bull-rush him, instead. Daredevil did a split-second handstand on the head of the faster man, kicking the other two in the face. When he landed behind the faster soldier, he introduced his elbow to the back of the man's skull. Weak punches and grab-attempts glanced off of him. He swung his billy club like a tennis racket, backhanding it in an arc that was painful for anyone in its path. Daredevil got two men in headlocks, ducked some crisscrossing beams, and kept squeezing their necks while he kicked anyone who got within range.
He was making his way toward Halo Knight, wanting to knock him out while he was still weak. Not very heroic, maybe, but effective. Angel would have had a better shot-literally, in this case-but, with the noise, Daredevil couldn't communicate that idea to him.
I could try swinging over there...but the ceiling is smooth, so there isn't anything for the grappling cord to wrap around. And, with all the crossfire, some lucky blast would eventually cut the cord and send me crashing back down.
The sheer numbers should have overwhelmed him...but, apparently, Stick hadn't been exaggerating when he said that his training would enable someone to take on a hundred men. And there was also the fact that these soldiers weren't 100%. In addition to being shaky from terror, many of them had received blasts from Angel, who was constantly making strafing runs. If they had blaster wounds (he could smell them), he made sure to attack them where they were already vulnerable. And they were constantly getting in each other's way. Daredevil wasn't some target that was a hundred yards away, in the clear: he was right in the thick of the soldiers, surrounded by quick-moving chaos.
One of the soldiers made a good decision. Instead of shooting at Daredevil, he shot over him, preventing him from engaging in any acrobatics. Other soldiers picked up on the idea, copying him. But they didn't know that Daredevil's father had been a boxer. He was perfectly content to stay low, throwing jabs and crosses, and he mixed in some of Stick's lessons, as well. Daredevil kicked soldiers' knees and hips, and he gave them open-handed thrusts to various pressure points. One of the soldiers shot him point blank in the side, and he winced, but its temperature told him that it was a relatively weak beam. Many of the soldiers were turning their dials down, either to conserve power or to make friendly fire less dangerous. The soldier who shot him didn't even have time to smile; Daredevil immediately elbowed him in the eye-socket and knocked him out.
Ignoring the pain, Daredevil fought off another wave of them, his body almost moving of its own accord. Stick had told him about this. In truly intense battles, when you were pushed past what you thought were your limits, muscle-memory would go into overdrive, and you'd feel like an outside observer. Daredevil felt strangely peaceful, as if he were meditating. The universe consisted of this room and the fight. As he focused on the mission at hand, everything else fell away.
Daredevil was still aware of Angel, though, and he noticed when he suddenly stopped shooting. His blaster must have ran out of power. Daredevil casually grabbed a pair of blasters from a pair of soldiers, waited for Angel to look at him (he assumed that he was looking, anyway, based on the way that his head was inclined), and tossed the blasters to him. He had to time it just right, to avoid the over-everyone's-heads crossfire that was keeping him from jumping around. The kid caught both blasters on the first try: his reflexes must have been off-the-charts. But, with all the high-speed flying he did, they'd pretty much have to be.
He kept getting closer to Halo Knight. His side still felt like it was burning, and the noise from the machine was giving him a monster headache. With all the soldiers in the way, it was a brutal, bone-crunching slog, but that didn't bother him. His entire life had been like that.
For some reason, that got him thinking about his father's old acquaintances. His father had never been the type of man that had friends-he'd thought that "friends" were something for women and old men-but there'd been some neighbors that he'd talked and drank with. They'd mostly been tradesmen. They were hard workers who were good at their jobs, and proud of how they were able to take care of their families...but they weren't ambitious at all. Deep down, these men were cautious, not wanting to rise above their stations. They did the jobs that they knew they could do.
Before Matt Murdock lost his sight, he'd seen them be afraid. Sometimes, an emergency situation would come up at their jobs, and they'd have to do something more advanced than they usually did. Something that tended to be left for the bosses, or the ones with college degrees. These men, who primarily defined themselves through their work, would have to do something that was beyond their expertise. They took it deadly seriously. Their survival, and their families' survival, hinged on their abilities...and their abilities might not be enough, this time.
Daredevil felt that way, right now. He belonged in the alleys of Hell's Kitchen, fighting men who were armed with switchblades, bats, and cheap pistols. Instead, he was currently in a super-science base, fighting soldiers who were carrying beam weapons. This should have been a job for the Fantastic Four or Iron Man. But he was one of the two heroes present, so it was up to him to get things done.
The thing underneath the floor was the real threat, and Daredevil had two plans to deal with it: one was plausible, and one was crazy. The plausible one involved the group of men that currently surrounded Halo Knight. They were wearing glasses and long cotton coats-coats that were too thin for outdoor use-and some of them smelled like chemicals. Scientists, he was sure. Unfortunately, there were also some dead scientists on the floor, and with his luck, they were the ones that actually knew how to turn off this giant gizmo.
Daredevil would probably have to go with the crazy plan, instead. And, making things even worse, Halo Knight stood up.