Frank flipped the steak over.
Grease from the cast-iron pan splattered, burning the back of his hand, but he didn't flinch.
The problem was the fire was too high.
The bottom of the steak was already charred black, and acrid smoke billowed from the pan, filling the entire safe house.
Frank turned off the fire and cut the steak with a knife.
The outside was charred, the inside still bloody.
He carried the plate to the cot and placed it in front of Jack.
Jack stared at the steak for three seconds.
"...Thanks."
He picked up his knife and fork, cut off a small piece, and put it in his mouth.
He chewed twice, his Adam's apple bobbing, and swallowed hard.
Frank pulled up a folding chair and sat down beside him, arms draped over his knees, without saying a word.
The fluorescent lights in the safe house hummed, casting their shadows on the ammunition boxes.
Jack cut off another piece.
This time he chewed more slowly.
"Why did you save me?" Frank's vertical pupils shifted, looking towards the iron gate.
"He saved you." Jack looked down at the WS-07 serial number on the inside of his right arm.
"And you? Why are you here?"
Frank didn't answer.
He stood up, folded up his chair, and walked to the weapons rack to clean his gun.
Jack didn't ask again.
He finished the entire steak on his plate, including the burnt parts.
Ron returned to the safe house at four in the afternoon.
His court badge was still pinned to his lapel, his suit was new, and his tie clip was perfectly in place.
He walked up to Jack and knelt down.
"Make a fist." Jack clenched his fist.
Ron extended his right hand, placing his index and middle fingers on Jack's wrist pulse.
Observation Haki penetrated beneath the skin, scanning the entire body along the network of blood vessels.
Heart rate 72 beats per minute, high.
Adrenaline level twice normal.
Muscle fiber density increased approximately threefold, with bone density increasing simultaneously.
However, neurotransmitter concentrations in the thalamus and amygdala fluctuated wildly.
Side effects of the serum.
His emotional regulation circuitry had been forcibly rewritten by the drug, lowering his threshold by 60%—under the same stimulus, his anger response would be three times more intense than a normal person's.
Ron released his grip.
"Have you had any sudden urges to smash things lately?"
Jack's fingers twitched.
"...Yes. I almost broke the knife handle while cutting the steak just now." Ron stood up, walked to the folding table, and opened the system panel.
Armament Haki Willpower Tempering Mode—strengthening the prefrontal cortex's inhibitory circuitry on the limbic system through repeated mental concentration and muscle control training.
Theoretically, this could neutralize the serum's emotional side effects.
But Jack had only been off Hydra's operating table for less than forty-eight hours; his body hadn't fully recovered.
"Let it rest for now," Ron said, turning off the control panel. "We'll talk about the next step once you can go three days without breaking anything." Jack nodded, carefully placing the plastic water bottle on the bedside table.
The bottle still bore the dents he had made earlier.
Nine o'clock in the morning.
The courthouse corridor was filled with whispering people.
As Ron walked through security with his Americano, a court clerk jogged over.
"Judge Stern, Judge Mickson's cases have all been transferred to you. The Chief Justice's office says—you are most familiar with the Hell's Kitchen jurisdiction." Ron took the stack of case files, a good twenty centimeters thick.
He opened the top file.
Fisker Corporation v. Residents of 48th to 52nd Streets, Hell's Kitchen, Land Acquisition.
Plaintiff: Fisker Corporation Legal Department.
Defendant: Twenty-three Residents.
Defendant's Attorney—Matthew Murdoch, Nelson & Murdoch Law Firm.
Ron tucked the file under his arm and went into the office.
The door had barely closed when the landline on the desk rang.
"Judge Stern, Attorney Murdoch is here. He says he wants to confirm the case filing documents with you."
"Let him in." Thirty seconds later, Matthew Murdoch pushed open the door and entered.
A grey suit, a dark red tie, a briefcase in his left hand, his white cane tapping the floor in his right.
His sunglasses were unfocused, but his head was tilted slightly to the side.
Ron sat behind his desk, flipping through case files with a steady pace.
Matthew sat down in the visitor's chair, his briefcase resting on his lap.
A desk and a meter and a half of empty space separated the two.
"Judge Stern."
"Attorney Murdoch." Matthew took a stack of documents and a USB drive from his briefcase.
The USB drive was black.
The size of a thumbnail.
Exactly the same as the one Ron had thrown at him in the alley a few days ago.
"These are supplementary materials regarding the evidence in the Mickson case. The FBI has officially opened a case, and some of the evidence overlaps with the Fisker Corporation land acquisition case—I request that the cases be consolidated." Ron took the documents and flipped through a couple of pages.
"The legal basis for consolidation?"
"Rules of Federal Civil Procedure 42(a), which allows cases involving common legal issues to be consolidated for trial. Three of the bribes received by Judge Mickson came directly from Fisker Corporation's special funds used for land acquisition." Ron put down the documents, took off his gold-rimmed glasses, and wiped them.
"If the evidence is sufficient, I will approve the consolidation." Matthew tilted his head slightly.
He was listening.
The heartbeat of the person across the desk—sixty-two beats per minute, steady and strong.
It was exactly the same as the heartbeat of the person standing six meters away in the alley that rainy night, hands behind his back, facing his stick.
Matthew closed his briefcase, buttoning it slowly.
"Judge Ron."
"Hmm?"
"I hope this time, the law will be on the side of justice." Ron adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, looking at Matthew through the lenses.
"I will conduct a fair trial." Matthew stood up, tapping his white cane on the ground, and turned to walk towards the door.
He opened the door, paused for a second.
He didn't turn back.
The door closed.
Ron sat in the chair, staring at the black USB drive on the table for three seconds.
Then he brought up the system panel and entered the target's name—Wilson Fisk.
[Target: Wilson Fisk (Kingpin). Sin Value: 12000.]
[Impact Level 2 Confinement Limit: Sin Value 5000.]
[Level 3 Unlock Condition: Justice Value 10000. Current Justice Value 5200. Shortfall 4800.] Ron closed the panel.
Kingpin couldn't move.
But his claws could chop him off one by one.
Six o'clock in the evening, the safe house.
Frank slammed a handwritten report onto the folding table.
"Kingpin is reorganizing." Ron pulled the report over, reading line by line.
"The Moonlight Foundation's accounts were frozen by the FBI, but Kingpin opened a new funding chain through a shell company in the Cayman Islands. The recipient is a Russian criminal organization—'The Black Market.'" Frank's claws scratched a line on the table.
"The boss is Viktor Lazarev, a retired GRU special forces soldier who later got involved in arms dealing and mercenaries. The informant said he'll be in New York within three days, with a group of men." Ron turned to the last page of the report.
"Anything else?"
"Kingpin sent an encrypted message to a number. I tracked it for four hours; the signal disappeared after jumping eight nodes in Eastern Europe." Frank's vertical pupils narrowed.
"This number isn't one Kingpin has used before." Ron folded the report and stuffed it into his pocket.
He closed his eyes and activated the system's crime value scanning function.
The perception range expanded outward from the safe house, covering the entire city of New York.
Three seconds.
Data feed.
Kingpin, 12000. Known.
Hand New York Chapter Leader "Venom Eater", 3200. Location: Basement level three of an office building in Midtown.
An extremely glaring number emerged from the direction of Hell's Kitchen East—8000.
Name: Kilgrave. Nickname: "Purple Man".
Supernatural Ability: Mind Control. His pheromones, transmitted through sound waves, can force any living being who hears his commands to execute them. Control range is approximately thirty meters, lasting twelve hours.
Ron stared at that number for two seconds.
Mind Control.
Frank's werewolf senses, Jack's still-unstable emotional system—if controlled by the Purple Man, the consequences would be unimaginable.
There was another signal.
When Ron's scan reached the deepest part of New York's underground, the system returned a string of gibberish.
Sin Value Display: ???.
Location: Underground—very, very deep underground.
The system cannot decipher it.
Ron didn't linger on this signal for long. He opened his eyes.
"Before Kingpin, take out two targets. The Hand's Venomous Devourer, and the Purple Man, Kilgrave." Frank leaned against the wall, arms crossed.
"I've heard of the Purple Man. Mind control. We can't fight him if we can't touch him."
"Seastone handcuffs can seal his abilities."
"You'll have to put them on first."
"Right." Ron took out conceptual Seastone handcuffs from his system space; the black metal gleamed coldly under the light. "So the question is—how do we put these on his wrists before he's controlled?" Frank stared at the handcuffs for three seconds with his vertical pupils, then remained silent.
Ron put the handcuffs away and walked to the safe next to the weapons rack.
The combination lock turned four times, and the safe door popped open.
He took out the Target-Target Fruit from his system space and placed it in the safe.
The deep blue fruit gleamed coldly in the dim light of the safe; the patterns on its surface were arranged in the shape of a crosshair.
Frank leaned closer and glanced at it.
"Another rotten potato?"
"Ten times more valuable than yours." Ron closed the safe. "Need to find a suitable marksman."
Frank snorted, asking no further questions.
11 PM.
Rooftop.
The neon lights of Hell's Kitchen spread out below, their red and green spots blurred by the night wind.
Frank came up with two cups of coffee, shoving one into Ron's hand.
The two leaned against the low wall of the rooftop, neither speaking.
The wind blew into the white cape on Frank's back, making the word "Justice" appear flipped in the night.
Frank took a sip of coffee.
"You said you wanted to build an army."
"Yeah."
"Are two enough?" Ron held his cup, looking at the lights of the Fisker Building on the Manhattan skyline in the distance.
"Soon there will be a third." Before he finished speaking, a sharp female scream ripped from the east.
Ron's Observation Haki exploded the instant the scream reached his eardrums.
Three blocks away.
A blonde woman was running frantically down Ninth Avenue, one of her high heels missing. Her bare left foot stomped on broken glass, leaving a trail of blood halfway down the street.
Behind her were six people.
Three men and three women, dressed in various ways—suits, sportswear, pajamas.
Their steps were perfectly synchronized, their pace identical.
No extra muscle movement on their faces.
Pupil color—purple.
Ron placed his coffee cup against the low wall.
The system popped up a red alert.
[High-risk target "Purple Man" Kilgrave detected nearby.]
[Warning: His mind control abilities have a 15% chance of affecting hosts with the current synchronization rate (30%).]
[It is recommended to carry Conceptual Seastone during this mission.] Ron glanced at Frank.
Frank had already thrown away his coffee cup, his right hand resting on his gun.
"Speak of the devil, and he appears." Ron took out a pair of Conceptual Seastone handcuffs from his system space and gripped them in his right hand.
The blonde woman's scream rang out again, shorter and sharper than before.
Then it stopped.