I went exactly one building over, crouched down, and watched.
The passenger got out of the car, went up to one of the attackers, and actually drew his sidearm. I had the distinct impression that if there hadn’t been a lot of people watching, he would have shot the guy on the spot.
What was more interesting was when the police arrived.
What I expected to happen is that the helpless men would be handcuffed, loaded into the back of the police car, and either driven to a hospital or wait for an ambulance to arrive. This was well before the era of real criminal rights, so an ambulance might not even have been called.
Instead, there was a conversation between the policemen and the van drivers, a radio call in between, and I watched with great interest as the unconscious men were put into the back of the police car... and the lights were turned off, the street swept of broken glass, and the police sedan pulled out smoothly after the van resumed its course.
I had no problem following them, easily able to run faster than a car could reach on these busy streets, and the buildings were uniform enough that jumping between them was no issue.
Five blocks away and out of sight of the crowd, the two vehicles pulled over, and the unconscious men were transferred to the van without ceremony. The police sedan pulled away as if nothing had happened. I watched it go, the faces of the drivers in my Visual File and ready to not ever be trusted in the future.
The van resumed its course elsewhere, now having two hog-tied prisoners in the back doing a ride-along.
Well, wasn’t that just a totally New York thing to have happened. Saved by the hero, two criminal organizations have a tiff, the cops are bought off, and now the one has some prisoners of the other who tried to jump them.
Ginseng Traders. Huh. That probably meant links with the Orient. Who was it who called himself a humble dealer in spices?
Had I just saved a delivery van for the Kingpin from a hit? If not... no, the guards hadn’t been Oriental, so it likely wasn’t one of the Oriental cartels, and Mr. Hill had said that the Kingpin had dealings with one of the Hand families. Apparently, he was rated an Oyabun among them, due to his prodigious martial prowess and respect for Japanese culture. He might be in total command of one of the Hand Clans looking to expand here.
Well, if it was the Kingpin, then no doubt I was going to run into a specific hero or three who messed with the guy. At the least, I’d gotten a toy out of it I could modify to my own benefit.
Being able to supercharge a punch that could lay out a Brick would be pretty damn useful to me. I was sure there was a Tinker in town willing to help me do so, too, especially since he’d likely be able to replicate the tech...
Mmm, no, probably not a good idea to use The Tinker, on second thought. Even if the materials were expensive, there would be lots of other people who wanted one of these for their own.
On the other hand, giving this thing out meant that they really wanted to jack that van. I had to wonder what was in it.
Oh, and I had to cut the batteries to the gauntlet, too, in case it could be tracked.
So now I was already on the bad side of the Crux, if that was indeed them, and the Kingpin and/or the Hand might learn of me. Welp, off to a strange start, that was me.
-------
Following them to an office building with attached warehouse down by the docks wasn’t too difficult, which further made me think I was indeed dealing with Fisk. A big guy in an outfit with... sawblades mounted on his arms, of all things, came out to oversee the removal of the hapless Crux guys, and some metal cases and boxes were removed from the van and carted inside.
Their rooftop security was laughable, and it was easy enough to Repulse the lock on a skylight open to allow me to first listen to what was going on below, and potentially enter myself.
“How are you involved with this?” a low male voice asked from behind me.
He probably thought he was being sneaky, and he was pretty quiet, but he was making contact with the ground, so I’d felt him sidle up on me by his footsteps and sit there watching me, also listening to the interrogation going on below.
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And there was the fact he was a lightbulb in the radio-wave spectrum.
“Saved the van used to transport those materials in earlier, knocked out the two men. The cops who came handed them over to the van instead of taking them in themselves, which looks like basically a death sentence.”
He seemed startled by my utter lack of surprise, and how very softly I spoke, a whisper that no normal person could possibly hear.
I could make my Voice heard to everyone within a mile, or only to those nearby I wanted, but this was obviously pandering to his hyper-senses.
Matthew Murdock, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, was here, following up on something.
He stepped up behind me, ‘looking’ down through the skylight, using enhanced hearing to determine the positions of everyone.
“Who are you?”
“She replies after he introduces himself,” I said to no one in particular.
“They call me Daredevil,” he replied after a moment of hesitation.
“Dynamo.” I made voltage snap between my fingers. “You’re tilting your head slightly. You blind?” I asked calmly.
He actually flinched in alarm. “What?”
“If you tell me what color my mask is, I might believe you aren’t using echolocation if you say no.”
There was a long pause. “Black,” he finally declared.
“The light coming up from below is clearly enough to show that my mask is a very deep crimson, almost but not quite black, even deeper than your own suit. Good guess, however. I could also ask you what color the outfit of the twat with saw blades on his wrists is.”
“Saw blades on his wrists,” he repeated, frowning. “Sounds like a mercenary who calls himself Gladiator...”
“Has to be Murican. If he was on the Coast, he’d be laughed at and beaten to a pulp for taking a name like that. He doesn’t have any power armor, other than the rotary blades. I think I see a spring launcher, and he’s carrying a few spares on his shoulders and hips for shooting around. Just a gimmick.”
There was a high-pitched whirr as the sawblades turned on, and the man beside me flinched. “They’re going to mutilate and kill those two...”
“Yes. They’re Crux agents or hirelings. As I saved this batch earlier, I’d rather not be seen taking them down. Can you handle this? I want to find out what they were after.”
“Yes.” Before he could move, I reached out and leisurely lifted up the skylight, which was not at all light. He gave me another not-glance, and then dove down inside, grabbing a support beam on the way down, spinning with the strength and power of a master acrobat to rescue two fanatics from some criminals.
I was perfectly aware that he could see me come in behind him, rapidly yet silently lower the skylight, and then bounce off in my own direction, back towards the office building. It shouldn’t take me long to find those cases...
Behind me, shouts arose and whirring metal began to shriek through the air as Daredevil and Gladiator had it out, the local goons already down by thrown billy club and crashing right and left hooks, respectively.
------
The ‘hidden’ sub-basement didn’t surprise me. I simply sent the elevator up a floor, forced open the door, and descended using the sidewalls easily.
Only the one floor, opening out into a lab-type area, white coats and everything.
Thankfully it didn’t seem to be yet another mutation lab with prisoners for experimentation, although there were definitely rats in cages here, and refinement equipment that indicated this was probably a place where they refined incoming drugs out of whatever they were mixed in, and then cut them for sale on the street.
Given the time of night, there weren’t any people here to receive anything except the night guard, who’d stacked the boxes in the room for one of the scientists to work on, when he stopped pulling cocaine out of gasoline.
Frying the electronics was simplicity, and then just Repulsing the catches open inside the cases was enough to get them open.
Vials of yellowish liquid, unlabeled, in padded foam for transport for the first two cases. The third one held some derivative liquids and computer disks.
The boxes held hard copy research materials. Skimming through them at x15 speed, it looked like they were making a new type of drug with hallucinogenic effects, and these were the promising prototypes. They were Energized if they came in contact with a psionically-active mind, making them more addictive and powerful against Powered types.
I made a long face. Well, to be expected. Who was doing the research, however? I flipped through the papers quickly, noting that only code names of utter simplicity were being used on the printed sheets.
I pulled out a vial of oil-reactive spray, and puffed it over the hardcopies with a blown breath. Who needed an atomizer?
Lo, and watch the fingerprints come up...
I could mark them in my Visual File, but there were alternate methods, and too much paperwork. Even going through them very quickly, I wasn’t going to get everything, but that was what I assumed the floppies were for.
I gathered some of the most key hardcopy and all the folders, and since no one was watching, I calmly desiccated the rest of the lot, reducing it all to dust and powder in no time at all.
Carving out more room in the foam of one of the suitcases, I piled all the vials therein, then Attracted it to my back.
I was sure there were alarms upstairs from the fighting, but he was the diversion, as I wasn’t going to show up on cameras or anything.
A metal case riding on my back, I headed for the elevator and the way out. I heard the phone ring down here as I stole out, but the men working in their drug lab didn’t see me come or go.
Yeah, I could have blown the place apart pretty easily... and on the way out, I tripped the fire alarm just so I could do that. Sparks flying made it easy to set things on fire in the office building, and soon enough men were pouring out from the underground into the streets, while the fire that had started on the bottom floor quickly spread upstairs and into the warehouse area.