Foggy visibly relaxed when Kade walked in unharmed. "Lawson, this is Matt Murdock, my partner and best friend. Our firm is Nelson & Murdock, Attorneys at Law."
Partners. Best friends. The kind of bond that only formed when two people had been through law school and poverty together. Kade filed that away.
He extended his hand. "Nice to meet you. I'm Kade Lawson, just got back from Afghanistan. I work at Stark Industries."
Matt shook his hand with an easy smile. "Nice to meet you too. I can't see you, obviously, but I have a feeling you're a good person."
Smooth. Relaxed. The perfect performance of a blind lawyer meeting a stranger at dinner.
But Kade knew better.
Not from the alley. Matt's face had been covered the whole time. Kade couldn't have identified him from that encounter any more than a stranger on the street could. What Kade knew, he knew from another life entirely. Daredevil. Matt Murdock. Nelson & Murdock, Hell's Kitchen. The blind vigilante with radar senses and a no-kill code.
Matt, meanwhile, had almost certainly recognized Kade's voice the second he walked in. The gun guy from the alley was now sitting at his dinner table. But as far as Matt knew, his mask had done its job. His secret was safe.
"And I have a feeling you're a man with a real sense of justice," Kade said, keeping it light.
Something flickered across Matt's expression. A micro-hesitation, gone as fast as it appeared. Paranoia, maybe. Does he know? No, that's just a compliment. He's a stranger. He can't know.
Foggy caught something in the air anyway. A stiffness, a beat of silence that lasted a fraction too long. "Wait. Have you two met before?"
Matt's face went rigid for half a second. Kade bailed him out.
"Ran into him on the way to the store. He gave me directions. But I don't think he recognized me at the time."
A beat of silence from Matt. Kade could almost hear the calculation. Why would a stranger cover for me? Unless he's not a stranger. Unless he knows.
Then Matt picked up the thread, smooth as a courtroom redirect. "That's right. I just now recognized his voice. You know how it is, Foggy. Can't exactly pick people out of a lineup."
Foggy seemed satisfied. "Well, even better! I was worried you'd be awkward around a stranger."
Mrs. Cardenas emerged from the kitchen carrying a pot large enough to feed a small army. "Boys, dinner's ready!"
The meal was excellent. Mrs. Cardenas's home cooking was rich, hearty, loaded with spices Kade hadn't tasted since his last deployment in South America. He ate less than the others, mostly because his mind kept circling back to the palladium in his basement, but the company made up for any distraction. Foggy and Matt were both natural conversationalists. Warm without being overbearing, friendly without crossing into pushy. They knew how to put people at ease, probably a professional skill as much as a personal one.
By the end of dinner, Kade was genuinely glad he'd met them.
After saying goodnight and heading downstairs, Kade opened his front door to find Matt Murdock already inside.
He glanced at the open window. Made a mental note: get a steel security grate installed tomorrow.
"You know, you could have just told me you wanted to see the new place. I'd have offered you a drink."
"I wanted to thank you," Matt said. "For not giving me away upstairs."
"That was nothing." Kade shrugged off his jacket and unstrapped the SHIELD watch, setting it on the table. "But I will say this. Between friends, it's better not to keep the kind of secrets that could get someone killed. Foggy especially. He deserves to know."
Matt didn't respond to that.
"I have some questions," he said instead.
"Ask away. No guarantee I'll answer."
"Who are you, really?"
Kade had expected this. He took a moment.
"Everything I said at dinner was true. I'm Australian, former military. I ended up in Afghanistan at the wrong time and got pulled into Tony Stark's mess. Now I work at Stark Industries. Meeting Foggy was pure coincidence. You don't need to worry about me having some hidden agenda."
He'd expected to have to work harder. Instead, Matt just said: "I believe you. You're not lying."
"You can tell when someone's lying?" Kade raised an eyebrow. "Sounds like a superpower."
"Nothing that exotic. I listen to heartbeats. Blind people tend to have sharper hearing."
"That's a lot sharper than 'tends to,'" Kade said.
He knew Matt was holding back. The radar sense, the training, the full extent of his abilities. But Kade wasn't going to press. Everyone was entitled to their secrets.
Matt held up one of the metal bracelets. "Is this a Stark Industries product?"
"Prototype. Anything goes wrong, come find me. Full after-sales service."
"Thank you. These are genuinely useful." Matt turned the bracelet over in his fingers. "I owe you one. If you ever need help, legal or otherwise, come to me."
"Discounted legal fees?"
"Free."
"Let's hope I never need to take you up on that."
They were still talking when police sirens cut through the night. Matt's head tilted. Listening to something Kade couldn't hear. His expression hardened.
"Sorry. I need to go."
He was out the window before Kade could respond.
Kade watched the curtain settle, then turned to the watch on the table.
"Violet. Did you get his voiceprint?"
The black watch erupted into motion.
Panels split, micro-components unfolded, tiny mechanical limbs extended. Two seconds and standing on Kade's table was a figure roughly ten centimeters tall. A miniature robot in sleek purple-black armor, proportioned like a woman, with articulated fingers, segmented joints, and a face so finely detailed that individual eyelashes were visible above luminous violet eyes.
She dropped to one knee.
"Voiceprint recorded and catalogued, Commander. The next time he puts on a mask, I'll identify him within seconds."
"Good work. What about the other assignments?"
"I've been monitoring Stark Industries' financial accounts since the press conference." Violet stood and clasped her hands behind her back. Intelligence officer delivering a briefing. "This afternoon, approximately one billion dollars was quietly moved out of company accounts. The transfer was split into over a hundred smaller transactions to avoid detection. All of them routed to private accounts belonging to Obadiah Stane."
"That fast." Kade's jaw tightened. "His patience is even thinner than I expected. What about the other thing? Find anything?"
"Based on SHIELD's medical database, I've identified the top ten surgeons in the world with the skill to extract shrapnel fragments from Mr. Stark's chest. One of them is based in New York. I'd suggest the Commander approach him first."
Violet's eyes flickered, twin points of violet light, and a holographic projection materialized in the air in front of her. Three-dimensional, translucent, hovering above the table.
The image that appeared was a cartoon girl. Pastel-colored hair. Singing what sounded like an anime opening theme at full volume.
Kade stared.
Violet killed the feed instantly. "My sincerest apologies, Commander. Wrong file."
The projection flickered and reformed. This time it showed a medical profile. A man with sharp cheekbones, immaculate gray-streaked hair, and the kind of angular bone structure that looked like God had designed his face to play a villain in a BBC drama.
The name beside the photo: Dr. Stephen Strange.
But Kade was barely looking at the profile.
Was that a Vocaloid?
He'd caught maybe two seconds of the accidental broadcast, but that was enough. His newly created intelligence operative, the most advanced espionage unit on the planet, capable of infiltrating SHIELD's global network, was spending her downtime watching anime.
Violet was a nerd. Confirmed.
PLZ Throw Powerstones.