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"If you believe me," the girl said, "I can help you find it."
"You? How?"
"I've got cameras set up in the tunnels. If someone came through here, they'd be on my footage. You tracked me down, so whoever took your stuff is probably local — one of the other light fingers. I can check who's been moving around today."
"Light fingers?"
"It's what we call ourselves. Because we only take small things. Nothing expensive." She paused. "And there are more people down here than you'd think."
Kade was quiet for a moment.
Ten meters above his head, Manhattan was happening. Taxis, restaurants, office buildings, a million people complaining about rent they could still afford to pay. And down here — this. A community of people living in an abandoned sewer, stealing scraps to survive, calling themselves light fingers like it was a professional title.
He pushed the thought away. He wasn't powerful enough to afford sympathy yet.
"If you can help, I'd appreciate it."
The girl smiled — cautious, wanting to seem cooperative — and walked over to the generator. She grabbed the crank handle and started cranking with both hands, putting her full weight into it.
She knew the rhythm well. This was clearly a daily routine. But she was too thin for the work — by the time the generator sputtered to life, she was breathing hard.
The lightbulb flickered on, filling the room with a dim yellow glow. And now Kade noticed something he'd missed in the dark: a small fishbowl sitting on the desk. The goldfish inside was floating belly-up.
The girl caught him looking. She quickly shoved the bowl into a drawer. "I just... forgot to feed him today."
Kade said nothing.
She booted the computer — it took an agonizing thirty seconds for the ancient machine to wheeze to life — and rattled the keyboard with practiced speed. Several grainy video feeds popped up on the blocky CRT monitor.
"The cameras run on batteries," she explained, fingers moving as she talked. "I modified the internals to cut power consumption. That's why the resolution's so low." She glanced at Kade with a look of unmistakable pride — a girl who couldn't resist showing off what she knew.
Kade obliged. "That's impressive. You taught yourself?"
"Downloaded a tutorial. I've got WiFi down here — I tapped into..." She caught herself. "Anyway. Here's today's footage."
The feed showed the tunnel directly below the manhole — the main entry point. On screen, Kade could see himself dropping through the opening.
"Why is this so blurry?" he asked.
"I literally just explained that. Low power mode. Come closer if you can't see."
Kade sat down in front of the computer and started scrubbing through the timeline, looking for anyone else who'd passed through the entry point today.
He'd been watching for maybe five seconds when he heard rapid footsteps behind him.
He didn't turn around. He already knew.
The girl had bolted. The moment his attention was on the screen, she'd run — exactly as planned. The cameras, the helpful act, the invitation to sit down. All of it engineered to put his back to the door.
Clever girl. Nobody survived Hell's Kitchen's sewers by being simple.
But Kade didn't chase her. He reached for the watch on his wrist and pulled a thin USB cable from Violet's chassis, plugging it into the computer.
"Violet. Download everything."
"Yes, Commander. Ten seconds."
The hard drive screamed — a grinding, rattling death rattle that suggested the machine was being asked to do more in ten seconds than it had done in its entire operational life. When Violet retracted the cable, the computer tower emitted a thin plume of acrid smoke and went dark.
"Now take over her cameras. All of them. Find her."
Violet hadn't just copied the hard drive. During the ten-second extraction, she'd also identified and hijacked every camera the girl had installed in the tunnel network. The feeds now routed directly to Kade's Tactical Optics — still blurry, but Violet's processing cleaned them up enough to track human silhouettes.
The girl was thin and weak. She hadn't gotten far. But she was smart — taking corners, doubling back, exploiting Kade's unfamiliarity with the sewer layout. Under normal circumstances, it would have worked.
With a surveillance network feeding live positions to his glasses, Kade ran her down in under a minute.
She'd gone to ground in another alcove — dirtier than the first, with a smell that was distinctly chemical. Weed. Someone was smoking in here, or had been recently.
Kade stopped at the corner and activated X-ray.
Two figures. And on the table between them — a hexagonal crystal, glowing faintly blue even through the wall.
His Activator.
He could also hear them arguing.
"Daisy, I told you to put it back. The owner tracked me down — he's not normal. He found my place in the dark, he sees through walls, and he has a gun."
"Skye, I didn't do this for me. This is our way out! We sell this stone and we have enough money to rent a real place. Aboveground. With walls and a door. You know what happened to Jackie? She just vanished. No body, no note. People are disappearing down here and I am not waiting around to be next."
Kade stepped out of the shadows.
"Sorry to interrupt. But I'm in a hurry."
Both girls froze. In the light — such as it was — Kade could see the second girl clearly now. Stockier than Skye, with a round face and wide, frightened eyes.
The Activator sat on the table, right where the X-ray had shown it. Kade reached for it.
Daisy grabbed a bottle from the floor. "Don't touch it! I'll crack your skull open!"
Her hands were shaking so badly the bottle was vibrating. Whatever courage she had, it was running on fumes.
"I'm sorry about your situation," Kade said. "But put that down. Now."
He drew the M1911 from behind his back.
Daisy set the bottle down immediately. "Fine. Take it. No arguments."
Kade pocketed the Activator. He started to leave — then stopped.
"Nobody's born to live in a sewer," he said, without turning around. "If you want help, go to Nelson & Murdock, Attorneys at Law. There are people there who'd be happy to help you get out of this."
He meant it. These two were thieves, but they were thieves because the alternative was starving in a drainage pipe. Matt Murdock — both the lawyer and the man behind the mask — was exactly the kind of person who'd fight to get two girls like this off the street. Or in this case, out from under it.
He'd taken three steps toward the tunnel exit when the sound hit.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Heavy. Rhythmic. Something enormous, pounding through the tunnels. The concrete under his feet vibrated.
"Commander," Violet said. "Two cameras just went offline. Something destroyed them."
A blurred image appeared on the Tactical Optics — captured in the half-second before the camera died. A massive silhouette. Vaguely humanoid. Wrong proportions. Too big for the tunnel.
Kade turned back to Skye and Daisy, both of whom had gone white.
"You said people have been disappearing down here?"
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