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Matt's hearing was extraordinary — heartbeats at a hundred meters, words through concrete walls, the shape of objects mapped by the echoes they reflected. But he was still blind. He could identify a device by its hum and size, but he couldn't distinguish a motion sensor from a thermostat by appearance alone.
"Don't worry about the alarms," Kade said. "I can handle that."
He'd already deployed Violet and Masque. Two miniature robots, moving as one — Masque had shifted into a stray cat, with Violet tucked against his chest.
In Matt's sonar perception, the "cat" was actually two small mechanical bodies pressed tightly together.
"Do we really have to do this?" Violet muttered through the AllSpark link. "I could ride on your shoulders. Better vantage point."
"I'm afraid that's not acceptable," Masque replied. "A gentleman does not allow a lady to ride on his neck. It's a matter of principle."
"That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. And I've listened to Blitz's music."
"Principles are never ridiculous. They are the stage directions by which we perform our roles."
Violet gave up arguing but made a mental note to revisit this conversation later. Masque carried her toward the parking garage entrance without further protest.
The cat didn't draw attention. Two Russian gangsters standing guard barely glanced at the stray padding past their feet.
Near the entrance sat a security booth — a small metal-walled structure with monitors inside. Through the window, a third Russian was watching a bank of screens. The garage had cameras, at least in this section.
Masque scaled the booth's exterior — magnetic grip on the metal paneling, silent, invisible as a shadow wearing fur. When he reached the window ledge, the cat finally caught the attention of the man inside. He waved a hand to shoo it away.
The last thing he saw was a flash of silver.
Masque's blade — no longer than a needle at his scale, but needle-sharp and driven with precision that human hands could never match — punched through the man's eye socket and into his brain. Once inside, the blade fanned outward in a micro-burst, shredding neural tissue. Death was instantaneous and absolute.
Masque pulled Violet through the open window and set her down beside the computer terminal.
"My lady, the stage is yours. I have two more performers waiting outside."
He pulled the blade free, leapt to the dead man's head, and launched himself out the window — shifting from cat to pigeon mid-flight.
The two guards outside watched a white bird flutter toward them from the booth. Odd. Where had that come from?
A blur of silver. The first man's throat opened from ear to ear — carotid, jugular, trachea, all severed in a single pass. Blood sprayed across his partner's face. Before the second man could process what had happened, the pigeon was on him. The blade found his eye. Then his brain.
Three kills. Under ten seconds.
"Exit, pursued by a bird," Masque murmured, cleaning his blade on the dead man's jacket.
While Masque had been working, Violet had cracked the security system in the same ten-second window. Every camera, every sensor, every alarm in the garage now answered to her. She owned the building's digital nervous system.
The bad news: cameras only covered the entrance area. The interior of the garage was blind.
Kade received the all-clear through the AllSpark link and sprinted to the entrance with Matt.
Matt stopped when he sensed the bodies. Three dead men. The smell of blood was overwhelming, even over the garage's oil-and-concrete baseline.
He opened his mouth —
"Don't," Kade said. "One shout from any of them and Harry dies. You can fight without killing when your life is the only one at stake. Right now, it's a six-year-old boy's. These men made their choices. I won't lose sleep over them."
Matt's jaw worked. He was a man of principle — deep, unshakeable principle. But he was also a lawyer. He could weigh competing interests, assess risk, and accept that the calculus of a hostage rescue was different from the calculus of a street fight.
"After we get the boy out," Matt said quietly, "I'd appreciate it if killing isn't the first option."
"I only care about Harry's safety. Everyone else is secondary — but I'm not going to hunt them for sport. You have my word."
Matt accepted it. Not happily. But he accepted it.
He stood at the entrance to the garage's interior and listened. Really listened — head tilted, jaw slightly open, every sense reaching into the dark.
Kade waited. Patient. This was Matt's domain.
"Two levels," Matt said at last. "Seventeen armed guards total. Weapons on every one of them. Harry is on sublevel two — locked room, far corner." He paused. "But there's someone else down there. A second hostage."
That wasn't in the plan.
The Russians hadn't just kidnapped Harry Osborn. There was another prisoner — another piece of leverage in whatever game was being played above their heads.
Kade didn't know who it was. Didn't matter. The operation was already in motion. They'd save Harry and grab whoever else was down there on the way out.
"First floor," Kade said. "How many?"
"Seven. And..." Matt tilted his head again. Then a faint smile. "They're asleep."
Masque went in as a cat.
Seven sleeping guards. Seven targets, spread across the first level in various states of unconsciousness — slumped in chairs, stretched across car hoods, one snoring face-down on a card table.
The blade moved like a conductor's baton — precise, unhurried, each strike placed with anatomical perfection. Not the brain this time. The cervical spine. Point of entry: the gap between C3 and C4 vertebrae. The blade severed the spinal cord, then withdrew.
Each guard felt a sharp sting at the back of the neck — and then nothing. Ever again. Paralysis from the chest down. Vocal cords offline. Breathing shallow but sustained. Alive, technically. But unless a neurosurgeon reconnected those nerves within hours, they would never move again.
It was harder than killing. It required a knowledge of human anatomy that bordered on surgical, and a blade control that left zero margin for error. But Masque had made a commitment. The Commander had given his word to the blind man, and Masque would honor it.
Matt could hear all seven hearts still beating. He understood what Kade — what Kade's robot — had done. Gratitude and revulsion fought for space on his face. Gratitude won, barely.
He led Kade to a wall panel and pulled off a ventilation grate.
"This duct goes straight down to the hostage room on sublevel two. Two guards inside."
The vent was narrow — far too small for any adult to fit through. But Masque was fifteen centimeters tall.
He dropped into the darkness without a sound.