New York at night never truly slept.
The city glowed with endless lights, traffic humming through the streets long after midnight.
Inside a hospital room in downtown Manhattan, a handsome man lay in bed wearing dark sunglasses. Thick bandages wrapped around his right arm and left leg.
The patient was Matt Murdock.
The night before, he had been shot in the arm and leg—injuries inflicted during his encounter with Noah Vale.
Despite his condition, Matt held a charcoal pencil in his uninjured hand and moved it steadily across a notebook resting on his lap.
For a blind man, drawing might have seemed impossible.
But Matt's senses operated far beyond normal human limits. Sound waves bouncing off nearby surfaces created a detailed spatial map in his mind, allowing him to perceive shapes and distances with remarkable precision.
The faint scratch of charcoal against paper filled the room.
Stroke by stroke, a face began to appear.
When the final line was finished, Matt set the pencil down.
On the page was the portrait of a young man—perhaps eighteen years old—strikingly handsome, with sharp features and an almost unnatural sense of symmetry.
Matt leaned back slightly.
His thoughts returned to the confrontation the night before.
Who is he?
And how did he know so much about me?
Noah had known things no stranger should have known—Matt's identity, his blindness, even the vulnerabilities he kept hidden from the world.
The memory of Noah's warning tightened a knot in Matt's chest.
If Matt continued investigating, Noah had threatened to reveal Daredevil's identity to Wilson Fisk.
That possibility alone was terrifying.
If Fisk learned the truth…
Everyone Matt cared about would be in danger.
For the first time in years, Daredevil felt cornered.
Just as he was debating whether to keep digging into Noah's identity, his ears picked up footsteps outside the hospital room.
The rhythm was familiar.
A moment later, the door handle clicked.
"Amy?" Matt said before the door even opened.
The woman stepping inside paused in surprise.
"You heard me already?"
She walked into the room carrying a small basket of flowers.
Amy, one of Matt's colleagues from the law firm, looked visibly relieved.
"I heard you got caught in some kind of gang shootout last night," she said. "How bad are you hurt?"
Matt smiled faintly.
"I'll survive. The doctor says my body heals quickly. Though apparently I'm not allowed to work for at least a month."
Amy sighed in relief.
"That's good. Things have been crazy lately. The city's getting worse every week. We're barely keeping up with our cases."
As she spoke, her eyes drifted toward the bedside table.
A sheet of paper lay there, flipped face down.
"What's this?"
Without thinking, she picked it up.
The moment she saw the drawing, her eyes widened.
"Wow."
She held up the sketch.
"Who drew this? That guy is ridiculously handsome. Is he a real person?"
Her expression turned slightly puzzled.
Why would a blind man have a portrait sitting next to his bed?
Matt chuckled.
"A friend of mine drew it," he said calmly.
"As for the guy in the picture… apparently he's just some student my friend saw on the street. The image stuck with him, so he sketched it later."
Amy tilted her head.
"You don't know him?"
"Afraid not."
"That's a shame," she said with a laugh. "I'd love to meet someone who actually looks like that."
She looked back at the drawing again.
"Although… this might be an idealized version. People don't usually look that perfect."
Matt smiled politely.
"If my friend ever runs into him again, I'll ask him to get a phone number. Maybe I can introduce you."
Then Matt casually changed the subject.
"By the way, I overheard someone earlier talking about a bank robbery. Another one?"
Amy nodded.
"Oh yeah, that's all over the news today."
She sat down in the chair beside the bed.
"A gang blew open the vault at Terri Bank last night. They were already loading the money when some other criminal showed up and stole everything from them—including their getaway car."
Matt remained silent.
He knew exactly who that "other criminal" was.
Amy continued.
"When the police arrived, the original robbers were still there. Their ankles had all been shot so they couldn't run."
"They arrested the gang immediately, but the mystery guy disappeared. Apparently the police only managed to recover the abandoned car."
She shook her head.
"This morning's newspapers are tearing the NYPD apart."
Then she suddenly raised a finger.
"Oh right—almost forgot."
"The police department is holding a press conference tomorrow morning."
Matt raised an eyebrow.
"A press conference?"
Amy nodded.
"Yeah. Bank robberies like that don't happen often in New York anymore, and the media's been going crazy about it. They probably want to calm the public down."
"I see," Matt said quietly.
So the city is taking it seriously.
The two chatted for a while longer before Amy finally stood up.
"It's getting late. I'll come back tomorrow morning."
After she left, the hospital room fell silent again.
Across the city, in a quiet suburban home, George Stacy stared at his computer screen.
The online news coverage was brutal.
Articles criticizing the police department were spreading everywhere.
George rubbed his temples.
Becoming police commissioner in New York hadn't been easy. Years of hard work and careful decisions had finally brought him to the position.
But everyone understood the uncomfortable truth.
Police officers could handle ordinary criminals.
But when it came to mutants, superpowered individuals, or other supernatural threats?
Survival itself was often the best outcome.
George had asked his superiors more than once if the federal government planned to create specialized units for dealing with enhanced threats.
Some kind of super-powered police force.
Every time, the answer had been the same.
Delayed.
Deflected.
Apparently a military project involving the Super Soldier Serum had been suspended after a test subject escaped from a research facility. The military was still searching for the runaway experiment.
Until that situation was resolved, there would be no new programs.
George sighed.
Despite everything, New York's police casualty rate remained relatively low compared to other major cities.
Five percent annually.
Even that had taken years of careful management.
He reviewed his prepared speech for tomorrow's press conference one more time.
Then he shut off the computer.
His wife called out to him from the bedroom, but George simply waved the invitation away.
He was exhausted.
Within minutes, he fell asleep.
Elsewhere in the city, Noah Vale continued training inside his apartment.
He moved furniture like improvised weights while his mind worked through a different problem.
I need to get that money cleaned soon.
His finances were starting to tighten again. The stolen cash needed to become legitimate funds as quickly as possible.
While Noah trained and planned—
Across the city, inside a dim warehouse, several heavily built men sat around a table.
They looked like hardened criminals.
One man with a long scar running across his face leaned forward.
"Tomorrow morning at nine, the police are holding a press conference," he said.
"A lot of officers will be tied up there."
He tapped the table.
"That means the rest of the city will be short on manpower."
Another man nodded slowly.
"So we move while they're distracted."
"Exactly."
Scarface grinned.
"We go in fully armed and finish the job fast."
One of the others raised a question.
"So which bank are we hitting?"
Scarface didn't hesitate.
"Lansher Bank."
"I've done my homework. They're holding more cash reserves than almost any bank in the city."
"And the security?"
He leaned back in his chair.
"Surprisingly light."
The men around the table nodded, already imagining the payoff.
None of them stopped to ask the obvious question.
If that bank held so much money—
Why was the security so weak?