"Any other questions?"
Harry looked at the two of them, then continued before either could respond.
"And just so we're clear — you're not fighting alone. Remember my father? Norman Osborn has already established connections with the District Attorney's office. There have always been public prosecutions pending against Fisk — drug trafficking, murder, racketeering. Every year, the prosecutors who push those cases get dealt with. Bought off. Threatened. Some of them just... disappear. But new ones always step up. Hotheads with more courage than self-preservation."
Bribery. Kidnapping. Coercion. Murder. Fisk's criminal empire was a kingdom built on violence and silence — and in this city, all of it operated in the shadows. That was the key. Fisk rarely provoked the real power players. Compared to one or two solo vigilantes punching their way through his operation, an organized legal campaign operating in broad daylight could do far more lethal damage.
And this time, Harry had already signaled Norman to fund the DA's office — specifically targeting certain criminal operations in Hell's Kitchen.
"On top of that," Harry continued, pulling a business card from his jacket pocket, "the Osborn Group has reached a cooperation agreement with NYPD Captain George Stacy regarding increased police presence in Hell's Kitchen and the establishment of a temporary witness protection zone. If you need to keep a witness safe, contact him directly."
He set the card on Matt's desk. George Stacy's name and number were printed in clean, professional lettering.
Captain Stacy was a good cop. The kind of cop who'd earned his badge the hard way and wore it like it meant something. He was also — though this was information Harry kept to himself — the father of a certain blonde girl who would eventually become very important to a certain web-slinging teenager. Introducing him to Matt wasn't just pragmatic. It was part of a longer play — building the political infrastructure that would make the Osborn name synonymous with justice in this city.
One connection at a time. One alliance at a time.
"Well then," Harry said, standing. "That's all for today."
He'd barely gotten to his feet when Matt's hand shot out and caught his arm.
Harry stopped.
Matt's head was tilted — that particular angle he used when he was listening to something nobody else could hear. His blind eyes were fixed on the door, but everything about his posture said danger.
"You didn't bring bodyguards, did you?"
Harry opened his mouth to answer.
"Someone's coming for you."
The office door exploded inward.
Not opened. Not pushed. Kicked — with enough force to rip the hinges clean off the frame. The old, water-damaged wood splintered on impact, the door slamming flat onto the floor with a bang that shook dust from the ceiling.
Standing in the doorway, framed by the flickering hallway light, was a man.
Bald. Lean. Irish complexion, sharp features, and the kind of smile that belonged in a psych ward. And carved into his forehead — not tattooed, not drawn, carved — was a bullseye target.
Bullseye.
"Uh..." Foggy looked from the assassin to Matt, who had gone rigid with tension. "Who is this guy?"
"Professional assassin," Matt said, his voice low and flat. "One of Fisk's. Remember the grocery store owner who was killed by a paperclip last month?"
"He doesn't look like a grocery store owner."
"He's the one who threw the paperclip. Foggy — find somewhere to hide. Now."
Foggy didn't need to be told twice. He was behind his desk and crawling toward the back closet before Matt finished the sentence.
Harry, meanwhile, felt an odd sensation — something between amusement and satisfaction. Not because a psychopathic assassin had just kicked down the door. But because the timing was perfect.
The Spartan Program modifications were complete. His body had finished its transformation. And now, standing in this run-down law office with a world-class killer staring him down, Harry finally had a chance to see what he was made of.
The system agreed.
〔 Temporary Mission Issued: A Small Test 〕
〔 Mission: Subdue or kill Bullseye — alone. 〕
〔 Reward: Spartan Warrior Training Program + Pilot Training Program 〕
Alone. Harry smiled.
He shrugged off his suit jacket and draped it over the back of a chair. Rolled up his sleeves slowly, deliberately — the way a man does when he's not in a hurry because he knows he doesn't need to be.
"So," Harry said conversationally. "Someone's getting nervous. What did Fisk tell you? Take me out, or bring me back alive?"
Bullseye didn't answer. His expression was already beyond conversation — the manic, twitching grin of a man who enjoyed his work the way most people enjoyed breakfast. His fingers were moving, though. Working a paperclip. Straightening it with the precise, practiced motions of a man who could kill you with office supplies.
"Matt," Harry said without turning around. "Step aside."
"Harry—"
"Step. Aside."
Matt hesitated. Then, slowly, he moved back. Not because he wanted to — but because something in Harry's voice told him that arguing would be a waste of time.
"Warming up first?" Harry asked, watching Bullseye's fingers. "That's fi—"
The wire launched.
Bullseye flicked the straightened paperclip with a motion so fast it was practically invisible — a silver blur that crossed the room like a bullet, aimed directly at Harry's throat.
Harry moved.
Not dodged. Not ducked. Moved — his hand snapping up to catch the wire between two fingers, an inch from his carotid artery.
But he didn't let Bullseye see that.
Instead, Harry clutched his throat with both hands, let out a strangled gasp, and collapsed dramatically onto the sofa behind him.
Bullseye walked in. Confident. Triumphant. He flicked his collar with a showman's flourish, already composing the report he'd give Fisk — one shot, one kill, the Osborn kid went down easy.
Matt tensed in the corner. His superhuman senses were telling him something was wrong — Harry's heartbeat hadn't changed. His breathing was steady. His body temperature was normal.
He wasn't hurt.
He was acting.
Bullseye opened his mouth to deliver what was presumably a witty one-liner.
Harry launched off the sofa like a coiled spring.
"You didn't actually think that hit me, did you?" He was grinning. Full, genuine, delighted. "You bald freak."
He whipped the wire back at Bullseye. The throw was terrible — no technique, no spin, the wire tumbling through the air with all the aerodynamic grace of a thrown pencil. Bullseye caught it effortlessly, snatching it out of the air between two fingers.
But the catch wasn't what mattered.
What mattered was the look on Bullseye's face.
"You... you made me miss?"
The man who never missed. The man whose entire identity — his name, his brand, the target literally carved into his skull — was built on the absolute certainty that every projectile he threw would find its target.
And he'd missed.
His expression twisted. Not anger — something worse. The specific, dangerous rage of a narcissist whose entire self-image had just been shattered by a kid in a dress shirt.
"Looks like someone else is getting nervous now," Harry said.
Bullseye's response was immediate and excessive. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a fistful of projectiles — throwing darts, sharpened playing cards, a letter opener, what appeared to be a fork — and hurled them all at once in a vicious spray of lethal hardware.
Harry had about half a second to assess the incoming wall of sharp objects and conclude that dodging all of them wasn't happening.
So he improvised.
He reached out, grabbed the three-seater sofa — the one he'd been pretending to die on three seconds ago — and lifted it off the floor like it was made of cardboard.
Matt, standing against the wall, felt his jaw detach from his face. That's a three-seater leather sofa. That weighs at least three hundred pounds.
Harry charged.
Holding the sofa in front of him like a battering ram, he sprinted straight at Bullseye with the subtlety of a freight train. Darts, cards, and cutlery thudded into the sofa's upholstery like rain on a windshield — absorbed, blocked, irrelevant.
CRASH!
The impact drove the sofa into the far wall, wedging it into the plaster with a crunch of splintering wood and crumbling drywall. Bullseye had thrown himself sideways at the last instant — barely, barely avoiding being sandwiched between three hundred pounds of furniture and a brick wall.
But the dodge had cost him his escape route. The sofa blocked the doorway. The office was small. And Harry was right there.
"Alright," Harry said, cracking his knuckles. "Let's settle this the old-fashioned way."
He threw a punch.
It was a bad punch. Mechanically sound — the Spartan Program had given him the strength of a demigod, but it hadn't given him skill. His footwork was flat. His weight transfer was sloppy. His telegraphing was so obvious you could've read it from the next building.
Bullseye dodged it. Easily. Then dodged the next one. And the next.
Because Bullseye, for all his instability, was a trained combatant. He read Harry's movements like a book and started looking for counters — finding openings in Harry's amateur technique, probing for weaknesses.
He found one. Grabbed Harry's overextended arm. Twisted. Applied a textbook joint lock to Harry's wrist, the kind of hold that would snap a normal man's tendons like guitar strings.
The lock held for about one second.
Then Bullseye realized that Harry's joints were harder than steel.
Locking Harry's arm was like trying to put an armbar on a fire hydrant. The technique was perfect. The physics were impossible. You could joint-lock someone twenty, thirty, fifty pounds heavier than you. But you couldn't joint-lock a tank.
"Had enough?" Harry asked.
He jerked his arm.
Bullseye went airborne — ripped off his feet by the simple, brutal physics of a two-hundred-and-forty-pound Spartan-enhanced human flexing — and slammed into the floor with enough force to crack the floorboards, send a tremor through the entire building, and rain broken glass from the old window frames above.
Bullseye spat blood. His eyes were unfocused. His body was trying to go limp in the way that bodies do when they've decided that consciousness is no longer a priority.
Matt stood against the wall, his enhanced senses painting a picture of the scene that his rational mind refused to accept. This man was as weak as a kitten a month ago. How is he Captain America today?
Harry looked down at Bullseye. Frowned. Then kicked him.
Not a gentle kick. A launch. The kind of kick that picked a grown man up off the floor and drove him into the far wall with enough impact to leave a body-shaped crater in the plaster.
The building groaned. More glass fell. Foggy's muffled voice drifted from behind the closet door: "Is it over? Please tell me it's over."
The extra kick wasn't sadism. Harry had checked the system notification mid-fight, and the mission hadn't registered as complete yet. One more hit had done the trick.
〔 Mission Complete: Bullseye has been subdued. 〕
〔 Rewards issued. 〕
There we go.
Harry reached into the wall and pulled Bullseye out like a man extracting a nail. The assassin dangled limply from his grip, conscious only in the most technical sense of the word.
"I didn't realize you were this... intense," Matt said carefully.
Fair point. Looking at Bullseye's twisted, broken form — several ribs visibly displaced, one arm bent at an angle that arms shouldn't bend at, blood on his face and in his teeth — the man was probably minutes away from dying without medical intervention.
"Can this guy serve as evidence against Fisk?" Harry asked, dropping Bullseye unceremoniously onto the floor.
Matt shook his head slowly. "Unlikely. Professional assassins don't leave paper trails. His identity's been scrubbed from every database years ago. And his mental state..." He glanced at the target carved into Bullseye's forehead. "No jury would consider him a reliable witness."
"Right." Harry nodded. "So we just finish him off."
The words landed in the room like a dropped grenade.
Matt stiffened. "What? You can't just—"
"Matt." Harry's voice was calm. Patient. The voice of a man who'd already had this argument in his head and reached the conclusion. "Don't do this. How long would this guy stay locked up if we handed him to the police? A month? Two? With his psych profile, there's a coin flip on whether he'd even see a prison cell or just get shuffled into a mental facility with a revolving door."
He pulled on his jacket. Took a sip of water from the bottle on Matt's desk.
"Think about how many people he's killed, Matt. Not in the abstract. Actually think about it. The grocery store owner. The witness from last year's trial. The reporter who got too close. Those are real people who died because this man walked free."
Matt was quiet. His jaw was tight. His hands were clenched at his sides. Everything about his posture said I know you're right and I hate it.
"Aren't you worried about your image?" Matt asked — deflecting, the way people do when they can't argue with the logic but can't accept the conclusion.
"My image?" Harry almost laughed. "An unidentified foreign national — a professional assassin — attacks a millionaire philanthropist who's been publicly investing in Hell's Kitchen community improvement. The millionaire defends himself. The assassin dies." He spread his hands. "That's not a scandal, Matt. That's a headline. 'Osborn Heir Fights Off Assassin' — I'll be on the cover of every paper in the city. The public loves a tough guy who can handle himself."
He straightened his tie.
"I'll leave the paperwork to you. If you want to dig up some of his prior kills and attach them to the case file, I'll back you up. Shouldn't be hard to connect a few cold cases to a man with a target on his face."
Matt said nothing.
Harry didn't wait for an answer. He walked toward the door, stepping over the remains of the sofa and the scattered projectiles. On his way past Bullseye's crumpled body, he gave it one more kick — lighter this time, almost casual. A punctuation mark.
Then he stopped at the threshold and looked back.
"The law is on our side this time, Matt. Go ahead and use it."
He walked out into the hallway, leaving Matt Murdock standing alone in his destroyed office with a dying assassin at his feet and a business card on his desk.
The door — or what was left of it — didn't close behind him.
It couldn't. Bullseye had kicked it off the hinges on the way in.