The girl's right hand twitched on the chair again.
White light seeped from her fingertips, spreading along the back of her hand to her wrist, swallowing three inches of black veins.
Then her eyes opened.
Black pupils. Clean. No purple light, no gray, no trace of erosion.
She opened her mouth.
Chinese.
Ron couldn't understand.
Matthew couldn't understand either.
Frank walked in from the church entrance, seven knife wounds still bleeding. He glanced at the girl with his vertical pupils, then turned and called out.
"Jack." Jack squeezed through the back of the bench, the pink new skin on his left shoulder still fresh.
He knelt down in front of the girl, rummaging through the meager recollections of his college elective Chinese class, and stammered.
"What...is your name?"
The girl stared at him for two seconds.
"Lin Xiaowei." Jack turned to look at Ron.
"She said her name is Lin Xiaowei."
Ron nodded.
"Ask her how old she is."
"Sixteen." Jack continued. Each sentence required mental rehearsals to form the correct Chinese grammar, but the girl's answers were quick—short sentences, steady voice, no tremor.
A Chinese immigrant family in Chinatown. Kidnapped by the Hand on her way home from school three weeks ago. Injected with a black liquid.
"She said…she heard many voices." Jack frowned as he translated, some words for which he couldn't find the English equivalents.
"Those voices told her, 'Don't be afraid, fight back.'" Ron crouched beside the bench, his right hand resting on the back.
"Ask her whose voices they are." Jack relayed.
Lin Xiaowei shook her head.
She added two more words.
Jack paused.
"She said— 'It's warm.'" The stained glass windows of the church dome shone a dim red in the dawn light.
Claire Temple wiped the blood from her hands, stood up from beside the first-aid kit, and walked to Ron's side.
"Forty-one people need to be taken to the hospital. I've contacted Craig's Clinic in Hell's Kitchen and a community hospital in Harlem, to be taken in two groups."
"The girl isn't being taken," Ron said.
Claire glanced at him but didn't ask why.
Matthew walked over from the bench, his white cane tapping the ground. He had already put his mask back on.
"I'll take care of the hostages. I have other things to do."
Ron stood up.
Matthew tilted his head slightly.
"You promised me—not to harm the innocent. You did it tonight."
Ron nodded.
Matthew turned, the tip of his white cane drawing a line on the cobblestones. He walked to the church door without looking back.
A dark figure squeezed through the crack in the door, blending into the still-lingering night outside.
Ron watched him disappear.
The transfer took forty minutes.
Frank's backup safe house was in Brooklyn's Red Hook Pier district—a shipyard abandoned twelve years ago.
The main factory building was five times the size of the old safe house, with a steel beam structure. A third of the corrugated iron roof had been torn off by the wind, and Frank had patched up the exposed sky with waterproof tarpaulin.
The floor was poured concrete, with two old shipyard rails embedded in the ground, rusted black. Frank had set up the medical area in the tool shed on the east side, containing a cot, two first-aid kits, and a portable electrocardiogram monitor bought from a secondhand market.
Lin Xiaowei was placed on a bed at the far end of the medical area.
Jessica pulled the blanket over her shoulders, poured a glass of warm water, and placed it on the corrugated iron tool cabinet beside the bed.
Frank leaned against the doorframe, his vertical pupils sweeping over Jessica.
She adjusted the glass twice, so the handle faced the girl's right hand.
Frank didn't speak, turned, and left.
Ron sat down at the folding table in the main factory building and closed his eyes.
A throbbing pain shot from his shoulder to his elbow in his left arm.
The system panel popped up.
[Consume 2000 Justice Points to accelerate left arm repair? Current Justice Points: 12200.] Confirm.
A surge of heat flowed into his shoulder, spreading along the aging muscles and withered skin. Cell division was accelerated to thirty times the normal rate—dry epidermis peeled off, new skin emerged from beneath the wound, elastic fibers re-woven, and muscle fibers regained their moisture content.
Eight seconds.
The left arm was healed. Ron flexed his fingers, and magma seeped half an inch from between them before receding.
Elementalization function normal.
[Repair complete. Remaining Justice Points: 10200.]
[Akainu template synchronization rate increased due to extreme combat experience—current synchronization rate: 33%.]
[The Devouring Poison Transcendental Origin "Dark Power - Yin-Yang Eye" has been extracted. Refining options—Paramecia-type Dark-Dark Fruit (Dark Manipulation) / Zoan-type Mythical Beast - Yin-Yang Beast Form. Please select.] Ron glanced at it and closed the panel.
No rush. Frank walked over, carrying a handwritten intelligence report, and slammed it on the table.
"Before dawn, I had my informants monitor all the exits around Chinatown. The escaping ninjas split into three directions—two groups went north, entered the tunnels in New Jersey, and can't be caught."
"The third group?" Frank's claws tapped on the table.
"Queens. Kingpin's territory." Ron picked up the report. Frank's handwriting was consistently ugly, but every place name and time was clearly marked.
The Hand remnants defected to Kingpin.
Morning sunlight filtered through the canvas, illuminating the folding table.
Ron folded the report, stuffed it into his pocket, changed into a clean suit, and pinned on his court badge.
"I'm going to work." New York Supreme Court. 10:00 AM.
As Ron entered the courtroom waiting area, a court clerk rushed towards him, carrying a stack of documents stamped with a red "Urgent" seal on the cover.
"Judge Stern, Fisker Corporation's legal team has filed a motion objecting to jurisdiction." Ron took the document and flipped through a couple of pages in the hallway.
The motion listed four points.
First: The presiding judge had overlapping jurisdiction with the former bribe-taker, Judge Mickson, and could be biased due to the latter's case.
Second: There is a potential conflict of interest between the presiding judge's jurisdiction and the location of the subject matter of the case.
Third and fourth points—purely a jumble of legal jargon.
The core demand was singular: to wrest the case from Ron's hands.
Ron closed the document and walked into the courtroom.
Matthew Murdoch was already seated in the plaintiff's seat. Gray suit, dark red tie, white cane resting against the chair leg.
Fisker Corporation's lead lawyer sat in the defendant's seat—a man in his forties, balding, the buttons of his three-piece suit ripped shut. Two assistant lawyers followed behind, and a stack of case files half a meter high lay on the table.
Ron walked to the judge's bench and sat down.
"Fisk Corporate Co., Ltd.'s attorney, presenting an objection to jurisdiction." The bald lawyer stood up and cleared his throat.
"Your Honor, given that Judge Mickson's bribery case is related to the subject matter of this case, and that Judge Stern and Judge Mickson are in the same jurisdiction—"
"What exactly do you mean by 'in the same jurisdiction'?" Ron interrupted him.
The bald lawyer paused for a moment.
"Uh…we both served in the Hell's Kitchen district of the New York Supreme Court—"
"Judge Mickson presided over 117 cases before his arrest. How many cases overlapped between my and his?" The bald lawyer flipped through the documents in his hand.
"…parts."
"Then what is the basis for the claim that he 'might be influenced by it and thus have a bias'?" The courtroom was silent for three seconds.
Matthew's head tilted slightly. He didn't speak. It wasn't necessary.
The bald lawyer forced himself to flip through two more pages of his document.
"We believe that, based on the principle of prudence—"
"The principle of prudence is not an excuse to evade judicial responsibility." Ron placed the gavel on the table without striking it. "Jurisdiction objection dismissed. Trial date remains unchanged. Any further objections?" The bald lawyer sat down and glanced at the assistant lawyer in the back row. The assistant lawyer was typing on his phone.
Ron didn't need Observation Haki to know who the message was sent to.
Four o'clock in the afternoon. Shipyard.
Jessica carried a bowl of instant noodles into the medical area.
Lin Xiaowei sat on a cot, a blanket draped over her lap, her hands resting on her knees. The dark veins on her arms had faded by another thirty percent.
Jessica placed the bowl on the tool cabinet.
"Eat." She reached out to adjust the bowl's position.
The moment her fingers touched the rim, a crack appeared in the middle of the ceramic bowl.
Soup seeped out from the crack, dripping onto the metal cabinet surface.
Jessica withdrew her hand.
She stared at her fingers for two seconds.
Lin Xiaowei leaned over the bed, steadying the cracked bowl, supporting the bottom with her other hand.
Not much soup had spilled.
"It's okay," Lin Xiaowei said in Chinese, then added three more words in broken English, "It's okay." Jessica's throat tightened. She turned and walked out of the medical area, nearly bumping into the doorframe.
Frank stood in the main factory, cleaning his gun, his vertical pupils following her.
"Come here." Jessica stopped.
Frank put down his gun and pulled a twenty-kilogram iron chain from a pile of old goods in the corner.
"Both hands. Hold it. Raise it slowly." Jessica took the chain. Rust grazed her hand.
She raised the chain.
Frank stared at her wrist.
"Slower. More strength isn't always better. What you need to learn is—when to stop." Jessica gritted her teeth and slowly raised the chain from her chest to above her head. The chain didn't break.
"Put it down." The chain hit the ground with a dull thud.
"Again." 11 PM.
Shipyard rooftop.
The wind blew in from the direction of the East River, carrying the salty, fishy smell of diesel fuel.
Ron stood on the edge of the rooftop, bringing up the system overview.
Impact Level 3 is operating normally. Bullseye, Purple Man, and Venom continue to generate sin points.
Available resources: Bullseye Fruit (unallocated), Soul-Soul Fruit (in the furnace, 6 hours remaining), Venom's Yin-Yang Eye Origin (awaiting smelting).
Team: Frank, Brigadier General; Jack, Captain.
Jessica—Ability awakening.
Lin Xiaowei—SSS-rank, sixteen years old.
His gaze turned towards Manhattan. The lights on the top floor of the Fisk Tower shone, like a glowing nail in the night sky.
The system suddenly popped up a new piece of intelligence.
Source: Memory fragments automatically extracted by the Purple Man Kilgrave's interrogation system on Impel Down Level 2.
[Memory fragment successfully extracted—from a meeting before Kilgrave was hired by Kingpin.]
[Content restored—] The scene pulls back.
The conference room on the top floor of Fisk Tower. Three months ago.
Wilson Fisk sat at one end of the conference table, opposite a man in a dark blue suit. In his fifties, his gray hair was neatly combed, and a silver cufflink peeked from his left wrist—engraved with a symbol.
An eagle. Earth. Olive branches.
The World Security Council.
Fisk's hands rested on the table.
"Conditions?" The gray-haired man picked up a teacup and took a sip.
"The mutant problem in New York is getting worse. S.H.I.E.L.D. is disobedient, and the Avengers are acting independently. The Council needs a…more flexible partner." He placed the teacup back on the table, the porcelain bottom clinking against the oak surface.
"Get rid of those uncontrolled superhumans—your way. Leave no trace. In exchange, the Senate will ensure Fisk Corporation gets the next round of defense infrastructure contracts. Seven billion dollars." Fisk didn't answer immediately. His right index finger tapped on the table.
"Didn't you have your own 'disposal plan' before?" The gray-haired man's lips curved into a straight line.
"That plan… had a problem. The person in charge ran away." He pulled a document from his briefcase and pushed it in front of Fisk.
The document's cover had three letters printed on it—WSC.
Below was a line of smaller print: Mutant Control Plan · Authorization Letter for Civilian Agents.
[Memory Fragment Ends.] Ron stared at the last frame frozen on the system panel—the World Security Council logo on the gray-haired man's left cufflink.
Kingpin's backer wasn't the underworld.
It was the government.
Kingpin had been operating in Hell's Kitchen for twenty years, and the FBI couldn't touch him. Judge Mickelson's bribery investigation took three years to begin. Every time Kingpin was brought to court, someone would always break the chain of evidence at a crucial moment.
The law didn't fail. Someone was holding the law by the neck, preventing it from speaking.
Ron closed the system panel.
The wind from the East River sent the pebbles on the rooftop tumbling twice.
His right hand hung at his side, a dark red light seeping from between his five fingers.
Magma.
The light shone on his chin and neck, outlining a silhouette in the darkness.