Five black fingerprints were burned onto the low concrete wall, the residual heat of the lava baking the surrounding dust to a golden-brown.
Ron flipped his phone over; the screen still displayed the message: "World Security Council Representative Gideon Malik will be visiting the New York Supreme Court this Friday."
He put the phone in his pocket and turned to go downstairs.
His mind was already racing.
Kingpin's backer was the World Security Council. Malik was a core member of the council. Fisker Corporation hadn't just won ordinary government contracts; it was defense infrastructure—seven billion dollars.
Pulling this thread upwards wouldn't just lead to Kingpin.
It would lead to the dark side of power in the entire United States.
Ron paused for two seconds in the stairwell.
No rush.
First, he'd pry open the first breach in court.
The next day. The New York Supreme Court.
Ron, dressed in a black judge's robe, walked into the judges' offices and slammed a request for a record on the clerk's desk.
"Fisker Corporation's complete government contract records for the past five years." The clerk flipped through the cover, his fingers pausing.
"Your Honor, this scope…"
"In the land acquisition case, Fisker Corporation's core defense is the 'government-authorized urban renewal plan.'" Ron straightened his name tag. "The legality of the authorization documents falls under the court's jurisdiction. Obtaining related contracts is standard procedure." The clerk swallowed, stamped the document, and filed it.
The application was delivered to Fisker Corporation's legal department forty minutes later.
Two hours later, a man Ron had never seen in court walked in.
Benjamin Donovan.
Fifty-three years old. Bald. A three-piece dark gray suit, his pocket square folded into a triangle, every crease angle calculated.
Kingpin's lead counsel. Annual salary of twenty million dollars. 147 court appearances in his career, undefeated.
Donovan had no appointment. He walked directly into the courtroom, sat in the defendant's dock, and placed a motion on the table.
"Judge Stern." His pronunciation was crisp and clear, the intervals between each syllable perfectly precise.
"Fisk Corporation objects to the access warrant." Ron sat on the judge's bench, opening the motion.
First page, third line—"National Security Exception."
Donovan stood up, buttoning the top button of his suit jacket.
"Some of the contracts Fisk Corporation signed with the federal government fall under the category of defense infrastructure, involving national security secrets. Under Section 553b, paragraph 1 of the Freedom of Information Act, state courts have no jurisdiction to access classified contract texts." Ron didn't look up.
"Mr. Donovan, your client is being sued for fraud and coercion in a forced land acquisition. Not the defense contract itself."
"The contract content is directly related to the acquisition. Its disclosure would jeopardize national security—"
"Whether the authorization document was issued legally and whether the contract content is classified are two separate matters." Ron closed the motion.
"Your client says the demolition was authorized by the government. I just want to see who signed the authorization document, whether the date is correct, and whether the process was completed. You're telling me this involves national security?" Donovan tapped his finger on the table.
"Your Honor, I understand your position. But according to precedent—" The side door of the courtroom opened.
Matthew Murdoch walked in.
A grey suit, a dark red tie, the rubber tip of his white cane tapping rhythmically on the floor.
He sat down in the plaintiff's seat, pulled a document from his briefcase, and handed it to the clerk.
"Submit supplementary evidence in court." Donovan's index finger hovered on the table.
The clerk handed the document to Ron. Ron opened it.
An environmental assessment report.
A soil and groundwater contamination assessment of the Hell's Kitchen demolition area by Fisker Corporation—concluding "no risk of contamination, suitable for development."
The signature section at the bottom of the report—Environmental Engineer, Richard West.
Matthew began.
"Richard West resigned from the New York City Environmental Protection Agency three months ago. He hasn't appeared in any public records since. No credit card transactions, no medical records, no immigration records."
He pulled two more pages from his briefcase.
"This is an email West sent to a colleague from his personal email three days before his resignation. He wrote in it—'They asked me to sign a blank report, I refused, and they said someone would come and talk to me.'" Four seconds of silence filled the courtroom.
Donovan lowered his hands from the table, folding them in front of his stomach.
Ron looked at the report and email record in his hands.
"Mr. Donovan."
Donovan looked up.
"Your client claims this is a legitimate government renewal project. Why would a legitimate project need to falsify an environmental assessment?"
Donovan's lips pursed.
"We object to the authenticity of this evidence—"
"The authenticity of the evidence can be verified." Ron placed the gavel on the table. "The retrieval order is upheld. Furthermore, given the emergence of new supplementary evidence requiring review, the next hearing date is postponed by two weeks." The gavel fell.
Donovan gathered the documents, rose, and left the courtroom.
As he reached the door, Ron was at the judge's bench, head down, organizing the case file.
Donovan pushed open the door, took out his phone, and dialed a number.
He didn't speak. The person on the other end spoke first.
"The result?"
"The warrant didn't stop them. They submitted new evidence—West's emails." There was a three-second silence on the other end.
"Matthew Murdoch. The blind lawyer."
"Yes."
"Understood." The call ended.
3 PM.
Matthew walked out of the courthouse and turned onto Sixth Avenue.
He walked two blocks, the rhythm of his white cane unchanged. But his head tilted slightly—high-frequency sound waves detected a change in the engine revs of a black SUV forty meters behind him.
Following.
For the next twelve minutes, Matthew made seven turns, crossed two alleyways, and climbed into a fire lane in a parking lot.
The black SUV lost its target at the fifth turn.
Matthew leaned against the wall of the fire lane and pulled out his phone.
"Kingpin moved. A car followed me for two blocks." Ron's reply was only two words: "Understood." He hung up and dialed Frank.
"Matthew Murdoch. Remember his scent. Every day on patrol, scan his usual routes. If you smell gunpowder, blood, or the scent of Kingpin's men—report it to me immediately." Frank took a bite of something on the other end of the phone and chewed it twice.
"Does he know?"
"Don't let him know."
Frank grunted and hung up.
Evening.
Ron sat in the judge's office, his screen displaying the court's internal inbox.
A new email. From: Office of the Chief Justice of the New York State Supreme Court.
Subject: "Jurisdiction Recommendation Regarding Fisker Enterprises v. Hell's Kitchen Land Acquisition."
The body contained only one paragraph—
"Given the federal contractual relationship and potential national security considerations involved in this case, it is recommended that the case be transferred to the jurisdiction of the federal court to ensure professional and impartial proceedings." Signed: Chief Justice Arthur Wilkins.
Ron stared at the screen for five seconds.
He closed his eyes. The system's crime scan returned its results within three seconds.
[Arthur Wilkins. Chief Justice of the New York State Supreme Court.] Sin Value: 2100.
[Financial Anomaly: An anonymous Cayman Islands account receives a $500,000 transfer quarterly. Funds are laundered through seven layers of shell companies, ultimately pointing to the Fisk Foundation.] Ron opened his eyes.
Two paths lay before him.
First: Fight it out within the legal framework. If Wilkins were serious, he could suspend Ron's jurisdiction over the case through an executive order, or even initiate a suspension investigation on charges of "judicial misconduct."
Second: Use Impel Down. Detain Wilkins. But the sudden disappearance of a state Supreme Court chief justice could cause enough shockwaves in the judicial system to paralyze the entire New York legal system for three months.
Both paths were blocked.
Ron's fingers paused on the keyboard for three seconds.
He opened a drawer and took out an encrypted USB drive.
The USB drive contained all the intelligence he had compiled over the past two weeks—the Hand and Hydra's New York hideouts revealed by Venom, the flow of funds in Kingpin's underground supply chain, Judge Mickson's bank statements regarding bribes, and the Purple Man's memory fragments extracted from the Impel Down interrogation system that afternoon.
The World Security Council authorized Kingpin to erase the images of superpowered individuals.
He copied the files twice.
The first envelope had a name on it—Ben Yurik. A New York Times investigative reporter. Having covered crime for fifteen years, Kingpin's name had appeared over three hundred times in his investigative notebooks, but each time it had been suppressed.
The second envelope had another name on it—Karen Starr. A federal prosecutor. Ron had scanned all twenty-three prosecutors in the New York U.S. Attorney's Office using the system; she was the only one with a zero crime rate.
Two envelopes. Anonymous.
Two weeks. He gave them two weeks.
Ten o'clock at night. The shipyard.
Jack, shirtless, his arms covered in a greyish Armament Haki glow, threw a series of punches at the sandbags hanging from the steel beam.
Each punch landed within two centimeters of its target.
The Armament Haki didn't flicker. A steady output.
Ron timed it.
"Five minutes." Jack stopped punching, sweat dripping from his forehead.
"Two minutes longer than yesterday." Ron walked over and patted Jack's forearm. The Armament Haki's rebound hardness was at least 20% higher than three days ago.
"Today I'll teach you Iron Body."
He demonstrated. Every muscle in his body contracted and locked in a split second, the Armament Haki hardening synchronously, his entire torso becoming a solid iron plate.
"The core isn't about brute force. It's about concentrating all your power on the point of impact the instant you're hit. Your serum constitution makes your muscle reflexes fast enough. Try it." Jack closed his eyes.
Ron punched him in the stomach.
Jack took a half step back, but didn't bend over. His abdominal muscles locked the instant the punch landed, the grey glow flashing at the point of impact. "Again."
The second punch. Jack only took a quarter step back.
The third punch. He didn't retreat.
"Not bad." Frank's curses came from the other end of the factory.
His half-beast-like body pushed off the two-meter-high steel beam, his hind legs making a "moonwalk" motion in mid-air.
He held on for a second and a half.
His 120-kilogram weight pulled him down, his back slamming into the abandoned dock rails, rust flying all over his face.
"Damn." Ron laughed.
Frank got up from the ground, his vertical pupils glaring at him.
"Don't laugh."
"You're too heavy."
"Duh." Frank rubbed the rust off his face, climbed back onto the steel beam, squatted, and jumped.
This time he held on for two seconds.
Then he slammed down again.
Jack lowered his head beside him, his shoulders shaking twice. Frank's vertical pupils immediately turned to him.
"Try laughing again." Jack turned his face away, his shoulders shaking even more violently.
Footsteps sounded from the entrance to the east medical area.
Jessica stood by the doorframe, her right hand behind her back.
"Ron." Ron walked over.
Jessica held out her right hand.
In her palm was a lump of iron-gray material—an apple and a fruit knife were squeezed together, the metal blade embedded in the flesh, the whole thing compressed into a fist-sized metal disc.
"I was peeling an apple for Lin Xiaowei."
She stared at the metal disc for two seconds.
"I'm not normal anymore, am I?" Ron didn't beat around the bush.
"You have a chemical enhancer in your body called IGH. It was dormant before. When the Purple Man controlled you, the extreme emotions activated it." Jessica's right hand gripped the metal disc, the metal deforming once more under her fingers.
"Those three days when the Purple Man controlled me—"
She stopped.
"I only had one thought in my mind." The metal disc fell from her hand to the ground with a dull thud.
'If only I had power.'
She looked up.
"Now I have it. Tell me, how do I use it?" Ron looked at her.
"That's up to you." Jessica's jaw tightened slightly.
"But if you decide," Ron turned and walked back, "I have a spot for you here."
He didn't turn back.
Jessica stood at the entrance to the medical area, looking down at the crumpled metal disc on the ground.
She crouched down and picked it up.
She didn't speak again.
One o'clock in the morning.
Ron sat at the folding table, the system panel lit up.
First notification—
[The Devil Fruit Furnace is complete. The Soul-Soul Fruit is ready to be retrieved.] Ron took the Soul-Soul Fruit out of his system space; the deep purple fruit emitted a faint spiritual fluctuation in his palm.
Second notification, red.
[Warning: S.H.I.E.L.D. has deployed a secondary surveillance network around Hell's Kitchen. Triple coverage includes satellite thermal imaging, street camera networks, and cell phone signal tracking.]
[Surveillance target—Host Judge's identity has been added to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s watch list.] Reason for Attention: "A high-value civilian suspected of being linked to recent superpower events."
[S.H.I.E.L.D. internal codename—"Judge"] Ron's fingers tapped on the table.
Fry.
This one-eyed man had his eye on him.
Not because of Impel Down. Not because of the lava.
It was because of his identity as a judge—a district judge in Hell's Kitchen, who happened to be within the radius of all the superpower events.
Too many coincidences, it's no longer a coincidence.
He was about to close the panel.
A red emergency alert exploded in the center of his vision.
[Urgent! Anomaly detected in Impel Down's second level!]
[Prisoner "Bullseye's" cell is under external intrusion!]
[Intrusion method—Dimensional probe. Non-magic, non-superpower. Purely technical means.]
[Probe signal tracing complete—]
[Launch coordinates: Midtown Manhattan. Fisk Tower. Basement level 3.] Ron's hand gripped the Soul-Soul Fruit.
His consciousness flashed into Impel Down's second level.
On the outer wall of Bullseye's cage, an extremely thin blue beam of light was cutting through the surface of the conceptual seastone.
The light extended from a pinhead-sized spot on the cage's outer wall, slowly spreading along the swirling patterns of the seastone, darkening with each inch it passed.
It wasn't trying to save Bullseye.
The probe's scanning direction wasn't towards the cage's interior, but towards the cage's structure itself—it was replicating the arrangement of the swirling patterns, deciphering the dimensional encoding of the seastone.
Kingpin wasn't trying to steal a person.
He was trying to steal Impel Down's technology.
The blue beam advanced another inch.