Daredevil, page 21
Mickey laughs. “So you still going to come ’round the gym?”
“You want to carry on training?”
“Sure. There’s still a few things I can teach you.”
Matt laughs.
Mickey stands on her tiptoes and gives him a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks.”
“No problem. I’ll see you ’round, okay?”
“Well … you won’t,” says Mickey. “But I will.”
Mickey heads across the street and into the apartment block. Returning to her home.
Finally, Matt meets up with Foggy Nelson two days later at the sandwich shop.
“Looks like you won your case,” says Matt.
“What case? We didn’t even get a chance to go to trial. When all this crap came out, we didn’t have to!”
“Yeah. Well. Sometimes fate is kind to us.”
“You heard the latest?” asks Foggy.
Matt shakes his head.
“The councilman and his son? Boyd?”
“What about them?”
“They were going to turn state’s witness. Least, William was. Give evidence against the mob.”
“And?”
“They were both found dead in their cells this morning. Their tongues cut out.”
Matt straightens up in his chair. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. Word is the mob guy got to them. This Kingpin everyone’s talking about.”
Matt takes a sip of his bitter coffee. Not sure how he feels about the news. They could have supplied vital evidence against this Kingpin.
“So what’s the plan now?” asks Foggy. “You heading back to Boston?”
“Nah. I’ll stick around here. I’ve missed this place.”
Foggy leans forward, putting his elbow in his pastrami rueben. He winces, wiping his suit jacket with a napkin. “I’ve been thinking. What do you say to me and you starting up our own law firm?”
Matt doesn’t answer at first. Runs it through his head. He sits back thoughtfully. “Here in Hell’s Kitchen?”
“Where else? We’re both locals. We know the area. We know the people. It’s perfect.”
Matt thinks about it, then grins and holds out a hand. “You know what? It’s a great idea. I’m in.”
“Great. My mom can lend us the money for an office. As long as it’s not too fancy.”
“We won’t need anything fancy. Not for the kind of work we want to do. All that stuff we talked about in college. All those ideals we had. We can do it, Foggy. The two of us.”
“So you want to flip a coin?”
“For what?”
“For whose name comes first on the door. Is it Murdock and Nelson, or Nelson and Murdock?”
“Let’s go alphabetically,” says Matt.
“Nice try. Call it.”
“Heads.”
Matt hears the sharp metallic ting of a coin behind flipped in the air. “Ah, crap.”
The coin flies past Matt’s face, hits the counter, and bounces a few times before someone down the line catches it.
Matt turns slightly, catches a familiar scent. A presence long missed, but never forgotten.
Stick.
Matt says nothing. Waiting. Stick takes his time finishing his coffee. Then he gets up.
“You watch your back, kid,” he says, walking past them. He pauses at the door. “And the quarter came up tails. You came in second. Remember that, and don’t get cocky.”
Wilson Fisk stares out his window at the falling snow.
It brings him no pleasure tonight. Because he knows that there are others out there watching the snow and thinking it is a fresh start. They will see the snow as wiping the city clean.
They will be finding … hope.
All because of one man.
One man who ruined his plans. Plans years in the making. One man who cost him millions of dollars.
Daredevil.
That’s what they’re calling him. The name on the lips of terrified criminals. The name uttered breathlessly by grateful victims.
Daredevil.
The name of a shadowed demon, an unseen avenger. A silent, almost invisible savior of the innocent.
Daredevil.
Fisk turns from the window. He will find out who the masked fighter is.
And the Kingpin will make him pay.
EPILOGUE
Daredevil.
It was in that one moment of cold purpose—that moment when Mickey’s life hung in the balance—that the name came back to him.
Daredevil.
Echoing from the schoolyard bullies’ taunts.
He’d spent an entire life running from the name, hating it.
But now he wears it like a badge. A reminder of where he came from. Of who his father was.
Of who Matt is trying to be.
Let the bullies know—all of them, the kind that use knives and guns, the kind that use money to beat down those poorer than themselves—let them all know they have an enemy now.
Daredevil.
And as he takes to the rooftops, in a costume he made himself—dark red and black, the color of shadows and blood—Matt Murdock vows to protect this city, his home, from the bullies of the world.
Daredevil is here. And he’s not going away.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Crilley is a Scotsman living in South Africa. He wrote the Invisible Order series and The Adventures of Tweed & Nightingale, as well as the award–winning detective series the Abraxis Wren Chronicles. Crilley wrote for Bioware/LucasArts’s massive multiplayer online game Star Wars: The Old Republic, and adapted his stories of Eberron detective duo Abraxis Wren and Torin into comics for IDW. Crilley also plotted and co-wrote IDW’s six-issue crossover series the X-Files: Conspiracy. An accomplished scriptwriter, he has written more than one hundred hours of television ranging from drama, sitcoms, crime thrillers, and children’s shows.
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