Punisher Kicks Down the Door

Super Intelligence designed a plan in about ten seconds.

The drug ecosystem in Hell's Kitchen had a very clear food chain.

Bottom-tier distributors like Murphy and Red Ghost, mid-tier regional managers, and at the very top, Kingpin's organization.

Every level had to account to the one above it.

The core of this accounting was a single concept: the cut.

Red Ghost's monthly drug turnover was roughly between 150,000 and 200,000, and by the rules, he had to hand over thirty percent to Kingpin's mid-tier managers.

But Lynn had caught a detail during a casual chat the day Murphy came to the clinic—Murphy had said, "That dog Red Ghost, he reports 3,000 for 5,000 worth of goods."

If this were true, Red Ghost had been underreporting his turnover and skimming the profits.

Kingpin's organization had zero tolerance for such things.

All Lynn needed was a trigger.

The monitoring range of Super Senses was stable at around two hundred meters.

The clinic and Red Ghost's stronghold were separated by only a block and a half, about 120 meters.

That night, Lynn sat by the second-floor window, closed his eyes, and pushed his hearing to the limit.

A massive amount of background noise flooded in—television sounds, arguments, barking dogs, the hissing of water pipes.

But his mind acted like a precision audio filter, peeling away these noises layer by layer until only the sounds inside Red Ghost's stronghold remained.

Three men were talking.

"...The books for last month, I told Old Fei it was 125,000."

"And the actual amount?"

"178,000."

Another voice laughed: "Red Ghost, you're getting bolder."

"What's to fear? That idiot Old Fei can't even do elementary school math."

Lynn opened his eyes.

Enough.

He used the clinic's landline—not a cell phone, as landlines were much harder to trace—to dial a number.

It was a number he had inadvertently memorized when Murphy was undergoing surgery; Murphy's phone had lit up with an incoming call, and Super Senses had recorded it in that split second.

The number belonged to a mid-tier manager for Kingpin in Hell's Kitchen, a fat man named Old Fei.

The phone rang three times before it was answered.

"Who is it?"

Lynn didn't speak.

He used his phone to play a recording—the conversation he had just intercepted with Super Senses, which he had dubbed through the clinic's recording equipment after stripping away the background noise.

"...The books for last month, I told Old Fei it was 125,000."

"And the actual amount?"

"178,000."

"Red Ghost, you're getting bolder."

"What's to fear? That idiot Old Fei can't even do elementary school math."

The recording finished.

The other end of the line went silent for about five seconds.

Then came a heavy, ragged breath, accompanied by the sound of teeth grinding.

Lynn hung up the phone.

The next morning, two black SUVs pulled up in front of Red Ghost's stronghold.

Four men in dark clothing went inside and took away Red Ghost and his two subordinates.

The entire process took less than ten minutes.

That afternoon, the metal rolling door of Red Ghost's stronghold never opened again.

Lynn sat behind the clinic's front desk, listening to the hollow silence in that building 120 meters away.

He picked up his coffee cup and found it had gone cold.

He poured a fresh, hot cup.

The next day, he called a contractor to replace the sign.

The new sign was of better quality than the original, using a tempered glass panel that wouldn't shatter easily.

He embedded a micro-camera on the inside of the sign, facing the entire area in front of the clinic, recording twenty-four hours a day with data automatically uploaded to an encrypted cloud drive.

From start to finish, he hadn't stepped outside, hadn't had any direct contact with anyone, and hadn't used any violence.

One anonymous call.

One recording.

Red Ghost had vanished from the map of Hell's Kitchen.

Lynn picked up his phone to check the news.

There was no new information about Tony Stark today.

But another headline caught his attention—

The social section of the New York Post: "East Harlem Shooting: Suspected Superhero Intervention Fails to Prevent Tragedy, Twelve-Year-Old Girl Struck by Bullet."

The accompanying image was a blurry cell phone photo showing a burly Black man in a hoodie, walking away from the scene with his back to the camera.

The muscle definition on the arm beneath the hoodie was unnaturally clear.

Lynn completed a physical comparison in one second.

Luke Cage.

He put down the phone and suddenly heard footsteps coming from the direction of the clinic's back door.

Not the back door.

The front door.

2:17 AM.

Lynn had already gone upstairs and was lying on that hard folding bed.

Sleep had become increasingly shallow for him—his brain maintained a semi-active monitor of the surrounding environment, and any abnormal sound would pull him back to a state of wakefulness.

Footsteps.

Coming from the south.

The spacing was uneven.

The left foot stayed on the ground about 0.2 seconds longer than the right, indicating the right side of the body was bearing extra weight or pain.

The soles were the rubber of hard military boots.

Every three steps, there was a faint metallic clink—shell casings knocking together in a pocket.

Further away.

The nasal breathing was heavy, carrying a thick scent of lingering gunpowder and a metallic, bloody smell like rust.

Not someone else's blood—he was bleeding himself.

A lot of blood.

Every step the body moved, there was the sound of blood dripping onto the ground, roughly 0.8 seconds between each drop.

Lynn sat up on the bed.

What happened next gave him no time to prepare.

"Bang—"

The clinic door was kicked open.

Not "pushed" or "rammed"—it was a literal kick.

One of the hinges snapped instantly, and the door hung at a forty-five-degree angle against the frame, emitting a harsh metallic screech.

Lynn descended the stairs quickly.

He saw the person the moment he reached the landing.

A tall man stood at the clinic entrance.

No, not standing—propping himself up.

He held the door frame with his left hand and raised a silver M1911 pistol with his right, the muzzle pointed directly at the stairs.

He was covered in blood from head to toe.

Not splattered—it was pouring out of his body.

His black jacket was soaked through, the color shifting from black to a sticky, dark brown.

The jacket hung open, revealing a black bulletproof vest with a white skull emblem printed in the center of the chest.

The skull emblem had been pierced by at least four bullet holes, and blood was seeping from the edges of each one.

Frank Castle.

Punisher.

Lynn stood on the stairs, about six meters from the door.

He looked at the M1911 aimed at his head, then glanced at the face behind the muzzle—a gray, blood-stained visage marked by gunpowder, with deep-set eye sockets and pupils that burned with a terrifying intensity.

That was not the look of a man about to die.

That was the look of a man who refused to die.

"You're the miracle doctor who can fix anything?"

The voice was hoarse, like sandpaper grinding against iron.

Lynn's gaze lingered on the muzzle for a second.