"Something's wrong? What's wrong? You think that fat pig Kingpin planted antitank mines in here?"
Frank Castle held his M4A1 ready, sweeping its tactical flashlight through the pitch-black warehouse, his voice dripping with contempt.
Matt Murdock stood rooted to the spot, veins bulging on the back of the hand gripping his cane. Beneath his dark red cowl, his brows were drawn into a deep knot.
"It's not mines." Matt's voice was low, carrying a chill that made their skin crawl. "There were twenty-six heartbeats upstairs. In the last ten seconds, twenty-three of them disappeared."
"Disappeared?" Peter Parker hung upside down from a steel ceiling beam, the white lenses of his goggles narrowing to pinpoints. "You mean they all had heart attacks at once?"
"They were torn apart." Matt drew a deep breath, as though he could smell the blood drifting through the air.
"I heard bones being ripped apart, and the dull thuds of organs hitting the floor. And those three remaining heartbeats..."
Matt paused and struck his cane hard against the floor.
"They beat like war drums. Fewer than forty beats a minute, but every beat is terrifyingly powerful. Those are definitely not human heartbeats."
Frank sneered and racked his rifle. "Don't care what kind of monsters they are. If they've got heads, armor-piercing rounds can crack them open. Come on. Upstairs."
The three advanced quickly up the rusted iron stairs.
The higher they climbed, the stronger the pungent smell became. Peter sniffed. "Guys, this smell isn't right. It's not the sour smell of heroin. It's more like the formalin in my high school biology lab, mixed with a reptile stink."
"Shut up and stay alert." Frank kicked open the iron door to the second-floor office.
His tactical flashlight swept across the room. The instant he saw what lay