Before the words had faded, dozens of high-powered industrial searchlights around the warehouse abruptly switched on.
Harsh light poured down, exposing every detail of the spacious Warehouse 47. The torrent of photons mercilessly pierced the shadows, stripping away every hiding place.
Along with the glare came the high-frequency electrical hum of the searchlights' ballasts. To ordinary people, it was merely a piercing noise. To Matt's extraordinary hearing, it was an acoustic catastrophe.
At the heart of the human auditory system were the hair cells inside the cochlea. These tiny cells converted mechanical sound waves into bioelectrical signals and transmitted them to the brain's auditory center.
Mutated by radioactive waste, Matt's hair cells were thousands of times more sensitive than those of an ordinary person. The high-frequency hum was like a tangible blade, ruthlessly slicing through his auditory nerves.
Bioelectrical signals jammed the synaptic gaps, and neurotransmitter release spiraled out of control. Flooded with redundant information, his cerebral cortex lost its ability to process it.
The flawless three-dimensional echolocation map in his mind instantly dissolved into a blizzard of chaotic static.
Matt's knees slammed into the rough concrete floor, and he clamped both hands over his ears. His nails tore into his scalp, sending blood snaking down his temples.
The agony of sensory overload far exceeded any bodily injury. It was torture inflicted directly on his central nervous system.
Steady footsteps sounded from behind the shipping containers.
Each step fell in a deliberate rhythm, proclaiming the newcomer's control over the situation. Bullseye wore his signature black combat suit, the white target on his forehead gleaming coldly beneath the harsh lights.
He toyed with three specially made Asgardian Steel throwing darts. As they danced between his fingers, the metal gave off crisp chimes.
All around them, fully fifty heavily armed gangsters emerged from hiding. The safeties on their HK416 assault rifles clicked off one after another, and the beams from their red-dot sights wove an impenetrable web of death around the two men in the center of the warehouse.
"Boss Kingpin specifically asked me to say hello to Hell's Kitchen's two big stars." Bullseye grinned, baring stark white teeth, his smile brimming with bloodlust.
"Fifty million dollars' worth of weapons as your grave goods. That should be lavish enough."
Wasting words had never been Frank's style. On a battlefield, words were the cheapest expendables. Only bullets could give a real answer.
His cerebellum and spinal reflexes took complete control of his body. His arm rose, the sights of his M1911 pistol settled over Bullseye's face, and his index finger squeezed the trigger in rapid succession.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Three shots, their trajectories forming a triangle that cut off Bullseye's escape routes to either side. In the same second he fired, Frank engaged his core muscles and rolled tactically behind a pile of military wooden crates to his right.
Bullseye's reaction speed was inhuman. His spine gave a series of sharp cracks as his upper body folded backward into an exaggerated backbend.
The bullets skimmed past the tip of his nose, trailing searing air. At the deepest point of his backbend, Bullseye snapped his right wrist, sending all three Asgardian Steel darts flying.
An ordinary dart throw relied on an arm swing and a flick of the wrist. Bullseye's technique was entirely different. Years of deforming training had altered his skeletal structure, giving his shoulder blades a far greater range of motion than a normal person's.
Before the throw, his latissimus dorsi contracted, transmitting force along his spine to his shoulders before releasing it through his triceps. This mechanism could propel a dart at an initial velocity of over eighty meters per second.
Notably, extremely fine spiral grooves had been cut into the tails of the Asgardian Steel darts. The instant they left his hand, air flowed through those grooves, generating a powerful Magnus effect.
The imbalance between high- and low-pressure zones gave the darts curved trajectories that defied Newton's first law. They curled around the edges of the crates, heading straight for Frank's carotid artery and the back of his heart.
Mid-roll, Frank kicked a discarded oil drum on the floor with his tactical boot. The empty metal drum flew into the air, intercepting two of the darts. A shrill scrape of metal rang out, and sparks scattered.
The third dart grazed Frank's ribs, slicing through the Kevlar armor layer of his tactical vest and leaving a shallow bloody cut.
The gunshots became the signal for an all-out firefight.
Fifty assault rifles roared at once, brass casings raining onto the floor. Bullets poured into the military crates, sending wood splinters flying.
Frank displayed the pinnacle of human special-operations skill. Rather than return fire blindly, he used the maze of shipping containers to execute textbook close-quarters battle maneuvers.
Every time he leaned halfway out from cover, flames spat from the muzzle of his M1911. He targeted the seams in the gangsters' body armor, their faces, and their necks. Within three seconds, four gunmen fell backward.
Matt forcibly suppressed the chaos in his central nervous system. He knew that if he went down, Frank would have no chance of facing this much firepower alone. He bit through the tip of his tongue, using the taste of blood and the pain to force some of his senses back into action.
His alloy baton spun rapidly in his hand, forming an airtight defensive barrier. Relying on muscle memory and the faint sounds of rushing air he could still detect, the blind lawyer knocked away stray bullets heading into Frank's blind spots. The sharp ring of colliding metal sounded incessantly amid the gunfire.
Bullseye stood high above them, looking down at their desperate struggle. Conventional weapons were doing little against these two freaks. He casually grabbed a handful of loose steel nails from a nearby shelf.
He pinched the nails by their ends and flicked his wrist.
More than a dozen steel nails became deadly projectiles, piercing the air.
They did not fly directly at Frank. Instead, they struck the surrounding steel walls and container shells. After ricocheting twice or even three times, the nails shot behind Frank's cover from bizarre angles.
Frank twisted aside. A nail skimmed his cheek, tearing away a strip of flesh. He fired backhanded and shattered the light overhead, trying to create a patch of darkness. But there were too many searchlights. The white glare remained blinding.
Frank emptied his magazine and pressed the magazine release with his thumb. The empty magazine dropped freely.
His left hand pulled a fresh magazine from his tactical vest and drove it into the magazine well. His index finger pressed the slide release. The entire process took less than 0.8 seconds, reducing his gap in fire to an absolute minimum.
He pinpointed Bullseye's position and raised his pistol to line up the shot.
Bullseye refused to trade shots with Frank head-on. Well versed in the ways of an assassin, he darted across the tops of the shipping containers like an agile black cat.
With every move, he hurled assorted debris. Broken glass, discarded gears, even spent cartridge casings became lethal weapons in his hands.
Matt's condition was dire. The intense lights heated the surroundings, rapidly evaporating the moisture in the air.
His sense of smell was disrupted, leaving him unable to pinpoint the enemy's positions accurately. Every swing of his baton consumed a tremendous amount of stamina.
The gangsters tried to tighten their encirclement. Two burly men carrying Remington shotguns flanked them from the side.
Frank caught the threat out of the corner of his eye. Instead of swinging his muzzle toward them, he drew the tactical knife strapped to the outside of his thigh and hurled it backhanded.
The knife punched through the throat of the man on the left. At the same time, Frank slid along the floor, evading the shotgun blast from the man on the right.
As he slid, his M1911 fired twice, shattering the man's kneecaps. The burly man fell, and Frank seized his shotgun, racked the pump-action fore-end one-handed, and blasted his chest apart.
Matt's ability to locate targets by sound was impaired, but the muscle memory built through years of Filipino stick fighting remained. A gangster charged him with a leveled bayonet.
Matt sidestepped the blade, caught the man's wrist with his left hand, and smashed his alloy baton into the man's elbow with his right.
The crack of breaking bone rang out clearly. He wrested away the assault rifle and used it as a long staff, smashing its stock into another enemy's jaw and shattering it.
The battle grew ever more savage. Thick gunsmoke and the reek of blood filled the warehouse.