Bullseye stood high above them, irritation creeping into his eyes. These two were harder to deal with than he had expected. Fifty million dollars' worth of weapons crates lay at his feet. If he did not finish this fight quickly, the police or S.H.I.E.L.D. might show up, and that would mean serious trouble.
He reached into the custom holster at the small of his back and drew out two oddly shaped darts. Barbs lined their blades, and a layer of eerie green liquid coated their surfaces.
It was a genetically modified neurotoxin extracted from the Amazonian arrow poison tree. Even a trace amount entering the bloodstream could stop an adult African elephant's heart within ten seconds.
The battle reached a fever pitch.
Bullseye searched for the perfect opening. His viper-like eyes stayed locked on the two men below. Gang casualties were climbing sharply, and the fifty-man encirclement had been torn open.
Frank's shotgun ran dry. He discarded it and drew his M1911 again. For an instant, he lowered his head, and the cover blocked his line of sight.
It was the perfect opening.
Bullseye flicked his wrist. The poisoned dart left his hand without a sound. Its specially optimized aerodynamic shape reduced turbulence in flight to an absolute minimum.
It headed straight for Frank's unprotected brainstem at the back of his head. Once it penetrated, the vital centers in his medulla would immediately shut down.
Anatomically, the brainstem was one of the human body's most vulnerable areas, without effective protection from the hard skull. The dart only needed to pierce skin and muscle to directly sever signal transmission through the central nervous system.
Though Matt's hearing was damaged, his instinct for danger transcended physical senses. He caught an almost imperceptible slicing sound in the air-the pressure change caused by the poisoned dart displacing air at high speed.
He calculated its trajectory. Frank was the target.
Matt did not hesitate. His leg muscles bulged as he launched himself into the air, throwing his own flesh and blood directly into the dart's path.
A wet puncture.
The dull sound of a blade piercing flesh.
The poisoned dart struck squarely through the right side of Matt's chest. Its barbs lodged firmly between his fourth and fifth ribs, and its sharp tip pierced the visceral pleura, stopping less than two centimeters from his right ventricle.
The eerie green toxin surged into his bloodstream through ruptured capillaries, revealing the full destructive power of the cardiac glycoside poison.
The toxin molecules rapidly bound to the sodium-potassium pumps on his heart muscle cell membranes, blocking ion exchange. Intracellular calcium levels soared, abnormally increasing cardiac contractility before triggering a lethal arrhythmia.
Matt slammed into the ground. His alloy baton flew from his hand and rolled far across the concrete.
His face turned visibly ashen, and his lips took on an alarming bluish-purple tinge. Breathing became agonizingly difficult, each gasp accompanied by the hiss of air leaking from his lung. Tension pneumothorax compounded by neurotoxin poisoning.
Frank heard the noise and turned.
He saw Matt lying in a pool of blood, and his pupils shrank to pinpoints.
"Matt!" Frank's voice was hoarse, thick with bloodlust. He slid to Matt's side and scooped him up with one arm.
Matt coughed up a mouthful of black blood mixed with fragments of internal organs and clutched Frank's tactical vest.
"Go... leave me..."
Frank's gaze became terrifying. It was the absolute fury of a man who had watched his family die brutally and was now watching a comrade fall. Without hesitation, he tore the last high-explosive grenade from his belt with his left hand and pulled the pin with his teeth.
He did not throw it immediately. Instead, he counted silently.
Three.
Two.
One.
The grenade left his hand in a perfect arc and landed in a gap between the weapons crates at Bullseye's feet.
Bullseye's expression changed sharply. He did not even have time to curse before turning and running.
A thunderous explosion tore apart half the warehouse. A raging orange-red fireball rose into the air, devouring everything around it. The shock wave hurled tons of steel fragments in every direction. The intense heat consumed the oxygen inside the warehouse, creating a brief vacuum.
The laws of physics displayed their most primal destructive power. Armor-piercing rounds and high-explosive ammunition inside the crates detonated in sympathy, setting off a chain reaction. The shock wave traveled faster than sound, shredding shipping containers in its path like cardboard boxes.
Under cover of the explosion, Frank slung Matt over his shoulder. He smashed through the warehouse's flimsy sheet-metal wall and charged into the boundless downpour of Hell's Kitchen.
The rain extinguished the sparks on their bodies, but it could not stop Matt's body temperature from plummeting.
Bullseye crawled out of the wreckage. His signature combat suit was scorched and shredded, and blood covered half his face. He stared into the fathomless darkness beyond the warehouse, his eyes utterly vicious.
"Lock down every block," Bullseye ordered his surviving men, his voice ice-cold.
"He's carrying dead weight. He won't get far. I'm going to twist their heads off myself and hang them from the roof of Fisk Tower!"
Flight through a rain-soaked night.
With Matt over his shoulder, Frank sprinted through flooded alleys. His tactical boots smashed through puddles, splashing muddy water.
Matt's vital signs were deteriorating rapidly. The neurotoxin invaded his heart's pacemaker, triggering ventricular tachycardia. His body convulsed uncontrollably, and his pupils gradually dilated.
Frank found shelter beneath an overhang and laid Matt down. He tore open his medical kit and tightened a tourniquet around the wound in Matt's chest, trying to slow the spread of the toxin. But it was barely a drop in the bucket.
He needed a doctor. A regular hospital was out of the question. Kingpin's informants riddled New York's entire medical system. Going there would mean walking straight into a trap.
Frank rapidly sifted through what he knew of Hell's Kitchen's Underground Information Network. A rumor surfaced: a newly opened black-market clinic on Lake Street. Its owner was Asian, possessed unfathomable medical skill, and never asked where patients came from, as long as they could pay.
There was no other choice.
Frank hoisted Matt onto his shoulder again and headed for the destination at full speed.
The downpour over Hell's Kitchen seemed capable of washing away every sin, yet it could not cleanse the rot in the city's bones.
Frank's breathing remained steady. Years of extreme physical training allowed him to sprint several kilometers carrying a grown man without showing fatigue, but Matt could not hold on much longer.
The toxin began paralyzing his respiratory muscles. Matt's chest rose and fell less and less. Every breath demanded all the strength he had.
"Hold on, Matt. Don't you dare fall asleep!" Frank growled, quickening his pace again.
He crossed three dark, garbage-strewn alleys, evading two search teams of Kingpin's men.
At last, the battered Roll-up Door of 22 Lake Street came into view.
There was no sign above the entrance, only a dim yellow wall lamp swaying in the wind and rain.
Inside the Underground Clinic.
Jessica Jones slouched in the swivel chair behind the triage desk, several broken suture needles scattered at her feet. In the stainless steel tray, the Eastern European Gang member's corpse lay with its chest cavity fully opened.
Wearing a white coat and sterile gloves, Yang Ming held a needle holder as he demonstrated vascular anastomosis.
"Watch closely. The needle must enter perpendicular to the vessel wall, with one millimeter between stitches. You're using too much force. You could easily tear the inner lining."
Jessica rolled her eyes and was just about to complain.
Bang!
The clinic's Roll-up Door was kicked open with overwhelming brute force. The tracks at its base buckled badly, producing a teeth-grating screech of metal.
Carrying the dying Matt over his shoulder, Frank burst into the clinic, bringing the chill of the downpour and a heavy reek of blood with him.
He reached back and locked the ruined Roll-up Door, then aimed his M1911 pistol directly at the two people behind the triage desk.
"Save him." Frank's voice was hoarse, his muzzle rock-steady. "If you can't, you're both going to the grave with him."
The sudden intrusion infuriated Jessica. Stitching up a corpse had already left her seething. She rose to her feet, her far-beyond-human explosive strength allowing her to disregard the threat of the gun.
She stepped forward, clamped her left hand around the M1911's barrel like an iron vise, and wrenched it with her right.
The hardened steel barrel was like a plastic toy in her hands. She bent it into a ridiculous angle by sheer force.
Frank's pupils contracted slightly. A mutant? Or a metahuman? He reacted instantly, releasing the ruined pistol and drawing his tactical knife with a reverse grip.