The motel room smelled of stale bleach and old tobacco.
Jack sat on the edge of a mattress that sagged toward the center, his right hand trying to thread a small needle he’d bought at a 24-hour pharmacy three blocks back. His thumb was coated in dried blood, making his grip slick. The thread slipped past the eye four times.
The yellow lamp on the nightstand flickered, buzzing with a high-pitched drone that set his teeth on edge.
He gave up on the thread. He dropped the needle onto the grease-stained bedsheet, pulled a plastic bottle of cheap amoxicillin out of his coat, and popped two capsules into his mouth without water. They stuck to the roof of his mouth, bitter and chalky, before he managed to force them down with a dry gulp.
His left shoulder wasn't bleeding anymore, but the skin around the black nylon stitches had turned a deep, unhealthy purple, hot to the touch.
Jack reached for the phone on the nightstand. The receiver was greasy. He dialed Karen’s private landline, holding the plastic against his right ear with his shoulder while his right hand unspooled a roll of industrial gauze.
It rang six times.
"Yeah?" Karen’s voice was clipped, background noise hummed—the sound of an old printing press or a heavy AC unit.
"The counting house on 38th," Jack said. His tongue felt thick, like he'd been chewing on dry cotton. "Did the paper pick it up?"
Silence on the line for three seconds. A chair squeaked.
"Jack, where are you?" she asked. "Ben’s been trying to trace the runner you paid. The guy dropped the dry-cleaning bag in a sewer grate on 45th because he thought two transit cops were following him."
Jack stopped wrapping the gauze around his arm. The roll dropped, tumbling across the carpet until it hit the base of the bathroom door.
"He dropped it?" Jack asked.
"He got scared," Karen said. Her voice drifted as if she were looking away from the receiver. "Wait—Ben, leave the coffee on the desk. No, the blue mug." She came back to the line. "He dropped the bag. Half the receipts from Wesley’s shipping shell are floating down the East River right now. Ben managed to fish out three wet carbon copies, but the ink is running."
Jack stared at his bare feet on the carpet. His toes were blue from the cold. The remote detonation at the pier had failed, the runner had panicked, and now the paper trail he’d spent two weeks building was mostly pulp in the harbor.
He didn't yell. His right hand just tightened around the plastic receiver until the casing groaned under his knuckles.
"...dare..." he whispered under his breath.
"What?" Karen asked. "Jack, what did you say? The police found three bodies on 38th. No bullet holes. The coroner’s office is claiming it was a gas leak from a broken heating pipe."
"Fisk owns the coroner," Jack said. He reached down to pick up the gauze, but his left knee buckled, throwing his ribs against the corner of the nightstand. He took a sharp, shallow breath through his nose. "He’s covering the aerosol. He can't let the precinct know someone used chemical agents inside his vault."
"It doesn't matter what he owns," Karen said quickly. "The district attorney’s office just received an anonymous courier delivery twenty minutes ago. Not from us. Someone else."
Jack froze, his hand suspended an inch above the carpet. "What delivery?"
"A formal petition under the Sullivan Act amendments," Karen said. Her tone shifted, growing cold and sharp. "They're pushing the emergency registration list through the magistrate court tomorrow morning. Every unregistered operator on the West Side is being flagged for immediate federal warrant."
Jack’s jaw twitched. "Who signed the petition?"
"That’s the thing," Karen replied, the sound of paper rustling over the line. "The signature on the filing isn't Fisk. It isn't the Irish either."
Before Jack could answer, a dull, heavy thud echoed from the alleyway directly behind his bathroom window.
It wasn't rain. It was the sound of a heavy boot landing on a fire escape ladder.
Jack slammed the phone back onto the cradle, ignoring Karen’s voice calling his name from the tiny speaker. He grabbed his coat with his right hand, jamming his bad left arm straight through the sleeve without slowing down—a white-hot spike of agony shot up into his jaw, but his face remained a blank, rigid mask.
He didn't go for the door. He stepped toward the bathroom, pulling one of the remaining Mark III canisters from his coat.
The bathroom window burst inward in a shower of glass and rusted iron frame.
A man in a dark tactical vest swung through the opening, a short-barreled shotgun already coming up toward Jack's chest.
Jack didn't try to dodge. His foot slipped on the wet bathroom tiles, his balance completely gone from the fever and the dead arm. He fell sideways, his shoulder slamming into the porcelain sink with a cracking sound that shattered the basin.
The shooter pulled the trigger.
BOOM.
The heavy lead shot tore through the drywall where Jack’s head had been a second earlier, showering the room in white plaster dust and pulverized insulation.
Jack lay on his back in the broken porcelain, his vision swimming with red and grey static. His right hand scrambled across the floorboards, his fingers locking around the heavy brass body of the fallen sink pipe.
The shooter racked the shotgun's slide, stepping over the window sill with his heavy boot raised to crush Jack's ribs.
Jack didn't look at the gun. He drove the jagged edge of the broken iron pipe straight upward into the shooter's kneecap with everything he had left.
CRACK.
The shooter screamed, his leg bending backward at an impossible angle as he collapsed onto the wet tile floor right on top of Jack.
Jack pinned the screaming man down with his dead left weight, his right hand reaching for the man's tactical belt, his fingers clawing at the leather pouch housing the shooter's radio.
The radio was blaring static, a calm, cold voice coming through the small speaker over the sound of the rain outside:
"Team Two, report. Is the target secured? The magistrate needs verification before the registration mandate goes live at dawn."
Jack squeezed the radio's push-to-talk button with his blood-stained thumb, his cheek pressed flat against the shooter's neck.
"...dare..." Jack rasped into the microphone, a thin, red smile breaking across his plaster-covered face. "...dare to come count the bodies..."
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