The first wire transfer from HYDRA's Swiss accounts cleared just after midnight.
Before dawn, two heavy freight trains from the Hungarian border rolled into the southern rail terminal. The steel wheels screeched to a halt along Track Nine, carrying forty cargo wagons packed to the brim with sacks of flour, dry beans, canned meat, medical boxes, and tons of heating coal.
Luka and his railway crew worked through the freezing fog with big smiles on their soot-stained faces.
Adrian didn't send the food to the black market, and he didn't hand it over to the city council. He had Luka distribute the supplies directly to the worker families in the southern ward. By mid-afternoon, hot soup was boiling on fifty stoves, radiators hissed with steam, and kids played in the streets without shivering.
To the ordinary people of Novi Grad, Adrian Kovac wasn't a stranger anymore. He was the only man in the whole valley keeping them alive.
Around sunset, heavy boots ran up the stairs of the depot office.
Captain Vanev pushed the door open, out of breath and pale. He closed the door quickly, wiped cold sweat from his forehead, and stood at attention in front of Adrian's desk.
"Director," Vanev said in a hushed rush. "We have a serious problem."
Adrian set down his pen. "Speak."
"Colonel Grigori," Vanev said, his voice shaking slightly. "He runs the northern and eastern districts. His scouts saw the cargo trains pulling in. Grigori gathered fifty armed men and three pickup trucks with heavy machine guns mounted in the back. They're coming to raid Track Nine tonight to steal the grain and sell it across the border."
Pietro, who was cleaning his boots by the stove, jumped to his feet. Silver static flickered around his ankles.
"Let me go out there," Pietro said, his eyes bright. "I'll break their knees before they can jump out of their trucks."
"Sit down, Pietro," Adrian said calmly, standing up from his chair. "We don't chase after stray dogs in the dark. If Grigori wants the trains, we let him come to the yard. Tonight, we clean out the rest of the city's gangs in one stroke."
Midnight arrived with a heavy river mist.
Track Nine was pitch black. The freight wagons sat like giant metal walls in the cold silence.
Suddenly, the depot's outer chain-link gate was torn off its hinges with a loud metallic screech. Three dark pickup trucks sped into the gravel yard, their tires throwing mud, their bright headlights cutting through the fog. In the flatbeds, men in mismatched leather jackets stood behind heavy machine guns, laughing and cocking their rifles.
"Move! Check the boxcars!" a rough voice yelled from the lead cab.
Before the first truck could roll thirty yards, a silver gust tore across the yard.
WHOOSH.
Pietro blurred between the moving vehicles like a ghost.
In less than three seconds, he ripped the spark plug cables out of all three engines. The trucks sputtered, choked, and died instantly. Pietro didn't stop there—he darted up onto the truck beds, snapped the firing pins right out of the mounted machine guns, and snatched forty rifle magazines straight from the gunmen's hands, tossing the metal clips into a muddy ditch.
He skidded to a halt on top of an empty gravel pile, tossing an empty ammunition belt into the air with a grin.
"What the hell was that?!" a thug screamed, pulling the trigger on his rifle.
Click. Click. Click.
"My gun is jammed! The firing pin is gone!" another yelled in pure panic.
"Shoot the one on the gravel!" Colonel Grigori roared, kicking the passenger door open.
Before anyone could move, Wanda stepped onto the roof of the central train wagon.
Her eyes blazed with intense scarlet light. She raised both hands and brought them down with a sharp, forceful snap.
A heavy dome of glowing red hex magic dropped over the entire convoy like an invisible lead blanket. The gravity in the yard doubled in a split second. The truck suspensions bottomed out with a loud groan, and all fifty fighters were slammed face-first into the freezing mud, unable to lift their arms or legs.
Grigori struggled on the floor of the truck cab, cursing through gritted teeth. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a heavy fragmentation grenade, his thumb hooking into the ring.
"If I'm going down, I'm taking the whole yard with me!" Grigori screamed.
A shadow stepped through the closed truck door.
Adrian walked straight through the solid steel body of the vehicle, his body phasing cleanly into the cab and solidifying right in front of Grigori's face.
Adrian didn't shout. He just looked at the grenade.
With a tiny squeeze of telekinesis, the grenade was yanked from Grigori's grip and hung in the air between them. Adrian closed his fist. The thick iron casing of the bomb crumpled into a tight ball, the metal turning into grey powder that drifted harmlessly down onto Grigori's lap.
Grigori froze, his jaw hanging loose, his face gray as a corpse.
"Who... what are you?" Grigori whispered.
Adrian reached out and pressed his palm flat against Grigori's forehead.
Using Cassandra Nova's telepathy, Adrian drove straight into the warlord's mind. He bypassed the man's surface panic and ripped through his memories:
The warehouse in the north ward hiding three hundred assault rifles and cases of ammunition.
The basement beneath the old brewery holding two million dollars in gold and cash.
The list of corrupt police officers and district judges on Grigori's payroll.
Adrian took every piece of information he needed. Then, with a cold, precise mental sweep, he wiped Grigori's violent ego clean and locked a new command into his core thoughts: You are completely broken, your criminal days are over, and you will obey Captain Vanev without question.
Adrian released him. Grigori slumped against the truck seat, nodding like a tired child.
Adrian stepped out into the misty yard. Wanda still held the scarlet hex field tight, keeping the fifty gunmen pinned into the mud.
Adrian raised his eyes and let a wide telepathic wave wash across every single man on the ground. He didn't hurt them. He simply erased their street loyalty and planted a clear, firm reality in their minds: The gangs are dead. Fighting is finished. If you want food and a real wage, you serve the new order.
"Release them, Wanda," Adrian said quietly.
Wanda lowered her hands, and the red glow vanished.
The fifty men slowly pushed themselves up from the dirt. Nobody reached for weapons. Nobody tried to run. They stood in the dark with their heads down, waiting for orders like disciplined recruits.
Vanev's militia trucks rumbled into the depot a minute later.
"Take their names, get them into clean coats, and load them into the transports," Adrian told Vanev. "By sunrise, I want Grigori's northern warehouse and brewery cleared out. Pietro will guide your trucks to the locations."
"Consider it done, Director," Vanev said, saluting sharply.
At dawn, Adrian, Pietro, and Wanda stood on the flat roof of the rail administration building.
The river fog had lifted. Below them, Novi Grad spread out across the valley under a pale morning sun.
For the first time in years, there were no gunshots echoing in the alleys. The street gangs had been completely dismantled in a single night. Armed thugs were now patrolmen in clean uniforms, paid regular wages from seized accounts to protect the neighborhoods instead of robbing them. The southern and northern wards were joined, warm, and fed.
Pietro leaned against the roof railing, taking a bite out of a fresh apple.
"Grigori's whole crew surrendered in less than five minutes," Pietro said, shaking his head. "The whole city is actually quiet."
"They were just thieves with old guns, Pietro," Adrian said, watching the smoke rise peacefully from thousands of chimneys across the city.
He turned his gaze toward the center of the valley, where the grand stone dome of the municipal government building caught the early sunlight.
"The street fighting is over," Adrian said evenly. "In a few months, the 2008 municipal elections begin. It's time to take City Hall."