Those words were like daggers.
Damn it, don't let them catch on.
Lin Ent's heart tightened, but his face remained expressionless.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a broken device the size of a matchbox, and tossed it over.
It was tangled with all sorts of messy copper wires, incredibly ugly.
"I made it."
His tone was as flat as if he were introducing a toaster.
"A simple wide-spectrum signal detector. If a continuous signal source approaches, this thing vibrates in my pocket. Every time that bastard walks by the door, my crotch feels like it's been electrocuted."
He paused, delivering the final blow.
"It's dirty here. Unsafe."
This explanation was flawless.
That incredibly ugly little gadget was a stroke of genius.
It perfectly hit Raven's deep-seated aversion and wariness towards human government agencies.
Raven stared at him for a full ten seconds.
Her gaze was like an X-ray, scanning him from the inside out.
Finally, she suppressed her suspicion.
She had to admit, this man's sense of danger was as keen as a rat that had lived in the sewers for thirty years.
"Where to?"
"Hell's Kitchen."
Lin Ent grinned, a smile with three parts self-mockery and seven parts madness.
"The worst place in all of New York, and also the cleanest place. And..."
"It's time for our capital game to begin."
An hour later.
The apartment door clicked shut behind him.
But Lin Ent stopped.
He stood alone in the empty, moldy-smelling hallway.
He pulled a playing card from his pocket.
He pushed the door open and went back inside.
He returned to the messy, empty room, and with a careful, yet suicidal, provocative gesture, he tucked the card into the gap between the bed frame and the nightstand.
The most conspicuous, yet also most easily discovered, shadowy corner.
Only after completing all of this did he turn and leave.
The moment the elevator doors slowly closed, he finally dared to breathe deeply.
Damn it, am I crazy? His heart pounded in his chest, not from fear, but from a morbid excitement.
Doing this is like pointing at Natasha Romanoff's nose and calling her incompetent... No, that's not right!
Against a top-tier cat like Natasha, if you play dead, she'll just toy with you until you die!
If you want to play at the big table, you have to become another cat, crazier and more lawless!
This Joker card was his first chip to throw onto the table.
Using his last ten thousand U.S. dollars to buy a ticket to compete with the Black Widow.
Worth it!
The night was as black as ink.
A Shadow, silent, landed on the fire escape outside the apartment building.
Natasha Romanoff.
Her movement as she slipped through the window was lighter than a cat's.
However, what greeted her was a deathly silence.
Inside the room, the smell of cold pizza and cheap air freshener mixed, both pungent and strange.
She swept through every corner of the room like a professional coroner.
Conclusion: He ran.
He ran cleanly, as if silently mocking her.
Just as a flicker of annoyance crossed Natasha's eyes, her fingertips, in the shadow of the bed frame, touched a piece of stiff paper.
She pulled it out.
It was a playing card.
Under the moonlight seeping in through the window, the card face came into her view.
Joker.
The Joker.
That blood-red mouth, stretched to its ears, seemed to be silently laughing at her.
Natasha was stunned at first.
Then, she laughed.
A genuine laugh, tinged with a hint of sickness and fanaticism.
The laughter in the empty room was light and cold.
She understood.
He knew perfectly well that she had laid a trap, and then, in the most contemptuous way, he slipped away before she arrived.
Finally, he left this card.
This wasn't a provocation.
It was a declaration of war.
He was using this card to tell her.
You think you're the hunter? Don't be ridiculous, in this game, you're just a... Joker, like me.
"Heh..."
Natasha put the playing card away, her tongue unconsciously licking her lips, as if savoring some exquisite delicacy.
In her beautiful green eyes, the last trace of an Agent's calm completely faded, replaced by...
The burning heat of meeting a worthy opponent, and the brutal desire to crush this new toy with her own hands.
"Lin Ent... No, Joker."
"The game, it's just beginning."
Three days later.
Hell's Kitchen, the new safe house.
This place was even more of a dump than the previous apartment, with graffiti and mold on the walls, and an air that reeked of urine, alcohol, and cheap curry, enough to send a normal person running.
But these three days, neither of them had been idle.
Lin Ent was welded to a broken computer, the screen displaying a waterfall of data.
Police internal network, black market forums, gang wars... He knew exactly where every dog in Hell's Kitchen had peed in which corner.
Raven, meanwhile, had become the ghost of this neighborhood.
What she brought back were drunken words from bars, rumors from street corners, the freshest, most brutal underground intelligence.
That night, another gunshot echoed outside the window, police sirens approaching from afar.
Lin Ent turned off the computer.
He turned and spread a map of Hell's Kitchen on the table.
A rat larger than his fist scurried past his feet, but he didn't even bat an eye.
He picked up a red pen and drew a blood-red circle on the West Side Docks.
"The first deal is here."
Raven was wiping a dagger with a torn cloth, and at his words, she looked up, her golden pupils glinting coldly in the light.
"Kingpin and the Irishmen are fighting tooth and nail over a shipping lane. I hacked their communications, and three days from now, right here, they're going to have their final showdown."
He looked up at Raven, his smile cold and wild.
"What we need to do is, before they finish fighting, legally buy this dock from that Irishman, who is destined to die, at a rock-bottom price that no one can refuse."
Raven stopped, the cold gleam of the dagger reflecting her scrutinizing face.
"Your intelligence relies entirely on the network; it could be a trap. And, is Kingpin an idiot? Watching us snatch food from his mouth?"
"Good question."
Lin Ent nodded approvingly; this was the kind of mind he needed.
"The intelligence, three independent sources cross-verified, unless Kingpin and the Irishmen are teaming up to trick this poor guy, the probability is over 98%. As for Kingpin..."
The smile on his lips grew wider.
"When he wins, and discovers the dock is already someone else's, and it's all done legally. He'll be furious, but he'll be even more curious. A You-Know-Who who dares to play tricks right under his nose, he won't dare to make a move until he figures out who we are. That's our window of opportunity."
Raven's doubts largely dissipated, but she still frowned.
"Why would that dock manager sell to us?"
This time, she didn't wait for Lin Ent to answer.
This was also her homework for the past few days.
"I know that manager's weakness."
She licked her lips, her eyes becoming playful.
"He's keeping a mistress in Queens, a ballet dancer. He treats that girl like gold."
Lin Ent's eyes instantly lit up.
Damn, professional!
He's in charge of digging online, Raven's in charge of digging offline!
This is the perfect criminal partner!
He reached out, his fingertip pressing hard on the red circle on the map.
"Excellent!"
Lin Ent grinned broadly, the neon lights from outside the window falling on his face, casting a mad play of light and Shadow.
"Now, our money-printing machine, it's time to start!"