Rage was a foreign concept to Wilson Fisk. It was a tool for lesser men. What he felt now, standing in the cold silence of his penthouse as the first gray hints of dawn touched the sky, was something far colder. It was the weight of being outmaneuvered.
The Russians, he thought, his massive hands clenching into fists that could shatter marble. The Bratva had gutted him while he was chasing ghosts.
He had spent the night redeploying his forces, pulling his best men back from their pointless watch over the union halls.
The reports from the Queens vault were a nightmare of clinical efficiency. No alarms tripped, a skeleton crew neutralized with gas and a multi-ton vault door peeled open like a can of sardines. And the bottle of vodka left on the desk… an arrogant message.
"Find Dmitri Volkov," he had ordered Wesley, his voice a low growl. "Find every captain in his organization. I don't care what it costs. I want them off my streets."
Fisk would cauterize this wound. He would unleash his own brand of terror on the Russians, reestablish his dominance and remind the city who truly owned the night.
He was mobilizing his most feared assets: the Hand. The ancient clan of assassins, his silent partners in the city, were the perfect weapon for this kind of war. They were disciplined, utterly ruthless and moved like shadows.
…
Amon watched the data streams flicker across the screens in his bunker. Fisk's enforcers were on the move, pouring into Brighton Beach and the Russian enclaves in the Bronx.
The holographic form of the Red Queen appeared, leaning over his shoulder with a thoughtful expression. "He's taking the bait beautifully. Sending his pet ninjas after the Russians. This is going to get messy. Are you sure you don't want me to just crash the stock market and bankrupt them all? So much cleaner."
"No," Amon said, his gaze fixed on a particular section of the city map. "Fisk needs to believe he is in a conventional war. While he is focused on the Bratva, we will remove his real teeth."
He pointed to a location… a nondescript warehouse in Hell's Kitchen known to be a primary training and staging ground for the Hand. "This is the target."
"Ah, the spooky ninjas with the endless supply of black pajamas," Red Queen said with a dismissive wave. "What's the plan? A drone strike? A sudden and convenient gas leak?"
"Blonsky will handle it," Amon stated. "Alone."
The Red Queen raised a holographic eyebrow. "One man against a hundred of Fisk's best assassins? Even with the serum, that's… ambitious. Are you sure you don't want me to at least cut their lights out?"
"He is a weapon," Amon replied. "And it is time to field test him."
…
Rain lashed down on the grimy streets of Hell's Kitchen, turning the neon signs into blurry watercolors.
Emil Blonsky stood on a rooftop across from his target, a four story brick warehouse that looked like a hundred others in the district. To the naked eye, it was abandoned. To him, it was a hive.
He could feel the energy of the disciplined hum of predators waiting in the dark.
He wore a lightweight tactical suit that absorbed the light, making him a part of the rain soaked shadows. The Mask of Loki was a second skin, its emerald green surface featureless.
Underneath it, his eyes scanned the building. Thirty seven visible entry points.
Blonsky took a running start, his boots making no sound on the wet gravel and launched himself across the fifty foot gap between buildings.
He landed as silently as a falling leaf on the warehouse's roof, rolling to absorb the impact.
He found a ventilation shaft, its cover held down by heavy industrial bolts. He gripped the edges, his fingers like steel talons and ripped the half inch thick steel plate free with a low groan of protesting metal.
He dropped inside, falling twenty feet into the darkness of the top floor attic. He landed utterly silent. He could hear them now. The soft padding of tabi boots on the floor below, the whisper of fabric and the controlled breathing of dozens of trained killers.
He moved to the stairwell. He descended, his steps perfectly matching the rhythm of the storm outside.
The third floor was a open dojo. In the center, twenty Hand assassins were moving through a synchronized kata, their blades slicing through the air in perfect unison.
Blonsky picked up a discarded wrench from a nearby toolbox. He stepped from the shadows at the edge of the room.
A single ninja, his senses sharper than the rest, turned his head, his eyes widening for a fraction of a second.
Blonsky moved. He closed the thirty foot distance in the time it took the ninja to draw a breath. The wrench blurred through the air, hitting the man in the temple with a sickening crunch. He was dead before he hit the floor.
The kata shattered. The remaining nineteen assassins turned, their blades flashing as they charged. A katana swung at his head, he ducked under it, his fist driving up into the attacker's sternum with enough force to shatter bone and stop the heart.
Blonsky grabbed his wrist, twisted it until the bone snapped and used the man's own blade to slit the throat of the ninja behind him.
He broke limbs, crushed skulls and used their own momentum to turn them into weapons against each other.
In less than a minute, nineteen of the world's deadliest assassins lay dead or dying on the dojo floor and Blonsky didn't have a single scratch on him. He dropped the now bent wrench.
He could hear the sounds of alarm from the floors below. He kicked open the door to the stairwell and descended into the hornet's nest.
The second floor was a maze of storage rooms and barracks. They were waiting for him. Ten archers loosed a volley of arrows from the end of a long corridor the moment he appeared.
He ran straight at them, his arms held up to protect his face. The arrows slammed into his tactical suit, a few piercing the fabric but stopping dead against the unnaturally tough muscle and bone beneath. He barely felt them. To the archers, it was like watching a man run through a hailstorm without flinching.
He reached them in seconds. The slaughter was even quicker this time. He moved through them like a threshing machine, his hands, feet and elbows becoming bludgeoning instruments. He left a trail of broken bodies, their bows and arrows scattered like kindling.
He reached the ground floor. This was the main staging area. At least fifty more Hand warriors were waiting, this time better prepared.
They formed a wide circle around him, swords and kusarigama blades held at the ready. They attacked in disciplined waves, trying to overwhelm him, to find a weakness in his defense.
Blonsky became a dance of death. He would disarm one opponent and use his sword to impale two others. He caught the chain of a kusarigama, yanked its wielder off his feet and swung him like a wrecking ball into a cluster of his comrades.
Every move was precise, efficient and utterly final.
He felt a blade slice across his back and another across his arm, but the wounds were shallow and the bleeding had already stopped, the serum knitting his flesh back together almost as fast as it was torn.
The fight lasted less than five minutes. When it was over, Blonsky stood in the center of the room, breathing steadily, surrounded by a carpet of black clad bodies.
He walked through the carnage to the office at the back. Inside was the clan's jonin, their leader, a man who had personally killed senators and kings. The old man was sitting calmly behind his desk, a katana laid before him. He showed no fear.
"What are you?" the jonin asked, his voice a dry rasp.
Blonsky stopped in front of the desk. The emerald mask seemed to drink the light from the room.
He reached out, his hand moving faster than the old man could react and snapped his neck with a sound like a dry branch breaking.
He made his way back to the roof, the rain washing the blood from his suit. He leaped back across to the adjacent building and melted into the shadows of the city.
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