The ride back was quiet. The streets of New York City rolled by outside the window as we drove towards hell's kitchen. Catherine wasn't the most talkative of people, but the silence had a different tenor to it. It was tenser, more pregnant.
I thought back to the events of 5 minutes ago.
Best not to focus on the fact that I was wrong about the timeline.
That was ominous, and I'd think that through later. Catherine froze up completely. The woman seemed indomitable and emotionless. I didn't think anything could phase her. I mentally rolled back a step. Thinking about anything even adjacent to the Beyonder freaked me out. It was one thing to read about it on-panel, and quite another to see a whole building transmuted.
How did the people we were spying on possibly know we were there? Even finding the main STRIKE database for the tristate area had been contested by Vixen's people, but that had been a matter of them tripping over us. I didn't know much about Vixen off-panel, but Catherine had said she'd cut her losses and run. Combine that with the demonstrated competence of the few people she had sent and it seemed unlikely that Vixen would be behind this. Then who was?
The second pressing factor is what Catherine was searching for. She'd probably emptied most of the caches by now, especially in the timeframe we've had. Eavesdropping the meeting means that she was looking for leads, but for what?
I needed an explanation.
Deciding that now was better than never, and before my better judgement kicked in, I decided to pose a question to Catherine.
"What the fuck was all that about?"
Catherine opened her mouth,paused and I bulled forward.
"Seriously. The previous 2 times I've done a job for you, I've had at least a vague idea of what was going on, but this time, I have zero clue what we were attempting to gain from that, who the hell was even after us, why the hell a motorcycle-based hitman was riding his bike in a office building..."
I trailed off, losing my fine head of steam.
Catherine interjected.
"Fair enough. Not now." She glanced at her watch. "Might as well make a working lunch out of it. The Meridian, in the Meatpacking District. One-thirty. Say you're with Ava's party."
She pulled an envelope from the glovebox and held it out. "Your pay for today."
I took it. The van had already slowed to a stop a block away from the warehouse in Hell's Kitchen.
On that note, I doffed my boiler suit and hopped out of the van.
The walk back to the warehouse was automatic. I was thinking hard enough that Hell's Kitchen largely failed to register, and I came back to myself somewhere in the elevator going down to the bunker. By the time I reached the planning room I'd already started turning things over in my mind.
The sliding timeline was clearly in effect. This meant that I couldn't fully attempt to map things by using the in-universe dates as a 1:1 reference to publication dates. I remembered the years for most big events and the months (vaguely). From what I recalled, the compression ratio between my universe and Marvel was about 4.75 years in universe to 1 year out, but that wasn't a hard and fast rule especially since there had been something time-travel related around this time. I think it was related to the whole Kulan Gath mess, but then again, there was usually something time-travel related happening somewhere on Earth-616.
I pushed the other thoughts out of my mind and thought silently, attempting to recall an exact publication date for the second issue of Secret Wars 2. After about 2 minutes of attempted recall, I realized attempting to figure out compression ratios was a waste of time, mainly because I didn't ever bother to memorize them. They were just things I passively saw.
A better use of my time would be figuring out what exactly happened during Secret Wars 2 before I did anything hasty, like leave the city, and possibly the continental United States for the duration.
Pulling out my notebook, I began to map out a vague sequence of events.
Several hours later, I had the beginnings of something. While I hadn't paid overly much attention to Secret Wars 2 at the time, thus the lengthy period of recall, I had the broad strokes in my head.
We were around the second book from the main event comic. That's when the Beyonder turned the building into gold. The Beyonder got involved in street level crime in issue three, but that was undone at the end of the issue (from what I vaguely recalled).
After that things got progressively weirder and progressively less relevant to NYC. The Beyonder fell in love with Dazzler. He got depressed. Befriended a thirteen year old Boom Boom. Killed Death itself at some point, which sounded like it should have been a bigger deal. Built a headquarters in Illinois. Got attacked by essentially every villain in the Marvel universe simultaneously, then threatened to destroy the universe, the plan was foiled, then molecule man turned the beyonder into a new universe?
Molecule Man also (conveniently) undid all the consequences of the event.
On the macro scale, Secret Wars II had very few implications, but it was still existentially disturbing.
Shelving my existential disquiet for now, my thoughts drifted to gold building. That had led to a half-decent Spider-Man story, unlike the rest of the event. I never thought I'd regret not paying the highest level of attention to poorly thought out Marvel event comics.
With that depressing thought in mind, I moved on. Realistically, none of this would affect the heist as planned. I'd be making tracks out of NYC as soon as humanly possible in case I had forgotten any immediate future developments regarding the Beyonder, but things should be fine. Still, best to call in my favour from Catherine when this current business was wrapped up and execute the heist as soon as possible, especially when taking this timeline uncertainty into account.
I decided to turn in early, at around 8 PM, and get up early at around 5 AM. Mainly in an attempt to maximize my schedule, get some exercise in before the business lunch ( with Catherine.
Oddly, I couldn't sleep. The thought of the Beyonder and the disturbing existential ramifications of a being like that kept me awake for a good 4 hours before I finally coerced myself to sleep.
I arrived at The Meridian at 1:30 PM, and entered the building. The restaurant was a Continental bistro. It was worn around the edges, and had evidently been open for a while .The lunch rush had thinned to scattered businessmen nursing coffee, delaying their return to work.
I was let into the back room after telling the maître d' I was with Ava's party. Catherine waited there, idly perusing the menu. The room was plain and slightly cramped, a large table with only two places set at one end. Catherine had apparently reserved the whole thing for the two of us.
I nodded.
"Good afternoon. How'd you swing the room?"
Catherine looked at me flatly.
"I reserved."
Figuring I'd get no more of an explanation than that, I sat down, poured myself some water and waited for her to start talking.
Catherine made a show of perusing the menu, then set it down.
"The physical STRIKE assets were straightforward. Safe houses, equipment caches. I've cleared most of those." A sip of water. "There's also a support network. I've dealt with that."
She paused.
"There are also operational human assets. Some of which I'm trying to recover."
Figuring that was all I'd get out of her, I nodded.
"What happened at the stakeout?"
Catherine nodded.
"I've been working through some of New York's less legitimate elements. One of them mentioned seeing one of the assets I'm looking for coming out of a meeting with several higher-ranking members of some of the smaller organized crime outfits in the area. He didn't know who the asset was, but thought the people running the meeting would know more than he did."
I shrugged. "That seems pretty insubstantial. People are hard to ID in passing."
"Some of the assets are distinctive in appearance," Catherine said. "Difficult to mistake for someone else."
She picked up her water glass.
"I didn't have better leads at the time. The meeting seemed worth listening to."
Well that was interesting. A failed super soldier potentially?
Just then the door opened and a younger woman came in with two plates. Dark-haired, shorter, seemingly-bored. She set the salads down without ceremony.
Catherine nodded.
"Thank you."
Then, to me, as the door closed: "I took the liberty of ordering for you. Caesar seemed appropriate."
She picked up her fork.
"The lead seemed worth chasing. I scouted the area and set up the laser in an adjacent building."
She paused briefly, spearing a piece of lettuce and chewing it
"Then I brought you in for the stakeout."
I leaned in, my salad forgotten.
"How did you know we were made?"
"Thirty minutes of nothing." Her expression didn't change but something behind it did. "They talked in circles."
She picked up her water glass.
"That on its own didn't concern me. That's how half these conversations go — organized crime types talk around things by habit, even when there's nothing to talk around." A sip. "These men were marginally worse than average at it, but nothing that raised flags."
She set the glass down.
"Then one of them looked directly at the building we were operating from. He turned, found the seventh floor corner window, and held it for approximately five seconds."
She picked up her fork.
"He tried to make it look natural, but I've seen better acting in a school pantomime."
I thought about that for a moment.
"So the whole meeting was to bait a trap?"
Catherine nodded.
"The concept was sound," Catherine said. "Feed false intelligence through criminal channels. Wait for someone following up on STRIKE-adjacent leads to surveil the meeting. Have an asset in position to eliminate them when they do."
She paused.
"Competent planning, which is exactly why it's odd."
I took a sip from my glass, marshaling my thoughts.
"From what I know, some of the criminal elements in NYC are pretty operationally sophisticated. This wouldn't be that beyond the Kingpin."
Catherine shrugged.
"I'm not the most familiar with New York's criminal element, but as I said before these men belong to minor families. Two were from a small Cosa Nostra family, and the other belongs to a small Chinatown based set."
She paused again as she methodically worked her way through more of her salad.
"The men in the so-called meeting were close to acceptable, but looking at the building was a dead-giveaway."
"And our assassin?"
"He rode a motorcycle into an officebuilding. Honestly. I realize some of these American hitmen love the whole costumed gimmick but..."
I shrugged.
"In all fairness, he was quite the skilled motorcyclist."
Catherine didn't dignify that with a response, and picked idly at her salad.
"Someone designed a counterintelligence sting and handed it over to some minor organized crime organizations to implement." She picked up her glass. "That's very interesting."
The door opened again. Different waiters this time. An Asian woman, moving with the practiced efficiency of restaurant staff. She had a tray: two bowls of French onion soup, steam curling off the surface, and what looked like veal marsala.
Catherine glanced up. "I don't think we ordered those dishes."
The waiter set the tray on the edge of the table with one hand.
"Oh, I am sorry. I was told—"
Her English was precise, slightly formal, slightly accented. Restaurant worker, immigrant, probably been stateside a few years—
She moved.
The apology was still hanging in the air. One fluid motion, closing the distance, and Catherine was in a seated choke before her hands were fully up. The soups steamed gently beside the veal marsala.
The woman locked eyes with me across the table.
"You are not involved in this." Her voice was completely level. "If you would like to live a long and healthy life, I would suggest leaving the restaurant now." She looked down at Catherine. "Vixen sends her regards, Ava."
I sat very still.
Catherine had said Vixen wouldn't send anyone. The woman currently applying a chokehold to Catherine from behind had rather disproven that theory.
The rational calculation was straightforward: stand up, walk out, let things take their course. I benefited from causing as few ripples as possible.
That rationalization collapsed almost immediately. If I'd actually wanted to minimize ripples I wouldn't have left the bunker in the first place. That ship had sailed.
The real argument for leaving was simpler and more honest: this wasn't my fight.
I looked at Catherine. Despite being in a choke, she looked utterly placid.
Leaving people hanging wasn't how I was raised. Despite the fact that I'd never see my family again, holding close to some of those values made them feel closer somehow.
"Unfortunately," I said, "I can't do that."
The woman's expression didn't change. "I suppose I'll be disposing of 2 corpses."
She tightened her choke on Catherine.
I moved, kicking out of my chair. The table was between myself and the assassin, but I could force her to drop the choke.
I grabbed my water glass and threw it at her head.
The assassin released Catherine to slip the glass, momentarily off her base.
Catherine didn't hesitate. She leapt out of her chair and came forward hard, using her height advantage and the half-second of imbalance, arms going for the clinch.
The assassin stepped inside Catherine's reach before the grip could establish, chest to chest for one brief moment where Catherine's height advantage counted for nothing. Catherine's hands closed on air. The assassin's hip turned, one arm redirecting Catherine's forward momentum rather than opposing it, and Catherine went past her and into the wall.
Catherine pushed off it immediately and came back around, slightly unsteady but still moving, and now her hand was inside her jacket, coming back out with a jazzler.
The assassin saw it. Her eyes tracked to the hand.
"S.T.R.I.K.E. equipment." She tilted her head slightly, pulling out a combat knife. "You are not S.T.R.I.K.E. You are a criminal who found their tools."
That was pretty ironic, considering.
I wisely stayed near the wall. I couldn't do much in a knife fight between 2 vastly superior combatants.
Catherine came at her fast, jazzler angled for the forearm.
The assassin didn't retreat. She sidestepped, letting Catherine's momentum carry her past, and the jazzler scraped across her sleeve without clean contact. Catherine recovered and came back around. The assassin moved laterally again, keeping the table between them, using the confined geometry of the room to deny Catherine the closing distance she needed.
Catherine's eyes tracked to the table, then back to the assassin.
She feinted left and drove right, trying to cut off the angle. The assassin read it and stepped back, and now Catherine had the table at her back instead of her front. She came in fast with the knife, a low thrust that Catherine deflected with the jazzler arm, the blade scraping along the device without clean contact on either side.
They separated.
Catherine was breathing harder than she should have been for the work she'd done. The choke was still collecting its tax. The assassin was unfortunately not similarly constrained.
I was still a far cry from Taskmaster or Captain America, but I could see what was going on in the fight.Maybe having some of the technique implanted into me gave me a better understanding of what I was seeing.
Catherine's game plan was straightforward: get inside the knife's reach and stay there. The jazzler was the tool to do it. Either land clean contact and end it, or force the assassin to manage the weapon hand constantly, which created the opening for a clinch. At six foot two with a corresponding reach advantage, if Catherine got her weight on the smaller woman and kept it there...
The assassin knew that was the game and was refusing to let it happen. She was just fast enough that every time Catherine committed to closing, she could dodge it. The knife extended her effective range just enough to make Catherine's approach costly.
Catherine grabbed the knife wrist on the next exchange and got it for half a second before the woman torqued free. The rotation that broke the grip brought the assassin briefly inside Catherine's reach rather than outside it. Catherine grabbed again before the geometry could correct itself, got purchase on the same wrist, and used the assassin's own rotational momentum to drive them both sideways into the table.
The veal marsala went onto the tile. The first soup bowl shattered on the floor. The remaining soup bowl skidded to the edge and stopped.
Catherine had the knife wrist pinned. For a moment she was where she wanted to be, leveraging the size and weight differential. Her free hand came down with the jazzler, going for contact.
The assassin saw it coming. She was face up on the table looking directly at Catherine, and the downward jab was telegraphed by Catherine's shoulder movement before her arm had traveled six inches. The assassin's free hand found Catherine's inner forearm and dug. Catherine's grip spasmed open mid-jab. The jazzler hit the table and bounced onto the floor somewhere.
Catherine bore down anyway, keeping the pin through the pain. The jazzler was gone but she still had the weight advantage and the knife wrist and she wasn't giving either up. The assassin got her feet to the table surface and pushed, using Catherine's own downward pressure as resistance, converting it into enough force to break the grip and come off the table in one ugly, functional motion. The knife had been lost in the scramble. They were both empty handed now.
Catherine was breathing hard, one arm moving jerkily. The assassin rolled her neck and settled into a combat stance.
I came off the wall. Now that the sharp objects had been dispensed with, I could probably contribute more.
I swung a hook at the assassin from her left side, trying to buy Catherine some space.
Her head turned. Enough time, I thought, for the punch to arrive before she could respond.
Her hands were already on my wrist and elbow.
Edwin had been faster than she was, but her hands were already on my arm before I'd fully processed it.
My first thought was: Fucking 616 martial artists.
My second thought was: Oh dear.
She found the angle. The pop of my arm being dislocated was very loud.
I howled incoherently and went down, concentrating very hard on remaining conscious.
When I looked up a second later, fighting down my pain, a soup bowl was in flight towards the assassin's head.
The assassin moved. She got her head mostly clear. Mostly. The bowl clipped her across the cheekbone and the hot soup caught her left eye and the side of her face.
She hissed. Short, involuntary, the first uncontrolled sound she'd made in the entire fight.
Catherine's hand went to her jacket. The assassin saw it even half-blind and lunged.
Catherine scooped the candle holder off the table and swung it at her head in a clinical arc. It connected with a dull clunk. The assassin went down to one knee, still moving, still trying to get her bearings.
Good lord, the assassin was durable.
Catherine grabbed my collar.
"Run." Then, sotto voice. "I don't know if she came alone."
She was already moving. I got my feet under me somehow, cradling my arm, and followed her out the door at something between a jog and a controlled fall. Through the private room, through the main floor — the lunch crowd had thinned to almost nothing, the smattering of remaining diners turning to stare — past the maître d' station.
Catherine pulled a folded sheaf of bills from her jacket without breaking stride and dropped it on the maître d's podium as we hit the door.
"For your trouble."
We hustled out onto the street. The Meatpacking District was sparse in the early afternoon. No crowds to disappear into. Catherine turned immediately into the nearest alley without breaking stride, and I followed.
We waited. Thirty seconds. A minute.
The assassin wasn't in evidence. The soup had bought us more time than I'd expected. Catherine didn't relax. She scanned the alley mouth, then the fire escapes above, then checked her watch. "Keep moving."
The Meatpacking District had no shortage of empty warehouses. Catherine picked one half a block down without hesitation and had the side door open with a tension wrench in under a minute. The interior smelled of old oil and cold concrete. Afternoon light came through grimy skylights in pale rectangles. Empty hooks hung from overhead rails.
"Sit," Catherine said, nodding at an ancient crate .
I sat. She crouched in front of me and examined the shoulder with clinical efficiency, fingers probing the joint without ceremony.
"This will be unpleasant," she said.
"Appreciated. The warning, I mean."
She ignored that taking my arm in both hands, positioning carefully. "I didn't expect that. Vixen has considerably more pressing problems than tracking down one former asset in New York." Her grip shifted. "Budget operation. She's stretched."
I processed that.
"How do you know that it's a budget constraint?"
"If she had to send one mercenary, and she wanted a higher level of talent, she'd send Slaymaster. She's used him to tie up loose ends before. The fact that she didn't tells me something."
She adjusted her grip on my arm. "No support either. If our friend had brought backup there would have been someone covering the exits. Nobody was waiting when we left."
"So Vixen paid for one assassin with no backup."
"Budget operation," Catherine said. "She's stretched."
"And the stakeout?"
"Completely unrelated to Vixen." She adjusted her angle slightly
"Different procurement, different methodology, different everything."
"Two groups?" I queried.
"Two groups." She looked up briefly. "One of which is Vixen attempting a assassination on a budget against someone she thinks betrayed her. The other—"
She relocated my shoulder.
I hissed. "FUCK"
The pain was extraordinary and immediate and then subsided into a deep nauseating ache.
"—is considerably more organized," Catherine finished, as if nothing had happened. She stood and handed me my jacket.
I was still breathing through the residual pain when I heard it. A sound from the far end of the warehouse. Soft. Deliberate enough that it wasn't accidental.
Catherine heard it too. Her hand moved toward her jacket.
A figure stepped out of the shadows near the door we had come through. The waitress uniform was gone. Dark charcoal trousers tucked into flat ankle boots, a fitted top, a narrow sash wrapped tight at the waist. Hair up, secured with pins. Spare and practical, with the exception of the medallion catching the afternoon light at her throat.
The medallion snagged something in my memory. Flashy medallion. Martial arts type. I turned it over until it landed.
Black Lotus. Minor league assassin for hire, Hand adjacent if I was remembering correctly, which explained how we missed her entry. I couldn't recall much else about her, which was unfortunate given that she was trying to kill us. Her original costume in her first appearance had been much flashier. She'd evidently toned it down.
"You are more difficult to follow than I expected," Black Lotus said. She sounded faintly approving.
Catherine said nothing. Her hand was still inside her jacket. Black Lotus had stepped out of the shadows at maybe fifteen feet. Close enough that drawing was a race she'd definitely lose.
Black Lotus tilted her head slightly, eyes moving between us with the calm assessment of someone running calculations.
"Ah well."
Catherine rushed her.
I moved in from the side, trying to cut off her lateral movement while Black Lotus was managing Catherine's charge. The fighting fans appeared from somewhere in the sash before Catherine had covered half the distance. The draw was fast. One moment her hands were empty and the next they weren't, and the lead fan was already angled to intercept Catherine's approach.
I kept coming from the side. The second fan came around to manage me without Black Lotus looking away from Catherine.
I'd thought she got her combat fans in the 2010's. Apparently not.
She moved between us with the particular quality of someone who had done this many times before. The fans were a tool to create space, giving her reach she shouldn't have had at her height, and making closing distance costly.
Catherine tried to push through it anyway. She took a strike across the forearm that made her whole arm seize, pushed through that, took a heel to the knee that buckled her, and kept coming. Black Lotus let her come. The right fan snapped on the way in, the edge flickering across Catherine's forehead. Blood immediately. Catherine's hand went to her eye and she broke off.
I swung at Black Lotus from her left side with my relatively undamaged arm. The fan came around, deflecting my punch at the wrist and rotating her into the strike. Her elbow drove backward into my solar plexus simultaneously. I crumpled to the ground for the second time today, wheezing.
Black Lotus stepped back and regarded us both.
"You are persistent," she said. "It does not change the outcome."
She raised one fan slightly.
The door next to the loading bay burst open. The entire thing, corrugated metal and rusted frame, simply ceased to occupy its former position and skittered into the warehouse interior. A man walked through the opening as the afternoon sun flooded into the warehouse. I couldn't get a very good look at him from my prone position, but I tried. White. TALL. Six foot eleven if my guesstimate was right. Built like a fridge. Black suit jacket, white sweater. He was smoking a cigarette and he looked faintly bored.
Wuh?
Black Lotus moved first, her hand blurring to one of her hairpins and throwing it at the intruder.
The man was faster.
One moment he was in the doorway and the next he simply wasn't there anymore. The projectile sliced through the air where he had been, skittering to a stop after bouncing off a wall. The intruder (and probable superhuman) was already inside her range. Black Lotus read it immediately.She moved laterally, creating an angle, one fan snapping open to intercept whatever was coming.
The man's arm came through the fan like it wasn't there. His hand closed on her shoulder. She twisted inside the grip, getting loose. Barely. Black Lotus put six feet between them and reassessed.
The man let her go and looked at the tear in his jacket instead. She came at him again. Lead fan intercepting his lead hand, rear fan going for his inner elbow, drop step to create the angle for a takedown at the knee. The man took the fan strike to the elbow without any visible response. His other hand found her collar.
She was fast enough to get her arms up before he lifted her. Fast enough that the throw wasn't clean, she twisted in his grip, got one foot against his forearm, pushed off to redirect the trajectory. It cost him half a second and changed her angle enough that she hit the wall instead of going through it. She came off the wall already moving, one fan raised.
The man looked at her with the mild attention of someone who had found the task slightly more interesting than expected.
He crossed the distance fast. He was moving well above baseline human speed. I upgraded my previous assessment of "probable superhuman" to "definite superhuman"
This time she didn't have the angle. His hand closed on her wrist, the other on her collar, and the motion was completely economical. Black Lotus left the ground.
The window on the far wall had been intact, despite the dilapidated nature of the warehouse. This state of grace didn't last, as Black Lotus flew through it. The sound of breaking glass echoed through the warehouse, followed by a distant impact, followed by silence. The intruder looked at his cigarette. Still lit. He took a drag and languidly turned to face us.
Great. I was probably going to get beaten to death by an actual superhuman.
He looked at Catherine.
"Someone would like a word with you." he said. "I'd advise coming along."
Catherine looked at me. I looked at Catherine. She had dried blood tracking down her cheek from the cut above her eyebrow and one arm that wasn't moving quite right. I had a recently relocated shoulder making its displeasure known and a solar plexus that wasn't happy about the elbow either. Black Lotus was somewhere outside a window. The man who had defenestrated her was more interested in the tear in his jacket than in either of us.
The threat assessment didn't take long.
"Fine," Catherine said flatly. She straightened her jacket with her functional arm and looked at the man. "Lead on."'
I coughed.
"I assume this doesn't extend to me."
The man looked at me. "He asked for you too." He paused. "By name, Mr. Davis."
Well, that was a interestingdevelopment in the Chinese sense.