Michael walked through it all, undisturbed. The few remaining gang mbers—those not already unconscious or fled—were hiding. None dared face him.
He stepped into the back office, where the gang's leader had once sat. The desk was cluttered with datapads, injector vials of Vyre Dust, and a small server terminal humming faintly. Michael placed his hand over the system.
His Symbiote extended from his hand, latching onto the computer as all the files on the system were unlocked.
Michael's eyes glowed faintly silver as streams of data flowed rapidly across the terminal screen. The Symbiote pulsed with soft, inky tendrils, linking him directly to the system. Within seconds, directories unraveled—encrypted files decrypted, hidden folders revealed.
He read them all in silence.
Shipnt logs. Distribution routes. Communications with forr Hydra tech dealers. dical experints using modified human subjects—so injected with variants of Vyre Dust, others with even darker, more twisted compounds.
Then he saw it.
A map—marked in crimson.
Crimson Talons: Sub-Cells.
Six more bases. Scattered across the East Coast. One even deeper in Manhattan. Another beneath an abandoned train station in Jersey. Each one with its own "Commander."
Michael's eyes narrowed.
"Too organized for street rats…" he muttered. "Soone's propping them up."
He copied the entire data cluster into a black cube the Symbiote ford in his palm, then crushed the server with a squeeze—sparks and smoke rising from the crushed tal.
Turning from the ruined office, he walked back through the club's halls, now silent except for flickering lights and the groaning of broken beams. He spoke softly to himself:
"One by one... you'll all be erased."
Jersey – Abandoned Train Station, Midnight
The silence was thick. A forgotten part of the city, untouched by redevelopnt. Rusted rails, shattered glass, and concrete riddled with graffiti—most of it gang markings twisted into strange symbols.
Beneath the station, hidden behind a locked maintenance shaft, the second Crimson Talons base stirred with activity. Red floodlights illuminated the tunnel's reinforced walls, retrofitted into a bunker. Dozens of guards—so augnted with black-market tech—stood watch. Others prepared crates of Vyre Dust for shipnt.
The air was damp and foul, laced with the sickly chemical scent of cooked stimulants.
They didn't hear him arrive.
Not until the tal above creaked like thunder.
A Crimson Talon lieutenant looked up. "What the hell was—"
The roof exploded downward.
Michael landed in the center of the base like a teor strike—dust blasting outward, lights shattering from the shockwave. His eyes glead silver in the dark.
Before the first scream could leave a guard's mouth, Michael was already moving. A shimr of power laced his form, it was his Aura.
He moved like a ghost. A fist to one guard's chest sent him flying into the far wall. Another had his weapon sliced in half before his brain caught up. Three tried to open fire—Michael vanished between their line of sight, reappearing behind them. In a flash, their weapons were crushed, and they dropped unconscious before hitting the floor.
Alarms blared. Red lights spun.
A heavy-set enforcer stord out of a back room—wired with cybernetic limbs and a shoulder-mounted railgun. "You think we're scared of you?!"
Michael raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "No. But you should be."
The enforcer fired.
The beam struck—only to bend violently away midair as if reality rejected it.
Michael calmly walked forward, step by step.
The enforcer roared, charging him like a freight train.
Michael sidestepped. One flick of his wrist—and the man's chanical arms bent backward with a tallic scream, followed by a dull thud as the man crumpled.
Michael looked toward the command room. The door was sealed shut with reinforced plating.
"Cute," he muttered.
He raised his hand. A pulse of energy surged forward, as he lightly tapped on the door.
The door was obliterated.
He stepped inside.
Inside was another cache of data servers, sealed canisters of Vyre Dust, and surveillance screens showing connections to the other four sub-cells.
Michael scanned the room with cold efficiency.
"I'll finish this network before sunrise."
He opened a comm-link to Mada Hydra.
"Second base is down. Send a cleanup crew. And tell your chemists—I want full analysis on the compound by dawn."
"Yes, my lord," ca the imdiate reply.
Michael crushed another data cube into his palm.
South Brooklyn Industrial Docks – 2:43 AM
The night air was cold and briny, thick with the scent of rusted chains and diesel. Shipping containers ford a twisting maze across the deserted port yard—most bearing fake manifests. But Michael already knew which ones mattered.
He stood on the roof of an abandoned crane, his coat swaying in the wind as he looked down at the Crimson Talons' third base.
This one was larger. More organized.
Guard posts. Watch towers. Patrol routes. Spotlights. The Crimson Talons here weren't low-level junkies—they were disciplined, ard like a black-ops militia. And leading them was a man wrapped in a crimson overcoat, standing at the edge of the dock, watching a cargo container being loaded onto a sleek subrsible vessel.
Michael's eyes narrowed.
"Trying to export Vyre Dust now?"
He descended the crane without a sound, landing on the container yard with supernatural grace. His presence distorted the air slightly, warping the shadows around him.
The guards didn't even see him coming.
The first fell before he could exhale.
The second reached for his radio—too late.
Michael slipped through them like wind through reeds. Precise. Ruthless.
The alarm finally rang, but it didn't matter.
The red-coated commander turned as his n shouted. "What the hell—? Who breached—?!"
Then he saw Michael.
"Did Stark tech leak?" Michael mumbled as he observed the charging soldiers. But then he shook his head, noticing the lack of Arc reactors. "Just a pitiful imitation."
With a casual swipe of his hand, five razor-sharp slashes tore through the air like the swipe of a beast—cutting down the incoming enemies in an instant.
The bodies of the modified Talon soldiers hit the ground with heavy thuds, sparks and blood mingling across the cracked tiles. Michael walked forward, unfazed, stepping over the wreckage as if it were nothing more than fallen leaves.
The gang leader—one of the few still breathing—staggered back, clutching his baton like it could save him. His voice trembled. "W-What are you?! We never provoked an enemy like you!"
*******
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