Chapter 8: The Awakening
The first thing Matt Murdock noticed was the scent. It hit him three steps from the safehouse door, a complex bouquet of distress layered over the building’s baseline of mildew and old wood. Stale sweat, the sharp, clean bite of isopropyl alcohol, the coppery tang of blood—both fresh and not. Underneath it all, something else: a burnt-sugar ozone, like the air after a lightning strike, clinging to skin and fabric.
The second thing he noticed was the heartbeat. Two of them. One, Frank’s: a slow, metronomic 58 beats per minute, the steady drum of a predator at rest. The other was the problem. A rapid, fluttering arrhythmia, skipping like a stone across water. Too fast, then too slow, with long, worrying pauses in between. It wasn’t the rhythm of sleep. It was the rhythm of a system in deep shock.
He didn’t knock. The lock was a simple deadbolt; a twist of his wrist and a precise shove with his shoulder and it gave way with a soft crack of splintering frame. He stepped inside, closing the broken door quietly behind him.
Frank was exactly where Matt expected him to be: in a worn armchair angled toward both the room’s single window and the couch, a disassembled M4 carbine on a towel on the floor beside him. He didn’t reach for a weapon. He just turned his head, his breathing pattern unchanged. “You’re early.”
“I got your signal. The dead-drop was clean.” Matt stood still, his senses painting the room. The witch was on the couch, a blanket pulled to her chin. Her breathing was shallow, her heartbeat that worrying stutter. She was awake, but profoundly still. “What happened, Frank? Her vitals are all over the place.”
“The auction happened.” Frank’s voice was gravel under tires. “The ‘processing’ happened. They gave her something. A cocktail. Makes them suggestible, pliable. It was wearing off when they brought her out.”
Matt moved further into the room, his cane tapping lightly. He stopped near the coffee table. His nose wrinkled at the cold, congealed scent of canned soup. A full glass of water sat beside it, untouched. “And after? Your report said you secured the asset and extracted. This doesn’t look secured. This looks like a casualty.”
Frank shifted in the chair, a subtle creak of leather. “The processing wasn’t the end of it. The head of the operation, Alistair Vance. He’s not just a slaver. He’s a collector. A fanatic. He saw her try to fight the drugs, saw the magic she let off. He called it ‘a deep, untapped wellspring.’ He didn’t want her broken. He wanted her honed.”
A cold knot formed in Matt’s gut. “Honed how?”
The silence from Frank was heavier than any answer. Matt listened to the grind of his teeth, the minute increase in his perspiration, the rush of blood in his capillaries. Guilt. Anger. A seething self-loathing so potent Matt could almost taste it, acidic at the back of his own throat.
“Frank.”
“They wanted a group calibration.” Frank said the phrase like it was a live bullet he was spitting out. “A collaborative effort. To see what she’d do under… systemic overload.”
Matt’s grip tightened on his cane. He understood the euphemism. His mind supplied the images, his imagination—always too vivid, too informed by the sounds and smells of human cruelty—filling in the blanks. The rapid, punishing rhythm of Frank’s heart during the story’s climax had told its own tale. “And you gave it to them.”
“I redirected it.” Frank’s voice dropped, low and fierce. “The alternative was twenty men taking turns. I gave them a show. One source. Controlled. Contained.”
“Contained?” Matt took a sharp step toward the couch, his senses focusing on the woman. The bruising on her wrists, older. The new, tender abrasions on her back from rough concrete. The specific, inflamed trauma between her legs. The scent of Frank was on her, mixed with the chemical fear-sweat and that peculiar ozone. He didn’t need to see to map the violation. It was written in the air, in the subtle pulses of pain from her body, in the shattered quiet of her psyche. “Jesus, Frank. You raped her.”
“I saved her life.” Frank stood now, the movement quick, a coiled spring releasing. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see the look in their eyes. It was that or let them dismantle her piece by piece while they took notes. That circle they had, that array… it was a battery. They were feeding on her fear. On her pain. I gave them a direct current.”
“You fed it.”
“I channeled it!” Frank’s control slipped, a crack in the granite. His heartbeat spiked. “She was a live wire in a puddle. I grounded her. I gave her a target. Me. Her hate. It’s the only thing that’s still in there. You hear that heart? It’s not beating, it’s shaking apart. The only time it got strong, got real, was when she was fighting me. When she was letting that fire out.”
Matt turned his head, his blank gaze resting on Frank’s silhouette. “So your solution to their torture was to torture her yourself. To become the thing she needed to fight against. How is that different from what they were doing?”
“The difference is intent, Murdock. The difference is next.” Frank took a step closer, his bulk dominating the small space. “They wanted to break her down for parts. I’m building a weapon. She’s got power in her that can burn that whole fucking operation to the ground. But she’s buried it under fear. I had to dig it up. However I could.”
“You dug a grave.”
A sound, then. Not from Frank. From the couch.
A sharp, dry inhale. The rustle of cheap blanket fabric.
Both men went still. Matt’s senses zeroed in. Sage’s heartbeat had changed. The erratic flutter was coalescing, tightening around a harder, faster core. Like embers being fanned.
She pushed the blanket down slowly. She sat up. The movement was stiff, pained, but there was a new consciousness in it. Her eyes, those violet depths Matt had never seen but could feel the weight of, were open and fixed in Frank’s direction. The vacant stare was gone, burned away by a slow, kindling anger.
“Stop.” The word was a scrap of sound, torn and raw.
Frank looked at her, his expression unreadable.
“Stop talking about me,” she whispered, her voice gaining texture, gaining edge with each syllable. “Like I’m a circuit. A weapon. A thing you’re building.” She swung her legs off the couch, wincing as her feet touched the cold floor. She was still wearing only the thin dress, now wrinkled and stained. She pulled the blanket around her shoulders like a cloak. “You want to know what’s in here?” She tapped her own temple, the gesture jerky. “A catalogue. Of every smell on that floor. Oil, copper, cheap cologne, their breath. The sound your belt made. The weight. The taste of my own blood in my mouth. And your voice in my ear, telling me to hate you.”
She stood, swaying for a second before finding her balance. Her heartbeat was a steady, angry drum now. The burnt-ozone smell intensified, radiating from her skin. “Congratulations. It worked. I hate you. I hate your methodology. I hate your reasoning. I hate that you’re probably right.” Her eyes shifted, finding Matt though he made no sound. “And who are you? The conscience? Coming in after the fact to tally the sins?”
“I’m a friend,” Matt said quietly.
She let out a short, brittle laugh that held no humor. “I’m fresh out of those.” She looked back at Frank. “You wanted my fire? You got its attention. Now it wants to know what you’re going to do with it. And so do I.”
Frank didn’t flinch. “Vance. His wife, Genevieve. Their network. I have names, locations, financial trails. We burn it down. All of it.”
“'We’.” Sage repeated the word as if it were in a foreign language. “You just finished telling your friend here how you had to do it alone. How it was your burden, your strategy.”
“That was then.” Frank’s gaze was locked on hers. “The channel’s open. You said you felt it. That means you can use it. You can find them. Not just the Vances. The people who took you, who caged you. The ones who paid to watch.”
The air in the room seemed to thicken. Sage was silent for a long moment. Matt could hear the rush of her blood, the click of her dry throat as she swallowed. The fury in her was a living thing, churning, looking for a shape.
“I find them,” she said, her voice dropping to a near-whisper. “And then what?”
“Then we visit them,” Frank said. The finality in his tone left no room for debate.
Matt stirred. “Frank—”
“Not your way, Murdock.” Frank cut him off, still looking at Sage. “Not the law. Not a day in court they’ll buy their way out of. Their way. Final.”
Sage’s lips peeled back from her teeth. It wasn’t a smile. It was a primal expression of agreement. The ozone scent spiked, and for a second, Matt swore he felt the temperature in the room rise a degree. The ambient static in the air grew sharp.
“Okay,” she said. Simple. Absolute.
“No,” Matt said, stepping forward. “It’s not okay. What he did to you was—”
“Was what?” Sage turned her fierce gaze on him. “A crime? A sin? I know what it was. I was there. You think putting him in a cell undoes it? You think a trial feels like justice to me?” She shook her head, the tangled black hair shifting. “They have my blood in vials. My screams on their servers. There is no ‘law’ for that. There’s only balance. And he’s the scale.”
“He used you.”
“He used the situation. There’s a difference. A terrible, shitty, real difference.” She wrapped the blanket tighter. “I need a shower. I need clothes that don’t smell like that room. And I need food that isn’t from a can.”
Frank gave a single, curt nod. “Bathroom’s through there. Towels are clean. I’ll get you something to wear.”
Sage didn’t thank him. She just walked, stiff-legged, toward the hall, disappearing into the darkness. The sound of a lock clicking echoed back to them.
Matt waited until he heard the shower start, a distant rush of pipes. He turned his full attention to Frank. “You’ve created something.”
“I’ve unleashed something,” Frank corrected, kneeling to resume cleaning his rifle. “It was already there. Now it’s pointed in the right direction.”
“She’s not a gun, Frank. She’s a traumatized woman who just agreed to help you kill people. That’s not a partnership. That’s coercion by another name.”
Frank slotted the bolt carrier group back into the receiver with a solid clack. “It’s a war, Murdock. You don’t get to pick your allies from the untouched. You pick them from the survivors. She survived. Now she wants payback. I’m giving her the tools.”
“And after? When the payback is done? What happens to her then?”
Frank looked up, his eyes cold and flat. “One battle at a time.”
The water ran in the other room. Matt listened to it, to the soft, almost inaudible sound of crying underneath the stream. He felt the weight of his own conviction, his belief in a system that could, however imperfectly, separate right from wrong. That system had no box to check for what happened in that mill. No charge for alchemical battery through sexual violation.
Frank’s way was a cleaner line. A terrible, final line.
“I’m in,” Matt said, the words tasting like ash. “But not for the slaughter. For the network. We take down Vance, we follow the money, we expose the whole thing. We save the others they have, the ones still in cages.”
Frank shrugged, a massive roll of his shoulders. “You do what you do, Counselor. I’ll do what I do. If our paths cross, try not to get in the way.”
The shower shut off. A new silence descended, brittle and charged.
“She’ll need a doctor,” Matt said quietly. “Not just for the… injuries. For the drugs they gave her. For withdrawal.”
“I know a guy. Discreet.”
“Good.” Matt turned toward the door. He needed air that didn’t smell of trauma and tactical calculus. “I’ll start on the financials from the ledger. Vance has a shell corporation that stinks. I’ll find a thread.”
He paused at the broken doorframe. “Frank. Don’t mistake her anger for strength. It’s fuel. It burns hot, but it burns out. And when it does, there has to be something left of her to put back together.”
Frank didn’t reply. He just stared at the closed bathroom door, his face a stone mask, listening to the heart of the weapon he’d forged beating on the other side. It was a strong, steady, furious rhythm. For now, it was enough.
For now, it was enough.
The facade of strength lasted two days. It bled away not with a scream, but with a quiet cessation. She refused the food Frank left out—protein bars, bone broth he heated on the hotplate, a stark red apple. The glass of water she finally touched only to rinse the taste of the safehouse from her mouth; he heard the faucet run, then her spitting into the sink.
She stayed on the couch, wrapped in the blanket, a sentinel of stillness. The furious energy she’d mustered for their confrontation had burned through the last of her reserves. Now, the real cost of the mill, of the drugs, of the violation, was being tallied in the hollows beneath her eyes and the new prominence of her collarbones.
“You need to eat,” Frank stated on the third morning, placing a tin of peaches in syrup beside her. The sweet, cloying smell filled the space between them.
She looked at the can, then through it. Her violet eyes had grown dull, the light behind them receding like a tide going out. Her lips were cracked. When she spoke, the sound was a dry rustle. “Everything tastes like copper. Like that room.”
“Eat anyway.”
“I can’t.”
That afternoon, she tried to stand when Frank moved toward the window and her legs buckled. She caught herself on the arm of the couch, a tremor running through her like a faulty wire. Frank was across the room in three strides, but she flinched from his offered hand, sinking back onto the cushions with a ragged breath. The ozone smell around her had faded to a faint, sickly trace.
Matt returned that evening, his senses absorbing the degradation before he’d fully closed the door. The sour ketosis on her breath. The slower, weaker thump of her heart, a tired bird beating against a thinning cage. The scent of unwashed despair had settled into the fabric of the room.
“She’s dehydrating,” Matt said, his voice low and urgent near the door. He tilted his head, listening. “Her kidneys are starting to sound… stressed. This isn’t stubbornness, Frank. This is a systemic shutdown.”
Frank watched her from his chair, his jaw a hard line. “She has to choose to live. I can’t force that down her throat.”
“You can’t shoot this problem, either.” Matt ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “The trauma is metabolic now. It’s chemical. Whatever cocktail Vance gave her is probably still screwing with her neurotransmitters, her hunger signals. She needs more than a safehouse and a can of soup.”
“What, then? A hospital? They’ll ask questions we can’t answer.”
“Not a hospital.” Matt’s expression was grim, resolved. He pulled a sleek, encrypted phone from his inside pocket. “I know someone. He’s arrogant, insufferable, and has more diagnostic tech in his bathroom than most level-four trauma centers. And he understands… unconventional injuries.”
Frank’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”
Matt was already dialing. He put the phone to his ear, waited. “Tony. It’s Murdock. I have a situation. A patient. No, not me. It’s… delicate. Supernatural adjacent. Severe physical and psychological trauma, probable unknown pharmacological agents involved, and now refusal of sustenance.” He listened, his face unreadable. “Yes, that kind of delicate. We’re off the books. So far off they don’t make books for this.” A pause. “I’ll send coordinates. And Tony? Discretion isn’t a suggestion.”
He ended the call. “He’s in the air. His lab on the tower’s private medical level. We have to get her there.”
Frank looked at Sage’s wilted form. The blanket seemed to drown her. Getting her out would be a fight they couldn’t afford, not on the street. “She won’t go willingly.”
“We’re not asking.”
It was a brutal, silent operation. Matt explained it to her, his voice calm and firm, while Frank prepared a syringe from a slim medical kit. A sedative, mild, just enough to make her pliable.
“No,” she whispered, seeing the needle, her eyes wide with a flash of the old terror. She tried to
scrabble back into the couch, her limbs clumsy with weakness. “Don’t. Please.”
“It’s this or you die in this room,” Frank said, his voice low and devoid of negotiation. He moved with a swift, economical grace that belied his size, catching her wrist before she could fully retreat. Her skin was fever-hot and dry. “You’re not making a choice. You’re surrendering. This is us choosing for you.”
“Frank,” Matt warned, hearing the runaway-gallop of her heart.
But Frank was already swabbing a patch of her arm with alcohol. The sharp, clean smell cut through the room’s staleness. Sage’s other hand came up, not to strike, but to push feebly against his chest. It was like pushing a mountain. “You said channel,” she gasped, her eyes locked on his, wide and pleading. “You said… partnership.”
“This is the partnership.” His gaze didn’t waver. “Not letting you check out.” He inserted the needle. She flinched, a full-body tremor, but he held her steady. The plunger descended.
Her breath hitched. For a second, nothing. Then the fight seeped out of her muscles, replaced by a leaden weight. The terror in her eyes dulled into a confused, swimming betrayal. “Hate… you,” she slurred, the words thick.
“I know.” Frank withdrew the needle, pressing a cotton ball to the spot. He didn’t let go of her arm. “Add it to the list.”
Her head lolled back against the couch cushion. Her eyelids fluttered, fighting the chemical pull. The ozone scent around her sputtered, a last gasp of defiance, and then faded entirely. Her breathing deepened, slowed. The frantic drumbeat of her heart settled into a heavy, drugged rhythm.
“That was harder than it needed to be,” Matt said, folding his cane.
“Nothing about this is easy,” Frank replied. He slid one arm under her knees, the other behind her back, and lifted her. She was disturbingly light, a bundle of bones and blanket. “Get the door.”
The night air outside was a slap of cold, industrial city smell—exhaust, distant rain, fried food from a cart two blocks over. Frank carried her to a nondescript black van idoning at the curb, its back doors already open. Matt had called in a favor. The driver, a silent man with a military bearing, gave a curt nod.
They laid her on a padded gurney secured inside. Frank strapped her in, his movements precise, almost clinical. He tucked the blanket tight around her. In the van’s dim interior light, she looked younger, the harsh lines of pain and defiance smoothed by unconsciousness. It was worse, somehow.
The ride was a study in tense silence. Matt tracked their route through the city’s sonic tapestry, his head tilted, listening for tails. Frank watched Sage’s chest rise and fall, counting the breaths. The van slipped into a private underground garage beneath a tower that pierced the midtown skyline. The elevator ride was smooth and silent, ascending to a level that didn’t exist on public floor plans.
The doors opened not into a hospital corridor, but into a clean, white, softly lit space that hummed with suppressed technology. Tony Stark stood waiting, arms crossed, wearing dark jeans and a Black Sabbath t-shirt. He wasn’t smiling.
“So,” Tony said, his eyes flicking from Matt’s grim face to Frank’s stony one, then to the woman on the gurney. “This is the delicate situation. She looks like hell warmed over and then left in the freezer.” He gestured, and a sleek automated bed slid silently from the wall. “Put her there. Let’s see what we’re dealing with before the judgment starts.”
They transferred her. Scanners embedded in the ceiling came to life, casting grids of harmless blue light over her body. Holographic displays flickered to life above the bed, streaming data: vitals, metabolic panels, neural activity. Tony studied them, his playful demeanor evaporating, replaced by a focused intensity.
“Severe dehydration, electrolyte imbalance consistent with starvation,” he muttered, fingers dancing in the air to manipulate the displays. “Elevated stress hormones are off the charts. Adrenal fatigue is a given. There are… unusual neurotransmitter metabolites. Synthetic. Nasty stuff. It’s like a party drug crossed with a truth serum and a psychic dampener. Your friends have a creative pharmacologist.”
“Can you fix it?” Frank’s voice was a gravel scrape.
“The physical part? Yeah. IV fluids, tailored nutrient boost, liver support to flush the crap out.” Tony’s eyes narrowed at another readout. “There’s some minor internal tearing, bruising. I can address that. The rest?” He finally looked at Frank, then at Matt. “That’s not in my wheelhouse. The brain scan shows activity in the amygdala and hippocampus that looks like a war zone. That’s not chemistry. That’s experience.”
A soft chime sounded. Tony glanced at a new data stream. “Huh. Elevated thermal output around her hands and sternum. Not a fever. Localized. And there’s a faint electromagnetic field distortion. That’s new.”
“She’s a witch,” Matt said, simply.
Tony blinked. “Right. Of course. Because why not.” He shook his head, a wry twist to his mouth. “Okay. Step one is getting her body back online. Step two is… we don’t talk about step two until she’s conscious and trying to set my very expensive lab on fire.” He initiated a protocol. A robotic arm extended, sterilizing a patch of skin on her arm and inserting a micro-catheter with inhuman precision. Clear fluids began to flow.
“How long?” Frank asked.
“For her to be medically stable? Twelve hours, maybe less. For her to be her again?” Tony shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. The mind’s a tricky thing. It doesn’t always want to come back from places like that.”
He turned to face them fully, crossing his arms again. “Now. The part where I ask what the hell happened, and you give me the heavily abridged, non-incriminating version.”
Frank just stared at him, a wall of silent menace.
Matt sighed, leaning on his cane. “A trafficking ring. Supernatural beings. They were using a form of… alchemical battery. Feeding on fear, pain. She was their latest acquisition. Frank went undercover to get her out.”
Tony’s gaze lingered on the fresh, angry scratches on Frank’s cheek. “Looks like she didn’t appreciate the rescue.”
“The extraction was complicated,” Matt said, his voice carefully neutral.
Tony looked from Frank’s impassive face to Sage’s unconscious one, his sharp mind undoubtedly connecting dots Matt would rather leave unconnected. He let out a low whistle. “Complicated. Right.” He didn’t press. “You can stay. There’s a lounge through that door. But if she wakes up and you’re the first thing she sees, it might undo the good work of the sedative. I’d recommend giving her space. And maybe a different face.”
Frank didn’t move for a long moment. His eyes were fixed on the slow, steady drip of the IV, the lifeline feeding into her vein. Finally, he gave a single, sharp nod. He turned and walked toward the lounge door, a silhouette of coiled tension against the clinical white.
Matt lingered. “Tony… thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Tony said, his attention already back on the holographic diagnostics. “She’s not a project. She’s a person. And people, especially people who’ve been turned into batteries, have a habit of blowing fuses when they power back up.” He glanced at Matt. “You sure you know what you’re babysitting here?”
Matt’s expression was unreadable behind his red lenses. “No,” he said honestly. “But we’re in it now.”
He followed Frank into the lounge, leaving Tony Stark alone with the silent witch and the soft, insistent beep of machines keeping a broken body alive. On the bed, Sage’s fingers twitched once, a tiny, involuntary spasm. On the thermal display, the heat signatures in her palms glowed a fraction brighter.