No one outside Drex Valen's circle knew it yet, but the Punisher had beco sothing far worse than a man.
A monster, yes.
But also sothing more useful.
Frank Castle hadn't exposed himself either. He hid his transformation well enough that S.H.I.E.L.D. and the rest of the world still had no idea he had beco a skull-faced Rider just like Johnny Blaze.
Frank understood greed as well as he understood war.
If the truth ca out, those vultures on Wall Street would imdiately try to put a price tag on him. They would dissect him, own him, weaponize him.
He didn't want public chaos. He didn't want panic.
He just wanted to kill everyone stained by sin.
As for the n in suits on Wall Street?
They could keep their heads on their shoulders for now.
Once Frank had finished with the truly damned, he would get around to them too.
That night, Frank entered one of the Stanich family's safehouses.
His trench coat still concealed a small armory's worth of weapons and ammunition. Unless it was absolutely necessary, he had no intention of using his Ghost Rider powers openly. Staying hidden mattered.
Besides, becoming a Ghost Rider had changed him even in human form.
Strength, speed, reflexes, all of it had beco monstrously beyond normal limits.
More than enough to butcher ordinary criminals.
"Harley, my friend, how have you been lately?"
The owner of the safehouse was already greeting a xican drug runner who had just stepped out of a Buick parked outside.
Harley Stanb, a short xican man, clapped the local handler, Gorin, in a brief embrace.
"If you'd give a little more product, I'd be doing a lot better."
Gorin spread his hands with a helpless shrug.
"Ah. You know how it is. Production of Heaven Three is still low. I'd love to give you more, but my hands are tied."
Frank was already thinking this was a good catch when his soul radar picked up movent nearby.
Soone invisible was approaching him.
A mutant?
Frank said nothing.
He slipped a hand into his coat and pulled out an M500 revolver.
Then he shifted suddenly to the side.
A red tongue, thick with the stench of blood, lashed through the air like lightning and struck the spot he had just occupied.
It hit the concrete with enough force to leave a deep crater.
The noise instantly alerted the two traffickers nearby.
Gorin shouted sothing, and nearly thirty ard gangsters raised their guns and aid at the disturbance.
But Frank had already fired, guided by the location of the tongue.
In the span of a few blinks, he emptied the M500.
The powerful rounds punched five holes straight through the invisible mutant's body.
Five shots.
Five hits.
The body collapsed with its eyes still open, unable to understand how the bullets had found him. He had been invisible. How had Frank hit him? Worse, every shot had struck his torso and shattered the vital organs inside. Even if a surgeon were standing over him right now, there would be no saving him.
That was Frank Castle's terror.
In a world like DC, he would have belonged in the sa conversation as Deathstroke.
For n like them, killing was no longer a skill.
It was instinct.
Frank reloaded the M500 and lunged forward.
The thirty gangsters were still watching the area, and the mont he appeared, they opened fire.
The problem was the terrain.
The safehouse sat in a kind of underground foundation space beneath a building, filled with huge reinforced concrete pillars used as support.
Frank's leap carried him behind one of those pillars, and the incoming bullets chewed the stone instead of his body.
The gangsters kept firing in dense bursts, but none of them landed a clean shot.
"Damn it, Briz is dead!"
"Jason too!"
A few seconds later they realized two of their n had been shot through the head.
The gunfire had been so loud and chaotic that nobody had even noticed the instant Frank counterattacked.
What the hell was this thing?
Frank reached inside his coat again and pulled out a 12.7mm automatic rifle.
Do not ask where he kept it.
That was a man's secret.
The sa way won had dinsions no one dared explain.
He just did.
With a sixty-round extended magazine loaded, the rifle was more than enough to turn the room into a slaughterhouse.
Frank tossed out two smoke grenades.
A choking cloud filled the underground space, burning eyes and clogging lungs.
Before they could react, Frank was already firing.
To the n inside, it felt like the air itself had turned thin.
Breathing beca difficult.
They were not cowards. They were Stanich family soldiers, trained through countless gang wars to guard one of the family's more important assets.
But this was different.
This was an enemy they could not see.
Cough.
Another low cry.
Then a body hit the floor.
Another man down.
No one dared to run.
There was nowhere to run in the smoke anyway. They couldn't even tell which direction was which. Fleeing might only get them killed faster.
The pressure finally snapped one of them.
He raised his gun and fired wildly into the fog.
It was pure panic, nothing more.
Not strategy.
Not resistance.
Just a desperate attempt to relieve the fear clawing at his chest.
Frank never hesitated.
He listened to the sound of the shots and the movent of the n, then answered with precise fire of his own.
The 12.7mm rounds were devastating.
Even if one of them was wearing body armor, unless it was heavy military-grade protection, a second shot usually wasn't necessary.
Three seconds later, the underground chamber fell silent again.
Only a few half-dead n remained on the floor, wheezing and clutching at their wounds.
Frank finished them with cold efficiency.
Headshots.
Then he located three briefcases and set them on a makeshift table.
He opened Harley's case first.
Money.
Stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills, bundled tightly together.
Two hundred stacks.
Two hundred thousand in each bundle.
Two million dollars in cash.
Small gangs preferred smaller denominations because they lacked proper laundering channels. But for a family like the Stanichs, one with serious money-laundering infrastructure, larger bills were far more convenient.
The other two briefcases were filled with blue capsules.
Ice-blue.
Frank had overheard Harley and Gorin talking earlier, so he already knew what they were.
Heaven Three.
Drug technology kept advancing.
The old staples like heroin and cocaine were fading. Anything derived from plants required huge growing operations, which made it easy for people to find and destroy.
But synthetic drugs changed the ga.
Chemical compounds could be manufactured, hidden better, and made far more addictive.
That made them far more dangerous.
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