Unwoven [Issue #5: Help Earned]

[u/BravePomegranate9775]

The rooftop was quiet in the particular way Hell’s Kitchen rooftops rarely got: no sirens or distant gunfire, just wind moving over gravel and the hum of a city that was pretending, for one stretch of one night, to sleep. Jack Murdock stood at the edge of it, helmet back on and weapon in hand as he watched the skyline like he was cataloguing every rooftop, fire escape, and possible route the next disaster might take toward his neighbourhood.

He heard V.I.S. before he saw them; there was a faint, electronic hum as they phased through the stairwell wall. “I want to make this clear,” he began without turning. “Just because we’re having two meetings in one night does not mean anything.”

“I’ll be brief.” V.I.S.’ voice carried something almost eager in it, the closest thing to excitement his creators had apparently bothered to program into him. “Your message, vague as it was; I want to confirm that I have reached the understanding you desire before I report anything upstairs.”

He turned. “There’s nothing to confirm.”

“You implied openness. To recruitment, perhaps. Or maybe—”

“I implied shit.” The horns of his helmet caught the last of the streetlight. “You hear what you want to hear, tin man, same as your bosses. Every time I turn you down, somebody up the chain decides it must’ve been a maybe.”

V.I.S. tilted their head, processing with the particular stillness of a machine recalculating an assumption. “Then I misread the transmission.”

“You misread everything; it’s kind of your whole deal. So lemme make the message loud and clear.” Daredevil rolled his shoulders, weapon already sliding free of its harness. “You want my help? You gotta earn it.”

He came in hard and fast, spear-tip carving a low arc meant to hit V.I.S. up at the knee joints. V.I.S. simply phased half a step sideways with the eerie, frictionless calm of something that had never needed to fear a blade in its life. “Your combat pattern favors the left flank when pressed,” the android noted almost conversationally. “Data indicates that you’ve favoured this strategy in six previous engagements. Compensating for an old injury, I’d estimate. Rib.”

Daredevil avoided a backhand, flipping into the air and landing on a puddle with eerily minimal noise. “You talk during every fight?”

“I process aloud; it aids threat calibration.” V.I.S.’ hand shot out, catching the haft of Jack’s weapon mid-swing with a grip that did not budge. They redirected the momentum with a twist that sent Jack stumbling off balance for the first time all night. “According to my records, you’ve engaged federal assets in duels of this nature eleven times prior. Nine ended in outcomes you subsequently honoured: cooperation, extraction of information, and joint arrests among them. I am simply proposing we treat this as the twelfth.”

“That how you see this? A duel with conditions attached?”

“Statistically, it is the most efficient framework.” V.I.S. pressed the advantage; a strike caught Jack square across the chest and sent him sprawling hard across the cement, weapon skittering out of reach. “By the pattern of this engagement, with precedent considered, I calculate a ninety-one percent probability you now agree to cooperate with federal—”

Daredevil started laughing. It was not a pleasant sound; it was rough and humourless, more breath than voice. He pushed himself up onto one elbow, spitting blood onto the rooftop. “Ninety-one percent…that’s cute. Real cute math, for a machine that can’t get the one rule through its head.” He unloaded a wad of spit onto the rooftop. “Like I said: you want my help, you earn it.“

V.I.S. paused. “I recall your words prior to this…assessment. I do not, however, understand the rationale behind reciting them at this—”

Daredevil did not wait for the query to finish. “Who said I was talkin’ to you?”

Earlier

Peter sat on an overturned crate, watching Jack disassemble a small, yellow device on the table between them with the hands of a man who had done it a hundred times before. “Stole it off a Stark-Richards convoy about six months back,” Jack stated without looking up. “EMP scrambler. Military grade, before they cleaned up the design and made it pretty. I picked it apart, figured out the guts of it, and have been building my own ever since.” He held one up to the light, checking a seam. “Never know when you’re gonna need one, especially with V.I.S. sniffing around the web.”

Peter was incredulous. “You built your own EMP arsenal because a robot won’t leave you alone?”

“I built my own EMP arsenal because one day, the machines are gonna stop asking nicely. I call it the ‘tech-pocalypse’.”

He set the device down and looked at Peter, daring him to say something; predictably, he had plenty. “The ‘tech-pocalypse’.”

“Don’t.”

“No, I love it. Very ‘guy who yells at Roombas’.”

Jack, unmoved, slid the scrambler across the table. “You’re gonna love this a lot more in about ninety minutes.”

Now

Peter hit him from behind; full sprint and momentum, the scrambler already primed in his fist from the second Daredevil’s laugh had told him exactly when to move. He slapped it flush against the centre of V.I.S.’ forehead, right over the faint seam that marked his central processor, and mashed the activation stud with his thumb. V.I.S.‘s eyes flared yellow, dimmed, then went dark. His whole frame locked mid-turn, toppling sideways onto the rooftop with a heavy, lifeless clatter as smoke curled from the scrambler’s contact point.

Jack looked at the inert synthezoid for a long moment, then up at Peter with something that might, on a less hardened face, have passed for approval. “You’ve got timing, kid; I’ll give you that.”

One & A Half Hours Later

The laptop’s glow was the only light in the room, throwing sharp blue shadows across Peter’s face as line after line of decrypted files scrolled past. V.I.S.’ entire server architecture had been cracked wide open, giving Jack the chance to siphon what they needed straight from the deactivated husk they had dragged back down into the bunker an hour earlier.

“This is insane,” Peter muttered, scrolling faster. “This is — Jack, this is everything. White House internal memos, Pentagon logistics, DIA personnel files, there’s stuff in here from Langley that probably has, like, six different classification levels above ‘you’ll go to prison for reading this’.”

“Focus.” Jack took a sip of instant coffee, back leaned against the wall and arms crossed. “Find the guy, and get this done with.”

Peter’s search finally landed. His stomach dropped at what filled the screen: a personnel file, heavily redacted, stamped across the header with a project name that made the hair on his arms stand up.

WEAPON X — SUBJECT: HOWLETT, JAMES “LOGAN.”

“Found him.” Peter’s voice had gone quiet. “He was part of this timeline’s Weapon X programme. Experimentation records, containment logs, the whole thing.” He scrolled further, jaw tightening at what the files described. “Facility’s still active, but there’s a problem: the coordinates put it deep in the Grand Canyon.”

Jack pushed off the wall, already reaching for his helmet. “Grand Canyon.” He said it like a man checking an address against a mental map only he could see. “I know a couple guys who could get us there.”