decided to match the atmosphere inside the building, and as Sarah paced around the conference room, the stormy sky began to release a torrent of rain outside. The thunder and lightning began not too long after, completing the tense mood.

It had been about forty-five minutes since Ronan's ominous prediction, and Sarah's mind was still anxiously racing as she tried to figure out how this night could possibly end with her, Matt, and the teenage girl all alive. She knew Matt wasn't in top fighting condition right now. Even beyond the obvious injuries, he was probably still concussed, and it had been clear in the market the night before that his senses weren't currently as sharp as they could be. On the other hand, Ronan's plan was painfully transparent, and Matt wasn't dumb. She assumed he'd probably figure out it was a trap on his own; but that didn't mean he wouldn't show up anyway.

Sarah apprehensively glanced out the window at the pouring rain, and as lightning flickered across the sky she thought she saw the outline of a dark figure on the rooftop next door. She sat up straighter and squinted, waiting for the next flash of lightning; but when it came, the rooftop was empty. But she was sure she had seen it. An idea crossed her mind; it seemed like a long shot, but she figured it couldn't hurt.

"Matt?" Sarah began uncertainly in a hushed tone. She kept her face down, still turned towards the dark window so that Ronan and the others wouldn't be able to see her mouth moving. "I really hope you can hear me. Um, I'm pretty sure you've probably already caught on that this is a trap. I didn't have anything to do with it," she added quickly, glancing up at the ceiling like she expected him to drop down on her.

She felt silly talking to no one, with no guarantee that the person she was addressing could even hear her. Doing so felt oddly similar to praying, which had always had the similar effect of making her feel ridiculous. But if there was any chance Matt could hear her, she had to at least try to warn him.

"There's about fifteen guys in here, and I think more next door. They have all these weapons and—and tranquilizer darts. Strong ones," she continued quietly. She glanced over at the bound girl in the corner, who was watching her in confusion, probably wondering why she was talking to herself. "They kidnapped a girl, and I don't know how I can get her out. Ronan took my phone, and—"

As though Ronan could sense she was talking about him, Sarah was interrupted by a small clinking sound as a pen bounced off the glass separating the room she was in from the rest of the floor. She looked over to see the greasy man in question beckoning her out into the main office lazily.

"Make yourself useful," Ronan called out to her when she opened the door. "Go get some drinks for us from the break room downstairs. This guy's taking forever to get here."

Sarah glanced back at the conference room, not crazy about leaving the teenage girl alone with Ronan and the other men while she went downstairs. But if Matt was here, then the timing was perfect; maybe she could speak louder if she was on a different floor. And it wasn't like she could do much to protect the girl from Ronan or the others anyway.

"I thought you wanted me to watch the hostage," Sarah pointed out, not wanting to seem too eager to get away.

"She'll be fine for five minutes. How long does it take you to grab some drinks? Do you need a map?" Ronan said mockingly, and a few of the guys sitting near him snickered.

Sarah barely registered the condescending comment as she disappeared down the stairs. She had just exited the stairwell on the floor below and was heading towards the break room kitchen, debating whether or not to try calling out to Matt again, when without warning the lights went out and the entire building was plunged into darkness. Sarah stopped in her tracks, raising her eyes to the ceiling.

She heard a muffled commotion above her as Ronan's men reacted to the darkness with surprise. The office building was sandwiched closely between two taller buildings, allowing light in only from the streetlights out front, which were too weak to illuminate more than a few feet of office space in front of the windows. The rest of the office was lost in total darkness.

Sarah waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark and listened to the muffled footsteps upstairs, trying to pinpoint if any of them belonged to the vigilante. She slowly started moving away from the weak light of the windows, towards where she thought the staircase door was, extending her hand out clumsily to find the wall for guidance.

Suddenly, she felt a strong arm snake around her waist from behind, pulling her back against a firm chest, and a hand settled over her mouth, muffling the startled yelp she let out at the contact.

"Don't scream," came a familiar low voice in her ear. "It's me."

Sarah closed her eyes briefly in relief. She nodded, and Matt slowly took his hand off her mouth and turned her around so that she was facing him. She could barely make out his shadowy form in the dark, despite him being only inches in front of her.

"I swear I didn't know they were planning this," she said quickly. "I tried to warn you—"

"I know. I heard your message," Matt said. "Figured I'd come find you."

Sarah glanced up nervously at the general area where she knew the security camera was, not wanting to be recorded casually chatting with Daredevil. There would probably be no talking her way out of that one. "Are the cameras out too, or just the lights?"

"Everything. I cut the power. Don't need them to have any extra advantages tonight," he said, and her stomach dropped as she realized he must be having doubts about his fighting abilities as well. She had really been hoping that it was just her. "I already took care of the reinforcements next door. They're barricaded into the building; they won't be able to get out in time to be a problem."

"Well, that's good, but that still leaves nearly fifteen guys up there guarding the girl, Matt," Sarah said anxiously. "And you were literally passed out on your couch from injuries just a couple of days ago. Please tell me you have some sort of master plan, here."

Matt didn't say anything, which was less than reassuring. He tilted his face up towards the ceiling, and she assumed he was listening to the noise upstairs.

"Is there just the one staircase?" he asked her.

"Yeah...why?" she answered slowly.

"Elevator's out. Stairs are the only way down. Shouldn't be too hard to draw them down here, and then I can use the stairwell as a bottleneck. They can only fit through the stairwell door by two, maybe three men at a time. I can handle that," Matt said.

Sarah chewed the inside of her cheek nervously. It seemed like a shaky plan—if it could even count as a plan—but it made more sense than him heading directly into the trap laid out for him upstairs, at least. And he'd have the advantage of the almost complete darkness enveloping the building.

She jumped when she felt his gloved hand on her upper arm.

"Come with me." Matt started quickly leading her through the room, towards the stairwell. He was moving swiftly, and in the darkness she was clumsy and disoriented. She stumbled over a cord on the floor, and he caught her other arm, easily steering her around the obstacles in the room. The irony of being led through the dark by a blind man momentarily crossed her mind, before being brushed aside by more important matters.

Matt let go when they made it to the corner about ten feet past the door to the stairwell, where the weak light from the streetlamps didn't reach.

"You should be safe here. When they come out of the stairwell, they'll be going the other way, towards me. Stay low to the ground," he said firmly. "Don't scream. And don't move until I come get you."

Sarah nodded, her stomach twisting in trepidation as the oncoming fight got that much closer.

A flash of lightning lit up the room, and she blinked in surprise when she saw that Matt was no longer standing in front of her. She jumped at the accompanying thunder and squinted around as darkness fell over the room again, but she couldn't place him among any of the shadows.

There was a loud crash of shattering glass as a chair flew through one of the windows on the opposite side of the room. The footsteps on the floor above her quickened as the armed men rushed to come downstairs. She supposed this was what Matt had meant when he said it'd be easy to get their attention.

The door to the staircase flew open, and Sarah quickly slid down the wall as another flash of lightning illuminated the room. She was far enough away from the windows that the lightning didn't touch the shadows concealing her hiding place, but with the staircase between her and the windows she was able to briefly see the outline of three men emerging from the doorway.

She could hear the sounds of fighting start immediately: blows landing and strangled yelps of pain being cut off suddenly. She saw the silhouettes of the first two men go down almost immediately. Matt might be injured, but the darkness was his territory, and it was clearly helping him regain the upper hand. One of the men still in the stairwell was apparently smart enough to try turning his phone's built-in flashlight, because a beam of light illuminated Matt mid-kick as he slammed his foot into his opponent's chest, sending the larger man flying backwards into the stairwell. It seemed to create some sort of domino effect as Sarah heard a few bodies tumble backwards down the stairs, including whoever had been aiming the flashlight.

A few more men poured out of the small doorway, and from the sound of it Matt was dispatching them just as steadily. He wasn't moving as fast as he had been the last time he'd crashed a meeting at Orion, but he wasn't losing either. She could hear a small thwick as one of Ronan's goons repeatedly shot his dart gun at the vigilante, whose silhouette she could see against the window, agilely flipping out of the way. Whoever was shooting the dart gun yelled in pain, and there was a loud clatter as the tranquilizer gun flew out of his hand and skidded across the floor, landing a few feet away from Sarah.

Sarah impulsively leaned forward and snatched the gun before retreating back to her shadowy hiding place. Of course, she had no idea how to actually use the thing, and she didn't dare try to shoot any of the men that Matt was fighting. She could only see vague outlines against the light from the windows, save for when lightning illuminated the room. They were all moving too fast—either of their own accord or because Matt was knocking them around—for her to be able to aim without risking hitting Matt himself.

She could still hear footsteps in the stairwell, but they were getting farther away. Some of the men were making a run for it, she realized. She would bet everything she owned that Ronan was one of them.

It seemed for a minute like there were no more coming, but then a large shape shuffled out of the stairwell, looking oddly misshapen, as though it had too many limbs. She realized with a sinking sensation that it was one of Ronan's men—possibly the giant Russian—holding the teenage hostage in front of him like a small human shield.

"Hey!" he yelled in a heavily accented voice. Definitely the large Russian. "Don't move! I've got the girl, and I swear to god I will cut her throat open!"

She couldn't see well enough in the dark to tell how Matt reacted to the threat. The sounds of the fight faltered, but didn't stop; even if Matt wanted to get to the girl, the three men fighting him weren't about to stop. The man's back was to Sarah, and he was stupidly waving the knife around as he made his threats, instead of keeping it at the girl's throat.

Sarah's eyes fell on the shadowy outline of a fire extinguisher about two feet to her left. As quietly as possible, she took a few steps closer to it, hoping that the men fighting Matt would be too busy to see what was about to happen. Lightning lit up the room, and she waited for the thunder to follow and mask the sound and she lifted the extinguisher from its place.

She swung hard and the fire extinguisher connected with the man's skull with a sickening metal thud. But her swing wasn't strong enough, and he just staggered forward, disoriented but not unconscious. However, it did the job of making him release the teenage girl, who stumbled away from his grip. Before the large man could turn towards Sarah, Matt appeared in front of him, catching him under the chin with a sharp uppercut and then yanking his head down to connect with his knee. Sarah lurched forward and grabbed the younger girl's arm, pulling her away from the blur of shadows as the two men fought.

Another streak of lightning, just enough to see the outlines of the last two men left standing, not including the large Russian that Matt was fighting. Both of them had tranquilizer guns in their hands and were firing in Matt's general direction. But they didn't have the advantage of a lit window to frame their targets like Sarah's angle did, and their darts were missing by several feet.

The teenage girl was struggling against Sarah's grip in panic, obviously not understanding that Sarah was trying to help her. She thrashed violently as Sarah tried to keep them both in the shadows and out of sight.

"Shh—please, stop—you have to stay here—it's not safe yet—" Sarah hissed desperately, trying to keep a grip on the girl's arms, but she kept flailing wildly until Sarah's fingers slipped away. Before Sarah could react, the younger girl was making a mad dash across the room.

She made it about halfway across the room before two stray darts hit her almost simultaneously; one in the neck and one in her side. She stumbled immediately as the tranquilizer moved quickly through her small frame. Sarah watched in horror as the girl swayed for a few moments and then dropped, unconscious. Her head bounced off the floor with a disturbing crack.

At almost the same time, Matt landed a final blow and the Russian man fell to the ground. His defeat seemed to rattle the other two men, who quickly darted through the stairwell door and down the stairs, leaving only Sarah and Matt with several unconscious bodies, including the young girl.

Sarah scrambled over to the girl and dropped to her knees next to the her, checking her pulse with shaking hands. The heartbeat pulsing beneath her skin felt thready and sluggish. She remembered the tattooed man saying that four darts would be enough to stop Daredevil's heart; this girl was less than half his size, and she'd been hit by two.

She heard footsteps as Matt approached. He was moving gingerly, having clearly re-opened some of his wounds and probably earned a few more.

"We—we need to call an ambulance," she told him frantically, looking up at his shadowy outline.

"They're already coming. Cops, too. I can hear the sirens."

"Her heart's going to stop," Sarah whispered blankly, looking back down at the teenager. "Oh, my god. She's going to die."

"No, she's not," he said firmly, taking her by the arm and pulling her to her feet. "They'll get here in time. And you need to get out of here before that happens."

"What—what about you, aren't you coming?"

"Soon," he said. "I need to make sure none of these guys wakes up and does anything stupid before the cops get here."

Sarah glanced down at the girl on the floor, barely able to see her in the dim light coming through the windows. Her breathing was so shallow that Sarah couldn't even see her chest rising or falling. She tried not to think about how soon her heart might stop if the paramedics didn't arrive quickly enough.

"What if they come after her in the hospital?" Sarah asked worriedly.

"I know someone on the police force," Matt said. "I'll tell him to put a detail of clean cops on her room."

Finally, Sarah was able to hear the sirens too, meaning they must be closer. A few blocks away, maybe.

"Sarah. You need to go. Now."

With a last glance at the unconscious girl, Sarah turned and ran towards the stairwell. When she got to the ground level she snatched her purse from behind her desk, hurriedly tossing into it the tranquilizer gun she hadn't even realized she as still holding. Then she took an extra few seconds to dip into Ronan's office and grab her cell phone off the desk before darting out the door and into the rainy night, not slowing down until she got to the subway station.

➳

The next day, the aftermath of Ronan's plan going awry ended up being worse than expected. As Sarah had predicted, Ronan had been one of the men who had turned tail and ran away when the situation went downhill. The small bright side was that when Sarah claimed that she, too, had run from the scene, no one seemed to doubt it. Only a few of the men from the night before had been arrested, if they happened to have outstanding warrants. Beyond that, the cops had no proof of a crime, beyond the unconscious teenage girl that no one claimed to know about, and they were suspiciously slow to investigate further. From the gossip going around the place, it sounded like the girl had yet to wake up, and that she did have the police detail Matt had promised, much to Ronan's displeasure.

Now it was close to eight o'clock the next night, and Sarah was still at Orion. For the second night in a row, she had been told to stay hours late, but at least this time she knew why. Jason had been out of town for the last couple of days, and he got back in tonight. He'd made it clear that he wanted to see Ronan as soon as he got back; the discussion of what had happened last night apparently couldn't wait til morning. And Ronan, ever the petulant child, had informed Sarah that if he had to stay late to meet with Jason, she sure as hell wasn't allowed to go home.

So she found herself still doing paperwork three hours past when she was supposed to have gone home, waiting for Ronan to return from his meeting upstairs with Jason so she could leave.

Finally, she heard Ronan coming down the stairs. He burst through the stairwell door forcefully, making her jump, then stalked straight by her and into his office. She could hear him rummaging around, slamming drawers and cabinets. Not sure what was going on, but thinking it best to stay out of the way, she tried to focus on her paperwork again.

It was only a few minutes before Ronan came back out, carrying a cardboard box and scowling furiously.

"You know what this is?" Ronan demanded.

Sarah looked at him blankly. "A...box?"