when the hero comes to the one who believes in him¹

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Murdock s' apartment was busy, and in addition to the permanent residents of this living space, there were also their guests, whom Matt and Elektra had long equated with family - the Wilsons and Peter.  Little Daniel sat on the knees of the brown-haired man, constantly putting various “sweets” on his plate, and the guy ate in pain, cursing himself for his long tongue - well, who asked him to somehow say that because of enhanced regeneration he is always hungry?  Now the guy was reaping the fruits of his talkativeness - the little girl decided to feed the guy half of the food that was on the table.

"Ha, now you know the pain when you are fed!"  Wade said with a laugh, looking at the guy who was convulsively chewing on a piece of potato, while seeing a fork in front of his mouth, with a piece of meat pricked on it.  "Believe me, if the nursing person has no experience, you will know all the torments of Hell!"

“Go to hell, Wade,” having spoken, Peter sighed in martyrdom, eating another portion that Danielle offered.  Laughing, Elektra beckoned to her daughter, saying that Peter had eaten, but the girl herself did not eat.  Sighing heavily, young Murdoch got up from the guy's knees and went to her place to have dinner.  "Well, did you understand something from that nonsense that that grandfather told me?"

"No," Matt shook his head, dabbing his lips with a tissue and looking at Peter.  The man rarely wore glasses at home, so that everyone present could clearly see his white eyes, like snow, where it was impossible to see the iris or pupil.  Only with a longer examination of Daredevil's eyes could one see purple flashes in the eyeballs, which were provoked by any sound.  "But I found out exactly who you met.  Bernt Lichtenberg, better known as the Black Hand, right hand of Johann Schmidt..."

"Oh shoot really?"   Thinking on a meaningful pause, Peter tried to remember all the Germans he knew.  Only the Nazis of World War II came to mind, and among them was just one Johann, better known as the Red Skull.  "Damn it, are you sure?"

"More than that, his daughter officially announced her father's death in New York," Matt said with a nod.  "For you to understand, Bernt was one of the most dangerous Nazis after the Skull - on his hands is the blood of more than three hundred people who died during experiments on the Aryan genome, he also worked on biological weapons, which in forty-third destroyed most of the population of the European part of Russia.  And so, by 2016, he is dying at the age of one hundred and thirteen in the United States.  Do you know what scandal this is?"

"I wonder what he forgot here?"  the guy muttered.  "Wade, what do you have?"

"Daniel, have you eaten?"  Wilson asked smiling at the girl.  Sighing, Matt's daughter quickly took her plate of food with her as she headed to her room.  Perhaps this was not the best decision on the part of the parents, but they could not do otherwise - too serious topics were discussed and the child should not have listened to them.  "Who is Smith, I could not find out, too few details for an accurate description.  As for Burnt, before Matt said who he was, I didn't know anything myself, but in the end, here's what I know."

About four years ago, Germany's top geneticist suddenly breaks out of his haunted laboratories, traveling across Europe, while hiring a PMC to guard his person.  Everything would not have been so sad, and perhaps would not have attracted anyone's attention, if Bernt had not been one hundred and three years old and he would not have been disabled.  During his journey, he does not stay in any city for more than a week, in any country for more than a month, and death follows him - explosions, murders and corpses.  We, mercenaries, are not the most cowardly creatures, ready to go even against the devil himself for a certain reward, but we really don’t like it when we are set up, and this Nazi set us up exactly what, you can’t say otherwise, given the fact that the Bone Hounds and the Reds  gnolls ceased to exist not only as PMCs, but also units in general.  In general, after a year and a half, Lichtenberg went on a trip to Asia, with the same success, only he hired the most desperate and greedy thugs, and then ended up in the Southern Confederation and the USA.

"And then his path ends," Peter sighed after listening to Wade's story and taking a sip of coffee.  Silence formed around the table, as no one knew what to say - on the one hand, no one was saddened by the fate of the Nazi responsible for the death of thousands of people, but the fact that he was trying to defend himself against a more dangerous enemy was not pleasant.  "What do you know about Ultron?"

“This is one of the myths of our shop,” Copycat said with a twitch of her shoulder, as if remembering something terribly vague.  - Mostly hackers and those who actively crawl on the Internet talk about him, but sometimes Ultron is also met by those who are on “special operations”.  They say about twenty years ago, Hank Pym, together with Howard Stark, created some kind of robot that was supposed to protect America from an external threat.

"And as always, something went wrong?"  Elektra asked skeptically.  In principle, most of the stories began in this way, which gave rise to a lot of anecdotes.  "What happened?  Dr. Pym screwed up?  Stark infected the robot with his ego?  Oh, I know - everything was mixed up in him and he, instead of protecting the United States, decided to destroy it?"

"And ... Mrs. Murdock gets a million dollars for quick wits for the last answer,"  imitating the voice of Crews Terry, Vanessa said.  "But seriously, something happened in that experiment and the first terrorist robot appeared in our country, who wants to destroy humanity.  Five years ago, Fury, Barton and Coulson were able to destroy his physical shell, but the very essence of Ultron was on the Internet," Wilson said, running her finger along the rim of the cup.  "Sometimes they stumble upon him, then he tries to set them up or kill them.  They say he has an army of robots hidden somewhere in Sokovia, ready to do anything for that tin."

"In the end, two things can be taken out of all this nonsense  I was up to my ears in the stinkiest shit I could find in New York," Peter said in a not very cheerful tone, taking a sip of coffee.  "And I definitely need the help of my godfather, even if he is a black-assed cyclops."

  "By the way, did you find out why he sent two of his best operatives to Connors?"  asked Matt, the only one who knew about the meeting between Romanoff and Parker at the university.  Sighing, the boy shook his head and quickly recounted the conversation he had heard in the office.
"There is only one conclusion, they are gathering a team for something, and they have a clear shortage."

“Considering that they are ready to take the Lizard as a partner, it’s hard to disagree,” Deadpool said with a chuckle.  "In short, all I can offer is to continue to dig for these two names, maybe something will come up.  What about a riddle?  Did anyone understand what this Bernt gave us?"

“The place where he hid the flash drive is something obviously connected with space,” Peter said, scratching the back of his head.   "Two galaxies meet there, this is clearly a hint at a planetarium or something like that, but the second part ..."

"God, Peter, you're so limited," Elektra said with a sigh, rolling her eyes.  "Are you interested in anything besides biology at all?  Have you even read classical literature?  Or from the school bench was interested in biology and related subjects?"
“Well, since childhood I was sent to a school with a bias in the exact sciences,” the guy said quietly, blushing slightly.  Exactly what he was embarrassed about, Peter didn't know, but it was there.
"Not to know the legend of Altair and Vega, it's generally ... an ignoramus!"

"Altair?  Like from Assassin's Creed?"   Wade immediately perked up, who was also not very good at astronomy, but loved video games.   "It's strange, but I don't remember Vega there, maybe in some DLC.  Oh, it hurts, by the way!"

"Wade, they are talking about completely different things!  This is a love story between a bootes and a princess separated by the milky way!"  Vanessa said, slapping her husband on the back of the head.  "Altair and Vega fell in love, but Vega's father, the Heavenly Emperor, was against such a relationship, which is why he separated them.  True, he later realized that this was not his best decision, and allowed the two lovers to see each other once a year, on June 7th.  And yes, I know where they hid it all, but getting there will be more difficult."

“We are ready to listen to you, Van,” Daredevil said laughing, he also did not know the history of Altair and Vega, but was not subject to obstruction, since it was difficult for a man to read or listen to anything on TV, since his improved hearing was  both a blessing and a punishment.