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It's evening, but not so late. Besides, Anya has heard that Jessica Jones works all kinds of odd hours. So Anya Corazon arrives in her most practical clothes, hoping for a chance to chat with with the female investigator. She's in jeans and boots, with a black sweater, and a shoulder-strapped satchel.
She comes down the hallway, inside the building and knocks on the door marked 'Alias'. Anya is extra alert though. As Spider-Girl, people don't come up behind her and surprise her. As Anya, anything can happen. Better safe than sorry.
*
The voice that answers is decidedly not Jessica Jones, nor is it one of her employees. It's the voice that belongs to Matthew Murdock.
"Come in, it's unlocked."
Murdock is also in his street clothes; a nice working man's suit, sans tie; the black number has been draped over the back of a chair, at a table where a fresh beer can be seen, 1/3 of which has already been drank.
As for Murdock, he is standing in front of a wall near the door. There are photos attached to the wall, and strings that run from photograph to photograph. Murdock is perched upon a chair, which is up on two of its four legs, in a display of critically precise balance. His right hand hovers over one of the photographs, with fingertips that gently brush over the surface again and again.
*
Reaching for the door automatically at the invitation, Anya freezes, cocking her jaw to one side, thinking. Man's voice. Familiar for some reason. But it's so unexpected she can't place it. "Que demonios… Pull it together," Anya mutters to herself. It's probably just Jones' boyfriend.
Anya opens the door and steps inside, closing it quietly behind her. "Hey, is Ms. Jo-" Then she completes turning from the door and takes in the room. And the wall. And the guy perched on the chair.
And she freezes again. She takes a deep breath. And then another, looking around frantically for anyone else here. She voice is a harsh whisper, not angry exactly, but terrified she's about to get unmasked. Her heart is beating like a kettle drum. "Jesus, man. What. The fuck. Is going on here?"
*
"Jessica was arrested," Murdock tells her without turning from the task at hand. Literally. His fingers move from the photograph and begin tracing one string down and to the right, where they land upon the next one. His tone of voice is dull, and yet deeply determined, as if something had lit a fire deep inside.
"Believe it or not, I was about ten photographs away from dangling tacos out the widow," he tells her, injecting at least some measure of humor into the situation. "There's some kind of conspiracy going on here, mi querida arana," he tells her. "I'm worried the police may be involved."
The beating of Anya's heart has him worried. He pauses the inspection, and turns his head slightly toward her general direction. "Hey. Don't worry. I really can't see you, but… truth is, I know people by much more than their faces. You… can't really hide from me." He offers a half-hearted smile, knowing it may not mean much. His secret identity is just as important to him as the next vigilante, which doesn't entirely explain why he isn't in costume here. No, there's a reason for that, and it was a calculated risk. "Gotta admit," he says, while turning back to the photo map. "I didn't expect you to walk through that door."
*
"Shit man…" Anya says, still kind of stuck in the situation. "Look, I got people, you know? I can't…" She sighs and runs her fingers through her hair. "I mean, I guess it /is/ kind of even. But we can't go around with you calling me Spider-Girl," she whispers when she says the hero name. "Let's just pick… yeah, you can just call me Anya, when we're in plain clothes, ok?" She makes a show of sounding like she's pulling a random name out of the air.
But on top of all that, she is drawn to the photographs on the wall. Her mind is too sharp to just leave a mystery like that hanging. She unslings her satchel and sets it down, stepping up to examining the pictures. After a deep breath she asks, "Ok, so what is all this stuff?"
*
"Yeah, I got people, too," answers Matthew. His response isn't really that short, but there's a tension there. They're in the same boat, after all. "Anya, okay. And I'm… I dunno, just… call me Bob."
He visibly winces.
"No, Robert. Matt. Just, Matt."
He decidedly leans away from the photographs, gently setting the chair back on all fours before hopping down. His shoes are all but noiseless when they strike the old, half-rotted hardwood floor. Up comes a hand, which runs through his hair, unkempt as it is, and for a moment he just stares blindly at the wall.
"We obviously both know Jessica Jones," he begins. "She… stumbled upon something. Missing person's case. Cops snatched her up because the girl she was looking for turned up right here, at Alias, bloody, wounded, tortured." He leaves out the gory details for now. "Turns out she's one of nine missing kids, all from Hell's Kitchen High. Classmates claim she's a mutant, but the father denied it. Problem is, they're all being reported as runaways, not kidnappings. All allegedly mutants. No police reports, so, nothing official on record. No reason for law enforcement to give a damn." He pauses, glancing Anya's way. "I don't suppose the name 'Charlotte Ferguson' means anything to you?"
*
"Ok. Matt." Anya says with a smirk that even shows in her voice. "And yeah, of course. Ferguson was all over the news," she says, going back to study the photographs. "But how is this all supposed to link…" She trails off, tracing the connections, the almost inaudible sound of her fingertip tracing twine. "I mean, this is St. Mary's, right? I've been there. And if you put these on a map… Yeah, this is kinda same area. Where was Jones wanting to look next?"
*
"Well, she's got people working on that already," Matt tells Anya. "Ava, Remy, and Alexander, all people she has following different threads. She said that Charlotte Ferguson's boyfriend was trouble; believes she met him at St. Mary's soup kitchen. I've got to get in touch with a man named David North; he knows where Jessica's case files are. They're scattered all over the office, probably intentionally out of order, there's no way I could find them."
With a sigh, he turns around and walks back over to that beer. It's snatched up from where it's left a ring on the table, and he downs a good two gulps in short order. "Thing is, I'm not really concerned about those… those other investigations. If this thing is being covered up, then those other people - Remy, Ava, Alexander? - they're probably wasting their time. Thing to do…" He knocks the bottle against the table twice. "Find the people responsible for the coverup." His brow furrows. "I'll bet they had something to do with dumping Ferguson off here. Think about it. Beyond the sheer intimidation factor, it got Jones arrested. They might not charge her with anything. She could be out in hours. But her name's all over the news, and I promise you something, that is not good for Jessica's headspace."
*
Anya's brow furrows, at first thinking Daredevil was hoping she'd rifle through Jones' case files, but then she nods when he starts to explain. She paces while he talks, tapping her chin with one finger. Eventually she slips her shoes off and puts her back to a wall. One foot goes back, then the other, and she's sitting on her heels, stuck to the wall. Her favorite sit.
"Yeah ok, I think I see where you're going. Especially if they think Jones is solo on this, which is kinda her rep on the street," Anya says, partly to Matt, and partly to herself, thinking aloud, working the problem verbally. "Which means they don't need her jail. They just need her out of the way for /right now/."
Anya blinks as it becomes clear. "Shit Matt! They're covering something up right now! Moving it, or changing stuff, or leaning on people. Right now. While she's out of the way. Damnit. How do we narrow this search?"
*
It would seem that Matt is coming to the same conclusion. A hair behind Anya, for his head was in a different space; but the urgency behind her curse has him setting the beer down and closing the distance. "You're right," he says, then frowns deeply. "Fucking Mother of Christ, you're right!"
Matt steps back and out of the way. His head turns rapidly from side to side, neck straining against itself. Then, he draws in some air through his nose, and his eyes visibly go wide behind the circular shades.
"Blood."
He rushes past Anya and over toward the front door. He grasps the handle, feels it, then pulls it open. He drops to his hands and knees, face near the floor, nose flaring. "Soaked into the wood itself, but fresh. Can you see the stains? You should. If anyone cleaned it, they didn't do a good job."
*
"You can /smell/ that? Damn…" Scrambling along the walls to perch above where Matt is looking, Anya nods, and then says, "Yeah, shit, yeah. It's there, barely. But it's kind of a pool, not all splattery. Not like the fight was here, you know?" Anya may not know the technical terms for blood spatter analysis, but she definitely has an eye for details. "Does that mean… they must have carried a bleeding body here from somewhere else. There's gotta be drops, right?"
*
"They either carried her here, or they left her nearby, and instructed her to come here," answers Matt. "Either way, whatever happened to her didn't happen here. There's no way. So, there should be a trail…" He looks up and toward the hallway. "And with that trail… other things that don't belong."
Matt scrambles in an almost catlike way back from the door, then rises to his feet. He looks upward a bit, then nods his head toward Anya's satchel. "You bring that skinny suit with you?" he asks. The fact that he's unbuttoning his shirt might seem inappropriate, but a hint of red beneath sets that all at ease.
"I prefer not to wear a jacket when I'm on the hunt."
*
"Always," Anya says with a feral grin. She's ready to get this hunt on the road. Her suit is also on under her clothes though. She just has to grab her mask out of the bag, which she dons with a quickness, and tucks her street clothes back into that bag. "Let's roll." Spider-Girl falls in behind Daredevil, letting him do the lion's share of the tracking, choosing to keep her eyes up and ready for whatever danger they're about to blunder into.
*
"Yeah, I can smell it." Matt won't admit it to her, but… he can smell anything, with virtually microscopic detail. The change comes quickly, Matt choosing to leave his belongings behind at Alias Investigations. "One thing," he says. "Get some paper, leave a note. Address it to… anyone. David North. Tell them what's happening."
Moments later, Daredevil is creeping down the hallway on his hands and knees, face close to the dirty floor. Thank goodness for masks… they serve a greater purpose than simply concealing one's identity. For the moment, however, he's reconsidering the whole full-face mask thing. He doesn't need to see it to know that the hallway is pretty gross.
"Oh… now that's interesting," he says. "The EMT's… their shoes have a unique smell. Something else, too… I'm not quite sure." He pauses, spinning around to look in Spider-Girl's direction. "Okay, now we've got two threads. The EMTs… probably legit, so they probably have records of where they took her, and hospital records are usually fairly reliable. If we find where they took her, we can find Ferguson, and I'll bet you someone's looking after her. Other thread is… finding who brought her here, by tracking her back to them. You said she was in the papers? Was there a photograph?"
*
Anya scribbles down the required note and leaves it pinned to the top of Jessica's desk. Turning back, she nods and says, "Yeah, definitely. I know what she looks like. And those are both good leads, but the EMTs /could/ just be patsies, paid off to do some dirty work, and not know much more. The other guys though? That's got my vote. That /has/ to give us something."
*
"Maybe," Daredevil answers. They'll get there. "Come on!"
He leads Anya downstairs in silence, creeping along with barely a sound. Once they've reached the lower level and the main entryway, he pins himself up against a wall in order to stay in relative shadow. The exposed lower half of his face is grimacing; it's fairly quiet outside, especially given rumors of mutant, alien space bugs crawling all over the Kitchen, but that may not last. "Her blood," he whispers. "I can smell it. Some of it's… older. Not by much. It does go in different directions." He sighs deeply, shaking his head. "We don't have time to round up the others. I think we need to split up, cover more ground. Do you agree, la arana?"
*
Anya follows along, just as quietly, still keeping a keen eye out for conspirators, or bugs, or who knows what else. "Splitting up makes sense, except I can't smell this stuff. Most of it I can't even see, Dee. I'm sorry. I'm just backup until we find her. We have to just pick one and hope for the best. What do you think?"
*
Anya's words bring a small grin to Matt's face. "You don't have to smell blood if you're looking for a hospital patient." He reaches into his utility belt and produces a handful of small, grey tubes. "These are microflares. Start with Metro-General. If you find her? Open the window, aim straight." He produces one in particular, holds it between his finger and thumb with the other fingers tucked safely behind. "Pull the string, let go when it fires." He demonstrates, not wanting Anya to burn her hand. "And I'll be there quickly as possible. If you come up dry, we'll meet right back here, in… one hour."