Evening settled slowly over Hell’s Kitchen, the kind that dulled the edges of the city without ever really softening it. The light outside had gone from gold to gray, bleeding through the office windows in tired streaks.

Nelson & Murdock still had their lights on.

The place looked… lived in, if you were being generous. If you weren’t—it looked like a forgotten corner no one had bothered to clean up properly. The lingering smell of old cigarettes clung stubbornly to the walls, mixing with stale coffee that had been reheated one too many times.

Foggy sat hunched over on his side of the office, tie loosened, sleeves rolled up, a newspaper spread out in front of him like it personally offended him. He dragged a highlighter across a column, then stopped, squinting.

“Okay—petty theft, public intoxication, assault—no, that guy definitely did it…” He muttered to himself, flipping the page with a frustrated snap. “Where are all the innocent poor people in need of really good, very affordable legal representation, huh?”

A half-empty cup of coffee sat dangerously close to his elbow—the latest victim of Foggy’s ongoing “borrowing” from the office next door.

Out in the main area, Karen sat at her desk, the glow of her laptop reflecting faintly in her eyes. The Wi-Fi dragged its feet with every click, each page loading with irritating slowness.

“Come on…” She murmured under her breath, tapping her finger lightly against the desk as another article took its time. “You’d think in this neighborhood wifi would at least be… efficient.”

She glanced toward the office door for a moment, then back to the screen, scrolling through another list of arrests, her focus sharp despite the sluggish tech.

Behind the frosted glass, on the side of the office without the view, Matt sat at his desk.

A neat stack of files rested beneath his hands—though “neat” was more habit than necessity. His fingers moved lightly over the paper, tracing the braille, flipping pages with quiet precision. To anyone watching, it might’ve looked like routine work.

It wasn’t.

Each name, each report—he knew them in ways the files didn’t explain. The cadence of a heartbeat under stress. The shift in breath before a lie. The sound of a fist connecting in a dark alley three nights ago.

His jaw tightened, just slightly.

The city was… quiet tonight.

Unusually quiet.

Out beyond the walls, Hell’s Kitchen carried on—distant sirens, muffled voices, the hum of traffic bleeding into something almost rhythmic. But beneath it, in the spaces most people couldn’t hear—

Nothing urgent. Nothing immediate.

For now.

Matt leaned back just a fraction in his chair, head tilting ever so slightly as he listened—not to the room, but through it. Past it. Searching.

Waiting.

From the other side of the office, Foggy let out a long sigh. “I’m just saying,” he called out, louder now, “statistically, there should be at least one wrongly accused guy having the worst day of his life right now, and we’re just… missing it.”

Karen didn’t look up. “Give it time.”

A beat.

Then, dry—“It’s Hell’s Kitchen.”

Silence settled again, thin but not uncomfortable.

For once, the city wasn’t screaming.

And for a moment—

Neither were they.