American comics: May the Holy Light deceive you

Chapter 22 The Chitauri Invasion - Part 3

The sewers of America are a very attractive place, not only for criminals and homeless people, but also for many superheroes who have set up secret hideouts there.

Beneath a street in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, lies a hidden space filled with various weapons and supplies—the secret base of Frank Cassel, the Punisher.

The space here is very cramped, yet there are six people—three men and three women—crammed into it.

The Punisher Frank Cassel, Daredevil Matt Murdoch, Wonder Man Luke Cage, Mist Knight Misty Knight, Phantom Assassin Erica, and Echo Maya Lopez, who was born deaf and mute and lost her right leg.

Everyone was doing their own thing, and the room was very quiet.

The quiet environment was incredibly oppressive. After a long while, Misty Knight, unable to bear it any longer, tapped the table with her metal right hand and said, "Are we just going to hide like this and do nothing?"

Sitting opposite her, Maya Lopez understood what she said from her lip movements and responded with hand gestures: "What else can we do?"

Leaning back on the sofa, wearing a red, tight-fitting long dress with a slit up to her waist, and her long, slender, white legs draped over the coffee table, Erica said lazily, "I'm also feeling pretty bored. How about we go up to the ground and have some more fun?"

Matt Murdoch stopped wiping the stick, frowned, and looked at her: "Erica!"

Luke Cage: "We cannot implicate innocent ordinary people."

Frank Cassel, who was disassembling a single-soldier aircraft, didn't say anything, but his thoughts were the same as the other two.

Erica complained, "Ugh, it's awful being around idiots like you. If I'd known I was going to be a local rat, I would have left with Kingpin."

"Sorry, I forgot you have a grudge against my boss." Erica apologized to her insincerely when she saw her boss's adopted daughter, Maya Lopez, glaring at her.

The room became quiet again.

Erica's words were harsh, but they were absolutely right; they were like ground rats now.

When aliens invade Manhattan, the six of them from Hell's Kitchen are summoned by Luke Cage to fight against the aliens.

At first, things were fine, but as the number of aliens increased and they used powerful weapons like bombs and missiles, the six of them were forced to flee in panic. If Matt Murdoch hadn't used some special gadgets, they would have suffered casualties.

In less than half a day, Manhattan fell, followed by a bloody and horrific massacre.

The six men set out again to intercept and kill a lone alien in a remote location. This operation was both successful and a failure.

The hunted alien soldiers were killed by them, but after they withdrew, the area was razed to the ground by the enraged aliens.

Now, they dared not attack the alien soldiers anymore, and instead turned their attention to those who took advantage of the chaos to commit crimes.

However, the operation was not going smoothly. Whenever the fighting became too loud, the aliens would come running and indiscriminately attack everyone nearby.

After this happened several times, everyone learned that to survive, they needed to keep quiet, and they also learned that if they encountered an enemy they couldn't defeat, they could use gunfire to threaten the enemy into leaving.

To avoid implicating innocent people, the six had no choice but to hide in this base.

Of the six, the one who suffered the most was Matt Murdoch. His senses were so acute that he could perceive everything within a five-kilometer radius. The screams, pleas, and cries for help from different people tormented him to the point of despair.

Erica realized this, which is why she suggested going to the ground to cause trouble again.

She didn't care whether ordinary people would be implicated, but she couldn't bear to see her ex-boyfriend suffer like this.

Moreover, she was fed up with this life of being a groundhog; she would rather die a quick and painless death than continue living in such misery.

"This can't go on. We have to do something, right?" Even the hot-tempered Misty Knight couldn't stand it any longer, and she asked again.

Luca Cage: "We've lost all contact with the outside world, and we don't yet know how many aliens we have or how large the area we've invaded is."

Frank Cassel: "The area affected should be very large. If it were only New York, the military would have already attacked. The aliens are not powerful enough to be invincible."

Erica said maliciously, "The United States might have already fallen. Don't forget the nuclear explosions that happened before the alien invasion."

Everyone fell silent.

After a long silence, Luke Cage spoke: "We need to figure out the current situation on the outside, and at the same time prepare for the worst."

Erica: "You make it sound so simple. The only way to find out what's going on outside is to leave here."

Manhattan is now an isolated island. All exit routes have been destroyed. How do we get out? By swimming?

Luke Cage: "We're not leaving, we're going to Stark Tower!"

This time, Erica fell silent. That place was a safe zone that countless people longed for, but she preferred to call it the testing ground of the evil god.

On the night of the fall, the entire Manhattan lost power and fell into darkness, but Stark Tower remained brightly lit and was not attacked by aliens.

Not only Stark Tower, but also buildings and people within a ten-kilometer radius of the tower were not attacked. In fact, the aliens provided everyone there with ample supplies.

This was clearly abnormal, but in order to survive, countless people rushed there like madmen.

Most people died on the way, and only a few made it there. But they were not truly safe; instead, they were met with bullets and enslavement by the locals.

Only 50,000 people are allowed to survive in the safe zone at the same time, and 500 people will be eliminated every day!

The two sides began fighting for the right to survive and the resources to survive, and the fighting only stopped when only more than 30,000 people remained.

Then, the management of the area fell into the hands of various armed groups, and in order to obtain more survival supplies, they limited the number of people in the safe zone to 30,000.

Those who did not comply with them, as well as the elderly, the weak, the sick, and the disabled, were subject to a daily "head tax" levied in a planned manner.

Once these people are exhausted, the death zone outside the safe zone becomes a dead end that countless people dare not tread. Very few people can reach it anymore, and those inside the safe zone are also unable to leave.

In order to pay the "head tax," these armed groups had no choice but to start selecting worthless people from the ordinary people they ruled.

If things continued this way, everyone would eventually die, but driven by ample food and the instinct for survival, everyone deliberately forgot about this problem.

In order to survive, those who were chosen chose to fight back, but many more turned their attention to their own family and strangers.

The daytime there is peaceful, but at night it turns into a hell of hunting and counter-hunting.

Luke Cage: "That's the only place we might get news from the outside world, so we went there!"

Matt Murdoch worried, "We're being closely watched by those aliens. If we're discovered there, will they take their anger out on the people there?"

Frank Kassel picked up a rifle magazine and began loading bullets, saying in a cold, emotionless voice, "There's only a pack of cowardly beasts there!"