"It would actually be better if I handled this, after all, an Avenger is far more convincing than an urban legend."
Listening to Spider-Man's lament on the other end of the satellite phone, Daredevil, who had already shed his costume and returned to his Matt Murdock guise, couldn't help but chuckle, comforting the young man on the other end: "But you said it yourself, if you show up, it will put Hydra on even higher alert. Conversely, while Daredevil is an urban legend, neither his abilities nor his threat level are significant, so even if Hydra finds out, their vigilance won't increase much."
In the initial plan, the intention was truly to have Luke Cage swallow a tracker and then locate Hydra's new base. However, Jessica Jones raised two questions regarding this: first, how to ensure the tracker's signal wouldn't be jammed inside the Hydra base, and second, how to guarantee that Hydra's attitude towards Luke Cage would be capture, not execution.
Therefore, Matt was there not just to promptly prevent Serpent Solutions from taking Luke and handing him over to the police, but also as a contingency. If Hydra chose to execute Luke on the spot, Daredevil would appear to confront them. If Daredevil couldn't solve the problem alone, he had even called for backup.
All in all, until Hydra's headquarters were found and a direct confrontation initiated, Spider-Man had best avoid public visibility.
Serpent Solutions' eventual decision to take Luke also confirmed part of their hypothesis: Hydra indeed needed Luke. And hearing the name "Serpent Solutions," Peter thought of Marvel's Serpent Society. How to put it, he honestly didn't have much impression of this entire organization. He couldn't remember who its members were or what their abilities were. The only one he vaguely remembered was Madame Viper, Ophelia, whose right face seemed disfigured, and who had received blessings from the demon Chthon, granting her immortality or something.
But most crucially, Madame Viper herself was an absolute high-ranking member of Hydra, and the Serpent Society was her dedicated enforcer group. This further confirmed Peter's suspicion—all of this truly was Hydra behind the scenes, not merely a conclusion drawn from simple deduction.
As for what happened after Luke Cage's arrest, that was a problem for the lawyer, Matt Murdock, to solve.
"I won't say a word until I see my lawyer."
At the police station, Luke Cage, possessing superhuman strength and unbreakable skin, chose neither to escape nor to defend himself. Facing police interrogation, he sat obediently in the chair, handcuffed, repeating only that one sentence.
It drove the police crazy. Buddy, you're just a dock worker, where would you get a lawyer? And you don't have family or friends, otherwise would you hire one now?
The perplexed police suddenly heard a knock on the door, looked towards it, and received a shocking piece of news: the lawyer for Carl Lucas, who claimed to be Luke Cage, had arrived.
You actually have a lawyer?
So the police saw a smiling Matt Murdock. He arrived very promptly, so promptly that his arrival was almost seamless with Cage's entry into the police station. Was it strange? A coincidence? It was meant to be a coincidence, to tell the other side: we planned this.
"Excuse me, I need to consult with my client first."
As he spoke, Matt pulled out a few green Franklins and smiled. The police understood, took the money, and left, leaving only Matt and Luke to synchronize their stories in the interrogation room.
"Just like we discussed, you'll tell the police your story. How you were wrongly imprisoned, how the US military and government mistreated you, how they transformed you into a super-soldier, and how you had to escape because of the abuse, then used that power to fight for justice."
In a certain room at the police station, a recording device captured the entire conversation happening in the interrogation room. It was a lawyer's subtle persuasion: "It's not the judge who ultimately decides your fate, but the jury. You need to tell a good story. In this story, you must be the victim, a kind person, to make the jury sympathize with you."
"So that's why you made me pretend to be a superhero."
"Exactly!" Matt Murdock's excited voice echoed in the recording room: "These days, everyone loves superheroes, especially repentant superheroes like you. You've already saved many people; your presence is already on social media. Next, the focus will be on compensation from the federal government. They illegally conducted human experiments on you, so sue them for that reason. And secretly leak the news to the media—you must leak it to the media, otherwise your safety won't be guaranteed."
"Think about it. When the media hears news of human experimentation by the US military, they'll swarm like sharks smelling blood. Then you can extort a hefty sum from the federal government."
Ophelia cut off the recording.
She had originally wondered if Daredevil had some scheme, but no, this Luke Cage, at the end of the day, wasn't really a superhero; he was just a common thug. He hadn't anticipated Hydra's involvement behind all of this (normally, without the serum sample from Black Cat, it would have been impossible to discover). The only troublesome part was that lawyer; he was threatening to take this matter to the media.
If that happened, there might not be enough time to get Luke Cage into the lab.
Ophelia, pondering how to eliminate the lawyer and extract Luke Cage before everything was exposed, suddenly came up with an idea. However, this idea required a bit of setup. Weren't they planning to tell the media about the "superhero" angle, sensationalizing it and causing trouble for Hydra?
But all of this was actually very easy to resolve. If Luke Cage "voluntarily" broke out of his cell and escaped from custody, then the "superhero" narrative would fall apart. They only needed to find someone within the Serpent Society who could control Luke Cage's strength and bring him out.
However, no one had yet received the complete Super Soldier Serum; they still needed to wait.
Just then, Ophelia received a new message from Yamashiro. He once again needed a batch of "volunteers" with specific gene sequences.