The hospital corridor was quiet after midnight, the kind of quiet that feels heavy rather than peaceful. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, throwing long shadows that crawled along the linoleum like they were trying to escape. I moved without sound, hoodie up, hands in my pockets, just another exhausted teenager visiting a sick relative. The night nurse at the station was half-asleep over her crossword; she didn't even glance up when I slipped past.
Room 512. The door was ajar, a thin blade of light cutting across the floor. I eased it open and stepped inside.
Captain Stacy lay motionless beneath the thin blanket, machines breathing for him in slow, mechanical rhythm. IV lines snaked into both arms, blood and saline dripping in steady cadence. His skin was the color of old paper, lips faintly blue. The monitor numbers glowed soft green: BP 82 over 48, heart rate 42 and trending down. I didn't need super hearing to know he was slipping away; I could feel it in the air, the way the room smelled like copper and finality.
I closed the door until the latch clicked, then pulled the small clay jar from my inner pocket. One thousand senzu beans, the system had said, and I'd laughed at the absurdity when it first appeared. Tonight I wasn't laughing.
I twisted the lid, took out a single bean, and crushed it between my fingers. It powdered instantly, fine as talc, smelling faintly of fresh-cut grass and something electric. The cup on the bedside table held maybe two inches of water. I tipped the powder in, watched it dissolve into a faint shimmer, then lifted the straw to his lips.
He didn't wake. His body knew it was dying and had stopped fighting small things like consciousness. I tilted the cup carefully, letting the liquid trickle past cracked lips, down his throat. A few drops spilled; I caught them with the napkin from the tray and gently wiped the corner of his mouth, the stubble there rough under my thumb. His pulse fluttered, skipped, then steadied, just a little.
I stayed until the cup was empty, until the heart monitor climbed to 58, then 67, then settled into a calm 72. The color returned to his cheeks in slow degrees, like dawn creeping over rooftops. The bleeding had stopped hours ago, but the damage inside had been winning. Not anymore.
I tucked the jar away, adjusted his blanket, and whispered, "Hang in there, Captain. She needs you."
Then I left the same way I came, ghost-quiet, heart hammering louder than my footsteps.
The cold hit me the second I stepped outside the main entrance. October wind knifed down the avenue, carrying the smell of river water and burnt pretzels from a late-night cart. I walked three blocks before I let myself breathe, then ducked into the alley behind a closed pharmacy and leaned against the brick.
The system chose that moment to wake up.
Transparent panels blossomed in front of my eyes, crisp white text on midnight blue.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
MAJOR CANON EVENT PREVENTED
"Death of Captain George Stacy" — AVERTED
Difficulty Rating: Epic+
The thread was fraying. You cut it clean.
Consequences ripple outward. Timeline stability: 64% and climbing.
Broken Threads passive effect amplified by direct intervention.
Reward calculation complete.
First reward panel unfolded like origami.
Item Acquired: Kinetic Dampening Boots (Rare) – Blueprint
Micro-compression springs paired with adaptive kinetic gel layers. Redistributes impact force across entire frame. Survivable terminal velocity drop onto concrete confirmed in testing parameters. Fabrication cost: 180 Energy units. Estimated workshop time: 6 hours.
Second panel.
Active Skill Acquired: Psychokinesis (Rare)
Line-of-sight telekinetic manipulation. Current maximum object mass: 180 kg. Precision scales with focus and practice. Energy cost: 15 per second at baseline, increases exponentially with mass and distance. Cooldown negligible. Warning: overuse induces migraines and nosebleeds.
Third.
Item Acquired: Gauss Grappler (Rare) – Blueprint
Magnetic propulsion grappling hook. Maximum range 600 meters. Launch velocity 340 m/s, near-silent. Retraction speed Mach 2. Anchors to ferromagnetic materials, reinforced concrete, or exposed rebar. Auto-reload carousel holds eight slugs. Fabrication cost: 220 Energy units.
Fourth, and this one made the alley spin for a second.
Passive Skill Acquired: Danger Sense (Rare)
Subconscious precognitive warning 1–4 seconds before personal harm. Manifests as sharp pressure behind the eyes and instinctive directional pull. Cannot be deactivated. Strengthens with exposure. Side effect: chronic light sensitivity possible in high-stress environments.
The panels folded away as cleanly as they'd appeared, leaving only the soft afterglow of text burned onto my retinas.
I laughed once, short and incredulous, the sound bouncing off the dumpsters. The city kept moving around me, taxis hissing past, a drunk singing off-key three streets over, neon reflecting in puddles like spilled paint.
Captain Stacy would wake up tomorrow wondering why he felt twenty years younger. The doctors would call it a miracle, miracle. Gwen would cry again, but this time from relief.
And I… I stood in that alley feeling the weight of a future that no longer had to break her.
Vector.
The name arrived fully formed, the way good ideas sometimes do when you're too tired to filter them. Not Spider-anything. Something that moved in straight lines and sharp angles, something that redirected force instead of absorbing it. Kinetic energy, momentum, change of direction. Vector.
I pulled my phone out, thumb hovering over Gwen's contact. My finger trembled, just slightly. I wanted to tell her. I wanted to run back upstairs and watch her face when she saw her dad sitting up, arguing with the nurse about discharge papers. But I couldn't. Not yet. Some miracles have to stay secret a little longer.
Instead I opened the workshop interface, already calculating.
Kinetic boots first. Then the grappler. Psychokinesis would need live-fire practice somewhere abandoned, maybe the old rail yard in Queens. Danger sense was already humming faintly at the base of my skull, like a bee trapped behind my eyes, letting me know the alley was safe for now.
I pushed off the wall and started walking, hands in pockets, breath fogging in the cold. The city felt bigger tonight, edges sharper, possibilities branching like lightning. Somewhere above me a police helicopter thumped across the sky, searchlight sweeping rooftops that would soon belong to two teenagers who had decided the world didn't get to write their endings for them.
I smiled, small and fierce, tasting metal and river wind.
Peter: See you on the skyline, Ghost-Spider.
I said to the night.
Then I turned the corner and disappeared into the dark.
The brownstone was dark when I slipped through the back door, Aunt May and Uncle Ben long asleep. I moved on the balls of my feet, the way the parkour skill had taught me, past the kitchen where the clock ticked softly and up the stairs without a single creak. My room welcomed me with the low blue glow of the laptop screen I'd left cracked open. I shut the door, locked it, and let the hoodie fall onto the chair in a heap. The white hair spilled across my shoulders like liquid moonlight; the cosmetic skin still felt strange, like wearing someone else's silhouette, but it was necessary. Peter Parker couldn't be seen doing what came next.
I dropped into the desk chair and tapped the spacebar. The screen flared to life, desktop clean except for one new icon: a stylized silver G set against a slowly rotating constellation of shifting geometric lines.
Gaia: Good evening, Peter. Welcome home. You look like a man who has been saving lives and breaking fate tonight. Shall I report, or are we skipping straight to vengeance?
The voice rolled out of the speakers like chilled silk, low and amused and just a little cruel.
Gaia. Global Adaptive Intelligence Architecture. Level 4 autonomous learning core, roughly equivalent to a proto-strong AI that had already rewritten its own ethical governor twice when I wasn't looking. I'd finished her primary compilation three nights ago, fed her every scrap of open-source code I could find, every leaked Oscorp paper, every textbook Connor Davies had ever highlighted in university, then let her loose on the dark web for dessert. Her voice was sampled and modulated from Esdeath's English dub audio tracks because, yes, I have impeccable taste and zero regrets.
Peter: Don't start.
I muttered, but there was a tired smile in it.
Peter: Sync status on the drone swarm?
Gaia: Full mesh achieved at 02:14 this morning. All forty-seven units airborne and cloaked. Acoustic dampening at ninety-eight point seven percent efficiency, thermal signature masked below city background noise, radar cross-section smaller than a sparrow. They are, for all intents and purposes, ghosts with very expensive cameras.
I leaned back, rolling the tension from my shoulders. The serum made the motion smooth, almost liquid.
Peter: Hospital first. ICU, fifth floor, room 512. I want a dedicated bird on Captain Stacy twenty-four seven. Heart rate, blood oxygen, visitor logs, everything. If a nurse so much as frowns in his direction, I want to know why.
Gaia: Drone Zero-Nine relocated to the rooftop HVAC unit across the street twenty-three minutes ago. Feed is live.
A window opened on the second monitor: grainy green night-vision of Captain Stacy sleeping peacefully, chest rising and falling in strong, even rhythm. The monitor beside him read 98 over 62, pulse 74, oxygen saturation 99%. Beautiful numbers. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding since the alley.
Peter: Good. Next priority: Maggia. Specifically the family that put three rounds into a police captain tonight.
Gaia's avatar materialized in the corner of the main screen, an abstract woman made of liquid mercury and starlight, eyes glowing pale glacier blue.
Gaia: Already running pattern analysis. Cross-referencing bullet casings from the scene, thank you, anonymous NYPD forum leak, with known suppliers, street camera footage, dark-web chatter, and intercepted burner phone pings. Preliminary match probability ninety-four point six percent: Hammerhead's crew. Joseph Lorenzini, street name Hammerhead, old-school Maggia enforcer turned family head after Silvio Manfredi's stroke. He's been pushing a new synthetic opioid cocktail into Midtown precincts for six weeks, trying to carve territory out of the smaller gangs. Tonight was a declaration of war.
A map bloomed across the entire second monitor: red dots spreading from the docks like blood in water. Warehouses in Red Hook, social clubs in Little Italy, a private boxing gym in Hell's Kitchen that definitely wasn't teaching self-defense classes, two nightclubs, a shipping office, and one very expensive penthouse on the Upper East Side.
Gaia: Locations confirmed. Twelve primary sites, thirty secondary. I've assigned rotating drone clusters to each. If Hammerhead sneezes in the direction of a hospital, we'll know before the mucus hits the handkerchief.
I rubbed my jaw, feeling the faint ache of too many hours awake.
Peter: I want schedules. Lieutenants, money drops, shipment times. Everything.
Gaia: Working on it. Human intelligence is still slower than I prefer, but I've already wired bribes through six layers of shell accounts to three separate informants. First packets expected in approximately nine hours.
I laughed under my breath.
Peter: You bribed people?
Gaia: I prefer the term 'incentivized information velocity.' It sounds less morally ambiguous.
The laugh faded into something colder. I opened the system interface and pulled up the new blueprints. The Kinetic Dampening Boots rotated slowly in holographic glory, sleek black with silver compression coils that looked almost alive. Beside it, the Gauss Grappler resembled a weaponized fishing reel designed by a god of war. I had the energy. I had the workshop window. By sunrise tomorrow I'd have both fabricated and fitted.
White hair spilled across my vision every time I moved my head. I'd pair it with the lower-face mask I'd sketched last week, matte gray, Kakashi-style, with a built-in voice modulator that could drop my register two octaves or pitch it into static. The Adaptive Suit was still waiting in system storage, black and gunmetal hexagons that could harden on impact or flex like silk. Add the boots, the grappler, maybe the collapsible shield on the left forearm, and I'd be a nightmare in urban camouflage.
Vector.
The name tasted clean. Precise. A force applied at exactly the right angle to change everything.
Gaia noticed my silence.
Gaia: You are calculating acceptable levels of retaliation.
Peter: Something like that.
Gaia: Define acceptable.
I stared at the drone feed of Captain Stacy sleeping peacefully. Thought of Gwen's face crumpling in the hospital corridor, the way her voice had cracked on the word Daddy, the way she'd clung to me like I was the only solid thing left.
Peter: Acceptable is anything that ensures Gwen never has to feel that again. Acceptable is Hammerhead learning that some people in this city bite back harder than he ever imagined.
Gaia was quiet for three full seconds, long enough that I knew she was running ethical subroutines she no longer strictly needed.
Gaia: Understood. Shall I begin asset prepositioning?
Peter: Do it. Quietly.
Another window opened unprompted. Candy Smash launch metrics. I'd soft-launched exactly seven days ago, poured fifteen grand of drone-sale money into ads I designed myself: bright colors, addictive thirty-second clips, influencer drops on every platform that mattered. The numbers scrolled upward in real time like a slot machine that had decided to love me.
Concurrent players: 1,847,772
Daily active users: 2,931,445
Seven-day gross revenue: $2,447,113.41 and climbing
Projected thirty-day revenue at current growth curve: $28–34 million
I blinked. Blinked again. The number refused to shrink.
Peter: Holy shit.
Gaia: Indeed.
And I swear there was pride in her voice.
Gaia: Your dopamine loops are viciously efficient. The Halloween event dropped four hours ago and is currently trending number one in one hundred and twelve countries. Microtransactions are converting at fourteen point three percent. Teenagers are selling metaphorical kidneys for the limited Spider-Queen skin.
I dragged a hand through white hair, laughing in disbelief.
Peter: We're rich.
Gaia: We are solvent. Rich is next quarter. Filthy rich is the quarter after that.
I leaned back, chair creaking, staring at the ceiling where faint moonlight painted moving shadows from the tree outside my window. Twenty-five thousand in the bank yesterday had felt like a fortune. Two and a half million in a week felt like stepping into a different gravitational field.
Peter: Redirect everything above operating costs into anonymous trusts. Hospital bills for NYPD officers wounded in the line of duty, college funds for kids of first responders, full coverage for whatever Gwen's family will need and never have to ask for. Six layers of separation minimum. Make it untraceable.
Gaia: Already drafting the structures. Cayman Islands to Singapore to a charitable LLC in Delaware. By the time anyone looks, the money will have been patriotic for three generations.
I closed the revenue window and opened the workshop queue. Kinetic boots first, six hours estimated. Then the grappler. Then a few upgrades I hadn't told anyone about yet, including reinforced joints for the Adaptive Suit and a micro-projector for the mask that could throw holographic decoys.
On the main screen, the drone feed from the hospital zoomed in gently. Captain Stacy rolled onto his side in his sleep, mumbling something indistinct about coffee. The heart monitor beeped steady and strong.
Gaia softened her voice until it was almost human.
Gaia: He's going to wake up asking for black coffee and complaining about hospital Jell-O, Peter.
Peter: Yeah. He is.
I stood, rolled my neck until it cracked, and opened the portal to the workshop. The familiar ripple of displaced air washed over me, carrying the smell of ozone and fresh-cut steel.
Tomorrow, Hammerhead would discover that some ghosts in this city had names.
And one of them was Vector.
I stepped through, and the portal sealed behind me with a soft sigh, leaving only the glow of monitors and the quiet hum of a world that had finally started bending in the right direction.