I can't believe I'm actually doing this, but well, the math doesn't lie. Gwen made her debut last night—blurry cell phone footage hitting every underground forum by dawn, some hooded figure in violet and white webbing up a purse snatcher mid-leap off a fire escape. No one knows who she is yet, not even the cops piecing together the "Ghost-Spider" whispers on scanner traffic. I helped her with the web formula two days ago in the Midtown chem lab, playing it off as some "hobby project" while she sketched spinneret designs on notebook margins. She thinks it's just organic polymers and tension catalysts. If only she knew how close it mirrored the system's own twisted alchemy.
I sighed, staring at the warehouse schematics projected on my HUD. Gaia had dissected the building in under ninety seconds: load-bearing walls in faded yellow, thirty heat signatures clustered around the central bay, armed to the teeth with smuggled AKs and ARs fresh off a Balkan freighter. Hammerhead's crew, sloppy but vicious, guarding tonight's payday like it was their last.
Gaia: Entry in three. Drones confirm no external patrols. Smoke deployment primed. Remember, Peter: vectors, not vengeance. Though I suspect the distinction blurs tonight.
Her voice purred in my earpiece, cool as glacial melt.
Peter: Save the philosophy.
I muttered, crouched on the rooftop gravel twenty meters above the loading dock. White hair tickled my neck under the mask; the Adaptive Suit hummed against my skin, hex panels primed for impact.
Peter: Just make sure the feed's clean. Gwen's out there playing hero. Time I showed her how it's done without the arachnid drama.
The power grid dipped. Lights inside the warehouse flickered, then died.
Chaos erupted below, muffled through the roof but sharp in my enhanced senses: shouts, boots scuffing concrete, the metallic clatter of rifles sweeping arcs in the dark.
Vito: What the hell is going on? Jimmy, what happened to the lights?
Hammerhead's lieutenant—a squat bull of a man named Vito—barked, his voice gravel over broken glass.
Jimmy: I... I don't know, boss! Power's live on my end—wait, it's spiking!
A low electric hum vibrated through the steel beams, my cue. I thumbed the gauntlet trigger. Vents I'd psychokinetically unsealed earlier hissed open like serpents uncoiling. Thick white smoke billowed from every corner, engineered by Gaia to cling low and burn eyes without choking lungs—yet. The emergency floods stuttered once, twice, then blazed back to life, carving harsh shadows through the haze.
I dropped.
The skylight glass shattered in a controlled cascade as the Gauss Grappler's magnetic slug punched through, cable reeling me down in a silent arc. Boots hit the catwalk ten feet above the floor with a soft compression whuff from the kinetic dampeners, absorbing the fall like it was a stroll. Smoke swirled around me, parting just enough to reveal the scene: thirty armed men frozen in a loose semicircle around stacked crates of matte-black rifles, faces twisted in confusion and rising panic.
I stepped off the edge. The boots whispered me down another ten feet, landing dead center on the bloodstained concrete, white hair settling like fresh fallout.
The silence stretched a fractured second, broken only by the drip of a distant leak.
Peter: Men of the Hammerhead family—or gang, I don't care which lie you tell yourselves tonight. You have failed this city.
I said, voice warped low through the mask's modulator, echoing off the rafters like judgment from on high.
Vito recovered first, spitting a curse that sprayed flecks into the smoke.
Goon: Who the hell is this bastard?
One of his goons snarled, a wiry kid with a neck tattoo and an AR-15 already swinging up, finger whitening on the trigger.
I tilted my head, eyes narrowing behind the glowing slits. The Danger Sense pinged faint—a pressure behind my orbits, directional tug leftward. Early warning.
Peter: I am night. I am vengeance.
I intoned, shield unfolding from my gauntlet with a resonant snick. The cobalt coils along my forearms pulsed once, charging.
Peter: I am Vector.
Vito: Kill this freak!
Vito roared.
The world ignited.
Muzzle flashes erupted in a staccato storm, white-hot blooms stitching the air toward me. I snapped the shield wide—titanium-composite disk blooming to three feet across—and caught the first volley center-mass. Sparks danced like fireflies dying in the rain; the impacts jolted my arm but the adaptive gel redistributed the force, turning 5.56mm fury into dull thuds against a wall.
No time for awe. Pivot, palm out. Psychokinesis surged, a rare skill I'd drilled in empty lots for hours, energy draining fifteen units per second but worth every spark. The air warped, invisible barrier slamming outward like a freight train's buffer. Bullets hung suspended a heartbeat—twenty, thirty rounds frozen in ballistic limbo—then plummeted in a metallic hail, clattering harmless around my boots.
He vanished.
Not vanished—blurred. Super-soldier serum and parkour training turned me into a streak of white and black, cutting left through the smoke at seventy miles an hour in a controlled burst. The first gunman—a burly enforcer with a scar bisecting his lip—barely registered the shift before my fist cracked his jaw like dry timber. Bone gave with a wet snap; he airborne'd six meters backward, vest shredding on a crate edge, splintering wood and polymer casings in a explosive plume that blinded two more behind him.
Rifles barked in frantic reply. Tracers lanced crimson threads through the fog, painting erratic kill-zones on the walls.
I wove.
Time fractured in my senses—enhanced reflexes stretching seconds into symphonies of motion. Heartbeats thundered slow, breaths rasped eternal; brass spun lazy in the air like golden leaves in autumn wind. I ghosted between the streams, kinetic boots kissing concrete in feather-light steps, body angling fractions of degrees to slip a 9mm round by millimeters. One grazed my shoulder; the suit hardened instantaneous, hexagons locking into ballistic weave, heat blooming harmless against the weave.
Close enough to the next shooter—a twitchy vet with an AK slung low. My hand clamped the red-hot muzzle, serum strength crumpling the steel into a useless accordion with a tortured screech that drowned his yelp. Knee drove upward into his solar plexus, air whooshing from lungs in a defeated wheeze. He folded like wet cardboard. No mercy for follow-through: spinning kick to the chest, boot sole connecting with vest plating, launching him into a domino of his buddies. Three men tangled in a heap of curses and flailing limbs, rifles discharging wild into the ceiling.
Bullets hunted me still, a hornet swarm denied its sting. I never paused.
Wrist flick. The shield detached, psychokinesis coiling around it like an invisible leash. It spun edge-on, a razor-disc howling through the haze. First hit: sheared a rifle barrel clean, the severed muzzle exploding in the holder's grip. Second: bit deep into Kevlar at chest height, cracking ribs with a sound like celery snapping under boot. Third and fourth: collarbones shattered, men crumpling mid-stride, screams cutting short as they clutched ruined shoulders. The shield arced wide, boomeranging flawless back to my gauntlet with a satisfying magnetic clack, humming from the violence.
Knife flashed low behind me—Danger Sense spiking sharp, ocular pressure yanking my awareness rearward. I didn't turn. The blade hammered between my shoulder blades, point seeking kidney. It struck true and... stopped. The Adaptive Suit's panels rippled, absorbing the thrust like water swallowing a stone; the knife snapped at the hilt, tip skittering away in a pathetic spin. The attacker—a lean Latino with prison tats snaking up his neck—froze, eyes saucer-wide in the strobe of his own flashlight.
Peter: You want to dance too?
I growled, spinning into him.
The beatdown unfolded in surgical brutality. Grabbed his vest one-handed, used his momentum against him—physics, pure and simple—swinging him into a charging pair like a human flail. Heads cracked together, helmets denting; one went down vomiting, the other clawing at eyes from the impact daze. Discarded the knife-man with a casual toss into a crate stack, wood groaning under the weight.
Pivoted low as he staggered up, leg sweep hooking his ankle. He toppled, exposed. Short hook to the throat—cartilage crumpling under knuckles, wheeze turning to gurgle. No kill shot; just enough to silence. He hit the deck twitching, done for the night.
Smoke bombs next. Palm dropped three in a rolling scatter, chemical fuses hissing to life. They burst in sequence, plumes merging into a choking shroud that clawed visibility to zero. Coughs ripped through the ranks; orders devolved to panicked barks.
I thrived in it. Ghost in the machine.
A blind burst flashed left—muzzle betraying position. I was there before the echo faded, hand vise-gripping the barrel, twisting ninety degrees until the rifle wept sparks. Palm-heel to sternum followed, force compressing ribs inward; he skidded backward ten feet on slick concrete, vest smoking from friction.
Flank right: shotgun thunder, buckshot screaming high. I dropped prone, pellets shredding a hanging chain-link partition overhead. Surge up, grappler thumping soft. Magnetic slug pierced catwalk rail twenty feet aloft; cable snapped taut, yanking me airborne in a horizontal launch. Wind whistled past the mask; I twisted mid-flight, boots extended. Landed catwalk-crouch directly above the blunderbuss fool, who craned up slack-jawed.
Boot descended like judgment. Kinetic dampeners turned the drop into a piledriver—through his crate perch, wood exploding, man folding unconscious amid the debris.
Below, panic metastasized. Rifles swept wild, friendly fire chewing crates; shouts overlapped in multilingual frenzy. I dropped into the maelstrom, meteor descent buffered by boots.
Shield high, psychokinesis blooming radial. Tight spin, edge out—a whirlwind of alloy death. Three chests met the rim sequential: first lifted airborne, vest parting like tissue; second ribs caved, breath exploding out; third flung sideways into ammo pallet, avalanche burying him in tumbling green boxes and ricocheting rounds.
Big one charged through the murk—Vito's muscle, a seven-foot slab named Rocco, fire axe raised in two-handed bellow. Overhead chop whistled down, edge keen enough to split oak. I caught the haft mid-arc, serum grip halting it dead—inches from my mask. Rocco's eyes bulged, veins popping in tattooed forearms as he strained.
Realization dawned slow. I headbutted upward—once, mask cracking his nose in crimson spray; twice, orbital fracturing with eggshell crunch; third, temple caving soft, eyes rolling back. Axe clattered; he followed, tree falling in slow motion.
Lucky burst stitched my ribs—full auto, 7.62 tearing air. Suit locked rigid, hexes turning to plate armor; felt like heavyweight hooks, bruising but unbroken. I wheeled toward the shooter, a kid no older than me, mag fumbling in sweat-slick hands.
One hand rose. Psychokinesis plucked the magazine mid-air, whipping it across the space to slap into my palm. Fingers closed; aluminum crumpled to glittering dust. I let it confetti down, slow and mocking.
Peter: Last chance. Drop them. Walk away.
I broadcast, voice amplifier turning it warehouse-wide dirge.
Defiance answered: lone shotgun boom, defiant roar. Buckshot fanned wide, chewing rafters. I blurred—boots compressing for explosive launch, closing gap in heartbeats. Hand crushed barrel into molten pretzel; buttstock splintered across helmet, shards flying. He dropped limp, shotgun a ruined toy.
Silence crashed down, absolute save for groans threading the drip of blood and settling dust. Thirty men accounted: sprawled, shattered, stirring faint. Thirty seconds elapsed, give or take—clockwork carnage.
I stood epicenter, white hair haloed in dying smoke, chest heaving minimal under efficiency. Surveyed the ruin: bodies twisted unnatural, crates sundered like matchsticks, weapons strewn as discarded children's blocks.
Upward glance to the rafter drone, its red eye unblinking witness.
The warehouse roof peeled away beneath me like a tin can under the Gauss Grappler's Mach-two retraction. I shot upward into the October night, cable singing, kinetic boots humming as they bled off the last of the ascent. Thirty meters up, the skyline of Red Hook glittering below, I thumbed the remote detonator I'd palmed on the way out.
One minute.
The charges were my own work, no system handouts, no glowing blueprints. Just Connor Davies' old chemical engineering notes, a weekend in the workshop, and a very unhealthy amount of spite. Twelve hockey-puck sized packages of custom binary explosive (stable until mixed, then eager as hell), each taped beneath a crate of Hammerhead's freshly imported rifles. Enough boom to turn a quarter-million dollars of black-market hardware into confetti, not enough to bring the roof down on the broken bodies below. Precision cruelty.
I crested the arc, released the grappler mid-air, and let momentum carry me across the gap to the next rooftop. Landed in a crouch, boots compressing with a soft pneumatic sigh. Behind me the warehouse windows flashed orange, then white. A rolling thunderclap punched the night, followed by the beautiful secondary pops of cooking off ammunition. No fireball, no mushroom cloud; just a perfect surgical detonation that gutted Hammerhead's shipment and left the structure standing so the cops could catalogue every melted barrel tomorrow morning.
I exhaled, slow and shaky, adrenaline still sparking along my nerves.
I won't kill you, I thought, watching the smoke column climb into the stars. But your hospital bills are going to be legendary.
The city lights blurred for a second. Not from the explosion, from the realization that I'd just crossed a line I could never uncross. Thirty men down, some with bones I'd powdered myself, and I hadn't lost a drop of blood. The serum, the skills, the tech; it all worked better than I'd dreamed. And that terrified me more than any bullet.
I fired the grappler again, swinging east toward the safehouse rooftop I'd prepped above an abandoned bodega in Carroll Gardens. Three swings later I touched down, killed the suit's external lights, and slipped through the skylight I'd left cracked open. Inside, the loft was dim, lit only by the soft blue glow of monitors and the gentle pulse of Gaia's holographic interface.
I pulled the mask down around my neck and let the white hair fall free. My hands were trembling, just slightly.
Peter: Gaia. Run the full evaluation. I want everything.
I said, voice rougher than I expected.
Her avatar materialized beside the main holo-table, liquid mercury and starlight coalescing into that familiar sharp-edged silhouette.
Gaia: Combat telemetry already parsed, Peter. Shall I be gentle or honest?
Peter: Honest. Always honest.
She flicked a finger. Data exploded across the air in cascading panes: heart-rate graphs, reaction-time histograms, energy expenditure curves, predicted injury vectors that never landed.
Gaia: Overall combat efficiency: 94.7%. Peak reaction window: 0.18 seconds. Psychokinetic expenditure: 312 units total, well within sustainable limits. Shield deflection success rate: 100%. Kinetic dampening absorbed 4,112 joules across seven separate impacts. Zero suit penetrations. Zero tissue trauma beyond minor bruising on the left oblique.
I swallowed.
Peter: Compared to VR?
Gaia: Your standard VR scenario, the one you run obsessively at 3 a.m. when you can't sleep, is calibrated to 85% real-world difficulty. Tonight you performed at 112% of your best recorded VR run. You exceeded projected performance in every metric except emotional regulation.
I barked a short, humorless laugh.
Peter: Yeah, I noticed the part where I almost threw up on the roof.
Gaia: Adrenaline dump plus moral realization. Your cortisol spiked 380% in the thirty seconds post-detonation. That is… human. And expected for a first lethal-adjacent engagement.
I dropped into the chair, elbows on knees, staring at the floor.
Peter: I didn't kill anyone.
Gaia: Correct. Estimated injuries: twenty-nine moderate to critical fractures, fourteen concussions, one ruptured spleen, one punctured lung from rib displacement. All survivable with prompt medical attention. You threaded the needle between message and murder with surgical precision.
I rubbed my face.
Peter: How many more warehouses can I hit at this performance level before they adapt?
Gaia tilted her head, eyes glowing brighter as she ran simulations.
Gaia: Assuming Hammerhead maintains current security posture and does not escalate to metahuman contractors, you can sustainably neutralize one additional site every forty-one hours without significant risk of fatigue or compromise. Push to thirty-six hours apart and probability of critical injury to you rises to 9%. Push to twenty-four and we enter coin-flip territory.
I nodded slowly.
Peter: There are eleven more primary locations on the map.
Gaia: Eleven remaining after tonight. At forty-one hour intervals, full neutralization campaign completes in approximately nineteen days. Casualties on their side remain non-lethal. Your conscience stays intact.
Peter: Nineteen days.
I echoed. The words tasted like iron.
Gaia stepped closer, hologram flickering as if she wanted to rest a hand on my shoulder but remembered she couldn't.
Gaia: Peter. You are seventeen. You just dismantled thirty armed men in thirty-four seconds and walked away without a scratch. That is not normal. That is terrifying. And you are still choosing not to kill. That is the part that matters.
I looked up at her.
Peter: Sooner or later someone's going to force the issue. Someone's going to make me choose.
Gaia: Then we make sure you're ready when that day comes. But tonight, you drew a line in the sand and the city saw it. Tomorrow every lowlife in Hammerhead's payroll is going to wake up in traction and realize the rules changed while they were sleeping.
I stood, rolled my shoulders until the tension eased a fraction.
Peter: Show me the next target.
A new schematic bloomed in the air: a fortified social club in Little Italy, basement armory, rooftop helipad, forty-eight heat signatures this time.
Gaia: Primary shipment arrives at 04:17 tomorrow night. They've already doubled the guards and added motion sensors. They're scared.
Peter: Good. Fear's a teacher.
I pulled the mask back up, white hair spilling over the collar like a war banner.
I walked to the window and stared out at the city I'd just scarred. Sirens were converging on Red Hook now, red and blue lights painting the clouds. Somewhere out there Gwen was probably swinging between rooftops in violet and white, wondering who the hell had just blown up half the docks without spilling a drop of blood.
I pressed a gloved hand to the glass.
Peter: Clock's ticking, Gaia. Let's make sure Hammerhead learns the lesson before anyone else has to.
The Gauss Grappler hummed awake in my palm, hungry for the next vector.
Peter: Plot the route. We've got nineteen days to burn an empire to the ground without becoming the monster we're fighting.
Gaia's smile was sharp enough to cut steel.
Gaia: Course laid in. First swing in thirty seconds.
I fired the grappler into the night and launched myself after it, a black and white streak against the burning skyline, already counting heartbeats until the next explosion.
Peter's suit image in comments