The penthouse office looked like a war zone that had lost. One wall of floor-to-ceiling glass was spider-webbed from the impact of a bronze sculpture that now lay on its side, the abstract face of some long-dead Lorenzini patriarch staring at the ceiling with cracked marble eyes. The custom mahogany desk (imported from Sicily, forty-two thousand dollars) had been overturned and used as a battering ram against the liquor cabinet; bottles of Macallan and Grappa lay bleeding amber and clear across white carpet that would never be white again. A sixty-five-inch monitor dangled by its cables, still flickering with frozen security footage of a white-haired figure walking through smoke like death on vacation.
Joseph "Hammerhead" Lorenzini stood in the middle of the wreckage breathing like a bull that had just discovered the red cape was nailed to the floor.
Hammerhead: Two hundred and ninety-four million. That's the current tally. Two hundred and ninety-four million dollars in product, real estate, payoffs, and medical bills since those two freaks decided to play hero. Eleven warehouses. Six armored convoys. Four money-laundering fronts. Four hundred and thirty-seven men in traction with more fractures than a demolition derby. And not one corpse for the coroner. They're not even giving us the dignity of funerals.
He kicked the overturned desk so hard the leg snapped clean off. The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot.
Frankie Bones (his second since the last one took early retirement in a full-body cast) stood near the ruined bar, tablet clutched to his chest like a shield. He had been with Hammerhead for fifteen years and had never seen the man this close to the edge without stepping over it.
Frankie: Ghost-Spider hit the Queens shipment last night. Webbed the whole convoy to the underside of the Kosciuszko Bridge. Drivers still hanging there when the sun came up. Cops had to bring cherry pickers. Vector took the Red Hook armory the same night. Thirty-eight seconds on the internal clock. Thirty-eight seconds and forty-one guys down. He left the walls standing so the insurance adjusters could see exactly what he did to our inventory.
Hammerhead's laugh came out like a rusted hinge.
Hammerhead: Inventory. That's what we're calling two hundred crates of military-grade hardware now. Inventory.
He turned, the steel plate fused to his skull catching the recessed lighting and throwing it back in cold, surgical flashes.
Hammerhead: My father ran this city with a straight razor and a smile. I took a bullet in the brain and came back stronger. And now two kids in costumes are making me look like I'm running a charity for broken bones.
He crossed the room in three strides, picked up a heavy crystal ashtray, and hurled it at the already-cracked window. The glass finally gave, exploding outward in a glittering rain sixty stories above Park Avenue. Wind howled in, whipping papers into frantic spirals.
Frankie didn't move.
Frankie: The other families are circling, Joe. Silvermane sent a fruit basket to the hospital wing we basically own now. Card said 'Thinking of you.' Nefaria's already moving product through our docks. We bleed any more and the Maggia starts carving us up for parts.
Hammerhead's knuckles were white on the edge of the broken bar. Blood ran from one palm where glass had sliced it open; he didn't seem to notice.
Hammerhead: I want them found. I want them unmasked. I want them on their knees begging in front of every soldier they put in the hospital. And then I want them gone.
Frankie swallowed.
Frankie: We put twelve million on each head. Every hitter from here to Atlantic City is looking. But nobody's cashing in. These two don't leave fingerprints, don't talk, don't sleep. Ghost-Spider drops out of nowhere, webs everything shut, vanishes. Vector falls out of the sky like a damn meteor, breaks every bone you own, blows your future to scrap, and he's gone before the echo fades.
Hammerhead turned slowly, the wind tugging at his ruined tie.
Hammerhead: Then we stop playing by street rules.
He walked to the only piece of furniture still upright (an antique roll-top desk that had survived three wars and two divorces) and yanked open a drawer. Inside lay a single black satellite phone, older than most of the soldiers downstairs, its plastic cracked and yellowed with age.
Frankie's face went the color of old paper.
Frankie: Joe… you're not.
Hammerhead thumbed the power button. The screen lit green, casting his steel skull in radioactive light.
Hammerhead: I am.
He pressed and held zero until the tone changed, then punched in a twelve-digit sequence he had memorized the day he inherited the family. Three rings. Four. Then a click and a voice, female, calm, accented with something Eastern European that had been sanded down by years of killing for pay.
Widow Handler: You are either very brave or very stupid to use this number, Joseph.
Hammerhead: I'm cashing in every favor the Maggia has with your people. All of them. Going back to Naples in '78.
Silence stretched long enough for the wind to scream through the broken window.
Widow Handler: You understand the price. Once the contract is live, it does not end until the targets are confirmed dead or the city is ash. There is no cancellation. There is only completion.
Hammerhead looked out at Manhattan glittering below him, a city that had forgotten how to be afraid.
Hammerhead: I want Ghost-Spider and Vector erased. I want it loud. I want it ugly. I want every freak in a mask to wake up screaming my name. Triple your usual rate. Half wired tonight.
Another pause, shorter this time.
Widow Handler: Done. The Black Widow protocol is green. You will receive confirmation when the assets are in theater. Forty-eight hours.
The line went dead.
Hammerhead lowered the phone slowly, deliberately, and crushed it in his fist. Plastic and circuitry exploded between his fingers like cheap bones.
Frankie found his voice.
Frankie: Joe… the Widow people… they're not enforcers. They're exterminators.
Hammerhead smiled for the first time in two weeks. It was not a human expression.
Hammerhead: Good. Because I'm done asking nicely.
He walked to the jagged hole where the window used to be and stared down at the streets sixty floors below, wind whipping his tie like a battle standard.
Somewhere out there, two vigilantes were still breathing his air.
Not for long.
Hammerhead: Forty-eight hours. Then we see who breaks first.
He whispered to the night.
Captain George Stacy walked the bullpen like a man who had borrowed someone else's body: same limp from the old football injury, same gray at the temples, but the ache in his chest was gone, the one the doctors had sworn would kill him before sunrise two weeks ago. He had woken up instead, oxygen mask fogging with every strong breath, monitors singing a tune no one in the room could explain. "Spontaneous resolution of internal bleeding," they'd called it. "Miracle," the nurses whispered when they thought he wasn't listening.
Miracle had also paid the hospital bill (six figures, itemized down to the last latex glove) through a shell company registered in the Caymans that dissolved the moment anyone tried to trace it. Another deposit hit his personal account the day he was discharged: one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, memo line blank. He'd stared at the notification so long his coffee went cold.
Now he was back at his desk, badge clipped to his belt, service weapon heavy on his hip, and the entire Major Crimes squad pretending they weren't sneaking glances at him every thirty seconds.
Ramirez: Captain, you sure you're cleared for full duty?
Ramirez asked for the third time, leaning against the whiteboard like casual could hide the worry in his eyes.
George: I'm fine, Detective. Doctor signed the paperwork himself. Stop hovering before I write you up for maternal harassment.
A ripple of laughter broke the tension, but it died fast when the television bolted high in the corner flicked to the midday news. The anchor's voice cut through the low murmur of phones and keyboards.
News Anchor: —continues to baffle law enforcement. In the last fourteen days, eleven warehouses and private armories linked to organized crime have been systematically destroyed or disabled. No fatalities, but dozens of known Maggia affiliates remain hospitalized with injuries described as 'precision non-lethal trauma.' Authorities are struggling to identify the vigilante calling himself Vector.
Grainy security footage filled the screen: a white-haired figure in matte-black armor dropping through smoke like a falling star, bullets sparking off a shield that moved like it had a mind of its own. Thirty armed men down in under forty seconds. Then the explosion (controlled, surgical) that turned half a million dollars in illegal firearms into scrap metal.
George felt the bullpen go quiet the way it only ever did when someone spotted a ghost.
Ramirez whistled low.
Ramirez: Same night Ghost-Spider webbed up those carjackers in Queens. Two vigilantes, Cap. Two in two weeks. City's turning into Gotham with better Wi-Fi.
The footage cut to shaky phone video: a slender figure in a black-and-violet bodysuit with white lenses, swinging between buildings on glistening strands that caught the streetlights like frost. She stuck the landing on a fleeing van, punched through the roof, and yanked the driver out by his collar before webbing the entire vehicle to a lamppost like a fly in amber.
George's hand tightened around his coffee mug. Gwen had come home the night he was shot smelling like adrenaline and rooftop wind, eyes too bright, asking questions about responsibility that no sixteen-year-old should have to ask. He'd pretended to sleep so she wouldn't see him crying.
Ramirez: Ghost-Spider and Vector. Twitter's losing its mind. Half the city wants to name schools after them, the other half thinks they're terrorists with good PR. And get this (both of them trending higher than that new game the kids won't shut up about).
George followed Ramirez's nod to the corner of the bullpen where two rookie uniforms were hunched over a phone, thumbs flying.
Rookie: Candy Blast. Just hit two million daily players. My niece won't go to bed without finishing the Halloween event.
George tuned them out. On the television, the anchor moved to a split-screen: left side Ghost-Spider perched on a gargoyle, head tilted like she was listening to something only she could hear; right side Vector standing on a burning rooftop, white hair whipping in the updraft, arms folded as emergency lights painted him red and blue.
News Anchor: Sources inside the department confirm both vigilantes have targeted only Maggia operations, specifically those connected to Joseph 'Hammerhead' Lorenzini. The FBI task force has officially classified them as persons of interest, but public approval sits at sixty-eight percent and climbing.
George's lieutenant, a woman named Park who'd been with him since they were both beat cops in the Bronx, dropped a thick case file on his desk with a thud.
Park: Welcome back to the circus, Captain. Hammerhead's screaming for blood. Says he'll put a ten-million bounty on both masks, dead or alive. Feds want us to coordinate, but half my guys want to shake their hands.
George flipped the file open. Crime-scene photos: warehouses reduced to twisted metal skeletons, gangsters zip-tied with their own belts, spray-painted V's still dripping on every wall. Medical reports read like a textbook on controlled force (shattered femurs that stopped exactly one millimeter short of arterial damage, concussions delivered with the precision of a neurosurgeon).
He closed the file and looked up at the television again. Ghost-Spider was frozen mid-swing, one hand reaching toward the camera like she was waving at someone specific. Vector stood motionless on the rooftop, head angled toward the camera too, as if he knew exactly where the drone was filming from.
George felt something cold settle in his gut, the same instinct that had kept him alive through three shootings and one dirty bomb scare.
George: Park. Pull every frame we have of both of them. High-res. I want facial recognition, gait analysis, height, weight, everything.
Park: You think we can ID them?
She asked, brow arching.
George: I'm not sure
The bullpen noise faded to a dull roar in his ears. On the screen, the news ticker crawled: GHOST-SPIDER SAVES BUS OF SCHOOLCHILDREN… VECTOR DESTROYS THIRD MAGGIA SAFEHOUSE IN 72 HOURS… CANDY BLAST DEVELOPER REMAINS ANONYMOUS AS STOCK SOARS…
George reached for his phone, thumb hovering over Gwen's contact. The photo was from last summer (her laughing on the pier, ice cream on her nose, sunlight turning her hair into white gold).
He set the phone down without calling. Instead he opened the top drawer, took out his old notepad, and wrote two words in block letters that hadn't shaken this badly since the night his wife died
He stared at them until the letters stopped swimming.
Then he underlined them twice, hard enough to tear the paper, and turned back to the television just as the footage looped again (Ghost-Spider reaching, Vector watching, the city burning and healing in the same breath).
George: Ramirez. Get me everything we have on anonymous charitable donations in the last thirty days. And someone find me a warrant for that damn game company's financials.
Because miracles didn't pay hospital bills.
And fathers recognized the way their daughters moved, even under masks.
He closed the notepad, slid it into his pocket next to his heart, and stood up to face the storm that had already started calling itself family.
The late-afternoon light slanted through the window of Mary Jane's bedroom, turning everything gold and soft, the way New York only looks right before it decides to bruise into night. I sat cross-legged on her bed, knees hugged to my chest, hoodie sleeves pulled over my hands like I could hide inside them. The city hummed beyond the glass: sirens, horns, someone yelling about parking, ordinary noise that suddenly felt too loud, too close, like the whole world was pressing against my eardrums.
Vector.
The name had been living rent-free in my head for two weeks, ever since the first grainy clip hit the internet: white hair whipping through smoke, a black-and-gunmetal figure moving like physics had personally betrayed everyone else in the room. Thirty men down in thirty-four seconds. No bodies. Just broken bones and burning warehouses and a single white V painted on the wall like a signature.
I kept replaying the footage on mute, frame by frame, trying to understand how someone could be that fast, that precise, that angry without ever crossing the line into killing. It made my own nights as Ghost-Spider feel clumsy by comparison. I webbed muggers to lampposts and stopped purse-snatchers and told myself it mattered, but Vector… Vector was dismantling an empire one calculated explosion at a time.
Mary Jane flopped backward onto the pillows beside me, red hair fanning out like spilled paint, phone glowing in her hands. The cheerful chiptune of Candy Blast filled the room, bright and relentless. She was on level 412, which was honestly terrifying.
MJ: This game is going to be the death of me. I swear the little ghost candies are mocking me now. Look at this one. It's smirking.
I leaned over, managing half a smile.
Gwen: That game is really addictive.
MJ: I know, right? It's the perfect distraction ever since I finally told Flash to get lost for good. Like, I need something that isn't thinking about his stupid face every five seconds.
Gwen: Yikes.
I offered, soft. I'd watched the breakup from the sidelines: Flash yelling in the hallway, MJ walking away without looking back, the kind of clean cut that still bleeds for weeks.
She snorted.
MJ: Yeah. Yikes is diplomatic.
Another cluster of candies exploded on her screen in a burst of purple stars.
MJ: But seriously, Gwen, this game is evil genius. The Halloween event dropped new spider-queen skins and I actually gasped out loud in chemistry. I'm not proud.
I laughed despite myself, the sound surprising both of us. For one second everything felt normal: two seniors avoiding homework, complaining about boys, pretending the world wasn't quietly catching fire.
Then MJ lowered her phone and rolled onto her side, green eyes sharp and curious.
MJ: Okay, but real talk. What do you think of the new superheroes? Ghost-Spider and Vector. The entire school's obsessed. Harry won't shut up about how Ghost-Spider saved his cousin's friend from a carjacking last week, and half the football team has Vector's stupid V drawn on their sneakers like it's a gang sign now.
My heart stuttered, spider-sense flickering at the edges like static. I pulled the sleeves further over my hands.
Gwen: I think… I think they're trying to do the right thing. In their own ways.
MJ raised an eyebrow.
MJ: That's diplomatic too. Come on, Gwen. Off the record. Ghost-Spider seems… I don't know, almost gentle? Like she's trying not to hurt anyone worse than she has to. But Vector? She whistled low. He's scary. Like, scary-hot if you're into that whole brooding vengeance angel thing, which I am absolutely not admitting on record, but also he's terrifying. Did you see the clip from the docks? He dropped out of the sky, took out forty guys, blew up half a billion dollars in guns, and just… left. No taunting. No victory pose. Just gone.
I swallowed. My palms were sweating inside the sleeves.
Gwen: Yeah. I saw.
MJ studied me for a second, something soft and knowing in her expression.
MJ: You okay? You've been weirdly quiet the last couple weeks. Ever since your dad…
She trailed off, biting her lip.
Gwen: I'm fine. Just… a lot.
She let it go, thank God, and rolled onto her stomach, kicking her feet in the air.
MJ: I think Ghost-Spider's my favorite. There's something about the way she moves. Like she's dancing almost. And the suit is gorgeous. That violet with the white lenses? Fashion icon behavior.
Heat crawled up my neck. I ducked my head, pretending to study the pattern on MJ's bedspread.
Gwen: Vector's suit is pretty cool too. Functional. Intimidating.
MJ grinned wickedly.
MJ: You've been watching the clips too, huh? Don't lie, Stacy, I've seen your browser history when you leave your phone unlocked.
Gwen: I have not— I started, then gave up because my face was on fire. Okay, maybe once. Or twelve times. But only for research.
MJ: Research. Sure. Research on brooding white-haired vigilantes who fight like they were born in a war zone and disappear like smoke. Totally normal teenage girl behavior.
I grabbed a pillow and smacked her with it. She squealed, retaliating instantly, and for thirty glorious seconds we were just two girls having a pillow fight while the city outside kept its secrets.
When we collapsed, breathless and giggling, MJ's phone buzzed with a news alert. She glanced at it and her smile faded.
MJ: Another warehouse. Red Hook this time. Vector again. They're saying Hammerhead's losing his mind.
I sat up slowly, heart thudding against my ribs. Red Hook was only a few miles from here. I could have swung there in minutes if I'd known.
MJ set the phone face-down, expression serious now.
MJ: Do you think they know each other? Ghost-Spider and Vector? They never show up in the same place at the same time, but the timing's too perfect. Like they're coordinating.
I stared at my hands, at the faint white lines across my palms where the web-shooters sometimes rubbed raw.
Gwen: I don't know. Maybe they're just… on the same side.
I said, and it wasn't entirely a lie.
MJ was quiet for a long moment. Then she reached over and squeezed my knee.
MJ: Whoever they are, I hope they're okay. Doing that stuff alone… it has to be heavy.
My throat closed. I nodded, not trusting my voice.
Outside, the sun dipped behind the skyline, bleeding orange across the buildings. Somewhere out there Vector was planning his next move, and I still didn't know if he was friend or rival or something else entirely. All I knew was that every time I put on the mask, the city felt a little less mine and a little more shared, like someone else was carrying part of the weight I'd never asked for.
MJ picked up her phone again, thumb hovering over the screen.
MJ: Hey. If you ever need to talk… about anything… I'm here. No judgment. Even if it's about mysterious vigilantes with excellent taste in color palettes.
She said suddenly, softer.
I looked at her then, really looked: my fearless, heartbroken, fiercely loyal friend who saw more than she ever let on.
Gwen: Thanks, MJ.
I whispered.
She smiled, small and real, and went back to her game. The little ghost candies exploded in cheerful bursts while I sat in the dying light and wondered how long I could keep pretending the girl in the violet suit and the shadow in black and gunmetal were strangers.
Because deep down, in the place where the spider-sense lived, I was starting to suspect they weren't.
And that terrified me more than any warehouse full of guns ever could.
I pulled my knees tighter to my chest and watched the city turn on its night lights, one by one, waiting for the next siren that might call me out into the dark to find him.