The Triskelion at 02:17. This is what passes for quiet in this place. A low, mechanical murmur that never shuts off. Like the building itself is breathing in its sleep. The corridors outside my office are dimmed to that emergency blue glow. The kind that makes everything look like a crime scene waiting to happen. I can feel the distant thrum of helicarrier engines vibrating through the floor. Server fans whirring like a thousand tiny hearts that don't know how to stop.
Inside, the lights are cranked low. Just enough to cast long shadows from the twelve wall-mounted monitors. They flicker with feeds from God-knows-where. Grainy satellite passes over the Potomac. Encrypted chatter from half a dozen black sites. One persistent alert about some low-level HYDRA remnant stirring in Latvia again.
And then there's my phone. Propped against a stack of classified folders. Blasting those godawful rainbow explosions from Candy Smash. It feels like it's mocking me personally.
Motherfucker.
I jab the screen with my thumb. A cascade of striped candies lights up the board in a perfect chain reaction. And still leaves one stubborn jellyfish bastard hanging in the corner. Mocking my entire existence. The restart button takes the abuse. I can feel the plastic casing creak under the pressure.
Hill: Sir.
Maria Hill is in the doorway. Arms folded across her chest. One eyebrow doing that slow, inevitable climb toward her hairline. Like it has a personal vendetta against bad decisions. She's still in her tactical blacks from the briefing earlier. Hair pulled back tight enough to give her a perpetual fivehead. But the exhaustion is there. In the faint lines under her eyes. The way her shoulders sit just a hair too low.
Fury: Not. One. Word, Maria. I'm stress-testing a potential intelligence vector here. Psychological warfare through dopamine loops. That's the official line. And if you breathe a syllable about it to Coulson, I'll have you running sims with Barton until you cry.
She steps inside anyway. The door seals behind her with that soft pneumatic hiss. It always sounds like a sigh of resignation. She crosses the room in four efficient strides. Drops a thick black folder onto the desk. It lands with a meaty thud that makes the phone jump an inch. Those cartoon candies bounce in protest.
Hill: You're on level 492 now, Director. You've sunk forty-eight dollars and sixty-three cents into microtransactions over the last eleven days. You've got three unclaimed Halloween ghost boosters rotting in your inventory. Accounting flagged your card twice last week for suspicious activity patterns. I have receipts. Transaction logs. And the disappointed faces of the entire finance team ready to testify if you want a full debrief.
I kill the game. Slap the phone face-down on the blotter. Like it personally insulted my mother. The screen goes dark. But not before one last smug ghost candy winks out. I lean back in my chair. The leather creaks under my weight. I fix her with that one good eye. The kind of look that has made grown men reconsider their life choices.
Fury: You come in here to bust my balls or deliver bad news? Because if it's both, pick a lane.
Hill: Bad news first. Always.
She doesn't sit yet. Leans against the edge of the desk instead. Close enough that I can smell the faint trace of gun oil and stale coffee on her. She flips the folder open with one hand. Lets the contents fan out across the scarred oak surface. Like a deck of very ugly playing cards. Crime-scene photos. Forensics reports. Grainy stills from traffic cams and security feeds. All of it spilling out in a controlled chaos I've seen a thousand times before. But never quite like this.
Hill: Vector hit the Red Hook armory at 01:04 this morning. Forty-one seconds from entry to exfil. Forty-three armed Maggia soldiers down and out. Concussions. Fractures. One dislocated shoulder that the ortho called artistic. Zero fatalities. Zero collateral. Sixteen million dollars in military-grade hardware reduced to what the fire marshal's calling abstract modern sculpture. Ghost-Spider took down a human-trafficking convoy on the BQE twenty-three minutes later. Three armored trucks webbed into a single cocoon so tight the drivers were still dangling like piñatas when NYPD rolled up at sunrise. She cut the kids loose herself. Eighteen minors. Mostly Eastern European. Before vanishing into the fog. Same pattern as the last fourteen hits. Clean. Surgical. And so goddamn traceless it's starting to feel personal.
I spread the photos wider with one scarred hand. My fingers linger on a high-res still of Vector caught mid-drop from a skylight. White hair whipping like a battle flag in the updraft. That black-and-gunmetal suit catching the strobing muzzle flashes in sharp, lethal angles. It looks more like armor from some forgotten myth than anything sewn by human hands. His right arm is outstretched, palm flat. A dozen rifles hang frozen in the air around him. Barrels twisted mid-burst. Like iron filings obeying an invisible god who doesn't like being shot at. I trace the edge of the photo with my thumb. Feeling the glossy paper give just a little under the pressure.
Hill: Psychokinesis is now confirmed on multiple angles. Not just some jumpy thug's eyewitness sketch. Bullets stop dead ten feet out. Full-auto bursts from AKs and ARs. 5.56 and 7.62 tumbling like they hit an invisible wall. They hang there for half a second. Just long enough for the shooters to realize what the hell's happening. Then drop straight down like someone yanked the plug on gravity itself. Strength estimates put him north of twenty tons casual. He flipped a three-ton forklift like it was a barbell to block the exit. Speed's off the charts. Forensics clocked him crossing a forty-foot bay in under two seconds without breaking stride. And that suit. Whatever it's woven from, it eats small-arms fire for breakfast. Three point-blank bursts to center mass. The only mark left was a scorch pattern that flaked off like ash.
I tap the photo once. Hard enough to leave a dent in the paper.
Fury: Steve Rogers on his best day. Post-serum, pre-thaw. Couldn't pull this off. Rogers never made bullets play dead like trained puppies. He threw shields and punched Nazis, sure. But this? This is something else. Elegant. Angry.
Hill: Exactly.
She finally sits. Pulls a slim holographic tablet from the folder's back pocket. Flicks it alive with a swipe. The device hums softly. Projecting a three-dimensional map of New York City that blooms between us like a bruise. Red dots pulsing like infected wounds over every site the vigilantes have touched in the last three weeks. Warehouses in Red Hook and Gowanus. Safehouses in Hell's Kitchen. A money-laundering front disguised as a Korean spa in Flushing. The pattern is surgical. Vector's hits cluster around infrastructure and arms caches. Ghost-Spider's around human trafficking and street-level ops.
Hill: They never overlap in real time. Vector clears the hardware and blows the exits. Ghost-Spider handles extraction and cleanup. But the strikes are coordinated within hours, sometimes minutes. It's like they're reading from the same playbook. Vector guts the machine. She saves the people caught in the gears. They're running a textbook counter-insurgency campaign against the Maggia. And they're winning it so clean the FBI's starting to whisper about poaching the files.
I lean forward. The chair groans in protest. I study the hologram with that predator's focus I reserve for threats that can actually bite back. The red dots form a noose tightening around Hammerhead's operations. Each one a knot pulled tighter than the last.
Fury: So we've got ourselves a super-soldier who can move the world with a thought. And a teenage spider-kid slinging organic silk stronger than Kevlar. Both holed up in the same goddamn city. Both dismantling an entire crime syndicate like it personally pissed in their cornflakes. And neither one has left so much as a fingerprint. A stray hair. Or a single smudge on a security lens for us to chase. No DNA. No fibers. No boot prints that don't match a hundred other schmucks off the street.
Hill's mouth twists into something that might have been a smile if smiles were ever allowed to be this bitter and tired. She rubs the bridge of her nose for a second. A rare crack in the armor. Then straightens up.
Hill: Hammerhead slapped fifteen million on each of their heads last week. Bounties climbed to twenty by Tuesday. Every two-bit hitter. Ex-KGB washout. And Triad enforcer from Philly to Boston is circling like sharks at a chum line. Nobody's cashing in. Not a dime. The street's started calling Vector the White Death. Like he's some kind of ghost story they tell new guys to keep 'em from sleeping. Ghost-Spider? She's got actual fan clubs now. Etsy stores slinging enamel pins and bootleg hoodies. There's a subreddit with thirty thousand subscribers debating her web formulas like it's peer-reviewed science.
I bark a laugh then. Short and sharp and utterly devoid of any real humor. A sound like gravel crunching under boot heels. I push back from the desk. The chair rolls a foot on the industrial carpet. I stand to pace. Coat swirling around my legs like a shadow that doesn't quite fit.
Fury: Kids, Maria. That's the kicker. Gait analysis from the footage. Skeletal ratios. The way they move when they're not turning the world into their personal obstacle course. Late teens. Early twenties at the absolute oldest. We're getting our asses handed to us. Our entire alphabet-soup apparatus outmaneuvered and outgunned. By a couple of goddamn children who probably still have curfews and algebra homework.
I reach for the phone again. Almost on reflex now. Thumbing it open to that cursed game. The little ghost candies dance across the screen in their smug pastel glory. Chaining combos like they own the place. I stare at it for a long, loaded second. The colors too bright. The sounds too cheerful. Then slam it back down harder than strictly necessary. The impact rattles the pens in their holder.
Fury: This game. Every agent under thirty is glued to it like it's the second coming. Half the analysts in this building have it installed on their secure tablets. Against regs, but who's gonna write up a Level 7 for candy-matching on lunch break? Revenue stream's north of forty million in thirty days and climbing like it's got actual rockets strapped to its ass. The developer's a ghost. Routes everything through six layers of shell companies. Crypto tumblers. And offshore trusts we can't crack with a sledgehammer and Jesus. Same encryption fingerprints we're seeing on Vector's comms blackouts every time he hits a site. Same goddamn Caymans routing we slam into dead ends on with the few scraps of Ghost-Spider's web we've managed to recover and analyze in the lab.
Hill goes very still then. Her fingers pausing mid-tap on the tablet. The hologram flickers once. Like it felt the shift in the air.
Hill: You're saying the vigilantes and the game are connected. Not just coincidence. Deliberate.
Fury: I'm saying I don't like coincidences this elegant. This goddamn poetic. Two enhanced teenagers blink into existence out of thin air. Start burning the Maggia to the ground one precision strike at a time. And suddenly every kid in America. From Brooklyn stoops to Silicon Valley boardrooms. Is addicted to a mobile game that bleeds money through the exact same anonymous pipelines we can't touch with a ten-foot pole. That's not coincidence, Maria. That's infrastructure. That's someone building an empire in plain sight while the rest of us chase shadows.
She joins me then. Pushing off the desk and crossing to the floor-to-ceiling window. It looks out over the dark, restless water of the Potomac. And the distant, jeweled sprawl of the city beyond. She folds her arms tight across her chest. Staring out at the lights like they might give up their secrets if she glares hard enough.
Hill: So what's the play? You want to bring them in? Hot extraction, black-bag the masks before they can twitch?
I shake my head. Slow. The motion carrying the weight of a dozen bad decisions I've already walked back from.
Fury: I want to know who they are before someone with less restraint and more missiles decides a drone strike is cheaper than a sit-down. Right now the only thread keeping them off the kill list. The only reason some panicked bureaucrat in Langley hasn't greenlit a Hellfire from ten thousand feet. Is the fact that they haven't spilled a drop of blood that wasn't already on the Maggia's ledger. The second that changes. The second Vector slips and cracks a skull too hard. Or Ghost-Spider webs the wrong throat. The rules evaporate. Gone. And then we're the bad guys in someone else's news cycle.
I turn from the window. Coat swirling around my legs like a living thing. I fix her with that unblinking stare.
Fury: Put together a task force. Six people maximum. Off-book. Deniable. The kind of operators who can tail a ghost without breathing on it. Agents who know how to keep their mouths shut and their weapons holstered unless I give the word. I want eyes on every hit from here on out. Drones if we can get clean lines of sight. Ground teams if we have to. I want to know what they eat for breakfast. Where they crash after the adrenaline crash. Who they whisper to in the dark. I want to know if they're lone wolves or if there's a handler pulling strings from some basement server farm. Hell, I want their Starbucks orders and their favorite takeout spots.
She's already pulling up files on her tablet. Fingers flying across the screen in that blur of efficiency that makes her indispensable.
Hill: Composition? Mix of field and tech?
Fury: Three field. One tracker like Romanova if we could poach her. But since we can't, give me Morales. He's got that ghosting talent without the ego. One close-quarters like Barton, but quieter. And one profiler. Someone who can read body language through a scope. Two tech. Sitwell on signals if he's clean. And that new kid from cyber who cracked the Mandarin feeds last year. Last slot's yours. Run point. Keep them from killing each other.
She nods once. Sharp. Already mentally assigning calls.
Hill: Timeline?
Fury: By 0600. And Maria?
My voice drops another notch. The one that means this isn't a suggestion.
Fury: No leaks. Not to the Council. Not to the Director's office. Not even to your goldfish. If this gets out before we're ready, those kids become problems we can't fix with words.
Hill: And if we find them? Actually corner them without a firefight?
She pockets the tablet. Straightening her jacket like she's suiting up for war.
Fury: Then we have a conversation. A real one. Before someone else. Hammerhead. The Council. Some suit in the Pentagon. Decides conversation isn't an option anymore and turns it into a kill order with our names on the after-action report.
I look back at the city then. The lights glittering out there like a million possible futures waiting to unfold. Some bright. Most sharp-edged. I can almost see them. The white-haired shadow leaping skylights. The violet streak swinging between steel girders. Two kids playing at gods in a world that eats heroes for breakfast.
I reach for the phone one more time. Staring at the spiderwebbed screen and those frozen, mocking candies. Like they hold all the answers I don't have yet. The glow lights my face in harsh blue. Carving shadows under my jaw. And for the first time in years. Maybe since the serum went missing. Maybe since Steve went under the ice. I sound almost, genuinely tired.
Fury: Or find me the kid who built this damn game. One way or another, Maria, I'm getting answers. Even if I have to match every last candy on this board to drag them out.
I tap the screen. The ghosts come alive again. Chaining combos in cheerful defiance.
Fury: Restart the damn level. Or burn the whole board down. I'm done losing sleep over puzzles I can't solve.
Hill lingers a second longer. Watching me. Then turns for the door.
Hill: 0600, sir. I'll have the roster by 0400.
The door hisses shut behind her. Leaving me alone with the hum of the monitors and the relentless pop of exploding sweets.
Fury:I play three more levels before the sun cracks the horizon. And not one of them brings me peace.
Peter's first person view
The house was too big. The quiet was the worst part. May and Ben had been gone for four days, and the silence they left behind wasn't empty. It was heavy. It pressed against my eardrums. I stood in the kitchen of the new place, the one I bought with the exploding-candy money. My bare feet were on heated Italian tile that cost more per square foot than Uncle Ben used to make in a week. The city glittered beyond the triple-paned glass, a million lights that suddenly felt like a million eyes.
Gaia: I have the transcript. Hammerhead's call. It was seventy-one hours ago.
The audio file played without my permission, tinny and alien in the quiet kitchen.
Unknown Woman: 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 all the way back to Naples in '78.
There was a long silence on the line, filled only by the sound of wind screaming through a broken window.
Unknown Woman: 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: 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 of it wired tonight.
Another pause, this one shorter and colder.
Unknown Woman: Done. The Black Widow protocol is green. You will receive confirmation when the assets are in theater. Forty-eight hours.
The recording ended with a sharp click. The kitchen felt ten degrees colder.
Gaia: Forty-eight hours came and went yesterday. Four confirmed Red Room graduates landed at Teterboro under false diplomatic tags. There is possibly a fifth, a handler. They dropped off every grid the moment their boots hit the concrete. There has been no chatter since. That isn't travel fatigue, Peter. That is hunting silence.
Peter: May and Ben are drinking wine in Tuscany right now. At least that's one less thing to worry about.
Gaia: They are safe. The villa is completely off-grid. Their security team believes they are guarding a crypto heiress and her husband. Hammerhead could not find them with a nuke and a prayer.
Peter: Small mercies.
I walked to the window and pressed my palm to the cold glass. Manhattan sparkled back, beautiful and utterly indifferent.
Peter: What about SHIELD?
Gaia: Fury is running an off-book team.
A new hologram flickered to life, showing grainy drone footage of unmarked black vans circling the block after my last hit as Vector.
Gaia: They are good. Not good enough to catch us yet. But they are good enough that any contact would be a catastrophic idea. And we both know who is really holding Fury's leash right now.
The word hung in the air between us, unspoken. Hydra. It tasted like rust in my mouth.
Peter: So I'm on my own.
Gaia: Not entirely. There is one other person in this city hitting the same targets, on the same nights, fighting the same enemies. Ghost-Spider. You have studied her footage the way she has studied yours. You know her patrol patterns. She knows yours.
I let out a laugh, short and sharp and hollow.
Peter: So you're telling me I should just stroll up to Gwen Stacy on a rooftop and say what, exactly? 'Hey, remember that spider that bit you? The one that was supposed to be for me? Cool suit. Wanna team up before a bunch of assassins from the Red Room turn us into throw rugs?'
Gaia: Something like that. The Widows will go for the softer target first. That is her. She announces herself. She gives warnings. She pulls her punches. You do not. They will break her to draw you out. It is classic doctrine.
My stomach dropped straight through the heated floor. I thought of Gwen swinging through the city, all grace and fearless hope, always leaving herself an exit, always trying to talk the bad guys down even when they deserved to be punched into next week. She wasn't ready for what was coming. Not alone.
I turned from the window, my fists clenched so tight my knuckles ached.
Peter: Give me the odds.
Gaia: One-on-one against a single Widow, with your current kit and skill set? Eighty-seven percent in your favor, but only if you strike first and do not hold back. You are stronger, faster. Your psychokinesis gives you a reach they cannot match. But they have studied every frame of your footage. They know your tricks. And they never, ever hunt alone. Two Widows drops your odds to fifty-fifty. Three or more, and the math becomes… ugly. They will use poison, misdirection, garrotes in the dark. Things that would make your worst nightmares look nostalgic. And they will enjoy it.
Peter: They'll go for Gwen first.
Gaia: It is the most likely scenario. She is greener. She hesitates. She tries to save everyone. That hesitation is a death sentence against the Red Room.
I closed my eyes. I saw her, stuck to the warehouse ceiling the night the spider bit her, her eyes wide and terrified and already glowing with a power she never asked for. I saw her in the hospital hallway the night her dad almost died, clinging to my jacket like I was the only real thing left in the world. I saw her now, swinging between buildings with that stubborn, impossible hope that refused to die no matter how dark the city got.
I opened my eyes.
Peter: Then we don't give them the chance to set the terms.
Gaia's hologram stilled, a rare moment of what might have been surprise.
Gaia: You are going to reach out to her.
Peter: Tonight. I know where she patrols on Thursdays. There's a rooftop on the edge of Hell's Kitchen, the one with the broken billboard she likes to perch on. Clear sightlines, no civilians after midnight. I'll be there. No mask at first. Just Peter and Gwen. If she bolts, she bolts. But if she listens…
My voice cracked. I cleared my throat.
Peter: Then we figure the rest out together.
Gaia was quiet for three full seconds—an eternity for her.
Gaia: They will be watching her already. Possibly tonight.
Peter: Then I'd better not be late.
I walked past her shimmering form toward the private elevator that went straight down to the sub-level garage. The lights tracked my movement, sensors reading my biometrics, doors sliding open before I could even reach for them. The U9 sat waiting under a single spotlight, its pearl-white paint shifting like oil on water.
Peter: Full kit. Adaptive suit, grappler, kinetic boots, shield, everything. But I'm leaving the white hair and the Vector mask in the locker until I know she's in. I'm not going to scare her off before we even talk.
Gaia: I will have drones in a two-mile radius on silent mode. If a Widow so much as breathes in your direction, I will know.
I pulled on a plain black hoodie and zipped it up. I hit the garage door opener. The night rushed in, cool and electric with the promise of rain.
Gaia: Peter.
Her voice was softer now, almost human.
Gaia: These women… they were forged in a place that makes hell look like a summer camp. And they have been ordered to bring back trophies.
I stepped into the dark, the keys to the U9 cold and solid in my palm.
Peter: Then they're about to learn what happens when you hunt someone who's already decided this city is worth dying for.
The garage door rolled shut behind me, sealing away the house, sealing away the normal life I was desperately trying to protect. I slid into the driver's seat and fired up the hypercar. The electric motors woke with a low, predator's purr. I pulled out into the street.
Hell's Kitchen was twenty minutes away if I obeyed traffic laws.
I floored it.
The U9 shot forward, its tires gripping the asphalt as the city lights streaked across the windshield like tracer rounds.
Somewhere out there, Gwen was swinging alone.
Not for long.