The Black Hawk came in low over Flushing Bay, skids kissing the cracked tarmac of an abandoned airfield that hadn't seen legitimate traffic since the eighties. Natasha Romanoff was off the ramp before the rotors had even begun to slow, boots hitting concrete with the softest scuff, duffel slung over one shoulder like she was here for a long weekend instead of a kill-or-capture that could turn half of Queens into a war zone. The pilot kept the engines spooling; he knew the drill. She gave him a lazy two-finger salute without looking back and started walking toward the rusted chain-link fence that separated the old runway from the sleeping neighborhoods beyond.
Cold October air knifed straight through her jacket, carrying the smell of jet fuel, dead leaves and the distant salt of the bay. Natasha exhaled once, watching her breath fog, and let the familiar weight of mission mode slide over her shoulders like a second skin. She had parachuted into worse places with less, once with nothing but a garrote wire and a smile that usually ended with someone dead or in a bathtub, but this felt different. Slippery. Like trying to hold smoke.
She vaulted the fence in one fluid motion, landed cat-quiet on the far side, and melted into the backstreets of Queens. Hood up, hands in pockets, stride loose and unhurried—just another insomniac out for a 4 a.m. walk in a city that never really slept. The streets were theirs at this hour: bodega gates down, traffic lights cycling red to green for no one, the occasional yellow cab hissing past with its rooftop light off like a tired shark looking for one last fare. Somewhere a dog barked once, thought better of it, and went silent.
Her comm buzzed softly in her ear. Hill, right on schedule.
Maria Hill: Romanoff. Status.
Natasha kept moving, eyes scanning rooftops, alleys, the dark mouths of doorways.
Natasha: Boots on ground. Queens is quiet. Too quiet. The four assets you sent ahead? Radio silent since 23:17 yesterday. My money's on my sisters finding them first and not liking the conversation.
A beat of silence long enough to be uncomfortable.
Hill's voice came back clipped, the way it always did when she was pretending she wasn't worried.
Maria Hill: We lost their transponders an hour after insertion. Last ping was near a condemned warehouse in Long Island City. No bodies, no blood, just… gone.
Natasha snorted softly, breath fogging again.
Natasha: Which means they're either compromised or dead. And since the Red Room doesn't do prisoners unless they're planning to sell them back in pieces, I'm betting on dead.
Another pause. Hill hated being this far behind the curve.
Natasha turned down a narrow side street lined with brownstones, their windows dark, porch lights glowing like low-watt stars doing their best to keep the night at bay. She moved like she belonged here, shoulders loose, gait easy, just another local who couldn't sleep. In reality she was mapping angles, escape routes, blind spots, every instinct the Red Room had burned into her bones humming at low volume.
Natasha: Maria, you sent me here with zero intel beyond stop the rogue Widows before they turn the local talent into trophies. No names, no faces, no last known locations. Vector and Ghost-Spider have been dark for seventy-two hours straight. Not a warehouse fire, not one webbed-up trafficker swinging from a lamppost on the evening news. They know we're coming. And they're good. Really good.
She stopped under a broken streetlamp that flickered like it was on its last legs, let the shadows swallow her completely, and pulled the secure phone from her thigh pocket. Thumbed a message one-handed while her eyes kept sweeping the rooftops.
You basically sent me on a mission with no leads, just a directive. I've checked every major network, traffic cams, cell towers, even the damn Ring doorbells and private security feeds. It's like they evaporated. They're covering their tracks and they're good. Really good.
The reply came back almost instantly, like Hill had been waiting with her finger on the trigger.
Fury wants them brought in alive if possible. He thinks they're assets.
Natasha snorted again, louder this time, the sound swallowed by the empty street. Assets. Right. Two kids who had turned the Maggia into a city-wide joke were assets the way a live grenade was a party favor. She typed back without breaking stride.
Tell Fury assets don't usually make four Red Room graduates disappear without a trace. These two aren't just enhanced. They're smart. And they're scared enough to go to ground perfectly.
She pocketed the phone and kept moving. The city was starting to wake in fits and starts: a delivery truck rumbled past with its hazards blinking, a lone jogger in neon spandex thumped by with earbuds in, the first newspaper guy wrestled with the metal gate on his corner stand. Normal life, oblivious to the fact that four of the deadliest women on the planet, possibly five if the handler was on-site, were stalking its shadows with orders to paint the pavement red.
Natasha slipped into a small park tucked between two rows of brownstones, empty swings creaking in the wind like old bones, and found a bench that gave her clean sightlines on three different rooftops and two alleys. She sat, pulled her knees up, and let herself look like just another tired local who couldn't sleep. In reality she was mapping everything: wind direction, moon position, the faint reflection of a possible sniper nest on the water tower two blocks over.
Her mind ran the numbers the way it always did, cold, clinical, efficient.
Four Red Room graduates, almost certainly Dreykov's last class before the program went officially dark. Trained from diapers to kill without blinking, no mercy, no hesitation, no concept of too far. They'd come for Vector and Ghost-Spider because Hammerhead paid in untraceable crypto and because the Red Room never forgot a slight. Vector had humiliated the Maggia's money flow; Ghost-Spider had freed girls who were supposed to be the next generation of Widows. That made it personal.
Natasha knew the playbook better than her own heartbeat. They'd watch, wait, isolate the softer target, Ghost-Spider, almost certainly, use her as bait, then close the trap on Vector when he inevitably came running. Classic doctrine. She'd written half of it herself.
Except the kids weren't playing.
No sign of them for three days. No warehouse explosions lighting up the skyline like the Fourth of July. No viral videos of Ghost-Spider webbing muggers to traffic lights with little notes that said Be better. Nothing. Just silence.
Silence from two teenagers who had spent the last month making the Maggia look like amateurs.
Natasha's phone vibrated again. Hill.
New satellite pass in twenty. We'll have thermal on half the borough.
Natasha typed back without looking.
They'll be cold. They're not stupid.
She stood, stretched like any civilian working out a cramp, and started moving again. The city was waking for real now: lights flicking on in upper windows, the smell of coffee drifting from somewhere, the low rumble of the subway under her feet. Normal life, oblivious.
She turned down a narrow alley that smelled like old beer and wet cardboard, found the fire escape she'd scouted on the satellite maps, and climbed three stories in silence, and crouched on the railing like a gargoyle in tactical gear. Queens spread before her in a patchwork of brick and tar and rusted water towers, the Manhattan skyline a jagged promise on the horizon, still glowing even at this hour.
She closed her eyes for a second and listened. Not with her ears; with everything the Red Room had burned into her soul. The city had a rhythm, a pulse, the way a living thing does. Right now that pulse was off. Too many quiet corners. Too many places where the usual late-night predators had suddenly gone to ground. Too many rooftops that felt watched.
They were here. All of them.
Her comm crackled softly, almost apologetic.
Maria Hill: Romanoff. You've got movement. Rooftop, three blocks east. Single heat signature. Small. Female. Holding position.
Natasha's eyes snapped open.
Ghost-Spider.
Or a decoy.
Or bait.
Either way, the game had just started.
She dropped from the fire escape, landed in a crouch that didn't even disturb the puddles, and started running across the rooftops, silent as a thought, red hair catching the first pale edge of dawn like a warning flag.
(It was a decoy)
Timeskip
The city was a blur of steel and neon, the kind of night where the wind bit hard enough to make your teeth ache and the skyline looked like teeth gnashing at the stars. Gwen swung from one building to the next, her web line snapping taut against a rusted fire escape, the recoil yanking her body forward in that stomach-dropping arc that never got old. Her heart hammered against her ribs, not from the height or the speed, but from the shadows that kept pace behind her—four of them, dark suits blending into the dark, masks like voids where faces should be. They moved like smoke, vanishing from one rooftop only to flicker into existence on the next, as if the city itself was folding around them, spitting them out closer every time.
She landed on a gravel roof in Midtown, boots skidding for a half-second before she caught her balance, the rough surface scraping under her heels. The air tasted like rain coming, sharp and metallic, mixed with the distant exhaust from taxis far below. Gwen's breath came in short bursts, fogging the lenses of her mask, and she risked a glance back. There—three blocks away, silhouetted against the glow of a billboard advertising some energy drink that promised to make you invincible. One of the figures paused, head tilting like a predator scenting blood, then they were gone again, swallowed by the night.
"Shit," she muttered, voice muffled by the modulator. Her arms burned from the constant swinging, muscles screaming for a break she couldn't afford. The web-shooters Peter had given her were miracles—light, seamless, firing lines that held like steel cables—but even they couldn't outrun ghosts. These women weren't just fast; they were wrong. One minute they'd be leaping gaps with cat-like precision, the next they'd dissolve into the shadows, reappearing a hundred yards ahead as if space had bent to their will. It wasn't tech, not the kind Gwen could spot anyway—no glints of gadgets, no hum of engines. It was something else, something that made her spider-sense prickle like static on her skin.
She fired another line, this one to a crane arm jutting over the avenue, and launched herself into the void. The drop stole her breath for a second, wind roaring in her ears, the city rushing up like it wanted to swallow her whole. She twisted mid-air, boots grazing the side of a brick wall, and stuck the landing on a ledge barely wide enough for her toes. Below, the street was a canyon of yellow cabs and late-night stragglers, oblivious to the war playing out above them. A hot dog vendor packed up his cart, steam rising from the griddle like a ghost of dinner long past. Gwen's stomach twisted—hunger she hadn't noticed until now—but there was no time. She could feel them closing in, that itch at the base of her skull telling her they were near, too near.
Why her? Why now? The question looped in her head as she vaulted to the next roof, a flat expanse of HVAC units and satellite dishes that looked like mechanical grave markers. Peter had warned her about the Widows, the Red Room's elite, women forged in places that made hell look cozy. But hearing about it and living it were different beasts. They'd been chasing her and Peter for hours now, ever since the first one had dropped from a helicopter onto the warehouse roof where they'd been staking out a Maggia shipment. One became four in the blink of an eye, coordinated like a pack of wolves with human faces. Peter had held them off long enough for her to swing clear, his psychokinesis hurling debris like confetti from hell, but they'd separated them deliberately, herding her east while he drew fire west.
Gwen's mind raced as she ran, the gravel biting through her suit soles. Peter was out there somewhere, probably turning an alley into a kill zone with that shield of his. The thought of him—dark hair matted with sweat, hazel eyes fierce behind the mask—sent a spike of fear through her chest. They were partners now, whatever that meant in a world where "forever" was measured in heartbeats. But these women... they didn't fight fair. No taunts, no mercy, just efficient, brutal silence. One had nearly clipped her with a garrote wire on the last jump, the thin cable whistling past her ear close enough to singe hairs.
She leaped again, web line snapping to a flagpole on a high-rise, the city tilting as she swung in a wide arc over 42nd Street. The lights below blurred into streaks of color—Times Square's electric fever dream, tourists gawking at screens that promised escape from the real world. Gwen's arms screamed, lactic acid burning like fire, but she pushed harder, twisting to land on a sloped roof slick with dew. Her boots slid for a terrifying second, fingers scrabbling for purchase on the copper flashing, before she caught herself and rolled into a crouch.
There—movement in her peripheral. A flicker on the adjacent building, a shadow detaching from the chimney stack like ink bleeding into water. Then another on the rooftop to her left, materializing from nothing, mask reflecting the neon like a black mirror. They were bracketing her, cutting off escape routes with the precision of surgeons. Gwen's spider-sense went nuclear, a full-body buzz that made her teeth ache. Four of them now, spread out like points on a compass, suits absorbing the light until they were holes in the night.
The first one moved first, leaping the gap between buildings with impossible grace, landing in a roll that brought her within twenty feet. Up close, the suit was matte black, tactical weave that drank shadows, mask a featureless void with slits for eyes that glowed faint red from some internal HUD. No weapons visible, but Gwen knew better—Widows didn't need guns when their bodies were the blade.
Gwen fired a web at her feet, the line thickening mid-air into a sticky net, but the woman twisted, vanishing in a blur of motion that left only afterimages. She reappeared ten feet to the right, already closing, a knife glinting in her hand like moonlight on water. Gwen swung low, boots skimming the roof edge, and kicked off into another arc, the line pulling her toward a distant crane. The wind howled in her ears, drowning out the thud of boots behind her, but she felt them—the pursuit relentless, the air thick with the scent of rain and something sharper, like ozone from a storm about to break.
They were toying with her. That's what made it worse. The way they disappeared and reappeared, phasing through shadows like they owned the dark, it wasn't speed; it was something engineered, some Red Room trick she'd heard whispers of in Peter's briefings—neural implants, light-bending cloaks, tech that made you question if they're sugar daddy was tony stark.
She landed on a flat warehouse roof, the surface littered with vent pipes and forgotten air conditioners, and risked a glance back. Three of them now, fanned out, leaping gaps with synchronized precision that turned the skyline into their playground. The fourth was gone again, vanished into the maze of ducts. Gwen's breath came in ragged pulls, mask fogging, suit chafing at her thighs from the constant motion. Sweat trickled down her back, cold against the chill air, and her arms felt like lead, but she couldn't stop. Not now.
A web line to the next building, swing, land, run. The city blurred—rooftops giving way to a stretch of low-rise apartments, laundry lines snapping like whips in the wind. One of the shadows matched her leap, landing close enough that Gwen heard the soft impact of boots on gravel. She spun, firing a wide spray of web that coated the space between them in sticky strands, but the figure rolled under it, coming up with a baton that crackled blue at the tip—electric, non-lethal, but the kind that would drop her twitching for hours.
Gwen dodged, the baton whistling past her ear, and countered with a kick to the midsection that connected solid, sending the woman staggering back. Satisfaction flared hot in Gwen's chest, but it died fast—the shadow recovered in a blink, vanishing into a shadow cast by a chimney, reappearing to Gwen's left with the baton swinging low for her knees.
She leaped back, web line snapping to a flagpole, and swung out over the street, the drop yawning below like a mouth. Cars honked far down, oblivious, and for a second Gwen felt the vertigo hit, the endless fall calling her name. She twisted mid-air, stuck the landing on a billboard advertising some insurance company with a smiling family that looked nothing like her life, and kept running.
They were closer now, the four of them converging like wolves on a wounded deer. One dropped from a higher roof, landing in a roll that brought her within striking distance, knife flashing. Gwen webbed her wrist, yanking hard enough to pull her off balance, but the woman twisted, using the momentum to close the gap, free hand clawing for Gwen's mask. Fingers grazed her cheek, cold through the fabric, and Gwen shoved her back, heart pounding.
"Stay down," she gasped, but the shadow just smiled—or what passed for one behind the mask—and vanished again, reappearing on a vent pipe to her right.
The chase blurred into exhaustion. Building to building, swing to leap, the city a endless maze of edges and drops. Gwen's legs burned, lungs raw, but she pushed on, mind racing for an out. Peter—where was Peter? The thought looped, terror and fury tangled together. They'd separated them on purpose, herded her like this was a game. But it wasn't. These women were death in suits, and Gwen was just a girl who'd gotten bit by the wrong spider.
She swung wide over a park, the green space below dotted with benches and trees like black ink spills, and landed on a high-rise ledge, the wind howling louder up here, tugging at her suit like it wanted to strip her bare. The four shadows were visible now, spread out but closing, their movements a deadly ballet she's been studying alongside Peter
One leaped from the adjacent roof, baton crackling, and Gwen met her mid-air with a web line to the ankle, yanking her down into a controlled fall that ended with the woman slamming into a dumpster lid with a clang that echoed like a gunshot. Two down, temporarily. The other three pressed on, disappearing and reappearing in flashes that made Gwen's head spin.
She fired a line to a distant antenna, swung out over the avenue, the drop endless, and stuck the landing on a sloped roof, sliding down the tiles before catching a gutter. The metal groaned under her weight, but held. She ran, boots slipping on loose shingles, and vaulted to the next building, a flat expanse of tar paper and gravel that crunched underfoot.
They were on her. One materialized from the shadows of an AC unit, knife slashing low for her hamstring. Gwen twisted, the blade whistling past her thigh close enough to part the fabric, and countered with an elbow to the jaw that connected with a satisfying crack. The woman staggered, but didn't fall extremely tough, every one of them.
Gwen webbed her feet to the gravel, thick strands pinning her in place, and leaped away, heart slamming. Two more appeared on the flanks, batons humming blue, and she swung low, line pulling her under their strikes, boots kicking out to sweep one off her feet. The woman hit the gravel rolling, coming up with a gun in hand—suppressed, 9mm, aimed center mass.
Gwen's spider-sense exploded, and she dove left as the shot whispered past, embedding in the AC unit with a dull thunk. She fired a web at the gun hand, yanking hard, the weapon flying into the dark. The woman cursed in Russian, low and venomous, and vanished again, reappearing with a knife.
The fourth one closed from behind, garrote wire whistling. Gwen ducked, felt the thin cable slice air above her head, and spun, webbing the woman's legs together in a cocoon that dropped her to her knees. Three down, thrashing and cursing.
The last one paused, head tilted, assessing. Then she smiled behind the mask and vanished completely, the air rippling like heat haze.
Gwen backed toward the edge, breath ragged, suit torn at the thigh where the knife had kissed it, a thin line of blood warm against her skin. The city sprawled below, lights mocking her, and for a second she thought she heard Peter's voice in the wind, calling her name.
The shadow reappeared right in front of her, baton crackling, and drove it into her side.
Pain bloomed white-hot, electricity seizing her muscles, and Gwen crumpled, vision tunneling to black. She hit the gravel twitching, the world spinning, and the woman knelt, mask inches from her face.
"End of the line, spider,"
she whispered, voice like broken glass.
Gwen's world faded to nothing.
But as the shadow reached to unmask her, the body flickered. Pixels. Light. A hologram.
The drone buzzed to life, projectors dying, and the real trap sprang.
Mini-drones swarmed from vents and shadows, thirty of them, no bigger than fists, humming like angry bees. The woman leaped back, baton swinging wild, but they were everywhere—firing canisters that burst on impact, hissing clouds of sleeping gas that filled the roof in seconds.
She coughed, eyes watering, and vanished one last time, but the gas followed, invisible and relentless. Her form flickered back into existence mid-leap, legs buckling, and she hit the gravel hard, body going limp as the sedative took hold.
The other three stirred, webbed and battered, only to face the same swarm. Canisters popped, gas bloomed, and one by one they slumped, masks fogging over.
The drones hovered, lights blinking green, and Peter's voice crackled through a hidden speaker.
"Sweet dreams, ladies. You've been trapped in my genjutsu"
The city lights twinkled on, oblivious, as the Widows slept the sleep of the defeated.