PART 1: THE FOGGY HOLIDAY
DAVID MARTINEZ sat in his armchair, coffee in hand, watching the morning news. The TV screen showed a map of New York covered in a thick white blob.
NEWS ANCHOR (ON TV)
"...unprecedented fog advisory for all five boroughs. Visibility is less than fifty feet. All public schools are closed for the week as a safety precaution. Buses will run delayed schedules, and essential services will continue..."
In the kitchen, MARIA poured cereal into a bowl. Their five-year-old son LEO was already spinning in circles on the linoleum floor.
LEO
No school! No school! The fog ate my school!
DAVID
(Muttering to Maria)
Great. A whole week with the human tornado.
MARIA
(Smiling)
Think of it as... family bonding.
The door to the hallway swung open. Their fourteen-year-old daughter stood there, her hair messy from sleep, a huge grin on her face.
THE GIRL
Did they say... a whole week?
DAVID
They did. Don't get too excited. You still have that book report.
THE GIRL
(Already planning)
Mom! Can we make those spicy noodles today? And the chicken soup with the big dumplings? We can make a blanket fort and watch movies! Please?
LEO
(Stops spinning, dizzy)
BLANKET FORT! YES! WITH PILLOWS!
MARIA
(Laughing)
Alright, alright. Noodles and soup it is. But only if you two clean up after.
PART 2: THE BLANKET FORT INVESTIGATION
By noon, the living room was transformed. A massive blanket fort, held up by chairs and couch cushions, took up half the space. Inside, it was warm and cozy. A laptop played colorful anime on a low table, surrounded by empty noodle bowls.
LEO, wrapped in a blanket burrito, was fast asleep, a tiny snore escaping his lips.
The girl wasn't watching the screen. She was staring at the fabric wall of the fort, her mind racing.
One whole week.
Dad at the bank all day.
Mom busy chasing Leo.
No school.
It was a perfect, foggy window of time.
She carefully slipped out of the fort, making sure not to wake her brother. She tiptoed to her room and closed the door. Pulling out her phone, she called her best friend, BENJI.
It rang twice before he picked up.
BENJI (PHONE)
Hello? Aren't you supposed to be in a noodle coma right now?
THE GIRL
Benji. I need your help. With the... you know. The project. The history one.
There was a pause on the other end. They hadn't talked about it since the library, but they both knew.
BENJI (PHONE)
The one about the... urban legend?
THE GIRL
Yes. I think we have a chance now. A week to really look. Can you help me search online? For anything. News articles, old forum posts, anything from back then. 2010 to 2014. Please?
BENJI (PHONE)
(Sighs, but it's an excited sigh)
Okay. My mom thinks I'm doing extra credit math. Give me an hour.
PART 3: THE DIGITAL GHOST
An hour later, they were on a video call, screens shared.
BENJI'S FACE looked frustrated on the laptop screen. "It's weird. It's like... digital amnesia. You search for 'Spider-Man New York 2012 fight' and you get links to movie trailers and video games. The real news stuff is just... gone."
The girl scrolled through her own search. She found a few things. A blurry picture on a blog called "NYC Weird Tales." The caption read: "My cousin took this in 2012? Could be a guy on wires? Or a really big bird?" The picture was just a dark smudge against a building.
Another site, a old message board, had a thread titled: "Did anyone else see the guy on the bridge?" Most of the comments were deleted. The few that remained said things like "[Comment Removed by Administrator]" and "This thread is locked."
"It's like someone cleaned house," Benji said, his voice a whisper. "They wiped the internet."
"But they can't wipe everything," the girl said, a new idea forming. "Not the stuff that was printed before the internet took over."
Benji's eyes widened behind his glasses. "You mean..."
"The library," they both said at the same time.
PART 4: THE LIBRARY EXPEDITION
The next morning, the fog was still a thick, white soup. DAVID drove them downtown, his car crawling through the gray world.
DAVID
You two are very dedicated to this... group study. For a foggy day.
THE GIRL
It's a big project, Dad. On local history.
BENJI
(Nodding fast)
Very local. Very historical.
David pulled up to the big stone library with the lion statues out front. "Be safe. Call me when you're done. And don't wander off in this fog, you hear me?"
Inside, the library was a temple of quiet. They approached the main desk, where an elderly librarian with kind eyes and a name tag that read MS. PEARL looked up.
THE GIRL
Um, excuse me? We're doing a school project on New York City in the early 2010s. Do you have... old newspapers from that time? Like, the physical ones?
MS. PEARL
(Smiling)
Of course, dears. We have the archives on microfilm. Follow me.
She led them to a quiet corner with big, clunky machines that looked like sci-fi movie props. She showed them how to load the film reels—the Daily Bugle from 2011 to 2014.
For two hours, they scrolled. Their eyes stung from the glowing green screens. They saw headlines about politics, sports, weather. Nothing. Not a single mention.
"Maybe my dad was right," the girl whispered, her hope deflating. "Maybe it really was all just a dream people had."
Dejected, they started packing up. As Benji pulled his backpack from under the table, he knocked over a pile of old, discarded magazine boxes meant for recycling.
"Whoops!"
They scrambled to pick them up. That's when the girl saw it. Not on the microfilm, but in the trash pile. A torn, yellowed piece of newsprint, sticking out from a 2014 issue of a science magazine called The Electro-Chemical Review.
She picked it up. It wasn't a full article. It was just a torn fragment, part of a larger piece that had been ripped out. The headline read:
"...OSBORN INDUSTRIES' STAR ENGINEER, MAX DILLON, CRITICAL AFTER FREAK LAB ACCIDENT INVOLVING ELECTRIC EELS AND...".
The text below was cut off. But in the next fragment, a sub-heading sent a jolt through her:
"...TRANSFORMED INTO LIVING CONDUCTOR, DUBBED 'ELECTRO' BY PRESS...BECAME A MAJOR THREAT TO THE CITY AND TO S..."
The page ripped off. The "S" was the last letter on the line. The sentence was unfinished. A threat to the City and to S... to Security? To the System?
Her heart hammered. To S...
She carefully folded the fragile paper scrap and put it in her pocket.
PART 5: DINNER AND DISCOVERY
Dinner that night was chaos, which was normal.
LEO had decided his mashed potatoes were a volcano and his peas were fleeing lava victims.
LEO
Save yourselves, green people! The lava is coming! GLUB GLUB GLUB!
He made a dramatic drowning sound as he shoved a spoonful of peas into his mouth.
DAVID
Leo, the green people would prefer to be eaten with dignity, not during a natural disaster.
MARIA
(Trying not to laugh)
Just eat your disaster, honey.
The girl pushed her food around, the piece of newspaper burning a hole in her pocket.
DAVID
(Nodding at her)
And how was the intense study session? Crack the code on New York history?
THE GIRL
(Forcing a smile)
It was... informative. Found some interesting stuff about... engineering accidents.
DAVID
(His smile fading slightly)
Accidents, huh? That era had a few of those. Best left in the past.
Later, in her room with the door locked, she laid the scrap of paper on her desk under her lamp. She typed the words into her computer, her fingers trembling.
Max Dillon Oscorp accident 2012
Electro New York threat
Engineer electric eel lab
The searches were cleaner now. Having a name—Electro—was a key. She found a few more fragments. An obituary for a man named Max Dillon who died in a "industrial accident." A small article about a massive, unexplained blackout at the old Ravencroft Institute in 2012.
Her breath came fast. This was real. A person. An accident. A... villain.
Her cursor hovered in the search bar. She took a deep breath and typed the final, desperate search of the night. She combined the only two real clues she had.
"Electro" "S" New York 2012
She hit ENTER.
The screen blinked. The search results loaded.
For a second, nothing. Just the spinning icon of doom. Her internet, always flaky, was choking on the fog or history or both.
Come on. Please.
And then, the list appeared.
The usual junk was there. Movie wiki pages. Video game character bios.
But at the very top, a result she had never seen before. It wasn't from a news site or a blog. It was from a dry, official-looking domain: nyc.gov/archives/publicsafety/declassified.
The link title was a string of numbers and letters: PSR-041-2012.
Below it, a text preview. Her eyes scanned the fragment, her heart seizing in her chest:
"...INCIDENT REPORT: HOSTILE ENGAGEMENT BETWEEN ELECTRO AND S* MAN AT THE TIMES SQUARE ELECTRICAL SUBSTATION. COLLATERAL DAMAGE EXTENSIVE. CIVILIAN CASUALTIES: MINIMAL. SUBJECT S *MAN'S WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN AFTER EVENT. CASE STATUS: COLD/CLASSIFIED. FULL REPORT REDACTED PER ORDER..."
The preview text ended there.
The room ceased to exist. The hum of the heater, the distant foghorn from the river, the muffled sound of the TV from the living room—it all faded into a silent, rushing roar in her ears.
S*** ***MAN.
The redaction bars were exactly three asterisks each. A three-letter word, a space, another three-letter word.
Her brain, the brilliant math-and-logic part of it, instantly began to solve for X.
_S _ _ M _ .
Not 'Security'. Not 'System'. Not 'Safety'.
A name.
A name the city had tried so hard to bury that they'd cut it out of official reports, leaving only its ghostly outline. A silhouette made of asterisks.
Her finger, cold and trembling, hovered over the trackpad. The cursor sat atop the mysterious link.
To click it would be to open a door everyone had told her was welded shut. To look at something she had been warned, in whispers and sad parental looks, to leave alone.
This wasn't a blurry photo. This wasn't a forum rumor.
This was a government document. It called him a "Subject." It called the fight a "Hostile Engagement." It was cold, factual proof that the battle—and the man—were real.
The fog outside her window pressed against the glass, a solid white wall hiding the world.
But here, on her screen, the past had just cracked open, and a single, piercing beam of terrifying truth was shining through.
She took a shaky breath.
And clicked.