Chapter 12: Night at the Museum
The Osborn visitor badge still worked on the R&D elevators.
It probably shouldn’t have been authorized to do that. I wasn’t even a visitor, technically. I was a liability with a last name that opened doors people preferred stayed locked. But Oscorp liked legacy optics, and Norman liked pretending everything in this building still belonged to him—including me.
So. It worked.
The badge chimed green.
The elevator doors slid shut, and I started heading down.
To the Sublevel Materials Lab.
There were risks, of course, to using Oscorp labs to run the tests I needed to, but I’ve taken some precautions. If I’m fast enough, I should be able to find what I’m looking for, and leave before I get caught.
For one, tonight’s board dinner had started forty-three minutes ago. I’d checked the calendar myself.
That bought me about seventeen, maybe thirty-two minutes. Norman would be upstairs shaking hands and discussing quarterly projections while I committed light corporate espionage just a few floors below him. Healthy father-son dynamics.
The elevator hummed as he carried me downward.
Don’t forget the cameras. Three in the corridor. Two rotating. One fixed.
‘I know the layout. When have I ever not memorized a layout?’
You miss one sometimes.
‘Lies and slander.’
The doors opened.
White floors. Frosted glass. Steel and silence. Oscorp’s idea of subtlety was very expensive minimalism. I stepped out like I belonged there because, technically, I did. Maintenance corridor to the left. Main biometric checkpoint to the right.
I went left.
The biometric scanners logged fingerprints and retinal data for late-hour lab use. My prints were on file. So was my retina. But there was a difference between “guest with clearance” and “guest accessing chemical analysis equipment after-hours without authorization.”
The maintenance hallway smelled faintly of coolant and ozone. I’d memorized it months ago when I’d still believed I might need a backup route for less wholesome reasons. Turns out paranoia was versatile.
All clear ahead. We do hear one guard at the far junction. He sounds bored. We could fix that.
‘We are not mauling corporate security.’
You are no fun.
I slipped past the junction during the guard’s phone check, pushed through the secondary access door, and badge-tapped into Sublevel Materials.
The lab lights activated in soft tiers.
Cold. Clean. Sterile.
I set the reverse gas mask on the stainless counter and exhaled slowly.
This thing had been on the victim’s face when I found him. The filter still held trace residue. That was all I had. No dispersal canister. No storage unit. No delivery system.
Just a mask and a hunch.
We told you, it smells wrong.
“It’s a filter,” I muttered under my breath. “It’s not exactly going to smell right, now is it? You’re sure that there’s more to this?”
Ugh. We bet Gwen wouldn’t be this skeptical of our hunches. Maybe we should have stayed bonded to her…
‘I’m going to ignore that.’
Sorry. That went too far.
‘Let’s just see if you’re onto something.’
I pulled gloves on and detached the filtration cartridge, sliding the inner mesh lining free. The condensation plate on the interior held faint crystalline residue along the rim. Someone had used this more than once.
Oscorp’s spectrographic analyzer powered on with a soft tone. I loaded the first sample—microscopic scrapings from the filter lining—into the tray and initiated a compound breakdown.
The screen populated slowly.
Molecular chains resolved into something ugly.
Volatile psychoactive compound.
Rapid blood-brain barrier penetration.
Olfactory absorption vector.
Neurochemical amplification of amygdala activity.
Heightened fear recall response.
Not just “you’re scared.”
More like: your brain remembers everything it’s ever feared and turns the volume to maximum.
There were secondary markers too. Trace hallucinogenic triggers. Not a full deliriant. More like perceptual distortion layered on top of emotional overload.
Whoever engineered this didn’t want random chaos. They wanted targeted fear.
“Okay,” I muttered. “That’s charming.”
Drugs are for losers, Harry.
This guy has nothing on us. Real badasses scare people with hard work, determination, and sharp pointy teeth that can shred flesh as easily as a… paper shredder. We are bad at metaphors. Shut up.
‘That was almost inspiring.’
I ran the second sample—exterior residue scraped from the mask housing itself.
Different result.
Polymer catalyst.
Non-toxic. Industrial grade. Designed to accelerate synthetic chain bonding reactions. Temperature-sensitive activation curve. The kind of compound you’d use if you wanted a reaction to stabilize quickly under controlled environmental conditions.
That was not part of a fear gas delivery system.
I frowned and loaded the third trace sample.
Organic reactivation accelerant.
My fingers paused over the keyboard.
Designed to bind to preserved organic proteins. Reactivate structural elasticity in collagen remnants. Restore flexibility to treated biological tissue.
That… was also not part of a fear gas.
I leaned back slowly.
The psychoactive compound had been in the filter. That was what the victim inhaled.
The catalyst and accelerant?
They’d been on the outside of the mask. Transfer residue. Whoever put this on the victim had been handling those compounds directly.
Which meant—
He was running two operations.
Fear agent dispersal.
And something involving polymer acceleration and preserved organic proteins.
“Why would someone dispersing a fear agent also be messing with polymer accelerants?”
Because he is bored. Or stupid. Or both.
‘Stupid people generally don’t make drugs, Venom. Not… these ones, anyways.’
I pulled up the molecular stabilization module and began drafting a counter-agent neutralizer. Something that could bind to the psychoactive compound before it crossed the blood-brain barrier. Something portable.
The simulation projected minimum incubation time: forty-eight to seventy-two hours for stable synthesis.
I didn’t have forty-eight hours.
I copied the compound signatures onto an encrypted drive. The lab lights flickered slightly as a security sweep alert pinged on the wall console.
Earlier than scheduled.
I glanced toward the ceiling instinctively.
Someone changed the patrol path.
‘Of course they did.’
Just my luck.
If someone upstairs had noticed badge activity in sublevel labs during a board dinner, that would raise questions. Questions I did not want to answer tonight.
I resealed the gas mask components and slipped them back into my bag.
I’m low on time, and on options. So, I did what every responsible person would do in my situation.
Call someone more qualified.
Gwen picked up on the second ring.
“Hey,” she said, voice bright. “Miss me already?”
“I always miss you,” I replied automatically.
There was a small, satisfied hum on the other end. “That was smooth.”
‘I forgot why I called.’
Because we are tracking down someone literally terrorizing New York?
Right.
“Okay, so, hypothetically,” I began, leaning casually against a lab bench as if that would somehow disguise the fact that I was committing corporate theft. “Any chance you can sneak into the NYPD Police Database?”
“… what?”
Down the corridor, footsteps echoed faintly.
I shut down the analyzer and pulled my bag over my shoulder.
“It’s for a good cause,” I added quickly. “I need you to look into some specific chemicals, or rather, the people buying them. I can’t really talk about it right now, but I’ll explain in a few minutes, I swear.”
She exhaled slowly. I could practically see her processing it.
“Harry Osborn.”
“Yes?”
“You are such a bad influence.”
“You love it.”
“I absolutely do not,” she said, which meant she absolutely did.
The corridor lights dimmed slightly as the security sweep approached the sublevel junction.
I stepped toward the maintenance exit.
“I’ll text you the compound signatures,” I said. “Just—be careful.”
“You too.”
The line disconnected.
You like her.
‘Shut up.’
You really like her.
I slipped back into the maintenance corridor just as the security team rounded the far end of the main hall.
That was close.
Here’s hoping Gwen has better luck than I do.
…
Halloween turned the NYPD precinct into something halfway between a fortress and a daycare with firearms.
Orange paper pumpkins were taped to reinforced glass. Someone had strung plastic cobwebs across a bulletin board labeled GANG TASK FORCE. A patrol officer in partial riot gear was wearing a pair of devil horns over his helmet. It should have been ridiculous.
It was ridiculous.
It was also the busiest night of the year.
Gwen adjusted the box in her hands and pushed through the front doors with her brightest, most harmless smile. Sugar cookies. Chocolate chip. Pumpkin spice, because she was not above seasonal manipulation.
“Evening!” she called lightly. “Bribery delivery.”
A few officers looked up. One groaned appreciatively. Another clapped.
Her father glanced over from the front desk—and immediately softened.
There it was. The micro-expression. The relief. The pride. The very obvious, very public, that’s my kid.
She crossed the lobby and wrapped him in a quick hug before he could protest about professionalism. He smelled like coffee and aftershave and the faint metallic scent of precinct air that never really left his clothes.
“You’re going to rot their teeth out,” Captain Stacy murmured, but he was already reaching for a cookie.
“That’s the plan. Criminals can’t run for it if the NYPD has a sugar rush.”
He huffed a laugh. His eyes flicked past her, instinctively scanning the room. Halloween meant drunk idiots, costume masks, and opportunists. It meant chaos.
It meant overtime.
“You heading straight home after this?”
“Yep. Group study. Very thrilling. Lots of calculus.” She widened her eyes innocently.
He didn’t look convinced. He also didn’t look unconvinced.
That was the worst part.
Shift turnover was beginning—day officers filtering out, night shift filtering in. Controlled chaos. Paperwork exchanges. Half-finished reports. Dispatch chatter rising in volume.
Perfect.
She made sure to distribute the baked goods widely enough that no one clocked her movement as intentional. A cookie here. A joke there. A wave to Officer Ramirez. A mock bow to Detective Powell, who always pretended not to like her.
Then, when the lobby’s attention fractured at exactly the right moment, she slipped down the side corridor toward administrative offices.
Her heart rate barely ticked up. This wasn’t fear.
It was adrenaline.
The stairwell door shut behind her with a muted click. She waited three seconds, listening—boots on tile, distant laughter, the hum of fluorescent lights. No one on the landing.
Up two flights.
The upper administrative level had fewer decorations and more locked doors. Gwen moved normally at first. Walking pace. Shoulders relaxed. Just another captain’s daughter wandering where she technically wasn’t supposed to.
When she reached the blind corner near the records wing, she exhaled slowly—and jumped.
Her fingers caught the edge of a ceiling beam. A silent pull upward. Her body flattened instinctively, spider-sense whispering the map of space around her. She pressed into the crawlspace just as the door below opened.
A detective stepped in, muttering to himself about overtime forms.
Gwen stilled completely.
It was almost unfair, how easy this part felt. Her heartbeat slowed. Her breathing went shallow and controlled. Dust tickled her nose, but she didn’t move.
He crossed the room. Papers shuffled. A chair scraped.
Then the door shut again.
She counted to five.
Dropped.
Her sneakers touched tile without a sound.
The records terminal glowed softly in the dim office light. She slid into the chair, fingers already moving.
Restricted psychoactive compound purchases. Last six months.
Search.
Polymer catalyst bulk orders.
Search.
Organic substrate accelerants.
Search.
Buyers flagged under medical credentials.
Search.
Her eyes skimmed results as they populated, brain working faster than the refresh rate. She didn’t need everything. She needed intersection points. Overlap. Patterns.
There.
One name appeared in all three procurement categories, directly or through subsidiaries.
Dr. Zoltan Drago.
Gwen leaned closer to the screen.
Former reconstructive surgeon. Specialized in burn victims and facial restoration.
So, what went wrong?
Her stomach tightened slightly as she scrolled.
License revoked.
Unauthorized tissue preservation.
Experimentation outside hospital protocols.
Use of synthetic scaffold bonding agents without FDA approval.
She exhaled slowly.
“Of course,” she murmured under her breath.
The psychoactive compound made sense for a fear dispersal vector—olfactory absorption, rapid blood-brain barrier penetration. Amplified amygdala response. Weaponized trauma.
But polymer catalysts and organic reactivation accelerants?
Those weren’t about fear.
Those were about structure. Binding. Preserved proteins. Collagen elasticity.
What was he doing with them?
Her fingers moved again, pulling supplier records. Shipping invoices. Flagged procurement notices.
Shell companies. Layered ownership. Masked destinations.
No direct address.
She sat back slightly, frustration flickering through her chest.
So he was careful. That didn’t make him smart. Just cautious.
The outdated home address on file was useless. Current residence: unknown.
“Okay,” she whispered to herself. “So you’re a ghost.”
Ghosts still left footprints.
Gwen would know. She left hers on ceilings.
She copied the relevant procurement chains to an encrypted drive Harry had set up for her. The baton pass. He’d be able to trace financial overlaps faster with Oscorp-level tools.
Footsteps in the hallway.
Her spider-sense flared—not sharp, but present. Allowing her to dodge a few watchful eyes.
She shut down the terminal, cleared the query history, and moved.
Up again. Ceiling. Stillness.
Two officers entered, mid-argument about patrol assignments. One complained about costume-related pranks. The other swore he wasn’t responding to another fake zombie call unless the zombie had a gun.
They left within minutes.
Gwen dropped once more, landing lightly near the doorway.
On her way back down the corridor, she slowed when she passed the open bullpen.
Her father stood over a large table covered in patrol maps. Colored markers indicated increased foot traffic zones. Parade routes. High-risk intersections.
Halloween overlays. Increased deployment near costume shops. Extra units near the waterfront.
He looked tired.
Not physically exhausted—though that too—but stretched. Responsible for too much.
He ran a hand through his hair and adjusted a marker line.
She could tell him.
The thought rose unbidden.
She could walk in there. Close the door. Tell him about Drago. About the compounds. About the fact that someone was combining fear toxins with tissue-reactivation chemistry for reasons that were almost certainly monstrous.
He would listen.
He would believe her.
And then he would walk straight into it.
Her throat tightened.
Gwen had told herself this before. After Walter Hardy. After the docks. After Fisk. After too many nights where she’d come home and he’d been half a second from asking the wrong question.
She’s protecting him.
The words felt noble.
They also felt rehearsed.
She stepped back from the doorway before he could glance up and catch her staring.
Protecting him meant carrying it herself.
Boy, did that sound familiar.
But she wasn’t going to make her dad choose between his badge and his daughter. If that meant she had to keep a few… extracurricular activities to herself, then fine. She could live with that.
She slipped down the stairwell during the next wave of shift rotation, reappearing in the lobby just long enough to shout, “Don’t eat all the pumpkin ones at once!”
“Love you, Gwen!” someone called.
Her father waved without looking up from a clipboard.
Outside, the night air hit her cool and electric. Sirens wailed in the distance. Kids in costumes flooded the sidewalks. Masks everywhere.
She blended into the crowd easily.
Dr. Zoltan Drago didn’t have an address.
But he had suppliers.
And she had friends.
Time to pass the baton.
…
The blinds in the office were half-drawn, cutting the neon outside into narrow, tired-looking stripes across the floor. Case files were stacked in teetering columns. A bottle sat near the edge of the desk like it had been placed there and then forgotten halfway through the thought.
Gwen stood beside Harry, arms folded loosely, trying very hard not to look like a fourteen-year-old asking for permission to borrow the car.
Jessica leaned back in her chair and watched them.
Not the papers.
Not the flash drive Harry had slid across the desk.
Them.
“So,” Jessica muttered, lifting her glass but not drinking yet. “Convince me.”
Harry launched first. Of course he did. He always did when he hadn’t slept.
“Dr. Zoltan Drago. Former reconstructive surgeon. Specialized in burn victims and facial restoration. License revoked for unauthorized tissue preservation, off-protocol experimentation, and use of synthetic scaffold bonding agents without FDA approval.”
His words came quick. Precise. Like if he slowed down, the exhaustion would catch him.
Gwen stepped in smoothly. “He’s been purchasing restricted psychoactive compounds under layered shell companies. Rapid blood-brain barrier penetration. Olfactory vector. It amplifies fear response—amygdala overactivation. Hallucinogenic potential.”
Jessica took a drink.
Gwen continued. “He’s also buying polymer catalysts in bulk. Temperature-sensitive chain accelerants. And organic reactivation compounds designed to bind to preserved proteins.”
Jessica’s eyes flicked between them.
Harry hadn’t blinked in a while.
Gwen realized her own hands were clenched and forced them to relax.
Jessica set the glass down with a soft clink. “Okay. So we’ve got a disgraced doctor buying scary gas and weird science glue. Why do I care?”
“Because he’s using them,” Harry said, dropping off the gas mask. “I found that on one of his victims. Think of the craziest acid trip you can imagine, and multiply it by your worst nightmare.”
“It’s not something you want to see,” Gwen added quietly.
Jessica studied her a second longer than was comfortable.
Gwen forced herself to lean back slightly. Casual. Not vibrating with urgency.
Jessica exhaled through her nose. “Drago,” she repeated. “I’ve heard that name.”
Harry’s head snapped up.
Jessica rubbed her temple like she was digging through filing cabinets in her own brain. “Couple years ago. Wrongful death suit. Burn victim. Family thought the hospital screwed up reconstruction. Turned out Drago had preserved the body for ‘extended study.’”
Gwen’s stomach dipped.
“Private storage fees were paid for years,” Jessica continued. “Off the books. Guy got canned, and instead of crawling into a hole like a normal washed-up surgeon, he took a job at a wax museum.”
She snorted faintly.
“Fucking loser.”
Harry blinked. “Wax?”
His expression shifted. Calculating.
“That could explain the polymer,” he muttered. “Structural reinforcement. Synthetic skin analogues. Temperature-activated bonding curves would help maintain form.”
Jessica gave him a look. “You’re fourteen. Stop sounding like a patent application.”
Gwen’s brain was already moving ahead. Wax museum. Preserved tissue. Structural accelerants.
He wasn’t just making statues.
He was improving them.
Jessica swiveled her chair toward her laptop. “If he’s still employed there, property registry should list the holding company.”
She reached into her jacket pocket, produced a cigarette, and set it between her lips while her other hand searched for a lighter.
A thin black web-line snapped across the room and plucked the lighter from her fingers before it sparked.
Jessica stared at the empty space in her hand.
Harry reeled the lighter back casually. “Smoking kills, you know.”
Jessica slowly turned toward him. “So does getting shot. Didn’t stop you.”
“It’s bad for the furniture,” he countered. “And Gwen’s lungs.”
Gwen pretended very hard to be absorbed in the screen while they glared at each other.
The argument rolled over her like familiar background noise. It wasn’t really about cigarettes. It was about control. About adults and not-adults and who got to decide what was reckless.
While they bickered, she let her gaze drift across the cluttered desk.
Receipts. Old case notes. A half-empty perfume bottle.
She hesitated.
Then she picked it up.
She lifted it to her nose and inhaled lightly.
It was nice. Warm. Subtle. Something woody under something floral. It didn’t smell like high school hallways or drugstore body spray. It smelled like someone who knew what they were doing.
Like someone older.
Like someone who wasn’t pretending they had everything together.
They just did have it together. For a second, the tight coil in her chest eased. The precinct. The lab reports. She felt less like a kid playing detective.
She pocketed the bottle. She wasn’t stealing it. Just borrowing…
Jessica clicked her tongue at the screen. “There it is. Holding company ties back to a property in Brooklyn. Old industrial block. Guess what’s zoned as ‘historical exhibition space.’”
“Wax museum,” Harry said.
Jessica stood, grabbing her leather jacket from the back of the chair. The cigarette was still unlit between her fingers.
“I’m taking the long way,” she said. “Because I can’t swing across the city like I’m fucking Tarzan.”
Harry brightened slightly. “I could carry you.”
Jessica stared at him.
“I am not a child,” she replied flatly.
Gwen bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.
Jessica slid her arms into the jacket and headed for the door. She paused with her hand on the knob.
“Do not,” she said without turning around, “go in without me.”
Silence.
The door opened.
“Seriously,” she added. “You two have a talent for making things worse.”
Then she left, boots thudding down the hallway.
The office felt larger without her in it.
Gwen looked at Harry.
Harry looked at Gwen.
There was a whole conversation in that glance. About timing. About Jessica taking the long way. About wax museums and preserved bodies and fear gas on Halloween.
About not having any time to lose.
He didn’t say anything.
He didn’t have to.
Gwen reached for the window first.
…
The newsroom of the Daily Bugle looked like it had lost a bet.
Orange streamers drooped from fluorescent light fixtures. Someone had taped fangs onto a framed Pulitzer. A cardboard gravestone reading RIP Print Journalism leaned precariously against a filing cabinet, which felt a little on the nose.
Peter adjusted the camera strap around his neck and tried not to look like a sophomore who’d wandered into a corporate mixer by accident.
MJ did not have that problem.
She moved through the room like she’d been born in it—chin high, shoulders relaxed, black dress simple but sharp under the newsroom lights. Adults turned toward her when she spoke. Not indulgent. Interested.
It was unfair.
And kind of amazing.
“Peter!” Robbie Robertson’s voice carried warmly over the chatter. “You brought reinforcements.”
Robbie looked exactly like a managing editor should on Halloween: sleeves rolled up, tie slightly loosened, expression patient in the face of chaos. MJ shook his hand with easy confidence.
“Mary Jane Watson,” she said. “I’ve heard you’re the only adult here.”
Robbie laughed. “Don’t let Jonah hear that.”
Across the room, J. Jonah Jameson was already mid-rant.
“I don’t care if it’s Halloween!” he barked at a junior reporter dressed as a vampire. “Masked menaces swinging over Brooklyn is not festive, it’s a liability! Where are my photos? Where is the menace angle? We need something that says ‘terror in tights,’ not ‘adorable neighborhood acrobat!’”
Peter instinctively shifted the camera higher on his chest.
MJ leaned closer to him. “Your boss seems calm.”
“He’s in a good mood,” Peter murmured. “No one’s sued him this week.”
Betty Brant appeared at MJ’s elbow, all sharp eyeliner and sharper smile. “You must be MJ. Peter talks about you.”
Peter nearly choked.
MJ didn’t miss a beat. “Only good things, I assume.”
Betty’s eyes flicked to Peter with amusement. “Debatable.”
They slipped into conversation seamlessly—media internships, city politics, how high school felt like a holding cell for people who thought they were the main character.
Peter drifted half a step back and raised his camera.
Click.
MJ laughing under fluorescent light, head tilted back, hair catching the orange glow from a plastic pumpkin.
Click.
Robbie gesturing mid-story, hands expressive, newsroom buzzing behind him.
Click.
A costume contest forming near the copy desk—someone in a surprisingly detailed Doctor Doom outfit arguing with a woman dressed as Lady Liberty.
Peter adjusted his focus manually. The Bugle’s overhead lighting was harsh, but it gave everything an honesty he liked. No filters. No hallway whispers. No lockers slamming shut.
MJ caught him watching her instead of shooting the contest.
“You’re supposed to document, Parker,” she teased.
“I am documenting,” he said, lifting the camera again. “Historical record. Very important.”
She stepped closer, lowering her voice. “I like this better.”
“Bugle Halloween parties?”
“Adult rooms,” she clarified. “Way better than partying with Liz. No one’s pretending to be cooler than they are. They’re just… themselves. It’s less performative.”
Peter considered that.
High school had hierarchies. Invisible scripts. Entire ecosystems built around who was dating who and who wore what.
Here, a crime reporter in zombie makeup argued about municipal budgets while balancing a plastic cup of punch.
It felt… real.
“You thrive in chaos,” he told her quietly.
She shrugged. “I thrive where people are interesting.” She squeezed his hand once before drifting back toward Betty and Robbie.
Peter watched her for a moment longer than he meant to.
He pulled out his phone and stepped toward the edge of the room near a corkboard layered with headlines.
Everything good?
He sent it to Harry.
The message showed as delivered.
No response.
Peter frowned slightly.
He and Gwen were probably just cooped up in a lab. Or on a roof. Or both. Some sort of… lab room.
Science.
They were probably doing science.
Maybe… chemistry?
…
Me and Gwen had so much chemistry it was honestly unfair to the rest of the periodic table.
Not the cute kind. Not just the hand-brushing, lingering-look, shared-braincell kind.
The actual kind.
Polymer catalysts. Organic accelerants. Psychoactive aerosol dispersal curves.
Normal couples snuck into movies.
We broke into condemned historical exhibits.
The wax museum sat on a dead stretch of Brooklyn like it had given up on being remembered. Windows blacked out from the inside. Exterior signage unlit. Only two security lights still functioned, flickering weakly over a cracked concrete entryway like they weren’t fully committed to the concept of illumination.
“Subtle,” Gwen murmured beside me, her voice low.
The symbiote slid over my skin in a silent ripple, black fabric sealing tight along my arms.
We should have worn matching costumes. Romantic infiltration.
‘Focus,’ I thought back.
The front doors were chained but not reinforced. Gwen handled the lock with delicate, spider-precise pressure. I handled the chain.
It parted.
Inside, the air felt wrong.
Cold—not naturally cold, but maintained cold. Industrial. Preservative. The faint scent of paraffin lingered under something sharper. Chemical. Sterile.
My eyes adjusted quickly.
Figures stood frozen mid-restoration across the showroom floor. Half-finished faces. Limbs without hands. Torsos mounted on scaffolds. Some draped in plastic sheeting like shrouds.
A Revolutionary War soldier missing his jaw.
A movie star with one eye socket empty.
A firefighter posed heroically, skin tone slightly off, surface too taut.
I swallowed.
“Tell me you’re seeing the collagen sheen,” I whispered.
“I’m seeing it,” Gwen replied quietly.
We moved deeper.
The layout had been rearranged—display platforms pushed aside to create workspace. Metal tables lined the center of the room. Heat lamps. Chemical trays. Precision tools laid out with surgical neatness.
And then—
A muffled voice.
“…creep motherfucker statues…”
We both snapped toward the sound.
Back corner. Behind a partition designed like a Victorian street façade.
We rounded it fast.
Turk Barrett was tied to a metal chair, wrists bound with zip ties, duct tape hanging loose around his neck like someone had changed their mind halfway through gagging him. His eyes were glassy. Pupils blown wide.
“Wax fucks,” he slurred. “He kept correcting me. Said they ain’t statues. Said they’re transitional mediums.”
“Hey,” I said, crouching in front of him. “Turk.”
He squinted at me. “You’re… you’re the black one.”
“… I really need that Twitter account.”
Gwen was already cutting his restraints.
“He kept talkin’ about revelation,” Turk continued, words stumbling over each other. “Said fear peels back the lie. Said wax is just… practice.”
We should eat him. He smells like panic and cheap cologne.
‘We are not eating the arms-dealer.’
He can get us more arms?!
I snapped the last of the zip ties and hauled him upright. “Can you walk?”
Turk didn’t argue. Didn’t posture. Didn’t try to negotiate.
He bolted.
Stumbled once. Regained balance. Ran for the exit without looking back.
Smartest decision he’d made all year.
The museum fell quiet again.
Too quiet.
A slow clap echoed from above.
We both looked up.
A balcony wrapped around the second level, overlooking the main exhibit floor. A single overhead light flicked on with a muted hum.
Drago stood there.
Protective lab coat buttoned high. Gloves. A standard-issue gas mask covering his face. On his belt, hanging almost casually, was a reverse mask—like the one I’d analyzed earlier—its filtration system modified, intake ports facing outward.
He didn’t move immediately.
He observed.
“Fear,” he began, voice slightly filtered through the mask but steady, controlled, “is the most honest state a human being can experience. Strip away comfort. Strip away identity. What remains is truth.”
Gwen shifted subtly beside me, weight balanced on the balls of her feet.
I kept my tone light. Irritated. Dismissive.
He wanted reverence.
He was getting sarcasm.
“You’ve mistaken exposure for revelation,” he continued. “When the mind is forced to confront its deepest aversions, it becomes malleable. Suggestible. Receptive to—reconstruction.”
There it was.
“Reconstruction?” Gwen called up. “You lost your license. This is one hell of a pivot.”
His head tilted slightly.
“I was ahead of my time.”
He talks too much. We should throw something at him. Preferably him.
‘You want to throw him at himself?’
It made more sense before we said it out loud.
‘You didn’t say anything out loud.’
Semantics.
Drago descended the stairs slowly, one gloved hand trailing along the railing like he was guiding an audience through an installation.
“Wax,” he said calmly, gesturing faintly toward the figures around us, “is forgiving. It accepts form. It holds memory. But it lacks resilience. That is where modern chemistry intervenes.”
My jaw tightened.
Yeah. I’d seen the bonding agents. The accelerants. The protein-reactivation compounds.
He wasn’t just preserving tissue.
He was improving it.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, waving a hand as if I was bored. “Can we just skip to the part where we kick your ass, Scarecrow?”
Drago stopped mid-step.
“Scarecrow?” he repeated thoughtfully.
Gwen shot me a quick look. That was not part of any coordinated plan. That was just me being me.
Drago considered it.
“Hm,” he mused. “Not bad. Evocative. Better than mine, certainly.”
He adjusted something on his belt, almost sheepish.
“I was going to go by ‘Mr. Fear,’” he admitted. “But… I like yours better.”
We named him. We are branding consultants now.
“Oh my God,” I muttered.
Drago’s hand moved to a remote device clipped near his coat pocket.
“You misunderstand,” he said calmly. “This is not about intimidation. It is about demonstration.”
He pressed the trigger.
There was a soft mechanical hiss from above us.
Panels I hadn’t clocked in the ceiling vents split open in synchronized clicks.
A fine, almost invisible mist began to descend.
My stomach dropped.
“Gwen—”
…
Running sucked.
Jessica’s lungs burned halfway down Lexington, each breath dragging in cold October air that tasted like car exhaust and bad decisions. Her boots pounded pavement slick with old rain and fallen leaves. A taxi honked. Someone yelled. A guy in a Spider-Man costume stumbled out of a bar laughing.
“Shit… I need to stop drinking.”
Her thigh twinged. She ignored it. The museum wasn’t that far. Far enough.
Teenagers.
She should have kept them closer. Should have insisted on regrouping. Instead, she’d split off because she was faster on a straight line and because part of her still thought of them as annoyingly competent sidekicks instead of fourteen-year-olds with a death wish and access to bullshit superpowers.
And now they were going up against a literal terrorist.
The word curdled in her stomach.
She fished her phone out of her jacket without slowing, nearly shoulder-checking a tourist. Scrolled. Hit the contact.
It rang once.
“Jessica.”
Of course he answered like that. Calm. Neutral. Like he hadn’t been sitting in a quiet apartment cataloguing the city by heartbeat.
“Yeah, hi, Murdock. Miss me?”
Her breath came rougher than she liked. She heard him adjust the phone slightly, the faint shift of fabric against receiver.
“You’re running.”
“Gold star.” She cut across the street against the light. A car screeched; she didn’t look back. “Museum. Brooklyn. Teenagers are inside. There’s some asshole dosing the place with aerosolized fear toxin.”
Probably.
If there wasn’t, she assumed they’d call to rub in her face how wrong she was.
“How many teenagers?”
“Two. Mine.”
“And you need help?”
“Don’t make it a thing.”
“I’m not.”
She could hear it, though. The way his focus narrowed. The way the ambient noise around him shifted as he stood.
Matt’s voice lowered a fraction. “How do you know it’s fear-based?”
“Because I’ve seen what that stuff does. I’ve gotten a lot of weird calls.” Jessica elaborated. “I’m guessing you did, too.”
She vaulted a newspaper box without breaking stride. Her knee protested. She flipped it off internally.
“Just the one from you,” Matt said carefully. “I… do you want me to call the police for you? I’m sorry, I really don’t think I’ll be of much help. You do know I’m blind, right?”
Jessica snorted. “Yeah. Blind, and superpowered.”
“… Did Harry tell you?”
There it was.
She rolled her eyes even though he couldn’t see it, for more than one reason. “No. I followed you back when I started helping your firm with the Fisk case. Thought I should know who I was getting into bed with.”
A couple walking a tiny dog gawked as she blew past them.
“Not that it’s ever stopped me from getting into bed with strangers,” she added, absentmindedly.
His jaw tightened over the line. She didn’t need super-hearing to know that.
“You followed me,” he said.
“Yes, I did. Figured out you were Daredevil because of your whole jumping around Hell’s Kitchen like a circus trapeze thing. No fucking idea how you did it blind, but I clearly didn’t know shit about how superpowers worked.”
She ducked under scaffolding, breath ragged now. The museum’s upper façade loomed a block ahead, banners flapping with cartoon ghosts and discount Halloween slogans.
Matt didn’t respond immediately. When he did, his tone had cooled.
“That was a violation of my personal privacy.”
“Yeah, well, welcome to my entire career.”
Another second passed. She pictured him standing still, weighing pride against triage.
“Where did you say it was, again?” He asked.
She gave him the address, street and cross. “Brooklyn Wax Museum. Front entrance probably compromised. HVAC’s likely circulating whatever he’s pumping.”
“I’ll approach from the roof.”
Of course he would.
“You always this dramatic?”
“Jessica.”
She heard it then—the shift in the background, the faint rush of wind as a window opened.
“Try not to break anything,” she said.
“Hey, you called me.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
The line clicked dead.
Jessica shoved the phone back into her pocket and pushed harder. Her lungs felt like sandpaper. She hated cardio. Hated it with a passion usually reserved for purple-suited psychopaths.
Teenagers.
Harry with his stubborn jaw and reckless hero complex. Gwen, too smart to panic but brave enough to do something stupid. Peter, which—God help her—was somehow both of those things at once.
If that fear agent hit them full strength—
Her pace quickened despite the burn.
She should have driven.
She should have forced them to wait.
She should have never let a fourteen-year-old intern punch a seven-foot mutant in the face, no matter how well it had turned out.
The museum entrance came into full view now, though she was still woefully far. Police sirens wailed somewhere distant, not close enough.
Jessica muttered to herself as she pushed herself to cross the final stretch. “After this, I’m stealing Trish’s treadmill.”
Because if she was going to keep up with idiots in spider-costumes and demon ninjas and blind acrobats with Catholic guilt complexes—
She was going to need better lungs.
…
The air tasted wrong.
Sweet. Chemical. Like someone had melted Halloween and left it to rot in the vents.
Gwen pressed her sleeve over her nose on instinct, but she already knew it was pointless. If it was airborne and circulating, she’d inhaled enough the second she stepped through the door.
Okay. Fine. Variables.
Unknown compound. Likely neuroactive. Targeted at fear response.
Her heartbeat ticked up half a notch.
And then doubled.
The museum lights seemed brighter than they had a second ago. Or dimmer. The edges of the exhibits softened, like someone had smeared Vaseline over her contact lenses. The wax figures—presidents and movie stars and historical generals—stood in their frozen poses beneath theatrical spotlights.
Her spider-sense ignited.
Not a spike. Not a direction.
Just a constant, screaming static.
Every nerve in her body tightened.
She ducked.
Nothing was there.
Her pulse roared in her ears. She forced a slow inhale. Scientific method. Observe. Hypothesize.
Immediate symptom: amplified amygdala activity. Probably heightened recall of fear-associated memories.
Her brain did not wait for her consent.
Harry on the pavement.
Blood soaking through his shirt.
His skin too pale. His eyes unfocused.
She felt the phantom slick warmth on her hands, heard again the ragged way he had tried to breathe after the gunshot. The way she had been too far away. Too slow.
Her spider-sense shrieked.
She flipped backward over an invisible sweep of a leg that did not exist.
Landed in a crouch.
The wax Abraham Lincoln across the room seemed to tilt his head.
No. Not tilt. Shift.
Her vision rippled. The exhibits elongated, stretched. Smiles widened by millimeters.
“You’re not fast enough.”
The voice wasn’t in the room.
It was inside her skull.
Another memory surged—running rooftops with Peter, misjudging a landing, slipping—
Falling.
Falling.
Falling forever between buildings, web-shooter misfiring, fingers scraping brick that wasn’t there. The ground miles below. The sickening certainty that this was the one mistake she wouldn’t recover from.
Her spider-sense pulsed so hard she could barely differentiate one warning from the next.
Threat. Threat. Threat. Threat.
From where?
Everywhere.
She twisted to the side as something lunged at her peripheral vision—white powdered face, wax teeth bared—and her shoulder clipped a velvet rope divider instead. It snapped with a pathetic twang.
Focus.
This was a toxin. It preyed on pattern recognition. On worst-case projections.
She had studied this. Not this specific compound, but the concept. Fear conditioning. Trauma reinforcement. Neural pathways carved deeper with repetition.
Her breath hitched anyway.
Across the gallery, she saw herself.
Not literally.
But close enough.
A wax figure dressed in a lab coat now wore her face. Same hair. Same nervous smile. Except the smile twisted.
“She’s not the right one.”
The words slithered through her thoughts in overlapping whispers.
Not the right one.
Too slow.
Too reckless.
Too smart for her own good and not smart enough when it mattered.
Harry bleeding again—this time worse. Not a shoulder wound. Something deeper. Darker. His hand slipping from hers because she hadn’t calculated the angle correctly. Because she’d hesitated.
Her spider-sense detonated.
She dropped flat to the ground as a phantom blade sliced through the space where her neck had been.
Nothing touched her.
Nothing—
Pain exploded across her left shoulder.
Hot. Real. Tearing.
She gasped and rolled, vision swimming.
That wasn’t phantom.
That wasn’t memory.
Her sleeve split open, fabric parting cleanly. Beneath it, blood welled in a sharp diagonal line.
Gwen sucked in a breath through clenched teeth and forced her vision to stabilize.
One of the wax figures had moved.
It stood three feet closer than before.
George Washington—powdered wig, ornate coat—arm extended. In its hand, a decorative saber that absolutely had not been sharpened for historical accuracy.
Except the edge glistened wet.
Her spider-sense screamed again, but it was useless—blaring at the figure, at the shadows, at the empty air behind her.
“I am not hallucinating that,” she muttered under her breath.
The figure’s head twitched.
Not a trick of light.
Not distortion.
Its eyes—once glassy and unfocused—tracked her.
Understanding crashed through the fear haze.
The gas wasn’t just making her see things.
Something else in this room was responding.
The wax figure stepped off its platform with a stiff, jerking motion, joints bending where solid wax had no right to bend.
Her shoulder throbbed. Her pulse hammered.
For one terrible second, doubt tried to take root again.
Too slow.
Too distracted.
Not the right—
No.
She set her feet.
Real threat or not, bleeding was real.
And whatever had just cut her?
It moved.
…
The gas hit like a suggestion.
Not a punch. Not a knockout.
A whisper.
And then the world rewrote itself.
Gwen was on the floor.
The first thing I noticed was the sound.
Wet.
A horrible, thick sound that didn’t belong in a museum full of velvet ropes and informational placards.
The second thing I noticed was the tail.
Green. Segmented. Curved like a scythe.
It punched through her abdomen and lifted her an inch off the ground.
“No.”
My voice cracked around it.
Across from me, grinning inside that mechanical nightmare, stood Scorpion. His lenses reflected my face back at me—small. Powerless. Too slow.
I was at her side before she hit the floor.
She felt warm. Too warm. Blood soaked through my gloves as I pressed my hands to the wound that wouldn’t close.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, and her voice was already distant. “It’s not your fault, Harry.”
“Don’t,” I choked. “Don’t do that.”
I peeled the symbiote back from my hand, forcing it forward, pushing it toward her skin.
“Take it,” I begged. “Heal. Fix it. Do the thing.”
The black matter slithered over her wound—
—and slid off.
Like oil on glass.
It recoiled, confused.
Harr r—
The voice fuzzed in my head, like a bad radio signal in a tunnel. —is not r—
“Work,” I snapped. “You work on me. You have to work on her.”
A hand settled on my shoulder.
Calm. Disappointed.
“Harry.”
I didn’t turn around.
My father’s voice didn’t need a face.
“I gave you that suit to save your life. Not Gwen’s. You can’t just go around sharing it with whatever sad soul happens to get impaled. What if they don’t give it back?”
“I don’t care,” I shot back. “She needs it.”
“Do you hear yourself?” Norman asked mildly. “You are alive because of that organism. Because of me. And you would risk it for a teenage romance?”
Juggernaut’s shadow swallowed the floor beside us.
“Your daddy’s making sense, rich kid.” His voice rolled like grinding stone. “You need that suit. Just like I need my gem. Without them, we’re powerless, aren’t we?”
“That’s not what this is about.”
He laughed.
“It’s not? Oh, brat, don’t get all sanctimonious on me now. You like being strong. Scary. Admit it.”
My hands were still pressed to Gwen’s stomach. The blood wouldn’t stop.
“I like helping people.”
A slow clap echoed behind me.
Wilson Fisk stepped into view, immaculate in white, as if he’d never seen the inside of a prison cell.
“There are many ways to help people, young man. You choose to prowl the streets. Stalking. Preying upon criminals.”
Rhino’s bulk lumbered into my peripheral vision.
“Can you blame him?” he rumbled. “Is so much better to hurt bad people than to help good ones.”
“No!” My voice tore out of me. “That’s not why I— why we do what we do! I just—”
Walter Hardy crouched down on Gwen’s other side, grinning.
“Lay off the kid, huh? He doesn’t need that suit to feel strong.” His eyes flicked to my shoulder. “He needs that suit to live. Heh. My bad. Hey, how’s the shoulder feeling, kid? The one I shot?”
“Shut up.”
The room felt smaller.
Gwen’s hand went slack in mine.
“Shut up.”
My spider-sense detonated, but it was useless—blaring in every direction at once. Every villain. Every accusation. Every doubt I’d ever had about why I put the suit on in the first place.
“Shut up! This isn’t real! This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real—”
The symbiote peeled away from me.
Not by choice.
It melted down my chest and arms like tar under a heat lamp, sliding off my skin and pooling at my feet.
Cold air hit my bare torso.
I looked down.
My veins were black.
Not metaphorically. Actually black. Crawling like ink beneath translucent skin. Tumors bulged along my ribs, my abdomen, my neck. My hands trembled—thin. Sick. Dying.
The disease.
Unmasked.
Norman’s disappointment sharpened.
“Without it,” he said quietly, “you are nothing.”
Har—ry—
The voice struggled through static. —not real— gas—
Juggernaut leaned closer. “Powerless.”
Fisk folded his hands. “Exposed.”
Hardy laughed. “Fragile.”
Gwen’s body dissolved into ash in my arms.
The spider-sense shrieked again.
Too loud.
Too constant.
I couldn’t tell what was memory, what was guilt, what was hallucination, what was—
Movement.
Actual movement.
Something heavy displaced air to my left.
I moved on instinct, even half-blind in terror.
A blade whistled past my ribs.
I twisted, grabbed—
Solid.
Dense.
Wax fingers closed around my throat.
Abraham Lincoln’s face loomed inches from mine, top hat immaculate, eyes no longer glassy but focused. Intent.
The axe drove toward my side again.
Adrenaline cut clean through the hallucinations.
My grip tightened.
The strength was still there.
The symbiote might have “melted” in my head, but my muscles didn’t care about the illusion. They responded the way they always did—faster, stronger, reinforced beneath the surface.
The axehead scraped across my flank instead of gutting me.
It hurt.
Really bad. But the keyword here was “real.”
I drove my forehead into Lincoln’s wax nose. It cracked with a dull, brittle snap.
This wasn’t memory.
This wasn’t guilt.
This had weight.
Resistance.
I caught the axe arm and squeezed.
Wax fractured under my fingers.
“Okay,” I breathed, vision still swimming with afterimages of blood and tumors and disappointed fathers. “Okay. That’s new.”
Lincoln lunged again, jerky but powerful, like a marionette yanked too hard on its strings.
I planted my feet and drove a fist straight through his chest.
It caved in with a wet, splintering crunch. Hardened polymer and wax and something fibrous beneath it split apart.
He didn’t scream.
He just kept moving until I ripped the arm off at the shoulder and kicked the torso back into its display platform.
It shattered on impact.
The hallucinations flickered but didn’t disappear. Fisk still stood at the edge of my vision. Norman still watched.
But they were thinner now. Less convincing.
Because I could feel the cracks in my knuckles.
Because wax dust coated my tongue.
Because something in this building had just tried to decapitate me.
Har—ry—listen—
The symbiote’s voice finally punched through the static. —not dying— not sharing— gas attacking fear centers— focus—
“I know,” I muttered, chest heaving. “I know.”
Another shape twitched on its pedestal.
I squared my shoulders, ignoring the phantom sight of blackened veins beneath my skin.
I wasn’t powerless.
I wasn’t nothing.
And if some ex-doctor had decided to run a second experiment in here—
I rolled my neck and stepped back toward the moving exhibit.
“Hey, Abe,” I said, flexing my cracked knuckles. “I hope you’re ready to have your head emancipated from your shoulders.”
…
The window latch gave way under controlled pressure.
Matt slipped inside without a sound.
The first thing that hit him wasn’t noise.
It was smell.
Chemical aerosol—sharp, synthetic, atomized. Not household. Not industrial cleaner. Something designed for dispersion. It clung to the air in a fine mist that coated the back of his throat.
Under that—
Heated wax.
Not candles. Larger volume. Softening. Warping under elevated temperature.
And beneath both of those—
Adrenaline.
Multiple sources. Spiking. Erratic.
He closed the window behind him and let the city fall away.
The building opened up in his mind.
Air currents mapped themselves against his skin. The HVAC system pushed the aerosol through upper vents, distributing it evenly across the exhibit floor. Footsteps—too many, too irregular. Some light and frantic. Some heavy and uneven.
Two heartbeats leapt out immediately.
Fast. Young.
One was spiraling—rhythm broken by sharp bursts of cortisol, breath hitching between clenched teeth.
The other pounded hard but forced into control, like someone trying to breathe through a panic attack by sheer stubbornness.
Good.
They were still upright.
Something else moved.
Heavy mass displacement. Roughly human-sized. Density inconsistent with muscle and bone. Joints creaked where cartilage should glide. Impact patterns brittle, not elastic.
That wasn’t hallucination.
Matt stepped forward.
He did not rely on sight. The world was already black to him. Gas designed to distort visual processing meant nothing in that regard.
But it did affect breathing.
He adjusted automatically—shorter inhalations, controlled exhales through fabric. Let the chemical pass without letting it own his rhythm.
A rush of air to his right.
He pivoted and drove two knuckles into a wrist-shaped structure mid-swing.
The material fractured under precise force. Not flesh. Not armor.
Wax.
The arm separated at the joint and struck the floor in two pieces.
The torso kept moving.
He followed the vibration through the ground and snapped a heel into the knee. The leg shattered, structure collapsing in a cascade of brittle failure.
Not alive.
Animated.
Another one approached from behind—he felt the heat signature first. Slightly warmer than ambient room temperature. Internal friction.
He stepped inside its arc and struck upward beneath what would have been a ribcage. The internal frame cracked. The figure sagged.
More heartbeats flared.
Closer now.
A sharp intake of breath—female. Pain. Fresh blood.
He changed direction.
Her balance was compromised. He could hear it in the way her weight shifted—overcorrecting for threats that weren’t there.
Something lunged at her.
He intercepted it mid-stride, forearm colliding with hardened wax. The impact jarred his bones but confirmed density. He twisted, redirected the mass past her shoulder, and brought an elbow down on the back of its neck.
It snapped.
The head rolled.
He reached for her wrist.
Her pulse thundered against his fingers.
“Don’t trust your eyes,” he said evenly. “Trust your balance.”
Her breathing stuttered.
The hallucination response was layered over her proprioception. He could hear it—micro-hesitations before each movement, as if her body argued with itself about where the floor actually was.
He tightened his grip briefly. Anchoring.
“Shift your weight slowly,” he continued. “Find the center. The ground isn’t moving.”
Another wax figure scraped across tile nearby.
She adjusted.
Good.
He released her only when her stance stabilized and moved toward the second heartbeat.
The boy’s was louder.
Angrier.
There was something else there too—an additional resonance beneath the surface of his physiology. Not separate. Interwoven. It distorted the baseline rhythm in subtle ways, like a second drumbeat half a fraction off tempo.
Matt filed that away for later.
Right now—
A heavy object rushed the boy from the front.
He heard the grip tighten on wax, the brittle crack of impact.
The teenager was fighting blind and still winning.
Another mass approached from behind him.
Matt closed the distance in three strides and swept the legs out from under it. The figure struck the ground. He stomped down at the shoulder joint and shattered it before it could reorient.
The boy’s breathing was too fast.
Too shallow.
“Slow your breathing,” Matt instructed as he stepped into his space. “Listen past the noise.”
The kid didn’t respond verbally, but the rhythm shifted—fighting for control.
Matt placed a hand briefly against his upper back between the shoulder blades. Solid contact. Warm. Real.
The hallucinations couldn’t compete with pressure and gravity.
“Count your inhales,” he said. “Four in. Four out.”
Another wax body collided with his side. He pivoted and drove a palm strike into its sternum, fracturing whatever framework held it upright.
The room was chaos—erratic heartbeats, brittle impacts, ventilation pushing toxin through every corner.
But beneath it all—
Patterns.
Real footfalls. Real displacement. Real heat.
He tracked them cleanly, cutting through the noise with economy of motion. A kick to a knee joint. A twist at the wrist. A strike to the neck hinge. Each movement deliberate, minimal, enough to break structural integrity without wasting energy.
Gradually, the teenagers’ heartbeats began to even out.
Not calm.
But no longer spiraling.
Hallucinations fed on panic. On runaway breath. On unchecked fear loops.
Ground them physically, and the mind had something solid to cling to.
A wax figure lunged toward the girl again.
She moved this time before it reached her—balance centered, weight low. Her counterstrike connected cleanly with the side of its head. The impact cracked it open.
Better.
Matt adjusted his stance between them instinctively, triangulating threats.
The gas still lingered.
The wax still moved.
But the panic had edges now instead of being an ocean.
“Stay close,” he said quietly.
Not a command.
An anchor.
And as their breathing synchronized—just slightly—the hallucinations thinned at the margins, no longer the dominant signal in the storm.
…
We fell into formation without talking about it.
Matt centered.
Gwen to his left.
Me to his right.
The wax figures kept coming—jerky, heat-warped presidents and movie stars and historical icons with murder in their hollow eyes. Every time we shattered one, another dragged itself off a platform somewhere deeper in the exhibit hall.
This wasn’t sustainable.
My brain finally clawed its way out of adrenaline mode and started doing what it did best.
Observe.
The room was warmer now. Noticeably.
The HVAC was still pushing the aerosol, but something else had shifted. The wax around fractured joints sagged slightly. Edges lost definition.
Wax melts under heat.
Polymer destabilizes under flame.
I grabbed the nearest display spotlight and crushed it in my fist. The bulb popped, filament dying with a hiss. Useless.
We needed more heat.
Not ambient.
Focused.
My hand brushed against something in my suit’s hidden pockets.
Metal.
I blinked.
Jessica’s lighter.
I stole it to stop her from smoking. And it turns out it might actually save my life? Jessica can never know. She’ll never not have a justification for having a lighter.
I yanked it out.
Gwen saw it immediately.
Her eyes sharpened—not panicked now. Calculating.
“Good idea. I think I have something else that can help,” she said, already digging into her own pockets.
She pulled out a small glass bottle.
Jessica’s perfume.
I don’t know when she borrowed that, and frankly, I don’t care. Because right now, we could damn sure use it.
“Alcohol base,” she muttered, more to herself than to me.
A wax Theodore Roosevelt charged.
I flipped the lighter open with my thumb.
The flame bloomed small and steady.
“On three,” I said.
Matt shifted half an inch to give us space. He didn’t ask what we were doing. He just angled his body to deflect the next incoming figure.
“One.”
Gwen stepped forward and sprayed.
A fine mist coated Roosevelt’s chest and face.
“Two.”
The wax didn’t understand fear.
It just kept advancing.
“Three.”
I touched flame to alcohol.
It went up fast.
Not an explosion.
A hungry whoosh as the accelerant caught and crawled.
The wax face softened first, features sagging grotesquely as fire licked across it. The internal structure beneath crackled. The thing stumbled, flailing as heat destabilized whatever polymer network was animating it.
It collapsed mid-stride.
Melted.
The smell was awful.
Despite this fire being lit by perfume, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. And this wasn’t much like lighting a candle, despite the burning wax. Chalk that up to the chemical binder. And something almost… organic beneath it.
But it worked.
Another one approached.
Gwen sprayed.
I ignited.
Matt swept the legs out from under a third and dragged it through a line of flame before it could rise again.
The gallery transformed from horror show to inferno in under thirty seconds.
Curtains caught next.
Old velvet, dry and neglected, went up like kindling.
“That’s not ideal,” Gwen coughed.
“No kidding.”
A display backdrop ignited. The fire crawled upward, found wood beams that hadn’t been inspected since the Reagan administration, and claimed them greedily.
The wax figures that weren’t fully animated yet began to slump where they stood, faces drooping into featureless masks.
For a brief, savage second, it felt like victory.
Then the smoke thickened.
Fast.
Too fast.
The fire suppression system didn’t engage.
No hiss of sprinklers. No pressure release.
Neglected museum.
Abandoned budgets.
“Time to go,” Matt said calmly.
He was already moving.
He grabbed Gwen’s wrist first, then my forearm, orienting us without sight toward the upper level.
Smoke layered the ceiling in choking waves. The aerosol mixed with it, turning the air into something that clawed at my lungs and blurred even my enhanced perception.
Below us, something heavy collapsed.
A beam.
Flames roared.
Sirens wailed in the distance now. Closer.
Matt kicked open a maintenance door near the upper exhibit and pushed us through into a stairwell that felt marginally less like a crematorium.
We climbed.
Not gracefully.
Not heroically.
Just fast.
By the time we burst through the rooftop access, the sky felt like salvation.
Cold air hit my lungs and I sucked it in like I’d been underwater.
We moved across the adjacent rooftop in three leaps and dropped behind a low brick wall as flames began licking through the museum’s upper windows.
From up here, it looked cinematic.
Half the structure was already engulfed. Fire crawled along the roofline, smoke pouring into the October night like a signal flare.
Emergency vehicles screeched to a halt below.
People shouted.
Water cannons began to arc upward, but the interior was already compromised.
I watched a section of roof cave inward.
Evidence.
Gone.
Drago.
Gone.
Public property.
Extremely gone.
My chest tightened for a completely different reason now.
We survived.
Venom’s voice echoed in mind, finally clear and stable in my head.
That’s all that matters.
I kept staring at the flames.
‘We just burned down a building.’
It was a creepy abandoned wax museum. You just did the city a favor.
I exhaled despite myself.
‘… point.’
Gwen stepped closer to me, shoulder brushing mine. Her cut had stopped bleeding. Her breathing had steadied.
Matt stood slightly apart, head tilted toward the chaos below, listening to the fire crews coordinate.
No one looked at me like I’d failed.
No one said it out loud.
But the thought sat heavy anyway.
Drago had gotten away.
The fear toxin was still out there.
Tonight had been a test run.
And we’d responded by setting the test lab on fire.
The flames reflected in the black surface of my suit.
Not victorious.
Not triumphant.
Just… aware.
Somewhere in the city, a man with a doctorate and a grudge was probably watching the smoke and smiling.
I clenched my jaw.
“Next time,” I muttered under my breath.
Venom hummed agreement inside my skull.
Next time.