Chapter 13: This Is What We Train For
The sirens got closer.
Not the distant kind. Not the “somewhere in Manhattan, somebody else’s problem” kind.
The “you set a historical landmark on fire and now the NYPD would like a word” kind.
Smoke rolled up past the lip of the roof in thick, oily waves, orange reflecting against the neighboring buildings. The Burning Museum of Natural—whatever it used to be called—crackled beneath our feet like an overcooked crème brûlée.
Matt stood a few feet away, posture stiff, hands folded like he’d accidentally wandered into a parent-teacher conference. Which, honestly, was not far off. How the hell did he even know to come here… did Jessica call him?
Shit.
Gwen had pulled her mask up to help her breathe. Which incidentally left her hair flowing dramatically in the wind. It smelled faintly like a melted candle, and cheap perfume that probably cost a lot of money.
She looked composed, but I could see the tremor still fading out of her hands.
I get it. It was… a harrowing experience.
We handled it well. Fire is cleansing. Very dramatic. We approve.
‘We are never allowed to say that out loud.’
A shape vaulted from the street.
Not climbed.
Vaulted.
Jessica cleared the side of the building in a single, furious arc and landed on the roof hard enough to rattle loose gravel. She might not be able to fly, but she can leap a mean tall building in a single bound.
She was breathing hard. Not even looking that winded. Just angry enough that oxygen had to fight its way in.
She looked at the smoke.
She looked at the flames licking out of shattered windows.
Then she looked at us.
The temperature impossibly dropped ten degrees.
“I told you not to go in without me,” she said, voice tight and controlled.
Matt shuffled slightly. I had the overwhelming sense he wished he could see facial expressions right now. Poor guy. He’s like that one friend you have over for a sleepover, and ends up getting blasted with secondhand embarrassment from your mom nagging you.
Gwen opened her mouth.
I beat her to it. “Okay, but in our defense, it was a wax museum. We did society a favor.”
Yeah! Tell her, Harry! Assert dominance!
Jessica turned her head slowly. Her eyes hit me like a freight train.
Jessica used Glare!
It was super effective!
On second thought, we respect this apex predator.
She took a step closer. “You disobeyed me. You walked into a sealed building. You triggered something you didn’t understand. And now there’s a five-alarm fire in Hell’s Kitchen.”
Technically three-alarm, but this did not feel like the moment for fact-checking.
“And the bad guy?” she continued. “Did you catch him? Is he invisible? Because I don’t fucking see him.”
That one stung.
“Well… no,” I admitted. “But I did snag some of the weapons he was buying.”
I reached into my suit’s hidden pockets and pulled out the gas grenade.
It was dented. Industrial. Ugly.
And faintly hissing.
Gwen leaned in. “Is that… leaking?”
A thin, almost invisible vapor curled from a hairline fracture along the seam.
“Yeah,” I said. “Turk’s quality control is less ‘military grade’ and more ‘fell off a truck.’ But that’s arms-dealing for you. Risky business.
Oh. You meant arms as in ‘weapons.’ Our bad. We thought you meant limbs. Nice, tasty limbs, with finger-licking fingers.
Jessica’s focus shifted instantly.
Anger narrowed into something colder.
“Don’t move,” she said.
Matt tilted his head slightly toward it, nostrils flaring. “That’s the same base compound,” he said quietly. “Similar volatility profile to what he dispersed inside. Highly aerosolizable.”
The word hung there.
Aerosolizable.
I felt my stomach drop.
For those of you who don’t want to look it up, I’ll summarize it for you. The toxin is airborne.
Which was a problem. Inside the museum, it had been contained. Enclosed space. Ventilation ducts feeding a limited interior. Bad. But it was a controlled bad.
This thing in my hand?
This was portable.
“The dispersal system inside was ceiling-mounted,” Matt continued. “Wide spread, but finite volume.”
Gwen’s eyes met mine.
And maybe some couple do share a few brain cells, because we reached the same conclusion at almost the exact same time.
This was a test run.
The museum wasn’t the plan. It was calibration. A trial, a shakedown. Small building. Predictable airflow. Manageable population density.
Jessica exhaled sharply through her nose. “He was figuring out how to spread it.”
“And how to make it stronger,” Gwen added, voice steady but tight. “The hallucinations weren’t random. They were individualized. The compound adapts fast.”
My mind caught up the rest of the way.
If you scale the volume…
If you increase the dispersal radius…
If you move from enclosed to open-air with forced circulation…
I looked down at the leaking seam in my hand.
Halloween.
Crowds.
Masks.
No one questions strange behavior on Halloween.
Sirens wailed below us, louder now. Someone shouted orders from the street.
Jessica muttered something under her breath that definitely wasn’t printable. But felt pretty appropriate all the same. “We’re getting off this roof. Now. Matt, you’re clear?”
“I’ll leave the way I came,” he said.
Which was deeply unhelpful information but very in character for him.
Gwen moved closer to me, shoulder brushing mine. A show of silent support.
Which I appreciated. Silently.
“I need to find out where he’s going next,” I announced.
Jessica shot me a look. “We,” she corrected, “are going to do this without setting anything else on fire.”
That felt like a soft constraint.
“I make no promises,” I replied automatically.
Her glare returned.
“—But I will try,” I amended.
We could set something small on fire. As a treat.
‘Not helping.’
Below us, someone shouted that the roof might not hold much longer.
Jessica jerked her head toward the adjacent building. “Move.”
We moved.
Not retreating.
Repositioning.
Because if tonight had been a test—
Then the real show was about to start.
…
Gwen hated that they had to break into a college to save the city.
It felt like the kind of thing that would absolutely tank her chances at early admission if anyone found out. Not that she was actively planning her future while wearing a mask and dodging felony charges. She wasn’t. Obviously.
Still.
She would preferred to do this at Oscorp labs. But, given Harry already put their security on high alert after he snuck into the lab to get their last lead, it wasn’t a particularly available option. ESU was the only place they could get to with enough resources to find what they were looking for.
And did Gwen mention the absolutely abysmal security?
The side door to the ESU science building had been insultingly easy to bypass. A little web tension on the magnetic latch, a little patience, and suddenly higher education was open for business. She filed that away under terrifying and maybe useful later.
Focus.
The lab space was dark except for the fluorescent strip lights Peter had flicked on over one workbench. Glassware gleamed. Stainless steel reflected back pale, jittery versions of them. Outside, sirens still echoed faintly through the city. Closer than she liked.
Harry set the dented grenade down carefully, like it might take offense if handled rudely.
It was still faintly hissing.
Gwen swallowed the spike of irritation that rose with it. She didn’t like that sound. She liked variables she could control. That wasn’t one of them.
Peter had already pulled gloves on. Of course he had. He shot her a quick look over the rims of the borrowed goggles.
“Tell me we’re not about to discover this thing melts faces.”
“If it melted faces, Harry wouldn’t have a face,” she replied evenly. “And he’s still fortunately symmetrical. Looking good, Harry!”
Harry paced behind them, boots tapping a restless rhythm against tile. She would have found it adorable under literally any other circumstance. There was something endearing about a boy with alien symbiote powers who still looked like he was waiting outside the principal’s office.
No, Gwen! Not helpful! Focus.
She cracked the casing seam further under the hood, drawing a small vapor sample into a collection tube. Even diluted, the compound reacted fast—binding to oxygen, diffusing aggressively. It wasn’t just airborne.
It wanted to be airborne, to spread as much, and as fast, as possible.
Her mind started running the math without permission.
Surface area.
Airflow.
Pressure variance.
Population density.
“If this is pressurized and released in motion…” she murmured, already scribbling across a legal pad she absolutely planned to put back where she found it, “…the dispersal curve goes nonlinear. It wouldn’t just fill a room. It would draft. Spread. Multiply.”
Peter leaned over her shoulder, following the equations like he was reading sheet music. “Ventilation systems,” he said quietly. “Subway tunnels. Forced air. Constant movement.”
She didn’t look up, but she felt the pieces sliding into place between them.
“How the hell hasn’t anyone called this in, yet?” Harry stressed, running his fingers through his hair. “How many supervillains have we had to deal with in the last week alone? You figured a guy who can make you live literal waking nightmares would…”
He stopped pacing.
“Right,” he said. “I forgot. It’s Halloween."
Just that.
She looked up at him then.
He didn’t need to elaborate. Costumes. Masks. Makeup. Crowds pressed shoulder to shoulder. No one questioning someone screaming at nothing. No one questioning someone clawing at the air.
She had to admit, it was a good plan.
In a super evil, messed up way.
Gwen adjusted the microscope, zooming in on crystalline structures forming along the compound’s binding edge. “The hallucinations weren’t random,” she said, voice steady despite the chill creeping into it. “They were adaptive. The compound interacts with neural receptors and then amplifies. It tailors.”
Peter’s jaw tightened.
She really hoped he didn’t blame himself for not being there. He can’t be everywhere, and no one was blaming him for partying with MJ. Except for Peter himself, of course… When this is settled, Gwen really needs to have a talk with him.
She turned to the city transit map mounted near the lab exit. ESU used it for environmental studies—urban flow patterns, population modeling. Tonight it might prevent mass hysteria.
“High-density lines,” she said, tracing routes with the blunt end of a pen. “Above-ground transitions where ventilation shifts. Anywhere air exchange increases.”
Peter stepped closer, marking intersections. “This one runs through Midtown and crosses near Times Square. Halloween foot traffic would be insane.”
Harry moved in beside them, eyes sharp now, no pacing left. “And if you wanted a moving dispersal point…” He tapped a section of track where a yard connected to multiple lines. “I’d take the train.”
Gwen’s stomach dropped.
It made sense.
Confined airflow. Forced circulation. Predictable routes. Thousands of people who couldn’t just scatter if something went wrong.
She was already reaching for her phone.
Harry beat her to it. “Jessica,” he said when she picked up, voice tight but controlled. “Hope I’m not interrupting your and Matt’s quality time, but—”
“Please tell me you’ve found something,” Jessica cut in.
“Maybe,” he finished. “We think he’s going to use a train to spread the toxin.”
Jessica didn’t even hesitate.
“Which line?”
Gwen leaned closer to the map, rattling off the route they’d just circled. “Anything that crosses Midtown and runs near Times Square. High density. Above-ground transitions.”
Jessica didn’t answer immediately.
Muffled noise came through the receiver—street traffic, maybe. A door shutting. Movement.
“We’re a few blocks from the 50th Street entrance,” Jessica said finally. “Hang on a second, and we can see it in person.”
The line didn’t disconnect.
Gwen could faintly hear footsteps now. Faster. Then another voice, lower, closer to the phone.
Matt.
“What are we looking for?” he asked.
“Unscheduled movement,” Harry replied. “Maintenance runs, bomb threats. Hell, if it was just running later than it usually is, I want to know. No way Scarecrow was able to rig a train, quietly. Whatever he made took time.”
Silence again, but not empty silence. Listening silence.
Gwen pictured it: Matt standing near a subway entrance, head slightly tilted, filtering chaos into usable data. Conversations bleeding together. Transit radios. Conductors complaining. Police chatter drifting across frequencies.
Jessica’s voice came back, sharper. “There has been some weird noise on the police band tonight. Not panic. More like… confusion. A couple calls about delays that don’t match the board.”
Matt murmured something she couldn’t quite catch. Then, clearer: “One of the yard supervisors is arguing with someone. Claims a train was pulled for ‘inspection’ late afternoon. Paperwork didn’t clear properly.”
Gwen’s pulse ticked up.
“Which yard?” she asked.
Matt didn’t answer right away. She imagined him turning slightly, orienting toward the sound of a voice underground, a radio squawk, the particular echo of a station entrance.
“West Side storage,” he said at last. “Feeds into multiple Midtown lines. Train number…” He paused, listening harder. “… three.”
Jessica exhaled through her teeth. “It reentered service about twenty minutes ago. Listed as standard maintenance completion.”
Twenty minutes.
Gwen did the math automatically.
Distance traveled.
Average subway speed with stops.
Projected current location.
“It’s already moving through Midtown,” she said.
Harry’s expression hardened. “Can you get eyes on it?”
“Working on it,” Jessica replied. “We’re heading down.”
There was the distant rush of a turnstile forced too hard. A startled protest. Jessica did not sound apologetic.
Matt’s voice came back, focused. “If he’s releasing something, he’ll need airflow. He won’t deploy in a sealed tunnel. Watch for an above-ground stretch or a station with heavy ventilation.”
Gwen’s eyes snapped back to the map.
There.
A curve that surfaced briefly before diving back under.
“If he times it with that segment—” she began.
“—he gets maximum spread,” Peter finished.
Jessica’s voice sharpened. “Then stop talking and move.”
The line clicked dead.
Gwen slid her mask fully into place, heart steadying into something sharper than fear. She looked at the boys. “We know his vector.”
Harry was already moving toward the window.
Peter didn’t hesitate.
And neither did she.
…
The cards weren’t even trying to pretend.
Mark watched another hand disappear across the felt and into the dealer’s tidy little pile, and felt that particular, slow-burn humiliation crawl up his spine. Not the cinematic kind where a guy slams the table and flips it over. The quieter kind. The kind where you keep telling yourself the next one will turn it around.
It didn’t.
Chips bled away in neat little stacks. The overhead lights were low, yellowed, designed to make the room feel warm instead of windowless. The air smelled like cheap cologne, spilled liquor, and the kind of desperation nobody talked about out loud.
Illegal casinos were supposed to be edgy. Underground. Exclusive.
Mostly they were rigged.
He should have known better. But it wasn’t like a legal casino would let a sixteen-year-old walk in and test his luck. So here he was. Testing it anyway.
And losing.
He rolled one last chip between his fingers, feeling the faint heat under his skin respond to irritation. Not enough to glow. Just enough to remind him it was there. Waiting.
Across the room, laughter spiked—sharp, ugly.
Mark’s eyes flicked up without thinking.
One of the “guests” had cornered one of the cocktail servers near the back wall. Big guy. Mid-thirties. Expensive watch. Drunk enough to think that made him charming.
The girl looked about Mark’s age. Maybe a little older. Dressed in the kind of costume that walked the line between festive and exploitative because tips depended on it. She was smiling.
It wasn’t reaching her eyes.
The man’s hand slid lower on her waist when she tried to shift away.
Mark’s jaw tightened.
Not your problem.
He looked back at the table. Another card flipped. Another loss.
Don’t get involved. Focus on your own shit. Noise draws attention. Attention draws management. Management reports up.
And up eventually meant Tombstone.
Mark liked breathing. He liked not being on anyone’s radar. Especially not the Big Man’s.
The laughter spiked again. The girl’s smile faltered this time, just a crack. The guy said something that made the dealer glance away.
Mark exhaled slowly.
He’d been dragged into this world because people with money and connections thought he was expendable. Because experiments were easier when you didn’t think about the kid under the skin.
He wasn’t going to sit here and watch it happen to someone else because he was afraid of losing a few more chips.
He pushed back from the table.
“Hey,” he called, voice carrying just enough.
The man turned, annoyed at being interrupted mid-performance.
Mark walked over, hands in his pockets, posture loose. Non-threatening. Just another stupid kid who’d had too much soda.
“She looks like she’s trying to work,” Mark said evenly. “Maybe let her?”
The guy barked a laugh. “Beat it.”
His hand didn’t move.
Mark felt the heat rise properly this time.
Not explosive. Not uncontrolled.
Intentional.
A faint shimmer rippled under his skin, like sunlight catching liquid metal. The air around him ticked up a few degrees. Subtle. But noticeable.
The man’s smile faded.
“What the hell—”
Mark moved.
He didn’t fully transform. Didn’t need to. His fist connected with the guy’s gut hard enough to fold him over the table. The felt smoked where the man’s shirt brushed it.
Chairs scraped. Someone shouted.
The guy swung back, sloppy and wide. Mark caught the wrist. Heat flared brighter along his forearm, not enough to char, just enough to burn. The man howled and tried to yank free.
Mark twisted.
The guy hit the floor.
The room had gone quiet now. Not silent. Just that tense, coiled hush that came right before decisions got made.
Mark leaned down, grabbed the front of the guy’s shirt, and let the glow creep a little higher up his neck. Not full molten. Just enough to make the point.
“You’re done,” he said quietly.
The man nodded frantically.
Mark released him and stood, rolling his shoulders once to bleed off the excess heat before it built too far. He crouched again, but this time to scoop up the stack of chips that had spilled from the guy’s pocket when he’d fallen.
He weighed them in his palm.
More than he’d lost tonight.
Funny how that worked.
He straightened and turned to the girl, who was staring at him like he’d just walked out of a special effects demo. “For the inconvenience,” he said, splitting the stack in half and pressing one portion into her hand.
She blinked at the warm plastic. Then up at him.
A slow smile curved across her mouth. This one reached her eyes.
“Thanks,” she said. There was appreciation there. And something else. Amusement, maybe. Interest.
Mark shrugged, suddenly aware that his skin was still faintly glowing at the edges.
“Happy Halloween.”
A few of the onlookers laughed nervously.
The dealer looked like he was reconsidering his career choices.
From the corner of the room, one of the security guys lowered the phone he’d been pretending not to use.
Mark saw him.
Of course he did.
Like he said. Noise draws attention. Attention draws reports.
He let the glow fade completely and walked back toward the exit without looking back. Not running. Running made it look like guilt.
Behind him, the big guy was still groaning on the floor.
Worth it.
Probably.
Outside, the night air hit cooler against his skin. Steam curled faintly from his shoulders before dissipating. He flexed his fingers once, watching the last ember-like shimmer fade beneath the surface.
Staying on the Big Man’s good side meant not causing problems.
But sometimes?
Problems caused themselves.
And if someone up the chain wanted to have a conversation about it—Mark could always remind them who really had the power to set the world on fire.
He headed down the sidewalk, pockets heavier than when he’d walked in, heat banked low and quiet. And why wouldn’t he?
It was Halloween, after all.
Everyone wore masks.
Some of them just ran a little hotter than others.
…
The train was already moving.
That was the first thing Peter noticed as he swung around the corner of the elevated track and saw the streak of steel and sparks cutting through the Halloween-lit skyline. Too fast. Way too fast for a city line that should’ve been slowing into the next station.
Orange decorations fluttered from lampposts below. Fake cobwebs stretched between brownstones. Somewhere, someone had carved a pumpkin with too much enthusiasm and not enough supervision.
Up here, though?
Real screams.
Peter adjusted his arc mid-swing and fired another webline, feeling the familiar snap in his shoulders as he redirected himself toward the rear car. To his left, Gwen kept pace—white hood up, mask on, graceful even at this speed. Ahead, a streak of black cut lower and faster along the tracks.
Harry.
They didn’t need to shout the plan. They’d already said it before leaping.
Rear. Front. Sides.
Peter hit the back of the train in a crouch, boots skidding against vibrating metal. He slapped a webline over the rear window, yanked hard, and tore his way inside.
The smell hit him first.
Sweet. Chemical. Wrong.
Passengers were slumped in their seats, some clawing at their own arms, others screaming too loudly. One man was trying to pry open the emergency window with his bare hands, convinced it wasn’t real. A woman sobbed while insisting the floor was melting.
Toxin exposure.
Not lethal. Not yet.
Peter moved fast, webbing wrists to poles, anchoring hands to seats—gentle, controlled shots. He kept his voice steady as he worked.
“Hey, hey—okay. You’re not melting. I promise. It’s just a bad trip. You’ll be okay in the morning.”
A teenager lunged at him, eyes glassy, convinced he was a monster. Peter caught the kid’s wrist, twisted, and stuck him to the ceiling with a quick flick.
“This is temporary,” Peter muttered. “Very temporary.”
Another scream echoed from up the train.
He bolted forward, slipping between cars as the wind roared past the open connector. The city blurred around them. The train was accelerating.
That was when he heard the voice.
“Fear is an organizing principle,” Drago said calmly. “It reveals the fractures in society. It strips away illusion.”
Peter stepped into the next car.
Drago—no. Scarecrow—stood at the center aisle beside a bolted metal case, sleeves rolled neatly, mask in place. Canisters lined the seats like grotesque decorations. Thin hoses fed into vents he’d manually installed.
He wasn’t just ranting.
He was adjusting the valves.
Precise. Clinical.
“As Halloween traditions go,” Peter said lightly, advancing down the aisle, “this one’s really lacking in spirit. Generally, we try to go for light-hearted scare tactics. You know, fun stuff. Carving pumpkins, horror movies, haunted houses—yes. Toxin spreading, speeding trains? Not so much.”
Scarecrow turned. No surprise in his posture. Just calculation.
“You’re not having fun?”
Peter didn’t bother answering.
He closed the distance in a blur.
One clean strike. Center mass, pulled just enough to avoid turning the man into paste against the far wall.
Scarecrow folded.
No shockwave. No dramatic rebound. No hidden armor. Just a man with fragile bones and a skull that bounced off subway flooring with a sickening thud.
Peter caught him before he could slide under the seats and webbed him to the floor in three quick motions.
Huh. Guy had a glass jaw.
Peter had expected… well more. After Rhino. After Scorpion. After everything Fisk had thrown at them. But at the end of the day, this wasn’t a monster. It was a chemist with a god complex.
He tightened the last strand of webbing around Scarecrow’s wrists and rose, scanning the car.
The canisters were still hissing softly into the ventilation system. Timers blinked in quiet, orderly red. Nothing in this compartment looked unstable.
Okay. Bad guy down.
Mission accomplished.
Peter reached for the emergency brakes.
Click.
He felt it more than heard it—a vibration through the soles of his boots. Scarecrow’s fingers twitching against the webbing, as they pressed into a button carefully hidden up his sleeve.
Peter’s spider-sense detonated.
He dove—
The explosion wasn’t large, but it was surgical.
The brake override panel at the front of the car blew outward in a spray of metal and sparks. The control console shattered, wires whipping like severed nerves. The emergency brake handle snapped clean off its housing.
The train lurched.
Then it surged.
Acceleration pressed Peter back a step as the cars screamed against the tracks.
From somewhere ahead, a distant metallic crunch echoed—Harry reaching the engine room, probably realizing at the same moment what had just happened.
Scarecrow laughed weakly from the floor, blood trickling beneath his mask.
“How about now?” He rasped. “Having fun, yet?”
Peter crouched beside him, yanked the mask halfway up, and saw the manic satisfaction in his eyes.
“Tell me, Spider-Man.” Scarecrow whispered, his bloody lip curled in sick fascination. “What are you afraid of?”
“Listening to monologues." Peter webbed his mouth shut.
Outside, the city lights began to streak.
Too fast.
Way too fast.
Passengers were still exposed. Gwen was somewhere along the side cars trying to keep people from clawing each other apart. Harry was at the front, facing a ruined control system and a train that had just become a missile.
Peter looked down the length of the car.
No conductor control.
No manual brake.
And Halloween night crowds waiting at the next station.
The real problem had just begun.
…
The first scream wasn’t fear.
It was confusion.
Gwen knew the difference.
Fear had rhythm. A spike, a gasp, a plea. Confusion was chaotic. It spiraled. It made people unpredictable.
The man clawing at the window wasn’t trying to escape the train. He was trying to escape something only he could see on the other side of the glass. His fingernails screeched against it hard enough to leave streaks. Another passenger tackled him from behind, shouting about fire that wasn’t there. A woman two rows down sobbed and slapped at her own arms like spiders were crawling over her skin.
The toxin had spread faster than she’d expected.
She felt the lurch of the train a second before the pitch changed. The vibration under her feet sharpened, lost its resistance.
Brakes.
Gone.
She didn’t let herself dwell on it.
At this rate, they’d tear each other apart before the crash ever mattered.
Move.
She fired two web-lines in quick succession, catching the man clawing the window and the one restraining him. A tight pull. They thudded gently against the side wall, pinned shoulder-to-shoulder, breathing hard but immobilized. She layered webbing across their torsos and wrists, careful not to bind their chests too tightly.
Secure. Not suffocate.
A teenager lunged past her toward the connecting door, shrieking that something was chasing him down the aisle. Gwen pivoted, caught his wrist mid-swing, and redirected the momentum into a spin that ended with him cocooned against a row of seats.
“Okay,” she muttered under her breath, more to herself than anyone else. “No shadow monsters allowed.”
Her pulse stayed steady.
This was triage. Prioritize the threats. Prevent collateral. Stabilize the scene.
The woman slapping at her arms started clawing at her own face. Gwen vaulted over a seat, landed lightly behind her, and wrapped her in webbing from elbows to shoulders in three clean passes. The woman collapsed forward, sobbing into the adhesive strands, restrained but safe.
Gwen adjusted the tension automatically. Too tight and panic worsened. Too loose and they’d break free.
She moved to the next car.
The air felt thicker here, like fear had weight.
Two passengers were wrestling near the center aisle, one convinced the other had a knife. There was no knife. Just a phone clutched in a white-knuckled hand. Gwen fired a web at the phone first, yanking it away. Disarm the hallucination’s anchor. Then she split them apart with opposing lines and stuck each to opposite walls.
The train swayed harder.
She recalculated without consciously meaning to. Speed. Distance to next curve. Structural integrity. How long before—
Stop.
Not helpful.
Peter would handle the front. Harry would handle the impossible.
Her job was this.
A little girl crouched between seats, hands over her ears, eyes squeezed shut. Not violent. Just overwhelmed. Gwen knelt in front of her.
“Hey,” she said softly. “I know it’s loud.”
The girl flinched but didn’t bolt. Good.
Gwen peeled her mask up just enough to show her mouth. A smile. Calm. Controlled.
“I’m going to wrap you up like a burrito, okay? It’s a good thing. Keeps you safe.”
A tiny nod.
Gwen cocooned her gently, leaving her face clear. Then she secured the webbing to the seat frame so she wouldn’t roll when the train shifted again.
Compassion was efficiency too.
A crash from the far end of the car snapped her attention back. Someone had nearly forced the emergency door open. Wind screamed through the crack they’d made, tugging at clothes, at hair, at balance.
Gwen shot a web-line straight past them and sealed the door shut in one thick lattice, then reinforced it with a second layer for good measure. The man responsible fought her, convinced he was escaping something behind him.
She caught his fist before it connected.
There was strength in him. Adrenaline-fueled. Desperate.
She twisted, swept his legs, and pinned him flat against the floor with a web across his shoulders.
“Not today,” she breathed.
Her movements were fast but never frantic. Every motion economical. Every decision immediate.
She didn’t panic.
Panic wasted oxygen.
She vaulted into the next car.
More hallucinations. Different flavors. One passenger curled in the aisle whispering apologies to someone who wasn’t there. Another laughing hysterically at something only he could see. Two more arguing with empty space.
The toxin wasn’t uniform. It tailored itself to fear.
Interesting.
Later.
She webbed three at once in a clean horizontal sweep that stuck them against the luggage rack. Reinforced. Checked breathing. Moved on.
The train rocked again, harder this time. A high metallic whine threaded through the floor beneath her boots.
Gwen felt it in her teeth.
She inhaled slowly.
She trusted Peter.
She trusted Harry.
And she trusted herself.
This was what she trained for. Not the glory. Not the costume. The moments where everything fell apart at once and someone had to think clearly while everyone else couldn’t.
A man grabbed her ankle from beneath a seat, shrieking about demons. She didn’t even startle. She flipped, planted a hand on the seat back, and stuck him gently but firmly to the underside of it.
“You’re going to have a weird story later,” she informed him quietly.
She reached the final car.
Most of them were already restrained now. The chaos had shape instead of randomness. A pattern of white webbing crisscrossed the interior like some strange art installation. Passengers breathing hard. Crying. Safe.
For the moment.
The train screamed against the tracks.
Gwen steadied herself in the center aisle, one hand braced against the ceiling, eyes scanning for any remaining threats.
None immediate.
Good.
She exhaled once.
Then she turned toward the front of the train.
Because whatever Peter had walked into—
Whatever Harry was about to attempt—
It was going to require all of them.
…
The control panel was dead.
Not “flickering, maybe salvageable” dead.
Black. Fried. A smoking, gutted ruin where braking systems used to be.
The speedometer needle kept climbing anyway.
The train howled through the tunnel like it was excited about it.
Okay.
Okay.
Think.
I paced once, twice, boots clanging against the metal floor, heart pounding harder than the engine beneath us. Fourteen-year-olds were not supposed to be responsible for municipal rail disasters. That felt like an adult problem. A heavily insured adult problem.
“What do we do?” I muttered.
Can’t we just pop the tires?
‘It’s a train, not a car. Those things are solid steel.’
Everything pops if you hit it hard enough.
‘That’s not how physics works.’
The curve warning sign flashed past outside the windshield. Fuck! This thing is going to crash, everyone in it is going to die, and the resulting explosion’s going to send the toxins flying across the city!
How the hell do you stop a train without brakes?!
What would Spider-Man do?
Memory flickered. Arms out. Web-lines everywhere. People screaming behind him. Dramatic music swelling.
That had been a Raimi thing. Different universe. Different physics budget.
… Would that even—
Don’t even think about it.
Too late.
I was already moving.
The symbiote flowed over my hands before I consciously told it to, reinforcing fingers, thickening along my shoulders. The cockpit window didn’t survive my exit. I burst through it into screaming wind and concrete darkness.
The tunnel walls blurred past.
I ran along the side of the train for three steps that felt like running across a hurricane, then jumped forward and spun, firing web-lines behind me in a wide spread.
They struck.
Left wall. Right wall. Overhead support beam.
I planted my feet against the front of the train and pulled.
For half a second, nothing happened.
Then everything did.
The force hit my arms like I’d grabbed onto a planet that didn’t want to stop rotating. My shoulders screamed. My elbows felt like they’d inverted. The web-lines snapped tight with a sound like gunshots, and the entire world narrowed to tension and vibration.
The suit absorbed what it could.
My bones absorbed the rest.
The train did not care.
It kept going.
I felt the wheels grinding against track, the shriek rising in pitch. The webbing stretched, thinned, fibers screaming under stress. My boots slid an inch across the metal nose of the train.
Another inch.
This wasn’t cinematic.
This was ugly.
My teeth rattled. My vision blurred at the edges. Every micro-adjustment I made just redistributed the pain somewhere new.
It was slowing.
Maybe.
A little.
Not enough.
The curve was getting closer.
Let go.
‘No.’
You are tearing your arms apart.
‘I know.’
We will heal. They will not.
The metal under my feet bucked as the train hit a minor track seam at high speed. My right shoulder made a sound I absolutely did not enjoy hearing inside my own body.
I was going to lose.
That thought arrived calm and clinical.
I did the math in a flash. Mass. Velocity. Friction coefficient of steel on steel. My available tensile strength. The answer was simple.
Insufficient.
Then something slammed into the left side of the train’s nose.
A second impact hit the right.
Two new web-lines shot past my shoulders and anchored into the tunnel walls at different angles than mine.
Peter.
Gwen.
I didn’t look. I didn’t need to.
The tension redistributed instantly. Three anchor points. Three vectors. Instead of fighting the train head-on, we were triangulating it, bleeding momentum sideways and forward at the same time.
The webbing stopped stretching and started holding.
The strain didn’t lessen.
It multiplied.
All of us were absorbing it now.
My boots dug into the metal, symbiote reinforcing the soles. My arms shook violently, muscles spasming under the load.
This is idiotic.
‘Shut up.’
We could survive the crash.
‘I don’t care.’
The curve loomed.
Concrete pillars.
A section where the tunnel narrowed just enough that derailment would turn the first three cars into a meat grinder.
The shriek of tortured metal became something deeper. A groan. The sound of kinetic energy being forced, screaming, into heat and vibration instead of catastrophe.
Peter grunted somewhere to my left. Gwen made a sharp, controlled exhale to my right. No panic. Just effort.
We weren’t even old enough to vote.
And here we were trying to out-argue physics.
The train shuddered violently. My vision went white for a split second as something in my spine protested the entire concept of what I was doing.
The web-lines smoked.
The air filled with the smell of burning adhesive and overheated steel.
Slow.
Slower.
Come on.
Come on.
The momentum bled out in inches. In stubborn, defiant resistance. The curve crawled toward us instead of rushing.
My arms felt like they’d been threaded with live wires. I couldn’t tell if I was screaming or if that was just the train.
The front wheels crossed into the beginning of the curve.
We were still moving.
Too fast.
I pulled harder.
Not strategically. Not intelligently.
Just harder.
The symbiote surged in response, reinforcing muscle fibers, bracing joints that had no business bracing this much weight.
You will break.
‘Then we break.’
The metal gave one final, ear-splitting shriek.
And the train stopped.
Not gracefully.
Not gently.
It jerked to a halt inches—literal inches—before the worst of the curve would have thrown us sideways.
Silence didn’t fall immediately.
It rang.
Like the world had been a bell and someone had just stopped striking it.
My arms dropped. I didn’t remember telling them to. I slid down the front of the train and landed hard on my knees on the narrow maintenance ledge, chest heaving.
Everything hurt.
Everything.
Peter peeled himself off the left wall, landing beside the train with a thud that was significantly less dignified than he’d probably prefer. Gwen swung down from the right, boots hitting metal, one hand still braced against the wall as if she didn’t entirely trust gravity yet.
For a second, none of us said anything.
We just breathed.
Inside the train, a murmur started. Confused. Shaky. Then louder.
A cheer tried to form. It came out weak and uneven, like the passengers weren’t sure if they were allowed to celebrate yet.
Relief flooded the tunnel in waves.
I leaned my forehead against the cold metal of the train’s nose and laughed once. It sounded hysterical.
We had just stopped a moving train.
Because of course we had.
We are never doing that again.
‘Yeah,’ I breathed. ‘Let’s hope not.’
I don’t care what anyone else has to say.
Clearly, the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man was the strongest of all of them.
…
The police sirens reached the station before the echoes of the train’s brakes had fully died.
Red and blue light began to flash through the shattered entrance, reflecting off broken glass and steel rails. Voices followed. Shouting. Radios crackling. Boots pounding across concrete.
Drago was still webbed to the pillar where Peter had stuck him.
He looked less like a mad scientist now and more like a disgruntled wax statue himself.
Good symbolism, really.
Peter finished reinforcing the webbing around the man’s arms and torso, adding an extra loop for good measure.
“Okay,” Peter muttered, stepping back to inspect his work, “that guy is not going anywhere.”
Gwen tilted her head, examining the cocoon.
“Define ‘anywhere.’ Because the NYPD is about thirty seconds away from asking some very uncomfortable questions.”
That was our cue.
The three of us moved at once.
Peter and Gwen swung first, disappearing up through the shattered skylight like twin comets of webbing.
I followed a half-second later, Venom tightening around my body as we vaulted upward.
The symbiote helped absorb the landing on the roof above the station, but even with the cushioning, every muscle in my body protested.
I staggered two steps before catching myself.
Okay.
Stopping a train.
Officially worse than it looked in the movie.
Behind me, Peter landed and immediately doubled over laughing.
Not polite laughter.
Not even dignified laughter.
Full-body, adrenaline-dumped, hysterical laughter.
“Oh my God—”
He wheezed, clutching his ribs.
“—we stopped a train.”
Gwen landed beside him, one hand on his shoulder to steady him as he bent forward.
“You realize,” she said, breath still a little uneven, “that if we’d been wrong about the physics there, we’d all be pancakes right now.”
Peter straightened, still grinning like an idiot. “Yeah, but we weren’t.” He pointed vaguely back toward the station. “We did the thing!”
Gwen snorted.
I leaned back against a ventilation unit and tried very hard not to collapse.
The tremor running through my arms refused to stop.
Not pain, exactly.
More like every muscle fiber in my body had just discovered what overtime felt like.
Your bones vibrated.
Yeah.
I noticed.
We do not recommend repeating that maneuver.
‘Duly noted.’
Across the rooftop, Peter was still riding the adrenaline wave. “You know what the best part is?” He asked.
Gwen raised an eyebrow. “The fact that we didn’t die?”
“No, no, the other best part.” He jabbed a thumb at me. “Harry called it.”
Gwen glanced over.
I straightened slightly. “Called what?”
“You know, the thing,” Peter said, as he poorly mimed pulling. “You told me you always wanted to stop a train.”
Gwen’s mouth twitched. “Oh my God.” She looked at me, disbelievingly. “You actually planned for that?”
I lifted both hands slightly. “In my defense it was supposed to be with a button. I wasn’t supposed to be the brakes. We had to improvise that part.”
Peter laughed again.
Gwen rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth betrayed her.
The three of us stood there for a moment, breathing in the cold night air while the sirens multiplied below us.
Police cruisers.
Ambulances.
The city’s cleanup crew.
Down on the street, officers were already pouring into the station.
Someone shouted about a suspect secured with “some kind of industrial adhesive.”
Peter winced. “Yeah… we should probably not be here when they figure out what that adhesive is.”
Gwen nodded. “Agreed.”
Neither of them moved immediately.
Neither did I.
For a moment we just stood there, looking out over Manhattan.
The skyline glowed under the Halloween night haze. Sirens echoed through the avenues, distant traffic humming beneath the city’s constant motion.
For a few seconds, the chaos below felt… far away.
We survived.
The voice in my head had lost its earlier edge. It was quieter now. Satisfied. I guess not literally being torn apart will do that to you.
I exhaled slowly.
‘This is what we train for.’
…Was that a pun?
‘…no?’
Across the roof, Peter and Gwen finally fired fresh web lines toward the next building.
Peter glanced back. “Race you home?”
Gwen smirked. “You’re still recovering from the train thing.”
“Excuses.”
They launched themselves into the night.
I followed a second later, the city air rushing past as Venom tightened around my shoulders. Below us, the police lights kept flashing.
Another disaster contained.
For tonight, at least.
…
The room was cold.
Not dramatically cold. Not theatrically cold. Just the quiet, institutional chill of a place designed for long hours and unpleasant conversations.
Bare table. Two chairs. Steel door.
A camera in the corner.
Zoltan Drago sat with his wrists cuffed to a metal loop in the table, staring at the wall across from him.
His clothes had been replaced with a grey holding uniform. The fabric scratched faintly against his skin whenever he shifted.
The police had taken his coat.
A shame.
The coat had pockets.
And those pockets had contained notebooks. The notebooks had contained ideas. Now the notebooks were gone.
Evidence, no doubt.
The authorities would catalog them, photograph them, and misunderstand every line of them.
That was the problem with small minds.
They saw formulas.
They did not see possibility.
The door opened with a muted metallic click.
Drago turned his head slowly.
The man who entered was well-dressed. Dark suit. Clean lines. The sort of tailoring that suggested both money and discipline.
He carried a thin leather briefcase under one arm.
The man closed the door behind him and approached the table with calm, unhurried steps. “Good evening, Mr. Drago.”
His voice was smooth. Controlled. Professional.
He set the briefcase on the table and opened it with careful precision. “My name is Benjamin Donovan. I’m an attorney.”
Drago watched him silently.
Donovan removed a folder from the case, placed it neatly on the table, then looked up with a courteous smile. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Drago.”
“No.”
Donovan paused.
Drago leaned forward slightly, the chain between his cuffs rattling softly against the metal loop.
“Drago was a doctor. A generous, if misunderstood man, who wanted to enrich the lives around him.”
His lips curved faintly.
“That man no longer exists.”
Donovan regarded him with the same polite expression.
Drago’s eyes gleamed faintly in the sterile light.
“I am Scarecrow.”
For a moment the attorney simply studied him.
Then Donovan nodded once, as though acknowledging a correction in pronunciation rather than a declaration of identity.
“Very well.”
He folded his hands neatly atop the folder.
“Mr. Fisk asked me to extend his compliments.”
That name carried weight.
Even here.
Even in a room designed to strip power away from the people inside it.
Scarecrow’s head tilted slightly.
Wilson Fisk.
Yes.
He knew the name.
Everyone who worked the darker corridors of New York eventually heard it.
Crime bosses usually trafficked in drugs. Weapons. Protection rackets.
Fisk had trafficked in something far more interesting.
Infrastructure.
Donovan continued speaking, voice calm and measured.
“My client has followed your work for some time.”
Scarecrow’s smile widened just a fraction.
Of course he had.
Genius did not hide forever.
Even when the world refused to acknowledge it.
“Your recent… demonstration,” Donovan continued, “only reinforced his admiration.”
The attorney opened the folder.
Inside were photographs.
Museum exhibits.
Wax figures.
The aftermath of tonight’s work.
Bodies immobilized.
Creatures of polymer and preserved tissue, animated by his serum.
Even in still images, they looked magnificent.
Donovan turned one photograph slightly so it faced Scarecrow.
“A remarkable application of neuromimetic polymer networks.”
Ah.
So Fisk had someone competent reading the reports.
Good.
Good.
Donovan closed the folder again.
“Unfortunately,” he said mildly, “the legal system tends to frown upon such demonstrations.”
Scarecrow glanced down at the cuffs.
“Yes.”
“Prison is inevitable.”
Donovan spoke the sentence the same way one might comment on the weather.
No malice.
No judgment.
Just fact.
Scarecrow felt no particular distress at the statement.
Prison was merely a location.
Locations could be… adjusted.
Donovan leaned back slightly in his chair.
“That said,” he continued, “the nature of one’s incarceration is… flexible.”
Now Scarecrow’s interest sharpened.
Donovan steepled his fingers.
“My client maintains certain relationships with institutions responsible for housing individuals of… specialized talent.”
There it was.
The real conversation.
“Facilities can be accommodating,” Donovan went on.
“Research privileges can be arranged. Equipment can be acquired. Materials can be delivered.”
He watched Scarecrow carefully as he spoke the next words.
“Provided the individual in question agrees to continue their work under the patronage of a new employer.”
A quiet pause settled over the room.
The fluorescent light hummed faintly overhead.
Scarecrow studied the attorney’s face.
Polished.
Controlled.
A man who understood exactly how much to reveal and exactly how much to withhold.
“Your employer,” Scarecrow said softly.
Donovan inclined his head.
“Wilson Fisk.”
Scarecrow leaned back in his chair.
The chain between his cuffs rattled again.
The police believed they had captured a madman tonight.
They believed the wax museum had been a finale.
A last act of desperation from a deranged scientist.
How small their imagination truly was.
Because the serum worked.
The principle was proven.
The process only required refinement.
Better substrates.
Better containment.
Better resources.
Scarecrow looked back at Donovan.
Resources were exactly what Wilson Fisk possessed.
Slowly, the former doctor smiled.
A thin, satisfied smile that carried none of Drago’s former restraint.
Yes.
This arrangement would do very nicely indeed.
…
The balcony door slid open with the softest whisper of glass against its track.
I slipped inside the Osborn penthouse like a burglar who knew exactly where the floorboards creaked.
Which, to be fair, I did.
Growing up somewhere meant you learned the terrain. The dead spots in the security grid. The angles the cameras didn’t quite cover. The places the house staff never looked because the owner’s kid wasn’t supposed to be climbing across the outside of a sixty-story building at two in the morning.
The living room was dark.
Manhattan stretched beyond the glass walls like a sea of lights. Cars moving like slow streams of red and white below. Helicopters drifting lazily between skyscrapers.
The kind of view rich people paid millions for.
Right now it mostly just meant I had enough ambient light to avoid tripping over the furniture.
My muscles ached.
Stopping a train turns out to be bad for the human body.
Who knew.
The symbiote shifted across my skin, easing some of the strain where it could. Microfibers tightening. Reinforcing. Cooling inflamed muscles.
Not a miracle cure.
But better than ibuprofen.
You are limping.
‘I’m not limping.’
You are definitely limping.
‘I stopped a subway train with my spine, Venom. I think I’m allowed to limp a little.’
The suit rippled faintly in mild irritation.
I crossed the living room slowly, keeping my footsteps quiet out of long habit. The penthouse was enormous, but the silence still felt… fragile.
Like if I made the wrong noise, the whole illusion of sneaking in unnoticed would shatter.
Halfway to the hallway leading toward my room, I paused.
No sounds.
No lights.
Good.
Dad was probably asleep.
Or working.
Or plotting world domination.
Fifty-fifty odds there, honestly.
I moved again, careful, quiet—
The lamp turned on.
Warm light flooded the room.
I froze.
Well.
Shit.
My father sat in the armchair beside the lamp like he’d been there the entire time.
Which, given Norman Osborn’s personality, was not only possible but extremely likely.
He wore a dark suit, jacket removed, tie loosened slightly. One arm rested casually on the chair while the other held a remote control.
His expression wasn’t angry.
That would’ve been easier.
He just looked… patient.
Observant.
Like a scientist who had finally confirmed a hypothesis.
“Harry.”
My brain immediately began cycling through every possible excuse I had ever invented in my entire life.
None of them seemed particularly convincing when paired with “entered the apartment through the seventy-second floor balcony.”
“…Hi, Dad.”
Norman raised an eyebrow slightly.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?”
‘Don’t say 2 AM.’
‘Don’t say 2 AM.’
‘Don’t say—’
“Late?”
He sighed softly.
“Breaking curfew would already be a conversation, Harry.” He gestured toward the television. “But that’s not actually what concerns me.”
The screen flickered on.
Security footage filled the display.
Black and white.
Grainy.
But very clear.
A figure moved across the screen.
Tall.
Lean.
Wearing a sleek black suit with a spider emblem across the chest.
The figure slipped through an Oscorp lab door like a shadow.
Me.
Oh.
Oh no.
Venom stirred against my skin.
… We told you.
I stared at the screen.
You forget one sometimes.
‘It was a blind spot.’
It was not a blind spot.
‘It should have been a blind spot.’
Norman muted the television.
The room fell quiet again except for the low hum of the city beyond the glass.
He looked at me.
Not angry.
Not shocked.
Just… studying.
The way he looked at a new piece of technology.
Or an experiment that had produced very unexpected results.
“Son,” he said calmly. “I think it’s time we had a long talk about your extracurricular activities.”
Venom shifted uneasily beneath my skin.
For once…
Neither of us had a clever response.