Chapter 21: Under the Influence
The smell of caramelized sugar and dark roast coffee usually meant Emily was trying to outdo herself. And that meant today was going to be a very good day. I slid into the breakfast nook, navigating the quiet expanse of the penthouse kitchen with the sort of careful, deliberate ease you developed when you were trying not to be noticed by your potentially super-villainous father.
Though, I haven’t seen much of him lately, to be honest.
With Dad buried in his work at the corporate tower, the air up here actually felt breathable for once—less like a pressurized vacuum and more like an actual home.
Mom was already at the island, her stylus tapping a rapid, rhythmic staccato against her tablet as she cross-referenced her foundation’s weekly gallery schedule. She looked up, offering a quick, soft smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes before she drifted toward the pantry, her mind clearly three steps ahead of her this morning.
I feel for her. Really. It can’t be easy being a trophy wife for a billionaire… I need to to work on my phrasing, that didn’t sound sympathetic at all.
A sharp, familiar double-knock vibrated through the service door just as I reached for the orange juice. I didn’t even have to look up to know who it was, but the sudden, happy flutter in my chest was entirely my own doing.
Gwen stepped into the kitchen, the morning sunlight catching the bright blonde of her hair and reflecting off her sensible, slightly oversized academic blazer. She had that bright, sharp alertness that always made me feel like I was operating half a step behind, her blue eyes scanning the room with a mix of casual warmth and absolute competence.
She looked like the smartest person in any room she walked into, mostly because she was, but she had this effortless way of carrying it that never felt like she was looking down on you.
“You’re going to be late for your version of public service, Harry,” Gwen said, leaning against the counter and snagging a piece of toast straight from my plate with a practiced, teasing flick of her fingers. “And before you ask, yes, I am taking your breakfast. Consider it a tax for making me walk from the station alone.”
“I’ll allow it. For now. You know our people threw a revolution for taxation without representation, right?” I asked, leaning back and watching her take a neat, crunching bite. Thief.
“I’m pretty sure if anyone can afford a tax or two, it'd be the one percent.” The crumbs on her face were mocking me. So, I kissed them off. “Hey!”
“Don’t hate the player, baby.” I defended myself, solemnly. “Hate the game. Capitalism. The game where everyone wins. Except you.”
“Ouch.” She laughed. “You sure you want to defend that system now that you’re part of the working class?”
“Pretty sure I have to be paid to be part of the working class.” I sighed, forlornly. “Which Jessica hasn’t done. Ever. Speaking of unpaid, and overworked internships, I thought you had that early shift at the ESU today? Aren’t you supposed to be busy saving the world?”
You know. With science, not fists.
Gwen’s expression shifted, the playful spark in her eyes dimming just a fraction into something more analytical, more clinical. She set the toast down, her fingers tracing the edge of the polished marble counter as she fell into that rapid-fire, intellectual cadence I’d grown to love.
“We were up until midnight calibrating the gene-sequencing array.” She gossiped. “Dr. Connors is getting aggressively close to a breakthrough with the avian-reptilian hybridization models. He’s talking about human trials for the limb-regrowth serum within the month, Harry. The mathematical models for the cellular regeneration are beautiful, really, but the cross-species genetic stabilization is… well, it’s volatile.”
An icy spike of pure adrenaline shot straight up my spine.
My internal systems winced, the meta-knowledge rattling around in my brain like a loose coin. I knew exactly where this road ended. I knew what happened when a desperate, one-armed scientist injected himself with raw lizard DNA in a basement lab, and it wasn’t a clean bill of health.
It was a nine-foot-tall, scaly nightmare tearing through Midtown. I had to keep my mouth shut about the future, even potential futures—because the moment I started explaining how I knew the exact biological mutation rate of an unreleased Oscorp-funded serum, the whole fragile house of cards would come crashing down.
The one-armed science man wants to grow a tail?
Venom’s voice rumbled through the floorboards of my conscious mind, thick and oil-slick dark, vibrating right behind my eyes with that heavy, alien curiosity.
Hmm. Let him. In fact, why stop there? He should grow wings. And pincers. Then we could fight him. We could tear the tail from his spine and use it to pin him to the wall!
‘He just wants his arm back, buddy,’ I thought back, keeping my internal voice flat and firm, pushing the black fluid’s bloodthirsty enthusiasm down into the dark corners of my subconscious where it belonged. ‘Let’s keep it simple. No tail-tearing. No fighting giant reptiles before midterms.’
Or… ever. Ideally.
Ugh. Yes, mom.
My dark passenger grumbled, a faint, liquid hiss receding from my temples as he settled back into dormant monitoring mode.
He would taste like swamp water anyway.
“Volatile how, exactly?” I asked, keeping my voice casual as I picked up my jacket, masking the sudden tension in my shoulders by focusing entirely on the zipper. “Like, standard laboratory side-effects, or the kind of volatile that ends with an entire department getting their funding pulled by my dad?”
Gwen sighed, shifting her weight as she pulled her bag over her shoulder, her thumb looping through the strap with a familiar, nervous twitch. “The ethical review boards are already breathing down his neck, and Norman’s threats about cutting the grants aren’t helping his blood pressure.”
Leave it to Norman Osborn to put the dead in deadline.
“He’s just… he’s so desperate to prove the science works, Harry. He wants his arm back, and this serum is his last chance. I just worry he’s going to skip the safety protocols to beat the corporate demands.” She paused, her eyes softening as she stepped closer, her hand briefly brushing against mine—a small, reassuring touch that felt solid and grounded against the weird, multi-universal static in my head. “But hey, that’s my problem to worry about. You have to go pretend to file paperwork for a cynical private investigator who also happens to know you’re a vigilante.”
“Yep… thanks for reminding me.” I said, offering a small, lopsided grin as we moved toward the elevator together, the continuous flow of the morning drawing us out of the penthouse and toward the bustling, noisy reality of New York City below. “At least Jessica promised she wouldn’t break any more of my windows this week. That’s progress.”
…
The smell of stale neon, cheap whiskey, and industrial floor cleaner was exactly what Mary Jane Watson needed to nail her second-act monologue. She sat on the cracked leather sofa in the corner of Alias Investigations, her copy of the modernized Maltese Falcon script resting open on her knees, though she hadn't looked at the typed lines in twenty minutes.
Why bother with fiction when the real thing was sitting right across the room, aggressively ignoring a stack of past-due utility bills?
Jessica Jones was a masterclass in human defense mechanisms. The way she slouched in her squeaking desk chair, her faded leather jacket pulled tight around her like a suit of armor, her heavy combat boots propped up on a desk that looked like it had been salvaged from a dumpster fire—it was perfect.
MJ watched the slight, rhythmic twitch of the older woman's jaw as she chewed on the end of a cheap plastic pen, those dark eyes completely vacant but radiating a quiet, dangerous energy that could clear a room in seconds. She was the ultimate cynic.
And if Mary Jane could mimic even half of that raw, unpolished edge for the casting directors on Friday, the role of the hardened, modern-day detective was practically hers.
“If you keep staring at me like that, Watson, I’m going to use you to test the structural integrity of that glass door,” Jessica said without looking up from her desk, her voice a low, gravelly scrape that sounded like it had been cured in smoke and disappointment.
“It’s called a character study, Jessica. It’s a vital part of the artistic process,” MJ replied, offering her best, completely unfazed theater smile as she tapped her pen against her script. “Beside, Harry brought you a triple-shot espresso half an hour ago, which means you legally can’t assault his friends until noon. It’s in the internship bylaws.”
Harry, who was currently trying to organize a filing cabinet that looked like it had been run over by a subway car, let out a soft snort but wisely kept his head down. He was a good guy—honestly, playing matchmaker for Peter and her was still the best thing he’d ever done—but his choice in extracurricular activities was bizarre.
He complained about his “unpaid business internship” a lot, but here he was, still working. MJ knew there was more to it—he’s a scientist, not a detective. Or detective-adjacent. So, it’s not like he was doing it for the “experience” like Peter and Gwen were with their own internships… then again, maybe he was.
For his… extracurricular stuff. That involves breaking peoples jaws, and tying them up against their will. No! Bad, MJ! Don’t be harsh. Harry’s just doing his best to make the world a better place. They all are; Harry, Gwen, Peter.
She couldn’t be mad. Not without being a hypocrite, anyways.
Which she… kinda was.
It had made her furious at first, the fact that her boyfriend and two of her best friends were running around rooftops in spandex, getting into trouble, risking their lives. It wasn’t particularly comforting to know. But they were past that now. Mostly.
The perks helped.
Right now, she was using one of those very perks to get front-row seats to real-world drama.
The frosted glass door to the office suddenly rattled, the brass handle twisting violently before the door swung open to reveal a middle-aged couple who looked like they hadn’t slept in a week. The man was clutching a damp handkerchief, his tie pulled loose, while the woman’s eyes were red-rimmed and wide with a kind of frantic, vibrating terror that immediately changed the entire temperature of the room.
“Are you Jessica Jones?” the man asked, his voice cracking as he stepped into the office, his eyes darting between Jessica’s messy desk and Harry. “Please, the police won't help us. They said she’s an adult, that she probably just ran off with a boy, but she wouldn’t do this. Not our Hope.”
Jessica’s posture changed instantly. The lazy, hungover slouch vanished, her combat boots dropping to the floor with a heavy, hollow thud as she sat up straight. The annoyance on her face didn't soften into sympathy—it hardened into something tight, professional, and guarded. “Take a breath. Sit down. Who is Hope?”
“Our daughter,” the woman sobbed, collapsing onto the opposite end of the leather sofa right next to MJ, her hands shaking so violently she could barely hold her own purse. “She’s a track scholarship student at the university. She’s supposed to be training for the qualifiers. But three days ago, she just… stopped answering her phone. She emptied her savings account. She hasn’t been to her dorm. We went to her room and all her clothes are gone, her laptop is gone… it’s like she vanished into thin air.”
MJ watched Jessica closely, her actress brain automatically cataloging the subtle shifts in the woman's face. She expected her to look moved, or at least interested in a paying case, but instead, Jessica looked completely detached. She pulled a yellow legal pad toward herself, her pen hovering over the paper with a stiff, unnatural rigidity.
“Did she have a history of running away? Drugs? A new boyfriend her track coach didn't know about?” Jessica asked, her voice flat, almost robotic as she ran through the standard checklist. She was building a wall between herself and these people, a thick barrier of pure detachment to keep their panic from bleeding into her space.
It was fascinating to watch—the ultimate shield of a woman who dealt in the worst parts of New York City for a living.
“No! None of that!” the father insisted, slamming a hand down on the edge of the desk, his face flushing a desperate, angry red. “She’s a good kid! She wouldn’t just abandon her life! We brought a retainer. Whatever it takes. Just please, find our little girl.”
He pulled a crumpled white envelope from his coat pocket and slid it across the desk. Jessica looked down at the money, her jaw tightening so hard MJ could see the muscles pulsing under her skin. For a second, MJ thought she was going to push it back, but the private investigator slowly reached out, her fingers closing around the envelope with a grim, heavy nod.
“Give me her roommate's number and her latest bank statements,” Jessica said, her voice dropping an octave into that cold, uncompromising noir tone MJ had been trying to perfect all morning. “My intern and I will start shaking the trees. Go back to your hotel. If she’s in this city, we’ll find her.”
…
The green fluorescent glow of the centrifuge felt like it was actively boring a hole through Gwen Stacy’s retinas. She adjusted her safety goggles, leaning over the digital readout with a frown that had been steadily deepening since eight in the morning.
On paper, the cellular regeneration metrics for the reptilian-avian splice were spectacular. In reality, the genetic stability looked like a structural nightmare. Frankly, she wasn’t entirely sure anyone could splice animal DNA with human biology and expect a positive result that didn’t involve growing an unnecessary set of eyelids.
It was a massive, walking contradiction for her to even think it—considering she and Peter were living, breathing, wall-crawling proof of the exact opposite anomaly—but their radioactive spider accident had been a freak lightning strike in a bottle.
Trying to mass-produce that kind of genetic tampering with a syringe full of aggressive lizard components felt less like science and more like playing Russian roulette with chromosomes.
“If you stare at that sequence any harder, Gwen, the computer might actually self-combust out of sheer intimidation,” Peter said, leaning against a nearby desk. He was casually tossing a crumpled ball of discarded scrap paper from hand to hand, his hazel eyes bright with that hyperactive, restless energy he could never quite shut off, even after pulling a double shift monitoring the local police bands.
“I’m just trying to figure out why the lipid barrier keeps collapsing during the synthesis phase,” Gwen said, pulling a stray pen from her pocket and gesturing toward the monitor. “Dr. Connors is brilliant, Peter, but he’s pushing the metabolic rate too fast. Look at the variance. It’s practically vibrating.”
“Well, maybe it just needs a little mechanical calibration,” Peter offered, a mischievous grin cutting through his exhaustion as he squared his shoulders and eyed the plastic recycling bin across the room. “Like this. Total focus. Flawless execution.” He launched the crumpled paper ball through the air in a perfect, high arc.
Gwen didn’t even look up from her data screen.
She simply extended her left hand, shot a line from her web-wrists, and reeled it in. Guiding her fingers to snag the paper ball cleanly out of the air. A shame for poor Peter Parker. Only a mere inch away from clearing the rim of the bin.
She gave it a light squeeze, tossing it back to him with a smug, teasing wink. “Nice try, Pete. But that’s still three-zero, in my favor. And here I thought you had skills.”
“And here I thought you were above cheating. I should have known better. I’ll never forget this betrayal,” Peter complained, catching the paper ball with a laugh, though his smile vanished the moment a harsh, commanding voice cut through the heavy double doors of the inner office.
The shouting wasn’t your typical academic bickering.
It was cold, sharp, and dripping with an immense, corporate authority that made the hairs on the back of Gwen’s neck instantly stand on end. She and Peter exchanged a quick, knowing look before silently sliding away from their workstations, their synchronized steps completely soundless as they crept toward the half-open observation door to check out the disturbance.
Through the glass, Dr. Curt Connors looked smaller than usual, his single hand gripping the edge of his chalkboard while his empty sleeve fluttered slightly against his lab coat. Standing directly across from him, looking like an iron stake driven into the center of the room, was Norman Osborn.
The older Osborn looked exactly like the corporate tycoon he was—his tailored charcoal suit immaculate, his posture rigid, and his sharp, hawkish features set in an expression of pure, unadulterated disdain. Oscorp was one of ESU’s primary financial lifelines, and since the absolute disaster with Max Dillon breaking out of university custody before tearing Times Square apart as a walking electrical grid, Norman had essentially become Connors' only donor.
And right now, he looked entirely finished with philanthropy.
“I am not running a charity for sentimental academics, Curt,” Norman said, his voice a low, biting rasp that carried perfectly through the door. He didn’t raise his tone, which somehow made it infinitely worse—it was the voice of a man who measured human worth entirely by a quarterly balance sheet. “I brought Oscorp’s capital to this university to see market-ready biological results, not a folder full of excuses and failed synthesis trials.”
“Norman, please, the cross-species stabilization requires meticulous isolation,” Dr. Connors pleaded, his voice thick with a mix of desperate exhaustion and professional pride. “If we rush the human trial phase, the cellular degradation could be catastrophic. I just need another three weeks to stabilize the formula.”
“You don’t have three weeks,” Norman snapped, stepping closer, his shadow completely swallowing the one-armed scientist. “And quite frankly, I am tired of indulging my son’s little high school circle. Harry’s insistence on protecting your tenure is the only reason you’re still standing in this laboratory, but my patience with his adolescent sentimentality has expired.”
Gwen’s jaw tightened, a cold, fierce wave of protectiveness washing over her at the mention of Harry. Watching Norman stand there, radiating pure, calculated malice, she couldn’t help but marvel at the absolute cosmic absurdity of genetics.
How could someone so cruel, so greedy, and so aggressively selfish have helped make someone as compassionate, as generous, and as completely selfless as Harry? It didn’t make mathematical sense.
That settled it.
Her boyfriend seriously needed to run a paternity test, because there was simply no biological way Norman was Harry’s real father.
“You are not the only man in this city operating in the limb-replacement business, Curt,” Norman continued, tapping his cane sharply against the linoleum floor. “Otto Octavius’s prosthetics research at the harbor facility has shown immense promise lately. I should know; I’ve played around with his pneumatic prototypes myself. Effective, durable, user-friendly. Perhaps his laboratory could better utilize the remainder of the ESU grant money if you are incapable of producing anything meaningful with what I’m giving you.”
Dr. Connors went completely pale, his shoulder slumping as if Norman had hit him with a physical blow.
Norman didn’t offer a parting glance. He simply turned on his heel, his heavy leather shoes clicking a ruthless rhythm against the floor as he swept out of the office, leaving a suffocating, miserable silence in his wake.
Gwen and Peter stepped fully into the room, looking at the frustrated trio they had suddenly become. Dr. Connors was staring blankly at his chalkboard, looking more defeated and broken than Gwen had ever seen him. It was a miserable sight, but it didn’t make her want to quit—it made her want to work until her fingers bled.
“We won’t let him win, Dr. Connors,” Gwen said firmly, her voice cutting through the clinical gloom of the office with a bright, stubborn certainty. “We’re going to put in the overtime. We’ll recalibrate the lipid barriers from scratch if we have to, but we are not letting Norman Osborn shut this project down.”
Peter nodded aggressively beside her, already reaching for a fresh box of glass vials. “She’s right, Doc. We’ve got the data. We just need to work smarter than Oscorp’s legal team.”
Dr. Connors looked up, a faint, tired flicker of gratitude passing through his eyes before he offered a weak nod. “Thank you, both of you. Let’s look at the synthesis models again.”
Gwen turned back toward the main lab area, her mind already racing through the chemical equations. Shoot. She probably should have said the part about making the serum first to sound more scientific, but the dramatic flair felt right anyway. Whatever. It was time to make a serum.
…
Tracing a digital footprint in Manhattan usually meant wading through a swamp of mundane human behavior. Jessica stared down at the glowing screen of her cheap smartphone, her thumb aggressively scrolling through the intercepted credit card data of Hope Shlottman while the evening chill began to seep through her scuffed leather jacket.
At first glance, it looked like a standard textbook case of a college kid going off the rails.
Hope wasn't paying her university housing fees anymore. Her cell phone bill was past due. But somebody was dragging the track star’s identity through a bizarre, sickeningly luxurious gauntlet. There were thousands of dollars racked up at ultra-exclusive boutiques on Fifth Avenue. Premium silk dresses. High-end lingerie.
And then there was the dinner bill.
Jessica stopped dead on the crowded sidewalk, her eyes fixing on the latest line item as the ambient noise of midtown traffic suddenly faded into a distant, muffled hum. Niku. An incredibly expensive, heavily reserved restaurant right across the street. She looked up, her gaze cutting through the passing pedestrians to find the sleek, polished black facade of the establishment, its warm interior lighting glowing like an invitation she never wanted to accept.
It wasn't just the sheer amount of money being spent that made the bile rise in the back of her throat. It was the precise sequence of the dates. The timeline. First the clothes, always a specific designer. Then the jewelry. Then the exact five-star dining experience, followed by a sudden, complete isolation from anyone who actually cared about her.
It hit Jessica like a bucket of icy water poured directly down her spine. It was a perfect, mirror-image recreation of her own torment. The exact same dinners. The exact same clothes. The exact same predatory pacing. It was a flawless carbon copy of the eight months she had spent drowning inside her own skull, a puppet on an invisible string.
He was supposed to be dead. She had watched the bus hit him. She had heard the crunch of bone. But the universe wasn't that kind. The universe was a sick, repetitive joke.
He was alive. Killgrave was alive.
The street began to tilt. The neon signs from the storefronts blurred into sharp, stabbing streaks of purple light that felt like they were pressing against her temples. Breathe. She needed to breathe, but her lungs felt like they were filled with wet cement. He was in the city. He was looking for a replacement.
Or worse, he was setting a trap, dangling a new victim in front of her office door because he knew she would look.
“Jess? Hey, look at this. I found a second account registration tied to the same billing address—”
“We’re dropping the case,” Jessica interrupted, her voice a flat, trembling whisper that didn't even sound like her own. She turned on her heel, her boots slamming against the concrete as she began walking away from Niku at a frantic, uncoordinated pace.
Harry hurried to keep up with her, his brow furrowed in deep confusion as he navigated the crowded sidewalk. “What? Jess, wait. We literally just found the connection. The restaurant is right there. If she’s inside, we can—”
“I said we’re dropping it!” Jessica barked, her hands shaking so violently she had to shove them deep into her jacket pockets to hide the tremor. “We’re done. The Shlottmans can hire someone else. We’re going to Trish’s apartment right now, we’re getting whatever cash she has in her safe, and we are fleeing the city tonight. Long Island. Upstate. It doesn’t matter. We just need to get across the river before midnight.”
“Jess, you’re spinning out. Talk to me,” Harry demanded, his voice dropping into that stubborn, focused tone that usually preceded him doing something incredibly reckless in a leather jacket. He reached out, his hand wrapping around her forearm to halt her progress, but she ripped her arm away with enough force to nearly send a passing businessman into the gutter.
“You’re not listening to me. We’re fucking going! Now! Before he finds us.”
She didn't stop until she veered into a narrow, dimly lit alleyway between a theater and a brick office building, desperate to get out of the open air, away from the predatory geometry of the streets. But Harry was right on her heels. Before she could turn around to scream at him, the fourteen-year-old stepped directly into her path, his fingers grabbing the thick lapels of her leather jacket with a surprising, unyielding strength.
“Who is he, Jess?” Harry demanded, his blue eyes burning with a fierce, protective urgency as he pinned her with his gaze. “Why are you freaking out like this?! You helped take down the Juggernaut. And the Scorpion, remember? Who could possibly make you run like this?!”
“Let go of me, Osborn,” Jessica hissed, her teeth clicking together as she glared down at him, her face twisting into a harsh, ugly sneer designed to push him away. She needed him gone.
She needed him to be terrified enough to run, because if he stayed, he was dead. Or worse.
“You’re a kid. You’re an unpaid, high school intern who plays dress-up on weekends because daddy didn't give you enough attention.” Never say she didn’t know how to make it hurt. “You don’t know anything about the real world, so take your hands off me before I break them.”
Harry didn't flinch. He didn't even blink. He just held on tighter, his knuckles whitening against the leather.
A surge of pure, panicked adrenaline washed over her, and Jessica brought her hands up, shoving him hard against the chest with her super strength. The impact echoed through the narrow alley like a gunshot. It was enough force to launch a delivery truck into a brick wall, but Harry simply skidded backward along the wet asphalt, his boots digging into the ground as his posture absorbed the kinetic shock.
He didn't fall. He didn't reach for his ribs. He just stood his ground, looking at her with an expression that wasn't angry—it was just desperately worried.
Jessica privately reflected that the kid was entirely too sturdy for his own good. It was terrifying, honestly. To see someone so young absorb so much, and keep taking more. It’d make her heart break, if she thought she still had one.
“I’m not letting you do this,” Harry said, his voice softening from a demand into a raw, heavy plea as he took a step back toward her. “You’re like a big sister to me, Jess. You think I’m just going to let you pack a bag and disappear because some ghost crossed your path? Talk to me. Please.”
The word sister felt like a physical blow, cracking through the frozen layer of panic around her heart. He looked so much like Philip sometimes, she’d swear it—the same stubborn chin, the same refusal to look away when she was being monstrous.
He was basically the little brother she had lost in that horrific car crash, the one she still saw whenever she closed her eyes in a dark room.
Speaking of, she really should forbid Harry from driving entirely. Cars were deadly, unpredictable meat-grinders. Then again, so was this superhero shit he insisted on running around in, and she hadn't exactly been successful in convincing him to knock that off either.
She looked at his ridiculous, determined face, and she knew she couldn't win this argument by running. If she left without telling him, his colossal, unearned Osborn ego would just drive him to investigate the restaurant himself to prove a point. And if he sought out Killgrave on his own, the monster would have him within five seconds.
Harry already fit Killgrave’s other favorite demographic perfectly: he was filthy fucking rich. The creature would love nothing more than a billionaire teenager with a dark secret to play with.
Over her dead body.
“Fine,” Jessica whispered, her shoulders slumping as the defensive anger completely drained out of her, leaving her feeling hollow and incredibly old. “You want to know what we’re dealing with? His name is Killgrave. He’s not like Fisk, or the Shocker, or whatever mutant freak you’ve tangled with. He doesn't have a suit or a plan to take over the city. He just has a voice.”
She leaned back against the cold brick wall, her eyes tracking a slow trickle of dirty water running down a rusty pipe. “If he tells you to jump off a roof, you do it. If he tells you to cut your own throat, you smile while you look for a knife. There is no willpower, Harry. There is no fighting it. He found me a year ago. He used me for eight months. He made me do things… horrific things… and I was conscious for every single second of it, locked inside my own body while he steered me around like a doll.”
She looked up, her dark eyes hollow, the raw terror finally exposed. “I can’t go through that again, Harry. I won’t. If he knows I’m alive, he’ll come for me. I am leaving this city tonight, and if you have a single brain cell left in that expensive skull of yours, you’ll take your little spider-friends and you’ll leave too.”
Harry stood completely still in the shadows of the alley, the ambient city noise continuing to hum beyond the brick walls. He looked down at his shoes, his jaw tight, before he raised his head to deliver a brutal, unvarnished dose of tough love. “You can run to the ends of the earth, Jess, but he’s already here. Maybe he’ll find you again. Maybe he won’t. But this isn’t just about you, or me anymore. It’s about Hope. You really want to leave another girl suffering exactly like you did? You want that on your conscience?”
“I don’t fucking want to!” Jessica spit, the words tearing from her throat as she stepped forward, her face inches from his. “Obviously! But what the fuck kind of choice do you think we have against someone who can turn your own mind against you? Tell me, hero! What’s the play?!”
“Well,” Harry said softly, his voice steady, entirely devoid of the panic that was currently consuming her. “For starters? I was thinking we could kick his ass. Take it from there… Jess, I swear to you. I’m not going to let anything happen. Okay? This isn’t like last time. You’re not alone.”
Jessica stared at him for a long, agonizing moment, her chest heaving as she tried to find a flaw in his ridiculous, infuriating logic. She wanted to hit him. She wanted to walk out of the alley and never look back.
“…fuck you,” she muttered, a shaky, exhausted breath escaping her lips as his stubbornness finally forced her feet back down to earth. She wiped a hand across her face, her thoughts clearing just enough to let the old, cynical investigator take the wheel again. “The Plaza Hotel. We need to check it out right now. I’ve got a feeling I know exactly where he’s keeping her.”
It’s the same place he kept her when he wanted to feel like a king.
Maybe it was time for a regicide.
…
The gilded decadence of the Plaza Hotel felt like a sick joke compared to the raw, vibrating panic radiating off Jessica. Walking through the marble lobby, I had to keep my pace measured, matching her aggressive stride while making sure she didn't just smash through the velvet ropes.
The snobbish doorman in the crisp livery didn't even get a chance to open his mouth to ask for our room keys; the second he stepped into our path, Jessica caught him by the lapels of his heavy coat and effortlessly navigated him into a dense decorative fern, leaving him sputtering in a nest of expensive leaves.
We hit the elevators before the front desk could even finish dialing corporate security. I kept my hands shoved deep into my pockets, feeling the subtle, rhythmic pulse of the symbiote beneath my skin, ready to slide up my wrists at a moment's notice.
When we reached the top floor, there was no waiting around for a master key. Jessica didn’t even bother trying the handle. She simply planted the heel of her combat boot right next to the brass lock, and with a single, explosive crack that sounded like a small firework going off in the corridor, the heavy mahogany door tore completely out of its frame, splintering inward.
The silence inside the luxury suite was deafening. The air smelled of expensive lilies, stale room service, and something deeply, inherently wrong.
I stepped into the master bedroom right behind her, my heart hammering against my ribs as the meta-knowledge of the show materialized into grim, physical reality right before my eyes. Hope Shlottman was lying on the king-sized bed, completely unmoving. She was still wearing the elegant, overpriced silk dress we’d seen on the boutique receipts, her blonde hair spilled across the satin pillows like a broken halo.
Her eyes were wide, completely vacant, staring up at the crystal chandelier with a glassy, catatonic fixity that made my stomach twist into a hard knot. She didn’t blink when the door shattered. She didn’t move an inch. It was only when I drew closer that the sharp, unmistakable smell of ammonia hit me, cutting through the heavy perfume in the room.
The poor girl had been ordered not to move for hours, trapped under a psychological paralysis so absolute that her own body had failed her while her mind remained locked in a cage.
The voice did this.
Venom’s thoughts bubbled up against the back of my skull, a sudden, oily surge of pure, defensive malice that felt like liquid ink behind my eyes.
It makes them into hollow shells. It smells like rot. We should find the man with the purple clothes. We should bite his tongue out so he cannot speak to us.
‘Yeah, that’s not happening. There’s only two tongues allowed in my mouth. Mine, and Gwen’s.’ I projected back, keeping my internal focus tight and rigid, fighting down the symbiote’s sudden urge to paint the walls black. ‘But we’ll make him pay. For now, let’s get the girl out of here.’
Jessica let out a ragged, choked sound that was half-sob, half-fury.
The defensive, cynical outer shell she usually wore to protect herself from Hell’s Kitchen completely shattered in an instant. She threw herself across the mattress, her movements uncharacteristically gentle as she grabbed a heavy plush comforter from the floor, wrapping it tightly around Hope’s shivering, frozen frame.
Jessica was whispering to her, her voice trembling with a raw, protective desperation that made her look entirely human, entirely vulnerable. Hope didn’t answer; her limbs were completely stiff, moving like cardboard as Jessica carefully scooped the track star into her arms, cradling her against her leather jacket like a shield against the rest of the world.
With Jessica completely consumed by the immediate rescue, I knew this was my only window to set the board for the next phase. I couldn't just magically tell her the names of Killgrave’s parents, Albert and Louise Thompson, or explain that we needed to track down a pair of aging British scientists to build a vaccine.
If I did, the questions would never stop. I had to create a paper trail that made sense to a cynical private eye.
My eyes scanned the elegant nightstand, past the expensive champagne bucket, until they locked onto a single, half-empty wine glass resting near the edge of the dresser. The crimson residue at the bottom was dry. A faint, clear smudge of oil from a thumb was visibly pressed against the crystal stem.
I reached into my inner jacket pocket, pulling out a standard clear plastic evidence bag I’d lifted from Alias Investigations earlier. I carefully slid my sleeve over my fingers, lifting the glass by the very top rim to preserve the print, and dropped it into the plastic before sealing it with a sharp, intentional snap.
“Jess, look at this,” I said, turning back toward her, keeping my voice steady, projecting the calm, resourceful logic of an Osborn who knew exactly how to utilize a multi-billion-dollar corporate empire for street-level tracking. “He left a glass. He was drinking here.”
Jessica looked up from the bed, her breathing heavy, her arms locked tightly around Hope as she adjusted her grip. She looked completely overwhelmed, her dark eyes frantic as she stared at the plastic bag in my hand, her investigative instincts currently buried under a mountain of personal trauma. “What? Harry, we need to go. We need to get her to a hospital, we don’t have time for—”
“Oscorp has a private, off-the-books forensic database,” I lied smoothly, the fabrication rolling off my tongue with the practiced ease of someone who had been keeping his entire existence a secret for months. “It has access to medical registries and high-end international profiles that the NYPD can't touch without a warrant. If this Killgrave guy has ever visited a private clinic or has any kind of biological record under any alias, the DNA and partial prints from this glass will pull his real name and family history within forty-eight hours. I’ll run it through the lab myself under my dad’s credentials.”
Jessica didn’t question it.
She couldn't.
The sheer weight of seeing her worst nightmare recreated in the flesh had pushed her analytical mind to the absolute brink. She simply gave a single, tight nod, her jaw clenched as she turned toward the shattered doorway, carrying the silent, terrified girl out into the corridor. I slipped the bagged glass into my pocket, a quiet, calculated satisfaction settling over my thoughts. The cover story was locked.
Now, it was time to use the tech to find his parents—and hunt this monster down.
…
The raw emotional release unfolding in the center of the office was almost too heavy to process, even for someone trying to memorize the exact mechanics of human grief. Mary Jane Watson leaned against the edge of the sofa, her script forgotten in her lap as she watched the Shlottman family.
The relief in the room was thick enough to choke on. Hope’s mother was weeping openly, her arms wrapped so tightly around her daughter’s shoulders that it looked like she was trying to physically fuse the girl back into the family unit.
“Oh, baby, thank God,” Barbara Shlottman sobbed, her voice cracking as she buried her face in Hope’s hair. “We were so scared. We thought you were gone forever.”
“I’m right here, Mom,” Hope murmured. Her head nodded in a slow, rhythmic pattern that didn’t quite match the frantic energy around her. She was answering them, yes, but her voice possessed a strange, practiced evenness that sent a subtle chill creeping down MJ’s arms.
It was a goldmine of genuine, unvarnished human drama—the kind of messy, desperate love that directors begged for—yet the center of the performance felt entirely hollow.
And then there was Harry.
Instead of soaking in the victory of a successful rescue, Harry was pacing the perimeter of the room like a caged animal. His hands were stuffed deep into his pockets, his jaw locked tight enough that the muscles along his cheekbones were violently pulsing. He wasn't looking at the happy reunion.
His entire focus was locked on the frosted glass door, his gaze cutting straight through it toward the shadows of the hallway where the standard, metallic elevator doors rested at the end of the corridor.
“Harry, you’re going to wear a hole in the floorboards,” MJ murmured under her breath, shifting her script. “Relax. They’re safe.”
Harry didn’t stop pacing. “Yeah. Sure… for now.”
MJ frowned slightly, watching the tense, rigid line of his shoulders.
Maybe he was just anxious to leave, eager to go hunt down whatever sick monster had locked that poor girl in a hotel room in the first place. Jessica wasn't much better; the private investigator was leaning against her desk, aggressively nursing a glass of cheap amber liquid, her dark eyes hollowed out by a deep, exhausting dread.
“We should get her home,” Bob Shlottman said, his voice thick with tears as he finally broke the embrace, wiping his face with a damp handkerchief. “She needs a warm bed. A real doctor. We can’t thank you enough, Miss Jones. You saved our lives.”
“Just get her out of the city,” Jessica muttered, her voice rough, not even looking up as she tossed the empty glass onto her desk with a hollow clatter. “Don’t pack her things. Don’t go back to the dorm. Just get in your car and drive until you hit a different time zone.”
Bob blinked, startled by the hostility. “But her classes—her scholarship—”
“I don’t give a shit about her track record!” Jessica snapped, her voice cutting through the room like a razor. “Take your daughter and get out of New York tonight. Do you understand me?”
“We’ll go,” Barbara said quickly, tugging her husband’s sleeve, her eyes wide with lingering anxiety. “Bob, let’s just go. Come on, Hope.”
The family gathered their things, Hope moving with a compliant, mechanical grace as her mother kept a protective hand resting on her lower back. MJ stood up, offering a small, supportive nod as they filed out of the office, the heavy glass door clicking shut behind them. Through the frosted pane, she watched their silhouettes retreat down the dim, narrow hallway toward the elevator.
Harry stopped pacing. He froze in the center of the room, his head snapping toward the door with an abrupt, violent sharpness that made MJ’s breath catch in her throat.
Out in the hall, the low, metallic ding of the elevator arriving echoed through the floorboards. The sliding steel doors groaned open, and the family stepped inside the brightly lit cab. And then, the entire universe seemed to tilt on its axis.
Through the clear gaps in the frosted office glass, MJ saw Hope’s silhouette completely stiffen, her posture straightening into a flat, unnatural line. The girl’s hand slid down into her oversized purse, her movements smooth, deliberate, and entirely devoid of hesitation. The steel doors of the elevator began to slide shut, their tracks screeching a slow, mechanical rhythm.
Right before the metal panels could completely obscure the family, Hope pulled a heavy, matte-black pistol from her bag, her arm rising with a terrifying, mechanical precision until the barrel was pointed directly at the back of her mother’s head.
MJ’s mind went entirely blank, a wave of pure, paralyzing shock slamming into her chest like a physical blow. Her vocal cords seized for a fraction of a second, her hands flying to her mouth as the sheer horror of the image registered in her brain. But before the paralysis could fully lock her down, a sharp, piercing scream tore from her lips, shattering the quiet of the office. “No! Hope, stop!”
That scream might have been the very thing that saved the Shlottmans' lives.
Barely a millisecond after the sound passed MJ’s lips, Harry reacted. He didn't run toward the door. He didn't reach for a weapon. With a terrifying, explosive burst of speed, a thick, midnight-black tendril of living, oil-slick fluid violently erupted from his right forearm, tearing through the fabric of his sleeve like a striking viper.
The black mass shot across the office, shattering the frosted glass door into a million glittering shards as it launched into the hallway, threading the needle directly through the rapidly closing gap of the elevator doors.
The tendril wrapped around Hope's wrist with a wet, heavy slap just as her finger squeezed the trigger.
BANG.
The gunshot exploded within the confined steel elevator, a deafening, metallic roar that vibrated through the entire building. The bullet went wide, rocketing straight up into the ceiling, and shattering the overhead light fixture in a shower of sparks and sudden darkness.
Before the terrified parents could even process the flash of fire, Harry flexed his arm. The black fluid expanded, locking onto the sliding steel doors and violently wrenching them backward into their tracks with a horrific screech of tearing metal.
“Bob! Oh my god, Bob!” Barbara shrieked from the darkness of the elevator, her voice dissolving into pure, breathless hysteria.
Jessica was already moving before the glass had even finished hitting the floor. “Get out of the way!” she roared.
The older woman charged through the ruined doorway like a freight train, her combat boots crushing the shards as she launched herself into the elevator cab, using her sheer, unnatural strength to tackle Hope out of the enclosure and pin her flat against the hallway floor. The gun clattered away, rolling into the shadows near the baseboards.
“Hold her down! Don’t let her grab it!” Harry shouted, his voice tight as he yanked his arm back, the black fluid dissolving under his skin.
MJ stumbled out into the corridor, her heart hammering against her ribs so loudly she could hear it in her ears. The Shlottman parents were collapsed against the back of the elevator, screaming in absolute, unadulterated terror.
Years of stage training and vocal control suddenly overrode her panic; she needed to manage the room before someone else got hurt.
“Mr. and Mrs. Shlottman! Stay back!” MJ commanded, her voice projecting with a fierce, authoritative weight that cut right through their screams. “Stay inside the elevator! Do not move!”
“She tried to shoot us!” Bob yelled, his hands clawed into his hair, his eyes bulging as he stared at his daughter on the floor. “Our own daughter! What’s wrong with her?!”
“Just stay there!” MJ shouted back, her hands shaking as she kept her eyes locked on the floor.
On the ground, Jessica was heavily anchoring Hope’s wrists, her face pale with an agonizing fury. “Hope! Hope, look at me! Look at me, damn it!”
But it was Hope’s expression that made MJ’s blood run completely cold.
Pinned against the hard floor, her parents' blood nearly spilled across her dress, Hope didn't look terrified. She didn't look broken. Her face twisted into a wide, glassy, completely giddy grin, her eyes staring up at Jessica with a horrifying, mechanical emptiness that made her look like a broken porcelain doll.
“Smile.” Hope whispered, her voice bubbling with a sickening, hollow amusement as she stared into the private investigator's face.
“Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!” Jessica screamed, tears of pure rage finally spilling over her lashes as she pressed her weight down on the girl’s arms.
“He told me everything,” Hope giggled, a tiny thread of saliva trailing down her chin as her eyes rolled slightly. “He said you’d come for me. He said you’re going to have so much fun together.”
MJ slowly turned her head, her wide eyes moving from the grinning girl on the floor up to Harry, who was standing by the shattered office entrance. The black tendril had already receded completely back under his skin, leaving nothing but a ruined sleeve and a quiet, lethal stillness in his posture.
“Harry…” MJ whispered, her voice trembling as she looked at his torn jacket. “You’re not… you aren’t in your costume. What if they realize what you just did?”
Harry didn’t look at her. His eyes remained fixed on Hope, his voice dropping into a cold, hollow whisper. “It looks like they might have bigger things to worry about, right now.”
MJ swallowed hard, pulling her jacket tighter around herself. It was a sudden, dizzying reality check. She had spent weeks worrying about Peter running around in red and blue spandex, but maybe she should count her blessings.
At least his internship wasn’t dangerous.
Science labs were safe. Science labs were predictable. Compared to being a PI in Hell's Kitchen, Peter was probably having a perfectly normal, quiet night at ESU.
Harry's world was a nightmare.
…
And that’s three more people who know our secret identity. Nice one.
Venom’s voice was a low, vibratory growl that echoed directly against the back of my teeth, heavy with a thick layer of alien sarcasm.
Very subtle, Harry. Very tactical.
‘What? Should I have let Hope murder her parents right in front of us?’ I shot back mentally, checking my footing as I vaulted over a rusted fire escape. The liquid-black fabric of the suit rippled effortlessly across my skin, absorbing the damp night air. ‘I didn't exactly have a lot of options.’
No!
Venom hissed, a sudden spike of defensive agitation pulsing through our shared nervous system.
But did you have to stop her with a tentacle? Now they know who we are. There’s only one logical thing we can do. We have to eat them.
‘No. Absolutely not.’
Worth a shot.
The symbiote receded slightly, leaving a faint, lingering taste of copper on my tongue as I launched myself off the roof.
The wind howled past my ears as we dropped into the neon-lit canyons of Manhattan. I swung low, letting a strand of sleek black webbing catch the edge of a brick building before snapping myself upward into Harlem.
Technically, I was on patrol. I was doing what we always did—clinging to the shadows, dropping down on low-level muggers, webbing up car thieves, and leaving them tied like oversized trash bags for the NYPD. But tonight, the routine had a desperate, aggressive extra step.
Interrogation.
I dropped from the sky into a damp alleyway in Hell's Kitchen, landing with a heavy, silent thud directly in front of a mid-level look-out who had been leaning against a graffiti-covered dumpster. Before he could even draw a breath to yell, the black suit shifted, a mass of midnight tendrils lifting him three feet into the air and slamming him hard against the brick wall.
“Hey! Hey, man, look, I don’t know anything about Fisk’s old crews!” the guy stammered, his eyes bulging as he stared at the smooth, eyeless white lenses of my mask. “I swear to god, I’m just a runner!”
“I don’t care about Fisk,” I snarled, letting Venom amplify my vocal cords into a dual, overlapping resonance that vibrated the loose bricks behind his head. “I’m looking for someone else. A tall British guy. He forces people to do whatever he says. He makes them hurt themselves. Have you seen him?”
The runner’s hands shook as he clawed at my wrists. “Like—like the guy with the glowing stick from the news?! The alien dude?!”
“No, not Loki, damnit!” I muttered, dropping him an inch just to shake him up. “He’s not even on Earth! Use your head. The guy I’m looking for wears expensive, fancy tailored suits. He loves the color purple. He controls people just by talking to them. Is there anyone like that operating in these blocks?”
“No! I swear, no!” the guy whimpered, his teeth chattering. “Nobody like that is here! Just regular crews! Please, man, don’t eat me!”
“Keep your eyes open,” I warned, letting a thick stream of webbing pin his jacket firmly to the masonry. “If you see a purple suit, you run, and you find me. Understand?”
I didn't wait for his answer. I flexed my legs, launching myself straight back up to the rooftops of New York, my mind racing through the limited meta-knowledge I could safely leverage. Killgrave was careful. He didn't leave a paper trail, and his victims usually ended up dead or completely traumatized like Hope.
Just as I cleared the lip of a high-rise building, a sharp, repetitive vibration buzzed against my hip. I reached into the hidden fabric folds of the suit, pulling out my phone. The screen illuminated the dark rooftop, displaying a slick, stylized cat icon.
Felicia.
‘Now is really not a good time,’ I thought, my thumb instantly sliding across the screen to hit ignore. I shoved the phone back into the suit, letting out a sharp breath. I had enough psychological horror to deal with tonight without adding her chaotic energy to the mix.
“Wow. Ghosting me? Really?”
The playful, sultry purr cut through the sound of the distant city traffic. I froze, my white lenses narrowing as I slowly looked up toward the ornamental stone ledge protruding above the roof.
Felicia Hardy was perched lazily on the gargoyle, her chin resting in the palm of her black-gloved hand. The white fur trim of her collar caught the dim moonlight, and her leather suit gleamed with a faint, polished sheen. A wicked, knowing smirk played across her lips as she looked down at me, completely unbothered by the terrifying black mass I currently occupied.
“Huh,” Felicia continued, shifting her weight to swing her legs over the ledge, dangling them over the drop. “That’s actually a first for me. Usually, it’s the other way around. What’s the matter, Osborn? You don’t want to play with me anymore?”
“I’m busy, Felicia,” I said, dropping the demonic Venom filter from my voice, though I kept my tone flat and entirely unamused. “I’m working a case. A real one. Not a burglary.”
“Oh, I can see how busy you are, shaking down low-lifes about fashion choices,” she chuckled, effortlessly dropping from the ledge and landing on her feet with a soft, feline grace. She took a slow, deliberate step toward me, her hips swaying slightly as she closed the distance. “But you are a man of your word, aren’t you? You owe me, remember? You promised you’d teach me how to program those lovely little Oscorp microbots I borrowed.”
Borrowed. Hmmph! Is that what we’re calling “stole” now?
Venom wondered, a low rumble of amusement echoing in my skull.
Why are we even talking to her? Let’s just tie her up, and call it a day.
‘For once, buddy, we’re on the same page,’ I thought, keeping my hands at my sides. I looked at Felicia, entirely annoyed by the timing, but I knew she wasn't the type to just walk away if I asked nicely.
If I tried to ditch her, she’d just follow me and compromise the investigation. “I said I’d help you configure the tech so you didn’t blow your own hands off, Hardy. I didn't say I’d do it in the middle of a manhunt.”
“Mmh, details, details,” Felicia purred, stepping close enough that I could see the mischievous spark in her eyes beneath her mask. She reached out a finger, lightly tapping the white spider emblem on my chest. “Come on, V. A deal’s a deal. Let’s go find somewhere private and warm. You can show me how to override the security protocols for my own… mysterious, mischievous purposes.”
“Stay right there,” I said, stepping backward out of her reach and pulling my phone out again.
Felicia pouted, crossing her arms over her chest. “Oh, don’t tell me you’re calling your dad to report me.”
“Worse,” I replied smoothly. I quickly dialed a familiar number, hitting the speaker button just as the call connected.
“Hey, Harry!” Gwen’s voice boomed through the small speaker, bright, alert, and instantly cutting through the thick, tense atmosphere of the rooftop. “I just got back from the lab. Is everything okay? You sounded stressed earlier.”
“Yeah, all good. Hey,” I said, keeping my eyes locked firmly on Felicia, whose smirk was slowly faltering into an expression of profound disbelief. “Are you anywhere near Hell’s Kitchen right now? In uniform?”
“Yeah, I’m actually just a few blocks away, checking the old docks,” Gwen replied, her tone shifting into something sharper, more protective. “Why? Did something happen with Jessica’s case? Do you need backup?”
“Not exactly backup,” I said, clearing my throat as Felicia rolled her eyes dramatically. “I have a bit of a scheduling conflict. Black Cat just dropped in, and she’s demanding that I fulfill my technical consulting obligations regarding the microbots. I was hoping you could swing by and chaperone.”
There was a brief, stunned silence on the other end of the line, followed by a loud, clear snort of pure amusement. “Oh, absolutely. I am one hundred percent on my way. Don’t start the lesson without me, Harry. I’d hate for things to get… unacademic.”
“Great. Sending you the coordinates now,” I said, tapping the screen to share our location before sliding the phone back into the suit.
Felicia let out a long, dramatic sigh, throwing her hands up in the air as she turned away. “You are unbelievable, you know that? A girl wearing a literal catsuit is offering you quality one-on-one time, and you call your incredibly competent, terrifyingly fast girlfriend to babysit us?”
“I’m a good boyfriend, Felicia,” I said, crossing my arms, a smirk forming beneath my mask as the distant sound of a rhythmic, web-snapping swing began to echo from the east. “And trust me, Gwen’s excellent at tech support.”
And babysitting.
…
The silk of his bespoke purple robe was undeniably smooth, but it didn't do a single thing to alleviate the staggering, suffocating weight of absolute boredom. Killgrave sat sprawled across a pristine velvet sofa, swirling a glass of remarkably expensive Bordeaux while his eyes drifted lazily over the sprawling expanse of Central Park through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
He didn't even know whose penthouse this actually was. Some corporate titan or hedge-fund manager who had been entirely too eager to hand over the keys and throw themselves down the stairs the moment Killgrave suggested it.
Living in the absolute lap of luxury was supposed to be a grand statement, but honestly, it was just so remarkably unrewarding when everything was simply handed to you the exact second you asked for it.
This was probably why so many rich people in New York were so aggressively depressed. They didn't earn their money. They just inherited it, or shuffled numbers around on a screen until they could buy another glass tower.
Not him, though.
Killgrave had earned his power. He had suffered through every single agonizing second of his parents’ horrific, clinical experiments to get it. He had paid for his gifts in blood and sterile white rooms. But after so long of having the world bend to his every whim, well, it was exceptionally easy not to feel the same high he used to.
The novelty wore off. Telling a street vendor to iron his clothes while he was still wearing them just didn’t possess the same creative spark it used to. Figuratively speaking, of course. The smell of burning polyester was dreadfully difficult to get out of the carpets.
Except for Jessica. Oh, sweet, magnificent Jessica. The only other person Killgrave had ever encountered who possessed a gift that felt like art. And more importantly, the only person who had ever managed to resist him.
He took another slow sip of wine, his jaw tightening slightly at the memory of that chaotic bus incident. Hopefully, she hadn't caught on to her own immunity back then. If she knew she could say no to him, it ruined the poetry of the reunion he was meticulously composing.
A soft, hesitant scratching sound at the edge of the rug drew his attention away from the skyline. One of his thralls—a bruised, glassy-eyed low-level informant he’d pulled out of some pathetic gambling den in the East Village—was kneeling on the expensive Persian rug. The man’s knuckles were white, his chest heaving with a desperate, pathetic panic as he waited for permission to exist in the same air.
Finally.
Killgrave set his wine glass down on the mahogany table with a sharp, deliberate click. Was it news of Jessica? Had she finally found Hope? He hadn't heard a single whisper on the police frequencies about the girl’s arrest for slaughtering her parents, and he certainly would know. He kept several exceptionally obedient spies nestled deep within the NYPD’s communications sector just to ensure the news broadcast went perfectly.
“God, man, don’t just sit there breathing like a broken bellows,” Killgrave sighed, leaning back against the plush cushions and waving a dismissive hand. “Speak! Tell me what happened at the hotel.”
“Jessica found her, sir.” He obediently informed him. “She brought the girl back to her parents. Just like you planned.”
Ha!
“But…”
Fuck! A wrinkle in his tie, and his plan. He’ll solve the former with another street vendor. As for the later? “But what?”
The informant swallowed hard, his voice trembling as he kept his eyes locked firmly on the floorboards. “The—the plan went wrong, sir. The girl, Hope… she didn't manage to kill them. Someone stopped her.”
Killgrave’s eyes narrowed into sharp, dangerous slits, his pleasant demeanor instantly evaporating. “Someone stopped her? Who? Jessica shouldn't have seen it coming if the girl gave her the time I told her to give.”
Don’t tell him another person has immunity? One may be fun. But two, and were through.
“It wasn’t the woman, sir,” the informant stammered, a bead of cold sweat rolling down his temple. “It was a monster. The press is calling him Venom. He’s been tearing through the docks, the blocks, everywhere. He was looking for you, sir. He caught one of our lookouts in the East Village and nearly put him through a brick wall.”
Killgrave tilted his head, a faint, curious twitch lifting the corner of his mouth. “Looking for me? How flattering. And what exactly did this… creature want?”
“He described your accent, sir. Your suits. He told everyone on the street that you were dangerous, that you could make anyone do whatever you told them to,” the informant explained, his voice dropping into a frantic whisper. “He’s hunting you, Mr. Killgrave. He’s telling the crews to run if they see a purple suit.”
The lingering fog of boredom instantly vanished from the penthouse, replaced by a malicious, thoroughly delighted spark that danced in Killgrave’s dark eyes. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, a wide, boyish smile breaking across his sharp features as he looked down at the kneeling man.
“Is he?” Killgrave purred, his voice dripping with an intense, theatrical excitement that made the informant flinch. “Oh, how absolutely thrilling! A secret admirer with a dramatic flair! Well? What are you still doing here, you pathetic little toad? Go find him! He wants to know exactly where I am, doesn’t he? It would be terribly rude to keep him waiting. Chop, chop!”
The informant scrambled backward, his boots sliding against the polished wood as he tried to stand.
Killgrave didn't stop there.
The sheer, intoxicating rush of a new game had his blood singing.
He stood up, throwing his arms wide as he surveyed the rest of the penthouse. Standing along the perimeter of the room like expensive furniture were a dozen other thralls—a bizarre, tragic mixture of common street thugs, corrupt low-level cops, and homeless people he’d simply plucked from the alleys because no one ever cared when they went missing.
“All of you! Listen to me!” Killgrave shouted, his voice ringing through the high ceilings with an absolute, unyielding authority that instantly locked every single mind in the room into a vice grip. “Drop whatever tedious little tasks you’re doing and go out into those disgusting, rainy streets. I want this Venom creature found. I want him brought to me, or I want him broken into tiny, manageable pieces. I don’t care if half of you die trying to track him down. There are plenty more homeless people where you came from, after all.”
The thralls didn't say a word. Their expressions remained completely blank, their eyes vacant as they turned in perfect, horrifying unison and began marching toward the penthouse exit, driven by a command they couldn't even dream of fighting.
Killgrave walked back over to the floor-to-ceiling glass, picking up his wine glass and taking a long, deeply satisfied sip as he watched his tiny army spill out into the New York night.
God, he absolutely loved this city. It was just full of surprises.
…
The rhythmic, soft hum of the gene-sequencing array was usually a comforting sound, but at three o’clock in the morning, it felt more like a countdown. Peter Parker leaned over the glass console, his eyes burning from hours of staring at shifting nucleotide strands on the monitor. He adjusted a dial with his thumb, carefully calibrating the laser alignment so the data wouldn't corrupt before morning.
Gwen had told him to go home hours ago, teasing him about how his brain was going to turn into mush if he kept trying to match her pacing, but he wanted this sequence perfect. Dr. Connors had been under an immense amount of pressure lately, and Peter wanted to prove that hiring a pair of fourteen-year-old interns wasn’t a mistake.
A heavy, ragged sigh echoed through the cavernous lab, instantly cutting through the white noise of the machinery.
Peter paused, his hand freezing on the console. He looked across the dim, shadow-drenched room toward the primary research bay. Dr. Curt Connors was standing entirely alone before a glowing video log camera, the blue light casting sharp, exhausted lines across his pale face. His lab coat hung loosely over his shoulders, the right sleeve securely pinned back where his arm ended at the elbow. He looked older tonight.
Defeated.
“Log entry, October 24th,” Connors murmured to the camera, his voice shaking with a terrifying, frantic undercurrent that made Peter’s stomach drop. “The board is threatening to pull funding. They don't see the vision. They want human trials, but they lack the courage to take the leap. If we don't proceed tonight, everything we've built... everything I've sacrificed... it all disappears.”
Peter slowly stepped back from his console, slipping into the deep shadows cast by a heavy steel containment unit. His spider-sense wasn't screaming yet, but a subtle, cold prickle was beginning to stir at the base of his neck.
Connors turned away from the camera, his single hand moving with a manic, desperate speed as he reached into a localized cryo-storage unit. When he pulled his hand out, he was holding a pressurized syringe filled with a glowing, translucent green fluid. The prominent lizard-DNA serum. The one they hadn't even finished mapping for cross-species rejection rates.
“Dr. Connors, wait,” Peter whispered under his breath, his chest tightening as he took a step forward, completely paralyzed by the realization of what the man was about to do.
“It’s ready,” Connors whispered to himself, his eyes wide, reflecting the green glow of the vial like a man staring at a miracle. “I know it’s ready.”
Before Peter could even open his mouth to shout a warning, Connors slammed the tip of the pressurized syringe directly into the muscle of his right stump. He hissed in pain, his teeth grinding together as he depressed the plunger, forcing the untested genetic cocktail directly into his bloodstream. The empty cylinder clattered across the linoleum floor, rolling into the dark.
For the first thirty seconds, nothing happened. Connors stood perfectly still, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling in shallow, ragged gasps.
Then, the horror began.
A sharp, wet snapping sound echoed through the silent lab, followed by a choked, agonizing scream that tore out of Connors' throat. He collapsed to his knees, his single left hand clawing violently at the edge of the metal desk, sending a tray of glass beakers shattering to the floor. Peter’s spider-sense instantly flared, a violent, buzzing alarm rattling the inside of his skull as he pressed himself flat against the steel containment unit.
The transformation was spectacular, and completely nightmarish. Beneath the fabric of Connors’ shirt, a thick, emerald-green layer of hardened reptilian scales erupted across his shoulder, tearing through the threads with a horrifying, dry rustle. The skin split and reformed in a matter of seconds, turning a sickly, dark olive color.
“Ahhh! God, it burns!” Connors shrieked, his body arching off the floor as his bones began to violently restructure themselves.
From the stump of his right arm, a mass of raw muscle, dark bone, and bloody sinew exploded outward with a sickening, wet crunch. Peter watched in absolute fascination and terror as the missing limb literally forced its way into existence, lengthening by inches every second. Thick, corded muscles braided themselves together over the newly formed bone, and a massive, five-fingered hand burst through the end of the growth, tip-ended by thick, black, razor-sharp claws that immediately gouged deep furrows into the floorboards.
But the change didn't stop with the arm.
Connors’ jaw distended with a sickening, metallic pop, his skull elongating as his human teeth were violently pushed out by rows of jagged, needle-thin fangs that coated his lips in thick, white foam. His nose flattened into a pair of slit-like nostrils, and when his eyes snapped open, the warm, intelligent blue was entirely gone. In their place were a pair of predatory, cold yellow irises with sharp, vertical slits for pupils.
The man was gone. In his place stood a massive, heavily muscled creature that easily towered over seven feet, its tail tearing through the back of the white lab coat with a heavy, leathery snap.
The newly born Lizard let out a guttural, terrifying hiss that rattled the glass beakers on the shelves, a sound so primal and full of pure, unadulterated malice that Peter’s breath completely caught in his throat.
‘Oh my god,’ Peter thought, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. ‘He did it. He actually did it.’
The immediate problem was glaringly obvious. Peter was trapped in his civilian clothes—just a pair of baggy jeans and an ESU t-shirt. His Spider-Man suit was tucked securely inside his backpack, which was currently sitting on a chair a good fifteen feet away, directly in the creature’s line of sight. If he moved out into the open, the Lizard would tear him apart before he could even get a leg through the spandex.
He crouched lower behind the steel containment unit, his fingers trembling as he reached into his pocket and slid his phone out, keeping the screen dim. He needed raw, heavy-hitting power.
He needed backup.
…
Sitting on a freezing stone ledge near the peak of the Chrysler Building at three in the morning was definitely not how I envisioned spending my night, but life always found new ways to complicate my schedule.
The wind howled through the steel architecture, carrying a damp mist that should have made me shiver, but the symbiote kept my core temperature perfectly regulated. Right now, I was trying to focus entirely on the open interface of a modified Oscorp datapad, consciously ignoring the fact that Felicia Hardy was leaning in entirely too close.
“So, if you don't sync the neural micro-frequencies right here,” I muttered, keeping my voice strictly professional and completely robotic as I pointed a black-suited finger at a spiking green waveform on the screen. “The receiver array rejects the handshake. The microbots will just spin out of control and lock themselves into a permanent diagnostic loop. You have to match the cadence of your own brainwaves.”
“Mmh, it sounds terribly complicated, Osborn,” Felicia purred, her shoulder brushing against mine as she intentionally tilted her head closer. Her gloved fingers traced a slow, teasing line along my collarbone, just skimming the edge of my suit. “Good thing I brought an expert. Your technical expertise is breathtaking when you get all serious like this.”
I didn't move an inch, staring resolutely ahead at the glowing pad. I was sweating bullets inside my own skin, not out of nerves from Felicia's blatant flirting, but because of the literal ghost-spider hanging over my head.
Exactly five feet away, Gwen Stacy was perched flawlessly on top of an art deco eagle gargoyle, completely outfitted in her classic white, black, and pink Ghost Spider attire. She didn't say a single word. She didn't have to.
She was casually, rhythmically tossing a heavy steel web-fluid canister up and down in her palm, catching it with a soft, ominous thwack against her glove over and over again. Her unblinking, stylized white mask stared directly at the back of Felicia’s head with a lethal, terrifying silence that shouted a thousand warnings.
I had explicitly invited Gwen here as a chaperone because I was a good boyfriend who wanted zero misunderstandings about my interactions with the city's premier cat burglar, but Felicia was treating the entire arrangement like a personal challenge to make Gwen jealous.
The cat woman is playing with fire.
Venom whispered inside my head, his thoughts dripping with a dark, secondary amusement.
Bet you $20 that Gwen is going to drop that canister on her skull... Can we break the datapad? Please? It is making a very annoying high-pitched noise. And we have sensitive ears
‘No bet, don't destroy the tech, and please don't encourage either of them,’ I thought back, trying to maintain a zen-like state.
Trying being the operative word.
“You just need to adjust the slider to point-zero-four hertz, Hardy,” I said aloud, gently tapping her hand away from my collarbone with the edge of the screen. “And then the bots are entirely yours to configure. Safely.”
Felicia let out a soft, theatrical pout, glancing upward at Gwen with a sharp, victorious glint in her eyes. “Oh, don’t be such a spoilsport. Your friend up there looks so incredibly tense. Are you sure she doesn’t want a turn? I’m sure she has lots of things she’d love to sync with you.”
Gwen stopped tossing the canister.
Her hand closed around the heavy metal tube with a distinct, metallic grip that resonated through the quiet air. She shifted her weight on the gargoyle, her hood catching the midnight breeze as she tilted her head downward. “I’m doing just fine right here, Hardy. Just making sure the local wildlife doesn't get infected with rabies. Keep your hands on the homework.”
The sheer sass in her tone was lethal, all wrapped up in a layer of absolute authority. Before Felicia could fire back another teasing remark to escalate the rooftop cold war, a sharp, violent vibration rattled inside the chest lining of my suit.
I’m a popular guy, tonight.
I pulled out my burner phone, instantly sliding it open. I didn't even have a chance to say hello before Peter’s voice blasted through the speaker, frantic, completely out of breath, and punctuated by the distant, horrific sound of shattering laboratory glass and tearing metal.
“Harry! Gwen! It’s Connors!” Peter hissed into the receiver, a sharp gasp tearing out of him as a massive, guttural roar echoed in the background of his call. “The serum went live—he injected it! He’s changing, he’s absolutely massive, and he’s completely tearing the ESU research lab apart! I’m trapped in my civilian clothes behind a containment unit, he’s hunting for me, and I need backup right now!”
The playful atmosphere on the roof vanished in an instant. I looked up, meeting Gwen’s masked gaze, and gave her a sharp, definitive nod. The lesson was officially over.
“We’re on our way. Keep your head down,” I said, slamming the phone shut and letting the black fabric of the suit swallow it whole. I grabbed the datapad from Felicia's hands, forcing her to step back as I stood up. “The tech is configured. Don't blow yourself up. We have an actual emergency.”
Gwen launched herself off the gargoyle before I could even finish my sentence, her white hood snapping back as she dropped into a graceful, high-velocity dive toward the city streets below, a strand of web trailing behind her.
I didn't waste another second, flexing my legs and throwing myself off the opposite side of the Chrysler ledge, letting the symbiote manifest a thick black line to catch the wind as we accelerated toward ESU.
And all I could think was thank God!