Morning sunlight poured through the high windows of the New York Sanctum’s kitchen.
Ethan sat at the heavy oak island, nursing a mug of black coffee and reading a thick Kamar-Taj text on warding theory.
Gwen stood a few feet away, leaning against the marble counter. She was supposed to be eating a bagel, but her eyes were fixed firmly on Natalie.
Natasha was dressed in her standard, immaculate maid uniform. She stood by the espresso machine, her back to Gwen, calmly steaming milk in a stainless-steel pitcher. She moved with absolute, practiced efficiency.
Gwen’s eyes narrowed. She casually reached out, her fingers brushing the handle of a heavy, eight-inch chef's knife resting near the edge of the cutting board. With a subtle flick of her wrist, she pushed it off the marble.
The knife plummeted, point-down, toward the hardwood floor.
Natahsa didn't flinch. She didn't even look down.
Her left hand shot out, her fingers snapping around the heavy handle of the knife an inch before the blade hit the floor. She set the pitcher of milk down with her right hand, stood up straight, and casually placed the knife back onto the cutting board.
"Careful, Miss Maxine," Natalie said smoothly, wiping the counter with a cloth. "The edges on these are quite sharp."
Gwen stared at the knife. Then she looked at Natalie.
"Did they teach you that in secretarial school?" Gwen asked, her voice laced with heavy sarcasm. "Catching falling blades blind?"
Natasha offered a polite, completely hollow smile. "Mr. Stark had a habit of throwing tools when he was frustrated. I learned to adapt."
"Right," Gwen muttered. "Because an aerospace wrench and a falling chef's knife use the exact same muscle memory."
Ethan took a slow sip of his coffee, his eyes never leaving his book.
"Don't look at me," Ethan said, turning a page. "I'm not getting involved."
Gwen scowled, grabbing her bagel. She walked past Natalie, deliberately bumping her shoulder, and headed for the stairs. "I’m going to the training room."
Natalie watched her go, her polite smile vanishing the second Gwen was out of sight.
"Spider is getting curious," Natalie said quietly.
"She's a teenager, not an idiot," Ethan replied, closing his book. "Keep playing the maid if you want, but the clock is ticking on that cover."
Ethan walked down into the Sanctum’s lower basement, leaving the tension of the kitchen behind. He needed to fulfill his end of the bargain with Stark.
He opened his inventory interface, pulling up the System Shop. He completely bypassed the skill trees and weapon upgrades, filtering straight to dimensional materials.
[ Purchase Confirmed: Plumber-Grade Spatial Stabilizer Alloy ]
Cost: 12,000 System Points.
Remaining Balance: ~74,510 SP.
A heavy, dull-silver brick of alien metal materialized in his hand. It was cold to the touch, humming faintly with a strange, internal resonance.
Ethan spun his fingers, opening a golden portal directly into Tony’s underground lab, and stepped through.
Tony was already moving at a manic pace. The lab was a blur of holographic schematics.
"Tell me you have it," Tony said, not even turning around as he welded a microscopic circuit board under a magnifying rig.
Ethan tossed the heavy brick of alien metal onto the glass table. It hit with a dense, unnatural thud.
"Spatial stabilizer alloy," Ethan said. "It bends instead of breaking. How are the magic sensors coming?"
"Compiling," Tony answered, ripping off his protective goggles and walking over to the metal. "J.A.R.V.I.S. is running the localized frequency algorithms you gave me yesterday. But the sensors can wait. This is priority one."
Tony picked up the brick of metal, weighing it in his hands. He looked at it like he was holding the Holy Grail.
"If I can machine this down," Tony muttered, his eyes darting to a 3D hologram of a Hoi-Poi capsule hovering nearby. "If I can line the containment matrix with this... I can fold a two-ton suit of armor into a cylinder the size of my thumb."
He looked up at Ethan, a manic grin spreading across his face.
"Wizard, you are my favorite person on the planet right now."
"Just don't blow up the block when you test it," Ethan warned.
"No promises," Tony said, already shouting orders at J.A.R.V.I.S. to prep the laser lathe.
Miles away, in a damp, dimly lit Hell's Kitchen basement.
Phineas Mason wiped grease off his forehead, staring at the jagged, glowing green core of the Vulture wing.
Hammer's money had bought him the best black-market diagnostic tools on the eastern seaboard. He had spent the last forty-eight hours doing nothing but mapping the impossible dimensional physics radiating off the scrap metal.
He hooked a heavy set of jumper cables to the core, attaching them to a modified Oscorp power cell.
"Alright," Tinkerer whispered, his raspy voice echoing in the empty shop. "Let's see what you're looking for."
He flipped a heavy breaker switch.
The Oscorp cell hummed loudly. The Vulture core flared, emitting a sudden, blinding flash of green light.
It wasn't an explosion. It was a pulse.
A high-frequency, localized ping ripped outward from the basement, invisible to the naked eye. It wasn't a radio wave. It was a biological and dimensional sonar, specifically engineered to hunt a very unique, very specific genetic resonance.
Tinkerer watched his monitor as the diagnostic software struggled to translate the pulse.
Back in the Sanctum’s training room, Gwen was mid-air, executing a flawless backflip off a wooden striking dummy.
Suddenly, she gasped.
She hit the mat hard, her knees buckling. She grabbed the sides of her head, her breath hitching in her throat.
Her spider-sense was screaming, but it wasn't the sharp, localized buzz of an incoming punch or a hidden weapon. It was a cold, nauseating wrongness that coated the back of her neck like ice water.
It felt like a camera lens had just focused directly on her spine.
The heavy wooden doors of the training room slammed open. Ethan stepped inside, his eyes immediately locking onto her. He had felt the spike in her panic through their passive bond.
"What is it?" Ethan asked, dropping to one knee beside her.
"I don't know," Gwen breathed, shivering slightly as the feeling began to fade. "It wasn't a threat... it was...it’s as if someone was looking at me. It felt dirty."
Ethan’s expression hardened. He opened his interface, instantly pulling up the Multiversal Tracker he had received from the System.
The glowing, translucent map of the multiverse appeared in his vision. But the warning wasn't coming from outside the dimensional barrier.
A faint, localized red circle was pulsing directly over the map of Manhattan.
It was weak. It was artificial. It was incredibly crude.
Someone on Earth had scavenged the broken pieces of the Vulture's tech and was actively trying to imitate an interdimensional hunter's tracking frequency.
A new blue prompt flared over the map.
[ Main Quest Chain Updated: Hide the Spider ]
New Threat: Local imitation of Spider-Totem tracking technology detected.
New Objective: Locate and destroy the tracking source before the signal breaches the dimensional barrier.
Status: In Progress.
Ethan dismissed the screen, his golden eyes cold.
"You're not going crazy," Ethan told her, helping her to her feet.
Gwen looked up at him, her pulse still racing. "What was it?"
"Someone in this city found a piece of the Vulture's tech," Ethan said, his voice deadly serious. "And they just built a megaphone."