TWO WEEKS LATER
It was everywhere.
Over four thousand pages of internal SHIELD communications, medical records, operation logs, and surveillance photographs — spanning from 1945 to 1989 — were published simultaneously across seventeen separate file-hosting sites. Attempts to take them down began within the hour. By then, it was already too late.
What were those files? Quite simple, the material painted an extraordinary and deeply disturbing picture of a covert SHIELD program allegedly designed to identify, extract, and experiment on civilians in pursuit of replicating the super soldier process.
The first super soldier on record was Samantha Wilson, Captain America. The legendary national hero, appreciated by victorious nations of the Allied Powers.
She had nothing to do with this program's creation in some ways, and yet also everything to do with it. Her name was now attached to it. And next to her, the program's most extensively documented subject — a teenage boy taken from his home in 1978, catalogued across six hundred pages of medical notes and photographs that his family was never meant to see — was named Sam.
Thus, they were exposed as the Sam Files.
Samuel Reyes was fourteen years old and from Bridgeport, Connecticut when he was taken.
His mother, Dolores Reyes, was seventy-one years old now. She agreed to speak to the Daily Bugle from her kitchen table in Bridgeport, a cup of tea in front of her that she never touched.
"W-we were homeless at the time a-and two men in plain clothes, they said Samuel would be good enough. They probably thought I was dead. I was unconscious, we were in an alleyway a-and before I knew, they…they took him from me."
The mother stopped talking for a moment. Her hands, folded on the table, pressed together until the knuckles went white.
"He had a gap in his front teeth. I keep thinking about that. A gap in his front teeth. He was always bullied for it. I…he…"
She smiled. The smile did not reach her eyes and it didn't try to.
"I'm not sure if I ever made him happy."
She was quiet for a long time after that.
"I filed a missing persons report. They closed it. I filed another. They told me they had no record of a Samuel Reyes matching my description. I went to the police. I went to the press and they said they couldn't substantiate it. I went to my congressman. He sent a letter back. A form letter. It had the wrong name in it. He had written the wrong mother's name."
She pulled a tissue from somewhere and held it but didn't use it.
"He would be fifty-nine years old now. I wonder if he has grey hair. I wonder if he even remembers me."
She used the tissue then.
"I've been waiting fifty years for someone to call me or talk to me about it. Nobody ever did. They just stopped listening. And now…now everybody is listening. Thank you. Thank you, J. Jonah Jameson."
The mother looked out of the window after that. This was just one of many interviews, one of many compilations of evidence.
"Well, you heard it here first folks! The government has been lying to us! And who the hell is surprised!?"
All spearheaded by none other than the popular editor of the Daily Bulge: John Jonah Jameson Jr.
…
…
…
The forty-third floor of the SHIELD administrative building in Midtown had no signage. It was disguised as a paper company and, from its inception, had not been exposed for being a government building. Nick Fury stood at the window with his hands clasped behind his back and watched the crowd below. From this height they were small. A moving mass of colour and noise, though the noise didn't reach up here — the glass was too thick. It might as well have been a silent film.
Nick fury watched it anyway.
It seemed impossible. This building was a secret SHIELD facility. Key word: was a secret. Who the hell told these protestors to come here?
It wasn't just here either. Protests formed outside all three known SHIELD buildings, the largest being the one in front of Director Fury. He estimated four thousand people gathered, many holding photographs — not of politicians, not of symbols, but of people. School photos, birthday photos, and images pulled from old shoeboxes and scanned and printed and held up in the November cold.
HIS NAME WAS SAM!
FACE YOUR CRIMES.
OPEN THE PRISON!!!
"Who in the world leaked our SHIELD bases."
It wasn't a question. It came out flat, stated, like a fact Fury was refusing to accept.
Behind him, Maria Hill stood with a tablet in both hands. She pursed her lips. "Director, we don't know yet."
"You said that an hour ago."
"It...is still true, Director."
A click of the tongue. "The buildings are one thing but even the underwater prison…?"
Nick turned from the window. The office was sparse. A desk, two chairs, a wall of screens, all of them currently cycling through news feeds. It was the same footage from six different angles, the same crowd, the same signs, the same words scrolling beneath talking heads whose mouths moved without sound.
He began to pace.
"It's not possible." The new Director of SHIELD was on the cusp of swearing and miraculously didn't. "We have contingencies in place. Firewalls layered on firewalls. The best supercomputers shouldn't be enough. We should at the very least be capable of triangulating the continent by now. At least."
"We're working on it."
"'Working on it' in my experience means to me you're not getting very far, are you?"
Maria said nothing to that.
Nick stopped moving. He stood in the middle of the room and looked at the screens . The scrolling chyron read: SAM PAPERS: CONGRESSMAN CALLS FOR SPECIAL COUNSEL REGARDING SHIELD.
Another feed: GWEN STACY UNDER SCRUTINY.
Another: REYES FAMILY ATTORNEY TO FILE SUIT.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose beneath the eye patch. A rare gesture. He generally did not allow himself those.
"All your damn fault Peggy," he grumbled. "What in the world have you done?"
The bastard woman was dead and opened all her skeletons for him to deal with. First the shit with T'Challa and Wakanda and now this.
Peggy Carter had been the only Director this organisation had ever known. She had built it. She had carried it. Consequently, Fury knew and was aware about the skeletons. Had known for years. But knowing and directing were different weights, and right now those weights were being distributed right as he was starting to steer the ship.
"At the very least, can we confirm these protests are being fabricated?" Fury asked.
"Yes, it seems so. Online activity is unnatural. An issue of this scale, I mean, to the American people, this issue isn't so big a deal that it causes…this. Not to mention, most importantly, it is centralized in New York only."
"New York only." If Fury swore, it was in his head. "That's because it can only happen here. New York is the place where it all happens. Spider-Gwen and the helicopter, the people saw that, remember? Something like this, we knew it was bound to happen. People are full of fear, anxiety, and curiosity. They want answers. They want to know why they're the only city with publicised superpowers and super-attacks."
No other city experienced Spider-Man, Spider-Gwen, or giant lizards. No city had to establish a new type of insurance in the event that a superhero threw their car. There had been smaller protests, but, partially due to their own meddling and the city need to rebuild, they were never massive.
"Someonenudged people's social medias and algorithms. And then that nudge became a push and then…"
Nick looked over at the window and the protest he was avoiding. He clicked his tongue.
"Cuba," Nick said. "Any connection there?"
"....the interim council has decided to let it be."
"I know., I was there." Another tongue click. "Two governments falling in the span of two weeks: first Latveria, then Cuba. And now, this shit is going down in America. Is it a coincidence?"
"We don't think it's the same person," Maria said. "Latveria and Cuba—there's blood being shed. It's direct."
"Let's say how it is, they're coups, Agent Hill," Nick said. "Even though the news calls them simple massacres and terrorist attacks and whatnot; they're coups."
It was rare for a domestic party to become so ruthless to outright be deemed terrorists in the media. But that was the case. It was like whoever was behind the shit in Latveria and Cuba, they wanted nothing but chaos. Nothing but the annihilation of the upper class.
Below, the crowd had grown. Or maybe it only looked that way from up here. Someone had brought a loudspeaker. The sound still didn't reach.
Nick crossed his arms.
The habit of his entire adult life — every impossible room, every unsolvable problem — was to find the thread. Pull it. Follow it somewhere. There was always a thread.
He looked at the screens. At the crowd. At Maria's reflection in the glass.
He could not find the thread.
For the first time in longer than he could specifically remember, Nick Fury stood in the middle of a room full of information and came up with nothing.
***
Two supercomputers from the future and the stealth of Spider-Man. Across New York, there was no stopping it. It would begin here, then spread throughout the east coast, then maybe the whole country. But for now, the protests were central in New York.
In the influence of Spider-Man.
No one suspected it. Why would they?
After all, Felix Faeth sat in a cafe, alone. He smiled. He blew on his coffee. He drank it. It was good. It was a good life he lived. With his powers, with his money, life was great.
He was sitting with his back to the wall. Civilian clothes; a plain black jacket, dark jeans, and a cup of black coffee in front of him. He wasn't a huge coffee guy.
His Spider-Sense went off first. 'There he is.'
The bell above the café door rang second. Felix's eyes flicked over. With a cheesy smile and dark red waves, the man breathed and walked like he was reborn. He was middle-aged; people reinvented themselves at that age, didn't they? Felix raised a hand and the man blinked, before grinning and heading over.
Protests reigned outside. The windows showed them and echoed them in buzzes.
Harold Osborn plopped down across from him. He grinned but didn't greet him.
The Control Symbiote and the teleportation technology of the Red Goblin. Across the globe, there was no stopping him. All the world's elites were in fear of this man.
The server arrived. Young, a little harried, the kind of tired that came from a lunch rush that hadn't quite ended yet. Harold gave her his full attention the moment she appeared, which was the kind of thing some men did as performance. Harold performed but it was a sincere performance.
"My, my! You're pretty!"
"T-thank you…"
"What do you recommend?" Harold asked, hands folded and arms conveniently shaped like a heart.
The server blinked, slightly off-footed by the directness of it. "The caramel latte's popular. Or the—"
"The caramel latte." He said it like she'd given him a gift. "And whatever pastry you'd eat yourself, if you had the time." He smiled. "I'm rich, I'm okay."
"O-okay…"
Harold hummed and gave her a huge thank-you when she returned with a coffee. The pastry he gave to her, she rejected it, to which he rejected back. Harold wouldn't have it any other but his. The server relented, eating what she had originally carried for him.
"So." Harold sipped on the caramel latte. "Showing me your face, my arachnid friend. What for?" Harold turned his head over to the protest outside. "For this? It's nice music, I will admit." It wasn't the heart of it, that was three blocks north, gathered around the SHIELD building like weather around a mountain, but the spillover. "But also the dumbest thing you could do."
"..."
"How did you find my people at Lower Alloways Creek? I was shocked to hear 'em say they got a box from Spider-Man."
"My computers are better than yours."
"Ha! Noted! And I bet that's how you got all that giddy stuff on SHIELD?"
"...I probably should have done that a long time ago."
Harold glanced at him. "What, so you plan to shut down SHIELD?"
"Yeah."
"Woah-ho! Blunt!"
Both of them sipped their drinks. It was quite funny. The future of the city was not to be decided by explosions, but by words. At least…for now.
"I like the new you!" Harold said. "It's a unique way of going about things. You're being proactive."
"I am. If things can be better, then we should attempt to make them better. I shouldn't, how would you say it—"
"Pussyfoot about it?"
"Yes. Exactly." Felix smiled lightly. "Like with you."
Harold cackled like it was a good joke. "You're going to kill me?"
"The Control Symbiote deprives people of everything they are. That, I can't allow."
"So you'll just let corruption run free?"
"No. I'll kill it. By killing key figures and with the people seizing it for themselves." He pointed the cup of coffee outside. "Like so."
"What, you think you can keep causing protests and you'll slowly make the world a better place? Through legislation? Please, that'll take decades. Sorry to say, but I won't believe it. My way is the only way. I'll make those elites kill one another and in two years time, the world will be completely different."
"That includes Gwen Stacy? And those poor boys and girls that were experimented on in that prison? The world will be better without their potential?"
Harold's smile waned. "Always about fucking Gwen."
"I'm talking about Luke Cage and Samantha Wilson too."
Silence.
Cups were still raised. Fingers were still looped.
"He's a cop. A pig. So is she. And, look…people like us. Like you and me, we're not…natural. We weren't meant to be born. We cause nothing but destruction and death." He spoke in whispers. "Spider-Man, the Red Goblin, we could be gods. We could. But we shouldn't, because the people will turn on us—or maybe they'll obey us like weaklings. This hierarchy, it will NEVER work. Ever."
"Can I ask you something?" Felix looked away from him and back toward the window. "Who do you suppose is leading these protests?"
"You. Duh."
"I'm not. It's George Stacy. I nudged the direction, but the one that pushed it? The one that was able to locate Samuel Reyes' mother? That was the former captain of the NYPD."
Harold chose to drink. "Hrn."
"You don't see much value in ordinary people, do you?"
"They're just so…feeble. Always watching from a distance, always judging and afraid. They're cattle. But cattle do deserve to live unsubjected and with freedom. They don't deserve to be in cages. Like I used to be."
"I'm glad you can use your sympathy, Harold."
"You're glad? Why? You want to give me a second chance to join your side?" Harold snickered. "Sorry, but I actually want to see the better world. I won't be convinced by mere words. And the only way my condition is going to get better is with the Sheath. And that, unfortunately, seems to be a dead end. The big reason I went to Latveria first since old Harry visited there. I did some interrogating, found nothing, and then set out what I was going to anyway."
Anarchy among the elites.
"You did the same to Cuba," Felix pointed out.
"I did. That was way easier." Harold laughed as though it had been fun. Probably was for him. "But alas, like with Latveria, our old pal Harry just went on normal visits. No amount of interrogation with my new Symbiote friend helped. Oh, and by the way, I took control of that server. Hope you don't mind."
His Spider-Sense had gone off the moment he entered. This bastard had been planning to kill and take control from the moment he stepped in. He had a plan, just as Felix suspected he would. And he doubted it was limited to the server. He had more cards up his sleeve.
"..."
"I'm not going to kill her. Relax. I'm doing this for her." Pause. "Unless you make me."
"What the hell is the difference?"
"It's the implication of murder, that's all." Harold smiled. "Don't blame me! Or you! Or anyone! It's just the way it has to be. You're too strong. I might need her to get out of here alive."
"Harold," Felix said carefully. For the first time, his cup touched the table. "You need help. I know what you've seen." Harold laughed as if he didn't believe him. "I know you've seen the future. The world of 2099."
Harold wasn't laughing anymore.
"Yeah. Yeah, I've seen it. A world where things get out of hand. A world where faceless stupid elites won. I saw that, Spider-Man, and do you know what the solution was? Indiscriminate bombing. I don't want to do that here. I'm a nice guy. I don't want to be the guy trapped while everything else goes to shit."
"I know."
Harold leaned back and put one leg atop his knees. "I like this game of cat and mouse. I like operating without people knowing. Over there though, it was impossible."
"Cat and mouse…you sent the Hulk at me."
"Come on! I knew you could handle it! You weren't twiddling your thumbs! You have suits! You have strength! You're fucking perfect! Well, except for one teeny, tiny thing."
"What's that?"
"You're Spider-Man. And that makes you want to protect Gwen Stacy."
"..."
"About Gwen…you're right. She's the one I'm aching to kill the most. She's the strongest of us, after you of course. And the most blood thirsty, after me of course~!"
"She's everything you fear," Felix declared. "She's done good, she's done bad. She's a victim and a predator. She has the potential to be a villain and a hero. That uncertainty, it's everything you fear."
Harold didn't respond to that.
"She's a victim, just like you. You just can't see it. But I do wonder…" Felix crossed his arms. "Just how badly are you aching for her death? Would you, for example, want to be healed by the Sheath? Do you want to live? Or do you simply want to go out fighting and hating?"
"Uhhh, is this some hypothetical? Some test?"
Felix smiled politely. "Why would I lie to you? When have I lied to you?"
"So you mean to tell me that you have the Sheath? How? Where did it—?"
From beside his leg, Felix brought out a black box. Opening it, Harold's eyes widened. The black shape could not be mistaken. The power could not be mistaken.
And yet…
He couldn't do anything. This wasn't some sleazy human. This was Spider-Man. His grip was absolute.
The Goblin was at his mercy.
"If you had to choose between healing yourself and swearing to never kill Gwen…would you do it?"
"....I would."
Felix felt his Spider-Sense go off. He put the cover back on. "You lied."
"....you're right." Harold frowned and his face slowly warped into that of a goblin. "I did."