The amulet does nothing.
I turn it over in my palm, waiting for the stone to warm up, for anything, and it just sits there, cold and dumb, no different than it's ever been.
Gatomon watches me from the couch. "Nothing?"
"Nothing." I set it down on the counter harder than I mean to. "It's the same as always."
BlackGatomon doesn't even open her eyes. "Shocking. Truly shocking that the ancient Doctor Strange rock hasn't gotten an upgrade."
I don't have the energy to laugh at that one. Whatever crawled out of that stone in Vanko's lab last night isn't showing up on my radar any more than Mr. Fear did, or the last three nobodies I chased through half of Brooklyn with this thing glowing like a broken flashlight. It never works when it matters.
I already know what that means. It means we do this the slow way.
Peter's got three windows open before I finish explaining what I need. Gwen's already pulling a banker's box off the shelf in the corner of the office, the one labeled HAMMER IND. in Sharpie, and I don't ask how she got it here so fast.
"I need the financials, the shipping manifests," I say. "And whatever's on his drives. Somebody, somewhere, ordered parts for that suit, and Vanko's not exactly the type to file a permit."
Gwen sets the box down. "You want the boring version or the depressing version?"
"Pick one."
"Paper's everywhere, and the digital side is worse. Half of it's encrypted, half of it's been wiped, and none of it says Vanko anywhere I can see."
"Then we don't look for his name," I say. "We look for what he needs."
Jessica shows up around noon with a bag of something from the place on the corner and doesn't ask if she can help.
She just sits.
Without looking away from his monitor, he mutters a thanks. She pulls a chair up next to Peter, close enough to watch the screen scroll without reading it, and hands him a container without being asked. Gwen gets one too. I get one last, and when I take it she doesn't say anything about it, goes back to flipping through a folder like she's been doing this for hours instead of minutes.
She's quiet in a way that isn't quiet. She watches the room the same way she watched Tony's face in that conference room two days ago, like she's still cataloging what the world costs.
The answer's one I already know, so I don't ask her if she's okay, and she already knows I know.
By two, we've got nothing.
The parts orders lead everywhere and nowhere, three shell companies deep before every trail goes cold, and that specific tired sets in, the one that comes from staring at numbers that refuse to mean anything.
Gwen shoves her chair back from the desk.
"This isn't working."
"No kidding."
"No, I mean the whole approach isn't working." She's already pulling up a new window. "We're chasing what he bought. Let's chase where he'd put it instead."
She cross-references delivery addresses against every property Hammer's name has ever touched, old deeds scanned into the paper files, GPS tags buried in metadata nobody bothered to scrub off the digital copies. It's slower, messier, and for a long stretch it's another dead end.
Then she stops scrolling.
"Ethan."
I lean over her shoulder. One address doesn't fit the pattern of anything else on the list, a storage facility out past the edge of the industrial district, nothing flashy, nothing that screams supervillain lair.
"That's it," I say. "That has to be it."
Peter's already pulling up satellite images before I finish saying it.
"Power draw's up," he says, "and it's been climbing hard for two nights now. And a security system's installed on that address that wasn't there a month ago, cameras, exactly what you'd want if you were rebuilding something you didn't want anyone walking in on."
The flat certainty of a lock clicking into place.
"That's him."
Jessica's stopped picking at her food. She's watching me now instead of the screen, and for the first time all day she's paying attention to what's happening instead of just being here for it.
Tony finds me before I can grab my jacket.
"Marcus Chen from Apex Technologies called," he says. "He wants a sit-down, and this time it's not the strong-arm garbage from the Expo."
"I don't have time for Chen right now."
"He's not selling us out to some rival, kid, he wants to co-invest, specifically because we're already tied to Stark Industries." Tony leans against the doorframe, arms crossed. "That's not an offer you just wave off."
"I know. I still don't have time."
His jaw sets, not with anger exactly, more like the particular flatness he gets when he thinks someone's not taking something seriously enough.
"You've been somewhere else all day," he says. "Care to tell me where?"
"Not right now."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the one I've got."
He doesn't say anything for a second, studies me the way he studies a schematic he doesn't trust yet.
"Fine," he says. "I'll take the meeting myself. Somebody around here has to act like this company matters."
"Tony..."
"I've got it, Ethan. I'm not asking you to come." He's already turning for the door. "Go do whatever it is you're not telling me about."
The door shuts harder than it needs to.
Jessica's waiting by the elevator when I get there, jacket already on.
"I'm coming," she says.
"Jess, I don't know what's out there yet."
"I know." She doesn't move. "I'm still coming."
I want to argue. I don't.
"Okay," I say.
We ride down together, and neither of us says anything else, and somewhere across the city a storage facility sits quiet behind a security system that wasn't there a month ago, waiting for us to find out exactly what Vanko's built inside it.
***
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