During midday at an undisclosed Hood Facility in New York. Madame Masque circled the room; however, she did not pace.
Pacing was for the anxious, the unfocused.
She simply glided.
Slow, deliberate movements through the data center—servers humming in cold blue light, her golden mask reflecting every flicker. The technicians around her worked in strained silence. They always did when she was in the room. Fear really made for excellent discipline.
She stopped behind the lead analyst, a lanky man with a red beard and nervous hands. Lines of French text streamed down his screen—encrypted databases from the Interior Ministry, tourism registries, border checks, underground passport forgers. All scraping, all cross-referencing one name:
Luc Moreau.
A name that seemed to exist like a ghost: sometimes present, never tangible.
Masque clasped her hands behind her back, "Status."
The analyst swallowed. "Still… still clean, ma'am. No red flags. No criminal records, and there does seem to be records of a passport really being issued by the government."
"Real?" she echoed, as if tasting the word.
"Yes. Issued by the French government, authenticated at multiple checkpoints." He hesitated. "But—"
"But what," she said, voice delicate and lethal.
"There are… anomalies. Shadows behind the entries. Something in the metadata keeps… shifting. As if someone is rewriting the record in micro-segments. One byte at a time. So we can't find a copy of the passport or any data related to it, except that it was issued. We don't even know where it was issued." He pointed at the code. "It also looks like a worm was also inserted in the French digital records, but it doesn't seem to be attacking us. More like… mocking us. It's slowing down our search."
Masque stared at the lines of code that flickered like taunting laughter.
Luc Moreau had called her.
Luc Moreau had handed her the challenge of finding out his identity and his network.
Luc Moreau had spoken to her as if he were the only one in the world who could truly understand her and give her what she wanted.
And Luc Moreau was now playing games with her databases.
Her fingers curled slightly.
"Expand the trace. You said there are records of the passport being used to enter other countries, so search their databases too."
The analyst nodded, launching a deeper scan. IP signatures spiked across the screen—France, Belgium, Luxembourg, then—
A location pinged.
Nearby.
A Manhattan address.
Her hand tightened on the back of the analyst's chair.
"That cannot be correct."
"It's bouncing, ma'am," he said quickly. "Spoofing us. Whoever's doing this wants us to know he could be anywhere. I believe he's close. Very close."
Masque's golden mask reflected his terrified face back at him.
"Keep digging," she said, low and dangerous. "Pull every trace, every scrap of data, every deviation in routing tables. I do not care if you have to tear apart the entire system—find him."
"Yes, ma'am!"
She turned and walked away, her heels clicking like a metronome of wrath.
She felt it in her bones:
She was being played.
And she hated nothing more.
At Long Island in the Kane Family's New House
Ethan had not realized how loud sunlight could be until he stepped into his new bedroom. With no curtains hung and so many windows, the sunlight blasted his eyes.
Downstairs, there were still boxes stacked against the wall, soft ocean wind drifting through the open window, and his mother humming as she unpacked kitchen supplies. The smell of clean wood floors and new beginnings should have felt comforting.
Instead, it felt like camouflage.
"Ethan!" his mother called. "Can you grab the other box of bedsheets from the car?"
"Coming!" he shouted back.
He carried two boxes inside, set them in the living room, and helped his father assemble a shelf, nodding and offering small smiles. Normalcy came to him like speaking a forgotten language—familiar shapes, uneasy rhythms. It could almost make the dangerous world feel wonderful.
He was in the middle of shifting a stack of books when his phone buzzed.
It was a notification sent to his phone triggered by his program.
"Hey, I'm gonna check out my room again. I was going to finish hanging my curtains," he told his parents casually.
"Go," his father said, swatting the bookshelf with a soft grunt. "I'll go help your mother, in the kitchen."
"Just don't start reorganizing everything!" his mother called. "You always put the forks in the wrong spot!"
"Who puts forks and spoons in different places. It's just confusing, but fine, fine, we'll do how you like. My wife is always right… when it comes to decoration."
He smiled as he slipped upstairs.
Once the door was closed, he really did hang some curtains. He then drew the curtains, dimming the blinding sunlight.
He unzipped his backpack and took out his backup laptop, then he connected his burner phone.
Data poured into the screen in cascading green lines.
TARGET: THE HOOD — SYSTEM INFILTRATION COMPLETE.
EXTRACTING BASE LOCATIONS…
EXTRACTING SAFEHOUSE COORDINATES…
EXTRACTING FINANCIAL ROUTES…
Ethan leaned forward, eyes gleaming.
The worm he'd left in the French registry? That was only the outer shell. The deeper worm—a carefully engineered silent parasite—had burrowed directly into the Hood's encrypted internal network the moment Masque initiated her search.
Using her access.
Using her authority.
And now every secret the Hood's empire possessed flowed into Ethan's temporary laptop like a confession.
He opened a new tab, loading a digital map of the city.
Red dots populated the grid:
Weapons depot in Red Hook Smuggling node under a Queens warehouse Cash-cleaning apartment in East Harlem Three safehouses used for mutant trafficking Primary financial routing hub in a Hell's Kitchen brownstone
Ethan smiled faintly.
"Well… this is a thorough but small network. I was expecting a little more, to be honest. I suppose he is just starting out, so I shouldn'y compare him to the Hood I knew in the comics."
He opened his secure drop scheduler and queued the first anonymous information packet:
TO: Captain Yuriko Watanabe
FROM: UNSPECIFIED SOURCE
SUBJECT: Criminal Activity — URGENT
ATTACHMENTS:
Red Hook weapons depot coordinates Warehouse blueprint Lease records Shipping logs extracted from Hood servers
He scheduled it to be sent on Monday at 2:12 PM. That would be in two days, when he was at school, giving him an alibi.
The packet was timed to appear as if sent by someone inside the Hood's organization—a leak, a frightened underling, a whistleblower. The same playbook Ethan used on Norman. He didn't want it to become his signature, so he'd only use it this time before waiting another year or so to do so again.
The police would mobilize fast. With actionable intel and proof, they'll be able to investigate and prepare themselves to act upon it.
They'd raid even faster. The city had lost some faith in the police force since the Osborn city attack, so being able to clear a gang out of the city would help them restore some much-needed confidence.
Once the police raided then the Hood's empire would bleed from three wounds at once.
"Consider this your first lesson, Whitney Frost," he murmured. "A mask protects you, but it also limits your vision. Making a prideful individual such as Parker Robbins the face of the organization means that when the heat is turned up, he'll start blaming you for it."
More files streamed in. Ethan mapped them absently, his mind already six steps ahead.
The criminal underworld was like a greenhouse.
Left alone, it grew wild and tangled.
But prune it correctly—carefully—and you could shape it.
He wanted Yuriko Watanabe and Whitney Frost to be his gardeners.
Luc Moreau would eventually own that entire greenhouse, allowing him to walk through as he pleased.
Isaac Maddox would handle the public aspects. To do so, he also needed to control the criminal underworld.
And Ethan Kane?
He just wanted crime to be controlled so he could keep his family safe.
His phone buzzed once more—this time the normal buzz.
A text from Amy in a group text including himself and Paige.
Amy: Hey, Mr. Peter asked if we wanna all hang out tmr 💖 u in??
A second came in instantly.
Paige: She means "tomorrow after lunch." And yes, you're invited.
Amy again.
Amy: 😀😀😀
Ethan huffed a soft laugh.
He typed:
Ethan: Sure. Tomorrow's good. Let me know where.
Amy: 😁😁😁
He set the phone down, the faintest warmth tugging at his expression.
Strange, how grounding simple things could feel.
Downstairs, his father shouted something about missing screws. His mother answered with an exasperated "You didn't look properly!"
Ethan exhaled and went back to the data.
He had ten minutes before they'd probably call for him again.
More than enough time to make the plan to dismantle half the Hood's organization.
Elsewhere, Madame Masque stood perfectly still as the analyst ran another trace.
The code on his screen suddenly froze, then rearranged itself into five simple words:
TOO
SLOW
WHITNEY
TICK
TOCK
The analyst recoiled. "Ma'am—I—I didn't type—"
"I know," she said quietly.
Her jaw clenched behind the golden mask.
Luc Moreau was taunting her directly, through her own system, leaving her a message in a language only someone as gifted—and as arrogant—would dare to use.
"Keep digging," she ordered, low and lethal. "Find me anything. A micro-trail. A signature. A breath out of place."
"Yes ma'am!"
Masque stared at the screen long after the code dissolved.
He has to be close.
Close enough to watch me searching.
Close enough to laugh.
She whispered into the empty air, "You think you can play with me, Moreau? Very well. Let us play."
Ethan closed the laptop.
He smoothed his expression, pocketed his phone, and headed downstairs.
His mother smiled up at him from a box of dishes.
"Find the forks?"
"Not yet," he said lightly.
She handed him a stack of cups. "Then help me with these."
He took them.
The world outside continued its normal rhythm—waves on the beach, distant gulls, his parents' soft chatter.
Inside Ethan's mind, he thought about tomorrow.
He'd spend the afternoon with Peter, Amy, and Paige, wondering what in the world they would be doing.