Chapter 35
"W-what... is happening?" Gwen's voice was hoarse and raw. "Where am I? Who are you?"
She lurched, trying to sit up, and doubled over immediately as the pain in her side tore through her. A strangled hiss escaped her.
A thought clicked in my mind as I watched from the side. Her instincts were working. Her memory too. She had decided to play a card of partial amnesia to buy time and gather information. Smart move. I approved.
"Easy, take it easy," I said, keeping my voice even and calm. I took a slow step forward with my hands in plain sight. "You are safe. My name is John Thompson. And this is my friend, Peter Parker."
I nodded toward Pete, who stood a few feet back, watching her with obvious concern. He had the marker still clutched in his hands, looking more like a frightened grad student than the person who had just saved a superheroine's life.
"He is a lab assistant here," I added. "We removed the bullet and dressed the wound. Your mask is still on. We did not touch it."
I had put that last part in deliberately, watching for her reaction. It came. The lines of her shoulders, locked rigid, eased just barely. Under the mask, I was certain, she exhaled. Control over the situation was slowly returning to her.
"T-thank you..." she managed, still breathing in short pulls.
"Do not mention it," I said with a mild smile, and then pushed forward. Not the time to accept a quiet thank-you and step back. Time to turn a few screws. "And now, maybe you can satisfy our curiosity? Out of every window in New York, you came through this specific one. There must be a reason."
Peter shot me a disapproving glance. Clearly telling me to let her breathe for a moment. I ignored it. Her identity was the tip of the iceberg. I needed to understand the full picture.
"My sense brought me here," she answered with a practiced, neutral phrase. There was a note of genuine sincerity in it, though, and it was aimed past me. Her gaze through the white mask lenses was fixed on Peter. "And it was right. Thank you... both of you."
She flew straight to him, I noted. Which meant some degree of trust in him already existed. But the unspoken question remained.
"To be clear, when you came through that window and passed out, only Peter was here," I said, giving her that small piece to work with. "I had just stepped out for a moment. So your first thank-you goes to him."
Peter coughed awkwardly.
"But that raises another question," I continued, dropping my voice slightly. "Who did this to you? Your sense should stop something as basic as a bullet, should it not?"
"None of your business!" she snapped, and the steel in her voice was real.
I understood it. To her, we were two civilians who had accidentally stumbled into her war. A war she had already been losing tonight, before she even made it here, having lost her father before that. Of course it was not our business. Except that when people in masks fell through the windows of an institute lab to be patched up, it had a way of becoming everyone's business. Especially mine.
"Fair enough," I agreed without resistance, moving to lean against the edge of the neighboring table. "But consider it this way. Think of it as repayment of a debt. We saved your life while keeping your secret. In return, you answer a few questions for our, let us call it, scientific curiosity. It is not every day you see a super-agile city vigilante get shot out of the sky like a duck during hunting season."
She was quiet, breathing through the pain. The white lenses of her mask seemed to bore straight into me. I could see from the slight shift in her costume that her fist was clenched. She was weighing her options. Leave now, wounded and weak, or give something and settle the debt. Finally, she let out a long, tired breath.
"His name was Shocker."
Before she could add anything further, I decided to get ahead of it.
"Let me guess," I said, rubbing my jaw thoughtfully. "Ridiculous quilted costume in yellow-brown? Vibro-gloves that make bones resonate like tuning forks when they connect? And possibly a noticeable German accent?"
The room went still. The only sound was the hum of equipment.
"H-how do you know that?..."
Herman Schultz. One of Kingpin's top enforcers. The chain assembled itself instantly: Captain Stacy's death, a daughter made reckless by grief, and Fisk unleashing one of his elite assets to rein in the presumptuous new heroine. Accustomed to street-level criminals, she had been completely unprepared for a professional. Now the key question: had I just shown my hand for nothing? No. I needed leverage. I needed to build something here.
"You were lucky it was only one of Kingpin's mercenaries who found you," I muttered, watching her reaction closely.
"So that bastard really does work for Kingpin!" she exhaled with pure fury. The hatred in her voice was almost physical. She slammed her fist on the lab table and immediately grabbed her wounded side with a wince. "But how do you know all of this?!"
"Yes, John. How?" Now Peter was looking at me too. His usual openness had been replaced by a sharp, suspicious squint.
I stood up and paced slowly around the lab.
"Let us think it through logically," I began, keeping things as general as I could, bearing in mind that her sense could theoretically catch a lie. "Who in this city has enough money, influence, and nerve to hire a meta to eliminate another meta? And beyond that..." I paused, choosing my words carefully, looking from her to Peter and back. "At some point, you have to understand who the major players are. Sooner or later everyone steps out of the shadows. And if you want to survive, you need to know the board before that happens. I am sorry, but I cannot say more than that. We do not know each other well enough yet."
I shifted my gaze to Peter.
"And Pete, I trust you understood what I am getting at."
Peter nodded, slowly but genuinely. He was always perceptive. He had already connected the dots between our recent work and the broader picture, and the nod confirmed it.
"Now, back to our mutual friend in yellow-brown tights," I said, looking at her again. The pressure was working. My knowledge had cornered her. "What can you tell me about him? What are his capabilities beyond the obvious? Why did he resort to a regular pistol instead of his gloves? And how did you end up in contact with one of Kingpin's elite assets in the first place?"
She was quiet for a moment, pulling her thoughts together. Her breathing was still uneven, but when she spoke, there was hard, angry focus in her voice.
"He is strong. Very. Not just in terms of raw muscle, but beyond that. And fast." She paused, as if stepping back through the fight in her mind. "But that is not really the point. His gloves are not just weapons. He generates shockwaves. Focused ones, like a hammer blow, or expanding rings that flatten everything within a radius of several meters. He can also use them to launch himself into the air, like pushing off a trampoline. But the worst part..."
She touched her temple through the mask.
"The hum. The vibrations. They drive my sense absolutely insane. It does not go quiet. It screams. From every direction at once. A thousand threat signals flooding in simultaneously and I cannot isolate where the real danger is coming from. He effectively jammed my greatest advantage. And then one of his guys just... shot at me. I never even felt him before the bullet hit."
A clear picture was forming as she spoke. This version of Shocker was something entirely different from the caricature robber in the comics. This was a soldier equipped with purpose-built hardware, specifically designed for hunting people like her. And soldiers like that served a general. In this city, there was only one general, and Gwen had been unlucky enough to cross his path.
Wilson Fisk.
The name surfaced in my mind like a leviathan breaking water. Founder and principal of Fisk Capital, a hedge fund with fifty-eight billion dollars in capitalization. City council speaker with his eye on the mayor's chair, and possibly beyond that. Philanthropist in public. Predator in the shadows. This was not simply a crime boss. This was an entire ecosystem. A megalodon with a circle of remora sharks in its wake. And Shocker, by every indication, was among the sharpest of them. But far from the only one. Pointing Gwen directly at Fisk right now would be like pushing a kitten into a cage with a tiger. She would not even understand what had swallowed her. Wilson Fisk's name was off the table. For her. For everyone.
"Yeah..." I said slowly, genuinely impressed. "You walked into a very serious opponent. No wonder that you..."
"I did not lose!" she cut me off with sudden fury, the white lenses flashing. "I just... underestimated him. That does not happen twice."
A heavy silence settled over the lab. Peter shifted his gaze anxiously between the two of us. Gwen was working to suppress the trembling that was equal parts pain and rage. And I was running an equation.
Recruit or not recruit?
On one hand, an ally like her was a genuine prize. Strength, speed, abilities that were uniquely her own. On the other hand, she was an unstable asset right now. The fresh wound of her father's death made her predictable in her unpredictability. She was being driven by revenge, and revenge was a terrible compass. Peter was a scalpel. A genius who could solve the unsolvable, a precise and irreplaceable instrument. Gwen right now was a sledgehammer. Powerful, destructive, and capable at any moment of slipping loose and destroying everything around her, including us.
Walking up to her and saying "join us" would spook her and make me look like an idiot. Too fast, too suspicious, too poorly timed. No. This required a soft recruitment. Slow, gradual. Establish myself as a useful resource. Weaponsmith. Informant. Show her that Peter and I could offer her what she currently lacked: support and intelligence. Once the dependency on those resources was established, the conversation would happen naturally.
"Herman Schultz," I said, breaking the silence.
She flinched. Her head turned sharply toward me.
"What?"
"The person you are looking for. His name is most likely Herman Schultz. German accent, engineering background, criminal history. It all lines up."
"Shocker..." she caught it immediately.
I nodded.
"Listen to me carefully," I leaned forward, keeping my voice as direct as I could. "If that name checks out, you will find him. I am sure you have your channels. But I am asking you not to go any further than that. The thing that keeps him on a leash will swallow you whole without effort. Before you do anything else, contact me first. Promise me that."
She looked at me for a long moment, studying. The expression behind the mask blended gratitude, surprise, and lingering suspicion.
"I... understood. Thank you." She finally nodded and began carefully sliding off the table. "This information... you learned it by studying the key players?"
The look from beneath the mask was trying to see straight through me.
"We do not dig into your secrets," my tone went cool and firm. "We are not asking who you are under that mask. So please extend the same courtesy in return."
I let the pause settle, then softened slightly:
"Or be prepared to trade in kind. Because tonight I did considerably more for you than anyone was obligated to."
"Yes, you are right... and... thank you. For everything." The aggression was completely gone from her voice. What remained was exhaustion and honest gratitude. "How do I reach you?"
I gave her my number. She listened, committing it to memory. Without another word, Gwen crossed to a different window, pushed it open with ease, and slipped like a shadow into the dark New York night.
Peter and I stood in silence for a moment. I was watching the empty window. He was watching me. I could feel his gaze on the back of my head. Heavy, loaded with questions.
And so it begins.
"John," his voice was quiet, but there was a steel underneath it that I had not heard from him before. "How do you know all of this? And do not come back to the key players explanation. You gave us his name. You described his equipment like someone who had fought him personally. What is actually going on?"
I turned slowly and met his direct, demanding stare.
"I already explained it, Pete. Knowing everything about the pieces on New York's chessboard is the only viable survival strategy. Not reacting to threats, anticipating them. Do you think we are building Proteus just to wear it on Halloween?"
"You... you want to be a hero? Like her?" The incomprehension in his voice was edged with alarm.
I could not suppress a short, dry laugh.
"A hero? No. I just want to stay alive. And I want you to stay alive. Look, if I walk past an alley where three people are cornering someone and I have the means to do something, I will do something. But making it my life's mission? Dedicating myself to putting out local fires while the world is burning at every edge? That is inefficient. You and I have the opportunity to help humanity at a global, foundational level."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Is it not obvious?" I spread my hands, sweeping my gaze around the lab, our workspace, our sanctuary. "With the level of intelligence we can give ourselves, no problem is beyond our reach. Why pull one person from a burning building if you can invent a material that does not burn in the first place? Why chase street dealers if you can create a cure for cancer and save millions? Speaking of which, how is our NZT-48 coming? Is the first batch ready?"
Peter blinked at the sudden shift in direction. Then, as if on autopilot, he nodded.
"Yes..."
He walked to the synthesizer, opened the calibration chamber, and extracted a small titanium plate holding perfectly uniform rows of tiny, unremarkable white tablets. He carefully lifted out a few and held them out on his palm.
"The formula is stable according to the calculations. No side effects in theory. But John... are you certain? We do not fully understand the long-term picture here..."
"Completely certain," I answered without hesitation, plucking one tablet from his hand and tossing it into my mouth, washing it down with the last of my cooled coffee.
"As you like..." Peter murmured. The way he said it managed to contain both admiration and dread simultaneously. "But about solving global problems, you said it yourself, this kind of thing attracts attention. If you develop a cure for cancer, every major pharmaceutical company will put a target on your back. Create a new energy source and the oil industry, maybe entire governments, will want you gone. Are you prepared for it to not just be street criminals after us, but the CIA?"
"Problems for future us," I said calmly, already feeling that familiar fire beginning to ignite. "And we will be smarter about it. Careful. Gradual."
The tablet was taking effect. The world around me seemed to sharpen into a higher resolution entirely. I could see every dust particle drifting through the beam of light, hear the faint buzz of the aging monitor's power supply, feel the subtle shifts in air pressure from our movements. My thoughts did not simply accelerate, they organized themselves into clean, multidimensional structures. The effect was comparable to the Potion but perhaps ten percent lighter. And most importantly, no risk. No crash. Thanks to the Master Gourmand trait, my body received the compound as though it were native to it. This was ideal. Especially since we were no longer dependent on the Orchids.
I crossed to the large whiteboard that covered most of one wall and picked up a black marker.
"So."
My hand moved.
PROTEUS MARK II, OUTSTANDING TASKS:
POWER: Current power sources are insufficient. Need a miniature, self-contained reactor.
STEALTH: Audio-visual concealment. Must also mask thermal and electronic signatures. Active metamaterials? Illusion projectors?
MENTAL SHIELDING: Psychic threats are real. Need a defense for the mind. Electromagnetic field? Psi-blockers based on... what?
PHYSICAL ENHANCEMENT: The suit does not make the operator stronger. Need augmentation. Micro-servos? Neural interface removing muscle limiters? Injectors?
OP FARMING: This one I left in my head only.
The list grew. I filled the board with formulas, diagrams, and rough sketches. I could see solution paths for each problem, could see how one technology fed into the next, creating a cascade of possibilities. Some of it I could build myself using Technological Modernization. The most complex and breakthrough elements would need Peter. His mind under the NZT, combined with mine.
It was unfortunate that he would be tied up here in the lab during the days for the next two weeks. On the other hand, that freed my schedule for more practical matters. I needed to farm OP. A lot of it. Maybe the System would surface something that addressed the physical enhancement problem. Building Extremis from scratch in a garage, even with Peter's help, was still a fantasy. What I actually needed was a proper research institute.
I put a final exclamation mark after the last item on the list, set the marker down, and turned to face the stunned Peter. I knew my eyes were burning with the cold clarity of pure intellect right now.
"Time to work."
The air in the cheap motel room was stale and close, thick with the smell of ground-in tobacco smoke, cleaning chemicals, and low-grade misery. Through the window the motel's neon sign blinked steadily in red, flooding the dim room with pulsing, agitated light.
On the edge of the rumpled bed sat a somewhat heavyset man of around thirty-five. His neat bowl cut and practical green coveralls looked wildly out of place in the room, like an orchid sitting on a garbage heap. Expensive sunglasses covered his eyes, though they did nothing to hide the hard tension at the corners of his mouth.
A casual observer would have taken him for an eccentric guest. Until they noticed what was behind him.
From his back, moving in rhythm with his heavy breathing, extended four metal tentacles. Flexible, powerful, each ending in a predatory three-fingered claw, they moved with a life entirely their own. One tapped lazily on the filthy carpet, beating out an impatient rhythm. Another, the uppermost, curved with fluid grace and adjusted the glasses sliding down his nose with a delicacy no human hand could match. They were the kind of thing that triggered something old and primal in anyone who saw them.
Doctor Otto Octavius, the genius whose name until recently had been spoken in scientific circles with something close to reverence, had died on this cursed evening of September 22. What remained in his place was simply Octopus.
After the gamma reactor explosion, the blinding green flash, and the devastation of his laboratory, he had run. He had abandoned everything. His investors. The handful of colleagues who, despite his difficult personality, had respected his mind. He had fled the ruins of his project, his past, and himself, driven by panicked fear of failure, by an unwillingness to acknowledge his mistakes, by an ego as inflated as it was brittle, one that had cracked along with the reactor's protective casing.
In the first hours he had simply walked the city, hunched under a wide coat to hide what he had become. And then, in one of the city's dirty alleys, something had clarified. Realization struck him like a bolt.
He was free.
Yes, he no longer had a lab, a reputation, or money. But by the same token, he had everything. He had them. His manipulators. His greatest creation, which had become his own flesh, an extension of his nervous system. With them he could take whatever he wanted. But what did he want? To change the world for the better? Too modest. Too ordinary. No. He wanted to create. To build. Without limitations, without ethics committees, without the petty interference of morality.
He needed a new workspace. A new laboratory.
A day of wandering, overheard conversations, and several brief but highly effective interrogations in dark alleys had led him to a single name, spoken everywhere with a mixture of fear and reverence. Kingpin. The shadow king of New York.
And now Otto sat in front of an old laptop, looking at a black video call screen. His interlocutor had no visible face. Only a deep voice filtered through a modulator seemed to emanate from the speakers themselves, filling the room.
"And what exactly are you offering me, Doctor?" The voice radiated authoritative calm. "Why should I allocate laboratory space, resources, and personnel to you?"
Yes, he was prepared to make a deal with the devil. All in the name of pure, unlimited scientific pursuit.
"Because I am the future," Otto's voice was steady, stripped of any doubt. "I can give you what your current stable of pseudo-geniuses could not produce in a hundred years. I can multiply your power many times over."
He leaned back slightly, allowing the laptop camera to take in his full silhouette. The tentacles behind him rose and fanned out slowly, like a cobra spreading its hood.
"What you are seeing is a prototype," Otto continued. One tentacle reached down, plucked a coin from the floor, and began passing it between the claws at blinding speed. "I can do considerably more than this. Your street soldiers are expendable. I will give them lightweight combat exoskeletons that allow a single man to punch through a brick wall. Your communication channels are exposed. I will build you a quantum-entangled network, instantaneous, completely secure, untraceable. Your people crack safes with drills? How quaint. I will give them devices that generate harmonic resonance to turn steel into powder and electronics into dead weight."
The tentacle closed around the coin and crushed it into a shapeless lump of metal.
"Now picture a fleet of combat drones built in my image. Silent. Lethal. Controlled by a single operator. Loyal. Effective. And that is only one of many things I can create for you. All I ask in return is a place to work."
Otto was certain. An asset and a mind like his was not something Kingpin could turn away. And he was right. Several seconds of silence sat in the speakers. Then the voice said:
"That sounds... interesting. An address will be sent. I will be expecting you."
The call ended.
Otto Octavius closed the laptop. For a moment he sat perfectly still, staring into the dark. Then a slow, triumphant smile touched his lips. He closed his fist. The tentacles behind his back tensed in unison, their tips scraping lightly against the floor.
The old world had rejected him. Very well. He would build a new one on its bones. And his genius would finally rise above this insignificant city.
The soft click of the closing laptop lid was the only sound to disturb the weighted silence of the penthouse.
Wilson Fisk rose from his massive, throne-like chair and moved to the panoramic window. His movements were smooth and measured, the unhurried, predatory ease of an enormous creature that had no reason to doubt its own strength. His colossal figure, draped in an impeccable custom suit, was reflected in the glass, a dark monolith suspended above the scatter of city lights.
Below him lay New York. Not a city. His kingdom. A carpet of captured stars and dark arterial streets. Looking down at this living, breathing creation, Fisk could not suppress the trace of a smile. Who could have imagined it. The fat, bullied orphan from the streets, the boy his peers had mocked and tormented, now looked down at the world from a height none of them could have dreamed of reaching.
He liked these moments. Moments of absolute control and absolute quiet, when he could let his mind travel back to the dirt and humiliation of his past. Not out of masochism. Every memory, every scar, was a brick in the foundation of his empire. What had not killed him had become his arsenal. He was grateful to his past for forging who he was, and because of that he held the present with fierce, possessive love.
And he had no tolerance for anyone who dared threaten what was his.
A discreet ringtone cut through the silence, pulling him out of his thoughts. The display showed the name of one of his few truly trusted people, one of those he allowed to handle routine matters so he could concern himself with strategy only.
"Speak, Jeffrey."
"Mr. Fisk," the voice was flat and professional, but Fisk caught a faint note of tension beneath it. "There is a complication with the neutralization operation. Spider-Woman managed to evade Shocker. We lost her trail."
Fisk's expression tightened slightly. Spider-Woman. A minor irritant in black-and-white tights who had not warranted serious attention until recently. But she had crossed a line. Fisk despised heroes. Every one of these self-righteous masked figures forever pushing their noses into matters that did not concern them. He had dealt with them methodically and without mercy, removing them from his city one by one, and there had never been a misfire. There would not be one with this particular pest either.
"Find her," Fisk said. His voice was quiet, and because of that, heavier. "She will make a mistake somewhere. Identify her. I want her name. I want the names of her family, her friends, everyone she cares about. Then make an example of her and all of them, one that people will still be talking about for years to come."
"Understood. One more matter. Frank Castle has again declined your offer."
Here Fisk's expression darkened further. Frank Castle. Former Marine, the finest tactical and weapons specialist he had ever encountered. An extraordinarily valuable asset. Fisk had offered him the position of head of security. Exceptional compensation, unlimited resources, real authority. The man had chosen to stay in his gun shop in Queens, playing the role of the righteous civilian.
His continued existence was a living reminder that Wilson Fisk was not all-powerful. That there were things he could not buy and could not frighten into compliance. That there were people he could not control. This was irritating. And when Fisk was irritated, he arranged things so that others became profoundly uncomfortable.
He was silent for several seconds, studying his own reflection in the dark glass.
"Deal with him," he said finally, and the words landed like a verdict. "But first, break him. Psychologically. Physically. I want him to understand, clearly, before the end, that refusing me was the worst decision he ever made."
He paused briefly, remembering the complication just mentioned.
"Send Shocker and a team. Let him work off his earlier failure."
"Understood, Mr. Fisk. I am assembling the team now," Jeffrey answered, and the call ended.
Silence returned to the penthouse. Blood would be spilled tonight. And Fisk had no feeling about it whatsoever. In this world there was one law: the strong consumed the weak. And kings had no right to appear weak. Not ever.
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