Ethan didn't deploy them all at once.
That would've been reckless.
Instead, it happened the way most of his plans did—quietly, methodically, without anyone noticing the moment New York changed.
In the basement, the main display showed a live map of the city. Queens filled most of the screen, streets layered with transit lines, power grids, and anonymous movement patterns. To anyone else, it would've looked like clutter.
To Ethan, it was a living system.
"Apocalypse," he said calmly, fingers resting on the edge of the console. "Initiate phase deployment. Priority: observation only."
"Confirmed," Apocalypse replied. "No active interference. No signal amplification."
Across the workshop, thousands of spider drones stirred.
They moved without sound—tiny legs unfolding, bodies detaching from their racks in perfect synchronization. Each drone carried just enough processing power to act independently, but never enough to be traced back to a central mind.
They weren't weapons.
They were witnesses.
The first wave slipped into the city through ventilation shafts, sewer access points, and open windows no one ever noticed. They crawled along brick walls and steel beams, riding delivery trucks and subway cars, vanishing into the bones of New York.
Queens was covered first.
School rooftops.
Apartment complexes.
Bus terminals.
Power substations.
The drones learned the rhythm of the borough—the times people slept, the moments streets went quiet, the places no one ever looked twice.
Then came Manhattan.
A cluster of spiders reached a familiar landmark, their matte-black shells blending into shadows cast by towering glass.
Stark Tower.
They didn't climb the outside. That would've been obvious. Instead, they entered through maintenance conduits, power lines, and overlooked access ports designed for machines no one thought to monitor.
They attached themselves to cables—thin, almost invisible.
And began to drink.
The drones didn't steal power. They borrowed it. Minuscule draws, spread across thousands of points, indistinguishable from background loss.
Self-sustaining.
Self-repairing.
Patient.
Another cluster moved farther—deeper.
A heavily shielded facility, layered with security protocols and countermeasures built by people who believed they understood technology.
S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters.
Apocalypse adjusted parameters on the fly, routing spiders through non-digital gaps—air vents, structural seams, forgotten crawlspaces.
No alarms sounded.
No one noticed.
By the time the sun rose over the East River, New York was no longer just a city.
It was a network.
In the basement, Ethan watched the map fill with faint points of light—each one a spider drone reporting in silently.
Coverage: near-total.
Agnes appeared beside him, her expression unreadable."You've given yourself eyes everywhere," she said gently.
"Not everywhere," Ethan replied. "Just where it matters."
"And what will you do with all this information?" she asked.
Ethan didn't answer right away.
On one screen, footage rolled in—ordinary moments. People rushing to work. Kids cutting through alleys. Police cars idling at intersections. Nothing dramatic. Nothing heroic.
Just truth.
"I won't act unless I have to," he said finally. "This isn't about control. It's about never being blind again."
Apocalypse added, "All drones are operating within stealth thresholds. No detection events recorded."
Ethan nodded.
Aboveground, Tony Stark worked on the next impossible invention, unaware that something impossibly small now watched from the shadows of his own tower.
S.H.I.E.L.D. analysts reviewed threat assessments, never realizing the most effective surveillance network in the city wasn't theirs.
And in Queens, Spider-Man swung through the streets, believing he was alone in his silent guardianship of the city.
Ethan leaned back in his chair, eyes steady, expression calm.
New York didn't know it yet—
—but it was already standing on a web.
Ethan didn't celebrate the deployment.
He simply sat there for a long moment, staring at the city-wide web of quiet lights on the screen, letting the weight of what he'd done settle into place. New York pulsed beneath him—alive, unaware, protected in ways no one would ever thank him for.
Then he turned away from the map.
Preparation was never about watching.It was about what came next.
He pulled up a different workspace—one that hadn't been touched in weeks. The screen was blank at first, then filled with layered simulations, abstract shapes, and stress graphs that didn't resemble any conventional weapon design.
Agnes appeared, folding her hands calmly."You're thinking far ahead again," she said.
"Two and a half years," Ethan replied. "That's all the margin I have."
Apocalypse's voice followed, precise as ever."Projected future event probability: extreme mass-casualty scenario within New York City. Unknown hostile entities. Energy signatures exceed conventional weapons."
Ethan nodded. He didn't need the reminder. He'd seen enough patterns—cosmic anomalies, unexplained tech spikes, rumors buried in classified channels—to know that the city would one day become a battlefield.
"And guns won't matter," he said quietly. "Missiles won't either."
He began sketching—not schematics, not blueprints, but principles.
Containment.Redirection.Survivability.
Whatever he built couldn't be about destruction. Not really. New York didn't need another bomb.
It needed something that could hold the line.
"This won't be a single device," Ethan continued. "It'll be modular. Distributed. Adaptive."
Agnes studied the floating concepts."A system, not a weapon."
"Exactly."
Apocalypse processed silently for a moment."Recommended approach: layered response framework. Non-lethal first contact. Escalation only if containment fails."
Ethan allowed himself a thin smile."You're learning."
He tied the idea back to what he already had.
The spider drones weren't just eyes.They were anchors.
Points where energy could be redirected.Nodes where shields could form.Paths where civilians could be guided away before chaos even started.
No flashy name.No dramatic reveal.
Just a contingency so thorough that, when the sky fell, people would survive without ever knowing why.
Ethan leaned back, rubbing his eyes.
"I'm not trying to play god," he muttered. "I just don't want to watch helplessly again."
Agnes stepped closer, her voice soft."You're doing what you can. That's enough."
Ethan looked at the city map one last time, then minimized it and locked the workspace behind multiple layers of encryption.
This project wouldn't be rushed.It wouldn't even be built yet.
For now, it would remain an idea—refined, tested in silence, waiting for the day the world proved it necessary.
Aboveground, New York slept.
Heroes dreamed of tomorrow's fights.Villains planned in shadows.
And beneath it all, Ethan Vale began preparing for a future no one else could see—not with weapons of conquest,but with the quiet resolve to make sure the city endured what was coming.
Whether it knew his name or not.
Ethan stood still for a long moment after locking the final project files.
Then he moved.
"Apocalypse," he said evenly, pulling a fresh workspace into existence, "new directive. I want a drone-based response system. Autonomous, scalable. Similar in concept to a satellite-controlled defense network—but stronger, quieter, and not dependent on orbital assets."
There was no hesitation.
"Authority level requested," Apocalypse replied.
Ethan didn't look away from the screen."Full brainstorming authority. No execution without my approval. Deliver concepts in two hours."
"Confirmed."
Agnes appeared briefly, concern flickering across her otherwise composed expression."You're accelerating," she noted.
"I know," Ethan said. "But I've been patient long enough."
The idea took shape almost immediately in his mind—an army, not for conquest, but control. Precision. Suppression. A system that could neutralize threats before cities burned. Not flashy like myths and heroes. Invisible. Inevitable.
He left Apocalypse to think and turned instead toward a locked cabinet at the far end of the workshop.
It opened with a soft hiss.
Inside lay gear he had assembled piece by piece over months—dark, unmarked, functional. No symbols. No identity. Just purpose.
A lightweight mask.Reinforced clothing.Compact storage pouches.
And a photograph.
Ethan picked it up.
Marcus Kane.
The face was older now, lines carved by time and arrogance. The same man whose name Apocalypse had pulled from buried files. The same man tied—quietly, carefully—to the hit-and-run that had ended Ethan's parents' lives.
Seventeen months.
That's how long Ethan had waited. Trained. Planned. Built.
Not out of rage—but out of certainty.
He slid the photo into a pocket and opened another case.
Inside was a compact firearm—unremarkable at first glance. Ethan checked it with methodical calm, hands steady.
The ammunition was anything but ordinary.
One set contained specialized rounds designed to disperse a fast-acting sleep agent on impact—non-lethal, precise, meant to end a fight before it began.
The other set… was not.
He didn't linger on that distinction.
This wasn't about revenge spiraling into chaos. It was about control. About making sure this ended cleanly.
Ethan secured the weapon, holstered it, and pulled the mask over his face. The world felt quieter instantly—focused.
"Apocalypse," he said, voice low, "monitor my vitals. Emergency extraction protocols only if I'm incapacitated."
"Understood," the AI replied. "Risk probability remains non-zero."
"I know," Ethan said. "That's why I prepared."
As he ascended the basement stairs, Apocalypse began compiling ideas at impossible speed—drone formations, command hierarchies, adaptive threat response models. Somewhere in that flood of thought was the future Ethan was building.
But tonight wasn't about the future.
Tonight was about closing a chapter that had been left open for too long.
Ethan stepped out into the cool night air of Queens, mask hiding his face, resolve steady in his chest.
He wasn't a hero.
He wasn't a vigilante.
He was just a boy who refused to let the world decide when justice happened.
And somewhere in the city, Marcus Kane was about to learn that the past doesn't stay buried forever.