Morning came to New York.
The storm from the night before had passed, leaving only wet streets behind as proof that it had ever happened at all.
At the Daily Bugle building in Manhattan, Ben Parker arrived at the office early as usual.
The visible damage from the previous attack had only just been repaired, but the inside of the editorial floor was still in rough shape.
So aside from Ben and Jameson, everyone else had been temporarily moved to other floors to work.
After all, as everyone knew, contractors were rarely in any hurry to finish a job.
The moment Ben pushed open the office door, he saw something sitting in the middle of the room.
A small bundle.
Wrapped in webbing.
Given everything that had been happening lately, Ben went alert instantly. His hand moved toward the pistol at the back of his waistband.
In TV dramas and in real life, this was how things usually went. Someone sent a package, and inside was a bomb, a threat, or something equally ugly.
In more than a decade as a reporter, he had seen that sort of thing too many times to count.
Usually, though, it ended up going nowhere.
Then he noticed the note attached to it, written in thick black marker:
To Mr. Ben Parker: Inside is the full evidence from last night's black-market weapons deal in Brooklyn. —From your friendly neighborhood source
Ben had already heard pieces of what had happened the night before. Having the police commissioner as a direct source of information came with its benefits, and he also knew that Eddie, a kid he had always thought highly of, had been hurt.
Carefully, Ben used a pair of scissors to cut through the webbing and pulled out the SD card inside.
He slotted it into a card reader and opened the files on his computer.
The video showed Sal, Mac Gargan, and their people conducting a weapons exchange inside the garage. It even included footage of the tail being tested.
There were also images Eddie had recorded of some ledgers and account records, including shell companies tied directly to Fisk.
"My God..."
Ben understood immediately just how explosive this was.
This kind of evidence could trigger a citywide purge across multiple industries in New York, and the last cleanup wave still wasn't even over yet.
It might even be enough to put a criminal case on the shoulders of the public philanthropist Wilson Fisk.
Without a second of hesitation, Ben grabbed the phone on his desk and called George Stacy's private line directly.
"George, it's Ben. I've got video and financial records that could put Fisk in court. This stuff is too hot to sit on. I need the police to get someone here immediately and take custody of the originals. I'm also planning to run everything on the front page in a few days."
There was a two-second silence on the other end. George sounded exhausted when he answered.
"Ben, do you have any idea what that would make you? Number one on every hit list in New York's underworld. Fisk will lose his mind. He looks like a philanthropist to the public, but you know exactly what kind of man he is."
"If a reporter doesn't have the courage to publish the truth, then I should've jumped out that window with Shocker the other night." Ben's voice stayed steady. "Send the people you trust most, George. Don't let this evidence vanish before sunrise."
To Ben, this mattered more than his life.
At the same time, inside NYPD headquarters—
George Stacy hung up the phone and rubbed his bloodshot eyes.
He had been running himself into the ground for days in the commissioner's office.
Ever since taking over in New York, he had been going into the field himself, leading raids himself, handling interviews himself, carrying the whole weight of it himself.
Too many officers had already been compromised by Kingpin. If George brought only his own trusted people on operations, there was less risk of someone getting bought off on the scene.
That was the only way the city was going to get better.
And Ben's reporting had only made the scope of the situation larger, pushing them closer to the man at the center of it all, Kingpin, the biggest crime boss in New York, maybe in the world.
The forensic report from the Brooklyn alley was sitting on George's desk.
Something in it had caught his attention.
"Commissioner, the scene analysis is back," said the head of the forensic department, personally delivering the report.
"In the corner of the alley, those vitrified marks on the pavement were analyzed spectrally. The asphalt was exposed to temperatures exceeding four thousand degrees Celsius in an instant. Not only that, but trace carbonized biological residue was found inside the crystalline material."
"So..." George frowned. "Someone generated heat above four thousand degrees in the middle of a rainstorm?"
"Yes, Commissioner. But our working assumption is that whatever caused it may have originated elsewhere and only landed at the scene. So at this point, we're not treating it as definitive on-site evidence."
"No," George said, taking a breath. "Not yet. We still have a suspect we can question. Keep it open."
He rose and walked to the one-way glass of the interrogation room.
Inside, Mac Gargan was shackled into a heavy restraint chair with reinforced cuffs and chains.
Even stripped of the exoskeleton, he showed no fear of the police.
Only fear of something else.
George pushed the door open, stepped inside, and dropped several photographs of the crystallized residue onto the table in front of Gargan.
"Let's hear it, Gargan. Last night in Brooklyn, besides the three masked tights-wearing people who webbed you to a wall and beat the hell out of you, who else was in that alley? Who burned your men to ash?"
The moment he heard that, Gargan visibly shuddered.
The nightmare came rushing back.
That thing he could not stop.
That thing he had never even had a chance against.
"Those three idiots in costumes were nothing! Just stunt freaks!" Gargan shouted in a near-hysterical burst, rattling the chains with the force of it.
"It was the monster! The blue demon with the 'S' on his chest! He wasn't human, Stacy! He didn't use a weapon. He just looked at my men and..." Gargan swallowed hard, almost choking on the memory. "His eyes glowed red, and they were gone. Gone. Nothing left. Not even bones."
George stared into Gargan's eyes, searching for the truth.
As an old cop, he could tell when a criminal was lying, and when terror had blown apart their mental defenses.
Gargan wasn't lying.
Not entirely.
But he was hiding something, specifically what had happened with Eddie.
Which meant there was now something else on the streets of New York.
Not just those new vigilantes.
Something stronger.
Something decisively lethal.
Something with catastrophic power and no hesitation in using it.
George felt a wave of helplessness.
If a being like that ever decided to do something to New York, then every weapon the police had, every shield, every armored unit, would be no more useful than paper.
In its eyes, ordinary people and Gargan were the same.
"Double the guard at New York General. Twenty-four-hour protection on the ICU," George ordered the officers outside as soon as he stepped out of the room. "Eddie Brock is a key witness. Nothing happens to him."
"And send two SWAT armored units to the Daily Bugle. Ben Parker gets an escort. Effective immediately, New York is on maximum alert."
He looked down the hallway, jaw tight.
"God willing, this doesn't spiral into something bigger."
Then, under his breath:
"Fisk... this is still New York. The police still exist here."