Chapter One

One would expect HYDRA to be all dark bases and blasé, thick concrete walls, with binding chairs and torture tools next to them.

Contrary to expectation, we were in a cozy, well lived-in living room in a house in a town some miles outside New York limits. We'd ditched the chopper an hour ago, and I was driven to this place by some mooks that weren't in the team to which I was assigned. I stood before my seated handler, presenting cold indifference to him as he sipped on some lemonade, listening to my mission report with his ears and tape recorder. Two more mooks in plain clothes stood on either side of the sofa, one with a hand near his concealed pistol on his shoulder.

"...I then retired to the exfiltration point and boarded the helicopter, and completed my mission," I finished, speaking in a dull monotone.

My handler nodded with approval. "Good," he said. "Perfectly handled, Pawn. Now for your next mission - you will be transported under sedation, where you will be given your orders. Your handler for this mission will be addressed as Ymir."

"Understood," I acknowledged.

"Go to your transport," he told me, pointing towards the glass doors, where a blue Ford van awaited me. "Get it done."

"Complying," I said, and turned to walk. The mooks fell in step behind me, closed the door after I exited, and nodded at a third waiting at the back of the van, who opened the double doors, revealing a gurney with its straps hanging off on the sides, and awaited my entrance. They weren't meant to contain me so much as be their own impromptu seatbelt for me. Our Senses revealed that one of the mooks behind me, on my left, extracted something from his inside jacket pocket. A wallet? No - a badge, or his card keepers. He flipped it open and held it up to nobody in particular, apparently mimicking the police. Hm. So that's how they'll cover any highway patrol stops...

His partner gestured harshly at him, as if telling him to cut it out.

"Get on the stretcher," the doorman ordered. I did as told. He entered behind me, strapped me down, and reached for something - a bag, my Senses told me - and extracted a syringe. I revealed the inside of my elbow to him, where he pulled up the sleeve of my jacket. There was a tattoo of a black, thin X on my inner elbow - drawn by necessity over an artery, so people wouldn't need search parties to inject me there. With no further ado, he injected the sedative into me - any other person, they might well have killed, something the handler told me himself, some years ago, when I first learned the hard way that I could fight off their effects and puppet the body through them anyway. The effects were not instant, but they were effective.

I groaned and sluggishly woke up inside my mind. Rodrigo, next to me, had slumped onto the ground, and he'd be useless until the effects of the sedative wore off. The mind world wobbled and stumbled and waved and blurred, in a perfect simulation of sheer drunkenness. The body felt sleepy, but I felt as if I'd been on six shots of vodka.

It was incredibly difficult to focus, no less than the last time, but I managed to fight off the effects of the sedative enough to rise from the seat and set Rodrigo into a recovery position. I was as coordinated here as a punch drunk fool and would only fare better in the real world solely because of the Senses. "Fugg'n... sed'tives," I slurred, and not for the first time. "'nno how... p'ple find this...pl'surabl'. 'ck off wdd... bein' drunk."

With a moan, I settled back onto the couch, missing the meat of the seat for the armrests and somehow managing to find my seat anyway. Then I waited, relying on the Senses to tell me where we were.

It took incredible patience, another sedative injection, and a long time, but we finally reached New York. We turned through a ton of unfamiliar streets, finally coming down to some place that seemed vaguely familiar to me. I kept still, breathing slowly, sleepily, pretending the tranquilizer was still in effect, and remained limp as they unfastened the gurney and pushed it out of the vehicle into some small building, in the rear entrance. Two of the three men I'd come with returned to the van, removed the license plates, replaced them, and drove off.

I heard voices. It was difficult to make out what they were saying exactly, but I came to know their positions. There were five men in the room, all armed, three with pistols, and two with SMGs in addition. They wheeled me deeper into the building and into a room, one of them dragging his eyesight back every now and then to ensure we were not followed. I didn't care about their conversation, but they seemed argumentative about something unspecific. I breathed again, and twitched my ears - an easier task. The sedative was wearing off, faster than it ever had on previous injections. I pretended it wasn't and kept 'sleeping' - an easy task, because it was something I was trained to do to perfection in case of emergency scenarios - and listened carefully.

"Well, where are they, then?" one of the men demanded. "They're late!"

"They were held up," a second man told him, "like I said. They got unlucky - accident on the route with less traffic, cops on the scene. They had to take a detour."

"Why would they do that? You acquired the ambulance for that exact reason - it'd get us through the traffic like nothing -"

"Which would be suspicious to do and then just drive past the scene of the accident, dumbass. Give 'em time, they're coming."

"Radio 'em," a third guy butted it. "We gotta know how far they are, at least."

The second guy sighed and extracted his walkie-talkie. He clicked on it. "Hati, this is Skoll. Where are you? Over."

"Skoll, we're on 122nd and Broadway," came the response. "ETA, three minutes. Over."

"Roger that, Hati, three minutes. Over and out." The guy put his radio away and turned to his mates. "See? Nothing to worry about. We're still on schedule. You'll be in the airport in no time."

"Alright," the first guy nodded, seemingly relieved. "Good. We're not as far behind schedule as I feared."

They'd clearly been testing Murphy, the poor motherfuckers, because the driver contacted them again.

"Skoll, this is Hati. We are now on the street, traffic permitting, ETA is ninety seconds, over."

"Skoll to Hati, acknowledged ETA ninety seconds, over."

"Roger that, Skoll, Hati - what the hell is tha -?!" The transmission ended abruptly, and at the exact same time that the sound of a loud boom and a subsequent roar faintly made it into the room.

"What the hell was that?" the first guy demanded, extracting his pistol. "What the hell's going on?!"

Oh my god, I realized, this could not have gone any better. These stupid motherfuckers actually brought us to Harlem! That's probably Abomination! Ha! I should thank that big lug... but first... time for a live-fire exercise.

I inhaled, actively expanding my Senses to the entire, empty room. The air thrummed softly with air conditioners managing the ambient temperature - and it thrummed under my control. The otherwise bare room had only us and a camera watching us. I straightened my hands, imagining a sharp implement, a blade of unmatched cutting power, and positioned it near the radio guy, who was demanding that Hati respond. Hati wasn't going to respond - and with a twitch of my hand and a new smile added below his mouth, neither would Skoll. Then I sliced the wires connecting the camera to security.

"What the fuck?!" a fourth man goggled as the radio guy toppled over, clutching his opened windpipe. "Gyles!"

I positioned another blade on him, and it sliced into his brain with ridiculously little resistance. He made confused gestures as he fell. Two down.

"Who's there?!" the first guy demanded, extracting his pistol along with the others and waving it around. "Show yourself!"

Number Five checked on me. I breathed, evenly, perfecting the art of playing dead asleep.

"We need to get him out of here -" Number Five spoke up - and he stopped talking as a deep cut laughed his armored vest off and sliced his stomach open. He grunted in surprise, then groaned horribly when he saw his innards fall out.

"No!" Number Three yelled, swinging his SMG in arcs around him. I let the silence and suspense build, the both of them yelling for the unknown assassin to come out. The poor fools didn't know he was already there.

Mistake. I sliced Number Three's head off, gesturing with the hand they couldn't see. Number One screamed horribly and unloaded bullets on the area just beyond where Number Three failed. He achieved nothing.

"Who are you?!" he screamed, waving his gun around wildly. He fired twice more, and the gun clicked, the slide locking back. "Where are you?! What do you want?!"

I opened my eyes. The ceiling was plain white, a single, round lightbulb shining down on the room.

"Juss' t' Paaawn," I slurred, my voice reverberating unnaturally in the room. "I w'nt you t' die, HYDA."

He gaped at me, startled and confused. He had a moment before he realized he had to reload his weapon. I sliced his hands off before he could move his second hand off the pistol, and woke up. I rolled off the gurney, thinking I'd pull off a superhero landing - and thanks to my uncoordinated limbs and these fucking sedatives, I landed on my face instead.

Nice going.

"...Ow." I mumbled. Number One started screaming horribly and fell on his knees as the liquid of life squirted off his wrists. "St'pd seedativ'."

I shifted up, feeling like an absolute zombie. It took me longer than I'd have wanted to get up and shamble over to Number One and -

"Huh." I mumbled, staring drunkenly at the familiar face. "Muh g'dn'ss. Jasper fuck'ng Sitwell."

Sitwell stopped screaming, staring at me with a fascinating mix of confusion, terror, and horror. "Huh... How..."

"I kn'w every'thiiiing." I singsonged, grinning drunkenly. He opened his mouth, but I honestly didn't need to satisfy myself by drawing this out too much. Fucking around made enemy opportunities, after all, and that sort of idiocy was long beaten out of me. I raised my arm, and with a drunken flourish, sliced his fucking head off. I chuckled. "Sur'pr'se, moth'r'fuckers. Oh. Always... say... the one l'ners... after kill'ng... everyone. Smarter... st'll badaaaassss. HYDA's gonna diiiieeee."

I stumbled away from the bloody scene - careful to avoid the bloody puddles as much as possible - and, of course, with two guns and plenty of ammo looted. 1911s, too, yay.

Another roar startled me. Oh yeah, I recalled, moving with increased coordination - sedatives were wearing off faster, Abomination's here.

Now how do I do this one?

One last sigh, before he leapt off a roof and slung a web.

"Should we, uh, pack it in for today?" Peter Parker asked. "Been kinda a bit of a boring one."

"Yeah, as boring as boring gets when you've stopped five muggings and two accidents," the Girl in the Chair retorted. "Or that ATM robbery. Or -"

"Okay, okay, you've made your point," Peter protested, casually thumping off a building and pulling an air spin. "But let's be fair here - I usually get a lot more action on nighttime. Plus hey - it's a Friday, and I'm in Harlem!"

"Maybe it's for the better if things are quiet, Spider."

"Or maybe they're getting smarter about keeping things low-key." Peter paused. "Which, to be honest, is kinda sad. I remember the days when every mook threw themselves at me like video game enemies."

"You're sad that they're learning to stop doing crime?"

"They totally didn't stop and you know it."

"Yeah, that's fair."

Peter picked up the noise of a clattering keyboard and some faint music he couldn't recognize in the background. He made to leave Harlem for Queens, and was about to say something else when he heard an explosion, from somewhere behind him.

"Uh-oh," Peter said. "So much for that quiet night. Explosion in Harlem, cameras picking anything up?"

"One sec." The pace of her fingers all over the keyboard picked up to a nearly maniacal rate, as she started checking out the feeds. A minute later, she had something for him. "Got something. Looks like a huge pile-up, and... what's that?"

"What is it?" Peter asked, picking up the pace towards the scene.

"Something big. Hulk size. But it's not the Hulk. Unless the Hulk got some weird steroids."

"Yikes." Peter stopped, considering the situation. "Might need something stronger, G -"

"Way ahead of you," she told him. "Your closest stash is in 124th, three clicks out, near Mount Sinai Hospital."

"Gotcha. On my way, G." Peter took off in a different direction. "Gonna have to get that stash fast, before that guy does any more damage."

"Good luck," she told him.

"Yeah, well, if it comes down to it..." Peter said, eyes glowering in determination, "I've got more than just plain old webs. Won't even need five minutes with him."

Happy New Year's, bitches! Hope y'all 2023 is a lot better than last year.

Arachas will be posted up on Monday. I was, uh, a bit stuck with some parts of Chapter 10, but I'm much happier about how it's coming along.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed.