Common Thread

by StormySky1005

Three years after Spider-Woman and the Prowler saved New York, threats old and new are on the rise in a changed world. Sequel to Trials of Nature.

3. If You Can't Stand The Heat

Chapter 3

Miles POV

Glaring at his shared office's doorway as his COO walked into the room carrying a cup of hot coffee, Miles' surprising presence made Phin jump a bit when she saw him standing there in his full Prowler gear before she realized who he was and annoyedly asked, "Geez, are you ever off the clock?"

"Some of us have a city to save," Miles told her unapologetically.

Going over to her desk and holding up her cup of coffee for Miles to see, Phin responded, "Yeah, and some of us have this thing called personal wellness. See, it's the thing that keeps us from dressing up in black and jumping off rooftops or going out to beat up armed criminals every night."

"Then maybe you are the crazy ones," Miles observed. "Because fighting criminals gives me all the adrenaline boost I need, no caffeine required."

"Maybe, but I stayed up late last night helping you interrogate a former crime boss and woke up early this morning to run an international tech giant at the age of 18," Phin reminded him as she sat down and took a sip from her cup, then winced from the heat of her drink and tried to blow on it to cool it down slightly as she continued, "But if you really want, I did offer to go out there with you sometime. You just have to agree to use my nickname."

Looking away, Miles firmly said, "No."

"To letting me be a superhero or agreeing to use my nickname?" Phin asked.

"Both," Miles answered simply, folding his arms across his chest and standing tall to show that he was firm in his decision. He was far too familiar with the personal trials of trying to live the life of a city's hero to allow that burden to pass on to Phin, not if he could help it. If she tried, he'd happily drag her back somewhere safe and make sure she stayed there, for her own sake, and he'd already been plenty vocal on that subject with her in the past and wouldn't be changing his mind any time soon.

Besides, he had no desire to take on a partner. Not after what happened last time.

Setting her coffee on her desk and starting up her computer, Phin asked, "So what's next on the agenda for today? Seeing as you're here, I'm guessing further kidnapping and torture are off the table-"

"I did that last night," Miles told her abruptly, then nodded into the glass walled room to their side, where a new person now lied on the table that Leonard Carlyle had been on just last night. "I made sure our friend Leonard had told us everything he knew, then gave him to the cops and got a replacement. This is Ralph Douglass. He used to work for Fisk."

Spinning away from the man so she wouldn't have to look at him, Phin sarcastically remarked, "Another guest. Wonderful."

"And another thing, you can't kidnap garbage, not even when it's alive," Miles pointed out. "People like Ralph here are symptoms of the disease I'm trying to root out. They're the worst kind of people, and after everything they've done, they don't get to just settle into nice, normal lives."

"Says the guy who created a high-tech program called 'Psych' just to avoid his ex," Phin mumbled under her breath.

His eyes narrowing, Miles looked down at her and corrected, "It's not 'psych'. It's 'Psyche'. Sike-ee." Phin looked at him in confusion, clearly not seeing the important distinction, and Miles prompted, "Apuleius? Metamorphoses? Not ringing any bells?"

Shrugging, Phin faced her work again and said, "I'm not much of a reader. Not even instruction manuals. I prefer to do my own best work and let it speak for itself. And I think that 'psych' is a better name for what you did last night. That's essentially what you said to-"

"Enough," Miles stopped her, not wanting to hear the name Phin had been about to say.

He then stepped forward and pulled his phone from his pocket and threw it gently onto Phin's desk. Looking down at it, Phin asked, "What's this?"

"My eye hacked James Wesley's phone last night while I was talking to him, copied all the information onto my own phone," Miles explained, then mentally removed his suit, his mask unfolding from his face mid-sentence as he continued, "I tried to do the same with Fisk, but he didn't have a phone on him."

Phin nodded in understanding but commented, "Good idea, but kind of a waste of a good phone. How many new games did you just unknowingly download?"

Leaning against Phin's desk, Miles warned her, "Enough with the jokes. Just plug in the phone and see what you can find in his photos, notes, files, contacts, search history, whatever. I want to know what Fisk's people are interested in and who they're talking to."

Her face showing her exasperation at being forbidden to have her fun, Phin huffed but still did as ordered and quickly plugged the phone into her computer and began running a software program to bypass the phone's lock screen and separate the different parts of the phone into icons on her desktop for easy access. Once that was done, Phin leaned back in her chair and looked up at Miles to ask, "What should we look at first?"

"Pull up his recent searches and personal notes," Miles said, trying to tamp down his instincts that were telling him to immediately look for something on Fisk as he tried to remember that there were more important things to worry about first. "Look for anything relating to an explosive device. Mr. Carlyle was found with a truck suspected of being part of our bomb threat, and his crew were talking about Fisk getting out. We need to find out if Fisk has something to do with it."

Looking at him disbelievingly, Phin pointed out, "Miles, Fisk's been behind bars for the past three years."

"Just humor me," Miles told her.

Sighing, Phin pulled up the requested files and read off her screen as she reported back, "Alright, he recently looked up 'Ryker's Island Ferry directions' (wow, he actually bothered capitalizing that), 'hybrid speciation theory', 'Now Eye See… Oph-thal-mologist Clinic', 'Donovan and Partners' public office', 'best rare wines', … but nothing about any bomb."

Of course, Miles was relieved to hear that, but he was also a bit disappointed. He was still sure that the two cases he was now prioritizing, the bomb threat and Fisk's release, had to be connected somehow, but apparently Fisk wasn't the one causing this whole thing with the bomb after all… Unless his other employees who'd stayed in touch with him while he was in prison, like his lawyers at Donovan and Partners who'd been brought on after Fisk had stopped using Nelson and Murdock at the King's Attorneys law firm, might know something.

Though he didn't want to mention it to Phin, Miles gave himself a silent reminder to pay Mr. Donovan a visit later, just to make sure. But even if it wasn't the bomb threat that Fisk was involved in, Miles still felt certain that he had to be up to something, and he was going to search until he found it.

"Pull up his contacts next," Miles said, resting his hand on the back of Phin's chair to idly stop her from spinning it back and forth. "Fisk didn't have a phone in Ryker's, so his assistant most likely made all of his outside contacts for him."

Closing out the tab showing Wesley's recent searches, Phin instead switched it to show a list of his calls and texting history, then typed a few keys and examined the screen for a moment before reporting, "I've entered a program to find out who he's placed calls to, specifically in the last three years and a few days after he placed a call to Ryker's to schedule a visit."

Nodding his head, Miles noted, "Good idea. Whatever calls he made at these times would most likely be on his employer's orders."

"That's what I figured," Phin agreed as she ran her program. A few seconds later, a list of contacts appeared along with the number of times they'd been contacted, and Phin read, "Okay, it looks like the most consistent contacts placed after Mr. Wesley's meetings with Wilson Fisk are as follows: A. Marsalis, B. Fisk, M. Vistain, D & P…"

"Just run all the names through a search," Miles cut her off, not recognizing most of the contacts he was hearing about.

Switching to her second monitor, Phin plugged in each of the contacts' names and said, "Alright… I can't narrow down all of the names while they're written like this, but we have three names recognized. D & P, I think we can safely assume that that's Fisk's lawyers. B. Fisk is Bill Fisk, Wilson Fisk's dad. And the last name is Dr. Brock, which I'm guessing is Dr. Elsa Brock, an animal biology expert who works here in New York."

Already having decided that the previous two names were useless to him, Miles quickly caught on to the last name and noted, "A doctor? That's business, not relation. Whoever she is, Fisk's interested in her. Look up what she's working on."

While Phin set about the task of finding Dr. Brock's research, Miles walked over to his own computer and sat down as he began to look up the woman's office building on the police's city records, trying to memorize the layout of the place as he had a feeling he may need to pay it a visit soon. He noticed that it was also in Hell's Kitchen, just a few blocks away from Fisk's club.

As he did that, Phin spoke from behind him, saying, "The Internet isn't saying anything about Dr. Brock or her lab. Whatever her work is, it's apparently not very interesting."

"Fisk's interested, meaning so are we," Miles corrected, then suggested, "Try searching Wesley's notes for 'Brock', 'doctor', the lab's street address, anything he might've used as a shorthand."

Behind him, Miles could hear Phin typing on her keyboard as she listened to him, and a moment later she stopped and said hesitantly, "Uh, Miles, you may want to look at this."

Pushing his rolling chair back so he could sit by Phin, Miles asked, "You found something?"

Instead of answering, Phin just gestured at her computer screen, prompting Miles to look at it and read what was written there. Apparently Wesley had only mentioned Dr. Brock once in all of his personal notes, and it wasn't a particularly detailed one, but it still had some meaning to Miles. On the screen, typed letters spelled out, Samples to doctor by tonight for +Parker.

Miles' narrowed as he read and reread this simple phrase, and Phin confirmed to be thinking along the same lines as him as she asked, "What are the chances that an animal biologist is looking at something called 'Parker' and it's just innocent?"

"Not great," Miles admitted. "It looks like someone's trying to recreate the Lizard."

The Lizard had been the first supervillain to ever appear, and also one of the only ones that Miles had never fought, as that had been before he'd become the Prowler. But from what he'd heard, it had been huge, fierce, and impossibly strong, and had only been defeated when a ceiling collapsed on it.

But most notably, the person inside the Lizard, Peter Parker, had not sought to harm anyone when he initially took the serum that turned him into that monster. In short, the serum turned whoever drank or was injected with it into a vicious, out-of-control beast that was dangerously powerful and intelligent. If someone figured out how to recreate that serum and tried making more Lizards… Miles would need a lot more ceilings than he currently had on hand.

Here, however, seemed to be where his thought process split from Phin's, as she looked at him and cautiously said, "Miles… We have to tell her."

Distracted by his thoughts, it took Miles a moment to realize who she was talking about, but then his expression turned to stone as he simply argued, "No."

Not willing to back down so easily, Phin pointed at her screen and insisted, "She would want to know about this!"

"No," Miles sternly repeated as he began to walk towards the office's exit door. "Besides, it wouldn't make any difference. I'm going to go look into this. If it's true, I'm going to turn it to ash tonight, and she never needs to know a thing about it."

As he grasped the door handle in front of him, Miles heard Phin call after him, "This is a terrible idea!"

"Ruining Wilson Fisk's evil plan before it gets off the ground?" Miles asked, looking back at her with a smirk. "I disagree."

Making one last effort to make Miles stay behind so she could convince him to rethink his choice, Phin told him, "You have three dozen calls from your mom to return!"

"Tell her I'm out meeting a girl like she wanted!" Miles yelled back as he stepped outside of the office and shut the door behind him, knowing but choosing to ignore the fact that his mom had been very clear on which girl she wanted him meeting with.

Line Break

Stepping forward to meet Miles, the glasses-wearing blond-haired woman reached out and greeted, "A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Morales. I'm Dr. Elsa Brock."

Reaching out to shake the woman's hand and giving her a friendly smile, Miles responded, "The pleasure is all mine, Dr. Brock."

"I must say, I was surprised to receive your call," Dr. Brock mentioned curiously, then looked around and added, "And I'm also a bit surprised to see that you're not arriving in a car." She took a look at his jacket and also put in, "Or a motorcycle, perhaps."

Shrugging, Miles excused himself, "I like to get my daily steps in. Brooklyn-raised, you know. Besides, my experience has been that the paparazzi never expect to run into a millionaire walking down the street."

Nodding in agreement as she turned and began to lead the way into the building where she worked, Dr. Brock said, "I completely understand, Mr. Morales. As I said, I was just surprised. But if you don't mind my asking, what exactly are you looking for from this tour?"

Trying not to sound anxious, Miles looked around the main lobby as they entered, instantly locating all of the building's security cameras that he remembered from the building's records, and answered, "I was in the area and remembered that some of my friends had recommended it to me. My COO, for one. She suggested that we look into animal's natural defensive measures for inspiration for our newest line of defense tech, and told me that you were the expert to see for that kind of thing."

Blushing slightly at the praise, Dr. Brock cleared her throat and said, "Well… That's very kind, but I don't know if I'd call myself an expert-"

"Oh, please, no need for modesty," Miles said as he waved off her words. "She's not even the only one of my friends that have recommended this place to me, and I trust all of my friends implicitly. I'm sure you must be quite the accomplished scientist, even if the rest of the world doesn't appreciate it fully yet. I actually once knew someone else who was the exact same way."

Becoming even more flustered at Miles' honeyed words, Dr. Brock stopped and turned around to face Miles with a smile as she said, "I know flattery when I hear it, Mr. Morales. What is it you're really here for?"

Quickly thinking something up, Miles looked around warily before he leaned in close and told her, "That new animal defense line I mentioned? I'm considering hiring you to lead it… If you'd be interested in something like that."

Her eyes widening in amazement, Dr. Brock asked, "You want to hire… me?"

"To lead a team of researchers, doing exactly what you do here, but with better pay and benefits, and also potentially saving countless lives while you're at it," Miles prompted further, but then said, "But… before I do that, I'd like to take a firsthand look at some of your work, Doctor. See what kind of things you can offer, given the right resources."

After he'd said that, Miles saw a faint glimmer of light in Dr. Brock's eyes, and he knew she was interested even before she looked away from him and said, "Well… I suppose I have a few things I could show you. Off the records, of course."

Understanding and really not much caring to disturb the confidentiality of her work, Miles bowed his head and quietly responded, "Of course. My lips are sealed. Lead the way, Dr. Brock."

Dr. Brock took one last cautious look around the room, as though any of her co-workers were actually going to notice her doing anything wrong, then gestured with her head for Miles to follow her as she led the way across the building and into a private lab, then silently motioned for Miles to close the door behind him, which he did, closing the two of them in the room together.

However, as he turned back around, he discreetly used his eye to scan the room for the Parker samples he was looking for. He didn't see them, but to his surprise, he did locate a small, lead-lined safe behind one of Dr. Brock's wall-mounted cupboards. Intrigued, he made a mental note to check it if he indeed came back later.

Then, Miles walked over to stand across from Dr. Brock on the other side of her desk, and waited for a moment as she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her phone before swiping on the screen a few times to pull something up, which she then held out for Miles to see. It was a camera roll showing numerous pictures of the same chameleon camouflaging itself against different backgrounds, and Brock swiped between the pictures as she narrated, "Most chameleons along with some other creatures like certain octopi, geckos, and anoles can change the color pigmentations of their bodies to blend in with their environment. I think that if we studied this deeper, maybe we could develop some kind of automatic color-changing camouflage."

She looked at him hopefully, but Miles just scratched his chin before saying, "Even if we could, it would be more expensive than just a regular invisibility net. Do you have anything more… actively defensive?"

He could see disappointment evident on Dr. Brock's face, but she quickly collected herself and said, "Uh, yes, of course. I think I have just the thing." She then leaned over to the side of her desk and opened one of its drawers before she pulled out a picture of a large snake and began to point out certain parts of its body as she said, "See this? And this, here? Some animals like this python, or certain ferrets, badgers, and a few others have the ability to emit horrible smells from their scent glands to frighten away threats."

Once again, Miles appeared to think about it for a moment, then said, "That may be effective… But I imagine our customers would complain about lingering smells. Perhaps something more aggressive."

Miles could see Dr. Brock's expression starting to shift to panic as she realized that her first two suggestions had been turned down, and just as he'd hoped, her unwillingness to blow this interview caused her to look over his shoulder at the closed door warily before she looked back at him and said, "Aggressive? I… I may have one thing."

"Show me," Miles prompted, suspecting what it was and trying not to sound too eager.

Hesitantly, Dr. Brock reached down into another of her desk's drawers, one of the lower ones, and slowly pulled out a locked metal box before raising it up and setting it on the desk's surface. Then, she reached up and took off her lanyard that held her name card on a ring at the end, along with a small key. Taking this key in her hand, Dr. Brock inserted it into the keyhole on the locked box and twisted it sideways to allow her to open it, revealing numerous rows of small vials filled with red liquid, a partition rising in the middle of the box to separate the two different types.

Not waiting for permission, Miles reached out and gently picked up one of the vials on the right side of the box, then held it up and examined the liquid inside. It was clearly blood, but unlike any Miles had ever seen, with hundreds of tiny green dots floating around inside it.

Seeing Miles's expression of interest and deciding to explain, Dr. Brock told him, "This is a blood sample I received a few years back for study. It belonged to one of the first supervillains, the Lizard. And I know that it maybe seems kind of weird that I have blood belonging to a deceased kid. I thought the same thing when I first received it. But don't you see? In Peter Parker's blood lies a piece of the puzzle towards uncovering the secrets of successful, risk-free cross-species genetics!"

Setting the vial back down inside the box, Miles asked, "So you're trying to recreate the Lizard?"

"More like the idea of it," Dr. Brock clarified. "You see, Peter Parker somehow developed a serum that successfully gave him the proportionate strength, speed, reflexes, and healing abilities of a lizard. If I can just figure out how to eliminate the body and mind transformation while keeping the benefits, the possibilities are endless!"

Nodding as he processed this information, Miles gestured at the vials on the left side of the box, which held blood that looked much more normal, and asked, "And what about these? Parker's blood pre-transformation?"

Quickly losing much of her excitement, Dr. Brock answered, "Well… not exactly. Actually, I'm not entirely sure what that is."

Raising an eyebrow at that, Miles asked, "What do you mean? It's your work!"

"Yes, but I didn't acquire these samples myself," Dr. Brock explained. "You see, a few years back, these things were just left in my office one day anonymously. No note, name, price, number, and certainly no explanation. I studied both sample types to try to figure out what they were, and was surprised to discover that they were two different DNA samples featuring the results of successful cross-species genetic testing. One was labeled as Peter Parker's, and by that time, it had been revealed that Parker was the Lizard before he died. I didn't know why I'd been given the vials, but I just counted myself lucky. The second set of vials wasn't labeled though, but it was clearly different. By comparing the two of them, I was able to more-or-less narrow down the proper experiments to begin researching how the human and animal sides of the equation could be combined."

Miles listened to all of what Dr. Brock was saying and was careful to keep his expression neutral as he processed what he was hearing. Besides the Lizard, he'd only ever heard of one example of cross-species genetics, but it couldn't be her blood, could it? When he'd worked with her, they'd always been careful to take care of any significant amounts of blood they lost to keep themselves from being identified, and that was on the rare occasion that it actually mattered.

Usually, if they got that badly hurt, their blood would spill somewhere where it would quickly get contaminated by the environment, or simply ignored as it fell among the blood from their enemies' wounds. He might think that maybe his old partner had gotten careless at some point since they'd separated, but he knew her better than that. Besides, Dr. Brock said that she'd received the blood samples several years ago, before Miles had gone solo. So even if it was her blood, where had it come from? And if it wasn't, whose blood was it?

Deciding to put those questions aside for later, Miles recalled what Dr. Brock had said and asked, "Combining the samples?"

Interlacing her fingers for visual aid, Dr. Brock expounded, "By taking the strengthening parts of both the Lizard DNA and the other samples, I can find out what bonds connect with human's living DNA, then combine all three of them to make something stronger than any of them."

His mind now made up to come back here tonight and destroy all of Dr. Brock's research (it may be cruel, but it would keep it away from Fisk, which was all he really cared about), Miles tried to ensure that he knew where it all was by asking, "And your research, is it all in this room? Notes, samples, results?"

"... Yes, it's all here," Dr. Brock answered, but Miles noticed her slight hesitation at the beginning of the sentence and quickly determined that she wasn't telling the full truth. His eyes drifted to the secret compartment behind one of her drawers, which was arguably not in the room and thus caused him to suspect that maybe it was where Dr. Brock was keeping the more secretive parts of her work, but he decided to confirm it before he just assumed.

Still, he couldn't reveal that he knew about the secret compartment, so he would have to take a different approach in making Dr. Brock be honest with him, and the best way he knew to make people cooperate was through fear. Sadly, that was the sort of thing he usually left to the Prowler, meaning Miles Morales may have some difficulty with it. Then, he remembered a fortunate fact from what had happened last night, something he could use to maybe help Dr. Brock feel a bit more intimidated by him.

Speaking lowly but firmly, Miles told her, "Dr. Brock, I'm afraid I forgot to mention an important part of this job offer. I should've mentioned this before, but Seraph Tech recently agreed to a business partnership with Fisk Industries. You know, as in the recently-released Wilson Fisk."

Miles was confident that the mention of Wilson Fisk's name would rattle Dr. Brock, especially if his people had spoken with her recently as well, but he didn't quite expect the reaction he got.

Her eyes narrowing, Dr. Brock looked up at him and asked with a newfound coldness in her voice, "So… that's what this is about? That's why you're really here?"

Confused, Miles responded, "Uh… yes? Is that-"

Standing up abruptly, Dr. Brock said, "Mr. Morales, I think it's time for you to leave."

Surprised and not feeling that he was quite ready to leave yet, Miles argued, "What? Hold on, Dr. Brock, this interview isn't over-"

"Yes, it is," Dr. Brock responded sternly, cutting him off, and walked over to her lab's door before opening it and standing to the side in a clear dismissal of Miles. "You can keep your job offer, Mr. Morales. I've been very clear on this point, but it's clear that your employer isn't getting the message, so I'll put it in simple terms for you to relay to him. My work is my own unique accomplishment, and I won't be convinced to share it. You can offer me as much money or as many employment positions as you want, but I won't sell to you or anyone."

Standing up and walking over to her as he tried in vain to understand what she was talking about, Miles said, "Dr. Brock, I think there's been some kind of mis- Wait, my employer?"

Instead of responding to him, however, Dr. Brock simply grabbed his arm and ushered him out of her office, saying, "Good day, Mr. Morales."

After he was forcefully ejected from the lab, Miles spun back around and tried to protest one more time, "Wait, Doctor-", but Dr. Brock closed the door behind herself and Miles heard it lock.

Huffing in annoyance, Miles gave the door one last look, knowing that he could force his way in there again right now if he really wanted to, but then just shook his head and began to walk away, deciding that he wasn't willing to do such a thing in the daylight. He would come back later tonight and turn Dr. Brock's office inside out until he was sure that he'd searched everywhere and destroyed all vestiges of her work along with anything that could potentially allow someone to replicate it. Whatever Dr. Brock was acting so defensive of, it wouldn't matter after tonight.

Gwen POV

Gwen's new assignment had actually seemed alright for all of about twelve hours before she started to have some concerns about the arrangement.

It started last night at the party. She'd been doing her job, watching people enter The Tycoon through the main entrance and discreetly keeping an eye out for any familiar faces whilst she pretended to simply be another one of the hundreds of partygoers.

After some time doing that, however, her thoughts drifted to the last few parties she'd actually attended just for fun, and above all else, who she'd attended them with. She'd been thinking of how Wilson Fisk's release from prison was exactly the sort of thing that might get his attention, maybe causing him to throw caution to the wind for once just to get a closer eye on the man that they'd put away together three and half years ago, and how despite the fact that she hadn't seen or heard from him in the last year of that time, she still would've given anything to see him one more time.

As part of that hope, she'd eventually realized that she was subconsciously checking the faces of the crowd entering the building, looking for her old partner, or even one of the signs she'd learned to recognize indicating the presence of his disguise work, in case he was wearing a different face when he came, but she saw nothing.

Until she did. Gwen never saw him enter the building, but she was aware that no guest list would've stopped him from getting in where he wanted to, and she'd silently cursed herself for thinking that he wouldn't find a way around the FBI's security measures and enter The Tycoon through another path than the front door. But though she never got a good look at him, for a moment last night, Gwen had been so sure that she'd seen her old boyfriend, Miles Morales, AKA the Prowler and a whole lot of other terrible titles he'd earned himself in the last year, sitting at the bar on the second floor of the building and talking with Wilson Fisk.

Hardly able to believe her eyes, Gwen had tried to go up to get a closer look, but like he'd done so many times before and most notably after what happened in New Jersey last year, he had vanished. Fisk was also nowhere to be found by the time she arrived and the bar was crowded and busy, making her even less sure of what she'd seen.

But she hadn't been willing to give up so easily, and she'd quickly taken note of all the possible escape routes. She'd found several of the windows on the second floor open to help air out the packed building, and though they were all being watched by the FBI's panning cameras, Gwen knew that if anyone could find a blind spot, it would be Miles. So that could be how he got in without her seeing him, but he wouldn't have taken the same way out, not if he'd noticed that Gwen was on his tail, which was of course the most logical reason that he would've disappeared so fast.

But while she wasn't watching the front door anymore, he could easily slip out that way, so Gwen had looked downstairs once again and quickly picked out the back view of someone who could potentially be Miles swiftly slipping his way out of the building. Gwen had been forced to shove her way through the crowds to try to catch up with him, which had gotten her some negative comments from annoyed party guests, but she'd managed to keep the departing maybe-Miles in her sight as she also left the building, not able to care at the moment about how she was technically abandoning her post.

She'd followed who she thought was Miles around the block and saw his duck into an alleyway off the side of the street, but when she'd gone after him… she'd run into a dead end, and the man she was following was nowhere to be found. After a quick search during which she still found nothing, Gwen was even more confident that it had been Miles she'd seen, but he was clearly gone by then, and she was shortly called back to the club by Louise, leaving her unable to even consider suiting up to try going after Miles.

After her failed pursuit, however, Gwen had regretted even trying to go after him, because whether or not it had actually been Miles that she'd seen, losing track of the man who'd left the club had felt like she was losing Miles all over again.

But if last night had been bad, today was even worse.

Sadly, Wilson Fisk's probation agreement with the city and country only established that he had to be watched wherever he went. It was no house arrest, and so though Fisk was supposed to live and work primarily out of The Tycoon, he was still allowed to travel as long as he was escorted by a special detachment of his probation officers. And today, he was feeling adventurous, which meant Gwen, Louise, and a dozen FBI agents including Ben got to take Fisk on a road trip.

The way Fisk (read: Fisk's assistant) told it, the city had changed in his absence, and Fisk was interested in seeing what his new "business playground" was like. Well, when they'd first heard that this morning, Louise had looked dubious, but Gwen had shrugged and asked her, "How bad could it be?" In her defense, when she'd said that, she didn't think that Fisk was going to want a full tour of every single inch of Manhattan, from the parts that had changed completely in the last three years to the places that had a single pebble out of place.

Okay, maybe that was exaggerating, but honestly, it seemed like Fisk wanted to go everywhere. So far, they'd gone through Times Square and the Metropolitan Museum, down Broadway, in the One World Observatory and Rockefeller Center, the NY Aquarium, and Little Island, in that order. They'd also spent about two hours in the New York Public Library, two hours that Fisk spent cataloging each and every book in the building to make sure they hadn't added or lost any while he was away.

By the end of that one, Gwen felt fairly certain that Fisk had definitely lied about leaving his criminal ways behind him. He was just getting really creative now in how he went about being a bad guy. His new evil plan was clear: he was going to inconvenience his probation officers into losing their minds.

For better or worse, though, Gwen didn't quite manage to die of boredom as Fisk's Sightseeing Tour of Terror finally started to draw to a close as in the latter part of the day, they came to probably the first place on their tour that had any real personal significance to Fisk: the building that had once been the center of his business, the former Fisk Tower. Unfortunately, the building also had some painful degree of importance to Gwen, actually even more so now than it had when Fisk had owned the building.

While Fisk was in prison, his company's shareholders had made a number of big decisions in the absence of Fisk Industries' CEO, decisions that had ultimately weakened the company greatly. Once, they'd owned almost a third of the city, but Fisk Industries had liquidated hundreds of their old buildings in the last few years as a cost-cutting measure when all of their employees were placed under scrutiny due to Fisk's arrest. Thousands of those employees had quit, and the company had sold many of their buildings in a desperate attempt to save some of their money before they collapsed completely.

Their gamble had worked, but the Fisk name no longer carried nearly the same weight it did three years ago, and Fisk Tower, one of the tallest buildings in Brooklyn and once a symbol of Fisk Industries' power, was now under new ownership. The old company headquarters of one of the world's most prevalent billionaires had been taken over by a lowly up-and-coming millionaire, and now Wilson Fisk stood outside the place that had once borne his own name in massive golden letters over the entrance and read the building's new name out loud.

"Seraph Technologies," Fisk noted with interest, then looked back at his assistant, Wesley, and commented, "The sight of my old building with a new name on it, owned now by an eighteen-year-old entrepreneur… It almost seems poetic, wouldn't you say? Like a lesson, a reminder that the world of business belongs to the young, the hungry. It seems that perhaps my days of relevance are over, doesn't it, Wesley?"

"Oh, I don't know, sir," Wesley responded encouragingly in a low voice, his hands clasped in front of him as he stood a couple steps behind his employer. "Personally, my experience suggests that age can weaken, but also strengthen. If you don't let it get in your way, sir, I'm sure that your best days may well still lie ahead of you."

Nodding in grateful acceptance, Fisk returned his gaze to the building and looked at it silently for a few moments before Gwen, who was standing back by the car, got impatient to be going and asked, "Mr. Fisk, it's starting to get late, so can you hurry and snap a selfie or whatever you're gonna do so we can get out of here?"

Smiling back at her, Fisk responded, "Now you mention it, Officer Stacy, I'd very much like to go inside and look around if possible. Do you think you could go in and ask if we can see the owner?"

There was a short, uncomfortable silence following that question, and then Gwen bit her cheek and answered simply, "No."

"No?" Fisk repeated, acting surprised. "May I ask why not?"

"Because he's never been here when I've come by in the past," Gwen answered, looking up at the topmost floor of the building of the company that had been named after her.

"You've been here before?" Fisk asked, though of course he already knew the answer.

"I visited the top floors of this building while it was still getting renovated, right after it was bought," Gwen reflected. "Every time I've come by since then, I couldn't get past the receptionist. Trust me, they won't let us up."

"Shame," Fisk said regretfully, giving the building one last look, then turned and began to walk back to the car as he said, "Very well, we can get back to the club. But first, there's one more place I want to visit. The biggest change in the city since I went away, and I hear it looks spectacular at sunset."

Gwen had an uncomfortable feeling of what Fisk was talking about, but she couldn't say anything to stop them from going there, so she just steeled herself and opened the car door to allow Fisk to climb in once again.

Line Break

About an hour later, they arrived just where Gwen had assumed they would, on the shore of Jersey City, the best view point for NYC's newest tourist attraction, the Eighth Man-Made Wonder of the World.

As hundreds of people were gathered in this area, most of the FBI agents with them busied themselves with trying to keep the crowds away from Fisk, and frankly, Gwen kind of wished that she could be doing it with them, keeping her from needing to look at the sight in front of her, a sight that brought back memories of one of the worst days of her life.

Fisk and Wesley had no such concerns, and merely looked up at the enormous statue looming above them with simple interest, even as it made the speed and intensity of Gwen's heart and breathing increase against her will, but fortunately Louise noticed. She didn't know everything about what Gwen had gone through that day, but she knew enough to understand that Gwen had been left deeply traumatized. Louise didn't speak, but she reached out and placed a comforting hand on Gwen's shoulder, steadying her and allowing her to look up at the statue despite the pain of it.

In front of them, standing in the water where there had once been a sandy shore, was a humanoid statue as tall as a skyscraper, over a hundred and fifty meters high, made entirely of glass. The figure was frozen in a position of clear, absolute agony, one of its hands reaching outwards as though begging for help that would never come, and though it could be difficult to tell from all the way down here, especially with the whole figure being largely transparent, Gwen knew that its face was scrunched up with a final yell of pain and defiance. She'd heard its echoing roar before it was finally silenced forever, after all, a sound she would never be able to forget.

Yes, that's right. The statue had once been alive, or at least it had seemed to be. Gwen didn't know if it had ever been any kind of human, as she hadn't gotten the chance to find out, but when she'd first encountered it as Spider-Woman, it had been a massive giant made of sand, bent on destruction for reasons she would never learn.

She'd had no idea how she was supposed to stop it when it had simply appeared one day, but fortunately, she hadn't been alone back then, though it would be the last day she didn't work alone for the foreseeable future. Long story short, it had seemed nearly invincible to Gwen until it picked the wrong fight, and pushed its adversary too far. Since then, the statue that it had become had served as a warning to all criminals in New York and beyond, an unmissable metaphor for how no criminal was safe, not when even the strongest of them could be rendered as fragile as glass.

The city had suggested taking the statue down on occasion, considering it macabre to keep what was essentially a dead man's corpse out in the public eye like this, but they'd always given numerous excuses for why they didn't actually do it. They'd say that the glass would take too long to cut through with as big as it was, or it would cost the city too much to bring in all the helicopters and demolition crews that would be necessary to bring it down, but Gwen knew the real reason behind the decision.

This statue had driven all supervillains into hiding for the last year, along with many of the regular criminals across the entire world, all out of fear of the Prowler, the Bane of the Earth, and no one wanted to eliminate that fear. But while Gwen was perfectly alright with supervillains being a thing of the past, the thing that separated her from everyone else when they looked at this statue was she considered what it did to the Prowler himself.

Unlike everyone else, Gwen knew and cared about the man beneath the mask, and she knew that he was no killer. What had happened when they fought the sand-man had been an accident, but it had driven Miles down a dark path.

Gwen couldn't deny that she was more than a bit horrified at what she'd seen the Prowler had done to some of his victims in the last year. Maybe they would never be able to commit a crime again after he was done with them, but she couldn't abide by the cost of such a result, especially as she knew that Miles didn't want to do it himself. But she also recognized that with all the horrible things he'd done in the past year, he still hadn't killed anyone except for the sand-man.

The city had still seen plenty of killings in the past year despite the massive drop in crime rates, many of them even criminals in what looked like gang warfare from people who were most likely just desperate to survive Prowler's supposed culling, but Gwen knew that none of it was Miles, no matter what anyone like Yuri said to try to convince her. For one thing, Gwen knew that Miles would never resort to using guns or mass murder. He was just trying to inspire fear.

When they'd fought the enormous sand monster, Miles had accidentally taken too big a risk in the heat of battle and had ended up saving Gwen's life at the cost of his own soul. Gwen never blamed him for it, and she tried to make sure he knew it, but even then, she could tell that he couldn't forgive himself as easily as she could.

He was broken by what he'd done, and Gwen tried to help him recover, but she didn't have the chance before the rest of the world got to him. When Miles had heard that criminals were terrified of him after what he'd done, he'd started to encourage the rumors that were told about the Prowler. He withdrew from Gwen, and he was smart about it. He dropped out of school in the middle of their final year at Brooklyn Visions Academy without telling Gwen, and retreated to the safety of his new business. He stopped answering Gwen's calls and texts, and when she went to Seraph Tech to ask to speak to him, she was repeatedly told that he wasn't there at the moment.

After that happened a few times, Gwen realized that he was avoiding her, and that's when she went after him as Spider-Woman, but Seraph Tech specialized in technology designed to combat superpowered threats, and Gwen never managed to get close. Gwen hadn't seen or heard from him since.

In her attempts to break Miles out of his stupor, Gwen had personally attacked this statue in front of her with the intent to destroy it, and she knew that there were cracks on various places all over it from her attacks, but she may as well have tried punching a building to death. A building protected by Seraph Tech drones employed by the United Nations.

Gwen knew that if she'd succeeded, it would've emboldened many criminals around the world to return to their dealings, but she would rather fight every criminal on the planet and go through an entire lifetime of getting punched through buildings by supervillains if it meant that she could protect Miles from the pain she knew he was putting himself through. But sadly, even after all the threats from without and within that Miles had protected Gwen from in the two years they'd been together, neither Gwen nor Spider-Woman had been able to protect him from himself.

However, Gwen was broken out of her memories and regrets as Fisk suddenly spoke up, looking admiringly at the statue as he remarked, "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

"It's certainly one of a kind, sir," Wesley agreed.

Appalled by what she was hearing, Gwen looked over at the two of them and said, "Someone was killed here, Fisk."

"Wrong, Officer Stacy," Fisk argued. "Many people died here. Not just the man-mountain, but also thousands of other people who would try to follow in his footsteps. The day the earth was killed, every other criminal on the planet started to see how small and vulnerable they all are, so much so that most of them committed suicide. Career suicide, that is, though I'm sure that there was no shortage of the real thing as well. And this statue was left here for everyone to see, the world's largest gravestone to mark the death of millions of those terrible people."

"Plenty of good people died that day as well, Fisk," Gwen pointed out.

Looking down sadly, Fisk agreed, "Yes. Including your old partner, I'm sure you believe. But… sacrifices like his are how you win a game like this, Ms. Stacy."

"It's not a game, Fisk," Gwen insisted, her heart stinging from the large man's comment. "It's people's lives. Thousands were lost that day, and you call it a game?"

"Tell me, Officer, when you look down at two warring colonies of ants, do you really care about the outcome, or are you just enjoying the view?" Fisk countered. "I learned this lesson a long time ago. It's all a game… when you're above it all, simply watching as it plays out. You have no control, just the entertainment value… unless and until you choose to place your own hand in it."

"No one is above someone else, Fisk," Gwen said with conviction, being a strong believer in a certain moral equality between people.

However, Fisk still disagreed with her, saying, "Are you sure? Do the rich not live very different lives than the poor? Are there not victims and victimizers? Or how about humans and superhumans? You see, Officer Stacy, mankind has long wondered what exactly separates one person from another, why we're all so similar yet so different. We're animals, after all, and like any social beasts, we seek a hierarchy. But I figured out the difference between a man and his brother when I was a mere boy, and it's not our religion, or our gender, or the color of our skin. It's our circumstances, and when we don't have good ones, it's our drive and our ability to improve them."

"So you have to work for success," Gwen granted. "That doesn't mean that anyone doesn't have to. Everyone has their struggles, Fisk."

Hearing that, Fisk looked down silently for a moment, then said thoughtfully, "Struggles? Hmm. When I was young, my father liked to abuse me and my mother, so I spent most of my time outside, but not for the same reasons as other children. You see, I was born a different shape and build from most kids, so the other boys in my neighborhood never let me join them in their games, their sports and whatnot. But simply to be cruel, they would always play it on the street in front of my apartment building, never allowing me to join in, only watch. Any lesser child would've been broken by the experience. But not me. No, I sat on the steps every day, and I would watch them play their game. I watched the game, and I eventually learned the game. And then, I learned to control the game."

Getting impatient as she failed to understand where Fisk was going with this, Gwen asked, "Is there a point to this story, Rudolph? Why are you telling me all this?"

Shrugging, Fisk answered in a low voice, "There's not many people with the power to understand how difficult it can be to simply control it. But you… You could kill anyone on the planet with a touch, yet you have never taken a life. That takes a unique sort of discipline, of self-control. So you must be able to see what I do, that everyone, and everything… is a game. It's the ants putting on a show for the bigger beings living above them, those higher-ups who could crush them all under their boot heel but are having too much fun watching it all play out. And you were given power, Officer Stacy… But my greatest strength has always been my will to seize it, to manipulate the game to suit me. Because the one who controls the game controls everything."

Gwen had no response to that at first, but then pointed out, "I once knew a guy who seemed to control everything. He's spent the last three years permanently disabled in prison. So I think I'll just stick with my own theory for now."

Looking disappointed, Fisk looked back up at the statue in front of them while telling her confidently, "One day you'll see. Just like Mr. Morales clearly has, one day you'll see that your power is whatever you give yourself, nothing more and nothing less."

Gwen was about to argue further, but then she felt her phone buzz in her pocket. Knowing that the few people who had her number weren't known to be very patient, Gwen hesitated for only a moment before she decided not to give Fisk the satisfaction of continuing this conversation and turned away as she pulled out her phone and turned it on to read the texts that she'd just received.

She was surprised and somewhat worried just by reading the name connected to the texts, but her concern only grew as she actually read what had been written. She had to read it twice to reassure herself that she wasn't imagining it, but finally lowered her phone with a newfound determination in her gaze, knowing that this was something she would have to see to personally, and it certainly couldn't wait.

Gwen heard Louise approaching her from behind and turned to face her as she put away her phone and urgently told her, "I need to go."

Looking confused, Louise asked, "Go? Gwen, we're in the middle of a public outing escorting Wilson Fisk. What's more important than that?"

Lowering her voice, Gwen said, "It's Spider-Woman business."

"I thought this was Spider-Woman business!" Louise argued.

Clearly having noticed their quiet, heated debate, Ben suddenly walked over to them and asked, "What's going on?"

Gwen and Louise exchanged a quick glance, during which Gwen looked into her partner's eyes in a silent plea, and finally Louise sighed in defeat and said, "My partner needs to go handle some important business, something she forgot to finish this morning. She won't be able to ride back with us."

Raising an eyebrow, Ben looked at Gwen inquisitively, then over at Fisk, then finally just sighed and shrugged as he told Gwen, "Alright, we can afford to be one down on the security team for the trip back. I heard you might be kind of hard to keep around all the time, something about your connection to Spider-Woman. But don't think I don't know why you're really leaving early, Stacy."

Looking at Ben's glaring face and wondering how he could possibly know that she wasn't being entirely truthful, Gwen questioned, "Uh… You do?"

Ben continued to glare at her for another second, then smirked and said, "Hey, it's alright. It's been a long day for all of us. I know I've wanted to get away from Fisk before I strangle him a few times myself, but you owe us all pastries tomorrow morning for covering your shift, alright?"

Trying to hide her relief, Gwen quickly agreed, "Yeah, yeah, of course. I'll see you guys tomorrow."

Gwen began to walk away, of course knowing that she wouldn't be able to take any of the cars present even if she had needed one, and hurriedly tried to find the nearest empty alleyway so she could change into her costume, refocusing on her current mission. If what the text she'd received had said was true, Gwen was about to have a very interesting night.

Miles POV

Perched on top of one of the PDNY's new criminal-activity-alert towers, Miles faced Dr. Brock's lab building a couple blocks away and narrowed his eyes at it in concentration as he scanned it for any security measures he might have missed during his visit earlier today, appearing to anyone who might happen to look up like a mere shadow, noticeable only by his glowing eyes, though if anyone actually did manage to get their eyes on him, he would surely be able to be gone long before they looked back to confirm what they'd seen.

As unlikely as it was that Dr. Brock's lab had a very advanced security system, Miles was much too experienced at this job by now to take a foolish risk like that. Never going anywhere unprepared was a lesson he had learned back in the first days of his training, before he'd even really been the Prowler. It was a lesson that had served him well many times over the last few years, and it was always nice to see that some things never changed.

But then, there were some things that he would like to change about his stakeouts. For one, he would really have to find a way to silence people interrupting his thought process over his communications line.

"You know you're just flexing really hard on the police by literally squatting on one of their scanners, right?" Phin asked rhetorically in his ear.

When Miles didn't respond to or even acknowledge her question, Phin continued, "Also, what's the point of selling the police Seraph Tech scanners if they don't work? Won't they just get rid of them and trash the brand's name when they figure out that they don't do what they're supposed to?"

Now having a question he was willing to answer, Miles explained, "The towers work perfectly, but their purpose is fourfold, while the police only know about one of them. They detect criminal activity better than anything developed in the past, but they ignore me completely. In short, the police can't afford to get rid of them, and I can continue my activities undetected. And my ability to remotely access the police-owned citywide tower network means I have all the information the cops have and more. So the police are paying me to stay several steps ahead of them, but I'm still making them more effective than ever while I'm at it."

"I count only three reasons," Phin noticed. "What's the fourth one?"

With the final reason being more personal than the rest, Miles looked down and answered, "The fourth reason for the Guardian Angel Protocol… is to help me stay ahead of people even more capable than the police. The really dangerous ones."

Phin was silent for a moment, and Miles knew that he wasn't fooling her about who he was really talking about, and she said with clear disbelief, "Uh-huh. Dangerous. Right."

Miles opted to put her words aside and silently returned his attention to his target. Phin had no idea how dangerous Spider-Woman could be to their operation, and not because of her powers, her potential ability to actually defeat him when all others would fail. No, she had much greater weapons at her disposal for fighting Miles than her webs and super-strength, and so Miles had taken every precaution possible to avoid an encounter. Phin didn't understand that need, and it would be pointless to argue about it with her.

Deciding to change the subject and get back to the mission, Miles asked, "Can we please focus? We're here to stop a Lizard army from quite possibly falling into Wilson Fisk's hands, so you can disagree with me while I ignore you later. Right now, we have a city to save."

He heard Phin let out a sigh before she said, "You know, you can't keep dodging this topic forever. But fine. The lab is clear and cameras are down, but avoid the front door, it has an alarm." She then muttered to herself quietly, "As if you ever use the door."

Tuning out her voice, Miles readied himself to pounce and abruptly leapt off of the tower, his anti-gravity shoes launching him across the street and onto the wall of the building adjacent to him, which he then used his claws to climb in a matter of seconds before rolling onto the new building's rooftop. He got back to his feet and dashed quickly across the rooftop before locking his eyes onto the next upcoming building and leaping straight across the street to land on it, landing on his feet and continuing his run as though there had been no obstacle.

Finally, he took his final leap and landed on top of Dr. Brock's work building. Unfortunately, the building had no skylight, which would've been Miles' preferred method of entry, so instead he swung himself down the side of the building and dropped onto the thin ledge of a windowsill, but still managed to keep his balance as he reached down and slipped one of his claws into the crack of the window before dragging it sideways and easily cutting through the window's locking mechanism, then used that same claw as leverage to pull the window open from the outside, allowing him to slip inside the building without notice, and all within a matter of seconds.

Dropping from the higher window and landing in a crouch on the ground floor, Miles quickly activated his mask's infrared scanner and looked around the building more closely, making sure that he was truly alone. However, to his surprise, he found that someone was in fact still here, in Dr. Brock's private office right next to her lab, in fact, prompting him to think that it was Dr. Brock herself who was still here, apparently sleeping.

Mentally cursing his own bad luck as he knew that this mission was certainly not going to be quiet and thus was going to get the doctor's attention, Miles nevertheless deactivated his scanner and stood up as he began walking towards Dr. Brock's lab. Deciding that speed would be more important than stealth at the moment, Miles faced the lab's locked door, and raised one of his gauntlets as he clenched it into a fist and heard the power coils within it start to hum with built-up energy, then reared back his fist to thrust it forward and knock the door right off its hinges so he could get in.

However, his punch stopped dead halfway to its target when he suddenly heard a familiar voice say, "You know, there's more polite ways to pay someone a visit. Ever heard of knocking?"

His eyes narrowing as he quickly tried to put the pieces together for how she could've possibly found him, he suddenly heard Phin say in his ear, "Oh, Miles, a red dot just appeared on your screen, about twenty feet behind you."

With everything now becoming much more clear, Miles sighed in annoyance and responded, "Mason, you're fired."

Finally, with no choice left to him, Miles lowered his fist and looked back over his shoulder to see the dreaded sight of Spider-Woman entering the building through the window he'd opened a moment before, gracefully vaulting her way through it and leaping towards Miles before rolling back to her feet on landing a few feet away from him, looking him up and down for a second before complimenting, "I like the new suit, by the way. Looks like you found a compromise to kind-of give yourself that cape you always wanted."

Irritably dismissing the dozens of emergency proximity alerts that were suddenly appearing on his mask's HUD as if he couldn't see the threat right in front of him, Miles pointed a finger at Gwen and told her, "You're not supposed to be here."

"And yet here I am," Gwen said carelessly as she took another couple steps towards him, prompting Miles to take a wary step back. Seeing that, Gwen stopped approaching Miles and was silent for a moment, then folded her arms over her chest as she told him, "Phin reached out to me."

"Yeah, I kind of put that together, that's why I fired her just now," Miles acknowledged with a glare.

Pressing on despite Miles' words, Gwen continued, "She told me that you were going after something related to the Lizard. Without me. And you know, I'd like to say that I told her that even you couldn't possibly be that stupid, but then I realized that I didn't believe it."

Miles knew that even as Gwen was mostly succeeding in keeping her anger under control, he was in dangerous waters now for several reasons, but that didn't stop him from trying to convince Gwen to leave as he told her in an aggravated but low voice, "I figured I wouldn't need help. And I'm still sure I don't, so get out of here and let me handle this!"

"You ghosted me for the last year and now you're telling me to just walk away?!" Gwen asked furiously.

"That's exactly what you're going to do," Miles told her sternly. "I'm in the middle of a mission to save maybe the whole world, so neither of us can really afford to have this conversation right now!"

"And I might agree with you, except that you're trying to save the world from Peter Parker's blood. My dead best friend's blood, and you weren't even going to tell me about it, were you?!" Gwen protested.

His hands reaching out like he wanted to throttle her, Miles answered, "You think?! Of course I wasn't going to tell you, because I didn't think you could be objective about it. Clearly, I was right!"

"Oh, don't pretend, you haven't even tried talking to me for a year-!" Gwen started to argue, and Miles prepared to return fire with further insistence that she leave, but suddenly Phin spoke up and said, "Hey, enough! Miles, put me on external audio!"

His adrenaline still high from his heated argument with Gwen, Miles directed his attention onto Phin now and accused, "And you! What right do you think you have to share mission info-"

"Zip it, Miles!" Phin suddenly cut him off, yelling loudly in his ear. "We can argue about this later! Something new just came through, and it requires both you and Gwen urgently, so just listen to me for once!"

Shocked into silence by Phin's sudden firmness, Miles reached out a hand to cover Gwen's mouth, forcefully stopping her from continuing to berate him, and before she could smack his hand away and resume it, Miles reached out with his other hand and pressed a button on his gauntlet, then lowered his hand from Gwen's face as Phin's voice began to speak from the device on Miles' wrist.

"Okay, look, I get it. Both of you are angry right now. Maybe I did the right thing, inviting Gwen here, and maybe I didn't," Phin told them quickly. "But it's a good thing you're here now, because this mission just got more complicated. Prowler, we just received a message on our servers from an encrypted source, and it says that the bomb we've been looking for is here in Hell's Kitchen, just a few blocks away."

Her attention quickly getting drawn to those words, Gwen asked, "Wait, the bomb threat? The same one the PDNY's been looking for the last few weeks?"

"The very same," Phin answered. "And most importantly, it says that the bomb's armed. We have about ten minutes before it goes."

His own priorities also having quickly changed, Miles asked, "Where is it?"

"I've marked its supposed location on your HUD," Phin responded.

Miles thought through the situation for a moment, then lowered his arm and switched the audio back into his earpiece only as he turned to Gwen and reluctantly told her, "Alright, you get your wish. Stay here and destroy everything in this lab, anything relating to Dr. Elsa Brock. Don't forget the secret compartment in her cupboard. I'm going after that bomb."

With that said, he began to walk away, but Gwen hurriedly grabbed his arm to stop him and suspiciously said, "Shouldn't we both go after the bomb? I mean, it sounds like it's the more immediate concern."

Shrugging her hand off of him, Miles turned back to Gwen and pointed into Dr. Brock's lab as he told her, "This needs to be dealt with now too. The bomb is one thing, but I can reach it faster than you can, and while it needs to be stopped, an army of Lizards sounds a lot worse."

Even through her mask, Miles was able to recognize that Gwen was hesitant to accept his reasons, clearly thinking that he was probably going to try to vanish on her again after he managed to get out of her sight (which was exactly what he intended to do), but as always, her sense of duty overcame her own personal interests and she gestured with her head for Miles to go as she told him, "Alright. Go. But we will talk after."

Miles gave a false nod of agreement, then turned away from her again and ran towards the window they'd both entered through and jumped back outside as he pulled up his HUD and began following Phin's marker leading him to the suspected location of the bomb.

Gwen POV

Typical. Gwen finally managed to corner her old boyfriend after a year of searching for him, and they got to spend less than four minutes together before he disappeared again, called away to deal with the very bomb that Gwen herself had been looking for for weeks now, of all things.

And of course, they spent almost the entire time arguing over one another instead of properly reconnecting, and now Miles was probably going to try to escape her once again. Not that he would succeed this time. After losing track of him for a whole year, Gwen was not about to let him get away from her again. But unfortunately, she hadn't really been able to think up a good excuse for why she couldn't allow him to go stop a bomb, so she'd been forced to let him leave. For now.

But while he was gone, Gwen had a mission of her own. Fighting to put Miles' situation out of her mind so she could focus on what that mission was, Gwen looked around on the ceiling until she located a ventilation shaft opening. Shooting her webs onto the ceiling on either side of the barred grate, Gwen pulled herself up to it and slipped inside the vent shaft so she could begin crawling her way through the internal parts of the building, and soon dropped back out inside the lab that Miles had been trying to force his way into, the one belonging to a woman who he'd named as Dr. Elsa Brock.

Looking into the office right next to the lab, Gwen could see a woman with blond hair sleeping at her desk and assumed that she must be the doctor that Miles had spoken of. Deciding that it would probably be best not to wake her, at least not yet, Gwen silently walked around the room and arrived next to Dr. Brock's other desk (how many desks did one lady need?), then quickly rifled through all of the drawers looking for any kind of blood samples until she arrived at the bottom one, in which she found a locked metal box.

Gwen looked through the desk once more, trying to find a key for the box though she didn't really expect to find one, and sure enough, found nothing. Sighing to herself in annoyance, Gwen then looked towards Dr. Brock's office and decided that it was her most likely option, though it wasn't one she would've preferred.

Creeping across the lab, Gwen arrived outside Dr. Brock's office and slowly turned the doorknob before she steadily began to push the door open, only to be surprised by the loudest, squeakiest door on the planet. Wincing uncomfortably, Gwen mentally willed the door to be more quiet, but it refused to indulge her wishes as Dr. Brock snorted and stirred in her sleep, making Gwen freeze completely for a moment to avoid waking her, and fortunately Dr. Brock soon mumbled something sleepily and settled herself back down.

Letting out a deep but quiet breath of relief, Gwen chose not to push the door open any further and simply slid her way into the office through the thin crack she'd already opened. Then, walking over to the desk, Gwen noticed the doctor's lanyard with her laminated ID card lying on the wooden surface, and also with a small key on the ring.

Looking up at the sleeping woman as she reached forward to grab the lanyard, Gwen softly told her, "If your hand suddenly shoots out to grab me, fair warning… I'm terrified of zombies and am very likely to accidentally break your arm."

Thankfully, the warning seemed to work, as Dr. Brock didn't make even an unconscious attempt to stop her, which maybe hadn't been likely from the beginning, but Gwen had learned that she could never be too careful. But with the key she sought now grasped tightly in one of her hands, Gwen quickly retraced her steps back out of the office and inserted the key into the locked box on the lab's desk before she unlocked and opened it.

Looking inside it, Gwen quickly determined that about half of the vials in the box, the ones on the right side of the box, must be Peter's blood, as they had some sort of green growth inside them, likely biological remains from Peter's usage of the serum that had turned him into the Lizard in the first place.

Honestly, Gwen couldn't imagine what kind of horrible people could possibly want to recreate the effects of that serum, given how much damage it had done and what kind of monster Peter had been forced to become against his will, but she imagined that that was the idea. Probably some sort of criminal arms dealer, maybe working with some human trafficker to prepare an army of savage, superpowered beasts for muscle to fight back against the Prowler's reign of terror (as much as Gwen hated to admit it, she knew that Miles was far more feared than she was these days). But whoever they were, however Dr. Brock had been involved in their evil plan, they weren't going to get what they were after, not on Gwen's watch. She refused to allow anyone to insult Peter's memory in such a way.

She didn't know what the other blood samples in the box were, but she wasn't going to take any chances with them. Miles had been very clear, but he hadn't even needed to be; Gwen already had every intention of destroying all of this research relating to the Lizard, anything that could potentially replicate what had happened to her first former best friend.

But as she thought along those lines, Gwen suddenly remembered that Miles had said something about a secret compartment in one of Dr. Brock's cupboards. Seeing how he had mentioned it, Gwen could only guess that it must also be related to the Lizard project, meaning it also had to be destroyed. Turning around to see a long line of wall-mounted cupboards above her, Gwen began to open them and push aside the supplies blocking the back of the cupboard from her view.

In the back of the third cupboard, Gwen found what she was looking for. A short but long safe with a combination lock on it. The sight of it made Gwen frown. Once, safes had been more of Miles' thing, as he was quite well-equipped for cracking them (both figuratively and literally, if necessary). Of course, Gwen would be able to pop this one open as well with her spider-proportionate strength, but it wasn't really her usual style.

Reaching into the cupboard, Gwen pulled the safe out of it and carried it back over to the desk, then absently shot a web line across the room to pull Dr. Brock's office door shut once more to muffle the noise she was about to make. She then used one arm to hold the safe firmly against the surface of the desk while she stuck her other hand to the surface of the safe's door, then pulled against it as hard as she could.

The metal began to slowly bend, but that wasn't enough for Gwen, so she took both her arm and her hand off of it and instead used her webs to secure it down on the desk, then quickly punched the safe's door to disfigure the metal before she placed both hands on it and began to tug on it hard once again. Gwen would say this much for Dr. Brock, she knew how to buy quality security for her research, but it wouldn't be enough to keep out Spider-Woman.

The metal bent and groaned for another couple seconds, and then it finally broke off completely, and Gwen looked inside the safe victoriously before her expression fell and her head tilted in confusion. Inside the safe was… Actually, she had no idea what it was. It was a simple hollow cylinder made of thick glass, about a foot and half long with a base diameter of maybe eight inches, and locked in place against the walls of the safe to keep it from moving, though Gwen wasn't sure why it would.

Inside the cylinder was some simple… black sludge of some sort? It was all just a smooth black with a light sheen, not appearing at all appealing or interesting, but it still had Gwen's attention, especially as her Spider-Sense inexplicably tingled at the sight of it. Still, Gwen didn't see anything wrong with it, so she hesitantly reached out a hand to lightly touch the glass with her fingers, then actually jumped with surprise when the sludge suddenly moved, five tiny tendrils of that same tar-like substance reaching out to press against the glass in the same places that her fingertips had been before she had jumped away, like it was attracted to her touch.

When she moved away, the substance fell neutral once again, and Gwen looked at it with intrigue. What was this thing? It didn't seem to have anything to do with Dr. Brock's Lizard experiments as Miles had apparently assumed, nor did it match the description of anything Gwen had ever heard about in the entire animal kingdom in general. It had reacted to her proximity, so was it alive? Or was it simply attracted to warmth or something like that? It didn't seem to have any defining features, no face or organs or skeleton. In fact, it didn't appear to have any sort of structure whatsoever. If Gwen had to guess, she would think it was probably the result of some crazy chemistry experiment, but then why was it in an animal research lab?

Unfortunately, she didn't have very long to ponder it as there was the sound of hurrying footsteps, and suddenly Dr. Brock burst out of her office, wide awake and looking panicked. "What did you do?!" she asked, staring at Gwen in horror. "What did you do?!"

Putting her hands up non-threateningly and trying to draw attention away from all of Dr. Brock's opened drawers, Gwen responded calmingly, "Okay, I know that this probably looks bad, but before you freak out-"

Not listening to her, Dr. Brock rushed forward and told her with mad eyes, "You don't know what you're-!"

However, Dr. Brock would not manage to finish her sentence, as Gwen's Spider-Sense suddenly tingled powerfully, and her eyes widened before she jumped towards Dr. Brock and yelled in warning, "Get down!"

Gwen didn't quite manage to reach her though before what her Sider-Sense had vaguely predicted came to pass, and all at once, every single wall of the building blew in every direction, and Gwen was tossed away by a blastwave of force in midair as the entire lab was flipped in all directions, and a burst of fire shot inward to almost instantaneously fill the room, scorching several holes in Gwen's suit.

While still in the air, Gwen collided with multiple different flying objects including heavy scientific equipment along with pieces of the destroyed walls, and she felt a sharp pain in her left shoulder as she hit back-first into a falling metal support beam followed by a much worse stab of pain in her right leg as her kneecap collided with Dr. Brock's safe flying at several hundred miles per hour, the pain of which made her want to scream out in agony, but she only succeeded in opening her mouth in a quiet gasp. She felt both of her web-shooters break at different times as flying objects crashed into them, though thankfully one of them was broken saving Gwen's wrist from getting impaled by a jagged piece of broken glass, and then a fire extinguisher crashed into her chest, causing her to feel even more pain from just the impact that only doubles when the force of the collision knocked her down to the ground, and large pieces of rubble began to fall down on top of her.

After several seconds, the debris finally began to settle enough for Gwen to try to get her bearings, her face mostly still uncovered even though the rest of her body was badly damaged and mostly buried beneath numerous huge pieces of stone. Gwen was disoriented for a moment, but then quickly realized that though she had somehow survived what had just happened, Dr. Brock was still somewhere in here, and didn't have any of Gwen's superhuman durability. If there was any chance that Gwen could still save her, she had to try.

Trying to keep her head clear, Gwen analyzed her own situation and tried to move her body, but it was pure agony to make such attempts. Now that she was relatively out of danger, Gwen could tell that in addition to being buried beneath the weight of much of a collapsed building, she had dislocated her left shoulder and probably also had several broken ribs, and her suit had been torn to shreds. Worst of all, though, was her leg. It felt like every bone in it had been shattered, and Gwen knew that she wouldn't be standing on it again any time soon, much less superhero-ing.

Fighting to maintain consciousness, Gwen attempted to piece together what had just happened. There'd been some kind of explosion, one big enough to level the entire building. The city's emergency teams would surely be here soon to sift through the wreckage… and they would find Gwen here, trapped and broken, her mask mostly blown away. Once that happened, would that be the end of Spider-Woman's secret identity? Was Gwen's secret double-life really about to be destroyed after all this time due to a mere unexpected explosion?

Speaking of, where had the explosion even come from? Gwen recalled that Miles had gone to defuse a bomb about ten minutes ago, which Phin had said was the time before detonation. Had he then failed to defuse it? But Miles never allowed himself to fail, and in any case, the bomb had supposedly been several blocks away.

Unless there was more than one, Gwen's subconscious considered, and Gwen's eyes widened as she once again pushed against the debris holding her to the ground, trying to ignore the pain as she wondered how many people might have really been hurt.

However, when she expectedly failed once again, Gwen fell back to catch her breath and tried to look around for anything she could use as leverage to get the rubble off of herself, but instead she looked outside the perimeter of what had recently been the building she was in and her eyes widened even further in horror. Wherever she was, it no longer even looked like New York City. All around her, Gwen could see only piles of destroyed stones topped with raging fires, like the entire area had been delivered an apocalyptic-level missile strike. Through the smoke that rose all around her, Gwen couldn't even see the tops of the skyscrapers that should've reached to the New York skyline, leaving her unable to tell whether or not the entire city had been destroyed without her knowledge.

Looking at the scope of the damage, it wasn't hard to tell that this had been no accident. This had been a massive terrorist attack, one that no one had known about. If this had indeed been the result of multiple bombs, there must've been at least dozens, and that was only judging by how much Gwen could see from where she lay. They must've been getting planted for weeks, and all the while, the PDNY had been struggling to locate a single one. How many hundreds might've been killed by this event, maybe even thousands? How many more were still in terrible danger while Spider-Woman lay trapped beneath a couple thousand pounds of stone, her body broken into pieces?

That thought gave Gwen the incentive she needed to push one final time against the weight holding her down, clenching her teeth through the tears that pooled in her eyes against her will as she tried harder than ever before to get herself free, but she still found herself unable to manage it, not in her current state. Falling back helplessly, Gwen turned her head sideways and resigned herself to needing to wait to be rescued.

She supposed that the best she could hope for was that maybe Miles would try to save her and would reach her before the city's emergency services did. She didn't doubt for a moment that even with all that had happened between them, Miles would surely come to try to help her as soon as he heard what had happened down here. But what if he was in danger himself, or if he truly had no intention of returning originally, he might've dealt with the bomb and simply left, and Gwen might be waiting hours for him to come to her aid. Though among this level of destruction, she may not get any help from anyone else any faster than that anyway.

Gwen was just trying to resign herself to any number of miserable conclusions to her current situation when she suddenly noticed movement among the stones in front of her. Looking towards it and trying to determine its origin, whether it was Dr. Brock or maybe someone trying to dig through the rocks for survivors, Gwen struggled for a moment to figure out where the movement had come from, but then it moved again, and Gwen looked at it in confusion for a moment before her eyes widened as she realized what she was seeing.

Dr. Brock's cupboard safe had landed near Gwen, its open door facing towards her, and the glass cylinder secured inside it now had a small crack in its walls, an admittedly impressive show of strength considering that it had just been through an explosion, but the cylinder was now broken open a small bit nonetheless. But far stranger was the fact that the black sludge inside the cylinder seemed to be moving of its own accord, not even reacting to Gwen's fingers this time, and Gwen watched in amazement as it slowly slid its way through the hole in the glass and dropped to the ground before it began to move forward like a living oil spill.

For a few seconds, Gwen just watched the previously inanimate object in wonder, but then it froze suddenly, then abruptly changed direction and began heading right toward her. Gwen began to get nervous at seeing the sludge's approach and her Spider-Sense tingled rather needlessly as she began trying in vain to jerk herself away from the… whatever it was.

In seconds, however, it was upon her both literally and figuratively as it arrived next to her and regarded her for a second before it reached out a tendril and grabbed onto Gwen's damaged right leg, making her gasp in pain as it crawled on top of her. Then, it began to climb even further up her body, though it didn't leave her leg to do so, instead just unfolding itself onward little by little as it began to spread itself out and wrap around Gwen's entire leg, then her waist, and still kept going, down her other leg and up her torso.

Unable to fight what was happening even if she'd had any idea what it was, having never experienced anything like this, Gwen followed her instincts and began trying to twist and turn to dislodge the sludge, grunting with effort as she met no success in her futile efforts, but then she hesitated as she began to have yet another unfamiliar experience. A surprising warmth was spreading its way through Gwen's damaged leg, and then, unbelievable as it seemed, not only did the pain start to ease, but she could actually feel her leg realigning itself into its proper position, followed by its strength returning, and Gwen curiously tried to move her leg experimentally. To her complete and utter astonishment, she felt no discomfort whatsoever, as though it had not been broken at all. Then, that same feeling began to spread into the other damaged parts of her body, her cuts and bruises losing their smart and her shoulder automatically getting pulled back into place with only a dull ache that soon passed as well.

To put things mildly, Gwen was shocked by this strange new turn of events, so much so that it took her a moment to notice that the sludge had now climbed its way up to her face and was beginning to cover it just like the rest of her body. Realizing too late that she was in danger of suffocation, Gwen tried raising her face upwards as though that would be able to stop the sludge, but before she could even yell in panic, it stretched out and quickly covered her mouth, then her nose, silencing her and cutting off her oxygen flow respectively, and Gwen's eyes went wide one final time before the sludge proceeded to finally draw itself over them, and then Gwen's world went black as she was completely enveloped by the sludge.

Trapped inside it and unable to speak or move, Gwen felt true terror for one of the only times since she'd first gotten her powers, wondering if she was really about to be suffocated and… consumed?... by the sludge.

However, to her increasing surprise, Gwen's discomfort lasted only a moment, and suddenly her vision began to return in perfect clarity. Her body loosened up and freed itself from the sludge's control, but even more than that, Gwen soon realized that she felt… good. Better than she'd felt in a long time. Not only were her injuries all apparently healed, but Gwen also felt noticeably stronger, more so than even her incredible spider powers had ever made her feel.

Feeling a newfound confidence, Gwen looked up at the hundreds of giant pieces of stone that were pinning her to the ground, a weight that now seemed practically laughable, and Gwen put her hands against it and pushed upwards. Immediately, the stones began to shift and rise, and without even needing to put her feet beneath her, Gwen felt herself start to rise up from the earth, like some sort of supports on her back were lifting her off the ground. Not bothering to concern herself at the moment with how that could possibly be, Gwen continued pushing against the stones on top of her and soon succeeded in pushing them completely to the side as she once again stood on her feet.

Only when she was free did Gwen look back at the place she'd been trapped a moment before, then looked down at her hands, amazed with her own accomplishment. To her astoundment, she quickly realized that her hands were not covered in the remains of her destroyed gloves, but were instead adorned with new gloves that were completely black, though with a spot of white on the backs of her palms.

Tracing her finger down one hand and up her arm, Gwen saw that it wasn't just her gloves that had been repaired, either. It seemed like her whole suit had gotten a dark-style makeover, and though Gwen couldn't quite tell what the whole thing looked like without some sort of mirror, she could tell that her new outfit was almost completely black, though there was some sort of dark pink/reddish line running down the front of her body, starting in the center of her chest and going down to wrap around her left leg a couple times before it ended at her foot.

Out of the corners of her vision, Gwen could see that her hood was once again intact as well but seemed to be completely red on the inside rather than the pink with cyan webbing style that Gwen had created for her costume, and it seemed to be attached to a jacket that Gwen was wearing over the rest of her costume.

Now, being a pretty smart person (if she did say so herself), Gwen was able to almost instantly determine that the sludge that had climbed on top of her had seemingly created this replacement suit for her, and she also understood that it was probably actually made out of whatever the sludge had been simply given solid form (which she wasn't sure how to feel about), but trying to comprehend how such a thing had happened was another matter entirely.

However, Gwen only thought about it for a moment before she remembered that lots of people could still be in need of rescuing and decided to worry about it later. Especially seeing how this suit seemed to be increasing Gwen's power levels, granting her the ability to save countless more people if given the chance. But with her web-shooters broken…

Suddenly having a crazy idea, Gwen looked down at her wrists and wondered to herself, if the sludge could create a suit for her, could it possibly have restored something more advanced. Deciding to take the chance, Gwen aimed one of her wrists upward and made her usual hand gesture to fire her web-shooters, and amazingly, a web line fired itself from her wrist just like usual despite the web-shooters getting broken. Grinning to herself, Gwen tugged on the web line to pull herself away from the area while commenting, "Okay, I'll admit it. Whatever this thing is, it's pretty cool."

Third Person POV

Just a few minutes after Spider-Woman had left the bomb site of what had once been Dr. Elsa Brock's science center, a group of about half a dozen men entered the same area, wearing very similar outfits to one another consisting of loose clothes made of black cloth, including masks that covered every part of their heads except for a line over their eyes, and a red sash around their waists.

They dropped from the surrounding rooftops, completely silent and the movements in sync with one another, and quickly approached the wreckage of the building before beginning to climb through the rubble, pushing aside the rocks and seemingly looking for something.

One of them, who seemed to be the leader, climbed to the top of a pile of rocks and began to scan the area with an analytical eye, but he didn't manage to see anything for himself before one of the other men pushed aside one of the rocks to reveal a blond-haired woman lying beneath the remains of the building, a bad cut on her head and her eyes closed beneath a broken pair of glasses, then called out in Japanese, "Teacher! I found Brock!"

Curious, the leader looked over at him and yelled back, "Is she alive?"

The man who'd found Dr. Brock leaned her head down on her chest, then answered, "I detect a heartbeat, but it's faint."

Looking dissatisfied, the leader made a gesture of quickly drawing his hand over his throat, and the other man nodded in understanding before he raised a single fist and quickly brought it down on Dr. Brock's chest in a single precise attack that made her body jolt before he laid his head down on her chest again, once again listening for a heartbeat, then stood up and walked away from the body in silence, resuming his search pattern.

A moment later, another cloth-covered man got the leader's attention once again and called out, "Teacher, here!"

Excitedly rushing over to the man who had spoken, the leader of the group hopefully leaned down to look at what the man had found, but ultimately looked away in disappointment. Turning away from the empty safe with the broken glass, the leader looked around the area once quickly, then reached into the lines of his tunic and pulled out a phone, then pressed a button to dial the only number on the device and waited for a couple rings before a woman's voice asked, "Well?"

"The first target is dealt with, but the second is in the wind." the man referred to as "Teacher" reported.

There was a brief silence, then the woman said, "Understood. We'll find it in time. For now, we have other concerns. You and your men take the rest of the night off. Go celebrate a job well done. Hell's Kitchen has fallen, and the future is at hand."

A/N: Wow. 17K+ words. I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure how that happened, but I wanted to fit quite a bit into this chapter and I guess I just got a bit carried away. In any case, I hope you all enjoyed it. I finally gave you guys some context for Miles and Gwen's breakup, and I finally got to start the next important chapter in Gwen's story, one I've been working towards for quite a while now. We'll get more into it in the next chapter, but first I want to apologize to the readers of my Path of Honor fanfic. Originally, the plan was for me to put out a chapter on both stories this week, but this one obviously turned out a bit longer than planned and I couldn't quite stop myself once I'd started it. But if any of you reading this are readers of that story as well, just know that I'll have a new chapter on that story by next week. If not, we shall form the circle of shame. But anyway, leave a comment with your thoughts on this latest chapter if you enjoyed and thanks for reading!