A back alley off 14th Street in Queens.
The asphalt here had vanished.
In its place was a thirty-meter-long glassified corridor that gleamed with an obsidian sheen.
A tactical boot stepped onto it, raising no dust—only the crisp click of a hard sole striking glass.
Clint Barton—code-named “Hawkeye”—looked down at his feet.
The once-potholed asphalt now possessed an eerie smoothness, reflecting an obsidian glaze under the beam of his tactical flashlight.
Clint Barton crouched down.
He switched off the screeching Geiger counter.
The damn thing had been wailing non-stop, sounding like a cat with its tail stepped on.
“Fury.”
Barton ran a finger across the mirror-smooth surface.
Heat scorched through his fingertip.
“If you want to fry an egg here, you wouldn’t even need oil.
Thermal imaging shows the underground temp is still high enough to roast a turkey.”
Nick Fury’s somber voice came through the earpiece.
“I want conclusions, Barton.
Not a cooking guide.”
“Conclusions?”
Barton stood up and looked around.
The brick walls bore obvious radial melt patterns, as if God had taken a magnifying glass and focused sunlight directly onto the alley.
“Conclusion: radiation levels are off the charts, but it’s not nuclear.
It’s more like…
a momentary burst of some high-purity isotope.” Barton looked down the nearly fully vitrified dead-end alley and whistled low.
“Residual thermal analysis suggests a ‘miniature sun’ touched down here last night.
Instantaneous temperatures exceeded at least three thousand degrees.
Fury, if this thing goes off somewhere crowded like Times Square, we’re going to need to hand out sunscreen to every citizen in New York—SPF ten thousand.”
Barton paused, adding:
“And the control was surgical.
The energy only destroyed this alley—didn’t even touch a trash can two meters away.
That’s the scariest part.”
…
Triskelion Headquarters, Director’s Office.
Nick Fury tossed the tablet onto his bulletproof glass desk.
Two completely different reports were displayed on the screen.
On the left was the grim news of Tony Stark going missing in Afghanistan.
On the right was a field report on a suspected “human nuke” appearing in Queens, New York.
“Is this ‘Give Nick Fury a Headache Week’?”
Fury rubbed his throbbing temples.
Natasha Romanoff pushed open the door without knocking.
“The situation with Stark is worse than expected.” She slid a set of satellite photos in front of Fury.
“The terrorists cut off all signals.
Those military idiots are running around the desert like headless chickens.”
“Have Colonel Rhodes wipe their asses.”
Fury stared with his single eye at the photo of Queens, where the faint blur of a Ford sedan was visible.
“I care more about my own backyard right now.”
“Understood.
What about New York?”
“Keep Barton on it.
I refuse to believe this ‘Fireman’ can vanish into thin air.”
Less than five minutes after Natasha left, there was another knock at the door.
This time, it was Jasper Sitwell, the senior agent in charge of the New York intelligence network.
He looked slightly uneasy, clutching a fresh newspaper in his hand.
“Sir, regarding the street anomaly in New York…
we have a new lead.”
Fury perked up.
“Satellite capture?
Or did you recover the surveillance footage?”
“Uh, not quite.” Sitwell swallowed hard and handed over the newspaper.
“It’s…
news from the newsstands.”
Fury suspiciously took the copy of *The Daily Bugle*.
The front-page headline screamed in bold, oversized font that practically jumped off the paper: *MASKED MENACE: SPIDER-MAN!*
Though the photo was somewhat blurry, it clearly showed a figure in a red-and-blue suit hanging upside down from a billboard in Times Square, shooting a line of white webbing from his hand.
Dead silence fell over the office.
Three seconds later, Fury slammed the newspaper down onto the bulletproof glass desk, rattling the coffee cup right off its base.
“So you’re telling me,” Fury said, his voice terrifyingly low, like a lion on the verge of roaring, “that we have the most advanced satellite system in the world, a global network of secret agents, and an annual budget big enough to buy half of Europe…
and we’re relying on a fifty-cent gossip rag for intel?!”
Sitwell shrank back.
“Sir, this…”
“The guy is on the front page!
He even has a fan club!
And your report only lands on my desk *now*?” Fury pointed at the ridiculous red-and-blue figure on the paper, his single eye wide with fury.
“Is your intel network running on dial-up internet?
What the hell is happening to New York this week?
Son of the Sun, Spider-Kid…
what’s next?
Godzilla climbing the Empire State Building to swat down planes?!”
The communicator lit up again, and Barton’s voice chimed in just in time to interrupt Fury’s rant.
“Sir, I think I found a lead on the ‘Fireman.'”
Fury took a deep breath, fighting down the urge to throw Sitwell out the window.
“Speak.
It had better be useful, Barton.”
Barton transmitted a batch of traffic surveillance data.
The screen zoomed in.
An old Ford.
In the driver’s seat was a worried middle-aged man.
In the passenger seat sat a pale, blond teenager.
“Vehicle owner: Ben Parker,” Sitwell read off the file.
“The passenger is his son, Leon Parker.
According to records, the kid should have been critically injured that night, but no hospital ever admitted him.”
Fury narrowed his eye.
Injured.
Didn’t go to a hospital.
High temperatures capable of melting a street occurred at the scene.
The next day, the kid went to school like nothing happened.
All the dots connected in Fury’s mind.
“Classify Leon Parker as a Level 8 Subject of Interest.”
Fury tapped his fingers rhythmically against the desk.
“I want to know everything about him.
What he likes to eat, what time he goes to bed, and…
whether he’s the ‘Fireman’ who scorched a street into glass.”
“And if he is?” Natasha asked.
Fury let out a cold smirk, a sharp glint flashing in his single eye.
“Then pray he’s a good kid.
Otherwise, the Avengers Initiative’s first target won’t be an alien—it’ll be a high schooler.”
…
The night wind in New York carried the dampness of the Hudson River.
Peter Parker crouched on a steel girder at the top of an unfinished building.
He held a strand of web in his hand, his body swaying gently with the breeze.
The feeling was remarkable.
Before, he had always relied on his eyes to find a landing spot and his muscles to fight gravity.
But ever since he got “beaten senseless” by Leon that night, he had learned something else.
Shut his mouth.
Close his eyes.
Listen, and feel.
“Phew…”
Peter let go, falling into a free fall.
Just as he was about to hit the ground, he flicked his wrist, shooting out a web line and swinging through the air in a perfect arc.
“Ten out of ten!” He landed firmly on a rooftop, striking what he thought was a cool pose toward the empty air.
“Peter Parker, you are a genius.
If the gym teacher could see this, he’d definitely give you an A+ for the semester.”
Clap, clap, clap.
A sudden burst of applause echoed from the shadows.
“Not bad at all, little bug.”
Every hair on Peter’s body stood on end.
His spider-sense was blaring inside his head like a struck gong.
He spun around sharply.
Three guys in bizarre gear were fanning out, surrounding him.
On the left was a burly man wearing exoskeletal armor, holding two hydraulic hammer fists.
In the middle was a tall, thin man in a cowboy hat, his electric whip crackling with high voltage.
Hovering above was an old man in a green bodysuit with a pair of mechanical wings strapped to his back.
Peter couldn’t help bursting out laughing.
Especially at the old guy in the green suit with massive mechanical wings on his back—he looked like a vulture that had escaped from a nursing home.
“Whoa,” Peter said, pointing at the winged old man.
“Did you guys escape from a circus?
Especially you, Grandpa—doing high-altitude stunts at your age?
Osteoporosis is no joke; one bad fall and you’re done for!”
“It’s the Vulture!”
The old man in the sky roared, swooping down as his razor-sharp steel wings slashed toward Peter’s neck.
At the same time, Montana the cowboy whipped his electric lash like a striking viper.
The burly Crusher raised his heavy hammers, blocking Peter’s path of retreat.
A dead end.
If it were before, Peter would probably be panicking, firing off webs wildly and getting beaten to a pulp.
But now…
The terror of being dominated by Leon had actually taught him how to stay calm.
*”Don’t rely on your eyes.
Your eyes will lie to you.”*
Peter closed his eyes.
Leon’s voice echoed in his mind.
Peter closed his eyes.
The sound of the wind changed.
The airflow on his left compressed under the heavy hammer.
The air on his right singed from the high voltage.
The whistle piercing through the air above was the sharpest of all.
Now!
Instead of retreating, Peter stepped forward.
He ducked low, sliding almost flush with the rooftop.
*Bzzt!*
The electric whip grazed his scalp and struck full force into Crusher’s armor.
“Argh!” Shot by his own teammate, Crusher stiffened in place.
Peter seized the moment, shooting two web lines onto Montana’s wrists and yanking hard.
“Up you go!”
Montana lost his balance and was yanked airborne, slamming straight into the diving Vulture.
*BANG!*
The two villains collided in midair, crashing to the ground like snapped kites.
In just three seconds.
Peter opened his eyes, staring at his downed opponents on the roof, barely able to believe it himself.
“I…
I actually did it?”
He looked down at his hands.
That precise prediction of danger, that thrill of setting a trap in advance…
Was this the “art of combat” Leon talked about?
Top floor of Oscorp Tower.
Norman Osborn swirled the whiskey in his glass, the ice clinking crisply against the crystal.
On the monitor, the red-and-blue figure stood frozen on the rooftop.
“Reaction speed increased by thirty percent.
Predictive accuracy…
an astounding ninety percent.”
Norman licked his lips, his eyes gleaming with fanatical obsession as if admiring a top-tier lab rat.
“That ‘Blue Lizard’ is a genius mentor.
In just a few days, he turned a jumping bug into a warrior.”
He put down his glass and pressed the comm button.
“Test complete.
Bring out the main course.”
Norman’s voice was bone-chillingly cold.
“Send Scorpion.
I want to see if this little bug can still jump when absolute strength crushes technique.”
On the rooftop.
Peter was just about to web up the three unlucky guys and hang them from a streetlight.
Suddenly.
The spider-sense in his brain shrieked without warning.
It wasn’t a warning.
It was a death knell.
The feeling was even more intense than when facing Leon—it was pure, unadulterated intent to kill.
Peter whipped his head around.
In the darkness, a mechanical tail glowing with an eerie green light hung silently right behind his head.
At the tip of the stinger, a drop of highly corrosive acid slowly dripped down.
It splashed onto the concrete.
*Sizzle—*
White smoke billowed up.
“Gotcha, little bug.”
A raspy voice exploded right in Peter’s ear.