After dinner, Peter went back to his room and picked up the marker again, adding new lines to the whiteboard — traffickers, docks, container, someone knew their names.
He stared at it a long moment before deciding he’d check up on the case whenever he got the chance.
If the people responsible walked, he needed to know.
He opened his laptop and pulled up the news.
Nothing.
No headlines about a warehouse raid, no mention of six men found tied to a ceiling, nothing at all.
Makes sense, he thought.
They’ll probably keep it quiet, at least until morning.
He picked up his phone instead and pulled up the video he’d taken, watching it back with a critical eye.
It was evidence, but he wasn’t sure it was enough.
A defense lawyer could spin almost anything — claim the victims had gone willingly, claim it was staged, claim a dozen things a jury might actually believe if the right people got paid to make them believe it.
I need more than this, he thought.
Because if there’s even one corrupt judge in that courtroom, this whole thing goes nowhere.
He caught himself in the thought and frowned.
He knew he was being pessimistic.
But after tonight — after watching a woman who’d just wanted to get home from her shift end up zip-tied in a shipping container — his faith in people had taken a hit he wasn’t sure would heal by morning.
He shook his head, pushing the thought aside, and made himself focus on something more immediate: how he was supposed to walk into school tomorrow and act like a normal person.
It was almost funny.
It hadn’t even been a full day since the café with Felicia, and he’d already thrown himself into another life-or-death situation.
If Felicia — or MJ, or Gwen — ever found out about tonight, he had a feeling they’d kill him before any trafficker got the chance.
He huffed a tired laugh at that and decided it was time to call it a night.
I’ll wake up early and train before school, he thought, pulling his covers up.
No hiccups tomorrow.
Practice only helps.
With that, Peter drifted off to sleep.
Somewhere else, in a room lit by almost nothing at all, a heavyset man sat in a heavy chair, the one thin light source in the room catching the broad, unnaturally hard shape of his skull.
Another man stood before him, waiting.
“You know what needs to be done,” Hammerhead said, his voice low and even.
“Find out who planned the hit on Oscorp.
Find out why.
Report back to me the moment you know.” The standing man nodded once and left without a word.
Alone now, Hammerhead turned toward the glow of a computer screen on his desk, leaning forward slightly, the light bringing his features into sharper relief.
On the monitor, the Oscorp attack footage played on a muted loop — smoke pouring from shattered windows, security personnel sprinting across the screen.
He studied it in silence, his expression giving nothing away.
“What are you trying to hide, Norman?” he murmured, to no one.
“That even your own company got hit in broad daylight?” No one answered.
No one was there to hear it at all.
The 12th Precinct hadn’t seen a night like this in years.
Every light in the bullpen was on, every desk occupied, phones ringing over each other in a constant, overlapping din that nobody had time to answer politely anymore.
Officers who should have clocked out hours ago were still at their desks, ties loosened, coffee gone cold beside stacks of paperwork that kept growing instead of shrinking.
“I need everyone who responded to the dock call in the conference room in ten minutes,” someone shouted across the room, and a tired chorus of groans answered back.
Captain George Stacy stood at the center of it all, sleeves rolled up, a folder in one hand and his phone wedged against his shoulder with the other.
He’d been fielding calls for the better part of two hours — the mayor’s office wanting answers, a reporter who’d somehow already gotten his direct line, his own captain of detectives asking questions Stacy didn’t have answers to yet.
“No, I don’t have a name,” Stacy said into the phone, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“No, I don’t have a description beyond ‘wearing black’ and ‘apparently very strong.’ No, I can’t confirm or deny it’s connected to Oscorp, we’re still—” He stopped, listened, exhaled hard through his nose.
“Yes.
I understand it’s a priority.
Everything’s a priority tonight.” He hung up before whoever it was could say anything else, and dropped into his chair, staring down at the growing stack of statements on his desk.
Twelve trafficking victims.
Six armed suspects, all found unconscious, all bound together with some kind of material the lab still hadn’t identified, all suspended nearly four feet off the ground from the warehouse rafters like some kind of grim art installation.
Not a single bruise on any of them beyond what looked like careful, controlled restraint — no broken bones, no serious injuries, nothing that matched the kind of violence six armed men should have put up a fight over.
“Captain?” One of his detectives, Reyes, appeared at his desk holding a tablet.
“Forensics finished with that binding material.” “And?” “They don’t know what it is.” Reyes set the tablet down in front of him, pulling up a photo of the strange, pale strands still wrapped around one suspect’s wrists.
“It’s not rope.
Not cable.
Not anything synthetic they can identify off the shelf.
It’s got some kind of organic compound in it that’s throwing off every test they’ve run so far.” Stacy stared at the photo for a long moment.
“So we’ve got a masked vigilante running around this city who ties people up with something science can’t even name.” “That’s about the size of it, sir.” Stacy rubbed both hands down his face, feeling every one of his years pressing down at once.
Crime in this city had been climbing for months — worse every week, thinner resources every week, more bodies through this precinct’s doors every week than the one before.
And now, on top of all of it, there was a person out there capable of taking down six armed men without a scratch and stringing them up like decorations.
“What do the victims say about him?” Stacy asked.
“Anything useful?” Reyes flipped through his notes.
“Consistent stuff, actually.
All of them say he told them they’d be safe.
That the men wouldn’t ‘walk free.’ One of the kids said he sounded scared himself, if that means anything.” Reyes shrugged.
“Whoever this is, doesn’t seem like your typical criminal profile.” “Doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous,” Stacy said quietly.
“Powers like that, whoever he is — that’s not something this city’s ready to deal with.” He picked up his phone again, thumb hovering over his wife’s contact, and typed out a short message.
Running late tonight.
Don’t wait up.
He set the phone down and pulled the trafficking case file back toward him, flipping past the strange binding material and the unidentifiable footage toward the parts of the job he actually understood — twelve victims who needed real answers, and six men who needed to answer for what they’d done to them.
Whatever the masked figure turned out to be, good or bad, that mystery would have to wait its turn.
It was going to be a long night.
Stacy had a feeling it wasn’t going to be the last one, either.
Meanwhile, several miles away, the person responsible for every bit of that chaos was fast asleep, having, without question, the best night’s rest of his entire life.