The command chamber beneath the city thrummed with a low mechanical heartbeat rows of screens, humming servers, engineers hunched over consoles. Shadows moved like thoughts across the steel floor.
Miles stood with his arms folded, silhouette carved by pale monitor light. His coat was open at the collar, Prowler colors muted in the dim. He watched the feeds with a predator's patience.
Aaron Davis older now, shoulders stooped from years in the suit but still carrying the quiet authority of a man who'd survived worse stepped up beside him, folding his hands.
"Did Kraven die?" Miles asked without looking away from the screens.
Aaron shook his head once, slow and precise. "According to the reports, he's alive. Captured."
Miles made a small sound half dismissal, half boredom. "Hmph. I don't care about a useless thing."
Aaron's eyes flicked to him, studying the boy he'd raised into something hard and dangerous. "You should care about distractions. They cost you time."
Miles's jaw hardened. He swallowed, voice colder than the room. "How's Doctor Octopus' experiment?"
Aaron's reply came without surprise. "It's progressing."
The word hung in the air like steam. Screens behind them showed schematics and energy signatures coils, resonant fields, a framed prototype of the gate, half-built and humming faintly.
Miles turned fully to face Aaron. There was no heat in his face only a quiet calculation and a cruelty that had learned itself from grief.
"Good," Miles said. "Progress means we're closer."
He stepped forward, hands flexing at his sides. The room felt colder around him when he spoke next.
"I will kill anyone who gets in my way."
Aaron watched him for a long moment, then gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod—part approval, part warning.
"Then make sure you don't become one of them," Aaron said quietly. "Don't let the portal give you what you want at the cost of what you need."
Miles looked back at the gate schematics as if seeing them anew. For a breath, something like hunger softened into something almost like longing.
"I'll do whatever it takes," he answered. "I don't make bargains."
The servers hummed. The lights blinked. The prototype gate thrummed a slow, patient heartbeat waiting.
Outside, the city burned and hoped in equal measure.
Inside, the Alpha closed the distance between obsession and action.
Meanwhile on another place
Ganke sat on the cracked concrete steps outside the med tunnel, the night air cold enough to sting through his jacket. His left arm was wrapped in a grimy bandage, dried blood seeping faintly into the gauze. Streetlight cut across his face, throwing his scar into hard relief.
He flexed his fingers slowly, one by one testing the ache.
(I will kill you, Miles Morales.)
The thought was a hot coal behind his ribs, and he let it burn there, steady and certain.
A shadow fell over him. Quin's silver braid caught the light as she dropped down onto the step beside him, the scar along her jaw sharper in the glow. She folded her hands in her lap and watched him for a long beat before she spoke.
"Ganke…"
He didn't look up at first. He could hear the base, the hum of generators, the distant murmur of med techs tending wounds but here, for a second, it felt like they were the only two people left.
Finally, he turned his head. "Quin. You're here."
She followed his gaze to the bandage. Her voice went soft but direct, the way she was when she wanted something true from someone. "Your hands…"
Ganke forced a small shrug, the motion brittle. "It's nothing."
Quin didn't buy it. She reached out, thumb hovering over the edge of the bandage as if she might touch it, then held back. "You don't have to pretend with me," she said. "Not here."
He swallowed. The scar along his brow tightened when he smiled, and it didn't reach his eyes. "People keep getting up. People keep dying. You know how that looks."
Quin's gaze hardened with the stern, weary patience that made her a natural field commander. "It looks like we're still breathing." She tapped his knuckles lightly, an old, blunt gesture of comfort. "And breathing means we can still fight."
(Miles took everything from me.) The thought tasted like metal. Ganke let it out between his teeth. "He took my family. He turned a kid I grew up with into a monster for a throne."
Quin's jaw worked. "Then we take that throne away. One way or another."
He looked at her. For the first time all night, something like calm edged into his features. "You trust Fury."
"I do." Quin's voice was steady. "And I trust you. Don't let your blood be the only thing that stalks him."
Ganke wrapped his bandaged hand around his other wrist, feeling the pulse there, the steady throb that said he was alive. He breathed in, slow and measured.
"I'll make him pay," he said quietly not a vow shouted to the world, but a promise that settled into bone.
Quin nodded once, the silver braid swinging. "Good. Then tonight—rest. Tomorrow we plan."
They sat in the hush together, two fractured pieces of the same machinery: one wound tight with vengeance, the other a tempered blade of discipline. Around them the base moved patching wounds, loading weapons, preparing for what came next.
Above, the city's ruined skyline kept its silent watch.
To be continue