The hum of cooling fans filled the warehouse.
Alex Price sat before a stack of monitors, his crimson optics flickering with data streams. To the outside world, this place was nothing more than an abandoned dockside storage unit, purchased under a false name through layers of shell corporations. To Alex, it was the first true Forge of the Omnissiah in this dimension.
The walls groaned with hidden machinery. Servo-arms dangled from the rafters. Alien alloys melted in smelters of nanometal flame. And above him, a small flock of servo-skulls floated silently, their optics glowing faint red as they whispered binary hymns to one another.
He began each day as always with ritual.
"Blessed be the Circuit, endless in pattern.Blessed be the Forge, eternal in flame.Blessed be the Omnissiah, who guides my hand through steel and shadow."
The prayer completed, he turned to his work.
With S.H.I.E.L.D. still reeling from internal fractures and Hydra's exposure, Alex had slipped easily through the cracks. Using stolen funds siphoned through digital networks, he had purchased servers, processors, and networking hardware.
His servo-skulls, outfitted with stealth plating, infiltrated rooftops and subways, quietly feeding him surveillance from across New York. They whispered in binaric static, delivering fragments of intelligence:
Police chatter about illegal alien weapon caches.
Oscorp shipments routed through shadowy channels.
Stark Industries deliveries flagged with "Experimental – High Security."
All of it stored, analyzed, cross-referenced in the system's vault.
Patience was vital. He could not yet move openly. To reveal himself too soon would bring the attention of Stark, Fury, or worse. For now, he would remain the ghost in the wires, stealing scraps and knowledge.
One night, his servo-skulls fed him something curious. A Stark Industries transport truck moving across Queens, heavily shielded, loaded with advanced technology. And not just any tech new modular components for the Spider-Man suit.
The skulls also recorded something else: a fight.
On one side: the so-called "Spider-Man," a teenage vigilante in Stark's upgraded armor.On the other: the scavenger-turned-criminal in Vulture's winged exo-suit.
Perfect chaos.
Alex stood in the shadows of his warehouse, watching the live-feed through his servo-skull's optics. His mechadendrites twitched in anticipation.
[Opportunity Detected.]Quest: Infiltrate Transport. Acquire Stark Systems.]Warning: High Security Countermeasures Active
While Spider-Man and Toomes battled above, Alex moved in silence.
His servo-skulls swarmed the underside of the Stark truck, their stealth fields masking them from human sensors. Micro-drills hissed, carving open panels. Mechadendrites extended, plucking out core processors and modular plating.
A holographic warning blinked inside his optics:
[Stark Encryption Detected.]Bypassing… Error. Bypassing… Error. Partial Success.]
Alex grunted softly. Stark's firewalls are crude, but redundant. It would take time to strip them fully. Still, the hardware was what he wanted most.
By the time Spider-Man and the Vulture's battle sent the truck spiralling out of control, Alex had already transferred half its cargo into system storage. The rest burned in the chaos.
Back in the warehouse, Alex placed the stolen components upon the altar of his nano-forge. Servo-skulls circled above, chanting softly in static.
The system displayed Stark's schematics: web-fluid systems, modular AI support nodes, reactive armor plating, and most importantly the spider-suit's internal power distribution grid.
[Analysis Complete.]Weakness Detected: Energy Transfer Vulnerability in Arc-Nodes.]Weakness Detected: Limited EMP Shielding.]Opportunity: Replication of Nanoweave Memory Alloy.]
Alex's crimson optics flared. "So, the golden boy's toys bleed after all."
His nanometal fingers caressed the armor fragments. Already he saw paths forward: improved stealth plating, EMP harpoons, countermeasures to collapse Stark's armor mid-combat.
But he would not use them yet. Not until the Forge was stronger.
Alex leaned back in his chair, servo-skulls floating in a halo around him like the wings of a fallen angel.
The world above saw Spider-Man and Vulture's fight as a clash between good and evil. To Alex, it was merely a distraction a chance to harvest resources for his own ascension.
He whispered into the quiet warehouse, the hymn of a man already thinking three steps ahead:
"The Forge grows. The Omnissiah guides.Let the heroes fight their battles.I will claim their weapons."
The red glow of the servo-skulls pulsed in rhythm with his words.
Somewhere in the shadows of New York, the first whispers began of a ghost who stole from gods and kings alike.