[MILES]
The pain came first. Not a physical ache, but something deeper, a discordant hum in the very fiber of my being. It was the sound of a string snapping on a cosmic guitar, a vibration that ran through every Spider-Totem connected to the Great Web. The Nexus, our sanctuary at the center of all things, thrummed with a sick, agitated energy. On the main console, holographic strands of reality flickered and died like faulty neon signs. Messages from other sectors arrived as digital gibberish, screams translated into static.
Some of the others described it as hearing a "heartbeat through glass." For me, it was simpler. It was the sound of drowning.
"Everyone, back to the Nexus. Now," I'd ordered, my voice tight. "We regroup. We figure this out."
Gwen was the first to arrive, portaling in with a flash of pink and white light. Her fists were clenched, her hood down, and the look in her eyes was pure, unadulterated fury. She didn't have to say a word; I could feel the tremors of rage coming off her. Silk and Jessica Drew followed a moment later, their faces grim masks of concern. They were the calm before the storm.
And then the storm walked in.
Rorschach entered last, a ghost in a trench coat. He moved with a heavy silence that absorbed the ambient panic, his gloved hands clasped neatly behind his back. The containment case, a featureless metal box that had become the focal point of all our anxieties, was still with him—sealed tight, a promise and a threat in one.
He stopped in the center of the room, his masked face a blank canvas of shifting inkblots, and simply observed the chaos on the displays. He was the only one who didn't seem surprised. That's what scared me the most.
I took a deep breath, the recycled air of the Nexus feeling thin and cold. "Whatever's happening out there," I said, my voice barely a whisper, "it started when the Web bled. When you said it, Rorschach."
His head turned slowly, the movement precise and economical. The inkblots on his mask swirled, forming a fleeting, symmetrical pattern before dissolving again. "I didn't cause it," he replied, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. "I diagnosed it."
The tension in the room instantly solidified, becoming something heavy and sharp. And Gwen, who had been vibrating with suppressed anger, finally snapped.
"An experiment?" she spat, slamming her palm down on the console. The holographic interface shuddered. Her glare was hot enough to melt steel, fixed entirely on the blank-faced man. "You think this is some kind of experiment? People are dying in the threads. Whole worlds are flickering out—and you stand there writing notes?"
Rorschach didn't react, at least not in any way I could recognize. His posture didn't change. He just watched her, his head tilted in a gesture of cold, surgical observation. He let her fury wash over him, a rock in a raging river, before speaking.
"Emotion doesn't solve contagion," he said. "It feeds it."
That was all it took. Gwen pushed off the console and advanced on him, her movements fluid and predatory. The venom in her tone was chilling. "You talk about contagion like you're not part of it! You brought that thing back here!" She jabbed a finger toward the metal case at his side. "You touched it, studied it, wrote to it—now it's talking through the Web!"
I could feel it, what she was saying. The heartbeat through glass was a voice. A whisper. A dark little nursery rhyme echoing through the collapsing strands of reality. It had started as a flicker, a ghost in the machine, but since Rorschach's arrival, it had grown into a chorus.
His voice dropped, losing its detached quality and gaining a serrated edge of control. "I contained it," he said, the words cutting through Gwen's tirade. "No one else here understands containment."
The statement hung in the air, an indictment of us all. He wasn't wrong, not entirely. We were heroes. We fought, we saved, we swung. We didn't build prisons for ideas. We didn't put concepts in a box. But he did. And in his quiet, absolute certainty, there was an accusation that our way—the hopeful, heroic way—was naive. That it was going to get us all killed.
Silk's eyes darted between them, her spider-sense probably screaming bloody murder. Jessica had her arms crossed, her expression unreadable but tense. They were looking to me, waiting for me to step in, to be the leader. But I was frozen, caught between the two poles of our dilemma: Gwen's passionate, righteous fury and Rorschach's terrifying, dispassionate logic.
Gwen made the choice for me.
With a cry of desperation, she lunged, not for him, but for the case. Her plan was simple, primal: destroy the source.
Rorschach moved with a speed that defied his bulky appearance. He didn't intercept her body; he intercepted her intent. His gloved hand shot out and clamped around her wrist mid-swing, stopping her inches from the case. The sound of leather on fabric was like a gunshot in the silent room.
"Don't," he growled.
Gwen twisted in his grip, her eyes blazing. "You think I'm scared of your mask?"
A new pattern bloomed on his face, something sharp and symmetrical. "No," he said, his voice flat. "I think you should be scared of what happens if you're wrong."
The tension finally broke. Gwen exploded. She drove her free leg back, kicking him square in the chest. A shockwave of her bio-electric venom erupted from the point of impact, a crackling wave of white-hot energy. I expected him to be thrown across the room. Instead, his trench coat flared, the reinforced material absorbing the blast with a dull thud. He stumbled back a single step, his grip on her wrist unbroken.
With brutal efficiency, he twisted, using her momentum against her. He grappled, disarmed, moved like a predator that had done this a thousand times. There was no artistry to it, just a grim disassembly of her attack.
"Not fighting you," he grunted, forcing her arm behind her back. "Not the target."
"Then maybe start acting human!" she screamed, struggling against his hold.
The fight devolved into a chaotic, lethal ballet. Gwen was a whirlwind of motion, a dancer weaving a tapestry of strikes and kicks, her attacks fueled by righteous anger. Rorschach was a guillotine. Each of his movements was direct, purposeful, and final. He didn't strike; he neutralized. He didn't dodge; he parried and countered, his armored coat and grim determination turning him into an immovable object.
"Stop it! Both of you!" Silk cried, shooting a web-line to try and ensnare Rorschach's arm, but he shrugged it off as if it were a string of confetti.
I had to intervene. This was tearing us apart faster than the Web was. I launched myself forward, firing two web-lines, weaving a thick, layered net between them just as their attacks were about to collide again. Gwen's leg, shimmering with venomous energy, swung in a devastating arc. Rorschach's baton, a blur of metal, swung to meet it.
They struck my webbing simultaneously.
For a split second, it held. The strands strained, glowing with Gwen's contained energy. Then, with a sound like a rifle crack, the webbing snapped. Sparks of overloaded energy showered the floor. The force of the impact threw us all back a step.
"Enough!" The word tore from my throat, raw and desperate. It echoed in the sudden, ringing silence of the Nexus.
I landed between them, breathing hard, the left side of my mask torn open from the energy backlash. My heart hammered against my ribs. I looked from Gwen, trembling with a rage that hadn't even begun to subside, to Rorschach, who had already straightened his coat and stood as if nothing had happened.
"You both want to stop the same thing," I said, my voice shaking with the effort of holding myself together. "But you're tearing the Web apart yourselves!"
Gwen finally backed off, lowering her fists. But the fire in her eyes remained. "He's not one of us, Miles," she said, her voice brittle. "He never was."
Rorschach didn't even look at her. He simply turned his masked head toward me, a slow, deliberate motion. I couldn't read his face, but I felt his disappointment. It wasn't anger. It was something colder, more profound.
"Never claimed to be," he said.
He bent down, his movements stiff, and picked up the containment case. He gave it a brief, cursory inspection before tucking it securely under his arm. Then, without another word, he turned and started walking toward the main portal exit.
"Where are you going?" I called after him, the question feeling both necessary and useless.
He paused at the edge of the platform, the swirling chaos of the multiverse reflected in the polished metal of the case. He didn't turn around.
"To hunt," he said, his voice echoing back to us. "Someone has to."
Then he stepped through the portal and was gone, leaving us standing in the wreckage of our own making, listening to the dying heartbeat of a thousand worlds.
The silence that followed Rorschach's departure was a physical weight, pressing down on us in the flickering heart of the Nexus. It was a silence born of unspoken accusations and the gnawing dread that oozed from the dying sections of the Web. Gwen's knuckles cracked against the console, a sharp, violent sound that echoed the splintering of our unity. A network of fissures spread across the screen, mirroring the bleeding in the cosmic tapestry beyond.
"He's right about one thing," Silk said, her voice barely a whisper, yet it cut through the oppressive quiet. "The Web's changing. If we don't understand it, we lose." Her gaze flickered towards the fractured display, then to me. Her usual boundless energy seemed muted, replaced by a somber understanding.
Jessica Drew sighed, the sound a weary exhalation that carried the burden of our fractured trust. "And if he keeps going rogue, we might lose more than that." Her eyes, usually sharp and assessing, held a deep worry. She'd seen the cost of unchecked passion, the collateral damage of self-righteousness. Rorschach's methods were brutal, his logic cold, but his intentions, however twisted, were aimed at preservation. Yet, his methods were tearing us apart.
I moved to the edge of the platform, looking out over the glowing strands of the Web. It was a breathtaking sight, normally. A vibrant circulatory system connecting countless worlds. But now, sections were dimming, the light fading like a mortally wounded creature. The bleeding was visible, dark bruises spreading across the cosmic body, a terrifying testament to the encroaching chaos.
"He's hunting monsters," I said, my voice softer than I intended, a stark contrast to the storm brewing within me. "But I don't think he realizes one's already hunting him."
Rorschach saw only the immediate threat, the tangible horrors that clawed at the fabric of existence. He saw the symptoms. But the disease, the insidious rot that was spreading through the Web, that was something else entirely. And it was a sickness that fed on division, on mistrust, on the very fractures Rorschach was exacerbating. He was so focused on the external enemy that he was blind to the internal one, the one that was already inside our own camp, whispering doubts, fueling paranoia. And that monster, the one that preyed on fear and discord, was far more dangerous than any he could ever hope to punch. I could feel it, a cold tendril of unease snaking around my own heart. We needed to stop Rorschach, not just for what he was doing, but for what he was allowing to happen. The Web was dying, and we were too busy fighting each other to notice the true killer closing in.
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[RORSCHACH]
The corridor breathes. A digital lung, sick with corruption. Filaments of light, the very strands of reality, flicker and die around me like faulty wiring. The air is thick with the hiss of static and the smell of ozone, the reek of a world tearing itself apart. They call this place the Nexus. I call it a wound.
Behind me, their voices are a fading echo. Morales spoke of hope. Stacy spoke of trust. Wasted breath. Hope is a crutch for the unprepared. Trust is the currency of fools. They see a team to be united; I see a contamination to be purged.
The shifting ink of my face catches the light. For a moment, it's Stacy's face, twisted in accusation, her eyes burning with a righteousness she hasn't earned. Then Morales, his brow furrowed with a boy's desperate faith. Then the Web itself, a schematic of arteries weeping glitch-red static into the void. My own face is the last reflection—a blank slate, a promise of an ending.
I mutter into the quiet, the words swallowed by the hum of decay.
"Web bleeds. So do people. Only difference is… one pretends it doesn't."
They bleed their emotions—their fear, their anger—all over the mission. They think their pain makes them special. It just makes them a liability. A broken bone is a fact. A broken heart is a distraction. The Web doesn't have the luxury of distractions.
I pause, my boots grinding on the crystalline floor. My hand rests on the containment case slung over my shoulder. A faint, rhythmic thump echoes from within. Something small. Something alive. It feels like a frantic heartbeat against my back. Stacy wanted to know what was inside. She thought she had a right. Rights are illusions we invent to feel safe. There is only the job.
I don't open it. The mission is containment, not comfort. The thing inside is a variable, and variables must be controlled. I tighten the strap on my gauntlet, the leather groaning against the metal plate. The sound is final. A decision made.
I turn from the memory of their faces and walk deeper into the dark. The flickering light casts long, dancing shadows ahead of me, like grasping hands. Let them grasp. Let them break. The path forward is dark. Good.