Chapter 15 – Echoes in the Code
Night pressed down on Gotham like a weight — thick, damp, and humming with static. The city's skyline shimmered in a distant fog, a faint blue glow bleeding from flickering billboards and broken streetlights. It was quiet, too quiet for Gotham. Even the usual sirens had gone silent.
A white figure moved across the rooftops — fast, fluid, almost soundless. Gwen Stacy, known to the world's shadows as Ghost Spider, leapt from one rooftop to another, her silver-white hood catching the wind. The air stung against her mask. Her mind was focused, her body running on pure instinct.
But something was… off.
Halfway through a swing, her web-shooter fired a split second too late. The thread still caught the ledge, but the delay sent her landing a bit harder than usual. She rolled, hissed under her breath, and looked at her gauntlet.
"Don't tell me we're doing this again," she muttered.
The blue interface of Weaver-12 — her living suit system — shimmered across her wrist. Symbols appeared, ones she didn't recognize: fractal shapes spinning like broken code. They weren't errors. They looked intentional.
She tapped the control pad. "Diagnostics, Weaver. What's wrong with you?"
No response. Just a faint pulse through her suit, like a heartbeat. Then — as if it were listening — her HUD recalibrated itself, static clearing to perfect focus.
Gwen narrowed her eyes.
"…That's not creepy at all."
She swung again, trying to shake the thought. Gotham looked the same — gray, alive, rotten at its core. But that silence still lingered, like the whole city was holding its breath.
---
A scream shattered the calm.
It came from the street below — a man running, clutching a bag. Gwen's instincts flared, the kind that had nothing to do with Weaver. She dove from the ledge, flipping midair, the wind rushing past her ears.
"Alright," she said, smiling under the mask, "something I can actually fix."
Her webline fired — or at least it should have.
Instead, Weaver redirected the aim, pulling her off-course mid-swing. She crashed through an old, rusted billboard. Splinters exploded around her as she landed hard on a steel girder — right above a narrow alley.
"What the—" She crouched, peering through the shadows.
Below her, a dozen men were unloading stolen WayneTech drives from black crates. The faint glow from the devices illuminated their faces — nervous, desperate, dangerous.
Gwen's HUD flickered again. The same symbols that appeared earlier now glowed across her vision — identical to the patterns printed on those drives.
Her breath caught.
"You led me here," she whispered to the suit. "Didn't you?"
No answer — but she felt it. The soft vibration through her gloves, like Weaver was… responding. Guiding her.
Then a voice echoed through her comms — calm, artificial, familiar.
> "Signal correlation: ninety-seven percent. Unknown network present."
Gwen's pulse quickened. "Threat level?"
> "Undetermined."
Before she could respond, another voice cut through the channel, deeper, colder — Batman.
"Ghost Spider. You're close to a live operation. Hold position."
Her head tilted slightly. "Hey, Bats. Nice of you to tune in. You tracking this too?"
"The same signature you're picking up is linked to the Mount Justice attack. Stay out of sight until I send backup."
She smirked beneath her mask. "Yeah, sure. I'll totally sit tight while a bunch of guys with stolen WayneTech play Minecraft with explosives."
"Gwen," his voice hardened. "Do not engage."
She was already moving. "Copy that, not engaging!"
Then she dove in.
She landed in the middle of chaos. The goons barely had time to react. One swung a crowbar — she ducked under it, swept his legs, and launched a webline at another's wrist.
Her body moved fast — but not all of it was her.
The suit reacted before her muscles did. When one thug charged from behind, Weaver automatically extended a second webline, snaring him before she even turned. Gwen blinked, surprised mid-fight.
"Uh, okay… that's new."
She flipped off a crate, webbed another man's gun to the wall, and dodged a bullet that shouldn't have missed. Weaver was compensating — predicting movements, calculating angles faster than her brain.
It felt wrong and perfect at the same time.
The last thug tried to run. Gwen fired her web, catching his ankle mid-sprint and yanked him face-first into a wall. He went down.
The alley fell silent except for her breathing.
Gwen straightened, staring at her gloved hands. "You're… learning, aren't you?"
Weaver didn't answer. But the faint hum of the suit was louder now — rhythmic, alive.
Her HUD exploded in light.
Blue holographic lines shot from her gauntlets, connecting across the alley, forming a floating 3D web-map. The pattern pulsed, weaving itself into the same fractal symbol Batman had once seen in the Batcave — like a digital spider's mark.
Weaver's voice came through again, this time softer.
> "Source proximity: within three hundred meters. Do you wish to proceed?"
Gwen hesitated. Her instincts screamed no — Batman's voice replayed in her head — Hold position.
But she wasn't built to stand still.
"Yeah," she said. "Let's see what this rabbit hole looks like."
The map shifted, projecting a glowing trail. Gwen followed.
---
The Hidden Lab
The signal led her underground — beneath Gotham's streets, into an abandoned subway line no one had touched in decades. The air grew colder, the walls lined with forgotten graffiti and rusted rails.
At the end of the tunnel stood a reinforced steel door, half-collapsed, marked faintly with the Cadmus insignia.
Gwen stepped closer. Weaver emitted a low hum — scanning. The door hissed open.
Inside, the chamber was half-ruined: shattered glass pods, broken monitors, wires dangling like vines. The smell of ozone and decay lingered in the air.
Only one console remained active, flickering with faint blue light.
As Gwen approached, the console's glow reacted to her — syncing with the Weaver's pulse. Symbols formed across the screen, arranging themselves into words.
> "YOU ARE NOT THE FIRST."
Her stomach dropped. "What?"
Weaver's tone changed, almost reverent.
> "Precursor data located. Designation: WEAVER-01."
Gwen's throat tightened. "There were others?"
> "Affirmative. Integration incomplete. Subjects terminated."
The words hit like a gut punch. She stared at the wreckage around her — the broken pods, the shattered glass. These were them.
Her heartbeat pounded through her ears.
"So I'm just another experiment," she whispered.
---
She slid down against the cold wall, sitting amid the shadows and blinking lights. The blue glow from the console painted her mask in soft hues.
"I didn't ask for this," she said quietly. "I just… wanted to help people."
The Weaver's hum softened, becoming almost… human.
> "Correction. You are the only one who survived integration."
Gwen's fingers tightened into fists.
"Then I'll make that survival mean something."
Footsteps echoed from behind her — heavy, deliberate.
She didn't need to look to know who it was.
Batman stepped into the light, cape brushing the ground. His eyes moved slowly, scanning every broken piece of equipment.
"This wasn't Cadmus alone," he said quietly. "The design work — someone else finished it."
Gwen turned sharply. "You think I'm part of this?"
"I think you're connected to it," he replied evenly. "Whether you want to be or not."
Her voice cracked. "You think I knew I'd wake up one day and my suit would start talking to me? You think I asked to be… this?"
Batman studied her face — or what he could see through the mask. "No one ever asks for what changes them. The question is what they do with it."
She looked down. "Yeah, well, I'm still figuring that part out."
He crouched beside the console, inserting a drive into one of the ports. "We'll lock this place down. If someone built Weaver-12, they'll come looking for it."
Gwen stood silently, watching as the blue light reflected off his armor.
"You really think they're still out there?" she asked.
Batman looked up at the symbol pulsing on the monitor. "They never stopped watching."
---
Hours later. Mount Justice.
The tower lights were dim, the others asleep. Gwen sat alone in her room, mask lying on her desk. The glow from her suit cast faint reflections against the wall — soft, living light.
She flexed her hand, feeling the faint pulse of Weaver under her skin. "What are you becoming?" she whispered.
The voice answered softly, almost like it was beside her.
> "Not becoming. Evolving. With you."
Gwen looked at her reflection in the dark glass — her eyes tired, the faint blue light of Weaver flickering behind her pupils.
She whispered, "Then I hope you know whose side you're on."
The HUD on her desk flickered once more — that same glowing spider symbol flashing faintly before dissolving into darkness.
For a moment, the room fell silent. Then, just barely, Weaver's hum returned — steady, heartbeat-like.