The wind screamed in my ears, a high-pitched New York symphony of grit and velocity. I let go of the web line at the perfect apex, tucking into a tight roll and landing with a whisper-soft touch on the rusted iron lip of the rooftop. My knees bent, absorbing the impact that would have shattered concrete for anyone else. The city sprawled below me, a map of light and shadow, but my focus was a single, squat, ugly building three blocks into Hell's Kitchen. A warehouse that didn't belong, humming with a low, illicit energy even from here.
Fisk's latest venture. Smelled like it, too. Even from this distance, my enhanced senses—sharpened, honed by the second layer of mastery—picked up the chemical tang. Not industrial solvents. The acrid, sweet-sour signature of cutting agents and bulk narcotics. Hammerhead's absence had left a vacuum, and Wilson Fisk, the ever-ambitious Kingpin, was filling it with his own particular brand of poison. Peter was tied up with some corporate espionage thing uptown—Vector business—so tonight, it was just me. Ghost-Spider. Solo act.
And I'd never felt more ready.
The fusion was complete. The inner flame technique, that relentless core of personal power, woven perfectly with the rhythmic, universe-connecting breathwork Peter had drilled into me from his chi manuals. It wasn't just additive; it was multiplicative. A synergy that had unlocked the second layer, and with it, a transformation that still left me breathless sometimes.
My baseline strength, which used to top out at flipping a sedan on a good day, now sat comfortably around twenty-seven tons. I'd tested it privately, lifting the back end of a city bus with a focused grunt. Speed? I was a streak of black and white, a phantom blur that left afterimages. But it was the subtler changes that were wild. I'd grown. Not a lot, but enough—pushing five-ten, and my body… it had refined itself. Curves were sharper, more defined, like my physical form was finally catching up to the power within. My skin under the suit was flawless, glowing with a health that felt almost supernatural. A cut from a stray piece of rebar last week had sealed in under three minutes, leaving no mark.
And the chi skills… that was the real game.
Sensory expansion let me feel the warehouse from here. Twenty-three heartbeats. Fast, anxious, bored, alert. The thrum of cheap fluorescent lights. The squeak of a dolly wheel on concrete. The crinkle of plastic wrapping. I could taste the adrenaline in the air from the guards.
I could create constructs of hardened chi-energy now—webs that could suspend a main battle tank if I wanted. Energy blasts with pinpoint, surgical precision. I could bend the light and sound around me, becoming a ghost to ordinary senses. The promise of an extended lifespan was a distant, theoretical echo in the back of my mind. Right now, it just felt like being more alive than I'd ever been. A river of boundless, ancient energy was mine to command.
And Peter's warning was the only dam holding it back: "Hold back. No displays. Give them a surprise."
He was right. Fisk had resources. He had Emma Frost, the psychic. If they saw the full extent of what I could do now, they'd adapt. They'd prepare. Better to let them think I was just the fast, strong spider-girl they had files on. Let them underestimate.
The thought was a delicious secret simmering in my gut as I dropped from the roof. I didn't fall. I flowed. Chi cloaked my presence, bending perception, making me a shadow within shadows. I was silence itself as I slipped through a broken pane on the second-floor loading door, melting into the darkness between towering shelves of forgotten machine parts.
The main floor was a hive of sordid activity. Open crates revealed bricks of white powder, vacuum-sealed bags of pills. Five guys, armed with serious-looking rifles, were loading boxes into a panel van. Their movements were practiced, casual in their menace.
One, a guy with a neck tattoo and the posture of a retired linebacker, glanced up towards the rafters. A flicker. My chi mask had wavered for a nanosecond, a deliberate tease. His eyes met the white lenses of my mask in the gloom.
His brain took a half-second to process. I saw the shock, then the alarm, then the move for his weapon.
I dropped.
Not a superhero landing. A casual, almost languid dismount from the rafter, landing in a silent crouch right in front of him, close enough to smell the stale coffee on his breath.
Gwen : Yo.
The sound, my voice filtered through the mask's modulator, was conversational. Cheerful, even.
His mouth opened. "What the fu—"
My right hand flicked. A strand of webbing, thin as silk but reinforced with a thread of chi so fine it was invisible, shot out. It didn't just cover his mouth; it sealed his jaw with a shhk sound, the adhesive instant and absolute. His eyes bulged. His hand, halfway to his holstered pistol, froze.
I moved. A spin, my left leg hooking behind his right knee while my palm slapped his chest. It was a gentle push by my new standards, a love-tap. But it contained the focused kinetic energy of a speeding car. He left his feet, airborne for a full second before crashing onto his back on the concrete, the wind blasted from his lungs in a silent, webbed-mouth scream.
The other four froze, mid-action. The tableau held for a heartbeat: their colleague writhing soundlessly, and me, standing calmly in the center of their operation.
Then chaos.
"Marco! Shit, it's her! It's Ghost-Spider!"
Guns came up. Safety clicks echoed. The leader, a scarred man with cold eyes, didn't bother with orders. He just opened fire.
The rattle of automatic gunfire was deafening in the enclosed space. My danger sense—now less a 'tingle' and more a full-color, three-dimensional schematic of incoming threats painted directly onto my vision—lit up. Trajectories. Muzzle flashes. Points of impact.
I didn't dodge the bullets. I moved into the spaces they weren't going to be.
I flowed between the streams of lead like water through rocks. A step to the left, a tilt of my head, a backbend that put my palms on the floor as bullets whizzed over my nose. To them, it must have looked like impossible luck. To me, it was a slow-motion dance.
I came out of the backbend into a handspring, launching myself at the nearest shooter. My feet connected with his chest. I held back. He still flew ten feet backwards into a stack of crates, wood splintering, bags of powder exploding into a bitter cloud.
Gwen : Achoo! Seriously, guys? A girl could get a sinus infection.
Two more fired in tandem, trying to pin me in a crossfire. I shot a web line to the ceiling, yanking myself up and out of the kill zone. As I swung, I fired two precise web-shots. Not at the men. At their rifles. The chi-infused webbing encased the firing mechanisms, the barrels, fusing moving parts into solid, sticky blocks. They pulled triggers. Click. Click. Nothing.
Gwen : Guns are so last season.
I landed between them. A spinning kick took the legs out from the first. As he fell, I caught his collar and used his momentum to swing him gently into his partner. They collapsed in a heap of tangled limbs and curses.
The scarred leader had backed away, barking into a radio. "We have a breach! Warehouse three! It's the spider! Send every—"
My web-line snatched the radio from his hand. I crushed it in my fist with a faint, suppressed pulse of chi. The plastic and circuitry disintegrated into dust.
Gwen : No calls. It's rude.
He roared, a pure, animal sound of fury, and charged. He was big. Strong. Probably ex-military. He threw a haymaker that could have decapitated a horse.
I didn't block. I let it come.
His fist connected with my raised forearm. The sound wasn't flesh on flesh. It was like a sledgehammer hitting a steel I-beam.
CRUNCH.
His eyes went wide with a pain that was instantly swamped by utter, mind-breaking confusion. He stared at his own hand. The fingers were bent at wrong angles. He'd broken them on my arm.
Gwen : Ouch. You should get that looked at.
My own punch was a short, sharp jab to his diaphragm. Controlled. Precise. Just enough chi behind it to stun his nervous system. He folded like a paper cup, eyes rolling back, hitting the ground unconscious.
Alarms finally started blaring—a delayed, klaxon wail. Boots pounded on metal stairs from the upper level. Reinforcements. My chi-sense updated: ten more, pouring in from side doors. Better armed. More focused.
They formed a firing line, disciplined. No panic. These were Fisk's inner circle. Professionals.
"Flanking formation! Don't let her get airborne!"
They spread out, cutting off my angles. A hail of gunfire erupted, not wild sprays, but controlled bursts. They were herding me.
I gave them what they wanted. I let myself be 'pinned' behind a thick steel support column. Bullets chewed the other side, SPANG! SPANG! SPANG!
Gwen : (calling out) You know, for a drug operation, you guys are surprisingly organized! Benefits package must be killer!
"Shut her up! Grenade!"
I heard the distinctive poonk of a launcher. My danger sense screamed, painting the arc of the projectile in a fiery line in my mind's eye. A fragmentation grenade.
Old me would have webbed it and tried to throw it back. New me had… options.
As the grenade sailed over the column, I didn't move. I focused. A whisper of chi, shaped by will. A construct. A sphere of barely-visible golden energy, like a force field the size of a beach ball, materialized around the grenade in mid-air.
It detonated inside my chi-sphere.
The sound was muffled, a deep THUMP instead of a bang. The shrapnel rattled harmlessly against the inside of the energy field for a split second before the construct dissolved, releasing a puff of smoke and a shower of spent, flattened metal fragments.
Silence, for a beat.
"What… what was that? Did it malfunction?"
I chose that moment to strike. Not with overwhelming power. With terrifying speed and precision.
I became a blur. I didn't web-swing. I moved, using bursts of chi-enhanced agility to cross distances in eyeblinks. I was behind the first shooter, webbing his weapon to the floor before he could turn. A pressure point strike to the neck, and he slumped.
I was in front of the second, snatching the rifle from his hands and bending the barrel into a pretzel with a faint, concealed flex of my fingers.
I was above the third, dropping down to land on his shoulders, using my momentum to drive him face-first into the concrete—gently. Relatively.
To them, it was like being attacked by a ghost. A ghost that quipped.
Gwen : Tag. You're it. And you're it. Oop, you're it too!
I webbed two together back-to-back. Disarmed another with a web-line to the wrist, then a gentle tug that sent him spinning into a wall.
The last two, the smart ones, broke. They backed towards the open bay door, firing wild, panic shots.
Gwen : Leaving so soon? The party's just getting started!
I shot two web-lines, not at them, but at the heavy chain mechanism for the rolling bay door above their heads. A sharp yank. The chain snapped. The heavy steel door came crashing down with a deafening BOOM, sealing the exit a foot in front of their noses, cutting off their escape.
They turned, weapons trembling, faces pale in the flickering emergency light.
I stood amidst the wreckage of their operation and their crew. Twenty-three men. Unconscious, webbed, disarmed. Not a single lethal injury. The drugs were all still here, evidence intact.
My heart was a steady, powerful drum in my chest. My chi flowed smooth and cool, a vast, untapped reservoir. I hadn't even broken a sweat. I hadn't used a fraction of what I could do.
I pulled out the burner phone, hit the speed dial for the NYPD's anonymous tip line, gave the address, and hung up. Sirens were already converging in the distance.
I took one last look at the scene. Fisk would hear about this. He'd hear about the speed, the efficiency. He'd think he knew what I was.
He had no idea.
Peter's plan was perfect. Let them underestimate.
I leaped back into the night, a silent streak against the city's glow, the promise of the surprise I was holding back humming in my veins like a second heartbeat. The next time Fisk or his telepath sent something my way, they wouldn't know what hit them.
And I was so looking forward to it.
The exhilaration from the warehouse raid was still singing in my veins, a high-octane thrum that made the night city feel like my own personal playground. I swung wide over a canyon of lit windows, the wind a cold, clean slap against my mask. Peter was waiting for a debrief, but I was riding the afterglow too hard to head straight back.
Then my spider-sense screamed.
Not the usual low-level tingle for a distant sniper or a tripwire. This was a full-body flinch, a visceral jerk that yanked my body into a reflexive tuck before my brain even processed the why. A searing, cobalt-blue beam of pure energy lanced through the air where my head had been a microsecond before. It missed by a hair's breadth, but the heat of its passage washed over me like opening a blast furnace.
The smell of ozone and scorched air hit my nostrils.
I released my webline, letting momentum carry me into a twisting, mid-air flip. I landed in a crouch on a lower rooftop, knees bent, fingers splayed on the sun-warmed tar. My head snapped up, lenses narrowing.
There. On the adjacent rooftop, a silhouette against the neon glow of a Times Square billboard. A man, hood pulled up, features hidden in shadow. But his hands weren't hidden. One clutched a glowing, pulsating object the size of a baseball. It wasn't a rock. It was a fragment of something else, humming with a dangerous, alien energy that made my teeth ache.
He didn't speak. He just raised the glowing shard again, aiming with a terrifying calm.
Gwen : Okay, what in the fresh hell is that?
A second beam screamed towards me. I didn't dodge sideways this time. I pushed off with my legs, launching myself straight up. The beam vaporized the roof ledge I'd just been perched on, turning it into molten slag and flying debris.
I arced backwards, firing a webline to a radio tower. As I swung, I reassessed. This wasn't Fisk's usual muscle. This was something else. Something with power.
I landed softly on a water tower two buildings over, putting distance between us. My right web-shooter hummed as I dialed it to a new setting Peter and I had been testing. Not just adhesive. A kinetic-impact web, the fluid supercharged by a thread of my own chi, making it dense, hyper-compressed. It hit like a bunker buster.
I didn't wait for him to fire a third time. I took aim and fired back.
The web-shot wasn't a line. It was a blazing-white projectile, a comet of condensed webbing and energy. It tore through the night with a sound like ripping canvas.
Hooded Guy : Oh, shi—
His calm shattered. He tried to dive aside, but my shot was too fast. It didn't hit him clean. It clipped the edge of his boot, and the kinetic energy packed into that tiny web-mass did the rest.
It was like he'd been kicked by a giant. The impact spun him completely around. He lost his grip on the glowing shard—it skittered across the rooftop—and his body was flung off the edge of the building. He pinwheeled through the air, crashed through a scaffolding pole with a sickening crunch of metal and bone, and slammed into the asphalt of the side street below in a cloud of dust and sparks.
I was already swinging down, ready to web him up and ask very pointed questions.
I never got the chance.
My spider-sense blared again—a different frequency. Not energy weapons. Close-quarters. Primordial.
I dropped my webline and let myself fall, tucking into a ball.
Claws—six gleaming, foot-long blades of what looked like polished bone—slashed through the space I'd just occupied. They cut the air with a sound like tearing silk.
I hit the roof of a parked delivery truck, rolling to my feet in one smooth motion.
She stood ten feet away, crouched like a panther. A woman, wild dark hair framing a face etched with feral intensity. Her eyes glowed a faint, predatory yellow in the gloom. And her hands… her fingers ended in those horrific, organic claws. They weren't weapons she held. They were her weapons.
Vi : Oh, a 2 v 1. How… quaint.
Her voice was a gravelly purr, laced with amusement and bloodlust.
Gwen : You're on.
I didn't have time for banter. The hooded guy was groaning, pushing himself up in the street, his shard glowing faintly a few feet away from his outstretched hand.
Vi moved. She didn't run. She flowed. One moment she was a statue, the next she was a blur of motion, closing the distance between us in a heartbeat. Her first attack wasn't a wild slash; it was a precise, professional lunge aimed at my throat.
I parried with my forearm, the chi-reinforced material of my suit meeting her claws with a shower of bright orange sparks and a screech of stressed polymers. The impact rattled up my arm. She was strong.
Gwen : Fisk's hiring better tailors. Nice accessories.
I used the momentum of her strike, spinning inside her guard. My elbow aimed for her ribs. She was fast—she twisted, taking the blow on her muscle-hardened side with a grunt, but her other hand came around in a backhand slash aimed at my eyes.
I ducked, feeling the wind of the claws pass over my head, and swept her legs. She leaped over my sweep, impossibly agile, and came down with both sets of claws aimed for a killing plunge.
I was already gone, a backwards handspring putting distance between us. I fired a web at her face mid-flip. She sneered and swatted it out of the air with a casual flick of her wrist, the claws slicing the tensile webbing like it was tissue paper.
Vi : Predictable.
From the street, a pained shout.
Hooded Guy : Vi! A little help! She took my—
He didn't finish. He'd scrambled for his shard. I was faster. A web-line snapped out, not at him, but at the shard itself. I yanked. The glowing fragment flew from his fingertips towards me.
Vi saw it. She abandoned me and leaped off the rooftop, a spectacular arc that ended with her snatching the shard out of the air before it reached me. She landed in a crouch on a fire escape, tossing the shard back down to her partner.
Vi : Stop dropping your toys, Kyle!
Kyle fumbled but caught it. The shard's glow intensified in his hand, fueled by his anger and pain.
Kyle : Screw this! Fry her!
He raised the shard, not at me, but at the base of the water tower I was near. A sustained, sizzling beam of blue plasma connected with the rusted iron legs.
The world turned to noise and heat. The support beams glowed red, then white, and melted like butter. The entire structure groaned, listed violently, and began its toppling descent—straight towards me and the occupied street below.
Shit.
Instinct took over. Not just spider-instinct. Chi-instinct.
I didn't just jump. I pushed off the roof with a surge of internal energy, becoming a projectile myself. I shot past Vi on the fire escape, webbing her ankle as I passed. A hard yank pulled her off her perch. She yowled in surprise, claws scrabbling for purchase on metal.
I swung us both in a wide, desperate arc away from the collapsing tower. Behind us, several tons of steel and water hit the street with an earth-shaking BOOM. A geyser of water erupted, mixed with steam from the superheated metal. Car alarms for a block around screamed in unison.
I released Vi, letting her crash through the awning of a bodega. I landed on a streetlight, breathing hard, my suit steaming slightly from the ambient heat.
Kyle was standing in the floodwater, shard held high, lit like a malevolent blue star by the emergency lights and fires. Vi emerged from the shattered awning, shaking glass from her hair, her expression one of pure, unadulterated rage.
They didn't speak. They just looked at each other, then at me. A silent understanding passed between them.
This wasn't a random hit. This was a coordinated attack. Kyle provided the ranged, overwhelming firepower. Vi was the relentless, close-quarters predator. They were a team. And they were just getting warmed up.
Vi charged straight up the side of a building, her claws digging into brick like it was soft clay. Kyle began charging his shard, the light building from a glow to a miniature sun.
I took a deep breath, centering myself. The inner flame roared in response. The second layer of mastery unfolded within me, a well of power so deep it was dizzying. I could end this now. A chi-blast could vaporize Kyle's shard. A speed-blur could put Vi down before she took another step.
Peter's voice, calm and certain: "Give them a surprise."
Right. No full displays. Not yet.
But that didn't mean I had to play nice.
I dropped from the streetlight as Vi's claws shattered the bulb where I'd been standing. I met Kyle's next plasma beam not by dodging, but by redirecting it—using a rapidly fired, chi-infused web-net that absorbed and dissipated the energy in a spectacular shower of blue sparks, right in his face. He stumbled back, blinded.
Vi was on me again, a whirlwind of slashing strikes. I stopped blocking. I started countering. Every parry was followed by a chi-enhanced jab to a nerve cluster. Every dodge ended with a web-line pulling her off-balance. I wasn't just fighting her; I was dismantling her rhythm, using her own ferocity against her.
I webbed her leading wrist, yanked her into the path of Kyle's next, poorly-aimed shot. The plasma washed over her back. She screamed—not in pain, but in fury—as her leather jacket smoked.
Vi : YOU IMBECILE!
Kyle : She moved!
I landed on the hood of a drowned taxi, the water around my ankles.
Gwen : Teamwork's a real struggle for you guys, huh? Maybe try couples counseling.
They both snarled in unison, their focus now fully, homicidally on me. They moved together this time, a pincer movement. Vi from the left, low and fast, aiming to hamstring. Kyle from the right, shard held like a spear, preparing a point-blank discharge.
My spider-sense painted the attack in perfect, horrifying detail. No clean dodge. I had to take a hit.
I chose Kyle.
As Vi's claws raked across the back of my left thigh—a line of fire that made me gasp—I lunged into Kyle's attack. I didn't try to avoid the beam. I caught his shard-hand with both of mine before he could fire, forcing it upwards.
The plasma beam shot harmlessly into the sky, lighting up the low clouds.
Up close, I could see his wide, frightened eyes behind the hood. He wasn't a soldier. He was a kid with a dangerous toy. I headbutted him, my mask protecting me. His nose broke with a wet crunch, and he dropped the shard.
I kicked it, sending the glowing artifact skittering down the flooded gutter.
Kyle collapsed, clutching his face.
Vi's roar of pure rage was the only warning I got. She hit me from behind like a freight train, her claws digging into my shoulders, her weight driving me face-first through the windshield of the taxi.
Glass exploded. The world became a symphony of shattering safety glass, blaring horns from the ruined car, the smell of blood and ozone, and Vi's hot, panting breath in my ear.
Vi : Got you now, you little bitch!
I was pinned, disoriented, the jagged edges of the windshield digging into my chest. In the reflection of the shattered glass, I saw Kyle staggering to his feet, blood pouring from his nose, his eyes frantically searching the water for his shard.
The battle wasn't over. It was just entering its darkest, most brutal phase. And in the chaotic reflection, I saw my own masked face. Not scared. Not panicked.
Smiling.
Let them think they're winning.