"Open those damn crates and unload them! We need these ready by tomorrow!"
I snapped picture after picture — more than enough to serve as evidence, I hoped. I couldn't personally get involved in Kingpin's business directly, but if these guys looked like they were going to walk, a well-timed tip to the right person from an anonymous source would be more than enough. That was good enough for me.
I looked down from the rafters, safely hidden in the shadows. I had my camera aimed at the people below and the crates being moved around. It was Sunday night. Tomorrow, a new GST lieutenant who went by the name Bubbles was due to meet some of Kingpin's representatives to deliver a drug shipment.
I had been following them all week — finding every weakness they had, spending so long crouched in vents and back alleys around that strip club that I knew all the songs playing downstairs by heart. And then I found it.
The warehouse.
It was where they brought in their supply and staged it before cutting it down further for street-level distribution. I had been watching and waiting, and now I had them.
I wasn't a glory-seeker. I worked better in the shadows, where people didn't see me coming. I wasn't ready to take on the world just yet — I needed more time. Until then, the best way I could protect people was to be a spy. A very nosy teenager with nothing but time and spite.
It took them an hour before everything was loaded and accounted for. Most of the men left after that, posting guards outside the building to keep watch, with the interior now nearly empty. Careless.
I crawled along the wall toward the main office that overlooked the entire warehouse floor. I dropped down before the door, reached into my pocket, and pulled out my lockpicks. Yes — I knew how to pick locks. Jealous?
I opened the door easily with a quick twist and slipped inside, closing it behind me and locking it again. I looked around the office. It was spartan — nothing but files up on shelves and paperwork scattered across the desk. I opened folders, all of them, looking for something specific.
The last time I was here I had watched Bubbles writing down financial records — the money the GST was making off of Kingpin's shipments. The idiot had a paper trail. All I needed to do was find it.
I searched the room but couldn't find it anywhere. Then it occurred to me — of course it was hidden. Alright. If I were an important record book, where would I be?
I checked behind paintings. I opened locked cabinets. I looked underneath the desk. I was just about to give up when the floorboard beneath my foot gave a soft, hollow groan.
Bingo.
I pried up the board and found a small safe underneath. Dial combination lock — the same type we had at school. And luckily for me, Peter had spent a good portion of his junior high years unlocking his own locker after Flash would sneak in and change the combination on him.
I pressed my ear to the safe door and listened carefully. With slow, precise adjustments, I worked through the tumblers one by one until —
Clink.
I grinned. I opened it and there it was — the ledger. I checked the safe for booby traps before extracting the book, found a tripwire connected to an alarm trigger, disarmed it, relocked the safe, and replaced the floorboard.
I opened the ledger and flipped through it. Pages and pages of information — shipment records, payment tracking, dates, dollar amounts, names.
I had them. I had them completely.
I couldn't photograph the pages here — people would notice a ledger that had been disturbed, or notice new marks on the pages. I needed to take the book and go. But I had also planned for exactly this.
I managed to slip out of the warehouse and into the open air. I swung away with the ledger tucked into the waistband of my pants. Once I was a safe distance away, I took out a burner phone I'd picked up for exactly this purpose and dialled a number I had memorised.
It had taken me a long time to get that number. I'd had to break into a police precinct to find it.
When I first started building the case against the GST, I had nothing. I figured the police would be the most logical starting point — they'd presumably been investigating the gang longer than anyone. So I dug into their files.
What I found was surprisingly comprehensive. There had been dozens of arrests, numerous injunctions, but everything had fallen apart in court. Either the DA handling the case was sloppy, the judge was compromised, or the evidence kept disappearing. Every attempt to take the GST down had collapsed before it reached sentencing.
I made a note of all of it, and vowed that when I brought them down, they would stay down.
But I also noticed something else in those files. A name that kept appearing throughout the case history: Detective Gregory Barnes. Every major investigative push against the GST had his name attached to it. He was, by all accounts, a straight-arrow cop.
He'd been on the GST's case since day one, ever since one of their drive-by shootings had nearly killed his son. He was determined, methodical, and — as far as I could tell — completely uncorrupted.
I'd taken his number from the file and knew immediately that he was the man I needed.
The phone rang twice. On the third ring, he picked up.
"Hello?"
"Detective Barnes?" I asked, pitching my voice into something younger and scared.
"Yes. Who is this?"
"I — I'm part of the GST. I-I want to talk to you."
"And why would a gang member want to talk to me?"
"Because these people are crazy, man!" I said, letting the fear edge in. "They're killing people left and right! I didn't sign up for this!"
"Okay. Okay, calm down. Where are you right now? What's your name?"
"I — I can't. I'm not telling you my name, man. I've got a kid to feed. If they even hear I said anything, they'll kill me!"
"I'm on your side, son. You want to get away from them? I can make that happen. Just tell me where you are and I'll come to you — no questions asked."
The man was good. I'd give him that. He'd make an excellent hostage negotiator. I sighed, playing the part. "No, man, it's too late for me. But I ain't going down without taking these bastards with me. There's a warehouse by the Manhattan pier — number 827, blue with a yellow roof. They store the whole stash in there. Right now we've got a month's supply of product and enough firearms to start a war. You can take them all out tonight."
"I need more than that. Names, clients, anything that holds up in court."
Greedy, but fair. "Bubbles is running things now — he's the man. He's setting up a meeting with a major client." I paused for effect. "I've said enough. Remember: Manhattan pier, 827. Bring your whole unit and for God's sake, come in quiet — no sirens."
I ended the call and dropped off the roof, swinging back into the city. Detective Barnes would first need to get a judge to sign off on a search warrant. That would take time — probably most of the night. But I knew Barnes. He was the kind of man who would work through the night for a chance like this. He'd have a SWAT team at that pier before sunrise, and he'd make it stick.
Now I needed a lawyer. Fortunately, I happened to know one who was arguably the most principled man in the entire Marvel universe.
I swung my way to Hell's Kitchen with one thought in mind: a message from the Spider.
---
I had found Matt Murdock's law firm address online weeks ago. I'd also followed him home one night — just once — and memorised the building layout. I came down the fire escape now, opened the window with my picks, and slipped inside, easing it shut behind me.
"Hello? Is someone there?" His voice came from the bedroom — calm, unhurried. But I knew that in that same moment he was mapping the room by sound, calculating angles of attack.
"Matt," I said, muffling my voice as best I could. "We need to talk."
Matt walked into the living room, his cane tapping the floor ahead of him, his eyes aimed about a foot above my head — the tell of a man whose vision didn't work the way most people's did. He was blind, technically. But I knew better.
"Please — if this is a mugging, I'd ask you not to hurt me," he said with a disarming smile. "As you can see, I'm not exactly in a position to defend myself."
I smirked. "You're not blind, Matt Murdock."
Matt paused. "What? Of course I am. I can't—"
"No. You can see — it's just that to you, the whole world looks like it's on fire."
The facade of the harmless, helpless blind man dropped instantly. He swung his cane forward and charged.
"I'm not here to fight!" I knocked the cane aside, jumped clean over his tackle, and landed on the far side of the room. "I just want to talk!"
"You break into my home and just want to talk?!" Matt came at me with his fists — precise, fluid, devastatingly fast. It was only my superior reflexes and spider-sense working in concert that kept me from getting hit as badly as I did.
"I need a lawyer, Matt, and you're the one I need!" I ducked under a kick, caught his leg, and threw him onto the couch. "So sit down and listen!"
Matt bounced back up, hooked a leg behind mine, dropped me hard, and got a hand around my throat. "Give me one reason why," he growled, raising a fist.
"I can get you the GST — for good," I wheezed.
"Why should I care about a street gang?"
"They — " I coughed. "They supply Kingpin's drug operation. He can't source from anyone else in the city right now." I felt his grip loosen just slightly at the mention of the Kingpin. "If you take down the GST's operation and their financial records go into evidence, you cut off the Kingpin's entire supply chain for at least six months."
Matt stared at me for a long moment. Then he got off me and stepped back. "How did you know about my sight?"
"I read your medical records," I said. This was a lie, but a functional one. "Your other senses compensating for the loss of normal vision — advanced sonar processing, heightened sensitivity to environmental sound. I theorised that the resulting sensory model would make the world look as if every surface was radiating heat. I put two and two together."
Matt was quiet. I sat up and straightened my jacket. "You're a clever kid," he said at last.
"Thanks." I got to my feet.
"And a skilled liar."
"I didn't lie," I lied.
"Maybe," he said. "I can hear your heartbeat, you know. It's elevated right now. I don't know if that's adrenaline or deception. But I don't fully believe you."
"You don't have to," I said, and took out the ledger. I held it out to him. "This is a complete financial record of every transaction the GST has made through their operation. Every shipment, every payment, every name. Tonight, a warehouse connected to the GST is getting raided. You'll have everything you need to step in and take the case to court. You can strike a real blow against Kingpin's wallet, and you'll make a name for your law firm while you're at it."
Matt took the book and examined it with his hands — running his fingers along the pages, reading the paper itself somehow. "What? No Braille version?"
I smirked. "Foggy Nelson isn't blind, is he?"
Matt set the ledger aside and looked up at me. "How did you get this?"
"I stole it."
"From where?"
"The warehouse."
"How did you find the warehouse?"
"Spent nearly a week crammed in ventilation ducts and side alleys, running surveillance on Bubbles. Razor died last week, so Bubbles had to establish himself as the new boss — which meant visiting every location in their territory. I followed him door to door until he'd toured half of Queens."
"Do you know their other safe houses?"
"Every one. I took photos of the buildings and documented illegal activity at each one. I sent everything to your law firm's email account under the handle 'GSThelper.'"
Matt was quiet. I could tell he was listening to my heartbeat — committing its rhythm to memory so that if he ever encountered me again in any context, he'd know who I was. If he encountered me again at all.
"Why are you doing this?" he finally asked.
"Because the GST is running the streets into the ground. They need to be dismantled."
"But why you?"
"Why not me?"
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
"You would risk your life, your family's safety, your identity — just to play hero?"
"It may not matter to a blind man," I said, "but I am wearing a mask, you know."
"I'm serious, kid. Why?"
"And I'm serious too — why not? People are dying out there. If I can make a difference, why wouldn't I try? Are only the trained and the certified allowed to give a damn?"
"There are trained professionals who—"
"Trained professionals haven't done anything about the GST, Matt. Every time they've brought a case to court, it's been dismissed, thrown out, or buried. The DA doesn't care, the evidence disappears, and the gang celebrates in the street." I stopped, then continued more calmly. "I called Detective Barnes tonight. Posed as an informant. I told him where to find the warehouse. I suggest you call Foggy, get down to the precinct tonight with the evidence I've given you, and coordinate with the arresting officers while it's still fresh. Tell them an anonymous source pointed you to it."
"And in return?"
"Put them in the ground. And make sure they stay there. I've given you more than enough. The officer running the case is clean and motivated. The only thing left is a solid prosecution — and I don't think any judge in New York would be willing to throw out a case this airtight."
Matt looked at me for a long time, clearly thinking. Finally, he sighed. "Fine... Are you ever going to tell me your name?"
I walked back to the window and pulled it open. "I'm Spider-Man. I'll see you around, Matt." I stepped onto the ledge and leaped into the air.
"No!" Matt ran to the window just as I shot a web line across the street and swung away into the night. He heard my laughter echoing as I arced between the buildings, and shook his head slowly.
"This city is insane," he muttered.