Peter led Frank Castle through the secure ground-floor lobby of Avengers Tower and straight into the private express elevator.
Considering he was a guest, Castle hadn't exactly packed light. He was currently hauling roughly eight firearms, a dozen assorted explosives, and enough spare ammunition to supply a small militia. He stood rigidly in the polished steel box, looking entirely out of place.
JARVIS, however, was programmed to handle eccentricity. The AI's smooth, cultured voice dropped from the ceiling speakers. "Good evening, Spider-Man. Mr. Castle. Welcome to Avengers Tower."
Castle let out a low, gravelly scoff. "Stark's billion-dollar toy box. Never thought I'd actually set foot in this place."
"Yeah, well," Peter said, his lenses narrowing slightly as the elevator engaged. "I heard this doesn't get used much anyway. Supposedly, the last guys in here were construction workers hauling drywall up to the penthouse..."
Castle didn't respond. He just stared straight ahead at the brushed steel doors.
Peter shifted his weight, tapping his heel against the floorboards. The absolute silence in the elevator was suffocating. "I usually just swing straight up to the landing pad," Peter babbled, gesturing vaguely upward. "So, you know, I've only heard the rumors. Most of the team just flies."
Castle slowly turned his head. His dark, exhausted eyes bored directly into Peter's mask.
Peter cleared his throat. "I mean, it's a long ride. Do you ever get that weird feeling in elevators? Like the cable is just gonna snap and—"
"Shut up."
"Right. Sorry. I'm just running on adrenaline here," Peter exhaled a sharp breath. "Just two guys, standing in a box for two minutes, not saying a single word. It's a lot of pressure."
"Kid. Shut up."
"Shutting up now."
Peter pressed his lips together beneath the fabric. He thought about the ruins back in the Garment District. He thought about the cold, systematic way Castle had executed the Chameleon. He opened his mouth to ask about it, caught Castle's glare, and immediately snapped it shut again.
I'll ask later.
The elevator doors chimed and slid open, revealing the sprawling, multi-level penthouse of Avengers Tower. Peter stepped out onto the hardwood floor and immediately went to work.
"JARVIS," Peter called out, walking toward the primary holographic interface. "Pull up the NYPD database and run a scan on recent missing persons reports in the five boroughs. Even if Carl King can mimic human shapes, he's bound by the law of conservation of mass. We burned thousands of those spiders. He has to consume fresh biomass to replenish the swarm."
Castle didn't look at the monitors. He walked straight behind the marble bar, reached under the counter, and pulled out a bottle of Stark's top-shelf whiskey.
"It's a waste of time," Castle said, popping the cork. He poured two fingers of amber liquid into a crystal glass. "This city is packed with invisible people. Runaways, addicts, the homeless. People nobody files a report for. Your bug problem can eat his fill without ever pinging an algorithm."
Peter paused, his hands hovering over the holographic keyboard. He hated that Castle was right. "Then he's going to go off his baseline psychology. Carl won't let this go. He can't get to me right now, so he'll target the people around me. My family is out of town, thank God, and he doesn't know my home address. But he knows where I spend my mornings. I have to lock down the school gates before the bell rings."
Castle froze. He hadn't even taken a sip of his drink. He slowly lowered the glass to the marble counter, turning to fully face Spider-Man.
"What did you just say?" Castle asked, his voice dangerously quiet.
"I said I have to lock down the school."
Castle took a slow, heavy step out from behind the bar. He looked Peter up and down, processing the height, the build, the nervous energy. "You're a student. You aren't even in college, are you? You're a high school kid."
Peter stood his ground. "Does it matter?"
"You're running around the worst alleys in this city in a pair of pajamas," Castle growled. "You're taking bullets from cartel hitmen. You took down the Shocker. You've got the Chameleon and some mutated freak made of bugs gunning for you. What the hell are you doing?"
"I'm trying to be a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man," Peter said flatly. "I help where I can."
Castle stared at him for a long, heavy moment. He shook his head, retreating back to the bar to pick up his glass. He didn't ask any more questions. He dropped onto one of the massive leather sofas, kicking his combat boots up onto the coffee table. "So. How are you planning to stop this guy from eating your classmates? You gonna talk him to death?"
"No," Peter said, turning back to the lab table. He reached into one of his utility pouches and pulled out a small, charred glass vial. Inside was a single, unburned spider carcass he had salvaged from the crater.
"Biological structure dictates behavioral limits," Peter explained, his mind already racing through the chemical formulas. "For Carl to control thousands of individual spiders simultaneously, he has to rely on a localized hive-mind network. Chemical signaling. Pheromones. If I pull up Dr. Hank Pym's research on ant-colony manipulation, I can reverse-engineer a synthetic pheromone compound. I can override Carl's signal and force the swarm to follow my chemical markers instead."
With JARVIS handling the heavy computational lifting, Peter knew he could synthesize the compound overnight. Once he had the pheromones, he could draw Carl out before he ever got near Midtown High.
"Plus, we use thermal imaging," Peter added, pulling up a schematic on the monitors. "Spiders are poikilothermic. They take on the ambient temperature. Even if Carl weaves a perfect human skin suit, his heat signature will look entirely wrong on an infrared scan. He'll show up dead-cold against the crowd."
Castle didn't say anything. He just watched the kid work for a few minutes, took a slow sip of his whiskey, and laid his head back against the leather cushions. He had put down mob bosses, mercenaries, and assassins. He had never fought a tidal wave of bugs. He closed his eyes, hoping for a few hours of dreamless sleep.
Across the room, Peter carried the dead spider into the isolation lab. He set up the chemical synthesizers and pulled his personal smartphone out of his pocket. The screen was heavily cracked from the chaos of the last few days.
He tapped the screen. He had a new text from Gwen.
Gwen: When are you coming home? I have something to tell you.
Peter stared at the message, a knot forming in his stomach. He quickly typed back.
Peter: I have something I have to finish tonight. Probably won't be home until way later. Sorry.
He waited, watching the typing bubble pulse.
Gwen: That's fine. I can wait.
Peter exhaled a long breath, resting his forehead against the cool glass of the lab table. She wasn't calling, which meant she wasn't in immediate danger, but the tone of the texts felt heavy. He couldn't go back to Queens tonight. Not with Carl King currently rebuilding his mass somewhere in the city. There was no better vantage point to monitor the five boroughs than the top of Avengers Tower.
Peter pulled his mask off, running a hand through his sweat-damp hair. From the living area, the heavy, rhythmic sound of Castle's snoring echoed over the hum of the servers.
Peter turned back to the chemical centrifuge and got to work.
Frank Castle rarely dreamed.
Ever since the massacre in Central Park, his brain usually spared him the theater of the subconscious. When he closed his eyes, he was simply forced to relive the memory—the ordinary afternoon, the picnic blanket, the sudden, deafening roar of automatic gunfire tearing through the trees. He couldn't forget it. None of it would have happened if they hadn't crossed paths with the gang war. None of it would have happened if the Chameleon hadn't set up the board.
But tonight, the memory warped. The dream shifted.
He saw a mother and a daughter standing in the park. But the mother wasn't bleeding. She was holding a pistol. She raised the barrel, pointed it directly at Frank's forehead, and pulled the trigger.
Castle woke up with a sharp gasp, his hand instantly dropping to the empty holster at his hip.
He sat up on the leather sofa, his chest heaving, cold sweat clinging to his forehead. The penthouse was quiet, bathed in the pale blue light of pre-dawn.
The rich, dark scent of roasted coffee drifted from the kitchen.
Castle wiped his face and stood up. He walked into the kitchen area. Peter was leaning against the counter, wearing his suit with the mask rolled up past his nose. He was quietly sipping from a ceramic mug.
"Good morning," Peter said softly. "You want a cup? Stark buys the good stuff."
Castle ignored him. He reached into his tactical vest, pulled out three different amber prescription bottles, popped the caps, and tossed a handful of painkillers into his mouth. He swallowed them dry.
Peter set his mug down on the counter. He looked at the heavily armed vigilante, his expression serious.
"I need to ask you the question I held back in the elevator," Peter said, his voice steady. "Why did you execute the Chameleon like that? The way you shot him... it felt like you had a personal grudge."