"The CIA had already uncovered Walter Hardy's true identity," Felicia said, her voice completely stripped of its usual playful lilt. She paced the gravel rooftop, her boots crunching softly. "He had been retired for years. He had a daughter. A kid. He wasn't taking jobs anymore."
"But the CIA doesn't take no for an answer," Peter guessed, crossing his arms over his chest.
"They excel at using a man's family as a loaded gun," Felicia replied bitterly.
They had blackmailed Walter. Sent him into Russian territory right after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His mission was absolute suicide: infiltrate a black-site and steal the mature, mass-produced Soviet super-soldier serum.
Walter actually pulled it off. He secured the serum. But he never made it out of Budapest. The CIA shipped a closed casket back to New York, claiming Russian operatives shot him during the exfiltration.
Felicia stopped pacing. She reached into one of her tactical pouches and casually tossed a small, heavy glass vial through the air.
Peter snatched it out of the night air. His lenses whirred, automatically running a chemical and radiological sweep. Faint, trace amounts of radioactive isotopes pinged on his HUD. But the radiation wasn't what made Peter's stomach drop. Etched into the base of the glass was a skull resting on six tentacles.
Hydra.
"He didn't find the Soviet serum," Peter whispered, his thumb brushing over the raised glass tentacles. "He found a Hydra vault."
"Exactly," Felicia stepped closer. "A Hydra mole inside the CIA killed my father to secure that sample. That vial is how the US military finally figured out the psychological variable of the Erskine formula. It's the foundation of Weapon Plus. It's how they made Luke Cage."
Peter's jaw tightened. He knew Hydra was a parasite deeply embedded in global intelligence. Nick Fury and Phil Coulson constantly spoke in circles about it. But holding physical proof made the threat terrifyingly real.
"JARVIS," Peter muttered, instantly severing his suit's external video feed so the AI couldn't log the Hydra logo into the mainframe. "Scrub the last thirty seconds of recording. Where is Captain America right now?"
"The Avengers are currently operating in Madripoor, Peter," JARVIS's crisp voice replied in Peter's earpiece. "They are actively pursuing leads regarding the biological weaponization of Jim Hammond."
Right. The original Human Torch. Cap had practically commandeered the Quinjet the second he heard his World War II brother-in-arms was still alive. That meant Peter was the only active Avenger currently sitting on the Eastern Seaboard.
"Send a priority override," Peter ordered, slipping the glass vial into one of his suit's concealed waist pockets. "Tell them to wrap it up and get back to New York. I just stumbled into a Class-A intelligence leak."
"Acknowledged. Shall I deploy a containment unit?"
"No, I'm bringing it to the Tower myself," Peter said. He looked up at Felicia. He understood now. The impossible rooftop jumps. The crushing kinetic force of her kicks in the Oscorp lab.
"You injected yourself," Peter stated softly. "You used a synthesized variant of the Hydra serum to give yourself the physical stats you needed to hunt down the people who killed him."
Felicia didn't confirm or deny it. She just held his gaze, her blue eyes cold and unreadable in the moonlight.
"The underground lab on Rikers Island is gone," Peter told her, saving her a suicide mission. "They evacuated the entire Weapon Plus operation. The room is totally scrubbed."
Felicia's shoulders slumped a fraction of an inch. She let out a long, slow breath, stepping backward toward the edge of the roof. "So... are you going to arrest me? I technically haven't stolen anything tonight. And you got the Oscorp intel you wanted."
"If we burn this whole conspiracy to the ground," Peter asked, tilting his head, "are you going to hang up the claws and actually go back to being a normal high school senior?"
Felicia just offered a devastating, razor-sharp smile. She leaned backward, letting gravity pull her off the ledge. A second later, the sharp thwip-thwip of her grapple gun echoed off the brickwork as she swung out of sight.
Peter didn't follow her. He fired a web-line, charting a direct course for Midtown Manhattan.
Once inside the secure sublevels of Avengers Tower, Peter locked the empty test tube inside a lead-lined bio-vault. He layered three inches of high-density web fluid over the vault door for good measure.
Job done, Peter swung back across the East River to Forest Hills, Queens.
He slipped through his second-story bedroom window, landing silently on the carpet. He checked his phone. No missed calls from Aunt May. Uncle Ben had successfully run interference, maintaining Peter's "I feel sick, I'm going to bed early" alibi. Uncle Ben was the best ex-Marine a kid could ask for.
Peter pulled his mask off, running a hand through his sweaty hair. He walked over to his window to pull the blinds shut.
He froze.
Three houses down, silhouetted perfectly against the streetlights on a neighboring rooftop, stood the Black Cat.
She wasn't hiding. She raised a single, black-gloved hand and gave him a cheerful, mocking little wave. Then, she turned and dropped into the alleyway, vanishing from sight.
Peter's mouth hung open. He looked down at his suit, his memory running the entire night in reverse.
The vial.
He reached to his utility belt, pulling out a small radiological scanner he had grabbed from the Avengers Tower lab. He swept it over his own waist pocket.
Beep-beep-beep.
The tracer wasn't a mechanical bug. It was the vial itself. The glass was coated in a highly specific, easily trackable radioactive isotope. When Peter caught it, the residue transferred to his gloves. When he put it in his pocket, it marked his suit. Unless he had completely stripped down and run his gear through a full radiological decontamination scrubber at the Tower, he was lighting up like a Christmas tree on a Geiger counter.
Felicia hadn't run away. She had simply tracked the isotopic breadcrumbs right to his bedroom window.
Peter let out a heavy, self-deprecating laugh, slumping his forehead against the windowpane. He thought he had outsmarted her. He thought he held all the cards because he knew she was Felicia Hardy. But she had played him perfectly.
Mutually Assured Destruction.
He knew she was the Black Cat. And now, she knew he was Peter Parker. Neither of them could expose the other without burning their own lives to the ground. They were completely, terrifyingly equal.
Peter smiled, yanking the blinds shut.
"See you in the club tomorrow, Senior Felicia."
PS: In the main comic continuity, Felicia Hardy doesn't naturally possess superpowers! She initially relied entirely on her athletic training and gadgets. However, she later sought out the Kingpin to undergo a radical, experimental procedure that gave her the subconscious ability to affect probability fields—literally causing "bad luck" to anyone who attacked her. Tying her physical enhancements to the Super-Soldier Serum here is a way to ground her abilities
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