The F.E.A.S.T. Center—Food, Emergency Aid, Shelter and Training—operated out of a renovated brick building in Midtown Manhattan. It was funded and managed by Martin Li, a prominent Chinese-American philanthropist. Aunt May spent half her week volunteering here, which meant Peter spent a significant amount of his downtime dropping by to help carry crates of canned goods and secretly run diagnostics on Li.
So far, his spider-sense stayed completely dormant around the man. Stark-tech bioscans showed zero abnormal energy signatures. Martin Li was clean. He wasn't Mister Negative. At least, not yet.
Peter swung onto the rooftop, his boots touching down silently on the gravel. He was the second to arrive.
Daredevil was already there, perched perfectly still on the ledge, his horned cowl silhouetted against the neon bleed of the skyline. He gave a single, short nod as Peter approached. Tonight, Peter wasn't wearing his Stark-fabricated suit. He was wearing his original, low-tech spandex uniform. The fabric breathed poorly and offered zero ballistic protection, but it lacked a GPS tracker and a central comms unit. No tech meant no digital footprint. Tonight, safety meant staying off the grid.
Jessica Jones and Luke Cage came up the fire escape next. Luke's eyes darted across the adjacent rooftops, his jaw clenched tight. His shoulders were rigid. Jessica just sighed, slumped against a rusted ventilation unit, and buried her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket, lost in her own brooding.
Then, a shadow detached itself from the stairwell housing. Frank Castle. Peter hadn't invited him, but the Punisher had somehow caught the scent. Frank sat down heavily on an air conditioning unit, pulled a combat knife from his tactical vest, and began scraping dirt from under his fingernail. He looked incredibly bored and entirely ready to murder everyone in the tri-state area.
Felicia Hardy was the last to drop in. She landed with silent, feline grace, clad in her black leather uniform. She took one look at the assembled group and froze.
"The Devil of Hell's Kitchen?" Felicia mused, eyeing Matt Murdock. "I thought you were just an urban legend."
"Every urban legend has a foundation, Ms. Hardy," Daredevil replied without turning his head. He tilted his chin toward Peter. "Everyone you called is here."
Felicia blinked. She had clearly expected a rooftop full of Avengers.
"Okay, let's run it from the top," Peter said, stepping into the center of the roof. "Usually, I only use that line to introduce myself, but we have a lot of ground to cover."
Peter pointed at Luke. "Mr. Cage broke out of the Rikers Island black site. The U.S. military is running illegal human trials to recreate Abraham Erskine's Super Soldier Serum. But according to the intel provided by Black Cat, they aren't using standard military science. They're working backward from a Hydra variant."
He laid out the timeline. Erskine's original serum mutated a subject based on their psychological profile, but it carried a massive mortality rate. Luke Cage was the sole survivor of the current trials. Back in the early 2000s, the CIA forced Walter Hardy—the original Cat—to infiltrate Russia and steal a Soviet Super Soldier stash. But the vials he extracted were actually Hydra serum.
"The military is using the Hydra strain to crack Erskine's formula," Peter explained.
"Which explains Fisk's intel," Jessica chimed in, her voice flat. "Kingpin mentioned an untouchable player sweeping the streets. Homeless people, runaways, the people nobody looks for. They've been disappearing for years. When the FBI took Fisk down, he deliberately triggered a shootout with his dirty NYPD cops to prove a point about how outgunned he was by this shadow group. The military needs human test subjects. Hundreds of them."
"Tandy Bowen vanished off the grid too," Peter added. "She didn't fit the usual demographic, but she's gone. I'm linking it to this."
Jessica crossed her arms. "Walter Hardy's death is the smoking gun here. Even if he died on the job, the serum container he sent back lacked any Hydra markings. That doesn't match the historical records. Hydra rigged the drop. They scrubbed the shipping manifests so the U.S. military would receive the vials without raising red flags. Hydra wanted the Pentagon to do the heavy lifting on the research."
Daredevil tilted his head, listening to the ambient hum of the city. "Which means the military's top-secret research divisions are currently controlled by Hydra."
The rooftop went dead silent. Taking on the United States military was suicide. It was an Avengers-level threat.
"The Avengers would back us," Peter said, his voice tight. "But I have reason to believe S.H.I.E.L.D. is also entirely compromised by Hydra."
Frank stopped scraping his knife. Jessica swore under her breath.
"If I flag this up the chain, S.H.I.E.L.D. buries it, and they bury us," Peter continued. "The Avengers are pinned down overseas. By the time they get back, it'll be too late. We're the only ones left."
Felicia stared at him, the reality of the situation finally settling over her.
"They moved the Rikers equipment underground immediately after Mr. Cage escaped," Peter said, pacing a tight circle. "That means they are at the finish line. They have Captain America's blood on file, and now they have Mr. Cage's physiological data. They know exactly what makes the Erskine serum stabilize. If they took Tandy Bowen, her DNA must carry the exact genetic markers they need."
"We need a lab," Jessica said.
"I can't run the data at Avengers Tower," Peter said. "JARVIS logs everything. And Oscorp is out. Their Savage Force division is likely already crawling with Hydra assets."
Daredevil spoke up. "I have an acquaintance. She has the medical background to help us."
Luke Cage, who had been staring at the skyline, finally turned around. His heavy frame seemed to take up half the roof. "We need to lure them out. We need to force them into making a mistake." He looked at the group, his expression hardened into stone. "I'm the missing asset. If I step into the light... if I go to the press and make a massive, public fuss about what they did to me at Rikers, it'll draw their fire. Can we buy enough time doing that?"
He looked directly at Daredevil.
Matt's lips twitched into a faint, humorless smile. "I know a very good lawyer. He'll buy you all the time you need."
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