Ash knew the moment the air changed.
He was walking home from school when the world felt too clean. The traffic was normal. The pedestrians were scattered. But something in the way the shadows curved and the wind moved told him:
He was being watched.
Not by the Inheritors.
Not by Falcon.
This was… colder. Clinical.
Professional.
---
> "Echo," he whispered.
Falcon beeped softly in his earpiece. Hovering far overhead, cloaked to the visible eye.
> "Multiple thermal signatures. Triangulated surveillance pattern."
> "Non-hostile posture… yet."
Ash adjusted his backpack.
He passed the bodega on 34th, gave a nod to the owner, then slipped into the alley beside the laundromat. The same alley where he first felt his power begin to resonate weeks ago.
He touched the side of the wall with his hand.
> "Cloak pattern," he murmured. "Activate."
His skin shimmered faintly, and in a moment, the boy vanished—at least to normal sight.
Falcon dropped lower, behind the water tank above the alley.
> "Three assets now circling your known routes."
> "Pattern matches SHIELD surveillance."
Ash grimaced.
"They finally noticed."
---
He ducked into the maintenance hatch beside the alley, sliding into a narrow, forgotten crawlspace beneath the street. Falcon's sensor light blinked softly ahead, illuminating rusted pipes and wiring that buzzed softly.
> "They shouldn't even know who I am."
> "They do not know your name."
> "They know your signature."
> "Drone-Fused Tech. Unauthorized Evolution Pulse. Orbital data cross-referenced from Wakandan satellites."
Ash shook his head.
"Of course," he muttered. "They'd track anything that glitches the satellite grid."
---
He emerged several blocks away—out through a storm grate and onto an empty sidewalk under the elevated train line.
There, Falcon hovered closer.
> "There is still time to disappear. Mask your energy. Let the Starborn core hibernate again."
Ash looked out at the street, then down at his own hands—faintly glowing with residual energy even when he wasn't using it.
"I can't hide what I am anymore," he said. "But I can hide where I am."
---
Over the next few hours, Ash moved like a ghost.
He ditched his phone. Left no digital trail. Even Falcon reconfigured its signal output to mimic bird migration patterns—undetectable to human systems.
He set up a rotating safe zone pattern, moving between rooftops, old Corp-safe dead drops he was only now beginning to sense, and forgotten surveillance blind spots in the city's infrastructure.
It worked.
For one day.
---
At 3:47 a.m., Falcon beeped.
> "SHIELD intercept signal. Location: May Parker's home."
Ash's blood went cold.
"No," he whispered. "Not her."
He was moving before the thought finished.
---
By the time he reached the street, two sleek black vans were parked at either end. Unmarked. Windows tinted. Agents in dark tactical gear swept the perimeter quietly—discreet but efficient.
Falcon streaked overhead in stealth mode.
> "No breach attempt detected. Observation only. Listening devices confirmed. House unentered."
Ash crouched behind the neighbor's trash bins, eyes narrowed.
Observation only didn't mean harmless.
---
Then he saw her.
May.
Standing in the kitchen window. Mug in hand. Looking tired. Alone.
She didn't know.
Didn't suspect a thing.
Ash's jaw clenched.
He turned to Falcon. "Create a phantom echo. Make them chase noise five blocks west."
> "Understood."
Falcon zipped off, emitting a low-level burst of bio-sim data: heat, motion, electromagnetic trickles.
Within moments, the SHIELD comms crackled to life in his earpiece:
> "We've got movement. West side. Unconfirmed pulse spike."
> "Send teams three and four."
The vans began to shift.
And Ash moved in the opposite direction—slipping between shadows, scaling the back wall, and quietly dropping into the backyard garden without a sound.
He didn't knock.
He went to the basement.
---
It was where he kept the blueprints. The old drone parts. His private console.
But now, it became something else.
He activated a new firewall grid—one based on Corp quantum scrambling. Falcon rejoined him, plugging directly into the mainframe.
> "Encrypt everything," Ash ordered. "And set the new firewall to reactive. If they try to trace again, we burn."
> "Confirmed."
He looked up the stairs toward the soft thud of May's footsteps. She was moving toward the hallway.
He didn't go to her.
Didn't speak.
He just watched from the shadows.
---
That night, he left again.
No goodbyes.
No traces.
Just one note on the kitchen table:
> "Going to stay with a friend for a while. Don't worry. I love you. —Ash"
---
In a dark facility beneath D.C., Director Maria Hill stared at the data feed from Queens.
She frowned.
"This one's careful," she said. "He knows we're watching."
The analyst nodded. "We're still triangulating the drone origin. But it's not just Stark-tech. It's something else."
Hill leaned back, eyes narrowing.
"Then we're not just dealing with a gifted kid."
She tapped the file: a blurry image of Ash mid-leap on a rooftop, glowing faintly.
"We're dealing with something that doesn't have a name yet."