Sirens blared, their echoes splitting the silence of early dawn. Red and blue lights bathed the damp New York streets, painting long streaks over cracked pavement as the rubber of police tires screamed against asphalt. The NYPD was on the scene.
Seven squad cars converged on the abandoned storage house, their arrival sharp and synchronized. The time: precisely five in the morning—seven hours since the crime occurred.
The cars came to a screeching halt, tires locking, headlights cutting through the thick morning fog. The beams fell upon the entrance of the warehouse—eliciting gasps, dropped jaws, and wide, stunned eyes.
Ice.
Not a thin layer. No mere frost. But thick, sharp spikes of frozen terror jutting out from the metal frame, twisting toward the lot like the spears of a frozen army.
"God! I know it's November, but damn!" one officer barked, stepping out of his vehicle. His voice carried that classic, half-jaded tone of someone who'd seen too much—and still wasn't ready for this. The man wore a slightly ill-fitting NYPD uniform, his gut pressing against his vest. A fedora covered his brown hair, while his eyes—brown to match—spoke of a life lived through hard choices and harder streets. This was Harvey Bullock.
A hand tapped his shoulder.
"Harvey, let's go."
He turned to his long-time partner, a woman in her late twenties with the quiet authority of someone who didn't need to raise her voice to be heard. She was of Asian descent, with jet-black hair that swung gently at her shoulders. She didn't wear the standard-issue uniform—instead opting for a black jacket over a plain white T-shirt, brown slacks, and polished black shoes. A detective's badge hung from a chain around her neck.
This was Yuri Watanabe.
Both detectives—veterans in very different ways—moved forward cautiously. With wisdom in their steps, they approached the door. Their hands hovered near their firearms, instincts sharpened by experience, until a sharp crack snapped them to alert.
They whipped their heads toward the sound—one of the younger officers had stepped too heavily onto something. Something slick. Something red.
Not just ice—blood. Frozen solid. Hardened crimson pooling outward like a petrified scream.
The officer recoiled instinctively, face pale. Yuri crouched beside the ominous shard, her breath puffing clouds in the morning air. She examined it with a practiced eye, fingers hovering just close enough to feel the chill.
"Yuri…?" Harvey called out, his voice barely above a whisper. He wasn't usually the nervous type—but this? This was different.
She didn't answer. Instead, her gaze slowly lifted.
There, encased in frost and silence, stood three statues.
Each one human.
Each one locked in an eternal moment, their last breath sealed within icy tombs.
They were frozen not by nature, but by something deliberate. A message sculpted in death.
A snow globe of murder.
Harvey and Yuri exchanged a look. Even the younger officer behind them, who'd followed out of some misguided curiosity, said nothing. The other officers stood stationed outside, cordoning off the area, holding back the storm of onlookers, press, and morning chaos.
Yuri led the way further into the warehouse, her steps careful but unafraid.
And then they saw him.
A boy.
No older than seventeen—his face frozen in panic, body locked mid-motion in a sculpture of ice that had grown around him like a crystal cage. Head bowed. Limbs unmoving.
Dead.
About ten feet away were two more familiar faces—known enforcers, low-tier criminals tied to the major underground factions of New York. One was Eddie—street name, no last name—infamous for his loyalty to the second-largest crime family in the city. His statue was grotesque in its detail. His gun frozen mid-fire. But the bullet? That hovered—caught mid-air in a shard of impossible, translucent cold.
"Science fiction," some might say. But for these two detectives, it was just another notch in the ever-breaking scale of what was possible in this city.
And then there was the last one.
Lander.
Once a runner, now an ice-covered monument to failure. His right hand was gone—blasted or severed clean off. What the NYPD didn't know was that Lander had been holding his phone in that missing hand.
Unlike Eddie, Lander hadn't gotten a shot off. His body was frozen in an attack posture, weapon raised toward an intruder. But whatever hit them had moved faster than reflex. Faster than thought. Now, Lander was part of the gallery.
Yuri, shaken, turned her gaze—and her stomach—from the scene. She had seen many things in her career.
But not like this.
She now realized—the bloodied shard of ice outside wasn't just abstract horror. It had been Lander's hand.
"Yuri, I'll go tell the chief. Hey newbie—let's go!" Harvey snapped, reverting to habit, corralling the younger cop as he made his exit.
Yuri remained.
Alone, surrounded by silence—and frost that still whispered with death.
At least, she thought she was alone.
A familiar voice broke the quiet:
"Hey! Yuri! Whoa!! I thought we talked about this! No surprise snow parties without an adult present."
Spider-Man descended from the skylight, his signature sarcasm echoing in the still air. He was suspended upside down by a web, swaying gently above the frozen scene.
Yuri didn't laugh.
She didn't even smirk.
"What do you make of this?" she asked—her voice all business, no pretense. The question wasn't casual. It was a command dressed as a query.
Spider-Man stopped swinging.
His masked gaze scanned the scene. His posture shifted.
He looked toward the frozen statues, to the blood, to the bullet—an impossible moment carved into reality.
His tone dimmed.
"Well… unless Elsa decided to audition for The Godfather, I'd say someone with a serious cold front and zero chill did this."
He paused, taking a slow step forward as his white lenses narrowed.
"This isn't just ice. This is precision. A bullet stopped mid-flight? That's not your average freeze-ray tech. That's… time-slowing speed. Or maybe something faster."
He flipped upright and landed with care, his boots crunching the red-stained frost. He dropped his voice to a hush.
"I've seen ice villains before—Blizzard, Frost, even that knockoff 'Ice Machine Man' who robbed a deli in Queens. But this? These guys didn't get a shot off. It's like they blinked—and the world turned arctic."
He circled Eddie's statue, cautious but alert.
"This wasn't an accident. This was punishment. A statement. Whoever did this didn't want to just kill—they wanted everyone to see it."
He looked back to Yuri, all jokes gone now.
"You said this happened seven hours ago? Then we're already behind. This kind of power doesn't come and go. Someone like this leaves a trail. Or worse—a wake."
He looked past the warehouse, toward the waking city.
"Either we've got a new player in town… or someone old just evolved."
He shot a web and leapt skyward, pausing only to toss one last line over his shoulder:
"Call me if another snow globe of doom shows up. Or, y'know… if you find a coffee machine that didn't freeze solid. I'm running on three hours of sleep and an expired granola bar."
With a thwip, he vanished into the skyline.
Yuri remained.
Alone again.
The cold air wrapped around her breath as the sun dared to rise behind the city.
⸻
Elsewhere, in a shadowed alley just a few blocks from the crime scene, an old Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme sat parked.
Inside, five men sat. Their clothing varied wildly—from tailored suits to oil-stained workwear. One man, sharply dressed, held a phone to his ear. The call was live. The name on the screen was blurred—just like the last call Lander ever made.
The caller's face was calm. His eyes—hazel, behind thin glasses—were cold and calculating. His hair was brown, neatly combed.
"Sorry, sir. The police beat us to it. How do you wish to proceed?"
He wasn't speaking to a boss.
He was speaking to a king.
To Kingpin.
"That is unfortunate," the voice replied—calm, deep, absolute. A voice that held no need to raise itself. "Did any of our embedded officers discover anything about the individual responsible?"
"Yes, sir," the man responded swiftly, precisely. "They confirmed what we already knew—Lander and Eddie were eliminated. But there was more. Something Yuri Watanabe noticed."
Fisk's silence was permission to continue.
"She's still a rising star in the force, but sharp. Too sharp. She observed that the third body—the boy—was several degrees colder than the other two. Evidence suggests the presence of a device. Not just a power."
Fisk was quiet. Not out of surprise—but contemplation.
"A device…" he repeated. "Curious."
The man didn't move, awaiting the next command.
"Coordinate with Mr. Mason. I want the source of this ice located. And if possible… arrange a meeting."
"Understood."
"Thank you Wesley."
At the mention of Mason, another man in the car handed over a different phone—already dialed.
The suited man brought it to his ear and said: "Phineas, it's me. I need your assistance."
Beneath the city, in a hidden lab nestled in the old sewer systems, machinery roared to life.
A burst of steam, a flashing red light—alarms rang out in warning.
The creator was already moving. A man encased in a massive armored suit, large enough to rival a car, approached a pod at the lab's center. A storage unit—a battery—was being repaired.
The battery clicked into place, and the capsule responded.
The alarms silenced.
Inside, sealed in glass, was a woman.
Her skin the color of frozen rivers.
Her hair—white as snow.
A sleeping figure, serene and still, surrounded by machinery that pulsed faintly with energy.
The suited man approached slowly.
His metal hand—massive, unshakable—rose.
And with more care than such a giant should have possessed, he placed his palm against the capsule's surface.
The frost on the glass melted under the heat of that gesture.
And through his helmet, his voice cracked—not with rage.
But with sorrow.
"…I'm sorry. I wasn't here."