Chapter 9: The Devil in the Walls.
(General P.O.V)
The penthouse was silent.
Somewhere above the skyline of Hell's Kitchen, Wilson Fisk—Kingpin of New York—was getting dressed. Not with help. Not with ceremony. Just careful, deliberate movement.
White cuffs. Gold pins. Black jacket pressed so sharply it might as well have been armor. Every piece chosen, each button snapped into place like it mattered.
He stood before a mirror. Didn't look at himself. Just adjusted the cuffs again. Behind him the lights flickered with an ominous buzz.
The shadows shifted.
A voice—smooth, dry, and wrong—echoed in the room.
"You've come far, Mr. Fisk."
Fisk didn't turn. "No thanks to luck."
"No," the voice murmured. "Thanks to me."
The room dimmed some more, though the light hadn't changed.
"You trusted me when others feared me. In return, I gave you… everything."
Fisk scowled. "You gave me tools. I built the empire."
"And in return," the shadow said, "you destroyed all the would-be kingslayers. The man without fear. The warrior of K'un-Lun. The Punisher. All gone. All because I whispered into your ear. Revealed secrets unknown- their true identities. And now, New York… is yours. "
Fisk walked across the room, stopping at a dusty picture frame sitting alone on the shelf. Vanessa. His son. A still shot of a life that never got to finish.
"All it cost me," he said quietly, "was them."
The shadows laughed softly. "A low price. For power."
"It's not absolute," Fisk muttered.
A pause.
Then the voice whispered: "Not yet."
Fisk turned. "And what would make it absolute?"
The answer came without hesitation. "A soul."
Fisk narrowed his eyes. "Mine isn't for sale."
The shadows curled upward around the chandelier, forming something almost like a crown above him.
"Oh, Wilson," the voice cooed. "I won't need to buy your soul. You'll come to me anyway. Soon enough."
Fisk clenched his jaw. "Then whose?"
"You already know. The Absolute Totem. Strongest of all Spiders..."
Silence.
Then, a knock at the door.
Fisk didn't flinch. "Come."
The Prowler stepped in, eyes low behind his mask. "The message is delivered. Spiderman's on his way."
"Good," Fisk said, walking to the window, looking out over his city. "Kill him. Kill the woman. Kill the child. Bring me the bodies. Tonight the web burns."
Prowler hesitated. Just for a second.
Fisk turned his head slightly. "Have you forgotten who owns you?"
Prowler shook his head. "No, sir."
"Then remember this—" Fisk looked back at the family photo. "If this Peter Parker is what my Associate says he is, if he's indeed the Absolute Totem... then we can't leave any threads behind."
He couldn't risk the Totem passing on to another.
The shadows moved again—retreating into the walls, whispering something as they faded.
"And watch the woman. Out of all the spider people, she's always been trouble."
-0-
A dark faced Peter stood alone on a rooftop overlooking Oscorp Tower.
The wind tugged gently at his hoodie, cooling the sweat behind his neck.
From up here, the city looked normal. Too normal. Cars crawled through intersections. Pedestrians laughed into phone calls. A delivery drone hummed by.
But in four hours, Peter would face six enhanced killers and their boss.
And they had his family.
He took a steady breath. His heart pounded against his ribs. Not fear—urgency. Pressure that wouldn't let up until this was over.
He cracked his knuckles, flexed his fingers, and fired a webline.
No more waiting. It was time to prepare.
Oscorp's R&D building looked the same on the outside—tall, cold, modern. But the inside told a different story.
Empty stations. Unmanned checkpoints. No guards at the door. The company had been gutted from the top down after Norman's ousting, and most of the brain trust had already jumped ship.
Peter bypassed the main entrance and climbed in through a maintenance shaft he remembered from his intern days. No security sweep. No red lights. Just an old keypad outside the R&D wing.
He pulled out his phone and fired off a message.
Peter: "Need access codes for R&D wing xxxxxxx. Emergency. Please. No questions."
A few moments later, his best friend came through.
Harry: "You really are gonna get me fired, man. …Sent."
Seconds later, the door clicked open.
Inside, the lab felt like a ghost town.
Shelves lined with half-finished weapons. Prototype drones suspended in armatures. Test logs scrawled in dry-erase marker on black glass walls. The overhead lights hummed steadily.
Peter moved through the space without speaking, his shoes silent on the floor. He passed old memories: the hoverboard that never launched.
The arm-mounted grappler that burned out circuits in three seconds flat. A semi-transparent riot shield folded neatly in the corner.
Then he reached the vault where the the good stuff was.
The biometric scanner was dead, but the code Harry sent bypassed it.
It opened with a hiss.
And inside… were options. Mostly unfinished military grade projects. Exactly what he needed.
The first thing that caught his eye were the mechanical limbs—four segmented arms folded like insect legs, matte-black and sleek. Each one connected to a headpiece wired to a small circular neural chip.
The note on the crate read:
"Test sync latency: 0.7ms.
Status: Spinal interface in progress. Not cleared for field use."
Peter picked one up. It was lighter than it looked. Responsive.
Then there was the E.M.P. cannon—short-barrel, coiled with magnetic railwork. Secondary mode stamped along the grip: Railgun. Looked like overkill.
Next to it hung a prototype suit, displayed on a sealed mount.
According to the files: woven spider silk, reinforced with reptile hide fibers, coated in a reactive stealth mesh. The tensile strength was absurd. But so was the weight.
He gave the fabric a tug. It barely stretched. Like body armor designed for a tank.
On a shelf near the back, he spotted a foldable glider. Small. Remote-controlled. Limited range, but enough to serve as a distraction or lift if needed.
And then—he paused.
A locked safe sat on the far end.
The label on the reinforced glass door read:
SYMBIOTE 2.0 – ANTI-VENOM
ACCESS RESTRICTED – LEVEL 5 ONLY.
A canister of a swirling black and white liquid sat in the middle.
He didn't open it.
Didn't touch it.
But he didn't forget it either.
Peter checked the wall clock.
3 hours left.
He pulled out his phone—twenty-seven missed calls from Felicia. Even Harry tried once.
He didn't answer any of them.
Instead, he opened a hidden app buried deep in his storage: Mayday—his own coded AI support assistant, still under development.
"Mayday," he whispered, "cut tracking. Mask everything."
"Confirmed," the feminine voice resembling an older May replied. "GPS scrambled. Signal null. No external trace active Father."
He powered down the device and tossed it in a drawer, locking it shut.
Then he got to work in the Lab section of the building.
For the next 2 hours, Peter worked like a machine. No distractions. No panic.
He broke the E.M.P. cannon down into a modular pulse rig and strapped it to a custom shoulder mount. He disassembled the glider and extended its range with spare signal boosters from the hoverboard project.
He stripped the heavy armor from the prototype suit and re-threaded the inner layer into something light, flexible, and just durable enough.
He synced the 4 mechanical octo limbs to a portable neural uplink and fastened the mount onto the suit, behind his neck. No direct spine interface. Too risky. But it would do.
He didn't need perfection.
He needed function.
Every step, every tool, every decision was about one thing: getting them back.
May. Gwen.
Their faces kept flashing in his head.
He didn't allow himself to imagine what could happen if he failed. He soldered. He rewired. He breathed through the pressure.
He was no longer building gear.
He was preparing for war.
-0-
Peter stood still on the rooftop across from the old Skelton Tower—a luxury complex long since bought out, gutted, and repurposed by criminals who didn't want attention.
The lights inside were faint. Powerlines fed into it from three different blocks. Surveillance gear lined the corners. It wasn't a stronghold. It was a fortress. Kingpin's fortress.
He tapped the side of his head, where a slim earpiece fed into the neural chip at his neck. His voice was low.
"Mayday," he said. "Deactivate signal scramble."
"Confirmed," came the soft reply. "GPS trace now active. Good luck Father."
Peter stared at the building one last time.
His pulse was calm now. Focused.
"It's time."
He jumped.
Inside the tower, the Prowler was in the security control room with Shocker—real name Matt Gargan, mask half-off as he cleaned grime from his gauntlets.
"Any signs of him yet?" Prowler asked.
Gargan checked the monitors. "Nothing. Just rats and wind. You sure he's gonna show?"
"He'll show."
Right then, the building shook.
A deep, hollow boom from below.
The security feed crackled and cut out on six cameras at once.
Prowler cursed. "North service corridor. Sublevel two."
"Explosives?" Gargan asked, rising.
"Does it matter?" Prowler growled. "Move."
They were halfway out the door before Prowler turned back and pointed at the wall where Electro was jacked into a surge harness, arcs of energy humming across his arms.
"Stay plugged in. Watch for him."
Electro didn't respond. His pupils were blown wide, face slack, like he was riding a current too high to speak.
In the lower west wing of the building—the old pool section—Gwen Stacy knelt with May clutched close to her chest. Sand shifted behind and around them, the edges of the pool grinding under Sandman's control. One massive limb kept them from running. Again.
They'd gotten close. So close to escape.
Rhino stomped in next, his face blistered, patches of skin peeling around the edge of his cheek.
"I'm gonna kill her," he bellowed. "I swear to God—!"
"You let her near chemicals," Prowler snapped, striding in with Shocker behind him. "What part of 'biochemist' didn't register with you meatheads?"
"She threw acid at my face!"
"And nearly blew me up in the kitchen," Scorpion added, rubbing a fresh scorch mark on his sleeve.
"She set a trap!" Rhino roared.
Prowler raised a hand. "Enough. We're seconds away from finishing this. Nobody touches her. Not yet."
Gwen stared up at them, face bruised, eyes blazing.
"You locked me in a storeroom next to bleach and cleaning acids," she spat. "That's on you."
"Be cooperative Mrs.Parker." Prowler said, voice tight. "Just a few more seconds. Then it'll all be over."
Gwen leaned forward and spat in his face.
May looked up from her mother's arms, defiant. "My daddy's a wrestler," she said loud and proud. "And he's gonna kick all your asses."
There was a beat.
A shared look.
Then laughter. First Shocker. Then Sandman. Even Prowler chuckled under his breath. Rhino let out a wheezing bark through his ruined nose.
Then the lights went out.
Hard.
Power gone. Darkness swallowed the room.
The laughter stopped.
Somewhere above them, metal groaned.
And something moved in the dark.