Hawk did not drive the stolen taxi into Quantico Town. Ten kilometers out, he found a secluded, overgrown access road leading to a deep reservoir. Without slowing, he turned the wheel, sending the car plunging into the dark water where it would likely remain undiscovered for years. He walked along the deserted highway, a solitary figure against the vast Virginia landscape.
His luck held. After only a kilometer, a minivan slowed down, driven by a friendly-looking woman with a military-style haircut. A military spouse, returning from a supply run. After learning his destination, she warmly offered him a ride. He accepted without hesitation, easily slipping into the role of a polite, harmless young man.
She dropped him off at a clothing store on the main street of the small town, and from there, he made his way to a nondescript motel he had picked out from the satellite maps. Checking in was a simple, impersonal transaction. A man with money needs no car to rent a room.
He got his key, went up to the second floor, and found his room. Before stepping inside, he paused, turning to look down the street. In the distance, illuminated by floodlights, was the main gate of the Quantico Marine Corps Base. He could see the armed soldiers, the checkpoint, the methodical inspection of every vehicle. It was a fortress. He watched for a moment, his expression unreadable, then stepped into his room and closed the door.
It was too late to act today. The plan was set. Tomorrow, he would scout during the day—observing guard rotations, mapping sensor blind spots, and confirming patrol routes. And tomorrow night, he would assault the abandoned lab. Then, he would vanish.
He felt a profound, almost chilling confidence that he would not be caught for the death of the taxi driver. The man was a small-time criminal who had chosen the wrong victim. In a city like D.C., his disappearance would barely register as a statistic. But more importantly, Hawk had covered his tracks. When he had first gotten into the taxi at the airport, he had noted with satisfaction that the only surveillance camera pointed at the taxi stand was decapitated, its lens staring blankly at the sky. A lucky break.
Furthermore, he was a ghost in the system. The disparate, non-interconnected nature of state and federal law enforcement databases was a bureaucratic flaw he was more than happy to exploit. A fingerprint left in Virginia would have no corresponding file in New York. And since he had been a law-abiding citizen his entire life, his fingerprints weren't in any database to begin with. He had left no trail.
Half an hour later, the day's ten thousand punches were complete, thrown into the stale air of the cheap motel room. He showered, and as he stepped out of the bathroom, he saw his phone, lying on the bed, light up with an incoming call. Before he could even reach it, the screen went black. The battery was dead.
"Huh," he grunted, slightly startled. He considered it for a moment, then shrugged. He had no one he needed to call, and, he believed, no one who would be worried about him. The phone was a convenience, not a necessity. He tossed the dead device onto the nightstand, pulled back the covers, and lay down. He had important work to do tomorrow.
Within three minutes, he was fast asleep.
Back in her room in New York City, Gwen Stacy frowned at her own phone, the automated "the number you have dialed is not available" message echoing for the third time. She hung up, a sense of unease settling over her.
She rested her chin in her hand and turned to her laptop, pulling up a web browser. A few keystrokes brought her to a familiar login page. When she had given Hawk her old phone, she had wiped the data, but in her haste, she must have forgotten to log out of her primary account. A moment later, after entering a verification code sent to her own phone, a map appeared on the screen.
A single, blinking light pulsed on the map. But it wasn't in New York.
Washington D.C.?
Her mind instantly jumped to the most logical, and most common, explanation. His phone was stolen. She felt a surge of resentment, not at Hawk, but at the city itself. She vividly remembered her first smartphone, stolen from her pocket on the subway less than three days after she bought it. New York was a city of thieves.
Forget it, she thought with a sigh. I'll just give him another one when school starts.
She closed the location-tracking website, but her mind was still on Hawk. She opened another tab, navigating to an online archive of the Daily Bugle. An electronic newspaper article from after the Battle of New York filled the screen, complete with illustrations. The headline was stark: ENTIRE CITY BLOCK IN QUEENS LEVELED IN FOCUSED ALIEN ATTACK.
She scrolled through the images of the devastation—the place Hawk used to call home. She was trying to piece him together, to understand the quiet, intense boy who could answer quantum physics problems in his sleep but didn't own a phone. The boy who had a sister he never spoke of, and who carried a profound, hidden sadness.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway outside her room. Gwen came back to her senses. Then, her eyes lit up. An idea, a connection, a new path for her investigation. She closed the webpage, jumped up from her chair, and ran to her door, pulling it open.
"Dad!"
Captain George Stacy, who had just gotten home and was in the middle of his routine check-in, was startled by his daughter's sudden, ambush-like appearance, her eyes glowing with an excited, determined light.
He gave a faint, tired smile. "Sorry, Gwen. I don't have any new gossip about Spider-Man to share with you today."
A new, masked vigilante had recently appeared in the city, and the NYPD was less than thrilled. In their view, if vigilantes were necessary, what were the police for? But the media and the public were fascinated, and Gwen, like everyone else, had been curious.
She shook her head, dismissing the topic instantly. "Dad, I'm not interested in Spider-Man."
George's smile widened. "Then yesterday, when you and Mary Jane were grilling me about him…"
"That was MJ being curious, not me," Gwen interrupted quickly, steering the conversation back on track. She blinked up at her father, her expression turning serious and earnest.
"Dad, can I ask you for something?"