Chapter Text
Harlem, New York City, New York.
To the white people with gentrifying intentions, it can be sight for sore eyes. Only those who don’t acknowledge the historical and botanical beauty of the neighborhood would believe that.
It’s a part of the city that never really sleeps. Instead, it dozed in restless bursts, various trains rumbling down 125th, its sound background noise to countless residents, headlights slicing through the fog of Harlem River Drive and the Henry Hudson Parkway, music of various genres leaking out of open windows up and down apartment buildings and brownstones, and racing through the streets.
From the roof of one of these brownstones, Michelle Jones crouched at the ledge, hood of her suit pulled up, pocket sketchbook balanced on her knee, displaying her latest musings.
Her pen moved in tight, precise lines, tracing the pockets of the neighborhood she’d watched for weeks: the bodega that stayed open until 3 a.m., the streetlight that flickered twice before shutting off completely—then turning back on 20 minutes later and continuing the cycle—the delivery van that parked a little too long in the alley every other Thursday. These routines spoke to the nature of people; people operated with patterns, and patterns told the truth, regardless of whether a person said it. You just had to look long enough.
MJ had always been good at looking.
She shifted her weight forward, eyes narrowing at the far corner of the block where two men hovered near a closed storefront. Their voices were low; evidently, they were trying not to draw attention to themselves. One carried a duffel bag just large enough to look suspicious. The other glanced up, surveying the street in both directions every few seconds.
“Really?” she muttered under her breath, webbing her sketchbook to the roof and making a mental note to come back. Her eyes narrowed at the pair, voice exasperated. “It’s not even midnight.” Their behavior was insulting; a five-year-old would look at them and ask their dad about the strange behavior.
A faint thwip echoed as a strand of web shot from her wrist, latching onto a rusted fire escape. She swung down effortlessly, the pads of her feet touched down silently in the alley behind them, just as one of the men pulled a crowbar from the bag.
“Bad idea,” MJ called out, shaking her head.
They spun. One cursed, clutching the bag. The other lunged with the crowbar.
She moved quickly, ducking low, sweeping his legs out, using his momentum to slam him against the wall. The second man tried to run. A quick flick of her wrist, another thwip, and webbing glued his ankle to the pavement, slamming him down with a grunt.
Thirty seconds later, both were gift-wrapped and dangling from the fire escape, still swearing and delirious.
MJ brushed her hands together, shaking imaginary dust off them, expression unreadable from her mask, but her voice dryly called out. “Next time, try looking at your phone or talking to each other. Maybe it won’t be so obvious you’re up to something.”
She launched herself back upward, vanishing into the night before sirens could get close.
Back on the rooftop, she resumed her crouch. Her pen and sketchbook in hand, she returned to watching the community below.
~~~
Harlem was alive in a way most people never noticed, and most overlooked for their own prejudiced reasons. Every street had its own rhythm, every block a different verse. Down on Lenox, a bus hissed to a stop. Somewhere farther east, the sound of a trumpet spilled through an open window—likely someone practicing for a show—it was slow and sweet enough to make her pause mid-swing.
MJ landed lightly on the edge of a low building, her shadow cutting against the glow of a streetlight. She crouched again, surveying. The corner store across from the park was still open. Its owner, Mrs. Abdul, was putting up her outdoor displays while scolding her teenage son for staying up late. Two cars drove down an empty street, laughter echoing as music played loudly from its speakers. Nothing seemed out of place.
For the next few blocks, she continued to watch the area begin to wind down for the night. Her earpiece buzzed faintly, an alert she’d coded with help from Ned, pulling emergency call patterns from the NYPD public scanner. A spike in distress calls between Frederick Douglass and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevards on 125th.
She adjusted her mask and hoodie, sighing.
“Guess break time’s over.”
One leap, then another, and the rooftops blurred beneath her. Web lines snapped against the chill air as she swung low. The wind whipped her hoodie back, cool against the back of her neck. Below, lights flashed red and blue around a shuttered jewelry shop. Two masked men scrambled out of the window, clutching stolen bags, their getaway car idling half on the curb.
MJ didn’t slow down in her pursuit.
She hit the first one mid-run, knocking him flat before he even realized the air above him wasn’t empty. The second reached the car door. Seconds later, she shot a web, yanked it backward, and sent him sprawling into a trash bin.
It took less than a minute.
When the officers finally rushed in minutes later, they found the thieves neatly webbed against the jewelry store, hurling curses at the masked vigilante. MJ perched above the store, unseen, watching one of the cops shake his head.
“Damn hero wannabe,” he muttered. “Everyone’s got a gimmick now.”
“Ya think it could be that Doctor Strange’s new magic trick?”
MJ rolled her eyes under her mask. “Not him,” she whispered.
She swung off again before the cops could try to look for her.
~~~~~
By two in the morning, MJ had moved south, sliding through Harlem, toward the East River. The air shifted as she went, trading fried food and street smoke for salt and diesel. The further she swung, the noise webbed and flowed, the hum of nightlife fading into the mechanical thrum of shipping yards and bridge traffic.
Behind her, Upper Manhattan’s lights burned soft and amber, her second home shrinking into a cluster of glowing veins against the dark. Ahead, the water cut through the skyline like a blade of glass, separating Manhattan from the quiet pulse of Brooklyn. She perched on a steel beam overlooking the river, watching the surface break against the pylons below.
Further downstream, the faint silhouette of Stark Industries’ waterfront complex shimmered against the horizon, tower cranes, cargo depots, and the soft red blink of security drones gliding in loops. From this distance, it looked sterile and perfect, a seemingly perfect fortress of light. But, like the New York native she was, MJ knew the rhythm of this city better than any transplant or visitor who may be fooled. And tonight, that rhythm was off.
She squinted, leaning forward to study the docks. Security lights flared, then dipped, not in a power surge; at first glance, it looked like a glitch. Like the pattern-seeking individual she was, she kept staring at it. Three minutes in, she noticed it. Three short flickers, pause, three long. A pattern. Someone must have overridden the base code on the lights, an inside signal, maybe, or a distraction.
MJ frowned, pulling out her small black notebook. She flipped to the last filled page—sketches of routes, names, drone markings, everything she’d seen in the past few weeks, and scribbled a new line at the bottom:
Riv. docks — lights glitching in some pattern. Check for internal override.
She hesitated, then wrote another note beneath it, smaller:
Patterns changing around Stark shipments.
Closing the book, she tucked it back into her hoodie and leaned forward, eyes tracing the skyline that glittered like fractured stars. The wind coming off the river was colder here, sharper. Somewhere in the distance, a barge horn echoed, low and mournful.
Tomorrow, she’d wake up early. Be Michelle Jones, Stark intern. Smile at the right people. Pretend she hadn’t spent the night dangling above their secrets.
But for now—just for now—she watched the city breathe, knowing something beneath it had already started to shift.
The wind picked up near the river, brushing grit against her cheeks. MJ tucked her hood tighter and stood, scanning the skyline. Something pulsed red in her peripheral vision—a small light, hovering where it shouldn’t.
She crouched and focused.
At first, she thought it was a police drone. Then she noticed the pattern; too clean, too smooth, no identifying markers. And quiet. Too quiet.
“Not NYPD,” she murmured.
The drone glided across the street, stopping to scan the alley between two old apartment blocks. MJ moved with it, keeping low and to the shadows. The machine emitted a faint whir that made the air vibrate; it was watching someone.
Below, a man in a dark jacket was unloading something metallic from the trunk of a car. Crates with "Stark Industries" faintly stamped on the sides.
MJ’s stomach tightened. No way.
She zoomed in with her mask’s lenses. The markings were old, but she’d seen those crates during her internship. Discontinued parts from Stark’s micro-reactor project. They were supposed to be locked away in a Stark warehouse across the river.
So why were they here?
The man opened one crate. MJ’s heart skipped. Inside, rows of mini-drones shimmered in low light, sleek and weaponized.
Then, one of them blinked awake.
MJ barely had time to swing backward before a beam of blue light shot through where she’d been standing. She flipped off the fire escape, landing on a neighboring rooftop. The rogue drone adjusted course instantly, chasing her.
“Oh, great,” she muttered, sprinting. “They’ve got target protocols now.”
Another shot. Sparks burst from a nearby vent. MJ vaulted over it, firing a web to yank herself across the alley. The drone followed, slicing through her first webline with a flash of plasma.
“Okay. That’s new.”
She ducked behind a rooftop water tower, heartbeat steadying into that razor-focus rhythm she only felt mid-fight.
She waited. Counted.
One… two…
The drone zipped into view. She leaped, grabbed a dangling cable, swung wide, and launched two web shots. The first tangled its propeller. The second hit its sensor. The machine sputtered, spun out, and exploded in a flash of electric light.
MJ landed hard, rolled, and came up breathing fast. The shards smoked at her feet.
She crouched, inspecting the remains. No serial number. No Stark registry chip. Whoever had modified it had erased any data tracing back to the company.
But under the burn marks, she saw a faint symbol etched into the shell, a spiral made of intersecting triangles.
Her phone vibrated. Another alert, more noise uptown. She hesitated, glancing at the ruined drone. Then she picked up a shard and slipped it into her hoodie pocket.
“Guess I know what I’m doing tomorrow,” she muttered.
She swung off into the night again, pushing her exhaustion aside. Below, Harlem’s lights gleamed steadily, unaware of what had just buzzed through their airspace.
By the time she finally turned toward home, the first hint of dawn was bruising the horizon. Her shoulders ached, her web cartridges were half-empty, and her mind wouldn’t stop replaying that symbol.