Luke Cage POV
I've been shot more times than I can count. Hit with wrecking balls, run over by a truck, tossed off a building once… Hell, I even survived a rocket launcher some lunatic aimed at my bar.
But standing here, rain pouring down on my bald head, staring at the hulking outline of the Leviathan ship in the dockyard — this feels different.
I don't know what's waiting inside that floating fortress. Genetic nightmares, drug-cooked freaks, maybe worse. But before any of us get to the real mess, I've got one job.
Be loud.
Be visible.
Be the biggest damn problem on the pier.
Easy enough.
The others dropped down behind me — one after the other like silent ghosts in the storm. Spidey web-slinging out into the dark. Daredevil flipping down with those weirdly graceful landings of his. Iron Fist and Vigil — that new kid — leapt rooftop to rooftop like they'd done it since birth.
Me?
I just dropped like a wrecking ball.
Landed in front of the docks hard enough to crack the concrete and make the whole damn pier jump.
I rolled my shoulders and started walking. Calm. Slow. Deliberate.
Security lights snapped on. Cameras turned. I didn't care. That was the point.
A hundred feet in, and I was in the private shipping area. The spot where the real secrets lived. And right on cue — black SUVs rolled out of every corner like they'd been waiting for me all night.
Tires squealed. Doors opened. Men stepped out — 30, maybe 35 of them. All kitted in body armor, some with pulse rifles I've never seen before. Experimental tech — the kind meant to drop heavy hitters like me.
And at the center?
A smug bastard with a mustache, a cigar hanging off his lip, and a look on his face like he ran the damn world.
"Well, well," he said, lighting his cigar and strolling toward me, "if it isn't Power Man himself. Thought you gave up the freelance hero business."
"Had some spare time," I said, cracking my neck. "Heard there was a party going on. Wanted to RSVP in person."
He chuckled. The kind of laugh that never reached the eyes. "Walk away, Cage. You don't want what's coming."
"Buddy, if I walked away every time I heard that line, half of Harlem would be in flames."
The guy shrugged and said, "Shame."
And then he vanished back into the crowd.
The second he did, the night exploded.
Bullets. Lasers. Grenades. I don't know what half of them were firing, but I could tell they weren't playing.
A few rounds pinged off my shoulder and face — stung a little, like being hit with a fastball. Annoying more than anything.
I sighed. "Alright. my turn."
I leapt forward and landed on the hood of the nearest SUV. Slammed down with my heel and crumpled the engine block like it owed me money. The guys inside screamed — I yanked them out and knocked them cold with a backhand each, then threw them like bowling balls into their buddies.
More gunfire. I ducked a grenade just in time, kicked it back across the lot. Boom — half their guys went flying.
Another one came at me with a shock baton. Poor bastard. I grabbed him and used him like a club — knocked two more out before he dropped.
That's when something big hit me in the face.
Not a fist. Not a bullet. Something heavier. Cracked me hard enough to send stars dancing behind my eyes.
I staggered back, leapt behind a shipping container for cover.
The container shuddered with the next barrage.
I peeked out. Sniper. Top of a crane. Big rifle. Bigger scope. Probably custom-built to punch through tank armor.
Fantastic.
I tapped the earpiece. "How long do I have to hold this circus, because these guys are starting to tick me off."
Static, then Spidey's voice: "Just a few minutes more, big guy. We're almost at the hatch"
Daredevils came through next. "Almost through to the decks with Vigil. Hang in there."
"Yeah yeah," I muttered. "Just don't leave me hanging."
I peeked out again. Sniper's laser flared red. Half a dozen more goons started circling my position, thinking they had me boxed in.
I stood up.
"You boys better bring more than that," I growled. "Because I'm just getting warmed up."
The rain was coming down harder now — big, fat drops smacking off the metal container behind me. Thunder cracked over the dock like God was tapping in for round two.
I clenched my fists, felt the blood pump through my arms. My skin was already humming with adrenaline, my muscles loose and ready. These jokers wanted to surround me? Good. Saves me the trouble of chasing them down.
I stepped out from behind the container, slow and casual, and whistled. "You boys do realize how terrible your aim is, right?"
A few of them hesitated — maybe the new ones. The smart ones.
The rest?
They opened fire.
Bullets bounced off me like pebbles on a tank. A few lasers singed my jacket, but I didn't slow down. Not for a second. I moved straight through the center of the formation like a one-man wrecking crew.
One guy got too close with an electric prod. I caught his wrist mid-swing, squeezed just enough to hear the crack of the metal inside his gauntlet. He screamed. I shoved him into two of his friends and watched them tumble like dominoes.
"You're gonna need a bigger stick."
Another came at me from behind — baseball bat, wrapped in some kind of crackling energy. I spun, grabbed it mid-swing, and yanked the guy clean off his feet. Tossed him overhead, and he landed with a crunch on the roof of one of their own SUVs.
Someone shouted, "GET THE SNIPER TO TAKE THE SHOT!"
I turned toward the crane, just in time to see the glint of the scope aim straight at my forehead.
And I smiled.
Bang.
I moved my head just enough for the shot to graze off my temple. It rang my ears like a bell, but I was still standing. Blood trickled down the side of my face, but that's all it was — a graze.
"Alright. Now I'm mad."
I ripped the door off one of the nearby SUVs and held it like a shield. More bullets. More sparks. The thing started glowing red from the heat of all the fire, but it held long enough for me to start running.
Not away.
Toward the crane.
I used a stack of barrels as a ramp and launched myself up — SUV door still in hand — and chucked it like a discus. It spun through the air like a flying car door of justice and slammed right into the sniper's perch, sending the guy tumbling off the side and into the water with a loud splash.
"Sniper down," I muttered into the comms.
Iron Fist's voice crackled back: "Copy that. We're about to breach the engine room."
daredevil chimed in, breathless, "And we've made it to the ship's bridge Whole place is like a maze."
"Glad you're all having fun," I said, wiping the blood off my face. "Meanwhile I'm down here playing Whack-A-Goober."
A small explosion rocked the dock behind me — someone tossed a grenade, hoping to catch me slipping. All it did was make more smoke. I used it.
Rushed two more goons in the haze. Cracked one's head against a steel drum, picked up the other and bodyslammed him into the side of a shipping container. He bounced off with a grunt and dropped like a sack of bricks.
Still more came.
A guy in some sort of powered exo-suit charged me — arms glowing, servo motors whining.
I stood my ground.
He threw a punch. I caught it. Bent the exo-arm backwards with a scream of metal. He tried to headbutt me — I let him.
Didn't go well for him.
I uppercutted him so hard his suit short-circuited, and he collapsed in a heap, twitching.
"How we looking, folks?" I asked through the earpiece, now standing alone amidst a field of groaning, broken tech.
Vigil's voice came through next — calm, focused: "Just one more layer of security left. You good to keep the heat off us a little longer?"
I looked around at the wreckage I'd caused. Some of the remaining guards were dragging their injured out of the way. Others were straight-up fleeing. The rain had become a storm now — lightning split the sky above Leviathan like it was ready to judge us all.
I cracked my knuckles.
"Yeah," I said with a grin. "I think I've still got some left in the tank."
Spiderman POV
Vigil's lock-cracker whirred in my hand, a little disc of brilliance humming quietly as it chewed through a security system that looked like it hadn't been updated since the Cold War. The thing pulsed blue, chirping like a sleepy R2-D2. AJ definitely knows how to make a tool that sings while it works.
I knelt beside the engine hatch near the ship's aft section. Thousands of containers loomed behind us like a mountain range of rust and steel. From the outside, the ship looked like every other container barge I'd ever swung past. Dirty. Loud. Boring. But my spider-sense had been itching since the second we climbed aboard, just enough to keep me on edge.
"You seeing anything?" I asked, not looking up.
Danny stood just a few feet away, arms folded, looking like a sentry carved out of calm. Iron Fist mode engaged.
"No movement," he said quietly. "Nothing but wind and water."
I nodded, but the buzzing in my skull hadn't gone away. It wasn't screaming yet, but it was definitely whispering "bad idea" in the back of my brain.
Click.
The lock-cracker gave a soft chirp, and the hatch hissed open. I glanced back at Danny.
"After you."
He raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, but you're the human tank."
Fair trade. We slipped inside, and the hatch sealed shut behind us with a soft thud and another hiss. The second it closed, everything changed.
Gone was the industrial vibe of the ship's exterior. In its place? Sci-fi. Pure, clinical sci-fi. The corridor was lit with soft white light, and the walls weren't metal — not normal metal anyway. They were smooth, seamless, a silvery-white alloy that looked... grown, almost. No bolts. No weld lines. No stains.
Danny touched the wall, then gave it a light knock. Then, without warning, he lit up his fist and punched it.
Zero reaction. No dent. No sound.
"Wow," I said. "That wall just tanked an Iron Fist punch. I should really ask whoever built this what they charge for home security."
Danny didn't smile. He just frowned deeper. "It absorbed everything. Not even a vibration."
Great. So the ship was part lab, part haunted house. Not ominous at all.
We followed the corridor to a narrow staircase and started heading down. The further we went, the weirder things got. The temperature dropped. The walls stayed pristine. My sense of direction went sideways — like we were descending into a place that shouldn't exist on a ship this size.
Finally, the stairwell opened up into a massive chamber — several stories high, packed with machinery. I expected turbines, maybe a fuel tank or an engine block. You know, engine things.
Instead, I got a nightmare.
Dozens of glassy pods stood in perfect rows, glowing faint blue. Inside each one? A person, floating in some kind of liquid. Limbs slack. Eyes closed. Tubes connected to their temples, chests, spines. Wires snaked out of each pod and disappeared into the walls and floor, pulsing with faint light.
I stepped closer to one of the pods, and my stomach dropped.
"They're kids," I whispered. "These are actual kids."
They looked young — teens at most. Some even younger. Just... hanging there, suspended like props in a horror show. The machines were draining them. I didn't know how, or why, but the cables weren't just keeping them alive — they were pulling something from them. Energy? Life? I didn't know. I didn't want to guess.
I tapped my comm. "Daredevil, Vigil, come in. We've got a situation. Engine room's not an engine room. It's a battery farm. And the batteries are kids."
"Copy that," Matt's voice came in. Calm, like always. "We've reached the bridge. Empty. Navigation room's clear too. We're checking the living quarters now—"
Then static.
I cycled through channels. Nothing. All dead.
"Okay," I muttered. "We're officially being jammed. Maybe EMP field, maybe something fancier. Either way, we're cut off."
Danny looked around the chamber, eyes narrowing at the ceiling. "Then we move fast. Can you open the pods?"
"I'll try." I moved to the control panel near the closest one, hands flying over the interface. The software wasn't in any language I recognized, but the layout was familiar enough. Patterns. Logic.
Then my spider-sense screamed.
I launched backward, instinct taking over. A split-second later, a beam of purple energy seared into the spot I'd been standing. The control panel exploded in a burst of sparks.
"Okay," I muttered, landing in a crouch. "Definitely not OSHA-compliant."
A voice echoed from somewhere above us — smooth, mocking, almost sing-song.
"Awww, and you were doing so well."
We looked up.
Floating just below the ceiling was a glowing figure — humanoid, but wrong. His body was made of energy, purple and writhing, crackling like lightning trapped in a glass shell. His eyes burned, and his outline flickered with static, like a bad transmission.
Both hands pulsed with power, and when he spoke again, I could hear the smile in his voice.
"I really wish you hadn't come down here. The boss? He gets real touchy when you mess with his toys."
His eyes flicked to the pods. "And trust me... freeing the kids? That's gonna make him very angry."
I stood, chest tight, heart hammering. Anger bubbling under my ribs.
"Good," I said. "I've got a few things I'd like to say to him anyway."
Danny stepped beside me, chi glowing in both fists, calm as ever. "You can stand down. Or I can put you down."
The energy guy just laughed. Bright and loud and theatrical.
"Oh, no, no, no. I'm not here to stop you. I'm here to play."
Another blast of searing violet light cut through the air, and I barely twisted out of the way in time. The floor where I'd been standing turned molten, bubbling like hot lava.
"Okay!" I shouted. "That's it. I know who you are."
I scrambled behind a large piston column and peeked out just long enough to confirm what I'd already guessed. "You're X-Ray. U-Foes, right? Glowing purple, radiating cancer, looks like a rave went supernova? Yeah, definitely you."
X-Ray floated lazily above us, arms folded like he was just bored of waiting. "You flatter me."
I glanced at Danny. "If he's here, where are the rest of his—"
And that's when we started to rise.
I didn't jump. Danny didn't jump. There were no jetpacks. We were just... lifting.
"Uh-oh," I muttered, flailing a bit in the air as the invisible force took control.
Then came the slam.
We were both hurled across the chamber like dolls, our backs crashing hard into the far wall. The shock knocked the wind out of me, pain blooming across my ribs. Before I could even suck in another breath, the same invisible force yanked us again and hurled us to the opposite wall.
WHAM.
The second hit was worse. My ears rang. My vision tunneled for a second, little static bursts creeping into the edges.
That's when I saw him.
Another figure stepped into view beneath the soft blue glow of the pods. He wasn't floating. He wasn't glowing. But somehow, he was more terrifying.
His skin was an unnatural shade of yellow, patterned with shifting geometric shapes that moved like oil slicks. His eyes burned with something colder than X-Ray's nuclear rage — purpose.
"Simon Utrecht," I whispered. "Vector."
Used to be an industrialist. Rich, ruthless, the whole Lex Luthor starter kit. Until he decided it wasn't enough and tried to remake the Fantastic Four's origin story with his buddies. Got their wish. Just… not the way they expected.
Vector lifted one hand casually.
And I felt my body jerk like a puppet.
He pulled us toward him and X-Ray, our limbs stiff and useless in the grip of his telekinesis. I fought to move. Nothing. Not even a twitch.
He looked me over like I was a bug he found in his drink.
"Did you really think," Vector said, his voice cold and smooth, "that after the mess you made at the club...they wouldn't expect you to come here?"
He sounded almost disappointed. Like he thought we were smarter than this.
"You kicked a hornet's nest, Spider-Man. Set back months of work. You think you're heroes. But you're just meddling insects. And I'm done swatting."
I'd had enough of the monologue.
Mid-sentence, I shot a webline, yanked myself forward—straight into him—and cracked my forehead into his nose.
"Sorry, what were you saying?" I grunted, as we both tumbled backward.
The impact broke his concentration just enough. I felt gravity return.
Danny landed on his feet like a cat, already surging forward. His fist blazed with chi.
CRACK!
The punch hit with a thunderous flash. X-Ray's form distorted, flickering wildly as he crashed to the floor, light sputtering from his body like a dying star.
Danny didn't wait. He was on him in a blink, fists flying in focused fury. Every strike disrupted X-Ray's form, sending ripples of instability through the energy field that made up his body.
I turned back to Vector.
He was dazed, blinking, probably wondering how his nose still hurt if he had full telekinesis. I webbed his eyes—thick and fast—then swept his legs out from under him as he flailed, trying to reassert control.
"Guess what?" I said, ducking past a wild telekinetic shove and landing a punch to his side. "I'm real annoying."
I webbed his hands, then somersaulted behind him, landing a kick to his back that sent him stumbling toward the wall.
I kept moving—high, low, angles he couldn't anticipate. I had to keep him disoriented. Keep him from focusing.
It was working.
Until it wasn't.
Vector screamed, and then came the wave.
A pulse of pure, raw force erupted from him in every direction, hurling me, Danny, and even poor X-Ray like bowling pins. I hit a pipe mid-air and ricocheted into the floor face-first, pain spiderwebbing through my spine.
Before I could even groan, we were yanked up again and slammed down.
This time, face-first into the ground.
And this time, we stayed there.
The force pinning us down was crushing — like an invisible mountain pressing every inch of my body into the cold alloy floor. I tried to lift my head, tried to twitch a finger. No dice.
"Put the devices on them," I heard X-Ray grunt, getting up somewhere behind us. "Quickly."
I turned my head just enough to see Vector moving toward us, pulling two silver disks from a pocket inside his coat. They shimmered faintly, humming.
"No, no, no—"
Too late.
He slammed the cold metal onto the side of my neck.
Pain. A jolt of electricity, a flash of white.
And then — darkness.
___________________________________________________________________________
Daredevil POV
Nothing.
No heartbeats in the navigation room. No breath. No footsteps. Just the soft hum of machinery and the distant groan of the ship shifting with the tide.
I paused near the hatch, focusing harder—casting my senses wider. There was the subtle electrical buzz of control panels, the faint metallic tang of coolant in the air... but no signs of human life.
"Navigation's empty," I said, turning toward AJ—Vigil. "No one's in the bridge either. Either this ship's crew abandoned ship, or they're hiding somewhere deeper inside."
AJ didn't hesitate. He moved toward the consoles in the center of the room, his gloved fingers running across the panel, scanning. "Or there's a third option."
He pointed to a bank of devices behind the main controls. Rows of server stacks, diagnostic ports, wiring clusters that were far too advanced for a standard freighter.
"This whole thing looks automated," he said. "Most of the critical systems—navigation, communications, internal security—are all running autonomously. There's barely any manual input required."
I frowned. "Then what are the accommodation quarters for? According to the intel we pulled from the lab, this ship was supposed to house multiple Kick production units. So far we've seen none of that."
AJ stepped back from the panel. "I was thinking the same thing. This might just be the shell. The real operation's got to be lower."
Before I could answer, my earpiece crackled.
"Guys, we've got something weird here. We're in the engine room... but it's not an engine room."
That was Peter. His voice was tense, uncertain—but sharp. Then came background noise. Danny's voice, too low to make out clearly.
Then static.
And silence.
"Peter?" I asked. "Iron Fist? Come in."
Nothing.
A chill crept up my spine like a warning.
Something was wrong.
"They'll be okay," Vigil said, eyes scanning the hallway beyond. Calm on the surface. But I heard the slight tension in his breath.
I didn't argue. We both knew what we were walking into.
We moved down the corridor into the accommodations. Rooms lined the hall—sleeping quarters, mostly. I stepped into one. Everything was clean. Too clean. No scent of recent habitation. Sheets unused. No clothes. No food wrappers. Just space. Stage dressing.
Fake.
Room after room, the same story. Emptiness. A set waiting for actors who'd never arrive.
Then—dead end.
"Hold on," AJ said, stepping into the last room. I heard the sound of him shifting furniture—a low scrape, the creak of wood under pressure. A heartbeat later, he muttered, "Bingo."
There was a click, and then a mechanical shhhk as the wardrobe groaned open, revealing a hidden hatch.
"Hidden door," he said. "Leads further in."
He worked quickly, using a compact device to pry the locking mechanism. It fought him for a moment, then gave way with a hiss of hydraulics. We descended into the dark.
A long hallway stretched before us—metal walls lined with dim red lighting. My senses adjusted quickly. I could hear the faint mechanical heartbeat of machines deeper below, the occasional hum of movement. Still no guards. No voices.
This wasn't a ship anymore. It was a fortress.
The hallway opened up.
I stepped out onto a metal catwalk overlooking a cavernous interior—and froze.
"From what I can make of it—" I started.
"Yup," AJ interrupted. "Those are labs. Production rooms. Everything we were expecting, just hidden deeper."
Rows upon rows of sealed rooms stacked across multiple levels, filled with surgical lighting and stainless steel. Some were sealed. Others glowed faintly behind glass, filled with vials, machinery, what looked like containment chambers.
I reached out with my senses—extending further, lower. My breath caught.
"There's movement. A lot of it. Below us."
AJ nodded grimly. "This section's supposed to hold shipping containers. Instead, every floor's been converted. Dozens of labs on each level. This whole ship is the factory."
Then I heard it.
Footsteps. Fast. Heavy. Charging.
"Incoming," I snapped.
A door on the side of the corridor slammed open.
Men poured out—at least a dozen. Boots pounding. Heartbeats fast, focused. No panic.
Each wore black combat armor, full-face helmets, visors glowing faint green. Riot shields in one hand. Electric batons crackling in the other.
They moved in formation. Well-trained.
They weren't here to scare us off.
They were here to stop us.
I raised my fists.
AJ was already shifting into a defensive stance, one hand reaching for something on his belt.
"Well," I muttered. "So much for stealth."
The moment the first boot crossed the threshold, I moved.
My billy club was already in my hand. I hurled it low and hard—felt it strike one guard in the knee, then ricochet sharply up into another's helmet. The clang was loud, but the second body dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
Beside me, AJ sprang forward. Frost crackled beneath the guards' feet as he released a burst of cold from his hands, icing the floor and catching several of them mid-charge. He was on them a second later—blows landing fast and heavy. Bodies crashed into walls, shields shattered.
But there were more.
Elevator doors at the far end hissed open—and more footsteps thundered toward us.
I ducked a swipe from a baton and flipped clean over the railing. A crackle of electricity passed just inches from my ribs. My boots found the opposite catwalk, and I sprang from it—feet planting on the shoulder of one guard before I twisted mid-air, scissoring my legs around his neck. He barely had time to gasp before I whipped him into his friends like a wrecking ball.
Two more came at me. I twisted, grabbed a riot shield mid-swing, and launched myself forward, using it as a springboard. My roundhouse kick knocked one cold, the other stumbled long enough for me to take his legs out.
AJ was holding his ground like a glacier in a storm. He turned toward the lift, eyes narrowing as another group tried to come through.
"Enough of this," he muttered, and with a quick incantation, ice bloomed across the elevator's frame—crackling over the doors and locking them in a jagged freeze.
The next wave of guards slammed into the barrier and bounced off. AJ didn't give them a second chance—he surged forward and hit them like a meteor. Their shields buckled under the force, denting like soda cans. A few even went airborne, crashing into the far walls.
Finally… silence.
I exhaled, drawing in cool air and steadying my heartbeat.
"Looks like they're trying to wear us down," I said, catching my breath. "Get us nice and winded before the main event."
AJ smirked. "I'll give them an A for effort, at least—"
I raised my hand.
He stopped talking immediately.
I heard it. So faint I almost missed it: the elevator was moving again. A low mechanical groan rising through the shaft. "Lift's coming up," I said. "Someone's inside."
AJ tilted his head, already calculating. "The doors are iced solid. It won't open eas—"
BOOM!
Something slammed into the doors from inside.
The ice exploded outward in a shattering burst of frost and steel.
A blur shot from the wreckage—faster than I could track. It collided with AJ like a missile. They tore through the railing and disappeared into the large area below and soon heard a thud of them crashing below.
Before I could move, a hiss filled the air.
Gas.
Thick, acrid, and unnatural—it poured from the shattered lift like a living thing. My nose burned instantly. I pulled my collar over my face and threw my billy club around a hanging support, swinging down to the floor below to avoid it.
But the gas followed.
And then—it moved.
It didn't drift. It struck.
A hard gust slammed me back up through the hole I'd dropped from, back onto the upper level. I hit the steel floor hard. Ribs screamed.
Then I heard it.
Laughter.
Light. Feminine. Cruel.
"Leaving so soon?" a voice purred from the smoke.
I staggered to my feet, heart racing. The gas coalesced—vapor curling into the shape of a woman. No heartbeat. No breath. Just presence.
Vapor.
One of the U-Foes.
It hit me again.
From the left—then the right—then the back. I couldn't track her. She was everywhere. A shapeless storm battering my senses.
"Aw, come on, devil boy," she teased, circling me. "You're supposed to be nimble. What happened to all that fancy kung fu?"
I lunged forward, trying to break free of the cloud—but another gust hit me square in the chest and sent me skidding.
"You're fun," she said, her voice everywhere. "But I've got places to be, and Ironclad'll be done turning your icy friend into scrap soon enough…"
I staggered, breathing ragged.
She was playing with me.
"Time to sleep now."
The air changed.
Something new filled my lungs—something heavier.
My legs buckled.
Sedative gas.
No taste. No color. But I could feel it. It slid through my bloodstream like oil.
The world tilted.
No…
I tried to move. To crawl.
My body wouldn't answer.
Through the haze, I felt her arms—or something like them—curl around me, lifting me. Dragging me.
The elevator.
They're taking me...
Spidey. Danny. AJ.
This was a trap.
Then everything went black.
3rd person pov
The room was cold, sterile, and dimly lit—a stark contrast to the chaos unfolding across the ship's many levels. Dozens of monitors lined the curved wall, each one streaming grainy, flickering footage from surveillance cameras mounted throughout the vessel. The feeds showed brief flashes of violence, sparks of power, and now, slowly, silence as one by one the intruders were subdued.
At the center of the room, seated in a high-backed chair, sat Basil Sandhurst—the man known to the world as the Controller. His imposing figure was wrapped in segmented armor of cobalt-blue alloy, its surface etched with faint circuitry patterns that pulsed faintly with energy. A network of cables ran from his back into the console, linking his thoughts directly into the ship's systems. His left gauntlet tapped rhythmically on the console's edge, impatience leaking into every movement.
He watched as Vector affixed two silver discs—his own handiwork—onto the necks of Spider-Man and Iron Fist. With a flicker of energy, the control tags activated, rendering the heroes inert.
"Perfect," Controller murmured, a smirk curling his lips. "Two more puppets for the stage."
He leaned forward, fingers dancing across a holographic panel. A communications link opened with a soft chime, and the screen in front of him shifted from surveillance footage to a high-resolution call interface.
The screen resolved into the image of John Sublime—immaculately dressed in a dark, tailored suit, standing in front of a glass wall that overlooked a skyline dotted with corporate towers. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes gleamed with cold calculation.
"What's the status report?" Sublime asked without preamble, voice clipped and commanding.
Controller straightened slightly, folding his hands in front of him with forced professionalism. "Spider-Man and Iron Fist have been neutralized. Daredevil has been subdued by Vapor and is currently being relocated to containment. Power Man is still... engaging our outer defenses, but his capture is only a matter of time."
Sublime's eyes narrowed slightly. "And the new one? The anomaly."
A pause.
Controller's fingers twitched. His jaw tightened.
Vigil—is still in combat on the lower floors. He's... proving more difficult to pin down." His voice held a subtle edge of both annoyance and unease. "Ironclad engaged him directly, and once we isolate him, the outcome will be the same."
Sublime's expression didn't change, but something about the way he adjusted his stance—slowly, precisely—conveyed dominance.
"Basil," he said evenly, "I have given you and Simon's team every resource you requested. Cutting-edge tech. Experimental weaponry. Anonymized funding trails. All of it has cost me considerably. So let me make this perfectly clear."
He stepped forward, his face filling more of the screen.
"The next time you contact me, it had better be to confirm that every one of those insects who boarded my ship is in chains. Or you already know the price of failure. And…" He leaned in slightly. "Try not to damage them too badly. I have... plans for the one who's held my undivided attention these past few months."
The screen went dark.
The silence that followed felt like pressure building inside the room.
Controller exhaled through gritted teeth, muttering, "Arrogant bastard…" under his breath.
A/N- This chapter was supposed to be the last one of this arc and was like 17k words but after my bike accident I had time and thought over and rewrote the whole thing and decided that I will shorten it and will probably end this arc in 2 or 3 more chapters, sorry for any mistakes after the accident I am still not 100% fine.