Wind whipped violently through the open rear ramp of the C-17 Globemaster III.
Phil Coulson stood near the edge, his tailored suit completely unbothered by the altitude. He glanced at Peter, who was stretching his shoulders, preparing to dive.
"Director Fury originally wanted me to emphasize that New York would be perfectly fine if you left for two days," Coulson yelled over the roar of the turbine engines. "Unfortunately, violent crime spiked by two percent on your first day absent. Once the underworld confirmed you were definitely out of town yesterday, it spiked another seven."
Peter pulled his red-and-blue mask down over his face, the smart-fabric vacuum-sealing against his jaw. "Tell Fury that anyone who ignores the Spider usually lives to regret it." He paused, shifting his weight to the edge of the ramp, and tapped the side of his head. "Oh, by the way. Your guy—Agent Ward? My spider-sense gave me a really sharp sting at the base of my skull when I walked past him. You might want to look into that."
Coulson's professional smile didn't waver, but his eyes narrowed fractionally. "I believe the two of you have no personal grievances."
"Just a heads up!" Peter saluted, leaned backward, and let gravity rip him out of the plane.
Coulson watched the teenager plummet toward the Queens skyline, seamlessly transitioning into a high-speed dive. The city was finally getting its friendly neighborhood Spider-Man back—and this time, his genetic instability was permanently cured.
Coulson turned to Cindy Moon, who stood quietly near the bulkhead. "What is your assessment of him?"
Cindy adjusted her gear. She didn't offer a paragraph of psychological profiling or S.H.I.E.L.D. behavioral analysis. She just looked at the empty air where Peter had been standing.
"Committed," Cindy said.
Without another word, she stepped off the ramp and dropped into the clouds. Coulson chuckled, shaking his head.
Minutes later, the massive airborne fortress descended toward the Westchester county line, touching down on the cracked, weed-choked asphalt of the Xavier Institute's main plaza.
The hydraulic ramp lowered. Logan stepped out first, chewing on an unlit cigar. He looked up at the crumbling brick facade, the shattered bay windows, and the thick ivy actively consuming the mansion.
"Place needs a hell of a scrub," Logan grunted.
"It requires a complete structural overhaul," a smooth voice corrected.
Warren Worthington III stood at the bottom of the ramp, immaculate in a tailored charcoal suit. "The Worthington Group is handling the renovation. It will be fully operational by the time the faculty and students arrive."
"You not putting the suit back on, Warren?" Logan asked.
"No, Logan." Warren shook his head, his gaze sliding toward Emma Frost. "I can do far more for mutant-kind from a boardroom than I can in a firefight. My capital will rebuild this academy and fund the X-Men." He unbuttoned his suit jacket, his expression tightening. "Where is he? How is the Professor?"
Scott and Hank exchanged a heavy look. They turned to Emma.
Deep in the underground levels of the estate, Scott led the team into a sealed, climate-controlled medical bay.
In the center of the room, encased within a massive, humming life-support pod, lay Charles Xavier. He looked incredibly frail, his skin paper-thin, his chest barely rising to the slow, mechanical rhythm of the ventilator.
"I thought..." Emma Frost's flawless composure cracked. She stepped closer to the glass. "I thought Charles was dead."
"He is," Hank McCoy said softly, his massive blue hands resting on the medical console. "This life-support array simply prevents cellular decay. It forcibly circulates his blood and pumps his lungs. We kept him on it because we believed his mind might return."
But it hadn't. As the world's most powerful telepath, if his body was still biologically viable, his consciousness should have been able to anchor itself and wake up. But the pod remained silent. The founding father of the X-Men was an empty shell. It was a brutal reality they simply had to accept.
"Spider-Man has returned."
Otto Octavius sat suspended in his mechanical life-support frame, his four metallic tentacles whirring softly as he adjusted the glow of his monitors.
On the screen, MacDonald Gargan stood shirtless in the center of an underground training bunker. Sweat poured down his heavily scarred back. The bullet that had shattered Gargan's spine should have left him a paraplegic. But Otto had integrated a prototype exoskeleton spinal-cord connector directly into Gargan's nervous system—a piece of stolen Osborn Tech salvaged from the Shocker's previous hauls.
More importantly, Otto had made his own modifications. A massive, segmented metallic tail whipped through the air behind Gargan, the razor-sharp stinger gleaming in the harsh fluorescent light.
"It doesn't matter that he's back," Gargan grunted, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. "I just need to master this."
He pivoted, his mechanical tail acting as a heavy counterbalance, and drove a devastating right hook into a reinforced heavy bag. The steel chains shrieked. Otto watched the measurement stream across his terminal. Peak kinetic output: thirty tons. Gargan's speed, agility, and sheer brute force had been artificially elevated to match Spider-Man's exact specifications.
It was a perfect genetic synergy. The modified scorpion DNA stolen by Quentin Beck had fully integrated with Gargan's biology. Otto had successfully completed the surgery, creating an apex predator designed exclusively to hunt spiders.
But there were two spiders now.
Otto tapped a mechanical claw against his console, pulling up a schematic for a heavily armored, green titanium exoskeleton. If Gargan was forced to fight both Spider-Man and the new girl, his statistical probability of victory plummeted. The suit was essential.
"Your neural-integration training will require several more days, Mr. Gargan," Otto said, his synthesized voice echoing through the bunker.
Gargan didn't pause. He casually whipped his mechanical tail forward, the stinger delicately hooking the handle of a water jug and lifting it to his hand. "Wilson Fisk doesn't want to waste time. He paid to put me back on my feet so I could rip the Spider apart. Both of them."
Gargan grabbed a towel and scrubbed it over his head. He draped a heavy coat over his shoulders, concealing the harness of his tail.
"But finding them and breaking them doesn't necessarily mean a cage match," Gargan said, a cold, methodical intelligence burning in his eyes. "I never agreed with the Chameleon's theatrical methods."
MacDonald Gargan was a private investigator. He was one of the most ruthless, effective trackers in New York City.
"I'm going to use my skillset," Gargan said quietly. "I'm going to find out who is under those masks. And when I put a knife to their families' throats... all that super-strength won't mean a damn thing."
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