"Mr. Lyman! Would you care to join the land of the living and solve the equation on the board?"
The furious bark of the AP Calculus teacher echoed off the cinderblock walls. Harry, who had been fully face-planted into his textbook, jerked upright. He blinked rapidly, a faint red crease pressed into his cheek from the spiral binding. He squinted at the whiteboard, his sleep-deprived brain visibly grinding gears, before stammering out a complex string of variables.
Miraculously, he was right. The teacher narrowed his eyes, clearly disappointed he couldn't hand out a detention, and turned back to the board.
Sitting two rows over, Peter Parker winced in sympathy.
Last night's infiltration of the Kingpin's natural history museum had run long. Peter hadn't escorted his "guys in the chair" back to their respective homes until well past one in the morning. Peter could function on four hours of sleep—his irradiated metabolism treated exhaustion as a mild suggestion rather than a biological imperative. But Harry and Amadeus were entirely human. Today, they both looked like extras from a zombie movie.
To Peter's right, Cindy Moon was watching the two boys in the back row with a faint, puzzled tilt of her head. She had caught Peter pulling all-nighters before, but she clearly didn't understand why Harry and Amadeus looked like they were about to collapse into comas.
As she turned back to the front of the room, Cindy slid a meticulously folded square of notebook paper across Peter's desk.
Peter took it, mildly surprised. He and Cindy hadn't exactly been conversational lately. Ever since that sudden, aggressively instinctual kiss a few weeks back, they had barely exchanged three sentences. Then again, Cindy rarely exchanged more than three sentences with anyone, so maybe this was just business as usual.
He unfolded the paper beneath the edge of his desk. Two short, hyper-neat sentences stared back at him.
I want to patrol the East Village with you after school. Fury wants a meeting. Not the New York safehouse. The Triskelion in D.C.
Peter chewed on the end of his pencil, his brow furrowing. Patrolling was easy. But a summons to the S.H.I.E.L.D. Triskelion in Washington, D.C.? Nick Fury didn't invite teenagers to federal headquarters unless the sky was falling.
Peter ran the variables through his head. There was only one logical catalyst. His recent debriefing regarding the Wasteland universe must have severely spooked the Director. Fury was paranoid on a good day; hearing about a multiversal timeline where his own people went fascist was probably keeping the one-eyed spy awake at night.
Keeping his head down, Peter scribbled a quick response beneath her neat handwriting.
Patrol is a go. But today is Wednesday. Detective Club meets at three. I'm stuck here. As for D.C., the man in the eyepatch needs to forge me a really good permission slip if he wants me skipping school.
He slid the note back.
Just as the calculus teacher slammed a ruler against Amadeus's desk to wake the genius up, Cindy read Peter's reply. She didn't blink. She just took her pen, wrote a single line, and flicked the paper back to Peter's desk.
I will join the Detective Club.
"Hmm... well. The deductive reasoning process is flawless. But, Cindy, I don't think we needed a psychological profile quite this... graphic. I wasn't really considering the suspect's childhood trauma when he stole the cafeteria funds."
Jessica Drew rubbed her temples, looking thoroughly overwhelmed. She sat behind the president's desk in the Midtown High Detective Club room, staring at the five-page application dossier Cindy Moon had just handed her.
Cindy stood perfectly still, her expression a blank mask. Her analysis of a mock-crime scene wasn't just professional; it was unnervingly forensic. She had profiled the hypothetical suspect down to his likely sleep cycles and nervous tics.
Sitting on the edge of a nearby desk, Felicia Hardy swung her legs, a deeply amused smirk playing on her lips. She looked Cindy up and down, clearly appreciating the new girl's intense, predatory vibe.
"I can't find a single reason to reject her, Jessica," Felicia purred, leaning back on her hands. "It's a terrifyingly perfect deduction."
"Agreed," Jessica sighed, offering a welcoming, if slightly strained, smile. "Welcome to the club, Cindy." Jessica reached into a cardboard box under the desk, pulled out a hideous, plaid deerstalker hat, and solemnly handed it to the new recruit.
While Cindy was inspecting the hat as if it were an explosive device, Felicia slipped off the desk and drifted over to Peter.
"So," Felicia murmured, dropping her voice so only Peter could hear. She smelled like expensive vanilla and danger. "A little bird told me the NYPD raided the Fisk Museum of Natural Art this morning. Apparently, they found an anonymous, highly encrypted hard drive detailing a massive wildlife smuggling ring."
She tapped a perfectly manicured fingernail against Peter's chest. "You robbed a museum without me? I'm insulted, Parker. That's a classic Black Cat gig."
Peter offered a helpless, lopsided shrug. "What can I say? The Kingpin's guys didn't hide the secret room very well. Spider-Man just stumbled into it."
"Uh-huh. Stumbled," Felicia teased, rolling her eyes.
In truth, the raid felt like a hollow victory to Peter. He had handed the NYPD the ledgers on a silver platter, but it would only put a dent in Wilson Fisk's offshore accounts. For a man like the Kingpin, facing a few extra decades on a mountain of concurrent sentences meant absolutely nothing. He practically owned Rikers Island anyway. Unless the feds could magically pin a capital treason charge on him, Fisk sitting in a cell was no different than Fisk sitting in his penthouse.
For a dark, fleeting moment last night, Peter had felt the urge to swing straight to Rikers, tear the steel doors off their hinges, and end the problem permanently.
But his Spider-Sense had practically screamed at the thought. That was exactly what Fisk wanted. The Kingpin was baiting him. If Spider-Man crossed the line and murdered a prisoner in cold blood, the symbol would shatter. The city would turn on him. Fisk was perfectly content to sit in his cell and wait for the hero to break his own rules.
There was also the lingering mystery of the ledgers. Peter had specifically searched the digital files for Sergei Kravinoff. The Russian hunter had been standing right in front of the smuggled ivory, asking highly specific questions. Yet, Kravinoff's name—and all known aliases—were entirely absent from Kingpin's buyer lists. He was a ghost.
Felicia raised a silver eyebrow, clearly sensing Peter's dissatisfaction. "I hope your web-swinging friend finds a better class of evidence next time," she whispered. "Something that actually hurts."
"Alright, Cindy, just sign the attendance sheet here," Jessica called out, snapping Peter back to reality. The club president looked up, narrowing her eyes at Peter and Felicia. "What are you two whispering about over there?"
"Oh, nothing," Peter lied smoothly, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Just discussing the news. The Spider-Man museum raid."
"Hmm... Spider-Man," Jessica sighed, leaning back in her chair.
As the months had dragged on, and with Spider-Man officially operating under the Avengers' umbrella, the breadcrumbs had dried up. The club's bulletin board was severely lacking in new leads. Jessica looked genuinely defeated.
Peter looked around the room, a sudden, hilariously tragic realization hitting him like a physical blow.
Wait a minute, Peter thought, his eyes darting from face to face.
Felicia Hardy was his former partner in corporate espionage. Cindy Moon was his genetically linked spider-twin. Harry and Amadeus were currently functioning as his personal Oracle and tech support.
Every single person in the 'Investigate Spider-Man' club knew that Peter Parker was Spider-Man.
Except for Jessica Drew. The founder. The president. She was sitting in a room packed exclusively with his accomplices, blissfully unaware that the greatest mystery of her high school career was currently wearing a flannel shirt and standing three feet away from her.
Man, that's just sad, Peter thought, suppressing a grimace.
"Speaking of attendance," Jessica said, tapping her pen against the clipboard. "Where are Harry and Amadeus? They never miss a Wednesday."
"Oh, uh, they took a sick day," Peter offered quickly. "They stayed up way too late last night. Just totally exhausted."
"Playing video games, I bet," Jessica huffed, crossing her arms like a disappointed mother, completely ignoring the fact that she was only two years older than them. "Honestly. The lack of dedication is appalling. Especially today."
Jessica's frustration vanished, replaced by a sudden, conspiratorial gleam in her eye. She reached into her blazer pocket and dramatically pulled out a silver USB drive.
"They picked the wrong day to skip. They are going to miss out on the top-secret intelligence I finally managed to acquire this morning."
Peter's spider-sense gave a faint, curious hum. "Top-secret intelligence? About what?"
Jessica slammed the USB drive onto the desk with a triumphant grin.
"I found the architectural blueprints and the security rotations for the Kravinoff Estate in the New York suburbs."
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