At exactly 4:00 PM, the burner phone sitting on George Stacy's cluttered mahogany desk vibrated, cutting through the low hum of precinct chatter outside his office. He picked it up.
"Dad?"
Gwen's voice was breathless, tight with an undercurrent of genuine panic that instantly spiked George's heart rate.
"Gwen? What's wrong?" George was already on his feet, his hand instinctively dropping to check the service weapon holstered at his hip. "Are you hurt?"
"No, I'm okay," Gwen said quickly, though the wind whipping through the phone's receiver suggested she was standing somewhere high up. "I met Spider-Man. He... he said he has something incredibly important to talk to you about. Right now. I'm texting you an address. Please hurry."
The line went dead.
George stared at the cracked screen of his phone, his brow furrowing into a hard, confused line. Spider-Man? The web-slinger had George's direct precinct line. If the vigilante needed to coordinate a bust or drop off a mugger, he usually just left a heavily webbed package hanging from a streetlamp. Why bypass the NYPD entirely? Why involve Gwen?
George grabbed his heavy trench coat from the coat rack. He didn't bother wondering how an Avenger knew his daughter's cell number. When you worked with billionaires and super-spies, finding an unlisted phone number was child's play.
He barked a brief order to his shift lieutenant on the way out the glass double doors, hopped into his unmarked cruiser, and hit the sirens.
The address Gwen texted was only a few blocks away—a dilapidated, five-story apartment building sitting in the shadow of the Queensboro Bridge. George parked illegally, flashing his badge at a confused doorman, and took the stairs two at a time. He pushed through the heavy, rusted fire door leading to the roof, the cold November wind instantly biting at his face.
Gravel crunched under his heavy boots. George scanned the empty expanse of tar paper and exhaust vents, his irritation mounting rapidly.
Gwen was standing near the edge of the roof, her arms wrapped tightly around her wool coat, shivering in the crosswind.
"Gwen, what the hell is going on here?" George demanded, marching toward her. "Where is he? Why would Spider-Man drag a civilian up to a freezing roof just to leave you—"
A shadow detached itself from the side of the massive cedar water tank looming above them.
Spider-Man landed on the gravel between George and Gwen with a soft, muted thud. He didn't offer a salute. He didn't drop a terrible pun. He just stood up straight, his shoulders rigid beneath the black suit.
Then, the mask suddenly retracts revelling the identity of the vigilante.
A mop of messy, windblown brown hair fell across the teenager's forehead. Peter Parker looked George Stacy dead in the eye, his expression completely devoid of its usual sunny teenage awkwardness.
George stopped walking. His breath hitched in his throat, visible in the freezing air. He stared at the kid who mowed his lawn in the summer. The kid who sat at his dinner table.
"It's me, Uncle George," Peter said softly.
"Peter... Benjamin Parker?" George whispered, the syllables feeling foreign in his mouth.
George took a slow, deep breath, dragging a heavy, calloused hand down his face. "My God. This is unbelievable. Honestly, Parker, this is even more unbelievable than the fact that you and Gwen are dating."
"Um, we're not actually dating yet," Peter corrected, a brief, nervous twitch breaking his stoic expression.
"Which is exactly why I said it's unbelievable," George muttered, his detective brain finally booting back up. The puzzle pieces were slamming together at terminal velocity. He pointed an accusatory finger at Peter. "Wait a minute. The notes. The handwritten notes left on the webbed-up perps. I ran those against your high school homework files. The handwriting didn't match." Captain George Stacy was still comparing Spider-Man's handwriting to Peter's right-hand writing, completely missing the crucial variable.
Gwen sighed, stepping up next to Peter. "He's ambidextrous, Dad. Peter can write with both hands simultaneously. He uses his left hand when he's in the suit."
George stared at them both. He let out a long, exhausted breath, shaking his head. "Okay. Fine. We'll shelf the ambidextrous vigilante dating my daughter conversation for later. Because I know you, Peter. You didn't drag me up to a freezing roof just to unburden your conscience. What's coming?"
Peter's posture stiffened. "It's Dr. Connors. You probably already got my warning; he mutated himself into a nie-foot reptilian monster."
"Yeah," George said grimly. "The NYPD is mobilizing a city-wide manhunt."
"You can't lead it," Peter said, his voice dropping to a desperate, hardened register. "I know what his endgame is. And... look, this is going to sound insane, but I've seen how this plays out. I've seen a different version of this exact scenario. And if you go up against the Lizard to stop his plan then there is a huge probability that you don't make it off the roof, Uncle George. I don't want you to sacrifice yourself."
George looked at the teenager. He looked at his daughter, who was watching him with wide, terrified eyes. He understood the play perfectly. Spider-Man couldn't order a police captain to abandon his post. But Peter Parker, the boy he practically treated like a nephew, hoped he could guilt him into staying home.
George stepped closer, his heavy boots crunching on the gravel. "Peter. Why do you put that mask on every morning?"
Peter blinked, thrown by the pivot. "Because... because I have these powers. If I can help people, and I don't, then the bad things that happen are my fault."
"Because you want to help," George interrupted gently. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his trench coat. "This morning, Gwen asked me why an Inspector still pulls midnight dispatch shifts. I told her it was just an occupational hazard. That was a lie."
George looked out over the sprawling, neon-lit skyline of Queens. "When I was just a beat cop, I'd drive my cruiser down these streets. I'd spot a mugging, I'd stop a robbery, and at the end of the shift, someone would look me in the eye and say 'thank you.' That does something to your soul, Peter."
George turned back to the kids, his eyes dark with memory. "When Gwen's mother passed away, I took a leave of absence. I sat in an empty house and stared at a very substantial life insurance check. I seriously considered turning in my badge. I thought about staying home, keeping my daughter safe, and never looking at a crime scene again. But every time I walked past my closet and saw that uniform hanging there... I felt sick."
He stepped up to Peter, tapping the red spider emblem on the boy's chest. "I walk these streets with a badge and a gun. I stop monsters. I find lost kids. I leave a piece of myself on this pavement every single day. I know how corrupt the system is. I know how utterly hopeless this city feels sometimes. But I can't stop. The NYPD motto isn't just a bumper sticker to me. Fidelis ad Mortem. Faithful unto death."
Gwen covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes shining with unshed tears. Peter stared at the floor, his jaw clenched tight.
George stepped forward, wrapping his thick arms around both of their shoulders, pulling the two teenagers into a fierce, crushing hug. He smelled like stale precinct coffee and cold rain.
"I know you're terrified for me," George whispered into Peter's hair. "I know I don't have super-strength. I know we're fighting monsters now, and the precinct casualty lists are longer than they've ever been. But I am not stopping, kids."
George pulled back, keeping his hands firmly on Peter's shoulders. The soft, paternal warmth vanished from his eyes, instantly replaced by the icy, tactical calculation of a precinct commander.
"Alright, Parker," George said, his voice pure gravel. "Give me the tactical briefing. What's the Lizard's play?"
Peter swallowed hard, forcing himself back into Spider-Man mode. "Connors is a pack animal now. He's suffering from biological isolation. He's going to try and turn the rest of New York into his own kind. He's going to build a chemical fogging device, take it to the highest point in the city, and aerosolize the serum into the atmosphere."
George nodded once, processing the horrifying logistics without blinking. "A mad scientist trying to gas the city. Makes sense. What are his physical specs?"
"We ran a combat stress test," Peter said grimly. "His dermal plating is essentially living Kevlar. Theoretically, a .50 caliber mounted machine gun wouldn't penetrate his scales even after a full minute of sustained, concentrated fire."
George stopped writing in his mental notepad. He stared at the teenager. "You shot him with a machine gun?"
"No," Peter deadpanned. "I ripped a massive chunk of skin right off his spine with my bare hands."
George stared at him for a solid two minutes in absolute, suffocating silence. He exhaled a long breath, a puff of white fog in the air. "Okay. Good to know. We hold the high ground. We requisition anti-materiel rifles from the SWAT armory. What else?"
"His regenerative factor," Peter added, wincing slightly. "The flesh I tore off his back? The wound completely closed and grew new scales in under three minutes."
"Under three minutes," George repeated flatly.
"Yeah. He heals faster than you can reload."
George Stacy looked up at the sky, rubbing the bridge of his nose in sheer, unadulterated helplessness. He was a normal man with a badge, tasked with stopping a bulletproof, regenerating dinosaur from committing biological terrorism.
"Alright," George muttered, turning back toward the roof exit. "I don't know what kind of eldritch nightmares the Avengers usually fight before breakfast, but I'll make sure the perimeter is locked down. Watch your back, Spider-Man."
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