⋆♱Heaven’s Night♱⋆

🔘 Jai Drago (3) WHAT ABOUT THE SAMPLES…

🔘 Nekyo (1) What’s in it for me?

🔘 Rordan Hilt (5) I can try to get you some…

🔘 Guavin (1) Sure, but only if you get me…

A smirk played on her lips as she pulled the fridge open with one hand and jammed the phone in a pocket with the other. After breakfast, she called her team to set up a meeting.

***

“So, what are we getting dragged into now?” Nekyo probed the group sarcastically. Chuckles resounded in different voices as they all got more comfortable.

The five of them were all gathered in the basement of Drago’s workshop. They sat around a table with a built in holodex that Saanvi had projecting her research notes.

“I’m going to personally investigate Spider-Man and you’re all going to help me. You know I’ll make it worth your while.” Saanvi smirked.

“When you say investigate… what do you mean exactly?” Drago chimed in, not wanting to lose his best customer.

“I’m going to figure out what kind of beast he is, and then figure out a way to stop him.” Saanvi didn’t want to explicitly tell them that she wanted him dead, that would reveal her fear too much.

“Isn’t he just some buff freak who has a lot of tech? I mean his webbing is neon…” Guavin trailed off to stuff some chips in his mouth, letting crunching sounds finish his sentence.

“I thought that too, until I was in the same room as him during that data pirate job. He’s… like me… but man-made.” Saanvi struggled to choke down the cocktail of disgust and fear that stirred in her as she said that. The only people who knew exactly what she was were sitting in the room with her. Saanvi was from a race of spider demons. They could take human forms, lived well beyond centuries, and spoke what was now a dead language, thanks to Thanos. As a brown recluse, her kind never had large numbers due to their behavior. She was an even more rare creature in the universe now since the destruction of her home world.

“How could you tell?” Guavin grumbled through a mouthful. “I thought it was all a gimmick.”

“Instinct. He reeks like a huntsman and has the size of one, but we all know it’s not possible he was born that way. Someone made him like that, and what if they make more?” Saanvi’s question threw electricity into the air, as if forcing all their minds to imagine an army of those self-righteous pests in the city.

“Okay so what? You’re going to stalk him and then…?” Nekyo piped up. She was already wavering on her interest in this, and Saanvi wasn’t close to convincing her to lending a hand.

“No, I’m not going to stalk him,” Saanvi rolled her eyes hard before cutting them at Nekyo. “I’m going to get close to him, find out who and what gave him those abilities and then…” She searched for the right words. “Get rid of the source and deprive him of them. At the least, he’ll be completely out of our way so we can have our way in the future.”

Now everyone was listening with real interest. A city without Spider-Man’s morality keeping trash alive was a city to smile about. They’d be able to take out their competition and deal with the psychos that terrorize their home permanently. A sigh came from Nekyo that let Saanvi know she would cooperate.

“What’s the plan then?” Rordan finally said something. Always soft spoken, his question finalized the discussion’s move from “convince the group” to “create a play”.

“I can’t see how you’d get him to come out of hiding without making yourself an enemy.”

“It’s easy… I’m going to use his nature against him. When I sensed him, I took to hiding in the vents. I was able to watch him for a bit—he had no idea I was there.”

“He doesn’t have any spider senses?” Saanvi shook her head and Rordan made a note of that, mind immediately running to ways of exploiting it. “We can definitely work around that.”

Their meeting went on for another two hours until their game plan was finalized.

***

Nekyo had cashed in a few favors to get the intel that led to their setup a few weeks later. She found out there was a group of anti-Spider-Man enthusiasts who were planning to use hostages as bait to lure him out and kill him. They made sure that Saanvi would be among those hostages tonight.

In the city’s most prestigious museum there was a gala being held for charity. No doubt those funds were just being recycled back into the rich pockets they came from but that wasn’t uncommon. Saanvi had an invitation and came dressed to the nines. A black form fitting gown that skirted the floor showed off her toned hourglass figure. Matching black heels with a silver ankle strap complimented her jewelry. Her long, dark hair was curled and worn in an elegant updo. As she made her way through the lobby she surveyed the room, noting exits and taking stock of the guests. A familiar voice spoke to her through a nearly-invisible earpiece.

“Their plan should kick off in an hour, feel free to enjoy yourself until then.” Rordan playfully suggested, noting the fact that on his feed from the contacts she was wearing a tall, black haired woman hadn’t left Saanvi’s field of vision. “Try talking to her instead of just staring.” His comment made her face burn, and she took a glass of champagne off a tray held by a nearby waiter. Waiting around in big crowds was never her strong suit. She felt naked without her usual mission gear—she hadn’t done anything like this in over eight years.

The hour passed uneventfully, conversations with the extremely wealthy weren’t interesting at all. However the energy shifted immediately as the opening speaker’s speech took a dark turn announcing that everyone in the museum was now a hostage and how they’d been given poison via the champagne.

How cliche… Saanvi thought, taking another sip of her third glass of champagne. Her resistance to poison making this reveal a non-event. Soon enough, she could hear far-off sirens coming towards the front of the building. First the cops, then the spider… She opened her clutch to look for the weapon that Rordan and Drago had devised for this night. Using an isolate compound from her venom, they devised a perfume that would make their target immobile and a sickness would follow. All she had to do was wait for him to take out the group before spraying herself with it and then haul him off as soon the commotion granted her enough cover.

Everything happened so quickly. Saanvi’s spine tingled with the awareness that her quarry was near. Once he appeared he made quick work of his attackers. His combat abilities were actually impressive to her. As his fight came to a close and cops and emergency responders flooded the scene, she saw her opportunity and gave herself three sprays of the perfume before putting on her best performance of a terrified socialite. She threw herself into him, screaming with fake tears in her eyes.

“You have to get me out of here! I’ve been poisoned! They laced the champagne!” Her hands thumped against his well-muscled chest as dramatically as possible. She watched his mask contort in shock and then turn serious.

“Ma’am please calm down! The EMTs are aware of the situation and they will help you, they already started pumping a neutralizer into the air.” His voice was stern and deep, she noticed a Spanish accent as well. He was grabbing at her wrists and missing each time, his reflexes already affected by the perfume wafting off her chest.

“No you don’t understand! It’s not enough!” Saanvi’s theatrics had her ear piece erupting in giggles from both Rordan and Drago now. She watched as her quarry started to sway on his feet and that was her signal. In a swift motion she pushed him through a set of doors that led to a closed off gallery where they were alone. His body stiffed and he tried to speak but no noise came. The world swirled around him and the floor came up to meet him. Standing over him, sure he was down for the count, she finally spoke to the two men privy to her sight. “Time for extraction. Send a nice car, please.” She removed the contact lens that was streaming her vision and took a long look at the man on the ground beneath her. His body was certainly a marvel, every muscle pushed past normal human standards. He might as well have been made from spun steel, or sculpted from marble. Even unconscious he had a menacing effect on her, like he was made to be aggressively intimidating. His waist was almost impossibly small compared to the broadness of his shoulders. Instinctively she knelt down and reached out to gently touch his face. The mask buzzed to the touch, as if it was full of electricity. She could feel the prominence of his cheekbones and began imagining what he might look like. The arrival of her extraction vehicle shook the images from her mind. She picked him up and threw him over her shoulder, making her way to the car.

“Talk about role reversal,” Guavin snorted a laugh as he watched Saanvi lay the hulking figure down in the back seat. “Where are we dropping him?”

Hellooo beautiful, she thought. While assessing all the upgrades, the multi-functional scope and walkable trigger she requested had her grinning maniacally. She made a mental note to give Drago a little more praise for his gunsmithing as she set up a stand in the darkness of the alcove. Cycling through the scope’s options allowed for eight different modes of visibility and detection, with heat-seeking sensors that stood up against even this night’s hellish weather.

Scanning the city for a few minutes allowed Saanvi’s dark eyes to adjust to the new level of detail the scope afforded them. Once her senses were fully immersed, the hunt was on. A den of data pirates had been having way too much fun with the identities of over half the city’s even-remotely-wealthy citizens. Ever the champion of fair play, she was going to bring that fun to an end by leveling their ranks. A glance at the watch face on the inside of her left wrist showed it was just before 02:00 AM. If the intel she scrubbed was accurate, a 12-person heat signature would pop up in less than 60 seconds.

Rifle loaded and ready, she took aim and waited. Intel was good—a warehouse four klicks away lit up with bodies. Once she had a count of twelve, her finger slipped into the trigger guard and onto the trigger in a swift motion. It didn’t leave the trigger until none of them were left standing. Smoke drifting from the barrel caught the light of an ad for aphrodisiacs and coiled pink and red against the shadows of the alcove. A smile cut across her face again as a leap off the building’s edge plunged her into the deluge.

Broken glass and rubble crunched underneath graceful steps as she leisurely filled a bag with data drives, cash, and whatever valuables her victims had stashed away. Once their warehouse was picked to the bones, Saanvi took a few photographs of the scene. Horrific images of bodies that were all bloated and bruising from the new ammunition she and Drago had developed. She knelt down near the worst-looking of the bodies, preparing to take a sample. As she pulled out a small vial and tool kit, the incoming presence of another threat sent her up the wall and into the ceiling’s vent system. Damn… intel must’ve been bad… there’s more of them. Sight limited by the vent grates, alarms went off in her head to escape as she felt the intensity of the aura peaking. There must be at least five more people about to walk into this room. Morbid curiosity won over her senses, so she repositioned herself in the vent to catch a glimpse of the intruders. Footsteps that seemed almost deafening from the intensity with which she listened for them indicated it was only one person. Good strategy, sending a scout. Eyes glued to the vent, she saw a massive silhouette peel around the corner. Her senses flared up at the sight of the figure beneath her: a man standing at least six feet tall, clad in a form-fitting suit that was dark blue with pulsing sections of red. The mask on his face had a menacing symbol on it that seemed to move the way facial expressions would. It started to stir a memory inside of her but an old emotion bloomed before recall could happen. For the first time in years, fear filled Saanvi’s veins. Thoughts only of escape and safety pinging in her mind. Run. Hide. Home. Run. Hide. Home. Go. Her head became a glitched mp3 but she couldn’t take her eyes off this predator. While the hulking figure below spoke in a low, annoyed growl to someone she couldn’t see, she stilled her mind and listened for the sound of pouring rain. The sound that would lead her away from this thing beneath her as fast as possible. Her crawl through the ducts to safety began with bated breath, a silent prayer that finished only after putting two klicks of distance between herself and whatever anomaly was in that warehouse.

Once back on the rooftop where her night began, her body shuddered hard, trying to fight off every feeling of the last few moments. She failed, senses made raw and primal by a hit of animalistic fear. Suddenly she could feel everything—single drops of rain and the chill that was trying to rob her of every last iota of body heat. Memories of another life came to her again, this time in echoes of her mother’s voice bewaring her of those made to be like her but not born as they were. ‘The universe is wide and more wild than our forest. You may meet something made to be even deadlier than you or I.’ The steel in her mother’s voice at that moment wasn’t lost on her then or now.

Saanvi had finally crossed paths with Miguel O’Hara that night. Only she didn’t register him as such. To her, she had come face to face with her mother’s fear made flesh: an unnatural union of arachnid and human.

***