Agent 19
He'd been sitting on the rooftop for an hour and a half and he was starting to think the trap wasn't going to work.
The Chrysler Building was four blocks east, lit up against the November sky, and Peter was on a water tank on West Forty-Third with his feet over the edge and the wind cutting through the suit. He'd chosen this rooftop because it was predictable. Same patrol route he'd been running for three weeks, same time, same perch. If someone had been watching him long enough to build a twelve-page file, they'd know he stopped here.
He'd felt the surveillance since October. The crawl at the back of his neck during patrols that his spider-sense categorized as observer, not threat. The same classification every time, weeks running. He'd seen the source once. The blonde woman at the Vulture fight, tactical vest and binoculars, three hundred meters out on a neighboring roof. She'd watched the entire fight without intervening. When it was over and Peter was breathing hard on a fire escape with two cracked ribs, she'd nodded at him across the gap. Then she'd spoken into an earpiece and vanished. She'd been patient about this. He was done being patient back.
The compass was at two. Cindy was somewhere in Queens and the bond was a low hum, the quietest it had been since the bite. A week since the fight in her bedroom and the silk on his hands and don't touch me when I'm mad at you. She hadn't texted. He hadn't texted. He kept checking the compass.
His right hand was warm. The glove was the same temperature as the rest of him but the hand felt warm anyway, which didn't make sense because Felicia had held it six days ago and hands don't stay warm for six days. His brain didn't care.
A helicopter passed over Midtown heading east. A siren wailed on Eighth Avenue. The Chrysler Building's eagle gargoyles watched him from four blocks away and he watched them back.
His spider-sense pinged.
Low. A presence behind him, approaching from the roof access door on the south side. The same signature as the Vulture fight: observer, not threat. Trained, controlled, no weapon drawn. Walking.
He didn't turn around.
"You're faster than your file suggests."
Female voice. Calm, amused.
He turned. The woman from the Vulture fight was standing fifteen feet away. Blonde hair in a low ponytail, wind catching the loose pieces. Blue eyes. Athletic build under a SHIELD field jacket worn open over tactical gear. Her hands were visible, palms out, fingers spread.
"Agent Morse," she said. "SHIELD. We've been monitoring your activities."
"I know," Peter said. "You were on the rooftop during the Vulture fight. Binoculars. Tactical vest. You nodded."
She raised an eyebrow. "You saw me at three hundred meters in the middle of a fight."
"Spider-sense. It's a whole thing."
"Yes. We know." She took a step forward. Stopped. Maintained distance. "I'm here to talk. That's all."
Peter looked at her. Late twenties, early thirties. Relaxed posture, weight balanced, hands free. Trained.
"We have a file on you," she said. "Spider-Man. Twelve pages. Plus appendix."
"Is it flattering?"
"It's..." She paused. Her mouth pulled to the left. "Thorough."
"Twelve pages seems like a lot for three months."
"You've been busy." She reached into the field jacket, slowly, watching his hands. Pulled out a thin folder. Held it up. "Photo mid-swing, taken from a SHIELD drone at six hundred feet. Combat analysis based on fourteen separate incidents we've observed directly. Current power classification: Class 10 strength, potentially Class 15 at physical maturation." She flipped a page. "Spider-sense reaction time of point-zero-three seconds, which is faster than anything in our database below the superhuman tier. Web-fluid tensile strength roughly twelve times industrial grade, which means you're synthesizing it yourself because nothing commercial comes close." She closed the folder. "Three months active. Forty-seven confirmed incidents."
"Some days I do two," Peter said.
"We know." She tucked the folder away. "You also skip Tuesdays. We're not sure why."
"Pub quiz at my local."
Her mouth pulled left again.
"There's a second file," Morse said. "Smaller. Your partner."
Peter's hands tightened on the tank edge.
"Female. Spider-adjacent abilities. Organic webbing, which differentiates her from your mechanical web-shooters. We're designating her Silk."
"That's a terrible codename."
"It was either that or Arachne. The committee preferred Silk."
"SHIELD has a codename committee?"
"SHIELD has a committee for everything." She put the folder back in her jacket. "Your partner's operational security is worse than yours. She leaves organic web residue on fire escapes, which is DNA-adjacent material she's leaving all over Manhattan. She's been photographed twice by civilian drones. And she swings through well-lit intersections instead of going around them."
"I've told her about the intersections."
"Tell her harder."
Peter didn't say anything for a moment. SHIELD had been watching Cindy. Building a file on her organic webbing from a drone six hundred feet up while she swung through intersections and left silk on fire escapes and didn't know.
"We're not here to cause problems," Morse said. Her voice shifted, warmer. "SHIELD has resources. Intel on threats you can't Google. Emerging enhanced individuals. Organized crime with superhuman connections. International operations that cross into street-level." She paused. "We can share. If you share back."
"What does that mean?"
"It means we tell you when something's coming and you tell us what you see on the ground. Partnership. Nobody's asking you to join anything or sign anything or wear a lanyard."
"What if I say no?"
"Then you say no and I go back to filing reports and you go back to punching people in alleys and we both pretend this didn't happen."
"And the files?"
"Stay on file. SHIELD doesn't delete data." She crossed her arms. "But the offer stays open."
A pigeon landed on the tank edge between them. Looked at Peter. Looked at Morse. Flew away. Peter was developing a theory about pigeons and important conversations but the sample size was still too small to publish.
"I'll think about it."
"That's all I'm asking." She reached into her jacket. Card. White, clean, SHIELD logo embossed in grey. Agent Barbara Morse. A phone number. An email address with a domain Peter had never seen. He took it. Fifth card he'd collected since this started. Ezekiel's cream-colored one, Norman's Oscorp card, Captain Stacy's NYPD card, Gwen's card with the coffee stain on the corner, and now SHIELD.
"One more thing," Morse said. "My partner reviewed your file. Agent Romanoff."
Peter's foreknowledge fired. Natasha Romanoff. Black Widow. Avengers. Red hair, catsuit, Scarlett Johan- no. That was the movie. That was a different universe where she was played by an actress and died on a cliff for a magic rock. This was 616, and the real Natasha Romanoff was a former KGB operative turned SHIELD agent who'd been running black ops since before Peter was born in either of his lives.
"She had a message for your partner. Silk." Morse's mouth twitched. "Her exact words: 'Tell the spider-child to stop leaving web-fluid on fire escapes. It's sloppy tradecraft.'"
"She sounds fun."
"She's terrifying. You'd like her."
"People keep introducing me to terrifying women. It's becoming a pattern."
"I'll put that in the file."
Morse walked to the building's edge. Pulled a rappelling line from the tactical vest, clipped it to the ledge railing, and stepped backward off the roof. Forty stories. She stepped off it like a curb. She paused at the ledge.
"Don't get killed, Spider-Man."
She went over. The rappelling line hissed against the railing and Peter leaned over and watched her drop eight stories and swing through an open window on the thirty-second floor and disappear.
He sat back on the tank. The card was in his hand. The Chrysler gargoyles were still watching and now he was wondering if they were SHIELD cameras, which was paranoia but with SHIELD you never knew.
Agent Morse had bone structure. He'd caught it during the conversation without trying, between the file numbers and the threat assessments. She could take him in a fight. He was pretty sure she knew that.
He put the card in his pouch next to the web-fluid cartridges. Cindy was going to lose her mind about the file.
The compass was at two. Cold and steady.
He put the card away and dropped off the tank into the November air.