The chase doesn't stop.
I'm swinging through smoke and shattered streets, web-shooters firing on pure muscle memory, eyes locked on the massive green silhouette bounding across rooftops ahead of me.
Hulk is *faster* now.
Not running—*bounding*. Each leap carries him three blocks, four, landing with impacts that crack pavement and send shockwaves rippling outward. He's not going around buildings anymore—he's going *through* them, punching holes in walls like they're made of cardboard, taking the most direct path possible.
My lungs are burning. Every muscle screams that I need to stop, rest, let someone else take over.
But there is no one else close enough.
And if I lose him—if he disappears into the maze of the city—
*This becomes a massacre.*
"Spider-Man to all units," I gasp into comms. "Still tracking. He's heading northeast, speed increasing. I don't think I can—"
A new voice cuts across the channel. Calm. Professional. *Controlled.*
"Unidentified gamma target locked. Providing aerial suppression."
I glance up.
The sky changes.
Precision-controlled drones flood the airspace—sleek, unmarked, moving in coordinated patterns that speak to military-grade AI or someone with ridiculous reflexes piloting them remotely.
And cutting through the debris and smoke: winged armor.
Not Iron Man's bulky, tank-like design. This is different—streamlined, predatory, built for speed and maneuverability. Dark blue and silver, wings that actually *flap* instead of just providing thrust, hard-light projectors glowing along the edges.
It banks hard, dodges a chunk of falling masonry without breaking formation, and fires.
Not at Hulk.
At a collapsing crane that's about to fall into an evacuation corridor.
The projectile—some kind of micro-missile—hits the crane's support structure, and instead of exploding, it *locks*. Magnetic clamps deploy, arresting the fall, holding the crane suspended long enough for civilians to clear the danger zone.
"Holy—" I start.
The winged armor pivots mid-flight, projects a hard-light shield that catches falling debris, redirects it away from Ice Man's evacuation route, then loops back to high altitude.
All in five seconds.
"Okay," I mutter. "He's good. Like... scary good."
"All units, this is Nighthawk," the voice says. "Integrating with tactical net now. Requesting target priorities."
Cap's voice, strained but steady: "Priority one: civilian evacuation. Priority two: structural stabilization. Priority three: do *not* engage the Hulk directly unless absolutely necessary."
"Copy that, Captain. Deploying support drones."
The drones scatter—some moving to create aerial barriers, others projecting holographic guide-lights to direct fleeing civilians, still others scanning for trapped survivors in collapsed buildings.
Nighthawk himself stays mobile, wings cutting through the air with impossible precision, filling gaps in our defensive line before I even realize they exist.
Quicksilver's about to evacuate a section when debris starts falling. Nighthawk's already there, hard-light shield deployed, buying Pietro the three seconds he needs.
Ice Man is reinforcing a building when the structure shifts. Nighthawk fires stabilizer bolts—same magnetic tech as before—locking the building's frame in place.
He's not just reacting.
He's *anticipating*.
I still remember watching him on TV. I still thing Ninja Monkey should have won but seeing Nighthawk in person, I can see why he made it instead.
Hulk notices Nighthawk.
*Really* notices him.
He stops mid-bound, lands hard enough to crater the street, and his eyes—glowing that sickly gamma-green—track the winged armor cutting through the smoke above.
"Oh no," I whisper.
Hulk crouches, muscles coiling, and then he *moves*.
He rips a chunk of roadway free—asphalt, concrete, rebar, the whole section—and hurls it upward like a missile.
The projectile screams through the air, spinning, trailing debris.
"NIGHTHAWK, BREAK LEFT!" I scream.
He's already moving—banking hard, wings folding, dropping altitude in a controlled dive that takes him *under* the projectile instead of away from it.
The roadway chunk sails past, crashes into a building's upper floors, and explodes in a cloud of dust and shattered glass.
Nighthawk levels out, but he's lost altitude.
And Hulk is already leaping.
My spider-sense *detonates*.
Not a warning. A *scream*.
Hulk launches himself upward—higher than I've ever seen him jump, higher than should be physically possible, clearing six stories in a single bound.
Reaching for Nighthawk with hands the size of cars.
"MOVE!" I fire webs blindly, trying to web Hulk's legs, slow him, *anything*—
Nighthawk doesn't panic.
He fires thrusters at maximum output, rockets upward and sideways simultaneously, barrel-rolls to avoid Hulk's grasp by maybe three feet.
Hulk misses.
Falls.
Lands on a bridge.
The George Washington Bridge.
Mid-evacuation. Hundreds of civilians still crossing on foot and in cars, guided by police and S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel.
Hulk lands dead-center on the roadway.
The structure *screams*.
Not metaphorically. The steel cables holding the bridge scream—high-pitched, vibrating, the sound of metal under stress it was never designed to handle.
Asphalt cracks in spiderweb patterns. Support pylons groan. Cars skid as the deck tilts.
Civilians scream and run in all directions.
"BRIDGE COLLAPSE IMMINENT!" someone shouts over comms. Maybe Ice Man. Maybe Cap. I can't tell anymore.
I'm already swinging, firing webs at the nearest support cable, trying to reinforce it, trying to buy time—
Ice Man appears beside me, skating across the bridge deck on self-generated ice, hands extended.
"Go left!" he shouts. "I'll take the pylons!"
Ice erupts from his hands, coating the support pylons in crystalline reinforcement, freezing cracks before they can spread.
Tigra and Quicksilver sprint evacuation efforts—Tigra carrying three people at once, Quicksilver blurring back and forth so fast he's evacuating entire cars by pulling occupants free and depositing them on solid ground.
And above us all, Nighthawk deploys structural stabilizers.
They fire from his wings—magnetic anchor points that latch onto the bridge's superstructure, projecting hard-light beams between them, creating a temporary skeletal frame that takes some of the load.
"Structural integrity at forty-three percent," Nighthawk reports, voice tight but controlled. "Buying you two minutes. Maybe three."
"Make it five!" Cap orders.
"I'll do what I can."
We throw everything we have at the problem.
Ice Man freezes support cables, flash-crystallizing them to temporarily increase tensile strength.
I web every weak point I can find—cracks, breaks, places where steel is separating from concrete.
Nighthawk's stabilizers hum, projecting force across the bridge's length, literally holding it together with hard-light and magnetic fields.
And Hulk?
Hulk stands in the center of it all and slams his fist into the deck.
Once.
Twice.
Rhythmic. Methodical.
Finding weak points.
Exploiting them.
"He's not trying to destroy the bridge," I realize, horror dawning. "He's trying to collapse it *faster*."
"Why?" Ice Man gasps, reinforcing another pylon.
"Because it's in his way. He wants to leave the city. And we're slowing him down."
Hulk slams the deck again.
A support cable snaps.
The bridge lurches.
People scream.
Nighthawk's stabilizers are glowing white-hot now, overloading, struggling to compensate for structural failure that's accelerating beyond their capacity.
"Captain," he says, and there's no fear in his voice. Just honesty. "This thing? This is above my pay grade."
"Can you hold?" Cap asks.
"For another ninety seconds. After that, physics wins."
"Then we have ninety seconds. Spider-Man, Ice Man—clear the last civilians. Nighthawk, hold that line. Quicksilver—"
"Already gone!" Pietro blurs past, carrying an elderly man and a child simultaneously.
I swing low, web-zip a woman frozen in fear, pull her toward Tigra who's coordinating ground evac.
Sixty seconds.
Another cable snaps.
Forty-five seconds.
The deck tilts ten degrees. Cars slide. People cling to railings.
Thirty seconds.
Ice Man's reinforcements are cracking, crystalline structures shattering under impossible strain.
Nighthawk's stabilizers flicker.
"Captain, I'm losing it—"
Twenty seconds.
Hulk raises his fist for one final, bridge-ending blow—
And freezes.
His head tilts. Eyes scanning the skyline beyond.
Then he *moves*.
Not to destroy the bridge.
To leave it.
He leaps—away from us, away from the civilians, toward the distant skyline—and disappears into smoke and ruin.
The bridge holds.
Barely.
Emergency crews flood in—S.H.I.E.L.D., FDNY, structural engineers with equipment I don't recognize.
Cap's voice over comms is quiet. Exhausted.
"All units—fall back. Regroup at designated safe zones. We're not stopping him here."
No one argues.
No one has the energy left to argue.
Ice Man collapses on the bridge deck, breathing hard, hands still glowing faintly with residual cold.
Tigra leans against a railing, fur matted with sweat and dust.
Quicksilver stops moving for the first time in twenty minutes and immediately doubles over, gasping.
And high above us all, Iron Man hovers.
Perfectly still.
I can see the targeting reticles flickering around him even from here—weapons charged, firing solutions calculated, ready.
He doesn't fire.
And somehow, that scares me more than if he did.
Nighthawk lands near me for the first time.
Up close, his armor is impressive—sleek, functional, covered in scorch marks and stress fractures from holding that bridge together through sheer will and technology.
His helmet retracts, revealing a face I don't recognize. Young. Maybe late twenties. Calm, despite everything.
He nods once. "You kept up. That's... impressive."
I exhale, hands shaking as the adrenaline finally crashes. "You should see the days I don't."
He almost smiles. "I'd rather not, if this is your baseline."
"Yeah. What a day to meet each other for the first time."
Behind us, the bridge creaks but holds. Emergency crews work. Civilians are safe—or as safe as anyone can be right now.
But it doesn't feel like a victory.
It feels like survival.
And survival isn't the same as winning.
I look toward the distant skyline where Hulk disappeared.
Smoke coils like storm clouds, backlit by fires we haven't contained yet, silhouetted against a sunset that looks apocalyptic.
*We didn't lose today,* I think. *But we didn't win either.*
*And whatever's driving him... it's not done.*
Above us, thunder rumbles.
Not from Hulk.
Actual thunder.
A storm rolling in, because of course it is.
Nighthawk follows my gaze. "That's not good."
"Nothing about today is good."
"Fair point."
He engages his helmet again, wings spreading. "I need to recharge my systems. Stabilizers are fried."
"Yeah. Get some rest. Tomorrow's probably going to be worse."
"Optimistic."
"Realistic."
He launches, wings catching air, disappearing into the darkening sky.
And I'm left standing on a bridge that almost collapsed, in a city that's falling apart, watching smoke rise from places I used to call safe.
My phone buzzes.
I don't check it.
Can't be good news. Never is.
Cap's voice over comms: "Parker. Debrief in thirty minutes."
"Copy."
I web-swing toward the temporary command post, every movement mechanical, running on fumes and stubbornness.
Behind me, the storm grows closer.
And somewhere in the city, Hulk is still out there.
Still moving.
Still driven by something none of us understand.
I think about Bruce. About the man inside the monster. About grief and guilt and how pain can twist into something unrecognizable.
And I think about Tony, hovering above it all, weapons ready but not firing.
About the choice he can't make.
About the friend he can't save.
Tomorrow, something breaks.
I can feel it.
The storm's coming.
And we're standing right in its path.