The USB drive clicked into place with a soft mechanical thunk. In the quiet hum of Peter's apartment—his aunt out, his homework forgotten—Raj and Peter leaned over the laptop screen, waiting for it to boot. Outside, rain tapped against the window, gentle but insistent. The kind of rain that made the city feel like it was whispering secrets no one should hear.
On-screen, the folder blinked open.
"PROJECT R-9: SOLAR SIGNATURE," Peter read aloud, his brows knitting. "That's… not ominous at all."
Raj didn't answer. His eyes were glued to the file tree: surveillance videos, timestamped folders, biometric readouts, energy scans.
And in the middle of it all, a file labeled: SUBJECT: RAJ VASANT. TIER 3 DESIGNATION. STATUS: UNSTABLE.
Peter glanced at Raj. "They gave you a tier ranking like you're a Pokémon."
Raj's mouth twitched. "Yeah, I must've skipped Charmander and landed straight on 'atomic death egg.'"
He clicked.
The video loaded. Grainy security footage from Midtown's cafeteria. The moment the apple exploded. A shimmer of light leaking from his palm. Eyes glowing—barely, but unmistakable.
Raj felt his chest tighten. It was one thing to live through that moment. It was another to see it dissected.
Peter reached for the keyboard. "There's more," he said, voice lower now.
Another clip. Rooftop footage. Him and Raj—talking, testing, laughing awkwardly. "She was watching that?" Peter muttered. "Jeez, we're like reality TV for creepy government spooks."
Raj said nothing. He was already scrolling down to the analytics: heart rate spikes, energy outputs, solar flux density.
And then—a simulation.
It showed a rendered model of Raj, glowing with solar energy. A red bar labeled "Critical Instability Threshold" climbed slowly over time.
Below it, a chilling note:
"If Subject R-9 is not contained or neutralized within 8-12 months, projected meltdown radius is estimated at 1.3 kilometers."
Peter's hand fell away from the mouse. "They think you're a bomb."
"Not a bomb," Raj muttered. "A problem."
Meanwhile—
Monica sat inside a dim surveillance van parked just off Bleeker Street, her eyes on the same feed. A second agent hunched at the console next to her, watching Raj's reaction in real time via hacked camera and mic.
"He's smarter than I expected," she murmured.
The agent glanced at her. "Should we have withheld the simulation?"
"No. He needs to see it," Monica replied, sipping coffee that had long gone cold. "Fear is a better motivator than comfort. If he doesn't realize what's growing inside him, we'll lose our only shot at shaping it."
She tapped her tablet. A notification pulsed: "Awaiting directive: Intervene or observe."
Her eyes narrowed.
Back in the apartment, Raj had stopped reading. He just stared at the red bar, the words meltdown radius looping through his head like a curse.
"Raj," Peter said gently, "they're guessing. They don't know what you're capable of. They're throwing around worst-case scenarios because they're scared."
"Then maybe they should be."
Peter blinked. "What?"
Raj stood, walking to the window. The rain cast distorted shadows across his face. "I never asked for this. I didn't wake up and decide, 'Hey, I'd love to become a living solar furnace.' But I'm not gonna sit around while they write my obituary in some lab file."
Peter followed him. "Then we use this. We plan. We get ahead of it. This whole Tier 3 threat thing? We make them wrong."
Raj turned. "You still think they'll just let us?"
Peter raised the flash drive. "Depends how much we know about them."
Inside the van, another feed lit up: Peter scanning through system metadata. "Persistent little spider," she muttered.
The agent beside her frowned. "He's digging into our structure."
Monica smirked. "Let him."
"Ma'am?"
"If we're lucky, he'll find the Easter egg."
Back at Peter's, a folder blinked open—hidden within the USB's architecture. A password field appeared.
Raj squinted. "What the—"
Peter's fingers flew across the keyboard. "Give me a sec. I recognize this encryption. It's not military—it's… Stark?"
Raj's breath caught. "As in Tony Stark?"
Peter nodded. "I saw his source code once. This signature's close."
The password box accepted Peter's override.
The file opened.
Inside: a short, grainy clip.
Not of Raj. Not of Peter.
Of Tony Stark, seated in a dim room, facing the camera. He looked… different. Tired. Less ego, more weight.
"If you're seeing this," Stark began, "then Project R-9 has become active. I built the sensor net to track anomalies. Not to cage them—but to understand."
He paused.
"R-9 isn't an experiment. It's a consequence. A mistake we're just beginning to realize. It's tied to something older. Something solar."
Peter froze.
Raj said, quietly, "He's not talking about aliens, is he?"
Stark looked away in the video. Almost guilty.
"I couldn't solve this. Not with all my tech. I left the keys in the network. Maybe someone smarter—someone more human—can do what I couldn't."
The video ended.
Peter was the first to move. "That wasn't public. Not even close."
The agent stared. "You gave them the Stark file?!"
Monica nodded once. "Now let's see if they break the cycle… or become part of it."
Back in the apartment, silence reigned.
Then Raj whispered, "They're not just watching us. They're gambling on us."
Peter exhaled. "Yeah. But if Stark left the keys… maybe we can win this."
Raj met his eyes. "Then we find out what R-9 really is."
And this time, they didn't flinch.