The hum of old hardware buzzed faintly in the background, interspersed with the soft clacking of keys as Peter Parker scrolled through the data logs on his dual-monitor setup. The glow of code reflected in his glasses, but his eyes were somewhere else—uneasy and distant.
Raj leaned against the wall of the cramped garage, arms crossed, gaze flicking between Peter and the flickering energy graph onscreen. "That spike in the heat signature," Peter muttered, tapping the screen. "That's not normal. That's engineered."
Raj arched an eyebrow. "You're saying that fire mutant was... what, built?"
Peter hesitated. "Not built. But his energy readings were too consistent—too structured. Wild powers don't usually come with internal heat regulators and patterned bursts. That thing was designed to flare at the right moment."
Raj glanced at the screen again. The graph showed a symmetrical curve of thermal output, peaking during the mutant's most destructive phase. Controlled chaos. "You think someone sent him?" Raj asked, voice quieter now.
Peter nodded slowly. "I think he was a test. And we were the test subjects."
Raj didn't respond immediately. He walked over to the workbench, picked up a small reflective shard of metal from the wreckage of one of the mutant's explosive blasts—Peter had saved it. He rolled it between his fingers absently.
"I've been feeling it too," Raj murmured. "That presence. The one that watches. Not just surveillance. Something colder. Like… like a predator waiting to confirm something before it strikes."
Peter didn't look surprised. "I saw two different drones in the past week. One near your rooftop. One near the alley behind school. They're not NYPD or Stark-grade."
"Military?"
Peter leaned back in his chair. "Or something pretending not to be."
Raj exhaled and turned away, focusing his eyes through the garage wall. It wasn't a strain anymore. His X-ray vision had sharpened since the mutant incident. Now he could pick out the frame of Peter's Aunt May walking around the kitchen upstairs, the flickering coil in the old toaster, the rusting lock in the neighbor's garage. It all came easy now.
He blinked it away.
"You okay?" Peter asked.
"I'm adapting," Raj said simply. "But the more I adapt, the more obvious it becomes—I'm not just some lucky solar experiment. Whatever I am, they know."
A long silence passed between them, filled only by the whir of the desktop fan and the distant sound of traffic outside.
Then Peter said, "You didn't tell me about the alley."
Raj didn't turn. "What alley?"
Peter pushed his glasses up. "Don't play dumb. Your hoodie had a bullet hole that vanished. You were jumpy at lunch the next day."
Raj exhaled slowly. "Someone followed me home. Two guys in a van. One of them pulled a gun. I didn't even think. The shot bounced. Didn't hurt. Didn't even scratch."
Peter whistled under his breath. "Super Defense?"
"Automatic now," Raj said. "If they're trying to provoke me into losing control, they're getting close."
Peter sat up straighter. "They want to see how far your powers go. How bright you burn before something breaks. That fire mutant was just them lighting a match."
UNKNOWN LOCATION
A laboratory bathed in low green light. Monitors lined the walls, showing grainy, zoomed-in footage of the recent city incident. The fire mutant's rampage played again and again from different angles. Civilian screams. A golden blur intercepting falling debris. A solar pulse erupting midair.
The figure in the glow—Raj—stood out in every frame, blurred by his own intensity.
A man in a charcoal lab coat stood with arms folded behind his back, watching without blinking.
"Subject Delta-1 performed within predicted instability parameters," a scientist said, checking a clipboard. "But the anomaly's response exceeded expectations. Solar output spike reached Tier 3. Still no cellular strain."
The man in the coat didn't speak. His eyes were sharp and cruel.
The scientist continued nervously, "We believe this... 'Raj'... is not just an enhanced. His body reacts like a living solar reactor. But there's no baseline genome match. No existing metahuman markers. He doesn't fit."
"He doesn't need to fit," the man said coolly. "He needs to burn."
Silence fell over the room.
"Proceed with Phase Two," he ordered. "Send Subject Twelve. No confrontations—only observation. I want him cornered. Let the light flare. Then we harvest."
The scientist paused. "And what if he doesn't flare?"
The man gave a faint smile. "Then we apply darkness."
EVENING
Peter closed the surveillance app on his phone and stood. "I've been checking street-level footage. Someone edited out half the damage from that fight. It's like it was cleaned up digitally before the city even logged it."
Raj didn't like that. "So someone's covering tracks and sending mutants?"
"And probably watching us talk right now," Peter said with a grim look. "They're playing a long game. And we're pawns who don't even know what board we're on."
Raj looked up at the exposed ceiling beams. "I don't want to be a pawn anymore."
Just then, Peter's laptop beeped. A file opened itself—no input, no click. Just a blank document, rapidly filling with text.
Both of them froze.
Words appeared in blocky white font.
"WE SEE YOUR LIGHT."
"CAN YOU SEE OURS?"
No sender. No prompt. Just that.
Peter immediately shut off the Wi-Fi, pulled the power, and yanked the battery. "That's not normal," he muttered.
Raj stared at the black screen for a long moment. "They're not just watching. They're talking now."
"Which means," Peter said, "we've officially graduated from 'being observed' to 'being provoked.'"
Raj nodded. The weight of the moment settled on his shoulders like armor. "No more waiting."
He walked to the door, opened it to the dusky light of the street. The sky above was hazy with smoke from some distant fire, still smudged from the last mutant attack. His eyes reflected the fading sun, a soft glow building behind his irises.
Peter stood beside him.
Raj didn't look back when he said, "It's time we stop reacting."
Peter finished the thought. "And start planning."
They didn't need a vow this time. They just stood in the quiet dusk, two kids who had finally realized they were on a chessboard made of shadows and surveillance.
And now?
They were ready to flip it.