The rain didn't wash the city clean. It just smeared the filth around. I walked through the steam rising from the grates, a ghost in a trench coat, the city's foul breath clinging to me.
Then, the sky spit out children in costumes.
Thwip. Thwip. Thwip.
Three threads, unnaturally swift, anchored to the cornices above. Two figures landed in a synchronized crouch, one in black and red, the other in stark white and pink. A third, in white and black, dropped a half-second later, more fluid, almost liquid in her motion. They formed a triangle, a cage of bright colors and misplaced optimism.
The boy in black, Miles, spoke first. His voice was gentle, a tone meant to soothe a spooked animal. "We're not here to fight. We just need you to come with us."
The girl in white, Gwen, was not so delicate. "You're a problem. We're here to contain it." Her arms were crossed, her posture a declaration of intent. No compromise. A sentiment I could almost respect, if it weren't attached to such naivete.
They didn't say "arrest." They used softer words. Custody. Questioning. Words for people who lack the conviction to say "prison."
I adjusted my gloves. "No."
The refusal hung in the damp air for a heartbeat before the scuffle began. They were fast, impossibly so. Their movements were a dance, full of flips and dodges I'd only seen in comic books. But I was not a comic book villain. I was a blunt instrument. I didn't dance. I broke things.
A grapple hook shot from my belt, snagging the fire escape. I used the momentum to swing a boot into the girl's ribs. A solid hit. She grunted, spinning away. The other woman, Silk, shot a web-line that I caught, yanking her forward and into the path of the boy. He somersaulted over her, acrobatic nonsense. For a moment, there was a real risk. I had the boy off-balance, my fist cocked back to shatter his jaw, to teach him what real violence felt like.
Then, a flicker of yellow light from his fingertips. Not a punch. A touch.
My world dissolved into a blaze of white-hot agony. It wasn't pain as I knew it. It was a violation. Electricity flooding my ganglia, bypassing muscle, bypassing will, and seizing the core of my nervous system. My body locked, a statue of torment. I fell, the impact with the wet asphalt a distant thud. The coppery taste of blood filled my mouth as my teeth bit through my tongue. It was a familiar taste. Grounding. But the shame of being restrained burned hotter than the bio-venom.
They didn't kill me. Of course they didn't.
The world tore open. Not with a sound, but with a sickening lurch, like reality folding in on itself. We moved through a bleeding kaleidoscope of color and light, a fracture between places. Then, we were somewhere else.
A pocket dimension. A sanctuary stitched together from the ruins of a thousand dead worlds. Neon threads of light, vibrant and electric, crisscrossed the void, forming alleys and bridges where none should be. In the center of it all stood a ruined cathedral, its gothic arches and shattered stained-glass windows now housing consoles and glowing screens. The air hummed with a power I could feel in my bones, a low thrum that vibrated behind my face.
Sanctuary for the masked. Church for the dishonest.
My humiliation was a cold stone in my gut. They dragged me, still twitching from the boy's sting, into the heart of their absurd clubhouse. My fury was a silent, patient thing. It could wait.
Inside the hub, a dozen more of them milled about. A circus of arachnids. Some wore familiar costumes, cheap imitations of a symbol I'd seen in newspapers. Others were alien, monstrous. I saw a talking pig in a blue and red suit telling a bad joke. The woman, Cindy, was already at a triage station, her movements efficient and clean. A stern, older man with grey at his temples watched a series of monitors, his face a mask of grim responsibility. Another warden for another asylum.
The moment my boots touched the cathedral floor, the threads of the Great Web seemed to pulse. A quiet ripple, unnoticed by most. But I felt it. A thousand unseen eyes turning my way. The hum intensified, pressing in. I felt naked, exposed, stripped bare under the gaze of this… thing. This network of lies.
Miles stood before me, his mask retracted. He was just a kid. A scared kid trying to sound like a leader. "Look, what you did back there… you saved a child, a totem. You fought off an inheritor spawn. The Web… it reacted. It pulled us all to you. It thinks you're important."
I stared through him, the shifting ink of my mask my only reply. He spoke of destiny. I knew there was no destiny. Only the abyss, and what we do in the face of it.
The hearing was a farce. They sat me in a chair in the center of a dais, my hands bound in hardened webbing. The leadership convened. The boy, Miles, spoke of understanding. The girl, Gwen, spoke of caution. An elder Spider, his suit a dark, dignified navy, called for a vote.
"He broke no rules because he never followed any," Gwen's voice was sharp, cutting. "He's a blunt instrument in a world that requires a scalpel. He nearly got that kid killed with his theatrics."
"He saved the kid," Miles countered, his voice earnest. "The Web brought him here for a reason. He's an anomaly, yeah, but that doesn't make him an enemy. We watch. We learn."
They talked about me like I was a weather pattern. A storm to be predicted and contained. The word "destiny" was used again. It was a filthier word than any I'd ever scrawled on a bathroom wall.
The cold rage finally boiled over. My voice was a low growl, rusted from disuse. "Don't speak destiny at me."
The room went silent. Every masked face turned to me.
"I don't bow to threads."
The air grew colder.
My journal lay on a table nearby, confiscated. A young Spider, a cadet in a garish yellow suit, picked it up, curiosity winning out over protocol. He flipped it open.
Then he froze.
A murmur spread through the room. I saw it over his shoulder. The letters on the page were no longer static. The ink was moving, crawling over the paper like a swarm of tiny black spiders, rearranging themselves, forming new words, new truths. For a single, unnerving beat, they all watched my life's work writhe in the hands of a child.
Gwen's expression hardened. Her eyes, visible through her mask's lenses, narrowed. This was not just a man. This was something else.
With a roar, I snapped forward, the webbing straining. The cadet yelped and dropped the journal. I lunged, snatching it from the air before it could hit the floor. I hugged it to my chest, my knuckles white. "Privacy," I snarled, my paranoia a shield. "Secrecy."
To prove her point about my methods, a junior hero in a sleek, silver costume stepped forward. "Your brutality is a liability. There are better ways." He gestured to a small training drone hovering nearby. "Show us."
I stood. They cut my hands free. I picked up a loose piece of rebar from a pile of rubble in the corner of the ruined church. The drone zipped towards me, its mock laser sights painting my chest red. I didn't dodge. I didn't flip. I took one step, swung the rebar like a bat, and jammed it into the drone's primary rotor. The shriek of tortured metal was music. It spun out of the air, crashing to the floor in a shower of sparks. Brutal. Simple. Effective.
The Spiders were silent. I saw it in their postures. Impressed. And afraid.
Gwen saw it as proof. "He's a liability."
Miles saw something else. "He's effective."
The council voted. Temporary custody. Observation. No execution, no banishment. They were too weak for either. The boy's vote was the one that tipped it. A single, foolish act of faith. Gwen cast a strict, formal dissent.
I was to remain. Not a prisoner, they said. An anomaly. I was assigned a guarded wing, forbidden from hunting alone. A caged animal.
The conditions were read aloud like a death sentence. Confined movement. No weapons off-site without an escort. And the last one, the one Gwen insisted upon: the journal was to be kept under supervised custody.
I almost refused. But I could feel it again, the subtle pull of the Web, the hum of the cage. And somewhere, deep down, a cold knot of knowledge that this place knew me in a way I couldn't comprehend. I accepted, my consent a low mutter. "Rules change nothing. Predator still hunts."
Later, I was led to my cell. The window, barred with threads of hard light, looked out onto a small rooftop. I saw them there—the boy and the girl. I couldn't hear their words, but I could read the argument in their bodies. Miles, pleading, his hands open. He wanted to watch, to learn. To reach me. Fool. Gwen, rigid, her arms a wall across her chest. She knew what I was. A time bomb. Their silent conflict was a prelude to an explosion I knew was coming. One of them was right.
They left me alone. The room was small, bare. A single chair, a slab for a bed. Through the window, the impossible architecture of the Great Web pulsed with a life I despised. I slammed my coat onto the chair and pulled out my journal. They had allowed me to keep it for the night, a small concession.
I breathed a low growl into the still, rain-scented air of my new cage. My fingers traced the worn leather cover. I looked out at the latticework of fate they all worshipped, at the threads that held me here.
Watch all you like, I thought, the bitterness a familiar comfort. I don't answer to threads.
But as I opened the journal, I saw the ink on the last page was still glowing faintly, the letters fresh. It was a sentence I had not written.
The Web will wait. The predator will not.