Buzz!
The plane's wheels screeched as they made contact with the tarmac at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. It was two-thirty in the afternoon. Just a few hours after being fired, Hawk was already in a different city, on the precipice of his next mission.
He moved with the light, efficient grace of a man with nothing to lose and everything to gain. He carried no luggage, just the small backpack on his shoulder. He bypassed the rental car counters and went straight to the taxi stand, got into the back of a waiting sedan, and gave the driver the name of a cheap motel in Quantico Town.
The young driver, who had a nervous energy under a veneer of streetwise toughness, just nodded, started the meter, and pulled away from the curb.
The Marine Corps Base, the FBI Academy… they were the heart of Quantico, but a civilian town still existed on its periphery, a place for families and support staff to live. A place where an anonymous face could blend in.
Any disciplined person possesses extraordinary execution. A man who had honed his will by throwing ten thousand punches a day for a thousand consecutive days was a force of nature. Hawk's execution was unprecedented. He had walked out of Oscorp a free man and was at the airport an hour later, booking the first flight south. He hadn't even gone home. His mind was already in Virginia, running through the cold, hard calculus of the coming heist.
Plan A, he thought, staring out at the unfamiliar scenery. Infiltration. A ghost in the machine. Get in, secure the Gammanian, and get out without a single soul knowing I was ever there. Clean, silent, professional.
He took a slow breath. But if I'm discovered, the plan immediately shifts. Plan B: a lightning raid. Overwhelming speed and force to seize the target and vanish before their Quick Reaction Force can even be mobilized. A surgical strike, over in seconds.
He was so lost in his mental rehearsal that he almost forgot about the mundane world. He pulled out the phone Gwen had given him, remembering he'd turned it off for the flight. As the phone booted up, its screen glowed, and a series of text message notifications began to chime.
Just as he was about to check them, the quiet atmosphere in the cab was shattered by the sharp, metallic click of the door locks engaging.
A low voice came from the driver's seat, accompanied by the sight of a dark, ugly pistol being pointed over the seat back at his chest.
"Don't move. Give me your phone."
Hawk fell silent. The sheer, unadulterated audacity of the moment was breathtaking.
Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing?
No. The real question was: I am on my way to commit an act of war against the most secure military installation on the East Coast, and I am being held up by a common street thug in a taxi?
His impression of the nation's capital plummeted to absolute zero.
From the rearview mirror, the driver's nervous eyes met his. The pistol trembled slightly. "I said, don't move! Now give me the phone and the wallet!"
Hawk came back to his senses, his indignation overriding any other emotion. "You want me to not move, or you want me to give you my phone? I can't do both."
The driver's eyes widened, thrown off by the calm, logical response. For a second, he was silent. Then, his composure broke. "Motherf*cker, stop talking shit! Give me the ph—"
Ding-a-ling!
The cheerful, default ringtone of the iPhone cut through his threat. The screen lit up with a name and a picture.
Gwen.
Hawk looked at the screen, then at the gun, then back at the screen. Without a trace of hesitation, he ignored the gun completely, accepted the call, and put the phone to his ear.
"Hello?"
The driver was completely broken. This wasn't defiance; it was dismissal. It was a level of disrespect so profound it shattered his confidence. The man in the back seat was looking at his gun and treating it like it was a harmless toy.
Rage replaced his fear. He slammed on the brakes, the tires screeching as the taxi swerved to a stop on the shoulder of the highway. He unbuckled his seatbelt and lunged over the seat, his face a mask of fury.
"Motherf*cker, I'll kill y—"
CRACK!
Hawk didn't even move from his seat. An elbow, moving with surgical precision and impossible speed, shot up and connected with the driver's exposed ribs. The sound was a sharp, wet snap of breaking bone. The man's roar of rage turned into a choked, agonized scream as the air was driven from his lungs, and he collapsed onto the center console.
On the other end of the phone, Gwen's voice was laced with curiosity. "Is someone screaming, Hawk?"
"…Uh," Hawk said, calmly pressing his hand over the gasping robber's mouth. "Just a guy passing by. I think he's watching a violent action movie on his phone."
"I guess so," Gwen's voice replied, a hint of laughter in it. "That scream sounds exactly like the one a person makes when they fracture their floating ribs."
Hawk glanced down at the exact spot he had struck. "…You can tell the injured location from a scream?"
"Of course," she joked. "My dad's a police captain. I'll tell you a secret; most new recruits aren't as good at this stuff as I am."
"I can tell," Hawk said, deadpan. Top students were a different breed entirely.
"I'm just teasing you," she laughed. "How could that be? Anyway, why was your phone off? I called you a bunch of times."
"What's wrong?" he asked, still holding the now-whimpering driver down.
"I'm downstairs."
"What?"
"Dr. Connors. He knows you were made a scapegoat, and he feels terrible about it. He prepared a gift for you. I was trying to call to let you know I was dropping it off, but your phone was off, so I just came over. Aren't you home?"
Gwen's voice was clear, and he could hear the sound of traffic in the background. She was at his apartment. In Queens. While he was in a taxi on the side of a highway in D.C. with an unconscious robber.
He was silent for a second, his mind racing. "Right, I'm not home. Why don't you take it back and just give it to me when school starts?"
"Too late, I'm already out of the car," she said, and he heard her car door shut. "You're on the top floor of the building near the road, right? Your window's not closed. I'll just go up the fire escape and put it in your room."
Hawk froze. It was one thing for her to know his address from the Oscorp file. But…
"How did you know my window was open?"
"I saw your shorts hanging outside to dry," she said, her voice matter-of-fact.
"Uh…"
"The grey ones. You've had them for three years. They weren't shorts before, were they? I think you cut them yourself back in tenth grade."
The level of observation was terrifying.
"Alright, that's it," she said, her voice slightly muffled as if she was starting to climb. "I'll just put it in your room. I'm in a hurry to get back anyway."
She hung up.
Hawk slowly lowered the phone, a cold dread washing over him that had nothing to do with the bleeding man at his feet.
Gwen Stacy, the sharpest, most observant person he knew, was climbing through his window.
And his five high-tech, illegal, alien-made Chitauri weapons were hidden under his bed.