The hum of servers swallowed every sound.
Felicia crouched low between the racks, the glow of the harvest ring pulsing like a heartbeat against the metal. Above her, red status lights blinked in slow rhythm—each one a countdown.
Footsteps echoed closer. The technician's ID card clinked against his lanyard as he moved down the corridor, muttering about revalidation errors. Felicia pressed her back to the cold frame and killed the ring's glow with a quick flick. Darkness swallowed her again.
In her ear, Ethan's voice came through in a controlled whisper. "Hold position. I'm in the maintenance subserver. I can spoof his reauthorization if I get a clean read."
The terminal window in front of Ethan bloomed with green text. His hands moved faster than he thought he could. Lines of code merged, forked, and reassembled like strands of DNA. The system was slow—too many redundant firewalls—and the delay made him twitch.
The revalidation ping hit his screen: Technician 0047 requesting badge sync.
"Got you," he muttered.
He forged an Authorization Timeout error and injected it into the local server's response queue. If the tech tried to refresh, it would display a maintenance flag and loop. Sloppy work, but believable.
Ethan's pulse ticked in his throat. "That should buy you—maybe—thirty seconds."
Felicia's breath ghosted through the mic. "Plenty."
She shifted, eyes adjusting to the dark, tracing the faint silhouette of the technician's head through the lattice of racks. He knelt to check the base ports, his handheld scanner flickering with light. Too close.
And then, movement—Peter.
He slipped past the doorway, silent as vapor, already gone before the technician turned his head. Felicia caught a brief glimpse of him vanishing toward the far corridor.
'What are you doing, Spider?'
Ethan glanced up from the terminal feed, noticing Peter was moving on his servenlence feed. "Peter, what the hell are you doing?"
Peter's voice came back low and even. "Improvising."
The camera feed on Ethan's monitor jittered; then he caught sight of Peter rounding a corner and spotting a lone guard standing by the stairwell, nose buried in a clipboard.
Peter exhaled quietly, stepping out of shadow. One web-line, fast and quiet, hit the clipboard and yanked it upward—smacking the guard in the face. Before he could shout, Peter was behind him, an arm around the neck, a soft thump against the wall. The man sagged.
"Sorry, buddy. If I ever run across you, I'll treat you to a meal or something," Peter muttered. He dragged him into the restroom, webbed him up, and within moments, Peter had become someone else: pressed uniform, security badge, and just enough authority in his posture to sell it.
He adjusted the cap in the mirror and grinned. "Not bad."
The technician jumped slightly when Peter rounded the corner.
"Evening," Peter said, dropping his voice half an octave, perfectly bored. "You about done with that check?"
The man turned, blinking. "Oh—uh, sorry. The terminal's throwing a weird timeout. It's taking longer than usual."
Peter folded his arms, imitating the posture of every tired guard he'd ever seen. "You're slowing down my lockdown schedule. I've got orders to secure this floor and disable the elevator until the audit clears."
The technician paled. "Right, right—sorry! It's just… weird, that error. Oh, there it goes. The logs show the two people that guard saw earlier went to the lower level. I'll just radio it in and get out of your way."
Peter's heart lurched, but he forced a professional sigh. "Great. I'll handle it. You're clear. Go finish your other floors."
The technician nodded, relieved. "Sorry again, sir." He packed up and hustled away, shoes squeaking on the concrete.
In the wiring room, Ethan's screens erupted with warnings.
Partial alert: revalidation trace mismatch.
"Damn it," he whispered, typing furiously. The worm he'd seeded earlier to erase their tracks had stalled halfway through a system scrub, leaving a bright digital footprint. He launched a secondary loop—a slow-delete protocol disguised as a memory fragmentation cleanup—but it was too late.
The Oscorp servers registered a "minor internal anomaly."
Low priority.
Logged, not acted upon.
Ethan's jaw tightened. "You're clear. Hurry up."
Peter slipped back into the restroom and changed, stuffing the guard uniform into a stall. Moments later, he reappeared at the end of the server corridor, the faint traces of web on his cuff, but he cleaned it.
Felicia looked up from where she crouched. "Didn't know you had it in you, Spider."
He smirked, straightening his tie. "Neither did I. Maybe I'd make a decent spy after all."
"Careful," she said, rising to full height. "You're starting to sound like you're enjoying yourself."
Ethan's voice cut through, brisk and steady. "All right, guys. No more improvising. Finish the transfer and get out there."
Felicia turned back to the rack. The harvest ring's LEDs pulsed faster, data streaming like veins of light through the cables. The download bar on her wrist display crawled—eighty, ninety, ninety-five.
Peter stood watch at the corridor entrance, every sense stretched thin.
"Almost there…" Felicia whispered. The final progress line blinked green. 100% Complete.
She exhaled, detached the ring, and slid it into the small case strapped to her thigh. The faint whine of spinning drives wound down, leaving only the omnipresent hum of the server room.
"Extraction complete," she said. "Like stealing candy from a goblin."
Ethan didn't respond immediately. He was staring at his own monitor—at a single blinking notification in the corner of the admin feed.
EXECUTIVE TERMINAL: ANOMALY DETECTED.
The access tag was N.Osborn / Personal Machine.
Upstairs, Norman Osborn's elevator dinged open on the top floor. His polished shoes clicked against the marble as he walked toward his office, the echoes mixing with the muffled sound of applause still drifting from the gala below.
He reached his desk and frowned at the computer screen, where a small warning box waited, pulsing amber.
"Unauthorized access detected: Sub-Level Server Connection. Source: Internal."
Norman's jaw flexed. He clicked open the alert.
The servers hummed below. Felicia and Peter were already on the move.
Ethan, watching from his dim terminal, whispered, "Shit."