Work Text:
Apartment of Nisa Contreras
Queens, NY
November 20, 2024 CE
Nisa checked her watch and fished the TV remote out of the pile of notebooks on the coffee table. She channel-surfed until she landed on the local news, and let it run as she checked her email.
Jameson wasn’t exactly thrilled to hear about the bizarre incident that cost her the mysterious hard drive almost a month prior, and she wasn’t so sure that he'd even believed her at first. His misgivings were mitigated, however, by the fact that she had come back with hundreds of dossiers packed with sensitive intel on some very important people—and then somehow managed to snag a brief interaction with none other than Tony Stark.
She’d known that showing up that day without the drive could provoke a contractual dust-up, so she’d arrived with the next best thing: good old-fashioned gossip, painstakingly documented by herself and the TVA. The JARVIS bot was polite and unbothered by it, but Stark seemed to take an immediate personal interest in one of the names she’d presented: Quentin Beck. She went in thinking he would find Beck’s alleged contractor work for Memoria Technica a revelation, but when his poker face remained stone still, she realized that he already knew.
She had no doubt that Stark was monitoring her visit with JARVIS, and that there would likely be something about Beck’s file that might move him to ask questions, but she didn't expect him to do so in person. He’d barged into the conference room nonchalantly, barefoot and smelling of whiskey at barely noon that day, looking quite a bit less put together than she'd expected from someone with that many zeroes in the bank. His interest wasn’t in Beck’s employment elsewhere, but in the strange machine he had designed. Stark had used the prototype as part of a talk at MIT years prior and appeared rather perturbed to find that a newer iteration of it was likely in use at another company.
She had spent the rest of that day wondering why he wasn’t at all interested in finding out how or where she’d obtained any of the strange documents laid out on the table for inspection by JARVIS. She half expected a visit from SHIELD any minute. It was just as well that she'd scanned and cataloged every inch of every page from that cart, then carefully packed it all back up, shrink-wrapped the whole thing, and rolled it into a secure storage room at the Daily Bugle offices. There were only two keys to that particular space: one of them was in a locked drawer in Jameson’s desk; the other was in a small fireproof safe in Nisa’s bedroom, alongside one of the hefty hard drives she’d bought to back up her newly-built digital archives.
Nisa yawned and brushed her hair out of her eyes. She needed a haircut and realized that she hadn’t kept any of her checkup appointments over the past six months, either. She’d been so wrapped up in election drama that she'd completely neglected herself and her apartment, but with the whole ordeal now solidly in the rear view mirror by two whole weeks, and all of her anger and frustration thoroughly vented in her column, she was left simply observing and reporting on the fallout. In January of 2025, America would welcome its first female president, Hailey Nichols, a rightwing crusader who had only made it to the ticket in the first place after her two predecessors ended up six feet under.
As always, Laufeyson was mostly evading the blame as a spoiler candidate who split the progressive vote and handed an extremely winnable election to the least qualified and most politically dangerous underdog and a party that was saturated with Klansmen and other domestic terrorists. His remarks, and therefore the narrative put forth by his millions of fans across the internet, was simply that the 25 million votes he had garnered were not stolen, and rightfully belonged to those who turned away from the Democratic party after the party had turned away from them. Apparently, telling people to vote as though their lives depend on it only works if they think their candidates will actually introduce something to help them survive the status quo they're selling.
Nisa scowled bitterly and checked her text messages.
Ben Urich had been a longtime colleague at the Bugle before leaving to start his own paper. He had made quite a name for himself as a crime reporter, with connections in most police precincts and prison complexes. Whenever something went down anywhere in the city, he was often the first person called—sometimes even before first responders. His column had won him a pile of awards and an even bigger pile of lawsuits, mostly settled out of court. He had an airtight reputation for protecting anonymous sources, something that occasionally put him at odds with law enforcement and even elected officials. She’d known Ben for years, both as a coworker and professional mentor.
The first round of TVA documents she’d felt comfortable enough giving him had caused quite a stir once they’d been given the front page treatment over at Frontlines, his new indie publication. She sifted the pile in front of her for a few up-and-comers who seemed to be on a collision course with fate, and opened her ongoing conversation with Ben.
Got another one for ya when you have a sec, she typed. A moment later, he replied.
I'll call you in a minute.
She glanced over at her nearly empty wine glass, something else she'd been neglecting. She unmuted the TV and listened as she stepped into the kitchen for a refill.
“This was the scene this morning in the court room of Judge Elton Lewis, who fell ill during proceedings.” Footage of the courthouse steps and an ambulance played across the screen. “Judge Lewis was rushed to Mount Sinai West hospital in Manhattan, where, at 10:32 a.m., he was pronounced dead. No word on the cause of death, but we will keep you updated as new information becomes available. You can sign up for instant updates and behind-the-scenes content on all of your favorite news topics on the WorldNews+ app, free to download from any app store—”
Nisa’s phone rang. She scrambled to grab it from the coffee table and muted the TV.
“Hey, Ben. How’s it going?”
“Chaotic, as always,” he said with a chuckle. “Whatcha got for me?”
“Some more of that classified paperwork, kinda bordering on conspiracy theories, with some pretty hot intel.”
“How hot we talking?” Ben asked, his voice perking up with interest.
She took a deep breath. “Hot enough that I’m thinking whoever ends up running it might wanna do so anonymously.”
“We talkin’ politicians, cops, or what?”
“Yeah.”
Ben paused for a long moment. “Does Jameson know you’re talkin’ to me?”
“He’s kinda over it, as long as we’re not trading anything that’ll get him sued.” Well, that was half true.
“How bad is it? We got a body count or something?”
“Probably.”
She could hear him rustling around. “How you feel about making new friends?” he asked. “I think I have the perfect guy for this one.”
“Depends. This isn’t another FBI agent posing as an informant, is it?”
Ben snorted. “Oh, definitely not.”
Back at the TVA.
Mobius stepped through the timedoor and headed straight for the decontamination suite, emptying his pockets into a bin before stepping into a stall. He had to admit, it was pretty handy that his agency-issued clothing size was on file so that such a convenient quick-change was available on demand. He hated the smell of the cleansers, but it was worlds better than the stench of sulfur and rotting bodies that clung to him. He emerged moments later in crisp, new clothing and whistled to himself as he emptied the sanitized contents of the bin into his pockets.
He signed himself out and glanced over at his suit jacket with its curiously inverted lapels; it was unique to him, an administrative error just like his name. He would swing by later to collect it. This was the occasional consequence of the strange places his work sometimes took him, and it seemed rude to show up at the hellish court of a supremely powerful being looking silly in a hazmat suit.
He passed through the cantina to grab a water and snacks on his way back to his ad hoc war room. By the looks of it, the interns had been quite busy replenishing the printed copies of the missing files, which sat neatly organized on a new cart just inside the door. He powered up a terminal and logged his debriefing, noting the subtle intel from Mephisto’s cryptically snide remarks. Three out of four dead presidential candidates were already smoldering down there with him, and the fourth was due shortly. He wouldn’t be surprised if every other candidate had also made some deal or another with this particular devil—it would simply be efficient for a devil to work the entire field at once.
Mobius looked over at the cluster of politician mugshots, most of whom had begun collaborating among themselves and with corporations to control most economic, legislative, and technological progress. Given what he’d already learned about the scale of the problem and those involved, what he saw rapidly unfolding was — at best — a twisted, dystopian nightmare. No matter who took the White House next in that timeline, it was guaranteed to compound itself exponentially. He doubted that even the literal god of chaos could keep it from sliding out of control and consuming the planet.
He considered the path Laufeyson had chosen to scale the political ladder, and a larger picture became evident. He’d calculated that the path of least resistance was upending the economic stranglehold of a single industry, and one most despised by Americans: medicine. But rather than capturing it by way of the stock market or from public office, he tackled it by resolving one of its most insidiously profitable sectors—terminal illness—thus single-handedly transforming it into his own market share while propelling himself into the limelight as a heroic intercessor. He was instantly beloved worldwide, above reproach by even his staunchest critics, and untouchable by the powers that be.
Running for office on the momentum of that victory was quite a brazen flex. Mobius had to give him that.
In an increasingly volatile timeline with a seemingly endless variety of new threats and bad actors appearing regularly, it was bound to escalate. Given the degree of civil unrest relayed by Nisa, and the culture of resentment it had amplified, he knew enough to see where this was headed. The most likely suspects were not mustache-twirling supervillains of lore, but rather those of the reactionary variety. The country, and apparently the world at large, had become a churning, inescapable hellscape: turn the screws hard enough and the pressure builds; let it cook for long enough without reprieve, and it was a powderkeg ready to go off at even the slightest provocation.
He turned back to the piles of theoretical arrivals and considered the odds of who might hit the fan next: a green-haired guerrilla terrorist in face paint and a purple suit? a botanical biochemist turned eco-terrorist with supernatural control over living flora? a man doomed to spend the rest of his life in a cryo-suit of his own design? In every timeline where one of them manifested, the others soon followed—an unholy trinity of unrestrained criminal mischief and a whole lot more.
The trouble was, the effects could potentially spill over beyond that single timeline once it surpassed a critical threshold, and while this could make it easier for the algorithm to spot, he wasn't too keen on the inherent risks of letting it get that far.
Back at Nisa's apartment.
Nisa adjusted the mic on her headphones and opened the video call. Ben was already there.
“Who is this we’re talking to, again?” she asked.
“He’s kinda like those podcasters you’ve been working with."
“The 'Lone Gunmen'?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “They’re pretty out-there.”
“Yeah, well… so is this guy.”
“So, he’s another conspiracy crank?”
“Not exactly.”
A chime sounded and a third pane opened up to the grumbling of a deep, gravelly voice.
“Testes, testes, one-two-three.”
Nisa snorted despite herself, suddenly glad she wasn't on camera. This was going to be one hell of a call.
“We can hear you, can you hear us?” Ben asked.
“Yeah, yeah, I hear ya. Gimme a sec.” The pane flickered and brightened and his hand could be seen pulling away a lens cap. Nisa didn’t know what she had expected a guy named Spider to look like, but the camera didn’t disappoint.
His cleanly shaved head bore a spider the size of a quarter tattooed onto his scalp. He sat slouched comfortably in his chair in nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs, his gaunt frame wrapped in thick, black tattoos over lean muscle. She spotted tracks of small pink dots with telltale bruising along the insides of both arms, which he made no effort to hide. She wasn't going to ask. He lit a cigarette and pulled a long drag from it.
“All right, Benny-boy. Who’d ya bring me?”
“This is Nisa Contreras, one of my old colleagues from over at the Bugle,” Ben said.
Nisa cleared her throat. “Hi.”
Spider raised an eyebrow from behind his unusual glasses, one lens red, the other rectangular and green.
“Wait, wait, I know who you are,” he said, playfully wagging a long finger at the camera. “You’re that kid who busted Governor Hitt for stealing from the renovation funds for his re-election campaign. And then that rat bastard Frump went and pardoned him, and they let him run again. Fuckin’ travesty, if you ask me.”
Nisa sighed. “Yeah, eight years later and he’s still not too fond of me.”
“Eh, fuck ‘em. That was one banger of an exposé. Nice job.”
“Thanks,” Nisa said. “Not that it did any good in the long run.”
“You ruined his night, and cost him six figures in legal fees!” Spider cackled. “He had to suck up to that orange-faced fuckwit, then buy his way back into the good graces of the party. And even then, it still took him ‘til ‘22 to claw his way back into office, and he just barely scraped by against a literal fuckin’ Nazi. Not a lotta people can say that about their work, ‘specially not some teenage amateur swingin’ for the fences. I hear he still shrivels up at the mere mention of it.” He looked genuinely impressed.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Nisa laughed.
“Never hesitate to leave a mark on 'em when they deserve it,” Spider mused, cracking his knuckles dramatically. "Okay, whatcha got for me?"
"Looks like some kind of agency profiles,” Ben said. “Sent them in PDF, encrypted. Check your drive.”
Spider picked up a laptop from the floor and started fiddling with it on his legs, his cigarette dangling precariously from his lips. A fluffy white cat wandered onto the screen and rubbed against his ankles. Nisa leaned in closer and squinted, certain that it couldn’t possibly have two faces on one little head and shuddered. The longer she stared at his pane, the more she noticed about the room: cracked tiles sagging from filthy walls, the floor littered with cigarette butts, empty cartons, bottles, discarded laundry; the oversized three-eyed smiley-face sticker on the back of his laptop; the biggest bong she had ever seen; and the chair he was sitting in was, in fact, a toilet.
“How the hell’d ya get your hands on these?” he asked, absently scritching the cat behind its ears as it purred loudly.
“Anonymous donor,” Nisa said.
Spider looked skeptically into the camera. He turned his laptop around so that they could see the screen, tapping his fingers on the letterhead of the page.
“Time Variance Authority.”
Nisa froze. She hadn't mentioned the TVA, not even to Ben. How the hell did this guy know?
“Is that what it stands for?” she asked, keeping her voice steady.
Spider nodded. “I would be very interested in talking to the person who swiped these. I can guarantee their anonymity, and there’s some money in it, if that helps motivate ‘em.”
“I can pass along any questions you have, and see if I get anything back,” Nisa said carefully.
Spider grinned into the camera, turning the laptop back around. “Benny, kindly give the lady my email.”
“What, uh, can you tell us about them?” Nisa asked casually. “Are they part of some conspiracy theory?”
Spider smiled crookedly into the camera. “It’s more than a theory. Life on Mars, now that’s a theory. But this shit? Inter-galactic clandestine surveillance orgs using alien tech to watch whole planets? I got filin’ cabinets full of those. But these guys, they’re the fuckin’ worst. What I really wanna know is, why these people in particular?” he asked, dropping his spent cigarette to the floor and grinding it out with his bare heel. He had another one in his mouth and lit in a matter of seconds. “What is it about them? Last I knew, the nerds workin’ for Washington were designing weapons and A.I., not wormholes.”
Nisa rubbed her eyes in exasperation. This guy seemed far more preoccupied with the origin of the documents rather than their alarming content.
“Sorry, I don't think I follow. What's this about wormholes?” Ben asked.
“Doors,” Spider said, waving him off. “And these people, the time cops, they don't even bother making the trip out unless you’re fuckin’ around with time travel or shit like that. Since when does some random shithead Senator dabble in—“ He paused, leaning closer to his laptop screen. “Holy fuck.”
He grabbed a second laptop from somewhere off camera, moved the cat out of his lap, and set the computers side by side on his legs. After a long moment of mumbling back and forth between the two screens, he smiled wide.
"Fuckin' knew it." He looked up at the camera. “You were there in Philly when that shit went down with the symbiotes, weren't ya?”
“Oh, I definitely got an eyeful that day, yeah,” Nisa said.
Spider smiled and set his chin in his palm. “See, I spent weeks combing through every piece of footage out there from that incident. None of the security feeds were able to catch the big red bastard on its way to the stage. Nothin' came through the floor or the ceiling. Only thing we can point to is Artie suddenly droppin' outta view just before ol' Pete went to pieces.” He turned around both laptops, tapping on their screens. “But this? This explains an awful fuckin’ lot.”
Nisa smiled from behind her own laptop as she saw that he had enlarged a page of the TVA dossier on Arthur Krane regarding his brief stint as host of a symbiote named Carnage and held it side by side with an enlarged still of Arthur during the split-second that he’d begun to teeter on stage, just three feet behind his father.
Finally, he’s getting it.
“How’d you figure it out?” she asked.
“I read your article on it,” Spider said matter-of-factly. “He basically told you, right to your face.”
Nisa blinked at her screen. “I… don’t understand.”
Spider fiddled with one of his laptops and cleared his throat as he read dramatically from the screen. “I will do everything I can to put an end all of this carnage.” He looked back up at the camera. “You had no way of knowin’ this, but that’s why Stark was there with ol’ Hammerhead. They knew one of ‘em was harboring a symbiote, but they were lookin’ at daddy Krane instead of that stabby little frat-brat he raised.”
“I take it you already knew about his, uh, hobby,” Nisa said, suppressing the urge to heave again at the memory of a particular crime scene.
“I knew it had to be one of ‘em in that circle, given the way they’ve all been coverin’ each other’s asses. Then I saw your piece, and what he said to you, and bing.” He tapped his forehead. “Bell went off. So I started lookin’ at all the old unsolved cases, and lo and behold, there it was.”
Spider shut the laptops and wagged a finger at the camera. “My question is, how did you figure it out?”
“I just followed the TVA paperwork, that’s all,” Nisa said. It wasn’t the smoothest lie she’d ever managed, but it was all she could muster on a moment’s notice. “I kinda got the vibe from him when he walked up to me that day.”
Spider looked carefully into the camera, as if he could actually see her. “Wait a minute. He walked up on you, not the other way around?”
“Well, I was loitering near the staff, seeing if I could talk to one of them instead. I didn't wanna be that asshole who tries to interview a family member at a murder scene, so I backed off as soon as I saw him sitting there. But he walked up to me anyway, and he knew who I was on sight.”
Spider furrowed his brow. “I’d watch your ass around that boy now that he and his pet demon are split up. He’s itchin’ to take it out on somebody. Not many politicians left alive for him to choose from.” He added another cigarette to his mouth, using its predecessor to light it. “Am I the only one noticing how many of these fuckers have dropped dead over the past year? And now that judge from this morning. Something’s up, man.”
“Judge Lewis?” Nisa asked, thankful to change the subject.
Spider nodded, grinding out another cigarette with his bare foot.
“You get any good leads on that one? Nobody’s saying much, not even to me.” Ben said.
“Oh, he was a dirty boy,” Spider said. “Had stock market connections, foreign lobby money, and he’s been the favorite to preside over class action suits against companies like Vought and Alchemax. Not bad enough we got chemicals in the water and microplastics in the bone marrow, but we can't even sue the fuckers who did it to us ‘cause they just run cryin’ to their Senators or hide behind a paywalled judge. Somethin' must be goin’ down somewhere soon if they’re knockin’ off judges.”
“You think maybe it was a hit?” Ben asked.
“Absolutely,” Spider snorted. “Lewis wasn’t exactly beloved around here, ‘specially after that whole fiasco with that fuckin’ Owl guy. That was the first big fish to get put behind bars. Maroni, Dimitrov, all these other guys just pay up under the table and walk away with a slap on the wrist. I guess Owlsley took it personally. Word is, after he got smacked around a little here in New York, he fucked off to San Fran to beg the silicon daddies for some startup cash so he could go play gangster in some cul-du-sac.”
“Could Leland Owlsley have something to do with it?” Nisa asked.
Spider shook his head. “I can’t see him doin’ that shit long distance. He’s much more of a hands-on kinda guy. Wants you to know it was him; wants to look you in the eye when he does it." He pointed a finger gun at the camera. "This had no flair whatsoever—it’s too nice and tidy. Whoever it was, she meant business.”
“Who?” Ben asked. “I haven’t seen anything about a suspect, at least not over official outlets.”
“Just sayin’,” Spider shrugged. “Historically, most poisoners are women.”
“They haven’t released any details about cause of death. How do you know he was poisoned?” Nisa asked.
Spider ran a hand over his smooth head. “Listen, I’m in tight with a couple of Gordon’s people on these cases. I hear things.”
Nisa raised an eyebrow. “Wasn't Jim Gordon’s office investigated several times by Internal Affairs over the last couple of years?”
Spider chuckled. “They’re cops. Of course they're under investigation.”
“I can't put anything in print until we get it from the Medical Examiner’s office,” Ben said.
“Nah, I get it. You guys got rules and shit. But watch the news reels again—the guy was obviously poisoned. I’d start lookin’ at chemists, pharmacologists, botanists, anybody who knows their way around a drug shelf or a garden. And I’d start lookin’ through all of his cases to see who else he pissed off lately. Somebody somewhere knows who lit the fuse on this one. If I catch any gossip, I’ll pass it along, but you’re gonna wanna tread lightly here. This case has got a lotta eyes on it.”
“I saw a tip line go up about an hour ago,” Ben said. “But no profile, no suspects, no CCTV footage.”
“They’re such shit at their jobs they gotta outsource it to the public.” Spider clicked his tongue, smirking. “They got nothin’ and they know it. They’re desperate. Doesn't help that our asshole mayor won't shut his trap every time some rando shoves a camera in his face.”
“I’m surprised he hasn't been dragged out of office by now, given the mountain of charges this time around,” Nisa said.
“More than one way to leave office,” Spider chuckled. He pulled a half-empty liquor bottle from a pile near his foot and raised it in a mock toast. “Anyway, I'll be in touch with my findings. Happy Thanksgiving, kids.”
The video feed cut out.
The following morning.
Nisa downed what was left of her coffee, stuck the mug in the sink, grabbed the TV remote, and paused. While she'd been packing her laptop bag for the day, the morning show had shifted from weather to breaking news, and the screen was now filled with a grainy image taken from a security feed, with a police tip line in huge numbers across the bottom. She unmuted the TV.
“ — apparently taken at a local hostel a few blocks away from the court house, just days before yesterday’s attack on Judge Elton Lewis. Staff have said that she was there for about nine days in total, and never lowered her mask except for this moment, captured by security cameras. Staff indicated she was smiling at a young lady working the front desk while checking out at five-thirty that morning."
Nisa’s jaw dropped.
"This is the clearest image we have so far of a woman who police say is their primary person of interest in the murder. Cause of death has not yet been confirmed, but those who were in the court room when Lewis suddenly became ill have described symptoms consistent with cyanide poisoning. The public is encouraged to contact law enforcement at the number on the bottom of your screen, and the NYPD is offering a $10,000 reward for any information that leads to her arrest.”
Nisa blinked in disbelief. She opened her phone and texted Ben.
holy shit, he was right about both
Ben replied a moment later.
lol get used to it, he usually is
She shook her head and dropped her phone into her bag, turned off the TV, and headed out. In the thirty minutes it took her to drive to the Daily Bugle offices, park, and step out of an elevator, the image had all but overtaken the internet. New images continued to pour into Tweetr, taken from the CCTV feed of the court house and the surrounding street cameras. The woman in question had been spotted moving around the upper floors of the court house, up and down several flights of stairs, and right out the front entrance. She disappeared minutes later into a bus heading north toward the Port Authority terminal.
All that was visible of her was a twirl of ruby red hair peeking out of a green hooded coat, a medical mask, and a shoulder bag. The coat and bag were identified almost immediately, with commenters posting links to the various online retailers who carried each, both of which had quickly sold out everywhere. New information had also leaked from the investigation at the hostel, namely the allegation that she had used a fake ID to book her stay, under the pseudonym “Ivy Greene”. Before long, the top hashtags trending on the platform were #PoisonIvy and #FemmeFatale.
By lunchtime, social media was awash with memes and mockups; by dinner, iterations of her likeness were featured on prayer candles and t-shirts in online storefronts. Influencers on TikTak had declared that red hair dye was selling out everywhere as buyers flocked to supermarkets and corner stores to get their hands on it. On her drive home, Nisa spotted a guy selling merchandise out of the trunk of his car. The back of his custom t-shirt read: One Down, 119 To Go, in reference to the 120 judges sitting on the city’s civil, criminal, and family courts.
As she sat writing in her living room that night with a container of takeout and a glass of wine, she saw reports of state and federal agencies taking down staff profiles from their websites. Lewis had a long roster of criminal and civil cases in his history, and it was now being painstakingly dissected online as a curious public wanted to know why he had been targeted. The internet never sleeps, and as the night wore on, every case Lewis had overseen was laid bare, as well as his entire stock portfolio, real estate holdings, and divorce history. The ensuing discourse ran the gamut from theories around mafia hitmen to retribution for any of the hundreds of cases involving corporate culpability, most recently over water contamination in the poorer sections of the city. To the surprise of no one, he had consistently sided with the businesses.
By the time Nisa walked back into the office the next morning, public sentiment was largely unsympathetic to his death. While many television newscasters stayed neutral, the podcast community was in an uproar as even the most conservative hosts leaned hard into an embittered narrative of underdog justice. That week, she learned more than she had ever wanted to know about the human body’s responses to cyanide, and none of them sounded pleasant. Even during Thanksgiving dinner, her family was talking about what a filthy crook Lewis must have been for someone to have ended him in such an agonizing way.
And the mysterious woman who had pulled it off remained at large.
United Hospital Corporation Annual Investor Conference
Milton Midtown Hotel
Manhattan, New York
December 2, 2024
The ballroom had been transformed into a winter wonderland. Thousands of sparkling ornaments in silver and blue hung from the balconies and adorned the centerpieces of every table, and from the central chandelier — a brilliantly lit trio of offset concentric circles — hung an enormous identical ornament on a thick white ribbon. The room buzzed with chatter as executives, shareholders, and other investors networked over coffee and breakfast. The opening speaker's enthusiasm had been infectious, and the applause was nearly raucous as CEO Brad Tomlinson stepped onto the dais. The projector screen behind him faded smoothly from the company logo to the introductory screen of a slide presentation as he took the podium.
As he began his review of that year's fiscal data, a silver ball fell from the balcony in the back of the room, landing with a surprisingly heavy thud on the carpeted floor between tables. A nearby attendee picked it up, marveling at its unexpected weight before setting it down on his table beside the centerpiece. The screen progressed to an overview of the company’s third-quarter revenue: $99.3 billion, with an over 7% increase in year-over-year, and a net income of $6.16 billion. The screen suddenly went dark, then flickered on again, the presentation replaced with a single word:
RELICTUS
Throughout the room, ornaments began blinking and chirping in an eerie wave, like a field of digital crickets. The giant ball dangling from the chandelier joined in, its beeping deep and low. People looked around in confusion, some rising from their seats nervously.
"Looks like we're having some technical difficulties, folks. Our 'Carol of the Balls' has gone a bit awry," Brad chuckled, and the room laughed anxiously along with him. Then, without warning, every ornament detonated in a blinding flash, engulfing the room in freezing vapor. Moments later, security entered to find the ballroom deathly still, hundreds of people paused in place — all of them frozen solid.
The Daily Bugle, NY Offices
An hour later.
Nisa looked up at the trickle of coworkers passing by on their way to the break room and checked her watch — she’d been so absorbed in finishing her latest draft that she’d completely lost track of the morning. She decided that she could use another cup of coffee after the exhausting holiday weekend.
She nearly collided with a huddle in the breakroom doorway. “What the hell is going on?” she asked, making her way between shoulders.
“Terror attack down at the Milton,” someone said.
“Oh, shit.”
Nisa checked Tweetr and found absolute chaos. There had been a series of explosions in the Milton's ballroom, over 200 people were reportedly killed, and it had something to do with an executive convention. Reply threads were rapidly filling with the professional profiles of people she presumed were among the dead, many of them getting booed in the replies. She looked back up at the news on the cantina's TV.
“We were out in the hall and heard this bang-bang-bang, like fireworks,” said a woman in a catering uniform. “We ran and grabbed security. A couple minutes later, the paramedics showed up, and everybody who wasn’t in the room when it happened got sent downstairs.”
“Were you able to see anything? Hear anything else?” the reporter asked.
The woman shrugged. “They said it was like dry ice in there, like a buncha ice sculptures.”
“The room was covered in ice?” the reporter asked.
A man in a hotel uniform chimed in from beside her. “No, the people. They were like—“ He posed himself like a mannequin. “Frozen in place, all shiny like ice.”
Nisa shivered.
"We are deeply saddened by this morning's events and our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by this senseless tragedy," said a hotel spokesperson. The reporter turned dramatically to the camera.
“We've been told the incident took place during the United Hospital Corporation's annual investor relations conference. It was livestreamed, but the video was taken down within minutes of the attack. UHC says that they are working closely with the New York Police Department and ask for our patience and understanding during this difficult time.”
A faint snickering rose from the huddle around Nisa.
“Somebody’s claim got denied,” someone cracked.
“I guess that’s one way to leave feedback".
“Found it!” said someone from a nearby table, leaning over his laptop. The huddle moved from the TV to the table where they watched a leaked copy of the footage in stunned silence. Nisa’s stomach clenched at the sudden flash of light, followed by a mist that slowly faded to reveal scores of people standing eerily still, like frosted statuary.
“Christ, you people are morbid,” said Jameson from behind them. Nisa hadn't even heard him enter the room. He pointed over their shoulders at the laptop screen.
“I better not see that go up in anybody’s work, and don't even think about linking to it from your socials. Leave that crap to the tabloids.”
He fed a dollar into the vending machine, took a bag of pretzels, and disappeared into his office.
Nisa turned back to the video and leaned over to get a closer look at something that hadn't been mentioned on the news.
“What’s that on the screen behind the podium?” she asked.
Her coworker zoomed in on the projector screen. “Re-lic-tus?”
“Abandoned,” a voice said from behind the group. Bill from Marketing had wandered up to the huddle. “Ego relictus sum solus. To be forsaken, or left for dead.” He glanced around at blinking faces. “What? Twelve years of Catholic school. They hammered it into us. Latin, I mean.”
“This shit must’ve been personal.”
“Maybe somebody’s kid died or something”
“Oh, god. I don't even wanna think about it.”
"Sorry, your body heat is out-of-network. Denied."
Nisa squinted at the screen again. “How did you find this so damn fast?”
“There’s a whole website full of shit like this.” He hit the home page and showed her. “I don't even bother with Tweetr anymore, I just go straight to this guy’s bulletin feed. He’s even posted some shit before the cops ever saw it. Dude gets around.”
It was Spider’s blog site. Nisa sighed. Of course it was.
Later that same day.
Back at her desk, Nisa dug through the archives of Spider's column, I Hate It Here. His writing style landed somewhere between satire and manifesto; his body of work a scathing repository of politics, investigative journalism, and a distinctly Gen-X brand of sneering social commentary. She snorted as she scrolled through visceral rants about everyone from Ronald Frump in And A Little Manchild Shall Lead Them to Leon Husk, who was featured in at least two popular classics, Make Rockets Explode Again and Fuck You And Your RoboTruck.
Under the conspiracies hashtag, she was intrigued to find that he had documented the sudden manifestation of Santa Carla, California and its disturbing crime statistics for Inside The Murder Capital You've Never Heard Of. At least she hadn't been the only one to notice it. He had also covered the Bermuda Triangle, UFOs, symbiotes and other cryptozoology, and the illustrated “necropsy journal” of a controversial Victorian-era scientist, Dr. Spencer Black. He had even covered emerging evidence of AI language models trained on scraped data, allegedly weaponized for mass-surveillance and military intelligence harvesting in No Gods, No Mastercomputers.
And then she spotted his most recent piece about the hotel convention attack, The Iceman Cometh. It was packed with images she hadn’t seen on TV or Tweetr; crime scene photos of the victims slumped over at dining tables or frozen in panicked poses, fully encased in thick, glassy ice. She found closeups of the hundreds of detonated devices, accompanied by theories about how they may have been used to bathe the room in chemical agents or possibly liquid nitrogen.
The death toll was now officially at two hundred eighteen, all of them high-level executives, managers, and shareholders. Their names and respective wealth were meticulously dissected, culminating in the widely shared conclusion that these were Not Good People, and, like Judge Lewis, had undoubtedly had a hand in something which had greatly harmed others. Though he was far more articulate in writing than in person, his delivery was no less acerbic.
I don't have the luxury of personal experience with this or any other insurance company, as I myself have never had such coverage. But when I spoke to those who have, nothing I heard surprised me. First, people get fucked out of hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars a month just to get a foot in the door. Then, they get to chew their way through hefty deductibles, sometimes adding up to more than what they’re already getting gouged for enrollment. Then, if they make it past these outrageous deductibles, these companies just turn around and deny claims, so that patients are still stuck paying their way through ER visits, surgeries, and diagnostics out of pocket until they either run out of money or die.
Meanwhile, CEO Brad Tomlinson (shown here frozen to the stage) was taking home a grotesque $10.2 million annual compensation package, including about $1 million in base pay plus cash and stock grants. That’s the combined rent of everyone living on my block for about five years. One motherfucker was pocketing enough in a year to house thousands of families for half a decade in this city. Most of us living in this neighborhood don't even have the barest of insurance coverage, and for the few who do, the cost of it is literally the reason they have to live here, because they can’t afford anything else.
And that’s just the CEO. It looks like the rest of the room was flying just as high with the average annual income hovering close to $6 million apiece. (Excuse the bar napkin math while we await more concrete numbers.) Point is, we're all getting fucked out of our long term survival by people who will never know our names or causes of death, nor will they ever care. So it should come as no surprise, then, that this morning’s big freeze was delivered with a one-word punchline: “relictus”, a word plucked from a dead language that means you’ve been left behind to die.
Nisa's cell phone chimed, and then a dozen more chimes sounded off in quick succession before she could get her phone open. The group chat was blowing up with the news that "Poison Ivy" had reportedly just been taken into police custody. She looked up to see colleagues heading back into the break room for another round of staring at the TV, but Nisa didn't bother rising from her desk. It wasn't like the broadcast news was any more up to date than the internet anyway.
She looked back at Spider's column and tapped through to his bulletin board — and sure enough, he was reporting on the story in real time.
Seattle, Washington — A senior law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity has said that local authorities received an anonymous tip overnight regarding the suspect's whereabouts. Officers were dispatched alongside federal agents to a home in a quiet suburban neighborhood just outside the city. After what one officer described to me as "an intense scuffle with several houseplants", a woman identified as Dr. Pamela Isley, 28, was arrested at around 11am PST.
What We Know So Far: According to neighbors, Dr. Isley was a polite, pleasant neighbor who had reportedly been away on a "work trip", though they did not know for certain where she had been or precisely when she had arrived home. Contents of the home were not made clear, but it is mentioned in the preliminary police report (below) that among the hundreds of plants found there, some that were described as "hostile" were confiscated.
Nisa scrolled through photos of the house and aerial images of the neighborhood, and paused at Isley's mugshot. Her deep red hair framed a pretty face that addressed the camera with hardened confidence, her smile tilting coyly to one side. There was no trace of fear or regret in her gold-green eyes. In truth, she looked nothing more than amused.
Nisa checked her phone to find nearly a hundred unread messages in the group chat, mostly expressing disappointment that she'd been caught. Nisa snorted. She'd be lying if she said she didn't feel a little bummed out about it, too. Her mugshot had begun making the rounds on Tweetr and was already popping up on new merchandise across the internet. Fan art on Fumblr was exploding, presenting her as a scantily clad bombshell in bodysuits made of leaves and ivy vines, her crimson hair and makeup drawn like a 1940s pin-up girl.
Nisa wondered who had called the tip line.
“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” Celebration
Rockefeller Plaza, Midtown Manhattan, NY
December 4, 2024 CE
Nisa moved through the thousands of spectators lining the Channel Gardens in the main plaza. The fountains were decorated with twinkling white lights, as were the giant wire angels that towered over them, their raised trumpets glinting in the flashes of tourist cameras. Overhead, a light dusting of snow swirled like a souvenir snow globe against the backdrop of the surrounding Art Deco architecture. The buildings loomed like rock giants, glowing purple from spotlights that cut through the sky.
It had been a charming evening of live music and pictures with her parents and cousins. She hadn't been to the tree lighting ceremony in years, and she realized she had missed the magic of it all. She felt a tug on her coat sleeve and turned to see Casey smiling at her.
“Oh, hey!” she said. It felt strange seeing him outside the context of Ophidia or the TVA. “How’ve you been?”
“Eh, you know. Fourth quarter madness and all that. How about you?” he asked.
“I’ve been trying to wind down since the election and all the excitement in the news.”
“It’s been a wild year,” Casey agreed.
“There you are!” Nisa’s mother appeared on her other side. “We’re gonna see if we can get a little closer—“ She paused, her face lighting up when she saw Casey. She smiled sweetly. Nisa gave her a look and introduced them.
“Ma, this is Casey. He’s one of the people I interviewed at Ophidia last year.” Her mother smiled and they shook hands, but before Nisa could say another word, her mother leaned in with a wink.
“We’ll be just past the next fountain. You two have some fun.” She stepped away into the crowd, leaving Nisa rolling her eyes. She turned back to Casey.
“Anyway, that's my mother,” she laughed.
“Moms are the same the world over,” Casey grinned. “Oh, I saw your column on Projekt-25 and the incoming administration’s policy proposals. And your exposé on Matt Goetz? I’m pretty sure you single-handedly ruined his chances for nomination.”
“Thanks,” Nisa smiled. “I’ve been getting the funniest fan mail over that one. Even the neo-cons are taking my side, which is just surreal.”
“You gonna do one for all of Nichols’ picks? It’s like a running gag now.”
“Oh, trust me — I have a list, and I'm checking it twice.” Nisa said.
Mayor Alec Adams joined the entourage on stage, where they gathered around an elegant pedestal holding a giant ceremonial button. Behind them was a fountain housing an eighteen-foot-tall gilded statue of Prometheus, and above them was a lush and green 74-foot tall Norway spruce. It was crowned by a nine-foot-wide, nine-hundred-pound star boasting three million brilliant Swarovski crystals. Nisa and Casey shouted along with the countdown, and applauded as the tree burst into brilliance with the light of fifty thousand colorful bulbs. The star shone brilliantly, almost ethereal in its grandeur.
Despite the freezing cold and densely-packed crowd, she realized she had missed moments like this the most over the past few years. At least some things remained unchanged about life in New York.
A loud popping sound rang out from beneath the tree and security officers rushed onto the stage. It sounded like gunshots to Nisa—from what she could see, there was some kind of escalating scuffle unfolding. The huddle of newscasters and celebrities fled in a panic and the crowd began dispersing in waves, retreating toward Fifth Avenue. Nisa caught up with her family and looked back just in time to see the tree flicker ominously and go dark. Whatever was happening on the stage below had drawn the attention of the police and paramedics.
Something caught her eye from within the darkened tree. It looked like a random inner section of bulbs was trying to come back on, but then thick smoke billowed from between the massive branches and fire spread rapidly up the trunk until the entire tree was engulfed in flames. The situation wasn’t helped by the gusts of wind that had been battering the plaza all evening and were now fanning the conflagration that the spruce had become. Emergency crews cleared the stage just moments before flaming tree limbs and boiling sap began raining down.
The tree tilted and swayed as the support cables burned loose; the light of its flames throwing a hellish glow onto the surrounding buildings. Even over the cacophony at the edge of the plaza, Nisa could hear the dreaded snap that followed. Her eyes widened as the entire upper portion of the tree pitched forward, its incinerated upper trunk unable to support the weight of the star any longer. It dangled perilously and then dropped, narrowly missing the head of Prometheus on its way down and shattering in the basin at his feet.
“Somebody shot the mayor!” a bystander called out.
“Wait, what?” Nisa asked.
“It’s all over the radios, he’s gone,” added someone else. “They said it was one of the cops up there with him. He just started shooting. No warning.”
“Can this fucking year just stop happening already?” asked one of Nisa’s cousins, wiping her eyes in exhaustion.
“It’s almost over,” Nisa said, and wrapped a comforting arm around her.
Inwardly, she doubted that 2024 was finished with them just yet.
Apartment of Nisa Contreras.
The days that followed brought little clarity about what had actually happened that night in Rockefeller Plaza. The timeline Nisa pieced together through concurrent press conferences suggested that there was no sniper involved, and that the incident that killed Mayor Adams involved a single security officer acting unprovoked.
The security camera footage showed that for about thirty seconds after the tree was lit, the officer was staring up at it, nodding at something, then turned his attention to the mayor, drew his sidearm, and waited for a clear shot. The resulting firefight left nine dead and eleven more critically injured.
But no one could pin down why he'd done it.
Investigators found nothing out of the ordinary in his private life. A thorough search of the officer's phone, email, and social media accounts turned up no evidence of foreign contacts, grievances against the city, or signs of radicalization. His psychological evaluations had consistently come back normal. Bank records left no trail of wire transfers, cash deposits, or anything else to indicate that he had been hired or blackmailed to kill Adams. It reminded Nisa of the perplexing lack of discernible motive in any of the Secret Service agents involved in the bizarre assassination of Ronald Frump back in August.
Then there was the question of how and why the tree was torched.
The logistics of publicly displaying such a huge and heavy object had long been taken quite seriously, from support anchors at the base to stabilizing cables to hold it upright during high winds. Nisa had digested tens of thousands of words from experts following the incident, and according to every one of them, the cabling had been anchored not to the top of the tree, but to a section of trunk just above the middle, where it was thick and sturdy. This made sense if one was concerned about the stability of the tree in its entirety, but it did little to address the possibility of it snapping in half from above its moorings — which, barring hurricane-force winds, was highly unlikely.
After careful scrutiny from every available video angle, she confirmed that the fire hadn't started at the tree’s base, or even just above it, but just above the cables. This struck her as oddly specific, if only for the fact that it had been identified as the single most important factor in the outcome — which may have been the point. The destruction of such an iconic community symbol would certainly have sufficed as far as terrorist motivations, so why the tedious investment in ensuring that the ornamental topper would also be destroyed?
The star itself was reportedly worth between $1.5-3 million, a value that its designers would not confirm even to the press. Its introduction to the display years ago had transformed the simple folk tradition of a holiday tree into one of metropolitan elegance, elevating it to a spectacle of shared investment and appreciation. The man who designed it had hailed it as a symbol of “our greatest ambitions for hope, unity, and peace”.
Ah. There it was. Nisa found herself arriving at an uncomfortable theory that this was not just some amateur arsonist or malicious prankster. Like the assassination of Frump months prior, the way that Adams was killed—by one of his own handpicked protectors—was meant to send shockwaves through government, a message that none of them were truly safe. Similarly, the ease with which the tree had been compromised was intentional, a warning to the public that they would be punished for daring to cultivate joy together.
Nisa looked up from her laptop and caught the beginning of a news segment on TV about Pamela Isley’s extradition to New York. She had arrived at a Manhattan heliport, where news crews were on hand as she was paraded down the pier by New York City Police Commissioner James Gordon and a contingent of more than twenty officers in riot gear, carrying assault rifles. If the objective was to humiliate her, it wasn't working. Though unable to wave due to her restraints, she smiled widely to the throngs of cheering supporters who had gathered behind police barricades in the freezing cold just to get a glimpse of her.
Nisa squinted at the TV screen and snorted at the searing contempt on the faces of the officers as they passed by the crowd's t-shirts and signs, all bearing Isley’s smirking mugshot. An especially brazen reporter dashed around the escort, microphone in hand, getting within yards of Isley before he was dragged away, though not before he was able to shout a question.
“Is there anything you want to tell the public?”
Isley paused in her step, briefly halting the entire procession to answer him.
“Defend the natural world, or it will defend itself!” she called back.
The crowd erupted into cheering and Gordon was visibly irritated by the spectacle. Nisa snickered into her knuckles at the scowling faces of the two dozen cops who’d just had their big macho moment ruined by a cocky redhead and her screaming admirers. One of the officers vented his fury by speeding up her stride, taking her first by the arm and then by the hair. She jerked free, turning to snarl a rebuke before he shoved her forward through the door into the courthouse.
Nisa opened her phone and found that Tweetr was already exploding with public outcry over what many were calling excessive “manhandling”, and within no time it spawned the new top trending hashtag #HandsOff. Still photos of the sneer she gave the officer went viral, and Nisa knew it wouldn’t be long before it became the new hottest-selling t-shirt and coffee mug online. The news crews had begun talking to the crowd, some of whom flashed brand-new tattoos of ivy vines in support of Isley. Many of the women, and even the men, were sporting freshly dyed red hair.
Up next were new developments in the hotel attack, though none of it answered any questions. Not only were they no closer to naming a suspect, but they couldn’t even identify the substance used to freeze the victims in place. Two different cryogenics experts were interviewed on camera and the most Nisa could get from it was that the mystery substance was “not unlike liquid nitrogen”, and that the devices used to deploy it appeared to be “handmade from common household items”. The infamous Latin message from the projector screen had since become a rallying cry attached to the wider discourse still going strong across every platform in weeks of angry social media exchanges airing the resentment of a weary public bankrupted by a corrupt industry that had long ago dismissed them.
The newscasters moved on to the conversation around the more recent incident at Rockefeller Plaza. An NYPD spokesperson explained that a handful of suspected arsonists had been sought for questioning, but no connections were reported. The funerals had been quietly carried out for each victim and the press was being kept away from the mayor's family for the time being. Footage of NYPD and state police combing Central Park were replayed endlessly on every channel following the discovery of an unattended backpack said to contain "nothing but plastic coins and playing cards".
Snippets from the multiple CCTV recordings had saturated the media but produced little in the way of intel, despite the meandering statements from Commissioner Gordon, Governor Hitt, and even a spokesperson for the FBI. Nisa rolled her eyes and opened a new browser tab on her laptop. She knew exactly where to look for up-to-the-minute speculative reporting, and it wasn’t the evening news.
She headed straight to Spider’s bulletin board and — as expected — hit paydirt.
His latest posts included a massive cache of unreleased photos from the crime scene at the plaza, and the mention of someone he had dubbed The Man In White who popped up in at least a dozen images. According to timestamps on surveillance footage, he only arrived fifteen minutes before the lighting of the tree and passed the time leaning perfectly still on one of the spectator ledges where he was partially obscured from CCTV by a large decorative arrangement. Just before the tree lit up, he pulled something from his coat, then disappeared shortly after the chaos erupted.
There was no footage of him prior to his sudden appearance in the inner plaza, nor had he been found on any transit cameras. As she enlarged the images, she was abruptly certain there was a connection to someone who had popped up repeatedly in the hundreds of TVA files she had scanned and archived. After some scouring, she found him on the backup drive. Ernesto Morez, known in criminal circles simply as The Ghost, was an especially notorious “alpha” mutant who had racked up quite a body count.
Nisa clicked on the Contact Us button of Spider’s column and, on a hunch, decided to call the prank number listed as his home line. Against all odds, 1-800-EAT-SHIT was in fact a valid toll-free number, even if it only led to a recorded greeting in Spider’s raspy voice stating, “You have reached the voicemail box of me. Leave a message and I’ll think about it.”
Said inbox was presently full.
Nisa took partial screenshots of the variant files and followed Ben’s guide to encrypting and uploading them to Spider’s cloud drive, willing to bet that he would reach out with an interest in seeing more. She dug around in his other recent posts and found more on the hotel attack by "The Iceman". Specifically, there were hundreds of pages of leaked tax documents, bank transfers, emails, and other damning materials on most of the victims.
It wasn’t pretty. Public sentiment was growing darker with every new revelation, with most news outlets reportedly turning off comments on their coverage of the incident.
Nisa hadn't yet been to the hotel to lay eyes on the scene, but apparently a makeshift shrine now persisted on the sidewalk lining the entrance. It started as a modest tribute to those killed in the ballroom, but was quickly transforming into a bitter memorial honoring the city’s thousands of loved ones lost to lack of medical intervention mandated by United Hospital Corporation’s policy board. She glared at every statement from their PR team who either did not understand the problem at all, or were hellbent on ignoring it.
She was leaning toward the latter. Spider had just leaked a recording of an internal conference call from just days after the attack, wherein interim CEO Warren Schitty informed an audience of a few hundred middle managers that the company had “no plans to reverse course” on any of their controversial policies, regardless of what he called “radicalist media spin”. On another leaked call, Schitty was overheard bemoaning Ophidia’s elimination of “the oncology market”. Tweetr users wasted no time in crowning him #Schitthead.
An email notification popped up with an invite to a video call with Spider. Nisa checked her watch and tapped her fingers on the coffee table. She was practically finished with her piece on the ongoing mess of Congressional in-fighting, and she had enough time left in the day to bang out a few hundred words on the Adams assassination, should anything interesting come to her from this strange new contact she’d gained through Ben. She muted the TV and plugged in her headset.
“You were right about the poisoner,” Nisa said as the call opened.
“Yeah, I know.” Spider coughed his way through a sound check and adjusted the camera. This time he was sitting shirtless on a blanket-covered sofa, surrounded by laptops, a lit cigarette stuck to his lower lip. She was beginning to wonder if he even owned a shirt. “You see that shit they pulled at the pier? Like walkin' a movie villain to their cage at the end of some shitty blockbuster.”
“See, that’s exactly it,” Nisa said. “They have to make her look like the world’s most dangerous monster, so they can look badass for having caught her. Didn't seem to work, though." She snorted. "I’m trying to work out who might have ratted her out. Pissy neighbor, maybe an ex.”
“My money’s on an ex. And if they’re anything like her, then shit’s about to get wild.”
“So, like, what the hell is a ‘scuffle with a houseplant’?” Nisa laughed.
“Funny you should ask.” Spider's lip curled and he dropped a link to a new post that he’d just put up: Grown Man Slapped In Face By Potted Plant. Nisa sat glaring through 48 seconds of body cam footage as officers burst through the doors of a house and were immediately met with a curtain of vines that pulled them off their feet, confused and screaming, and entangled them against the walls and ceiling like flies in a spiderweb. Nisa burst out laughing.
“Premium fuckin’ entertainment,” Spider said, tapping his cigarette. “Shoulda heard those idiots tryin’ to explain that shit to Dispatch. Speakin’ of which…” he grabbed a laptop and turned it to face the camera, with Morez’s dossier filling the screen. “How the fuck did you get your hands on this?”
“Let’s just say my source went above and beyond. I’m almost certain it’s the same guy as your Man In White.”
“Gotta be. I mean, it’s ten at night and this freak’s rockin’ shades? I don't even do that.” Spider scratched his head. “And why leave right away? Every arsonist I’ve ever known wants to hang around and watch; it’s kinda the whole point. Also usually what gets ‘em caught.”
Nisa wondered how many arsonists he hung out with, but decided not to ask. “About that — I sent you the rest of his records. Check out his history.”
He studied his screens and muttered to himself. “What. The. Fuck.”
“See?” she asked. “How much do you remember about the Frump assassination?”
He shrugged. “Came about 8 years too goddamn late, for one thing.”
Nisa snorted. “Yeah, well — that, too. But I also distinctly remember that the committee couldn't work out how those agents had been coordinated or paid, yet they all acted at once like a synchronized operation. What I’m saying is, what if he wasn’t there to torch the tree? According to the agent’s notes there, he’s got a knack for hypnosis and subliminal instruction. That’s one hell of a handy trick for a hitman.”
Spider flipped a notebook open and started scribbling. “I got the old footage from Vizcaya somewhere around here. I’m bettin’ they didn’t look back far enough, or they missed him, sittin’ right out in plain sight. Best hidin' place there is.”
“So then my next question is, who the hell lit the tree up?” Nisa asked. “I see nothing in any of this guy’s profiles that sounds like he’d have any interest whatsoever in an large-scale arson project. He’s more of a sneaky hit-and-run guy, so, unless there’s a reason he’d have broken routine and worked alongside someone else, why would it happen at the same time as his hit job?” Nisa asked.
Spider shook his head and lit another cigarette. “Firebugs are mostly solitary. But you know what would be really funny?”
“Huh?”
“What if both these assholes picked the same event at the same time, and neither of ‘em knew about the other? Talk about pissin’ on somebody else’s glory,” he laughed. “World’s gettin’ smaller every day. The way this year’s gone, I wouldn't doubt the terrorists are steppin’ on each other’s toes around the holidays.”
“Oh, I definitely think we’re dealing with multiple independent people, not this unified front that Gordon made it out to be,” Nisa said. “There’s Isley and her whole cyanide thing, but there’s also two more pretty individual styles. One guy targeted an executive convention using some pretty high-tech equipment which must’ve taken months to prepare and hours to smuggle into the building and set up.”
“That’s an obsession, somebody with a grudge and a half,” Spider nodded. “Took out a whole room full of rich pricks and insurance ghouls. And the other guy? He straight-up turned a 70-something foot tree into a towering inferno while blowing away the mayor and his whole security team. And he did that shit right in front of Prometheus. That’s… that’s fuckin’ poetry, man.” He snorted and shook his head. “Coulda stolen that star and made some bank too, but instead he let it drop to the pavement. It was stripped of crystals so fast the cops couldn't even chase people away in time to salvage it. And that backpack they found in Central Park?"
"The one with the toy money and deck of cards?"
"That would be the one," he said. "It wasn't just playing cards, not even a full deck. It was hundreds of the same card, the fuckin' joker. Whatever that guy’s deal is, it ain't about the money.”
“But for Morez, it probably was.”
“Oh, sure.” Spider blew out a mouthful of smoke. “Nobody gets into office in The City without a hand in some shady shit, and Mayor Adams was the slickest of ‘em all. And most of the worst shit in any city revolves around money. A lot of those people who got frozen at the hotel were power brokers, and some of ‘em were even named on the Eppstein tapes. You know, the guy who pulled a ‘suicide’ in jail before he could testify.” He raised his fingers in quotes. “And a lot of ‘em were also under investigation for shit like insider trading and human trafficking or dealings with the Mob.”
Nisa snorted. “Italian or Russian? God, I feel like I'm picking out a salad dressing.”
“I mean, people with that much cash got enough to go around. Little something for everybody, then they're always on the side of whoever wins.”
“The hotel probably wasn’t a professional. Well, not a career killer. This guy knows his shit, but it’s not his area of expertise. He did this as a last resort, I bet,” Nisa said.
“Per my previous email,” Spider said. “I’d start lookin’ into doctors, scientists, people with higher education in things that go boom. Interesting, though, that it wasn’t outright explosives. He froze ‘em solid. That feels like a pretty specific message.”
“And what’s that?”
“Fuck if I know,” he shrugged. “I just find it funny that he had the perfect set-up to blow out probably five floors of the most expensive hotel on the block, and instead he decided to turn that ballroom into one big morgue locker full of corporate prick-sicles. And he did it with an audience. That shit was live-streamed to about half a million people as it went down, with some cryptic shit in Latin. That takes a certain… je ne sais quoi,” he snorted. “Maybe the kids are right. Maybe Santa’s real after all.”
Nisa laughed. “It does seem to be open season on all the worst people."
“Scorecard's lit, gotta give 'em that. We got a couple hundred white collar crooks on ice, all of ‘em under investigation,” Spider said. “Adams was pullin’ strings in court to keep a lot of this quiet. Gordon’s office was told to delay serving warrants and keep deferring to the Feds. I got that much in writing. And get this: I got it on good authority that Adams was about to hop the aisle and run for Governor on the GOP ticket, handing off the Mayoral race to another broker in the system.”
Nisa raised an eyebrow. “Who?”
He shrugged coyly. “Could be any one of these sharks circlin’ the waters, but my money’s on Fisk.”
“Fisk? The fucking Kingpin?” Nisa asked.
“He practically runs this city already,” Spider said. “Might as well put a ring on it.”
Nisa rubbed her temples. She was a seasoned veteran of writing about politics, but hadn't drilled so far down into crime reporting. “That’s … worse than putting Frump back in office.”
Spider shrugged again. “Look, the Chechen’s been doin’ okay for himself, but he’ll never be the top dog around here. Maroni’s the new big player, sure, but he’s not in bed with the cops. They’re just waitin’ for an excuse to blow his head off. Fisk, though? They’ll trip over each other to work for him. He’s got their loyalty. You put him in office, suddenly everybody’s makin’ a shit-ton of money on the side.”
“I mean, that is half of what put Adams in the hot seat in the first place. But I also hear talk about how Arthur Krane was installed in his dad’s Senate seat for a reason; Governor Hitt didn’t do that shit out of the kindness of his heart. I know that Nichols already promised HItt a cabinet position in her administration, and I think he’s already made up his mind,” Nisa said.
“That Krane kid’s gonna owe him one hell of a favor,” Spider said. “And ya know who else just got a cabinet nomination from Nichols?”
“Yeah.” Nisa sighed. “Sebastian fucking Shaw. Couldn't even get into Frump’s administration, so I guess he’s taking whatever he can get for now.”
Spider scowled at the mention of Frump. “I hope that orange fuckin’ Nazi is slow-roasting in hell.”
The Neitherworld waiting room.
“Number 7,497,950 … Jones?” called the receptionist. A woman in a hospital gown and cap shuffled barefoot up to the window.
“Hi, uh … I think there must be some sort of mistake. I’m already scheduled for my surgery and they’re waiting for me,” she said, looking around in confusion.
“Your caseworker will explain everything. Please take your handbook and follow your guide through the door to your left,” the receptionist said sweetly.
“What handbook?” Jones asked.
The receptionist sighed. “They can give you a new one in your appointment.”
Jones turned to see a flat man hanging by the elbows from some sort of rolling clothesline, with a distinct tire tread across his body. He smiled at her. She glanced back to the receptionist, who politely waved her away.
Ronald J. Frump, businessman and former President of the United States, complained to everyone who would listen — which, by the attention aimed at him, was no one in particular.
“… and if it had been a fair and honest election, like it was the last time, I wouldn’t have had to spend the last four years in and out of court defending myself against these radical left judges, out to ruin me. Very unfair.”
He pursed his lips and glanced around the room at the rows of blank faces. Bored, he turned his attention to Jones as she headed for the door with the flattened man. He strolled over to the receptionist’s window and cleared his throat. She pulled the divider aside, took one look at him, and closed it again without a word. He looked around the room, gesturing at the window.
“Can you believe this?” he asked incredulously. “Terrible service here! And from a fake beauty queen. Very nasty woman.”
After a long moment of silence, Frump looked back over at the door, which had been left slightly ajar. He raised his chin and squared his shoulders as he walked nonchalantly through it, absently dragging the strip of queue tickets on the floor behind him. On the other side, he found a sprawling open floor office filled with endless rows of busy work stations, the floor covered in papers and boxes of supplies. He waved to the lifeless and skeletal faces of the staff, looking out at the room expectantly; when he got no reaction, he huffed and wandered down the central aisle, nodding over at the workers on his way past their desks as though he were inspecting their productivity.
They ignored him.
He wandered into the next office space, this one filled with row after row of filing cabinets covered in a thick layer of dust. Rolling carts were parked along the wall, tightly packed with overflowing boxes of paperwork. The floors were littered with balled-up paper, pencils, and supplies.
“Hellooooooo?” he called out, annoyed.
A voice grunted in alarm from behind a cabinet and a disembodied head popped up, held in the palm of a hand that turned it side to side. It spotted him, squinted, and grunted dismissively before disappearing behind the cabinet again. Frump blinked and shrugged. He wandered through the next door, turned the corner and stood staring down a long, crooked corridor with a black and white checkered floor.
“What is this, some kind of fun house?” he mumbled, and started walking. He came upon a series of doors, each a different shape and color, and started trying the doorknobs. Most were locked, but he came upon a few that weren’t and he let himself inside, finding nothing but unoccupied rooms that looked as though they’d been plucked from random points in history. Bored, he started back down the corridor, humming Ave Maria to himself as he went.