INSOMNIAC GAMES,
MARVEL'S SPIDER-MAN (2018)

✶

I.
SIREN SONG

IT STARTS WITH SIRENS, the unofficial anthem of New York City. An oft-sung song, the citizens knew it all too well—the siren's screech like a melody, the accompanying police-radio static like percussion, the subsequent skid of rubber tire against road like a bow to strings. A condition, it's something that habituates, something you eventually get used to because you have to—there is no medication, no alternative, no other way to manage something so chronic, so relentless.

So you must deal with it in the only way you can: indifference. The sirens and the screams and the silence that should come after but doesn't because it never, ever stops is something you have to get used to. It is a cycle and it is cruel but it is life and you, unfortunately, have to live it. You are not a hero, and all you will ever be able to do is summon your sympathies and then move on with your life. There will always be sirens. There will always be screams.

You are not a hero. There is nothing you can do.

Only watch.

New York knows the rules. Today, the sirens shriek through the neighbourhood of Hell's Kitchen, and New York only watches as two dozen police cars pump through the streets to reach the beating heart of the city's criminal underworld: Fisk Tower. It's no secret what Wilson Fisk does behind closed doors, but now, thanks to a well-hidden informant situated deep behind enemy lines, the police had enough evidence to put him in the Raft. How many crimes had he committed over the years? Trafficking, murder, bribery—the list went on and on, and so would the Kingpin's jail sentence.

Like blood to a wound, New York congregates behind the barricades put up around Fisk Tower. Though he had polished his public image to perfection, playing the part of philanthropist and protector well, Wilson Fisk was still in his heart an animal. And in his head, he was still the apex predator. He would not go down without a fight—he would not go gently, and certainly not without raining down hell on the city he saw to have betrayed him. Collateral damage was a certainty, and yet, the city crowded around the epicentre of his corruption and cruelty, waiting with equal parts excitement and fear as the police force readied themselves to lead the charge and send Wilson Fisk's empire crumbling into nothing like all those who had come before.

Part of it was that desire, that anticipation for the inevitable catharsis that would come in tandem with the sight of Fisk leaving his tower in handcuffs and humiliation.

And part of it was to see if Spider-Man would join in on the fun.

Spider-Man—the city's favourite superhero. Forget the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the Saviours, the whoever else who wanted to wear a mask and cape and call themselves a hero. It was Spider-Man everyone loved, or at least, Spider-Man that everyone could count on. (Funnily enough, the Avengers didn't actually spend a lot of time avenging. Awfully convenient.) Say what you want about the guy—his entire gimmick, the "spider" thing, was weird, or his quips were kind of lame—but he was always there to save the day. And when he was there, when he came swinging in in all his webbed glory, regardless of your stance on masked heroes, you couldn't pretend he wasn't a wonder to watch. Fluid in every possible way, he was a marvel of movement, a creature that lived to defy the laws of physics. The origins of his abilities remained unknown to the public, and the theory that he was some kind of arachnid-alien still ran rampant in conspiracy circles—but, alien or otherwise, Spider-Man was amazing, and even the sirens seemed to quieten as he swung onto the scene.

You guys waited for me? he'd probably say as he hung from the side of a SWAT truck, casually defying gravity as he was wont to do. Aww, I really feel like part of the team. Do I get to go to the Policeman's Ball now?

Yeah, something stupid like that.

Juliet Young, a self-proclaimed contrarian when it came to the subject of superheroes—spider-themed or otherwise—wasn't a fan. And twenty blocks north of Fisk Tower, with no siren in earshot or spider in sight, she was exactly where she wanted to be.

✶

It was well-known that Wilson Fisk kept an extensive collection of art, half of which was kept at his luxury penthouse in the wealthier end of Hell's Kitchen, and half of which was displayed at Rosemann's auction house in the Upper East Side. With all manpower issued a new directive to protect Fisk Tower, this was the perfect opportunity to go what Juliet liked to call "window-shopping" through the big bad Kingpin's personal favourites.

So maybe Spider-Man actually was good for something. A distraction.

What a surprise.

What was also a surprise was the severe lack of security upon the Rosemann's rooftop; Juliet had been expecting some degree of shorthandedness, but she hadn't expected it to be this easy. And yet, it was.

Slipping into the building through the ventilation system, Juliet found herself a perfect vantage point—the rafters that ran horizontally above the showroom floor. Easily, effortlessly, she crossed one end of the rafter to the other, allowing herself a better view to assess her options.

"What're we looking at, Jules?" Ezra, her handler, hissed through the comms device in her ear. He was nineteen—so, technically, an adult—and yet, his voice still had the juvenile crackle of a thirteen-year-old boy. "You might want to hurry it up. It doesn't take that long to arrest someone."

"And you're the expert on being arrested since when?" Although she knew Ezra to be back at the apartment they shared, curled in front of his collection of computer monitors nursing a military-grade energy drink, her eyes still drifted heavenward in annoyance. As if he was some inconvenient god playing petty jokes and tricks of fate from above—or a particularly annoying poltergeist that haunted the network of vents she'd just crawled through. "Is there something you're not telling me? A jaded past you're trying to hide?"

"Oh, totally." Ezra slewed a laugh through his breath, and to herself Juliet smiled. Ezra came from a good family, happy and healthy and for the most part whole, and though he had his share of secrets and skeletons-in-closets, the only dirt he could possibly have on his hands would be from the vegetable patch his mother grew in the back garden. "You're running out of time."

"Yeah, yeah," Juliet huffed as she let her eyes roam over glass cases and display cabinets. "This is a safe space, you know. And I'm not one to judge."

"You are. What's Willy got squirreled away in there?"

"A lot. I'm seeing Sui dynasty. Tang. Qing. Ming, too. He's got something from practically every period of Chinese art."

"Anything tickling your fancy?"

Juliet's gaze stopped upon a glass display at the other end of the showroom—its contents looked out of place, and she had a soft spot for oddities. "Yeah. I'm going to take a closer look."

"Make it quick."

"Yessir." Juliet dropped soundlessly onto the marble-tiled floor, easily slipping into a cavity of Rosemann's skeleton patrols. She hadn't seen anyone yet, but she could sense the consciousnesses of two men—side effects of her telepathic abilities. They had to be somewhere in the building, but for now, they weren't here. She could also feel the auction room's owner, Rose Rosemann, but she was preoccupied in her office down the other end of the floor. As long as Juliet stayed quiet, she could capitalise on their absences.

"Don't call me sir."

"Yessir." Ignoring the Chinese pieces—paintings, scrolls of calligraphy, carved blocks of wood, each worth a million apiece—Juliet moved through the collection until she reached her target. "Jackpot."

"Jackpot?"

Juliet nodded, even though Ezra couldn't see her. "It's an An Gyeon. Ink-and-colour silk scroll painting. Joseon dynasty."

"You're just throwing words at me—wait." A pause. "Joseon. That's not Chinese, is it?"

"No, sir, it is not." Juliet shook her head as she peered through the glass. The painting was beautiful; it depicted a deep valley, unspooling in pale shades of blue and green. The technique was delicate, intricate, and even Juliet—who dealt strictly in straight lines and sharp angles—could appreciate it. "Joseon is Korean. Fisk's got Japanese artefacts in here, too. Edo period."

"Really?"

"Mhm. Crazy—he's a white guy. Didn't realise they could tell the difference." Juliet snickered to herself as she shifted to the back of the display, searching for a way to open it. There were other pieces in his collection probably worth more, and at the end of the day she was only a messenger, passing the painting from one pair of hands to the next. But she could feel it in her fingers, that itch, that urge to possess. "You've disarmed the security cameras, right?"

"I'm offended, Jules. Of course I have."

"Just checking. What's the sitch with this case security?"

"I'm working on it. You know, I do love a spontaneous art heist."

"You do your best work at the last minute, Ez. And careful, your FBI agent's listening."

"My FBI agent and I have set boundaries, actually. We've got a really good relationship, based on mutual trust and shared experience." A snort from Ezra's end. "When you told me to be ready to go, I thought you meant ready-ready. Not, give me ten minutes to put on my suit and makeup ready."

"Like I was going to rob Wilson Fisk in sweatpants and a Totoro t-shirt."

"I was watching you, and—"

"Creep." Juliet could practically feel the heat of his embarrassment through the comms.

"I am not a creep. You spent a full three minutes on your eyeliner. That's three full minutes you could've spent liberating East Asian artefacts from Wilson Fisk's grubby little grasp."

"The eyeliner is integral to the way I operate, thank you. Have you ever seen Megamind?"

"Have I ever seen Megamind?" Ezra scoffed. "Excuse you? Of course I've seen Megamind."

"Then you should know exactly what I mean. All this? It's about the presentation."

And DreamWorks references aside, it was. To Juliet, appearance was everything; moonlighting as the Illusionist, it had to be. Every inch of herself had to reflect the image she wanted to project—in this case, it was that of the Illusionist, a high-end mercenary with a high-end price to match. She was the nightmare, the daydream, and everything in between. She had to look the part.

Juliet had come from nothing—nothing being a working-class family of immigrants who had nothing but their name and each other—but her clientele, often of privilege or power if not both, didn't need to know that. Her background of single-roomed apartments overcrowded with dry-cleaning bags and transcultural baggage and ill-fitting garments awaiting alteration, of second-hand clothes and toys played with to the point of breaking, need not be known by the city's criminal underworld; in fact, it needed to be hidden, with makeup and clothes and composure. Crime had not raised her like it had others, nor corruption or cruelty—only first-grade-equivalent English and calloused hands well-worn from hard, American work.

Juliet had chosen this life in spite of another. She had to fit in. She was her mother's daughter, after all, and her mother had made a business of fixing things, of putting pieces together or pulling them apart.

Juliet herself was in the business of creation. An architect, a twenty-first-century God, perception was hers to control and create. Nothing comes of nothing, Shakespeare once wrote, but from nothing Juliet could create anything. Her mother made fabric her craft—Juliet made hers reality. It was easy, when the minds of others were malleable, like material between your fingers. When you could stitch two moments together and make a man doubt his own memory. When you could fashion unbridled fantasy from a single thought, a thread in a tapestry followed through to glorious realisation. When you could slice right through a psyche, unstitching reality one seam at a time, your purpose sharp and true.

Her mother had retained the Buddhist beliefs she'd cultivated back home despite her family's Protestantism; Juliet, however, was a non-believer. She believed in herself.

Herself, and her power. New York City was her staging ground and this was her Genesis.

That's what the Illusionist was. A creation, a construct, of Juliet's own design.

From the eyeliner that followed the curve of her eyes to where they sharpened like knives at the corners to the eyeshadow that shifted in the light, blue then green then black. From the hair, cut short first for a change after a relationship left in ruins then maintained at that length for convenience, slicked back behind her ears in a style that Juliet dubbed "professional" and Ezra called "right out of the Matrix". And, of course, the suit.

Custom-made from a carbon-fibre weave, it gave the look and feel of sheer tulle but the protection of military-grade Kevlar. The weave covered Juliet from her neck to her ankles, as well as from her shoulders to her wrists. She was further protected by a thin inlay of body-armour plates arranged to form a corset-like bodice, optimised for movement to aid her preferred form of martial art, agile and acrobatic in nature. (The design kept in mind the fact that she rarely had any reason to actually fight; thanks to her powers, she rarely needed to stray from her comfort zone, the shadows, where she could safely play her mind tricks in the dark.)

With the suit she wore a pair of cargo pants, both to avoid being the mercenary that was dressed in a glorified gimp suit and to carry with her an arsenal of gadgets and gear. She wore combat boots as well, once stiff with that factory newness but now well-worn with use.

Perhaps she was trying too hard—the Illusionist even had a colour scheme, comprising black and various shades of dark blue. But Juliet hadn't spent hours hunched over one of her mother's sewing machines for nothing, nor had she wasted time studying the heroes and vigilantes of New York for costume tips. From Daredevil she had learned of the body-armour inlays. From the Punisher she'd learned the efficiency of a well-made pair of boots. An omniscient entity, not a single soul in New York had ever seen someone like the Illusionist. But like a diamond cut and carved to angular perfection, when held up to the light, she revealed the facets of her creation.

She had sewn herself from nothing and yet every part of her was a piece taken from someone else.

Juliet enjoyed her work, and she couldn't lie; she had enjoyed the process of recreation, rebirth. Designing the suit and then feeling it, fully-realised, between her fingers. Tangible and true and all her own. The last Juliet she had been, the last suit she had worn, had been stitched in bright, bursting colour—pink and yellow. And it had been made for appearances' sake only, pushing forth the right parts of her body and pulling in the wrong. Protection had been an afterthought.

(And maybe—she felt safer in black and blue, like a walking bruise, like the wound still healing she was. Black and blue, the colours that faded most easily into shadow. Phantasma, the old Juliet, had been radiant, beautiful. But being beautiful had made her a target.)

(It didn't matter. It doesn't matter. You're not Phantasma.)

(You're not a hero.)

(Not anymore.)

"Thank god you're not a hero anymore." Ezra's voice wrenched Juliet from her thoughts and thrust her back into reality—back into the showroom. "You'd get a call and by the time you arrived on the scene, all dolled up, the crime would be pretty much committed."

"Ha-ha," Juliet said humourlessly, as she traced gloved fingers over the keypad fixed to the back of the case. "You're so funny. I think someone else would've stepped in by then."

"Who? Spider-Man? The Saviours?"

The Saviours. Two words were enough to strike the match and light the fuse coiled deep in the pit of her stomach. Two words were enough to needle Juliet's jovial mood into nothing, prick a thousand tiny cuts and leave her to bleed out. "No. The police."

Ezra seemed to realise his mistake. The Saviours were off-limits: it was a ground rule, laid in concrete since the day they'd met. "Hey, I was just kidding—"

"I know you were," Juliet cut him off, her words as sharp as a knife. "What's the code for the keypad?"

Silence, then: "One, two, one, eight, five, eight."

Juliet punched in the numbers. The tell-tale click of the case as its security system disengaged itself told her that Ezra was, as per usual, right. "Thank you."

More silence followed as Juliet swung open the back panel and reached for the painting. Her touch was careful, tender even, as she transferred the scroll into the carry tube she'd brought with her. As far as transporting art went, this could have been a lot more glamorous and a lot more efficient, but she worked with what she had. Previous endeavours into the world of art theft had been planned out to perfection, executed to exact detail—but she was an opportunist at heart, and taking the painting off Fisk's hands was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity if she'd ever seen one. Assuming Ezra's usual list of buyers would be lining up for it, he and Juliet could be multi-millionaires.

She was just closing the case when she felt a familiar presence.

"Stop right there," a coarse voice ordered, but Juliet knew the words her sister said before she even decided to say them. She'd touched so many heads, slipped into so many psyches, that they all begun to blend together after a while—but one she would never forget was her sister's.

Part of her was glad Arden wore the façade of one of Rosemann's security guards. The last thing she needed to see right now was her sister, backlit by halogen-lighting and high off occupational heroism. The last thing she needed to see was the new Phantasma.

Juliet and Arden Young were born to Yeong Ji-Ae in the back room of the storefront that would later become Young's Alterations and Dry Cleaning. Arden came out first, then Juliet; not having expected twins, Ji-Ae had hastily named her second daughter after the character she'd seen in an under-funded Shakespeare production just a week before. (Perhaps she had prophesied a tragic and bitter end that Juliet was yet to experience, though she wasn't holding her breath.)

It was here that Juliet was established as the lesser daughter, an afterthought swaddled in a blanket the colour of cotton candy. It seemed her destiny wasn't to commit joint suicide at age thirteen with a boy she'd met just over four days before—instead, it was to be second to Arden in everything. Despite the latter's best efforts, of course; life was not a competition to Arden Young and if it was, she and her sister would reach the finish line together or not at all.

Life poured Juliet and Arden into shapes and until puberty the girls kept them: Arden drew attention while Juliet actively avoided it, preferring to watch from the shadows while her sister basked in the light. Though Ji-Ae loved her daughters equally, Juliet travelled through childhood burdened by the weight of the truth: her mother liked Arden more. Everyone liked Arden more—their grandmother, once she came over from Daejeon to help Ji-Ae in the business; their friends, who were really just Arden's friends and only Juliet's by association; even the random adults who stopped Ji-Ae on the street to compliment her children and then ask her where their family was from.

Juliet made her peace with never being everybody's favourite. She was Arden's favourite. That was all that mattered, and as far as she could tell, that would never change.

Until they turned thirteen and Juliet woke up one night, screaming, her head full of voices that weren't her own and images no one else could see. When she was pregnant, Ji-Ae didn't have the money to afford the proper care, the ultrasounds and the check-ups, so she hadn't known that what was growing in her womb was not one child, but two. She hadn't known that what was growing were mutants, either.

Juliet's abilities came first, the power to read minds and alter them, and a few months later—after praying to every god that existed, bargaining second-hand Barbies and promising straight-A grades—came Arden's. She could shapeshift, take on any form she wished and changed her voice to match. Juliet found it ironic that her sister could transform herself into anything, anyone, and chose to, even though her original self—Arden Young—served her so well.

Every teenage girl went through phases. That was undeniable. Juliet herself had gone through a dozen selves, trading Taylor Swift for pop punk, musical theatre for junior varsity, but her sister tore through a thousand, trying on a new Arden every other day and tossing the old one aside. Before she joined the Saviours, she made cosmetic changes only, small alterations that anyone could achieve with the right routine, budget, or regimen: she changed her hair colour, tinted her eyelashes, erased acne and their subsequent scars from the surface of her skin.

But as they grew older, Juliet watched her sister shift into something else, something she didn't recognise. With a mother who didn't understand her daughters' abilities and a sister whose power set was an entirely different ballpark, Arden was unbridled in her ambition, in her search for the ultimate self. While Juliet threw herself into sports when she realised she needed extracurriculars for college, Arden chased popularity and by proxy, perfection. She carved weight from the parts of her body she hated and added it to the areas she thought weren't enough, folding the atoms that comprised herself into existence and then non-existence and then back again. She removed the freckles she and Juliet shared, like constellations across the bridge of their noses, as well as the baby fat in her face that Juliet only shed when she began working out consistently.

Arden wasn't Arden anymore. But Juliet was still her favourite. And that was fine. Through all the preening and the promise of perfection, the bathroom scales and the bodies discarded, they still had each other, and that was all that mattered.

Then came the woman in the power suit, who gallivanted into Young's Alterations and Dry Cleaning after her car broke down in Koreatown, interrupting the scent of tea and dry-cleaning fluid with expensive perfume and entitlement, who just happened to need emergency tailoring on a dress she was wearing to some charity gala that night. Then came the influx of new, wealthy clients, whom the woman had recommended Young's to. Then came the sponsors, who saw the Young family as something to fix, and after that came the fancy high school (called, pretentiously, an "academy") and the fixtures of a full-ride scholarship.

And then came the Soros family, and their youngest son, Dominik. Dominik, with his expensive tastes and expensive consequences. Dominik, with his perfect smile and his promise of being good, doing good. Dominik, with his steady hands and silver tongue.

Cruelly, Juliet had always expected her sister to be the first one to go. Arden, the centre of attention. Arden, the centre of the universe. She figured that Arden would decide Juliet was just more dead weight that needed to be shed, and then she'd be gone.

But she didn't. It was Juliet who left first.

For that betrayal, she'd paid the price.

She was still paying.

"Where's your boyfriend?" Juliet asked coolly, as she tilted her head to the side. "You can drop the façade, Arden. I know it's you."

The security guard that stood before her was as average as they came. Just another faceless foot soldier in Kingpin's army. He sighed, knitting his brows together, and his face began to transform. It was a swift process, almost instantaneous, and yet it felt like an eternity, a film painstakingly watched frame-by-frame. His eyes shifted first, then his nose, then his lips, then his cheeks, and then he was Arden, in the ever-changing flesh.

Arden Young, in her original form, was beautiful. (By proxy, so was Juliet, but if Arden was a star, Juliet was a black hole.) Arden was stunning and seamless and by looks alone, more of a heroine than Juliet had ever been. Her eyes were a warm, comforting brown, and their softness offset the sharp edges of her face—her cheekbones and jaw, cut as clean as the corners she'd turned in search of Mr. Right. She'd found him, of course, on his way out from Juliet.

Juliet narrowed her eyes. Arden's face was Juliet's face and yet Juliet did not know Arden, not anymore, not one bit. At some point since the last time Juliet had seen her, Arden had dyed her hair strawberry blonde.

It matched the Phantasma suit perfectly.

"Don't call him that," Arden said, folding her arms.

Juliet smirked, levelling her sister with a single look. Inside, her emotions had made an uroboros of themselves, anger, jealousy, bitterness and hurt stringing together into something scaly and reptilian that consumed itself again and again. "That's what he is, though, right? Your boyfriend."

"Cut it out, Jules."

Again and again. Again and again and again.

Dominik Soros stepped to stand beside Arden, slipping an easy arm around her waist, and as his hand fell to rest against her sister's hip Juliet died a little on the inside. Because Dominik Soros was a wound and his voice was the weapon he used to make it; his voice, as well as his face and his hands and his body and his everything. Because Dominik Soros, even after all that had happened, was still breathtakingly attractive, still made of hard muscle and chiselled features and miles of smooth, polished skin.

He had brothers, all of whom he resembled as Juliet resembled Arden. The Soros boys shared the same eyes, as dark and as slick as oil and twice as suffocating; the same smile, pearly and perfect with dimples like crescent moons on either sides of their lips; the same hair, curly and copper-brown, like a family heirloom left to rust.

All these similarities Dominik claimed saw him pale in comparison to his brothers. In retrospect, it was laughable that someone like Dominik—whose family possessed power and privilege Juliet couldn't even imagine, whose strict criteria when it came to marriage was borderline eugenicist—could ever be ignored. But it was the story he spun when he and Juliet had first met, on that day in her mother's shop, when he dropped off his blazer jacket and returned with his phone number and a bouquet of flowers.

"She's calling herself the Illusionist now," Arden said, her fingers closing around Dominik's wrist defensively. She disliked the sound of Juliet's nickname in Dominik's voice just as much as Juliet herself did, albeit for different reasons. Juliet didn't have to read her mind to know some part of Arden still wondered if she was just a replacement.

Some part of Juliet still wondered that, too. Arden had replaced her as Phantasma, that was certain. But had she replaced Juliet as Dominik's girlfriend?

(All signs pointed to yes.)

"Theatrical." Dominik slanted his girlfriend a look, before letting his eyes settle on Juliet. "Hi, Jules."

"Hi, Dom." Juliet said, refusing to meet Dominik's gaze.

"How have you been?"

"Good. You?" The last thing Juliet wanted to do was small-talk with her ex-boyfriend, but she supposed the desire to continue talking to him, sudden and unprecedented, had something to do with his mutant powers. Gifted with the ability to control through verbal instruction, Juliet noticed the natural pull he had on others. She and Dominik were two of a kind, even if she no longer wanted to admit it; he wove words, entrapping others in tapestries formed of sounds, vowels, syllables, while her work lay in weaving worlds.

They both spun their webs, but Juliet knew where her creations ended and the real world began; whether Juliet was still trapped in Dominik's was yet to be known.

"I'm good, too." He carded a hand through his hair. In the light, it looked like a precious metal. "It's been a while."

"What did you expect?"

"This is awkward," Ezra said quietly, and Juliet resisted the urge to tell him to shut up. She didn't need to look crazier than she already did. (And also, Ezra was right. This was awkward. Very awkward.)

"I don't know. A phone call. A text?" A shadow passed over Dominik's face, and Juliet finally turned to look at him, feeling the shift in his mood like a breeze brushing her cheek.

She would've called him, or texted him, if he'd waited more than a month before fucking her sister. Juliet wanted to be angry at Arden, but she couldn't be—not on the surface, at least. She understood the appeal, the charm, that Dominik had. He was broken, but fixable. Secure in himself, but subject to change.

And if Arden liked anything, it was change.

Dominik was dark, too. Disarming. Distracting. But that closet of his, however many expensive clothes it housed, however many brands Juliet couldn't pronounce, still housed skeletons. That skin, however polished and preened, still had its scars, still split at the seams. Those eyes, however slick and suffocating, were still shadows. They made the way through the woods grow thin and the lights of home shine bright.

If Juliet had been smarter, she wouldn't have strayed from the path.

But she read minds, not prophecies—and she was not as ill-fated as her namesake suggested. She was still standing, still breathing, still alive, and that was all that mattered.

It was Arden's turn to be smart now.

"We don't always get what we want," Juliet said dryly.

"No," Dominik replied, "we don't."

Juliet gave a half-smile, half-sneer. "On the topic of what we want and what we don't get, why exactly are you two here? Shouldn't you be at Fisk Tower, trying to steal Spider-Man's thunder?"

"Pyre and Sucker Punch are on their way there n—" Arden began, but Dominik shot her a look and she fell silent. Clearing her throat, she started again. "We're here to help Spider-Man."

"Are you, now? I didn't realise you guys were so close. That's cute." Disgusting.

"At least we're trying to be good people," Arden said indignantly. Juliet simply shrugged, nonplussed by her sister's righteousness.

"Emphasis on the word trying."

"It's more than what you're doing, Juliet."

"I never said I wanted to be a good person."

"You used to be."

Sometimes, if she focused enough, she could turn her thoughts into knives, manifest them into the physical plane. Juliet could feel those blades in her chest now, sharpening themselves against the inside of her ribcage. "That's in the past. Shouldn't you be grateful? You wouldn't be where you are now if it wasn't for me."

"Weren't," Ezra corrected, his voice a whisper in her ear, and Juliet winced. Knowing he was listening in made her feel both instantly safer and insanely uncomfortable. If the Saviours were first on the list of banned conversation topics, Dominik Soros was second, Arden third. Ezra and the art and the suit and the Illusionist—it was all meant to be a fresh start, a new page. She didn't appreciate the transference.

"We're here to get evidence to help put Fisk away for good. What are you here for?"

Juliet scoffed gently, lifting up the carry tube. "What does it look like I'm here for?"

"Mom would be disappointed in you."

"At least Mom has seen me in the past six months. Where did you go, Arden? Come home. She misses her favourite daughter." Juliet said sharply. When she joined the Saviours in Juliet's place and started seeing Dominik, Arden abandoned the rest of her life—her college degree, her friends, her family. And even though she'd been ignoring their mother's calls, Ji-Ae still favoured Arden, and wouldn't hear a word against her.

Not that Juliet was going out of her way to speak harshly of her sister. At the end of the day, she wanted her home and safe and away from all this "hero" business. It was a sham.

(You are not a hero. There is nothing you can do.)

"I went to do something with my life."

"And that meant donning what is essentially a leotard and dying your hair pink?"

"It's strawberry blonde, and you did it first."

"I never dyed my hair." Arden's nostrils flared, eliciting another smirk from Juliet. "I'm aware I did it first. You wouldn't be here if I hadn't done it first."

"I wouldn't be here if you'd done it right."

Anger slashed through Juliet, a knife sharper than her sister and Dominik and the sight of them together combined, sharper than the weapon whetting itself inside her chest. Slinging the carry tube safely over her shoulder, she stalked past the two of them—through their perfect, power-couple united front—towards the curator's office at the other end of the showroom. "You want evidence, yeah?"

"Yes," Arden said, confused, as she followed her sister. Dominik trailed after, catching up easily with long, graceful strides.

"It's got to be in here." Finding the office door locked, Juliet crouched by the handle and pulled out her lockpicking kit. "Wilson's buddy-buddy with the place's owner, Rose Rosemann. Stupid name, I know," she added, flicking Arden an entertained smile.

Arden could not have been less amused. "Why are you helping us?"

"Just doing my daily good deed. My random act of kindness, if you will." The lock clicked undone and Juliet packed her kit back away. Then, she straightened up, and opened the door.

Rose Rosemann didn't have time to protest. Juliet was in her head in an instant. Sleep, she instructed, and the woman had no choice but to obey, her mind and body answering to a god she did not worship. She was out like a light, and Juliet caught her body as it fell, taking a moment to lay her down carefully.

"Looks like we got here just in time," Juliet drawled. The office was expensively furnished, and obscenely tidy, save for the manilla folder on a desk in the corner, right beside an open laptop playing a live broadcast of the happenings at Fisk Tower. It was muted. Juliet stepped over to examine the file, marked M. She flicked through for appearances' sake, not actually reading nor registering any of its contents, before turning back around to face Arden and Dominik. "This looks super incriminating. I guess it's what you're after, hm?"

Arden's eyes lingered on the M. "Yes, it is. Hand it over."

"Of course. One second."

She tucked the file under one arm and reached down into Rose's blazer pocket, searching for a lighter—as she'd compelled Rose to sleep, she'd skimmed over half a dozen or so of her thoughts, and one of them had been the woman's desire for a smoke (despite a promise to family members to quit.) For her own credibility's sake, Juliet hoped Rose hadn't kicked the habit quite yet.

Bingo. She closed her fingers around the lighter and stood straight again, flipping off the top cap with her thumb.

Realisation dawned on Dominik's face. "Juliet, stop."

Involuntarily, she froze. It was a familiar feeling, this stillness. Dominik, Dominik, Dominik. Dominik Soros was a wound and his voice was the weapon he used to make it and it was what he used to numb it, and Juliet was numb, numb, numb. Dominik and his eyes and his mouth and his voice, like anaesthesia, like a drug—

—But take enough of any drug and you build a tolerance. Take enough of any drug and you'll start needing more of it to get high and stay high, and unfortunately for Dominik a single word, stop, is not enough to satisfy Juliet and the months of her life she wasted addicted to him.

Her hand, paralysed, twitched. Slowly, her body became her own again, and the first thing she did was grin; the second was flick on the lighter.

The third was lift it to the corner of the file.

"Juliet!" Arden called out.

It was too late. Dominik's words could undo commitment and conviction but they could not undo flame. Juliet's grin only grew as the fire ate away at the file and its contents, turning them from paper to ash and then ash to nothing.

"What were you saying about evidence?" Satisfaction carved a smile upon Juliet's lips.

"You didn't have to do that," Arden said. A thousand faces she had worn and the one she had now was blank, impassive. Disappointing. Juliet had hoped for more.

"Let's not get started on things we didn't have to do," Juliet replied. "Things—or people." Her gaze flickered to Dominik briefly before returning to Arden. Her twin opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. What could she possibly say in reply?

"That's uncalled for, Jules." Dominik began, but Juliet didn't give him the chance. Her attention strayed back to Rose's laptop, still open and playing, albeit silently, on the office desk.

Juliet reached back to unmute the broadcast, and the familiar voice of a local news reporter filled the silence of the office.

Wilson Fisk has been apprehended through the combined efforts of the New York City Police Force and Spider-Man. Fisk is now in transit to supermax prison the Raft, where he will await trial for charges of—

"I think that's my cue to leave." Juliet closed the laptop. "It's your cue, too. Now that Kingpin's locked up, all his men will be directed to secure his assets, protect his territory. Meaning... they'll be here any minute to make sure no-one touches his prized art collection."

"You're in as much trouble as we are."

Juliet flashed another smile as she stepped past them, pushing through the office door to return to the main showroom. Just as she did, the cavalry arrived, right on cue. Half a dozen armed men came crashing through the front entrance, all dressed in a violent shade of purple—Fisk's favourite colour, one associated with royalty.

It was a clever trick, association, that he used to distract from the fact he came from nothing, just like Juliet. If the justice system saw his trial all the way through, Juliet supposed he would always be nothing.

His men had a little more faith.

They lifted their weapons to fire, giving Juliet a fraction of a second to react.

The knives she sharpened inside her chest made good use of themselves, appearing in the air as if summoned, as if spell-cast. Transparent, like glass, they hovered beside her, powered by pure will, the totality of her telepathy whittled into a weapon that only she could wield.

She let them fly.

They shot through the air, soaring towards Fisk's men, each projectile corporeal until the point of contact. The moment they met the men's skin they disappeared in a burst of fractured light; there was a moment of pause, of reprieve, before they did their damage, flooding the mind of every man they touched with migraines.

Six guns fired, and only one bullet found its way to Juliet, skimming off the side of her shoulder and burying itself in the door behind her.

Fuck.

"Jules?" Ezra's voice, sudden but an instant comfort, echoed in her ear. "Jules, I heard gunshots. Are you okay? Jules?"

The next few moments were staggered, like the shutter-click of a camera, one frame and then the next and then the next. First, the footsteps from the office behind her as Arden sprinted outside, spurred on by some sisterly instinct she'd retained despite all that had happened in the past six months, some desire to make sure Juliet was okay. Then, Dominik close behind. Then, Juliet flashing the perfect couple a vicious grin before she shoved through the men with her good shoulder, pushing them aside as they reeled from the psionic attack. They fell like dominos, and Juliet was out the front entrance, onto the street, ego and painting and body (for the most part) intact.

"Juliet?" Ezra asked again, as Juliet slipped down an alleyway adjacent to Rosemann's, already disappearing into ambiguity as nearby citizens, attracted by the sound of gunshots, drew close to the mouth of the building.

"I'm fine," Juliet seethed, her head pounding and her shoulder throbbing. "I'm fine. Don't freak out."

"I'm not freaking out."

"You sound like you're freaking out." Juliet was two blocks away when she finally stopped to catch her breath. She leaned against the back wall of a café, pressing her palm flush against the brick to steady herself. This was one way to reach runner's high.

"Come home, Juliet."

"Yeah, dad," Juliet panted, "I'll be right there. Grab the kit." The line clicked dead, and Juliet closed her eyes, feeling waves of nausea crest through her stomach, fill and flood the empty space left behind.

In the distance, she could hear it—sirens. Screams. Panicked yells, pleas, cries for help. The sounds of the city.

Juliet opened her eyes, wincing. She could hear the thoughts of the people around her, sitting in the café through the wall, sorting through flowers in the florist down the street. They whined in her ears like tinnitus, like a chronic illness that couldn't be cured. Those voices were easy to silence. It was the ones that cried for help that were difficult.

Help me!

She stood up, clutching her shoulder. Home was only a few blocks south.

Somebody, please help!

All she could see when she shut her eyes was her sister. Her sister, and Dominik, and the Saviours, and the suit—the fucking Phantasma suit. Pink and yellow.

Please!

Beautiful. Radiant.

Someone! Anyone!

She was thirteen again, skull spilling over with the voices of the entire neighbourhood. Her mother, downstairs, making appointments for alterations, asking her clients to repeat their availability in fractured English. The family next door, and the rage the father felt, the anger he spat that shook the house and its inhabitants down to its core.

Help me!

Juliet shut out the voices, choosing to ignore it as she ignored every other scream she heard, every other siren.

Yes—sirens. Screams. Silence that should come after but never does because it never, ever stops. The oft-sung song of New York City.

Juliet inhaled sharply. She tightened her grip around her shoulder, and headed home.

You are not a hero. There is nothing you can do.

✶

AUTHOR'S NOTE

here's the first chapter of now you see me! 🥳🥳 it's quite long but i think the length is necessary to set up everything that happens later on.

is how i feel writing arden and dom's relationship. yiiikes.

what do you think so far? let me know your thoughts in the comments! even a short comment is deeply appreciated 🥺❤️

thank you so much for reading! i promise future chapters will not be 7k words long.

🪞 GRAPHIC by SOULOFSTAARS 🪞