Snapshot (фотография)

XVII

"What are we going to do about Spider-man?" Steve Rogers asked, shining his shield in the debrief room.

"What about him?" Tony asked, distractedly flipping through different pages on his tablet, scribbling furiously

"Natasha?" Cap asked, turning to the spy, hopeful that she might have some information.

"I think he uses police scanners. He doesn't have any regular patrols that we could stop him on. He's a ghost."

They sat there in contemplation for a bit. Spider-man wasn't a threat to the avengers, but he was a threat in general. They had to either get him to sign the amended accords or figure out what he was. He did little things- helping old ladies cross the street, getting cats out of trees, stopping bank robberies.

"Do we really need to bring him in?" Sam asked. Cap sighed, running his hand over his face.

"The cops and the city are searching for him." He replied. "He's enhanced, so it's better if we figure him out first, at least."

There had been a strange string of unsolved murders. They weren't linked together at first because of the varying methods and victims. A gang-banger one night, his throat slashed, a lawyer the next, his lips blue. The killer was a mission-oriented, a highly organized one at that.

Mission-oriented serial killers usually feel that they are doing society a favor by ridding it of certain people; these can include young women, prostitutes, drug dealers, or homosexuals, people they feel that society could do without. These killers are generally not psychotic. In fact, some see themselves as trying to change society. They always have a controlled crime scene, hence categorizing them as organized makes them much easier to track. These killers always go after specific victims, this makes them much easier to track down.

However, because this assassin was so capricious about his victims and method with no real signature, the police had originally pegged it as several different murders before pegging him as a new serial killer. Evidence was scarce, with no fingerprints or DNA, so they soon came to realise that whoever the killer was, they were skilled. Spidey's webs had been found by police at the high-profile assassination of Wilson Fisk.

The webs usually dissolved within an hour or so, as they had learned when picking up the bogeys that Spider-man left behind. For the webs to still be there meant that he had been there either while the man was still alive or just after he died. Spider-man knew something about the killer.

"Have the police had any luck tracking him down?" The cops were gunning after him too.

"If I could just get some of his DNA, we could figure out his identity." Bruce groaned. Tony snapped his fingers, shooting out of his seat to run into a different room. The entire team shared a look, and Steve began to rise from his chair to go after him. Tony raced back in, a plugged test tube in his hands. He panted, leaning his right hand on his knee in a slight squat as he held the glass tube aloft.

"From when the assassin broke into the tower..." Natasha realised. Tony nodded, collapsing in the chair.

"FRIDAY." He said. "Can we run an analysis on these and see if they match up with the webs from the police?"

Natasha rested her forehead against the back of her left hand, staring at her reflection in the glass table. When she had entered the room with the boy Clint had found at HYDRA, she couldn't help but be struck with the similarity between the two of them. It was her own fault that she had gotten soft, that she had ignored the killer, and only saw the boy. She'd let him go, and she'd let her carefully constructed boundaries down.

You can't change your past, no matter how much you run. Natasha knew that better than anyone. She realised that she had gotten caught up with the idea that she could pay it forward, like Clint had with her. Goodness, the situation in the hospital was nearly identical. She had run too, but she had staved off killing. She knew she had other skills. But Noir knew nothing else.

He only knew how to kill, and he was just a boy. He was a ghost, he didn't have any papers or certificates, but he was skilled enough to forge something believable. Training usually had them depend on their handlers for these things, but Noir was probably as paranoid as she was. He wouldn't chance being found by going to a fast food job.

"They're contract kills, then." Clint said, his eyes wide as he and Nat shared a look.

"What are you talking about?" Wanda asked.

"You remember that boy I recovered from the HYDRA base?" Clint leaned on his elbows onto the table, holding his right wrist in his left hand, almost as if he was trying to hold himself back. He breathed shakily, remembering the terror on the boy's face and the shock on Natasha's when she told him that Noir was the assassin after Tony. He'd given himself up and escaped.

They explained this all to the Avengers, Natasha chiming in occasionally. When they got to the part of the story about Miami, Clint stopped, staring at Natasha in horror.

"Nat." He said. "If Noir is the assassin..." She stopped, her mouth open. In their distraction in looking for Noir, they had completely forgotten the most important information about him that they didn't have on file. His identity had been confirmed when the fingerprints came up on the database in Miami.

"Who's the boy with no tongue that's been with the Parkers?"