Exit the interrogation room.

You step out into the corridor, the door clicking shut behind you.

Cortez is there, shoulder against the wall, arms folded. His eyes move over you once, quick, like he’s counting pieces. You keep your face still, your breathing even.

For a moment neither of you speaks.

“How sure?” he asks.

You meet his gaze. “Sure.”

He nods, but it’s not the easy kind. His jaw works once, like he’s biting something back.

“Stop by C Wing before you head out,” he says finally. “They’ll get your girl set up with papers. So she can move without… trouble.”

You nod once, then look past him down the hall. The air smells faintly of bread again, but you can’t taste it now. Somewhere, someone laughs—short, sharp—and it dies just as quick.

Cortez shifts his weight, like he’s about to say more, then doesn’t.

You’re halfway down the corridor when the shot cracks through the air. Sharp... and final.

Your eyes close on instinct. Just for a second.

The hum of voices from the mess hall falters somewhere behind you, then picks up again, quieter. The drip of water from the overhead pipes is suddenly loud in your ears.

You don’t stop. Boots on concrete. Left, then right, following the chalk arrows toward C Wing.

Somewhere in the back of your head, the shadow settle down. Quiet, waiting.

C Wing is quieter, the air cooler. The hum of voices and work fades until all that’s left is the soft tap of keys behind a half-closed door with a peeling “Records” sign.

Inside, a young woman is hunched over a desk that looks like it was stolen from an abandoned DMV. Her hair’s pinned back in a messy knot, a pencil stuck in it like she forgot it was there. She’s working fast, eyes flicking between an old monitor and a stack of papers.

You tell her what you’re here for.

She leans back, hands pausing on the keys. “Got a recent picture?”

You slide Mariana’s across. She studies it, tilts her head.

“She looks way too young to be thirty-eight. We’ll take a few years off. Makes it easier for people to buy it.”

“How much is that going to cost?”

“Normally? Thirty grand. But Cortez already said this one’s free. Family discount.”

You meet her eyes. “Generous of him.”

Her mouth twitches. “Paloma López, age thirty-one. The real Paloma’s been dead a while—clean record, no biometrics anywhere. It’ll work.”

You nod. “Good choice.” You linger a beat, giving her room to keep talking.

She doesn’t bite, so you tilt your head toward the room’s only chair that doesn’t look like it’s been salvaged from a curb. “Mind if I sit while you work?”

She gestures without looking up.

You settle in, let a couple of quiet minutes pass before you ask, “Been here long?”

“Few years.”

“Guess Cortez takes care of his people.”

That gets you the faintest smile. “Yeah. I was living in a tent by the tracks before he found me. Parents starved out. He… fixed that.” She leans back just enough to gesture at herself. “Now I eat too much.”

You give her a small, knowing smile. “Beats the alternative.”

She chuckles, turns back to her screen, and starts typing again.

The door bangs open, blinds shivering in the draft.

A small knot of people push in—four, maybe five. The young Titan from earlier is at the front, still breathing a little hard like he ran here.

They skip any kind of hello.

“Is it true?” one of them asks.

You don’t move, just glance at the faces. “Is what true?”

The Titan tilts his head, like he’s trying to get a read on you. “That you’re the Spider.”

Behind the desk, the woman who’d been helping you with Mariana’s paperwork goes still. Her hands hover over the keyboard, her eyes on the screen, but you can tell she’s listening.

You sit back in the chair, elbows resting on the arms, letting their words roll past without really landing.

“That was a long time ago,” you say finally. Your voice stays even, but there’s no warmth in it. “I’m not really that person anymore.”

The rail-thin one doesn’t hear you, or doesn’t want to. He’s already stepping forward, eyes bright, movements restless like he’s about to start pacing. “No, you don’t get it. You have no idea how big that was. Four of you. Kids. You took out fifty-plus men, dug in deep, fortified, armed like a militia. And you wiped them out. In one night.”

Your jaw shifts. You don’t correct him. You don’t tell him what it smelled like in there when it was done, or how long the sounds followed you after.

He’s waiting for some sign—agreement, pride, something. You give him nothing.

From the desk, the woman keeps her head down, fingers tapping a lazy rhythm on the keys, not typing anything.

The kid glances around at his friends like he’s just remembered the punchline. “You know they’ve been calling you one of the Four Horsemen, right?”

You keep your face still, but it takes effort.

“Cortez is War. Jinx is Famine. Jigsaw is Pestilence…” He pauses, milking it. “And Spider... Spider is ****.”

You breathe in slow, let it out through your nose. “Catchy,” you say. It comes out flat enough to make him falter, just a little.

The desk woman glances up at you then, studying your face, like she’s not sure if you’re about to laugh or leave.

The thin one keeps grinning, like he’s sure you’re secretly flattered. “It’s not just a name. It’s a legacy. People still tell stories about that night.”

You shift your weight in the chair, leaning back far enough that it feels more like a wall between you and them than a seat. “People tell stories about a lot of things,” you say. “Doesn’t make it worth remembering.”

That earns you a confused look from one of the others in the group. A broad-shouldered guy with hands like concrete blocks. He opens his mouth like he wants to argue, but something in your expression must cut it off before it starts.

The first one tries again, undeterred. “You saved a lot of people,” he says, softer now. Almost reverent.

You hold his gaze. “I killed a lot more.”

That stops him cold. No one says anything for a moment. The hum of the old light fixture above fills the silence, steady and loud.

At the desk, the woman finally speaks without looking up. “You boys done? Some of us are trying to work.”

They mutter something under their breath, but it’s enough to make them shuffle toward the door. The kid who brought you here is the last to leave. He lingers, eyes flicking between you and the woman, like he wants to say something else. But he doesn’t. Just turns and follows the others out.

Only then do you let your shoulders ease, just slightly. The woman is watching you now, chin resting in her hand. “They look at you like you’re a ghost story,” she says.

You don’t answer. You’re not sure which part of that bothers you more, that they look at you that way, or that they’re not wrong.

“You’re not what I pictured.”

You glance up from the fake IDs spread across the desk. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She studies you for a beat longer, like she’s checking the angles of your face against some mental sketch. “I figured you’d be… I don’t know. Scarier. Or taller. Or wearing more leather. Something.”

You let out a small breath through your nose. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“Not disappointment.” She tilts her head, still measuring. “You just look… normal.”

You don’t have anything for that, so you don’t answer. You let the hum of the lights fill the space, eyes on the neat rows of paper and laminate.

She flips one folder closed, then glances up again. “The woman you're doing this for...”

You nod.

“She important to you?”

The answer comes before you think to temper it. “Yeah. She’s… stronger than she has any right to be. Everything she’s been through, she still somehow came out the other side kind. That’s… rare.”

Lily studies your face for a moment, then smiles faintly. “She’s lucky to have you.”

Your gaze stays on the laminate in your hands, the name Paloma López printed crisp and unblemished. “No,” you say after a beat. “I don’t deserve her.”

It’s quiet when you say it, but there’s no mistaking the truth in it.