The system's blue HUD glided into place at the edge of my vision as Alpha-01 and I threaded through the side streets of Hell's Kitchen. Noon heat silvered off windshields; a subway rumbled like distant thunder beneath the pavement; a hot-dog cart hissed the gospel of lunch. New York City moved the way it always does—like a complicated machine that still refuses to read its manual.
Points: 1,000
Summon Spartan-II (baseline clone): 500
Spartan-II Training Overlay (complete): 1,500
I let the numbers hover and mean what they meant: progression fantasy fuel with a conscience attached. "Looks like we can afford some company, Alpha," I murmured.
"Another Spartan," Alpha-01 said. He didn't break stride. He never does. Even in a hoodie (new, slate, unbranded), he radiated discipline disguised as casual. He still favored his left heel when he planted, still aligned his zipper with the seam, and tapped the drawstrings twice. The micro-traits felt like anchors in a day that wanted to fly.
"Can't let you hog all the glory," I said. "Besides, competition keeps a blade honest."
"I will not rust," he replied, serenely confident.
"I'm counting on it. Still going to enjoy watching you show off for your younger brother."
We slipped into a narrow service alley that smelled like fryer oil and yesterday's cardboard —the kind of place that had seen too many break-ups and at least one proposal, anyway. A dented dumpster leaned against a brick wall like it was tired of being useful. I rested a shoulder on it and let the HUD's Summon tab slide forward.
System, spend it. One clone. Designation: Alpha-02.
Ding.
Blue light folded itself out of nothing, then into someone. The coalescing never stopped being eerie—a human outline arriving the way a screen saver returns, except this screen saver watched back. He stood at attention by instinct and by design: same height, same build, same sharp features as Alpha-01. But the eyes were the tell: focused, not yet forged; steady, not yet settled: prototype, this time at minute one.
"Commander," he said. The voice was a shade lighter than Alpha-01's, the posture a hair less economical.
"Welcome to the party, Alpha-02," I said, grinning. "You've been alive five seconds and you're already cooler than ninety percent of this zip code."
He blinked once, absorbing the alley, the heat, the cotton hood that would soon be his, then glanced to Alpha-01 as if calibrating off a star.
"This is your big brother," I said. "Alpha-01, meet Alpha-02. You're going to whip him into shape."
Alpha-01 stepped forward and offered his hand—not a test, not a trap, a bridge. Alpha-02 took it, a firm grip, right hand. Micro-trait: Alpha-02 set his feet in a three-step offset and used breath cadence to time the squeeze; two count in, two count out. Not copying—learning.
"Understood," Alpha-01 said. "We will train together."
Alpha-02 nodded once. "Copy."
The copy had a different weight than was understood. Not better. Distinct.
"Look at that—teamwork," I said. "You two need a banter patch, but I've got enough personality to carry us through Q3."
Two statues stood in elegant silence, evaluating me. I sighed like a man resigned to greatness. "Okay. Quick ground rules before we go introduce you to the MCU."
Both sets of eyes were on me, and it felt like I was writing words into metal.
"Rule One: We do not escalate when a flex will do. Rule Two: We don't make messes we expect other people to clean. Rule Three: We don't turn people into point drops—system or no system. Rule Four: We show up where people need us, not where cameras want us. Rule Five: We pick our battles—and sometimes the battle is a parking ticket."
Alpha-01 repeated them back in order, voice the metronome you want in a fire. Alpha-02 followed—slower, careful, each sentence clicked into place like a mag in a well.
"One more," I added, because I had learned to front-load my better angels. "We treat you as people. The system calls you soldiers under my command; I call you partners. If I give an order that crosses our line, you challenge it. If I try to get clever with ethics, you call me out. If I insist, you keep civilians safe first—even if it means ignoring me."
Alpha-01 didn't blink. "Acknowledged."
Alpha-02 looked from him to me, then back again. "Copy," he said, then—tiny change in tone—"Understood."
He'd switched words on purpose. Micro-trait: language as calibration.
The Training tab ticked for Alpha-02—0% sliding to 1% as a "Baseline Neural-Muscular Optimization" overlay began to trickle into a brain that had been alive for a minute but carried a month of preparation in blueprints. We didn't have the 1,500 points to finish the Spartan-II training yet. That was fine. Earn your tools. The rhythm mattered almost as much as the result.
"We're not making you a public spectacle," I warned. "Hoodies. Hands in pockets. Friend-shaped. People will still stare. That's okay. We choose how much we give them to stare at."
Ten minutes and nineteen dollars later, Alpha-02 wore a charcoal zip-up he had adjusted with ritual neatness. He tried the hood up, then down. He aligned the zipper with the seam and, like his brother, tapped the drawstrings twice. Micro-trait: He checked the fit by rolling his shoulders once precisely, at the same cadence as his breath count. The silhouette softened. A soldier turned into someone's tall friend.
We rejoined the flow of Hell's Kitchen as three: two Spartans disguised as "guys who belong here" and one mortal with a shopping bag and a plan. Stares followed, but fewer than you'd think. New York can clock a story and look away on purpose—people have somewhere to be.
"Alpha-02," I said as we moved, "big plans? Hopes? Dreams? A musical number you've been workshopping in your head?"
"I exist to serve," he said, earnest.
I groaned theatrically. "Oh no. Not you, too. Two brick walls and me. We're going to need a decorator."
Alpha-02's brow knit for a fractional second, but his voice stayed level. "I will learn."
Self-awareness glinted there, unpolished and hopeful. I caught Alpha-01's micro-judgment—you are testing him, Commander—and gave him a shrug that said absolutely. He had a half degree of fondness in his posture—don't ask me how you read that off a man whose baseline expression is "competent gargoyle," but you do.
Neighborhood Interludes (Low Heat, Real Stakes)
Hell's Kitchen delivered, just as she always does. You don't go looking for trouble here; you open your eyes and it introduces itself.
On Ninth, a purse yank turned into sudden physics when Alpha-01 caught a wrist mid-tug and turned the thief's energy into a gentle appointment with the pavement. The woman—forty, grocery bag tearing under stress—stared between her reclaimed purse and Alpha like she'd witnessed a magic trick that left all fingers attached. She started to thank him; I shook my head and pointed her toward a calmer sidewalk. Don't build a spectacle. Build a habit.
Ding. +5 (adult). +1 (collateral avoided). Heat: negligible.
On a bar's open door, two drunk men decided anger deserved to stand up straight. Alpha-02 stepped into the frame and borrowed presence from his height. He didn't touch them. He didn't have to. "Gentlemen," he said, and the word did thirty percent of the work; the quiet did the rest. They recalibrated their life choices to "walk away muttering." Micro-trait: Alpha-02 plants his right foot half a shoe length farther forward than Alpha-01 when he blocks a doorway. Leverage preference. Filed.
Ding. +3 (two). +1 (PR, de-escalation). Heat: none.
At a playground, three older teens used boredom like brass knuckles on younger kids hovering around the monkey bars. The Alphas arrived like monuments and stood there. Sometimes looming is a love language. The teens re-categorized their lives to "find a different block" without requiring a lecture.
Ding. +10 (group) +1 (community confidence) Ethical multiplier: retained.
We kept it at a low temperature by design—no broken bones. No speeches. No hero worship. We left receipts only where they mattered.
The city kicked back, because it's a relationship. A beat cop did a slow drive-by and gave me the look cops adopt when their day suddenly includes paperwork they didn't ask for. He parked crooked, got out, and conducted the universal ritual of adjusting his belt while approaching civilians he wasn't sure about.
"You folks doing okay?" he asked, his voice neutral, the New York accent fading to the civic default.
"Fine, Officer," I said, hands visible, posture not challenging. "Helping Mr. Patel with a door hinge later. Fix-it tour."
He clocked Alpha-01 and Alpha-02—hoods down, hands out of pockets, faces calm—and filed them under "Too Big to Be Coincidence." "You private security?"
"Neighborhood hands," I said, and slid one of the cards the system had generated into view: Community Repairs, No Cost, No Questions. A number. A Wednesday Legal Aid Clinic address that would be a lifeline if he were the kind of cop who liked daylight.
He looked at the card, then at me. "You know the law on vigilantism?"
"We also know the law on the Good Samaritan, sir."
He sighed the sigh of a man who had seen things go sideways and didn't want to pour more tilt into the room. "Repair. Call us if it gets loud."
"Understood," I said, which in New York means we won't embarrass you; please don't make our life enjoyable.
The system chimed: Heat +0.3 (NYPD awareness), PR (Civic): +1 for not being a jerk—progress and cost, measured at the speed of a day.
Money Talks (So We Whisper Back)
Money didn't magically rain out of the HUD. The system tracked points, not rent. We were still living off petty cash inherited from a drawer (legally gray, ethically complicated, practically necessary) and the occasional Carmen-issued casserole. Hot dogs? Ten bucks for three. Two hoodies? Nineteen apiece. A camera for Mr. Patel? Even the good cheap ones weren't cheap cheap.
I watched the bills leave my wallet and adopted a new rule: Every dollar we spent had to make the neighborhood quieter. Coffee didn't count; I bought it anyway. Hypocrisy is a muscle you monitor.
"Commander requires food," Alpha-01 said when I made a face at the math.
"He does," I agreed. "And so do the guys who lift couches and bolt ladders."
"We can eat," Alpha-02 said, neutral.
"Yeah," I said, steering us toward a street cart anyway. "But can you enjoy?"
The vendor slid three hot dogs across the table like a sacrament. Mustard. Relish. Onions that had yodeled in a skillet. I handed Alpha-02 his. He held it like a device from a lab that had not completed peer review.
"You bite it," I said. "Chew. Decide you're alive. Repeat."
He took a cautious bite and chewed as if testing the structural integrity of a new alloy. Swallowed. "Efficient," he pronounced.
"Not efficient—delicious. Say it with me."
"Delicious," he echoed, face unchanged, and I laughed because you have to.
Alpha-01 just held his, politely. I stole it, took a bite, and declared it one of the top five wise decisions of my week. He watched me eat, as if checking a system parameter that read Commander Morale.
We were two blocks from calling it a good afternoon when the city tested our plan with something that smelled like kitchen catastrophes and insurance adjusters.
Grease Fire (Costs Paid, Points Earned)
The fire alarm's scream ricocheted out of a tenement two doors down from Mr. Patel's—one of those after-market smoke detectors that sound like a soprano screaming into a tin can. The building exhaled the panic of hot oil and a mistake. People did the New York thing and paused long enough to decide whether this was their business.
It was ours.
We didn't run in capes. We ran like men who knew smoke moves faster than fire. Alpha-01 took the stairs two at a time, scanning with his nose and his ears the way a soldier learns to. Alpha-02 angled for the back hall and the fire escape in case egress got messy. I beelined into Patel's store.
"Extinguisher," I said. "Now."
He didn't ask. He handed it over the counter like a hot potato. "Third floor—Mia's! Grease."
Grease fires and water are enemies. Extinguishers and lids are friends. The system made no magic happen; it was just a list of steps in my head that collapsed into a single command: foam, cover, cut oxygen, kill heat.
Third floor, white door, a woman shouting "I got it—NO I DON'T—" and a skillet doing the devil's Christmas tree under an open window. Alpha-01 was already there, holding a dish towel like he meant it and pulling the oven mitts clear of the stupid zone. Alpha-02 had the hall clear, kids in pajamas and a terrier all lined on the floor against the baseboard, eyes too wide.
"On it," I said, and squeezed the extinguisher's handle. Foam-blunted flame; the pan protested; smoke decided to be dramatic. Alpha-01 slid a metal lid over the top with surgical precision. Lights flickered. The alarm screamed in triumph at its own usefulness.
"Gas," Alpha-01 said. I reached and turned the knob. Done.
We let it sit. Five seconds. Ten. Twenty. The room steadied its breathing. Mia—Carmen's neighbor from two doors down, hair in a bun that looked like it had been fighting a war—clutched the counter and tried to decide whether to cry or kick the stove into next week.
"You okay?" I asked, softer than the alarm deserved.
She nodded too fast. "I—my sister called and I—" She stared at the pan like it had betrayed her vows.
"Everyone out," Alpha-02 said to the hallway, calm, confident, the voice you want on a bad day. "Single file. We go to the stoop. We breathe there."
People obeyed because sometimes authority is a gift you give a voice that sounds like it can handle it.
Ding.
Assistance (Structural Fire Averted): +60
Collateral Avoided (Tenants 7): +21
Ethical Multiplier: +1 (non-destructive containment)
Financial Penalty: −1 (extinguisher charge owed)
Attention (Local): +0.2
We opened windows that should have been opened an hour ago; the alarm grudgingly acknowledged our efforts by lowering its volume by a notch. Mia stared at the extinguisher foam and then at me, making a sound. Gratitude tries to shove through embarrassment and sometimes forgets how.
"Next time," I said, gesturing, "lid first, kill the heat, don't move the pan, don't add water. You know all this now because you almost learned it the hard way."
She laughed and cried in the same breath—the sound people make when adrenaline decides it will not be staying for dessert. "I owe you—"
"You owe me to teach the next person," I said.
On the stoop, a kid in dinosaur pajamas held the terrier like an honorary brother. Carmen appeared with a wet washcloth and moral authority. "You," she told Mia, "sit." Then to me: "You, hero, you're buying me a new extinguisher cartridge."
"Gladly," I said. "Put it on my tab."
Alpha-02 knelt by the dinosaur kid and checked the terrier's nose with a gentleness that tugged at something I didn't have time to name. Micro-trait: when he focuses on a small task, he hums a three-note pattern under his breath so faint you think you imagined it. I filed the lullaby.
My right forearm stung—a small kiss from a popping droplet I hadn't ducked fast enough. Alpha-02 spotted it with the x-ray vision soldiers develop for other people's injuries, and in one fluid motion, had my arm in his hands, water running over it, his eyes scanning for a lister. "Superficial," he diagnosed. "Cool water. No ointment."
"Look at you," I said, grinning despite the sting, "already practicing for Spartan-II EMT certification."
He did not smile. He did, however, rinse the washcloth Carmen had brought before he handed it to me, and that felt like progress in a language you don't learn in a classroom.
NYPD showed up two minutes late and pretended it was on time. I met them with receipts: extinguisher canister, Mia's insistence that she had "gotten distracted," and no damages. One officer eyed my burn like it was a story he didn't want in his notebook; I held it up and said, "Kids and dog are fine." His shoulders lost half an inch. He nodded, noted, and left. The day exhaled.
Counters, Costs, and the Grind
"Another five hundred," I said later, leaning against the car while the city decided what to become next. I wasn't talking about a single incident; I meant the day's trickle—small acts aggregated until the scoreboard made a pleasant noise. I coaxed the HUD forward.
Points: 1,000
"Halfway to your doctorate," I told Alpha-02, meaning the 1,500-pointSpartan-II training overlay he needed to sync up with his brother.
"Training is required," he said—not a plea, not pride—a principle.
"You're already tough," I said, "but the overlay is what pushes you into the tier where physics starts to file a complaint. It's pricey. We'll grind."
"I will train with Alpha-01 until then."
"I will ensure his progress," Alpha-01 added, and if I hadn't known better, I would have sworn there was a grain of older-brother competitiveness in there.
"Good," I said. "Because if he falls behind, I'm blaming you. That's called delegation."
They ignored the joke. I took it personally for three seconds and then bought us all water like a parent bribing children with hydration.
We walked. We learned. We paid small costs. A second alternate-side sacrament landed under the wiper because I'd misread a sign that felt like an IQ test written by a trickster god. We pay it—because rule five isn't window dressing. A guy at a corner tried to sell us a phone "like new" for cash; we declined and bought hinges instead. Mr. Patel let us install a real camera, not the kind that blinks without purpose. He offered to pay; I told him to save it for the Legal Aid Clinic. Points chimed like pocket change adding up in a jar.
We also paid attention to counters—the world's answer to the kind of power scaling that makes conflict boring. The system whispered lessons when I asked for them:
Advisory: Overexposure → legal exposure.
Advisory: Repetition breeds patterns; patterns attract predators.
Advisory: Terrain constraints (narrow stairwells, crowded blocks) reduce dominance.
Advisory: Moral traps (e.g., one man with a gun in a room of bystanders) cannot be solved with force alone.
"Copy," I told the air. "We'll vary our route, our timing, our haircuts." I looked at Alpha-01's hair and amended: "Our hoodies."
We didn't go hunting big names. Peter Parker had been a morning's grace note, not a farming rotation. Wilson Fisk—Kingpin to the men on his payroll—was a shadow we wouldn't go poking just to feel large. S.H.I.E.L.D. was a weather system; Phil Coulson was the polite knock you heard when you'd been too clever for too long. The Avengers were a storm still forming out over the ocean. Our job, for now: bolt things down before the wind arrives.
Squad Habits (and Hot Dogs, Again)
By late afternoon, the block had taken on a different face. People's shoulders sat a little lower. A woman waved from a window without realizing she'd done it. Kids zigzagged on scooters, as if practicing for geometry. Whispers followed us: the giants, the statues, those guys who helped with the fire. I let the rumor mill do what rumor mills do and didn't feed it.
We stopped at a cart and did the New York catechism again—three hot dogs. Time, Alpha-01, declined to ded, and I didn't steal it because you can only push a joke so far. Alpha-02 considered the condiments with a scientist's interest, added exactly three dots of mustard in a pattern that looked suspiciously like a constellation, then ate with grave concentration.
"Delicious," he said—unprompted.
Alpha-01 looked at him, then at me, and if there had been a coin for the machine's "fondness," it would have clunked out the prize chute.
"You two," I said, pointing the last bit of bun at them, "are going to be a problem for my cholesterol, aren't you?"
"The mission continues," Alpha-01 said, which is his way of saying you're buying pizza next without actually knowing he says that.
"Tomorrow," I promised. "I'll teach you the word slice like it's a theology."
Alpha-02 tilted his head. "Slice?"
"Oh no," I said, clutching my heart. "You poor, sheltered soul. Uncle Shredder is going to fix you."
Interiority Check (Because Armor Isn't Enough)
New York settled into blue-gold light. We found a stoop that had a structural relationship with sunsets and sat. The system was quiet, a cat purring in the corner of the brain.
"Question," I said, not looking at either of them. "Do you want names?"
"Designations are sufficient," Alpha-01 said immediately.
Alpha-02 considered—a beat longer than his brother. "We can earn names," he said carefully.
Something in my chest moved. "Sold," I said. "No Beta jokes. When one shows up, he picks it. Until then, you're my Alphas, which is not a personality test and definitely not an Instagram hashtag."
Alpha-01's mouth didn't move. His shoulders lost a millimeter of tension anyway. Micro-trait: he prefers order to labels. Alpha-02's fingers tapped his knee once—two count in, two count out—then stilled. Breathing as an etronome. Micro-trait: cadence as comfort.
"Another question," I said, because the review I'd given myself about interiority and ethical posture wasn't going to police itself. "How do you feel about being commanded?"
Alpha-01 answered like it wasn't a trick. "Purposeful."
Alpha-02 took longer. "It is… simple," he said finally. "Clear. I will learn the parts that are not simple."
"You will," I said quietly. "And we'll make sure the simple stays good. If I ever start treating you like tools, you say something ugly at me."
Alpha-01: "Understood."
Alpha-02: "Copy."
I rubbed the slight burn on my arm and let the sting report in. "Als, —today when the stroller broke free—" The horn came back, the memory I keep in a box. I breathed once and set it down. "Never mind. The point is, thank you for being fast when I wasn't."
"You were fast," Alpha-01 said, which for him might as well be, "I saw the bruise on your ryhistory, and I'm not telling anyone."
Ledger, Lines, and the Long Game
Back at the apartment, the fan had decided on a new rattle. I tuned it with a screwdriver in the time it takes a noodle to soften and wrote the day's ledger on the back of a pizza flyer because the future belongs to people who write on trash.
Positives:
— Alpha-02 summoned without incident.
— Extortion pressure on Patel: resisted, documented, cameras upgraded.
— Grease fire: contained, no injuries, minimal property loss.
— Multiple small interventions, zero broken bones, zero viral spectacles.
— Points: back to 1,000. Halfway to Alpha-02's training overlay.
Costs:
— Two parking tickets.
— Extinguisher recharge owed.
— Small burn (superficial).
— Heat:NYPD +0.3, Local Org +0.2.
— Visibility: three low-quality uploads, likely to circulate locally.
Mitigations:
— Vary patterns.
— Use third-party institutions (Legal Aid, community boards, churches).
— Keep hoodies, keep hands visible, keep words sparse on camera.
— When in doubt: fix the hinge. Bolt the ladder. Buy the fridge.
I added a sixth line to the rules and underlined it:
We protect the timeline to the extent that it protects people. We don't worship canon. We worship outcomes.
Alpha-01 read it once and nodded. Alpha-02 read it twice and said, "Copy," then, after a moment, that sounded like a lesson making a home, "Understood."
We ate Carmen's cookies and declared them a strategic resource. I iced my forearm with a bag of frozen peas like a sitcom dad. The system purred:
Training (Alpha-01): 12% → 13% (overlay learning while idle)
Training (Alpha-02): 1% → 2% (baseline optimization)
Note: S.H.I.E.L.D. correlation +0.02 (background awareness). Maintain variance.
Note: Ethical multiplier intact.
"Tomorrow," I said to the ceiling, to the HUD, to the men who were and weren't like me, "we grind smart. No capes. No headlines. Screws, cameras, slices."
"Slice," Alpha-02 repeated, experimentally, as if it were a word that might break, and he wanted to learn how to hold it.
Alpha-01 tilted his head. "The mission continues."
"Yeah," I said, and let the weight of mortality feel like an anchor instead of a limit. "It does."
The Marvel Cinematic Universe kept turning somewhere beyond our windows—Tony Stark caught a camera angle he liked; Nick Fury moved a magnet on a board to see if a weather pattern changed; Wilson Fisk signed something with a pen that had seen more of the world than it should; a lawyer with a cane listened to a block teach itself a new song; a teenage boy in a hoodie opened his backpack and found questions that would become webs or proofs or both.
Us? We had 1,000 points, two Spartans with different micro-traits, and a building that had started to believe it could knock on our door. We had lines, and we'd held them. We had costs, and we'd paid them without getting cocky about it.
"Lights," I said. Alpha-01 flicked the switch. The room went soft.
"Tomorrow we teach you pizza," I said into the dark. "And how to argue about it like a New Yorker."
"Understood," Alpha-01 said from the doorway—his night post by choice.
"Copy," Alpha-02 said from the window—three-step offset, breath steady, a three-note hum so quiet I wasn't sure I'd heard it.
The fan breathed. The city breathed. I did, too.
The mission continues.