Morning arrived carrying its usual New York orchestra—sirens stitched to delivery trucks, pigeons heckling from the ledges, a neighbor's radio mixing salsa into the steam rising off a manhole. Light leaked through the cracked blinds of the top-floor apartment and painted my ceiling in uneven bands. I yawned, sat up on the couch we upgraded from "box" to "furniture" at 1 a.m., and took inventory.
Alpha-01 was a silhouette against the sky, stationed on the roof with the posture of a lock.
Alpha-02 had already turned the basement into a metronome—footwork taps, breath ladders, the soft thud of medicine balls—Alpha-05 keeping pace at his shoulder.
Alpha-03's voice carried up two flights—quiet, instructive—while 06 and 08 learned to lift with their hips and not with their egos.
Alpha-04 moved like a compass needle, correcting 07's stance with a length of metal rod and a patient knuckle-tap to the elbow when it drifted.
Eight Spartans awake before sunrise. I raised my paper cup. "Early birds," I told the room. "Meanwhile, I'm the genius who drinks coffee and points at things. Balance."
I knocked back the last swallow—burnt and perfect—and stood. "Alright, squad. Family field trip. Today we shop."
Alpha-02 surfaced from the stairwell like a calm theorem. "Objective."
"Equipment," I said, rubbing my hands as if that generated capital. "This building's got bones. Now we add muscle. Stop one: gym supply. Stop two: tools and mats. Stop three: kit that keeps us legal and useful. By tonight, this place won't feel like a haunted apartment complex; it'll feel like a base."
"Civilian exposure," Alpha-03 reminded me.
"Let them stare," I said. "In this city everyone is too busy starring in their own show to watch ours. Do it clean, do it fast, keep the smiles turned on."
Alpha-01 dropped back in from the roof hatch. A small tilt of his head counted as a go signal. "Proceed."
The Alpha Express Learns Manhattan
The Alpha Express—our not-quite-tour bus—rolled out of the lot with eight Spartans in rows behind me. Driving a big white coach through Manhattan is already an attention magnet; add eight men who look like they could deadlift the Lincoln Tunnel and we turned heads like a parade float that had escaped.
"You feel those looks?" I asked, easing us through a river of yellow cabs. "Betting pool says the crowd is split between 'sports team' and 'extremely polite cult.'"
Freshly upgraded Alpha-05 deadpanned from two rows back: "Misinterpretation irrelevant."
"Oh, it's very relevant," I said. "If we're a cult, at least we're a stylish one."
Alpha-04 ghosted up the aisle with a clipboard—yes, paper; he trusts what doesn't crash. "Routing: West Side Highway southbound. Loading bays on 12th. Return via 10th to avoid sanitation convoy."
"See?" I announced to no one in particular. "We've got logistics. Somewhere, Coulson's heart rate just dropped three beats."
Warehouse of Iron
The gym-supply warehouse sat in an industrial strip where brick walls keep secrets and loading docks snack on delivery trucks. Inside smelled like oil, rubber, and ambition. A salesman clocked us and forgot how to blink.
"Uh… can I help you?" he tried.
"Absolutely," I beamed. "Show me your most overbuilt racks, bars that don't weep under load, platforms that forgive bad decisions, and five of everything."
"Five?" His eyebrows moved north of reason.
"Cinco," I said, because we're an inclusive organization.
He led us down aisles lined with power racks, plate trees, cable towers, and benches that had seen things. Alpha-06—who still tries to prove points with wrists—curled fingers under a squat rack's crossbar and lifted. The steel groaned. The rack didn't budge.
"Good," I said. "If it survives 06 trying to date it, it survives anything."
Alpha-02 checked welds with the tender attention of a jeweler. Alpha-04 crouched by the baseplates, doing quiet math on load distribution and anchor patterns. "Floor rating required," he said, which in Alpha-04 means we will not punch through a century-old slab because we got excited about glutes.
We ordered rubber stall mats by the pallet, shock plates for platforms, and the little things that make sweat sacred instead of sloppy: chalk bowls, band pegs, extra J-cups, barbell collars that don't bounce. Alpha-03 drifted through cable stacks adjusting pulleys to learn their personalities; Alpha-07 mirrored his touch like a shadow learning to be its own thing.
The salesman scribbled as if the ink might run out. "This is… a lot."
"Add sleds for pushing and rugs that forgive them," I said. "Add battle ropes because cardio is real and cruel. Add rowers that can handle enthusiasm and air bikes that will make grown men reconsider life choices."
He swallowed, nodded, and pointed toward forklift beeps. "Loading bay?"
"We'll self-load," I said.
His eyes flickered to the bus outside. "Into… that?"
"Sir," I said reverently, "you are about to witness Alpha Movers."
Alpha Movers, LLC (Not a Real LLC—Yet)
Two hours of moving steel turned gawkers into fans. The Spartans ferried racks like they were wardrobe boxes and not several hundred pounds of welded promise. Alpha-01 and 02 carried a platform between them like a table set for dinner. Alpha-06 shouldered a stack of plates that reached his chin. Alpha-07 jogged past with a sled and didn't even breathe like an apology.
People watched—workers on smoke breaks, a kid with a scooter, a woman holding a coffee and an expression that said I have lived in this city my whole life and this is new. I handed the kid a collar like a souvenir; he held it up like a trophy.
"You know," I said, holding the loading dock door with my foot, "if the hero business dries up, Alpha Movers—'We Carry Your Regrets'—pays for pizza."
No one laughed. Alpha-05 gave me half a nod, which in his dialect means I understand your joke's structure, Commander.
By the time we finished, the Alpha Express looked like it had eaten a gym and was proud of it. We strapped equipment to anchor points Alpha-04 had installed that morning and rolled out, waving at the warehouse crew like we hadn't just redefined their sense of "heavy."
Foundations and Floors
Back at the Alpha Complex, we turned the first basement into a cathedral to earned pain. Alpha-04 paced the concrete with a stud finder and a grease pencil, marking anchor points according to a floor-load diagram he seemed to conjure out of thin air. We laid down stall mats edge to edge—a black ocean that quieted footsteps—then bolted racks to plates that spread the load across a wide square of slab because I like my building more than I like gravity.
"Platforms here," Alpha-02 said, toeing off a boundary in chalk. "Heavy pulls on the wall side. Clearance lanes behind. Mobility corner by the column."
"Cable machines along the east," Alpha-03 added. "Less echo. Easier to talk breath."
"Chalk stations away from the fans," Alpha-04 said, because he has lived and cleaned.
We built the room. Racks rose like rib bones. Barbells slid into gun racks (the only guns allowed in the first basement). Plate trees sprouted along the wall and grew into forests. Sled lanes cut through the middle like roads no one could argue with. In the far corner, a stretch grid—blue tape and intention—waited for hips to confess their sins.
When Alpha-04 tested a bench under a stack thick enough to make a chiropractor weep, the steel creaked and held. He nodded once. Alpha-01 flicked the lights off and back on, memorizing how the shadows behaved.
"Not bad," I said, hands on hips, heart doing that warm, stupid thing. "This room is already better than half the gyms in Manhattan."
Alpha-02 rolled an air bike into position and patted the seat like introducing a wolf to lambs. "Cardio."
The rookies tried not to look afraid.
Tools, Mats, and the Gospel of Fixing
We hit a warehouse for hand tools and consumables next—dollies, pallet jacks, ratchet straps, impact drivers, concrete anchors, stud anchors, masonry bits, pry bars, a ladder system that transforms like something Stark would design if he cared about gutters. Alpha-04 loaded a cart with electrical odds and ends because a building wired in a different century tends to negotiate.
Back at home, we staged a tool wall like a shrine—everything outlined so you can tell at a glance if something's missing and which Spartan owes me twenty push-ups for misplacing a Torx. Alpha-05 drilled anchors with the tidy competence of a man who has always known there's a right way to do things and enjoys doing it.
A neighbor from across the alley paused at the freight door, groceries heavy in her arms. Alpha-06 got there first.
"We help," he said, taking a bag like it could break. He carried them up three flights and returned with an unexpected smile on his face like he'd found a new muscle. Somewhere behind my eyes, the System chimed a soft ding I pretended not to hear. Five points? Ten? It doesn't matter. The city was learning our name the right way.
The Armory, Reimagined
There's a version of this day where we walk into a shop, buy an arsenal, and build a live-fire range in a basement in New York City. That version ends with Coulson turning my $5M retainer into a cautionary tale and our building into a court exhibit.
We live in a different version.
First: a phone call. "Coulson," I said, pacing under a dead fluorescent bulb that Alpha-04 had already marked for replacement. "We're stocking for nonlethal first. Compliance gear, shields, helmets, gloves, flex-cuffs, and—listen closely—sim rounds, UTM kits, laser cartridges, airsoft for close-quarters drills. Live fire happens offsite at licensed ranges. Paperwork will be so clean you can iron shirts on it."
Pause. The sound of a man who'd been waiting for me to preemptively be sensible. "That works," he said. "We can assist with range access upstate. In-city storage requires safes, serial logs, humidity control, and access protocols. You know the drill."
"I do," I said. And I meant it.
We went to a legal dealer for the things the city allows when you do it correctly: storage systems, biometric safes, locking racks, serialized inventory software, padded training batons, riot shields (don't call them that in public), Level IIIA helmets, eye/ear pro for days. We purchased inert training disableds, blue guns for hand-position drills, and a stack of targets that somehow all depict a person intending poor life decisions in grayscale.
"Relax," I told the clerk whose hand hovered near a panic button until he realized we were spending money and not creating an incident. "We're the good guys. Annoying, but good."
Back at the building, the second basement transformed into the armory. Alpha-04 mounted a dehumidifier and ran a drain line like a surgeon. Alpha-02 organized a serial log that would make a compliance auditor purr. Alpha-03 taped CQB squares for sim work and hung curtains of dense foam to catch training rounds that would never be fired in anger at our walls because we respect concrete and neighbors.
A sign at eye level, printed, laminated, and underlined twice:
NO LIVE FIRE IN CITY LIMITS.
SIM / LASER / AIRSOFT ONLY ON PREMISES.
LIVE TRAINING BY APPOINTMENT—LICENSED RANGE.
LOG YOUR GEAR. LOG YOUR ROUNDS. LOG YOUR BREATH.
"Functional," Alpha-01 said, standing at the door, scanning the room like it was a map to something worth guarding.
"More than functional," I corrected. "It's disciplined. There's a difference."
We stacked shields in a rack, preloaded med pouches, checked tourniquets, staged IFAKs like altar candles. If the city dropped its worst day in our lap, we'd have hands, not just fists.
Upstairs, Humans
The rest of the afternoon turned the building from shell to shelter. Veterans supervised while rookies hauled beds, frames, dressers—the sturdy kind that survive moving day and men who don't apologize to furniture. Alpha-03 ran a line: up the stairs, down the stairs, a rhythm of breath and wood, 06 and 08 syncing footfalls automatically. Alpha-04 arranged laundry in the basement—industrial washers, dryers that don't lie about time remaining, detergent storage that wouldn't win any design awards but will never spill.
We stocked the ground-floor kitchen with crates of canned goods, sealed tubs of rice and oats, proteins that don't argue, and fresh produce that would vanish under a Spartan's fork in seconds. Water—so much water—stacked waist high along a wall with a rotation plan Alpha-02 taped above like scripture.
Floor plan, for the record:
Roof:Alpha-01's realm. Eyes, weather, drone launch point (license pending; we're boring, remember).
10th (Top): My not-office. Couch, table, whiteboard, coffee. Door open unless sleeping or lying about it.
9th:Alpha-01.
8th:Alpha-02 + Alpha-05.
7th:Alpha-03 + Alpha-06 + Alpha-08.
6th:Alpha-04 + Alpha-07.
5th and below: Overflow, storage, and a dream of a recovery room—ice, compression, the kind of quiet that heals.
2nd: "Community" space—mats for yoga no one will admit to doing, tables, books that don't involve shooting.
Basement-1:Gym.
Basement-2:Armory / CQB Sim.
Basement-3:Storage / Tools / The Place Where Alpha-04 Fixes Things and Mutters
Lights burned on for the first time in years. If you walked by on the sidewalk at dusk, you'd see motion in windows that used to be silence. Not menace. Life.
A guy from the corner coffee cart knocked on the freight door, carrying two boxes that smelled like a truce. "Neighbors," he said, with the bravado of someone who has sold to cops, crooks, and construction crews. "No charge for first delivery. Welcome to the block."
"We'll pay double tomorrow," I said, accepting the cups and handing them out. Alpha-07 took his like he wasn't sure coffee was legal. He sipped; his eyebrows betrayed him by enjoying it.
"We help," Alpha-06 told the cart guy automatically, which wasn't the point but also exactly the point.
The Part Where the Building Becomes Ours
After sunset, the first basement clanged properly. Racks sang in low notes, plates kissed steel, the air bikes whooshed like windmills turning promises into taxes. Alpha-02 called cadence for a conditioning circuit—thirty seconds on, thirty off—while Alpha-05 mirrored his pace with the quiet pride of someone who kept up.
"Feet," Alpha-03 told 08, tapping his shoelaces. "They tell the truth before anything else does."
"Understood," 08 said, and his next rep was a degree better everywhere because he'd fixed the thing at the bottom.
Upstairs, Alpha-04 walked 07 through weapon-free control patterns with that metal rod and a patience that looked like kindness from the outside and engineering from the inside.
The second basement hummed with the soft pop of sim rounds finding foam and the gentle beep of laser cartridges registering hits. The paper targets suffered bravely; the walls did not suffer at all. Our neighbors were not invited to participate, which is the best PR.
And me? I did what commanders do on good days: floated. Corrected here, encouraged there, kept a tally in my head of things we still needed (two more tool carts, degreaser that doesn't smell like regret, new hose for the dehumidifier, a sign that says PLEASE DON'T DROP DUMBBELLS and means it). I walked past the front glass and caught sight of our sign:
UNDERGOING REPAIRS
CONTRACTORS ON SITE
PLEASE PARDON NOISE
(WE CAN HELP CARRY YOUR GROCERIES)
I smiled. We were going to earn this block one small, useful thing at a time. Hell's Kitchen does not mind soldiers. It hates bullies and loves hands.
Compliance, Cash Flow, and the Coulson Clause
Between loads and reps, I checked the numbers. The $5M S.H.I.E.L.D. retainer—the clean one with oversight—had lost weight today: equipment, mats, tools, safes, helmets, shields, crates of PPE, the bus insurance, utilities deposits, a deposit to a licensed range upstate for live-fire days, and a smaller but not negligible line item labeled Coffee (Diplomatic).
"Funding adequate," Alpha-02 said, not looking up from a clipboard he had stolen from Alpha-04 when logistics turned into math. "Projected strain begins with repairs."
"We'll make it," I told him. "New York is a buffet of named problems. We pick the right ones. The System pays. Coulson stays comfortable. Everyone wins."
He nodded. Comfort is not his goal, but he likes plans that survive contact with buildings.
As if invoked, my phone vibrated with a number that never calls by accident.
"How's the Complex?" Coulson asked, not wasting calories on greeting.
"Standing," I said. "Basement gym in, armory sim only, safes and serials, you'd faint from compliance joy. We're buying quiet where we can."
He made the sound of a man who approves without admitting it. "Keep it that way. I'd rather read your name on expense reports than incident reports."
"Same," I said. "If we break something, it'll be a sweatband."
"Doubtful," he said mildly, and hung up before I could make it weirder.
Roofline
Night wrote the city in neon and sodium. I climbed to the roof with a cup of coffee that thought it was a trophy. Alpha-01 stood with hands light on the parapet, gaze moving in slow sweeps that took the whole borough into consideration. A police helicopter droned somewhere east. Something somewhere sizzled on a grill. Jazz leaked from a window three buildings down and almost forgave a trumpet for being learning.
Below, our windows glowed for the first time in years. If you stood on the far side of the street and looked up, you'd see nine separate motions that were actually one story: a squad turning concrete and air into a home.
"Not bad, huh?" I said to Alpha-01, raising my cup to the skyline. "A week ago we were baking in a New Mexico parking lot. Now we've got a building, a bus, three SUVs, a gym that could make The Rock call us for a day pass, and an armory that would make a compliance officer cry happy tears."
"Progress achieved," he said, which is Spartan for you did well; don't ruin it by spiking the ball.
"Tomorrow," I said, watching a cab argue with a pothole, "we start paying rent to the city in the only currency it respects."
"Service," he said, no question mark.
"Exactly." I took a drink. "We'll map Hell's Kitchen by need. Find the places that bleed and put fingers on the right arteries. Keep S.H.I.E.L.D. bored. Keep our neighbors curious but not worried. Train until restraint is a reflex. And when the MCU decides to throw a god or a robot through a wall again, we make sure the wall is ours and the people behind it are fine."
We stood like that for a while—me and the sentinel—letting the city do its heartbeat thing. Downstairs, Alpha-02 called last set like a church bell. Alpha-03 walked 08 through one more quiet rep because form learned tired is form kept real. Alpha-04 wrote a task list on the whiteboard in handwriting that could cut glass. 06 filled water. 07 cleaned mats like it mattered. 05 turned off lights with military neatness. The Alpha Express slept in the lot like a whale waiting for tides. The SUVs glinted like punctuation marks.
I'd joked all day—because jokes are lighter to carry than fear—but standing up here with the noise and the glow and my men below, I let the armor shift. For one private breath, the smirk fell away and something softer stood where it had been.
Family first. Not the kind you're born to. The kind you build. The kind that makes a city as loud as this feel like a room you can lock with a word.
"Good work, boys," I told the night.
No one answered.
Which is how I knew they'd heard me.