The Alpha Complex woke like a drill instructor's whistle—no snooze button, no mercy. By the time I poured coffee into a chipped mug, the place had already picked a tempo: iron kissing iron in the first basement, clipped commands on the range two floors down, skillets snapping on a hot plate someone had smuggled into the lobby against my very clear "no fires near the lobby couch" directive. Eleven Spartans moving as if the building were a lung, each breath a rep.
Alpha-01 floated into the doorway at the top of the stairs, precisely one pace inside the frame—his ritual. He taps his knuckles on every threshold he crosses, greeting the structure like an old comrade. "Commander."
"You've got that look," I said, taking the first sip. "Streets?"
A single nod; the yes you give when the answer was never in doubt.
"Good," I said. "Biggest patrol yet. Eleven Spartans means eleven chances to make New York safer—or at least cleaner."
He shifted his weight to his right foot, that tiny tell that says his head is already three blocks away, running scenarios. Downstairs, Alpha-05's voice carried up in short, even counts—the human metronome driving Alpha-09 through squats. On the range, Alpha-03 kept 11's breathing steady—a low, almost unhearable hum 11 carries like a tuning fork, converted into four-count box breaths until shoulders melt a centimeter. Alpha-04 was re-aligning mats at perfect right angles because he is constitutionally incapable of letting a corner exist uncorrected. Alpha-02 adjusted his watchband—that means he's about to transition from observation to movement. I don't think he knows I've clocked it; I don't plan on telling him.
We stacked in the lobby like a moving wall. Through the glass, two tourists froze mid selfie, phones slowly lowering as the reflection of eleven tall, broad men snapped into focus.
"Yesterday was great," I said, tapping a laminated city map I'd taped to the wall. "Today we expand. Split more, cover more ground, catch more. If we don't hit a thousand points, I'll eat my hoodie."
"Impractical," Alpha-02 observed without looking away from the door.
"It's very comfy," I said. "I'll season it."
I ran a finger across the borough like I was dealing out cards.
Team One: 01, 02, 03 — Hammer squad in Midtown. Stay organized. Crowd control is a performance art—hit your marks. No casualties.
Team Two: 04, 07, 09 — Lower Manhattan. Gang cleanup, petty crews with big mouths. Avoid alarming civilians; you are not a horror movie.
Team Three: 05, 10, 11 — Uptown training run. 05, keep the rookies tight to your hip. Let them work, but you're the governor on the engine.
Team Four: 06, 08 — Central Park and the nearby ring. Plenty of opportunity; too many trees. Visibility is a joke; watch the edges.
"And me?" I hooked the map back onto a pushpin. "I'm the circus barker. I'll float—supervise, manage public relations, preempt anyone who thinks 'enhanced men' and 'vigilantes' rhyme. If a reporter gets brave, I'm the smile."
No questions. They rarely have any once the lanes are drawn. We filed onto the Alpha Express (yes, we're keeping the name) and rolled toward Midtown.
Midtown: The Hammer Finds the Nail
I stepped off with 01, 02, 03 into the density where taxis bleat in F major and tourists make every lane a hazard. We'd barely made it past a man selling knockoff sunglasses when a purse snatch tried outrunning his decision.
Alpha-02 moved on the second beep of the crosswalk. Two fingers at a collar, one graceful pivot, and gravity remembered its manners. He returned the purse before my coffee thought about cooling. Zip ties. Awkward applause. Someone said, "Are they Avengers?" and someone else hissed "Shh," like heroes are a library.
"Another satisfied customer," I said. "Don't forget to tip your local Spartan."
"Proceeding," 02 said, watchband set, eyes already reading three blocks ahead.
New Yorkers track patterns. Eleven giants moving through their morning is—at best—a disruption. At worst? A story. You don't let a story write itself.
Two blocks later, a different rhythm: the hollow clatter of a phone on tile, the crowd's tightening gasp. Subway entrance. I caught the edge of the scene; a man teetered close to the yellow line, glazed eyes dead set on the tunnel throat, shoulders rolling like a wave that hadn't decided where to break.
"03," I said.
He slid past me like the air owed him a favor. Alpha-03 does doors like he does people: respectful, without startling. Palms visible, chin neutral, voice set at indoor human instead of authoritative statue. "Hey," he said, just enough to hook a heartbeat. "Lousy mornings are still mornings."
The man blinked at him, not at the elegant monsters flanking his peripherals. "I can't—" he started, and 03 didn't make him finish. He took space, let the man have a choice, not a command. Alpha-01 moved to the edge of the platform and simply existed—a presence the size of safety. I palmed the emergency pillar, ready to pop it if physics got ambitious.
Three breaths later, 03 had the man's hand in his—human contact softer than a directive—and turned him a half step away from the rail. The train screamed into the station, wind peeling at jackets. No one died.
The crowd pretended not to watch and watched anyway. A woman at the far end recorded everything and then put her phone down without pressing upload. That is public sentiment: fifty tiny choices that add up to a city not hating you.
Ding.Reward: 50 points. Target: Civilian group. Reason: De-escalation, platform safety.
I didn't grin. Sometimes you let a win land quiet.
We surfaced to clear air, and I peeled away to check on Team Two.
Lower Manhattan: Precision, Not Spectacle
04, 07, 09 had found an alley with ambition. I arrived to a six-man chorus already on the ground and three holdouts negotiating with reality. Alpha-07 blocked the mouth of the alley with his body the way a bollard does—mute and persuasive. Alpha-09 drove a textbook tackle that put a would-be lookout on the wall without any head bounce. Alpha-04 moved like instructional video: guard check, elbow, step, pressure to the wrist that most wrists consider impolite.
"Choreography!" I called, staying out of the frame. "Broadway will be calling."
"Area secured," 04 replied. No panting. No smug. Just fact.
Two bystanders filmed. One yelled, "Yo, you can't hit him like that!" The one in the hoodie whose voice cracks three times on the same syllable. He wasn't wrong—force is an optics problem even when it's correct.
"Easy," I said, palms raised, voice pitched for spectators. "Capture only. Everyone goes home with their pulse."
Hoodie blinked, recalibrating. 04 adjusted his grip, just visible enough to read as care on a screen. 09 shifted his knee an inch off the shoulder blade of his very loud friend and asked, "Breathing?" The guy spat a curse that ended on the wrong consonant. Breathing: confirmed.
A woman peered around a parked car. "They broke my brother's nose," she said, voice thin with tears and anger.
I walked over—hands visible, smile tucked away. "Ma'am," I said. "We'll get him checked. He'll hate the cuffs; he'll love the hospital."
She looked me up and down like I was a tax bill. "You're not the police."
"No," I said. "I'm the part that gets between your brother and a prison record that's worse than a broken nose. We hand them over. Clean."
Her jaw worked. That's a lot to process when your day was supposed to be about laundry. "Fine," she muttered. "Fine."
Ding.Reward: 80 points. Targets: Civilians at scene. Reason: Non-lethal resolution, medical check initiated.
Optics are a fight, too. You win them by remembering people have mothers.
I tossed a glance at 04. He was already on his radio. "EMS requested." Of course he was.
I let the sirens do their work and headed uptown.
Uptown: Teaching the Drift to Hunt
05, 10, 11 were exactly where you'd expect trouble and need to triple-check your wallet: a corner bodega with a lottery line, the bell over the door a little too eager to ring. Two men with guns and not enough common sense had picked a midday slot, which is the mark of an amateur: lunch rush equals witnesses.
05 had already disarmed the closer one—hand on the slide, twist, heel of the palm to wrist, the gun dropping clean to the floor. Alpha-10 took the doorway, his default left-drift turned into a wedge that kept the exit not an option. Alpha-11 tackled the second man so gently it looked like a dance move and ended in a pin that spared the ribs a lawsuit.
"Quick, clean, nobody shot," I said, letting the clerk's "ohmyGodohmyGod" cycle to a close. "Great first day, rookies. Round of applause."
05 didn't do applause. He did inventory: weapons cleared, safeties engaged, zip ties, the small nod you give a rookie when you mean Keep doing that and you might survive me.
The clerk—mid-fifties, Mets hat, eyes a storm—looked at the mirror where the cigarettes live and then at 05. "You broke my glass," he said, because adrenaline says stupid things.
05 dipped his chin. "We will pay for repairs."
The clerk blinked like I'd spoken in Asgardian. "You what?"
"We will pay for repairs," 05 repeated, and the clerk's shoulders softened five millimeters. Money is empathy's translator.
Ding.Reward: 120 points. Targets: Store staff and customers. Reason: Prevented armed robbery, restitution pledged.
A kid peered around his mother's legs, eyes huge. "Are you Avengers?" he whispered.
I leaned in, conspiratorial. "Close," I said. "We're the understudy that keeps the show running on time." He nodded solemnly like I'd bestowed a title.
05 gathered 10 and 11 outside. He set them in a line. "After-action: Door dominance was correct, follow-through too deep by four inches. 11: hip pressure good, head control late." 10 drifted his left foot like a patient bad habit; 05 didn't fight it. He trained it into a trap. "Use the drift to lead them into the corner," he said. "Make your flaw their mistake."
11 hummed the faintest note as he breathed. 03 would be proud.
Central Park: Trees, Trouble, and the Temptation to Run
I caught up with 06 and 08 near the reservoir, where runners pretend the city is kind and ducks pretend they own the lease. Two teenagers decided a woman's bag was less hers than theirs and learned that physics is unsentimental. 06 erased the leader's angle without breaking him; 08 turned on a dime and ran.
"First chase," I called as 08 bolted after the second kid. "Not bad. Faster next time."
He didn't look back. Good. Look back and you learn the wrong lesson.
Ten seconds of footwork later, 08 had a hand on the kid's hoodie, then a calm, "Stop." The kid did, partly because 08 is shaped like a No and partly because he had nowhere smart to go.
Then the call that shrinks time: "My child!" a voice tearing, directionless. A woman near the pond—empty stroller, wheels still spinning. The fear in her face hit like a thrown stone.
"08!" I barked, and he let go of the hoodie kid. "Go."
The kid bolted; I'll deal with that version of justice later. 08 was already scanning—eyes low, near the waterline. Shoes. Little ones. Two feet from the edge.
06 reached the mother, hands visible. "Ma'am, what color? Name?" He didn't touch her; he anchored her. She made the sound you make when your bones try to run. "Pink—Lily—pink shoes—she was here—"
08 was in the pond up to his shins before she finished. He plucked the child up like precious cargo, water slicking down his forearms, and handed her into her mother's shaking hands.
The mother made a noise like prayer and collapsing at once. 06's hand hovered near her elbow and didn't land. "You're okay. She's okay."
Ding.Reward: 300 points. Targets: Mother and child; nearby civilians. Reason: Rapid locate and recovery near water hazard.
The teen who'd run on the hoodie stood twenty yards away, guilt sparring with luck. He watched the reunion, shoulders hunching. 08 looked at him and did not chase. One lesson at a time.
I breathed out slow. The pond exhaled with me.
Floating the Lines: PR, Neighbors, and the One-Eyed Ghost
Between teams, I played janitor of narrative. A woman with a microphone tried a question with "vigilante" in it; I gave her community guardian and capture only until "vigilante" sounded like a word from a bad seventies comic. Two cops from the local precinct rolled their eyes at the paperwork we were generating and took custody of a package of zip-tied mistakes without commentary. One of them, a sergeant who could have been cast as NYPD in any procedural, muttered, "At least your boys don't scuff the uniforms." We're getting there.
A black SUV I pretended not to see pretended not to watch. S.H.I.E.L.D. has tints with opinions. My phone vibrated.
From: UnknownCrowd work cleaner today. Keep the mothers on your side.—P.
Coulson texts like a man who thinks punctuation is emotion. I sent back a thumbs-up emoji that he will read as trouble brewing; it's our bit.
A Noon Pivot: Cookies and Fire Code
At noon, we regrouped long enough to gel the open-house plan. Fire code inspector had come through yesterday, clipboard bristling with the thirst to be respected. We promised cookies and tours; today we made a grocery list.
"04, 08—signage and traffic flow," I said. "No live fire, no rookies on display, no filming inside the range. 05—neighbor outreach. Mrs. Hernandez gets the first tray of empanadas. If she blesses us, the building will stop side-eyeing our squats."
"Understood," 04 said, already sketching a floor plan on a legal pad like he'd been waiting his whole life to marshal civilians through a maze of mats.
"Acknowledged," 05 added, which in his language means he'd already taped the first flyer to the elevator.
We ate in shifts, which for Spartans means fuel, not lunch. I stole a bite of a cannoli 06 had in his pocket because why did 06 have a cannoli in his pocket? He shrugged, perfectly unaware of the miracle he had committed. I promoted him two imaginary ranks.
Afternoon: Heat, Gravity, and a Little Bit of Luck
The city saved a bigger test for late afternoon: scaffolding on 7th decided it had a philosophical disagreement with bolts. A pipe coupler pinged down to the sidewalk like a doorbell from God. The worker on the second level swore in a language that deserved better acoustics.
01 broke into a trot; 02 was already dividing the scene into quadrants. "Cordon." 03's gaze climbed the frame of metal.
"Do not go up," I said—because the line between guardian and reckless is sometimes one bad decision.
"He's clipped wrong," 03 replied, but he didn't climb. He found the anchor line on the ground, traced it to a failed hook, and fixed the problem without becoming the story.
"Sir," 02 called to a foreman with a neon vest and a face shaped like a bulldog. "Shut down for the hour. We'll keep your people out of liability."
The foreman weighed a lawsuit against a schedule and picked not being sued.
The worker climbed down, shook 03's hand, and said something that made 03's mouth move a millimeter into something like pride before it remembered it wasn't allowed. Small moments make the big ones stick.
Ding.Reward: 60 points. Targets: Construction crew, pedestrians. Reason: Prevented injury, coordinated temporary shutdown.
The Return: Zip Ties, Numbers, and a City That Breathed Easier
We rolled the Alpha Express into the garage before sunset. Doors down. Engines cooling. The day's gifts for NYPD stacked on a workbench like a buffet nobody wanted to eat: wallets, watches, two knives, three cheap pistols with the serial numbers filed with the urgency of a procrastinated term paper. The suspects—zip-tied, grumpy, breathing—sat against the cinderblock and reconsidered Monday.
I stretched until my spine wrote me a complaint. "What did I say? Four zones at once. Efficiency."
01 gave the report in a sentence because he is allergic to more. "Midtown secure."
04: "Lower Manhattan cleared. Medical requested for one. No fracture; contusion only."
05: "Rookies improving. Door dominance better. Drift trained."
06: "Central Park patrolled. Child recovered. No injuries."
The System chimed in the back of my skull, smug as a scoreboard.
Ding.Points earned: 2,000Reason: Multiple captures, assists, de-escalations, and incident prevention across Manhattan (4 zones).Advisory: Public sentiment uptick within two-block radius of incidents; minor social chatter on "paramilitary presence." Risk: Manageable. Maintain "capture only" message. Suggested: community event within 24–48 hours.
"Now that is a result," I whistled.
And just like that, the day had bought us more of what matters: choice. Points mean training or people. They mean heads in beds. They mean time.
Dinner: Precision Chewing and a City's Small Blessings
Dinner was almost normal if you squinted and ignored the way 11 very large men make a lobby look like a dollhouse. Pizza, soda, and a delivery guy who improved his mile time every time we opened the door. He didn't even ask for a signature; I chased him down the steps with cash anyway because fear should never be a tip.
We ate like professionals. 02 set his can down exactly between the two screws on the table top, because of course he did. 03 folded his slice with symmetry that would have impressed a geometry teacher. 04 wiped his hands before he touched anything that wasn't disposable because grease is an enemy that will end a civilization. 05 tapped a two-beat on the table before every bite; 06 kept his plate three inches from the edge like it's a regulation he wrote. 07 rolled his right shoulder once and then seemed to remember shoulders should be boring. 08 stacked empty boxes into perfect towers and then smiled when 09 left one slightly misaligned on purpose because perfection is a flex and humor is a shield. 10 drifted left even while sitting—he'll do that until he learns it's a weapon. 11 hummed under his breath so quietly the soda's fizz tried to harmonize.
Mrs. Hernandez knocked, and I made the grave error of answering without shoes. "Niño," she scolded, pushing a tray of empanadas into my hands like a judge handing down a sentence, "your boys need real food."
"Ma'am," I said, "you have no idea the power you wield."
She peered around me at 07, chose him at random, and said, "Eat." He took two, said "Gracias," so carefully it sounded like a vow, and she left satisfied in the way only New York grandmothers can be.
Night on the Roof: Boundaries, Oaths, and the One Line I Won't Cross
Later, the roof. The city did its evening thing—lights like constellations, sirens like lullabies with teeth. I leaned on the railing with a soda and a spine that had forgiven me worse, and 01 assumed his spot: one pace back and left.
"Eleven Spartans, four teams, two thousand points," I said. "Nobody even broke a sweat."
"Progress confirmed," he replied, and tapped his knuckles on the hatch.
Below us, a helicopter drew a bright line between towers. Far in the distance something like a storm shouldered the coastline, the way weather does when it wants attention. The Complex hummed under my feet—iron under concrete, discipline threading both.
I let the grin live for five seconds and then did the work that matters more: the inventory.
"Tomorrow: open-house," I said. "Cookies. Tours. Fire code's happy, neighbors get to see we're human. No firearms on display. Rookies off the floor. Capture only stays the message."
"Understood," 01 said.
"And the line," I added, because the rooftop is where I say it out loud. "We don't kill. Not because we can't. Because we won't. We don't pretend people are problems just because solving problems is fun. If Nick Fury shows up with the coat and the stare, we have answers that don't taste like lies."
His silence agreed.
My phone buzzed once more. Nice save at the pond. The mother called it "angels." Don't correct her.—P. Coulson again. He's a poet when he tries not to be.
I pocketed the phone and stared into a city that had breathed easier for four hours because we kept our promise. The System flickered the corner of my vision one last time:
Points available: 2,000
Team: Trained—01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06 | Rookies—07, 08, 09, 10, 11
Public Sentiment: Warming in patrol corridors; neutral in outer rings
Risk: Manageable (PR chatter "paramilitary" low heat)
Advisory: Stark-adjacent Expo chatter up; Hell's Kitchen vigilante rumor density increasing (Matt never sleeps)
"Expo season, rumor season," I said to the skyline. "Maybe Tony Stark breathes at Pepper over a show floor that smells like money; maybe Matt Murdock keeps punching the night until it files a complaint. Either way, we'll be there—door etiquette, capture only, and cookies."
01 did not smile—he almost never does—but something eased in the posture that says orders received.
I finished the soda and let the last of the carbonation sting the back of my throat like a reminder. Below, in the lobby, I could hear 08 smoothing the tape on a handwritten WELCOME, NEIGHBORS sign 04 had measured three times. On the range, a single shell casing finally gave up and lay down.
We'd been eleven shadows in New York for a day—quiet, precise, everywhere—and the city had decided that maybe, just maybe, we were a story it wanted to hear again.
"Tomorrow," I told the lights. "We prove it again."