At 8:47 PM, Spade packed the decoy case into his courier bag, secured the comms unit in his ear, and stepped out into Manila's night.
The streets of Tondo were quieter after dark---not safer, just quieter. People moved quickly, kept their heads down, avoided eye contact. The Blessing had brought powers, but it hadn't brought prosperity. If anything, it had made the gap between haves and have-nots wider.
Spade walked with purpose but not haste. His awareness was fully extended now, that spider-sense reaching out into the darkness, feeling for followers, for watchers, for threats.
Nothing obvious yet. Port District was eight kilometers away. He could have taken the train, but Eli's briefing had been clear, they'd be watching public transportation. On foot, through the back streets and alleys, he was just another body in the city's bloodstream.
The route took him through neighborhoods that grew progressively more industrial. Spade checked his phone: 9:23 PM. Right on schedule.
His awareness suddenly flared, he was being followed. Not closely, maybe fifty meters back, keeping pace but maintaining distance. His power couldn't tell him who or how many, just that something was tracking his movement through the urban landscape.
Spade didn't change his pace, didn't look back. He turned left down a side street, then right into an alley. The presence followed, maintaining that fifty-meter gap.
Professional surveillance, they were good.
"Miss," he said quietly, knowing the comms unit would pick up his voice. "I've got a tail."
Her response was immediate in his ear. "Confirmed. We're tracking them too, looks like just one person. Continue to target."
Just one? That seemed wrong, Ego wouldn't send just one person for an intercept.
Unless...
Unless the tail wasn't from Ego.
Spade's mind raced through possibilities. Kaizer had said there was a leak in his organization. Someone selling information. What if that someone was watching to see if the decoy operation succeeded?
Or what if it was someone else entirely?
The warehouse came into view, a three-story structure of corrugated metal and crumbling concrete. According to Eli's map, there was a personnel entrance on the east side, currently unlocked.
Spade approached it carefully, his awareness screaming warnings. The building felt wrong... too quiet, too still.
He pushed the door open.
Inside was darkness cut by thin streams of moonlight through holes in the roof. The smell of rust and decay. Scattered debris, old pallets, broken machinery, the detritus of a business that had failed before the Blessing and been abandoned after.
And ants.
Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, crawling across every surface. Normal-sized ants, unremarkable individually, but moving with an unnatural coordination. They formed flowing patterns on the floor, the walls, creating living rivers of chitin and coordination.
Shino, the Swarm-aspect.
"I know you're here," Spade called out, his voice echoing in the empty space. "I have the package, let's make this simple."
Silence. Then, from somewhere above...
"Simple?" A man's laugh. "Nothing's simple anymore, courier. Not since the Blessing... not since people like us got to matter."
The ants began moving faster, forming words on the floor...
"Drop the bag!"
Spade's fingers tightened on the courier bag's strap. His awareness was going wild, Shino was above him somewhere, probably on the third floor where he'd have full view of the warehouse interior. The ants were his eyes, his ears, his surveillance network.
And Spade was standing in the middle of it.
"The package is sealed," he called back. "You'll need to verify contents before you can collect your fee."
"Drop it and leave," Shino's voice came back. "Walk away and you live. This doesn't concern you."
"Can't do that." Spade was moving as he talked, slowly circling toward a support pillar. "Contracts, you know. Professional pride."
The ants surged toward him, not attacking, just following, tracking. Thousands of tiny scouts reporting his every movement.
Spade reached the pillar and pressed his back against it. His awareness told him Shino was directly above, maybe thirty meters up, using the warehouse's old office spaces as a vantage point.
Thirty meters.
His threads could reach fifteen.
"Last chance," Shino called down. "I've got four more people positioned around this building. You're trapped."
That was probably true. But Spade had known he'd be trapped, that was the entire point of this operation.
He just needed to survive long enough for Kaizer's people to identify everyone involved.
"Okay," Spade said, pulling the courier bag off his shoulder. "Okay. I'm leaving it."
He set the bag down on the floor and started backing toward the entrance.
The ants immediately swarmed the bag, covering it completely, and Spade felt the moment Shino's attention shifted, focused entirely on the package, on verifying its contents.
That was his window.
Spade ran.
Not toward the door. Toward the nearest wall, his hands already extended, threads beginning to generate. He hit the vertical surface and went up, adhesive grip allowing him to scale it like a ladder.
"What the---" Shino's voice cracked with surprise. "Stop him!"
The ants surged upward, following Spade's path, but they were too slow. He was already ten meters up, fifteen, reaching the second-floor level where rusted catwalks created a maze of pathways.
And then someone stepped out of the shadows directly in front of him.
Hilda, the Scorpion-aspect.
Her eyes glowed faintly in the darkness, and her skin had taken on a chitinous quality, hardened plates visible along her arms and neck. She smiled, revealing teeth that seemed just slightly too sharp.
"Hello, little spider," she said. "Ego sends his regards."
Spade's awareness was screaming danger. C-rank versus D-minus, poison generation versus weak threads. This wasn't a fight he could win.
But Kaizer had said something important...
Spiders don't hunt what they can overpower. They hunt what they can outsmart.
Hilda lunged forward, inhumanly fast, one hand extended with fingers that had curved into something resembling claws.
Spade dropped.
Just let go of the wall completely, falling backward into the darkness below. He saw Hilda's surprise, saw her try to correct her momentum, but she was committed to the attack.
He fell three meters, four---
His threads caught.
He'd been generating them as he climbed, anchoring them to every surface he'd touched. Now they formed a loose net beneath him, catching his fall, slowing his descent. Not enough to stop him completely, his threads weren't that strong, but enough to break the drop into manageable stages.
He hit the ground in a controlled roll, came up running.
Above him, Hilda snarled in frustration and leaped down, no threads, just raw physical enhancement that let her survive a four-meter drop without injury.
She landed where Spade had been a second before.
The ants were converging now, forming a living carpet that was trying to block the exit. Shino's voice echoed through the warehouse. "Don't let him reach the door!"
But Spade wasn't running for the door.
He was running for the support pillars.
His fingers touched each one as he passed, leaving trails of thread, creating connections. Web-patterns, like he'd practiced. Anchored and released. Building structure.
Hilda was faster than him, closing the distance with every step. He could hear her breathing, could feel the displacement of air as she swiped at where his head had been a moment before.
The third pillar, the fourth.
"You can't run forever!" Hilda's voice was a snarl now, the human elements giving way to something more primal.
Spade reached the fifth pillar and spun, pressing his back against it. Hilda was five meters away, approaching with predatory caution now, intelligent enough to recognize when prey was cornered.
"I don't need to run forever," Spade said. "I just needed you to chase me."
He triggered his awareness fully, feeling for all the threads he'd generated. They formed a loose network between the five pillars, not a solid web, just connection points, anchors, potential.
Hilda lunged.
Spade dove sideways, his hands touching the floor, threads generating and pulling taut.
Hilda ran into the web he'd created.
It wasn't strong enough to hold her, each individual strand was only rated for eight kilograms of tension. But five pillars, multiple connection points, a network of gossamer silk that caught her mid-stride---
It slowed her, just for a second... just enough.
Spade was already moving, his awareness guiding him through gaps in his own trap. He reached the courier bag, grabbed it, and ran.
The exit was blocked by ants. Shino was somewhere above, probably calling for reinforcements. Isabella was tearing through silk behind him, her snarls of frustration echoing off metal walls.
So Spade went up again.
Third time scaling a wall tonight. His arms were burning with fatigue, his concentration wavering, but his adhesive grip held. Second floor, third floor---
"Miss!" he gasped into the comms. "I need extraction!"
"Four minutes!" her voice crackled back. "Get to the roof!"
The roof... of course. Because nothing was ever simple.
Spade found a rusted ladder leading upward, climbed with one hand while clutching the courier bag with the other. Below him, he could hear multiple sets of footsteps, Ego's other people, moving in now that the trap had been sprung.
He emerged onto the roof under Manila's night sky, the bay visible in the distance, lights from ships creating constellations on dark water.
And he was trapped.