Arriving back at his apartment at just after nine in the evening, the tall man with the unruly shock of red hair quickly became aware that he was alone. The woman who lived here alongside him – his friend and his lover, Karen Page – had evidently been called in at short notice to work a late shift at her place of employment, a diner a few blocks south. The man knew this because of those all-important details: he couldn't hear her heartbeat, or the electric hum of overhead lighting that he personally held no use for but without which she would be – in a word – blind. Also the faint perfume he could detect upon the air was the fragrance Karen invariably wore when she was waitressing.

Details. Most girlfriends would have scrawled a note and pinned it to the refrigerator. To Matt Murdock, those tiny, telltale signs that would have by-passed other men were all he required.

When they’d parted that morning they’d pledged to spend the evening together, their first for almost a week. Karen had broken the pact, but this was only fair. Matt had been detained at his private law practice for three hours longer than intended. It wasn’t the first time Karen had given up on him and decided to earn some extra dollars instead. Sometimes, Matt mused, it was far too easy to overlook the important things in life. For a man with superhumanly heightened senses, such a lack of sensitivity would have been amusing if it weren’t so tragic. When had he become so neglectful? Or had he always been that way?

Scowling, Matt moved quickly yet carefully through the darkened apartment, mindful that he shared his life with someone who - despite the best intentions in the world - could sometimes forgot his disability. Such a simple oversight as discarding a pair of shoes on the bedroom floor instead of securing them in a closet might prove hazardous for a man who, regardless of those other wonderful senses of his, was still sightless. Tonight, thankfully, Karen had been meticulous. Matt made it to the lounge without stumbling over any unexpected challenges and deposited his briefcase, then visited the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee, all in pitch blackness. She hadn't placed the jar of grounds back in the cupboard exactly where it should have been, but it was close enough. They’d known each other for years these two, and had been lovers for almost as long, but they’d only been living together for a few weeks. She was slowly getting used to his need for routines.

There was a faint yet steady clicking in the air. Matt had been aware of it instantly upon entering the apartment and now, coffee in hand, it was time to deal with it. It was like the tocking of a clock, something he couldn’t abide; for a man whose hearing was as profound as his, noisy clocks were the equivalent of Chinese water torture. This sound irritated him, but it was necessary and easily dealt with. It was the clicking of the telephone answering machine, and was accompanied by a flashing red light he could not see. Karen, in his place, would have noticed the light but wouldn’t have heard the noise. Different strokes. For sighted people, the visual aspect of their day-to-day lives overcame everything else to the point that certain sounds and scents may as well not have existed. The world Matt inhabited was alien territory. For all of the love and friendship he shared with Karen or his law partner Foggy, or others close to him, that world was a cold and lonely place to be.

He operated the answer machine, half expecting to hear a recording of Karen's voice. Instead it was another woman who spoke. It was a familiar voice, like Karen's in many respects, but also wholly different. This cadence was soft and dark, sultry, like black velvet; it was laced with the barest touch of accent, almost erased after so many years but still discernible to him. It stirred in his mind the memory of an exotic scent and the touch of her lips, urgent against his own, and the silken whisper of her hair beneath his fingers. That hair was a brash and distinctive red, apparently. It was how most people identified her. But not Matt. For him it was her scent and her warmth, and the shape of her beneath him.

For a blind man memory is a powerful and vital attribute that must never be dulled. For Matt, this voice and this memory belonged to Natasha Romanova, the Black Widow.

"I'm sorry, Matt," Natasha’s recorded voice purred. "I know I shouldn't be calling given your current… circumstances. But I promise, I mean no mischief. And you're the only person I can trust. Earlier today an old acquaintance enlisted my aid in the prevention of an imminent terrorist threat to the city. The threat is spearheaded by a man named Mikhail Rhoskov. I have a location for him, which I intend to pursue tonight. An encounter with a super-powered enemy in Central Park has left me wary that Rhoskov will prove to be a potent foe, so it’s only prudent I be wary. If I manage to apprehend Rhoskov alone then I'll call you later tonight, midnight – but if you don't hear from me, it means I’m in trouble. I’ll need you to visit the following address - not solely for my benefit, but to ensure that Rhoskov’s threat is terminated."

Matt grimaced as he listened to Natasha read out an address for a warehouse down by the Hudson River docks. No mischief? Maybe, but this was typical of the Widow’s penchant for mind-games. For all that had passed between them - and their relationship had always been frustratingly complex and subtle, filled more with barbed wire kisses than roses - she was an arch manipulator, always would be. She knew that she was facing something too big to tackle alone – even someone without heightened senses couldn't have missed the concern in her voice – but she wasn't going to come out and ask directly for his help. That wasn’t her style. Instead she was playing on his ingrained sense of duty. As if he could wait around until midnight to see if she called!

Matt possessed two wardrobes, one filled with suits and shirts and standard day-to-day wear, and the other containing a handful of costumes that were anything but. These costumes were dark red, the colour of blood, from boots to masks with their distinctive horns curving out from the temples. Not a brash red, but distinctive all the same. Apparently. He removed one of the outfits, and held it almost reverently. The finely tessellated leather was cold and slick beneath his touch, like delicate snakeskin. The familiarity of it made him smile in the dark. He cursed Natasha beneath his breath, but there was no denying a simple truth; he loved what he was about to do.

After all, the Black Widow's message hadn’t been intended for Matt Murdock, attorney at law. Her unspoken plea had been directed, instead, at Daredevil – the man without fear.

"Okay, so how about this?" Spider-Man said to himself as he flashed across the darkened sky, his red-and-blue form cast momentarily silver by the light of a cold winter's moon. "Dear Mary Jane. I'm really, really, really, really, really, really, (really), really, really sorry I let the nasty, horrible, completely unattractive in any way whatsoever woman kiss me earlier today. Yeah, that sounds about right. Do we think that 'nasty, horrible completely unattractive in any way whatsoever woman ' is better than 'slinky, curvy redhead in the kinky, skin-tight black leather with the sexy eyes'? Oh, yes. Yes, I think we do. Spidey, let no-one ever say that you don't know how to be diplomatic. Of course, if you were truly diplomatic then you wouldn't have let the slinky, curvy redhead in the – uh, that is, the nasty, horrible, completely unattractive in any way whatsoever woman – kiss you in the first place. But there we go."

He paused for breath. “Am I talking to myself again? I am? Well, gee. It must be Tuesday…”

The night was dark and frigid. The city far below was covered in a blanket of snow and ice, and there was more on the way. Sensible individuals with the proportionate strength, speed and agility of a spider would be home in the warm, tucked up in their beds with their wives – or, at least, on their sofas, because their wives were still all cross and sharp-eyed about that whole kissing thing. But not all such uncannily gifted individuals were sensible. Here was one, criss-crossing Manhattan on silken strands of web, amidst towering, sporadically lit skyscrapers, allowing himself to be guided by his celebrated, all-singing, all-dancing spider-sense, whilst freezing his red-and-blue butt off.

Of course, Mary Jane would eventually forgive him for something that, ostensibly, wasn't really his fault, given a few more grovelling apologies. Unless, that is, she ever found out that he wasn't currently trolling the city for his standard nightly fare of jewellery store robberies, muggings and the odd supervillain, as he’d told her, but was instead trying to track down the aforementioned woman in the black leather who'd caused the whole sorry mess to begin with. No, he could never have told her the truth. Because then, instead of being very mad, she'd be very, very mad. And that definitely wasn't good.

“Oh, it’s not that easy… being green…”

Earlier that day, Spider-Man had aided the Black Widow in defeating a macabre adversary in Central Park. He didn’t know what it was all about and the Widow, ever mysterious, had declined to enlighten him, leaving him only a brief kiss – and a furious wife – to remember her by. However, as she’d departed, the wall-crawler had tagged her with a spider-tracer, one of the tiny micro-transmitters he’d invented early in his career. The tracers emitted a coded, low-frequency signal that he was able to detect over long distances via his spider-sense, and now he was homing in on the Widow's current location. In this instance, his spider-sense allowed him to view the city as an enormous, invisible web, with the tracer causing a discernible tremor to guide him, much as the struggling of a trapped fly might alert a true arachnid. Of course, this might all prove to be a wild goose chase. After all, the Widow has said she didn't require Spider-Man's help in her business. But it wouldn't hurt to make sure, right?

Mary Jane would understand. She was an understanding gal. Beneath his mask, Spider-Man grimaced. Yeah. About as understanding as The Rhino on a day he’d woken up with an itchy horn.

Down below, the slice of the city known as Hell's Kitchen was glowing darkly with neon. The tracer signal drew Spider-Man on further, out towards the docks that lined the edge of the Hudson, which flowed black and icy in the night. The wall-crawler rarely strayed into this territory but when he did it invariably resulted in trouble. Trouble was what Hell's Kitchen was famous for – that, and pain. His instincts were on the money, he knew. Down there, in the snow and the shadow, Black Widow needed his help…

Natasha groaned, and her head lolled as if she were still unconscious – but, in reality, she had been awake for a few minutes. Better to let her captors think that she was still insensible, however, so that she could assess her current situation... which, when all was said and done, wasn't good.

Through slit eyes she could see that she was still in the warehouse down by the river's edge, the location Alexei Lehzkov had given her in Central Park. She’d arrived here anticipating resistance, but nothing that she couldn't handle, especially with the element of surprise on her side. But Rhoskov's men had been expecting her, and she’d underestimated them. They’d been armed to the teeth, and although her skill and agility had allowed her to steer clear of their automatic gunfire she’d eventually been tagged. Now she was bound securely to a wooden beam over in the darkened corner of the warehouse's central storage area. The walls around her were lined with packing crates and palettes drenched in shadow, but the centre of the room was spot-lit by harsh fluorescents. Here gathered a half-dozen men, kitted out in black leathers and shouldering automatic rifles. Rhoskov's gang.

Natasha strained at her bonds, but realised quickly that she was tethered securely. Ropes were wound about her upper arms and chest, and more about her legs – and worse, there was something locked about her throat, hard and cold beneath her jaw. Over the throb of her heart and the blood in her veins she could hear a faint, steady ticking from whatever it was about her neck. A timer.

A bomb.

“Oh, wonderful…”

She forced herself to breathe deeply, her eyes tightly closed. Trying to concentrate on something – anything – other than that awful ticking, she listened instead to the creak of settling timber all about her, and the faint hiss of lapping water. The warehouse was built on a wooden dock, directly overhanging the river. The water beneath the boards underfoot was likely thickening with ice as winter temperatures dipped, and she imagined it beneath her, cold and black. She shivered, gripped by a sudden chill. Then, hearing footsteps drawing close, she sighed and opened her eyes, abandoning her ruse.

Two of the armed men stood before her, smiling gravely. "She's awake," one said, in Russian, his accent coarse.

The other nodded, his dark eyes gleaming. "Good," he said. "Mikhail wants the sow to know what she's carrying in the canister about her neck – before we activate it."

Grinning, the two men stepped forward, and the Black Widow tensed...

...only for a flash of red to skim past her face, followed by a sharp crack of a splintering nose. The thug whose face had suddenly been reduced to a bloodied mess staggered backwards, wailing like a child. The other man blinked. Then – whack! Another red fist shot down out of the shadows and planted itself squarely in the back of his head, pitching him forward. He crashed face-first into the wall and rebounded. He was met by a second hefty punch from above, and was unconscious before he hit the ground. The first goon tried to lift his gun, but a red boot snapped across his face and spun him sideways. The rifle clattered to the floor and skidded away.

"My Russian's a little rusty," said a voice – deep, male and familiar. "But I'm guessing they weren't being complimentary."

Natasha's smoky green sparkled and her red lips curled into a smile. “Actually, we were discussing recipes. Ever tried Siberian goulash…?”

A lithe figure in a blood red costume slid down from the darkened rafters overhead. Matt. Or, to be more precise -

"Daredevil!" came the yell, followed by a string of expletives in Russian. Over in the centre of the warehouse floor, the four remaining members of Rhoskov's gang all started forward at the sudden commotion over in the corner, their weapons raised.

Daredevil turned sharply at the waist, half-cast in darkness but otherwise a lick of red flame, fluid and elegant in one sense yet also thick and potent with corded muscle. In one gloved fist he clasped a blunt rod - his Billy Club. He snapped out his arm and the club shot from his outstretched hand. Inside a split-second its flight through the air was diverted - by the face of the closest thug. Chok! The club glanced off the bridge of the man's nose and angled right, striking a second man in the mouth, just as Daredevil had intended. The man reared backwards, his legs giving way beneath him, and he crashed into another of his fellows, whose finger jammed down on the trigger of his rifle. A sudden roar of bullets caused the wooden floorboards underfoot to erupt in a shower of splinters and sawdust, and another of the goons screamed as he lost three of his toes.

The club's momentum was all but lost as it flicked up weakly into the air one final time, glinting in the stark light... but then a red fist reached out and closed about it at mid-length. Continuing forward at a sprint, Daredevil pirouetted and lashed out again. The club shot away a second time, striking its intended target across the knuckles and causing him to squeal and drop his weapon. Daredevil flipped over his advancing opponent, using the thug's back as a springboard, then snapped out a savage kick to the man's head even as he wheeled sideways and chopped down at the back of another foe's neck.

More gunfire rent the air, but it wasn't directed at either Daredevil or the Black Widow, who remained tethered and helpless – much to her chagrin – across the room. The red club ricocheted off the edge of a crate and skimmed across the head of a reeling thug, causing him to stagger. Daredevil reached out and snatched the club in his fist as he spun on one leg and swept the other round to catch the blackguard in the throat with the heel of his boot. Choking, the man collapsed, his face flushing purple.

Five of the six thugs were now down, either unconscious or writhing on the ground in pain. At the centre of the melee, Daredevil stood, his head slightly cocked. Throughout this brief but violent skirmish he hadn’t looked once, at any opponent. He hadn’t gauged distances and trajectories by sight. He was listening, Natasha watched on from a distance, familiar with her old companion’s mannerisms, traits that others weren’t likely to notice. Daredevil could hear the creaking of the wooden floors and walls and the rush of the black water underfoot, but he could also detect a medley of beating hearts all about him, as well as the echo of the brief but furious altercation which had just occurred. Sonic refraction. Hyper-sensory radar perception. Sightless, but governed by a full and detailed three-dimensional acuity of his immediate situation. He was tensed, utterly alert - and aware of the sixth goon just behind him, raising his gun in trembling hands.

He was about to spin, launching a roundhouse kick... but then, as if possessing a sixth sense of his own that, or perhaps just scared witless, the thug threw his weapon aside and ran. Daredevil smiled grimly, but didn’t turn. He simply flicked his arm backwards and let loose his club, which smacked the retreating thug in the base of the skull and then rebounded smartly off the floor and back into his waiting palm, all in the space of a few of those telltale heartbeats. The goon crashed to the ground and was still.

Daredevil remained standing in the centre of the floor for a moment or two, motionless save for a gentle rise and fall of his broad chest. Then, smiling humourlessly, he said, "Thanks for all your help there."

Natasha blinked, then narrowed her eyes crossly at the sarcasm. "What?" she snapped. "Can't you tell that I'm - "

"Not you," Daredevil snapped. "Him."

And with that, he whipped out a wrist and let fly with his club once more. It shot up into the shadowed rafters high overhead, and was met with a surprised yelp...

...but there was no sound of impact, and the club didn't return to its owner's hand as it had before. At least, not on any kind of angled trajectory. Instead, it descended slowly, dangling on the end of a piece of silvery webbing.

"Now, see. That's not nice. You could have someone's eye out with that. And wouldn’t that be ironic, hmm?"

Spider-Man dropped down from the ceiling, bounced off a pile of crates and skittered to a halt between Daredevil and the Black Widow. Daredevil stared across at him impassively, although they all knew he was not looking at the newcomer with his eyes but rather with his other senses. He reached out and took his suspended club. The web was springy, and rather gooey, and remained resolutely attached.

Daredevil was aghast. "Oh, for… I hate it when you do this."

"Well, then, stop throwing your toys at me."

"Well, stop skulking around in shadows when I'm tackling an armed and angry mob."

"Well, you stop taking care of the armed and angry mob before I've had a chance to get involved!" Spider-Man snapped. "I mean, seriously. That little brawl took, what – sixty seconds? You are so unreasonable, sometimes."

“Just showing you how it’s done.”

“Ooh. Bitchety bitch McBitch…”

"Uh, boys...?" Natasha spoke up from the corner. "When you're finished your little playground skit, perhaps I could have some help over here."

Spider-Man glared at Daredevil then reached up and rolled away the lower part of his mask to expose his mouth. He poked out his tongue and waggled it.

"I can hear that," Daredevil said. "Don't think I can't hear that."

Spider-Man bounded over to where the Black Widow was tethered with ropes and with a canister of shiny black metal strapped about her throat. "Well met, fair maiden," the wall-crawler said, pulling down his mask in case she felt the need to try and kiss him again. Not that this would be a bad thing, of course, but even if Mary Jane wasn't here in person then she likely was in spirit, and -

"You tracked me down," Natasha said, smiling wryly. "What was it, one of those little tracer things of yours?"

"You know about my tracers?"

"SHIELD have had one in their files for years, probably one of the first ones you used. A clumsy design, almost like it was made by a teenager in their back bedroom, but effective nonetheless."

"Obviously. Otherwise I wouldn't be here to rescue you."

Black Widow raised an eyebrow. "Oh, so you did the rescuing? Well, well. My hero."

“Well I would have rescued you given half the chance by L’il Hot Stuff over there…”

Spider-Man made a face beneath his mask as he loosened the ropes about Natasha arms and legs, then raised his hands to the black device that encircled her slender throat. “Wait!" Daredevil and the Widow suddenly yelled, simultaneously, and Spider-Man snatched his fingers back as if stung.

"What? What'd I do? What? What?"

"It's a bomb of some kind," Natasha said, breathing heavily. "I... I can hear it ticking."

"So can I," Daredevil confirmed, moving forward to stand before her as Spider-Man stepped aside. "And likely set to trigger if we attempt to remove it."

He reached out, just as the wall-crawler had done, and Natasha tensed. Red-gloved fingers closed about the outer shell of the container. Daredevil's touch was gentle, yet insistent. He explored with his fingertips, his head slightly turned away, his ears primed... and then, suddenly, he locked his wrists and pressed.

The black shell of the canister slid open with a faint hiss. Daredevil was still, his hands frozen in place. Spider-Man leaned forward, and let out a heavy sigh.

"Uh-oh."

Black Widow clenched her teeth, her brow beaded with concentration. "Uh-oh?" she repeated. "Forgive me, but now is not the time I want to hear the exclamation uh-oh."

Spider-Man's expression was sheepish beneath his mask. "Sorry," he said, contritely. “Next time I’ll just whistle.”

The inside of the black container was a second, smaller canister – transparent and filled with red dust. It was enshrouded in a swirl of colourful wires, soldered together with a series of switches and metal coils. The ticking was louder now, emanating from the heart of the device.

"Well?" Natasha probed. "It's bad, isn't it?"

"It's chemical," Spider-Man confirmed quietly, for Daredevil's benefit as well as the Widow's. "Some kind of biological weapon."

Daredevil grimaced. "And I was right," he murmured. "I can't remove it while the timer's armed."

At that moment, back across the floor of the warehouse, there was a sudden rush of noise. Spider-Man and the Black Widow both glanced up and looked, whilst Daredevil's head flinched and he listened. Over in the shadows, something was moving. Spider-Man narrowed his eyes... and then he saw it.

Black and viscous, it was seeping up through the floorboards, slowly but inexorably. It wasn't water, but nor was it shadow – rather, it was something in-between. Oil? No, not that. There was no mistake: this was something alive.

"In reply to your earlier statement," the wall-crawler said, "Yes, a biological weapon is bad. And this? This is really bad. What in the world is that?"

Daredevil hunched his shoulders, his hands still resting on the black canister strapped about the Widow's neck. "It sounds like... grease. Slick, churning. Smells like sewage, and stagnant water – rotten. I've never encountered anything like it. What does it look like?"

“Like the blob from that Steve McQueen film.”

“What Steve McQueen film?”

“The Blob.”

Daredevil made an exasperated sound. “You know, it’s no wonder you have such a huge and diverse rogues’ gallery. The urge to punch you in the face is truly irresistible.”

"Sorry. It’s just that it looks pretty much how you just described," Spider-Man said. "Only uglier. It's growing a face – and though the outside’s amorphous there's some kind of structure inside, like a skeleton."

"I think I can hear it whispering."

Natasha frowned. "Is it alive?"

Daredevil frowned, and paused. "I don’t know," he said eventually. "I can't discern a heartbeat. But... can you hear the noise it's making? Like a voice."

"I can only hear mumbling, no words."

Daredevil furrowed his brow in concentration beneath his mask. "There's only one word," he said. "Repeated over and again. A name. Vodianoi... it sounds Russian. Does that mean anything to you, Tasha?"

Her green eyes glittered then, and she paled. "A water spirit," she breathed. "Invariably evil. A creature from old Russian folk tales that drowns its victims and peels off their skin."

"Lovely," Spider-Man commented. "Bless its little heart that it doesn’t have. Is this a relative of the guy we beat down earlier, in Central Park?"

The Black Widow raised an eyebrow. "In the context of it being the manifestation of a legend that does not truly exist? Yes."

The Vodianoi exhaled a sickening roar, like the splintering of bones beneath the hush of high tide, and when Spider-Man looked across at it once more he saw that it had grown to a height of approximately five feet - and was seemingly as thick across. As well as a face, twisted and cruel yet somehow recognisably female, it now bore arms - four of them - and was beginning to slide across the wooden floor towards them. It was no more than a glob of thick, black, oily ooze... but nevertheless he knew that it was going to be a shockingly dangerous adversary.

He leapt forward without further delay. Behind him, Daredevil raised his club and prepared to throw – but, at the last moment, he felt the tug of the webbing that was still attached to the end of it. "Rassin’, frassin’..."

Black Widow lifted one hand and flexed her wrist, about which there wound a circlet of golden discs. She tapped at a palm-trigger and released a burst of electricity from the bracelet – her Widow's Bite. The small charge burned away enough of the offending webbing that the club's owner could tug it free. Daredevil glowered.

"You're welcome," said the Widow, sweetly.

“I honestly hate him, you know. I do.”

“Oh, stop it. He’s just like the little brother you never had…”

Up ahead, Spider-Man launched himself at the Vodianoi. He sprang high, flipping head over heels, and his leap took him over the advancing creature's head. As he passed he released a gout of gluey web fluid that smothered the Vodianoi like a gossamer blanket, but the water spirit merely continued to slide forward, oozing slickly between the cracks of the webbing... at least, its liquid outer shell did, as the wall-crawler had anticipated. He had fought such foes as the Sandman and Hydro-Man enough times to understand his webbing's limitations – and its advantages.

He clenched his fists, holding the ends of his web tendrils, and then planted his feet firmly against a stack of crates. Then, he yanked, with all his strength.

The Vodianoi screeched, an unholy sound. The webbing acted like a net, ensnaring any objects with any solidity within the beast's seething form – and that included whatever it was that passed for bones within its watery cocoon. The black, oily water suddenly lost its shape as Spider-man continued to tug at his webbing, dragging his haul out into the open. In his net there was a mass of stinking, wriggling bone and gristle that made him want to retch.

"Well, that's the Hudson for you," he muttered. "Do we have pollution laws in this city, or what?"

But the threat wasn't over. As he watched, the struggling mass of oily bone began to reform – and summon the water it had lost back towards it. Then, it began to claw its way free of the webbing that encompassed it, shredding it like paper. Spider-Man extended his hands and wove another net, but the Vodianoi easily ripped through this as well, adapting quickly to its enemy's attack.

Pok!

Daredevil's club ricocheted off the beast's inner body, but to little effect – and, even as it rebounded back towards its master's waiting fist, a watery arm lashed out and snatched at it in mid-air. The club spiralled away, out of Daredevil's reach. The crimson-garbed hero threw himself forward, ducking low as another oily strike shot out towards him, then springing, feet-first, into the heart of his shape-shifting adversary. It was a bold move, utterly without hesitation or faltering heart, but it was only what was to be expected from a man without fear.

The Vodianoi shrieked under this new attack and tried to snare Daredevil even as he rolled free of reprisal. Spider-Man launched himself at the creature's back, plunging into his dark, watery depths with fists swinging. He landed a couple of blows, mirrored by Daredevil close by, but then felt a spine of bone lash down across the back of his head, stunning him, and he crashed sideways into a crate. Looking up in a daze, he saw Daredevil twist in mid-air and kick out at his rapidly advancing foe – and witnessed the Vodianoi slam into the sightless hero with the force of a vile tidal wave, throwing him backwards through the air so that he came to rest at the feet of the Black Widow. The beast then retreated back across the warehouse, obviously to gather its strength after the brief pummelling it had just withstood.

Steering clear of the main battle, Natasha was concerning herself quite rightly with the device about her neck. Now, as Daredevil pulled himself to his feet before her, she scrabbled at the black canister, trying to manoeuvre it into position so that she could see it clearly...

...but instead, a row of lights along the transparent inner container blinked into existence, and the ticking emanating from the bomb instantly increased in speed and pitch. The Widow froze, her eyes wide and stricken. Daredevil cursed beneath his breath, as Spider-Man sprinted over to join them.

"I need to deactivate this," he snapped. "Now."

The Widow's lower lip trembled. "Matt...?"

"I can do it," he said, quietly, but insistently. He cocked his head towards Spider-Man. "Can you deal with that thing on your own?"

Spider-Man blinked and glanced over his shoulder at the Vodianoi. It was larger now, seething darkly with an inner pulse, and its odious stink assailed him like a physical blow.

"No problem," he said, weakly. "Although, I gotta say, I could really use Steve McQueen right about now…"

And then he bounded into battle once more. Daredevil lifted his head towards the Black Widow, aware that her eyes were upon him. He lifted one hand from the device at her throat and cupped her face in his gloved palm. She nuzzled against him instinctively, and he breathed in the scent and the warmth of her.

"You've never done anything like this before, have you?" she asked, gently.

"My senses are precise enough that I can listen to the power flowing through the wires. By operating different switches I can determine if there's a circuit I can re-route, thus allowing me to deactivate the unit."

"But you haven't done it," Natasha persisted. "This would be your first attempt at this kind of operation."

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“Matt…”

Daredevil said nothing more. The Widow closed her eyes.

"I do love you, Matt. In so many ways. If this goes wrong, I just wanted you to know that."

Across the warehouse, Spider-Man stood before the approaching Vodianoi. It was now a good three feet taller than him, and was reaching out with a total of six arms of black sludge. The wall-crawler grimaced.

"Okay," he said, uneasily. "But I just want you to know, you big, oily bundle of thing – whoever created you is going to get my dry-cleaning bill when all this is done. You know how difficult it is to get this costume laundered? It - "

The Vodianoi gurgled and surged forward, quicker than its adversary had anticipated. Spider-Man tried to leap clear, at the same time as raising his hands before him to instinctively let loose with a shower of webbing no matter how ineffective, but it was all too late. The Vodianoi engulfed him in a slick, black tide, crashing against him and slamming him to the ground.

Spider-Man grunted as his body erupted in pain, and in that moment felt dark water flooded through his mask and into his mouth and down the back of his throat. He gagged and scrabbled with his arms and legs, but the pressure all about him was too much. He was suffocated in blackness, and he could feel his lungs beginning to clog. Absurdly he thought of a spider being washed away down the sink, and some part of him wanted to laugh...

…but this wasn't true laughter. It was hysteria.

The Vodianoi had him, and he couldn't break free.

He was drowning.

NEXT ISSUE: ‘The Myth-Maker’ concludes! Starring Spider-Man, Daredevil, The Black Widow… and does anyone here remember a lady by the name of Morningstar?