“So let me get this straight…” Ghost Spider looked between the two men. “You-” she pointed at the labcoat. “-are poking around alleyways because an animal escaped from your company’s lab and you recruited Nicky here to help you look for it.”

“And you-” her finger moved to the shifting policeman. “-are helping him because you owe him a favor.”

At the pair's nods, Ghost Spider cocked a hip and gave them a very disappointed look.

“And why haven’t either of you reached out for more help finding this thing?”

Nick shrugged. “I didn’t think we needed to at first, it’s just an animal right? But now that Umar’s been keeping me out for a week trying to find this thing I was asking the same thing.”

“Good point.” Ghost Spider nodded. “Except for one thing. Your buddy here is poking around with a scanner presumably dedicated to finding this thing. So, what’s so special about this animal that it not only has a dedicated scanner built to find it, but also needs to be kept secret from the one helping you find it?”

Nick raised a finger to object, paused, and turned back to his friend. “You know she has a point.”

“That information is confidential.” Umar protested. “I cannot disclose anything about the subjects to anyone outside of Biotechnica.”

Ghost Spider frowned. Subjects? As in multiples and not just one? “And who are you exactly?”

“Umar Khan, as you might have guessed I’m a researcher for Biotechnica.”

“Right…so what about that scanner then? What are you tracking? Implanted chip, DNA signatures, pheromone concentration, psychic signature, little postcards with hints where your critter went…?”

“...that information is also classif–” *thwip!* “Hey!”

Ghost Spider ignored him while she inspected the scanner she just snatched. “Let's see…oh neat! Multiple scanning modes. Thermal, night vision, DNA…wait, why is this scanning for radioactivity?!”

“Radioactivity! Umar, what the hell?! You never said anything about these things being radioactive!”

“You would be fine! The subjects don’t give off enough for long term damage unless…I’m going to stop talking now.” Umar tried clamming up.

Ghost Spider wasn’t having it.

“If you want this back you better keep talking.” She wiggled the scanner between her fingers.

“Aaaah ah! Careful with that.” Umar made a grab for the scanner which Ghost Spider avoided easily by simply jumping up onto one of the alley’s walls.

She wiggled the device tauntingly. “So, you gonna talk?”

Umar shot a look at Nick, probably hoping he would also demand the scanner back, but Nick just smirked and gave an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders. The labcoat quickly slumped over in defeat.

“Okay, fine. But you need to swear that you never heard this from me.” he insisted. “Biotechnica was experimenting with variable phase nuclear radiation and its interaction with the metagene. But there was an accident and the program was shut down.”

“After a two month observation period, all test subjects and resources were eventually moved to other projects. No one suspected there was anything special about them. Two weeks ago, a truck rammed through a lab wall in an unrelated high speed chase. Several of the lab rats escaped. Four days ago, one of the subjects spontaneously manifested a meta ability under signs of extreme stress.”

“So now Biotechnica wants their rats back and doesn't want their competition knowing they’re up for grabs.” Nick concluded.

But Ghost Spider wasn’t so sure. If a big company wanted some test subject back they wouldn’t be relying on a researcher and his off-duty cop buddy. They would use internal employees only at the minimum.

“So what was this ability that has your bosses so interested but not enough to give you a full team?”

“Some minor increases in durability, small elemental displays, and the like, but the big one is the regeneration factor. Anything short of full dismemberment healed within weeks, if we could replicate that in humans…”

Biotechnica would make a killing, but that wasn’t what Ghost Spider focused on.

“You said elemental displays.” she said seriously. “What kind of elemental displays?”

“Nothing much.” Umar said nervously. “Just some puffs of fire, hardly enough to do anything impressive.”

Ghost Spider glared at him. “Unless something sets them off all at the same time in say, an apartment building?”

“...I, uh…I suppose that would be possible…”

“You mean these are the things responsible for the random fires around the city?” Nick shouted. “That’s it, I’m calling Animal Control. They can help us track these things down.”

“You can’t!” Umar said quickly. “The rats are connected somehow and with the methods Animal Control uses for rats it would definitely cause another incident, if they were able to find them in the first place! It’s why this needs to stay discrete, if every random person decided to catch one it could set them all off constantly!”

Ghost Spider sighed. Of course they were.

It didn’t matter too much, she supposed. She was definitely going to have to stick her nose into this if the escaped rats were the cause of the random fires. Working with the AC would actually slow her down.

“Okay, this scanner – how do you use it, what’s the range, and do you have more?” She asked.

“N-no, I was only able to borrow the one…” Umar stammered. “But why does that matter?”

“Because I can cover a city block in the time it takes you two to check an alley.” Ghost Spider replied. “So you going to tell me how to work this or am I going to have to figure it out on my own?”

Nick looked at his friend. “Again, she has a point.”

The researcher slumped. “Fine, fine. We’ve wasted too much time as it is. I’ll show you…”

-o-

“Psychic, nuclear powered rats, huh? That’s a new one even for us.” Nightwing muttered once Ghost Spider finished explaining everything she learned. “Nice to see you’re still tripping into interesting situations.”

“Yeah well, hopefully I trip over the test subjects too. Before a fire breaks out in a really crowded building.” Ghost Spider replied. “You think you guys will be able to help out?”

“We’ll keep an eye out for them definitely, but without more scanners we’ll be looking for some very specific rats in Gotham. This Umar Khan guy give you anything else to identify them by?”

“Nope. According to him they still look just like normal rats…at least until they light themselves on fire, anyway.”

Nightwing grumbled. “Well that’s just fantastic, we’ll just have to hope you get lucky then.”

“It’s not all bad news.” Ghost Spider said. “I was able to pull the scanning software off the device and onto a thumb drive. Probably won’t be as good as the scanner Umar had, but–”

“But we could load it into more generic scanners and comb the city that way.” Nightwing interrupted. “Not a bad idea. If you have the drive on you, Robin’s patrolling around Market Street right now. If not, you can just hand it over next time we run into you.”

“I’ve got it. I’ll swing by in a sec.” Ghost Spider answered.

“I’ll let him know.” And Nightwing ended the call.

“Bye to you too, dick.” Ghost Spider grumbled, dusting herself off and stowing her communicator before web-swinging away.

-o-

A few frustrating days later, Ghost Spider had mostly given up on finding the escaped lab animals any time soon.

No more mysterious fires had sprung up so her theory was that the escapees had found a safe hole somewhere they didn’t feel threatened and weren’t coming out for a while. She would keep an eye out for them of course, but they simply couldn’t be her main focus.

That would be honoring her dad’s memory by making sure everyday people could be safe from criminals, even in a city like Gotham.

A siren in the distance got her attention and she quickly angled her next webline to slingshot her way towards the disturbance, which turned out to be a high speed chase between a muscle car and the police.

She felt a surge of anticipation as she joined the chase, quickly pulling herself through the air until she caught up and eventually overtook the fleeing car.

Another webline to the hood pulled her directly onto the speeding car and letting her come face to face with two very surprised men in black ski masks.

“Hi fellas, I think you missed your turn!” Ghost Spider yelled over the wind. “Tryouts for the city ski team were two streets back!”

The car swerved under her and she had to brace herself to avoid kissing the hood.

“Okay, okay. Snowboards are more your thing, you still need to stop and pull over!”

The car swerved again and Ghost Spider got the impression the driver wasn’t going to slow down like she asked.

“Alright guys! You asked for it!”

Ghost Spider leaned over and shot a generous amount of webbing into the wheel wells. The tires squealed as the wheels locked up and the driver lost control, but Ghost Spider had intentionally chosen a stretch of road with no other cars or people around so she wasn’t that worried.

A slight tingling of her spider sense let her know exactly when to jump off the hood of the car before the out of control vehicle crashed into a street light and came to a complete stop. A quick check showed that both men inside were a bit banged up, but besides a few bruises, completely fine and ready to be webbed up while she waited for the pursuing cop cars to catch up.

The cops looked annoyed that she had stepped in to nab the two in the car, but accepted them anyway. Ghost Spider got the distinct impression that one of them was looking for an excuse to confront her though, considering how often his hand brushed over his gun and how he seemed interested in keeping her there as long as he could. Ghost Spider couldn’t figure out the reason why either. He could have been taking bribes from someone in the Crime Families she helped take down, he could have a hatred of Supers, heck, it could be as simple as bruised pride from her catching the people he was chasing.

But she didn’t want to hang around long enough for him to do something stupid. So after a quick wave, she swung away, leaving the cops to do their work, and for her to get back to her patrol.

She also wanted to call the Bat Family and see they had better luck or if there were any updates about the lab rats.

-o-

“Nothing on your end either, huh?” Batgirl was the one answering her call tonight. For all the good it seemed to do.

“Not really. The scanning program you gave us was helpful, but they still only have a range of a few dozen feet at best.” Batgirl replied. “Plus, we’ve been busy with something else lately.”

“Oh, yeah?” Ghost Spider couldn’t say she was surprised. With how much finding those rats depended on luck she would have been very impressed if her friend hadn’t moved on to other more visible incidents.

“Yep, a string of closed door murders. All the victims were strangled like they were hung from something. But there are no places to do so and no signs the bodies were moved. All of them supposedly had ties to high ranking crime bosses too.”

Ghost Spider hissed.

That sounded suspiciously like someone cleaning house and sending a message at the same time. She didn’t envy her friend in figuring those out but she would still offer her aid if she needed it.

“Sounds disturbing. Any leads or clues?”

“Just the same method of killing and a calling card, a literal card with a black spider on it.” Batgirl answered. “Nightwing is checking our databases for any matches but that will take a while.”

“Huh, he didn’t mention anything like that to me when we talked last.”

“...I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it.” Batgirl said unconvincingly. “Look, I’ll let you know if we find anything about the escaped animals or need your help elsewhere.”

“Mhmm.”

“I mean it, Gwen. With Batman out of the City, Nightwing has been taking every problem that pops up onto his shoulders. He’s not really thinking straight.” Batgirl said. “I was actually thinking about saying something but never felt like the timing was right. So, why don’t we meet up tomorrow? We can talk about how to get our stubborn idiot of a friend’s head screwed on right.”

Considering the alternative was waiting until Dick realized he was being a jerk and pulling his head out of his posterior by himself – something that often took weeks for him to do so – Ghost Spider was more than happy to agree to fast tracking the process.

“Sure, where do you want to meet up?”