SPIDER-MAN

Business Part I

Capture

"How was business today Mr Sheel?" boomed a low voice from the shadows of the circular room.

"N..n.n..not bad s..s.sir" came the reply from the captured man, bound by handcuffs to a chair in the middle of the circular room, a spotlight blinding him, protecting the identity of his captor. The captive man was in his mid thirties and was in good shape considering the method with which he was captured and thrown into this room. He was stammering falsely, trying to disguise the calm and collected state that years of training had prepared him for. He'd already undone the handcuffs but was holding them in his hands so as not to alert his captor. The only problem was he didn't know where his captor was standing, how big he was, how strong and or even if he had bodyguards. All factors had to be eliminated to secure a safe escape but so far he couldn't see a thing, so he waited.

"Do you know why you're here Mr Shield?" asked the bass voice, purposefully accentuating the word Shield.

Dropping the false nervousness, he stood up and replied almost cockily, "Well, I guess you've finally located your mole," before dropping the handcuffs to the floor, testing what material it was and how thick it was from the clang made but accidentally alerting a sound sensor above him. It blinked red twice before returning to its original state.

A minute of silence passed, nothing moved and his thoughts drifted to his wife. He always thought of her at times like these; times when his life was in jeopardy, and sadly for him, this was pretty often. For 9 years now, he had worked for the American secret government service SHIELD as a mole. He had been trained for over 4 years at a special camp before being assigned to over 25 different companies. He'd never been caught till now, but many a time he'd been found out. He had had to escape skyscrapers and company security more times than there are Mario games. Only, this time, he'd been assigned to one of the biggest companies in New York, Foster, Ingman, Stevens and Kendal Industries. They had a hand in everything that went on this city and his job was to find anything illegal and pass it on to his fellow SHIELD operatives. One of these operatives was his wife Fiona. And at times like these he always thought of her.

His eyes began to adjust to the darkness just as something brushed past him, fast, agile and cold. His pulse roared and his captor began to talk once more.

"No, Mr Sheel or should I say Gargan. I haven't just found you, I have known about you since the day you began to work for me. You see I am the most powerful man in New York. As chairman of Foster, Ingman, Stevens and Kendal industries I have access to information about every citizen of this city, including you. I've been feeding you false information, you've sent the false information to SHIELD and this has caused the deaths of over 100 SHIELD agents including your wife." The way he said this was almost nauseating for Gargan; so calmly, his voice unwavering as he delivered the death toll of his mistake.

"Your b..bluffing" Gargan replied with a genuine stutter, not being able to come to terms with the truth. She couldn't be dead; the missions had all been successes. He had been nominated for promotion. He's lying.

"Why have you not received a letter from your wife in over a fortnight? You were too enthralled in your own success that you failed to check the letters you received from SHIELD. They each contained my stamp! If only you had looked, she wouldn't have died, they wouldn't have died and maybe you wouldn't have died. Your success and cockiness went to your head and cost the lives of others. But your punishment isn't over yet" the deep voice answered.

Realising his mistakes, Gargan controlled his emotions. He had to go out fighting. He had come to terms with his failures and was ready to accept death but his training wouldn't let him. However much his grief made him want to curl up and let his captor end it all, he still strived unconsciously for escape, to waste time, delay his death. "At least let me see the face of my destroyer. Who is the most powerful man in New York?"

"You don't honestly believe that I would give you that honour do you? No, of course you don't, your just trying to prolong the inevitable. Well, it's to no avail Mac Gargan. Your death is already here."

The cold, agile presence dashed out of the shadows, past him again, this time injecting him as it went past. Gargan collapsed and shook violently for a couple of seconds before stopping still, his face, expressionless lying at the foot of the most powerful man in New York.

A minute passed while the captor circled Gargan expecting him from the shadows, before he began to speak again, "I hope he's not dead Stromm."

"No sir, just in a state of comatose as you asked" replied a voice masked by static emanating from a speaker on the extermination robot.

"Good. Fuelled by his grief and equipped with his shield training, he will be a valuable addition to the ranks. Take him away."

"Yes sir," The robot added before picking up Gargan in its six powerful arms and transporting him out of the room through an automatic door.

Electric shutters slowly began to rise and tinted windows appeared allowing the most powerful man in New York his favourite view of the city. As he sipped his favourite drink from his personal bar, celebrating his victory he whispered to himself, "Business was good today, business was good".

There it was again, that black van. There was nothing weird about it, just the usual black transit van. Apart from the tinted windows and the almost cryptic licence plate, "P0WERS 1". Quite an unusual thing to have as a licence plate, Peter thought, usually its "M4RK" or "1AN", simple things like names. Why was it following him, the class nerd, Peter Parker, The one guy who would think to himself "that suspicious black van has an interesting licence plate" instead of "oh no, a black van is following me, run!" He was an outcast in school, orphaned as a young boy, he had dreamed that his parents were super spies and that they would return in a black van to retrieve him and take him off on an adventure with them. But he'd grown up now, he was older and he had to be responsible for Uncle Ben and Aunt May. God knows what'd happen if he went missing and that's what would most likely happen if that van caught hi anyway.

As he turned a corner the van followed. It trailed him for 5 blocks until he stopped and tried to hide in the newsagents but it just did a couple of laps around the block, waiting for him, waiting for the ideal moment. Just after it had turned the corner for the fourth time and Peter had given up hope of it going, he made a run for it, down the back alley next to the shop. It took him quite a distance from his house but at least he'd be away from the van, for a while anyway.

It had followed him everywhere; it had even waited outside school. You had to be pretty determined to wait for over 6 hours outside his school. Let's just say it wasn't in the nicest neighbourhood. He'd been trying to work out who would possibly be following him and go to this much trouble just for him. He'd ruled out relatives as he only had Aunt May and Uncle Ben left. He'd ruled out friends as he only really had one, Harry Osborn. Peter had heard a phrase somewhere that fitted Harry perfectly, "fair-weather friend", but to Peter any type of friend was good, even if it meant extra homework. This left the government some sort of company or kidnappers but it was most likely the latter. What would the government or a company want with Peter Parker?

About 20 minutes later Peter turned the corner to finally reach his house only to stop instantly and dash back around the corner. There was the van again, but this time right outside his house. Who would be that cocky, that they would try and abduct him right outside his own home? A better question, deduced Peter would be, who would go to the trouble to find out where I live just to kidnap me. As her pondered on these questions, he took the only obvious option left, the back door. Through the alley behind his house, he ran hoping that the van hadn't seen him. As soon as he opened the back door he heard a familiar frail old voice.

"Peter? Peter, is that you dear?"

"Yes Aunt May, I'm home," answered Peter in a Fred Flintstone voice receiving a quick chuckle from his uncle Ben before he became a bit more serious.

"What time do you call this?" he asked, turning round in his chair

"Sorry Uncle Ben had to… err… pop in to see Doc Connors about the science project" Peter replied hesitantly trying not to alarm his Uncle but giving away the fact that he'd just mad it up on the spot with the huge gaps in his sentence. He really wasn't very good at this lying stuff.

"Really?" replied Uncle Ben in a disbelieving manner "well, whatever reason you're late, it doesn't matter, you've still got to run down to the shop to pick up some paracetamol for you're Aunt May, she's had a terrible head ache all day."

"Do I have to?" asked Peter dreading having to face the van again

"Yes, Peter, you're aunt isn't feeling well at all, now go get her those tablets" Uncle Ben said as he placed some money in Peter's hand.

"Alright" Peter replied dejectedly as he noticed the van still over the road "See you later."

As Peter pulled on the handle to close the door he felt something prick his skin. Looking at his hand, he noticed a tiny mark and a tiny, silvery spider crawling along his finger. Almost instinctively he shook his arm flinging the spider onto the ground. Peter was almost sure he saw sparks coming off it as it slid along the ground before it picked itself up and continued to meander down the path. Peter followed it down the path but left it at the end and turned in the direction of the shops. As he turned he almost fell, a quick nauseating feeling arose inside him, he began to feel dizzy, groggy but shrugged it off and continued, taking slow steps until he reached the corner, where he just collapsed, weakly repeating the word "spider".

No sooner had Peter fallen to the ground than 3 people jumped out of the black van. One was wearing a white lab coat and looked quite intelligent, almost intellectual in fact although almost eccentric with his rough, rugged brown hair whereas the other two were grunts, big, bald men wearing black suits who promptly lifted Peter onto a stretcher in the back of the van. The man in the white lab coat quickly whispered "Project Arachnid, Phase 1 complete. Business is good today sir, very good"

"Good Stromm, don't let me keep you from your work" replied a familiar deep voice from the radio; the voice of the most powerful man in New York.