Peter ran from the Green Goblin through a dark, ill-lit wood, his baby clutched close to his chest to protect her from the burning heat of the explosions that the Goblin was causing with his bombs and sparkle blasters. He could hear the Goblin's glider getting closer all the time, its engine whining with the strain that the Goblin was putting on it. It sounded like a demon escaping from the seventh circle of hell, and it chilled Peter to the bone.
"Give her back, Parker!" the Goblin howled. "You'll never escape me! Don't you see – this is only the beginning!" He threw more pumpkin bombs, ripping trees from their moorings, the ancient branches falling with what Peter thought were screaming sounds. Wails and moans issued forth from their splintered trunks, and, instinctively, Peter clutched his child closer to him. He was concentrating so hard on doing that that he didn't hear the telltale pee-yow of a pumpkin bomb impacting behind him, his spider-sense seeming to abandon him just when he needed it most. He tripped, stumbled, and fell, his baby flying out of his arms. He screamed with fear as he watched the delicate little figure go tumbling towards the ground where he knew that she would be broken like a dry twig. Before that could happen, though, the Goblin swooped around and caught her deftly. Stunned with fear, Peter could only watch as the Goblin loomed over him, suddenly appearing to be twenty feet tall as he blocked out all the meager light.
"This is where it ends, Parker," he said, with a trace of sick amusement under his words. He reached into his bag of tricks, and Peter braced himself for the killing blow –
– and was hit by a pillow, full in the face. He opened his eyes, and saw his beautiful wife standing over him, clutching a soft feathered pillow in both hands, her coppery hair tumbling down her face and framing her gorgeous green eyes and full lips. She was still dressed only in her lacy nightshirt, and for a moment the desire to take her in his arms was almost overwhelming. In fact, it was overwhelming, and he grabbed her and gave her a deep "good morning" kiss. Gently, MJ eased herself out of it and said, "Sorry, stud – no can do. Jonah called while you were sleeping off last night. He needs to see you as soon as you can be at the Daily Bugle. He sounded like he wanted to wring your neck."
"Oh, Jonah always sounds like that," Peter replied, a little disappointed, getting out of bed and going over to his closet to find a clean shirt and some pressed pants. "He loves me really."
"Well, you better hurry, or he won't for much longer," MJ said. "He told me to tell you that if you don't get there before eleven, you're fired." Peter rubbed his chin and nodded sagely.
"I see," he said, trying to sound unworried. "And what time is it now?"
"Ten thirty," MJ said with a wry smile.
"Oh, boy," Peter said. Quickly, he threw the shirt and pants on over his Spidey costume which Peter had also cleaned and pressed, thanks to MJ's insistence that he not leave symbiote residue all over the house, before leaping down the stairs, putting his shoes and socks on and executing a graceful landing as he neared the ground. Rushing out the door, he shouted "Tell Jonah I'll be there as soon as I can. I'll get a bagel in the city for breakfast, okay? I love you, MJ!"
"I love you, too, Peter," MJ said, laughing. "I should have my head examined."
Peter managed to stumble through the doors of the Daily Bugle before eleven, after much insane web slinging and running across rooftops. He managed to catch his breath before walking up to the main office level, where he was greeted almost straight away by Glory Grant, her chocolate-colored skin glowing in the bright sunshine filtering through the office's windows and Venetian blinds. She smiled at him, displaying brilliantly white teeth and waved, saying "Hi, Peter!"
"Hey, Glory," Peter replied, a little breathlessly. "Jonah told me he wanted to see me?"
"He's in his office, Peter. Go on through," Glory replied. "I'll buzz him for you – tell him you've arrived. Better that he shouts at me than you – you look like you had a rough night."
Peter grinned like a naughty schoolboy and said, "You could say that." His grin widened when he saw that Glory had cottoned on to his meaning, and she gave him a sly wink and a smile of her own, before pressing the intercom button with her right hand.
"Mr. Jameson? Peter Parker's here to see you." Glory waited a second before JJJ's gruff, cigar-roughened voice growled from the intercom's small speaker in his trademark blustering fashion.
"Send him in, Miss Grant," he said. "I don't have all day." Peter could just see the old newsman rubbing his hands with glee at the prospect of getting a freelancer to do the work of a staff photographer. The old skinflint was probably watering at the mouth.
"Good luck, Peter," Glory said with mock-sincerity.
Peter rubbed his chin. "His bark's worse than his bite, Glory. You should know that by now." Glory nodded with a smile, and gathered up some papers on her desk so that she could go and deposit them in a filing cabinet in the reference section of the offices' storage space.
"Peter!" came a voice from off to his right. Peter turned his head to see Robbie walking towards him, his red and black tie loosened even at this early hour, and hanging limply against his chest. "Good to see you, son."
"Good to see you too, Robbie," Peter said with genuine affection. The dignified editor of the Daily Bugle was the closest thing to a father figure that Peter had, and he looked up to Robbie in so many ways that it was impossible not to be in awe of the man.
"How you holding up, Peter?" Robbie said, the look in his eyes indicating that he didn't mean simply in the paying-taxes-and-bills sense of the phrase – he meant in the Spider-Man sense. Peter still felt bad about "confessing" to Robbie that he had known Spider-Man for years, even though that was true in a certain sense. He wished he could have told him the whole truth, but that would have been too dangerous, even for a man like Robbie. He took a deep breath. Since Glory had left, he felt a little more comfortable speaking about it, even in cloak-and-dagger circumstances such as this.
"I'm… fine, Robbie," he said. "Really, MJ and I are doing pretty good."
"Don't give me that, Peter," Robbie said. "Come on, son, don't keep this to yourself. I want you to let me know if you need my help, okay?"
"Sure," Peter replied. "You're a good friend, Robbie."
"Someone has to look out for you kids," Robbie said with a wry smile. "Go on – you don't want to keep Jonah waiting any longer. He hasn't had a cigar yet, and he's getting real cranky."
"Oh boy," Peter said with mock horror. While he was glad that Jonah's foul-smelling cigars were off the agenda for the moment, thanks to Jonah's wife Marla, he didn't like the thought of becoming a focus for Jonah's nicotine-starved vitriol, so he made his way carefully through the offices towards the door at the end of the room that had Jonah's name up in thick black letters. The words "J. Jonah Jameson – Publisher" had recently been re-stenciled onto the frosted glass and gleamed. Peter thought that Jonah had to be feeling better now that Norman Osborn wasn't clutching the Bugle with his bloody claws any more. The new lettering would massage his ego until the sting of having to kow-tow to Osborn had faded, Peter supposed. He knocked on the door and heard Jonah yell, "Come in, Parker!" in an irritated tone. In the office, Peter saw that both Flash Thompson and Betty Brant were either side of the desk – Flash, he thought, was doing well to have kept his job here, especially since it had been Osborn who had got him the job in the first place. He thought that Jonah might have got rid of him to take away the last vestiges of Osborn's slimy touch.
"Peter!" Betty said. "Good to see you!" She hurried up to him and gave him a warm hug.
"Careful, Betty, or you'll make Flash jealous," Peter said with a wry smile as he returned her embrace, watching Flash's face split into a wide grin, despite the fact that he had had to spend all morning in Jameson's overly-abrasive company.
"Take your hands off my star reporter, Parker," JJJ said abruptly. "This isn't a singles bar."
"Sorry, Jonah," Peter said apologetically, as Betty bade goodbye to him and left, clutching a file of press clippings to her chest. "What did you want to see me about?"
"I need you to go on an assignment with Ben Urich," JJJ replied, settling back into his chair. His fingers fidgeted, deprived of their comforting cigar. "He wants to follow up some information he got about a meeting between the Kingpin and Don Fortunato tomorrow night – he thinks they'll talk about taking over the territory of the Rose and the Black Tarantula now that those two bosses aren't around any more. I'll let him tell you the rest. Now get going, before I have you arrested for loitering!" He gestured gruffly towards the doorway.
"Sure, Jonah," Peter said. "Thanks for the assignment."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Jonah snapped, in an attempt to brush off Peter's gratitude, but Peter saw through it immediately. He decided that he would spare Jonah further discomfort and go find Ben so that he could get more information on this whole situation. It sounded intriguing, and he wanted to know as much as possible about it before he went rushing in unprepared.
Jeff Stankowicz watched the monitors at Ravencroft, a packet of peanuts and a soda sitting on the little shelf in front of him. He yawned and looked at his watch. Twelve-thirty, and he was only an hour-and-a-half into his shift. He pressed a couple of buttons and shifted between the views of half a dozen security cameras, showing the cells of various supercriminals. Here the Rhino drooled and mumbled, dosed up to the eyeballs with sedatives to keep him docile, there the psychotic Carnage cackled and muttered insanely to himself, his redheaded stare almost burning holes in the lens of the camera trained permanently on his cell. Jeff suppressed a shudder. He'd been here the last time that freak had got loose. He'd had to help them sponge the blood off the walls and try to get the smell of ripped flesh out of the air. He'd not been able to sleep soundly for months. The Silver Surfer had, it appeared, decided to let the shell of cosmic energy that Carnage had been encased in lapse, or had been forced to draw its power back to himself somehow. Jeff didn't know, but he'd been happy that the microwave generators had been on in any case when Carnage had come around. He'd smelt the stink of burning symbiote tissue as the strange alien that coated Kasady's body thrashed and convulsed under the intense heat, and been extremely glad that he'd been wearing a spare suit of Guardsman armor and had been carrying a microwave rifle.
"Go to sleep," said a voice behind him. Jeff whirled in his chair, his hand going to the pistol at his waist, but he could see no one there. He called out "Who's there?" and began to get up, but then he felt a heavy object thud into his skull at the temple, and he knew no more.
The air in front of him shimmered slightly and a tall man appeared as if he were a mirage in the desert. His body was clothed in a black bodysuit that seemed to absorb the meager light in the room, giving him the appearance of a living black hole. "Where is she?" he muttered, flicking through the security camera views with the control on the shelf. Tapping the button briefly once or twice more he found what he was looking for.
There, he thought triumphantly. Now to break her out… Reaching over towards the security toggle controls, he flipped the switch that he was looking for and touched a point on his throat, shimmering into invisibility again.
The woman called Delilah sat in her cell, chained with adamantium shackles – the only things that could withstand her awesome strength. With one hand she lifted a dumb-bell and with the other she drew shapes on the wall of her cell with a piece of chalk that she had managed to hide from the guards. They were not good pictures – no, they had never been good pictures, not since kindergarten – but they kept her occupied, and the wall was a good canvas. She drew a little spider and a tiny rose, and smiled faintly. The drawing was the only thing that was keeping her sane. How ironic, she thought bitterly. This place is doing the exact opposite thing that it's supposed to.
Across from her, Cletus Kasady waved demonically at her, drool spilling over his lips as he made goo-goo eyes and little kissy noises in her direction. She spat at him. Freak, she thought, as Kasady stalked closer to the bars of his cell and waggled his pinkie finger at her.
"Hey, sweetheart," he cackled, "you ever been with a guy like me?" Little tendrils of symbiote curled around him in order to accentuate his words.
"No," she said wearily, "and you aren't my type. Too bloodthirsty."
"Oh, sweetie, you say the nicest things!" Kasady crowed, licking his lips with his long, pink tongue. "I didn't know you cared."
"I don't," she replied tersely. "Shut up."
"Oh come on, baby, lighten up!" Kasady said as he leered at her chest with his vivid green eyes. "Want to know about chaos?"
"No," Delilah replied. "Why should I?"
"Because there ain't no God, sweetie!" Kasady howled. "An' you know what that means? We can do whatever we want to, an' there ain't nobody who can stop us, not when you an' I got the power, like we do! We can kill, we can cut, hack an' slash them feebs weaker than us, and there ain't a damn thing that creeps like Spider-Man can do!" His symbiote swirled over him excitedly, as if his talk of chaos and bloodletting had aroused it somehow. Delilah was unable to tear her eyes away from its oozing, twisting movement. It was hypnotic in a weird kind of way. Suddenly, Kasady was thrown back against the wall of his cell. Delilah started suddenly, rising off her bunk a little. She could see a burn mark on the front of Kasady's grey Ravencroft T-shirt, and inside the circle there was a little patch of reddened, blistered skin. Delilah thought she must have gone mad, when the air in front of her cell shimmered and a black-garbed figure appeared as if out of nowhere. His fingers stroked the door release mechanism and the bars of Delilah's cell slid aside.
"Come," he said. "You're getting out of here." He held out a suit like his and indicated that she put it on so that she could escape. He held out a small metal key and unlocked her shackles with it, the heavy links falling away with a clatter. Delilah rubbed her wrists and slipped on the suit that the mysterious man had given her.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked. "Who do you work for?"
"Not here," the man said. "Come with me and you'll get your answers soon enough." He indicated that she should flip up the hood on her suit, and then touched the spot on his neck that activated his cloaking mechanism. Delilah felt in the corresponding spot on her suit and found a small nub of plastic. She pushed it, and vanished.
Wilson Fisk looked out over the city of New York from his towering headquarters, his massive tree-trunk arms tucked behind his back. He watched the lights of the city as they blinked and twinkled like earth-born stars, and he took pleasure in knowing that a good proportion of them were under his control. Fortunato was nothing, an annoyance at best – the Cosa Nostra were worthless thugs. Fortunato had HYDRA backing him up, true, but even HYDRA's resources paled in comparison to his. He would crush Don Fortunato as surely as he had Silvermane and Hammerhead. It was only a matter of time.
At that moment, he heard one of his scurrying assistants enter the room cautiously, and he turned to see a nervous-looking young man tiptoeing towards him, clutching a piece of paper in his hand.
"Mr. Fisk, sir?" he said uncertainly. "News from your field operative." He held out the paper, and the Kingpin took it in his massive fingers, and opened it out to see what was written on it.
When he had finished reading it, he smiled thinly. Things were going to plan, and the day that Fortunato met his end would be arriving soon.
