A brisk swing into Greenwich village later, my heart was only beating about twice as fast instead of ten times as fast like it had been on the way to the warehouse. Either Spider-Man had decided to go slower or I was more accustomed to traveling on the back of a mad acrobat.

When we arrived at Empire State University, I thought maybe Spider-Man was going to give me a clue to his identity by opening the doors with a faculty key card, but instead, he climbed down a wall and forced open a window. He then crawled back up and, without warning, threw me down and in an arc through the open window. I landed unceremoniously on my butt, and the wallcrawler flew in a moment later, landing in a perfect four point crouch.

We were in some kind of chemistry lab, and the equipment surely looked a lot more expensive than the setup our forensics department had. Spider-Man went right to work, putting samples under microscopes and flipping switches on various machines as though he had been working them all his life. This guy was definitely in his element. In only moments, he was deeply engrossed in his work, and it occurred to me that this was probably a welcome distraction from whatever was going on in his personal life. As such, I hated to interrupt, but my mouth opened and just kept on running.

"So look, I can see that you're having a tough day. Sometimes it helps to talk to someone, let it all out, ya know."

Spider-Man was peering through one of the microscopes, and I wondered how good a view he was getting through those eyelets. He answered me with a non-committal grunt, and I could tell he wasn't listening.

"I know how it is. Sometimes you get your head so wrapped up in a girl, you can't think straight. You spent so much time worrying about how she was feeling, what she was thinking….it never occurred to you what you would do if she was gone. You forget how to just live your life for you."

Spider-Man moved away from his microscope and began poking at another of his samples with a metallic instrument. When he spoke, his voice had softened somewhat. "I did spend a lot of time thinking about her. I saw her…see her everywhere. But she didn't know that. I was never home, never took the time to show her how much she really meant to me. All she saw was a guy who was always gone, always putting everyone else before her."

"Hey man, I'm a cop. I understand that. Melina…that's my wife, she still has trouble with my career sometimes. Cuz I'm always gone, and how must that be for them? Sitting at home, long hours into the night, waiting for the phone to ring with the voice on the other end telling her that I ain't coming back. I don't know how she does it, man. I know I couldn't."

"Why do you still do it then?" Spider-Man asked. "You could do anything. Be a butcher. Be an accountant. Why stay in a job that puts such a strain on your relationship? Why take the chance that you'll come home one night and she won't be there?"

"Man, you know I'd love to quit. Love to make it so my wife and kids don't have to worry about me. I'd love to stop seeing that haunted look in her eyes. She tries to hide it, but I catch it out of the corner of my eye, every now and then. But then I think of all the people I've helped over the years. It ain't even the big stuff…the riots, evacuations, the bombings, the fires. It's the little things that I remember. The domestic spats, where I get some woman away from her scumbag boyfriend, even if it's just for a night. The traffic accidents, where I get to pry people out of their cars and see the look on their faces knowing how narrowly they escaped death. The missing kids that…" I broke off, thinking of Georgie. "That I get to bring back to their families. I love it. And I hate it at the same time. I could never give it up. Could you?"

"I've thought seriously about it," Spider-Man said.

"You know, there was a night that my wife almost got the call. Well, not even a call. The last words my wife woulda ever got from me were going to be in a text, telling her that some Maggia dopeslingers had finally made her old man bite the big one." I swallowed. "If it wasn't for you, buddy, I wouldn't be here. I think if it wasn't for you, a lotta people's husbands, wives, children wouldn't have made it home. Your old lady, she may not be able to live with your job. But that's on her, not you."

There was a pause as Spider-Man fiddled with the equipment for a few long moments. Then he spoke. "Still, I can't shake the feeling that something is missing. That I sacrificed her happiness—our happiness—to hold onto this life. That there's a big gaping hole in my side that won't ever be….aha!"

"What?" I said. "What did you find?"

Spider-Man turned to a nearby desktop computer and began typing furiously. "Manufacturing markers in the feathers. They're Toomes's design all right, but they're not from his prototypes. They're being manufactured by a very specific process that's only in use in a handful of facilities in New York. And once my silicate sample analysis is finished, I should get a general idea of the factory's location."

"You're gonna tell what part of the city the factory's in by the dirt they left behind?" I said in disbelief.

"I've taken a lot of samples over the years," he replied simply.

It had never occurred to me that the Spider-Man would be a scientist, as well, but then I thought back to the first time I saw his red-and-blue costume and mused that only a huge nerd would create something like that.

Something beeped on his belt and I glimpsed him tapping on something that looked like a smartphone with antennas coming out of it. "Turn on your scanner," he said.

I flipped on my police scanner and fiddled with the dials until I came across the traffic. A burglary in progress in the Diamond District. "You gotta take me with you," I said.

"Fine, McDoogel," he said. "Get on my back. And hold on tight. We're gonna take a shortcut."

I dubiously climbed onto the superhero's back. "Shortcut?"

That was when I learned about the web slingshot. By being propelled by one. Across several city blocks. Many stories high.

After a bonkers, balls-out web-sling across town, we were in the Diamond District, and I had motion sickness.

Maybe motion sickness was understatement. It took almost a full minute after I slid off the wallcrawler's back that the world stopped spinning. I caught my breath and checked my pockets to make sure nothing had fallen out.

"How…" I panted. "Why…" I huffed a few more times. "Are we there already?"

"I told you, when you ride with me, sometimes things get bumpy," he said offhandedly. Without another word, he crouched down and crawled across the rooftop and down the side of the building.

I stuck my head over the ledge after him. I guess I had to make my own way down.

Rain started falling as I took out my baton and went to work on the padlock on the rooftop door.