Awwww Guys, I'm hurt! Hardly anybody read and/or reviewed my last chapter! That's one major blow to my ego. Anyway, got yet another chapter for the ones that are staying with me. So here you go. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own Spiderman yadha yadha yadha you know the drill…
A dank, rancid smell assaulted Spiderman's nose as he slowly climbed down the pitch black tunnel. Sinking further and further away from the small circle of faint light above, the superhero had a moment to seriously wonder if he would ever see the surface again. His footsteps on the metal ladder echoed noisily off the stone walls of the passageway all around him.
He could feel the air around him slowly becoming chillier as he continued his way deeper into the earth. A cold shiver passed across his skin as the moist air began to work its way past his clothing. Glancing upward, Spiderman noticed that the little speck of light from the opened manhole had now completely disappeared, leaving him stranded in the blackness.
'I must be about thirty feet down by now,' Spidey speculated, judging by the time he had spent climbing the damp metal ladder.
As Spidey continued his descent, he became consciously aware of the gnawing uneasiness that was quickly overtaking him. The walls of the passage seemed to closing in around him as the darkness that blinded his vision seemed to slowly take on darker hues of black as he fell farther away from the surface. He knew what was going on was only a figment of his imagination and fear, but that still didn't do much to comfort him. Somewhere in the darkness below him waited a living, breathing monster.
It felt like he had been climbing down forever when suddenly he felt his extended foot hit nothing but thin air beneath him. Over the beating of his heart that rang in his ears, Spidey could hear the subdued trickle of water flowing somewhere below.
"Bottom floor: women's clothes, shoes and dangerous man-eating spider monster," he muttered absentmindedly to himself.
Releasing his grip on the slippery metal rungs of the ladder, Spiderman dropped several feet before splashing to a halt below. Slick sludge like matter met him, almost making Spidey lose his balance and fall flat on his back down into it. Luckily, his acquired superhuman balance saved him from such a messy end.
"Aw, man! I just got these boots polished too!" Spidey whined loudly as he picked a foot gingerly from the ankle high water that began to quickly soak through the thin material of his costume, "Dang, what is that smell? I must have really stepped in something nasty!"
"Didn't you ever hear, that people are turned off by excessive complaining?" came a familiar voice as a presence stepped up beside him in the darkness. Spiderman could detect from the tone in her voice though, that Commander Lee shared his sentiments exactly.
But before the young superhero could come up with a comeback, a bright light suddenly exploded through the darkness. His eyes dilated to the pitch black subterranean lighting, Spiderman yelped in pain and surprise, his eyes screaming in sensory overload.
Shielding his face with both arms, he waited a moment, allowing his eyes to readjust to the newfound light source. Through narrowed eyes that still stung and watered in the corners from the yellowish glare, Spiderman could finally make out the form of his companion holding a large flashlight.
"A little warning next time would be great," he muttered as the last of the patches of white faded from his vision.
Not making any acknowledgement to the web swinger, Commander Lee swept her flashlight in a wide arch around the two. Bouncing off the walls, the wide beam of light illuminated the rough stone surface of a wide berthed tunnel. Every fifteen feet or so, there branched another darkened tunnel that lead away into the yawning darkness beyond. Multiple pipes that were all rusted to the same ugly shade of muted reddish brown, hung overhead from the low ceiling. Around their feet swirled murky, oil slicked water-- or at least they hoped it was water…
"Ugh, let's get out of this stuff," Audrey suggested with a wrinkled look of disgust on her face. Following her to the far side of the tunnel, Spiderman hoisted himself up onto a narrow ledge that served as a dry walkway along the small river of foul smelling water then turned to pull the commander up after him.
As the two shook the excess water from their boots, Audrey pulled a small device from her jacket that began to suddenly beep in slow, far spaced blips. Pressing in a few keys, she frowned noticeably in the dim light cast by her downcast flashlight.
"What is it?" Spiderman questioned nervously. The light had done little to relieve some of the uneasiness he felt. Beyond the comforting glow of the flashlight stood thick walls of pitch black in which shrouded possibly thousands of dangers. Subconsciously edging closer to the woman, Spiderman glanced over her shoulder at the device held in her hands.
"The signal from the ear piece. It's getting farther away. It's already at least twelve blocks away. We need to hurry if we don't want to lose the signal. This thing's fast," she stated coldly, turning to look beyond her superhero companion into the standing darkness that stretched out almost endlessly.
Stepping around Spiderman on the narrow ledge, she forcefully took lead of the procession and began walking to the right. Leaping to the cold stone wall of the tunnel, Spidey began wall crawling alongside the commander, his body parallel to the ground. Somehow the proposition of possibly walking through more of that questionable looking water held no appeal to him.
Glancing out of the corner of her eyes at the strange sight she beheld, Audrey asked almost incredulously, "How can you stick to the walls like that? Do you have some kind of glue on your fingers, or is that one of your superpowers?"
"One of my superpowers. I can stick to almost any surface. I have tiny, hair like hooks on my hands and feet that can attach to almost anything," Spiderman answered plainly without any audible pride. He had become so accustomed to his powers over time that he rarely thought of them as abnormal anymore.
"How did you get your powers…I mean, your parents weren't some alien spider creatures from some other planet were they?" she asked almost curiously.
"Ummm not exactly…" Spiderman chuckled to himself. Numerous people had speculated about his origins since the very beginning of his crime fighting career, but Audrey theory just took the cake as the most outrageous.
"Well, are you going to answer me or are you going continue being so secretive? It's not like I'll figure out who you are just by you telling me how you're able to crawl walls," she snorted irritably.
"I was bitten by a genetically engineered spider," Spidey replied. As he answered, Spiderman took a second to steal a glance from the corner of his eye to see how the commander would react to his story.
Audrey's eyebrows and facial features were twisted in a ponderous, sardonic expression almost as if she was skeptical and at the same time disappointed at his explanation.
"What!?" Spiderman demanded defensively.
The commander merely glanced up to him crawling against the wall, her eyes cold orbs of condescendence. "It's just that you'd have a little bit more of an interesting background story," she answered callously.
"Do you have any friends?" he cried in exasperation.
"Nope. The whole concept is overrated," the young woman matter of factly with indifference.
Letting out a loud groan of frustration for her impossibly cold nature, Spiderman rolled his eyes behind the gleaming eyes pieces of his mask unconvinced. There was no way the commander could be so uncaring, he told himself. She had to be putting up a strong front.
Forgetting her companion yet again, Audrey glanced down at the tracking device in her hand. Training the light of her flashlight onto it, she studied the instrument for a moment before suddenly stopping dead in her tracks.
"What is it?"
"The signal's stopped," she said plainly, again trailing her flashlight to shine down the length of the tunnel, "Maybe two blocks distance from our present position."
"Then let's go," Spidey called, suddenly taking off down the tunnel. Moving his legs and arms in a fluid grace as his fingers and toes glided across the slimy surface of the wall Spiderman skittered into the darkness.
"Hold on, bug-boy! Wait for me!" the commander called in a hushed voice that still managed to bounce and echo into the distance as she sprinted after the wall crawling superhero.
"Would you mind not calling me 'bug-boy' anymore? For your information, I'm not an insect or a bug; I'm an arachnid," Spiderman pointed out teasingly as the young woman caught up to him and the two rushed headlong into the spiraling sewer. Only giving a snort as a response, Audrey jogged quickly along, the beam of her flashlight bouncing wildly off the tunnel walls.
************
Groggily sliding his eyelids back into his head, the man was not surprised to see nothing but endless darkness meet his sight. It would have been just as productive to not open his eyes at all for what little it did him.
The small amount of energy that was needed to perform that simple task of keeping the heavy lids of skin from falling back over his vision was too much. He was too weak. Succumbing to his fatigue, he let his eyelids slowly drift back into place, his head rolling to the side weakly.
His whole body felt numbed to the core. Shivering did nothing. Every time a convulsion or twitch of muscle generated any minute ounce of heat in his weary body, it was instantly stolen away by the wall of stone ice that pressed into is shoulder blades and back.
The man's toes barely grazed the ground beneath his limp legs that hung lifelessly under his body. A massive net of impossibly strong, sticky strands suctioned themselves around his still form. Glued to the bone cold wall behind him, the silky threads tightly cocooned the young man upright like some kind of ancient Egyptian mummy with only his head and legs from the knees down free.
The passage of time had become a distorted concept since becoming imprisoned in the dark hell that surrounded him. It felt like another lifetime ago since he had been drug down and entrapped in the lonely abyss of cold and fear. Had it been a day, a week, or a month? He just didn't know anymore.
The last thing he remembered from that once, never time was walking through a silenced Central Park late at night with his girlfriend, Liz. And then a sudden and violent attack by a monstrous insect looking creature. He remembered praying the monster would not go after his date, but also that it would spare him.
Fate had allowed him part of his wish, but had abandoned him in the end to the clemency of his attacker. The poor, frightened man had mercifully fainted after being violently trussed like a package and carried off into the night.
But those nightmares had been nothing when he had awoken in utter darkness only to realize sharp fangs deeply imbedded into the soft flesh of his shoulder. Screaming out in pain and fear, Steve had found no sound escaping from his parted lips. Only the silence of a scream trapped deep within his tight throat. He had felt the stinging venom enter his shoulder and begin pumping through his blood a moment after the razor sharp mandibles of the spider creature retracted and a feral hiss cut the air soon afterwards.
Seconds later, he had lost all control of his limbs, rendering him as lifeless as a puppet severed from its strings and puppeteer. That was when he had been forcefully adhered to the wall with a gauzy straight jacket of webbing. He had remained there since, drifting in and out of consciousness. But before long, the line between the two states of awareness became muddled and fuzzy by the hallucinogenic venom administered to him by the spider monster to keep him still and non-combative in its web.
The wound still remained in his shoulder, pussy and dripping with infection that had festered in the dank and rancid air of petulance. Even the slightest twitch of the inflicted flesh sent stabbing pains of agony deep into his torn shoulder.
The rotten, decoyed stench of death stung Steve's nose from somewhere nearby, churning his stomach in revulsion. Dry heaves constricted his chest weakly. Had there been any substance in his emaciated belly, the poor boy might have retched, but he had not eaten or drunk anything since arriving in that dark dungeon of horrors.
The swollen mass of his tongue filled his mouth, pressing against the back of his teeth and roof of his husky mouth. Slow, agonizing drips of water plunked in rhythm from above nearby in the darkness; close yet so far out of reach for the thirst tortured man.
He could feel other presences weakly shifting against their organic restraints in close proximity to his. But no one muttered a sound. Not a word. Not a scream for help. Not even a whimper or groan of misery. Nothing…
Either the psychological or physical strains of the horrible situation; the weakness and paralysis from the painful spider bite, their near starved state, or the luring fear of what stalked in the thick blackness around them had silenced the numerous victims of the creature, or it had been they had just accepted their uncertain fates.
Steve suddenly heard from a distance, an echoing crescendo of inhuman clicks. Reverberating down what could only have been a long and narrow tunnel, the scrapping footfalls of multiple clawed legs clattered loudly against the cold cement floor as they drew nearer.
Steve's heart pounded against his ribs in fear. It was the spider creature returning to its lair. The thing had made a notable routine of coming and going periodically during the time Steve had been captured. And every time it returned, it carried with it another kicking, screaming bundle of frightened human flesh to feed upon. The young man had lost track of how many there had been, but he knew there were many.
During his time, Steve had witnessed (or at least heard…) the monster through the darkness feeding several times on its trapped victims. The sharp, gurgled scream of pain that stung his ears of the death blow of the creature on its victim's neck and then the sickening slurp of the poor victim's body fluids being greedily sucked from their still warm corpse remained all too horribly vivid in Steve's memory. He could only guess at how much longer he had left on Earth trapped in that cold blanket of darkness.
Entering its foul smelling lair, Steve heard the creature's low hiss vibrate the air dangerously. Cowering in the massive web that cocooned around him, the young man waited in painful fear as he heard the thing come towards him. His frantic heartbeats thundered in his ears deafeningly.
Steve could almost picture the monster's form in his mind's eye, it's spindly legs holding the newest addition to its collection high off the ground. A heavy thud against the cold ground accompanied the thrashing sound of a struggling person kicking the air frantically for release.
"No! Let me go! Stop!" cried the panicky voice of a grown man through the still air. A soft song of alien clicks was the newest victim's only answer before a sharp scream of pain and terror split the air.
Steve felt empty of emotions or pity as the howl of the poisoned man slowly faded away down the tunnels, the sound becoming caught in his paralyzed throat. He vaguely remembered hearing stories about Holocaust survivors becoming desensitized to the horrors they faced daily in the death camps of Germany decades ago. Perhaps the same thing had begun to effect him. He just didn't care anymore…only that he himself would somehow survive.
The watery splat of webbing sounded a moment later against the same wall he was trapped to, perhaps only five feet away. The dull thuds of thick soled shoes bumped lifelessly through the sudden stillness against the wall behind the new man until they gradually lost their momentum and hung still beneath the fresh body.
Steve cringed back weakly in fear as he felt the massive bulk of the monster gracefully move away from the new victim and pass his own suspended body on all eight of its long legs. His breath catching in his throat, the young man stifled a sob as he sensed the spider creature come to a stop before him.
He could almost feel the merciless bulging eyes of the thing crossing over his flesh, debating whether to fest on him or not. 'Please no. Please no. Please no,' he begged uselessly in his head, his body too weak from fatigue and starvation to respond to or even acknowledge the screaming primal instinct to flee from the awful monstrosity that breathed its rancid breath in his face.
'Just please leave me alone…'
********
"Down this way," Audrey shouted to her superhero companion, motioning to her left as she suddenly veered into an adjacent tunnel. Holding the small tracking device out from her body in the bouncing path of her flashlight, the signal bleeped and blipped steadily in slowly increasing intensity as they ran headlong down the miry sewage system.
Despite the quick and sudden directional changes of the hardened commander Spiderman could have easily left her in his wake, moving in unhindered grace crawling along the water streaked stone walls of the tunnel quicker then any Olympic track runner could have running along the narrow sewer ledge. Even with his heightened senses and the addition of his all-knowing sixth sense for danger, the looming gloom of the subterranean world posed too many uncertainties and dangers for the crime fighter.
He may still have been headstrong in his youth, but Spiderman was self-conscious enough to know that traveling into the unknown, underground territory of his genetically advanced hybrid clone may prove too much for him to deal with alone, especially if it was without any light with which to see his enemy. So he opted to stay with the heavily armed blond woman.
"How much farther?" he asked, finally pushing off the slimy stone wall, dropping beside his partner on the water slicked ledge in a run, his rhythm or speed never skipping a beat.
"We should be coming up on my guy any second. Get ready. The creature may be with him or nearby," she ordered abrasively, too accustomed to being in charge to remember Spidey already having pointed out her weak authority over him.
Audrey suddenly veered into an adjacent tunnel that branched off from the main trunk of the sewage vein they had followed for the better part of twenty minutes. The subdued beeps of the tracking device began to rise in intensity as Spiderman and commander Lee cautiously paused at the mouth of the new sewer. Clicking the tracking device silent, the young woman shoved it back within the fold of her SWAT jacket and unclipped a large energy pistol from her belt.
Taking the lead, Audrey stepped carefully into the shaft, her flashlight slowly panning left to right. This tunnel, unlike the one they had just left, was narrower with no stream of water flowing through it. Only thick pipes ran along the ceiling leaving the bottom void of anything except for small puddles of stagnant water into which slowly dripped drops of water. The startled squeaks of rodents sounded farther down the length of the underground passage before they scurried back into the darker recesses of the sewer.
"Do you see anything?" she asked in a whisper, shining the flashlight now up towards the low ceiling of the tunnel. Spiderman looked about slowly, searching for any sign of the eight legged monstrosity. Nothing came from the base of his skull in the way of a spider-sense heads up.
"No. But I wouldn't put it past this thing to be somewhere nearby though," he answered in a hushed voice, his hooded head turned towards the ceiling also. He almost expected any second a massive black blur of eight legs to suddenly materialize and descend upon them; the creature finally revealing itself. But no attack came.
Swinging the cone of light back onto the sludgy surface of the ground, commander Lee noticed a shiny glitter radiating from the middle of a murky puddle off to the side of the tunnel. Stepping over towards it, she stooped down to pluck the object from the standing water.
Rolling the thing over in her gloved palm as she shined the flashlight straight down onto it, she recognized it as one of her teammate's radio link ear pieces. "Damn it," she cursed under her breath, "This means the creature could be anywhere now. We have no way of tracking them now."
Spiderman caught the masked tone of guilt hidden beneath the woman's voice. She was probably feeling somehow responsible for losing the two team members and the creature's trail.
"They could still be nearby," Spidey said, "This thing couldn't have gotten that far. The main area it's been hunting in was only about fifteen blocks or more, meaning its lair is probably somewhere inside of that zone. We've already followed it this far and it's had to of been at least ten blocks or more. It has to be nearby."
"Then let's go, bug."
Following the winding underground passage deeper into the bowels of the earth, Spiderman suddenly noticed a faint rumble that slightly vibrated the ground beneath his feet. Glancing up to the barely visible outlines of the massive pipes shrouded in the darkness above, Spidey saw small showers of dust rustled from between the bricks of the ceiling as the vibrations gradually drew directly overhead in monstrous intensity.
"What is that?" Audrey cried over the now thundering roar that hurtled past from somewhere overhead. Snapping the flashlight's beam skyward, the two looked on helplessly as the storm of noise filled the entire tunnel with its deafening clatter. Dust showered down on their shoulders and heads in a fine blanket of gray. The walls literally shook around them with such intensity by the violent quakes, Spiderman feared the ancient sewer line would suddenly collapse in on them in a massive shower of stone and dirt, burying them alive.
Within seconds the quakes gradually tapered away to nothing, taking with them the crashing roar that still rung loudly in Spiderman's and the commander's ears.
"What was that?" Audrey again asked in a shrill voice, her ears still adjusted to the loud noise that had just roared past overhead.
"I think that may have been a subway car," Spidey said speculatively, still looking upward in thought, "We must be farther down then we thought. It looks like we may be under the subway lines."
"But why would the creature be this close to a mass transportation line?" the young woman wondered out loud, "Don't most animals find nice quiet places to have their young when their about to give birth?"
"Well, this thing isn't what I would categorize as normal…" Spiderman pointed out hesitatingly, lost for an actual answer and a little uncomfortable by her comment about his cultivated blood sample's reproductive tendencies.
"Well, whatever its reasons, we have to hurry up and find this thing. We may be running out of time. My men are in greater danger every minute we waste here talking," the uptight commander snipped, recovering from the sudden distraction of an overhead subway car and again tromped away into the tunnel on her rescue and capture mission, leaving Spiderman behind in the dimming light as the light of her flashlight slowly receded with her.
"Wait up!" he called after her, jogging after her as the glowing light faded around a sudden turn of the tunnel. Hastily turning the bend to not be left in the darkness, Spiderman barely had time to register the sudden tingle of his spider-sense before he abruptly plowed into the stopped commander's back. Somehow the pair managed not to become a giant mass of twisted limbs on the slimy floor of the tunnel.
"Watch it, web swinger, or I'll pull out a can of Raid," she growled dangerously, whirling around on the masked man to stare him down as punishment for bashing into her.
"Sorry," Spidey exclaimed with his hands held up in surrender, "But what's the problem? Why'd you stop?"
"The tunnel's forked," she answered curtly with a clear look of disapproval twisted onto her face for the city's wall crawling superhero while pointing down the length of the tunnel. Following her finger, Spiderman saw that the tunnel indeed split into two separate tunnels that snaked away into the blank wall of darkness beyond the reach of their flashlight; one to the left and the other to the right.
"Now what?" he asked, somewhat demoralized by this new turn of events. He dreaded to think about what this new development could spell.
"The only obvious thing would be to split up and search each tunnel separately. We can't waste anymore time searching only one tunnel when we can search both separately," Audrey remarked coldly, "I'll take the left; you take the right. We can still keep in touch with our radio link down here."
"But you're forgetting a tiny little detail…I can't see if you take the flashlight or vice versa. No matter what you may think, I can't see in the dark," Spiderman exclaimed in exasperation.
"Aha! So you're not the all powerful, all capable superhero everybody makes you out to be," Audrey smirked maliciously, taking pleasure in Spidey's clear agitation about traveling the dark sewer system alone and without lighting. "Are you afraid of some big bad boogey man scaring you in the dark?" she simpered coldly.
"No. I'm afraid of a big bad spider monster eating me alive in the dark," Spiderman retorted defensively before suddenly realizing something. "What a minute…did you just crack a joke?" he questioned incredulously.
"I always like to keep people guessing," she responded with an indifferent shrug of her shoulders.
"Well, that nice and all that you're finally lightening up, but one of us still won't be able to see in there," he said, again motioning to the awaiting twin mouths of blackness.
"Now that's where we're different, bug-boy--"
"--Amongst many other thing…" Spidey interjected quietly to himself.
"As I was saying…" she continued with a snarl of annoyance for the masked man, picking up the side commentary of the wall crawler, "that we're different in that I come prepared for almost any situation…" Reaching into her jacket, she suddenly produced a thick mask like apparatus.
"What's that?"
"Night vision goggles," the blond answered indifferently, thrusting the piece of technology into Spidey's gloved hands.
"Why didn't you tell me about these before?" he asked half in annoyance for having things constantly pulled on him by the young woman as he tugged the goggles over the bulgy eye pieces of his mask and tightening the strap to fit snuggly around his head.
"Like I said, I like to keep people guessing…" she replied.
Muttering under his breath, the wall crawler snapped the small switch on the side of his goggles, illuminating everything before him in the dark tunnel in a pale greenish glow. Scanning the area to test the night vision goggles out, he could now see cockroaches the size of small dogs scurrying across the slippery tunnel ground that he had not noticed before with only the flashlight to aid their vision. Somehow with his new vision, he wished he still only had the flashlight…
"Wow…I always wanted to get me a pair of these," Spidey muttered to himself in appreciation for the vision enhancing instrument.
"Stay focused, bug-boy…" the commander warned but not without cocking an eyebrow at the awkward, comedic appearance Spiderman now possessed with the bulky goggles perched precariously atop his head, "We have hostages to think about before we get sidetracked. Not to mention a particular spider we have to stop from giving birth to hundreds of baby monsters."
"Point taken," the crime fighter conceded seriously.
"Stay in touch. I don't want to have to hunt you down if you get lost in there," she ordered as she started down her chosen tunnel, the bouncing beam of her flashlight slowly fading into the distance which cast the last fleeting shadows of her to one side of the tunnel. Before Audrey's disappeared into the darkness, Spiderman saw her unclip her gun from her belt and train in into the tunnel spread out before her in readiness.
"That can work both ways, commander," he shouted after her, not totally sure if she heard him or not. Shrugging helplessly in getting no response, he leapt to the wall of the right hand tunnel and hurtled himself into the darkness that now glowed florescent green behind the thick lens of his night vision goggles.
I know, I know! This was a very odd place for me to leave this chapter but I didn't want a seventeen page ramble which this very well could have turned into. Long but not too long chapters are the best. (At least in my opinion…) Anyway, the story will be picking up very soon so please bear with me! I promise, you won't regret it. I just don't like to hurry thing…
By the way….please review? I hate begging but I'm running low here on motivation. I have what I think is a great idea for another Spidey story but I want to finish this one first. I'm not giving away any details, but I think it'll be good.
Signing out,
-LAXgirl
P.S. Don't forget to review!!!! PLEASE!!!