Chapter Fourteen

I seized a chunk of concrete and flung it viciously. It shattered against the steel wall of a building with a sound like a gunshot. I had left school during lunch. According to the neon clock blinking across the street, I had thirty minutes to get back before the bell rang. It was freezing. I wondered vaguely how Dad had survived the winters dressed in a spandex costume like this. Another gust of wind nearly shoved me from my perch. I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered.

How could this have happened. Why did it have to be Harry. Why had Harry done all of this. How could he. How could he.

I thought in a stunned, emotionless monotone. Nothing seemed quite real, not the cold, the shock, nothing. The-

"Hey, look! It's Spider-Girl!"

Click! Flash! Click! Flash!

I threw up my hand to shield my eyes from the flashing of the group of camera-wielding tourists, grinning and snapping pictures of me in a flurry of clicks.

"Will you stop that?" I roared. Seething, I released my grip on the railing of the observation deck and dropped straight down the side of the Empire State Building. There was no privacy anywhere.

I sat down again on the edge of a roof, regretting my shouting. It had nothing to do with them. Harry. It all came down to Harry.

"What did I do to you," I said. "You were my best friend. I never did anything to you. Now you go and do all of this because of your father. It wasn't my fault. You were my best friend."

A black wave of rage and sorrow and betrayal swelled up in me, making me want to scream and cry at the same time.

"What did I ever do to you?" My voice rang back at me over the noise of the traffic, again and again, like a cruel mockery.

At that moment, I wished that none of this had ever happened. I wished that I had never known anything, never had anything to do with this. I wished that Dad had never been bitten. I wished that me, Mom, Dad, Benny, that we could be a normal family who worried about normal, everyday things like jobs or homework. Not treacherous friends and half-arachnid monsters out to kill us.

I flinched as a slew of police cars tore down the street below me, sirens wailing loud enough to deafen the officers inside. Ten police cars, followed by five ambulances.

Oh, no.

I fired a line of web and swung down, landing lightly on the roof of the last ambulance. I don't think the paramedics inside noticed. I could hear the driver shouting into his walkie-talkie.

"Yeah, I know, I know! Oh..." He cursed vehemently. "Damn it! Subway tunnels don't just decide to cave in, you idiot! What the hell is going on? Casualties? What?"

A lump formed in my throat. Casualties were serious injuries. Maybe deaths.

The procession of cars and ambulances whipped around a corner to a squeal to a stop in front of a subway entrance, and my blood froze in my veins. People were crying, covered in dust, swarming out of the subway in panic. But above...

"Oh, hello, officers. Just a little accident, you see. I didn't quite realize just how delicate those tunnel supports are."

Sitting on the windowsill of a neighboring apartment complex was a creature that provoked strangled gasps from the police officers jumping out of their cars. Black-scaled, eight-limbed...

"I offer my most sincere condolences," the creature continued in a ridiculously capricious voice. "Spider-Girl? Is that you? So glad you could join us, dear. After all, I think that the air might be running out soon for someone you care about."

She smiled, a hideous sight of unfolding fangs, then sprang from the windowsill and webslung out of sight.

I jumped from the roof of the ambulance, much to the surprise of the paramedics. Clouds of dust were floating up from the entrance to the subways.

"The fire trucks are on their way."

"They've got about ten minutes of air left. The trucks aren't going to get here in time!"

I could feel the gazes of the officers and paramedics burning holes in my back. Ten minutes of air. The trucks would be too late. Someone I cared about.

I ran into the dust, clearing the stairs in a single bound and stumbling on chunks of loose rock on the tiles. The platform was totally empty. I ran past the shops and booths, searching wildly. No one.

The tracks. Of course! I turned a corner and skidded to a stop, eyes wide in horror. A gigantic tear in the concrete ceiling of the tunnel gaped like an open wound. Sparking electrical cables dangled from the hole, nearly touching the pile of rubble three times my height blocking the tracks.

She had collapsed the tunnel!

Gasping for air in the stifling dust, I scrambled up the mountain of concrete, seizing the first chunk of rock. I flung it aside and heard it shatter on the floor below. I worked like a machine, grabbing rocks larger than I was and hurling them aside. I was dimly aware of the people below, paramedics, policemen, and ordinary passerby prying at the rocks at the bottom of the pile, shouting instructions and encouragements to each other.

I shoved another boulder out of my way and was greeted by the white face of a man in a conductor's uniform on the other side of the shattered window. I motioned at him frantically. "Move away!"

He nodded shakily and shuffled backwards into the first car. I drew back my right fist and smashed a hole on the glass. Ignoring the slicing pain in my hands, I gripped the edges of the hole and pried the glass open.

"Hey in there! Anyone hurt? Hello?"

"Yes! We've got a man in here with a broken leg! He's bleeding real bad!"

"Okay!" I leaned backwards from the hole and shouted at the paramedics below. "There are people hurt in here!"

Ladders slammed up next to me as the paramedics and firemen answered. I slid into the hole in the windshield, letting my eyes adjust to the dimness. Only the emergency lights were shining. It seemed as if all of the passengers were crammed into the first car. Some of them recoiled as they saw me.

"I'm not going to hurt you! Come on! Sorry, ma'am." I gently picked up a protesting elderly woman and spun around to see the dust-coated faces of two firemen.

"Here! Give her here!" The firemen took hold of the woman's arms and helped her crawl out of the hole.

I pulled people out one by one, all pale and trembling, and handed them to the firefighters outside. Next the bleeding man. Men, women, and small children. One of the last people out was covered from head to foot in black dust, gasping for air and limping.

"Mayday?"

It was Mom.

Before I could react, the firemen reached in and pulled Mom to safety. I grabbed the last passenger, a man in a business suit, and helped him out.

The ruined terminal was crammed with people now, most of them in dark jackets with the letters EMS on their backs. I let my breath out in a whoosh as I saw Mom being handed to the care of two paramedics. I ached inside, hating myself; I couldn't go down there to help her.

"What the hell is going on here?" I heard a policeman below shout into his walkie-talkie.

"Hobgoblin sighted on Fifty-Second, now reported heading for the harbor! Repeat, Hobgoblin-"

"The suspect is to be apprehended unharmed! Suspect is outside now over the viaduct, moving north. Suspect is described as...shoot...uh, uh, around eight feet tall, six arms, black suit with red hourglass-shaped marking..."

"Explosion on a charter boat going past Staten Island! It's Hobgoblin! Hobgoblin has been sighted..."

"We've got a four-alarm! Four-alarm fire in the Bronx! Street address is..."

It sounded like an eruption of static and crackling voices from almost every single radio in the terminal.

A voice from a fireman's radio shouted, "Hobgoblin is now heading for Manhattan! Repeat!"

"Suspect given as Black Widow has taken a hostage! No! Several hostages! Correction, several hostages!"

They were playing games, I realized. Hobgoblin and this 'Black Widow'. Jumping around from place to place, causing disaster after disaster...

I skiid down the pile of rubble and followed the group of firemen sprinting out, taking one last look at my mother being treated by paramedics.

"You're not going to win this one, Harry."