Chapter Twelve: What Happens Next
Spider-Man kicked glass from the window sill and hopped up, searching the walls and street below. Firemen were helping people down ladders and aiming jets of water through broken windows at the flames. Emergency vehicles were parked at odd angles on the street below. No super-villain in sight. On the wall above him, Fisk's hired assassin was cursing and shouting, still glued to the bricks by the web across his body.
"Hey! Joule!" he shouted. "Did you see anyone come out this way?"
"Are you kidding me?" Joule squealed, his voice rising with outrage. "Get me down, get me down!"
"What, you got a date?"
Spider-Man left him hanging, and turned back to the people crowding behind him. The heat and smoke in the conference room were becoming unbearable. Quickly, Spider-Man spun silk from both wrists, creating a shining web that reached five stories down to the street. It looked a little like the rope challenge at fairs, where you could watch people trying to crawl over an open net of ropes that constantly twisted and threw the suckers off before they reached the top. A couple of the WXXP employees looked at Spider-Man as if he had lost his mind.
"It's easier than it looks, trust me," he said reassuringly, wishing he could offer an encouraging smile. He jumped back inside to pick up Cheap Shot's erstwhile hostage. Cradling the burned girl carefully, he took huge leaps down the web and in a few seconds reached an ambulance. He laid the moaning girl down carefully. The people crowded into the broken window weren't trying to follow, in spite of the increasing danger, and he hopped back up the web almost as quickly.
"This way, ma'am." Spider-Man offered a hand to a sophisticated woman with heavy make-up. Unwillingly, she took his hand and clumsily swung a foot out to rest on a strand of the web-ladder, a strand no thicker than yarn. The expression of surprise on her face when it took her weight without a jiggle made Spider-Man grin under his mask. More confidently, she found a handhold and climbed down without trouble, although slowly. As Spider-Man offered to help the next person, several others found the courage—or a great enough fear of burning—to step onto the fragile-seeming path down. A few clung and squealed, obviously terrified by the height, others scrambled quickly from rung to rung. In a few moments, the giant web was covered with descending employees. A media crew in a hovering chopper filmed the odd sight, which made a great video clip for the evening news.
Seeing the last employee clamber out the window, Spider-Man scurried up to where he'd left Joule. Ripping him free, he descended one more time, conscious that every second he delayed gave Cheap Shot that much more time to reach Fisk. Like most people in New York, Spider-Man knew exactly where Fisk was right now: presenting his curriculum donation on the lawn in front of the Colonial Rotunda, surrounded by students and teachers. Somehow, he doubted the presence of children would worry Cheap Shot, or slow down his murderous attacks. How many people would die in the next round of this war, if he wasn't quick enough to stop it?
Jumping lightly to the ground in front of an ambulance, Spider-Man set Joule down on the pavement near an empty ambulance. A paramedic hurried up.
"This guy's got some damage. He also wants to talk to a cop." Spider-Man said, quickly.
As the paramedic shrugged and helped Joule into the back of the ambulance to examine his injuries, Joule glared at the vigilante. Spider-Man pretended not to notice and waved urgently at a uniformed cop, who looked surprised and headed over.
"Are you nuts?" Joule hissed. "I'm not telling the cops a thing."
"Think hard about it, friend." Spider-Man said, his voice sharp, his arms folded. He didn't have time for this argument. "Your partner's body is in there, along with the remnants of some pretty heavy firepower. They're going to be all over you, whether you talk or not. Cooperation sounds like an option to me."
Joule gasped as the paramedic began cleaning his hands, and nervously watched the cop walk toward them. It was a safe bet Joule had a record, and Hendricks' body would take some explaining. He could almost see the wheels turning in the blond man's head as he thought the situation through. When the cop arrived, Spidey just cocked his head in Joule's direction. "Here's a witness, officer. He can tell you how all this got started."
"Yeah?" The cop looked from one to the other. "Aren't I suppose to arrest you, wall-crawler?"
"Can you do it some other time? I'm really booked for today," Spider-Man said lightly, jumping on top of the ambulance. The cop just snorted and opened his notebook, licking a finger and flipping the pages over before turning to Joule.
"Name?"
Joule hesitated with his mouth open, glared at the cop, and shut his mouth. Spider-Man waited impatiently, looking down at the scene, until Joule made up his mind.
"I want to talk to my lawyer."
Shaking his head in frustration, Spider-Man launched himself into the air, landing high on the wall of a neighboring skyscraper. What time is it? Oh, right, I don't wear a watch. The presentation's at three...Cheap Shot's had more than enough time to get there. It'll take me what, twenty minutes to reach the Rotunda? As he reached the rooftops and prepared to swing westward, he spotted the news chopper, flying low through the billowing black smoke. Now, there's an idea.
The helicopter pilot felt a jolt, as if he'd hit one of the landing skids against a building. Pulling the chopper up, into clear air, he craned his head to look out the window, panicked. When the window was suddenly filled with a webbed red head, he shouted and nearly lost control of the craft.
Unable to make himself heard over the noise of the blades and the pilot's headphones, Spider-Man pointed with exaggerated gestures at the cameraman in the back of the helicopter and then jabbed his finger in the direction of the Rotunda. The pilot stared at him and the media crew exchanged bewildered looks. Spider-Man repeated his pantomime, and the news director finally said over the intercom, "I think he wants us to head that way!"
The pilot looked over his shoulder at the news director, who waved him forward and said, "Go on! What the hell—if Spider-Man's involved, it'll probably be news!"
Curving sharply, the helicopter took off over Manhattan, with its unusual passenger clinging to the landing skid.
Cheap Shot choked, doubling over as his lungs rejected the acrid smoke and soot that clogged them, as he made his way carefully down the alleyway.
It had taken a split-second, while everyone's attention was diverted, to activate the cloak's camouflage function. He had waited silently, forcing back coughs, trying not to breathe, standing as still as possible. And it had worked, restoring his confidence after the shock of seeing Spider-Man appear so suddenly in front of him. The cloak, in that room full of flickering light and black haze, rendered him effectively invisible. It was all he could do not to laugh, watching Spider-Man's frantic astonishment at his disappearance.
How had the web-slinger found him in the first place? Cheap Shot's head was pounding from the after-effects of the fire and his long stay in the smoky room. Each time he put one of his careful plans into execution, Spider-Man was there, hunting him, chasing him down, countering his every move.
He paused to rest one hand against the wall, an exhausted and furious old man. He'd been forced to wait until everyone else was out before stealthily making his way through the window, down the web. With police, firemen, victims, and the press milling around he'd had great difficulty slipping away without bumping into someone, or having anyone discern his wavery outline at close quarters. It had frightened him, all of it.
And the game hadn't been worth it. His plan to bait Fisk into sending his minions to steal the transmission code so he could take them out before meeting Fisk one on one had failed. Fisk hadn't considered him important enough to send more than a couple of minor thugs.
Drawing his lips back from his teeth in a silent snarl, Cheap Shot hurried forward again. The ground was prepared, his attack waiting to be put in motion. Fisk would soon know the error of underestimating him. It would be the last lesson Fisk ever learned.
As Wilson Fisk stepped up to a podium set on the sweep of wide marble steps leading up to the massive, domed Colonial Rotunda, he was beaming. Despite the cold weather, the lawn was filled with a milling crowd of teachers, parents, and students. Sitting in rows of folding chairs behind him were the city's VIP's, politicians and businessmen. The mayor sat next to his wife, the superintendent of schools smiled tightly, and a few carefully selected children under the supervision of fussy teachers waited to present tokens of appreciation to the philanthropist. Fisk was resplendent in a snowy white coat lined in white fur, his diamond-topped cane swinging easily from one hand. A cluster of microphones bloomed on the podium and the cameras were rolling.
Spider-Man leaned forward, trying to scan the entire area as rapidly as possible. Now, if I were a megalomaniacal fashion victim plotting a devious assault on a crime boss, where would I be? Losing patience with the helicopters altitude, he waved his thanks at the pilot and flipped into the air, spinning as he fell until he stretched fingers and toes to fasten onto the wall of an apartment building across the street from the Rotunda.
He heard Fisk's voice, booming and distorted, over a series of loudspeakers mounted on poles around the lawn. Spidey was too far away to make out the words, and didn't know how he was going to get closer without drawing attention. The flat lawn stretched from the street back to the domed building, packed with restless children and red-faced adults in bulky coats.
There were security officers for crowd control, of course, and he spotted two uniformed police officers, but there was also a large number of tough men dressed in trench coats standing around and looking uncomfortably out-of-place in the family atmosphere. Guards out in force. It crossed Spidey's mind that Fisk was prepared for trouble. Uneasy, he watched kids dash heedlessly past the grim-faced guards, the adults ignore their presence. The ceremony was winding to an end.
The loudspeakers blared, a feedback whine screeching to a peak. Like most of the audience, Spider-Man lifted his hands to his ears and winced. Rotten sound system, he thought randomly. Down at the podium, Fisk was scowling, waving a media technician up to the steps to the cluster of microphones.
Glancing over the disturbed crowd of people trying to cover their ears, Spider-Man became aware that a number of the guards had drawn their guns and were pushing their way forward. For a split-second, he stared, wondering what they were doing. Then it clicked. Instantly, he leaped across the street to the spindly top of the nearest tree, then to a speaker that nearly gave way beneath his weight. Hopping from one wiggly pole to the next, he began to shout as soon as he thought there was a chance for him to be heard over the screech.
"Fisk! Everyone! Get down, get down!"
If he can brainwash children, what's to stop him from brainwashing adults? He leaped again as the nearest gunman sighted down his weapon. Fisk didn't think to check his own men for hidden transmitters, did he?
A large man with a blank look on his face was pulling the trigger as Spider-Man yanked the automatic from his hand with a strand of webbing. The shot went wild overhead as Spider-man landed in front of the podium. As he twisted to confront a second attacker, the deafening echo of the gunshot—picked up by the microphones and amplified over the squealing loudspeakers—sent the screaming audience running in panic away from the Rotunda. The mayor threw himself down, his wife rolling beside him. Folding chairs tumbled and were kicked out of the way as people flattened themselves on the steps. A semi-circle of gunmen was closing in around the wide flight of marble stairs, shoving brutally through the fleeing crowd.
Spider-Man shot webs as fast as he could, coating weapons in sticky goo. He punched at the thugs within reach, knocking two cold with his fists, somersaulting into the air to kick another in the back of the head. But Fisk had brought thirty men to guard him, and he couldn't stop them all from firing. Bullets went flying into the steps.
Fisk was huddled behind the podium, which was wholly inadequate to protect his bulk. Next to him a little girl in a pink dress lay motionless, a sobbing teacher prone at her side. Spidey couldn't stop long enough to find out how badly the student was hurt. The superintendent of schools lost his head and made a mad run up the stairs toward the double doors of the Rotunda. He fell before he reached them, clutching his leg and screaming in pain. The guards were jostling each other in their mindless need to fire at their boss, their shots wide and dangerous to everyone in front of them.
The loudspeakers—that whine. It triggered the attack, it's a signal. Ducking a bullet that whizzed by him and ricocheted off the steps, Spider-Man flipped on to hands and pushed off to land next to the podium. Grabbing the cluster of wires leading from the microphones, he pulled them free. The whine abruptly cut out, and as suddenly the thunder of gunfire stopped. A small, mean-faced man with a .45 crooked his elbow and lowered his gun, confused. All around the steps, the gunmen backed away uncertainly.
Panting, Fisk rose heavily to one knee and reached for his cane. The former audience had fled the brown, trampled grass of the Rotunda lawn, but a line of policemen, guns drawn, were advancing over it, shouting for the guards to drop their weapons. Most did, still dazed.
Straightening and backing away from the podium, Spider-Man breathed a sigh of relief. Now, if he could only find Cheap Shot and shut him down before anything else happened. On the heels of that thought, his spider-sense went wild. Across the steps and the lawn, a grid of red light snapped into existence, crisscrossing in every direction. Spider-Man turned desperately to the police.
"Don't move! Stay back from the trip lines!" Naturally, the officers continued to advance, one or two looking curiously in his direction. Fisk and his guards, more aware of what they were up against, froze in place. A second later, the first cop crossed a glowing red line.
"I'm sure Peter just got held up," Mary Jane said soothingly. Aunt May smiled at her and patted her hand.
"I know, dear. He's a good boy, it's only that sometimes he, well," the white-haired lady tilted her head ruefully, "loses track of time." She sent MJ a sharp look. Then she added softly, "Thank you so much, dear, for everything you've done for me. Including driving me home today."
MJ grinned and shrugged, fussing with the arm of her chair. Aunt May settled herself comfortably, closing her eyes. MJ thought she looked tired, and felt a flash of anger at Peter for leaving her stranded at the hospital.
"Peter's a good boy," Aunt May repeated, eyes still closed. MJ jumped guiltily. "You've become closer since graduation, haven't you?"
"In some ways," MJ answered uncomfortably. "He's...not the easiest person to get to know."
"He's been acting so very mysterious, lately. I thought you might know why." The dignified lady's tone was gentle and hurt, and there was an appeal in her voice that Mary Jane had never heard from her.
I thought I did. "No," she answered quietly. "I wish I did."
"Well." Aunt May laid her head on the back of the chair and changed the subject. "Would you mind if I turned on the news, dear?"
"Of course." MJ curled up on her chair as Aunt May peered at the remote, pushing the power button and choosing a channel. The television came to life. A female reporter was standing in front of some trees, holding a microphone to her face.
"—as we speak. The police have declared the situation at the Curriculum Presentation highly dangerous. All traffic through the area has been rerouted. There is no official report on casualties as yet, but our news copter estimates at least four officers down, wounded or dead, and an unknown number of civilian wounded. They also confirm that Spider-Man is involved, repeat, Spider-Man is on the scene."
"Spider-Man." Mary Jane sat up. "It seems like we're always hearing about that man," Aunt May said disapprovingly.
MJ raised her eyebrows. "Well, you know we've got to see what happens next," she teased. Aunt May smiled back and increased the volume.