Kate kept a hand lightly pressed against the wounded area of her stomach, pushing into the web just a little. Even with the thin gloves on her hand, she could tell that the webbing was already beginning to soak with blood, and she could feel herself going in and out. She knew they were swinging through the air, but she didn't feel much outside of the slightest tinge of the wind rippling through her hair, her hoodie blown down.
The one thing Kate could feel was Spider-Man's arm wrapped around her. It was a firm hold, but not an overly tight one. Despite steep descents toward the ground and various changes in momentum, she never once so much as flinched from her position against his side. She glanced up in his direction at one point, and he turned to look at her.
"Just hang on, okay?" he said to her. "I'm going to get you help."
Something in his tone filled her with reassurance, despite everything she was feeling. His words were tender, but not in a romantic or overly sweet sense. It was more like a simple, steady determination, as if he simply was not going to allow himself to fail her.
Kate recalled her previous thoughts about Spider-Man's motivations for helping her out. At the time, she had felt bad, even a little frustrated at the thought that she needed to be protected so carefully in his eyes. After what had just happened, knowing more now of what they were up against, she understood it now. He had seen so much that Kate had not, and despite his jokey and lighthearted nature, he clearly understood the seriousness of the situation on some level from the first time they fought those guys.
Moreover, Kate wondered who Spider-Man must have lost because of the Snap. She herself had been very fortunate not to lose anyone she was that close to, but she knew many who weren't so lucky. At the least, he had lost all his old allies from the Avengers, people he had fought alongside. If the sturdiness of his arm against her was any indication, it was their memory driving him to get her to help; driving him to make sure that she was able to make it back home alive and well, if not a little cut and bruised.
Kate started to feel them getting lower, and she looked out ahead to see what she believed was Empire State University. She had never been to the university herself, but she had seen enough pictures to know what it looked like. Besides, it made sense given the area that they were in that a place looking like a college campus would be that one.
But why would Spider-Man be bringing her here?
Peter glanced down as he came towards the campus grounds, scanning to see how many students were down there. Fortunately, not many people seemed to be out and about that evening, which worked in his favor, and the fact that it was summertime meant even less students would be there in general. Peter had had to come to M.J. here for medical attention a few times before in similar situations, so he'd had some practice sneaking his way into the university. However, bringing someone else with him meant he was going to have to be more careful than usual.
Landing gracefully on a building on the edge of the campus, Peter gave a minute for his spider sense to kick in should somebody be about to walk by. When nothing happened, Peter leapt over to the next building, holding Kate gently in both his arms. The last thing she needed right now was even the slightest lack of grace in his landing to aggravate her wound further.
Fortunately, M.J.'s dorm was close to the outskirts of campus as well, and soon he was at the building. This was where things were usually the trickiest; M.J.'s room was right on the middle floor, so Peter would have to carefully navigate around some windows in order to get to her. Glancing towards Kate, Peter reached over, pulling her hood back up and tugging it a little so that it came down more over the top half of her face.
He knew more than anyone it was better safe than sorry when it came to identity issues in these situations.
Wrapping an arm around Kate's side, Peter slowly began his descent. If it was just him, he would be trying to move much more rapidly to not give as many opportunities to spot him, but he needed to be careful with Kate, lest he accidentally cause the bleeding to accelerate. He had noticed earlier that the web was now mostly soaked, which meant it did its job only to a degree. She was still conscious, but barely.
Peter kept waiting to be alerted that someone was about to peek out a nearby window, but thankfully his spider sense remained silent as he continued. He finally came to M.J.'s window, which was already open. He stuck his head around the corner, with her immediately spotting him, having been sitting on the edge of her bed, with the medical supplies standing by. She quickly got up and moved over to him as he started to hand Kate off to her. M.J. grabbed the girl by her shoulders as Peter held onto her legs, keeping her level as he came into the room. They then laid Kate on the bed, which had a large towel on it to catch any blood, a lesson that had been learned a long time ago.
M.J. immediately went to work, getting out the supplies needed. When she finally got sight of Kate's actual wound, her eyes widened.
"What happened?" M.J. said quietly, grabbing something by which to soak up what was left of the excess blood.
"Robots," Peter said.
M.J. turned and looked at him inquisitively. He proceeded to give the cliff notes version of what had happened at the Alchemax building as he helped her deal with Kate's wound.
"Well... that's new," M.J. replied.
At that point, Kate started to stir a little bit. She had never quite fully lost consciousness, but now that her wound was being messed with, she was a little more awake than before. She let out a groan as M.J. continued pressing on the wound, trying to make sure the bleeding had stopped.
"Easy," Peter said, coming to her side. "You're gonna be fine."
"Y-you have to go back," she said.
"Go back?" Peter asked.
"You have to find out what those... things did to that dish," Kate explained. "My stuff is still there too; you need to get it before someone else finds it."
"What I need to do is make sure you're okay," Peter said.
"No," Kate said a little more assertively. "We have to find out what's really going on."
Peter was about to say something but caught M.J. motioning with her head to talk to him.
"Hold onto this for a moment," she instructed Kate, then she got up and walked to the corner of the room, Peter meeting her there.
"She's right," M.J. said, her voice a whisper.
Peter let out a soft, quiet sigh. He glanced over at Kate, who appeared to turn her head away from facing the two of them.
"You sure you'll be okay?" Peter asked.
"It's me, remember?" M.J. said with just the slightest hint of a smile. "Seriously, I got this. Go."
Peter finally yielded. Giving one final nod to M.J, he turned and, after checking to make sure no one was peeking out another window or walking down below, climbed out the window and back out into the night.
After Spider-Man left the room, Kate turned back as the girl whose room she was in came back towards her, trying to pretend she hadn't been paying at least a little bit of attention to their conversation. She hadn't really been able to hear much, as the two of them had kept their voices low. She wasn't even specifically trying to listen in, but her curiosity seemed to get the better of her.
As the girl came and began attending to her wound again, Kate fought the urge to ask about anything related to her connection to Spider-Man.
"Thank you," she said, realizing she had not properly thanked her for the use of her dorm room, not to mention her bed.
The girl looked up at her only briefly as she continued to attend to the wound.
"No problem," the girl said, offering a faint smile.
There was mostly silence between them for a while as the girl continued to deal with Kate's wound, taking care of all the blood before applying a washcloth to clean around the area. Kate squirmed a little on its initial application, the spot still sensitive.
"Sorry," the girl said.
"It's okay," Kate replied, letting out some air through her nose to try and relax herself.
After soaking the wound and some other minor things, the girl got up from the bed, grabbing something that looked like superglue and bringing it back.
"This stuff should help close the wound," the girl said, beginning to apply it.
"Got it," she said, trying to relax as the girl began applying the glue-like substance. "So, I'm guessing you're a nursing major?"
The girl didn't look at her, but Kate could tell she was pondering the question.
"No," she finally said.
"So...how do you know how to do all this?" Kate asked.
The girl hesitated for a moment, still not meeting Kate eye to eye. After a moment, she resumed her work on the wound.
"Grew up with it really," she finally said. "My mom was a nurse."
Some brown curls hid part of the girl's face from Kate's view, but there was something in her voice that convinced her that this statement wasn't true, or at least not all of it. A suspicion growing within her mind, Kate blurted it out without even thinking.
"You've done this before... on him, haven't you?"
The girl paused, finally turning to look at her, causing Kate to almost regret in inquiry. There was concern in her eyes, but something else as well, something that looked just a little defensive.
"Yes," the girl answered. "I found him once when he was in bad shape. I helped him and proved to him that he could trust me not to tell anyone, so now he comes to me when he needs something like this done. I figure it's the least I can do for someone who has saved the city several times over."
The girl continued working, and Kate pondered over what she had been told. It wasn't unplausible to think that something like that could happen, even if it seemed kind of random. She thought back to when they were back at Alchemax earlier though, and his hesitancy before bringing her here...
"I don't think he wanted to bring me here," she said.
"What?" the girl asked, still working on the wound.
"He wanted to take me to the hospital at first," Kate replied. "I refused, because I didn't want people to find out, and I asked if there was anywhere else we could go. I think he thought of you pretty quickly, but he seemed... almost nervous to bring me here."
"Just because he and I don't know each other that well doesn't mean he wouldn't still try to protect me from exposure," the girl responded. "He's a superhero after all. Protecting people is kind of his job."
That was a good point. In all of their encounters so far since they decided to work together, Kate could clearly see Spider-Man's protective nature in his actions. During the heat of battle, he had repeatedly gone out of his way to help her out whenever she got into trouble, and despite her limited levels of consciousness on the trip here, she remembered how careful he had been with her.
Kate still wasn't sure about the entirety of the girl's story though, but she didn't have much more energy for questions. She opted to try and relax as best she could and leave the girl to do her work. After all, the last thing she needed was to cause her to mess up because she kept questioning her.
Peter was relieved once he reached the Alchemax building to see that Kate's bow and her arrow quiver, which had been discarded for easier transport earlier, were still exactly where they had been left, untouched. Landing gracefully on the building, he walked over to the bow, reaching down for it when his spider sense went off.
He needed to move.
Grabbing the bow and webbing the arrow quiver to himself, he leapt off the building, sticking to the side of it just underneath roof level. He peeked over the top of it to see what was going on, finding that it was just what appeared to be a couple of IT guys from Alchemax who had likely come up to check out whatever that thing had done to the satellite. Figuring he might actually be able to gain some insight from them on the situation, Peter moved over to a better position on the side of the building, still out of sight. He tuned in his enhanced hearing, trying to focus on what the men were saying.
"What in the world?" he heard one of them say after a moment.
"What is it?" the other man asked.
"They were right, there's some kind of strange interference on this thing," the first man replied. "That's what caused all of the satellites to shut down."
Wait, ALL of the satellites shut down? Like, the ones the head of Alchemax had basically bragged about that were monitoring the known universe for potential incoming extraterrestrial threats?
Peter REALLY didn't like where this was going.
"Well, can we do something about it?" the other man said.
"We'll have to see," the first man said. "Obviously it'll have to be analyzed further, but just looking at it, I'd say it's some kind of virus, but I've never seen anything like it before."
"Alright, let's get some equipment up here so we can analyze it more fully," the second man said. "And remember, the boss said keep quiet until we know what we're dealing with here."
"Obviously," the first man replied.
The two men then ceased their discussion; Peter dared to peak over the roof to find that they were quickly walking back into the building, probably to get their equipment as they had just talked about. Now that he was left alone to process what he had just heard, Peter could feel his heart sink and his mind swirling a hundred miles an hour. If those machines had sabotaged the satellites, then that had to mean that more of them were coming, and if that was the case then...
Shaking his head, Peter forced himself to take a breath.
"Easy, Pete," he said. "One thing at a time."
First, he needed to get back to M.J. He didn't know where she might be in terms of treating Kate's injury, but he needed to see her, needed to prepare her for what might be coming...
Suddenly, Peter heard a loud noise that sounded like a sonic boom. He looked up to see what appeared to be a small object streaking through the sky. Eventually, it crashed in Central Park.
Opting to investigate what the object was, Peter found a safe spot to stash Kate's gear momentarily before heading to check the matter out. If this was tied to those machines, then maybe somehow, he just might be able to get ahead of this thing...if he was lucky, which wasn't usually true.
Making his way quickly to the park, Peter came upon the site of the crash landing. Of course, like typical New Yorkers (or maybe just human beings in general), there was a small crowd gathered around the object, which now appeared to be a tiny single passenger ship of some kind.
"Stay back!" Peter called out as he came upon the scene, landing in front of the crowd. The circle of people backed up but refused to dissipate. He then cautiously approached the ship, dirt and smoldering bits of fire from the impact surrounding it. Even as he came upon the craft, Peter's spider sense wasn't going off, which surprised him.
Once he got right next to the ship, it suddenly opened up, and something came bursting out of it... or rather someone. Whoever it was, they actually looked like a human, dressed in an almost militaristic looking blue and yellow suit, with a gold helmet over their head. The individual almost crashed into Peter as he came out of the ship, before looking him dead in the eye, his eyes wide.
"It's coming," the figure spat out exhaustedly. "It's coming!"
Before Peter could ask what he was talking about, the figure collapsed in his arms.
Uh oh, what's happening!?
Stay tuned!
Continuing to pray for you all; stay safe and healthy!
"Even to your old age and gray hairs I am He, I am He who will sustain you. I will carry you; I will sustain and rescue you." Isaiah 46:4