I had been a bit disorientated at the time, so you couldn't blame me for not noticing these things. But where my kidnappers had kept me was not only in an "abandoned warehouse," it was situated just by the docks. Could they have been more stereotypical? It was almost insulting at this point. They couldn't have put themselves in the basement of a tall building or something? At least that would spice things up a bit.

The warehouse was shrouded in darkness; the only thing lighting it up at all was the street light. It looked like it might have been an old office building with a warehouse section in its prime, if the glass dome leading on to an open floor plan was any indication.

So here I was, sitting on the rooftop opposite the warehouse, wondering how the hell my life ended up like this.

I scrubbed at my eyes with the heel of my hand. I did not want to do this, at all! Stupid goons stealing my stupid powers, now I had to go back to this stupid place that, y'know, traumatized me.

It wasn't going to get any easier the longer I waited. Besides, I only had about two hours before my curfew kicked in. Even though it was a weekend. Maybe I should ask for my curfew to be extended to two AM on Saturdays…

The warehouse still stood as silently as it had ten minutes ago, when I got here. I still had not investigated, and time was ticking. Besides, it looked completely abandoned. There was no way I would find anything interesting, at all. Just dust and mice!

I stood up, aiming a webshooter. Fine! Fine, world! I'll do it! This whole thing was stupid anyways!

I thwipped a web and swung myself onto the rooftop. This building was only like four stories high anyway. So at least it shouldn't take too long to find out if there was anything in this damn place. Which there wouldn't be, obviously.

I decided to go through the offices first, since the warehouse section looked completely dead.

I crawled around until I found a window leading into an office. The window was shut tight, but after some fiddling around I got tired and just pulled it up until the lock snapped. Better.

I took one step, two steps inside. The dust crept up my nose and I sneezed. Gross! Now there was snot covering the inside of my mask.

I reluctantly pulled it off and just stuffed it in my pocket, grovelling the whole way. I couldn't be bothered cleaning it up. What difference would it make anyway? People knew my identity. And I wanted to be in and out of here as quickly as possible and cleaning the mask would take like ten minutes, at least. That was ten minutes too long!

I crept over to the desk and looked inside the first drawer. Empty. Next one? Empty. The one to the side? You guessed it! Empty.

I guess the police had taken away a lot of the evidence. Which made sense. Maybe I would ask Dad about all that later. But maybe there was something they had missed…

I crept over to the door and paused. No sound, this place was dead besides a small whirring - like electricity going into a lightbulb. I opened the door and crept out into the hallway. There were two doors to my left, and the hallway continued around the corner to my right.

Well, if I wanted to be thorough, I had to go door to door.

Except, same as the last office, there was nothing but spiders and dust in them. I went down the hallway and skipped the next few that looked just as bland. The whole dang floor ended up being this way. It felt like a creepy ghost town.

Next floor down? Also the same, except this time I found one folder sitting on a random desk. I frowned, ok, well, that was new. I wandered into the stale office and picked it up. Classified was stamped on the front, and I snorted. Ah yes, so classified that some random thief can just look at it anyway.

I flicked it open and found blueprints for some sort of belt. I frowned, and flicked to the next page. Lines upon lines of text, but half of them were blacked out with ink.

I pulled my phone out and shone it on the page. Blah blah, distorting, blah blah, air, blah blah, sciency words. After a quick skim, I decided to try something. I could hardly tell what this thing was since half the documented was inked out.

I grabbed my phone out and turned on the flashlight. At the same moment, I picked up the page and held it up in midair.

Lo and behold, with some light I could make out what was under the blacked out parts! I was a genius!

And right at the top, in big, bold lettering, was OWL. Ah, never mind that celebration. I would never look at Owls the same way after today, especially since one was apparently organizing crime.

I couldn't get a picture of the page without losing the lettering underneath, unfortunately. That would have been easier than hauling this clunky folder around with me while I did my Spider-Man thing. I would just have to take it home with me and type it out so I wouldn't lose it. I didn't have a big enough pocket for this folder, so I made a quick backpack out of webs. There, that should do. If I pick anything else up that'll-

Bang!

I was on the ceiling before you could say 'spidey.' Or maybe cat, because I felt like a cat with a poofy tail from that startle.

"Owl wants more? What else could he possibly want?!" one voice said. Why were there people in this warehouse? It was supposed to be abandoned!

Wait, did they just say Owl? Aw, nuts.

"He wants the big guns, and he's it. Why's he refusing in the first place? He'll get a big paycheck," a second voice said, sounding annoyed. It sounded like they were getting closer. Where could I hide? What if they walked in here?

The first person sighed. "Something about how he's fifteen and morals. If only we had approached him a couple months earlier, before this whole identity thing."

Ah, so they were talking about me. Not reassuring. I didn't like being the news of the town around bad guys. And they were talking about some other guy, too. "The big guns" didn't sound like a good time for me. I should probably be worried about it...

The footsteps kept on getting closer, and closer.

"Have you seen the kid's Instagram? What a riot. It's like he thinks he has fans or something." They both laughed. Ouch. I didn't come here to be roasted, but I needed some ice for that burn.

The door creaked open, and the two figures walked in. By then, I was a literal spider in the corner. And also camouflaged for good measure. I did not want to be spotted.

Down side? I didn't know how long they would talk. And camouflaging came with a big down side. It was like swimming in a pool, and ducking under the water. The longer you held your breath, the more you wanted to come up for air. Eventually, you ran out of breath and are forced back up for air - or die. Now imagine that, but my body tingles, then burns, then I'm in agonizing pain and forced to stop camouflaging. I didn't know what would happen if I kept on camouflaging.

Five minutes was the point my body went from burning to full blown pain. Yes, I had experimented extensively in the past year. It had used to be three minutes, but the longer I trained myself, the longer I could do it.

But if one of them sitting down in the desk was any measure, this would take longer than five minutes. I would need to figure out a way out of here before my time was up, or get a better hiding spot.

"I could have sworn I left the folder on my desk," the first voice, who I decided could be desk girl, muttered. I mean, she did, but now a certain Spidey had it. If only she knew it was only two meters away, hanging in the corner. She rolled her eyes and sat back. "No matter. We'll print out a new copy for you on your way out. We have an arsenal of new inventions from Alchemax's special divisions that I'm sure could... entice him."

Wait, Alchemax? I thought this was just Owl? Damnit! Ganke had been right!

"There's still the morals thing," second voice/standing guy said, folding his arms.

"He's useful to us dead and alive. Besides, I'm sure Owl isn't the only one who wants a chunk out of the kid. I hear some big name is about to announce something," desk girl chuckled.

"But Owl gets first meat, get it? You Alchemax crew get him second. Is that clear?" standing guy said, leaning close and stabbing his finger at her. It was not effective, if the unamused look was anything to go by.

"Yeah, yeah. Now scram, we've got work to do here," desk girl said dismissively. Standing guy stood back up, straightened his suit and walked out.

And he left the door open, score!

I was almost out the door when the lady began muttering to herself, "Alchemax is going to get so rich from both of their contributions. And they don't even know they're both being double crossed. Hilarious."

I frowned. Ok… That sounded ominous. But my five minutes were almost up, I had to keep going anyway.

I crept into the hallway and spotted a convenient janitor's closet. I scrambled into it and shut the door firmly behind me. I sank to the ground, blocking the door with my body as I did so. I slowly let the camouflage seep away, breathing out a sigh of relief.

Ok, so. Owl was working with Alchemax, still not sure what for. Alchemax wants my body, dead or alive, for mysterious science purposes. One bad guy who sounded like a big threat didn't want to fight me because I was a minor - which brought into question what they would have done if my secret identity hadn't been revealed. And on top of all of that, some other bad guy was about to make a big announcement.

My work was so cut out for me. And I hadn't even seen where the science section of this place was! Maybe they had hid it all underground. I wouldn't even be surprised at this point if they had.

Groan. I felt like I was already ten feet under, struggling to stay afloat.

But, I'm Spider-Man. And Spider-Man fights ten bad guys at once if he has to. It's fine, I'll be fine!

Yeah, no, not even I could convince myself of that. I needed major upgrades, stat.

I stood back out, peeking out into the corridor. It was still blackout-dark, and I couldn't see anyone. But now that I knew there were people around, I couldn't take the risk. I would have to camouflage the rest of the way around this place if I wanted to investigate more.

Why did I think this would be easy? The easiest plans always fall to pieces the quickest. Especially when you're Spider-Man.

Unfortunately, the rest of the floor was much the same. Nothing anywhere. The first floor though? Well, that's where things got interesting.

Or, well, worse. Worse was a much better way to think about it.

Because I found my chains, still lazily chucked on the ground, in the room I had been kidnapped in. I would know those twenty-nine roof tiles anywhere.

I looked around, checking for cameras, checking outside, checking my spider-sense. No one, good. I shut the door and webbed it for good measure.

It felt… really weird to be back in here. I didn't feel too upset either. I would have thought I would have, but instead I just felt, well, normal.

I picked up the remainder of one of the leg metal bar things. I tossed it up in the air and caught it. Huh, it was sorta heavy, but not too heavy. I grabbed it and tried to bend it. Nope, nope, hey wait! It budged.

I frowned and looked at the wall, where the arm chains had been attached to. If I could bend it now, why couldn't I have when I first got captured? Did they weaken me somehow? It wasn't like I had been in any major battles before I got captured. It had been a really normal day, actually.

I hesitated, then threw it in my web backpack. And then I got all the rest, too. Who cares if they figured out that I had come by? As long as they didn't know right this second.

And for that matter, I did want to see why my spider-sense had been so insistent on the fact that 'imminent doom came if you break the chains.'

I approached the wall slowly. It looked like any other brick wall. Just a normal, everyday brick wall. The only difference was, well, there was a chain drilled into it.

Ok, let's see. I grabbed the broken ends and gave it a tug. Why was there nothing? Not even a hint!

It made no sense! I did it again and achieved the same results.

I rubbed at my eyes tiredly. I didn't know what to do. If my spider-sense was lying to me, the one thing that had been the most trustworthy of any of my senses ever, then what could I trust?

There was a weird whooshing noise outside the door and I paused. I walked over to the door and peeked out. There was a light bathing the warehouse in light. I hastily dripped some solvent on the webs to loosen them up before opening the door and crawling out onto the ceiling, hurrying to see what was happening.

Sure enough, there was a elevator sticking out of the floor. I could have sworn there hadn't been one there before. Before I could even think about racing over to tag along with it, it disappeared under the floor again, with two people inside.

I hit the ground running, and camouflaged. I raced over and kneeled over the spot they had disappeared. If I hadn't seen it for myself, there would have been no way I could have guessed that there was anything interesting under this concrete floor.

But, if there's an elevator. There's always a set of stairs…

I looked around, trying to spot any cracks in the concrete, or a set of normal stairs.

And I was right- there was a stairway just behind me. Score!

I ran over, quickly opened it and leaned over the guardrails, checking how far it went down. …It was pretty far down, way too far for any normal human to ever consider walking up and down these bad boys every day. Maybe fifty stories down if I was guessing correctly?

At moments like these, I was grateful for my webshooters. One web and a steep drop later, I was at ground level. Ground level? Below ground level. Floor zero? That sounded better, and more accurate.

I slowly walked forward. There was light streaming out from under the door, and the sounds of people milling about and discussing something. I swallowed nervously. If I got in over my head, I wouldn't be able to get out all that easily- only two exits that I knew of. But it would be fine. I was just a regular Spider-Man investigating Alchemax which just happened to want to experiment on me! And kill me, apparently. It was all fine!

I cracked the door open. There were people bustling around everywhere in science coats. Looking in microscopes, writing on notepads, dripping droplets into test tubes. And at the centre of it all, was a man. In a tube, hands and arms bound, half naked.

"You sure this is going to work?" the man asked, his voice echoing out of speakers.

One of the scientists standing by the tube nodded. "Oh yes, yes. You'll be the perfect soldier in no time. Owl will be very pleased with you."

The man didn't look any less nervous, but he did smile anyway. "Then what's the hold-up? Get it going!"

The scientist made a gesture and the already very light room lit up almost blindly so, forcing me to block my eyes.

Then the screaming started.

I was locked in place, wanting to run, wanting to help, scared of what would happen if I failed. When I looked back at this moment, I would hate myself for not moving when I should have.

An agonizing ten seconds passed. Slow, tortuous, seconds with the screaming set as the terrifying background noise. It tapered off, and then all of a sudden he was silent. The light melted away and in his place was a weird, spider-like, contorted person.

Without a care in the world, the scientist gestured for the glass tube to be lifted. She poked him with a metal stick, then grimaced. He still didn't move. Dead. "Get another one in here," she ordered.

My next move was either my most selfless, or stupid. You decide.

Because I shot forward like a bullet, almost knocking over five scientists in the process, grabbed at the control panel and venom-blasted it to hell and back.

Even I had barely had time to react to my own actions, because by the time I had finished the strike, I realised just how surrounded I was. By scientists, who had now pulled out guns. And also the lights had gone out because of the overload of power.

"Uh, hey everyone?" I murmured. But I might as well have shouted for the way it echoed throughout the place, breaking the silence.

The room lit up with bullets.