Chapter 3
Spiderman leapt the last twenty feet onto his apartment's balcony. He quickly stepped inside, pushing the fluttering curtains out of the way.
Pulling off his mask, Spiderman, now Peter Parker, surveyed his apartment. It was new; Mary-Jane had made quite a bit of money in her latest Broadway performance, and they'd finally moved out of the slum that he'd inhabited for the last two years. The living room was wide, with softwood flooring and delicate lighting. The walls were a cream colour, and three couches sat in an arrangement around the TV. A few DVDs lay on the floor where Peter had left them this morning. He'd been watching Seabiscuit which he thought of as an okay film with a good actor.
Rubbing his brown hair thoughtfully, Peter wandered into the biggest of the three bedrooms. The large bed ahead of him was empty; Mary Jane was still out performing in Hamlet.
Peter pulled off his Spiderman outfit, wrinkling his nose as the mixture of sweat caused by the tight suit and dirty rain wafted up from his armpits.
After a quick shower, Peter switched the bedroom's TV on, and the news flicked on. A short woman with ferocious curls spoke quickly.
"A fire has broken out on a theatre in Broadway, which was showing Hamlet at the time the blaze started. Most of the audience and actors have been evacuated, but three actors are trapped on the stage; the blaze is too thick for the fire-fighters to penetrate. The police refuse to comment on whether this is arson or not…"
Before the reporter could finish her sentence, Peter Parker had changed into Spiderman and started swinging towards the Broadway.
The fire was belching thick, black smoke into the skies of New York. The theatre, a tall and modern building made from steel and glass, was almost entirely consumed by the crimson flames that leapt hungrily from the windows, shattering windows with ear-splitting screeches. Spiderman frontflipped off his web-line, soared over the twenty fire trucks arrayed in a semi-circle around the building, and dove headlong into the charred gap where the steel wall had been blasted apart by a ruptured gas-main.
Spiderman rolled and stood up in the blackness. All he could se was smoke, penetrated by great bouts of flame. His heart thudded in his chest; the theatre was the one Mary Jane acted in.
Calm down! Spiderman thought, his heart beating frantically. I can use my Spider-Sense…
Spiderman squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated, letting his heightened reflexes guide his feet forward.
A sharp crash sounded from above him, and he launched himself forward just in time to dodge a section of the ceiling as it collapsed. Spiderman twisted in mid-air, narrowly dodging an explosion, and then stuck himself to a steel girder which had been knocked over slightly by an explosion. He stayed there for just half a second before throwing himself forward, and diving into what he thought was a theatre viewing-balcony.
The heat on the balcony was incredible, and the ash in the air was choking Spiderman. His heart pounded horribly, and a hacking cough escaped his throat. Flames from below suddenly ignited the flammable carpet and wooden floor of the balcony, and the small viewing platform suddenly broke from the wall it was connected to and swung forward. Spiderman bent his knees and leapt forward, twisting to avoid a piece of wreckage coming tumbling down from the roof, and landed on the stage. His Spider-sense instantly picked up three presences huddling together on the stage. One was familiar: Mary Jane!
Reacting on instinct, from the experience of saving hundreds of people from previous blazes, Spiderman extended both his arms and webbed the three actors together. He pulled the webs and half-turned, letting the sticky web that bound the three actors stick itself to his back. He now had the actors secured on his back.
Spiderman leapt forward, and his Spider Sense tingled. He kicked out and fired a web to stick itself to the ceiling, and his outstretched legs met a piece of metal wreckage, blasting it away instead of letting its sharp edges cut him in half.
An explosion mushroomed out from above, the shockwave hitting Spiderman before he could react. The web he clung from melted in the intense heat of the explosion, and the web-swinger began to plummet towards the inferno below. He desperately fired out another web, back towards the stage, which latched onto an aerial camera designed to give the audience in the rear area of the cavernous hall close-ups through screens. Spiderman grabbed the web and pulled, catapulting himself back onto the stage. He landed, just in time to leap back as more than half of the theatre's roof collapsed inwards, blocking all of the main entrances and exits. The rubble was stacked so high that Spiderman couldn't leap over it, and most of the rubble was made of artistic and highly-flammable wood, which would be ablaze before Spiderman could crawl to the top and escape through one of the gaps in the theatre's roof.
Spiderman turned and bolted off the stage, only to find that every fire exit and cast exit was blocked by huge amounts of rubble which would take a lot more time to lift than Spiderman had. The charred and blackened walls on either side of Spiderman, however, were made of oak, which Spiderman could break effortlessly.
Spiderman kicked out with his left foot, shattering a man-sized hole in the wall. Giving the wall another good few kicks to ensure that the actors on his back would fit through, he ran through the hole.
Bursting into the changing rooms, Spiderman spied a skylight, high above him. It had shattered in the intense heat, leaving a perfect escape route.
Without thinking, Spiderman ripped the actors off of his back, and hurled them up, through the skylight. Luckily, the roof above the dressing rooms were made of thick steel which the fire would take hours to melt, and the actors would probably be rescued within minutes by fire-fighters.
Spiderman leapt to follow, but was met in mid-air by something incredibly strong, and hurled against a wall. Spiderman hit the wall, made of dark red bricks, and was hurled through. A trail of dust and shattered bricks followed him as he broke through another wall, and tumbled into a cast-only toilet.
Extending a hand, Spiderman grabbed the wall of a cubicle as he ripped through the white, tiled walls of the bathroom. But he'd been hit too hard, and the cubicle wall was merely ripped off by Spiderman's grip.
Spiderman eventually came to as he was blasted through the wall of the male restroom, and into the female one. He crashed into a row of cubicles, which were smashed by his weight. But, they slowed the wall-crawler enough so that, when he'd battered down every cubicle and hit the wall of the restroom itself, he merely cracked the tiles instead of smashing through.
Spiderman slid to the ground and keeled over onto the wreckage of the cubicles, horribly sharp pain slithering up and down his spine. His only thought was how the attack had not been detected by his Spider-Sense. It'd been just like his fight with Venom; every attack had been undetectable. But the Venom suit, and Eddie Brock, were both dead, killed by Harry Osborn's pumpkin bombs.
Getting unsteadily to his feet, Spiderman looked through the holes he'd made in the walls. A pathway of wreckage and destruction traced itself to his stop, showing exactly what he'd been punched through. Steel, plastic, bricks, and enamel all lay littered in front of him.
Sprinting forward, Spiderman leapt through the gaps in the walls, landing under the skylight and leaping straight up. He moved so fast that surely no attack could catch him; he had no desire to face something undetectable by his Spider-Sense, particularly with his lungs filled with ash, his body in incredible pain, and with Mary Jane stuck on the roof of the burning building.
Spiderman grinned under his mask as he neared the skylight. It was just then that a rope—no, a web!—shot by his right side, black, and with a composition like barbed wire. It suddenly snaked to the left and wrapped itself around his throat like a whip. Spiderman gurgled horribly as the improvised noose closed his trachea and suddenly jerked him back towards the ground.
Spiderman's hands came up to grip the web, and pulled desperately. But he'd been caught by surprise, again, and the web pulled him head-first into the ground with a horrific crash.
He smashed through the floor as if it was paper, and fell into the mercifully cool darkness of the basement. For a second, he was free, without pain or worry, but then he was smashed into the uneven, concrete floor of the basement, which was merely reduced to dust by the impact.
Plummeting unceremoniously through the ground, Spiderman fell into a subway tunnel. He landed on his belly and the sound as he hit the ground echoed in the metallic tunnel. A train roared past, centimetres in front of Spiderman's head, the thunder of its wheels roaring in his ears. Blackness appeared at the side of his vision, but he battled with the looming veil of unconsciousness, and managed to stay awake.
Rolling onto his back and leaping to his feet Spiderman quarter-turned and retreated a few steps, staying off of the subway tracks but staying away from any possible attacks from the theatre.
The subway tunnel was quite large, designed to take two trains heading in the opposite directions from each other, each on a separate track. The tunnel was roughly circular. Ahead of Spiderman, it rounded a corner, and behind him it came to a bridge over a large circular pit. Above and below the track-bridge, more track-bridges criss-crossed over each other, leading off in different directions. Pipes containing sewage also ran from wall to wall and at the bottom of the pit there was a large steel manhole leading into the main sewage system. The entire tunnel was well-lit by large light-bulbs, casting pasty yellow light over the tunnel.
Spiderman gritted his teeth, listening to the grinding sound, and prepared to meet his enemy.