Lying Heart
Chapter Four
Over the next month, Peter's life is a blur of picture taking, fighting crime, and trying to catch up on schoolwork. He even gets a job walking some woman's dog in the afternoons, which eventually turns into her whole neighborhood's dogs, and Peter makes enough money to pay for his application easily.
The month goes by both agonizingly slowly and astonishingly quick. Most nights he's out on the streets tuned into the police radio frequency on his cell phone. If there's not much going on, he'll try and find something worth taking pictures of. A lot of his portfolio for the scholarship are pictures taken at night, from strange angles—not so strange that they can't be explained, but enough to be a unique perspective. He takes pictures of people working night shifts, of people waiting at the bus stop, of confused tourists pouring over maps. Once he took a picture of himself soaring from the momentum of a web—he knows he won't include it, but it still turned out pretty nice.
He stays after school most days and manages to pull all of his grades back up to passing. He isn't too worried because he has better grades in years past to fall back on, and his GPA isn't too permanently damaged.
Aunt May stops worrying so much. It's partially because there's not much to worry about. November is a calm month for New York that year. There are carjackings and robberies and a few attempted assaults and kidnappings, but no major threats that Peter can't handle alone. The NYPD even backs up on him a little bit; they only try to shoot at him like three times, as opposed to the usual nightly ordeal he had with them in the past.
The only loose end is Gwen. Peter does everything in his power to avoid her. He switches his schedule mid-semester, which is virtually unheard of, but the woman in the front office knows that his uncle died and pulls some sympathy strings. Now he has no classes with Gwen, and he takes diligent care not to run into her in hallways or on the street.
Still, he can't help himself when night falls. At least once a week he finds himself lingering in her neighborhood, drawn to the ledge across her street where he has a perfect view of her. She is always up late, studying or surfing the web. He watches her until his chest aches, and then he tears off into the night.
Gwen aside, his life finally seems manageable. He has fallen into a routine he can keep up with. His teachers are happy. His portfolio is almost finished. He's making a good chunk of change walking dogs. Not to mention, it's almost the holidays, and Peter has always loved Christmas. For the first time since his uncle's death, things are decidedly looking up.
Then December comes, and everything changes again.
It starts with a call on the police frequency, calling all available units to the George Washington Bridge. There is an "unidentified technological threat". Peter immediately starts slinging in that direction, aware that it will take him at least fifteen minutes. He spends most of it thinking of his last encounter with a threat on the bridge, but he knows whatever this is, it can't be as bad as the Lizard.
He is, as usual, wrong.
Whatever this "unidentified technological threat" is, it's enormous, and it's extremely accurate. To Peter's horror, almost half of the officers called to the scene are down by the time he arrives. People are still crushing into each other, running off the bridge. Peter has no idea how many cars are already in the water, but he immediately scans up and down, looking for the ones that are dangling and deciding it's more important to check on those first before addressing what appears to be a giant, extremely angry robot attacking the NYPD.
Once he saves three cars full of people from meeting their end, he realizes he cannot ignore the unidentified technological threat anymore, because it is advancing on him. It is easily nine feet tall, and its arm span was similarly vast. Peter backs up involuntarily into an abandoned car, trying to get some idea of what it is. It is human in shape, but grotesque, filled to the gills with wiring and weapons and flashing lights.
Peter wonders if it has a weakness. But before he can wonder much more, it shoots at him.
He darts out of the way, and sees the massive steaming hole the shot leaves in the car behind him. "Holy crap," he mutters, slinging a web upward toward the top of the bridge and propelling himself upward.
This does not seem to impede its aim. It shoots at him again, and Peter barely dodges; it shoots at him a third time, and it grazes his left shin, burning unlike anything he's ever felt before. He looks down, just for a second, and sees almost thirty dead officers below him.
He has no time to digest his horror. The robot has turned its back on him, or so it seems—then Peter realizes it is hovering in the air, flying upward, flying toward him.
Without thinking he starts shooting webs as fast as he can, hoping he'll hit anything to deter it. He shoots and shoots in vain, trying to tie its legs together, trying to hit obvious exposed mechanisms, anything. His heart is pounding between his ears like a drum as it advances, faster by the second.
When it is right above him, he slings a web onto it and tries to propel himself onto its back. It anticipates him, shooting again and just barely missing him, but Peter manages to climb on anyway. With all of his strength he bashes its head, which crumples easily under his fist, but does nothing to stop it from functioning. Peter panics. Of course the mechanism to stop it wouldn't be in its head—that was way too obvious. He settles for trying to bash in the robot's feet, thinking it will at least stop its ability to fly.
It seems to be fueled by some sort of jet pack. Peter's hands burn as he thrashes at them and gets caught in whatever heat it is spitting out. After a few panicked seconds, though, it seems to work; the robot falters, and Peter keeps whaling at it until he feels them both falling through the air, plummeting toward the water.
The robot does something unexpected then, and reaches its arm around and—hugs him? Bu then Peter realizes in absolute terror that it is trapping him, holding him so that he can't get out of the water, either. Peter thrashes with all of his strength and barely budges the thing's grasp on him. They hit the water and Peter sucks in a breath of water, feels it entering his lungs.
Oh, God, no. He's not going to drown here like some kind of rat. He thrashes again as they plummet further downward, into the darkness, into the cold. The edges of his vision are going black. He isn't going to make it.
You are not invincible.
He sees her face, then, as if she is lighting up the dark abyss. With one final shove, he frees himself.
It takes forever to find the surface, and he's not entirely sure he's even conscious for the entire journey back up. For a long time he just lays there, floating in the water, choking. Even when he reaches air it takes forever to find it, the water still filling his lungs. In a gut wrenching moment he finally coughs it all up and sucks in the most painful, glorious breath he has ever breathed.
Whatever that thing is that attacked them, it doesn't come back up, at least not in the ten minutes that Peter floats there. His lungs are burning. It's the most beautiful feeling in the world.
After awhile, when he's sure the robot-creature will not resurface, Peter swims to a pillar of the bridge, and propels himself upward. He slowly crawls under the belly of the bridge until he reaches Manhattan, and then he darts through alleys until he finally gets home.
He is finished for the night. He doesn't want to think about the dead men on the bridge, or the people he might have failed to save by arriving too late. He knows he did everything he could, and knows that it's still not enough.
For Aunt May's benefit, he noisily goes down to the kitchen and fixes himself a cup of tea. As he predicted, she wanders down and says, "Why are you up so late?"
He shrugs. "Want some tea?" he croaks.
She stares at him, perplexed. "No, thanks," she says.
"I just wanted a cup before I turned in for the night," says Peter.
Aunt May frowns. "You sound sick or something, what happened to your voice?"
"Puberty."
She doesn't laugh, but a small smile appears on her face. "Don't stay up too late," she chides him. "And be a little quieter, would you? It sounds like there was a horse down here."
Peter salutes her in understanding, then watches her climb back up the stairs. He knows he had to do this because the first thing she will see in the morning is a headline about the robot and Spiderman's involvement, and he doesn't want to scare her like last time. It's worth disturbing her sleep knowing she'll have some peace of mind in the morning.
Oh my god, your guys' reviews just totally blow me away. It's pretty much restored my will to live through nine hour shifts of crying babies at the daycare. Seriously. I wish I could respond to all of you, because I'm so happy to get all this feedback, I'm just basically walking around with my cell phone and grinning like an idiot every time I get an email. Thank you so much for making my week!
Sorry there wasn't much Gwen in this chapter-I promise I have lots of big plans for this story coming into play soon, but I'm kind of easing into it for now. My goal is to try to get one chapter up every day. Which should be fine, since I pretty much have no life when work is over. Woohoo!