Peter walks, directionless, for what feels like almost no time at all. It must be a while, though, because by the time he stops he is in the warehouse district by the river, dozens of blocks away from the school. Instinct must have carried him there; there are at least half a dozen abandoned buildings on this side of town, any one of which will be a decent place to be alone. It's freezing out, and he doubts the long-defunct buildings will be any better, but Peter doesn't care: he picks one at random and heads for the top floor, only noticing when he is halfway up the rickety, rotting stairs that he is jumping over weak spots and protruding nails almost without thought, like he can tell they're there without looking.

Still the words too good to be true are ringing in his head like a claxon as he reaches a storeroom on the third level and, upon trying the knob, finds it locked. They remain even when, noting the rusty padlock, Peter decides to give it a tug, thinking maybe he can force it and—

The padlock breaks off in his hand, as easily as if it were made of eggshell instead of iron.

He looks down as he unfurls his fingers. They almost seem stuck to the lock. When he opens them fully, he sees he's left finger-shaped dents in the metal.

Peter drops it.

"Holy shit," he says. "Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit."

He repeats this mantra over and over as he walks into the storeroom and starts to pace.

Superpowers. It has to be—right? There's no other explanation, and no other way to describe everything that has happened to him since he woke up, but even still Peter can't quite believe it. There have never been two concepts further apart in his mind than undersized, sickly, nerdy Peter Parker and the ability to heal overnight, or hear conversations unfolding from a mile away.

And yet the proof is on his hand, no longer blemished by Felipe's knife. It's in his eyes, which are tracking and cataloguing features of his surroundings he would never have even thought to notice before now: the particles of dust in the air, the traces of mouse hair in one corner, the spot near the center of the room where the floor has nearly rotted through… It's in his ears, which can not only hear the traffic trawling through the city miles away, but also seem to impart an innate sense of where that trawling is happening. He can tell the difference between a car horn that is outside this warehouse and one that is being pressed in Midtown—doesn't even have to think about it, just knows.

So, okay. He has superpowers.

Though he tries to suppress it—too good to be true—a smile makes its way, slowly, onto Peter's face.

He has superpowers.

Trembling, Peter pulls a notebook out of his backpack. He writes:

Heightened senses

Super hearing

Healing

Super strength?

He includes the question mark on the last, since he's really only thinking it because of how easily he climbed the fence earlier, and the little marks his fingers left on the padlock. The fence could be explained by adrenaline, after all, and the lock was rusty, falling apart already. Super strength—that would be too good to be true… right?

Of course, it all seems too good to be true, so incredible he still isn't entirely sure he's not dreaming, or possibly dead (good things don't happen to Peter Parker), but if he isn't dead then it's very likely he's just getting over-excited in the wake of all the other changes. Super strength would be way, way too much to ask of a universe that has made itself very clear that Peter Parker has gotten on its bad side in the worst way.

Still. He has to be sure, right?

There is a pile of old crates in the corner. Most of them look empty, and all of them are half-rotten, like the floor, but there are a few that contain sacks of cement, turned rock-solid by time and humidity. Peter rubs his hands together before he grabs one, reminding himself not to get his hopes up, and that even if all he can do is see really clearly and hear things from blocks away, that's still more than he had yesterday, that he can still make a difference if he doesn't—

Lifting the bag is like lifting tissue paper.

Peter nearly drops it in surprise, catches it at the last moment. Heart in his throat, Peter stacks it on top of the one underneath, lifts them both. It's just as easy.

"Holy shit," he whispers.

Still disbelieving, he holds onto the bags for a solid five minutes, waiting for them to start to feel heavy, waiting for the low, unfamiliar warmth of certainty—that he has super strength—to recede. When neither of these things happens, Peter lifts the bags over his head, takes a breath, and throws them as hard as he can.

This turns out to be a bad move. The bags soar across the room, crash through the far wall, then through the wall of the adjacent room, then finally crash through the window on the opposite end of the building and tumble to the asphalt of the abandoned parking lot beyond.

Peter yelps, cringes. Crouches down and waits to see if he can hear anyone coming, but the surrounding buildings are mostly abandoned, and the ones that aren't are filled with the sounds of industry, drowning out Peter's small contribution to the chaos.

"Okay," says Peter. "So, definitely super strength. I'll just uh, write that down."

But when he goes to reach for his pen, he sees that a strip of the paper bag tore away as he threw it, and is stuck to his palm. He tries to shake it away. It sticks. Only comes loose when he carefully peels it off with his other hand.

Peter thinks of the padlock, how it seemed to stick to the pads of his fingers for just a second before he dropped it.

He thinks of the spider.

"No way," he says. "No way. No freaking way."

Still, he crosses to the wall. He presses his hand to the crumbling brick.

Peter climbs.

It takes at least an hour—an hour spent pacing and climbing the walls and hanging upside-down from the ceiling—before Peter calms down enough to think clearly. He's been alternating between giddy excitement and pure disbelief all afternoon, so it's not surprising it takes him a while to really start thinking about the implications of his new powers. But when he does, those implications hit him like a flying bag of hardened cement.

It's been nearly a year since Ben died. Peter has spent the better part of that year believing that the only good he can do—the only good he is capable of—is to jump in front of the bullet so others don't have to. To take the hit in order to protect someone else—because that is the only way he's ever been able to help anyone, and since he can't help himself, helping others is all he's had.

There is a second option now. If he really has superpowers—and he does, that much he is finally allowed to believe—then he doesn't have to wait for the bullet to emerge from the gun. He doesn't have to jump in front of anything, because he can intervene before the gun goes off, make a difference before anyone gets hurt.

He can save people. People like Felipe, who have been crushed by a system that thinks they're worthless. People like Ben, taken away because of one stupid night, one stupid decision.

He might even be able to save himself.

Peter's heart rises to his throat, and not just because he is dangling by his toes from the dilapidated ceiling. He drops to the ground—lands gracefully, easily—and straightens up, staring at his wrist. Thinking of the bruises that are no longer there.

If he can fling two bags of cement across the length of a building… if he can pull his body up the side of a wall by just his fingertips, and leap over fences like he's playing hopscotch…

Maybe he can stop Skip, too.

Peter feels suddenly dizzy. He knows it's not physiological, but he has to sit down anyway, to take a few breaths with his head in his lap while the threads of the plan forming in his mind begin to weave together of their own accord.

One push is all it would take. Just one shove with his newfound strength—not enough to hurt Skip, just enough to let him know that Peter wasn't the tiny, weak, scared kid he used to be anymore—and Skip would leave him alone. He would have to.

And the girls wouldn't have to find a new home. Peter wouldn't have to go back to the halfway house, or drop out of school. He could keep Skip in line, keep them all safe, stop going to bed scared and miserable and exhausted every single night, worried about what would happen to Emma and Lily if he didn't keep his mouth shut.

Maybe—maybe, maybe, maybe—things could be better. Not perfect, but okay. Bearable.

And all it would take is one push.

The sound of his phone chiming makes Peter jump so hard he nearly ends up on the ceiling again. He's barely noticed the cold, seeing as he's been running all over every surface of the room since late morning, but when he picks up his phone his fingers are starting to go numb again; he fumbles for a second before he can unlock it.

Skip: School called to say you missed class. I'm not angry just worried. I'm sorry, Peter. The girls are worried about you too. Please come home.

Peter stares at the message for a long time, wondering how he could have ever bought into Skip's phony remorse before, how he could have even wanted to believe it even when he didn't really believe it. It seems stupidly clear now that Skip is not sorry, was never sorry—he just doesn't want to arouse suspicion. It's the same reason he didn't take Peter to the hospital last night.

Skip doesn't care about Peter, but for once this knowledge doesn't hurt. Because finally, finally, it doesn't matter. Peter doesn't have to put up with it.

He has another option, and he's going to take it.

Peter: Srry to worry u. Needed some air, but I'm okay. Omw home now.

Peter does not, however, go straight home. He intends to—but gets distracted when he passes in front of a thrift shop window, at the center of which, prominently displayed, is a red-and-blue jumpsuit.

He knows it's ridiculous. Red and blue against a city backdrop will make him stand out like a tropical bird, is about as far from subtle as he could possibly get. And if he's really going to do what he's thinking of doing—

(Responsibility is not a choice)

—he could probably do with some stealth.

But next to the reasonable part of Peter telling him it's silly, a counterpoint arises, the sentiment as foreign to Peter as the little flame of determination that accompanies it: maybe he doesn't want to keep hiding.

Whatever he is—whatever he's becoming—that something isn't invisible. It doesn't have to be. Not anymore.

Besides, Peter thinks as he ducks into the thrift shop, red and blue are superhero colors.

When Peter gets home that night, Skip is full of watery-eyed apologies. He shouldn't have dismissed Peter when he said he was sick. He shouldn't have sent Peter to school. He's so sorry Peter has been so worn down, so sorry for the pressure he's put on him. It will never happen again. Never. That's a promise.

Peter accepts the apology quietly. He promises not to ditch any more school. He eats his dinner, watches TV with the girls, and then asks to go to bed early, saying he's still tired.

Once he's alone, Peter pulls the suit out of his backpack, lays it out across his bed. The red is stark against his bedspread, and when Peter runs his fingers over it and swears he can feel an electric tingle run up his arm, emanating from the suit. He's sure it's his imagination—it's just fleece and dye, after all—but that doesn't stop giddy excitement from rising in his throat when he thinks of what he can do now. What he will do.

There's a permanent marker on Peter's desk. He uses it, normally, for his decathlon flashcards. This evening he takes it to the front of the red sweatshirt vest, where he draws a single spider.

Once he's sure it's dry, Peter folds the suit carefully, and brings it to his closet. Inside the hidden compartment is his ever-growing pile of food and the burner cell Ned gave him, months and months ago, and Peter picks the latter up for just a moment. Flips it open and stares at the red ink on the number one. The panic button.

He closes it. Puts it back. Sets the suit on top, and goes to bed.

For once, elation is the reason Peter doesn't sleep, rather than terror. Elation and nerves. Elation for the possibilities of tomorrow. Nerves for the possibilities of tonight.

But this is not the night.

His door stays closed.

It stays closed the night after that, too. And the night after that. By the fourth Peter realizes why: he has Skip scared. The fever, ditching school, the call from the principal—Skip is on the ropes, and Peter is the one who put him there.

It's a thrilling position, but a scary one nonetheless: Peter can sleep, finally. His grades on his homework improve. He's not sure if it's the rest or the spider powers, but either way, he can finally think again, and so long as that's true he's not concerned about the why. But he still has to be careful. Because if he does slip up, the girls are still at risk.

Peter goes to school, therefore. He goes to each class, and even to tutoring afterwards (with a kid he knows from math club, now; Michelle is no longer speaking to him). He keeps working and keeps his mouth shut, just like he did before. Only now, he isn't dogged by exhaustion and worry and the constant, nagging wonder of How much longer can I do this?

Because now Peter has Spider-Man.

The first time Peter saves someone is simultaneously the best and scariest moment of his life.

It's afternoon on a Friday, nearly a week after the bite. The girls have therapy; it's the first chance he's had to get away without Skip questioning where he's going in a week. Peter leaves Skip's neighborhood, heads back to the part of Queens he lived in when Ben was alive, climbs a fire escape to the top of the highest building he can find (wall crawling still makes him nervous—he's been practicing, in odd moments behind the school and in his bedroom when Skip isn't home, so it's not fear that he'll fall; more fear that someone will spot a kid in a sweatsuit scaling the side of a building with no ropes and, like, start trying to blast him out of the air or something) and sits on the edge of the roof to listen.

It takes just twenty minutes before he hears it: there is a scuffle happening in an alley three blocks away, two men against one woman. They sound menacing; she sounds scared.

Peter climbs down the fire escape. He pauses for just a second at the bottom— this is insane!—but the thought isn't a self-reprimand. It's exhilaration. It's freedom.

Running to the fight, however, is not freeing. It takes far too long; by the time Peter gets there, the muggers have already taken the woman's purse and are running for a car that is idling on the side of the road. Peter only just manages to get between them and the vehicle by taking a running leap, nearly knocking off the side-view mirror as he skids to a halt.

"Hey!" he shouts. "You shouldn't steal stuff, it's bad!"

The two muggers look him up and down and burst out laughing.

They stop abruptly when Peter sweeps the legs out from under them. It's almost too easy—until Peter reaches for the stolen purse.

As soon as he takes his immediate focus off the two muggers, several things happen at once:

First, the car behind him kicks into gear and starts to peel off. At the same time, the first mugger lurches to his feet, fists up, ready to lunge at Peter. But even though Peter sees both of these things clearly, almost senses them before they happen, his focus is swallowed, all at once, by the third man, who has just pulled a gun out of his jacket pocket.

The gun turns a screaming scarlet in his vision, and he lurches forward almost without thinking, kicking it out of the mugger's hand. The gun goes flying, but because Peter's senses are so honed-in on the most immediate danger, he doesn't have time to block the second mugger's tackle—it catches him off balance, knocks him backward into the now-moving car.

He feels a layer of skin leave the back of his arm as the car leaves the alleyway, but catches himself before he falls. He blocks the next punch, ducks another, and then, for a second time, sweeps the muggers' legs out from under them.

This time when they stand up, they both take off running. They leave the purse behind.

"Hey!" Peter shouts after them. "Bad guys! You have to go to jail now, that's how this works!"

But apparently the bad guys disagree.

"Holy shit," says a voice behind him, making him jump. When he turns, the woman whose purse he is holding comes shuffling out of the alleyway, looking shaken but otherwise unharmed. "Holy shit," she says again. "You just kicked those guys' asses, kid! What the fuck? How old are you? Twelve?"

It doesn't quite ruin the holy-hell-I-just-fought-off-two-armed-muggers-using-my-bare-hands feeling of the moment, but it does set Peter to thinking about his suit's features—or, more accurately, the lack thereof.

By the time he arrives home that night, the scrape on the back of his arm is gone. Peter takes a moment to wonder over this in the mirror (he has been wondering at himself in the mirror a lot lately, a stark change from two weeks ago, when he could hardly stand to be in the same room as one, let alone stare at himself in it), and then he pulls his chemistry notebook—now his Spider-Man notebook—out of the hiding space in his closet. He writes:

Mask

Goggles (need to focus—something with blinders/light filters?)

Ropes

Because, he reasons, what good is fighting bad guys if they're only going to get away? He needs something to tie them up. And more than that—he needs a way to get there before they're halfway to their getaway car, though this last is more of a conundrum: it's not like Peter can just walk into a car dealership and buy his own private Spider-Mobile.

That one will have to wait, however. He can hear Skip and the girls down in the lobby, about to get on the elevator. He's about to stuff the notebook back in its hiding place—when he is stuck by a sudden, obvious inspiration.

He pulls it back out. Crosses out his last entry, and adds another.

Not ropes. Webs.

"Peter."

Peter startles and sweeps the half-completed web shooters into his lap immediately, thinking the shop teacher has decided to look up from his crossword puzzle for the first time this semester and has spotted him using school materials for his unsanctioned—and very much secret—project.

But it's only Ned.

Peter immediately feels himself burn red. He does not take the web shooters out of his lap.

"Um," he says, "hey."

Ned swallows.

"Hey," he says.

He looks… he doesn't look like the Ned Peter knows. He looks sad, and a little nervous. It makes Peter nervous, too, but he bites it back. They haven't spoken since the incident in the lunchroom, and even though Peter's stomach twists with longing every time he sees him, he has finally come to understand that the fight was a good thing. He was being stupid in the first place for thinking he could keep his secrets and keep Ned as a friend: he was only putting Ned in the line of fire—his fire, Skip's fire—and as Peter's secrets have grown, so has the danger.

Ned is better off without him.

Peter thought Ned understood this. He thought that was why he has stayed away, why he hasn't texted or said so much as a passing word to Peter in weeks. But apparently today, Ned does not understand.

"I just wanted to…" Ned trails off. Swallows again. Starts over. "Look, man, I don't know if I did something, or if something is going on, but you've been… I mean, I just want to know… Are you okay, dude?"

The back of Peter's throat begins to burn, the back of his eyes along with it.

He forces these sensations away.

Peter sighs.

"Look, Ned," he says. "Maybe… look, maybe we're just too… a lot has happened since… I mean, this last year, a lot has happened and…"

He sees Ned's eyes go shiny and stops abruptly. He thinks Ned is about to cry; instead, he shakes his head and says, in a voice that is a little wobbly but otherwise clear, "So you don't want to be friends anymore."

For one wild moment, Peter wants to tell him everything.

He wants to tell him about Skip—about what happens when the lights go off, about the girls, about how terrified he is that they will be lost and forgotten the way he has been. He wants to tell him about how he still feels responsible for Ben; how everything up until the spider bite has felt like a punishment, and how everything after is a chance—just a chance—to maybe undo some of the bad, to try to bring some balance to the tilted scales of his life.

He wants to tell him about Spider-Man.

(No one is safe with you, Peter. Good things don't just happen, and when they do they don't happen without a price. If you want to do this thing right you have to do it alone.)

"I guess I don't," says Peter.

Now there is no mistaking it: Ned's eyes fill with tears, and he has to blink ferociously in order to stop them from spilling over. Peter sets his jaw, forces himself to hold Ned's gaze until the latter nods, once, and heads back to his own seat.

Only when he is sure Ned is out of earshot does Peter let out a slow, shaky breath, trying to expel some of the guilt that is gnawing painfully at his insides.

Then he pulls out the web shooters, and he gets back to work.

The first time he web-slings is like flying.

He feels like the whole city belongs to him, like he can do anything. He goes through a whole canister of web fluid in one evening, revelling the sensation of falling, of catching himself at the last moment, of hearing the gasps and screams and whoops of the people below as they spot him. When he finally has to stop he sits on the edge of a rooftop, panting and grinning and shaking, and it takes him a long time to realize there are tears running down his cheeks.

Freedom, he thinks, and he adds his own whoop to the chorus of the night.

And yet, the ghoul lurks.

Even with Spider-Man on his side—even as he adds more and more notches to his tally of thieves and muggers and would-be car accidents, even as his pride over the people he has saved swells—the ghoul never goes away. It's always on his shoulder, even when it's silent, and Peter always knows it is there.

It is waiting for Skip.

He still hasn't bothered Peter again—not since the night of the bite. But Peter can feel his facade slipping the longer Peter stays in line—or at least appears to—can feel the false apologies and fatherly affection giving way to disgust, to lingering touches and ill-concealed stares, just like they did in those first months. For a while Skip was pretending to like him, even—but that, too, is falling away, as evidenced by the sneer on his face one evening when Peter gets home from patrol—AKA the made-up study session he told Skip he was attending—and finds Skip blocking the entrance to his room.

"Did your social worker tell you she was planning to visit?" he demands, before Peter can ask what's wrong, or even set his backpack down.

Peter hates how nerves fill his stomach when Skip sounds like this, hates how he can feel a flush creeping into his neck when he notices Skip's gaze lingering on his too-large t-shirt and oversized jeans. He's been dressing in baggier and baggier clothes since the bite, trying to hide its more obvious effects, and even though Skip hasn't mentioned anything Peter has the sense that it bothers him. Angers him, even.

"Um, no," says Peter. "She never talks to me. Did she, um, did she come over or something?"

"Why else would I be asking?" Skip snaps. "She dropped by just before I was about to head to the gym, it threw off my entire routine. Said she wanted to 'look around.' Have you been talking to her?"

"No. Of course not." Spider-Man, Peter reminds himself, you're Spider-Man and you don't have to be afraid of him. "Is she—is she gonna come back when I'm here?"

Skip sighs, dramatic and long-suffering, and moves out of Peter's doorway.

"If she does," he says, "you'd better warn me next time. You know I hate being caught off-guard." He plucks at Peter's scruffy flannel as he passes, wrinkles his nose. "Why are you so sweaty all the time? Go take a shower, you stink."

And he skulks off down the hall toward the kitchen, where the girls are shrieking for him to come make dinner.

Peter lets out a slow breath, willing his hands to stop shaking before he opens his bedroom door, because lately he has a tendency to crush things when he isn't paying attention, or isn't fully in control. When he does manage to enter his bedroom he immediately jumps in the shower, rinses the residue of his most recent knife-dodging dance off, and then drops onto his bed, wanting to gather himself before he pastes on a smile and heads out to the kitchen.

His hand brushes something under his pillow.

Peter extracts the little slip of paper, sits up. It's a business card:

Margaret Esposito

Child Advocate

On the back, Margaret Esposito has written her personal cell phone number, along with a note: Call me if you need anything :)

At the sight of the smiley face, Peter is filled with a sudden, burning rage.

Call if he needs anything? Where was she when the Arlingtons were smacking him over the head with rolled-up magazines, forcing him to go to school smelling like cat litter, making him sleep under their stairs? Where was she when Ms. Charlise was withholding their food, when Felipe got so hungry he decided he would rather spend his life in jail than spend another minute starving under her rule? Where was she when Skip—?

Before Peter knows what he is doing, he shreds the card.

It's not, anymore, just that he has to take care of himself.

It's that finally, Peter actually can.

After the incident with the social worker, Peter's afternoon patrols gain a new element.

He still swings around the city searching for crime, jumping in front of potential car accidents and dropping in on unsuspecting robbers. But now, whenever he has a spare moment, Peter practices.

He practices in back alleys, with garbage cans and discarded furniture. He practices on rooftops, propping his backpack on walls to act as leverage against his metered, careful punches. On each of these objects, he imagines Skip's face. When he punches too hard—when his backpack goes flying, or the garbage bin explodes—he takes a deep breath.

"Okay, Peter," he mutters. "Punching. Normal, human punching. You can do this. You can do this."

All it will take, he reminds himself, is one push. One punch, one strike, and then it will be over. Skip will know he can't mess with him. The girls will be safe. The ghoul will be gone.

He just has to be ready when the time comes.

The time comes in March.

After weeks of silence, weeks of learning to be strong but not too strong, weeks of taking care of others and taking care of himself and anticipating the moment it will all come to a head, learning to control his new strength, preparing to make it known—Peter finally hears the sound of Skip's feet on the carpet in the hall.

The door squeaks on its hinges as it swings open. A strip of faint orange light slices through the dark. Skip's socks shuffle on the carpet as he enters Peter's room, carried on a wave of grain alcohol. After weeks of suppression, it seems Skip has indulged: he is drunk, tonight, not on beer but whiskey, and it's apparent in more than just his breath. He enters the room at a staggering pace, so drunk he can barely hold himself up.

In his bed, Peter tenses. This is it. This is what he's been waiting for, the moment he takes Skip off the ropes and onto the floor. The moment everything finally gets better.

And yet, when Skip stumbles over to sit on Peter's bed—when he sits on the edge, and pulls the sheets off, and gropes at Peter's skin, his back….

Peter holds still. He holds his breath. He waits for it to be over.

When it is over at last—when Skip pulls his clothes on and staggers, wordlessly, out of the room—Peter stays in bed for a long time. He stays still, right where he was when Skip came in. He barely dares to breathe.

When, finally, Peter is able to get out of bed, he does so automatically, mechanically, hardly feeling present in his own body. He dresses, goes to the window. Rakes his hands through his hair and locks onto the ends, tugging so hard he practically rips it out of his scalp.

Why didn't he move?

Why didn't he fight back?

(Because you can't, Peter Parker. Because you were never supposed to defend yourself. Because this is the way things are, the way they are always going to be.)

A sob chokes him. Peter turns away from the window, toward his closet. He hasn't ever gone out this late as Spider-Man, has always been too afraid of being caught, but tonight he has to. He can't stay here, he can't stay in this apartment, this room, knowing that he just laid there and did nothing while Skip… even knowing what he could have done, he just let him—

Peter yanks the hidden compartment in his closet open, pulls his suit out with such force that a small cascade of chips and cookies come tumbling out with it, gathering in a pile at his feet.

Peter looks down. And he sees the answer he has been ignoring all along.

(You gotta look out for yourself, Pedro.)

Peter has been laboring under a delusion. He has been operating under the belief, for months now, that there was only one choice available to him: to take what Skip gave him for the sake of the girls. To throw himself on the bullet so others didn't have to.

Spider-Man gave him a second option—or so he thought. He thought he could fight back. But tonight has proven him wrong, proven that no matter how strong or how quick or how prepared he is, he will never, ever be strong enough for this.

He thought this was all he had.

But there is a third option.

It's an option Peter has not even considered because of what happened the last time he took it. One that has been so far from his mind it strikes him as ridiculous when it finally does present itself, both in its obviousness and its simplicity:

Peter can just leave.

He shakes as he pulls on the suit and overturns his backpack on the closet floor. He shakes as he fills the empty space left by his binders and his books with six months worth of pilfered snacks, switching to his duffel when the backpack becomes too full. Atop the snacks he adds a few changes of clothes, the burner phone, his notebook, and the blanket from his bed.

And that is all. All Peter has. All he will need.

There is a third option, and Peter is going to take it.

He opens the window. Hitches his bags over his shoulders, pulls his mask over his face. And leaps into the welcoming night.

End of Part I