It was so unbelievably cold. Tyrone shivered, feeling hardly able to stand. Darkness was everywhere, stifling him. He cried out, his voice echoing in the endless pit of black, and he was drowning, drowning…
It was so unbearably hot. Tandy panted, knees buckling. The light was everywhere, blinding her. She screamed, her voice stifled by the roar of the flames, and she was burning, burning…
The warehouse was up in a panic, as scores of teenagers moaned and cried out, writhing on the floor, or leaning against the wall. Uniformed workers scattered, as the man in charge, designated by his lab coat and clipboard, hastily dialed his cell phone.
A smooth voice greeted him, but it was anything but soothing to his shattered nerves. “You’ve got Kingpin.”
“We’ve got a major problem here, Mr. Fisk!”
“What did I tell you about calling me that if you don’t know the line is secure?”
He paused. “Is it?”
“It is now. Now tell me what’s going on.”
“Our test subjects are having an extremely averse reaction to the upped dosage, sir!”
“Explain.”
“They all seem to be having some sort of… of seizure, or something, I don’t-”
“I don’t want to be responsible for this. Cut your losses, and get out of there.”
“But the children-”
“-don’t know your name or mine. If they stop convulsing and somehow get out of there, they’ll come back. The drug is addicting, and they’ll need another dosage. We can decide what to do with them then.”
“What if—sir, they could die if we don’t--”
“No skin off my nose. Anything that has even remotely ties to me- yourself included- should be out of that warehouse within ten minutes, do you understand me?”
“Yes… yes, sir.”
-
‘Oh, God.’
Babs Gordon lay in her stark white hospital room, watching the numbers flicker on the adjacent screen, measuring her vitals. Little purple beeps went along, a blue graph shifting beneath them.
‘I’m just taking up space.’
IV bags and humming machines surrounded the teenaged girl.
‘I’m tied to all this. Grounded.
I can’t do gymnastics anymore. Can’t run, can’t walk, can’t play basketball
with dad, can’t do a fucking thing. Oh, God. I’m just
taking up space.’
“Barbara, you’re awake!”
The entrance of her father snapped Babs back to reality. Unfortunately, reality wasn’t exactly a very fun place to be for Barbara Gordon.
“Daddy…” she sobbed, her face crumpling. He was with her in a moment, hugging her as best he could as she cried.
“It’s okay, sweetheart, I’m here. I’m right here. I’ve got you. Everything will be alright…”
-
Tandy Bowen awoke, flushed and drenched in sweat, to the roar of two hearts pounding in her ears—her own, and that of Ty Johnson, whom she’d met only a few days previous. He was stumbling, barely managing to keep himself standing let alone carry her, and passed out, spent and shivering, when he saw she was awake.
Feeling
exposed and unsafe in the pale light of the moon, dappled by the fire escapes
that blocked the sky in the alleyway, she grabbed at a spare blanket, covered
in the grime of
She noticed in horror that the shadows around his body weren’t quite natural, contrasting to the glow of the moon above. They twisted around and under the old blanket, covering Tyrone. Frightened, she swatted out at them, as if they were a raccoon she could just frighten away.
Beams of light, like hot knives, swept forth from her fingertips, and she felt some of the heat dissipate off her body, the arthritic ache in her hands she hadn’t even noticed begin to ease off.
‘What’s happening to us?!’
-
Babs thought that after an emotional catharsis, one was supposed to feel cleansed or drained or some other term normally associated with household chemicals. She didn't feel either, just slightly headachey and congested, not to mention embarrassed with herself.
“Feeling better?” Jim asked quietly, stroking her hair.
“Not really.”
He gave her a wistful look before retreating into the hall. He returned with a large grocery bag.
"Well, I have something that may help. I know hospital food is terrible, so I got some stuff at D’Agostino’s. You've got to keep your strength up," Jim reached into the bag and pulled out five bananas, three cinnamon buns, half a chicken, an army-sized tin of cookies, the other half of the chicken, and a thermos of coffee she could have swum laps in.
Babs goggled at the bounty. "Dad?”
He looked up. “Yes, sweetheart?”
“Um… how much strength am I keeping up, exactly?"
He gave her a smile and walked to the closet, retrieving a pillow and blanket before returning to his chair.
“Dad?” Babs inquired, raising an eyebrow.
“It’s getting late, honey, you should get some sleep.”
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing, just rearranging some furniture. Go to sleep.”
Babs sighed, turning her head away from his. “Daddy, you don't have to sleep in the room with me. I’m a big girl.”
“I know, I just think the chair looks nice here.”
“And what's the blanket for?” Babs asked suspiciously.
“In case the chair gets cold.”
“And the pillow?”
“To keep the blanket company.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay, everything's in its place. Chair seems warm, blanket seems happy, just one thing missing... oh yeah,” Jim said before sitting in chair and getting a newspaper out of the grocery bag, “Good night.”
“Freak of sideshow proportions,” Babs muttered.
“Shh, the chair is trying to sleep.”
-
Dawn in
He looked around, disoriented, pulling his blanket closer to himself. He couldn’t remember getting a blanket, so Tandy must have-
Tandy.
For one stressful moment he panicked, before his eyes fell upon her sleeping for across from his own. Dirty and disheveled, she slept fitfully.
It was only
a week ago that he’d met her. She’d run away from her
The two had little in common, but something clicked, and when Ty told her where she could find some shelter and something to eat, she eagerly followed him back to a warehouse, full of teenagers like the two of them.
And then there was Crave.
They didn’t know enough to question the doctors. They were given twenty bucks to try the drug, and the unique opportunity to be paid to use was too strong of a pull for even the innocent Tandy to pass up. The nameless doctors had a long, drawn out title for the drug, but the kids called it Crave, since that’s what you always started and ended with when you took it.
And then… something changed. The high was stronger, and then, too strong. The memories blurred and faded to black at that point before coming up upon a hazy recollection of carrying Tandy away from the warehouse when the writhing bodies had become suddenly still.
‘We’re the only ones left…’
But there was something worse.
He was starting to feel the need again.
-
“Swish!”
“Har-per! Har-per! Har-per!” Lian cheered, imitating the roar of the crowd.
Gently,
“Again!” she insisted.
He gave her an apologetic smile. “Sorry, kiddo, but I’ve got to get you off to school. Mrs. Chapman is taking you guys to the Central Park Zoo, remember?”
“Oh, yeah!” she said enthusiastically, running off to get her backpack. She stopped suddenly halfway down the court, however, and ran back.
“
“Yeah, kiddo?”
“Can I be a cheerleader for the Knicks when I grow up?”
“But there aren’t any girls on the Knicks, Roy!”
He knelt down next to her. “,Then you’ll be the first. You can be anything you want to when you grow up, do you understand me? Now go get your backpack.”
-
There was a knock at the door, and a nurse stuck her head in.
“Miss Gordon? There’s a Mister Murdock here to talk to you.”
Babs blinked. Why the hell was Matt Murdock coming to visit her? He was a senior, for one. Not to mention…
“Well, um…” she floundered, “Send him in, I guess…”
The nurse disappeared again. “Right in here, sweetie,” she said gently to the shadow in the hall, leading him in by the elbow. With a sweep of his cane, he found a chair.
“I’ll leave you be,” the nurse said when Matt had seated himself, “Call if you need me.”
And with that, the teens were left in an awkward silence.
“The room smells like flowers,” Matt said finally, in an attempt to start a conversation.
“Yeah, uh, the cops from my dad’s station sent over a bouquet.”
Again, silence.
“So, Matt. I, uh- I don’t want to sound rude, but… why are you here?”
He gave her- or at least her general direction- an odd sort of smile.
“Well, after my accident,” he began, removing his sunglasses to reveal his sightless eyes, “no one came to visit me in the hospital. They were too weirded out. I don’t blame them, but… well… being left alone… it’s not a nice feeling. I didn’t want that to happen to you.”
Matt’s comments stung, though he had not meant them to. He was right. No one from school had come to visit her since she’d woken up.
“I… well… thanks, Matt. It really means a lot to me that—hold on. Today is Monday.”
“Yeah.”
“Why aren’t you in school?”
“It’s Senior Skip Day. Do you know when you’re coming back to classes?”
“Soon, I think. I just want to get on with my life, the way things were before.”
Matt just smiled his sad smile again.
-
“The Oracles of Delphi,” the boring teacher droned, “were young virginal females who possessed the divine gift to see outside of the present into the past and the future. They gave up their individual identities to- yes, Mr. Parker?”
“I thought they were old women,” Peter said, putting down his hand.
“After one young girl was raped, the Delphians passed a law…”
“Wassamatter, dorkwad?” the jock who sat behind him whispered, poking Peter in the neck with his pencil, “Don’t know nothing about virgins?”
“’Dorkwad?’” Peter repeated, incredulous. “You lash me with your words.”
“Is there something you would like to share with the class, Mr. Parker?” the teacher asked, peeved at the interruption.
“Uh, sure. Apparently, I’m a dorkwad.”
The teacher blinked, composing himself, before deftly moving on. “Prophesies were only given between spring and autumn…”
-
“Welcome home, kiddo,” Jim said with a smile, holding the door open to allow her through.
“Thanks, Dad. I think I’m gonna hit the hay--”
“Hold on!” he exclaimed, running ahead of her. “While you were gone, I made a few… modifications.”
She raised an eyebrow as he opened the door for her.
“I know you can’t get out into the street as often anymore…” Jim said as she wheeled in, “so I decided to bring the streets to you.”
Babs gasped. In the corner where her laptop had once adorned her otherwise bare desk, a veritable plethora of computer equipment stoop piled on top of itself.
“Dad, what…?”
“Webcams, Google Earth, the best hardware and software money can buy. You’ve got your eyes on the whole city when you’re at that desk.”
“I… thanks, Dad,” she said with a small smile. He kissed her on the forehead.
“I’ll leave you to explore a bit.”
She wheeled over to the desk as he left the room. Immediately getting online, she ran a search on Spider-Man.
-
“
“Sure, Oliver, what’s up?”
“Lian is getting out of school late today, right? Field trip?”
“What of it?”
“I have to meet with a new patient’s family. I need you to close up, today.”
He reached into his pocket, drawing out the huge key ring containing all the keys to each door in the building.
“Oliver, I--”
“I trust you, Roy.”
-
Babs had thought that coming back to school would be the easy part. Being with her friends and getting on with her life.
She thought her friends would be there for her.
Sometimes, however, people just aren't who you need them to be, at a certain moment in time; and unfortunately there's nothing you can do about it.
She sat alone at lunch, waiting for friends who never came.
Fortunately, a knight in shining armor happened to be handy.
“Babs?” a now-familiar voice queried to the space next to her at the empty table.
“Hi, Matt.”
“How’s your first day back?” he asked, taking a seat.
“You wouldn’t understand,” she mumbled into her sandwich.
He raised an eyebrow. “Well, let me guess. I think it goes something like this. You didn’t sleep at all last night. You tried, but nothing worked, and then they were back again, those same tormenting thoughts that have been with you ever since you woke up from the hospital.
“It always begins with: This can’t be me. Then it goes to: Why me? Then to: There’s got to be a mistake. Then finally: Oh God, I’m trapped, I’m in prison. I’ve got a life sentence here. I’m stuck, I’m never going to get out of this. I’m not going to survive. I can’t do this and I can’t do that. I’m pathetic. What am I going to do with myself? I’m fifteen years old. I’ve got no life. I’m just going to be a charity case. And into your head comes the desperate plea: Somebody, please, let me out. Just let me out.”
He offered her an iconoclastic smile. “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Eventually there will come a day when you wake up and missing what you had doesn’t hurt as much, but until then you’ve got to keep going. Want to get coffee after school?”
“Like… a date?”
Matt shrugged. “If you want it to be.”
“I… sure.”
-
When Peter entered the Bugle with his newest set of prints, he found the paper to be abuzz with activity. Carefully, he made his way across the newsroom to Jonah’s office.
The door was open, and Betty Brant was already there, trying to look calm.
“Uh, the mayor wants a correction
to the interview we printed with him. He wants to clarify that he in fact
referred to his departments problems with the advisory board as an, quote,
us-and them thing, unquote.”
“What did we print?” Jonah asked,
waving his cigar.
Betty winced. “An ‘S and M’ thing.”
“Keep it the way it was and print off a story of the Mayor’s denials of kinky habits in the office. What do you want, Parker?”
Passing the distressed-looking Betty, Peter dumped his new photos on the table. Jonah quickly shifted through them, muttering.
Putting down the pile abruptly, Jameson gave Peter a sharp look. “I don’t get it, Parker.”
“Get what?”
“I just can’t figure out how you
always know exactly where Spider-Man is going to be,” Jonah clarified, shaking
his head.
Peter sighed. “Well, Mr. Jameson,
the truth is I'm actually Spider-Man in disguise, and I only pretend to be a
photographer in order to get some positive publicity and help my aunt with the
bills.”
Jameson stared, silent a few moments. “… You're a sick man, Parker.”
-
‘This
is stupid.’
Try as she might, Babs couldn’t banish that thought from her head as she sat before the front door of the Parker residence.
Almost all available photos of
Spider-Man had been taken by a freelancer named Peter Parker. A few quick
cross-references had brought her to his home in
‘This
is so, so stupid.’
Wincing and bracing herself, se reached up and rang the doorbell. She was greeted by an elderly woman, noticeably older than her own father.
“Um… Hi.”
“Can I help you?”
She bit her lip. “Does, uh… does Peter Parker live here?”
“Yes, but he’s out right now. He should be back within the hour. Are you a friend of his from school?”
“I… no. I saw some of his pictures in the Bugle, and… I’m Barbara Gordon.”
“And I’m May Parker, Peter’s guardian. Would you like to come in, dear?”
“Oh, I don’t want to intrude-”
“Nonsense. I’ll put on some tea.”
-
Miraculously, the bus pulled in,
and the first child off was Lian. She ran to
“Hey, kiddo! How was the zoo?”
She showed him the light blue balloon animal she was holding. “So fun! I gots a giraffe!”
“So I see.”
“An’ I decided I don’t wanna play for the Knicks no more.”
“No?”
“I wanna be the balloon animal lady! Can I, Roy? Can I?”
He smiled. “You can be anything you want to be, Lian.”
-
When Peter walked into his living room, he noticed three things.
The first thing he noticed was that Aunt May was talking to a girl he’d never met before.
The second thing he noticed was that the girl was in a wheelchair.
The third thing he noticed was that the girl was very, very pretty. Peter tried not to notice that, taking a seat on the couch.
“Hey, Aunt May, who’s the friend?”
“This is Barbara Gordon. I’ll leave you two kids to talk,” May said with a smile, getting up and moving into the kitchen.
“Uh… Hi,” Peter mumbled, looking at his feet, “Do I… do I know you from somewhere? Your name sounds really-”
“I was, um… I… the Jack Napier arrest?” she murmured, playing with her hands.
Peter’s hand flew to his forehead as he slapped himself. Stupid.
“Oh, yeah, I—I had to take—pictures-- um… how are you doing?”
“Okay, I guess. I… I noticed that, uh… you… you take pictures. Of Spider-Man.”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“I… so… you could… could you give him a message for me?”
Peter looked up. “What?”
“I want to thank him.”
Peter sat next to her on the couch. “Spider-Man… he, uh… he mentioned you to me the other day.”
“He did?”
“I was talking about… how he was guilty. Because he… he didn’t get to you in time. He didn’t save you.”
“Of course he did! What do you call this?” she asked, motioning at herself.
“But you-”
“I’m paralyzed, yeah. But if Spider-Man hadn’t been there, that bullet would have hit my heart, not my spine. I know it. He saved me, and I need to thank him. So—could you pass on the message for me?”
“Of course. I… that is, Spider-Man will be relieved to hear you say that.”
-
“In a related story, a group of teenaged bodies were found dead in a warehouse on the west side from what appears to be a mass drug overdose. Forensic examination of the bodies shows traces of a Mutant Growth Hormone-like substance in their system. Police are investigating…”
But
“MGH? You think I can’t do better’n that? I got word-”
He would not let any more lives be destroyed.
-
Across town, Peter Parker too had made the connection, for an entirely different reason.
Too many deaths in west side warehouses for his tastes.
He reached under his pillow for the vial. He needed the autopsies of the bodies, and had to see if Tyrone was one of them.
And he had to see if his substance was a match.
Grabbing his backpack and stuffing his suit inside, he quietly made his way down the stairs in an attempt to get to the door.
“Where are you off to, Peter?” May asked from the kitchen. She too had been watching the news, a look of sadness on her face.
“Oh, I was just—didn’t I tell you about this?”
“About what?”
“Doctor Connors invited the kids from Science Olympiad on an overnight star watching trip. There are some anomalies in the sky that haven’t been seen in like two decades and--”
May raised an eyebrow. “I don’t remember signing a permission slip for that.”
“That’s because it’s all done outside of school, it’s all Dr. Connors’s hospitality,” Peter improvised, thinking on his feet.
May sighed. “Do you need a ride?”
“No, I can take the bus. I don’t want you staying up on my account.”
“Well, have a good time, Peter.”
As she watched him walk down the street from the living room window, she sighed sadly.
She doubted she’d be getting any sleep at all.
-
‘This
is stupid.’
‘Oliver trusted me with these keys, and what am I doing? Stealing from him to go off and act like a vigilante on some stupid hunch.’
Feeling like a voyeur as he crept through the
silent, darkened hallways,
‘Does it still count as stealing if he gave me the keys? This is so retarded. I should just go home.’
He reached in, and dug out of the twisted heap of sports equipment a compound bow, hip-holster quiver and a fistful of arrows.
‘What
if Lian wakes up?’
Reaching up on a shelf and grabbing a fencing face mask, he sighed, flicking the light off and re-locking the door.
‘I hope I’m doing the right thing.’
-
It had taken Spider-Man a much longer time than he’d anticipated to find out where the bodies were being held. Smart as he was, chemistry and genetics were more his cup of tea than computers and detective work.
He supposed, however, that he
should be grateful that that the bodies were being held at
Breaking into the forensics lab by way of a ventilation tube, he made his way over to the computer. Taking out his vial, he poured a small amount of the contents onto a dish, going through scanning procedures and hoping, waiting…
A match was found. And lo and behold… it had been added in only hours before. The cause of death of the teens at the warehouse.
‘Tyrone…’
It was only a few months ago that Ben had asked Peter to join him in looking for the teen, stopping by the foster home where Ty had been staying. His foster parents hadn’t had the slightest clue where he was- in fact, they hadn’t had a clue about most things.
However, when they’d taken a look in his room, Peter had found the vial tucked in between the mattress and frame of the too-small bed, and had pocketed it, hoping to help Ben somehow.
He hadn’t had the slightest clue then the turns his life would take.
Snapping back into the moment, Spider-Man went over to where the bodies were being stored.
Twenty-one teenagers. Only five identified so far. Between those five, no connecting threads had been found to link the group to a single purpose, or the drug to a manufacturer.
Having already skimmed over their names, Spider-Man went to the sixteen unknowns. He didn’t know whether or not he should be relieved when Ty was not among them.
He knew that Ty had been involved with the same drugs that had killed these teenagers. But if Tyrone wasn’t dead…
…where was he?
-
Tandy slipped out of the moving shadows that had deposited her on the catwalks that ran the ceiling of the now police-infested warehouse. With a ripple, another figure followed, and Ty, blanket covering him like a cloak, emerged.
“What are we going to do, Ty?” she hissed at him, “This place is covered top to bottom. How do we even know there’s anything left? The police will have taken it all by now.”
“I just need a minute to think!” he muttered back.
She crossed her arms. “Every minute you take, the craving gets bigger. God, Ty, I’ve never… I’ve never felt like this before. What if that stuff we took is what gave us these powers? We don’t even know what happened to everyone else. Do they have powers now, too? How did the police find out?”
“Do you ever shut up?” Tyrone growled.
‘Perhaps I could be of help,’ a smooth
voice sounded in their heads. A picture of a dark, stylishly decorated office
popped into Ty’s head. ‘Bring yourself and Miss Bowen here, and I’ll explain everything.’
“Did you hear that?”
For once, Tandy was speechless, and it was all she could do to nod. Tyrone opened up his arms as if to hug her, and she sank back into the darkness.
For a moment, she felt like she were falling, without knowing how close the ground was or if she’d ever get there, and suddenly she was spat back out again, into the office that had just been shown to her.
She and Tyrone stood before the large, bald man at the desk, who gave them a smile that looked more predatory than reassuring.
“Forgive my intrusion into your heads; it’s a skill of an associate of mine, and there was no other way to get in touch with you.”
“Who are you?” Tandy demanded.
“You may call me Kingpin,” he said, “but we’re not here to talk about me. We’re here to talk about you remarkable young adults.”
Tandy went to open her mouth again, but Tyrone held out his arm, silencing her with a steely look.
“What do you want from us?”
Slowly, the Kingpin withdrew a vial of a now-familiar drug. The eyes of the two teens widened, craving evident on their faces.
“I think the question, Mr. Johnson, is what do you want from me?”