Marvel's SPIDER-MAN E-Book

David Liss

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 453

Beschreibung

The official prequel to MARVEL'S SPIDER-MAN, the PS4 exclusive video game from Marvel and Insomniac Games, with a thrilling adventure that leads directly into the game narrative itself. The official prequel to the blockbuster action video game MARVEL'S SPIDER-MAN, written by David Liss, bestselling author of A Conspiracy of Paper. The events of the novel lead directly into the game itself, and feature some of the web-slinger's most famous friends and foes including the Shocker, Echo, the Blood Spider, J. Jonah Jameson, Mary Jane Watson, and Wilson Fisk—the Kingpin. It reveals his plan to establish an iron grip on New York City, and establishes layers of detail and character relationships that will play out in the game, helping to create a richer experience for the reader/player.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Novels of the Marvel Universe by Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Epilogue

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Also Available from Titan Books

Novels of the Marvel Universe by Titan Books:

Ant-Man: Natural Enemy by Jason Starr

Avengers: Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Dan Abnett

Civil War by Stuart Moore

Deadpool: Paws by Stefan Petrucha

Spider-Man: Forever Young by Stefan Petrucha

Black Panther: Who is the Black Panther by Jesse J. Holland

The Marvel Vault: A Visual History by Matthew K. Manning, Peter Sanderson, and Roy Thomas

Obsessed with Marvel by Peter Sanderson and Marc Sumerak

DAVID LISS

TITAN BOOKS

MARVEL’S SPIDER-MAN: Hostile Takeover

Print edition ISBN: 9781785659751

E-book edition ISBN: 9781785659768

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: August 2018

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

FOR MARVEL PUBLISHING

Jeff Youngquist, VP Production and Special ProjectsCaitlin O’Connell, Assistant Editor, Special ProjectsJeff Reingold, Manager, Licensed PublishingSven Larsen, Director, Licensed PublishingDavid Gabriel, SVP of Sales & Marketing, PublishingC.B. Cebulski, Editor in ChiefJoe Quesada, Chief Creative OfficerDan Buckley, President, Marvel Entertainment

FOR MARVEL GAMES

Isabel Hsu, Assistant Creative ManagerMike Jones, Executive Producer & VPBecka McIntosh, Senior Operations ManagerHaluk Mentes, Executive Director, Business Development & Product StrategyEric Monacelli, Senior Producer & Project LeadJay Ong, Senior Vice President, Games & InnovationBill Rosemann, Executive Creative DirectorChuck Roquemore, Operations ManagerTim Tsang, Art Director

Cover art by Alexander Lozano

Spider-Man created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko

Marvel’s Spider-Man developed by Insomniac Games

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Claudia, my long-suffering wife.She had no idea what she was getting into.

NEW York City had everything, and that was usually a plus, but not so much when that something was a snake store.

Or was it still a plus? Maybe the weird, gross, and possibly dangerous implications of a shop dedicated to limbless reptiles embodied everything he loved about this city, Spider-Man mused as he swung through an open second-story window.

He’d planned to land on the floor, but it was already occupied. So at the last moment he performed an in-air flip and clung to the ceiling, staring down at the dozens of hissing, slithering creatures.

He’d set up his computer to monitor emergency channels, and then alert him when they picked up anything where he might make a difference—fires, robberies, and the all-too-frequent appearances of villains doing super-bad things. He’d also played with the coding to catch anything that might be, well… amusing.

It was Saturday night, and his girlfriend Mary Jane was off doing something she didn’t want to tell him about, and he’d wanted to be diverted… so snakes. He’d chosen snakes, and he’d gotten snakes. There was a lesson in there somewhere, he thought. Maybe that when life gave you options, it was best to choose more carefully.

In perfect New York style, Steve’s Serpent Storehouse wasn’t just a small curbside shop he could scan with a single glance. It was located in an old, narrow, multi-floored brownstone, with each of its many rooms dedicated to a different variety of reptile. Venomous, non-venomous, constricting—all your slithery needs in a single location. A true convenience for the busy snake shopper.

And for the busy snake thief, if that was what he was dealing with here. He was beginning to wonder. All of the cages had been smashed, and while some of the animals might have been collected, he couldn’t tell for sure. To add to the confusion, he was starting to get a headache from the smell.

Who knew that snakes even had a smell?

Then he saw it. A shadow in the hallway outside the room. A person crouched low, holding something in his hand. Maybe a sack—which, under the circumstances, would likely be a sack full of snakes. The figure moved just enough that Spider-Man could get a better view in the light from outside the window.

The shadow’s head jerked around, and then he dashed into the hall. Spider-Man pushed himself off the ceiling and clung to the doorjamb. There was no way he was touching the floor. He peered into the hallway and saw the snake thief—running upstairs!

Who tries to get away by going up? Someone with a well-thought-out plan or someone with no plan at all. Spider-Man grinned under his mask.

The chase was on.

* * *

HIS real name was Peter Parker, and eight years ago he’d been bitten by a radioactive spider. Only in New York, right? The encounter left Peter with abilities—spider abilities. He could leap incredible distances, cling to almost any surface, and sense when something threatened him, allowing him to leap, dodge, roll, or twist his way out of dangers others might not notice.

While the spider bite had enhanced his body, giving him enhanced strength, stamina, and reflexes, Peter’s mind had done the rest. He’d designed his now-iconic red-and-blue suit which offered anonymity, protection, and comfort—all while making him look cool, if he did say so himself. He’d designed web shooters which helped to propel him across the city and enabled him to snare victims.

Peter had always loved science, inventing and tinkering practically from the time he started crawling—in the traditional sense—and while it helped him chase shadows up a narrow and twisting stairway, life was more than the endless glamor of catching snake thieves.

In his “day job” he worked in a laboratory, which allowed him to focus his mental skills on challenging and important research that, in its own way, made a difference. Though exciting, it was way more than a forty-hour-a-week job.

So Peter had to find the time to be Spider-Man. More than a desire, it was a responsibility, and he dedicated every minute he could to helping his city any way he could. He stopped bank robbers and carjackers and muggers, rescued people trapped in collapsing buildings and rushed victims to the hospital.

He also seemed to be spending more of his time facing guys who wore suits and possessed their own unique abilities—criminals like the Rhino, the Scorpion, the Lizard, Shocker, Electro… the list went on and on. It seemed as if there were more of these “super villains” every day. They, like Peter, had been granted powers by chance, fate, or design, but unlike Peter they didn’t choose to use those powers to help others. Someone had to keep them in check. That sometimes meant spectacular confrontations. Broken glass, brick, and concrete turned to powder, fire, electricity, explosions, and mayhem.

Somehow, he didn’t think tackling the snake thief was going to be quite that dramatic. This was going to make for a funny story when he told MJ—the only person he’d trusted with his secret. No, this was shaping up to be a relatively uneventful night.

Shouldn’t think that, he told himself as he leapt up another flight of stairs too fast for an ordinary eye to follow.

I might jinx myself.

* * *

SPIDER-MAN launched himself onto the fourth and topmost floor in time to see the thief dashing into a room at the end of the corridor.

The guy was fast. Not super-powers fast but definitely track-star fast. The ambient light was still bright up here, and he caught his first glimpse of the thief. Probably not even twenty. He had short hair dyed the color of a tennis ball and big brown eyes and the barest hint of a mustache. His face was round and babyish, though, and he might as well have been wearing a T-shirt that said, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING.

As the Web-Slinger entered the room, the guy reached into an open tank and grabbed a snake, which he hurled at his pursuer.

The thief had a good throw. This was a big snake, too. As thick as his arm and twice as long. It had been balled up, probably comfortably sleeping and dreaming its snake dreams, when the thief grabbed it. Now it unspooled and twisted in serpentine alarm as it came hurtling toward Spider-Man.

It would’ve been easy to dodge, but it was a living creature, and even slithery things deserved soft landings. He was no snake expert, but Spider-Man seemed to recall that the big ones usually weren’t poisonous. Anyhow, if he grabbed it the right way, it couldn’t bite him. Propelling himself forward, he caught the reptile in midair, placing a hand just under its head. He landed, dropped the creature, and lurched backward while shaking off whatever the snake might have left on his glove. He knew the answer was nothing, but it was a snake and it was icky.

With the snake safe, Spider-Man turned in time to see the thief leap out the open window as if he could fly.

Seriously?

Sprinting to the window, he stuck his head out in time to see the snake thief land on an awning two stories down, bounce onto another, lower awning, and then stick the landing on the street. With his bag o’ snakes clutched in one hand, he glanced up, spun, and raced in the direction of the river.

Shooting his webs onto the side of a building, Spider-Man hurled himself forward, then again, and then again. It was as close as he could get to flying, and it never got old. He had a mic and earpiece embedded in his mask, so while he propelled himself westward he toggled his phone to give MJ a call. There was no better way to begin a conversation with your girlfriend than, “I’m chasing a guy holding a bag of snakes,” but—once again—she didn’t answer.

Briefly he lost track of his quarry, then he saw that the thief, who had a decent head start, was making his way toward the Manhattan Cruise Terminal. It seemed like a pretty stupid destination. He could hide out in any of the docked or decommissioned ships there, but there’d be no escape except the river. Besides, Spider-Man’s aerial view would make it almost impossible for the thief to elude him.

He’d never been to the cruise terminal—or on a cruise ship, for that matter—so this would be a novelty. Sort of like the snake store, but without the icky part. He imagined an impossibly luxurious place that—during the daytime—would be filled with men in top hats and women who cooed while feeding treats to their tiny lapdogs.

The reality was more like a giant parking garage spotted with poorly maintained buildings that flaked paint like eczema. Docks that reminded him of hastily set bones jutted out into the river, some of them sporting dark ships that loomed as inert as felled trees.

The thief chose one of the docks and hurried toward what looked like a decommissioned ship that was speckled with massive patches of rust and algae. There was no way onto the ship, however, so it looked like the end of the line. Swinging forward, Spider-Man let loose with a blast of webbing that wrapped around both the thief and one of the dock’s concrete posts.

Mission accomplished.

Sort of.

This was one of the things that made being Spider-Man frustrating. He’d caught this guy in the act and he’d apprehended him, still clutching his bag of stolen reptiles. He would now call the police, but chances were the thief would never be charged. He could argue that Spider-Man had abducted him and planted the evidence. It would be hard to prove otherwise. Yeah, the guy was just a snake thief, but people guilty of much bigger crimes had gotten away after he’d put everything he had into stopping them.

One criminal in particular had gotten away with far too much—something that never ceased to haunt him.

One problem at a time. Spider-Man took the bag from the webbed-up thief and opened it. He expected to find a nauseating, slithering mass of scales and peering eyes and flicking tongues, but there was nothing alive in there at all. At first, he thought the snakes were dead, but then he realized they’d never been alive.

The thief had been running with a bag of rubber snakes.

* * *

“THE accumulated wisdom of my life experience tells me I really shouldn’t ask,” Spider-Man said, “but I’m going to ask anyhow. Why did you break into a snake store to steal a bag of rubber snakes?”

The webbing that coiled around his torso really didn’t do much to make the thief look any less clueless. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“Really?” Spider-Man asked. “What am I paying my PR team for?”

“You’re one of them super heroes!”

“So is the ‘who are you’ more of a philosophical question?”

“Sorry,” the thief said. “I just get nervous sometimes, you know?”

“Perfectly normal, given that you’ve been apprehended while committing a stupid felony,” Spider-Man assured him. “Now, let’s start by talking about why you would steal a bunch of rubber snakes.”

“I didn’t,” the thief said.

Spider-Man sighed. “Okay, let’s start over. I’m Spider-Man.”

“I thought you were Daredevil.”

“Do I look like Daredevil?”

“Kind of,” the thief said. “But kind of not. Less horns and more… uh, webs.”

Spider-Man went for the theatrical cough into his balled fist. “How about you tell me your name.”

“Andy!” the guy said brightly. He looked pleased to know the answer.

“Okay, Andy, I caught you, after you broke into the snake store, and you ran away clutching a bag of rubber snakes. Walk me through this.”

“I didn’t get a chance to steal anything,” Andy said. “You showed up and messed with the plan. So I didn’t do anything wrong. The rubber snakes in there are mine. I paid for them.”

Don’t ask, Spider-Man told himself. There is nothing to be gained by asking. He asked anyway. “And you brought them with you why exactly?”

“So the snakes I put in the bag wouldn’t get lonely.”

The Web-Slinger made a deliberate decision to spare Andy’s feelings and not face-palm in front of him.

“I had a list,” Andy continued. “A guy was looking for particular snakes.”

“No ordinary snake would do,” Spider-Man prompted.

“Right, but you showed up, and then things went bad, so I didn’t steal anything. So I’m not in any kind of trouble, right?”

“What, for breaking into a store and destroying private property?” Spider-Man asked dryly. “Surely there’s no law against that.”

“Come on, S-Man,” Andy protested. “No harm, no foul.”

“Actually, there’s plenty of harm and foul, not least of which is calling me ‘S-Man.’ You broke the law, and I’m going to call the police. You’ll stay webbed up until they arrive.”

“But I didn’t do nothing.” Andy’s face was a mask of cartoonish terror.

“I think we’ve covered this already,” Spider-Man said. “Maybe you want to review your notes.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have done it,” Andy said. “It was my brother’s idea. He said it would be easy money, but I guess I should have known he wasn’t being straight. He just didn’t want me around because he was off doing stuff for Scorpion.”

“Wait a minute…” Spider-Man might have been letting his thoughts wander a little there, but now Andy had his full attention. “Scorpion. Like the Scorpion? Big guy? Anger problems? A tail?”

“That’s him.” Andy brightened. “You know him? Are you guys, like, friends?”

“No, we’re not friends, because—and this may have escaped your notice—I’m a good guy, and he’s a bad guy. Those sorts of dynamics don’t usually promote lasting friendships. But you don’t seem so much evil as… let’s say, misguided. So how about you tell me everything you know about the Scorpion, and if it seems useful, I can let you go.”

“I don’t know nothing,” Andy said plaintively, “except that he’s using this construction site as a hideout or something. He’s, like, stashing his equipment and plans and stuff there.”

“That actually seems like a decent amount of knowledge.”

Andy looked pleased. “My brother likes to brag when he’s drinking,” he replied, “and if he’s breathing, he’s drinking.” It seemed like too much to hope for, but the kid knew exactly where the building was. His brother had shown it to him when—big surprise—he’d been drinking.

Figuring he’d gotten everything he was going to get out of Andy, Peter sprayed a dissolving agent on the webs.

“Okay, get out of here.”

The kid looked over at his gym bag. “Can I go back to the store and get my snakes?”

“Andy…” Spider-Man said in a warning tone, like a parent talking to a toddler.

“Right.” Andy nodded. “No more stealing.”

Spider-Man let out another sigh. “Andy, what do you do all day, other than listen to your drunk brother?”

The kid shrugged. “I don’t know. Come up with plans, I guess.”

“Listen, you seem like a nice enough kid. I’ve got an idea that’s a lot better than sticking you in a cell. There’s a place in Little Tokyo,” Spider-Man said. “It’s called F.E.A.S.T., and it’s where the homeless go for help. They could really use some volunteers, and you’d pick up some marketable skills working there. It’s a win-win kind of thing. What do you say?”

Andy’s face lit up again. “That would be great. I like being helpful.”

“Okay then, you should skedaddle before the cops show up.”

With that the Web-Slinger turned and shot out a strand, pulling himself into the air. This had been an amusing, and occasionally frustrating, little interlude, but now there was something really exciting in the works. Ruining the Scorpion’s night seemed like a good way to make the night very eventful.

THE construction site was at 46th Street and Ninth Avenue, just where Andy said it would be. Spider-Man half-expected to find an empty lot or a supermarket, maybe even a giant hole in the ground. Instead there was the skeleton of a building that rose up twenty or so stories. So far, the kid’s info was right on target.

He circled around it a few times to make sure there weren’t sentries, or even just a bunch of guys with guns, but the place looked about as deserted as—what was the right metaphor?—a construction site after work hours. Yep, that sounded right. None of which meant Andy was wrong. It could still be a staging area, and if the opportunity to disrupt one of the Scorpion’s operations presented itself, there was no way Spider-Man was going to pass it up.

Before heading in, he tried again to call MJ. He’d made an attempt after leaving the dock, but it had gone straight to voice mail. Same result.

“Me again,” he said. “Just wanted to hear your voice before valiantly throwing myself into danger. But I know you’re busy, so it’s cool.” He hoped his tone conveyed that he wasn’t really serious, but also that he was a little serious.

Convincing himself that the construction site was empty, he landed in a central area on a lower floor, one that looked reasonably solid, and began to look around. First he checked the areas closest to the ground. Tools, piles of concrete blocks and rebar, equipment for pouring cement. No sign that it was being used for criminal purposes, but every sign that it was being used for construction—and recently, too. Why would Scorpion stash his gear in an active work site?

Maybe Andy had been wrong, after all.

Then he started getting a feeling. Not a Spider-Sense feeling, but a regular old something’s not right feeling. It seemed reasonable that a thief might sell him a line, give him a bigger fish to go after as a way of getting off the hook. But Andy didn’t seem like thinking on his feet was a particular strength, and the information about the building site, about Scorpion, had been pretty specific.

Webbing up to the next floor, he looked around for signs of any nefarious activity. Nothing he wouldn’t expect to find at an ordinary, non-villainous building under construction. It looked like this was going to be a waste of time, but he still intended to check things out floor by floor. He had to be sure.

Climbing the girders, he moved to the next floor up, which he figured would be just as empty and non-evil as the last. Then he heard something. A clatter, like metal falling on metal, and it was coming from further up. Way further up. He also felt something, a faint prickling at the back of his neck—his Spider-Sense was tingling. That meant he was getting closer to danger.

While danger wasn’t a good thing, it did suggest that he hadn’t been outsmarted by a criminal-in-training. That was something. Moving to the outside of the building, he began to climb, making almost no noise. As he approached the roof, his Spider-Sense began buzzing more aggressively. Just then his phone rang with a call from MJ.

After trying to reach her all night, he didn’t want to ignore her. She’d understand if he did, of course. She was great that way. Mostly he just wanted to hear her voice.

“Hey,” he said as he slowly pulled himself up onto the roof.

“That’s your going-into-action voice,” she said, doing what he thought was a pretty fair imitation of his going-into-action voice. “Everything okay?”

The tingling increased, telling him the bad guys probably knew he was there—which meant they were lying in ambush. It was still relatively low-level, so they probably weren’t going to pose much of a problem. He could talk and fight at the same time.

Just to be safe he said, “Yeah, but I’m about to smack down a bunch of thugs, and chances are they’re armed. If I stop talking, it’s not something you said. Unless you say something totally insane and I have no response to it.”

MJ laughed. Peter loved the sound of her laugh. Even after all this time.

“Well, I can call you back,” she said wryly.

“No, this is going to be pretty routine,” he said. “And I’ve been trying to reach you all night.”

“The sixteen voice mails gave that away.”

“Twelve tops. Where are you?”

MJ said something, but it was drowned out by the sound of gunfire. He was already up in the air, shooting out a web and contorting himself to avoid the bullets without thinking about what he was doing. His enhanced spider reflexes, plus eight years of experience at not getting shot, made it pure instinct. While spinning in the air, Peter took stock of the situation.

Four guys, each with firearms.

They jerked their heads left and right, as if he had vanished into thin air. These idiots didn’t know to look up? It was almost too easy.

“You still there?” MJ asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “The action’s started.”

“There’s no reason we have to talk this second,” she said. “I don’t want you to get hurt just because—”

“Oh, please,” he said, cutting her off. “It’s not a problem.” He pointed his web shooter at one of the gunmen, whose wrist was then attached to the wall behind him. The gun fell harmlessly to the ground. “That’s one down.” He landed behind another guy and shot out with both web shooters, pressing him face-first against a wall, his features all squished. “You should see these guys. It’s hilarious.” Using the suit’s built-in camera, he snapped a picture. “I’ll show you later.”

“Something to look forward to,” she replied sarcastically. As she did, another assailant came around the corner and raised his gun. A quick web, and the guy was hoisted into the air, attached to an overhang.

“The cops might have a hard time getting that one down.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re having fun,” MJ said, “and don’t take this the wrong way, but listening to you narrate your exploits isn’t what I need to be doing right now.”

“But I’m using new tech!” he protested. “Girlfriends are supposed to love it when their guys show off their new gadgets,” he added. “Aren’t they?”

MJ laughed. “Call me back when you’re done playing.”

“Hold on—I’m just getting the last one now. He’s creeping around in the dark, like being low means I won’t be able to find him. It’s adorbs.”

“I’m hanging up in thirty seconds.”

“I only need ten,” the Web-Slinger said. Then he shot out webbing and incapacitated the last of the quartet.

“I’ll call you back,” he said abruptly, and he cut the connection.

His Spider-Sense went off like a tingly explosion. It wasn’t exactly an eleven on a ten scale, but it was easily an eight. These guys weren’t the threat, they were the bait, and Spider-Man had just blundered into a trap.

THE Scorpion had never much impressed Spider-Man with the quality of his henchmen. In fact, he rarely even used henchmen. Clearly he needed to rethink his employment agency, or however these guys operated. Have a little chat with the people down in HR. But these four had been underwhelming, even by Scorpion’s standards.

They’d been expendable.

That, it seemed, had been the point.

Whoever he faced next would be the real threat.

It wasn’t Scorpion. That was for sure. This guy was about Spider-Man’s own height, slim and wiry like him, dressed all in black, nothing fancy—sweatpants and a loose sweatshirt. Over his head he wore a black balaclava, so nothing of his face was visible.

Or her, he supposed. There was no reason to assume this bad guy wasn’t a bad woman. Just a bad person, though the only evidence he had of that was the tingling sensation that told him he was in for a serious fight. He led with a few web-shooter bursts, thinking maybe he could end the conflict before it began.

The webs hit nothing but wall. The person in black was gone, tumbling through the air. For a second, Spider-Man thought that the moves looked familiar—like he’d know who this was, if he could just remember where he’d seen a fighting style like that before. Then it came to him.

He’d seen those moves on news coverage.

This guy moved like Spider-Man. Like him!

“Nice style,” he said, springing up to a far wall, then another, then another. The three-spring fake-out. It never failed to fool the garden-variety thug. An enemy couldn’t dodge something if he didn’t know where it was coming from.

This guy dodged it.

Time to shut him down.

Bracing himself on a wall, Spider-Man lobbed out a barrage from his web shooters—where the guy was, where he was likely to be in the next fraction of a second, where he might leap unexpectedly. Blanket coverage like that used up a lot of web fluid, though, and it had been a busy night. He was a fussy driver who liked to fill the tank long before it was empty, and he was already running low. Of course, the typical fussy driver didn’t have to worry about being shot, stabbed, crushed, trampled, electrocuted, stung, or bludgeoned if he cut things a little close.

None of the webs hit home, because his assailant leapt and bounced and lunged in a style that was all too familiar. A second barrage missed, too, and Spider-Man started to wonder why he was bothering with this guy. Other than trespassing—a crime Spider-Man had also committed, when he thought about it—the guy hadn’t actually broken any laws. Even if he was able to catch this person, more likely than not he’d walk.

On the other hand, Andy sent him to this place, where there just happened to be a bunch of decoy henchmen and a guy with some awfully familiar abilities.

“This isn’t passing the smell test,” Spider-Man said, “and I’m not talking about your body odor—though that doesn’t pass the smell test, either.”

He leapt in, letting his instincts take over. He was ready to dodge, shift, roll, and lunge—whatever it took to get this guy at a disadvantage. The fun had gone on long enough. It was time for his opponent to be webbed up and explain just what was going on here.

Spider-Man landed behind the Man in Black. At least that was the plan, but his opponent was already gone.

No wonder the guys I fight get so angry, he thought. That’s just annoying. Then he was struck from behind. It was like getting slammed by a speeding truck. His foe hit hard and fast, sending Spider-Man skidding across the paved surface. Then the guy was on top of him. He moved like Spider-Man, but fought like a brawler. There were hands everywhere, slamming into his face, his chest, grappling without letting up.

“Hands off the merchandise,” he grunted. He slammed his forehead forward, hopefully into his attacker’s general nose area. At least that was the plan. The guy jerked back, avoiding the blow. The move allowed Spider-Man to break free and leap to the scaffolding. He turned and aimed with his wrist, but there was no one to hit.

He tensed, ready for a surprise attack from any angle, but then he realized his Spider-Sense was no longer thrumming. It had gone to sleep. He moved around the perimeter of the roof, fast and erratically, changing his trajectory and speed to make an ambush more difficult, but it became apparent that this was nothing more than an exercise in caution.

The Man in Black was gone.

“So, no Scorpion is what you’re telling me,” he said to himself. This whole thing had been a setup, but a weird setup. The Man in Black had moved like Spider-Man, yet fought like a biker, and held his own. The throbbing on Spider-Man’s cheek suggested he’d done more than hold his own. He had, in fact, had a real shot at beating the crap out of the original.

So why had he taken off while he was winning the fight? There was a lot he didn’t know, but the bits and pieces suggested a new and dangerous enemy with a completely unknown plan. In other words, trouble. He needed intel, and, at the moment, the guy who set him up and made him look like a chump seemed like a pretty good source.

So it was back to the cruise terminal. Andy would be long gone, but even though he’d pulled the wool over Spider-Man’s eyes, he still wasn’t God’s gift to intelligence. With any luck, he’d left some kind of clue behind, like his wallet or the keys to his apartment. If he couldn’t find anything there, he’d check the snake store afterward.

As he swung toward his destination, however, he felt his stomach drop. It didn’t take spider-powers to tell. Flashing blue and red lights, a police perimeter, the squawk of radio chatter.

Something had gone horribly wrong.

* * *

ANDY was dead.

Spider-Man perched in the shadows on an upper deck of one of the ships and looked down at the scene below. The body was surrounded by a dozen police officers. They hadn’t even bothered to call EMTs—there was no reason to do so. There was a large pool of blood on the deck beneath him, and a big stain on the front of his shirt.

An hour ago, the kid had been alive…

A woman was circling the scene, systematically taking photos with her phone. A guy in plain clothes—probably from the coroner’s office—was studying the body and taking notes on a tablet. A handful of uniformed officers combed the scene with flashlights, searching for clues. A mustached man, most likely a plainclothes detective, stood impassively, sipping coffee from a Greek-themed paper cup and staring into the distance. His tie flapped in the breeze.

There had to be someone behind this—some sort of mastermind. The kid had just been a pawn. Even more alarming, whoever was working with the fake spider-person had been confident that the real Spider-Man would respond to the break-in at a snake store. That meant that someone had been tracking his movements, following where he’d gone that night, or what kinds of police calls were likely to grab his attention—or both. That suggested an alarming investment of time and energy.

Peter didn’t like to let emotions cloud his thinking, but the fact was that Andy was lying dead down there. He’d been a person, and probably not a terrible person. He’d had the right to live and make mistakes and hopefully learn from them, and someone had taken that away. They’d done it in order to mess with Spider-Man.

That made it personal.

It also meant that Spider-Man had information the police needed. The trick was figuring out the best way to pass it along. The guy with the coffee and the flapping tie was probably in charge, so Spider-Man would need to get him alone. Unfortunately, the detective showed no signs of moving.

“Hold it right there!”

The voice startled him. Raising his arms in the air, he turned slowly to face a woman—holding a very nasty-looking weapon of the sort favored by the New York police officers. Despite the pistol she held, his Spider-Sense hadn’t tingled, so she didn’t present an immediate threat.

“You know the routine,” she said. “Hands where I can see them.”

“Oh, come on,” Spider-Man said. “Is this really necessary?” He could think of plenty of answers, but wanted to hear what she had to say.

“It’s necessary,” the woman replied, “because you’re suspect number one in a murder.”

SHE was a slender woman in her thirties, wearing jeans, a leather jacket, and a yellow button-down shirt. She looked like she meant business, though she didn’t seem terribly eager to shoot him.

Spider-Man relaxed a little.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded of him.

“I didn’t kill him,” he answered. As soon as he did, it sounded lame.

“I know that,” she snapped. “Unless you’ve figured out how to hide a pistol in that skintight suit of yours. It’d stick out like a tumor.”

“Thanks?” he offered.

“Don’t be funny. Tell me what you know.”

“Any chance you could put that gun down?”

The woman glared at him, then sighed. “I don’t suppose it would do much good against you, anyhow.” She holstered her weapon. “You’d just grab it with those rope thingies of yours.”

“They’re actually webs,” Spider-Man said. “Powered by science. Anyhow, let’s do this the polite way. I’m Spider-Man. And you are?”

“Lt. Yuri Watanabe,” she said in a clipped voice, “and I’m not looking for a new pal. You’re a person of interest in a murder investigation, and while bringing you to the precinct for questioning would present some challenges, putting out an APB on you would probably mess up your week. So how about you stop wasting my time?”

No nonsense, tough as nails, and willing to work with Spider-Man. He liked that—and it made him think. For years he’d wondered how much more he could get done if he had a direct relationship with the police department. His mind raced with the possibilities. The trick would be to prove his worth to her. That would involve a much lower percentage of wisecracks per sentence than what came naturally, but he was pretty sure—if he focused—he could get it done.

“Tell me how I can help,” he said.

“Why did your voice suddenly get so deep?”

“It didn’t.”

“It did, and it still is. Before you sounded like a kid—”

“Hey!”

“—and now you sound like a kid trying to fool someone over the phone.”

“How about less criticism and more crime-solving?” he proposed. A wry little smile flickered across Lieutenant Watanabe’s lips. Then she was back to business.

“You see that trailer down there?”

She pointed to a white metal rectangle about 200 feet past where the other plainclothes cop was still sipping his coffee. He was also looking at his phone, and from this distance Peter couldn’t be sure, but it looked like he was playing some kind of jewel-matching game.

“That’s the terminal’s security office,” she said. “The door is on the far side, so if you can meet me there without anyone seeing you, I’d like to show you something. Give me five minutes.”

Then she was gone.

* * *

GETTING to the entrance was no problem. A little creative swinging, and he was through the door. Lieutenant Watanabe was seated at a desk, running her fingers along a keyboard. It was gloomy, but a half-dozen video monitors illuminated her face, each showing a different section of the facility. The trailer smelled of old gym clothes.

Watanabe turned the moment he entered, and her hand moved toward her gun, not quite touching it. She might be willing to work with him—she might even trust him on principle—but she wasn’t about to let her guard down. Peter didn’t like her any less for it. It was common sense.

“I told everyone I needed to concentrate in here, so we have a few minutes,” she began without any preamble. “But we don’t have all the time in the world, so save your comments and questions for the end.”

Her fingers danced across the keyboard. One of the monitors went dark, then began playing a recording. The first thing she showed him was a black-and-white clip revealing his first encounter with Andy. A time signature spun rapidly in the lower left corner. It was always weird watching footage of himself. There was a part of his mind that never quite got used to seeing himself from the outside.

“When I left he was fine,” Spider-Man said. The footage backed him up.

“Quiet,” she said, forwarding the footage for what looked like only a few minutes. It showed Andy walking away from the dock, trying to keep to the shadows, probably mindful of the security cameras. Then Spider-Man leapt in behind him, landing lightly on his feet—so lightly that Andy seemed not to notice.

Definitely not how things happened…

He knew that move. Knew how to land from thirty or forty feet up, without making a noise. He did it all the time to get a drop on the bad guys. It had taken him months to learn the trick back when he first started out. Now it was second nature.

The problem was, that wasn’t him. Was it? The moves were right—so much so, he had to remind himself that it was impossible. He looked at the time signature. By that point he was well on his way to the construction site.

Holy crap! It has to be the guy. The imposter.

He was about to open his mouth to say something when the Spider-Man imposter raised his right hand. He held a gun. It looked absurd and strange and grotesque. Spider-Man never touched a gun, unless it was to get it away from some idiot who had one. Even then, he usually used his webs. Guns were big and loud and nasty. They were difficult to nuance and frequently deadly. They were everything he didn’t want to be.

The imposter must have said something, because Andy jumped, his shoulders lurching upward and his legs wobbling in mid-stride. He turned, and then started to backpedal. There was the burst of muzzle flash, a violent eruption of light that obscured everything else in the dark frame. When the light cleared, Andy lay on the ground.

The imposter took a moment to examine the body, then he fired three more shots into the prone figure. He paused for another instant, and then shifted his gaze to look—at the security camera. At least, it seemed like he did. It was hard to tell with the mask. He then raised his left hand, a web shot out, and he propelled himself out of the camera’s field of view.

* * *

SPIDER-MAN needed time to gather his thoughts.

There were a hundred things he wanted to say, and he didn’t even know yet what half of them might be. Ideas burst into his mind, only to be replaced by others. Outrage, pity, indignation—raw emotions had the advantage here, but there were other things. Observations of minor details that some distant, calmer part of his mind knew might be of use to the detective.

It was hard to stick to logic, though. Andy had died facing an impersonator. He’d died believing that Spider-Man had gunned him down. It didn’t make the crime any worse, but it made him all the more determined to do something about it.

“I didn’t do that,” he said. “I would never do anything like that.”

“It’s inconsistent with your past behavior,” Watanabe replied in a clinical tone, “and it would be hard to prove that one person wearing a mask is the same as another person wearing the same mask. The perp moves a whole lot like you do, though, and that’s harder to mimic. If you have an alibi, it would help us. Maybe there’s another place you might be on camera at the same time? Though, again, we still have the mask and identity problem.”

“First of all, that’s not me.” His thoughts began to shift into focus—at least some of them. “I don’t use guns, and I absolutely don’t go around assassinating people. Even the Daily Bugle, back when Jameson was calling for my head, never claimed I would do that.”

“I believe you,” Watanabe said, replaying the footage, “but my opinion doesn’t count as evidence.”

Spider-Man leaned in closer to the screen, peering at the costumed figure who appeared there. “Freeze it,” he said. “There. The suit isn’t quite right. It’s close. It’s a decent copy, definitely better than something you’d get from a costume shop, but the design is a little off. I can’t say anything about the color, but the spider icon doesn’t look exactly like mine, and the web lines are too close together.”

“I noticed that, too,” Lieutenant Watanabe said. “Here, look at the earlier footage.” She brought it up on another screen. “You would’ve had to change your outfit into something nearly identical, and then come right back. It doesn’t make sense, but whenever we’re dealing with costumed vigilantes, ‘making sense’ doesn’t always apply…” She let her voice trail off in a way that indicated she was playing devil’s advocate, and not actually arguing a position she believed.

Spider-Man took a deep breath, organizing his thoughts. He needed to tell her everything that had happened, and had to figure out what would be most useful. She pulled out her cell phone and he began, describing his encounter with Andy, getting the tip about the construction site. He went through everything that happened there, as well.

“It sounds awfully convenient,” she said tonelessly as she typed. “A guy who can copy your moves just happens to show up, the same night Spider-Man is filmed killing a kid.” She shook her head. “Like I said, things with your crowd don’t always make sense, but this feels like a setup. The disposable henchmen were there to slow you down while the real bad guy changed his clothes and hightailed it over there to face you.”

It sounded plausible, but there were still a lot of unanswered questions.

“Why change his clothes at all?”

“Maybe because he wanted you to see this?” she said with a shrug. “Probably figured you’d catch it on the news, rather than here with a cop, but I think the shooter wanted this video to be a gut punch. Someone is calling you out. I’d ask if you have any enemies, but that’s a stupid question.”

“If the construction site has video cameras, and most of them do, then it will at least prove that part of my story.”

“I’m thinking the same thing,” she said. “You got an address?”

He told her about the building, and Lieutenant Watanabe’s eyes went wide. She set down her phone and turned to look at him.

“Are you kidding me? You’re sure that’s the location?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Why?”

She let out a long breath that hissed between clenched teeth. “It’s hidden behind hundreds of pages of documents and a half-dozen shell companies, but that construction site is owned by Wilson Fisk.” She worked her mouth as if she was trying to get rid of a bad taste. “The frigging Kingpin of Crime.”

FISK, he thought. The anger blossomed inside him, radiating outward until it was hard to remain still.

Fisk was in the news a lot. Back when he’d first started Spider-Manning, Peter had been convinced Fisk was—as the tabloids claimed—the Kingpin of Crime, the most ruthless criminal in the city. Sure, Peter was just a high-school kid back then, but he’d been driven to prove that he could use his powers responsibly.

He’d made a massive mistake, soon after he got his spider-powers—a frivolous decision not to act when he might have acted, should have acted, and that had led to the death of his Uncle Ben. He’d sworn never again to sit idly when there was something he could do. Something that would make a difference.

That something had been putting the Kingpin behind bars. Spider-Man had dedicated months of his life toward that one goal—disrupting Fisk’s operations, keeping him off his game, and looking for hard evidence upon which even a bribed or blackmailed district attorney would have to act.

Spider-Man had dug up that proof. He’d collected files, laptops, photographs, and witnesses. He’d found enough hard evidence to put Fisk in a bespoke orange jumpsuit for life.

Back then, it felt like the triumph of a lifetime. He remembered sitting on the couch with Aunt May, shoving fists full of popcorn into his mouth while the local news showed Fisk perp-walking into the precinct.

“You know, Peter, there was a time when I wasn’t sure how to feel about that Spider-Man,” Aunt May had told him, “but it certainly looks as if he’s done the city a real favor.” Coming from her, it had felt really good. That cocktail of pride and satisfaction and contentment—the sensation of knowing he’d really accomplished something important—had been hard to beat.

Then life beat it. Life beat it right down, and smacked it upside its metaphorical head.

Fisk’s lawyers went to work, and suddenly half the news outlets in the city were on Fisk’s side. “It was a setup,” they said. Spider-Man was a thug, a criminal himself, and he wanted honest businessmen like Wilson Fisk destroyed so the criminals could have free rein. Evidence went missing. Documents vanished or changed. Photos were altered. Computer records disappeared. Witnesses “forgot” things or remembered entirely new accounts that exonerated Fisk, made him look innocent, made him look like a hero, struggling to save his business while a lawless vandal in a costume tried to tear down everything an honest man had accomplished.

Fisk walked.

He’d gone right out of the courthouse, and then out of the country. He’d been gone for years, too, and maybe that was good enough, Spider-Man had told himself. Sure, it wasn’t perfect. No one wanted a guy like Fisk being evil on someone else’s turf, but at least Spider-Man had cleaned up his own backyard. If people everywhere did the same, the bad guys would have nowhere to hide.

It was weak, Spider-Man knew, but it was all he had.

Then, a year ago, Fisk appeared back on the scene, throwing money around, investing in prominent real estate deals, developing long-neglected parts of the city, creating jobs and goodwill. The newspapers were full of stories about the Fisk Foundation, a new charitable effort which was aimed at promoting opportunities for New Yorkers of all incomes. Wilson Fisk was a changed man, he told anyone who would listen, which included a number of journalists whose organizations were flush with Fisk money. He’d never been what the vigilantes had claimed, he told them, but he had been selfish and greedy, focused on nothing but his own bottom line.

Hardship had taught him the price of selfishness. Now he understood that he had to do good to do well, and that was why every project he invested in would make the city a little better, improve the lives of its citizens. He didn’t want to profit unless others profited, too.

That was what he claimed, and that was what plenty of people seemed to believe. The truth was, Fisk was back in drugs and extortion and hijacking and money-laundering. All of his old tricks. If it was dirty and violent and profitable, he had his hands in it. Spider-Man knew it, and he was sure he could prove it, but he didn’t know if proving it would change a thing. It hadn’t last time.

* * *

“I know you’ve got your own history with that piece of garbage,” Watanabe said. “That’s one of the reasons I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. I’ve been trying to build a case against Fisk since he came back on the scene, but I’ve had to do it on the sly. There are plenty of people above me who don’t want Fisk investigated.”

“Fisk always had cops on his payroll.”

“Allegedly,” Watanabe said, but her tone made it clear there was no doubt. “Those charges were dropped, remember. You played a pretty big part in his arrest that time. What was that—five years ago?”

“Seven,” Spider-Man said.

“Right,” she said. “I guess the question is, what is Fisk after now? Why go to all this trouble? What does setting you up get him?”

“Seems like it’s better to focus on catching this impersonator,” Spider-Man proposed. “Fisk is slippery, and we can worry about his motives later. This bogus Spider-Man—bogus me—might provide all of the answers. Can you ask for the video-camera feed from the construction site?”

“We can ask,” she said, “but if they say no, we’ll need a search warrant, and without any evidence of a crime but your word, I don’t see that happening. Even if we could get a warrant, it’ll take time. Fisk might have his people erase or alter the feed by then.”

“Why would Fisk even have a secret construction site?” Spider-Man asked. “Everyone knows he’s a real estate developer.”

“This building is nothing but high-end luxury co-ops,” Watanabe explained. “There’s nothing noble about it—nothing that benefits the ‘common man.’ It’s meant to make a ton of money, so he doesn’t want it getting out, since it’s not consistent with his new ‘good-guy’ con.”

“None of this tells us what he wants.”

“It looks like good old-fashioned revenge to me,” Watanabe said. “You messed with him. Now he’s messing with you. You really put the hurt on him back in the day. You gathered a ton of good evidence, but Fisk’s lawyers were able to kick up plenty of reasonable doubt—especially with evidence gathered by a guy dressed like a spider.”

“So there’s no point in going after him again?”

“I didn’t say that,” she replied. “If you’d had someone on the inside helping you out, someone who could clean the evidence the way Fisk launders money, things might’ve turned out differently the first time. I know you costumed types are loners, but maybe we could help each other out.”

This was what he had been waiting to hear. It was a terrific idea, but he didn’t want to appear too anxious. So he leaned back and folded his arms.

“Maybe.”

“I’m usually out of Chinatown, but Hell’s Kitchen is shorthanded tonight,” she said. “That clown out there playing some stupid game on his phone isn’t my regular partner, either.” She gestured with her head, looking disgusted. “In fact, I think he could be one of those guys in Fisk’s pocket, which is why I’m happy to let him play games on his phone instead of helping me out. I caught this case, and that moron will be happy to be off the hook. All of which means I call the shots.

“I’m going to go on the offensive, argue that we suppress the Spider-Man angle. Say the evidence makes it clear—and it does—that this is an imposter looking to stir the pot, and we don’t want to play his game. Sooner or later, the guy will have to strike again.”

“And someone else gets killed.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” She shrugged. “There’s no reason to think he’ll play the same hand twice. There’s also no reason to think he won’t use violence again, no matter what we do. Our best option is to keep him playing our game, rather than having us play his. Meanwhile, you and me—we go after Fisk.”

“Go after him how?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I need to give this some thought, but you can go places I can’t, and I know things that you don’t. Your abilities should be able to land us evidence I’d never get my hands on otherwise, and I can turn it into something that will hold up in court.” She paused, then added, “Let me chew on this a little while. If you don’t like what I come up with, you can tell me to get lost—but I have a feeling you’d like to see Fisk go down as much as I would.”

She held out her hand.

They shook, and maybe it was just the emotion of the moment, but it felt as if something momentous had just happened.