下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
Hanging from the side of the bridge span, Spider-Man looked down as another burst of purple energy blew up an abandoned car. The whole area was abandoned buildings and scrapyards. Three men stood at the edge of one of the outcroppings. One of them, with a shaved head and a beard, held a weapon that looked like it was made from a piece of an Ultron drone—the same drones that the Avengers had defeated an army of in Sokovia. His pal looked nervous. They were clearly trying to sell some weapons to the third guy. Near them was a van with its back doors open. Inside were crates full of weapons and unidentifiable gadgets.
“Direct from Sokovia,” the bearded guy said to the third guy, their client.
“I said stop shooting that thing,” the other guy said. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Look, man,” their prospective client said, shaking his head. “I need money. My plan is to rob people, not send them back in time or whatever.”
Peter’s phone rang. He jumped, nearly falling off the bridge, and scrambled to mute it, but it was too late.
“What’s that?” the bearded guy said, looking up and pointing his gun as he searched for the source of the ringtone.
Before he could shoot, Spider-Man leaped down and webbed the gun to his hand, fouling the barrel. “Uh, you’re ... under arrest!” he said, trying to sound authoritative.
The bearded guy’s partner spun toward the client and drew some sort of alien-hybrid gun, gleaming and scary. “You set us up!”
The client backed up a few steps, hands in the air, clearly terrified.
“Hey!” Spider-Man shouted. “If you gotta shoot at somebody, shoot at me.”
The client looked at Spider-Man, astonished. But the guy with the gun just shrugged. “Okay,” he said, and fired.
Spider-Man dodged. “Nice try,” he said.
Then the other guy hit him as hard as he’d ever been hit. Spider-Man reeled back, crashing into the embankment by the bridge. In his free hand, the bearded guy had some kind of big metal gauntlet that glowed with a crazy energy.
The two gun dealers jumped into their van. “Who was that?” one of them said. The would-be client sprinted to his car and peeled off in the opposite direction.
Spider-Man staggered to his feet and said, “I’m ... ow ... Spider-Man.”
As he recovered, he saw what was happening. He couldn’t let them escape! He shot out a web to each vehicle, sticking to the van’s back door and the car’s rear window. For a moment he hung suspended in the air as the webs drew taut—and then the car’s back window popped out. Spider-Man hit the ground and skidded along as the van roared away into the neighborhood near the bridge.
Thanks to his suit’s enhanced sensors, he could just barely hear the two guys in the van yelling at each other. “I told you not to blow up that car,” one of them said. “We gotta call him.”
“No,” the bearded guy said. He was watching out the open back door as Spider-Man pulled himself up the web toward the van. “We got this.”
He grabbed a nasty-looking weapon from behind the seat and fired at Spider-Man. The blast missed, but it also blasted a huge piece out of the van’s back end. The van fishtailed, and the bearded guy dropped the gun. It bounced out of the back of the van and past Spider-Man, landing in the brush at the side of the road.
“I’m calling him,” the other guy said. He jerked the wheel to one side, trying to make a turn, and Spider-Man was flung off. He hit a gazebo in the yard of a house and lost his grip on the web. By the time he somersaulted to his feet, the van was too far away to web again. He was back in a leafy, suburban part of Forest Hills, and all he could do was dash madly through backyards and hope he caught the van before it got to one of the main roads.
He sprinted past dogs, jumped over fences, and frightened little kids out in their yard in a tent. “I’m so sorry!” he called back as he kept going, using a trampoline to bounce over one last fence ... and onto a golf course. With nothing to swing from, Peter had to sprint, cutting across to the houses beyond the fairway. Not the most elegant solution, but it was all he had.
Ned was calling him, but he was too busy to answer. This was bigger than whatever might be happening at Liz’s party.
He vaulted a fence and swung up onto a house just as the van screeched around the corner onto the road on the other side.
“So, thought you got away from me, did you?” Peter said, timing a jump from the house. He soared over the road as the van roared toward him, aiming a web shooter at the center of its roof. He saw the two men in the van staring at him in amazement—and then something snatched him out of the air.
Peter yelped in surprise and tried to get a look at whoever—or whatever—had grabbed him. He saw wings and a mask with glowing green eyes. Sharp talons dug painfully into his back and arms. He struggled but couldn’t get free as the winged monster flew higher and higher and the lights of Queens grew smaller and smaller.
As he thrashed in the creature’s grip, the spider-symbol on his suit started to flash and beep. Not knowing what else to do, Peter touched it. A parachute billowed out from the back of the suit. A split second later it caught the wind and ripped Peter out of the monster’s talons. He made a mental note to thank Tony Stark for including the parachute in the suit’s features, but his relief didn’t last long. As he tumbled in the air, he got tangled in the chute. Instead of carrying him gently to the ground, it rippled around him as he fell. One of the last things he saw as the parachute covered his face was the complete figure of the monster, wings spread against the moonlit sky.
He fell, desperately trying to fight his way out of the chute before he hit the ground. But he didn’t make it, and he hit the surface of a lake with a huge splash. Now his panic at dying from the fall was replaced with panic at drowning before he could get out of the chute. He fought against the tangle of fabric, not sure which way was up, breath burning in his lungs ... He started to pass out.
Then there was a brilliant light.
At first, Peter thought it was the white light people talk about seeing during their near-death experiences. Then someone grabbed him and pulled him up. After what seemed like ages, when they broke the surface, Peter heard Tony Stark say, “Now I know why you never went out for the diving team.”