"The Solitary Penitent—Tony Stark's First Exclusive Interview."
Peter, dressed in his Spider-Man suit, crouched on the outer wall of a building in New York. He scrolled through his phone, reading the interview feature Mary Jane had written. Naturally, the front page of the newspaper featured the photo Peter had taken of Tony—dressed in a deep red suit, holding a wine glass, looking poised and rational.
"I actually admire J. Jonah Jameson a little. He let an intern put a photo taken by a non-employee right on the front page of the Daily Bugle. But personally, I think this article is written incredibly well. Just my personal opinion, of course."
"According to reports, Spider-Man and his spider-freak counterparts are appearing more and more on the streets of New York!" J. Jonah Jameson was clearly incapable of tolerating Spider-Man's praise for more than three minutes. "I can't help but ask: when will our city finally rid itself of these growing numbers of spider-freaks?"
"I received a letter from a viewer who said he works as a window washer in New York. He said last month, a female Spider-Man in a white suit threw a criminal straight into the air while stopping a crime, then webbed him to the glass wall where the man was working! That left him unable to do his job for a full two hours. Without a doubt, these spider-freaks are turning the skies of our city into a hazardous airspace!"
Peter muttered to himself as he read Mary Jane's article: "I don't even know if you can follow your own logic, Jonah, but whatever."
"Hey! Spider-Man!"
Lorry, the pigeon keeper, walked out and looked at Spider-Man, who was looking at his phone. Peter raised his head to look at him. "Hey, Lorry. Is that Lola in your hand? Not Carl?"
"Yeah, what a sweet girl. It'd be even better if those street punks didn't keep trying to throw things at them."
Lorry smiled and released the pigeon, then asked Peter, "Uh, Spider-Man, can I ask you something? I heard people saying Stark Industries' stock is going up again. Does that mean our electric bills will drop back down? I really miss those couple of days. Did Iron Man say anything to you about it?"
"Oh, yeah, he did. He said the electricity rate will stay the same as before—I mean, with that fifty percent discount."
These details had actually been mentioned in today's report, but Lorry, like quite a few Americans, struggled with reading. Confronted with an interview feature that filled an entire page, they found it almost impossible to read the whole thing.
"Oh, that's great. I can finally save up a little money. I want to get a bigger cage and install some automatic waterers and feeders for these kids."
Lorry smiled happily. Peter expressed his well-wishes and then asked, "By the way, have you heard about a doctor who recently appeared on the streets of New York, offering free prosthetics and medical care? I'm hoping to find them."
"I've heard of them, but I don't really get sick, so I haven't gone."
Lorry said as he scooped Carl out of his cage and let the pigeon fly. "Besides, who knows if that 'free' stuff is actually free, or if it's just free the first time? Maybe they use low-quality medicine so you have to go back soon and spend all your money buying their drugs. It's better not to trust these doctors who pop up out of nowhere."
"That makes a lot of sense. Well, I should get back to patrolling. Have a great day with your pigeon friends, Lorry."
"You too, Spider-Man!"
Lorry waved as he watched Spider-Man swing away on a web line. As Peter swung, he began to think. Over the past few days, he had asked the Defenders to help him look into this strange doctor, specifically requesting assistance from Jessica Jones since she was a detective. But so well-hidden was the doctor that they had found nothing so far. As for S.H.I.E.L.D., while Nick Fury could probably figure it out quickly, telling Fury was practically the same as telling Hydra.
If the doctor turned out to be a genuinely good person, it would be terrible if Hydra ended up targetting them.
Meanwhile, many of the poor folks at the F.E.A.S.T. shelter clearly did not care much about people who had intact limbs. They were specifically seeking out all kinds of sick individuals, especially amputees, to proselytize to. They kept repeating phrases like "the gospel bestowed by the Lord's messenger" over and over, to the point where Peter sometimes could not even understand what they were talking about. It all sounded incredibly cryptic.
"What's even more ridiculous is that the Spider-Bots can't track them at all. The signals get completely disrupted. Now I'm really getting more and more curious about this mysterious doctor."
Peter leaped through the air, landed briefly on the umbrella of a hot dog stand to grab his hot dog, and then swung off again. He ate while keeping an eye out for potential patients. Since all high-tech methods had failed, he had to resort to the simplest approach: tailing them.
Fortunately, he did have some professional detective friends. While Peter was swinging around looking for targets, Jessica Jones sent over a set of coordinates, which took him by surprise.
"The South Bronx? That's one of the highest-crime areas in New York, and it's not even in Manhattan! There's a whole Brooklyn separating it from Queens! I'm really getting more and more curious about who this doctor is. Come to think of it, I've lived in New York for over a decade and I've never actually been to the Bronx."
With these thoughts in mind, Peter swung northward. He went straight through Manhattan to the Bronx, which lay even further north than Harlem. It was a massive borough and community of its own. If Harlem was Manhattan's low-income neighborhood and gathering place, one could easily imagine what an oversized version of Harlem would look like when separated from Manhattan—the heart of New York—further north, with the Hudson River acting as a physical barrier.
This was the highest-crime area in all of New York, even worse than places like Hell's Kitchen.
Yet surprisingly, as Peter made his way toward the target location, he did not spot any gang activity or crime. The area was quiet to an uncanny degree. When he arrived at the clinic, he found that it was just an old, three-story townhouse, looking no different from the neighboring houses on either side.
Peter's Spider-Sense did not tingle either.
He raised an eyebrow, walked up to the clinic door, and knocked.
A moment later, Doctor Ultron opened the door for him.
"Hello, Spider-Man."
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