Alice from Fox followed the man's gaze upward and went pale. "Someone jumped! They couldn't hold on—someone just jumped from the roof!"
"Cut away from it—don't film that!" That was Alice, Fox News.
"Are you kidding me? Camera one, stay on the falling figure—I want every second, from jump to landing. Camera two, zoom on the face. I want the expression. Fear, despair, give me everything." That was Anna from ABC, already barking at her crew.
Both reporters had spotted the jumper at roughly the same time and started shouting simultaneously.
On the street below, firefighters and bystanders alike looked up and saw the falling figure.
"Oh my God—"
"That poor soul—"
"Lord, please—"
"My dad's still up there—my dad—"
Fire Captain Hicks—the scarred veteran leading the crew—screwed his eyes shut and drove his fist into the side of the water tanker. Hard. He didn't notice the pain.
"Captain—wait. CAPTAIN! Something's happening—it's slowing down. Oh my God, it's slowing down. Is that—is God doing that?!"
Young Sam's shout made Hicks look up despite himself.
The jumper, who had been in full freefall, had abruptly stopped accelerating somewhere around the fifteenth floor. The descent was getting slower—visibly, impossibly slower—and the figure drifted slowly to the ground.
"What in the—" Hicks couldn't finish the sentence.
He wasn't the only one. ABC's Anna had been leaning forward, waiting for the "tomato splat," and now she just stood there staring as the jumper—a heavyset, middle-aged man—hit the street and immediately started laughing and sobbing at the same time. She couldn't say a word for a long moment.
"HA! I'm alive—I'm ALIVE—oh God, I'm alive—" The man had gone straight to his knees on the pavement, his Zegna handmade suit and all, completely ignoring the mess around him. "Lord, I confess everything. I swear, after this I'm going straight home every night. No more using my position on my college-student secretary. I swear—"
Roughly translated: hallelujah.
Up on the roof, the trapped crowd had watched as someone finally couldn't hold on and jumped. A second woman, who'd been frozen in her own private misery, got to her feet. Her expression was blank, resolved. She walked to the edge, looked down at the waves of heat rising from below, allowed herself one last sad smile—and stepped off.
Taishan watched them go, one by one. People he'd stood next to for the last hour, finally out of patience, following the example of the first two and pitching themselves off the 40th floor.
He was close to doing the same when he heard it—cheering, drifting up from the street a hundred meters below.
He stopped.
"Are you serious?" He started crying again immediately. "What is wrong with you people? You dress up like decent human beings every day, you walk around like you've got manners, like you're civilized—and now you're out there cheering while we're up here about to die? You're worse than me—and I'm a gangster. THIS is the real New York? THIS is the famous New York spirit? Fine. You know what? I'm NOT jumping. Just out of spite. You don't get the satisfaction—"
He couldn't see through the smoke. He could only hear the cheering getting louder, more organized. A chant was forming.
"SPIDER-MAN! SPIDER-MAN!"
"GO SPIDER-MAN! GO!"
"SPIDER-MAN! SPIDER-MAN!"
"GO SPIDER-MAN! GO!"
The chant reached Amanda on the 3rd floor, reading the Bible and waiting to die. She heard it the same way Taishan heard it—no context, no visuals—and reached the same wrong conclusion.
"Lord... this world is so dark. So filthy. Please, take me home already—"
It was Captain Hicks who figured it out first. He grabbed the public address system from the control truck and keyed it open.
"Attention, everyone in the Golden Crown Tower! This is Captain Riddell Hicks of the Manhattan Fire Department—badge number [BADGE]. Listen carefully: jump from the front face of the building. The front face—toward the sound of my voice. We have a rescue method. We have a rescue method. The previous jumpers all survived. I repeat—all previous jumpers survived. Don't wait. Move now!"
Hicks knew what he was doing. Shouting "jump" without context would accomplish nothing—people don't trust a voice in the smoke. He'd led with identity and a badge number. Nobody up there could memorize the number, but the structure of it would hit the brain's pattern for official authority and flip a switch.
Floating in the air forty meters up, sweating through her costume, President Maya heard the speech and felt her stomach drop.
Oh no.
Sure enough—the moment Hicks's voice cut through the smoke, the trapped crowd surged to the building's edge all at once. They came over the side like dumplings going into a pot, one after another, no hesitation.
"Hicks, you absolute idiot!" Maya hissed, already moving. "How am I supposed to catch this many at once?!"
She cursed him even as she dropped her concealment and let the Shadow Shroud dissolve. Both boxes at her hips fired in the same breath—black threads shooting outward in opposite directions, anchoring into the glass facades of adjacent buildings, fixing her in the air like a hub in a wheel.
"Oh my God—what is that?!"
"Camera—on the figure! NOW!" Alice from Fox was already screaming at her cameraman.
"Is that Spider-Man? James, does that look like Spider-Man to you?"
"Similar silhouette, but that equipment on the hips is different—mechanical, maybe? Doesn't scan as a mutant—"
"This is Anna, ABC News—viewers, you can see the cross-dressing freak behind me. This individual has clearly been responsible for the earlier miraculous rescues. The question I'm asking: is this same entity connected to the Golden Crown Tower fire itself...?"
Sitting on the couch at home in her pajamas, watching this live, the real Maya Hansen curled her lip. "ABC's Anna. Got it. Remember that name. 'Freak'? 'Weirdo'? You're looking for trouble, lady. President Hansen does not forget."
"Wow, that thing is hideous," Jennifer said, watching the zoomed-in shot of the "Captain Levi Spider-Man." "What is that even wearing?"
President Maya's expression went completely flat. "Jennifer. Lovely. Looks like you've decided you don't want any fruit for the rest of the month."
The shadow clone midair, of course, had no idea that her main body was sitting at home roasting her outfit choices.
At least I thought to add five launch points instead of just one, she noted to herself, firing another anchor thread. Standard Titan gear has a single cable per side. Her custom version had added anchors at each corner plus the center—five total launch points—meaning she could brace from multiple directions simultaneously.
That also meant she hadn't brought any weapons—she didn't need them. Ten Shadow Touches was more than enough.