At six in the morning, the alarm clock blared. Peter Parker's eyes snapped open, shattering a perfectly good dream. He reached out and tapped the snooze button with deliberate, painstakingly calibrated pressure. He didn't smash it into plastic shrapnel.
"Day twenty-two of not destroying the clock," Peter whispered.
He slapped his cheeks, letting the hum of his accelerated metabolism kick in, and threw off his blankets. After a blur of getting dressed and splashing water on his face, he bounded downstairs.
Aunt May was already at the dining room table, scraping plates. She was still young, in her late thirty, her hair still holding its color, moving with a sharp, practiced efficiency.
"Did Uncle Ben sleep in?" Peter asked, grabbing a piece of toast.
May rolled her eyes and bumped her hip against the counter. "Ben didn't oversleep. Someone else just forgot what day it is."
Peter froze, the toast halfway to his mouth. "School starts today."
That explained why Ben wasn't lacing up his running shoes.
"Uncle Ben's in the garage?" Peter asked.
"Getting the car ready," May said. "Go next door and grab Gwen, will you?"
Peter swallowed the toast dry, ran a hand through his hair, and jogged out the front door. He crossed the small patch of grass separating the Parker house from the Stacy house. Gwen Stacy was his oldest friend. Her dad, Captain George Stacy of the NYPD, practically lived at the precinct, so Gwen essentially grew up eating half her meals at the Parkers' table.
She'd spent the entire summer in London on a middle-school graduate trip, returning just yesterday. Peter had bailed on the trip to stay home and let Uncle Ben train him to survive being Spider-Man. Gwen had been furious when he canceled. He was banking on London putting her in a forgiving mood.
"Hey, Peter," a raspy voice called down.
Before Peter could even knock, Gwen's head popped out of her second-story window. Her blonde hair was a chaotic bird's nest. She blinked down at him, her eyes bloodshot.
"What time is it?" she croaked.
"Six a.m.," Peter called back. "First time I've ever seen you up this early. Jet lag kicking your butt?"
"It's destroying me," Gwen groaned, rubbing her face. "I stared at the ceiling for nine hours. Give me five minutes."
She vanished. Peter leaned against the porch railing. Exactly five minutes later, the front door clicked open. Gwen stepped out. Her hair was ruthlessly brushed back and pinned under a black headband.
Peter blinked. "Turtleneck, long sleeves, and heavy jeans? Gwen, it's a furnace out here. London could not have been that cold."
"I run cold now," Gwen deflected, adjusting her collar. "Besides, Midtown High doesn't do uniforms. I can wear what I want." She dug into her pocket and tossed a crumpled fabric bundle at his chest. "Here. I got you a souvenir."
Peter unfolded it. "A deerstalker hat? Did you actually go to the Sherlock Holmes museum on Baker Street?"
"No, I bought it from a guy selling out of a duffel bag near a tube station," she deadpanned, pulling her front door shut.
Peter tucked the hat into his back pocket. "Is Captain Stacy up?"
"He got off shift at three in the morning," Gwen said, walking past him. "He's dead to the world. He definitely isn't driving us today. I'm raiding your kitchen for breakfast."
"Perfect timing. Aunt May just plated, and Uncle Ben's pulling the car around."
Gwen offered a tired smile. "Nice to know some things never change."
Breakfast at the Parkers was efficient. Scrambled eggs, toast, jam. Uncle Ben came in from the garage, wiping grease off his hands with a rag.
"Alright, kids. Midtown High awaits," Ben said, pulling out a chair. "I've got an early shift at the site, so I can't walk you to the front doors. I left a voicemail for George, but I doubt he's waking up for it."
"Let him sleep," Gwen mumbled around a massive bite of eggs. "He can forage for himself."
Ben and May shared a quiet smile.
Peter didn't talk. He shoveled food into his mouth, his fork a blur. Gwen paused mid-chew, staring at the empty plate in front of him.
"Did you just inhale that in under two minutes?" she asked.
"It's been happening all summer," May sighed, crossing herself quickly. "His stomach hit the gas pedal. Thank the Lord he just eats faster and doesn't eat the actual plates."
"I need to leave time for combat training with Uncle Ben," Peter lied smoothly.
Gwen's fork clattered against her plate. "Wait. You spent your summer doing combat training?"
Peter nodded. "Yeah. I have to make sure another Carl King situation doesn't happen. And the worst part is, Carl got accepted into Midtown too."
Carl was the bane of Peter's existence. He was pushing six-foot-two in middle school, built like a brick wall, and bullied indiscriminately. Peter had taken his fair share of shoves into lockers.
Ironically, Peter owed his entire double life to Carl. Back at the Oscorp Expo, when the radiation exhibit malfunctioned and everyone panicked, Carl had been the one to grab the glowing, escaped spider from a display console and slap it onto the back of Peter's neck as a joke. Peter had been trying to figure out a safe way to catch the thing. Carl made the decision for him.
"You better watch your step," Gwen warned. "Two months of hitting pads in a garage won't let you beat Carl."
Peter smirked. "I don't know. I think I could flatten him."
"We train to defend, Peter, not to instigate," Uncle Ben said, though his tone lacked its usual edge. Ben knew better than anyone that Peter could probably throw Carl into low orbit if he sneezed too hard. He wiped his mouth and stood up. "Let's move out."
The Parkers' fifteen-year-old Toyota groaned as Ben wrestled it into gear. The drive toward Midtown High was supposed to take ten minutes. Gwen monopolized the conversation, showing Peter grainy photos on her phone from a foggy London street. Ben kept the radio off, just listening to the kids talk, a relaxed smile on his face.
Then the concrete tore open.
"Uncle Ben! Brake!" Peter screamed.
His spider-sense spiked like an icepick to the base of his skull. Ben slammed both feet on the brake pedal. The Toyota shrieked, tires smoking against the asphalt.
The three-story brick wall of the building to their right violently blew outward.
A shower of pulverized mortar and massive cinderblocks rained down. A slab of concrete the size of a refrigerator slammed into the street three meters from the Toyota's bumper. The shockwave rattled their teeth.
Ben threw the car into reverse, twisting the wheel, but the falling debris formed a barricade. Behind them, a falling steel beam crushed the engine block of a yellow cab. The driver kicked his door open and sprinted down the avenue.
"Out of the car!" Ben roared.
He unbuckled and shoved his door open, grabbing Gwen by the shoulder of her thick jacket and hauling her out.
"The subway entrance!" Ben pointed to the concrete stairs fifty yards away. "Move!"
Peter hit the pavement. He looked up. The building's structural columns were failing. Spider-web fractures spiderwebbed up the remaining glass. He looked at Ben. He looked at Gwen.
He spun on his heel and sprinted in the exact opposite direction.
"Uncle Ben! Get Gwen underground! I'm finding a clear route out!" Peter yelled over his shoulder.
"Peter, get back here!" Ben shouted, but the crowd of screaming pedestrians shoved him and Gwen toward the subway stairs.
Peter didn't look back. He bolted down the nearest alleyway. He scanned the brickwork. No cameras. No pedestrians. He yanked his web-shooters and his fabric mask from the front pocket of his backpack.
He hurled the backpack straight up into the air.
He lunged at the alley wall. He sprinted vertically up the brick face, grabbing his t-shirt hem and ripping it over his head. The suit underneath was modular—short sleeves and leggings to prevent overheating under his street clothes. He caught the backpack mid-air, yanked out his long red-and-blue gloves, and shoved his arms into them, zipping them securely to the short sleeves.
He kept running upward. He slapped the web-shooters onto his wrists. He pulled the utility belt from the bag, locked it around his waist, and zipped the backpack shut. He shoved the mask over his face and tossed the bag toward the roof.
He fired a line of webbing, pinning the backpack securely behind a billboard.
Spider-Man crested the roofline. He didn't stop moving. He fired a line to the adjacent building and launched himself into the morning sun.
Down at the subway entrance, the crush of panicked New Yorkers had bottlenecked. Uncle Ben shielded Gwen against the railing, looking up in horror as a massive section of the roof cornice snapped loose.
A woman screamed.
The concrete fell.
It never hit the ground.
A massive, brilliant white net of tensile webbing expanded across the gap between the buildings, catching the two-ton block of concrete like a baseball in a glove.
A red-and-blue blur swung down from the rooftops, doing a lazy backflip before landing in a deep crouch on a streetlight overlooking the crowd.
"Is it a bird? Is it a plane?" someone in the crowd yelled.
"No, guys, please, that's trademarked!" Spider-Man called out, pointing a finger gun at the crowd. "It's just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man!"
He fired a rapid sequence of webs, reinforcing the net above the street and anchoring the falling debris away from the pedestrian crush. Once the street was secure, he stood up on the streetlight and looked at the building that had just vomited its facade onto the asphalt.
Thick, black smoke billowed from a massive hole in the ground floor.
Peter narrowed his white lenses. It wasn't a construction accident.
It was a bank.