The Captain
The bed was empty when he woke up. Cindy had left the window cracked and the compass was at one, fading east, which meant she was on the 7 train. She'd cleaned up. First aid kit under the sink, cotton balls in the trash, a glass of water on the nightstand he didn't remember her putting there.
He sat up and his ribs said no.
The ACE bandage was tight. She'd wrapped it right. Advil from the bathroom cabinet. Shirt over the bandage, loose, untucked. He went down the stairs slow because fast was a different category of experience today.
Ben was in the kitchen with the crossword and the WORLD'S BEST UNCLE mug. The letters were chipping worse than last month. The W was half gone.
"You look stiff."
"Slept weird."
"You want eggs?"
"Going to the Bugle."
Ben looked at him over the newspaper. Held the look. Peter stood in the doorway and let him look because arguing with the look was worse than receiving it.
"Seven letters. 'Persistence.' Starts with S."
"Stamina."
"That's the one." Blue ink. Careful handwriting. He didn't look up again. Peter went to the door. May was in the hallway putting on her coat for the Sunday hospital shift.
"Home for dinner?"
"Yeah."
She looked at him. Saw the tilt, the left side protected. Kissed his forehead. Left.
The October air was cold on his face. His ribs tightened under the bandage.
The web-shooters. He'd had both on during the fight and he'd counted them on his wrists last night, half-delirious, but the left cartridge had felt light. If a spent cartridge had dropped somewhere on the construction site with web-fluid residue on it, if a forensics tech picked it up and sent it to a lab and the lab found a polymer compound that didn't match any known adhesive.
He walked fast toward the subway.
The A train was half-empty on a Sunday morning. A woman in church clothes sat across from him reading a Bible with a cracked spine. A kid Peter's age was asleep against the window with headphones still in. The train rocked and Peter's ribs rocked with it and he held the pole with his right hand and kept his left arm tight against his side.
The Sunday Bugle was on the seat next to him. Someone had left it open to page three. JJJ's editorial ran across the fold: SPIDER-MAN: RECKLESS VIGILANTE OR JUST RECKLESS? The subheadline mentioned the construction site and the damage estimate. Peter didn't read the rest. He'd heard JJJ compose it in real time on Thursday and it hadn't improved in print.
He got off at Thirty-fourth and walked west. His ribs tightened in the cold.
The construction site was taped off. Yellow police tape across the gap in the chain-link fence Peter had made going through it at full speed Saturday night. Two patrol cars. A forensics van. A uniform cop by the fence drinking coffee and looking at his phone.
Peter walked up with the camera around his neck. Betty's laminated press badge in his pocket.
"Daily Bugle. Any statement on last night?"
"Talk to the captain." The cop didn't look up. "Inside."
Peter ducked under the tape. The site looked different in daylight. Smaller. The scaffolding he'd crashed through was bent at angles scaffolding shouldn't bend. The concrete where the Vulture had hit the ground had a crack in it shaped like a body. From this angle, in sneakers instead of a costume, the crack was bigger than it had looked from four stories up. A man had hit the ground that hard and stood back up.
The wing panel was gone. Forensics van probably had it. The chain was still hanging from the crane arm, his webbing long dissolved. The burnt-metal smell from the Vulture's engine had settled into the steel overnight and mixed with wet concrete and gravel dust.
He checked the ground. Walked the area under the beams where he'd hung from the scaffolding, where the web-lines had anchored. The gravel where the Vulture crashed. The edges of the concrete slab where a small object might have rolled. No cartridge. No blood on the concrete. No suit fibers. Spider-healing had kept him from bleeding on the ground and the webs had dissolved and whatever footprints he'd left were mixed in with the forensics team's.
He checked again. Wanted to check a third time and stopped himself. A fifteen-year-old photographer searching the ground three times at a crime scene was the kind of detail cops remember.
The man by the crane was not a uniform cop.
Tall. Grey hair cut military-short. Blue eyes. Suit, not a uniform, but the posture of a man who'd worn one for decades. Captain's shield on his belt. He was studying the chain, tracking it from the crane arm down to the concrete crater and up to the scaffolding where Peter had ripped the wing panel off.
Reconstructing. Same tilt Gwen got when she was working a problem.
"You're from the Bugle." He'd noticed Peter without turning around.
"Peter Parker. Freelance photographer."
"Parker." He turned. The blue eyes found Peter and stayed. "Jameson's paper."
"I take the photos. He writes the editorials."
"He writes a lot of editorials." Stacy walked along the concrete crack. His shoes were polished. The kind of man who polished his shoes on a Sunday morning before driving to a construction site.
"This chain." He pointed at the crane. "It was attached to that crane arm at ten PM last night. By seven this morning it was welded to a piece of a wing harness that my forensics team is currently trying to cut apart in a van on Eleventh Avenue." He followed the crack with his eyes. "Between ten PM and seven AM, someone fought an individual with a mechanical flight apparatus in this construction site and caused extensive structural damage."
"Spider-Man," Peter said.
"Probably." Stacy walked to a scaffold joint and pointed. "The webs dissolved. They always do. But the anchor points are visible if you know what to look for. Discoloration on the steel. Residue." He pointed at a second joint six feet away. "There. And there. Two points close together. He hung here. Resting or hurt."
He walked to the crane base. Studied where the chain had connected to the harness fragment. "The web attached the chain to the wing joint. He used the construction site as a weapon. See the angle?" He traced a line from the chain to the scaffolding. "He turned a liability into a tool. Impressive. Also reckless." Stacy shook his head. "An experienced fighter brings his own tools. This kid used what was lying around because he didn't have anything else."
He stopped at the spot where Peter had hung in the scaffolding with broken ribs. Peter's stomach went tight.
Stacy crouched. Touched the concrete. Looked at his fingers. Nothing on them. He stayed crouched anyway.
"He's young." Standing up, looking at the scaffolding. "The improvisation. The chain. A veteran plans. This kid reacted. Smart reactions, but reactions."
"Maybe he's old enough to know what he's doing."
Stacy looked at him. The blue eyes went still.
"That's what worries me." His voice was quiet. "A kid who thinks he's old enough is a kid who doesn't ask for help."
Peter held the camera. His ribs ached under the bandage under the shirt.
"I think he's trying to do the right thing," Stacy said. "I think he's going to get someone killed. Probably himself."
A truck horn on Eleventh Avenue. A pigeon on the crane arm.
"Your boss doesn't like our web-swinging friend," Stacy said.
"Mr. Jameson has opinions about everyone."
"He does. Strong ones. Lots of ink. The editorial this morning was four columns." Stacy looked at the scaffolding. "Jameson called him a reckless menace. I think that's half right."
"Which half?"
The left corner of Stacy's mouth went up. Peter had seen that expression two days ago on a different face in a chemistry lab. Same muscles. Same timing. Genetics were a real thing.
"My daughter goes to Midtown. Gwen." The mouth corner stayed up. "She says there's a kid named Parker who's 'annoyingly good at chemistry.' She used that exact phrase. Annoyingly."
"I'm adequate at chemistry."
"She doesn't say 'annoyingly' about adequate people." He reached into his jacket. A card. White, thin, government cardstock. NYPD seal. Captain George Stacy, Enhanced Crimes Unit. A phone number printed in standard font.
"This isn't about arrest," Stacy said. "If you happen to run into Spider-Man. Tell him a cop named Stacy would rather talk than chase."
Peter took the card. The cardstock was cheap. Government budget.
"I can't exactly pass this to Spider-Man."
"You seem to find him often enough." Stacy's eyes held on Peter's for two seconds. Three. Then he looked back at the construction site. His voice went quiet. "Tell him there are people who would rather help than arrest. Tell him a father worries about kids who get into fights they can't walk away from. And tell him-" His jaw tightened. The almost-smile was gone. "Tell him sixteen is too young to die in a construction site."
He walked toward the forensics van. His shoes crunched on the gravel. He didn't look back.
Peter stood in the construction site with a thin white card and his ribs aching. Sixteen. He was fifteen. Close enough to hurt.
He pocketed the card.
He changed on a rooftop six blocks north. Suit over the bandage, mask on, Queens in the distance. The card in his hand. White cardstock, NYPD seal, government font.
He didn't call.
He thought about the voice. The blue eyes. The mouth that moved like Gwen's when it went from professional to almost-kind. The man had walked a construction site and read Saturday night's fight like a book and gotten every page right. The chain. The improvisation. The age. The injuries. He'd looked at an empty patch of concrete and known Peter had been hanging there with broken ribs.
And the last thing he'd said was about fathers and kids who fight alone.
Stacy was a different thing from Ben. Sharper. Military where Ben was warm. Crosswords and bad coffee versus polished shoes and forensic analysis. But the machine underneath was the same. A man who saw a kid making dangerous choices and wanted to say the right thing before the kid got himself killed.
If Peter called, what would he say? Hi, I'm the kid you're worried about. Your daughter is my lab partner. Your boss wants me in cuffs. I have three cracked ribs from a man with wings. The conversation would last four sentences before Stacy started asking questions Peter couldn't answer.
The card was an open door and Peter had too many open doors already.
The card went into the web-pouch. Norman's cream card with the handwritten number. Ezekiel's heavy stock with the gold lettering. Stacy's government white with the NYPD seal.
Three cards from three people who were paying attention to Peter Parker. None of them had the whole picture. Together they might.
A woman on the street below was trying to parallel park a sedan that was too big for the space. She'd been at it for three attempts. Fourth, she almost had it. Nope. She gave up and drove around the block.
His ribs ached. The wind was cold through the suit. Somewhere over the East River, a man with one wing was rebuilding. In Queens, Cindy was on a train with his bruises mapped in her head. Ben was doing the crossword in blue ink. And Peter was sitting on a rooftop with three business cards and no idea which door to open first.
He jumped off the roof and went home.