For three seconds, he was pure flight. No doubt. No guilt. No memory of Harry’s sneer or Jameson’s headline: SPIDER-MAN: MENACE OR THREAT?
And he saw the tritium cylinder. Magnetic seal. Highly susceptible to electromagnetic pulses.
39 , Peter thought, already leaping. That’s high. Too high for a web-swing. One shot.
Peter slumped against the railing, the tritium core safe in his webbing. He looked down. Thirty-nine floors. The city glittered below, oblivious. He thought of Mary Jane, asleep in her engagement. He thought of the five dollars left in his checking account. He thought of the crushing, impossible math of being two different people. spider man 2 2004 39
And that’s when the hum stopped.
He checked the police scanner app on the cheap phone Aunt May had given him. Nothing. No robbery, no carjacking, no cat in a tree. Just the hum. And the rain.
Then he was there.
The fight on the 39th floor was different. No quips could mask the exhaustion. Peter’s body felt like a bag of loose hammers. He caught one actuator, then another slammed into his ribs. He heard something crack. The woman scrambled inside. Good. One less worry.
And behind her, a flicker of orange.
He didn't think. He acted.
Not a crime. A woman. On a balcony on the 39th floor of the Roxxon building across the way. She wasn't screaming. She wasn't waving. She was just… standing there. Perfectly still. One hand on the railing, her white nightgown whipping in the wind like a ghost's shroud.
“Yeah, I’ve heard the pitch,” Peter grunted, dodging a claw that sheared through a steel lounge chair like tinfoil. “Not interested in a timeshare.”
