Now I’m talking to these two like I’m planning on torturing them, which I’m not, but I can’t let them think that.
And then it happens.
Before I have time to blink.
A rush of air through the place.
A flash of red.
The sound of something slender and long being swept through the air like a whip whip whip!
I look up, and Starling is standing in front of me again, Hollowclaw and Shadow are standing behind her, and the webs I’d so carefully cocooned them in fall to pieces on the ground.
“Oops, time to go!” I say, concluding that if the nanobots’ origins aren’t here in this room, I’d better run. Literally.
I’m out the window and web-slinging myself around the side of the building faster than I can hear Starling demand, “Get him!”
I’m running along the side of the building, holding my web latched to the roof, because I have a plan. Well, kinda. At least, it should work in theory. I run, and run, and run, shortening my web as I go so I’m sprinting in a spiral higher and higher into the sky, my body parallel to the ground. As I go, I’m glancing through the windows. The building is so narrow, it’s easy to see straight through to the other side as I run.
And, with all three of them in a trail behind me, we’ve completely circled the building. I look down and can see Shadow’s beacon of glowing yellow hair just below me, and I decide this is the moment. I double back, darting up and back the way I came, and then plunging straight down. Hollowclaw dives right behind me. I watch as I slip past Shadow, face to face with them for a split second, just long enough for me to flash them a smile, and then plunge as I hear Hollowclaw and Shadow collide in the air above me.
The sound of metal crumpling around itself, twisting and tangling together… it sounds like a car crash. And when I see the smoking, sparking, mangled mess that is intertwined Shadow and Hollowclaw falling several stories, their screams ringing out, I shoot my web between this building and the rooftop of the building adjacent, wrapping them up in a big ol’ mangled cocoon of smoking wing contraptions still strapped to their backs.
“Good luck squirming out of that,” I say before turning my attention back to Starling.
I grab the nearest window and pull myself inside. The minute my feet connect with the ground, which is equally dusty and glassy on this floor, I begin creeping through the middle of the building, and listening.
I don’t hear much up here. It’s strangely quiet. Dead quiet.
But I spot a stairwell on the far side of the room and step inside. If I thought it was dark out there in the main room with all the windows letting moonlight in, I had no idea what I was in for. This place is dark. So dark I can’t see my own hand in front of my face. But I decide that if I can track down Starling in this place, maybe I can talk to her about what her grandfather said about their “plan,” and maybe even make her see the light.
Not literally. By the looks of Vulture’s hideout up here, it feels like he’s more into darkness… and maybe even dead things.
I shudder and start my way up the staircase, which appears endless as I look straight up. I walk, step by step, up each floor, until I hear a shuffling nearby, which makes me freeze where I stand. I’ve spent enough of my life in New York to know what a rat crawling through the walls sounds like. Except this rat is taller than me, and is fitted with two five-foot-long metal wings. And it sounds less like it’s crawling through the walls, and more like it’s… just…
One wall away.
I press my fingers on the drywall to my left and keep walking upward, listening as I go. I come to the next door and press my ear against it, hearing what sounds like a faint buzzing on the other side, like the whole room might be a microwave. I take a long, deep breath, hoping this place isn’t booby-trapped or something. But when I ease the door open, creaky as it is, I see a huge green canister in the corner, glowing, lighting up the whole room with its eerie radioactive-looking hue. Papers lie discarded all over the floor. Plans line the walls, scrawled out on blueprint paper taped all over the room. The windows on this floor are mostly intact. Dirty and impossible to see through with a few shattered holes here and there, but largely still whole enough to provide shelter.
I see the huge red-winged contraption lying on the ground, feathers collapsed in on themselves like the thing was cast aside carelessly.
And in front of the glowing canister, huddled up in a little ball, knees to chest, chin to knees, two Afro puffs poking out of a dark hoodie, sits Starling. She hasn’t flinched since I opened this door, and I wonder if she even knows I’m here. Just in case, I creep forward slightly and examine my options.
I could outright destroy the canister, which looks like a power source of some kind. That’d be the quickest way to end this. Or I could web Starling from behind, cocooning her in webbing like I did to Hollowclaw and Shadow before she swooped in. Or I could—
“I know you’re there, Spider-Man,” comes her voice, the softest I’ve ever heard it. She turns around and locks eyes on me. “You don’t have to sneak around looking like a paranoid mime.”
I look down and realize I’ve been holding this one-knee-in-the-air position, both hands up like velociraptors, shoulders hunched and eyes wide, like… well, like a paranoid mime. I quickly straighten and clear my throat, but before I can think of what to say, she turns her attention back to the canister and continues.
“I know why you’re here too,” she says. “You’re here to tell me all about my grandfather’s plans and why they’re wrong, and remind me that I’ve helped infect thousands of people with this tech just to get back at a pharma corporation that had nothing to do with me in the first place, and how pointless the whole thing was, and how silly I was to believe him.”
Okay, I was prepared for a lot of things when I walked in here—dodging claws, deflecting grappling hooks, swinging faster than she can fly. What I wasn’t prepared for was a heart-to-heart discussion.
“I… wasn’t prepared to tell you any of that, actually,” I say.
“Well good,” she hisses, “because you can save your breath. There’s nothing you can do anyway. What’s done is done. I’m up here because I have nowhere else to go.”
She pushes herself to her feet and turns to face me.
“Do you know why I got involved in the first place?” she asks. “Now that we’ve won, I can tell you, I guess.”
I rest my hands on my hips and shrug. Sure, I guess.
“Because you really believed your grandfather’s cause was noble,” I say. I know she did. Who wouldn’t think that, if the man who raised them was in dire straits, body rotting in jail from an aggressive cancer, soul rotting in jail from an aggressive treatment. He asked her for help, and she said yes. Because she loves him.
I think back to my dad, and how much about him I looked up to. Not once did I hear him raise his voice at me, Mom, or… anyone, really. He always tried to do the right thing. He showed me how to make my first beats on my turntables. He used to sit with me in Prospect Park, and play ball with me at the courts between my school and the deli next door. On slow days at work, he used to let me sit in the front seat of his squad car, and on rare occasions when he was parked underground at the precinct where the noise wouldn’t bother anyone, he’d let me hit the siren button and watch the lights illuminate the whole parking garage.
I can’t imagine growing up under his care, and then finding out he had a secret plan to infect all of New York with zombie bird DNA-mapping nanobots.
All for revenge. Petty revenge against the company that turned him into a science experiment.
“I’m… sorry,” I say.
What else can I say?
“I… can’t say I know how it feels to lose faith in someone you looked up to,” I continue, stepping closer until I’m right beside her. “But I know how it feels to lose someone I looked up to. It hurts. And it can leave you feeling lost.”
She’s quiet for a moment, so I keep talking.
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“But you know what?” I ask. “You only lose if you give up.”
She says nothing. Just sighs and continues staring at the glowing green canister. I follow her eyes and examine it myself, now that I’m closer. The viscous fluid inside is mobile, gurgling around behind the glass so slowly you could blink and miss it.
“What is this thing, by the way?”
“Rumidium,” she says.
A long silence passes between us. So long that I give up on her offering a further explanation on her own.
“Room-id-i-um,” I enunciate. “What’s that?”
So much silence passes that by the time she pushes herself to her feet and speaks, it startles me.
“What’s it matter, huh?” she hisses at me. “Even if I wanted to take back what I did—helping him make…” she gestures wildly in the direction of the canister, “this—I couldn’t. The nanobots are out. They’re multiplying. They’re taking over the city.”
Starling’s voice grows soft again as she looks back up at the canister and says, “We can’t just take them back.”
I look over at her as she watches the bots swim around. The green glow lights up her face and reflects in her eyes.
“So… you saying you’ll help me?”
“I’m saying there’s no helping you. Don’t you get it, Spider-Man? You’re too late. And so am I.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t believe that. There has to be a way. We could start with destroying this thing—”
“No!” she yells, throwing her arm in front of me even though I haven’t even flinched. “We can’t do that.”
“Why not?” I ask, folding my arms over my chest.
“See that statue in there?” she asks, pointing to the canister.
I bend down and look reeeeeally close, peering deep inside, where I find the faintest outline of those familiar golden wings sitting on a pedestal in the center of the green fluid.
“The museum thought the Thoth’s Embrace statue was made of solid gold, but inside it’s made of solid Rumidium. My grandfather found a way to liquefy it using plasma from the blueprints at the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility. Solid Rumidium is relatively harmless, but liquid Rumidium is highly volatile. Even the slightest disturbance could send this stuff airborne, and who knows what that would do.”
“How did y’all build this thing if it’s that sensitive?” I ask. “You sure he didn’t just tell you that to keep you from touching it?”
“He wouldn’t lie to me,” she growls. “My grandfather’s a lot of things, but he’s not a liar.”
“Okay, okay,” I concede. I turn and start pacing around the room. “But why did you need it?”
“It sends the nanobots into overdrive. They’d worked on his DNA already, beating back the cancer and restoring his strength, but he wanted more. By making the nanobots more volatile, he was able to introduce strands of bird DNA. Eagles, hawks…”
“Vultures?” I can’t help but ask.
“Vultures.” She sighs. “And now the nanobots are spreading and infecting everyone. It was meant to bring down Terraheal. It was meant to be contained.”
“You’ll help me, then?”
“Stop asking me that,” she says. “I won’t betray my grandfather.” Then she pauses and looks up at the canister again. “But if you find a way to undo this, I… won’t stop you.”
A flame of hope flickers to life in my chest, and I can’t help but feel a grin tug at the corner of my mouth. Looks like there’s some good in Starling after all. The big bad red Pigeon that threw me off the S.H.I.E.L.D. building has a heart after all. Or at least a capacity to empathize.
“Alright,” I say, settling for—if not compliance—complacency. “So, if I destroy the source—”
“All destroying this thing would accomplish is killing the rest of the nanobots left inside. It wouldn’t do anything for those already infected.”
Think, Miles, think! I urge myself. There has to be something I can do.
We can’t destroy the canister, sure. We can’t extract the statue without opening the canister, which is also probably a bad idea. I certainly can’t go out there and keep webbing people at a pace that’s needed to cure them. I’m only one person. I can’t be in more than one place at once. This problem just feels far too big.
So much for being the bird-eating spider…
…unless…
Mr. O’Flanigan’s words flood back into my mind. Imagine you’re a spider up against an enormous foe—take the bird-eating spider, for instance—imagine how hard it would be to overpower such an enemy without taking it down from the inside.
My pupils dilate as the idea comes full circle and my heart begins to beat out of my chest.
“Starling!” I holler, grabbing her shoulders.
“Ahh, what?!” she screams, flinching and throwing her fists up. “What is it?!”
“Nothing! Just thought of something.”
She lands a firm punch on my left shoulder and points angrily at me.
“Don’t you ever do that to my nerves again,” she breathes, resting a frustrated hand on her forehead. “What did you think of?”
I step forward and hold out my hands to her.
“My DNA has antiseptic powers,” I say.
She raises a skeptical eyebrow at me.
“… and?” she asks.
“When I mixed it with my webbing, it seemed to affect the nanobots in people on the ground while I was down there. I webbed a few people and they transformed back into being human, Starling. I couldn’t get all of them because I’m only one person… but maybe, if the nanobots could learn from me, and my DNA, and then we sent them airborne… These compromised nanobots would undo the damage of the first ones. Everyone infected could go back to normal. This will still get out and come back on Terraheal’s head. That damage is done. But maybe if we could reverse this now, people won’t have to suffer and possibly die.”
Her eyes go wide as she tracks with what I’m saying and the whole idea sinks in slowly. She shakes her head and purses her lips, and eventually folds her arms.
“Absolutely no way that’s going to work.”
“Why not?” I challenge. “You got a better plan?”
“Um, yeah,” she says. “I could get the hell up outta here, move back home, and forget any of this ever happened.”
“And leave the whole city full of bird-people?!” I ask. “How do you know this will stay confined to New York? If these nanobots continue to replicate and infect everyone, your grandfather may have just changed the fate of the human race, Starling!”
I squeeze my hands into fists and feel rage boiling up. My mom is out there terrorizing the city, out of control of her body, or possibly taken out by police by now. And the longer we wait, the longer there’s a chance there is no reversal of the nanobots’ damage.
We have to try.
She owes me that.
She’s the one who infected my mom in the first place.
She owes me this.
“I’m gonna do it,” I say, extending my hands forward and aiming them at the canister.
“Wait!” she hollers, whipping around and covering her mouth. “What are you doing?”
“In three seconds, I’m going to shoot the canister with my web, which should give the Rumidium antiseptic properties. Hopefully the nanobots will learn those properties before they get scrambled, and when it explodes and they go airborne covering those affected, they’ll heal the city.”
“Okay, you can’t just go webbing the canister though,” she says.
“Then tell me what to do!”
Her eyes flicker with indecision, and she glances between me and the canister.
“Please don’t give up, Starling,” I say. “I haven’t.”
Determination settles into her eyes and she shuts them and takes a deep breath.
“Can you make a ball of webbing and hand it to me?”
“How big?” I ask, webbing my hands one after another, growing a ball of web bet
ween the two of them like a golf ball, then a softball, and finally, a basketball.
“That’s big enough,” she says, reaching for it. I pass it to her like a basketball instead, smiling in spite of myself at how she stumbles a bit under its weight.
“Why is this stuff so heavy?” she asks.
“Concentrated silk is pretty heavy, actually,” I reply, stretching my arms strategically above my head. “Carrying that stuff around all day? How do you think I got this buff?”
She smiles and rolls her eyes, and says, “I did tell you my grandfather warned me about you, right?” before turning her back on me and climbing a stepladder behind the canister that I hadn’t noticed until now.
I feel my neck grow hot under my mask, and I take a deep breath.
That wasn’t supposed to be flirting, what I did, but…
I guess it kinda was?
Come on, Miles, stay focused.
When I focus my attention on the situation at hand again, I realize Starling has the lid off the canister and is holding the web over the open top.
“What are you doing?!” I whisper.
“They don’t care about sound,” she says with a shrug. “You wanna give this a try or not?”
This also wasn’t in the How-to-be-Spider-Man handbook. Me standing here in front of the villain, in the villain’s hideout, with the source of the villain’s power in a giant canister in front of me, and I’ve just given the villain a ball of my web, which might or might not have the power to blow us both off the top of this building.
“Well?” she asks.
“Question,” I say.
“Oh, now he has questions,” she grumbles with one hand on her hip.
“If this thing is going to explode, shouldn’t we carry it closer to the epicenter? Like, Times Square?”
Her eyebrows fly up.
“Oh, now you want to carry this thing first?” she asks. “Did you miss when I said this canister is volatile?”
“Listen,” I say, “I’ve spent my whole life in New York. It’s my home. It’s my life. And if I don’t fix what happened today, I’ve lost it all. My family is down there.”
Something in her face changes when I say this.
I think of just the other day when I was moving that box up the stairs into my new home at my Abuela’s apartment, wishing I could web the door open to make moving easier. Wishing I could make it all go by faster.
Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales Page 18