by David Liss
Maya looked at her reflection in the mirror. Maybe, she thought, this was the day she would confront him. Mr. Fisk said it wasn’t time, but some things weren’t about choice. Sometimes destiny chose for you.
Is this, she asked herself, what she wanted to look like when she finally met him in combat? She wanted him to see her true self. She wanted him to look at her and fear her. She thought of that night in Montana, the bloody handprint.
Red wasn’t right, though. Something subtle. She was like a ghost out of her own past. White. It had to be white. She began to search for her old collection of stage makeup from her dance days. It was time for Echo to become more than an idea.
It was time for “Echo” to become a name.
* * *
THE contractors came out of the building almost exactly fifteen minutes after they went in. Peter prepared to follow them, but they immediately split up, each taking a different though identical dark SUV. Without much time to consider his options, he picked one at random, and he was off.
Following cars wasn’t hard at all when they remained in the city. Bridges and tunnels presented certain problems, though he could usually hitch a ride. The trick there was avoiding getting spotted. Nothing blew a stealthy pursuit like wildly enthusiastic honking.
Fortunately, the car he was following stayed in Manhattan, and this time of the day that meant it couldn’t travel too fast. He kept with it as it headed uptown, leaping from roof to roof, wall to wall, careful to stay out of view of anyone on the ground.
The weird thing was the faint tingling from his Spider-Sense. He looked behind him a few times but saw no sign of anyone on his tail. Maybe it was because these guys were dangerous, he told himself. He would need to be careful. He was always careful, but he had to know what they were up to.
The car he was following stopped at Broadway and 147th Street. Keeping to the rooftops, Spider-Man watched the Roxxon Blackridge contractor get out and linger at a bus stop, all the while keeping his eye on a nearby brownstone. Twenty minutes after he arrived, a woman came out of the brownstone holding a little girl’s hand. She began to walk down the street, and the contractor followed her. He had his phone out, and from time to time, he took pictures.
The woman dropped the little girl off at a daycare center. The contractor stepped into a greengrocer, lingering around the entrance. He took a half-dozen photos. She left and he followed her for another four blocks, where he photographed her buying what Spider-Man felt certain had to be heroin.
What did it mean? Who was this woman? Why did the contractor want to get pictures of her buying drugs? The easiest way to find out might be to question her, but she wouldn’t likely tell him her life story. When a guy in a costume drops from the sky, you don’t immediately volunteer your darkest secrets.
Spider-Man made a note of her address. Maybe he could ask Watanabe to see what she could find out about the woman. Trailing the contractor hadn’t turned up the smoking gun he’d been looking for, but it could still turn out to be an important piece of the puzzle.
Following the contractor back to his car, he was careful to duck behind a digital billboard on a rooftop to be sure he wasn’t seen. He was watching the contractor drive off when his Spider-Sense went into high gear. He rolled away, trying to get a sense of what exactly was going on.
Then he saw her: a woman all in black, with black hair tied back, and—carrying a spear? She had a white handprint across her face, not exactly a mask but making her difficult to identify. He didn’t dwell on it for long, though. He’d been attacked with some improbable things over the years. If he was going to be honest with himself, it could be argued that he was also dressed a little wacky. So who was he to judge? He was more interested in the part where she was trying to kill him.
While the billboard behind him formed itself into a car ad, the woman lashed out with her spear. He dodged to his left, but it turned out the jab was a feint, and he only just twisted out of the way to avoid getting impaled. He dodged and rolled, but she dodged and rolled, as well. He leapt at an angle. She leapt at an angle, mirroring him exactly. It seemed as if she could emulate his every move. Meanwhile, the billboard changed again, this time turning into an ad for—of all things—the Fisk Foundation.
Perfect.
The woman with the handprint on her face moved in toward him, her every step seeming to be a copy of his own. For a fleeting moment he wondered if this could be his impersonator, then he discarded the thought. His double had a male voice and physique, and while this woman echoed his every move, she lacked his enhanced abilities. She could leap the way he did, but not as far or as high. She could push herself off walls the way he did, but not cling to them. It was more like parkour. She certainly had no web shooters.
They faced off again, and Peter managed to dodge three fast jabs from the spear. The third one missed him by a mile, slamming into the billboard, sending off a shower of sparks.
“Hold on,” he said. “Can we talk about this?”
She came at him with a sideswipe, acting as if she hadn’t even heard him. Another miss, and another shower of sparks shot out. He leapt out of the way, wanting to get away from the billboard in case it exploded. He shot out two large webs to catch her, but she rolled away as if she knew exactly what he was going to do, even before he did it.
And that, he realized, was how this woman was different. The doppelgänger was like another Spider-Man in his abilities, but not in his style. There were similarities, the way two mixed martial arts fighters or two Tae Kwon Do practitioners would always have certain core moves in common, but their approaches would never be identical. Spider-Man and his imitator were similar because they were working with the same set of abilities, even if they used them differently.
This woman was copying him, and the mimicry was precise. That was the only word for it. Not that she mimicked him as he moved—it was more like she had internalized every move he’d ever made, turning herself into his mirror image.
Yet watching her dodge, leap, attack, feint, and roll, he thought she must have studied hundreds of hours of Spider-Man doing his thing. While she didn’t have the gifts he’d received from that radioactive spider, normal abilities were nothing to be sneezed at. He’d been smacked around pretty handily by people who were just regular old human beings.
This one was fast, angry, and she had a spear.
“I like your style,” he said. “You seem like a really terrific person, but I’ve got an impaling phobia, so let’s skip the skewering. How about you just tell me what you want?”
Her only response was to try to put a hole in him.
“Well, this is no fun,” he said as he leapt out of her way and out of her range. Planting his feet, he turned toward her, hands up in a position of surrender, and walked forward. “Why don’t you just tell me what this is all about? We could get lattes.”
She feinted twice and he dodged easily. Then she lunged forward, toward a spot where she knew he would be. She was good, and she knew how to anticipate him, but now that he knew what she could do, he was simply too fast for her. By the time the thrust came he was out of the way, if only by inches.
“So you won’t talk, and I’m not going to let you slice me open, even if you are the second-best Spider-Man impersonator in the city. So, lady… miss… whatever you are, I’m out of here.” He reached out to cast a web, but she’d anticipated that, too.
Her spear came down in a hard swing, knocking his arm. The web shot out to the concrete beneath them and he followed it, hitting the ground hard. This was an epic fail, and he really hoped no one had caught it on camera. She circled around him with astonishing speed and struck him across the backs of the knees with the shaft of the spear. She was strong.
He rolled out of the way, but she clipped him with the shaft again, propelling him backward into the billboard, sending a halo of sparks into the air. It hurt like hell. She came in for a third swing and he managed to roll away toward the edge of the roof, taking a few photos as he d
id so. All he had to do was to drop off and he’d be free of her, but the point wasn’t really to escape, was it? She’d gotten in some good shots, but he wasn’t afraid of her.
Okay, he was a little afraid, but this wasn’t like taking a beating from Rhino. There was no chance of getting pounded into goo here. Besides, he was curious. How had this woman learned to move like him? What did she want? Was she connected with the other imitator? Could she tell him anything he needed to know?
Through their entire encounter she hadn’t uttered a word, but it was surprising how conversational people became once they were nicely webbed. It was time to stop worrying about hurting the nice lady with the spear and start finding out what she was up to. The next time she came at him, he knew exactly how to play it. She rushed forward, jabbing with the spear. He leapt up, over her head, spun around and kicked.
But she was waiting for him, like she knew exactly what he was going to do. She grabbed his ankle while he was in mid-leap and yanked hard, bringing him down with a painful thud. And then, somehow, she was on him.
His attacker straddled him, a knee on each of his arms, keeping him pinned in place. One hand held the spear as if she was ready to bring it down with a fatal thrust to his throat. The other reached for the seam of his mask. It was like she knew exactly where it was, and she had a solid plan of unmasking him and then killing him.
Throughout the fight Spider-Man had been by turns surprised, confused, curious, and annoyed. Now he was pretty concerned. He had very strong feelings about being unmasked and murdered, and they weren’t good feelings. This was definitely something he didn’t want to happen. He also wasn’t that big on getting his butt handed to him by someone he outweighed by at least thirty pounds of enhanced muscle.
“Getting stuck with a spear is going to ruin my schedule for the week.”
Fortunately, he didn’t have to. Her knees kept his arms from swinging. Knees were good for that sort of thing, but the thing about knees was that they were narrow and pointy. That left him with a limited range of motion. He shifted his wrist and aimed his web shooter. A jerk of his wrists and he was moving, while she was tumbling off him.
As soon as he was free he spun to face her, crouching and hoping to take advantage of her confusion and pin her in place. The confusion was his, though.
The woman was gone. He’d only had his eyes off of her for a few seconds, but she’d vanished. Maybe inside the building. Maybe she’d leapt to another rooftop. She could be hiding, or she might have already scrambled down to the street. A person with a hand on their face couldn’t exactly blend in, but this was still New York, and she wouldn’t stand out either. If he saw someone like that he’d figure she was on her way to a theater or dance company rehearsal. He wouldn’t immediately wonder if she’d just been fighting a super-cool hero dude on a roof.
Spider-Man stood and unconsciously scratched the back of his head. He hadn’t been stuck like a figurative pig. That was good. He’d managed to get smacked around by a woman who clearly did a lot of strength training, but whose main ability seemed to be watching Spider-Man exercise tapes. That was bad. Also bad was that whatever connection she had to the murderous imitator—assuming there was one—remained unknown.
So, in short, an unimpressive display and nothing to show for himself.
The Roxxon Blackridge contractor was long gone, oblivious to the drama that had played out above his head. Apparently he’d been sent by Fisk to take pictures of an ordinary woman with an extremely troubled life. Another mystery, which was also not a win. It certainly didn’t bring him any closer to Anika’s murderer.
It was, at least, a clue. And any morning that wasn’t a complete disaster was what counted as a victory these days.
PETER was supposed to meet MJ for coffee that morning, which was good. He needed someone to talk to. He still didn’t know what to make of the woman, who seemed so desperately to want to hurt him, to expose him. There was something about her silence that left him unsettled. Somehow the whole thing had felt personal, yet as far as he could remember, they had never met.
When he talked about it with MJ, she also found the whole thing confounding.
“Maybe she knew someone who died at the sandwich place,” he said, keeping his voice quiet so no one could hear them. “Now she blames Spider-Man for it.”
“Not likely.” MJ shook her head. “From what you’re telling me, she’d need months, maybe years, to imitate your moves the way she did. You can’t just pick up something like that, even if you’re already an athlete.”
That made sense. “But how did she know where to find me?” he said. “Even I didn’t know where I was going.”
“She must have followed you,” MJ replied. “It’s the only explanation. That means—” she cut herself off. “You said you took a picture of her.” Peter nodded and reached for his phone. He’d transferred a photo over from the camera built into his suit.
The picture was somewhat blurry. MJ looked at it and shook her head.
“I’ve never seen anyone who looks like that. Her outfit is kind of generic—like clothes she bought at a store, rather than a suit that a hero or villain would have custom-made. I can show it around the newsroom, though. Maybe someone there will recognize it.”
He nodded. “There’s got to be a story to her. And that handprint. It must mean something.”
“Hold on,” she said. “Let me look again. I’m getting a weird feeling.”
“Your MJ-Sense?” he asked.
She laughed. “Exactly. I don’t know. It’s kind of a déjà vu.” She looked at the photo again. “There’s something familiar about her. I’ve seen her somewhere, but I can’t—” Her eyes went wide. “Oh my God.”
“That sounds like recognition.”
She slid the phone back. “That’s Maya Lopez, Fisk’s creepy assistant. I’ve met her a couple of times. She sat in on my last meeting with him and never said a thing.”
“How many meetings have you had, exactly?”
“Peter, stay focused. I have no idea what she does for Fisk, but she’s a top player. It’s really odd, because she’s clearly pretty young—younger than we are—but he seems to take her seriously. His eyes are on her a lot.”
“You think she’s his special lady on the side?”
MJ squinted as she thought about it. “I never got a sense that there was anything romantic or sexual in Fisk’s interactions with this woman, and he’s famously devoted to his wife. She’s out of the country right now, but I don’t think it makes a difference to a guy like that. As weird as it sounds, it’s like Fisk actually cares about Lopez, or something nearly human like that. He definitely cares what she thinks.”
“Huh,” Peter said.
“Maybe he’s grooming her for something—and when you said she must have followed you, that meant she had to pick you up somewhere. So she either knows where you live, or she spotted you at Fisk Tower and started to follow you from there.”
Peter leaned back. “So Fisk has two Spider-Man impersonators working for him. One is assigned the job of making me look bad, and the other one has instructions to turn me into a human pincushion. The two seem kind of at odds.”
MJ nodded. “Something’s definitely not right.”
“The way she came after me was strange,” he said, thinking back. “As angry as she was, it felt—I don’t know—personal. It was like the hatred was coming off her in waves, even though she never said a word. Hardly even grunted.”
“So maybe she’s doing this on her own,” MJ offered, “which could mean Fisk doesn’t know she’s trying to kill you. It could be something going on inside Fisk Tower that Kingpin himself might not even know about. I guess for now I’ll see what I can find out about her. Also, did you get a clearer picture of the spear?”
“I think so. Why?”
“Just a hunch,” she said, “but if it’s an antique, maybe it’s distinctive. It might tell us something. It might be another lead pointing back to Fisk.”
Peter sighed. “MJ, I know you’re not going to want to hear this, but maybe that’s not such a great idea. You’re talking about monkeying around with Fisk’s inner circle—his personal life. People have been beaten to death just for thinking about insulting his wife. If this woman actually means something to him, then he’s not going to play nice.”
“Maybe I should pass the story on to someone else then,” she said testily.
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
She folded her arms. “It’s not?”
Okay, it was precisely what he was saying, now that he thought about it. “I’ve seen this before with reporters—people I actually cared about. They think their pursuit of the truth will somehow protect them, and they end up in car accidents or home invasions or the sudden need, without any history, to take their own lives. You’re not immune to any of that, just because Fisk pretends to be charmed by you.”
“I know all of this,” she said. “I also know how to cover my tracks.”
“The graveyard is full of reporters who knew how to cover their tracks.”
“And our society depends on reporters who know never to back down,” she snapped. “Are you saying I should give up and go home?”
“Of course not, but…” He let himself trail off, because he had no idea how he was going to finish the sentence. What he wanted was for her to give up and go home. He didn’t want her to give up on reporting, of course. He didn’t even want her to give up on reporting about bad people doing bad things. She wanted to investigate, and he respected that. He loved that about her, but Fisk was something different. He was his own level of dangerous. Peter knew she had no illusions about what kind of a person she was challenging, but that wouldn’t stop her. MJ’s tenacity was admirable and attractive and heroic. It was part of what made her special, but he had a hard time living with it.