by David Liss
“You won’t have me at all,” she said. Maya ran at Fisk, picking up her laptop and whisking it at him like it was a throwing star. It spun, end over end, and looked as deadly as any weapon as it hurled toward its target. Fisk barely dodged out of the way before she leapt into the air and slammed her heels into his chest.
We’re not supposed to be fighting, Spider-Man thought. We’re supposed to be skedaddling, yet there was no way to tell Maya that without lifting his mask. And though fighting was the wrong move here, Spider-Man would have loved to watch Willy get pounded by someone a tenth of his weight.
Unfortunately, he had problems of his own. The imposter—Blood Spider, as he called himself—was coming at him. He was scatter-shooting his webs, so Spider-Man had no choice but to go on the defensive.
“Where’d you get the webs?” he asked as he dodged out of the way.
“They made them for me,” Blood Spider bellowed, “because I’m Spider-Man!”
The Web-Slinger had learned a thing or two from Echo about fighting someone who mimicked his style, but this was different. She moved like Spider-Man did, but the Blood Spider had a style all his own.
Spider-Man liked to think of his fighting style as employing surgical precision. He fought larger, stronger, tougher enemies, but he won—or at least kept himself from losing—by being careful and deliberative. His moves might look spontaneous—and they often were when playing defense—but he carefully chose the moments to go on the offense. A guy who was smaller and, yes, sometimes weaker than the people he fought had to choose his moments.
If he was a scalpel, Blood Spider was a hammer. There was no nuance in his attack. He filled the space with webs. He wound up for roundhouse punches and tried to move in for powerful jabs.
He wouldn’t stand a chance against me in the open city, Spider-Man thought, but in the tight confines of Fisk’s office, it would be easy to get jammed up. He didn’t have room to set up attacks and defenses. All he could do was avoid getting hit and try to hit back. This was going to turn into a brawl, and that meant they’d be playing by Blood Spider’s rules.
He needed Maya’s attention, but she was locked in a deadly face-off of her own with Fisk, who had the upper hand. He’d managed to get one of his massive hands around her throat, and was slamming her against the wall.
“You know nothing about gratitude,” he said in a disturbingly quiet voice.
For a gratitude seminar, head-pounding seemed like the wrong pedagogical tool. Spider-Man turned to lend Maya a hand. In that moment of distraction, Blood Spider shot out a web that pinned his right wrist to the wall. Bingham then released another that hit his left arm near the elbow.
The Web-Slinger yanked hard. Blood Spider’s webs were impressive, but—he noted with some satisfaction—they were an inferior product. They weren’t as strong. He doubted an ordinary person could break free, but he could. He was loose and ducking as Blood Spider tried to land a rapid punch to his head. Spider-Man hit back hard, a blow to his stomach, his ribs, and when he turned slightly, to his kidneys.
Blood Spider was momentarily stunned. Spider-Man unleashed his own wave of webbing, pinning his opponent to the floor. He then spun and sent a web around Fisk’s ankles. He yanked hard, using all of his strength, and toppled the huge man. Another web to keep him pinned to the ground, at least for a while. Hopefully as long as he needed.
He ran to Maya, lifting up the bottom of his mask as he did so.
“Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. “Nothing serious.”
“Time for the escape plan,” he said.
“But the thumb drive!”
“It’s not here,” he said. “And getting killed won’t help us.”
She nodded, took out the device—a modified car fob—and hit the red button. The window burst open. Peter grabbed her, found a target for his webs, and leapt into the air.
It took a lot of trust for her to put herself in his hands this way, he guessed. She didn’t look frightened, though, and she didn’t wriggle out of his grasp. As they soared into the night at speeds that would terrify any rational person, she didn’t even squeeze her eyes shut.
* * *
BINGHAM broke free of the false Spider-Man’s webs. They were stronger than his, he hated to admit, but not beyond his ability. Fisk struggled though, which was funny. He pulled out a device designed to dissolve his own webbing. It didn’t affect the imposter’s strands, but it did help clear out the room a little.
He went over to Fisk to help yank him free. Once mobile, the big man rose like a monster in an old horror movie, waving his arms and stumbling forward. His fists opened and closed in a repetitive, almost soothing, rhythm.
“This,” Bingham observed, “is where the big baby has his temper tantrum.”
“Goddamn it!” Fisk screamed. He slammed a fist into a desk. It cracked in at least three places and collapsed.
“Called it,” Bingham said. Fisk strode over to the safe and peered inside.
“It’s empty,” he shouted. “They took everything. They took the thumb drive! Do you know what this means? The entire operation is compromised!” Fisk drove his fist into the wall, sending chips of wood paneling flying like shrapnel.
Bingham hopped onto one of the remaining desks. He made a show of examining his fingernails, which was silly because he wore gloves. He liked the effect though. He liked showing Fisk that he had nothing but contempt for the fat man.
“This is one of those good news/bad news type situations,” he said. “The good news is that they didn’t get the thumb drive.”
Fisk slowly turned to him. There was a light in his eyes as his rage zeroed in on a new target.
“What have you done?”
“The bad news,” Bingham continued, “is that your safe is made by First Line. Yes, it’s earned its reputation as being the manufacturer of some of the most secure safes on the planet. The thing is, it’s a privately held company, which is why they didn’t make a big deal out of being bought by Oscorp last month.”
Fisk took a step toward him. His face was a mask of rage.
“So this safe, the other safes, the ones at all your buildings, all your hideouts…” Bingham waved his arms around theatrically. “Not so safe, these safes. We thought we knew about all of them, but that’s where owning the company came in handy. There were a couple we’d missed, but once we had company records, we were able to track them down. I mean, if you have any safes by another company, then the plan is shot, but if not…” He shrugged. “Then I win.”
“Osborn,” Fisk growled. “He put you up to this.”
“I’m not going to say I could have done it without him,” Bingham replied. “We’ve all got our skills. Outwitting fat people is one of his—but, there are some things Norm doesn’t know, that he doesn’t control. He thinks I’ll be eternally grateful to him for helping me find my true self, for allowing me to go from being the Spider-Man in my mind to the Spider-Man in the world. And I am, but that doesn’t mean I’m his puppet. I’m no one’s puppet.”
Fisk gritted his teeth and stared at Bingham. His nostrils flared, and his breath came out in short, hard bursts. He planted a foot hard on the ground as if he was ready to charge, but he did not move. Not yet. Anger might course through his veins, but he wasn’t ready to let go of rational thought.
“What do you want?” he demanded. “Where are all the thumb drives?”
“There is no all, Lardo,” Bingham said. “There’s only one. I destroyed all the rest. Osborn said to bring it to him, but I’m not going to do that. And do you know why? Would you like to know? I’ll tell you. It’s because this one is mine.”
“What do you want for it?” Fisk asked. “I can make you rich. I can give you power. Soon I’ll be in a position to pull the strings of this city.”
“Not if I hand the drive over to Osborn, you won’t,” Bingham corrected. “So, it’s not a question of what you can do for me, but what I can do for you. You see, there’s been a chang
e in the organizational chart. You still control Osborn, but I control you. That means I’m not just Spider-Man anymore. I’m also the Kingpin of Crime. I’m the Kingpin of Blood.”
Fisk charged forward, fists raised, head down. His will to think, to plan, to strategize was gone. He wanted only to crush the enemy. Bingham was expecting it, but he wasn’t expecting the speed the big man could muster. Fisk landed a massive punch to Bingham’s head before he could dodge.
The world went dark and weird. Ringing filled his ears and lights danced on the periphery of his vision. He was sliding across the floor. He would have been finished if he’d been an ordinary man, but he wasn’t ordinary anymore. He hadn’t been ordinary since the experiments in Osborn’s lab.
Osborn hadn’t found the cure he was looking for, but he’d found something else. A way to make Spider-Man. It killed everyone else they’d tried it on, which just proved that there could only be one Spider-Man in the world. That was why the imposter had to die. Every moment he breathed, he weakened Bingham. Anyone could see that.
Bingham had other problems at the moment, such as the giant who was barreling toward him again. This time he was ready. He knew what Fisk could do, how fast he could move, and that made it all the easier. He leapt up and over, landing behind his attacker. He yanked on Fisk’s pants, hoping to pull them down. Nothing would throw a guy like Fisk more than a good humiliation. Those pants seemed to be glued on, though, and Bingham leapt back to get out of Fisk’s range.
“I will kill you,” Fisk growled.
“You need to accept the new order,” Bingham said, leaping up to the ceiling. “You thought you owned Osborn. Now I do. I can still make him do what you want, so long as you understand that you work for me.”
He let the webs fly—four, five, six—seven blasts to his face. Seven was a lucky number, but not for Fisk, who couldn’t breathe. Bingham knew better than to punch him in the stomach. His fist would get lost in there. The face would be satisfying, but it might dislodge some of those webs. So he went for the knees to topple him, and then kicks to the ribs. Fisk grunted and writhed. The pain, the suffocation, the humiliation. It must have been terrible for a man who thought himself so powerful. Now he was just another stupid kid in a stupid town whose mother ignored him and who got laughed at by everyone.
Bingham thought back to another time, another fat person, another suffocation. The pain. The terror. The absolute and abject terror. When you did something, it was no longer something that could be done to you. Bingham realized this with startling clarity. He was setting himself free, liberating himself from his past. He was taking the final steps toward becoming Blood Spider, the only true Spider-Man.
He activated the device and dissolved the webs. Fisk gasped as his lungs filled with air.
“So this is how it is,” Bingham said. “You can be my friend, or you can be my victim. Which do you choose?”
Fisk stood there, opening and closing his fists, breathing deeply until it slowed. Then he peered at Bingham, and his face became unreadable.
“Friend,” he said.
“Good,” Bingham said. “You’ll like being my friend.”
He didn’t trust Fisk, of course. The man would betray him the first chance he got. And Osborn—when he found out he’d been outsmarted, that was going to be quite the blow. But they would learn. They would all learn. Blood Spider couldn’t be outsmarted. Once a person named Michael Bingham could be used and toyed with and tossed away.
Those days were over.
HE would have liked to have time to put together a smart plan. Unfortunately, there was only time for a stupid one, so Spider-Man figured it was best to go all the way and make it a really stupid one.
Everything was against them. The event would take place in a Fisk hotel. There were Roxxon Blackridge security guards everywhere. Norman Osborn was on the scene, which meant there was a heavy police presence. If that didn’t make things bad enough, the crowd was full of people Spider-Man cared about.
Peering from their hideout in a janitorial station—one with a vent that overlooked the ballroom—he saw MJ trying to interview the most prominent and wealthy people in attendance, ostensibly for an article in the Bugle’s style section. There was Aunt May, accompanied by her boss, Martin Li. Yuri Watanabe was present as part of the police detail, and J. Jonah Jameson. While there were times Spider-Man would have been happy to shove JJJ onto a manned mission to Uranus, he wouldn’t actually wish harm on his old employer.
Maybe just some mild public humiliation.
If it came down to a fight, the people he treasured most in the world were going to be in danger. That was a problem, because the plan involved it coming down to a fight.
The ballroom, at least, was huge, with high ceilings and balconies that overlooked the gaudy furniture and bordello-red carpet. On the other hand, there were glittering chandeliers that could come crashing down, so not an ideal location for a public showdown. But still—spacious.
Spider-Man was depending on Maya, because she had way more experience with this nut Bingham.
“He’s insane,” she’d explained, “but he’s predictably insane. He’s exhibited some of the same behaviors in each of my encounters with him. He’s a braggart, and seems to think he is the real Spider-Man. He’s aggressive and cruel. What gives us hope is that he has rampant hoarding tendencies. He keeps things, and the things that are most important to him he keeps close.”
“So you think he has the thumb drive?” he asked.
“I know he does. You told me what he said. ‘It’s safe, but it’s not in the safe.’ He has it, and he’ll have it with him—I know he will,” she said. “Or I’m reasonably certain he will. Like 90 percent certain.”
“What if it’s the 10 percent?”
“Then we’ve risked everything,” Maya said, “for absolutely nothing.”
“On the other hand, we have no alternative.”
“Then you understand the realities of our situation.”
If they were going to succeed, they would have to rely on the consistency of Bingham’s madness. This seemed to Spider-Man its own sort of madness. On the other hand, they had no choice but to try.
“It’s not like a king granting Fisk a title, though,” he said. “Osborn can say that Fisk will be the new commissioner of finance, but if tomorrow we get the thumb drive, and let Osborn know, then all bets will be off. It will be an embarrassment for the mayor’s office, but he’ll deal with it.”
“Agreed, but after tonight there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to get the thumb drive—tomorrow or ever again. Tonight at least we know the lunatic will be nearby. We know he’ll have the thumb drive on him. He won’t be able to resist proving that he is the real Spider-Man. But Bingham is powerful, not clever.
“No, if we’re going to succeed, it has to be tonight,” she concluded. “This time tomorrow Fisk might have figured out a way to get the thumb drive away from him, and then we’ll never be able to stop him.”
* * *
HE couldn’t help but think of what Watanabe had told him, though. A public attack on Fisk was going to make it harder for her to advance her own investigations. Even if they prevented Fisk from becoming the commissioner, they might be making it harder, even impossible, for the lieutenant to nail him legally.
He could second-guess himself forever, though, and that wasn’t an option. If Osborn placed Fisk in that position, bad things would result. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to deal with the crisis in front of him. He’d deal with the fallout later.
That was why Spider-Man had stopped arguing with Maya. He was never going to convince himself that this was a great plan, but he knew he had to go ahead with it.
She was dressed as Echo, perhaps to conceal her identity, perhaps because she felt freer to fight dressed like that. There was something else, too, he suspected. Fisk had played a role in shaping Maya over the past eight years. Echo was a role she had created for herself. Even before she knew about Fisk’s betrayal,
being Echo had been an act of rebellion. He understood what it was to put on a costume and feel liberated from your ordinary life. She probably needed that even more than he did.
The party had been going for more than an hour when Echo tapped him on his shoulder.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Some kind of a sign that the time is right. An indication that Bingham is here. If I go out there, and he’s not even watching, it’s going to be a disaster.”
“He’s here,” she said. “I’m sure of it. He loves to spy on people, and he won’t be able to resist watching how things play out. But even if he’s not, your appearance will make the news, so you’ll just have to wait for him.”
“Basically, keep from getting shot by cops for—what? —twenty, thirty minutes until he can get here?”
“If he’s close,” she said. “You’d better hope he’s not out in Brooklyn.”
“You know, I think you were easier to deal with before you discovered humor.”
“I’m telling you he’ll show,” she said. “This is the gamble. We’re betting on it, but a bet is never a sure thing. We have to put everything on the line, and hope for the best.”
That was probably the best pep talk he was going to get. So he pulled down the bottom half of his mask, but then he turned back to her and rolled it back up to expose his mouth again.
“What?” she asked.
“Before we get started,” he said, “I should probably pee.”
* * *
“LADIES and gentlemen, may I have your attention for a moment?”
The room went silent as all conversations came to a halt. The piano quartet stopped playing. He winced at the sound of MJ doing a facepalm. She had to think this was the most idiotic stunt of his career, and he wasn’t entirely sure she was wrong. Definitely top ten.
Someone should really do a supercut.
“I just want to offer a few words about my friend, Wilson Fisk,” Spider-Man said loudly, standing with his feet on the ceiling. “Businessman, philanthropist, kingpin, super gigantic dude. You all know him. You all hate him, but you have to pretend to like him because you don’t want to wake up with a horse’s head between the sheets.”
