Spider-Man: Cumming Home - Chapter 14 (A Spider-Man Fanfic) (Patreon)

Chapter 14

Sympathy Key

I got the shirt over my head on the last flight down and left the hem crooked. The front door was still shut. The latch sat where Strange had left it. Midtown's tether had stopped hopping from camera to camera, which meant the heading had picked a place to finish, and the place was our threshold.

A vertical seam tore down through the air a foot past the wood, bright along both edges. Through the middle I could see a slice of night, a yellow cab bumper, and wet asphalt that belonged to a different block than Bleecker. Rain came through the cut and hit the hall tiles in cold drops. Strange shouted from the lower corridor and threw a gold pin at the nearest edge. The pin stuck and hissed. The opening stayed wide enough for a body.

Felicia Hardy stepped through on the balls of her feet with a white wig crushed in her left hand. Rain stood on her cheek and darkened the white fur at her collar. The catsuit was black to the throat. She had no mask. She landed, let the far street drop away behind her heels, and smiled at me before she smiled at anyone else.

"There you are," she said. "I asked a cabbie for Spider-Man and a magic house. He told me to get out at the light. You should work on your brand."

I shot webbing across the left edge of the opening and anchored the line to the doorframe. The silk smoked where it touched the cut. Strange drove a second pin into the right edge and dragged both hands together until the tear cinched down to a glittering thread, then to a faint scar that still pulled at the hairs on my arms.

Felicia walked onto our tile and stopped where a guest stops when the guest has already priced the exit. She took in the half-pulled shirt, the bite Gwen had left on my shoulder, the extra width through my chest, and the heat I could not shut off. Her eyes did a thief's inventory and enjoyed the work.

"You run loud," she said. "My Peter ran cold. I picked you up from a rooftop four blocks south and the heading came in clean enough to be rude."

MJ arrived at my shoulder with the traffic-camera feed still lit on her phone. "He has a girlfriend. She is standing here. If the kiln speech happens twice I will put you back through that scar myself."

"Michelle," Felicia said.

"MJ."

"MJ." Felicia tipped two fingers off her brow. The claws had not come out yet. "I stole a fare, a wig, and a city block. I have not stolen your boyfriend on the walk. I am still deciding if that is manners or pacing."

Gwen halted on the last stair. The hoodie sat crooked on her and her hair still showed my hands. She looked at Felicia the way she looked at a waveform with an extra hump in it.

"Your envelope matches mine," Gwen said. "Same human outline. Different vector. You did not fall."

"I jumped," Felicia said. "I like the part of a job where I choose the pavement."

"I am Gwen Stacy. If you knew another Gwen, keep the eulogy. I already sat through one."

Felicia's smile lost a degree. She studied Gwen long enough to make the pause do work. "I knew one. She is not on your staircase. That is why I used the hole."

Down in the holding wing the bars went in a staggered crash, eight impacts in a ragged line, then one shared quiet. I felt the hits through the tile. Strange turned his head toward the basement stairs.

"Synchronized," Gwen said. "They have not been."

"They are now," Strange said. "Foyer. Off the scar. Hardy, you will tell me why you asked for this address by name before I treat you like a package."

Felicia tossed the wig onto the side table. The white heap stuck to a ring of old wax. She opened a slit at her ribs and drew out a folded square of oily paper shot through with copper thread. The fold still held another world's rain.

"The address was on the map," she said. "So were you, Parker. On my side a man with four arms has been buying breach coordinates since your wizard tore a hole and you left the locks off. He paid in Oscorp bearer notes and two relics that still smelled like this foyer. I lifted his working copy off the desk while he lectured a slit in the air. He kept a cleaner sheet. I kept the one with coffee on it."

I took the paper. The sheet was warm from her suit. Three human-shaped pulses ran down the page in a tight, ugly hand, each one tied to a street grid and a body trace. The top trace carried a fall line and a blonde smear over Midtown stone. The middle trace carried a two-foot landing and a path across the same blocks we had watched on MJ's phone. The third trace was unfinished, ink still tacky, the grid centered on our lot and then dragged east toward the river.

Gwen came off the stair and put her finger on the top trace. "That is my arrival."

"That is the first harvest," Felicia said. "People who died in a spider's hands, or who should have. You came through because this Peter held the door. He made the fork louder."

MJ folded her arms. "And you are line two."

"Line two is a thief who already knows how to walk a wall." Felicia tapped the middle trace with one claw, careful not to tear the copper. "The buyer wanted me whether I volunteered or not. He had my building marked. He had a time. I cut his purse, took his hole, and brought the list to the man the list is aimed at. A stolen page is worth more if you hand it to the target while he can still argue."

"Otto," I said.

"A free one," Felicia said. "Not the pair in your cellar. He is stitching doors that open for people who already orbit you. The ones you caught. The ones who robbed you. The ones whose names yank your pulse around. He called the system a sympathy key. I called it inventory and I took it."

Strange pulled the sheet from my hands and held it to the hall light. Copper thread threw a small spark off his ring. "This is my failed working, copied by a man who thinks extra limbs are a doctorate. He is using Parker's residue as a tuning fork. Every open door teaches the fork a new pitch."

"I kept one door open so she would live," I said.

Felicia glanced at Gwen's bare legs and the mark on my shoulder. "Then you taught it contact as well. Heat. Skin. Whatever you two finished upstairs. I followed that across four blocks the way I follow dropped chain."

Gwen did not flinch. "If he tunes to attachment, the third trace should carry a name."

"It did," Felicia said. "He tore the name off before I cleared the sash. He left the vector. River. East. Steel over water. He also left a timer. I have been hearing it since I stepped onto your tile."

Light climbed back into the scar above the threshold, hard enough that the gold pins threw shadows on the door. A second opening tore at knee height and a surgical-steel tentacle punched through, Oscorp stamps punched along the inner plates. It went for the paper in Strange's fist. I put a web-line on the first joint and hauled. The joint beat the line. It dragged me two steps across the tile before I set my stance and wrenched sideways. Hydraulic fluid sprayed in a sour fan and dotted MJ's phone screen.

Felicia was on the arm before the spray landed. Claws out, she ran the plates toward the cut and drove a blade into the hose that rode the inner channel. The hose burst. The arm bucked and slammed her into the plaster. A crack ran up the wall by her shoulder. She spat white dust and cut again.

"Left coupler," Gwen called. "Mark four actuator. The housing is a decoy. The coupler is the break."

"I heard you," Felicia said.

She hit the coupler. The arm went slack from the second joint out and sagged, still half inside the opening. I webbed the stump to the doorframe. Strange drove a third pin through the cut. Sparks jumped from pin to steel to the wet hem of my shirt. The far end of the arm ripped free on Otto's side and vanished with a torn corner of the map pinched in its last live plate.

Oil shone on the floor in a ragged comma. My shirt had a new hole over the ribs. Felicia dropped off the dead segment, shook plaster out of her hair, and checked her claws for bends the way a lockpick checks a bent torsion wrench.

MJ picked Strange's dropped pin up with two fingers and passed it back. "River vector. A free Otto has the missing name. Our guest carried his shopping list into a house that already owns two of him."

"Two of him, two lizards, two live wires, one spare Goblin, one man made of grit," I said. "Eight. I would like the number to stay boring."

Strange wiped oil on his slacks. "Basement. If the pair downstairs took a beat from their brother I want their faces while the bars still mean something."

We went down in a tight file. The lower corridor ran narrow between ward-cut stone and lamps that flickered each time I passed, because the residue in my body tugged at every lock Strange had carved into the mortar. The cages stood in one row. Two Ottos in ruined gowns sat behind separate gold fields, both turned toward the door at the same idle angle. Two Lizards paced on glass-tipped claws. Two Electros sat on their benches with their hands folded too neatly. The spare Goblin had his mask off and his smile already in place. Sandman packed the tall flask from wall to wall, a face gathering in the grit and then flattening again.

I counted eight because I needed the count to hold.

The Ottos' heads ticked when Felicia came under the lamps.

"Miss Hardy," said the left.

"You kept the stained copy," said the right. "How sentimental."

Felicia waggled a bloody claw. "Your brother sends arms. You should ask for a raise."

The left Otto looked at me, then at Gwen, then at the heat sitting on my skin. "The key functions. The girl from the unfinished fall. The cat from the ledge. The third closes the chord. After that the doors will not require Parker's mercy. They will open because the chord is complete."

Gwen set herself at the barrier. "Define chord."

Neither Otto gave her the definition. The Goblin giggled behind his teeth. An Electro flexed once and a crawl of sparks died against the inside of his field.

Strange laid his palm on the left ward until the gold climbed. "They are taking timing from him. That slam was a metronome. Hardy, if you lifted anything else, it goes on the table."

Felicia unclipped a chain from her nape. A sliver of green stone wrapped in copper dropped onto the steel worktable and spun once before it settled. I felt the hum of it in my molars.

"Focus chip," she said. "He had three. I took one off the blotter. He used the second to shove me through. The third is still on him. This one sings when a tether is about to resolve. It has been doing that since your wizard pinned my entrance."

Gwen bent over the sliver, hair sliding across her cheek, and did the work she trusted. "Same envelope as my pulse and hers. The third heading is active. It has not chosen a face. It has chosen a line."

MJ watched my hand instead of the stone. "If the system eats attachment, and line one is the woman you pulled out of a fall, and line two is the woman who rode your heat across Midtown, then line three is the one who stayed in the house and still came down the stairs."

"That is a hypothesis," Gwen said.

"It is mine," MJ said. "I am not getting drawn through a hole in a floor because Peter left a door cracked and then put his mouth on the first result."

Felicia's brows lifted. She gave MJ a look that had money in it. "The girlfriend has a clean count of the room. The free Octavius does not need the chord to be tasteful. He needs it closed. If he cannot take the redhead he will take the next mass on the vector."

The sliver knocked once against the steel, hard enough to click. I caught it. The hum ran up my arm and the residue in my blood matched pitch with the stone until my vision tunneled. For a breath I had the East River in my head, the underside of a steel span, and a body-shaped absence standing on a walkway with no face painted in yet. Then the chip burned my palm and I dropped it. Strange trapped it under a lab glass before it could slide off the table.

"Williamsburg Bridge," I said. "Pedestrian walkway. The cameras will lie about the time. The heading will not."

"You are not going alone," MJ said.

"I am going with the people who can read a pulse and the woman who stole the page," I said. "Strange stays on the row. If that metronome starts I need the cages to remain eight."

Strange's glare could have taken paint off a pipe. "I stay because two Octavius brothers conducting in my cellar is an insult I intend to answer. Hardy, if you bolt I will write your name on the inside of a locked book. Stacy, you are on the span because the pulse still uses your outline as a ruler. Jones, if you come, you come as a person I cannot restock."

Felicia hooked the damp wig under her arm. "I come because he still has my third chip and I want it back. I also come because your lighthouse is about to stand on open steel and shine for every buyer who owns a copy of this page. Someone should get to him first."

Gwen was already on the stairs. "I am not waiting in cotton while an Otto finishes a chord on my waveform. Peter. If the vector takes MJ, you hold her. If it takes me, you hold me again. If the math requires a choice, you say the math. I am done with quiet catches."

"I talk when I catch," I said. "It is a character flaw."

The Goblin called after us for a postcard. We left him under the lamps. Eight fields still lit. The glass over the sliver ticked as the hum climbed.

The stretch between Bleecker and the river was wet metal, horns, and a news helicopter pointed at the wrong fire. I took rooftops. Felicia took the same rooftops without asking for a line, claws ticking on copings, the white wig flashing whenever she needed a cab to look the other way. Gwen moved like someone who had run scaffolds in another New York and refused to be slower than me on this one. MJ took the path I webbed for her and did not waste breath on wonder. Halfway across a billboard scaffold Felicia drew even with my shoulder.

"Heat trails off you," she said. "I could pick you out of a blackout. That is why I came to the house instead of selling the page to the next highest bidder. A map aimed at a man is worth more if the man can still bleed on it."

"That is the least romantic business plan I have heard this week," I said.

"You have had a full week."

Gwen, two chimneys back, did not let that sit. "If your plan was rescue, you would have thrown the chip in the river. You brought a live tuner into a locked house and you waited to see who reached for it."

"I brought proof," Felicia said. "Wizards do not pay in faith. Neither do girlfriends."

MJ, clipped to my line, snorted. "Keep me out of your invoice."

The bridge came up as a black truss over black water. The pedestrian walkway ran inside the structure, a cage of rivets and chevron plate, the river sliding under the grating in oily sheets. I dropped first, then MJ, then Gwen, then Felicia. Cold air moved over the span with rust in it and a faint copper sting that matched the thread in the stolen page.

We did not find a waiting body. We found the missing work already bolted to the inner beam. A copper circuit no wider than a finger had been bradded into the steel at chest height, three nested human outlines burned into the plate. The first outline matched Gwen's fall trace. The second matched Felicia's landing. The third sat empty in the metal, a socket the size of a palm, green stone residue already smeared around the rim. Beside the socket, in the same ugly hand as the map, someone had stamped a single instruction: BRING THE FORK.

Gwen crouched and hovered her knuckles over the plate without touching it. "This is a receiver. The Sanctum scar was the sender. He did not need the third name on the paper. He needed the first two notes standing on his antenna with the lighthouse between them."

MJ's voice went flat. "We walked the inventory to the register."

Felicia's claws came out with a small, offended click. "He let me steal the working copy."

"He let you steal the invitation," Strange's voice said in my ear, thin through the cracked comms bead he had slapped on me at the door. "Parker. The pair downstairs just faced the river in unison. Their metronome is in time with your span. Do not let the socket close on anything that belongs to you."

Heat left my skin in a visible sheet and ran toward the brads, filling the empty third outline from the inside. The residue that had been sitting in my blood since the failed spell leaned at the plate hard enough to buckle my knees. I hit the grating. Gwen grabbed one arm. MJ grabbed the other. Felicia drove both claws into the copper and tried to peel the circuit off the beam.

The socket opened a seam the size of a manhole. River air punched up through the hole, and with the air came a barge-level view: a crane deck, a lamp, and Otto Octavius in a dry coat with the clean map spread under his palm. The third chip hung at his throat. He did not look surprised to see us. He looked like a man checking a measurement he had already paid for.

"Thank you for standing where the fork can read you," he said, conversational over the water. "Two harvests to set the scale. One lighthouse to give me the amplitude. I have what I need."

Felicia ripped a strip of copper off the beam. Metal tore with a raw shriek. The drag on my bones slackened and then snapped back harder as the circuit took a last reading. I webbed the socket, then webbed it again, layering the hole until silk and rust packed the opening. Gwen jammed the stolen oily page into the brads sideways, copper to copper, and the ugly traces on the paper blackened as they shorted the receiver. The seam pinched shut on the last loop of web.

Otto's barge lamp dwindled under the span. On the clean sheet, before the view died, I saw the column he had kept from Felicia. Four traces, not three. The fourth was already inked in a finished hand. It was not a woman. It was a building cutaway of the Sanctum holding wing, eight cages drawn as notes on a staff, and a time mark set forty minutes ahead.

Strange's voice broke up, then came back sharp.

"Parker. I am looking at eight fields. I am also looking at a ninth outline forming on the floor between the Ottos. It has no body yet. It has your bridge all over it. Get back here before he plays the cellar like an instrument."