Unlucky

Twenty Six | Website Killed The Printing Star

Walter Hardy (km) - Deceased

Behind me, the printer made a terrible grinding sound, and I turned. One of the papers was on fire, still sticking out of May's printer.

"That wasn't me!" I yelled, and darted forward to stamp out the fire.

Once it was out, Ned assessed the damage, and diagnosed the printer as dead.

"Holy shit May's gonna kill me!" Peter yelped, and Ned pulled out the paper that had previously been on fire.

"When did she last use it?" Ned asked, strangely calm. given what just happened.

"I don't know, like a few months ago?" Peter said, shaking his head frantically.

"And is May any good with Printers?" Ned asked, still strangely calm.

"No, I don't think so." Peter frowned.

"Okay, so if she asks what happened, we just tell her we don't know, we went to try and print out some papers for our extra credit project and nothing happened so we went down to the copy place a few blocks away." Ned suggested.

"Wow Ned, that was impressive, you were so calm during that whole thing." I nodded, glancing down at the computer screen.

Alan Guiles had had something to do with my father's death. I had known it all along, but now that I knew for sure, I was going to do something about it.

"Grab the rest of the papers we can hang out at the copy place until the website is done printing, and then come back here to finish cross-checking.

000

This wasn't good. The firewall was supposed to keep people out. If someone found out the connection between the website and the boss, Ray Silvano would be out of a job for sure. Maybe even dead.

Computer in hand, he ran as fast as he could to his boss's office, past the guards, slamming open the doors, and then he stopped.

Barging in had been a mistake.

The Green Goblin was standing in the middle of the room, hands folded behind his back, bag of pumpkin bombs at his side.

Ray froze, and Kingpin slowly turned his head.

"This couldn't have waited?" he asked, and almost frantically, Ray shook his head.

"It's about the website Larson and Barry created," he said, and Kingpin waved a hand, motioning for his business partner to step aside.

"You know how you asked me to put in a program that would tell us who was using the website and where? Well some kids just connected their computer to a printer in a copy place in Queens." Ray said, spilling out everything he knew in one breath.

"They what." the glass in Kingpin's hand shattered, and Ray did his best not to flinch.

"I can delete the website if you want. I just wanted to make sure you didn't want to send them a message or anything before I deleted it." Ray said, and Kingpin stared thoughtfully.

"Find out who they are." Kingpin said, and the room fell into silence.

"Uhhh, according to this, it's Spider-Man." Ray said, frowning at the screen.

"Perfect. Osborn, come here. Ray, I want you to help him send a message." Kingpin said, motioning between the two, and Ray's eyes bulged. "And you. Find me Larson and Barry. Now"

000

The copy place was small and smelled like hot dog water, but its printer was working fast.

We ended up deciding not to use Harry's dad's printer after Harry texted us that he was in a mood.

Peter Ned and I stood around the printer, to which the computer was attached via a janky looking cord.

Ned was staring at the computer screen intently when suddenly his mouth dropped.

"Oh shit!" he whispered, and I leaned over to stare at the computer.

Where the website had been was now a blank white screen with the words 'error page not found' printed boldly across the centre.

"What happened?" I asked, uncrossing my arms, and Ned unplugged his computer, grabbing the pages.

"They know. They deleted the website and are probably having someone sent here now!" Ned said, and I nearly choked on air.

"Gimme your hand sanitiser!" I said, taking the small bottle from Ned's bag. Squirting a large amount onto a folded Kleenex I quickly wiped down everything we had touched, ushering Peter out to where Ned was standing on the curb.

"What happened, did we get the pages?" Peter asked, and I shook my head.

"Not really, they found out we were on their website and deleted it- Ned, you dropped some of the papers!" I said, dropping down to collect them.

Once we had them all, we got back to Peter's apartment as quickly as possible, casting furtive glances over our shoulders.

Pausing in front of Mr Delmar's rebuilt deli, I leafed through the papers counting them.

"Okaaaaay, so the list stops about two thirds of the way down and- what the..." Halfway down the page I stopped.

Something was typed there, something I was sure none of us had seen while reading the list before.

"We got a message." I said, holding out the paper for Ned and Peter to read.

Peter's eyes scanned the paper and his brows furrowed as he read. Ned looked just as worried, and when he looked up I nodded, grimly.

"We need to warn Harry and Aura. He knows. He knows we're onto him. And now we have to figure out what this means before Friday, or we might not be able to stop it."

Spider-Man, you might not want to fumble this chance, after all it is a chance to stop bad things from happening to innocent people. You have until Friday. - your friend, the Green Goblin.