𝙏𝙊𝙓𝙄𝙉 | 𝙈𝙞𝙜𝙪𝙚𝙡 𝙊'𝙃𝙖𝙧𝙖 🔞

1| 𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐚 𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫

Just another smoggy Saturday, nothing new, you think to yourself as you swing into the triage area of the hospital.

Within seconds, your spidey senses manifest as a sharp sting in your chest. It felt like something big, and to you, that meant that one of your many enemies had decided to make full use of the cover that the smog gave them. This time the goosebumps tugging on your skin lead you a bit further downtown toward the financial area. You wonder if this was the Rhino rampaging through Wall Street again.

That wasn't the case, however. You drop down on the sloping tiled roof of a building overlooking an abandoned restaurant that the contractors had left halfway through demolishing.

This was a densely packed residential area, you realize, and almost all the windows on the street had lights in them.

Most people hadn't gone to work because of the low visibility and the acidity of the smog. Someone wheezed and coughed over the unceasing blare of the Evening News in the apartment just below the roof. Just next to that, the prattle of an infant falls on your ears, followed by the tensed whispers of a married couple and the low melodious croon of Frank Sinatra drifting into the dreary air.

Your nostrils flare as the smell of baked oregano and cheese hits them, making your stomach grumble. You've been too caught up in dealing with the smog casualties that you haven't eaten since the previous night. You're beginning to suspect that your lightheadedness was hypoglycemia kicking in.

Far away, you could see the sign of the Alchemax Industries main office skyscraper glowing a dull menacing red through the burnished smog. Despite them claiming to be more environmentally responsible than Oscorp or even Stark Enterprises, their huge billboards advertising their eco-friendly agro products with beaming Cambodian farmers stood at odds with the smog rising from one of their burning warehouses near the Hudson River. Warehouse 17 has been burning for two days straight despite the Neo York City fire department's best efforts.

The Alchemax corporate lawyers had chalked it up to a short circuit that caused a fire but you know that something had occurred in that warehouse, something big enough to generate a sprawling cover of smog large enough to choke an entire city.

You wanted to snoop around but the rescue missions had been taking up so much of your time.

The pinpricks of your spidey sense dance across your skin in warning, making you breathe faster in anticipation.

You wet your lips behind the mask and whisper a spell of clairvoyance.

You feel a shiver run down your spine as your magic ignites your nerves, sharpening your spidey senses and expanding its range. You lean forward and close your eyes to pinpoint the source of the disturbance.

Your mind peels off the layers of stimuli one by one. You could tell that there was a pretty serious threat waiting for you inside the abandoned building like a ticking time bomb but that was about it. Usually, your magic-enhanced spidey senses could tell most threats like ghouls, the undead, monsters, vampires, werewolves, evil warlocks, supervillains, and straight-up demons amd eldritch gods apart.

You bite your lip— you were in the complete dark.

You leap over the edge of the roof and land on the terrace of the abandoned restaurant. Your gaze quickly moves past the empty barrels filled with filthy rainwater and mosquito larvae, the dirty syringes, the rusted needles, the cigarette butts, and empty plastic bags floating around like mini ghosts. The smog and the fading light render your eyesight pretty much useless, so you let your enhanced spidey senses guide you through the half-open terrace door and down the stairs into the darkness.