The wait for the school day to end felt like it lasted forever, but at least by the time P.E started MJ seemed to be feeling a lot better.
When the final bell rang, Peter Ned and I were, miraculously, the last people out the door.
Harry and Aura had left as soon as the bell rang to do their own research into who the Green Goblin was, with the hopes it could lead them to Kingpin.
We spent the first few minutes out of school proposing their extra credit project to their teacher, something, thanks to Ned and Peter, they now had to complete.
The walk home was longer than normal due to the detour to get more paper and ink, and Ned tried to break the too palpable tension by talking about Star Wars to no avail.
Thankfully, May was out shopping, as the note taped to the door relayed, as it would have been pretty hard to explain why we needed to print more than a hundred pages of a website we couldn't name. An added bonus, May knew about Peter being Spider-Man, and she wouldn't approve of the printing of a shady website, so if she came back during the printing process it would be even harder to explain.
"Okay, Let's get to it." I said, dropping my bag onto Peter's bed.
The first fifteen minutes started slow because Ned needed to create the printing algorithm again, this time on the account he used for Spider-Man stuff. He had explained that if someone could reverse engineer a hack, they could find out who he was.
So while he did that, Peter and I looked through the names on the website to see if we could recognise anyone..
"Who was that guy, the uh, the name you looked up?" Peter asked, and I deflated.
"Alan Guiles... He was the prosecuting lawyer in my dad's case." I said, sneering down at my lap in distaste. "I know he had something to do with my dad's death, so I thought maybe it had been on behalf of the Maggia." I revealed, and as Peter opened his mouth to reply, the printer started up.
"Got it!" he said, setting aside his laptop, and the first page came falling out.
"I got it." Peter said, and I stood up.
"I'll go get the hospital pages." I said, hurrying out into the hall.
I unlocked my door quickly, finding the stolen papers from where I'd hidden them inside a cheerio's box.
I left my apartment, closing and locking the door before heading back into Peter's apartment. The printer was loud, and I could hear it from the living room.
"Ok! I got them." I said loudly, dropping down on the chair Ned had been sitting in. I split the large stack into three smaller ones, handing them out in exchange for some papers from the website.
For the first half hour things went smoothly, as it was just handing out papers, crossing out names and repeating.
Then, after the printer got too hot, Ned paused the printing process, and while he and Peter tried to find anything else on Kingpin via the website, I finished cross checking the lists with each other.
I was on the last page and the printer had started up again when Peter spoke. He was tolerating me, but he clearly wasn't ready to talk about what I'd said.
"Hey Gwen, what was the name of that lawyer guy again?" he asked, glancing between me and the computer screen.
"Alan Guiles, why?" I asked, standing up and walking over.
My heart stopped.
There, on the screen, was a picture of Alan Guiles, smiling into the camera, hair oiled into place for his picture. And underneath the assignments was my fathers name.
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.