The Spider Pt. 05

"Make no mistake, Just John. You won't see me; you won't know you are in danger until I have you. No one ever sees the Spider coming, and once you are in my web, there is no escape. No one will ever know what happened to you or where you went. They'll quit asking someday, and you'll be forgotten, forever. You've had your lackeys looking into me. You know what I am. You know what I'm capable of."

John sat silently for a moment.

"Wow," he said, finally. "I will have to be careful with you, won't I?"

The Spider said nothing, pulling her mask off. She shook her long black hair free.

"But I've been doing a lot of research into you, also, Spider," John went on, finally. "I have a friend on the police force, well, he isn't there anymore. But he gave me all the information that they have about you."

She sat there wordlessly in the dark, drinking her wine.

"They don't have much... frankly, this friend of mine was almost a total waste of my time. All they know about you is that you summon them with your little alert buttons, and when they get there, you'll have the criminals tied up in your webbing, and always with enough evidence to prosecute, and the times you don't leave them with enough to prosecute, you leave them with a criminal hurt so badly that he's out of commission for a good long time. This is why the average patrolman on the streets loves you, Spider. This is also why you are an embarrassment to the brass upstairs. They don't like that you make them look unable to keep order in their own City."

She lifted her hips, slid her black panties down.

"But everyone knows that, Spider. I was starting to think that I had wasted my time with my cop friend of mine, and then I found out something very interesting. Well, I think you'll find it very interesting. Do you remember the Mercenary?"

She took in a sharp breath. Oh, she remembered the Mercenary.

She never knew where the Mercenary had some from, only that he had arrived in the City one cold fall and the word was quickly on the streets that he had come because of a bounty on her head, and he intended to collect it. The word about the Mercenary was, he'd been all around the globe, fighting for whoever would pay him the most, fighting for any side of any conflict, or both, if the money was right.

And here he was in her City.

That's all she had heard about him for a couple of weeks, none of her informants knew anything about him. She had begun to think that the bounty hadn't been enough, and he had taken off for a war somewhere that offered more money.

One night she had responded to a scream, and swung down into an alley where a perpetrator was attempting to sexually assault a young woman. She had made quick work of him, leaving him bleeding and gasping for breath on the cold, wet bricks.

The Spider asked the woman if everything was all right. The woman went into a faint, and slumped towards the Spider. Without thinking it about it, she caught the young woman as she fell.

And then out from the fog stepped him. The Mercenary was a big man, but that was nothing to the Spider. She'd been making big men fall for years.

He had on thick armor, much thicker than the light covering the Spider wore. He had on a helmet that covered his face and eyes, his right arm was covered in all metal and, as she found out, assisted with power.

The Spider remembered asking him what he wanted, but it was clear, and the Mercenary never said a word. She told the woman in her arms not to be scared, and to run, that the Spider would keep her safe.

The woman reached up, and made a move as if to caress.

Then the Spider felt a little prick on her neck, the tiniest little pin prick.

Motherfucker, she had thought. It's a trap.

The woman ran off, and the Mercenary approached. The Spider threw one of her boomerangs, it skipped harmlessly off the Mercenary's robotic arm.

The next boomerang missed wildly. The drug was already taking effect, making her dizzy, throwing off her aim. Most importantly, slowing her down.

The battle was one sided, ultimately. She fought him hard, as she ever did, using her speed and agility to land blow after blow. The Mercenary was strong, but slow, and he swung his robotic arm at her uselessly, her dodging his attacks effortlessly, despite the drug slowing her down.

They fought on, him lunging after her, trying to catch her with a blow, or trying to grab her. Each time she met him with a high kick, or a blow. Each time he kept coming after her, step by step.

He backed her up out of the alley, past the small jogging trail, and back towards the lazy blue river that ran through the center of the City. The river was gentle, and blue, and passive. Well out of place in the City.

She had stepped backwards, and knelt down into a crouch. Again he lunged, slow, strong, stupid. She stepped aside from his blow, and swept his feet out from under him. He fell with a crash, and she spun up into the air, and spiraled around in a roundhouse kick that caught him right in the head, with enough force that anyone would have been knocked down, never to get back up again.

But as she landed to the ground, her head spinning from the drug and out of breath, he did get back up. He got back up, and moving more quickly than she knew he could, reached out his robot arm and caught her upper arm.

It had been his turn to rain down blows, and he had shown no mercy to her. He had beaten her halfway unconscious very quickly.

She had been beaten, for the first time.

It was only the arrival of a police officer that had saved her, a uniformed patrolman called James Candy who had come running up, yelling at the Mercenary to stop hitting her, let her go. She never forgot James Candy.

The Mercenary had turned to face the cop, and for the first time it looked as if he might say something, but he never got the chance to. The Spider threw out her web, and caught the Mercenary around the neck, and under his helmet.

She threw the webbing up, high into the branches of a barren oak tree, and she had pulled the Mercenary up with her. His helmet had fallen off, clanging on the pavement far below. She kept the webbing tight around his neck, and as he finally let go of her with his super strong and robotic arm to pull the webbing away to breathe, she swung him out, over the beautiful and tranquil river.

She had dropped him into the cold blue river.

He fell in, with a splash. She sat up in the oak tree, dizzy, afraid to move for fear of falling. She watched to see if the Mercenary would swim to shore, afraid she'd have to fight him again, not sure how she could.

But that was the last she, or anyone else to her knowledge, ever saw of the Mercenary. She never knew any further what had happened to him, and assumed that he had drowned in the river.

Finally, she lowered herself down, collapsing into Officer Candy's arms.

It was Officer James Candy who took her to safety, and kept her safe, and healed her. It was months before she was back on the street.

"Yes," John whispered. "You remember the Mercenary."

She said nothing, unclasping her bra from behind her.

"He hurt you, Spider," John said gently. "And I won't let anybody hurt you. Not the Mercenary, and not the police, and not anybody else that the police send in the future. You barely got away from the Mercenary, and that's the only reason you aren't in jail now. Next time, the police will send someone that you can't get away from, and you will be in jail, and I won't be able to help you."

She said upright with a start. She knocked over her wine glass, picked it up, and filled it again.

"What?" she said, her voice hoarse in the darkness.

"You don't know." His voice was sad and small over the phone line. "That's who hired the Mercenary. The chief of police, Danby. Chief Danby was the one responsible for bringing the Mercenary here."

"No."

"I'm sorry. It's true. Listen to me: you know I'm not lying to you."

And she knew. It made sense. There was no way that the street cops would have stopped her, no way the Chief and the rank and file could have tolerated her stepping onto their turf. Of course they had to stop her. The whole nation was paying attention to the City, and her presence and success at providing the law and order that the cops were too corrupt and incapable of providing was intolerable to them, exposing them for the criminals they were.

"They'll catch you, sooner or later, Spider. They almost did, with the Mercenary. I remember that. I remember how worried I was, how I was afraid that he'd hurt you, afraid that you would stop being the Spider and go back to being whoever it is you otherwise are, afraid that I'd never know who you are, or get to meet you, or take care of you. I was afraid that they would catch you, and take your mask off, and put you in jail."

She shook her head.

He went on, "I decided to take matters into my hands, Spider. I decided that it was time for me to step up, and become the sort of person who would attract your attention, and make you notice me. That's why I made them promote me to vice-President at Maxon, Spider, to become the sort of person that would help you, and who you would want to work with, be with. To do great things with. Don't you want that?"

She said nothing.

"I want that, Spider. The police aren't on your side. The criminal underworld here wants to kill you- I can stop them, I can protect you from them. They both want you dead, out of the picture, in jail. They want to hurt you."

Her hands shook as she picked up her wine glass. She wasn't sure why.

"But I'm not one of those, Spider. All I want is for you to be safe, and happy. With me. You don't know, but I have great things planned for the City, for us. Come talk to me. Come be with me. You'll see. You'll know what I mean. We'll make the City safe, we'll do great things together that will-"

"You've been warned," she hissed, breaking in. "You have one week, after which, I'm coming for you. Make no mistake, you can leave the City, or you can disappear forever."

"Oh, Spider," John said, but she had hung up the phone.

She poured the last little bit into her glass.

She sat there alone, in the dark, for a very long time after that.