Bzzzz—!
A shockwave slammed in from outside.
Screams erupted below the building, and somewhere nearby, part of the structure gave way.
Then the lights across the entire editorial floor flickered, and with a heavy bang, the building's power system collapsed. The whole twelfth floor dropped into darkness.
"What the hell is going on? Get the backup power on! Damn it, I hadn't even saved my new layout yet!" Jameson roared in fury, still fully locked into his work mode as his screen died in front of him.
But Ben, as an old soldier, knew immediately this was no ordinary blackout.
That shockwave had not been normal.
It was some kind of weapon.
During his investigation, he had seen references to one model in particular, a glove-mounted high-frequency vibration device.
This had to be retaliation.
The vermin had come.
"Everybody! Away from the windows! Get down!"
Ben vaulted out of his chair and threw himself across the room, tackling the intern in front of him to the floor as he shouted with everything he had.
He had barely finished the warning when—
BOOM!
The floor-to-ceiling windows along the outer wall of the editorial room took a direct hit. The glass exploded instantly into a storm of tiny shards, and with the strong wind blowing through New York that day, the fragments came slicing straight into the office.
The screams around him rang nonstop in Ben's ears.
At the edge of the shattered windows, four figures in specialized gear swung in on rappel lines.
The man in front wore a yellow-and-brown reinforced suit, and on his forearms were two customized metal bracers, the very glove-mounted high-frequency shock devices Ben had been investigating.
Herman Schultz.
Known in the underworld as Shocker, and leader of the Shocker gang.
Behind him came three fully armed mercenaries. They were wearing lightweight exoskeleton armor from Hammer Industries and carrying assault rifles fitted with infrared sights.
"Teach everybody a lesson except the one named Ben Parker," Shocker ordered. "And burn every paper file and hard drive in the place."
The device on his arm lit up again as he raised his right hand and aimed at the nearest row of desks.
A sonic impact burst outward instantly.
Three desks, along with the computers and office equipment on them, were sent flying and smashed into pieces.
"Run! Head for the fire stairs!"
Ben shouted through the darkness, but he did not move to escape.
He knew they had come for him.
Keeping low, he used the office furniture for cover and pulled his handgun from beneath his desk.
The chambering motion was smooth and practiced. Retirement had not dulled that part of him at all.
"Jameson! Get everybody down the stairs! Move!"
Ben leaned out from behind cover and fired twice, without hesitation, at the two mercenaries advancing toward him.
He had no issue killing either of them.
They were threatening innocent lives. He was not naive enough to hesitate over that.
Bang! Bang!
Both bullets struck a mercenary squarely in the chest.
And did nothing.
If anything, they only revealed Ben's position more clearly. The chest armor on those bullet-resistant exoskeletons was far beyond what a handgun could punch through.
Jameson, after ushering the staff out, secretly doubled back.
He had a gun in his office too, and he had every intention of fighting beside his old friend.
He bore the same responsibility.
The two of them had brought this storm down together.
"Stubborn old bastard."
One of the mercenaries spotted Ben's position, raised his rifle, and swept the area with infrared targeting before opening up with automatic fire.
But before he could finish, Jameson shot him in the exposed arm, one of the few areas not protected by armor.
Immediately, all four attackers redirected their fire toward Jameson's position.
Whoever posed a threat got dealt with first.
They had not expected anyone to come back just to get killed.
"Figures. Reporters really are a bunch of suicidal lunatics!"
Outside the building, clinging to the exterior wall, Clark's eyes burned faintly red.
As he watched the bullets about to fire, he weighed his options.
Should he just go full one-punch god and grind these mercenaries into dust?
He could.
But he did not want the public to know he existed.
Jameson, for all his flaws, had the instincts of a real newspaperman. If something like Clark appeared in full view of witnesses, Jameson would absolutely make it his life's mission to do something about it, whether that meant raging about him across newspapers and TV, or turning him into a symbol.
Clark wanted neither.
So he chose another method.
He narrowed his eyes slightly.
Two impossibly fine beams of heat vision slipped through the shattered windows and struck the mercenary rifles with surgical precision, right at the barrels.
The mercenaries pulled the trigger—
But the barrels had already been heated to the point of liquefying.
The rifles catastrophically blew apart in their hands.
"Ahhh! My hand!" one mercenary screamed. His arm was instantly scorched, and the force of the blowback hurled him backward. The others stopped firing and looked over at their suddenly crippled teammate.
Ben and Jameson had no idea what had happened.
But they did not waste the opportunity.
One shot each.
One target each.
That was enough to drop another attacker.
Leaving only Shocker.
Shocker, however, did not care.
These were not really his men anyway. Fisk had shoved them onto him. Normally he did not bother with jobs that paid badly, but for the sake of the supply chain, he had had no choice but to show up.
Looking at the result, two dead and one wounded, Shocker simply kept walking toward Ben's position, ignoring the bullets Jameson was firing into his back.
They were doing nothing to him.
He did not care.
"You Ben Parker?" Shocker asked, closing in. "Mr. Fisk sends his regards."
He was preparing to knock Ben out and take him.
Nearly an hour earlier, when Peter got home from school, the house had been dark and empty.
The moment he opened the door, he shouted, "Aunt May? Clark?"
Then he dropped his backpack and got ready to keep working on his web-shooters.
Peter was alone, peacefully tinkering while listening to the radio and refining the device.
Then the modified radio he had rigged to monitor police channels suddenly crackled with an urgent dispatch:
"Emergency! Ten-thirty-three! Major explosion at the Daily Bugle building in Midtown Manhattan! Witnesses report multiple heavily armed assailants entered through the windows! Repeat, this is a high-tech heavy-weapons assault! Requesting SWAT support!"
The moment Peter heard it, the screwdriver fell right out of his hand.
Uncle Ben was still at work.
He had no idea where Aunt May was.
Clark was nowhere to be found.
Peter was still a kid who had grown up well protected inside that home. When he heard that message, he did not think.
He just moved.
He grabbed the first version of his web-shooters and strapped them to his wrists.
Then, still wearing the clothes he had on, he pulled on the most robbery-coded mask he could find.
"I have to go!"
Peter shoved open his bedroom window.
This would be the first real time he used his powers to save someone.
He looked toward the direction of the Daily Bugle, bent his knees, and pushed off.
Whoosh!
His body launched into the night sky.
As gravity started dragging him back down, he raised his right hand and hit the trigger in his palm.
Pew!
A strand of white web shot from the web-shooter and latched onto an apartment building ahead of him at blinding speed.
"Hi!" Peter even found time to wave at some random kid who saw him, then immediately kept moving.
He yanked hard, and his body swept forward through the air in a perfect pendulum arc.