Only after Clark said that did Peter seem to snap back to reality. He immediately rushed toward Eddie, who sat there looking like the last bit of fuel had burned out of him.
"Eddie! Hang on, I'm here!"
Peter dropped to his knees in the water, hands trembling as he reached out to check Eddie's injuries.
Gwen and Cindy hurried over too, but all they could do was stand behind Peter and watch.
Only when Peter got close did he notice something that left him stunned.
There was a hole torn through Eddie's shirt at the chest, and through it Peter could see clearly that what should have been a fatal wound and catastrophic blood loss had somehow been treated. The bleeding had been sealed. Some of the other injuries had also been cauterized and stabilized.
Peter remembered the confused way Gargan had muttered to himself earlier, along with the signs of combat on the ground.
There was no way Eddie had done this himself.
So there was only one conclusion.
"It was Clark..." Peter finally understood what had happened, and a wave of gratitude hit him hard.
His brother could have handled everyone there himself.
Instead, he had left the chance to them so they could grow.
He had even treated Eddie's injuries and already called an ambulance.
All of it had been to create a real battlefield for them.
Eddie felt someone in front of him and forced his eyes open.
His vision was blurry. All he could make out were three people in strange masks and tight suits surrounding him. The blue figure he had seen just before blacking out was already gone.
"Who... who are you...?" Eddie asked weakly, his voice barely louder than a whisper.
Peter hesitated. He still didn't want Eddie to know it was him, so he lowered his voice and awkwardly altered it.
"We're just passing civilians," he said. "Don't talk. Save your strength. The cops and the ambulance are almost here."
In reality, Peter's attempt at voice-changing was a complete disaster. Anyone who knew him and had working ears would have figured it out immediately.
"Don't..."
Eddie summoned some last burst of strength and grabbed Peter's hand.
"At the corner... under the red fire hydrant..." He stared through Peter's goggles. "There's an SD card... it's got proof of the weapons deal on it... please... get it to Ben Parker at the Daily Bugle... you have to..."
The moment he finished that sentence, Eddie lost consciousness again and slumped over.
"The police are close. We need to move," Gwen said. She had already heard the sirens drawing nearer.
Peter nodded. He carefully lifted Eddie and carried him under the edge of an awning to keep him out of the rain.
"Cindy, web Gargan down tight. Don't let him get away. I'm going for the SD card."
The three split up at once.
Cindy used her web-shooters to wrap the unconscious Gargan up like a mummy and pin him to the alley wall so he couldn't escape.
At the street corner, Peter searched around the base of the fire hydrant for several tense seconds before finally finding the SD card. He slipped it carefully into an inner pocket of his suit.
"Move!"
All three fired webs at once. Red-and-blue, black-and-white, and red-and-black figures shot up into the dark high-rises and vanished into the night.
By then the police were practically on top of the scene, their lights already washing over the mouth of the alley.
A few seconds later, NYPD Commissioner George Stacy, wearing a classic yellow raincoat, personally led officers into the dead end.
When the flashlight beams swept across the alley, even George froze for a second.
A support wall had been smashed in.
A man had been wrapped up in white webbing and stuck to the wall.
And beneath the awning lay Eddie Brock, gravely injured and unconscious.
"Get an ambulance here! Now!" George shouted over his shoulder. He knew Eddie. He had watched that boy grow up.
George immediately knelt beside him and checked his condition. When he saw the burned and sealed wounds, he couldn't make sense of it at all.
"Lock the scene down. Get forensics and tech here tonight. I want the whole place processed. And take the one on the wall in alive. I want him talking."
Clark stood in the rain and watched everything unfold.
His dark blue suit almost blended into the night itself, leaving only the red S on his chest burning bright.
He waited until Eddie was loaded into the ambulance, until Peter and the other two had secured the evidence and were already on their way back to the base.
"For a first time," he murmured, "not bad."
He hadn't spared Gargan's men because they had directly taken part in Eddie's attempted murder, and because they were the sort who had likely done the same to others before.
Clark was not someone who believed in a strict no-kill rule.
In a world crawling with high-tech criminals and supervillains, mercy toward the vicious often became cruelty toward the innocent.
As for Gargan, the reason he was still alive was because Clark needed him as bait. A living lead would help draw police attention toward Kingpin and the hidden factories behind all of this. He was also useful as a sparring dummy for Peter and the others.
Basically, the traditional beginner-zone boss.
Which meant that if New York were a game dungeon, Kingpin counted as the real final boss.
And now that the evidence was in Peter's hands, Clark could already picture what would be sitting on his father's desk tomorrow morning:
A bombshell big enough to blow apart one of Kingpin's major operations.
If it somehow didn't work, there was only so much he could do.
A moment later, Clark disappeared into the night.
At the same time, the moment word about Eddie's situation broke—
Inside Fisk Tower.
Wilson Fisk, the emperor of New York's underworld, sat in that massive chair of his with a glass of expensive red wine in one hand.
The air in the office felt frozen solid. That was Fisk's presence. The presence of a king who ruled New York from the shadows.
And tonight, he was furious.
One of his men stood trembling in front of the desk, too frightened even to raise his head, reporting the latest developments in a stammer.
"Boss... there was a major explosion at Sal's garage. Gargan... Gargan's gone missing. None of his men made it. There aren't even bodies at the scene. The police have locked down the whole block. They're taking this seriously."
Fisk rose to his feet.
So many things had been going wrong lately. That blind man was constantly causing trouble with his little group of pests, and now some new player had started taking shots at him too.
On top of that, there was the new police commissioner.
And that damned Daily Bugle.
Everything had been turning against him.
"Sal was an idiot," Fisk said coldly. "Someone came onto my turf, touched my people, took my shipment, and destroyed a test rig worth tens of millions."
He stepped up to the floor-to-ceiling window and looked down over the city he had always believed was firmly in his grasp.
Now it was starting to cut back into his hand.
"Find out what happened in Brooklyn tonight," he said. "Use every contact we have. I want answers."
"And that mechanic, Eddie Brock..." His voice dropped colder still. "Alive or dead, find him."
He stared out over the city.
No matter who this was.
No matter what color suit they wore.
"If you choose to provoke me..." Fisk said softly, "I'll show you what hell really looks like."