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Gwen stood with Captain Yuri Watanabe, chewing a piece of hard jerky that tasted like salted cardboard. At least it provided some calories to keep her going.
'So tired.'
She had been ferrying elderly residents and children to the bridge checkpoint, getting them as far away from the symbiote hot zones as possible. She had to take a break when her arms couldn't properly endure the weight of her web-swing.
For weeks, she hadn't rested properly in stress and overthinking. Yesterday was mostly sleepless for her. Her body was barely holding up after fighting those symbiotes, but she couldn't stop until work was done.
Shaking her head, she watched the civilians moving in three orderly streams to leave the island.
Piotr, the steel giant, held down the left lane with his imposing physical presence alone.
Amy Chen managed the center lane with her twin swords strapped visibly to her back.
Ava prowled the right lane in her White Tiger suit, her eyes radiating the type of bully presence, like someone looking for an excuse to hurt someone who stepped out of line.
Most civilians were smart enough not to test these three. But, of course, a few idiots had tried to push their way forward or start arguments about priority, but those troublemakers had been very quickly and very efficiently put back in their proper places.
Regular police officers also worked alongside them to coordinate the flow and keep things as minimally hectic as possible given the circumstances.
Gwen chugged a bottle of water to force the jerky down her throat. If possible, she would never like to taste it ever again.
'I hope things are fine on the cruise,' she thought, letting her eyes drift toward the massive vessel in the river where Dante and the others had drawn the attention of every symbiote. His strategy of concentrating the enemy forces in one location had worked flawlessly. It made the evacuation easier, but also raised the pressure on them. She could only imagine the type of battle they would be having over there.
In her current state she would only be a burden. Otherwise, she'd have gone to help them.
"Cap, is there anything else I can help with?" Gwen asked, turning her attention back to Yuri. "Anything?"
Yuri shook her head, concerned. "Others will handle…" her gaze shifted to the officer sprinting to them, breathing hard. "What happened?"
Gwen knew this was an emergency.
"Captain Watanabe, message from Captain Morales' squad. He's run into trouble and needs backup."
Gwen's eyebrows raised slightly. Captain Jefferson Morales was a longtime friend of her father, someone he had worked with for years and spoke highly of. Gwen had only met Jefferson a handful of times at informal gatherings, but he had always struck her as a decent person who cared about doing the job right. His son Miles was also a good kid—quiet and artistic. They would've been great friends if Miles wasn't living in Brooklyn.
"Give me the location," Gwen said before Yuri could respond. "I'll check out what's happening."
The officer quickly relayed the address of a relatively secluded school building in a residential section. Gwen tried to pull up a map on her phone, but the screen stayed dark. Dead battery.
'Great.'
Yuri noticed the problem and held out her own phone without being asked, then reached over to pat Gwen's shoulder. "Sorry for running you into the ground."
Gwen understood this wasn't just an apology for the physical labor, but she didn't want to think about it.
"It's alright," Gwen said, crushing the empty plastic bottle and shaking her head. "I'll report when I get there."
She threw the bottle in the air and webbed it to the metal beam, where it wouldn't become litter. She turned and swung back toward the residential areas of the island.
On the way, she passed the husks of vehicles burned down by the bikers. The evidence of the terror Norman had unleashed. The fear those people must have felt when they realized the thing attacking them wasn't human, that their car doors and windows couldn't protect them—made worse by the fact that the law couldn't help them.
This was why someone had stepped up and fought back.
'Harry's dad is a demon.'
There were no other words adequate enough to describe the scale of destruction and suffering Norman Osborn was causing. She had to stop him at all costs.
A few minutes later, Gwen landed on a fence and observed the school. Police cars sat empty in the lot, parked at odd angles like the officers had arrived in a hurry. Her spider-sense remained quiet, but her instincts kept telling her something felt slightly off about the whole situation.
She dropped to the ground and pushed through the front doors. The hallway was empty. Strangely, there wasn't any sign of recent activity even though Captain Morales' entire squad was supposed to be here.
"Hello? Is anyone here? Captain Morales?"
"Help!" A male voice called out desperately from somewhere deeper in the building.
She immediately sped up toward the source of the plea. Her fatigue was temporarily forgotten in the face of someone who clearly needed assistance. The voice called out again and again as she navigated the school's corridors, growing louder as she got closer, until she found herself standing outside one of the classrooms nearly out of breath from the sprint.
She paused for just a moment. This could easily be a trap to lure the hero to an isolated location with calls for help, then ambush them when they let their guard down.
"Help me please!" But the voice called out again from inside the classroom.
She realized she didn't actually have a choice. Even if it was a trap, she couldn't just walk away from someone who might need help. That was the reality of being a superhero.
With a deep breath, she pushed open the classroom door and saw a man bound to a chair in the center of the room with his back turned on the door. His build and hairstyle were enough for Gwen to recognize him.
Jefferson Morales.
Gwen looked around the rest of the classroom carefully, finding nothing threatening. Her spider-sense remained quiet, and that made her even more nervous.
"Untie me," Jefferson said, clearly having heard the door open but unable to turn around to see who had entered.
Gwen walked forward slowly and used her enhanced strength to simply rip apart the rope binding his wrists. "How did this even happen to you?"
"I don't know," Jefferson said, embarrassed. "I was ambushed. Someone hit my head."
Gwen was speechless at the absurdity of a veteran Captain being so easily ambushed. "Where is the rest of your squad? The officer who called for backup said it was your whole team."
Jefferson suddenly twisted around to look at her with wide eyes. "Behind you!"
Her spider-sense rang at the warning, and she jumped to the side. Several figures rushed into the classroom, and the door slammed shut behind them—someone had been waiting just outside for exactly this moment.
She found herself surrounded by symbiotes. Seven of them, each one a massive seven-foot giant, making the classroom look cramped. They might be the strongest symbiotes she had ever seen.
With her web, she brought Jefferson to her side and positioned herself between him and the symbiotes.
'I have to escape.'
Her eyes darted to the windows, but she immediately saw they had been barred shut from the outside.
"Officer, get those window bars open however you can!" Gwen said, hoping Jefferson's experience would bail them out.
"I'll try."
Gwen smirked. "Is it your master's doing, or are you folks evolving to set up traps?"
The question was to buy time to think. She couldn't fight this many symbiotes head-on, not in her current exhausted condition. It might've been doable with flames around them. What's worse, she had a civilian to protect, which limited her options even further.
The symbiotes, of course, showed no sign of humoring her. They lunged at her in a coordinated rush, and her spider-sense flared even brighter. She webbed to the ceiling and kicked the most aggressive symbiote's jaw. The creature's head barely moved from the impact.
She wasn't in any condition to overpower these monsters through raw strength.
That left her with only one option—distract and buy time.
Her heart pounded like a freight train as she pushed her focus.
She used her web to zip around the cramped space, dodging and weaving between fists and kicks—each one of which could knock her out on the spot. Thankfully, the symbiotes only targeted her, leaving Jefferson with plenty of room to experiment.
After five minutes of fighting the symbiotes for her life, a metallic sound suddenly echoed in the classroom.
"Done!"
Gwen finally heard the voice she had been waiting for. She webbed a symbiote to the wall, then leapt towards the window. Lifting Jefferson in her arms, she prepared to jump out, only to see nothing had changed.
The window hadn't been touched at all.
Her spider senses flared as an attack came from behind, forcing her to dodge sideways. "Captain, what did you mean DONE?"
"You are done."
Suddenly, an arm grip the back of her neck. Jefferson's. He brought his other arm to her neck and began choking her. Meanwhile, the other symbiotes closed in on her and struck her from the behind.
Gwen fell to her knee and coughed. "W-Why?"
More than the physical pain, she couldn't understand why Jefferson had betrayed her.
Jefferson Morales rose to his feet with a smile. That was the smile of someone taking pleasure in maliciousness. "You're finally in my hands, Ghost Spider."
Gwen's eyes widened as understanding crashed over her. He was possessed just like Felicia and her father were.
The symbiotes grabbed her hands and wrapped her completely in thick slimy matter.
"It's always the kindness and heroism that gets superheroes killed in the end," Jefferson said, except it wasn't really Jefferson speaking—it was Norman Osborn using the man's mouth like a puppet. He reached out with one hand and gently touched the edge of her hood, then slowly pulled the fabric back. "Let's see the face of our friendly neighborhood Ghost Spider, shall we?"
Gwen tried desperately to shake her head, but the symbiote matter holding her was too strong. She could only watch helplessly as her mask was slowly peeled away from her face, exposing her identity to her enemy.
She felt a cold rush of air on her damp face. "Are you happy now?"
Norman stared at her for a long moment. "Gwendolyne Stacy?"
The way he said her full name made her skin crawl.
"Norman Osborn," Gwen said, forcing her voice to stay steady. "Release me right now if you have even the smallest amount of love for Harry."
Norman placed one hand over his face and laughed, unhinged. "Oh, I could let you go, certainly. But the real question is whether you actually want me to let you go. You only got one chance to save your father's life."
The mention of her father twisted something painful in Gwen's chest.
"It's your fault he's in that condition," she said, trying her best not to scream at him. "You did this to him."
"And I can make up for it," Norman said with a smile and bent down in front of her, bringing himself to eye level. "Aren't you here running around playing hero because you're too afraid to go back to the hospital and see your father in that horrible broken condition?"
She found herself unable to deny it. That was the truth she had been trying not to acknowledge. She had thrown herself into this crisis and volunteered for every dangerous task not just to save innocent lives. Staying busy meant she didn't have to think about her father lying paralyzed in a hospital bed.
"I can get rid of your suffering," Norman whispered, almost sincere in his tone. "I can heal your father completely. Surrender yourself to me, and George Stacy will be alive like before."
Gwen stared at him while her heart beat so violently she could feel it pounding in her ears. "I—"
"Don't accept," a familiar voice whispered directly behind her.
Norman's eyes went wide at the sudden appearance of the man who had been ruining his plans everytime. He didn't even get a chance to speak or react defensively before an invisible force launched him backward. He bounced off the window and blood spurted from his mouth.
Dante materialized out of seemingly nothing. With one claw hand, he sent out multiple black tendrils towards the other symbiotes. Their connection was severed as the black matter was ripped apart. The creatures didn't even manage to put up a meaningful fight against him.
He yanked away the symbiote matter that had been restraining Gwen.
She looked up at him, still trying to process what had just happened. "Thanks for the rescue..."
"You were going to say yes to his offer."
Gwen looked away from his gaze, unable to look into the flaming blue eyes. Gwen was ashamed of the choice she'd have made if he wasn't there. Yet, he didn't sound disappointed. Or maybe he faked it to comfort her.
"I just want to help my dad. I just want him to be okay again."
"Too bad you lost your only chance!" Norman laughed as he pushed himself back to his feet. "This hero of a man, who is loved everywhere. A great father and a husband, he will die because of your actions, Ghost Spider and Skullfire."
"Stop!" Gwen yelled, aiming her webshooter at him.
Dante rushed forward at his best speed to grab Norman and stop whatever he was planning.
Jefferson's body suddenly ballooned up. His eyes showed a look of fear, what he hadn't shown before.
"Gwendolyne… say sorry to Miles. Tell him I love—"
Jefferson's body exploded like a bomb before he could say his final words. Blood and tissue splattered across every surface in the classroom. An invisible barrier had appeared between them and the explosion, stopping them from being covered in gore. Gwen was too stunned by what she had just witnessed to even notice his protection.
She just stood there with her eyes wide and her mouth slightly open, staring at the space where her father's friend had been standing moments before.
"No..." she whispered. "How can he…"
Norman Osborn had just murdered Jefferson Morales. And he had done it purely out of spite.
Her father was still alive, but Miles Morales had lost his forever.
Because of a choice she made.
***
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