"Yeah, hello, 911? I just got home from work, and somebody left a glowing, supernatural metal ball on my coffee table..."
The recorded audio crackled from the speaker of George Stacy's cell phone. They were sitting in a quiet, roadside diner.
Silk sat across the booth from the NYPD Captain. Her red Silk mask only covered the lower half of her face. She pulled it down, completely exposing her features, just to take a sip of her black coffee. She clearly wasn't making any effort to guard her secret identity in front of a police captain. Peter noted the casual unmasking but filed it away for later.
Peter focused on the recording. Arnold Donovan. The name meant absolutely nothing to him. If the guy was a supervillain, he was strictly D-list.
"So," Peter said, resting his elbows on the Formica table. "How long did it take patrol to respond to this call?"
"Under thirty minutes," Stacy said, pausing the tape. "Which is an exceptional response time for Manhattan."
"But still enough time for someone to break in, kidnap Donovan, and wipe the scene," Peter muttered. "And nobody in the building heard the blast?"
"The explosion was entirely contained," Stacy said. "It didn't even blow out the apartment windows."
Peter frowned beneath his mask. He took his own coffee from the waitress, lifting the fabric just enough to take a sip. He set the mug down. "I need to see this apartment."
Captain Stacy didn't waste any time. He drove them to the scene in his unmarked NYPD cruiser.
Peter and Cindy sat in the back seat. Stacy kept glancing up at the rearview mirror, his brow furrowed. He cleared his throat. "So, are you two... official partners? Or something else?"
"We occasionally team up," Cindy said smoothly, looking out the window. "We aren't on the same roster. We just share a similar power set."
Stacy muttered something under his breath. It sounded a lot like Gwen's usual complaints about Peter being constantly surrounded by girls. Peter wisely chose to keep his mouth shut and stare at the passing traffic.
They arrived at Donovan's apartment.
Stacy wasn't exaggerating. The scene was bizarre. The living room was a scorched, melted disaster zone, but the blast radius was perfectly controlled. The rest of the apartment was completely untouched.
Peter stepped into the center of the charred room. He tapped the spider emblem on his chest. A sweeping blue laser erupted from the logo, washing over the blackened drywall and melted furniture. JARVIS's diagnostic matrix went to work, projecting a three-dimensional holographic wireframe over the room to reconstruct the events.
"Is that thing completely accurate?" Stacy asked, stepping back from the blue light.
"It perfectly reconstructs the physical evidence left behind," Peter explained, adjusting his lenses. "It just extrapolates the physics backward to show us what caused the damage."
The blue hologram formed a wireframe outline of Arnold Donovan. It showed him standing by the coffee table, making a phone call, and then sitting on the couch.
Stacy pointed at a hollow circle of light resting on the holographic table. "What is that?"
"I wish I knew," Peter muttered. He directed the scan to focus on the object. The wireframe filled in, forming a smooth, spherical shape. "Some kind of tech sphere."
The hologram continued playing. Donovan stood up and walked to the door. The door opened. A second wireframe figure stepped inside.
JARVIS couldn't generate facial features or clothing. It only rendered a rough estimate of height and mass. But the data was enough to show the intruder grabbing Donovan by the throat, lifting him completely off the ground, and violently slamming him into the sofa.
"That's our kidnapper," Peter said grimly.
The holographic intruder grabbed the tech sphere from the table. Before stepping back out into the hallway, the figure tossed a much smaller, golf-ball-sized sphere onto the living room floor. The door clicked shut.
A millisecond later, the small sphere detonated. The hologram flashed red, simulating the intense thermal expansion that had gutted the room.
"You told me the bomb squad didn't find any explosive residue, Captain?" Peter asked.
"None. Clean burn."
"I initially thought about the Extremis virus," Peter muttered to himself. "that thing don't leave chemical residue. But JARVIS's physics model says otherwise. The blast didn't vaporize the bomb's casing. It just scattered it."
Peter dropped into a crouch. He crawled toward the far corner of the room, near the baseboards. Cindy crouched opposite him, her eyes scanning the floorboards.
"Here," Cindy said. She picked up a curved shard of heavy, orange plastic.
Peter found another one. Then another. None of them were charred. He didn't bother trying to piece them together by hand. He held them up in his palm, letting the suit's HUD scan the jagged geometry.
In the corner of his vision, the system automatically assembled the fragments. They locked together, forming a ribbed, spherical shell. Two triangular eyes. A jagged, grinning mouth.
Peter's stomach dropped. The air in his lungs turned to ice.
"Spider-Man?" Stacy asked, noticing Peter freeze. His hand dropped instinctively to his service weapon. "What is it?"
"It's a pumpkin," Peter whispered.
He stood up, his fists clenching tightly at his sides. "A pumpkin bomb. Manufactured with a high-yield, heat-resistant polymer casing. Excuse me. I need to make a phone call."
Peter walked quickly into the untouched bedroom, leaving Stacy and Cindy exchanging confused glances. Peter pulled his phone from his belt pouch. He dialed Harry.
"Hey, Pete," Harry answered on the second ring. "What's going on?"
"Hey, Harry," Peter said, forcing his voice to stay level. "Weird question. Has your dad been leaving the house much the last few days? Have you noticed anything... unusual?"
A pause on the line. "I've been out a lot, but yeah, something feels off. He's been more distant. Why?"
"No reason. Just checking in," Peter lied.
He hung up. He stared at the blank bedroom wall. Gwen had mentioned Oscorp developing a device to treat Norman's schizophrenia. If the treatment had failed... if the Green Goblin had returned...
Why the hell was he kidnapping random warehouse workers?