Marvel's Shendu: Dominating the Multiverse

Chapter 165 Uncle Ben is Attacked

Saturday.

The FEAST shelter is located in Lower Manhattan, in an old three-story building with white paint on the exterior walls, beneath which remnants of the previous layer of green paint can still be seen. A line had formed at the entrance, mostly with homeless people and low-income families, some with children.

Uncle Ben drove Parker from Queens in his old Dodge, a forty-minute drive each way. The two of them didn't talk much on the way. Parker leaned against the passenger window, watching the Queens Bridge pass overhead.

"I'll help sort canned goods and blankets today," Uncle Ben said, parking the car in the alley and turning off the engine. "Martin said we don't have enough manpower, so I promised him I'd stay until 3 p.m.

Parker unbuckled his seatbelt. "Okay."

The conditions inside the shelter were better than they appeared from the outside. The floors were spotless, there were a few old sofas in the corner, and community notices and children's drawings were posted on the walls. A middle-aged man in a flannel shirt came up and shook hands with Uncle Ben.

"Ben, you're here early. Is this Peter? He's grown taller."

"Martin, the last time I saw him was on Thanksgiving."

Parker shook hands with Martin Lee. Martin had very white teeth when he smiled, and he looked energetic, more like a private school gym teacher than a shelter manager.

Distributing supplies wasn't complicated. Canned goods were sorted by type, blankets by thickness, and the names of recipients and dates were recorded.

Parker worked efficiently, deliberately not using his full strength when moving the boxes, carrying two boxes at a time, no more and no less.

Uncle Ben chatted with the people in line. He has a knack for putting people at ease, no matter who's standing opposite him. An old man in a military coat complained about the weather, so Uncle Ben joined in, ranting about New York winters. A young mother with a child seemed a bit shy, so Uncle Ben knelt down to tease her daughter, asking the little girl if she liked Sesame Street.

After Parker finished moving the last box of blankets, he stood behind the shelf for a while, watching his uncle.

Ben Parker, 52, an electrician at the Dodge factory, a veteran, has an old knee injury that causes a lump when he walks in the rain.

My salary isn't high, and I've been paying off my mortgage for fourteen years, but I still donate twenty dollars to the shelter every month.

Parker sometimes thought this kind of "good" was useless. What can you do with twenty dollars? Enough to buy half a case of canned food. But Uncle Ben didn't do the math. He never did that kind of math.

At 2:30 p.m., the work was finished, and Uncle Ben went to say goodbye to Martin, while Parker waited at the door.

My phone vibrated.

That number that I never saved.

"Martin Lee of FEAST has a clean background, but there are two unexplained transfers to an account under his name. I haven't found anything further. It might not be a problem, just letting you know."

Parker read the message and then deleted it. He didn't want to admit that he hesitated for two seconds before pressing delete.

Uncle Ben pushed the door open and came out. "Let's go, let's buy a pizza on the way home."

"it is good."

The Dodge started up in the alley, making a loud noise; the exhaust pipe needed replacing. Uncle Ben nearly scraped a fire hydrant while backing out. Parker instinctively grabbed the door handle.

"Can't you watch where you're driving?"

"Thirty years of driving experience, how many times have you been involved in a minor accident?"

"last month."

"That time doesn't count; that fire hydrant shouldn't have been there in the first place."

Old Dodge cruised along, stopping and starting in the evening rush hour traffic. As Uncle Ben passed Seventh Avenue, he signaled to turn right to the pizzeria he knew, where the owner was. Parker's phone rang again.

This isn't a text message. It's a listening app for police frequencies. Parker wrote it himself and compiled it using a machine in the school's computer lab. The code is very rough, but it runs.

An address was being called out on the channel: "Intersection of Ninth Avenue and 44th Street, armed robbery at a convenience store, one suspect, armed."

Parker glanced at the navigation. They were less than six blocks away.

He turned off his phone screen. Uncle Ben was waiting at a red light.

"Uncle, I'm getting off here."

"What's wrong?"

"I want to go to the bookstore. The one on Eighth Avenue. Ned asked me to look at a book for him."

Uncle Ben glanced at him. The red light turned green.

"Okay, I'll bring the pizza back for you. What flavor do you want?"

"Italian sausage".

Parker got out of the car and watched old Dodge merge into the traffic. He waited five seconds, then turned into the nearest alley.

His backpack contained his gear. A red and blue hoodie and sweatpants were folded at the bottom, his goggles were covered by socks, and the web-launching device was wrapped in his underwear. He changed in thirty seconds, hid the backpack behind the fire escape ladder, and then climbed up the wall.

Six blocks, two people ran across the rooftops, the rest swung across. The spider silk launcher still contained the old formula. He had tested a batch of small samples of Plan B, and the performance was indeed good, but he hadn't fully tested it yet and didn't dare use it in actual combat.

44th Street. Convenience store.

Parker looked down from the rooftop of the building across the street. The glass door of the convenience store was open, and inside, a man in a gray hoodie stood with his back to the door, pointing a gun at the clerk behind the counter. The clerk was an older Korean man, with both hands raised.

Parker flipped down and landed on the awning in front of the convenience store without making a sound.

As he climbed over the edge of the shed, he flicked a spiderweb, which stuck to the barrel of the gray hoodie's gun. With a yank, the gun slipped from the man's hand and flew to the ceiling, where it became stuck.

The man in the gray hoodie turned around. He was in his thirties, with a thin face and very bright eyes, an unnatural brightness, as if he had taken something.

"What the hell is that?!"

Parker stuck another spider web to his face. The gray hoodie reached to tear it off, but Parker came from the side and kicked him in the back of the knee. The man fell to the ground. Parker pinned his hands to the ground.

"Did you call the police?" he asked the clerk behind the counter.

The Korean-American store clerk nodded, his hand still raised.

Parker took two steps back, preparing to leave through the door. As he turned, the man in the grey hoodie cursed something on the floor and stomped on the shelf. A row of potato chips fell to the ground.

Then Parker's spider sense went haywire.

It didn't come from inside the convenience store. It came from outside. From southwest. Six blocks away.

He didn't know what it was, but his body had already moved. He rushed out of the convenience store, a spider web swung up to the building across the street, and swung away.

He heard gunshots while he was in the air.

The gunshots didn't come from the convenience store; they came from further away, mixed in with the city noise. Ordinary people wouldn't hear them. But he heard them.

He swung faster, the old-fashioned spider silk creaking slightly near its limit. He didn't care anymore.

Seventh Avenue.

The old Dodge was parked on the side of the road with the driver's side door open.

Uncle Ben lay on the floor between the driver's seat and the door, a patch of an off-color on the left breast of his flannel shirt. His hand was pressed there. There was a pizza box on the floor, overturned, with sausages face down on the asphalt.

Parker bruised his knee when he landed. He didn't remember how he got down the stairs.

"uncle!"

Uncle Ben's eyes were still open. He saw Parker. He saw Parker wearing a red and blue hoodie and goggles, which Parker himself had ripped off and thrown away. He saw Parker's face.

"Peter."

Parker's hand rested on top of Uncle Ben's, right there. The shirt beneath his hand was wet, the temperature was off.

I'm calling 120—

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