When Peter had torn the lid from the coffin-like crate, his eyes had widened with anger at countless smaller boxes, stacked inside for efficient storage… another dead-end in his search. His heart was pumping and he drew breath loudly. Too loudly, he thought. He had to resist the urge to smash the crate's lid right there. The frustration was almost overpowering. He put down the lid and clutched his head with both hands.

Get a grip, he told himself. Your back is still killing you, and the thought of that missing kid is making you crazy. Just remember to follow the old Spidey-sense. If it's not going off, that's telling you almost as much as if it was.

He'd been Spider-man for a couple of years now, but was still mystified by the ability he called his "spider-sense". He knew enough, though, to know that his anxiety was hampering his using it, and he sorely needed to calm down.

The sound of footsteps outside the caboose set his nerves on edge again in a second. Through the grime-covered windows, he could make out a stocky figure, followed by a slimmer one, skulking around the yard. Heedless, Peter crashed through the widow and grabbed the larger figure in a tight bear-hug. Teddy cried out in pain.

"No…," Peter breathed, recognizing his quarry. Mary stared at the two men with fright. Peter dropped the gasping man onto the ground. "No!" he hissed. "What are you doing here? Get out! Get out of here now!"

"But we're just…," Mary started. She looked with frustration to Teddy. He didn't look like he was in any condition to make a hasty retreat after suffering for Peter's mistake. It was then she realized that she didn't know what they were doing here. Some madness akin to the killer's had gripped them, misleading them into thinking that they had the power to help a hero. It was a madness that sent them into the night, searching for a way to take their lives back from a faceless murderer.

She knelt next to Teddy on the ground. Watching Peter sprint away, she wondered if it wasn't already too late for that.

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The sound of shattering glass followed by a cry of pain made Bobby and Nancy jump. Bobby felt paralyzed, well aware that someone was hurt, but too unsure of the circumstance. Nancy just shivered and huddled close to him. Still, they couldn't help but be a little relieved for their own safety, as the noise had come from some distance away.

Bobby stared at the door through which they'd entered the maintenance building. They'd shut it behind them, and now it served as a barrier between them and the commotion outside. Though the intent to help had brought them here, neither found themselves willing to traverse that barrier now.

"I'm calling the cops," Nancy whispered finally. She began digging around in her purse for her cell phone.

"Parker!" a gravelly voice screamed from somewhere else inside the building. "Come out, you damned coward, or this kid is gonna die!" Nancy dropped the purse.

Quickly, Bobby put a hand over her mouth as gently as he could, while she began whimpering with uncontrolled terror.

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"What the hell was that?" Alfred asked Madison as they moved cautiously in the direction of the sound of the broken glass.

"I don't want to know," she said. "I just don't want to know."

Running footsteps approached them at a superhuman pace. They turned their heads, trying to find the source. Madison saw the figure sprinting toward them first, barely having enough time to alert Alfred. They were just poised to attack when they saw that it was Peter.

"No, not more of you!" he lamented upon seeing them. "I nearly killed one of you back there! This isn't a game; you need to get out of here!"

"I know it's not a friggin' game!" hissed Alfred. "We… we were just trying to help, okay? Maddie and I checked all over that side of the yard," he said, gesturing vaguely behind him. "The killer's got to be over here somewhere."

"You're lucky you're not dead!" Peter said grimly. "You're just damned lucky, that's all." He was about to say more when he heard his name on the wind. It was close but muffled, and he turned in the direction of the maintenance building.

"Holy shit," said Alfred, turning white. "Bobby and Nancy went in there."

"Get the other two… and anyone else you brought… and go! Now!" Peter tore off toward the building after issuing this final command. Madison spied Teddy and Mary further away, by an ancient locomotive.

"So, what do we do now, Maddie?" Alfred asked.

"Let's get them," she said, pointing at the pair in the distance. "And it's "Madison", by the way." She shook her head and laughed off her nervousness. "It really pisses me off when you shorten it, you know."

"I know," he admitted, smiling. "I was wondering when you'd get around to calling me on it…. So are we gettin' outta here, then?" Madison looked at him.

"Like hell we are," she replied defiantly.

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Peter walked cautiously through the building, trying to pick up the slightest sign of anything with all the senses he had available. Numerous train engines lay disemboweled in the sprawling building, and Peter moved as silently as he could through the parts and tools strewn about.

"Parker!" came the shout again. It was probably less than a minute since the first shout had brought him running here, but it felt like a lifetime. And hearing it again startled him just as much as before. It was a rare occurrence to have his true name screamed in unabashed anger.

Peter swallowed hard as he peered around the last engine into a wide-open section beyond. The expansive area was lit only by the moon and the light from a few watch-lights in the yard, streaming in through high, narrow windows. A hooded figure stood inches from a boy slumped in an office-chair. The boy was facing away from where Peter stood, but the figure tending him scanned the perimeter relentlessly. Peter watched with dismay for several more seconds, noting that the figure's pistol never veered far enough from the little boy's head.

"I'm here," Peter called out finally. He stepped into view with his hands raised non-threateningly. He tried to stay calm, swallowing a tight ball of hate and revulsion. He instead focused on the faint buzz of his spider-sense, waiting for any spike that would indicate the killer was about to fire.

"I was starting to think you chickened out," the killer laughed mirthlessly. The voice sounded strange to Peter, but he was too far away to tell why. That would soon change. "Get over here! Closer, dammit!"

The killer stabbed the gun threateningly toward the child as the demand was made, and Peter stealthily breathed a sigh of relief. His spider-sense hadn't wavered a bit, revealing the bluff. The killer obviously had no intention of shooting the boy. Still, Peter did as he was told in the hopes of apprehending this sick individual peacefully.

"Why?" Peter asked as he moved forward. "Why did you do it?"

"Why?" the killer screeched mockingly. "I… I killed all those people… and you still don't know why?"

Though the voice was ravaged by years of smoking, Peter was now close enough to tell what was wrong. He could see it now, too. The hood of the sweatshirt had come back a little as the killer's head lifted to stare into Peter's eyes. They grew wide to take in what he saw. The face was that of a middle-aged woman, her features twisted into a mask of guilt and rage.

"I did it for him!" she cried. There were tears on her face, and the hand with the gun was shaking. "I did it all to protect Spider-man! He made this city safe! It was shit before he came… robberies, rapes, murders… all day, every day! You couldn't walk on the street at night! But… but then he came, and we were safe. And this is the thanks he gets? These people… they were going to sell him out! For money, for fame… they were going to destroy this city for their own greed! I couldn't let them do it. I couldn't let them take him away… I couldn't let them take him away from me…."

"All the people who saw Spider-man's face," Peter said, suppressing nauseous waves of his own guilt, "you were killing them… but you never saw his face, did you?"

"No," the woman whimpered. "I was in the next car back… but I heard them! As soon as the Fire Department evacuated the train, they were all talking and exchanging phone numbers! It was sick! They just wouldn't shut up, you know? They just wouldn't shut up…."

"But why me?" Peter asked, trying to buy time to think. He could be on top of her in seconds, but the gun was so close to the boy that he feared it going off. "I wasn't even on the train."

"Liar!" she screamed back. "That article about Joe said you were!" Peter inwardly cursed his inability to keep his own lies straight. "That's what started all of this! That frigging newspaper and that frigging bum! After that, all I wanted was to get you, Parker! You're the worst of them all! You're like Spider-man's god-damned stalker… always taking his picture! What the hell are you after? Just leave him alone! Screw you and your damned newspaper! It was you I wanted when I got that black guy at the paper! I was after you when that dumb little bitch ran out of the pizza parlor into a dark alley where I could cut her up. I found that stupid list they made in her jacket… idiots! I thought I finally had you when I started that warehouse fire… I had you, you little shit! And then some poor innocent had to die, because I got the wrong hospital bed!"

"They're all innocent," Peter whispered, fighting back his own tears.

"No! No one is a threat to him but the people who saw his face! And out of them, no one is a bigger threat than YOU!"

With that, Peter's spider-sense flared as the killer brought her gun to bear. Reflexively, he did what he would normally do as Spider-man, webbing her gun-arm while simultaneously webbing her legs to the spot. The webs covered her from torso to feet, holding her upright in a cocoon-like mass. She struggled against her immobility until the reality of what had happened caught up to her. She looked at Peter's face and suddenly knew that what she saw was the face of Spider-man.

"Noooooo!" she cried. Her anguished sobs echoed in the massive building. Peter looked at her with horrified pity. Whatever was left of her sanity was gone, shattered by the realization that she had been trying to kill the same person that she wanted so badly to protect. She looked older to Peter now than when he'd first seen her. Another decade or two, perhaps, and she might have born a resemblance to Aunt May. The comparison made him shudder.

Immediately, his next thoughts were to the boy. The child had remained still throughout the entire encounter, probably from fright. Peter gently laid a hand on his shoulder, giving a squeeze of reassurance. The lifeless body fell awkwardly onto the cold, concrete floor.

Peter screamed a primal, guttural sound, borne of shock and fury and utter helplessness. Still screaming, he grabbed the now-empty chair and held it aloft, ready to bring it down on the skull of the weeping murderer.

"Peter, don't!" cried Bobby. Peter looked around, watching as Bobby and the others moved toward him from the surrounding shadows. Nancy was trying to dial "911" shakily on her cell. Mary held Teddy up as he limped beside her. Madison and Alfred held hands as they emerged, one looking to Peter, the other to the child on the ground.

With a final yell, Peter hurled the chair through one of the upper windows and sank to his knees. He cradled the boy's body as he cried, rocking back and forth. His tears fell onto a bloodstained shirt that had a small hole ripped through the center.

"It was one of the conductors…," Alfred whispered to himself as he got closer to her. But the blubbering thing in the mass of webs barely looked like a person anymore.

"I knew that she wasn't going to shoot," Peter said with a quavering voice. "I just didn't know that she already…." He couldn't finish speaking. He just buried his face in the boy's hair and let his tears flow freely.

The survivors of the train clustered around Peter, kneeling with him and shielding him from the sight of the killer. Bobby took the boy from Peter's arms, and Nancy moved in to hold him like he had been holding the child. Teddy mumbled forgiveness while still leaning on Mary, who bore his weight without complaint. Madison put a hand on Peter's shoulder, and Alfred held his own head in his hands. They all stayed until the sirens came wailing in the distance, and Peter had to go.

And it was in that intervening time that they finally gave Spider-man the help he needed most… with sympathetic eyes, arms to hold him, hands to clasp… and quiet words of comfort and love.

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The sun was not quite up, but J. Jonah Jameson was already at work. Robbie had ordered a "stop-press" and was on his way up with the details. Jonah was on his second cigar by the time he saw the editor approaching.

"Did you hear that they caught the "Spider-man killer" last night, Jonah?" Joe Robertson asked as he walked into the publisher's office.

"Of course!" Jameson bellowed. "It was all over the late news shows! But I don't trust those hacks. What's the story, Robbie?" He perked up his ears and put down his cigar. Robbie swallowed hard and continued.

"Turns out it was some woman named Martha Roark," he told him. "She was 58… worked as a train conductor for 35 years. She'd been diagnosed a long time ago as paranoid and delusional. She was on meds for it, but the police figure that she went off them about the same time that Doc Ock attacked the train, and then she went downhill from there…. They aren't releasing a name, but they're saying that her last victim was a just a 10-year-old kid. It makes me sick to think about it, Jonah. I've got a son of my own."

"Yeah," said Jameson blankly.

"Someone's writing up the story for the morning edition, but how do you want to play the Spider-man angle?" Robbie waited anxiously for Jameson's response. His stoic superior considered the question for some time.

"Play it down," was the reply.

"Down?"

"You heard me," Jonah said with frustration. "Play it down! Some nut goes on a killing spree because he thinks aliens told him to, we're not gonna go writing an article about Martians, are we?"

"No, sir," Robbie said gratefully. The smile faded when he remembered what other news he had to deliver. "Oh… and one more thing…. There're some people down in the lobby. Now that the killer's in jail, they want to sell us Spider-man's description." Robbie looked to his boss with uncertainty. Jameson puffed his cigar in silence.

"Send 'em home, Robbie," he said. He turned his chair to face the window. "Send 'em all home…."

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"I still have no idea what it says," Mark rasped, handing his hastily scrawled note back to Peter. He could speak again, but not as well as before. "I don't even remember writing it." That made sense to Peter. Mark's mind had been swimming in painkillers at the time. No one else had been able to make it out, either. It might be something that Mark could laugh about in the future… some day, but not yet.

"I guess it doesn't matter anymore," Peter said solemnly.

"Hey," said Mark, "you better not still be beating yourself up about all this. Even the Bugle isn't pinning this on Spider-man…. You did the best you could."

"Thanks, Mark…," Peter said. It wasn't the first time Mark had told him that. Peter wondered how many more times he'd have to hear it before he believed it.

A little later, he was stepping out of the hospital and making his way down the street. It had been days since the killer had been caught, and he hadn't visited Mark Greer on each of them, but he tried.

Other than these visits, Peter was doing his best to put it all behind him. But fate has a way of sundering such plans, and bringing old pain back to light, if only for a moment. He glanced at the Bugle's headline as it lay on a street-vendor's stand:

SPIDER-MAN KILLER DIES PROTECTING SECRET

Peter read as the paper told of Martha Roark's last hours, beaten to death by some of her fellow inmates. Onlookers interviewed by the guards after the fact reported that the assailants were demanding Spider-man's description, though Martha took the beating without saying a word. They'd only assumed that she had it, anyway.

"Hey," the vendor broke in, "this ain't a library, kid."

"Sure," Peter mumbled absently. He laid the last of his pocket change down on the counter and tucked the Bugle under his arm.

The very next trashcan he passed by, he stuffed the paper in and kept walking.

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END