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| Issue #15 July 2009 |
"Return of the King" Written by Andrew Gabriel |
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Wilson Fisk strode off the main stage of the Roxxon Energy Conference Center with the confidence of a man who was about to receive the world on a silver platter. He had just finished his third speech to the gathered corporate leaders at the first annual Corporate Cooperation Conference, and the press pool was still hanging on his every word.
To the public, he had returned to New York from a long absence, a man prepared to right the corporate wrongs that had plagued business in this city for the last couple of years. His company, Fisk Enterprises, would be at the forefront of this new era of ‘clean’ business.
Beneath the surface of this massive business man, however, hid the blood thirsty, cunning objectives of a ruthless crime lord…one on the verge of reclaiming New York City’s underworld as his own. His pawns were in position and his plans were being set in motion.
Fisk smiled and waved to a group of photographers as he walked to the V.I.P. area of the conference center. On the inside, the Kingpin was grinning as well, pleased to be regaining his stature as top dog in the city that he had always loved.
“Mr. Fisk.”
The Kingpin turned to face his personal assistant coming to meet him at the entrance to the V.I.P. section. Wayne Gremil was a brown haired, green-eyed man in his late twenties. Holding a briefcase, with a hands-free cell phone strapped to his ear, what the young man lacked in size, he certainly made-up in determination.
“Are we on schedule,” Fisk asked his assistant, as the two broke away from the throng of other corporate suits.
“Everyone is in place,” Gremil responded quietly.
“Good,” Fisk nodded. “And our friend?”
“Where he should be,” the assistant answered, as the two made their way towards a field of waiting limousines.
“Well then, have my car brought around,” the Kingpin said. “And give the signal.”
Wayne Gremil nodded, and fell back behind his boss, as he whispered orders into his hands free cell.
Wilson Fisk stood on the curb of the parking lot, waiting for his transport to be brought around. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man staring at him. He turned to stare into the face of Steven Grant, head of Lunar Enterprises.
“Ah, Mr. Grant. How nice to see you again,” the Kingpin said with a smile, extending his hand.
“I haven’t decided if it is nice to see you, though,” Grant answered, refusing to accept the Kingpin’s handshake.
Grant furrowed his brow, as Wilson Fisk continued to smirk. Besides his persona as millionaire entrepreneur Steven Grant, Marc Spectre was also the vigilante hero known as Moon Knight. Like most costumed heroes in this city, Spectre had worked to take down the Kingpin’s crime empire on numerous occasions.
“If you are here to drag out the…implications surrounding my past, Mr. Grant,” Fisk said, as a black limousine pulled to a stop in front of him. “I assure you, I have better things to do.”
Before Moon Knight could respond, a series of loud booms echoed throughout the area, as the conference center shook under the shock of several powerful explosions. Sirens began to blare, and people screamed, unsure of what was happening.
As press and corporate people scrambled for safety in the ensuing excitement, a pair of burly bodyguards pulled the Kingpin into his waiting limo. To the witnesses that managed to glimpse Wilson Fisk among the mass of panicked people, he seemed shocked, confused, and even scared. But inside, the Kingpin of Crime was still confidently smiling.
********************
“C’mon, c’mon, pick up the phone…” Spider-Man whispered into a cell phone as he swung as fast as his muscles would carry him through the canyons of Manhattan. His mind was spinning as the evening air whipped every inch of his body. Ribs aching, he listening to the ringing coming from the other end of the call…waiting for Mary Jane to pickup the phone…
“Hey Tiger, what’s up? Everything alright?”
“M.J. listen, this is important…”
“Oh…O.K.,” Mary Jane responded, taken back by the seriousness in her husband’s voice.
With time of the essence, Peter kept the conversation short and to the point. The details could wait for later.
“I was attacked this morning, at the school…”
“Attacked,” Mary Jane cringed. “By who? Are you alright?”
“I’m fine…but a student of mine was caught in the middle…She was pretty banged up, M.J. I left her with an N.Y.P.D. officer, but I’m not sure which hospital they took her to…”
“I’ll find her, Peter,” Mary Jane said, sensing the concern her husband’s voice and what he was about to ask her. They may have had their fair share of relationship problems recently, but she could still read Peter Parker like the back of her hand.
“Thanks M.J.,” Peter replied, a slight smile forming under his mask. “Her name is Carla Jacobs. I’m not sure who she has as far as family goes, so please just checkup on her…make sure she’s alright?”
“Of course…and you be careful too,” she said, the whistling of the wind in the background telling her Spider-Man was on duty.
“Don’t I always,” he responded playfully. Though, the seriousness of the situation was getting worse by the second. He had reached the balcony of Felicia Hardy’s penthouse apartment. Though nothing could be seen from here, he sensed things were terribly wrong.
“I have to go…Please, look out for yourself and Aunt May…Just be careful,” Spider-Man said, as he ended the call, and replaced the cell phone beneath his costume. He had left out the fact that he had been attacked, because the Shocker had learned his identity from someone…someone that wouldn’t hesitate to hurt his family as well, he thought.
He pushed the thought out of his mind. The Black Cat was his focus now.
Spider-Man slowly made his way into the darkened master bedroom. His spider-sense wasn’t tingling; there wasn’t any danger. He prayed that he had made it before an attack could occur…he hoped Felicia was safe. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, however, that hope was quickly dashed.
“Oh God…No,” he gasped to himself.
He stared at the naked body of the Black Cat, his old friend Felicia Hardy, sprawled on her back across the king-sized bed. He approached the bed in shock. At first glance, Peter could have sworn that the bed had been decorated in dark red sheets. To Spider-Man’s horror, as his shaking hands touched the moist fabric, he realized that it was blood…Felicia’s blood. He quickly found the source, as he carefully examined her pale body. A long cut ran the across her neck, blood flowing from the wound…her throat had been slashed.
“Felicia,” he whispered, pain, rage, and fear filling his words.
“P-P-Peter…,” the Black Cat muttered, the words barely escaping her quivering lips.
Spider-Man stepped back, eyes wide. He was stunned to see that Felicia was still alive, never mind able to speak. Her chest barely moved up and down, as she struggled to breath, but there was a fury in her eyes that Peter Parker had never seen before.
“Don’t talk,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm, as he took an extra bed sheet, and began to wrap it around her body. “I’m going to get you help.”
“Bulls…B-B Bullseye…h-he d-d-did t-this…,” she struggled to say, her body shaking.
Bullseye!?! What the Hell was going on here? How many identities had been compromised and revealed to these psychos…and how many people were going to suffer?
“Don’t talk, Felicia,” Spider-Man ordered, taking a pillow case, and wrapping it around the gash in the Black Cat’s throat, trying to stem the blood.
He picked her up from the bed, holding her close to his chest, gently cradling her in one arm. Peter quickly made his way back out onto the balcony, then stopped; where was he going to take her?
He quickly racked his brain, trying to think. Even with the extensive injuries he had suffered over the years, his medical experience was next to nothing. Any public emergency room would draw too much attention, and perhaps draw that psychopath Bullseye back to the Black Cat to finish the job.
Then, a thought sparked Spider-Man into action. He took a leap off the terrace, gently cradling the wounded heroine in his free arm as best he could as he spun web after web across the city. He wouldn’t take her to a ‘public’ E.R. at all…
********************
It took Mary Jane a little under half an hour to track down the injured young girl named Carla Jacobs to New York Presbyterian Hospital, and about the same amount of time to travel over to the medical center.
She would have to play this by ear. Mary Jane had no idea if this child’s family was by her side, or who she would say that she was, but she knew in her gut that she had to be by Carla’s side.
“Hi there, I’m looking for a young girl…her name is Carla…Carla Jacobs,” Mary Jane said to the receptionist, as she ran up to the desk, acting more flustered than she actually was.
The receptionist looked up and smiled at Mary Jane.
“Lord Almighty,” she exclaimed. “It’s about time somebody got here for that little girl!”
“What? There’s, uh, no other family here,” Mary Jane asked curiously.
“No,” the tough African American receptionist said, shaking her head. “You’re the first one here. This poor girl has been layin’ in a bed, without anybody by her side!’
“I’m…I’m a family friend,” Mary Jane began. “I’m sure if you tried to call…”
“Sorry, honey, but there’s no one to call...we tried,” the receptionist began. “And that’s only the beginning. I’ll let the nurses fill you in on the rest. This poor girl…”
Mary Jane found herself ignoring the receptionist as she continued to talk. She had become lost in her own thoughts. She started thinking about the unfortunate young girl lying alone in a hospital bed, an unexplainable feeling a dread twisting her stomach.
********************
“Mr. Murdock! Mr. Murdock…”
Matthew Murdock walked down the steps of the New York City Supreme Courthouse and faced the crowd of hungry journalist before him with a smile. Just hours before, the seventh day of depositions in the trial of Gerard Howards had finished, with the prosecution gaining a strong upper hand.
Howards, Chairman of the Haller Chemical Company, had been indicted on charges that he had knowingly allowed toxic chemicals to leak, unrestricted, into a local water supply, possibly poisoning near-by residents. Being a rather large company, with a legal department to match its size, Howards was confident that the charges would be dropped in a matter of hours…that was until the prosecution signed on blind attorney Matt Murdock.
An experienced and talented lawyer, Murdock had fought vigorously to prosecute the corrupt businessman. It wasn’t until a break in the case; information gathered by Murdock’s alter ego Daredevil, ‘the Man without Fear’, that the defense lost all of its credibility. Late that night, Murdock had received a call that Gerard Howards wanted to cut a deal that would help indict all those involved in the illegal practices in exchange for a reduced sentence.
It was late, but as Matthew Murdock stopped near the bottom of the immense stone steps, he couldn’t have felt more confident in the legal system that he represented, and the work he had done as Daredevil.
“Mr. Murdock! Elliot Garner of the New York Times…,” a woman screamed, her voice hitting Daredevil’s heightened senses like a jackhammer.
“I’m going to make this quick and concise,” Murdock began, looking towards the reporter. “I’m proud of what has been accomplished here tonight, but there is still work to be…”
He turned his head, his sonar-like vision and keen hearing detecting someone in the crowd acting strangely. It was a woman, with flowing red hair. He knew her, but before he could pinpoint who it was, the figure disappeared back into the crowd.
“…Uh, I’m sorry,” he said with a smile. “I lost track of what I was saying…”
“Matthew Murdock…Daredevil…We know who you are,” he heard a woman’s voice say with a giggle…inside of his head!
He placed a hand to his forehead, trying to clear his mind. What was happening?
As he tried to regain his composure, he barely saw that familiar woman emerge from the crowd again. With a wave of her arm, a wall of flame erupted between Daredevil and the sea of reporters. As he fell backwards from the sheer heat from the assault, he realized in horror who the woman was…this woman who somehow knew his secret…
“Daredevil is a suit jockey,” the woman with bright red hair and a pale white face shouted with glee, as she stepped through the wall of flames towards Murdock, as the journalists scrambled for cover. “We would have never guessed!”
“Mary, stop this,” Daredevil hollered back, regaining a fighting stance, as he tried to determine which one of the insane woman’s personalities was in control. “You’ll hurt innocent people…”
“First of all, I think today you can call us Typhoid Mary. We think it is a Typhoid Mary kind of day, don’t you think,” Mary said, moving closer. “Second, we only came for you, Matthew Murdock…Daredevil!”
Mary unleashed a fire storm with a squeal. The flames hit Daredevil like a battering ram of searing heat, sending Murdock flying backwards down the stone steps. As he tumbled, Daredevil knew that his clothes were on fire…that his chest was burning.
With little time to think about people watching around him, Murdock tore off his burning suit, revealing the smoldering red costume of Daredevil underneath. As he did so, he tumbled in pain behind a parked truck, ensuring that as few people as possible could see what he was doing.
Luckily, all eyes of panicked civilians and reporters alike were fixed on the figure of Typhoid Mary, gleefully turning parked vehicles into fireballs as she made her way towards Daredevil.
“Come out and plaayyy…”
“Enough,” Daredevil yelled, as he leapt from behind the truck, ignoring the pain from his burns.
He landed a hard punch to Mary’s face, but she was already preparing another pyrokinetic attack. Shaken from Daredevil’s punch, Mary was only able to set a small amount of the flame at the Man without Fear. It was enough to throw the hero off balance, and he toppled to the street, disoriented and in pain.
“Time to die…” Mary began, but screamed, as she was suddenly knocked backwards by a powerful concussive blast.
“Only for you, girl.”
Daredevil looked up in shock, as his sonar sight formed the figure of the vigilante known as Cardiac standing between him and Mary, his smoking pulse staff still smoking from the beta particle blast.
“Cardiac, what are you doing here…,” Daredevil mumbled as he tried to stand, watching Typhoid Mary reel in pain.
“Saving your life hero,” Cardiac responded, as he turned towards Murdock. “I was observing the trial. I had been trying to take down that scum, Howards, for awhile, but it looks like you did it the legal way. Congratulations.”
Dr. Elias Wirtham had donned the vigilante costume of Cardiac, after his brother had died, unable to receive lifesaving medical treatments due to corporate greed. Since that day, Wirtham had worked, enhancing his body with vibranium mesh and a beta particle reactor, to ensure that no one ever suffered at the hands of dirty corporations again.
“Yeah, thanks,” Daredevil said, as he pulled himself from the ground with Cardiac’s help.
His intense hearing alerted him that Typhoid Mary was up and preparing to attack again. Before she could, Murdock threw his billy club, connecting with Mary’s stomach, knocking the wind from her.
Before she could recover again, Daredevil was on top of her, hands around her throat, restricting the oxygen to her brain, effectively keeping her off balance and unable to attack.
“Who sent you Mary,” Daredevil growled. “How do you know who I am?”
“…Heh…Two birds with one stone…”
“…Tell me!”
“…We’re alright with killing the Murdock devil and the Wirtham Cardiac…”
“TELL ME,” Daredevil yelled, increasing his hold on Mary’s throat.
“Alright,” she gasped. “Al-alright…We’ll tell you a secret…”
Mary moved her head close to Daredevil’s ear, and his eyes widened as she spoke. Suddenly, he felt her heart rate increase. Before Murdock had time to react, Mary’s arm was in motion.
With a bloodcurdling scream, Dr. Elias Wirtham erupted into a ball of fire.
“NOOO,” Daredevil shouted, as he threw Typhoid Mary to the ground.
He ran and leapt onto Cardiac’s burning body, trying to smother the flames. The heat was unbearable, but Matt Murdock rolled on the ground, smothering the flames on Cardiac’s body, until they had been put out.
“…We’ll talk again soon…,” he heard Typhoid Mary hiss into his head, as she disappeared into an alley way.
Daredevil turned back to Dr. Wirtham, and almost vomited at the charred sight before him. He lifted the body of Cardiac as carefully as he could manage, the smell of blackened flesh assaulting his heightened sense of smell.
“F-f-find h-her…,” Cardiac coughed, his words barely audible.
“I will,” Daredevil promised. “But I’m going to get you help first.”
As the sounds of sirens began to fill the area around the courthouse, Daredevil cradled Cardiac in his arms, and began running. He had to get this man, this hero who had saved him, to someone that could save his life…
********************
Linda Carter was happy to be coming to the end of a thirty-six hour shift. She was exhausted as she walked down the hallway towards the nurse’s lounge, but reflected on the past day or so with contentment, knowing she had helped a good many people.
As she approached a suite of examine rooms, her heart skipped a beat, and she stopped in her tracks. She noticed a window had been opened in the farthest examine room…and that blood had dripped along the window sill and floor.
“Well, it’s not over yet, I guess,” Carter said, taking a deep breath, trying to clear her tired head.
She walked into the suite, and towards the back exam room.
“What kind of situation do we have,” the long-time nurse asked, as she entered the room, unsure as to what was awaiting her.
Her sudden appearance startled Spider-Man, who was standing over a still bleeding Black Cat. He had placed her into a bed, and was adjusting the blood-soaked pillowcase around her neck.
“Uh…Are you the Night Nurse,” Parker asked. “Her name is Black Cat…She was attacked…”
“God above, her throat has been slashed,” the woman affectionately called the Night Nurse by the super-human community said, pushing Spider-Man out of the way.
She checked Felicia’s vital signs, before removing the bloody cloth from around her neck.
“Massive blood loss, shallow breathing…unconscious…”
“She was conscious…actually talking when I got there…”
The Night Nurse ignored Spider-Man’s comments, as she honed all of her emergency medicine skills, trying to save the fading heroine.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Stay out of the way…Wait in the other room,” Carter said bluntly as she continued to work. “And yes, I am the Night Nurse. Surprised we haven’t met before, with your haphazard career. Nice to meet you though.”
“Yeah…You too,” Spidey said in a hushed tone, as he watched the Nurse work frantically.
He did as he was told, and walked into a side room. He sat on the side of a bed, and let himself fall backwards onto the sheets. With his adrenaline fading, Spider-Man winced, the pain in his side reminding him of a few possibly broken ribs.
Suddenly, his cell phone began to vibrate. He shot up from the bed and pulled out the phone. It was Mary Jane.
“Mary Jane, it’s me...Did you find Carla?”
“Peter.”
Mary Jane’s voice sounded distant on the phone, as if something were wrong. Spider-Man’s heart sank as he thought of Carla, and the rage he felt for Shocker, the man that had hurt the young girl.
“What’s wrong M.J., how’s Carla? Did you find her?”
Mary Jane hesitated.
“M.J.,” Peter asked, his concern growing.
“Sorry Tiger…I’m just distracted,” Mary Jane began. “Yes, I did find her. They took her to New York Presbyterian. She’s unconscious, but the doctors say that she’s doing alright, and that she should recover…but the nurses had some unexpected news for me Peter…I was kind of…shocked…”
“Well…What is it,” Spider-Man said, his worry growing to the point that he was raising his voice to his wife.
“…They told me when I arrived that this girl has no documented family…No one that the hospital could have called for her…They were pretty happy that I had showed up to be with her…”
“What? No family what-so-ever? Who was she living with,” Parker asked.
“I don’t know, Peter…but that’s not the only thing…They also told me that ‘Carla Jacobs’ isn’t her real name…It looks like she was seen at this hospital in the past, though the charts don’t list who had brought her in. They have older documents from when this child was a baby that match her description. They have her name listed…as May Osborn.”
Peter Parker felt like the air had been knocked from his lungs. He couldn’t respond to his wife, and, on top of everything else that had happened today, his mind began to race about the student he had known as Carla Jacobs. She was an Osborn? How could that be possible?
It was impossible, to say the least, Peter thought to himself. But the worst part of it all, was that the girl he had thought was Carla, was really named May; the name of his aunt and the name that he and Mary Jane would have used, had their child not been stillborn so many months before.
Whatever craziness was about to hit the fan, whether the work of an Osborn or not, Peter Parker cringed at a feeling of sadness in the pit of his stomach, one that he hadn’t felt since his wife had given birth. He couldn’t stop focusing on this revelation…this name…
“Peter Parker, I want you to listen to me,” Mary Jane said rather harshly after a few seconds of her husband not answering, knowing the thoughts that were probably running through his head. “I don’t want you to start jumping to conclusions, alright? We don’t know what this all means…”
“I know Mary Jane…I won’t,” Spider-Man finally responded, taking a deep breath, trying to mask the emotions that were now eating away at his gut. “Just…Just stay there with her…especially since she doesn’t have anyone else.”
“I will,” Mary Jane answered softly. “I love you Peter Parker.”
“I love you too,” Spider-Man said, as the Night Nurse walked into the room, her uniform splattered with blood, as she dried her hands on a large towel. “I have to go. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Parker hung up the phone and replaced it beneath his costume.
“How is she Ms….”
“Carter. Nurse Carter,” Night Nurse answered. “She is stabilized for the moment, but the amount of blood she has lost was significant. The bleeding has stopped, and I was able to stitch the wound. Luckily for her, the gash wasn’t that deep. There was minimal damage to the trachea, and there wasn’t any damage to the larynx, which explains why she was still able to speak. Remarkably, no major arteries were cut either. Whoever attacked her slit her neck with surgical precision.”
“What do you mean?”
“It seems to me that her attacker had no intention of giving the Black Cat a quick death. They wanted her to suffer; to slowly bleed to death…agonizingly slow, at that,” Carter said, as she brought Spider-Man back into the exam room where Felicia lay. “I’m going to have to get a large amount of blood to replenish what was lost, but she should regain consciousness soon.”
Spider-Man just nodded and clenched his fists, trying to keep the anger he was feeling towards Bullseye from bubbling over.
“There was one more thing,” Carter said, as she began to write on a chart next to the bed. “After I had her stabilized, I began to check the rest of her body, just to make sure that she wasn’t injured anywhere else…and…”
“And what?”
“Well…I’m sorry to say…but it looks like your friend was also raped.”
Spider-Man didn’t have time to react to this last piece of horrific news. As Peter stared at the Night Nurse in shock, he realized that her gaze had moved beyond him, and back to the open window. He turned around, and saw the hero known as Daredevil crouched on the window, holding the badly burned body of the vigilante Cardiac.
“L-Linda,” Daredevil said, his arms shaking under the weight of Cardiac and his own injuries.
“Sweet Jesus, what is happening tonight,” Night Nurse shouted.
Before Daredevil could say anymore, Linda Carter was already in action, taking Cardiac’s vital signs and examining his burns, as Spider-Man helped him carry Wirtham to a bed in an adjacent examining room.
“He’s gone,” she whispered, as they laid the body of Dr. Elias Wirtham on the bed.
“What? No,” Daredevil hollered. “He was conscious only a few minutes ago…”
“He was dead before you got him here,” Night Nurse explained, pulling a sheet over Cardiac’s head. “He is completely flat lined, unresponsive. Just by looking, I can see that his body is just about 75% covered in third…maybe even fourth degree burns. This man never stood a chance. He was probably dead before you even left the scene. I’m sorry.”
“Damn,” Murdock said through clenched teeth, punching a wall. As he did so, Linda Carter caught a glimpse of Daredevil’s own wounds.
“Matt, I need you to calm down and sit on this bed. I’m going to have to cut your shirt off,” she said, taking a closer look at the injuries on Daredevil’s chest, as she guided him to another examining area.
“What happened man,” Spider-Man asked as the Night Nurse went to work.
“An old enemy, Typhoid Mary,” he began, wincing, as Carter injected him with an anesthetic. “She attacked me outside of my office. She…ouch…She would have killed me to if it hadn’t been for Cardiac.”
“How am I,” Daredevil asked Carter.
“First degree burns on your face and hands, mostly second, maybe some slight third degree on your chest. You’re going to be in pain, that’s for sure, but you’ll be alright,” she responded, continuing to treat the blind lawyer.
Spider-Man stared at his friend, sensing in his gut that all of these assaults were connected.
“She knew your real name, didn’t she,” Parker said.
“Yeah…and Cardiac’s,” Daredevil responded, looking at Spider-Man with curious concern. “Is that what happened to you? Is that why you’re here? Who’s the woman in the other bed…?”
“The Shocker attacked me at work, almost killing a young girl in the process. The other one,” Spider-Man began, glancing over at the comatose body of Felicia Hardy. “It’s the Black Cat. She was…attacked by Bullseye…”
“That murdering bastard…Oww.”
“You have to stop moving,” Night Nurse said, as Daredevil’s body began to quiver at hearing the name of one of his most brutal enemies.
“They knew our names, Matt. They knew where to find us as civilians. These aren’t separate assaults,” Spider-Man said, becoming more animate as he spoke. “Someone has somehow learned who we really are, and they have given that information to some of our worst enemies, and they are stopping at nothing to take us down.”
Daredevil just nodded, agreeing whole-heartedly with Spider-Man.
“Yeah,” he finally said. “And the man pulling their sick strings…the one behind all of this…is the Kingpin.”
********************
…To be continued…
As the Kingpin’s plans to regain power continue to tear through New York
and the lives of its heroes, the shocks just keep on coming!
Who will die…who will survive?
Plus, a revelation begins to unfold that will have Spider-Man reeling
for months to come!
Be here next for Amazing Spider-Man #16
“The Return of the King” pt. 3!
