Half an hour later:
The one-hour deadline ran out. The text came through directing me to a construction site a few miles outside the city. Felicia and Johnny stayed out of sight in the back as I brought the car down to land.
"Johnny — hand off my backside before I do something you won't enjoy," Felicia said through her teeth.
"Sorry, and just so you know — I'm literally made of fire. For me, everywhere is sunny."
"It won't be if I shove it deep enough," Felicia replied.
"Well, if it's shoving you're interested in—"
"Johnny," I said quietly, "if you finish that sentence, I will find a dildo the size of Ben Grimm's fist and use it on you until you learn to sit still. Am I understood?"
I heard him swallow. Good. No one touches my Kitten. "Good. Remember — stay in the car. The code word is 'Drewness.' Ready?"
"Ready," Felicia said. She turned around and glared. "Johnny."
"Sorry!" he said quickly.
I sighed. God help me.
I stepped out and shut the door. The construction site was half-built — the iron skeleton of a structure around fifty feet tall and a hundred feet across. The concrete had been poured onto a nearby parking area, and large mounds of sand sat banked alongside the frame.
I walked in and immediately spotted a white van parked in the middle of the building. I approached in full costume. No need for a mask now — Wyndham already knew who I was.
I felt the pull before I saw her. Jessica was here. I swept my gaze upward and caught a figure balanced on one of the iron beams twenty feet above and to the left. I gave a small wave. She stared back. She did not look pleased that I'd spotted her.
I walked toward the van. The doors opened and Wyndham stepped out, leaning on a cane. He studied me with an expression somewhere between satisfaction and pride.
"Your father would have loved the suit, Peter. Such intelligence in the design. I'll be honest — I'm genuinely impressed that you cracked Stark's technology. You are truly your father's son."
"From what I've heard, my mother was no small talent either," I said.
"Oh, that she was. And I'm certain your father would have spoken about her for hours. But he was the real genius." Wyndham smiled crookedly. "Now — do you have what I asked for?"
"My aunt and uncle first."
He stepped aside without argument. Behind him, May and Ben sat bound and gagged in the van, and from the look of things, unconscious.
"The files, if you please," Wyndham said, extending a hand.
I looked at him, then took out the hard drive and tossed it over. "It's all in there."
"For your sake, I hope so." He turned and began walking out of the construction site, Jessica following from the beams above.
I ran into the van and crouched beside May and Ben. "Are you alright? Can you hear me?!" I shook them gently, then harder.
"Must you persist with this act?" Wyndham called back, almost amused, as he walked away.
I stopped. Something was wrong. A smell — metallic, wrong, not human. I touched Ben's cheek and traced a finger along his jawline. My fingers slipped beneath the skin.
I pulled it back.
Underneath: the unmistakable geometry of circuitry and synthetic material.
"You bastard!" I launched myself out of the van and charged at Wyndham.
"Jessica, if you please," he said, barely glancing back.
Jessica dropped from the beam and stepped between us. We fought again — this time she was sharper, more controlled. I crushed the involuntary pull I felt toward her and replaced it with everything I had: fury, fear for the people I loved.
"If you ever want to see your family again, Peter, you will do exactly as you're told," Wyndham said, watching us from a distance. "Or they die."
She drove a fist at my gut. I leapt over it and landed behind her, fired two web lines, and wrapped them around her — binding her arms and pulling her tight.
"What?!" Drew struggled against the webbing. "How come you can do this and I can't?!"
"Simple," I said. "I'm smarter than you." I turned to Wyndham. "Your turn." I ran at him.
The man sighed. "Did you not hear my threat?"
"I heard it. Didn't care." I launched into the air and came down fist-first toward his face—
Something slammed into me from the side, sending me spinning away. I rolled, came up in a crouch, and looked back.
The sand was moving.
Every mound in the construction site was shifting — flowing, gathering around Wyndham like a living wall. The grains rose and compressed, taking form.
"Peter," Wyndham said, his expression calm, "allow me to introduce an old associate. My first serious experiment in human genetics — one that produced a very remarkable result. Meet Marko. Or, as I tend to call him, Sandman."
The sand finished forming into the shape of a man — dark hair, heavy build, wearing a green and black striped shirt. His hands had become a war hammer on one side and a morningstar on the other. He turned toward me with an expression that was more animal than human.
"The procedure left some lasting damage to his higher functions," Wyndham admitted, almost regretfully. "But he follows instructions well enough." Wyndham pointed at me. "Get him."
"Drewness! Drewness! Total Drewness!" I yelled, already shooting a web line toward the nearest beam and swinging clear as a wave of sand the size of a small car came crashing toward me.
Johnny erupted from the car in a column of fire and dropped onto the site. "Someone call for a hero — what the absolute hell is that?!"
"Giant sand monster! Apply heat — sand becomes glass!" I shouted, vaulting away from a fist the size of a wrecking ball.
"Get back here!" Jessica had broken the webbing and launched herself from a beam in pursuit. She was fast. But a black-booted leg came sailing in from her blind side — she twisted clear, landed on a steel beam, and found Felicia right behind her.
Jessica took one long look at Felicia and raised an eyebrow. "And who are you supposed to be?"
"The girlfriend of the man you tried to get off with," Felicia said pleasantly.
Drew had the decency to look embarrassed. Before she could form a response, Felicia attacked.
Johnny swept a column of flame across Sandman's left side. The sand there melted, fusing into jagged glass. The creature roared and swung a massive arm at Johnny, who ducked underneath it.
"You're going to need to do better than that, mate!" Johnny taunted.
"NOT. FREAK!" Sandman bellowed, and launched a wave of sand that the Torch barely cleared.
I trusted my teammates to hold them. I had one target.
Wyndham was looking at Johnny with barely concealed alarm. I swung in and landed directly in front of him.
"Didn't think I'd bring friends, did you?"
"An unexpected complication, yes. No matter," he said.
"Where are they?" I asked.
"And if I refuse?"
I raised my arm, aimed at Sandman's lower half, and fired my repulsor beam at full output. The sand construct's legs detonated in a burst of scattered grains. Sandman let out a guttural roar.
"Cheers, Spider!" Johnny shouted, immediately blasting the creature's right arm with sustained fire.
I levelled my arm at Wyndham. "That."
"Never begin a negotiation with a death threat, Peter," Wyndham said, disappointingly composed. "You need me. I am the only one who knows where your family is. You cannot afford to kill me. Which means your threat is hollow, and I have nothing to fear from you."
I nodded. "Sound logic." I grabbed his arm and twisted sharply. Something snapped.
"ARGH!" He dropped to his knees, clutching his wrist.
"I don't need to kill you," I said, pressing my weight down. "I just need you to wish I had. Where are they?"
"Go to hell!"
"After you." I hauled him up by the collar and cocked my fist back—
"Spider! A bit of help here!" Johnny yelled.
I looked. Johnny was pinned — Sandman had wrapped its mass around him like a vice, suppressing the flame before it could build. I swore.
I drove my forehead into Wyndham's nose. He collapsed. As he fell I slipped a micro-tracker into the lining of his coat, barely a second's work. I ran.
"Hey! Over here!" I yelled at Sandman. It turned. I leapt high into the air and threw a fistful of nitrogen capsules downward.
"ARGH!" The creature swung and one arm froze solid. I landed on the arm, ran the length of it, raised both hands, and fired twin beams of energy directly through its head.
"Marko! To me!" Wyndham's voice rang out from somewhere behind me.
The sand reacted instantly. Every grain in the site began flowing away from us, rushing toward Wyndham. It gathered around him, lifted him off the ground, and formed a dense, rolling mass that accelerated away faster than I would have liked. Fast enough to worry me about the man inside surviving the ride.
I hissed and turned to Johnny. "You alright?"
Johnny brushed sand off his shoulders. "Yeah. Aside from my pride taking a serious hit from losing a fight to what was essentially a giant sandcastle — I'm fine."
I nodded. Then I turned toward the beams.
I was already smiling before I looked up.
Felicia had taken a tooth out with one kick and put Jessica down with a follow-up combination that ended with a bola wrapped around the steel beam and Drew tied to it. Jessica strained against the cord, and Felicia stepped forward, cracking her knuckles.
"Next time you so much as think about putting your tongue anywhere near my boyfriend," Felicia said quietly, "I will rearrange your face. Permanently." She put her fist through it.
Drew's head snapped back against the steel beam and she went limp.
"I'm making a mental note," Johnny said, wide-eyed, "never to make her angry."
"What in the hell is going on here?!" A familiar voice cut through the dust. All three of us turned.
A SHIELD hover-jet was setting down at the edge of the site, its hangar bay doors already opening. Fury strode out with Cap and approximately twelve field agents at his back.
"So," Johnny said, grinning like he'd won something, "how much trouble are we in?"
Fury narrowed his eye at me. "Enough. Start talking, kid. Leave nothing out."