The port was dark and smelled like salt water and something older than salt water, the particular smell of a place where things arrived and departed without being asked too many questions.
Spider-Man and Wade moved through it in the shadows, which was easier for one of them than the other.
"Why are we here?" Wade whispered.
"There is a drug shipment taking place here tonight," Spider-Man whispered back. He glanced around a container, saw nothing he did not expect to see, and pulled back.
"I saw this location marked on the web I had strung across one of the walls of her room. She has been investigating them for a long time, and today she finally has an opportunity to capture evidence of the trafficking. She is a good detective. This confirms it."
"Impressive!"
"It would be," Spider-Man said, "if this were not a trap."
"Wait, what? What do you mean?"
"Think about it. Why would the Maggia plant bodies in Yuri's apartment? And how did they know when Yuri would not be there?"
He peeked out briefly, ducked back just before a patrolling Maggia member came around the corner, and waited for the footsteps to pass.
"Yuri has been a real pain in the ass for them, and since she is connected to Captain Stacy, they cannot simply kill her without triggering a full investigation. So the method they chose was this trap.
Plant fake evidence in her apartment, frame her for corruption, send her to prison. One of the places they control.
The perfect environment to kill her without taking any visible risks. Just like they did with her father."
"I see... Wait! How do you know about her father?" Wade asked, surprised.
"And how do you know all of this?"
"My annoying Mouth," Spider-Man said, in a tone that contained a great deal of patience and was not quite running out of it yet, "I am a genius and a prodigy in technology. The people with their posts and headquarters are not the only ones watching everyone else."
He let that settle. "But that is beside the point. There is no drug shipment. And now that we have foiled their plan to manipulate her department, she is in immediate danger, because they will have already found out that none of the men they sent have made contact. That or a police informant told them."
"I understand," Wade said, and his tone shifted into something that was noticeably more serious, which made Peter stop and look at him.
"What? Look, if she dies, bye-bye to my juicy check!"
"I understand," Spider-Man said, nodding.
He produced an earpiece. "Here. Put it on. This way we stay aware of each other. I will go to a high vantage point and we will see what to do from there. Stay here and keep quiet. If someone passes by, handle it quietly."
"Ohhhh, am I allowed to get creative with.... the handling?" Wade asked, wiggling his eyebrows.
"As long as it is done quietly and they do not find the bodies," Spider-Man said, already climbing the crane.
"Sniff. Sniff." Wade pressed a hand to his chest and wiped an imaginary tear from his eye.
"You are possibly MBFF. (My Best Friend Forever)."
"Shut up, weirdo," Spider-Man said, and could not entirely hide the amused smile beneath the mask.
"Now let me concentrate."
He closed his eyes on top of the crane and tried to clear his mind.
The spider-sense was a fascinating power with a strange concept, and in his opinion it had never been explored to its full potential in any version of Peter Parker's story.
For the other Peters it had functioned as an alarm, something that went off when life was in immediate danger. A sensory warning system, hence the name.
But for him there was something more.
'If I can find a way to actively use it,' he thought, trying to artificially recreate and hold the feeling of each time the sense had fired, 'to apply it in areas the comics only hinted at, then I would have a ridiculous number of advantages in situations that would otherwise be beyond my reach.'
It was like standing in a dark room looking for a light switch. You could not turn on the light because you could not find the switch.
Until he found it.
He pressed it.
Everything around him changed.
His eyes opened wide because of the sensation, which was immediately and completely addictive, and then the pain arrived, sudden and total, as his visual cortex and auditory cortex and olfactory cortex and parietal lobe all tensed simultaneously under the weight of information arriving faster than his brain was built to process it.
He clamped his mouth shut. He tasted iron.
Information overload.
That was the precise name for what was happening to him.
He felt the edge of unconsciousness approaching and threw every ounce of the specific quality he chose to call DETERMINATION at the task of memorizing what he was feeling before it was gone, then exhaled and breathed heavily and released the switch.
"Wade." The name came out with difficulty.
From the earpiece, simultaneously: "Not so fast, buddy! Jackpot! Headshot! Let him win! I am hoping for some of that white powder, I am crazy about coke! Hey you, pointing at me!.... wait.... wait.... I have a hand! You do not have a hand! And now you are without your gun! HAHAHAHA!"
He slapped his palm against his mask.
'I thought he lost his mind after they experimented on him,' he thought. 'I should have known he was already disturbed before that.'
He called again. "Wade."
"Die, die, moo.... Oh! Hey Spidey! I await your orders!" He could almost feel the military salute through the earpiece.
"Yuri was captured."
"How?! When?! What?!"
"I said, Yuri was captured. This happened approximately two minutes ago, and it is possibly because you killed almost everyone in the port, EXCEPT the ones you were supposed to keep alive, in order to rescue our damsel in distress."
"Damn."
"Ah." A weary sigh.
"So what?"
"Move toward the entrance and do not let yourself be seen. I will explore the upper section and find an alternate entry point and assess how bad the situation is."
"The fiery companion is on the way."
"Please do not say that again," Spider-Man said. "It is awful."
"Hey! It is sexy! The ladies love it! They say it makes my personality look devilishly charming."
"You are quite the dreamer, buddy. That nickname is a bit large for you. You are no Tom Ellis."
"Damn it, how I hate that man," Wade complained from somewhere below, clearly running.
"Awww, is someone feeling sensitive?"
"Shut your mouth."
Spider-Man smiled to himself as he moved toward the building where the Maggia had taken Yuri.