Out on the street, Clark had already finished dealing with the attackers and was just about to leave.
Then came the sound of rotor blades.
Not police helicopters.
Three dark green Apache gunships were racing in fast.
And not just helicopters. Military Humvees were rolling into the district too.
They pushed past the NYPD perimeter and started taking over the scene.
"This is Thunder Team, calling Command. We've reached the target zone and have visual on an unidentified superhuman target. Repeat, unidentified superhuman target confirmed. Target is extremely dangerous. Awaiting authorization to engage."
One of the soldiers in the helicopter relayed the report to General Ross. They were a special response unit for superhuman threats. They still hadn't caught the Hulk, and Ross had been furious ever since. Now it looked like they might have found a new target.
"So the military's here."
Clark stood still and looked up at the Apaches overhead.
In both this life and his last, he knew the name Ross well. The man who had spent a lifetime chasing the Hulk. A hardliner with a deep hostility toward superhuman beings.
But this time... what were they here for?
To arrest him?
Or to help Ben?
Most likely, Manhattan had simply exploded into too big a crisis to ignore.
Up in the building, Ben saw his old friend's troops arriving and immediately felt regret.
Ross could be ruthless when it came to superhumans, so ruthless that civilian lives didn't always matter enough to him.
Ben still wasn't completely certain about the man with the S below, but tonight that man had helped save them all, and had done nothing beyond that. If anything, Ben was starting to suspect he had been there more often than anyone realized.
"Go! Get out of here!" Ben shouted from the open window.
Clark heard his father's worried voice perfectly clearly.
A smile tugged at his mouth. He raised a hand and waved in that direction, letting Ben know he didn't need to worry.
"They're not shooting me down with those helicopters," Clark muttered to himself. "If anything, I'd be the one swatting aircraft out of the sky."
He almost laughed at his own joke.
He had come out tonight to intimidate Kingpin, to announce his existence to the world, to show where he stood. He had not come to wage war against the U.S. military in downtown New York. That wasn't the point.
Besides, there were already more than enough eyes on him.
Especially that one-eyed guy in black.
He already had enough trouble to deal with.
What he needed now was an exit.
The helicopter searchlights locked onto him.
Ross made his decision.
Test the superhuman.
Inside the helicopter, the machine gunners pulled their charging handles.
"Target locked. Heavy guns locked."
Just before they opened fire, Clark bent his knees.
Gravity seemed to vanish for an instant. The air around him compressed violently, forming a visible ring of pressure.
Then, in full view of everyone watching:
BOOM!!!!!!!!!!
A thunderous sonic blast ripped across all of New York.
A crater over thirty feet deep opened beneath his feet as Clark shot skyward in a blue blur.
The launch wave was so violent it blasted everything around him apart. It practically created a localized hurricane, tearing through the street below. Even the helicopters were thrown into chaos, wobbling and spinning wildly in the air while the pilots yanked desperately at the controls to no effect.
Clark looked at the helicopters spinning in the turbulence.
"Holy shit! Thunder Team reporting! Target is airborne! Speed exceeds Mach 5... no, Mach 10... we've lost tracking! We're going down! Repeat, we're going down!"
The pilot's panicked voice crackled over the radio.
But Clark was not the kind of man who killed innocent people casually.
Suspended high above them, he looked down at the soldiers. This wasn't even true flight yet, just the force of a jump. And all he wanted was to make a point.
Don't provoke him lightly.
Or next time, it wouldn't end like this.
He caught all three helicopters in midair, holding them up with his hands, pressed the rotors to a stop, then calmly stacked them one on top of another and set them down in the street.
Total silence.
When the crowd blinked again, the man with the S on his chest had already vanished into the night sky. The clouds above had been blown away, and moonlight poured down cleanly across the city.
The gangsters scattered across the street, the stunned soldiers who had just arrived, and even the reporters still inside the building had all lost the ability to speak.
Even the most secular, hard-nosed soldiers there found themselves instinctively making the sign of the cross.
Half an hour later, back at the secret base in the abandoned factory.
When Peter, Gwen, and Cindy returned empty-handed, they found the whole place lit up.
On the couch sat Clark, the same brother Peter had spent the entire trip mentally ranting about. He was now wearing a pajama top May had knitted for him, one with a big S on it, drinking Coke and watching The Simpsons on TV. Every now and then he even laughed out loud.
Hearing them land, Clark turned around, then casually put on those black-rimmed glasses again. Felicia had texted him earlier saying they made him look even more handsome, and he had actually believed her. Definitely not because they helped hide his identity.
Then, with an innocent tone that deserved to be illegal, he said, "Oh, hey, you're back. How'd tonight go? Run into any trouble? I saw on the news that something huge happened in Manhattan. You guys didn't go check it out, did you?"
Gwen looked at him, all harmless sincerity and familiar glasses, and for some reason felt incredibly warm inside.
She patted him on the shoulder.
"Don't worry, Clark. We just went to take a look, and then someone else handled it. Is this good?"
"It's great," Clark said, pointing at the screen. "Look, Homer's choking Bart again."
Gwen sat down beside him naturally, just like when they were little, and the two of them started watching cartoons together.
Behind them, Peter stared at the older brother and childhood friend sitting there watching animation like two overgrown kids, and the corners of his mouth twitched.
Gwen had really been captured way too easily by his brother.
And Cindy didn't know Clark that well, so Peter was the only one really sensing how wrong all of this was.
His eyes drifted to the S on Clark's chest.
That mark had followed Clark his whole life.
Now that Peter thought about it, a lot of Clark's things had S marks on them.
Some were custom-made by Aunt May and Uncle Ben.
Some had come from old Mr. Stan Lee next door, who always seemed to find weird factory-made products with S logos on them.
And now, in Peter's head, all those S symbols started overlapping until the truth became impossible to ignore.
He had basically confirmed his brother's hidden identity.
Could it be that their family crest was actually an S?
Then why didn't he have one?
Was it because Clark took after Aunt May's side?
Wait.
Did that mean Clark wasn't really one of the Parkers?