"I know, Uncle Ben, can we not do the lecture right now?" Peter interrupted him somewhat impatiently.
The light turned green.
Ben Parker's eyes dimmed for a moment, but he said nothing more, only silently stepping on the gas.
The car stopped at the entrance of the library two blocks away from the abandoned shipyard.
"Just stop here." Peter grabbed his backpack and hurriedly got out of the car.
"Peter." Uncle Ben called out to him, "I'll wait for you here. About how long will it be?"
"No need, I'll take the subway back myself." Peter didn't want his uncle to see where he was going.
"I'll wait for you here," Uncle Ben said stubbornly. "No matter how late, stay safe."
"No need, you can't park here, you'll get a ticket." Peter was anxious to get away from his uncle and pointed to the no-parking sign on the side of the road. "Go wait for me on the next street, there's free parking there. I'll come find you after I finish looking up the info."
Uncle Ben looked at the sign and sighed: "Alright, I'll wait for you at the intersection of 42nd Street next door. Stay safe, Peter."
"Known!"
Peter brushed him off casually, pretending to walk into the library entrance. Once Uncle Ben's car turned the corner, he immediately turned around and sprinted toward the brightly lit abandoned shipyard in the opposite direction.
And on the rooftop across the street.
Alice, wearing a fox mask, saw Ben Parker drive the car to 42nd Street.
That was a necessary path connecting the library and the shipyard, and it was also a quiet one-way street.
...
Brooklyn, abandoned Navy Yard.
Under a giant, rusted metal dome, nearly a thousand restless spectators gathered.
Heavy metal rock music was deafening, as if it were about to tear one's eardrums apart.
This was an outlaw land of New York's underworld, a gray colosseum that the laws of civilized society could not reach.
It was an outlaw land of New York's underworld.
"Bets down! Bets down!"
At a simple gambling table cobbled together from several oil drums, a Black bookie with a mouth full of gold teeth and a thick gold chain around his neck was shouting, spittle flying.
"Tonight's odds are 1 to 20. As long as someone can last three minutes under Bonesaw, I'll pay him twenty times. Of course, provided that person can still crawl off the stage alive."
The gamblers around him burst into laughter, betting their cash on the Bonesaw column one after another.
"Bonesaw snapped a Muay Thai expert's spine last week. Who would go to their death?"
"I bet that challenger won't last thirty seconds."
Just then, a hand wearing a black leather glove gently patted a thick stack of bills smelling of fresh ink onto the least popular slot on the gambling table.
On that slot, "Challenger: Anonymous" was written crookedly in chalk.
The noisy crowd quieted down slightly.
The bookie was stunned. He looked up and saw a mysterious person in a long gray trench coat, wearing a red and white fox mask on their face.
From the build, it seemed to be a woman or a slender teenager.
"Ten thousand dollars."
A slightly raspy electronic voice, processed through a voice changer, came from under the fox mask.
"Betting on that challenger to win. Not to last three minutes, but to win."
A burst of even more frantic laughter erupted around them.
"Hey, is this chick crazy?"
"Ten thousand dollars, is she here for charity?"
The bookie also laughed, laughing so hard he almost spat out his gold teeth, looking at Alice like she was a fool: "I just saw that challenger too. Skinny as a chick, dressed like a delivery boy. Are you sure? This is throwing money into the water."
"That's my business."
Alice's voice was devoid of emotion. Those ice-blue eyes revealed through the mask's eye holes were as cold as the frozen soil of Siberia.
"Issue the ticket."
Stared at by such eyes, the bookie's smile gradually faded.
His intuition from years of hanging around the underworld told him that this person in front of him was not to be trifled with.
"Fine, only a bastard wouldn't take easy money."
The bookie quickly wrote a receipt, stamped it, and threw it to Alice. "Keep it safe. If you lose, don't go home crying to your mama."
Alice picked up the receipt with two fingers, turned, and blended into the dark stands.
Ten thousand in principal, twenty times odds.
That was two hundred thousand dollars.
This was not just a top-up for the system, but also the first large-scale expansion fund for the Umbrella Corporation.
"Peter, you better not let me down."
...
"Clang—"
With a piercing sound of a gong, the lights of the entire venue instantly focused on the octagonal cage stage in the center, surrounded by chain-link fencing.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Hell!"
The host held a microphone, screaming at the top of his lungs.
"Tonight's main event! No one can last three minutes under his saws! He is the meat grinder, he is the pulverizer, he is—Crusher Hogan!!!"
"Boom!"
One side of the iron cage door was slammed open.
A giant man over two meters tall and weighing at least three hundred pounds rushed out.
His muscles were knotted all over, his skin was coated in oil, and he wore a leather vest full of sharp rivets.
Waving a folding chair in his hand, he slammed it frantically against the iron cage like an out-of-control prehistoric Beast.
The whole place boiled over. The spectators frantically waved their fists, chanting Bonesaw's name.
And in the other corner of the stage.
Peter Parker was standing there, shivering, wearing that red and blue cheap hoodie with a ski mask over his head.
He looked too thin, too frail.
Standing before Bonesaw, he was like a little lamb that had strayed into a wolf pack, or a rag doll about to be torn to pieces.
"What should we call you, kid?" The host held the microphone to Peter's mouth, his eyes full of mockery.
"Uh, I'm The Human Spider," Peter said nervously.
"What, The Human Spider? Oh, I have to say, that name is terrible."
------------------------
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