Home Again

Chapter 9

Given everything Peter decided he needed to do this alone, so with a silent apology to Matt he set off to Foswell's apartment in the city, but no one was there. Just as he let out a frustrated sigh, Peter noticed the window was unlocked so put his hand to it and pulled, smirking as the window opened.

"Perfect," he said crawling into the apartment. "Any alarms, Karen?"

"Not that I can detect."

Peter's body dropped, hanging by a single hand before he released his grip and fell to the floor. He started at the common places for notes but there were only ash trays on the tables and a few of Foswell's articles clipped to the fridge. In the closet he found a box with a bunch of newspapers he quickly realized were all ones with his articles in them.

"There's got to be more here, right? Karen can you, like, scan the walls or something? Maybe there's some kind of secret safe somewhere or something?"

"I can detect no safes hidden from view," she said after a moment.

Peter looked around until he spotted a vent and his brow rose. "What about there?" He asked crawling up the wall to pull the vent off. Inside he saw a solid white board which he tapped, causing the cardboard to buckle, revealing the duct behind it. While not large enough for someone to craw l through, it was large enough to hold the hard drives stacked inside it.

"Jackpot." Peter pulled a small panel on his arm aside and plugged the drives into the slot. "Copy and isolate them, alright Karen? I don't want it doing anything to you."

"Of course, Peter." It was barely a second before he plugged in the next drive, and then the next. Once they were dune he put them back in place and reset the vent cover.

"At least this wasn't all pointless," Peter said making his way to the living room. As he leapt onto the ceiling he glanced at the garbage can and saw a slip of paper with something that looked like an address. He quickly dropped back down and picked the paper up. "Chinatown? What's at this address, Karen?"

After a moment Karen answered, "A medicinal shop."

Peter tossed the paper back in the trash and left, closing the window behind him before leaping off the building and swinging toward Chinatown.

He landed on the roof across from the Wu Ping Medicine shop and had Karen scan it, revealing a group of men in the back and a lone woman out front.

"Any suggestions?" he asked leaping to the building beside it and making his way around the back.

After a moment Karen suggested, "Call for support."

Peter crouched on the edge of a roof looking at the back door of the building. He could call Matt, but Peter wanted to prove himself and while Matt was a good fighter it wasn't like this was something Peter couldn't handle. He'd taken out almost a dozen guys days ago and there were only eight in there, bar the old woman at the counter. And he wasn't an Avenger anymore so he couldn't call for the others.

With a sigh, he told Karen, "You're all the support I need."

"Thank you, Peter," she said happily.

"Now let's go shut down a syndicate," Peter said firing a dozen web shots across the back door before swinging around to the front of the shop.

He landed at the door and stepped inside, the bell above the door ringing and making the woman look up, gasping in shock at the sight of him making his way to the counter. "H-How can I help you?"

"I'm here for the meeting," Peter said leaping over the counter, throwing open the door to the back room. "Hey boys. What'd I miss?"

Eight men all rose and turned to him. Peter saw Foswell in his mask and brimmed hat along with six others who moved toward him protectively, clearly his guys. It was the eighth man who made every hair on Peter's body stand on end as he pulled a purple mask over his scarred head and turned to Peter, his irises so pale they seemed white.