Chapter 1
Consciousness crawled back in short bursts, then all at once. Her head hurt. Her ribs hurt. Her chest hurt. Her legs hurt. Everything hurt.
Eyes peeling open one by one, Parker realized that her face was pressed against the side of the moving train, her palms sticking her to the cool metal. She pulled her face back, but a nauseating dizzy spell had her pressing her forehead against the metal and squeezing her eyes shut.
She wasn’t sure how long she had been stuck to the train, riding it through New York, but she knew she was safe from the guy who had been sicced on her. For now, at least.
The rumbling of the tracks and screeches of metal sent icy stabs through her brain. She waited it out, clenching her teeth through the pain, until the train came to a halt.
A groan ripped through her vocal chords as she peeled herself off and fell to her knees in the gravel. She had no idea where she was and had no concept of what time it was. It was dark, and the blinding city lights were swirling together.
Parker pulled herself up and trudged forward, hand on her abdomen just below her ribs and her head hung. Her feet dragged against the concrete.
Definite concussion. 100%. God, she was hit by a train , she was lucky she wasn’t in bloody pieces along the tracks. She was still bloody, but at least she was whole and alive. It hurt to breathe, but she could breathe. It hurt to walk, but she could walk. It hurt to think, but she could think. Right now, she was thinking about a nice warm bath to soak all the blood from her clothes, skin, and hair.
She blinked, and then she was standing in the alley by her apartment, staring straight at the bricks she had to climb to reach her apartment on the fourth floor. Time didn’t make sense. The concussion was taking a toll. Resting a shoulder against the building, she gathered her strength and caught her breath. The hand on her side was wet and warm. The blood had soaked completely through her suit and was like a second glove inside her actual gloves that glued the material to her fingers. Her mask was sticking to her face, too, which was probably from the injury that gave her the concussion that made her mind feel like mush and her vision swim.
With one last shuddering breath that made her ribs ache, Parker started up the bricks. She had to blink away stars every five seconds, but once she narrowed in on her window, she was able to block most of the pain and dizziness out.
She didn’t remember locking the window—it was normally left unlocked in case of emergencies just like this one—but it didn’t pose an obstacle as she was able to push it open regardless. The lock quickly gave way with a click and a crack.
She pulled herself in and rolled over the windowsill onto the floor where she collapsed into a bloody heap. With a grunt, she pushed herself up, yanked the mask off her face, tossed it aside, and started for the bathroom to get that warm bath she had her heart set on.
She caught herself on the wall, then the doorway, then tripped over the edge of the bathtub. The cool tub cradled her. As soon as she tilted her head back against the wall, consciousness floated away again.
_
2 HOURS AGO
There were three things that Parker hid beneath the red Spider-Man mask she donned every time she went out to knock crime on its ass. The first and most important thing was her identity, of course. Not only did it keep people from knowing who Spider-Man was, it kept people from knowing that she was a “she” at all. Given the lack of curves her mother graciously passed down to her—mixed with a healthy amount of malnutrition growing up in a broke drug addict’s care—Parker probably didn’t even need the hoodie she threw over her skin-tight suit to hide the fact that she was indeed of the female variety.
Without the mask, however, her soft features were a dead giveaway. The media tended to be sexist and gross towards the women vigilantes, so Parker wasn’t keen on correcting the world for their mistake when they dubbed her Spider- Man two summers ago.
The second thing was her expressions. She’s always been easier to read than a picture book. With her face covered, there was no way for the bad guys she faced to see the panic or fear she felt on a daily basis. As far as they knew, she was as cool as a cucumber even when a flamethrower sets her on fire, or when she’s dangling off the torch of the Statue of Liberty with smashed webshooters.
The third thing was her knock-off airpods that played a constant stream of kickass music. As she dodged a hammer aimed at her face, James Brown’s "Get Up Off of That Thing” pulsed through her ears.
The hammer shattered the glass of the passenger window of the van he and his goonies were packing full of stolen electronics.
Fighting was a style of dance. Parker moved to the beat of the funky song, timing everything according to the rhythm of the song and of her dance partners who, unfortunately for them, decided to be criminals in her city of all places.
Duck, block, punch, kick, flip. Her body was a fuckin’ machine and the music pouring through her ear canals was her fuel. Her top-notch sixth sense that alerted her of threats enabled her to fight deaf and blind if need be. She’d
She caught a fist and sent the goon flying into the dumpster, head bopping. If she could sing without outing herself or losing all her street cred, she would. Alas, she was a serious vigilante—she mustn’t sing to herself mid-fight.
Once all five men were webbed up in a circle with their backs together, Parker helped bring every laptop and gaming console back into the Best Buy alongside the young workers in their cute little blue polos. She gave a few high-fives and posed with a peace sign as they took turns taking selfies with her.
After that, she swung off into the evening with the intention to bring the next asshole to justice just as swiftly as the last. High above the streets and out of earshot, Parker let herself sing the lyrics to the next song on her playlist.
“So here's to the future 'cause we got through the past, I finally found somebody that can make me laugh.” Parker kicked off the side of the Empire State Building and did a backflip before catching another well-aimed web and flinging herself down 5th Avenue. Salt-N-Pepa’s “Whatta Man” was always a vibe. “You so crazy, I think I wanna have your baby.”
Before she could join in on the chorus, a tingle at the base of her neck accompanied by her muscles moving on their own accord had her swinging east until she was standing at the edge of a roof overlooking the East River. Her eyes narrowed-in on a pier where two guys in dark jackets and hats were talking in front of a large metal cargo container. Parker poked her airpod with a gloved finger over her masked ear to pause the tunes so she could eavesdrop and find out why she was drawn to the sketchy pair.
“—the deal, no one has to know.”
“Get the fuck over it, Michael. We’re doing this the boss’s way, and he said no one touches ‘em.”
“I’m gettin’ real tired of you actin’ like you can boss me around. In case you forgot, I don’t answer to you.”
“In case you forgot, the guy you do answer to will chop both our balls off if he finds out either of us messed with ‘em. I’m not taking the fall for your stupid ass.”
One of the guys, Not-Michael, turned and strode towards a parked Jeep. Before he could get far, Michael grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. The dim streetlights glinted against his sick grin glinted in the darkening night.
“Come on, man. Don’t you want to have a little fun? Play with the girls?”
Parker’s stomach dropped. Human trafficking? Fuck these guys.
Not-Michael shoved him off. “Did you just assign guns a gender?”
Oh. Arms trafficking. Still bad, but not as bad as finding a container full of scared underaged girls. No problemo , she thought as she stealthily made her way down to the pier.
Not-Michael reached the Jeep. Parker shot a web at his hand just as it made contact with the handle.
“What the—?”
She slammed his head against the door, effectively knocking him out. One down, one to go.
She felt the gun being aimed at her back before she heard it. The bullet dug into the side of the Jeep as she leapt to the right and landed in a somersault into a crouch where she pelted a random loose rock at Michael’s hand. The gun clattered to the ground. She shot a web that attached him to the side of the container.
“What the hell is this stuff?!” Michael tried—but failed, obviously—to pull against the ingenious webbing Parker concocted and perfected over the past couple years.
Parker ducked before she realized what she was ducking from, but she was glad she did because a millisecond later a bullet cut through the air where she once was. She turned. Five more guys, all armed, came running from all directions.
Where the hell were they hiding!?
Parker tapped her airpod and the chorus of “Whatta Man” started back up. Come at me, bitches .
More bullets, more knives, more fists. It was the same old, same old, only the amount of assailants was a bit of a challenge. As soon as she turned to incapacitate one guy, two more were right there, ready to strike. Her attention was split like a pie.
A blade slit the suit on her side a few inches below her armpit. With a hiss, Parker spun, punched the guy’s lights out, and stumbled to the right when a loose fist got her right in the ear. “It’s Raining Men” by The Weather Girls cut out in that airpod.
Grunting, Parker double-tapped her webshooters on each wrist with two fingers and shot out web grenades: another ingenious design by yours truly. Four guys incapacitated at once, one still armed. Parker swiped the gun from his hand and turned, pointing it at the man who was about to attack her from behind. He froze and lifted his hands in surrender.
Just kidding . Parker yeeted the gun over the pier into the river and gave the guy a nice roundhouse kick to get him to the ground where she proceeded to web him down.
Parker had a pretty strict no-killing rule. Shooting people point-blank was included in that. Obviously.
With everyone webbed up or out cold, Parker leaned her hip against the railing at the end of the pier and caught her breath. She slipped a finger under the hem of the mask and dug around for the broken airpod.
Yep, it’s fried. She tucked it into her sweatshirt pocket to fix later that night.
Tapping into her hyper-hearing, Parker picked up the sound of fast footsteps. Someone was running away.
Parker tapped 9-1-1 in morse code against the airpod and listened to the ring as she jogged to catch up with the runner. With her hearing, she was able to tell how far she was from him and about where he was, so she didn’t worry too much about catching up. Besides, she had a suspicion that he was running back to their home base where the big boss could be hiding out.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“South pier of the East River off 5th Avenue,” Parker said, taking on a low, gravelly voice with a hint of a Southern accent. “There’s a large cargo container of illegal weapons. Bring enough handcuffs for about two dozen guys.”
She abruptly ended the call with a tap. Police would be there to handle the guns and bad guys; Parker wanted to see where this runner was taking her.
She scaled a few buildings and hid behind billboards to keep out of sight in case the guy threw a paranoid look over his shoulder as he sprinted through the streets. Parker had to hand it to him—he had some serious stamina for a non-enhanced fella. He must’ve run track back in high school.
After a few minutes, Parker’s webs ran out and she had to rely on running and jumping from building to building. It wasn’t all that surprising; she’d been out all day, and those web grenades used more webs than they needed to. It was a kink she still needed to smooth out.
Finally, after another ten or so minutes and the guy was starting to show some signs of wearing himself out, he slowed to a stop at an old pawn shop. Parker silently landed on the roof of the neighboring building and looked down from her perch. A bigger guy than the runner with a badass mustache was hanging around the back door. His arms were crossed, and his bald head reflected the dim light of the streetlamp on the corner.
Security? Lookout? Parker wasn’t sure, but he must be protecting something or someone. He let the runner inside after a silent glare, then returned to his wide, stoic stance.
Parker tossed a piece of gravel down the alley. With his head turned, she leapt across the gap between the buildings and gracefully landed on the pawn shop’s roof, silently rolling to her feet in a crouch. Closer, she could hear two heartbeats within the building, both steady. There wasn’t much talking, just shuffling, something metallic clanging against more metal.
After a few more minutes of just listening to nothing, a phone rang.
Parker closed her eyes and imagined the scene taking place below her: A man looked at the caller ID, said, “Lincoln” in a low, gravelly voice. Parker waited for them to answer the phone and speak so she could listen in on their conversation and gain some intel. They let it go to voicemail. Why couldn’t they just let this be easy?
A gun cocked. Her eyes snapped open. Crawling to the lip of the roof, she peered down and watched a man come out of the door the bald guy was surveilling. This man was thinner and taller than the runner, and his hair was slicked back in a dark, sleek style that matched his sharp suit and tinted sunglasses.
Carefully, Parker fished her phone from her pocket and made sure the flash and the sound were off. She let the man take a few steps down the alley so she could get a better angle. Then, she snapped a quick picture. She ducked behind the edge and looked at it. You could barely see his face past the shadows and sunglasses.
With a steadying breath, she grabbed a piece of gravel from the roof, tossed it down the road, then jumped to the other building once more. When she spared a quick glance on the other building, the security guy and the man with the gun were both looking to where the gravel had landed. Parker took the chance and snapped another photo, this one getting a better angle of both of their faces.
When she lowered the phone, a chill shot down her spine. The new guy paused, then looked up. Directly where Parker would have been, had she not ducked under the brick barrier.
There was no way he saw her—no possible way—but the man spoke in a low tone, “Find him.”
The security man started for the ladder to the fire escape. Parker jetted off, sprinting and leaping onto the next building with her heart in her throat.
“How the hell did you see me?” she muttered under her breath, throwing a glance over her shoulder. The security man was on the other roof now. He unholstered a handgun from under his shirt.
An alarm rang in her ears, and she lunged to the right. A silenced bullet sailed past her ear. Stumbling but keeping on her feet, Parker cursed under her breath and leapt onto a shorter building and then onto the ground, landing in a roll that kept her momentum to keep running. More bullets from a silenced gun cut past her from above. She heard each quiet gunshot, each time the metal bullet hit the sidewalk. Normally it wasn’t a huge issue that she had run out of web fluid because she was faster and more agile than the average criminal, but this guy was relentless. Skilled. Professional. She was just an eighteen-year-old girl parading in glorified pajamas after being bitten by a weird spider.
The sound of screeching metal-on-metal and rumbling in the near distance alerted Parker. A train . She took a sharp left and scaled the bridge to reach the tracks. It left her exposed, and she could hear the man nearby, but the train was right there.
She stood at the side of the rails and waited, ducking from a bullet, and as soon as the train got close enough for her to reach out and stick to, it blared its horn. Her mind scrambled at the sheer volume.
A sharp tear in her side threw her in front of the train. A flash of white-hot pain. Then, nothing.
_
PRESENT
The first thing Parker registered was the pain in her side. It was hot, itchy, and deep. The second thing was the smell of canned ravioli. The third, a heartbeat, only a foot or two away.
It took a moment for everything to come back to her: the pier, the guys with guns, the train, the bathtub. It didn’t explain why she felt like she was on a couch—something she didn’t own—or why there was someone else in the room.
“I know you’re awake, kid.”
Parker steeled herself and opened her eyes. Her neighbor—a forty-something-year-old man she only caught glimpses of when he slipped in and out of his apartment at odd hours—stared back at her. She looked between him, the can of Chef Boyardee in his left hand, the fork in his right hand, her mask on the ground, the bloody trail she left to the bathroom, the open window, the dimly lit apartment that definitely wasn’t hers, and back to him.
“Hey.” Her tongue was dry.
He set the fork inside the can and placed it on the table beside him. Setting his elbows on his knees, he locked eyes with Parker and didn’t let them go. There was something hard in his gaze—something scary and cold—that concealed something gentler. “You had a bullet in your side.”
“That’s a common symptom of getting shot.” Parker sat up on her elbows and looked down at herself, noting that her hoodie was gone, leaving her in the black compression long-sleeve. She pulled it up and winced at the bandages over the bullet wound beneath her ribs. He must’ve taken it out. Hence, had a bullet in your side, not have . Parker pulled her shirt back down, noted the bloody bullet and bloodied tweezers on a napkin on the table, and returned her gaze to her neighbor. Sized him up. “Are you a doctor or something?”
He was still staring at her. Well, less staring, more observing. Probably wondering to himself how the hell this girl was Spider-Man and why she was bleeding in his bathtub. “Marine.”
Figures. Parker pushed herself upright, but a pain in her ribs on the other side of her torso stopped her short. She sucked in a sharp breath and lay back, face screwed up.
He frowned and nodded towards her. “What’s wrong with your ribs?”
Parker shook her head. “I’m good, they’re just sore.” She pressed her hand over them, feeling for any fractures, but she wasn’t a doctor or a marine, so it was just pain without any insights to what was wrong.
“Let me take a look,” he said, sitting forward.
Parker shook her head again. “I’m fine.” As nice as this guy was for digging a bullet out of her and not immediately calling the cops when he saw the blood and mask on his floor, there was a line. Having him feel her up crossed it.
He stood. Parker pressed herself against the couch. “I’m fine .”
“You’re not.”
He reached for her. Parker jerked back. “Don’t even think about touching me.”
Their eyes met. She raised her chin. His eyes narrowed, but after a few tense moments of silence, he sat back down. “Have it your way.”
“Yeah, I will.” She eased herself up to a sitting position. Her lips were chapped. Smeared blood stuck her baby hairs to her forehead.
The man leaned back. “So. Spider-Man.” Parker’s eyes flickered to him. He looked unimpressed. “You’re a little girl.”
“Surprise,” Parker said. She tried to stand. As soon as she put weight on her legs, her head spun, and her ribs and bullet wound screamed.
“Take it easy.” The man’s hands were on her arms, steadying her as she sat again. “Who did this to you, anyway?”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Does it matter? I’m fine ,” Parker emphasized. He was still close. Too close. Their apartments shared a wall, but that was about as much as she knew about this guy; for all she knew, he could’ve been a serial killer. “I need to—what time is it? I need to go home.”
She went to stand again, and this time she was able to stay upright. The man stood, too, and stepped in front of the door. Parker itched for the mask. Without it, she was sure he could see the panic in her eyes that she tried to hide with indignation.
His brow furrowed. “How old are you?”
“You sure have a lot of questions, don’t you?” Parker’s head was still spinning. She stuck a hand out and grasped onto the wall for balance.
The action didn’t go unnoticed by the man, but he didn’t mention it. “You were the one who broke into my place. I think that warrants my questioning.”
Parker didn’t reply. Partially because she didn’t have a good response to that, and partially because she felt like she was going to faceplant into the ground at any second.
“Your folks know?”
Parker gave him a searching look. Then, she said, “No, of course not. I’m an adult—they don’t need to know.”
His eyebrows raised and he crossed his arms. “Don’t need to know,” he echoed.
“That’s right.”
“Right.” He poked the inside of his cheek with his tongue, then sighed. “Take a seat, kid, before you pass out.”
“I’m—”
“Fine. Yeah, I know. Just do it.”
Parker wanted to challenge him, but the weight of her body standing was getting too much to bear for her middle and her head. She lowered. Hid a wince. Poorly, evidentially, because he was watching her with the same cold-yet-gentle expression from before.
“My name’s Parker,” she said. “You don’t need to call me ‘kid.’ ”
He remained standing but nodded. “Frank.”
He looked like a Frank. Which didn’t strike her as particularly significant at first, but the longer she looked at him with the name stewing in her mind, it started to all piece together.
What are the fucking odds.
“Frank Castle,” she said. “The Punisher.”
He looked away and rubbed his hands together.
They were both vigilantes, technically criminals in the eyes of the law, except her vigilantism didn’t involve murdering people. He was a literal serial killer, for fucks sake. And he was supposed to be dead. The panic that was rising in Parker’s chest was replaced by confusion and shock.
“I thought you died?”
“Only legally. I go by Pete now.”
“Huh.” She tilted her head. “Okay.” What a fucking night. First she got shot, then she got hit by a train, and then none other than Frank Castle fixed her up. Knowing that her neighbor was a murderer should’ve scared her more than it did.
Frank took a few steps into the kitchen. Parker watched him take a glass from a cabinet and fill it with sink water. He wordlessly handed it to her. She took it and offered a thin-lipped smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“I’ll ask you again,” he said after she took a few gulps. “Who did this to you?”
Parker sighed. She, like most, knew the basics of Frank Castle’s past: a marine-turned-killer who took down a whole floor of prisoners while incarcerated for, you know, murder. He was most likely trained in interrogation tactics. Avoiding his questions would just waste time.
“I don’t know.”
“Would you just cut the bullshit and tell me—”
“I honestly don’t know who the guy who shot me was,” Parker insisted. She had his picture, but she wouldn’t be sharing that information with the class. “I followed a suspicious guy, and the boss guy saw me somehow, so he sicced his henchman on me.”
“He beat your face bloody?”
Parker took another drink of the water. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she said, “No, he just shot me.”
“So what caused all this?” Frank motioned to his own face. Parker wasn’t sure what her face looked like, but she had a good guess. Her left temple felt raw, and there was a faint stinging on her left cheek. Although her nose was healed from having her septum piercing ripped out the other day—long story—it felt torn again, so it was probably bleeding at one point. Frank added, “And your injured ribs?”
“Got hit by a train.”
He laughed humorlessly.
Parker rolled her eyes. “Why do you want to know, anyways?”
He squinted and cocked his head to the side. He looked at the open window. The blood on the wall and floor. “If I had come home to this scene and there was a man in my bathroom, I would’ve pulled him out, tied him up, questioned him, and kicked him out to fix himself because his shit is none of my business.”
Frank turned back to Parker. The moonlight from the window cast sharp shadows over his rugged face.
“But, instead, I came home to a teenage girl in my bathroom, and she’s covered in blood, looks like she got beat on real bad, and she has a bullet in her. So, I carried her to my couch, took out the bullet, made sure she ain’t gonna bleed out, and patiently waited ‘til she was awake to know why the hell a baby girl has been fighting thugs at night while her poor parents are sleeping safe and sound.”
Parker pursed her lips. “So you’re a misogynist.”
“Christ.” He ran a hand through his short dark hair. “I’m old fashioned, alright? Point is, now that I know, I can’t ignore it.”
“ It , meaning me?” Parker clarified.
He nodded once. “Meaning you, a little girl taking on New York’s low-lives and sneaking home with bullets in her gut.”
“Would you stop calling me a little girl?” Parker snapped. “I’m eighteen.”
Something in Frank’s eyes shifted. He looked away and cracked his knuckles in his palm.
Parker sighed. She set the water glass on the table and threaded her fingers together. There was something intense about Frank—other than the figurative blood on his hands and Parker’s literal blood on his hands—that felt dangerous, but not threatening. Like he was a loaded gun, but it was aimed somewhere else, not at her, and there was constantly a finger on the trigger. Ready. Waiting for a target.
“Tell me, kid,” he said. “Your folks love you?”
Parker rolled her bottom lip between her teeth. He was obviously going for the good 'ole "your poor parents, what would they think if they found out?" tactic. When Aunt May was alive, she didn’t necessarily not love her, but she also never explicitly told her that she did. May died when Parker was eleven. She died doing the only thing Parker was sure that she loved: drugs. Ben was probably a close second, then maybe Parker ranked somewhere after that. Her parents weren’t ever in the picture.
She hesitated too long. Frank noticed. She cleared her throat and decided to forgo the lying and verbal gymnastics. “I don’t have anyone.”
He pursed his lips. He wasn’t expecting that, apparently. What can I say , Parker thought, running her tongue over her top teeth, I’m just full of surprises.
“The game you’re playing is dangerous,” Frank eventually said. Parker stared up at the ceiling and thought about where her airpods were. And where was her sweatshirt? “It don’t end in retirement with a 401k, it ends with an early grave.”
“I’m not gonna die.” Was he seriously giving her a lecture? She needed her shit so she could go home and sleep off this concussion.
Frank raised a brow. “You came pretty close to dying tonight, before I stepped in.”
Parker raised her brow, too. “I’ve slept off bullet wounds before, I would’ve been fine.”
Frank shook his head and crossed his arms. “You keep saying fine. You’re fine, it’s fine. What does fine mean to you?”
Parker looked him in the eye. “Alive.”
“What was your plan, exactly?” Frank scratched the stubble on his jaw. “If you hadn’t broken into my place?”
What was this, twenty-one questions? Although he didn’t seem to be a threat to her well-being, she was wary of giving him too much of the attitude she got backhanded for while in the foster system. Not that she thought Frank would backhand her, just that he was a serial killer and all.
“Like I said, I’ve slept off bullet wounds before. And before you give me that look, just listen, okay? I can take care of myself, have been for a while.” Frank frowned. Before he could get a word in, Parker continued, “Plus, I’ve got a…an enhanced healing…thing. I heal fast. This bullet wound—” She gestured to her side. “—will be halfway to healed by tomorrow. I usually just sleep while I let my healing do its thang and stitch me back up itself.”
Frank didn’t seem sold. “Do you live alone?” Parker gave him a what’s-it-to-you look. He sat on the other end of the couch and leaned his elbows on his knees.
Parker rubbed the headache from her forehead. It was getting late. “Look, man, I really don’t have time for this interrogation.”
“Interrogation?” He laughed breathlessly. “This ain’t an interrogation, sweetheart.”
“Then can I please just go to bed?”
He leveled his gaze with hers. “How do you know that guy that shot you won’t be back to finish the job?”
“Because I have a secret identity,” Parker cockily replied. “And he thinks I’m dead.”
“Because he shot you? People survive bullets every day.”
“Because he watched me get hit by a train after he shot me.”
Frank didn’t blink. After a moment of searching her face, he sunk back against the couch and ran a hand down his tired face. “You got hit by a train.”
“I told you that already.”
“Are you made of rubber or some shit?” Frank asked incredulously.
“Okay, this was nice, but I’m leaving.” Parker stood, only slightly weakened and woozy. After a peanut butter sandwich, she’d wake up hunky-dory tomorrow. Frank moved to stand in front of the door again, but Parker wasn’t headed that way. She scooped up her mask and made a bee-line to the window.
Frank grabbed her arm. She elbowed him in the face, catching him by surprise and earning a grunt. He went for her again, but she twisted and jumped to the ceiling. Although he was clearly shocked, it was overshadowed by the glare.
“I’m grabbing my shit and leaving,” she said, eyes narrowed, challenging Frank to protest. His jaw clicked but he said nothing. His nose where her elbow caught him was sluggishly bleeding. Wary eyes lingering on the man that looked shorter upside down, Parker crawled to where her hoodie was, snatched that up, pulled her mask over her head, and crawled out the window to access her own.
Once she was in her apartment—for real, this time—Parker tore the mask off again and collapsed on her bed. She needed to take stock of her injuries, but checking her tech felt more pressing. Pushing past the discomfort and her body’s desire to just sit still, Parker sat on her mattress with her back against the wall as she dug her shattered phone and airpods out of the hoodie pocket.
The broken phone was whatever—the SD card was fine, and that's what she really needed. She could go without a phone for a while; once the pictures are uploaded to her junky little laptop, she’ll be able to figure out who those bastards at the pawn shop were. Thankfully one of the airpods still seemed intact. The other one was also a whatever situation—she could fix that by Friday.
Stiffly and with one hand over her bullet wound, Parker teetered over to her desk and deposited the devices. It was a multi-purpose desk used for anything: eating, coding, fixing her tech, stitching herself up, patching holes in the suit. Speaking of which, she had a lot to mend. Parker looked down at herself and could count at least four spots that needed some TLC.
Tomorrow , Parker promised herself. She’d deal with all that tomorrow. For now, all she had to do was get some calories in her and then get some well-deserved sleep.