Chapter 2
Welcome to Roxxon Energy, America’s leading source of energy!
Miles squinted at his phone. The late afternoon sun was glaring off his screen.
Open since 1932, Roxxon Energy is dedicated to supporting Americans with American engineering and American resources! We started as a humble oil and gas company, but we are now the world’s lead researcher in Nuform. Roxxon intends to make Nuform energy available across New York by 2024 to private and public locations!
Big promises, Miles thought. Hobie would hate these people. He flicked through their About Us page and even scrolled through the entirety of the frequently asked questions section, but Miles couldn’t find a word on what Nuform actually was. Just that it was invented by some guy named Simon Krieger, apparently.
Miles closed his phone. He glared at the Roxxon building. A different one, though. Miles had quickly looked up the Roxxon locations across New York. There were a shocking amount of offices listed as in operation but Miles only found three buildings that claimed to be the origin of all Nuform. All three of the buildings were in Harlem. It gave Miles a bad feeling. He couldn’t place why. Miles was trying to be smart about his decisions after dropping the hard drive. All of Roxxon’s security was going to be focused on recovering the losses in the building he and Hobie had invaded earlier. While they were distracted, Miles hoped he could slip into this building, find an empty control room and dig around.
There were flaws to the plans, sure. Miles didn’t have the experience hacking cooperate computers the way Riri and Hobie did. He knew little to nothing about firewalls, or bugs, or code, or whatever the fancy dancy terms were. Something about snakes, Miles thought. He was going in alone when Roxxon was looking for him, specifically him. There were going to be some roadblocks, but Miles was determined to prove to Hobie and his dad that he didn’t need anyone over his shoulder. He was Spiderman. Miles could handle it.
He leapt onto the roof. The pebbles crunched under his feet, but the air was quiet. Miles heard the vvvsh. Vvvsh. Vvvsh. of the air conditioner turbine spinning. There was a metal door that surely connected to a stairwell into the building, but Miles knew better than to just walk down the stairs. Being invisible was a huge drain on his energy and Miles wanted to save that for when it really mattered. He doubted the door was unlocked, anyways. So Miles stood in front of the air conditioner, hyping himself up.
Come on, big man, he thought. You’ve already done this once. You jump in. Stick to the wall. Use the vent system to move quietly and discreetly. And then, bamn. Information will be in your phone and you’ll be good to go.
Miles shook the nerves out of his hands. Vvvsh. Vvvsh. Vvvsh. Miles bounced on the balls of his feet. He leaned back. Vvvsh. He leaned forwards. Vvvsh. He leaned back. Vvvsh. Miles leapt between the blades of the air conditioner. He crouched down into a roll, expecting to hit the back of the box and fall before grabbing the wall, but instead he smacked his shoulder into the back of the box and landed on a fine grate. Right, Miles thought. Pest control.
He wriggled his fingers between the grates and leaned back, pulling the metal with him. He breathed in, breathed out, and tugged. Slowly, the metal bent towards him. Miles kept pulling and pulling, reminding himself to be aware of how close he was getting to the still-turning fan, until the gap in the grate was big enough for him to slip into. Hands and feet stuck to the wall, Miles slid aaaalllll the way down until he touched the ground again. That was easy, he thought. So much for being high security.
He ducked into the vent to his left. Miles didn’t have the blueprints of the building or really any idea where he was going, but he was confident that one of the vent corridors had to lead to an empty room with a computer that had high enough clearance to give him what he needed. Miles crawled through the darkness of the vents, only being able to see by the gentle haze where each entrance point let in the light of the room it connected too. Miles peeked through the slats each time he passed one, looking for a room that looked promising.
The metal under Miles’ hands was beginning to feel hot. Miles was tempted to turn around as he felt sweat run down his temple under his mask. The air was stifling, the vent too hot. But a pale, blue light was ahead. Miles could hear a distant but persistent whirring. He was a curious man.
Transitioning to walking on his feet in a horrible, painful crouched position to save the skin of his hands, Miles crept towards the next vent slat. He peered into the room and saw nothing but that pale blue light and big pieces of silver machinery. Watery voices echoed through the vent. Miles fished out his phone and rushed to open the voice memo app. Even his phone was overheating in his hands, responding to his commands sluggishly.
“How is output looking?”
“Favourable. We need more coolant, though. We’re already halfway through the last tank.”
“What’s the radiation looking like?”
“Not great. Yellow zone. The lower on coolant we get, the further we lean towards orange.”
“Well. Let’s see if we can get some of those fancy shields in here, yeah? Let’s not stay long.”
The voices retreated. Miles stopped the recording and carried on, thankful that he didn’t have to stay in that heat for much longer. It felt like it was making him weak, slowly sapping his energy. As Miles crawled, he thought about what “radiation” could mean. He knew nuclear energy was considered a type of clean energy, but nothing he had read on Roxxon suggested they had the nuclear facilities. It would make sense though. Nuform. The ill employees. Miles wasn’t even a lawyer and he could smell a lawsuit.
It felt like a small eternity had passed before Miles decided to leap up into one of the ventilation shafts above him and see if there was anything of interest on a higher floor. Crawling through the vents was boring and unnervingly silent. At least he was determined.
Finally, Miles peered through the slats and saw what he wanted. The linoleum floors of an office room. A big, black standing desk with a nice PC. The lights were off which suggested that the room was empty, but Miles opted to be careful anyways. There were probably cameras. He went invisible. It was a watery feeling. It stung for a moment, like pins and needles, before washing over him. When Miles checked his hands, he could only see a faint outline where it looked like the air wavered. He reached towards the vent and was relieved to find the cover was cheap plastic. He kicked it out and crawled onto the floor of the office.
It was a big office. There was a trophy case and a wall of plaques and a little seating area. Surely this computer would have what he needed.
Miles crept up to the desk and shook the mouse. The PC whirred as it came to life. It asked him for the password. Miles growled. Shit.
There was a small, plastic shelf underneath the standing desk. Miles ripped open the cupboards and dug through the mess of blank papers, half-full notebooks, random wires, and dried pens. When Miles started flipping through the pages of the notebooks, he stumbled across a small, black book. Inside, messy scrawl and random sticky notes had a plethora of passwords pressed between the pages. Miles was so, so relieved, and searched through the pages until he found the correct note. The computer opened for him with no problem.
Then life was reduced to searching through the files. Miles leaned over the desk, already partly annoyed at this person’s organizational habits as he opened folder after folder, jpg after jpg, pdf after pdf. The word documents were the least helpful.
PRcheque.pdf
Miles felt his shoulders sag. Finally, something. He double clicked the file.
Miles wished he hadn’t.
15,000, the price read. The subject line was blank. The depositor was listed as Aaron Davis.
Uncle Aaron had worked for Roxxon?
Miles dug through the drawer of abandoned wires and was blessed enough to find one with a USB that fit his phone. He dropped the file into his SD card and moved on.
Miles searched and searched and searched. He found a few things. A damage report related to an exploded piece of technology. A payroll statement that showed a inadequate severance charge. There wasn’t a lot that he could find, especially not compared to what Hobie had found. Miles had caught a glimpse of Hobie’s work when they ran away, and he had found enough evidence to fill the screen.
That anger was back. Sparking in his Miles’ gut before it turned into flame and started licking at his insides. Miles knew what he was doing. He was going to find just as much as Hobie did on a different computer that was organized by someone with more than 3 braincells. Miles was great at being Spiderman. He didn’t need anyone’s help. He just needed different resources.
His spidey sense whined.
If Miles strained, he could hear the clicking of shoes on the floor. Panicked, he closed the files app and pressed his thumb into the power button of the PC before shoving the notebooks and wires he had pulled out back into the drawer. He struggled to shove the drawer fully shut, but fiddling with it wouldn’t fix anything as the big wooden doors creaked open and the yellow light of the hallway spilled in.
Miles launched himself against the wall, quickly tucking his phone into his suit. He climbed up towards the ceiling, watching as a blonde man in a relaxed suit strolled in. He clapped and the lights within the scones on the wall blinked on. Two of the Roxxon guards, big guys in cargo pants and red body armor wielding guns, walked in with him and remain posted at the door. Clearly this guy was important. If only he knew how to organize his computers.
One of the masked Roxxon soldiers looked at Miles.
Miles looked down at himself. He was still invisible. There was a gun pointed at his chest.
The words of Riri echoed in Miles’ head. Heat seeking goggles.
Fuck.
“Do we have a visitor?” The man asked, halfway between the guards and his desk.
The Roxxon guard’s voice came through their mask distorted and robotic. “Permission to disable the target?”
“Nonesense!” The man laughed. He clapped his hands and spun to face Miles. He was looking at the wrong part of the wall. “Spiderman! Big fan.”
Slowly, Miles dropped the invisibility. “Uh. Hi?”
“Wow!” The guy exclaimed. “In the flesh. I’m Simon Krieger. Pleasure to meet you.”
Simon Krieger. Miles remembered that name from the website. This guy created Nuform and didn’t know how to organize his files by year? Alright. Miles leapt down from the wall and landed across the desk from him and the two guards, one of which still had his gun aimed at Miles. “Mind telling your buddy that?”
“Fellas, fellas!” Simon sighed, waving his hands at the guards. “Leave the kid alone. I got this.”
Miles cringed at being called a kid. “You’re not mad that broke into your facilities? Twice?”
“Mad? Why would I be mad. Look at this.” Simon walked around the desk and stood in front of his computer. Miles felt incredibly awkward. If he could, he would have just slipped back into the vent and disappeared. His spidey sense was ringing in his head like a pot against a pan, begging him to turn tail and run, but Miles was smart enough to know that running would just end with the guns pointed at him again. The look in Simon’s eye, the way his hands moved with his excitement, it was intriguing. Miles was intrigued. He had fully screwed this guy over but was being offered a front row seat to the computer he had just broken into. So, hesitantly, Miles approached Simon and the computer. Simon had pulled up video feed from Miles fighting the Roxxon guards while defending Hobie. Great. Video evidence of him being a menace.
It didn’t seem like Simon cared, though. He tapped his fingernails against the screen. “See that? How do you do that?” He laughed. Miles watched a video of himself drop his invisibility, stick out his arm, and shoot a crackling spiderweb at one of the guards’ cannons. The guard dropped the defective weapon and turned to run before Miles webbed his legs and swung out of the way of another guard’s aim. The video looped. Simon was watching it enamored.
“The electricity?” Miles asked.
“Yes.” Simon turned to him. There was a wild look in his eyes that made Miles jumpy. His eyes were a little too blue, his smile a little too big. Miles didn’t have much of a chance to do anything other than listen to him, though. “Listen- I know you’re a busy guy. Hell, I am too. But you care about New York. I care about New York. And I’m telling you, Spidey, with these powers of yours? We could do great things. Together!”
“IIII dunno.” Miles leaned back slightly. He let out a scared laugh. “I’m just. Your friendly neighbor Spiderman. Not a lot of my endorsement deals have gone very well.”
“I’m not asking for you endorsement.” Simon said. “I’m asking for your brain. There is no one in this country with a brain like yours, a brain capable of doing that.” He gestured frantically towards the screen. “New York City uses 11,000 Megawatt-hours of electricity every day. That’s a lot of coal, yeah? And you kids, you kids these days, you’re so worried about the environment! Well, I am too. I’ve dedicated my life to this stuff- finding better ways to fuel the world. I think, with your brain, we could do something. Make a breakthrough!”
“Uh.” Miles stuttered out. “It sounds like you’ve been thinking about this for awhile.”
Simon suddenly got very bashful. “Well. Let’s just say I’m a fan. I have been for a long time! Since you entered the scene. You weren’t born with these powers, surely.”
“I, um-”
“You don’t need to tell me.” Simon held up his hands in surrender. “You can give what you want and take what you want. I’ll be honest with you, Spiderman, you breaking into my buildings does not look good for me. I’m gonna have higher ups with questions. Hell, I have questions for you. But I’m willing to put that all aside, I am! In the name of New York. A better future. You don’t need to tell me if you want to work together today, but I promise you, it’ll be worth it. Think about it, yeah?”
“Think about it.” Miles echoed. Think about working with Roxxon?
His brain was going at a million miles per minute but. A job. An actual job. With someone who seemed to trust and like him. With someone who had a lot of money, the kind of money Miles would need to go to school, to develop interdimensional travel, to see Hobie without a stupid watch on. Miles shoved that thought of his mind. He didn’t need Hobie to chase his dreams. Miles had motivations outside of him, okay?
“I’m a little roped up today so we can’t talk specifics quite yet but I’ll walk you out.” Simon said, interrupting that thought process. He put a hand on Miles’ shoulder and pushed him towards the doors. Miles felt his spidey sense kick him but. He was intrigued. Sure, this guy was shady, Miles knew that from the second he swung through the doors. But. It sounded like Simon liked the way that Miles thought. It sounded like he was interested in what Miles had to say. It sounded like Simon wanted to give Miles a chance to spread his wings, the chance he had been begging for since he was sixteen. If a higher up in some random energy company thought Miles was worth something just at a glance, maybe this was Miles’ window to show everyone in his life just what he was capable of. Simon sounded absolutely amazed by just about anything Miles could have put on the table. He spoke with a lightness and excitement Miles had reserved for little kids, not full-grown men. “Front doors this time. You know, when you’ve made your decision, you can just come knocking.”
Simon’s thumb pressed into the meat of Miles’ neck as they walked through the door. Accompanying the pressure, Miles felt the sharp prick of a needle. Oh, great, he thought, his knees going weak as his say over his body disappeared and he collapsed onto the floor.
“Sorry, kid.” Simon sighed. Miles couldn’t move his head to look at him but heard something clink. Hobie’s hard drive rolled into his view. It glitched and spasmed. Miles saw the toe of Simon’s polished shoes. “I can’t let you go swinging around with all this information, you know? I know you understand. You’re a good kid. Hey, uh, fellas, want to take care of this? I have a meeting in five.”
Miles wanted to scream. He wanted to kick and punch and melt into the floor. Of course. Of fucking course, of course! Two pairs of hands grabbed the back of his suit and heaved him up. He was dead weight. Miles couldn’t get his feet underneath himself no matter how hard he tried, his toes dragging uselessly on the floor as he was carried away. Shit.