"Queens was officially a no-go."
Peter Parker crouched on the chimney of his house, chewing cold pizza while tugging at his red-and-blue mask in despair.
"I can't spend every night out 'fighting crime' worrying about a cop blowing my head off, can I? That's a little too much excitement!"
Officer George Stacy's cold face and the dark muzzle of his gun flashed through his mind again, making him shudder.
The New York Police Department's wanted posters covered every street and alley in Queens. Officer Stacy was clearly a man of his word. These days, police cars patrolled Queens more often than delivery drivers passed through.
"Time to switch maps." Peter stuffed the pizza into his mouth in a few bites and brushed the crumbs off his hands.
Behind his lensless black-framed glasses, his gaze pierced the layers of rain and mist toward the westernmost edge of Manhattan.
Hell's Kitchen.
New York City's cancer, a criminals' paradise, and a lawless territory the police wanted nothing to do with.
"Loads of bad guys, barely any cops. It's practically a leveling zone made just for me!" Peter snapped his fingers excitedly. "Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is opening for business in Hell's Kitchen tonight!"
He leaped into the air and flicked his wrist.
"Thwip!"
A strand of webbing stuck precisely to a distant signal tower. His red-and-blue figure traced a huge pendulum arc across the night sky, heading straight for the neighborhood shrouded in darkness.
At that same moment, in an abandoned laundry factory on Tenth Avenue in Hell's Kitchen.
On the surface, it was a dilapidated factory with a "For sale" sign. Underground, however, it concealed a drug lab raking in a fortune every day.
Bang!
A brutally powerful front kick blasted open the two-hundred-pound iron door, sending the two armed guards