Wind.
It was cold, cutting against her skin like knives.
Gwen Stacy's eyes snapped open.
Everything was upside down. Manhattan's sea of neon lights flickered above her "head," while beneath her feet was a vast pane of reflective glass mirroring the city lights.
She froze for a second. The swelling pressure of blood rushing to her head reminded her that this was no dream.
She really was hanging upside down hundreds of meters in the air, outside the Empire State Building's floor-to-ceiling windows.
Bzzzz!
Before she could figure out what was happening, a terrifying torrent of information slammed brutally into her mind.
It was too loud.
Four hundred meters away, taxi tires shrieked against the asphalt on Fifth Avenue; three blocks below, a couple argued in an alley; she could even hear the wet smacking of an office building security guard chewing gum on the other side of the glass.
Every sound stabbed into her eardrums at once, like ten thousand needles.
Gwen squeezed her eyes shut in pain, instinctively raising both hands to cover her ears.
The moment she lifted them, she froze.
A layer of black substance, flowing like asphalt, covered the backs of her hands, with stark white patterns extending from their centers. These weren't her clothes. This was a black-and-white costume that clung tightly to her skin, outlining every curve of her body with startling clarity.
Tiny barbs tipped the costume's fingers, gripping the smooth glass firmly.
A savage power surged inside her, something that didn't belong to her at all, as though she could shatter the entire building with one punch.
"Little girl."
Without warning, a rough, hoarse voice rang out, like two pieces of rusty iron scraping hard against each other inside her head.
Gwen's breath caught.
The black fluid at her shoulder suddenly