The abandoned warehouse had a complicated smell.
Rust, motor oil, moldy cardboard boxes, and the smell cheap instant coffee acquired after sitting too long, like a failed attempt to resurrect a corpse.
Paste-Pot Pete sat on an overturned plastic bucket, holding half a cup of coffee and looking deeply contemplative.
That look usually appeared on two kinds of people.
Those who had just escaped prison and started contemplating the meaning of freedom.
And those who had taken a sip of instant coffee and started contemplating whether life was worth continuing.
Paste-Pot Pete was now both.
"So," Scythe said, crouching beside a pile of old tires and wiping his curved blade with a cloth, "Doctor Octopus, Vulture, Sandman, Rhino-that black spider picked them all up?"
The low-level villains in the warehouse fell silent together for a moment.
That sounded strange.
Like someone had swept up several big-ticket items from a supermarket's clearance section in one go.
And it made those of them the black spider hadn't chosen seem like trash nobody wanted even at a discount.
Paste-Pot Pete took a sip of coffee, his face crumpling as if life had just slapped him, and decided to give himself a break.
So what if he wasted food?
Wasn't making food taste this awful the cook's fault? The factory that produced this batch of coffee was the real food waster!
"'Picked up' is exactly right."
A skinny man in a gas mask sat on a shelf, swinging his legs.
"I heard the black spider was really serious about picking people out in the Raft. Like a Christmas sale. Doctor Octopus, Vulture, Sandman, Rhino-each one a bigger item than the last."
Scythe sneered.
"So what? Those guys' lives are in Spider-Man's hands now. We got out on our own. At least we're free."
"Free?"