The red countdown lights pulsed behind Chen Mo.
Five minutes.
Four minutes, fifty-nine seconds.
Four minutes, fifty-eight seconds.
The mechanical Joker head stood in the middle of the fountain pool, its enormous mouth opening and closing, the screen behind its teeth like a reddened eye.
Iron gates slammed down one after another, heavy crashes echoing from the edges of the amusement park.
People began screaming.
Some were still laughing.
Residual laughing gas, nerve-stimulation devices, fear and pain all mixed together, making those sounds seem like nothing a human could produce.
Chen Mo fired two strands of webbing, sticking them to the top of the ticket booth and the outer rim of the carousel, then swung low across the ground.
A man hanging beneath a stall canopy was being lowered bit by bit by a mechanism, toward a row of upright steel spikes beneath his feet.
"Hey, buddy, don't look down." Chen Mo kicked the base of the spikes aside. "Seriously, the decor down there really isn't suited to reviewing your life."
The man's eyes were full of tears, but his mouth still twitched with laughter.
Chen Mo tore through the rope, wrapped him in webbing, and flung him toward the temporary safe zone.
More than a dozen people were already secured to the ground with webs there, like survivors wrapped in white cocoons.
"Heads down, eyes closed, don't run around!" Chen Mo shouted. "The white area is the safe zone! It might look like some giant spider's illegal warehouse, but trust me, right now it's more reliable than Gotham City Hall! Wait, that wasn't a great comparison..."
Before Chen Mo could finish, the game stall to his right suddenly lit up.
A row of plastic ducks sprang out of a trough, a short gun barrel extending from each duck's mouth.