Perfect D

BLACKOUT PROTOCOL A Spider-Man and Jean Grey story The lights went out across Manhattan at 9:47 p.m., all at once, like a giant had blown out a candle. Spider-Man was halfway across the Queensboro Bridge when it happened. The streetlamps died. The traffic signals died. Even the glow of the skyline vanished, leaving only the black river and a thin smear of stars. "Okay," Peter said to nobody. "Either that's a very big fuse, or somebody's having a very bad night." Then a voice spoke inside his head, calm and warm. Spider-Man. It's Jean Grey. Forgive the intrusion. I need you at Lexington and 59th. Now. Peter nearly fell off his own web line. "Okay, that's new! A little warning next time? Like a knock?" There are two hundred people trapped in a subway tunnel and the water is rising. I can hold the walls. I can't hold them and dig. He didn't ask anything else. He swung. Lexington Avenue was chaos. Sirens wailed from stalled fire trucks, and people stood in the dark street with their phone flashlights raised like candles. At the mouth of the station stairs stood Jean Grey, both hands pressed flat against the air as if holding up a heavy door. Sweat ran down her temple. Beneath the pavement, concrete groaned. "Tell me," said Peter, landing beside her. "Electro," she said through her teeth. "He drained the grid, then pushed the surge into the water main. A pipe burst under the station. The ceiling is cracking, and I'm holding it up with my mind, but I can't leave to clear the exit." "So I dig." "Four hundred feet down the tunnel. It's buried in rubble." She looked at him, and he saw how tired she was. "Peter, the water is already at their knees." He hadn't told her his name. He decided that was a problem for later. He dropped down the stairwell into the dark. The tunnel swallowed his voice. Water slapped at his boots, cold and fast. Far ahead, a single flashlight beam became dozens, a frightened constellation of people clustered around a stalled train. Above them the roof sagged, held in place by something he couldn't see, something that hummed against his spider-sense like a plucked wire. "Hi, folks!" he called. "Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man! I'm going to need everyone to stay calm and keep your elbows to yourselves!" A kid on his mother's shoulders shouted, "Is it really you?" "Only on weekends and holidays!" He ran the length of the train, webbing the cracked walls as he went, and reached the sealed exit. The rubble was a mountain of broken brick and twisted steel. He planted his feet, took a breath, and lifted. It was heavy enough to turn his vision white. His muscles burned. Every instinct told him the whole pile would collapse on top of him, and then it didn't, because something else lifted with him, an invisible hand beneath his own, taking the weight. On three, Jean's voice said. "You always do the counting?" Only when it matters. Three. The rubble parted like a curtain. Cold night air poured into the tunnel, and with it the glow of fire-truck headlights idling above. They got everyone out in eleven minutes. Peter carried the last stragglers up the stairs three at a time, and when he climbed into the street with the final child on his back, he found Jean on her knees on the pavement, pale and shaking, a thin line of blood at her nose. "I'm fine," she said, before he could ask. "That was a very convincing 'I'm fine.'" The air crackled. Every hair on Peter's arms stood on end. A bolt of white-blue lightning cracked down the street and slammed into a parked taxi, and out of the smoke stepped Electro, grinning, sparks crawling across his skin. "You ruined my blackout," he said. "I was enjoying it." Peter looked at Jean. Jean looked at Peter. "Please tell me you can ground him," Peter said.