Free Web NovelChapter 28: Ch 27: The Confession Train On Bridge IX
Gwen pushed herself up on shaky arms, her voice raspy but firm.
"Never," she said, biting down on the pain in her cracked ribs. "The world doesn’t need fixing. It just needs to be saved from lunatics like you."
Veritas let out a long sigh, tilting his head like a disappointed parent.
"You’re so stubborn, Spider-Woman. And way too responsible for your own good. I actually like that about you... It’s a shame your efforts are so terribly misguided."
He shrugged. "If only you understood me the way I understand you. Oh well. Before I make the world see the truth, I guess I’ll have to make you see the truth of the world first."
He launched himself forward.
BOOM!
Gwen watched him come, and for just one moment. A single, quiet second, she closed her eyes.
Breathe.
Her ribs screamed. She breathed anyway.
And then opened them again. When she opened her eyes, she watched Veritas rocketing toward her, riding the chaotic, zigzagging momentum of his palm blasts.
Her mind flashed back to just a few minutes ago. To strip her of her advantage, Veritas had willingly let her hammer her elbows into his spine just so he could drag her into the open sky. He took the damage because he knew it was the only way to get what he wanted.
Her spider-sense buzzed as he got closer and closer.
’Fine,’ she thought. ’You’re not the only one who’ll do whatever it takes.’
With a sudden burst of speed, she launched herself directly toward him.
Thwip! Thwip!
She shot two strands of webbing straight at his face, aiming to blind him with her webs.
Luke’s eyes narrowed behind the mask. He twisted his body mid-air, a small burst from his palm spinning him sideways. The web missed by inches. He used another controlled blast to pop himself a few feet higher, then adjusted his angle and plummeted straight at her.
"Say cheese!" he said, both palms aimed directly at her face.
Her spider-sense went ballistic. Every instinct she had told her to dodge, to swing, to get out of the way.
But this time, Gwen didn’t dodge. She didn’t swing away.
BOOOM!
Heat washed over her as the explosion bloomed. It was intense, searing, her already-burnt suit, her skin screaming in protest. She gritted her teeth and pushed through it.
Emerging from the smoke like a vengeful ghost, Gwen shot her hand out and clamped her fingers around his left arm.
She twisted her hips and swung him in a brutal, downward arc, aiming to plant his creepy clown mask right into the steel railway tracks.
"Woah!" Luke yelled.
Right before his face could kiss the tracks, he fired a massive blast from his free hand toward the ground. The heavy recoil shot him back up into the air, narrowly avoiding a shattered nose.
Then something unexpected happened.
Gwen wasn’t in front of him anymore.
She was behind him.
Her legs wrapped around his waist from behind. Her arms snaked around his neck, locking into a tight chokehold.
"Oh come on—" Luke choked out, struggling to stay afloat with awkward, sputtering blasts. "What happened to personal space now?!"
"Shhh," Gwen whispered. "Just let it happen."
Luke reached backward, palms pressing against her thighs. He felt the torn fabric of her suit, the heat radiating off her burnt skin.
’...........Soft’
Some dumb part of his brain noted.
Gwen’s spider-sense screamed.
Before he could blast, she released his neck and grabbed both his wrists in an iron grip.
Luke’s eyes went wide. It was not a grip he could shrug off, it was a Spider-hero’s grip...
’Ouh shit.’
He realized what she was after a microsecond too late.
In sheer panic, he fired a massive blast from his palms, hoping the recoil would shake her off.
It did. Gwen launched herself backward, diving smoothly away from him into the open air. But as Luke tried to stabilize himself, he realized his arms weren’t moving. They were webbed.
Still high in the air, Luke struggled frantically to balance himself. Without his arms to guide his flight, his center of gravity was entirely ruined.
He fired another panicked blast, hoping the intense heat from his palms would incinerate the mess.
But the webbing didn’t burn.
’Ah,’ Luke realized, feeling the tight strain on his arms.
Her webs weren’t sealing his palms. She had tied his wrists together. And wrists are just above palms for humans, meaning the webs were completely out of his own blast radius.
And since her webbing was strong enough to hold up falling buildings and pull planes, his physical strength wasn’t even close to enough to break free.
He was falling fast.
But the Spider wasn’t done playing with her food.
Thwip!
A web-line shot out and plastered right onto the middle of his back.
Gwen yanked her arm back with brutal super-strength. She used his falling momentum to swing him in a massive, high-speed arc, turning him into a human wrecking ball.
And then CLANG.
He slammed shoulder-first into a metal support beam.
"Gah!"
Before he could even slide down the metal, Gwen quickly fired another web, anchoring it to a beam above. Now, Luke was dangling from the bridge.
Thankfully, there was a metal beam behind his back, or he would’ve been dangling back and forth across the tracks like an explosive pendulum.
His expressive Jester mask changed its expression from gleeful to a perfectly flat, unamused deadpan.
Gwen shot a web string towards him. In the blink of an eye, she was right on top of him.
She got awfully close...
Without a word, she reached out and started patting him down. She tapped the outside of his suit coat, then slipped her hands inside to check the inner lining. Finding it empty, her hands moved lower, aggressively tapping his trouser pockets.
Luke cleared his throat. "If you’re searching for something thick, long, and hard... it’s not in a pocket..."
Gwen’s hands stopped moving. She turned her head slowly toward him.
"That was out of line. Even for you, creepy clown."
"Sorry," he apologized instantly.
She leaned closer. "The kill switch, where is it?"
Luke leaned his head forward, leaving their faces just inches apart. The playful energy faded into a smug, confident whisper.
"Did you really think, after seeing your expert pickpocketing skills, I would make the same mistake twice? There is simply no kill switch this time."
Gwen’s heart pounded against her ribs.
"What?"
A cold weight dropped into her stomach. She felt a sudden, suffocating lump form in her throat.
Was this situation hopeless?
Was the timer going to run out?
Was she going to fail to save lives once again today?
Was all this fighting for absolutely nothing?
"Tell me."
CRAAAANG!
Gwen threw a blindingly fast punch right past his ear. Her fist slammed into the solid metal beam behind Luke’s head.
The impact sounded like a car crash, the steel vibrating violently. Luke didn’t need to look to know there was a massive, fist-shaped dent in the steel right now.
"Tell me, how to stop the timer on the hostages’ bombs? How to stop the timer of the bridge’s bombs?" she demanded.
She tried her best to ask calmly, but there was a scary, desperate shake in her voice that was damn intimidating.
Luke tilted his head in genuine confusion.
"Timer?" he said. "On the hostage bombs? No, no, no. Those don’t have timers. Those are triggered by excessive movement in the wire or by breaking the circuit. You see, they came with severely limited configurations. I simply picked the one that encouraged everyone to stay perfectly still."
Gwen’s eyes widened behind her mask.
Hope.
She didn’t waste another second.
Gwen backflipped away from him, a blur of pink and white. But mid-flip, she twisted her body, planted a foot on the beam, and launched a spinning kick straight at his face. She was going to keep her promise of double kicks on the face.
BAM!
But her foot didn’t hit his clown mask.
It slammed squarely into his crossed forearms.
Gwen’s eyes widened in shock beneath her mask. His hands were free!
You see, while he talked, he pressed his bound hands hard against the thick steel beam behind his back, and he forcefully bent his right wrist inward. It was so damn painful...
And right when Gwen separated from him, a quick AP-Shot burned the webs and freed his bounds.
Gwen was now crouching on the tracks, ready for anything... Luke hovered in front of her.
’Well, the minimum stream duration passed over a minute ago. And now I’ve also made Gwen realize the only way to save the hostages... ’ Luke thought.
"Welp! As much as I’d love to stay and play a bit more with my Hero, I think I’ll just declare today’s rematch a draw," Veritas said, giving her an exaggerated, mocking bow mid-air. "You see, I don’t really want to be on this bridge when it goes kaboom."
Gwen froze.
"You have less than a minute before the bridge’s timer hits zero, by the way! 45 seconds, to be exact." Veritas added helpfully, pointing a finger-gun at her. "Leave the hostages, better run away fast!"
"I’ll check tomorrow’s Daily Bugle headlines to see what happened next," Veritas cheered, his floating phone hovering over to his shoulder as he readied his palms. "Well then, see you next time, Top G!"
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
Veritas unleashed a massive, blinding blast from both hands. The sheer force of the explosion rocketed him straight up into the sky, leaving a trail of orange fire and black smoke in his wake.
Gwen didn’t waste a single second looking up.
Forty-five seconds.
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P.S. The next day, for some reason, Andrew Tate was trending no.1 on all sites.
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End of damn long arc! fгeewebnovёl.com
By the way just wanted to tell ya. The novel is not going to be a repeat of terror attacks and, fights mixed with some "bad touch" moments. These arcs were just to establish Veritas’s image. The next stream arc is going to thicken the plot a bit. And don’t you ever worry about romance, its always gonna be in the air.
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