Author's note: I've written police before in my stories and some people were offended by how I represented them. After learning about how the police operate in other cultures, I realized something. Police in some places outside of the United States aren't corrupt, nor do they abuse their power. Of course, there are some places with an even worse police department than the United States out there as well. All I ask is that if you are from one of the nations whose police department actually helps people, like China for example, please do not try and apply that to this story, which takes place in America. Of course, it is fiction so it is exaggerated here but unfortunately, the police are scary for a lot of Americans, especially if you are a minority. I know it's absurd hearing it from an American, but keep the author's culture in mind when reading their work.
Ky would wander the streets, pockets empty as well as his stomach. By nightfall, he was spiraling into an alleyway due to the side effects of being bitten by that radioactive spider. As he writhed in pain on the ground, passersby ignored him -- he was nothing more than another druggy from their perspective.
Blue and scarlet lights seemed to be his salvation as a police car pulled up beside him. Once the officers stepped out of their vehicles, Ky reached out to them with trembling hands.
"Help me, please..." He could barely let out those words. Still, he was thankful that the police were there to help him. However, the police department of 2125 and the police department of 2025 weren't the same.
"Look at him. Kid's totally cracked out," one of the cops said, pulling Ky by the collar and forcing the kid to look at him. He flashed a light in Ky's eyes, checking his pupils. His partner scoffed as he reached for his cuffs.
"Please..." Ky muttered as he was being restrained. "I need help."
"Be quiet, already. Should've stayed in school, kid," The officer that was restraining him reached into his own pocket pulled out a bag filled with a white, powdery substance, and planted it in Ky's pocket.
"Well, what do we have here?" he said in a mocking tone, pulling the bag out of Ky's pocket as if he wasn't the one who placed it there.
"Not... Mine..." Ky mumbled, his fever worsening.
"Then why was it in your pocket? You're coming with us." One of the cops pulled Ky to his feet before hitting him in the face with the back of his taser.
"Stop resisting!"
"But... I didn't-" Ky was then punched in the gut by the other officer. His legs buckled and he fell to the ground before the two cops took turns assaulting him, using their fists, feet, and batons.
If it wasn't already clear, Ky knew that the cops in this time period were a dastardly bunch.
That's right... The police department wasn't reformed until the fifties...
Ky couldn't do anything as the cops continued to beat him. Either due to his injuries, his intense fever, or both, Ky fell unconscious. He later awoke inside of a jail cell; unbeknownst to him, it was the next morning.
A couple of hours passed and an officer pulled Ky from his cell and brought him into a small room with a table and two chairs. The officer prompted Ky to sit, offering him a bottle of water.
"Those guys really roughed you up, didn't they?" The officer spoke with a friendlier cadence than the others, but Ky was hesitant to trust him.
"They told me that you had cocaine in your possession. Is that true?" he asked the young man.
Ky shook his head, saying nothing.
"Well, we have the body cam footage. It'll be easier on us if you cooperate."
"Bullshit," Ky mumbled.
"Pardon me?" The officer's friendly cadence was replaced with malice.
"If there was footage, you'd see that they planted that on me."
The officer scoffed, looking through the file he had on Ky. "It says here that you were high while being detained."
"No, I was having a reaction... I was bitten by something."
"Bitten by what."
"A spider. At Oscorp."
The officer couldn't help but laugh. "And I met the Easter Bunny last week," he mocked. "What's your name, kid? We gotta call your parents. Tell them their son is dealing drugs."
"They're not alive..." Ky mumbled. "And I'm not a drug dealer. I was under psychosis from a spider bite."
"Right. And who's gonna believe that story?"
Ky lowered his head, looking down at his cuffed hands. "No one."
"That's right. No one. So let's try this again. Yesterday, when we found you, what did we find in your pockets?"
Ky refused to further humor the man and kept his mouth shut.
"You know, those cameras up there are all for show? They've been down for months, no one gives a shit." The officer gestured toward the camera, compelling Ky to look. The LED at the bottom was inactive, compelling Ky to believe him.
"So what? Are you going to beat me like the other officers? Go ahead and get it over with," Ky told him. "It won't be like last time, I can assure you that."
"Is that a threat?" the officer said, reaching for his sidearm.
"Nope," Ky's handcuffs snapped and he punched the officer in the face, sending the man flying into the metal door, knocking him out cold. Ky snatched the key from the officer's pocket and towered over his collapsed body. "It was a promise."
Just like in the comic book that retold the life of Peter Parker, Ky Carter awoke with the powers of a spider. Though he couldn't swing a web without a web shooter, he still had the super strength and agility of the legendary hero. There was a moment when Ky trembled in excitement, staring at his own quivering hands. As a child, he'd dreamed of being one of the many to take up the mantle of Spider-Man after the hero's passing; however, it came at a hefty cost.
An officer started to open the door from the other side, but Ky instinctively kicked it off its hinges, sending it and the officer crashing into a wall. Ky ran out of the room, finding a dozen or so officers investigating the commotion, each reaching for their weapons. Ky's brain began to buzz; he recognized this feeling from the comics he'd read -- his Spider-Sense was tingling.
Ky lept toward the ceiling, latching onto it while avoiding a bullet, which whizzed past him and hit another officer in the chest. His Spider-Sense flared again, prompting Ky's eyes to dart across the room, noticing another officer pointing his gun at him. Ky threw himself at the officer, knocking him out with a kick. Bullets started to fly, but Ky continued bobbing and weaving past them, delivering emphatic punches and kicks until he was the only man standing.
The men in the other holding cells began to cheer him on, asking him to open their cells. Ky hesitated for a moment, considering freeing them since they too could've been wrongly accused. Then he remembered what happened when Peter Parker got his powers and allowed a criminal to roam free, it led to his Uncle's death.
"I'm sorry," Ky told them before sprinting down the hall full of holding cells. He kicked down the door leading to the front of the police station, seeing a couple of officers heading his way. However, just like the others, they were no match for him. Ky knocked them out with ease before crashing through the entrance, hearing sirens in the distance and they were getting closer.
Ky immediately ran toward the nearest building and began to climb. As he did so, officers arrived at the scene and some of them began firing their weapons at him, having no regard for any civilians who may have been unlucky enough to catch a stray. Once Ky reached the top of the building, he began sprinting as fast as he could, jumping from rooftop to rooftop in hopes that he could evade the police before a helicopter was called.
Lucky for him, he'd already found a place to hide before the police helicopters began circling the scene. There was an old billboard with a gap at its center, big enough to squeeze into and hide. In fact, it was big enough to live in if he was desperate enough, and that he was.
For at least twelve hours, he lay inside the billboard until his stomach started to growl. Ky was able to hold back his tears for a while, but once his hunger set in, he couldn't stop them from welling up. As he wept, he thought about the life he left behind and the things he took for granted. He hated high school, but he was willing to give up anything to go back -- to see his friends and his family. He'd heard that being Spider-Man was sort of like a curse, attracting bad luck to whoever helmed the mantle, but this was beyond anything he could've ever imagined.
His stomach started to roar so loudly, that he couldn't feel sorry for himself anymore. He needed to survive.
"F.E.A.S.T. existed back then, right? I have to find it. I just hope unlike the police department, it's unchanged from the present day..."
Ky wiped his face and rose to his feet. The city's layout was still the same, minus a few name changes. However, Queens New York was one of the many cities whose reputation survived the turn to the next century. It took a bulk of the afternoon, but Ky eventually found F.E.A.S.T.; though it was a far cry from its future self. Instead, of a massive shelter capable of housing thousands, Ky found himself in front of a humble, shoddy building made of brick, capable of feeding less than a hundred. Regardless, he was thankful to have a place to eat.
When he walked through the double-doored entrance, he was greeted by a sour odor. There was a woman in front of him; she held a toddler. The two of them looked as if they hadn't showered in weeks, explaining the smell.
One of the F.E.A.S.T. workers led them elsewhere before a middle-aged woman greeted Ky. "Hello, welcome," she said. Her kind eyes empathized with the young man.
"Hi... Is it true that I can come here to get something to eat?" Ky didn't look her in the eye as he spoke. Subconsciously, he felt as if he needed to hide his face to avoid being detained once again.
The woman nodded. "Of course. Do you have any family we can contact?" she asked him.
Ky shook his head. "They aren't alive. I'm all on my own now."
"I'm so sorry to hear that... My name is May, we'll take care of you, okay?" May opened an arm, welcoming the time traveler inside. Ky followed her into the building, his tummy still rumbling and his heart still yearning for home.