( For the record, and for the benefit of anyone keeping one: the small girl currently occupying a townhouse in Hell’s Kitchen, eating her guardian toward bankruptcy, was the Daughter of Galactus, Devourer of Worlds, traveling this planet under the name Gali.
Nobody on Earth knew this.
Least of all her landlord.
— Queens, meanwhile.
A high school.
The last bell had let out into a furnace of an afternoon, and students poured through the gates in sweaty clumps, trading goodbyes and shoving matches.
At the curb sat a silver-gray sedan with a shine on it that didn’t belong in this zip code, and every kid who passed it slowed down for a look.
They all knew whose car it was.
“Peter.
Come over to my place?” Two of them came out together, one in glasses with a backpack strapped on like cargo, the other wearing his collar open and his family’s money lightly.
“Can’t, Harry.
I’ve got to get home.” Peter Parker waved it off, then brightened anyway.
“Tomorrow’s the institute trip.
Do you know what they’ve got in there?
Actual gene-splicing rigs.
I’ve been reading about their arachnid program all week.” That was Peter.
Point him at a lab and he glowed.
He figured he’d caught it young, from his parents, back before everything, and it had never worn off.
“That so.” Harry Osborn’s attention had already left the conversation.
Across the stream of students, a girl with red hair you could see from half a block away was laughing at something, and every boy in a thirty-foot radius was working hard at not obviously looking.
Mary Jane.
Harry, who did not believe in not obviously looking, watched her go with open appreciation.
“Fine.
Some other time.” “Hey.” Peter, halfway into his goodbye, went up on his toes instead.
“Harry, that’s Trist!” He was already waving.
Down the sidewalk came a young man in casual clothes, hands in his pockets, and though Trist ran a grade ahead of them, off in college while they finished high school, the three of them went back years.
Trist walked up wearing a grin.
“Look at you two.
Still doing homework.” “Hmph.” Harry led with a fist to Trist’s shoulder, which from Harry was a hug.
“Glad you’re in one piece.
Our condolences, man.” Peter’s smile behind his glasses said the same thing with less percussion.
They’d heard about the crash almost as soon as it happened, and then Trist had gone dark for a solid week, no calls, no sightings, nothing.
Now here he was with his shoulders back and light in his face, and both of them relaxed a degree they hadn’t known they were tensed.
“Although,” Trist said thoughtfully, “I suspect young master Osborn’s condolences were pointed somewhere else entirely just now.” His eyes flicked, once, in the direction the red hair had gone.
Harry coughed.
Peter laughed at him, and if the laugh came out slightly hollow, only Trist caught it.
Peter liked Mary Jane too, in the silent, filed-away manner of a boy who had never once considered saying so out loud.
Trist saw the whole geometry of it at a glance and kept his mouth shut.
Honestly, she wasn’t the right fit for Peter anyway.
“So what brings you back to Queens?” Peter asked.
“Paperwork.” Late that afternoon he’d taken Gali out, watched her inhale two full orders, and dropped her at home with instructions to stay put.
Then he’d come out here to file his transfer.
Home and company both sat in Manhattan now; commuting to a Queens campus made no sense, and the route to the registrar happened to pass his old high school at dismissal.
“I heard what you inherited was the comic company,” Harry said, and the young-executive frown he’d been practicing lately made an appearance.
He’d started sitting in on Oscorp business this year, future head of the group and all, and he recited the industry consensus like a stock report.
“That’s not a good business, Trist.
The whole sector’s standing water.
No growth, no energy, no reason to enter.” “Hard to say.” Trist’s grin tilted.
“Tomorrow my own comic hits the stands.
Wait and see.” “Your comic.” Harry stared.
“You draw?” “Since when do you draw?” Peter said.
“Since recently.
I’m told I’m gifted.” They gave him grief about it in the way of old friends, and then, in the way of old friends, both swore on the spot to buy copies.
Harry, characteristically, swore to buy a lot of copies.
The three of them stood at the gates trading talk while the crowd thinned around them, and by the time they split up, the sun was sliding into the rooftops.
— Dusk came down slow and orange over Hell’s Kitchen.
Trist strolled the last blocks toward home in no particular hurry, right up until he saw the restaurant on the corner, and the small figure in a purple dress crouched outside its window like a gargoyle, watching the plates go by inside.
His face went dark.
He crossed the street in six strides and picked her up by the back of the collar.
“Owowow!” Gali, ripped mid-drool from her vigil, whipped around with purple light flaring up in her eyes, fully prepared to delete whoever had dared.
Then she registered the particular thundercloud of a face holding her, and the light scattered instantly.
Her eyes went huge and wet on command.
“Triiist.” A masterpiece of fake crying, deployed at zero range.
“I was hungry.
I had no choice, I had to come out.” Trist did not move a muscle of sympathy.
“Oh?
You put away two full orders at four o’clock.
It is not yet six.
Are you a pig?” “I am not a pig!” The tears evaporated on the spot, replaced by outrage.
“A pig wouldn’t even rate as a life form where I come from!” “Uh huh.” “You don’t believe me!
Fine!
Listen.
Listen!” “Listen to wh…” Her stomach answered for her.
Long, low, unmistakable, echoing gently off the restaurant glass.
“You really are a pig.” “I am not!
This is completely normal!” “It doesn’t happen to me.
It doesn’t happen to anyone else on this street.
Why does it happen to you?” “Says who!
My father’s does it too!” “Great.
It’s hereditary.
You’re a family of…” “Hmph!” Gali drew herself up to her full, insufficient height.
“When my father gets here, I just hope you don’t wet your pants!” “…Sure.” He kept arguing on pure autopilot, entirely unbothered, because as far as he knew the poor man was long dead.
What was he going to do, haunt him?
It was not a bluff.
That was the tragedy of it.
Somewhere out past every map this planet had ever drawn, her father’s appetite had its own gravity, and entire civilizations kept his dietary schedule the way coastal towns keep tide charts.
The growling stomach really did run in the family.
It was practically a crest.
But diplomacy had failed, force was off the table on account of room and board, and that left Gali exactly one weapon.
She dropped to the sidewalk and rolled, wailing about starvation, a full theatrical production staged for an audience of one.
Trist stood over the performance and aged visibly.
He’d taken her for a quiet, well-mannered little thing at that first lunch.
One day.
It had taken one day to learn the truth: five meals a day, three orders a meal, and public opera whenever supply fell behind demand.
He bent down, picked the flailing hamster up off the pavement, pinched one round cheek and stretched it out to its impressive full elasticity, held it there until the wailing turned into indignant squeaking, and then carried her into the restaurant.
Thank God he was rich.
An hour later the two of them came back out, Trist in front, Gali trudging behind with the posture of the deeply wronged.
“Not full,” she muttered.
He didn’t dignify it.
Privately, though, the question circled again: where did it all go?
Was she sick?
Two lifetimes on two Earths, and he’d never heard of a human being who ate like this.
Then the street blew apart.
Gunfire.
Real, close, a hard ripping burst of it that stood every hair on his body straight up.
It was coming from an alley not far ahead, muzzle flash strobing yellow against the brick, and the easy evening shredded around it, pedestrians scattering off the sidewalks.
Trist clamped a hand around Gali’s wrist and walked, fast, the other way.
He was still an ordinary man, and ordinary men did not stroll toward gunfire to satisfy their curiosity.
That was how you died stupid.
Tomorrow the comic hit the stands.
Tomorrow the points started flowing, and everything changed.
Until then, his only superpower was knowing when to leave.
They were barely around the corner when, behind them, the shooting stuttered and stopped.
Smoke drifted in the alley, sharp with cordite under the dying light.
Brick and dumpster alike wore fresh bullet scars, and among the shell casings, several men who would not be reporting in lay where they’d dropped.
Out of the dark stepped a small girl.
Purple hair, a fitted suit and short skirt, a black mask over her face.
She glanced toward the street and pitched her voice low.
“Big Daddy.
I think somebody saw.” “It’s fine.
He’s smart.” The man in black tactical gear didn’t look up.
He moved from body to body with brisk, practiced hands, turning out pockets, checking linings, and finding, judging by the curses building under his breath, nothing at all.
He stood at last and kicked a casing skittering into the dark.
“Frank.
That son of a bitch seals everything airtight.” A breath, cold and level again.
“The trail’s dead.
Again.” Sirens rose somewhere in the distance, drawing closer.
By the time the first cruiser turned onto the block, the alley held nothing but shell casings, smoke, and the dead.
The man and the girl were gone, folded back into the shadows like they’d never been anything else.