by Diane Duane
Now, Peter’s pretty sure the creature that escaped from the sub is responsible. But did he get a chance to tell Venom about it? She had no way of knowing.
But Venom has obviously made the connection between radiation and Hobgoblin. So that’s why he was at ESU. Fine. I still don’t know where I’m going to find Spider-Man…
She stopped in the middle of a cross street, having walked a couple of blocks while she was thinking, and stepped back to let a car pass in front of her. I wonder if he’s called home and left me a message? she thought and walked quickly to the next phone she saw, dropped a quarter in, and called home.
The phone rang three times. She hung up quickly before the fourth ring, when it would pick up. It only did that when there were no messages. Nothing, she thought, retrieving her quarter. Either he didn’t think to call… or he can’t.
She’d go home and wait for him. If he needed her, she’d be there.
* * *
THE voices were screaming again.
Sometimes Fay McAvoy thought the noise would drive her crazy. She heard things—always had—but down in the tunnels below the city it should have been better. Usually she could sleep here, bothered only a little by the rats and the trains. It was the voices she tried to escape.
Those voices were starting again, a little whisper at the back of her head. She pressed her hands to her ears. No no no, she thought. You’re not real. You’re not real.
Fay had been homeless for the better part of a decade, sometimes scavenging, sometimes living on charity, always just getting by. The voices made it impossible for her to work, impossible for her to hold a job of any kind. Half the time she just wanted to crawl into herself and disappear. Once, long ago, before her medical insurance had run out, the doctors had tried to help. She’d been in and out of institutions for years. Nothing had been able to get rid of the voices in her head, though.
Fay suddenly froze in her tracks. What was that? It had sounded like a footstep behind her.
She whirled, straining to hear. Footsteps—and they were getting closer. “Who’s there?” she called.
“Well, look what I found,” said a voice. And then, very low, Fay heard a chuckle.
It was not the sort of voice she wanted to hear. About six feet in front of her, she could see the tall, shadowy shape. Even under the rags he wore, she could tell he was broad in the shoulders, certainly stronger than she was, possibly faster. Don’t wait, said one of the voices in her head. Run. Run now. Knock him down, get past him, and keep going.
She was just taking a deep breath to start her charge at him when something brushed against her leg, quite high, from behind. She screamed at the top of her lungs. Something ran by underneath her—rats, several of them. She knew all too well the abhorrent little pitty-pat of their footsteps.
The next thing she heard shocked her even more, for the man now screamed too. Then Fay heard his footsteps running in the other direction—rat-scurry and shoes mixed together.
Not one to miss an opportunity, Fay ran. She vaulted up sideways, over the third rail, and into one of the diveins that led to an access tunnel. This went at right angles to the train tunnel, and then curved around to parallel it again. One dim utility light was all she could see in this stretch, but it was enough to see that this particular spot, at least, was deserted.
The voices in her head had grown quiet for the moment. Then Fay heard a sound behind her—boots, not crunching on trainbed gravel, but coming down hard on concrete. He’s behind me! Again, Fay ran.
She kept it up for nearly five minutes. Several times Fay had to stop, holding her side as the stitch started. She couldn’t keep up such a pace much longer. Between bouts of panting, she strained to hear. The footsteps seemed to be getting closer over time.
When she stopped, what would she do? Scream? Certainly, for all she was worth—and for all the good it would do down here. Fight? The best that she could. She had been successful at fighting off the occasional mugger in the past. But that had been above ground and, despite the fabled noninvolvement of New Yorkers, you always knew you had a better chance to get away, to survive, when there were other people in the neighborhood. Here she was alone.
She hurried on into a bigger, more open space, as poorly lit as the one she had left. She stopped for a second, gasping, trying to get her bearings—
—and saw a red-and-blue shape, walking towards her.
After a moment, she realized it was a man in a red-and-blue outfit. Then she recognized the outfit—it looked like it had been rubbed threadbare in a couple of places, and it was covered in grime, dirt, and sewage, but none of that mattered. He was a real super hero. She’d seen him before from the streets, and she knew he’d help her.
“Spider-Man!” she hissed. “You gotta help me!”
He looked at her. He seemed poised and ready for action, despite the somewhat bedraggled state of his costume. “What is it?” he said.
“Help me!” Fay whispered fiercely. “There’s someone after me! Please, Spider-Man!”
Spider-Man threw back his shoulders, and turned toward the spot where Fay pointed.
The big, dark shape which had been following Fay came in that doorway. It was another homeless person, with long hair and a scraggly beard—and a knife in his hand.
Hands on his hips, Spider-Man glared menacingly.
The man looked back, stunned for a moment. Then a big grin split his face. “Awright!” he said. “Nice Spider-Man costume! Whadja raid a Halloween shop or somethin’? Well, ‘hero,’ you gonna rescue the lady?” He moved slowly closer. “Let’s see you rescue her from this.” He approached Fay with the knife. Fay’s mouth widened, about to form a scream.
But it was the man who screamed as the line of web shot out, fastened to the knife, pulled it out of his grip, and flung it across the tunnel.
“All right,” Spider-Man said calmly, his voice sounding comfortingly strong and vibrant, “I rescued her. But who’s gonna rescue you when I’m done with you?”
He took one step toward the man. The guy went wide-eyed, backed away stammering something that Fay couldn’t make out, and fled through the entrance to the tunnel again, back into the dark.
They stood there for a moment, just waiting, but there was no sound save the receding footsteps, still running far up the tunnel.
“Are you all right?” Spider-Man asked.
“I—I think so,” Fay said. The voices were still silent. “How about you? You look like you were in a real bad fight.”
“I’ll live,” Spider-Man said. “Can you show me the fastest way out of here? I need to get to the East Side.”
Fay turned slowly, getting her bearings. She’d been in this tunnel before, she realized. “That way,” she said, starting out. “Follow me.”
* * *
A bit less than half an hour later, Spider-Man returned home. There he found MJ, who nearly bowled him over with a hug.
“You’re all right! I was so worried!” She pulled out of the embrace. She wrinkled her nose, probably from the smell of the sewer Spidey had been lying in, but she said nothing about it.
“Good to see you, too. Just came back to restock the web-shooters.”
“You’re going to need them,” she said gravely, and then Spider-Man noticed her look of apprehension, which he realized was about more than her husband’s welfare. He removed the mask from his sweat-stained face.
“Bad news, I take it,” he said, opening the drawer where he kept his spare web cartridges.
MJ quickly filled him in about what she’d seen on the news. “I was worried sick. After hearing how ESU’s been torn up, and that you and Venom and Hobgoblin were all there, what was I supposed to think? And then the next thing I know, Hobgoblin is on the TV, threatening to blow Manhattan up with a bomb if the city doesn’t give him a billion dollars by five thirty this morning!”
“Five thirty. Boy,” Peter said softly, putting a hand to his head, “some people just can’t sleep in, you know?”
“He could certainly send them quite a bit of stuff,” Peter said. “He stole two safe-fulls from ESU.”
“But how did he get away?”
“Venom and I had a little, uh, disagreement about how to handle him—I guess that would be the best way to put it.”
“Well, never mind that, we have more important things to think about.”
“I’ll say we have. When I ran into our little friend, a while back—”
“Who, Venom?”
“No, the critter from the sub.”
“You caught it!”
“Um, no,” Peter said, rubbing the back of his neck meditatively. “I would say offhand that it’s about fifty-fifty as to who caught who.”
He told her in some detail about his encounter with the creature. “No question that it looks like Venom,” he said finally. “There are small differences, but you don’t see them until you’re pretty close up—and by then you’re too busy trying to keep yourself in one piece to pay much attention to them. And it’s a lot stronger than Venom. Brock’s no pushover, but he doesn’t usually push over trains, either.”
MJ shook her head. “Where can that thing have come from? Wherever did they find it?”
“The Captain didn’t tell me much,” Peter said. “Couldn’t.”
“It’s a pity he couldn’t have told you how to catch it,” said MJ. “I wonder how they did it?”
“No telling. And in the final analysis, even having caught it once didn’t help them much, the thing melted its way right out of a nonstandard radiation confinement when it was ready. We’re going to have to think of some other way to keep it. Meanwhile—” He took a long breath, and winced. “Ouch. But I still can’t get over how much it looked like Venom.”
MJ looked doubtful. “Has it tried to shapechange, that you’ve seen?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t.” He turned towards her, really looking at her for the first time since he came in. “You’re all dressed up. Were you out today?”
“I had an audition,” she said.
“What, for the social worker thing? I thought that was tomorrow.”
“No,” she said. “They called this morning. They had to move it up.”
“So how’d it go?”
“Not too bad,” MJ said. “I’ll tell you about it later.”
Peter nodded and rose and put his mask back on. “Back to work,” he said.
MJ glowered at him. “You are out of your alleged mind,” she said. “Look at you! You can barely stand up! You’re in no condition to fight anybody or anything.”
“I can too.” He struck a heroic pose.
MJ looked at him cockeyed, not convinced. “Look at the way your knees are trembling. And don’t think I can’t see you wincing when you breathe.” She reached out to feel his ribs on the right-hand side, and sure enough, he sucked in breath and almost moved away from her. “You cracked them again! And after they just healed from the last time. Doctor Spencer’s never going to believe that you fell down the stairs again. He’s going to start thinking I’m abusing you or something.”
“MJ, never mind. I have to go!”
She had had this argument with him before. She knew where it was going, but she had to have it. “Look,” she said. “This is hardly fair to you. Where are all the other super heroes in this town? Let one of them take over. Call the Fantastic Four or somebody.”
Spider-Man sighed. “Hon,” he said, “half the time when I call there, all I get is their voice mail system. What am I supposed to do? Call and leave a message that says, ‘Hi, guys, it’s Spidey. Listen, I’m not feeling real well at the moment, but I just want you to know that if you haven’t seen the news, you should turn it on, because Hobgoblin has a bomb, and he’s going to blow the city up at five thirty this morning. I’m going home to take an aspirin; can you take care of this one for me?’ It doesn’t work.”
“It’s still not fair to you,” MJ said. “And what about me? One of these days, one of these guys is going to catch you when you’re hurt, and I—I don’t know what I’ll do.”
He gathered her close. “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, MJ,” he murmured. “You having second thoughts?”
“No,” she said. “I just wish there were something I could do to help.”
“Can’t think of anything at the moment,” Spidey said. “If something occurs to me, I’ll give you a call. But don’t wait up for me… I’ll be late.”
“That’s what I was afraid of to begin with,” MJ said dryly. “That you would be late in the funeral-parlor sense of the word.”
“Well, reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. Come on, MJ, cheer up.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Is there anything else you can remember from the newscast that might be a help?”
She recited to him, word for word, as best she could, the text of the news report. Spidey shook his head. “I’m not sure there was anything even in the big safe that would have done Hobby any good. And he wouldn’t have known that until he got it home, wherever home is, and opened it. Then he probably figured that he might as well make some use of it, and gave a batch of that stuff to the authorities as a sample.”
“So he got the material for his bomb somewhere else entirely.”
“That’s right.”
“He has to have been storing it somewhere, then.”
Spider-Man nodded. “The ‘where’ is the problem.”
“Well, I’ve got a suggestion. Marilyn, the homeless lady I met in the shelter the other night, told me that the place where people have been getting sick lately is over by Penn Station.”
“Penn Station,” Spidey said. “You know, when the critter came out into the rail yards and knocked the train over, it ran back into the tracks that would have come out of Penn.”
“Interesting,” MJ said.
“Well, I’ll find out. I managed to put a tracer on both of the safes that Hobby took—”
“Your spider-sense is back, then!” MJ said, relieved.
“That’s right.”
“Well, that’s good. Though, I don’t know… it was kinda fun to see you tripping over things like a real human being. Oh well. I knew it couldn’t last.”
“You like seeing me fall on my nose! When I get back after all this, I’m going to tickle you until you can’t breathe.”
“You’ll have to catch me first,” MJ said mildly, but there was loving challenge in her voice. “I just want you to know that I love you,” MJ said, “and I was worried for you. I want you to be real careful, and don’t give me any more cause to worry, okay?”
“Okay.” He pulled up his mask just enough, and gave her a long and enthusiastic kiss.
She refused to let him go for another moment. “Hon,” she said, “if I don’t see you by five thirty this morning—”
“You will,” said Spider-Man. “Never fear.”
* * *
SWINGING from weblines, Spider-Man headed downtown. The buzz from his spider-tracer grew stronger all the time—its signal undiminished from being underground, if indeed it was underground as he suspected.
The alien was still on his mind. How did they manage to capture it for as long as they did? he wondered. What were they keeping it in? Lead, almost certainly, if the ambient radiation around the creature had to be minimized. Probably reinforced with other substances—though maybe not reinforced enough.
All the same, he wondered at the wisdom of sending a nuclear sub to carry such a creature. It would have been like shipping a tiger in a truck full of meat. He sighed, then. Friends who had gone into the armed forces had joked with him, telling him that the words “mili
tary” and “intelligence” appearing in the same phrase were an oxymoron, with the emphasis on the moronic side of things. It may be that the Navy scientists really thought whatever confinement vessel they were using was sufficient. Well… they’ll have to think again.
Spider-Man was still bemused enough by the thing’s likeness to Venom. But it was certainly nothing more than a coincidence. Though he hadn’t had the symbiote-costume for very long, he’d never noticed it to have any affinity for radiation, so their resemblance wasn’t a family one. He did wonder very much what kind of evolution would produce such a creature, especially one with bipedal and bilateral symmetry which also involved the ability to use those tentacular pseudopods. He would have to leave a message on Reed Richards’s voice mail about it at some point, but there was no time for that right now. Maybe in the morning—assuming there was still a city with a phone system.
And the poor alien creature—he doubted that even it could survive dawn at ground zero. If it did, it would certainly get such a blast of radiation from the bomb that even it would get a bellyache.
Spider-Man swung up onto the top of the hotel across from Madison Square Garden and stood looking down at the entrance to Penn Station. Was he imagining it, or was the traffic a little less busy than usual this time of day? He wouldn’t be surprised if people who had heard about Hobgoblin’s threat might very well have decided to hurry home to their families and stay there, if this was going to be the city’s last night. He wished he could do something of that sort himself, but when he could possibly do something to stop Hobgoblin, he couldn’t afford such a luxury.
He swung down to ground level, and got onto one of the escalators which headed down into Penn. People stared at him with some surprise. Some waved and called his name, others just looked at him as if they saw him every day and he was just one more commuter.
He came out on the lower concourse level. His spider-sense guided him to the right… back and down. He went along past the Long Island Rail Road ticket windows into the main concourse, paused a moment to get his direction from the tracer. Looking up, he saw the guy who made track announcements gazing at him thoughtfully from his little glass box high up on the west wall. Spider-Man gave the guy a wave, then headed toward one of the track doors on the west wall. Its indicator light was lit, to show that the train was boarding.
