Spider-Man: The Venom Factor

by Diane Duane

  —and something twinged him inside, just faintly, just once: the taste of danger coming.

  The chemical has worn off, Spider-Man thought happily. His pulse started to pick up. My spider-sense is returning! He didn't even mind that the faint tingle meant trouble was coming.

  Outside the window, he heard that faint telltale whine of very small, very sophisticated jet engines.

  He couldn't even wait for it to get completely dark, he thought. Impatient cuss.

  Spidey leaned forward to watch the jetglider settle into the courtyard, with the eerie shape of Hobgoblin standing on top of it. His back was to Spider-Man.

  "It's showtime!" Spidey said softly to himself as, very gently and very quietly, he eased the little window open.

  Now this is going to be interesting, Spidey thought. While the Nuclear floor of that building had windows, they were very few and small. Most of the light came in via glass brick. Hobby, though, seemed undaunted. He jockeyed the jetglider around to the rear end of the building, where the least important equipment was sited, and very straightforwardly flung a pumpkin-bomb at the outside wall.

  A tremendous explosion shook the building, and the rear wall fell away in ruins. Alarms started ringing, but Hobby obviously didn't care about those. He zipped in through the opening.

  Just as I thought, Spider-Man thought as he leapt from the open window and swung across the courtyard. Somebody told him where things were. What to worry about damaging, what not to care about.

  Hurriedly, Spider-Man began webbing almost the entire outside of the building, except for the opening Hobby had blown in the back side. The webbing was in the garden-spider tradition, a fairly fine-meshed network anchored to the ground all around. Spidey leapt and bounced from place to place, very glad that he had restocked his web-shooters earlier in the day. When all the rest of that side of the building was covered, he went to the hole and threw a similar webbing across it. He was barely half done when Hobgoblin appeared on his jetglider. He hovered behind the web mesh, staring at Spider-Man with a look of shock on his face.

  Spidey was slightly shocked, too, for Hobby had cabled the bigger safe to the bottom of his rocket sled, and to Spidey's astonishment, the jetglider was actually managing to lift the thing off the ground.

  "All right, Hobby," Spider-Man said as calmly as he could. "Put it back where you found it."

  Hobgoblin's incredulous expression didn't last long. A nasty grin spread over his face. "Surely you jest, Spider-Man," he said, laughing. He pulled out another pumpkin-bomb and lobbed it casually at the nearest wall.

  There was another huge explosion. Brick and broken pieces of equipment flew in all directions, and Spider-Man felt a moment's extreme unhappiness over how much it was all going to cost to replace. "Ta-ta, bug," said Hobby as the smoke cleared, and without hesitation, he and his jetglider zoomed straight at the hole he had made.

  He should have hesitated. As soon as Hobgoblin came through the hole he'd made, he ran into Spidey's trap full tilt. The webbing caught and held him. Spider-Man moved in fast to finish the job, parting his webbing and leaping through the first hole. From behind, he webbed Hobby up like a neat package. Hobgoblin thrashed and swore, but it did him no good. Within a few seconds, all he could do was glare mutely at Spider-Man, so tightly webbed from toes to mouth that there was nothing he could do. He couldn't reach a bomb to throw, nor deliver any shock from his energy-gauntlets that would do anything but fry himself. The jetglider, tethered now, thumped to the floor with its leaden cargo.

  "Now then," Spider-Man said gently. "You and I have things to discuss."

  "Perhaps," said a deep voice from behind him. "But we think our conversation with this—thing—takes precedence."

  Spider-Man turned. There, silhouetted against the webbing and the opening Hobby had made, stood Venom. The symbiote slowly grinned, his terrible snakelike tongue reaching toward Hobgoblin.

  "We've got to stop meeting like this," Spider-Man said, annoyed, "or people will talk. This is just a good old-fashioned garden variety theft of nuclear materials. Nothing for you to concern yourself about—"

  "We think not," Venom said, stepping slowly toward Hobgoblin, who was so thoroughly wrapped up that he couldn't even speak. Instead, he made nervous, placating-sounding grunting noises.

  "The very fact that he is thieving nuclear material," Venom said, "makes plain what he's been up to. The other 'us' that we've been hearing reports of has also been thieving such material, has he not?" Slowly he drew closer to Hobgoblin. "So you kill two birds with one stone. You fulfill whatever nasty mercenary criminal scheme you're working on at the moment, and you also throw the blame on someone else. And they eat it up, don't they? The media." Venom smiled his awful fangy smile, and the symbiote drooled in anticipation. "No one has ever dared try anything quite so audacious with us. Such action on your part would seem to argue that you are weary of your life. That being the case—"

  Tendrils from the symbiote streamed off him, grabbed Hobby, webbing, glider, safe and all, picked him up, and shook him as another man might shake someone by the lapels of a jacket. "Before we julienne the flesh off your bones and tie it in bow-knots while you watch—we want to know why?"

  Hobgoblin made muffled, desperate noises. Venom's dark tentacles began to edge themselves like razors. They descended on the webbing—sliced it, ripped it, shredded it away.

  "Hey, wait a minute," Spider-Man cried. "It took a little doing to get him that way!" He leapt at Venom to pull him off from behind.

  Venom's hands were occupied. Some of his tendrils whipped around to deal with Spider-Man—still razor edged, deadly as any knives. Spidey ducked away from them, and managed—but only because Venom was distracted—to throw some of his own webbing around Venom this time.

  The struggle that folio wed was a chaotic sort of thing— Venom tearing at the web, his tentacles wriggling and streaming out from between the strands, trying to reach Spidey, Spidey throwing more web over it all, desperately hoping he wasn't about to run out after all he'd just used on the building. The two of them danced to and fro, spraying webs, cutting webs, tendrils clutching, being tangled, freeing themselves and being tangled again—

  —until the whine of the jetglider stopped them both where they stood.

  It was a pitiful-looking package which was soaring slowly, but more and more quickly every second, up out of the shattered building. Shreds and rags of web hung off Hobby, the jetglider, and the safe—all ascending as Hobby put on speed.

  "Oh, no," Spidey moaned. He dashed out and shot web desperately at the receding form, but the jetglider kinked suddenly sideways, rose over the walls of the college, and was gone.

  Glaring terribly, Venom rid himself of the last few rags of Spidey's webbing. "You utter fool. Now he'll get away and finish whatever awful thing he's started! Not to mention going back to impersonating us. And there's no telling where he's heading now—"

  Spider-Man said nothing. He had seen, as the safe ascended, that his tracer was still on it. When his spider-sense came back fully—which he hoped would be soon—he would be able to track him well enough. He turned to Venom. "You're serious about this. It really wasn't you down there."

  "You still don't quite believe us," Venom said, his voice a low, angry growl. "O ye of little faith."

  "Yes, and the Devil can quote scripture to his purpose," Spider-Man said. Still, he thought, I've been giving him the benefit of the doubt all this while. And now when he comes to me and tells me I was right—I can't believe him?

  "You're telling me that you didn't knock over a train last night?" Spidey said.

  Venom's smile was grim, but just a touch more humorous-looking than usual. "Someone who could knock over trains," he said, "would not have had the trouble with your webbing that we just did." He frowned. "We must see about a more effective remedy."

  "Let's leave that aside for the moment," Spider-Man said.

  "I think we had better. That creature can't continue impersonating us—
"

  "I'm not so sure it was Hobgoblin," Spider-Man said. "And it would be dreadful to eat his spleen for the wrong reason, wouldn't it?"

  "If he's doing what we think he's doing at the moment," Venom said, his tongue flickering in shared rage, "there's reason enough to rip him limb from limb, even leaving personal business out of it. Hobgoblin is almost certainly building a bomb of some kind, wouldn't you agree?"

  Spider-Man could only nod at that.

  "And the only reason one builds atomic bombs is to threaten other people with their use. And sometimes . . . to actually use them." Venom glared at Spider-Man again. "We, for one, though we consider this city a Hell for the innocent, and the den of every kind of injustice and crime, would prefer not to see it blown up . . . it, or any other like it. That Hobgoblin is even willing to threaten to do such a thing, or to help someone else to do it, merits him death. If he would do more—if he would actually detonate a bomb and end millions of innocent lives—then he merits death millions of times over. And we promise to make that death as prolonged and painful as he would make the deaths of many of the people here!"

  "Look," Spider-Man said, "I'd agree, but—"

  "No buts," said Venom. "We are going after him. This wretched creature has been brought to 'justice' enough times—with what result? This. We swear to you, we will find him before you do. By the time we are done with him, he will bewail the fate that kept you from finding him first."

  Venom turned and leapt out the blown-out end of the building.

  Spider-Man leapt after him.

  MJ had seen Peter off that morning in a somewhat mixed state of mind. She had the pleasure of knowing that he was rested, not aching too badly (for a change), he'd had enough to eat, and most important, he'd actually had enough time to digest and consider what had been happening to him for the last couple of days. MJ watched her husband with considerable concern. She was afraid that, if he went out one time too many unrested and without his plans in order, he wouldn't come back.

  She knew what he was planning for his day at ESU. She couldn't say she was overwhelmingly happy about it, but he was as well-prepared as he could be; he had a plan. So, there was nothing much more to be said about it. That being the case, she made tea and toast, sat down at the dining room table with the sun coming in through the window, and paged through the trades she'd bought the other day at Mr. Kee's. There wasn't anything much of interest that she hadn't already seen. News of mergers, buyouts, movie deals—I'd love to have anything happen to me, she thought, that had lots of zeroes after it. . . .

  She made a second batch of toast, buttered it, and sat down when the phone rang. She debated letting the machine take it, then got up and went over to the phone table. "Hello?"

  "Ms. Watson-Parker?"

  "This is she."

  "This is Rinalda Rodriguez, over at Own Goal Productions—"

  "Yes," MJ said, and her heart leaped. It was the people who had offered her the audition.

  "Listen, I'm sorry to trouble you so early, but we've had a change of plan—"

  There it goes, MJ thought. The whole thing's off.

  "My partner and I have to leave for LA early tomorrow morning—"

  Iknew it, it was too good to be true. .

  "—so is there any chance that you could come up to do your audition today?"

  "Today?" MJ said, swallowing. "Certainly. I don't see why not. What time?"

  "Would after lunch be all right?"

  "After lunch—"

  There was some babbling in the background. "Oh, no, wait a moment—" The phone was covered, and some words were exchanged. "Actually, three o'clock. How would that be?"

  "Three o'clock. Fine. Same place?"

  "No, we're moving uptown for this one." The AP gave her an address on the Upper West Side.

  "That's fine," MJ said. "I'll be there."

  "Sorry again to change plans on you like this."

  "Oh, that's all right. It's nice of you to tell me this early," MJ said, meaning it. Some producers she'd known would change plans without warning and then make it sound as if it was your fault somehow when you couldn't meet the new requirements. "I'll see you this afternoon, then. Bye!"

  She hung up. This afternoon. Ohmigosh!

  She had planned to spend a leisurely afternoon, studying the material she'd been given, reading to feel what the material did for her, and working to the mirror, making sure that her expressions were doing what she thought they were doing. Well, it was going to have to be mostly mirror work today, and in a hurry, too. As always, when a crisis like this came up, she was all nerves, all at once. She scooted over to the window, leaned against the windowsill and looked out across the rooftops, twitching slightly. Peter . . . she thought.

  But Peter could take care of himself. He had proven that often enough in the past, in one set of clothes or another. Now she was going to have to get out there and do the lioness thing. She would make him proud of her.

  She let out a fast, excited breath, then went to get those script pages.

  The time until two o'clock, when MJ needed to leave, flew by. How to read young Dora, the social worker character—that was the main problem. She was young: if the producers were casting actresses 22-25, they meant it. Surely they didn't want Dora too experienced, too knowledgeable. Yet at the same time, someone coming out of school that age could have considerable expertise—and the series bible did emphasize the character's sense of humor. That, MJ thought, was the key. When the character knew for sure what she was talking about, she would be all business and certainty, but when something happened with which she'd had no previous experience, she'd cover with humor while trying to figure out what to do.

  As time to leave got closer, it got harder for MJ to concentrate. I wonder how many other people are auditioning? she thought. She had trouble dealing with cattle-calls like the one the other day. But surely most of those people had been shaken out. All the same, she didn't like watching a lot of readings before her own—the fear dogged her that she could accidentally adopt someone else's approach when her own would really work better. And at the same time, she was usually forced to see a lot of other readings, because her name began with "W." So she did her best to ignore what was going on around her—but the long wait always made the nervousness worse. Sometimes I think it would be less stressful to go out and have a fight with a super-villain.

  As two o'clock inched closer she read the pages one last time, putting some extra emphasis on the set of lines about hunger, letting the feeling out. There was a lot of it: her close look at the shelter yesterday reminded her how easy it was to forget about the homeless problem completely, and the anger and frustration came up in the reading, she thought, to good effect.

  Well, she decided at last, this is as good as it's going to get. Let's get dressed and head out.

  She had showered and taken care of her hair and makeup earlier. Now she went into the bedroom and hunted through the closet for the right thing. Something attractive, but appropriate for a young social worker. Fawn linen skirt, just barely below the knee; medium heels; white silk shirt. She thought for a moment and pulled out her one and only Hermes scarf, the one with the tigress on it, a present from Peter. She twined it around her neck outside the shirt collar and left it hanging down casually. There, she thought, looking herself over in the mirror. A touch of class.

  She went out, grabbed her purse and keys, the script pages and audition pack, and her copy of War and Peace, and headed down to catch a cab. Normally, MJ had cab luck. Rain or shine, all she had to do was go out to the curb, stick her arm out, and a cab would materialize from nowhere. Today, naturally, the luck deserted her for all of five minutes, so that she stood there twitching impatiently, thinking, What if I don't get a cab at all, what if I'm late, what if there's a traffic jam . . .

  Peter . . .

  She let out a breath, then smiled at herself. At times like this, her free-floating anxiety fastened on anything it could find. Peter was quite probably
happily and coolly ensconced at ESU somewhere, biding his time.

  A cab finally pulled up. She got in, gave the driver the address, and let him whisk her away. From Peter, her mind jumped again to the homeless people she had met. While she and Peter had been in the tub, they had talked about the radiation sickness—for so it seemed to be—that some of these people were suffering from. The submarine captain said, she thought, that the creature itself wasn't radioactive. And Peter mentioned the hole in the bottom of the warehouse, leading down into the sewers. If that thing's been down in the sewers, and in the train tunnels where some of the homeless people are, doesn't it have to be the cause? But if the captain's right and it's not affecting them, not the cause of their radiation sickness—what is?

  She turned the problem over in her mind, but could find no obvious answer. Could there be some kind of radioactive waste leaking down into the tunnels and servers? Could someone be disposing of the stuff illegally? She knew that toxic waste got dumped in landfills where it didn't belong. Sometimes, tankers full of it just sprayed their contents out on the side of some lonely country road, or into common sewerage, where it just flowed out to sea, untreated. Suppose someone was doing something similar with radioactive waste here in the city?

  It would be easy enough to do, and there would be reasons for it. Disposing of nuclear waste safely was expensive: companies that used the legal methods of disposal were charged a lot for it. Why not save the money and just dump the stuff somewhere?

  She was too nervous to think clearly about it. There was something nagging at her—the image of people, hungry and homeless to start with, now having to watch the blotches and sores form on their bodies, their hair falling out, feeling themselves getting more ill and weak every day. It didn't bear considering. She hoped somebody—Spider-Man, or the police, or even Venom—would find the creature, if it was the cause of this, and end its threat. Those poor folks, she thought and was surprised to find her eyes stinging with tears.