“Before I go handing out the treats, though, I have one little question.” Peter paused, letting the grumbles and curses die down before continuing. “Who was behind last night?”
Silence.
“We already know that Electro did the wet work,” said Peter. “What I want to know is, who came up with the plan?”
“Your mama,” said Carnage.
“Ah, well,” said Peter, “guess I’ll just go leave these in the guards’ lounge.” He took one step toward the intercom, and then paused. “You were right, by the way, Otto. These are from Mike’s.”
He was facing the outer door when he heard someone say, “Lykos.”
“Lykos.”
“Karl Lykos.”
“Shut up, Pigface, you’re just repeating what I said.”
“It was Karl Lykos, the doctor, now give me the damn doughnuts!”
Dr. Octopus pressed his pudgy face up against the bars. “If I tell you who went with him, can I get one of those big coffee roll things with the cinnamon?”
“Sorry, pal, I don’t need any more help,” said Peter. He handed out the doughnuts and left the prison, his mind racing.
Karl Lykos was a mutant with the ability to feed off other mutants’ energy and shape-shift into a pteranodon. Since there weren’t a lot of neighborhoods where prehistoric flying reptiles went unnoticed, Lykos made his home in the Savage Land, a tropical anomaly hidden deep in the remote continent of Antarctica. Well, Peter thought, at least I don’t have to waste time figuring out where to look for Lykos. All he had to do was find a way to get to an inhospitable jungle on the other side of the world. Perched on top of the Roosevelt Island cable car, Peter thought longingly of home, tomato soup, saltines and ibuprofen, not necessarily in that order. He also thought about the likelihood that calling into work sick again was going to wind up with him getting fired from his teaching position at Midtown High. Of course, now that he wasn’t getting married anymore, Peter didn’t know whether he even wanted to keep the job. Truth was, he didn’t know what he wanted.
But one thing was clear. He couldn’t face Lykos on his own, not in his current weakened condition. Especially since Peter knew the doctor would be surrounding himself with friends and allies—if only to have a steady supply of food.
And if Peter didn’t want a replay of his visit to the Raft, he was going to have to find some friends and allies of his own.
T E N
LUKE Cage was not the best person to sit next to on a small plane. First, there was the man’s size. Second, there was his habit of sitting with his legs spread so wide that Peter had to keep his own legs at an angle to avoid touching the other man. Last, but not least, Luke was seriously on edge.
“I’m not saying I’m scared of flying,” he said, not for the first time since they had taken off. “I’m saying, small planes are how God gets rid of excess rich people.”
“I don’t think Tony’s your typical hobby pilot,” said Peter. “Besides, he’s got Captain America in the cockpit in case anything goes wrong.”
Luke’s eyes rounded. “Wrong? What do you think’s going to go wrong?”
“Nothing. Besides, what are you worrying about? You’re pretty near invulnerable. It’s Jessica and Clint and yours truly who are liable to become Hamburger Helper if we crash.”
“Hey,” said Clint, from the other side of the aisle. “What’s wrong with Hamburger Helper? I make a mean tortilla casserole with that stuff.”
Luke gave Peter a hard look. “Do. Not. Talk. About. Crashing.”
“Sorry.” Peter settled back into his chair and took out a copy of New York magazine. As he scanned the Brilliant/Despicable list, he could feel Luke still staring at him, but tried to ignore it.
“Are you really going to sit there in that mask for the whole flight?”
Without missing a beat, Peter said, “Are you really going to wear that little wooly yellow cap?”
“My wooly cap says I want to keep my bald head warm. Your mask says you don’t trust me. So how do you expect us to work together?”
“I’m not expecting anything from anyone. I rely on myself.” Peter tried to keep a note of smugness from creeping into his voice, but it was difficult. After all that trouble, Electro had turned out not to know that Lykos had hired him. Tony Stark might be a billionaire genius, but it was Peter’s hunch that had produced the goods.
“Then you’re not part of this team,” said Luke. “You go into a battle situation with people, you are supposed to expect something from them, and they are supposed to expect something from you. You want to keep to yourself? Fine. But you’re putting the whole mission in jeopardy.”
Behind his mask, Peter felt himself flush with anger. “I’m sorry, Power Man, but it’s not just my safety I’m worried about.”
“You think no one else has anyone they want to protect? Please. You go ahead and hide whatever you’re hiding under there, but do not try to tell me it’s about other people. I got a pregnant wife back home. So either take off the mask and tell me your first name, or don’t expect me to have your back.”
Peter stood up, ready to change seats, and bumped into Jessica, who was putting something in the overhead compartment. “Sorry,” he said, sitting back down. She was dressed in a skintight red-and-yellow Spider-Woman suit that was actually quite modest—or would have been, on a woman with a less Amazonian figure. “Where are you sitting?” he asked.
“Next to Clint. Why?”
Peter didn’t look at Luke. “No reason.”
Luke gave a little bark of laughter. “You want to switch seats, Spider-Man? Did I hurt your feelings? I must be crazy, heading off to some land-that-time-forgot jungle in the middle of Antarctica. I mean, what kind of idiot would choose to hide out in a place where they have dinosaurs running around, anyhow?”
“A guy who turns into a dinosaur,” said Peter.
“Lykos isn’t the only escaped Raft inmate who was based in the Savage Land prior to capture,” said Jessica, tapping on her computer. “I’m betting Mandrill and Nekra will be heading back there, as well.”
Luke shook his head. “I was in high school when the first reports came out. I remember telling my friend that he was full of it. Some British guy discovers a real-life Jurassic Park inside a ring of live volcanoes? I told him, ‘Give Elvis and Bigfoot my regards.’”
“Weird was my normal,” said Jessica. “I’ve got more of a problem believing that there are normal people living the kind of lives you see on sitcoms.”
“Always imagined going there someday, though.” Luke smiled sheepishly. “Thought I’d get to ride a Brontosaurus or something, like Fred Flintstone.”
“Apatosaurus,” said Peter. “Yeah, I remember my tenth-grade science teacher telling us when the U.N. declared the region out of bounds for any commercial or tourist purposes. I think I sulked for a week.”
“Jeez, you were in tenth grade?” Luke laughed. “I was already serving time.”
“Hey boys and girl.” Steve, who had been sitting next to Tony in the cockpit, moved down the center aisle like a coach addressing his team before a big game. Steve was wearing his Captain America shirt with a pair of pressed khakis, and he looked so blond and square-jawed and clean-cut, he made Peter feel that perhaps pressed khakis were the answer to everything. “How is everyone doing back here?”
“Just peachy,” said Luke, his voice gravely. “My wife is liable to give birth any day, and I’m running off to save the world with a bunch of people I hardly know.”
“You know me,” said Jessica. “And your wife’s not due for another month.”
“If everything goes according to plan,” said Luke. “In my life? Things do not tend to go according to plan.”
“I’ve got a plan,” said Tony, swiveling in the pilot’s seat to face them. With his stubbled goatee, Black Sabbath T-shirt and the silver bracelet on his left wrist, Tony looked more like a dissolute rock star from the eighties than a billionaire genius. “We land, we find the bad
guys, we kick their asses. On the way back, we stop off at the Quay in Sydney to try their tasting menu. Last time, I had hand-caught Tasmanian squid and wild grey ghost mushrooms.”
Steve nodded. “That’s a swell idea, Tony, but where exactly are we going to start looking? We’re talking about a jungle. It’s not like Lykos is going to be making cash withdrawals or get caught on someone’s security camera.”
Tony turned back to the instrument panel, flicked a button, then turned back. “You know how the X-Men have a gizmo for detecting mutant energy signatures?”
“Cerebro,” said Steve. “I’ve heard of it. It takes a telepath to operate, right?”
“And it’s stuck in a dedicated chamber. I’ve just improved it by making it mobile and changing the specs so you don’t have to be a mind-reader to use it. You do have to have an IQ of over 175, however. I call it Analytica.”
“That’s a terrible name,” said Peter. “Sounds like an accounting app.”
“I know. If you have any better suggestions, I’m open to input.” Tony swiveled back to face the cockpit. “Hang on, that’s strange.”
“Oh, dear God,” said Luke, gripping the sides of his seat. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve been trying to take a look at Lykos’s file, and there’s something a little hinky about it.” Tony tapped something on a laptop opened on the co-pilot’s seat to the left of him. “Huh. It has a security lock on it.”
Luke grabbed Peter’s arm. “This is what I was talking about. He’s checking Lykos’s file while he’s flying. You know what happens to people who multitask like that?”
Peter looked out the window. There were a lot of puffy white clouds. “I don’t think we’re going to crash into anything at the moment, Luke.”
Luke nodded three times, as if Peter had just confirmed his worst suspicions. “I must be going crazy.”
“Let me have a look at that file,” said Jessica. Opening up her laptop, she typed in a few codes. “Nothing. If it were coded in AES—Advanced Encryption Standard cipher algorithm—that would open it. But it’s not.”
“So it’s protected by something stronger than the code that safeguards most diplomatic exchanges and financial transactions,” said Tony. “That’s interesting, in a ‘Gee, wonder why the husband of the missing woman cleaned his car trunk with bleach’ kind of way.”
Jessica tapped her fingernail against the computer. “I don’t have the clearance to override this, Cap. Do you?”
“I should be able to.” Steve leaned over and punched in a code. “That’s odd.”
“Let me try something else,” said Jessica, typing. Suddenly she paused and sat back, looking stunned. “Huh.”
Clint, seated beside her, leaned in. “What do you see?”
“The S.H.I.E.L.D. outpost in the Savage Land is offline.”
“I take it that’s not exactly normal?”
“They’re never supposed to go offline. The purpose of the facility is to intercept, store and analyze intelligence data.” Jessica stared at the computer as though it had just turned into something strange and potentially dangerous. Peter felt a prickle of alarm.
“Maybe you should try to contact them,” said Luke.
“Better not,” said Peter. “Someone locks Lykos’s file, and Lykos organizes a prison break. We’re following him back to his home in the Savage Land, and now we’ve got a S.H.I.E.L.D. outpost here that’s gone dark. Call me a paranoid conspiracy-theory guy, but it seems to me that these things could be connected.”
Luke frowned. “What if they’re all sick or something? They could have gotten some crazy Savage virus.”
“That’s possible,” said Steve. “Or they could have some kind of security breach inside the compound. If they were under attack, the first thing they would do is shut down.”
Peter could see that everyone was thinking the same thing: The situation had just gotten a lot more complicated.
“Anyone consider that this could be some super-secret S.H.I.E.L.D. op?” Luke tore open a packet of nuts and popped one into his mouth. “They may hire me from time to time, but I can’t say I trust any organization that has its fingers in as many pies as S.H.I.E.L.D. does.”
“I don’t trust organizations, period,” said Peter, holding out his hand.
“Finally, we agree on something. For that, you get three nuts.” He shook them into Peter’s hand.
“You guys are wrong,” said Steve. “I’m not saying that S.H.I.E.L.D. is perfect, and there are always some bad eggs, but they’re working to promote democratic ideals.”
“You want to know my philosophy?” Tony turned in the pilot’s chair, looking over his shoulder at the others. “Give S.H.I.E.L.D. the benefit of the doubt, and keep the very latest technology advances to myself.”
“If you feel that way,” said Jessica, “why did you even bother to include us? We work for S.H.I.E.L.D., remember?”
“We’ve all worked for S.H.I.E.L.D., except Spider-Man,” said Clint. “The question is, have we drunk the Kool-Aid? Speaking for myself, the answer is no. Now, where did you get those nuts from?”
“Check the pocket with the crash-safety instructions.” Luke crumpled the empty packaging in his hand. “Well, at least now we know where to look for the were-dino-vamp,” said Luke. “He’s probably having a luau at the S.H.I.E.L.D. outpost.”
Peter shook his head. “Not unless they’re mutants. As far as I know, Lykos is on a strict mutant-only diet.” There was silence as everyone thought about the implications of this: Lykos had no reason to keep non-mutants alive.
“Okay,” said Clint, “so we have two objectives here: get a sit-rep on the S.H.I.E.L.D. outpost and track down Lykos and friends.”
Jessica clicked her computer mouse and brought up a topographical map of the Savage Land, prompting a heated debate about mission priorities, assignments and strategies. After a few minutes of this, Peter excused himself to go the bathroom.
Locking the door behind him, he pulled off his mask and splashed cold water on his face. His left eye was still puffy and mostly shut, but the skin around it had faded from black to purple.
All of a sudden, Peter remembered a pre-spider-bite summer-adventure trip he had taken to Costa Rica as a teen. All the other kids had been running up and down the airplane aisles, laughing with friends, singing, telling loud stories. Sitting in his seat with his nose pressed to the window, Peter had wondered what was wrong with him. A few months later, he had acquired his powers. In a way that hadn’t made him different as much as it had given him an easy excuse for not fitting in.
Yet here he was, with a bunch of people who were supposed to be his peers, and Peter didn’t feel like he fit in here, either. Shake it off, Parker. Peter looked at the mask in his hands, and then deliberately kept it off as he left the bathroom.
As he made his way back to his seat, he heard Steve saying, “All right, folks. I suggest you try and close your eyes while you can. After we get there, we’re not going to have much chance for sleep. Also, once we begin to make our descent, you’ll have to assume crash positions. There’s some kind of atmospheric barrier around the Savage Land that plays havoc with flight systems, so we should anticipate a rough landing.”
Luke moved so Peter could slide into the window seat, his eyes skimming Peter’s bare, bruised face. “You look like hell.”
“We can’t all have unbreakable skin.” He fastened his seat belt. “You can call me Peter. Or Pete. Just not Petey.”
Luke pulled off his yellow wool cap and handed it to Peter. “Here you go.”
“I don’t want your hat, Luke.”
“That’s ’cause you got no personal style. Go on. Take it.”
After looking at it for a moment, Peter threw it backward, to Jessica.
“Hey,” said Clint, “did anyone lose a yellow hat?”
“It’s mine,” said Luke, holding up a hand. “May I have it back, please?”
“Sure,” said Clint, balling it up and throwing it into the cock
pit. “Woops, missed.”
“Guys,” said Steve. He held up the yellow hat, looking like a camp counselor who had just discovered his charges had vandalized the bathrooms with toothpaste and toilet paper. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but these are very complicated controls here.”
“Actually, they’re quite simple,” said Tony. “Part of my genius design.”
“Oh,” said Steve. “Well, in that case…”
Luke didn’t get his hat back for a long time. When he did, it was three sizes too big for his head. He didn’t complain, though, and Peter decided he didn’t entirely dislike his seatmate.
THE first sign of trouble was a pocket of turbulence that made the plane lurch up and down. Luke, who had fallen asleep with headphones in his ears and a copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting on his lap, snapped awake, knocking his elbow into Peter’s bruised rib.
“Sorry,” he said, as the plane began to shake violently.
“No problem, I’ll just put my head between my knees and retch my guts out,” said Peter. Suddenly, Tony and Steve started arguing.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” said Tony. “We’re going to land this baby so gently you can all put in your contact lenses.”
“Watch it, Tony!”
“The wheel’s not responding the way it…”
“Use the instruments, not the visuals. That mountain’s much closer than it looks.”
“Don’t tell me how to fly this plane. I invented this plane.”
“I don’t think that position looks right…something’s messing with the altimeter.”
Luke and Peter stared at each other. From the other side of the aisle, they could hear Jessica saying, “Clint, there’s something I really think you should know…” when the plane bounced abruptly. A siren went off, and all the overhead compartments snapped open.
Next to Peter, Luke was cursing so softly it sounded like a prayer.
There was a bump as the landing gear touched down, followed by a high whine as the brakes engaged. Then, to Peter’s surprise, the plane slowed and came to a surprisingly gentle stop.
New Avengers: Breakout Prose Novel Page 9
