TWENTY-ONE
COMPARED to the gray semi-private room, the ICU was open and bright, with light-green walls and wide window views. Cushioned seats were scattered among ten beds, accommodating visitors staying only a few minutes as well as family members curled up for a long haul. Peter’s eyes cast about nervously until he spotted Aunt May.
The thought that she would like the view of the Hudson brought some relief. Even the steady mechanical hush didn’t bother him…until he was close enough to realize it came from a ventilator connected to a flexible blue tube that ran down her throat.
The yellow tinge had faded a bit from her skin. Some pink showed through beneath the nearly invisible peach fuzz on her face. She appeared well cared for, freshly bathed, her gray and white hair neatly combed back. The pattern on her hospital gown was faded, but clean. The off-blue would have matched her eyes, had they been open.
Still holding it together, he pulled up a chair. But when he sat down, suddenly he didn’t know whether to scream or sob. Whatever slight wisdom the years had given him, there would always be some things that made him feel like a helpless child.
Great power may bring great responsibility, but it can also be pretty damn useless. I don’t have anywhere near the money to save her, but I’ve got the secret of eternal youth sitting under my bed, something humanity’s been after since we got up on two feet—and what good is it? If it wasn’t so sad, it’d be funny. Unless…
Suddenly, a thought struck him.
If Silvermane is still alive, maybe that elixir can help Aunt May.
An odd intuition made him look up. Anna Watson was at the entrance, not quite coming in, not quite turning back. Wondering how long she’d been standing there, he rose to offer her his chair.
“Mrs. Watson?”
As if bracing herself for something unpleasant, she inhaled and stepped closer. Noticing the brush she carried in her hand, Peter realized she was the one who’d combed his aunt’s hair.
“You’ve been here all this time?”
“She’s my best friend.”
“Of course…I’m grateful she has you.”
“And you…” she began. Then she literally bit her lip. “No. I promised Mary Jane I wouldn’t say anything, so I’ll keep my opinions to myself. I think it would be best if I waited outside until you’ve left.”
I hate having her feel that way.
“No, you take the chair, please. I was just leaving.”
Her silence was worse than her recriminations.
He slinked out. With little over an hour left in Professor Blanton’s three-hour class, he headed back to ESU.
Hoping to avoid attention, Peter tried to sneak in the back of the lecture hall. Of course, the door was locked. He rapped softly on the glass panel until a student seated along the aisle took pity and reached out to turn the handle. As she did, she knocked her textbook to the floor. Blanton immediately stopped speaking. Worse, the hinges squeaked as Peter stepped in, and all eyes turned to him. The door squeaked even louder. A few students tittered sympathetically.
The wiry, balding Blanton, who always looked exasperated, slapped the side of his lectern to get their attention. “Quiet!”
Peter tried to move toward an empty seat, but the professor called to him.
“Don’t sit just yet, Mr. Parker. I’d like to know what sort of excuse you have this time.”
Even Blanton would have to understand that his aunt’s condition was an emergency, but this wasn’t the right time or place to explain.
“I realize I owe you an apology, sir, but I’d rather discuss that in private.”
After a pregnant pause, Blanton gave him a curt nod. “Very well. Let’s get back to the rules for counting significant figures. As I was saying, all zeroes between non-zero digits are significant…”
Maneuvering an obstacle course of backpacks and folded legs, Peter tried to reach the only open spot quietly. But then the door squeaked open again.
Entering, a harried Doctor Connors zeroed in on Peter. “Sorry for the interruption, John. Do you mind if I borrow Peter Parker for a bit?”
Blanton tossed his hands in the air. “Not at all, Curt. Please, by all means. Keep him.”
Abashed, Peter struggled back along the cramped seats. All the while, Connors excitingly waved for him to hurry, while Blanton remained deadly silent.
They all but ran to the Life Sciences building.
“What is it, Doc? Spider-Man told me you were trying to figure something out from that old tablet. Did you?”
“I did. Turns out he was right. Silvermane is alive!”
“But how? I thought the guy vanished into nonexistence or something.”
“The problem is ‘or something.’ I was making progress with the inscriptions when it dawned on me that a simple experiment could provide a much faster answer. It’d probably be best if I showed you.”
Once they were inside his faculty lab, the door locked behind them, Connors flipped on an electron microscope. “Usually, the specimen has to be specially prepared and held inside a vacuum chamber, but this new microscope, donated by Oscorp, is much more flexible.”
As Connor adjusted the device, a monstrous image appeared on a monitor: a gangly winged creature, its exoskeleton translucent ochre, its oversized head consisting almost entirely of two bulbous red eyes.
Peter wasn’t sure what he was looking at. “It looks like a refugee from a 1950s monster movie. What’s it got to do with the tablet?”
“I’m getting to it. That’s Dolania americana, a species of mayfly. It’s unique in that the females have a normal life expectancy of roughly five minutes. When Silvermane drank that formula, he began getting younger. As that process continued, it accelerated, so that within hours he was an infant. Now, if you consider human life expectancy is roughly 70 years—”
“I get it. With the mayfly, it would all happen in seconds. So you made more formula?”
He removed a small vial from his lab-coat pocket and held it up. It was half-filled with a clear, sparkling liquid. “Frankly, I was surprised it worked at all on an insect. It’s as if the chemical composition adapts to its host.”
Using a dropper, he placed a small amount on the specimen. On the screen, a single drop appeared as a deluge. The mayfly sloshed in the liquid, but ultimately pulled itself to the surface.
“The life cycle of the mayfly consists of four stages, which for our purposes I’ll recite backwards. The last, the adult stage, is called the imago.”
As the fly tried to dry itself, its color grew softer and duller, its legs and tail shorter. The wings acquired a bluish tint. “This is the subimago.”
The wings folded into the body, which became long and slender. Small claws appeared at the ends of its six legs. “The nymph.”
In less than a second, the body shrank into a tiny oval that settled to the bottom of the specimen container. “And the egg.”
As the egg kept shrinking, Connors adjusted the magnification. Some embryonic features remained visible, but as it grew smaller still, the lines between body parts vanished.
“Now we’re basically watching individuation in reverse…”
Connors made a final adjustment. The individual cells popped back into one another, until there was only one single cell left.
“…until we’re left with the initial zygote, or fertilized egg. From here, you’d think the cell would disintegrate into nothingness, the way we thought Silvermane ended. However…”
After a few moments, the cells began to divide. “…the cycle starts over at the beginning. At first, things proceed at a normal pace, but then the process accelerates until the mayfly reaches the end of its cycle.”
Peter watched the egg form. A nymph emerged and become a subimago, then a fully formed imago. Another second later, the fly fell on its back, twitched its legs, and stopped moving.
“Is it dead?”
Connors shrugged. “If not, it’s as close to it as anything can get.”
&nb
sp; But then the legs twitched again, and the imago righted itself. Over the next half-minute, it went through the cycle backwards again—subimago, nymph, egg, zygote.
Peter frowned. “And it keeps doing that over and over…forever?”
“As far as I can tell.”
“But when Silvermane drank that stuff, he lost decades in hours, and that was about two years ago. The boy Spider-Man saw was around 10. Wouldn’t he be older…or younger…by now?”
“I can’t be sure exactly how it works, or if it’s as stable in humans—but judging by the mayfly, the process starts off at a normal rate, then gradually accelerates. It may have taken this long for him to reach age 10.”
“That’s why he wants the tablet. He must know what’s happening to him, and has to suspect where his aging is headed. He’s probably hoping the tablet contains some way to stop the cycle. Who wouldn’t? It’s like a curse.”
“Yes. Silvermane as a child is bad enough—and he’ll be an adult pretty soon. I thought Spider-Man should know.”
“I’ll get him the message right away.”
“Good. After that, you should probably try to catch the end of that class. Blanton looked pretty angry.” Connors clicked a pen open on his knee and scribbled on an ESU memo pad. “I’ll give you a note, saying I needed your help saving some lab samples.”
“I’m not sure it’ll help, but thanks.”
Then it struck him. If there is a way to stop the cycle, the elixir could help Aunt May.
“Something else?” Connors asked.
Spider-Man told him about the transplant, so that question would be better coming from the web-slinger, not Peter Parker.
“No, the whole thing is just so freaky. Thanks again for the note.”
* * *
CONNORS waited for Parker to leave before destroying the mayfly specimen. It had already lived four times its normal lifespan. Not knowing how its altered biology might interact with the ecosystem, he couldn’t very well release it. The alternative—letting it loop through infinite lifetimes while trapped in the confines of a specimen dish—felt cruel.
He rinsed the container at the lab sink, crushed the tiny body between his fingers, and watched it swirl into the hazardous-waste disposal. From the recesses of his subconscious mind, an odd urge arose—a desire to eat the mayfly.
Lizards were fond of bugs.
It was only the sort of passing thought he had every day, the way an average person might experience a fleeting desire to throttle a driver who cut him off in traffic. The Lizard hadn’t posed any real danger of resurfacing since the kidnapping.
It did make Connors sure he’d given Spider-Man the right advice about a transplant. The wall-crawler was fortunate to be able to use his powers for the benefit of others, but the two of them shared that invisible wall that separated them from the rest of their species.
From the corner of his eye, he caught a lithe figure climbing in from the window.
Speak of the devil.
“Spider-Man?” he called.
But the clothes were wrong, the voice too young.
“Silvermane!”
“My nickname, right? Good to have someone call me that again.”
Studying him, Connors asked, “You’re not sure?”
“I’m sure enough.” He looked down at a scrap of paper in his hand. “Dr. Connors, right? The guy who got me here in the first place. It’s funny what memories come and go, Doc, but listening in on your chat with that college kid filled in some more blanks. Maybe I forgot my nickname for a second, but I still followed most of that conversation. And smart as you are, you missed some stuff.”
The gangly teen grew closer. His entire body was a bit off, as if stretched too quickly by the hormonal changes of puberty. But Connors was more concerned with the thing in his long-fingered hands: an old-fashioned tommy gun. Hit by a body-memory of the gangster’s previous threats, Connors fought to stay calm. Silvermane’s memory was clearly piecemeal, his very identity muddled. He couldn’t have his former connections.
And Billy and Martha were safe, visiting relatives in Florida.
“Do you want to tell me what I missed?” Connors asked.
The question confused the boy, then angered him. “Do I want to tell you? No. But you’re gonna want to listen, like your life depended on it.”
When he waved the barrel in Connors’ face, the Lizard writhed inside. “First off, it’s not so smooth, like that fly you just flushed. Sometimes nothing happens for weeks, or months, then I get this growth spurt that hurts so bad I’m moaning on the ground like a whipped dog. When I get back up, I’m a year older and wiser.”
Noticing his reflection in the window, the boy rubbed his cheek. “What do you think I am now? Fourteen? Can’t wait to get some decent facial hair. Anyway, when I first came back from that, I don’t know, darkness? Next I know there’s these fat, fat arms lifting me, up, up, up into this huge face. Not the face of God or nothing, just some cleaning lady. She took me to a hospital, where they poked and prodded me like a pin cushion. I was like a baby. I had no idea who I was, but I knew I had to be someone. It was like the idea of me had never gone away, but it wasn’t really with me, either. Like you think you know everything about the love of your life, only it turns out they’ve been a tease all along. I hightailed it out of there as soon as I could, but it wasn’t until I taught myself to read that I started piecing it all together.”
His acne-pocked brow twisted. He whimpered, as if he were a lost soul, desperate to be understood by someone, by anyone. But when Connors nodded sympathetically, the boy turned the gun on him again. The familiar predatory glow of Silvermane’s eyes shone against the black of his pupils. He put his chin down and bobbed his head in a classic gesture of aggression.
Connors realized his mistake. He’s only telling me his symptoms because he expects me to cure him. In the end, like everything else, he’d rather keep his experiences to himself. I know what that’s like.
Silvermane sneered. “Happy as I am to have kicked the Grim Reaper’s butt, by the time I hit 30, it’s gotta stop—and you’ve gotta help. Not here, though. Don’t want your buddy Spider-Man or that Parker kid sniffing around. Take what you need, but either you come with me or they won’t find enough of you to bury.”
Connors went into a submissive pose, eyes down. “I’ll do what I can, but I’ll need equipment. I have a place, not far. No one knows about it, I swear.”
For some reason, his captor chuckled. “Guess we all have our secrets, huh? Well then, what are we waiting for? I ain’t getting any younger—yet. Let’s get going.”
While Connors collected his notes and the cast of the tablet, the tommy gun remained trained on him. As he wondered what to do next, a dark thing prodded from the back of his mind:
You should have eaten that bug.
TWENTY-TWO
THEY sloshed through the dank sewers. Connors held the flashlight while Silvermane kept the machine gun pressed into the small of his back. The persistent danger hadn’t riled the creature to the point of transformation yet, but Connors was increasingly struggling with its presence. The humidity reminded the Lizard of the Everglade swamps, its home. Unfortunately, it also reminded the creature of the importance of defending its territory.
Reaching the right spot, Connors set the flashlight on a ridge above the muck and felt along the wall for the hidden lever. It was only when he found it that he started questioning why he’d been so ready to reveal his lab’s location. It made some sense: His equipment and old files were down here, and if the gun were fired, no one else need be involved. But it was equally possible that a more primal motive lurked beneath his selfless veneer.
Everyone thinks Silvermane is dead. No one would miss him.
Putting the thought into words gave it power. Throttling his enemy seemed so reasonable, it made Connors shudder.
If the resurrected gangster noticed, he didn’t seem to care. His attention was fixed on the curved wall tugging away from the s
lime with a moist plop. Full-spectrum lighting spilled into the dismal dark, revealing a clean white space equipped with high-tech apparatus and scores of bubbling bio-tanks populated by rare plants and reptiles.
Silvermane let out a low whistle. “All this on a professor’s salary, huh? That university must be choking on change.”
The creature twitched as the invader stepped inside its nest.
“Actually,” Connors said, “I did a lot of the construction myself, and my research provided some valuable patents that have earned back my salary several times over.”
Silvermane quickly located the only comfortable chair and plopped down in it. The creature didn’t like that, either. Seeing the look on Connors’ face, Silvermane waved the gun, as if a reminder of its presence was somehow necessary.
“I’d advise you not to waste time getting that big brain all steamed. You got work to do.”
The acne on Silvermane’s face was a little thinner now, his features slightly more adult.
Maybe I could trap him here, contact Spider-Man. Or better yet…leave him until he’s a helpless infant again, and take care of him myself.
“Would you mind not aiming that right at me, please?”
Silvermane sniggered and lowered the weapon.
The creature grew quieter, if not docile. Connors placed the rubber cast beneath an overhead lens and projected its image on the wall. “You heard me say I’d only translated the chemical formula—that to get farther, I had to study the prose?”
Silvermane made a face, as if to say maybe he had and maybe he hadn’t. “So?”
“I have some hunches, but I’ll need a few hours to confirm them.”
Fidgety, Silvermane looked around. Noticing a big red Emergency button on one wall, he asked. “What’s that for, launching a rocket?”
Connors was afraid he’d have to answer, but before he’d parted his lips, the gangster had moved on. “Got internet down here?”
He not only looks like a teen—in many ways, he is one. He needs distraction.
Connors set him up with a browser at one of the terminals and went to work.
* * *
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