Spider Man 3 Page 16

  Wallace stared at the bag for a moment, and Marko saw a thin line of sweat beading his brow. “It won’t be enough,” Wallace said, which immediately raised Marko’s suspicions, since Wallace hadn’t even glanced inside. He had no idea how much money was in there. More likely Wallace was terrified at the thought of receiving stolen cash. “It would take teams of researchers, millions of dollars…”

  “Then I’ll get more! All you need!”

  “Even if you could,” Wallace insisted, “it’s highly unlikely we’d find a cure in the short time your daughter has left.”

  Wallace’s reluctance probably stemmed from aiding a known criminal via “ill-gotten gain.” But Sandman didn’t give a damn about niceties or moralities—to him, the end justified the means. If the end meant that Penny lived, then any means was fine by him. The problem was bringing Wallace, the foremost expert—indeed, the only expert—on this disease into line with Sandman’s way of thinking.

  Shouldn’t be too hard.

  “Shut up!” snarled Marko as he slammed Wallace against a window, shattering it. Wallace almost tumbled to the floor, but Marko grabbed him and yanked him forward. Wind whistled in through the broken glass, blowing papers off the counters. He hauled Wallace up until they were practically nose to nose and said with barely controlled fury, “You’re gonna help her, Doc. I’ll get you the money if I have to level the entire city to do it. Just fine a cure for my Penny!”

  “Yes! Yes, I will!” Wallace cried out. “Don’t hurt me!”

  “Then don’t fail me!”

  He shoved Wallace well clear of the window, and the research scientist fell to the floor, utterly petrified.

  Well, that had been easy enough. A meeting of minds established in just a few seconds through threat and intimidation.

  Satisfied with the way matters stood, Sandman released his mental hold on his body and streamed out the window, running down the side of the building. The dustup with Wallace already behind him, he got busy thinking about his next move, and where he was going to get the money he needed.

  Wherever it was, he was certain to find it. He was going to save Penny. Find her a cure.

  A cure that had waited far too long.

  * * *

  Chapter Fourteen

  THROUGH A MIRROR DARKLY

  Peter Parker looked out at the night sky through the window of his small apartment. The scratchy voice on his police scanner barked out announcements, except Peter had changed the frequency. No longer was he just attending to the major emergency calls—now any summons, no matter how trivial, was coming through. The almost steady stream of chatter was overwhelming, but he didn’t want to take a chance that some seemingly insignificant problem—people experiencing a small sandstorm on a Coney Island beach, for instance—could slip past Peter when it might lead him to his prey.

  Come on, Marko. Come on. Turn up. Give me something to go on. Make yourself known so I can find you and give you what’s coming to you.

  “L20 Parkway, abandoned vehicle,” the scanner announced. “Elderly man in center of Wabash, sorry, Parkway Avenue …”

  Still nothing. He turned and glared at the scanner, as if mentally commanding it to give him something useful.

  There was a knock at the door. “Who is it?” he called, not really interested.

  “It’s me.”

  Mary Jane. He heaved a sigh. Only the day before, he would have sprung across the apartment and thrown the door open, overjoyed to see her. Now, somehow, Mary Jane’s presence seemed irrelevant. He had matters of far greater concern on his mind. It was as if she belonged to a part of his life that—if he hadn’t left it behind—had at least become inconsequential.

  Still, he couldn’t just leave her standing out in the hallway. He crossed to the door, opened it, and turned back to the police scanner.

  “I’m not here about what happened in the restaurant. I’m sorry that happened,” she said, her hands fluttering slightly in agitation. Whether she was or not was of no great concern—the restaurant incident was a lifetime ago. “But Aunt May called me, told me about this convict and what he did and Uncle Ben. She’s worried about you.”

  “She worries too much,” Peter said curtly.

  Mary Jane was about to reply, but the chatter of the scanner cut in. “Could you turn that down?” she asked. He petulantly considered turning it up instead. The anger within him burned like fire, over Uncle Ben’s death, over the police department’s ineptness. He wanted to take it all out on someone, preferably Flint Marko.

  But Marko wasn’t here, and Mary Jane was, and there was no reason to misplace his aggression on her just because she was trying to help… even though he didn’t need it. So he turned the police scanner down to a low murmur. Enough so that he could still pick out what was being said, but not so much that it drowned out what she was saying to him.

  “Your aunt hopes you won’t do something foolish,” she said.

  “Like try to find my uncle’s killer? Why wouldn’t I?” He could understand that Aunt May was concerned about him. But why was Mary Jane telling him this? She, unlike May, knew Peter’s secret. She knew what he could do, and how he was more than capable of taking care of himself. Why was she coming here, relaying May’s worries? Why wasn’t she with Aunt May, assuring her that Peter was a grown man who could make intelligent and informed decisions, and she could rest easy?

  Mary Jane’s hand hovered above his forearm as if she wanted to rest it upon it affectionately, but she withheld it. Instead her voice dropped to an understanding tone. “I know how that night has always been on your mind. You hunted down the wrong man, but you couldn’t have known when you pushed him that he wasn’t—”

  He wasn’t the wrong man. He was a criminal and a thief,

  and if he didn’t kill Uncle Ben, there’s no saying that he wouldn’t

  have if given the opportunity, and there’s no telling whom else the

  creep did kill in his career that we’ll never even know about, and

  you weren’t there, you don’t know what happened, you don’t know

  what you’re talking about.

  His jaw tight, he said, “He had a gun on me. I made a move. He fell. I didn’t push him.”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything. I understand how you must feel.”

  Do you? At least you have a living mother and father. It may be dysfunctional as hell, but you have them. As long as they’re alive, there’s hope that things can be straightened out, matters settled, closure made. How could you possibly understand?

  “I’m here,” Mary Jane went on, “because I loved your uncle Ben too. And if I can help you in some way, I’m here to… to be here…” Flustered, she said, “I just want—”

  Okay, enough. This was way too little, way too late. Peter was currently seeing the world through a blinding wall of pain and anger, and Mary Jane was simply throwing meaningless words to him from the other side of it. “I don’t need your help,” he said brusquely. “Thank you for coming.”

  If she was put off by his tone, she didn’t show it. Perhaps she expected it and had decided ahead of time that she wasn’t going to let it bother her. “We all need help sometimes, Peter. Even Spider-Man. This pride of his,” she emphasized, as if speaking about a different person altogether, “maybe even he’s not perfect.”

  She waited a moment for him to respond. He didn’t.

  The last thing Peter wanted to do was prolong her stay. She nodded once, a silent acknowledgment of his wishes, then walked out the door, closing it softly behind her. Peter returned to the police scanner and turned it up louder than before, hoping that it would drown out the frustration that was roiling within him. Hoping that it would drown out her voice that was still echoing in his head.

  He glanced at the clock: 8:45 p.m. What had Mary Jane been doing here when she should have been onstage?

  He brushed the thought from his mind and went back to listening to the reports.

  Eventually tiring of doing nothi
ng other than hunkering down next to the police radio, Peter pulled on his Spider-Man costume, ready to leap into action at a moment’s notice. With the mask in his hand, he looked out the window for what seemed the hundredth time that evening and muttered, “Where are you, Marko?”

  He no longer gave any thought to Mary Jane’s visit, never even considered picking up the phone and calling Aunt May to assuage her fears.

  The rest of the world seemed to fall away until there was only him and, somewhere out there, Flint Marko.

  He considered randomly swinging around the city, searching for Sandman, hoping to stumble over him, but that was likely a waste of time. Waiting for a police summons to at least steer him in the right direction was clearly the more logical way to go. But logic didn’t do a damn thing to satisfy his desire for action. He felt like a racehorse trapped behind a gate that refused to open.

  More time passed, and Peter—tired of ineffectual pacing—lay down on the bed, continuing to listen to the scanner. With everything that was on his mind, one thing was for certain: no way he was going to fall asleep this night.

  Naturally, within the hour, he was dead to the world.

  The scanner crackled at him, “Car 604, domestic disturbance at 3415 Belmont… apartment B… woman caller is at knifepoint, hysterical…”

  Deep in slumber, Peter was unaware of the thick black ooze that was separating itself from the shadows of his closet… and now slowly creeping toward him.

  Instead he was in the grip of a nightmare, twitching in bed, groaning in mental pain. Twisting in his dream, he saw the criminal Dennis Caradine tripping over a pipe and falling to his death—except now Peter was there shoving him hard, grinning dementedly, just as Mary Jane had said… but that wasn’t how it really went down… was it?

  Uncle Ben’s murder scene flared up. Ben lying there, dead, eyes closed… Ben’s head snapping around, eyes opened… except there were no eyes, nothing but worms crawling out… Flint Marko walking past the macabre scene, whistling casually, innocent of suspicion.

  It isn’t right, it isn’t fair, this shouldn’t have happened, I should be able to do something about it, you can, you can do whatever you want now, nothing can—

  Peter’s mind recoiled against itself, bewildered and uncertain of what was happening. He was talking to himself, as if his mind had somehow split right down the middle. Even in his dream state, he wondered if he was somehow losing control of his entire Spider-Man persona. Ben was gone, the murder site was gone, Marko was gone, and instead the city spun dizzily beneath him, skyscrapers whipping past, the chill air permeating him, and he felt giddy, reveling in his power, enjoying it in a way not before experienced since it all began. It was all new and liberating, and he couldn’t understand why. He heard the distant sound of car horns honking, and sirens yowling, and suddenly he realized that the wind was all too real.

  Caught in that twilight area between sleep and wakefulness, he fought his way back to consciousness. He should close the window since it was obviously getting way too drafty…

  Peter opened his eyes, waking to see the world through the filter of his eye pieces, which meant that he had put on his mask. Odd. He didn’t remember doing that.

  And he was rocking slowly back and forth.

  And he was upside down.

  What am I, sleep web slinging now?

  Am I still asleep? No. Definitely not.

  That thought lingered right up to the moment that he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirrored glass of a skyscraper.

  Wrong. Still dreaming.

  It was like watching an image on TV, since it seemed to bear no resemblance to Spider-Man at all.

  Oh, there was Spider-Man all right, or the image of Spider-Man, hanging upside down on a webline—except his costume was no longer blue and red.

  It was solid black.

  The eyepieces—no longer white, but silvery—leaped out at him, a stark contrast against the ebony mask that he was now wearing.

  He could see the outlines of the web pattern against the black, also with that same silvery hue to them, along with his chest emblem.

  It was an alien Spider-Man, a bizarre version.

  Peter’s still fatigued mind processed that he wasn’t just watching a separate image. It was his own reflection.

  “Whoa!” he shouted, and almost lost his grip on the webstrand before clutching it tightly and maintaining his place. “What the… what is this?!”

  He’d always known the right way to catapult yourself out of a dream was to pinch yourself. He attempted that now, pinching his arm through the suit. He felt the pain; that torpedoed the entire dream theory. Even stranger, though, was that the suit seemed to pull away from his skin, like elastic. When he released it, it snapped back. “Ow! Sticks!”

  Whatever this tarry stuff was, it hadn’t simply covered the suit. It had actually permeated it, been absorbed through, adhering to his skin.

  The Goblin? Harry? This must be his doing. He must have regained his memory and…

  Even as the thought crossed his mind, he dismissed it. Harry had been focused on one thing: the death of Peter Parker. If he’d regressed to his villainous mental state, had come to Peter’s apartment and found him asleep, he would simply have killed him. The Sandman? Didn’t seem likely. So where the hell had this thing come from? A lab experiment gone wrong? A trap by an enemy he hadn’t even encountered?

  Panic welled within him… but faded just as quickly. He felt an almost soothing sense of peace and well-being, so much so that it never occurred to him to question it. He stopped to study, really study, the way his reflection appeared in the building. Not satisfied with the distance, he vaulted free of the webline and landed on the building’s side. He flexed one arm, then the other; amazingly, his I muscles were larger. He felt stronger too, nearly bursting I with power.

  It was as if he were reborn… no. More than that. He was truly alive for the first time in his life.

  It wasn’t just the strength he sensed burgeoning within him. He was more attuned not only to his own body, but to the entirety of the city as well. The full potential of his spider-sense pulsed in his brain—as if invisible weblines radiated in every direction, and he was at their center. Just as with a real spider, any small vibration in any of the lines instantly caught his attention.

  He wanted to do more.

  He could do more.

  Whether that was coming from a deep-seated need or from somewhere else within that had only now manifested, he couldn’t say.

  Peter was oblivious to the concept that whatever had bonded with him might have its own mind, its own agenda. That while he was busy testing the limits of his own abilities, the creature was doing the exact same thing.

  The black-suited Spider-Man ran. Moving at break-neck speed, he sprinted down the face of the building and then leaped powerfully. He somersaulted in midair, bounded off a lower rooftop, and landed with perfect precision upon a narrow ledge. Not something that would have been beyond his abilities to accomplish before… but not this effortlessly. He would have been looking ahead, calculating distances, making sure that he could pull it off. Instead, as if his body no longer needed his conscious mind to function, he simply leaped into action, moving with far greater sureness and facility than ever before.

  “No problem,” he said, confirming it for himself. “How’d I do that?” He caught his reflection in the mirrored glass, turned this way and that, said, “Gotta be this suit. But how did… ?”

  As a scientist, his first impulse was to go home, remove the suit (presuming he could), and find some way to study it. It was the height of recklessness to be throwing himself around hundreds of feet in the air without the slightest true comprehension of what this… this thing… could and could not do.

  But the impulse was quickly smothered, again by some part of his mind that wasn’t his.

  This time, though, Peter started to fight it. Although he didn’t consciously experience it, part of his core personality s
tarted to rise through the “static” that the suit was creating within his mind, like a deep-sea diver in distress, struggling back toward the surface.

  The alien symbiote—for that was what had attached itself to him—fought for its own survival. It reached deep within Peter, found that which was most distressing him, then plucked the single strand on Peter’s newly heightened spider-sense that would lead him straight to his quarry.

  Peter, not realizing that the symbiote had triggered the response, suddenly knew, just knew, exactly where Flint Marko was. Something in his head did a fast “zoom in,” a movie unspooling in his brain just for him, and his concerns about the creature bore no further thought. Instinct kicked into overdrive as Peter bounded away from the building, webbing down toward the street, moving dangerously fast.

  Peter Parker wasn’t the only individual in the city with a police band.

  Eddie Brock had arrived at the First American Savings Bank barely minutes after the alarm had been called in. He was hoping, praying, that it would be Sandman, because Jameson had put a bounty out on pictures of “the new freak in town.”

  The good news was that he had gotten his wish. The bad news was that, because of traffic and some horrendously crappy luck, Eddie had gotten there after the real action.

  Two cop cars lay on their backs, flipped over like a child’s toys. Steam rose from them, the cops all unconscious within—Sandman had tossed them the moment they’d arrived, not giving them even half a chance. The bank windows were shattered, and since there was almost no glass on the outside, it meant that Sandman had smashed them in. Obviously he wasn’t making any attempts at stealth these days. The unconscious bodies of several bank guards littered the street.