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  Marko went headfirst in a large pile of sand. He pulled his head out, sputtering, coughing up granules that had gotten between his lips, his teeth. Getting to his feet, he looked around, trying to get his bearings.

  Suddenly a massive light kicked on above him. He had no idea what it was. Oh, Lord… what if he’d foolishly broken into, not an airport, but a prison? Wouldn’t that be just too freaking perfect if—in his determination to escape—he wound up back in jail?

  Marko looked up, shielding his eyes, uncertain of what he was going to see. His jaw dropped. Now that he was looking at it, he still didn’t know what it was.

  It appeared to be about three stories tall and bore a passing resemblance to an agitator in a washing machine. The upper section began to turn, slowly at first, then faster. Three mechanical arms extended above Marko and started whirling. They formed a high-speed arc around him. He tried to find a way out, but the metal arms were moving by him so quickly that he couldn’t get past them. It was like being trapped inside a helicopter with propeller blades that were tilted down, blocking escape.

  On the far side of the bowl, a servomotor whined as a bank of observation windows were being covered by reinforced steel blinds. The noise was sufficient to draw Marko’s attention, and he desperately waved, trying to get the notice of whoever was in there. If the windows sliding into place and blocking any further view of Marko’s predicament was any indicator, then Marko had failed spectacularly in his endeavor.

  At that moment, as Marko felt the hair on the back of his neck standing straight up and heard the energy around him building up toward what sounded like some sort of detonation, he really, really wished he’d read that sign before jumping the fence.

  Knowing that the sign screamed DANGER! high energy particle physics test site! keep OUT! would not likely have made him feel any better.

  Inside the research facility, the technicians studied the arrays on their computer screens. “Capacitators charged,” Ashley Michel said, satisfied at the results she was getting.

  “Right,” said Chafin, confirming it. Then he saw something that didn’t look quite right, and he leaned toward Blaswell. “Donnie, got a little fluctuation on one.”

  Adding his own concerns, O’Shea said, “There’s a change in the silicon mass.”

  Donnie considered the possibilities and reasonably concluded, “Probably a bird.” It made sense. Stupid birds saw the pile of sand at the base of the particle accelerator gun and didn’t know it was there to measure molecular bonding. They thought it was someplace convenient to build a nest and lay their eggs. “It’ll fly away when we fire it up.”

  The others nodded, satisfied with the explanation. Chafin called out, “T minus three and counting. Three… two… one…”

  “Initiating demolecularization,” announced Michel, and she activated the cycle.

  The spinning arms crackled with electricity as the centrifugal force whipped up the sand around Marko. A centralized energy blast triggered an electronic ripple effect that began to spread, bathing Marko and the particles of airborne sand. Marko and the sand began to glow.

  Had Marko been capable of perceiving things on a microscopic level, he would have seen the particles of sand—single granules no larger than a period in a sentence—being broken down into their atomic components. Glowing from the intensity of the particle gun’s radiation, the sand atoms slid between the atoms of Flint Marko’s atomic structure, affecting Marko at a fundamental, molecular level.

  Like any human, Marko was a carbon-based lifeform. But that was about to change, as the glowing silicon atoms of the sand slammed into Marko’s carbon atoms, knocking them out of their orbit and taking their place in his molecular structure.

  It was not an isolated occurrence. The inorganic atoms of silicon dioxide—sand—penetrated Flint Marko’s entire body. None of his physical makeup was spared, and he staggered under the barrage. The heaviness in the air that impaired his breathing increased until his lungs felt as if they were full of sand. Now he couldn’t breathe at all. He put a hand to his chest as the sand whirled around him, peppering ever molecule of his body like a dust devil.

  He twisted in place to see if the mechanical arms were slowing, if there was any way out of this. He watched in disbelief as his hand started to transform into sand.

  Transform.

  Into sand.

  Reflexively he grabbed at his chest and felt Penny’s locket nestled against it. There was no practical reason for what he did then; it was entirely instinctive. He yanked the locket free and threw it low. It bounced once, twice, and under the whirling arms, clear of whatever was happening to him.

  Only in the final seconds of reflection before his hideous fate overtook him did he realize why he’d done it. His desire to protect his daughter was so overwhelming that he couldn’t allow even an image of her—an image that had smiled out at him every time he had opened the locket and peered in—to come to harm. At that moment he realized he was never, ever going to see her again. That knowledge, more than the horrific transformation he was undergoing, caused him to throw back his head and scream.

  Nothing emerged from his mouth except a geyser of sand.

  If Flint Marko had been able to see himself, he would have witnessed his features starting to dissolve. Like a million years’ worth of erosion happening all within a few seconds, his head became sand and his face began to slide off. Eyebrows, nose, his eyes, his mouth open in a silent howl of protest and then falling away, leaving his face inhumanly blank and featureless, like a department-store mannequin. Please, no… she needs me… Penny needs her father… I can’t die now, I can’t. Then seconds later, his entire body fell apart and was whisked away into a small whirlwind of air that looked like a sandy, brown cyclone.

  “Shut it down?! Now?!?” Chafin was outraged at the timing. He was on the phone with a guard at the front gate and couldn’t believe that the call had even been put through to him. They were busy men involved in serious work—work that was finally giving them proper readouts for the first time. “You can’t be serious! Why are you even calling me?”

  “Because the police are here,” shot back the guard from the front, sounding both irritated and nervous. “They said they’re pursuing some criminal and that he’s somewhere here on the base. And I didn’t think it was a good idea to have them stumbling around in the dark while you’re testing whatever the hell it is you guys are testing in there.”

  “Of all the—”

  Suddenly the anomalous readings that had been reported came back to Chafin. The readings that had carelessly been chalked up to a bird. Yes, it could still have been a bird. But if a man had been down there by the gun, it would have generated the exact same readings, which could have meant…

  Oh hell.

  “Shut it down!” Chafin abruptly shouted.

  Everyone gave him stunned looks, their expressions demanding explanations. There was no time to provide them. “Shut it down! Now!” he screamed, the urgency in his voice giving them all the impetus they needed. The particle accelerator deactivated within seconds.

  As the readings spiraled to normal, Chafin realized that he was gripping the receiver so tightly that his knuckles were getting white. He forced himself to relax and said, through gritted teeth, “All right. Send them back here. But I want an escort with them at all times. Make sure they don’t touch anything. We don’t need them contaminating the field.”

  He slammed down the phone without waiting for an acknowledgment and sat back in his chair, shaken to the core. The others approached him, looking bewildered. “What happened, Al?” asked Michel. “Why’d we shut down? Everything was going fine. It was the best—”

  “What would happen,” Chafin said, ignoring the question and instead responding with one of his own, “if a human subject were trapped in the field that the gun generated?”

  The scientists looked at each other quizzically. “Are you thinking of looking for a volunteer?” asked Donnie. “Because I don’t thi
nk it’s a good—”

  “What would happen?” Then, as an afterthought, Chafin added offhandedly, “Hypothetically speaking.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then Ashley Michel said, “The subject would be dead, I suppose. If everything worked correctly, his molecules would essentially bond with the air, so he would be functionally discorporated.”

  “How do we know he wouldn’t bond with the concrete of the pit? Or the sand?”

  “We don’t,” Michel said reasonably. “But either way, he’s dead, so what difference would it make?”

  “None,” Chafin admitted. “Probably none.”

  “Al, what’s going on here?” demanded O’Shea, taking charge of the situation as the senior technician. “Are you saying there was a person down there during the test?”

  Chafin pictured what the poor devil’s final moments would have been like. Would he even have understood what was happening to him? How long would his consciousness have held on? Would he actually have felt his body falling apart around him? Would he have felt nothing… or everything?

  “I hope to God not,” was all Chafin could say.

  The police searched the entire grounds. They paused at the top of the large, bowl-shaped pit with the ominous-looking tower, like something out of a James Bond film, protruding from dead center. At first they wondered how in the world they were going to get down there and inspect it, then concluded that shining the searchlights down would be sufficient. There really wasn’t any sort of cover where Marko could hide. Still, one of the technicians, a twitchy-looking guy with the name CHAFIN on his ID, had said they might want to check it out. Furthermore the dogs were sniffing around one of the edges and whimpering in an odd manner.

  The lights played all along the interior and came to rest on the pile of sand at the bottom. There didn’t seem to be any sign of Marko, and the sand certainly wasn’t deep enough for Marko to have buried himself under.

  “Where’d he go?” wondered one of the cops. The others shrugged. They continued to shine the light down there for long moments, making absolutely certain there wasn’t some hatchway or other means of egress that might have eluded them at first glance. Finally, satisfied that wherever Flint Marko had made off to it wasn’t here, they turned their attentions elsewhere. Curiously, they practically had to drag the dogs away, since the stupid mutts seemed determined to haul the cops down into that pit in pursuit of nothing more than a pile of sand.

  A pile where, had they looked very, very closely, the police would have seen the glint of a half-buried locket that had slid back down from the edge and come to rest in the sand, as if returning safely home.

  * * *

  Chapter Six

  DEAD FATHERS

  Lying to the police officer had been the toughest thing for Peter, but he had done it with confidence and aplomb.

  As he sat in the waiting room, apprehensively watching the sun crawl over the horizon and wondering if Harry would be alive to see it, he decided that—in retrospect—it hadn’t been that difficult after all. He was still so shaken after the night’s events and revelations that his vagueness had come across to the cop as genuine shock. The hospital had naturally summoned the police officer when Peter had informed them that Harry was the victim of a hit and run. The cop had sat opposite Peter, notepad in hand, and asked him to recall everything he could. His expression had appeared neutral, but Peter could tell the cop—an older uniformed officer with a lined face who had seen far too many innocent people hurt in his career—was eyeing him closely, looking for some indication of drug or alcohol influence. Was this really a random accident, or a couple of doped up young guys who got themselves in big trouble?

  In Harry’s case, of course, it really was closer to the latter. But they could run all the drug/alcohol tests on Harry’s blood they wanted, and they still weren’t going to detect whatever the hell it was that Harry had put into his system that had transformed him into the New Goblin. As for Peter, clearly articulate and earnest as the day was long, he was so obviously not under the influence of anything that the cop relaxed in short order and simply listened.

  What he heard was a story that Peter kept deliberately vague. They’d been up all night cramming for school—or more accurately, Peter had been cramming and Harry had been helping. They were hungry, there was nothing in the fridge. They’d decided to go out, see if they could find an all-night eatery. Harry had started to cross the street; Peter had looked away to see if he could spot someplace down the street. Then came the screeching of tires, the hideous thud, and he’d looked back. There was Harry lying in the street, a car speeding away. A dark car. Blue, he thought, but hard to be sure. No, he hadn’t gotten the make or license.

  “You shouldn’t have moved him,” the cop said in a severe tone. “Could’ve done him more harm than good.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Peter said, looking down, as he had been much of the time. Now he looked up, though, and said with absolute sincerity, “I hope to God I didn’t kill him.”

  The cop allowed a gentle, almost paternal smile and said, “You’ve got the best doctors in the world right here at this hospital. If anyone can help your friend, they can.”

  Peter suspected that they said that at every hospital, but he accepted the reassurance for what it was worth.

  The cop was now long gone, after giving Peter his card and asking him to contact him if he remembered any more details. Peter continued to pace nervously. He glanced at the clock on the wall to see how much time had passed and realized with a start that he was supposed to have gotten together with Mary Jane for a late breakfast that morning. He quickly phoned her and got her machine. Assuming that she was in the shower or otherwise occupied, he left a terse message, a Reader’s Digest version of what he’d told the cop.

  Then it was back to waiting, until finally he saw a doctor exiting the intensive care unit. Peter instantly recognized him as the doctor who had asked him earlier what had caused Harry’s condition. Peter rushed over, moving so quickly that the doctor was startled and stepped back in surprise. “How is he?” Peter blurted in a rush.

  “You a relative?” asked the doctor.

  Peter considered claiming that he was. But then the doctor might start asking for ID, and it could get embarrassing. Besides, Peter was sick to death of lying. “His best friend,” he said. The doctor made a face that indicated Peter had no business inquiring, and that the doctor shouldn’t even be speaking to him, so Peter added, “His parents are both dead. He’s an only child, so…” He took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m all the family he’s got.”

  The doctor clearly considered what Peter was saying, then nodded once as if satisfied. “He’s going to be okay…” he said, and Peter immediately felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Then he grew tense as he sensed a but coming. Sure enough: “But there’s been some memory impairment. Particularly his short-term memory. Right now he can’t remember the accident or much of anything that’s happened to him recently.” His tone shifted from clinical to sympathetic. “You can see him now if you’d like.”

  Peter was apprehensive, unsure of just how much Harry had forgotten. Perhaps he didn’t recall the details of the battle, sure, but did he remember the events that had led up to it? “Is it permanent?” he asked.

  “Could be,” said the doctor, and he started to move away, clearly heading somewhere else. “Only time will tell.” As an afterthought he called over his shoulder, “Keep it brief. I want him to rest.”

  Peter watched him go and, steeling himself for the worst-case scenario, entered the ICU.

  He asked an orderly to point him in the direction of Harry Osborn’s bed, since all the sections were curtained off, and he didn’t want to start poking around. The orderly scowled a moment, and Peter quickly said the doctor had given him permission for a short visit, even though visitors weren’t typically allowed in the ICU. The orderly obviously wasn’t sure if Peter was lying, but apparently didn’t feel like c
alling him on it. Instead he simply pointed toward one curtained area, then added, “Make it quick.”

  Peering around the curtain, Peter saw Harry lying in bed, eyes closed. Tubes were running in and out of him, his chest rising and falling slowly, with a steady beep from the various monitors. How did it come to this? My God, how did it come to this? Peter thought bleakly.

  He was about to turn away and leave when he saw Harry’s eyes open into narrow slits. At first they didn’t seem to focus on Peter at all. Then Harry’s stare latched onto Peter, and there was a moment of confusion. Peter was certain at that point that Harry had no idea who his visitor was.

  But to Peter’s surprise, Harry smiled slightly, although in a pained manner, as if the mere stretching of his mouth muscles hurt, and he said softly, “Hey, buddy.”

  It was the first time in an age, it seemed, that Harry had addressed him in a manner that sounded like… old times. Scarcely daring to believe it, Peter—working hard to control his emotions—said in an offhanded manner, “Hey,” as if he and Harry had accidentally bumped into each other on the street.

  Harry raised a hand to his forehead, taking care not to jostle the tube that was inserted into the hand. “Hit my head.”

  “Yeah.” Peter remained cautious, not wanting to say too much, fearful of triggering some emotion or recollection that could shred the moment. He felt as if he were watching slowly hardening concrete. If he did nothing to disturb it, then it would dry smooth and flat. The last thing he wanted to do was scrawl Spider-Man’s initials in there.

  Frowning, Harry said, “Doctor said I was…” He paused, trying to recall. “Hit and run, he said. Can’t remember. Did they get him?”

  Briefly, Peter had no idea who the “him” was. He thought Harry was referring to the doctor. Then Peter remembered that a mythical person had been driving a mythical car that he himself had created, and it was important that Harry continue to believe that. “Not yet. They will,” Peter assured him.