“Spider-Mon, Spider-Mon, where did you go to, Spider-Mon… ?”
He glanced out the window and saw a young Japanese violinist sitting there, performing the mournful dirge. Without hesitation, Harry upended the drink and watched with some pleasure as it descended upon the head of the street singer. He was quite satisfied with the yelp he heard, and moments later the violinist moved along.
Unfortunately, that left Harry without a drink.
Equally unfortunately, that didn’t really present a problem.
He walked, or lurched slightly, over to his father’s liquor cabinet—or rather, his, Harry’s, liquor cabinet (he had trouble thinking of it that way)—and poured himself a shot of scotch, straight up. He downed it in one gulp and gasped as the liquid heat cascaded down his throat. Once upon a time, he would have coughed it up, unable to handle it. It was amazing what he was able to handle these days.
He steadied himself, leaning against the bar a moment, and then poured himself another.
There, in what had been his father’s private office—Except it’s mine now, Harry once again had to remind himself—he flopped down onto a chair and swirled the drink idly in the glass. Funny. On the rare occasions that he’d ventured in here, the place had seemed majestic, filled with energy and purpose. Now that it was his, it seemed… smaller.
Edmund Bernard—or simply Bernard, as he preferred to be called—entered the room stiffly. Bernard had been his father’s houseman, and now worked for Harry. He had been with the family for ages. Getting rid of him would have been unthinkable, which was probably why Harry thought about it whenever Bernard entered his field of vision.
He glared balefully across the room at Bernard, who entered with some papers that Harry had to look over and sign before the morning. As Harry took them, he watched Bernard’s stare stray to the desk, and the assortment of papers scattered there. Even the most cursory of glances would have revealed that the papers were almost exclusively photos and news clippings about Spider-Man.
“I’m leaving for the night, sir,” Bernard said, and then, pausing, added in a voice tinged with regret, “Your father only obsessed over his work.”
“Good night, Bernard,” Harry said coldly. He felt as if Bernard was regarding him with a combination of fear and disgust. Bernard turned on his heel and left. A few moments later, the door slammed.
“See you tomorrow,” Harry added, voice barely above a whisper.
He rose from his chair and tottered over toward the desk, leaning against it until the world around him stopped swirling. There was a file photo of Spider-Man in the latest issue of the Bugle, accompanying some ridiculous article that claimed Spider-Man had quit. The photo had a large red “X” stenciled over it, and the words “Where are you?” had been scrawled by Harry in big red letters.
Spider-Man quitting. What a stupid notion. Spider-Man would never back off, or back down. As near as Harry could tell, it was the wall-crawler’s mission, for whatever reason, to destroy the Osborns one person, one experiment, one life at a time. Anything was possible. Perhaps he was some disgruntled former employee; OsCorp had tons of those. Or perhaps… perhaps he’d been hired by OsCorp’s main rival, Quest. Harry clenched his fists angrily. There had to be a reason, a rationale. All Harry had to do was keep looking, and he would surely find the reason that Spider-Man was trying to make life a living hell for anyone named Osborn.
He wandered out onto the balcony, still holding the drink. He was in shirtsleeves, and barefoot, to boot. Well, there was one way to try and boost the temperature. He drank yet another shot of scotch and felt a cheery warming sensation spreading through his blood. Oh, yes, this was definitely the life. The lifestyle of the rich and famous.
That was when he heard what sounded like a distant thump. He glanced around, wondering where it had come from. Then a second thump, only closer this time, and louder. Then some crunches, a whirring, an assortment of noises originating from below the balcony, out of his field of vision. He moved cautiously toward the railing. Clutching it firmly, he looked over the edge.
He looked right, then left, trying to figure out from which direction—if any—the sounds were coming, whatever they might be. He leaned slightly past the edge, trying to see underneath.
And suddenly, some sort of thick steel cable unspooled straight up at him. He flinched, getting his head out of the way just in time, but the thing knocked the glass out of his hand, sending it flying. It was at that instant that he recognized the “cable” for what it was, and he stumbled backwards.
A symphony of thumping and crunching and whirring sounds enveloped him as the mechanical arms climbed steadily up the side of the town house, seemingly in slow motion, their master hanging in the middle with his real arms folded confidently.
Harry’s back was against the wall, and yet he still kept pushing against it, as if he hoped he would be able to pass through it, ghostlike. The telephone was ten feet away, but it might as well have been ten miles, for all that he could get to it, since the way was blocked by one of those steel tentacles.
Like a ghoul emerging from its grave, the man once known as Otto Octavius—but now referred to by everyone in the city as Doc Ock—rose into view over the railing. One of the tentacles thrust toward Harry like a javelin. He let out a shriek, convinced that this was the end, and then to his shock he realized that all of this had happened in a matter of seconds. Even his glass hadn’t yet hit the ground, and the pincers at the end of the tentacle deftly snatched it out of midair. As Doc Ock stared down at Harry, the pincer moved toward Ock and handed him the glass.
“Hello, Harry,” he said with surprising softness.
Harry managed to gasp out, “Octavius. What… do you want?”
Doc Ock looked mildly astonished that Harry would have to ask so self-evident a question. “A drink,” he said, gesturing to the glass suspended in front of him. Another tentacle brought him the bottle of scotch, and Ock poured himself a glass. Lifting it in a mock salute, he drank it, smacking his lips and savoring the taste. Then he threw the glass to the floor, smashing it.
“And something,” he continued, almost as if it were an afterthought, “that starts with a ‘T.’ But I need more this time. As much as you can get.”
Harry was so frozen in terror, watching those dangerous metal appendages of Ock’s moving around sinuously, hypnotically, that it took a moment for him to process what it was that Ock was referring to. “More… tritium?” Ock nodded.
Harry’s voice rose an octave as he demanded, “Are you crazy!?”
Doc Ock’s expression indicated that this might not have been the best of questions to ask, but Harry was hardly in a state of mind to mince words. “I already took a chance on you and you created a disaster! You’re a homicidal maniac!”
Without a word, Ock sent two of his tentacles snaring forward, grabbing Harry by either ankle. For a heartbeat the terrified young man thought he would be ripped in two, like a wishbone. What actually transpired wasn’t much of an improvement, as he was whipped high into the air and suspended upside down, past the balcony. Harry hung there, terrified.
“Wait!” he cried out with remarkable cheer under the circumstances. “I could use a homicidal maniac!” He took a breath and continued, “We’ll make a deal! Kill Spider-Man, and I’ll give you what you need!”
Slowly Doc Ock brought Harry back from his precarious, dangling situation and dropped him on the floor. “It seems we have a common interest. But don’t you read the newspapers?” he asked derisively. “Spider-Man appears to have given up the ghost. They say he’s quit. Some even say he may be dead already.”
“I don’t believe that any more than you do,” said Harry. “It’s a trick, that’s all. Either a trick by Jameson, who’d crucify his mother to sell a few newspapers, or a trick by Spider-Man, to throw everybody off the track. But he’s out there. I can… I can…”
“Feel it?”
Harry had been looking out toward the city, but now he stared at Ock. As d
emented as it sounded, he realized he was talking to the one man in all the city who could actually understand what was going through his head. The irony that this kindred spirit was a lunatic slipped right past him. “Yes. In my heart. In my gut, I feel it.”
“As can I,” Ock agreed. Insanely, the tentacles seemed to nod, as well.
“On second thought,” Harry told him, “don’t kill him. I’ll never have any sort of closure if this ends like this, with the chance of me never seeing him again. Bring him back to me . . . alive. Do that and I promise, you can have all the tritium you want.”
“How do I find him?”
The answer came from Harry’s lips before he could stop it. “Peter Parker,” he said.
Ock looked surprised… and yet, somehow, not. “Parker? Little Mister Know-It-All?”
Harry would have grabbed the words back out of the air if he could, but it was too late to do anything but see it through. He nodded. “He takes pictures of Spider-Man for the Bugle. Make him tell you where he is.”
“Have it ready,” snarled Ock, referring to the tritium. “I’ll be back.”
With that Schwarzenegger-esque advisement, Doc Ock turned and clomped down the side of the building. Harry, flushed with guilt and determined to salvage something of this debacle, ran to the railing and called after him, “Don’t hurt Peter! He’s my best friend!”
A tentacle waved over Ock’s shoulder, acknowledging the caution. But Harry had no idea whether that meant that he would abide by it, or was dismissing Harry with a gesture that bode ill for the safety of Peter Parker, his helpless friend.
XIX
Peter Parker wasn’t supposed to be depressed.
This was, after all, the post-wall-crawler part of his life. The guilt-free part where his heart beat serenely in his chest, no longer shrouded in a veil of misery. The part where the specter of Spider-Man had been permanently exorcised.
So he had no idea why he was wandering through the nighttime city, peering wistfully at the skyscrapers he once ricocheted off, while around him the world went on about its business. An oncoming taxi blew its horn at him as he crossed the street, slamming to a halt a few feet away. He didn’t even acknowledge it, but simply kept on walking, drawing his coat tighter around him against the cold.
He glanced at a newspaper on the newsstand as he passed. The banner headline proclaimed, “Crime in City up 75%.” In smaller printing, a subheading read, “Some ask: Where is Spider-Man?”
Yeah. Some. The bitter or the frustrated or the malcontents. The people who had never had anything good to say about Spider-Man when he was around were now crabbing because he was gone. There was no pleasing some people.
And then, even as he wondered whether he was one of the people who could never be pleased, he heard shouting, and the sound of running feet. He sniffed the air, and the unmistakable smell of smoke wafted toward him. People were running past him and he didn’t follow them so much as allow himself to be caught up in the movement of the crowd.
Then he saw what all the hubbub was about. A storefront was ablaze around the corner, flames licking the night sky. What sort of store it might have been was impossible to tell, because the glass had already burst away from the inferno within. There were several floors of apartments above the storefront, as well, and smoke was pouring from several of them.
People were milling about in the crowd, screaming out a veritable laundry list of desperation. One woman cried out that her father was still inside, while another was positive there was a kid on the second floor.
It had been so easy to ignore the howls of distant sirens when Peter could simply turn his back and walk away without knowing what it was he was avoiding. But this was right in front of him, and instinct took over. He started to dart away and yank open his shirt when he suddenly remembered his costume was in the possession of J. Jonah Jameson.
Spider-Man no more.
All right. Fine. But he was still Peter Parker. That would never change, and Peter Parker had to do something.
A homeless woman was crouched nearby, watching the blaze, and she had a ratty blanket wrapped around herself. Peter scooped it up and threw it over his head to provide some protection from the smoke and flames and rushed in through the front door, keeping the blanket over his nose and mouth. He squinted out from under the blanket, counting on his spider-sense to help him maneuver, praying that it hadn’t deserted him along with the rest of his abilities.
He sprinted up to the second floor, suffocating heat pressing at him from all sides. He heard screams, cries for help from all around. Watch it! It’s the Green Goblin trying to trick you again! He shrugged away the ridiculous notion as he kicked open an apartment door and was greeted with a wave of billowing smoke.
He dropped to the floor, remembering that it was what one was supposed to do. Heat rose, but the oxygen might still be collected close to the floor. Even if he didn’t have his spider-powers to aid him, at least his scientific knowledge might see him through.
He crawled along the floor, thick black smoke billowing around him, and he was able to make out someone through the haze. It was a child, face so smeared with dirt, hair so singed, Peter couldn’t even determine if it was a boy or a girl. It didn’t matter. He scuttled forward and grabbed up the child under his arm like a football.
Still keeping low to the ground, he sprinted for the door since flames were blocking the window. From above him he heard timbers starting to break, and screams from what seemed far away. He couldn’t think about them. He was out of time.
The rest of it was a blur. He was operating purely on adrenaline, instinct, and barely contained terror. All he knew was that suddenly he was out the front door, coughing and choking and hoping to God that his lungs didn’t collapse. He nearly dropped the child, and then someone was hauling the child from his arms, calling out a name, “Leslie!” which didn’t do much to solve the question of the kid’s gender.
Someone grabbed the blanket away from him, and he realized it was the homeless woman, who complained that he had gotten it covered with soot. Peter mumbled an apology as sirens rang in his head, and then he nearly blacked out.
By the time he came to his senses again, he was breathing in oxygen through a mask held up to him by a paramedic. He blinked away the remaining confusion in his head and looked around, watching the hive of activity surrounding him. The firemen had arrived and were pumping water into the blaze, bringing it under control. Ambulances were there, as well, some heading away from the scene at high speed, sirens blaring.
“Just take it easy, fella,” said the paramedic. “We’ll get you to the hospital, have you checked.”
“I’ll be fine,” Peter whispered hoarsely. “You don’t have to—”
“With the amount of smoke you took in? You bet your ass we have to,” replied the paramedic firmly. He placed the oxygen mask back over Peter’s mouth.
A passing fireman patted him on the back. “You got some guts, kid,” he told him. Apparently folks in the crowd had pointed out Peter as being the heroic idiot who had dashed into the flames to save a child. Peter tried to bob his head in acknowledgment, but even that small gesture hurt.
Another fireman approached the one who had just spoken to Peter, and Peter overheard him say in a low voice, “Some poor soul got trapped on the fourth floor. Never made it out.”
Never made it out.
The words stayed with Peter all the way to the hospital. There they gave him a clean bill of health, and hailed him as a hero while simultaneously telling him he should never do anything so foolish again, because he’d been exceptionally lucky.
It didn’t matter.
His heroism didn’t matter to him. His good fortune didn’t matter to him. Nothing mattered except the unknown individual on the fourth floor whose life had ended this night, and Peter hadn’t been able to do a damned thing about it.
But Spider-Man might have. Spider-Man could have moved faster, Spider-Man could have accomplished more.
Spider-Man could have gotten the job done.
So… was that it? All the way home he mulled it over and over, and still he couldn’t come up with an answer that was acceptable. Either he had to be Spider-Man, or deal with the guilt that came with every person whom he didn’t save. Was the price of great power not only great responsibility, but an incessant sense of culpability, as well?
He couldn’t do everything. Not even as Spider-Man—he couldn’t be everywhere, accomplishing everything. He was still a man, not a god.
Back at his apartment, he stood at his window, going over and over the day’s events and staring out at the night, wondering if he would ever know peace. Tears welled up unwanted in his eyes. He turned and looked at the picture of Uncle Ben and Aunt May on his dresser.
His imaginings had been free of his uncle ever since he’d left the costume behind. It had been such a relief. Now, though, he felt as if he wanted him back. As if he could never come to any sort of resolution if he couldn’t square it with Ben face-to-face.
“Am I not supposed to have what I want?” he asked. “What I need?”
The picture stared at him mutely, offering no response.
Every muscle in his body felt sore. He could barely move, could barely think. He flopped down onto the bed and closed his eyes. “What am I supposed to do?”
There was a light tap at the door. He didn’t even hear himself say, “It’s open.” Using a mental crowbar, he pried open his eyes and saw Ursula, the landlord’s daughter, standing there. For a wild moment, he imagined that she would open her mouth and her father’s harsh cry of “Rent!” would emerge.
She said nothing, nor did he. A long moment of silence passed between them. Then she smiled.
“Would you like a piece of chocolate cake?” she asked, her eyes limpid.
The question was so utterly out of left field that the only thing Peter could think to say was, “Okay.”
“Glass of milk?”
He nodded. She bounced lightly on the balls of her feet and sprinted away to get them.