A giant robot—of all things—was hauling a man across the ground right toward it. A lower section had slid open, like a bread drawer, and the man was being pulled in, kicking and shouting. The moment it snapped shut, his voice vanished.
The first thing Spider-Man did was glance around to make sure there weren’t any movie cameras to be seen, because it was so bizarre, he wouldn’t have been surprised to find that he had wandered into the middle of a film shoot. Unfortunately there were none.
Even more astonishing, he saw Doctor Connors standing there, shaking his fist in impotent fury. The robot ignored him, pivoting on its treads and rolling away.
Spider-Man swung down toward the robot like a guided missile, released his web-line at the last moment, and landed on the robot’s back. He looked for an opening, a weak spot, something he could attack, but the robot appeared seamless. He was reasonably certain, though, that he’d seen some sort of viewing port. Quickly, he scuttled around the robot to the front and found himself staring in at a bald man with a surprised expression.
“Spider-Man!” came the voice of the controller, issuing over a hidden speaker. “What do you think you’re doing?” His voice sounded distinctly Australian.
“Oh, just hanging around,” replied Spider-Man. “So you coming out of this thing voluntarily, or do I have to pull out my can opener?”
The robot rolled to a stop, and for a moment Spiderman thought this was going to go easily. Then he saw the arms of the robot lift up on either side, snapping into attack position, and he realized such was not the case.
They angled toward him, huge vise grips on the end of either arm rather than fingers. Fortunately they were moving relatively slowly, and Spider-Man was able to dart between them, never losing his grip upon the robot’s surface. In the meantime he kept looking for some weak spot where he could get a grip, rip the robot open, find some wiring, and tear into it. Certainly that would be enough to bring this thing to a halt.
He moved to the back of the robot once more, and the vise grips tried to get at him. But there was restriction in the arms’ range of movement; the guy inside—presuming he was the designer—hadn’t given them full 360-degree rotation. With any luck, that would prove to be a fatal mistake.
Looking closely, Spider-Man saw that there were, indeed, seams, but they had been welded over. Okay. Fine. Then I’ll just have to make my own fun. He proceeded to slam the metal surface repeatedly with his fists. At first there was no sign that he was doing damage, but as the surface shuddered under the blows, dents started to appear.
“You’re on the verge of making problems for me, Spider-Man!” grated the mocking voice through the speaker. “Guess I’ll have to return the favor.”
The entire robot suddenly began to tremble, then to shake violently, and Spider-Man felt substantial power building up at the base of the mechanoid.
“Oh, man,” he groaned, “you’ve gotta be kidding me.”
Seconds later, his worst fear materialized. The robot lifted off the ground, driven by nothing less than rocket power. Slowly at first, and then faster, it blasted skyward, with Spider-Man holding on for all he was worth.
New York City was a blur below him as his mind raced, trying to figure a way out. He was starting to be faced with the realities of drag as the high wind threatened to overcome even his incredible adhesive power.
Suddenly he felt something at his back. He’d been distracted, and the robot’s arms were snapping at him again. He twisted away, and flattened himself against the robot’s back.
Determined to end the confrontation, he skittered around to the front of the robot. The mechanoid began angling to the right, left, up and down, trying to shake him loose. Spider-Man moved around so that he was facing the operator once more, and he started pounding on the view port.
“No way you’re getting through that!” laughed the man within. “That’s triple-ply reinforced…” But then the laughter trailed away as cracks began to—appropriately enough—spiderweb through the view port.
Spider-Man kept pounding on it, and then his spider-sense warned him of danger. One of the vise-grip arms was descending right toward him. The world seemed to slow around him and he waited, waited for the right moment. Just as the vise grip was about to grab him, he twisted clear, stood, and grabbed it. Using the arm’s own momentum against it, he slammed the claw down with all the strength he had.
The grip drove down and shattered the view port. The man inside let out an alarmed scream as Spider-Man reached in a gloved hand and grabbed him by the throat.
“Do you remember being born?!” demanded the web-slinger.
“W-what?!?”
“Do you remember being born!”
“No, you lunatic! Of course I don’t remember—!”
“Fine, then! It went something like this!” And he started to pull the man out through the narrow space, headfirst.
The man screamed at the top of his lungs. “Don’t! Don’t! I’ll set us down! I’ll set us down!”
“Back at the university!”
“All right! Yes! All right!”
Spider-Man released his grip on the man and glared at him balefully… which, naturally, the guy couldn’t see because of the Spider-Man mask.
The thoroughly cowed pilot was as good as his word. Within minutes, the robot was coming in for a landing back at the central quad. When people saw that Spider-Man was astride the robot, they began shouting and cheering, waving fists in appreciation.
“Let the guy out! Now!” ordered Spider-Man. The pilot nodded numbly, manipulated some controls, and the hatch snapped open. A man stumbled out of it, gasping for breath, looking around in confusion.
Spider-Man, meantime, had gotten a solid grip on the front of the robot now that it wasn’t moving. He pulled, with a grunt, and the front section of the mechanoid ripped away. Sparks flew and the robot shuddered violently, then shut down. Gripping the pilot by the front of his shirt, he pulled him close and snarled, “We’re having words, you and I.” He fired a web-line and, seconds later, he was hauling the squirming pilot upward. The man let out a satisfying screech of terror as he swung higher and higher, tucked under Spider-Man’s arm, his arms and feet flailing wildly.
“I wouldn’t thrash much if I were you. I might drop you,” Spider-Man pointed out to him, whereupon the man promptly went limp.
Octavius sagged against the side of the fallen robot, breathing heavily. The air had been getting stale inside that insane mechanism. People were clustering around him, shoving in close, all asking him if he was all right, and what was up with the robot, and a hundred other questions. He flinched back, trying to ward them off.
“One side!” came the angry voice of Curt Connors. “Move! Any student within the sound of my voice who doesn’t get out of my way is going to see his GPA go down the toilet. I guarantee it!”
That was more than enough to cause the crowd to part, and Connors reached his grateful friend. “Oh, thank God,” muttered Octavius.
“Otto, are you all right?”
“Truth to tell, I’ve had better days,” admitted Octavius. “Curtis, do you think we might be able to postpone my talk with your students? I don’t exactly think I’m up to it right now.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Connors assured him. “Some people helped me gather your belongings. I… was going to send them to Rosie…”
“In case I didn’t make it back? Very considerate.” He patted Connors on the shoulder. “And very well-ordered priorities. We’ll make a scientist of you yet, Curtis, even if you don’t know the difference between a geologist and a seismologist.”
Connors looked at the robot in amazement. “But… who was this person? What did he want you for?”
“Not a clue. And—not that I’m knocking it—but what am I doing back down here?”
“It was Spider-Man, dude!” said one of the students nearby, and others were nodding their heads.
“Spider-Man?” Octavius asked Connors. “That lunatic who goes
about risking his life helping people?”
“Apparently so.”
“Hunh,” said Octavius thoughtfully. “Apparently it takes a crazy man to stop a crazy man.”
“You’re crazy, man!”
The former robot pilot was dangling upside down as Spider-Man looked down at him, casually holding a web-line that was attached to the pilot’s right foot. “You’re crazy!” he howled again.
“You have no idea,” replied Spider-Man. If there was anyone he’d ever considered dropping from this height—ten stories high as he stood on the edge of the rooftop—it was this guy. Clearly he wasn’t going to make it to class, which wasn’t going to endear him to Doctor Connors.
He was supporting the dangling man’s weight with one arm, and now he started rubbing that arm’s bicep and saying, “Y’know, I think I may have strained this muscle while you were trying to smack me around on Gigantor back there. Not quite sure it has the strength it normally does.”
“Please let me down!”
“Down isn’t your problem,” Spider-Man reminded him. “Staying up is the problem. And you’ll only be doing that for as long as I feel like keeping you here. The speed with which you go down is dependent entirely on how reasonable you’re prepared to be.”
“Anything! Anything!”
“Oh, good. Okay. Question number one: Who are you?”
“Jack! Jack All!”
Spider-Man just stared at him. “You can’t be serious.”
“Full name’s Albright! But I go by Jack All! It’s my alias, okay?”
“Brilliant. There’s a name that’ll strike fear into the hearts of millions.”
“Hey! Hey!” The guy sounded annoyed. “Like ‘Spider-Man’ is any great shakes! How long did’ja have to think to come up with that one, eh? Why not something really creepy, like the Human Spider?”
“I thought of that, actually,” Spider-Man said a bit too defensively. “But there was this guy, and he—”
“Not caring!”
“Okay, fine!” Spider-Man shook him a little to regain control of the situation and was rewarded with a terrified yelp. “Who was that guy you grabbed?”
“Otto Octavius!”
Spider-Man kicked himself mentally. Of course. How could he not have recognized him? He’d been following the man’s work for ages, discussed him at length with friends who, more often than not, were just pretending to understand what he was talking about. In this case, he supposed he could be forgiven, since he’d only gotten quick glimpses of the man in all the confusion. But certainly he’d seen his photo enough times in Scientific American. Nevertheless, he decided to respond in a guarded fashion. No sense letting upside-down boy know that Spider-Man was a science guy.
“Who?”
“Octavius! Otto Octavius! He…”
And then Jack All passed out.
At first Spider-Man thought the guy might be faking it. He shook him a little, even mimed releasing the web-line. There was no reaction.
“Man, they’re just not making criminal masterminds the way they used to,” he said to himself as he hauled the guy up to the roof. He dumped the limp body there, then lightly slapped his face a couple of times while saying, “Wakey wakey.”
The guy stirred and then gasped as he found Spider-Man staring down at him. He looked around frantically, thoroughly disoriented.
“Otto Octavius,” prompted Spider-Man.
“Oh… right,” grunted Jack All. He sat up, running his hand over his bald pate. “He’s a scientist. Doing research. I figured he could be of use to me.”
“Waaaaiit a minute,” Spider-Man said, acting as if he were trying hard to recall something, rather than knowing it off the top of his head. “I read about him somewhere, I think. Something to do with some sort of energy source?”
To his surprise, Jack All let out a dismissive snort. “If you think I care about that, Spider-Man, then you don’t know Jack All.”
“You’ve probably been waiting this whole time for a chance to say that,” accused Spider-Man.
“Well, kinda. Yeah,” Jack admitted.
“All right, so if it’s not an energy source…”
“It’s the other thing.”
“What other thing?”
Jack glowered at him. “The weapon.”
“Octavius isn’t a weapons-maker.”
That seemed to amuse Jack tremendously. “No, he’s not. And he’s not intending it as a weapon. But he’s working on something that could be one. Stupid bugger probably doesn’t even realize it.” He pulled a battered packet of cigarettes and a lighter from his pants pocket. “Lucky these buggers didn’t fall out, what with all that dangling. Do y’mind?” he said.
“Go right ahead, kill your lungs. See if I care.”
Jack nodded and lit up a cigarette. Then he tucked the pack in his shirt pocket.
“How do you know about it?” Spider-Man asked him. “This ‘weapon.’ ”
“Heard tell through the grapevine. I would’ve tried to snatch Octavius at his lab, but I didn’t want to take a chance of messing with what he’s cooking up in there. It’s got that much potential, is what I hear.” He nodded his head in the direction of the university. “Bottom line, mate, I’m a merc. Strictly freelance. And I’m a techno junkie. Whipped up that little battle shell there, and it ain’t bad. Not at all. But Octavius, without even trying, may well have outdone me. So I nabbed him ’cause I wanted to pick his brain. Find out the details, find out how it works.”
“How what works?” Spider-Man said in exasperation.
“The arms, mate. The arms.”
“What arms? What are you—?”
Suddenly Jack All flipped the cigarette in Spider-Man’s direction. His spider-sense screamed a warning at him, and he desperately back-flipped to get out of the way. He didn’t entirely make it, and the cigarette exploded in a fireball. It knocked him clear to the other side of the roof.
As he scrambled to his feet, he heard screaming.
Jack All was staggering around on the rooftop, slapping at himself frantically. He was completely aflame. Apparently all of the cigarettes he’d had on him were likewise incendiary devices. A stray flame from the one he’d just set off had struck his chest and ignited the rest of them. His screams were horrifying, and Peter mused that burning to death had to be just about the worst, most painful way that someone could die.
Fortunately enough for Jack All, that wasn’t to be his fate. His back leg hit the edge of the roof and he toppled over. Spider-Man fired a web-line and it snagged him just before he went, but the heat of the flame promptly sizzled through the gossamer threads and Jack fell off the roof.
Spider-Man vaulted from one end of the roof to the other, but knew even before he reached the other side that he was going to be too late. He was right. He peered over the edge of the roof and saw the burning and motionless body of Jack lying on the ground. People were backing up, some screaming, and someone was running at Jack All with a fire extinguisher that wasn’t going to do a bit of good.
Then people started pointing upward at him, shouting things. Even at this distance, he was able to discern what they were saying.
“Spider-Man! What the hell did you think you were doing!”
“Why didn’t you save that guy!”
“Maybe he pushed him!”
“Someone down here could’a been killed, y’freak!”
He sighed heavily, fired a web-line, and swung away.
As he did so, his thoughts kept wandering back to Otto Octavius. What had Jack been talking about? Arms? Was Otto Octavius becoming some sort of weapons developer? Had he taken on some contract for the military? That didn’t sound like him, though. Certainly not based on anything that Peter had read.
Peter felt adrift. There was no one he could ask about it, and he had no way to follow it up. This Jack guy had obviously been deadly serious, but Peter just couldn’t fathom what any of this was about.
Perhaps he should ask Doctor Octavius.
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And how, precisely, was he supposed to do that? Stroll up to the guy and say, “Excuse me, are you involved in some sort of arms program that would attract the interest of mercenaries? No offense.” Yes, definitely, that was sure to work. Crackerjack plan.
Inform the authorities? They’d want to know how he knew what he knew. If he contacted them anonymously, they’d likely pay him no mind. If he went in as Peter Parker, they’d ask him all sorts of very uncomfortable questions. And if he went as Spider-Man… well, thanks to J. Jonah Jameson’s constant diatribes in the Daily Bugle, he had the credibility of a dirty politician, a terrorist, and a shyster lawyer all rolled into one.
Still… reading up on Octavius, doing a little digging… that might not be such a bad idea after all. If nothing else, he might be able to find out just what sort of arms might be worth dying for.
II
“The first time I found myself in your arms, I thought I was going to die,” said John Jameson.
John was a tall, strapping young man, with a square jaw and closely cropped brown hair. His eyes spoke of quiet intelligence, and his entire demeanor conveyed someone whose nature was to remain calm and collected no matter how stressful the situation. It made him the polar opposite of his father, who could be counted on to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation.
He was sharply attired, having chosen to wear his air force dress uniform for the occasion. The circumstances were right for it: lunch at an extremely fashionable and, frankly, snooty men’s club. His father loved to make a fuss over the uniform, especially the medals that gleamed on the chest, and he wanted his dad in a good mood.
Whereas the club itself was men-only—one of the last bastions of such gender segregation—they had opened the main dining room to women, provided they were accompanied by a club member, of course. This had been done to prove that the club was willing to change with the times—which it wasn’t, really, but the management had done so at the strident advice of its attorneys, in order to avoid lawsuits.
The change in policy was fortunate for John, since he had his girlfriend with him today. She sat next to him in the back of the limousine that had been sent for them. She had long red hair, a round face, and eyes that sparkled with laughter. “Is that supposed to be a compliment?” she asked of his declaration.