Spiderman 3 (36 page)

THE GATHERING WEB

THE SUN eventually punched through the cloud cover, but the day remained cold and dank. Nevertheless, Emma Marko had taken her daughter down to the local playground as she had promised.

Children were playing on the jungle gym and swing set and sandbox, but today Penny wasn't especially energetic. Sure, she'd been excited enough about going over to the playground, but once there, she'd started feeling lethargic. Naturally, Emma didn't force her to run around like a nut. Instead she sat next to her on a bench, reading to Penny from
The Arabian Nights
. Penny was bundled up against the cold, a baseball cap perched jauntily atop her head. Penny leaned against her mother, relaxing, and then Emma felt her stiffen. Then Penny was pointing and saying, "Look! There's Daddy!"

Emma looked where Penny was indicating, praying the child was wrong. No such luck. Sure enough, there was Flint Marko, seated on a bench across the playground. He was watching them like some sort of stalker. He gave a tentative wave at being spotted, and even smiled, but Emma did not return it. Instead, scowling, she drew her daughter tightly to her and said, "I know your father made promises to you, but he's always made promises he couldn't keep. So don't get your hopes up and don't count on him for anything. He'll only break your heart."

"But he came back!" she said plaintively.

Penny looked back at her father, then reacted with surprise and confusion. Emma was likewise surprised to see that Flint was no longer there. Where did he go?

"Mama, my snow globe!"

What? The snow globe was back home, in Penny's bedroom. Why would she be asking for it now? Then she understood what Penny was talking about.

A beautiful, ornate sand castle, similar to the one in Penny's globe, had arisen in the middle of the sandbox. This one, though, was ten feet tall. It hadn't been there seconds ago. Its existence was impossible, and that merely added to the aura of magic that surrounded it.

Penny slid off the bench and approached it before Emma could stop her. The child walked toward it, studying it, then cautiously touched it. She made a small fingerprint in the sand, then lay her palm flat against the surface to make a handprint.

Emma went to Penny and took her firmly by the hand, brushing the stray particles off her palm. Penny offered a token protest, but Emma ignored her, pulling her away from the sand castle… never even noticing the larger handprint that had magically appeared next to Penny's.

Penny and Emma retreated into the distance, Flint Marko reformed himself from the sand castle and watched them go.

"Ahhh, the family."

Marko spun and faced a figure leaning against a obscured by the shadows. The voice was soft and menacing. "The bulwark. I'll bet money can solve your problems."

"How did you find me?" demanded Marko.

"I sensed you," replied the newcomer. He reached out and plucked invisible strings in the air. "I saw a particular vibration along a particular line that only I could see and fallowed it right to you."

Marko had no idea what this guy was talking about, but at least he wasn't making any aggressive move. That was probably a good thing. Forming the castle had taken a lot out of him. He was still recovering from having been a creature of mud; for a while he'd thought he would never be able to reconstitute himself. He might be ready for a fight in a while, but not at this very minute. "Do I know you?" he asked suspiciously.

"You should."

"Who are you? What do you want?"

"What you want: Spider-Man. Together he's ours."

Ah. This perked up Marko's ears. Spider-Man had massively inconvenienced him; damn near killed him. He certainly wouldn't mind seizing the opportunity to take that punk down. Whatever sympathy he'd felt for Spider-Man over his personal loss was long gone. Considering the grief that Spider-Man had caused him, returning some aggravation would be a pleasure.

"What's the little girl's name?" asked the stranger.

Marko's eyes narrowed. "Penny."

"Penny. How sweet."

He tried to gauge whether this stranger presented a threat to his daughter and finally decided that he didn't. At least not now. "What's your plan? I'll only go so far. And if you push me more, I'll stomp you into the ground."

"Oooh, I like that," said the man, and he stepped from the shadows… and yet seemed to take the shadows with him. "Now you're talking."

Later that night, Peter Parker lingered across the street from Mary Jane's apartment.

He had spent much of the day sleeping off complete exhaustion. Considering all that he had been through, it was understandable. Once he had awakened, he had gathered together containment equipment—large, clear containers that he could seal airtight—screwed up his courage, and returned to the church. He had searched it high and low, but that just simply confirmed what his spider-sense had already told him: the symbiote wasn't there.

He chided himself over waiting so long, but what else could he have done? He checked out the surrounding neighborhood, but there remained no sign of it. Irritated and weary, he went home. He considered calling Gwen and trying to explain what the hell had happened the night before, but really… how could he possibly?
Sorry, Gwen, I wasn't myself, I was infested by an evil alien symbiote
. Yeah. That was going to fly.

Gwen would just have to be a problem for another day. What about MJ, though? Everything that he had to say… how did one put that in a phone message? He knew he had to see her, and so he went over to her apartment building and prepared to march up to her door and…

And…

Peter remained where he was for half an hour, wrestling with the best way to approach it. He briefly regretted having parted company with the symbiote—it may have posed a number of problems for him, but leaving him indecisive was certainly not one of them.

Finally Mary Jane emerged from her apartment, ready for work. She adjusted her hair and glanced at her watch. Apparently she was running late, for she started scanning the street for a cab.

A taxi farther down the street started to angle toward her, then another cab)—which had been parked curbside with its sign atop reading: OFF duty—suddenly roared to life and cut directly across the street toward Mary Jane. She jumped, a little startled, as the cab farther down screeched to a halt to avoid slamming into the one that was now facing Mary Jane.

Taken slightly aback, Mary Jane nevertheless climbed into the back of the overly aggressive cab, pulling the door shut behind her. Moments later the taxi sped away into the night.

The cabbie who had unceremoniously been cut off wasn't taking it lying down. He leaned out of the driver's side window and rattled off a string of invective in a foreign language. Then he turned to Peter and demanded, "Did you see that? Did you see that?!"

Peter had, in fact, although he didn't give it much thought.

What he had not seen was the cabbie in the taxi that had picked up Mary Jane. When Mary Jane had settled into the backseat, a leering Eddie Brock had turned in the seat and said, "Where to, ma'am?"

Nor did Peter see the body of the cab's legitimate owner, since it had been dumped in an alleyway some blocks away.

Nor, worst of all, did his spider-sense tell him that anything was wrong, because the symbiote was now invisible to his spider-sense. If Eddie Brock had come up to Peter on a subway platform and tried to push him in front of an oncoming train, Peter would never have known about it until it was too late. So it was that Peter Parker went home, feeling that he hadn't accomplished anything the entire day, and unaware that his day was only just beginning.

CRISIS POINT

HARRY OSBORN SAT IN his apartment in darkness, something he much preferred nowadays. He was facing a wall with assorted television screens on it, each tuned to a different TV station. Typically he used them for various sporting events. Now, though, he was watching a variety of news outlets, and all of them were focusing on the same developing story.

CBS:

"All New York is holding its breath as the hostage situation continues to unfold."

NBC:

A clip of a construction site showed a multidimensional latticework of what could only be described as black webbing, suspended seventy stories above the ground. Several items were snagged in the giant web: construction barrels, a shovel, an industrial Dumpster, and a taxicab. All dotting it like so many flies caught in a spider's web.

ABC:

A SWAT team in riot gear was advancing on the construction site in armored Humvees. The sand beneath them heaved. (Harry loved this part; it was chaotic and destructive. They'd run it twenty times, and each time was better than the last.) The vehicles were sent tumbling. Two Humvees crashed down upon the construction site. Pedestrians in the street scattered as the third vehicle tumbled toward them and crushed an empty taxi.

CNN:

"Every attempt by the police to rescue the hostage has been thwarted by Sandman. Compounding the danger is the appearance of a strange, black-suited figure. Early reports had believed him to be the black-suited Spider-Man, but he has now been identified as something entirely different."

Sure enough, someone in the black spider suit was leering like a jackal as the camera zoomed in on him. He swung down, dispatching members of the SWAT team with disturbing ease. Some tried to get a shot off and didn't even come close. He tossed them aside, juggling them like plates, and showing them to be just as easily breakable.

Harry sighed heavily to the empty room. "So much violence on TV these days."

MSNBC:

They had a helicopter. Good for them. The news camera aboard zoomed in on the taxi that was up in the webbing, and a terrified Mary Jane Watson was in the backseat.

"The hostage has been identified as Mary Jane Watson, an actor recently seen in a brief stint on Broadway. She is currently a singing waitress at a downtown jazz club. We're now going to take you live to the scene, with news action team reporter Jennifer Dugan."

The camera shifted to the site; a miniskirted young woman looked to be in way over her head and knew it. She was game, though, Harry had to credit her that. Running alongside her camera team, she was saying, "
We're only a hundred feet away now, Hal, and… wait
!"