St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Downtown New York, Early Evening, February 2100.
Crossfire.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral had seen many a conflict over the centuries. In the twentieth century, it had been the occasional stomping ground of such superheroes as Daredevil, Cloak and Dagger, and Ghost Rider. Even Spider-Man, once or twice.
Starting long before that and continuing well into the twenty-first century – once New York’s superstructure had been built over it – the cathedral had become the scene of frequent turf wars between rival gangs. And within the past year, the cathedral had found itself the site of battles involving costumed, super-powered characters. Spider-Man – the latest inheritor of the mantle – had been a frequent contributor to that.
Plenty of blood had been spilled at St. Patrick’s, and today was no exception.
Xina Kwan was slumped unconscious on the wooden floor of the ancient church, kept in a vague sitting position only by the chains that bound her to the altar. Two other hostages -- a superpowered drifter named John Tensen and the cathedral’s proprietor, Father Jennifer D’Angelo -- were likewise unconscious and chained, but neither was bleeding from a fresh energy-discharge wound to her abdomen the way Xina was.
Frantic, Spider-Man leapt toward Xina and crouched down next to her. She was still breathing, but she was steadily losing quite a bit of blood. Using his talons, he ripped off a section of her jacket and used it to stop the bleeding.
“How touching,” the voice behind him intoned. Spider-man kept his back to her, refusing to make eye contact or accept that the Goblin who had dragged his reputation through the mud these past few months was his former lover Dana. His dead lover.
“Do you think you’ll be able to save her life?” the maskless Goblin continued, and her voice sounded so much like Dana’s it crawled under his skin. “Or will you hold her in your arms as she breathes her last? Just the way you held me.”
That did it. Miguel hopped to his feet, spinning around and lashing out at her, the talons on his fingertips slicing through the air.
The Goblin – Dana – stood perfectly still as his hand stopped in midair, inches from her face. “You have that look on your face, y’know,” she commented in that tone of voice Spider-Man had known so well – the one she used when she’d observe a person’s key character traits just from body language. “I know what you’re thinking. You remember that time you were on Rapture. You said you were seeing monsters everywhere, even me. So you hit me.”
His teeth grit; his fists clenched. “You’re. Not. Her.”
“If you’re so sure of that, then kill me. If I’m an imposter, then I’d mean nothing to you.”
His fists clenched even tighter. Then they slackened and hung limply at his sides.
She smiled. “I thought so. I’m not the pretender here, Miguel. You are.”
“Mig … uel?” Xina’s weak voice whispered. “Where’s…?”
“He won’t kill you,” a masculine voice belonging to John Tensen declared, “but I will.” The gray-haired man struggled against his chains, having a harder time than usual freeing himself.
“Well, look who’s awake,” the Dana-Goblin announced. “The other pretender. The so-called ‘Net Prophet’, come to save us from ourselves. Good thing I installed a power dampener in those manacles, or else you would have blasted me to cinders by now.”
Shouting with rage, Tensen tugged at his chains, pulling them taut. “You’re gonna pay for hurting Xina!”
“So much impotent rage. The mighty certainly have fallen, haven’t they?”
Spying a complex-looking electronic device on Tensen’s manacles, Spider-Man dashed over to him and sliced through the device with his talons. Sparks flew from the shredded device, and Tensen’s eyes and hands began to glow with angry extradimensional energy.
The Dana-Goblin’s eyes widened as Spider-Man stepped to the side and gave the Net Prophet a clear shot. The bright-blue energy blast lit up the church interior as it ripped through the green-and-purple-clad villain, who vanished upon contact.
“Whoa,” Spider-man couldn’t help but comment in disbelief. “What’d you do, disintegrate her?”
“I’d like to,” Tensen relied as he stood up. “But I think that was just a hologram. Now that the dampener’s off, my awareness of that kind of thing is returning.” He looked down at Xina and Jennifer. “But we have more urgent worries.”
Spider-Man followed his gaze, clenching his jaw. “Agreed. We’ve gotta get them to a Docs-in-a-Box before – what are you doing?”
Tensen’s entire body had started to glow, and the air rippled around them. “Teleporting them to your place. It’s faster.”
“Wait, what—“
The ripple consumed all four of them, leaving the cathedral deserted.
Babylon Towers, Uptown New York. An instant later.
Change of Address.
“—are you doing that for?” Spider-Man finished, then helost his balance as the transport effect disoriented him.
“We’d be able to deal with fewer prying eyes and questions this way,” Tensen explained, looking around the apartment where he’d teleported from memory. His gaze fell on three people sitting at a dining room table. A Korean mother, father, and daughter eating dinner and staring at them with wide-eyed surprise. “Wait, who are they?”
“They would be the prying eyes you wanted to avoid,” Spider-Man pointed out.
Tensen leaned toward the wallcrawler to whisper in his ear, “why are these people in your apartment?”
“’Cause I don’t live here anymore,” Spider-Man hissed back, barely audible over the mother and father’s mile-a-minute ranting and swearing in both English and Korean. “I moved to the penthouse suite at the top of Alchemax HQ.”
“Why would you--?” Tensen began, before he teleported his three companions out of Miguel O’Hara’s former place of residence--
Miguel O’Hara’s executive suite, Alchemax Plaza. An instant later.
Intensive Care.
--and into his current one. Tensen looked around at the penthouse’s lavish décor as Spider-Man overrode its security system; their sudden appearance had tripped an intruder alert.
“Oh, that’s right,” Tensen remembered, “you were promoted to CEO months ago. Makes sense you’d live like one.”
Spider-Man hastily changed into his Miguel O’Hara clothes as Tensen made this observation. “So glad you remembered. “Lyla? First-aid program, now!”
His holographic assistant managed to look a paler shade of goldenrod than usual upon seeing a critically-injured Xina-Kwan … her creator. She vanished and rematerialized right next to Xina, who along with Father Jennifer was being laid on sofas by Tensen and Miguel. Lyla’s holoimage now bore the attire of an emergency medic. “I have mobilized servitor drones on a medical emergency setting,” she reported to Miguel as she began scanning Xina’s physiology.
“Which means you need to make yourself scarce,” Miguel told Tensen. “Hide, teleport … whatever you need to do. Xina and Father Jennifer will be in good hands, I promise.”
“I don’t trust doctors in real hospitals,” Tensen snapped, “and more to the point, neither does Xina!”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” Miguel snapped back, “but what exactly do you think I’d be able to do? I’m a geneticist-cum-CEO, not a doctor! And if you have all these godlike powers, why can’t you just heal her?”
He frowned and looked away. “Because I’m not a god. I need time to replenish my energy. Teleportation takes a lot out of me.”
“Wouldn’t have been a problem if you’d saved us the trip and healed her right there in the church.”
“I … I think I might’ve been able to do that at one point in the past … but not anymore. My powers have changed a lot from what they used to—“ He was about to say more when the drones summoned by Lyla arrived, and he quickly hid in Miguel’s bathroom.
“What’s … goin’ on?” Father Jennifer asked as she sat up and looked around. Spotting the drones, she fended off their scanning and probing efforts. “I’m fine … I just have a slight headache. That’s all.”
“It seems to be caused,” Lyla observed helpfully, “by the cybernet interface deck located in the base of her skull.”
Miguel turned to stare slack-jawed at Lyla, then at Father D’Angelo, who scratched at the back of her neck. ”It’s a holdover from my misspent youth,” she explained. “I wasn’t always a Father, but I’d like to think I’ve mended my ways since then and found my true calling.”
Miguel ordered the drones to gently place Xina on a gurney and usher her to the Alchemax’s ICU. “I have to go fill out some paperwork,” Miguel informed Jennifer. “If you want, you can stay here and recuperate.”
Tensen emerged from the bathroom, seeing that the coast was clear. “Father, I see you’re up and around.” To Miguel, he added, “Don’t worry, Miguel, she and I will be just fine staying here. Just let us know if there’re any changes with Xina.”
Father Jennifer nodded as she idly clutched and ran her thumb along the crucifix around her neck. “Yes, John and I have catching up to do. You can go on ahead.”
Holding cell, Stone Enterprises. Meanwhile.
Second Chances.
“You’re free to go.”
Ken Zimmerman looked up from where he sat on the meager cot in the holding cell, surprised to hear those words from Tyler Stone so soon after he was imprisoned. “’Free to go’? I figured you were going to have me put down like a lab animal.”
Stone Enterprises’ CEO smiled. “The thought crossed my mind, after you unleashed Venom on my company. That little stunt of yours cost my fledgling company quite a bit of time, money, and resources.”
“And employees, right?”
Tyler Stone’s lips thinned. “Like I said, ‘resources’. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t follow through on my initial thought.”
Ken shrugged. “Well, I did bring Venom back to you, didn’t I?”
“With the intention to keep it for your own purposes as its new host, yes.”
His eyes narrowed as he studied Tyler. “Where is it now?”
“That’s none of your concern at the moment. Just know that it’s been put to the best possible use.”
“Hunh. I notice you no longer have that tube in your nose.” Indeed, Tyler was missing the nutrient tube that extended from his hoverchair’s life support system. “And you’re looking a lot … healthier … than usual.”
“You’re not the first person to make that observation,” Tyler replied as he pressed a button to open up the hoverchair. “And you won’t be the last.”
Then he slowly stood up.
Ken’s eyes widened. “How…?”
“It’s all a matter of genetics,” Tyler explained vaguely. “I believe that’s your area of expertise. And with that in mind…”
Xina Kwan’s hospital room, Alchemax Plaza. An hour later.
Hospital Visit.
Miguel O’Hara’s mind wandered, now that he no longer had paperwork to occupy his thoughts. He’d delegated that responsibility to his mother/secretary Conchata, but for once in his life he was beginning to regret that. Now he had nothing to do but stare at Xina Kwan as she lied on the hospital bed, her slumber aided by heavy medication. The medical drones and human surgeons had done well with stabilizing her condition; now all she needed was rest.
Miguel himself needed rest just as badly, but he couldn’t bring himself to go to sleep in the chair where he sat. His eyelids drooped, and his eyes stung with the need to sleep, but he refused to surrender to exhaustion. He wanted to be present and awake when she woke up. Which was why he’d sent word to Tensen and Father Jennifer about Xina’s improvement, but he hadn’t gone to them personally. Or so he told himself.
A sudden crash of bullets shattering the thick windows caused Miguel to jolt upright in his seat and forget about sleep altogether. In an instant he was out of his chair and peering out of the doorway into the hall, where he saw an infamous green-and-purple figure swoop into the building through the hole in the window carved by the bullets from the Public Eye flybikes hovering outside.
“Careful!” the Goblin shouted to the Public Eye officers outside, broadcasting the voice electronically. “One stray bullet in the wrong place, and the oxygen tanks go up in flames along with the rest of this hospital wing!” This statement also doubled as a warning to the security officers in the hall converging on the Goblin with guns drawn.
As soon as they lowered their weapons the tiniest bit, the Goblin unleashed a flurry of energy bolts from finger-talons that zapped the guards in the heads. They dropped to the floor, each one writhing in pain and experiencing his own private hallucinatory hell. “Anyone else want to stand between me and my quarry? Anyone else want to be a hero?”
An unlikely one arrived in the form of Conchata O’Hara, whose own pistol was aimed right at the Goblin’s temple. “How about me?”
The Goblin’s head shook in dismay. “Weren’t you listening to what I just told them about stray bullets?”
Conchata held her ground. “I won’t miss.”
“But would you be so hasty to fire, if you saw who’s under this mask?” The Goblin grabbed the bottom of the grinning mask and began tugging it upward to peel it off.
“No you don’t!” Spider-Man shouted as he leaped from hiding and tackled the Goblin to the floor. He was silently thankful for his mother’s timely distraction, which allowed him enough time to shed Miguel O’Hara’s clothes in favor of the blue-and-red Spider-Man clothing underneath.
He refused to let anyone see the face of Dana D’Angelo within the Goblin’s costume … if it indeed even was Dana. The Goblin was so adept at illusions and misdirection that Spider-Man had no idea what was true or false.
The Goblin rolled Spider-Man off, and the two began trading blows as they rose from the floor. The two were fairly evenly matched in terms of strength and speed, but more of Spider-Man’s punches landed. “Are you that determined – oof! – to hit me,” the Goblin asked as they fought, “even having seen who I am -- ugh! – behind the mask?”
“Shut up!” Enraged, Spider-Man doubled over his foe with a gut punch. “You’re. Not. Her.”
Conchata blinked in confusion. “’Her’? ‘Her’, who?”
The Goblin whipped around and zapped Conchata in the temple, causing her to drop her sidearm as she staggered against a wall. Fireworks exploded behind her eyelids; when her vision cleared, she focused on the Goblin and Spider-man who were still fighting.
The Goblin appeared to have the upper hand, pounding Spider-Man with a series of punches and kicks, the wall-crawler was sent reeling, seemingly unable to regain his balance.
Conchata picked up her pistol, took aim and fired upon the Goblin, striking him in the chest. He fell back against the window, clutching his chest as Spider-Man started … cackling.
That seemed severely out of character for both Spider-Man and for Conchata’s son, Miguel O’Hara.
Spider-Man started saying something, but Conchata’s addled brain had difficulty understanding his words. But ultimately, she found the words to be useless anyway: she was focused on their body language, and Spider-Man was acting an awful lot like the Goblin, and vice-versa.
She’d been tricked, and she’d just shot her own son.
TO BE CONTINUED
Next Issue:
The Goblin 2099 arc concludes with "Shadows and Light" by David Ellis.