One Hundred and Eleven Years Ago, 2100 A.D.
Alchemax Science Labs
When Kron Stone awoke, his body felt like several tons of lead.
Nothing wanted to move. His arms. His Legs. His head. Almost as if he were glued to the surgeon’s table.
The room spun warily around the one-time host to the Venom symbiote. Violent metal instruments hung from the ceiling like chandeliers, moving and twitching like monsters. The lights of the sterile room shone like floodlights, burning pure, bright white light into his fully-dilated pupils
He was restrained to a surgeon’s table in a laboratory – a dark, loud one – buried somewhere in the Alchemax building. That much he knew.
What he didn’t know, was how big the laboratory was. He couldn’t even lift his head up to look at anything but the mechanical monsters hanging from the ceiling. What their use was, he didn’t even want to guess.
It occurred to Kron that he might have been drugged. He thought about moving his arm up from the table into his field of vision and watched intensely – in that swirling tunnel vision he was having – as nothing happened at all.
Severely drugged. Unable to move an inch.
Lucky mothershockers.
If only he had the symbiote…
The last thing Kron could remember, he was suspended in his glass capsule when one of the eggheads walked in and started pointing around and gesturing with authority, like he was ordering the other scientists around. They scurried off like good little mice, doing this and that and the other thing. Next thing he knew, Kron had smelt some kind of gas and felt light-headed.
There wasn’t much after that.
Now, instead of a holding cell, Kron was strapped to this table in the dark lab. Despite the grogginess and nausea gripping his conscious mind, he could hear sounds in the background. Meatbags talking, the squeals of heavy equipment being dragged around the lab, the whirring of machines, the bleeping of monitors.
The sounds of an old-school chainsaw revving in the distance.
He could almost feel the symbiote writhing and twitching in pain somewhere, another set of audio tests being done to surmise its durability to sonics. Kron could almost even hear and see the toothy, inky-black beast writhing psychotically inside the Teflon-coated transparent-adamantium prison it was trapped in somewhere down the hall. It was more of an intuitive feeling, really. A psychic rapport wracked with pain and suffering.
To Kron, it was fuel.
All of it.
“Get me offa this thing you pus-infected warts!” Kron growled through the drugs, grunting and growling and clenching his teeth till they bled.
“Shaddup, ya spoiled little priss.” One of the scientists said, slapping him in the head. “Daddy’s not gonna save you this time.”
Scientists…
Meat…
Kron could almost taste what it would be like to strip the flesh off the eggheads around him one-by-one. To wrap himself inside the symbiote like a lover; its alien-borne power a narcotic. To feel the black suit joyfully disembowel his captors and bathe their insides in hydrochloric acid.
Kron let the rage and the bloodlust take him, eyes glazing over, almost feeling the power of the symbiote channel through him. He shook off the last of the grogginess and with the fury of a caged animal, raged against his bonds.
Kron gloried in his power as a cadre of scientists came over to try and hold him down. But they were having a hard enough time holding down his chest. If he could get an arm free…
Something smacked him in the back of the head. Hard. Had to be some metal rod of some kind.
Another whack and Kron could barely think anymore.
He sank back down into the metal bed, barely feeling the scientists tightening the restraints almost to the point of cutting off circulation to his limbs. Kron’s eyes fluttered as the world sagged and bobbed.
It had to be a concussion. A massive one.
The buzz of activity died down. The scientists went back to their preparations.
One attached a breathing mask to Kron’s nose and mouth. Kron never heard the hiss of the knockout gas as the world fell away into a haze of darkness.
Today, 2211 A. D.
Outside the Infirmary, Octet Headquarters.
Miguel O’Hara slid his taloned fingers across the scarlet eye slits of his mask, glancing into the darkness of the unstable molecular fabric. The molecules of the mask didn’t rip or shed at his touch, despite the razor points curving back against his fingertips.
It was calming to Miguel; it was something to do. In a future full of strangers that seemed to know who he was and what he was all about, it kept Miguel focused on keeping sane.
It also kept his mind off the inoculations he was about to receive.
The Octet, as they called themselves, had ordered he get a full physical and a set of inoculations against all the airborne pathogens that 2211 had to offer. All kinds of new and deadly viruses that had emerged from the complications of the 2211 Apocalypse. Radioisotopes diffused about the air. New strains of genetic viruses. Ravenous bacteriophages from the polluted rains. Things that would severely sicken anyone without a natural immunity.
Or kill them.
He leaned back on the bench just outside the Octet Infirmary, tracing a line across the infamous red pincers on his mask.
Yeah, he said to himself. Let’s not go there.
Miguel’s train of thought was shattered as he heard a shuffling noise. He darted his head to the side, talons extending slightly – a defense of habit. Albeit, an unnecessary one.
The Spider-Man of 2211 sat down on the bench next to Miguel, taking off his helmet as a gesture of respect and familiarity.
“How are you doing, Miguel?” Aaron Lycosid said, casting a glance toward Miguel.
“Going severely bonkers, how about yourself?” Miguel scoffed.
“Sorry about the whole time-displacement thing.” Aaron started, “The timestream is too turbulent to send anyone back through right now. Bringing you forward was the only way…”
“I think I remember… a hologram or something. Looked like you, and you were screaming something…”
“Yeah,” Aaron bit his lip, absently drumming on his thick plastic-metal helmet. “That was me. Couldn’t quite get through the temporal turbulence.”
“So you let me be the guinea-pig, instead. Swell.” Miguel mumbled.
Aaron sighed, bowing his head. “We didn’t have a choice. Both of our histories were about to be blinked out of existence. I needed to reach you somehow…”
“To what, re-write history?” Miguel narrowed his eyes as his future-borne successor.
“No. To restore it.” Aaron said simply.
Miguel raised an eyebrow, frowning in dismay. “I’m sorry?”
Aaron chuckled idly, seeing the confusion laced about Miguel’s dark features. He shuffled about on the bench, and began to explain.
“See, we have a law about altering history as little as humanly possible.” Aaron began, “We view the timeline only as observers. We never interfere in the lives of our progenitors or ancestors unless the danger warrants it. And even then, only indirectly.”
“Indirectly?” Miguel asked, suddenly feeling a twinge of déjà vu setting upon him.
“Yes, you see…”
“Wait…” Miguel furrowed his brow tighter. It was like a fog came to cloud his mind. A wisp of smoke. A whisper of substance. And when the fog left, there was something there that had not been there before.
Miguel remembered seeing a devastated landscape – the ruins of New York City.
“New York…” Miguel soldiered on. “It was … it was destroyed…?”
Fractured images suddenly came into focus – broken puzzle pieces knitting themselves back together. The dream – the one where he’d walked across the ruins of the city – he’d been there before. He’d been fighting some … green … suited … lunatic. A man that called himself… “the Hobgoblin….”
“The Hob … you mean, you remember that?” Aaron looked at the Spider-Man incredulously.
“And before that…“ Miguel muttered, oblivious to the newer Spider-Man’s questions, “I got sent back to 1996 and the first Spider-Man, Peter Parker, got sent to my time … right…?”
“Yeeeah, that was us.” Aaron said firmly. “Or rather, my predecessor. Like we said, we couldn’t directly interfere in your pasts. Our technology, if misplaced in the timeline, could spell disaster for my people. Possibly yours too. Too many unknowns, you see. Arm the wrong guy with a time machine and the Germans suddenly win World War II, or the Great Purge causes the extinction of man. That is why you two had to be our agents to counteract the temporal paradoxes in each of your separate times.”
“Temporal … paradoxes…?”
“Yes. One in 1996, one in 2099. Set by the Hobgoblin tribe for a purpose we still can’t figure out. But it goes without saying that they’d ensure you and I would be wiped from existence. Completely.”
“Wow.” Miguel shook his head. Explosions and sounds of battle rung as the memories built themselves back from non-existence. “Wasn’t the green guy was tossing around ‘Teflon’ bombs, or something?”
“Heh. Retcon bombs, actually.” Aaron corrected. “Another thing that would erase you from history. And the guy we were fighting was … er, is, Dominic Norman. The Hobgoblin of my time.”
“Right,” Miguel muttered skeptically. His talons tucked themselves beneath his fingertips as he grasped at his reeling skull. “Sooo, why didn’t I remember all that ‘til now?”
“Retcon bombs destroyed the temporal paradoxes, negating them from existence.” Aaron said, gesturing an explosion with his hands. “None of it, technically, happened. In the new timeline, you two were never switched around.”
“So how come you remember all this?” Miggy fired back.
“We’ve developed genetic temporal shielding to protect us from hiccups in the timeline. But we also have shields in the city-state itself as a back-up. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to do our jobs very well, being erased from history and all that. But, it looks like the back-up ones are starting to work on you too, if you’re remembering these events that never happened.”
“Wait, but they did happen!” Miguel insisted.
“Now you understand how confusing my job can get.” Aaron replied
"Okay, so let me get this straight," Miguel O'Hara spoke after a long-suffering sigh. "You're the Spider-Man from 2211, the year I'm now in when I should be in 2100."
"Correct so far."
"And I was taken out of my own year so you could show me what yours looks like, even though I've seen it once before."
"Not all of it. See, there's--"
"And," Miguel barreled on, "you're saying it's important that I take in the sights and learn just how much of a dump this place has become..."
"Sort of, yeah...."
"...Not so I can actually prevent this from happening in the first place, but so I can keep it exactly the way it is."
"The Society of the Spider has to be formed through your actions, yeah. Otherwise mankind on Earth won't even make it to 2211."
Miguel stood up and started pacing back and forth. "See, that's the part I don't get. Why not prevent the Apocalypse of 2112 you've been telling me about? Why not make sure the corporations stay intact, if their downfall leads to society's collapse?"
"Corporate dominance has been the single worst thing to happen to the planet in centuries. Believe me, keeping them in power wouldn't prevent an apocalypse."
"Funny how 'an apocalypse' is said so casually, like it happens all the time."
Aaron glanced at Miguel. "What are you trying to say? That I'm not telling the truth about why you've been brought here?"
"I'm saying this goes against everything I've ever heard about knowing too much about one's future."
"I should point out that when you were sent to 1994 to avert a timeline shift, you had no problem telling the locals about their future."
"Yeah, refresh my memory: who the shock sent me to '94 in the first place? Wasn't it you?"
Aaron held Miguel's gaze, forcing himself to remain calm. "No. It wasn't. Like I said, it was my predecessor, Gener Tyr."
Miguel raised an eyebrow, puzzling this out. "Then ... it was him I met last time?"
"No, it was me. You were looking at my first official act as Spider-Man that day." His four mechanical arms waved at Miguel for emphasis.
"So that means ... he died."
"And he left me in charge of the legacy. I'm honored to wear these arms."
Miguel raised an eyebrow again. "Why?"
"What d'you mean, 'why'?"
"Doesn't that make your life harder than it needs to be?"
Aaron shrugged. "I guess. I mean, I was an intern before this, but ... he chose me. Battlefield promotion. As the saying goes, 'With Great Power Must Come--'"
Miguel pointed a finger talon in warning at Aaron's face. "Don't. Even. Say it."
"Say what?" another voice inquired. This one was female -- a tall woman with sleek black sunglasses that matched her hair. She grasped at her glasses, peeling them away to reveal a gorgeous visage of deep brown eyes -- and a monumental frown. ”‘Great Responsibility'? Congratulations, Aaron: out of all possible Spider-Men from history, the one you chose to save our present is the one who believes in responsibility the least."
Miguel raised an eyebrow at her. "Miss Congeniality, I presume?"
Aaron sighed and gestured from one to the other. "Miguel O'Hara, meet Jenna Sosippi, my First. Jenna, Miguel. Try not to kill each other."
This raised Miguel's other eyebrow as he shook hands with her. He whispered to Aaron, "uh, she was your 'first'? I realize customs must've changed in a century, but are you sure this is something I need to know about you two?"
Aaron shrugged. "She's my first officer; I'd think it'd be useful information."
"Oh, first officer. That's different, then."
"...what did you think I meant?"
Jenna cleared her throat. "Anyway, to answer your earlier question, O'Hara, the reason we don't use our chronaltech to prevent the 2112 Apocalypse is that we've tried. Our previous attempts to alter the past have resulted in the loss of three Spider-Men. Each attempt has made the timeline worse than before. Our goal now is to ensure that this current timeline remains intact. We can't afford to have a worse world than this."
Miguel pondered that in silence, his unmasked face a mask of seriousness. Finally, he replied, "So basically, you guys are sworn to protect the timestream ... even though you suck at it."
Jenna got right in Miguel's face. "All right, listen you obnoxious little--"
Aaron sidled between them, holding Jenna and Miguel at bay with two mechanical arms each. "Whoa! Okay, take it easy, you two." To Miguel, he added, "the time travel thing is still a work in progress."
"The same way doctors consider what they do a medical 'practice'?"
"Pretty much." Aaron grinned and turned to Jenna. "Well, if you'll excuse us, I'm gonna show Mig the next stop on the tour."
She raised an eyebrow. "Which is...?"
"Hobgoblin's cell. I figure since we have him as a guest of honor--"
"No. No no no no no! You're not visiting Norman without me! You need to have someone with you for backup."
"I'd have Miguel."
"You need someone qualified to back you up."
Miguel's eyes narrowed. "'Not qualified'? You think I couldn't handle myself if the 'Goblin gets out of hand? I've fought him before, for shock's sake!"
"For less than a minute. How long have you been a Spider-Man?"
He thought about it for a moment. "It's coming up on a year, come to think of it."
"That's it?"
"What d'you mean, 'that's it?' You have any idea how much I've been through in less than a year?" Miguel yelled, incensed.
"You still don't have a fraction of the experience Peter Parker or Gener Tyr had."
"He has a lot more than I do," Aaron piped in.
"Which doesn't help your case," Jenna pointed out. "I'm going with the two of you, to keep you out of trouble."
“Oh what a joy this will be.” Miguel scoffed.
Aaron and Jenna just rolled their eyes and made their way down the tiled hallway, the Spider-Man of 2100 following in their wake.
Operations Central, Octet Headquarters.
"Good thing the First is going with them," Rhonda Pardosa, Aaron's Third commented as she sat with the rest of the Octet in Ops. "No telling what kind of trouble they could get into with the Hobgoblin."
"I think they could handle themselves," Kevin Xysticus, the Fifth replied. "You have to remember, Aaron is the reason Norman's in our holding cell in the first place."
"Through sheer dumb luck, yes," Rhonda asserted. "Tyr would have taken him out in half the time."
"Funny," Bobb Arctos, the Fourth pointed out as he ran some scenarios on a computer. "I thought Gener Tyr was taken out by the Hobgoblin".
Everyone else in the room froze.
"Yeah, sorry. I don't mean to speak ill of the departed. Just saying...."
"We've got an intern as the Spider-Man now," Rhonda barreled on. "An intern who thinks the Miguel O'Hara incarnation will save us all."
Kevin shrugged, leaning back in his chair. "Okay, I guess when you put it like that...."
"The fact is," Bobb piped in, "O'Hara is a footnote in the history of the Spider-Men….”
“Hardly a footnote, Bobb.” Phillip Salticid, the Second Leg of the Spider-Man 2211, corrected in a stern tone – a tone just as sharp as his chiseled visage. With intense black eyes affixed firmly on the Fourth, Phillip continued, “Miguel O’Hara was one of the progenitors of the Spider Society. He gathered the fourth Spider-Woman and the rest of her Spiderites together after the Apocalypse of 2112. He helped them forge a community – a community that would become the foundation of our fine city-state. You know that as well as I do.”
“Yeah, maybe when he’s older,” Bobb continued on, “but you can’t argue the fact that for right now, he’s just an arrogant jerk.”
“I don’t agree with his methods at the moment.” Phillip muttered, “But he eventually grows to become a legend to our people. Despite his … profoundly irritating personality.”
“Of all the possible time periods Aaron could have snatched up Miguel,” Rhonda vented, “why oh why did he have to choose the one before he was tempered with humility and experience?”
“Unfortunately, as you well know, the divergence point in the timeline happened before Miguel could grow up to be the historical leader we all studied and loved.” Phillip said. “We have to deal with the Spider-Men we have.”
“Spider-Men?” Rhonda asked.
“Yes. Miguel…and Aaron.” Phillip muttered. “Jenna’s a fine scientist and leader. I would have loved to see her tackle the role of the Spider-Man.”
“Me too.” Rhonda sighed.
“Uh, guys?” Kevin interrupted, “Gener Tyr himself picked Aaron to succeed him…”
“Only because he had no choice.” Rhonda shot back. “And he continues to be the Spider-Man because the arms are bonded to him for life. No one intended for them to go to an untrained intern, but thanks to the Goblin, they did. And now we’re stuck with the consequences.”
“Just give him some time to prove himself,” Kevin said, “The kid’ll be just fine. He was one of the brightest interns we had for the Octet. He’ll grow into it. Just like Miguel did, and will.”
“You want legends?” Bobb replied, “Peter Parker. There was a legend."
“Bugger, not this again.” Phillip growled, losing himself once more in the holographic historical archives.
The rest of the Octet rolled their eyes. Even Paulos Undatus, Valerina Atrax, and Marcy Deinopid, the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth who were pointedly staying out of the discussion in favor of getting work done.
I mean," Bobb continued, unaware as usual of his colleagues' discomfort at his sermonizing, "just imagine if Parker had been summoned here. Or better yet, if the First Heroic Age hadn't ended at all!"
"You always say that," Kevin retorted, "but you always leave out that the First Age did end, because of--"
"I'm not overlooking that part. I'm just saying, this world would have been much better off if this were still the First Age. Then the decay of the world after that wouldn't have led to Second Age, then the Third we're in now. I think that's what we should be working toward with this chronal tech--"
Rhonda sighed explosively. "Bobb. We've been through this."
"But as usual, nobody listens to me."
Prisoner Holding, Octet Headquarters.
Now you two listen to me," Jenna instructed Aaron and Miguel. "Dominic Norman is a sociopath, and an intelligent one at that. He will try to manipulate you into giving him information he can use against you. So let me do all the talking."
"Because, obviously, you're the peacekeeper of this little group," Miguel commented, letting the sarcasm flow freely.
"I've had experience dealing with him in captivity. You haven't."
"I had a pet hamster once. Does that count?"
Aaron briefly removed his helmet to undergo a retinal scan. "If you two are finished, I'd like to get this over with soon. Like today, for instance."
The wall-mounted scanner beeped and unlocked the heavy door leading to the observation room adjacent to the Hobgoblin's cell. The three of them stepped into the room and stood in front of the reinforced window, where a heavily-built bald man with a multitude of tribal tattoos sat on a cot, bereft of his purple-and-green body armor. The man was staring into the corner of the room furthest away from the one-sided glass, intensely – as if he were about to burrow through the wall in front of him simply by concentrating hard enough. He was oblivious to their presence at the moment – stock still, tensed and silent.
“Dominic Norman.” Aaron Lycosid said calmly, six arms crossed over his chest. “Modern-day sociopath. Better known as the Hobgoblin of our time.”
Miguel studied the massive man on the other side of the glass. Even sitting, silent, faced away from the trio – the Hobgoblin was a fearsome figure indeed.
Aaron continued on. “He, along with his nomadic Hobgoblin tribe, is responsible for countless terrorist attacks against the Spider Society. He is responsible for the genocide of multiple groups of peaceful nomads, in order to thieve food, water, and technology for the rest of his cadre. He is responsible for just under a hundred deaths in the city itself … including the previous First, and the previous Spider-Man, Gener Tyr."
Aaron and Jenna bowed their heads slightly in reverence of the dead. Miguel bit his lip, glancing back toward the prisoner.
“He is responsible for multiple timeline paradoxes, as well as two permanent timeline divergences. Both for the worse. He is responsible for multiple individuals being erased from existence … those Retcon bombs of his. He’s a murderer, plain and simple. A cold-blooded murderer.”
Jenna just glared at the Goblin.
“His entire M.O. seems to be un-making existence. Erasing our timeline from history. And it seems this current wave of time distortions we’re facing are all his doing -- even though we haven’t gotten a full confession out of him yet.”
“Wait,” Miguel asked, “If he’s trying to un-make existence … wouldn’t that erase him from history as well?”
“That’s the thing we can’t figure out.” Aaron huffed. “The entire Goblin tribe seems to be obsessed with dismantling the timeline. And so far, we haven’t gotten confessions out of any of the prisoners. They are fully committed to their task, whatever it is.”
Miguel joined Jenna in watching the brooding figure, separated from them by inches of impenetrable transparent adamantium glass.
“He will be in that cell for the rest of his natural life.” Aaron said. “Though I should point out, Miguel … the Hobgoblin is much like Kron Stone. Your half-brother….” Aaron started.
Miguel whirled toward the Spider Society president. “How the shock do you know about--?”
“Historical archives.” Aaron muttered. “I just wanted you to realize that, even with undesirables such as Venom, or the Hobgoblin here, there are alternatives to stopping their rampages … besides execution.”
Before Miguel could say a word, Aaron had stepped to Jenna’s side and grasped the microphone, patching him into the Hobgoblin’s cell.
"Dominic," Aaron spoke into the rusty mic, ignoring the irritated glare from Miguel. "How're you feeling?"
Norman looked over to the window, casting a sneer in its direction though it was clear he couldn't see anyone on the other side. "Right now? Confined. But that will change."
"Aaron, I thought we agreed I was going to do the talking," Jenna interjected.
"Okay, first of all," Aaron replied in a low voice, making sure the mic was off, "we didn't agree on that. You just made a demand. Second, in the event that you become a Spider-Man, would you let a subordinate decide whether or not you're allowed to speak to a prisoner? Didn't think so."
Miguel watched the exchange with no small amusement. "You two are like an old married couple, I swear."
"Is there anything you wanted," Norman inquired, "or do you simply feel the need to poke at my cage?"
Finding another microphone, Miguel pressed a button to turn it on. "Yes. Poking at your cage makes us happy."
"O'Hara!" Jenna snapped.
Norman tilted his head to the side. "Did I just hear the name O'Hara? Yes ... I thought that voice sounded familiar." His voice was calm, measured, and pleasant, but nonetheless carried a dangerous edge, like a security blanket being dragged across a road laden with crushed glass. "Miguel O'Hara, the Spider-Man of the Second Heroic Age, am I correct?"
Miguel wrestled to keep the microphone out of Jenna's reach. "Yeah, it's me. I was in the neighborhood, and I thought I'd drop by...."
"To see if your predecessors were properly worshipping you, no doubt. Look at them. They dress like spiders, the same way you do. They've even adopted the family names of spiders as their own surnames. Pathetic."
"That might hurt more," Aaron replied, "if it didn't come from someone whose tribe named themselves after goblins."
Dominic chuckled. "Yes ... the names of the great Goblins of the past, with or without the Hob- prefix. Osborn. Norman. Hamilton. Kingsley. Macendale. D'An--"
Jenna finally bodyslammed Miguel to the ground and grabbed his microphone, so Miguel didn't catch the rest of that. "Enough baiting, Norman, as much as it might amuse you."
"Ah, Jenna Sossippi. The illustrious First. Lovely to hear your voice again. Still a force to be reckoned with. You know, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to face you in battle, Hobgoblin to Spider-Man. You would be a truly worthy adversary, a credit to your mantle...."
"Stifle it, Norman."
"But that's not going to happen is it? Not as long as the upstart is alive. Short of a mutiny, I'll never get to see you wear the Spider-Man arms, correct?"
"It's not going to happen because you're never getting out of that cell." Jenna growled, silencing the mic.
Miguel sat up, rubbing the back of his neck. "Does she have increased strength?" he whispered to Aaron.
Aaron shook his head.
"And she took me down anyway. I'm officially impressed. You have a great choice in firsts."
"All right, it's obvious this conversation is getting us nowhere," Jenna announced, casting a sidelong glance at Aaron that screamed ‘I told you so’ before turning to Miguel. "You're not going to learn anything about the Hobgoblin by speaking to him--"
"I thought you didn't want me to speak to him."
"Yes, and this is why.” Jenna grumbled, “Let's just go."
Just Outside the Ruins of New York City. Hours Later.
“New trajectory confirmed,” Aaron’s smooth red helmet said gently in a sultry feminine purr. The Spider-Man of 2211 sailed across the dead, acrid desert once known as the outskirts of New York City, burning a trail in the dusty winds with roaring boot jets as the Spider-Man of 2100 sat perched upon his back, holding on for dear life.
As he clutched tightly onto his successor’s shoulders, Miguel’s web cape fluttered powerfully in the wind, dragging on the breeze like a parachute in a hurricane. Lucky for Aaron, the AI in his boot jets and helmet were able to calculate just the right trajectory to compensate for the wind drag and carry them safely towards their destination.
“Where the shock are we going?” Miguel screamed over the whipping of the winds.
“Home.” Aaron yelled simply.
“Uh, actually it’s back the other way. You know – the giant city we just left?”
“Not my home, Miguel. Your home. New York City.”
“Good, good.” Miguel said, “Lyla’s waiting for me. You learn it’s never a good idea to keep a hologram waiting.”
“Ah yes, the one that looks like the movie star.” Aaron smiled. “Speaking of scandalous wind gusts…”
A heavy wind whipped at the duo hard, pulling forcefully at Miguel’s web-cape. The helmet chattered lovingly in Aaron’s ears again, making another automatic course-correction to compensate
“Weather’s not the best around these parts,” Aaron muttered.
Miguel cast a weary eye toward the stormy, puke-green sky. It felt heavy -- heavy with the weight of the giant, tumbling gas clouds that encompassed the entirety of the horizon. They floated on the air like a tank or a battleship might, shoved across the sky by violent, whipping winds, all but ready to crash to the earth at any moment. Miguel scoffed. “Guess not.”
Miguel scanned the desert with his accelerated vision, making out the decrepit shapes jutting out from the rocky ground below. He could make out the vestiges of some abandoned city beginning to appear on the horizon a few miles ahead of them. It looked like they were almost there.
“I should warn you, Miguel.” Aaron called out above the airy wisps. “This will not be the New York you remember. As you know, all the major cities of the early twenty-second century…”
“Were wiped out, I know. You told me all that already.” Miguel assured him. “But I need to see what happened here for myself. It’ll … I don’t know … it won’t really be … it won’t seem … real … until I see the old place. If that makes any sense to you.”
“…I understand.” Aaron responded finally.
They neared the jagged, broken structures that were once towering skyscrapers. The sky shrieked with a fiery green glow, electric clouds beginning to descend on them. It was as if the sky was getting ready for war. Miguel watched the desert sail behind them, replaced by the backdrop of dusty rubble half-covered in the calm sands.
He felt a slight bump. The roar of the boot jets beneath quieted down to a whisper.
“We’re here.” Aaron said.
They coasted lightly over the ruins of Miguel’s former world. The man out of time eyed the structures sticking out of the auburn sands, recognizing some of the walkways and buildings that once comprised his home city despite the decades of decay and neglect. He frowned, looking at the metal skeletons that were once proud skyscrapers.
A sigh. A solemn shake of the head.
Aaron circled around and descended on the wreckage, landing on the most stable region: a sunken rooftop overlooking a cluster of hollowed skyscrapers. Miguel leapt off of Aaron’s back, landing on a cracked ledge below.
The old landing shifted under the weight, sending Miguel toppling over onto the rooftop. Aaron landed calmly beside him. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” He grunted, standing up and dusting off quickly. “Fine.”
The city was quiet, save for the lingering roars and yelps of thunder above the ruins. Miguel gripped the ledge of the former rooftop, feeling the wreck beneath his touch. He ran his fingers across it, feeling the cracks in the plasti-steel and the frayed edges of ceramic. Dust collected on the tips of his UMF gloves.
The razor talons sprang – a product of the timeless man’s frustrations. Miguel ripped angry fingers through the ceramic, shredding deep, jagged grooves into the ruined ledge. It cracked and buckled and finally gave up the ghost against the strain, splintering into coarse pieces of rock and ceramic. The debris fell forward, crashing with a hollow thud into the sands below.
Sad, quiet echoes from the impacts reverberated throughout the ruins.
Miguel scanned the scene in front of him, noting with contempt the half-buildings rising off toward the sky. So much for making the world something he could stand to look at.
“So you say you’ve taken me from my home to … what, make sure my home ends up this? Make sure the future, ends up like THIS?” Miguel growled, baring his fangs aggressively, instinctively, gesturing out towards the shattered world around them.
“No.” Aaron sighed. “I’m asking you to make sure our city survives this.”
“Survive?” Miguel asked.
“I’m sorry; I haven’t given you the complete story.” Aaron said, pacing about on the creaking rooftop.
Miguel lowered his gaze on the pacing president before him. “So what, exactly, did you leave out?”
“The part where you execute Kron Stone.” The future Spider-Man said, stopping his pacing suddenly. “The part where you back out of your labor contracts with Boru and the Downtown workers. The part where you lead an Alchemax liquidation team on the Atlantis colony…”
“What?”
“Yep. History, this history, gets altered by your actions in the past. In the new timeline, you’re also going to kill Boru. And Roman. And just about anyone else who gets in Alchemax’s way.” Aaron spoke sadly. “You’ll become nothing but a figurehead to your corporation. You won’t lead it. You’ll be led by it. And we have no idea why that is going to happen.”
“Okay, okay. I get it. Practical joke time!” Miguel scoffed, walking around looking at the sky. “It’s been a really nice VR program, Gabriel. Very detailed, very complete, but it’s time to let me out now!”
“Miguel, I am not your brother, and this isn’t a virtual reality program.” Aaron stared at Miguel, “This. Is. Real.”
“Nice speech, Gabe, but I know when I’ve been had!” Miguel ignored the future Spider-Man, making his way across the shattered rooftop. “Look, if this is your way of criticizing my decision about Kron Stone…”
“Miguel!” Aaron yelled. “Stop screwing around. This is serious.”
Where’s the Cadillac and the gorgeous woman you usually program into these things? Is it some kind of unlockable, or what?”
“Miguel!” Aaron slapped the masked man across the face, the gauntlet making a loud thud against his jaw. “This is not a program, or a dream, or an illusion. This is reality. And in this reality, you kill Boru. Gabriel and Kasey are slaughtered in the Downtown riot that follows. And after learning what you’ve allowed to happen, your mother, Conchata O’Hara….”
“What, she goes into the asylum again to spite me?” he laughed.
Aaron glared into the Spider-Man’s eyes. “She puts a gun to her head, and blows her brains out.”
Miguel stopped smirking, suddenly silent.
“She kills herself, and her suicide note states that she couldn’t live with the fact that she lost both of her sons.”
Miguel lowered himself to the ground, as if he’d been hit in the stomach with a sack of bowling balls. “Kills … herself…?”
“Apparently, she couldn’t stand working for a corporate sellout.” Aaron placed his hands on his hips, tearing his gaze away at the sullen man before him and pacing. “It gets worse from there.”
Miguel slouched, staring hard into the pebbles and girders strewn about the roof. “How much worse can it get?”
“A team-up with Hikaru Takeshi, of Stark-Fujikawa Corporation. The subjugation of the Downtown populace as compulsory slave laborers. The synthesis of multiple artificial Venom symbiotes for use as corporate raiders. Hell, the Spider Society isn’t even formed in this potential future. Our city, our way of life, never even exists in this alternate reality.” Aaron spoke softly. “We ran hundreds of projections, and there’s no doubt. The entire Spider Society will die, unless you can help us.”
“Shock me…” the Spider-Man of the past whispered. “How …the shock does that all happen?”
“Our projections … they tell us the biggest deviation begins when Kron is executed.” Aaron sighed, sitting down with his predecessor. “The rest seems to snowball from there.”
“I don’t get it…” Miguel muttered. “Killing Kron ought to solve things. Not….”
“It doesn’t.” Aaron sighed. “Murder never does. At least, it shouldn’t.”
“It would have, if I’d gotten him earlier.” Miguel replied. “Maybe it would have saved Dana….”
“Maybe.” Aaron said. “But that doesn’t make it right. And killing Kron won’t change that. You need to keep his execution from happening. Or else your future, and my history, won’t be worth squat.”
Miguel grunted in response, tensing his fingers in frustration. Suddenly, he straightened up, remembering…. “Did you say something about … synthetic Venom symbiotes?”
“Yes.” Aaron responded. “Kenneth Zimmerman manages to clone more docile versions of the Venom symbiote and attach them to Alchemax raiders.”
“ZIMMERMAN?!”
“Zimmerman.” Aaron tapped the controls on his crimson gauntlet. With a bleep, the normal image of the Spider Society symbol faded and was replaced by the face of a man from the history records. A face Miguel knew all too well. “This is the guy who suggested you murder Kron, is he not?”
Miguel glared angrily at the image. “He told me he was going to make sure nothing like Venom would ever happen again. That the autopsy would lead to heightened defensive measures against other murderers like the Venom symbiote.”
“He lied to you.”
“But even if he did, executing Kron should have—“
“He manipulated you into doing what he wanted.” Aaron said sternly. “He used you to help him develop and create his own, cutting-edge, corporate soldiers. It’s as simple as that, son.”
Miguel tore his gaze away from the gauntlet-screen, gripping at the roof beneath his talons. Suddenly, he tore a palm-sized piece of plasti-steel out of the smooth ground and launched it toward the other end of the roof. Aaron ducked, instinctively, in the nick of time. He glanced back at his twenty-first century counterpart.
“Listen, I know you’re frustrated, but—“
“Frustrated?” Miguel scoffed, standing up in a second’s time. “You don’t know the meaning of frustrated. Frustrated is waking up with spider powers after some shocking nutcase sabotages your laboratory experiment. Frustrated is finding out about the uglier sides of your world and deciding to try and make a difference out of them. It’s watching your new life as a hero destroy your relationship with your fiancé. It’s holding the woman you can’t stop loving as she dies in your arms and watching your brother blame you for her death….”
Miguel clenched his fists, shaking. “Frustrated … is watching all of your friends and family fall away from you, and the only thing you have left is your desire to change the world for the better. And you find out you can’t even do that. You find out that the best you can hope for, that you could ever have hoped for, is this.” In his fury, he swept a gesture out toward the rubble of the city.
“You know that’s not all that there is around here, Miguel.” Aaron said.
“That’s all that I saw!” Miguel yelled in anger, pointing a talon at his successor. “When I was with Parker that first time when we fought the Hobgoblin here…this wreckage is all I saw of my future! And then, when Dana died, I realized how pointless my life as the SMAN really is…”
Aaron stopped dead in his tracks. “….how did you see that?”
“What?”
“How did you see that before Dana died? How did you know about this future before today?”
“I … I don’t … I dunno exactly.” Miguel drew in a breath and slowly let it out. “I don’t … know how I could have known that until that temporal shielding you talked about kicked in earlier.”
Miguel paused then, looking about, connecting the pieces together.
“But I did have dreams. Nightmares, of a world just like this. A world that was my fault, because I couldn’t make it better. Everyone was dead. New York was rubble. On some level … I think I knew….”
Aaron walked about, his mind clicking at light speed. “You mean subconsciously you remembered when we switched you around to fix the first paradoxes? When you were pulled to the future through the rifts, and saw the ruins of New York. The timeline shifting didn’t erase those memories?”
“Not … completely … I guess….”
“And the only memory of the future you had was of New York City in ruins.”
“Yeah, we established that….”
“The future, as you saw it, was over.”
“Nothing I could have done would have made any difference.” Miguel muttered.
“My God … that’s when it started! That’s what caused the timeline to deviate.” Aaron exclaimed. “Your intrinsic knowledge of the future. Don’t you see? It wasn’t the Hobgoblin! It never was! Our own attempt to fix the paradoxes actually caused the latest one. Gods be with us, it was our fault!”
“You’re kidding.” Miguel said.
“No, I’m not.” Aaron replied. “Peter Parker had been through many timeline incursions, he’s had the experience of dealing with timestream anomalies. You’ve never been through any of that. You’ve never dealt with anything that big. It’s worn down on you … allowed your subordinates to manipulate you … my God, it all fits!”
Miguel scratched his head. “I’m a little confused. Could you run that by me one more time?”
“It’s simple, Miguel. In order to save the future, yours and mine, we just need to make sure you’re not … manipulated....” Aaron trailed off.
Aaron suddenly realized how far away he was from the city. Remembered Jenna’s resistance to let them visit the Hobgoblin’s cell. Remembered the way the Hobgoblin talked about being released from prison – as if he was less a frustrated prisoner and more an honored guest. And most of all, he remembered the Hobgoblin’s knowledge of Jenna’s new rank. It had only been days since that promotion. Who the shock gave him that information?
What if Jenna’s attempts to ostracize him from the Octet was simply an attempt to separate him from the city? To lure him away for a couple hours, to give her time?
What if the entire Hobgoblin tribe was at the city right now, laying waste to it?
Manipulated by his subordinates….
“My God, what have I done?” Aaron gasped in horror.
Operations Central, Octet Headquarters.
The doors to the chronalporter room opened with a slight hiss.
Jenna Sosippi slipped in quietly through the entrance, thumbing the trigger on her hand-held laser gun. Even as she eased her way into the darkened chamber, the heavy doors quietly shut behind her, blanketing her once again in darkness. She was a shadow, lurking in-between the calmly humming technology in the laboratory.
She narrowed her eyes toward the location of the main control panels for the lab.
The Ruins of New York City.
"We've got to get back to the lab," Aaron shouted almost breathlessly as the thrusters in his boots propelled him between the broken, lopsided skyscrapers of New York.
"Will you wait up?" Miguel demanded, tugging his mask back down to cover his face with one hand even as he jumped skyward and fired a webline with the other. "Only one of us can fly, and it's not the guy with a web-cape!"
Rather than waste time anchoring the webline to a nearby building, swinging from it, and repeating the action with another building, he'd simply aimed for Aaron and snagged one of his robotic arms.
Aaron's flight path swerved and lurched, jarred by the presence of another passenger. "Hey! You're throwing off my balance! We're gonna--"
No further words were necessary as they raced toward one of the many crumbled structures at top speed. Aaron's flight path was taking him toward a flat windowless part of the building, where the broken 'O' of a vertical neon sign waited. It might as well have been a bull's eye.
Glancing around as he trailed from his webline, Miguel spotted a tangled mess of half-collapsed walkways and fired a webline at it. The webbing struck and adhered to the surface, stretching the line for several yards before it pulled taut.
Aaron screamed as he was lurched yet again. "What the hell are you doiiiiing?!"
"Saving our buuuuuuutts," Miguel replied as he allowed the line to stretch just a little bit more. Then he let go.
The two of them shot toward the building like a bullet, only at a different angle than before. Their trajectory managed to line up with two large broken plate glass windows on opposing sides of the building. Thankfully, the path in between those windows was clear.
Once they'd shot through the one side of the skyscraper and out the other, Aaron spread all six arms out and pointed his hands behind him. The strands of guided webbing in each one converged on a single point in the open sky and interlaced, swiftly creating an intricate, silvery parachute.
The two of them slowed immensely even as Aaron reduced his thrusters. Miguel had let go of his first webline and clung to the facade of the office building they'd just exited, to Aaron slowed enough to adopt a hovering posture., turning around to face his predecessor. "You almost got us killed," Aaron pointed out between gasping breaths.
"Wow. And I thought I was a glass-half-empty kind of guy," Miguel replied. "As much as I'd like to hang around in my old neighborhood, you're my only ride back to your neighborhood. So. Is your first really that important that you have to drop everything to --"
Miguel had let go of his first webline and clung to the facade of the office building they'd just exited, so Aaron slowed enough to adopt a hovering posture.
"Yes! She is important considering she's a traitor in a high position of power! We have to stop her before she can carry out ... whatever her plan is."
"Well, if it's 'we', then I guess it's time for another ... piggyback ... do you hear a buzzing sound?" Miguel tilted his head and looked around, as what started as the faint background sound of a single housefly roared into the racket of a nest of angry bees.
"Not good," Aaron declared. "Helmet display's showing multiple incoming hostiles!"
"Yeah, I don't need a helmet to see that! I've got my own two accelerated eyes."
And what they saw -- miles away but clearly closing fast -- truly worried him. They were all humanoid figures. Each stood atop a rocket-propelled glider vehicle, and each wore some kind of freakish costume. Their attire ran the range from polished and state-of-the-art to grungy and cobbled-together. But they all wore purple and green. And they all wore grinning masks that made them look like the stuff of a child's nightmares.
They were Goblins. And they swarmed the airspace between the two Spider-Men and the Spider city-state.
TO BE CONCLUDED
Next Issue: "Hold the Line".
Next Issue:
The Spider-Men vs. the Goblins!
Hobgoblin freed!
The Traitor’s evil plan revealed!
It all comes down to the wire in two months, with the sensational conclusion to the ‘Spider-Man 2100 Meets 2211’ storyarc in next issue’s "Hold the Line"!
As always, comments and questions are welcome!
End gratuitous use of exclamation points!