St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Downtown New York, Early morning, February 2100.
Morning Worship.
The ancient church lit up from within with bright flashes of green light.
Inside, chaos reigned. The large crowd of parishioners shoved and trampled over one another to get away from the battle taking place near the altar.
“Xina, get out of here,” John Tensen shouted to his female companion as he stood between her and their attacker, a green-clad lunatic with purple wings.
“Why don’t you just ‘port us out of here?” Xina Kwan retorted as the Goblin’s green energy bolts streaked by her head.
“I just teleported us here from halfway across the country, remember” John argued as he shaped a thin, transparent forcefield out of the air with his hands. “I barely have enough left to shield us!”
“Now, now, children,” the Goblin reprimanded them in the tones of a concerned parent. “It’s not nice to bicker in a church.” A barrage of brilliant streaks of light issued from his finger-claws.
John’s forcefield withstood the barrage, but the frenzy of colored light overloaded his vision. Temporarily blinded, he dissipated his forcefield and staggered backward. The riot of abstract shapes and colors continued even after John shut his eyes.
A high-pitched scream cut forced him to reopen his eyes and look around.
He was no longer in the centuries-old cathedral. His surroundings were cavernous and flooded with bright red molten lava that drenched the cavern with oppressive heat. In the distance, he could see demonic shapes that were vaguely human, as well as human forms who were shouting in agony.
He was in Hell.
Struggling to breathe, John looked around frantically for a way out, but the infernal environment stretched for miles in every direction. He wished he still had the strength to teleport. He—
The scenery flickered and distorted, and John could see hints of the cathedral’s interior. The demons and suffering humans gave way to the crowd of amazed onlookers who’d called him the Net Prophet. Hell had just been a multi-sensory illusion.
But one demon still remained in the reality of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, he realized as his legs began to give out from exhaustion. That demon, the Goblin, blinded John with another lightshow.
“Xina…” he slurred as he slumped to the floor and passed out.
Stone Enterprises limousine, New York. Meanwhile.
No Rest for the Wicked.
“Hey pal, you awake?”
Spider-Man opened his eyes after an exhausting night, but for the second time in as many hours, he didn’t wake up in his own bed.
“Yeah … still alive.” His last opportunity for rest had come the previous evening, when he’d passed out from exhaustion fighting the Venom creature across the city. Then he’d woken up in Tyler Stone’s custody and had to fight Venom again. Granted, the second time it had been Kenneth Zimmerman as host to the Venom symbiote instead of Kron Stone, but none of it had been easy.
Once Zimmerman/Venom had been defeated, Tyler had arranged for one of his chauffeurs to drive Spider-Man “home”; now he was in the back seat of one of Tyler’s company limos.
The driver was watching him through his rearview mirror. “You gonna let me know where to take you, or not?”
“Just drive,” he’d informed the driver. “I’ll let you know where to drop me off.” He rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed that he’d dozed off in Stone’s limo. What a colossally stupid mistake that was; knowing Tyler, Spider-Man could have woken up on an operating table in a Stone Enterprises lab. He was sitting in the enemy’s property.
That realization sent adrenaline through his system, waking him up faster than any cup of coffee. He glanced around, keeping alert to any possible sign that he might be double-crossed.
“Kinda nervous, ain’tcha?” the driver observed, making conversation. “Relax, you’re in the best maglev limo money can buy. The seats are comfy an’ everything.”
Spider-Man sat in the back seat in silence, while the driver kept chattering, making small talk. He looked out the window as the towering structures of New York kept getting closer, and traffic merged onto the magnetic levitation highways around them.
“Y’know, I got a son who used to dress like you,” the driver mentioned at one point.
Within the mask, Spider-Man raised an eyebrow. “Like me?”
“Yeah, his name was Steve. He was one of those … whaddyacall’em.…”
“Spiderites?”
“Yeah, that’s it! He was one of those. He went an’ bought a costume online that looked like yours, y’know? Fell in with that bad crowd.” The driver’s brows knit as he stared at Spider-Man through the mirror. “Hell, I bet you even met him.”
Spider-Man blinked. “Come again?”
“That’s your cult, isn’t it? Didn’t you start that?”
Staring at the chauffer as if he’d lost his mind, Spider-Man answered with a definitive, “no! That was somebody else’s idea! The Spiderite thing was a spin-off of the Thorites—“
“You been calling yourself the ‘Harbinger of Thor’.”
“They called me that! I never asked for that! Why does everybody always think—“
“Steve’s in the hospital, y’know.”
“—Huh?”
“He jumped off one building, an’ he tried to glide to the next one, or whatever it is you do. But he couldn’t jump as far as you, and his web cape was homemade. He fell a thousand feet an’ landed on a hover-billboard.”
“Oh … shock….”
“Broke every bone in his body. All because he was copyin’ you.”
Spider-Man scowled. “Let me out.”
It was the driver’s turn to look at Spider-Man as if the wall-crawler had lost his mind. “Let you out? We’re in the middle of maglev traffic!”
“So? I can go the rest of the way from here. I can jump far and glide on my cape, and all that.”
The driver pointed an accusing finger. “Oh, I get it! You just don’t wanna take any responsibility for what happened to my son!”
Spider-Man stood up and held out an index finger, displaying an inch-long retractable talon. “You really want to point fingers?”
“You can’t get out of this limo, anyway. It’s locked down as long as it’s on this mag-track. So where’re you gonna go?”
The wall-crawler launched a side-kick into one of the limo’s doors that wrenched it off its hinges. “Anywhere I want.”
The driver’s jaw dropped as the watched the damaged door sail across three lanes of traffic. “You … you … you can’t do that—“
“Stone can put it on my tab,” Spider-Man replied as he hopped out of the limo, sprung across the roofs of several cars, then dived off the maglev freeway into the abyss that separated upper New York from Downtown. Spreading his arms, he threaded the long fin-shapes on his forearms into the gaps in his ragged webbing cape. The lyte-byte fabric caught an updraft and expanded like a parachute, carrying Spider-Man upward toward the skyscrapers above him. Toward Alchemax Tower in particular.
As he ascended, the driver’s words rang in his ears: ”I got a son who used to dress like you.” ”That’s your cult, isn’t it?” ”All because he was copyin’ you.” And of course, the ever-popular: ”You just don’t wanna take any responsibility.”
He supposed that somewhere in the driver’s tirade, he’d had a point. Sure he did, he decided. His head is shaped like one.
Deciding he was far too tired to worry about it, he banished that train of thought and approached the Alchemax building. From this distance, he could easily see the giant hole that last night’s explosion had carved out of the R&D wing. Workers and drones were swarming around it, but it still looked very much like the aftermath of the explosion from last year … the one that had accompanied his accidental transformation into a spidery superhuman.
Too late, he realized the workers and drones weren't the only things swarming around the building. Half a dozen Public Eye officers on yellow flybikes converged on him, handguns at the ready. "Spider-Man, you are in restricted airspace," the leader announced over his flybike's loudspeaker. "If you come any closer, you will be fired upon."
It figures, Spider-Man thought. Considering how many Public Eye officers had died in Venom's rampage a few hours ago, it'd be insane not to expect them to be on high alert.
Shifting his body's positioning so that he could remain in a stationary position, he was about to tell them that he had a message from Tyler Stone to deliver to Miguel O'Hara. He quickly thought better of it, realizing the logistics might then require both Spider-Man and Miguel to be seen in the same place at the same time. And he was far too tired to come up with something clever, anyway, so he flattened his arms to the side of his body and dropped into freefall. He was going to have to find another way in. Failing that, he supposed he could always crash on his brother Gabriel's couch.
He gave that option exactly two seconds of thought. "Shock that; I'll find some other approach," he muttered with disgust.
Cyberspace teleconference, Later that morning.
Elusive Details.
Conchata O’Hara didn’t hide her disgust as she observed, “you’re looking well, Tyler. Good thing it’s just an illusion.”
Tyler Stone smiled anyway as the two of them walked in a virtual environment that closely resembled his mansion on the outskirts of New York. For Tyler, walking here was something he couldn’t do in the real world. “Now, Connie, is that any way to speak to an old friend?”
MIguel’s executive assistant glared, both at him and at the simulation of the crackling fireplace. “No, but it’s a perfect way to speak to you. Seriously, Tyler, this VR conference isn’t even necessary. I just wanted a screen-to-screen chat with you about the Venom symbiote.”
“Oh, but I get so few opportunities to have company over, as it were. And since I’ve been spending recent months confined to a hoverchair, I’m only able to stretch my legs with virtual conferencing technology. After all, it was based on Dreamvision, an invention of my—“
“Of your dear old great-grandfather, Tiberius Stone,” Conchata finished for him, rolling her eyes. “Yes, I know. You used to brag about that often. But it’s funny you should mention him: I’ve been researching his connection to the symbiote. You said he’d acquired it from the Life Foundation.”
“That was in the report I’d e-mailed to Mike, yes,” Tyler replied, using his favorite nickname for Miguel. “The symbiote was one of many the Life Foundation had engineered from DNA samples from the original Venom. My grandfather had bought this one in particular … though admittedly, it had gotten away from him.”
“Oh really? How’d that happen?”
“Details are … elusive.”
Conchata snorted, skeptical. “Yet somehow you expect me to believe your company’s claim to it is iron-clad.”
“Just because one loses track of his property doesn’t make it any less his.”
This earned an outright laugh from her. “Sure it does, especially when that property comes out of hibernation, bonds with a psychotic killer, and goes on two bloody rampages that rack up high body counts. Besides, when Venom ended in Alchemax’s custody, your company hadn’t even been formed yet.”
Tyler narrowed his eyes; his patience was wearing thin. “I formed Stone Enterprises by acquiring companies and properties that were in existence at the time. My ancestor’s ownership of the symbiote was one of those properties. I will stand up to Alchemax’s bullying.”
Seeing that Tyler was losing his cool, Conchata closed the virtual distance between the two of them, staying calm and collected. “Bullying. Is that what this is? And here I thought it was Alchemax looking after its own interests--”
“Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear from you.” He smiled. “How corporate. Life as Miguel’s executive assistant must have changed you.”
Conchata’s jaw dropped; her eyes widened. She whipped her hand up to slap him across his cheek, but her hand passed through his avatar.
Tyler chuckled. “Nice to see your temper hasn’t diminished.”
“You haven’t seen my temper yet.”
“Oh, I believe I have, Connie,” Tyler corrected her. “I believe I’ve experienced first-hand exactly what you’re capable of.”
Her jaw hung open again. This time she didn’t say anything. She couldn’t.
“I’d love to continue this conversation,” Tyler declared, “but I have a doctor’s appointment. Just the latest in a long line. But I’d love to hear from you again some time. Ciao.”
Conchata O’Hara’s office, Alchemax Plaza, New York.
With that parting shot, Tyler Stone logged out of the virtual conference room, and Conchata O’Hara did the same. She slumped in her office chair, rubbing her temples as Tyler’s words echoed in her head. He knew what she was capable of. He knew.
He knew she’d been the one to shoot him through the spine, robbing him of the use of his legs. And he’d just let her know that he knew.
That conference could have gone better.
Medical Laboratory, Stone Enterprises Estate, Outskirts of New York.
“That conference went rather well, if I do say so myself,” Tyler commented to no one in particular as he returned his virtual visor to a compartment in his hoverchair. “Still, it’s back to sitting in this thing again.” Technically, he’d never left it, but the conference had allowed him to fool his perceptions for a while.
Doctors and nurses employed by Stone Enterprises swarmed around him, preparing him for his latest medical procedure. He watched as a dark-green solution – made from the Venom symbiote’s genetic material – was loaded into his chair’s life-support system. One way or another, this procedure would be his last.
Miguel O’Hara’s executive suite, Alchemax Plaza, Later that day.
Rude Awakening.
One way or another, Miguel O’Hara was going to get a good day’s rest. Even if it killed him.
As Spider-Man, he’d found himself having to mug a businessman in an alley for some civilian clothes to wear. The businessman in question had been conducting a black-market drug deal over his headset, so the mugging hadn’t been difficult to justify.
Peeling off his mask, Miguel had crawled into bed less than two hours ago, too tired to remember his own name, let alone strip out of the rest of his costume. He then waited a torturous hour for the loud machinery noises to subside; Alchemax workers were repairing the hole in the building.
His holo-assistant Lyla had greeted him, but all he could manage was a mumbled order for her to hold all his calls and notify everyone that Alchemax’s CEO was taking a day off and was not to be disturbed – that included the repair workers. Whether or not the directive had come out in a comprehensible fashion was another story.
Clearly it hadn’t, because the racket of heavy machinery continued.
At some point, he’d apparently managed to doze off, because the next thing he knew he was being woken by Lyla’s announcement that, “you have a caller on your private line, Miguel. It’s Father Jennifer D’Angelo, and it concerns Xina Kwan.”
Miguel groaned, disappointed that he wasn’t too deeply asleep to hear the hologram. “Tell her I died, an’ I’ll call back.”
“Okay, Miguel.”
Blessed silence reigned after Lyla had disappeared, having apparently conveyed the message. Satisfied, Miguel settled back into another attempt at sleep. He’d deal with Xina and Father Jennifer some other time, when his bleary eyes didn’t feel like they were the size of basketballs.
Wait a minute….
Miguel sat up, suddenly disturbed by the question: why would a message from Father Jennifer be about Xina Kwan?
"The Goblin's taken her hostage?" Miguel asked minutes later, speaking to the hologram of Father Jennifer D'Angelo.
The proprietor of St. Patrick's Cathedral nodded sadly. "Yes, I'm afraid so. He’s captured that Net Prophet as well. I had stepped out for a moment, but when I came back, that ... creature was attacking my church. He wasn't letting anyone leave."
He frowned. "How are you contacting me now? Did he see you?"
"He saw me. He wants a rematch with Spider-Man, so he gave me this communicator and told me to contact him."
Miguel's eyes widened. "You're calling me because...?"
"Since I don't know how to get a hold of him, I figured you did. And … I know you and Miss Kwan were close, so I thought you should know."
"Oh." He tried not to make his sigh of relief too obvious. "Well, uh, our paths have crossed a few times. But it's not like we're tight or anything.” He paused. “Spider-Man and me, I mean. Look, I can't promise anything, but I'll do what I can."
"That's all I ask. May God be with you."
Miguel resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "And Spider-Man, too?"
"Absolutely. I'll pray for the both of you."
St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Downtown New York. Early evening.
Walking Through the Shadow.
“’Though I walk through the valley in the shadow of death,’” Spider-Man muttered under his breath, quoting an old prayer, “’I will fear no evil.’ Yeah. Right.” He’d been a lapsed Catholic for most of his life, and he’d been mostly fine with that. But now, as he descended into the depths of Downtown, he found himself in need of all the spiritual help he could get.
Not that he would ever say this to Gabriel. His younger brother would never let him live it down.
He’d attached a webline to the superstructure of Upper New York, and the organic spinnerets in his forearm steadily extended the line as he hopped downward, rappelling from one of the structure’s main supports. He could have easily glided downward, but he wanted a tangible lifeline to the city above as he braved entry into the city below.
“Braved” was an excellent word for what he was doing; he’d been chased out of Downtown two or three months before by an angry mob. They had been convinced by the Goblin that Spider-Man had only pretended to champion the interests of Downtown’s people, and that Spider-Man had been a corporate puppet all along. It was a lie, of course, but the out-of-context footage the Goblin had shown them was fairly damning.
Once, he’d had allies in Downtown. Some Spiderites –Thorites who’d adopted Spider-Man as a religious figure alongside Thor – had lived down here, as had his brother Gabriel’s ex-girlfriend Kasey Nash and her gang of Throwbacks. And of course, there was Father Jennifer.
But since being ousted by the Goblin, Spider-Man doubted the Spiderites were still around or held as much reverence for him. Kasey was probably just as disillusioned as everyone else. As for Father Jennifer, she seemed to still be on his side for the time being. Provided, of course, that she and the other hostages survived this current ordeal.
Rappelling onto the roof of the church, Spider-Man spotted a tarp that covered a large circular stained-glass window. He remembered crashing through it almost a year ago, when he’d first met with Father Jennifer and the Vulture had been hot on his trail. Now there was a singled hole in the tarp, roughly the size and shape of an adult human. That must have been the Goblin’s entrance. Cautiously, knowing full well he was probably crawling into a trap, he poked his head through the hole and looked around.
He caught a faceful of dazzling color and fell into the cathedral.
Spider-Man didn’t feel his body hitting the floor beneath him; he was too busy experiencing a sensory overload that did to his perceptions what a mist of pepper spray did to one’s eyes. Soon, the effect subsided, and Spider-Man was able to see and move around again … but he was no longer standing in St. Patrick’s cathedral.
Instead, he instantly recognized the vertigo-inducing architecture, pulsating rave music, and flashing lights of the M.C. Escher Club. The dance club was the place where he’d first met Dana D’Angelo, who soon became his fiancée.
The dance club had also been the place where Dana had died.
He spotted her body on a dance floor that might have been a wall or a ceiling, the way the artificial gravity generators played havoc on one’s sense of up or down. Blood was pouring from her nose and mouth; she was dying of multiple bullet wounds, just like she had that day, months ago….
”No!” a voice shouted, and a dark blue-and red blur leaped to Dana, crouching over her. It was Spider-Man. Or rather, a past version of himself.
From a distance, Spider-Man watched his past self crouch over Dana and whisper to her as she breathed her last. Her life slipped away from her, and he cradled her in his arms.
Suddenly, the past Spider-Man disappeared, and Dana was sitting up as a large, monstrous figure loomed over her. It was Venom, leering at her with murderous red eyes, a bony-white face, sharp teeth and green-oozing tongue. Behind him, Xina Kwan was crawling away through an alcove, trying to escape the madness.
Dana’s posture was defiant. ”Take your best shot! I’m not afraid to die!”
Venom lowered his face closer to hers. ”All the more reason,” he replied, ”not to kill you!” He started to turn around toward Xina, but shouting off to the side interrupted him.
”He’s clear!” an officer dressed in the patriotic colors of a SHIELD officer announced to the rest of his squad. ”Take him!” They opened fire on a distracted Venom.
The roar of gunfire was so loud, it almost drowned out a shout from the past Spider-Man, who was late in arriving.”Venom! Let them--!”
Venom howled as the bullets ripped through him, while the present-day Spider-Man watched from a new angle as the projectiles continued on their collective path … right into Dana’s body.
The SHIELD agents held their fire, and Venom revealed he was merely perforated but none the worse for wear, but Spider-Man’s attention was on his fiancee’s body as it fell to the floor all over again. And died in Spider-Man’s arms all over again.
“Stop it,” Spider-Man whimpered as he watched the same thirty seconds repeat over and over. He began to realize it was an illusion, a clip of three-dimensional footage on a constant loop, but it clawed at his gut all the same. This was the same scene that had replayed in Miguel O’Hara’s mind since the night it happened, and every time, he was helpless to stop it. “I said—“
He felt something hard hit his jaw – probably a fist. He staggered backward, and three more hard blows followed. The last one sent him to the floor, and the Escher Club dissolved around him. He was back in the cathedral, where of course he’d never left.
He tried to sit up as a lean, winged figure loomed over him. It was the Goblin, glaring at him with dark beady eyes, a dark purple face, gleaming teeth and jagged horns. Behind him, Father Jennifer was tied up at the altar, bound to John Tensen and Xina Kwan.
“There, you see?” the Goblin declared. “I’ve stopped. The time for show-and-tell is over, anyway. Now it’s time … for retribution.” Energy pulsated from the talons on the Goblin’s gloved fingertips as the villain prepared an energy blast.
“I agree,” Spider-Man retorted as he lashed out at his opponent, his fist colliding with the Goblin’s jaw. As the Goblin reeled backward and unleashed energy bolts from each hand, Spider-Man leaped over them and grabbed the villain’s mask, tugging on it.
The Golin’s dark facial features slackened as Spider-Man pulled off the horned mask. Once the mask was completely off, its face was smooth and blank, but it was the human face that captured Spider-Man’s undivided attention.
“You…?” Spider-Man breathed as he saw who it was. “I-it can’t be!”
“Perhaps it is,” the Goblin replied, grinning at him. “Perhaps not. But sadly, the consequences of your actions are very real.”
He noticed that the Goblin’s gaze had flitted to something behind him, and he risked a glance over his shoulder. Xina Kwan – the real one -- was bleeding from an energy wound burned into her chest. A wound that had no doubt been intended for Spider-Man himself.
TO BE CONTINUED
Next Issue:
Who is the Goblin of 2099? Will Xina Kwan survive her injury? Find out in "Shadow of Death" by David Ellis.