He headed for the creature, trying to be stealthy about it—running along, half-crouched, on the ceiling of the tunnel rather than on its bottom.
Then his spider-sense hit him like a club in the back of his head just as the tentacle came slithering out of the shadows at the bottom of the tunnel, reached up, snagged him by the leg, and pulled him down.
The next few minutes were like a nightmare of being attacked by an octopus—except that once you've webbed up eight of an octopus's tentacles, theoretically the nightmare is over and you can leave. This creature produced more tentacles each time Spider-Man webbed up the ones attacking him. It had apparently decided that cutting the webbing was a waste of time and was now simply working around it instead. The tentacles swarmed over him. As fast as he could throw them off or web them down, more emerged to hold and pull at him—and at the canister webbed to his waist.
And he realized all of a sudden that he couldn't move at all: the thing had him thoroughly tied. It shredded the webbing on its imprisoned tentacles, and then one tentacle flashed in, developed an edge, and slashed down—
The webbing holding the canister parted, though not completely: for a moment the canister dangled. Another pair of tentacles snatched at it, and the canister, not designed to take such stresses, fell apart, clattering to the tunnel floor. One of the little packets of americium isotope fell out.
Somewhere nearby a train's rumble began, got louder. The creature roared too, that high piercing roar again, released Spider-Man, and leapt on the fallen canister.
Not with Dawn's science project, you don't! thought Spidey. He jumped straight at the creature's face. The fangs parted—though not to bite, to roar—and then more tentacles whipped around and hit Spider-Man broadside.
It was like being hit by a train: Spidey was lifted off his feet and flew straight across the tunnel. His head, side, and right leg crunched into the far wall and bounced off. In a blaze of pain, Spider-Man slid down to the floor, unable to stop himself or do anything but lie there, wheezing, and in agony from trying to breathe, having to breathe.
The creature clutched at the isotope packet, bent over it and stuffed it into its maw. Get up, get up, get up, Spider-Man could hear one part of his brain ineffectively exhorting his body.
He managed to lever himself up onto one elbow, then wavered to his feet. The creature froze in what might have been a moment of after-dinner digestion and paid him no mind. Spider-Man shot a quick line of web at the first half of the canister, then at the second half, and pulled them to him. Then he shot one last line of web at the remaining packet of isotope just as the creature turned its head slowly, beginning to come out of its moment of assimilation.
He quickly sealed the isotope back into its canister, rose unsteadily, and fled down the tunnel, not sure where he was going, not caring, as long as it was away from that.
The soprano roar went up behind him again, but Spider-Man kept running. The sound of trains grew louder, drowning out the roar behind him. He plunged through the dimness, every breath a stab in his side, stumbling, clutching his ribs. Broken. Has to be at least one broken.
That roar sounded behind him again, closer. Desperate, Spider-Man ran for the trains. Can't let it get the rest of this stuff. If it gets it—if it finishes it—it might just go on with me—as an hors d'oeuvre—since I was so close to the radio-actives.
The roar seemed to be fading in the increasing roar of the trains. He could hear no sound of pursuit. He fell down once, got up and staggered on, but not far. Then he fell again and couldn't get up, no matter how the back of his mind yelled at him. His whole side, from head to foot, was one long line of pain, which washed the thought out of him, left him sitting, then lying, helpless, on bare cold concrete, in the dimness, which grew darker . . .
. . . went black.
MJ stared in horror at the TV screen. It cut to a game show, in which a well-dressed woman turned over letters in a row, while contestants tried to guess the words of the phrase they spelled. Normally MJ was of the opinion that this game was intellectually challenging only to those with IQs lower than that of a banana slug. Now, though, she stared at the impending words and couldn't make head or tail of them. Peter! she thought.
She hoped for some kind of continuation of the bulletin, but nothing came. An explosion at ESU—she knew what the science building there looked like. Maybe not as solid as the main building, but solid enough. Not something you could blow up easily. He was right, she thought. He knew Hobby was coming. Sometimes I wish he didn't have to be so—
She looked around nervously. There were fewer women in the reception area now than there had been before, but not that many fewer. Obviously a lot had been asked to stay, possibly to do a second reading, maybe even to read for some other part. That happened sometimes. It might happen to her. She couldn't leave now. She hadn't even read for the first time yet.
At the same time, even if she was free to leave now, what could she do? There was no telling exactly what had happened over there at ESU, and nothing was to be gained by her shooting off in that direction without a good reason or a plan. She would be much smarter to sit still and bide her time. Peter would be annoyed with her if she just ran out of an impending audition because—
"Ms. Watson-Parker?"
"Here," MJ said, standing up, the mask of the professional falling into place—though not with the usual assured slam. She followed the AP toward the audition room, feeling a lot less excited about it all than she had been just a few minutes before. I wish I'd never seen that bulletin, she thought—then smiled at herself, a little ruefully. If he can be a hero, she thought, you can too, even if only by staying at your post.
Head high, she went in.
It was a good reading. She had always been able to memorize quickly, even at school, and her work on Secret Hospital honed that talent to a fine skill, especially since lines changed even as they filmed episodes. Several times they had even broadcast live, with several of the staff writers scribbling hectically away on the sidelines to cover up mistakes made by actors, or by another writer who had somehow slipped out of continuity. At such times, you had better be able to plaster the words onto your brain while four thirty-second commercials were airing. To actually have lines that weren't going to be changed was something of a luxury.
So MJ stood up in front of them confidently enough. The older woman producer, Rinalda, was there; the younger woman, the AP; the young male AP; and a suit, a handsome enough man with gray hair and a weary look. Executive producer, MJ thought. At least, that seemed most likely. Her resume, duplicated, was on the table in front of them. They had her still, and they were looking at MJ speculatively.
"Please, sit down," the woman AP said, and there followed the usual two or three minutes of pleasant chatter about what she'd been doing recently ("job-hunting"), had she had any other work since Secret Hospital ("no"), her schedule for the next year—it was hard to throw caution to the winds and say, "Empty," but she did it.
"There's a little more modeling work coming free this year," the young female AP said thoughtfully.
MJ simply sat back and said, "I like this better."
Then they asked her to read. MJ went into the ten-page excerpt they had given her without pausing for more than a breath or two—delivered the first few lines of it sitting, as the social worker in the script might have. Then she got up and began to work with the lines moving—pacing a little, playing to Rinalda as if she were the other character in the scene. She let herself fall into feeling like Maureen as best she could: that passion and compassion, clear-eyed, a little humorous, a little edged when it needed to be, letting the anger come out at the hopelessness, the hunger. Hopelessness—that was accessible right now. MJ couldn't get her mind off what she had seen on the TV in there, even while she was in the middle of the part. Maybe that was all right. It gave the reading a bit more edge than it had had at home, when she was comfortable and unworried.
She didn't usually look at the rest of her a
udience while she was reading, but once she stole a glance and saw the rest of them looking at her with much more lively and intent expressions than they'd had when she'd first come in. The young female AP was smiling slightly as she scribbled something on her legal pad. The smile was not a nasty or bored one; it was genuinely pleased. That was more than MJ often saw during a reading—too many producers prided themselves on being poker-faced—and it encouraged her oddly.
As usual, when she finished, no one told her whether they thought she'd done well or badly. Rinalda simply paged through a script in front of her, curled the pages back at one spot, and said to MJ, "Would you read this?"
MJ took the script, swallowing. Her character's parts had been highlighted in pink. That was a courtesy on the producer's part—some liked to make it harder by just letting you cold-read the part as best you could and seeing whether nerves would trick you into reading someone else's lines under pressure. "Both parts," MJ said, "or just the one?"
"Both, please."
The dialogue, as she instantly saw from scanning just the first page, was between her social worker and a young, inexperienced doctor who obviously thought very well of himself—the tone of his dialogue was pompous, the vocabulary unnecessarily complex. MJ thought she could see where this was going. She read the social worker's dialogue as patient, at first, then a little annoyed. The doctor was using heavy medical vocabulary, and MJ rocked forward on her feet a little as the social worker explained to him that she didn't need to use long words to intimidate her, and that if shorter ones like "caring" and "commitment" were beyond him, he should practice them a little until he got familiar with them. It got to be a noisy piece as it continued for page after page—and MJ began to wonder how much they had stuck her with—as the two characters began shouting at one another. MJ felt she had some shouting in her at the moment, so that came out well too, her uneasiness inside translating itself most effectively into annoyance at the idiot doctor—at any establishment that hindered her pursuit of what really mattered.
She took the reading straight through to the act break. They didn't stop her. And when she was done, the man with the silver hair was nodding. "We have a few more to go through," he said to MJ, speaking directly to her for the first time. "Will you wait?"
"Of course," MJ said. And then added, on the spur of the moment, "I might need to step out briefly—"
"We won't be too long, I don't think," said Rinalda, looking at her. MJ tried to read the expression, trying to work out whether it was one that said, Go ahead, step out, it's okay, or I'd stay where I was, if I were you. Impossible to tell; she simply didn't know the woman well enough.
MJ smiled, nodded, stepped out into the front room again.
She sat down where she had been. One of the other auditioners, a short-haired blond woman, looked over at MJ and smiled a little. "Tough in there, huh?" she said.
MJ nodded. "Tough bunch . . ."
After a few minutes, the AP came out of the audition room and began to step around to some of the women in the reception area, one after another, having a few quiet words with each, smiling, shaking them by the hand. The message was clear: they weren't being considered for the part. MJ waited.
The AP did not come to her.
In a few minutes the room had cleared a little more. There were about six actresses left now, and MJ. They all looked at each other, and at her, with the polite expressions that MJ knew perfectly well concealed a desperate desire that everybody else in the room should be sent home except them. MJ was wearing the same expression herself, she knew. She tried to get rid of it, on general principles, and wasn't sure how well she was doing.
Now more time went by in which nothing happened. The game show edged toward its end. On the last commercial break she watched a trailer for the end-of-the-week episode of the network's big soap. MJ could hardly bear the banality of the characters' conflicts and troubles, their petty jealousies and rivalries, considering what was going on in the real world at the moment down at ESU.
But after a moment, even she had to laugh softly under her breath. Doubtless, to the average person in the street, her problems would seem fairly fantastic. "I'm worried," she imagined herself saying, "because my husband is out chasing a raving lunatic who flies around on a jet-glider and throws pumpkin bombs at things, and being chased by another nut case who's in cahoots with a sentient suit of tailor-made clothing from another planet. And they're both chasing something which appears to eat fissionables for lunch. Did I mention that it's from another planet too?" Any sane person would have her carted away to Payne Whitney, or some other similarly therapeutic refuge for the extremely confused. People just have no understanding of the problems of super heroes' wives, she thought. Maybe I should found a support group.
The trailer flashed on from confrontation to confrontation. MJ looked at her watch. It was pushing five o'clock: the network was about to start its local evening news. Maybe there would be something about whatever was going on at ESU.
After some more commercials, the news came on. MJ watched eagerly, and she tried to get control of her face as the first graphic to go up behind the newsreader was a picture of Hobgoblin.
"Just minutes ago," the newswoman said, "we received copies of a videotape from the costumed criminal known as Hobgoblin. In the tape, Hobgoblin claims to have planted a nuclear bomb somewhere on the island of Manhattan. He threatens to detonate this bomb unless one billion dollars in cash is paid to him within twelve hours—by five-thirty A.M. local time."
Everyone in the place was now staring at that TV, not just MJ, as the station began to play Hobgoblin's tape.
The tape showed Hobby sitting behind a desk, like a bad parody of a corporate executive about to give a pep talk. "People of New York City," he said, "such as you are. This being, according to actuarial figures, the richest and most successful city in the United States, I have decided it's time you plowed some of that wealth back into your local infrastructure. That is to say, me. Using that traditional American trait, good old-fashioned entrepreneur-ship, in the spirit of free enterprise, I have caused to be built one of the little toys with which the great nations of the world have been cheerfully threatening each other these last fifty years: an atomic bomb. It is rated at one point two kilotons and is more than sufficient to scour Manhattan Island down to its original native granite and basalt. Being that materials for so-called 'clean' bombs are increasingly hard to lay hands on these days, it will doubtless make life uncomfortable in the four surrounding boroughs and New Jersey—in fact, probably as far north as Albany and as far south as Baltimore, depending on how the winds blow.
"To demonstrate that I am not wasting your time," said Hobby, "and that I can in fact carry through with what I'm proposing, I have, at the time of this tape's airing, delivered to municipal authorities in New York a sample of the material I have acquired, which has allowed me to construct the tidy little device which at present sits so happily ticking to itself in some snug and secure corner of this great metropolis. Along with the material in question are instructions for how and where the payment is to be made. Any attempt to make the payment spuriously, or to lay a trap for me or any of my associates, will unfortunately result in the device being detonated—as will the failure to make a payment at all. Manhattan, in either case, will be history."
He folded his hands and grinned a little more widely. "About time, anyway. The architecture's been getting out of hand. Now, it may be that some of you will agree with me, especially about the architecture, in which case my advice to you is to sit back, do nothing, and wait for the fireball. Those of you who desire to put your affairs in order should feel free to do so.
"However, for those of you who might have breakfast or lunch dates to keep, or who for whatever other reasons desire to continue your wretched mundane little lives in what passes for their normal fashion, I strongly suggest that you call your local city councilmen, your mayor, your borough councils, your Congressional representatives, and anyone else you
think may be of any use, and tell them to pay me. Otherwise—" he shrugged "—those of you who have had to deal with city bureaucracy over the years will understand that, as one more person routinely oppressed by it, especially by the doings of what are euphemistically referred to as New York's Finest, my patience with such bureaucracy is rather limited—just as yours is. Therefore, I hope you'll understand when I say that no extension of this deadline will be made. The city has twelve and a half hours from the initial broadcast of this tape, which I have embargoed until five PM local time. At five thirty this morning, either I am going to go away independently wealthy, or the sun is going to come up in New York. In it. So please, call your representatives in Government . . . and just say yes.
"Thank you for your attention, and—" another nasty grin "—have a nice day."
The view on the screen went back to the newsroom staff. One of them said to the female anchor, "June, we have a report from the Fourteenth Precinct downtown, which states that a canister labeled as nuclear material was delivered by courier to the Precinct a few minutes ago, and that it is currently being checked by experts from City University and the New York City branch of the Atomic Energy Commission. We hope to have a reporter down there shortly to bring you news of this development. Meanwhile, the response from Gracie Mansion—"
The room erupted in a hubbub of confused and anxious voices. MJ shut it all out. She couldn't care less about the mayor's reaction—or anyone else's, at the moment. All she could think of was, He went to deal with Hobgoblin. And now here's Hobby on the news—but no news of him. The hair was standing up all over her. The feeling she was having now was one she had had many times before, and repetition never made it any easier to bear.
That tape could have been made just a few minutes ago, she thought, or days ago. There's no way to tell. If it was a few minutes—That wasn't a thought that she much liked. It would imply that Spider-Man had met Hobby this afternoon, and Hobby had gotten away from the encounter—while Spider-Man hadn't been heard from since. It would imply that Spider-Man couldn't stop him.