"Ms. Watson-Parker?" MJ turned to see Rinalda standing in the doorway with a somewhat urgent expression on her face, beckoning MJ back into the audition room.
MJ nervously followed her in. The others were all gathering their things into briefcases and portfolio packs. "Ms. Watson-Parker, we'd like to offer you the role." MJ's eyes widened. "But with what's going on here, we're flying out to LA tonight instead of in the morning. Can you come with us? We have to start shooting tomorrow."
Igot the part, was her first thought. But Peter's in trouble, was her next one.
She bit her lip. Do you know how many people would kill for a chance to get out of New York right now? But I can't just leave Peter—he could be hurt or dying or worse, for all I know.
In the end, there really was no choice.
"I'm afraid I can't leave New York tonight. I'm going to have to turn it down."
Rinalda stared at her in disbelief, her mouth twitching. Before MJ had the chance to talk herself out of it, she turned and left. She did not look back.
Outside, everyone was still standing around staring at the TV, pointing, arguing—shaking their heads, not believing it, believing it all too well. Not even the receptionist saw MJ head out, take the elevator downstairs, and rush out into the street.
She stood there on the sidewalk and had no idea what to do next. The back of her brain was still shouting recriminations at her, things about making a fool of herself, losing the job, not getting out while the getting was good, being blacklisted in this town, and other nonsense which she listened to briefly and then decided to ignore. She had more important fish to fry.
Peter, she thought, was at ESU. That, at least, gave her a place to start. She hurried down the little side street to a public phone, picked up the receiver, and listened for the dial tone. There wasn't one. MJ slammed the receiver savagely back into its cradle and went back up to the street, crossing to where she'd seen another one.
Someone was heading for it at the same time she was. MJ practically leapt across the street, got there first, said "Sorry, emergency!" to the poor guy she pushed in front of, fed the slot money and started dialing. Normally she had trouble remembering the ESU main switchboard number, since when she called Peter there, she usually called the lab direct. But now she remembered it with no trouble.
It was busy. She hung up, dialed again. And did this five more times, while the guy waiting behind her nearly expired with impatience.
"I know, I know," she said out of the side of her mouth. "Just hang on." The sixth time she dialed, it rang . . . and rang, and rang, and rang. After a while it was answered by a harried woman's voice which said, "ESU—"
"Listen," she said, "my husband was back in the science building when—Has anyone seen him?"
"Who's your husband?"
"Peter Parker. He's a doctoral candidate in Biochem."
"Just a moment, I'll inquire." The woman put her on hold. MJ stood there practically stamping her feet in frustration and fear, while a deranged computer sang "Green-sleeves" at her. "I could punch you right through this phone," she hissed at the hold music, the switchboard, and the composer of "Greensleeves," some five hundred years distant. The man behind her, intimidated by her tone, took a couple of cautious steps backward.
"Not you," MJ said. "Sorry—" The music seemed to go on for weeks. Finally the voice came back, saying, "Peter Parker?"
"Yes!"
"Sorry, no. No one's seen him."
"Oh, great," MJ muttered. "Listen, what was going on there, anyway?"
"It was just on the TV." said the operator wearily. "Hobgoblin did it." MJ suspected that she had been saying this to everyone for the last half hour. "He flew in on his little whatsis and stole one of the safes with some radioactive stuff inside it. Then Spider-Man showed up, and they started to fight, and then that other one, Venom, you know, the one with the weird suit? He showed up, and there was some kind of big argument."
"I bet," MJ breathed. "But they're not there now?"
The operator laughed shortly. "Do you think I'd be here if they were? And if I'd known they were coming, I'd have called in sick, I can tell you. No, they've all left, I don't know where for, and good riddance. You should see the science building. It looks like someone crashed a train into it."
"Did they leave in any particular order?"
The operator laughed again. "You working for the Post society column or something? They're just gone, ma'am. Don't ask me who took precedence. Anything else I can help you with? My phone's lit up like a Christmas tree."
"No—thank you. Thank you very much."
MJ hung up and walked away, staring at the sidewalk and thinking. Gone, simply gone. But where would they go?
She walked, trying to put it all together.
They were all there, she thought. They met. They must have talked. She tried to imagine what the conversation would have been about, extrapolating from what Peter had told her last night. Venom wanted whoever was impersonating him, she thought. So Peter said. Hobgoblin wanted the radioactive stuff.
She stopped there. Venom knew about the radioactive waste in the warehouse and the way the creature took it. Suppose he came to ESU because he, too, suspected Hobgoblin would try to take some more radioactive stuff, or because he suspected Hobby of being the impostor?
Now, Peter's pretty sure the creature that escaped from the sub is responsible. But did he get a chance to tell Venom about it? She had no way of knowing.
But Venom has obviously made the connection between radiation and Hobgoblin. So that's why he was at ESU. Fine. I still don't know where I'm going to find Spider-Man . . .
She stopped in the middle of a cross street, having walked a couple of blocks while she was thinking, and stepped back to let a car pass in front of her. I wonder if he's called home and left me a message? she thought and walked quickly to the next phone she saw, dropped a quarter in, and called home.
The phone rang three times. She hung up quickly before the fourth ring, when it would pick up. It only did that when there were no messages. Nothing, she thought, retrieving her quarter. Either he didn't think to call. . . or he can't.
She'd go home and wait for him. If he needed her, she'd be there.
The voices were screaming again.
Sometimes Fay McAvoy thought the noise would drive her crazy. She heard things—always had—but down in the tunnels below the city it should have been better. Usually she could sleep here, bothered only a little by the rats and the trains. It was the voices she tried to escape.
Those voices were starting again, a little whisper at the back of her head. She pressed her hands to her ears. No no no, she thought. You're not real. You're not real.
Fay had been homeless for the better part of a decade, sometimes scavenging, sometimes living on charity, always just getting by. The voices made it impossible for her to work, impossible for her to hold a job of any kind. Half the time she just wanted to crawl into herself and disappear. Once, long ago, before her medical insurance had run out, the doctors had tried to help. She'd been in and out of institutions for years. Nothing had been able to get rid of the voices in her head, though.
Fay suddenly froze in her tracks. What was that? It had sounded like a footstep behind her.
She whirled, straining to hear. Footsteps—and they were getting closer. "Who's there?" she called.
"Well, look what I found," said a voice. And then, very low, Fay heard a chuckle.
It was not the sort of voice she wanted to hear. About six feet in front of her, she could see the tall, shadowy shape. Even under the rags he wore, she could tell he was broad in the shoulders, certainly stronger than she was, possibly faster. Don't wait, said one of the voices in her head. Run. Run now. Knock him down, get past him, and keep going.
She was just taking a deep breath to start her charge at him when something brushed against her leg, quite high, from behind. She screamed at the top of her lungs. Something ran by underneath her—rats, several of them. She kn
ew all too well the abhorrent little pitty-pat of their footsteps.
The next thing she heard shocked her even more, for the man now screamed too. Then Fay heard his footsteps running in the other direction—rat-scurry and shoes mixed together.
Not one to miss an opportunity, Fay ran. She vaulted up sideways, over the third rail, and into one of the dive-ins that led to an access tunnel. This went at right angles to the train tunnel, and then curved around to parallel it again. One dim utility light was all she could see in this stretch, but it was enough to see that this particular spot, at least, was deserted.
The voices in her head had grown quiet for the moment. Then Fay heard a sound behind her—boots, not crunching on trainbed gravel, but coming down hard on concrete. He's behind me! Again, Fay ran.
She kept it up for nearly five minutes. Several times Fay had to stop, holding her side as the stitch started. She couldn't keep up such a pace much longer. Between bouts of panting, she strained to hear. The footsteps seemed to be getting closer over time.
When she stopped, what would she do? Scream? Certainly, for all she was worth—and for all the good it would do down here. Fight? The best that she could. She had been successful at fighting off the occasional mugger in the past. But that had been above ground and, despite the fabled noninvolvement of New Yorkers, you always knew you had a better chance to get away, to survive, when there were other people in the neighborhood. Here she was alone.
She hurried on into a bigger, more open space, as poorly lit as the one she had left. She stopped for a second, gasping, trying to get her bearings—
—and saw a red-and-blue shape, walking towards her.
After a moment, she realized it was a man in a red-and-blue outfit. Then she recognized the outfit—it looked like it had been rubbed threadbare in a couple of places, and it was covered in grime, dirt, and sewage, but none of that mattered. He was a real super hero. She'd seen him before from the streets, and she knew he'd help her.
"Spider-Man!" she hissed. "You gotta help me!"
He looked at her. He seemed poised and ready for action, despite the somewhat bedraggled state of his costume. "What is it?" he said.
"Help me!" Fay whispered fiercely. "There's someone after me! Please, Spider-Man!"
Spider-Man threw back his shoulders, and turned toward the spot where Fay pointed.
The big, dark shape which had been following Fay came in that doorway. It was another homeless person, with long hair and a scraggly beard—and a knife in his hand.
Hands on his hips, Spider-Man glared menacingly.
The man looked back, stunned for a moment. Then a big grin split his face. "Awright!" he said. "Nice Spider-Man costume! Whadja, raid a Halloween shop or somethin'? Well, 'hero,' you gonna rescue the lady?" He moved slowly closer. "Let's see you rescue her from this." He approached Fay with the knife. Fay's mouth widened, about to form a scream.
But it was the man who screamed as the line of web shot out, fastened to the knife, pulled it out of his grip, and flung it across the tunnel.
"All right," Spider-Man said calmly, his voice sounding comfortingly strong and vibrant, "I rescued her. But who's gonna rescue you when I'm done with you?"
He took one step toward the man. The guy went wide-eyed, backed away stammering something that Fay couldn't make out, and fled through the entrance to the tunnel again, back into the dark.
They stood there for a moment, just waiting, but there was no sound save the receding footsteps, still running far up the tunnel.
"Are you all right?" Spider-Man asked.
"I—I think so," Fay said. The voices were still silent. "How about you? You look like you were in a real bad fight."
"I'll live," Spider-Man said. "Can you show me the fastest way out of here? I need to the get to the East Side."
Fay turned slowly, getting her bearings. She'd been in this tunnel before, she realized. "That way," she said, starting out. "Follow me."
* * *
A bit less than half an hour later, Spider-Man returned home. There he found MJ, who nearly bowled him over with a hug.
"You're all right! I was so worried!" She pulled out of the embrace. She wrinkled her nose, probably from the smell of the sewer Spidey had been lying in, but she said nothing about it.
"Good to see you, too. Just came back to restock the web-shooters."
"You're going to need them," she said gravely, and then Spider-Man noticed her look of apprehension, which he realized was about more than her husband's welfare. He removed the mask from his sweat-stained face.
"Bad news, I take it," he said, opening the drawer where he kept his spare web cartridges.
MJ quickly filled him in about what she'd seen on the news. "I was worried sick. After hearing how ESU's been torn up, and that you and Venom and Hobgoblin were all there, what was I supposed to think? And then the next thing I know, Hobgoblin is on the TV, threatening to blow Manhattan up with a bomb if the city doesn't give him a billion dollars by five thirty this morning!"
"Five thirty. Boy," Peter said softly, putting a hand to his head, "some people just can't sleep in, you know?"
"I guess he wants to get to the bank early, so he has the rest of the day free." MJ shook her head. There were times when she noticed that her husband's turn of phrase had contaminated her. "Anyway, he says he has an atomic bomb. He gave some radioactive material to the city to prove he could do what he said he was going to."
"He could certainly send them quite a bit of stuff," Peter said. "He stole two safe-fuls from ESU."
"But how did he get away?"
"Venom and I had a little, uh, disagreement about how to handle him—I guess that would be the best way to put it."
"Well, never mind that, we have more important things to think about."
"I'll say we have. When I ran into our little friend, a while back—"
"Who, Venom?"
"No, the critter from the sub."
"You caught it!"
"Um, no," Peter said, rubbing the back of his neck meditatively. "I would say offhand that it's about fifty-fifty as to who caught who."
He told her in some detail about his encounter with the creature. "No question that it looks like Venom," he said finally. "There are small differences, but you don't see them until you're pretty close up—and by then you're too busy trying to keep yourself in one piece to pay much attention to them. And it's a lot stronger than Venom. Brock's no pushover, but he doesn't usually push over trains, either."
MJ shook her head. "Where can that thing have come from? Wherever did they find it?"
"The Captain didn't tell me much," Peter said. "Couldn't."
"It's a pity he couldn't have told you how to catch it," said MJ. "I wonder how they did it?"
"No telling. And in the final analysis, even having caught it once didn't help them much, the thing melted its way right out of a nonstandard radiation confinement when it was ready. We're going to have to think of some other way to keep it. Meanwhile—" He took a long breath, and winced. "Ouch. But I still can't get over how much it looked like Venom."
MJ looked doubtful. "Has it tried to shapechange, that you've seen?"
"No, but that doesn't mean that it can't." He turned towards her, really looking at her for the first time since he came in. "You're all dressed up. Were you out today?"
"I had an audition," she said.
"What, for the social worker thing? I thought that was tomorrow."
"No," she said. "They called this morning. They had to move it up."
"So how'd it go?"
"Not too bad," MJ said. "I'll tell you about it later."
Peter nodded and rose and put his mask back on. "Back to work," he said.
MJ glowered at him. "You are out of your alleged mind," she said. "Look at you! You can barely stand up! You're in no condition to fight anybody or anything."
"I can too." He struck a heroic pose.
MJ looked at him cockeyed, not convinced. "Look at the way your knees
are trembling. And don't think I can't see you wincing when you breathe. She reached out to feel his ribs on the right-hand side, and sure enough, he sucked in breath and almost moved away from her. "You cracked them again! And after they just healed from the last time. Doctor Spencer's never going to believe that you fell down the stairs again. He's going to start thinking I'm abusing you or something."
"MJ, never mind. I have to go!"
She had had this argument with him before. She knew where it was going, but she had to have it. "Look," she said. "This is hardly fair to you. Where are all the other super heroes in this town? Let one of them take over. Call the Fantastic Four or somebody."
Spider-Man sighed. "Hon," he said, "half the time when I call there, all I get is their voice mail system. What am I supposed to do? Call and leave a message that says, 'Hi, guys, it's Spidey. Listen, I'm not feeling real well at the moment, but I just want you to know that if you haven't seen the news, you should turn it on, because Hobgoblin has a bomb, and he's going to blow the city up at five thirty this morning. I'm going home to take an aspirin; can you take care of this one for me?' It doesn't work."
"It's still not fair to you," MJ said. "And what about me? One of these days, one of these guys is going to catch you when you're hurt, and I—I don't know what I'll do."
He gathered her close. "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, MJ," he murmured. "You having second thoughts?"
"No," she said. "I just wish there were something I could do to help."
"Can't think of anything at the moment," Spidey said. "If something occurs to me, I'll give you a call. But don't wait up for me . . . I'll be late."
"That's what I was afraid of to begin with," MJ said dryly. "That you would be late in the funeral-parlor sense of the word."
"Well, reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. Come on, MJ, cheer up."
"It's not that easy."