by Peter David
And the four tentacles rose up and basked alongside his flesh-and-blood hand in the glare of the morning sun.
XI
J. Jonah Jameson loved the smell of chaos in the morning. It smelled like victory. Or increased sales, which was the same thing.
And he was smelling it this morning. It was wafting up his nostrils and he reveled in the glorious aroma. It was floating up from the early edition of the Daily Bugle, spread out on his desk with the printer’s ink barely dry.
“It’s all over town!” Jameson called out. He wasn’t talking to any one person in particular. On days like this, he was so incapable of containing his exhilaration that he tended to bellow in stentorian tones for the benefit of anyone who happened to be within earshot. Like a Roman politician addressing the senate. “Rumors! Gossip! Panic in the streets, if we’re lucky! Crazy scientist destroyed his own lab, turned himself into some kind of monster. Four mechanical arms welded right onto his body!”
He studied the artist’s rendering of what Octavius might look like with the new appendages on either side of his torso. “Who would have thought it?” he said sarcastically. “Guy named Otto Octavius ends up with eight limbs. What are the odds? Hoffman!” he bellowed.
“Yes, Chief?”
Jameson jumped in surprise. Hoffman had been standing less than a foot away. He wasn’t sure if Hoffman had responded with lightning swiftness, or if he’d been there the whole time and Jonah simply hadn’t noticed him. More likely the latter. It only slowed Jameson for a moment, though. Nothing short of a mouthful of webbing could shut J. Jonah Jameson up for more than a couple of seconds, and he knew that from personal experience.
“The people of this city are going to be looking to us, Hoffman!”
“Right, Chief. Looking to us for leadership.”
“No!”
“For evenhanded reporting?”
“No, no! For a name!”
Hoffman blinked. “A name?”
“We named that other nut ‘Green Goblin.’ We have to make sure the public knows that when some new loon hits town, the Daily Bugle is the place to go to find out what the hell to call him! So what are we gonna call this guy?!”
“Doctor Octopus?” suggested Hoffman.
Jameson’s response was immediate and fervent. “I hate it!”
“Science Squid?”
“Who asked you!”
“Doctor Strange—”
“Already taken,” Jameson said, shaking his head. Then he snapped his fingers sharply, grinning like a crocodile. “Wait! I got it! I got it!” He held his hands up as if envisioning a marquee. “Doctor Octopus!”
Hoffman didn’t miss a beat. “Well, I like it.”
“Of course you do,” Jameson said proudly. “Doctor Octopus! New villain in town. ‘Doc Ock!’ It even has a catchy abbreviation!”
“Genius, J.J.”
Jameson nodded, then scowled, dimly realizing that Hoffman had come up with the name earlier. Jameson always considered that a major problem: He thought so fast that sometimes it took him a few minutes to catch up with the many slower thinkers around him. “What’re you looking for, a raise?”
Betty Brant stuck her head in before Hoffman could respond. “We found Peter, Mr. Jameson.” She’d barely completed the sentence when Peter walked in. He looked exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept properly in weeks. Not that that meant anything to Jameson. He remained pleasantly focused on what was important.
“Where ya been?” he demanded. “Looking for you all day. Why don’t you pay your phone bill?” Without waiting for answers he really didn’t care about anyway, he turned the newspaper around to face Peter. Robbie Robertson stepped in behind the young photographer as Jameson tapped the artist’s rendering. “Mad scientist goes berserk and we don’t have pictures!”
“We heard Spider-Man was there,” said Robbie.
Jameson wasn’t surprised. “Sure he was. Probably caused the whole thing!”
“That’s not true,” Peter said, his voice cracking slightly.
“And where were you? Photographing squirrels? You’re fired!”
“I’m a freelancer!”
“Okay, fine, you win. You’re on staff. Welcome to the Bugle.” He shook Peter’s hand brusquely. “Now you’re fired.”
“J.J.,” Robertson said softly, “the party…”
Peter looked from one to the other in bewilderment. For a moment Jameson was no less confused, but then he realized. “Oh. Right. You’re unfired. I need you. What do you know about high society?” Peter started to open his mouth and Jameson steamrolled over him. “Don’t answer that. Our society photographer was hit by a polo ball. You’re all I got. Big party for an American hero. A real hero. My son, the astronaut.” He said it with genuine pride.
“Could you pay me in advance?”
Jameson stared at him for a moment, and then erupted in coarse laughter. “You’re serious? For what? Standing there?” He thumped his finger on Peter’s chest, and mentally noted in mild surprise that the scrawny Parker had pecs that felt like metal slabs. Then he promptly tossed the observation away as not worth the brain cells required to retain it. “The planetarium. Tomorrow night. Eight o’clock.”
Peter looked as if he wanted to say something, but then he just shrugged and nodded. He turned and walked out without another word.
Shaking his head, Jameson mimicked, “ ‘Could you pay me in advance?’ That Parker. Always looking for a handout.”
XII
Peter tried to find some hint of sympathy in the face of Mr. Jacks, vice president in charge of home loans at the First National Bank on Madison Avenue. It seemed a hopeless cause. Jacks’ face was unreadable.
Aunt May, on the other hand, was an open book. She sat in the chair next to Peter, her hands fidgeting on her lap, her eyes so hopeful that it caused Peter’s heart to ache. How many crushing disappointments was this decent, honorable woman going to have heaped upon her in one lifetime?
“I see a small amount of Social Security and the insurance from your late husband, Benjamin,” said Jacks. Ignoring Aunt May’s nod, he continued, “I don’t know if it’s going to be enough.” He turned back to the screen to see what other information might be there.
May nudged Peter with her foot, and immediately Peter picked up on the cue. “So… Aunt May…” Then his mind went blank as he forgot his lines. He rallied and tried to sound idly conversational, as if they were making chitchat while Jacks went about his business. “You’re doing pretty well with those piano lessons, huh?”
“Oh, yes!” replied May with such a painfully forced attempt at spontaneity that it instantly became evident to Peter why May’s dream of being an actress hadn’t worked out. “In fact, I’ve got so many new students that—”
Jacks saw through the manufactured exchange as if it were clear plastic. “Please. We appreciate that you—” He ran his finger along a line of data on his screen. “—just opened a new supersaver account with us today. But the fact is, you don’t have the assets to justify this loan.”
Peter tried to be strong for Aunt May, but she looked visibly deflated. “At least,” she sighed, her voice quavering, “we get the toaster.” She held up an advertisement cut out from the previous day’s newspaper, with a shiny new toaster pictured.
“Actually,” said Jacks, tapping the small disclaimer printed at the bottom of the ad, “that’s only with a deposit of five hundred or more.”
“I see,” said May, squinting as she tried to make out the tiny type.
“I’m sorry,” Jacks said, although he didn’t sound it. He glanced at his watch and made a vaguely apologetic nod of his head, which was his terse way of letting them know that he had to head off to a meeting or a coffee break or some other function, any of which was going to be more important than staring at these two losers from Forest Hills any longer.
He rose and walked away from his desk, leaving May neatly folding the newspaper ad into precise squares. “Oh, well,” she sighed.
>
Peter reached over to pat her hand…
… and the world began to slow around him in a sensation that he knew all too well.
Oh, no. God, no, not now…
His spider-sense, trying to warn him of something. Imminent danger, but from where?
And suddenly his vision felt as if it was everywhere at once, taking in people and objects all around and bounding off them with supernatural certainty, one by one, determining that this one posed no threat, that one posed no threat, that…
The man in the trench coat, with his head low and the sunglasses…
Peter half rose from his chair, his jaw dropping.
He hadn’t wanted to believe it. The article that the Daily Bugle had run, which fingered Otto Octavius as some sort of insane criminal with four destructive arms—Peter had easily been able to shunt that aside mentally. He knew Jameson’s slants, Jameson’s prejudices. With Spider-Man’s arrival at Otto’s demonstration, Otto Octavius had become tainted in Jameson’s mind purely by association. Naturally, Jonah had made sure it was a smear piece. Otto Octavius was a good man…
But even good men, Peter realized, could be driven mad by grief, by shock. Who could know what sort of concussion he might have sustained as a result of the explosion?
All this raced through Peter’s mind as he stood up, and that was when the tentacles snaked out from beneath Octavius’ coat. They stretched, kept stretching, then the pincers at the ends of the tentacles clamped onto the vault door.
There were shouts from the tellers, a warning cry from a bank executive. Peter tried to tell himself that while the arms might be useful experimental tools, they didn’t pose any actual threat. They couldn’t—
The tentacles retracted about a foot and, with distressing ease, ripped the vault door clear off its hinges with an earsplitting screech of metal. As if the door were a small piece of garbage, Octavius carelessly flipped it over his shoulder.
It came straight at Peter and Aunt May.
If Peter had been by himself, he could have back-flipped out of the way. But he wasn’t. Aunt May was standing right there, and in just over a second she was going to be crushed.
With a move so quick and decisive that it seemed as if he couldn’t possibly have given it any thought, Peter grabbed hold of Aunt May, planted his foot on Jacks’ desk, and pushed off with all his might. The strength in his legs sent them rolling clear of the monstrous, careening door, which demolished the desk they had just leaped away from. It continued end over end, crashing through two more desks, a stand-up display about winning a toaster, and an entire row of tellers’ windows, the tellers themselves having screamed and bolted when the door first headed their way.
Peter was crouched over the fallen Aunt May and could see at a quick glance that she appeared to be okay. But he knew that might not remain the case, for her or for anyone else in the bank. And if Peter Parker leaped into the fray, his two worlds would irretrievably come crashing together. That had to be avoided at all costs.
For a moment he considered jumping up, facing Octavius, waving his arms, and saying, “Remember me? That nice dinner we had? Let’s just calm down, shall we?” Then he heard Otto’s demented laughter. It even sounded as if he was talking to someone who wasn’t there, and Peter realized that the nice sane approach very likely wouldn’t work.
Quickly, keeping low to the ground, he scrambled on hands and feet toward a corridor across the way that presumably led to other offices. His heart sank as his Aunt May called from behind him, “Peter, don’t leave me here!”
He couldn’t stop, and couldn’t explain why he couldn’t stop. To make matters worse—which he would have bet serious money wasn’t possible—he heard that cretin bank exec reply sarcastically to May, “That boy of yours is a real hero.”
“I resent your implication,” Aunt May shot back. “He must be trying to get outside so he can warn the police what they’re up against.”
Oh, God, it just gets better and better. Now Aunt May is thinking up reasons to excuse my “cowardice,” Peter thought bleakly as he made it to the corridor and shoulder-rolled forward to get out of sight. He bumped against a locked door that had a “Do Not Enter” sign on it. Seemed a reasonable place for privacy. From his crouched position, he gave a quick shove, and the lock on the other side of the door snapped off. He skittered inside and kicked the door shut behind him.
Even as he got to his feet and started yanking his shirt off, he looked up and saw an array of TV monitors and a couple of video recorders on small tables. Instantly he realized where he was: This was the security monitoring room, where machines were set up to watch and record everything that happened in the bank. Well, they were sure getting a lensful today.
Quickly as he could, he changed into his Spider-Man costume. Meanwhile, his attention was riveted to the events unfolding on the monitor, and they were truly heart-stopping. Two bank guards had flanked Otto and they had their guns out. One of them was shouting, “Put your arms up!” and Peter could hear the screams of onlookers.
Octavius didn’t appear the least bit intimidated, and Peter quickly saw why. The guards weren’t in Otto’s league. The mechanical arms, moving with the speed and grace of living tentacles, lashed out and knocked the guards over with their coils. As for the guns themselves, with no apparent effort the pincers on the tentacles snapped them up and crushed them into twisted metal.
Another guard, chambering a round into a riot gun, stepped into view on the screen, standing between Octavius and the vault. For all the success he had, he might as well have been wielding a peashooter. A tentacle shot down from above, clamped around the guard’s head, and lifted him off his feet. With a casual flip, the tentacle tossed him aside as if he were a rag doll.
Moving with uncanny coordination, the tentacles lifted Octavius over a railing and into the vault. With growing dread, Peter watched as the thrown guard came crashing down to earth clear on the other side of the bank. He didn’t move. Peter prayed he wasn’t dead.
And then, his face grim, Peter Parker slid on his mask. For the first time, he decided there was a reason why he had chosen to go with a full face mask. It was so he never had to worry about even the slightest facial tic giving away what was going through his mind. If bad guys heard him cracking wise, and they couldn’t see his expressions, they just assumed that he wasn’t worried about his opponents. If, on the other hand, they saw him sweating with nervousness, or gritting his teeth, that might provide them some encouragement.
In full costume, Spider-Man sprinted out into the main lobby and ricocheted off the ceiling to gain some momentum. Octavius was busy hauling bags of what appeared to be gold coins from the vault.
Shouts of “Spider-Man!” alerted Octavius. He didn’t seem the least bit concerned, though. Instead, he turned toward Spider-Man in leisurely fashion, but his tentacles were already at work, grabbing bags and tossing them at the approaching costumed figure with machine-gun speed.
Spider-Man rebounded off the floor, twisted in midair to avoid several more thrown bags, and grabbed a chandelier. He let the momentum carry him and then released his hold, dropping quickly toward Octavius. But the tentacles were too fast. They had snapped up more bags of coins and were continuing to hurl them at Spider-Man. He avoided a few more, but the assault was coming from too many directions at once. As a result, two bags exploded against him with devastating impact, sending a shower of gold coins through the air. Spider-Man started to fall, and then another, larger bag, thrown with even greater force, nailed him in the stomach and crushed him into the ceiling. Once again he was plummeting, and this time the only thing that stopped him from hitting the floor was one of Otto’s own tentacles. It didn’t terminate his fall gently, however. Instead, it smacked into him with the speed of a car and the impact of a baseball bat. Spider-Man tumbled backwards heels over head, crashing through a railing and a table. He finally slid to a stop in a heap.
Spider-Man coughed, feeling his ribs, hoping they weren’t broken. He g
lanced over in Aunt May’s direction to make sure that nothing had fallen down upon her while he was being smacked around. He saw that Mr. Jacks was trying to pick up some of the fallen money and shove it in his own pocket, and Aunt May was slapping his hand in annoyance, forcing him to drop it. He would have laughed under his mask if he wasn’t hurting quite so much.
He started to stand and suddenly there were pincers around both his wrists. He gasped at the strength of them. He had the awful feeling they might be able to break his hands off if they were so inclined.
The tentacles snapped to the opposite sides, forcing Spider-Man to cross his arms over his chest. Octavius advanced upon him, his face twisted in cold fury. He was virtually unrecognizable as the slightly arrogant, but ultimately convivial dinner host of the other evening.
“How dare you interfere with me again!”
“Interfere?” Spider-Man was incredulous. “I saved your life!”
“Saved me to become this!” Octavius didn’t seem enthusiastic about his new station in life, and Spider-Man couldn’t entirely blame him. Not that it justified Otto’s actions, but at least he comprehended them. “And where is my Rosie? Dead… because of you!”
“It was your experiment that killed her,” Spider-Man snapped back, sick of being blamed for things that weren’t his fault. Wasn’t the cloud of guilt he always, truly labored under already enough? “And you knew it was dangerous.”
“No,” Octavius said, “I…”
For just a moment a fog seemed to lift from Otto’s eyes. He looked around, not appearing to fully comprehend where he was or what he was doing. Spider-Man’s heart jumped with hope. But then the two tentacles that hadn’t been used to immobilize him converged around Octavius and he glanced from one to the other as if they were addressing him somehow. Spider-Man watched, uncomprehending, as the uncertainty faded and Otto turned to face him again. “Liar! The experiment was perfect! And one day the world will know. It’s you who’s ruined everything!”