by Peter David
And then consciousness slips away, and Peter’s life review ends prematurely as the stars coldly glitter around him like diamonds while he plunges toward his death…
And nothing is as it should be.
* * *
Chapter One
ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES
“Harry! Harry, wait!”
Peter hadn’t believed for a moment that Harry Osborn would miss the opening of Mary Jane’s show. Despite all that had happened between them, and all that remained unresolved, the bottom line was that Harry still had to feel something for Mary Jane. She had been his first major love, had been too much a part of his life, for him to let such a landmark event pass. Hell, Harry had attended MJ’s previous theatrical endeavor four times (a fact that Mary Jane had pointedly made clear to Peter, back when he’d been so unable to manage his time that he’d alienated her by missing performance after performance). Still, Peter hadn’t seen Harry in the theater. Now he realized why. Peter had naturally assumed that, considering Harry’s wealth, he would have obtained the best seats in the house. Instead, as Peter made his way up the aisle, he spotted Harry coming down the stairs that led to the balcony. Harry had obviously wanted to see without being seen.
Just as Harry reached the bottom of the stairs, some instinct caused him to glance Peter’s way. For half a moment they locked eyes, and then Harry pushed his way past several people in front of him. He nearly knocked an old woman off her walker as she was busy extolling the virtues of Cole Porter and wondering loudly why they didn’t write tunes like that anymore. When Harry shoved her aside, she surprised Harry, Peter, and the people she was with by snapping out an extremely explicit profanity at him. Harry blinked in surprise and then moved away from her. He was out the door, and Peter found his way blocked by the same elderly people. He looked around desperately, spotted an opening on the upper section of the wall next to them, and prayed no one was watching too closely. With one quick move he jumped six feet in the air, rebounded with his feet off the wall, and landed in front of the slow-moving party. Their heads snapped around in confusion, since Peter had been little more than a blur in the corners of their eyes. By the time they had any real inkling of where he’d been, he was already gone and out the front door of the theater.
Peter got there just in time to see Harry stepping into the backseat of his town car. The chauffeur was standing there, waiting for Harry, holding the door for him.
“Harry! Harry, wait!” Peter called as the chauffeur slammed the door closed. Peter looked at Harry’s driver, and to his surprise, something akin to sympathy was there. It underscored for Peter that Harry’s staff had to be aware of the slow deterioration of their employer’s personality. They must have felt, in their own way, as helpless as Peter. Probably worse, since a number of them had served the Osborns for many years and had known Harry since he was very young.
How many people are you going to hurt, Harry? What’s it going to take before you let me in?
Peter brought his face close to the window as the chauffeur headed for the driver’s side. The window was tinted, but Peter could still make out Harry on the inside looking out at him. “Don’t keep locking me out. You need to hear the truth.”
Peter couldn’t be sure, but he thought that something in Harry’s expression just then seemed to be wavering. It was as if he wanted to hear what Peter had to say but couldn’t bring himself to do so. Or perhaps there was even more to it than that.
Then Harry’s gaze shifted. It was the strangest thing, but it looked to Peter as if Harry was staring intently at his own reflection. He had no idea why Harry would possibly do that. A change passed over Harry’s face then, and whatever curiosity or compassion or consideration might have been in his expression moments earlier was now replaced by distance and harshness. The window rolled down barely half an inch, just enough so that Harry could be sure that his voice would be heard. “Tell it to my father,” he said coldly. “Raise him from the dead.”
“I’m your friend,” Peter said desperately. “Your father was my friend.” That might have seemed insane to say, at least on the surface, but as far as Peter was concerned, it was the truth. Norman Osborn had been helpful and supportive to Peter… sometimes, it seemed, even more than he was with his own son, an inequity that Harry had appeared to take in stride. That was the person whom Peter thought of as Norman Osborn. Not the crazed, cackling, flying demon into which circumstance and accident had transformed him. The real Norman Osborn, Peter’s friend and Harry’s dad, died the day the Green Goblin was born. Everything else after that had been the unfolding of a Greek tragedy.
The window slid back up, and seconds later the car pulled away from the curb. Peter could have run after it. For that matter, he could have leaped atop the roof and clung to it. He could have webbed it to the spot, preventing it from moving forward. But what good would any of that have done? Just what Peter would have needed: Harry leaping out of the car and screaming at him that he, Spider-Man, had killed his father. So much for his secret identity.
As he sighed heavily and headed around to the stage door entrance, where the stage manager knew him well and would let him pass with no problem, Peter had to wonder why he even had a secret identity anymore. What in the world had stopped Harry from telling the police, or J. Jonah Jameson, or taking out a billboard? What prevented him, in short, from blabbing Peter’s secret to the world?
Three reasons occurred to him.
The first was that, on some level, Harry knew that not all was as it seemed with his father’s passing. Perhaps Harry had even figured out that his father was the Green Goblin. If the truth of Peter’s identity came out, then sooner or later that truth would lead to the revelation that Norman Osborn was the Goblin. The sins of the father would be laid at the feet of the son. Not only would Norman’s legacy be forever disgraced, but anyone who had suffered damage at the hands of Norman Osborn might turn around and sue his estate. Harry could be wiped out.
Second, Harry would logically be asked how he knew the secret of Spider-Man’s identity. What would Harry say to that? “I hired the known criminal Dr. Octopus to assault Spider-Man, kidnap him, and bring him to me so that I could unmask him?” Not only would he then be exposed to even more civil suits from the damage that Doc Ock had done at his behest, but he would also face criminal and felony charges. Harry could bring Peter down, but Harry would go down right alongside him.
Then there was the third, least appealing reason. If Peter’s identity became public knowledge, it would be the equivalent of painting a target on his back. He’d never have a moment’s rest. Anyone who’d ever hated Spider-Man would come gunning for Peter, and sooner or later, they’d get him. Even Peter Parker had to sleep eventually. He’d be a dead man for certain. Why wouldn’t that suit Harry Osborn, who so despised his former friend? The answer was obvious: Harry wanted to save the privilege of killing Peter for himself.
Oh, yeah. That’s making me feel a whole lot better.
It required great effort on his part, but Peter was determined to put all such thoughts out of his mind. This was Mary Jane’s night, her evening to shine, and he’d be damned if he would drag her down with his depressing musings.
It was a madhouse backstage. The narrow corridors were packed with well-wishers and fans. People were thrusting their Playbill programs at whatever cast members they could find, and the actors were reveling in it. Peter noticed some good-looking man clad in a suit also signing an autograph. He wasn’t a cast member; Peter assumed he was someone famous. Hard to say for sure who it was. Peter wasn’t especially good at identifying actors.
He saw Mary Jane back up and pause in the entrance to her dressing room. She was clearly studying the crowd, looking for (he hoped) him. “MJ!” he called, and immediately she turned and spotted him.
Her face split with a grin. “Peter!” Then, just as quickly, her expression transformed into concern bordering on agitation. As he approached her, he wondered what could be wrong. Had she seen Harry?
Were the same worries that Peter had had occurring to MJ as well?
She gripped him by the shoulders and, as if asking a doctor whether the tumor was malignant or not, demanded, “Was I good?”
It was all he could do not to laugh. It was ludicrous that she’d even have to ask. “Good? You were great! You’re just… how can I say it? You’re a…”
“You said great,” she reminded him as if she were an auctioneer making certain that he was sticking to his previous high bid. He smiled and nodded in reaffirmation, and she pulled him into the dressing room, leaving the door open behind him.
He immediately saw the simple, tasteful assortment of flowers that he had sent, sitting on a table nearby. But they were dwarfed by another arrangement so ostentatious that it might have looked at home atop the coffin of a dead princess. MJ had to push past them to rest a hand on the flowers that Peter had sent. “I got your flowers, thank you. They’re beautiful. And these…”
They’re from Harry, he thought grimly without even having to be told.
“… are from Harry,” Mary Jane finished. She looked confused, glancing over Peter’s shoulder as if she expected Harry to be walking in right behind him. “Was he here tonight?”
“I saw him, but…” Peter paused, not wanting to say too much, but not wanting to say so little that it was obvious he was holding back. “He wouldn’t talk to me.”
Peter tried not to introduce any melancholy into the moment, but there it was anyway. MJ’s face fell as she said, “I’m so sorry. What is it with you guys, anyway?”
Well, his father was the Green Goblin, and Harry thinks I killed him, and…
“It’s complicated,” he said with an air of finality, hoping that MJ wouldn’t pursue it.
His wish was granted. It wasn’t all that surprising: ultimately, Mary Jane was an actress on opening night of her play, and her thoughts weren’t going to wander far from the performance for long. “Tell me again, did you really like it?” she asked, all concerns about Harry forgotten. She laughed, although it was a laugh tainted with an edge. “I was so nervous. My knees were shaking.”
“Your knees were fine,” he assured her.
Clearly she still had doubts. “The applause wasn’t very loud.”
Peter had noticed the same thing, but he had an answer at the ready that he had even managed to convince himself was completely true. “Yes, it was,” he said quickly… perhaps too quickly, but she didn’t notice. “It’s the acoustics. It’s about diffusion, which keeps sound waves from grouping.” Mary Jane didn’t look entirely convinced, so he spoke faster, random technical words spilling over each other in a suicidal rush, like lemmings. “It’s all about slap and flutter and nulls and hot spots—”
Mercifully, the celebrity that Peter had spotted earlier drew Mary Jane’s attention away from Peter. He was walking past the open door of the dressing room, and he saw that Mary Jane had noticed him.
There was a brief silence, which Peter might have considered uncomfortable if he hadn’t been distracted by the hopeful look on MJ’s face. The celebrity cleared his throat and said, just a little stiffly, “Congratulations, my dear. You were quite good.”
As he walked away, MJ clapped her hands together in delight. “Peter!” she almost squealed. “Do you know who that was?!”
“No.” He was looking forward to finally learning for certain.
But Mary Jane was clearly enraptured, lost in her own little world of sudden notoriety. “He won a Tony Award… he liked me!”
“I thought that was him,” Peter said, as if that settled it.
She grinned so widely that, had New York suffered another blackout, her smile would have illuminated the room.
“I think I’m happy,” she announced. “Let’s celebrate!”
“Got my bike!”
The traffic out of the city had been formidable, but Peter had deftly maneuvered his motorbike between the lines of traffic that were stacked up in the Lincoln Tunnel. His natural agility helped him keep it steady no matter how hair-raising the maneuvers. Mary Jane clung to his back the entire time, her warmth suffusing him, and she got to burbling about the play. With the helmet over his head, he couldn’t hear half of what she was saying, but it didn’t matter. All he had to do was nod and say “Yeah!” or “That’s great!” or just laugh loudly every so often, and that was sufficient.
Soon the city had been left far behind. He drove them up to the Palisades, to a beautiful section of the woods where his uncle Ben had used to take him when he was very young. It was a terrific place for stargazing, a pastime that was hard to indulge in the city, where the lights made quality viewing difficult. Up in the Palisades, overlooking the Hudson River, the view was unimpeded. Peter thought with amusement that it was almost up to the level of the fake stars that had dotted the Broadway stage where MJ had made her debut. To top it all off, a spectacular meteor shower was underway, dazzling streaks of light zipping within and around the constellations.
The ground was a bit damp, making lying down problematic. Peter was unfazed. He rolled up his sleeves, exposing the spinnerets on his forearms, and in short order had fashioned a web hammock between two large trees. With his bike parked nearby, he and Mary Jane lay in the hammock, swaying gently in the breeze, gazing up rapturously at the array of stars and the meteor shower overhead. He was busy imagining Mary Jane descending from the stars above on an invisible staircase when she spoke with an air of wonderment, “Where do they all come from?”
“Maybe Mars, a hundred million years ago,” he replied carelessly. He could have given her a detailed dissertation on the falling space rocks burning up in the atmosphere, and on the big bang and the forces that had created a billion balls of gas, but he didn’t think she was really that interested.
Once again, he had sussed her out correctly. “You know what?” she said. “I’d like to sing on the stage for the rest of my life with you in the first row.”
“I’ll be there.” He gestured toward the heavens as if an earthbound stage were simply insufficient to contain her talent. “I’m going to build you a stage on the Milky Way.”
She laughed. “Can you swing that high?” she asked teasingly.
“I’m working on it.”
Mary Jane paused, and then, her voice dropping low and becoming filled with intense need, she said, “Tell me you love me. I like to hear it. It makes me feel safe.”
He turned slightly so that he was looking into her eyes, their faces only a few inches apart. “I will always love you, Mary Jane. I always have.”
Their lips came together. “Mmm… strawberry,” he murmured.
For a second, Peter noticed something flashing high in the sky. Another meteor, this one very close. Shooting stars. Heralds of great changes to come for anyone who witnessed them. Then he put such unscientific thoughts out of his mind and focused his attention instead on the woman he loved.
The shooting star that Peter had observed, speculated about, and then given no further thought to, thudded to earth in a nearby field. A small, smoking crater provided evidence of where precisely it had struck.
Had Peter endeavored to turn his analytical eye upon the aftermath of the space rock’s fall, he would have seen something that defied any manner of scientific explanation.
It was a thick, black gooey substance, which oozed from the meteorite’s porous surface as if the space rock were a car and the hard landing had caused an oil leak.
To describe the behavior of something from space as “unearthly” would certainly seem, on the face of it, to be belaboring the obvious. Nevertheless, it would have been warranted in the case of the black substance, for it now wasn’t merely oozing from the rock. Instead it was as if it was pulling itself—extracting itself—consciously from the meteorite.
The black goo separated from the meteorite entirely and sat there for a moment, an animated puddle getting its bearings. Then it started across the field, propelling itself a few feet, halting as if trying to orient itself and acq
uire a sense of its surroundings, then undulating forward once more.
Then it reacted to something, some sort of growling noise. Even though it was a newcomer to the planet, it could still differentiate between a sound made in nature and something that was technological. It sped toward the source, eager to see what this world had to offer. It was impossible to determine whether the black goo was some sort of higher species of individual with a refined thought process, or some sort of animalistic thing operating purely on instinct. Either way, the result was the same. Its rapid slither brought it within distance of what appeared to be two biological forms, possibly native to the sphere, perched atop something perhaps designed to transport them. It scrutinized the both of them and was immediately drawn to one over the other: the one on the front of the vehicle. The one who radiated power and energy.
The creature was no more than a few inches in diameter, so it wasn’t noticed at all as it slithered up onto Peter Parker’s shoe when his foot shoved down on the starter once more. This time the engine caught and the bike rolled forward. The abrupt movement gave the creature a brief moment of disorientation. It clung fiercely to the underside of Peter’s shoe and settled in, basking in the power that Peter’s molecular structure was generating.
With Mary Jane holding tight, her hair whipping about in the wind, Peter maneuvered the motorbike down onto the road toward New York City, unaware that the city was under alien invasion, and equally unaware that he was the means by which it was happening.
* * *
Chapter Two
FATHERS
When Harry Osborn had seen the desperate face of Peter Parker peering in through the window of the town car, something about the intensity of his sincerity had almost prompted Harry to listen.
For a moment, he saw Peter not as the enemy who had destroyed his father or the rival who had snatched Mary Jane away from him. Instead he was the whiz kid who had taken a young Harry under his wing and had helped him succeed in high school science classes, an accomplishment that at least half a dozen tutors had sworn to Harry’s father was an impossibility. Peter had seen hope when others had declared Harry to be hopeless. Unlike just about everyone else in Harry’s life, Peter had been under no obligation to do so. Norman Osborn didn’t own him, didn’t pay him, couldn’t compel him. Peter had just done it out of the goodness of his heart because he thought Harry was a decent guy who could use a friend.