Greg ran toward the treehouse his father had built in the woods years before his parents divorced.
Apparently, some memories survived even the most radical transformations.
The subconscious was a frighteningly powerful thing.
It could drag old memories back to the surface when you least expected them, even when everything else about a person had changed.
“Leave her alone, Greg.”
I spoke quietly from behind him as soon as he placed Lana on the floor of the treehouse.
Greg spun around.
“You?!”
“Stop, Greg.”
I kept my voice calm.
“You can still stop.
You can leave town, go somewhere else, and start over.
You don’t have to kill anyone.”
“It’s too late, Clark!”
Greg shouted.
“I’ve changed.”
“I know.”
“Then you know I’m free!”
He spread his arms dramatically.
“I eat what I want!
I go where I want!
I take what I want!”
“And where exactly is that going to get you?”
I scoffed.
“Maybe a bullet won’t kill you, but people hunt elephants too.”
I looked directly at him.
“You’re a slave to your instincts.”
“An animal.”
I paused for a moment.
“Actually, an insect.”
His expression twisted with anger.
“They won’t catch me.”
He lunged.
Stupid.
This time, I was ready.
I simply stepped aside and let his own momentum carry him straight through the wall.
He crashed through the wooden boards and dropped roughly five meters to the ground.
It didn’t hurt him.
Not seriously, anyway.
But it disoriented him enough that, when I appeared beside him a second later, he looked genuinely frightened.
“It’s not too late, Greg.”
I looked down at him.
“Stop.”
“No!”
He spat webbing at me and immediately took off in enormous leaps toward an abandoned foundry that had been left behind after the Meteor Shower.
Naturally, the web missed.
I followed him.
The moment I entered the foundry, however, something went terribly wrong.
Pain exploded through my body.
The Meteor Shower.
Twelve years ago.
One of the largest meteorites had landed here.
Of course it had.
The moment I became distracted by the pain, a powerful blow struck me from behind.
“You never liked this place, Clark!”
He laughed.
I had to admit it.
The guy was smart.
He’d realized he’d found the one place where he had an advantage.
The question was whether that advantage would be enough.
“You haven’t changed at all, Clark!”
Greg laughed again and charged.
“The strong survive!”
“You can’t fight nature, Clark!”
I crawled toward a thick-walled metal basin, its surface covered with familiar streaks of lead-gray residue.
I needed a moment to recover.
From there, the fight became much more even.
Greg had strength.
I had speed.
He had webbing.
I had control.
And the abandoned foundry had plenty of heavy machinery lying around, giving both of us plenty of opportunities to use the environment to our advantage.
At one point, an excavator bucket came crashing down on Greg.
A swarm of strange beetles poured out from underneath it.
I crushed the last one beneath my foot.
There was something about those insects that I didn’t like.
Maybe it was their coloring.
Maybe it was the way they looked at me.
Either way, they were gone now.
Greg was different.
I didn’t want to kill him.
That was why I hadn’t been hitting him with my full strength.
I’d been trying to exhaust him, wear him down, and convince him to stop.
Talking to someone after they’ve lost a fight is considerably easier than talking to someone who still believes his newfound strength makes him invincible.
But the world had decided otherwise.
I didn’t think my conscience would bother me about this.
Not about Greg.
Not about the beetles.
Still, I couldn’t help wondering what I would have done if Greg hadn’t died accidentally.
What if persuasion hadn’t worked?
What if he’d refused to stop?
That was a question I didn’t have an answer for.
I climbed back into the treehouse and carefully tore the webbing away from Lana.
I still had no idea how the stuff worked.
Some kind of anesthetic field?
Perhaps something closer to stasis?
Maybe it only worked while the cocoon remained intact.
Whatever the mechanism, it took less than thirty seconds for Lana to wake up.
Her eyes flew open.
“Clark?”
Tears immediately appeared in her eyes, and the next second, she was hugging me tightly.
“Clark!
I…
I thought you were dead!”
“Why would I be?”
I gave her a confused look.
“He had a crowbar!”
“You must have imagined it.”
I shrugged.
I’m tough.”
“But…
but I saw it!”
She pulled back far enough to look me directly in the eyes.
“I’m not stupid, Clark!”
“Lana…”
I sighed.
“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it.”
I smiled gently.
“Let the miracle remain a miracle.”
“There’s no need to put it under a microscope, right?”
“And where is Greg?”
There was the next uncomfortable question.
“He died.”
I sighed.
“He went into the old foundry and got caught under an excavator bucket.”
I shrugged.
“Things like that happen in abandoned buildings.”
“You…”
Her eyes widened.
“You killed him?”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“Like I said, it was an accident.”
“But what were you two doing in the foundry?”
“Fighting.”
I shrugged.
“What else would two boys be doing?”
I gave her a tired smile.
“Guys fight.”
“Greg must have pulled the wrong lever.”
I looked into her eyes.
“I hope you won’t tell anyone about this.”
“About what?”
“All of it.”
I sighed.
“Greg.
The webbing.
The foundry.”
“But they’ll find the body, won’t they?”
Lana sounded frightened.
“I don’t know what Greg had become, but there wasn’t much of a body left.”
I shook my head.
“Just some kind of slime, pieces of something that looked like chitin, and his clothes.”
“If anyone finds it, they won’t be able to identify it as Greg.”
“Okay.”
Lana finally gave in.
Or maybe she really did.
Who could ever understand girls?
” I won’t tell anyone.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
I helped her to her feet.
“I don’t like this place.”
“Let’s go.”
We left the treehouse together.