While I was trying to process what had happened, it was time to leave the vehicle. Apparently, I had slept through most of the trip. Judging by what I could see from the inside, we had been traveling in a closed cargo van without windows, like the hundreds that cruise the city streets. Except this one was clearly not meant for transporting ordinary people. Seats, ten on each side, lined the walls of the vehicle. Besides mine, four others were occupied by the women accompanying me, all in formal suits.
«Out you go, gentlemen,» said Archie, the one who had earlier silenced Mumbler. Apparently, she was the leader here.
Two of the women grabbed me under my arms and lifted me to my feet. Mumbler, who turned out to be a black woman, opened the rear door of the van and stepped out first. The leader exited last. I was clearly being kept in the center.
We found ourselves in the courtyard of a luxurious mansion. A couple of tired, indifferent guards were loitering by the gate. Beyond the hedge, tree branches were visible, but I wasn't allowed to admire the scenery for long. They immediately led me toward the two story mansion.
Actually, they didn't even need to hold me. Once we got out of the van, the women simply made their presence known and lightly held me by the elbows. A remarkably gentle approach for kidnappers.
Inside, the house turned out to be just as luxurious as outside, perhaps even a bit excessive in my opinion.
«Bobbi, One Two, take him to Cindy's office,» Archie commanded in a firm voice.
The office in question was on the second floor. Mumbler knocked politely with her knuckles before entering.
«Cindy, we brought him.»
«Archie, how did it go?» Cindy was a plump, older woman. She looked at us through tinted glasses, smoking a cigar while seated behind a wide desk cluttered with papers.
«According to plan. We picked him up on his way from school. No one saw us,» Archie reported.
«Excellent, excellent,» Cindy looked at me. «Sit down, Peter. And you... Archie, why did you bring all of them here? And take those ropes off him. Good Lord, he's not a terrorist, just a schoolboy.»
Archie nodded toward me, signaling Bobbi to follow the boss's order, then dismissed One Two and Mumbler.
A few seconds later, after Bobbi had untied the knot, I finally managed to rub my hands together.
«You're probably wondering why you're here,» Cindy blew a puff of smoke into the air and looked me in the eye.
I wasn't in a hurry to answer. I was distracted, watching the play of light and dust through the lenses of my glasses. Nothing like graphics. Pretending to wipe my lenses with my sleeve, I checked for blind spots in my eye, as I used to do as a child. Cindy's head obediently disappeared. Damn, everything felt so real.
«I think you're going to tell me.»
«Look at this. Do you know what this is?» The woman handed me a fairly advanced tablet. On the dark screen was a diagram of some device with a huge number of parts and explanatory formulas. Naturally, I couldn't say what it was off the top of my head. Cindy apparently thought otherwise.
«I don't...» I started to admit that I didn't understand a thing, when my eyes fell on my own reflection on the dark monitor of the device. «...it's a stabilizer circuit for controlling incoherent radiation under extreme...»
I cut myself off mid sentence. What was that? I looked again at my reflection. Yes, it was me. Peter Parker. What had surprised me so much?
«I see you remembered,» Cindy continued, not noticing my hesitation. «Dr. Stans, who published that article six months ago... she's in a coma after trying to use the emitter on herself. Something went wrong. You will finish her work.»
«Dr. Stans's article was severely criticized, and the theory was deemed unsound.» I didn't remember reading that article, but I said it without any doubt.
«Don't play dumb with me, boy. Stans worked for me, and I saw the letter Peter Parker wrote to her. Archie, remind me what it said.»
«With an expansion to the theory.»
«Exactly. Thanks to your letter, Stans almost managed to complete the project. But she made another mistake and messed up during the experiment. You will finish her work, boy. Do it quickly, and you can go back to school. Aunt May won't even have time to start worrying.»
I flinched. Because I realized what had been bothering me. My reflection was far too young. At this age, I hadn't yet gained my Spider Man powers, which would explain both the tooth and the lack of the implant. But she had let something slip. She said «Aunt May will worry.» Yet, by the standard story, Uncle Ben should have been alive. You slipped up, you bitch. But I still couldn't find any confirmation that what was happening wasn't real. More precisely, I was almost completely sure I wouldn't find any.
In the laboratory, Bobbi was left to keep an eye on me. However, the supervision wasn't much of a problem. Right now, I was completely alone. The girl had flitted off somewhere, saying she would be back in five minutes.
Amazing irresponsibility. Were they provoking me into doing something rash? Could this Bobbi really be so careless around me? I was a damn superhero, and she was supposed to be watching me.
Alright, let's test something.
I took off my glasses. They would get in the way. I put my hands on the floor. Hmm, I had wanted to do a handstand, but now I realized that in this body, even ten push ups would be a feat.
Well, push ups would work too.
Twelve times. I managed to do twelve push ups. I was completely exhausted. That was the limit. There was no strength left in my arms to lift my torso off the floor. I really was a powerless teenager again. Feeling so weak, so helpless... it was unpleasant.
I needed to look around.
This Dr. Stans had set herself up nicely. My eyes fell on an SEM.
Working with an SEM is like looking at satellite images. You are in space, looking down at a complex earthly landscape. Then you turn a little black wheel, and the surface zooms in. The zoom feels like a fall. As if you've been dropped from orbit, and the Earth is rushing toward you, only you're falling faster than actual gravity would allow, faster than terminal velocity, unbelievably fast, unbelievably far, and the landscape grows, and it seems like impact is imminent, but there is no impact because the image grows even closer and clearer, and you still never reach the ground. Like the old fable of the frog that jumps half the distance to a log, then half again, and again, never actually reaching it. That is an electron microscope. An eternal fall into the image, with no bottom in sight.
I increased the magnification to 14,000, focusing like the Eye of God. Searching for the ultimate, indivisible truth. You can't see the bottom because it doesn't exist.
Under the glass was a blood sample. I chose a more reasonable magnification for working with blood. This was what she had tried to irradiate? The table was covered in a thin layer of dust, barely noticeable, but still there. Several days had passed since someone had worked here, yet the blood cells were still active.
Okay, I needed this woman's computer. I had seen blood like this once before in one person. Not exactly, but still. If this was what I thought it was... where did it come from?
Hmm... what's the problem? Windows crashed on startup. Was the computer broken?
Nothing ever works right the first time.
Perhaps someone had tried to access Stans's records before me. Hmm, before the screen went dark, I saw a line of garbled characters. Probably a font or registry error. I wasn't particularly skilled with computers, but I thought I could try to restore the registry to a working state. Then we would see.
Attempting to roll back to the last working configuration didn't work. That would have been too easy.
«Not Aunt May's cooking, of course, but it's edible.» Bobbi's voice came from behind me. In her hands was a tray of fast food.
Coming over to me, Bobbi set the tray on the table, right on top of Stans's scorched lab journal.
«Oh, trying to get the Doc's computer running? No luck, I tell you right away. It died the day after the Doc fell into a coma. But the hard drive is still in there. I could bring... um, that thing for reading hard drives. There was one around here somewhere.»
«Not yet.»
I used the system recovery tool, but found no restore points. What the hell? This Stans was annoying me more and more.
Without leaving the recovery environment, I opened the command prompt and used it to launch Notepad. Using Notepad, I navigated to the «configs» folder on the system drive. Then I displayed all the files in that folder, found the registry hives responsible for the system and programs, and added a random set of letters to their extensions. Then I copied backup copies of those files into the «configs» folder. Thank the gods this Stans had been smart enough not to disable the task scheduler. Otherwise, I would have had to remove the hard drive.
«I hope this works,» I said, and rebooted the computer.
«I brought you some food,» Bobbi hesitated, seeing that I had finished my work. «It's not home cooking, but it'll keep you alive. The Doc often worked without leaving the lab, and I bought food for her too... wow, it worked.»
This time, Windows successfully reached the welcome screen, but now it was asking for the password of a user named SuperMegaAdmin.
«How old did you say this Stans of yours was?» Realizing what I meant, the girl hesitated for some reason.
«Well, actually, I helped the Doc set up the equipment... but I don't really understand this stuff. And you, kid, are a real hacker.» The girl looked at me as if I had performed a miracle. She had heard that I was supposed to finish and correct Stans's research, yet against that background, fixing the computer was a mere trifle. She was just trying to dodge the awkward topic.
«I see. Well, now we just need to reset the password for this... SuperMegaAdmin,» I said with a hint of sarcasm.
Bobbi blushed as red as a poppy.
«There's no need for that. I know the password.» She bent down to the keyboard and quickly typed a combination. Did she have to press her chest against me like that?
«Seriously?» I said in surprise. «The password is 'password'?»
«I... well, yes. What's wrong with that?» She jumped back from the keyboard as if it were on fire.
Chuckling quietly, I began searching for useful information on the computer. Ah, here was the cause of the crash. Someone had stuffed a ton of incompatible Skyrim mods onto it. Apparently, some of them were writing to the same registry sections while running... SuperMegaAdmin.
Oh, finally, information on the Doc's projects. Damn, what a strange feeling. I was seeing this project for the first time, yet I recognized it. And this scan of a hand drawn diagram and formulas... the handwriting looked very much like mine. This was messed up.
For the next few hours, I fell out of reality, digging through the Doc's work and, apparently, my own. By the end, I even started to develop something like a memory of working on this research. But it wasn't a real memory. You know how, when someone tells you about something you did, but you don't remember it yourself, your brain creates an illusory memory, a kind of model. That was what happened here. I hoped that as the mass of false memories accumulated, the real ones would awaken. I simply could not have forgotten working on this research. More precisely, on the technical part, the emitter schematics. But the formulas for some kind of serum that was supposed to affect the patient in combination with the emitter were unfamiliar to me.
I should have guessed the emitter's purpose. How could I have given something like that to someone without finding out what substances they intended to combine with my work? It was obvious that the settings and emission structure would have to change depending on the type of reagents. Hmm, I might have considered that too obvious, especially for a scientist. Could Stans have used my specific emitter configuration for her formula without adapting it? If she had been my student, I would have made her memorize all the safety rules for every piece of equipment. How could anyone be so reckless? And to test it on herself? That she only ended up in a coma was a miracle. Of course, Cindy hadn't told anyone what the Doc was working on. The doctors simply couldn't or hadn't yet discovered the other consequences. Wait, but this Cindy was a criminal. Maybe they hadn't sent Stans to a hospital at all. They might be keeping her right here, in the mansion.
«Bobbi, tell me something.» I began, but turning around in my chair, I saw that the girl had fallen sound asleep while I was working.
Some guard she was. And how could I use this opportunity?
If she was security, then I was the Pope. I walked over to the girl. She was sleeping peacefully, sitting on a backless stool, her face resting on the table. Her boyishly short, light bangs fell over her eyes and face. I waved my hand in front of her nose, snapped my fingers near her ear. No reaction. Maybe she was pretending, to see what I would do? Hmm, she had a gun. The holster was attached to her side, on her left. If the girl was pretending, she wouldn't let me take the gun. I unbuttoned the holster and pulled out the weapon. I had handled police toys a couple of times before, though I personally disliked noisy, smoky firearms. I put the barrel to the girl's temple. Bobbi slept on.
I put the gun back and, as a final test, placed my palm on the girl's chest. No reaction. I squeezed it, gently massaging through her shirt. No, she was definitely asleep. This was the ultimate test. After all, this Bobbi wasn't Natasha Romanoff, ready for anything.
Leaving the girl alone, I walked to the exit. An electronic lock. Four buttons were more worn than the others. If all the digits were used once, there were only twenty four combinations. I could try all the possibilities, but locks like this surely had a safety mechanism. I didn't need an alarm in the middle of the night. Taking a table knife, I pried open the panel. Inside, I found a port that accepted electronic connections. Got it. I could have taken the guard's gun and tried to force my way out of captivity, but where was I and where was force? My firearm handling skills left much to be desired. If I had at least my spider sense, I might have risked relying on the gun.
In principle, I could build a decoder for the door using the equipment in the lab, but that would take more than a day, and I would need internet access for the work. Unfortunately, my head wasn't a supercomputer capable of storing everything.
Stans's computer was currently offline. At least in that regard, my captors had shown some prudence. Although, I remembered seeing an iPhone cable on the desk.
I returned to the table and the sleeping Bobbi. Now then... I again slipped my hands under the girl's jacket, patting her down for pockets. Change, keys, a wallet, a notepad, an extra pistol magazine, a pack of condoms, some pills. No phone. But surely she must have some means of contacting her superiors, even a radio. I stepped back, and my eyes fell on her backside in tight jeans. Found it.
Pulling the iPhone from the girl's back pocket, I plugged it into the computer and went online. First, I found the information I needed for my own escape plan, and I learned my location. In principle, I could call the police right now or even try to contact one of the heroes. Hmm... I couldn't find my Facebook account. Strange. I also wasn't on Twitter or Instagram. Bobbi stirred in her sleep behind me, making my heart skip a couple of beats. Finally, I found a record for Peter Benjamin Parker in my school's database, just to confirm my existence, and decided that was enough for today.
I disconnected the iPhone and carefully covered all traces of my internet activity. Although, given SuperMegaAdmin's skills, I could have just cleared the browser history. Bobbi didn't wake up, not when I returned the phone to her jeans pocket, not when I made noise with the dishes, deciding to have supper.
I wasn't going to attract outside attention yet. Now that I had a couple of escape routes, I felt like figuring out this mess Stans and Cindy had stirred up myself. I was probably too overconfident for a powerless sixteen year old teenager. Well, we would see what my superhero experience was worth. This serum, combined with the emitter, could cause all sorts of trouble. The project was clearly raw. Even I could see that Stans had made several miscalculations while working on the formula. With that approach, the best possible outcome would be the woman's survival. There could be no talk of any practical use.
Besides the refrigerator full of frozen meals, dishes, and a kettle, the laboratory also contained a bed. Obviously, the Doc could work here for days on end. If only I could wash properly in a normal bathroom or shower before sleep, instead of with cold water from the sink. I went to bed but felt a little awkward. Oh, right, my «guard.»
I shook the girl awake and made her lie down properly. She barely woke up and obediently followed all my commands, even mumbling something like «yes, Mom, don't nag» in her sleep a couple of times. There was enough room on the bed for both of us. I wouldn't be surprised if Bobbi and Stans had shared it like this before.
For some reason, I couldn't sleep. My head started hurting again where I had hit it in the van. I remembered what the girls had talked about while we were driving. At the time, I hadn't paid it any mind. I had other things on my mind. Later, I had convinced myself that what was happening wasn't real, so I hadn't paid attention to environmental details that didn't directly involve me. But now... this was all very strange. It didn't feel like a performance put on for me as the sole spectator. And Bobbi didn't give the impression of a professional actress. If anything, she didn't look like someone who could be a professional at anything. So how were those ridiculous conversations to be understood? I wanted to go online again. It felt like I was missing something important, something that should change my entire worldview. Yet, with an effort of will, I pushed the idea aside.
Before falling asleep, I spent a long time thinking about how to improve Stans's work. My last thought was not to delay, because who knew what would happen to the comatose woman. As soon as I sorted out the mess she had made during the experiment, I would act. Otherwise, it might become too late.
I dreamed that I was flying on a spaceship. The dream was filled with fear and despair. We were fleeing from something, and an even greater danger lay ahead. A man was with me. He kept talking to himself and demanded not to be distracted from his work. The ship's walls could become transparent, and through them I watched the Earth. The little blue ball kept receding from us, but against all logic, it did not disappear from view, even when we left the solar system. Other crew members floated toward me, but none of them saw the Earth. They said it was too small to be seen from such a distance. Then the impenetrable darkness of space swallowed me up.
Fear filled my consciousness. The stars disappeared. The ship disappeared. Only I remained, alone in open space with the Earth. The Earth fell toward me. It grew rapidly, and the larger it became, the more horrors I saw. This was what our ship had been fleeing from. The Earth was dying. No, humanity was dying, thrashing in its death throes, and the Earth, like a vast beast, suffered from the parasites clinging to it. Then a Drop fell upon the Earth, a concentration of pure beauty, a symbol of the grandeur of science, a creation of the gods, perfect in its unbreakable fragility. Then the Earth's suffering ceased. The Drop had rid it of the virus of humanity.