Spiderman 1 (19 page)

It was no doubt his own vivid imagination that made it
look as if the gas were leaping, like an entity that had developed intelligence, into his mouth. It was that selfsame imag
ination that caused Osborn to choke on the gas for a
moment, but then he calmed himself and forced himself to
breathe normally.

The gas flowed in and out of his nostrils; he could actu
ally see it moving. He saw Stromm looking in on him, felt

more relaxed than he'd ever been, and started to speak to Stromm, to tell him not to worry.

And suddenly his entire body was seized by convulsions.
From his fingertips to his teeth, it was as if someone had
touched a hot poker to his every nerve ending. His body
shook violently, straining against the straps, and if he'd been able to see his eyes at that moment, he would have seen only
white.

He heard frantic beeping, alarms, and distantly realized that it was the body monitors. He heard flatlining noises,
which he couldn't understand because those would only be going off if someone were dead. And that certainly couldn't be applying to him, because he definitely wasn't dead. Hell, no, he'd never felt this alive before, every fiber of his being,
every pore of his skin, wide-open and receptive to every
thing it could possibly experience. He felt bigger, stronger
than his body, as if his skin couldn't contain the amazing
sensations that were hammering through it.

That was when he heard a ringing that soared above
everything else. It was the panic button, the emergency abort
button. Stromm had hit it. Stromm, the lily-livered, weak-kneed insult to the human race. Stromm had displayed a
complete lack of vision and conviction in hitting the panic button, and Osborn felt a surge of fury at Stromm's weak
ness.

The white gas was being sucked out of the tank as the giant vacuum vents in the ceiling roared to life. Osborn
wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, to beg the gas to return to him. To give him the strength and stamina that he was positive he could obtain. No, not just "could." Should. The abilities that should by right be his were being sucked away via the ceiling vents.

It was more than he could bear.

He felt hands fumbling at the straps, and it was only then
that he realized his eyes were clenched shut. His body

wasn't responding to the instructions of his mind. It was like
having an out-of-body experience while still being in your
body.

Osborn decided to inform Doctor Stromm that he was perfectly fine, thanks, and to get his hands off him.

It came out as a shriek.

Osborn continued to scream, and he had no idea why he
was doing it, but it felt good on some sort of primitive level,
like a caveman with his foot planted on the body of a re
cently slain foe, informing everyone else that he was a force
to be reckoned with.

The straps were gone from his chest, and Osborn could hear all the emergency monitors going off. In his haze, he
didn't associate them with himself anymore. They were just
noise, something he could join if he so chose. And he did,
screaming louder, matching them in pitch and taking an in
sane delight in doing so. His heart rate leapt, his blood pres
sure, respiration, everything, shot off the charts.

His eyes snapped open, alight with the fire of inner mad
ness, and he ripped the sensors off his chest. Stromm tried to
hold him back and lasted for exactly as long as it took Os
born to notice him. When he did notice him, he knocked him
away with one sweep of his arm.

The strength of the gesture was horrifying in its casual-
ness, devastating in the damage it caused with such minimal
effort. Stromm sailed into the glass of the booth, and
through it. The glass exploded from the impact, shards fly
ing everywhere. Stromm kept going, flying through the air
as if some great invisible fisherman had tied a line to him
and was reeling him in.

He sailed across the lab and smashed into a pillar on the
far side, some fifty feet away. He sagged to the floor, blood
pooling under his head.

Osborn watched Stromm's life ebb from him and didn't care in the slightest. He had other things to worry about.

His attention was far more drawn to the battle suit and the
personnel carrier prototype. The two devices were sitting
there in the darkness, filled with power waiting to be used. Osborn felt exactly the same way, like a source of considerable power—if only it could be utilized properly.

He felt as if his mind were splitting in two. On one level, he was fully aware that Stromm was dead, dead at his hand, and the aspect of Norman Osborn that realized it recoiled in shock and horror.

But there was another part of him that not only didn't
care, it reveled in it. Stromm had been weak, and the new Osborn despised weakness.

The world was filled with sheep, and the wolf went
among the sheep and devoured them.

The component of Norman that had no tolerance for
weakness leapt to the forefront, brought there by the gas, by
the chemicals that it had unleashed in his mind. A great
green haze fell over him, and Osborn trembled, twisted, con
vulsed as if something was trying to fight its way out from
the most primordial roots of his soul. And then Norman Os
born threw his head back and howled in pain, confusion, and
transformation.

Gone was any trace of guilt, gone was any consideration
for ramifications, gone was any hint of a man who would have felt the least bit of remorse for his actions.

He began to leap and dance and cavort around the glider
and armor, like a devout worshipper giving thanks to the
totem of a dark and slavering god. He waved his arms
around, gibbered and howled like a cross between a baboon
and a wolf, and the last conscious thoughts fled him.

The next thing he knew, he felt as if he were being lifted
up, as if his god were taking him up to heaven. There was the
heady sensation of flight, of the world speeding below him. And there was more than that; he felt as if he had power, ultimate power of life and death over all the puny mortals who

sprawled beneath him, going about their pathetic little lives,
sleeping or watching movies or making love, all unaware
that a new dark god and his greatest disciple were abroad
upon the land.

They would know him and fear him and worship him, and
he would take their fates in his clawed hand, for they, like Stromm, were just sheep. Just sheep. And he was the shep
herd, and he would guide them and herd them and sheer
them and slaughter them. For what else did one do with
sheep?

Harry Osborn hated his father's den.

Partly it was because some of his earliest memories involved being chased out of that haven of his father's, when
all he'd wanted to do was spend a few minutes with his dad. But his dad had been so busy, always so busy.

The other part of Harry's antipathy for the den stemmed
from his father's grotesque collection of masks.

He had no idea what had prompted his dad's fascination
with such hideous things, but they had been there for as long
as he could remember, and every year there were more of
them as Norman acquired them in his business travels. Me
dieval jester's masks, masks from New Orleans during the
Mardi Gras revels, masks allegedly worn by witch doctors in
the heart of the Congo
...
all these and more adorned the
walls, staring down in silent judgment and condemnation of
anyone—namely Harry—who dared to set foot in the den without approval of the master of the house.

Some of the masks even had eyes painted on them, and
Harry always felt as if they were watching him. Sometimes, when he was a child, he'd had dreams that they were observing him while he slept.

Truth to tell, he had similar dreams as a teen.

The problem was that the den extended off the main hall
way in the opulent Osborn apartment in Tudor Hill, and

there was no way Harry could avoid walking past it whenever he was on his way out. So he always made a point of
hurrying by as quickly as possible. The passage was made
simpler by the fact that the doors were usually closed, so
there was no temptation to slow and glance in to see if some
new repulsive mask had joined the others.

This day, however—one which was supposed to be dry, but nevertheless had a considerable number of clouds in the
sky—Harry saw that the doors were wide-open as he walked
by. Against his better judgment he slowed, hesitated, then
peered around the corner of the door frame with the inten
tion of speeding on his way once his curiosity was satisfied.

To his utter astonishment, his father was seated in the
middle of the den. If it weren't for the fact that he didn't
smell of alcohol, Harry would have thought Norman Osborn
had been out on a serious bender the night before. He was
wearing the same clothes he'd worn the previous day, and he
looked disheveled and disoriented.

Long years of being told in no uncertain terms that the
den was off limits prompted Harry to pause in the doorway.
He almost felt like a vampire, unable to enter unless he'd
been invited.

"Dad? What is it, Dad?"

Norman Osborn looked up at his son, seemingly aware of
his presence but unable to focus on him. "Harry?" It was
partly an acknowledgment, and partly an inquiry as to
whether this was, indeed, his son standing before him.

Harry immediately shook free of the old childhood wor
ries and quickly walked in, crouching in front of his father
and making no attempt to hide his concern. "You look sick.
What's happened?"

"I
. . .
don't know."

He'd never heard his father sound like this: vulnerable.
Even scared. For once his dad actually needed him. "Where
were you last night? I didn't hear you come in."

Osborn frowned, as if trying to reassemble pieces of a fractured recollection. "I was ... last night," he said thickly,
"I was ..."

"What?"

His shoulders sagged in defeat.

"I
. . .
don't remember."

Before Harry could pursue the matter, he heard noises
from down the hallway. He immediately recognized one of
them as the houseman, Edmund. The other took him a moment to place, but then he realized it was his father's assis
tant from the factory, Ms. Simkins. He'd only met her one or
two times; his father had taken great pains to keep his life at
the factory separate from his home life. Sometimes Harry
got the feeling it was because he was embarrassed about his
son and wanted to minimize Harry's exposure to any busi
ness associates so he could spare himself humiliation. Now,
though, clearly wasn't the time to dwell on old hurts.