"Come on, come on…!"
Praying for the best for Spider-Man did not mean just letting it denote. No way, he contained the damn explosion. Giant black tendrils flushed out of his arms, slamming together and holding it with the bioelectricity. Black and red lightning merged and funneled through the black tendrils. It didn't matter.
An atomic explosion was done through nuclear fission; the splitting the nuclei of a heavy element like Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239 triggered it into a supercritical state, releasing neutrons that split more atoms, causing a massive, fast explosion. That wasn't exactly the case here, but whatever Felix had done it was pretty damn close to it.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
'Contain it, contain it, contain it—!'
'Weee are okay! WE ARE—!'
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
"Hahahaha—!"
There was laughter, a red beam of laser sliced the massive tendril, and the explosion slipped through him.
BOOM!
All at once, everything went white.
All at once, sound and vision returned. It was a concussive event; the world's volume knob twisted from zero to ten with no intermediate settings.
"Ngggh….!"
On the floor, Felix lay dazed atop the glider. His Spider-Sense was accompanied by dull pain in his shoulders.
'We are okay!' Rash whispered inside him. 'Get up! GET UP!'
Felix flipped to his feet, the liquidy nature of his suit rehealing him. It wasn't perfect. So what? The white V-shaped lens tightened. This was a battle. Pain and misery was part of the damn job.
He was, unfortunately, mildly weaker in his healing factor. If he was at his full potential, it was possible he and Rash would have healed the huge tendril before it was chopped off. But regardless, that wasn't his reality. These were the cards he had and he was going to play with them.
The ceiling of the forty-third floor of the SHIELD building was obliterated. Even rubble did not fall. It had a new skylight and wiring hung from the edges.
The floor was cratered and the wall of screens that had been cycling news feeds was gone, just the mounting brackets remained, protruding from scorched plasterboard. Desks and chairs were out of sight, out of mind.
'SHIELD AGENTS INCOMING—!'
Herbie's warning was expounded by his Spider-Sense, then the sound of organized boots coming from two directions at once.
"Everybody, put your hands up!"
They came through the doors on either side of the room simultaneously, fanning out in proper geometry, black tactical gear and weapons up. They were in that emergency-state low crouched posture. There were twelve of them.
Guns found the Red Goblin first. He was the most obvious target, the horned mask and the chainmail beside him making him relatively easy to identify as the problem.
"Put your hands down!"
The Red Goblin was surrounded and lazily lifted his arms high up. "Of course, of course~!"
"Turn around! Hug the wall! Now!"
Classic.
Except four of those guns found Spider-Man.
The laser burns across his torso. However, the critical wound was his lungs. They were functional in the way that a car with two flat tyres was technically still a car. He started to lift a hand to signal them that he wasn't the threat here.
"Spider-Man…?"
Seeing him, the SHIELD agents vaguely understood. Perhaps they didn't see him as a threat. Perhaps it was an order from Nick Fury. Perhaps it was the goodness Spider-Man represented.
Then the laughter started.
"Aww, and here I thought we'd get the same treatment!"
Zwoom!
Red light. Fast and surgical.
Zwoom!
Felix's Spider-Sense went haywire. He jumped. 'No—!'
The first two agents dropped without sound. Guns started firing off. Quickly, they stopped as lasers penetrated their vital points. The Red Goblin never missed. Not The agents that had been focused on Spider-Man turned. With thick tendrils, he managed to push them down and save them.
Zwoom! Zwoom! Zwoom!
But not the ones in front of the Red Goblin.
See, the Red Goblin was a master bowman with his lasers. Not to mention his lasers could curve and twist. Every "Zwoom!" meant at least two or three penetrations. Two or three fallen agents.
'My arms…!'
Holding back that explosion burnt the web-shooters and the volume of Symbiote he had. He could use his webbing and tendrils but the range was pathetic. He couldn't instantly reach the other side of the room and save those agents.
Thwip!
One wrist, one thin line of webbing. That could do it. He yanked and pulled himself forward through the room—
Zwoom!
"Nope!"
Bastard's aim was too fucking good and the webbing severed. The laser had found the line before he'd moved six feet and Felix hit the floor with one knee and had to redirect, jumping instead, moving toward the cluster of agents who were retreating but ultimately still trying to shoot the Goblin.
The bullets hit the Red Goblin. Some penetrated him too.
The problem was—the goblin healed too fast for it to matter.
"Spider-Man—!?"
The four remaining SHIELD agents assumed he was on his side, and he was, technically speaking.
'You're in the way.'
Except they were in the way. He had to get rid of these agents. He hit the first one with an open palm to the chest.
'Rash!'
'Got it!'
Synchronized fully, Rash cocooned the agent in black. It was maybe a second of wrapping, the tendrils emerging from his wrist and spinning rapidly into the cocoon. A mighty impressive feat.
The second agent, he back-flipped toward and kicked. So what if it was his foot making contact? Same principle, same kind of rapid coccooning.
"You're really trying to save them! You're SUCH a hero!"
The third and fourth agent had turned toward Spider-Man by then, which meant he was facing away from the Red Goblin, which meant Felix had to intercept them shooting at him and also get in front of the laser that was tracking him down.
Somehow, he did it. He jumped himself right into the line of fire, bullets piercing his right shoulder and leg, and his hands reached their chests. They fell to the floor and were cocooned simultaneously.
"Haah…haah…"
When it was over, Spider-Man was standing in the middle of a room where twelve SHIELD agents were either cocoons or dead. His Spider-Sense faded. He snapped his head over and…
The Red Goblin was not there.
His laughter was.
From somewhere beyond the room, carried through the structure of the building itself, bouncing off ductwork and corridor walls until its direction became a feeling.
Spider-Man followed it.
'Herbie, turn on the X-ray!'
'NEGATIVE. TOO MUCH DAMAGE HAS BEEN SUSTAINED TO THE SYMBIOTE-SUPERIOR SUIT!'
'Tch! Heal faster! I knew I should have brought the Spider-Armor Mark II!'
'MASTER FAETH, THE USAGE OF THAT SUIT WAS PARTIALLY TO BLAME FOR YOUR BRAIN DAMAGE! NOT TO MENTION IT IS A SEMI-FUNCTIONAL STATE. IT WILL TAKE MONTHS FOR FULL REPAIR.'
Still, he should have. People died on his account…!
He ran. The goblin wasn't far, after all.
The SHIELD building was a disguise for a fake military company. The office spaces were real and used by people in order to aid in the prevention of hacking. Stopping government sites and such, this was all here.
The forty-third floor was a maze of corridors that had been designed to disorient. Unmarked doors and identical junctions. The kind of layout an individual was never supposed to understand. It was a huge anti-hacking department, after all. One part of a whole.
Except the trail of scarlet on the floor made it irrelevant.
At the end of a corridor, the left side wall had a hole that had been pried open. It was right next to the elevator. Too impatient, huh? Spider-Man leapt through it and slid down the elevator cables, hopping off into the pried open elevator doors.
He started running and following. 'Where are you going?'
He stopped at the foot of another hole. Blood was concentrated in heaps here. It must have taken longer than expected to punch through to this room. He could see layers upon layers of metal and wire. Spider-Man jumped down in the hole.
'This is…!'
The room he found himself inside was enormous and quite obviously a server room. It was high-ceilinged and the walls were just server racks with a small gap for the lonely door. Wherever this was, it was highly sealed and most definitely contained. A cube of metal for emergencies.
Felix was in the middle of the gradient of light that ran from full illumination at one end to near-darkness at the other.
On that other side and behind him, SHIELD agents were down. These guys had been given the chance to form up and still failed. Not all of them were dead. This was hastily done.
Thank god for it.
'Maria…!'
She was one of them. Maria Hill laid against a server rack nearest the hole, seated with her back against it. Her left hand was pressed to her right shoulder. The tactical vest and flesh took the brunt of the laser in equal measures.
She looked at Spider-Man when he came through the hole. "Spider-Man…!"
He held her gaze for one second — I see you, you're alive, that matters — and then followed the laughter to the far end of the room where the lights still worked.
"So, this is what you meant by the party…"
Nick Fury was on his feet.
That was the first thing — he hadn't been forced to his knees, hadn't been put on the floor. He was standing, which under the circumstances was either a dignity the Red Goblin had chosen to extend or a calculation about optics. His hands were at his sides and his single eye observed the lone hero.
All the while the villain had one arm around his shoulders.
It was almost casual, almost friendly, like the posture of two men who'd known each other a long time but happened to have a finger extended toward the other's temple. Felix could feel the threat of death in his back teeth.
"There he is!" The laughter had settled into something lighter. "My arachnid friend! You know, I was starting to think you'd gotten turned around."
Calculations first. 'Twelve feet. Dammit, too far to lunge and save before the laser blows his brains out…!'
"Thank god you don't use guns or anything. Otherwise, this would be pointless. You'd shoot me and it'd be over."
"..."
'Rash, a web-bullet. Can you do it?'
'Yessss! Like in those movies!'
"I love the commitment. Very pure of you. Very Man-Spider!"
"..."
'Make it as fast as possible. Ridiculously fast.' He could feel the liquid bubbling in his wrist. It wasn't visible nor noticeable to anyone but Felix. 'Faster than light…!'
'That…' Rash paled a little. 'I can try…'
"So here's my question." Harold's voice dropped slightly, not in threat but in something almost conversational. Sincere, even. "If you want me dead — and I think you do, I think we've established that today — how does that happen? Because your fists, sure, they're impressive, we've both seen what they can do. But your fists reach me and this director of ours catches the alternative first." He glanced sideways at Fury with something that might have been an apology if the finger weren't there. "Nothing personal."
"Tell that to my building," Fury said flatly.
"Director, I like you." Harold returned his attention to Felix. "So. Let's think about next steps, shall we?"
Spider-Man and Nick Fury locked eyes. There was resignation. That his fate was in the hero's hands.
The Red Goblin reached into his tunic with his free hand — Felix tensed — and produced nothing, just spread the hand open, empty, a gesture of transparency.
"The Control Symbiote. You know what I've been doing with it."
"..."
"And while New York is impossible to penetrate because of you, that's not the case for Washington. Everything is already in place. Seventeen government officials. Four senators. Two federal judges. A deputy director of — well. It's done, Spider-Man. Washington is under my control." He let that settle. "Latveria's already changed. Cuba's already changed. America's next. The upper architecture of this country is already compromised, and within six months, the decisions that come out of Washington are going to look different. Better, I think. I think better."
"You think," Nick Fury said sarcastically.
"I do." Genuine. No performance in it. "And look — the Control Symbiote. When I'm done. When the work is done, when the positions are held by people who got there on their own merit and the ones who didn't are gone — I'll destroy it. All of it. Every trace. No one gets to use it after me. I promise. I promised it to my people. My employees."
The room was very quiet. The sparking server rack near Maria punctuated the silence at intervals.
"So think about what happens after I kill Fury and you kill me."
If Harold and Fury died here, it was game over for SHIELD. SHIELD was already bleeding from what Felix himself had set in motion two weeks ago, the Sam Papers and the protests and the congressional pressure. Not to mention the death of Alexander Pierce, the Security Council member, the death of Director Peggy Carter, and their failed handling of protecting the Security Council Member known as King T'Challa.
The institution would not survive it, not with what Harold implanted. Not with this much already in the water.
"Buuuut…correct me if I'm wrong," Harold said, his voice finding the notion of gentleness, "I think you already know SHIELD needs to go." He smiled, and the mask smiled with him. "So maybe — and I'm genuinely asking — maybe this isn't the worst outcome. Maybe this is you and me wanting the same thing from different directions, and we find a way to not be in each other's way."
If Nick Fury cared about the conversation, he didn't show it on his face. Aside from maybe a narrowed eye.
"I'm asking you to be practical. Which I know you are, because you're still standing there instead of trying something. You're too strong, Spidey. In a straight fight, I don't win. I know it. You know it. So this—" He gestured, the empty hand, the full room, the whole impossible afternoon. "This is my only real move. Let's kill Fury together and I need you to let me walk away. That's it. That's all I'm asking. And Gwen Stacy? You know what, I'll forget about her. I promise."
Harold watched Felix.
Felix looked at Harold.
The case was made. Now, it was time for the verdict.
"Spider-Man, nnggh, I don't know who he is but don't trust him!" Maria called out. "This man, he has control over Washington! He has the connections to be able to infiltrate the SHIELD prison where Gwen Stacy is being held!"
He looked at Maria Hill against the server rack, her hand pressed to her shoulder and heaving. For two seconds, he was completely still. From the very start, he had his answer.
'Rash, now—!'
"Sorry to say, but I'm a hero. I'm Spider-Man—"
The hero lunged forward and plunged his fist inside Nick Fury. He stared into the brown eye of a man that had been expecting to be saved. He saw the light pluck from him.
"Director—? DIRECTOR!"
That was Maria. That was her screaming and asking what in God's mercy Spider-Man did.