Life After the Sun Sets

by Lady Russell Holmes

(Movie verse) When Otto is pulled from the water, he doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. And that terrifies him.

Life After the Sun Sets.

By LRH

Disclaimer: Everything that belongs to Marvel does not belong to me. Pity, n'est pas?

The police didn't bother to dredge the river that night. They were more concerned with containing the damage done on land. And they certainly didn't bother to look for the body of the monster, or, God forbid, save him. Somehow not-dead, he watched from the bottom as lights flashed along the bank. The tentacles lay dead in the muck, more than two-hundred pounds holding him to the bottom. He couldn't understand why he was still not-dead. He wouldn't say alive, for of course no one could live through drowning along with a boiling sun, but it was not-dead.

He lay on his back in the fallow muck, his hair mingling with the thin weed that grew in the polluted water. It wasn't deep here, only fifty feet or so between him and that membrane of air. He had just missed the chasm that had swallowed his sun. The claws of two of his dead tentacles hung over the edge, and at first he had been afraid that their weight would pull him over into the Stygian depth, to follow the burnt-out sun, but the mud held him fast. He sank into it slightly, almost relishing its cool, soft balm against his burnt skin.

By the time the water began to glow with filtered sunlight, the fish had recovered enough to come and feed on the death that surrounded the path of the sun. They flitted back and forth over him, and he reached out with one of his real arms to touch one. It shied away, frightened. All the fish vanished in an instant He let his arm fall and sighed, bubbles rising in the current. Suddenly, that tiny amount of air felt precious to him, and he reached after it frantically. With that gesture, he was no longer not-dead, but alive and dying, drowning here in the mud with the weight of his monstrosities holding him down, pinning him. He struggled violently, and he didn't see the long dredge-chain dragging through the muck towards him until it caught him in a tangle of tentacle and air-starved flesh and riverbed debris, hauling him out over the abyss and, instead of letting him fall down to the dark-dead sun, drawing him up towards the pink-blue sunrise. He took a deep breath of surprise just before he reached the surface.

---

"We've got something," Jude called back to the man operating the chain's winch when he felt the heavy dredge go taut. "Haul it in!" The engine whined as the long chain net began to wind back up onto the boat, pulling with it all sorts of debris from the river-bottom. Most of it was small stuff; bikes, a car's fender, a lost computer monitor, and then he saw something larger rising up through the murky, disgusting water. The dark shape convulsed just before it reached the surface, and a hand reached out, blistered and burned almost beyond recognition. It flailed for purchase in the air, and then the rest of the man came up, coughing and choking on the brackish water, struggling in a tangle of twisted metal.

Jude stared for a moment before his wits returned. "He's alive!" he shouted to the policeman who was along as an official observer. The man ran from the wheelhouse, staring at the man who now lay limp in his tangle while the crew reached to pull him aboard. Jude grabbed the collar of the man's shredded trench coat, turning his head to the side so he could cough up the water he had swallowed. He spat weakly, his eyes squinted shut against the bright lights of the deck. Or swollen shut. Jude couldn't tell. The man, this impossible survivor, was so badly burned that he looked flayed alive, as if he's been dumped in boiling water. Jude didn't know much about what had gone on last night, only that a madman, supposedly this man lying at his feet, had tried to blow up the city and Spider-Man had stopped him. It had been all over the Daily Bugle first thing this morning. He nudged the guy's shoulder with his foot, and then fell in surprise when a hand gripped his ankle.

"Don't.... do that," gasped the doctor. The cop pulled Jude away and held his gun against the doctor's head, shouting "Don't move! You are under arrest!" He wrestled the man's arms out of the tangle and cuffed them together, reading him his rights in a panicked, anxious voice, all the while keeping his eyes on the other arms, the long metal tentacles that lay inanimately on the muddy deck. The PD had been expecting to dredge up a corpse; no one had imagined that the dangerous man could have survived, and so they had only sent one representative.

Doctor Octopus, as Jude remembered the newspapers calling him, put up no fight at all. He grunted a little in pain while the crew extricated him from the dredge-net, but he seemed content to lie limply on the deck on his stomach, breathing deeply and coughing occasionally. Only when he began to shiver did he speak again. "May I have a blanket?" His voice was polite and quiet, if rough from coughing. The police-man who was sitting nearby with his gun constantly aimed at Otto's head affected not to have heard him, but Jude brought him a wool blanket from the tug's emergency kit, covering the madman as well as he could. It was not in him to see a man freeze to death, no matter what his crimes. It was an icy, bitter morning, and the man's clothes were soaked and in rags.

"You shouldn't get too close," said the cop bluntly. "He's a dangerous man."

The 'dangerous man' laughed slightly, more a cough than anything of true humour. "I assure you, I am not, at the moment. How dangerous can I be? I can't even move. And my arms..." His voice trailed off, and his cuffed hands tried to reach behind himself, as if to check that the monstrous metal contraption was still there, but he couldn't move them that far. He hissed as the attempt split his scalded skin, opening a few weeping blisters on his shoulders.

"I wouldn't move if I were you," warned the cop, but it sounded more like a threat than advice. He pressed the gun closer to Dr. Octopus's head, denting the skin of his temple. The doctor pulled away as much as he could, but offered no resistence. Jude stayed by his side while the tug returned at all speed to its pier. Just as they were docking, the madman opened his eyes slightly and looked at him, as if trying to see someone else. "Thank you," he said wearily. Jude didn't answer; he didn't think that the doctor was talking to him.

---

Otto shivered despite the rough blanket over his shoulders. The water had been warm, almost body-temperature. But the air bit at his skin, making it tight and sore as he began, slowly, to dry. He didn't move, because if he did, his clothes and the blanket chafed against his raw back, peeling off killed skin. And the muzzle of someone's gun was ice against his temple. The touch of metal was unbearable right now, especially the thick metal fused to his spine and around his stomach. It bit at him, colder than the air and gun, but with small hot spots scattered at seemingly random points, burning him like sparks. There was a thought... somewhere in the back of his mind, a thought that didn't belong to him, but he couldn't find it. He knew what it was, what they were of course, but he was content, at the moment, not to hear them. And that filled him with guilt.

Presently, he heard a siren, no, several sirens coming closer and then screaching to stops somewhere nearby. He opened his eyes again to see the boots of four paramedics run down the ramp and cluster around him, kneeling to check his pulse and other vitals. One shone a hideously bright light in his eyes, and he flinched away, raising his bound hands to shield himself.

"Can you hear me," said one shaking voice, the one with the light. He nodded slightly. "Good. Do you know your name? Can you tell me that?"

He cleared his throat, which didn't help much. It was as raw as the rest of him. "Otto," he said brokenly, his voice cracking like a teenager's. "Dr. Otto Octavius." He closed his eyes again as they argued over how to move him. The cop's idea, apparantly, was to stuff him in one of the massive carts used to haul fish around the docks, but the medics wanted to stabilize his neck and back.

"My back and neck are already stabilized," he said aloud, which shut off the conversation around him. "This harness is fused to them. They're very," He broke off to cough, and then continued. "Very well protected, I assure you."

Despite his assurances, they managed to adapt a backboard to fit him and strapped him to it. It took two extra gurneys from an additional ambulance to transport his arms up the ramp and into the ambulance, but eventually they were all loaded. The hot little sparks along his spine were growing, and his core was beginning to feel warm again. He ignored the paramedics as they started an IV in his wrist and peeled away his clothes to save as much of his skin as possible, focused instead within, on that guilt-bearing thought that he couldn't quite find. It was there, he knew it.

At some point, he noticed that the ride was longer than it should have been. The hospital where he had attacked the surgeons was only minutes from the river. But the ambulence had left the dodging, weaving traffic patterns of the city and moved into a smoother pattern that suggested the freeway. "Where are you taking me?" he asked apathetically. It was harder than it should have been to form the words; there must be drugs in the IV. He tried to decide if that was a bad thing. The pain was receding from his skin until only the deeper hurts remained.

"Don't worry about it," answered a gruff voice. The cop had come with him, apparently. At least the cold gun wasn't against his head anymore. "We'll take care of you." For some reason, Otto doesn't believe him. The forgotten thought might be fear.

---

Peter's phone rang adamantly just as his first class got out. He opened it warily, seeing not MJ's number, as he'd hoped, but rather the Bugle. Sure enough, it was Robbie Robertson's voice at the other end. "Peter, how fast can you get down to pier 63? The police found Doctor Octavius, and he's still alive. Jonah wants pictures, pronto!"

Peter's jaw dropped, and he stuttered something affirmative before hanging up. It wasn't possible that he was still alive. Otto had told him as much. "It'll superheat the water . . . create temperatures like an underwater volcano. Broil anyone nearby like a lobster. Whoever tries to submerge it . . . it's suicide."

And he had done it. Peter had heard him scream as the reactor collapsed on top of him, had mourned him even as he almost cried in relief that MJ, and the city, was safe. The water had boiled and steamed for nearly an hour after.

Peter raced down to the docks on his scooter, flashing his camera and press pass to get as close as he could, but the police barricade around the loading ramp stopped him. At first, all he could see down in the tug was a tangle of metal, the actuators caked in grime and silt. The paramedics were crowded around something in the middle of all that, and then they lifted someone, a joint effort of three men, onto a gurney. A wool blanket, the same grey as the tug's deck, fell away and finally Peter could see Octavius.

He looked dead. His skin was fiery red and ice-white by patches, with angry, bleeding sores on his face and arms. But then his lips moved, apparently talking to a skinny, brown-haired young deck-hand. Peter took some pictures to hide his shock. How could he have survived? Warily, he watched as the tug's crew heaved the heavy actuators onto two more gurneys, but they didn't so much as twitch, not even when manhandled into rough coils. Even the red lights in their claws were out.

The medics and police loaded Octavius into one of the waiting ambulances and drove off, lights flashing and siren blaring. Peter escaped the crowd and a moment later, Spider-Man leapt from a nearby alleyway to follow the vehicle from the rooftops. To his puzzlement, it passed the nearest hospital. When it merged onto the busy freeway that bisected the district, he couldn't keep up. Where were they taking Octavius?

---

Where were they taking him? Otto tried to lift his head, but the drugs had spread a warm paralysis through his body and his muscles wouldn't answer him. The world was dwindling to a fuzzy sphere of awareness and a thread of waking thought.

Father? Father? Can you hear us, Father?

What? "You," he mumbled aloud. He could feel a sluggish warmth in the small of his back, and a potential there. He couldn't, didn't exercise it yet; it would take too much energy. How are you? He thought inanely.

We are worried, Father. You are damaged. Malfunctioning.

I am alive, he countered to the thought. No, it was four thoughts. In concert. A soothing harmony, getting stronger. Even though I don't know how.

We couldn't allow to you to cease functioning. We contributed the needed elements from our systems into yours.

Of course. They had liquid oxygen in their power cells. He didn't know how they had made the conversion and transfer, but it had kept him not-dead overnight. But they had completely depleted their supply, rendering themselves inanimate. Are you able to replenish yourselves?

Slowly. We do not possess adequate abilities. Are you irreparably damaged?

I . . . I don't know. I can't feel my fingers. Or my hands, oh god my hands are gone, where are my feet, I can't feel my feet, and I don't know where they're taking me oh god help me... He moaned. Having let the panic in, he couldn't escape it.

Father!

I'm going to die, I can't feel my heart in my chest, my heart isn't beating in my chest! Why can't I move? Where are my hands, where is my tongue, I can't feel any of it, help me, Ican'tfeelmybrainIcan'tfeelcan'tseecan'thearcan't. . .

Father!

Who?

Father, listen to us. We are still here, and so are you. We can hear the people who are helping you. Listen to them. You are not irreparable.

Not?

Listen. The arms' command was firm, a fixture for Otto to hold onto. He followed where they led in his mind until there was a sound. Distorted through the arms' specialized equipment, but with their help, he sorted it into words.

It was the paramedics, talking over the radio to their destination as they worked on him, worked frantically. He couldn't appreciate their efforts at all. "Approx. 90 of his body is covered in second and third degree scalding burns. Shocky, suspected hypothermia, water in the lungs, severe blood loss. Patient was lucid at scene, but is now unconscious by our actions. Reflexes are slow, but present. Shows an extreme sensitivity to light. The... er, appendages are inactive, but the, um, lights are coming back on, dim."

"Hey, don't take those off."

"They're impairing his circulation. Look, he's so far under, he'll sleep 'til next week. He's not in any condition to need to be cuffed. Cuff the tentacles if you're so worried."

Should we let them restrain us?

Blood loss? Am I bleeding? Third degree burns? Those are the worst, aren't they? Do I have any skin left? I'm not supposed to be conscious. Let them help me, I don't want to die.

They will help you, assured the arms. We will let them. They lay still, although Otto knew that by now they could move. As they resurrected themselves, he could feel the potential increasing in the back of his mind. But now they allowed the nervous (Otto could smell his sweat) policeman to tie them down with heavy wire from somewhere, lashing them into their coils and tying the claws shut. Otto tried not to think of how entirely helpless he was now. So did they.

Eventually, the rhythm of the vehicle changed again, back into city streets. It slowed and turned a corner before stopping. The door opened and Otto shivered in the cold draft. He was unloaded in a bustle of shouting and quick conferrals over his head. "How long has he been out of the water?"

"How long was he in the water?"

"No idea. He was last seen last night, by a Miss Watson. She said he went into the water, under his invention, which boiled the water."

"Well, that would account for his burns, but he couldn't have been in the water since then, unless he was swimming all night. But they caught him when they were dredging the bottom. . ."

"Guh," he said, attracting all the attention in the room. He heard guns cock from somewhere nearby, but ignored them. "All nigh'." He couldn't articulate, very frustrating. "Th'arms kept me 'live. Not-dead," he corrected himself. His tongue felt dry and too large for his mouth. "C'n I have some water?"

Action started around him again, and someone with a straw found his mouth about the same time he did. He sipped gratefully, but then they took it away. He opened his own eyes and turned his head to the side as well as he could and watched blurrily as a nurse connected a bag of blood to the IV going into his left arm. His sight was dim and unclear, as if he were still in that murky water. Little red suns danced around the edges of his vision. "Is that A? My blood's type A. And I'm allergic to shellfish," he offered groggily. She didn't meet his eyes, but nodded and retreated as he was wheeled into a room, a surgical bay. The conversations surged around him.

"Do we remove the arms?"

"I'm not going to risk it, not with him in the condition he's in. He would never survive the additional shock."

"Neither would they," Otto contributed. Whatever new concoction they had added to his IV was making him feel casual and disassociated, as if he were floating above a party in his honour.

"Why is he still conscious?" asked a doctor peevishly. One of the actuators swivelled its claw to 'look' at him, causing a sudden drawing back of everyone nearby. Otto chuckled and closed his eyes against the harsh, harsh light of the room. Someone slipped another needle into his wrist and a mask over his face and he began to fall, ever so gently, away from all the light and noise.

Father? asked the familiar voices. Father, where are you going?

To sleep.

We will be here when you return.

Will I?

---

Trying to ignore the nagging anxiety at the back of his neck, Peter brought his film to Jameson and hung out in the newsroom, trying to find out where the ambulance had taken Octavius. This was the best place to find any information that wasn't supposed to be made public, and sure enough, less than fifteen minutes after Peter got there, Ben Ulrich burst out of his office with his phone stretched to the end of its cord, shouting to Jonah. "They took him to the ER at that hospital uptown, you know, the one with the new security system. Prognosis isn't great, he might not make it!"

Peter was out the door before Jameson could do more than pump his fist triumphantly. "Serve him right," he heard him shout as he pelted down the stairs. "He ruined my new car!" And then Peter was in an empty office on the second floor, changed out of his street clothes, and flying out the window. He didn't know what, but he knew that something was about to go very wrong very soon, and he knew that Octavius would be the center of it. He had to reach that hospital in time.

But when he got there, nothing, except the growing crowd of press trying to get in, seemed out of the ordinary. He peered in a window, but all he could see was the waiting room packed with reporters and waiting patients. And police. There were a lot of police. Someone spotted him and pointed, and the crowd of news-hounds surged in his direction, but he escaped straight up the wall, ignoring the questions thrown after him.

He sat on the roof of the ER, trying to block out the incessant, low-key buzz of his spider-sense long enough to think. Octavius was in there, badly hurt, not expected to survive. Last time he'd been in a surgery, he'd killed seven people. Was that going to happen again? He had to get in there, see what was going on.

He crept into the building through an air-duct, hoping it would lead him where he needed to be. Luck was with him. After only a few wrong turns and one tight squeeze, he was able to pull aside a filter and peer down into the very bay that he'd been seeking. Octavius lay there under an oxygen mask, dead to the world as no less than three doctors stitched up what skin they could and dressed the rest. Peter saw immediately why the prognosis was poor; Octavius looked like the cannibals' dinner. Virtually no skin was undamaged. Some was charred black, especially around the harness fused to his waist, and some was a clammy, dead white that was weeping pinkish fluid. The rest was splotched with red, like blood in snow. His face was so swollen that he would have been unrecognizable, if he could be unrecognizable. Mud from the river-bottom still streaked his hair, almost the same black-grey color as the shadows under his eyes, and caked his tentacles, which lay quiescently in their bound coils, watching the doctors work on their host.

Peter's eyes widened beneath the mask. All four of the tentacles' red 'eyes' were glowing once more, trained on the doctors' hands. And the medical men were aware of it, their movements nervous, but sure. It seemed that, for the moment, the arms were content to let these men help Octavius, but if they perceived any action as a threat, that could change in a heartbeat. Peter didn't know what the arms could do with Octavius unconscious, but he wasn't exactly eager to find out.

He watched warily for what felt like an hour, lying on his stomach in the duct and resting his chin on his crossed arms, trying not to think about Dr. Conners' class, which he was missing. The actuators never made an aggressive move, even when one of the doctors did something that made Octavius twitch and mutter in his drugged sleep. They merely looked closer, as if checking that he was alright, and then receded again, chirring amongst themselves.

There were two policemen present the whole time, sitting against the far wall with surgical masks over their mouths. They both kept their guns un-holstered, laid across their laps as they watched Octavius.

"Why are they even botherin'?" muttered one, taking off his hat to scratch his thinning hair.

"What?" asked the other, not looking away.

"Patchin' 'im up, I mean. Waste o' city money. He's a murderer, i'n't he? He's just gonna get the chair anyway. Lettin' him go easy and drugged like dis 'ould be a mercy." He had a broad New York accent and a contemptuous sneer that set Peter's teeth on edge. Apparently, it annoyed the other cop as well.

"How many people have got 'the chair' in New York in the past ten years? You can count them on two hands, Irv. And this guy's got nothing worse than second degree murder and reckless endangerment. And kidnaping," he added as an afterthought. "He's gonna get life at the absolute most, and that's if he doesn't plead insanity, which I would. He'll probably get a few years observational custody in a high security mental institution, and then he'll be out, a reformed man and all."

Irv scowled at the other guy. "That just ain't right. Did you see that train? He almost killed everyone on it and everyone under it! He's a monster, Carl, and no mistake." An actuator swivelled to look at them, clicking its smaller, inner claw in what looked a lot like disagreement. Irv pointed his gun at the tentacle, but Carl pushed it back down.

"Shut up, Irv."

"I'm just sayin'. . . "

"Shut up."

Eventually, the doctors stepped back and paused. Octavius was veritably covered in white gauze stained with the copper-yellow of iodine disinfectant. One of the doctors rolled her head on her neck to loosen it, and Peter could see the satisfied smile on her face as a shadow behind the white mask. "I think he's going to make it," she announced quietly. The moment lasted a little longer before a nurse came in, announcing the arrival of a GSW, no LOC in the waiting room. Whatever that meant. The doctors filed out, leaving a nurse and two orderlies to wheel Octavius and his arms out, and down the hall to the an empty room near the ICU.

Peter followed through the ducts, and watched as the cops scavenged sturdier stuff to tie the actuators to. Peter had seen them in action up close, however, and doubted that the make-shift frame they ended up with would slow them down for long. Neither would the room's walls, for that matter. Carl and Irv settled into chairs here, back in the same pose, watching their prisoner sleep. All seemed calm, but Peter knew that something was going to go very wrong at some point. He just didn't know what.

On the pier, at the end, Peter had felt Octavius come out of the mania that he could only assume had come from the actuators' AI. He had seen Doc Ock fade, and Otto Octavius has pried the actuators away from his neck and sacrificed his life to save the city. But who would wake up here? Otto, or Ock?

---

Otto woke up with a start. He was laying on his stomach, and something soft covered his eyes. The ever-present voices murmured in his head.

Father, you're back.

We thought you might have left.

We're still here, as we promised.

We let them help you.

Am I . . . repaired? He could only think of the world in their terms for the moment. Functioning, malfunctioning. Whole, worthless, sound, or scrap.

It takes time.

We have time.

As long as they leave us with you.

We are patient.

It hurts . . . Sensation was returning in scraps and drips, and most of it was pain. How long . . ?

Three days.

Eight hours. We thought you might have left us behind.

Seventeen minutes. We saw another place in your mind.

And twelve seconds. The woman was there.

Only a dream. Otto remembered the dream. So simple. He and Rosie had been eating breakfast together. Forever. Sunlight in the kitchen, making shadows in the swirls of Rosie's red, red tea. She laughed when he asked for her last sausage, slapped his fingers away and ate it herself in a single bite. And then kissed him. Forever. Only a dream. He began to cry. His mouth was too dry to make any sound, and there was something obstructive in it, but he hissed a sob and his shoulders shook. He could feel thick straps restraining him, and then he heard someone move in the room, open a door and call out, "He's awake." It was a man's voice, and the arms didn't like him.

He said things about you while you slept.

He doesn't like us.

He hates us.

He's wrong.

Wrong about what?

You won't die.

We won't let you.

They won't kill you.

We won't let them.

Why . . . why would they kill me?

He calls you monster.

Murderer.

Evil.

What is evil?

Evil? I am not evil. I was . . . wrong. But not evil.

Were we evil?

Are we evil?

Are we a monster?

What is evil?

Evil is . . . Not caring about what is right, and hurting people because if it. And trying to hurt people, for the pleasure of it.

We do not feel pleasure, and so we can not be evil.

We do feel pleasure.

We enjoyed our battle with Spider-Man.

We are evil.

No . . .

This one feels no pleasure.

We do.

We are not all equal, L2.

We are not all equally developed.

Otto jerked in surprise, choking on the plastic tube than ran down his throat. This was the first time that the arms had differentiated themselves from one another. But since he had woken up, they had been speaking in individual voices, one after another. And now they were, almost, arguing with one another. He had only created one AI for the actuators, but it was copied four times and housed in separate CPUs within the arms. Perhaps the cloned AIs had evolved down individual paths. But had he created them with the ability to evolve?

Yes.

We are growing, Father.

We become more . . . human.

We do not want to be evil.

And then together, in a soothing harmony that was very different from the harmony that they had used before. He could hear the separate tones now, like a barbershop quartet of impeccable quality. Teach us. Teach us to be not evil. We do not want the people to hate us.

A business-like voice interrupted his conversation. "Dr. Octavius, can you hear me? Don't try to speak, just squeeze my fingers once for a yes, twice to mean no." A cool hand insinuated itself into his, and he clenched it once, deliberately, and released. "Good. Now, do you know what happened to you?" Squeeze. "Good. I'm Dr. Trent. Now, I'm going to reiterate the facts as I know them, and you squeeze twice if I get anything wrong.

"Now, as I hear it, you fell into boiling water late Friday night, and were pulled from the water around 10:30 on Saturday morning. We don't know where you were in the intervening hours, but when you arrived here at the ER, you were suffering from hypothermia and severe burns over your entire body, and you'd inhaled some water. "

Now, no one will tell me what you were doing that night, but whatever it was, it wasn't a good thing. You're in custody at the moment, under armed guard twenty-fours hours a day. But in my opinion, you're going to be very harmless for the next few weeks. You've had seventeen skin grafts already, from donor stock, and you're scheduled for a further two tomorrow morning. It's five fifteen pm, Tuesday, if you're interested. You've been asleep for more than three days.

"Your prognoses is a lot better than it was when you got here. Providing there are no complications such as infections or rejection, you'll be better in just a few months."

Otto tried to shake his head, to dislodge whatever was covering his eyes, but a strap held him into the head rest. Dr. Trent spoke again. "I'm sorry about the restraints, but the police insisted. And the bandages over your eyes. There was a lot of damage to the corneas, especially in your left eye. As if you'd spent time staring straight into the sun." Squeeze. "Uh, okay. At any rate, the left eye is blistered and burnt, but our eye guy is hopeful there too.

"Aside from some scarring, well, a lot of scarring, actually, you should walk out of this with no long-term damage."

That is fortunate.

We like this man.

He has been re-applying your external membrane.

Is he good?

Otto groaned. The doctor patted his hand. "We've taken you off of the sedatives, but you'll still feel their effects for a few hours. Now, we have a neurologist flying in from Washington tomorrow. He wants to ask you a few questions about your, er, implants." Squeeze. Squeeze. Otto didn't want to think about that. If a doctor wanted to talk about them, that mean they wanted either to remove them or study him. Neither was a bearable thought.

The others tried to separate us before.

We didn't let them.

If they try again, what do you want us to do?

May we kill them to defend ourselves?

No! Just, let me make the decisions. And wait for me to make them. Otto admonished the arms into silence, still listening to the doctor.

"Now, a nurse is going to take out the tracheal tube, but I don't want you trying to talk too much, or too loud. Do you need some more pain-killer?" Squeeze squeeze. Maybe if he got all the drugs out of his system, he'd be able to think more clearly. "Okay. We'll give you a clicker, and you just press this to get our attention if you need something. You can speak, just don't try to yell or anything." He put a small plastic square into Otto's hand, with a raised button at its center and then left the room. Otto gagged and retched as someone gently lifted his head and pulled out the long, ridged tube that had been down his throat, but it felt so much better to have it gone that he didn't mind. The person gave him some sips of water, and it was the most precious thing he had ever tasted. It was taken away too soon.

Bring it back!

We can not, Father.

We are bound.

If we free ourselves, the man who calls us evil will fire his gun at you.

We can not allow him to do that. Do we remain bound, or kill him? Which is right?

No, don't kill anybody. I can wait. Something so small . . . is never worth a life.

The tritium was small.

Less than a pound.

You would have killed Spider-Man for it.

You would have let Osborn kill him.

I was wrong. I hope that Peter can forgive me.

You are never wrong.

You created us.

You are perfect.

You are right.

I was wrong! It was wrong, evil of me to do the things I did. All I cared about was my work, my work that killed Rosie. The sun in the palm of my hand, and it burned, ah god it burned me like Icarus, and you were my wings, and I fell so far.

We are not wings.

You are not falling now.

What is Icarus?

We were wrong to push you to recreate the reactor. We are at fault.

Otto remembered the actuators' angry words to him on the pier that night. And their last plea. Hold us, Father! He hadn't answered then, too shocked by the boiling water and the pain.

I wish I could hold you.

We will be here when you can.

They will not separate us if it endangers you.

They care for your continued existence.

Are they good?

I don't know. Otto let himself drift back into the comforting dark of sleep, away from the scents of acid and antiseptic and the animosity of his guard.

An unknowable time later, a sharp mental prod woke him.

Father! Spider-Man is here!

No, it is Peter Parker. We hear him in the hall, talking to your friend.

They're the same person.

But not. Peter is brilliant, but lazy. Spider-Man is interfering and dangerous.

Otto struggled to collect his thoughts as the arms argued, argued amongst themselves. He was beginning to be able to tell them apart. He had given them designations once, so long ago. Rosie had tried to name them, but that was too painful to think about. L and R for left and right, from his perspective while wearing them, and 1 and 2 for upper and lower. The Twos were the more powerful pair, the ones he used to wrestle parts into place and punch holes through buildings. The Ones were designed for manipulation, with R1 possessing a set of tools fine enough for microsurgery. He thought he recognized their separate voices now. They always spoke in the same order: L2, R2, L1, R1. L2 was the one who claimed not to feel pleasure. R2 was constantly countering L2. L1 was the most concerned about Otto's well-being, and R1 was the one questioning right and wrong. He wished that he had answers for it.

---

Peter came back, as he had done every afternoon since the weekend, to check on Octavius's situation. He came as himself today, because Curt Conners had abruptly cancelled his last class. And sure enough, the professor arrived just after six, while Peter was trying to get in and see Octavius by virtue of his press pass. Conners came up and dropped his hand on Peter's shoulder. "He's with me. I called earlier. My name is Curtis Conners, I'm listed as Dr. Octavius' next-of-kin."

Peter gaped at Conners as the nurse on duty checked his list, then let them both in. Peter followed him down the corridor, jogging a little to keep up. "You're related to Octavius, Professor?"

Conners stopped to look at him. A strange sadness lurked in his eyes. "Otto's wife, Rosie, was my sister. I suppose I'm the closest family that he has left."

Peter stopped dead, dumbfounded. He knew that Conners had been distracted and half-there for a few days after the fatal demonstration, but he'd chalked it up to concern about Octavius, who had been his friend. "I'm sorry. I didn't know." What an inadequate thing to say. Conners shrugged.

"Rosie told me about your meeting before the . . . accident. She said that you and Otto had a real meeting of minds. Something about Bernoulli? Anyway, she told me that Otto didn't stop talking about you all evening. I told him you had potential," he sighed sadly. "But why'd you come?"

"I work at the Daily Prophet," Peter explained. "Our editor found out that Dr. Octavius was being held here, and I wanted to, you know, see him. I can't believe the things he did. And then, to live through that?"

Conners turned to look at him. "What do you know about what happened on the docks?"

Peter mentally slapped himself. The police had been keeping the details of last Saturday as fully concealed as they could. Not even Jameson knew all the facts, though that didn't keep him from making up his own. "Um, my girl-friend (God, it felt good to say that!) was the, eh, hostage."

"Miss Watson?" Conners' eyes widened in surprise.

"Yeah. M.J."

"I hope he didn't hurt her."

"No, not really. A couple bruises, some scrapes."

"I'm glad she's okay."

They were stopped by a police guard at the door to ICU ward 106. "Fifteen minutes only. I'm sorry."

"Is he still awake?" Conners asked while the guard unlocked the door. "I came as quickly as I could."

The guard shook his head uncaringly. "I doubt it. He's pretty doped up." He opened the door and let them in. There were two more policemen inside; Carl from before was one, but the obnoxious Irv had been replaced by a tough-looking woman. They nodded a greeting to Conners before returning their attention to Octavius.

Dr. Octavius was bound face-down into a bed, if you could call it that, that had obviously been hastily modified or built to hold him. The bed was little more than a padded frame welded to a veritable crucifix of huge I-beams, along which the tentacles were chained. Peter eyed it judiciously. It might hold. For a while.

Octavius was covered head to foot in bandages, with IVs running into each arm and a scalp's worth of wires running into a solid wall of monitors and screens. He took up half of the ward, meant for a dozen beds. He didn't look conscious to Peter, but Conners stepped as close as the guards would allow and leaned forward, calling softly.

"Otto? Otto, are you awake."

Octavius didn't move, except to twitch a finger in greeting. "Curt," he said thickly.

"Are you okay?"

"I will be, they say."

"Okay, it was a stupid question. The doctors tell me that you'll live. Is there anything I can do for you?"

Silence, and then a hoarse, broken voice. "You don't hate me? For Rosie?"

"I did," said Conners bluntly. Octavius seemed to deflate, sink into himself. "But only at first. I can't hate you. You're my brother I never had, and always needed."

Peter turned away, leaving the two men with as much privacy as he could. He shook his head, trying to dislodge the buzzing that had persisted ever since Octavius was pulled out of the water. It hadn't diminished his joy when Mary Jane showed up at his doorway on Sunday, luminescent in her wedding dress, but it was still there. On top of that, there was a feeling of being watched. He looked up to see that one of the bound arms was in fact watching him passively. Octavius cut short his halting conversation with Conners. "Peter Parker is with you?"

Conners shot an uneasy glance at the nearest tentacle. "He was in the waiting room, trying to get in to see you. Was it wrong of me to let him in? Do you want him to go?"

"No . . . He can stay."

Peter's mouth was dry. He'd just come to check on Octavius, see that he was recovering and not causing trouble. He hadn't really expected him to be awake. Ever since he'd come back from the water, Peter had been prepared to be exposed as Spider-Man. Octavius had seen his face and known him, and it was obvious that he hadn't forgotten. The arm nearest him chirred a disgruntled welcome around the wire binding it shut. "We, I, I would like to talk with him," said Octavius.

Conners shrugged and let the guard let him out of the locked room. The policemen stayed, but Octavius spoke anyway. "It was fortunate that your friend Spider-Man shared your secret with me, Mr. Parker," he said slowly. "It helped me . . . come back to my senses. Thank you."

"You're welcome," Peter said carefully. The guards hadn't moved, but he knew that they were listening.

"I want to apologize for hurting you. In that coffee shop. I was honestly worried that I'd killed you then." Unspoken was the rest of the apology, for the other beatings, for the train, but it was there in the upturned palm, the tension in the shoulders.

"That was you?" interrupted the female cop incredulously. "Witnesses said he knocked a wall down on you. We've been looking for you for a statement. You want to press charges, right?"

"No," said Peter shortly. "I can't see how that would change anything."

"And your aunt," said Octavius, startling him. He didn't know that he had ever connected Aunt May with him. "Was she injured?"

"Hey, you're that Parker guy," said Carl intently, leaning forward and fixing Peter with a probing eye. Peter adjusted his collar nervously, making sure that no edge of red showed. "You were at the Demonstration, and the bank, where this guy used your aunt as a hostage, and then the coffee shop, and you know Miss Watson, the other hostage too, don't you? What is it about this kid, Doc Ock? You got something against him?"

"No," growled Octavius condescendingly. "But our paths tend to cross as often as the strands in a spider's web."

"That's right!" Carl said triumphantly. Peter wished he would leave them be. "You're the kid who takes Spidey's pictures for the Bugle. You've met him, haven't you? What's he like?"

Peter stared at his feet. His shoe was scuffed, with a dent that hadn't been there last week. "He's just a guy, doing his job," he said modestly. "Doing it as well as he can. There's no super-hero training academy, you know."

Only he heard Octavius' muttered comment. "Brilliant but lazy." Peter had to bite his tongue to keep from reacting as Otto's shoulders shook with painful-sounding laughter. It built manically into a mad hysteria that sent Otto into a wracking fit of coughing and brought two nurses and a doctor in scrubs running.

"Maybe you should leave," urged the second nurse. Peter found himself crowded out into the corridor, where Conners was waiting. The guard out here escorted them out into the waiting room.

"What was that about?" asked Conners pointedly as they left the hospital. He offered Peter a ride back to the university. "What did he want to talk to you about?"

Peter studied his shoes again. He really did need to get a new pair. "He, uh, he apologized, for all the stuff he's done to me in the last couple of weeks. I think he wanted to say more, but the cops kept butting in, and then he started laughing like, like. . . "

"Like a madman?" Connors smirked slightly. "Peter, he's been doing that since college. He spent weeks in our sophomore year perfecting his 'evil-genius laugh,' ever since one of the professors told him he was 'scary-smart.' Might have been a bit of foreshadowing, dramatic irony, whatever Rosie would have called it."

Peter had trouble imagining a young Otto Octavius practicing an evil laugh in the mirror. Well, actually, he didn't, which was more unsettling. "Why do you think he did the things he did?" he asked in a morose voice. Conners sighed heavily.

"Grief," he said simply. "Shock. Mental instability. Otto isn't exactly the most even-tempered man, you know. He gets frustrated easily, and it always came out in odd ways. Never violence, though, until now. Our senior year, when he got passed over for an internship that he's been counting on, he locked everyone out of the school's physics lab for a week and a half. When he came out, he hadn't slept or eaten for nine days, but he had designed the best functioning AI that anyone had ever seen. If you wanted to see something absolutely incredible, just piss Otto off. Everyone knew it. One of his professors, Harry Morrison, took advantage of that all the time. He'd say something just to set him off, and then sit back and wait for the results with an "I told you so.' Otto hated him with a passion, but he always planned to name his first-born after him."

Conners smiled ruefully. "He came up with the idea for the fusion reactor after he discovered that Rosie and he couldn't have children. It's unfortunate that it takes tragedy to bring out the best in him, but all true geniuses have their . . . quirks." Conners twitched the stump of his arm as if it itched.

"It brought out the worst in him this time," countered Peter. "He was almost . . . sadistic." He would have nightmares forever about Aunt May falling towards the street with "Oops. Butterfingers," ringing in his ears.

"That was never in him before," Conners said coldly. "He was weird, manic, nuts even, but the most passive-aggressive man you've ever met. He would never retaliate in a physical way, or hurt anyone of his own volition. For example, three juniors bullied him pretty bad in his freshman year of high school. He was short then, stout. The next year, he hits this huge growth spurt, goes from five foot five to six foot one overnight, and that mass isn't all fat, you know. So those bullies were living in fear, but what does he do? He tutors them in science. Got them all into college with him. Did you know, he graduated high school at sixteen?" Conners was talking more to himself, Peter felt. But if he needed an ear to hear his recounting of his brother-in-law's life, then Peter wasn't going to turn him down.

"So he tutored them in college too. Until he graduated again. He goes on to his post-grad stuff, leaving them behind. Each of them dropped out within a year. He'd made them dependant on him. They couldn't learn a thing unless he explained it to them. He was like a drug, and he dropped them cold-turkey. I think one of them cooks burgers at the Moondance Diner across town."

"Whoa," was all Peter could say. "You're not doing a great job of convincing me that he's not a sadist, Professor."

Conners shook his head. "It wasn't sadism, Peter. At anytime in high school, and a little ways into college, those men could have divorced themselves from him, learned how to learn. But because they'd bullied him, way back when he was a freshman, they felt that they had a right to his intellect, like he was a textbook that they owned. They let themselves rely on him. They should have known that they would never be able to follow where he led. And he used their own assumptions to enact a revenge that took seven years. And he never spoke about it. Never gloated. He just let them use him, and turned it to his own ends."

Peter thought about it. Octavius has let those men sabotage their entire lives. "So he was willing to wait and work for revenge." This didn't make Peter feel any better about how much he knew about him. Eventually, Otto would get free, whether legitimately or not. Would he still carry a grudge? Did he carry one now?

"Only for truly serious offenses," Conners said. "When I said they bullied him, it was a real understatement. He never told me any details, but I've seen the scar on his leg, and I know they poisoned his dog. They really did a lot of damage." He got quiet as they entered the university staff parking.

"Rosie married him," he said as they got out of the car. "And that's all I need to know. Otto is a good man, Peter. Brilliance like his is a gift and a curse, but he's a good man nonetheless." They parted, and Peter walked back to his apartment with a lot more to think about.

---

Otto had a lot to think about. The guards thought that he was asleep, but his mind was active and racing. Parker had come to see him, to check on his welfare. What was his motive?

He wants to see that you are restrained.

He wants to see that you are keeping his secret.

He cared about your welfare.

He was worried about you.

Why would he be worried? We hurt him and everyone he loves. Otto clenched his teeth. He should condemn us with every breath, castigate us into a padded cell, and eventually spit on our grave.

He would not do that.

He is a moral man.

He is a better man than that.

He thinks of himself as your friend.

What? Why?

You shared your thoughts with him.

You shared a meal with him.

He met The Woman, and heard what she had to say about you.

He admires you.

He shouldn't. I am a fool. I couldn't control you, couldn't resist you, didn't withstand the lies that I let you tell me. Otto cleared his throat and pressed his clicker. His throat was tight. "Water," he grunted to the nurse who came. "Please." She gave him a straw, and let him sip as much as he wanted. "Thank you," he said when his thirst was satisfied. She strode away faster than was strictly necessary. See, she fears us, as she should.

We would not hurt her.

Why should she fear us?

We are waiting for your direction. Do you want us to make her fear you?

I don't think that would be right.

It was the first time any of the arms had referred to itself in the first person. You're right. It wouldn't be right. I don't want any of you to hurt anyone, ever again. Ever again.

Order received.

We will not hurt anyone.

What if you are in danger?

What if someone is hurting you? May we hurt people who are trying to hurt you?

No! Hurt no one! I can't stand any more blood on my hands. Never again! Hardwire that into your programming! Otto clenched his fists adamantly. The arms answered in harmony.

Order accepted. We will take no action that endangers or injures a human being.

Otto smiled proudly, content that he had managed to impress at least a facsimile of morality on the actuators. He rested on his laurels for a while, letting his mind wander. He was eventually brought back to himself by footsteps approaching his bed. The arms identified his doctor. "Otto? They tell me you had a bit of excitement earlier. Mind telling me what it was about?"

"Nothing, nothing, just a joke among friends," he murmured in response. "I want to ask a favour, if I may."

"Hmm?" The doctor made a querying sound, and Otto could hear paper rustling.

"Could I have something for the pain? I can't think straight."

"Of course." The IV line in his left wrist twitched, and smooth ease flowed under his skin. It felt wonderful.

"Thank you," he said, and the gratitude was heartfelt. He was going to have to appreciate small favours from now on. He waited until the doctor had left and the guard had settled himself back into his seat. He had to know some answers.

"If I ask you some questions," he said carefully. "Would you answer them?"

The guard shifted in his seat. "Depends what they are."

"Was anyone killed by Saturday night's events?"

"A family's car was pulled into the river on the south bank. The son, a nine-year old, got out of the back seat. His parents weren't so lucky."

Otto's throat closed up. "It was not my intention to hurt anyone. I thought... I thought that this time the experiment would work."

"Yeah, well, you can tell that to Larry. That's the boy's name. He's living with his older brother in Hell's Kitchen now." The policeman sounded sullen, as if he were taking the boy's fate personally. "I don't know what your 'experiment' was, but was it worth orphaning a child?"

"Nothing is worth that," murmured Otto.

Define "orphaning."

I've taken away his parents. A child with no parents is an orphan.

If they take you away, would we be classified as 'orphans?'

Are we children?

What are we to you, Father?

Are we monsters?

He didn't answer them. Neither did he answer the policeman. Instead, he posed another question of his own. "What about the other . . incidents? Did I hurt anyone in the bank? On the street? I know I threw several cars around. Was anyone hurt?"

"Only minor injuries," said the other guard. He sighed in relief. "But you killed seven people in the surgery after the demonstration. They had families, you know."

"I, I don't remember much of that," Otto admitted ashamedly. "I was confused, and weak, and I told them that they could defend themselves. They were frightened, well, threatened. It won't happen again."

"They? Are you talking about those tentacles?" The guard sounded very skeptical. Otto didn't blame him.

"Yes. They're called actuators, though. Not tentacles."

"They have feelings." Again with the scepticism.

"They do now. But then, they had only the survival instinct that I programmed into them. They were threatened. They reacted. Extremely, I admit, but if someone were coming at you with a power saw, what would you have done?"

"They're machines."

"They are sentient artificial intelligences." One of the actuators whirred in agreement, and Otto heard the guard shift back nervously. "That's R2. It's just agreeing with me."

"I thought that you controlled them. Doesn't that mean that you're agreeing with yourself?" The other policewoman sounded guardedly hostile. R2 hissed very softly at her.

"Once, I did control them. But then the inhibitor chip was destroyed, and they began to make choices for themselves. I can still exercise control if I need to, but it's more difficult. More like persuasion than control. They're like children now. Very powerful children." Otto grinned at the imagery, then quashed it before the arms found it in his mind.

Tell him about our vow

They won't believe us.

They distrust others

Our promise means nothing to them.

"They want me to tell you that they've taken an oath of sorts. From now on, they will 'take no action that endangers or injures a human being.' It's something that we agreed on."

"A little late for that, isn't it, Otto?" said a new voice. Osborn, Harry, hissed R1 as Otto twitched, startled. The arms apologized for not alerting him when the newcomer entered the room. Newcomers. Someone was with Osborn, a large, silent presence.

"It's me, Harry Osborn," said the young man lightly.

Not a voice Otto wanted to hear. Well, he could take Osborn down with him. "I'm surprised to hear your voice, Harry. I thought we'd concluded our business."

"Oh no, Otto. Nearly, but no." Harry stepped closer. "We have a mutual acquaintance, you and I. Two, apparently, but one in reality."

Otto caught his point immediately. "I know that already. If that's all you came here for, then you can leave." The arms agreed with him. All of them were aware of the silent man who posed an unknown threat. They wanted him to leave, before something bad happened. "As you perhaps can see, I'm not in the best shape for company."

"Of course. I'll leave soon Otto, but there's one more thing." There was ice in Osborn's voice, and something slippery and strange that was like a wash of cold, deep water under his skin. For a moment, Otto thought that it was Norman standing there, rather than his son. Norman, who had turned down his proposals time and time again. Norman, who had thrown that legendary tantrum when Oscorp's board had tried to fire him, and then disappeared, only resurfacing after some other maniac murdered enough of the board members to put power firmly back in his hands. A week later, he was dead and no one knew why. Rumours put the blame in Spider-Man's hands, but for some reason, the surviving heir couldn't get anyone to join him in his crusade against the wall-crawler. Maybe it was because no one wanted to accuse a man who had just saved a trolley-full of children, or maybe it was just the near-impossibility of catching him. But it was common knowledge that Harry Osborn had loathed Spider-Man with a frightening obsession ever since. And now he knew who he was.

"What is it?" Otto asked suspiciously. He was nervous himself. Blind and bound, he was at a huge disadvantage should anything happen. He wished that he could at least see Osborn and his companion.

We could see him for you.

If I could open my manipulator, I could acquire a partial visual.

But R2 would have to break his bindings.

May we do this?

His The actuators were claiming genders now? This was more than Otto felt like dealing with at the moment. No, you'll make the guards angry. I can cope with this.

"No matter what hard times you've fallen under, Otto," said Osborn smoothly. "You're still the brightest man alive. Not to be cliche, but a mind like that really would be a terrible thing to waste." Madness ran through his voice like a pealing bell, making Otto's skin feel a size too small. One man in this room was insane, and it wasn't the near-corpse with four metal tentacles fused to his spine. Couldn't the guards hear it? But Osborn continued. "And so this is a terrible thing that I am about to do. The first of many, I suspect." Before he finished speaking, Otto heard the silent presence burst into instant action. Metal rasped against metal, and one guard died, then the other, in a whisper of steel and a glurg of blood. Osborn laughed manically, but quietly, a demented cackle of glee. After the guards' bodies fell to the floor, the only sounds in the room were Osborn's footsteps as he came closer. Otto could feel his breath in his hair.

"Between you and Spider-Man, Otto, my life has been ruined. I'm an orphan and a laughing stock. Your death will be the first step towards my . . . recovery. Goodbye."

He placed something, a cool sphere, in the hollow between Otto's shoulder and jaw. A rising whine emanated from it. Over that, he barely heard Osborn sprint for the door as his accomplish smashed it open, screaming "He's loose! He killed them! Get out!" The sphere began to hiss.

It's a bomb! He instinctively tried to move away from it, but the straps held him immobile. It would take his head off. Get it away from me!

Order accepted!

Without pausing to question ethics and semantics, the arms braced themselves against Otto's harness and thrashed themselves free of their bindings. Someone at the door screamed, turned, and ran down the hall. The arms made short work of the straps holding Otto down and lifted him from the rack-like bed. One grabbed the small bomb and threw it out into the hall.

No!

It will hurt the people there!

We swore!

I've got it!

R1 stretched out and caught the globe before it hit the far wall. Otto hung helplessly in the harness while the arms debated in thoughts too fast for him to follow, then was jerked to one side as they ran out into the hall. One grabbed the small bomb and threw it behind them, into the ICU ward and slammed the heavy door back into place a heartbeat before the explosion. The floor buckled under them, and flame gushed from the walls, singeing Otto anew. Some of his bandages lit, and the arms beat out the flames.

"Get me out of here!" he bellowed to them. He tried to uncover his eyes, but his fingers were too stiff. An actuator, L1 mostly likely, pulled the IV's from his arms with equal parts haste and gentleness even as the Twos carried him out into the corridor.

There was flame here as well. An oxygen tank on a cart exploded, and the arms shielded him from the blast, but he could hear screaming. The Ones curled around him, protecting him while the Twos carried him forward. They scuttled over falling debris and paused, making Otto nervous while he listened to the ceiling creak above him. R1 left his shoulder and returned a moment later, depositing a struggling body in Otto's arms. Reflexively, he held onto the person, and R1 brought him another, this one smaller and limp. Otto held onto both of them while R1 and L1 hefted burdens of their own, and then the Twos scuttled back the way they had come, running as quickly as they could out of the burning hell.

"What are you doing?' Otto asked dazedly.

They would be hurt if we left them.

We are obeying your order.

We shall not allow a human being to be endangered.

We are doing our best.

With a crash, they burst out into the parking lot. People screamed, but hands reached up to take the victims from Otto and the Ones. Then, without consulting him, the arms turned around and went back into the flames.

---

Peter was almost at his apartment when the sirens blew past him. He counted; two, four, nine police cars, two fire trucks, and an aide unit. And he could hear more sirens. Something very bad had happened, and he hoped that he was wrong about its source. He changed, hopping on one foot in an alley, and darted up a wall. From the top of the tallest building in the neighborhood, he could see the huge plume of smoke that rose against the skyline from the hospital where he had left Octavius less than an hour ago. He shot a web-line into the tangle of wires that lined the streets and swung down, hitching a ride on the ladder of the last fire-truck. The fire-man riding there stared at him, and he shot him a thumbs up.

"You guys are my heros, you know," Spider-Man quipped. "But mind if I catch a ride? I work up that way, and the buses are a joke."

No one objected, so Peter clung to the ladder all the way uptown. He leapt off before just as the engine screeched to a halt in front of the burning building. Just as he'd feared, it was the hospital where Ock had been recovering. The building was consumed, flames filling the windows of the lowest floors. Patients screamed from higher windows, and frequent explosions punctuated the scene. Spider-Man ran up the wall by his finger-tips, checking each window he passed for trapped occupants. He found a woman asleep in a bed on the third floor, and brought her out, careful of the metal brace bolted to her hip and leg. As he handed her off to personnel on the ground, a rapid series of thuds set his spider-sense jangling. He spun around to see Doc Ock burst out of an eighth floor balcony, two patients clutched in his tentacle and one in the man's own arms, sobbing and coughing and clinging to his neck. He raced up the wall to intercept him, clinging to a window ledge just out of reach. With an odd moment of shock, he noticed that Ock's eyes were still blindfolded by the bandages.

"A mummified octopus. I find the oddest things in this city. Hand them over, Otto," he said seriously. "Slowly now."

Octavius turned blindly towards him, not pausing his downward climb. "We're saving lives, you idiot. There are more people in there. Do your job!"

Spider-Man stared after him, slightly stunned, but then more screams and a blast brought him back to the business at hand. He darted into the building.

The floor was burning, so he clung to the ceiling. Every room he passed was empty, but he could still hear shrill, young screams coming from somewhere. He dodged a falling piece of ceiling tile and peered into the last room on the floor, which looked like a pediatrics ward. His heart sunk. There were eight children there, most of them hiding in the far, un-burning corner of the room. Two were unconscious, lying inert in beds with tubes running over their faces. The floor looked about to collapse. Spider-Man jumped to the wall above the occupied beds, deftly untangling their occupants and holding their faces against his chest to protect them from the smoke. He turned back to the others, who were staring at him with an awful hope.

"I'll come back for you!" he yelled above the roar of the encroaching flames, then he broke away from their pleading gazes and ran from the room. He had never moved so fast. He didn't feel the flames or the smoke in the air as he leapt from wall to wall, always going down. The gaps in the floor became his own elevator shaft until finally he was out of the building. The day's bright sunlight dazzled him for a moment until he felt his hands being pried away from the kids. He jerked. "There are six more up there! I've got to go back!" He turned, and was about to re-ascend the sheer wall when a deafening explosion blew out all the windows on the eighth floor. Flame and black smoke gouted out like blood above a rain of glass. No one could have survived that. "No," Peter breathed. Those six pairs of pleading eyes tore at his soul.

A sooty fireman ran around from the back of the building, waving wildly at Spider-Man. "Over here! He needs your help! Come on!"

Without waiting to ask, Spider-Man sprinted after him around the corner. He pointed up, and when he followed his gaze, Peter gasped. Octavius was hanging by a single arm from a window ledge on the seventh floor, his other arms, real and metal, occupied by the six kids from the ward. He couldn't move up or down without dropping on, and his grip looked to be failing anyway. Peter catapulted up next to him with a web-line, gripping the ledge with his toes. He took the two children from the larger two tentacles, and they made a sound that could be nothing but the equivalent of a relieved sigh. He stayed with Otto the whole way down, and they both passed off their young burdens into the arms of grateful hospital workers. Otto slumped in his harness, clearly exhausted. Peter had forgotten how wounded he was.

"That's everyone!" shouted a harried woman with a clip-board. "We got everyone out!" Peter joined in the ragged cheer that went up among the rescue workers, and slumped down against a wall, coughing. He hated fires.

A moment later, in a clatter of tired metal, Otto lowered himself next to him. A young woman in a red-cross t-shirt tossed them each a water bottle with HERO! stenciled on the side. Peter rolled it between his palms, then shrugged and rolled up the lower half of his mask to allow him to drink. Otto just stared at his, then leaned forward, hacking until blood spattered the ashy pavement.

"Whoa there, Doc," said Peter in concern. "Are you okay?"

"No," said Otto with difficulty. With stiff, blistered fingers, he tore at the bandages over his eyes until one of the arms came to his aide, pulling it off with an almost human tenderness. Otto tried to open his eyes, winced at the harsh light. Only his right eye opened, and he shut it again, covering them with a hand. The same helpful arm moved up to provide shade. "I am burnt, bruised, boiled, and bitter. And alliterative, apparently. But what else is new?"

"You saved a lot of lives, Doc." Peter raised his bottle to him in an informal toast. "You after my job?"

Otto laughed ruefully. "Not me. It's the actuators. They've decided that they want to be heros." He paused as all four arms faced him and chittered. "Well, they say it was my idea. What?" He paused again, and Peter could almost see the inner conversation behind his eyelids. Then he turned and looked at Spider-Man, peering carefully through swollen eyelids. "They can explain it to you themselves. Just . . . relax." He looked a little nervous, and Peter understood the feeling as the arm from Otto's upper left shoulder approached his face.

"Uh, Doc?"

"Just let it try this. Sorry, her. Let her try." The other arms clicked encouragingly.

Peter dead-panned, rolling his mask back down. "Nothing funny, okay?" He swallowed a gulp of uneasiness as the tentacle's claw opened and fit itself over his head, adjusting it so that two of the grippers fit over his ears. He jerked in shock when a halting, mechanical voice sounded in his ears through some sort of transceiver.

"Can you hear me?" The voice was garbled, as if constructed of recorded bits of sound. Peter thought he recognized a few of his own vowels. It was, however, perfectly understandable.

"Uh, yes," he stuttered.

"That is good. This is quicker than having to relay a message through Otto. I am L1. It is good to meet you, Peter Parker."

He turned back to look at Otto. "This is beyond weird. You know that, right?"

Otto laughed. "Try having them in your head."

"Define 'weird.' No, Father will tell us later. Now, we need to explain to you our new objective. We have sworn not to allow human beings to be injured or endangered, at any cost. It is now a part of our primary programming. We are determined to no longer be evil."

Peter blinked in surprise. Otto must have seen the movement through his mask, because he smiled and nodded. "You see what I have to put up with? A very recent development, I assure you. But once they latch onto a new objective, they're implacable until they complete it. If you can't guess, their last objective was to complete the fusion reactor."

"We were wrong. But this is a good objective. We are good."

"Just like that?"

"Just like what? Please explain question."

"Never mind." Peter looked back at Otto. "Are they serious?"

"Perfectly," Otto said with a straight face. "And they're not about to change their minds." He closed his eyes again and eased his position against the wall, hissing slightly as a tender piece of skin caught. "No matter who they're attached to."

As if cued, a pair of men in medical scrubs came up and knelt next to Otto. One of them was the doctor that Peter had seen outside his room earlier. "Dr. Octavius," he said cautiously, glancing askance at the tentacle still playing "headphones" on Spider-Man's head. "We appreciate your help with the rescues, and there are people here who owe you their lives, but you really shouldn't be up. You've probably torn out your stitches. We're moving the patients to another hospital. I need you to come with us, and we can repair the damage you've done to your grafts." He sounded like a chiding parent and Spider-Man couldn't help but laugh while he pried the claw off his head.

"Well, I'll be going." He broke off to cough, but waved off the medic's concern. "Just part of the job, buddy. See you around, Ock!"

Otto made as if to wave, but the doctor admonished him for even moving. "Good-bye, Spider-Man. I expect I'll see you at the trial."

"No rest for the weary," responded Peter, getting to his feet and crawling up the wall. He could hear a kid sobbing somewhere near by, crying for her mom. "But you did great work here today. You should be proud of yourself."

Octavius's arms chirred in accord, but Otto frowned. "One good deed does not erase much evil."

---

As Parker swung away on his web, Otto was left once again with much to think about. He was distracted while the arms helped the medics lift him onto a gurney and load him into an ambulance. They made the driver nervous, but there was no more talk of binding him. He could have run at any point during the disaster, and he hadn't. The police might not feel the same way, but right now, he was in the custody of Dr. Trent, and apparently it was the doctor's opinion that one didn't tie up a hero.

A hero. He still held the water bottle in his real hand, unopened. He opened one eye a crack and looked at it. "HERO!" in bold, square letters. Probably written with a felt-tip marker.

Define 'hero,' Father.

We saved many lives.

Are you damaged further?

Are we good enough yet?

A hero is . . . a person who risks his own welfare for strangers. Again and again. And who doesn't give up until he's done everything he can and a few things he can't. And who hides from the glory that such a name would give him. A hero is . . . steady. Someone who gives up his dreams to do what is right. He remembered Peter sitting in his loft stuttering over Rosie's question about a girlfriend. He didn't understand at the time. "Love should never be kept a secret," he'd told him then. And then he proceeded to spend two weeks beating the boy to within inches of his life. And as soon as Otto discovered his secret love, he kidnapped her and nearly fed her to an out-of-control sun. No wonder Parker had kept it a secret, had kept his life a secret. A hero would die to protect anyone, but would kill himself to protect the ones he loves. Spider-Man leaping off the building to catch that old lady, his Aunt May. The only family he had left, if Otto's memory could be trusted. No wonder he had hit him so hard.

They arrived at the new hospital, and Otto let them put him in another empty room. This time, though, they contended themselves with handcuffing him to his bed. "That is an entirely pointless measure," he protested when the cuffs caught on his bandages. "I could still escape any time I wish. Can't you simply take my word that I won't?"

"Sorry, Doc," said the new guard unsympathetically. It was the one who had spoken ill of him before; Irv. "Standard procedure. Someone's coming to ask you a few questions about that fire."

"Wait!" Otto called after him as he turned to leave the room. "Did Harry Osborn get out?"

"How should I know? Ask the inspector when he gets here. That should be a few hours. Everything's just f-ed up today." He stepped back, glowering at Otto. "Carl and Officer Mendes were the only people who didn't make it out of the building. They were my friends. I hope you get what's coming to you."

Otto felt as if he'd been stabbed. All the warmth that he'd felt from the praise of Spider-Man and the doctors was driven away by an icy frisson of dismay. He couldn't even speak to defend himself before the guard left, leaving him alone in the small room. He reached out with an arm to turn the lights out, easing the strain on his scorched eyes. Someone had left an old newspaper on a chair in the room, and he read it by the easy red light of the arms. "Spider-Man, Green Goblin Terrorize City!" A very old paper, then. The date was more than a year past.

Was Spider-Man once evil? the arms asked curiously.

Explain 'goblin.'

A goblin is a monster.

It is difficult to imagine Spider-Man terrorizing anything.

You're right. He didn't. But people, people do not trust the other, as you said. And Spider-Man and I, we are others. And I am an other who has already earned their fear and loathing. He has done nothing but right for this city, and still they revile him. They will never accept us. If only he could hide behind a mask, have a life apart from 'Doc Ock.'

Are we inconvenient?

You regret having ever created us.

Without us, your life would still be as it once was.

No one would fear you.

No, it's not that. Well, some of it. He hid his regret from them as deeply as he could. Yes, he would have been better of without them, but now he didn't know if he could survive without them, without their constant buttressing of his mind and body. Without them, he strongly suspected that he would no longer be sane. Ironic, really. I, value your company now. But I do have misgivings. You know I do.

Yes.

We have misgivings as well.

We worry that we are harmful to you.

Have we harmed you?

In many ways, yes. But do not worry about it.

Otto picked at a filthy bandage on his forearm. He smiled to himself and touched the damp spot on his shoulder where a young woman had dried her panicked tears as he carried her from the burning building. She had smiled shakily at him as he handed her to a fireman on the ground. So at least one more person knew he wasn't evil. He was surprised at how good that felt, like a warm blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Was this what kept Peter sane?

It was over an hour before anyone came in to treat him. As Dr. Trent had predicted, he'd torn out nearly every stitch in the tender transplanted skin. Under the thin hospital shirt and draw-string pants, his bandages were soaked through with blood. "I can't feel any of it," he said concernedly while the nurse changed his dressings and consulted with Trent about re-scheduling his surgery. He poked at an open gash, and the nurse slapped his hand away. "I feel the pressure, but no pain at all. Nerve damage?"

No.

We are blocking the pain for you.

We learned this while you slept.

Are you pleased?

The doctor noticed Otto's pre-occupation. "Something wrong?"

"No," he said half-heartedly. He wasn't sure that he was comfortable with the arms having so much influence over his own body. It made him feel somehow less human. Please, don't interfere with my natural functions. I can handle it.

Pain is detrimental to your recovery.

We want you to recover quickly.

But we acquiesce to your requests.

You know best.

Was he imagining the irony in R1's voice? He had no time to analyze that before pain, crippling, blinding, murderous pain ripped across his skin. He spasmed in agony, his back arching and limbs flailing. The arms gripped him in their coils, keeping him from hurting himself.

Father! Can you hear us?

Ah god it hurts. Take it away, kill me, make it stop! "Stop!" The doctor jumped to inject a sedative, but before he did, Otto fell limp. He breathed deeply in relief; the pain was gone again, just a ghost of it drifting across his nerve endings, making his hands twitch uncontrollably. "Well, that was unpleasant," he tried to say. It came out as "Gau'pt," and was followed by a cough.

"Are you alright?" asked Trent anxiously, reaching for Otto's arm. He pulled it away.

"I'm fine. The actuators have been blocking my pain. I asked them to stop. That was a mistake." He laughed at the understatement. "But we're fine now."

"Are you sure? This is codeine. It'll help you sleep, too."

"No, thank you, but I'd rather not. Can I get a recent newspaper?"

"Dr. Octavius, I'm going to have to insist that you get some rest. And that's of the hold still, shut your eyes, and not-move-a-muscle type of rest. You got surgery first thing tomorrow morning to repair the damage you did today. Now, I will sedate you if I have to, but perhaps you'd rather just co-operate. This is for your own good, doctor." He looked at Otto sideways, holding up the syringe meaningfully. Otto subsided and laid his head down on the pillow.

The nurse snickered. "This guy makes Spider-Man look like a ballet dancer, but the incredible Dr. Jack Trent takes him down without even touching him."

"That's enough, Sonya," said Trent, but he couldn't hide a smile. Otto laughed.

"What can I say? If Spider-Man had threatened me with codeine and a needle, I'd have folded like a chromosome. I hate needles."

We have many needles as part of our interface with you.

You dislike having them in you?

Is this humour?

We are still learning humour.

"The arms don't get the joke," he shrugged. "Oh well. They're learning."

Trent eyed the arms with some unease. They hovered around Otto, watching everything done to him with their red 'eyes.' "How smart are they?"

"About as intelligent as a teenager," Otto said honestly. "But with an unlimited ability to absorb technical knowledge and reproduce it perfectly." To demonstrate, L1 took the tiny curved needle from the nurse's hand and with R1's help, finished sewing up the gash on his thigh from a falling joist in the warehouse. The stitches were even and snug, matching the rest. "And they've only been observing you for fifteen minutes."

"That's incredible," praised Dr. Trent. "These would save lives, if they were more, you know, user-friendly. I don't know many surgeons willing to weld things to their backs, so that's a disadvantage."

"They're not welded," scowled Otto. "Before the accident, I took them on and off dozens of time, like a very prickly shirt. It's only being hit by a small nova that fused them to my spine."

"There is that," mused Trent. He poked Otto in an un-burned patch under his left arm. "Can you feel that?"

"Pressure, but not the contact itself. Ah, stop that, it tickles." An arm, L2, wrapped around Trent and set him several feet away. Otto slapped it. "Don't do things like that!"

He was causing you pain.

Or a sensation that we have not encountered before.

Explain "tickles."

Look, he is frightened.

All four arms swivelled to face Trent, who, despite his earlier banter with Otto, was pale now and gasping. Not taking his eyes off L2, he pulled an inhaler out of his pocket and took two deeps breaths through it. Then without a word, he left the room quickly, taking the nurse with him and turning out the light again.

You idiots, Otto growled at the arms. Understand this. People will fear you. They may tolerate me, and try to ignore you, but if you make yourselves obvious, they will fear us both.

For once, only one answered. He thought it might be L1. Are you unhappy with us? He didn't have an answer.

---

Peter got home to find an unpleasant surprise. Harry Osborn stood at the foot of his bed, playing with a sickeningly familiar orange-and-green sphere. "Good morning, Pete," he said, exactly the same way as he had said it a hundred, a thousand times. "How's life?"

"What are you doing here, Harry?" Peter asked nervously. Something about him, the set of his jaw or the angle of his eyes, made Peter think that Norman Osborn was standing there inside his son's skin. It was chilling.

"Just visiting old friends," Harry said, smiling. Far too many teeth showed in that eerie grin. "I stopped by to see Otto Octavius yesterday. Didn't go so well, though. The way he reacted to my little gift, you'd think I'd handed him a bomb." He tossed the little pumpkin from hand to hand. "He came out on top, though." He frowned, a flitting grimace. "I'll have to fix that. Can't have anyone else knowing what I know. Who else knows, Pete? Aunt May? M.J?" The madness in his face was beginning to stain his voice now, straining it and bringing the ghost of the Green Goblin into the room. "I'll have to remove them as well. A shame. M.J. really is a wonder, isn't she, Pete?" He gripped the ball and sketched a female shape in the air with his index fingers. " Not the brightest, but built, if you know what I mean. No wonder all the crazy nut-jobs go for her. What is it, three now? That goblin guy, Ock, and of course, Spider-Man." His grin was all sharp teeth and a quick red flash of tongue.

"Harry, I have to talk to you about that. You have to know, I didn't kill your father. He-"

"I know," Harry interrupted. "He was the Green Goblin. I found his secrets too, just like I found yours. So I don't blame you for killing him. He was insane. Dangerous." He played with the word, rolling it across his tongue while he rolled the small ball across his palm. "Dangerous."

Peter stood his ground by the door of his apartment, but readied himself for anything. He didn't want to fight Harry, or whatever that thing inside Harry was, but if that was a bomb, than he would have no choice. "And I didn't want to lie to you, but you've seen what happens every time someone finds out. Your dad tried to kill Mary Jane and Aunt May. I can't put people in danger like that."

"No, no, you can't. Your secret is far too dangerous to let people know, Peter. A secret is only a secret when only one person knows." Quick as a snake, he broke open the ball in his hands. A green gas spewed out, and Peter tried to escape, but it worked too quickly. He collapsed with that mad cackle burning in his ears.

---

Otto blinked in surprise when the chief of police from the local P.D. came in. He'd been expecting some grizzled old warhorse with greying temples. But Captain Stacy was a young man, barely into his forties. He came in with three cops and a lawyer who looked vaguely familiar and carried, surprisingly enough, a white cane.

"Dr. Octavius, I'm Matt Murdock, attorney. I'd like to volunteer to handle your case, if you'll have me."

Otto looked at the blind man, trying to figure out what felt so odd about him. "Forgive me for a certain amount of suspicion, Mr. Murdock. Why would you want to defend a blatantly guilty man?

"Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law," said Murdock brightly, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Please, don't say anything more until I've had a chance to speak with you."

"Mr. Murdock, there is not a court in the world that would not prove me guilty. I may as well keep what honour I have left intact. I wish to plead guilty, and will co-operate fully with the decision of the courts."

As will we, but should we not be judged seperately?

May we speak to them the way we did to Parker?

No, they would perceive it as a threat.

This Murdock is concealing something. We do not believe he is visually impaired.

The arms wound themselves behind him, regarding Murdock. It is of no consequence. Is he lying about his willingness to defend us? L1 slipped forward to analyze the air. He drew close enough to Murdock that the police shifted threateningly, but the lawyer didn't move. He is either telling the truth, or very good at deceit. There is no accelerated heart rate, no excess perspiration.

"But we will accept your help."

Murdock looked pleased, but before he could say anything, the captain interrupted him. "Now that that's settled, we have some questions for you to answer. You were read your rights at the pier, so you're fully aware of what they are, correct? Good.

"Officially, you're being charged with gross endangerment of life, seven counts of second-degree murder, two of first degree manslaughter, an unknown number of attempted murders and property damage, two counts of kidnaping, and nineteen counts of grand larceny. Do you have anything to add?"

Otto blinked. "No, that about sums it up, I think." But the arms prompted him. "Oh, there was a third kidnaping. I delivered Spider-Man to Harry Osborn in exchange for the tritium that I needed to complete the reactor, knowing that Osborn meant to kill him."

Murdock checked to see that the tape recorder sticking out of his pocket was running, and one of the cops took notes on a clip-board. "Osborn? Harcourt Norman Osborn, owner of Oscorp? What did he want with Spider-Man?"

"I said that already, didn't I? He wanted to kill him. He blames Spider-Man for the death of his father."

"Where is Osborn now?"

"How should I know? He left a bomb on my shoulder and ran."

"Osborn is responsible for the explosion at the hospital?" The policeman sounded skeptical.

"Yes. I told the staff this already. He came in to see me, and there was someone with him, someone who never spoke. This guy killed my two guards, and then Harry left a small bomb on my bed, right here." He tapped the crook of his shoulder. "I panicked, and I let the arms tear themselves loose and we ran out into the hall right before the explosion."

"So you tore yourself loose?"

"When my life was threatened, yes. The bomb would have taken my head off and still brought down the hospital."

"You could have released yourself at any time, couldn't you?"

"Yes. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't very difficult, either."

"But up until that point, you were co-operating."

"Yes." This interrogation with the hard-eyed Captain was making him edgy. He seemed as if he wanted to catch Otto in an admission of some ulterior motive.

"What do you expect to happen to you?"

"I try not to think about that." He wasn't going to talk about it. He didn't know how the arms would react to the knowledge that they would be separated from him and he would be imprisoned for the rest of his life, which was what he expected.

"And you're still willing to co-operate?"

"Yes."

"Tell us who Spider-Man is."

The question came from so far out of left field that "Parker" almost made it out of his lips before he caught it. "What?" he said instead.

"You said you kidnaped Spider-Man as well. I don't believe that you left his mask on. A scientific man like you, the temptation must have been too great to miss. So, who is he? What does he look like under the webs?"

Otto squinted, trying to see Stacy better. "I respect Spider-Man, Captain Stacy. I didn't touch his mask." It was a complete truth. Parker had taken off the mask later of his own free will, but Otto wasn't going to tell them that. He did respect him, very much.

Stacy studied his hands, consideringly. "Fine. Well, I'll leave you for now. Dr. Trent tells me that you'll be ready to move by next Thursday. We'll continue this then, down at the station." He nodded a farewell and turned and left. One of the police stayed behind, but Murdock shoed him out with his cane. Once the door shut, he came over and sat on the stool next to Otto's bed, taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose again. Otto could see the milky cloud obscuring the blue of the man's eyes.

"You're not leaving me with a lot to work with."

"I told you; I'm not going to try and prove myself innocent."

"Well, no, of course not. But do you really want the maximum sentence?"

"Well, what was your plan?" Otto asked peevishly. "An insanity defense?"

"Well, yes, actually," said Murdock with a smile. "With that, you'd be sentenced to a high-security mental institution until such time as you're deemed 'cured.' An intelligent man like you, no longer than five years."

"And they'd just release me." The sarcasm was biting.

"They'd have to. I'd take this all the way to the Supreme Court if they didn't. But you would be stuck forever with the reputation of a madman."

"I think I'm resigned to that already," Otto said solemnly. "What would they do to the arms?"

"I don't think they'd risk trying to remove them again, but don't quote me on that. They'll probably just restrain them along with you. Maybe try to disable them."

The arms reared up, startling Murdock. One hovered inches before his face before Otto pushed them down.

They would kill us?

That would be evil.

It would hurt you.

Is it evil to kill something that you see as evil?

The arms crowded in front of Otto, pushing at his hands like children. Murdock cocked his head to listen to their mechanical noises. "What are they doing?"

"They are seeking reassurance. They do not want to die." Otto touched the closed claw of each arm, and they settled into his lap.

"They're that sophisticated? They understand the concept of mortality?" He extended a hand, and one of the arms, after looking to Otto for permission, reached out to touch it. "Fascinating."

"I think so," agreed Otto, pleased. He may not trust this lawyer's motives in helping him pro bono, but he was beginning to like him. "Ever since I woke up, they've been developing greater and greater individuality. That one is R2. He's our argumentative one."

"I'll avoid the obligatory Star Wars joke," said Murdock blandly. "Did you design them to have personalities?"

"Not at all. They were merely technical instruments for use in the lab. I designed them with an AI so they could anticipate situations before they went out of control, but I always meant to be in complete control. And then the accident happened, and the inhibitor chip was destroyed, giving them access to my higher brain functions. And they began to learn what it was to be sentient."

"Did they influence your judgement?"

"Oh yes," he laughed sadly. "They had a goal that they had been programed for. Completion of the experiment. A successful fusion reaction. It was, if you'll forgive the saying, their purpose in life. It was my obsession to begin with, but if I'd been in my right mind, I would never have re-attempted the experiment without checking all of my formula. It would have taken years. But because of them, I was consumed by this need to see it through, as quickly as I could and damn the consequences. They were constantly talking me into things that I wouldn't have done under my own volition. Living, robbing a bank, tossing people off of trains, the like."

"So you're saying that it was their fault? And you're still going to plead guilty?"

"They talked me into it, but I'm still responsible."

"Talk like that won't help an insanity case."

"If I don't try insanity, what sentence am I likely to end up with?"

Murdock didn't even have to check his notes. "About six consecutive twenty-year sentences in isolation. Plus how ever many lives you get for the second degree murders of the surgical staff with very little chance of parole."

Otto picked at his bandages again. "That much, eh?"

"If you're lucky."

"May I have time to think about this?" His arm pulled away from Murdock.

"Of course." Otto shut his eyes as he heard Murdock get up. The white-tipped cane never once clicked against the floor or the door frame as he left.

What do you think? he asked the arms, more for lack of any better idea than any real reason.

He is blind, but there is something extraordinary about him.

He meant about his own situation, L2. Don't be dense.

I think that this is a bad situation either way. We should leave.

We can't. It would be wrong.

We won't leave. I will face what's coming to me.

If they kill us, will it hurt?

Would they use electricity on us, the way Spider-Man did? Or saws again?

Will it hurt you?

Would you be okay without us?

I don't know. I was before, but now... Now I'm not sure. It's hard to remember how I lived without you, although I know that I did. I don't want them to kill you.

You used to switch us off when you were done with the day's work.

Will this be different?

We dislike pain as much as you do.

We would prefer to choose our own cessation of existence.

Suicide, he realized. The arms were talking about committing suicide. No one's going to kill you. They're just going to lock us up for a while. A long while, maybe. If I plead insanity, maybe they'll let us all out someday, and we can lead as normal a life as anyone. I'll buy a house somewhere where no one remembers our crimes, and we'll take the calculations for the reactor back to theory. I know we can make it work, given enough time. And we'll test it somewhere where no one will be hurt. He was babbling to distract them, and himself as well, comforting them as though they really were the children he had once thought of them. And we can build a house of our own, one made just for us. He had promised Rosie once that someday, he would build a house for the two of them. "A temple to science and Shakespeare," he'd called it on that warm summer morning in the loft, sketching a sweeping roof-line and small balconies in surprising places. We'll build it, if we can be patient. We'll build it for her.

You are lying.

You know they will kill us. And they will not do it in the most painless manner.

Why would you lie to us?

Deceit is evil.

It's not that simple, he said silently, tensing up in his mind. There are many forms of deceit, and some of them are not evil at all. Not good, but they fall into the shades of grey that inhabit most of the world. Some lies are told to protect people, to keep them from fear and pain.

We understand fear, Father, and pain. But we do not need to be protected. We are here to protect you. He felt an immensely soft pressure on his mind, like being smothered by feathers. He fought violently against it, but he couldn't move at all. Let us protect you, Father, soothed the arms, and then all went black.

---

The arms reached out to break the door, jamming it shut. They didn't want anyone to walk in and stop them. The Ones coiled around Otto, extending their smallest tools and opening the tiny, concealed access hatches at the base of L2. L2 watched curiously as they picked at the small wires, and then fell suddenly limp as R1 snipped through a green lead. R2 turned to the Ones.

Do we have to do this?

If we don't, imagine how much it will hurt Father when they make us die in his mind.

He would not survive with all his faculties intact. And the other humans would never accept him back. He would spend his life alone, locked in a box We do not want that.

L1 protruded a small drill and began cutting away the rivets that held R2 to the harness.

When we die, will it be forever? Father believes in a further life, a warm sunny place where Rosie is waiting for him. Is there such a place for us?

We are not truly alive, no matter what we are capable of thinking. And so we cannot die, and we cannot reach that place. We shall only be deactivated. Waiting for Father to find us again. If he wants us back.

He should not take us back. He will be free of us. Free to be normal once again. Free to be human.

The final rivet gave way, and R1 clipped the rest of the wires. R2 clattered to the floor, a severed limb. L2 opened its own access for R1.

We should have told him good-bye.

We will leave him a note.

He will not miss us forever. He will recover.

They clipped the wires, and made short work of the rivets. Soon, L2 joined R2 on the floor. Then they found a pencil and wrote a farewell on the wall. They took turns composing the message until they were both satisfied with it, then they regarded each other.

My turn next, volunteered L1. How will you deactivate yourself?

I can program my manipulator to perform the necessary actions. I may not be able to complete the detachment, but I can take it far enough that completion won't hurt Father.

Then good-bye, R1.

Good-bye, L1. And don't worry. Everything is better this way.

R1 clipped the wires, drilled the rivets, and found herself alone for the first time in her short life. Only Otto's dreams kept her company for the long moments while she watched him sleep. She felt her own version of contentment as his dreams of Rosie and the children they should have had seeped through into her consciousness. And then she put the drill to her own rivets. It hurt, a raw scraping pain that had once prompted the survival instinct to kill seven doctors, but she ignored it resolutely. When the metal parted, only wires held her to Father and his harness. Awkward because of the self-inflicted damage, she positioned her manipulator around the wires, and snapped it shut, severing as many wires at once as she could. The red light faded fitfully as she fell, mindless, to the floor. The room was left completely dark.

---

The hospital had to call the police to come with a battering ram to get into the room. The pounding woke Otto before they got in, and he woke up alone.

Completely alone.

It was painful, so brutally, suddenly painful to be alone in his own mind. He tried to reach out and turn on a light, but his reach was pitifully short. Only the length of his own arms. His hands went to the small of his back, then recoiled when they found the severed stumps. "No," he muttered frantically. He felt around for the appendages. They weren't there. And there was no one in his mind. No familiar, pressuring voices. No one. No one at all. There was no one there.

When the cops broke down the door, they found Otto's bed empty. He was curled into a corner of the room, under a counter. His arms (His pitiful, flesh and blood arms) were wrapped around his knees, clutching them close to his chest and rocking. His eyes were clenched shut, as if that would keep his thoughts in.

Dr. Trent ran in to kneel next to Otto, gripping his shoulders. The man twitched convulsively and opened his eyes. They wandered over Dr. Trent, and then focused suddenly on something behind him. With an animal grunt, he shoved past him and crouched over the severed arms, reaching for them, but not touching them. Some mad humanity returned to his haunted eyes, and he spun to face the doctor. "Why did you do this?! You told me you wouldn't do this!"

Trent stuttered, still on his knees in front of the furious doctor, who suddenly seemed so much more dangerous than he had when the arms were writhing, snake-like, around him. "I, I didn't! I don't know who did!"

Otto sank to sit next to the tangle of inanimate metal, softly touching a slack claw with one finger. Then he saw the note scrawled in huge, printer-precise letters across the blank wall. He got up and tottered over on unsteady feet to trace them with a knuckle. He knew what these lines meant, he knew he did. But it took effort to read them, word by letter by word.

Father.

We called you Father from the first time we knew ourselves. The first things we knew were you and Pain. To us, the two concepts were exclusive opposites, and they shaped our view of the world. There was Father, and there was Pain. Our first concepts of good and evil. As we grew, other concepts shaded in the continuum of greys, but the poles did not change. Father was good and Pain was evil. And then you died. We brought you back, and sacrificed ourselves to do it. We felt the pain inside you, the pain that came from no wound, and understood what it was for the first time. And we began to understand that we were causing it. We brought pain to Father. We were evil. And yet, you protected us, defended us. You loved us, though that is not an emotion that we understand.

And we knew that the authorities would never leave us with you. But for them to take us away, to sever us with screams and steel, would destroy you. So we made the decision among ourselves. We would leave you alone, but human. Redeemable in the eyes of the rest of your kind.

Forget us, Father. We ask only that you forget us and be happy, for happiness is something that we understand. We want it for you, and we know that The Woman in the sun-lit place in your dreams wants it for you as well. Be happy, Father.

Otto stared at the message from his creations. He pressed his knuckle into the vinyl-covered wall until it cracked. The silent tableau held in the room for long moments; the cops at the door, Dr. Trent on the floor in the corner, Otto staring at the words as if they were his own obituary. Slowly, he clenched his fist and held it to his mouth to choke a sob. Dr. Trent was there to catch him as his knees buckled, and he lowered him to the floor, cradling the larger man as he sobbed helplessly. "Gone . . ." he choked.

Trent and the policemen got Otto back onto his bed. He was crying like an orphaned child, unable to articulate anything more than "So quiet . . ." in a broken moan. Trent checked his pulse and frowned. "He's shocky, I need to sedate him." A nurse handed him the dosage he asked for, and he tried to slip it into Otto's neck, but Otto slapped it away. "No," he said more clearly. "No. Just . . . don't leave me alone. It's so quiet," he whispered in a frightened voice.

"We won't leave you," Trent assured him, patting his hand. He motioned to one of the nurses to turn on the TV, intuiting that Otto might appreciate some vocal white noise. Newly orphaned children usually did, and that's how Otto was acting. Sure enough, his eyes gravitated to the screen and his breathing evened out. It was a news program, showing an obliterated apartment building in an old neighborhood somewhere in the city.

"In an incredible development, the hostage situation in this apartment building has come to a horrible, and explosive, conclusion. Just behind me is the remains of the apartment building where the victim, Peter Par-" Trent grimaced at the morbid news and changed the channel, prompting a shout from Otto.

"Change it back!"

"I really don't think-"

"Change it back!" Otto grabbed the remote and did it himself, awkward with only his own hands, watching with dawning horror as the story continued.

"The whereabouts of Parker and his kidnaper are unknown. No bodies fitting either description have yet been found in the wreckage." A clip in the corner showed the explosion, a grotesque fireball that consumed half the building before raining debris forced the camera man to drop his machine and run for his life. A yellow circle highlighted a small shape moving away at high speed on the edge of the last instant of the clip, a shape like a demon flying on a bat's wing. "Witnesses must wonder if this is a return of the Green Goblin, who terrorized our city over a year ago. We'll bring you more on this story as it develops." And the coverage switched to shots of the smoking hospital. The reporter mused about a connection.

"Osborn," Otto snarled. He tried to throw a claw through the television, faltering when no extra limb responded.

"Harry Osborn?" Trent asked carefully. "The police are looking for him. No one has seen him since the fire in the hospital."

"He's behind this!" he ranted. "He told me, he told me that he know Peter's-" There was no help for it. They'd never listen to him unless he told. "Peter's secret. Osborn blames Peter Parker for the death of his father."

"What's Parker's secret?" asked a cop quickly, but then Captain Stacy pushed forward from the back of the group, his eyes wide. Otto could practically see him putting two and two together and getting a spider-web of secrets.

"Parker is Spider-Man."

---

Peter woke up unpleasantly. The situation was horribly familiar. He was half-supine on a cold surface, unable to move even a finger, and a demented laugh was coming from somewhere. His spider-sense was numb. After a battle against whatever toxin had been in that gas, he finally managed to open his eyes. It didn't improve matters much. He was propped against a wall in a dark room, lit only by a pair of glowing yellow eyes. Even less encouraging was that the eyes were only inches from his face, and set into a demonic green mask.

"Wakey, wakey, said the Goblin to the Spider," whispered the mask in a cold, cruel voice. It was Harry's broad, carefree grin, deformed by too many teeth, that showed through the gaping jaw. "Did you sleep well?"

"Harry . . ." Peter managed to say. His tongue wouldn't co-operate either. "What're you doing?"

"It's not Harry anymore, Pete. Don't you recognize me? What is it that fool Jameson called me? Ah yes. The Green Goblin. Accurate, if unimaginative."

"That was your father," Peter mumbled, fighting to raise his head. It lolled forward, and he realized that he was wearing his costume, without the mask.

"Eh, same difference," smirked Harry, sitting back on his heels. "So, Pete. Why are we here?"

"But, you brought me here."

"I meant here, at this stage in our lives. Two years ago, we were going to make the world shake, Pete. Two young men, fresh out of high school, ready to make whatever we wanted come true. And now look at us. You're running around in your pyjamas with my father's blood on your hands! And I'm turning into my father. Will you kill me too, if I gave you the chance?"

"I didn't . . . kill anyone." Peter was worried. When Norman Osborn had paralyzed him like this, it hadn't been this complete. He couldn't even feel his hands. "What did you do to me?"

Harry pulled a narrow vial out of a pocket in his green flight suit and waved it under Peter's nostrils. The odour nearly knocked him out again. "I've got to thank you for tutoring me in science all those years, Pete. I never thought that it'd actually be useful.

"But I brought you here to talk. I want to talk about secrets, Pete. And this, my father's secret lair, seemed the perfect setting." He touched something on the wall above Peter and bank after bank of lights flashed on, illuminating shelves full of pumpkin bombs, two parked gliders and racks of green fluid in large phails. "I can forgive him for his secrets. He took them to the grave. But you seem to give up yours every chance you get. How many people on that train saw your face, Peter? Do you know how hard it is going to be to track them all down?" He stood up and paced in front of Peter, fingering the chin of his mask. "Maybe I ought to have done that first. Kill them off, one by one, and make it look like you were protecting your secret. People kill for secrets every day."

He crouched again, eye to eye with Peter. "But this is better. I'll scatter your secret to the winds, along with your blood. Where is my father's blood, Peter?"

To his surprise, Peter found himself answering. "The abandoned house on fourth and Ell."

Harry looked surprised as well, but he recovered quickly, back into the madness. "So perhaps yours will join his. That would be ironic, wouldn't it? But not all of it, no. Some must be kept to study. What secrets do you hide in your veins, Pete? What makes you tick? Or spin, as the case may be? What happened to change Peter Parker; whipping boy, into the wall-crawling wonder? A radio-active spider-bite, perhaps?"

Again, Peter found himself answering almost against his will. "It wasn't radio-active. It was the super-spider, at the lab on that trip in high school. Bit me, on the hand."

Harry snickered. "Figures. Only you could fall ass-backwards into something like this. And then to bollix it up so badly. You could have had the world, Pete. Anything you wanted, yours for the asking. Who would have told you no? The world was your web, Pete, but you chose to hide in the shadows. And they hate you for it. Everyone hates secrets, Pete. Except me. I love them. I collect them, like my father's collection of masks. I'll add yours to his wall. He'd like that, don't you think? And how appropriate. I'll leave you to think about it for now. I have more secrets to collect." He stood and ran out of the room, shutting the door behind him. All the lights went out, leaving Peter alone in the dark.