The Darkness Within

A Shadow/Spider-Man Crossover by Stephensmat and Scarlet

Part Four

(The Story So Far: Peter Parker, Stephen Cranston, and Sarah Branson attended Mary Jane Watson's debut as a lead in a Broadway musical, Manhattan Memories. The ice between Sarah and Stephen has started to thaw, but Sarah is still uneasy with Stephen spending so much time with MJ, and deliberately hiding their rendezvous from Peter. Harry Osborn, freshly back from Oxford, England, also attended the Opening Night performance, then transformed himself into another superpowered human and took on his father's role as the New Goblin. First target: Peter Parker, who he battles in the skies over Manhattan until Peter manages to clothesline Harry with a cable-thick web. But when Harry doesn't immediately wake up after a 40-foot fall where his head takes a hard bump, Peter becomes terrified of what he's done, and races back to Cranston Manor--where Sarah and Stephen are relaxing and letting their psyches blend--and tells Stephen about Harry's new powers and role as the New Goblin, but that Peter may have killed him during the fight. But when Stephen and Peter arrive on-scene, it isn't long before they realize that news of Harry's demise may be premature, and the Goblin healing factor is kicking in. Peter wants another chance to reason with Harry and isn't willing to let him die as an enemy, but Stephen thinks it's the only way to ensure that this battle doesn't repeat itself night after night and pollutes another generation of Parkers and Osborns. Peter insists that Stephen wipe the last few years out of Harry's mind, and even though Stephen doesn't think he's up to the challenge, he tries anyway in St. Vincent's Trauma Bay 1, as new agent Dr. Michael Benning leads the charge to save Harry's life from what he's been told is a hit-and-run ped vs. auto. Stephen's mind-wipe succeeds…but just barely, as he manages to get rid of events back to the moments prior to Harry finding Spider-Man standing over Norman's dead body. Thus, Harry has a vague feeling that Norman is dead--which Peter confirms--but remembers nothing after that. But another agent message sends the already overtaxed inner core of the network into overdrive--Flint Marko, a recently uncovered Person of Interest in the murder of Ben Parker, has escaped from prison just hours before he was due to be transferred to Manhattan for questioning. Marko makes his escape from Queensboro Correctional Facility after a long foot race by scaling a razor-wire-topped fence surrounding a testing facility for subatomic molecular manipulation…but finds himself an unwitting part of the experiment, as his molecules are disintegrated only to be re-integrated into the sand at the bottom of the pit. Marko manages to re-construct himself as a man of living sand, and escapes the pit. While Stephen and Peter plan the details of Peter's upcoming proposal to Mary Jane, Sarah finds out the details of why the police are so interested in Marko, but believes him dead because of the scientist's explanation of his experiment. But when Sarah arrives to brief Stephen on the details of Marko's prison escape and possible demise, they are both interrupted by a skyscraper crane that is moving way too quickly…)

Far above them all, John Jameson was strapped into his seat in NASA's new shuttle, the cutting edge experimental craft FarReach. Above the Earth for fourteen days, "Houston, this is FarReach," he called to the Texas-based spacecraft control center.

"Go ahead, FarReach," NASA's Houston control center returned.

"We are ready for re-entry, just waiting for your O.K."

"FarReach, this is Houston, you are go for re-entry." The Houston control center commander paused for a moment, as they had all done since the loss of the Shuttle Columbia. "See you on the flipside, Major."

John did his final checks. The payload--a malfunctioning satellite and its cargo of cometary's debris--was secured tightly behind him and the crew. His crew had signaled preparation for their return home, the safety gear had all shown nothing but green lights, Houston had verified their trajectory, and all was well.

Nonetheless, he checked again. No astronaut had ever forgotten Challenger. No astronaut had ever forgotten Columbia. And no astronaut had ever forgotten the macabre joke about what the initials in NASA stood for: "Need Another Seven Astronauts".

John flipped the necessary switches, gave one last glance at the five remaining crew members behind him, traded a salute with his co-pilot, and pushed FarReach back into Earth's atmosphere.

Each man and woman on the flight felt the g-forces press them back into their seat as the windows glowed red around them.

Gwen stretched her shoulders, pretending to be really fascinated by the photocopier she was half sitting on, with fellow models Emma on her left, Marissa on her right. The three of them had worked together before. But today was just weird. At least MJ could get her face on a billboard. MJ's ads had some class to it, some art. Gwen was sitting on a photocopier. Last time she'd done that was when she and Stephen had snuck into the faculty lounge at his High School Formal on a dare and photocopied their…

"O.K. Gwen, I've got a secret: It's my copier," Paulo drawled, way too excited.

Gwen fought to keep her face sexy in the face of lunacy and blew an air kiss at him. She knew people were watching out of the corner of their eyes. Why they had to do this in a running office in the middle of the day she couldn't understand. Who put a photocopier in front of a view like this in a working office anyway?

Paulo was one of the nuttier photographers she knew, Peter would forgive her for saying so. But he kept his hands to himself around the models and he was as complimentary when he had things his way as he was vicious when anything went slightly away from his plan.

Like now. Paulo's face twisted. "What is that thing doing in my shot?"

Gwen glanced over her shoulder. A forty-foot beam was suddenly visible in the window.

Gwen felt the universe drop into slow motion, as the girder suddenly got very very big, and she heard Emma scream beside her.

Feeling like she was moving through molasses, Gwen pushed Emma aside and threw herself to the ground.

She could feel the impact right down to her fingertips as the girder dug its way into the side of the building. She was hyperaware of every sound, and barely noticed the feel of glass shards raining down on her.

There was silence, and Gwen raised her head. The wall had been disappeared, and the wind was blowing gently through the room. Gwen checked and couldn't believe how close it had been to hitting her. Far below outside, she could hear chunks of building, and whole office tables hitting the ground, and people screaming as sirens began to sound.

She glanced around. Nobody seemed hurt.

Paulo was barely recognizable with his face so pale. "It's coming back!" he yelled and ran for it.

Gwen spun and ran away from the window, as well as everybody else.

The Crane hit again, a floor lower, taking another neat slice out of the building.

Gwen ran for it.

The floor caved beneath her feet, its supports at the corner of the building gone.

Suddenly, Gwen was sliding toward open air.

"Chloe!" bellowed Stephen, through both the intercom and through the air with his mind as hard as he could.

The intercom buzzed back first. "You roared?"

"Call Josh Oded. His number is on Victor's Personal list. Get him now. Right now." He barely paused. "I don't hear the sound of dialing! Call now!"

Sarah saw a helicopter circling the crane from above, and started flicking through channels on the TV across the room. "Who's Josh Oded?"

"Bigwig at Edison. If the site operators could kill that crane, they would have, so we've got to cut power to the whole block before…"

Sarah finally found a TV station that was covering the crane disaster. "Too late," she said.

Stephen turned to look at the station. "Chloe, channel 5," he called through the intercom. "Give me Oded now!"

"Line one," she replied.

The news anchor was watching the scene happen in a split-scene. "We're getting our first images now, and the situation looks as bad as--oh, my God!"

The cameras focused on one blonde woman hanging off the edge of the building. The camera couldn't show what she was clinging to, but whatever it was, it wasn't much. But the woman was all too familiar.

The phone fell straight out of the transfixed Stephen's hand. "Gwen!" croaked Stephen in horror.

Sarah suddenly jerked as Stephen's resounding mental scream of "NOT AGAIN!" hit her full in the psyche.

Sarah put a hand on his shoulder. "Spidey's heading there. He'll make it. She'll make it."

Stephen calmed down slightly. "Josh, this is Stephen Cranston. What's up with the block with the crane swinging wild on it? Are you watching TV?" He paused. "No, they can't shut it off or they would have already. Kill the power for the block. I don't give a crap about the whiners at the local TV stations. Kill the power. There's a woman hanging from the building, and she's about to get killed by that crane. Kill the power!"

On the screen, the crane kept smashing the building as Gwen fought desperately for a grip. The metal plate that normally held the glass in place came half free of the building, and Gwen was swept, still clinging to it, halfway out over the street, four hundred feet in the air.

MJ came rushing into the office. "I heard on the car radio that--" She saw the screen. "Oh no!"

Sarah blinked. "How'd you get past Chloe?"

"She was watching on a mini-TV at her desk. I honestly don't think she noticed me come in."

Sarah blinked again. "Should we tell her to come in here and watch with us?"

"Dammit, Pete, where are you?" Stephen hissed at the screen violently.

"No," MJ told Sarah decisively.

Stephen punctuated her answer with a glance over her shoulders at the open door to his outer office.

It shut itself hard, sealing the trio and their secrets in momentary solitude.

It had been sitting for eternity in the cold, waiting for something.

Then, finally, it felt a joyful warmth.

It rejoiced! Warmth…it could feel itself again.

But then…something far more soothing than warmth. It felt energy. Mighty energy. He could feel its lines drawn all around it, leading through circuits and switches.

Rejoicing, finally able to feel, to feed, it stretched itself.

There was something in its way. It felt into itself. The obstruction was solid. The obstruction was strong.

Not nearly strong enough.

A black gooey substance oozed out of what was left of a meteorite inside the Space Probe Cargo Hold. At first, it merely looked like some molten rock or alien lava.

Then, the lava sprouted tentacles as it reached forward on the ground and pulled the rest of itself out of its transportation, as if it were some stretchy multi-legged black alien spider.

Finally free of the rock, the alien creature began crawling along the ground. It had traveled a long way, and it was feeling weak and tired. It needed sustenance. It needed a new host.

Forcing itself out, in a way it had been unable to do for eons, it reached for the power.

FarReach had entered communication blackout. Every astronaut since Apollo 13 had grown to hate this moment, including John Jameson. They were completely cut off from their controller and had to trust that the flight plan programmed in by Houston Mission Control was going to be able to glide them through the atmospheric bubble that looked practically invisible from outer space yet turned into one of the worst stresses that could ever be inflicted on air and space vehicles.

FarReach was a new generation of manned space vehicles, built by Stark Technologies under NASA's guidance--which, rumor had it, that Tony Stark couldn't even muster enough of a damn to care about, which brought most of the NASA astronauts to cheers, as NASA really only cared whether or not their precious space objects returned to Earth safely. Stark had showed it off personally, with the proclamation that this was going to be the first space shuttle that the Mission Commander would actually feel like he was truly flying. Of course, only Stark could come up with the greatest incentives: Magnums of Dom Perignon to christen each mission--not by breaking the bottle, of course, but by drinking to it after each return home. Even though the first mission was only a quick up-around-down, the test pilot who got out of there couldn't stop talking about how superfantasticmanyou'vegottatrythisthingnow.

John had tried it. And damn, it felt good to fly. It was smoother than any shuttle before, and he'd flown it from coast to coast and around the world inside the atmosphere. And its takeoff profile--especially when they hit "Throttle Up", the engines that kicked in to lift the shuttle into outer space felt so good you'd swear you were driving a really high-end sports car.

But this wasn't a sports car. It was a space shuttle. And every shuttle pilot or crewmember knew that no shuttle that went into orbit was ever safe until it was back on the ground.

The friction from re-entry had turned the air white hot, the thickening atmosphere had turned to plasma. Liquid fire was pouring over the nose of the Space Shuttle, and as a result, John and his crew were silent from the world until they got lower and slower. No one spoke. It was a tradition. No one spoke during radio silence unless it was an absolute emergency.

Like, for example, right now.

John didn't see what had happened, but suddenly the avionics had shifted in his grip. All the screens all frizzed and blinked out.

At the same time, there was a shattering sound behind him, as if something had blasted its way through the cargo hold.

Something black was at the edge of his vision, as alarms blasted out from every side.

The obstruction was easy enough to break out of, once it had warmed up a bit. But the power it had sensed was wrong, wrong, wrong. Cold, dead, artificial. It wanted something real. It could feel natural energy ahead. Alive, and warm…weak, but it was desperate.

As it reached, it became aware that its surroundings were becoming hostile. When suddenly there was a blast of heat and noise.

The noises made the air around it howl and it retreated instantly, its cells screaming with the vibration.

Spider-Man arrived on the scene and took instant stock of the situation. The crane operator was freaking out, hitting the shutdown button over and over, trying to kill the circuits. It clearly wasn't working, and Spider-Man could see the sparks flying out of the engine like crazy. The girder was still swinging out of control, apparently on its second pass through the corner of the building, one slice through either side of the fortieth floor. The corner of that floor had collapsed fifteen feet lower, and the debris had swept everything down toward the ground, where the police were keeping everyone at bay.

One woman was still clinging to the wrecked edge of the building…

GWEN! Spider-Man thought in horror.

The swinging beam had come full circle again, and Gwen knew her time was up.

The forty foot steel girder swung back into the building hard, tearing upward this time, and taking her with it. She was swept off the outside of the building by the massing metal. Glass bit at her, and nothing but concrete below.

Gwen lost her death grip on the building, and screamed as she fell.

The world dropped into slow motion again, and even her hyper-aware senses couldn't hear the sound of her own shrieking over the pounding of blood rushing through her ears.

But somehow, she could see him.

A blur of red and blue salvation swooped in from the sky. It fired a line from its hand, to pull itself along, closer to her by the debris itself. It turned itself impossibly on end and flew through the crane's arm like a missile…

For a moment, her view was blocked by a chunk of concrete bigger than she was, when suddenly it turned around, with her hero actually standing on it, leaping from it, and wrapping his arms tightly around her, suddenly skyborn.

The world sped up to normal and she found herself the latest member of New York City to be rescued by the Amazing Spider-Man.

The g-forces were making John dizzy, half his crew were already passed out, but he fought to keep his grip on the controls. "FarReach to Houston, can you hear me?" he called into his radio, knowing that they had only just passed the halfway point for a standard re-entry…which this clearly was not. "Houston, this is FarReach!" he cried out. "Houston, this is FarReach!"

No answer.

"Greg--you still with me?" John shouted at his second-in-command.

"Yeah," Greg replied. "Maybe."

"Good, at least somebody is. I need a back-of-the-hand calculation of our closest landing site when we emerge from radio silence…"

And at that moment, they broke out of the plasma firestorm and into the atmosphere, and John knew exactly where the closest landing site was going to be.

Never landed a shuttle at LaGuardia, he noted. First time for everything, I guess.

Mom…Dad…I'm home, he thought as he continued to try and do anything with his damaged craft other than slamming it into the Manhattan skyline.

Gwen had never been so exhilarated, so charged.

Surely, she told herself. This is what flight feels like.

But she was not weightless; she was merely protected, as her guardian lowered himself to the ground and balanced her on his hip to keep her feet from touching down harshly.

Please, she whispered to him silently. I understand now, I understand everything now, you have such power, and you use it to rescue me, after what I've done to you. Forgive my foolishness, and I will honor you.

Stephen let out a hard, soul-cleansing breath. "Thank you, God!"

Sarah grinned and gave him a hug from behind. "Told you he'd make it."

MJ grinned proudly. "That's my man."

John Jameson had no idea how badly damaged the shuttle's exterior was, but its control systems were pretty much shot to Hell. If he didn't do this now, they'd overshoot the US mainland and ditch in the Atlantic, and though he'd tested ditching like all shuttle pilots, there was no telling what would happen if all this chaos had come from exterior damage encountered God-only-knew-when-or-where. If he did do this now, they'd probably take out a bridge and a skyscraper or two but might be able to make LaGuardia for a hurried landing on a busy commercial runway.

Neither was a good option. So Jameson took the best one he had that didn't involve drowning in the Atlantic.

He flipped the switches to kill the engines and release the landing parachutes.

Gwen felt ground beneath her feet.

"Are you O.K.?" Spider-Man asked her.

"Yeah," she managed to get out. Am I O.K.? Am I O.K.? She stared at her new guardian breathlessly, and he looked back.

Distantly, Gwen was aware of Brock, snapping photos almost non-stop. Gwen still had her hands on his shoulders, and she wished she could see his eyes…

Explosions ripped the air, but these were not explosive blasts. These were explosions of pure sound.

Sonic booms filled the sky, and everyone managed to tear their eyes away from Gwen and Spider-Man, all of them looked up in shock, as the space shuttle blew past overhead, clearly in the wrong place, and far, far too low.

"Go!" Gwen told him, as though he needed her permission to break the moment. Go fight the good fight, she beseeched him. Go be our hero again.

Spider-Man was already gone.

The cameras had spun wildly, trying to follow the new story as the air around the helicopters exploded with movement.

Stephen was on his feet in an instant, looking not at the TV, but at the skyline visible out his office window as the glass rattled. "The Hell?"

Sarah was also on her feet. "Was that the…?"

"It was," MJ said, aghast. "John…"

Stephen was at the window, searching the skyline as a trail of smoke and fire disappeared behind buildings. "If he's lucky, he might make LaGuardia."

MJ didn't want to ask the next question.

Sarah did it for her. "And if he's not?"

Stephen was already staring through a pair of binoculars on his window sill as he dialed his cell phone hurriedly. "Port Authority?" he said into the phone. "This is Stephen Cranston. Listen, that roar in the sky fifteen seconds ago? Yeah, that one. That's about to cause a massive traffic jam at the Triborough Bridge."

"Gwen!"

The starstruck blonde spun around and saw a face she recognized. "Eddie!" She shouted, still high on the thrill.

Brock seemed absolutely torn between giving the woman before him a tight hug, and chasing after the superhero. "Are you O.K.?"

Gwen was still ten stories above the ground. "Oh, yeah."

"Listen, I hate to do this, but wherever that shuttle hits is going to-"

"Yeah, sure, whatever, Eddie."

Brock wasn't paying much attention to the fact that she wasn't paying attention; he was already heading for the street. "Thanks! Call you later!"

I know Tony Stark doesn't like flying commercial, but this is beyond ridiculous.

That was Spider-Man's internal snark generator providing him with a quip he'd never get to use as he swung as fast as he could, racing to wherever-it-was that Stark's new shuttle was heading toward. He was relieved beyond measure that the shuttle wasn't going to land during rush hour. The streets were fairly empty, the traffic light and moving smoothly.

It was about the lightest he'd ever seen traffic on the Triborough Bridge. But he was pretty sure that thing in front of him was over the weight and height limit for the bridge.

The shuttle had come down fairly straight, ricocheted off the bridge towers, and gotten tangled in the suspension cables, as the parachute got tangled, bringing the whole thing to a wrenching halt.

The shuttle structure was torn in several places, one of the wings had been sheared off, and the cars that hadn't been able to get off the bridge in time had been tossed into the sides of the bridge like children's toys.

The ones that Spider-Man couldn't help were all crushed underneath the shuttle. The ones that hadn't been totally destroyed were fairly intact, and there was precious little in between.

The intact cars had people clambering out of them.

With them fairly safe, Spider-Man swung onto the bridge. Relieved to see the crew compartment intact--meaning they had probably kept internal compression, so they at least stood a chance of surviving the trip home--he ripped the shuttle hatch clear off.

It felt the impact that threw its world apart and wrapped itself around itself, trying to save itself. There was plenty of warmth all around it, but this was fiery heat, not the welcoming kind, and it wept in terror.

Suddenly, there was a bright light filling its senses. Above it, were two larger creatures. The smaller one had more life energy than the little bits and pieces the alien had so far seen…

…but the larger one, holding onto the first, was practically glowing with power.

Power, such power. Energy! Such mighty energy!

The creature was momentarily startled by the loud burst of sound of scraping and more sounds of mechanized objects with hideously loud engines that followed, but managed to pull itself together enough to realize that its potential new host was about to escape; and leapt toward it.

But such movement, through fire and noise, when it had gone without for so long, had cost it nearly everything. It could not hope to fight its way into its host now.

But it had to. It had no choice. It needed energy. And the creature coming in and out of view had it in abundance.

Hope allowed it to overcome its terror, just for a moment, and as this dazzling burst of electrical impulses reached past him, it threw itself at it, and gripped.

Then the impact came back, and it froze, hoping that its deliverer would take it away safely.

Spider-Man grunted, trying to see through the smoke. His spider sense was going off non-stop as he felt his way through the smoke and the flame.

By the time he'd lifted out his third pair of crewmen, something was sticking to his costume…a thick black tar.

Great, he thought clinically. That'll be fun to clean off. Dontcha just hate it when the space shuttle comes down on an asphalt truck or something and you brush up against it in your newest costume? I sure do.

The shuttle crew were all unconscious. Sparks were flying everywhere, panels were exploding from the discharge, the smoke was making vision impossible…

Spider-Man started grabbing the unconscious bodies and pulled them out of their seats.

When he got to John Jameson, he couldn't help a small smirk of irony. "It's a good thing laughing boy is wrong about me being the jealous type," He responded. "You will mention this to your dad though, wont'cha?"

John Jameson was out cold.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Spider-Man agreed, and laid him down beside his crew, safely out of the Shuttle, and scanned around. At the other end of the bridge, people were still streaming away from the wrecked cars…

When suddenly his spider sense told him to look up.

One of the cables wrapped around the shuttle tail had come loose, and the long heavy coil of steel came crashing down…

On one of the cars which had been shoved to the side of the bridge. A teenage boy had been climbing out of his car window.

The additional weight forced it over the edge of the bridge before he could get clear.

Spider-Man hurled himself over the side of the bridge.

With the always-cold East River below, the angles were a nightmare, and worse yet, he was too far away for Spider-Man to even think about reaching him.

As the boy screamed, the helicopters circled for the shot.

Stephen, MJ and Sarah sat riveted to the screen as the rescue unfolded dramatically.

"You think Peter's getting pictures of this?" MJ asked, breathless.

Stephen didn't smile, looking hard at the screen. Stephen knew from experience, that once you reached a certain velocity, the surface of water could be hard as a brick wall. That by itself wasn't so bad for his partner. Spider-Man had been put through plenty of brick walls. But not so where the teenager was concerned. He had done the math too. There was no way Spider-Man could swing over before the boy hit the water.

The news camera fought to focus, just in time to see Spider-Man fire a web out to his left, and another in the opposite direction. The web fanned, catching the boy in a net, before attaching itself to the bridge pylon.

Spider-Man dropped below the web line, revealing that the second line he had fired was tied to the net, attached to the opposite pylon.

The web stretched, leaving the boy caught in a safety net a good five feet above the East River.

Spider-Man dropped hard into the drink.

Stephen froze. Sarah and MJ audibly gasped.

"The boy seems safe!" the on-site newscaster reported. "Police boats are coming up on him now. There's no sign of…wait, pan left! Left! THERE! THERE HE IS! Spider-Man is safe! He's coming up out of the water now!"

And sure enough, on the screen, his suit soaked and dirty, Spider-Man was firing a line up at the underside of the bridge, scaling his way back up.

Stephen and Sarah whooped. MJ let out a breath like she'd been holding it for a year. Sarah was on her feet cheering, Stephen right next to her, caught up in the thrill of adrenaline, he picked her up, and spun her around, realized who it was, and set her down on her feet.

Sarah didn't let go right away.

Neither did Stephen.

They stared at each other like total strangers for a moment, before glancing over at MJ, who was trying very hard to be invisible.

"Oh, please," she assured them, ever so reasonable. "Don't let me stop you."

Sarah and Stephen let each other go very quickly.

"I've got some work to do," Stephen mumbled awkwardly.

"Me too, now," Sarah agreed, gesturing at the screen.

Spider-Man landed lightly on his balcony, and started stripping off the filthy suit. Cleaning your own gear was one of the fortunes of having a secret identity. Stephen's cloak was Dry Clean Only, but he had his own cleaning staff, which could cover most suit maintenance.

But that would keep for another few hours. He pulled the suit off, fighting the tug of the wet spandex, examining the thick black muck on his skintight suit.

"East River," Peter growled to himself. "I gotta get Stephen to do something about that."

He went to the closet, threw the filthy one into the bottom, out of sight, and grabbed the next one along. A quick change of undergarments, and Peter headed off to his bathroom for a gloriously soothing hot shower before taking his nightly patrol.

It felt stillness, after the energy being had released him. The room was dark and quiet. But there was still enough warmth.

It waited.

End of Part Four

AN: Going a little AU now. Read and Review!