JMJ

CHAPTER NINE: ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY WALK IN

With a lazy smile Chameleon turned off his communicator ring, and reaching into that big hairy coat now hanging over the other kitchen chair opposite the drowsing Dr. Austin Octavius, he pulled out something else. It looked a little like a child's hearing aid, a child's because it had a very strong grip that held it in place in the ear without being painful. In fact it was very gentle in a way that a person under drug influence would not remove it, nor wake from it if the drug began to wear off.

This was hooked onto Austin's ear, but naturally it was not an impartial hearing aid. Under its influence one could only hear very selectively. While asleep as well it worked all the better, for it then would work into the brain at a subconscious level.

The plan for Austin Octavius was not to turn him into some freak to add to the rogue gallery as his father feared or to kill him if they could help it as Miss Angelina Brancale feared and thought she knew. The plan was a little more careful than that and a tad more a befitting revenge. If Austin did not leave New York City and end his silly game of playing doctor of the underworld he would become its asset—not in becoming a half Venus fly trap or suddenly being endowed with tornado powers that would sweep him away in the wind as well as anyone else caught in his path. Those things had long ago proved to be unpredictable. The freaks under their command now days were only those who could fully be trusted because they knew precisely what they were getting into ahead of time and were paid very well. They could even lead semi normal lives right under everyone's noses as they could turn back to normal almost as easily as had been falsely promised long, long ago to a boy named Mark Allen.

No, Austin Octavius would be their own drone. They would use his mind as a tool and with the brilliancy of modern science and engineering it was the easiest thing in the world to brainwash a person like a brainwashed assassin in some good many stories. Now he would wake and decide to take the job offer without question, obey his boss without question, and the spirit of Austin Octavius would be broken. His genius would be under lock and key in the bowels of Oscorp where the new boss was only a puppet for the creature that lived beneath it which had once been known as the Big Man of Crime.

And people wonder why Osborn's little squeaker left town, thought Chameleon with a haughty sniff before turning on the unorthodox hearing aid to begin the reorganizing of Austin's mind. While it began running its course, Chameleon closed Austin's laptop too and removed the USB drive from its port.

CRASH!

Chameleon had barely time to look up before he received a sudden foot in his face and fell to the floor, bringing the vacant chair with him. With a half moan and a half growl, he rubbed his jaw and looked up unsurprised to see Spidergirl standing a safe distance from him so that he could not lash out unexpectedly, but she certainly looked ready for a fight.

"Chameleon, huh?" muttered Spidergirl. "I'd say it's a pleasure to finally see you in person, but I think I'd just prefer it if I heard you retired to the Bahamas like a good little senior."

"Hmph," said Chameleon with a sneer as he blocked the way of Austin; in the dark kitchen he quickly pilfered the hearing aid off again so it would not be found. He could only count on that it had done its work enough to at least get Austin through the doors of Oscorp the first time. "As charming as your notoriety. But you're too late to—"

SWAK!

Again Spidergirl kicked him in the face and with a most painful moan he dropped a second time.

Liar, thought Spidergirl and went to Austin, but before she could do anything Chameleon was leaping out the window.

"Wait!" Spidergirl exclaimed, and she was after him in a flash.

Whatever propelled the Big Man to reach ninety as fit as it was rumored must have been the same benefit Chameleon was graced with, for he surely was too old to slip down an apartment building so quickly, but then maybe Chameleon was not human at all. No one had ever seen anything of him but that strange shiny white face. Not that it would have changed Spidergirl's resolve to chase him either way as she leapt easily after him. She was still more agile and far faster, save that he managed to reach a motorcycle before she could grab him. It revved faster than a normal motorcycle and blasted out like a bullet down the street without hindrance of snow or slush.

With little more than a frown, Spidergirl dashed forward undaunted. She threw out a web and began to swing after him with the dexterity and strength of Tarzan and the litheness of a spider monkey (New York City was a jungle, after all); Chameleon was not about to get away before he explained himself if Spidergirl had anything to say about it.

In the helmet now thrown onto his head, he did not seem too unusual except maybe for the fact that he was not dressed properly enough for the weather and perhaps going too fast to not eventually go unnoticed by the police. In fact hardly had he turned a corner when a siren could be heard.

They came into high traffic with Spidergirl at roof level swinging close enough to throw a web for him. The web shooter fired just as the traffic engulfed the motor cyclist, but what she pulled up almost caused her to lose her bearing as she leapt out of the way in time from missing being struck by the motor cycle.

"Wah!" she cried and just managed again to keep it from falling into the street as she caught it neatly in a web net.

Leaping onto the side of a nearby building now her eyes darted through the traffic, but there was no sign of Chameleon.

She had no choice but to go back to Austin.

Austin had not moved in the least upon her return to his apartment, and for a moment she feared that Chameleon's words were true and that Austin was already dead. Leaping to his side she tried to remain calm enough to feel for a pulse on his wrist, but as she fumbled for it Austin let out a very small moan. In her surprise and relief she dropped the wrist with a thud back onto the table.

Austin did not move. He muttered instead after a moment or two something about work that she did not understand.

"Well," she said to herself. "At least he's alive."

Had they been planning on kidnapping him after they drugged him?

With her super strength she gently brought Austin to his bed and laid him down upon his pillow with the sound of the music of the club across the street reverberating into the room. She took off his shoes and pulled up a blanket for him and patted him gently on the shoulder with a smile tainted with melancholy before departing. However as she stepped out of his bedroom again she remembered with a moan, the window she had broken in order to get into Austin's place.

That could not stay like that all night.

After propping up the fallen chair that Chameleon had brought down with him, Spidergirl looked around trying to think of what she could put in front of the window and feel comfortable about leaving Austin's apartment prone to the elements and whatever else might decide to crawl in during the night. The chill breeze coming in was bad enough. Holding her arms against the chill herself, or in as a sort of outward expression of her frustration, she wondered if she would be able to cover it all with webbing.

No, she did not think she would have quite enough for that right now.

But there was a pretty good-sized wooden board sitting near a dumpster in the alleyway over which the window looked down. That might work if she webbed it in place.

#

It was as if his heart was beating against his skull in an attempt to leap right out of his body. In a space between dreaming and consciousness he thought for sure someone was knocking on his bedroom door. Something rather with long slimy tentacles pulsing with an eerie throb and straining veins as they wriggled their way through the door already open a crack when he did not answer the knock. Pulsing, throbbing, pounding on, the first snaked its way around his ankle, and Austin was too immobilized even to cry out much less fight back against the beast. He could feel the pulsing of tentacle through his own body making the throbbing in his head even worse. Another tentacle wrapped around his head, and Austin could barely breathe. With all effort he tried to scream but his lungs barely forced out a gentle wheeze.

The tentacles now wrapping around his chest and stomach and legs made his whole bed throb as it began to pull him bed and all downwards as through a mucky sinkhole gurgling and moaning and bubbling around him as though his bed was a raft in a nauseating swamp heated from beneath by some unknown terrible force.

"Your father's rebellion …" a voice seemed to hiss like steam from the popping bubbles; though Austin was more occupied with the heat coming from the throbbing tentacles pulling harder and harder over his body and suffocating him. "You're father's rebellion … for the sake of your father's …"

"Wait," said a voice, calm and relatively normal sounding, it was it was quite a contrast from the eerie and over dramatic tone of the first voice. The fact that it sounded quite familiar also aroused Austin's ears. It was a voice right above him and a head hovering there casting a shadow upon his face.

The swamp and tentacles were gone. Only a familiar face looked down upon him with a firmly set jaw but otherwise expressionless. He was in his own room at the apartment, but the feeling of normalcy had certainly not returned when Austin realized that such a face should not be above his head. It should still be in Duluth—not to mention that he had never out of newspaper and magazine photographs seen it masked in electronic eye pieces and topped with this dark brown hair sleeked back against his head which topped a very large round body clothed in some strange janitorial suit and a thick leather coat.

"Austin," said the face now in a dry mocking tone.

Austin tried to respond even if only to demand what was going on, but he became conscious again of the fact that he still could not move.

The figure above him cocked his head with cold calculating interest like a scientist about to dissect a gruesome alien life form, and the sound of clicking mechanical arms followed the black snaking limbs behind his back as he asked just above a whisper, "What have you done?"

Austin's eyes darted down as well as they could without moving his head, and he saw that the tentacles writhing in slime that had entered earlier by his door came now from his own shirtless body, which was itself pulsing with that same sickening vibration in which the veins seemed liable to pop with their glowing orange blood through his deep red puffy skin. The tentacles seemed to writhe with his own emotional response as he finally found his voice enough to cry out.

"Wah!"

Gasping for breath as he leapt upright in bed warm and wet with sweat still dripping from his brow, Austin at last woke to full consciousness. Not quite reoriented he looked down frantically at his body and touched his chest, which still was covered with his shirt from the evening before, but all seemed normal enough.

He slapped his palms into his face with relief and disgust at his own dreams.

As he realized where he was and time and space came back to its normal perspective in his brain however he wondered why in the world he had slept in his clothes at all.

And he remembered Delilah.

Springing out of bed he found his footing a little unstable, but he did not let it stop him from leaping out of his room even if he did nearly run fuzzy headed into the door. He tripped into the hall, and actually did ram his shoulder into the wall before turning the corner into the empty living room.

"Delilah?"

Shaking the grog from his head as best he could he was drawn away from the absence of the girl to the sudden draft from the kitchen. He jumped back in alarm to see the old weather-stained board lodged into where his window had once been by … well, it looked like Spidergirl's webbing.

Slowly, Austin investigated closer, touching a thread gently, and he found it still felt sticky.

His laptop was on the kitchen table where he had been using it the last time he had coherent thought. His thermos had some tea left in it he found after shaking it up a bit. He opened the top and poured the rest down the sink, and after a pause he opened his laptop. It had never been shut down and had been apparently on sleep mode all the night through, but what concerned him far more was that he noticed that the USB drive was missing.

Unless the bear girl was a dream too, he thought.

Was he sick?

The slight queasiness he felt seemed to prove so, but he could not go back to bed until he figured out what was going on. A shower too might be nice and breakfast afterwards, but first he went to make some strong black tea in the hopes that the caffeine might clear his head.

Just as he reached for the tin on the counter which held it, he heard a sudden knock on the door.

He stiffened.

First the knocking in his dream returned to him, which announced the entrance of that ridiculous beast and bearer of doom at his chamber door, but it was soon overpowered by the memory of Delilah's knock. A shiver ran up his spine as it occurred to him that perhaps she had herself been a bearer of doom, and for the first time he wondered if something not of normal causes had made him sleep so hard without knowing how he got to bed, or why he felt so dizzy and sick.

The knock came again.

"Austin?" asked a familiar voice, the voice of Spidergirl.

Austin breathed a sigh of relief and his shoulder fell loose at his side. After a third round of knocking from Spidergirl, he came to the door and was pleased to see her larger than life as usual.

"Oh, good!" exclaimed Spidergirl. "You're okay." The smile could be heard in her voice and stance. "Though, you look like you had a rough night. You're still in your clothes from yesterday and—"

"You came in through the front entrance?" muttered Austin in interruption; his voice still sounded rather groggy.

"Oh, it's not the first time," said Spidergirl carelessly waving her hand. "Besides I didn't want to break another window to get in. Anyway, I was so worried about you last night and I hated leaving you alone, especially with the window I broke and all, but I sealed it up at least temporary. If you want I can re—"

Austin held out his hands as his still slow mind had caught up with her rapid explanation for her visit.

"Okay…" said Austin. "Why did you break my window exactly?"

Spidergirl glanced behind her idly, but it was to make sure no prying ears were about. This was not lost upon Austin who then invited her inside and closed the door behind her. Turning Austin watched his strange friend as she examined her own work with the board and remark that it was kind of a clumsy job and that she could have done better.

Austin shook his head. "Just tell me what's going on."

"Okay, but first sit down, you really do look awful. I don't know what they gave you but it obviously hasn't quite worn off yet."

"What?" Austin demanded but he plopped himself down on a kitchen chair not bothering to turn it the right way around so that he was seated backwards upon it.

"Well, how much do you remember from last night?" asked Spidergirl still musing over the board with a hand under her chin.

"Um, I think I was helping a girl whose DNA had been combined with a bear's, and I sat down to analyze her blood here and then … I don't really know after that." Austin looked quite annoyed. "I might have dreamt the whole thing."

"Maybe, maybe not," said Spidergirl at last turning to Austin and with a voice rather earnest, "but you were face-first on the table when I saw you through the window here. And there was no girl. But there was Chameleon. He never disguised himself as girl before as far I know, but—" She shrugged. "I think he drugged you."

Austin scowled and leaned over the back of the chair with chin in his arms. "So, do you know what he was going to do after that? Turn me into the half bear thing?"

"I don't know," said Spidergirl shaking her head. "He was hovering over you when I came in. You know. Through the window. He was touching your head. Maybe he was going to do something more to you. I'm sorry. I tried to catch him, but I—well, I lost him. Everyone lost him. Caught his motorcycle like the wildest fish story in your life on my line, but Chameleon was gone."

Staring thoughtfully up at the ceiling (or maybe that was sleepily) Austin muttered suddenly, "Maybe I should take the job."

"What?" demanded Spidergirl.

"At Oscorp," said Austin. "The one they offered me."

"But Oscorp might just be the guys who hired Chameleon," Spidergirl remarked.

"Probably," Austin shrugged.

"One does not simply walk into Oscorp," Spidergirl said as a half tease but quite serious all the same. "They won't fall for it. That's probably where they were going to take you last night. Maybe they even subliminal messaged you to want to work for them and that's why you're even thinking of something so stupid."

"Maybe," Austin admitted. "But this isn't going to end ever unless I find out what's going on."

"They could kill you or worse," Spidergirl said crossing her arms.

Austin laughed. "Or worse."

He could almost see the pout on Spidergirl's face as she retorted, "I don't see what's so funny about it."

"Please, Spidergirl," said Austin then rising again from his seat and walking over to her. "Help me with this. I'll help you expose them. Miss Brancale knows that the Big Man ultimately owns Oscorp. Its new owner's just his puppet. Let me get in and find out what they know. They want me there so bad? Well I'll give me to them. We'll keep in contact with speakers. I have some. I'll put mine in my pocket. You'll hear everything."

"I don't like it," said Spidergirl.

"Do you have a better idea?"

"Not really," Spidergirl admitted, "except whooping more freak butt like that thing I fought last week."

"That thing that was once a man," said Austin.

Spidergirl nodded and sighed. She consented.