Surrounded by fellow prisoners in Ravencroft's equivalent of a gym, Harry pushed the barbell over his head, the muscles on his arms rippling at the intensity of the weight. A sheen of sweat covered his face and chest, soaking through the black muscle shirt he'd worn for the purpose of exercising his body. All around him the grim, grey, windowless room was filled with prisoners pushing themselves to their physical limits, but not because they particularly needed to. The security being what it was, Ravencroft prided itself on minimal incidents among prisoners. The men who frequented the gym did so either out of boredom or out of fear of going to seed during their long incarceration. They had nobody to impress besides one another due to the almost impossible chance of ever being released and although some of them looked highly intimidating the chance of them ever using their built up strength, especially on one another, was minimal.

For Harry, it was a way of both keeping himself in peak condition and also gave him a chance to do his best thinking. The repetitive motion and the strain it put on his body helped to keep his perfectly compartmentalized mind from being shaken loose by his illness. In any event, he had found that pumping iron helped keep the goblin at bay. That day his thoughts were stormy, calculated as ever and rife with hurt. It had been almost five days since he'd seen Felicia and the knowledge of what she'd done still stung in spite of his best efforts to convince himself that she'd merely been frightened and frustrated. As he continued through his umpteenth set he tried his hardest to ignore the hurt that had been threatening to consume him for most of the week. He couldn't blame Felicia for avoiding him. After all, he'd both terrified and wounded her when the goblin had come through.

I hate you, Harry's thoughts were bitterly directed at the seemingly uncontrollable monster within. He repeated himself with each and every overhead thrust of the weight, I hate you I hate you I hate you...There was a darkness in him. There always had been but when the goblin took over it become just as volatile internally as it was outwardly. Even now he felt it whispering to him, telling him to have the woman he loved hunted to her death for turning against him and siding with Octavius and Spider-Man.

But he wouldn't. He would sooner gouge out his own eyes than let himself hurt Felicia. Besides, her act of compassion hadn't set his plans back at all, at least if his trustworthy inside man had done his job properly.

In any event Harry Osborn didn't consider himself the kind of person to bear a grudge. At least not after a year of being incarcerated at Ravencroft Institute. He hated Spider-Man, that much he would gladly admit to himself and anybody who asked. However he wasn't a foolish man. In his time spent behind the stone walls of the unforgiving prison he had managed, at least in his mind, to make a very important distinction.

Spider-Man was a a symbol, a paragon of blind justice and heroism. Harry would hate the wall-crawling bastard until one of them was dead and cold in the ground. The pain he endured nearly every week was a result of Spider-Man's refusal to help him find a cure for the disease that had turned his father into a monster before killing him. If only the other had agreed to simply help Harry look into the possibility then they could have learned together about the dangers of using the blood samples made by Richard Parker.

But Harry wasn't stupid. He knew perfectly well that there was a man under that mask. In spite of all the blood spilled between them Harry still for some inexplicable reason considered Peter Parker his best friend. It was a strange, almost psychotic notion to carry, especially after being imprisoned for over a year. He knew perfectly well that Spider-Man and Peter Parker were one in the same and yet he couldn't seem to accept that fact completely.

In his mind, he had to separate Spider-Man from Peter. He had to break the web-slinging hero enough that Peter would give up the costume. Then they could return to the kind of friendship they had shared, however briefly, before Electro's attack on the city. Then Harry wouldn't have to withstand the crushing guilt and even more suffocating loneliness that he had lived with his whole life. His attacks in recent months, the ones involving The Vulture and Rhino had been concentrated on Spider-Man because that was who Harry wanted dead and hurt, not Peter...never Peter.

The goblin had taken too much from Harry's only friend already. His fingers curled in a white knuckle grip on the bar as he brought the weight back down and set it on the stand on either side of the bench. He had barely known Gwen Stacy but knew that he would remember her for the rest of his life, her beautiful face stricken with fear as he'd held her precariously on the edge of his glider. It had been easy for the goblin to let her fall, like a child dropping a kitten simply for the sake of seeing whether or not it would indeed land on its feet.

Much of his epiphany he knew he owed entirely to Felicia's influence. In spite of all he had put her through in the name of his crusade against Spider-Man she had staunchly remained the one constant in his life thus far, calming him when he fell too far under the influence of the goblin, remaining patient and loving him in spite of all his rage and hatred.

Harry sometimes wondered if that was what Gwen Stacy had done for Peter. The notion both angered him and overwhelmed him with guilt. The girl's death had been rash, impulsive and completely unnecessary when he really thought about it.

And as much as he'd tried to tell himself that Spider-Man had killed the girl he knew full well that it had been his own actions that night. He had taken it too far in killing Gwen. She had been too much a vital part of Peter's life, not Spider-Man's. He didn't want to hurt Peter. He just wanted to make him see how wrong he was in assuming the identity of hero. Heroes died for the cause. Heroes lost, as Peter had any times already, and Harry wanted to save his old friend from having to suffer those losses again.

Assuming Felicia hadn't decided to flee the state after her encounter with the goblin, Harry knew that with Octavius' machines he would be that much closer to showing Peter the error of his ways and ridding the city of Spider-Man for good.

He wiped his head down with a starkly white towel and walked away from the ripe smells and exaggerated sounds of the prison's gym to the adjoining showers. The tiled room was long like any other prison shower and Harry had been in Ravencroft too long to approach it with anything other than resignation. In any case, the stalls were partitioned and the ever watchful guards were mere feet away outside the doors that led back to the corridor.

As was the norm, Ravencroft's staff worked hard to make sure that the prison was kept better than other institutions. Too many bleeding hearts meant that what could have been a mildewy hive of bacteria was a sparkling white sanctuary of hot water and fresh clothes. The room was completely devoid of people...at least at first glance. Harry had just shed his clothes and stepped under the hot spray of the shining silver shower head when he heard the unmistakable sounds of footsteps padding on the damp tiles near the entrance to the gym. He narrowed his eyes and hunched his shoulders, letting the water cascade over his long hair but did not look around.

Not that he needed to. Somebody stepped into the stall next to him with a high pitched giggle that made Harry's skin crawl in spite of the warmth of the water. He glanced sideways briefly and saw the rather unappealing sight of an undressed Cletus Kasady standing in the next stall over, the spray of the shower making his straggly ginger hair appear all the more unkempt.

"Hello sweetums," he said with another giggle. "You look right tuckered out from all that heavy lifting."

Harry rolled his eyes but said nothing. Kasady was a sick son of a bitch, that much anybody in Ravencroft knew. Being monitored twenty-four seven was an assurance that he wouldn't pull anything anywhere near as violent as his crimes within the outside world had been. The stories that Harry had heard about the killer's activities during his heyday were sickening at the very least but he, like everyone else in Ravencroft, simply regarded Kasady with contempt and annoyance.

"Piss off," Harry muttered, running his hands through his hair and doing his best to simply savor the feeling of the hot water in spite of the killer's presence.

"Now now goblin," Kasady replied innocently, "there's no need to get...testy." He glanced downwards, his eyebrows wiggling licentiously as he stuck his tongue out between his teeth. Harry narrowed his eyes once more and resisted the urge to wrench the piping off of the shower stall and bludgeon the bastard to death. Knowing just how disturbed the man was, Harry wouldn't have put it passed Kasady to actually enjoy that kind of beat-down.

"What the hell do you want?"

Kasady shrugged, still looking at Harry like he was some kind of delectable piece of meat. "I just thought I'd come over and stab some words in your ears." He twitched and shook his head, merely putting on the show of correcting himself. "Sorry about that...I meant put some words in your ears."

"I highly doubt that there's anything important that I could hear from you," Harry remarked acidly, shutting off the hot water. Any other day of the week he would have tried to enjoy the shower more but at the moment he simply wanted to be rid of the serial killer's presence.

"That hurts my feelings, goblin, it really does!" Kasady's unhinged eyes widened in mock hurt. "It's so boring here. All dull day every day right up until I hit the hay all I think of is bodies. And when I sleep all I ever dream of is bodies and it wasn't so bad out there in the pretty places because I could actually slice them right up the middle but they don't let me have fun here."

"I can't imagine why that would be," Harry said with a roll of his eyes as he retrieved a towel from one of the plastic shelves at the edge of the showers. He could feel Kasady's eyes on him once more and looking over his shoulder saw that the man was in fact staring at him, still with that hungry look on his face. "Take a picture, Kasady. That's the best you're going to get."

"I don't like pictures," Kasady replied with a dramatic sigh. "They're too much like the real world; all grey and boring and nondescript. I can't get the pretty colors out when I scratch pictures."

"Yeah well," Harry said dismissively as he pulled a fresh pair of prison fatigues out from the laundry hamper, "I really don't think you're going to get a chance to scratch anybody here, let alone me."

"But I don't wanna scratch you, goblin!" Kasady walked out from under the spray and stepped across the damp tiles. With a predatory light gleaming in his eyes he stepped right into Harry's personal space. Without the added effort and concentration that had come with lifting the barbell over his head repeatedly Harry could feel the goblin inside begin to squirm at this encounter. His veins begin to constrict and he felt his heart-rate quicken. Gritting his teeth, he curled his hands into fists, trying with all his might to keep the attack at bay, even though he would like nothing more than to release his fury on the son of a bitch in front of him. He forced himself to meet Kasady's slit-like eyes as the man leered down at him like a perverted hawk. "I spent too much time scratching," Kasady said softly, almost introspectively, "guess that's why they threw me in this little place. Not so bad though. I get food, company...but I don't wanna scratch you little Harry...I just want to devour you...every last little bit until there's nothing left."

His hand, still warm and wet from the shower, touched Harry's bare shoulder and made to trail down the length of his arm. The tightly uncoiling monster inside the pit of Harry's stomach snapped like a crocodile. Before Kasady could so much as jump out of the way Harry grabbed him by the wrist and snapped the man's hand back. Kasady's eyes widened with pain for the briefest of moments but then his whole fact lit up with ecstatic delight and he let out a peal of impish laughter.

Incensed, Harry flung the bastard away from him with all his strength, pleasure spiking through him when Kasady knocked his head against the side of the tiled stall. Blood, stark and scarlet, mixed in with the water from the shower that swirled around the drains. The goblin began to tremble in anticipation, urging Harry to spring upon the vulnerable, wounded serial killer, to pummel him into oblivion with his bare hands, to see his brains beaten against the ivory tiles of the shower floor.

The door to the corridor beyond flung open and three guards rushed in. For a second they stared in shock at Harry, half dressed in his black prison fatigues, shaking with the effort of suppressing the ever-threatening goblin. There weren't any mirrors in the showers but Harry knew that the veins on his chest and face were probably already tinged with green, something the guards knew by now to be wary of. Then, almost in unison, they looked to the naked, injured form of Cletus Kasady, who was giggling like the maniac he was on the floor, blood still trickling from his head.

"God damn it Kasady what have you told you about playing nice with the other kids?!" The burliest of the guards stormed forward, the other two tailing him. Undeterred by the serial killer's state, he wrenched the bastard to his feet. Kasady giggled and replied, "I don't want to play with the other kids, I want to rip their lips off! Maybe fry them up with my morning toast and eggs and a nice glass of orange juice." He stuck his tongue out like a serpent at Harry who met the killer's insane eyes unflinchingly.

The burly guard practically threw Kasady at the other two officers who dragged him towards the hampers of clothes and all but pinned him down as they forced him into a jumpsuit of his own. Eyeing Harry warily the first guard said, "Get the hell out of here Osborn. There's somebody waiting for you at your cell anyway."

Blinking at the information, Harry stood still for a brief second. The first person he thought of was Felicia and it helped to calm him down somewhat, even though he realized that it was impossible for her to actually be waiting for him inside the prison itself. Taking a deep breath, he pulled the rest of the dark jumpsuit on and walked passed the commotion near the hampers, ignoring Kasady, who called out cheerily, "Say hello to your little girlfriend for me, goblin! I think about her as much as I think about you!"

Clenching his teeth, Harry pushed through the door to the vast, dark corridor that lead to the holding cells, his mind racing, the goblin still singing in his veins. He walked among other milling prisoners, not meeting anybody's eye. It wasn't out of fear that he avoided eye contact. In Ravencroft it was simply understood that you didn't try and chum it up with anybody else serving a life sentence and eye contact was too formal a way of indicating a person. He moved swiftly among the cells and guards, the path back to his own vault one that he could walk in his sleep by this point.

He knew exactly who he would find there and wasn't disappointed by the time he reached his cell. There was only one person who had the kind of clearance to get inside Ravencroft without having to force his way in. He hadn't seen the man since he'd come to deliver news of Felicia's betrayal several days ago. Harry entered the cell to find his guest standing in a shadowy corner, staring at the opposite wall. He was so used to this man's air of impassiveness that the anxious look on his face immediately set Harry's mind on alert. The man looked around at the sound of Harry's approach and, stepping forward said, "You look preoccupied, Mister Osborn."

"I was simply hoping that you'd turn out to be some kind of call girl."

The man rolled his eyes and said, "I doubt that even a place as concerned with its image as Ravencroft would allow that sort of thing."

"You never know," Harry replied, "it is the Christmas season after all."

For a moment the man in the shadows was silent and then, with a small tilt of his head he said, "You're incredibly tense, Mister Osborn. What happened?"

"It's nothing to concern yourself with, Gus," Harry said with a dismissive nod. "I just had a run-in with a parasite is all. It's a prison. It happens at least once a week." Gustav Fiers's deadpan blue eyes regarded Harry reproachfully as he flung himself onto the single mattress that constituted his bed. Folding his hands behind his head and not opening his eyes to meet the other man's Harry said, "Either you're here to tell me that everything went south with Octavius or you're bringing me Spider-Man's blood."

When Fiers did not answer right away Harry opened his eyes. Fiers had removed his hat and was standing somewhat awkwardly, not quite looking at Harry but not avoiding him either. Narrowing his eyes, Harry sat up and stared hard at his inside man. "What happened?" He said, authority lacing every syllable.

Fiers cleared his throat. "Quite a lot actually. Good and bad."

"Get the bad out of the way."

Fiers took a deep breath and began. "Octavius cooperated as you hoped he would. I don't think that Felicia gave him much of a choice. Neither did I for that matter." This was Fiers' way. He had absolutely no time for chewing the fat no matter how much it might lessen the pain of bad news. It was why Harry appreciated him in addition to his knack for persuading people. "This robot of his, the prototype that is...he called it Mark One and set it loose just the other day."

"Robot," Harry repeated with disdain. "God that sounds so nineteen-fifties horror movie, don't you think?"

Fiers eyed him warily. "What would you rather have it called Mister Osborn?"

Harry grinned wickedly, the giddiness of a child overtaking him as he said, "How about we call them Spider Slayers? It's a name I've been tossing around for a few days."

"It suits them," Fier said with a nod. Then, launching back into his reiteration of the events of the last several days he said, "The...Spider Slayer zeroed in on Spider-Man at a mall in Queens."

"Was anybody hurt?" Harry demanded, sitting up straighter on his mattress. The last thing in the world that he needed was another Adrian Toomes on his hands. He anticipated casualties. They were necessary to draw the spider out of his web after all. Blind murder on the other hand was something he wouldn't stand beside if he could help it. He had the blood of an innocent woman on his hands already and that was more than enough to haunt his conscious. Alexsei had been so effective when he'd attacked the city in his specialized armor because he had been possessed of a thirst for revenge against Spider-Man for having bested him in the first place. Toomes had simply hated everybody under the age of thirty-six and although Harry was grateful that the old coot had gotten rid of Donald Menken he hadn't appreciated the attack on NYU.

To Harry's relief, Fiers shook his head at the question. "No deaths. Octavius set it loose in the parking lot and most of the people inside escaped with minor trauma. There was one young man reported injured at the scene but he declined being taken by the paramedics."

"And Spider-Man?"

Fiers took a deep breath and then said with a perceptible rush, "He arrived only moments after the Spider Slayer attacked."

Because Peter was probably already at that mall, Harry thought, wondering whether or not the young man who hadn't wanted to be hospitalized had been his friend.

"The bad news, since you asked for it first," Fiers went on, "is that Mark One didn't survive. Something went wrong with its electricity circuit. Octavius has told me that it was a concern of his during development and somehow Spider-Man managed to exploit that weakness."

Harry breathed in through his nose as his pulse quickened irritably. The chance of the first Spider Slayer being felled was one that he had prepared himself for. They were, after all, working with a prototype that had been in development for almost twenty years. Hiccups were inevitable. Still he couldn't help but feel mildly annoyed. "What's the good news then?" He asked Fiers, gripping the edge of his mattress to help maintain as much calm as was possible. The spike of adrenaline and anger due to his encounter with Kasady in the showers was only beginning to ebb and the last thing Harry wanted was to work himself into another attack by becoming unnecessarily angry.

The man smiled, reached into the pocket of his overcoat and pulled out a vial with a long cotton swab affixed to the inside of the stopper. Even in the dimness of his cell Harry could see the dark red blot of blood on the end of the cotton. He leaned forward, taking the sample as Fiers passed it to him.

"Mark One managed to get several good hits at Spider-Man before it malfunctioned," Fiers explained. Harry noted the triumph in the man's voice but did not remark, staring intently at the vial clutched in his hand. "I managed to get a sample before the clean up detail washed away the trace at the scene." He all but beamed at Harry as he added, "We've got him now, Mister Osborn. Even the smallest sample of his DNA could prove useful for genetic experimentation. And of course you'll be able to find out exactly who he is underneath that damn mask once we get it into a lab."

Harry stared at Fiers incredulously. There was credence in the man's words. Any other person in Harry's position would have gladly jumped at the opportunity to pin his enemy with such incriminating information. Even in his state of disbelief his mind was racing with strategies, things that could be done with this sampling of Spider-Man's blood; cloning, splicing, viruses...hell, if he wanted to he could probably turn the entire population of New York City into Spider-Man.

He didn't need to know who his hated foe was because he already knew. His hand clutched around the vial and he closed his eyes as he felt two polarizing parts of his persona clash. He could see Peter at the bottom of the stairs at his father's old mansion, drawn there simply by a desire to see an old friend again. Harry had been so cynical and guarded back then, too injured by the life his father had forced him to live to have believed Peter at first but as his childhood friend had turned to leave a kind of spark had been lit inside of Harry, sending a rush of warm feeling through him.

Peter had gone there to see him purely out of the goodness of his heart because that was simply who he was. Even now after all that had happened, after all the reasons he had given Peter to hate him until the end of the world he still felt a small flicker of that warmth. Peter had loved ones, people like Gwen Stacy who would be in the crossfires and that wasn't what Harry wanted. He wanted Spider-Man to suffer, not Peter Parker because Peter was his friend and so unflinchingly kind and Spider-Man...he was just another self-righteous hero on the road to ruin.

Harry crushed the vial in his bare hand, ignoring the stinging pain as the glass ground into his skin. Fiers let out a cry of alarm but before he could make any move to stop his employer, Harry got to his feet and threw the cotton tip of the swab down the drain of the small basin affixed to the stone wall of his cell. Turning to face Fiers who looked almost murderously angry Harry said, "I'm not playing that kind of game, Gus."

Fiers eyed Harry levelly in spite of shock and outrage and said in a voice of deadly calm, "You had the perfect weapon in your hands, Mister Osborn."

"There are other options. How many models does Octavius have?"

"Several, all at various stages of completion."

"Well then," Harry said as he sat back down on the edge of his mattress, "I suggest you pay the good doctor another visit. You persuaded him once and I'm more than confident in your ability to make him see things our way again."

Fiers exhaled, averting his gaze from Harry, who could tell that the man would rather have simply used Spider-Man's blood sampling against him. Not one to get into any kind of argument with the man who had given him so much power Fiers gave a curt nod and said, "It'll be done before the end of the week."

"Good," Harry said with a satisfied grin. "You know how much I hate to be kept waiting. Speaking of which, have you heard anything from Felicia?" Harry made a concerted effort to keep the need out of his voice although he knew perfectly well that Fiers understood that Felicia wasn't just another pawn in his game against Spider-Man. It would have sounded so pathetically weak to tell the man just how badly he wanted to see the woman he loved again and in any event he knew that Fiers would care in the slightest.

"We've had her penthouse under surveillance," the man replied, "but you've probably seen more of her than any of the surveillance unit has. I think it's safe to say that she left the city."

Harry shook his head. "She wouldn't do that."

"Mister Osborn I know you're attached to her but-"

"She feels responsible," Harry said, cutting Fiers off bluntly. "She was the one who initially stole that hard drive on my behalf and even though she returned it like a good little kitty cat she still knows what's on it." She also knows that I wouldn't give up that easily, Harry thought to himself with a smirk of pride. Felicia was challenging him, goading him into seeing just how much he could withstand before his own conscious got the better of him but he wasn't going to give in that easily. "Keep an eye out for her still," he said out loud to Fiers. "And if you do find her...do me a favor and leave her alone."

Fiers was silent for a moment and then said, almost as though he were, for the first time, afraid that he was in danger of overstepping his bounds, "I understand that she means a lot to you...but don't let her become your Achilles heel."

Too late, Harry thought wryly. Out loud he said, "I keep my personal and professional life separate, Gus. You know that by now. Felicia's a special case and while she did give up the ghost in the end she isn't exactly walking around with a gigantic Spider-Man flag is she? Give her time. She's a cat. They come when they're ready, not when you ask them to." Fiers nodded, his gaze as impassive as ever. Sighing heavily, Harry traced the cuts on his palm that had formed when he'd crushed the vial. "You'd better run along now Gus. And when you see Doctor Octavius again, try and persuade him a bit more gently than Felicia did."

"What if he refuses in the end? He does have several more models but he could turn on us one day or even end up dead like Adrian."

Harry smiled at the man, his eyes glimmering with dark intent. "Your confidence in me is astonishing. You're forgetting who you're talking to here. I may be serving a life sentence or two but I'm an Osborn, remember? We always have a contingency plan."