Chapter Thirteen

What will happen to Spider-Girl will be the same thing that happened to her father.

Spider-Man, eh? You killed him?

I didn't say that.

"Hey, Mayday."

I snapped out of my reverie. "Harry!"

Harry grinned and slid into his desk next to mine. Maybe it was my tension or my jangling nerves that gave me the impression that his grin was too wide. I had climbed through my window just as my alarm clock had started an ear-splitting racket. I had been forced to dive into bed and feign sleep when Mom had come to make sure I was awake.

"Hey. Where were you yesterday?"

Harry blinked, a bemused expression on his face. "Yesterday? Oh, uh, I was...home. Sick."

"Oh. Feeling better?"

Harry nodded. "Uh-huh. Yeah. Much better."

I didn't need to be feeling normal to tell that something was wrong. Harry stuffed his books haphazardly into his desk and sat up straight again. "So, what'd I miss? I'm so messed up in this class it'll take a miracle to get me a D. Are we still on oxidation numbers? Or electron configuration? One of those? Whatever." He said this all very quickly.

I stared at him. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Yeah! Yeah, I'm fine. What?" Harry barked a short laugh.

"You're acting a little tense."

"Tense? Naw, I'm okay. Where's Garcia?"

"I don't think she's here today," I said.

Harry was lying. I could always tell when he was lying, and now was no exception. His face tightened and he tended to talk more quickly than usual. He was drumming absentmindedly on his desk as he spoke.

We weren't talking. Not really. This conversation was nervous, forced. What was wrong? What had happened? Try as I might, I couldn't concentrate on what reason Harry could have for lying to me.

What will happen to Spider-Girl will be the same thing that happened to her father.

I heard it again and again, like a jammed recording. Every time someone nearby made a sudden movement I flinched. Even the sunlight outside seemed too garish and bright.

That creature skulking around the bowels of that building knew something about

Dad. She had even hinted that she had had something to do with what had happened.

I had to find her.

A surge of fury washed through me. She knew! She had done something to my father! This scum had stolen my father, put my family through years of worry and misery and dashed hopes. For what? For what?

Snap!

"How did you do that?" Harry asked.

"Huh?" I opened my fist and the splintered remains of my pencil fell onto my desk. "Lousy pencil," I said quickly.

What could I do? How could I find her again? She could be anywhere by now. Where did she hide?

Harry shrugged, still drumming his fingers on his desk. The substitute teacher that was rifling through the papers on Ms. Garcia's desk dropped the lesson plan in exasperation. "Okay, kids, your teacher didn't leave anything coherent, so just keep it quiet today."

She had some place to live, a lair. She had to be out of sight, somewhere dark, a place where she wouldn't be found. No normal person would miss an eight-limbed fanged spider-woman in plain view.

Sally Ericson raised her hand and asked, "Can we use the chess stuff then?"

There was a loud mass groan from the jocks in the corner.

"The chess stuff?"

"The chess team meets in here, and there are a bunch of pieces and boards and everything in the cabinet."

"Oh! Go ahead, just keep the noise level down."

"Want to play?" Harry asked.

"Sure," I said.

Harry got up and joined the crowd at the cabinet grabbing bags of chess pieces and rolled up paper boards. I swept the shards of wood and graphite into my cupped hands and tossed them in the trash.

In an abandoned building? Underground, in an old subway tunnel? Those would have been searched by contruction workers eventually.

"White or black?"

"I'll go with white."

Harry poured the bag of pieces over the two desks and sorted through. I collected my pieces and lined them up in their order. A neat row of pawns, then the rook, knight, bishop, king, queen. Little armies.

I moved a white pawn forward one space. Harry lifted his black knight over the row of pawns to counter. Vaguely, in my thoughts, I recalled a line from a book that I had once read. 'Some species of spider can change colors to blend in with their environment.'

What if she didn't look that way all of the time? Was it possible, just possible, that that creature could change, morph from that shape to that of a normal person? It would be as easy as taking off a mask.

Mask. Mask! I was forgetting Hobgoblin! What role was he playing in all of this?

"I haven't played in a long time. Pawns attack diagonally, right?"

I nodded as Harry slid another pawn forward two spaces to block my first pawn. I moved my queen out of the safety of the chess nobility. Direct approach.

"So your Aunt Beth actually let you stay home yesterday?"

"Yeah. For once in my lifetime." The other black knight skipped over the line of pawns. A slow approach, purposefully leaving the pawns in place to protect the important pieces.

It was still that forced, dry chitchat. What was wrong? Was everything falling apart? First Hobgoblin, then Mom losing her trust in me, then the spider-woman, and my best friend. And Dad.

I moved. White queen took black knight. A very straightforward attack.

Harry frowned, and his eyes narrowed. The second knight went back into its original space. A cautious, calculating strategy, waiting for an advantage.

"Did you watch the news yesterday? They didn't show anything else on TV except that bombing in Times Square." White pawn forward two spaces.

"I saw." Black bishop diagonally four spaces left. "The fight.with Sp- Spider-Girl and the guy on the w-wingjet," Harry stuttered. I blinked. I had never heard him stutter before.

White rook forward one space. "Wingjet? You mean the glider?"

Harry didn't respond, only slid his bishop two spaces right and snatched my queen. "Hah! Beat that."

"If you insist." I shoved my rook across the board and took his bishop.

Danger.

I flinched. Harry stared at me, down at his vanquished bishop, and back up at my face. "Insist?"

My spider-sense was tingling. I stared back, puzzled. "What?"

Harry's eyes caught the fluorescent lighting of the classroom for just an instant, giving them an eerie glitter. He seemed to shake his head, as if dismissing a thought, then slowly moved his black queen forward three spaces. I countered with a knight.

Danger.

"What do you think about all of this?" Harry asked.

"You mean the Spider-Girl versus Hobgoblin stuff? I think it's just the media blowing things way out of proportion."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Why would someone just appear out of the blue and decide to start a vendetta against her for no reason?"

"Maybe he has a reason," Harry said casually.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Maybe he wants to get even for something. Punish her."

"It doesn't seem like she's been around long enough to make many enemies."

Yeah, right, I thought privately. "Hobgoblin just decided one day to become bitter?"

"He could have found the guts, or the will, and the means to do something."

Probably so, I thought. Still, it seemed strange. Why had it taken Hobgoblin so long to begin exacting his revenge? Had he been plotting it for all of these years?

"Good point." White rook to the right six spaces.

Danger!

I shook my head slightly. Why was my spider-sense going off here, of all places? School, where normalcy was embedded in the very walls.

It was true, though, what Harry had said. Hobgoblin needed all of that technology, the suit, glider, and grenades. But that didn't explain his phenomenal strength.

Still, where could he have gotten all of that equipment? Could he have invented it himself? Or had he bought it, or maybe stolen it from someone else? It would have to have been an engineer, or an engineering company...

Quest Aerospace. Of course! Quest Aerospace was a huge supplier of technology to the United States military, I remembered that much. Where had I heard that? Something in the paper, probably.

I absentmindedly shifted my queen to the left. Aha! The paper that I had read at school with Harry, months ago. The big article about his inheritance. Quest Aerospace used to be OsCorp, the company that Harry's father had owned.

At that moment, both my spider-sense and intuition exploded to life. My mind whirled, fitting pieces together like a complex jigsaw puzzle.

Hobgoblin somehow got into Quest Aerospace the night before. Hobgoblin wanted revenge for someone who had been stolen from him. The Green Goblin had fought Dad and disappeared. Hobgoblin was the son of the Green Goblin. Hobgoblin had access to technology through Quest Aerospace, which used to be OsCorp. It was merged with another company after the owner, Harry's father, had died. How did Hobgoblin get access to Quest Aerospace?

Through an inheritance?

My breath caught in my throat with a soft wheeze. Harry looked up. "Mayday?"

It fit. It fit all too perfectly. I knew who Hobgoblin had to be. He had given himself away with one tiny slip. But I didn't feel relieved or triumphant. I felt nothing. I thought nothing. Nothing but one single, horrified sentence.

Oh, my God.

Yes, I knew who Hobgoblin was. He was sitting right in front of me.

Harry slid his black queen forward across the board in a single movement and glanced up smiling.

"Check."