Chapter Twenty-Four

I turned around slowly. I saw the guns first. At least fifteen automatic weapons glinted with reflected lightning. Holding them trained at our heads was a semicircle of suited rig workers, their faceless helmets making them seem more ghostly and mechanical than human.

Standing just behind two of the center guards was Black Widow, appearing oblivious to the freezing rain and surf. Two of her arms were crossed, and a third was holding a clear cylinder filled with an amber liquid. "Looking for this?"

I heard a double click from behind me. Doc had just cocked the gun.

"That won't do you any good, Doctor. One gun against sixteen."

Doc stepped forwards, in front of me. "I'll take that chance."

Black Widow chuckled. "You're so transparent, Dr. Hiller. You think that you'll have a clean getaway because I wouldn't dare harm you, due to the information you posess. Well, guess what?"

Black Widow waved languidly in the direction of the laboratory. "Our chief science officer has devised a way to recreate the formula of the performance enhancer from the substrate signature of your antidote. Very ingenious. I'll have to offer him a pay raise."

I felt a cold chill. What Black Widow was saying was that she had the formula, and that she didn't need Doc alive anymore.

"You're forgetting Spider-Girl."

Black Widow snorted. "A girl in a costume?"

Doc glanced between me and Black Widow, confused.

"Don't tell me you didn't know, Doctor. Spider-Girl doesn't exist anymore. The kid standing next to you is nothing more than a normal girl in a suit. Her powers are gone. Oh, dear, hadn't you figured it out by now?"

Doc was slowly turning to stare at me. I couldn't blame him. After all, he was just realizing that he'd put his life in the hands of a high school sophomore who was no stronger or smarter than the next average teenager.

Black Widow gestured in the direction of the guards. "Secure them."

"Like hell you will!"

In a lightning movement Doc flipped the gun over, gripped the barrel and swung the gun like a club, catching the nearest guard in the stomach. The guard yelled and dropped his gun, clutching his middle and wheezing.

Two pairs of hands clamped around my right arm. I twisted and threw a punch that once upon a time would have sent the guy flying across the platform.

I missed. He caught hold of my fist and wrenched my arm around in a crushing armlock. I gritted my teeth to strangle a yell of pain. Someone grabbed my left arm and twisted it behind my back. I kicked wildly but hit only air.

"Get them both to the plant. Sandrouni, take your group and scour this platform. I want to know how the little brat got here," Black Widow said.

What? If she didn't know how I'd gotten here, then she couldn't have found the glider...

Then where was it?

"Somebody get Doe and send him to the plant as well."

The guard, Sandrouni, said, "Doe, ma'am?"

"Yes, Doe. There's something I want him to see."

Suddenly my feet were off the ground as the two guards hauled me upright and jerked me around, dragging me back in the direction that we had come. I dug in my heels, earning a stunning blow in the back from the barrel of a gun.

Doc was struggling wildy as they shoved and dragged us back into the corridor. The floor was wet and slippery under my feet. I struggled in their grip, but one guard jerked my twisted arm so hard I thought it would snap.

They marched us past other rooms and corridors that branched off like tunnels in an anthill. Down a curving flight of stairs. Over a catwalk. The throbbing hum of machinery became twice as loud.

Around a corner were two gigantic, sliding steel doors, partially ajar. The inside was dim and flickering. A spark of fear spun through my whirlwind of emotions. Whatever Black Widow had in store for us, it was not going to be at all pleasant. My wounded ankle throbbed.

The guards hauled us through the doors, and Black Widow said, "Lights."

I gasped. The room was massive, nearly the size of a basketball stadium. It had only three walls; the fourth opened out over the ocean, shielded only by a waist-high safety railing. Lightning forked through the black sky.

The wall to our left was blanketed in terminals and switchboards. Lights flashed and graphs spiked. A monitor displaying a ghostly radar weather image swept around.

"This," Black Widow said, with obvious pride, "Is the brainchild of our most distinguished researcher. Figured it out yet, Dr. Hiller? I'm sure you would understand as well, Spider-Girl. You were quite the intelligent student.

"This entire facility is powered by atmospheric energy. The method is unique to our business. The original drilling platform was hydro- electrically powered, but that system didn't yield nearly enough energy for our purposes. So..."

Black Widow waved grandly at the torrential rain over the ocean. Freezing gusts of wind swirled around the room.

"Your average thunderstorm generates enough electrical energy to equal that in over ten nuclear warheads. Naturally, for this type of operation, you would need a generator of truly phenomenal proportions. Such as this one."

The two guards spun me around to face the right, and my breath caught in my throat. I saw first a web of catwalks, with automatic elevator platforms rising and lowering between the levels. Under the net was a tangled mass of angular metal beams and coiled generators taller than telephone poles. The humming of electricity vibrated through the walls and floor.

"Oh, no," Doc murmured. "She's going to...she wouldn't..."

"Wouldn't I?" Black Widow said. "Ah, Doe. Perfect timing."

Dad. I whipped my head around. Through the wall of guards I could see him standing, so small compared to the gargantuan doors. His gun was gone. The mirrored helmet shielded his face, but he started when he saw me, then Doc.

"Yes, Dr. Garcia?" His voice shook the tiniest bit.

"Come over here, Doe. I need your opinion."

Dad hesitated for a moment, then stepped slowly forward. I couldn't see his face, and he couldn't see mine.

Thunder rumbled.

"Take this, Doe." Black Widow handed the antidote to Dad. Harry's life, and the lives of thousands of New Yorkers were contained in that cylinder. In Black Widow's hands, the lives of innocents all over the world.

Dad's fingers closed around the antidote. He stood there, holding it, unsure.

"Now, Doe, ever seen this girl before? No? Is it the mask? The mask alone should be enough to remind you."

Dad didn't move.

Black Widow smiled. "Been with us long, Doe?"

"Three years," Dad said.

"Just three? And where were you before?"

"I...I spent a while in a hospital in Manhattan. After that it was odd jobs in Jersey. A few weeks as a shiploader in Nantucket."

"A shiploader?" Black Widow snorted. "I see. Hardly a demanding profession for a man with two degrees in chemistry and journalism, is it?"

"I don't know what you're getting at."

Black Widow shook her head in mock sorrow, building up the tension cruelly. "Got any family?"

Dad turned his head ever so slightly. "I...no. I don't."

"No family, eh? Good. That means you won't mind this all that much."

Before I could even blink two clawed hands clamped around my shoulders in a bone-crushing grip. I yelled as the ground rushed away as Black Widow sprang twenty feet across the room, landing with a clatter on the highest catwalk above the generator.

"Well?" Black Widow shouted. "Any objections? No? Well, how about this?"

"Aaaauugh!"

One of Black Widow's hands clenched around my throat and swung me off the catwalk, dangling me barely ten feet above the sparking generator. I gagged and grabbed hold of her wrist with both hands, gasping for air and from the heat of the generator. Black Widow's grip tightened. The air crackled with electricity.

"What are you doing?" Dad screamed.

"Are you crazy?" Doc yelled.

"Doctor!" One of the guards yelled, joined by other horrified shouts from below, "Doctor, you can't do that to a kid! You can't-"

Through the whitish haze of my mask I saw Black Widow turn towards me, a hellish triumph dancing in her arachnid eyes. "So, Mayday, anything you'd like to say to your dear old dad standing down there? Or to anyone else? Any pleas for mercy?"

Mom...Dad...Benny...Grandma...

Even through my struggle for air, a furious, raging defiance burned inside me. I was about to die, die horribly, but I'd be damned if I was going to beg anything from her!

Harry...

"Yes," I gasped. "S-something...to say. To y-you."

Don't worry about me…don't worry...

"Oh?" Black Widow inclined her head.

"Yeah." I took a final, wheezing breath.

Go out as Spider-Girl...like a hero...

"Go to hell, you coward!"

Black Widow snarled and tightened her grip. Blood roared in my ears. She swung around to face Dad, Doc, and the horrified guards below.

"Doe! Are you watching?" Black Widow roared. "Then watch your daughter die, Spider-Man!"

She let go.