Chapter Twenty-Seven

"Warning! Atmospheric energy regulation system destabilizing. Core implosion estimated in seven minutes, fifty seconds."

The inside of the rig seemed much warmer than it had moments before, even through my soaked costume. The water that had drained in from the storm was evaporating into clouds. Spikes of pain shot up my arm from my broken hand.

Dad led and I followed, sprinting down grey, sterile corridors and making hairpin turns around corners. The ceilings were beginning to slope down, giving the impression that we were running through a tunnel.

"It's not much farther!" Dad yelled over his shoulder. "We'll take the shortcut through the heatings! They're off!"

"Okay!" I forced more power into my legs, catching up with Dad. The damp air, tinged with salt, rushed through my lungs. I tried to ignore the computerized voice droning, "Core implosion estimated in seven minutes, twenty seconds."

Concentrate, Mayday. Follow Dad and run. Jut run.

I couldn't think about the fear. I had to ignore it, or I would freeze in my tracks. Ignore the fear, ignore the pain. I had to keep focused! Antidote. Antidote. Find the antidote.

My spider-sense flared and I narrowly avoided crashing into Dad's back as he halted. It was another set of doors, not nearly as huge as the ones leading into the plant, but bolted across with an automatic lock. A keypad was embedded in the wall beside it, beside a small speaker.

Dad yelled, "Doe, six one four four!"

The keypad beeped, and the computer said, "Facility under automatic lockdown. Access denied."

Dad took a step backwards. I went forward and jammed my fingers into the seam between the steel doors. "This ought to work better. Grab on!"

Dad gripped the edge of the opposite door. "On three! One! Two! Three!"

I braced my feet against the metal floor and heaved. The gears shrieked as the metal buckled under my fingers. Dad flattened his door against the threshold.

"Core implosion estimated in seven minutes."

A blast of heat hit me full in the face. The room was almost as large as the generator room, humid and very dim. The walls went up and up and simply disappeared into black shadow. I blinked.

"There's no floor!"

"There is, but it's about fifty feet below." Dad pointed downwards into the hot, oppressive darkness. "See those?"

I hung onto the edge of the threshold and leaned forward. Steel pillars, hundreds of them, nearly five feet in diameter rose up from the blackness below to floor level. They stretched in rows across the room like giant stepping stones. Their tops were covered with some kind of machinery. I could barely make out the faint outline of another door, much like the one we had just destroyed.

"Those are the gas jets. We'll hop 'em across, and we'll be right at the lab."

"Dad?" I asked. "Are you sure these are off?"

"I shut them off myself an hour ago. They're-"

"Core implosion in six minutes, fifty seconds," the computer droned.

"Come on." Dad sprang from the threshold and landed neatly in the center of the first jet.

"All right," I said, and followed. Something was warning me, and it wasn't my spider-sense. Something in the back of my mind that repeated, It can't be this easy.

Still, I followed Dad, bounded lightly from jet to jet. The light from the jammed doors receded behind us and nearly disappeared as we reached the middle of the row.

Then my spider-sense started to tingle. Dad froze, a pillar ahead of me.

Huuuuuummmmmmm.

"What was that?"

Dad turned around and stared at me. I saw the color drain from his face. "That's not possible..."

A light flared at my feet and I jumped. A ring of tiny red lights circled the surface of the pillar, directly surrounding the gas jet. Up and down the rows of pillars, red rings winked on. I leaped and landed on Dad's pillar, which was also aglow.

"What's going on?" A feeling of immense dread swept over me.

"The jets are about to ignite! Someone's activated them!"

"Three guesses who," I muttered.

KSSSSSH! KSSSSSH! KSSSSSH!

At the far end of the echoing room, just in front of the doors we entered, three gigantic blue jets of fire exploded from the pillars.

"Run! Now! Now!" Dad yelled. He grabbed my hand and leaped, pulling me after him.

KSSSSSH! KSSSSSH! KSSSSSH!

Three more jets flared behind us. Each flame was much longer than I was tall, and nearly five feet wide. Sweat prickled on my forehead and my heart leaped into my throat.

"Hurry! Go! Go!" Dad screamed. I followed at his heels as we bounded from jet to jet. The pillars behind us were erupting in roaring fire. The temperature soared.

I tasted blood in my mouth, and my pulse raced. The jets were igniting faster and faster, all around us. We were trapped in a volcano. We weren't going to make it!

Dad stopped suddenly and I landed beside him. "Oh no..."

There was a gap of fifteen feet between this section of rows, like a channel cutting through the inferno. At the other end of the room, the rows of jets were roaring to life in the opposite direction, coming towards us in sudden bursts of flame. There was nowhere to go.

Five pillars behind us, a jet ignited.

Dad and I looked around frantically. There was nowhere to swing, nowhere to jump...we were going to be burned alive!

The fourth jet ignited.

"Mayday..." Dad whispered. "Oh, God, I got us into this..."

I swallowed hard, feeling the sour taste of my own terror rise in my throat. The third jet ignited, and I saw the first jet, far at the opposite wall, wink out. The jets must be timed, I realized, an eerie, intense concentration seeping over my fear. They burned for a few seconds, then switched off. They reminded me of huge Bunsen burners. A bright blue inner cone of flame, enveloped by the larger, less distinct outer cone.

The second jet ignited as another far-off row of fire disappeared.

Like Bunsen burners...

I felt the metal beneath my feet grow warm.

"Dad!" I screamed, "Hold your breath!" I grabbed his arm and pulled him next to me in the center of the jet, just as the world dissolved into a deafening roar of fire.

I shut my eyes and squeezed Dad's arm, holding my breath and praying that Dad was doing the same. Air blasted up from the jet in a hurricane of wind, feeding the wall of blue flames that raged inches away from us, surrounding us in a pyramid of fire. I started to tremble. My lungs were burning. This was worse than being underwater, far worse. I was drowning in fire.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the fire dissolved around us and air rushed into my lungs. The system was resetting; the first jets were igniting all over again. Dad was white and sweating, gasping for air.

"Core implosion estimated in six minutes, ten seconds."

The cool, impassive voice galvanized us into action. Not looking back, we sprang, dashing across the room as the jets burned hundreds of feet behind us. Dad jumped from the last pillar and hit the doors feet first, bashing them open. I tumbled after him, feeling as if nails were being driven through my hand. The corridor was calm and cold, such stark contrast to the raging inferno behind us that I almost laughed.

"What...happened?" Dad asked, leaning against the wall. Sweat streamed down his face.

"The air and gas circulate really fast in the flame's inner cone. The low air pressure creates a heat vacuum, so the inner cone doesn't get hot. Just like..."

"Just like a Bunsen burner," Dad finished. He stared at me in amazement. "Where did you learn that?"

I thought, and the irony of the answer made me burst out laughing. "Ch-chemistry class!"

Dad blinked, confused at my hilarity. I swallowed my laughter. "It's a long story. No time for it now."

"Good point. This way!" Dad took off down the twisting corridor and I forced my legs to follow him. The passageway narrowed even further. Dad halted in front of a simple metal door with a handle. LABORATORY 01.

"This is it? Giant doors for a generator and just a little one for the lab?" I asked incredulously.

"This place was guarded day and night." Dad reached forward and twisted the handle. It didn't move. He took a step backwards and ripped the door of its hinges. "I'd say that worked better."

"Core implosion estimated in five minutes, fifty seconds."

The lab was brightly lit, massive, and totally empty. Swivel chairs were revolving slowly at desks and tables. Three towering electron microscopes stretched from the floor to the ceiling, each screen flickering different atomic structures. Someone's overturned coffee puddled on the floor by a desk. I swallowed. For Black Widow to have a lab this size, a base this elaborate...this plot was huge, beyond comprehension...

"There it is!" I pointed at the row of glass cases lining the far wall. A flask of amber liquid glimmered in the light like a beacon among other flasks of chemicals. I ran forward and pulled the case apart with my good hand. I grabbed the flask by its neck and rushed back to Dad.

"That's it? You're sure?"

"Positive. Dad?"

"Yeah?"

I forced a weak grin under my mask. "Is there another way back?" The side of Dad's mouth curled up in a shaky smile. "We'll take the long way."

"Core implosion in five minutes, thirty seconds."

We started running, out of the brightly-lit lab and back into the dim corridors. They twisted and turned around us like anthill tunnels that went on for yards and yards, seeming to spiral in on each other like a deadly maze. You got in, did you? the place seemed to mock. Let's see you get out.

The pain in my hand was worse than before, but I gritted my teeth and forced my legs to run.

"Core implosion estimated in four minutes, fifty seconds."

Dad turned a sharp corner and suddenly there we were, back on the dock where we had started. Rain blew and the wind howled around the rig. I could see the seaplane bobbing up and down on the waves and Doc leaning out of the cockpit, squinting through the rain. We sprinted forwards, through the storm. He saw us a gestured wildly, disappearing back into the cockpit. The seaplane's propellers spun to life.

Dad hopped aboard and reached down to help me up. The plane began to glide across the surface of the water. "We made it! Mayday, we-"

"Oh no you don't!"

Thwip! Thwip! Thwip!

A high-pitched shriek split the air and I felt something wrap around my leg like a tentacle. I choked as something jerked me backwards. I was suddenly flying away from the plane, sailing back towards the platform.

I crashed against the grating and scrambled to my feet. Something clamped around my shoulders and spun me around.

I gasped. Black Widow was there, her face inches from mine, two-inch fangs bared. "Give me that!"

I didn't think, I only swung my left arm around and smashed my elbow against her head. Black Widow's grip loosened and I tore away. The plane was pulling away from the dock, too far to jump...

Dad was yelling, pounding against the side of the plane, screaming over the howling wind, "Doc! Go back! Stop! Stop!"

Doc couldn't hear over the wind. I saw Dad turn back towards me. He was going to jump, to risk it... "Dad! Don't!"

I ran forward, pulled my arm back and hurled the flask with all my strength towards the plane. I saw Dad shoot a web line and snatch it out of the air. He pointed his other arm towards me, about to pull me up...

The ocean raged around it as the plane's skis lifted off the surface. Lightning crackled, reflecting off the rising seaplane and illuminating, for a second, the look of absolute horror on Dad's face.

"Mayday! Noooooooo!"

I stood there, on the platform, frozen, watching the plane vanish into the howling night. The antidote. We had gotten the antidote, and Dad was safe. That was all that mattered.

"No!"

Suddenly Black Widow was up, surging past me to the edge of the dock and stretching out her arms in a desperate, futile reach.

"Core implosion estimated in four minutes."

I closed my eyes, feeling nothing but a cold emptiness. Frigid rain pounded against me. Duty. My duty. I had done it.

Spider-Girl had done her duty.

And she was going to die.

"You."

I heard a faint whisper, somehow audible over the storm. I opened my eyes. Black Widow was slowly turning away from the ocean, turning to look at me.

"You. You've done this. You sneaked in here, you sabotaged everything...everything I've worked for...you're the one responsible. You."

I stared back at her. "And you. You stole my father. You punished him for something that he didn't do. You took his memory and left him wandering the streets. You."

I took a step forward and hissed, "You're the reason that my mother has cried herself to sleep every night for the past five years. You made my brother grow up without a father. You tried to destroy my family. You." We stood, glaring balefully at each other. That feeling was bubbling up again, that cold emptiness filling with the anger. The rage. I couldn't quell it; I didn't try.

"Core implosion estimated in three minutes, forty seconds."

Then Black Widow sprang.

I bent backwards as her claws tore the air over my face. I landed hard on my back, drew back my feet and kicked upwards. She screamed.

I bounded to my feet. Black Widow was bent double, clutching her side. I had hit her wound. She stumbled, then straightened, tossing something contemptuously to the grating. A bullet glinted in the lightning.

"Do you honestly think that a little thing like that could hurt me, Mayday?" Black Widow asked. "Your friend's bullet might have slowed me down, but did you think I was gone for good?"

"Core implosion estimated in three minutes, twenty seconds."

I reached up with my good hand and pulled of my mask. I stretched it and wound it around my broken hand, pulling it as tight as I could to immobilize the bones. The wind whipped my hair. I didn't care that she saw my face. She knew who I was. Even if she hadn't, what did it matter now?

"In a few minutes we're both going to be gone for good, Garcia."

Black Widow smirked. "Maybe you will be." I saw her eyes flick upwards, over my head, when I heard it. Over the crash of the waves, the buzz of propellers. I spun around.

The plane was coming back! It was soaring over the ocean, rocking in the wind and flying low, straight for the rig.

"As I said," said Black Widow. "One of us will be staying behind."

I could see the plane coming closer and closer. Doc was going to steer it right over the platform. Black Widow was going to escape!

"Core implosion estimated in three minutes."

She had raised her arms towards the plane. Her fingers were just beginning to turn inward when I tackled her. We both crashed to the floor. The plane's skis blew past overhead as it soared back over the ocean.

"No!" Black Widow reached over her shoulder and flung me off. I hit the wall of the building, polished to a mirror-bright sheen from the rain.

"Core implosion estimated in two minutes, forty seconds."

I stumbled to me feet, my head spinning. Black Widow bounded from the platform and landed against the side of the building, wallcrawling effortlessly up to the roof. Ignoring the pain, I followed, scrambling after her. Rain blurred my vision and my damp hair whipped in my face.

In the distance, I saw the plane bank in a wide arc and turn, back towards the rig. Black Widow was going to jump aboard, to hijack it...

"Core implosion estimated in two minutes, thirty seconds."

"Stop running," I screamed. "You coward!"

Black Widow stopped in her tracks and turned slowly. "That's the second time you've called me a coward, Parker."

My voice rose as I spoke, cresendoing into a shout of utter rage. I had never heard my own voice sound that way before, but I didn't care. Lightning seared the air over our heads.

"You keep running! Come back and face me, Black Widow! Or are you afraid of me? I think you are! And I know why!" I screamed, "I'm facing you, Garcia! You always stab people in the back!"

Black Widow launched herself at me, roaring, her claws whirling. I ducked out of their way, my spider-sense firing my muscles faster than my brain could plan. I threw myself at her, swinging with both hands and kicking with all of my strength, not caring if she clawed me or even killed me. This would end now. After all she had done, I was not going to let her leave this rig.

"Core implosion estimated in two minutes."

Even if it meant that I wouldn't be leaving, either.

One of Black Widow's fists crashed into my face and I felt myself falling. My back slammed against steel. I tasted blood in my mouth. The world turned black as Black Widow's six hands slammed me down again, pinning me to the roof.

"You think you're so clever, don't you?" Black Widow hissed in my face. "Eavesdropping, sneaking around."

I couldn't move. In a rainy fog, I saw the plane swoop by again. They couldn't see us from the wind and the rain. Black Widow's grip on my neck tightened.

"Core implosion estimated in one minute, forty seconds."

"You think you're so smart." Black Widow snorted. "You don't understand, do you, Mayday Parker? I've known who you were since you were a ten-year-old brat playing marbles at Queens Borough. I know where you live. I know every single member of your family. I know your friends. You think it was a coincidence that I taught at your high school? I knew it was you when you saved the people in my helicopter crash."

"Core implosion estimated in one minute, thirty seconds."

I felt the color drain from my face. The world was going dark around me. My lungs were burning. I struggled, trying to thrash, to throw her off...

Black Widow's mouth stretched into a hideous grin. "Surprised? Yes, I tampered with that chopper before it took off. I knew that you had inherited the powers, when your coach so kindly informed me at school of your mysterious illness. I wanted to see if you'd try to play the hero. You know..." She laughed softly. "You would have lived much longer if you hadn't."

"Core implosion estimated in one minute, twenty seconds."

I felt the strength draining from my body. I had no air. She was strangling me, ever tightening her grip. She was going to break my neck. I gagged, struggling for one breath, one gasp of air. Rain pounded my face. My eyelids closed.

"It's such a pity, Mayday. You were such a good student."

"Core implosion estimated in one minute, ten seconds."

Black Widow's fingers tensed around my throat. One sharp squeeze and my neck would snap.

I could hear the smile in her voice. "I think I'll make a little stop in Queens. Maybe to send your mother and brother after you. I believe in clean jobs, Mayday. But I'm not sure how yet. Hmmm...I think a nice little swim in the East River should do it. Let's see. Who should go first? That sweet little boy? That way he won't have to see his mother tossed off the bridge. I don't want to scar him." Rage. Hatred. Monster. You monster. You evil—

"Core implosion estimated in sixty seconds."

"As it is..." Black Widow said, "Goodbye, Spider-Girl."

No!

My arms snapped up, a strength coursing through my muscles that I didn't know I possessed. A strength that sent me clamping both hands around Black Widow's wrists and hurling her off me, twenty feet to skid across the roof. A strength that propelled me up, charging forward as she staggered to her feet and smashing my fist into her head. I somersaulted over her head, grasped her shoulders and flung her away across the roof.

"Core implosion estimated in forty seconds."

Black Widow was up again, shooting six jets of web. One twined around my arm and pulled me off my feet. I twisted and rolled, grabbing the edge of the webline and wrenching. Black Widow went down.

"Core implosion estimated in thirty seconds."

In a flash of lightning I saw the seaplane banking again, shaking in the air. It was still coming back, still trying to rescue me from the time bomb ticking below.

I landed my back against the metal wall that rose from the roof. Black Widow was twenty feet away, on her knees, holding her side, not rising.

"Get up!" I snarled.

She raised her head and stared at me. Black blood trickled from forehead. Then she started to laugh.

It was a laugh that didn't fit her appearance, high-pitched, rollicking laugh, her face twisted in a rictuslike grin. A clawed hand raised to point directly at me.

"Look at yourself!" Black Widow cackled, stabbing her finger towards my face. "You, with all of your moralizing and sanctimonious heroism! Turn around and look at yourself!"

"What?" I roared. "Get up, Black Widow!"

"Look! Are you afraid? Look!" She was pointing past me, at the metal wall of the rig. Another burst of hysterical laughter, as if she found real mirth in what she saw. "Look!"

"Core implosion estimated in twenty seconds."

I turned. Behind me was the metal wall, gray and shining with rain. Bolts of lightning split the air, and I saw a reflection on the rain-slick wall.

The face of Hobgoblin stared back at me.

I gasped, and the image was gone. I saw only myself, Mayday, in a tattered costume, battered, bruised, wide-eyed, blood trickling down the side of my face.

The face that I had seen had seemed barely human, so twisted and contorted with rage that it wasn't recognizable. Eyes that had burned, teeth bared, lips curled in an animal snarl. A face ugly with hatred.

I hadn't seen a goblin.

I had seen myself.

"Warning! Nineteen seconds remaining."

I turned around, backing away from the reflection in horror. The plane was still coming, less than a thousand feet away. Still coming. It would fly straight into the explosion.

Black Widow was on her feet again, charging at me like a bull. I dodged as a fist punched a crater in the steel wall behind me.

"Eighteen...seventeen..."

The plane was coming closer, and closer, about to sweep over the roof again. I lunged forward and shoved Black Widow away. "Sixteen...fifteen...fourteen..."

Black Widow roared and came at me again, slashing wildly. I leaped out of the way. The plane was only a hundred feet away, flying low, straight for the roof.

"Thirteen...twelve...eleven...ten seconds remaining."

I ducked under another blow and bounded over her head, behind her. The plane was fifty feet away...forty...thirty...

"Nine...eight...seven..."

Twenty feet...ten...

"Six...five...four..."

Then the plane was there, soaring over the roof, over my head. I turned and ran, sprinting. It was ahead of me...going too fast...and Black Widow was running...running for the plane...

"Three...two..."

I reached the edge of the roof and leaped, shooting web from both wrists...

"One..."

My arms jerked over my head and I was soaring through the air as the night lit up in a supernova of light and a tremendous roar of sound and fire, pulled by two lines of web attached to the tail fin of a speeding seaplane. An enormous fireball belched from the rig, mushroom-shaped like the cloud of a nuclear explosion. Glass shattered and metal screamed as the supports collapsed under it, melted by the infernal heat. Another explosion sent twenty-foot waves sweeping away as the rig collapsed like a child's tent, pylons buckling like clay as it fell, crashing into the storm-swept ocean and sinking. Shards of metal flew through the air like knives as the rig sank, its mysterious evil disappearing forever into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

The plane rocked in the air, pitching and diving in the shockwave. I shut my eyes and hung onto the weblines, ignoring the pain in my hand as I gripped. The strength was draining away, replaced only by a mind-numbing weariness, total exhaustion. Slowly, I reached up and pulled myself up, hand over hand, until I felt the cold metal of the ski under my fingers. I wrapped my arms around it and hung, eyes closed. It was over...it was over.

Tired...so tired...

DANGER!

"Mayday!"

My eyes snapped open. Adrenaline rushed through my veins as my spider- sense screeched a warning, howling in alarm.

"Mayday! Please!"

My heart leaped into my throat. There was someone else on the outside of the plane, hanging onto the end of the ski. It was a woman, about Mom's age, with black hair and wearing a strange, black costume that was much to large for her.

"Mayday!" Ms. Garcia, Black Widow, screamed. I saw her fingers sliding across the metal; her human fingertips didn't grip. She was about to fall.

"Help me, Mayday! Please, for the love of God, help me!"

I stared at her, but who was I staring at? Black Widow? Or Elaine Garcia? She stared back at me with human eyes, a human face pale with desperation. She stretched out her hand.

"Please!"

The person who had kidnapped my father, threatened to kill my family, let Hobgoblin return and destroy Harry from the inside out...

The monster who had endangered thousands of lives, who was working for someone with plans too horrible to conceive...

Black Widow was begging me for help.

I could save her...but she had to be stopped...

But she was begging for help...but this could be a trick...

But she was begging for help...

I reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her up onto the ski. I spoke over the storm; I knew she could hear me.

"I'll let a jury decide what happens to you."

"Thank you, Mayday," Garcia sobbed. "Thank you...so very much!"

"Aaaaaaaaahhh!"

Her fingers clenched shut around my wrist, and Ms. Garcia wrenched, swinging me off the ski. I gasped as a spray of seawater hit me in the face. I looked up, aghast, dangling ten feet above the brine.

Garcia was grinning, and I saw the blaze of Black Widow's arachnid eyes through her human facade. I felt her grip loosen; she was going to drop me.

Mayday, you fool! You idiot! I thought, anger at myself blending with my terror.

"Well, Mayday," Garcia, Black Widow called. "I hope you've learned something from all of this!"

"Yeah, I did," I choked out.

"What? Never help your enemy?" Garcia mocked.

"No," I shouted. "I learned something else."

I tightened my grip on Garcia's wrist and screamed over the wind.


"Spiders can't swim!"

I swung my other arm up, shot a line of web at the hull of the plane, clamped my fingers around Garcia's wrist and pulled as hard as I could.

There was a wordless scream as Garcia fell, fell into the churning sea, as Black Widow disappeared under the waves. She was gone.

I found that I was weeping.

Tears were streaming down my face. What had I just done? What had I just done?

I dangled there, tears mingling with the salt and the rain, without the slightest dregs of energy left in me. I felt a tug on the line. If it was ripping free of the plane, I didn't know. I couldn't have saved myself if I tried.

There was another tug, and then someone was pulling me up and onto the ski, hugging me.

"Mayday...it's okay...it's okay...it's over..." Dad repeated, as if he were comforting a young child woken from a nightmare.

"Dad...I...I..." I stammered.

"I saw. It's okay, Mayday...you didn't have a choice...and she had to be stopped...it's okay...it's okay...it's over..."

"But...but I..."

"Do you want proof?" Dad asked.

"Huh?" I looked up and saw him smiling.

"Look." He turned and pointed to the east, from the direction we had just come.

The waves were calmer, the sky less black. In the distance, far in the distance, the winter sky was clear, and tinged with the glow of the rising sun.

I turned back to Dad.

"Dad..." I said, my voice breaking, "Let's go home."