Norman Osborn sat, enthroned, upon an ornately-carved wooden chair with expensive leather upholstery, clad in his garish Goblin attire. His mask lay limply on the desk in front of him, its manic, insane grin staring blindly up at the ceiling. On the other side of the desk stood one of Osborn's legion of Scriers, clad in their ceremonial black robes. With one massive hand he leant, almost casually, on a small wooden object.
A cradle.

"I don't expect to have to repeat this order," Osborn said flatly, looking up at the monolithic Scrier, who was built, like all of his brethren, seemingly to simulate a brick wall. "This plan is very important to me - I must succeed where Parker fails. It is imperative that you do not let Parker foil your efforts. And dispose of Raxton if he attempts to step in, too. I'm finished with tolerating that fool and his self-righteous ways. Do you understand me? I will have your head - your head - if your people fail me again."

"Yes, my lord," the Scrier said obediently, bowing neatly as he did so. If he felt any fear from Osborn's quite genuine threats, it wasn't evident in the tone of his voice. Osborn admired that as much as he despised Peter Parker's tragically stunted vision and idealism.

"Good. Make sure nothing goes wrong, boy, or I will hold you personally responsible. Now get out," Osborn said shortly, waving the Scrier away with a purple-gloved hand.

"As you wish, my lord." The Scrier made obeisance to him once more and lowered his head as he left Osborn's presence, hurrying out of the office in order to put his master's commands into practice.

Osborn was grateful for the respite. He liked the feeling of power the Scrier cabal gave him, but their fawning respect for him got on his nerves at times. He was determined to make sure that ceased in the future. Now, though, he had old schemes to wrap up and new ones to begin, so their wheedling rituals would have to wait for the moment. He sat back and picked up the phone on his desk to call some more of his associates.

High above Osborn, through the skylight that adorned the center of his penthouse headquarters, the man called Kaine watched, silent as the grave. This looks interesting, he thought. Osborn was clearly gearing up towards doing something major. He had beheld the same look in Professor Warren's eyes when he had emerged from his birthing pod, swathed in sticky amniotic fluid and blinking in the antiseptic light of Warren's secret laboratory - the same hungry, callous look that meant pain and death for those who got in his way. Kaine felt the constant, agonizing fire in his cells grow just a little more virulent for a second at the memory.

Osborn is just like Warren, he thought bitterly. They both want to control people's lives utterly. Osborn has had more practice at it, though, and for that he must be stopped - stopped for good. I wonder how... Peter... dealt with him all these years without becoming... me. It was a puzzle Kaine had no idea how to solve, and wasn't sure he should, either.

Kaine was here because of his mutated spider-sense and the searing visions it forced upon him from time to time. It had told him to beware of the Green Goblin, in a flurry of words and pictures, sights and smells and sounds all mixed together in a whirling blur of sensations that Kaine's fevered brain had barely been able to assemble into a coherent order or meaning. All that he had been able to discern from the unsettling experience was that Osborn was involved in hurting Peter Parker, and for that, Kaine had vowed that once he had ascertained what it was that Osborn was doing to his genetic sire, he would make Osborn pay. And pay he would, of that Kaine was certain.

He would pay dearly.

Kaine peeled his dark blue mask off and took a few deep breaths of the cool evening air. He felt the slight tinge of moisture in the air settle on his ravaged features that were unrecognizable now as Peter Parker, the thick nose, blank brown eyes and matted brown beard marking him apart from the person who had provided his cells. He shook his shaggy mane of dark chestnut hair out with both of his scarred hands and coughed, spitting some flecks of bloody mucus out onto the concrete roof. Emotionlessly, he noted that today had been one of the bad days - if any of his days could be considered "good", they were the ones in which the degeneration decided to cut back to a slow, moderately painful crawl. Today, however, it seemed like his cells wanted to melt into a warm, sticky puddle of genetic soup as quickly, as agonizingly, as they could. He felt his ruined face twist in agony as a particularly sharp, vivid lance of pain shot through his body. He suspected that that was not a good sign. He needed to get some rest, and soon, or -

"Kaine," said a soft, calm voice, "what do we do now?" The voice belonged to a man costumed in much the same way as Kaine, but a fraction of the size, looking like a child next to Kaine's bearlike, brutal frame. His costume was a uniform black, the color of a funeral shroud, with few distinguishing features. Mirrored lenses hid the stranger's eyes from the world, but Kaine imagined that he could see fine - after all, Kaine himself had modeled the eyepieces after the ones in his own and Parker's masks. He thought that the stranger would appreciate such improvisation.

"We go to Peter, my friend," Kaine replied flatly. "I have... I have a hunch that wherever Osborn's plan is, Peter will be headed there. The Green Goblin has to be stopped, and Peter, fool that he is, doubtless feels that he is the one to do it."

"A hunch?" the black-clad figure asked skeptically. "And that's enough for us to go on? Kaine, I need more than just a hunch -"

Kaine rose up off his haunches and towered above his companion, sinews and muscles bulging, glaring at the other man with enough force to bore a hole in him.

"Enough," he said hoarsely, absently feeling more blood fleck his chin. "Don't ask questions. We have to help Peter Parker. It's what I was born for, and it's what I'll die doing. He won't want my help, I know, but he'll get it anyway. I don't think he'll give a damn about you, one way or the other."

"You're wrong, Kaine," the stranger said. "You're wrong about a lot of things."

Kaine smiled crookedly, his battered lips exposing teeth that were still in remarkably good shape, and which gleamed hungrily in the fading light." We'll see, my friend. We'll see."

Elsewhere, Spider-Man fought for his life. Before him stood a slavering monstrosity that looked as if it had been stitched together from pieces of movie monsters, all claws and teeth and bad attitude. Three of its fellows lay sprawled on the ground, unconscious from Spider-Man's blows. Spider-Man himself had had his costume torn by their teeth and claws, and he was rapidly running out of patience. He wondered how long it would be before more than his long underwear got torn, and then tried not to think about it.

The beast itself, like its stunned companions, was shaped vaguely like a greyhound, but instead of being thin and sinewy, it bulged with muscles and reached up to Spidey's waist, its slobbering jaws full of needle-sharp teeth and gooey black saliva. Its four red eyes glittered with murderous intent, a low growl coming from the base of its throat. Suddenly, it sprang.

Oh, boy... why do I always get the killer mutant doggies? Spidey wondered. I'll bet Captain America never has to deal with homicidal pets... As he leapt back out of the range of the beast's vicious jaws, Spidey couldn't figure out how Osborn had managed to create such hideous beasts - perhaps he'd been a really good biology major in college, his mind whispered to him, in an attempt to raise at least a small smile beneath his mask - but he knew that this last mutant creature stood between him and his daughter, and for that it could not be allowed to remain standing for much longer.

"Hey, Fido!" he shouted, aiming his webshooters at each other in order to create a solid glob of webbing, about the size of a baseball, in the palms of his hands. "Catch!" He threw the web-ball with all his strength, and it splattered messily into the hideous creature's face, gumming its gaping jaws together and rendering it unable to sink its teeth into him, which Spidey counted as a good sign. It snarled - an oddly nasal sound now that its jaws couldn't move - and swiped at him with its massive front paws, the razor-sharp talons on the end of them whistling audibly through the air like steak knives.

"Yikes!" Spidey exclaimed as he sprang backwards, his spider-sense screeching, and felt the air slicing palpably as the vicious, serrated claws whooshed past his face.  Ducking under another swipe, he grabbed a handful of the beast's loose underbelly, and, placing his other hand under the thing's hind legs, he threw it into a nearby fir tree, hard enough to knock the wind out of it, but not hard enough to kill it. It was an ugly sucker, true, and it had a temper worse than J. Jonah Jameson's before his first cigar, but it didn't deserve to die simply for doing what it had been created to do, Spider-Man decided. It whimpered and tried to stand, and then wisely decided to stay down, its legs refusing to work.

"Good boy," Spidey said, and patted the unconscious creature on the top of its hideous, lumpy head with a gloved hand. "Stay here like a good doggy, and maybe Uncle Peter will give you a doggy chew later." Peter made sure that it couldn't follow him by spraying a layer of webbing across its sprawled body, doing the same to the other three unconscious monstrosities before he left. He didn't want to be bitten in the butt by any of them on the way back - not by a long shot.

Looking upwards, Spidey picked out a low branch and snagged it with a webline, swinging as far as he could before abandoning it and somersaulting three times to come to earth again. It was going to take a little longer to get to Osborn's lodge this way, true, but this wasn't Manhattan and there weren't as many places to attach a webline to. In which case... Spidey gathered his strength in his calves and powered himself up into the treetops, grabbing a sturdy branch and pivoting himself up on top of it like a monkey. "What do you know - I'm the king of the swingers," he muttered wryly to himself. "King Louie eat your heart out." He was well-aware - painfully aware, in fact - that this was not the time for wisecracks, but he was desperate to keep himself from sobbing. Spying another couple of possible swing points, he leapt and stretched out both hands for them. As soon as he did so he felt his spider-sense sing like a banshee in warning, and he had to redirect himself in mid-air, using the body of a nearby tree to anchor himself so that he could see what his spider-sense had been so worried about. Now that he could see it up close, he saw that the branch was fractured ever-so-slightly at the base; something that he had missed in the dimness of the thick, soupy gloaming which now engulfed the woodland. The edges were smooth; they had evidently been cut with a saw. Apparently someone had anticipated him approaching from above, and had prepared adequate defenses. They wouldn't have stopped him, of course; simply slowed him up, but it seemed prudent now that he travel the old-fashioned way - on foot.

Dropping to the ground, he accelerated to a run and jumped thirty feet in a single leap. Web-slinging might be faster, but this would be safer than falling to the ground from the treetops, he decided. Spider-Man wondered if Osborn had any security here at all, apart from the freaks and mutants he had cobbled together as if from pieces of corpses. He thought that with his old enemy coming for him, Osborn would have splashed out on a high-end mercenary army, with the latest in Stark-Fujikawa and Hammertech high-performance weaponry, and the best training that his considerable amounts of money could buy. If Osborn was really serious about keeping his worst foe out, he might even have hired the Wild Pack. It didn't matter anyway - Osborn had May Parker, an innocent child. Peter Parker's child. And Peter Parker, not Spider-Man, would resolve this situation any way he could.

You'll pay, Norman Osborn. If I have to drag you to the gates of Hell myself, you'll pay. I promise you that.

Seeing that the way ahead was virtually choked with a hedge that gleamed with murderous spines, Spidey covered his hands with a thick layer of webbing to act as a pair of makeshift gloves, and prepared to tear his way through it. Grasping the thick, heavy branches of the hedgerow, he tore the plant up by its roots and threw it to one side where it entangled a large conifer in its strangling embrace. Spider-Man ignored it and pushed onwards, using his fists as piledrivers in order to create a tunnel for himself.

I'm coming, Norman. You had better be ready.

Mary Jane Watson-Parker sat in the lounge of her home, the lights dimmed and the TV on. She had put it on almost by reflex after Peter had left, as if to distract herself from what was going on around her. CNN had just reported that earthquakes in Latveria were being attended to by Doctor Doom's android servitors, and that von Doom's administration staff had refused all offers of outside help in Doom's "unfortunate absence", even from the Red Cross. Mary Jane found it extremely hard to empathize with the poor, disadvantaged people of Latveria, and that worried her. How selfish of her was it to compare her private pain to that very public suffering that the poor, downtrodden peasantry of that country were experiencing? She did not know, and that worried her even more. She considered ringing in to donate some of her meager savings (and they were meager indeed, and MJ knew it) to the earthquake relief fund number that was flashed up on the screen, but she thought it useless - Doom's people were refusing to accept it, then what was the point, other than to massage affluent Americans' inflamed and oversensitive egos? She didn't know. She picked up the remote and switched to CNBC. Trish Tilby was on, reporting on Robert Downey Jr. and his wild lifestyle again. Mary Jane wanted to reach out into the TV and strangle the woman as she blathered on in her well-manicured, oh-so-perfectly-made-up way.

Who cares? she thought angrily. Who cares if he ruins his life? It was his decision, not someone else's! He chose to do it! He didn't - He didn't have a madman dogging his every step and manipulating every aspect of his life. That's what this is all about, MJ, isn't it? Norman Osborn. It's no use telling yourself that you don't care, because you do care, don't you? You want to know if your baby is alive after all. What if she is alive? Are you ready to be a mother yet? Could you really handle it? And what if your husband brings back a body? Could you really handle that? Could you bury your firstborn child?

With a shrill double tone, the phone began to ring, sparing Mary Jane the pain of having to think that horrible decision through. Silently thanking God for small mercies, and for coincidences, MJ picked up the handset and put it to her ear. "Hello?" she said, her voice a little shaky. "Parker household."

"Mary Jane?" said an official-sounding voice on the other end. "Mary Jane Watson?"

"Mary Jane Watson-Parker," MJ said in order to correct the voice. "But yes, otherwise that's me."

"Of... course, Mrs. Watson-Parker," the voice said, a little more coolly than before. "My name is Wendy Friedberg and I represent Virtuoso Modeling."

That made MJ sit up. "You... you do?"

"Yes, Mrs. Parker. We saw your maternity wear work and we were very impressed."

Apparently not enough to offer me a full-time job, though, MJ thought bitterly.

"I trust your baby is well?"

MJ felt an invisible knife twist hard in her chest. "She's... she's fine, Ms. Friedberg. She's... just fine."

"Good, good." The voice sounded totally unaware of the faux pas it had just committed. "Now, Mary Jane, I'd like to discuss a one-time offer of a catalogue shoot. As I say, it wouldn't be a fulltime contract but I assure you that you would be well paid for your services. What do you say, Mary Jane?"

Mary Jane bit her lip. Oh, God, why now? Just when I have bigger things on my mind, this comes up. What if my baby is alive? I'd need the money to pay for most of the things she'd need straight away. I could buy her a baby crib. I could buy her a teddy bear. I could... I could...

"Mary Jane? What do you say?" said the voice, sounding a little impatient.

On the other hand, this might be a fresh start for Peter and me as well. We certainly need the money right now. That thought helped her to make her mind up.

"Yes, Ms Friedberg, why not? When do I start?"

"Splendid. Why not indeed? We start shooting next week, Wednesday morning, nine o'clock sharp. Don't be late." The voice paused for a moment and then added "I trust you know where our premises are?"

"I have some idea," MJ said, a ghost of a smile appearing on her lips. "It's just opposite Bloomingdales', isn't it?"

"That's right," the woman said in an appreciative tone. MJ was convinced she was happy not to be dealing with an airhead model for once.

"That's great. I'll see you on Wednesday, then." MJ heard the slight click on the other end of the line and then let out a little whoop of joy. This could be the new start you've been looking for, Mary Jane. We could be on our way...

The woods had finally parted, the pale light from the moon reflecting off Spidey's eyepieces and casting two oval discs of light onto the leaf-strewn ground in front of him. Peter felt numerous scratches and cuts stinging in the chilly air, laid bare as they had been where his costume had caught and torn on the prickly foliage.  

This is why I'm glad I live in Manhattan, he thought with a sour grimace. He squinted towards the large wooden building that formed Osborn's hunting lodge. There appeared to be no outer protection of any sort, which made Spidey extremely nervous. This wasn't like Osborn at all, he realized uneasily. Norman wasn't the type to leave any bases uncovered. But then again, he's never unprotected, is he? He has the Goblin to fight his battles for him.

Peter felt a bitter, angry shudder run own his spine. Whether it was the dour, silent stand-in he had employed on several previous occasions, or the howling, screeching maniac that Norman became when he wore the mask, the Goblin had to be close by. Peter could smell the stink of it, could recognize the stale odor of death that the Goblin brought with it wherever it went.

Gwen, Harry, May... No. Not my daughter. She's alive; I won't believe she's dead.

"They're waiting for you, you know," said a voice that sounded like his own, except deeper, thicker, harsher. Peter jumped, for a moment stunned that his spider-sense had not gone off, until he realized who it was that had spoken to him. He had never really got used to hearing his own voice coming out of someone else's mouth.

"Kaine," he whispered in a low tone, before spinning around on the point of one foot, a lethally quick blow aimed at Kaine's mangled face. Kaine simply held up one massive hand and caught Peter's fist effortlessly before it even got anywhere near his shaggy visage.

"Don't bother struggling," Kaine said emotionlessly. "You should have learned by now that I'm stronger than you." To illustrate his point, he squeezed Peter's hand a little, and Peter screamed as the delicate, tiny bones were crushed together agonizingly, almost to the point of shattering. Kaine let go just before they were turned to powder, Peter gasping for breath and shaking his hand out to get some blood flowing back into it. "I trust you're going to listen to me now?"

"Why should I listen to you?" Peter asked, his voice still wracked with pain as his hand throbbed dully. "Why should I trust the word of a murderer?" His thoughts suddenly turned to another visage of himself, the man who was called Ben Reilly. "Why should I trust someone who tried to kill Ben - kill my only brother - so many times?"

"Because I say you should, Peter," Kaine said flatly. "I'm your brother too, remember. I'd never lie to my own flesh and blood."

Peter snorted in contempt. "You're not my brother, Kaine. No brother of mine would kill. No brother of mine would maim people with that horrible burn of yours. No brother of mine would go on an insane quest to murder all of my old foes. You did."

Kaine glared at Peter, his searing gaze cutting his "brother" to the core. "I seek no justification for my actions, Peter, save that I did what I did to protect your wife from my vision of her death. I tried to ensure that she would be safe. But then again, as I recall, it wasn't any of your old enemies that tried to kill her, was it? It was you, wasn't it, Peter? it was you who wanted to wrap your hands around her neck and squeeze until all the life was drained from her body, wasn't it?"

Peter scowled under his mask, a painful memory brought bubbling to the surface, as if his mind had been charred by acid. "I couldn't help myself, Kaine," he said, his voice a low growl. "The Jackal, he did something to my mind -"

"Spare me," Kaine said, his voice flat. "I know more about the Jackal than you'll ever know, Peter. Don't try to pretend that you were hard done by where my 'father' is concerned; I don't have much sympathy to give in that regard."

"Enough, Kaine," Peter replied, folding his arms. "I don't want to discuss this - not when my daughter is so close - so I'll make it short: why do you want to help me?"

"Because Osborn's madness cannot be allowed to infect an innocent child," Kaine replied emptily. "Even I, misshapen damned monster that I am, know that. So what do you say, Peter? Will you accept my help or not?"

Before Peter could reply, the air was abruptly filled with a screeching explosion as a pumpkin bomb hit the ground close to where the two men were standing. Fragments of torn sod filled the air, along with a hail of small pebbles and tree roots. Stunned, both Kaine and Spider-Man looked up to see the horrifying form of the Green Goblin on his bat-glider hovering at about head-height, his horrific Halloween grin fixed on the pair of them.

"Well, well, well," the Goblin said, his voice changed and obscured by the high-tech electronics in his mask, so that his voice became a higher, more maniacal sound, "what do we have here?"