Primal Shift

Peter sat quietly, his eyes crossing and re-crossing the ceiling tile. Two hundred thirty small holes in that panel. Two hundred and eighty in the next. Fifty tiles across the room. One hundred and eight tiles spanning the length of the room. That would be how many dots?

He let his eyes drift shut as his mind told him and he ignored it. His eyes seeped open and settled on the lecturer again. Considering the money he was paying for this course, he really should try to get something out of it. Dr. Connors was considered one of the best guest lecturers the college had managed to acquire in years.

"—which is why death is such a mystery," the professor was saying. "Since most of the cells in our bodies are replaced every seven years, the question arises. At what point do our cells forget how to remake themselves? Why do the chemicals we are made of shift so we become old, brittle, and forgetful? That is why research into cellular level memory, RNA, and related venues is currently enjoying a resurgence. Perhaps we can even discover the secret to regeneration," he said, gesturing to his empty sleeve, pinned up at his shoulder.

"The fountain of youth might be within each of us waiting only the proper key to unlock it," he continued. "If we could teach our cells, our bodies, our autonomous functions to replicate themselves indefinitely, only our more permanent cells would need to be rejuvenated. We could possibly go on forever, unlike this lecture," he said with a smile. "For next week, chapters four and five. Dismissed."

The students got up and shuffled to the door, chatter rippling through their ranks. Here and there a student laughed. They were moving to the door immediately; almost every student had packed up books and notes ten minutes before the lecture ended.

As Peter walked out into the hallway, he saw several people waiting for friends. He headed past them, his head down, mapping out his weekend. It was Friday, which was good, but he had some nasty tests on Monday. Plus, his lab with Connors was Monday, and those were pure torture if you got behind in class.

"Peter Parker?" came a hesitant voice. He stopped and turned, coming face to face with a pretty young woman with bright blue eyes.

"Yeah, that's me," he said with half a grin.

She smiled, and her cheeks turned a bit pink. Blonde. Cute.

Really cute.

"Well, Mr. Parker," she said, half teasing, "I was wondering if you had plans for tomorrow night. I had a date and it turns out he's had something come up, so I was wondering if you'd like to do dinner and a movie."

Peter glanced to the right and the left. "Me?" he said with a grin. "Well, sure, I guess. Did you have a particular movie in mind?"

"Oh, we can figure that out over dinner," she said with a shrug. "How about Golden's?"

"Sure," Peter nodded, mentally reviewing the sit-down-cafeteria-type restaurant and quickly working through the menu price range. "That would actually be fine. I didn't catch your name, though."

She laughed silently to herself for a moment, then she held out her hand. "Gwen. Gwen Stacy."

He took her hand and before he could think it through he kissed the back of it in a single swift burst of gallantry. "Well, Gwen Stacy, I'll look forward to Saturday. Shall I pick you up?"

"Sure," she said. "I'll meet you in the Student Center at five."

"Five is good for me," he nodded.

"Plus," she said with a shrug. "Golden's is in walking distance." She flashed him a smile and lost herself in the crowd. Peter looked after her, wondering what had just happened.

Someone jostled him. He turned to see a bright, grinning face.

"Yo Pete." The young man facing him had a tight mat of curly and immaculately trimmed auburn hair, an ironed shirt, dockers. He looked suave and relaxed and a bit elfin and mischievous.

"How's it going, Harry," Peter said. "You got the lab results ready for Monday?"

"Transposition from my notebook is cake," Harry said, confident. "I have real news for you, Mister Bookworm. You know how you were always kow-towing at my feet and acknowledging my studliness?"

"Uh, that's not quite how I remember it," Peter said, rubbing the back of his neck and arching an eyebrow at his lab partner.

"Well it's time to start. Guess who I have a date with tonight."

"The Dean's wife?"

"Ouch," Harry said, still grinning. "No sir, tonight is all class." He shifted his bag and made a Hitchcock camera view with his fingers. "'Tonight: Harry and Mary Jane.' Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it, tiger?"

"Yeah, that's great," Peter said, suddenly confused by his emotions jumping two directions at once. He slapped his lab partner on the shoulder. "Just great, Harry. You show her a good time now."

"You got it, pit crew," Harry said, his grin insufferable. "Gotta jet." He slipped back into the crowd before Peter could think of something witty and fun yet absolutely crushing. The moment was lost; he stood in the hallway, his brain still groping around for something clever to say.

"Better not wake me up at two this morning with a good comeback," he muttered to himself, and he trudged down the hallway. Then he thought some more.

"What the hell," he said. "I have a date too." He smiled and picked up the pace.

xXx

"So how's the schoolwork," Doctor Connors asked as he looked out the window at the afternoon sun slanting across the campus. Working on Saturday was easier somehow, with no classes in the building.

"Good as yours," said the impudent young voice on the other end of the line. Connors smiled.

"Keep it that way," he said. "Now I've got a stack of papers to grade that's as big as you are, so why don't you give me back to your mother."

"Kay," the boy said. "You comin home soon, dad?"

"Soon," Connors replied. "Just two more weeks here."

"Here's mom." The phone bumped and rattled, then he heard his wife clear her throat. "Hello," she said.

"How's the homestead," he asked.

"We're making do," she smiled. "Billy's fine. He's aced his report card."

"I think I've aced mine too," Connors said, watching students walk along the brick sidewalks, talking and laughing. "I think I'm close to a breakthrough."

There was a hesitation on the other end. "Curt," she said, "don't be gone too long. We want you back. I wish you wouldn't work on the weekends."

"I'll be back," he said with a smile. "This tour has been good for me. And good for my research."
"Just... be careful, okay?" she said, trying hard to conceal the worry in her voice.

"I will be careful," he assured her patiently. "I'm a scientist, not a corporate worker drone. I take careful consideration before each step."

"Okay," she said. "Well... we look forward to seeing you in two weeks."

"Keep Florida together for me," he smiled. "This is Doctor Curt Connors, signing off."

"Be safe," she almost whispered into the phone. He hung up.

The room suddenly seemed silent and dim.

He stood and walked over to the lab table. He reached out with his one arm and flicked on the Bunsen burner; his eyes caught the pale ropy white scars on his wrist as he did so. His expression darkened.

"I have my work," he whispered to himself. "I have my work." He straddled the stool and glanced over at the cages that lined the wall. "You lot could make yourselves useful," he said with a rueful grin. "Don't suppose you'd fetch my notes for me, Kaa?"

The massive ball python flicked its tongue in and out once, but remained quiescent in its massive coils. Connors sighed, and bent over the microscope.

His one hand flicked to the adjustment knob, then to the slide, then to the knob. Frustration was never too deep in him; he sat back at once and rubbed his eyes. "Can't focus," he muttered. The room was growing dimmer, it seemed. Clouds over the sun. He leaned forward again.

He lost all touch with the passage of time until he had finished the concoction in the tube. Looking at it, he blinked. The liquid was pale and yellow, and it looked quite innocuous. He tried to remember what he had done to make it, but he felt clouded, almost compelled. He shook his head, shook off the odd feeling. He walked across the room.

A rat looked at him out of the cage. It was missing a leg. Connors put the tube in a rack. He had to think through the process more carefully than most people, since he could only do one thing at a time. He opened the top of the cage, then picked up the syringe, then loaded it from the tube. He lowered the syringe towards the suspicious rat.

"Let's see if we can grow you a leg," he whispered, his eyes bright.

The rat squealed and leaped away; startled, Connors pulled back. Then his eyes grew cold. He jabbed with the syringe, caught the rat, and injected. The rat squealed. Connors pulled the syringe out of the cage, tossed the syringe aside, and dragged the top back over the cage.

Then he settled himself on his stool once again, struggling with the dark feelings that never seemed far from overwhelming him.

"Let's see," he murmured. "Let's see if we can make a whole rat of you."

The rat squeaked piteously; almost mewled. Connors felt the darkness sweep over him; like despair, only more active.

In the back of his mind, a thought flashed: too long away from family, too long alone. Then he was lost to it.

"I don't see what the big deal is," he said, scooping up a large syringe and jamming it into the pale liquid. He drained it all into the needle and regarded it for a moment. "I really don't."

Then he jammed the needle into his leg and squeezed.

All the sound that escaped him was the hoarse cough of a brief scream. Then he was overwhelmed by the darkness. He fell to the floor and knew no more.

xXx

"There has got to be a way," Peter muttered as he walked across the campus. "I need to find a way to take all the time I'm early and put it into all the time I'm late." He glanced at the clock tower and saw it was four thirty. "Thirty minutes," he muttered. "Might as well check my email." He headed towards the library. Then he slapped his forehead. "Gotta get my camera from my lab locker," he muttered. "If I go on another date without taking pictures, I might never live it down. Stuck on campus on a weekend. I gotta be damaged."

He headed into the science building. Then stopped. Something was wrong. Something out of place. His senses kicked into overdrive, his expression intent and searching.

A dragging sound, an odd smell.

Peter slowly walked into the hallway. He glanced down; he was wearing his best corduroy academia jacket, khakis, even decent loafers. He was in no condition to get mixed up in anything. He was reassured by the mesh mat stuck to the small of his back. Don't leave home without it.

He glanced down the hall and was startled to see the ball python slowly and leisurely pushing his way back and forth, headed towards the chemistry lab.

"I don't think you're supposed to be out," he muttered. Then his senses kicked into red alert.

Something breathed, not too far away. And it was like no breathing Peter had ever heard. That's what his senses seized on; strange, sibilant breathing, slow and deep.

He headed further into the science building. First get the camera. He passed the snake, leaving it alone for the moment. He dashed to the back of the chemistry lab and whipped his locker open, grabbed the camera bag, then was headed out to find the source of his unease.

When he reached the advanced studies lab, where the animals were kept, he knew he was close. The strange breathing had stilled, as though it detected his approach.

"Hello?" he called out, not sure what else to say. An iguana scuttled under one of the chair desks; the room was otherwise eerily silent. "Anybody back there?"

He cautiously made his way towards the laboratory that abutted the back of the classroom. "Doctor Connors?" he said. "Uh, Doc? I have some questions about Monday."

He reached the doorway, and smelled a peculiar thick and musty smell; reptilian, ancient. "Is everything okay?" he asked in a small voice.

Movement.

As he threw himself forward in a roll and popped up, lethal claws slashed through the air less than an inch above his head. Peter's blood ran cold when he saw the powerful reptilian thing clinging to the ceiling above the doorway.

"Yikes," he whispered. Then it launched at him before a normal man would have seen that it was there.

He slid to the side and lashed out with his foot, catching the creature in the side of the neck. The creature struck, tearing up the tiles on the floor before Peter's kick sent it smashing through a table. Empty cages shattered and snapped.

Peter sprang up, as did the lizard thing. Peter's senses read the monstrous creature in a glance; its face was almost humanoid, but with a savage jaw like a crocodile. Its eyes glittered with almost-human intellect. Its skin was tough, armored, and brutal. Knotted ropy muscle bound the creature together under the hide, and it lashed its prehensile tail.

Then Peter whirled to the side as it slashed after him. He was clear of the claws when the tail snapped into his lower back; he was airborne. He slapped into the wall, but his shoes scrabbled. He kicked them off and sprang up to the ceiling. The lizard thing glared at him, then bounded up from the floor, flipping midair, digging its claws into the tile. For just a moment they regarded each other, almost face to face, on the ceiling.

"Stealing my shtick," Peter said, bounding to the wall and down to the floor. "Bad lizard." He slid out of his jacket as the lizard dropped and sprang. Peter whirled his jacket at the lizard. The beast wasn't quick enough, and for a moment the jacket flapped around its face.

"Night," Peter said, slamming his fist into the back of its head. Its momentum carried it forward, and it crashed through the wall and toppled into the lab next door, spraying shattered glass and mangled equipment in all directions as it slammed into a heavy tile-topped table and knocked it over.

Peter started dusting off his shirt. "I guess I'll look okay without the jacket—"

Then a rasp of scales on drywall; he looked up in time to catch a heavy backhand across the face, sending him sprawling. No time to spin, so he crushed into the wall between the lab and the classroom, bursting through it like a wrecking ball and shattering a chair desk as he slammed to the ground.

"Ow," he muttered, shaking his spinning head to clear it.

The lizard was already airborne, and Peter lashed out with his feet. He felt and heard the air knocked out of the heavy creature as he slammed into its shoulders, absorbing the impact of its spring and kicking it back. The lizard stumbled, shreds of lab coat sloughing off, arms and legs and tail flailing. Peter sprang and came down with a knockout blow, snapping into the lizard's head between eye and snout. Something gave, and the creature almost flipped as it slammed to the ground.

A split second later it popped back up, its snout catching Peter in the chin. He sailed back through the air and his head plowed through the drop-tile ceiling, ringing off a rafter, dropping him back down onto the desk chairs and scattering them in a jumble.

"Wanna play it hard, huh," he mumbled as he dragged himself to his feet, tossing a desk chair aside. "Okay then."

His sleeves were already shredded. His forearms itched. The creature hesitated.

"Let's go," Peter said, settling his stance.

It sprang, and Peter launched himself to the side, over the ranks of chairs. With a splintering clatter, the lizard crashed down among the chairs, then spun and hopped up. This time it caught the drop-tile ceiling, which could not hold its weight. The tiles tore loose and the scrabbling lizard dropped.

Peter snagged his camera bag and rooted in it for a moment as the creature righted itself. It was fast, but not as fast as Peter. He hoped.

It sprang again, and this time he spun in time to dart straight up, catching the ceiling as the lizard blundered past under him, crushing into the wall. It pulled free, mashed drywall sifting down from its now-pale form.

Peter dropped in front of it, and it snatched his throat with one hideously fast hand, then the other.

Peter felt his neck squeezed, and he knew he had less than a second before he choked or broke; his hand whipped up and he pushed the button.

The flash popped, and the lizard wheezed a squeal. It dropped him, spun, and darted back into the dim lab.

For just a moment, Peter hesitated. Then he pictured the college rent-a-cops against this thing, saw their bodies sprawled on the ground.

No one else was fast enough.

So he went in after the lizard.

He cleared the doorway in time to see it dart through the hole it had made into the next lab, then it scuttled up the wall.

With a sinking feeling, Peter realized he knew where it was going. He moved with a burst of inhuman speed and bounded up, just missing the lizard's tail as it sprang up above the ceiling. He was right behind.

Upside down, they raced through the gap between the drop tile ceiling and the concrete ceiling, dodging supports and wiring and plumbing and insulation. The lizard reached a supporting wall, tore out the braces in the way, and slid up behind the walls to the floor above.

"For this I stand up my date?" Peter muttered to himself. It took all his spread adhesion and small size to wriggle and dart through the tangled infrastructure of the science building, but he didn't lose the lizard as it moved like lightning amid the tangled and confused wiring and piping behind the walls. The building was old and huge; as musty and stifling as this space was, there was enough room for the agile opponents to move through between walls, between ceilings and floors.

After almost two minutes of the chase, Peter clung to the side of an air duct, his back to the water pipes, and caught his breath. His head was still throbbing from the lizard's hit; a good clean hit, had him dead to rights on that one. Peter was panting, for the air was dust laden up here, and worse; he was so filthy and cobwebbed he almost looked like he was wearing his mesh.

Not far ahead, his fingers told him, the lizard was clinging to a pipe and catching its breath. A thousand questions seemed to spin through Peter's mind about what it was, and where it came from, and what it wanted. Then he felt the lizard moving again, and he squirmed to catch up.

Peter's eyes widened in alarm as he saw the lizard scrabbling, tearing, and battering the wall. He pulled a final burst of speed out of his flagging muscles in time to almost catch up to the lizard as it tore through the wall of the science building and sprang clear, falling two stories to the greening grass.

Peter reached the hole. He fired out a webline that caught the creature's tail, but it was quicker than he expected, and it jerked reflexively away from the line. Peter was tugged out of the hole and sent tumbling through the air.

He shot out another webline and caught the building's edge, swinging up to it and slapping against the brick. His chest heaved and his muscles quivered with the prolonged, unusual demands he had placed on them. The lizard, now entirely devoid of clothing, hopped into the lake and swiftly swam towards the storm drain.

"Damn," Peter whispered. "Don't dare chase it into water."

He caught his breath on the side of the building for a moment. Something felt very wrong. He checked his internal timekeeper.

Precisely five o'clock.

He gasped. "Gwen!" he said. "Oh no!" He looked down at himself.

His shirt was entirely gone, his pants shredded and hanging from him in ribbons. He had some of one sock, and part of his belt. Head to toe, he was thickly coated in filth from scrabbling behind the walls, and his face was bloody from battering.

He wasted no more time. Springing off the wall, he landed rolling in the grass then popped up, running as he had never run before. Reaching the edge of the campus, he fired his webs and whipped up into the trees, springing and diving and web spinning as fast as he could go.

Shower. Fresh clothes. Shoes. Yes. Then to date. Yes. Then return and try to get camera back. Again. Dammit. And maybe his shoes.

Wind whistled and tore at him as he slung through the air, taking daring and desperate chances with the thinnest lines, over traffic. Height of rush hour. Dammit dammit dammit.

As he sailed through the air, upside down, his mind calculating his next webline's angle, he vaguely wondered if MJ and Harry were having a good time.

xXx

Peter was thoroughly out of breath when he spun into Golden's. After a quick glance around, he didn't spot her. He did see Amy, MJ's room mate.

"Amy," he said quickly, "have you seen Gwen Stacy?"

Amy slowly raised her eyebrows. "She was waiting for you, huh. Figures. She left about ten minutes ago."

"Ten minutes," Peter said, glancing at the clock. Five forty. "Ten minutes. Thanks."

As he moved out the door, he managed a pained smile. She waited half an hour. She must really like him.

As he jogged around the corner into the alley, he shot a webline up to the edge of the roof and sprang off the sidewalk. From the rooftop, he surveyed his surroundings. Okay.

Plan.

His mind whipped through options and narrowed his choices down very rapidly. He nodded to himself and leaped from the roof of Golden's to the parking lot. From there it was a quick two blocks to get to the florist.

xXx

Peter knocked, cleared his throat, and waited as he practiced a sorry smile. Knocked again.

The door opened, and a heavyset young woman with shifty eyes answered the door. "Yes?"

"Uh, yes," Peter said. He cleared his throat. "Is Gwen in?"

"You must be Peter Parker," the woman said, pronouncing his name like it was a disease.

He tried to be charming. "Yes."

"Yeah. Gwen would be here. But she bumped into MJ and Harry. They were going out clubbing, and took her along to cheer her up."

"Ah," Peter said.

"Yeah, 'ah'."

"Well," Peter said, "uh, if you could give her these flowers, and this chocolate..." he trailed off.

"You bet," the roomie said. "Sure thing, Parker. Car break down? I mean, I thought Gwen planned it out to be a pedestrian date."

"Have a nice night," Peter said, heading down the hallway, waving.

The door slammed behind him.

xXx

Peter lay in bed. His fingers were laced behind his head as his mind picked at him, thinking and not sleeping.

Maybe he was meant to be alone. Yeah. Maybe his power meant he had to be a solitary figure. Or maybe he was trying to blame fate for his screw-ups. Maybe he was just a loser.

"Maybe I should get some sleep," he said aloud.

He glanced at the clock. Ten thirty. Probably would be getting out of the movie about now. Damn.

He looked back up at the ceiling. First MJ, then Gwen. And what was MJ playing at? Did she still like him or not? Had she ever liked him? Or was he just a shiny toy in her box of boy toys? And was that a bad thing? And since when did this Stacy girl know he walked the face of the earth?

"You," he muttered to his brain, "need a hobby."

What was a relationship worth to him? Would he really trade all his abilities to be normal? He thought for a moment of the wind whipping through the trees after him as he bounded from branch to trunk to empty space. Was that really better than women, better than a normal life?

"Oh yeah," he whispered to himself, and he grinned in the dark. "But I want to have my cake and eat it too. And I want to go to sleep. So shut up already."

Voices in your head, Parker, they'll lock you up. And what about that lizard thing? Who was it? Or what was it? It had been in Connors' lab. Peter couldn't help but like Connors. Good sense of humor, modest, brilliant, well adjusted to missing an arm. Peter wondered what he would be like as a friend.

"Wonder what it's like to go to sleep before midnight."

You would. Let's go for a swing. Tomorrow's Saturday, won't have to get up, and besides, Harry will be sleeping in after a hot night on the town with both the girls you're trying to date.

"Oh shut up," Peter grumbled, rolling over and sticking his head under the pillow.

Four hours a night. Just four hours. All you need. And by tomorrow you'll never get your shoes and camera back. Unless we break into the police station, and interesting as that idea is...

"Fine," Peter said, his voice muffled under the pillow. "Fine, let's go."

A minute later he was wrapped in his mesh suit and out the window.

A fine night for flying.

xXx

No police tape over the hole in the wall. The back wall of the science building faced the lake, and it was entirely possible that no one had noticed it yet. Peter slipped inside, and worked his way through the guts of the building until he had returned to the hole over the lab. Silently, he proceeded through the ceiling. Voices ahead.

"—thugs, I guess," one voice was saying.

"Some pretty pissed off thugs, you ask me," said another voice, more skeptical. "They'd have to be hopped up on PCP or something to get through this wall."

"It's just sheetrock," shrugged the other voice. "No big thing. I could push you through it."

"Yeah, well, let's not find out. These chairs are sturdier than they look, too. And it took four guys to stand that table up; those things have stone tops."

"If they got Connor, he's in some trouble, anyway," the first voice said. Peter gently adhered to one of the drop tiles and lifted it.

A security guard and a policeman were idly talking in the classroom. The place looked like it was waiting for a forensics team. Peter saw his shoes in a corner, unnoticed so far. He grinned and stealthed over that way, upside down above the ceiling.

"Think guns would stop somebody that mad?"

"Oh yeah," the cop said. "Thirty eight special magnum load will stop anything. You knock a hole in it, boom, it goes down. End of story."

"What about vests?"

"Still knock you down," the cop said, confident. "Break your ribs. Catch two of them and your vest won't be worth much any more."

"Ever shot anybody?"

"Never had to," said the cop as Peter silently lowered a web line, stuck it to one shoe, the other, reeled them in. The shoes drifted up through the air, unnoticed by the guards. Good loafers weren't cheap, and Peter found these to be quite comfortable.

"So whaddya think the doc was working on?" asked the security guard.

"Who knows. Smelled nasty, whatever it was."

Peter stopped, thinking. The doctor was working on something in the lab... then he disappeared... the lizard appeared... lab coat shredded... Peter couldn't help but wonder. He worked his way back over the lab, down into the one next to it, and through the hole in the wall.

The doctor's computer and monitor were untouched, to the side out of the way of their fight. Peter grinned. He put the tower case against the front of the monitor and quickly webbed it in place, put the keyboard on top and gobbed it in place, quickly gathered up all the cords and secured them. Then he lifted the assembly easily with the fingertips of one hand. He glanced out at the guards.

"I figure either he wasn't here or we'll get a note by tomorrow," said the campus guard.

"I don't know," the cop said, shaking his head. "Kids these days..."

Peter was through the unguarded door, moving lightly down the hallway gripping the ceiling with three limbs, holding the computer bundle lightly out to the side with the other.

Clean night air. He breathed deep.

"Oh no," he muttered, glancing back. "Forgot my camera..."

Just then the forensics van pulled up. Two techs started unloading their kits from the back.

Peter was gone, only the night breeze watching now.

xXx

An hour after he left, Peter dropped back in through the window and set up the computer on his meticulously clean homework-free desk. No password protections, nothing. Peter grinned. "Let's see what you've been working on, doc," he said to himself.

He started checking through the files; there was a folder for Connors. Good. Shared computer. Probably nothing vital on here, though.

Formulas, class notes, presentations, yeah, et cetera... journal.

For a long moment, Peter stared at the file. Journal. As in, private, personal, and none of your business.

He opened it.

Dropped down to the end. Looked like several months were recorded in here. Peter started a few days back.

February 8. Classes going well here, and I have hope for the next generation of scholars. Even if I cannot solve this puzzle, perhaps my work will give them the tools they need to solve it. As it is, the despair is sometimes overwhelming. This is the time I am the loneliest, I think, absorbed in my work with no one else that understands. But if they did, then ethics would enter in to the equation, and what I do alone in the lab is immune to questions of ethics. Or so I tell myself. And then I think back to those dark days in Green Acres, and I remember what can happen if you step far enough away from the beliefs of the world. You are a genius or you are mad, and too often they walk hand in hand. I should attend to my studies, my teaching, and leave my research in the hands of others.

Peter hesitated, and saw that there was more. This journal could contain clues that would save Doc Connors life. At the same time, Peter could not imagine Connors being pleased by one of his students reading his personal journal. Peter glanced at the time. Oh, sure, only one o'clock. He read on.

February 9. Success. I have amputated a leg off of one of the rats, and I found a concoction that did indeed regenerate most of the leg and several toes. The rat survived for two days and then developed a fast, lethal cancer and died. Is cancer the price of instability? The chaplain at Green Acres told me that suffering is so prevalent in the world because it is through suffering and accepting our limitations that we become stronger and more wise. I cannot accept that. If everyone did, scientific advance would become heresy. Besides, I am reaching a point where I am willing to accept cancer, if only I could be a whole man again. Adjusted, they call me. I do not choose to adjust. There must be a way. I will find it if it kills me two days later. Still I have a little patience. Refine, refine. Smelt the impurities of the science, not the man, and you will find wisdom.

"Wacko," Peter muttered to himself. "Maybe," he added uncertainly. He looked into the screen. A rather unpleasant idea was forming in his head.

February 10. At last, Friday. I don't know what I was thinking, to try to abandon my research. My family is safe in Florida, and now, out here, I have a chance to finally try out my newest attempt. I promised the doctors that I would leave off research and use my mind and skills and knowledge to train the next generation, but patience has faded since then, and I do long to be whole. I will do anything to become once again the man I was. Today may hold the secret. I have a feeling that I'm close to a breakthrough.

The journal ended. The cursor blinked idly and rhythmically at the base of the screen. Peter stared, absently, absorbing the implications. This was more than science. This was... what? Spooky.

"Doc Connors," Peter said to the screen, "I'll find you, and see what we can do about this. And if you are that lizard, then we'll just have to find a way to bring you back." He shook his head and shut the computer down. "Or we could let the swat teams kill you."

He slept uneasily.

xXx

Sunday.

The cash register sang it's song, and Peter smiled uneasily at the clerk. Then he hit the street. In the bag under his arm he had three packages of powerful barbiturates.

"No good to catch you if I can't keep you," he muttered, and he crossed the street. "Okay," he said, "warm wet dark. Warm wet dark. If I was a lizard, I would go somewhere warm, wet, and dark." He glanced down the sidewalk and started walking. "Movie theaters, the zoo, the aquarium... Looks like a long day."

Long day, short on cash. Between the flowers, chocolate, and drugs, Peter had precious little disposable income left. Looked like a day on foot.

He got started.

xXx

Peter came through the front door and closed it quietly behind him. He saw a message blinking on the answering machine, and he punched the play button.

"Peter," said Mary Jane's voice, "You'd better remember how to use the phone pronto. Gwen got let down pretty hard when you dumped her last night, and the ninny even feels guilty that she wasn't there for you to give her flowers. Don't know what you're thinking, champ, but this is not cool." Beep.

"Thanks, MJ," Peter muttered.

"Oh, Peter, you're back," came a wavering voice from the kitchen. Aunt May came out, wiping her thin hands on a dishcloth. "Some girl called for you three times."

"Mary Jane?" asked Peter.

"I don't remember," Aunt May said thoughtfully. "She didn't leave her number."

"So you don't know who it was and I can't call her back," Peter said patiently.

"Sorry, Peter," Aunt May shrugged. "Girls are so forward these days. I hear some even ask boys out on dates."

"Shocking," Peter said, utterly dejected. "Am I too late to help with dinner?"

"You can set the table," Aunt May nodded. "I just finished a casserole."

Peter followed her into the kitchen, where the afternoon sun slanted in through the windows. A small television burbled quietly to itself on the counter.

"In other news," the announcer said, "a bizarre tragedy. An escaped crocodile broke into the kennel, 'Paws of Love', and ate four dogs before escaping."

"Four dogs?" the other announcer said. "That is bizarre."

"Police are on the case, but as of this report they have not captured the animal. Those in the neighborhood are advised to lock up their pets—"

"Peter?" Aunt May said, looking around. He wasn't in the kitchen. She peered into the living room. "Peter?"

xXx

Of course, the lizard had to eat. Peter lay flat on his back on the bus, watching the light poles go by. Should have just watched the news. Saved himself some precious admission fees that were ultimately dead ends. A kennel, just brilliant.

"My stop," he muttered, bounding off the bus and scrambling up a power pole. He hopped to the building twenty feet away, over the top of the next, and he saw the kennel.

"Now," he murmured, "warm wet dark." He slowly scanned the area.

"Perfect," he said, smiling.

He swung off.