xXx
By mid morning, Mary Jane had arranged to see Peter. She fidgeted on the other side of the thick plexiglass. Peter was brought out to sit opposite her. She picked up the phone, he picked up the phone on his side.
"Peter, my God, what the hell is going on?" Mary Jane said breathlessly. "They're holding you without bail. What happened?"
"I woke up," Peter said, his voice hoarse. "They were there for me. Evidence all around me. It doesn't matter," he managed.
"I should have stayed with you," Mary Jane said as tears threatened.
"Can't be there all the time," Peter said with a shake of his head. "Look, better that you aren't involved."
"Are you… okay?" she said, peering into his red eyes.
"No," he said softly. "I'm scared out of my mind. I can't stay. I can't run. I can't stop it. I don't even know what's going on. I'm not even sure I'm innocent." His low rush of words sent chills up her spine as she looked into his eyes and saw desperation so intense he was numb. "If they don't know about me by now they will by the end of the day. One way or another, Peter Parker dies."
"Peter," she whispered, pressing her hand against the glass. He briefly touched his side, then lowered his hand. "Mary Jane," he said seriously. "Get out of this before you are involved. Get out before they start asking questions. I can't… you must not be pulled into this."
"Peter," she managed around the lump in her throat. Then she slowly hung the phone up, stood, and deliberately left without looking back.
She didn't master herself until she reached her car in the parking lot. By then, her eyes were cold.
"After all," she gritted out, "I gotta look good for my date tonight."
xXx
A tall man with stooped shoulders and white hair strolled into the police impound garage. He wore a trench coat to stave off the October chill.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen," he said with jovial smile. "This must be the truck from that robbery last night."
"Piece of work, isn't it?" the mechanic noted. "What brings you down here, Stacy?"
"Just looking around," Mr. Stacy said with a bit of a rueful smile. "I like to keep up on the weird ones."
"Then this is the one for you," said a policeman who approached from the back of the garage.
Mr. Stacy squinted at his nameplate. "Officer Petit. What do you mean?"
"Whoever did this," Petit said, nodding at the truck, "must be absolutely fearless and a crackhead to boot. Every bone in his hands is broke today. Exhibit A," he said, walking over to the bench where the back doors to the truck had been laid. "These things were just casually ripped off. First they had to be opened."
Mr. Stacy squatted down, his knees cracking. He peered at the fist-sized dents that plowed deep into the steel of the armored door. The sharp rip of the hinges sundered by incredible force. One of the doors was spattered in blood.
"Two men in the hospital, one in the grave," Petit said with a shake of his head. "Whoever did this was a mean sumbitch. Just took two cases of money. But they were all tagged," he shrugged. "I figure if we don't have the right man, we got the next best thing." He grinned as Mr. Stacy turned and looked him in the eye.
"Really?" Mr. Stacy said.
Petit nodded. "Peter Parker is in custody right now," he said. "All it takes is one drug test."
"Indeed," Mr. Stacy said. "Thank you for the help. I must be going." He smiled briefly.
Petit watched him go.
xXx
"Hullo, Silas," Mr. Stacy said with a rueful grin.
The pudgy, balding man turned to see who interrupted his work. His eyes brightened. "Stacy! Why, Retired Police Captain Stacy! As I live and breathe! What brings you to see me?"
Stacy settled back against one of the steel work tables, glancing around the lab. "I'll be honest with you, Silas. You're working on something of great interest to me."
"Of great interest to everybody," Silas said, looking at the microscope on the table in front of him. "I can't believe my eyes!"
"Exactly," Stacy said with a nod. "Exactly."
"I don't even think this is from a human," Silas said, "though the cellular structure mimics human blood and tissue."
"That's from Peter Parker," Stacy said slowly.
Silas looked up at him, suddenly wary. "Why'd you come to see me, Stacy?" he asked.
"I know that boy," Stacy said with a gesture towards the microscope. He half smiled. "He's a great sleuth. I've seen him untangle cases. Remember that 'Special Crimes Unit' that Brilhart said the commissioner pulled in for the Empire University Roth Hall slayings?"
"Yeah," Silas said. He shuddered. "You shoulda seen what that monster was made of. Stuff like this," he said with a gesture.
"Stuff like that," Stacy echoed. "The 'Special Crimes Unit' was Parker. By himself."
"No," Silas said, breathlessly.
Stacy nodded. "When I was a suspect in the Antiquarian collection theft last year? Parker's detective work cleared me."
"You don't say," Silas said.
"He even sorted out that mass suicide on the West End last year. Quiet, under the table problem solving. He's one of the good guys, Silas."
Silas watched him, sorting things out in his mind.
Stacy sighed. "Silas, in the thirty eight years I was on the Force, d'you remember me ever breaking a law or even bending a rule that didn't need bending?"
Silas chuckled. "Hell no," he said. "There were a lot of guys that were glad when you retired."
"Right," Stacy said. "Parker is a born sleuth. He's a bright kid with a bright future. And as you noticed yourself, he's not normal. Not by a long shot. But he's on our side." Stacy paused. Then he stood, and grasped Silas's shoulder.
"I hate to ask this of you," he said seriously. "If what you see on that slide gets out, Parker will spend the rest of his life in a laboratory. Please. Lose it."
Silas stared at him, his eyes wide, his jaw slack.
"Please," Stacy said, his eyes quietly pleading. "You can make this go away, Silas."
Stacy squeezed his shoulder once, then turned and left the lab.
Silas stared at the samples, uncertain.
xXx
A string quartet played in the background as Harry and Mary Jane were seated at the table with the white linen tablecloth.
"Wow, Harry, this is really something," Mary Jane said, glancing around the colonnades and balconies of the expensive restaurant.
"I like it here," Harry shrugged.
"You're going to order for me, right?" she said, a bit nervous. "No snails or raw fish or anything too wild." She blushed.
He grinned at her. "I'll get you something good," he said.
"So what have you been up to?" Mary Jane asked, leaning her chin on her hand and gazing at Harry.
"I've been traveling the world," Harry said. "My father left me some pretty sprawling business interests, so I've been mixing business with pleasure as I traveled to places I couldn't even find on a map before I left. It's been a hell of a trip. I've learned about business, of course. And martial arts. Origami. Cryptology. Meditation." He smiled at her. "I've been searching the world for what I'm good at. Everyone should know themselves, their strengths and weaknesses. Everyone is good at something."
"That's great, Harry," Mary Jane said.
He shrugged. "I got tired of life acting on me all the time. I need to act on life. I mean, I went to Empire University because my father wanted me to. I roomed with Peter because Peter wanted me to. I was in a car accident and I wasn't even driving. I got evicted from the bungalow. Then my father died. It was just the last thing, you know, in a series of things that made me feel totally out of control in my life. Instead of thinking that I was holding you to me, I had this feeling that I was just at your mercy. That whenever you were tired of me you'd leave, that Parker would get up the nerve to go for you and you'd get pulled out from under me." He shrugged.
"Now I know better," he said. "I pushed you away. It was my own damn fault. But I've grown up now. I'm not in high school anymore. A year… it's been good to me," he said with a calculated smile. "I'm growing into my place at the head of the company Norman Osborn built."
"So what are you good at?" Mary Jane asked him.
Harry smiled. "Missing you, for starters," he said. "That's the one I want to talk about tonight."
Mary Jane hesitated for a moment. "I'm with Peter now," she said firmly.
Harry leaned back and laughed. "To the normal eye, comparing me and Peter, that would be a bizarre choice," Harry said. "But I understand, I really do. It's his little secret," he said, and a darkness deepened in his eyes, spreading out of his pupil across his iris. "After all, who knows how kinky and exciting he'd be in bed?"
"How did you find out?" Mary Jane whispered through nerveless lips.
"We know all our children." The whisper slid out of Harry, but it was not his voice. His eyes were completely black. Mary Jane was short of breath. His smile seemed frozen. "I met a new friend in my travels," he said in a voice more like his own. "Peter is in jail now because he's a freak. It's time for me to get my life back."
"I need to go," Mary Jane said quickly, standing and grabbing her purse and walking away from the table with hurried steps.
Harry chuckled to himself, sipped his water, and gave her a head start.
Mary Jane fumbled her cell phone out of her purse as she shouldered her way into the ladies' room. Her hands shook as she punched in Tandy's number.
"Pick up, pick up," she whispered as she paced in front of the mirror.
On the third ring, Tandy picked up the phone. "Bowen residence," she said.
"Tandy!" Mary Jane said quickly. "I need help. Now. Get Tyrone. Harry's freaking me out. I'm at the Chez Royale. Hurry!"
"On it," Tandy said quickly, and she hung up.
xXx
"Tyrone," the robust voice said, "It's that Bowen girl on the phone!"
Tyrone started awake. He was sitting on the couch watching the television, some game show. His brother was laying on the floor coloring a picture. Tyrone stood up and stepped over him, maneuvered around the pile of Legos his sister was tinkering with, and grabbed the phone as his mother returned to whipping the mashed potatoes up with the mixer.
"M-me here," he said.
"Tyrone. I need your help, right away," Tandy said.
"Y-you home?"
"Yes."
"On-n m-my way," Tyrone said, and he hung up the phone just in time for his teenage sister to pick it up and start punching in her friend's number.
"Tyrone, where you goin?"
"O-out, ma, b-be back s-s-soon," and he was out the door.
"I don't like it," his mother said darkly to herself. "That Bowen girl is gonna git my boy in a heap a trouble one of these days."
Tyrone stood in the alley behind his apartment building. He focused, leaning his forehead against the wall.
"C-come on," he whispered, and he let the light drain out of him.
The darkness stirred.
Then Tyrone grunted with the impact as the Shroud unfurled inside him; he felt the pressure in his eyes, and the fabric rippled free, unfurling from his eye sockets, curling out of him until he was covered. He gasped, leaning against the wall, supporting himself with his hand. Looking at his hand, he saw it appeared to be tanned leather, or cunningly worked wood.
Tyrone, now the Shroud, smiled bleakly to himself. Then he leaned back into the shadow that formed himself, right out of reality. In the alley, with a last flourish, the whirling mass of fabric was gone.
He navigated the shadows, the dreams, and as he had practiced, he dropped back into the real world in the edgy shadows of the Bowen garage. Tandy was waiting for him, wriggling out of an oversize sweater to reveal a racy white dress.
"What's the occasion," Tyrone asked, thrilling to the sound of his smooth, reliable, deep voice.
"Mary Jane is in trouble," Tandy said quickly. "She's at the Chez Royale, downtown. Let's go!" He opened his Shroud wide, and she stepped through him into the darkness he was made of.
The dim glow of Agamotto's Light held at bay the swarming kaleidoscope of nightmares that awaited her. By now she could ignore them; it was not good to look too closely. Then they were in the network of dreams and shadows that surrounded Prime.
"There," Tandy said, and they emerged from the shadow of a tree trunk in the small park by the back entrance to the restaurant. "Wait here," she said to the Shroud, then she dashed around to the front of the building.
Mary Jane was running warm water over her wrists, trying to warm up, when the door to the ladies restroom opened and Harry strolled in. He smiled at her, looking her over.
"I don't think you're supposed to be in here," Mary Jane said coolly.
"Not supposed to smoke, either," Harry replied with a peculiar smile, removing a cigarette from his silver cigarette case. He flicked his lighter as he put the case away, and he lit his cigarette. His eyes glittered as he smiled at her. "Mary Jane," he said with a shake of his head, "Don't you know? You dance with the one that brought you. I think it's time we go back to my place and you find out what it's like being with a real man."
Mary Jane backed up, thinking fast.
Just then, the restroom door opened and Tandy strolled in. She stopped and blinked.
"Why Mister Osborn," she said, amused. "They get such handsome valets in these restrooms. Oh! Mary Jane. Oh. My. God. You have got to see the new car my mom got me. Come on! Later Harry," she said as she babbled on, grabbing Mary Jane's wrist and hauling her out of the bathroom.
A muscle twitched in Harry's cheek, then he smiled slightly.
"Fine," he murmured. "We have other business to attend to tonight."
In a single smooth motion, he hopped up and opened the window and slid out through it, letting it bang shut behind him.
xXx
"Absolutely not," Tandy insisted as she and Mary Jane approached where the Shroud lurked.
"I am going with you," Mary Jane said fiercely. "Harry is wigged out. He's some kind of monster. I suspected, but—look, it isn't important, okay? He's out to get Peter. What are we going to do?"
"I'll see if I can find him," the Shroud murmured in his deep voice.
"Tyrone?" Mary Jane said, squinting. "Damn, that's creepy as hell!"
Tyrone flashed her a smile, then folded into himself and vanished with a flicker of fabric and shadow.
"I appreciate your situation," Tandy said, putting her hand on Mary Jane's shoulder, "but—"
"No," Mary Jane said, brushing her hand off. "You're going to tell me that it's too dangerous, that I don't have any special powers to defend myself. You know what? I don't. But Peter is my man, Tandy. It's not going to be safe being around him. So I'll just take my chances and see what I can do. Both Harry and Peter know me, and I know them. You can't cut me out of this."
Tandy studied her for a moment, then nodded. "You're right," she said. "Welcome aboard."
"Thanks," Mary Jane said seriously. "Okay. First let's get some of Peter's mesh. He may not need it, for all I know. But if he does, I want to have it for him."
"Let's get going," Tandy said.