Hey everyone, I'm sorry that I took such a ridiculously long time to update, but once the school year started life became crazy, I got involved with other stories and neglected my Black Widow. I'd just like to say that I promise the next update will be soon, and that I will finish this story in a very short amount of time. As always, please leave me some love and reviews to let me know what you think! We're nearing the end of the journey!

Enjoy and review, and again sorry about the long long dely in updating, it won't happen again.

Chapter 15: Explanations and Miscalculations

The pain was sharp, knifing its way through Madison's skull as she slowly rose to consciousness. There was a light beyond her closed eyelids, a light so bright that it filled her sockets with a hot, blinding glow. A soft groan escaped her lips as she struggled to open her eyes, a far greater task than she ever imagined it to be. What had happened? She couldn't remember.

"I see you're awake."

A familiar, irritating, and at the present moment downright scary voice interrupted her pain filled thoughts. Gritting her teeth, Madison forced her eyes fully opened and turned her head, searching for the speaker with hazy vision.

The room appeared to be empty.

No sooner had she realized this, Madison was hit with another realization: she couldn't move her body. She wasn't paralyzed, thank God, but her arms and legs were pressed very tightly against the walls of a steal box that reminded her eerily of an open coffin, except for the fact that the sides closed off around neck, allowing her head full mobility. In a moment she realized that all she had to was sit up and swing her legs over the side of the open box to escape.

"Now don't panic, Madison, and whatever you do, don't sit up," the voice spoke again. "I don't think you'd like the results if you were to do that."

The sound seemed to emanating from a small TV screen situated to the left of her. Raising her eyebrows, Madison stared at it for a moment, blinked, and turned her gaze above her.

Hanging just above her chest, encased in a metal, was a huge syringe filled with a pulsating pink liquid unlike any she had ever seen before. Fear knotted within her chest as she realized that the only way for her to sit up, to escape, was to allow that needle to penetrate her chest. He had placed her in this position for a reason, and Madison was confused. If he wanted whatever was in that syringe to be in her, why not pump it into her while she was unconscious? And if he wanted her dead, why not kill her while she was unconscious? Her head felt heavy and strange; she couldn't even remember how this happened to her. The last thing she remembered was going to sleep the night before. What was really going on?

"Your increase in brain waves alerted this program to your wakefulness. Now that you are conscious, I'm sure you must have many questions," the voice from the television screen continued, and a black and white image of a tired but smiling Harry flicked into view on the dilapidated screen. "And I assure you, I did not want things to have to happen this way. I did not want to issue you this ultimatum. But we all kept secrets, and things didn't work out the way that they were supposed to, did they, Black Widow?"

Breath left her body, leaving her ice cold. How did he find out? And what about Peter?

He was grinning widely now. "Yes, I know about your other identity, as I'm sure you know about mine. Oh, and I know about precious Peter's secret life as well, something that I was very surprised to discover. But I got over that shock quickly, and realized that there was a very logical way to have everything that I want. Would you like to know what that is?"

"Fuck you," she growled at the screen, knowing that there was no one around to hear her.

He face grew more somber. "I'm sure that you must hate me by now," he stated, as if he had heard her muttered oath. "And I'd like to reiterate that I never intended things to turn out this way. But the time for bewailing our fate has passed," Madison raised her eyebrows at the oddly poetic statement, noting how even his recorded self had beads of sweat gathered at his forehead, had pale, lined skin bunched agedly, and a smile that was vaguely manic. Her fear rose fresh within her body. He was losing his mind.

Dimly she realized that he was still speaking. "I know all about you, my dear, but there is much that you do not know about me, and your present situation. I think there are some things that need to be explained."

His recorded self held up a long thin vile of dark greenish black liquid. "This is what I have been working on for the past year. It's a derivative of what my father designed; did dear Peter ever tell you the story of my father? He was a genius, a pioneer for mankind, and right at the height of his power Spiderman killed him. Murdered him. He made me an orphan."

Madison noted absently that Harry must not have known what really happened to his father. From what she had heard, the man was a dangerous nutcase responsible for the death of several people, but Harry was acting as if he was a martyred hero. He must have only discovered his father's seemingly brilliant formulas without making the connection between the human enhancers and the Green Goblin's arrival. She felt a stab of pity for Harry, who believed his father wrongfully murdered. Was that what drove him to this madness?

Harry was still talking. "My father's formula had defects, and it was weak. I found it, I changed it, made it better. I discovered that with the proper dosage the strength and abilities it allowed me could become part of my system, blend with my genetic code, just as I assume the spider's venom blended with your genetic code when you were bitten. But my formula was too powerful to all be taken in at once. I used desperate scientists, greedy and cowardly enough to bend to threats, to help me create, and later decrease the potency of my formula until I was strong enough to accept the true and unfiltered amount. I had to build up the tolerance to it, steadily gain my power through injections until my body could withstand the final amount, the final injection that would shock my body into accepting the formula into my genetic code. Until then I was still weak, I had not achieved my final ability, and once the formula wore off I regained my normal, human state, unable to fight, without power until the next injection. But I have reached the point I have been waiting for, I have given myself the final injection. The formula has become part of me; I am now genetically enhanced, and invincible!"

Despite the maniacal look in the two dimensional Harry's eyes, Madison felt herself almost believing him. A cold certainty crept through her veins. Whether he was truly invincible or not was irrelevant, the point was the he had steadily been growing stronger and now, with the formula actually a part of his genetic code, he would never stop fighting, never grow tired, and, from her previous encounters with the masked villain, almost certainly beat Peter if they fought one on one.

"I bet that you are thinking, 'what can I do?' or, 'can I stop him?' The answer to this is obviously no. And since you cannot stop me, and I really do not want you attempting to save him and possibly getting hurt, for I don't want you hurt, you must understand that, Madison, I devised a way to give you the choice of what to do.

"Here is my ultimatum. That syringe above you is filled with a formula that I developed some time ago, as a backup in case my genetic melding did not go as planned and I needed to dispose of its code from my system. It is designed to strip the additional, enhanced genetic code from the original, existing code. It would not harm you, you have my word on that, but it would remove your enhanced genetic coding, and all of your powers. You would be free to leave this room, but you would be a normal human being, unable to help Peter. All you need to do to escape me is to sit up and forfeit your powers forever."

Madison was very still, her eyes wide, her stomach sinking. Forgo her powers? Never! They were what made life worth living, made her world exciting; they were the freedom she needed to ground her thoughts, give her sanity when she had been close to losing everything, losing her mind. She couldn't, but what choice did she have?

"Difficult to imagine living without your powers? You don't have to. All you have to do to retain your power is to lie exactly where you are for a few hours, until the battle is over. Staying where you are means that your loyalty lies with me; if you chose me, you chose a life of power that you do not have to live alone. Peter barely offers you friendship. I offer you so much more. Stay where you are and you will never have to worry about being a normal, average person again. Either way, Peter is going to die. It's just the way things have to be.

"Should you choose to leave me, to give up everything, I want you to be reassured that you will be safe. Look," and the camera angle tilted away from him to focus on a cage full of rats, looking bored but otherwise healthy. "I injected these rats with the formula above you a few hours ago, and have monitored them closely. They are perfectly healthy, normal rats again, stripped of the powerful genetic transformer I had once injected into them. If you look to your right, you should still be able to see the cage, with them alive and healthy inside of it. I want you to know that I am fair; the choice is not me or death, it is merely me or normality. I'll leave you now to make your choice, and to remind you that no matter what you choose, you cannot save Peter, so put him out of your mind and try to make an objective decision. I sincerely hope that you chose to remain with me: we would be unstoppable. Think about it. Goodnight."

The tape flickered to a stop, and the room fell silent. She rolled her eyes disbelieving. Objective decision? Forget that Peter was going to die? Curiously and slowly, Madison turned her head to the right, her eyes seeking out the cage of rats on the lab countertop. Her throat closed up, her arms shaking with fear as she realized that Harry had been wrong in his calculations, his attempts to keep her from harm.

All of the rats in the cage were dead.