Unreasonable Addiction III

Chapter Five: Delays

By Yumegari and LRH, ed. Skylanth

Neither of them moved until sunlight filtered through the window, leaving a square patch of light in front of them. His eyes fluttering open, Octavius noticed they'd fallen asleep in that armchair, and that his back hurt terribly because of it, and that Clair was still asleep. He looked at her, watching her from an inch away, then drew his fingers along her cheek. The bruising had gone down but was still visible, and he brushed his fingertips over the greenish-bluish splotch below the bandage.

She stirred, squeezing her eyes shut tighter before they fluttered open. Light lanced in, and she clenched them shut again with a groan.

"What did I do last night?" she groaned, covering her eyes with a hand.

"You drank my brandy," came the reply. He pushed strands of her hair behind her ear, expressionless and quietly intent.

"Ngnnm, that's ridiculous. I don't-" She paused, slitting her eyes open. "I did, didn't I? My head is going to fall off."

"It won't fall off," he said, a slight smile crossing his pale features. He continued to run his fingers along her temple, behind her ear, then bring them back up again, slowly, over and over.

"Why not?" she said wistfully, rubbing her temples. "It would probably feel better on the floor. As long as the floor's not spinning like you are. Stop that."

"I'm not spinning," he said. "You're just dizzy, is all." His arms tightened around her for a moment as he was pushed out of the chair and onto his feet by the actuators. He turned and put her in the chair, draping the throw over her. He leaned forward and kissed her, his hair brushing against her face, before leaving the room quietly.

She sat up, trying to get the spinning under control. Her head felt like someone had bowled a three hundred with it, and her mouth felt as if she'd been drinking sand, rather than expensive brandy. The bottle, she noticed, was very nearly empty on the table next to her. She'd probably been staring at it for a while before a glass was put carefully to her lips, the water in it touching them a moment later.

She jumped, startled, then looked up at Otto and took the glass, taking a long sip and putting her head back against the back of the chair. "At least I know I haven't been missing anything, not drinking all these years."

"Not really," he said, leaning against the table and watching her.

The water helped, and she soon felt more like herself, though her head still felt fragile. She wrapped the throw around her shoulders. "I didn't make a fool of myself last night, did I? I think I remember talking about my parents..."

"At least you had an excuse," Octavius replied, head turned to look out the window. "I don't recall having been the least bit drunk when I rambled my childhood memories to my hostage." He continued looking out the window, the light glinting off his goggles and whitening his profile.

"In your defense," she said, watching him. "That wasn't too long before we met, right? The, eh, problem was probably in its early stages at that point."

"True. Though I have vague memories of this condition existing for a while before that. Still, I think you've more of an excuse than I do. Rambling is a common side-effect to drinking."

"Another reason to avoid it." She shifted, adjusting the angle of her splinted leg. "Although it's a very effective painkiller."

That smile flickered across his face again and he turned to look at her. "Why do you think I drink it?" he asked. Apropos of nothing, she realized his face was paler than usual, hair hanging around it in midnight strands.

She looked up at him, squinting a little. She wasn't sure where her glasses had gone. "Are you okay? You're pale. Even for you."

"Mmm?" he blinked at her, or at least she figured he did behind those dark goggles. "Oh, it's nothing. Just ... drank too much last night, same as you." He shifted against the table and winced.

She reached out and snagged her actuators by their harness, pulling them over and struggling to get them on over the broken arm.

Still leaning against the table and trying not to move, he watched her do this, one actuator almost absently locating the clothing she'd been wearing over her harness.

She got it on at last, stiffening with an indrawn breath as she fastened the clasps and the needles re-inserted themselves. She lifted herself up on them, looking at him, observing for the first time, his stiff posture. "Is it your back?"

For an answer, he shifted painfully again. "Sleeping in that chair is not a good idea, especially while wearing actuators," he muttered.

"I should have realized," she said, feeling somewhat guilty. "If you take them off, I'll rub your back for you. It might help."

He blinked at this and looked at her with his head cocked slightly to the side, regarding her. And it hit him just how much of an influence she'd had on him in the past year. Two years ago, he never would have allowed someone to come that close to him, and certainly never would have removed his actuators in anyone else's presence. He did things himself, was beholden to no-one, never accepted help.

And now, with all her closeness and affection and the little changes in his thought pattern that snowballed to this, he had the sudden thought that she was ... taming him.

Nonsense. But part of him wondered, nonetheless, if being domesticated would really be that much of a bad thing, that same part that had him now unbuttoning his coat the rest of the way, and his shirt, and unlatching the harness, disconnecting the actuators.

She circled behind him, pulling his harness and the actuators out of the way and digging her fingers gently into the flesh of his upper back, seeking out the knots of tension around the spine. It was something she hadn't done for a long time, and never for Otto. She didn't think about Brandon, as a rule, so she didn't remember the last time she'd given a backrub. She bent close as she worked one-handed, her hair just brushing the top of his spine.

His eyes slipped shut and he sighed, the sensation sometimes reaching such a level of knife's edge exquisiteness that his breath caught. He'd never really taken into consideration how sensitive the contact points were. His head dropped forward, and a soft, rumbling "Mmmm" escaped him. He opened his eyes again after a beat and realized they were still standing. Carefully, he sat down on the floor, looking back at her.

She smiled affectionately at him. "This would be better if you lie down." She offered him a hand to stand again, indicating the direction of the bedroom with a nod.

He looked at her, then at the hand, then took it, standing and following her to the bedroom, watching her walk carefully in her headachy dizziness. The brief thought that they should get back to the lab to at least look in on their subject flickered through his mind, but it was easily forgotten, especially when he got into the bedroom and was instructed to lie down on his stomach, which he did, realizing the nest felt strangely softer than usual.

Awkwardly, she sat down next to him, her splinted leg out straight and her good one folded under her, leaning over him to rub deeper, avoiding the tiny contact points and the dim bruises where the "footprints" of the actuators had pressed against his back. She could feel the tightness in his back, a stiffness older than one night's bad sleep.

His eyes slipped shut again and a long, quiet Mmmmm sound rumbled in his throat. Warmth blossomed where her hand rubbed and that warmth was almost indescribable, releasing things that he'd simply become accustomed to in their permanently tightened state. She rocked forward, putting her weight behind her hand. She could feel the muscles relaxing, though reluctantly. "Better?" she asked, not stopping.

"Mmmmm, yes," he mumbled, barely audibly. One hand reached up and pulled his goggles from his face, his eyes closed. He didn't feel as though he could open them again, but that didn't seem much of a loss.

She continued the massage, her hand moving slower and slower along his spine until it stopped, resting lightly on the small of his back. She bent and left a light kiss on his shoulder blade, sighing happily. "As much as I'd love to fall asleep next to you here, I still have an experiment to finish. Do you want to watch?"

He stirred, finally forcing his eyes open, black slits that looked up at her. "Hnnnn... that would require movement," he mumbled slowly.

"Quite likely," she said, stirring herself and lifting herself from the tangle of the nest. "I rather doubt that you want me to bring the bug up here while I pick his brain."

He sucked in a huge breath and sighed, nodding. "True, that," he mumbled, and pushed himself off the bed, locating his goggles and covering his eyes with them again. He stood, looking down at her again, then bent and kissed her.

She returned the kiss warmly, then touched the corner of one lense of his goggles. "I liked getting to see your eyes." She knew well by now why he had to wear them, the intense sensitivity he had to light, but she did, every so often, like to see past them.

The smile flickered again, rare and fleeting. His fingers slipped through her hair again and he straightened, looking down at her.

She smiled back, her hand lingering for a moment on his, and then turned, heading downstairs. She collected a pitcher of water and a glass as she passed through the kitchen; it had occurred to her that the bug had been bound in her basement for four days now, and she rather doubted that Otto had offering him much by way of hospitality. Death by dehydration would be a waste of a unique opportunity.

In the next room, he listened to her doing getting a pitcher of water as he reattached his actuators and located his shirt and long-coat. There was something strangely pleasant about that sound. He walked in after her, buttoning his shirt and watching her.

She turned to face him, filled pitcher held up in the grip of one of her actuators. "I'd rather our houseguest didn't die of thirst. He's not half as useful to me, dead." Opening the basement door, she headed down the stairs and into her lab.

Shrugging his coat on over his actuators and pausing for them to poke through the holes, he followed her downstairs and stopped behind her, seeing she'd stopped still in the doorway. He looked past her.

Parker had apparently worked one hand free, and Octavius could see that hand was strangely bent--he must have dislocated all the wrist and knuckle bones in order to fit it through the restraint--and bloodied from where skin had been scraped off, and was in the middle of trying to cut the other restraint with a tool he'd managed to reach. It was probably about halfway sliced through.

Parker was looking up at them in surprise. "Eh heh..." he said, his battered face grinning unconvincingly. "I ... really gotta pee..."

Clair set the pitcher and glass down on a counter top, looking at Parker. "You can't want to leave yet, we've only just started." One actuator snapped out and grabbed the tool he had, twisting it out of his hand.

"Aaagh... ehhh... and here ... I was gonna make a grocery run..." Parker managed, one eye squinting shut.

Tossing the tool aside, the claw latched onto his forearm, above the misshapen wrist. Clair stayed well back, her face set in an observational neutral. "Perhaps keeping you awake for this isn't the best choice." A lower actuator retrieved a vial of anesthetic, fitting it into the other arm as it extended its needle.

A pair of hands came down on her shoulders, and she could feel their heat through her sweater. One of Octavius' actuators intercepted hers, its claw grasping hers.
She turned to look at Otto. "What?"

"I think we could much more easily simply restrain him again," Octavius replied, stepping into the room. His actuators held Parker down, and he located another restraint, tying Parker's wrist down even more tightly, his face expressionless as he tightened the remaining restraints.

"Gee, Ock," Parker grated. "Your hospitality's ... engh... hardly Martha Stewart..."

"Otto," Clair pointed out. "I can't put the table into the MRI scanner with him. That's the next step."

There was a pause as Octavius grew very still. He blinked. He considered, for a moment, that maybe he could make the table fit into the MRI, but that would be counterproductive. He sighed. "Very well," he growled, and one actuator picked up a rather nasty-looking sharp tool with which he sliced the restraints, but held Parker down with his actuators.

Clair moved over to the MRI's computer, typing in a series of commands. The bench slid out, looking like a drawer in a morgue. "Have you ever had an MRI done before, Parker?"

"Nope," came the reply as he tried very hard not to look at Octavius' face as the other loomed over him. "Can't say I've gone on that ride."

She nodded to Otto and indicated that he should move Parker onto the bench. "Do you think that you can co-operate and hold absolutely still? Or do I have to sedate you for this?" She'd rather scan his waking brain, but she would take what she could get at the moment. Her upper actuators hovered over her shoulders, the needle still extended from one.

Parker's eyes flicked from Holmes and her syringes and claws, to Octavius, who smirked evilly. This was not a time to try to escape. He nodded. "I'll stay still." He certainly didn't want to be sedated with those two in the room.

"Clever of you," she murmured, withdrawing the needle and clacking that claw shut. She ran the start-up, and the machine hummed, ready.

Why he didn't feel more suspicious about this, Parker had no idea. He'd gone this long without extensive examination for fear of exploitation by the military or unscrupulous corporate ventures like Oscorp. The last thing he wanted was to end up a lab rat in some clandestine think-tank, a state which would prevent him from going about his business of fighting people like the ones who currently held him captured as, of all things, a lab rat. The irony was almost sickening. What was even more sickening was that he could more easily trust the likes of Doctor Octopus and his newest paramour with this information than he could his own government. They ran on a much more private scale, interested in only their own aims.

This, however, didn't loosen the knots in his stomach at all, or quell the nausea. Then again it could simply be the four days of no food and very little water talking. He watched Holmes carefully.

With Parker installed within the machine, Clair snagged a stool and perched on it in front of the screens, guiding the scan to the part of his brain that she wanted. "Yesss," she said slowly as the images filled the screen. She tapped the glass. "That is not a human neurological structure." Caught in fuzzy grays and whites, a lace-like, multi-armed shape sat just under the familiar form of the temporal lobe, tendrils extending into the cerebellum and brainstem.

Octavius leaned in closer to look, peering at the display. This explained a lot, actually. That new organ, an extension of the brain, was enough to account for Spider-man's supernatural reflexes and precognition. The tendrils connected it to so many parts of Parker's primitive brain structure, perhaps interconnecting them, that he suspected removing it might completely destroy a number of key brain functions. He gazed at that image for a while until it almost seemed to take on the shape of a spider. Ironic, that.

"One wonders if it does anything to increase speed of existing brain activity or if it fortifies it with added connexions. Or both."

"What would happen if we turned it off?" she wondered aloud, running through the idea in her head. It would be more difficult, but, if she got a sample, a serum-carrying virus could conceivably be programmed to attack only the unusual structure. "Hmm. Would his brain maintain human-standard functioning, or is it dependant on the aberration?"

"Debatable," Octavius replied. "They're all so closely interlinked and have been for so long, there's no telling how interdependent they are."

"We'll find out," she decided. It would be killing two birds with one stone; a challenging test of the destructive powers of the Zombie Juice and an investigation of the curiosity that was the bug. She shut down the machine, leaving the relevant scans onscreen with their spatial coordinates. The bench slid out while she stared at Parker's head, mentally looking inside it to the sprawling mutation. "Yes, I'll need to take a sample first."

"Uh..." Parker said, momentarily floored by this. "Gee, much as I hate to stand in the way of scientific progress, I can't let you take away my Spidey-powers, I mean, really, what would I put on my business cards, then?" Spotting an opening, he curled and jumped, relieved that he could still stick to the ceiling. His eyes flicked about the room, seeing his web-shooters on one table and his mask on another. He'd need both. Web-shooters first. He started across the ceiling toward the table.

"Oh, no, you don't," Clair growled, upper two actuators thrusting up to knock him off the ceiling.

He leapt before they even got close, crashing into the table and grabbing the web-shooters as he went. Rolling, he managed to clip one to his wrist before dodging Octavius' strike. He couldn't use the other one, his hand was in too bad of shape. Rather than lose the web-shooter, though, he put it on the other wrist anyway. He jumped out of the way of another actuator strike, sticking to the wall and spotting a small window near the ceiling.

"No!" Clair shouted, seeing him glance at the basement's only window. Her subject was not going to escape. She picked up the table he'd been bound to and flung it at him with a jerk that hurt her shoulder and ribs.

He saw the table coming and leapt again, his Spider-sense screaming at him by now. "You two really are a cute couple," he quipped, dodging actuators and flung objects as though his life depended on it, which it did. A web snatched his mask and he yanked it on as he rolled, but it distracted him enough for Octavius to crack him upside the head with an actuator claw. His grip on the wall slipped and he fell among a clatter of upset medical instruments. Octavius charged toward him, growling.

Clair dodged to one side as Otto rushed straight forward, maneuvering to flank the bug, all the while picking up anything expendable and throwing it at him; books, chairs, an empty box marked "radioactive." It put her on a line between him and the window, and she extended one actuator back to bar the aperture.

Spider-man barely managed to dodge as Octavius lunged for his throat, and webbed him good, sticking him to the wall. He flipped and stuck to a corner of the ceiling and wall, looking down at them. He saw Clair's actuator block the window and the door was too far away. He dodged another thrown object. "With those things, I'd hate to see your lovers' spats," he said, shifting, then leaping forward, landing a calculated blow against Clair's injured shoulder on his way to sticking to the other wall.

Bone shifted brutally and Clair screamed, her actuators curling in around her protectively as she fell to the floor, struggling not to black out, then they lashed wildly out again at the bug, trying to impale him against the tile wall. Thoroughly expecting this barrage, he leapt free of Clair's attack, rebounded off the ceiling, and was smacked out of the air with a resounding thwack by one of Octavius' arms. Octavius, for his part, managed to tear himself free of the webbing, leaving a few chunks of hair stuck to the wall in the process, and bore down on him, actuators thumping him into the floor. Spider-man managed to roll out of the way of the next strike, snapped to his feet, and kicked, a blow that snapped Octavius' head back and caused him to reel for a split second before he made for the window, smashing it open with a fist and nipping out through the hole. There was a thwipp sound and he was gone. Octavius yanked the door open and charged up the stairs.

Forcing the pain back and ignoring the new shape of her shoulder, Clair lifted herself back up, tearing open the doors that led outside and climbing up into the alley. Out here, with more room, the actuators would be more effective, but only if the blasted bug hadn't chosen just to run.

Octavius had climbed up over the house to the side where the window let out, and caught Spider-man before he had a chance to get up to the top of the lamppost he'd targeted. He yanked the arachnid from the pole and slammed him against the sidewalk, but Spider-man slipped free, bounced off the actuator, and flipped over another actuator, bounced off another, and grabbed Octavius' head, allowing his downward momentum to overbalance him and crack his head against the sidewalk before Spider-man flipped away, heading for the lamppost again.

Clair reached them and grabbed the lamp-post, snapping it off with a painful effort and swinging it at the bug like a baseball bat, two actuators braced against the pavement and two holding the pole.

If the noise hadn't alerted Spider-man to her intent, his Spider-sense was miles ahead of her already. He flipped over it, but his action was slowed enough by his injuries that it hit his ankle, causing him to flip wildly in the other direction. A web shot at the next lamppost corrected his course and he swung past Clair and onto another roof, swinging off another lamppost and out of sight.

Octavius stirred, rolling over and pushing himself up onto his hands and knees, actuators bracing against the ground.

Clair shrieked after him in rage, her fist clenched, hair wild across her face. It took her a long moment to regain control, gritting her teeth and breathing heavily as the adrenaline began to drain. She turned to face Otto, holding her shoulder tightly with her free hand.

He stared after Spider-man's retreating form, and one hand went up to the back of his head, coming away red with blood and slightly sticky with a few strands of webbing. There was more in his hair, standing out against the black. He blinked and looked at her. "We need to come back inside," he said, putting a hand on her uninjured shoulder, steering her back toward the house.

She let herself be steered, scowling blackly ahead of her. Then she shook her head, brushing her hair back from the bandage around her head and blinking. "I'm not sure what I just did. I've never been so... furious before. And he wasn't even saying anything. Just something about him, the way he fights, or dodges, or the colors, or something..."

"You know, sometimes listening to you is like listening to my own thoughts. I've thought on this occasionally, and I think it is because he manages to dodge almost everything one throws at him, so to speak. That wretched precognition of his, I suppose. And, yes, that red and blue is painful to look at sometimes." Like he was one to talk, having, at one point in his career, clad himself in green and orange spandex and a white labcoat, the end result bringing to mind the image of a bowl of sherbet with four very odd spoons stuck into it. Still, it wasn't as ... impertinent as Spider-man's red and blue.

She raised an eyebrow and looked at him sideways. "Even your old costume hurt less. I'm just - " She shrugged and broke off, hissing.

They were inside by now, and Octavius pulled the doors shut behind them. He steered Clair toward the couch and had her sit, fingers probing carefully at her shoulder.

She watched the wall past him, her face set. "He fights dirty, but I don't think he broke anything new, just unset it. How is your head?"

"It's all right," he replied, positioning one hand on her back and the other under her arm and quickly pushing her shoulder back into place.

She couldn't keep from crying out slightly when he did this, her good hand shooting up to grab his arm. The noise was disturbing. "Maybe... maybe we should wait to continue the experiment. I think I'm a liability like this."

"Do you feel that would be best?" he asked, looking down at her, noticing how pale she had gone and the way her actuators curled inward instinctively.

Reluctantly, she nodded. "I've never been in this much pain before. It's a distraction, and as the bug proved, I can't afford that. I could mess everything up."

He sat on the couch next to her and looked about the room. "All right, then," he nodded. "Perhaps you ought."

"Hate this," she remarked, leaning against him. "Hate feeling this weak, this broken. Spent my whole life trying to convince people that I am not as delicate as I look, and one little fall and I prove myself wrong."

"You fell five stories," he pointed out. "You're lucky to be alive, really."

"I am, I suppose," she agreed, but she was still frowning. "Six weeks, two months at the most, and I'll be ready to start again." She looked up at the screens across the room, which still displayed the bug's scans. "He had better hope that someone kills him before then, because when I get him back down here, I am going to drill a very large hole in his head and do my examinations the old-fashioned way."

Octavius smiled at this, leaning in to kiss her neck. "You know I find you irresistible when you talk like that," he murmured against her skin, but stayed still after that, head leaned against hers, as he gazed in front of them at nothing in particular.

That made her smile. "I'm afraid you must resist," she teased gently, playing with his hair and looking around her lab. There was debris everywhere; broken machinery sparking here and there. They had managed to miss the important things, but it would still take ages to clean up and rebuild. And she had to get that table down from where it was stuck, half through the ceiling. And replace the broken window. And her centrifuge. She reached out two actuators to shift a pile of broken stuff, and swore at what she found underneath. "He broke my Tesla scanner. Wonderful."

Octavius gave it a glance. "Mh," he said. His own actuators sifted through the wreckage, righting things. "This experiment would have been delayed anyway," he muttered, looking at the destroyed centrifuge and the damaged microscope array. Under an upturned table and a pile of scattered tools, he found the box which held the wetware control array. "Ah," he said, looking inside it. "He didn't even realize this was here." A smirk crossed his face.

"It's not broken, is it?" she asked, shifting to see it better. "The scanner's replaceable, that's not."

One actautor claw tip poked the foam padding that filled up the majority of the box while another carefully plucked the tiny piece of technology from it. "This padding kept it from being damaged."

"That's good," she said, lifting herself off the couch. "I can't wait to see what that will do for your actuators. The bug won't know what hit him."

"That is the plan," Octavius chuckled, carefully placing the array back in the box and putting it aside. He looked about the room. "In the meantime, we've a lot of cleaning to do."

Martin had just come in to drop off a file she had forgotten, but the light in their office was on. She poked her head around the door frame and saw Hanover, and scowled at him. "It's bad enough you're here at all, but you're working late? The doc told you to take it easy, Brian."

"I'm fine," Hanover replied curtly. He appeared to be scrutinising a map of the city, tracing and logging possible routes, another map up on his computer screen, which bore a small collection of red dots marking places in the city and its surrounding area.

She came over and looked at the map. "I can't believe they got away with an MRI and nobody saw them. It's not like they're inconspicuous. Especially now that there's two of them." She shook her head. "That Dr. Holmes is just as mad as Octavius. Worse. He got the arms through an accident. To voluntarily choose them..."

"Holmes can still be turned back," Hanover muttered. "You're right. They weren't seen at all." He looked at a copy of that day's Bugle. The newspaper's headline shouted, OCK AND OCKETTE HIT HOSPITAL. Under that was a sub-header reading SPIDER-MAN CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT. And under that was an artist's rendering of Holmes, complete with tentacles and a very Octavian scowl. Hanover pushed the paper toward her. "No-one stated where they went beyond 'east.' So I'm plotting possible destinations."

"No one's seen Spider-Man in days," she said, taking the paper and reading the article, which was filled with vague and improbable "facts." She made a sound of disgust. "Does Jameson ever check his facts?" she thought aloud, then looked back at his map.

"Of course he doesn't," Hanover replied. "That would destroy the Bugle's reputation of yellow journalism at its finest." He squinted at the map. "No one saw them. The only place that could possibly happen would be in a residential district," he mused.

"Res districts are too heavily populated," she argued. "Even if they could sneak in every now and then, someone would certainly notice Doc Ock as their next door neighbor."

"You don't talk to your neighbors, much, do you, Martin?" Hanover said, looking up at her. "A residential area is the perfect place to hide because people refuse to believe they could possibly have a supervillain for a neighbor. It's too ridiculous. So they don't notice. Ock's done it before and it looks like he's doing it again."

"If that's true, then what do we do to find them? A door-to-door search? Draw up warrants for every home in New York? Or just wait for them to come out again?"

"Trace power consumption numbers," he replied, turning to his computer and accessing the power company's database. "We chart the position of houses with the highest energy consumption level and stake out the most likely location."

She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it. "Why didn't I think of that? The MRI alone will take up more power than your average city block, not to mention whatever else they have."

"Something you learn with experience," Hanover smirked. After a moment, he sat back and scrutinised the results of the search, cross-referencing them with addresses and the courses he'd plotted on the map. He leaned forward again, a somewhat disturbing grin crossing his features. "I think I've narrowed it down," he said.

She leaned forward to look at the screen, shooting him a glance. "You're going to go after him again, aren't you?"

"Nobody else has even come close to finding him. What do you think?" Hanover replied. A printer whirred to life, printing out his list of locations.

"I know. I'm coming with you, but I just want my protest to be on record. If this breaks in our faces and you go down for it, I'm not losing my job. That said, where do we start?"

"98504 West Twelfth," Hanover replied, reading off the first address. He stood, grabbing his coat and shrugging it on over his underarm holster, and placed his hat on his bandaged head. "Let's go."

A short time later, the two sat parked in front of 98504, staring up at it, grateful for tinted windows. Even so, Martin wished she had her sunglasses. "That many Christmas lights should be against the law."

Hanover squinted at the house. "It's effective cover--" he started.

Martins looked at him crookedly. "You can not be serious. Doc Ock, in that house? He may be insane, but he's not that far gone. The man's lucifugus, Brian, he'd go blind. I'm about to myself. No, this is just the wrong house. How many more do you have on that list?

Hanover grumbled something about snap decisions and unfolded his list from his pocket. "The next address is 16 Icon Lane, on Roosevelt Island." He glanced out the window again. "It would have been unexpected, but maybe you're right," he observed.

Martins started the car and drove on, heading for the bridge. "I'm sure that house gets people knocking all day to admire the lights and all night to ask them to turn them off. Hardly an ideal lair."

16 Icon Lane was a pleasant little house with a big yard and a giant dog tethered out front. Martin eyed it warily. "After you, sir."

Hanover examined the surroundings and the complacent canine. There was a shaded area under which they could park and still see the house, so he pointed it out, instructing her to drive the car round so that it could park in said space and they could watch the house. Parked, Martin looked around the property skeptically. "This doesn't really look like the place. A dog? Octavius doesn't seem the sort."

"That's what he'd want us to think," Hanover replied, sitting back and settling in to watch the house.

Martin sat up, watching the half-curtained windows at the front of the house. "There's someone in there. A woman, looks like."

Hanover reached into the glove compartment and retrieved a pair of binoculars. Raising them to his eyes, he trained them on the window, gazing through them into the shadowy interior. The woman in question could have been Holmes, if she'd gained about forty pounds and six inches overnight. She was moving around what must be the kitchen, her mouth open as she yelled to someone they couldn't see.

"Maybe he's gone back to collecting women," Hanover muttered, still staring into the window.

Martin checked through her own binoculars, sighing. "I think you're reaching, Brian. Look, there's even a swingset in the back."

He scowled heavily. "Damn," he muttered. He tossed the binoculars onto the dashboard and fished out his list again. "What the hell could they have been using all that electricity on, anyway?"

"That's their business," said Martin shortly, trying to tame her hair, which was making a serious effort to rise on end for no reason at all. "It's not a crime, just expensive. What's the next address?"

Hanover consulted the paper. "Second and East 82nd, on the upper east side. I think it's near Shurz Park." One last glance at the house showed him a child running out the door to glomp the dog. He sighed.

"He may collect women," she said, backing out of her parking space. "But I really can't see him taking on kids, can you? No matter what the Bugle said this morning." Back over the bridge and into East Side, following the river front past the wooded park. It was a quiet neighborhood, full of dignified, attached, two-story houses with narrow streetfronts.

"What's the address?" she asked, looking down the road. The area had class, but it had seen better times. Several of the houses sported boarded up windows and missing shingles."201," Hanover replied, and pointed. "Right up there."

Number 201 was not one of the dilapidated buildings, and the windows shone warmly, a new VW Bug parked in front. Martin drove around into the narrow alley in back to see it from that angle as well. A garbage bin sat neatly on the curb. All plainly mundane. "How many more addresses do you have on the list?" she started to ask, but then she saw the broken lamppost across the alley. Snapped cleanly off at the foot and left to lay along the lane. And the house next to 201 had a window broken out in its basement, from the inside by the look of the glass lying outside it. "Look at that," she pointed out quietly to Hanover, pulling past the house and stopping a little way down the alley.

"No lightning strike could have done that to that lamppost," Hanover mused. "No drunk driver, either. I think we might have our house." He peered at it, seeing the windows all had the shades drawn.

"And there's a delivery door to the basement. They could have gotten the MRI in through that. I wouldn't put it past Octavius to route his power usage through the house next door, either." She looked more closely at the door. "That's been damaged recently. See, clamp marks, right where you'd grab it to open it. This has to be the place."

Hanover squinted at the building. "Found you, you bastard," he growled.

"And now what?" said Martin, staring at the house. "Let's go back to the bureau, get back-up."

Hanover stared at her and it was evident that he was waging something of a war in his mind. His objective was right there, just inside that house. And yet there was the reality that he'd never be able to do anything against two individuals with actuators. He sighed. "I guess you're right. We're gonna need backup."

Relieved, because she'd seen his desire to just charge in there and wage war with his own personal demon, Martin put the car back in gear and headed back out into the city, back downtown to the Bureau.