(wonders where everyone is) Sorry the last chapter was so dreary you didn't even think it fit to review (except for LadyKayoss, thank you). It should get better soon; chapter 9 will feature the first appearance of the Green Goblin in a Nature Versus Nurture story. What will Norman's debut hold in store for our heroes? Keep reading and keep reviewing!

From her secret bunker in her undisclosed location, The Trickster

Chapter 8: Enlightened One

The inventor never saw what hit him. Carlyle was dispatched in a similar fashion. Octavia gasped as Carlyle hit the ground. "Do you have to hurt them?"

"Shush!" the villain scolded. "You're spoiling my fun." He picked the bracelet off the floor. Octavia's attention was focused elsewhere. Meanwhile, the other patrons at the conference were running like hell.

"What are you looking at, girl?" Otto sharply asked.

Octavia held up another device. Another scientist lay unconscious a few feet away. "It's some kind of sonic nullifier device. I heard him say it could crash any electronic security system or computer within twenty feet."

The doctor was impressed in spite of himself. "How'd you get rid of him?" he asked, indicating the scientist.

Octavia smiled, but it was devoid of mirth. "I hit him."

"This computer has a probability predicting program that indicates where Octavius will strike next. By use of a sophisticated algorithm, it analyzes information from past actions and gives me a percentage of probability of the most likely events."

"Ah," Spidey assented. "So what does Hal say?"

"Hal?" Cypher was puzzled.

"Haven't you ever seen 2001: A Space Odyssey?"

"My job doesn't afford me time to watch movies."

"There's an artificially intelligent computer named Hal on the spaceship. Hal took on a life of his own, turned homicidal and killed the whole crew."

Cypher groaned. "What does this have to do with Octavius?"

"Everything, Agent." Spidey sighed. "Just about everything."

Anthony Nicholas sat down rather gingerly in his car (the better not to irritate the computer chip in his ass).

"God, you could do with a new car." Daisy crinkled her nose.

Anthony tapped the steering wheel. "1979 Pacer. Classic. I lost my job two years ago and hadn't found one since. I swear to God They're blacklisting me."

Jordan was well used to her father's conspiracy theories. Daisy was not. "Who are They?" she asked.

"The Illuminati, of course. They engineer wars, pitting one class of people against the other, financing both sides, until someday, everyone will be too weakened to resist when They step out of the shadows to take over the world."

"Illuminati? Doesn't that mean 'The Enlightened Ones'?"

"Who is Satan but the fallen Lucifer, the Angel of Light?" Anthony replied. "What if your little friend Octavia was part of this Illuminati plot? What if they were designing an army of super-soldiers as part of their personal military force of world domination? And if they put brain implants in their heads to keep them under control—"

Daisy leaned over and whispered to her best friend. "Your dad's nuts. No wonder your mom and dad are divorced."

"Daddy, I already explained it," said Jordan. "Octavia's not a super-soldier. She was just part of a really perverted psychology experiment."

"Besides, if they were building super-soldiers, why would they clone Doc Ock? He's really smart, but they could have cloned, say, the Green Goblin, who has super-strength and heals really quickly?" added Daisy.

"Or why wouldn't they just build people from scratch?" Jordan rejoined.

"That new Dean Koontz novel is really getting to you, isn't it?"

Jordan held up her copy of Frankenstein: Prodigal Son. "Sure, but Koontz missed one thing: Victor Helios is working for the government." In an undertone to Daisy, she added, "I haven't heard Daddy rant this much since he said the Catholics were part of a conspiracy to hide Christ's true origins. He said Jesus had a wife and kids. Can you believe that?"

"Hell no. Your dad's nuttier than a fruitcake, Jordan. A real live nut."

"Maybe he's on to something," replied Jordan. "About the super-soldiers, I mean. Not about Jesus having a wife and kid."

"The nut doesn't fall far from the tree," Daisy sighed.

"So, what is he going to do next?"

Cypher looked at the computer screen. "He's going to rob another bank. 80 percent probability is First Central—"

"Your computer's full of bullshit, Cypher."

"What?"

Spidey rolled his eyes under his mask and clarified. "For Chrissakes, who do you think he is, Jesse James with tentacles? Now that he's got the money, he's going to hit some kind of scientific exhibit, steal some equipment."

Cypher impatiently tapped the screen. "This computer is tested to be 95 percent accurate, Spider-Man."

"Trust me, with Doc Ock, things always fall into the other 5 percent. He's going to the nearest place they have scientific inventions. Trust me. He fancies himself a man of science, but he's a scientist like Victor Frankenstein's a scientist."

Cypher decided to put her trust in the web-crawler. She tapped a few buttons. "Next stop, the International Conference of Engineers and Scientists at the Convention Center."

"Come to think of it, why would anyone want to clone and army of super-soldiers anyhow? The United States already has an army," asked Daisy.

"Americans are always loath to go to war and even more loath to have their boys die 'over there'. That's what we saw during Gulf War II. If this super-army were created, there would no longer be objections to a third Gulf War. After all, they're just clones, if they get blown up, we can make some more. It wouldn't be our fathers and brothers and sons getting killed."

"Daddy, will you quit scratching your butt? You're embarrassing me."

"Sorry Jordan, it's this damn computer chip. Honestly, I thought they were giving me an anthrax immunization."

"They probably were," said Daisy.

The agent and the hero stood at the entrance to the trashed remnant of the convention center. Three scientists and two security guards were dead; all the other people there had probably ran like h-e-double hockey sticks.

"You were right, Spider-Man," Cypher said. "He was here."

"And now he's gone."