Peter shot awake, his breathing heavy as he sat up in bed. He ran his hands over his face as he collected himself. What had started as a wonderful dream with him and M.J. strolling through Central Park together quickly turned into a nightmare, as darkness descended over them and he had turned to see Martin Li there, holding M.J. by the throat. Peter had only been able to watch as Martin's dark energy flooded through her being and she became another one of his puppets.
"You're next," Martin had said.
Peter glanced out the window to see sunshine beginning to peek through his window. He got up and looked out to find that, sure enough, New York was still New York. An evil darkness had not consumed it, and things were still normal, at least for now. Time was still on his side.
The problem was, he still didn't know where exactly to begin in his hunt for Martin, his minions and the machine he was building. He didn't even know what the man's intent was for the machine in the first place. Obviously, its main function would be to syphon off quantum energy, but what did he need it for?
Peter decided that maybe a good breakfast would help him clear his mind a little bit, so he turned and walked out of his room toward the kitchen. He kept his steps quiet in case Happy and M.J. were still asleep, but once he entered the room, he saw the latter, sitting at the kitchen table on a laptop. She turned and looked at him, and a smile instantly overtook her face.
She was here. She was still herself.
Once again overcome with relief that his nightmare hadn't been real, he moved over to her as she stood up from her seat, pulling her into a tight hug. For several seconds, he just stood there, clutching her like a lifeline.
"Not that I'm complaining, but is everything okay?" M.J. questioned.
"Yeah," Peter said as they finally pulled away from each other, "just happy a dream I had last night didn't come true."
"I know what you mean," M.J. replied. "Well, sort of; I kind of had a hard time sleeping much last night."
"Yeah, same here," Peter said, recalling now how, before his dream, he had lied awake for a fair amount of the night. His brain had just been unable to quiet down, going back and forth between what to do about Martin Li and how he couldn't believe that M.J. actually liked him too.
"Join the club," came the voice of Happy, who strolled into the kitchen. "I kept rolling onto this lump on the side of my head, so I didn't sleep a wink."
"You should really get that checked out, you know," Peter said as Happy opened the freezer. He himself had had worse lumps before from fights and bad falls, but what Happy had going on was still nothing to sneeze at.
"Oh, I'll be fine," Happy replied. "This isn't my first Rodio kid. I've been through the ringer several times before."
"Yeah?" Peter asked. Those were some stories he'd be interested in hearing.
"Oh yeah," Happy answered. "I'll just take it easy with my leftovers and ice pack and I'll be fine."
"Are you sure?" Peter said.
"Oh yeah; R&R has always been the best thing to help me recover," Happy said as he grabbed some left-over food from the other day and took it with him. "If you kids need me, I'll be in my room trying to find a good movie to put on."
"Okay then," Peter said as Happy turned and exited the room. He was still worried about the man, but he at least still seemed mostly like his normal self, which provided a degree of comfort to him. His own wound was still bothering him a little, but had largely healed itself over night.
Peter turned back to M.J.
"I really hope he's as fine as he says he is," Peter said.
"He wasn't too keen on the idea last night either," M.J. replied. "Oh, also I think I might've found something helpful."
"What is it?" Peter said, hopeful for even the smallest break.
M.J. sat back down by the laptop, pulling up an article. "So, I was doing some research last night while I couldn't sleep, and after scrolling through SEVERAL google pages, I eventually found this."
Peter glanced down at the article; it was about an interview that Martin had done a few weeks after the Snap, just before Peter had started working at F.E.A.S.T.
"Okay, so, what am I looking at here?" Peter asked. "I'm not seeing anything that stands out."
"Neither did I, at least not at first," M.J. said, scrolling down before pointing to a particular section. "But check this out."
Peter narrowed his eyes at the section she was pointing too. It was a small chunk of the interview where Martin had mentioned getting therapy, saying he was just like everyone else in the fact that the snap was hard on him too, even though he recognized his privilege during that time, which was why he wanted to help people.
"Nothing about his therapy is ever mentioned again," M.J. explained, "but, since it was still something new, I dug a little deeper and found these." She clicked on another tab, and Peter could see pictures of Martin walking into... Ravencroft Institute For The Criminally Insane.
"Are these real?" Peter asked. He didn't know much about Ravencroft, except for the fact that some of his enemies had ended up there over the years. In any case, it seemed like the last place a man like Martin Li would go.
"Yep," M.J. replied. "At first it was just the paparazzi catching these, but to get ahead of things, Martin came out with a statement saying that he was visiting to discuss his potential funding of the institution, because he believed that the people there needed the best resources possible to get proper help. However, given what we know about Li, I looked into Ravencroft a little more, and saw that her founder was a someone named Dr. Ashley Kafka."
Peter shrugged. "Never heard of her."
"She's actually the founder of Ravencroft," M.J. said, "but get this: her specialties as a psychologist are in criminal insanity and multiple personality disorder."
It finally dawned on Peter what she was getting at.
"Which means that Martin might not have just been going there to make nice and give out money."
"Exactly," M.J. said.
Peter knew what he had to do.
It seemed his breakfast might have to wait.
Breaking into the office of a homeless shelter was one thing. Breaking into a maximum-security sanitarium... that was another matter entirely. Peter had a hard time just finding a decent vantage point from which he could properly scope out the building. What he did see only made him more unsure of his plan, as cameras and security staff were all around the building. If that wasn't enough, he was attempting to break in during the daytime. If he felt he had more time, he would've waited until the cover of night, but for all he knew, that could be when Martin would be ready to enact whatever he was planning to do with the device.
The one good thing about this situation was that he was in his Spider-Man outfit, so at least if he was caught, he wouldn't be recognized. Okay, he would, but as Spider-Man, not as Peter Parker, so at least the secret identity side of his situation would be safe. Then again, he wouldn't be able to suit up and go out into the city without being a wanted man...
Peter shook his head, trying to get out of the rabbit hole his mind was going down. This endeavor was going to require precision and caution, and he couldn't do that if his brain was going in a million different directions. He examined the side of the building he was in front of one more time, trying to see if he could pick up on any patterns. He had already rotated his way around the building once from different vantage points, trying to find the best way in.
After a while, Peter finally found what seemed like a reliable pattern: each of the cameras along the fence line rotated both ways in order to cover the grounds, and the security patrol along the outside came back around about every 2 minutes. If he hurried, he could enter a ventilation shaft just outside of the camera's view and plug it back up before he would be caught.
He waited for the security patrol to come through again, then once they had turned the corner, Peter swung over near the fence. Thankfully, the camera was just starting its rotation as he landed on it, so it only took a couple seconds before it was far enough in the other direction that he was free to leap to the shaft. Working quickly, he popped off the entrance to the shaft, got inside, and webbed the cover to seal it back up just long enough for the short term.
His spider-sense hadn't gone off even once yet, so so far so good.
Now all Peter had to do was find the office. No schematics had been available online, but M.J. had managed to find that the offices were on the fourth floor, so Peter made sure to scale his way up to the proper level. From there, he took a glance in each office, hoping that the doctor was inside. He would search her office if he had to, but he really was hoping to be able to speak to the lady herself.
And, of course, hope that she didn't call security on him. That was kind of a big one.
Finally, Peter found the right office, recognizing the doctor from the picture M.J. had shown him. She was sitting at her desk, which was positioned like how Martin's had been in his office. She didn't appear to be doing much, just sitting at her computer, maybe reading?
Working as quietly as he could, he managed to open the shaft's entrance to the room without making hardly any noise, and he slowly climbed down, landing smoothly on the floor. He rose to a standing position.
Now came the interesting part.
"Uh, excuse me," Peter said.
The woman spun around in her chair, standing to her feet and pulling a taser out of her jacket pocket. Peter threw his hands up in the air.
"Woah woah, it's okay," Peter said. "I know how this looks, but I just want to talk."
Dr. Kafka seemed to relax, stuffing the taser back in her pocket after a moment.
"Spider-Man," she said. "I'm sorry, I thought you might be someone else. I'm guessing you're here about Martin Li?"
Peter's head tilted a little in surprise.
"Yes," he replied, "but how did you know that?"
The doctor glanced back to her computer, which Peter noticed had what appeared to be footage of his fight with Martin from the previous night.
"I know my patients," Dr. Kafka said. "This version of Martin, his look, his movements, mannerisms, it's all different, but I can still tell its him."
"So, he was a patient of yours?" Peter asked.
Dr. Kafka nodded.
"It seemed like we were making such progress, but clearly I was wrong."
"Look, I know there's a whole patient confidentiality thing, but if there's anything you can tell me that could help me stop him, I'd appreciate it," Peter said. "Plus, I think the city might too."
The doctor shook her head, running her hand over her forehead. Eventually she nodded.
"Martin actually had been coming to me for a while," she began. "He said my unique expertise could help him with a 'problem' he was having. I'm guessing if you've dug this deep into Martin, you know about the accident?"
Peter nodded.
"Well, he said that ever since then, something had felt off," Dr. Kafka continued. "He could tell there was something going on in his head, a voice, almost like an entirely different person had invaded his headspace. He kept describing this personality as all the negative parts of himself."
That made sense.
"Did he say anything about what this 'negative' part of himself wanted?" Peter asked.
"Control," Dr. Kafka replied. "Martin said that this other side of him kept insisting that things would be better if HE was the one in charge."
"Wait, he could TALK to this other personality?" Peter questioned.
"Sort of," Dr. Kafka said. "It was more like he could pick up on it sometimes."
This was all starting to sound like something out of a horror movie.
"For a while, he was making a lot of progress towards bringing it under control," Dr. Kafka continued. "He was blacking out at first, but finally had gone a week without issue, and his wife said his 'sleepwalking' had stopped."
"Wait wait," Peter said, waving his gloved hands, "his WIFE?"
"Yeah, June," Dr. Kafka replied. "She used to come to the sessions as well, but then after the Snap, they both stopped coming."
"Did he... did either of them ever tell you why?" Peter asked.
"I tried calling them," the doctor replied. "They never responded, and so I went to check in on them, and..."
"What?" Peter asked. "What happened? Did he hurt you?"
"No," she said, "he just told me to leave, that he had everything under control, but I could tell he wasn't himself. When I asked about June, he said that she was gone, and he tried to apologize, saying he needed to be alone but that he would contact me when he was ready to meet again, but he never did."
Peter's eyes went wide underneath his mask; the pieces of the puzzle were starting to add up. Martin Li gets powers and a violent, controlling secondary personality, starts to get things under control, then starts to act differently again once his wife disappears because of the snap...
That must've been it: the last crack in allowing this "negative" persona of Martin to fully rise to the surface and take control...
Wait a minute. Control. That was it!
"I knew I should've done more, but I just didn't know what that was," Dr. Kafka said. "I've been nervous ever since that he night come after me."
"It's okay doctor," Peter said, "listen, sorry for barging in on you like this, but thank you for your time. You've been a bigger help to me than you know."
Peter started to leave back the way he came, but Dr. Kafka stopped him.
"Wait," she said, "the next time you see him, please, remember that there is a good man in there somewhere still."
"I will," Peter assured her.
As soon as Peter was outside of Ravencroft and its security measures, he got a call from M.J.
"Hey M.J," he answered, "I'm on my way back now, and I think I might know..."
"Peter, listen," she said, cutting him off, "I've been doing some more digging. The machine that he's building funnels quantum energy, but without some place to transfer it into, the energy would just go crazy, destroying anything around it."
It took Peter only a second, given all that he now knew, to put that last piece with the rest.
"He's funneling it into himself," Peter said. "Dr. Kafka said that Martin's darker side wants control, and I think that device is how: if he can get more of that energy into himself, he'll have enough to assert his control over the whole city, maybe even more. He might not even have to touch them directly to do it."
"In order to do that though, he needs to be at one of the highest points in the city," M.J. added, "and I found that Martin Li purchased the old Stark Industries building that was also the first Avengers headquarters."
As soon as she said that, Peter got an alert on his phone through the crime system he and Ned had installed. He let go of his web, landing on a nearby building to take a look at it, and he couldn't believe what he saw.
There had been an attack at the old Avengers Tower. Nothing had been said about Martin, but Peter guessed he had used his normal face to get them in there in the first place.
It was happening.
So, just a heads up…there's only 2 more chapters left after this…..
Hope you guys are still enjoying this as we near the conclusion!
Continuing to pray for you all; stay safe and healthy!
"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Matthew 22:34-40
