XXVIII. Assumption

Over the course of the next few days, Peter and Gwen didn't see much of either Mary Jane or Harry. The school play was only a couple of weeks away now, and so MJ had to devote most of her time after school to drama practice—she'd landed the role of Desdemona in Othello. Harry, meanwhile, had apparently sunk into a deep depression again. He pushed his friends away, kept to himself while at school, and always went straight home right after. As to just what Harry was doing when he was off on his own, his friends couldn't begin to guess, and he refused to talk about it.

Peter, of course, was always kept busy between school, his two jobs, and his "extracurricular activities" as Spider-Man. Ever since the Kingpin had mostly thwarted his rivals and assumed unchallenged control over New York's underworld, crime had been on the rise again in the Big Apple—and you didn't really see the Avengers or the Fantastic Four doing much about that. Crime-fighting fell to the street-level heroes, the likes of Spider-Man, Daredevil, Iron Fist, Moon Knight, and a rare few others who felt that they had the responsibility to use their powers to help people wherever they could.

And as for Gwen... well, Peter saw her around at school and at home. Flash Thompson did indeed work up the nerve to ask her to the fall formal again, and this time around, Gwen agreed—her exact words were, and I quote, "Sure, why the hell not?" But mostly, she was putting in a lot of extra hours at the lab.

• • •

One night, about a week later, Gwen crept back into the ESU genetics lab after everyone else had left. She'd already done this a couple of times; she knew what she was doing by now. She went to her locker and took out her "personal project". Gwen had been able to isolate some DNA from Peter's blood, and those precious few samples were kept in a couple of test tubes in a small cooler. From there, she'd been able to draw a serum which, when combined with some of Doc Connors' artificial retroviral particles, ought to have made for a most efficacious mutagenic compound. All that remained were a few final tests to ensure that the DNA samples hadn't suffered from any irreparable degradation during their stint in a garbage bag in Gwen's locker.

She pipetted a few samples of the finished serum onto some slide trays, added a couple of testing enzymes, and waited. After a while, she placed the slides under a microscope and examined them for traces of degradation. Negative… negative… so far, so good… one test inconclusive… negative. The results were as promising as she could have hoped for. This was it; this was her one chance. There would probably never be another opportunity like this again. Sure, it was a risk—one that Peter would certainly never let her take, if only he knew—but Gwen had been a risk-taker all her life, and oh the reward if this actually worked…

She took a syringe and filled it with a dose of the serum, doing some quick math in her head to estimate the proper amount based on her own body mass. Then she cleaned off a spot on her forearm with some rubbing alcohol and a cotton ball, found a vein, and injected herself. The mutagen flowed into her bloodstream—she instantly felt pain, as if her insides were suddenly all on fire. She gasped and nearly doubled over, knocking a metal tray off the table. The tray clattered to the floor. Gwen barely noticed; she just gripped the table with one arm and her stomach with the other. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead first, then all over her body. Her clothes were soaked with sweat a moment later, and she slumped down to the floor and started shaking uncontrollably.

The shakes passed after a few moments, but Gwen still felt nauseous, as if she were going to throw up. Realizing that she had to get out of here before she left any evidence behind, she quickly staggered back to her feet and started cleaning up her equipment. The slide-trays, the serum, the syringe, the blood and DNA samples—they all went back into the cooler, and that went back into her locker. Once she was satisfied that she'd covered her tracks sufficiently, Gwen then left the lab, stumbling a little bit in her delirium as she went.

She never once noticed that Michael Morbius had been sitting in Doc Connors' office the whole time, watching her from the shadows.

• • •

Peter heard a crash and jumped out of bed. In fact, he was so startled that he jumped straight up out of his bed and clung to the ceiling. It was rare that anything startled him without also setting off his spider-sense. After a moment, he realized what had made the noise: the storm-door which led down to his basement bedroom was open, flapping and crashing in the wind. What in the world? thought Peter, dropping down to his bed again. He was just about to cross the room and close the cellar door, when he noticed movement out of the corner of his eye—someone was in the basement with him, huddled on the floor under a blanket.

"Hey!" said Peter. "Who's down here?"

The blanket shifted. Gwen's head appeared. She looked terrible: her face was flushed, and she hard dark rings under her eyes, like she hadn't slept a wink last night. "P—Peter…" she groaned.

"Gwen? What are you doing in my room? Wait, never mind that, what are you doing on the floor?"

"I… feel sick…" said Gwen. She moaned again. "I think… I did something really stupid last night…"

"Got drunk at a party, huh?" said Peter. He went over to help Gwen up. "Come on, let's get you some breakfast. At least it's Saturday and we don't have to worry about school…" But when he tried to lift up the blanket, it wouldn't come off of her. So he pulled a little harder; and he found, to his dismay, that the blanket was stuck to Gwen's body by a sticky mass of spider-webbing. "Gwen, were you playing with my web-shooters again last night? You know how expensive the web-fluid is."

"Unh… don't think so… don't remember…" she mumbled.

"Jeez, you really are out of it." He put some spider-strength into his efforts and tore through the webs, finally ripping the blanked free. "You really ought to—WHOA—"

Peter jumped back in astonishment. Gwen also had a look of shock and awe on her face as she looked down at herself. The tank-top she'd been wearing last night had been shredded; the scraps of it that remained only barely preserved her modesty. That was almost an afterthought, though, because Gwen Stacy had grown four extra arms.

"Gwuh… six… six arms…" sputtered Peter.

Gwen couldn't even muster up that much in the way of coherent speech. She just started to scream, at least until she clasped two of her hands (the middle ones from either side) over her mouth.

Neither one of them moved for several minutes. Finally, Peter realized that he'd just been standing there and staring dumbly. "Okay. Okay, we can figure this out. This must be, like, a side-effect from that red symbiote suit that Eddie made—"

"No, Peter—no," said Gwen. She reached out with two of her left hands and gripped Peter's forearm to stop him from pacing. "I did this. To myself."

"You did this."

She looked away in shame. "I… I kept some of your blood. From the accident in the lab the other day. And I thought, I just, I don't know… I just wanted…"

"Oh my God," said Peter, once he realized what Gwen was saying. "Oh my God! Gwen, do you—do you have any idea how dangerous, how completely stupid that was?! Nobody in the world—freaking super-geniuses like Reed Richards and Bruce Banner—nobody understands how all this mutation stuff really works yet! The science is so, so way beyond us right now, and you—you—you thought you could just—"

"Turn myself into a freak?" finished Gwen quietly. She was now hugging herself with all six arms, which made her look supremely pathetic and almost as sorry as she actually felt.

"Oh… oh, Gwen. I'm sorry; I didn't mean to blow up like that," said Peter. "You know me, I worry—neurotically—especially about the people I care about." He wrapped his arms around Gwen in a brotherly hug. "We'll fix this. I'll ask Doc Connors to whip up some of that anti-mutagen compound that he uses to keep his lizard problem under control."

"And you think he'll just give you some, no questions asked?"

"He will if Spider-Man asks him to. He owes me one."

"Thanks, Pete. That is a huge relief!" She tried to break away from Peter's embrace, only find that they were now webbed together. "Eew," they both said at the same time.

"I am so glad that Mary Jane isn't here to catch us stuck together like this," said Peter. Then a thought occurred to him. "Where are these webs even coming from? You aren't wearing web-shooters."

"I must be making my own somehow," said Gwen. They pushed against each other until the webbing finally broke. Then Gwen aimed one of her hands at the wall, pushed her middle and ring fingers against her palm, and… nothing. She tried other hands, other finger positions, other motions with her arms and wrists. "Go, web! C'mon, ya gotta come out of there somehow…" But there was nothing, nada, zip, zilch—she was sans webs.

"Maybe you're overthinking it," said Peter.

"Okay…" She shook all six of her hands to loosen up the muscles. "Don't think… just make a web…" And then something came to her. When she'd been wearing the Carnage suit, she didn't have to think to spin webs—she just pointed, and the webs came out. Like it had been instinctual. So she tried that now, pointing her index and middle finger at the wall, and—schlorp, fsssshhhh—web-fluid secreted from the skin between her fingers, flowing forward and spinning itself into a web-line by the time it left her fingertips.

"Organic webbing," said Peter. "That's fascinating! …And icky."

"Whatever; it's awesome!" said Gwen. She tried all six arms, firing web-lines in different directions and then tying them all together in the middle of the room. Then she jumped up and clung to the center of her room-spanning, makeshift spider-web and said, "Check it out; I'm even more spidery than you, Pete!"

"You realize, of course, that when Aunt May sees you like this, she's gonna blow a gasket."

"Then I guess I'd better lay low until you get me some antidote," said Gwen. "But until then," she flipped upside down on the web and hung there, "I'm gonna enjoy this! Hey, can I borrow your spare mask? I might wanna go web-swingin' around later on!"

Peter felt a headache coming on; he closed his eyes tightly and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm telling Aunt May before she comes down here, sees you, and has another heart attack." Then he went over to the nightstand beside his bed, picked up his cell phone, and dialed Mary Jane. There was no explaining this with words; she would have to come over and see it for herself.

• • •

While Peter and Mary Jane stood by and watched (with MJ staring, bug-eyed), Gwen sat at the Parkers' kitchen table, looking suitably contrite. Moments ago, Aunt May had exploded into the mother of all angry lectures. Now she stood before Gwen, her lips pursed tightly together, her arms folded, tapping one finger on her elbow. "And so what have we learned?" May finished.

Gwen sighed. "…No more mad science," she recited.

"That's right," said May. "It's dangerous, it's irresponsible, and it's damned inconvenient! Until you and Peter figure out how to fix this, you won't even be able to leave the house!"

Mary Jane cleared her throat. "Um, actually… I have an idea for that." When she'd first arrived and seen Gwen's condition, she'd been horrified. But now that it was sinking in, she was actually finding it pretty funny. In fact, she was having a hard time not laughing her ass off every time she looked at Gwen. Still, she wasn't without sympathy—hence her focus on how Gwen could go on living in the meanwhile.

"I'm all ears," said Gwen.

"And arms—" started Peter, until Gwen glared and shut him up.

"Well," said MJ, "obviously nobody can see Gwen Stacy with six arms. That would be too weird and attention-getting. But until Peter comes back with a cure, you could go full-time super-hero identity. I mean, that's what I'd do if I were in your shoes."

"Or gloves—" said Peter, only to be stopped by Gwen saying, "Can it!" To emphasize her point, Gwen shot a blob of webbing at Peter's mouth; he caught it with his hand.

"Hey, that's my move," said Peter.

Aunt May rubbed her temples and groaned. "Three super-powered teenagers… the grocery bills alone are going to drive me bananas."

"Trust me," said MJ, "we can make this work. Gwen just needs the right super-hero name. And, obviously, a costume." She was grinning now, like she had a secret that she was dying to tell.

"Ooh, ooh, how about… Arachne? Or the Black Widow?" said Gwen, holding up all six of her hands like claws and making a scary face.

"I think those are both taken," said Peter.

"Just… wait here a moment," said MJ. She ran out to the backyard, jumped over to her house, and went up to her room to get something. She came back into the Parkers' kitchen a moment later, carrying a bundle of black cloth. She spread this out on the kitchen table, revealing a black costume with a white spider-emblem—actually rather Venom-esque in its design—and a black and white mask very similar to her Scarlet Spider mask, in that it covered her face completely but left the top open for her hair. "I, uh… I was thinking of trying out a new identity, something with a slightly less 'villainy' reputation. Maybe call myself 'Spider-Woman' or something. But… well, it's yours if you want it, Gwen."

"Yeah, sure," said Gwen. "Thanks, MJ." She picked up the costume that Mary Jane had made, so that she could get a better look at it. They were about the same size; it would probably fit without much alteration. Then she added, "I'm gonna have to cut some extra arm-holes."

MJ nodded. "That goes without saying."

Peter went for the basement door. Since it was the weekend, Doc Connors wouldn't be in the lab, so there'd be no point in checking ESU. "I'm gonna go see if I can find the Connorses' new address," he said. Then he went downstairs to change into his own Spidey costume, and to boot up his computer and run a Google search.

• • •

Peter, Mary Jane, and Gwen all swung through the city together, Peter and MJ in their respective Spider-Man and Scarlet Spider costumes, and Gwen wearing the black Spider-Woman costume that MJ had made—black sleeves and white gloves covering only her two uppermost arms, the other four left bare and protruding from ragged arm-holes hastily cut into the sides of the costume. Thanks to those six arms and the power to spin a web from any one of them, Gwen was actually quite a bit faster than either Pete or MJ at web-slinging. She took to it like a natural, and she was having the time of her life—swinging way ahead of her two companions, doing a flip in the air or bouncing off a rooftop and then doubling back, shouting and whooping with joy the whole time. "YAAAHHHOOO! Hey, look out where I'm swinging—hey, watch it, I'm Spider-Woman over here! WOO-HOOOOO!"

But even though Gwen was fast, she wasn't exactly graceful. Compared to her, Peter and MJ were like a pair of synchronized swimmers dancing through the air together. At one point, MJ shouted, "Hey Tiger, catch!" and let go of her web-line at the top of an arc so that she'd sail high up and then come back down just as Pete were reaching the apex of his own swing. He caught her easily and kept swinging along with MJ held tightly in one arm, never missing a beat. And now that they were swinging together as one, it was possible for them to converse more easily. "Gwen certainly seems to be enjoying herself," said MJ.

"I'm worried," said Peter. "It's like watching a toddler play in the street."

"Oh, let her have her fun," said MJ. "Once she's cured she won't be able to do this anymore."

Just then, Gwen swung past them, backwards and upside-down on two web-lines. "Wooo! Maybe I'll change my mind and stay like this! Yeah!" And then she was out of earshot again.

"She'd better not…" grumbled Peter.

"Don't be a curmudgeon," giggled MJ.

"I'm not being a curmudgeon, I'm—" Before Peter could finish his answer, he felt his spider-sense tingling, and Mary Jane felt it too. So it hardly came as a surprise when Peter pushed her away as hard as he could. She pushed back with equal force, both of them spinning new web-lines to stay aloft. At the spot where they'd been swinging only half a second ago, a rocket-propelled grenade detonated into a fireball.

"Whoa!" cried Peter, swinging over to a rooftop. Mary Jane followed him over, and a moment later Gwen found them and landed too.

"What was that?" asked MJ.

"Some kinda missile, maybe?" said Gwen.

"Uh-oh," said Peter. He pointed, and the girls turned to see a huge mechanical thing lumbering towards them as it walked across the rooftops. It was the size of a large pickup-truck, with eight mechanical limbs and a flexible, segmented tail which made it appear vaguely like a giant robot scorpion covered in shiny armor of chrome and steel.

"The hell is that thing?" said Gwen.

• • •

On the 87th floor of Fisk Tower, Wilson Fisk had set up an elaborate entertainment apparatus. An enormous projection-screen TV allowed the assembled city officials and members of the press to see through the eyes of the Spider-Slayer prototype—to witness the coming battle from its perspective. Spencer and Alistair Smythe were there, of course: Spencer, as the Slayer's inventor, was the man of the hour, the star of Fisk's little show. But Fisk had also made sure to invite as many other distinguished guests as he could. Sam Bullit, who was running for mayor and already in full campaign mode, simply had to be there—he was running on an anti-vigilante, law-and-order platform, so a program like the Spider-Slayer was right up his alley. Captain Jean DeWolff was present as well, at the request of the police commissioner—all police matters that involved super-hero types were officially her purview, and so she was there to act as a consultant and to be the NYPD's eyes and ears. And then there was J. Jonah Jameson.

One might suppose that old Jolly Jonah was there because his two top reporters were unavailable. Ben Urich was over at the County Courthouse, covering the parole hearing of Sergei Kravinoff. Last spring, Kravinoff had come to New York City to hunt the world's most elusive prey—Spider-Man—only to get soundly whupped by the super-powered teen. And so he'd gone to Dr. Miles Warren at the ESU genetics lab and requested an augmentation, to level the playing field. Warren had obliged, for a price, splicing feline DNA into Sergei's genome, transforming him into "Kraven the Hunter". But Spidey had won the rematch too, and so Kraven had been in jail for the past half a year now, mostly for assault and property damage. Since there was technically nothing illegal about turning oneself into a mutant lion-man, that didn't really enter into the matter of whether he'd get out on parole. As for Jonah's other top man, Ned Leeds, well… he'd been missing for nearly four days now. Ned hadn't shown up for work in all that time, and neither was he answering his calls. Betty Brandt, who was dating Ned, was fairly distraught; but Jonah just assumed that he was being a lazy bum and that he'd have to fire Ned whenever he did finally have the audacity to show his face at the Bugle office again. One might imagine that these circumstances were what put J.J. in that office with Fisk, Smythe, and the others.

But the truth was, he just really wanted to see a giant robot open a can of whup-ass on Spider-Man.

"Hah, did you see that?" Jonah cheered. "I'll bet that creepy wall-crawler doesn't stand a chance!"

"That looked like military-grade firepower to me," said Captain DeWolff. "Smythe, what are you doing to minimize the risk of property damage—never mind civilian casualties?"

"Ah, I'm glad you've brought that up," said Spencer. "My Spider-Slayer is actually attuned to detect the subtle, bio-electric rhythms and vibrations unique to arachnid physiology. It will not attack an ordinary human being. But a spider—or a Spider-Man—will register on its sensors as a target to be eliminated." Spencer was standing before a podium, upon which rested a computer and several controls. While the assembled crowd watched, Spencer tapped a few keystrokes and brought up another display on the main screen, a sort of radar for bio-rhythms. As the Spider-Slayer's sensor arrays swept the area, three bright spots "pinged" on the radar display—with one of them appearing much brighter than the other two. "Oh, my," said Spencer. "As you can all see, the Spider-Slayer has tracked down three targets. The A.I. will now zero in on the most powerful signal and engage immediately. Observe."

Jonah rubbed his hands together and lit up a cigar. "I can't wait!"

• • •

Peter, Mary Jane, and Gwen all spread out on the rooftop. The robotic scorpion-shaped thing turned the cameras mounted on its "head" to face Gwen. Gwen feinted first to the right and then to the left; the robot's eight huge mechanical legs clanked and clattered underneath it as it shifted position so as to always keep Gwen firmly within its sights.

"Uh, guys?" said Gwen. "I think it likes me."

"Okay, just… stay calm," said Peter. "Those things on the head-section are obviously cameras or sensors, so if we can web those up, that should blind it."

The robot had other ideas, though. Forward-mouthed mini-guns started spewing high-caliber tracer rounds, hundreds per second. Gwen was forced to use all of her concentration dodging, flipping, staying out of the way. "Hey, I've been meaning to ask," shouted Gwen breathlessly, "that tingly feeling, that means something bad's gonna happen, right?"

"I guess that means she has spider-sense," said MJ, leaping into the fray with Peter. The two of them aimed their web-shooters and the robot's head and fired… only to see their webs slide harmlessly off the mech's chromed surface.

"What the…?" Said MJ.

"Maybe it's Teflon-coated," said Pete, half-joking.

"Okay then," said MJ. "Impact webs." She clicked the proper cartridges into place in her web-shooters; Peter did the same.

"Any… day… now," heaved Gwen, who was getting pretty tired of being shot at.

Peter fired a few gobs of impact webbing at the robot's head; Mary Jane shot mostly at its legs and body. The webs exploded into a huge, sticky white carpet, and the thing finally stopped firing its guns. Gwen slumped down to the rooftop to catch her breath. "Thanks," she said, giving her friends three thumbs-ups with her right hands.

And then the robot shrugged the webs off and rushed at the trio.

"Aw, come on!" said MJ. "Doesn't anything stick to it?"

"I'll bet it's designed that way," said Pete, diving out of the way as the robot bull-rushed him. "Even money that we don't stick to it either."

Now the Spider-Slayer aimed its scorpion-like tail at Peter and sprayed—something. A greenish stream of gunk struck the concrete at Peter's feet and burned a hole through it. He leapt back and yelped, "Acid—it's got acid!"

"Oh yeah?" said Gwen, who was back on her feet. "Well I'm gonna neutralize it." With bad chemistry joke accomplished, she ran straight at the robot and balled several fists, thinking to pummel it into submission with bare hands alone. It turned with surprising agility and sprayed something out of its "mouth", coating the floor under Gwen's feet with a potent lubricant. She lost her balance and went skidding past the Slayer, nearly colliding with Peter. Then the Slayer faced MJ and fired several small projectiles; she dodged most of them, but one came close to her, triggering a proximity sensor. It burst into a wire-mesh net that engulfed MJ and pinned her to the floor.

"A net?!" said MJ, annoyed. "Seriously?" She struggled, but the metal mesh only stretched and strained. She couldn't break free.

The Slayer stalked menacingly towards MJ, a wicked-looking blade emerging from its front-section. Clearly, its A.I. was designed to prioritize killing incapacitated targets over eliminating continued threats.

"I've got you, Red!" shouted Peter, who leapt over the Slayer, past its failing tail-appendage, and landed in front of it. He scooped up MJ in his arms and managed to only just yank her away before the blade pierced the concrete rooftop where she'd been pinned.

"Hey, ugly!" said Gwen. "You forgot all about me!" She reached out with six arms and grabbed the robot at the base of its tail—and tried to lift. Now, this thing was huge—and at least a few tons in weight—and Gwen didn't even know yet if she had MJ or Peter's kind of strength. She just pulled as hard as she could, straining her muscles, using every last ounce of physical might that she could muster up… and then something else happened.

Her arms started glowing with a weird, greenish-yellow light. Electricity surged through the robot, shorting out systems, blowing up cameras, causing weapons and other instruments to emerge from within the robot's armored chassis, whirl around for a bit, and then slide harmlessly back into their casings. In short, the Spider-Slayer was going haywire, and Gwen was somehow causing the energy-surge. More than a little surprised, she jumped away, even as the slayer collapsed into a twitching mass of metal and wires that soon shut down completely.

Peter pulled Mary Jane free of the net. Then the two of them walked over to a very astonished Gwen. "Gwen…" said Peter. "What was that?"

Gwen looked down at all six of her hands and said, "I have no friggin' clue."

• • •

"Another one!" Jameson had shouted, while the assembled crowd had been watching the fight from Fisk's office. "And it's some kind of six-armed, mutant freak!"

But in the middle of everything, the transmission from the Spider-Slayer had suddenly and without explanation gone offline. Fisk got up from his desk and stalked over to Spencer. "Smythe, what's happened?"

"I… I don't know," said Spencer, frantically trying several controls. "Everything is dead; I have no connection to the prototype."

Alistair wheeled over to his father's computer and looked at some of the readings. "Communications haven't been disrupted on our end. It must be something they did to the robot."

"Smythe, get it working again," growled Fisk darkly. "I can't have this embarrassment putting a stain on my program!"

"Everyone here is well aware that the Slayer is just a prototype," insisted Smythe. "A first crack—an experiment! The data we've already collected will be invaluable for building a production model. We know what we're up against now!"

Fisk looked over at the assembled officials. Jameson was furiously scribbling notes down onto an old-fashioned notepad. Sam Bullit was looking uncomfortable, almost as embarrassed as Fisk. Jean DeWolff and several others in the crowd, especially those connected with the NYPD, were more amused than anything else, and some of them were already chuckling. He turned back to Smythe and said, "Fine. But if the finished model fails to deliver, you're through. Do you hear me?" Then Fisk went off to address the crowd and hopefully end this debacle with some of his dignity still intact.

Alistair looked up at his father and said, "This is the man we're working for? Father, we can do much better—"

"Hush now," said Spencer. Alistair didn't know what Fisk had promised him, and the old man wanted to keep it that way. There was no sense in getting the boy's hopes up in case this project—like so many others before it—fell through.