It was pitch black when Felicia opened her eyes and for a moment she had no idea where she was or how she'd gotten there. She was laying face-down, her cheek pressed flat against a hard, smooth surface. Her whole body ached, her nose in particular was a throbbing knot of pain, and she was so tired… She was so tired, she was sure if she closed her eyes again, she'd fall into a deep, deep sleep...
In a flash, it all came back to her and suddenly Felicia was pushing herself up, gritting her teeth as her muscles complained loudly.
I'm going to kill that tentacled freak.
She had transformed back to Felicia at some point during her fall, and judging by the way her bones weren't splinters and dust, she guessed it was after she'd landed. She moved slowly, testing each of her limbs and joints in turn just to be sure. Nothing was broken though, not even her nose – tender as it was.
An uneasy feeling twisted her insides. She'd taken hard hits as Black Cat before, but never hard enough to actually knock the magic off of her. It had just never happened before. Although, now that she considered it, she guessed she'd never fallen so far before either.
She sensed, in some inexplicable way, that she hadn't died – intuitively she just knew, she still had eight of her precious lives left.
And she was immensely grateful for that, because wasting one of her lives on a pompous douche-bag like Octavius would almost be too maddening to bear. He'd gotten a cheap shot on her, but it wouldn't happen again.
She needed to get back up to the lab. Spider-Man was there, probably fighting off both Mysterio and Doc Ock at once.
Felicia staggered to her feet, the heels of her boots clacking loudly against against the steel floor – except no, it wasn't the floor. She was on the roof of Octavius's personal elevator, far, far down at the bottom of the tower and there was no way she was getting back up the way she'd come without transforming first.
She closed her eyes and focused her thoughts on the charm around her neck, which rested cold and still against her chest. She took deep breaths, counting silently, waiting for the thumming beat to start in her cat's charm, to feel the power flow out of it, and to see a flash of light from behind her closed eyelids.
Nothing happened.
"Fuck." Felicia swore between her teeth. "Come on, come on."
Still nothing.
She pulled the crest out of her shirt and clasped it in her fist, squeezing hard. She knew better than to try and force it, Wong and America had warned her against it before, but she still pushed herself regardless. Felicia could feel her whole body straining, along with her mind. Her hands shook, a stab of pain lanced through her empty stomach, and a sudden, explosive headache erupted behind her right eye, but she didn't stop.
Please. She thought, or maybe she was speaking aloud. He needs me. He needs me…
It was like trying desperately to remember the details of a lost, very important memory; or trying to stop yourself from throwing up when you knew you were about to be sick; or like trying to keep yourself awake, when you wanted nothing more than to just close your eyes and...
Felicia was going to pass out.
She was certain that she was swaying where she stood – the small, dark space at the bottom of the elevator shaft feeling impossibly cramped all the sudden, its walls pressing closer all around her. She would probably die here and her body would be found much, much later, long after Mysterio had won, and all her friends and Spider-Man were dead as well.
I … I can't… I can't – He… He needs. I need-
A flash of white light enveloped her and when it faded, Black Cat was down on her hands and knees. Sweat dripped from her forehead to fall onto the roof of the elevator. She took a deep, shuddering breath to steady herself – dispelling the darkness that had stealthily collected at the edges of her vision.
"Holy... hell…." Cat breathed after a moment.
She felt much better now, although definitely not a hundred percent. Transforming had never been that hard and already she could feel the power slipping away from her. She had to get moving.
It was a long way back up the elevator shaft, but the panic on her chest, thoughts of Spider-Man, and the ever-growing sense that she could lose her transformation at any second – carried her aloft. She made the climb in less than a minute and hauled herself out of the elevator shaft, to crouch right in front of MJ of all people.
"Oh shit!" MJ screamed staggering away from her. There were a few other students near, but none apparently brave enough to get as close to the elevator as MJ had. "We thought you'd died!"
Black Cat didn't respond, in part because she didn't know what to say to that and also partly because she needed a second to catch her breath. She looked MJ over, relieved beyond words to see that she was unhurt.
The lab, on the other hand, was completely destroyed. Nearly every table and workbench had been overturned, bits of machinery and broken glass littered the floor, and the smoking remains of Mysterio's robot was crumpled in the middle of it all – its chest torn open and its head missing. The students were scattered, many nursing small injuries.
"Where?" Black Cat rasped, staggering to her feet.
MJ pointed silently, not asking for clarification, and Black Cat hurried across the room in the direction she indicated. A large chunk of the class was posted in a loose huddle, forming a ring around something or someone. Cat shouldered her way through, not sure what she'd see, her tired mind conjuring the worst case scenarios.
But In the middle of the ring there was only Doctor Octavius, bound and gagged to a rolling chair with electrical cords, with his ridiculous tentacles knotted in an even more ridiculous bow on the floor behind him. His goggles were missing and without them Cat could see Octavius glaring at her with unfettered loathing. Connors was there too, along with Eddie, both of them watching a computer monitor that had been set up on the floor.
"What happened?" Black Cat asked, startling both of them.
"Y- you're alive!" Connors exclaimed, nearly tripping over his own shoes as he turned around quickly. Eddie had to grab his arm to steady him. "That's wonderful! Thank goodness you're alright. What a disaster this has all been… If I had known what would have come from bringing us here I-"
"What happened?" She repeated, sharper this time.
"Spider-Man stopped them, both of them." Eddie answered. He nodded to the robot and Octavius in turn. "Took that robot thing down and then tied up Octopus man. Then he took off after Harry."
"After Harry? What do you mean?"
"Mysterio… um, another Mysterio snatched him while you and Spider-Man were distracted."
It took a lot out of Cat not to swear again loudly, which wouldn't have been a very heroic thing to do.
Of course, it had been Mysterio again, using the chaos that he'd caused to make his move, and it had worked this time. She and Spider-Man had failed Harry, and Black Cat had no idea what was going to happen next. She wasn't sure if they could even track Mysterio in this god-forsaken tower, if they could find him before he hurt Harry, or if they'd be able to get any of her friends out of here before they suffered any more than they already had.
And she felt so, so tired.
It felt as if any second her transformation would drop and she'd be left as skinny, bruised Felicia Hardy, with every eye in the room still on her, staring, waiting for her to…. do something, anything besides just stand there.
They need me.
"Where?" She asked. "What direction did they go?"
"Well, Spider-Man went up through there." Eddie pointed to an open air vent in the ceiling and Black Cat felt a great swell of pride run through her unexpectedly – she'd taught him well. She'd taken one step forward, preparing to leap up into the hole, when Eddie stopped her. "You're going to want to look at this first though."
He drew her attention to the screen on the floor that he and Connors had been watching. Cat recognized it as one of Octavius's camera monitors. Its brothers and sisters were laying scattered close by in various states of ruin, along with the thoroughly smashed table that had once been home to them all. The sole remaining screen showed a camera looking directly at a set of ornate metal doors, etched and drawn with complex, artistic designs. The doors were in stark contrast to the blank, brutal steel ones she'd seen everywhere else in the tower - and there, trying to pry them open, was Spider-Man.
It took a second longer to recognize him than usual, but Black Cat was sure that was just because he was still wearing the ESU sweatshirt.
"He almost caught up with Mysterio and Harry, but they went through those doors just before he got to them." Eddie explained. He was by Cat's shoulder, watching Spider-Man struggle with the doors along with her. "We watched the whole thing. He's been there working at it for a good bit."
"Where is this?" She demanded.
"It's outside of Norman's personal office, on the very top floor. Er – that is, I mean Norman Osborn, of course." Connors said.
Right. Black Cat had almost forgotten.
Before all hell had broken loose, Harry had mentioned that his dad's office was higher up the tower. Cat's guess earlier had been right it seemed, that office was what Mysterio was after – what he'd probably been after from the very beginning, and now he was there, Spider-Man as well, which meant that would be where she was heading too.
She left without another word.
Taking the air vent out of the lab, Cat figured if she took the stairs high enough, she'd eventually find Norman Osborn's office at the top of the tower – but it ended up being far easier than that. All she had to do was follow the trail of smashed drones that led all the way to one particular hallway on the top floor.
Spider-Man had worked his finger tips into the seam between the fancy doors and was straining himself when Black Cat came up behind him. She moved silently, getting close enough to tap him on the shoulder before he even noticed she was there.
He spun as soon as she touched him, bringing his hands up to strike. He froze when he saw her, but didn't relax.
"Are you real?" He asked.
"Yes." She said.
"Not a hologram or a robot?"
"Nope, neither."
"Prove it."
She pinched him again.
"Ah! Okay," He rubbed gingerly at his chest. She'd forgotten about the burns. "Okay, okay, fine, but Mysterio would probably make a robot do that."
Seeing him, being close to him, hearing the sound of his voice – it was the injection of energy she so desperately needed. Cat almost felt like her old self.
"Oh yeah? Well how about this?" And with a sweep of her arm, she boldly took one of his hands in hers – the one missing its glove, and pressed her lips to his bare knuckles. The kiss lasted only a second, and was a relatively chaste thing, but in that instant, she felt a warm pulse run through her entire body. She could taste his skin, the smallest tinge of blood from his cracked knuckles, and feel the heat radiating from him across her cheek.
She ripped herself away, hoping the exaggerated "Mwah!" she let out would drown out the sound of her beating heart, which was pounding so hard it could probably be heard across the Hudson River.
He slid his hand out of hers and cradled it to his chest, as if the kiss somehow hurt more than the pinch.
"Um… I… well... I guess Mysterio could technically make a robot do that too, but it would be pretty weird... not that I wouldn't put it past him though." Spider-Man flexed the fingers on his hand and let out a small cough. "It's good to see you. I didn't see when Octavius threw you down that elevator shaft, but I heard about it. Are you hurt?"
"M'fine." Was all Black Cat managed.
"Good, good." He turned quickly away from her to look at the door. "This thing's locked, but it doesn't seem all that sturdy. Give me a hand with this?"
"Sure."
They each grabbed a door, hands meeting and just barely brushing in the middle, and then they pulled in opposite directions. The headache that had been steadily brewing exploded again as Black Cat pulled, the exertion summoning a sharp, stabbing pain that made her hiss between her teeth. The doors also seemed to be in pain. They complained loudly, groaning under the pressure as whatever hidden pneumatic system keeping them closed fizzed and popped from somewhere within the walls.
It wasn't the most sophisticated break-in that Black Cat had pulled off, but the time for sophistication was long gone. Cat and Spider-Man each put their backs into it, dragging the doors apart inch by inch until there was a gap big enough to fit her head through.
Blank Cat peeked inside and flinched back, nearly letting out a surprised shout.
A face was staring out at her, with empty eyes and skin white as snow. She thought it was a corpse at first, but then her tired mind quickly realized it was just a marble bust, sat on a stone plinth facing the hall. The small stature was of a bearded man, his brows furrowed and the lines of his face carved into a sorrowful expression.
"Not a fan of Michelangelo?" Spider-Man asked. He wedged his shoulder into the gap and forced the doors open an extra inch – enough for them to slip through sideways.
"Is that who that is?" Black Cat quietly slid into the room after him, her heart still racing. "Looks more like Paul Giamatti..."
They had stepped into a softly-lit room, lined with wooden panels and decorated with more classical art pieces, similar to the bust. Cushy armchairs and a chaise, prime nap material, were arranged in rows, leading up to a vacant reception desk that wouldn't have been out of place in Buckingham Palace. The room was so different, so much more cozy than the rest of the cold, grey tower, that Black Cat had some difficulty connecting the places in her mind.
No one was there – except for Spider-Man, Cat, and Michelangelo, of course.
"Mr. Osborn must think they're kindred spirits." Spider-Man whispered, nodding to the bust. He took her by the wrist then, his eyes fixing on a nearby hallway that curved out of sight. "This way… I hear them."
Black Cat could hear them too. Mysterio's robotic timber was immediately recognizable, as was Harry's muffled voice. Together, she and Spider-Man crept down the hall, following the sloping path until it opened to a small foyer, which ended – as all things did apparently – with a locked door.
Mysterio was towering above Harry, who was crouched with his face eye-level to a small console that was fixed to the wall. Before them, a final door was blocking their path. Black Cat figured it was all that separated them from Norman Osborn's personal office.
"I- I can't." Harry was gasping, his hands raised in pleading. "I don't... i don't know how."
"You're telling me not even you know the code to his office?" Mysterio asked.
"Yes – Yes! I don't. I can't get in!"
"Try the badge again." Mysterio ordered and Harry did, pressing his key card against the electronic door lock with shaking fingers. The console glowed red and the door refused to budge.
Mysterio let out a digitized, shuddering sigh.
"A pity. I was hoping to avoid this." With a snap of his fingers, Mysterio seemed to summon a drone out of thin air. It peeled off from the shadows in the ceiling and descended, stopping to float near shoulder-height. A long silver barrel extended from the drone's center, pointing straight down at Harry's head.
"Beck, wait!" Spider-Man shouted, lunging from the hall with his hands raised.
Mysterio turned from the door to face them. If he was surprised to see them, nothing about him betrayed it. His posture remained tense and the drone threatening Harry didn't so much as waver where it floated. Harry, for his part, stared at Spider-Man and Cat with wide, damp eyes, his mouth slack, looking somehow both incredibly relieved at the sight of them and mortally terrified.
"Spider-Man," Mysterio said, his voice level. "Nice shirt."
"Thanks, a good friend gave it to me. The same friend who I really wish you weren't pointing a gun at right now."
"It's a semi-autonomous rotorcraft, one of the most advanced drones ever devised – not a gun." Mysterio explained. "Also it's a flamethrower."
As if to illustrate this, a small flame flickered at the end of the barrel, close enough to blacken some of the curly hair on Harry's head.
"How could I forget." Spider-Man said dryly.
"How indeed. I could refresh your memory, if you'd like?" The fire over Harry's head intensified and he shrank away from it with a shout, the flickering flames nearly licking his ears.
Spider-Man took two massive steps forward, moving like a blur to close the distance, but stopped as the drone shifted even closer to Harry menacingly. Mysterio wagged their finger, tittering. "Not so fast, hero. Not unless you want his death on your hands."
"You don't want to do this, Beck." Black Cat heard the words leave her own mouth before she had the chance to even consider them. Her head was killing her, but she knew she had to do something. Spider-Man's hands were shaking. They were seconds away from an inevitable fight, and Harry was directly in harm's way. "If you hurt him, then it's all over for you."
"Hah! You're talking as if we haven't passed the point of no return already." Mysterio said with a high, cold laugh.
"Well... no one's died yet." Cat pointed out. "And- and you've had plenty of opportunity. You don't want that blood on your hands, I know you don't."
"Be that as it may... I've yet to rule out that possibility." Mysterio's hand came down on Harry's shoulder, gripping hard. Black Cat paid special attention to the way Harry winced painfully – this Mysterio was real. Probably. "We've traveled this far… and as entertaining as it's been watching you two frolic to and fro, I'm afraid we've reached the end of the line – the grand finale so to speak. I will kill to get through this door."
"What's in there that's so special." Spider-Man asked.
"Not 'what' – who."
No one had to ask.
"I- I'm telling you – I've told you!" Harry tried to twist in Mysterio's grasp, but couldn't break loose. "He's not here!"
No sooner had that last word left Harry's mouth than the door at his back slid open silently. Golden light spilled into the small hallway, assaulting Black Cat's sensitive eyes. She resisted the urge to cover her face though, instead forcing herself to keep her eyes on Mysterio and Harry. They'd both turned partially to stare into the glowing doorway.
Spider-Man moved first, surging forward as Black Cat's eyes finished adjusting to the light. Mysterio's head turned at the sound of his boots on the polished floor, and the drone swiveled too, spouting a jet of fire.
A wall of flame, brighter than the light from beyond the door, stopped Spider-Man in his tracks yet again.
"Careful!" Black Cat snapped, the word escaping her teeth in a hiss, barely audible over the whooshing flames.
"Let him go!" Spider-Man shouted after Mysterio, who was hauling Harry off his knees.
"Come." Mysterio said in response. He spoke to them over his shoulder as he dragged Harry forward. "You're going to want to see what happens next."
The moment Mysterio and Harry had crossed the threshold, the wall of fire fell and the drone spun on its axis to follow after them. Spider-Man gave chase, with Black Cat fast on his heels. They would have caught them quickly, but the sight of the interior of Norman Osborn's office, made them slow.
The warm, wooden theme of the reception area was continued in here, but with an added plush cream carpet, numerous oil paintings on canvases, and a magnificent desk that seemed to be carved from stone. It was all overshadowed though by the incredibly large and brilliantly bright ball of light that was hung suspended in the very center of the room. It was what had nearly blinded her before, but now, Cat had a hard time taking her eyes off of it. She was almost entranced by the magical sphere. She could see it full of swirling, fiery hues, which seemed to be flowing, ever changing across the ball's surface like molten gold. It was as if someone had plucked a star out of the night sky and hung it right in front of them.
And there, standing behind his desk, was the person who could probably do just that.
One of Norman Osborn's long fingers was pressed against a small button on the top of his desk. When he released it, there was a small click and the door behind them all slid shut.
He was a tall man, dressed in a dark suit, with a shirt so white and bright, Black Cat felt the bizarre urge to divert her eyes again. Instead, she watched – along with Spider-Man and the rest – as Osborn strode quietly around his desk to join them beneath the star, his leather oxfords sinking into the rich carpet. He regarded them all without a word, taking them all in as if they were a mildly interesting roadside attraction he'd just happened to bump into.
A shiver ran up Cat's spin as his eyes passed over her, before coming to an eventual stop at Mysterio.
"Who are you?" Osborn asked. He apparently had nothing to say to Spider-Man, Black Cat or even his own bruised, shivering son. Black Cat wasn't even sure if he'd looked at Harry.
Mysterio didn't respond to Osborn's question right away. A deep, rattling sound was coming from within his weird ball of a head, like he was breathing hard. He pulled Harry roughly to the side by the collar, keeping a distance from everyone else, and making it so he and Harry were one point of an odd triangle of unlikely people.
One of his gauntleted fingers was pressed up beneath Harry's jaw, right against his jugular vein, and his drone circled overhead, its small propellers the only sound for a long moment.
"Don''t you recognize me?" Mysterio rattled, his shoulders rising and falling with each breath. Pinned against the super-villain's chest, Harry looked ready for tears, his mouth was opening and closing without sound.
"Of course I recognize the costume. Mysterio." Osborn said, somehow managing to pack a wealth of subtext behind the name. "But I don't know who you are. You are, of course, not Ludwig Beck."
A sharp sound came from Mysterio as if he'd sucked in a breath.
"You say his name so casually… like you didn't destroy him."
Norman Osborn blinked.
"Destroy him? Is that what you think happened? No, if anything, I made him." Osborn said and Mysterio stiffened like a board, ceasing to breathe at all. "That is, until he decided to throw it all away. It was all very unfortunate, but the past is gone, and this is now. You went through a lot of effort to get here, ruined many pieces of my property, so grant me this one question – who are you?"
There was a long silence, then Mysterio slowly lifted his free hand and fumbled with something at his neck. There was a sound like escaping gas and then the pearly shell that Mysterio wore over his head lifted and fell to roll across the floor.
Out of the corner of her eye, Black Cat could see Spider-Man take that opportunity to strike, surging forward once more. Black Cat couldn't move though. A lead weight had dropped into her stomach.
Mysterio had long, dark hair that was tied up with a mass of bobby pins. She had a young, thin face, and heavy dark brows, and even with her face flushed red and her eyes glossy and filled to the brim with hate – Black Cat still recognized her immediately.
As fast as Spider-Man was, Mysterio still saw him coming. The young woman twisted, pulling Harry tighter to her chest and pressing her gauntleted finger into his neck. Harry let out a scream and Norman Osborn raised his hand, uttering a single word:
"Wait."
Spider-Man came to a screeching halt a few yards away, but Mysterio still stumbled back regardless, nearly tripping over her long cape as she pulled Harry along with her.
"Just wait." Osborn continued. He took his eyes off Mysterio to give Spider-Man a hard glare. "I see common decency eludes even you, Spider-Man. Please, let the young Miss Beck speak before you go and make a mess of things again."
Spider-Man glanced between Osborn and Mysterio two times in quick succession. Mysterio loosed her grip on Harry ever so slightly and when she pulled her finger away, there was a round burn on Harry's neck.
"I hate to be the guy who points out the obvious," Spider-Man said. "But your son is literally being held at gun- uh, finger point right now by a terrorist and you're worried I'm going to make a mess?"
"Can't you see that Miss Beck has some things to get off her chest?"
Indeed, Mysterio did look like she had more than a few things to say. Free from the confines of her helmet, she was sucking in great gasps of air, staring with wide eyes directly at Norman Osborn.
While she was much older (and certainly dressed differently) than the girl Black Cat had once known, there was no mistaking her. The two of them had spent many an evening shunted off into the spare bedroom while their fathers and their thieving crew schemed on the other side of the door. Black Cat could remember them sitting on the hard linoleum floor, not looking at each other, not playing together like their parents had asked. The other girl was sullen and rude and wanted nothing to do with Felicia Hardy.
"My name is Quincy Beck." Mysterio said.
"Let me guess," Spider-Man tapped his chin in mock thought, then jabbed a thumb at Norman Osborn. "He killed your father and he should prepare to die?"
"I didn't kill your father, Miss Beck." Osborn said simply.
This was apparently the wrong thing to say. Quincy Beck's eyes flashed and at the same time the tip of her finger sparked and ignited. Harry yelled again and tried to escape, but Beck held him firm, holding the fire just far enough away to barely avoid burning him again.
"YOU DID!" Beck screamed. "You killed him! And you think you've gotten away with it but you haven't! You thought you could just hide up here, taking the credit for everything he built. NO! I've found you, and now you're going to pay."
The drone overhead made one final orbit around the glowing star before descending. It floated behind Beck's head, its barrel retracting into its shell, replaced quickly with a small, cone-shaped thing. Black Cat dimly recognized, among all the other revelations, that the drone was now pointing a telescoping camera lens at Norman Osborn.
"You're going to tell them! You're going to tell everyone what you did!" Beck ordered. "Tell the whole-fucking-world that you took my father's technology and used it to build your company and this awful building – that you're still using his tech! You and that bastard Octavius." She snarled. "Admit it! Admit that you had my father killed, right now, or… or I will kill your son!"
Spider-Man took a step forward, just one, before he was stopped yet again. This time, all it took was Osborn silently raising one of his hands. It was such an inappropriate, benign, and oddly effective gesture, that Cat (and even Beck) seemed thrown by it.
Osborn lowered his hand slowly and clasped it in his other in front of him, relaxed.
"Is that why you've been trying to find me? Why you attacked the ceremony at Hammond Institute, hijacked my security system, went on a warpath through the tower, and nearly killed dozens of young students?" He asked calmly. "All so you can get me to confess?"
"For justice!" Beck spat. "You'll pay for your crimes against humanity."
"Otherwise, if I don't, you will kill Harry?" Osborn promoted. "Just to be clear."
"YES!" Beck shouted, inching her flaming fingertip closer to Harry. Her mounting frustration was obvious. "Do it now, or else!"
Osborn frowned and tiled his head half a degree, as if considering. After a couple of seconds of thinking, he seemed to come to a decision.
"No."
What felt like an hour of total silence followed that. Beck's drone bobbed in the air, filming as Osborn nonchalantly brushed a stray piece of lint of his sleeve and then resumed his relaxed, clasped hands stance, as if he wasn't standing face to face with his son's potential murderer.
"No?" Someone said. Black Cat wasn't sure who (she felt like she'd been hit in the head by Doctor Octavius again) but it was probably Beck or Spider-Man. It may have even been Cat herself.
But a sick, twisting feeling in her gut made her suspect it was Harry.
"I'm afraid your threats fall a little flat, Miss Beck." Osborn said plainly. He gestured casually to his desk, where his wide computer monitor cast a bluish glow on his empty chair. "I watched your progress through my tower today. I saw all the smoke and mirrors and trickery you employed to capture my son – all so you could kill him in the end? Nonsensical. And admittedly, I don't think you have the spine for it."
"The spine?" Beck questioned incredulously. She let out a familiar high, humorless laugh. "Let's see how you feel after I take off half of his face, hmm?"
The flame on Beck's finger bloomed bright, Spider-Man and Harry shouted, but before anyone could move, Osborn had raised his hand again – once more exercising his incredible, inexplicable power to bring everything in the room to a stop. Even the air seemed still.
"I'm sorry, Miss Beck," Osborn began. He kept repeating her name, Cat noticed. "But again, your threats just aren't having the effect you would think. The truth of the matter is that you have nothing of any true value to threaten me with."
Everyone stared at Osborn and he met their gazes in turn, looking between Mysterio, Spider-Man, Cat evenly. His face betrayed nothing and his shoulders remained relaxed as he spread his empty palms, inviting them all to listen as he lectured.
"What I should say, is that a few burns here or there won't make much of a difference." He said. "The boy you're holding was already born half-dead. He's never fully developed, physically, mentally, or any other way. The disease that's eating away at his muscles won't will continue until it has weakened the tissue of his internal organs and stopped his heart. He'll die like his mother… slowly, inevitably."
For the first time, Black Cat noticed a crack in his face, a slight twinge that turned his mouth down, but it was gone in an instant; a trick of the light maybe.
"So, as you can see," Osborn continued calmly. "Why should I worry when you threaten him, Beck? His days are already numbered. He's of little value, in the grand scheme of things. A depreciating asset. One might even say you'd be granting him a small mercy by-"
"Father..." Harry had stopped struggling, and as such, his voice had no fight either. "Y- you…"
His words seem to fail him and he simply hung in Mysterio's grasp, silent tears on his face. Norman Osborn did not meet his eyes.
Black Cat was half a mind to turn her claws on the man and cut him from chin to navel before turning and finally saving Harry from all of this – but Beck beat her to it.
"You're a monster." She said and then she took her finger away from Harry's neck.
That was when Spider-Man finally struck. He lunged forward in a flash and peeled Harry from Beck's grasp, tugging him out of the line of fire to the the floor, carefully rolling and covering him with his own body.
Beck staggered a step, but her hand stayed steady. She pointed her flaming fingertip directly at Osborn's heart, and Black Cat, as addled by everything as she was, saw with her keen eyes what nobody else did – Norman Osborn snapping his fingers and a white box in the high corner of the room that spun and emitted a flash of light, firing off a narrow beam that struck like lightening. It burned a hole through Beck's chest, punching clean through the green breastplate as easily as it did skin and bone.
The beam missed Spider-Man's shoulder by inches and drew a smoking hole in the carpet.
Quincy Beck teetered for a breath and then, slowly, dreamily, she fell backwards, her armor clanging like discarded pots and pans as she sprawled on the floor. Black Cat knew immediately that she was dead.
The drone that had been filming drifted lazily to the side, its master gone, and crashed into Osborn's desk, sweeping his monitor, a stack of papers, and a framed photograph of its surface. Before any of those things even had a chance to hit the ground though, Osborn was rushing forward. He grabbed Spider-Man by the back of his borrowed sweatshirt and pulled.
"Get off." He commanded. "Off, now!"
And when Spider-Man moved, Osborn held Harry at arm's length and brushed the tears from his face with slow swipes from his thumbs.
"Are you hurt?"
Harry didn't answer, not even with a shake of the head.
"Harry-"
"Is it true?" Harry asked. His tears flowing faster than his father could clean them. "It is… isn't it?"
Norman Osborn stared into Harry's eyes, but only for a second. He looked away, to Spider-Man and Black Cat, who were standing together close by. Gripping his son by the back of his neck, Osborn pulled him forward until Harry's forehead rested against his collar.
"We'll talk later." Osborn said, speaking into his curly hair.
Black Cat knew that she should look away, but she couldn't. Her thoughts were still five minutes behind what was happening, back in the past when she and Spider-Man had cornered Mysterio, before they'd met Norman Osborn, when everything was simpler and made sense and there wasn't a dead super-villain lying so close by.
Spider-Man's hand gripped hers tightly, anchoring her to the present. He pulled her away from the father and son and across the smoldering carpet to where the daughter lay.
"Cat." He said, taking her other hand too and guiding her to Beck's side. "Please."
Black Cat swallowed hard. She knew what he wanted, but she didn't know if she could do it – wasn't even sure it was a good idea. The first time it had been an accident, a glorious, beautiful accident, but an accident all the same. Theoretically, she know that she should be able to, it was her power after all, but how was the question.
She knelt by Beck's side. The other girl's eyes were closed, her mouth slightly agape. There was no blood. She could have been sleeping.
Up close, there was no denying it, this was the same young girl Cat had once known.
Had her father really been killed by Norman Osborn? Was it true that everything in Oscorp Tower, all the fancy technology, really belonged to Ludwig Beck? And if so, was Quincy right to do all that she'd done, to try and get her own version of justice?
Cat didn't know. It hurt her head presently to think about it. Nevertheless, looking down at Quincy Beck, she felt deep in her chest that this wasn't justice.
"I… I'll try." Black Cat said.
Taking a deep breath, Cat rested her hands on Beck's chest. Her brain throbbed painfully within the confines of her skull as she focused her mind and turned all her thoughts to once again slicing off another piece of her soul. There was no pain when she felt it break free, but there was… something, a kind of empty feeling maybe…
Loss. Black Cat thought.
She pressed the piece into the dead girl.
Seven left now.
When Quincy Beck opened her eyes, Spider-Man was ready for her. He removed her gauntlets, then tore off strips from her cloak to bind her hands behind her back. She blinked owlishly at the pair of them, but didn't resist as Spider-Man propped her gently against Osborn's desk.
"You'll want to take it easy for a few days. There'll be some lightheadedness, but that will go away soon." He said. "The existential horror of having visited the great oblivion and then come back might stick around though."
He shot Black Cat a thumbs up, but she didn't reciprocate. She wasn't quite in the mood to deal with his attempts to ease the tension in the room. Her vision was swimming worse than ever. She was seconds from collapsing with exhaustion.
"H- how?" Beck asked.
"I'm not... sure you'd believe us… if we told you." Cat muttered. She stumbled towards the door, glancing to Spider-Man as she went. "I – I have to…"
"Go." He said. "Get somewhere safe. Meet me at the usual place tonight?"
She nodded, feeling too weak to speak, and hurried away. She past by the Osborn family as she went. They were still huddled together on the floor, Harry's face hidden in his arms as Norman cradled his son to his chest.
Norman Osborn was watching Black Cat though, he'd been watching everything, and there was a new expression on his face that she hadn't seen up to that point – she wasn't sure if she'd ever seen that expression before on anyone.
It was a curious, extreme hunger.
Osborn's gaze was so intense, Black Cat felt as if he could see right though her and she wondered for moment if he could read minds like America Chavez and Wong could. Regardless, his stare sent shivers racing up and down her back and she could feel his powerful, silent gaze on her until she left the office, and turned the corner out of sight.
