(One) Two minutes earlier, Spiderman suddenly appeared in the headquarters of Dr. Octopus who had reformed the Sinister Six with Sandman, Electro and Mysterio, and who also had bullied Morbius the Living Vampire and the Lizard into helping them.

They reacted pretty much as you expect…

Spiderman was now trying to evade Electro's power bolts, Sandman's sand firsts and the metal arms of Dr. Octopus, all at the same time.

"Terrific," he thought.

Guilty of Innocence

(Two) "Wait? Is that Mary Jane and her aunt over there?" he wondered. Indeed, they were. "Why are they here?"

But just then Spider-Man felt himself surrounded by fog. "Oh, great, it's Mysterio. As if I didn't have enough to worry about."

And to make things even worse, one of Dr. Octopus' arms nearly hit him. "Damn, that arm nearly took my head…" but just then Morbius reached into the fog and grabbed him.

A quick kick forced Morbius away. "Damn, these people shouldn't get this close. What's going on?

"Of course, Mysterio's jamming my spider-sense. I either need to get out of this fog or find him and knock out his…"

But just then a sudden shock hit Spiderman. "GAAAH!"

He fell unconscious to the ground. As such he did not see the teenaged form of a Lizard Billy Connors holding what appeared to be a taser-like device.

(Three) "What happened?" asked Mysterio as the smoke cleared.

"I…don't know," Billy gasped weakly. "I sssssaw Spiderman attacking ussss, found thissss devissse, and fired it at him."

"Good job, Billy," said the Lizard who hugged him with paternal pride.

"I didn't even know we had a taser," said Morbius.

"Uh. So what do we now?" asked Electro. "Do we kill him?"

"Absolutely not," replied Sandman sternly.

"Spiderman isss the Lizard'sss friend," added Dr. Connors.

"We're not killing anyone," said Dr. Octopus. "But he's probably interested in the same cloning issues we are, and that goes as well for whoever transported him here." He pointed to a nearby cabinet. "Quentin, there's something on the middle shelf that will contain him."

"But while he is here, we can at least find out who's behind this mask," Electro said. He pulled off Spiderman's mask and found Peter Parker—but with the blonde hairstyle of his clone Ben Reilly.

"Who is this guy? I've never seen him before."

(Four) Meanwhile, Miles Warren was back at his own laboratory, trying to see what was going on in Zuccotti's laboratory. He managed to get a picture of Zuccotti taking some blood samples from the prostrate Ben Reilly Spiderman. He then saw Zuccotti and Kaas put Ben in the sensory deprivation chamber, but then the picture cut out. At the same moment, Warren heard a fuse blow.

"Damn! He's jammed my surveillance." He looked around his laboratory. Behind him Gwen made an appearance, wearing a very short nightgown. "Miles, surely it's time for bed."

"Just a few more minutes."

He looked at another screen. It was the apartment building where Martha Connors had been staying and another tenant had noticed the blood. A policewoman had come to the scene.

"Someone killed her? Why now?" He thought for a minute. "There was something about the whole cloning of her and her son that's a bit off. But I can't remember what it was."

He looked up his files to see what had happened. What he saw shocked him to his very core.

(Five) It was late the next morning, and the common hood Turk was trying not to think about his luck. That someone could be so long in the criminal underworld, and not spend most of his life in jail, and not be killed by the Kingpin in one of his bad moods, was quite improbable. Turk was inclined to think it was an achievement. But today his luck appeared to be running out, as he had been conscripted to help Richard Fisk, the Rose, in the course of his severe illness and had only learned later that Richard was also the source of an extremely contagious and almost certainly lethal disease of his own.

So far, Turk wasn't dead. Instead, he was handing Richard Fisk his brunch while he was watching Zoom. On the main screen he could also see that Fisk's father, the Kingpin, was also watching the same thing, along with his guest Paul Rabin.

"I don't understand it boss. Why are we watching an X-Man look through endless piles of string?"

"It's fairly simple," the Kingpin spoke up, "which means an idiot like you can understand if you listen carefully and don't interrupt. It turns out my son is inhabiting a clone body made by Miles Warren that is about to disintegrate. Not only do we not know how to cure that disintegration, but every great mind in the city is trying to cure the new disease that has arrived from all the clone bodies Warren has made.

"I tried getting Dr. Strange to solve the problem. But he does not know how to reverse the decay, nor resurrect my son once he dies. There is nothing in all the manifest volumes of magic that can save my son.

"But my guest Mr. Rabin has stumbled on a possible out. There is the great Andean civilization of the Incan empire. It does have a remarkable magical legacy. But it didn't actually discover writing—except for the form of record taking known as quipo, a series of knotted strings. Ordinarily there is little way to decipher these strings—except for the X-Man known as Cypher, whom we have hired to look at every museum collection of quipo in the world."

All this time Douglas Ramsey had been looking at the many quipo and was clearly bored out of his mind.

"Well!?" the Kingpin asked harshly.

"It's the same thing I told you earlier, sir," Ramsey replied. "The quipo are basically records. Here's some maize. Here's some potatoes, here's some llamas. Here are some tax records. There's nothing here that isn't just some third-rate bureaucrat's…hold on."

(Six) "What is it?"

"This is different. Wait…it's completely different. These are references to some kind of mystical brotherhood. Not simply a reference to priests, but something far more disturbing. These quipo are clearly more of a warning. Everybody should be very frightened of these people."

Turk spoke up. "How does that help us? Weren't the Incans conquered three centuries ago?"

"More like five," Richard clarified. "But Turk does have a point. How does this help us?"

Just then Paul's eyes lit up as if they were on fire. "Hell's Kitchen! There's something there!"

Shortly afterwards Zuccotti, or more accurately the infamous war criminal Arnim Zola, was looking through a microscope when the laptop near him made a loud beep. He looked at it and saw a message: "CRYPTOGRAPHIC PROGRAM HAS FAILED."

"Damn!" he snapped. Just then his cell phone rang. "Yes?"

"Just thought I would check in," said the voice on the other end. "How is our special project going?"

(Seven) "Perfectly well. Everything is on schedule."

"Your project isn't with you right now?"

"No, it's at a secondary lab. But I assure you the location is quite secure."

"There is another matter we need to speak about Mr. Zola. I believe you recently came into the possession of a computer file that was absconded with by the late clone of the late Mr. Leeds."

"Correct. I'm trying to decrypt to see if there's anything useful that idiot Warren thought up that could help with the virus."

"Ah. The problem is that there is a chance that what is on that file could compromise me. And my superiors. I would very much like it back."

"But the information on that file could be vital to stopping the virus!"

"It appears we have a deadlock."

Zuccotti/Zola paused. "The coding is very sophisticated. As I imagine any transactions involving you and your colleagues would be. Here's my offer. I give you the disc, you break the code and give me any relevant information."

"How very trusting of you, Dr. Zola."

"Not especially. We all need the vaccine from the clone virus. But with my making clone and android bodies, I imagine your associates need it much more quickly than me."

"Quite. I'm texting you a location."

"Got it." Zuccotti/Zola got up, put on his coat, and started filling a suitcase. "Kaas! I have to go out! I'm going to text you some tests to carry out. Keep an eye on the Reilly Spiderman and don't try anything ambitious."

(Eight) Peter Parker awoke, with his hair still dyed like Ben Reilly, and his hands tied behind his back and to his legs as well by what appeared to be slender steel strands.

"Peter! You're awake!" Mary Jane whispered.

"MJ? What are you doing here? Wait, how did you know I'm Peter?"

"Seriously, you think I can't tell the two of you apart?"

Electro, working at a table about fifteen feet away, barked at MJ. "Hey, you're not supposed to chat with the prisoner! Sandman says you can give him something to drink."

Shortly after, Mary Jane was pouring a drink down Peter's throat. "Anyway, I'm glad you're alive. I've spent the last few days trapped with these bozos. Can you do anything about your bonds?"

Peter gulped a little. "No. They're some kind of kinetic contraption. They transfer my energy so the stronger I struggle against them, the tighter they hold me."

"Well, they kidnapped me and Aunt Anna. Apparently, Morbius has a regenerative formula, and they wanted to use her as a guinea pig."

"How did that work out?"

"Actually, pretty well so far, so score one for the bozos." Anna Watson was nearby and thinking of something before she spoke to the two. "The Great Ziegfeld stars William Powell and Luise Rainer right?"

Peter was silent for a moment. "I'll take your word for it."

(Nine) Anna Watson continued. "All right, what's next, what's next? Wait! I remember. The Life of Emile Zola! Then You Can't Take It With you, Gone with the Wind, Rebecca…"

As the afternoon dragged on, and the four members of the Sinister Six worked with Morbius, and the Lizard, Mary Jane whispered to Peter when she had the chance to fill Peter in with what was happening.

"They brought the Lizard's son and he's around here somewhere, but I don't know where Martha Connors is…"

"Dr. Octopus, Electro and Mysterio only have a few days to live…"

"Then Kraven, well actually the clone of Kraven, not Kraven in a clone body, took the regenerative formula and it killed him in seconds…"

"Now where did Sandman and Mysterio wander off to?"

(Ten) Gwen entered Miles Warren's lab and found her husband sitting in a chair. "Miles, you haven't eaten anything today." She approached him more closely and saw that he wasn't moving at all, he wasn't reading anything, and it was not clear what he was doing.

"Darling, are you all…"

But just then Warren suddenly touched Gwen with a metallic object the size of a cell phone but which acted exactly like a cattle prod, stunning her unconsciousness.

"Can't afford to be interrupted," he said as he got up and moved to a terminal, with a strange fire in his eyes.

Meanwhile one of Kingpin's men was looking around something that resembled a YMCA in Hell's Kitchen, except it was clearly much more unpleasant. "Is the guy we're looking for here?" he asked with some impatience.

Paul Rabin seemed to snap out a daze. "No. The person we need is not here."

"Damn it! This is the third place we've been in!" He turned towards the short, fat and moderately disgusting owner. "Have you seen any Peruvians around here in the last week?"

(Eleven) It was approaching dusk, and Eugene Thompson Jr. was walking to his apartment when he heard a voice call out his name. "Flash! Flash Thompson!"

He turned around a saw an Asian woman close to by. "Sha Shan!"

"It's been some time."

"You look wonderful! I mean there was the whole part of you being dead, but apparently that's car for the horse."

"Par for the course," Flash corrected his former girlfriend. "You're still working on your martial arts job?"

Sha Shan nodded. "Are you busy this evening?"

"Well, it is a Saturday, so you'd think so. But actually, I don't have any plans right now." He paused. "We should have a chat sometime. But my apartment in just on the next block."

"I wouldn't mind joining you there."

"Sure, why not?" and he took her by the arm.

(Twelve) The sun had now clearly set, and Peter could hear Morbius, Dr. Octopus and the Lizard arguing, while Electro and Sandman were helping calibrating some instruments at another table.

"What are they complaining about?" he muttered to himself.

"Dr. Octopus is getting angry that Morbius and Connors aren't working as hard as they can. Quite frankly he's worried that their rationality is wearing off," said a familiar voice.

"Zola!" Peter said. "Wait, how are you talking to me?"

"Have you forgotten that you were briefly an absurdly wealthy tech billionaire who produced millions of your spider-tracers? I certainly haven't. I modified one and placed it somewhere on your person."

"So, you've known where I've been all this time for the last two days?"

"Actually, I didn't know about that extra-dimensional prison you were in for much of yesterday, though I recognize the technology."

"It wasn't Warren's?"

"What? No, of course not. But whose it was is for me to know and you to find out. You were curious about Stanley Osborn, and I can tell you he won't be affected by the cellular degeneration process. Of course, there is an excellent chance he will die, along with much or most of this city, along with much or most of humanity if I don't finalize a vaccine in the next 36 hours."

(Thirteen) "How can you, or anyone, finalize a vaccine in the next 36 hours?"

"Let me blunt, Peter. I need a sample of Morbius' regenerative formula. I also need blood samples from Anna Watson from before and after she was injected with it. I'm using the tracer to talk to you and hear what's going on. But my ability to see things is limited. Do you know where the samples are?"

Peter looked around the room. "There's a bunch of test tubes on a table at ten o'clock."

"Can you read the labels on them?"

"Not easily. I think one of them is from Anna Watson, but I can't tell when it was taken."

"Listen carefully Peter. I can't risk the others overhearing me. But sometime in the next few hours I'm going to send an electrical signal that will disrupt Octavius' kinetic chains. You'll know it's happened, because you feel a slight electrical sensation and a clear clicking sound. Once that happens you'll need to get the samples."

And with that Zola shut up. Mary Jane and Aunt Anna were about fifteen feet away, consigned to a corner.

"Mary Jane, there's something odd about these people."

"Well, yeah, there's an artificial vampire, two lizard people and two powerful super-criminals."

"No, no, that's obvious. There's something off about one of them."

Just then the Lizard spoke up. "We have made wonderful progresss. After hoursss of stagnation, I think thisss latessst sssolution isss right what we need. And I could not have done it without my ssson."

"Thanks Pop," said Billy as a sneer showed on his face.

(Fourteen) And with that Billy Connors blasted Dr. Curtis Connors with a great blast of yellow something that propelled him across the room.

"What the hell?" Electro shouted, but just then he, Morbius and Dr. Octopus found themselves trapped in what appeared to be golden chestplates around their torsos.

"What are these things?" Morbius wondered.

"They're mystical!" Dr. Octopus realized. "Try rolling around in metal shavings: iron disrupts magical spells." At the same instant, Peter felt the buzz and heard the click Zola just mentioned.

(Fifteen) Peter leapt to the table with the samples, while at the same instant Billy turned towards the Watsons. "I can't allow you to interfere with my vengeance," and the two women were now similarly enchained.

"Do you have the samples?" Zola spoke to Peter.

"Yeah, I've got them right here." At the same time Dr. Octopus, having correctly realized how to break the 'chestplates' was now halfway through freeing Morbius.

"I can't have you interfere either," said Billy. A blue mystical bolt hit Morbius' heads. A few seconds later all the rationality that had been inside Michael Morbius vanished and his blood lust returned, more vicious than before.

"Wait, since when did a kid have these mystical…oh crap," said Electro as a mad Morbius burst through his mystical "chestplate" and attacked him.

"I need to rescue the Watsons!" Peter said.

"And I need those blood samples!" Zola replied. There was a pause. "I see a small box. Put the samples inside it, close the box, and place it on that far table over there. I'll teleport it away and then take you once you want to leave."

Peter quickly obeyed while Billy lunged at the Lizard and savagely pummeled him.

(Sixteen) As the box with the samples was transported away, Dr. Octopus was grabbing Morbius with three of his metal arms. "Michael! Calm down!" At the same time Mary Jane, realizing that iron shavings were weakening the mystical bonds, was rolling around on the floor. "Spiderman, help my aunt!"

Peter quickly grabbed his mask, put it on, and grabbed some metal objects from a table. He crushed a few of the smaller ones in his hand and rubbed them on Anna Watson's bonds. "Hold on, Mrs. Watson."

Meanwhile, Billy Connors had clearly beaten the Lizard who was bleeding from his nose and mouth, not to mention several other orifices. "You miserable warm-blooded piece of filth! You're pathetic!"

"Billy, I'm sssorry! I know you never forgave me for eating you."

Billy Connors cackled in a most un-lizard like tone. "You over-educated moron! You didn't eat Billy Connors! I did."

(Seventeen) Meanwhile, Mary Jane had gotten up from the floor and had managed to free one hand from the golden mystical bond. "Let me help you with that," Spiderman said as he was able to break the weakened "breastplate."

"My electrical bolts aren't fazing him," Electro said, as he battled ineffectively against a raging Morbius. The no longer good Doctor was still trapped in Dr. Octopus' arms. Quickly, Dr. Octopus used one arm to open the door, and with the rest threw Morbius outside.

"Get out of here!" Spiderman said to the other Watsons, who quickly obeyed. He then turned to see the Lizard, who was holstered in the air and tortured by a veritable tricolour of mystical flames by the strange lizard creature who was clearly not his son. Dr. Connors screamed in agony.

"OK, Billy, that's enough," and Spiderman kicked him from behind.

(Eighteen) Instead of falling to the floor, the Lizard flew out of the room and the laboratory altogether once the mystical spell holding him had been disrupted. "Billy" however, was still very much in the fight and bombarded the others with mystical bolts.

"Great they're confusing my spider-sense," Spiderman thought as the evaded bolts filled the room with smoke. But leaping around he was still able to hit "Billy" again.

Now "Billy" confronted Spiderman, Electro and Dr. Octopus. "It was you!" Dr. Octopus declared. "You're the one who killed Mrs. Connors."

"Mom's dead?" "Billy" gasped. Whether this was a genuine sign of emotion or the shock of a broken cover story, the strange creature seemed to abruptly implode, before popping out of existence.

Now Spiderman confronted the two members of the Sinister Six. "Peter, remember when I said I would teleport you away?" asked Zola

"Yeah?"

"I actually think it would be better if you stayed put." And just then one of Dr. Octopus' arms hit him from behind, rendering him unconscious. "Truly, no good deed goes unpunished," he sneered.

(Nineteen) Inside Flash Thompson's apartment, Flash was on the couch, while Sha Shan was brewing some tea. "Thank you for allowing me to make this," she said.

"Yeah, to be honest, I was never that fond of Vietnamese drinks when were together."

"Don't worry. How about this?" And she tossed him a can of his favorite bear. Flash popped the tab while Sha Shan poured herself a cup of tea. She sat down on a chair across from the couch, while he took a swig of the bear.

"And how are things Flash?"

Flash took another gulp. "Actually, there's a problem. SHIELD, or more accurately the institution that's replaced SHIELD while it's being remade, has given me some bad news. There's something bad coming up in the next couple of days in New York. I mean I shouldn't be telling you this, except it's really bad. And you of all people deserve a heads up."

"Sound serious."

Flash took another gulp. "It is serious. They're already limiting air travel out of the city, and special squads are being sent in undercover. They think in 36 hours from now, I could be summoned for riot control and…" But just then Flash collapsed on the couch, unconscious. Sha Shan stood up, her formerly amiable expression replaced with grim sternness.

(Twenty) In fact, her appearance slowly changed, to reveal Mysterio, while Sandman slowly reformulated himself after pouring under the closed door. "Help me take Thompson to the special storage capsule. Otto just texted us we need him more than ever."

It was even later in Hell's Kitchen and the Kingpin's henchman was entering yet another unpleasant building with Paul Rabin. "Bloody hell. This is the eleventh place we've been searching. And it's the worst place yet!"

To make things worse, the henchman was accosted by a thin man with brown/grey skin, in his early sixties, with ragged clothes, and greying unkempt hair and an ugly incomplete set of teeth. "Heysshh, can you get me a drink, jussst some of the hard stuff."

"Get off me you disgusting drunk!"

"He's not drunk," Rabin said.

"What?" said the henchman.

"It's an illusion. He's actually more sober than most Presbyterians. He's the man we're looking for."

The "drunk's" disguise quickly vanished, revealing himself to have better hair and cleaner clothes. "So, your Jew found me. Well, you can tell Wilson Fisk that if he wants my help, he can start with providing me with a first-class meal and a decent bed."

(Twenty-One) It was just past midnight and Arnim Zola/Zuccotti had returned to his lab. "Kaas! Where the devil are you? Why haven't you responded to my calls?"

Nobody answered. Zola looked around the place and took care not to turn on all the lights. He gingerly made his way around the lab. Then he noticed the isolation tank where Ben Reilly had been confined. It was now clearly smashed. He stepped closer and saw that the tank was both empty and had been smashed in from the outside.

He looked around and saw an open door. As he moved towards it, he noticed a small patch of blood on the floor.

(Twenty-Two) Zola approached the door and spoke to the figure in the next room. "Was that really necessary?" he asked. Given the limited light in the laboratory, it was not quite clear who the tall figure in the shadows was. There was just enough light to see Kaas' corpse on the floor.