PIECES OF ME

Part I

By Tobias Christopher

OsCorp

Several crates were being loaded onto a truck as Osborn walked alongside the head scientist overseeing the project.

“The serum is ready to be shipped,” the man told Osborn as they walked past three vats that were about four feet high; one with green serum, one with red and one with a purple serum that was a combination of both. “We finally managed to get the formula accurate.”

“And the previous attempts were destroyed, I assume?” Osborn asked.

“Well, all but one sample,” the scientist said as he led Osborn to a vault. He opened it and revealed a vial. “We kept it for further analysis. The effects of this particular serum are…quite astounding. It’s all in the report.”

“Ah, yes,” Osborn said as he looked at the vial. “I’m so glad you kept that, because I have plans for it.”

“But the testing–”

“I have the perfect test subject,” Osborn smirked. “In the meantime, make sure the shipment gets to its destination. In 24 hours, I expect this city to be in total chaos. Don’t disappoint me.”

Midtown High School

“Attention, students,” the voice said over the loudspeaker as the students of Midtown High School headed to their classes. “Flu shots will be given to all students who have their signed permission slips starting at noon. Also, for our female students, there will be an educational film in the small gymnasium detailing the changes of puberty. ‘There Will Be Blood’ will be shown during third and fifth period. For lunch today, meatloaf. At least that’s what we’re told.”

“Meatloaf usually tends to imply that there’s actual meat in it,” Flash said as he sat in his office just next to the boy’s locker room.

“I used to think the same thing about hot dogs,” Peter replied.

“Don’t mock my favorite ballpark snack,” Flash warned as he tossed a football at Peter’s head, who grabbed it and tossed it back, careful not to use full force. “So, I heard your Aunt May has a new houseguest.”

“Yeah, the next door neighbor,” Peter told him. Rhett Carson’s home had burned down in a fight between Spider-Man and the Hobgoblin. May had offered to take the young man until he found a new place, and neither Peter nor Ben were happy about it. “He’s sleeping on the couch.”

“You don’t sound too happy about it,” Flash said as he noticed the tone in Peter’s voice.

“There’s something not right about the guy,” Peter replied as he heard the bell ring. “I’ll tell you about it later, though. I have some minds to mold.”

“Don’t cram too much science stuff into their heads, I need them to concentrate on P.E. when you’re done with them,” Flash said. “By the way, Drew and A.J. won’t be in class today. I let them take the day off so Drew could take A.J. to a doctor’s appointment.”

“Is he okay?” Peter asked.

“Yeah, just a routine check-up, he should be fine and back in class tomorrow,” Flash told him.

“Did they really have to draw blood?” asked A.J. as he rubbed his sore arm as he walked out of the hospital with his older brother.

“Do you want to know if you’re healthy or not?” asked Drew as they waited for the cab. “I thought you’d want to be done with hospital visits.”

“I do,” A.J. told him. “I hate hospitals. I’ve spent the last five years going in and out of them, and now with Billy laying in one–”

“Let’s not talk about that,” Drew told him as the cab pulled up. He still wasn’t willing to accept the truth about his brother’s relationship with Billy Connors. “We’ve still got the rest of the day, what do you want to do?”

“Do what you want, but I’ve got a job interview,” A.J. told him, hearing his brother’s tone.

“Really? Where?” asked Drew.

“I’ll tell you if I get it,” A.J. told him as he started walking. “I’ll see you at home.”

Spider-Man was sitting on top of a building after school, staring out into New York, looking for any sign of trouble while he was grading papers.

I still can’t believe that the Lizard escaped while I was fighting Will O’ the Wisp*. The Rhino and Shocker broke into the ESU holding facility where they’ve been working on a cure and broke him out. In the meantime, I’ve been trying to keep an eye on Aunt May. When the Watson house burned down, she took in her next door neighbor Rhett**, but I don’t trust that guy even though I can’t figure out what he’s up to. Maybe since Ben’s living there too, he can make sure that guy doesn’t do anything to hurt Aunt May.

* ASM #24
**ASM Annual #1

Having grown tired of sitting there, Spider-Man put the papers into his backpack and extended his hand, shooting out a line of webbing to go out and look for a crime to stop. As he was passing through the streets, his spider-sense went off, leading him toward an alley where he saw a trash can flying out.

“All right, finally! Some action!” Spider-Man said as he landed outside of the alley and saw a high school girl running out, recognizing her from his school. “What’s going on?”

“It’s my boyfriend, he–he’s in there!” the girl told him. “We were on our way to the movies when we were attacked–”

“Right, I’ll save him before he gets hurt,” Spider-Man said as he rushed in.

“You don’t understand!” the girl shouted after. As Spider-Man ran into the alley, he saw several thugs lying unconscious in the alley, having been brutally beaten up.

“What the–?!” Spider-Man started to say as his spider-sense went off again. He looked up and saw someone crawling up the wall. Following after to get a closer look, he saw that it was another student from Midtown High. “Pull over, pal, and let me see your wall crawling license!”

“Get away from me!” the teenager shouted as he held out his wrist and shot a strand of webbing into Spider-Man’s face, which caught him off guard and caused him to fall back to the ground below. As he got the webbing off, he looked up and saw the student was gone. He climbed up the wall as fast as he could, but by the time he got to the roof the student was nowhere to be found.

OsCorp

A.J. was sitting in a nice office waiting for the interviewer to come in. He wasn’t even sure what he was doing there, he just knew that he’d received a phone call telling him that he was being offered the opportunity of a lifetime and to come in for a meeting. He was hesitant about working for OsCorp, but on the other hand it would be nice to be making his own money and not to have to rely on Drew for handouts.

The door opened and Norman Osborn entered the room, sitting down in the chair.

“Hello, Mr. Michaels.”

“It was really weird,” Peter said over the phone as he was talking to his cloned twin, Ben Reilly, as he was rushing around his apartment to get ready to get Flash to his A.A. meeting. “The kid was crawling up walls and shooting webs. Only he was doing it from his own wrists.”

“That is weird,” Ben said as he was making dinner. “Think another radioactive spider’s involved?”

“Don’t know, but it looks like I’m going to have to track this kid down later tonight,” Peter told him. “Unless you have a free moment in your schedule.”

“I would, but I’m going for a job interview tonight,” Ben replied. “Unless the Defenders call up with a mission, I’m going to be filling out paperwork for the better part of the evening.”

“Well, good luck,” Peter said as he was about ready to leave. “I’ve gotta go. I’ll call you later tonight.”

“Pete, one more thing,” Ben told him as he heard Peter rushing around, knowing his brother’s evening routine like clockwork. “Put on your pants before you leave.”

Peter looked down, realizing he was well dressed from the waist up, but from the waist down he was wearing nothing but boxers. “You know me better than I know myself,” Peter told him.

“Well, duh, I am you,” Ben told him as he hung up.

“Zachary Young, you’d better be doing your homework!” a mother shouted as she was walking up the stairs. “You’d better not be looking at pornography on the internet!”

“Mom, don’t come in!” the young man shouted from behind the door.

“Are you abusing your body with the internet pornography?” the woman asked as she put her hand on the doorknob.

“Mom, don’t!” Zack shouted as the woman opened the door and screamed. Zack was hanging upside down from the ceiling, attached to it by his hands and bare feet.

“You were the one who offered me a job?” asked A.J. as he suddenly got a bad feeling in his stomach.

“An opportunity,” Osborn told him with a smirk. “I have an eye for potential, and you have it. I’d like to offer you an exciting opportunity, Alan.”

“It’s A.J.,” the young man told him. He wanted to distance himself from the father who walked out on him. “What kind of job?”

“Working in the science lab here at Oscorp,” Osborn told him. “You do like science, don’t you, A.J.? I understand you’re one of Peter Parker’s brightest students.”

That’s when it hit A.J. He wasn’t being hired to work for Oscorp, he was being hired to spy on Peter. But how did Norman Osborn know about his connection to Peter? He had never told anyone he knew that Peter was actually Spider-Man.

“I don’t think this job is right for me, I’m just an ordinary high school student,” A.J. told him. “I actually cheat off of the guy sitting next to me. I’m not your guy.”

“Are you sure, A.J.? Because you have certain…qualities this company could use,” Osborn said as he slid pictures across the table, taken from a security camera. They were of A.J. dressed in the black spider suit the night Drew was shot.

“Let me guess, you’re going to blackmail me into working for you?” asked A.J. as he looked at the pictures.

“Think of it as job incentive,” Osborn told him as A.J. pushed the pictures back.

“Go ahead, tell the world I was playing dress up the night my brother almost died,” A.J. told him. “I know all about you, Mr. Osborn. You don’t get what you want, so you resort to scheming and blackmail to get what you want. Why you want me, I don’t know. I just put on a costume to try to help someone I care about.”

“You do know that if you say no today, there will be no further chances within this company,” Osborn told him. “Or with me.”

“Threaten me all you want, Mr. Osborn,” A.J. said as he stood up. “I’ve faced a lot of things in my life. I’ve survived cancer. I’ve survived the Lizard, the Hobgoblin and nearly being trampled at last month’s Big Time Rush concert. I’m not scared of some psycho in a Power Rangers mask.”

A.J. got up and walked out of the office as he brushed against someone.

“Sorry,” A.J. said as the person quickly walked into Osborn’s office without saying a word before A.J. could see who it was. A.J. walked to the elevator, not realizing that a security pass had become stuck on the sleeve of his jacket.

“What the hell was that kid doing here?” Gwyneth asked as she looked at Osborn.

“Just another project,” Osborn told her. “One that just got a lot more interesting.”

Brandon Farmer was playing basketball with his friends in the park and received the ball, ready to slam dunk it. He ran with the ball toward the goal and jumped into the air, dunking the ball as he grabbed the rim with his other hand, which would have won the game.

If he had come down.

Everyone on the court looked up and saw Brandon hanging from the rim with the ball still attached to his other hand. He’d become stuck to both and couldn’t figure out how to let either go.

“A little help?”

He could smell the smoke and feel the heat of the flames closing in. It was all too real as the child looked up from the arms of the woman who was carrying him. The boy was wrapped in a blanket as the woman was running as fast as she could out of the burning building. It was exploding all around them and the child was fearing for his life as the woman carried him out to a truck. As she put him in the passenger seat, she got behind the steering wheel, watching as the building went up in flames. She looked over as the child and smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m going to take good care of you, Drew.”

Drew sat up on the couch in Flash Thompson’s apartment, covered in sweat. He was breathing heavily as he looked around the room. He’d fallen asleep, only intending to take a short nap after returning home. It was the same dream he’d been having since being released from the hospital.

Standing up, Drew headed to the kitchen to get a drink of water. As he was running the water, he heard a knock at the door. Heading over, he opened it and looked around, seeing a bottle of scotch sitting on the doorstep. He had no idea who was leaving alcohol for Flash, but he was going to find out.

As Drew took the bottle to the sink to pour it down the drain, he paused. Drew opened the bottle and poured a drink, downing it as quickly as he could. He’d wondered what was so appealing about alcohol and let his curiosity get the better of him. He’d heard that it made you forget about your problems, and wanted to forget the events of the last few weeks. His near death experience; his girlfriend dumping him; the weird dreams that were plaguing him.

Before he knew it, half the bottle was emptied. Drew quickly emptied the bottle down the drain before he could drink anymore, then quickly ran off to the bathroom, feeling like he was going to be sick.

Peter and Flash were leaving the A.A. meeting as Peter noticed Flash was more silent than usual. “You okay?”

“I think I might have screwed up bad, Pete,” Flash told him as they headed toward the bus stop. “The night Drew got shot, I might have…done something I might regret.”

“What are you talking about?” Peter asked as his spider-sense went off.

“Well, I–,” Flash started to say as he looked behind Peter. “Uh, Pete, isn’t that kid in your class?”

Peter turned around and a teenage girl ripping out a parking meter, swinging it at the young man she was with.

“A fast food joint! Our six month anniversary and you take me to a fast food joint!” the girl shouted as her boyfriend was backed against a wall. “I’ll kill you, you cheap bastard!”

“Not on a school night,” Peter said as he grabbed the meter, trying not to use his strength in front of everyone. The girl swung the meter with Peter attached, slamming him into the wall. The young man started running as the girl started chasing after, but before she could get anywhere, Flash tripped her.

“Pete, are you alright?” Flash asked as the girl got up, angrier than ever as she ran toward Flash, ready to attack. She picked Flash up by the shirt and tossed him out into the street, right in front of an oncoming truck before she ran off.

Pete started to pick himself up as he saw Flash laying in the street, a truck just inches away from him.

To be continued…