Hey, kids, your old pal Peter Parker here! Don’t have much time to talk because I was just thrown out of the window of Norman Osborn’s penthouse. Ol’ Normie’s been a bad boy lately, what with poisoning virtually every student at Midtown High, turning them into mini Green Goblins. Somehow he managed to merge my Spidey DNA with his goblin serum, and now the city’s full of super powered teenagers with no control.

And to make matters worse, I have until dawn to cure them before they all start dropping like flies when the serum causes their hearts to stop. I just hope that Ben’s close to a cure . . .

PARTS OF ME

Part IV

By Tobias Christopher

“Where is Michaels with my pictures!” Jonah Jameson shouted as he watched the news. “The biggest story of the year and we’re missing out!”

“He’s on his way now,” Robbie told him. “He says he has tons of pictures from around the city, he’s just trying to track down his brother first. Thinks his brother’s caught up in this nightmare somewhere.”

“I’ll put in a call with the NYPD, I can pull some strings and have them searching for what’s-his-name-”

“A.J.”

Jameson just stared up at Robbie upon hearing the name of Drew’s brother. “Is that it? Just two letters? Not much of a name,” Jameson replied before realizing he’d gotten distracted. “Just get Michaels in here with those pictures!”

“Dammit, A.J., pick up!” Drew shouted at his cell phone as he was riding the subway to get to the Bugle. “Don’t do this to me tonight, little brother.”

“Got it!” Ben shouted as he finally made his breakthrough. He looked at the red test tube in his hand. “This should cure all the students.”

“That’s good to hear,” Spider-Man said as he clung to the wall over Ben. “Are you sure it’s going to work?”

“There’s no way to test it out beforehand, unfortunately, but I did the math three times just to be sure,” Ben replied as Spider-Man landed beside him and looked at the tube. “Is there enough to cure all the students?”

“With enough left over in case something else comes up,” Ben replied as he pulled his mask back on.

“Good, now let’s get a move on, the clock’s ticking, and we’ve only got a few hours,” Spider-Man told him. “We only have until dawn to fix this mess.”

“With just the two of us? Shouldn’t we call the Avengers or someone?” Scarlet Spider asked as they headed for the door.

“I don’t have the Avengers home number,” Spider-Man told him. “Besides, the last time we got together, there was some . . . ugliness involving a clogged toilet and a whole wing of the mansion being flooded. Totally not my fault, it involved a Skrull. What about the Defenders?”

“Doc Strange took the guys to an alternate plane of existence that apparently serves really great seafood,” Scarlet Spider replied. “I would have gone, but you know what seafood does to us.”

“Then let’s split up and cover more ground,” Spider-Man told him as he extended a line of webbing. “We’ll meet back up here in two hours. Good luck, bro.”

Gwyneth continued holding A.J.’s head in the vat of chemicals, waiting until he stopped moving before she would let him go. When he finally stopped squirming, she released him and let the young man’s body fall to the ground.

“Good riddance,” Gwyneth told him. “I stopped your suffering before the cancer could finish you. You should be thanking me. Well, if you weren’t already dead.”

As Gwyneth left the lab, she didn’t see A.J. twitching his fingers slightly as he lay on the ground.

Flash opened his eyes as his cell phone started ringing. He was lying in an alley and his whole body was aching as he looked at his cell phone.

“Hello?”

“Flash, its Pete. Spider-Man really needs your help. Have you found A.J.?”

“No, something happened, I–”

“Get your butt to the ESU lab, you’ll find a note and instructions, we need as much help as we can to get these students under control. We don’t have much time, so you have to hurry.”

Peter hung up as Flash rubbed the back of his head in pain. “What the hell happened to me?”

“Flash is going to help,” Spider-Man told Scarlet Spider over the phone. “Three of us should hopefully be able to do this. If I can get hold of A.J., we could have him–”

“You’re willing to bring in the kid?” asked Scarlet Spider as he was swinging through the city.

“You’re the one who’s been working with him,” Spider-Man said. “If you think he’s not ready–”

“The kid’s more than ready,” Scarlet Spider replied. “I just . . . I really like him, Pete. I’m starting to think of him as a little brother. If something happened to him, I don’t think I could ever forgive myself.”

“Right now we don’t have much choice,” Spider-Man replied. “Besides, he’s still not answering his phone.”

“And just exactly how did he get past security?” asked Osborn as he rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers.

“Somehow he managed to steal my security pass,” Gwyneth told him as she stood in his office. “But don’t worry, he won’t cause any problems. You might want to send someone to dispose of the body.”

“Killing your own step-son? That is cold,” Osborn smiled at her as picked up his phone. “You’re definitely a far cry from the person that . . . Yes, I need a cleanup in Lab 83-B. Yes, that lab. I need . . . something removed. You’ll know it when you see it.”

“You do realize that Spider-Man’s going to do everything in his power to save his students?” asked Gwyneth as she took a seat.

“He wouldn’t be Spider-Man if he didn’t,” Osborn told her with a smirk. “I know exactly how this entire scenario is going to play out, down to the last detail. I know Spider-Man’s going to save his students. I’m counting on it. While seeing him lose all of the students would bring him a great deal of pain, it’s what is going to come after he saves them that’s going to be the real blow.”

The phone rang as Osborn picked it up and listened. “What do you mean there was nothing there? There should have been a body there and–” Osborn looked at Gwyneth as he hung up. “We might have a problem after all.”

“Thanks to Drew, we have a list of every student who had the flu shot,” Spider-Man said as he tracked down the next students. “We’ll check them off with each other as we go. Hopefully we’ll get them all before it’s too late for them.”

Spider-Man spotted two students who were swinging through the streets. Passing by them, he shot them with several balls of impact webbing, pinning them to the wall of a building. Before they could struggle and break out, he pulled out two syringes and injected them with the cure. “How are things going on your end?”

“Just got three more,” Scarlet Spider told him as he left three students pinned down after injecting them. “Texting the coordinates to have them picked up and taken to the local hospital to make sure our cure takes.”

“Flash, how’s it going with you?” Spider-Man asked as he left the students webbed down on the street for them to be picked up.

“I just took down one more,” Flash told them, having wrestled one of the students to the ground, putting the needle into his arm. “They’re tough, but I’ve got a handle on it. Is Peter doing alright with his part?”

“Yeah, Peter’s doing great,” Spider-Man told him. “Keep up the good work, guys, we’re doing great. We’ll meet up back at ESU in a half hour to reload and coordinate to get the rest of the kids.”

Rhett was heading home, ready to call it a night when he received a text from Osborn.

There’s a loose end that I need you to tie up.

“That training with Parker’s really starting to pay off . . .” Jameson said as he looked at the pictures Drew had taken. “They’re not quite to his level, but they’re good. Robbie, run these for the morning edition!”

“If you’ll excuse me, I have to see if I can track down my brother,” Drew said as he stood up. “I haven’t heard from him in hours. He won’t even return my calls.”

“He has a cell phone?” Jameson asked. “Just use the GPS to track him down.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Drew replied. “Thanks, Mr. J.”

“Kid’s more like Parker than he knows,” Jameson said. “If Peter wasn’t just a few years older, I’d almost swear that Parker was his father.”

Spider-Man, Scarlet Spider, and Flash met back up at the ESU lab at 4 a.m. All three were worn out and at their breaking point as they stumbled into the lab.

“I’d estimate that we’re at about 75%,” Spider-Man said as he looked at his cell phone’s checklist. “The kids must be wearing down, that might be why they’re getting so easy to take down and cure. Dawn is in three hours, I think we’re going to make it.”

“Where’s Pete?” asked Flash as Scarlet Spider noticed he was sweating heavily.

“He’s already reloaded and gone,” Spider-Man said as he noticed the same thing. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I just–I just don’t have the super stamina like you guys do,” Flash said as he tried to laugh it off before nearly passing out.

“I think something else is wrong,” Spider-Man said as he caught Flash before he fell. “Maybe you should sit out the rest of this fight. We can finish this.”

“No!” Flash told him as he tried to stand up. “I can–”

Flash’s eyes rolled back as he passed out. Spider-Man gently put him on the floor as he looked at his cloned brother. “Flash is a war vet, he doesn’t just pass out like this.”

“We’ll just have to figure it out after we get the job done,” Scarlet Spider told him. “We’ve still got a lot of kids out there that need this shot.”

“Hang tight, buddy, we’ll be back,” Spider-Man promised his friend as they headed out.

Drew followed the GPS signal towards the OsCorp building. “Why is A.J. here?”

As he entered the lobby, he found the security guard was nowhere around, having gone to the restroom minutes earlier. Drew just walked through the door, hoping to find his little brother without too much trouble.

Tommy was swinging through the city, looking for A.J. as well. Thanks to the goblin serum, his mind was too filled with anger to focus on anything else but the person who’d left him in the park. As he was swinging through, he was blindsided by Spider-Man, knocking him onto the roof of a building.

“Sorry, kid, don’t have time for my usual quips,” Spider-Man said as he fired off some webbing at Tommy, who returned fire. Spider-Man jumped out of the way as Tommy angrily rushed at him. “Okay, maybe just one,” Spider-Man said as Tommy rushed at him, Spidey grabbed him and flipped him to the ground. “Don’t flip out, kid, I’ll do it for you.”

“I’ll kill you!” Tommy shouted as Spider-Man held him to the ground.

“It wouldn’t be a normal night if someone didn’t want to kill me,” Spider-Man said as he injected Tommy with the cure. “There, that should do it. Rest tight, kid.”

Spider-Man picked Tommy up and swung him down to street level as he texted Scarlet Spider. “One more down.”

Scarlet Spider looked at his phone and smiled under his mask and texted back. “Looks like Osborn’s plan is going to fail.”

“Yeah, and I don’t like it,” Spider-Man replied back. “This just feels . . . too easy. It’s almost as if we’re playing right into his hands. There’s something bigger here, I know it.”

“Well, the most important thing is that the kids are safe,” Scarlet Spider reminded him.

“You’re right, there’s just . . . something else that I’m feeling that we’re not seeing here,” Spider-Man told him as his phone started ringing. “We’ll meet back up at ESU and figure this out. Got a call, I’ll see you soon. Hello?”

“Mr. Parker, it’s Drew,” Drew said as he was leaving the OsCorp building. “I think A.J.’s in trouble. I followed the GPS tracker in his cell phone to OsCorp, but all I found was his phone and a trail of… I don’t know what it was. It was red, but it wasn’t blood.”

“Terrific,” Spider-Man said with a sigh. “You just get back to Flash’s place, we’ll find A.J. I want you to stay put once you get there, got it? I’ll call you soon.”

“Fat chance of that” Drew said as he hung up. “My baby brother’s in trouble, and I’m not resting until he’s home.”

Rhett couldn’t believe he had to go back out and hunt down some punk kid. He’d put his Hobgoblin costume back on as his glider flew over the street, trying to find A.J. Michaels before Spider-Man did. He only had the security camera picture to go by, but he finally spotted the young man stumbling along the street.

“Got you,” Hobgoblin said as he prepared a pumpkin bomb. “This shouldn’t take too long.”

He flew his glider down, ready to strike, unaware that this situation had happened before weeks earlier*.

(Amazing Spider-Man #17-#18 – TC)

Spider-Man and Scarlet Spider returned to the ESU lab, ready to regroup and finish the job. As they walked in, Spider-Man looked at the spot they had left Flash in.

“Maybe he started feeling better,” Spider-Man said as he looked around. “Flash, are you here?”

“I think something’s wrong here,” Scarlet Spider said as he pointed to a pile of shredded clothing. Just as the twin spiders looked down, both of their spider senses started sounding as they felt something in the shadows behind them.

“Maybe it’s just a giant rat,” Spider-Man said as an eight foot tall spider monster crawled out of the shadows, wearing the remnants of the outfit that Flash had been wearing earlier. “No!”

Somewhere, Norman Osborn was laughing to himself. Even if Peter Parker saved his students, he would still lose everyone close to him, starting with his best friend.

To be continued…