A goblin is a proud bird. It won't fly until you kick it.
Grom Hellscream, Blademaster. (in Russian version)
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I returned to the institute on time, though I had stopped at a couple of other places along the way. Curt had not arrived yet, and the laboratory was entirely at my disposal. The previous day had been wonderful. Its positive charge would sustain me for a long time. Now it was time to thank Connors.
I placed a human right arm on the worktable and began examining it carefully. What? You are asking where I obtained the arm? Simple. I visited a morgue on the way back. Dozens, if not hundreds, of people died every day in a city this large, which meant fresh bodies were not difficult to obtain if one approached the problem creatively. Carrying away an arm had not been especially hard either. I would not have wanted to be the pathologist who later tried to explain to the deceased's relatives where one of the corpse's arms had gone.
I disliked the method. A genuinely fresh limb would have been better. But something told me Doc would appreciate the alternative even less. I could simply have torn an arm off a local thug, but Connors was too kind-hearted for that. So I would have to work with what I had. The situation was bad. Some cells were already dead, and the remainder were not far behind. I should have taken several arms. Why had I not thought of that immediately?
Once again suppressing the temptation to use higher-quality material (if the professor learned where that 'higher-quality material' had come from, our friendship might end) I sighed and began. Through Symbiote-me, I formed a connection between host-me and the arm on the table. Then I started restoration, using my own arm as the template.
First, I removed decomposition products and dead cells. A sticky, foul-smelling sweat appeared across the limb. I had to pause and wash it in a special basin, then ventilate the room. The next stage involved flooding the tissue with nutrients while forcing the cells to divide and replacing the unknown donor's DNA with Connors's genetic material. I did not need rejection problems.
It was the first time I had attempted to control an organism at such depth without Bonding. It was difficult. I became extremely tired—physically as well, this time. At least I had discovered an activity capable of exhausting me. But I succeeded.
Two hours later, a whole, clean arm lay on the table before a desperately hungry and tired me. According to every reading—except perhaps the fingerprints, and I was not even certain about those—it belonged to Doctor Connors. It looked as though it had only just been severed.
Half an hour remained before Doc's arrival. Enough time to eat something and test the nervous system. Choking down another variation of instant noodles alone after the excellent dinner with Felicia was particularly depressing. But there was no alternative. Watching the fingers twitch and the muscles contract in a severed arm connected to me only by thin Symbiote tendrils was slightly unsettling. Still, the test proved that the limb was fully functional.
Then a key scraped in the lock. Time to surprise Curt. I picked up a syringe filled with sleeping medication and went to greet the professor.
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Curt Connors was returning to work, his thoughts occupied primarily by his new assistant Walter. The young man learned at extraordinary speed. Curt smiled inwardly and allowed himself a moment of pride. His own contribution had not been small. Walter was ironic, somewhat sarcastic, and occasionally so at inappropriate moments. 'Mengele' was something Connors fully intended to remember. Still, the professor himself appreciated a sharp remark and a good joke, though some of his jokes made the assistant noticeably less cheerful. That was no concern. The boy needed tempering.
There were questions, however.
During a month of constant contact, the young man had never displayed ordinary-life confusion and had demonstrated respectable technical knowledge. In some areas, Curt was forced to admit, Walter understood matters quite well. Most likely he was concealing something. But who was Connors to judge? A monster lived inside him too, and he made every effort not to inform the world of that fact. Although Mayer's abilities probably meant he knew already.
Returning to the subject of monsters, there were moments when the doctor thought Walter was about to lose control. Something cold and dangerous occasionally flickered in his eyes. Yet nothing happened. So when his student demanded a day off, Connors let him go with a peaceful conscience. Well. Not entirely peaceful. The morning newspaper reassured him. Nothing terrible had happened. The city remained intact.
The only strange item concerned an incident at a morgue during the night that had already begun developing into a respectable scandal. Either the pathologists had confused something or another misfortune had occurred, but the body of a man killed in an automobile accident had supposedly been cremated by mistake, provoking serious dissatisfaction from the deceased's relatives.
As Curt later learned, the physicians had sensibly concluded that they would be punished in either case, but an error in paperwork was one thing and mutilating a corpse was a criminal offense. They had hurriedly burned the body.
Curt reached the laboratory and unlocked the door. Although his assistant possessed a key, Walter refused on principle to use the door, muttering something about stairs behind it. Connors had never understood what stairs had to do with anything. The instant he entered, something pricked his neck and the world began filling with fog. The last thing the doctor saw was his student's habitual slight smile and the empty syringe in his hand.
Then he fell asleep.
Connors awoke on the laboratory couch with a savage migraine. Groaning something obscene, he seized his head with both hands.
"Mayer, you bast—"
The professor finished uncertainly when he realized he was holding his head with two hands.
"Yes, yes. I love and respect you too," the aforementioned bastard answered cheerfully as he entered through the door carrying a large pizza box.
Curt rolled his eyes in suffering. On one hand, he wanted to kiss the vile creature for such a gift. On the other, he desperately wanted to strangle him for the manner in which it had been delivered. Then the smell of food reached him. Something croaked demandingly in his stomach, and he reached for the pizza Walter had already set on a small table beside the couch.
Mmm. Fine. The strangling could be postponed indefinitely. Once the first hunger had been satisfied, Connors leaned back blissfully and began the interrogation while constantly opening and closing his restored hand. It responded poorly, but the body was gradually adapting.
"Tell me everything."
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Walter Mayer.
I caught the collapsing body and carried Doc to the couch, where I removed his lab coat and shirt. He had taken quite a beating in that war. Almost his entire torso was scarred, and the stump of his right arm looked horrific.
"Well, let's begin," I said to the empty room and pressed the arm against the stump.
The next twelve hours resembled shoeing a flea. I had to keep Curt forcibly asleep. Fortunately, I had practiced on the homeless man, otherwise the result might have been awkward. Why all the business with the sedative?
Several reasons.
First, my current knowledge was enough to predict that connecting the nervous system would be agonizing. Judging by the impulses running through the doctor's body, I underestimated the pain. I could not block it. That pain was how the organism connected and tested the new nerves. Nor had it seemed wise to warn him. He would only worry, creating additional problems. An agitated organism was harder to keep asleep, and I had already used a considerable quantity of sedative. That ignored the possibility that anxiety might awaken his scaly friend. So I sat beside Doc, first breaking and cutting away entire portions of the old stump, then attaching and joining new tissue.
In my opinion, the result was excellent.
As a precaution, I left approximately a hundred of my cells inside his body. Separating parts of myself remained difficult, though I could sense them better with every day. The arrangement served several purposes. I could monitor Curt's condition from within, though only when near him, track him in case of trouble, and train my sensitivity. The fewer cells involved, the more difficult they were to sense. I had left the absolute minimum inside him.
When Connors awoke, his first words expressed burning gratitude through an impressive selection of epithets. Medical profanity was truly the most profane profanity in the world, and no other profanity... well, you understand. After receiving a slice of pizza as a sacrifice—twelve hours without food, and I had not used only my own resources to attach the limb, so both of us were hungry—the savage deity relented and demanded a report beginning with where I had obtained the arm.
Once he received it, the professor seized me in an embrace and attempted to kill me by compression while soaking me with tears and showering me with thanks. It made me uncomfortable. I disliked being thanked. I escaped simply by pointing out the time. It was already after ten in the evening. His family might be worried, and perhaps he ought to show them the new limb. Curt nodded and tried to run home immediately.
"Put on your shirt, fool," I reminded the bewildered professor.
After thanking me yet again, he hurried away.
"The important thing now is persuading him not to show this to the press. Otherwise, we'll have to answer some very unpleasant questions," I said thoughtfully, watching Connors's small figure move toward his home from the window. Gradually, we returned to ordinary life. Though I did have to attend a family dinner at Curt's, where another attempt was made to kill me with tears and embraces, this time by the doctor's wife.
Curt began spending less time at work and more with his family. I slowly finished the academic material, dealt with the papers connected to my 'transfer' (in addition to the universal Russian attraction to free goods, I discovered another constant across all worlds: bureaucracy) and prepared to defend a bachelor's degree.
Connors had somehow organized even that, which meant my diploma would be entirely genuine. It also meant I had to study seriously. I also needed to find housing. Remaining in the laboratory after the semester began would be impossible. Besides, I wanted a place I could call home. And where I could bring a woman.
Since I regarded Felicia as my future girlfriend, the home had to be appropriate.
New York property prices stunned me. Anything remotely decent cost around six hundred thousand dollars. The penthouse I liked on the twenty-sixth floor near the city center cost three times that. Obtaining money was not the greatest problem. Quietly pluck a few feathers from the Kingpin, making certain there were no witnesses. But how would I legalize the proceeds afterward?
Even back home, men eventually visited excessively blatant people to ask where their money came from. Here they certainly would. The answer came to me when Doc arrived with another lecture, this time on the effects of radiation on genetic code. If he had friends capable of creating documents for a man from nowhere, perhaps they could legalize certain sums as well. A simple thank-you would no longer suffice, but that was acceptable.
I approached Connors.
He was not delighted, but I persuaded him that money earned through the sale of drugs and weapons would look much better in our pockets than in those of the person selling them. The professor agreed through clenched teeth. After he discussed the details with his acquaintances, a plan emerged. They would create a wealthy, terminally ill uncle who, upon death, had left his entire fortune to me—approximately ten million dollars. I, in turn, had to provide those officers—my guess had been correct; they were military men, mostly former military—with the ten million in the near future, plus another two million in exchange for the absence of questions.
Only one small issue remained. Where would I obtain twelve million dollars?
Small gangs would not be enough. But they could tell me where to find larger fish. I did not even consider going after Fisk himself. One could obtain an entire herd of problems from him much more easily than money. Two days of wandering through disreputable districts—plus several new vampire rumors—and I stood before one of the city's money-transfer points. According to my informant, the site currently held approximately fifteen million. It had taken only a smile displaying all 142 teeth; the rectal cryptographic thermometer had not been needed.
I only had to enter and take it. But how? Quietly and invisibly was possible, but afterward they would investigate.
Killing every living being was also possible, but even if I removed every witness, what guaranteed the absence of cameras?
That left a third option: work 'for someone else.'
Of all the series' characters, I selected the Hobgoblin. He ought to reveal himself soon, and he genuinely targeted Fisk. More importantly, he worked with plenty of explosions and smoke while wearing a hooded cloak, albeit yellow-orange. Even if cameras recorded something, suspicion would fall on him. I 'borrowed' grenades from a nearby arsenal belonging to the local 'guards,' recolored and slightly shortened my robe, and shaped the face mask into one of Sauron's orcs—only one suffering from jaundice, but that was a minor detail.
With wild screams and insane laughter, I burst into the building surrounded by clouds of smoke from the grenade outside, hurling explosives in every direction. Amid the general chaos and confusion, reaching the room containing the money was easy. The entire operation lasted less than five minutes. Then a satisfied me, carrying a heap of bags that an ordinary human could not have moved without a cart, dissolved into the night.
"Yes... Deidara-senpai was right. Art is an explosion." I closed my eyes contentedly like a cat stuffed with sour cream. Explosions, screams, the confusion of everyone around me, the chill of danger, and an ocean of risk—how pleasant. It seemed I truly had become an adrenaline addict.
The officers kept their word. Only a day later, I officially appeared as having entered into my inheritance an entire year earlier. My account held slightly more than ten million dollars, while Doctor Connors received a million-dollar grant for some kind of genetics research. The subject was twisted so intricately that even I made no attempt to understand it. Now I could purchase the apartment and still have a little left for renovation.
Two days later, an entire chain of events occurred. Felicia called me. Wilson Fisk attempted to conduct a ceremonial reopening of a factory Spider-Man and Black Widow had destroyed during one of their clashes—at least according to the official version, otherwise known as the version produced by J. Jonah Jameson, whose love and adoration for Spider-Man burned like a flame.
During the ceremony, a man on a flying tray in a yellow-orange cloak and a mask resembling a jaundiced orc nearly killed Fisk.
But let me describe it properly.