SuperMegaAdmin
While I was trying to make sense of what had happened, it was time to exit the vehicle. Turns out I'd slept through almost the entire ride. Judging by what I could see from the inside, we'd been traveling in a closed windowless van — the kind that by the hundreds cruise the city streets — except this one was clearly not equipped for transporting peaceful civilians. Seats, ten on each side, ran along the walls of the vehicle. Besides mine, four others were occupied by the ladies escorting me, all in strict business suits.
— All out, gentlemen, — said Archie, the one who had earlier put Myamlia in her place — presumably the leader here.
Two women grabbed me by the elbows and lifted me to my feet. Myamlia, who turned out to be Black, opened the rear door of the van and stepped out first; the leader exited last. I was clearly being kept in the middle.
We found ourselves in the courtyard of a luxurious mansion. A couple of tired, indifferent guards lounged boredly by the gate; tree branches were visible beyond the fence, but I wasn't given much time to admire the scenery and was immediately led into a two-story manor.
In fact, they weren't even really holding me — once we got out of the car, the ladies simply made their presence known on either side and lightly held me by the elbows. Quite a delicate way to treat a kidnapping victim.
Inside, the house turned out to be just as lavish as it looked from the outside — in my opinion, even somewhat excessively so.
— Bobbie, One-Two, take him to Cindy's office, — Archie ordered in a commanding tone.
The office in question was found on the second floor. Myamlia knocked politely with her knuckles before entering.
— Cindy, we brought him.
— Archie, how did it go? — Cindy turned out to be a heavyset woman of a certain age, peering at us through tinted glasses lenses and smoking a cigar as she sat behind a wide desk buried in papers.
— According to plan. We picked him up on his way home from school, no one saw us, — Archie reported.
— Excellent, excellent, — Cindy looked at me, — have a seat, Peter. And you all… Archie, why did you drag all of them in here? And get those ropes off him, good lord, he's not some kind of terrorist, he's just a schoolboy.
Archie nodded in my direction, signaling Bobbie to carry out the order, then dismissed One-Two and Myamlia.
A few seconds later — just long enough for Bobbie to undo the knot — I was finally able to stretch my hands.
— You're probably wondering why you're here? — Cindy exhaled a puff of smoke and looked me in the eyes.
I didn't rush to answer. I was busy watching the interplay of light and dust through the lenses of my glasses… not at all like computer graphics. Pretending to clean the lenses with my sleeve, I checked for a blind spot in my eye, the way I used to love doing as a kid — Cindy's head obediently disappeared. Damn, everything feels so real.
— I think you'll tell me yourself.
— Look at this — do you know what it is? — The woman handed me a fairly advanced tablet. Against a dark background was a schematic of some device with an enormous number of components and explanatory formulas. Naturally, I couldn't just say off the top of my head what it was. Cindy, evidently, thought otherwise.
— I don't… — I was about to admit I had no idea, when my own reflection caught my eye on the dark monitor surface of the device, — …this is a stabilizer schematic for controlling non-coherent radiation during extra…
I cut myself off mid-sentence. What was that? I looked at my reflection again. Well, yes, it was me. Peter Parker. So what had surprised me so much?
— I can see you remembered, — Cindy continued in the meantime, not noticing my hesitation, — Doctor Stans, who published this paper six months ago… she's in a coma, after attempting to use the emitter on herself, but something went wrong. You will finish her work.
— Doctor Stans' paper was subjected to harsh criticism, and the theory was deemed untenable, — I don't remember ever reading that paper, but I said it anyway, not doubting for a moment that it was true.
— Don't play games with me, boy. Stans worked for me, and I saw the letter Peter Parker wrote to her. Archie, remind me how it was worded!
— With an extension to the theory.
— Yes, exactly. Thanks to your letter, Stans almost managed to finish the project, but she made another mistake somewhere and botched the experiment. You will finish her work, boy. Do it quickly and go back to your studies — Aunt May won't even have time to start worrying.
I flinched. Because I understood what had been nagging at me — my reflection was too young. At this age, I hadn't yet gained Spider-Man's powers, which could explain both the presence of the tooth and the absence of the implant. But she had slipped up. She said — Aunt May would worry. But according to the story, Uncle Ben was supposed to be alive. You gave yourself away, bitch. Still, I couldn't find any confirmation that what was happening wasn't real — or rather, I was almost completely certain I wouldn't find any.
***
Back in the laboratory, Bobbie had been left to keep an eye on me, but the supervision wasn't much of a problem. At the moment I was alone entirely — the girl had drifted off somewhere, saying she'd be back in five minutes.
Remarkable irresponsibility. Were they provoking me into some reckless action? Surely this Bobbie couldn't genuinely be this careless around me? I'm a damn superhero, and she's supposed to be watching me!
Alright, let's test something.
I take off my glasses — they'll just get in the way. I press my hands to the floor… yeah. I'd meant to do a handstand, but I now realize that in this body even a dozen push-ups would be a feat.
Well, push-ups will have to do.
Twelve. I managed twelve push-ups. I wasn't just winded — that was my absolute limit. There's no strength left in my arms to lift my torso off the floor. Feeling this weak, this helpless… it's unpleasant.
I need to look around.
So this Doctor Stans had set herself up nicely here. My eyes landed on a SEM.
Working with a SEM is like looking at satellite imagery: you're in space, staring down at a complex terrestrial landscape, then you turn a small black wheel, and the surface rises toward you. The zoom is like falling. As if you've been dropped from orbit and the Earth is rushing up to meet you — only you're moving faster than any real fall, faster than terminal velocity, impossibly fast, impossibly far — and the landscape swells, and it seems like impact is imminent, but the impact never comes, because the image only grows closer and sharper, while the ground stays just out of reach — like the old parable about the frog that jumped halfway to the log, then halfway again, and again, and never made it. That's your electron microscope. Eternal falling into the image, with no bottom to reach.
I set the magnification to 14,000 — focused like the eye of God. Searching for the ultimate, indivisible truth: you can't see the bottom, because there is none.
Under the glass was a blood sample. I selected a more appropriate magnification for working with blood. Is that what she was trying to irradiate? The table was covered in a thin layer of dust — barely noticeable, but still — it had been several days since anyone worked there, and yet the blood cells were still active.
Right, I need access to this woman's computer. I've seen blood like this before — in one person. Not exactly the same, but close enough. If this is what I think it is… how did it end up here?
Hmm… what's wrong? Windows is crashing on startup. Is the computer broken?
Nothing ever works right the first time!
Maybe someone before me tried to sort through Stans' notes. Hmm — before the screen went dark, I caught a line of garbled characters. Possibly a font or registry error. I'm no computer expert, but I think I can try restoring the registry to a working state and go from there.
Attempting a rollback to the last working configuration produced no results — which would have been too easy.
— Not Aunt May's home cooking, but it's edible, — Bobbie's voice sounded behind me. She was holding a tray of fast food.
Coming over to me, Bobbie set the tray on the table, right on top of Stans' scorched lab journal.
— Oh, trying to boot up the doc's computer? Waste of time, just so you know — it died the day after doc fell into the coma. But the hard drive's still in there, I can bring… um… that thing for reading hard drives, there was one around here somewhere.
— Not yet.
I used the system recovery tool, but found no restore points. What the hell? I'm liking this Stans less and less.
Without leaving the recovery environment, I opened the command prompt and used it to launch Notepad. Through Notepad I navigated to the "configs" folder on the system drive. Then I displayed all the files in the folder, located the registry hives responsible for the system and applications, and added a random string of characters to their extensions. Then I copied the backup copies of those files into the "configs" folder. Thank God this Stans had the sense not to disable the task scheduler — otherwise I would have had to pull out the hard drive.
— Let's hope that works, — I said, and rebooted the computer.
— I brought food, — Bobbie said, lingering awkwardly once she saw I'd finished working, — nothing homemade, but it'll do. Doc used to work without ever leaving the lab, and I'd bring food for her too… wow, it worked!
This time Windows did successfully make it to the welcome screen — and now it was asking for the password for the user SuperMegaAdmin…
— How old did you say this Stans of yours was? — Realizing what I was getting at, the girl hesitated for some reason.
— Well, actually, I helped doc with equipment installation… but I don't really understand all this stuff, whereas you're a real hacker, kid! — The girl was looking at me like I'd performed a miracle. She'd heard that I was supposed to finish and fix Stans' research — against that backdrop, restoring a computer was trivial… she was just trying to dodge an awkward topic.
— Right, well now all we need to do is reset the password for this… Super Mega Admin, — I said with a smirk.
Bobbie turned as red as a poppy.
— That won't be necessary, I know the password, — she leaned toward the keyboard and quickly typed in the combination. Did she really have to press her chest against me like that?
— Seriously? — I said, surprised. — The password is: password?
— I… well, yeah, what's wrong with that? — She jumped back from the keyboard like she'd touched a hot stove.
Quietly chuckling, I began searching the computer for useful information. And there was the cause of the crash — someone had crammed an absolute ton of incompatible mods into Skyrim, and apparently some of them had been writing to the same registry entries during runtime… Super Mega Admin…
Oh, finally — information on the doc's projects. What a strange feeling. I'm seeing this project for the first time, yet somehow I recognize it. And this scanned page with the hand-drawn schematic and formulas… the handwriting looks a lot like mine. Something weird is going on.
I fell out of reality for several hours, going through the doc's work and — apparently — my own. Toward the end I even started developing something like a memory of working on this research. But it wasn't a real memory. You know how sometimes someone tells you about something you did, but you don't remember it yourself — and then your brain builds an illusory memory, a kind of model? It was like that. I was hoping that once a critical mass of false memories accumulated, real ones would surface. I simply couldn't have forgotten working on this research. Or more precisely — on its technical side: the emitter schematics. The formulas for some kind of serum, supposedly meant to act on a person in conjunction with the emitter — those I didn't recognize at all.
I should have figured out what the emitter was for. How could I have handed something like this off to someone without first finding out what substances my work would be combined with? It's obvious that depending on the type of reagent, the settings and structure of the radiation would need to change. Hmm — I might have considered it too self-evident, especially for a scientist. Could it be that Stans used my specific implementation of the emitter for her formula without adapting it? If she were my student, I would have made her memorize every safety protocol for every instrument by heart! How could anyone be so reckless? And then to test its viability on herself? The fact that she merely fell into a coma is a miracle! Of course — Cindy never told anyone what the doc was working on! The doctors simply couldn't — or didn't have time — to detect the other consequences! Wait — this Cindy is a criminal. There's no guarantee that Stans was ever taken to a hospital at all. It's entirely in their nature to keep her right here, somewhere on the estate.
— Bobbie, tell me something, — I began, but when I turned in my chair I saw that the girl had peacefully fallen asleep while I was working.
Some guard. And how am I supposed to make use of this opportunity?
If that's what a guard looks like, I'm the Pope. I walked over to the girl. She was sleeping soundly, sitting on a backless stool with her face resting on the table. Boy-short blonde strands fell across her eyes and cheeks. I waved in front of her nose, snapped my fingers near her ear — no reaction. Maybe she's faking it, waiting to see what I'd do? Hmm, she has a gun. The holster was clipped to her side at the stomach, on the left. If the girl was pretending, she wouldn't let me take the gun. I unclipped the holster and pulled out the weapon. I'd dealt with police-issue hardware a couple of times before, though I personally never liked loud, smoky firearms. I pressed the barrel to the girl's temple. Bobbie is asleep. Well, I'll be damned.
I returned the gun to its holster and, as one final check, placed my palm on the girl's chest — zero reaction. I squeezed it, massaged it lightly through the fabric. No, she's definitely asleep. That was the highest-level test — this Bobbie was no Natasha Romanoff, ready for anything.
I leave the girl alone and head for the exit. An electronic lock, four buttons worn down more than the others. If every digit is used once, that's only twenty-four combinations. I could try going through all of them, but locks of this type almost certainly have a lockout mechanism. I don't need an alarm going off in the middle of the night. Taking a table knife, I pried off the panel — inside was a connector where the electronics plug in. I see. I could take the guard's gun and try to force my way out, but the gap between where I am now and where my strength needs to be is enormous. My skills with a handgun leave a lot to be desired — now if I had my spider-sense, I might have risked relying on a firearm.
In principle, I could build a door decoder using the equipment available in the lab, but that's not a one-day job, and I'd need internet access to do it. Unfortunately, my head isn't a supercomputer.
Stans' computer is currently not connected to the network. At least my captors showed some sense in that regard. Although — I suddenly remembered seeing an iPhone cable in the desk drawer.
I went back to the desk and the sleeping Bobbie. Let's see… I reached inside the girl's jacket again, searching through her pockets. Loose change, keys, a wallet, a notepad, a spare magazine for the gun, a pack of condoms, some pills… no phone. But she had to have some way to communicate with her superiors — at the very least a walkie-talkie. I stepped back, and my eyes landed on a backside wrapped in tight jeans. Found it!
Pulling the iPhone from the girl's back pocket, I connected it to the computer and got online. First I found the information I needed to plan a self-organized escape and located where I was. In principle, I could alert the police right now, or even try to reach one of the heroes. Hmm… I can't find my Facebook account… strange. I'm not on Twitter or Instagram either. Bobbie stirred in her sleep behind me, and my heart skipped a couple of beats. As a final step I did manage to find an entry for Peter Benjamin Parker in my school's database — just to confirm my own existence — and decided that was enough for one night.
I disconnected the iPhone and carefully covered all traces of my time online. Though, given the skill level of Super Mega Admin, I could have just left the browser history. Bobbie didn't wake up — not when I returned the phone to her jeans pocket, not when I clattered around with dishes while helping myself to dinner.
I won't be bringing in any outside help for now. Now that I had a couple of exit routes mapped out, I found myself wanting to untangle this mess that Stans and Cindy had cooked up on my own. I'm probably too overconfident for a sixteen-year-old with no powers whatsoever. Well, let's see what all my superhero experience is actually worth. That serum, together with the emitter, could do serious damage. The project is frankly underdeveloped — even I can see that Stans made several miscalculations when working on the formula. The way things stand, the best-case outcome is the woman surviving, and any practical application is completely out of the question.
In addition to a refrigerator stocked with ready meals, dishes, and a kettle, the lab also had a bed — evidently the doc was capable of working here around the clock. It would have been nice to wash up properly before sleep, in an actual bath or shower rather than cold water from a sink. I lay down but felt a nagging discomfort. Right — my "supervisor."
I shook the girl awake and made her lie down properly. For the record, she never really woke up and obediently followed all my directions, muttering something like "yes, Mom, stop nagging" in her sleep a couple of times. The bed had plenty of room for both of us. I wouldn't be surprised if Bobbie and Stans had already shared it the same way.
Sleep refused to come. My head started aching again in the spot where I'd hit it in the car. I thought back to what the girls had been talking about during the drive. At the time I hadn't paid much attention — I had other things on my mind — and then I'd talked myself into believing none of it was real, so I'd stopped paying attention to details of the environment that didn't directly concern me. But now… it was all very strange. It hadn't felt like a performance staged for me as the sole audience. And Bobbie didn't give the impression of a professional actress. If anything, she didn't give the impression of someone who could be a professional at anything. But then how to make sense of all those absurd conversations? I felt the urge to get online again. The feeling that I was missing something important — something that should change my entire picture of the world — wouldn't leave me. But I fought it off by force of will.
Before falling asleep I spent a long time thinking about how to improve Stans' work. My last thought was that I shouldn't drag this out — there was no telling what exactly had happened to the woman lying in that coma. As soon as I sorted out whatever she'd bungled during the experiment, I'd start acting — otherwise it might be too late.
I dreamed I was flying on a spaceship. The dream was soaked in fear and despair; we were running from something, and an even greater danger waited ahead. There was a man with me — he talked to himself constantly and kept demanding not to be interrupted. The ship's walls could turn transparent, and through them I watched Earth. The small blue sphere was drifting away from us the entire time, but defying all logic, it never disappeared from view — not even after we left the Solar System. Other crew members floated over to me, but none of them could see Earth. They said it was too small to be seen from this distance. And then the impenetrable blackness of space swallowed me whole.
Fear flooded my consciousness. The stars vanished, the ship vanished; there was only me, open space, and Earth. Earth was falling toward me — expanding rapidly — and the larger it grew, the more horrors I could see. This was what our ship had been running from. Earth was dying. No — humanity was dying, writhing in convulsions, agonizing, and the Earth, like a vast creature, was suffering under the actions of the parasites clinging to it. And then the Drop fell upon the Earth — a concentration of pure beauty, a symbol of science's greatness, and a creation of the gods perfect in its indestructible fragility. And with that, Earth's suffering ended. The Drop had delivered it from the virus of humanity.
Note:
*If there are any great biologists or doctors in the audience who spotted any absurdities in the text, I humbly ask your forgiveness — this is not my field.