"...Norman added you to the blacklist? Но you're Harry's girlfriend! ...wait, MJ, don't cry..."
The names "Norman" and "Harry" acted like an electric shock, instantly driving away the remnants of sleep. I sat up on the bed, listening. It seems Harry Osborn made some important decision, and his almighty father is cleaning up his tails. The question is—which one? Everything revolving around the Osborn family could at any moment spill into an unpredictable cocktail of madness, serums, and gliders. And it was better to be prepared.
"...No, no matter how closed this boarding college is, access to the internet and communication with the outside world are basic human rights, especially in Europe!" Peter was indignant.
Europe. Lack of communication with Harry. The puzzle began to come together.
"...Yes, of course, I'll look for information. You, on your part, try to break through to Norman anyway. Harry's departure to another country looks too strange and hasty..."
Is it to another country? the thought flashed through my head. Peter, meanwhile, finished the conversation and, turning around, finally noticed me. I had already come out of the bedroom, leaning my shoulder against the doorframe. An entire gamut of emotions was written on his face: confusion, concern, and anger.
"Something happened?" I asked in the most innocent tone I was capable of, pretending I had just woken up.
"It happened!" he flopped onto the sofa. "MJ's boyfriend, Harry, called her this morning and declared he's flying to Switzerland. To some closed boarding college named after a certain Eldbach Steurlitz. For three years, John! Without internet, without cellular communication, even without mail! An absolute vacuum in the twenty-first century, can you imagine?!"
"Hm. And? Harry is Norman Osborn's son; I happened to cross paths once," I explained under Peter's surprised look. "Who understands these rich people," I shrugged, deliberately playing the role of an uninterested skeptic to make Peter spill more. "I wouldn't be surprised if such boarding schools are just an element of upbringing for them. Building connections in their own circle, away from us plebeians."
"That's the thing—it's absolutely not in Harry's spirit!" Peter jumped up. "He studied in ordinary schools his whole life! He hated all these business meetings his father dragged him to, constantly grumbling that he was forced to meet someone else's standards!"
"Well, the perfect moment to grow up and start conforming. Norman probably thought so too," I continued my line.
"Harry would have warned her! He would definitely have told MJ!" Peter was almost screaming. "They have a serious relationship; they've been together since high school; he adores her! And here... just a cold call. A statement of fact. No complaints, no explanations. Just accepted it and broke up with the closest person after his father! As if it wasn't him."
"Hm... If everything is as you say, then it really is strange." I pretended to think. "Maybe it really wasn't Harry speaking?"
"In what sense?"
"Well, a hired voice imitator. Or a program. And Harry himself is already flying somewhere in handcuffs and under guard. And the call was initiated by Norman himself so that no one interferes in their business and looks for his son."
Peter froze, considering my words. Even if I didn't fully believe this theory myself, it sounded enough in the spirit of comics to be true.
"This is..." he frowned. "This is insane, but... quite in Norman's spirit. He is sometimes completely unpredictable. Once he personally came to pick up Harry from school and even gave me a ride. And once he came to my birthday!" surprise mixed with an old memory sounded in his voice. "Aunt May was in shock then. A billionaire sitting in our kitchen and devouring her apple pie, when his every hour costs more than her annual salary... My point is, his actions don't always yield to ordinary logic."
"Well, there's already something to start from," I said with a smile, satisfied with the collected information. I wasn't going to meddle in Osborn affairs, but I didn't discourage Peter either. Let him dig. Norman surely thought out a legend, which means this college really exists.
"Yes... um, John... I'll probably go," Peter muttered guiltily, standing up.
My smile instantly vanished.
"What? Right now? What about the work on the Potion?" icy notes sounded in my voice. "We agreed. Today should have brought real benefit."
"MJ is there... She's very bad... She doesn't understand anything..." under my heavy gaze, Peter's voice became quieter and quieter. "I must support her. Но I'll be back, honestly! Tonight..."
He was literally backing toward the exit, torn between duty to a friend and obligations to me. I was silent, letting him fully feel my silent condemnation. There it is. Interference from the real world. All this friendship, relationships... anchors that pull a genius to the bottom of the mundane...
But damn it! I cursed mentally, looking at Peter. Why did I forget that behind his monstrous intelligence, a complex-ridden youth is still hidden, hopelessly in love with a typical girl? And now, when he has a chance to be a "knight in shining armor" for her or just a shoulder for tears, he, of course, won't miss it. All our work and all our plans—all this fades into the background before the call of adolescent hormones. Fine, I'm above this. The Potion can wait.
I forced myself to exhale, driving the icy mask of irritation from my face. Control. The main thing is control.
"Khm... Fine," my voice sounded deliberately calm. "Just unexpected. Но I understand. About what time should I expect you?"
"I'll try to return after lunch," he replied with relief. "MJ just needs to talk, and she... she talks a lot when she's upset."
"Fine, I got you. The main thing is that you don't talk much," I warned, looking him straight in the eye.
"Of course, John!" Peter nodded seriously, instantly catching the hint. "Personal is personal, and secret is secret. I know how to keep secrets! You can stop worrying."
He called a taxi, quickly threw his tablet and notebook into his backpack, but then, thinking about it, left the backpack with me—a silent pledge of his return. Peter was already at the door when his phone rang again. He looked at the screen.
"Doctor Connors?" he muttered thoughtfully. At that moment, a chill ran down my spine. A bad premonition.
"Put it on speaker, please," I asked. Peter nodded confusedly but obeyed.
"Hello, Peter? Tell me, how are you with your workload in the next two weeks?" an exhausted and concerned male voice sounded from the speaker.
"Um..." Peter looked at me significantly. "Except for a couple of personal projects today and tomorrow, the other days are relatively free so far. Why?"
"Excellent. Can you please fill in for Gwen starting Thursday and work in the lab during her hours? We'll increase the salary, naturally."
Something happened to Gwen?
"What's with her?" Peter voiced my silent question.
A heavy pause hung in the receiver. Connors' voice became quieter; unfeigned sorrow was heard in it.
"Her... Her father died. Captain George Stacy. Right now she's in no state for work or study. I perfectly understand her."
Oh. There it is. A key spider event. Brutal. And as cynical as it sounds, that's probably how it was supposed to be. In a number of versions of the multiverse that I remembered from scraps of meta-knowledge, preventing such events—the death of Uncle Ben or Captain Stacy—led to catastrophes. To such a global clusterfuck that the Chitauri invasion is child's play by comparison. It was about the destruction of entire realities. So no. I definitely wouldn't have gotten into this under any circumstances, no matter how cruel it was toward Gwen...
"Yes... yes, I understand, Doctor Connors," Peter replied shocked. "Let her accept my condolences... Of course, I'll fill in for Gwen, don't worry."
The call ended. Peter, lowering the phone, froze, staring with a blank gaze at the door. A heavy silence hung in the living room.
"Did you know?" his voice sounded unexpectedly cold and quiet, and the question itself, though strange, was quite logical considering I had asked to turn on speakerphone.
"How?" I calmly met his gaze. "I heard Gwen's name for the first time from you a couple of days ago, not to mention her father. Just the second unexpected call this morning; intuition whispered that something was wrong. So I asked to turn on the speaker."
Indeed... September 22nd, Tuesday. The Fantastic Four launches into space. Harry Osborn vanishes in Europe. Gwen Stacy, the current Spider-Woman so far without serious opponents, loses her father—a turning point for her path of fighting someone more serious than back-alley trash. Three extraordinary events in one morning. Two of them directly touched Peter, who in such stories in the vast multiverse is often either a connecting link or a catalyst for all kinds of shit.
Perhaps it's just paranoia. Or perhaps the Master Clockmaker is speaking in me, noting details and putting them into a single mechanism. And right now it was literally screaming at me that the gears of the universe have set in motion. Something big has begun.
"Yes... sorry..." Peter shook his head, driving away suspicions. "Just... two shitty news in one morning. Fine, I'm gone. Talk to you."
He went out, and I remained alone in the silence of the house. Left to myself, I thought about what to do. The answer was obvious. Enough delaying. It's time.
I opened the System interface. The "Technologies" tab. My finger hovered without hesitation over the necessary line. "Technological Modernization." I pressed the confirmation button. The numbers on the OP balance changed from 1100 to 400. At that same moment, my world exploded.
It wasn't just a headache. It was... a catastrophe. The feeling as if my skull was being split into pieces from the inside to pour molten metal of knowledge inside. Blueprints, diagrams, physical laws, chemical formulas, principles of materials science, and quantum engineering flashed before my eyes at the speed of light. Millions of gigabytes of information were poured directly into my brain. I only managed to take a step to the sofa before my legs gave out and darkness swallowed me, and the poured knowledge turned out to be only the tip of the iceberg. For after the darkness, the dreams began.
I was definitely dreaming about something. Something viscous and surreal that broke through even the residual pain in my skull. A red, dusty planet under a foreign sun. Giant, chitinous humanoid cockroaches whose chirping echoed in my bones. And I—one of hundreds of colonizing scientists, surviving in this hell. Memories of high-tech laboratories on distant, blue Earth caused a sharp, almost physical longing. Here on Mars, one had to create from garbage. From a centrifuge, a 3D printer, and a pair of lenses, I assembled a laser gun. Electronic grenades with absurd effects. An exoskeleton for the left hand with which I, I remember, punched through the body of one of these monsters. Ideas swarmed in my head, but the equipment... outdated, from the twenty-first century... it was shackles. Но I-the-scientist did not give up. Until one of the creatures turned out to be too fast. Its limb, sharp as obsidian, pierced my armor and body through and through. And here I am. Woke up.
"Fuck!" I sat up sharply on the sofa, feverishly feeling my stomach. Intact. No wound. "What the hell was that?! Why so real?!"
Memories. They didn't disappear with the dream. Experience. Actually experienced experience of survival on a hostile planet, the experience of a brilliant engineer forced to create in conditions of total deficit. All this was now part of me, like a foreign archive uploaded directly into my brain.
"And that's only an 'uncommon' skill..." I muttered into the void.
I already wanted to dash to the garage to check how this new firmware works in practice, but the phone vibrated in my pocket. Blade. I remembered my thoughts about September 22nd. This is definitely not a coincidence.
"Yo, hello, rookie!" a ridiculously satisfied, bassy voice of the coolest vampire hunter sounded from the receiver.
"Hi. Why the joy?"
"Ho-ho! Is it that noticeable? Fine, I won't hide it. I finally cornered one slippery, smart-ass scumbag. A first-generation pureblood. Made him swallow more silver than he ever wanted."
I mentally ran through the vampire hierarchy. First-generation purebloods—third in power, right after the Progenitor and his Descendants. Serious prey.
"All thanks to your miracle potion," Blade continued, and sincere gratitude was heard in his voice. "I swear, for my almost two hundred years, I haven't felt my brains working so clearly. All the leads, all the rumors, all the info from my sources, living and not so... all this crap just folded into one ideal picture. I suddenly clearly understood where this beast was sitting. In San Francisco, imagine! The bastard was blowing money in casinos and screwing hookers. Well, I dropped by his light. Arranged the stormiest night in his pathetic non-life!"
"Glad to help. Now you understand why this potion is priceless to me."
"More than you know. So, I haven't even got to the main part! I wasn't hunting him just for the hell of it. He's Vow's 'boy'. Get it?"
"Not really," I ran through my memory, but alas.
"Oh, right. I only explained to you in general terms. Credit of trust, all that. Anyway, Vow is one of the five remaining living Descendants. And he's such a scumbag that the others look like kids with fangs next to him. I've been looking for him for the last ten years. And now I have a chance that he himself will come out to me to avenge his 'boy'."
"What about the other Descendants?" I asked, hungrily absorbing information. This was priceless reconnaissance.
"Of the five, only two are more or less adequate. Dracula, whom you already know—he gathers the vampire 'civilians' under his wing; yes, there are such. And Marak—a smart-ass researcher-bastard, founder of the Mistiel clan. I periodically drop by him to make sure he doesn't use virgins for experiments. He's holding so far." "Two remain." "Such beasts that rumors about them even leaked to humans. Nosferatu and Lamia. And yes, it's exactly what you imagined. An ugly balding ghoul and a snake-girl. Unlike Vow, whose Krieger clan is the most militant, these two are cowardly bastards. Hiding in the darkest caves of the planet and hoping that no one cares about them. Но nothing, Uncle Blade will get them too. Let them hope, for hope is a fragile thing."
"So, Vow first, and what about the Progenitor, you said..." I started, but Blade interrupted me.
"Vow first. And as for their daddy, Varnae..." Blade chuckled. "Yes, I remember what I said. An incredibly strong bastard who will twist me into a ram's horn. Но he doesn't care about this world. He's a myth, a legend. Perhaps he's no longer in our reality. The squabbles of his kids are his kids' problems. I bet my left fang he won't care even if I carve them all out to a single one."
"Understood. Good luck with that. So you only called to brag?"
"Fuck, no. It completely slipped my mind. Can I drop by tomorrow evening? Just coming back from this City of Sin."
I calculated. Peter and I were supposed to work today and tomorrow. On Thursday, he starts his shift at the university.
"Yes, no problem. What for though?"
"Remember I told you about an interesting thing? That it's definitely worth exchanging for your consciousness-expanding potion?"
"I remember," I replied, feeling the intrigue flare up.
"Well, we'll talk about it tomorrow. Be there."
He hung up. The jerk. I leaned back on the sofa, and the day's events hit me like a landslide. Reed Richards. Harry Osborn. Gwen Stacy. And now also Blade's crusade against the top of the vampire world. September 22nd turned out to be rich in events.
I urgently needed to understand what kind of beast I had received. What Technological Modernization is in practice. I stood up and decisively headed for the garage. The chaos of the outside world can wait. Now is the time to create. Time to check what a genius from Mars is capable of in my body.