Chapter 89: Green Goblin? No, Red Goblin!
Norman Osborn's private office.
The Green Goblin, who had been about to finally settle in for a rest, was on his feet the instant he heard Matthew's voice.
The irritation that had been sitting on his face all afternoon cleared completely. What replaced it was an expression of total, burning loyalty.
"Boss. Have you finally decided it's time to deal with that insufferable Spider-Man?" He couldn't get the question out fast enough.
For every day Matthew had told him to stand down, the Green Goblin had been submitting a daily request for permission to personally remove Spider-Man from the picture. Hearing Matthew's voice now, he had assumed his persistence had finally paid off, and the excitement was considerable.
On the other end, watching the Green Goblin lead with Spider-Man as his very first word, Matthew pressed his mouth to one side.
He genuinely could not work out why this person had such a specific, inexhaustible problem with Spider-Man.
Was this what people meant when they talked about destiny?
A brief pause.
"Set the Spider-Man question aside for now. I have a different assignment for you."
The Green Goblin's excitement dropped several degrees at once. Held in place by the full weight of his boss's authority, he managed a cooperative follow-up. "Then what did you have in mind?"
"Something straightforward."
Matthew kept his tone easy. "I need you to use Oscorp's internal connections to look into a military figure named Vane Carter."
"And if the opportunity presents itself..."
"Take him out?" Green Goblin got there first.
"Correct."
Matthew gave two quiet claps. "Congratulations. You're learning to anticipate."
His reasoning for choosing the Green Goblin was straightforward: the man's natural operating style was suited to work that couldn't be done in the open. Beyond that, in the first Spider-Man film, Green Goblin had already demonstrated experience with exactly this kind of thing, having blown General Slocum apart with a pumpkin bomb by way of a personal score. Handing him this kind of assignment was a natural fit.
"No problem, boss." Green Goblin agreed without hesitation.
Compared to sitting in an office managing line items for hours on end, he vastly preferred tinkering with his equipment and giving the darker impulses somewhere useful to go.
This assignment was exactly what he'd been waiting for.
And it gave him a perfectly good reason to channel the frustration that had been building ever since Spider-Man had beaten him across half the city.
That thought produced a predatory smile. "Thank you for your confidence in me. Just wait for good news."
"One more thing, Osborn." Matthew spoke again, just before ending the call. "This won't be easy. To make sure you're equipped for it, I'll have something sent to you. I think you'll like it."
Matthew's gaze moved to Carnage, the symbiote that had been catalyzed within Cletus Kasady's body using Venom. Something passed through his expression.
He was looking forward to seeing the Red Goblin come into existence.
After the call ended, the Green Goblin worked the stiffness out of joints that had been locked in a desk chair for most of the week, then turned to look at the design sketches on the table.
A new suit.
He didn't hesitate.
He walked to the workshop alone.
Every stage of this suit, from the first drawing to the final assembly, was classified at the highest level within Oscorp. Currently, only he knew it existed.
That was exactly how he wanted it. Built by his hands. Designed by his mind. Beginning to end.
Only then could he trust it completely.
As for what it would look like, he'd already decided.
The color this time would be red.
Red like blood.
And beyond the color, he wanted it to look genuinely fearsome. The kind of thing that stopped a person cold just by being seen.
Red Goblin.
Eastern Europe. Romania.
The cold here had teeth to it, and the countryside in every direction was buried under an unbroken expanse of white.
In the middle of all that snow, a village was holding its annual ceremony of worship for the Mother Goddess Miranda, praying for a good harvest and good health in the year ahead.
A hunched old woman stood quietly at the edge of the crowd and watched.
Her eyes moved through the gathered villagers with the deliberate patience of someone taking their time making selections.
Then they stopped.
A tall woman in a white dress and an oversized wide-brimmed hat stood among the crowd. Miranda studied her for a moment, then let her attention move on.
The old woman slipped out of the crowd without drawing any notice and walked in the direction of Alcina Dimitrescu.
Her pace was slow and heavy, and everything about her suggested someone who had been old for a long time. She was indistinguishable from any other woman her apparent age.
She was passing a tree wide enough to require two people to reach around when a flock of crows erupted from behind it without warning.
The hunched figure blurred and disappeared inside the rising mass of birds.
What emerged on the other side was someone else entirely.
A woman in robes layered from black feathers, a strangely carved mask over her face, six wings spread from her back, and an aura around her that was simultaneously sacred and deeply wrong.
She appeared without announcement.
For a moment, no one noticed.
Then a small child tugged at the sleeve of the nearest adult, and heads began to turn.
The moment they saw Miranda, the sound of the crowd died.
They stared. Their eyes moved between her face and the image kept in every home in the village, above doorways and over mantlepieces, the one every person here had grown up looking at.
Nobody could say who said it first.
"Get down! The Mother Goddess Miranda has appeared! The Mother Goddess is here!"
The words set everything in motion. People dropped to their knees in rows, foreheads going to the ground.
"The Mother Goddess!"
"Kneel!"
"Mother Goddess above! Please forgive our unworthiness!"
"Please bless my child, let him grow up safe and strong!"
Voices rose and overlapped across the entire village.
Miranda looked over the people bowing before her and said nothing. Her expression did not change.
Under every watching eye, her six wings beat once, hard, sending feathers up into the winter air in a wide cloud. She rose from the ground and was gone.
"God above! A miracle!"
"Grab the feathers she left! Those are sacred!"
"The Mother Goddess!" The villagers scrambled for the feathers in the snow, and the devotion in their eyes deepened as they watched the sky where she had been.
In practice, Miranda had done nothing in particular.
She rarely needed to. Show herself occasionally. Let the people have a moment of confirmation that their goddess was still present in the world. They would continue worshipping without any further prompting, and she would continue collecting what she needed from them.
About five minutes later, Miranda folded her wings and dropped silently into a stand of dense forest.
She looked at Alcina Dimitrescu, who had followed at a careful distance and arrived behind her shortly after.
"Everything I asked you to prepare. Is it ready?"
"Yes, Mother."
Alcina Dimitrescu, taller even than Nemesis, gave a deferential nod. She produced a neatly assembled dossier from inside her coat and presented it with both hands.
In the upper left corner of the first page was a photograph. Below it, a partial biography and a record of daily habits and movements.
"This is one of the target's inner circle. Her name is Ada Wong."
"I used your contacts to investigate her. She only became the target's personal assistant within the last few months."
"If there's a point of entry, I believe this is where you'd find it."
Miranda looked at Ada Wong's photograph. Whatever she was thinking, she kept it to herself. After a moment, she put it away.
A personal assistant.
An interesting position.
Miranda's eyes narrowed slightly. She turned to Alcina.
"This operation won't be simple."
"To ensure nothing goes wrong, bring Karl Heisenberg and Donna Beneviento. We move together."