Civil War Prose Novel (14 page)

TWELVE
days had passed since the press conference. Twelve days that turned Peter Parker’s life inside out.

Aunt May had been hounded by reporters, forced to hole up inside her house. People shouted “traitor” at Peter in the streets. The Daily Bugle filed suit against him for misrepresentation and breach of contract, citing the amount he’d been paid for Spider-Man action photos over the years.

And a visit to Peter’s old high school turned into a nightmare when Doctor Octopus crashed his guest lecture on physics. Thankfully, no students or faculty were hurt. But Principal Dillon had made it very clear that no further alumni lectures would be welcome.

Since then, sleep hadn’t come easily. Peter kept waking up, several times a night, with a low noise rumbling in his head. He’d never had migraines before, but he wondered if this might be the first symptom.

Then came Goliath. And that horrible moment, delivered in HD through the lenses in Peter’s new costume, that he couldn’t get out of his mind.

So Spider-Man practically sleepwalked through the trip with Tony and Reed. S.H.I.E.L.D. had cordoned off several midtown blocks with trucks and paddy wagons, isolating the Baxter Building. When Spidey asked Tony why, the billionaire replied, “Prisoner transfer.”

Spider-Man webbed his way above the cleared street and landed on the side of the Baxter Building. Tony and Reed stood below, deactivating the main door’s defense systems. Four or five S.H.I.E.L.D. copters hovered above, along with that flying command post Maria Hill used.

Briefly, Spider-Man thought:
How many agents does S.H.I.E.L.D.
have,
anyway?

“Stark to Commander Hill.” Tony’s metallic voice rang in Spidey’s ear. “I have an errand upstairs, Maria. Can your boys handle the transfer?”

“I think we got it.
Mister
Stark.”

Spider-Man frowned. He liked Tony, felt genuine gratitude toward him; and he believed in Tony’s cause, in the need to safeguard innocent people against powerful metahumans. Superhuman battles had grown more deadly, more vicious over the years, with a corresponding rise in civilian casualties. If Tony could reverse that trend, Spidey would follow him anywhere.

But Tony hadn’t told him everything. Like the fact that he’d had scientists busy cloning a dead god. Did Tony have locks of
everyone’s
hair squirreled away on ice, just in case?

Things were happening very, very fast. Spider-Man barely had time to process one shock before another one slammed him off his feet.

Off his feet.

Like Goliath.

“Peter,” Tony called. “You coming in or not?”

THE
Negative Zone portal hummed with life, lights dancing along its metallic edge. Inside, an unearthly nebula blazed, haloed all around by stars and asteroids. A display screen read: PROJECT 42 GATEWAY / ACTIVE.

“Your costume will protect you,” Tony said. “Just strap on this grav-pack for maneuvering.”

Spider-Man shrugged on the metallic backpack. It was surprisingly light. He pointed into the portal: “That’s where the prison is?”

“Detention center,” Tony said. “Reed, the access code please?”

No answer. Spidey glanced over at Reed, saw him hunched over a control console, staring blankly. One elongated arm stretched out behind him, idly manipulating a console all the way across the room.

“Reed?”

“Mm?” Reed looked up, bleary. “Oh, yes. Of course.” He typed quickly, extending and retracting his fingers to reach the keys. “Sending the code to your armor, Tony.”

“Got it. You know what to do when S.H.I.E.L.D. arrives, right?”

Again, no answer.

Reed had been very quiet on the trip over.
Marital troubles,
Spider-Man thought.
Wonder what that’s like.

“The fabulous Negative Zone,” Spidey said. “We just…walk through?”

“Follow me.”

Tony’s boot-jets flared. He arced upward, pivoted his body to horizontal position, and flew straight through.

Spider-Man stared, shrugged, and leapt.

Passing through the portal was like nothing he’d ever felt before. First his arms, then his head, then his torso and legs—all of them felt
inverted
somehow. The process wasn’t painful, but he found it disturbing.

Then he was inside, and the portal was gone. All around him stretched Negative Zone space, vast and bright, filled with objects of all sizes and shapes—stars, jagged asteroids, distant planets. It looked like deep space, if someone had pumped deep space full of extra matter and lined it with hidden funhouse mirrors to distort the distances involved.

“Weird, right?” Tony hovered just before him. “You get used to it.”

“It felt like I was…being turned inside-out,” Spider-Man said.

“That’s pretty close to what happens.”

“How can that be? How does that possibly, conceivably
not kill us?
”

“I asked Reed that, once,” Tony replied. “He launched into some elaborate quantum-physics explanation I couldn’t follow. Then he stopped in mid-sentence, and this funny little grin crept over his face.”

“He didn’t know either.”

“He didn’t know.”

Tony gestured toward a cluster of asteroids, took off toward them. Spider-Man followed, activating the grav-pack via his costume’s mental controls.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. is preparing to transfer prisoners,” Spidey said. “I guess that means the guys we captured at the chemical plant?”

“Correct.”

“So that’s how this is gonna work? Anybody who doesn’t register, gets brought to the Baxter Building and shipped in here?”

“Only temporarily. Reed Richards first discovered the Negative Zone; right now, the only portal on Earth is the one we just came through, in his laboratory. But Stark Enterprises is already building portals in major prisons all over the country. Once those are operational, violators of the Superhuman Registration Act will be dealt with like any other criminals: processed by the proper authorities, then transferred here.”

Spider-Man frowned. “You forgot ‘given a fair trial.’”

“There are no trial provisions in the SRA, Peter.”

“What?”

“You don’t give an atomic bomb a fair trial. Or an enemy combatant on the field of battle.” Tony pointed up ahead. “Altering course. Follow my lead.”

An asteroid loomed closer, one jagged rock among many. Buildings gleamed on its surface, reflecting the starlight. Spider-Man peered at it for a moment, and began to feel queasy.

“Follow me down, Peter. And don’t deviate from the flight pla—Peter?”

The structures on the asteroid’s surface were clearly visible now, jutting up like manmade building blocks. But something about them seemed very odd. Their configuration seemed to shift, flashing frighteningly from one arrangement to another. Spider-Man stared at them, felt a twinge of panic with every shift. His gut, his hindbrain screamed: This architecture is inhuman. Twisted, fearful.
Wrong.

Tony’s voice sounded distant in his ear. “…sorry. Set your lenses to Filter 18, strength level one notch below maximum.”

Spidey could barely process the words. He stared, eyes wide, twitching. “What?”

“Never mind, I’ll do it for you.”

Spider-Man’s vision blurred, went blank for a second. He blinked, disoriented, and then the scene became clear again.

The buildings had stopped shifting. They rose like a futuristic city now, gleaming and majestic against the bare rock of the asteroid. Far below, guards in full armor patrolled the perimeter of the land and soared around the highest spires.

“Security protocol Reed worked out,” Tony said. “It uses a specially designed architectural configuration, in combination with the unique properties of the Negative Zone, to create a virtually escape-proof environment.”

Spider-Man hovered, stared down at the cluster of spires. He remembered the effect they’d had on him, just seconds ago, and shivered. “
Rogue Moon
,” he whispered.

“One of Reed’s favorite sci-fi novels. I think it was an inspiration.”

“The guards are protected?”

“Actually, most of them are robots.”

Tony led him down to a landing pad, out where the gleaming metal of the complex petered out onto bare rock. Three robot-guards approached, pulse-rifles protruding from their arms.

“GUARD POST BRAVO RECOGNIZING ANTHONY STARK. IDENTIFY SECOND HUMANOID.”

“Spider-Man, real name Peter Parker,” Tony said. “Guest of Anthony Stark.”

“CONFIRMED. REGISTRATION ON FILE.” The lead guard’s face was blank, lights dancing behind its black-glass plating. “PRESENT ACCESS CODE PLEASE.”

“Tango Sierra Lloyd Bridges.”

“ACCESS CODE CONFIRMED.”

The guards moved aside. Tony led Spider-Man, on foot, toward a seemingly featureless silver wall. A door irised open, twenty feet high and almost as wide.

“‘Lloyd Bridges’?” Spidey asked.

“A custom-designed app randomly generates new passwords every half-hour. The app has an unanticipated fondness for the names of 1960s TV actors—yesterday it was ‘Charlie Foxtrot Adam West.’” Tony laughed. “When it gets to Sebastian Cabot, I’m pulling the plug.”

They passed through a large corridor, into a courtyard where baby plants sprouted from transplanted Earth soil. Spider-Man craned his neck, looked up at the featureless skyscrapers all around. The scope of the place was incredible; ceilings, buildings, everything seemed larger than life. And very new, very metallic, totally antiseptic.

“You said most of the guards are robots?”

“There are some human medical personnel and administrators, to make sure nothing goes wrong. But Reed and I discussed the matter at length. We decided the more we minimized the possibility of human error, the better this place would work.”

Tony led him into a smaller, tighter corridor. Held up his gauntleted hand, and a heavy door swooshed open.

“Here are the apartments.”

“You mean the cells?”

“Semantics.”

The hallway was lined with thick, angular metal doors, each with a small slit of one-way glass embedded at eye level. Spider-Man jumped up onto the wall, crept along it to the first door. He lifted a hand to raise his mask off.

“Careful,” Tony warned. “You take off your lenses, the disorientation effect will hit you again. It works everywhere inside the prison, except within the cells themselves.”

“Gotcha.” Spidey turned back toward the cell, leaned over to peer through the glass.

The inside looked like any sparely appointed living room, anywhere. Sofa, flatscreen TV, desk with a built-in computer monitor. A small fold-up bunk sat mounted against one wall, and Spider-Man could see the edge of a kitchen alcove in the background. The only oddity: a large armchair with wrist-restraints and a helmet hanging above it.

“Gotta admit, it looks nicer than my first Manhattan apartment. Bigger, too.” Spidey shrugged. “What’s that chair-thingy?”

“Virtual reality system. Lets them take little mind-vacations, even when they’re trapped in here. We may have to modify it, of course, for villains with tech-manipulation abilities.”

“I don’t see anybody inside.”

“The facility has only just become operational. Very few of the cells are occupied.” Tony cocked his head, consulting some internal data file. “Ah. Try this one.”

Spider-Man leapt down, crossed to the next cell. Peered through the glass.

A waterfall of sand dropped down before his eyes, landing on a heaped pile of clothing on the floor of the cell. The sand gathered, began to form, and rose up from the floor. Filled out a muscle shirt and jeans, forming into the unmistakable form of Spider-Man’s old foe: The Sandman.

“We caught him a couple weeks ago,” Spidey said. “With the Sinister Six.”

“
You
caught him,” Tony replied. “That was good work.”

Inside, Sandman flipped through a magazine, frowned at it. He picked up a remote control and plopped down on the sofa, sending grains of sand flying all around.

“He looks kinda sad,” Spider-Man said.

“Sad? He’s in prison.” Tony turned to Spidey. “People like Sandman are too dangerous to be allowed to walk around. You know that.”

“I’m not arguing about him, but…a lot of my friends, our friends, are gonna wind up here too. They’ll be locked up, same as him.”

“All their needs will be seen to. They’ll be comfortable.”

“But they can’t leave.”

“Of course they can. The minute they agree to register, to go public with their identities and follow the laws of the United States of America. To follow the courageous example
you
showed, back at the press conference.”

Once again, Spider-Man felt the low rumble in his head. The ache that had kept him awake, these past several nights.

“Come on,” Tony said. “The S.H.I.E.L.D. shuttle should be arriving about now.”

Spidey followed him back, through the corridors and the courtyard and the huge metal doors. His head was swimming. Those buildings rose up a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty stories. How many people would this place hold, ultimately? How long would they stay here? How much had it cost to
build
?

Outside, the S.H.I.E.L.D. shuttle was just arcing in to a landing. It looked like an airborne version of the Mobile Buses, thick and heavy, with rocket-tubes mounted on all four corners of its stern.

A hatch hissed open. A pair of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents strode out, in full riot gear and protective goggles. The robot guard moved to intercept them.

“PRESENT ACCESS CODE PLEASE.”

“Echo Delta Julie Newmar,” the agent said.

“ACCESS CODE CONFIRMED.”

Tony turned to Spider-Man. “Codes are getting better.”

The S.H.I.E.L.D. agent gestured inside the vehicle. Two more agents led Cloak out onto the landing pad. The young man wore his full costume, but with manacles at his wrists and ankles. A thick helmet was clamped on his head, stretching down to cover his eyes.

“Power dampener,” Tony explained. “It also shields them from the distortion effect.”

Wiccan and Hulkling stumbled out next, similar helmets covering their eyes.