But… It’s me! The real Spider-Man!

Having agreed to cooperate with Deadpool, we began discussing our next steps, including the prisoner. To do this, we first had to restore the order of events. There were a lot of questions that had accumulated by this time.

"Come on," Deadpool tried to reason with me, "you'd be surprised how compliant people become when you cut something off!"

The mercenary suggested that we get right to the intimate part of the interrogation, and I wasn't prepared to support that idea, and I wasn't the only one.

"No!" Bobby was indignant. "It was because of that experiment! Something broke in her brain afterwards. The doctor's always been good to me. Peter, tell her! It can still be fixed!"

"You see, Bobby," I hesitated, "I'd already given Stans a drug that was supposed to stabilize her and reduce the side effects of the serum. She was supposed to wake up in a week or two, but either I screwed up, or, more likely, you and your slimy friend, in which case, I have no idea what you did."

Then a black blob popped out of Bobby's shoulder and quickly formed into a toothy head with huge white eyes.

"No, I just fixed it. I gave the immune system a nudge, a boost of energy. I just accelerated the healing process. And that's when she sucked on me like a parasite. It sucked so much energy that I blacked out! I didn't even realize I was merging with her until they told me."

"You sing well, but it's hard to believe," Deadpool said.

I noticed that the symbiote sounded a lot like Bobby. Same intonation, same way of speaking, same expression. The past Venom may have adopted some of the host's personality traits, but this one is on a whole other level. How deep a mental connection did he and Bobby form?

"So you don't remember anything about what happened after the hospital?" I clarified.

"Yeah, nothing, nothing at all," the symbiote pulled itself back into Bobby's body. She just shrugged, not commenting on her partner's actions.

"Well, suckers," the mercenary cut in again, "you'll never find out, so we'll have to go to that voracious doctor of yours and beat the crap out of her... all right, all right, we'll just ask her first, and only torture her if she gets stubborn."

Having reached some kind of understanding, the three of us piled into a second basement room, temporarily used as a dungeon, where all the time and lay tied up, almost swaddled in a cocoon prisoner.

"You'll have to free her mouth," I remarked.

"I will," Deadpool drew one of her swords from its sheath and moved toward the prisoner, swinging it threateningly.

Somehow I hadn't bothered to make the solvent beforehand. Had the web been better, there might have been problems. Fortunately, the current version, though very tear-resistant, can be cut quite easily with sharp steel.

Stance looked even worse than she had after the fight at the mansion: she looked as if she had dried out from the inside, her skin cracked and showing unhealthy pigmentation. I guess Deadpool was right about something - I may have kept Stans alive in the mansion, but it was ultimately pointless. She's dying, and she's dying very fast.

"You should have bet for a few more minutes, she'd have just crashed out on her own!" Deadpool remarked.

"Doctor," Bobbie cried out, and, pushing the mercenary aside, rushed over to the dying woman, "what's the matter with you?"

Stans looked at the former warder with a hazy look, recognition flashed in her eyes.

"Come to watch me die?" she grinned.

"No, no, doctor, we'll help you, we'll cure you," the girl wailed. "We'll think of something, we'll take you to the hospital."

At this Bobby looked at me with a pleading look in her eyes.

"The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with her before, and now..." It suddenly dawned on me. "You were trying to use the symbiote to prevent cell death, weren't you?"

Stans looked at me angrily and grinned:

"Why on earth would I help you, Parker? Go to hell," she said, and coughed.

"Doctor," Bobby exclaimed, "we want to help you. Help us understand what happened to you."

"Bobby," Stans whispered, "you're so dumb. Do you think I worked for Cindy under duress? Stupid, I just used her resources and influence to keep my research going. So she also assigned me the dumbest, most naive chick in her whole gang!"

Stans laughed in the stunned girl's face, but soon she choked back a cough that made her laughter sound more like barking. And I confess I was relieved.

"And you, Parker," the dying woman suddenly turned her attention to me, "are as dumb as your father. Wondering how I got his records?"

I felt my insides tighten at those words.

"I took them from Richard's corpse after I blew his brains out with a revolver, him and his wife, and I wish they'd taken you with them, too!"

What? What did she say? I felt the ground slip out from under me. Did that bitch just confess to killing my father?

"What bad luck," Stans continued in an increasingly faint voice, "they picked the same ship I did, just bad luck. And you can't even... get your revenge."

She looked at us with gloating eyes. This woman, she reveled in our suffering. Enjoyed the fact that even before she died, there was someone she could hurt. She was dying with a smile on her lips.

"Whoa, man," Deadpool put her hand on my shoulder, "that sucks, but it could have been worse. At least your daddy didn't get eaten by other sailors after the shipwreck, which was pretty likely with a name like that."

Is she fucking kidding? Is this some kind of attempt to cheer me up? To make a joke about my father's death?

"You're such a bitch, Wilson!" I'm gritting my teeth. "But it's funny," I try to smile, but I can feel my face cracking like a crumpled bag of chips.