Chapter 4
Is this Hoby?
Hobie swung his legs off the couch and sat up. He glared at his watch like it had personally offended him, like it was melting away on his wrist, like the ugly face of Norman Osborn was crawling out of it.
“What’s got you jumpy?” Riri asked from her desk.
Karl walked in from the other room and leaned on the doorway. “There a problem?”
“Nah.” Hobie lied. “I gotta go.”
“Is Miiiiles calling?” Riri teased, spinning around her chair to give Hobie a lascivious look.
“Trouble in paradise is over, then.” Karl shrugged. Hobie was messing with the dials on his watch.
Riri tossed her head back and laughed. “I knew neither of them would last long with this whole radio silence thing.”
“Trouble is still very much troubled.” Hobie said, standing from the couch. “I dunno when I’ll be back.”
“Woah.” Karl put up his hands and stepped up to him. “What’s happening, man?”
“Someone who isn’t Miles ‘as his watch. I need my guitar.”
Hobie walked past Karl and reached towards the guitar stands. Hobie couldn’t really process the emotions going through him as he marched across the basement of the community center. Dread was the main one. The adrenaline of a fight to come was tickling at his fingertips. Karl grabbed him by his vest and Hobie snapped up his hand, holding Karl’s grip away from him.
“I’m going.” Hobie spoke with finality.
“I wasn’t going to say you shouldn’t.” Karl said. He looked worried and maybe even a little sad. “I want you to be careful. Do you want one of us to go with?”
Riri had all but sworn off interdimensional travel after her last run and Karl still hadn’t tried. He was adamant that he never intended to. Hobie knew the sounds of tearing paper and the pulsing of the portal was unnerving to them. He switched his grip on Karl’s hand to be clasping his palm and bumped his shoulder into his. “Nah, mate. I got this. You stay here.”
“Be careful, Hobie!” Riri called. Hobie gave them a mock salute once he had pulled his mask on and jumped through the portal as he shrugged his guitar strap over his shoulder.
Stumbling out of the portal prepared for a fight, Hobie was confused when he found himself pointing a web shooter at none other than Rio Morales. She was sat on Miles’ bed, mascara leaving grey tracks down her cheeks. Hobie’s breathing began to pick up as he looked away from her and instead saw Jefferson standing there, Miles’ watch awkwardly clutched in his too-big hands. He let his shoulders drop, through, heard paper fold behind him and took a few steps back now that the portal was closed.
“Wotcher.” He said quietly. His spidey sense was scratching at the inside of his skull. “What’s this, then?”
Rio leveled her big, teary eyes at Jefferson. Her lip quivered with the mere idea of speaking the words on the tip of her tongue and new tears rolled down her cheeks. It did something to Hobie, seeing Miles’ mom like that. He made him feel sick. Jefferson ran his hand down his face and awkwardly gestured at Hobie like he didn’t know what to say. Eventually, he found it in himself to choke out. “Miles is missing.”
It had been a few days since the rooftop. Hobie had assumed that Miles had been giving him the cold shoulder, not that anything was wrong. It was the first time they had ever fought, the first time Miles had spat at Hobie like that- it wasn’t anything more. That's what Hobie thought, at least. It felt like the rug had been pulled out beneath him. All the bitterness at being abandoned by his boyfriend who didn’t want him anymore was being replaced with an overwhelming guilt for not reaching out and checking in. The hole Miles’ absence left was filling with fear like an over-full tank.
“’ow long?” Asked Hobie.
“Four days.” Rio sniffled. Jefferson put a hand on her shoulder.
“He didn’t say anythin’ to you, then.”
Jefferson wouldn’t meet Hobie’s eye. “I… he lost something he got for me and went back out to find it.”
“The hard drive.” Hobie thought aloud. Jefferson squinted at him.
“You knew about that?”
“It was mine.” Hobie nodded. “I went an’ helped him get what you asked for but ‘e and I split before he came back home. He went out the same night, then?”
“You were there?” Rio echoed, eyes big and afraid. “Did you see him go back? Have you heard from him?”
“Not a peep. I’m sorry, Mrs. Morales.”
“Rio.”
Hobie swallowed hard. “Rio.”
“Look, Hobie, um. I know we’re not in the position to be asking you for favors. But I can’t go looking for Miles. If I show up at Roxxon, well, they’re not going to let me in. There’s a whole investigation going on already and I can’t slap a warrant down without endangering Miles and the other case I have.” Jefferson looked like he wasn’t really in the room. His gaze was far off, his feet shuffling like he couldn’t get comfortable. Hobie knew that he made Mr. Morales uncomfortable, but there was another layer that day. Hobie could feel the guilt pouring off him. Jefferson made a grasping motion with his hand not on Rio’s shoulder. “I just. I sent him back out. I need to know- we need to know he’s okay. If you could…”
It was always the same. Hobie had a place to stay as long as he could prove his worth. He felt. He felt betrayed. He felt abandoned and betrayed and scared because no matter how much Hobie wanted hate Miles in that moment, he couldn’t. Hobie hated Miles for pushing him, for yelling at him, for disappearing like the cocky piece of shit he was, but Hobie couldn’t stand those feelings churning inside of him. All he could think of was Miles trapped somewhere. How scared he must have been. Hobie couldn’t look at Mr. and Mrs. Morales and act like their scared faces didn’t tear into his heart.
“Any collapses or disturbances nearby?”
“None.” Said Jefferson.
“I’ll go to Roxxon then. Shouldn’t take long.”
‘Oh, mijo-” Rio launched herself out of her seat on Miles’ bed. She pulled Hobie down to her height with her arms around his neck and squeezed. He was a little stunned for a moment but very carefully returned the hug. He did not look at Jefferson, because he think that would have actually made him die from embarrassment. Rio squeezed him one more time and pulled away, pressing her palm against Hobie’s cheek. It was show stopping, for Hobie, to have someone treat him like that other than Miles. Hobie found himself forgetting what his mom looked like more and more every time he tried to recall her, and having teary-eyed Mrs. Morales hold him like he meant everything to her was a new development. “Thank you, Hobie. Thank you.”
“Yeah.” Hobie said. He pulled himself back up to his full height and gave Jefferson a curt nod. “Keep the watch, will you?”
“It won’t leave this house.”
“Cool.” Hobie awkwardly shuffled over to Miles’ window. He pushed it open and nodded to Jefferson and Rio before jumping out.
Now, Hobie Brown was a man of action. He was swinging towards Roxxon fully prepared to save Miles from whatever mess he had found himself in, but left with the silence of swinging, there was nothing to entertain him but his thoughts. So of course, that is when Hobie realized there were two huge flaws to his plan. Flaw number one, he had no idea where they were keeping Miles or if it was Roxxon who had Miles in the first place. Flaw number two, Hobie was absolute shite at stealth.
It’s not like he could take on every employee at Roxxon, so Hobie needed to find a way into the building without alerting anyone or putting himself and Miles in danger. As he crouched outside the facility and its canon-pocked walls, Hobie squinted at the guards milling about. That was an in.
Flaw number three quickly presented itself when Hobie decided to steal some Roxxon armor. And four, that is. Three was that he had no where for his guitar, so Hobie regrettably stashed it on a nearby roof and covered it in webs so no one could snag it while he was gone. Four was that Hobie was a tall guy. Blessed genetics or whatever. But for all of his height and spidey strength, he wasn’t packing on the pounds. The Roxxon guards he was eyeing, ones whose armor looked big enough to fit his stature, were built like brick houses. The world sure was cruel to one Hobart Brown.
There was one guy Hobie spotted who was walking along the chainlink fence that separated Roxxon property from the sidewalk. He had no visible weapon, probably so he wouldn’t scare any innocent pedestrians, and when he reached the end of his little path, he was separated from the other guards since he turned a corner. He was a little shorter than Hobie, he thought, but he could make it work since they had a similar body type.
Hobie held onto the wall. When the guard did his rotation, Hobie shot two webs onto his shoulders and another on his mouth. Hobie knocked the poor dude into the wall and dropped down in front of him.
“Hey mate. Mind if I borrow this?” He asked, tugging on the red jumpsuit. He had a little nametag that said McDowell.
It was a pretty awkward getting a struggling captive out of his armor and jumpsuit, but Hobie was thankful the guy was at least wearing some normal clothes underneath it. Hobie reapplied the web over the man’s mouth and nodded to him. “These’ll wear off. Eh- They’ll find you soon, bruv.”
He nodded to the man and dropped to the grass below. It took Hobie a moment to get the suit on himself and shove all of his hair into the unforgiving helmet. At least his mask had some stretch, man. Hobie walked back around the perimeter, and when the other guards didn’t so much as glance his way, Hobie made a beeline for the front door.
For a place that was literally surrounded by fences, covered in armed guards, and had just experienced a break in, Hobie was shocked by the complete and utter lack of locked doors. He just breezed right through the lobby and marched past the first pair of doors that said Employees Only that he saw. There wasn’t even a keycard fob! Hobie had only been in their systems for ten or so minutes and he had found enough dirt to have Roxxon energy scrubbed off the face of the earth. Surely a place like that would want more protection. The weak security was making him jumpy, but he continued deeper and deeper into the building.
It was a maze in there, Roxxon. Hallways split into intersections that appeared almost endless. Hobie had no clue where he was going and the more he looked, the more sure he was that he was never going to escape that building. Maybe Miles was just lost- not kidnapped. Hobie pushed that Absurd thought out of his mind and continued to explore when finally, finally the maze of hallways turned into a bridge. As Hobie walked across, he peaked over the edge. It was a factory line. Robots picked up screws as machinery went past on a belt and screwed pieces into place before the next section was moved forwards. People in lab coats and hardhats and protective goggles milled around. Hobie hadn’t seen any diagrams of the types of machines Roxxon made, but something about an energy plant building machinery made him uneasy.
Back into the web of hallways. One wall turned into glass and Hobie stopped for a moment to admire the machine inside. It was built almost like the Super-Collider, but much smaller, and instead of having the very fabric of the universe formulate at the center, a stream of blue light poured from both ends and into itself. There was someone with some very serious hardware within the room writing on a clipboard. That looked more like energy production to Hobie even if he had no idea what it was.
The blue light popped. As though a smooth stream of water had been disrupted, the blue material Hobie realized was molten splattered onto the floor. The clipboarded individual ran to a door on the other side of the room and left in quite the hurry. Hobie scowled at the machine, watching it return to its peaceful state. No one so many Roxxon employees were suing. There were no safety measures and whatever this Nuform was, was clearly unstable.
But the hall ended there. There was a staircase going down to the left. One going up to the right. A small metal door directly in front of him. This was too far into the building and far too small of a reception area for that door to lead anywhere important, so Hobie chose going up. Everything was so sterile, there wasn’t even signs directing him where to go. But once he opened up the stairway door, it was like the entire floor opened up.
A lunchroom. Miles had mentioned something about one of these creating the Spot, or whatever.
But Hobie was there. He was armored, his face covered. He could mill around in the masses and listen for awhile before leaving. No one would even notice. Maybe they’d assume he was a new hire who was lost. There was a good mix of people in armor and lab coats and tech gear, and the place was pretty full. Hobie was weighing the options in his head. He could go into that lunchroom. One mistake and he was dead. He could find out where Miles was or maybe he wouldn’t. Or Hobie could turn around, wander the halls of Roxxon, and hope he stumbled into the answer.
None were good options. Hobie cursed himself as he forced leaden feet into the lunchroom. Why was he doing this? If Miles didn’t need him, why was Hobie in that stupid armor in that stupid lunchroom about to have his brains dashed across some poor bloke’s meal?
Because he cared, he told himself, as much as he didn’t want to. Because Hobie wasn’t going to be the person who told Rio that he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t find Miles, and that her son was gone. Hobie wanted to laugh at himself and the concept that he was risking his life for a family that hated the spikes on his mask and the piercings in his face and the blue laces in his boots. But there he was, walking in between tables, head bent in an attempt to blend his height into the average and disappear into the crowds. Hopefully no one was perturbed that his helmet was still on. Hobie let the conversation of nearby tables wash over him as he walked.
“Did you hear that Mateo quit last week?”
“-and she is like, totally pregnant but won’t tell me!”
“We were missing a case. Can you believe that we started the sequence when we were-”
“I’m pissed, Zaid. I couldn’t get my son’s graduation off!”
“-gonna miss this place. Yeah. I’m getting moved to the North buil-”
“Did you hear about the stuff they’re doing in the North building?”
Hobie slowed his stride.
“Something other than Nuform, I know that. Why else do you think I’m so excited to move?”
“Damn, man. I’ll miss you. Think you can put in a good word for me?”
“When I’m anchored down, yeah.”
A third voice chipped in. “You’re gonna be working with Spiderman, dude. You hear that?”
Hobie’s heartbeat was roaring in his ears. It wasn’t like he could stop in the middle of the room to eavesdrop. He was sure he was moving slow enough to bring attention to himself as it was. So Hobie walked to the end of the aisle of tables and turned around to walk along the other side, hoping to catch the end of the conversation.
“-stability is their main issue right now, apparently.”
“You think he’d be able to control it.”
“I’m not really supposed to talk about this, guys.”
“Aww, c’mon Chris.”
“I gotta go. Discharge papers. You know how it is.”
Hobie started walking towards the exit. He could see it stitching together in his head. If he could get this guy alone in the stairway, Hobie would be able to pin him down and ask him some questions. Hobie tried to watch where he was going out of the corner of his eye. Scrawny. A shock of blonde hair and teeny blue eyes behind thick rimmed glasses.
Someone crashed into his front. “Watch it, McDowell.”
“Watching.” Hobie said, breezing past. He could feel their eyes in their back and cringed as his spidey sense told him he majorly fucked up. He didn’t have the chance to turn back and do something different though, so he kept his sights on “Chris”. Chris opened the door of the hallway and saw Hobie walking his way before flashing a smile and opening the door wider. Hobie did the white person jog so he wouldn’t be standing there awkwardly.
“Thanks.” He said, scanning the stairwell for cameras.
“Oh, no problem.” Chris smiled at Hobie before he began trotting down the stairs. After he got down one flight, Hobie lunged. He put his hand around the guy’s throat and shoved him into the wall, holding him just an inch or two above the ground so he had to fight to stay on his tippy toes. Chris grasped at Hobie’s fingers but was unable to break his grip.
“North Building. What’s ‘at mean?”
“W-what are you doing!?”
Hobie leaned in. “I ask, you answer, yeah? North Building.”
“It’s-it’s just the building code we use!”
“An’ what’s this about Spiderman?”
“I-I-I-”
Hobie shook his grip on the man’s neck. “Spit it out.”
“He’s helping with a- a new form of generation! I don’t know. I don’t know!”
“Helping how?”
“I don’t know!”
Hobie tossed the guy into the stairs. He knelt over him and pinned him to the concrete stair with a boot on his chest. “Tell me everything you do know, sunshine.”
“I haven’t, haven’t started, I swear to god, I don’t know what they’re doing to him!”
Hobie’s blood ran cold. To him? Hobie yanked off the glove the armor to reveal his web shooter and webbed Chris to the floor. He shot another over the guy’s mouth before he started running down the stairs. By Hobie’s calculations, he had about five minutes to get the fuck out of the building before someone found Chris and someone more important knew that he wasn’t actually McDowell. After that, he had maybe three seconds to find the North Building, wherever that was, and get Miles out before they moved him.
To him. Hobie thought. His heart was pounding in is chest and he tried to navigate the endless Roxxon hallways. An alarm started blaring through the facility and Hobie felt sick to his stomach as he began a desperate sprint to the front door. A new form of generation.