Nature and Science

Save for the crackling of the fire that Otto had fed before resuming his place on the sleeper sofa, there was almost dead silence in the cabin.

An owl hooted outside, a hollow tune that was answered by another of its parliament. The birds conversed, asking each other who cooked for them, who cooked for you too until Otto heard a door creak open. The beaded curtains chimed and Elle stepped out into the orange glow of the living room.

Wearing nothing but leggings and an oversized t-shirt, she wordlessly made her way to the heavy door and began unlatching the chain. She quietly unlocked the deadbolt next, pausing to listen and see if her movement had caused Otto to stir.

Otto lifted his head from the throw-pillow, grunting in acknowledgement.

“What's happening?” he asked her, voice hoarse from the dryness of the fire.

“Heard something,” Elle muttered. She looked up at the gun rack above the door and picked the rifle from its post, simultaneously clicking something on her other weapon. “Shotgun is loaded, safety's off. If you need it, just point it at whatever gets close. Don't worry about aiming.”

Otto quickly sat up, the blankets falling aside as he swung his feet off the couch.

“Why would I need to shoot anything? What did you hear?”

He reached for the sweater she had lent him, raising his arms to slide it over his turtleneck he had taken to sleeping in.

“Dunno,” she answered, contemplating the doorknob as she fished for something out of the cupboard. “Something big.”

“Elle,” Otto began, only for her to raise a finger to her lips. He fell silent, frowning as she loaded a round into the longarm.

“Lock the door behind me,” she cautioned him. “You'll know it's me when I want back in.”

She opened the door, ignoring the cold air that forced its way inside, and disappeared into the darkness beyond.

Otto shivered, pulling a blanket around his shoulders as he stood and made for the shotgun above the door. A moment of fear and panic struck him as he remembered that he'd never fired a gun before. He pressed on, telling himself that the mechanics of a pump-action were simple enough, only to pause with his hand hovering above the barrel.

No, he told himself. It's fine. It's nothing. Just an animal. A bear, maybe. She's paranoid, holed up in the woods alone too long. I would more than likely shoot myself in the foot than use it properly.

Otto locked the door and backed away from it, retreating to the couch where he simply stacked the pillows up and leaned back against them. He couldn't help but sigh as he sunk into the soft tower; he was sick of sleeping on his side.

The owls began calling to each other and Otto felt himself relax beyond comfort. If the birds saw fit to chat, there was nothing to worry about; the forest had gone quiet before the last terrifying instance with the werewolves battling, so sound was a good sign. Comfortable and warm, it didn't take him long to begin dozing off again.

Otto snapped awake to the sound of gunfire.

He bolted upright, hurtling to his feet, and stood stock still. He strained to hear, wondering if the noise had been part of his dream. The fire had died down, and no fresh logs had been put on it. How long had he dozed off for? Had Elle not come back inside? He picked his pants up and stuffed his feet into his socks, all while looking for his boots. Something was not right. Everything felt too quiet, too still, except for the blood rushing in his ears.

A roar, a bestial screech. He knew the sound, having heard it before; it was more desperate this time than by the hunt camp. The noise was close, two creatures fighting for their lives and making sure the whole forest knew one of them was going to die.

One of the creatures was screaming, far more frenzied than seconds before. Something had changed, and a note merely hinting at a feminine octave hurried Otto to the shotgun above the door.

The headlights came back. This time they dared to come closer, the light glaring into the cabin and blinding Otto's sensitive eyes. He hastily looked around, squinting through tears of strain, trying to find Elle's sunglasses.

There, on the mantle above the hearth.

He snatched them up, slamming them onto his face. They were too small but they helped dull the light that did not fade away. No one was lost, nor did Otto believe any longer in his own dismissive theory. Whoever the headlights belonged to wanted to be exactly where they were.

The sound of voices, human, became louder than the dimming roars of a creature in torment. More lights, hard blue and white, lit up the cabin walls, reflecting against the dirty glass panes. A sharp, crackling static noise preceded laughter, and again, and again. Each time, the noise was followed by the chortling of humans, and each time Otto recognized the sound of a creature moaning miserably.

Otto hurled the door open, raising the shotgun and drawing in a deep breath to yell and surprise whoever was close by on the other side-

-and immediately, he was engulfed in pain. Electricity ran across his muscles, contracting them painfully, making highways of his nervous system. He fell to his knees, hard, dropping the gun and barely registering the shot that went off from the impact.

Someone yelled, and he was shocked again, the pain held against him like a branding iron. He collapsed forward onto his face; the sunglasses cracked and he felt the broken lenses jab into his cheek bone and nose. Several hands grabbed him up before he could catch his breath, his limbs on fire with familiar agony.

A voice in his head called to him, lurking in the corners of his awareness. He couldn't think, couldn't hear. Two more joined the first, but they were so distant that he wasn't sure they were real.

Dragged across the porch, the yard, and then hurled again onto the cold ground, Otto barely managed to raise his head and look up.

The headlights of two black vans lit up the property. One was angled directly onto an auburn beast Otto recognized as Elle. She was pinned to the ground by the even larger black wolf from before, its fangs dug deep into her neck and bulging arms holding her still. Eyes still bleary from the light and shock , Otto tried to squint through the seeping water that further blinded him, fruitlessly blinking to try and rid himself from the obstructions of his sight. A form of what Otto assumed to be a person approached and whistled. The bigger wolf leapt to the side as a net, crackling with electricity, was tossed over Elle's body. She screamed wildly, flailing in every direction she could find purchase, bloodshot eyes bulging from their sockets. Her fur stood out in every direction with the electric current, smoking where the netting made contact in a terrible and grotesque honeycomb pattern.

Her wail cleared Otto's senses. He could pick out individual voices, footsteps on the muddy ground that came closer.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” somebody hollered. “Get a load of this asshole! The fuck are those?”

Somebody pulled Otto's shirt up his back, revealing his metal tentacles and harness. He growled, swearing, and tried to rise. Immediately, something hard collided with his shoulder and another painful shock was sent through him. When it ended, a pair of boots in front of him lifted to kick his jaw, knocking a molar loose and ripping his gum and lip open.

FAA
FA-FAA-FAAA
FFFfff-zzzzzzz-aaaaaa
zzzzzzzzGHZZZZZ

RRrrrRRRRr-f-f-f-f-f
faaaaah-ah-ah-ah

His vision went black for seconds at a time, flickering in and out like a disrupted satellite signal. Colours blurred then focused while sound proved clear as the crisp winter air.

“It can not be,” a calm, silky voice said, laced with a Russian accent. “My, my. What a night.”

Polished boots appeared in Otto's vision, not old but well-used and definitely designer. He tried to look up but received another shock, heard the Russian accent swear and felt a weight fall somewhere to his side. A person scrambled up from where they had been roughly shoved.

“Doctor Otto Octavius,” the Russian voice all but purred. A hand gripped at his unwashed hair and pulled his head to look upwards.

The man smiled almost pleasantly and, even looking up, Otto could tell he was shorter than him by a solid few inches. It didn't matter, as Otto was hauled to his knees, limbs convulsing from the electric shocks; the other man was strong, muscles bulging from beneath pale white skin. His eyes were so dark they were nearly as black as his long hair, pulled tightly back into a ponytail and slicked down with thick grease. He wore a thick fur coat made of some animal bearing an exotic pattern Otto wasn't familiar with and, while the other people gathering around him all bore long, lean, cattle prods, clutched in the man's other hand was a simple machete which he used to further force Otto's chin upwards.

“You, Doctor,” the thick Russian accent addressed him, “are supposed to be dead. Eighteen years, if my research is accurate. I am sure it is.”

Otto, blinded by the headlights, his limbs tingling from the shocks, forced himself to raise an eyebrow.

“Am I not?”

The man smirked and dropped him back to the ground.

“My most prized quarry knew you, and therefore I know of you. The first time I battled the Spider-Man, I lost. I decided to learn from my mistakes; all the better to serve myself and kill the bug. That is how I learned of your existence, among others who fought the smart-mouthed little creature. I studied you. You died in the Hudson river, in New York City. Or, were supposed to have, anyway. What is a dead man doing in this...yebenya?”

The man relented his grip, pushing Otto back slightly as though he were something unpleasant. Otto lifted his eyes, drawing his arms up beneath himself and trying to push off the ground. He managed to raise himself up into a crawling position, rocking back onto his haunches to kneel in the snow. Another flash of blue light grabbed his attention; Elle, throat hoarse from howling, merely writhed as thick smoke clouded around her.

“More what I am curious of - ” the man continued, gesturing to Otto with his machete, “ - how did you survive the Spider-Man and go unnoticed for so long?”

Otto remained silent, staring at Elle. He flinched as a string of electricity jumped across her pelt, caused by a uniformed man whacking her across the head with a club before threatening her with his cattle prod.

“She's...already down!” Otto growled through clenched teeth, his jaw uncooperative.

“Yes, well, the big one suggests we keep her restrained.” The man paused and looked over at the black werewolf, chuckling at the scowl on the creature's face as it glared down the other beast. “I'm afraid he is rather bitter about being run off by a bitch half his size.”

“Cowards,” Otto grumbled.

The man shrugged.

“Cautious, but not craven. You understand caution, yes? Surely you would not object to the contributions to science she will make? If nothing else, her pelt will make a fine, ah...tapestry for my wall. That is the word, da? Tapestry?”

“Bastard!” Otto snarled, making to stand. A prod struck him from behind and sent him into the ground yet again. Above him, the man tutted sympathetically.

Fffffffffffffffffffffffaaaaaather.

Father.

The man sighed with clear disappointment.

“He is distressed. Broken, even; the octopus part does not function. We will bring him with us,” the man continued, waving off two of the uniformed men that accompanied him. They hauled Otto back to his knees and unceremoniously dragged him across the yard to the second van, it's back doors left wide open. The men tossed and shoved Otto inside, slamming the doors behind them.

The lights inside the van were fluorescent, though several computer screens gave off an orange glow from their back-lit screens. Two benches lined either side of the carriage but Otto didn't dare try to drag himself up; his muscles twitched and spasmed painfully, his heart pounding so hard he thought it might burst through his ribs.

Father!

A voice, in the back of his mind, spoke quietly to him. It was clear, no more electronic interference or static hindering the words into patchy nonsense. It was separate from his own mind, an individual stream of consciousness that spoke to him, called to him, worried for him.

He recognized it.

Outside the van, Elle's feral screaming began again, joined with the sound of Russian curses and arguing amongst the men.

Otto's fist clenched, damning them for their torture, wanting nothing more than to drag them away from Elle as they had done to him.

The voice, joined by its awakened siblings, obliged.

The body of the van groaned as each claw tested a wall before punching through; shards of metal framing and chunks of fibreglass exploded in every direction as the tentacles tore into open air, their red lights hunting what their father sought.

Flesh. Bones. Things to be rent and torn and broken.

We are here, Father.

Do not worry.

We will help you, Father.

Screams, human this time, filled the air, and Otto listened intently as both anger and blood lust boiled within him. Through the three functioning cameras, he watched as the actuators picked up and flung bodies into trees, shattering skeletons. They punctured into internal organs with their fine cutting pieces, their claws clamping down around skulls and crushing them with unrivalled hydraulic force.

“Oh, God. No....not ag...again...”

The rage seceded to immediate remorse, Otto's temper dying alongside the men. He remembered waking up in the surgery theatre, the shock and horror of discovering what his creations had done to protect themselves tamping down his rage and filling him with icy regret.

But the doctors, nurses, technicians; they had been innocent.

These men, these uniformed, faceless fiends, were not. They hurt him, hurt Elle, threatened them and gave no reason as to why.

Behind his hands, hiding from ebbing shame, Otto's eyes narrowed.

The Russian had talked of Spider-Man, of fighting him, hunting him. He had done the same to Elle, ambushing and wounding and tormenting her like some mangy cur!

They are not deserving of sympathy, Father.

“No,” Otto agreed, one tentacle retracting back into the van to help lift him onto his feet.

They will be a warning to anyone else who desires to harm us.

...to harm Peter...

...Elle...

Steel hinges cracking from the force and flying out into the night, the tentacle flung the doors of the van open. A scream was cut short as a torso was crushed beneath the weight of one, but Otto barely registered it. Seeing red through the camera of his actuator, he sought out the second van and curled the tentacle around its body, crushing it as he clenched his fist at his side. As the windows shattered and doors swung open from the pressure, several pieces of equipment came tumbling out including a large yellow and black battery.

The energizer unit looked much the same as any old car battery, Otto mused, approaching it and following the line that trailed from the square box to the netting that kept Elle pinned to the ground. As he knelt down to examine it, he tilted his head and gently turned both the green and red gears that jutted out of the sides in a counter-clockwise direction.

The battery powered down, and the electric netting powered off.

Blue smoke still filled the air, the acrid smell of burning hair strong and invasive. As soon as Elle realized she was no longer being actively electrocuted, she began tossing the net off herself, tangling her limbs and paws in the gaps, tripping as she attempted to flee.

“Here,” Otto said, sending his tentacle towards her. The wolf, however, turned her head to bare her teeth at him. With wide eyes and a frothing mouth, she managed to get her legs free and took off, galloping on all fours into the pitch black woods, away from the lingering moans of pain that came from those who had not yet succumbed to Otto's fury.

Otto watched her run, confused at first until he turned around and examined the damage he had wrought.

Both vans were destroyed, one corseted so tightly it was nearly in two pieces. Bodies lay scattered about, nearly a dozen casualties of their own foolishness. The black werewolf that had battled Elle before and the Russian man were noticeably missing, confirming Otto's accusations of their cowardice. Otto pulled his lips back into a sneer, grabbing up prods and guns and whatever else triggered his ire, a tentacle curling about the weaponry and crushing everything with ease. The other two tentacles recoiled back to him, their work done and lights fading back to a clinical white, and reported that there had been a third van parked along the road beyond the driveway; one of the enemies had attempted to flee to its safety.

“Was anyone in it?”

No, Father, three electric voices answered in unison.

We will destroy it, Father.

“Leave it,” Otto growled, his body shaking now from adrenaline. “It may have a tracking device on it. It may have something of use inside. We'll investigate...yes. When there's light, we'll investigate.”

He made quick work of piling up the bodies, hurling each one into the van he had been deposited into earlier. Each tentacles wrapped around it, squeezing and folding the metal coffin until it was nothing more than a crumpled pile of ruined, bleeding metal. Disassembling the other vehicle was barely an inconvenience for the strength of his metal arms.

Gas leaked out from the destroyed tank of the second van, brown as diseased flesh. A tentacle grabbed a smouldering bit of wood from the hearth inside Elle's cabin, and Otto watched the ruined vehicles ignite for several minutes.

He had no idea how much time had passed. The sun had begun to peak through the trees cresting the steep hill to the east that Elle had brought him down when they had fled the hunt camp. Its light was lost amidst the burning inferno that spat oil and molten metal into the air, black smoke billowing upwards above the canopy.

The smell stained his memory, branding his mind.

Exhausted, Otto allowed the tentacles to walk him to the porch and sit him down on one of the chairs. A tentacle slithered into the cabin and brought out several blankets, draping each one over Otto's shoulders as he began to shiver in the cold, body drenched with sweat. He hugged his arms around the metal garter about his waist, stealing the heat it had begun to put out, and began to rock back and forth, grinding his teeth as he pushed away thoughts of visceral brutality.

We will watch for her, Father.

She will return to her den eventually.

Otto grunted, knowing the thought, though conveyed by AI, had been his.

His children were back, returned to him with carnage and violence. A small part of him wept with grief, regret, and lamented his violent rampage.

It was a very small part.