Free Spiderman 3 by Peter David Page B

that had gotten between his lips, his teeth. Getting to his feet, he looked around, trying to get his bearings.
    Suddenly a massive light kicked on above him. He had no idea what it was. Oh, Lord… what if he'd foolishly broken into, not an airport, but a prison? Wouldn't that be just too freaking perfect if—in his determination to escape—he wound up back in jail?
    Marko looked up, shielding his eyes, uncertain of what he was going to see. His jaw dropped. Now that he was looking at it, he still didn't know what it was.
    It appeared to be about three stories tall and bore a passing resemblance to an agitator in a washing machine. The upper section began to turn, slowly at first, then faster. Three mechanical arms extended above Marko and started whirling. They formed a high-speed arc around him. He tried to find a way out, but the metal arms were moving by him so quickly that he couldn't get past them. It was like being trapped inside a helicopter with propeller blades that were tilted down, blocking escape.
    On the far side of the bowl, a servomotor whined as a bank of observation windows were being covered by reinforced steel blinds. The noise was sufficient to draw Marko's attention, and he desperately waved, trying to get the notice of whoever was in there. If the windows sliding into place and blocking any further view of Marko's predicament was any indicator, then Marko had failed spectacularly in his endeavor.
    At that moment, as Marko felt the hair on the back of his neck standing straight up and heard the energy around him building up toward what sounded like some sort of detonation, he really, really wished he'd read that sign before jumping the fence.
    Knowing that the sign screamed DANGER! high energy particle physics test site! keep OUT! would not likely have made him feel any better.
    Inside the research facility, the technicians studied the arrays on their computer screens. "Capacitators charged," Ashley Michel said, satisfied at the results she was getting.
    "Right," said Chafin, confirming it. Then he saw something that didn't look quite right, and he leaned toward Blaswell. "Donnie, got a little fluctuation on one."
    Adding his own concerns, O'Shea said, "There's a change in the silicon mass."
    Donnie considered the possibilities and reasonably concluded, "Probably a bird." It made sense. Stupid birds saw the pile of sand at the base of the particle accelerator gun and didn't know it was there to measure molecular bonding. They thought it was someplace convenient to build a nest and lay their eggs. "It'll fly away when we fire it up."
    The others nodded, satisfied with the explanation. Chafin called out, "T minus three and counting. Three… two… one…"
    "Initiating demolecularization," announced Michel, and she activated the cycle.
    The spinning arms crackled with electricity as the centrifugal force whipped up the sand around Marko. A centralized energy blast triggered an electronic ripple effect that began to spread, bathing Marko and the particles of airborne sand. Marko and the sand began to glow.
    Had Marko been capable of perceiving things on a microscopic level, he would have seen the particles of sand—single granules no larger than a period in a sentence—being broken down into their atomic components. Glowing from the intensity of the particle gun's radiation, the sand atoms slid between the atoms of Flint Marko's atomic structure, affecting Marko at a fundamental, molecular level.
    Like any human, Marko was a carbon-based lifeform. But that was about to change, as the glowing silicon atoms of the sand slammed into Marko's carbon atoms, knocking them out of their orbit and taking their place in his molecular structure.
    It was not an isolated occurrence. The inorganic atoms of silicon dioxide—sand—penetrated Flint Marko's entire body. None of his physical makeup was spared, and he staggered under the barrage. The heaviness in the air that impaired his breathing increased until his