Paradox Convergence - nothingis_here - Spider-Man: Spider-Verse (Sony Animated Movies) [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Trial ninety two.

A researcher stood before the great electron microscope that took up the center of their lab, a speck of static in their lab coat, peering owlishly at a slide of damaged DNA inside a blood cell. What marvels in science were they forging with their deft hands?

The strands of RNA curdled and moved microns of microns further apart. The space between them may as well have been a gorge.

Status: Failure. Further tests must be conducted before a conclusion could be reached.

The researcher sighed, rubbing their neck. They would remain undaunted.

Trial ninety three.

This researcher was the last of their team to leave for the night, like most nights, too enamored with their research to be exhausted by your—their—constant setbacks. They had introduced a disease that crudely split it into two strands of RNA and now coaxed the tendrils of acids to flex toward each other, hoping they might link and repair themselves with the modified sugar injected into their curling backbone.

The strands shriveled in on themselves.

Best out of ninety four—

The researcher did not want to give up, necessarily, but they certainly wanted to gently, momentarily slam their head against the wall. So much for the Nobel Prize.

You kneaded your lip anxiously with your teeth, shifting your weight from one foot to the other until you caught an unstable sway. Trying to keep yourself awake, you veered too precipitously to your right and stumbled; your hip clipped the edge of the holo-screen, displaying a series of photos from the twelve times you repeated this test in the last two hours, the formulation of the bonding agent altered in all the smidges of ways achievable without making it catch fire or become inert.

You were a doctor. You considered yourself a healer. But to figure out all the body could be, you’d spent the blink of your life so far figuring out how much the body could take. But even you were reaching the limits of your patience.

Sighing, you righted yourself and massaged your budding bruise. A break was in order after you recorded the results of this trial. Bringing yourself back to the black lens, which seemed to stick straight into your eye sockets like hoses, you noticed that the two strands slowly floundered toward one another, reaching with agonized persistence until they grazed by their end-most monomers. Where they met, a new amino acid was created to replace the old one. You blinked, testing to see if it was just the backing light frying your retinas, and magnified the image.

This acid was more dense. The scan showed this sample bore similar properties to the disease that ravaged it, as though reconstituting itself by absorbing its invader.

You fell against the body of the microscope in disbelief. Eureka! Not just progress but a breakthrough!

You were too preoccupied with downloading the data and recording your observations to notice the flash of light outside or the way its flare was different from the rest of the opulent skyline. You figured the soft tremor beneath your feet to be caused by your overwrought nerves and thumping pulse. So tunneled was your focus that your periphery blacked out the gigantic shadow outside your window until it eclipsed your whole body.

You barely tilted your head in its direction before a beam of energy blasted the glass into smithereens. The explosion blew you into the far wall such that you shattered the fluorescent screens and crumpled pathetically against the ground. The cannon retracted into a hovering platform, one you recognized from its regular appearance on the news; sirens emerged from their alcoves overhead with their shrill call to action, the emergency generators flicking on to bathe the room in blistering red as the shadowed silhouette of the Green Goblin rocketed inside the lab.

Goblin’s pad sputtered a cloud of noxious smoke in its wake as it zipped around the room, something you never recalled hearing about when waking up to reels of Spider-Woman’s newest exploits. You seized the shot of frigid adrenaline to scrabble toward the exit while Goblin twitchily knocked over shelves of specimens in frantic investigation. You crouched low as you stared up at his lanky form, wires stuck to his back like leeches. He let out a scream of frustration and turned, eyes darting around the rest of the room.

“Where is it?!” he hollered, “Show your face, cowards!”

You typed the emergency access code into the keypad with your shuddering hand. You prayed the darkness was strong enough to avoid being pulverized, since it meant you couldn't identify the tooth-like protrusions of sheet metal around you. Your finger slipped on the third digit of the code, prompting the automated command—Emergency lockdown has been activated. This is not a drill. Please remain in place until law enforcement arrives. Your gratitude at the lab’s fortress-like qualities would have been incalculable had the threat come from the lobby and not the goddamn window. At least Alchemax provided you with your own taser!

A gust of wind knocked you down as Goblin hovered over you, cannon charging up. You crossed your forearms in front of your face in terror and groped for your taser.

“Please, don’t hurt me,” you begged, “I’m—I’m just a—I’m nobody.”

Your pupils contracted against the brilliant heat of the building cannon shot. Every plea evaporated in an instant. Despite his grinning mask you didn’t recognize this Goblin as the gleaming, metallic villain swallowing the screen of your television during last month’s evening news program. He looked…sickly, and his clothing was ragged. Goblin usually wore armor, right?

He plucked a neon bomb from his belt as if it were a tangerine, tossing it up and down.

“What have you done to OsCorp,” he snarled.

“I don’t k-know what that is!” you shrunk under the molten eye trained to your face. “Who are you? W-What do you want?”

“Elizabeth Allan. Get me Liz.”

“Our f-founder?” Your brow creased. Goblin neared his pad to your face, and you realized that the tech was completely outdated. Engines like the ones he owned belonged in museums. “She…died. Decades ago.”

Goblin’s eyes widened behind the glossy lens of his mask as the bomb flew to the apex of its upward arc. He panted in staccato bursts, but before he could speak again his body rocked with a spasm. His form was overwhelmed with saturated fractals of color, voice garbled. His limbs split and transformed like the slides of DNA under your electron microscope and three screams tore through his body at different octaves. He looked like a computer file corrupted by a virus.

The pin of the bomb caught Goblin's finger as the explosive phased from his hand, which rolled right in front of you with an excited beep, beep, beep. Right as you swallowed a breath, it flashed with detonation.

Huh, well, at least your death was so quick you couldn’t even feel it.

A blinding white light consumed you vision, and you waited for the oft-debated whatever on the other side. However, the negative spots cleared to reveal you were still in your lab.

Ah, you realized soberly, I must be a ghost.

Indeed, it could be the only explanation for why you hovered—floated!—near the ceiling, watching Goblin empty his arsenal at some streaking purple blur. Your samples still nested within the microscope and you instinctually moved toward them, wanting to shield your last contribution to the world from such needless violence. Ghosts couldn’t pass onto the afterlife until they finished their mission, right?

You fell from a suspiciously bouncy white hammock with a shout.

With a thwip! and a tssh, you were caught against a sturdy, lithe body, catching you from cracking your head against the torn ground. Your savior swung around the room to deposit you on a balcony, and you peeled yourself away from cybernetic arms to see your reflection in the shiny mask of Spider-Woman.

“—When I even made you a comfy little swing so you could sleep through the rest of this fight!”

You focused on her face, dumbfounded. She stuck a thumb behind her at a screen of pearlescent webs stuck to the corner of the room where you performed your swan dive.

“This is why you gotta maintain a work-life balance,” Spider-Woman continued, “What could be better than watching nationals right now, amiright?”

A shocked laugh bubbled out of you, “Meeting you!”

Her posture melted from your flattery before arching to avoid a cannon blast.

“Stay here,” she said, weaving a wall of webbing in front of you before you could interject. She tossed you your abandoned taser with a wink, “Gonna have to mix up my strats this time, this Goblin’s not what I’m used to.”

“Who is he?” You pressed against the barrier, fear lacerating your throat. You didn’t want to be boxed in, “What’s wrong with him? He keeps—”

Spider-Woman took a running start, “Just some cheap knockoff, swear!”

She dove towards Goblin, shooting a web at his chest and rocking him forward to greet the battering ram of her legs.

You tried keeping up with the action, but peeking through the gaps in Spider-Woman’s webbed shield was like trying to magnify Jupiter’s red spot with the cardboard tube of a paper towel. You plucked a strand experimentally—five times as strong as carbon steel, twice as light as aerogel, flexible as cellulose. A flash of white collided against the Green Goblin. Thin beams of violet light followed Spider-Woman’s movements like insect legs as the pair faded into blurry streaks behind the webbing.

The ground continued to rumble as the two fought, tremors escalating until you had to cling to a pipe to remain upright. Goblin chortled as Spider-Woman’s grunts intensified; she calibrated her moves based on his, but he was so sporadic that he could change his course mid-stream and cancel her entire plan of action. She was copying him, and he knew himself better than anyone.

Goblin released a flurry of explosives from his hover-pad with a roar, “You won’t take anything from me! Not anymore!”

Stray shots slashed the ceiling as Spider-Woman changed to defensive maneuvers. The metal wailed menacingly above you, bowing from the weight of the other floors in the building. You ducked as a bolt sprung free and dented frighteningly deep in the platform. When you stood, the dent was perfectly centered in the shadow of your head.

A scream ripped from Goblin’s throat as he glitched again, limbs tossing as he fell from his glider. The pad continued whipping around the room, its corrupting virus spreading to the supports of the lab, the walls, the broken window, the screens, warping their sizes and compositions; the beakers on an equipment cart were turned into liquor bottles, a fridge multiplied into gradually miniaturized versions of itself like a matryoshka doll, and a notepad blinked into an origami bird.

Goblin was going to level this building.

Your surroundings continued to destabilize until your feet were scrambling for purchase on disappearing terrain. The webbed barrier that protected you lost the wall it was secured to, dangling freely. You fell forward, hanging onto it, shouting in fear at the precipitous drop that awaited you.

Spider-Woman’s eyes shot to you in panic. She calculated, calculated, recalculated how to save you, apprehend her enemy, and catch his hover-pad before it reduced the entire complex into freeform shapes and colors, but the variables kept changing on her and nothing was staying still and she had to just move without thinking. She bounded towards Goblin, socking him in the jaw and stuffing his mouth with his cape, before focusing on you. She aimed her wrist, shot a web, and you reached out to her, your hands burning—

The glider zipped in front of Spider-Woman’s trajectory and caught her web, lifting both her and Goblin away.

“No!” Spider-Woman screamed. But before she could release herself, Goblin dug his fingers into her shoulders, tearing his way to higher ground before bestowing his ammo belt upon Spider-Woman like a lei. He clocked his foot on the right side of her jaw, sending her soaring toward the lab’s electron microscope. She thudded against its silver body and skidded part-ways down before sticking on, wobbly from her joyride. She looked down, processing the ramping tick, tick, tick, ticktickticktick—

She ripped the belt off just as a deafening crackle eviscerated the sound barrier, an onyx cloud of smoke metastasizing from the fulguration.

The blast provided you enough momentum to swing to the balcony ladder, rattling up its bars. You heard a miserable groan behind you, turning to see the electron microscope slowly, ever so slightly, jut its lip. Spider-Woman laid on her side, black soot eating her body like necrotic tissue. One arm folded across her torso as the other furiously twiddled something. You gasped—had she broken a bone? Was her suit malfunctioning?

The microscope ripped free of its reinforcements and careened to the floor and you tore afresh your scab of a voice, “SPIDER-WOMAN, WATCH OUT!”

The microscope met her in a binding crush. Dust fumigated the air in waves, cloaking Goblin in their riptide. He advanced on Spider-Woman, her pinned body attempting depleted, drained thrashes to escape her entrapment.

“You’re clearly not the Spider-Man I know,” he growled, “You deserve less than this defeat.”

He planted a flat turret on the ground and turned to the window, the twinkling lights of skyscrapers like stars.

“Maybe the city has what I’m looking for.” The turret counted down from fifteen seconds. Fourteen. Thirteen. "Oh, Liz, how could you do this to me..."

Goblin ascended, reinvigorated in his raze as he greeted the ethereal glow of the downtown. Yet the sparking wires in the lab did not die behind him; something bright and brilliant as the sun opened up in the crevasse of the microscope’s base. A bold new challenger charged from its depths, snatching the turret and lobbing it at Goblin hard as an oncoming train. The villain collided against the wall as the final seconds depleted, swallowing him in a scorching boom.

This newcomer stayed in a predatory crouch, the crimson designs on their suit the only thing distinguishing them from the abyssal maw of the ruined lab. Was this person Spider-Woman’s sidekick? You understood sidekicks to be smaller. Jauntier. Opposed to murder.

You studied how this new hero lifted the microscope from Spider-Woman’s body with ease, both of them rounding to capture their enemy. Yet when the chaos cleared, Goblin was missing from the wreck. Faint beeping perked Spider-Woman’s ears—as she called for her comrade to duck, a bomb activated, unleashing a maelstrom of fire as it split and angled itself into an angry glitch. The room around you malfunctioned and you dashed before you became as abstract and disfigured as the beam you clung to. The meteoric shower of fiberglass and metal reflected off the silver lettering of the lab's pharmaceutical repository almost a dozen meters across from you.

Spider-Woman was slower than her companion, moving in a stiff and conserved way that allowed Goblin to zip past her.

Her partner bounded towards their adversary, “I need you to get it together!”

“On it!”

It appeared you’d mistakened the pair’s dynamic. This gave you pause—Spider-Woman didn’t answer to anyone. Spider-Woman has also never bled this much.

You dropped to the ground, trying to make your way to the repository. You couldn’t live with yourself if your only contribution to this event was to act as an audience to your protector’s defeat.

Everybody, at one point, has wanted to be a hero. The most common desire in the world is to be exceptional, yet only a select few, chosen by a higher power or lucky enough to survive a hapless accident, were granted the ability to change the world. The rest could only dream, or else admire heroes from afar. Or, under particular circ*mstances, act heroically. The crowning achievement of your life was acceptance into Alchemax’s Genomics program, yet while your genius was a rarity in your hometown, you learned that it was the barest standard for the world’s most cutting-edge research institution. Your experiments were numerous. Your successes, few. But you were an expert in the art of trying.

You wove between upturned power banks, your sullied coat camouflaging you from the blazing periphery of Spider-Woman’s…whoever-that-is and the Green Goblin. The pair collided and repelled with the flaring brilliance of atoms above you, all jeweled webbing and superluminous gunpowder.

You glued yourself to the repository door, praying you wouldn’t have to try overriding another system as you slapped your badge over the key reader. The doors fwooshed halfway before getting stuck on some pebbled metal. You squeezed into the opening and kicked it into submission, tumbling inside and grabbing whatever unbroken, un-bubbling, un-discolored bottle of liquid you could find: rubbing alcohol, phenytoin, silver sulfadiazine, a sports drink that a coworker left in here by accident—

The ceiling above you caved so dramatically you nearly tore a hamstring as you dropped into the splits. You used your lab coat as a rucksack to carry your goods as you bounded back outside, running past a gigantic brass arcade token, a fuschia Pietá, and a popcorn cart.

Spider-Woman continued providing auxiliary support against the Goblin, but she remained unable to determine a move that would end this thing entirely. She was scared. She shot a web at Goblin’s shins, intending to bind them together and knock him off his glider. He fell, but the glider charged right at her, knocking against her temple before flying back to its owner. Goblin locked on by his hands, baiting her partner away.

You skidded to Spider-Woman, looking her over—several abrasions where her metal enhancements met skin, burns, and one particular flayed stretch of flesh on her stomach was so bright with blood it looked candied.

“Even superheroes gotta work overtime, huh?”

“Overtime… ten seconds on the clock, the championship is on the line,” Spider-Woman mumbled, flicking her wrist. “Rookie goes in for a sky hook and feints it…”

Oh, dear. Your head was down and your hands steady as you worked, throwing together a co*cktail of fluids into an IV bag and inserting the fine needle into her neck. You handed her the sports drink, checked her pulse, and jammed your taser into her armpit to deliver a thousand jolts of lightning.

Spider-Woman exploded upright, “CHEESE AND RICE—”

You were pushed onto your ass as she patted down her body, the skin repairing itself in microscopic sutures. She looked at you like you’d spoken backwards. Or sprouted a second head. Or resurrected a corpse.

“What the hell was that?!” She bounced to her feet, “I feel like I got bit by another spider!”

“Just like starting a car battery! Only, you need to keep moving to expel the excess energy. Or you might go into cardiac arrest.” Your laugh deflated out of you in flat squawks, “Will. You will go into cardiac arrest.”

Spider-Woman started jogging in place, “How can I repay you?”

“I’d love an autograph.”

The ground rumbled beneath you as Goblin fired another blinding beam. You jumped one way as Spider-Woman jumped another, split apart by this totem of hellfire. Spider-Woman swung back into action, doubling with her partner to each punch Goblin on either side of his face.

The unstable ground tripped you as you rushed for cover, making you land squarely on the back of your head. Goblin hovered above the smoke, cackling even as his body jumbled itself into polygons. As the room continued to wildly abstract and smoke canvassed your line of sight, you recognized two red beams shooting at Goblin’s hover-pad. You rubbed your head, woozy, making out the flex of the unknown hero's jaw as they held the Goblin’s head, removed their mask, and dove forward. It could only be your doubling vision that extended this hero’s teeth from their gums like silver bullets.

The two crashed to the floor. The lights extinguished, drowning the room in darkness. Goblin was so bound tight in red webbing that in silhouette he looked like a spool of sewing thread. You braced yourself for any sign of the battle continuing, but he remained completely prone. Still as though dead.

You stared at the branch-like designs of the red ropes long enough to realize they were similar to the webs that had bound you. Following their thread, you saw the strange newcomer unfurl to their full height, their shadow crawling over the marred metal floor. Their suit flickered, slicingly geometric, in contrast to the smooth, aquatic second skin Spider-Woman donned. You gazed at the icon emblazoned on the front of this figure’s chest and tingled with realization, the screen static of your brain becoming sparking electricity—two Spiders.

Many times you fantasized what being a Spider-Person would be like. The feats of daring, the stylish costume, the trust and dependence of the public, the knowledge that you had what it took to keep the world functioning. You would be a pioneer into the foray of the unknown! Your actions could be the key to advancing the most nascent fields of science to their apex! What possibilities for the future of human evolution could be explored through studying your physiology? Would your powers be like a set of locked drawers that needed particular triggers to reveal themselves, or were they like cooking ingredients, separate and whole on their own but able to combine with one another to create new abilities? While the dream no longer kept you up at night, it was a welcome salve to your many late nights at the lab miserably trying to make progress on your experiments.

The sum total of which was now obliterated by several billion parts of dimensional glitching per megaton of gasoline. Your entire department was gone. You stared at Spider-Woman, walloped but intact, and shuddered a sigh of relief. Hero work, you concluded, was too big of a responsibility.

The Spider-Man before you appeared to catalog the damage, but the yellow screens beaming up from their holographic cuffs looked more like a radiation panel than a traditional collateral scan, displaying writhing masses of energy clinging to the debris of the building. You sat on the floor, panting, covered in a mixture of sweat and several vats of amniotic fluid that would have served as the control site for a project on spliceosome cycle acceleration. Craning your neck and keeping low, you observed their actions, guessing the significance of each button-mash and color-key. Spider-Woman turned over debris and equipment in search of something—you, most likely, although you wanted to stall the wellness check until you figured out where this stranger came from, how they knew each other, and why they were so different. You tracked their movements with frantic fixation, hiding behind part of a blown wall. You edged close enough to clarify their low mumbling.

“This job was too quick to have needed backup,” Spider-Man said. He cuffed Goblin in some shiny alloy and rolled him to the side.

“You just finished him off for me,” Spider-Woman quipped, “At the last minute the tide turned. Don’t be so worried.”

“I’m not ‘worrying,’ I’m being pragmatic. We buddy-up for kicks and we’ll be defenseless against future anomalies. Determine if you need reinforcements before confronting the enemy.”

“What happened to teamwork? You know, ‘friendly neighborhood—’”

“We’re all different versions of the same persona. If you can’t rely on yourself to make these decisions, you impact the effectiveness of the entire Society.” He looked down at the graphs projecting from his wrist, scrubbing through them with a thoughtful tilt of his head. His words followed one another in an even rote, like a tumbler of cement, “However, now that everything here is where it should be, I’m eager to return this world to your custody.”

Behind this pair was the still-spinning, overturned wreckage of a centrifuge. It was the star of four grant proposals and a main feature of the city’s high-school field trips. You had christened it “Martin.”

You focused beyond it to the deflated rubber ball that was the Green Goblin. You wanted to know what could have stunned such an opponent to reduce him to deadweight. You slunk over, turtling your body to remain hidden amongst the rubble. You came to the Goblin’s side, tented beneath two converging plates of ceiling, and turned his body until you found perforations in his neck. Prominent bite marks mottled his skin, with some kind of viscous saliva oozing from the wound. You took a pen from the front pocket of your lab coat and prodded.

“I’ll ring if anything else pops up,” Spider-Woman promised with a two-finger salute. Her posture relaxed into a playful contrapposto, fingers splitting into a peace-sign. “Especially if it includes a celebratory dinner.”

Spider-Man inhaled with the rattling inflexibility of a rusted pipe.

“Camaraderie improves morale and performance, y’know.” Spider-Woman’s hand flattened into a visor over her eyes, the eyes of her mask hair-thin lines as they squinted against the dimness.

“Hey, you wouldn’t have happened to have seen a researcher nearby?”

You stiffened. Time was knocking on judgment’s door. You tried organizing your thoughts into mental notes, methodically prodding the skin, but the poor light prevented you from determining if the mutilated tissue was from chemical degeneration or physical trauma. As you explored the sight you looked up to find the Goblin’s eyes, terrifyingly wide, staring directly at you.

You launched backward with a yelp, shuffling some dust as you kicked away. Your reflexes, though you were relieved to find them still sharp, were wasted, as Goblin continued laying there. Alert, but immobile. Aware of how defenseless he was.

Your brain chimed with a coherent thought: paralyzed.

In the next instant the crush around you was shoved to the side, breaking into pebbles and stray bands of steel. Hauled up by your collar, you stared at the masked visage of Spider-Man, kicking your feet uselessly in search of the distant ground. Goblin was very much not dead. And you were very much about to be.

“Helping the enemy. I should have known.” Spider-Man’s anger was a jagged summit, “Always a constant with Alchemax.”

“I wasn’t helping him! I swear!” You dropped your pen, raising your hands in surrender. You hoped the gesture affirmed your innocence, but it only made you feel like you were inviting your end. “Please, he nearly killed me, I just wanted to see what finally stopped him.”

Spider-Woman struck his elbow, catching you on your drop and sparing you from tempting a second concussion.

“Easy, tiger, our Alchemax went through its rebellious phase ages ago,” Spider-Woman chided. “I make my suits here, same with my tech.”

She turned her sunny charisma onto you, cradling your splayed limbs against her chest with one mighty arm. “You were just amazed, right? A bit impressed by us saving you and all?”

Bit. You clamped lightly on your lip.

“I was curious,” you replied dumbly. You saw her eye twitch in bafflement. She was sticking her neck out for this random degenerate and you had the gall to stoke the flames higher? You didn’t even sound ashamed!

Despite her placatingly clapping his shoulder with her free hand, Spider-Woman’s partner generated tension like a force of gravity. Spider-Man’s eyes narrowed on you before shaking his head; you wondered if it was because he realized the folly of his aggression or determined this scuffle unworthy of his time.

“It’s temporary. Nothing to be concerned about,” he murmured. He turned to Spider-Woman and co*cked his chin to the general left, gesturing to an entryway that wasn’t there. “Better come with me to HQ and finish this.”

Wait.

You grasped Spider-Woman’s wrist, “You’re leaving?”

“Job description’s been expanded,” she apologized, “Gotta protect plucky scientists from all over nowadays.”

“You just trashed my lab—” you wiggled furiously until she took the hint to release you, gently but awkwardly, onto the floor. She appeared surprised at your anger. “You and that—that movie-monster lunatic and his haunted house props destroyed the sum total of years of actual blood and sweat I put into my research—”

“File an insurance claim,” Spider-Man dismissed. He trudged to where Goblin remained catatonic on the ground, reduced to making vague, pre-verbal hissing sounds as his only defense. A gold portal opened a few yards away. Your diaphragm froze solid and plummeted to your knees.

You rushed to intercept Spider-Man, holding your arms out and shifting right and left in a wimpy charade of a soccer goalie.

“What kind of heroes are you guys? What if something like this happens again?”

“Then we’ll stop it,” Spider-Woman assured you. She spoke like the promise was a bedtime story, like her continuous triumph was a natural law, even though right before this she was bleeding out of every pore, “Right, Mi—man?”

The adrenaline that prevented you from getting impaled by a million projectile test-tubes minutes ago had converted seamlessly into indignation. Your feet dug into the floor like a herm as you shoved against the both of them.

You were pretty certain you just sprained your wrists.

“What I do is just as important as your jobs! The work doesn’t end at just beating the bad-guy!”

“This ain’t even my mess to clean up in the first place,” Spider-Man barked.

Your jaw dropped. “You used Martin as a flying discus!”

“What my friend means is that we’re in a situation that extends beyond just us,” Spider-Woman chimed in, “Our green buddy here is from… out of town. And we gotta help him get home. We have bigger things to deal with than recovering your work.”

“Like anomalies, right?” you pressed. Spider-Man lowered his head toward you in what felt like a glower, “Anomalies to what? Is he from the same place you’re from? He said he knew a ‘Spider-Man,’ so—oh, but, I wouldn’t want to assume—”

“He’s not with me.” He sounded faintly offended. You’d be too, this Goblin looked and smelled like sentient botulism.

“Are you from the future?” You pointed to the Goblin, “Are you time-travelers?”

“Eh, sometimes,” Spider-Woman shrugged.

Spider-Man threw up a hand in exasperation, “Why are you encouraging this? Look—” he snapped back to you, “—Think of this as a lesson to… use a backup drive from now on, or something. Walk it off.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” you rang dryly, “I’m sorry for doing you both the inconvenience of being a defenseless citizen—New York’s guardian angel has always been vocal about doing the bare minimum to help those around her.”

Spider-Woman recoiled as though she’d been slapped.

You crossed your arms and blocked Spider-Man’s path, violating his personal bubble like a droning fly. Your eyes beseeched them. You had little hope that your results were uploaded to Alchemax’s cloud before Goblin appeared, but you were determined to source what data you could from the rubble.

“Forgetting something?”

Some kind of elf shimmered above Spider-Man’s shoulder. She peered at him over her heart-shaped glasses, pointing casually at Goblin’s feet.

“Forgetting to tell me?” Spider-Man retorted, “He’s completely disarmed, Lyla.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem,” Spider-Man’s… conscience(?) said, “Scans aren’t picking up the location of Goblin’s glider. We leave it here, it’ll continue to destabilize the atomic structure of this reality.”

You blanched, “What do you mean ‘of this reality’?!”

Lyla approached you in a series of clipped frames, conjuring a model of the lab.

“Pretty standard reaction, basically. Matter will continue to aggregate around the glider in a sort of accretion disk, becoming more dense until it collapses into itself and ends existences as you know it.”

“Oh, like a black hole!” Your face fell as the simulated room was swallowed by the inky whirlpool beneath your avatar’s feet. “Oh, like a black hole.”

Spider-Woman put her fists on her hips. While her mask was in its usual, neutral position, she appeared charged with something you couldn’t place. She pounded her chest, clearing her throat.

“Well, if we already need to stay here.” She gingerly grasped your shoulders as a coach would to their star player, “May as well help the doctor out, yeah? Kind of defeats the point of what we’re doing if we leave this place worse than we found it.”

Your smile spread across your face like an uncrumpled piece of paper.

Spider-Man pinched the bridge of his nose, dragged his hand down his face. His claws caught the molecular fiber of his mask, momentarily disrupting the projected design into splinters of magenta. Throwing Goblin unceremoniously to the ground, he trudged forward and kicked a machine out the window. It thundered against the base of the building below.

“Is anyone gonna help me look,” he demanded.

Lyla darted around the room with a cartoonish magnifying glass, performing admirably.

As the only two superhumans in the room began shifting the debris, you tailed Spider-Man. You studied the way his muscles strained as he shoved aside mounds of decimated concrete. He was a far cry from the nano-technical grace of Spider-Woman, seeming somewhat more…organic.

“Impressive,” you whispered.

Spider-Man glared back at you. “You picked the wrong one to cheerlead, Doc.”

A chill crystallized your spine; you didn’t think he could hear that. “You matched my anger, you can’t match my kindness?”

“Switched between the two a bit quick, don’t you think?”

“Ah, because you’re helping me now.” You gave him a wide berth as he flexed his hand, unsheathing claws to lift one of the microscope’s console stations. Everything about this Spider-Man was so sharp, so piercing, so easy to get hooked on.

“You can produce venom, yes?”

Any reaction you could have gleaned was redirected to his careful pause over the crater he’d cleared. He began moving away from you.

“The paralytic agent—” You orbited him. “Does it interfere with the brain’s ability to send signals to the rest of the body or does it seize the musculature itself?”

“Am I sitting on the cure to cancer?”

“Humor me,” you pleaded, “You’re already here, what’s the harm in answering a few questions? Conversation makes the work go by faster.”

“And how do I know you won’t use this information against me?”

“Nobody would want to make an enemy of a superhero, would they?”

You walked backwards to continue facing him, but tripped on a steel beam. Spider-Man caught you by your bicep, picked you up, and placed you on your feet a comfortable distance away from him. You touched your arm but found no marks, astonishment cascading over you at his reaction time and adaptability.

Spider-Man jutted his chin at you, neck flexing. “Stay out of the way.”

The appeal to his ego did not work. But that was also not a “no.”

You grabbed a tablet and stylus.

“Does it hurt to produce?”

Nothing.

“In what body fluids is this venom present?”

Spider-Man lifted a bookcase above his head, turning over the debris with his foot.

“Blood, sweat, mucus…” you smirked, “Bile?”

“No.” His tone was especially flat.

“Urine?”

“Absolutely not.”

“What about sem—”

“None—” He turned to you with such force that several books lodged loose and fell on his shoulders. He had the embarrassed aura of a wet dog. “None of that. Just the fangs.”

“Can you produce it at will, or is there a finite amount that can be created and stored at one time?”

“…It’s just there. I don’t think about it.”

Spider-Woman stared sideways at the both of you, equal parts intrigued and disturbed. It seemed she, too, had not thought about the nature of this ability before now, or at least tried not to.

You and Spider-Man approached a section of the room which had collapsed in on itself to block off access to the supply closet. His watch trilled softly and trepidatiously, suggesting something of interest awaited within the alcove.

“Does the recipient of the bite still retain full experience of their senses,” you asked. “I’d take a primary account from your enemy over there, but it doesn't look like he's in the mood to talk.”

Spider-Man ignored you as he started scattering the deadweight blocking off the closet, but the more he cleared, the more clearance there was for the roofing to sag inward.

“Stop that!” You waved your hand, “It’ll collapse!”

He waited until he could confirm your observation for himself before pulling back. Goodness, where did Spider-Woman even find this guy?

Spider-Man tapped a few buttons on his watch, launching a miniature drone from its neon paneling to explore where he couldn’t reach. You caught the frayed edge of its scans as it beeped and booped about, before singing a victorious little jingle. Spider-Man started excavating with more fiery vigor.

“You are exceptionally stubborn.”

“I’ll dig into the damn thing if I have to. Anything to get this over with.”

Digging. Dig. Tunnel. Your eyes glossed like river stones as you examined the shadowy entrance, pocketed between two blocks of concrete.

“You’ll damage whatever’s inside.”

He keeled backwards as he lifted a particularly burdensome lump of rock, “And what do you suggest I do?”

You stuck your tablet into the crook of his arm and dove into the opening as Spider-Man clipped an affronted “Hey!” behind you. He reached out a clawed hand before darting back to support his boulder and catch your tablet. By the time he sent the former sailing and tucked the latter under his other arm, you’d vanished.

“Get the hell out of there!”

“Uh-huh,” you returned, “Soon as I can!”

The closet was dingy and mangled in a way that seemed tastefully abstract, if only because you couldn’t see how damaged it really was; where once the shelves were beautifully perpendicular, they now intersected and bent with an offbeat flair. You navigated the path on tip-toes and touched nothing, for fear of activating some sort of fantastical boobytrap that would seal you in this prison forever.

You traversed until you found a piece of jet smothered beneath the dust and transmogrified tools of your lab. You had to rely on your untrained legs in order to gouge it from its nest, kicking it upright until you could curl a hand around one of its textured bars. You laughed with a syrupy kind of self-satisfaction that felt as stolen from Goblin as the glider you currently possessed.

You crawled out of the tunnel feet-first, dragging the pad behind you. You were pulled out the rest of the way by Spider-Man, who held you by your ankle as though you were felled game.

Spider-Man set you down and took the glider from you, pointing at the ground with his free hand. “Stay.”

“I thought you wanted me out of your way?”

His jaw was off-set with tension like he was gritting his teeth. You suppressed a laugh as he turned away. While the lighting in the lab was still busted, it was enough improvement over the closet to reveal that you had won only one busted half of the prize.

“That’s it?” Spider-Man demanded, shredding a panel on the glider as he turned it over. “This wasn’t worth you risking yourself like that. You need to be careful.”

“I am merely following your selfless example, oh amazing Spider-Man,” you volleyed, swiping back your tablet. He covered his chest like you’d exposed his bra.

Spider-Man knocked against your shoulder as he continued past you, “I never claimed to be a role model.”

“Then can I extort repayment for my assistance?”

He huffed. “Uh-huh. Try it.”

“I’d love a sample of your venom.”

“I wouldn’t.” He tilted his head. You couldn’t tell if he was amused or condescending to you, but he certainly wasn’t threatened. “There can’t be the slightest trace of extradimensional signature left in this place.”

“Then tell me how it can be recreated.”

“Via sabotaged lab experiment,” Spider-Man said. When he saw your hand continue to move over your tablet he pointed at you, “Don’t—Don’t actually do that.”

You nodded distractedly as you paced ahead of him, clacking merrily away on your keyboard. Spider-Man peered quizzically over your shoulder at what you were writing. The tiny font size and rapid scrolling of the pages thickened his roiling anxiety that perhaps he had actually given something away.

“Alright, let’s be serious—”

“Your watch is blinking.” You grinned as Spider-Man frantically flicked it open, “Lift this rock here.”

He did so, desperation for the prize overpowering his annoyance. While he still supported the mass on his shoulders, a half-toned Atlas, you circled him.

“What other properties does this venom have?”

He groaned, “What?”

“Is it only meant to incapacitate the victim or can it be used in a regenerative capacity?”

“Tell me when a bite has ever healed anyone.” He tossed the boulder to the side and spun to accost you for badgering him, but found no one there. He unsheathed his claws, set on edge.

“How long do the effects last?”

He jumped in an action you were tempted to call a spook, but in the next instant he brought himself to his full height, towering over you. His patience had run dry. “You wanna find out?”

You craned your neck up at him, “Absolutely.”

Spider-Man leaned back in regret at the provocation as you took a step closer to him. Your candid enthusiasm was disarming. You began backing him into the wall with a despicable gleam in your eye.

As Spider-Man took his next step, his foot sank into some kind of jellied padding. The loose rocks rumbled and shifted to reveal the other half of Goblin’s jet-black glider, wires sparking miserably like severed veins. Your eye caught something else, however. The glider laid atop petri dish samples of your prior experiment. You knelt down, gingerly touching the shards of glass, the fresh stitch of your agony ripped open.

“Jackpot,” Spider-Woman crowed. She had evidently been showing off her ability to bench press a freezer to Lyla and now bounded over in applause.

“What’s left of it, anyway.”

“Lyla,” Spider-Man called, somewhat tersely, “Final scan of the room. Please,” he added, like he didn't want to deal with any potential backtalk.

A ray of light passed over you and the remains of your work. Spider-Man caught your brimming tears as the scan concluded and rubbed his neck, turning to his screen.

“Think you could put Humpty-Dumpty back together again?” he added, enlarging an image of the sample in the simulation.

“It’ll take a minute,” Lyla warned.

“Well,” Spider-Man exhaled. You flicked your chin toward him in shock as he rounded with, “If it’s only a minute.”

He closed the screen, plunging the lab into total darkness.

A vision of a double helix replayed, the grainy feed of its ladder-like nucleobases slowly sharpening into an even clearer picture than what your microscope offered: the cell, too large to be observed on screen, was attacked by the needle-like tail fibers of a viral body. A table beside the holoscreen annotated the chaotic tide of symbols and letters as they clashed together and trickled into neat scrolls of chemical reactions. A cry of relief escaped you as you saw the DNA strand rebond, the same dense amino acid being born from the strand’s fusion with the disease. If a recording of your test could be produced like this, then restarting the experiment was at least that much easier.

Spider-Man’s eyes doubled in size. “What is this?”

“I study adaptive immunity at Alchemax. As you can see—” you always felt so sophisticated when using that phrase, even as your voice cracked, “—The sample remembered the substance that destroyed it, and reconfigured its structure to produce new defenses.”

“See,” Spider-Woman bragged, “We might not have flying cars in our universe, but we do have unparalleled breakthroughs in medicine.”

“And free healthcare!” you beamed. “Imagine coming down with the common cold. Instead of a vaccine every year, your body could invade the virus that invaded you and hijack it to create new stem cells. Now, instead of just recovery, you’ll have improved respiratory function altogether. It could end drug-resistant strains entirely!”

Spider-Man drew back. “Sounds like one gene splice away from a disfiguring mutation.”

“It involves no gene splicing whatsoever,” you replied. “The genetic code isn’t intruded upon, just provided more possibilities to sequence itself.”

The severe horizon of Spider-Man’s shoulders sloped, rounder in the projection's autumnal glow. “Impressive.”

“My dissertation was based on this. My life’s passion has always been genetics.”

Spider-Man tilted his chin down barely a millimeter, a subconscious maneuver. “So has mine.”

Lyla collapsed the simulation and transferred the code to your tablet. You hugged it to your chest in gratitude.

“So, you can fix the human genome,” Spider-Man mused. Your brow furrowed at the way he said “fix”.

“If I can recreate my experiment, then yes.” You looked around at the ruined space, wilting. “But it’ll take months to get this place running again. My supervisors were already getting sick of me before this anyway. I doubt my work would be a priority to resume at a different location considering it had about thirty seconds of success before being completely vaporized.”

Spider-Man considered you in total silence as Spider-Woman threw Goblin over her shoulder, holding his glider with her other hand. She opened the portal again, whistling for her partner.

“Weren’t you the one that wanted to get out of here ASAP, boss?”

Spider-Man’s head twitched toward her. His movements were labored, heavy, as if resisting a strong bout of wind as he stalked toward the light. He looked over his shoulder to you, fists clenched.

“Lyla.”

“Right here,” rang the coy reply.

“What’s their story, huh?”

You winced as another scan passed over you, rubbing your puffy and watery eyes.

“Model reports no instrumentalization to the canon.”

Was that bad?

“We have the facilities to accommodate this doctor’s research?”

Oh, that’s definitely not bad.

The AI blinked in and out of view as she calibrated her answer. “Yeah, definitely.”

You rose to your feet, jaw slack. Spider-Man turned to you.

“You want in?”

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

Learning of the multiverse’s existence was not as shocking as one would expect.

You understood none of the theory, of course, but never in your life had you rejected its possibility. It hit you in a startling, but ultimately mundane brush to the face, not all that different to accidentally walking into the branch of a tree because you were on your phone.

Coming to terms with this revelation was equally as mild and flat. It was like facing a closed door, unable to peek at what environment lay beyond it. Sealed against all signs of life—sound, shadow, vibration—a divide so solid it appeared to be a complete ending point altogether. Certain strains of philosophy argue that nothing exists beyond that door until it opens. Others posit that nothing exists outside the individual consciousness. But you understand, have always understood, this is ridiculous; the door’s purpose is to connect two points. Perhaps it was incorrect to call your reaction to the multiverse’s existence “flat”—it was absent of doubt, certainly, but not of emotion. The feeling was more akin to reassurance. The comfort that something waited beyond that door. That neither party was alone.

Or, perhaps, accepting the multiverse was easy because there was already proof of aliens. In your world, that is. Your world was a picture book compared to all this.

In your universe, there was the one-and-only Spider-Woman. This one-and-only elite individual, you learned, had infinite iterations across the multiverse in title alone, including one hundred eighty nine with her alter ego, forty three alter-dimensional heroic relatives and descendents, and twelve exact duplicates. When all your life you’d been told that excellence was spontaneous and rare, it was inspiring to see that across nearly all timelines, the saviors of the fabric of existence itself shared humble backstories and a simple desire to do the right thing. No matter how complicated reality became, it eased your anxiety to know that the most important element to success was so completely straightforward.

The rest of your life was not—quite not, in fact.

“Tell it to me straight, Doctor.”

You hunched over the somber form of Spider-Man, carnation clobber drowning the examination table in austere drapes, sweat mottling his brow in glass beads, salted doubly with the rush of acrid tears.

“I don’t know how to say this,” you dictated, each word as methodologically laid as the drum of the stethoscope you pressed to this hero’s trembling chest.

He clasped your cool, nitrile-bedecked hand and searched your impassible face for a clue to his fate. Nay—could it even be—his end? So many victories scraped from the straggling seconds of the penultimate hour, only for his demise to have snuck behind him, his capacity to shoulder the burdens of the innocent exactly what this disease gorged itself upon.

“Peter…” you laid the stethoscope over your neck like a yoke. This part was never easy. You pressed your interlaced fingers to your mouth.

“You have high cholesterol.”

Peter B. Parker’s torso collapsed over his knees in disbelief as you consolingly patted his knee. Behind him spluttered the delighted babbles of his daughter; Mayday climbed sportingly over her dad’s exposed back and clung to his gray-flecked hair, attempting to find an appropriate angle to swing to the top of a lustrous medicine cabinet.

Peter’s jaw quivered like a wind-battered tree, “How much time do I have left?”

“Jeez, Parker, you just need to eat more than one vegetable a week, calm down.” You collapsed back into your chair, swiveling to retrieve a cheap pamphlet plastered with cartoon broccoli. “No physique can last forever on queso blanco and quarter-pounders. Try going halfsies on Mayday’s baby puree, or something.”

“I was hoping for a more prestige cure, to be honest,” he drawled, handing the pulpy thing to Mayday. She unfolded it with an enthralled stare, smothering it over Peter’s face. His voice was slightly muffled by the waxy paper, “You can’t make a—what—a shot or a pill for this?”

“Unfortunately for both of us, I’m unable to practice live human experimentation.” You clicked your tongue, “Legally.”

You didn’t even have a medical license in this dimension.

Mayday shot a web from her bitty gauntlets only to strike your reflexed hand, tumbling right into your lap. She squealed high and sharp, intrigued at how else you could intercept her schemes. She dangled on your outstretched arm, enticing you to nab her before she snatched the bouquet of lollipops on your desk.

“I’m afraid there’s no way to beat this except by patience and discipline. Come now, you want to set a good example for your girl, right?” You tickled Mayday against your side as you stood, bouncing her on your hip as she continued cooing. “Who, by the way, is getting so gosh-darn strong nowadays, isn’t she~?”

“Can’t even believe she’s mine! Gotta be all MJ.”

Mayday jumped from your shoulder onto the ceiling, scuttling to the display of arachno-humanoid X-Rays at the opposite corner of the room.

“If she breaks anything, you’ll be my first test subject,” you warned him. You baited Mayday with a watermelon sucker and began ushering the family pair toward a bare stretch of wall. Peter collected his child and deposited her into his baby sling, playfully admonishing her for giving this meanie doctor such a hard time(even though they deserve it for letting Daddy stay sick).

“Didn’t say you couldn’t come back in the future, did I?” You fixed your hair and practiced posing, trying to balance reverent astonishment with sophisticated grace as Lyla’s elegant self apparated before you.

“Alright, everyone, say ‘cheese!’”

The accompanying flurry of flashbulbs served style over function, but you nevertheless delighted in the ecstasy of the moment: you, prodigy-turned-pundit, saving those that saved everyone else. It felt like the start to something amazing.

Lyla flurried her thumbs across her phone, sending the photograph to a sprawling gallery of portraits on your screen, all from your appointments with other Society members.

“I’ll just need your signature here—” you held your tablet out for Peter to bless with his autograph, upon which he scrawled an inordinate amount of stars and smiley faces until your face was a mess of yellow marker.

A flash of purple in the cuff of Peter’s robe caught your attention as the three of you exited the examination room, and you brightly plucked a stolen lollipop from his person to nestle in the pocket of your lab coat. A whine reverberated from his throat as he slumped after you, passing whirling medical equipment and spinning gauges toward the exit.

“C’mon, it’s grape! Nobody likes grape.”

“Then you’re nabbing this just for the sake of it? I’m disappointed in you, Peter.”

“The excitement of petty theft makes up for the awful flavor.” He ripped the plastic seal off Mayday’s stick, “You’ve never felt that joy? Getting away with something right under everyone else’s noses?”

You snorted in laughter, throwing your head back, “You sound like a supervillain!”

“I sound precisely like a superhero.”

“The dividing line is really that thin, huh?”

You opened the doors to a lobby overcrowded with Spiders of all shades, stripes, tones, and tints, jostling to write down their names on a waitlist to see you. Most of them had various chromatically aberating injuries, byproducts of inter-dimensional scrapes that couldn’t be healed by more traditional, stable forms of emergency response care provided by the Society’s other medics. Essentially, you were a back-alley doctor operating under the grubby, peeling sticker of legitimization that was Miguel O’Hara’s approval.

Who never came to check in on you, strangely enough.

“Alright, may I please see…” you lifted a page on your clipboard, “Peter Parker.”

A dozen hands shot into the air as you leaned against the door; they always forget to sign off with what Earth they’re from, you opined as you patted your pocket for the candy you secured, anticipating the need for a pick-me-up to deal with these next few hours. The pocket laid completely flat against your chest.

Your head snapped up to see Peter B. toasting sticks with his daughter, his profile a piping-hot slice of superiority as he meandered down the hall. You stuck your tongue out at him, filing away this grievance for later.

After squabbling with a sea of bespectacled puppies and the closest thing you had to a receptionist, Lyla, you finally found the man you were supposed to treat. Your fifty-sixth Peter Parker of the day cradled a still-crackling electrocuted arm, the muscles twitching and spasming sporadically enough that you took a precautionary step backward. Parker mistook this for permission to proceed toward the door.

“Ah-ah-ah, I’m not treating you broke hatchlings out of the kindness of my heart.” You beckoned him toward you, “This is your first visit to my clinic, yes? Cough up the intel.”

Parker doubled over in a sheepishly conciliatory bow, patting around for his phone, “Oh, r-right! In my universe…”

You hugged your clipboard as he reoriented an upside-down photograph of your counterpart, the upper corner obscured by the brick arch of a bridge; “your” hair was chopped something fierce, and the edge of a smoky tattoo peeked from under the collar of “your” shirt, but the set of “your” chin was unmistakably the same. Your parallel self was captured ringing up a pair of preteens for a cask of soda and powdered donuts.

“You’re a bodega clerk.”

~~~

You stared at the screen before you. You were before a microscope again. You were the only person in the room again. Thus was a day’s work for such a glorious researcher, rappelling from the most dangerous edges of scientific knowledge known to man and spider-kind. As Earth-928’s sun smudged itself over the horizon, you remained awake to test the samples you’d collected from your patients, analyzing how your bespoke medicine interacted with their blood cells.

Just as knowledge about your variant doppelgängers was your initial fee for the web-slingers that sought your services, and signed selfies and the occasional piggy-back swing through HQ were your exit fees, this was a supplementary, secret, third requirement for healing the unique injuries that so discorded righteous souls from their bodies: you extracted a small amount of DNA in order to figure out a way to make their hosts resilient to the whims of multiversal evil-doers. A small-scale evolution, but one that transcended planes of existence. The “Arachno-Humanoid phosphoramidite absorption project.”

The slide before you now, containing the genetic material of the resident hero of Earth-834, remained perfectly stable. Too stable, in fact—the zipper effect from your breakthrough trial was ultimately underwhelming in every batch of tests you’d performed on Spiders. Their accelerated healing proved too competent to bind with the invasive substances that attacked them, purging the viral agents entirely and leaving the traumatized DNA to wither away. Sometimes shiny new cells would flood the gap, depending on how young or recently bitten the hero was. It was an efficient, but also over-corrective, immunity.

You wondered if this obstacle could be overcome by somehow transplanting the viral agents’ telomeres onto those of the host’s chromosomes, but that would still demand expending the host’s own DNA rather than co-opting the reproductive faculties of the agent. You scribbled the formulae for the chain reaction on your tablet and hummed, puzzling over how to jumpstart a reaction so intense it would bypass the natural systems of a superhero’s healing factor. The variables you had to consider were so much more complex than even human DNA. The challenge both invigorated and infuriated you.

The cool aura of Lyla’s hologram fizzled behind you. Pink light consumed your vision as her heart-shaped glasses screened your eyes, her translucent head overlaying your own.

“Solid progress, Doc!”

You slumped over your microscope, “Does Sisyphus make progress if the rock always tumbles back down the hill?”

You grabbed your tablet to pen the last of your observations, returning Sample-834 to its spot in the frigid vault across the room.

“I’m not programmed to understand philosophical moping,” Lyla mused, “Which is why I can confidently say, yawn.”

You actually yawned, as though Lyla had reminded your body of its weariness. “What’s on the agenda, babe?”

Lyla scrolled through a list on her phone while she shifted her “weight” between her feet. You wondered whether the convincing minutiae of her mannerisms were a specifically designed feature of hers or patterns that her algorithm memorized.

“You’re ahead of schedule on all fronts. How’s that for progress?”

You rolled your eyes, waiting for her to continue. Lyla’s hum whirred like a fan as she processed her reply, “There’s really only one thing. You need to turn in your bi-weekly report to Miguel.”

You smiled, easy and unguarded, “I have nothing new to report.”

Lyla’s hologram rocked with a wave of static that appeared to you as a bristle. “You know you have to report all your observations.”

“Then how about, ‘Results have remained consistent across diverse trial environments.’”

“It’s been months since you were onboarded, Doctor,” Lyla pressed, and her tone was snarky in a way that betrayed anxiety, “You gotta have found something.”

“I’d be happy to answer any questions that haven’t been clarified by my updates.”

Lyla’s posture turned ram-rod straight as she phased in and out, like a rewinding VHS tape. You co*cked a brow. “Yeah, questions. Those’ll be sent shortly.”

“I’d prefer to discuss things with Miguel directly.” You tilted your head and leaned forward, studying the AI, “Perhaps in a formal meeting?”

“Eh… negative.”

You crossed your legs. “Why not? I’ve been here long enough to touch base with my…”

You drawed out that last word, tapping your chin as you contemplated a proper title. Miguel wasn’t exactly your boss, but he definitely wasn’t a colleague or an equal. Partly owing to an interest to remain in the ultra-secret multiversal superhero base, you were back-breakingly obsequious during your first few weeks at the Society. You’d expected an NDA and round-the-clock surveillance to be allowed to remain here, but it seemed your word of honor and as firm of a handshake as you could muster against Miguel’s hydraulic press of a grip was test enough. He never gave you assignments, ordered a change of protocol for your experiments, or even suggested the notion of a deadline for any of this, despite how insistent he was for you to reach another breakthrough. You settled on a term as vague as the man himself, “...Benefactor. Haven’t I?”

“I can put in a request for you,” Lyla offered.

“No, I’ve learned that those do nothing. But I’d like to know how my research is being used. Alchemax is at least that honest.”

You considered one another for the more tedious half of a minute. Lyla stammered in a way that reminded you of backspacing on a keyboard—that is, calibrated in response to some real-time input—and your skin prickled with goosebumps as you felt some nebulous force in the air coalesce into a third participant in this conversation, unseen but dominating, like dead air.

“You can be assured that your work is contributing to nothing untoward.”

“Well, then, I’m thankful such an immense amount of trust is mutual. Between Miguel and me, I mean.”

Lyla reset her face to complete neutrality.

“If I’m not being forced into compliance,” you concluded, “may I return to my work?”

Lyla gave a mocking salute and dissolved into glittering pixels. The feeling of being watched did not leave with her.

You analyzed the ceiling and walls, folding your legs to sit criss-cross in your desk chair as you looked for any screw or fleck of paint that was out of place. Humans were social creatures; you didn’t need a Spider-Sense to know when you weren’t alone.

You spun until your tablet dimmed and powered off. The knowledge that it was connected to the Society’s cloud made you neglect the device as though it were a changeling child, dangerous and parasitic. But you felt so out of control in the leaden air of your clinic, your conversation with Lyla replaying in your head and making you feel small, like a pawn or underling or intern that wasn’t worth the ink it took to print their badge. You fancied yourself a bit on strike at Miguel’s treatment.

You allowed your thoughts to wander to your exchange with Peter Parker #56 and guffawed in disbelief: A bodega clerk … “You” were probably barely making minimum wage. Had Peter ever interacted with “you” before? Would he even have remembered? You tried recalling any exchanges you had with cashiers but could not scratch away the blurry cellophane enveloping the details. Your stomach pickled with shame at this indifference to others; maybe such interactions had become so automatic you didn’t even realize if you were rude anymore. Even Spider-Man couldn’t remember everyone he ever saved, let alone bought a pack of gum from. Then you felt revulsion that you’d only thought about this now that it affected you. One of “you.”

However, it wasn’t just the fifty-sixth Peter either. Peters #1-55, a smattering of Mary Janes, one Flash Thompson, and some spunky “Spider-Boy” dweeb had all presented you glimpses at your multiversal variants. The tantalizing silhouettes of your copies were all unveiled to be hollow shells of your potential: a waiter at a greasy pitstop; a delivery driver; a D-list drama podcaster barely breaking one thousand streams per episode; and, worst of all, a grad school dropout that had to move back in with family. Your body shriveled inwards when Peter Parker #41 showed the photo of “you,” hair the dullest it’d ever been, the faded sweatshirt of a football team you never watched pulled over your knees as you curled into a ball, staring vacantly at your phone as you sat on the last unopened box of your stuff.

That wasn’t to say you were pathetic in every universe. But the height of your achievements was less “Nobel Prize winner” or “critically acclaimed actor” and more “fourth place in a cosplay contest.” The fact that you led the most successful of any of your potential lives enveloped your soul like a wet rag. The runner-up was Peter B. Parker’s world, where “you” were a high-school biology teacher in freaking Oswego. You felt no competitive zeal from this fact. You didn’t know what you felt. Offense. Mortification. Fear. Looking at your other selves, how little success would you attain with the rest of your life?

No matter who you were, you were an extra. An NPC. Cobbled together from the scraps and shavings of clay that made more important people. The only conclusion you could reach was that you just…didn't have that much potential.

You swallowed the rising lump in your throat and stopped spinning out of fear that you’d hurl all over your desk. Desperate to distract yourself from your current line of thinking, you started writing notes on copy paper, the messy handwriting making the variables inscrutable as runes, chicken scratch, or a cryptograph. But you understood it. At least you had your work. It was your legacy, the one thing about you that wasn’t weak and temporary.

Something scuttled behind your desk and toppled your thoughts. You remembered the cloying atmosphere of the room and pursed your lips. You wrote slower than you had before.

You caught a set of skinny little legs poking out from the wooden stand of a picture frame. Emptying your jar of lollipops, you flipped down the photograph and caught an absolutely adorable spider drone, it’s large shutter of an eye zooming in and out as it tapped miserably against its glass trap.

“I don’t imagine you wandered in here looking for flies,” you ribbed. The drone focused on you and widened its stance. “I suppose this is being broadcast directly to Miguel, right?”

The drone’s forelegs raised in a gesture you assumed to be menacing. You clicked your tongue.

“Miguel, if I didn’t know any better, I’d suspect you see me as a foe. This amount of surveillance is a waste on someone who’s shown they’ve got nothing to hide, don’t you think?”

The spider rammed futilely against the glass jar.

“That was a rhetorical question.” You walked over to the doors of your lab, crouching as you angled your little trap over the threshold. “Obviously, though I don’t know how, you stand to gain something from this project. Perhaps collaboration would expedite such results, no?”

You lifted the jar, but the drone remained perched in utter confusion, keeping its scrupulous black eye on your face. You flicked it off of your photo frame, sending it skipping along the floor until its legs could find traction, dazedly coming up to stand.

“Until then, I’ll keep my work very close to my chest.”

~~~

Once the appropriate amount of regret flooded your mind at how stupidly brazen your actions were, you holed up in your clinic expecting a squad of Spiders to storm in and expel you from the Society for insubordination. But you were neither summoned nor ambushed, and when the days stacked to form weeks, you began to wonder if you’d dreamt up the confrontation in a bout of microsleep.

Your popularity at the Society only grew as more dastardly nemeses sprouted in foreign worlds. Not every universe had a hero fit to join Spider Society—you’d shuddered when your patients told you about a supposed zombie Spider-Man—even with half its personnel being literal high school sophom*ores, so even the countless individuals Miguel had recruited began to spread thinner and thinner until you started making bets with Lyla on how long a Spider would last upon being discharged before they came hobbling back to your clinic.

Yet Miguel remained elusive.

The only times you’d caught glimpses of him were when you passed by the massive hangar that waitlisted villains for the Go Home Machine, but Miguel quickly foiled your subsequent attempts to follow him from there, his taut expression and inflamed retreat when he caught your presence comparable to embarrassment. Maybe cringe.

In all, your routine remained undisturbed. The more rational part of your brain demanded that you be more alert, but your id easily commandeered your tired, fragile body back to gumming takeout in your lab like a lugubrious cow savoring its cud. You sighed over the recordings of your most recent trials: while the host cells had progressed from instant cannibalization of the invading virus to simply exiling them to the depths of their cytoplasts like a toddler pushing their vegetables to the edge of their plate, the cells eventually rejected everything in a purge so vicious you were convinced they were doing it to spite you.

Your cuff blinked to life and you held it at the very edge of your periphery. The artificial yellow light couldn’t even offer you warmth in exchange for barraging your sight, so you screwed your eyes shut and continued eating from your styrofoam container of paneer.

“Lyla, light of my life,” you yawned. “Thanks for the company, babe, you know how I miss you.”

Lyla’s miniature form walked up your arm to sit on your shoulder. “Kind of sad to say that about an AI, don’tcha think?”

“Even meaner to spurn the affections of a friend.” You moved in a more careful way about your station even though you felt no weight on your shoulder and knew Lyla couldn’t fall off.

“Yeah, but I like being mean.”

Her ensuing silence did not come across like a definitive end to the conversation; it felt vacuous, expecting you to fill it. You squeezed a pipette into your petri dish and adjusted the knobs on your microscope, hoping Lyla wasn’t programmed to recognize the emotion attributable to the purse of your lips.

“Are you here to record my progress for Miguel?” Underneath the layers of sleep crust and eye bags, a modicum of surprise survived that even the bi-weekly reports were reinstated, but you shed no tears at your reunion.

Lyla seemed to be occupied with editing stickers onto a selfie, “Nah, not right now.”

You visibly relaxed. “Then do I have patients waiting in the lobby?”

Lyla scrubbed through a series of floating screens until she found a blinking clock, gesturing to it with an arch of her crisply rendered brow. It was five a.m.

“You’re the only person left on this entire floor, Doctor. Maybe you should get yourself checked out. For insomnia.”

“Lyla, I didn’t know you had different language settings! Does that word mean ‘dedication’ in English?”

She let out a dry, monotone laugh, face completely lax as she let the sound peter out into something akin to a groan.

“My database contains terabytes of information on the benefits of adequate rest. While I know they won’t convince you, I’ll bet they can bore you to sleep. I can also generate rain sounds.”

Lyla held up her phone, a steady pitter-patter coming from her speakers. It was kind of relaxing…

“You’re drooling, gorgeous.”

She tapped the tip of your nose with her index finger, making you jolt upright. In retaliation you swatted your hand at her. It phased cleanly through.

“Alright, alright, I get it, just let me tidy up my station,” you announced. “I know I’m gonna knock out so hard I won’t remember where I put anything in this mess.”

Your reflection glazed over the lidded petri dishes in muted drags of color. In truth, you weren’t all that excited to return to your universe. There was nothing operatically tragic about your living situation or your wage, though it certainly wasn’t what you deserved; it was just that your day job at Alchemax dissolved you into the “et al.” of every genomics study you’d worked on. Your conversations with your coworkers felt like chewing sand and your friends numbered few and internationally far between since graduation. At the Society, you were seen. People actually recognized you, what you could do. They said “thank you.”

But your ass had gone numb from sitting in this chair for so long.

You exited your improvised clinic and carefully crossed the buttress that connected to the other side of the lobby, coaching yourself not to look down. Every once in a while you saw a Spider-Person or two meander along the walls, but as the cafeteria closed a few hours ago, most of the Society had shuffled home or remained out of sight in one of the tower’s many cavernous rooms. If only you, too, could crawl upside down and drain the whirlpool of panic that vertigo induced.

You calibrated your watch with the necessary dimensional coordinates and stepped back to allow the vibrant, honeycomb portal to bloom. Your bedroom awaited you like a void: a blocky IKEA queen stood dressed in some 800-thread count bed sheets that you’d bought to celebrate being able to afford 800-thread count bed sheets, and presently needed a wash. They were a mild sea-storm blue, to communicate what a competent intellectual you were.

As you took your first step, the lobby rumbled as if collided by something. The vibrations intensified in the space of a few seconds until you had to drop on all fours to make sure you didn’t plummet from the walkway. Yet the quake settled just as quickly as it came, and when you analyzed your surroundings, you found nothing amiss. The stragglers in the lobby mirrored your panic until they received some system-wide alert on their watches, merging groups and charging through hastily conjured portals. You had the better sense to be suspicious.

“Lyla?” You wobbled to your feet, “You know what that was?”

It took her longer to materialize in front of you, her expression bored but her hand rapidly flexing as she scrutinized her nails. “What what is?”

“That crash!” You looked back up at the glowy singularity beyond the levels of walkways and supports. “It came out of nowhere, I’m still reeling from it.”

“Stuff like that’s standard here, don’t worry about it. Weren’t you clocking out?”

You started back toward the elevators, “I’ll just be a minute, I want to make sure no one’s been hurt.”

“It’s handled.”

You pulled back at how emotionless Lyla was. She was the closest to an automated assistant that you’d ever seen her, down to her professional posture and folded hands. She looked like she was being held hostage.

“What do you mean ‘it’s handled’?”

Lyla’s form rippled with a bout of static. She adjusted her glasses as they slipped down her nose. “It’s handled. Nothing’s wrong.”

“A second ago you didn’t even know what it was and now you’ve completely quelled it?”

“I’m a computer. We—uhh—process things really fast.”

Your eyes narrowed as you realized she was acting just like she was a fortnight ago when your last report was due. When you discovered you were being spied on.

“It’s Miguel, isn’t it.”

You stepped past Lyla before she could finish bristling and offer another excuse—most likely written by Miguel himself from inside whatever gargoyle’s nest he was hiding. You stomped to the elevators as Lyla bobbed around your head like a uniquely sparkly bee.

“Miguel’s lab has extremely restricted clearance—”

“So it came from his lab.” You would have smirked if your belly wasn’t brewing equal parts worry and rage. You zipped up the floors as Lyla graduated from wallowing pleas to the nuclear option of threats and insults. You remained impassive as the elevator arrived on the proper floor. You’d been to the ominous circle of hell that was Miguel’s lab exactly once, when you’d first been inducted, but you hadn’t forgotten the path.

The charcoal doors were sealed so tight not even a knife’s edge could slip between the seam where they connected. You didn’t even bother with trying your hand at the keypad, merely widened your stance and waited.

Lyla blinked into view to your right, “He’s not gonna let you in.”

“He’s gonna have to.”

The ripple of static that tore through her was a jagged series of stalactites. Lyla turned a full one-eighty to speak down to something you couldn’t see, “OK, woah, I’m not saying that.”

You combed a hand through your hair, controlling your words to flow without the slightest tremor, “I’m not an idiot, you know. If you’re trying this hard to get me to leave, it’s because something’s happened that would be relevant to me. And, seeing as I’m a medic here, that doesn’t really leave room for any possibilities besides someone being injured. I don’t understand why I cannot be trusted to do my job.”

Lyla shifted uncomfortably in front of you, tapping her foot. Your gaze softened as you watched her try and work out the best solution between her two directives—to obey any request and to properly help others.

“Lyla,” you soothed, “Let me handle it.”

The AI wrung her hands until her palms flattened into a praying gesture. She phased through the doors one minute, and in the next the great iron things separated with a hiss. They revealed another set of doors, which opened to another set of doors, one after another in kaleidoscopic fractals.

Your eyes adjusted slowly to the thick darkness of the lab, relying on the ambient glow of red lights to distinguish the pieces of equipment and cargo from one another. A flash of sparks hooked your attention onto the center console of the room: the platform where Miguel glowered over his domain was flipped onto its side, copper wire and fiberglass burst from the seamless paneling like an uprooted tree. Miguel sat up against it, protecting his side with a splayed hand. His head was tipped back to ease the flow of air, but he lowered it with a grunt, the shift of his shoulders reminding you of a leopard crouched in brush. When the wire sparked again, you could make out the jagged edges of a chemical wound.

“Miguel!” You charged toward him instantly, eyes darting among the fiery lacerations and slashes on his torso. Miguel’s suit glitched wretchedly in an attempt to close over them.

Your voice seemed to jolt him back to the present moment. Miguel rose weakly to his feet, protectively hiding his waist. But a bleat of pain escaped him as he tried walking, and with it his constitution drained. Miguel crumpled helplessly against your frame and you buckled against the three hundred pound wrecking ball of his body, falling with him as he dropped to a kneel, planted his hands on the ground, and shook.

“Miguel?” You snapped your fingers in front of his face, “You awake? Know where you are?”

He shifted away from you, pulling his arm out of your grip. He unfurled himself to his full height, but your smaller stature meant you could clearly see the tremble in his legs. He thrust his arm behind him for the heaping remains of the console, gripping it so hard the metal shriveled.

“I’ve got it under control.” Miguel’s voice was ragged. You would have thought he’d crawled out of a crypt.

“Let me assess you,” you offered. Dictated. His shoulder looked like it was about to unhinge from his torso entirely.

“I’ll be fine—run in with Scorpion from Earth-1089. Just get me one of those.” Miguel nodded to his desk. Your eyes swept over an overturned set of beakers and looping tubes, luminous with the last dregs of a green serum that’d spilled all over the platform. A tray of cylindrical vials with the same serum remained upright. The serum’s glow cast a more consistent light on Miguel’s injuries than the sparks had, allowing you to see his skin steaming and blistered with something that reminded you of nuclear waste.

You grabbed a vial and the injection gun on the ground, examining it uncertainly.

“Miguel, your wounds appear completely external. It’ll minimize the risk of infection if I clean them now and administer medication later.”

Even in this pretentious rave-like darkness you didn’t miss the annoyance that washed over his face. “Everything I need is in that serum.”

“Is it an antibiotic?”

“No.”

“Is it anesthetic?”

“No.”

“Well, then, what does—”

“Lo juro por Dios, do you have to ask so many questions all the time?!” He threw up his hand exasperatedly, “It’s a shocking multivitamin, for all it matters!”

“Your literal skin is being eaten by mutant ooze, Miguel, you could be more cooperative!” You waved the gun at his mottled flesh in emphasis. You were considering saving him just so you enjoy killing him yourself.

Lyla dialed up again, bending at the hips to speak to Miguel, “Scans all suggest your accelerated healing factor has been compromised from the acid burning away more skin than can be regenerated. The serum has a high likelihood of crashing your immune system entirely.”

“Something other than excuses would be nice,” he barked tiredly. “Everything around here needs my attention, do you understand? I can’t be out of commission. That serum will get my cogs realigned and then I just need to patch up my suit. Simple.”

“It won’t even be for that long.” You pinched your fingers together in a sunny gesture of reassurance. “I’ll be through in an hour, tops.”

“The last time I was absent for that long, the multiverse almost collapsed.”

“We can ask around for a second opinion—”

“No.” Miguel inhaled, mouth a severe line, “I don’t want to be seen like this.”

You felt a little guilty for a moment. However, the longer you paid attention to his shallow breaths breaking through the stale atmosphere, the more distinctly you could make out the way they hitched at the end. You saw his damp brow, his eyes screwed shut. Miguel tried breathing through his nose, swallowed in frustration, and rasped open-mouthed. You crouched low, fascinated by his lack of composure.

“Ah, I see,” you hummed, “You’re panicking.”

“Not. Funny.”

You shouldn’t goad him, but if he was so desperate to be right all the time then the least you could do was oblige him. “If you really wanna tough this out, you may be able to overpower the acid, but you’ll deplete your body of its defenses against anything else. If you take this weird serum and it works, you may absorb too much of the acid for it not to cause complications to your health in the future. If it fails, you may short-circuit your body and let the acid keep spreading. You are actively prolonging your condition.”

Miguel’s nostrils flared at your statement, but you continued speaking before he could offer a retort.

“Your injuries need to be cleaned of the acid before anything else. It’ll stop spreading and give your body a chance to recuperate.” You kept your hands away from Miguel’s abdomen, disconcerted with the constantly redrawn borders of the chemical burn as skin was created, corroded, and consumed. “If your healing factor is fatigued, it will help to stitch the most prominent sites of trauma first. A numbing and sterilizing agent should be safe, but Lyla is right that we need to limit the chances of adverse reactivity with your body.”

Miguel remained silent. His mouth was a severe line as he took in this information, peeled it for weak spots. His brows arched closer and apart, cycling between intransigence and clarity as he realized that you were right.

“If an anomalous incident comes up, we’ll put Jessica in charge. She’s your right hand, she’ll know how to fill in for you, right?”

Miguel did not voice any approval, but did exhale ever so slightly and raise his brows, like the idea wasn’t so bad.

“And if someone comes looking for me?”

“Is that common?”

“...No,” Miguel reflected. You bit your cheek at how borderline surprised he sounded. His gaze deadened. “Shut up.”

You helped set up an impromptu examination chair and sterilized the tools available in the lab, which outnumbered the instruments your lab had in stock downstairs.

Professionalism cloaked your body like a hazmat suit as you came to Miguel’s side, “Could you rate your pain on a scale from one to ten, please?”

“Four.” He winced as you checked his pulse even though the area was completely unmarred, blood lashing through his veins. “...To the power of ten.”

You nodded, betraying no reaction in your placating tone.

“I’ll need the top half of your suit removed to access your most prominent injuries. I’ll work in sections across each site so you can adjust yourself. You can tell me to stop at any time.”

You hovered an alcohol pad above a series of cuts on Miguel's hip, but even your hand fixing the skin in place was enough to make his jaw tense.

You looked up at him.

“Tell me when you’re ready,” you coaxed. “Deep breaths.”

Miguel drilled his gaze into the ceiling. “Go.”

“I need you to repeat what I said.”

He was caught off guard at how firm you were, and for that reason if nothing else took another moment to fortify his composure.

“I’m ready.”

The press of the pad onto the acidified wound launched a ragged groan from Miguel’s throat. His fangs shot from their alcoves, as did his claws, tearing paths into the chair’s matte pleather. You were quick without being sloppy, liberal with your determination and nothing else. Miguel’s healing factor might make stitches redundant, but you endeavored to avoid any scarring.

Time liquified as you worked, only measuring progress by the calming of Miguel’s breathing and the lessening tension in his neck. He kept his gaze focused on the ceiling, but occasionally scrutinized the viscera of his body with disturbing impartiality, like he was tracing the interlocking mechanisms of a car engine. However, when your hands crossed into his line of sight, the briefest wave of shame converged his brows.

“You’re doing well,” you coached. You avoided any statement that would make an assumption about how he was feeling, since you couldn’t imagine a corollary between superhuman thresholds for pain and your own.

“I’m lying down. Not exactly a skill.”

“Our bodies do their best work when we rest,” you said, like a hypocrite. You moved onto the three deep claw marks in Miguel’s chest, “Recede this part of your suit so I can see the rest of the incisions.”

Miguel obeyed and steadied himself with a slow breath, in through the nose and out through the mouth, without you having to tell him to do so.

Your voice was gentle, bordering on a hum, “Perfect.”

The word diffused between the two of you, cleansing the metal bite from the air. Miguel still stiffened when your hands returned to his skin after leaving for too long to select a new instrument, but his gaze softened, almost contemplative instead of strategizing.

Miguel cleared his throat. “I’d like an update on the Arachno-Humanoid phosphoramidite absorption project.”

You glanced back at him, “I’ll write up my progress once we’re finished.”

“I’d like a verbal report, actually,” he added. He spoke in an almost airy way instead of dropping to a lower register, but his syllables were still evenly cut by his teeth.

“Now?”

“Might as well use the time to be productive.”

Your eye twitched. “I am in the middle of sewing your pecs back together, is that not productive enough?”

“A conversation might clear up any nuance that gets lost in writing.”

Nuance?! You nearly screamed. Miguel handled this conversation with the subtlety of a boxer attempting the art of pickpocketing. And for him to act like this was his idea in the first place!

You were hoping for a conference room and coffee, maybe a slideshow presentation, to discuss everything you’d learned, but at this point you may as well expect Miguel to lead a debrief while getting a haircut. You changed gloves at your tool tray for no other reason than to prevent Miguel from seeing your disappointment.

“Sample colonies have achieved equilibrium, but not total synthesis. The improved cells do not pass on viral properties to daughter cells during mitosis.” You cut off before your voice could tremble, “Results as of now are inconclusive.”

You could tell from the restless angularity of his upper bust that Miguel was incredulous, but you didn’t think you could maintain your stoic front if you faced him head on. You wanted your feelings to numb and drop off like frostbitten limbs.

“That’s it?” Miguel’s tone shaved the upward inflection off of his question, but it still contained curiosity. No, that wasn’t the right word—it was disbelief. He didn’t believe you.

“Why wouldn't that be it.” What the hell had he been expecting? What had you been expecting—you'd been given a lab in an entirely different dimension, equal to if not superior to the technological advancements of Earth-409, with no shortage of resources, no overhead, no direction, no assistance—nothing but your bare hands and rigorously honed intelligence, and even then you failed to take this project anywhere.

He sighed like he was preparing to lift something heavy, “I’ll remind you that it’s in your best interest to be honest with what you’ve observed from your trials.”

You whipped halfway around, hands still upturned as though awaiting deliverance, “I don’t need a lecture on honesty from the guy who planted surveillance in my clinic.”

You felt your pulse under your tongue and were itchy from the anger and helplessness sprouting in your gut, but you bore your gaze into Miguel’s head all the same.

For once, Miguel broke eye contact first. “Alright, that’s fair.”

And, quieter, “I had no reason to distrust you. I’m sorry.”

His diplomacy caught you off guard, dampening the rant you would have unleashed in some self-immolating last hurrah before Miguel fired you for real. Self-consciousness rushed into the pit where anger had been, making you shrink like a collapsing star. Miguel looked no better; it finally felt like you were on equal footing.

“Good.” You coughed, “Thank you. I accept your apology.”

You sat down and continued patching Miguel up. He closed the suit over the stitched up gore marks on his chest, the crimson spider glinting with charges of electricity like strands of tinsel. You cleaned up the muddied sweat and watered-down blood caking the vee of Miguel’s hips with a damp toilette, marveling at the marbled facets of his muscles there. You wondered if you’d ever see him in action again, able to really analyze the push and pull of power in his form as he fought. The constitution of his physique seemed to you an inviolable frame even when he was as close to relaxation as this night forced him to be. You wondered what it felt like to have such a defined place in the universe. To have a role, and be chosen. Was canon the same as destiny?

“Miguel,” you tried. “Who am I? in your universe?”

His reaction was so pronounced it could only have been because he hadn’t expected the question.

“You think I’d look into that?”

You shrugged with one shoulder, “Yeah, actually, that sounds standard for you.”

Miguel huffed in a way you interpreted as the end-stop to this topic. Your chest screwed with a twin version of the disappointment you’d felt, like it had been reflected along the axis of a graph. All that work only to receive an identical result.

“You don’t exist in my dimension.”

“Oh.” It wasn’t any worse than being a dog-walker or janitor, but you didn’t necessarily know if that was better, either. “Can you tell me why?”

“Sure. Let me ask my personal friend, God the Father.”

You chuckled. “Ah, right, that was presumptuous. Sorry.”

Your uncharacteristic surrender painted you with a depressing defeatism that did not sit well with Miguel. He licked his lips and spoke like he’d just divined a hidden facet to this information.

“Not everyone shows up in every universe. But it also could be that you just haven’t been born in this timeline yet, that’s all.”

You’d better make me proud, you thought.

“You know,” you said, “There’s a version of me in the universe of every Spider-Person I’ve met. Yet I’m mostly the same as I am now.” Or worse.

“Must be pretty important to show up in every universe as you are.” There was an implication cloaked in Miguel’s wistful tone that you couldn’t unwrap.

“Yeah, I get that. I just thought that there’d be a couple of universes where I was… I dunno, a celebrity. An astronaut. The president. Something like that.”

“Do you actually want to be any of those things?”

“Everybody fantasizes about stuff like that, c’mon. Especially when you’re a kid.” Your eyes must have been pricking from the sleep deprivation, “Then you grow up, and enter the real world, and make the sacrifices necessary to live comfortably. Is it wrong to expect that living in a multiverse would mean there’s a ‘me’ who’s the best that they can be?”

“What does that look like to you?” Miguel murmured.

You skated your fingers over the tendon in your wrist, where a web might shoot out.

“It’d be a universe where I’m a superhero.”

Miguel’s expression softened incrementally, like the gradations of a charcoal sketch. You thought his hand nearer to you had twitched, but the reflex was lost to the rest of his movements as he sat up in the chair. You panicked that he’d reopen his injuries, but his healing factor seemed to have returned sooner than expected; the smaller flesh wounds on Miguel’s neck were already closing up.

“Trust me,” he made a low, incensed sound in his throat, “being the exception comes with exceptional baggage. You don’t wanna be like me.”

“I want to be more than this.”

“Got more than I thought possible.” Miguel’s eyes unfocused as he traced the plates on the ceiling, “A geneticist at an Alchemax that isn’t evil… I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat.”

He looked off to the side, hesitating, “And your work is impressive. There are people as ingenious as you but less—what’s the word… understanding, that would have turned to the dark side by now.”

"Is that why you stuck a camera in my office?"

“Okay, you don't have to say it like that—” Wow, was Miguel flustered?

"D-Did you—" Your cheeks stung with honey. “I'm sorry, did you actually think the likelihood of me becoming a villain was greater than my simply being slow?”

Miguel groaned, "...Yes."

Well, it was definitely one of the weirdest compliments you’d ever received. You stood up and began tidying your cart.

“Well, then, you'd better not try crossing me again. Or else.” You saw Miguel’s mouth twitch out of the corner of your eye.

“Right. I’m terrified.”

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

You were running so fast that the ground seemed to accelerate of its own accord. Your lungs seized and your feet blistered, and you were sweating so much you thought your body would evaporate like a bubble of boiling water. You couldn’t keep up, keep going, keep sprinting, keep escaping. The claustrophobic tunnel gave way to a barren, infinite room.

You didn’t know what you were running from anymore than you knew where you were going: you couldn’t recognize a trace of man-made design in the silhouettes around you—no doors, no signs, no furniture, no path. You collapsed against a steel column to catch your breath and just as quickly recoiled, the unfiled tooth of the metal abrading your hand as if bearing a polaric charge not just opposite to your biology, but actively hostile toward it. The texture was almost akin to sharkskin or the fine barbs on a cat’s tongue, pricking you if you went against the grain. You had to keep moving before you were swallowed up.

The tunnel you’d escaped reverberated with a derelict wail. It sounded like an animal being transmogrified into a machine, or perhaps like a machine being assaulted with memories of flesh and hair that it could not comprehend. Associating the haunting call with death was too charitable—it was unnatural and liminal in a way that not even decay or fire could return to the earth.

You did not look behind you. You would not turn around. You just had to keep running.

Ahead of you, the room gave way to the maw of a tunnel…

You woke with a punch of an exhale in your bedroom. Sweat plastered the bedsheets to your back like a wetsuit, and your head was soupy with adrenaline and fatigue. This was how you always felt when waking up from this dream, like an athlete or roller coaster car returned to starting position after lapping the track.

This dream had been happening every few weeks since that night with Goblin. You weren’t really fazed by it anymore, having dealt with these subconscious manifestations of insecurity since the squishy spring of your adolescence, where you dreamt of your teeth falling out, showing up to school in the buff, and balancing spinning plates on your head while debating Bill Nye. They were now no more inconvenient than acid reflux, just to the left of bothersome. You just needed to respect your circadian rhythm and not eat cheese before bedtime, but the knowledge that the solution to this dilemma was so simple meant you didn’t see it as especially urgent. Eventually you’d get around to it. You had a job, after all.

Which, speaking of…

You sat up and checked the clock on your nightstand, confirming that you had woken up before your alarm once again. This nightmare always entered and exited your head with commendable punctuality.

The morning report cued up on the TV became the auditory equivalent of melted rubber, with only the occasional tidbit about an exclusive charity ball or filibuster surfacing among the mess. You let the words bounce around your skull as you showered, shaved, and plucked your hamper for a dress-shirt so frumpy it could pass as a Rosemary Mayer installation. In lieu of ironing its deeply canvassed wrinkles, you ran the garment back and forth over your desk chair until it stretched into something more presentable. This meant, however, that it fit even worse on you than before, and you took care to tuck it into your pants as you listened to the anchorwoman give zealous updates on a bank robbery in Yonkers. Her glossy red mouth gleamed against her brown skin like berries on a branch: traffic cams show suspects on a southbound trajectory. Reports state the team of seven vanished an armored van from bank security—literally—as Mysterio has been identified leading the group in overpowering—

You paused knotting your tie to glance at the flat screen, recognizing Earth-409’s favorite loose marble. It comforted you that today’s event would be regularly scheduled programming instead of another crossover special. Ah, but that still meant you had to catch the Red Line before the police blocked off your burrough to catch these guys, which meant you’d need to put in your mobile order for Alchemax’s corner cafe once you got your coat and keys, which meant you had to choose between buying the bland but filling caprese or trying the controversial new burrito on the menu, which—

A thunderclap of an explosion shook the foundations of your high-rise. Smoke shrouded the streets beyond your window, followed by the screech of swerving cars and police sirens.

Which meant you should have left ten minutes ago.

You watched Spider-Woman’s fight as you rode the metro to Alchemax’s sister campus in South Bay. Her pale costume had the same iridescence as a fish’s belly and twinkled against the sun as she swung in and out of Mysterio’s illusions, baiting the villain to the artificial islands that floated over New York as he projected some sort of reptilian kaiju onto the ground level. The proudly exposed celestial heights of your home were a startling contrast to the underground districts of Nueva York, hidden under its manicured, utopic surface. How strange that the bones of Earth-409 and Earth-928 were the very same—same coastlines, same weather, same flora—and yet the grains of time that strayed from the dunes of their histories made it so that your universes were hardly similar at all.

Mysterio’s cape flared into a gargantuan aurora borealis as he settled atop a transmission tower. The screens of downtown were hijacked to broadcast his imposing proclamation, that Spider-Woman is not the hero she claims to be, that she cannot stop his misdeeds because they’re one and the same, that he claims credit for bringing this nightstalker to the light of—

The patch of atmosphere above Mysterio’s head tore open like a bag of chips, sucking his cape inside. He paused his tirade and tried wrenching it free, but the gap stubbornly held on until it yanked Mysterio inside the barren pocket of reality like he’d been caught on a hook.

Spider-Woman froze in shock, fists still raised in a martial stance as Mysterio’s microphone whined and cut off, letting the typical cacophony of city life reclaim the sound barrier. Civilians stared at the transmission antenna until the excitement staled, tucking their phones into their pockets and ambling away one stiff, half-expectant step at a time. Even Mysterio’s burly henchmen awkwardly swung their arms and looked around, as though preparing an Irish goodbye from a bad party. You caught Spider-Woman shrugging apologetically at them before your train passed behind a building.

Rubbing your temples, you turned to your watch and sent out a notification to the rest of the Society that soon, the great multidimensional stork was going to deliver a second Mysterio to one very special Spider.

Spider-Woman’s streamlined silhouette vaulted over your train, her violet comet tails arcing over the distant buildings of Columbia University. The pattern seemed so obvious now, in retrospect, that she always finished up her battles in time for one of the school’s home games, such that you were gobsmacked at never realizing it yourself; the short block of stats and measurements on Spider-Woman’s Society profile was ultimately what tied it together, along with informing you that she could lift two whole tons! Perhaps it was because you just didn’t give sports too much attention in your life. However, learning of Spider-Woman’s alter ego had fanned a breeze toward your ever-engulfing curiosity, and by lunch time you’d bought tickets for this weekend’s game. You were taken to investigating why your first idol was so passionate about basketball to prioritize it as much as hero work.

There was a rancid taste in your mouth that you couldn’t attribute solely to the burrito you were holding. Maybe you should stop calling the college sophom*ore over a decade your junior your “idol.”

Levien Gymnasium was loud to the point it felt seismic. The mass of people bounding their way to the bleachers marbled together in shades of skin and blue face paint, the scent of fry oil and nacho cheese clinging to them like potpourri. Several times you were nearly wacked in the face with an oversized foam hand or run over by a stroller, and while the soda you’d been tenderly nursing since you arrived had long since run dry, you still sucked the straw to not look so awkward. The actual students were the most intense, however, laughing and rough-housing as they met up with their friends or dates or…frat pledges? And jostled merrily over to their seats. You stood in line to scan in, your phone screen bearing the code for one, singular ticket.

A ticket to a game, for a sport you knew nothing about, in order to see a person you only knew in a professional capacity, who by all means would have neither the time nor inclination to speak to you after playing, uh…you looked down at your phone.

Dear God, against Princeton?!

For someone who messes up as often as you do, this was a mistake of catastrophic proportions.

You were still several meters away from the gangly lady wearing a very oversized work tee atop her leather-and-chain ridden grunge outfit, limply waving a laser over attendants’ phones as if she were ringing up groceries. You held your empty paper cup aloft as you ran your phone along your hip in blind, clumsy pursuit of a pocket.

“Excuse me?”

You turned to a ruddy-faced man of middle age, finger half-crooked as he hunched in that timid, apologetic way that universally communicated, forgive me, I swear I’d rather shoot myself than have a stranger learn of my existence because I need something.

“C-Could you save my spot for a minute? My wife’s in trouble with the parkin’.”

Your gaze bounced down your body to your feet, as though you couldn’t possibly be qualified for such a Herculean task as doing nothing. “Y-Yeah?”

“You sure?” He held up his palms like you were about to punt his request back.

You nodded vigorously as a way to say, the idea of disappointing a stranger after they put themselves through the mortifying ordeal of being known makes me want to eat glass. “Yeah, no problem!”

The stranger shot you a double thumbs up as he dad-jogged toward the congested garage, a ring of keys rattling with several LEGO figures and a lumpy, frayed lanyard far too small for the man’s wrist. Your chest squeezed momentarily.

Oh, come on, now you can’t leave!

You craned your neck to try getting a sense of the distance left and blanched. Had the line always moved this fast or did the bored attendant’s boss come around? Thankfully, the ruddy-faced man returned not much later, accompanied by his positively angelic wife and wheeling his teenaged son. You exchanged sensitive smiles and grateful nods as the family stretched and caught their breath.

“Got good seats?”

You circled your hands, “I don’t know, actually, I don’t come to these often.”

“Oh, the girls are just kickass, lemme tell ya,” the wife said, her curse crisply enunciated like she was delighting in something naughty, “It’s a straight-shot to winning the WNIT this year, I can feel it!”

Their son winced ever so slightly in a ticklish combination of embarrassment and endearment, tugging on his ear as he averted his gaze.

“What made you come to this game?” The man continued. “Know anyone on the team?”

“Sort of.” You stiffened, realizing the glaring weirdness of such an answer. “She’s, like, a family fr—I-I mean, I work with her family. She’s their kid, not mine.”

The son coughed to hide a sharp snort. Wonderful, you avoided looking like a creep only to end up sounding like an idiot.

“Ah, gotcha, gotcha,” the wife drawled, generous enough to ignore your leadened tongue. “Know her number?”

You didn’t, nor did you trust yourself to make one up.

“Keep an eye on #15,” the man murmured conspiratorially, like he was relaying coordinates for a missile base, “Oi,she’s quick as a bullet on the court, that’s for sure.”

Sounds like Spider-Woman, you thought. Might be her.

A throat cleared behind you, and when you spun around found that you were holding up the line. The grunge attendant held up her scanner with dry impatience, her scrunched nose shifting her septum piercing off-center. It seemed you were in too deep; there was no way to turn back now that there were witnesses to your absurd claims of “knowing” a Lions player. You dumbly held out your phone, waited for the scanner’s permissive blip, and stepped through.

The family proceeded to your left, while you veered to the right. You exchanged goodbyes, and just before they strayed out of earshot, you called, “Go Lions!”

The kid spun around and continued wheeling backwards, nodding at you, “Go Lions.”

There was a warm feeling in your chest, like a heartstring had been spun from sugar floss.

You took your seat and resumed sipping the drops of diluted cola and ice that remained in your soda cup. The chatter crescendoed as it got closer to game time, before crackling with applause at the rush of the women’s team onto the court. You searched for a gold “fifteen” amongst the white uniforms, yet couldn’t distinguish anything resembling numbers from the wrinkle and shift of the fabric, the lights transforming the players into an ensemble of mythical statues.

The team paced around the perimeter of the court to generate hype before the Princeton Tigers entered. You studied as the two schools gathered on opposite ends of the court, the referee holding up the ball. With the whistle, the ball shot upward, and two players rocketed to intercept it. A Lion scooped up the ball and thrust it behind her to a teammate, who hurtled across the court while dribbling, her feet punishing the linoleum as she wove in between the dark uniforms of her opponents. She launched the ball upwards, clearing everyone’s heads as it flew toward a blonde player flanking the basket. The blonde caught it, dribbled twice as a Tiger approached her, and shot it at the basket, only to have the ball curled into the serpentine stretch of an olive arm. The lucky Tiger passed it to a player on her right as the rest of the Lions swarmed her. The ball passed to and from spindly, sweaty hands with such speed and confusing direction that your eyes tempted a migraine with the way they shot around your skull. What was happening? What were these moves? The overlap of uniforms appeared to you no different than streams of dye in water.

The bleachers erupted in jeers and encouraging mantras as a Tiger scored the first basket of the game. You clapped in frantic confusion.

“Great game, eh?”

“Exciting, yeah!” you nodded automatically, quickly glancing at the figure beside you without registering their face.

“Didn’t take you for a Lions fan. Alchemax assign you a study on sports medicine?”

The words hit you like pelts of hail. You whipped around to greet the tallest woman you’d ever laid eyes on, the severe lighting illuminating her tan skin and making the many split ends on her short, choppy hair glow like spun brass.

Antonia Rodriguez, a.k.a Spider-Woman of Earth-409, stared wryly down at you as she tore into a corndog.

“Or,” she continued, mid-chew, “Is this for Miguel?”

“It’s—!” You shot to your feet a split second before the rest of the crowd, who roared in celebration at a Lion scoring a slam-dunk. You were shoved off-balance, your defense jumbled and forgotten.

Antonia’s head remained unobstructed even when the crowd jumped. Goodness, she must have been well over six feet, reaching Miguel’s nose if you remembered correctly. And, your brain quiveringly noted, terrifying as she bent ever so slightly to speak to you, like a track star lowering into a running start. You never had to consider experiencing Spider-Woman’s strength as an opponent rather than a meek, incapable, ever-so-very weak civilian in distress.

Antonia clapped a hand on your shoulder, forcing you to sit beside one another as she continued watching the game. She barely even kept you in her line of sight, like you were a bag someone asked her to watch, but her grip on your shoulder became crushing as if incrementally tightened with a lever.

“I don’t appreciate being bothered off the clock.”

You stared at the jutting caps of Antonia’s knuckles. The only clue to the synthetic skin covering her arms was how her joints didn’t blush. Every pore, every pale strand of peach fuzz, was totally lifelike, which made her display of strength all the more jarring. You tried to ignore the pain bursting in your collarbone.

“I’m not here on anybody’s behalf, I promise.”

“You stalking me, then?”

Oof, it certainly looked that way! At this point you prayed that the likelihood of her killing you was still high.

You nodded toward the court, “I thought you’d play tonight. I should have just asked, it was stupid.”

This seemed to crack Antonia’s intense front. She pushed you back to thoroughly look you over.

“What? Why’d you guess that?”

You told her in baffled honesty about how her entire routine on “the job” revolved around Columbia’s game schedule, how she never shut up about basketball, and how she was literally the height and breadth of an Amazonian warrior.

Antonia broke into a fit of giggles. She tugged you into her side, released your shoulder, and chummily clapped your back so hard it released a crick in your spine.

“Doc! You got me blushing, man, seriously.” She shook you by your other shoulder, palling around as if you’d been friends your entire lives. “Nah, nah, you’re right that I’m obsessed with the sport, but I only play as a hobby. When I’m helping her practice.”

Antonia pointed at player #42 with the stick of her corn dog, the girl’s back turned as she waited to be passed the ball; her hair was much more silken compared to Antonia’s, its dense volume slicked into a perfectly centered French braid, and her frame was squarer, but the set of their chins was unmistakably the same.

Your gaze softened, “Is that your…”

“My sister,” Antonia supplied. “Amaya.”

Amaya dashed along the outer edge of the court as a trio of Tigers crowded the muscular Lion guarding the ball. The Lion passed between their opponents’ legs to Amaya, who caught it, rocketed to half court like she was about to shoot a three-pointer, baiting the Tigers away from the rest of her team. She quickly launched the ball back across the court, allowing free access for the Lions to dunk their second basket.

“I know this probably won’t mean anything coming from me,” you said, “But she’s amazing.”

Antonia shrugged, “Mmm, I guess, sure.”

The onslaught of Tigers turned on Amaya as she regained the ball a second time; she made like she was about to dunk, getting her opposition to jump, before arcing her arm downwards, dribbling the ball behind her to #04.

Before you knew it Antonia was out of her seat, jumping a few inches higher than possible for the average man, hollering loud as a thrill-drunk berserker.

“UWAHH, AMAYA, ANG GALING! YEAHHH WOOHOO—”

The Lions stifled grins and giggles as they jogged back to their starting positions. Only the tip of Amaya’s reddening ear could be seen as she hid her face behind her hand.

“She’s been perfecting that feint since she joined the team.” Antonia landed in her seat like a sack of concrete, “Always so nervous about using it, but nobody redirects like she can.”

You felt a phantom chill race up your spine: Rookie goes in for a sky hook and feints it.

Antonia tapped you on the shoulder as the second period started, pointing out how absolutely perfect Amaya’s stance was. Light on her feet, banked just the tiniest bit forward. Antonia’s knee bounced up and down in barely contained adulation.

You found #15—a smaller, sylphlike player with buzzed hair—and followed her down the court as she gave several other players some cryptic nod. Their postures changed instantly as they scoped the opposition and spaced themselves along the court.

“Hey, what are they doing now?”

“Setting up a play,” Antonia rushed, eyes widening as she settled her elbows on her knees. She informed you of all their moves without prompting, dying to tell you just as you were dying to ask. “See #15? Immonen’s their star shooter, no doubt, but for her to make all these insane throws, the basket’s gotta be protected…”

#15 and #66 passed the ball back and forth over the Tigers’ heads such that no one noticed Amaya slink over to the basket. The final time #66 returned the ball to #15, the latter cut down the center of the court, planted her feet at the three-point mark, and made the shot. Anticipating a clean trajectory, several Tigers jumped in the air, missing that #15’s goal was really to pass the ball to the second player flanking the basket. #04 caught it and bounced it to Amaya, who hopped in one graceful arc like a hare, reached out her arm—

Tiger #20 cut right in front of her with one theatrical dive. Antonia hissed an inhale, squeezing your arm hard enough to cut the circulation, until Amaya tilted to the side and abandoned the shot, returning the ball to #04, who evaded the Tigers with the remaining seconds of the quarter. Amaya landed on her feet but stumbled, face-planting onto the floor as the Tigers stole the ball, scored a basket, and the buzzer went off.

The audience shrank in their seats with a pitying groan.

The other Lions circled Amaya and helped her to her feet, checking to ensure she was completely unharmed. Even from where you sat, you could make out the disappointment on her face that she couldn’t make the point, but in the next second #15 gave her a fist bump and #04 playfully tugged on her braid, and the cloud of tumultuous emotion cleared instantly.

Antonia relaxed beside you, wiping her forehead, “Just like I taught her.”

“She didn’t score, though,” you said. “Right? The game’s tied. They might lose.”

“Big whoop. If Amaya forced the shot, it’d end up either a foul or a miss anyway. There will always be another game for her to get her moment, but if she loses her team’s trust, it’s over. It’s the one thing that can’t improve with failure.”

The Lions huddled together as they recouped. Several players swapped out to wait on the benches, but Amaya remained where she was, taking in her coach’s wild gesticulations with a set brow and concentrated pout.

“You need people to see that potential in you, sometimes,” Antonia finished, her voice so soft you barely distinguished it from the hollering of the crowd. “That you can be who you say you are.”

The next quarter began with just as much intensity as the first, and to your shock, you found your heart galloping with every whip-quick exchange of the ball. Antonia pointed out each complex rig of moves on both teams, every crossover to jump stop to pivot to foul to yellow card the referee held up. Every time Amaya puffed up and charged into the fray, Antonia clapped her hands so hard you panicked that everyone could hear the slight metal clang when her palms met. But her excitement was contagious, and by the last ten minutes of the game, your temples were damp with sweat and your throat raw from cheering.

The game concluded without a death-defying shot, the Lions guarding the ball with an almost zen endurance as the seconds drained from the timer. Rather than go all-out with shots, they pivoted to preventing the Tigers from making any, expending the opposition’s beloved strategy of short, frequent bursts of power until they ran on fumes.

It was the quickest hour of your life. You felt a shadow of sadness that it was over. However, with Antonia’s easy sling of her arm around your neck, the out-of-body feeling settled sleepily in your bones.

“Happy you took my advice on that work-life balance.”

You laughed. You felt like you were allowed to laugh by this point, “Careful, you’ll encourage me to retire early.”

Your expression opened as the pair of you descended the stairs. Antonia clapped you a final time on your back before excusing herself to bull-rush Amaya, scooping her up and spinning her around. Amaya squealed in offense, pawing uselessly at her sister until her reaction was deemed disgraceful enough to merit Antonia’s mercy.

“You’re always so cold, ugh!” Amaya grumbled.

“Better than reeking like week-old steak~”

Amaya buried her hand in her armpit before shoving it into Antonia’s face, who gagged and pushed her away by the face.

“You didn’t wash your jersey before the match, did you? Did you even shower?”

“I didn’t have time!”

“You don’t have decency, ew—”

The two clashed in a baroque slap-fight until Antonia produced a clean towel from her baggy jacket and shoved it down the front of Amaya’s shorts. Breaking apart with a huff, Amaya begrudgingly accepted the towel and the subsequent water bottle proffered by her sister. She downed half the bottle in one go before dumping the rest on her face, wiping her neck. The rest of the team departed once Amaya confirmed she’d meet up for dinner, leaving the three of you alone on the court.

“Did you see it, though? The Pyramid?”

“I did,” Antonia assured her, “You come up with that name? ‘The Pyramid?’”

“Yeah, after one of my applied math lectures. It’s cause, like… uhh…”

You gasped, “A pyramid has five faces.”

Amaya processed your presence for the first time since Antonia offered her congratulations. She nodded in appreciation before continuing on, “Yeah, five, because there’s five of us on the court. And then there’s the tripod with me, Immonen, and Tran.”

“It’s… not that cool,” Antonia denounced, quickly headlocking Amaya to prevent her dopey grin from being noticed. “Better watch out, Doc. My sister’s nineteen and already one of the Lions’ MVPs. Pretty soon she’ll be the poster-girl for March Madness and flying me first-class to her games.”

Your brain short-circuited for a fraction of a second, tripping you up such that you were certain the onslaught of noises tonight had damaged your hearing. “Nineteen? Are you twins, then?”

Antonia blanched to the color of boiled ham, laughter not so much forced out as… nudged.

“Thanks, Doc, but I don’t look that good for my age. Gotta apply sunscreen more often and what-not. I’m twenty-four.”

You tilted your head, so confused you couldn’t filter yourself, “But, the file said—”

“The file must have recorded when I first joined ‘the club.’” Antonia did not look upset, but rather anxious, preparing to tread on eggshells. “The one that enabled me to join this new ‘initiative’ that we’re both part of?”

The words echoed softly against the linoleum, messily carved out like pulp from a rind of fruit. There was a minute, reflexive qualm within you even still, that it felt like Spider-Woman had been around far longer than just five years, which you stamped down instantly as an indication that you’d taken her protection for granted. You welded your teeth together before you could say anything else potentially incriminating.

Amaya excused herself to retrieve her gear, but couldn’t extract herself from her sister’s grip, not until Antonia twitched with remembrance that normal arms couldn’t actually lock in place. Amaya stared quizzically back at the both of you as she entered the locker room.

You squeezed your eyes shut, “That was reckless of me. You don’t have to say it.”

“Don’t mention it. Literally. Let’s just pretend this didn’t happen, agreed?”

“I apologize. Sincerely, I’m so sorry.”

Antonia took a skittish step towards you, glancing back at the locker room before opening her mouth. Yet right as she began speaking, your watch trilled in an all too familiar cadence. You projected an orange screen that warned of an anomalous incident in progress on Earth-218.

Antonia took out her own watch and switched it on, releasing a tsunami of notifications for all kinds of interdimensional bogeys, time-stamped between this afternoon and during tonight’s game.

“I should get back to HQ,” you said. The words sat foreignly in your mouth when they were directed toward Antonia. This was not a role reversal you were keen on, following that split second when Amaya was still here that Antonia’s eyes beseeched you like you were threatening her. “In case anyone needs medical assistance.”

Antonia fiddled with her watch without putting it on, reading the description of tonight’s threat and gritting her teeth. “I’ll come with. This villain can duplicate himself, it sounds like something my predictive programming can help solve.”

She smiled, “Amaya gets it from me, you know. Using math on the battleground.”

The gymnasium doors clanged open as Amaya strode out with her things, rucksack thrown over one shoulder and flimsy cotton sweats slipped over her shorts. A pair of thin, cheap, ruby reading glasses sat on her head. You and Antonia both hid your watches.

“Ready to go?” Amaya asked, “Coach is treating us to Papa Zarconi’s, the one with really good orzo.”

“I can’t tonight, dude. Remember that new job I took on?”

Amaya paused, the tiniest tint of disappointment left from her botched play staining her features. She looked at you and slouched in understanding.

“Oh.”

You took everything back. Wait, no. You realized you were right all along. You never should have come.

“You should still celebrate!” Antonia punched Amaya’s shoulder wimpier than a stuffed animal flopping onto bed, “Wag mo 'kong alalahanin, this is just a temporary thing I’m doing, since rent has gone up.”

You did not mention that neither rent hikes nor tears in space-time were decreasing anytime soon.

Amaya held her elbow. No matter how she adjusted her posture she retained that sensitive, almost guilty shadow over her face at what her sister said. This change in Antonia’s availability must have been new for her, judging by her severely unhoned ability to mask her emotions.

“Nah. My social battery’s dead. I’ll see you at home.”

“A-Are you sure?”

“I need to study for my Java midterm on Monday, anyway,” she continued, primly nonplussed, “Gotta have a backup career so you can mooch off me in the future, yadda yadda. Can you proof my notes tomorrow?”

“Only if you make them legible.”

Antonia took the lead, guiding you along the shadowy back of the brownstone buildings until the coast was clear and she could rappel the pair of you onto the roof. She watched Amaya yell for the last straggling players to wait up, shrug apologetically, ask an inaudible question, and, finally, carpool all the way out of sight. The hard set of Antonia’s body became pliant with solace as she shucked off her jacket and shackled on her watch.

The brown skin coating Antonia’s arms atomized away, revealing the polished chrome of her synthetic sinews, joined in bruised, hypertrophic scars to her lats. Her gaze could not stick to yours, continuously shifting along the ground as she stepped out of her pants. You offered to hold onto her clothes until she finished her assignment, the most manageable gesture possible that might return you to Antonia’s good graces.

Anontia wet her lips like it would ease the escape of a sentence, but found her throat arid regardless. She tapped the face of her watch and stepped back from the rippling portal, and you didn’t know what else to do but copy her, inputting the coordinates for HQ’s lobby.

Yet just as you took your leave, Antonia grasped your wrist, forcing her words out in one compact sum: “Amaya doesn’t know.”

You stared bewilderedly at her, “That you’re a cyborg or that you’re Spider-Woman?”

Whatever Antonia expected, what you said certainly was not it. She blinked stupidly until her eyes refocused to the hand still arresting you. Releasing her grip, she stretched her mechanical joints like she was correcting the pose on a doll.

“Uh… neither. She doesn’t know either of those things. Anything.”

“Obviously,” you agreed. “Something so difficult to explain and I almost gave it away.”

Antonia must have been exhausted to cower before someone she could pulverize with a flick of her pinkie. But it seemed whatever got her to talk prevented her from stopping, her refrain spilling out like the skyline was the screen of a confession booth.

“There was an accident. A while back. Shocker demolished the anti-gravitational generator for the heritage museum above Port Washington. There were still people inside.”

You stayed still, betraying no reaction or sense of pressure on Antonia as she took several labored breaths. You remembered this incident—you’d just gotten hired at Alchemax. You recalled the tendrilous way every update suffocated you; the speculations of where Shocker might strike next and if the fail-safes for the floating islands could be updated in time; the way you threw all your necessities into one bag to stay with relatives out-of-state; the jammed streets as everyone else evacuated too. “When Heaven Met Earth,” the press called it.

“Had to get them out, right? That’s what I do. But Shocker just—he sent the thing crashing down over the dock. Right into the ocean. All that rubble, t-that water, came tumbling down. I don’t know how long it stayed like that.”

“H-How did you—”

“My uncle. He led a bunch of Alchemax’s restorative therapy projects before he…I don’t even know how he did it. Every bone—h-half this skull was—” Antonia made a claw gesture, right over her eye, before pushing her hair back, “I was gone for more than a year. And when I woke up, I was this.”

She hugged herself, tracing the metal channels of her body right up to the nape of her neck.

“Doctor,” Antonia said, her voice several sizes too small for her, “I’m the same person, right? That I used to be?”

“Of course you are,” you said, too quickly. Too forcefully. Too emotionally. “No matter what or how much of you changes, it’s still you.”

That seemed to calm Antonia down. Thank God it was what she needed to hear. She wiped her nose and withdrew a pair of headphones from thin air, letting them expand into a headset mimicking the mouth of a spider. They clung as close to her head as the rest of her costume, but appeared specially reinforced.

“I just can’t help but think about it, sometimes. This body changed so much with that spider bite, and then even more with these prostheses. I feel like a living, breathing ship of Theseus.”

“Antonia, you should rest,” you soothed, “Maybe instead of reviewing Amaya’s notes, you could tutor her tonight? Or catch a movie together?”

Antonia remained troubled. You’d never seen her so off-rhythm when she was still the enigmatic, aspirational icon of Spider-Woman swinging through the sky every time you turned on the TV. How heavy did this weigh on her? Did she have anyone to turn to that could relate?

“Miguel covers for me a lot. So I can be there for Amaya.” Antonia tugged on the uneven forelocks on her hair, so blunt she had to have cut them herself. “The Society always has my back. I’d betray myself if I didn’t do the same for them.”

She turned back to the portal, shrunk to half its size like a dormant anemone. She kept her arms crossed and her back hunched, allowing the polished notches of her spine to stick out. You realized you didn’t actually know how much of her body was nanocarbon, since such sophisticated tech surely had to run deep, deep throughout her body.

With slow, careful grace, you laid a hand on Antonia’s back, over the flared scapula that appeared to you like the wings of a manta ray. Only when she turned to you did you hold out your other arm, inviting her to hug you. She quickly collapsed over you, and despite her size, there was something deferential about the way she folded her body to fit within your embrace. Like a child realizing they could no longer be picked up by their parent.

Amaya was right that Antonia was cold, but you found something pleasantly comforting about it. It felt no different than turning a pillow over right as you slipped into slumber.

~~~

One more molecule of caffeine and your heart would vault out of your chest.

You bounced between the stations of your lab, a series of bubbling beakers and tubes, carrying a stabilizing solution for your dormant cells. The previously sweet-tempered, darling little pearls of blood now declared anarchic apoptosis on everything in sight. Something was still preventing them from utilizing the viral bodies the way they were supposed to, the way you bribed them to with top-shelf glucose and encouraging pleas, prompting this kamikaze malignancy until the entire colony perished like victims of Pompeii. Who did you even source this blood from? How could they do this to you, specifically?!

You resorted to drowning your table in liquid nitrogen.

Collapsing into your chair, you tapped blindly on your tablet, not realizing what app you opened until you processed the wall of read and archived emails. Nothing new there, either.

A novel, mushy, still-yet-unsolidified emotion possibly attributable to caffeine overdose tickled your sternum. You created a draft and hurriedly input a few lines, then deleted them, the white shell of the message demanding purpose.

Hi Miguel,

You could only manage a header of text, the blinking cursor phasing through all the possibilities for how this could go:

The last time we spoke, you were half-naked on an operating bench and I was rehearsing my mid-life crisis. What do you say about forgetting all of that?

Would you like the next bi-weekly report early?

How have you been?

You deleted the draft and hid your face in your hands. Considering you weren’t an actual physician, your blatant disregard for the Hippocratic oath and proper bedside manner was not so egregious of a misstep, but shameful all the same. You maintained that dressing Miguel down—

Wait, no, that’s a terrible way of phrasing it. That laying into Miguel—

No, no, no. Much worse. Just—that yelling at him for… deeply invasive workplace malpractice was deserved, but the way the conversation veered became so stripped down that—

You kneaded your eyes with the heels of your palms. Language was difficult and it was so very late into the night. Nights have never left you so fried until recently; you had no idea if you were overthinking or lacking thought entirely with the way you’d come to act.

You’d spoken too personally with Miguel. The fact that he was nice, even sympathetic, only made you feel worse, like you guilt-tripped him into the role of a life coach. Spider-Man had bigger issues to deal with than comforting one faceless civilian about their multiversal gifted-kid burnout! You considered yourself above public whinges of self-deprecation for attention and legitimization. You worked hard for what you had. You had to, in order to prove that you actually earned what you got.

Miguel said the two of you would be in touch. You only realized now that was probably a courteous way of saying he’d never speak to you again.

Sighing, you turned off the tablet and returned to your experiment, selecting a sample you hadn’t checked up on in weeks, only to find you’d improperly sealed the petri dish. The blood was brittle with freezer-burn, utterly lost to any recourse.

Well, the symbiote-bonded Felicia Hardy you extracted this from seemed to like you. Perhaps they wouldn’t mind you harvesting their blood again!

A chime from your tablet electrocuted your spine. The home screen displayed a new message from Miguel, one without a subject. You hurriedly swiped it open and nearly dropped the device in shock:

Are you available for a meeting?

Your body rigidified. This is it. Earth-409 may have been unfeeling and capricious toward its inhabitants, but Earth-928 was a merciful, forgiving pocket of existence that bestows fat second chances on patient mortal souls. Glancing around at your mess of a workspace, you began collecting your things one-handed as you flourished a short response.

Give me five minutes.

Straightening the sleeves of your lab coat, you grabbed a flash drive containing figures and memos tracking protein synthesis and stabilization models before barreling down the corridor carrying a set of folders nearly the height of your torso, the unbound, pristine white pages fluttering with each step.

The doors to the lobby parted as you approached. A very large, very blue torso consumed the space beyond the threshold, one hand posed testingly on a trim set of hips as the other curled as though preparing to knock. You jumped back with a shout.

Miguel tilted his head beneath the doorframe, staring down at you in bemusem*nt.

You reeled back as the folders continued sliding forward from the momentum. Your arms trembled as you held the stack against your chest, “Miguel!”

He caught the stream of folders that fell off the top of the stack, stiffly tucking the pages back in and assembling them into a uniform block. He flipped one open as you continued staring at him like… well, like he appeared out of nowhere. You stepped out to the lobby of your hole-in-the-wall clinic and narrowed your eyes at him.

“I thought we’d meet in your lab.”

Miguel engrossed himself in the paper like he wanted to make love to it, “Well, I’m here.”

“You are.” You adjusted the weight of manila folders in your arms, “You very much are. Were you… waiting outside the door?”

He spoke with an all-too pruned aplomb, “What makes you say that?”

“You just sent that email. Which means you either sent it while standing out here, or—” you took a step forward, searching for eye contact as Miguel blocked your face with the folder, “—or you came here as soon as you received my response.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah. You’re very imaginative.”

“Then where did you come from?”

A deathly serious gravel leveled his voice, “I could be anywhere.”

You snorted. Miguel deflated and let his eyes roll to the top of his head, tapping his foot as though clicking through a rolodex of potential responses.

“And what about you, huh?” He dropped the folders in his grasp onto the top of your stack, making you careen perilously in search of balance. “Rushed out here pretty quick. Excited?”

“I am,” you said. Your hands and face stung from bearing so much weight for so long, “I-I mean, I’ve been working really hard to figure this out. Is that a bad thing?”

You couldn’t see Miguel’s face. Your palms were sweating.

“Here,” Miguel intoned. He took the stack of folders from your arms, spreading his hands over the respective ends. “I got it.”

Massaging your palms, you studied the way the enormous volume shrunk to nothing in proportion to Miguel’s height. Even still, the way he propped himself up reminded you of when he laid prone on the floor of his lab last week. The memory of his broiled skin projected itself over his costumed body, prompting you to put an end to your joint misery and turn around. It was a quieter welcome to your lab than you expected.

“How are your previous injuries,” you asked as the doors sealed shut. “Stitches dissolve yet?”

Miguel peered down at you, “Will we always need the pretext of a medical exam to discuss the phosphoramidite project?”

“I’m asking out of concern.”

Miguel’s footsteps slowed behind you. “I’m fine. Healed like nothing was ever there.”

You tossed a smile over your shoulder, “It’s a relief that you feel better.”

You came to the pale, effervescent examination room, gesturing to the door on the left wall. Upon entering, the pair of you was immediately greeted by a tall microscope and several stationary holoscreens, the lab in such a state of disarray it was damn near postmodern. Miguel studied the space like he was figuring out its weak spots. Or, rather, like he was looking for traps. He settled the stack of folders among the other messy plastic models of isomers and organic chemistry textbooks.

“Has your dimension not invented hard drives yet? Why all the paper copies?”

You moved objects from one pile of mess to another in a move that mimicked organization as opposed to actually accomplishing it, “Oh, it’s very simple. I ran out of storage on my tablet. What you’re holding is just yesterday’s observations.”

Miguel stared sidelong at the folders like they were radioactive.

“Please,” you beckoned, clearing a chair for Miguel to sit. “Make yourself at home.”

“This is my tower.”

You gave an ironic, sniveling laugh, "And I'm so very grateful you let me take refuge here after blowing up my lab."

Miguel's shoulders bunched as he frowned, like he'd stepped in a puddle of something odious and wet. His prickly pout amused you in its easy provocation, persuading you to see how wide you could wedge this crack of chagrin. You clasped your hands together as you hooked your foot around a metal cart of glucosides suspensions, rolling it to the other side of the lab as you lamented your "displacement" like a war-weathered widow.

"It's so much nicer here than in South Bay," you continued, "There's no space for us inner-city researchers, you see. I have to tuck myself into a corner like a mouse—"

"I already apologized for that."

"—and fashion a microscope out of spoons and aluminum foil—"

"You can stop—Stop it—" Miguel begged.

"And on my return home I always spy law enforcement unearth another piece of that darling, expensive centrifuge you used as a dreidel on Goblin's face. To defeat him, of course." You threw a holoscreen between you and Miguel as he pounced on you, displaying a series of photographs of the cell colonies you’d studied. It piqued his interest enough that you were able to plant your hands on his shoulders and settle him back in his seat, patting in a mollifying manner. "Which is why I'mindebted to you for such charity. Sir."

Miguel's claws poked through the holoscreen as he held it.

“Let’s start at the beginning.” You picked out a lollipop from your desk jar, toying with the wrapper as you directed Miguel to the twisting, jiggling membranes of the interacting blood cell and viral body. “This study aims to prove that Arachno-Humanoid DNA can reconstitute itself by appropriating the properties of a viral agent. The theory, as it stands, is that if the host cell absorbs the foreign body as an organelle, the former may exploit the reproductive capabilities of the latter, mending not just damaged DNA, but infusing it with elevated characteristics.”

The host cell swallowed the virus, suspending it in the diaphanous pond of cytoplasm in its body.

“Presently, a majority of samples succeed in integrating viral agents as an organelle, but leave it dormant once genetic reconstitution is completed, which proves one half of my current theory. However, the viral agent is not yet truly considered part of the cell. Daughter cells are not created utilizing the viral agents’ reproductive systems, nor are they imbued with any outstanding properties. At an average of twenty-seven days, immune response cells seem to reprogram themselves to see the viral bodies as threats to the organism’s health and terminate them.”

The screens filled up with dozens upon dozens of images from sample colonies. Miguel leaned back and crossed his arms, nodding without offering any indication of agreement or being convinced. He simply prompted you to keep going. You used the lollipop, opened but uneaten, as a wand to outline the areas of interest in Sample-3123.

“I hypothesize this is attributable to an energy issue, as the effort to maintain and utilize an entirely new organelle may be exhausting the host cells. It would explain why properties are not being passed on, as the colony would focus on conserving energy to return to a homeostatic baseline. However, samples have all returned to baseline levels of productivity as observed before introductions of viral agents. I’ve been attempting to resolve this issue by maximizing supply of glucose and other fuel-stuffs, though it has not garnered a noticeable uptick in reproductivity. Results as of now are inconclusive.”

You chanced a glance at Miguel’s face, leaning your hip against a table. Miguel spoke as you finally stuck the head of the lollipop into your mouth.

“So, the project is a failure.”

A sharp taste burgeoned across your tongue that magnified the offended pinch of your face. Sour.

“Absolutely not,” you retorted, “Did you not listen to me? One half of my theory has been proven, that means the other one is within reach.”

“Your cells keep blowing up.”

“Not all of them.”

Miguel raised his eyes to you in tired umbrage, like you’d relayed a grand conspiracy theory and were presently enticing him with a tinfoil hat. You leaned into it.

“You’re a geneticist too. What do you think?”

Miguel looked around like you must have referred to someone else. You fanned your palm in a circle, encouraging him to donate a morsel of his ever-so-very superior wisdom.

“I haven’t practiced genetics since becoming Spider-Man.” Miguel heaved a breath through his nostrils, “Only a select number of skills from my old day job are relevant to me now.”

While no less blunt than usual, his words were tinged with a remorseful kind of sympathy, like Miguel wished he could lend something of merit. For once, you doubted his disappointment had anything to do with you; it reminded you of a virtuoso that sprained their wrist, watching from off-stage as the rest of the orchestra harmonized. Wishing he could join the action.

You pressed lightly, careful to avoid coming off as nosy or petulant, “C’mon. You know what they say: you never really lose that magic touch. And you’re curious anyway, right?”

“Considerably less, at this point.” He spoke with the worn, routine dread of a patient receiving news that cancer had returned to their body after remission. You rested more of your weight against the table, allowing yourself to expose the tender underside of your shell.

“Miguel," you murmured, "Why’d you let me restart this project here?”

His brow furrowed. Licking his lips, he glanced off to the side and stammered. You attributed his hesitancy to his usual distaste for disclosing that he had a heart.

“I told you. Your work is impressive.”

“What do you gain from it, though,” you guided, gesturing to the crimson spider on his chest. Miguel swiftly covered it with one hand. Gracious, was the man difficult. “You help people, right? You’re Spider-Man. You’re a hero. You’re the good guy.”

Miguel looked up at you. Really looked at you— beheld you, like until this point you’d been separated into frames by color, line, and shading, and now combined into one unified vision of enlightenment.

“You think I’m good?”

You brightened, smug at being so correct you left him dumbfounded. “I want to help people, too. And this will help people. There’s just something I’m not understanding, it’s got nothing to do with the intrinsic properties of these cell colonies. Can you… can you help me?”

The bright light of the room allowed you to catch the subtle variances of Miguel’s expression. Something cleared from his dark brow as he accepted your words. His eyes relaxed for the first time, and you realized that when Miguel was calm like this, connecting with your optimism and high praise, he was quite easy on the eyes.

Miguel cleared his throat and wiped his mouth, ruminating. “Your samples always return to baseline productivity, right?”

You tugged the lollipop stick out of your mouth, “Yes.”

“If all the samples return to their level of activity from before the test, are you sure it’s the amount of ATP that’s the problem?”

You blinked in the same vapid way a gecko would.

Miguel cleared his throat, unsure of how to articulate himself, “Okay, yeah, that’s…stupid.”

You nearly threw yourself at him, “No! No, no, no, keep going.”

While rusty, Miguel had clearly grasped something from the information you’d presented and was excavating the necessary vocabulary for a response from the tunnels of his memory. You grabbed a stylus and began scribbling notes down on your tablet. “I mean, maybe it’s not so much that the samples are rejecting anything, but the foreign bodies become vestigial because there’s a lack of directive. Once the genetic damage is repaired, they don’t understand they’re supposed to keep using the bodies to generate new DNA. And then they purge because they remember the virus to be hostile, like you explained.”

“How can we test that theory?”

Miguel looked behind him at the microscope, returning his gaze to you for permission before he walked over to it. You hovered as close as you could without coming across as a nuisance, watching as Miguel loaded a long, thin, shiny needle into a tool sourced from the very back of the station. It looked similar to a pipette, save for the quiet thrum and spark of cyan lightning that blasted from the tip of the needle.

The entirety of your body clenched as Miguel lowered his eyes to the lenses of the microscope and zoned the needle closer to the awaiting cells on the observational stage. They connected with a little zap and flash of light, and your eyes roved over the sample as if capable of magnifying the seemingly unchanged sample to reveal its changes. Miguel gave a half-smile as he pulled away from the microscope, co*cking his head to invite you to look. You leaned fully in, close enough that your shoulder brushed his as he made space for you, leaning over until your sight funneled into the lens.

The cells were writhing in a state of chaos not dissimilar to the apocalyptic devastation you observed earlier, cramming together in one violent sea of glassy, growing bubbles. However, you realized that their explosive increase was not because of a rejection of viral bodies, but because they were actually multiplying; dozens—no, now hundreds, had to be—of cells shot from the aether into view. You zoomed in on one and projected the feed onto a holoscreen, confirming that the daughter cells were composed of denser acid strains.

You turned to Miguel so quickly and so lightly it felt like you were floating, “What did you do?!”

“I, uh, put them under pressure,” Miguel answered quickly as you returned to the microscope, “They needed incentive to adapt, so I just—I charged some cells, and the ones that survived, repopulated—”

“You’re a genius!” You threw your arms around him, “Forcing their adaptation—I never would have figured that out on my own. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you—”

Miguel rolled his eyes, but let you continue to sob all over him all the same. He remained one imposing, immovable force as you darted around the lab to finalize the formulae for this reaction, already talking about replicating this test on other sample colonies with different charges. He wore a spaced-out look on his face, as though his entire frame of reality had shifted on his axis. His focus remained trained on your mouth as you talked around your candy, flailing your hands as you mimed possible reactions in future experiments and what this could mean on a larger sample size when the time came to expand the parameters of the test. He wasn’t even cognizant of you vigorously shaking his hand like he bestowed upon you the key to the city until you wrenched him nearly a foot downward in your fervor.

“Alright, alright, it’s fine, seriously,” Miguel soothed, sliding his gaze up to your eyes, “This wouldn’t have worked without the foundations you laid. I barely did anything.”

You fanned your collar to alleviate the sweat you’d worked up, face positively flushed, “Y-You saved me. Really.”

Miguel squeezed your hand. The projection feed cast a halo on his irises as your reflection highlighted his pupils. You realized how indecent you looked then, half-crazed and panting, and attempted to fix your hair, only to find Miguel refusing to let you go.

“I want to work with you.”

A serene hum reverberated throughout your body, like a cadence played into an acoustic chamber. You felt harmonic, perfectly centered in the cluttered lab, the flurry of paper and cloudy holo-feed taking on ethereal tinges as they blurred in your periphery.

You clasped Miguel’s hand between both of yours, “I would like that. Very much.”

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

Venus sparkled brighter than usual tonight.

The distant world twinkled until the points of its flares sharpened into lances, the glow refracting into a feathery corona around the celestial body, the same kind that haloed streetlights when viewed through teary eyes.

The brightness grew molten and burned away the scant stars freckling the smoggy sky, until Venus shuddered and the night wrinkled, and the light proved too much for the planet to contain. A glass bullet exploded from the canvas of night, ricocheting off the masonic roofs of New York, Earth-94. The wound it left behind inflamed into a carmine supernova, its ravaged edges straightening out to form a hexagonal web. Spider-Man and Spider-Woman dove from its golden core in pursuit of their prey, the anomalous Mysterio of Earth-409.

“This is his fourth world, how have you not caught him yet?!” Miguel roared, stretching his arms to materialize a set of anti-gravitational wings on the sides of his suit. “He’s a hack! He doesn’t even have any powers!”

“Becky, baby, he doesn’t mean it!” Antonia crowed, silver wrists gleaming as they shot two webs at a set of brick chimneys and hurdled between them, “Come back, we can talk about this!”

“YOU’LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!”

Mysterio bounced off edge after edge of historic brownstone apartments with the scattered trajectory of a nitro-charged pinball, unleashing half-formed pyrotechnical displays in an effort to increase the distance between him and the team.

Another portal opened below the pair of Spiders, echoing with the aggressive rev of an engine as Jessica Drew charged onto the streets, maintaining eyes on the target as she fluidly wove between dumbfounded pedestrians. Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, and Spider-Woman swung about one another in harrying fury.

A stream of churning mist erupted from Mysterio’s sleeves, yet Miguel crossed his limbs in a set of x’s and burst cleanly through, locking his sights on his enemy as he spoke into his watch:

“Jess, in position?”

Her engine revved twice like a demonic snarl. Miguel shot a web at Mysterio’s chest, pulling the villain into a stranglehold as they fell headfirst to the light-freckled street below, twisting in the air until Mysterio’s spine collided with the raised back wheel of Jessica Drew’s motorcycle with a dense crunch.

Jessica continued driving on her front wheel until Antonia swung down from overhead, turning her bike one-eighty to allow her partners to descend on their adversary like frothing scavengers. However, Jessica clocked something off about her fellow Spider-Woman: the edges of Antonia’s sculpted body were hazy and ultraviolet while her webs appeared to bleed directly from her arms. Miguel realized a moment later and, therefore, a beat too late as he continued tying the upper half of Mysterio’s body; the villain kicked his legs up, dispelling Antonia’s phantom clone, as he flipped over Miguel and Jessica and landed on the street. With the magnetic coils in his boots, he jumped skybound, landing on the top of a narrow neon hotel sign reading “VACANCY!”

Antonia caught up to the chase, shaking her head at her comrades, “Always jumping the gun, huh, boss?”

“Better than giving up the chase,” he spat back, “Which, if you did your job—”

“Slow and steady wins the race! Jessica, you agree, right?”

“Slow and steady the best you got,” Jessica asked as she burned a set of sable tire marks into the asphalt and sped toward their mark.

Mysterio rotated the mirrors on his suit as Antonia neared him, projecting a swarm of rabid bats as he continued blasting from one brownstone loft to another, his cape fragmenting into polygons that meshed with the wings of his illusions. They circled Antonia with wheedling screeches such that she became disoriented, forced to dive closer to ground level in search of clearer paths as her partner and enemy soared overhead. Yet just as Mysterio chortled in celebration for getting the upper hand, his body glitched out, and Antonia flipped into the air, rounding a kick to his solar plexus that sent him crashing onto the roof of a cathedral like a glass cannonball.

Mysterio appeared to shake as he rose from his feet. Antonia and Miguel landed with the control of trapeze artists, turning to extend webbed levies to Jessica, who ferociously circled Mysterio once she set down. The ceramic shingles sounded like hundreds of chattering teeth under her tires. Yet as the three superheroes closed in, they realized Mysterio was not shaking in fear, rather the constitution of his very form wavered like the air above a hot street. The fog in his plexiglass helmet swirled chaotically as he laid his sights on the historic lay of Brooklyn Heights.

“Such a primitive Dark Age of humanity! My illusions and stagecraft would be miracles to these simpletons—I would be hailed as a God!”

“These people have makeup filters more advanced than your special effects, bud—”

Mysterio multiplied the bell towers of the cathedral until they resembled a row of sharp drills, spinning toward the heroic trio and clanging a discordant hymn. Antonia and Jessica wove through the gaps as Miguel barrelled through stone with a slice of his bladed arms. When he fell upon Mysterio with the intent to shred him into fatty strips, the villain crouched into himself with an air of desperation, and as he touched one fist to the roof, a paladin’s shield materialized in front of him and blocked Miguel’s attack. Both men seemed surprised at this turn of events.

Right as Miguel slashed a second time, Mysterio enveloped himself in his cape and vanished, reappearing at the summit of the cathedral’s center spire.

“Do you know what I’ve seen? What I could be?” Mysterio hollered, “I am a central force in the team of supervillains known as the Sinister Six!”

When Antonia and Miguel advanced on their opponent, Mysterio disappeared into a cloud of smoke and reappeared leagues away. Each time they apprehended him, his form would turn into a spectral smear. Antonia scanned the area in infrared and night vision but found no silhouette, meaning Mysterio neither cloaked himself in invisibility nor produced these copies as illusory duplications. When she glanced at her watch, she saw the readings for extradimensional contamination through the roof. The boundaries of this universe were loosening.

“I’m thrilled you’ve self-actualized or whatever, man, but you need to come home,” Antonia begged, “If you don’t, you will die. I-I’ll tell you what—next time you pull one over on a senator, I’ll give you a running start!”

“You think I’m going to settle for that paltry insignificance now that I’ve learned of my potential? My legacy?! There are universes where I exist and you don’t, Spider-Woman. There are universes where I beat you,” Mysterio seethed. The location of his voice could not be placed, such that Antonia thought it resounded inside her skull, “Tell me again who the universe needs to function?”

All oxygen was sucked from the area the Spiders stood as the atmosphere before them thinned to a shimmering screen. Mysterio burst forth, turning the roof into rough blocks wherever he touched it, like a cubist curse of King Midas. While both Miguel and Antonia had ganged up on him, their fists and feet merely phased through Mysterio’s staticy body with each move. Mysterio screamed from the existential flaying, yet continued fighting, as though the abstraction of his body would shed his weaknesses like snakeskin.

“You know something else?” he goaded, ripping up a section of the roof’s metal piping with a strength previously impossible for him, throwing Jessica into the air as her bike continued charging right into Miguel, isolating Antonia right in the middle of Mysterio’s war path. “This dimensional alchemy that turns a fire hydrant into a friggin’ Koons—I’m getting the hang of it.”

The pipe inflated into a comically large mallet in Mysterio’s hands with his next glitch, and he raised it with the crazed ambition of a challenger to a carnival’s High Striker. As Antonia lassoed a piece of metal to shield herself, her webs turned to a spray of steel, welded to her wrist. She could barely contain her gasp as she tried to rip the rope free, inadvertently destroying a panel on her nanocarbonic arm, as well as the series of tubes and wires hidden behind it, bleeding ghostly white web fluid onto the ground. Her desperation to stop the flow by webbing a wall with her other hand gave Mysterio the advantage.

“Think of it, insect! Reality—” the moon blinked through its phases like a flickering spotlight over Mysterio’s climactic note, “—in the palm of my hand.”

The round face of the mallet blocked the moon as it came down in a swift, descending arc over Antonia’s face. She raised one arm in defense as the other sought traction along the ground, her body caught between fight and flight and her companions’ not yet completely sprung with reaction.

Just as Antonia felt her face cool from the air parted by the mallet, a web splattered over the weapon, stopping Mysterio’s descending arc. Spider-Woman followed the condensed spiral to the bell tower piercing the sky, where an ominous silhouette hung upside down.

“No matter how twisted reality becomes…” the figure rasped, “It can’t compare to the darkness of my nightmares.”

The hour rang, the toll beginning with the smaller bells at the bottom of the tower and gradually infecting the larger ones, until the figure anchored a web to the large bronze vessel from which he hung and swung toward the group, his momentum triggering a sway and bass bellow. Ben Reilly, a.k.a Scarlet Spider of Earth-94, pulled the mallet into his grip and swung it over his shoulder, striking a voguish pose against the sleepless city.

Antonia arched her neck to glare at her support, “Please don’t tell me you were timing that.”

“I’m not letting your attitude ruin my awesome entrance,” Reilly returned, annoyance embrittling his stance. “Especially when all of you complain when I practice at HQ.”

“You mean when you brood for attention outside the training center?” Jessica flatly challenged.

Mysterio shyly raised his hand, “I liked it.”

“...Really?”

“Showmanship is so important in a fight—”

Ben made an exploding gesture against his temple with his fingers, “Thank you! I’ve always said that. Any notes?”

“Ehh, no—no! I couldn’t possibly—”

“I’m dying to know—”

“Oh, it’s just a tiny—feel free to ignore it, but, it would be superb if you, maybe, dropped into a low pose before springing up, like—” Reilly crouched down, and with further direction straightened one leg to the side, “—exactly like that! Now it’s perfect.”

“This does feel more dynamic, not gonna lie. You’re a genius.”

“Hey, c’mon, can’t be a genius without inspiration, amirigh—”

Miguel tackled Mysterio with a yell, pinning him to the ground as Antonia scrabbled to her feet. In desperation to finish the fight, Miguel yelled for Jess to secure a barrier around their foe as he extracted a pair of sparking handcuffs.

Mysterio thrashed wildly against the restraining grips of the four Spiders, glitches intensifying with each wave until the villain appeared stringy and dehumanized. The roof dented from his convulsions, as though gravity itself sought to lock Mysterio’s body to the planet’s surface. His helmet flashed like a lightbulb and then a greenscreen, before projecting the colored bars of a television lacking a signal.

The heroes grit their teeth in pain as the mounting static stabbed needles into the centers of their bones. Mysterio slammed his gloved fist against the roof, ripping up one shingle after another, which transformed into a pointe shoe, then a plush elephant, then a microphone, then a name tag.

Antonia gasped as Mysterio cleared a sizable hole in the roof, failing to choke him out between her locked legs, “DON’T LET HIM GET INSIDE!”

Each time the heroes wrangled one wrist into a cuff, Mysterio’s body became immaterial, until he collapsed into a line of electricity and escaped into the cleared hole.

Miguel ripped the metal scaffolding away and ordered everyone inside. Antonia dropped into the center of the nave and desperately looked around. Tapping a button on her headset, she scanned the area, overlaying a blueprint for the cathedral overtop her current view; Mysterio was strongest when he had an enclosed space to twist into his own hallucinatory labyrinth, and while Antonia had long outsmarted his usual deck of tricks, her comrades did not have the luxury of her cyber-enhanced sight. She linked up her view with the other Spiders’ watches, gazes flicking between their holoscreens and the surrounding brumal stone facade.

“All this time I’ve wanted to prove you were no better than me, parasite.”

Miguel thought he saw the stained glass lips of the angel Gabriel move, spinning to follow the line of colorful windows depicting the Immaculate Conception, Holy Infancy, Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. As he scoped the nave, his head aligned with the center of the great rosetta window. He did not see its petals fold into one massive, whirling spiral.

Mysterio’s laughter shook the building, “When now I know how to surpass you, once and for all.”

The Spiders’ watches blared alarms as the light filtering through the stained windows combined into one shade of vermillion. They grouped together into a tight circle, desperately checking their watches as the windows continued warping and inverting.

Antonia faced the large statue of Christ at the head of the nave and froze, caught by the strange way the light bounced off his face and muted his features. While her scans assured her nothing amiss, she still glared at it suspiciously until she found a single, minor discrepancy: the halo around the statue’s head was no halo at all, but a glass tank.

Antonia thrust out her good arm to web Mysterio. Thrown off his guard, he could only see a streak of violet light before being struck in the face, grabbed by his collar, and thrown to the pack of rabid wolves that made up Spider-Woman’s team.

Mysterio fought off their descending hands, jumping onto a pew. He attempted to project a few illusions from his suit, but doubled over with a fresh glitch. When he grabbed a tall candelabra for support, it destabilized as well. Not wanting to risk their atoms frying, the Spiders stayed back, allowing Mysterio to test a wild thought. He layered a projection of a tommy gun over the post, and, to everyone’s shock, the candelabra transformed into a polished ebony weapon. With a maniacal laugh, Mysterio let a hailstorm of bullets rip, sending his adversaries running.

“Can this fish bowl just drop already?!” Jessica shouted as she hid behind a column.

Antonia rolled out of the way as a spray of ammo shattered the glass. “Cuffs are a no-go. We need to get him into one of those big webbed box thingies.”

“Anyone got a plan?” Miguel shouted.

“Fight,” Ben growled, “Until the end…”

The weapon glitched again into a mounted machine gun. Antonia scanned the area for anything she could use to counterattack, spotting the jagged shards of glass piled on the floor.

Before Mysterio could fire again, a chunk of glass grazed his arm, scaring him back. More pieces fired toward him as Mysterio sought cover.

“If these buggy irregularities can make my illusions come to life,” he pondered, analyzing his hands, “Then this place…”

Mysterio rushed into the open and began constructing a hologram to overlay the cathedral’s interior.

The next piece of glass Antonia raised caught the light of the moon and bounced it right into Mysterio’s eyes. He stumbled back, half-blinded, allowing a fraction of weakness for Ben to drop down and lock Mysterio’s arms behind him.

“It’s useless to keep fighting,” Ben warned, “This is a variation of an arm lock that’s going to strain your upper body just shy of hyperextension. It’s almost impossible to break, unlike you.”

Mysterio paused his struggle to say, “Wow, my Spider-Woman never quips like that!”

Jessica charged forward, punching him in the stomach.

“Get the trap, boss!” Antonia yelled as Miguel bounded forth, materializing a small hexagonal pad from his watch.

“On it.”

Mysterio looked around in fear, willing his body to glitch again, even if it would hurt him. He struggled against the Spiders, snapping his fingers, clicking his heels, anything to escape their clutches. The pad slid in front of him, allowing the Spiders to break apart.

As the red containment barrier formed, Mysterio howled in agony as his body distorted again, gripping his helmet as the cloud of mist became plasmic. He beat and scratched his helmet in an attempt to release the mounting pressure, until the dome finally gave way with a hairline crack. The collapsing star of Mysterio’s head detonated with a sketchy mushroom cloud that blinded the approaching heroes like a flash grenade and blew apart the roof. The Spiders escaped onto the bell towers, watching this crude rebirth unfold.

The swelling mass darkened into a thunderhead, and from its depths emerged an unstably rendered jumble of polygons, the faces of the crude shapes comprising the creation’s body plasticine and so colorful they were juvenile. Formed, it seemed, entirely from the gray matter of Mysterio’s imagination, the thing spread two fractalized wings made from the containment barrier and gave a deafening war cry, shaking the chandeliers overhead.

“I hate to point out the obvious, guys, but—no, actually, I don’t even think you’ve realized—we’re getting nowhere!” Jessica boomed.

Ben balled his hand into a fist, “All hope is lost…”

As Antonia took a fearful step back, something crunched under her metal heel. She looked down to see her busted arm, softly reflecting the light of a candle. Her eyes widened into saucers.

“Follow my lead, guys.” Antonia began grabbing every reflective surface she could, all types of trays and glass, thrusting them into her companions arms.

“What’s your plan, kid?” Miguel asked, “Stupefy the narcissist with his reflection?”

“Mysterio creates his illusions through light and fire. If we disrupt his projections, it’ll prevent the glitches from becoming what he wants them to be. It’ll buy us just a bit more time before he recomposes himself.”

“Great!” Jessica beamed, then dropped her expression, “But he got out of the first trap.”

“We need to get close enough to disable his suit’s tech. Which means one of us needs to act as bait.”

Ben stood up, staring into the fray. “I’ll do it. I’ll…sacrifice myself, for the greater good.”

“Thanks, Benji, that’s perfect!”

“W-Wait, wha—”

A swift kick by Antonia sent Ben falling into the church. She shouted after him, “Don’t worry, he likes you!”

Ben landed on his feet in front of Mysterio, his body suspended in the chest of his draconic creation, but his broken helmet appeared a gateway into the space between worlds, that liminal plane one saw between the gaps of an interdimensional portal.

“When I take over the multiverse, I think I’ll keep you close to me.” Mysterio raised one great, digitized, taloned hand, preparing to strike. “As a pet!”

Ben jumped onto the ceiling as the hand neared, shining his light into Mysterio’s helmet, only to find it did nothing.

“Toni,” he yelled, bleached of all dramatic pretense, “you are so dead once I—”

An engine roared as Jessica drove along the roof, snatching Ben away just as Mysterio’s gigantic hand crashed against the rafters.

“You want him? Come and get him!”

The bike’s tires squealed as Jessica zoomed around the interior of the church, twisting Mysterio this way and that such that the chandeliers fell, their beads of flame momentarily burning through Mysterio’s wings before they extinguished against the cold floor and the wings healed over. Jessica brightened with epiphany, spinning her bike around to shine her headlight onto the creature’s arm.

It disintegrated.

Just as reality bends, so does light.

Miguel and Antonia jumped in, using the round center of the broken rosetta window and a silver platter to shoot spotlights through Mysterio’s half-existent body.

“I need something to magnify this stuff!” Jessica pleaded, “Like a lens!”

Mysterio loosed a deafening cry and reached with his other hand as Jessica continued driving on the walls and ceiling. Miguel rushed forward and positioned the glass in front of the bike’s headlight, riding on the handlebars.

He spoke into his watch to Antonia. “This one’s all you.”

Antonia stared at Miguel. One moment. Two moments. Then, she nodded.

Mysterio’s body continued evaporating, the demands of the dragon’s body too great for his tech to keep up with. One glitch rippled through his body, then another, and just as the entire mass of his living illusion gave into digital ruin, Antonia dove toward his chest.

The glitching flared with discordant screams, filling up the entire cathedral and prompting Miguel to launch his two teammates through the front doors, before it just…

Stopped.

A familiar burst of orange light flowed inside like a scan. The three superheroes stared at the cathedral, braced for anything to come out. Fearing the worst.

A burly figure emerged from the hole where the doors were, upper body swollen so bestially their head couldn’t be seen. Yet with a grunt, the top half of the figure dropped, the silhouette clearing to reveal Antonia, dropping a robed bundle to her feet.

“My final trick,” she drawled, lifting the cape to reveal a bound Mysterio, his gauntlets and boots ripped apart. “Et voilà.”

Jessica and Ben cheered, rushing to clap Antonia on the back. Miguel stayed in place, contemplating her work with his arms crossed over his chest. His mask did not hint at the expression beneath it. It rarely did.

“You have my respect.” While Ben intended it as praise, it sounded as gravelly and depressed as everything else he said, “Though, while I trust you, I hope I don’t have to put my life in your hands again anytime soon.”

“Pretty good stuff,” Jessica agreed, hugging Antonia to her side, “Wouldn’t you agree, Miguel?”

Miguel kicked the half-conscious Mysterio onto his back. “Yeah.”

“I learned the drop from you. Or, well, I studied the way you did it and practiced. Without you teaching me.”

Miguel focused on Antonia, trying to toe the boundary between pride and practical feedback. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. You’ve still got a lot to learn about being Spider-Woman.”

“You could…mentor me on that.”

While Ben remained ignorant to anything made amiss by what Antonia said, Jessica’s joy split apart with a jump of her brows, glancing uncertainly at Miguel.

He stared at the ground. “No. Final warning, Antonia. Stop asking.”

A flash of sadness breached the security of Antonia’s mask, yet she quickly plastered over it with a self-assured nod, hooking her arms around Jessica and Ben with an overly sweet extra helping of exhilaration.

“It’s cool. I’m too old for a mentor, anyway.”

Miguel turned around before he let his shoulders drop, shaking his head and tapping the screens of his watch awake. There was a reason he didn’t get too involved with those at Spider Society. Though, in truth, it was more like a consequence. The canon taught you not to grow too attached to an intricately laid mural of dominos—things made to fall.

And, unlike Miguel, Antonia had yet to experience all her canon events.

“You guys aren’t gonna believe this,” Ben marveled, looking up at the sky.

The other Spiders whipped around in preparation for another threat, only to match Ben’s line of sight to see a perfectly clear night sky. In spite of New York’s smog and cloudy weather, billions of stars twinkled overhead, along with a spray of color from the Milky Way’s spiral arm.

“Lyla, should we be worried?” Antonia whispered. The AI materialized on the face of her watch and hummed appreciatively at the view, conjuring a standing telescope.

“Negative. The fight thinned the boundaries of Ben’s dimension enough to allow a keyhole into the next Earth over, but everything’ll bounce back by morning.”

Constellations dotted Jess’ glasses. “It’s beautiful. You’d have to travel far for a view like this. Makes me wish it could be permanent.”

Miguel followed the smattering of stars to the distant skyline, where the lights ordered themselves into neat columns along the sides of titanic buildings. Each box held at least one person, maybe even a family, who could bond over witnessing this phenomenon without knowing the truth that it stemmed from a brush with armageddon.

Miguel wondered how many signs of chaos he missed during his…leave of absence. That ill-fated, stupid attempt at normalcy that destroyed an entire world, and wiped all evidence of his daughter from existence.

“So, what I’m hearing is,” a voice groaned beneath them, “I’m kind of right?”

The interjection startled the Spiders from their awe, staring down at Mysterio as he fought to hoist a smug grin past the nasty swelling of the left side of his face.

Antonia brought her hands together with a sharp clap. “Nice. Moment’s ruined. Aight, everybody, let’s wrap this up!”

Miguel willed himself to calm down as everyone finished scanning the grounds. When Lyla gave the final go-ahead, he opened his watch and began inputting the coordinates for HQ.

An incoming call took up the screen before Miguel could stop his finger from tapping the screen again, accepting the call and pulling up a hologram of your waving form.

He scowled so hard he feared he just gave himself a new pair of wrinkles.

“Miguel, did you have a chance to fix up the thermocycler?”

“How many times do I have to remind you not to contact me when I’m in the field unless there’s an emergency,” Miguel chided, accentuating each syllable in the latter half of his sentence with a chopping motion.

You picked the dirt beneath your thumb in tepid leisure. “I will have you know a majority of our project depends on this machine.”

Miguel hung up with thinly veiled exasperation, picking Mysterio up in a fireman’s carry.

Several paces away, Antonia’s watch twittered with an incoming call.

“No way, what a surprise!”

“Hi, Ant~”

Miguel squeezed his eyes shut, along with his hands over Mysterio’s limbs. “Unbelievable.”

“Jess and Ben are here, too,” Antonia added, holding her watch up so you could exchange spirited greetings with the other two Spiders, while Miguel busied himself with throttling Mysterio into a series of complicated harnesses. Antonia spun around, pacing to and from the ends of the gigantic hole in the cathedral wall. “What can I do for you, Doc?”

“Could you please ask Miguel if he’s fixed the thermocycler?”

The veil of polite chagrin tore with a prolonged groan from Miguel’s throat. “I’ll deal with it once we get back to HQ, alright?”

Antonia bounced her head from side to side. “He said he’ll deal—”

“They can clearly hear me!”

The top half of your head magnified, no doubt as a result of you pressing your face closer to your watch.

“Is that a Mysterio?”

“Our Mysterio, actually,” Ant corrected. “Been playing hopscotch across dimensions since Monday. Real slippery one.”

“Sounds like celebrations are in order.” You grabbed your tablet. “Anyone want takeout? On me.”

A chorus of gratitude broke out, flowing into allegro bursts of laughter.

“Oh, goodie,” Mysterio griped. “My defeat is given the same denouement as an after school special.”

“You must have put up a fantastic fight, though, to have evaded capture for a whole business week.” You rubbed your chin, “Though, you couldn’t have eaten very much during that time.”

Mysterio sucked his teeth, weighing the fullness of your geniality and finding none of it to be puffery. “I like shrimp har-gow.”

“And you, Miguel? Want your usual?”

Where his temper prepared to skyrocket, it instead tailspun into total bewilderment, “I have a ‘usual’?”

“Judging by the smell of it whenever I pass your computer, yeah.” You laughed. “One whiff of that spice and all my nose hairs burn away. Don’t know how you handle it.”

It never occurred to Miguel that the absolutely skeletal routine of sustenance he’d adopted had made him so predictable. It felt…weird to be noticed like this. But also nice. To be thought of. Provided for. Yeah, people were generally supposed to provide things for their leaders.

“Ooh, I’m craving something hearty,” Jess chimed, fondly rubbing her stomach. “I’d tear into a whole pan of lo mein right now. Can you ask them to double up on the bell peppers? No peas, though. And some egg mixed in—”

Ben landed in a frog-like pose beside Antonia, tugging her wrist toward his head. “Crab rangoons. Extra sweet and sour sauce. Please.”

“I want Reilly’s crab rangoons!” Antonia locked her arm around Ben’s head, jumping onto his back as the pair tussled, all the while Jess continued jovially modifying her order.

Miguel watched his hand-picked strike force dedicated to the security of the multiverse rough house one another like school children at recess.

“Countless lives depend on us.” His astonishment sounded nothing short of devastated.

“I, too, know what it's like to be unappreciated,” Mysterio murmured. He attempted to wriggle closer to Miguel’s ear, “Join me. We would be unstop—”

Miguel punched him in the face. With only a sharp, demanding whistle as warning, he tossed the villain at his correct nemesis; Antonia ended her call and plopped Mysterio on the ground like garbage left on a curb.

“You’re supposed to be one of my funner rogues,” Antonia smarmed. She roughly tightened Mysterio’s restraints, partly in smug victory, partly to reassure herself of the tech’s durability. “Why mess up our routine, Beckster? You throw a tantrum downtown, we have a chase averaging thirty one minutes in length, I catch you, kiss a few babies, then lay back for approximately seven weeks until your injuries heal.”

“I want glory.” Mysterio’s voice sawed through the air, lacking its usual ostentatious flair.

“How original,” Antonia tutted. “Everything’s derivative nowadays…”

“Nothing wrong with putting a spin on a classic. It gets old after a while, being so formulaic.”

Mysterio’s face peeked through the hole in his helmet, eyes stoking a rueful glare like metal in a forge. The fissures of the plexiglass reflected Antonia’s face back at her in pieces. The light bouncing off her silver mask melted into Mysterio’s sallow skin, connecting them.

“The itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the water spout,” he continued, adopting a sing-song buoyancy as he gently bumped his head. “Down came the rain and washed the spider out…”

Antonia’s trachea blocked off as though cauterized as she leveled her gaze at her adversary.

A memory replayed of the rising sea beyond a window. The horizon tilted like the water was forming a colossal wave. The window shattered. A heavy, opaque, hungry darkness spat through, broken only by pale faces that she couldn’t tell belonged to statues or real people.

More weight pressed down on her every time she exhaled. She held her breath. Lost it.

“Out came the sun and dried up all the rain, but the itsy-bitsy spider—”

Antonia switched on the cuffs to electrocute Mysterio at max charge, hands curling loosely at her sides as she stood over him. She watched him sputter dry, overwrought yells, writhing on the ground as pathetically as he always should, until a clawed hand shoved her aside and flipped the gadget to base stasis.

Miguel raised an unconscious Mysterio by the cuffs like a ragdoll, lowering his head toward Antonia in Hadean condemnation. The shroud of emotion over her features dissipated, and the eyes of her mask widened in realization that she’d done something wrong.

“I-I don’t know what came over me—”

“Save it for your own world.” Miguel tossed Mysterio onto the back of Jess’ bike. The words slid along Antonia’s skin like a knife on whetstone; flat on impact, but threatening a sharpness if she strayed out of line.

Miguel’s reprimand was not a moral one, but purely procedural, and the initial sting of shame for breaking a rule reverberated through Antonia’s system to become metered contemplation: nobody debated Miguel on whether it was permissible to kill one’s enemies. Which meant, on some level, taking death into your own hands didn't break the canon. And if Antonia were allowed, it would certainly be easy. Effective. Permanent.

Antonia pinched herself on the nape of her neck and returned to scanning the cathedral debris, reminding herself that she was supposed to be an example to the world. One couldn’t use murder to end all of their problems.

But…the problem would still be solved, no? The outcome would be the same.

Antonia rapped her knuckles on Miguel’s shoulder, hammering her thoughts into submission. “Just making sure he doesn’t slip away until we can stuff him in the Go Home Machine.”

“He shouldn’t have gotten this far in the first place,” Miguel scolded.

“He’s caught now!”

Jessica pulled up a portal and walked through beside her bike. In short order, once his watch confirmed all extradimensional contaminants had been eliminated, Ben followed suit. Miguel grasped Antonia’s shoulder before she could follow their teammates.

Miguel so deliberately spoke that each word may as well have been bitten from his mind, “You need to take this seriously.”

“I do my job exactly as you tell me, man. I put in my hours, write up my reports, play fair—what more do you want from me?” Antonia removed Miguel’s hand, only for him to wrench it from her grip and attempt again to pinch her in place. They crossed forearms with the force of two colliding lasers, each trying to overpower the other.

“You think this is some nine-to-five? The fate of the multiverse is just an errand you can shrug onto the closing crew?”

“You can’t preach about preserving the greater good and treat me like I’m just a tool at the same time, O’Hara. I’m a person—with my own values, my own goals, my own purpose.”

“Being Spider-Woman is your purpose. The only one that matters.”

“More like the only purpose you have left.” Antonia widened her feet, defiant and defensive.

“And how do you think that happened?”

Miguel broke free from their stance, grabbing Antonia’s wrists and forcing her arms apart. “I’m warning you, Antonia. You keep on like this, the time will come when you will lose everything. Just like before.”

Her face said it all: Antonia was about to knee this guy in the crotch.

“It’s the truth. Listen to me, or you’ll repeat my mistakes.” Miguel released her wrists right as she swung her leg back, sending her stumbling. He turned back to follow Jess and Ben through the portal before a mechanical grinding caught his ears, along with the pop of cartilage as Antonia cracked her neck.

“Amaya isn’t Gabi.”

Miguel paused as one foot entered the mouth of the marigold portal. The portal’s contrast against the night was so stark the back of his body looked inked in. Yet when he turned around, Antonia could make out his eyes: narrow, angry, and red.

In the nick of a second Miguel shot a web at Antonia’s chest and pulled her into his grasp. He clamped one hand around her neck like a vise, yet Antonia did not thrash. She knew Miguel liked a dramatic defeat.

“You’re drawing the wrong comparison, kid.” Miguel squeezed, yet Antonia did not choke. She didn’t breathe at all, only fought to rein-in her expression. “We’re not so different, you and I.”

He dropped Antonia to the ground, studying as her skin closed over the punctures left by his claws; thin silver lines spread in a grid-like fashion over her wounds, pulling the skin together before blending into her complexion.

Antonia’s eyes bore into Miguel like she was measuring the width of each chunk she’d carve from his face. Miguel stared back. He wanted to watch his words sink in. He wanted her to see reason, to see if there was even a chance that she could change.

“I don’t have to take this,” she spat. “I’m Antonia Rodriguez.”

Miguel softly scoffed, shaking his head as he turned back to the portal. This was what always happened. Always will. Someone becomes so secure in their spoils that they forget what it means to be a hero—what it costs. All Miguel could do—should do—was hold it all together. Minimize fallout, cut deadweight. There was no time to fix the damage left behind.

~~~

Through the doors of a ramshackle clinic tucked away in the recesses of the Society lobby laid a humble, frazzled lab always two minutes away from detonating in an act of scientific hubris. Miguel would admit to no one that this clinic was the most important variable to his entire operation.

Now that the place was devoid of the infirm and injured jostling to sign a waitlist rivaling those of most Michelin-star restaurants, Miguel receded his cobalt mask and combed a hand through his dark hair, the tension in his shoulders finally releasing after an entire day spent plugging sinkholes in space-time.

Technically, the term “day” was nominally inaccurate. The universes Miguel visited all occupied different positions on the spectrum of daybreak to nighttime, but, cumulatively, he spent twenty-four hours matching bad-guys to their proper dimensions like a child shoving the appropriately shaped block through its intended hole.

To put it lightly, the people Miguel dealt with were certainly happy to go back to their own Spider-Men and Women.

Steel doors parted to reveal your vibrant form, eyes glimmering and face flushed as you worried over your work station; you input a series of directions into a shiny, new machine, specially installed in your laboratory to handle tests that were unfeasibly delicate for the human hand. The alabaster arm loaded itself with colorful fluid as it dyed a piece of synthetically-grown tissue, before slicing up the specimen into discs thin as baby’s down and laying them on beds of glass to load into the room’s other observational desks. Operations for the phosphoramidite project had expanded, as of late.

A plastic takeout bag on the edge of the steel counter caught Miguel’s attention, teasing the taped tops of several white containers stamped with a scarlet pagoda. He turned over a carton until a blocky M stared up at him, ushering Miguel toward the greasy, comforting, aromatic haven within like a lighthouse to a helpless ship. However, Miguel’s rustling had alerted you to his presence. He froze with his piddly ration in hand like a bear caught pilfering trash.

You regarded his bulky, ravenous figure in your lab with an emotion even worse than mockery—relief.

Excitement charged your features as you greeted Miguel’s return. He let you circle his body in concerned evaluation as he visited the different stations of the lab, having long since figured out how to navigate around your untethered spirit of interest without pratfalling or knocking into your face.

“How’d you save the multiverse this time?”

“Desecrated a church.” Miguel flicked a tube of saline solution until a rogue air bubble popped.

“Eek, sounds like a lot of Hail Mary’s.” Despite your empathetic wince, your shoulders bounced with the release of a laugh. You tapped Miguel’s shoulder as the pair of you passed a bookcase, nodding at the highest shelf, “Could you get that box down, please? I can’t reach it in a way that complies with OSHA regulations.”

Miguel’s arm cleared the height so easily it didn’t even have to straighten out. He handed you a clear box of mismatched flash drives branded with the all-too-familiar Alchemax logo, several appearing so worn he wouldn’t be surprised if you scavenged them from the floor of your day job.

You beamed as though Miguel had handed you a present, “Ah, my hero! I’m saved~”

While you were clearly joking around, your tone was bereft of any derisive edge. The moroseness dragging Miguel’s features relaxed ever so slightly, pulling with it half a smile, like a petal curling with the melt of winter thaw.

Sticking one of the less banged up drives into your tablet’s USB port projected a report on a bunch of lab-grown quad muscles saturated the newest batch of improved blood cells. You led Miguel to the incubation chamber with the specimen in question; now that the blood had completely permeated the muscle, the pair of you could begin testing how much damage this thing could spring back from.

“Trial 70,” Miguel read aloud from the report. “Ready?”

“Ready.” You rippled with fervor, “Completely.”

A set of spindly arms descended from the ceiling of the chamber to inject the quads with a strain of measles. You enlarged a video feed of the invasion and positioned it between your and Miguel’s bodies, heart hammering as the neat, round, humanoid cells collided with the incongruous forms of the viral strain.

Miguel kept his hands on the keyboard, lowering a second arm with a shock wand similar to he’d previously used to catalyze the new generation of sample cells. You, on the other hand, kept your arms crossed, fearful of dispensing the modified sugars from your half of the station sooner than appropriate.

The number of viral bodies overpowered the immune cells surrounding them and continued advancing on the rest of the tissue’s population. Miguel caught your eyes flicking to your keyboard, but the anxiety in your body dispelled with a sway of your hips.

He met your worried stare, uncertain how to interpret the way your brows converged at his inscrutable stoicism until you briefly shot a glance at the video feed of the muscle and sipped a steadying breath.

“They’re… slower. Right? Compared to before?”

Miguel’s face slackened with the realization that you were seeking reassurance.

“It’s a much larger area this time,” Miguel replied, “Not enough cells have been attacked to trigger a full-blown immune response. Panicking won’t do anything. Breathe.”

Your brow shifted to communicate a much more familiar emotion to Miguel. Quizzicality. “Aw. Thank you?”

“I’m stating facts.”

“Specific facts, arranged in a particular way, that ended up sounding nice.” You smiled at him. “That was… sweet.”

Miguel had no idea why you were grateful at a courtesy as forfeitable in its politeness as holding open a door for a stranger, but where your reaction was perhaps magnanimous, his was downright excessive; he was, ostensibly—dare he say it—pleased. He liked helping you. He liked that you wanted his help. It might make him seek your help more often, too.

Because you did your job. Well—you did your job well.

The screens harmonized with an announcement that the ratio of viral to host cells had shifted, lassoing your attention back to the incubation chamber as the mock-quads grew vivid and dense as a cut of meat in a butcher’s display case.

Miguel enlarged the microscopic feed to see exactly what he’d been praying for—total unification. The blood cells absorbed the viral agents with brutish efficiency and quickly set to work reproducing their globular bodies.

There you had it. Total immunity. No inoculation, no emergency care, no vaccine.

“Check it out,” you enthused, “These mock-quadriceps look better than brand-new, wouldn’t you agree?”

Miguel’s delighted expression escaped his control, “This means we can test more complex parts.”

“You mean, bone marrow? This soon? I can barely believe it.” You theatrically wiped the corner of your eye, “They grow up so fast…”

“I’m saying we may not be far off from testing an entire system. Respiratory. Endocrine. The whole deal.”

Your jaw dropped. Miguel felt a pull on the lower half of his face that he hadn’t experienced in a very long time, as his grin broke with such force that he had to open his mouth in a half-scoff, half-half to accommodate it.

The happiness that had overpowered Miguel appeared to infect you as well; the whole of your face swept up into an unrefined smile, raw and asymmetrical as you celebrated with your lab partner. The longer you held Miguel’s stare, the softer the perimeters of your eyes became, the skin folding over itself like streams of silk.

Miguel would permit this level of guileless fraternization this once. Because this was a cause worth celebrating. And you’d worked hard for this result. You were extremely good at your job, which was a rarity even at Spider Society. You were loyal. And dependable. And gifted. And—

It wasn’t just the shape of your eyes, but how luminous they remained no matter how the circles underneath them darkened. Your focus distilled into a thing almost tangible when you isolated an object of interest, combing through every detail as though committing it to memory. It unnerved Miguel to see you in such a state of focus, the way everything about your character honed itself when you practiced medicine, so subtle as to be almost muted, in the same way a blade disappeared into nothingness when turned on its side. Your attention was both investigative and sentimental in a way that bordered on obsessive, so when it turned on Miguel, it felt like a sunbeam carved a hole right through the center of his chest. He never felt so transparent in his life.

—The list of people Miguel actually trusted was basically a memo, and you had claimed a spot right beneath the literal computer designed to cater to his every need. He knew he shouldn’t. But it was that gut-deep kind of trust. Or maybe it came from his bones. Something in his body was responsible for this—

This one-sided staring contest was so genuinely agonizing Miguel worried he might spontaneously combust. It was the excoriated vulnerability criminals felt under the sweltering lamp of an interrogation room—the effect Miguel aimed for when he demanded eye contact from his subordinates—the same effect which now tempted him to recite his bank routing number or system keys or his innermost desires or whatever you asked for in order to relieve him of the flushed itch creeping through his body.

The thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone. The hip bone’s connected to the backbone. The backbone’s connected to the neck bone.

You leaned your cheek into your hand, the tip of your little finger bisecting your mouth. And you looked so perfectly content, so nested there, ready to devote him all the time in the world, that Miguel’s conviction wavered like the frame of a building rocked with an earthquake, his unsteadiness increasing until he finally snapped and looked away.

“I’ll forward the results to you and save a copy for myself. Sounds good?”

He heard you exhale and shift to copy him. “Perfect.”

When Miguel first asked to collaborate with you, it made sense to continue operations in your lab, considering it stored the massive index of Arachno-Humanoid blood samples. However, the ramifications of this decision finally dawned on him; Miguel’s lab was his wheelhouse, where he was most in his element, and this was where you were most in yours.

Miguel was determined to reverse this dynamic, dammit.

He picked up his cooled carton of Mongolian beef and gnashed his teeth on a particularly tough piece of flank, relieved to have an outlet for his sudden agitation.

Once condensed into an encoded parcel, Miguel swiped the trial transcript in the direction of your charging tablet and watched the device suck the citrus-bright hologram inside like a vending machine eating a dollar bill; its stationary screen lit up with an ellipsis that bounced its end-most periods back and forth like the spheres of Newton’s cradle.

The tablet spat back the document with an offended exclamation point. Miguel shifted his gaze to you in thorny accusation.

You wrung your hands with a nervous laugh, “Must have run out of storage again…”

Okay. Yes. This was good. Miguel could stare at you forever if you remained as flustered as you were now.

Wait, what?

Hooking a thick gray cord to your tablet, you shuttled back and forth between your partner and the printer with thin, hot leaves of paper. In embarrassingly little time a stack the thickness of a dictionary rose from Miguel’s palms.

“There has got to be a better way of doing this,” he grumbled as the pages grew heavy enough to challenge his max for bicep curls. “At this rate, you might bring deforestation back to my world.”

“I’m sorry that I enjoy being thorough, Miguel, truly.”

You closed the print app to reveal your tablet had been reimbursed with a measly five megabytes of storage. A beleaguered sigh folded you into your chair like a felled house of cards as Miguel set the volume of freshly-regurgitated material before you, leaning against the table. The angle curtained your face behind a tangerine holoscreen.

“We should see if we can streamline our samples’ germline mutations through a different type of bonding agent, so that the adopted viral defenses are more thoroughly stabilized.” You pulled up a diagram of a blood vessel on your tablet, switching it around and pointing at each article in the mockup with your stylus. “That way—and tell me if I’m projecting too far into the future—when the time comes for hereditary inheritance, the combination of chromosomes won’t dilute the immunity we’ve engineered.”

Miguel found it even easier to keep his eyes on yours when the tenderness of your gaze was filtered and evenly dispersed across a prismatic plane. He zoomed in on your face. Picked out all the highlights in your eyes. Mentioned none of them. His eyes coasted along the edges of your body until they landed on the recording button in the bottom menu.

“I think I found a solution to our RAM problem.”

The doors parted down the hall, and a set of co*cksure footsteps punished the pristine tile with such force a set of beakers to Miguel’s right rippled in dazed concentric circles. All his features dropped in annoyance like layers of sediment.

“Yo, Doc.” Antonia knocked only after she popped her head around the corner, like the gesture was fanfare to a stranger’s intrusive presence and not a respectful petition for entry. Who knows, maybe that was how it was on Earth-409. The resident dimension for backwards people with no concept of personal boundaries. “Ready to go?”

You lit up again, “Ant! Do you need a checkup before we head out? Drew and Reilly came in quite ruffled.”

Miguel regarded Antonia with cool reserve as she spied the takeout bag on the counter, jumping side to side at the sight of the remaining cartons of fried rice and mapo tofu. She tied up the flimsy plastic handles and looped them over her wrist. She wore her baggy jacket over her costume, giving her the appearance of a warmed-up water polo player.

“I am all good,” Ant returned, relaxedly stretching out the “all,” tongue clipped between her teeth before sticking hungrily out at the scent of the food. “My healing factor must have gotten upgraded when you tased me way back. Didn’t even need a flu shot this season!”

Sorrow may as well have rained down your body, “But you’ve yet to book an appointment with me, after all this time. You wouldn’t even need to sign the waitlist, I swear.”

Ant spied the way Miguel tensed with your promise of special treatment and grinned, metaphorically twisting his arm.

“Sucks that I’m good at my job, doesn’t it?”

It was only when the pair of them noticed you spacely filling your bag with pens, a magnet, and a computer cord that matched neither the port for your tablet or your phone that the rope of tension between them dropped.

Antonia waved a hand in front of your face, “You—uh… feeling okay, man? Get enough shut-eye last night?”

“There were about two hours I can’t remember from yesterday,” you mused.

Miguel and Antonia both balked at you, “You only slept two hours?”

“I know, it’s awful,” you wallowed, “This amount of slacking off is unacceptable! I’ll see if Lyla can deliver a crate of those unregulated energy drinks from Nueva York’s black light district.”

A frigid, briney, oppressive silence congealed between the three of you. Your lungs squeezed out a miserable wheedle of a laugh like a whoopee cushion when the two heroes regarded you in defeat, as though the last pillar of humanity had fallen.

“Can I retroactively claim that to be a joke?” you apologized.

“How about you proactively take it easy tonight, yeah?” Antonia swept back her black hair to settle her mask on her head like a beanie. “It’s a quarter past seven. Maybe you still have time to call in a sick day.”

“No, no, I’ll be fine. The ride there will wake me up, I swear.”

While your soft-spoken desperation picked at the splotch of hesitance under Antonia’s skin, Miguel’s presence encouraged her to leave the vicinity without more than a pointed stare, streaming purple light across the pale medical equipment as she exited outside.

You turned off your tablet only for an email to wake the screen a minute later. You clicked your tongue, tucking the tablet against your chest. “Looks like I’ll be multitasking tonight.”

“Alchemax?”

“I’m behind on some reports for my new assignment.” You lazily mimed a crying gesture, then kept one of your fists raised to cushion your head. Your eyes crested halfway closed from the exhaustion you’d dammed up until now. “I’ll run some mutagenetic simulations on my Earth so we can get a leg up on potential error margins.”

“You can’t transport organic material between dimensions,” Miguel replied. “If the samples leave this lab, they’ll disintegrate before you brew a pot of coffee.”

You slumped, smacking your forehead. “You’re right. It’s just that South Bay’s facilities are almost as versatile as here. It would have sped up our progress by leagues.”

“I can take care of it.”

You chewed on your fingernail, “I couldn’t ask that of you. Not when you have anomalies to deal with.”

“We’re partners.” Miguel furrowed his brow, “That is what you said, right?”

You thankfully interpreted his demurral as a coercive demand, hesitantly nodding as you stepped around him to repeat Antonia’s path to the doors.

“If you insist…”

Miguel entrenched himself before you like a totem guarding a great gate.

“Remember how you also said our bodies do our best work when we rest?”

You snorted. Or, maybe snored. “I thought you were an advocate of the phrase, ‘Do as I say, not as I do’?”

“I am.” Vexation weighed Miguel’s voice like a leaf drooping from too much water; he didn’t like his insight to go wasted. “So, do as I say. You’ll crash soon, otherwise.”

You grinned in a particularly sneaky fashion, like you’d caught the first signs of a prank. “What about what you’ll do?”

He leaned over you. “I’ll wait for you, how’s that?”

With each slow, processing blink, your eyes widened; you swayed in an action Miguel was tempted to call a swoon, right against the central steel table.

“Okay. I do—will do that. Yes.” You broke his gaze to stare at the floor. Miguel’s brain lurched into alarmed overdrive as he realized he just cracked… something. He sought your eyes as you stepped around him.

“What’s that? Why so quiet, all of a sudden?”

Miguel should really stop his teasing. Miguel unexpectedly found that he couldn’t.

You hastened down the hall with a carefully placed salute that hid your face.

“I’m listening to you, obviously. Sir.”

Miguel gave a disbelieving smirk. This was fun.

As each step you took receded into silence, Miguel’s enhanced hearing picked up an accompanying tempo to the sound of your footfall.

When he crossed his arms and laid his fingers against the bend of his elbow, he realized his pulse picked up where yours left off.

~~~

In the short time since Ant began—for lack of a better word—chaperoning you to Alchemax, you’d passed out twice in total. Today you passed out five times in one go.

Your death-like pallor and ragdoll limpness made Ant worry she’d clipped your head on some scaffolding, crumbling your meteoric rise to stardom and implicating the flawless Spider-Woman in her first case of manslaughter, so she landed on the roof of the New York Aquarium to prevent you from vomiting a rainbow of half-digested coffee over Fort Hamilton.

And thus New York City greeted its morning with Spider-Woman sobbingly shaking an unconscious Alchemax researcher by the shoulders, before the pair of them shrieked on their plummet into rush-hour traffic.

The glass of the football field-sized aquarium tank was cool beneath your fingers. The rectangular panels, starkly divided by steel lining, dipped and rose around you in imitations of oceanic waves. They melded with the Pacific below and the sky above into one lucid, even blue. With your head balanced on the crest of a glass pane and your vision flipped wrong-side up, you couldn’t tell any of the ultramarine masses apart, but believed stepping into any of them would let you fall infinitely.

“I’ve only ever been inside this place. Frankly, I never thought I’d get to see something like this,” you said as you finally angled your head enough that the tips of the skyline poked your vision. “I understand that’s probably the most cliché thing to say right now, in the face of the new. Though, it’s not new to you, I’m sure—”

“This spot is.”

You turned to Ant, sitting criss-cross as she breakfasted on Chinese takeout, headset slung around the base of her neck and the lower half of her face freed from her mask. Her meal must have barely clung to lukewarmness by this point, but she savored it all the same, filling her cheeks out and letting the tips of her hair curl with the breeze. She looked so terribly innocent in that position, especially when compared to the stark cast of her limbs and the aquarium rooftop’s restricted access.

You shook your head in a jesting wag. “You’re younger than me and you’ve seen more of the city than I have. Probably the world. But I’ve been here and you haven’t?”

“Everything really does come around!”

Ant leaned back, crossing her arms to rest her head, as she’d given you her jacket to sit on. Trading glass for metal carried no appeal you knew of, nor did she seem to relax with the action, only stretching to redistribute her verve, her limbs twisting about each other like a double helix. You felt a spot of envy for Ant’s constant energy and freedom, her spirit of initiative, her power. There she laid, basking in the sun like a half-divine being, while all you could do was squint and watch your shadow grow along your side.

“How’s it been for you,” you broached, “Tell me about all the different worlds you’ve been to.”

Ant marinated her mind with the question. She dropped her voice and fidgeted back and forth in clear parody, “That’s classified.”

Your laugh delighted her.

“Can I get something off my chest, though?” Ant asked, sitting up again. All that shifting and no sign of exhaustion.

“Anything you want to say, I’m happy you trust me to be the one to hear it.”

Ant’s exhale puffed her cheeks. “I’m not like the rest of Spider Society.”

“Oh, don’t say that, Ant!” You soothed a hand over her back, “You’re just as capable as any—”

Ant laughed. She had such a loud laugh, belting from her stomach and reverberating throughout her entire body. Her joy made the edges of her skin flush pink like a roaring furnace. Your hand numbed against her back from the morning wind, and you couldn’t help but wonder how Ant could sound so masterfully tuned to happiness that the thought of her inferiority was impossible to conceive.

“I don’t mean it like that, man. Not in the slightest.”

Your brow furrowed, “Ant?”

She leaned into you with a conspiratorial air until your foreheads met, mimicking your arm’s position with her own. While she ironically raised her hand to hide her face and scrunched her mouth to the side as she spoke, there was an insistence to her grip on you that made you doubt this was another jest.

“I’ve figured it out. How to have it all.” Ant’s grin appeared iron-wrought, as though she’d cracked an unsolvable theorem. As if her entire life had been dedicated to such a pursuit.

“Sounds stellar.” You tilted your head at her, “Though, I thought every Spider already had everything.”

“Nah,” Ant returned. She said it in a nasally, overly childish way that scrunched up her whole face and showed off her white teeth. It made you chuckle. “Stopped trying.”

“Perhaps they decided what they had was enough?”

“I guess. If you consider only having the body of a sweater when the hood and sleeves have been ripped off to be ‘enough’.”

“Tssk, that’s mean.” Unlike with Lyla, there was a pinch of reproach in your delivery. You cleared your throat. “It’s not entirely their fault. It’s got something to do with the canon.”

Yes, the enigmatic canon to which mere plebeian fools like you were not privy. You partially hoped Ant would offer you a slice of that forbidden knowledge, but after chewing carefully on your words, she pulled back with a nod.

“Guess my canon must be different.”

Guess she doesn’t know any more than I do. Well, what you don’t know can’t hurt you, you supposed.

“Then I’m happy for you, Ant.”

Even when laconic, your praise was enough to embolden Ant to keep talking. She directed your attention to the skyscrapers, those obelisks of industry that ascended so high on their floating beds that they appeared raptured.

“Look at that,” Ant marveled, “So many people, so many more to come, all living complex little lives, all impossible to really understand, right?”

You gave a nod, a new weight landing in your web of heartstrings.

“Wrong.”

The balance between the features on your face shifted, mouth parting as your eyes widened, tilting your head at Ant in a way that tested the border between accord and offense; were you supposed to laugh?

Ant, to her credit, had the decency to look shocked at her statement’s landing once she saw your reaction, waving her hand and slipping a sardonic smile.

“What I mean is,” she retried, “no matter how complicated life may seem, how the multiverse may seem, in the end, it’s just a replication of a simple process onto itself, over and over again. People are just a bunch of biological impulses and institutions are just a set of trends. It’s like a computer.”

Her laugh was a forced exhale, like she had to remind herself how to breathe. “For any computer system to run well, it needs consistent outputs for every input. In an ideal world, there’d be a dedicated position for every input imaginable—any request could be matched one-for-one with a public servant to resolve that request with a spectrum of solutions. But, in reality, there’s just me. I’m supposed to do it all.”

Ant let more of her weight sag on you, and despite the way her words made a garotte of your guts, you were still seized with the need to hold her up. Yet just as she sank, she sprang back up again, as animated as she was at the beginning of her speech.

“And I do!” She tapped her temple, “’Cause instead of tailoring an output for every unique input, I just suppress the variety of inputs.”

“I don’t… I don’t understand.”

There was something clinical about Ant’s tone. Something tired and detached, her logic simple like it’d been pounded into hom*ogeneity, like this was the only range of motion she was capable of, not because she’d perfected anything after ten thousand tries, rather simply treaded back and forth so often she’d inadvertently dug herself into a hole.

“I can match the power set of every opponent I face. I’m always one step ahead of the competition. Sure, there’s some damage, but I get everyone out of harm’s way and leave the rest for the law enforcement of our lovely city to handle.”

“You can’t gamify goodness.” Your gaze quivered, “What about doing the right thing?”

You hated now naïve you sounded as you said it, almost as much as you hated Ant for the way her smile flipped, like you’d stated a popular misconception. She was supposed to protect this sense of innocence in others. You’d never considered that her defense wouldn’t be through leading by example, but by heaping the insidious burden of the world onto herself.

“What, you mean going ‘above and beyond’?” Ant swallowed, “If I were to do that, I could never be with my sister. What’s humane about that?”

When Ant locked onto your gaze, it was with a deep, intrusive stare. A fish hook in white jelly. A fight. You’d always been aware of the gap in ability between you and Ant, but the way she spoke to you now, the doctrinaire quality to her words that sounded borderline rehearsed, made you aware of the revulsion of your body in a way you’d never been before. A set of impulses. Electrical currents running through fatty tissue. Wet, red meat. Is that how Ant saw you?

“I’ve been doing things this way for five years. And it’s been a pretty perfect system, hasn’t it? It’s clean, symmetrical—I provide for the city so I can provide for my family, like anyone with a regular nine-to-five. This multiversal business is a bit of a… complication, but a temporary one, and once Miguel nabs the anomaly that started it all, everything can go back to the way it was. The way it should be.”

Was she trying to convince you of this? Why was she nodding to herself?

“What if it doesn’t?”

Ant narrowed her eyes at you. “You don’t trust that we can win this?”

You dropped your hand from her back and inched away, crossing your legs and facing her head on. “Change is a part of life. Adaptation is a part of life. Risk is a part of life. What happens when you want something that’s beyond your reach? When you outgrow your routine?”

You sounded so old lecturing Ant like this. It was the first time you felt the need to remind her of your seniority over her, of your profession, of your importance to Society. Things that would prove you the definitive authority. The wiser one. The adult. There was security in that title; it carried an absolutism that made the world more tangible. Manageable. Digestible.

“You’re excited for the future, then,” Antonia asked, tone so flat it smacked you with deja vu. Yet her stare still desperately prodded you.

You couldn’t lie to her, even if that meant having to feel like you failed her.

“Quite the opposite, actually.” You pulled your knees to your chest. “I don’t want to miss a single second of my life as it is now. And that makes me scared, because I know if I lose everything, I won’t be able to stop it. I’m not like you or Miguel or Peter.”

“Guess we can agree on something: whatever happens, it’s out of our hands.”

You wanted to comfort Ant with a simple truth. That there was a code, or a formula, or a rulebook for life. But you didn’t know the answer to these questions anymore than she did. Though you had several years over Ant, you weren’t experiencing time several years in the future; each day was equally new to the both of you.

More than that, you wanted to challenge the aloof empiricism of her worldview. But as it was right now, you could summon nothing but hypotheticals, whereas Ant had legitimate experience. A proven method. If the universe revolved around Antonia Rodriguez, perhaps she was right after all.

It was warmer than you expected today. Sunbeams broke out from the fluffy bundles of cumulus clouds to bathe you in gentle warmth, coursing a golden refraction throughout the aquarium tank.

“It’s going to be an exciting day today,” you chanted like a mantra.

Ant bumped your shoulders together. “Always is.”

Something vibrated along Ant’s stomach, prompting her to fish out a thick, older model of smartphone from a hidden pocket. The second she caught sight of the screen, she sucked in a panicked breath and ripped off her mask, smoothing her hair and organizing her limbs into a natural, unbothered composition; artificial skin spread down her arms, making the part of her suit above her spider insignia look like an athleisure tank.

“Siobe, what’s up?!”

You caught the edge of dark skin and darker hair on Ant’s phone screen.

“Hey, dude, I’m really sorry,” Amaya began, evenly-spaced trees rushing behind her on either side. It looked like she was on her way to class. “A bunch of things piled onto my schedule last minute. Is it okay if I show up to the gates an hour after the convention starts?”

“...Yeah-hah-hah,” Ant said, the word weightless and faint. “No problem at all! It’s a… long event, anyway.”

“You got the badges, right?”

“Sure did—do!” Ant gave a thumbs up, which turned into a rueful claw once out of view of her camera. According to your powers of observation, you deduced that she did not have said badges. “Can’t wait to learn all about musty antique comics and ye olde…dungeon handbooks.”

“Me too! I know I’m always so busy with practice and homework, but I’ve been really looking forward to—” Amaya bumped into a wandering baseball cap and grunted. “Ugh, I’m at lecture now, but salamat again, ate, love you and ingat—”

The call dropped as Amaya meshed with a crowd of floating heads.

Ant let her phone fall between her legs in horror, raking her fingers over her face. “I cannot believe I forgot.”

You pursed your lips, “It’s still pretty early…! Any event is always bound to have a few—”

“Tickets went on sale almost a month ago, man,” Antonia despaired, “This event is super exclusive despite just showing off collectible fantasy junk. I don’t even know if I can find a scalper at this point.”

Ant played with her mask like a stress toy before pausing, unraveling it to appraise its clean minimalism.

“Though, I bet the organizers would be happy to lend a few passes to Spider-Woman~”

“Bit of an abuse of power, isn’t it?”

“Doctor, you don’t understand,” Ant proclaimed, re-suiting herself into a stark beam of purple and platinum, “This young girl is counting on me to protect her innocence! You said it’s my sworn duty as our fair city’s resident super—”

You rolled your eyes so hard your entire body turned too, “Okay, okay, make fun of the pipe-dreamer, whatever.”

Antonia stacked her empty cartons and clambered to her feet, walking a tightrope along one of the roof’s steel dividers. And as she helped you up, mask not entirely pulled down around her neck, such that the sunlight illuminated it with a ripe, reddish glow, you gasped in a sudden bout of genius.

“Ant, could you do me a favor?”

“Maaan, you’re asking that now that I’ve got this ticket fiasco to deal with?”

“Yes, the world hangs in the balance, I’m aware—but this is quick, and it would really help my project out—”

You had no idea why you hadn’t thought of it sooner; to test Arachno-Humanoid blood on Earth-409, of course you should have sourced from Earth-409’s resident Spider-Woman!

Ant left her headset off for now, gesturing for you to get on with it.

“Could I extract a small blood sample from you?”

You couldn’t read Ant’s face behind her mask, but her body telegraphed its repulsion with a stumble back. All her features became blank, cold, and remote to you, as if you were meeting for the first time.

“I-It wouldn’t be enough for you to feel any effects, if that’s what you’re concerned about,” you continued, unsure how to interpret the sudden radio static between you, “And I can find a vein on your back. You’d hardly feel a—”

“No.”

Ant pulled farther back when you reached out to her. You retracted your hands against your chest, massaging a palm as if the source of the problem was your callused skin.

That should have been the end of it; she refused to grant consent on a medical procedure and you, a medical professional, should have respected her answer and commended the firmness of her delivery. But you couldn’t fathom a reason why Ant would refuse other than squeamishness at needles, which, in her line of work and how convenient this would be until you could return to Earth-928, seemed ridiculous. You couldn’t stop yourself from asking—

“Why not?”

The lens of Ant’s mask narrowed and angled steeply, “I said no. There’s nothing wrong with me. I don’t need your project.”

A flush nipped its way up your neck. God, if you were going to be stuck in that purgatorial nightmare of an office for nine whole hours—eleven, really, based on the amount of vacuous little tasks your supervisors assigned you because they couldn’t be bothered to do more than lift their legs onto their desks and flatter billionaire donors with excruciatingly eternal, peaco*cking calls—you could at least keep halfway sane with a fulfilling activity. Which was important, contrary to what Ant clearly believed.

“I wouldn’t administer anything, I just need—”

“You need to get to work,” Ant asserted. “It’s 8:30. Day’s started for everyone else.”

It appeared reserving the trump card of your prestigious job title meant nothing, because the way Ant spoke now made it sound utterly useless. You hunched in an attempt to nurse the invisible exit wound on your chest.

You looked down. “Alright. Good luck, Ant.”

“Awesome!” She chippered immediately. Whiplash sickened you as she punched your shoulder and shot a web into the distance. “Catch you later, Doc!”

Ant left you adrift and alone. You looked around in panic for an exit and found her jacket still on the ground, picking it up and staring into the newly uncovered patch of blue aquarium water. The glass had never seemed so delicate until now.

~~~

When a cell divides, it makes a copy of its DNA. However, sometimes the copy is not quite perfect. “Perfect” in this context means identical. “Perfect,” as in the same. That small difference between the original DNA and copied sequences is what’s known as a mutation.

In the body of any given child exist seventy genetic mutations that are not observed in the genomes of either parent. These are called de novo mutations.

Mutations can also be caused by exposure to certain chemicals, radiation, or simply the spontaneous breakdown of DNA. DNA is very fragile. Mutations are neither entirely random nor entirely premeditated, yet they are inevitable. And permanent.

There are also variations based on which genes are lost. These are known as deletions.

Adjusting for the false-negative rate produces an unbiased mutation rate estimate of 1.1 × 10^−8 per position per haploid genome, corresponding to approximately 70 new mutations in each diploid human genome (95% CI of 6.8 × 10^−9 to 1.7 × 10^−8).

The typical human mutation rate is 1^–1.8 × 10^–8 per nucleotide per generation.

10:34 a.m.

Hi team,

I hope this email finds you well. Please find attached my results for the current sequence.

The polymerase chain reaction(PCR) is a fast and inexpensive technique used to copy small segments of DNA. In the exponential phase of the PCR, the amplification efficiency can theoretically be estimated from cycle to cycle as E = Nc+1/Nc, which is the fold increase in PCR product per cycle.

The cycle of denaturing and synthesizing new DNA is repeated as many as thirty or forty times, leading to more than one billion perfect copies of the original DNA segment. The entire cycling process of PCR is automated and can be completed in just a few hours.

Can you imagine that? Experiencing time much quicker than those around you?

Yes, you could.

11:43 a.m.

Results are not satisfactory. Try again according to model 4-V.4. Thanks.

-Sent from my iPhone

The equilibrium mutation load formula is L = 2σu(i)(1 - q(i)) w/(z - x) = 2U w/(z - x) = 2U/(z - x + 2U) in which U is the mean number of new mutations per haploid genome in the population and w is the mean relative fitness before selection.

Everything was breaking down faster than it could be repaired.

Reverse the process. Solve for variables. Carry the one.

Carry it again.

01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110110 01100001 01101100 01110101 01100101 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01101100 01101001 01100110 01100101 00111111…

1:01 p.m.

Hi team,

Per my last email, I made it clear our procedure is not conducive to the results desired. I suggest an alternate approach.

Keep carrying. One is a heavy number. You cannot let it go.

The decay rate constant, k, is the value that minimizes Σi = 1,n[y(ti) − exp(−k⋅ti)]2, where y(t) is the mRNA abundance at time t and the summation is taken over all observations for the particular mRNA.

The decay is constant.

The decay is happening.

1:11 p.m.

We waited a week only to hear “no”? The rules are simple. If you cannot follow them in a timely manner, maybe the problem is you.

-Sent from my iPhone

One and zero. On and off, one after another.

01110111 01101000 01111001 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01100101 01100110 01100110 01101111 01110010 01110100 00100000 01100001 01100100 01100100 00100000 01110101 01110000 00111111…

The one is supposed to matter. A single number can tip the balance of an entire equation. A single number can deny the system order.

In one lifetime you may have four to eight romantic and/or sexual partners, three houses, nine cars, and two children. Go on, you have permission to do these things. Why do you settle for nothing? Why do you create nothing?

You couldn’t feel your hands.

You stood on the observation deck of a spotless room, looking through layers of tempered glass into an array of chemical baths rearranging the sequence of a strain of sheep DNA. The aim of the project was to see if genes could be spliced in a way to extend the life of cells and increase multiplicity, perhaps to the point where body parts could be regrown.

The result was cancer.

You were tasked with figuring out a comfortable rate for the cells to multiply without tipping over into abnormal territory. This was theoretically achievable. This was practically impossible.

You collapsed into your chair as drowsiness condensed along your eyelids and pricked the pinkish skin of your tear duct. Each lethargic pulse felt like shoving a coagulated lump of blood through your veins. Humidity surrounded your body. Your face was wet. When you licked your lips, you tasted salt.

The DNA in the baths was active, which meant it was, in the most crude sense possible, alive. It sent signals along its unseen channels to absorb protein strains and expel damaged matter. But this was a fragment of a genome of a sheep, and, obviously, if you were to look down at this matrix of dyed water and thin wires, you wouldn't identify either the tubs or microscopic material within them as a “sheep.” It had none of the experiences of a sheep—it did not graze, nor bleet, nor mate, nor sleep.

However, the DNA still recognized that it could be a sheep, and continuously tried to build itself into one. The determination to exist remained no matter how imperceptible the material became.

But you cannot say that determination is unique to sheep. Because then, everyone would be one and the same. How could you be unique?

As you typed your notes, you switched browsers to one of an obituary from almost one hundred years ago, something you found on your lunch break, and coughed up a sob. You blinked away tears until your eyes kept closed longer than open, laid your head on your desk to dispel your migraine, and fell asleep.

You woke up in water. That is to say, in a shallow puddle of tears and drool, on a messy desk in an empty trial chamber, overlooking a never ending series of basins holding genetic material too small to be detected by the naked eye.

Through the nearest window you could see the sky brushed with vermilion and cadmium yellow, sweet and vibrant like the skin of a mango as the gooey, nectary hemisphere of the sun peeked over the horizon. You had no idea whether it was sunrise or sunset, only that too much time had passed.

A figure clad head-to-toe in white stood over you, the ceiling lights carving the hollows of her skull in shades of gray.

Your supervisor had arrived. While you were asleep.

“Dr. Connors,” you said as you stood, “t-to what do I owe the—”

Wholly uninterested in your soiled notes, she pointed at a tub in the lower left hand corner of the chamber, desaturated imperfections mottled all along its surface. Your heart dropped as you magnified the video feed through one of the desk monitors—tumors.

You had reversed all the progress you’d made. You failed.

The drying tear trails turned to icicles as all blood fled from your face. You hurriedly wiped them away as your supervisor tapped her foot.

“D-Dr. Connors, I—”

“Call me Billie.” You were thrown off by how straight her teeth were when she smiled, so white they were almost blue. You were also thrown off by how her smile didn’t reach her drained, deep set eyes.

You stammered, “If you’d prefer that, Billie—”

“Lovely. Now that we’re on first-name basis, could you please be honest about what the hell happened to today’s rotation for the autologous regeneration therapy sequence?”

You hated the title’s appropriation of the term “therapy” in the project’s title. In your opinion, any claim to advancement in therapeutic discipline revealed itself to be a desire to maximize the number of needles and tubes it could stick into its subjects, rewiring their systems to be submissive instead of self-sustaining. You also hated how Billie Connors spoke to you with the bored glib of a customer on a helpline, repeatedly pressing zero until she got the result she wanted.

The look she threw at you burnt away your polite script. She glanced at the tainted batch of DNA on the ground floor and heaved a terrible breath inward, her flaxen ponytail falling from her shoulder.

In a host of other universes, the name “Connors” meant something devastating, and you couldn’t escape the curiosity of whether Billie belonged to that multiversal dynasty. It would be an easy explanation for her menacing aura, the ease with which she blended independence and authority to where, even when you successfully obeyed her requests, it felt like you were provoking her.

“I take full responsibility for this outcome, ma’am.” You bowed your head and flattened your hand to make a lateral swiping motion, like you were amputating the part of your spirit that betrayed your intelligence. Still, you lifted your hand to her in an almost begging manner, “However, I was extremely clear in our written correspondence that current models can’t accomplish such an intricate alteration to the specimen’s natural multiplication rate.”

The cellophane sleeve holding Billie’s badge caught the light with her gruff shift of posture. You studied the neat portrait in the upper right hand corner, taken when her hair was shorter and her face shape more masculinely boxy. Neither the past nor present version of Billie W. C. M. Connors (who in the world needs so many middle names) looked like any version of the Lizard that you could recall.

“Oh, forgive me. I must have been unaware,” Billie soothed. It came across like a smother, “Let’s review the facts together: you sent a flimsy protest to our current trial after weeks of delays, missing reports, and absences from meetings, which would have improved our estimation of the sequence’s maximums, thus preventing the blame for our present failure from falling on you. Did I get that right?”

A knot tied itself in your throat.

You wanted to justify hating your supervisor. You wanted to attribute her cut-throat, cut-and-dry bureaucratic cruelty to a sign of an impending evil. You wanted to be a victim. You wanted to be on the side of good.

“I have reported my observations honestly since joining the team.” I warned you. I warned all of you. I said this would happen.

“Circling back, perhaps the loss of progress would not be so great if more work was not assigned in an effort to find a solution to a failure that does not exist.” All you had to do was listen to me.

“Moving forward, I ask that my merit not be disregarded, as I have proven myself a capable researcher within and without this company.” Do you know who I am? I’m a medic for an entire secret society of superheroes—I’m friends with Spider-Woman!

Wait, was that even true?

There was nothing meaningfully different between the way Ant spoke to you this morning and the way Billie spoke to you now. In the grand scheme of things, there was only one value that extended your relationships to both women this long, more so than even your skills in medicine: fanatical obedience.

For a long while, you wanted to prove yourself to both these women.

“Do you even want to be here, Doctor?”

You wanted to be with Miguel.

You nodded rigidly. The action spread throughout your whole body, like a dog shaking itself dry.

“Your output as of late doesn’t meet Alchemax’s standard,” Billie continued, her tone so lifelessly procedural it was almost forensic. “I would advise you to consider what you provide to this company. A lot of people would kill for your position.”

You hated the careful, anodyne construction of her speech. You hated that she did not hate you, only wanted to get this over with. This visit was a necessary step to prove an intervention had been made; if you failed again, Billie could point to this meeting as the final straw for your ineptitude. If you turned things around, she could similarly claim this as a breakthrough moment. It was a purely mechanical decision that communicated how replaceable you were.

You stared at your feet. “I understand.”

“Go home. It’s a quarter past seven. You won’t get anything done until this whole thing resets.”

Billie exited swiftly and bloodlessly, empty of any jabbing final remark or foul look or fisticuffs. She got what she wanted and could now return to baseline propriety, wishing you a pleasant night as the doors sealed behind her. However, you caught a white highlight along Billie’s waterline that looked suspiciously burgeoning. It had to have been the light playing tricks on you, because lizards don’t cry.

Soon you would be fired. You could feel it.

You opened your tablet to find a familiar tan face projected on the screen, the portrait bearing the hazy, softened quality of many older photographs. The article read: Miguel O’Hara—son, brother, hero—casualty of Alchemax lab disaster.

The interest in Miguel’s parallel lives accumulated slowly ever since your first genuine conversation. It struck you how strange it was that you existed in endless iterations across universes, and yet Miguel acted like he hardly appeared in any.

He was right, of course. Miguel’s handful of alters lived fleetingly and died nobly. Whereas yours lived long, mundane lives in obscurity. One and zero, the only states that can exist.

~~~

The salt-spun wind enveloped your body as you exited campus. The advent of late autumn meant days alternated between temperate warmth and freezing cold, and you quickly realized tonight would be the latter. You had dressed improperly for the weather. Once again, you’d fallen short.

Yet you had Ant’s jacket, puffing up as it draped over your arms. You slipped it over your shoulders and waited for it to supply an iota of the body heat it stored from Ant after so much wear. Then you remembered Ant did not generate much body heat. It would be fine, you’d warm up with a nice walk.

You didn’t want to open a portal straight to HQ in such a flogged state. The cold was good for you—it’d help set everything in place, keep it all still.

If you continued in this direction, you could make it to the next bus stop headed westbound in twenty three minutes, or the next metro station in thirty one minutes. If you walked, it might take you the entire night. You never tried to before.

May as well now.

As you neared downtown, the skyscrapers stretched taller and taller into the sky until several separated from the horizon entirely, floating above the world on their blue-glowing anti-gravitational beds and trailing trains of shadows onto the streets below.

The rotating, quietly bustling thrusters illuminated the scant piping peeking through from the beds’ dark undersides, making the shiny, curving tubes look like spilled organs.

Most of the islands supported the wealthier denizens of the city, those with families that they wanted to protect from the smog and violence below; they were equipped with pools and garden courtyards that hung down the walls like feather boas, and the newest ones boasted their own miniature shopping centers, allowing residents to stay in their own little worlds forever.

The majority of your life had been spent chasing success, but you now considered how nice it sounded to have something to come home to. A person, or several, who waited for you in that gentle, settled way, and made you feel so wholly loved you never had to force yourself into the person everyone “liked” ever again.

Maybe you should get a pet. No, scratch that, you couldn’t implicate an innocent animal in your doom spiral.

You continued walking with an almost preprogrammed knowledge of the streets around you, such that you snapped back to the present to find yourself in the neighborhood of your old job campus.

Alchemax stood half-reconstructed, rubble organized into neat piles all around its concrete and steel skeleton. You circled slowly, studying the changes implemented to the building and pondering if the transfer back here would be automatic or by request. Though, in truth, the thought of returning here provided you neither serenity nor excitement.

You gripped your chest, willing some emotion to pool in the chambers of your heart. You even welcomed hatred, for that was still a sort of passion that could create change. You couldn’t feel nothing for your job, not when you worked so hard to get here—so hard for your parents who had worked for their parents who worked for their parents, who collaborated with every relative of every generation to provide you the opportunity to live in New York and rise to heights of excellence they could only dream of.

You’d cleared every obstacle on this path only to find yourself lost in space.

“Why am I here?” you whispered.

Were you going to wind up a bodega clerk?

A strident crash of glass blasted around the corner, startling you into a defensive posture. The sound of gravel shifting persisted with increasing volume, prompting you to pull out your phone and dial the police. However, the rustle of dust and cobble interspersed with a struggling chuff, as though something got caught in the debris and now attempted to pull itself out.

You closed the phone app and turned on your flashlight instead, slowly approaching the corner until you craned your neck enough to recognize the darkened silhouette of a foot poking from a nest of sandbags. You waited for any twitch of movement, but when only weak, animalistic keens of pain broke the air, you proceeded.

A body laid amongst the wreckage.

You angled the flashlight of your phone until the jumble of curves clarified into a mess of limbs, composed of pure, gleaming silver. Barren of breath as you advanced, each step wrung your chest tight, tight, tighter, until the light finally crawled over the purple-outlined insignia on Spider-Woman’s torso.

Ant’s voice scratched in pitch like a broken record, “Doc?”

She was injured.

She was alone.

You had no idea.

And there it was—a spark of outrage penetrating the numbness in your mind, directed entirely at Antonia for her conduct toward you, for the brand of arrogance that put her in this current state. The feeling contracted your body like it was preparing to attack. You raised your hand and brought it down—to type the coordinates for your apartment into your watch.

You fought to pull Ant through the portal to your living room. Pulling her by her upper body only added to her pain, while pulling her by her feet felt like dragging a car with a piece of floss. You settled on rolling her on her side like a can of paint, eventually lifting her onto your couch and folding her jacket under her head. She managed a touch of surprise upon seeing its lantern-wide sleeves.

“What happened to you?”

“I was on a really good streak, actually,” Ant coughed.

“Save your breath unless it’s to say something pertinent. Where are you hurt? Are you coughing up blood? Do you know what year it is?”

“I’m not actually injured, not really. It’s my limbs that’re the issue.”

Ant tugged the sleeve of her suit to reveal a sickly, puss*ng infection where her prosthetic met her trapezius. The uncovered smell hit you all at once, a mixture of iron, expired fruit, and formaldehyde.

When you felt Ant’s neck for a pulse, you recoiled from the aggressive spark that jumped from her skin. You detected a faint electronic hum from within her body when you leaned in, and followed her vitiated flesh to a patch of dark, thin fluid leaking from her back. When you managed to turn her onto her side and press a hand to her lats, the stuff certainly came away with the color of fresh blood, but that acrid smell made you desperate to wipe the substance off onto the cushion. Screw it, you accepted this couch would need to be replaced once you were through.

Ant’s eyes fluttered open and shut as she murmured a few undefined syllables, hurrying your search for whatever medical supplies you had lying around the house. She’d have to make do with generic ibuprofen and rubbing alcohol for now, until you could determine what caused her skin to experience such adverse degeneration.

You snapped your fingers. “Ant! You need to stay with me, alright? Describe what you were doing before you came here.”

“...Needed to find you. But when I typed ‘Alchemax’ into my watch, I clicked the first result without making sure it was the correct one.”

“You said you make your tech at Alchemax, would it help to get you to South Bay now?”

Ant shook her head. “No—I make gadgets there, man, like my headset. I don’t—I don’t want them to treat me. They’ll find out who I am, and—”

You shushed her as gently as you could, breath shakily slipping between your teeth as you held her close and continued cleaning her up. No villain you knew of could have done this to her. The damage seemed entirely to build from the inside out.

“Who did you fight?” you asked as you removed her mask.

“Stupid demon-looking dude in a white tux. Blasted me with negative electricity, made my mainframe go haywire…”

Strange beads of sweat pushed through Ant’s skin. You almost attributed their pearlescent hue to the lights lining the lot, until you swiped a finger along Ant’s brow and came away with a sticky string connecting you together. It felt airy, almost gel-like.

This was the same stuff as Ant’s webbing.

“I can withstand large bursts of heat for short periods, but nothing like this. Nearly ended me.” Ant looked up at you with a wry smile. “But I beat him~”

You wanted to throttle her. “You want me to congratulate you for nearly getting yourself killed?”

Ant’s shy esteem tripped into shock. “You’re not…proud?”

You continued your work. “As if you care how I feel. You made that perfectly clear this morning.”

“You’re still upset about that?”

“Yes, actually, I am!” You stood over Ant as you bellowed, “I am disappointed in you, Antonia. I thought you were better than this. I have no idea what’s going on with you except when you use me to feel better about yourself!”

All of Ant’s features shifted to emulate the terror of a prey animal as she shrunk into herself. It impressed upon you the reality of this situation: Ant laid in a state of previously undiscovered vulnerability, getting sicker by the minute, after experiencing one of the most harrowing moments of her life. For the first time you encouraged yourself to doubt the authenticity of her bravado.

“I can’t win, can I,” Ant murmured, looking up at the ceiling with familiar dispassion. “Whatever I do always upsets somebody. First Miguel, now you.”

You did all you could to patch up her skin, but the strange, tainted blood continued seeping through the seam where tissue met metal, and after a while you had to concede your place beside Ant at rock bottom.

“I’m not a mechanic, Ant. I don’t know what to do with your limbs.”

“You figured it out before. With Goblin.”

“If you can believe it, I was focusing on the fact that your stomach had been ripped open. Why don’t you know how your body works?”

“My uncle didn’t exactly leave me a friggin’ instruction manual, okay?!” Ant dragged a hand down her face, tucking her hands under her arms as her eyes darted back and forth, reading invisible lines of code. “Do you still have your taser?”

You closed your lab coat over your body as you took a step back. “That may only hurt you more, Ant.”

She shot a web at your side, grabbing the taser from its holster and bringing it to her breastbone. Before you could even manage a shout, she let the currents rip through her. The blast of energy was so intense your fingers singed despite not touching her body.

You fell backward over your coffee table as Ant’s body expelled an otherworldly incandescence, absorbing the taser’s electricity with such enthusiasm she looked like she was siphoning its very battery. The lights in your apartment began to flicker. Her body began to seize as you shouted for her to stop, until her mouth dropped in a silent scream and a pulse of energy erupted from her body.

The power blacked out.

“Ant!” you yelled. Dear God, did she die?!

You took out your phone and fumbled for the flashlight. It took a second to turn on, displaying a jumbled scattering of colorful bars in place of a lockscreen, but eventually you managed to shine the damn thing on the couch, only to find it unoccupied.

“ANT?!”

The lights returned, revealing Ant stretching herself out with renewed vitality.

“Good as new,” she said. “Don’t worry, Doc, I won’t bother you about this stuff again now that I know what to do.”

Your vision was streaky and doubled over. This was the first and only time you had to accept the fact that you were crying.

“What is wrong with you.”

Ant reached a tentative hand out to you, “Doc, it’s not that serious. I always solve my problems, you know this.”

“That doesn’t mean everything goes back to normal!” You wiped your face. Every breath felt like you were failing to secure your mouth to the nozzle of an oxygen tank.

Ant’s hand appeared to hesitate as it reached out to you. She pursed her lips and tried forcing its advance yet again, but the limb twitched and sputtered erratically. In desperation she tucked it against her chest, body trembling with the effort of restraint.

“You don’t even know what’s causing these problems with your prostheses.”

“There’s no problem.” Whatever sound Ant attempted to pass off as a laugh only made her voice shake. “Look, Doc, let’s just start from scratch, alright? Pretend this never—”

Her legs gave out under her.

“Ant. You need to get to HQ. Whatever you did clearly only delayed another breakdown.”

“Delay?”

“Yes, Ant, there may not be enough time—”

“What time is it?”

You were to frazzled to deny her query, tapping the power button on your phone until the screen cast your face in blue. “It’s 8:30. Why—”

Ant shot to her feet, ripping her jacket off the couch and willing her synthetic skin down her limbs; her legs cased themselves in brown, then black, mimicking the look of leggings, while her arms couldn’t dress themselves in anything more than scant, tan, flickering dapples. Ant threw on her jacket and foisted a pair of gloves from her pocket, hiding her polished fingers.

“I’m late,” she despaired. “I can’t believe I forgot—I’m late.”

You barely caught the black, amorphous stain on your couch as raced toward Ant, messing with her watch to open a portal out of your living room into the far side of a parking lot.

“Antonia, get back here right now!”

You had to sprint with achingly long strides to catch up with her as she merged into a crowd of costumes and foam swords, who gawked at the portal in open astonishment. You pulled on Ant’s arm to slow her down as the portal shrunk away.

“You’re in no condition to be in public,” you scorned, “Look at how obvious you’re being, Ant, you’ll attract attention.”

“Look around you, Doc, these people make a living out of playing pretend. Hey—” Ant saluted a stout woman dressed as a Valkyrie, “—Pretty neat lightshow, huh?”

The crowd nodded uncertainly to themselves as a few individuals clapped.

“See? Bunch of lolo’s in leotards.”

“Of course. Because you’re not also wearing spandex, Ant.”

Ant sneered at you, pushing you gruffly back as the parking lot gave way to the entrance of a majestic glass convention center, attendants meandering down the street in amicable chatter. You realized more attendants exited the venue than entered, and the number of cars in the lot steadily decreased.

Standing on your tip-toes, you finally caught what Ant had been craning her neck at this entire time: the group of people in mermaid costumes parted to reveal a gangly young woman sitting on the curb. Amaya wrapped her arms around her knobby knees as though she were a parcel dropped off for delivery, staring absently ahead as the flood of bodies parted so as not to knock into her.

Ant broke into a jittery run, accelerating too quickly and stopping too suddenly, her parts jutting strangely beneath her clothes like they’d been shaken inside a trash bag. Amaya did not appear surprised at her sister’s arrival once she processed it; her face curled in rage, like a hand readying a punch. You remained several feet away, uncertain how to extract Ant from such an intimate confrontation without causing a scene.

“Siobe,” Ant panted. She repeatedly attempted to flip her wheezing mouth into a smile and only succeeded in making a face like she was about to sneeze. Ant crossed her arms as sweat coursed down her brow. “I don’t even—I can’t even begin to explain myself, but I’ll do whatever you want to make this up to you, I promise.”

Amaya suppressed a groan as she stood, body stiff where Ant’s was strung-out. The former threw a teary glare at the latter with a sting that rivaled triple-proofed vodka. Amaya’s gaze slid to you, ejecting a thick and snotty scoff from her swollen throat.

“Kitang hinintay.”

The same message doubled in your mind, bleeding through your consciousness like a twice-pressed stamp: You are not supposed to be here.

You finally took in the peculiar hairstyle Amaya sported. Two narrow braids crowned her head while the rest flowed loose around her shoulders. From this silken curtain poked the ends of prosthetic elf ears. While more matte than her actual skin, they were completely convincing on first glance, delicately applied with powder blush and contour to heighten the illusion of their naturalness.

Ant floundered for some pebble of information that would stop this conversation from collapsing in on itself, replying in a quick whip of Tagalog.

Each time Amaya responded, more English words poked through her sentences. You distinctly heard “radio-silent,” “paranoid,” “accident,” and, finally, “badges.” Her visible frustration over her imperfect fluency reignited the anger that had cooked down to a hard, grainy essence of betrayal.

“Tamà.” You couldn’t tell if Ant’s tortured wince was from her injuries or realization. Ant held up two neon lanyards like prize trout. “Right, they’re right here, see? I’m sure we still have time to do something—”

A loudspeaker squealed inside the building. With a few crackles, a low, droning voice reverberated out the doors with half-hearted recitation.

“Attention guests, doors close in fifteen minutes. Please gather all personal belongings and proceed in an orderly fashion toward the exits. I repeat, doors close in—”

Ant’s hands shook as she held them out in a placative gesture toward Amaya.

You saw a stain grow along Ant’s back and stepped forward, worried that at any second she’d faint and knock her head on the concrete sidewalk.

“Antonia, you need to come with me, now,” you commanded.

When you came close enough that Amaya could discern the black Alchemax logo embroidered onto your left breast pocket, her biting, arctic aura became subzero.

Amaya shoved you backward. Your startled yelp caught the attention of several security guards, making you quickly right yourself to not draw any more attention; you lacked the skills in damage control necessary to handle the reveal that Ant was not who Amaya thought she was. However, the way Amaya’s face crumpled from two fat teardrops dribbling down her face and off her chin made you doubt such a scenario had been entirely prevented.

Amaya stood between you and Ant and barked with a damasked edge to her voice that you’d never heard in a teenager, “Your job involves Jacob’s work?”

Ant shrunk with every word Amaya lobbed at her in a way that was almost comical. You rotated the present scene in your head as one would examine a toy block: you could trace a hierarchy of least to greatest strength beginning with you, the out-of-shape scientist; the all-star basketball player; and Spider-Woman herself. Yet Amaya stood proudest out of all of you, protecting Ant from your advance even as she scolded her.

You could feel the threads of the Alchemax logo against your chest. For the first time in your life you felt the need to cover it up. The shame of wearing it was different from how it was with Billie Connors; where there you felt like you weren’t good enough to represent the company, in front of Amaya you weren’t good. You weren’t good, you weren’t good, you weren’t good.

A black hole opened in the pit of your stomach.

When Ant spoke, she did so with the queasiness of someone who prayed they picked the less explosive of two cans of worms.

“Amaya,” she murmured, jaw barely shifting like she was practicing ventriloquism, “Call him ‘Tito.’ Or at least ‘uncle.’”

“I am not giving that brainwashing egomaniac the satisfaction of acting like our childhood never happened!”

You took a tentative step forward, pointing at the guards, “Could we move this—”

“You stay out of this,” the women said, before turning back to each other.

“He’s gone, can’t you do it out of respect for his memory?”

“I hope he rots faster.”

Your hand flew to your mouth, stuffing the gasp that would have certainly carried the entirety of your soul.

What did Jacob Rodriguez do, again?

He led a bunch of Alchemax’s restorative therapy projects before he… I don’t even know how he did it.

Any claim to advancement in therapeutic discipline revealed itself to be a desire to maximize the number of needles and tubes it could stick into its subjects, rewiring their systems to be submissive instead of self-sustaining.

The smell of expired fruit hit you harder than before. You knew it seeped out of Antonia’s wound.

The band of security guards posted along the center’s doors stared intensely in your direction and spoke a series of numbers into their walkie-talkies. The argument transfixed a few con-goers as they finished loading their props into their cars, engines wasting precious gasoline as they remained in their parking spots. You could hear everyone whispering.

“Is that why you’re gone all the time now? You’ve made yourself a lab rat for the fine folks at Alchemax to dismember?”

Ant had never appeared so caged. Even in the face of death she remained cavalier. “Not even close—”

“Then what aren’t you telling me? You’re MIA all day and come home looking like you got hit by a semi! If it’s money, I can work. I’m not a kid—I can handle the truth. I can help.”

Ant laughed in an inaudible, hollow burst of air. “Siobe, you’re wearing elf ears.”

Amaya snapped up with photographic stillness.

“You said you liked this stuff too.”

Ant blinked tightly and shifted her gaze around the venue, looking for all the world like she’d been forced to sit at the kid’s table at dinner. “I like… that you like it.”

You caught every degree that the temperature of Amaya’s flush rose, mortification slowly dispersing into minute trembles of humiliation throughout her body. Ant pursed her lips and stared pleadingly at the sky. Just as she tried backpedaling her words, Amaya ripped the plastic tips from her head and hiccuped a sob, storming away.

When Ant followed her sister, the team of security guards followed not far behind. You endeavored to remain ahead of them, looking for clandestine exits. For diversions. You glanced at your watch and contemplated opening a portal to shove the three of you into, if only that wouldn’t guarantee spilling the truth Ant so endeavored to hide.

“I’m supporting you as best I can,” Ant said, catching Amaya by the shoulders and turning her around, “The entire point is that I am what I have to be so that you can be what you want to be. That’s what family does.”

Amaya was barely intelligible, “G-Get offa me-ee—”

She attempted to wrest herself from her sister’s hold, only for Ant to clutch Amaya’s wrist.

“I’m doing this for your own good, Amaya. All you need to do is be thankful—”

“St-Stop it!” Amaya tried prying open Ant’s grip to no avail. “Please—”

“Right? Is that so hard?”

“YOU’RE HURTING ME!”

Ant dropped Amaya’s hand like it was scalding as the security guards descended on the pair, two of the men restraining Ant and the remaining man and woman ushering Amaya backward. You caught only the beginning of Ant’s fiery tirade that she didn’t mean to, it was an accident—as she repeatedly lunged toward her sister. You were the only one trying to calm the situation down, yet she remained inconsolable as the other personnel examined Amaya’s wrist.

“I’m a doctor,” you volunteered, “I can assess the extent of her injury—”

The second of Amaya’s guards held a hand in front of your face, forcing you back. Just as the woman explained she should call the police, Amaya raised her hands as if proving she was unharmed. Her body juddered from how deeply she forced herself to breathe through her nose, going slow so she wouldn’t sniffle.

“I’m fine.” She stayed in place as she said, “Let her go.”

When the guards finally complied, Amaya tensed with the effort to not take another step backward and betray her fear of her sister, waiting for the guards to exit earshot before speaking again.

“I’m spending the weekend at Immonen’s.”

Ant remained similarly restrained to not frighten Amaya again. She shook with the effort not to move, balling her fists at her sides.

“Can we just talk about this at home?”

Amaya took a few steps backward. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”

She turned and took off down the street. You and Ant were left in a circle of dead air as what remained of the attendants skulked around the edge of your peripheries.

The dark, wet stain on Ant’s side began to drip. Your eyes bugged as you stepped forward.

“Ant—”

“Touch me, and I snap your arm.”

It felt like your ribcage had been degloved—all bright muscle, all exposed.

“What the hell did you just say to me?”

Ant sucked in a breath, running her hands over her face to push back her hair.

“This is all temporary. Once the multiverse is saved, everything will balance out again.” Ant moved her hands to her shoulders, feeling where the metal bit into skin. She was talking to herself. No need for you at all. “But my lives are collapsing into each other. I need to redraw some boundaries.”

Ant looked down at you.

“You can be Spider-Woman’s friend, but not Antonia Rodriguez’s.”

~~~

You missed your stop about five minutes ago. You decided to stay on the metro till the end of the line, when it would loop back around and pass the correct station once more.

You wished you could make time revolve in a similar way. You wished you knew how to reverse the damage you caused. Every action you made was always just a beat too late. Too slow. Redundant.

There was only one place you were immune from this feeling, and it wasn’t even in your own dimension. You had never felt so lost.

You rubbed your temples as a migraine hammered through your skull, too weak to prevent sleep from usurping your senses. You slumped against the window and closed your eyes as the train disappeared into a tunnel.

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

“Miguel, shut it off. I-I’m no good in the spotlight.”

“You like taking pictures. This is even better than that—it’s a moving picture.”

Miguel raised a small, transparent monitor to his face, screening your thorny glare behind layers of marmalade light.

“When you said you had a solution to our RAM problem, I thought you were implying you’d make me a new tablet.”

“A quantum supercomputer wouldn't have enough storage for you,” Miguel ribbed. He joked quite often in recent memory, surprisingly enough, in his own way. “Everything’s in position. Ready?”

“Hold up! I don’t even get a ‘testing, testing, one-two-three’?”

“We’re shooting archive material, not an action blockbuster.” Even still, Miguel focused the camcorder on the concentrated bunch of your brows rather than any equipment. His finger tested the looseness of the recording button in languid circles, tilting the plastic on its axis to avoid pressing down on the actual switch.

“You could at least give me a few minutes to make myself presentable.” You fiddled with your cuffs, the buttons catching the faint light of the room and illuminating the high points of your face. “Information is better retained when delivered by a pretty face.”

“Retained by who? You?” Miguel’s voice dripped with sardonic amusem*nt, “Sounds narcissistic.”

“Obviously not me.” Your gaze jumped momentarily to the black lens without latching on, as though scared that eye contact would provoke the camera like a wild animal.

Perhaps this was mean. No, Miguel didn’t deal in ambiguity: this was mean. But only as mean as you’d been to him. It felt nice to give you a taste of your own medicine.

“Right,” Miguel chuffed, “so, then, considering this is staying between us as facilitators of the phosphoramidite project, you’d have to be referring to me.”

The stiffness in your posture ebbed as you studied your cuff buttons, rolling your eyes as if to roll your embarrassment away. Miguel smirked with a short, triumphant exhale at getting you to relax. Or, at least, distracting you from your feelings. Miguel did not count himself as the type of person around which people let down their guards.

You rested your knuckles against your chin. “Hmm. That depends—do youcare about that sort of thing?”

Miguel shrugged, flexing the hand that nested in the grip strap, “A good view never hurts.”

“Shallow,” you gasped, shuttering your fingers over your mouth. Yet you kept your hand there, rubbing your jaw and shrinking into yourself. “How can the multiverse’s savior be so corrupt behind the mask?”

“You’re stalling.”

You clicked your tongue. “Aw, can’t even hide it. See? I’m not a good lead.”

“Again, that’s not what we’re doing, remember?” Miguel ticked his head from side to side as he rehearsed the same argument he sprung on you not five minutes ago, “I can compress a video file way smaller than a written document. We won’t have to keep strangling your tablet for space. This preserves the natural flow of productivity.”

“Nothing about this feels natural.” You walked around the table and whispered, as if trying to protect the camera’s feelings, “I-I’m actually concise in writing compared to talking. You know how I ramble. And I’m positively a mess.”

Miguel gave a disbelieving huff of a chuckle, “Te ves impresionante.”

You stiffened, such that Miguel readied the camera to dematerialize back into his watch in case he came off as overly forward. But he could hear you mouth his words to yourself in the soft, foamy silence of the lab, running your tongue along the vowels until your breath bounced atop a laugh, signaling that you’d pieced together a working translation.

Miguel would remember that you liked compliments.

You circled the table until you returned to your starting position, bringing your fist up to your mouth as you cleared your throat, then kneading your palm before your chest, like you’d captured your voice in your hands and were presently attempting to smooth it out.

Video was an infinitely more daunting affair than taking a simple photograph alongside a magnificent superhero, where you only had to hold one pose for several seconds with perfect lighting, angles, and shot composition, and afterward could sort through hundreds of copies for that special, blemishless keeper.

Instead, you had to worry about maintaining consistent volume, posture, eye contact, and a cogent stream of thought. You raised your head and narrowed your stance to prevent any unsightly bunches of flesh from jutting out.

When you nodded for him to continue, Miguel raised three fingers and brought them down in slow succession. The red recording light switched on in a hue not dissimilar to Miguel’s eyes.

“We are commencing trial 80,” you projected, voice unexpectedly hoarse. “This test is to see how hybridized immune cells function across all bodily systems. Principally, we’re investigating what happens to a host’s genetic makeup when different generations of cells encounter viruses previously absorbed and how the immune response might have evolved. To conduct this experiment, we’re using a blood sample from Earth-67’s Spider-Man.”

You gestured to the large, cylindrical tube before you, which contained a life-size artificial circulatory system, complete with a beating heart and crossing streams of veins, connected to the mock-quadriceps and femur from your previous trials.

Crossing to your console, Miguel not far behind, you explained the adaptations to the sugar supplement you planned to dispense as both bonding agent and energy source to the cells. You still refused to face the lens, instead preferring to look at Miguel over the blocky body of the camera.

Momentarily forgetting he had to keep the device at eye level for a good shot, Miguel let his hold sag slightly and caught the way you raked your nails over your palm.

“Just pretend I’m not here,” Miguel counseled.

“I don’t want to do that.” You were warm as honey from the tint of the holoscreen monitor, “I can’t do this without you.”

You’d always been honest about your feelings and intentions, to the extent that Miguel believed a core of something nefarious had to hide in its mellifluous depths. No matter how hard he scrutinized the simplicity of your words, the lilt of your voice, the bashfulness of your stare, he couldn’t accept the pure quality of your character; some other meaning had to have doubled-up with your words. Miguel prayed this was the case.

You nodded to your left, stepping aside to invite Miguel beside you.

Miguel swallowed, looking uncertainly around for some place to rest the camera. He mounted it on some kind of pronged instrument that resembled a tripod, flipping the monitor around and tilting the camera until he fit in frame. Unfortunately that cropped all but your bust, forcing Miguel to shove the camera back until it captured both your bodies from the knees up. While his enhanced sight still recognized the camera with crystallic clarity, he knew that to you it must have melted into the rest of the lab’s shadows. The orange monitor glinted like a medallion.

Miguel looked down at his costumed body next to your proper laboratory attire, crossing his arms over his insignia.

“What were we talking about?” he asked out of the side of his mouth.

“Your role in the project.”

“R-Right. Yeah.”

“Do you want to explain that?”

“Are you just trying to shirk responsibility for the presentation onto me?”

You grinned, “Practically read my mind! That means you’ll do just fine with this.”

You laid a hand on Miguel’s back and he stiffened, adjusting his posture as you spoke to the camera. Believing you’d crossed a boundary, you quickly recanted your touch and tucked both hands behind your back. Miguel’s fingers twitched at his side as he thought to say something to you, before ultimately remaining silent; he understood your sheepishness before the camera with newfound clarity; rather than fixing anything, restoring it to an accepted design proven to be functional, you were creating something new, and praying you had the elegance to represent it the way it deserved.

“Dr. O’Hara will take it away.”

It had been a while since anyone had called him “Doctor.”

You patted him once on the back before clasping your hands behind your back, chest puffed out in pride as you took turns presenting your data to the camera. There you stood, a pair of geniuses unifying their minds, inching close as though they didn’t trust the building’s warmth without using one another as a point of reference.

II

“Let me guess… another Sandman?”

Malala Windsor, a.k.a Spider-UK of Earth-835, stood before you coated in khaki-colored particles of sand like a beached seal pup.

“I know.” The lens of her mask bugged pathetically, “That makes—maybe—three this week.”

Whatever variant she ran into had a leg-up on his alters; the sand messed with the screens of your lab equipment and magnetized a set of surgical tools to Malala’s body with such ripping velocity that, were it not for Malala’s quick web-work, the tray would have smacked the back of your head. You remained placidly insensitive to the surrounding destruction as you thumbed through Malala’s file.

“Describe your symptoms, please.”

“Itchy.” Malala stayed still as you pulled a pair of scissors from her arm, the grains of sand whizzing through the space between the object and her body like the electrons of an atomic model. “And my Spider-Sense is completely jammed.”

You nodded in slow sweeps like a sagacious monk, which seemed to comfort Malala a great deal, either because she took it to mean you’d already engineered a solution in that vast, beautiful mind of yours, or validated her maddening uncomfortability.

Neither of these possibilities was exactly true. You were only this calm because you had entirely transcended enervation into outright delirium.

“I just cannae take this any longer,” Malala sobbed. A computer monitor shattered behind her. “I’ve got sand everywhere, Doctor— everywhere! I threw out all my table salt because I kept breaking my teeth on these sneaky granules that somehow got in there. I dunno what to do-hoo-hoo.”

“Oh, you’re handling this admirably, Malala, don’t worry.” You mixed together a watery slime and smeared it across her forehead like a face mask. “I would be a mess in your position.”

“Y-You would?” Malala blubbered, dripping with jelly like a scone.

You nodded dramatically again as your eyelids drooped dangerously low. The pop of a machine startled you back to the present.

In short work, your concoction clumped together the errant storm of sand on Malala’s body, before setting into hard mounds like a batch of rock candy. You gathered each chunk and dropped it into a receptacle for medical waste, and shoving that into a pocket along the wall to be incinerated.

Malala shook your hand all the way down the corridor in valorizing obeisance.

“Oh, bless you, Doctor—I’m in your debt forever. You’ve given me the strength to keep going, once again. Oh!”

“All in a day’s work.” You smiled as you waved her off, “Take care, now!”

When the doors slid shut, you wilted to the floor and wailed. And wail you did, long and horrifying as you crawled to your examination room like a mythological colossus returning to its cave.

You threw open the fridge that stored your most commonly used medications. In only two hours nearly all the brown-tinted glass bottles of anti-anything-and-everything had disappeared: antihistamines, anti-inflammatories, anticonvulsants, the dang antacids —

You shoved whatever remained aside and extracted one of four tall aluminum cans, branded with a heart struck with a lightning bolt. Any more caffeine and your veins would catch fire like the fuses of a bunch of dynamite, but any less and you’d blow up this building yourself.

You’d never treated so many patients in such a short time frame in all the months you’d been at the Society, such that you wondered if the other medics quit or croaked or cracked under the pressure.

“Take me, God,” you cried as you clambered into your swivel chair and popped the can’s tab, “I’m ready.”

“Woah, don’t walk toward the light, Doc.”

You squinted against the plasmic fluorescents of your lab to see Lyla bending over your brow, feet planted on your forehead. You were nearly completely horizontal in your chair like a corpse prepared for autopsy.

“Let me go, Lyla. Just buy a new medic before the kids get home, they won’t know the difference.”

Lyla scanned the clipboard on your stomach with a noncommittal nod, “Copy, initializing the ‘out to pasture’ protocol. You wanna be made into glue or sausage?”

“Glue. To fuel the creativity of millions of poor school children, who may perhaps succeed where I… failed.” You screamed histrionically into the unfeeling white room.

“Oh, you’ve got one more trick in you, Ol’ Nellie, let’s go,” Lyla encouraged, waving a bright flag over your brow.

“I’m removing you from my will if you make me get up.” You already began trailing the head of your pen down your clipboard’s list of names, “This is exploitative. It’s abuse. It’s dystopian. I demand a legal representative.”

“Shh, just drink your happy juice, you diva.”

Lyla’s sass almost made you put down the drink in defiance, but the siren song of its carbonation proved irresistible. You took a grumpy sip of the pink-tinted liquid and let its overpowering zing peel the tastebuds off your tongue.

The buzz was lighter and less immediate in a way that threatened a shifting bedrock of energy. From how regularly you’d consumed these disgustingly tart cans of battery acid, you hoped at least a placebo effect could still kick in. If not, you feared needing to consider whether the cons attached to hard drugs were really so bad.

You checked the contents of your fridge one more time and tutted.

“Lyla, please put in a bulk order for amoxicillin, metoprolol, and buprenorphine. Ask if the other labs can spare some non-opioid painkillers.”

“What’s wrong with regular morphine?”

“Given how frequent return visits have become, I’d like to limit the possibility of addiction in my patients.”

“Bad business model. Don’t you want them to come back?”

You entered the lobby to call the next name on your waitlist. Yet as you scanned the congregated heroes you looked past their almond-shaped eye marks toward one particular Spider-Woman crossing a distant buttress. Your Spider-Woman.

At least, she used to be.

You held her gaze for only a moment, expression tight like you were testing if you had laser vision.

“No. My job is to make sure they’re fine on their own.”

In spite of how you’d gotten along beforehand, in spite of the fact that nothing that happened between her and Amaya was your fault, in spite of the fact that she owed you an explanation for why she didn’t want to do anything about her damaged cybernetic infrastructure, Ant pretended like nothing happened with an all too acidic cheeriness, visibly eating at her like lemon juice on tooth enamel. She refused to answer to any name besides “Spider-Woman” in your presence.

Which was fine. She wanted professionalism and you gladly metered it out: you cut off all contact with Ant and avoided her wherever possible. Your generosity was reserved for people who didn’t treat you like single-use plastic.

Soon she would see how much she needed you and come crawling back. Crawling! On the ceiling, perhaps! And you would take her in, because you were the mature, bigger person.

Spider-Woman high-fived a few of her colleagues and eagerly accepted the web-shaped biscuit they’d brought her from the cafeteria. Your shoulders sagged.

It was pathetic to have forgiveness so readily on-tap.

You huffed and ushered your one-hundredth Peter Parker of the day into your clinic with spiteful gusto.

As Parker hopped onto the steel examination table in patient unacknowledgement of the shards of glass you pushed to the corner, your watch pinged with an incoming call. You lingered tenderly over the notification header before excusing yourself around the corner to tapping the “accept” button.

“Hey,” Miguel's miniature blue bust greeted. He noticed the way you hid and co*cked a brow, “Bad time?”

“I’m with a patient,” you murmured. “Confidentiality. You understand.”

“I’ll be brief. And vague.”

“It’s for their sake. You know how much I value privacy.” You brought your wrist closer to your chest, shielding Miguel’s hologram with your other hand as though it were a waning flame.

Miguel’s voice dropped as low as yours. “Uh-huh. Then why are you so invested in other people’s business?”

“Who better to protect their privacy than me?”

“I find that claim contradictory. And suspicious.” Miguel tilted his head, “How can I trust you?”

“Tell me a secret, and see if I keep it.”

“I can tell you never took an ethics class in college.”

You grinned as Miguel rubbed the lower half of his face, propping his chin up with his thumb.

“Alright. I’ll bite. You know the thing?”

“The thing-a-ma-jig or the doo-dad?”

“The gizmo.”

You gasped, “Something promising?”

“I can’t say much. ” Miguel chuckled at your crushed shock, “But, yeah. We may have done it.”

“Done it?! You’re getting my hopes up, Miguel. Can you be…specific? And extensive?”

You wished you could see whatever expression made the marks of Miguel’s mask round into doe-like saucers.

“I’ll show you. Tonight, usual time.”

Miguel ended the call, cueing your re-entrance into the examination room from stage right. You warmed as a syrupy trance washed over you, laying your fingers over your wrist to find your pulse had skyrocketed out of nowhere; your energy drink must have kicked in.

~~~

You entered Miguel’s lab to find it empty. An uncommon occurrence, but certainly nothing to cause worry. If Miguel wasn’t here, he was responding to an anomalous crisis somewhere in the cosmic beyond. And so, as you waited out Miguel’s impromptu grace period, you finished any remaining work on your tablet and made sure to print a copy of Malala’s patient summary to stick inside its manila folder later.

Yet soon work ran out and the calm of the lab became both creepy and boring. You shot Miguel a short message on your watch: Here.

His reply was instantaneous: Where?

In your lab?

The rolling tide of an ellipsis indicating that Miguel was typing his response disappeared, then reappeared.

Where are you? you added.

…Your lab.

The parameters of the phosphoramidite project expanded more rapidly than ever before. It had become standard to continue the un-manned aspects of synthesis and stabilization with the machines in your respective labs; you must have lost track of that cycle of trade.

The doors parted in a dizzying rotation of steel plates like the shutter of a camera as you jogged toward the entrance. You’d sooner portal into your clinic were it not for the fact the messed-up gravity around that gateway through space-time would float your equipment through the air before violently shattering them against the floor with its close.

The final door fwoosh’d open to reveal Miguel emerging from the elevator at the other end of the walkway.

“Wait long?” You spoke at the same time. It made you laugh.

“Sorry, I thought we were meeting here.”

Miguel approached, “Fault’s mine, don’t worry about it.”

“Are you hurt, is that why you went to the clinic first?” You sized him up as you fell into step beside him.

“No, I just did it out of instinct. Wasn’t thinking.”

You failed to notice the threshold to the door in your rapt assessment of Miguel’s condition and jammed your toe against the steel bottom of the entryway. You toppled against Miguel’s side with a curse, and in turn he stabilized you with a firm grip on your left arm.

“Wasn’t thinking,” you sheepishly echoed once you shook the pain out of your foot. “Must be contagious.”

Miguel had the decency to cover his laugh with a cough, but the audacity to over-perform beating his fist against his chest. You shoved him away in rowdy embarrassment and he humored you enough to stumble a half-step back.

“What, not compassionate enough for you?”

“If you’re emphasizing the ‘ass’ part.”

Miguel’s mouth quirked in a smirk before leveling out into a true smile.

“Here,” he said, holding up his right hand to show two lollipops pinched in the divots between his fingers. “For the uh… emotional wound.”

“That’s more like it.” You picked the red one with a greedy tear and subsequent shoving of its wrapper into your pocket. But Miguel’s frown halted the parting of your mouth, your eyes bouncing between his insignia and your treat. “Aw, were you hoping for this one?”

“Thought you were more a fan of sour apple.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

Miguel stuck the candy into his mouth. The white stick poked between his pointed teeth, luminous as the insular darkness of the lab overtook you. “It’s the best one.”

Cherry-flavored drool collected along your tongue until you were forced to swallow.

“S-So about that thing you wanted to show me,” you started, your train of thought nose diving into a ravine. You wanted Miguel to take initiative. No, that’s not it—take charge. Take you over—Take over for you.

You shook your head. Must you be out-of-sorts tonight?

Miguel nodded to the microscope. “Take a look.”

You observed a sample of perfectly healthy blood cells grouped together like beads of caviar, all missing a viral body retrofitted to be an organelle. Your bemused expression made Miguel chuckle as he leaned over you, magnifying the slide until you could observe a DNA helix, sturdy with novel acids and improved bonds.

“Second-generation cells are flawless,” you stated, “Happy to see they’re holding up so well.”

“These aren’t daughter cells of improved carriers.”

You could feel his body heat against your back.

“Then why are they missing a reconstituted foreign agent?”

You lifted your head from the lens to see Miguel’s cheek round with smug pride.

“Did some tinkering with the thermocycler. This sample is the one thousandth generation of improved blood cells.”

Your jaw dropped, the head of your lollipop clinking against your bottom teeth. “One thousandth?”

This meant the effects of the Arachno-Humanoid Phosphoramidite Project were not only viable, but sustainable long-term.

“Look at us go!” you cheered. You pumped your fists in the air and stepped closer to Miguel, but faltered at whether it would be appropriate to hug him. The idea of pressing his body against yours suddenly overawed you. You shook him by the shoulder instead, which he seemed entirely neutral toward.

“You should celebrate,” Miguel encouraged, “Take the night off. You earned it.”

“You mean, go home?”

It was exactly the thing you’d been avoiding; home meant sleep, sleep meant losing time, losing time meant losing the weekend, and losing the weekend meant waking up on Monday and having to clock into Alchemax.

You knew you had to return at some point. You had to confront your failure, take your superiors’ reprimands on the chin, and beg to stay at your job before they sealed your fate with a pink slip. Yet every time you rehearsed your script for a second chance, Antonia’s heartbreak at the state of her body and Amaya’s nuclear disdain at the sight of your lab coat flashed through your mind. You couldn’t go back, but you couldn’t stay in a dimension that wasn’t your own. You were effectively in limbo.

You wanted to forget the world. Any world. Anywhere that wasn’t here, where Miguel indulged in everything you said as though the color of the sky depended on your approval.

“Are you kidding? This is too exciting, we have to keep going!”

Miguel regarded you with faint trepidation, raising his brows. “You really don’t have to tell me what I want to hear. I’m not that kind of leader—I’m not your leader.”

“I’m serious,” you replied. “This is what I wait every week for, anyway.”

Miguel’s brows jumped for a moment in genuine surprise rather than their initial umbrage.

“It’s…still not perfect,” Miguel amended, taking your place in front of the microscope. “Bleeding is excessive compared to control groups, for one.”

You zoned in on Miguel zoning in on the blood sample, ghosting your gaze over his profile until you settled on his mouth. It was a shame Miguel didn’t smile more often. His broad jaw lent well to the kind of large, sappy grin he wore after your previous breakthrough. Not to mention his teeth…

Miguel absentmindedly tested his lollipop’s hardness against his canines; little cracks spread along the center band as he attempted to restrain himself from the instant gratification of breaking the green shell and taking the whole of its flavor.

With renewed interest Miguel doubled over the microscope, crushing the lollipop in a swift bite. You followed the lump in his throat, raking your eyes down his chest to the steep taper of his waist. You kept your own candy against your lips, almost kissing it.

“—at would you do?”

You blinked back up to Miguel’s face. “What?”

“About the density of coagulation.” Miguel frowned at the persistent, drowsy draw to your eyes. “Platelets are collecting too quickly and too numerously. It could lead to severe clotting. Would hardening the scabbing make the platelets move on quicker?”

You wondered if Miguel’s tongue turned green. “N-No. Eliminating too much moisture from the site may lead to atrophy. The solution may be as simple as programming the cells to more clearly differentiate stages of healing.”

Miguel nodded, returning to the microscope while you continued recording your observations. All of them.

Miguel was…big. Huge. On a scale that made catching slivers of his body in one’s field of vision probable—unavoidable, really. Was it then so wrong to allow him to occupy your particular view if he encroached on it anyway? Just to make sure you knew what he was doing. And, in a purely mathematical sense, Miguel had proportions which invited examination: his legs were sturdy, gracefully crocheted with muscle that captured the light in stark relief. His broad arms curved and winded with impeccable dexterity when they reached over your head or in front of you to grab a tool. His level shoulders were accentuated by the red accents of his suit, perfectly crossed against the column of his neck and spine when he stood before you. When his adam’s apple bobbed as he fought against laughing at something you did or said. When his eyes sharpened at the details in your explanations.

You momentarily pressed against Miguel’s side to grab a tube of hydrocarbon jelly across the table. He stilled, letting you cross without comment, something you belatedly recognized could be a sign of uncomfortability, which made you retract your body the second after. It would have been easier to just ask Miguel to pass the thing to you, but you wanted to study his features in closer proximity; the trade off for the obscurity of the lab’s darkness was that it removed the nuances of Miguel’s face. This made you want to stare at him even more.

The cap on the tube was stuck, forcing you to crank it.

It could not be helped that you enjoyed looking at someone like Miguel. Contemplating not just the hard, hewn planes of his body, but the areas that, in spite of combat, seemed soft. Supple. Like if you were to lay your hand on—for a completely arbitrary example in an impossible instance—his chest, the flesh would pudge around your fingers.

Your grip on the tube tightened until it exploded, splattering red petrolatum onto Miguel’s cheek as the cap pinged against a metal fixture overhead.

Miguel settled his hands on his hips, dropping his head in peevishness. “That on purpose?”

“No?”

“Don’t seem particularly shocked about it.”

“I am, uh—” Say something funny, say something funny. “—very used to my accident prone-ness.”

No, you idiot, you have to be cool, too!

Miguel gave a crisp chuckle.

Oh, nevermind, I’m in the clear.

“You’re especially accident prone around me, though.” Miguel wiped his face with the back of his hand. “This could impact our partnership down the line.”

“In what way?”

“It’ll waste time, for one.”

A red blot remained on the apple of Miguel’s cheek.

“Here,” you said as you grabbed a tissue, “you’ve still got a bit of…”

Your hand paused between both your bodies. Miguel simply waited, unsure of what was happening as much as you were.

In the simplest terms possible, the theory of the multiverse can be explained like this: for every choice presented to you, a universe was created where you selected the other option.

You flipped your palm to face upward as you held the tissue out to Miguel; he took it with a short “Thanks,” passing it over his face before crumpling it in his fist.

“What’s two?”

There was now a universe where you wiped Miguel’s cheek for him.

Miguel hummed, tossing the wad into the nearby trash can. “Might lead to a lab disaster.”

“I’m not worried about that.” You leaned against the table. “I know you’ll protect me.”

“Yeah? How so?” Miguel turned, setting his obnoxiously buff arm on the table to lean over you.

“Well, you would certainly be an—an incredible b-body—” your mouth dried at the proximity, skin blushing bright as a police siren as you begged for some space to breathe, something to defend you from this overwhelming sensation, something like a, “—shield.”

Miguel went horribly still as your brain collided with the brick wall of stupidity laid by your words: “body shield.” You implied you would use Miguel as a body shield. God, you might as well have threatened to kill him!

You stammered, “I-I mean, you just—”

“Mmhmm.” Miguel stalked to the other end of the table, “Let’s get into position for the test.”

Once this round of experiments concluded, you were going to walk off the roof of this tower.

You loaded the petrolatum into one of the mechanical arms, slamming your head into its metal base softly enough that you hoped Miguel’s super-hearing couldn’t pick up on it.

“Initializing coda sequence,” you said. “Ready the rest of the program.”

Miguel flicked a screen between the two of you and pressed record, much to your dismay; you were in no state to command any audience’s attention, let alone Miguel’s. Not to mention how tired you felt—really, truly felt now in a way you were able to ignore before. You could feel the sebum being squeezed from your skin every time your expression shifted.

A headache began forming within your skull.

All the fancy jargon your tongue once strung together like the shuttle of a loom tangled itself into blithering nonsense.

“Speak up,” Miguel ordered. “The audio feed is just picking up mechanical interference.”

You restarted to even worse results.

“Trial 88. Investigation of cell behavior within the complete body. We have progressed to testing how different viruses interact with improved cells.” You felt your hair sticking to your temple and moved to tuck it away, before you remembered that you couldn’t compromise the sterility of your hands, meaning you were forced to let it stay there, making you look gross. Tarnishing the camera footage.

You shook your head, “Uh, expectations are not in accordance with previous testing.”

“Don’t you mean are consistent with previous tests?”

One of the machine lights started blinking rapidly at the other end of the chamber, tearing Miguel’s attention away, “Hang on a sec.”

You puffed your cheeks with an exhale as you pulled up a series of fluctuating charts, accidentally adjusting the brightness too high and too rapidly, making you hiss in overstimulation. You rubbed your eyes and moved away before freezing, staring down at the gloved finger you just sullied with tear fluid and eye gunk.

“Great.”

The chamber began beeping in earnest. You froze like a deer caught in headlights.

“Why aren’t you at your station? Polymerase levels are dropping!”

You hurried to your console as you ripped off your ruined glove and grabbed a clean one, unable to cram your hand inside. You hovered your clean hand over the buttons, the torrent of text on the screen scrabbling your brain. You didn’t even know what kind of modified sugar was necessary to salvage this operation. You needed to make a decision —

Miguel yelled your name.

“I-I’m figuring it out!”

You ripped your new glove and slipped a curse. You kept your head down as you walked to the dressing station and Miguel once again yelled for you, more urgent this time, preventing you from noticing the sharp edge of a machine until you walked right into it.

You stumbled back. Clutching your forehead as you felt a slippery heat pearl itself on your brow, you realized you’d busted open your skin.

A firm hand on your shoulder spun you around, bringing you face-to-face with an irate Miguel as he badgered you with “I told you so” after “I told you so,” shoving the offending machine away as he did so.

You stared mutely at him before looking ahead at the observation chamber; the glass walls projected an army of holoscreens shrieking an announcement of every kind of internal failure within the model until the vitals crashed.

If that were a real person, they’d have died.

The tide of red light almost washed out the blinking dot of the camera, centering your atrocious state within a 4:3 aspect ratio.

“Cancel the trial.”

“We’ll reset everything and keep going,” Miguel settled, “it’s not that bad.”

“No. Cancel the trial. Please, I want that footage deleted.”

Miguel caught the way the blood thinned and lightened as it trailed down your cheek, mixing with another stream of clear, salty fluid. He stepped between you and the chamber, turning halfway around to tug the screen toward him and shut it off. It flattened into a yellow line, then compacted into a dot, then disappeared.

Miguel lowered the elevated podium in the center of his lab and sat you before his dormant console, digging out a first-aid kit from the bottom shelf of his desk. You reached for it on instinct, only for Miguel to knock you away with the back of his hand and drench a cotton pad in alcohol.

“Te dije que pararas, pero ¿me escuchaste? No, nunca en tu vida. El burro sabe más que tú.”

He hovered over your brow, waiting.

You shrank from the pad’s sanitary fumes, face already stinging. “I’m in full possession of my faculties, real—”

“Callate.” You’d never seen Miguel pissed off this way. The lab dropped a degree in temperature with every scornful word he muttered to himself. “Are you ready or not?”

“This isn’t your job.”

“Maybe think about what kind of example you set, then.”

For lack of a better response, you rolled your eyes and tilted your head back. Miguel grabbed your jaw and crammed the alcohol pad against your injury, unclotting several different four-letter words from your throat.

“OW—”

Miguel squeezed harder when you tried squirming away, “Could have prevented this if you were more careful.”

“I was being—God dammit—”

“Being careful means keeping a tight grip on things. No loose threads, nothing impromptu, nothing out of sight.”

You could feel your neurons dying from Miguel’s tough love, “Really putting the ‘full’ in ‘careful,’ huh?”

Miguel replaced the alcohol pad with a clean patch of gauze as he fished a sealed bandage from the white kit with his other hand. He ripped it open with his teeth and let the wrapping fall to the floor.

“That word mean something different in your dimension?” he asked.

The air assaulted your cut once Miguel removed the gauze. The blood on it looked almost black in the dim of the room. “Not in my universe. Just to me. Being careful means not getting too involved.”

“Wow. You don’t even meet the standards you set.”

“What can I say?” You replied, voice transparent. “I’m doomed to always fall short.”

Miguel’s hold relaxed, shifting his fingers as he laid the bandage over the vivid red split in your skin.

“Maybe.” He cleaned your face up. Tucked the rebellious lock of hair back in place. “Or maybe it’s a bad definition.”

“Because you’re always right?”

“Because you’re never wrong.” Miguel tilted your chin up, binding you in a sure, serious stare. “Not fully. You just need more time to understand.”

You laid your hand over Miguel’s wrist, recognizing two options before you: you could lean into his touch, or pull away. You knew you must have appeared wretched, and your pulse fluttered in that light, dizzy way like you were backing away from an edge, but while Miguel’s hold on you was binding, it did not crush you. It felt…secure. It made you want to let go, or perhaps hold onto him—could both be possible?

Before you could act, Miguel’s watch chirruped with urgent shrillness beneath your palm, shredding your ear canal. You jerked away from his hold, rubbing your ear as Miguel projected the screen of an incoming call. He cleared his throat and backed away with a clipped excuse.

Mimicking Miguel’s caress with your own hand, you tried flattening the staticy feeling in your cheeks.

You had forgotten one crucial detail in this entire scheme: choice, especially for a person immaterial to the events of the canon, did not exist. The universe made a decision for you. The universe reminded you of your place within it.

Shaking your head, you straightened your arms behind you, trying to compose yourself into a state of normalcy, only to accidentally press one of Miguel’s keyboards.

Screens overlapped one another in a dense pile of pixels, turning your body yellow and your shadows green like an unripe mandarin as you sprung to action, trying to turn everything off before Miguel returned. However, you slowed down upon recognizing several channels of security feed. In… every possible, private area the tower had.

You watched the screens long enough to realize you only studied figures with costumes in shades of gray and violet rather than perusing in a still-creepy but altogether ubiquitous interest. When Ant's chrome body failed to appear, you pulled up a new tab in the Society’s directory and typed in her name.

Considering your current snooping, you reserved judgment against Miguel. For now.

Two hundred one results came through. You backspaced and tried again, simply entering “Earth-409.”

Two results appeared. Your eyebrows jumped, glancing over your shoulder to make sure the doors were still closed before you clicked on the first profile. Far more stats filled the page than what were available to you—perhaps to anyone besides Miguel.

Antonia Michelle Rodriguez, a.k.a Spider-Woman. Age: Nineteen. Strength: 3.5/5. Speed: 4/5…

You knew all this. You scrolled down until you caught an unfamiliar line.

Experience(RTE): Two years.

Two years relative to Earth-409’s passage of time? That wasn’t right. Spider-Woman had been around for five years. Ant even said—

I’ve been doing things this way for five years.

But not five years in total. And you thought—no, you knew, by this point, that it hadn’t been just five years.

If Ant had been lying about her age, wouldn’t Amaya have corrected her when they first met? If Ant told the truth, was this profile wrong? Wouldn’t Miguel have corrected it by now?

You cobbled together the rationale for another possibility: if Ant had two years worth of hero experience at nineteen, then she would have been bitten at seventeen. And if she was twenty-four, then she would have been bitten...seven years ago.

Seven years ago, you began your doctoral program. And as you cast your mind to the past you recalled a particular afternoon, extraordinary precisely because of its mundanity, that you returned from class to find the evening news anchors shouting feverishly at an explosion that hadn't happened.

In the dead of night, an unknown agent broke into the private oil reserves of the Fisk corporation and single-handedly took down a team of mafiosos planning to trigger a full-blown turf war between two rival gangs. Grainy security footage showed only her shiny ski goggles and oversized bomber jacket as the figure disappeared, after diffusing every timer in the vicinity.

So either Ant stole this vigilante's clothes and built her crime-fighting career off another's street cred, or this profile was inexplicably frozen in time for a reason beyond Miguel's nonexistent laziness.

You returned to the results page, staring at the second profile. You reasoned that this had to be an unfinished update to Ant’s information.

Then again, if that were the case, wouldn’t it also be labeled Spider-Woman instead of Spider-II? Maybe Version II or Spider-Woman(II) or some other combination of characters, but certainly not the replacement of Ant’s proper title for a phrase so simple it invited the assumption that the file belonged to a different figure altogether.

After all, there could be one—and only one—Spider for each Earth at a time.

Just as your finger tapped the vaporous holoscreen, you picked up a set of footsteps down the hall.

The doors parted to reveal Miguel cracking his neck, finding you on your feet, on the ground, putting away his first aid kit in total darkness.

The silence between you was thicker than wool.

Miguel cleared his throat. “Anomaly.”

“Right.”

“I’ll be leaving. Now. I should have left already, to be honest.”

“Left?” You sucked in a breath, “W-Wait—”

“Yes?” Miguel rushed.

Miguel massaged his nape as you clasped your hands behind your back and nodded a tight, flat smile. You had no business stalling him like this.

“Thank you.”

Miguel nodded in…acceptance. Of your gratitude. You couldn’t recognize anything more than that from the poor lighting, especially not when your eyes had yet to readjust to the dark after staring at all those screens.

“I can stay in the clinic tonight, in case you're injured,” you offered in pitiful hope. You quickly corrected yourself, trying not to insinuate desire for Miguel to incur harm, “So that I can repay you for patching me up.”

Miguel fisted the hair at the base of his head. “Not out of concern?”

You were miffed. Did he seriously need to trip you up at all times?

Miguel’s watch flashed once more, causing him to grunt.

“Take the rest of the night off. You need it. Sleep.”

For once, the idea of refusal seemed outrageous. If only to make Miguel happy.

“Okay.”

You both turned around, opened your portals, and exited the lab.

~~~

“Let me guess… another Sandman?”

Malala Windsor, a.k.a Spider-UK of Earth-835, stood before you coated in khaki-colored particles of sand like a beached seal pup.

“I know.” The lens of her mask bugged pathetically, “That makes—maybe—three this week.”

“Pretty sure it’s four now, Malala.” You frowned as you thumbed through her file to find yesterday exactly where it should be.

Malala’s lens ballooned until they took up nearly all of her mask, before she began bawling into your shoulder, sprinkling sand onto the examination table with each shudder.

“Don’t worry, Malala,” you conciliated, redirecting your focus to the matter at hand. Thankfully it was quick work, the same mortar as last time perfectly effective at neutralizing the sand. Your speech was sweet if a bit automatic, “You’re handling this remarkably well. I would be a mess in your position.”

“Y-You would?” Malala blubbered, dripping with jelly like a scone.

It made you smile, how certain phrases always reliably touched their recipients the same way. Yet your wizened superiority was slightly tarnished by your fulfillment at saying those same words, and providing Malala relief. Now that you had enough rest to remember which way was up.

You couldn’t remember the last time you’d slept so well, uninterrupted by either internal or external stressors for a whole night; when you awoke this morning, you felt not so much rejuvenated as completely realigned, like everything about you had been given a factory reset. Your skin radiated with bouncy hydration, your hair shone, and when you went to change the bandage over your eyebrow, you discovered that the dime-wide cut had completely healed over. Perhaps some truth hid in Miguel’s full-bodied philosophy on care.

In Miguel’s… full body. His care.

You feathered your knuckles from the bottom of your ear to the point of your chin as you recalled the demanding way Miguel gripped you; a hot, stinging sensation flowed from your face to your belly, like you’d downed a tablespoon of cough syrup.

The slime thudded onto the steel table once set, startling you out of your reverie. You clasped your hands together with a crack that startled yourself as much as Malala, standing her up and dusting her off as you shook off the final specks of your memory.

“Astounding work as always, Malala,” you proclaimed as you all but marched her outside, shaking her hand with the bombastic ebullience of an army general.

For all her physicality, Malala stumbled beside you as though totally overpowered. “Sh-Shouldn’t I be thanking you, Doctor?”

“All in a day’s work.” You perkily grinned as you waved her off, “Take care, now!”

With the doors’ close, you slouched against the wall to ground yourself against the lightheadedness that reduced your limbs to putty, holding off on calling your next patient until you could recompose yourself. You slothfully climbed into your desk chair and rubbed your temples. Perhaps one night’s worth of rest hadn’t fixed you as totally as you’d thought.

When you crossed to your desk, you discovered one of the holographic clocks along the wall to be flickering wildly, hands stuck in a “v” shape like a clueless shrug. You clicked your tongue in dulled frustration at all these encounters with Sandman—perhaps the universe saw fit to answer your frequent cries for a beach day by bringing the beach to you.

You knelt before your steel fridge to discover another nasty nuisance.

“Lyla, I thought I asked you to double up on medication?”

A crinkly static accompanied the artificial assistant’s appearance, “Huh? When?”

You counted the dark vials as you rearranged them inside the fridge, making a clean part to the quartet of energy drinks at the very back.

“Just yesterday? I understand if the other labs can’t spare any of their stores, but I may need to close up early if I can’t get at least some antibiotics here.” You set a can on your desk as you scribbled a new list of necessities, “Though I appreciate you remembering to consistently replenish my personal supply.”

“Newsflash, Doc, I only have record of you ordering a crate of Zero Sugar Pulse Parkour Energy Boosters in flavor Charged Cherry last week.” Lyla snapped a picture of your list. “Maybe you got them mixed up?”

You laughed. “This is a rather guerilla method of enforcing self-care, babe.”

Lyla did not laugh, her ruminating pout morphing into a pair of duck lips as she appraised your form.

“Goodness, Spider Society is a tougher crowd than I thought,” you murmured, folding the list up and tucking it into your breast pocket. “What’s wrong with my quips?”

“They sound like cries for help, to start.”

You waved her off as you updated Malala’s patient history file on your tablet. Considering how identical Malala’s condition and remedy were to her last visit, you surmised it would be more efficient to just copy and paste your last update into a new document. However, as you began your summary, you balked at the date recorded on your tablet and cross-referenced it with the innocent copy of yesterday's chart laying within Malala's file.

Malala completed a visit with you yesterday. On Saturday.

Today was Saturday.

A fuzzy, moldering shudder crept over your body as you stared at your tablet, the disorientation comparable to forgetting why you’d entered a room. You turned to the flickering clock on the far wall and sat up in your chair, speaking into your watch.

“Lyla. What day is it?”

“Today for Earth-928 is Saturday. It is currently 7:10 a.m. Weather is cloudy with a sixty percent chance of rain—”

“What day is it on Earth-409?”

“’Kay, didn’t know it was the hot new trend to cut people off, but I’m always happy to learn!”

“Sorry, sorry,” you amended as you invited Lyla to perch on the back of your hand, lifting her to eye level. “Just a bit out of sorts. Had a…long night.”

Lyla spun around with a cold shoulder as if to ignore you, but all the same fluffed up her hair to bare one yellow ear in your direction. You snorted.

“Lyla, dearest, please tell me what day it is on Earth—”

“It’s Saturday, 7:15 a.m., on Earth-409.” Lyla smirked at your affronted startle. “Now we’re even. Would you also like to know the weather?”

You blinked your gaze about the examination room like you had an invisible set of VR goggles on, expecting the walls and ceiling to flicker into nothingness and reveal your present reality to be a simulation.

“That’ll be all, Lyla, thank you.”

“Want me to send in your next patient?”

“I’ll be another minute,” you excused. “Need to…put everything back to how it was.”

Lyla’s projection switched off, leaving you to your exponentially redoubling thoughts.

Oh, you knew exactly what was happening. There could be no other explanation: you’d somehow enmeshed yourself in a time loop.

While not yet proven, considering you were currently in a different dimension, belonging to an infinite array of dimensions in a collective multiverse, the likelihood was unimpeachable. Perhaps this was the result of some Spider’s tussle with a villainous variant somewhere in the great spread of space-time.

It kind of excited you, to be honest.

Then again, why did it appear that you were exempt from the loop? This was the key variable that prevented you from certifying your theory. That is, from getting your hopes up.

You should tell this to someone. Who knows what may happen if this recursive effect on time continues—honestly, could you imagine the horror of experiencing the same routine of semi-consciousness with no sign of progress until freedom becomes nothing more than a distant memory?

Your tablet caught the inverted reflection of your coat’s Alchemax logo.

Oh.

Well, you reasoned, there were certainly worse days to replay than Saturday.

Your watch rang with an incoming call. Miguel.

It…would be bad praxis not to collect more evidence. Or even wait until the Spider that broke the continuum fixed this or found you and asked for your assistance. The last time you spoke to Miguel ended so awkwardly, anyhow—would it be so terrible to wipe the slate clean?

“Hey,” he opened. You stared at him with such intensity that he shrunk back, half-afraid you’d pop through his watch like a jack-in-the-box. “Bad time?”

This was the same thing he said as before. Your theory strengthened.

“Not at all, Miguel.” You pursed your lips, toeing a risk, “A-About yesterday…”

The marks on his mask narrowed. “What about it? ”

You needed to rule out other possibilities, but it was rather difficult to do that without being forthright. “Could we just pretend like that didn’t happen?”

It was unfeasible to deduce his reaction from the minimal lines on his mask or the way they drew together by the brows. You wondered how crazy you appeared to him.

“I have…no idea what you’re talking about,” he coolly returned.

Relief burst from your chest. “Of course. Right. Nothing happened.”

“Nope.”

“See you tonight, then.”

“Hold on,” Miguel interrupted, rattled to bits at the strangeness of this exchange, “I never asked to meet up.”

“Isn’t that why you called?”

He appraised you dubiously, “You don’t know that for certain.”

“Does that mean you’re not free?” It would be a crime not to seize such a ripe opportunity to mess with Miguel.

“Y-Yes. Wait, no, I am not not free—”

“Can I see you tonight?” You tilted your head.

A second voice shouted from Miguel’s side of the call, roping him back into business. To your surprise, especially considering your shameless nettling, when he flicked his head back and forth between you and his unseen companion, Miguel seemed more peeved at the latter for interrupting your conversation.

“Your lab. Usual time.” He ended the call.

~~~

“Trial 88,” you narrated. “Investigation of cell behavior within the complete body. We have progressed to testing how different viruses interact with improved cells. We are confident that repeated integration is feasible, though it may augment over corrective immune responses within improved cells. We hypothesize that this can be disciplined through an intensification of our established methods of correction.”

Miguel squinted disapprovingly. “Mmm. That’s your hypothesis. Mine is that we just need to increase production of heparin.”

“As you can see, Dr. O’Hara is presently demonstrating his greatest skill: contrarianism,” you spoke conspiratorially to the camera, as though indulging in some inside joke with the device. Your newfound confidence seemed to stem entirely from humor at Miguel’s expense.

“It’s a valuable idea!”

“It most certainly is, Miguel. Now, when I prove my postulation, I’ll not only be right—I’ll be better than you.”

Miguel rolled his eyes as he fixed the camera in place and joined you in front of the observation chamber.

Even as you took proactive measures to prevent the same nasty spill you suffered during the first draft of this present moment, your gaze snagged on his body as the diffused light in the lab carved out the contours of his muscles.

You excused your interest by attempting to compare the sturdy trunk of Miguel’s leg to the quadriceps inside the chamber, yet this defense quickly fell in the face of your preference for the former over the latter. For Miguel’s form.

When Miguel caught your gaze, you returned to your work with a hot flush.

“Initializing coda sequence,” you said. “Glucose on standby.”

The anatomical model in the chamber glowed with the stream of fresh blood. One by one the synthetic systems sprung to life—the false heart stuttered its way into a pulse, the nerves along the spine flared with electrical signals, even the digestive system—the newest and most complex addition to your artificial host’s body for its delicate microbiome, but one imperative to ensuring the phosphoramidite project would integrate seamlessly to the natural functions of a human body.

Miguel administered the virus and pulled up video feed of it swimming through the rubied tunnels of the model’s veins.

It was time to lock in. Your body rigidified with the effort not to mess up your operation, keeping your gloved hands poised above your console as you adjusted concentrations of enzymes and proteins with your vast array of syringes, feeding them to the arm of the chamber to inject into your Arachno-Humanoid dummy.

Miguel performed his role with chiseled precision, his wide hands commanding the console like he was piloting a plane. You followed the lines of his sinews up his arms to the frame of his collarbones, climbing up the tendons of his neck to settle your gaze on his face; Miguel stared into the observation chamber with an anticipation bordering on hope. The flushed glow of the model lit his brown skin with an amber hue and made his eyes heavenly.

You sighed and tilted your head just enough to catch the camera’s lens, trained right at the pair of you. You quickly returned to your console, preparing an extra syringe for no other reason than to have something to do.

You liked looking at Miguel—of course you would! He was an attractive man. Every Spider was attractive, it was basically one of the prerequisites for the job, and Miguel was so obviously attractive that your appreciation of the nuances of his particular attractiveness had been delayed. You couldn’t have done so before, not with his mordacious deportment, but witnessing how animated he could be, even in anger, flipped your perspective entirely. Goodness, you could stare at him forever.

The chamber began beeping in a soprano squeal, bathing you and Miguel in the red light of its emergency alarms.

“Polymerase levels are dropping!” Miguel shouted.

“Multiplication is steady—clear outstanding cells in arteries only,” you returned. You were determined to prevent your previous mistake from reoccurring, directing the mechanical arm to administer more supplements to the model.

The scrabble was nothing short of apocalyptic as you and Miguel fought against the model’s depreciating cell count. His back hunched over the console in a predatory fashion, teeth grinding as more and more cells fell to viral invasion; you enlarged one video feed to see entire stretches of tissue electrocuted at a time.

You crossed to Miguel’s station, “Stop! You’re eliminating too many of the body’s natural defenses!”

“They’re not doing what they’re supposed to.” Miguel intensified his efforts as the chamber projected more emergency screens, their exclamation points coruscating like falling stars as the model began to sizzle and spark from excess electricity. “Why can’t they just fight it?”

“There’s nothing we can do, Miguel—”

“No! I can still save this.”

You grabbed Miguel’s wrist and he shoved you back. The heel of his palm met your solar plexus like the bumper of a car and knocked you to the floor. Miguel snarled at you with a mouth too full of teeth and eyes flashing like an animal in the night. You reared back in fright. The chamber began to overheat.

In mindless desperation, Miguel slammed his hand onto his console and destroyed the panel of buttons and switches; the chamber flickered and shut off as your synthetic body essentially cooked itself. A bolt from the top of the chamber burst free. You gasped as the metal popped into an ugly twist like a raring snake.

“Miguel!”

You threw yourself full-force at Miguel’s chest, sending the pair of you to the floor as a gasket popped and the last purging sparks of electricity overloaded the anatomical model, plunging the lab into chasmic darkness with a deafening burst of glass.

You shifted against Miguel’s body, planting your hands on the floor as you raised the trunk of your body to survey the lab’s damage: kernels of glass decorated the floor, with some rice-sized bits embedded in your coat, shallow enough that all they could do was sparkle instead of stab your skin.

Miguel stirred painfully beneath you. You quickly slipped your hands beneath his head to check for blood or bruised flesh as you called him to consciousness.

As Miguel groaned, his teeth flashed in a jagged series of peaks. In a bleary squint he opened his eyes to reveal total redness, such that you worried the vessels there had burst, until he widened them enough that you realized that both the irises and sclera glowed red. They magnified the scarce phosphorescence of the lab enough that it hurt to look at him directly. He appeared far more bestial than he ever had before, bordering on feral.

“A-Are you okay,” you asked. Miguel’s hair was soft and dense.

You slid onto the floor as he raised himself to his elbows and absorbed the scene of destruction before him. The half-charred remains of your model suspended itself like a side of beef. He dropped his head and ran a clawed hand through his hair.

“Miguel, answer me.”

“We’re done here,” he adjured. His voice met your ears like sandpaper.

“I need an explanation. I’m your partner, aren’t I?”

“Use your powers of deduction, Doctor,” Miguel barked. He threw out a hand toward what remained of your testing site, “I blew up our work.”

You borrowed a line from Miguel, hoping his own logic might sway him, “We’ll reset everything and keep going. It’s not that bad.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Alright, it’s pretty bad, yeah. But it’s fixable.”

“It’s inexcusable.”

“Oh, please. It’s just a setback.” You stared at the jungle-dense cross of wires overhead, “You get used to them eventually.”

“I don’t want to be the one to cause setbacks,” he murmured. The mouth full of fangs dampened his speech.

“They say mistakes are only repeated if you don’t learn from them.”

Miguel squeezed his eyes shut as the sting of regret and embarrassment overtook him. He knocked his head against the floor and pursed his lips. You stripped off your glove to rub your eyes, catching the waxy slip of healed flesh on your eyebrow. You recalled the tenderness that propelled Miguel’s anger toward you yesterday—the yesterday that potentially no longer existed. There was a chance that you could leave and return in the morning to find it still Saturday, your chamber good as new and your rapport with Miguel unchanged. Yet that doctorly instinct nagged at you, insisting that you mend the damage around you.

“You never answered my first question.”

Miguel’s chest depressed in an inaudible sigh. “I’m fine. Just bruised. And reeling a bit. Are you…?”

“Not a scratch. Thanks to my pristine reflexes, of course.”

He hesitated to laugh in a way that seemed uncharacteristic, even for him.

“Thanks. For what you did back there.”

The praise seemed too much for an accident you failed to prevent as much as Miguel failed to solve. “Forget about it.”

The rest of the lab obscured into less than an impression on your psyche as you realized how alive you were in this moment, feeling the charge of each thought from the crown of your head to the tips of your fingers. It was almost enough to jumpstart your body to cross the threadbare boundary between the two of you.

“We should get up.”

“Yeah,” Miguel agreed, assessing the damage around him with a burdened grimace. He breathed deeper now, as though given new expansiveness within his lungs. “In five minutes.”

The firm press of Miguel’s arm to your own was the only thing connecting you to gravity. Your knuckles brushed against his; the feel of the unstable molecular fiber of his suit had an almost metallic coolness to it.

Neither of you said anything as you laid there, still enough it merited a chalk outline around your bodies as you suspended yourselves in that weightless second between sleep and waking. You felt totally immune to time, wrapped in silence like a cozy duvet. If only you could stay this way forever, you thought. And it occurred to you that you just might, should your time loop prove itself to exist. You could revisit the choices you were given and explore both options. You didn’t have to wait for an option to be presented.

What did you want to do?

It struck you as you laid beside Miguel that you wanted to take his hand. You wanted to touch Miguel. To pull him to you and keep him there for a single, eternal Saturday, contained in itself like the globular space of a walnut shell.

With the way Miguel looked at you, you dared to imagine a universe where he felt the same. At least, the same curiosity, for how you felt. It was a terrible confirmation of your lack of heroic valor that you were so ready to abuse a broken timeline to confirm whether that spark might be reciprocated.

“Miguel?”

He opened his eyes, so overpoweringly and incisively red that they drowned out the blush in your face, and with it all your courage.

You switched courses to ask, “Why are your eyes like that?”

“What?” Miguel recoiled in shock. He sat up in an instant, pressing a thumb to his distended canine and growling at the confirmation of its size, before opening a screen on his watch. You recognized it as a vital chart, and an abnormally elevated one at that. However, it seemed to annoy Miguel more than any other emotion, especially panic.

“Are you sure you’re alright,” you asked as Miguel rose to his feet and continued tapping on his watch; the center podium began descending.

“It’s nothing.” Miguel rolled one shoulder, glancing up at his consoles, “Just a personal errand. See yourself out.”

Blood flowed with renewed vigor throughout your body as you stood, making the sensation of standing feel stilted. You paused at his strange energy, both calm and cross like a jarred hurricane.

“What? We’re just stopping?” You grabbed Miguel’s arm and he wrested it free. “At least tell me what’s going on.”

“It doesn’t concern you.”

“What about repairs?”

“Can you just leave,” he snarled. You flinched at the way his teeth hooked preternaturally over his lips, such that he squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his mouth. “Please.”

He opened a portal for you as he swung up to his podium. The sign to leave couldn’t have been more legible if it’d been made of neon lights. The taste of the air changed as you stepped through and the increased temperature calmed your gooseflesh. You turned to give Miguel a parting goodbye.

“Good night,” you said. For the sake of talking to him.

He almost didn’t say anything back, hands gripping the top edge of his keyboard and head bowed. “See you tomorrow.”

As the portal closed you almost turned back around, yet were stopped by the sound of something like a pistol co*cking; through the keyhole opening of the diminishing portal you saw Miguel load his injection gun with a vial of that green serum from all those months ago and jam it against his shoulder. Then the gateway disappeared, and all you faced was your own front door.

You glanced at your own watch, opening a panel to display the current hour in military time. The long script of numbers neatly segmented by semicolons continued climbing, until they reset from 24:59:59 to 00:00:00, neatly aligned like the jackpot of a slot machine.

Above it, the date remained unchanged.

And there you were again, pondering the funny mechanics of time and how it may pass and pass and pass but not add up.

~~~

“Let me guess! Another Sandman?”

Malala Windsor, a.k.a Spider-UK of Earth-835, stood before you coated in khaki-colored particles of sand like a beached seal pup.

“I know.” The lens of her mask bugged pathetically, “That makes—maybe—”

“Three this week?!” Malala launched backward as you thrust your pen into her face. You grabbed a silver basin and mixed together the necessary medical paste from memory, “Worry not, Malala, I am one step ahead of you.”

“I-I-I appreciate that, Doctor, but— AH!” Malala shrieked as you slathered her face with slime, “Oh, my stars, I think I swallowed some through my mask.”

“Oh, you’re handling this remarkably, Malala,” you parroted, “I’d be a mess in your position.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense!”

You ignored Malala and grabbed her file, “Could you tell me today’s date, please?”

Malala spoke through gritted teeth as the slime hardened over her body, “Issdiss bart o’the cheggup?”

“Most certainly.”

“...Saddurday?” she squeaked as you flipped open the manila folder. “Did I pass?”

You found your visit summary from ere-yesterday. Or, well, technically today. You grinned as the slime fell to the examination table in translucent crumbs.

“You did better than that, Malala. You've proven me right.”

Based on Malala’s frantic retreat, you did not so much escort her outside as chase her away.

Further investigation solidified your suspicions: the medicine in the fridge was all but annihilated. Four cans of energy drinks lingered at the very back. Your tablet swore today was Saturday. Malala swore today was Saturday. Lyla—

“Lyla,” you called, leaning back in your chair. Her golden aura shone through your closed eyelids. “What day of the week is it on Earth-928 and Earth-409?”

“Today for Earth-928 is Saturday. It is currently 7:10 a.m. Weather is cloudy with a sixty percent chance of rain. Expect highs in the forties and lows in the thirties. Today for Earth-409 is also Saturday. It is currently 7:15 a.m. Weather is partly cloudy with a one percent chance of rain. Expect highs in the fifties and lows in the forties.”

“A million thanks, babe.” You found your list exactly where you left it in your pocket and decided to inquire for the fun of it, “By any chance, did I ask you to bulk order some medications yesterday?”

“Got no memory of that request,” she returned with a contemptuous eye toward your drink.

“Ach, I must have forgotten. Oh, well, we’ll manage.”

Lyla gave you a once-over with a rather skeptical side-eye, “Doc, I say this with as much concern as an AI is capable of emulating, but I think you may be losing it.”

Your watch started ringing. Right on schedule. Lyla took note of the way your strange merriment tipped into outright mania.

“Actually,” she murmured, “May have already lost it.”

You waved her off, clearing your throat as you accepted the call.

“Hey,” Miguel’s indigo hologram greeted, “Bad time?”

~~~

You and Miguel entered his lab to find a perfectly intact anatomical model suspended within a pristine observation chamber, just the way it was the last time and the time before. When you began setting up your trial and Miguel angled the camera up to capture the steady flow of your genius, you repeated the same lines you delivered twice before.

“Trial 88. Investigation of cell behavior within the complete body. We have progressed to testing how different viruses interact with improved cells. We are confident that repeated integration is feasible, though it may augment over corrective immune responses within improved cells.” You furrowed your brow; the words had been recycled to the point of defamiliarization. The last sentence felt especially oxymoronic.

“We—” you threw a teasing look at Miguel, “—hypothesize this can be fixed through intensifying current procedures. Or the increase of heparin.”

You turned to face the model, its pastel array of synthetic flesh and organs darkening as blood began circulating its maze of vessels. It looked lifelike as anything, as though its parts were taken straight from a vivisected specimen. You suddenly had the urge to question if you’d go about treatment the same way if this were an actual person.

Perhaps you were going about this all wrong. You’d focused on the finer details, the base structure of the whole thing, that you’d failed to see how everything came together in a bigger picture. You figured you were ready for more.

You stopped Miguel as he walked to his station.

“I have an idea. It’s more of a hunch, really. Get your first aid kit.”

Miguel regarded you with his classic brand of skepticism that made you uncertain whether he doubted what you said or the way you said it. He swung to his podium and fished out the white kit from the bottom drawer of his console, tossing it to you from on high. He landed on the floor a second later, brushing against your back to inspect your energized fiddling. You withdrew a bottle of ibuprofen and shook one of the gel capsules into your hand, before squeezing its contents into a syringe and loading it into the dispensing arm. The machine injected the dose into a sleek bicep and afterwards folded itself away.

Miguel pulled up the video feed as the model responded to the medication. “Now what?”

“Now, we wait and see.”

His eyes bulged. “You can’t be serious.”

“An immune response is over corrective by design,” you explained, already walking away from your console. “Raising the body’s temperature kills native cells as much as foreign ones. I think I got so carried away with imagining all the things the phosphoramidite project could do that I forgot it can’t possibly do everything. We gave it the resources and encouragement to be excellent. Now it just needs a bit of outside help.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

“Then we’ll reset and load it with heparin, obviously.”

Miguel’s skepticism dragged the corners of his mouth until they seemed piercing. “And if that doesn’t work.”

“Then we know what doesn’t work.”

“This sounds uncomfortably idealistic.”

“That’s the scientific method for you,” you hummed, ambling to one of the stationary consoles along the perimeter of the lab.

“Hedges the definition of insanity, in my opinion.” Miguel approached you and leaned his hip against the edge of the console. “Repeating the same process and expecting a different result each time.”

You glanced at him out of the corner of your eye in admiration of the torque of his body, inching close enough to feel the pale, crackly charge of his costume through your clothes.

“Not a different result, just a…specific one.” You slid your hand through the fine film of dust atop the cool metal; your digits flexed like spindly antennae toward Miguel’s own. This was your chance to settle that smitten itch that flared from your throat to your navel. And from here you could refine the process until you knew the exact combination of gesture and phrase to reduce Miguel to pudding in your grasp and convince him that such attraction was no mere chemistry, but predestination. There would be no blunder, no poorly timed joke, no unflattering expression or reaction or feature or posture from you—you could finally be the person Miguel thought you were.

There was just the initial move. The first domino in the chain.

How should you play this out? The possibilities for escalation overwhelmed you with a pleasant zing; would you thread your fingers with Miguel’s in coquette submissiveness while extolling his virtuous character? Skip the hand and go straight for the leg with a surreptitious squeeze? Trail your hand up to his face—his hair, maybe, in preparation for a dominating tug, in the event Miguel preferred to receive? Should you throw yourself at him? Drown yourself in a tub of saline so he could give you mouth-to-mouth CPR?Beg?

You quivered from the prolonged tension of holding your breath such that Miguel turned toward you, making you quickly switch to tapping your fingers in an impatient trill. You cleared your throat and eased off the console to bounce your eyes around the lab in an attempt to flake away your suspicious demeanor.

Talking to Miguel was frictionless when you converged on a common topic. You stared long enough at the dark ceiling to pick out the variations in its shades of black, unearthing a series of vague industrial shapes. A group of cylindrical silhouettes jutting from the wall like the forepeak of a ship caught your eye.

“What are those things up there?”

“What things?”

You pointed. Miguel leaned down to your eye level. You sidled closer to make sure he looked at the correct one. In a quarter of a minute and some change you were pressed together, what a phenomenal start.

“Ah,” Miguel at last proclaimed, “those’re just…side projects.”

“What kind of projects?”

Miguel shrugged with an ambivalent screw to his expression. “You won’t be impressed.”

“Oh, come on,” you encouraged, “You said you still use some skills from your previous line of work, right? Show me how.”

Miguel tapped his foot and tilted his head back and forth as though knocking the suggestion around his skull. He glanced back at the observation chamber as though expecting to catch its tranquility slipping, only to confirm its orchestra of organs pumping in total euphony.

“Hold onto me.”

That was quick!

You embraced Miguel’s shoulders as he secured you by the waist. Yet you had no sooner appreciated the firm spring of muscle leading to the wells behind his clavicles—and began leaning in for a smooch—that Miguel shot a web upwards, throwing the both of you skyward. An inelegant shriek escaped you from the velocity, at which, if your ears did not deceive you amongst the rush of air, Miguel had the gaul to laugh.

Miguel deposited your panting, frazzled form in the tubular hull of the pipe you’d pointed out. You slid down the wall as you clutched your breastbone in a fright beyond what could be managed by the eons of survival instinct baked into your evolved mind; cortisol bleached your complexion from hair root to tiptoe.

“You really can’t give a warning?”

“I told you to hold on,” he smarmed. Despite your inability to see his expression, you caught the high, ludic pitch of voice that came with smiling. “This is what you wanted.”

“The other Spiders are leagues gentler.”

“Cutting performance review. Let’s see how you feel when you’re in danger.”

You twisted side to side at the waist until you heard your spine crack. “Keep that up and it won’t be any external danger that kills me.”

“Always thought it’d be your curiosity.”

You bit your cheek; this was too easy. Here you stood, preparing to venture into a private, tight squeeze, tucked away in Miguel’s fortress of a lab, with all the time in the multiverse at your disposal. You ran your hand along the curved wall of the pipe; you could feel irregular grooves and shallow, keloid-like welding on a novel metal, which felt sleek in one direction and finely scratched your skin in the other.

“You uh…know how the rest of the saying goes, though.” You leaned suavely against the wall as you pushed back your hair. “Satisfaction should bring me back.”

Miguel’s shadowed head tilted. He advanced a step, speaking low enough that subdued laughter hazed the syllables of his response, “Satisfaction?”

It made you shiver.

You nodded enthusiastically and took a step backward to lure Miguel deeper. You liked to imagine you were luring him and not simply growing jelly-legged. Miguel brushed against you as he neared. Your stomach flipped like it’d been tossed from a skyscraper. He continued several feet past you.

Miguel grasped a handle protruding from the ceiling, twisting it down to unearth a long, vibrant, cylindrical core that reminded you of the luminous brilliance of some geodes. Further down the hull you saw these same handles in multitudes.

“All of these cores activate to create the appropriate conditions for genetic suspension. I made this hull to suppress mutations to a person’s genome.” The glow of the core carved the cliff face of Miguel’s cheek in stark, teal light. “When a zombie infection spread throughout my barrio—”

“Zombies.”

“Yeah, zombies, keep up—this helped to freeze the virus enough to reverse engineer a cure.”

You gasped in mesmerization.

“But,” Miguel continued with a trace of guilt, like he’d duped you into thinking his sleight of hand were genuine magic, “Infrastructure to prevent another epidemic has continuously been rejected by the government. These diseases are evolving at a rate that outpaces regular human bodies. Or, I guess I should say poor human bodies. I haven’t had much luck updating this thing in the event something like that happens again.”

“That’s amazing,” you maintained and stepped carefully within the hull as though treading on sacred ground. “You must really love Nueva York, huh?”

Miguel’s shoulders dropped. “Yeah. Could say that.”

Ah, the eternally self-effacing humility of superheroes. You examined the pulsing plasma of the core more closely, letting its ionic charge tickle the tip of your nose until you felt a sneeze coming on, making you scrunch your nostrils and pull back.

The gentle glow of the core made you feel as though you were underwater.

“This city is lucky to have you,” you murmured, “Any city would be.”

That made him laugh. You wanted to cup the sound in your hands and keep them against your ear like a conch shell.

“Not many people would agree,” Miguel replied.

“Some would say variety of opinion is the greatest indicator of freedom.”

“Okay, so you’re not disputing that I suck at my job, that’s nice.”

You unexpectedly snorted, laughter stirring your insides like carbonation.

“Others would say it’s better to leave things to the cops,” he continued.

“People say, people say,” you teased. You adjusted yourself into what you hoped was a more open and inviting position. “I want to know what you’d say, Miguel.”

The light swirled into Miguel’s skin in shifts of magenta as his expression slackened in stunned mirth. “What d’you wanna know?”

You floated closer and put your hands into your coat pockets to feign obliviousness.

“Well, I…I do enjoy hearing you explain your work to me.”

“Somehow I don’t believe that’s all of it.” His voice carried the same stoniness as when he gave orders or speeches to the Society at large.

Miguel did not move as you inched ever closer. His refusal to harvest the ripening intimacy of the moment made you pause in greater consideration of his feelings toward you; this could be a sign of his disinterest, of his obliviousness to how obvious you were acting, or even that he did pick up the subtext of the conversation and hoped you had at least interacted with civilization enough to recognize a social cue. You realized that replaying the same evening to crack the code to Miguel’s heart meant also reliving an infinite series of potential rejection and embarrassment, an emotion you were keen on limiting as much as possible. After all, how many moments of life had others long since forgotten(without time travel no less), but which kept you awake at night in burning, cringing agony?

You craned your neck up at Miguel, deciding to play it safe. “Maybe.”

“‘Maybe’ like there’s more or…?”

“Maybe there could be. If I get to know you better.”

There wasn’t much of a transition between the low light of the pipe and your closing eyes as you leaned into Miguel.

Yet your hand slid deeper into your pocket until it brushed against a paper slip crumpled in its deepest corner. You paused your traction in a mixture of perplexion and dismay as your finger dragged over its waxy wrinkles, eventually turning away, slipping the thing out, and properly investigating it.

You smoothed out a square of wrapping to find a cartoon pair of cherries printed on its front. Your blood flow slammed the brakes with such force you nearly thought the core had activated and suspended you for testing.

“You alright, Doc?”

It stung to look Miguel in the eye no matter how many times you attempted it— this was evidence of nothing, your inner voice counseled, you wrote that patient summary and everything still reset!

Right, yes, you wrote it in your lab.

But you printed it here.

Miguel stared at you with a trace of reproach intermingling in his worry. You wiped the sweat from your forehead and lingered the pad of your fingers over your healed eyebrow. This made Miguel’s eyes bug.

“Does it still hurt?” his demand echoed out to trigger an avalanche of confoundedness throughout your body.

“N-No, I—you remember that?” Your voice was miserably thin like a line of snot.

“Remember? It’s been two days.” He removed your hand and appraised the strip of skin beneath it more closely. “Don’t tell me you got amnesia.”

When you continued to stare at him in empty horror he added, more skeptically, “Seriously, don’t.”

“But you said nothing happened!”

Miguel looked at a loss for words, “I was pretending? Because you seemed embarrassed?” He explained things with the careful slowness of an asylum orderly, “Because you asked me to?”

A feeling of freefall in your belly made you look at the floor in search of your missing gut.

“So then…the chamber also exploded.”

“Yeah.”

“And you actually repaired it?”

“Uh, yeah, I—”

“In one night?”

“If this is some elaborate joke, could you get to the punchline already?”

You folded your hands over your mouth, turned away, and muffled a scream.

Miguel’s eye twitched. “Gee, your appreciation is really touching.”

Maybe Lyla was right—you had lost it, actually! Maybe Malala really did strike out with a litany of Sandman variants and experienced short-term memory loss as a result of head trauma! Maybe you’d simply fallen asleep for an entire week at a time and only woken up on Saturdays! Maybe this was all a dream and you were going to wake up ten years in the past or future or in a universe where superheroes didn’t exist! Maybe you’d overdosed on caffeine and were now in a purgatorial limited reality proving the weight of your heart, only to dash any admission to heaven by attempting to seduce your goddamn lab partner.

“Oh, my God.” You collapsed against the side of the hull near its opening with a groan. “I can’t take this anymore.”

Miguel’s hands hovered in the air like he’d had something snatched from him, gesticulating in fatigued shakes.

“What is happening.”

“It doesn’t matter, Miguel,” you lamented as you stared at the ground over the lip of the pipe; perhaps if you angled your fall correctly, you could crush your skull through your ribcage like a retreating turtle. “I was wrong, anyway.”

His form rigidified out of the corner of your eye with layered valleys of wrinkles in his expression that attested unparalleled disgust. After another moment you heard a scoff rough as two pieces of flint striking.

“What’s up with you,” you asked.

“Nothing.” Miguel twisted the core back into its alcove, plunging the interior of the pipe into darkness once more. He sounded as defensive as the day you met him. “I’m not even—I don’t—I just can’t with you, sometimes.”

You rubbed your neck as you kicked out your legs and slid further down the wall. “Fair.”

“There a purpose to why you annoy me this much?”

“I think it’s just one of my few natural talents.”

Miguel raked his hair from his eyes and stared at you with barely restrained ire, keeping his other hand on the marble block of his hips to tap impatiently with his index finger. You shrunk at his complete reversal of demeanor and stared at the observation chamber below; it remained completely unchanged, betraying neither improvement or destabilization in a way that assailed your mind with anxious fantasies of lost progress.

“So this is our third attempt at Trial 88. I’ve been screwing it up this entire time. And that stupid nonsense I said…”

Despite the misty near-silence of your whisper, you knew Miguel still heard you.

“Just forget it. I’m sorry,” you finished.

“Why would I do that?”

“Some of what I said wasn’t especially kind, or information that I deserved to know.”

Miguel sat in front of you. “I think what matters more to me is that you consider… this—” he made a vague gesture that you couldn’t tell indicated the space between your bodies or the lab as a whole, “—important enough to keep improving, instead of never having issues to begin with.”

He had a kindness that caught you off guard in both its rarity and how intensely, protectively, positively familial it could be. It rejuvenated the planes of his face in a way that made him unrecognizable; no hero would need a mask with a face that trustworthy.

“I don’t deserve you, Miguel.”

You saw the silhouette of his neck flex with something like a swallow.

“Who knows,” he sidestepped. “May be close to stabilizing this into an actual medication.”

“I can’t believe how much progress we’ve made,” you said, admiring the chamber from on high, “I never thought I’d live to see the day I could entertain the possibility of finishing my research.”

Miguel exhaled a spent shell of a laugh, “Yeah. Time flies.”

“It doesn’t feel real.”

“Well, we all need some kind of pipe dream to keep us going.”

You stuck out a leg to kick him. “Right. What’s yours, then?”

“Hmm. Saving the world,” Miguel shrugged. But his question gave you careful pause as you caught the faint, electrical luminosity of his suit, emitting a barely detectable ghostly glow throughout the pipe.

“What do you plan on doing when all this is over?”

“The project?”

“Beyond that. What happens when there are no more anomalies?”

Miguel leaned his head back, softly knocking against the wall. You tuned your attention to the miniscule shifts in his expression as the image of the future settled in the creases of his skin.

“I try not to think about it.”

“Pessimistic, then?”

Miguel’s eyes were soft and burnished as they locked onto yours. He seemed almost elegiac.

“I can’t afford to get my hopes up.” He rolled his wrist like he was reeling himself in, but with it his voice unraveled to become gossamer thin, “I can’t allow myself to do anything without being certain of the outcome. There are no versions of me that are happy. Not anymore.”

You rested your forearm on your knee, mirroring his position save for how your palm turned halfway upward. You stretched your fingers toward his so imperceptibly it felt almost like a reflex.

“Why can’t you be that version?”

A streak of light circled Miguel’s pupil. His fist curled tighter like it was settling into rigor mortis. “I already tried. It didn’t work out.”

“How?”

The light collected along his waterline. “I had a kid.”

Your eyes widened. Miguel’s sentence reverberated throughout the space before disappearing like the slowing breaths of a dying man.

“There was a version of me with a family. With my old job. With everything I ever wanted,” Miguel continued, “Yet this idiot still played the hero against some petty theft, and paid the price for it. And I looked at his death and thought, ‘here’s my chance’. I gave up being Spider-Man and lived a normal life.”

You considered the way Miguel said “gave up” as though he were talking about a goal he couldn’t achieve despite his best efforts.

“It was perfect.” He swallowed. “But it wasn’t canon.”

“What does that mean?” Your throat felt tight-laced. “Why do your relationships have to prove a lesson?”

“When you break the canon, you destroy the foundations of a universe. Not just physical, but moral—its purpose for everything within it. If you wait too long, the whole thing falls apart.” Miguel grit his teeth. “Gabriella isn’t just dead. She’s gone. She’s ceased to exist.”

Your shadow melted into the yawning darkness as you processed Miguel’s words. The weight of his regret was so great you felt your ribs become concave and your lungs flatten; his eyes tracked along the ground in replay of an invisible scene.

“You didn’t know,” you whispered.

“Shut up,” he hissed. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Make it sound like I deserve redemption. I was selfish.”

“You’re human.” You sought Miguel’s gaze even as he turned his head away, taking your words like a hot iron. “You were selfish in the way only a human can be—you cared. You wanted care.”

“I can’t have that. Not as Spider-Man.” He spoke the title like it was a curse.

You stared at the floor. “This isn’t right.”

“No. But it’s what’s necessary.”

You skimmed your fingers over the back of Miguel’s hand. The gesture was too skittish to be a caress, but you extended your digits to appeal for his permission to take it there. Miguel slotted his hand into yours, running his thumb across your knuckles.

You held each other tightly, like it was all you could do, like anything else was forbidden. No, that didn’t sound right. You were doing something you shouldn’t for your own good.

“You can’t make a choice without knowing the outcome,” you repeated.

“Yeah.”

“But you still…dream of something?”

Miguel’s voice came out as a grievous gust of air, “Yeah.”

“What is it?” you asked, like you’d search for it on his mark or dispense the entirety of your savings toward purchasing it.

“I…can’t say,” Miguel murmured.

“Because you’ll jinx it?”

“Not really. The universe wouldn’t deny it to me—it would make it happen. But only so that it could take it away. I need a plan that’s foolproof.”

Miguel’s hand trembled in your grasp before he retracted it.

“I hope,” you said, providing him the only thing you could, “that you achieve it.”

Miguel’s voice had never been so delicate. “Thank you.”

You cared for Miguel. And you wanted him, yes, but your infatuation appeared so laughable in the face of his burdens; you couldn’t demand that Miguel open his heart to you after enduring the loss of his daughter, of his sense of self entirely. You reconsidered your options and laid solutions like splints against your heart.

In any other universe, you could invite Miguel to coffee, or even dinner, and voice your attraction in a simple and straightforward proposal. Where you could explore a relationship together with no rush or stakes, and, should it not work out, break up on amicable terms and remain friends. But you saw now that involvement with a superhero was no easy matter.

If Miguel were to reject you…

Well, you’d kill yourself, obviously.

But if Miguel were to say yes, that didn’t necessarily mean he reciprocated your feelings. Rather than love you, he might just want to be loved. Or let off steam.

There would be no relationship with Miguel. No dates, no announcements to friends and family, no long term plans, not even the comfort of waking up beside him every morning—the certainty that he was alive when he wasn’t with you. Every action of intimacy would be sporadic and performed out of convenience. You could convince yourself that a casual fling suited your lifestyle just fine, but you knew deep down that it wouldn’t have been your first pick. And no matter how pathetic you could be, common sense made up for the lack of self-respect enough that you knew not to settle for a situationship just to have Miguel.

That’s really what it boiled down to: you and Miguel would simply…take what you could get from each other.

It repulsed you to imagine him as such a chauvinist. You knew Miguel to be honorable beyond measure, but as Spider-Man he belonged foremost to the people, no matter the cost to his privacy. You recognized it when you passed certain Spiders in the lobby: the loneliness. The guilt. The separation from their loved ones, like sickly sheep breaking from the herd to spare it from predators. It always happened eventually.

After five years, it even happened to Ant.

You assured yourself that soon these feelings would dissolve into nothing more than a common crush, so insignificant and short-lived it would never have to be acknowledged. You could be friends. You could be this.

The chamber sang a cadence and bathed the abyssal lab in green light and faded your thoughts like they were ghosts.

“The cycle…finished,” you said.

The instant Miguel rappelled you to the ground you both rushed to check the dozens of screens floating in front of the chamber for readings. All vitals came back stable as they were prior to the test such that the lack of any discrepancy or shift in stasis frustrated you, until Miguel’s voice tore through the air with a thundering call of your name.

“Take a look at this,” he said, toggling a holoscreen before you and laying a steely hand on your shoulder.

Select words jumped at you before your head began swimming and you fainted against Miguel at what you read.

“It worked. The whole body, it—it cleared the virus! We did it!” You were nearly screaming as you turned and threw your arms around Miguel. He wrapped you in a bruising hug that paralyzed you with lightheadedness. You realized it came partially from the fact that he was spinning you.

The past decade of consciousness—taxing, anxious, determined consciousness toward your research—struck your body with the strength of a lightning bolt as new, undiscovered emotions of total rhapsody charged from the inside out.

Miguel set you down and drained the blood from the model back into its vial.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “What’s the next step? Where can we take this?”

You pressed your cooled hands to your face as you attempted to calm yourself down.

“In a typical experiment we would stabilize a formula and proceed to clinical trials.” You panted once, then twice, like your lungs were buffering.

“You mean we can start testing this on volunteers.” Miguel’s sentence thrust out of his mouth in a shaky rush like an arrow wobbling after hitting a target. But where this revelation gave him joy, it sobered you to the realization that your work could leave more than its intended effect on the world.

“We’d have to test this on people,” you gasped.

The image of Ant’s sick, struggling, sweating body leaking tar onto your couch assaulted your mind without warning.

“What’s wrong?” Miguel asked, gripping your shoulders and searching for eye contact.

How much blood could be whited out by a lab coat? How much torment could you justify for the sake of progress?

“What if…what if it goes wrong? We’d be messing with the functional health of a living being. What if we hurt them or impair them for the rest of their lives?” You shook your head and pursed your lips. “I can’t do that to someone, Miguel. I need to rule out all possibilities of harm.”

A troubled expression passed over Miguel’s face. “How long would that take?”

“Years.” The weight of it transmogrified your body into a tombstone. “It would have to take years.”

Miguel’s shoulders dropped with a short sigh as he processed your words. Yet he straightened himself with a deep inhale, tightening his grip on your shoulders and refocusing your gaze on him.

“Use me.”

Your eyes doubled in size, “What?”

He repeated in a tone that rang like pure jade, “Use me as a test subject. I know the risks. I know you. I consent.”

“No—Miguel, I can’t risk it, especially not with you. You have superhuman abilities and form, better than any regular human, and I could destroy all of that.”

Miguel’s stare was unbreakable, though his brows furrowed in an emotion you could attribute to either resignation or resolve.

“You’re wrong. I’m not like the others here.” He clutched you tighter. “For me, being superhuman isn’t better.”

“What do you mean?”

He pulled away as his gaze finally wavered with your question, breaking off to dart along the floor. When he raised his head, he regarded you as though trusting you with a loaded gun.

“I’ll show you.”

~~~

Before you stood a small army of vials filled with the lime colored serum you’d seen exactly twice. All the screens overlooking Miguel’s console displayed schematics of his body in a wall of chemicals and percentages that even you couldn’t keep up with.

“When I…got my powers,” Miguel narrated in rough mimicry of heroic origin, “It wasn’t through a radioactive spider. It was an accident. I thought I’d been drugged and tried fixing myself, but something went wrong and…”

He tapped a command on the keyboard which collected all the information spread across his various monitors into the center screen; the text curled into a DNA double helix and spun slowly around itself as the bases paired together, showing the pattern of Miguel’s genome in stable succession.

You gasped when the next portion of the helix crossed the screen. It looked as though it’d been shredded by a jagged, rusted, infected knife. The backbone of the twisting ladder looked swollen and overgrown while new compounds replaced the ones made to match typical human nucleic acids. The rest of the helix continued on like that, in swaths of destruction that outnumbered its patches of proper sequencing.

Miguel looked away. “And I just made it worse.”

He picked up a vial and loaded it inside its accompanying injection gun. In one rote motion he aligned the syringe with the ring of exposed skin on his shoulder where his suit parted and pulled the trigger. The shot released with a sharp hiss of air and meaty impact that made you flinch.

On the screen, the serum flooded his blood vessels with chartreuse antibodies, their opal membranes catching the light as they slipped against one another and binded to the swimming red cells with sweeping efficiency, coating them like a second skin and straightening out the DNA. The helix became more ordered and a kind of dexterous protein filled in the gaps between acids. Miguel’s vitals leveled out to look no different from those of your patients’.

“My genome is fifty percent spider DNA. But it’s incompatible with fifty percent that’s human. This serum makes sure nothing spirals out of control. Keeps everything stable—well-oiled, so to speak.” For the first time in his life, Miguel laughed to dispel the tension as much as in recognition of the cruel joke of his existence. “So there’s really nothing you could do to hurt me more than I’ve been already.”

You stared endlessly at the green web-like twines throughout Miguel’s DNA that held the parts together like museum glue. Then you looked down at the arrangement of vials on the console. Then to the more made this second in the machine to your left.

“How often do you have to administer a dose of this?”

“Usually once a day.” Miguel laid down the gun and rolled his shoulder. His suit crawled over the reddened skin.

“Usually,” you pressed.

“Some days I need to take it more often. Like yesterday. And…”

You looked him over as your mouth parted. “And today.”

He nodded. “It’s been happening more often.”

Your pulse reverberated through your body with such pain it felt like every atom in your heart was being split in half.

This serum was a bandaid to Miguel’s disfigurement, and one his body steadily grew to resist with each injection.

But you could help him. Your work was exactly what he needed.

In your universe, Miguel O’Hara died in a freak lab accident over a century ago. There was no one left to remember him and potentially not even any more relatives attached to his name. But if he was anything like the Miguel O’Hara that stood before you, it was an unequivocal truth that his absence left a scar on the world. You had the opportunity to prevent a similar fate from claiming this Miguel. You could actually make a difference that mattered, even if it wasn’t in your own universe.

“We could modify the formula of your serum as a base,” you began, voice strengthening with each word you spoke, “That way it’ll limit the chances of your body rejecting administration. We’ll switch to using your blood for all testing from this point on.”

Your ready embrace of the challenge before you bowled even Miguel over.

“We need a failsafe in case something goes wrong,” you continued.

Miguel scanned his desk. “The regular serum can be our control.”

It was a sound idea. You nodded, wrung your palms, cracked your knuckles as you straightened your spine into a steel beam.

“I’m going to compile some material on clinical testing tomorrow. I need you to install whatever is necessary into this lab in the event you need advanced treatment from a side effect of this thing.”

“Doc—”

“Please.” Your eyes shone with a faint film of tears. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Miguel raised his head in admiring shock. In two strides he crossed in front of you and clasped your hand in his with an unyielding handshake.

“Whatever you need.”

You denied yourself the pleasure of prolonging Miguel’s touch; with a squeeze and a tight-lipped nod, you retracted your hand and de-boarded his platform, putting in the coordinates for your apartment.

This phase of the project was too important to allow any risks, meaning you needed to finally clean up your act and proceed with maximum efficiency. As soon as you crossed back into your universe you'd storm the nearest pharmacy for melatonin and get an overdue eight hours of sleep. And when you next woke, you'd right a few wrongs.

“We start next week.”

The percussion of rainfall greeted your ears as you stepped into your apartment. A flash of lightning illuminated the room in a splash of white before oblivion rose like smoke once more.

You looked down at your watch to see the seconds add up toward midnight. But where every other time you dreaded the burden of another day, now you prayed for tomorrow to come. You wanted to greet a future where Miguel could own his body as he was supposed to. You were no longer afraid of your ability to create change.

Throughout the city bells began chorusing with the announcement of the new hour.

The text on your watch rewrote itself. It was Sunday.

Chapter 6

Chapter Text

The tunnel shrunk the deeper you ventured. Your muscles tore from an eternity running, closing the distance between you and your assailant as easily as two approaching magnets. You could feel it on the border of your shadow, suckling your steam as it squeezed, almost invertebrate, through this claustrophobic canal.

When the tunnel pressed on your back and your thighs hit your stomach with each stride, you conceded to crouching, then army crawling, feeling each breath blow black against your face in the sewer-like confines of this trap. Unidentifiable viscous sludge mired your elbows and front and you tried ignoring the iron aftertaste when it struck your tongue.

A wail slithered through the sides of the tunnel along with bone-like pops and thumps, such that you recanted your initial assessment; this thing came to be this way by being broken.

A tiny bead of light embroidered itself in the void, rolling into the size of a port—a chance for escape. You struggled as the walls vacuumed tighter around you, as your claws jammed with muck, as your opponent gained on you.

You managed to thrust a hand through the light and groped around for any leverage to pull the rest of your body. Just as you touched a smooth, metallic muff, a slab of a grip enveloped your ankle, binding you in a pulsating, mangled embrace before pulling you back into the dark…

You woke to find your sheets in a coup against you. You kicked them off in your haste to leave your bed, fearing your mattress would swallow you like quicksand lest you evacuate the premises immediately.

But in your movement the dream muddled, and your attempt to grasp its details resulted in abstract shapes and lucid rationalization, ordering pure sensation according to logic and rewriting the experience entirely. The only thing you knew for certain was the dream's infinite sequence of tunnels and rooms, one after the other, with no end in sight. Your skin erupted in gooseflesh as you recalled the feeling of something, at any moment, descending on you.

Your alarm clock sounded and you threw a slipper at it in fright.

~~~

Nothing disturbed your perception of time quite like a change to routine: where you would normally have seen at least ten patients and enjoyed a long liquid lunch within the privacy of your lab, you’d so far breakfasted on your way to the station, forgotten to transfer between trains, ended up halfway to JFK International Airport as a result, doubled back to Manhattan, and emerged from the underground greeting the sun like you hadn’t felt it in ten years.

Then you arrived at Columbia University with an even shakier plan than the first time.

“Amaya.”

Before recognizing you, she’d turned around with a sweetly surprised expression, eyebrows raised and mouth rounded into a little “o,” until she looked down and her interest curdled.

You thought the immediacy and ease with which you spotted her ridiculous, when you should have known finding her wouldn’t be the hardest part. Amaya and her peers seemed to be en route to some kind of rally, judging by the flags fluttering on their outfits and the signs they held at their sides. Then you got a better look at the megaphone and petition Amaya held and reconsidered whether their spirit was one of pride or activism.

You cleared your throat, “I’d like to speak to you about last week, if you have time.”

She let your words bloat in the space between you before tilting up her chin and relaxing her body. It wasn’t an agreement to your invitation in the slightest, merely a sign that you needed to further appeal your case.

“I’ll catch up with you guys later,” she told her friends, handing off her megaphone. Once they rounded the corner, Amaya widened her stance and leaned a micron toward you in a gesture clearly borrowed from Ant. Yet Amaya lacked the ease of her sister in enacting it, like she recognized it was supposed to make her scary but uncertain of how. The pose didn’t intimidate you, but it made the exchange awkward enough to prompt you to keep speaking.

“Are you coming from a protest?”

“We’re preparing for one, actually. For improvements to housing and welfare resources for students.”

“Oh!” You didn’t know whether it was appropriate to smile at what she said, “That’s amazing.”

She regarded you like a lame, cloying relative at a family reunion. You cleared your throat and decided your opener served its purpose in actually getting a response.

“I’d first like to clarify that Ant isn’t working for Alchemax at this time.”

Amaya betrayed no reaction to what you said. You were losing ground.

“Who’re you?”

“You…mean my name?”

“I mean to my sister. You hang off her back like a jacket.”

“I wouldn’t say that—”

“You’re certainly friendly enough to call her by a nickname.” Amaya wrinkled her nose, “Which sucks, by the way. Though, I guess you’d know that if you guys were actually close. Her friends call her Toni. Or Ni-Ni. Her nickname in high school was ‘Torpedo,’ so you can’t go that far back.”

“Wow, she must be popular,” you mumbled apprehensively.

“So, how do you know her,” Amaya finished, both flippant and dictatorial like she was quashing a bug beneath her thumb.

You stated with easy simplicity, “We work together.”

“But not at Alchemax.”

“N-No, it’s a…separate organization.”

“For the government?”

“I’d say it’s more like, privately owned?”

“And what does Toni do?”

Her insistence was both targeted and dizzying such that you shook your head from whiplash. It occurred to you that this was an interrogation, and Amaya hadn’t planned to take you up on an equal conversation at all.

“I’m afraid we both signed NDA’s.”

Amaya pushed her glasses up her nose and walked past you. “Alright. Then we’re done here.”

“What? Wait—”

“Not unless you tell me what the hell my sister is up to.”

You reached toward her. Without looking away from her path she cleanly warned, “If you follow me, I’ll scream.”

Following a beat of stunned hesitance, you attempted to keep up with her titanic strides without running. The briskness made your thighs ache. Yet Amaya seemed coolly pleased with your chase when she glanced in your direction, before dropping open her mouth and puffing out her chest with breath to prepare a soprano screech.

You dashed in front of Amaya and clamped a hand over her mouth as you pulled her down. The peeking edge of your watch beneath your sleeve reflected a fiery gleam in your eye as you spoke in a hiss of a whisper, “We work for Spider-Woman.”

Amaya’s saucer-wide eyes doubled to the size of platters as she processed your words. But with her triumphant expression, your initial panic that your white lie was just a shade too close to the truth turned to pure indignation at the realization that she’d bested you.

She hummed like she was used to getting her way. “Fine. Let’s do lunch.”

The spoiled younger sister. You should have known.

~~~

That was how you ended up two hundred dollars deep at an artsy bistro in Hamilton Heights, entertaining your soup with the promise of being eaten by swirling some oyster crackers into it, while Amaya stuffed herself with the entirety of the seasonal prix fixe menu.

You glowered at her, “Enjoying yourself?”

“I’ve gotta get 4,000 calories a day during the on-season,” Amaya replied, mid-chew on a juicy steak. “But, yeah. I am.”

Still, while she was undoubtedly, consciously pushing her luck, she also recorded everything she ate in a miniature bullet journal. Before slipping it back into her bag, you caught a crammed agenda on the opposite page and the perfectly trimmed cuticles of Amaya’s nails. She may have been high-maintenance, but in a meticulously practical sense. It seemed the only thing she indulged in excessively was her commitment to excellence.

“Have you spoken to your sister since Friday?”

“Toni’s called me,” Amaya admitted. “But I’m not ready to give in yet.”

“Give in?”

“She’s only going to say what she needs to so I stop being mad at her. She’s never been honest about what goes on in her life.” Amaya propped her knobby elbows on the table as she directed her attention to the salad on her right. “Guess I can see why.”

You tried not to slide down your seat.

A flicker of anxiety passed over Amaya’s face as she massaged a crick in her neck. “Toni doesn’t do anything on the front lines, does she?”

“No. She mostly…handles tech.”

Amaya raised a brow, but eventually digested your sentence with a low murmur that the job made sense. She kabob’d a line of cherry tomatoes and slid the fork out between her teeth.

“I’m guessing you’re the medic.”

You figured it would help to avoid being compromised if you stuck as close to the truth as possible. And regardless, you took pride in your work. “I am.”

“How long has Toni had this job?”

You concentrated on twirling your spoon, “A few months. Like she said.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“Then look me in the eye this time.”

You dragged your gaze over the dining table like a steel plow. Amaya’s irises were the color of volcanic glass. “She was recruited before me. That’s all I know.”

If you mentally replaced Ant’s experience being Spider-Woman with her experience in Spider Society, you could protect this facade a little longer. But you still needed to redirect this conversation to Amaya’s knowledge of her sister instead of your own, and at present you were forced to take the long way around.

“You don’t seem particularly curious about Spider-Woman herself.”

Amaya dipped one slice of radish into a ramekin cup of dressing. She requested every sauce on her order come on the side, along with subbing vinaigrette for ranch, homestyle potatoes instead of mashed, and mushroom alfredo instead of ravioli, all without a single stutter or pause.

“Why would I be?”

“It’s just rather common to be a fan of hers.”

Amaya looked you up and down. “She exclusively recruit her groupies, or something?”

“She’s a hero,” you defended. Though, you now partially sympathized with Ant’s constant endeavor to make her sister happy; something about Amaya made you want her approval.

“She does good work, yeah,” Amaya conceded, “But she used to be…well, she used to actually fight the system. Expose corrupt politicians. Topple crime syndicates. Humiliate environmental terrorists—I mean, nowadays she just acts as a battering ram for the police.”

“Ah. You prefer her ‘old work,’ then.”

Amaya tossed her napkin at you. Despite seeming like a retributive attack, the action appeared playfully appreciative of your humor, especially when you responded to it with a soft laugh. It was enough to assure her that she could continue to speak candidly.

“The old Spider-Woman would have never gotten so buddy-buddy with Alchemax, either.”

“Why not?”

Amaya threw you a half-concerned expression, “What, you really don’t know?”

“Alchemax has a history of malpractice, sure,” you tried, “But they’re one of the few places with enough resources to advance any given field of science.”

“Yeah, they did that by monopolizing the competition. In what world would a corporation ever be genuinely altruistic?” Amaya downed her unsweetened iced tea with a thick swallow, seeming to reconsider her corrosive attitude, “No offense. I’m sure you worked hard to be hired there.”

You sighed. “None taken. I understand why you’d say that, all things considered.”

“You mean Jacob.” Amaya said his name with the same prevaricated cordiality one would use to discuss an unpopular coworker. She noticed your slight confusion that the name hadn’t evoked the same response as during the convention and dismissively waved her hand. “I’m fine. Not like he can do anything to me now.”

The color drained from your face. “M-May I ask?”

“I don’t see why not.” Amaya turned her attention to the bread basket. But where she’d decimated her other dishes in systematic efficiency, now she only ripped small chunks of dough and let them drop to her plate in idle stimulation. Her appetite curtained earlier than expected. “What do you know about the guy?”

“Next to nothing, to be honest.”

“Serves him right,” Amaya smirked to herself. She began peeling the crust off her end piece of baguette in an irregular spiral. “Jacob was obsessed with being remembered forever as, like, the next big thing in restorative medicine. I'd say he liked the idea of immortality. Especially when you took his work into account. He made prosthetics and stuff—for limb replacements, obviously—but at some point that I can’t remember he pivoted from improving the body to, I think, perfecting it.

“He was all about perfection. Even Toni and I couldn’t get away from it; everything we did had to be platinum-standard. I couldn’t start a single hobby without explaining a whole ten-year plan of how I’d win every trophy or award or whatever within its community. Not to mention the constant comparisons between Toni and me, my friends and me, basically anyone with a pulse and functional literacy.”

You couldn’t restrain your wince at Amaya’s description, but she received it without a trace of opposition. If anything, she took it as vindication for her hatred.

“I get it, you know. It can’t have been easy taking in two kids and raising them by yourself. Especially me. I was terrible in school.” You wondered why she began with an olive branch extended toward her uncle before she revealed her rhetorical play with her next sentence, “So, I guess he got tired of spending so long tutoring me in fractions and decided to take the easy way out.

“I think I was, like, eight. Maybe nine. And I’d started having these weird dreams. I know everyone has weird dreams, but these were weird because they weren’t …weird. Like, nothing happened in them. I’d be sitting on a play chair in front of my bedroom door, and I could hear things beyond it and feel them and smell them and all of that without opening it, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything. And then I’d wake up the next day completely exhausted, like I never got any rest at all. But I’d go to school and all of a sudden, I was an ace at fractions.

“When I told Jacob what was happening, he just said it was a phase I’d grow out of. But then I started to black out whole days worth of school. My friends were telling me I looked like I was sleepwalking. I’d won a spelling bee with no memory of it. I thought I was going insane.

“Then one day, we were doing a final project on the solar system. And I was feeling really nervous, because we were presenting to our families in the auditorium and I didn’t bring in a posterboard like everyone else. I couldn’t find the time to work on it. But the teacher told me not to worry, because Jacob emailed her my powerpoint, and before I could own up that I never did the project at all and had no idea what my uncle thought he was doing, I got pushed onto the stage with the clicker wand and told to do my best. So I just tried going along with it.

“When I transitioned to the slide after my name and saw that picture of Sagittarius A, it was like one of those ancient cassette tapes had been stuck inside my brain. I started reciting this entire speech made of words I didn’t know and would never say and clicking through slides automatically. I wasn’t in control of my body at all. By the time I got to the end, everyone was clapping and congratulating me on having the best project in class, and there Jacob was in the front row giving me a standing ovation. And I just…broke down.

“I screamed all the way home. There was nothing Jacob could do to calm me down. By the time Toni arrived from swim practice, I was tearing up my room and trying to rip the door off its hinges. She eventually made Jacob fess up that this whole thing was because of him.

“He brought us into his office and turned on this gigantic machine on his desk. Jacob hooked it up to his computer and started playing a video of him flipping through a stack of flashcards with equations on them. He’d ask what the answer was and it’d be my voice replying, while Jacob told ‘me’ ‘good job’ and ‘I’m so proud.’ Dozens of videos like that.”

Amaya finished peeling her bread to reveal a porous ball of dough in her hand. She split it in two and raised one half in demonstration.

“According to him, he was building an ‘intelligence model’ based on my consciousness. To help difficult children like me in school, or whatever. Everytime he used this machine on me, it would use its findings to refine a copy of my mind in its CPU. It used this copy to test how my brain could be adjusted to process information.” She then raised the second half, “Then it used the most successful strategies on me. I’d basically been cloned to solve a problem Jacob made up because he had no idea what a normal kid acted like.”

Amaya smushed the bread in her fists, letting them drop to her plate in white lumps.

You covered your mouth in horror. “What happened to the machine?”

“Toni threw it off the roof.” Amaya smiled in a small, private, subconscious gesture. Then she turned crestfallen again, “She was always sticking up for me with Jacob. I don’t even know how much longer she had to put up with his schemes for her to have been that honest about her feelings. For as long as I can remember she was protecting the both of us. Even when we…you know, didn’t get along as siblings.”

Your hands balled into fists. It was difficult not to be enraged by the powerlessness contained in Amaya’s recount of her childhood.

“I’m sorry,” you said. “That shouldn’t have happened to you.”

Amaya looked at you with a degree of appreciation for your validating words.

“I hate him. He doesn’t deserve forgiveness,” Amaya concluded. Her eyes dammed tears, “And Toni used to agree with me.”

She took off her glasses to clean their lens with her shirt.

“A while back, like a long while back, Toni just disappeared. Jacob said she’d been accepted into some ultra-exclusive European software lab and that was it. But I just couldn’t swallow that she’d leave without saying anything or calling after the fact. And when she came back, she was…she wasn’t the same.”

“How?”

Amaya reconsidered her boldness, “Um…I-I shouldn’t. It’s not my place to say.”

“Please,” you appealed. “I care about Ant—Antonia too. If there’s a way I can better keep her safe, it’s through you. You know her best.”

She shrunk in on herself as she kept cleaning her glasses. Breathing a bank of fog across one lens, she pinched the glass through her hem hard enough to produce an audible squeak.

“Well, for one,” she started, eyes skitting across the table like she was selecting facts from a display case, “she’s fluent in Tagalog now. Perfect accent, too, even though I used to have to force her to practice with me.

“And she used to be so outspoken,” Amaya rushed, taking on an admiring tone, “She never took anything from anybody—she threw a paint bomb at the mayoral cavalcade once, for God’s sake! But now she caves to any authority and avoids confrontation like the plague. Every time I try talking about the stuff that happened with Jacob, she shuts down and says we should just leave it in the past.”

For the first time in this conversation, Amaya indirectly acknowledged your medical profession in sheepish remorse, “I know I shouldn’t push her on it. Everyone heals differently. But I don’t really think she’s moved on from it either.”

You leaned forward in your chair and nodded for Amaya to continue.

“This one time we were just at home, chilling out, when I heard Toni start sobbing in the bathroom. She’d given herself a haircut over the sink and botched it, I guess. Toni loved experimenting with her hair. Cut, color, updo—all of it, she was a total expert—but suddenly she was crying over chopping off four little inches. She must have come around to it, though, because she’s kept it the exact same for the past three years.”

You rubbed one temple and stared into your bisque, drowning in speechlessness. What the hell did you get yourself into? Why didn’t Antonia ever go to somebody? Her malfunctioning limbs seemed to tip an iceberg of chronic pain.

“Would you happen to have access to any of your uncle’s work?”

“Nope.” Amaya began rolling bits of dough between her fingers, “Burned whatever was in the house.”

You dragged your hand down your face at this dead end. You were facing a void and preparing to scream.

“What does Antonia do when she comes home? What’s her routine?”

Amaya narrowed her eyes at you, “Why do you want to know?”

“You expressed uncertainty that she was well.” You kept your eyes on your soup as your heart sped up. That was close. Too close. You needed to pull back. “If you don’t want to share, I understand.”

“...She doesn’t really do much. Just cleans or cooks or watches TV.”

“No hobbies?”

“Not anymore, no.” Amaya closed in on herself, “I try getting her to do stuff, before you ask. All the time. Stuff she used to like and hate, but no matter what she only does it if she’s told to. Or if everyone else is doing it too.”

“Even basketball?”

Amaya’s eyes softened into dark drops of clay, “Actually…yeah, I guess, everything except basketball. I got into it because of her, you know.”

You bit your cheek. “What about her physical health?”

“I’ve never seen her get sick. Never even see her sweat.”

The image of Ant in your arms flashed once again, covering head to toe in black and white and red. You tasted blood and stomach acid in your mouth. You forced yourself to say—

“In a manner of speaking, she sounds functional.”

This did not appease Amaya.

“Antonia’s trying to build an identity,” she murmured. “She’s trying really hard to be what she thinks a person is. But she keeps thinking that means being normal and I don’t know how to convince her that she already is. Lots of people have baggage—I'd say everyone does—and they move on without ‘curing’ themselves of it.”

You exhaled. All you could do was sit there and be useless.

“You have my condolences, Amaya.” You remained professional. Cordial. Like a doctor handing over a pamphlet for volunteer euthanasia. “I wish I could do something.”

Amaya studied you more closely before looking down.

“It’s not an easy fix, anyway. And I talked so much you didn’t get a chance to eat.”

“This soup isn’t that good, honestly.”

She scooted back her chair.

“Still have room for dessert?” she proclaimed. “I know a really good place nearby.”

She obviously inherited the awkward segue from her sister.

In order to protect your sense of peace, you let your card clatter atop the bill without looking at the total. Once the waiter returned, you collected your things, packed up your mushy soup into a takeout container, and followed Amaya out the door.

The late afternoon sun shone with white-gold luster as you crossed the East River; apparently, “nearby” meant traveling all the way to Queens. The ethereal canopy of floating skyscrapers diminished into flecks of dust as Amaya led you down increasingly narrow streets, cropped up with colorful stalls and crowded signs advertising fresh bread, fried food, tailoring, jewelry, and payday loans. The scent of melon and spice floated toward you in an inviting trickle before overwhelming your senses, making you salivate more heartily than your near-forgotten bisque ever could.

Vendors haggled with customers amidst the golden glow of frying oil, which contrasted sumptuously against the cerulean sky, crossed one thousand times over by telephone wires and clothing lines. From your perspective, it looked as if the atmosphere was bound up like a precious fruit.

Amaya wove in between the packed crowd like a guided missile. When the wall of passersby became too solid to be breached by your constant stream of “Coming through” and “Excuse me,” Amaya linked her arm with hers and pulled you with no more difficulty than picking an orange from a tree.

She tugged you along until you arrived at a tucked away plane of lilac-painted wood board built into a brick wall. In front of it stood a folded out sign boasting a promotional special for halo-halo. The cafe was as narrow as the entryway to a house, with its protective doors folded outwards into a roof and counter respectively. Through the narrow order window you could see a handful of cooks in white aprons and patterned bandanas preparing vats of thick, colorful syrup, studded throughout with pieces of fruit like jewels.

“Magandang Hapon, Enriqueta!” Amaya crowed.

What you had assumed to be a golden-brown dessert piled with powdered sugar revealed itself to be a squat woman with a stream of slick-combed gray hair. The owner of the shop greeted Amaya like a favorite grandchild.

“Bebi ko,’musta! Buti naman nandito ka na.” She cut a thick, bouncy purple cake into squares and transferred them from their baking tin to a display tray. “Look what happens when you don’t eat good food, you’re so thin—”

Amaya bashfully rubbed her arm, “I know, miss na rin kita.”

“Kamusta ang school mo, iha?”

“I’m uh—dami kong—er, nale-learn sa school po!” Amaya grinned wide and proud before redirecting to a different topic, “Hey, gaano katagal po kami maghihintay—”

Enriqueta laughed. “Ayan, kain ka na!” She produced two steaming skewers of rice balls doused with a fragrant coconut drizzle. “As soon as I saw you coming I made these. Dahan-dahan, mainit pa.”

Amaya squealed in gratitude as she fished a coin purse from her backpack and took out a ten dollar bill, for which Enriqueta returned a grossly improper amount of change. Amaya handed the skewers to you as she counted out the bills and you nearly collapsed from the warm, sweet scent of flour and coconut milk.

“Hey, this is too much,” Amaya whined.

“Tama na yan—it’s discounted,” the woman returned, “It will be free when you get better at Tagalog~”

“Lola—!”

You watched the two go back and forth in an argument completely opposite in tone to their elated affinity just minutes prior. Then at last Amaya took two-thirds of the wrinkled bills in her fist and jammed them into a ceramic tip jar. Just as Enriqueta gasped, taken aback, Amaya pulled you along and waved a cheerful goodbye to the booth. You managed to slip a five dollar bill and apology as well before the tide of customers blocked out the little shop and the smell of confectionery thinned into the background.

“Salamat, Lola!”

“Ingat, Amaya!”

You arrived at a park as Amaya took one skewer and bit off the top rice ball. She yelped and kept her mouth open in a frantic hashfa-hah-hachto cool it off, aided by the fanning motion of her palm, before swallowing; her skin ignited from the inside out like a roaring hearth.

You blew on your portion before biting down. The sweet was so buttery and rich against your tongue that a moan catapulted up your throat instantly, as though your stomach demanded more the instant its taste registered. This karioka was the perfect refuge against the early winter weather.

“Good, right?” Amaya egged on.

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever had,” you agreed, moving to hold the skewer in your other hand as you licked glaze off your thumb.

The silence grew spongey between you, dispersing your contentment through the late afternoon. Then Amaya’s phone rang and leveled the delicate foundations of your connection before it could even be called friendship.

She looked at the screen and her face fell. Antonia was calling.

Amaya pressed the power button and returned the phone to her pocket, staring at the unoccupied seesaw on the playground. You revisited what she said in the restaurant about “giving in” to her sister’s argument and meditated on whether her hardlined silence was a protective measure as opposed to a punishing one. A part of her must have genuinely wanted to forgive and forget, were it not for the knowledge that avoiding the issue would cement its recurrence.

“I still love her.” Amaya said it like she was still practicing the concept of enforcing boundaries against the one person who always respected them. “I’ll spend the rest of my life paying her back for what she’s done for me. Obviously, like, she’s been my number one supporter throughout high school and college.”

You turned to her. The way she hunched into herself made her have to look up at you.

“Sound justification.”

“I’m not justifying anything.”

“Clearly, if you have to convince yourself of it.”

Amaya exhaled. “There’re just some times where it—it still feels like I’m striving for the same standard Jacob expected. Like I need to be the very best, instead of the best version of myself.”

She tucked one knee against her chest to prop up her chin.

“And I know she’s doing it because there’s something—well, you told me the thing, I guess—that’s keeping us apart. Like an invisible wall. She can only see what makes me stand out from a distance.”

Your brow furrowed at the turn in hardness in Amaya’s voice.

“Do you mean what you said about caring for my sister?”

She looked at you. Into you.

“I do. Very much, Amaya.”

Amaya’s dampened eyes reflected the city lights more strongly. “You’re a good person.” She sat up, “Which is why I think I can ask this of you.”

Amaya stared you down, testing to see if you’d break away. You did not.

“I wasn’t telling you all that stuff about my sister just ’cause. I’m not sure she’d be a good assistant to Spider-Woman considering all her trauma, don’t you think?”

You pulled back. “Amaya, I’m not—”

“Just give me your opinion.”

“I have no expertise in psychology,” you stated. Your spirit closed in on itself like an armadillo, defending itself with clinical monotony and impartiality. “And otherwise, the decision whether to keep or let Antonia go from our initiative is not mine to make.”

Amaya stood up. “You have direct access to who does, though. You have matching watches with Spider-Woman. It’s how I knew you weren’t lying.”

You felt plainly Amaya’s desperation to strongarm dominance in this conversation. But she was young, and so well-provided for that she couldn’t fit back inside the walls she’d built during childhood; her face clearly sculpted its suffering with every word she spoke.

“Make Spider-Woman fire Ant.”

“I can’t do that.” You crossed your arms in a loose hold. “I’m a doctor, Amaya, I don’t make empty promises.”

Amaya scoffed. It would have made her sound spoiled if her hurt wasn’t so deafening.

“Why her, huh? Why not anyone else?”

You looked out at the city. Focused on the exchange of car horns and rushing trains. The countless lives sheltered there. “It’s a noble thing to place others’ lives above one’s own.”

“I’m not a god. I don’t want sacrifice,” Amaya barked. “I want to be in control of my life. I want my sister back. Hasn’t she done enough for the world already?”

“Haven’t you?” You tilted your head and fixed her an expression of respect, “Haven’t you filled enough petitions? Organized enough fundraisers? Attended enough protests?”

“No, that’s not—” Amaya’s gaze scattered to the floor, “That’s not what I mean—”

“All of those things can be equally as dangerous as Ant’s line of work. Why do it?”

Amaya wiped her hand across face as though it were a whiteboard, “We all should! But not everyone does, or is able to, and—”

You waited for her.

“—And I can help, so I should.” she ejected.

“You’re just one person, Amaya.”

“I’m one of many.”

“Will that be enough to eradicate evil?”

Amaya pushed her hair back, “Yes. No. I don’t—I don’t know if evil can be eliminated. But if more people come together, over time it will be easier to fight what’s harming the world.”

You shut your eyes and let your head hang.

“Ant is important to this initiative. In fact, it’d probably fall apart without her. Can you really accept that?”

You asked this of Amaya in total sincerity, appealing to her as a representative of the future. Would the countless people Spider-Woman inspired join together to continue her legacy? Would evil overtake the city instead?

Your mind meekly projected another question: could Spider-Woman not…pass the title onto someone else? Just settle everything with another radioactive spider and reintegrate into civilian-hood. Give it to someone who didn’t have what Ant had. Who wasn’t needed like she was.

Someone like you.

You shook your head. How foolish to return to this old fantasy now. And in your self-admonishment you remembered a key piece of information from Miguel:

The canon laid the physical and moral foundations for a world. If every Spider operated by its narrative, then that meant heroism wasn’t constituted by changing the world at all, but preserving it. The urge to disprove this fact was near-excruciating; the canon is a cycle, you defended, cycles produce differences, like those in cells.

But those differences—those mutations—were not intentional. The aim of mitosis was to produce a perfect copy. The aim of the canon was to maintain the status quo.

This realization of this injustice smelted your heart into molten ore.

You wanted to create change. To some extent, you could. How far did this allowance extend? How could you check without destroying everything? The only thing you were certain of was that the canon had to protect Ant from death in some way; what else could be the point to her role as Spider-Woman if not the sustained protection of New York?

“You sound like every other adult I know,” Amaya lambasted. “Putting responsibility for change on the next generation.”

“If you were in Ant’s position, would you act any differently to how she does now?”

Amaya reared back, shoulders raised, “Of course I would.”

“I don’t think that’s true. You said yourself that you wanted to pay her back, right? Become a famous basketball player so all your problems disappear?”

“That’s different—”

“It’s a different method of giving up your life.”

Amaya swallowed as she attempted to prevent herself from crying. She gripped the straps of her backpack and crossed them over her sternum, the sinews of her toned forearms standing out like cables.

You approached Amaya and she let you. You laid a hand on her back and she let you. You guided her to a bench and she let you. She did not see you as the actual enemy so much as its most immediate and identifiable node. She needed something upon which she could release her anger. Her misery was augmented by a greater understanding of her situation, perhaps greater than what you possessed.

~~~

By the time you arrived at the metro station with Amaya, you both achieved some kind of emotional equilibrium. You could not begrudge each other for being honest.

“I’m grateful you told me,” she said on the platform.

“Really?”

“Before, I was always fearing the worst. This gives me a more realistic grasp of the situation.”

The flyaways of her inky hair floated up with the rush of the incoming train. You were headed in separate directions, her toward Manhattan for basketball practice and you toward South Bay.

The train pulled to a stop before you.

“Is there even any point to trying,” Amaya asked.

“There always is. The solution just isn’t clear yet.”

The doors opened.

“I just remembered something,” you said. Amaya held off on integrating with the droving passengers to inquisitively blink at you. “You called her ‘Ant’ before.”

“I did?”

You nodded. Amaya smiled just big enough to share it between the two of you.

“Right. I guess it fits her.”

Your own train howled along the tracks behind you. As Amaya boarded the carriage she gave you a two-fingered salute against her forehead, before splitting her fingers into a peace sign.

Your heart faltered as you registered the origin of that gesture. Your gaze with Amaya did not break as you slowly raised your hand and repeated it, nodding to her.

~~~

While it was generally true that the internet remembered everything, this did not negate the other truth that digital archives were just as susceptible to alterations, damage, and loss as physical ones. It was for this reason that you insisted on printing copies of your research, something you learned from Alchemax itself.

While Goblin had leveled Alchemax’s primary research campus, its underground archives remained virtually untouched several blocks away.

You entered a perfectly tubular ivory elevator that reminded you of an empty pill capsule and descended into the underground far enough that your ears popped from the change in pressure. Your arrival was met by suppressed groans from the duo guarding the main archives; not only were they unfortunate enough to have been assigned a Sunday shift, but now they actually had to contribute a crumb of effort toward validating your entrance request and flicking occasional glances at the monitors while you perused Alchemax’s inventory.

The guards wearily directed you through three security screenings, trusting the machinery to alert them to anything amiss about your badge or demeanor and only exercising as much effort as was needed to double check that your stated employee ID number matched the one on your badge. Once you recited all ten numbers with guileless ease, passed the metal detector, scanned your cornea and then your handprint, you were allowed into the next room.

As soon as you walked through the doors, you caught the first guard pulling the brim of his hat over his eyes in preparation for a nap while the second unlocked his phone to play online backgammon. While you knew you weren’t doing anything in the least bit suspicious, you fancied yourself a bit appalled by how easy it all was.

Information on Jacob Rodriguez across Alchemax’s other channels proved nothing but plastic celebratory sophistry, and of course none of his papers were available on-demand, leading you here. As long as you blocked the view of your wrist from any cameras, Lyla could scan the material you provided and upload it directly to Society’s cloud.

For the most part, Rodriguez enjoyed an illustrious career in restorative therapy; his prosthesis were the most sensitive devices on the market for his time, at the cost of requiring constant maintenance and updating of both soft- and hardware to keep running. While many were excited to be outfitted with tech that could lift several hundred pounds and type thousands of characters a minute, others raised questions about why an individual should punch through redwood trees but not pop a soda can without crushing it.

Then you found a cinderblock of a compendium addressing Rodriguez’s last decade of privately-funded projects. Flipping through it you found every page branded with a huge RETRACTED stamp, along with notes from their respective publications elaborating that Rodriguez had forged data in order to achieve his results.

The book closed with a thunderous smack in your hands. You returned it to its place and continued onward, trying to find something related to actual methodology and blueprints for prosthetic parts and coming up empty.

You searched the shelves for what felt like ages, though perhaps that was because you kept returning to the same ending of Rodriguez’s condemnation and failure. You began to grow tired; in the sterile white light of the archive, your shadow looked twice as long as usual, and your heels struck sharply against the tile.

As you turned the corner you collided with a ghost dressed a white sheet. Upon closer examination after your stumble, you found it to be a lab coat, and the ghost to be no ghost at all but a face whose chalky features all blended together, save for her deep-set eyes.

“Lovely running into each other here.”

“Dr. Connors,” you grit out.

“If you chased me on a weekend to deliver a report, it must be good.”

“My presence here is a coincidence.”

“Oh.” Billie’s shoulders dropped in lukewarm disappointment, “Doing some recreational reading, are we?”

Ugh, the constant entitlement—“Yes. I am.”

“Magnificent! Hopefully you’ll learn some strategies on how to translate your…passion for science into actual practice.”

Your eye twitched. “And why are you down here on a Sunday? Behind on research?”

“Not at all. We’ve been given a headstart on the next phase. I’m gathering precedential material.” Billie waved an innocuous booklet you thought was her notepad. It appeared to be a self-published and well-loved copy, perhaps the only one of its kind. “I’m sure we’re all looking forward to diving straight in tomorrow morning.”

You reared back and shook your head, “How could we have been approved for advancement—samples either developed cancer or triggered apoptosis.”

“I fixed it.”

“How on Earth, in such a short turnaround, did you—”

“I always find a way.” Billie tucked the booklet into her breast pocket and smoothed the fly-aways of her hair back into her ponytail. “Now, in order to prevent our previous slip-up, I’ll be personally overseeing your work going forward. We'll be like a well-oiled machine.”

You stared soullessly at Billie before looking down at the empty outline of your shadow on the floor.

“I quit.”

“Come again?” Billie’s mild stupefaction lent enough momentum for you to repeat yourself with more conviction.

“I quit. I’m leaving Alchemax. I will not be returning tomorrow or any day after.”

She blinked and spaced off for a second. And just when you thought you’d finally gotten her goat and ripped from her a core component of labor she’d always taken for granted, she clicked her tongue and nodded.

“Very well. You’re fired.”

You were about to tackle her, “No, I’m quitting. This is my deci—”

“If you want to claim unemployment benefits, then you’re fired.” She gamboled past you in her patent heels like a gracile doe, “Being fired also means your keycard expires at midnight, presumably when you’re finished here. Unless you want to be thrown out right this moment, which I can certainly arrange at your behest.”

“I’m—I don’t—excuse me?”

Potentially worse than being castigated for betraying your work was being invited to leave. The floor fell out beneath your feet.

And now, where you’d always fought your hardest to avoid Billie’s eye, you found yourself floating toward her with Rodriguez’s papers stacked in your arms like the steps of a stairwell.

Billie ran her finger over the spines of the books as she walked ahead of you. “Something else you need?”

“You seem awfully calm about losing one of your researchers. You lead a small team, after all.”

“Oh, my God,” Billie groaned. “This is a withdrawal, not a breakup, be professional. What, did you think I was going to fall to my knees and cry—” She clasped the lapels of your coat, “—PLEASE DON’T GO, THIS PROJECT IS ONE FAILURE AWAY FROM RECREATING CHERNOBYL AND I NEED ALL THE HELP I CAN GET.”

You jumped in ghastly fright just as Billie resumed walking. “Because I will not.”

“Naturally,” you whispered. “I would never expect that from you.”

As you turned a corner, you tripped on the edge of a bookcase and dropped your collection of manuscripts. Billie set about helping you, though that mostly entailed handing you the bulk of them to hold and only carrying the lightest copy herself. You came to a table and set down your things.

“Then what do you want?”

You clicked your tongue, “I suppose, reassurance that I’m doing the right thing the right way.”

“I’m afraid I don’t do motivational speeches.”

“Yes, well, I was actually counting on something like a monologue.”

Billie kissed her teeth and picked a spot of imaginary crust from the corner of her mouth to prevent you noticing the upward tick of her lips.

“You know where you want to go. That’s an admirable conviction, take pride in it. I’m sure you’ll do great things.” As she set the book onto the table her face soured upon registering its title, “Yeesh, on second thought…”

Your head whipped up in an instant, “You’ve heard of Jacob Rodriguez?”

Billie’s jaw dropped with a censuring yell, “Heard of him?” Her eyes rolled in an exasperated, fluid motion like a rewinding tape as she freed her hair from its ponytail, “Guy was basically my arch-nemesis for fifteen years of my career.”

“...You must be joking.”

You’d have sooner believed the scientists were two chummy peas in a pod.

Billie shook her hair loose and massaged her scalp with her hands. It looked almost like she had bedhead. How long had she been here? “Well, fine, it was probably less exciting than that. And more one-sided. But I am serious about hating the guy. Why do you ask?”

You raised a brow, “Well, why did you hate him?”

It might have been prudent to abide by the phrase, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” However, caution stabbed into you with the reminder that Dr. Billie Connors could only hate sunshine and puppies and everything fair and whimsical in this world. This did not assuage you to Jacob’s innocence, just the possibility that he was a degree less evil than your supervisor.

Billie slipped you a little twist of a smile. No matter how positive the emotion, she always looked like she couldn’t believe the nonsense she had to put up with.

“Rodriguez and I promoted two opposing philosophies about restorative therapy.” She kicked off her expensive heels and lifted her legs onto the desk, “Me, I advocated that patients would see greatest improvements to their quality of life if their new limbs were as identical to their original ones as possible. Rodriguez wanted Robocop. We fought to sway Alchemax’s executives toward our respective sides for years—”

Billie waved her hand in a regally lethargic gesture toward the shelf beneath the one you perused, “—Which is what most of the stuff here is.”

“That’s…interesting.” You analyzed the spines with greater scrutiny now, sliding out one of the gargantuan volumes and flipping to a random page displaying an abstract for an old paper; the very first thing it stated was an explicit rebuttal against one of Rodriguez’s previous conclusions. The text reflected this back-and-forth debate between the two figures for another five hundred pages.

“Ugh, it was dreadful,” Billie moaned. She stretched her arms into the air and let them slowly descend onto the rests of her chair. “But I also don’t think I’d ever been so exhilarated. There’s just something phenomenally fulfilling about hatred, I feel. It’s the greatest motivator.”

You chuckled in your distraction and lightly covered it with a cough. But contrary to your prediction of her anger, she seemed entirely delighted that her comedy had landed, as though rejuvenating a rusty skill.

“Which is why I wasn’t put off when Alchemax decided the market favored Rodriguez’s approach. Because then he failed, predictably, and his patients probably succumbed to lead poisoning, which allowed me to overtake him in my debut as the company’s dark horse.”

“But why did he fail,” you pressed, returning the volume to its gap in the shelf. “How could he have possibly failed with all of Alchemax’s support and funding?”

Billie opened one bleary eye to renew her once-over of your presence, this time with more skepticism toward your barrage of questions.

“Why don’t you elaborate on your sudden interest in his technology?”

You kept your face entirely neutral, “We were having a perfectly fine time making this about you. As usual.”

It was catty and self-sabotaging, you were aware. But your recollection of Billie’s high-minded insouciance blinded you with rage. All this time working under her and her humanity only shone in the reflection of her polished ego.

“Of course I enjoy talking about myself. I have two doctorates, a Wiley Prize, and my Porsche matches the soles of my designer heels.”

Fine. She was a little funny. And she was the best lead you’d yet to find in your search for a solution to Ant’s toxic infrastructure.

“I know someone outfitted with his tech. She’s experiencing…complications.”

Billie’s brows jumped so high her forehead ribboned with wrinkles, “You’re pulling my leg, surely.”

“I’m afraid not.” You stepped forward, “Is there anything I can do? Anything. I don’t know how much time she has left.”

“How much of her body has been replaced with prosthetic parts?”

“All four limbs, along with extensive internal reworking. I’m not sure how much. I never properly examined her.”

Billie took her feet off the table and sat up, rubbing her forehead while she pondered a remedy.

“If it’s that deep, there’s no way she can safely separate from the tech without dying.” With her dire conclusion, Billie’s brief lapse into worry allayed, and she returned to her perfectly unperturbed baseline. She needed to conserve her emotions for more productive pursuits. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing to be done.”

“I refuse to accept that.”

“You asked why Rodriguez failed. This is why.” Billie made a vague gesture toward you—or, rather, the unseen woman for which you advocated. “He did not engineer prosthetics to serve the human body. He perpetually sought to bring to life an abstract ideal, impossible because the very definition of what it means to be human is the opposite of perfection, and therefore contradictory to the purpose of restorative therapy.”

You crumpled into the available chair. You thought about Ant’s joviality, her brashness, her stubbornness; her infuriating disregard for herself; the respect she displayed toward you; the way she tried to fit into your arms after that Lions game; the way she anguished for an adult’s pride and security and validation and love.

“I can’t let her die,” you croaked. “She’s got her whole life ahead of her.”

Billie’s voice rippled soft as velvet, her vowels catching on the lowness of her pitch in a way that betrayed her advancing age. “If she had as many alterations as you said, there wasn’t much life to begin with. This just bought her a bit more time.”

You sat up and turned to her, grasping at whatever straw you could reach. “But what about your research? Autologous regeneration—the regrowth of lost body parts.”

Billie evaded her gaze and chuckled. “Of course. Yes. My work.”

With a steadying breath, she tucked her sheaf of blonde hair to the side. Your bunched brow shifted toward confusion rather than disgruntlement.

“Do you know the reason I’m conducting my research?”

“You want to regrow amputated limbs. Quickly, to mitigate or reverse the effects of trauma.”

“That’s right,” she beamed. “That’s precisely right. But there’s a deeper reason than that.”

You crossed your arms with a sigh, “I’m guessing money?”

Billie shrugged. “Not too bad.”

You focused more deeply on her as your pulse calmed its geyser-like boil. “You…want to save the world?”

She gave you such a heartbroken, sympathetic smile you could see every minute of her forty-two years of life carved in the fine lines of her face.

“You’re almost there.”

Billie took what looked like a quarter from her breast pocket and dragged it along the wall until it stuck in place. At the same time, she quickly glanced at the nearest camera and nodded as its lights blinked off. You realized that the disc must have been a kind of magnet, and that she used it to scrabble nearby recording devices.

“I don’t think the guards are even awake, Billie—”

“It’s not that. Everything in this room is preserved. And what I’m about to say is especially sensitive.” She patted your wrist. “Now, because we’re such great friends, we’re going to have an honest, off-book conversation. Nothing that I say represents the opinions of Alchemax, et cetera.”

“Are you certain that’s a good idea?”

“Well, you’re fired, aren’t you? Not like you’re in harm’s way if I’m found out.”

It perplexed you how Billie could be so aware of a subordinate’s disdain yet not dispute it in the least. You rolled your eyes in weak protest as you acquiesced, leaning back and crossing your legs.

“You were in the process of conducting your own independent research project, I’m aware,” Billie broached. “What motivated you to work as hard as you did?”

“I’m not entertaining a conversation that’s a big pedagogical seminar.”

She leaned her chin into her hand, “I’m not giving everything away without some collateral, dear. Think of it as an exit interview.”

Her question bathed itself in your cloudy mind. Against your better wishes, you cast your consciousness back to last year, when you worked beneath the inky recesses of a starless sky on a sample of anonymously sourced DNA. You never talked to anyone about your plans or progress. It was hard to determine which came first, the lack of a listening ear or your lack of a desire to speak, but regardless, you worked in humble retreat to strengthen your research against a fear of foreign, premeditated doubt.

Back then, you thought of helping the world. But that was represented by throngs of faceless denizens, and in their vague, amorphous mass the only face you could distinguish in this fantasy was your own; your preeminence transformed you into a demigod and buffed the flaws from your profile, and on your chest rippled ribbons and medals from every office of public recognition this country had. You’d always expected the outcome of the phosphoramidite project to assure a long-overdue victory to your underdog narrative.

But now, when you thought of your work, you thought of all the people you treated at Spider Society. And the face that stood out with more clarity than any other was Miguel’s, someone who projected such indomitability you never would have guessed that he needed more help than anyone else—someone who took a chance on you, and pushed your buttons, then your limits. Now, you did not work to justify your existence. You knew the universe benefitted from your engagement, and you wanted to do what you could.

“You thought of something, didn’t you?” Billie murmured. She curled her fist against her cheek. “Or, maybe some one?”

You ticked your gaze away and adjusted your collar. Billie’s straight, taupe eyebrows raised like a plank.

“My my, forgive me. I didn’t know it was like that. But I’m not teasing. I recognize in you what’s true for myself.”

Your eyes softened as Billie spoke. “You were lying, then. Your biggest motivator isn’t hate, but love.”

Billie’s smile was interrupted by her pursed lips.

“Same difference. Love completes hate like the other end of a black hole.” She brushed some imaginary dust off of her pencil skirt, “And I love my father, which means I hate everything he’s experienced at the hands of those around him. That kind, brave man has been nothing but exploited his entire life, ever since he became an army medic.”

The way Billie’s dejection shadowed the underside of her words burned your color away.

You knew where this went. You knew who Billie’s father was. You knew what lied in store for them. Their roles in this story.

“He was mutilated,” you completed for her, “because of a botched ballistics campaign. When he blamed the military, they stripped his rank and barred from medicine henceforth.”

Billie’s head whipped up. “You’ve heard of my father?”

You nodded. Gently, slowly, humbly, bowing your head.

“And you believe that he told the truth?”

The enlivened turn in her tone wounded you like a barbed needle to the heart. The more you tried to pull it out, the more damage it did. You either had to tug it through and bleed out or leave it there and succumb to infection. You chose the latter, holding out a smidge of hope.

“Of course. Dr. Curt Connors was the most brilliant surgeon this country had ever seen.”

Inside Billie burned a small halo of fire from your words, radiating outwards to gild her hair and polish her zirconia-colored eyes. She carried the same devotion that Amaya did toward her loved ones. It flowed through her with greater intoxication than distilled wine.

“He’s my world,” Billie gushed. “Even the autologous project was started on the back of his notes. No matter who I wanted to be, no matter whether my career was in science or arts, no matter whether I stayed his son or became his daughter, he was there for me. And now that I’m finally—” She flourished her hand down the entirety of her form, “—the very best version of myself, I want to make him whole too.”

You were transparent. Weightless. Half-transcended. Like your soul had burst from your chest. You wondered how this woman could ever be a villain when everything that informed her character opposed evil. Maybe it was one of those many quaint exceptions of the universal order—the same tiny, harmless, overlooked inconsistencies that made it so that you existed in every world except Earth-928, for example.

Yet an inexplicable sadness eked between the lines of Billie’s words. In the space of five minutes your assessment of her character revolutionized, such that you couldn’t help but assume the best, attributing her sorrow to doubt toward her success or even despair that she could not achieve a breakthrough sooner to provide her elderly father as much time as possible with a restored condition. Even a spot of guilt blackened on your conscience for having delayed her with your failure so many days ago.

“You’re a hero,” you breathed. It carried the same reverence as a prayer. “You’re doing a truly good thing.”

Billie tipped her head back. Her eyes welled but shed no tears. You recognized her exhaustion intrinsically; she was simply too tired to cry.

“I’m not, sweetheart. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’ll sacrifice anything or anyone for my father. Which means I’ve cut a deal with Alchemax that, once this project works, Curt Connors will be the first and only civilian patient to receive treatment. After that, the tech will be sold to the military. I’m not going to help your girl.”

You recoiled in horror as Billie’s words starched your posture and drained your complexion.

“How can you sell your research to the same complex that maimed your father? They’ll twist it into something abominable, Billie, why—”

“I don’t care,” Billie sniffled. She shook her head with a defeated smile, “I don’t care. This world can hurt anyone but my dad. Anyone but him.”

Your gaze froze over like a lake. “And in however many years, if you’re exposed as the mastermind behind a military bioweapon, what will you do?”

Billie laughed, “What does it matter if people keep seeing me as they always have?”

“How about what your father will feel when he discovers his daughter has gone against everything he stands for?”

This rocked her enough to lengthen the hairline crack in her confidence. Billie mapped out every step of this ensnaring, labyrinthine plan and committed herself to its execution, but she'd not totally accounted for the toll her choice would take on herself. She would become a contradiction unto herself, achieving what she most wanted through becoming everything she despised.

“Your father is selfless. You wouldn’t love him the same if he wasn’t. He wouldn’t want this, Billie.”

“I like to think of it as another form of selflessness: I am less of myself and what my father has taught me for doing this. But he deserves to live the rest of his life without pain.”

Billie’s exhale came like she had to wring it from a towel.

“There comes a point when you realize it’s futile to try saving everyone, or even saving who you can,” Billie counseled. She held up her index finger as she leaned toward you, “And you focus on just saving that one special person.”

“Why are you telling me this,” you demanded. Your body was feverish and smoke-poisoned and there were no fire exits in sight. You were in hell.

Billie’s expression made her look like a safe harbor despite the brutality of her confession. “I see something great in you.”

If she meant her rumination to flatter, it had the opposite effect. It was only another self-centered compliment. You asked, astringently, “Because I remind you of yourself, sweetheart?”

“No. You remind me of Dad.”

Your vision flattened to crimson as one thousand alternate profiles of the Lizard developed in your mind, like the contents of a photograph fluorescing in a processing room. Your skin crawled over your bones with scraggly gooseflesh, betraying not just your fear, but seeming to signal premeditation of a hostile takeover of your body. You wanted to rip it off as though it were a ravenous leech, as though Billie had cursed you. You were unclean. Contaminated. Turning, turning, turning.

“Do well to protect what makes you special,” Billie cautioned. The way she settled into her chair pronounced the bow of her collarbone, the flare of her whittled ribs, and echoed a sore groan from the quarry of her stomach. Every second was one clutched like an effervescent insect in Billie’s entanglement of her personal and professional lives, meaning she was perpetually moving, perpetually wasting, wasting, wasting away. “Otherwise, you might end up like him. Or me.”

~~~

Miguel did not often have the privilege of being early to his meetings, but today he made certain not a single second would be chipped from his meeting with you. From the moment he arrived at the training center to hearing your footsteps outside the door nine minutes later, he assigned groups to anomalous incidents and investigations and explicated with more than a few expletives that if he was rousted for any reason except total armageddon, the offending Spider would be assigned janitorial duty for the next month.

What coupled this intense anticipation was your lack of availability; you’d worked round the clock non-stop this past week with only stray remarks on needing a machine or confirming Miguel’s blood type and allergy panel in the event he needed emergency care. While he’d usually relish a level of diligence that suppressed interaction as much as possible, being unable to intersect your parallel streams of productivity aggrieved him. You were quieter, more introspective. Shouldn’t Miguel feel relieved you treated his life as a priority?

Then again, shouldn’t he have felt more trepidation in charging you with his safety?

This hindsight gave Miguel pause; he should rest his finger more broadly upon the trigger of revocation.

Perhaps it was because of this socratic meditation that, when the doors breezed apart with your arrival, Miguel directed the entirety of his attention onto you in order to guard against any surprise.

And, immediately, he was taken aback. Now that you were within arm's reach again, the light bent around you. The moment followed you. You embodied a dynamism novel to Miguel, appearing less encumbered.

After several seconds passed, much longer than Miguel needed to process his environment, he realized it was because of a slight but unmistakable alteration to how you dressed.

The button-down framed your body in clean, worn drapes, its peaked hem falling over your belt while the sleeves rolled up to expose your forearms. The style was classical, betraying enough corrugation from the unnoticed asymmetrical lay of your collar and the starchy seams along your back and shoulders to add dynamism to your silhouette and accentuate your waist. But what magnetized Miguel’s attention most of all was the fact that you’d left one less button done than usual. It unveiled a previously unseen inch of skin on your chest.

Miguel’s analysis had lingered for too long. You left your clipboard aloft to look yourself over, “Do I have a stain, or something?”

You really shouldn’t have done that, because the steep vee of your collar pointed down the column of your body to the fly of your pants. And his fixation on your outfit was almost as ridiculous as his embarrassment for getting caught doing so; the reaction seemed stolen from another time, when people still wore hoop skirts and powdered wigs, or at the very least when Miguel was greener and rowdier and lacking hair on his chest.

Should he comment on it? No, absolutely not. How could such a thing matter when his colleagues’ professional attire consisted primarily of full-body lycra?

Instead, he said, “You’re not wearing your lab coat.”

His observation pressed a bruise, judging by the way you returned to scanning items on your clipboard. “Oh, yeah. I uh…left my job.”

“Oh.” You’d spoken so casually that it took a second for your sentence to pierce the dew of Miguel’s still-awakening mind. “Wait, what?”

“Benefits just weren’t that great anymore, you know. Didn’t even offer dental,” you elaborated as you passed, walking toward no particular destination other than away.

“You loved Alchemax.”

You winced as though Miguel had rammed a fork through your chest and twirled your ribs like strands of spaghetti, “You think that?”

“Did something happen?” His voice dropped like a ton of granite, cracking with the first designs of reckoning in case you imparted an injurious incident.

“Nothing new. Not on their end, anyway.” You sighed, “Turns out my universe didn’t contain an exception to Alchemax’s pattern of maleficence.”

Miguel’s pace slowed beside yours. With a roll of your shoulders and a crack of your neck, you straightened your posture and looked up at him with a fragile, eager, reborn spirit, budding from the ash of your revelation like flora after a wildfire.

“What matters to me is helping people. I’ll make sure everything I do from here-on advances that purpose.” You directed Miguel to the center of the training room with a sweep of your arm that carried such grace and solace that he instinctively obeyed. “Starting with you.”

The succor of your declaration disrupted the even pace of Miguel’s breath. And, noticing this, you turned halfways away before pursing your lips and squeezing your eyes shut in an expression ill-suited to you and incomprehensible to Miguel. Why would you regret speaking as you always have? Why now?

“Lyla,” you commanded, walking away. “Do the thing.”

Patches of floor around Miguel raised themselves into stacks of plates and dumbbells, while from the ceiling descended ropes, pulleys, and swings. As Miguel took in the transformation of the cordoned practice room, his watch chimed at his side.

“Hey, dummy,” Lyla called. What projected from the device was a different layout to his typical vital chart. Lyla stepped out like a game show host emerging from behind a scoreboard. “Just like on Ninja USA, remember?”

Across the way, you lifted your hand to display an identical, synced hologram.

“We’re going to run a full program to test the phosphoramidite project’s interactions with your body. This is a very controlled infliction of stress, so you can be assured that you won’t experience undue harm.”

Lyla flickered all over Miguel’s body with a length of measuring tape in hand, wrapping it around his waist, neck, and arms. When he curled one hand in a curious flex, Lyla bumped his fist with hers.

You walked in front of a collection of dumbbells, their hexagonal heads so polished that they looked like oversized bolts. You patted the largest one on the rack like a dog.

“We’ll start with some one-rep maxes. To establish your baseline abilities.”

You stepped to the side as Miguel approached your spot, “We’re doing lateral raises?”

You checked your page, “Bicep curls, actually.”

He raised a brow and moved beyond the rack to what you had assumed was some kind of wheeled axle for a different machine. Miguel wrapped one hand along its column and lifted it.

“Then that stuff’s too light.”

As Miguel shuffled to the center of the ring with a weight in each hand and demonstrated the infinitely sprawling facets of his strength, curling and lifting and twisting with godly finesse, you relied on Lyla to announce each weight for you to record on your clipboard. Except for the worried glances whenever Miguel let out a groan from hefting his load, you avoided looking at him for too long, burying your nose in your paper like a discomfited ostrich.

And this circuitous approach to interaction—the sudden extinguishment of your unremitting, neurotic, irresistible gaze—unnerved Miguel. Of all the chances before, you decided to conduct outrageous sensitivity toward his personal space after he bared the entirety of his soul to you?!

Miguel set down his current weight and ran a hand through his hair, half-expecting to find snakes instead. He pressed his hands over his knees and tried willing the ground to swallow him through telekinesis.

You scribbled more notes, “Need a break?”

He studied your gated neutrality more closely from his stooped position. Maybe you were bored. Whatever you paid attention to was always of tremendous importance, so you must have merely misunderstood the rarity of Miguel’s results among Spiders. This mistake necessitated thorough, instantaneous correction. Otherwise, you might miscalculate something about the serum. Or think of Miguel differently.

“No. What else is there?”

Your eyebrows jumped, and you made quick note of Miguel’s statement on your chart—he only caught the word “stamina,” which you underlined twice—before gesturing to a barbell and a supplemental collection of plates that gleamed like a stack of coins.

“Clean and press.” You recited it with a little laugh, so quick and quiet Miguel almost missed the joke; “clean and press,” like you’d do to a wound.

Miguel dressed one side of the silver bar until the plates formed a cylinder about half his height. He positioned himself before it and rotated his hands until his grip fastened with a comfortable curl. A breath, the clench of teeth, then of muscle, and the bar raced in a parabola until Miguel’s knuckles grazed his shoulders. Another grunt was enough for Miguel to heft the bar into the air, its ends bending under the strain of its weight like a rubber hose cartoon.

The go-ahead to drop the weight came from Lyla, and when Miguel’s ginormous catch released with a series of earthquaking bounces, he looked up to find you facing the opposite direction.

“Awesome job, Miguel!” Lyla cheered. Her pixelated confetti disintegrated as it littered his hair.

Miguel cupped his hands around his mouth and cholerically shouted, “Doc!”

You busily tucked your hair behind your ear before scratching the side of your head; Miguel recognized when a gesture was performed to evade suspicion. The only thing missing was you whistling to yourself.

“Mmm? Ah!” You acted like you’d just registered the crashed bar, concentrating on it like it was an unearthed fossil. With a shaky thumbs up you said, “That’s right. Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Then say it.

Miguel’s expression turned dry and dark as gunpowder. “Let’s do that again.”

This managed to push your expression to the border of astonishment. “I recorded it, I swear.”

“I can do more.”

“Oh?” You squeaked. You cleared your throat and tried again, “I-If you’re sure. Go ahead.”

Miguel heaved four more plates onto either side of the bar. He must have been pushing twelve tons, something he’d only previously managed with the aid of hysterical strength. He again spaced himself before the bar and coiled his fingers around its textured grip. Already Miguel's ligaments frayed and his muscles screamed at this taxing lift, veins throbbing along his arms like the freed roots of a tree.

His fangs extended with a determined snarl as the bar flew parallel to his shoulders once more. Miguel swallowed. His body was a live wire. His heart jackhammered between his lungs. His talons scraped the bar with a chalky screech.

With a shout he launched the bar above his head. The reverberations from the slide of plate-on-plate traveled all the way to the centers of Miguel’s joints. Just as he worried his arms would give out and the bar would cleave his skull in twain, Lyla shouted the cue to drop. Miguel threw the thing to the floor and wobbled backwards.

When the room absorbed its phantom doubles, Miguel scanned the perimeter of the circle and found you slack-jawed, a line of ink trailing from your pen where your hold on your clipboard loosened in shock.

“Congratulations on your new personal best!” Lyla cheered, dangling a sunflower gold trophy cup in front of Miguel’s face. He tapped an impatient meter on his hips with his index finger.

“What do you think?” he panted.

You fanned yourself with the clipboard. “That was phenomenal.” The letters came out in a quick blend like you couldn’t stop the whisper if you tried. You stoppered any additional refrain by laying the metal clip against your mouth.

“So,” Miguel continued. He rolled his wrist in a prompting gesture to mask his need to stretch it out, “What’re my results?”

“So far, so good,” you returned.

“So far?”

He watched as you flicked through page after page of your clipboard, the white sheets forming a stack about the width of your finger. And it was only in this moment, precisely counter to the intensity of his effort, that Miguel thought to question why he was trying to ace a diagnostic test. One that wasn’t even halfway finished, at that.

“Are you sure you don’t want a break?” you repeated, catching Miguel’s wide, terrified eyes at the density of the program. You splayed your palm over the clipboard and spoke with a splash of penitent hindsight. “Or, maybe I’ve done too much? Do you think all these tests are unnecessary?”

What was he supposed to say? No, let’s cut corners on the preliminary trial of my experimental treatment. How could he even broach a word of protest now that he finally succeeded in ensnaring your focus; you leaned forward in anticipation of Miguel’s next feat of championship, either forgetting the subject previously dividing your attention or finding yourself too impressed to care how you appeared.

“What’s the next exercise?” he asked.

The test concluded with Miguel so sapped for oxygen he thought he’d been transported to the vacuum of space; hair stuck up in sweat-slick blade from his head, his face was flushed crimson, and his body heat challenged radioactivity. Plates, several cracked, strewed the ground around him.

But there you stood outside the ring, watching Miguel set down the barbell after his last exercise, chest heaving, directing a half-lidded stare at the ground, muscles straining from the pump of exercise under the molecular fiber of his suit. Your pen had clattered to the ground unnoticed—at what point Miguel couldn’t say, but based on the depth of your trance he didn’t think you’d recorded anything for a long, long time. And that made his endeavor justifiable.

You realized you’d been caught staring and looked away.

“Got everything you need?” Miguel asked, attempting not to pant every syllable.

“Y-Yeah, just about perfect!”

“That concludes our practice round!” Lyla apparated with a whistle and baseball cap, jogging in place. Miguel’s stomach dropped to his ankles as the room shifted once more into a hellish, circus-like obstacle course.

“Now the real test can begin!”

~~~

Trial ninety-five.

The phosphoramidite project’s modified serum bore a thinner suspension and a soapy lavender color compared to the virident lime Miguel was used to. He injected the very first stabilized dose into his shoulder and flexed his arm, feeling a gentler cooling effect that stoked an ember of doubt within him as to its effects, doubly so when you reported absolutely no changes to his vitals whatsoever. Perhaps you’d given him a placebo.

Even still, the starting line of your next activity waited.

Miguel lunged until the pads of his fingers touched the floor. His body tipped forward in taut anticipation of your whistle as he surveyed the gauntlet before him, mapping out an appropriate route to the bell at the other side of the room.

This test measured speed and endurance, so all Miguel had to do was be quick. A well-timed sprint and this would all be over.

When the shrill banshee call of your whistle pierced the air, he rushed into the fray in titanic, frantic strides like a cheetah. Yet as he approached the end of the platform, the bell rose into the air on an opposite platform and the floor beneath him pitched into a steep incline.

“Lyla,” you signaled, grinning alongside her as she disappeared into your watch and conjured a control panel. You pressed a button to hollow the far wall into something like a cheese-grater.

Miguel could only widen his eyes in blood-drained fear as the wall shot a series of heat-trained missiles in his direction.

“I THOUGHT YOU SAID THIS WAS AN ENDURANCE TEST,” he roared as he bounded on all fours to avoid each explosive strike, webbing one to crash it into another.

“It is! I’m testing to see how long and how much you can endure!”

Miguel landed on one missile and straddled it like a mechanical bull. Sensing his presence, the missile bucked ferociously as it rose into the air—closing the distance between Miguel and the safe harbor of a floating platform several meters above. Yet just as he aimed his wrist, the missile flipped and dove straight down into the darkening chasm of a pit between the two ends of the track.

The remaining three missiles locked in on him. The sight of the spinning projectiles wiggled a bout of motion sickness in Miguel’s stomach.

Staring beyond to the distant bell, he shot a web at one of the missiles and swung just as the darkness of the deep pit closed in around him. His catch tweaked and torqued and flew up, allowing Miguel to swing to the next one and the next all the way to the edge of the opposite platform.

He clawed one hand into its edge and hoisted himself up. As the missiles once again advanced, Miguel tugged on all three webs and collided them with each other, generating enough of an explosive force to propel him back to top speed.

And yet, the ground beneath him tilted strangely and his vision grew hazy and tunneled. Shaking his head, he continued sprinting, only for the bell to skew farther and farther to his left. Though Miguel turned his head after it, this did not change his course.

He rammed head-first into the wall in a dust storm of plaster and chipped paint.

Alterations to the serum proved necessary.

Trial ninety-six.

The ground remained level this time, thank God.

Miguel spun a series of gymnastics moves between cones and pulleys to prove his agility, his sense of direction blissfully returned in exchange for his sense of peace. Every sharp twang of strain in his body made him fear the next crucial function to be debilitated by your farcical interpretation of medicine.

As he landed once again on his feet, the ground parted in neat squares to produce a volley of cardboard cutouts, a chorus of tinny animatronic voices ringing through the air as they began moving on their programmed tracks.

“We meet again, Spider-Man!”

Models of Mysterio, Electro, and Shocker surrounded Miguel and flailed their flattened extremities. Miguel’s express mission for this test was to dodge without the use of his webs in order to demonstrate his flexibility and agility. He could not directly engage with his opponents whatsoever, something that proved difficult as their limited array of jeers repeated every minute in nasally squalls.

“I’ve got you now!” Electro’s dummy declared for the umpteenth time, zigzagging closer with wriggling fingers like a disconcerting birthday clown. Miguel vaulted away in two easy flips to grab one of two flying rings dangling from the ceiling.

The facile experience reflected poorly on your creativity. Glancing at the control panel on your watch, you swiped through the menu of villains and paused at the slate-colored statue of the Rhino, humming in consideration as you proceeded to the slippery profile of Doc Ock, then back to the Rhino. You were curious as to how Miguel would fare against such a bulky and towering force as the latter villain.

You glanced back up at Miguel, nimbly tumbling over the heads of his enemies, and decided to prioritize his enrichment over your entertainment.

Doc Ock's tentacles flailed like an inflatable tube mascot as he entered the arena, bowl cut hanging thickly over his bows and making his head resemble an acorn.

Miguel turned to you and raised a brow as the computer-generated rogues fumbled their auditions for his fear.

You smirked and selected one more villain on a whim, a squat and shoulder-padded version of the Chameleon, before adjusting some knobs and spacing out the equipment on the training apparatus. A golden bell phased into one of Doc Ock’s suction-cupped tentacles, yet the static effect of its materialization spread through the villain to broaden his dimensions; he stepped off his stand as a flickering hologram, touching his companions to bring them to life as well.

Miguel tensed as they surrounded him once more, their voices harmonizing in minor key:

“All’s fair, Spider-Man.”

Doc Ock raised the bell and rang it thrice, “Come and get it.”

Electro ripped a bolt of lightning through the metal equipment, conducting a plasmic charge straight at Miguel’s polished flying ring and forcing him to drop to the floor, directly in line of Shocker’s stampede as he kicked up earthquakes in his approach. As Miguel jumped to the wooden equipment, Ock’s tentacles shot toward him and splintered the wood into a thousand stinging darts that pricked Miguel’s skin and blinded his sight. With the air crackling and the ground shaking, Miguel snapped and twisted like a rubber band to avoid the closing band of villains.

As he backed up, the light wavered in a dreamy, familiar way to his right, making Miguel cartwheel to the side just in time for a blazing torch to spew at his heels from the cloaked Mysterio. All of nature’s elements were manipulated against him as he pinged around the training room, fighting the urge to settle this with a slash of his bladed arms.

He just needed that stupid bell and this would all end. Ock’s arms gaped and pinched in his direction like Venus flytraps.

Miguel ran and the ground rumbled. He jumped and the air crackled with a million volts. He turned at the wrong second and Mysterio snuck up on him. At every angle the clip of metal threatened to nab him.

Alright, this was getting dicey. He was surrounded on all sides by threats. But, Miguel recalled, all he had to do was dodge.

Evasion was not inaction. He could get these guys to disengage another way.

Miguel whistled for Ock’s attention, throwing out his arms in a provoking gesture, “Come at me!”

Miguel hopped onto a metal pommel trainer, feeling the timely snap of heating air behind him right as his suit flickered from the aura of the two holograms, he jumped up and let Electro and Ock meet; as electricity coursed through Ock’s metal arms, it doubled back to Electro and blew the two apart, disintegrating them into pixels.

When the ground shook with Shocker’s approach, Miguel switched to a top-down approach, dangling from a trapeze bar to watch the light play on the ceiling tiles with Mysterio’s approach. Miguel swung with the bar just as the two grazed each other, binding Mysterio in its straps before cutting it and letting him fall to the floor; as Mysterio released a gulley of fire to try burning himself free he fell onto Shocker and engulfed them in fire. They reduced themselves to a spectacle of digitized ash.

Miguel dropped onto the floor and stumbled on the landing, looking warily around the room. He'd forgotten something, surely.

“Another fantastic performance, Spider-Man,” you congratulated behind him. He startled back, not having heard you approach. “You won! I’m so proud, I knew you had it in you.”

Miguel looked you up and down, “I didn’t get the bell.”

“Ooh, what does it matter? Put it there, pal,” you praised, holding out a hand. Miguel stared uncertainly at it, glancing up at your face and scrutinizing the placid joy of your gaze. Your eyes were a degree duller than normal, glowing but not shining, almost like they were…fake.

Miguel jumped back just as your hand joined his, unsheathing his talons and watching the edges of your body flicker in and out of solidity. Your pupils consumed your irises as your eyes narrowed, setting a clawed hand on your hip as your outfit rearranged into a broad-tied suit and you set a pair of circular sunglasses on a thin, short, upturned nose.

“Never had to try in a fight before.” Your voice deepened into a jazzy tenor, “But you can count on me making a splash!”

Chameleon vomited acid at Miguel, which ate the floor instantly upon contact and left a smell like rotten spinach in its wake.

Miguel barked into his watch, "You said no undue harm."

"Well. You were being a bad sport, so I bent the rules a little. But don't worry, the acid is not real."

The acid exposed the wiring beneath the floor panels.

"It's just very convincing."

You fought dirty. So be it. Miguel could find loopholes too.

“Lyla—go over the expectations of this trial.”

“Sure thaaang, I’ll take it from the top.” She blinked before him and pulled down a projection screen with bullet points, blocking Miguel’s view of the Chameleon. He dodged a shower of acid that would have peeled off his scalp. “Number one, have fun! Number two—”

“DEFINE DIRECT CONTACT.” His fist was going to make direct contact with your shocking face once this fin—

“You can’t attack your opponent with any web, attached accessory, or body part.”

“That means physical touch—just my physical touch, right?” He flipped onto a balance beam as acid carved a canyon before him.

“Yeah, man, you got it,” Lyla boredly affirmed, enjoying the sight of Miguel floundering.

“Peachy.” Miguel grabbed the beam and lobbed it at Chameleon’s head.

While initially scared witless, the beam phased through Chameleon’s body and crashed into the gymnastics bars several meters away. Seeing his immaterial visage return unscathed and Miguel nowhere to be found, Chameleon laughed uproariously.

“Man, running away? Guess it’s true that spiders think with their legs, huh—” Chameleon split apart again as Miguel threw another piece of equipment, splitting the villain’s hologram and buying another second of time to grab the bell in his hand.

As Chameleon’s body reformed and broke apart with the storm of equipment tossed at him, seeing Miguel circle closer and closer, he got desperate and threw the bell across the room with an arc of acid to follow, attempting to destroy the bell and deny Miguel a true victory.

Miguel bounded over Chameleon’s head parallel to the stream of acid and reached toward the bell. He could feel its metallic lip on the tip of his talon, its gold dome reflecting his face, its clapper rising in preparation of a ring—

Miguel’s overextended arm locked and his body set like stone. He plummeted to the floor like a plastic statue before you could throw a cushion in his path as the lactic acid in his body calcified, the virtual acid burning painfully real as it covered him, like relish on a hot dog, and made him scream an octave above his speaking range.

The bell rolled to your feet and you hid behind your clipboard in shame and horror.

Alterations to the serum proved necessary.

~~~

Miguel gripped a series of colorful hand and footholds on the protruding wall as he hovered several stories in the air. With each level he cleared, the pockets of convenient terrain where he could settle his extremities gradually smoothed out; this one bore similarities to Nueva York’s skyscrapers, a monolith of carbon steel and double-walled tempered glass with hardly a noticeable seam where the different panes met. Where other Spiders could easily stick on, and where Miguel would normally use his talons or the blades of his suit, he had to navigate slowly in order to prevent the wall from shattering and disqualifying him from the next level. It would be his third round in the last hour, and his competitive streak had been mangled from genial sportsmanship to acerbic zealotry.

Trial ninety-seven. The actual strength test, apparently.

He clocked a sliver of ledge a meter above and to the left of him, the exact area where he’d previously lost the level. He sucked in a breath as he calculated whether the distance would be manageable, the muscles in his back fanning out as he pushed down with his feet and pulled with his hands. He launched toward the ledge and stretched out one hand to catch on, only to miss the top of the protrusion by a hair. His talons extended and scraped the metal with a flare of sparks, before Miguel caught the icy glare where the wall transitioned to glass and retracted them. By sheer muscle memory his foot struck out to land on a previously cleared foothold, and with the expert slotting of his fingers between two steel frames, Miguel managed to avoid the hundred-foot plummet to the floor.

Beneath him floated the echo of a cheer and a party noisemaker as you and Lyla spurred him on. Miguel glanced over his shoulder to see the grain-sized diminishment of your body, fists raised to your chest and head tipped back to capture every second of Miguel’s ascent.

He was staring at you again. Which was stupid—you looked the same as you always had. But owing partly to the necessity of concentration in a task such as this, partly to the way being so high up always cleared one’s thoughts and rearranged the scale of life’s most imposing difficulties, Miguel could reflect on recent events from a new perspective.

It was easy to keep looking at you. The interest was entirely reflexive; in the same way people stopped to examine a flower growing from an unlikely spot, or admired the brushwork of a portrait, Miguel found himself tracing the cord of your neck, or the band of your waterline, or—an infuriatingly recent expansion—the sweep of your mouth.

Miguel had no idea as to the origins of this bad habit, but certainly what catalyzed it were the events of last weekend: you’d exhibited a manner so relaxed and confident it was positively contagious, and amid the stress of tidying up a constantly unraveling multiverse, being able to experiment for experimentation’s sake came as a welcome salve to Miguel’s troubles.

He shifted to the right of the wall until he found an indentation where he could clear another few inches.

And then you’d asked to see his work. Complimented him. Cherished his contributions to his Earth. You bowed to the cave of personal space created by Miguel’s curved posture and said you’d like to know him. Then just as you tilted your head and closed your eyes—just as it looked like you were about to kiss him—you pulled back like you snapped out of enacting some unspeakable sin and reacted to Miguel’s touch like scalding oil.

Miguel was…in a sense, offended. Was the idea of kissing him really that unpalatable? He’d never gotten any complaints about his technique. If anything, the consensus was that he was an expert at the whole thing!

Not that he wanted it. This wasn't about what he wanted, this was about uncovering your motive and settling things.

Because now, as a result of your weird hangup, this entire debacle planted itself in Miguel’s mind with the ferocity of an invasive species of fungal spore; all week, whether in idle passing or concentrated rigor, he kept thinking about Saturday, confoundedly replaying it for no reason, imagining all the ways the night might have changed if he’d called you out on your strangeness, if he’d pivoted the conversation to something else, if he’d grabbed the lapel of your coat to halt your departure, if he’d pushed you up against the wall, if he'd pressed his mouth to yours, chastely then wantonly then breathlessly, carnal—

Miguel hadn’t noticed his left hand’s hold begin to loosen, and his stomach’s dopamine-laced backflips tail-spun into adrenaline as he slipped. He hung from his remaining hand-hold while the rest of his body dangled free.

He looked up to find his other hand-hold gradually receding into the wall; the program began eliminating any ounce of respite to encourage Miguel to keep moving. He was still a good ways away from his previous point, with a constantly decreasing number of avenues to pursue it. He needed to get creative.

Miguel pivoted with a reverse iron cross to conserve the jumping power of his legs, grabbing an isosceles wedge of metal and balancing the entirety of his mass onto its hypotenuse. Up and across rested a thin bar in a depreciative angle, meaning Miguel would have to generate enough power to grab its uppermost body to avoid slipping off.

But his body ached, and his hold shrunk, and the end goal rose farther and farther into the distance.

Below, your voice carried like wind between the notches of a reed, “You’ve got this, Miguel!”

He turned to his target and, with a praying gust sucked into his lungs, bounded through the air and landed both hands atop the bar.

From this new vantage he could see two mounds rising from the metal strata, something hidden from his point of view when he was lower on the wall. If Miguel used them to support his hand and foot respectively, he could generate enough momentum to brush the bell at the very top. There was no time to weigh another option—his bar sank deeper into the wall with every passing second.

Miguel took what millimeter of a running start he could along the hold and grappled onto one of the mounds, pulling himself up until he could hook his foot onto the second—a feat simpler said than done, considering the smooth arc of the metal. Miguel had to rely on the friction of his suit in order to secure his spot, but doing so only allotted him a few seconds of traction before he once again slipped.

There were only a few meager feet of distance left between him and the bell. It glinted a superluminous white where the chalky fluorescent lights of the room hit it, its golden tongue gently bobbing from the vibrations of Miguel’s fervid impacts on the wall. He’d have to risk a launch as soon as his foot next landed on the mound.

The ball of Miguel’s foot crammed against the corner where the hold met the wall. He met resistance, signaling a countdown of a few seconds. He locked his sights onto the bell and leapt.

Yet Miguel began a downward descent before he could touch the bell’s crown. You gasped and Lyla yelled like she’d won a bet, until Miguel halted his dive and began swinging back and forth. He looked up to find the clapper of the bell clasped in his other hand, the metal yoke wailing as it dipped forward.

Miguel looked down at you. You looked up at him, hand protecting your eyes against the piercing brightness of the lights. The expression of lucent, optimistic curiosity spun across your features; it was the most natural thing in the world for you to embrace the unknown, and all Miguel could do was savor the few seconds he earned his spot in your focus.

The yoke snapped and crashed him to the floor.

Head ringing, pain cresting in foaming, rabid tides throughout his body, Miguel cracked open his eyes to find phantasmic duplicates of you, swimming about his field of vision as you worriedly called him to consciousness. How magnificent that, where before he had to break-in your attention like stiff leather, he now had a variety of you to choose from!

Your doubles bobbed about his head and appeared to leer closer. Miguel’s heart rate kicked into overdrive as he fought against the drives of fight, flight, freeze, f—

The clapper of the bell lolled in its gold cup beside him. With equal parts dazedness, guilt, intimidation, and resignation, he lifted it up and rang it thrice.

~~~

When Miguel returned to the training center, skin damp and steaming from his shower, he found you on the floor chewing on a granola bar and skimming your notes. You threw him a perfunctory wave before whipping your head in a double take, scrutinizing Miguel’s appearance like the topography of his body had completely rearranged.

Miguel pushed a few glossy streams of hair from his forehead and narrowed his eyes, “Something on my face?”

“You’re not wearing your suit.”

This made Miguel glance down his body like your observation had baptized him, brows quirked up as he processed that you were correct; prior to this moment, he’d only ever seen you sheathed in your lab coat, while he’d either been in his costume or shreds of it. You were both at your most casual, removed from all traces of professional embellishments. Save for your watches.

A drone the size of a Roomba tottered through the doors on eight spindly legs to present Miguel with a brown paper bag. He took it up and approached where you reclined on the ground.

“Alright, Trial ninety-eight,” you narrated, clicking your pen, “Observations on gastroenterological processes and bile secretions in the liver.”

“Calling it that is gonna make me lose my appetite,” Miguel warned. He withdrew one styrofoam container after another and assembled them before him, systematically flipping open each of the lids to drink in the outpour of steam; the smell of charcoal and pepper perfumed the air.

Miguel lifted a semi-circle of golden dough—what you recognized as an empanada once the back of his hand stopped eclipsing it—and tore its top off, loading the newly created opening with salsa, corn, cilantro, and rings of jalapeño before ravishing half the thing in one bite.

You stared at Miguel with wide, disrelished eyes as he messily consumed his fill, the combination of side dishes cracking through the skin of the empanada and trailing beads of juice down his hand.

“Watching that is making me lose mine,” you murmured.

Miguel’s gaze flashed indignantly. Turning away, he covered his mouth with his other hand and spoke in a manner approaching a snarl.

“Don’t you have bile secretions to tally, or something? This isn’t a lesson on etiquette.”

“Your lunch isn’t going anywhere.”

“Not staying hot either,” Miguel returned, one cheek rounded.

“You feel fuller if you eat slower.”

You returned to your granola, breaking off a moderately sized piece and chewing contentedly. Miguel’s brows raised as you made a show of your gratification. Then, as though in protest, your stomach warbled out hunger pangs like a laminated piece of paper.

Miguel snorted, hand now flush to his skin to hide his smirk.

“I’ve only just started eating,” you defended.

Miguel craned his neck around your body to see the overturned lunch pack you’d retrieved from your lab, finding a bag of chips, the saddest, most emaciated sandwich he’d ever seen, and an apple.

“Prisoners have better rations than that.”

“It’s been a while since I’ve cooked for myself, alright?” You waved your granola in emphasis. Flecks of oat and dehydrated fruit tumbled to the floor like pebbles from a depleted lake.

“Guess you should count unemployment as a blessing.”

You chucked a chunk of beige hardtack at Miguel’s face, which he easily blocked with his wrist.

“Here,” he said, shoving the remaining styrofoam container toward you. “I got extra.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll just order something later.”

“Sounds like you’re not taking this seriously. I had the decency to come here working at my peak, so should you.”

You recognized that it was a strange line, borrowed from the scripts he used on Spiders that were late or unresponsive to meetings but lacking its hardlined rigor; now, instead of Miguel saying to push harder, he was telling you to take it easy.

You opened the container and tested the crackle of the empanada’s crust in your grip. While you’d eaten at the cafeteria once or twice, you’d yet to try this particular item, and presently teetered it back and forth as though skeptical this free food had been filled all the way, or perhaps comparing it to the presentation of empanadas you had before. When it passed your judgment, you took a small, almost secretive bite.

Your eyes widened into perfectly round pearls.

“Oh, my God.”

Miguel nodded perspicaciously at your reintroduction to the general truth that Mexican food was the closest humanity would ever come to replicating manna, and you nodded back, taking his subsequent offering of a cup of salsa and copying his method of jamming the thing into what remained of your pocket pie.

He could read it all over your face: how did you live before this moment? What other grave injustices did you need Miguel to correct? How could you ever find a token of appreciation equal in magnitude to his generosity, so on, so forth.

You gathered a stray streak of sauce with your thumb and licked it off. Your mouth and the tip of your nose blushed from the spice as you closed your eyes and patiently extracted fulfillment from your meal.

Miguel’s face burned. Must have been the jalapeños.

But the room continued to warm in this private bubble of heat, and Miguel’s body tingled from his bout of exercise without yet slipping into discomfited soreness, and you sat there, the quintessential picture of relaxation; once you were finished, you leaned back on your hands as if engaging in a mutual exchange of tranquility with the training room as you perused a chart of Miguel’s vitals. Because surprisingly, in a tower as endlessly bustling as this one, the here and now were genuinely serene.

It felt like it did before Saturday.

Miguel let his posture drop into something approaching a stoop, resting one cheek on his fist as he prolonged his meal with deliberate chews.

However, he bent his neck too much and a thread of pain sewed itself along his nape. He brought his hand up to feel a sticky patch of blood.

Miguel tried to recall at what point he could have sustained such an injury. He’d been flung about all day and shot at with every grade of weapon below literal nuclear warheads, but anything prior to ninety-seven would have at least scabbed over by now. Maybe all the exertion had continuously reopened this one site of harm to the point that it fatigued his accelerated healing, or perhaps the continuous administration of two kinds of serum had numbed his body to noticing when it’d been hurt.

Whatever the case, Miguel saw no reason to panic. He’d been in tougher scrapes and emerged blemishless as a newborn baby.

Then again, why shouldn’t he receive treatment? It would completely nix the possibility of further complications. And you were so swift with your job, anyhow, so diligent and merciful and—

“Doc.” Miguel raised his hand to show off the bright trickle of blood. “Got a minute?”

When you processed that the red on his hand was indeed blood and not more food, you started to your feet immediately as though ashamed to have enjoyed a moment of relaxation at a patient’s expense. It made Miguel feel guilty, and for a moment he considered whether he should have gotten your attention some other way.

“Actually, you know, it’s nothing. I didn’t even realize it was there—”

You retrieved a first aid kit from the corner, and the pattern of wear and shallow scratches on its white-washed metal exterior made Miguel wonder if and when you pulled it from his lab.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed.” You approached with your signature tone of professional compassion. “Treatment is code. It’s standard. It’s a sign of respect. You’re all about rules like that.”

While not thrown off balance, Miguel was certainly tilted off-kilter by your explicit testament of respect. Which, considering his role in Society, how proper it was for Spiders to respect him, was the kind of revolting humble-brag he’d expect from a recipient of an Oscar: I don’t deserve this! I couldn’t have done it without my loving fans! This is so much bigger than me!

Yet, like an award, your sentence still weighed heavy and sparkling on Miguel’s insides. He screwed his mouth side-to-side like he was modeling your exhortation to his teeth, ready to say it back had the verb “respect” not threatened to rearrange into something else.

Because he was thinking about Saturday again. Getting angry at it—a level of anger Miguel recognized was disproportionate to the events that had happened. Hadn’t happened. Might have happened. Would never, in a million years—

Miguel sighed and nodded, then winced because nodding provoked the cut in his neck again, and watched you walk over and settle behind him.

Oh, he hadn’t considered that this position meant he had no idea what you were doing. Miguel tensed like something cornered.

You tugged down the collar of his shirt and clicked your tongue as you removed several items from the kit. Miguel focused on identifying them so as not to panic at the unexpected: there was the foamy spray of what he knew to be a fast-acting antimicrobial cleanser and then the crackle of a package of wipes. Just as Miguel expected a third element to enter this routine, the cool pads of your fingers caressed the junction of his neck.

“You’re not wearing gloves.”

“Oh, forgive me.” Your touch evaporated, “Would you like me to?”

“N-No, I was just...you usually prefer them, right?”

You let out an irregular breath. “I do. Yeah. But this is a very shallow wound, so it’ll be quick work. Less detail-oriented than surgery, and the like. Not that I’m not being careful—”

“I’m not asking you to justify yourself.”

“You have a right to know about the care you receive.”

The act of care or the sentiment?

A memory of…Friday, maybe—though Miguel’s grasp of time slipped between visiting so many worlds—flowered in his mind: the static pressure of your knuckles against his as you laid beside him, passing up and down the back of his hand but never pushing across. Had he already received the maximum amount of your care?

“Then tell me.”

“I’m inspecting the area to see if the damage is more than skin-deep. If not, then I’ll apply an antibiotic ointment and dress the site.”

“If there is?”

“Then we might be here a while.”

Miguel’s body relaxed at the thought of it. You misinterpreted this as the assuagement of his anxiety toward treatment.

“Feel better?”

“Nothing’s happened yet.”

“I mean, more confident. Protected.” You shuffled behind him and pressed more of your palms onto his back. “Emotional stability is equally important to recovery as physical resilience.”

Miguel focused on the gentle course of your breath as it floated into his ear. Your skin was soft where it coasted along his trapezius and tugged away more fabric.

“Yeah,” he murmured, almost sleepy, “I feel protected.”

You clicked your tongue again.

“There seem to be more cuts down your back. Could you lift your shirt, please?”

Miguel reached behind his head to grasp at the wide collar, bunching the garment like the panels on a set of blinds. Then, thinking he might as well, he pulled the shirt the rest of the way off and laid it in his lap. Blood spotted in Rorschach blobs where the shirt creased.

You cleared your throat and choked in the middle of it. Then coughed. Miguel could tell you were moving away by the loss of your body heat.

A flush akin to a swarm of termites infested the skin from his forehead all the way to his chest.

This was asinine. How could you ogle a diagram of Miguel’s organs while eating lunch completely unperturbed, yet blanch at the sight of a few minor scrapes. You’d treated Miguel in worse conditions. You studied all kinds of diseases when in university on both living and deceased specimens. Was Miguel less appealing than a godforsaken corpse?!

You ghosted your hand down Miguel’s back, incrementally increasing contact like a plane touching down on a runway.

“Just get on with it,” he pleaded.

Cool gel spread across his back. “Sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for now?”

“I made you upset.” Upset did not even begin to describe what Miguel felt—“That wasn’t my intention.”

“Your intention? With me?”

“Yes.” Your voice was firm, but not cold. You didn’t want to elaborate. Too bad.

“What aren’t you saying?”

You were silent for so long Miguel half-expected to find you evanesced when he turned around. But there you were, wringing your hands and looking from one side to the other.

“It’s…well, it’s about…” You looked at Miguel and your pulse picked up and his stomach lurched.

You cracked your knuckles and exhaled, eyes squeezed shut and voice flat and sunken as concrete, “It’s about Ant.”

The energy thrumming throughout Miguel’s body dissipated into the throes of instinct. His heart slowed and his pupils narrowed as you continued speaking.

“I know you can’t interfere with other worlds too much, but…” You sighed, “You’re the only one I can depend on for this.”

With the state of the multiverse, Miguel heard those words more and more everyday. But you said them with such trust and vulnerability that he knew you sincerely saw him as a paragon of hope, not the sole idiot willing to take the job.

He already knew he could not do this.

“What’s going on with her?”

“You’re aware that Ant is…”

He narrowed his eyes at you, not giving into finishing that sentence.

You sighed again, every breath too demanding. “A cyborg.”

“That’s right.”

“Her infrastructure is extremely damaged. I don’t know what’s wrong with it, but if something isn’t done soon, I’m worried she’ll get sick. Worse than sick.”

You interlaced your fingers and set them in your lap. Miguel tried not to wrinkle his nose at how small you made yourself, careful not to beg because you knew he’d stop engaging entirely. You had to look like you still had options, but that this was the easiest one. If the odds stacked against Antonia, then he’d know a canon event began brewing and push you completely out of the loop.

“She’s not speaking to me, and I know that if I confront her she’ll retreat further away. But she respects you—admires you, and she trusts you to look after her, like how you’ve been picking up her assignments so she could be with her family.”

The veins on Miguel’s heart were being ripped off one by one.

“I’m positive that if you were to talk to her, she’d accept medical assistance.”

“What kind of assistance?” This diffident skepticism started to sound dangerously similar to affirmation.

“I’m not sure,” you admitted. You quickly supplemented with, “But there are countless universes with better technology than Earth-409. Something has to exist out there that will save her.”

Miguel held your stare as he conjured the old warning, “You can’t transport organic matter between dimensions. Bio-tech included. If Antonia were to return home with foreign prostheses and take off her watch, it’d all be over.”

“Then we can take the schematics and construct them on Earth-409.”

We can. He’d almost glossed over it. You weren’t so much convincing him as you were defaulting on your partnership, seeing this as an extension of every collaboration you’d undertaken and considering the task feasible as long as you put your minds together.

If that were it, Miguel would have an easier time explaining the infringing nature of your request upon Spider Society’s modus operandi. You were idealistic, crafty—stubborn, yes, but not delusional. You would in time accept that worse outcomes than death would have arisen from this kind of involvement and that, in some way, everything that transpired across dimensions followed a greater plan.

But the protectiveness with which you spoke of Antonia seized him. It wasn’t just that you saw Antonia’s potential, that you gravitated toward her youth and charm, or that you believed she needed to be taught better, but you wanted what was best for her even at the cost to yourself.

You spoke of Antonia like a parent would. You spoke of her like Miguel once spoke of Gabi.

“I’ll look into it.” The words slipped free like an anchor. But, as always, if Miguel wanted something done right, he had to do it himself. That clarity settled his emotions down; this was just part of a never ending stream of work. Scoping out a target, determining how best to diffuse a situation.

You nearly collapsed where you sat. “Thank you.”

“This conversation never happened, got it?”

You nodded. Miguel stood and fiddled with his shirt, not keen on putting it on but wanting to promote the illusion that he’d already moved on from this canard.

“I’m serious this time. Don’t do anything until I get back to you.”

You continued nodding as you rose, like your neck was screwed to a hinge. A watery smile rippled across your face as your eyes welled and you cleared your throat against a hiccup.

“Thank you, Miguel.” You laid your hand over your mouth as tears streamed down your face.

Oh, dear God it was awful when people cried around him. And you weren’t even supposed to—he said he’d try the thing, dammit!

Glancing around for anything that could be of use, Miguel inched closer and charitably patted your shoulder, forcing out a few stilted repetitions of “There, there” like he was pointing to something on the ground.

Meanwhile you kept laughing and celebrating him and he hated it. He hated unjustified praise. Yet while what you were doing was certainly…uncomfortable, Miguel couldn’t call it wrong. He was just not equipped to handle this.

When Miguel rolled back his shoulders the bandages shifted too, and once again he was reminded of where you excelled and he failed. You fixed things better than he ever could, in the sense that you actually put things back together. Whatever Miguel touched always came away missing chunks. But now that an issue finally proved too much for you, you turned to him.

Miguel’s hand encompassed a majority of your back as he smoothed down your shoulder blades. “Alright, alright, it’s okay.”

You wiped your face and aired the front of your shirt, analyzing the tear stains there. “This is really embarrassing.”

“You pull it off, don’t worry.”

And somehow the patting gave way to pushing you forward, which is to say pulling you against Miguel, and as the distance closed he found your head against his shoulder and his hands securing your torso.

Your hands sailed over Miguel’s back, minding the wounds and settling on his ribcage, right behind his lungs. And just like that, the strange tension between you dispelled, and you held onto him like you had before, but like Saturday had never happened.

Miguel felt heavy. He was leaden, and rotten, and foolish. You were a good person, and you’d managed to be one without slipping from innocent samaritan to savior like Miguel, and this entire time that he thought you’d been icing him out you were contemplating how one person’s life hung in the balance. Whatever happened inside the hull must have been a trick of the light. This was how he would rewrite the events of that night so he could let it go. What did it matter now, anyway?

It was pitiable, really, the vanity of thinking someone like you could want someone like Miguel.

~~~

“Gold star, Miguel! EOD and you still haven’t dropped dead.”

“Try as I might.” Miguel was back in his suit, scrolling through hub updates alongside his scan results on his watch. A suspicious abundance of endorphins surged from today’s exercise, something that bothered him even after pinning it on the intensity of his effort. “Could still wake up with a third arm, though.”

“Don’t get too excited—we’ll have to see in the morning.”

An amused expression peeked out of the corner of his eye, “Might come sooner than expected.”

He held his fist above yours in display of a digital clock reading half-past midnight; the ones, twos, and threes layered perfectly between your respective screens, save for your five blinking underneath his zero.

You chuckled and switched off your watch, interlacing your fingers and cradling the back of your head as the pair of you continued to the exit.

“Didn’t realize our program ran so long,” you apologized. “Though, I suppose progress is progress, however incremental; now instead of going to bed at three a.m.—”

“Or four,” Miguel mused, “Or five. Or until you’d pass out on top of the—”

You waved a shushing finger by Miguel’s face, “Let’s not cast stones from glass houses.”

“With your throwing arm, I doubt you could manage.”

“I’m close enough to do this—”

Your punch to Miguel’s oblique popped all the cartilage in your knuckles at once. As he raised a brow and pressed onward, you stole a moment out of his line of sight to hiss and shake out your hand.

“Excited to get home?” Miguel segued.

“Far too excited—I’m not tired in the slightest. It’s complicating my commitment to this whole self-improvement thing, honestly…” You drew out the “y” like an exhausted “whee,” rubbing your temple at the idea of voluntarily giving up your time for eight uninterrupted hours of oblivion. “It kills me to have to purposefully bore myself with inactivity so I fall asleep.”

“Can’t imagine having it so rough,” Miguel deadpanned.

His poorly disguised envy reversed your opinion entirely, turning a spoon of bitter medicine into salt in the wound, “I know. And in the morning I have to prepare a balanced breakfast.”

“Harrowing. Clearly Spider Society isn’t focusing on real problems.” The bite in Miguel’s tone backfired so horribly he had to swallow the swelling thickness in his throat. He used to like the ritual of getting ready in the morning, of looking forward to the day. Now the only thing approaching emotion Miguel felt toward the dawn was relief that multiversal collapse had been once more delayed.

The weights and pulleys returned to their places along the walls and the rock-climbing wall smoothed into an unbroken waterfall of vibration-absorbing tile. In mere minutes all evidence of Miguel’s progress had been wiped clean, leaving the room barren for the next visitor to bandy about as they saw fit. Where Miguel would typically be comforted by this veil of mystery, he now felt disconsolated by how the emptiness of the room encouraged the memory of the day to fade quicker.

God, he couldn’t even be glad the day ended anymore. How very nineties. Nineteen-nineties. Grunge, or whatever. He felt so old.

However, hearing you describe your plans for tomorrow did carry Miguel into the eye of the hurricane of his torrential anxieties. A hungrier feeling than covetousness buzzed within him at your new lease on life, though he rationalized it as a milder form of the vicarious living he was used to with Peter B.

Your mouth continuously ticked upwards in a way that teased the edges of your teeth. It was…cute, honestly, how you transformed on a metaphysical level as every dimension of your essence strained against the filter of reality, your features enriching with such vibrance they even caught the light differently, like a shifting patch of duochrome.

So what if it came from poking fun at Miguel? You managed to figure out how to follow a moral compass and have an actual life, unlike him. You were good at everything like that. Certainly better than Miguel.

“—ly inconceivable.”

Miguel’s brain short circuited. It appeared that your mouth was moving because you were talking. To Miguel. About something important. And now he had to be a dick and admit he wasn’t paying attention.

With true bureaucratic acumen, he saved himself by hedging, “Which part?”

You chuckled, “Right, that was barely intelligible. I should be asking whether you’d be more comfortable recording your vitals while performing webwork simply next time you’re in the field. You could give a copy to me and save the other for yourself.”

“You…wouldn’t be supervising.” Miguel tried to avoid the tight lilt at the end of his question by phrasing it as a statement, but the dropped note he compensated with somehow magnified his dejection.

“That’s what I was trying to figure out, but being aware of an observer would only take you out of your zone.” You raised your hands parallel to each other and swiped them down as if directing a beam of concentrated energy, “And if this were to take place in a metropolis, it wouldn’t make a difference whether or not I’m physically present considering I wouldn’t be able to follow you around. I’d be watching you through a camera regardless. Barring that, what would happen in the event of an anomaly? There’re just too many variables.”

This made complete and total sense. But it was still a stupid objection. Of course you should be with Miguel. For his next trial. You did everything together. Perhaps if it were anyone else, Miguel would prefer to work alone, as usual, but this project was a rare exception to his antisociality.

Then again, he might inadvertently place you in harm’s way. And he wouldn’t allow that. But the only way he could ensure your safety would be to keep you with him at all times, and the only way he could do that was if…

Miguel’s gaze bore into you like a power drill. You shrunk and attempted to tug your collar, only to find it already open.

“S-Something on your mind, Miguel?”

“Just an idea.” He advanced a step in your direction, placing his hands on his hips as he scrutinized your form; you had an abnormally elevated heart rate whenever he focused in on it. Might be a problem. “How to knock two birds with one stone.”

He towered over you in his approach, but you only stepped away when it became clear you were going to fall from tipping your head so far back.

“We’d both get what we want from it,” Miguel continued, pointing a thumb at his chest “recording my performance…” Your back met the wall as he next unfurled his index finger, “And tiring you out.”

He aligned his finger gun with your chest, “If you can handle it.”

Judging by the exhilarated twinkle in your eye, his pitch worked. You looked halfway caught between laughing and screaming as your eyes darted around Miguel’s body.

“W-W-Wha—What?!”

~~~

Nueva York’s night wind cocooned your bodies in icy sheets as you stood on HQ’s roof. You glanced over the edge at the distant patches of brush, so uniformly trimmed they appeared as solid a mass as the neighboring concrete pathways. You retreated from the precipice before vertigo seized you, turning to Miguel and fastening your winter coat.

“A loop around the city,” you repeated in disbelief. Several times. The tips of your ears reddened as you shook your head.

“Just a short one,” Miguel firmly promised, though it dampened your excitement, “Until we get enough data.”

The skyline mesmerized you, “Better make it count.”

You straightened your brittle rod of a spine as Miguel phased his mask over his head. The pop of his joints as he stretched made you jump and glance down your own body in fear.

The designs over Miguel’s eyes crested in amusem*nt, “I won’t drop you.”

“Right. More likely you’ll throw me.”

“Not unless you ask.”

“Ah, it’ll be so terrifying I’ll beg for death. How reassuring.”

He unexpectedly snorted, a strange and unnatural action which forced a clearing of his throat.

“C’mon,” Miguel teased, holding out his hand, “Don’t you trust me?”

With a hesitance veering closer to shyness than genuine fear, you unbound one hand from your pocket and slid it across his. Miguel pulled you against his body with greater clemency compared to last time, tucking you against his chest with one arm strapped over your side. You rose as easily from the ground as a box of pastry and Miguel intended to handle you more conscientiously than that.

You enfolded his neck in your arms and nestled your head under his chin. Keeping your gaze trained on the horizon, you squeezed Miguel’s neck and tucked in your legs like you were preparing to zip-line. You wanted to meet the full force of this joyride—no holds barred, no training wheels, no practice run.

Your tenacity bested the bravest Spiders in Miguel’s roster, whose courage emerged from equal parts impulsivity and nihilistic absurdism.

Your grip remained steady. Miguel had never received your touch in a context that didn’t demand needle-precise, featherlight efficiency, which made him curious as to why such an opposite state didn’t inconvenience him whatsoever. If he concentrated hard enough, he could outline each individual finger through his suit.

“Ready?” He spoke lower than he should have, considering the speed of the wind.

You picked it up anyway. Always listening. “I’m ready.”

You were still staring at the city. He could see its chromatic dapples suspended in your eyes like a snow globe. “Do your worst.”

Always eager for a challenge.

Miguel lifted one leg in preparation for a step, but did not bring it down. Instead, the horizon grew taller and the night sky wider, until your stomach collapsed at the realization that the pair of you was banking backward.

The ledge ascended before your eyes in a stream of glass and your scream chorused with the howling wind.

Miguel thrust his fist out and shot a glowing bar of red webbing at the side of HQ, swinging in one great riptide around the building before letting go and letting the momentum launch you two toward a smaller minaret a handful of miles away.

As you rushed past the windows in one acrylic-bright blur, Miguel caught several Spiders marveling that—

“Doc must have upped prices. Thought we only had to do that in the lob—”

—before they condensed into an agglomeration of shadows inside the dwindling silhouette of the tower.

Skyscrapers and hover cars slowly dominated your vision in the distance before they zoomed past you all at once, trailing with the smell of metal, freshly tended flora from apartment balconies, aged petrichor, and cigarette smoke. Your body hummed after chance passes with neon traffic signs before your nerves flipped entirely with each change in trajectory.

You turned your face into Miguel’s neck as at any second you expected to meet the ground, before he cracked another web and lassoed you into the air. The air parted and re-enveloped you like a robe and the sky was as black as the descending, unlit streets and everything was happening so fast that you could no longer tell which way was up.

A collection of sleek, mythically bright and dominating buildings in the heart of downtown hurtled past you in your heaven-bound ascent. The velocity pricked your eyes and numbed your nose, but quickly gave way to total clarity as you found yourselves suspended between rising and falling; you marveled at the almost omniscient view of the miniaturized array of shapes and abstractly organic columns painted with bold, blocky letters.

Your belly quaked in recognition that your descent had resumed, holding your breath and sticking out one arm to feel the wind separate between your fingers.

Another swing through the hollowed middle between two segments of an office complex and you shrieked in laughter in between holding your breath and ducking back into the fortified shelter of Miguel’s upper body.

“Wanna kick this up a notch?” he shouted.

Your chest fluttered against him, “How could this get any better?!”

When you next rocketed into the air, Miguel released his web and activated his watch. A portal opened above you and saturated the starless night like a mock-sun, melting indigo into fuchsia into saffron into topaz.

This trans-dimensional tunnel exited into a blindingly ivory cumulus cloud. Molecules of water not yet nurtured into raindrops stuck to your lashes and brows, amplifying the flush wrought by the atmospheric chill and your pounding heart.

Leaving cottony vortices in your wake as you broke through the clouds, you cracked open one eye to see a wall of viridian.

This New York was a man-made mountain of buildings that looked like stacks of gardening pallets, blanketed by every variety of ivy, fern, and weed. Flowers spilled out of each and every level onto the pale, paved streets as workers gathered them into bouquets the size of shopping carts. Scores of people meandered the ground, their turbans and wide-brimmed sun hats making their heads appear like little UFO’s traveling alongside long, snakelike buses turning corners and ringing bells as they arrived at a requested stop. Mist clung to your hair as you swung in between gigantic boxed fans directing the paths of wild pollen.

Roasted meat and steamed vegetables threaded through the notes of aster and milkweed, leading you down to a strip of open air restaurants on rooftops and terraces layered like rice paddies, before a flock of stock-doves raced across you and tossed your attention back to the sky, where dozens of blimps and hot-air balloons idled between the imposing rays of a rutilant sun.

You shielded your eyes from the sun in desperation to absorb as much of this city as possible. Zipping past a field of solar panels, you spied a megalithic greenhouse that rose twice as high as the buildings you previously passed.

You lifted yourself toward Miguel’s ear to speak at as normal of a volume as you could manage, a feat of consideration toward his enhanced hearing he wouldn’t expect anyone to manage under these circ*mstances. Your voice rang tight and clear and rhapsodic.

“Can we go there?”

You straightened your arm with confidence toward the greenhouse, as though your ecstasy had infiltrated where terror had been through osmosis.

Miguel raised his hand to yours and ejected a fresh web. It splattered in a neon grid under the bare awning of a brutalist library otherwise drowning in moss, bringing in his legs to encourage acceleration in your dramatic arc. You passed close enough to the ground that you squeezed between passersby on bikes, in public transport, and saddled upon horses or camels, who turned in saucer-eyed wonder after the cobalt menace that dove from the sky.

Then you were swinging back up—and up and up and up, the greenhouse magnifying as it came closer until it caught the sun like a great bridge into space.

To let you see as much of the tower’s contents as possible, Miguel circled the building and rose higher with each revolution. Your reflection skipped across each window, beyond which you discerned a hibiscus flower the size of a car tire along with a train of orchids with petals thicker than the insoles of a pair of shoes.

Miguel’s web wrapped his entire forearm as he shortened it, and as you reached the greenhouse’s antenna, he opened another portal and let go, the web flying away like a cut ribbon unveiling your next unknown world.

You emerged into a New York currently enjoying mid-afternoon, though no skyscrapers filtered sunlight through their eaves and parapets. Instead there laid an infinite expanse of ocean broken up only by islets and rocks. Your breath tasted of salt and you could hear the call of gulls in the distance. Just as you questioned Miguel as to the location of any people, the horizon split into two levels, and the bottom one approached with a terrifyingly loud froth of seafoam. All you could do was repeat a petrified mantra of “OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGodOHMYGOD—” as Miguel shot a web at one rock and hydroplaned with his feet until he flew off the edge and the roar of crashing tide met your ears.

Like a supersized Niagara, as far as the eye could see were waterfalls unleashing a planet’s worth of water onto the river below. Buildings grew from the cliff faces with equal parts man-made mortar and natural rock, complete with complex drainage pipes and to carry the water away from residences. Multicolor tarps and umbrellas filled the remaining cracks like berries and so many gargoyles adorned the city they had to have been counted as one of its population demographics.

Miguel swung between the brightly colored metal parts of these towers, covered with what you determined was a rust-resistant paint. To account for the water, the beams of specialized lighthouses illuminated divides between “street” lanes on the river below, and projected advertisem*nts covered the sky in a quilt of holograms. But what fascinated you most of all was that, beyond all of this wonder, sailed ships of every size in a marina that was a metropolis of its own—cruise ships the height and breadth of dams beside dinghies no longer than a bicycle—their sails full as pillows as they caught fair trade winds and blew their foghorns at each other across the way.

Miguel swung between the tallest masts and the intensity with which they tilted from his pull enthralled you. As you continued on your course, you extended your foot to skim the water as Miguel did, and he raised his hand from the middle of your leg to your waist, dipping you so you could touch the turquoise sea. Beneath the water laid a gigantic dome protecting an underwater city.

Miguel clasped you to his front as you teleported to a New York that looked much like the one in your world, except where yours had floating islands, here the buildings rose so high that they curved and hung upside down from the sky; instead of neighborhood blocks, rings of architectural marvels continued in sequences across the entire city. When you passed over certain portions of the highway-wide path cutting through these rings, their sewers teased tunnels bearing more rings, more buildings, more to explore.

If your sense of direction had been skewed before, this circular dimension threw it out entirely. Miguel molded his navigational style to the shape of the city, twisting and flipping through every tight keyhole between buildings in what looked like a swan dive to the ground. Rising and falling, rising and falling, either-or then both until they equivocated to the feeling of linear flight.

Great windmills turned like July pinwheels to generate power for the city’s network of trains and elevators. Everything here was a concentric circle in a greater ripple; even the blazing sun shed haloes as it set over the horizon.

The open space in the middle of each ring allowed Miguel to soar in one backflip after another. You welcomed the transition in his repertoire with gusto, holding out your arms as you climbed into the sky and sticking them as you fell back down. Between two rings, you planted your hands on Miguel’s shoulders and grinned.

“Throw me.”

“Seriously?” Miguel raised a brow, “I was just kidding before.”

“I know you’ll catch me!”

You spoke with so much unalloyed confidence that for a moment it sounded like you wanted to be tossed so that Miguel would catch you.

Between separating from one web and shooting another, he grabbed you by the waist and pitched you into the air. Your body sailed in a limber arc like a deep stretch as thousands of windows dotted your field of vision. Pushing past the protective instincts of your body and reach out a hand toward the distant villas proved arduous without Miguel’s impenetrable protection, but you managed to inch one hand above you before you began your downward descent.

Your cheek met the dense cushion of Miguel’s chest as he caught you. You laid on his left side now in a comfortable bridal carry, your head secured in the crook of his arm and your elbows pinched against your sides. The setting sun softened everything into gold-tinged tufts of dandelion fuzz.

“Again!” you begged him, “Just like that.”

Miguel had gotten to this kind of trust over the course of being Spider-Man. Heroes always provided a sense of relief. But the way you lit up as you reunited with him felt like discovering his potential for the first time.

You hollered as you glided once more. Miguel opened one more portal and followed you into it.

You tore through the aether into a starless midnight identical to the one from which you first launched. As your ascent slowed and you began to fall, the proboscis of a red web scattered over your side and pulled you impatiently into Miguel’s embrace. The very last of your adrenaline drained from your body as you went pliant in his hold and tucked your head against his neck.

Artificial islands hovered above your head as Miguel swung to your burrough, deploying his cape to soften his landing and prevent you from throwing out your neck. At some point during this joyride, your legs locked around his waist, making disboarding an awkward affair.

In an act of convenient idiocy you left a living window unlocked, but the reason for the lack of burglarization of your apartment revealed itself within how intractably the window sat in its frame, refusing to budge no matter how you shook and punched it. Even Miguel grit his teeth from the resistance, but managed to raise it with a ferocious second of full strength, allowing you to part the curtain and climb inside.

You stumbled as your feet touched the floor of your home, leaning helplessly against Miguel as blood resumed flowing through your body.

The billowing curtain calmed enough that he could see past the living room into the kitchen: in the sink soaked a frying pan and a mug ringed with that morning’s coffee. To the left stood a small table with two chairs, where a stack of books with faded spines and missing dust jackets resided in place of a guest. Otherwise, the apartment stood barren of detail, as though, despite your best efforts, you couldn’t figure out how to fill up such a space just by yourself. There were the beginnings of theme in the decor, which had been given up or changed mid-stream in frustration. It reminded Miguel of his own near-abandoned apartment on Earth-928.

Yet while neither idyllic or chic, Miguel could still tell it was yours, and it showed in the way you arranged your possessions with eclectic, sentimental indecisiveness more than the possessions themselves, grouped together in little shrines of living throughout the space that Miguel wanted to tour in reverent silence like an art gallery.

You unfastened one hand from Miguel’s neck and passed it down the plane of his torso. A piece of him broke as you did so—away or down he couldn’t tell, all he knew was that he was not acting the way he should be.

“Thank you for taking me home,” you said. “I had…a lot of fun.”

Miguel swallowed. He needed to refocus, but his speech was poor and his constitution weak as agar. “Good results?”

“I-I forgot all about that, actually.” You stared at the ground. “Should’ve double checked…”

“Maybe we’ll have to do this again.”

“Wow,” you whispered, “wouldn’t that be something. Though, seeing all those universes might prevent me from wanting to come back here when it’s over.”

Miguel laughed at how ludicrous of an idea it was; this was the only universe that had the honor to host your existence. This was your window and your apartment and, as far as he was concerned, your city and your Earth. Nothing else compared.

You took a shaky test of a step back to find your feet still weak.

“Don’t rush yourself. I’ll help,” Miguel consoled, “I could get you to…”

His eyes darted first to the arm chair, second to the open door of your bedroom. Every breath stoked his body into a furnace at the thought of entering your home, touching your things, leaving behind hints of his presence, but the initial pleasure mounted into something acute and debilitating as he honed in on the imperfect way you’d made your bed.

Your other hand trailed to the invisible seam joining Miguel’s mask to the rest of his suit. If you pressed behind his ear, the fabric would disappear and leave him open to you. And then you could be defenseless together, could go to bed together.

Oh.

Oh.

Miguel’s heart pounded against his ribs like a gavel as his mind screamed for reinstatement of control. This state was deeper than instinct. Something that avoided being mastered, repressed, or amputated.

Oh, no.

Spit turned to glue in his throat and dammed his flow of oxygen as he crouched there, an intruder in your window, scheming how best to manipulate you into hosting him until he revealed himself to be weaker than he ought to be, unable to physically protect you from karmic damage beyond his control, unable to even be functionally vulnerable for what time you could enjoy together. Miguel would fail as he always failed and cause you to know the world as a crueler place as a result.

Miguel’s talons rendered the pulpy, cheap wooden window frame in an attempt to stay still. He could not tip over the threshold.

Sometimes an animal goes so long without a basic need that they overindulge when they finally obtain it. A starving dog will gorge itself on food and overwhelm its spent body to death. A core necessity becomes so foreign that both its absence and presence are deadly.

Miguel could not accept love in moderation. And he didn’t—he didn’t know if he wanted that in actuality, to have to take it all at once because he’d lose you either way. He should have been more careful.

The cacophony of fright in his body grew until the tremulations erupted into externality with the wail of a police siren several blocks away. Miguel almost thought it was coming for him.

“Are you alright?”

You studied him carefully, the red and blue lights of the distant chase blinking in your irises. The world began closing in on him.

“W-What are you talking about?”

“Your heart rate is much higher than during exercise.” Miguel realized that your fore and middle fingers were on the pulse point in his neck. “That might be an issue.”

He hadn’t noticed a weak spot had been exploited. You could hurt him. He could let you.

He grabbed your wrist and flicked away his head. The siren’s sound waves sliced the air like sickles as a second car’s tires squealed on a turn.

“I have to go.”

You decided to let go of any issue and gathered enough strength to bid Miguel goodnight.

“Stay safe,” you implored, stroking his cheek and hesitating as you whispered, “I…worry about you.”

He closed the window as you exited to your bedroom. Miguel squeezed his eyes shut in a way that was both in pain and relief. The curtain settled in place and blocked his view from anything else and, as his heart rate settled, Miguel softly pounded his head against the brick wall.

With the sirens crescendoing and then fading away, Miguel ordered Lyla to fetch the suspect’s coordinates. Once obtained, Miguel backed away from the wall and fell backward, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes before, in no hurry whatsoever, Miguel tapped his watch to open a portal a split second before he met the unforgiving gravel. No matter whether in action or inaction, everything he did always ended in regret.

~~~

“Suspect is headed south on fifth avenue, over.”

“Copy that. We got three cars in pursuit, over. Suspect is armed—repeat, suspect is armed—”

The smell of burning rubber and exhaust stained the air as Miguel tailed the speeding Bronco, police chatter feeding into his ear and clearing out all other thoughts like pest control.

With another swing his shadow swallowed the boxy Bronco as it banked into a torn-up, forgotten side street, before slipping over the sidewalk as Miguel shot a web between two street lamps; as the driver attempted to swerve out of the way, the cage of the car hit his web and flipped it over, allowing Miguel to web its undercarriage and hoist it into the air. It ascended so quickly that a tire struck a streetlamp, making it flicker.

Stuck upside down, the driver cut his seatbelt free and kicked open the door, focused only on making it out undetected from here-on.

Miguel didn’t give him the chance.

“You look lost.”

The fugitive spun in fright, gripping his head in equal parts confusion and nausea from the violent seizure of the car.

“N-Not lost,” he called, “Just…exploring.”

“Streets get pretty dangerous this time of night. Better turn in soon.”

The fugitive tensed with the encroaching sound of sirens. His eyes darted in search of an exit as he slid his foot behind him, preparing to make a run for it. He found a pair of red false-eyes and the beginnings of a tattoo-like neck design peeking from the shadowed alley. The faint eminence of Miguel’s costume caught the sprinkle of rain to make him appear half-spectral, almost hallucinatory.

The fugitive blew a disbelieving laugh, “That a costume?” He relaxed a tad with the blurred spider insignia on Miguel’s chest, “Hoo boy, you're one of those Spider-Woman sycophants, huh?”

Miguel fought the urge to roll his eyes.

“W-Well, what’re you doing hiding all the way over there, huh?” the fugitive continued, “C’mon out, lemme see what you got.”

“It’d be easier for the both of us if you gave up now.”

“Yeah, ’course it would. Must be your first time out and about, right?”

You know what, let Miguel humor this guy. Why not? “Here? Maybe second. Third.” Technically not a lie.

“Oh gee, what an honor, Spider-Man,” he goaded, voice sickly gleeful and hands raised to chest level in mock surrender. They descended a millimeter at a time to his waist. “Can’t believe I’m the one that gets to herald the end your career—”

He whipped out his gun from the waistband of his jeans and aimed it at Miguel’s head, triggering a scorching blast of a bullet that rang throughout the quiet alley. In the flickering stretch of light from the broken street lamp, the fugitive saw the smoking bullet hole in the brick wall, and Miguel’s head tilted only a centimeter away from it.

The fugitive took a step back as dumbfoundedness slowly sharpened into fear.

“Hey, I’ll be nice,” Miguel teased, “It’s my first time losing a fight. Maybe you can show me how it’s done.”

The fugitive shot again. Again. Again. One shot for every instance of lightnessness in the alley to try catching Miguel off-guard, only for the lamp to spark again and show Miguel advancing in a predatory crouch toward his target, talons out and the red marks of his costume glowing neon.

As the fugitive ran out of bullets and turned into a sprint, Miguel pounced on him, back curling as he grabbed the opposing man’s collar and knocked him unconscious.

Red and blue lights enraptured the murky alley to reveal a web-cocooned thief hung by the feet from a fire escape, his shadow appearing to break away and scale the neighboring building.

As Miguel departed the scene, he reached over his shoulder to scratch a persistent itch, so distracting that he nearly slipped on his climb; What started as a nick of pain widened into a cord of unbearable fire along Miguel’s backside. He pressed his scapula through his suit and dragged his blunted nails until he was not raking through the slick of sweat, but blood, on the stinging divot where he’d been injured during trials earlier that day.

No matter how intense the program may have been, this tiny wound should have vanished by now. It was shallower than a papercut and attended more delicately than a third-degree burn.

His heart raced as his hastily called portal burst before him.

Cutting through the remaining film of the gateway, Miguel stalked to his lab and awakened his computer screens, projecting several video recordings from their files and making a collage in the space above his console.

Dragging every kind of sequencing machine before him, he worked in a brutish sweep to collect cheek swabs and blood samples while picking out snippets of adaptability, system integration, genetic reconstitution, better—stronger—perfect, shaking so terribly the extraction needle slipped and pierced the meat of his palm instead of his finger. Wasting no time, Miguel curled a fist and let the blood dribble into a spare vial.

His watch glowed as it limned Lyla’s avatar.

“Take a breather, big guy.” She blinked across the canyon of machinery on his desk, “Your cortisol levels are off the charts.”

“I’ve got everything under control, Lyla.”

She stared at the scattering of blood on the hematology analyzer set to max speed, brows flickering in varying degrees of bunchiness across her face, “This isn’t the behavior of someone who’s stable, Miguel.”

“I didn’t say that.” He wrapped his hand in a stream of gauze, “I said it’s under control.”

In a comet of pixels Lyla hopped to the floor and grew to lifesize, laying a translucent hand on Miguel’s arm.

“You’re hyperventilating. Tell me what’s making you upset.”

The line of machines chorused in completion of their sequences, turning Lyla’s body into an emerald pillar and dyeing her heart-shaped glasses blue.

Miguel pushed past her to examine the results on his monitors. As lines of text scrolled before his eyes, he slumped over his keyboard in relief.

“I’m not upset, Lyla, I promise.” A stray vial of his original serum clattered on its side and began rolling off the desk. He caught it as it coasted over the edge, bringing it up to eye level to count its bubbles.

Laughter effervesced the air and reanimated life within the spread of videos. Miguel combed through the screens until he found the source of the sound, a little prologue of trial eighty-two when you found endless comedy in how Miguel couldn’t sync up one machine to another. Your eyes shone their constant, magnificent luster and humor percussed your body, and both versions of Miguel stood entranced before you.

He studied his profile in the video, ran his hand down his cheek, the corner of his mouth, over his jaw as he pondered how his face could have radiated that amount of happiness. Then he realized he recognized that look from another time.

He dragged another file before him. A crayon-green pitch unfolded under the cleats of a little girl as she bounded toward Miguel—who he once was, and swore never to become again.

“We did it this time!”

“Okay, okay—mija—”

He watched joy cross his face like an estranged friend on the street. He watched as each fine line carved his skin in exactly the same place between the two videos, and his eyes sloped in the same way, as his shoulders bounced with easy-going realization at his own humiliating slip-up of getting frosting on his face and frying the server of a machine.

You laughed in time with Miguel’s ghost. And there was just…something between your expression and his that Miguel found to be similar. To be close.

Your last words to him echoed through his mind just as they’d been doing all night: “I worry about you.” And he didn’t want to agonize over what you said and how you said it, but it sounded different to the other times you spoke to him; the pause after the first word, as though you wanted to stay something else, the waver of your gaze like you almost couldn’t bear to say to his face, the broad contact of your palm against his cheek. “I worry about you.” As in, “I think about you.” “I care about you.” “I need you.”

Could it actually be possible?

Miguel lifted the vial and turned it over, watching the bubbles snake their way through the fluid before popping or combining with each other.

“Miguel?” Lyla called.

“I’m okay. Everything’s going to be okay.” With a decisive inhale he loaded the injection gun and pressed it to his shoulder.

Ice spread throughout his capillaries as the serum cloaked his blood. He cleared the air of his holoscreens and turned to his assistant with steely resolve.

“If I can just make sure everything stays in line, I’ll finally be able to keep what I’ve always wanted. I need you to run a few simulations for me, can you do that?”

Chapter 7

Chapter Text

Miguel found Ant crouched between the curled fingers of the Statue of Liberty. Like a restless bird she watched the ribbony waves creep up the edges of the island, at once prepared to take flight should the tiny bubbles of seafoam grow too rabid, yet treating the act of staying as though it were proof of something. He’d always hated that about her—the ego, the intractability, the morbid curiosity, the way she cleaved a difference between duty and accountability. He could never succeed in coaching her to outgrow such behavior. It was difficult to solve for others a problem that persisted within oneself.

The cast of flame melded with Miguel’s portal. Ant neither acknowledged his presence as he peered over the railing nor when he hung from it to look her in the eye. The squeeze was too tight to allow Miguel to move next to her, so he stood on Liberty’s shoulder and waited for her to break.

Ant glared at him for the first minute, Miguel could tell, though she kept her chin directed at the water. Then she huddled tighter and wrapped her arms around her knees like she was trying to compress herself into a solid block. She didn’t like to be observed in silence. It felt like being tested. It made her fidget, and that’s when Miguel heard it: a rattling mixing with the whirring from her limbs, like a loose bolt in an old machine.

“Do you need something?” Ant asked.

“Do you?”

She turned her head at that, offense spreading all over her face like a tomato spattering against a wall. Miguel hadn’t meant his question to be inflammatory, but it at least prompted movement from her. He nodded at her hands and feet.

“You’re in trouble,” he stated simply.

“Gonna give me another lecture on what it means to be a hero? Just get it over with.”

“I’m talking about your tech. It’s been wrecked, hasn’t it?”

Ant shrunk. A speck of ash from Liberty’s fire.

“N-No,” Ant returned, voice squeezed thin. “It’s not that bad. I can deal with it.”

Miguel had expected her resistance, he expected her to lie and dismiss him, but her nauseated horror at being found out sounded like a kid discovered to have totaled their dad’s car. Like Ant damaged something that didn’t belong to her. Guilt twisted tight and sharp between his ribs like a screw.

Miguel shook his head and held up his hands, calming her down. “It’s alright. I’m—I’m not…I’m not mad. I just want to know what happened.”

Ant swallowed, adamant about staying shadowed beneath the torch. Miguel could still see her, but not as clearly as if she were to face him head-on; she looked paler, and her eyes seemed sunken in, like overripe fruit.

“I got into a fight.”

“Yeah. That’s our job.” Miguel inhaled, “Can you tell me when? And how?”

“It was a few weeks back. Got overloaded and, I don’t know, shut down for a second. When I woke up, I was…things were…”

She rubbed the nape of her neck, digging where metal attached to skin.

“You know, like, some parts stopped doing their job, and the stuff they were meant to slow down started speeding up. I thought I could get around it by just feeding myself more juice, but I…”

“You need more each time,” Miguel finished. He whispered it for fear of an echo—repetition into oblivion.

Ant nodded. She returned to staring at the water. “I wasn’t supposed to let decay happen. I was made to be better than this.”

“It was always going to go this way, at some point.”

“Because of the canon?”

“No, kid, just common sense. Stupidity is hardwired into humanity’s code.”

The tension locking Ant’s body loosened to the point her knees tipped away from her head. She lowered her hands to her ankles as she took in what Miguel said: despite sustaining an incident such as hers, he still thought of her as human. She may not have physically functioned as one, but behaviorally, psychologically, she was just like anyone else.

“Why didn’t you come to me about this before?” Miguel asked.

“I don’t want to give excuses.”

“You don’t want to be honest. Tell me what you’re feeling.”

Ant kicked her legs over Liberty’s knuckle. “I don’t want more people to know than already do—you, Ben, and Jessica. The changes were supposed to be undetectable.”

She dragged her hand over the smooth juncture of her neck as the unspoken cap to that sentence swelled in her mouth: undetectable to others. Always for others. The divide between organic and synthetic pronounced itself more each time she looked in the mirror.

Ant sighed. “There’s no version of Antonia Rodriguez that went through that accident with Shocker. At least, not any that I’ve met. And because they don’t know, they treat me like I’m one of them. They treat me well. And that means I get to keep this body, and my friends, and my family.”

Ant crawled back over the balcony railing of the torch, but she did not abandon the premises. She simply bowed her back to watch the water shimmer with the glow of the moon and city; an unspoken invitation. Miguel swung up Liberty’s arm and planted his feet in front of Ant. She looked down while he stared up. The night was an ink stain whose edges feathered out when it met the skyline.

“You can’t hide it forever,” Miguel warned. “Not anymore.”

Her features trembled with fury, “Yes, I can. I’m supposed to protect people. Shield them. To do that I need to stay close.”

“You’ve got it backwards. You’re shielding people in order to stay close to them, and look where it’s gotten you.” Miguel didn’t touch Ant when she turned around. He caught the way anger rippled across her face to become grief. “Think about what we do. What we are. Dividing black from white—good from evil—that means having to operate by extremes. There is no happy medium between heroism and civility. You cannot have both.”

“Fine. Maybe I can’t escape things forever, but at least a little longer,” Ant bargained. She might as well have been reciting from Miguel’s playbook, attempting to squeeze into a gap of a hearth and home, cracking the foundations of a place she didn’t fit and hoping that despite the crumbling, as long as she stayed still, she’d be no different than an extra brick. “I can at least hold it off until Amaya graduates college, right? She’ll be an adult, she won’t—she won’t need me as much. Maybe she’ll even hate me less for leaving…”

The phantom instinct of a doting father twitched within Miguel; it was only two years Ant asked for. But he reminded himself that her fate was unavoidable, and granting her this reprieve would only accelerate its arrival.

He recalled her story one last time: in five years, after steadily drifting apart like two continents—Ant giving into paranoid protection in direct response to Amaya’s inflated, rebellious bullishness, the two effectively trading places in personality—Amaya would tail her sister on her job, discover her true identity, and meet her end. Ant would burn the mantle of Spider-Woman, lasting a little over a year in hiding before returning to hero work.

She could only delay the inevitable, not defy it. The least amount of interference, on both Miguel and Ant’s ends, was the best option. They needed to be careful.

Miguel laid a hand on her shoulder, then moved it to her neck and squeezed the flesh there. While his grip was firm, it wasn’t torturous, and yet purple bruises already began forming when he pulled away. He could see dull capillaries branching underneath her skin. Everything on Ant’s body—her suit, her tech, her limbs, her complexion—was gray.

“Mitigation isn’t an option anymore. I’m sorry, kid, but we need to do something now or risk rebuilding you entirely.”

She removed Miguel’s hand and turned away, sniffling. Something inside Miguel creaked with strain.

“I can fix it,” Miguel promised, “But I can’t reverse the damage. The only one who can prevent things from getting worse is you.”

“Why was I ever—” She bore the heels of her hands into her eyes as she considered what would constitute her treatment: there would be no medicine. Surgery meant trading parts and changing oil. She was a thing, and therefore could neither heal nor grow. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing’s wrong with you.” Miguel said it without meaning or reason to speak and cursed himself for it; an expression of that kind was a useless and dangerous sentiment that deluded the both of them. He feared speaking it too much would ignite ambition within him like a hot coal and spur him to action, especially considering he believed the words.

Because what Miguel hated most about Ant was how she made him think that, even with his flaws and his biology and his past, he deserved to be loved as he was. He hated that he believed she should have the same, that he’d fight for her freedom to do so, that he’d be there for her if she couldn’t find acceptance anywhere else.

But that wasn’t how things should happen, nor how things have happened for any of their heroic incarnations, so it won’t be how things will happen, so long as their bodies were the way they were. Hindsight is foresight. They should be grateful to even receive pity considering how many times this tragedy has been recycled.

Miguel lifted his hand again, preparing to open a portal, lay his palm on her nape, and guide her away.

“It’s not your fault, Ant. It’s just the way things are.”

Droplets pinged against the metal floor of the balcony. “It hurts.”

And this made his nearing hand pause, hesitating to touch her for fear of making it worse. He didn’t know she felt what was happening to her body. He didn’t think she could. But perhaps it had only been muted by her programming, not outright removed. Perhaps Ant had just been very good at hiding it.

“I’m…I’m sorry.”

“It always hurts. Every part hurts.”

“I know.” For lack of anything better to say, Miguel lied. Or, maybe not lied, but defaulted on a bad habit: I know, as in, I heard you. As in, I’m not disagreeing or doubting you. As in, I can’t take it when things repeat. It feels like doubling. “I’m sorry.”

Ant turned into him, asking to be hidden, to be comforted, but keeping her limbs tucked in so as not to touch him. For a moment, Miguel attributed it to pride, hoping that this was a sign things weren’t so bad if Ant was still embarrassed to need his help of all people, until he saw how she pasted her hands over her face and hid herself in her hunch and realized she considered herself the incursive one in this situation. The alien. The parasite.

Miguel was sorry for them both, not only because Ant had to resort to him for compassion, but that this may have been their last moment together before Miguel flipped to the opposite extreme of their universal dichotomy.

Above all, Miguel hated the kinship he felt with Ant because it made him second guess his plan with the improved serum. With you. This was his one shot to wipe the slate clean; a new future, an erased past, a return to that gray blend of anonymity he forsake when he became Spider-Man.

Miguel laid his hand atop Ant’s head. He spoke no more reassurance; this would be the last thing he needed to give up.

~~~

They shoved Mysterio on the edge of the godforsaken mezzanine of this prison hangar. No good views for people watching, nor of villains getting zapped by the Go Home Machine, nor of the holoscreen that baby-faced intern Spider-Byte used to project her serial dating reality TV shows. The only mental stimulation Mysterio experienced was the uncomfortably wet smack of gums on a sandwich by the prisoner to his left.

The child warden’s avatar buzzed to life in her swivel chair. Margo Kess, a.k.a Spider-Byte of Earth-22191, walked among the collection of ne’er-do-wells squatting in their geometric cells and yawned, opening her tablet and readying a gigantic magnet to snatch up her targets like an oversized arcade claw machine. When Margo passed Mysterio’s cage, he tapped the glass in agitation.

“Hello? Hellooo? Hi, yeah, do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting over here? Can you open up another machine and get this over with?”

Margo looked him up and down, “You think we’ve got a second trillion-dollar interdimensional face-hugger hiding behind a curtain?”

“I think you could find some way to minimize this godforsaken wait time! Especially with a high-level threat such as myself.”

“High-level? Like…here, yea high?” Margo lined her fingers up with her neck, “Because I’ve had it up to here with you. Suck it up and wait your turn, bozo.”

“Where do you get the nerve to speak to me that way?!”

Margo pointed her thumb behind her, “You know what, lemme see if I have any extra for you. Gimme a minute to search.”

She took in one more second of Mysterio’s protests before disappearing.

The chewing grew wetter, like the person had slathered more condiments onto their sandwich. Mysterio’s mist twitched.

Oh, he’d leave these fools weeping in the shadow of his celebrity. By the time Mysterio was finished, every Spider-Woman of every timeline would watch everything they loved wash away in a purifying, biblical flood, incapable of halting their shed of tears despite knowing it would only increase the supply of water.

A momentary choking interrupted the chewing, followed by strained hacking like a dog experiencing acid reflux.

They’ll rue the day they first crossed Mysterio, master of shadows and—Christ, were they eating a sudsy sponge—oh, how they’ll beg to be put out of their misery, to be rid of—oh, God, the gnashing, the—the glory of battle! How—Oh my God, I can’t take this anymore—

Mysterio sank against the wall of his cage as the accursed discord of chewing grew louder. Did this person just have a ginormous meal or digest each bite four times like a cow? He beat his fist against the wall of his cage, hoping the vibrations carried to their side.

“Quiet down over there!”

The chewing ceased and the decrease in audio stimulation nearly moved Mysterio to tears. He raised his head in surprise at having been respected, curious to know the occupant sharing the cage next to his and instantly regretting all effort to focus his eyes beyond the static walls separating them.

The prisoner to Mysterio’s left was less human and more a pile of liver-spotted flaky pie crust, the way her wrinkled skin appeared so dry it looked like scales. In short, she was old. Not so much prehistoric as primordial. She looked like she was about to tell Mysterio he was the spitting image of the Neanderthal that started his family line.

She took one look at him and held up her forefinger as she dropped open her mouth. Mysterio counted a dynasty’s worth of crowns on her teeth. Then, like a thought just occurred to her, she belched and resumed eating her sandwich.

Mysterio ground his teeth, “Lady, you need me to write it out for you? Stop that.”

“Rude.” She had a strange accent, her consonants rolled like a plane propeller.

“You want me to be nice, I can use your teeth as brass knuckles and ram that thing down your gullet.”

The woman squawked a laugh at that, spraying granules of mustard seed at the wall. Mysterio shivered at her gross display of senile dysfunction. Youth! That was the ultimate weapon, prize, and currency in stardom. This sight was all the more reason for Mysterio to pursue vampiric blood transfusions once he turned fifty.

“You look like bobble I use to water my plants.”

“What?”

“Big bulb at top and stick everywhere else,” she elaborated. Her accent seemed to shift on a scale from Russian to Bostonian. “Almost like enema.”

Mysterio shuffled to the next corner, “You’re disgusting.”

“And you are coward.” The woman kicked out her legs and relaxed against the wall, picking greens from between her teeth with a toothpick, “All bark and no bite.”

He scoffed, “What would you know.”

“Uych tiy, where to start…” the woman followed the bustle of Spiders through the entrance of the hangar and chuckled at a figure locking up an unconscious Jackal variant. Upon depositing the villain into his own prismatic cell, the Spider turned to leave, but not before exchanging a tense stare with Mysterio’s mystery matron.

“That,” the woman said as she watched the retreating figure of the Spider, “is not my original Spider-Man. It’s his successor. His son.”

Mysterio couldn’t resist the temptation of asking, “What happened to the first one?”

The woman smiled the absent, unconscious smile worn when feeding pigeons in a park. “I killed him.”

“You’re bluffing,” Mysterio accused. “I don’t believe you.”

The woman tutted at him, then whistled at the Spider continuing on his way. He turned and glared with so much pressure that the dust in the air could have turned to diamonds. Her grandmotherly lilt hardened into a crone’s sneer.

“Dobriy denh, Watson. Get those flowers I sentcha? Petunias make that plot in Gravesend really pop.”

The Spider twitched like he touched a live wire, “Shut your mouth.” His voice cracked and his shoulders hunched in a way that made his head seem bigger; another teenager.

“Come now, no hard feelings! I’m honored to be the one to kill your papa~”

The Spider webbed an empty crate at the woman’s head. He wore automated shooters on his wrist. All at once a swarm of Spiders rushed to the kid and ushered him away before he escalated things further. The crate crumpled to the floor in dramatic folds like a flattened croissant as the wall of the woman’s door flickered in agitated bars.

It was here, as his breath died in his lungs, that Mysterio took stock of his neighbor; the heavily padded ensemble that dressed the woman was not the dated church attire he’d initially assumed it to be, but a pinstripe blazer and understated, mid-length dress. Mysterio couldn’t put a finger on when her clothes could have been made, but the more he studied it, the more apparent its superior construction and quality became. Pointy-toed alligator skin mules hugged her feet and made her outstretched legs look like those of the Wicked Witch of the East after being flattened by Dorothy’s house.

“How,” Mysterio seethed, head flicking between the entrance and the woman. “Tell me—I have to know.”

The woman blew a raspberry and shooed him away, showing off the gems encrusting her knuckles like plucked dragon eyes. Her voice once again shifted, shedding its accent, “Eh, you’ve got better things to worry about. And I’m feeling my siesta coming on. Can’t keep up with you youngins in my old age. Must be in a different lane.”

“Oh, come on,” Mysterio wheedled, “how could you resist regaling a victory like that?! It’d be the only thing I’d go on about for the rest of my life, it’d be my greatest achievement, it—it’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do!”

The woman chuckled, “Everyone wants to take down their Spider. But not everyone is capable of making it permanent. You’re not ready for it.”

“Why not?”

“If you anything like my Mysterio, you not graduate beyond flashy heists and publicity stunts. That ugly cape is proof.”

Mysterio glanced once again at the entrance of the hangar, catching the smear of colors from passing Spiders as they mingled, traded gossip, rushed to and from missions, and fixed their costumes. An endless parade of virtue that only pretended to reject the notoriety they accumulated.

“You haven’t really killed Spider-Man if there’s still someone to take up the mantle,” Mysterio challenged. “Spider-Men, Spider-Women, all their duplicates, they’re a symbol for something greater. They’re reifications of goodness. To kill that, you have to destroy the concept of them entirely.”

“J. Jonah Jameson try to no avail, buster.”

“J. Jonah Jameson doesn’t know what I know.”

The woman at first threw Mysterio an exasperated glance, then did a double take at the intensity with which the mist in his helmet spun, curling in hypnotic tendrils like the dust of a nebula; Mysterio glowed with passionate spite.

“I’ve been sitting on this for months, biding my time, waiting for the right moment to expose Spider-Woman as the abomination she is.” Mysterio’s voice turned airy and dreamlike, “And once I do, she’ll be recast as the basest stock of the world, only spoken of as a monster of the night, while I will be recorded as the man who changed the trajectory of history.”

The woman raised her brows and spoke in a carefully prodding manner, “Then why haven’t you done it?”

“I’m always interrupted when I get to that part.” Mysterio dropped his head into his hands, “First time, Spider-Woman beat me. Second time, I fell through a hole in space. And now I’m here.”

“You know why?” the woman prompted. Mysterio turned to her incredulously as she rounded with, “You play fair. You fight by her rules. It’s fair. Clean. Very boring.”

“How’d you do it, then?”

The woman stared off into nothing for a long time. It would have been simple to let the specialness of her success go on, but whether she saw kinship in Mysterio’s ardent grudge or became curious as to whether her success could be refined into a method, she spoke again, her accent at its thickest. It seemed that, while she clearly knew the intricacies of English slang and grammar, she was at her most genuine when she dropped the flimsy auxiliary verbs and conjunctions in accordance with Russian grammar.

“Spider-Man let my brother die. He was mobster—but left, try to change. Started working with law. But after bad bust, he and chief of police ended up in danger. Guess who Spider-Man saved.” The woman made a sign of the cross over her chest, then wiped her mouth. “I learned not all life had equal value in Spidey’s eyes. I figured, hey, if it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, I should repay Spider-Man. So I tracked down his kid, showed him the high life, praised him for being good shot—youngsters cling to any attention when their parents not much around—until he trusted me enough sneak out of bed instead of just ditch class. I was the one he told about his powers. So ashamed, didn’t know where they came from at all. And with that, I used him to recreate my brother’s end. I got to watch Spider-Man see his child corrupted, watch child realize his dad is superhero, and confirm that Spider-Man always could have saved everyone, as long as he sacrificed himself to do it. When he got trapped beneath rubble, I walked up to him with the gun I made his boy clean and practice with for weeks, aimed it right between Spidey’s eyes, and…”

The woman extended her arm and co*cked a right angle with her thumb and index finger, “Pow.”

Mysterio stared at her in shock.

“You want your nemesis to fail, you fight dirty. That means getting personal.”

His breathing quickened, “I’ll do it. I’ll do anything to get that final shot.”

The woman grinned, “How about a partnership, Beck?”

“You got it, Miss…” Mysterio shook his head, “I’m ashamed to say it, but I don’t recognize you. You don’t look like any of the villains where I’m from.”

“No problem, bobik. Blending in is what I do best. I am Demeter Osipovna Smerdyakova. But you can call me Chameleon.”

~~~

You were certain of it now: hell not only existed, but occupied its own parallel universe that somehow collided with Earth-928, inverting the most perfect, electrifying, intoxicating high of your life into infinite torture.

“Right behind you,” Miguel murmured, hand firm on your waist to keep you still as he squeezed past you. His chest pressed against your back for a wink of a second before he made it through to inspect a row of chugging machines. You reeled so violently from the warmth and solidity of Miguel’s contact—the way you almost bent over the table, its edge digging into your hips—that your permissive, faux-nonchalant wave in his direction knocked over the graduated cylinder bearing the latest version of the improved serum. You managed to catch it before it truly spilled, amethyst contents grazing the lip of the cylinder before slipping back down.

Miguel regarded you strangely as he settled beside you, but commented neither on your fluster or bluster. If you were a degree more egotistical (or desperate for his attention), you would have thought he was trying to get a rise out of you. It would explain his turn in behavior as of late.

Your noble refusal of any pursuit of romance had been met with what could only be described as a contest for your very soul ; you and Miguel were in greater proximity than ever, your numerous pieces of equipment caging you tightly, making Miguel have to stretch in front of you or over your head to grab a device, to lean in to clarify his words through the thrum of electronics, to graze your hand as he toiled, to touch you to get your attention or maneuver past you without interrupting your work (you jumped regardless). In essence, to be close, always. With each pass and press and prompting glance, you lost ground in this war against temptation like a wayward priest.

The advances escalated quietly and were, you were certain, entirely your own fault. You considered them harmless indulgences at first: Miguel bringing you coffee when you clocked in, or offering to carry your things between your respective labs, sharing lunch together, prolonging said lunch for the sake of talking to him more, and, of course, savoring the occasional graze in a way that, true to your priestly vow of sexual asceticism, bordered on comically virginal.

Safe to say, the forces of evil took the lead in this psychomachia. The only thing keeping you grounded was the reminder that some version of yourself enjoyed a universe where you acted on all your depraved fantasies. If you went by the logic that each thought bore its own universe, then tons of universes were forming where you got what you wanted. All of them, opening everywhere, even at this very second. Gaping wide. Spread-eagling—

But the worst instance came when Miguel wasn’t even there—not physically, that is. One morning, as you walked through the doors to HQ’s lobby, toggling three separate holoscreens with the newest transcriptome for Miguel’s genetic readout, he rang you up.

You cheerily greeted the miniature projection on your watch, “Miguel!”

“Hey. Bad—”

“Never,” you interrupted. You stiffened and swallowed down your excitement, worried your keenness might come across as callous. This was a matter of Miguel’s future, after all. “I mean, I’m happy to update you on the phosphoramidite project whenever you ask.”

“Funny. I remember you saying something very different a few months ago.”

“I remember you acting very differently a few months ago.” You slowed your steps and exchanged a few greetings with previous patients, stretching this call like a candy stick. “I hope you’re not thinking you won out of the two of us. Seems everything turned out alright once I got what I wanted.”

The tops of Miguel’s eye marks flattened, sarcastic. “I wasn’t aware we were fighting.”

“Not fighting, no. Just a bit of friendly competition.”

“Why don’t we settle the score? Couple rounds between you and me.”

Hearing him say it like that, so ironic it bordered on being a euphemism, made you blush. “Name the time, O’Hara.”

“Any time you’ll have me, partner.”

A Spider on horseback halted your procession before Miguel could respond. Patrick O’Hara, a.k.a Web-Slinger of Earth-31913. You treated him several days ago for exposure to a potentially lethal blast of microwaves during an encounter with a Carnage anomaly, an event that stumped the other medics in HQ. Your hours had completely flipped since quitting Alchemax, an inconvenience to many of Spider Society’s members but an improvement for many others; for example, if you weren’t in your clinic at nine o’clock the other day, Web-Slinger would have had to wait an additional nine hours for treatment, which in his case would likely have proved fatal.

Yet did this improvement outweigh the part of the day you weren’t in HQ? You felt like you weren’t doing enough.

The cowboy testified to a complete recovery, thank goodness, something he partially attributed to fresh air and twice-daily intake of so much whiskey it seemed better to call it a handshake than a “couple of fingers.”

“Patched me up in a blink! No quicker draw than a physician, what I’ve always said,” Web-Slinger praised, tipping his hat. “No nicer hands, neither.”

“Why, thank you very much.”

“Hello? Hey, I’m talking to—”

“Think you could take a look at Widow too?” Slinger continued, patting his steed’s neck, “Fearing my sweet gal may need knee replacement soon from this gig.”

“Now, I never thought I’d say this, but I cannot perform surgery on a horse, Patrick.”

“Why don’t we negotiate over some top-shelf rye? Give you a taste of those medicinal properties I’ve been preaching.”

“Are you asking me out for a drink?” Granted, a drink to extort your services, but you were both conscious of the bit. You grinned when you caught Miguel’s bafflement in your periphery. You sighed, dream-drunk on repeating your refrain in a different context, “My goodness, how forward of you, Mr. O’Hara.”

In that second Miguel’s hologram flickered to lifesize, clearing his throat and leering imposingly at his subordinate until he took the cue to leave. Widow swung to a lower buttress as you called after Web-Slinger to continue routine physical therapy for several more days, just to be safe. Then you turned back to Miguel’s stately gold visage, no longer a dwarfed bust but a flickering Adonis at your side.

“You’re getting distracted,” he accused.

“Can’t help my popularity, Miguel.” You continued walking, glancing occasionally at the pixelated cape flowing down his back. “If you want my undivided attention, the surest way is to lay on an operating table.”

The lower half of his mask shifted in an expression you couldn’t discern. He never took that thing off around you except during rounds at the lab, which made gauging his mood nigh impossible.

“What’re the scans saying?”

You pulled up a chart that organized Miguel’s blood by its populations of monocytes, lymphocytes, basophils, neutrophils, and eosinophils, running your pen down the accompanying text of their genomes, “Many driver mutations have regressed into dormant passenger mutations, which is encouraging. This means the kinase inhibiting properties of the serum continue to prove effective.” You paused at a line of text, “However…”

Miguel’s posture straightened even more, like his every hair had been coaxed upward by a brewing bolt of lightning. “What? What is it?”

You shook your head, “This gene—S100A4—was completely neutralized in our last trial, but its expression is now more elevated than before we started phase testing.”

You fretted over the rest of the transcriptome, “Here, too, we’d gotten these genes under control only yesterday. How could they have gotten so much worse?”

Miguel tried laying a hand on your shoulder only for it to phase through. You didn’t notice the consolation as you fretted about the screens, making him have to speak up. He called your name, “Hey— Hey, it’s alright. Look at GJA8 and PDZK1P1. They’re coding within the appropriate range for someone my age now, it’s not all bad.”

You willed yourself to exhale, grateful for Miguel’s stability while at the same time shameful he had to face these mixed results. How could you let him shoulder your fear alongside his own? It violated the equality you so valued in your partnership. “Of course, Miguel, of course. Panic is not only a distraction, but unprofessional. I’ll look into a way to tune S100A4’s activity this afternoon.”

“Unprofessional behavior isn’t all bad. It’s nice to know you care about me.” He pulled away, clearing his throat just in time for you to write off his comment as a joke, “ What’s so special about S100A4 anyway? ”

“It regulates cell cycles, namely, but elevated S100A4 expression has been correlated to suppression of immune cells. It’s a primary agent in the development of inflammatory diseases, but at its worst can aggravate metastasis of glioblastoma.”

Miguel’s throat clinched, “Brain cancer.”

Now it was your turn to calm Miguel down. That was a better way of thinking about it, you thought, taking turns bearing the load. It was almost like sharing.

“The S100 cluster is also the primary agent behind your accelerated healing factor. It shouldn’t be too bad if those genes are unaltered by current testing. We’re trying to stabilize your genome, not reset it entirely, right?”

Miguel stared ahead in silence, contemplating a vastness you could not see. You wondered where he was at this moment; the Earth he currently investigated must have been a tranquil paradise to allow this call to go on for this long without the threat of harm.

You read Miguel’s location: Earth-17413. Before you could examine its stat sheet, he spoke again.

“Continue testing as normal.”

Miguel’s shoulders rolled back, straining with an effort not to hunch forward again. You recognized this fatigue after spending so much time alongside him. Your bunched brows cast a shadow of worry over your face.

“Miguel, is everything alright?”

“Don’t worry about it, I’m just…tired. Long day on my end.”

“Please don’t hesitate to tell me your worries. I should know. For the sake of your health.” You knew you shouldn’t take advantage of a patient’s trust, but Miguel wasn’t any other patient.

The chatter of the surrounding Spiders seemed to disperse, settling into a resounding thrum like that of a sustained piano key. Miguel’s cape billowed out from a gust of wind from Earth-17413, bathing your side in a golden glow and framing his hologram like a statue. Yet the projection’s shimmering perfection only reminded you of the worlds of distance between the two of you. You couldn’t help but wonder if Miguel also wished your hologram bore more details, whether he saw the digitization as an effacement of your flaws or a representation of internal brilliance.

“I never said thanks,” he confessed. “For doing this for me.”

You looked away in sudden bashfulness, “Miguel, you really don’t have to—”

“I mean it. You’re changing my life.” He stepped closer, hands crossing behind his back as he tilted his head. You instinctually ascribed the slope of his mask’s marks to fondness before second-guessing your judgment. That word didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like enough. But, as always, you surmised that you must have been projecting your own feelings.

You copied the tilt of his head, face warm and worries melting, “Sounds like an optimistic statement, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’d say…I agree.”

You let out an airy laugh that sounded suspiciously like a giggle, “I had no idea you were capable of positivity, Miguel.”

“What can I say? You bring out the best in me.”

“Guess that means you can’t let me run loose.”

“Definitely can’t let you go. You know too much.”

“Shucks. Least I had a good run. Do I get a last meal?”

“T-That’s not what…alright, sure. Long as you meet up at my lab. Usual time.” Miguel lifted his watch, preparing to end the call. “See you back home.”

His hologram imploded into a pearly dot before disappearing, leaving you free to proceed to your clinic. You practically floated the rest of the way there, so light on your feet that the ground seemed to disappear at first, until it actually disappeared with your unwitting advancement right over the edge of the buttress.

You were spared from the cold, unforgiving floor in two seconds. Which, considering your place of employment, was a bit slow. Your savior cradled you against their front and set you against the ground floor, devoid of Spiders and darkly overshadowed by the walkways overhead.

You extricated yourself with a disbelieving laugh, fixing your clothes as you found your footing, “Pardon me, I’m not…constantly this out-of-sorts, I swear.”

“Still got a lot on your mind, huh?”

And this was where you should have ended your reminiscence to preserve the strength of its euphoria and your own well-being. But you couldn’t help reliving the experience, analyzing it, tracking all of its discombobulating novelties. Because you knew that voice. You knew who caught you.

“Ant?”

She stood before you with the same hair, same split ends, the same cut of her costume and set to her chin. Only her limbs looked different, gleaming in a way that couldn’t solely be attributed to the low light on this level.

“Hey, Doc,” Ant greeted with a timid wave. Her headset hung around her neck while she gripped her mask in her other hand. “It’s…been a while.”

You continued staring at her arms, speechless. The metal lacked the subtle iridescent luster from before, bearing a darker, plain gray polish. The metal strata now traveled farther up her neck as well, encompassing her entire throat save for the stripe of her jugular.

“Your prostheses…”

Ant jumped, rubbing her neck, “Oh, yeah! Just took myself to the shop, you know. Got a bit of help from—”

“Miguel,” you and her both said at the same time. You couldn’t stop looking at her alterations, the innumerable quantity of them. “How long ago?”

“Just the other day. Quick work, swear.”

Everything down to the screws and bolts had been replaced on her person. Your expression fell even more, not so much dejected as betrayed; to have completed such an intricate job, Ant’s body would have had to have been separated from her prostheses. How did Miguel accomplish such a feat without killing her like Billie forewarned? Why didn’t he inform you that he finished the job? Better yet, why didn’t he get back to you when he found a solution like he promised?

“So, what was wrong?”

Ant swallowed, the plates surrounding her jugular shifting like scales, “It’s…complicated.”

“I’m sure I can keep up.”

“Doc, I…it’s private. I don’t want to say.”

“You were counting on me to figure out how to help you before. Why can’t I know now? For the future?”

She flicked her head up, “You still want to be friends with me? In the future?”

“Of course,” you whispered. “I’m the one that told Miguel about your condition.”

Ant’s expression broke. But when she touched her eyes preparing to wipe away tears, she found nothing.

She looked angry. Her features certainly combined to communicate anger. But only her ears blushed, not her cheeks. Ant made sure the plates on her neck laid flat over her skin as her gaze kept flickering along the floor, like the words she sought were scattered pearls.

“I’ve been getting it all wrong,” Ant continued, “I’m not supposed to depend on people. I bring trouble to them, I get them hurt.”

“Who told you that?”

“...Miguel.”

Your heart stuttered. Would he really say that? That Ant was better off on her own? And if that were the case for Ant, was it true for him as well?

A pale numbness extinguished your nerves; what did that mean for any of the relationships you built here? Were they borne from convenience alone?

Were you being used?

“I’m sorry for how I’ve treated you, Doc. You’re one of the first people to really know me after the accident. I don’t have to think about my differences with you. Everything is different with you. You’re like—like family.”

You never entertained the possibility that Ant’s apology would have brought to life your most cinematic fantasies. But the sight gave you no feeling of superiority, of balance reinstating.

You stepped closer to Ant only for her to step away, “Family means acceptance. No matter what.”

“Can’t you accept that there are parts to me that you can’t know about?” Ant sniffed and looked surprised at the lack of obstruction in her airway. You considered what she needed to have replaced and why. Her incessant self-grooming to make sure everything was in place.

“It just…seems like you want to talk about it.”

Ant stilled like she’d been struck by lightning. She looked down at her hands, contemplating your words, realizing she did want to say something. But because her desire was personal, it was therefore selfish, and so compounded the reasons why she couldn’t be honest. “A lot of things are going to change, Doc. I’m not going to be able to see Amaya anymore and I’m…I’m scared of being alone.”

Your nerves sank into black nothingness.

“I-I figured that as long as I still had you, I could bear it.” Ant spoke differently than before. Her words were shaky and jumbled, her thoughts non-linear. Yet you didn’t doubt their honesty. If anything, you felt the need to reexamine everything she said to you up to this point to figure out what specifically she was being honest about.

“I’m like family,” you repeated, “I’m like family, but I’m not, really, am I? I’m just a replacement.”

Ant whipped her head up, “No—No, Doc, more than anyone else, I would never think of—”

This time you turned away first, closing your eyes. “What kind of family would we be? I’d give you everything, and you’d decide what was enough. What would be left of me from that arrangement? I don’t want that.”

Ant scoffed, turning away as she backed up like she expected the far corner to be closer than it was. “You only want to know my damage so you can feel important. So you can feel more involved in this stupid Society.”

Your voice shook as you spoke. Being the bigger person sure felt like being the bigger target. “If that’s how you see me, then fine. Good luck with everything.”

Ant shot a web into the bright heights of the upper floors as you called the elevator. You both spoke.

“Sorry I’m not enough for you.”

~~~

A touch pulled your head from the clouds. Miguel leaned over you, enveloping your shoulder in his palm while his other splayed on the table.

“Are you alright? Need a break?”

You shook the last cobwebs of your despair from your focus, picking up the graduated cylinder and pouring it into another machine. “I’ll rest once I finish stabilizing this version of the serum.”

“You sure?” Miguel phased off his glove and laid the back of his hand on your forehead, “You seem out of it.”

His voice was gentle. His touch too, and his eyes, glowing like coals in a hearth—he treated you so, so gently. Since when was he like this? The pair of you had grown to demonstrate your friendship more…physically since partnering together, but the celebratory hugs and consoling pats on the back never felt like this before.

“I’m just worried about S100A4. I can’t figure out why it started coding again.”

“You fixed it already, don’t worry about it. It’s just one gene.”

“You know better than I what changing one gene can do to an entire body.”

Miguel exhaled, “Nothing gets past you. It’s admirable.”

“I picked it up from you.”

Your heart rate picked up as you took in Miguel’s attention, succumbing to the fuzzy, warm blush scrawled across your skin. But a pang of fear cut across your pulse and made you sick. You forced yourself to question what would happen to you when the phosphoramidite project ended. What would you do when the multiverse no longer needed saving?

No, what would Miguel do with you?

You couldn’t take returning to business as normal. Where would you work? What would happen to the friendships you made here? Surely you’d proven your worth to stay at Spider Society through its next projects.

Maybe Ant was right that you wanted to be important. But you had things to offer. You were dependable. In a million insignificant lifetimes, no one might want you for your personality, but as long as one person— this person in front of you—needed your skills, you would thrive. You could handle the burden that came with this life. You were a healer, you could even…

You stopped yourself before the thought could implant yourself; you don’t fix people. Miguel especially did not need to be fixed.

Miguel passed his thumb over the scar on your eyebrow as you studied him. He looked more tired than ever, darkness ringing his eyes and hollowing the contour of his cheek. He seemed to constantly track two streams of thought at once, especially now as he examined you. He withered under your gaze in a way he hadn’t in a long while. Then, like he remembered his composure, he withdrew his hand, scratching the stubble he forgot to shave that morning as he backed away.

You returned to the transcriptome on your tablet as the serum continued its stabilization sequence. In all other aspects, the serum meshed perfectly with Miguel’s biology. But you were miffed as to why nothing about his body seemed to change. Everything looked the same as when you started. The phosphoramidite project kicked in within a few minutes of administration and was sustainable. What could be the issue?

You finished annotating the transcriptome and sent a copy to Miguel’s watch. He murmured a thanks as he turned away to read several other projections while you retrieved the serum.

In the gleaming reflection of the machine, you noticed two things: first, Miguel’s broad back and tight, shapely…access panel. That was the second thing you noticed, into which Miguel plugged a four-letter code, which distracted you from admiring his ass. You couldn’t make them out from here, but he appeared to press two characters on the middle row of the keyboard, then one on the bottom row, then one at the top.

A diagram of DNA floated from his watch bearing the genetic readouts from your transcriptome. After tapping several more buttons, the purple antigen cloaking the double helix melted away as percentages tagged groups of nucleobases, starting with red single-digit numbers but climbing to lime-green eighties and nineties. The screen projected the words “CLEAR FOR RESET” above the simulation.

Your eyes widened.

What was he doing?

You averted your eyes as Miguel turned around. Securing the serum in its vial, you turned back and nearly collided with Miguel, looking up past miles of sturdy, ample pectorals to his face.

You glanced at his watch before focusing on his eyes. “The serum is ready.”

“Good job,” Miguel said, plucking the vial out of your hands. His face showed nothing but earnest felicity. His gaze was steady. His voice even, “Take ten and clear your head. You look like you’re about to combust.”

“What? How?” You curled your fingers to stymie the feeling that you’d relinquished some advantage.

Miguel’s mouth quirked up reflexively at your panic. After a beat of silence, he smirked, and poked your cheek with a gleam in his eye. “You’re red as a match, ojitos. You don’t have a fever, but it could still be serious. Need me to look you over?”

The shock of your plain, incriminating vulnerability made you back away in an instant. You worried Miguel might record your pulse through touch like a living polygraph machine.

Miguel was being uncharacteristically nice. Wasn’t it a strategy to adopt congeniality to achieve an end result? In medicine, wasn’t extreme kindness often employed when a patient was nearing their end?

How much time did you have left together?

“I’m fine,” you returned, voice rattling like a storm-beaten windowpane. “I swear, I can keep working.”

Miguel stiffened and dropped his hand as his spark of humor died.

Another possibility rose from the grave of your subconscious insecurities: maybe Miguel was keeping you fed and rested to continue a steady rate of progress while blinding you to an ulterior motive.

You wanted to trust Miguel. You wanted to believe in his word; he was good to you, he gave you all the space and encouragement you needed to perform your work. But it unnerved you that, despite your partnership, so much of Miguel’s mind was still a mystery to you. There laid a handsome challenge in not being able to easily read him, where you could inflame his emotions through provocation and teasing and taxonomize each new expression, but until now it never occurred to you that not everything he said might be genuine. For a man who abhorred ambiguity, he sure left a lot in the dark.

But…this was Miguel. Despite everything he endured, he was good. He committed everything in his power to goodness. Perhaps he just needed the chance to explain himself.

You tasted the thick muscle of your heart in your mouth, “I ran into Ant earlier.”

Miguel’s shoulders raised a centimeter. His posture straightened, “Yeah?”

“You helped her.”

“Yeah.”

“I thought that was something we would do together.”

“I never said that.”

“I seem to recall you saying you would get back to me.”

“Hmm. I can’t recall that conversation at all.” Miguel glanced at you over his shoulder, “I thought we agreed it never happened.”

Your eyes narrowed. He was mirroring you.

“You didn’t get back to me when you finished, either. What did Ant need? And don’t say—”

“It’s classified,” you both intoned. You raised your brows.

Miguel huffed. You couldn’t discern whether that was a tell or a reaction. “It’s above your clearance.”

“I’m a medic. I, of all the people here, deserve to know.”

“No one here has access to everything.”

“Except you.” You tried not to look at his watch. You needed to concentrate on his face. His brow furrowed minutely. It reminded you of a knot tying. A bag cinching. Stopping his flow of words.

“Except me.”

You deflated, downcast. This time you did look at his watch. Then to the vial in his hand.

“On second thought,” you said, grabbing the injection gun, “I’m gaining a second wind. Let’s proceed as scheduled.”

Miguel reeled back. “Why?”

“Why not? We’re both here, I don’t have to clock in yet, let’s jump on this opportunity while it’s hot, Miguel.”

Your wording tripped him up, evidently. “I-I’m on-call, I can’t stay—”

“You’re always on call,” you dismissed as you gathered your things, “Doesn’t make a difference if it’s today or the weekend. C’mon, ten minutes now is just ten minutes. Ten minutes in the future is several hours plus ten minutes.”

“Your math is terrible.” Miguel appraised you dubiously, but whether it was because he recalled the sadism of your previous trials or picked up on this scheme of retribution you couldn’t tell. You hated not being able to tell. You were going to change that.

Miguel said nothing as you entered the training center and scrubbed through the index of programs on your watch. No particular option seemed… direct enough for the outcome you desired. He co*cked a brow as he leaned his weight on one foot.

He clicked his tongue as you swiped between the swinging gauntlet and trial-by-fire settings, “Never mentioned what we were testing.”

“It’s a bit of everything,” you returned quickly, “strength, endurance, agility…”

“Wow. Must have taken forever to put together.” Miguel’s voice dragged lowly through sarcasm.

You fought against both glaring and rolling your eyes for fear they might pop out of your skull, skimming through the index at lightning speed before your eye snagged on something.

A 3D scan of a mech suit projected from your watch. Your mouth parted as you compared its stat sheet to Miguel’s and found them fairly matched. The suit was slower, but what it lacked in speed it made up for in power and durability; its strike measured a point and a half greater than Miguel’s.

You threw him a dry expression as you clicked on the projection. The far wall rumbled as it parted to reveal a suit nearly three times Miguel’s height with a central carriage roughly the size of a helicopter co*ckpit.

“You know, my best ideas tend to be spur-of-the-moment.”

“You’re not serious,” Miguel gawked as you climbed inside. He pinched the bridge of his nose and grumbled, “No, you cannot be serious. You cannot ever be serious.”

You strapped yourself in and took a gander at the controls, delighting in the colorful array of buttons like a child set loose in an arcade. You moved the levers on either side of your seat back and forth to stir the heavy swing of the suit’s legs. Your clambering steps shook the room.

Gold light shot from your watch before condensing into a prismatic figure, “Found a new toy, Doc?”

“If I can figure out these controls.” You hesitated to touch the buttons before you, evenly spaced and glossy like candy on an assembly line. “Think you could lend me some training wheels?”

“I’d happily oblige!” Lyla enthused as she dove into the console, giving everything a warm, daffodil tinge. When Lyla spoke again, light danced underneath the buttons and switches in waves. “I’ll tell you which control does the thing you want it to, but it’s on you to come up with strategy.”

Miguel crossed his arms as you took your place opposite him in the training ring. “You don’t think this is childish?”

“Seems we both expected better from each other,” you hummed. “Lyla, count us down, please.”

A holographic timer ticked between you. Yet where you anticipated Miguel’s reaction to be instant, he instead stood in place, glaring at you like he was calling your bluff a final time.

Unflinchingly, you thrust out one robotic arm with the intent to squish him like any other crawling pest. The consequences of your tiny slip-up in provoking Miguel unfolded with no end in sight, like one of those newspaper-thin pamphlets for side effects and legal disclaimers that came in a box of medicine.

In a flash Miguel struck your side and ripped into one of your legs with his blades, webbing your head and flipping you over. The sweep did not sacrifice humiliation for swiftness, evidently.

You got back up and lunged at him. He sidestepped and dropped into a roll, springing on all fours before launching at you, generating power with his arms as opposed to his legs. Which meant you needed to go for his legs, but he was so fast and you were in this gigantic suit and he was taking you down again.

“Lyla! Which one is the—”

You fell on your side at the edge of the ring. This time, Miguel intended to finish you off.

He held out one arm to produce his talons. You sucked in a breath as you kicked out your leg and knocked him down. If only for a second, it allowed you to move before his hand slashed the space the suit’s carriage was.

“Does this thing have an arsenal?”

“Cherry bombs and a few rockets. Push here and here respectively.”

You crushed the first one to carpet the ground in explosives, forcing Miguel to return to standing. He surged toward you with the intent to climb your suit to higher ground, but while he was still on you, he no longer could up-end you as before, with the ease of someone flicking dirt off their shirt.

Okay, you reasoned as Miguel tore up your suit, Miguel relies on his arms. Almost all of his moves have been concentrated on the upper body. He prefers to keep close to his targets.

You rotated your limbs like corkscrews and swung them in circles. As Miguel couldn’t stick to them, he slowly slipped down until he fell off. You descended upon him.

Lyla showed you the switch for a sword, a staff, and a net, all of which you threw at Miguel with almost hedonist delight.

Miguel was quick, but that lent to over-eagerness and liability to telegraphing his moves. He opened up his body to generate momentum just a fraction too wide, allowing you to grab his arm and throw him back down; because he kept close to his target he often missed bigger picture plays in favor of tiny and immediate counters, allowing for moments where you actually switched things up on him; and, finally, because he leaned so far forward when he attacked, you grew to learn that he shifted his head the barest degrees toward his object of interest.

But the fight began to drag, and the novelty of your fighting style wore off as your skill set in, and you realized too late that Miguel was studying you just as you were studying him.

You kept your legs in a wide stance and used your arms defensively except for finishing moves, meaning any big reaction was a tell that you were completing a play.

Above all, you didn’t like to subject the carriage to extreme changes in orientation.

Miguel grabbed hold of one arm as you raised the other one, providing perfect clearance for him to shoot a web and pull you into an underbaked cartwheel. He shot up and down your suit with climactic frenzy, shredding the metal with his claws as you tried standing back up, until your arms broke from their metal supports and dangled by a rainbow of wires.

“Lyla?” you begged, “A little help here?”

“Oooh, sorry, Doc, this is all you.”

The indigo mast of Miguel’s body overshadowed you as he dug his claws into the windshield. You considered what it meant for your sense of self-respect to find the sight of him fluidly, violently crushing the metal frame as hot as you did, but there was just something about his desperation to get to you—to capture you—that activated a more animal excitement than fear ever could.

Miguel ripped off your safety harness and, with it, a gasp from your throat that sounded a touch too eager. He pulled you against him and dropped to the ground as the gutted suit careened backward like it was going to crush you, until Miguel rolled between its legs. The suit crashed at the edge of the ring, its vibrations absorbing into your body and making your head swim.

Miguel set you down with nary a difference in stamina, an unknown emotion cordoning the vigor in his body as you stared defiantly up at him. He phased away his mask.

“You done?” he challenged as you retreated a foot. “You wanna hurt me, do it yourself. And don’t complain it wouldn’t be a fair—”

You slapped him. Evidently, you had not been backing away, but backing up for a winding start.

Miguel’s face screwed up in pained shock, stumbling back as you advanced and kicked the side of his knee, dropping him into a kneel. It was easier than you expected, something you concluded must have been the result of truly getting the jump on him.

You raised your other hand, raring a punch only for Miguel to wrap your fist in his hand. Switching to your other hand yielded the same result. Without any other recourse, you flared your nostrils and slammed your head into his; you both cried out as pain flared across the middle of your face like the buildup to a particularly nasty sneeze.

Miguel let go of your hands to pinch his nose bridge with no more tetchiness than if his phone fell on his face, while you full-on cradled yours. Your flow of air was blocked and your sinuses pulsed like a well-water pump, but you found no blood or snot trailing from your nostrils.

Your actions were desperate and sloppy. But the fact that they yielded effects gave you a dark sense of gratification. Hurting Miguel delivered the same catharsis as breaking antique china or defacing public property; not only did it hit home that, for all his beauty and strength, Miguel was still a man, but that in some way you could challenge greatness if only for your ability to destroy it.

Miguel glared at you, but didn’t get up.

“I’m not apologizing for that,” you said.

“Good. Because I’m not forgiving you.” Miguel got to his feet. “Just jump right to explaining what the hell’s the matter with you.”

“You said you’d get back to me. You said not to do anything until you got back to me and you didn’t. You went behind my back.” You felt a clot rise in your throat, but unlike the knot you observed on him, it felt like a condensed bundle of sincerity rather than a cork to your speech. “If I hadn’t run into Ant, would you have informed me that she’d gotten better?”

Miguel screwed his eyes shut. “No. Not if I could help it.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

You rubbed your jugular and remembered the exposed line of Ant’s skin, the disparaging ratio between flesh and metal, how the construction seemed to draw attention to the divide between them rather than erase it, as though trying to convince an observer they were not only different, but opposite. Pronouncing change to prove a fragment of the original remained and, therefore, that its spirit remained whole.

You told Ant that it didn’t matter which parts of her were replaced. Was that true?

The memory of Amaya’s flyaways layered overtop of Ant’s split ends:

“I’m grateful you told me.”

“Really?”

“Before, I was always fearing the worst. This gives me a more realistic grasp of the situation.”

It had been necessary to lie to Amaya. Powerless civilians can’t get involved in the clashes of their titanic guardians. They would only cause problems for such heroes, at best becoming scorned and at worst becoming collateral.

You looked down at your hands, lining them up next to each other to examine their damage; while dry from constant cleansing or interacting with chemicals, they didn’t compare to the desert of calluses on Peter’s hands, or Miguel’s for that matter, based on the glimpse of his palm earlier. Certain lives could be close, but they needed to remain parallel.

But you recalled another thing Miguel said. I think what matters more to me is that you consider… this important enough to keep improving, instead of never having issues to begin with.

In order to surger a specimen, you needed to open it up. Goddammit, how many times could you lay bare your vulnerability before the skin stopped closing up the same?

“Miguel…” You tried to remain calm, but the contents of your skull churned in a dizzying whirlpool. You fixed him a delicate, blooming bud of stare and broke. “I don’t want us to lie to each other. Especially not by omission. I respect that you can’t disclose everything, but when you push me out of the loop it makes me feel helpless. Do you understand?”

Miguel’s expression opened in a pool of shock. You pursed your lips and looked down.

“Please tell me you understand.”

“I do,” he rushed, like your olive branch was a shortening lifeline. He sounded like he expected a greater reaction from you, or perhaps a more definitive break of your relationship.

“What detriment do I cause to be treated like this?”

“Detriment?” Miguel crossed a step, repeating the word like it was the name of a war criminal, “What the shock are you talking about?”

“I know I’m not…” you held your arms and disclaimed your awareness of your weakness in the hope that you sounded more level than you felt. Even still, you couldn’t silence the cord of veneration in your next sentence, “I’m not like you. In a purely biological sense, my thresholds are lower. My skills are fewer. I am more prone to error and therefore to catastrophe. I am a liability to Spider Society in that regard.”

He blanched, “You think I’m not keeping you informed for Spider Society’s sake?”

“I don’t know what to think, Miguel! I have nothing to go off of except what I see every day—the battered results of people like you sacrificing themselves to save idiots like me. Can’t I at least know where I fall short so I can improve? Can’t you give me some direction so I don’t lose you?”

You jolted with that last sentence, drawing in a sharp breath as you nailed your lips closed with your knuckles.

Miguel phased away his gloves and locked your hands in his; he chased your flighty gaze even as you retreated, until the crown of his head touched yours and you stilled.

“I’m not keeping what I know from you because you’re not important,” he murmured, voice unsteady. His pulse crashed against your skin like a frantic knock, “I need you more than anyone else here.”

“But I’m not part of the canon. I’m not instrumental,” you returned, though you spoke as though canon was synonymous with Miguel’s life, panicking that you’d exposed your deck as a royal flush. “That means I can’t break it either, right?”

“People die without it caused by a canon event. All the time.”

Miguel wrapped both your hands in one of his, bringing them against his chest in such a way that they blocked out the eyes of his spider insignia. His adam’s apple bobbed.

“Then what—what’s going to happen to all of you?”

“Didn’t I just say you need to worry about yourself,” he chided, though the corners of his mouth flicked up and his voice poured like nectar from a kantharos, “I’ve completed my canon and I’m still standing. It’ll be the same for Ant. She’s not going anywhere.”

You unfurled your hands against Miguel’s sternum, right beneath the insignia’s fangs, “How close am I allowed to get?”

Miguel’s head tilted, brushing his cheek along your hairline. You couldn’t hear his breaths, but his chest expanded into your palms. “As long as you don’t interfere with her work, you’ll be fine. Keep managing the clinic. You’re safe here.”

His frame vibrated lowly with his words, shading you with his body from the stark, publicizing lights of the room. Miguel spoke like he divulged a secret, despite his circumventive language, and the obviousness of his desire to let you know what he could superseded all else. Your body shed its opposition like rain-soaked clothing as you warmed yourself beneath Miguel’s neck and hands. Your suspicion was correct, his palms were callused, but the scratch electrified you like a sandy shore.

You split your forefingers just as Amaya split hers on the train. No words were exchanged between you at that moment, so it was debatable that the gesture even confirmed what you thought it did. And perhaps the debatability—the deniability—was the whole point; as long as it remained unspoken, who could say whether the truth was exposed, whether things had diverged from their intended path? If a tree falls in the forest and no one read this sentence, did it really happen?

After all, you never brought up that short time loop to anyone, and everything moved on like normal. As long as nobody found out, you could get away with anything. Who better to help Miguel than you?

Miguel called your name. He only called you by your name now instead of the usual “Doc,” and in spite of your internal counsel reminding you that this exchange didn’t change the fact that a relationship with a superhero was a bad idea, regardless of who would be the one hurt, you once again took advantage of Miguel’s kindness for unearned intimacy. You were only human, after all. You had urges. If given enough time and a projector, you could even prepare a persuasive slideshow on why those urges were needs, and why dosing on interactions like these actually inoculated you against succumbing to a delusion.

Miguel brought his mouth to your ear, “I need to know…”

You were thankful he couldn’t see the co*cktail of the blushing hues swirling into your skin. If only discipline weren’t so difficult.

Miguel pulled away and raised one of your hands, “Why do you hit like that?”

You shoved against him, so caught off guard that your bewilderment magnified your offense, “Like what?”

“Badly.”

“That’s not an answer! You can come up with something like the ‘Arachno-Humanoid poly-multiverse’ but you can’t describe what’s wrong with my attack?”

“It’s the only word I need—bad. You suck.”

“I do not—I took you down, didn’t I?”

“You got me on one knee and then hemorrhaged yourself.” Miguel adjusted the line of your shoulders and made you face him head-on, “Keep your spine straight and feet shoulder-width apart. What matters more than generating momentum is keeping a stable center of gravity.”

“Y-You’re teaching me…how to hurt you?” you balked incredulously. Miguel reared back in disquieted offense like a cobra, trying to conjure a sentence to no avail.

“I’m teaching you how to fight.” Miguel abruptly kicked your feet wider, “a good hook is a universal weapon. If it even budges me, it’ll knock out anyone else.”

You beamed as you followed his lead, curling your fingers into a fist and letting Miguel tweak your arm into a proper swing. Once you thoroughly beat the Dickens out of the air, he dropped the training wheels of his hands and patted his chest, gesturing for you to come at him.

You landed the punch. Unlike the handful of other times you attempted to get one over on Miguel, the pain was significantly reduced with no strain on your joints. Miguel remained in place like he’d barely been tapped.

You punched with your other hand, remembering to follow through and not diminish force upon contact. But, while fun, pummeling Miguel’s chest did less than nothing to advance any kind of victory, and so you pivoted to kicking him again, which garnered enough action from him that it opened him up to you coming up behind him and pinning his arm to his back.

Miguel spun free and rose over you with a cool, menacing smirk, mask phasing back over his face. Your overblown confidence deflated into a wimpy sliver of flesh.

You chuckled nervously, “M-Miguel. Let’s be serious—”

“We are.” He cracked his knuckles, “That was the warm-up. We’ve still got a fight to finish.”

“Have I ever told you how much I admire your nurturing—AAH!”

Miguel lunged at you and you dodged, narrowly missing his onslaught of grapples by a hair. Rather than slug you, he only tried apprehending you; while he sought to inspire your warrior spirit, you weaseled about with a courage that seemed borrowed from a feral cat. Which meant, of course, that the only thing you warred with was your desire to be seized, and praised, and given a treat for sweating more in one sitting than you had in all your years of PE.

Yet, more than being able to keep up, Miguel seemed most thrilled when you responded to his blows with your own, testing kicks and turns and jabs with your elbows and knees.

Miguel gradually stopped holding back, challenging your dashes with his own. On one, you crushed his head into a full Nelson, hoping that keeping out of his reach will eventually get him to give up.

You thought you’d achieved just that when Miguel dropped his arms and heaved a sigh.

He reached over his head and grabbed the back of your shirt, flipping you over his head and onto the floor. His face hovered in your view upside-down as you recovered from the velocity. You spun so that your feet could keep him at bay and hurriedly shuffled back.

Miguel seized one ankle and dragged you underneath him. He seized one wrist and pinned it by your head, then another, caging you in. Only his right leg dragged behind, brushing your thigh with a pressure that seemed restrained, like Miguel was readying an action but refusing to just pin you down. He wanted to see what you would do. The freedom to move, even in such a small range of motion, made staying prone a choice. You groaned in your struggle to break loose.

You and Miguel panted at different tempos, his inhale following your exhale like a musical canon. But while Miguel may have won the physical battle, you claimed the greater advancement in knowledge, and thus contentment bled so opaquely that it overtook your skin in a full blush. You were certain it traveled to your stomach, exposed where your shirt rode up from your pinioned arms.

The intimacy of your position hit you so hard you thought Miguel had landed a final punch to your solar plexus; your heart stuttered arhythmically like it was sending out a distress signal in morse code. You experienced total overload—too much of a good thing.

You looked down at your legs and imagined crossing them around Miguel’s waist, of enjoying his contact without the barrier of clothing. You remembered his back under your hands and his hair slipping between your fingers from times before, editing the cuts into scratches trailing from your nails.

Miguel stared at you, but you couldn’t tell if he was actually making eye contact. The false eyes on his mask invoked their intended effect, intimidating you with the feeling that he was taking in your entire form, no room for blind spots or blur to escape his calculations. They glowed as his head blocked the overhead lights.

You wondered if your skin glowed as well. You felt totally red—full, flushed, and flourishing under his touch like a reptile basking beneath a heat lamp. But it only made you want to slow down and take Miguel in, a counterintuitive urge to the predicament of entrapment; he grew impatient with your hesitance.

Miguel’s leg pressed upon yours in an overly sharp and wide stretch. Your determined grunts pinched into a hiss, shifting to relax the muscle, its burn combining with your sweat to send waves of massaging, steamy heat across your hips. Miguel pressed again with an insistence that tested the border between good pain and bad, startling a high moan from your mouth as you arched your back to escape the sensation.

Your eyes flared so wide that horror may as well have decorticated your skin; Miguel’s eye marks jumped to where his hairline might be, and in the same instant you sat up so quickly you might have swirlied your brain in its own rank, perverted juice, Miguel jumped off you. Where you were red before, you turned positively purple with asphyxiation as you corrected the wet stick of clothes.

“Yeah, uh—I-I wasn’t—”

“N-No, I was—I was trying to show you had an opening to reverse out.”

“Why wouldn’t you say that?!”

Miguel failed to convert his stammers into syllables. His head certainly followed his eyes now, based on the way he faced everything but you. His head angled in your general direction, maybe around your clavicle, continuously jerking away and coming back like he couldn’t help but gawk. And you—

You adjusted your sleeves for more cover and found your chest halfway exposed. You jammed the buttons into their holes to no avail, first because of the nimble precision required of such an action, then on account of almost blue-screening at the slide of the hard, blocky buttons into their narrow slits—

“I-I-I-I have to go,” you cheeped, hauling up your pants with one hand as you gripped the panels of your shirt in the other. “I have to open the clinic and—”

“I have meetings,” Miguel concurred, nodding behind him at nothing. “Need briefs—to give briefs!”

He tripped over the fallen mech in such shambling shock that he couldn’t even save his balance, falling on his tailbone with all the grace of a Life Alert commercial.

The doors slid open before you could even activate their motion sensors; you greeted Ben Reilly hiking up your pants with your shirt buttons mismatched, while several meters away his boss rubbed his derrière and shuffled to his feet with a gait brittler than drying glaze.

Ben’s jaw dropped. “Now that is going to haunt me.”

~~~

Margo’s orchid-colored avatar constructed itself before Mysterio’s eyes in pixelated blocks like a game of Tetris. She knocked on the glass and pointed at her holoscreen in enthused announcement.

“Finally your turn, Mysterio-409!”

The villain tensed with the approach of the hangar’s crane, exchanging a dry glance with Chameleon as she feigned a nap in a corner of her cell.

Upon closer inspection it seemed she’d fallen asleep with her eyes open. Mysterio groaned.

“Ready for take-off?” Margo ribbed as the claw joined the roof of his cage with a nuclear thrum.

“Actually!” Mysterio interjected, fighting to keep his voice even. He set his hands on his hips and posed dauntingly, “I need to use the restroom.”

Margo threw him such a flat stare one would have thought her eyes had been hammered down, “You can’t hold it?”

“I’ll have you know that I’ve been holding it for days.”

“Okay, and this’ll take less than a minute. You’ll be fine.” She returned to tapping on her screen as the crane raised Mysterio’s cubicle several inches in the air.

“W-Wait—wait, please!”

Margo paused at the sound of genuine fear in his voice. Mysterio turned his body to the side more than just his head, pronouncing his ponderance over the unseen Go Home Machine as it reset itself for his arrival.

“I’m scared,” he admitted. “That thing…looks like it hurts. I just want to be ready.”

Margo’s brow converged into a concerned summit as she looked at Mysterio; she rubbed her neck with a sigh as she considered her options, her hesitance to let Mysterio out of confinement battling the genuine empathy inspired by his plaintive disclosure.

The Go Home Machine did hurt. She forced herself to bear witness to it with every cycle, to reflect on whether she herself inflicted unnecessary violence while on the job and where that line must be drawn. While the people they handled were villains, Margo didn’t think that meant they deserved whatever harm came their way, especially not when it turned the relief of homecoming into punishment. The Go Home Machine, at times, felt like a final kick to a downed horse, further alienating an individual for an accident beyond their control and saying they weren’t welcome no matter where they went.

Margo turned away and Mysterio’s shoulders dropped, until she stretched out one technicolor arm to tap an exiting Spider on the shoulder.

“His majesty over here demands a potty break,” she jested, tamping her compassion underneath smug ridicule. “Escort him to the stalls around the corner and back.”

When the Spider in question approached, Mysterio saw two sets of arms and a secondary set of eyes beneath their lens. He gulped as the laser wall dematerialized and the Spider planted himself by his side, matching his pace like a shadow. When the Spider smiled, albeit with friendly intent, rows of sharp arachnid teeth glinted oblong reflections of Mysterio’s helmet that made him gulp.

“Don’t get any bright ideas,” Margo warned, though her posture remained relaxed; only an idiot would try something in a tower teeming with superheroes in a foreign, hostile dimension. And Mysterio refused to make himself an idiot.

He held his head high and began walking, though his unsettled energy increased from sizzling to seething as the pair of them approached the exits. Mysterio repeatedly squeezed his fists as though concentrating on a magic trick, silently pleading “ Come on, come on, come on, ” as the gleaming expanse of the lobby lifted the shadows from his form like a veil.

Before he could take another step, Mysterio’s body shredded itself in a terrible glitch. He fell to his knees and projected a tortured cry, drawing Margo’s attention as his Spider guard patted him with four gentle hands and spoke in a kind of low, hissing chatter.

“It’s right there, he does not need a day pass,” Margo volleyed.

The Spider chattered some more, gesturing something spilling from their crotch with their lower set of arms, while the upper set mimed moving a mop back and forth. Finally they waved their arms in a defiant slash and pointed to Mysterio in a sentiment that transcended language and time: Not gonna be my problem!

Margo stamped her foot and tugged on her afro puffs, trudging to a drawer in miniature rampage. A second later a blue bracelet hit Mysterio’s head with a plasticky smack before it clattered to the floor.

“Now, get outta here before I shove you back in your cell with an empty soda bottle,” Margo barked, shivering with disgust as she turned around and began scrolling through videos on her screen to kill time until Mysterio’s return.

Mysterio slipped the bracelet on, perhaps going overboard demonstrating his lack of familiarity with the item as a means to study it, before dropping his wrist to his side as his escort startled him in an unheard, unseen, creepy return to his side.

The view of the lobby was a dizzying spectacle that instilled awe no matter what, so considering Mysterio had no inkling of either ambition to escape or even curiosity to see how far he could get before he was taken down by one of the million silkscreen-printed agents milling about, he absorbed the sights in polite restraint like a visitor on safari.

The sound of flushing shook him out of his trance. Mysterio and his escort came to a recessed hall, forked between the simplified symbols of a woman and man respectively. Mysterio turned right before stopping, the smothering presence of his escort ungluing itself from his periphery.

He turned around to see the Spider raise a meek wave.

“You’re just going to…wait for me?”

The Spider chattered, two hands flourishing up and down their body while another one pointed farther down the hall. Mysterio peered around to see three more recessed entrances with stranger signs. One looked vaguely like an upside down women’s silhouette, with more curvaceous hips that resembled a thorax, while the other two signs remained utterly inscrutable.

“Ah.” Mysterio turned back into the Spider with a lopsided perplexity that leaned too far toward appreciation, “Well, I—I won’t be long.”

The Spider gave a thumbs up and turned around in an overly conscientious display of respect toward Mysterio’s privacy. It almost made Mysterio feel bad for what he was about to do.

With that, he turned the corner and occupied the farthest stall he could that was beneath one of the lights. It held a toilet that sparkled like a newly minted quarter, but Mysterio’s amazement was quickly extinguished by his discovery of the tulle-thin single-ply toilet paper on the side of the stall. Guess with such an ostentatious cat’s cradle of a tower he should have expected some corners to be cut.

When he was certain that all occupants exited the space, Mysterio lifted the toilet seat and waved his braceleted hand in front of its underside, determining the reflection clear enough for the next step of his plan.

Taking off his helmet, Mysterio angled it underneath the light until it magnified an eggshell ray onto the seat. He huffed a celebratory laugh but found he couldn’t control his breathing, huffing unsteady bouts of air as he fiddled with the excess strap of his bracelet; sucking in so much oxygen that his lungs burned like a kerosene lamp, Mysterio ripped the blue hand off like a bandaid.

The glitch pierced him like a bee sting and spread as viciously as the subsequent anaphylactic shock. Mysterio fell against the compartment of toilet paper as his form folded into magenta and creamsicle diamonds like a kite, tongue smushed against his teeth to dampen his cry, but threatening to burst free should the pain mount.

Shaking, Mysterio fought to steady his helmet beneath the light as he dangled the day pass between his helmet and the seat. The light penetrated the plexiglass shell of the helmet to catch the layers of liquid crystal, capturing the reflection of the bracelet like a projector. Light bounced around the stall until the gnashing isosceles fractals of the glitch consumed it, spitting it back out in a more solid, condensed form.

The reflection grew dimension until it popped into the air as a perfect copy of his day pass.

Mysterio combusted with a pant of a laugh, but moved the helmet too soon, snapping the bracelet’s enraptured suspension and plopping it into the toilet bowl.

Mysterio wrinkled his nose at his soddened creation, redressing himself in his gear and fishing the copy out of the water. Chameleon would have to make do.

Margo yawned as she watched her twentieth post on finding the right makeup for your color season.

“For dark winter girlies like me that love graphic eyeliners,” the influencer twittered over B-roll of her get-ready-with-me, “a bluer color palette is more radiant and cohesive, whereas these springy baby yellows wash me out. The first thing you notice is the makeup, not my face—”

“I thought new generation’s girls wanted people to notice makeup,” Chameleon griped. Margo had tilted the holoscreen toward her prisoner during their wait.

“Yeahhh,” Margo pitchily drawled, “but it still needs to look natural. Or, like, not out of place.”

“Yellow eyelids not natural. Unless from jaundice.” Chameleon gasped, pitying, “Do you have jaundice, kotenka?”

Margo’s mouth pouted like a sour plum.

“Curtain call, everyone!” Mysterio sauntered through the entrance of the hangar with the exaggerated strides of a vaudeville performer. “Time for my final bow~”

Their Spider escort clapped their hands in quick, fluttery applause as Mysterio strode back to his cell, eyes shining in awe at the villain’s courageous embrace of his fate.

Mysterio nodded at his cell as Margo raised a brow, examining him for any strange additions to his costume or person. She stuck out her hand with a beckoning gesture.

“Day pass. Now.”

Mysterio clicked his tongue and made a show of begrudgement slipping the band off. But when the ensuing glitch engulfed his body, he all-too-eagerly threw himself against the seam of his and Chameleon’s cages, sinking to the floor with his palms pressed to the glass with an operatic cry. When the glitch passed, he collapsed with the back of his hand to his forehead in drained woe.

Margo dashed to open the cell as the Spider cradled Mysterio’s body, maw stretching between their teeth like the nailed corners of a tent as they clicked a plea for their compeer, dare they say their confrère, even…their friend, to stay strong.

Mysterio felt so special. In the sense that he thought he was about to be preserved in silk and hung from a damp cave.

Margo duplicated herself and wrapped four elastic arms around Mysterio’s body to throw him into his cell. She dismissed the Spider with a gentle encouragement to find a slice of cake at the cafeteria and calm down.

The prism sealed once more. Nothing looked amiss. But when Mysterio looked at Chameleon, she poked the pointed toe of her mule through their dividing wall like it was nothing but smoke. A hologram.

Margo teleported back to her console as the Spider rounded the corner with one more mournful, parting wave.

The crane attached to the roof of Mysterio’s cell once more as he tossed the forged day pass to Chameleon; she squeaked and dropped it with a weighty plop upon feeling its cold, wet band, throwing a bewildered sneer at her ally. Mysterio urgently waved his hands, begging her to just deal with it and get moving!

Chameleon gagged as she dragged the bracelet over her knuckles. She got to her feet and dashed toward Mysterio once more before the distance grew into a wide and exposing arena certain to draw the attention of their overseer.

The thick bullet of a groan perked Margo’s ears and started her approach toward the corner. It sounded like someone was scratching against the floor.

“What’s going on back there?” Margo demanded.

“Stretching! Just stretching!” Mysterio shouted, “It’s cramped in here!”

Mysterio finished dragging her up with neither care nor ease, such that Chameleon smacked him for his insolence. One of her feet had become bare in the struggle and its sole weeped with the floor’s chill.

Chameleon whispered with the heat and bite of sizzling oil, “Don’t you know how to treat a lady?!”

“Be a little grateful—you haven’t helped execute this plan at all!”

“I came up with it, you brat—”

The cool light of the Go Home Machine’s stage crept over the cell. A twice-wide silhouette backed up as though attempting to avoid the paralyzing tractor beam of a UFO. Mysterio began to strip himself of his cape and helmet.

Margo arrived to find Mysterio perfectly in place on the center track. She squinted, dubious, “All good?”

“Aha, your clever tricks won’t work on me, girl,” Mysterio crowed, “Sorry to say that I’m still all bad!”

He was certainly…animated. Margo squinted; bad’s definitely the right word for this moment, because she had a bad feeling about this.

“Let’s just get to the Go Home Machine. I don’t want you here any longer than you have to be.”

“Right-o, Spider-Byte!”

Mysterio then jolted like someone tased his side.

Margo shooed Mysterio toward the console and began the Go Home sequence. Mysterio froze as the milky drone approached to scan his body, shrinking away in perfect synchrony with Margo. Just as the drone funneled a ray of light at the crown of his helmet, a call tuned into the space by Margo’s chair.

“Drop everything you’re doing right now,” a woman’s voice commanded.

Margo jolted, phasing her helmet over her eyes, “Huh? What, what’s going on?”

Mysterio didn’t even flinch, but the air in front of them seemed to tremble; a soft outline of a man developed, thin but noticeable like the tense surface of water in a tank. It choked up in visceral, trembling fear.

“We’ve been caught!” the translucent man whispered, “They know—this is it. We’re doomed!”

“Beck, stay still, you idiot!” Mysterio hissed, his voice now the high crackle of an elderly woman.

“I told you to be ready an hour ago,” the woman continued, “I packed everything for the bake sale in the car, put on your shoes.”

“Shoot,” Margo hissed. She bobbed her head around to escape the call screen, trying to keep an eye on the Go Home Sequence. “One more minute, Mom!”

“Honey, pause your game and help a little, alright? It wasn’t easy getting time off to chaperone this thing, it wasn’t easy making everything gluten and peanut free, and it’s not going to be easy setting the stalls up once we get to your school.”

Margo screwed up her mouth as though to stop it from foaming, breaking concentration to jam her palms against her eyes, mumbling, “I didn’t ask you to. You just want to avoid being at home.”

“What was that?”

“N-Nothing! I’m coming, alright, I’m—”

“Are you and your dad in league together now, huh? Being angry at me for trying to keep this family involved in life?”

The sequence resumed as Margo turned her back to attempt to diffuse her mother’s temper, the invisible man parking himself in front of the scanner as a beam of cadmium yellow wiped his face. The console displayed his place of origin: Earth-409.

Margo could only snatch a glance at the prismatic cocoon before the sequence’s finale exploded in a blinding flashbang, but she could have sworn she saw double the amount of occupants there should be.

As the Go Home Machine returned to standby, the alligator skin of a short mule rippled with gloss before blending together into one coal-dark silhouette with the rest of the hangar’s fixtures.

~~~

You raised your head high as you exited the clinic. You’d be gone no longer than fifteen minutes, back in time for your next appointment and ready for everything that came your way henceforth. Everything.

You schooled your features into complete neutrality as the elevator arrived at the indigo corridor to Miguel’s lab. You spied Peter badgering him in one of the cafeteria’s shaded pavilions on your reconnaissance of the building, guaranteeing the lab’s emptiness if only for a few minutes.

Tablet in hand, you passed through the gauntlet of doors until the indigo hue of the corridor crouched in the shadows of Miguel’s red lab. The moody saturation made you feel like game captured in infrared.

You’d get the information you needed and leave immediately. No delays, no dilly-dallying, no daydreaming. Otherwise your body heat might stain the atmosphere and echo the perpetration of your crime.

Was it a crime? Perhaps it was bad, but it would lead to a good outcome. You’d discover what Miguel kept from you in regards to the canon and the serum and work in the shadows to straighten everything out. You were almost a vigilante. Almost a hero.

You exited the tunnel-like hall into the expansive cavern of the central lab and stopped dead in your tracks at the sound of a high-pitched shriek.

Instinct took over as you ducked behind a stationary machine. You peered uncertainly around it: upon the central platform loomed a gigantic shadow whispering to some imprisoned creature, its small, plush limbs flailing with the release of a shrill, wild, rumbustious…laugh.

The screens carved the profile of the shadow as it turned three quarters of the way, revealing Miguel in casual wear as he rumbled a knuckle along Mayday’s ribs. She squealed at being tickled, crawling along Miguel’s shoulders as his face crinkled in a raw, asymmetrical grin.

Your next heartbeat shattered your chest like a shotgun blast.

Mayday scuttled atop Miguel’s head like a frizzy bowler hat. Spinning around, Miguel made a show of his confusion, the dramatic dip of his head as he searched underneath and inside the drawers of his consoles making Mayday giggle. He planted his hands on his hips and reached up to scratch Mayday’s head as though it were his own.

“¿Adónde fue ella?” he marveled, “¿Ella desapareció? Estuvo aquí hace un segundo.”

Mayday leaned over his forehead with a spooking babble. Miguel jolted back and gripped his chest, but retained remarkable bravery in the face of certain death, judging by how perfectly he masked his terrified shout with an elated chuckle.

Mayday kicked her legs in devilish fancy, but the loss of her anchor points made her fall from Miguel’s head. He caught her in the bend of his elbow and ruffled her hair as she continued babbling.

No longer crouching, you pillowed your head on your folded hands atop the machine as the sight of a comfortable, doting, utterly domestic Miguel embroidered your mind.

You’d never seen him look so happy.

Mayday popped her head up like she touched a spark plug, peering over Miguel’s bicep at the contents of the lab until she found you. She exclaimed a gurgly giggle as she shot a swung out of Miguel’s cradle, your worry that she’d hurt herself shoving you into the open to catch her at the end of her arc.

You eked a sheepish smile as Miguel’s eyes landed on you. You noticed his hands lacked gloves as he reached up to clear his throat; he was out of his suit and seemed bankrupt of energy, but his hair wasn’t wet and he lacked the pump of exercise, meaning he hadn’t worked out and showered as before. What was he doing before this?

Mayday tugged on your hair to regain your attention. You carefully unwrapped her fingers from your locks before she weeded your scalp, bouncing her on your hip as you approached the platform.

“I-I just came in,” you confessed, “I didn’t see…much.”

Mayday climbed you and Miguel in turns, experiencing double the joy from now having two people to play with her.

“Did she wander in here or did you take her into custody yourself? She does have a tendency to end up in places she shouldn’t.”

Miguel’s eyes flicked to you in a teasing accusation before he raised Mayday’s tush to help her finish climbing over his shoulder, chubby legs flailing.

“Peter asked me to watch her until he got back from a mission.” He opened his watch to check Parker’s location, “Though, with how long he’s taking, he might be buying groceries or something.”

You caught his emotions so easily this time that recognition slammed down on your brain like a buzzer: “I’m sure he’s fine, Miguel. No need to worry.”

Miguel closed his watch instantly, though his cold nonchalance lacked the same solidity as before. It felt as though his defenses had not been voluntarily lowered, but destroyed.

“Why are you here?” he pivoted instead, “You never come on your day shift.”

Your gaze dropped in frantic search of your tablet, only to realize you abandoned it on the floor when you caught Mayday. While it wasn’t immediately necessary to your alibi that you only stopped by to check on the thermocycler sequence, you couldn’t manage to get the excuse out anyway. With Mayday more slowly returning to your neck, on the path to tuckering herself out, the downy privacy of the scene twisted the lie in your mouth.

Seeing him like this actually made you wish your attraction was purely physical. It would make it a reaction. You were good at controlling your reactions.

“What if I just wanted to?” you hedged.

“To do what?”

“To see you.”

The sentiment charged of its own volition. You weren’t sure if you came across as nervous or teasing; even a combination of the two was better than the first one alone. Your blood pulsed so close to the surface of your skin you were certain Miguel could smell it.

His jaw tensed and his brow bunched with something approaching condemnation, maybe dismay, “How can you say that?”

You were certain you’d been caught. “W-What?”

“What do you mean when you say things like that? That you want—” he swallowed like his rage had reached critical limit, like he was drowning in it, “that you want me.”

Miguel almost sounded like he was calling you on a bluff. He inched backward as he watched you hold Mayday, blinking tightly as though trying to wipe away the sight before it could root in his mind.

Mayday fought against sleep in your arms. Welcoming the diversion, you attempted to coax her into relaxation only for her to remain staunchly cantankerous. You began to genuinely panic at your failure to help her until Miguel laid a hand on her head, coming up close to take her into his arms.

You stiffened with the scent of Miguel’s sweat; without his suit to obscure it or a cleanse to eliminate it, the novelty and richness of his smell overwhelmed the oxygen in the room.

Mayday whined with the transition until Miguel ran his knuckle along her nose bridge, eyelids fluttering closer and closer until the wrinkle in her brow smoothed and her breathing deepened.

Miguel answered the demands of fatherhood with more concentration than even his leadership at Spider Society. He was perfect at it. Perfect as in beyond compare. Unique. There was simply no one like him.

“Miguel, I—”

A portal opened across the room. A band of three stepped out.

“I mean, your body isn’t in peak condition like mine, Ben, but that doesn’t mean you need to worry so much over it. It’ll happen as long as you want it.”

“This is my greatest challenge yet, Peter. I have to increase my chances of success wherever possible, including these fertility stretches. Jess, I need you to critique my form.”

“Okay! Alright, yeah,” Jess lamely cheered, laugh slowing down into perhaps a deadpan sob through her grin, “This is the worst day of my life.”

Ben directed the other’s attentions with a brief, rabbiting thump, coming to nod as they absorbed the sight of you and Miguel playing House.

“Oh, my god,” Peter murmured to Ben, “You weren’t joking.”

“I don’t joke. Not anymore.”

Jess’ previous exasperation brightened into a summery playfulness, though there was something to the shimmy of her shoulders that reminded you of an ambushing crouch.

“Heeey!” she crooned with a wave of her fingers, eyes flicking back and forth between you and Miguel as she planted herself perpendicular to you. “What’s all this, huh?”

You and Miguel created more space between each other, floundering like malfunctioning animatronics.

“I was just leaving,” you excused, “I’m sure you’ve got to debrief after your mission.”

You nearly shouted as you backed into Ben, uncertain when he’d propped himself behind you.

“Of course. Everyone leaves…eventually.”

Peter shook you by the shoulder, “Don’t be in such a hurry! Let’s chat for a bit, as friends. It’s been a while since we all caught up, right, Doc?”

You felt like a steeped tea bag, moist and bleeding color as everyone studied your expression. “Y-Yes, certainly.”

“You’re not up here ’cause you’re in trouble, are you? Miguel giving you a hard time?”

“Of course not,” you rushed, your instinct to defend Miguel overtaking your decency. Or shame. It was difficult to tell which was which, since it often seemed the former was constituted by the latter; that is to say, operating by censorship to the point of deletion. “I just…wanted to talk about the phosphoramidite project. Miguel has been…”

You paused with the realization that no one had ever learned of the particulars of your partnership with Miguel, not from your mouth anyway. And, based on the tautness of his expression, you surmised he spoke little of it as well.

That mixed a strange feeling in your churning brain; you liked the exclusivity of this knowledge. The idea that you and Miguel shared some sort of secret. “Miguel has been a phenomenal partner. His involvement improves everything.”

Based on the glances Peter exchanged with Jess and Ben, the trio were indulging in their own inside joke. “All that experimentation must be exciting, right?”

“Addictively so. With Miguel.”

“You need to stop being humble,” Miguel complained, like praise was poison to him. Or, perhaps your words were not poisonous so much as unhealthy; refined and inoffensive as sugar, they could only answer an immediate craving for attention rather than any actual hunger for recognition.

You persisted, attempting to graft this strain of commentary onto the tender conversation you had before. “It’s not that I’m humble, I just feel more—well, I like discovering I can be who you believe me to be.”

Miguel looked ready to break into hives, but there was a ticklish oversensitivity to his reaction, an excess of protest alike yours, as though he too derived a guilty enjoyment from the sterling recommendation of character but didn’t want to seem arrogant.

This was where the three Spider’s faces dropped. They turned to each other with dread.

“Wow,” Peter mumbled, “this is actually…worse than I thought. I thought you said they—”

“I saw them half nake—” Ben retorted before Jess webbed his mouth shut.

She spoke much more sternly, a return to form you found equally disconcerting and relieving. “Seems like you guys really… respect each other.”

“What’s your favorite quality about Miguel,” Peter interjected. Jess reacted as though he waltzed into her finely built house of cards.

Miguel was cold and foreboding as a cursed statue, “I’d say Mayday’s ready to be put down, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I can assure you she’ll only open her eyes if I set her in her crib.”

Jess continued broiling you with her stare until you spoke.

“As I said, Miguel is an exceptional figure. There’s nothing he can’t achieve.”

“Are you saying you like him because of what he can do?” Peter held up a hand at Jess’ glare, clarifying, “As friends, as friends.”

You cleared your throat. “His abilities come from the strength of his character; there could be no Spider-Man without Miguel O’Hara. There shouldn’t be, really.”

Peter’s eyebrows jumped to his hairline. Beside him Miguel seemed to have flash-fossilized; where before he was desperate to pawn Mayday back to her dad like a thousand-degree potato, he was now clinging to her like he’d float away without her weight.

Peter patted Miguel’s back, half like he was showing off a magnificent car and half like he was trying to get said car to turn on.

“You know what I like most about Miguel? He’s great at giving gifts. Got Mayday a set of washable markers for Hanukkah, which is much easier to clean off the walls than crayons.”

“He’s great at cooking,” Jess supplemented, “Well, he can make, like, three things. But they’re the best three things you’ll ever eat!”

Every word seemed to parry Miguel like a knife on raw tuna. He certainly matched its color.

“Have I mentioned that he’s rich?”

Miguel stomped on Peter’s foot, mouth blade-thin. Peter in turn attempted to use his collapse as a means to squeeze Miguel into a side hug.

“It may not look it, but he’s also extremely sensitive,” Peter continued, teeth gritted as he turned back to Miguel, “And an exceptional listener.”

You looked at the ground, “So I’ve learned.”

There was something unmistakably yielding in Miguel’s expression, too surrendering to be coy yet carrying a hope that bordered on sanguine, almost manic. His eyes scanned you as his adam’s apple bobbed, drinking you in.

Privately, almost subconsciously, he smiled, redirecting it at Mayday.

Peter often worried whether he’d see Miguel relax ever again, and while this state was only an overlap of the emotion onto his person, he was certainly gentler. A little more vulnerable and flexible, like he was loosening up.

“You know what I just remembered?” Peter piped up, fiddling with his watch and scrolling as though begging for something of interest to jump out, “Today marks the—uh…Oh! It’s our four-hundred-sixty-eighth mission together. Pretty sure that’s, like, an angel number, right?”

“Angel numbers repeat,” Ben huffed. “You’re making us look uncool…”

“I’m not giving you a prize, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Miguel griped.

Ben and Peter spoke at the same time, “What if I say ‘please’?”

They turned to each other, the first ecstatic and the second perturbed.

“I’ve never felt as close to you as I do now.”

“It’s close enough, it’s—please don’t look at me like that.”

“Since I’m a clone of my universe’s Peter Parker, does that make us like twins? Is this twin telepathy?”

“No,” Peter deadpanned, just as you and Jess adjudicated, “Yes.”

“I thought you guys were my friends. Friends don’t make fun of their friends, it’s a rule.”

“Is it?” Miguel growled, bending his neck toward Peter.

“It passed the Senate just now.” He waved his hands, “Anyway, we have our four hundred ninety sixteenth—whatever mission to commemorate! We need to celebrate!”

“I’ll cover whatever whim you come up with, if it makes you happy, but sinkholes are popping up all over Earth-11638. I need to stay here and cover the response detail.” Miguel said it with renewed purpose, your words strengthening his spine like folded steel.

“Then we’ll do something here—we’ll keep it brief,” Peter stipulated at Miguel’s annoyance, “and light. Just something to mark the occasion, like a…”

He looked at you and snapped his fingers, “Like a picture!”

You’d be lying if you said you didn’t start beaming; you’d never captured a group photo before.

Peter made a frame with his index fingers and thumbs as he arranged everyone into an appropriate composition according to height: the two Parkers would flank Miguel while you and Jess stood in front, like an inverted pyramid.

“Just stay still while I figure out the settings on this thing,” Peter ordered as he scrupled with the enigma of his holoscreen layout.

You raised a tentative finger, “Just press the button in the corner for the menu.”

“Here?” Peter prompted as a calendar opened to his right.

“I’m pretty sure it’s at the bottom,” Jess threw out, while Ben rounded with, “What if it’s like a clapper?”

Miguel rolled his eyes, “Aye, así que ayúdame—Lyla!”

The AI limned in gold tangents like a visiting angel, advising Peter on how to stop zooming into Jess’ ear and maxing out the contrast.

“Dude, c’mon, I thought you were a photojournalist.”

“Yeah, that means I don’t use seven different apps for one picture. This a camera or a motherboard to a spaceship—” Peter made a frame with his fingers to finalize the composition before trotting over to take his place on Miguel’s right, “The fundamentals are all you need ninety-nine percent of the time; if a photo is about recording the current moment, it should embrace whatever flimsy, temporary, candid state it’s in. A photo is the ultimate affirmation that everything is exactly where it’s supposed to be.”

You rocked with laughter seeing Peter display genuine passion for something rather than carry on with his usual laid back attitude. Light unspooled from the rafters onto the six of you as Lyla gave the signal to smile and squeeze in; Peter hugged Jess and Miguel as Ben flexed his arm in front of you, tilting his face to pronounce his jawline.

“Cheese!” everyone trilled, mindful of the sleeping tot, followed by—

“We did it again! The twin telepathy thing!”

“That’s just what you’re supposed to say, Ben—”

Flash scattered across your eyelids like dandelion pollen.

You blinked away the residual negative spots in your vision as the portrait popped above your watches.

You looked…well, you looked your age. More specifically, you looked like everything that entailed: radiant with freedom, assured of yourself, confident, a joy to be around. You liked the way your eyes creased when you blinked. The skin overlapped like petals.

More than that, you looked perfectly natural alongside the Spiders. This wasn’t a photo taken in starstruck admiration like before; it was far more sentimental than a trophy or piece of paraphernalia. It felt more like an heirloom.

You immediately opened your phone to set it as your lock screen, half-conscious of Peter lingering over your shoulder.

“It was good seeing you guys. Let’s…do this again, sometime.” You tried not to look at Miguel and failed, “When we’re all free.”

His tongue seemed to have uprooted from his mouth, with all the luck he had forming a sentence. “I—uh, that’s—when—what time works for you?”

“Oh! W-Whenever, I can do whatever. Whenever. Anywhere.” Your watch beeped. Gasping, you glanced around for your tablet and began jogging to the doors, “My appointment is in five! Pardon me—”

You would have walked into the wall had not Jess webbed you back on the path, she and Ben flanking your sides like bodyguards. Or chaperones.

Miguel’s voice waned, “I’ll be here.”

When the doors closed, he smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead.

Peter guffawed, laughter rocking him like drunken hiccups. His volume only increased when Miguel began softly slamming his head against a monitor.

“What was that?”

“Take your baby, Peter.”

“Woah, come on, fill me in! How long has this been going on? How did it start?”

“It hasn’t.” Miguel’s face screwed up as he processed his slip up, “It won’t. Nothing’s there.”

“I mean, I don’t know about that, I saw you basically sprout a tail and wag everytime Doc looked at you.”

“Oh? Oh, you were seeing things? Like a hallucination? Figures. Just leave if you’re going to be a pest.”

Peter quieted down as he took Mayday, one hand held in surrender, “Alright, alright, I believe you. Nothing untoward going on between you guys. Colleagues give each other goo-goo eyes all the time! It’s listed in the Society handbook as a trust-building exercise. Right above the section for promise rings and buying a house.”

Miguel stalked away.

“Makes sense for Doc especially,” Peter mused, walking off in a slow, stalling exit from the room, “Caught a peek of their phone background after the group shot. Think it was you two standing next to some empty fish tank.”

Miguel spun back with too much hope, “The incubation chamber?”

“Aha!” Peter shouted before instantly shrinking at Mayday’s stirring. He whispered like a heating tea kettle, “I knew it. I knew you had a thing for them, you can’t hide it from me.”

Miguel threw up his hands, whisper just as steamed, “Fine! Take your petty win, Peter, shame on me for believing you could mature past high school.”

“This is fabulous. This is spectacular. This is—gosh, I’m ecstatic for you, Mig! What’s the plan? How are you going to make a move?”

Miguel shook his head in utter exasperation before heaving a breath, rubbing the exhaustion from his eyes before rubbing his temple in the same way you did yours. It felt like such a naïve ritual to him, attempting to magic your reciprocity of his feelings through copying you.

“You’re certain the feeling is…mutual?”

“Doc’s face lights up like a neon sign around you, bud.” Peter adjusted Mayday to drool on his bathrobe rather than his suit, soaking up the splotch with the end of his tie belt. “And I’m not sure if you’ve been paying attention, but whenever they looked at you, their heartbeat just—”

“Got fast,” Miguel finished, posture charged with adrenaline.

“Mistook it for a jackhammer at first, thought you were doing some remodeling here.”

“I just thought they had a condition,” Miguel tried to purse his lips against his smile, pressing his fist against them as he landed against a console with something approaching a faint. “So, they actually…”

Peter clapped Miguel on the back, “What are you gonna do?”

In a gradual acceleration he allowed himself to indulge in the memory of your contact with this newfound knowledge that your amaranth complexion was not only ripened by him, but intended for him. Possessiveness and pride and greed flowed down Miguel’s throat like spit-thinned ambrosia as he imagined provoking a more intense reaction from you; he wasn’t indulging in it, no, he was taking responsibility.

“I’m…going to invite them for dinner,” Miguel began, staring up like the whole sky had expanded in a new Big Bang.

“Yes!”

Miguel began to pace, rubbing his brow like he was throwing his thoughts on a pottery wheel, digging into the finer details of his fantasy and savoring their verisimilitude, their prophecy, “And afterward we’ll go somewhere with a view, private and quiet, maybe the transmission tower downtown—”

“Yes!”

“I’ll take their hand, keep it to the point…” Miguel curled his fingers into his palm, imagining the gesture to be one of acceptance and not restraint, “And then all that’s left is to decide whose place to go back to.”

“Yes! Oh-ho-ho, Miguel, you fox, you,” Peter celebrated with a pump of his fist. “When’s it happening?”

Miguel stopped, gaze dropping to the ground as his dream escaped into the aether like a lost balloon. “Soon. Maybe a few months, if I’m lucky.”

“I’m not trying to harsh your buzz, Mig, but maybe a fancy restaurant is a bit overkill for a first date if you have to schedule a reservation so far in advance.”

“No, I mean—” Miguel pinched his nose bridge, “It’s too soon to act. There’s still so much to do here before I can focus on my personal life.”

“H-Hang on, hang on. Lemme get this straight, you have a shot with Doc and you’re just going to…sit on it.”

Miguel nodded.

Peter snorted once. Twice. When he saw that Miguel was entirely serious, his face and hand dropped. Without further preamble, he struck Miguel upside the head, remaining in place even when Miguel retaliated with a snarl and poised talons.

“What the heck are you doing, man? You’re basically leading them on! Doc has these feelings now, you need to act on them now!”

“It’s not leading them on if I feel the same way,” Miguel growled, “I need to make sure everything else happens the way it has to, that nothing’s going to take this from me again.”

Peter backed off, a strange pity mixing with his disappointment that sickened Miguel to his stomach.

“Miguel. I get it.”

“You don’t. You can’t—you have a wife, a kid, a home to go at the end of the day. I’m nothing like you. I’m nowhere close.”

Peter took a breath, warming the limbs of his daughter as he copied Miguel’s position against the console.

“You know, most of my issues came when I hid that I was Spider-Man from those closest to me. Those that tried to be, anyway. You kinda have a leg up on me with that.”

“It doesn’t change how dangerous this all is,” Miguel murmured. “How much worse it can get.”

“Isn’t that all the more reason to help each other? I know our whole thing is self-sacrifice and all, but there’s a kind of egotism to thinking your problems are so divine that only you can bear them.” Peter chuckled as Miguel huffed. “Being with someone isn’t about being perfect or getting fixed or anything like that. Love is maintenance. It’s work, and you gotta deal with the dirty work to be rewarded with dirty work.”

Peter became unable to resist snorting at his own pun and losing the plot of this inspirational speech.

“¿De qué estás hablando?” Miguel groaned.

Peter’s fight to suppress his smile only pronounced his jowls like a senile weirdo, “Well, Mig, you see—when two people love each other very much—”

Miguel bared his teeth at Peter in incisive warning, though the latter didn’t cow to the former; the demands to leave had been dropped, leaving only unstable, roiling anxiety in Miguel’s chest for the pragmatic answer that lied at the core of Peter’s winding advice.

“You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You gotta take both—everything—the good parts and the bad.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“It’s a cake, Mig. You save a slice for everybody.”

The contours of Miguel’s body thickened and rounded with deep consideration, not just in contemplation for what Peter said, but appreciation for his support. The only problem the man saw was Miguel’s own hesitance, whose familiarity granted relief as much as its chronic continuance caused agony; no matter the issue, Miguel only had himself to blame.

Before their cushy fellowship could leaven any further, the screens awoke with a howling emergency announcement. Peter groaned as Mayday shot up in his arms and repossessed her father’s forty-five minutes of free time, to which Miguel only offered the reprimand that he should have left when he was told. The multiverse waits for no one.

Miguel opened the alert and raked his eyes over the footage contained within it, rage ransacking his expression of contentment until his cheeks hollowed and wrinkles reclaimed the space where his smile lay.

“Lyla, when was this taken?”

The reply was so quick Lyla didn’t even appear, her presence only communicated by the watch’s glowing panel, “About fifteen minutes ago.”

Security footage showed Chameleon of Earth-51070 breaking into the Palace Theatre, Earth-409. However, she lacked the panic and disorientation of most anomalies, taking a martini at the venue’s bar while polishing her teeth in the reflection of the badge on her kitschy, utterly unconvincing costume officer’s cap.

But what snagged Miguel’s attention was not the anomaly’s presence, but her bartender, leaning in to center himself in the frame with the same cheap, eye-watering, desperate star power of a disco ball. Mysterio’s wave as he poured Chameleon her drink bore such arrogance Miguel swore it was a challenge. Even for this villain the act was theatrical.

“The anomaly teamed up with a home player.” Peter’s voice came like an aftershock from the crater of his mouth. “I didn’t even know that was possible.”

“We’re supposed to stop them before they have the chance.”

Miguel scrolled through the accessory screen of Chameleon’s profile before closing it in a violent curl of his fist. He didn’t even glance at Mysterio’s before shoving it away.

“Qué cabrón, as soon as we send him home he starts trouble.” Though Miguel shook his head, it did nothing to dispel his vexation. If anything, it shook his blood vessels into apoplexy like a soda can.

Look what Ant had done with Miguel’s leniency—give an inch and that brat takes a mile, takes as much space as necessary to run away from her responsibilities until they become everyone’s regrets. If she’d followed Mysterio immediately after his displacement, he wouldn’t have caught the scent of power beyond his station, wouldn’t have then tracked it like a shark, wouldn’t put Earth-409’s canon, your existence, in jeopardy.

Miguel’s eyes widened as his pulse detonated, hurriedly ordering Lyla to tell him your whereabouts. You reprimanded Lyla for interrupting your appointment in a soft stereo crackle; thank goodness you hadn’t decided to shake up your routine beyond coming to the lab.

“Get Ben and Jess back here. Get Antonia too—I don’t care where she is, she’s going to clean up her mess.” Miguel tapped behind his ear as Lyla sent out his summons, conjuring his suit beneath his clothes so quickly it was as though his skin had been wiped away.

Peter positioned Mayday against his shoulder to block Miguel with his raised palms, “Woah, and where are you going?”

“I’m settling this,” Miguel answered, attempting to blink away the darkness ringing his eyes as though it were grime.

“Absolutely not, are you kidding?” Peter’s face drained to match the salt and pepper streaks of his hair, “Actually, wait—please be kidding. It’s a hilarious joke! Have I mentioned MJ wants you to visit again? You can delight us with your comedy over lunch.”

Miguel restrained himself from shoving Peter away as he and Mayday reached for him, “Get out of my way.”

Peter gripped Miguel’s shoulder with his full strength, preventing him from escaping no matter how he thrashed, “I asked you to watch Mayday because you look like you’ve got one foot in the grave. I don’t know whether work’s catching up to you or what, but you can’t go down there. Call in a bigger team if you have to.”

“And take away resources from worlds that need it?”

“Then I’ll go—”

“No.” Miguel winced as Mayday flinched at his voice, growing more distraught where she hid in her dad’s neck as Peter refused to budge. He grit his teeth in an attempt to slam his fangs back into their alcoves. “We’ve never had to deal with more than one anomaly at a time and you’ve never dealt with this Mysterio. He can manifest things through glitching, he nearly perfected it the last time I saw him, and every second he spends near that anomaly threatens that coming to fruition. There’s no time to debate this, Peter, take your kid and leave.”

Peter began cobbling together a retort in his mouth, but Mayday’s persistent discomfort, her fear at two trusted individuals yelling in her face, made him acquiesce. Parenthood had made Peter fiercer in many respects, but it also often made him pull his punches, bow out a fight instead of sticking till its very end.

Family made Peter selfish. To be tethered to someone meant being unable to appraise the world from a bird’s eye view; you developed an eye for details, for exceptions, for nuances. Your attention to prevention gave way to desire for new experiences. Peter now considered the world not for leave-taking. And so he placed his daughter in her sling, opened a portal, and decided to live to fight another day.

“I better see you here when this is over,” he threatened.

Miguel pulled up a panel of his DNA as the portal evanesced, the helix engorged and writhing from its violent separation from the improved serum. Miguel stalked to his desk and swiftly injected himself with the original version, shuddering with nausea as it swept throughout his body like a monsoon.

Ben and Jess re-entered the room with Ant in tow, looking borderline excited at their next mission before she registered Mysterio’s at the far edge of the splatter-pattern of screens. Her face fell as she met Miguel’s fuming stare.