Chapter Text
The multiverse transporter thingy (or the gizmo as Miles takes to calling it) fits perfectly over his wrist, just below his web-shooter.
It’s been two months since Miles shut down Fisk and Doc Ock's maniacal collider plan. Two months of juggling school with patrols, making time for family and for May Parker, and of course, two months to figure out the new gizmo Peni had talked about when she and Gwen wanted to practice their autonomous multiverse jumps.
Yes, it’s exactly as cool as it sounds.
For Miles to catch up to the science of it, he knows he has to get more into the Spider-Man techy part. He mixes his own web-fluid now, testing the limits of the web which is now as strong as a carbon-titanium alloy nanotube. The thing can carry a truck.
And now, he is sitting in May's kitchen, trying a weird flavor of tea and twisting a dial into his rudimentary multiverse watch.
The thingamajig, as May calls it, started out as pieces, but Miles figures out a stable configuration over several weeks. He’s sure it’s nothing compared to what Peni has in mind, but he can’t wait to surprise the other Spideys with his little device.
"Solved it?" Aunt May asks, setting down a plate of bagels.
Miles eyes the bagels suspiciously. "You're distracting me!"
"You're fidgeting," May points out, eyes crinkling with her smile. "A snack can help. Peter B. said you liked bagels."
It’s taken her a while to get comfortable with talking about the other Spider-people. Miles appreciates her thoughtfulness, even though Peter B. had been teasing. Miles prefers chocolate donuts with a beautiful sugar glaze. But bagels aren't bad either.
Miles grabs one with a cheeky grin. The TV is muted but running in the background, and the streaming headlines catch his attention.
CEO Potts' official statement is: “Stark Industries has no connection with the on-going global news regarding the superhero registration act. Please direct all inquiries to the UN.”
“Avengers,” May mutters, shaking her head. “There’s a team who could use some group counseling.”
She looks over to him, focusing on the metal brace. “Is that a spare web-shooter? Or the other thing…?”
"This is a prototype," Miles confirms her second guess, gesturing to the gizmo brace. “With what happened to the other Spidey-people, their atoms weren’t brought here in a stable fashion. So that’s what I wanted to fix with this. Peni had the idea to use some DNA of the traveler affixed to the gizmo. So it doesn’t matter which part of the multiverse we’d be in, this thing would hold all my atoms together because it’s reading my biological info.”
May wrinkles her nose. “You feed it your blood?”
“Just a tiny bit!” he defends. “Just enough for it to recognize me.”
“Sounds dangerous,” May says, but not entirely disapproving. “I hope you’ve done your research. You’re fourteen, Miles. Acing all your papers, patrolling every night, and working on a multiverse jumping idiomatic. Burnout is a real thing that’s hitting people at younger ages now. Twenty-something-year-olds go on sabbatical to escape the stress.”
She raises her eyebrows at him. “You’re going at full speed, Miles. You don’t need to prove yourself. We know how good you are.”
Miles swallows. May’s saying all this as though she’s been thinking of it for a while. “My grades are still up. And I catch a lot of small-time things now, May. I go straight back to my room at 1 am and don’t even get any dreams. Sleep’s easy for me.”
He looks down at the incomplete gizmo. “It gets a little lonely though.”
May nods, sitting opposite him. She reminds him kindly, “You told me once that they would understand.”
He watches her drop a magazine on the table, nudging the bagels towards him. “Take it from me, Miles. It will remove so much from your shoulders once they know.”
Miles wrings his hands together, knee bouncing. “I’m like… 80% sure they wouldn’t hate me. I’ll be grounded forever, but…”
“It’s not like Spider-Man is a different version of you,” May adds. “It’s you. And they love you.”
They do love me , Miles agrees. He never doubts that. His mami has glittering eyes that tell him the truth every day without words. And his dad… tells him. With stammers, and hitches in his voice. Tells him through a closed door, tells him over C-mobile, tells him in person lest Miles, through the cruelty of the world, forgets it or believes otherwise.
Miles is damn lucky to have them as his parents.
But the secret of Spider-Man…?
This was a secret just for him. His powers, his suit, his web-shooters... Miles is free, he flies over the city, constantly finding new ways to run and swing through Brooklyn. He leaps from bridges, skims over the water, and flips up into the sky, a subject of the occasional gasp of the people gawking up at him. He’s more than a hero, he’s part of something way bigger and glorious when he’s out there.
It was far easier coming out to his parents about his pansexuality, but Spider-Man?
“Going home for the weekend,” Miles finds himself saying, staring at the multiverse gizmo. “Let’s see what happens.”
May pats his shoulder. “Atta boy. Now scoot. I got my Bingo night to get to.”
“You’ll lose all your cash, May.”
“Yes, but I’ll get some digits.”
Miles laughs at the snarky but sure tone of her words.
Heading back to school is a small trial of its own. With the sun quickly setting, trouble-makers start gathering in pockets of the city. He comes across a gang of muggers harassing some kids in Queens. Quickly disposing of them and walking the teens home, Miles sets his sights on Brooklyn Visions, feeling the perfected web-shooters work exactly as he desires.
He revels in the elasticity of the web, wondering if that needs an upgrade as well when a soft roar of fire reaches out to him from somewhere across the borough.
Miles leaps from the top of the Baxter Building, catching himself and swinging over Brooklyn as the sound grows louder. It feels like he ought to know the noise, like something in him understands that this noise is different and must be investigated.
A suit of armor touches down very nearly in his path.
If Miles didn’t have his super-senses, he and Iron Man might have had a spectacular crash in mid-air. Luckily, they are both spared from the accident and land neatly on the top of a pigeon infested roof.
“Hey there, new Spidey,” Iron Man says, his voice laid-back and mildly curious. “Haven’t had the chance to introduce myself. Iron. Man. You may call me Mr. Man or Mr. Iron, I’m not picky.”
Miles is thankful for the unnecessarily long speech since it gives him ample time to unstick his jaw from the dirty roof. He is glad for the mask. Hopefully, it gives him as stoic a look as the unflinching face of the suit of armor portrays. The flashy red and gold do nothing to diminish the seriousness of the persona. In fact, Miles feels a small thrilling sensation of fear running through his veins.
“Keeping the city safe, I see?” he continues when Miles still hasn’t spoken.
“Uh… uh, yeah! I mean… “ Miles deepens his voice and speaks from his chest, “I’m on the case, Mr. Man!”
The suit’s helmet hisses a microsecond before the visor shoots up, revealing actual Tony Stark’s face. Miles gawks at him. He’s never seen Stark in real life before, so up close. His face had always been shown through screens small enough to fit in Miles’s palm, or large enough to encompass the side of a building.
In-person, Stark looks beat up. His sharply shaved beard is slightly coarse, there are dark circles… no, one of those was a slowly blossoming black-eye. His breath smells stale like he’s been stuck in the metal suit for far longer than he prefers.
“Are you... ” Stark says, looking confused and taken aback. “An actual pre-pubescent child?”
Miles does the mature thing and mentally sticks his tongue out at him. Outwardly, he says, “Excuse you, Mr. Man. You may address me as Mr. Spider if you please.”
“Of course,” Stark nearly rolls his eyes. “Mr. Spider-kid, here I was, flying innocently intending to propose a deal to the new Spider-Man, the hero who has taken up the mantle Parker left behind, and it turns out you’re a real adult-in-progress.”
Miles’s mind goes sour at the mention of Peter. “Did you know him?”
“In professional capacity. Oh jeez, you really are a kid, aren’t you? I was hoping for late teens at the youngest because this is a big deal—”
“Okaaaay,” Miles takes a few steps away from the rambling metal man with the creepy-placed words.
“No, wait!” Stark announces. “We’re here, I might as well just say it. We need your help, Spidey.”
Miles stops as the suit of armor splits from the front, a long vertical line opening up and retreating in plates, allowing Stark to simply step out onto the roof. The suit moves like it is a streamlined automotive machine in an assembly line. It makes Miles stare at the sight in awe.
“My help?” Miles asks weakly.
Stark spreads out his hands. He’s in a tux without the blazer, looking snazzy even though he was beat up. “The Avengers are in a bit of pickle. We got some rogues, we got some runaways. Need to round them up and bring them back. You in?”
Miles’s head is reeling. It takes him a little more time to realize that Tony freakin’ Stark is actually standing in front of him, asking little ol’ Miles for help.
But as Stark explains the situation, Miles notices the light ticks of the frustration and overtiredness in the hero’s visage. Whatever is happening is not really as simple as ‘rounding up a bunch of rogues.’
“You’re talking about Captain America,” Miles says. He thinks back to the news that’s been taking the world by storm for the past week. “And the Winter Soldier.”
“The good captain’s gotten a little over his head—”
“I thought you guys are friends?” Miles interrupts him.
“I am,” Stark answers, his face going unreadable. “We are.”
“Then why are you treating him like a criminal?”
“Kid, you did hear about the news from Vienna, didn’t you?”
Miles frowns. The explosion in the UN headquarters in Vienna had made news even faster than the blast in Lagos. Everyone knows about it.
“Then why would Captain America side with a bomber?” he asks. “Maybe there’s more to the story? Do you know that he and the Winter Soldier used to be friends? Like in the second world war?”
Stark sighs. “It’s far more complicated than that. But we’re going to bring him in so he can explain his side of the story.”
“You’re not acting like a friend,” Miles mumbles.
Stark groans. “Well, neither is he! The decor on my face isn’t the latest red-carpet style, his buddy socked me before high-tailing!”
Miles doesn’t know that adults whined as much as Stark does. There is the slightly jaded energy of Peter B., and then there is this.
“We’re going to stop them from taking off in Berlin. They’re still in the city, but it’s just a matter of time before they leave,” Stark says. “You can help us.”
There is something similar to the way Miles had to choose to wear the mask and join the Spiders in taking down Fisk and Doc Ock…
Wait…
No. This is actually nothing like that. Stark is asking Miles to join in a fight against teammates. If Peter B. and Peni come around to ask him to fight Gwen, Noir, and Peter Porker, Miles would smack them all upside the head.
He might be new to super-heroing, but this is not how a team works. Miles has no empathy for Stark and just wants to leave.
“No,” Miles answers, feeling his spider-sense shoot up in tandem with Stark’s eyebrows.
“What? Seriously, kid? This is an opportunity of a lifetime—”
“Fighting your friends is not an opportunity,” Miles says with a frown. “I know what it’s like to be part of a team. You and Captain America must have forgotten that, because this is not how friends behave. I’m not getting involved in that.”
He takes another step back, eager to jump off the roof. Stark is gobsmacked.
“You… you think this is some little cat-fight? It’s a whole misunderstanding that’s costing lives and funds. Mr. America’s gone rogue on us, siding with a known war criminal. We need to track them down—”
“I’m not going to Germany!” Miles protests, panic starting to sink in. “Yeah, I know where Berlin is!”
“Kid…”
“I don’t know why you’re asking me. There’s a dozen super-heroes around here, you can ask any one of them! Yeah, I’m new to the scene, but I’m not so green that you can just drop in, thinking I’ll take up any chance to fight big names.”
Miles might have stepped overboard with the comment because Stark glowers a bit.
“That's that?” Iron Man asks, with an unimpressed face. “You’d rather stick to saving kids from traffic and rescuing cats from trees? I’ve seen the aftermath of Fisk tower after his little science experiment was shut down, I’ve seen your work. You caught the head of an internationally known criminal organization. That’s no small game. You’ve got cred, you have the power and the ability, you’re leagues ahead of where Peter was when he started out—”
“Peter refused to join the Avengers, didn’t he?” Miles says. Stark snaps his mouth shut.
“I… I agree,” Stark says slowly, “that the hero life isn’t for everyone. It’s a choice that you have to go all in. But you’re choosing to be Spider-Man. Whoever you really are, whether a teen or a young adult, you are taking up this responsibility to do some good. So help me out.”
Miles’s shoulders slumps. Everything about the Lagos and the Vienna incidents, the story of Sokovia, the history of the Avengers and SHIELD, everything was privy to the public. And Miles, along with his parents, along with Aunt May, Mary Jane, and the Spiders, agreed to declare the Avengers a mess.
He doesn’t want to get involved in this.
“Have you ever rescued a cat from a tree?” Miles asks.
Stark stares. “Um… no. I’ve wrestled one out of my closet once. Turned out to be a raccoon, though.”
Spider-Man shakes his head. “Try saving a cat, Mr. Man. Give it your all, rescue a cat, and then we’ll talk.”
He takes a few steps back, hopping onto the parapet and falling off the roof.
Looking back on it, refusing Iron Man’s offer is a boss move. Miles is so glad he did that. Sure, there is his back-to-back AP Chem and Calculus tests this week, but more to the point, he is fairly confident that after working with the Spider-people and fighting as a team, getting involved in this civil war of sorts would have a terrible effect on his motivation.
He likes to fight with his friends, not against them, thank you very much.
Miles swings all the way back to Brooklyn Visions, heart racing at the prospect of having freakin’ turned down an Avenger invite! Nothing could bring him down from the lightheadedness, the rush thrumming through his entire body.
Except for what happens next.
His arm glitches.
Miles shudders, eyes widening. His left arm is elevated reaching out to grab one of the gargoyle statues atop a skyscraper. The night is growing colder, lights popping up everywhere, but it is the odd stream of colors that erupts from the skin of his suit, displacing his entire hand that catches him completely off-guard.
It happens again, this time a shock going through his system. Miles flinches, curling his fingers and pressing them to his chest. He topples onto the large green ledge on the building, looking up the clear skies, stars blinking at him.
What’s happening… ? Is Peni doing this? No, she’d somehow warn them if she activates her devices, but what if she’s in trouble and—
Miles’s entire body disappears for a fraction of a second. His molecules screech at the obscene stretch, brain-melting from the pressure. His physical form stitches itself back together, but Miles is gasping, body twitching from the abrupt shock.
That hurt! That hurt so bad—
The colors hit him again. Sharp tendrils of electricity race down his hands in self-defense but there is nothing physical to fight, except for the universe ripping a hole for him to slide through.
Miles falls right through the tear in the dimensional fabric.
He’s racing through space. Stars twinkle at him from a thousand light years away, and sleek silver strands of spider webs stretch across the cosmos. Miles cringes against the sharp tug, like someone is pulling him across the universe by a single web length. He is flying at the speed of light, past brightly let nebulous clouds and planets the size of gods.
Miles slips through a second tear in the multiverse and lands on a smooth metal floor under damning bright floodlights trained above him. Space disappears and he’s back on Earth.
Agony courses like a powerful sludge, suffocating his insides. He curls into a ball, screaming and shooting electricity out in every direction, barely holding back anything because the burn was bleeding into his skin, through the bones, into every atom of his entire being.
Lights short out, glass bursts, and the buzz of the machines around him shut down instantly. The silence now builds up in his head and Miles sobs, feeling tears slip down his face, wondering how the others could have gone through this fiery pain and still quip afterward.
He keeps glitching till he passes out.
Miles wakes to the smell of something delicious.
Sizzling tomato sauce; bell pepper, onions, and garlic frying in olive oil, warm melted cheese…
Pizza?
He opens his eyes, taking stock of the situation.
Miles is on a large futon, a cozy pink quilt draped over him. He has his transporter gizmo and is still in his suit, mask on. The tight fabric is restricting his breathing like he’s worn it for several hours. But that isn’t the problem.
He can’t recognize the room. The hall is long and spacious, with wide windows adorned in cream curtains. They are pinned to let the sunlight stream in. The wallpaper is a soft golden texture of high quality, matching the mahogany of the furniture spread across the place. There is an expensive-looking writing table, a freakin’ piano, two full sets of sofa and coffee tables, an incredible TV showcase for a 60-inch flatscreen… this is high living.
Along one part of the wall are many photographs adorned in elaborate shining frames. Most of them are about an older white guy, teens or twenties, Miles isn’t sure. He has floppy brown hair, vague brown eyes, and gleaming smiles in all the pictures. In most, he’s alone with scrolls, graduation caps, suits, trophies, awards, clutched in his hands. In some, there are a few peers, and in very few, he is surrounded by a couple, probably parents, who look on proudly.
The smell of fresh pizza is very distinct now. It’s from the kitchen, through a doorway on the other end of the hall. Miles sits up, now wondering if Iron Man kidnapped him last night. Is he in Germany?
A man steps through the kitchen door. It’s the same guy from the photos. He wears a bright blue apron with the words Drop-kick the chef, and smells of pizza.
But most of all, the air around him buzzes, the intensity hitting Miles immediately. His jaw drops.
“You’re like me,” Miles whispers, turning around fully. The quilt drops to the floor and the man, this new Spider-Man, grins.
“That’s exactly what I said when I saw you! Word for word,” he chirps before pointing at Miles’s shoes. “You know your laces are undone?”
Miles stands up, his body trembling slightly. It is a strange sensation, his spider-sense isn’t stopping, keeping up a low-level buzz like it’s prodding him to react somehow.
“Oh my god,” Miles blinks. He finally takes off the mask, letting himself breathe in the delicious smell of homemade pizza. “I’m in another dimension!”
The man stares, smile dropping. “You’re what?”
Now that’s going to take a while to explain.
His name is Peter Parker. While he looks nothing like Peter from Miles’s dimension had, this Peter resembles more like Peter B., but only barely. Miles rolls his eyes.
“Seriously, another one? I haven’t met a Miles Morales yet. Show me a Miles Morales!”
“Morales?” The new Peter says, slicing the pizza into six neat pieces. Miles sits at the table, enthusiastically watching the melted cheese drip onto the chopping board.
“Sounds familiar,” Peter continues, placing two slices on a ceramic plate and passing them to Miles.
“You know me? Like, the version of me from here?”
“I can’t recall your face, but the name is definitely familiar,” Peter takes off the apron and grabs his own plate, sitting down opposite Miles. “Dig in.”
Miles blows over his slices, taking a bite out of it and nearly moaning from the goodness. The flavors hit in all the right spots.
“Duuuuuude.”
Peter laughs. “Thanks! I figured a good meal would take the edge off. I’m still getting the buzzing sensation from the go-down.”
“The what?”
“Warehouse. It’s where I found you.”
Miles polishes off a full slice. “Was there some baddy there? Doc Ock?”
Peter frowns. “There was no one. Some odd bits and bobs. I got the owner to close off the area so no one wanders around there. After my patrol last night, got some funky vibes from Brooklyn, funkier than usual, I mean.”
“Like Queens is so hot.”
Peter points his slice at Miles. “You disrespect my borough, you disrespect me.”
“Bring it on, Spidey!”
They stare at each other before simultaneously chuckling. Miles takes a great big bite of the pizza, humming again. “This is too good!”
“Help yourself. You must be really hungry. Actual dimensional transportation,” Peter adds shaking his head.
“It wasn’t me, though,” Miles says. “Something in this universe brought me here.”
Peter looks up, eyebrows high. “You’re sure about that?”
Miles knows from the get-go that it isn’t his gizmo that brought him here. It is unfinished, still having no way to access the multiverse in any capacity. “Hundo. Trust me, glitching is something I’m not going to look forward to. It happened to the others, you know?”
“Others?”
“Oh, yeah. There’s loads of us. Basically, every dimension out there in the multiverse has a Spider-person. I’m from Earth-1610. Peni is from the future, in like… 3000 or something. It’s Earth-312? 512? Yikes, I forgot, she’s gonna kill me. Basically, everyone’s got an assigned number. I wonder which one we’re in?”
Miles launches into the entire story, how he was bit, how he saw his Peter Parker take on several villains at once, but was caught by Fisk, how the reactor had brought five Spider-people from their dimensions to Miles’s world… It’s a ride.
Peter looks a little pale at the thought of his counterpart dying. He refuses to eat more than two slices of pizza, leaving the rest to Miles, who feels bad.
“Sorry, I really… I don’t know how to put it gently—”
Peter shakes his head. “It doesn’t sound like your fault. Please don’t apologize. Just a day after you got bit and basically thrown into the scene at fifteen. I can’t imagine that. I had a luckier start than you.”
Miles shrugs. “Fourteen technically.”
“You’re only fourteen!” Peter groans.
“Hey, come on! How old are you? When did you start?”
“I’m twenty-six … started at fourteen.”
“Ha!”
“But it’s different!”
“How?”
“Because…” Peter splutters. “Because, looking back on it, I can’t believe I started so young. Jeez, please don’t tell me you’re doing this on your own. The lone wolf act isn’t so heroic.”
“Um… your aunt knows.”
Peter blinks and stares at Miles, lost for words. Miles wonders if he should have said it. Did something happen to May Parker in this universe?
“Uh…” Miles tries to say. “I mean…”
“She’s still around?” Peter asks, his voice thick.
Oh no.
“Yeah. She’s… there. She knows me.”
Peter breathes out, “And Ben?”
“He’s… sorry, he’s gone.”
Peter pressed his lips together, staring down at the pizza. Miles feels horrible. “Pete—”
“It’s okay, I just wasn’t prepared for that… it’s… I just wish they were together. I mean… her Peter’s gone and so is Ben. Is she alone?”
“She’s got friends at her club, the neighbors… I visit once a week. Mary Jane’s also around. May’s doing good,” Miles says, hoping to lift Peter’s spirits.
Peter nods slowly. “Who’s Mary Jane?”
Miles nearly swallows a bite without chewing. “MJ. You don’t have a Mary Jane here?”
Peter gapes at him. “I… her name’s not Mary Jane…”
He sits back, absolutely stunned now. Miles feels like he’s just digging a deeper hole, trying to explain things.
“Soooo... “ Miles looks around the modern kitchen. It is way too fancy with dozens of colorful cabinets (how can he fill them all?), a huge wooden furnished refrigerator (no fridge magnets?), and a large electric cooker set up with a hundred different settings…
“So, you’re really rich? Like a millionaire?”
“I’m doing okay.”
“That’s what a rich person would say. Old or new money?”
Peter huffs. “I come from humble beginnings, believe it or not.”
“I believe that,” Miles says before waving an arm around. “Like, I believe you being Spider-Man, being a hero. This is a little harder to swallow. Do you work for the Avengers?”
“Of course not!” Peter scoffs. “I do my own thing. But I also have a day job which pays very well.”
“Do you do hacking tests for the government or something?” Miles asks, munching.
“That’s… actually spot on,” he says, surprised. “Security is my domain. I have public and private clientele. I run a company for security systems, Parker Technologies.”
“Yikes, you’re like legit,” Miles complains. “How d’you do everything if you’re out being Spider-Man and have an actual job?”
Peter leans back in his chair. “It wasn’t easy. I was running myself to the ground by the time I graduated high school. Figured I could just keep doing the hero bit, maybe get snapped up by SHIELD. ...but I have people looking out for me. They set me straight, managed to convince me to take a break.”
Miles thinks back to May’s little speech. “You took a sabbatical?”
Peter grins. “Yes. A sabbatical from school, from patrols… it was the best thing I could have ever done. I figured out what to do. Went to uni, got a couple of degrees in what I wanted to do, mapped out how to climb the ladder. Now nobody’s my boss, I set my times, I have resources to aid me when I’m in a fight. And I can be in a fight without worrying about missing rent.”
“Because you bought this mansion and didn’t rent it?”
Peter laughs. “Yeah, I got a lot of goodies, but a lot of the funding goes to the tech department. They help build the Spider gadgets I need.”
Miles thinks this Peter is a little too well put together. The way Peter B. lives, Miles assumed most heroes take a lot longer to get into a rhythm.
This Peter basically has it all.
He looks back at the pizza and says, “You make any garlic bread?”
Peter’s smile is small but meaningful. He gratefully takes the cue. “Of course! What d’you take me for?”
He walks over to the microwave and brings out a pot full of warm pieces of garlic-infused bread with herbs. Miles is in heaven. As a fantastic host, he lets Miles inhale the whole thing, followed by half a jug of iced lemonade.
“You have a piano there. Do you even play?” Miles asks, yawning deeply as Peter riffles through the clothes in his room to find something suitable for him. The heavy food sits comfortably in his stomach, and Miles feels like he could sleep for another ten hours, lulled by the refreshing taste of sweet lemons.
Peter brings out a pair of grey jeans trousers and a red hoodie with a joke printed on it, ‘If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.’
Miles blinks blearily at him. “Nerd.”
“It’s cool!”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Peter steps aside to give him privacy. Miles takes off the suit, feeling his body hate him for the chafing. Note to self: do not wear the Spider-suit for more than 15 hours.
“My uncle can play,” Peter says through the door, lost in thought.
“Play what?” he yawns again.
“The piano.”
“Oh.”
Miles puts on the hoodie, before realizing what Peter has said. “Wait, your uncle? Uncle Ben?”
“Yup. He’s pretty good at the general tunes, birthday songs, Chopsticks, Ludovico Eiunado.”
Miles listens slowly. Maybe this is a universe where May died but Ben survived. A lot of things sound different, but at least Peter is doing good. He pulls on the hoodie, self-conscious about making a good impression now. There’s a logo at the top left portion, where a little breast pocket would have been. It’s a small yellow path spiraling inwards with perpendicular turns.
“That’s nice,” Miles says, rubbing his eyes tiredly and stepping out, glad for the fresh clothes. “Thanks for the threads, but I actually do need to figure out what happened in the warehouse.”
Peter looks away from the piano. “Yeah, I’m trying to look into it. It’s been abandoned since Fisk was arrested, but someone else could have been using it under the radar.”
Miles groans. Of course, it belongs to Fisk. “My first bet is Olivia Octavius.”
“Good guess,” Peter nods. “She’s a known associate of his. We’ll scope her out.”
Miles rolls up his suit in a bag and the two Spiders walk over to Peter’s office. “We’ve never caught her in anything directly incriminating. But if she’s building a multidimensional portal, it can’t be for any good reason.”
Peter’s office was a whole floor of its own. Miles stumbles into the room, unexpectedly graceless, and is blown away by what he sees.
It’s fancy, like Miles’s Peter’s secret underground Spider-Lair. One entire section is filled with screens that project two-dimensional holograms. There is a table beside the screens with an actual 3D display, mapping out Miles’s spider-suit.
The room lights up in sleek lines as Peter says, “Brooklyn underground, warehouse 97, details, KAREN.”
A synthesized voice comes out from the speakers. “Unoccupied property. Aside from the activity last night, we have no record of any persons in or around the building. It seems as though the boy did just appear out of thin air.”
“Meet the boy, KAREN,” Peter waves a hand over to a yawning Miles. “Miles, meet my handy-dandy AI. She’s the one who helped me cook the pizza and garlic bread to perfection. KAREN, meet Miles. He’s a Spider-Man from another dimension.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Miles,” KAREN’s voice takes on a soft tone. Miles shuts his eyes for an extra second and says, “Hi, KAREN. You’re super cool. Thanks for the coma-inducing pizza.”
“You’re welcome.”
Miles exhales in awe before looking over at the table with a 3D projection of his suit. “You scanned me?”
“As a precaution. You were setting off my spider-sense, but not as a threat,” Peter explains. “I’d never felt anything like it before.”
KAREN hums. “Undetected physics of the suit. It doesn’t belong to any known quantifiable states.”
“Neither do I,” Miles adds, before yawning again . “Urgh, it feels like I pulled an all-nighter.”
“I am unable to compute its origin,” KAREN concludes.
“Take it offline, Kar,” Peter instructs, bringing up a hologram of a foreboding and haunting warehouse. Miles figures this is the place he appeared in. It looks like prime real estate for the upcoming villain of the week.
The 3D image is a little grainy and Peter tries fixing random spots to increase its clarity, but the pixels keep flickering.
“There aren’t many good CCTV’s around the area and my drones couldn’t catch any viable footage,” Peter explains, slightly abashed. “This is the best I can do.”
“This is incredible!” Miles hisses in delight, running his hand through the light pixels. He feels the warmth of the image and it is a delight upon his senses.
“It happened around 11 pm,” Peter murmurs, bringing up the time-stamp and clicking play.
They stand by to watch. The image of the hologram moves wildly and Miles realizes that this is a visual from Peter’s point of view.
“You have a camera in your mask?”
“A Heads-Up Display unit,” Peter smiles. “KAREN runs an interface with it, so I can use all footage for backdated cases.”
Miles wonders if any of the stored suits in the Parkers’ lair had this tech. It probably does. Uncool of May to not tell him.
The warehouse’s image comes up larger now as the recording continues. Miles imagines Peter swinging up to the warehouse after a flash of light burst from the building. With night vision, they see Miles lying on the dirty floor in a large clearing, dust displaced all around him. He is crumpled up in pain before passing out.
Miles rubs his eyes and frowns. “Where are the lights?”
Peter leans in to gauge at the video. “I assumed they came from you? You said you were glitching?”
“Yeah, I meant… there were headlights from a car I think, like high beams, super strong,” Miles said, looking everywhere around the interior of the warehouse. “But they were attached to the ceiling or something.”
“KAREN, has anyone been here after we left?” Peter asks, frowning.
“No recorded movements post 11 pm,” KAREN said.
And then, Miles isn’t sure what’s happening. His energy drops from the cruising speed of 30% to what feels like a negative 20. Dark spots appear in his vision, a wave of incredible lethargy stretching from his spine to his brain and overtaking his body.
Peter is still talking to KAREN, pulling up different angles of camera footage, but Miles can’t hear the conversation at all. He sways.
Peter looks up, an odd expression of complacency falling over his face.
Everything goes dark.
A sharp tinge of electricity is buzzing at the nape of his neck. For a long time, it stays at that level, trying to coax Miles to awareness. He comes to… or rather, gradually grapples with reality at a snail’s pace after a long time. Miles tries to move but finds no strength in his body. He’s lying on a plastic recliner, it feels like, as though he’s at the dentist.
The room is different. Peter’s office is replaced with a cold and sterile lab. Something is definitely wrong.
Miles tries to move again, this time only managing a twitch to one of his fingers. He can’t even tilt his head, but his eyes can move from side to side now. He strains them as much as possible to look at his numb arms, realizing that both his hands are tied down to the sides of the chair with thick metal buckles. Aside from the restraints, his wrists are bare.
He’s out of the Spider-suit with no web-shooters, not even the non-functioning multiverse transporting gizmo, and now he’s petrified like a statue.
He tries to move his mouth, trying to sound out Peter’s name. Nothing happens.
There’s no physical pain, but the sheer terror of not being able to move is weighing down on him. Miles squeezes his eyes shut, willing his body to start moving or at least jerk about in the recliner, something to prove that this isn’t permanent.
After a long time and what feels like many hot tears, Miles can move his neck. His ankles also regain some mobility. Miles stretches them, listening to the pops. It’s as though he hasn’t moved them in years.
Soon, he can roll about in the recliner.
Brighter lights turn on in the room and Miles freezes, eyeing at the single door facing him.
It opens and Peter walks in, looking very cool and collected. He is followed by an older gentleman, taller with broader shoulders. There’s something almost refined about his stature. Miles squints at his greying blond hair, bluish-grey eyes, the very faint wrinkles on his face. He’s very familiar.
Miles sees this face every week at May’s house, in the array of old photographs on her wall. The same face that was at Peter’s house, again in the photographs.
Ben Parker watches him closely. “Incredible.”
Peter smiles. “You see? Gave him 10 milligrams, he’s already awake. Miles, how much can you move?”
This is a nightmare. It’s slowly dawning on Miles that the happy looks on both Parkers’ faces seem to promise something very terrible.
“Pete,” he slurs, bewildered. “Whas goin on?”
Peter walks up to him, touches his wrist gently, and takes his pulse. “You fainted. Hit your head on the floor.”
“How?”
Miles will never forget the look in Peter’s eyes, nor the soft words as he utters, “Because I gave you something.”
There is the lightest touch of maniacal gleam in his face. It’s gone with a blink, but Miles is already panicking.
This is very bad.
“It’s going to take us longer. The servers are fried,” Ben says, his voice mild and simultaneously chilling. Miles wishes he hasn’t seen Get Out.
“KAREN began the downloads last night. Be thankful for the back-ups, they’re working fine. I think we can do this tonight,” Peter says, walking around Miles to reach for a cabinet.
“We shouldn’t rush him,” Ben mentions. He looks at Miles again. “This one is different.”
Peter shrugs. “Potts was different. It worked with her, it’ll work with him.”
“She had fire. Miles, here, short-circuited nearly everything.”
“The resistors will hold him back this time. And he won’t be awake for it, anyway.”
“Peter,” Miles manages to gasp, chest moving painfully. Peter watches him, impassionate. He’s filling up a syringe filled with clear liquid, tapping the side. The needle looks very sharp.
“You won’t feel a thing, Miles,” Peter says, smiling gently. “Not even after the damage you wrecked, to my multiverse teleporter.”
Miles’s jaw drops in terror. The needle moves into the inside of his elbow and the room fades away.
This time, his spider-sense is screaming at him. Miles should be leaping away from imminent danger, jumping out of the way of a mugger’s right hook, chasing after car theft, dodging a kitten’s swift claws—
No. No, that’s nothing compared to the reason why everything in him is shrieking.
Miles can’t move again but at least he isn’t tied down this time. He’s lying on his back on a cold metallic base. One of his legs is bent at the knee, resting against a curved side of a glass wall. He feels cool air wafting over him, bright lights searing at his face, leaving bulbous dots in the backs of his eyelids.
Through the glass, he hears the low voices of Peter and Ben.
They’ve brought him to this dimension. They injected something in him, took away everything he’d brought with him. Miles didn’t know what they were up to, but he needed to get out.
“... up the voltage by a factor of 20%.”
“... too much,” Ben was saying. “He can shoot electricity, we can’t just combat it with more. What if he just turns it back on us?”
“He’s not Electro. KAREN did a thorough scan. And I have his DNA on file. But he’s a cut above the other Spiders. I need to have him.”
There it is. The real Peter Parker of this dimension. The entitlement, the shark-like tone that burst out like shards, his aura cutting through Miles like a blade made just to horrify him.
Miles turns his neck slowly. Hopefully, they wouldn’t notice.
“What was the dosage of the compound?”
“I put in 10 milligrams in the lemonade. Although, now thinking about it, I probably should not have added the ice,” Peter amends.
“Probably,” Ben repeats.
“My bad. But I needed to talk to him. He’s seen many others from other dimensions. He was already eating the bread when he started talking about them, and I couldn’t help it. It doesn’t matter. We can reverse engineer their sources from his atoms and figure out the exact dimensions. At least we know where he’s from.”
With every word, Miles’s body grows colder. This Peter knows he’s from 1610. Miles spoke about the other Spiders. This Peter—he needs to call him something different—Parker is not friendly.
If Parker really has a fully working transporter, Peni, Gwen, Peter B., Noir, and Porker are all in trouble.
Had Miles told him their exact dimension numbers? He can’t recall.
I have to get out of here. I have to…
I have to destroy the transporter.
Miles feels his eyes burn again with tears. But there’s no way he’s letting Parker get his hands on any of them.
Besides, Peter B. will know something’s wrong. Gwen’ll want to come for him. Peni’ll figure out a way for them to reach him. And Noir and Porker would be itching to break Parker in half.
Miles just has to figure out his steps right now. For that, he needs to get moving.
The two men are fixing up their ruined set up that Miles had damaged on his arrival. Listening to the conversation while focusing on moving every part of his body is a trial under fire that, thankfully, Fisk had prepared him for.
When Miles is finally able to clench his fist tight enough, he knows he’s ready to punch his way out.
He opens his eyes. He is in a glass tube, sealed from the world. Even through the tiniest gaps, he’s able to hear the Parkers. Miles cranes his neck and watches them stand in front of a screen, reading a series of vitals and numbers.
He’s back in the warehouse. Whatever video Parker and KAREN had shown in the morning must have been edited heavily, because the place does not look abandoned.
The building is brightly lit with all kinds of machinery set up around him. Miles can see a smoking wreckage of metal and glass parts pushed to the side. Is that the transporter? Had he already broken it? Then what was Miles sitting in?
“Are you kidding me?!” Parker yells, glaring right at Miles. His uncle chuckles as though this is funny.
“Yes, Petey,” Ben says, sarcasm turning him ugly. “Your plan seems flawless.”
Miles has no time to waste. He wrenches back his arm and throws his fist against the glass. The tube shudders but the glass doesn’t give.
“Gas him,” Ben suggests. Parker growls, marching over to one of the screens, and Miles panics. He brings out streaks of electricity to shoot them at the glass. Hairline cracks appear, but it’s still not enough. Miles is already drained.
Peter shouts at KAREN and there’s a hiss above Miles. The air moves like a heatwave and Miles holds his breath, looking around him frantically before aiming his fist at the floor.
The metal cracks under his feet.
Miles slams his aching fist again, feeling his skin split, knuckles creak, and the metal break apart.
Parker swears and whips out a two-foot-long black rod, with a horrible crackling noise emerging from the tip. The cattle prod is reinforced and will be the stuff of Miles’s nightmares for months to come.
Ben stops him. “You’re not a B-grade villain hellbent on torturing your hostage. You’re a superhero, Petey. You better act like it.”
Ben isn’t even yelling. Parker looks astonished for a nerve-wracking moment. Then he locks eyes with Miles through the glass. Miles can’t hold his breath anymore, sucking in a gulp of the heavy gas. It makes his head reel and he slumps against the glass, limbs twitching.
Ben levels Parker with a look and pats his back. “Miles is not the enemy, son. Remember that.”
Parker takes a steadying breath and nods. He tosses the cattle prod away and then approaches the boy. Miles pushes himself away, pressing his back to the glass. He realizes he’s shaking.
“I should introduce myself,” Parker says softly. “The name’s Peter Parker. I’m the Amazing Spider. You’re in Earth-11638. This is my home. The world I promise to change, to make safe, no matter the cost.”
He kneels to come eye-to-eye with him. Miles can’t be sure if it’s his own fear clouding the issue, but Parker is absolutely nuts.
“I’m sorry,” Parker tells him and he really does seem genuine. “I’m really sorry, Miles. I swear to you. You won’t feel a thing. Just let go.”
Miles chokes. “You’re gonna kill me?”
Parker’s shoulders slump. “I liked our chat. You’re a really good kid, Miles. I promise, everything I’m doing, it’s for the world. It’s for the people.”
“What’re you doing?” Miles’s words come out like molasses but Parker understands.
“I’m going to take your power,” Parker explains. He sits in front of the glass tube, looking at the small cracks before focusing back on him. “I need to be the best if this world has to be safe.”
My power? He’s taking my… abilities?
“You won’t survive it, that’s my only regret,” Parker continues. “But you are by far the strongest Spider-Man I’ve found. The burst of shock that you can conjure? Bio-electricity? Organic bolts, that’s a skill I can use. What else can you do?”
Miles feels lightheaded. But the gas isn’t as strong as he thinks it ought to have been. Or maybe he’s metabolizing it faster than expected.
“How many?” he whispers.
Parker looks sad. “Seventeen.”
17… Miles wants to throw up. Seventeen different Spider-people from various dimensions had been brought to this universe and killed by Parker, aided and abetted by his uncle Ben.
Any and all empathy has flown out the window.