Earth-65 Gwen Stacy lay flat on her back, staring blankly at the popcorn ceiling of her bedroom. The morning light filtered through the blinds, casting harsh lines across the scattered drumsticks and crumpled band flyers on her floor. She hadn't slept. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the impossible: a living, breathing Peter Parker sitting in her living room, alongside another version of herself.
She rolled over, grabbing her phone from the nightstand. She stared at the contact name she hadn't dared to delete.
Peter.
Her thumb hovered over the screen. She needed to know if yesterday was just a stress-induced, sleep-deprived hallucination. Holding her breath, she pressed call.
She expected the sterile, automated voice telling her the number was disconnected. Instead, the line clicked.
"Uh, hello?" a familiar, energetic voice answered. "Is this 65-Gwen?"
Gwen blinked, her grip on the phone tightening. "Why do you keep calling me '65'? I'm definitely not one hundred and sixty-five centimeters tall or sixty-five years old."
"No, no, it's a universe designation," Peter's voice crackled slightly over the line. "Your Earth is designated as Universe-65. It's categorized by the baseline vibrational frequency of your reality's quantum signature. Though, honestly, I barely understand the math myself."
Gwen sat up, pulling her knees to her chest. It was real.
Before she could ask her next question, a sleepy, muffled female voice drifted through the receiver. "Peter? Turn the light off. Who are you talking to?"
Gwen froze. It was incredibly jarring to hear her own voice—or at least, a slightly softer, less raspy version of it—complaining in the background.
"Wait," Earth-65 Gwen blurted out, her eyes going wide. "Are you guys staying together?!"
"What? No! I mean, technically yes, but not like that!" Peter scrambled to explain, his voice jumping an octave. "We are currently squatting in a S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier barracks. I don't know if you've ever seen military accommodating, but it's a metal closet with a stack of three incredibly narrow bunk beds. We're sharing a room, not a bed. I'm literally going to beg Director Carter to move us today because the Navy clearly hates lumbar support."
Gwen rubbed her forehead. "I... really didn't need the architectural breakdown, Pete."
The line went quiet for a moment. The frantic, defensive energy drained out of Peter's voice, replaced by something much older and quieter.
"You aren't doing the superhero thing, are you?" Peter asked softly. "I checked the local news feeds. Spider-Woman gets a lot of press coverage, but none of it mentions you actually stopping crimes or saving people."
Gwen's jaw tightened. "Yeah. I'm not a hero. Are you disappointed?"
"No," Peter said immediately. "My Uncle Ben told me once that the powers don't dictate who you have to be. As long as you aren't using your abilities to hurt people, it's your choice. If you want to use them to make money, or get famous, or just hide, that's up to you. But I don't think that's your problem, Gwen. I think your real problem is that you have absolutely no idea what to do with yourself."
Gwen squeezed her eyes shut. The words hit entirely too close to the bone. "It's been like this ever since... since my Peter died. You two have the exact same face, but you are so completely different. If my Peter had been as sunny and confident as you... maybe none of this would have happened. He wouldn't have felt like he needed to turn himself into a monster."
Peter let out a slow breath over the phone. "If you need closure, Gwen... I can go with you. We can go visit this world's Uncle Ben and Aunt May together. You don't have to face them alone."
A cold spike of pure terror shot through Gwen's chest.
She vividly remembered standing on the Parker family's front porch weeks ago, peering through the window. She had seen Uncle Ben and Aunt May sitting at their kitchen table, obsessively pinning blurry newspaper clippings of Spider-Woman to a corkboard. Their faces had been hard, lined with grief and anger. They weren't looking for closure. They were hunting the monster that killed their nephew.
"No," Gwen said, her voice trembling. She shook her head even though he couldn't see her. "No, forget it. I can't accept that offer. Not now."
"Okay," Peter said gently. "If you need me, I'll keep this frequency open. Just call."
Gwen hung up. She tossed the phone onto her bed and dragged her hands down her face. Peter was right. She wasn't a hero. She was just a terrified high school drummer who accidentally beat her best friend to death. And she absolutely could not look Ben and May Parker in the eye and lie to them.
Needing to clear the suffocating guilt from her head, Gwen grabbed her backpack and her web-shooters. She pulled on her white hood, opened her bedroom window, and dove into the brisk morning air.
The rush of wind usually calmed her down. She fired a magenta web-line, swinging high above the morning traffic, letting the kinetic rhythm of the pendulum swing empty her mind.
Suddenly, a violent, agonizing shriek tore through her skull.
Her Spider-Sense didn't just tingle; it burned. Gwen twisted wildly in mid-air, looking over her shoulder.
A massive shadow blotted out the morning sun. A man was diving directly toward her. He was bald, his face twisted into a cruel, sickeningly arrogant sneer. Strapped to his back was a massive, heavily weaponized flight harness. Six-foot mechanical wings, glowing with dark green energy, cut effortlessly through the air.
"Let's settle this once and for all, Spider-Woman!" Adrian Toomes roared, extending razor-sharp steel talons toward her throat.
Miles above the city, inside the sterile, claustrophobic barracks of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, Peter set his modified communicator down on the metal desk.
616-Gwen shifted on the bottom bunk, pulling a scratchy wool blanket up to her chin. She glared at Peter with half-open eyes. "Were you just talking to the short-haired me?"
"Yeah," Peter nodded, leaning back in his creaky metal chair. "She wanted to verify I wasn't a hallucination."
"It's entirely too early for multiversal therapy sessions," 616-Gwen grumbled, burying her face into her pillow. But noticing Peter staring blankly at the wall, she let out a sigh and sat up. "Alright. What's wrong?"
"I'm just thinking about the logistics," Peter muttered, tapping his chin. "If you and Earth-65 Gwen share the exact same cell phone number across dimensional frequencies, how does the routing actually resolve a call? Does the cellular tower just panic? Who actually answers?"
616-Gwen stared at him, utterly deadpan. "We are stranded in a hostile, dystopian dimension, and you are currently agonizing over AT&T's roaming charges?"
"It's a valid scientific anomaly!"
Gwen rolled her eyes, swinging her legs over the edge of the bunk. "Well, here's another anomaly for you. I was looking at the local dates on the monitors yesterday. The month and day match our timeline perfectly, but based on the school records, this earth Gwen and her classmates are technically a full year older than me."
Before Peter could unpack the terrifying chronological implications of dating a girl who was technically younger than her own dimensional twin, a heavy, sharp knock echoed against the steel bulkhead door.
Peter stood up, assuming Director Carter was back to deliver the morning briefing. He pressed the release panel. The heavy door hissed open.
Peter froze.
Standing in the corridor was Harry Osborn.
But it wasn't the impeccably dressed, emotionally distant rich kid Peter knew back home. This Harry looked like he had spent the last two years in a warzone. His jaw was covered in dark stubble. He was visibly broader, his shoulders packed with dense, military-grade muscle. He wore a dark, tactical jacket, and his knuckles were wrapped in worn athletic tape.
"Hello, Peter," Earth-65 Harry said, his voice deeper and far rougher than his 616 counterpart. "It's been a long time. Though, I suppose we technically just met in your universe."
Peter recovered his shock, stepping back to let the man inside. "Hello, Harry. Yeah, this is officially our first meeting, even though I was just hanging out with your variant yesterday."
Harry stepped into the cramped room, his eyes sweeping over Peter and 616-Gwen with cold, clinical precision. He didn't look surprised by anything.
"I have contacts inside S.H.I.E.L.D.," Harry said, crossing his arms. "I heard a dimension-hopper was brought on board last night to investigate the Lizard incident. I happen to have extremely classified intelligence on Oscorp's genetic divisions. I am willing to trade that intelligence, but I need you to answer a question first."
Harry took a step closer, his eyes locking onto Peter with burning intensity. "You know who Spider-Woman really is, don't you?"
Peter didn't flinch. He kept his posture perfectly relaxed. "You want to find Spider-Woman so you can avenge your best friend."
Harry didn't say a word. He just gave a single, hard nod.
"Do you actually believe that Harry?" Peter asked, his tone dropping into something far more dangerous. "You honestly believe a masked vigilante just randomly murdered Peter Parker in cold blood?"
"Who else could it be?" Harry countered, his voice rising with raw, unhealed grief. "She was there! She was the only one in the gym with him!"
Peter took a slow breath, looking this hardened, grief-stricken version of his best friend dead in the eye. He decided to bypass the lies entirely and drop a nuclear bomb on the conversation.
"Harry," Peter said quietly. "Do you really believe that Gwen Stacy murdered Peter Parker?"
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