"They're coming."
Cindy Moon stood in the center of her subterranean S.I.L.K. laboratory, adjusting the straps on her tactical gauntlets. She didn't look at the hulking monster standing behind her. She already knew exactly who and what he was.
Spider-Hulk.
In a distant, fractured corner of the multiverse, a scrawny, pathetic nerd named Peter Parker hadn't just been bitten by a radioactive spider; the arachnid had been saturated in concentrated gamma radiation. He didn't become a friendly neighborhood hero. He became a living engine of apocalyptic destruction. The Hulk of his world was a nightmare of pure, unstoppable rage.
That Peter Parker had desperately tried to be a good man. He tried to use the Hulk's power to save people. But the world only saw a monster. In their blind panic, the military had dropped a bunker-buster bomb directly onto his home in Queens. His Uncle Ben, his Aunt May, and the woman he loved had all been incinerated in a heartbeat.
Consumed by agonizing grief and self-hatred, the boy's psyche had fractured. That was when the Spider Legion found him.
One of the Spider Gods had dragged the broken boy to their interdimensional temple. Using his ancient, forbidden Web-magic, This Spider God had literally split Spider-Hulk's soul in two, completely severing the weak, guilt-ridden human consciousness from the beast. Without Peter Parker's morality holding him back, Spider-Hulk had returned to his Earth and conquered it. He butchered the heroes. He subjugated the villains. And terrifyingly, the beast's intellect had evolved from that of a raging toddler into that of a cold, calculating adult tactician.
He was the perfect, ultimate enforcer for the Spider Legion.
Cindy Moon strapped a high-tech utility belt around her waist. If she had actually wanted spider-powers for herself, she could have injected her own customized isotope serum years ago. She had synthesized the second-generation radioactive spider purely for research, and then carelessly released it just to see who it would bite. She didn't care about swinging from buildings. She cared about control.
And the Spider Legion had just handed her the ultimate prize: the keys to the infinite multiverse. There were gods out there. Endless realities ripe for corporate and technological plunder.
"And all I have to do to join your little club is conquer my own world?" Cindy asked, a cold, arrogant smirk curling her lips. She slid a pair of sleek, glowing red goggles over her eyes. "That's insulting easy. I'll handle the local law enforcement. You're going to take care of the dimension-hopper?"
"I will attempt to buy you time," Spider-Hulk rumbled. His voice was like grinding tectonic plates, vibrating the steel floorboards beneath Cindy's boots. "The Patriarch is powerful. He possesses the raw Web-connection to weaponize spatial rifts. He could tear this reality in half if he wished. But he is a naive, sentimental fool who refuses to kill. That hesitation is his only weakness."
Even a monster that had slaughtered an entire planet wouldn't dare claim he could defeat the Patriarch in a straight fight. He could only stall.
"Attention inside the warehouse! This is the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division! You are completely surrounded! Lay down your weapons and step outside immediately!"
The amplified voice of a S.H.I.E.L.D. tactical commander echoed through the reinforced steel doors, accompanied by the deafening thrum of Helicarrier gunships hovering above the roof.
"Right on time," Cindy smiled.
She slammed her palm onto a glowing red console. The massive, corrugated steel garage doors of the warehouse violently ground open.
Before the S.H.I.E.L.D. strike teams could even raise their rifles, a tidal wave of scuttling, razor-sharp mechanical spider-bots flooded out of the dark. The machines swarmed the armored vehicles, slicing through tires, jamming assault rifles, and incapacitating the front-line soldiers with high-voltage electric shocks.
Cindy stepped out of the shadows, the red lenses of her goggles glowing in the smoke. With a sharp mechanical hiss, four massive, articulated titanium spider-legs erupted from the specialized harness on her back, anchoring into the concrete and lifting her three feet into the air.
"Good evening, officers!" Cindy's voice projected clearly over the chaos. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Dr. Silk... and this is my Sinister Six!"
Heavy, synchronized footsteps shook the pavement.
Five nightmare figures stepped out of the warehouse behind her. Earth-65's Curt Connors—the Lizard—dropped to all fours, his reptilian jaws snapping wildly, restrained only by a glowing, high-voltage control collar bolted around his thick neck.
Agent 77, Jesse Drew, stepped forward. A massive, cybernetic Scorpion tail whipped aggressively back and forth over his shoulder.
Adrian Toomes dropped from the ceiling, his Vulture flight-harness heavily upgraded with reinforced armor plating and dual rotary-blade cannons.
Aleksei Sytsevich didn't just wear a rhino suit; he was permanently hermetically sealed inside a hulking, fifteen-foot-tall mechanized Rhinoceros tank-shell, complete with a depleted-uranium horn.
Finally, Herman Schultz racked the slide on a pair of massive, humming concussive gauntlets.
Standing on a rooftop across the street, Peter Parker watched the lineup step into the streetlights.
"You know, if Otto hadn't taken a sniper round to the skull, he'd be incredibly jealous of this presentation right now," Peter muttered to himself, his muscles tensing beneath the red and blue fabric.
He didn't wait for S.H.I.E.L.D. to regroup. He fired a web-line, intending to drop directly onto the Rhino's armored canopy and rip the beast's optical sensors out.
His Spider-Sense didn't tingle. It screamed like a banshee.
Peter twisted violently in mid-air, but he wasn't fast enough. A massive, green fist the size of a microwave materialized out of the dark and slammed directly into his chest.
Bones creaked. The breath exploded from Peter's lungs. He was launched backward like a cannonball, skipping violently across the asphalt before crashing straight through the brick wall of a nearby bakery.
Plaster dust and shattered glass rained down. Peter groaned, trying to push the rubble off his chest.
Spider-Hulk landed in the center of the street with an earth-shattering THOOM. The asphalt cratered beneath his massive bare feet. He threw his head back, unleashing a deafening, gamma-irradiated roar that shattered the remaining windows on the block.
"Your opponent is me, Patriarch!" Spider-Hulk bellowed. He raised his right fist. Slipped over his massive middle finger was a glowing ring stamped with a spider insignia. "Spider-Hulk of the Legion! Through darkest days and boundless nights, We hide in earth, forsake the light—"
"Sorry, buddy."
A low, wet, utterly demonic voice echoed from the dust cloud inside the ruined bakery. "You need an opponent in your own weight class."
Spiderman didn't step out of the rubble.
The liquid black symbiote violently erupted, rapidly expanding outward into a towering, nine-foot-tall wall of shifting muscle and jagged teeth. But the color was wrong. The glossy black ink boiled, instantly transmuting into a deep, visceral, blood red and a stark black spider emblem stretched across the monster's massive chest.
"I have wanted to do this for a very long time!" Venom roared, its jaw unhinging to reveal rows of razor-sharp fangs. "Red Power Form!"
The crimson symbiote didn't bother with webs. Venom dug its clawed feet into the concrete and launched itself forward like a freight train, slamming a massive red fist directly into Spider-Hulk's jaw. The shockwave of the punch shattered the nearby streetlamps.
Hovering near the S.H.I.E.L.D. blockade, Earth-65 Gwen Stacy gripped her web-shooters, her heart hammering frantically against her ribs.
She had just watched Spider-Man—the only actually experienced, legitimate superhero in the vicinity—get blasted through a brick wall and intercepted by a green giant. The tactical math had just shifted catastrophically. The number of active combatants on their side was cut in half, leaving only herself and Harry to deal with S.I.L.K.'s Sinister Six.
"How are we supposed to fight this?" Gwen yelled over the comms, dodging a concussive blast from the Shocker that vaporized a police cruiser three feet away.
"I got the Vulture and you stall them" Harry Osborn's gruff voice snapped back.
The roar of Oscorp turbine engines drowned out the gunfire. Harry rocketed overhead on his green glider, dodging a barrage of razor-feathers before slamming shoulder-first into Adrian Toomes. The two armored men tangled in mid-air, spiraling violently upward into the clouds.
Gwen stood on top of a flipped van, staring at the street below.
The mechanical spider-bots were swarming. The Lizard was roaring. The Rhino was revving his mechanical treads. Agent 77 was aiming his cybernetic Scorpion tail directly at her chest.
"Wow. Thank you so much, Harry," Gwen muttered into her mask, her voice dripping with terrified sarcasm. "I only have to fight five heavily armed psychopaths by myself. I love this."
Having absolutely zero formal combat training, Gwen desperately scanned the battlefield. She swallowed hard, raised her wrists, and prayed her enhanced bone density could take a massive beating.
While all hell broke loose on the street outside, Earth-616 Gwen Stacy dropped silently from the ventilation shaft into the pristine, climate-controlled sub-levels of Cindy Moon's S.I.L.K. laboratory.
The warehouse above was empty, the combatants drawn outside. The underground facility was a veritable treasure trove of stolen Stark tech, Oscorp prototypes, and illegal bio-weaponry.
Gwen didn't care about the weapons. Peter had given her one highly specific, surgical objective. She needed to locate the medical files.
Of the Sinister Six currently tearing up the street outside, Agent 77—Jesse Drew—was the only one who wasn't a true believer. In their earth Jessica Drew was the President of the Detective club and good person. In this earth her male counterpart here had a wife and two young children. He only worked for S.I.L.K. because Cindy Moon had convinced him that the alien spider-blood in his veins was lethal. She extorted his loyalty in exchange for regular doses of her stabilizing isotope serum.
But Peter knew the truth. Cindy had successfully cured Jesse's alien infection months ago. She simply needed a super-powered enforcer, so she lied to him, feeding him the addictive spider-isotope just to keep him on a tight leash.
If Gwen could find the authentic diagnostic report proving Jesse was cured, she could turn him instantly. The Sinister Six would lose their fastest operative, and Cindy Moon would lose her shield.
Gwen ghosted across the pristine white floor tiles, slipping behind a massive bank of server racks. She found the primary medical terminal connected directly to the chemical centrifuge.
"Arrogant," Gwen whispered to herself, tapping the keyboard. The terminal wasn't even encrypted. Cindy Moon was so confident in her underground security that she had left the system unlocked.
Gwen rapidly pulled up the biometric logs. She found Jesse Drew's bloodwork. The toxicology report clearly stated: Extraterrestrial pathogens fully eradicated. Patient is baseline. Dependency is entirely synthetic.
She downloaded the file onto an encrypted flash drive. Mission accomplished.
But as she pulled the drive free, Gwen's blue eyes drifted toward the machinery connected to the terminal.
Sitting on the steel workbench was a massive, industrial 3D fabricator, actively weaving a spool of high-tensile, ballistic spider-silk into a sleek combat uniform. Sitting right next to the fabricator was a pressurized, glowing blue vial. It was a pure, concentrated dose of the spider-isotope serum. The exact chemical cocktail Cindy used to grant humans the proportionate strength and speed of a spider.
Gwen stared at the glowing blue liquid. She looked at the suit currently being printed.
She thought about Peter outside, currently battling. She thought about the terrified, untrained version of herself currently fighting.
Gwen slowly reached out, her fingers wrapping around the cold glass of the isotope vial.
A very bold, incredibly dangerous idea formed in her head.