"I'll get it." Clark stood up, walked over, and opened the door.
It was Mary Jane.
She had not dressed up at all, and there were faint dark circles under her eyes.
Clearly, she had barely slept. The moment she saw Clark, she asked anxiously as she stepped into the house, "Clark, how's Peter? Is he still running a fever? I didn't hear anything last night."
At that moment, Peter, now completely fine and arguably upgraded, hurried over.
As one of the people who knew Peter best, Mary Jane spotted the difference instantly.
He looked completely different from yesterday. Not only was he not wearing his glasses, but his eyes were bright and sharp, and his whole body seemed full of energy and confidence.
"You... you're not wearing your glasses?" Mary Jane asked blankly.
She knew exactly how bad Peter's eyesight had been.
Usually he could barely make out anything ten feet away without them.
"Uh... right... about that... let me think," Peter said, rubbing his nose while his brain scrambled at top speed.
Mary Jane noticed immediately that he was lying.
It was painfully obvious.
But Peter kept going. "A fever can stimulate the nervous system. I read about it once, but I never thought something like that would happen to me. Pretty amazing, right?"
"Sure," Mary Jane said.
She knew Peter did not want to explain, so she did not press him. That would have been rude, and it was not the kind of thing a normal person should do.
At the very least, he was healthy and standing right in front of her.
That was enough.
She pulled out a box of homemade cookies from behind her back, about to hand them to Peter, but maybe Aunt May had done too good a job mopping the floor that morning.
It was too slippery.
Mary Jane and the cookie box both went flying.
She let out a startled cry and instinctively tried to save the cookies first. They were her hard work, after all. If she fell, she fell.
But Peter moved faster.
Much faster.
He caught Mary Jane in one arm and snatched the cookies out of midair with the other.
They did not even crack.
He had no idea how he had done it. It felt like pure instinct.
Standing there in Peter's arms, Mary Jane's eyes widened. She looked at the cookies in his hand, then at Peter's face.
"I didn't realize your reflexes had gotten that fast," she said. Then she gave him an appraising look. "And since when do you have muscles?"
She even squeezed his arm.
Peter laughed awkwardly, set her back on her feet, and cleared his throat. "Maybe the fever gave me superpowers or something. Ha ha."
Watching the two of them, Clark could only sum Peter up in one sentence.
"His acting is terrible. Like extra-in-the-background terrible."
He could not let Peter stay at home like this.
Right now, Peter was basically an overexcited husky.
Actually, no.
A husky might have been more manageable.
If Ben and May went out and then came back later, they would probably find the house halfway demolished.
"Peter, you finished eating?" Clark interrupted. "Since you're better, maybe we should message Gwen and Cindy. They had the same fever. No idea how they're doing."
Peter nodded immediately. "Right! I'll text them now. We should check on them."
Mary Jane agreed too. She wanted to know how Gwen was doing. "We should all go together, haah..." she said, yawning in the middle of the sentence.
Clearly, she was exhausted.
Clark reached out and gently stopped her before she could follow them. "No, MJ. You barely slept last night. Go home and get some rest. Peter and I will go. I'll tell you how Gwen's doing."
Mary Jane looked reluctant, but in the end she said goodbye to both of them, yawned again, and headed back to the house next door.
Peter pulled out his phone, already feeling a strange sense of solidarity with the two girls who had also been bitten and gone through the same fever.
He knew exactly what they had suffered through.
So he knew they probably had not had an easy night either.
At the same time, not far away, in the Stacy house...
Gwen was currently stuck to the ceiling of her bedroom in an extremely bizarre position.
Yes.
The ceiling.
Her arms and legs were planted firmly against it, her blonde hair hanging straight down, and she still did not fully understand how she had ended up there.
Rewind ten minutes.
She had woken up feeling warm and strangely refreshed, with none of the pain from the night before.
Then, when she got out of bed, she accidentally bumped into the chair George had left beside her bed.
Under normal circumstances, she should have gone down hard and landed flat on her face.
Instead, her waist and legs exploded with unbelievable force, and she flipped clean backward like a gymnast.
Then, trying not to hit the floor, she reached for the wall.
The moment her hand touched it, it stuck.
Curious, she climbed one step, then another.
And somehow ended up where she was now.
"This is insane..." Gwen muttered, her heart pounding.
She cautiously tried letting go.
Newton, delighted to be relevant again, immediately reasserted himself.
Gravity kicked back in, and she dropped straight off the ceiling.
But just before she hit the floor, she landed lightly and perfectly on both feet like an Olympic athlete, without making a sound.
Gwen walked over to the mirror.
Her body looked tighter, stronger, more toned. The small scars she had gotten from old gymnastics injuries were gone. Even some strands of her blonde hair seemed to have shifted toward a pale platinum shade.
"Gwen? You feeling any better? Dad made breakfast."
George Stacy's tired voice came from outside the door.
Gwen jumped, threw on a jacket, and opened the door to let him in.
"Morning, Dad. Sorry about all the trouble yesterday."
Captain Stacy was holding a mug of coffee with milk in it. "How are you feeling? I still don't know what happened last night. I just fell asleep sitting in that chair. Weirdest thing in the world. I was supposed to be taking care of you."
Hearing that, Gwen suddenly remembered the blurry dream she had while she was in pain.
A tall figure standing beside her bed.
Then a warm force wrapping around her.
She had assumed it was a hallucination brought on by the fever.
Apparently not.
"I'm completely fine, Dad. Better than fine, actually. I've never felt this good." Gwen raised a fist to show off how strong she felt.
"That's good." George let out a breath. "That Osborn guy, there's definitely something wrong with that lab of his. If you end up with any aftereffects, I'll make sure he finds out whether the police can shut a company down. Anyway, I've got to get back to work. Hell's Kitchen is getting uglier by the day. The gangs are tearing each other apart. You stay home and rest."
As he headed out, he muttered, "No wonder they brought me in to take over the NYPD. The whole city's turning into a mess..."
"Okay, Dad. Be careful."
After sending her father off, Gwen went downstairs and sat in the dining room, eating the breakfast George had made. It was not especially good, but to Gwen, it tasted perfect.
Right then, her phone buzzed.
[Gwen, are you okay? Did anything weird happen to you too?]
It was a message from Peter.
Gwen's eyes lit up instantly. She typed back right away:
[You too? I thought I was going crazy.]
A moment later, Peter replied:
[Put on normal clothes. Clark and I are heading over. Then we'll go check on Cindy.]