Peter Parker had a very strange dream.
No, calling it a dream was not quite right. It was more like some absurd fantasy. He dreamed that the spider that had bitten him had not died after he knocked it away. Instead, it crawled toward more people, one neck after another. More and more Peter Parkers were bitten, their faces flickering in the dark: different Spider-Men, different faces behind the same mask... countless Spider-Men overlapping in his mind. It felt as if everything had started with him, spreading outward into a vast web, with a different Spider-Man caught in every section.
"Spider-Man..."
A distant, hazy voice was calling to him.
"You have to find..."
Find what?
"The other spider."
It was a gentle woman's voice, unfamiliar and yet strangely familiar at the same time. It seemed close enough to touch, yet separated from him by thick fog. Peter wanted to ask what she meant by the other spider. Was there another spider out there? Another one like him? But he realized he did not even have the strength to lift his eyelids. All he could do was struggle, trying to break free from the darkness.
A meaningless groan escaped his throat as he forced his eyes open. A young woman with short brown hair was pushing open the door with a tray of fruit in her hands. When she saw he was awake, she smiled warmly and looked at him with open concern.
Was she the one who had been calling to him?
She looked weirdly familiar.
"Are you okay?" she asked softly. "Don't worry. You need to rest."
"I... Shocker..."
Memory crashed back in all at once. The broken elevated rail. The roar of the train. His body on the edge of collapse.
What happened to Herman? Was the fight over? Where was he?
Peter jerked upright out of bed and, acting on instinct, flipped onto the ceiling and hung there upside down while scanning the room. Only then did he notice that he was still wearing his damaged Spider-Man suit. The torn mask, missing its upper section, had been folded neatly and placed beside the pillow. Beyond the window, the Manhattan skyline glittered in the sunlight. In the distance, he could even make out the Empire State Building, shorter than it should have been from this angle, enough to tell him roughly where he was.
And from this angle, there was only one building that should have been missing from the view.
Peter finally understood why she had looked so familiar. His voice rose without him meaning it to.
"You're... you're Janet van Dyne, right? Where am I? Oh my God, am I in Avengers Tower? Is this real?"
Janet, or rather the Wasp, laughed at his exaggerated reaction.
"Relax, kid. Yes, this is Avengers Tower. Could you come down from the ceiling first? My neck doesn't appreciate talking to people upside down."
"Oh. Uh. Right. Sorry."
Only then did Peter realize how ridiculous he looked. He flipped down at once, but the moment his feet touched the floor his legs nearly buckled. Every muscle in his body protested. It felt as though every bone had been crushed and then forced back together.
Janet picked up the clear tablet from beside the bed and glanced at the diagnosis report on it.
"J.A.R.V.I.S. says you've got severe tendon damage, widespread internal bleeding from burst capillaries, major alveolar tearing in the lungs, and dozens of hairline fractures. Under normal circumstances, you should be in the ICU and nowhere near superhero business. But somehow you're in much better shape than any of us expected."
The mutated spider had given Peter healing far beyond a normal person. Nothing like Wolverine, but enough that if he slept for a couple of days, even broken bones would already be on their way back together. He was not particularly worried about his body.
He cared much more about something else.
"What about Herman? The Shocker? Did the Avengers catch him?"
Janet's expression stiffened, just for a moment.
"That... should probably come from somebody else," she said with a light sigh. "I'm just the manager. I handle the Avengers' public-facing matters, press conferences, apologies, that sort of thing. Not battle briefings."
Peter grabbed the torn mask at once and forced himself upright. His gut was already telling him the answer.
The Avengers had not caught Herman.
"Sorry, but could I... look around a little?"
At that exact moment, inside the Avengers Tower conference room, a holographic projection was replaying the entire fight between Spider-Man and the Shocker.
Tony Stark had his feet up on the conference table and was leaning back in his chair, sounding as casual as if he were commenting on a ball game.
"Good news number one: Herman Schultz is an insecure idiot with a giant ego, so he's definitely not going to share his masterpiece with anybody. That means there is only one unstable shock armor set out there." Tony snapped his fingers. "To quote him directly: 'The Shocker is still out there.'"
"Good news number two," Tony continued, "he improved the weapon system, so the rate at which the suit goes out of control is slower than we expected. We've still got time to catch yellow jackhammer."
As usual, Tony Stark had no problem assigning a ridiculous nickname to someone.
Tony was enjoying himself far too much giving the sewer-diving jumper that label, but Steve Rogers did not even crack a smile. His brow was furrowed, his eyes locked on the projected image of the Shocker mid-fight. The real problem was not Herman's arrogance. It was that Herman himself did not fully understand how dangerous his own weapon was. If the core overloaded and exploded, it could destroy everything within a one-kilometer radius, and this was New York, one of the most densely populated cities in the world.
At that moment, the conference room door slid open.
Everyone in the room turned at once.
Janet was standing there, helping a limping Peter inside.
Tony immediately whistled and threw his arms wide.
"Fantastic! Sleeping Beauty finally woke up! So how was it, kid? First time nearly dying against a supervillain?"
"Not great, Mr. Stark. I don't think I've ever been that tired in my life."
"Considering you almost held up an entire section of elevated rail, I don't think tired really covers your condition," Bruce said with a gentle smile, looking nothing at all like the Hulk. Hank, for whatever reason, was not there again.
"Uh... where's Hank? Janet said he was the one who saved me. I wanted to thank him."
"Don't bother. That guy lives in the lab and nowhere else. Just have the Wasp pass it along." Tony waved it off, then firmly pushed Peter down into the chair next to him. "Listen, kid. You pulled off a full heroic miracle out there. You saved a lot of lives. So, how do you feel?"
"Did I?"
Tony blinked.
"What do you mean, did you?"
"Uh... I blacked out at the end. I don't know if I really saved them or not, so... did I do it?"
The room went quiet.
"Yes," Bruce said with a nod. "You did. You held on for another twenty seconds or so. Everyone had already gotten clear, and they were shouting that they were safe. You just couldn't hear them anymore."
At last, Peter's shoulders loosened.
"That's great. Nobody got hurt. If I had..."
"All right, kid, that's enough." Tony cut him off before he could spiral any further, clapping him hard on the back and deliberately keeping his tone light. "You stopped a supervillain, got beaten half to death, and saved a crowd of people. That's a full superhero debut. Your job now is to go home, rest, do your homework, and not make your aunt and uncle worry. We'll take it from here."
What exactly did he mean by take it from here?
Peter instantly caught the bad feeling underneath the joke.
"So Herman is still out there?"
"Tony, let me explain this."
Steve let out a sigh and took over the conversation.
"Hank analyzed Herman Schultz's equipment. Its power supply is extremely unstable and carries a major explosion risk. Every time he uses it, the chance of catastrophic detonation goes up. Because of that, the Avengers have decided to take full control of the case. We want Spider-Man to step back from the operation."
"But..." Peter opened his mouth, then stopped himself. "I understand, Captain. But if I run into Herman while he's doing something, can I still stop him?"
"Of course you can, kid. Up until the point the Avengers take over the fight." Steve did not completely shut Spider-Man out of the hunt for the Shocker. He just drew a line. "But you need to understand that any fight with him from now on could be extremely dangerous. Every use of that weapon could trigger an explosion. Protect yourself."
"Okay. I... I should go. If I'm home too late, my uncle and aunt are going to worry."
"Have Bruce or Janet take you home."
After Peter left, very obviously disappointed, Tony finally asked Steve the question he had been waiting to ask.
"Well, Cap? What do you think of the kid now?"
Steve stared at the ceiling for a long moment before letting out a long breath.
"He's a good kid," Steve said quietly at last. "He's got a pure sense of justice and empathy... so pure it hurts to look at. Did you notice what he actually cared about? It wasn't how many people he saved. It was how guilty he'd feel if he hadn't saved them."
"And that's a bad thing?"
"I've seen soldiers like that on the battlefield. They take the deaths of their comrades and turn them inward. If only I'd done enough. If only I'd thrown myself in front of it. Maybe the one who died wouldn't have been them."
Steve kept his eyes on the projection of Spider-Man fighting.
"Soldiers like that are always trying to be the first ones to die. They're walking a path of self-destruction."
(End of Chapter)
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