Ben Parker sat at the dining table, coffee in his left hand, right arm stiff at his side. He kept reaching for the sugar jar and pulling back — each time a small flinch crossing his face that he tried to cover by scratching his jaw or adjusting his glasses.
He wasn't fooling anyone. Except Peter.
"Uncle Ben, you, uh—" Peter had peanut butter toast in one hand, milk in the other, half-chewing, half-talking. "You're doing this thing with your arm. Like it's — are you okay? Did you sleep weird or something?"
"This? Oh." Ben's eyes darted sideways. The man could defuse a fight between neighbors, talk his way out of a parking ticket, charm the cashier at the deli into giving him extra pickles — but he could not lie. Not even a little. "Took the trash out last night. You know that hallway, it's — the bulb's been out for a week, I keep meaning to — anyway, I missed a step. Rolled down. Stupid. These old bones, Pete."
Clang.
Spatula hitting the frying pan. From the kitchen. Hard.
May didn't turn around. Her back was straight, her shoulders tight, and her voice came out with the careful, practiced calm of a woman holding a live grenade.
"Your uncle is clumsy. I've spoken to him about it. Going forward, high-risk activities like taking out the trash are on you boys."
Peter looked between them. Back and forth. Then shrugged.
"Yeah, no, totally — I can do that. I'll handle all the, uh, the garbage stuff. All of it. But seriously, Uncle Ben, maybe you should get an X-ray? Just to be—"
"No."
"Not necessary."
Both at the same time. Exact same beat. The kind of synchronized response that only happens when two people have rehearsed it.
Peter didn't notice.
Leon sat across from him, cutting his sausage into precise pieces. He looked up once — eyes moving from his father's splinted arm to his mother's rigid back — and went back to eating.
Last night's gunfight. The blood. The fire. The brick. All of it buried under a lie about stairs and a burnt-out hallway light.
And Peter sitting here with peanut butter on his chin, not suspecting a thing.
"Eat up, Pete."
I pushed my plate back and stood.
"You wanna miss Osborn's opening? I thought this was the, uh — what'd you call it — the 'once in a generation moment'?"
Peter's eyes went wide. The worry about Uncle Ben's arm vanished like it had never existed.
"Oh God. Oh God, what time is it — we're gonna be late, we're gonna—"
He downed the rest of his milk in one tilt, grabbed his backpack, knocked over the salt shaker, caught it, knocked over the pepper, didn't catch it, and was at the front door before I'd even pushed my chair in.
"Leon! Move!"
Behind them, the front door slammed.
Ben Parker's smile fell off his face. He stared at his coffee. The steam had stopped rising a long time ago.
"May..."
"Don't."
She turned around. Her eyes were red. She was still holding the spatula, gripping it like she was thinking about hitting something that wasn't a frying pan.
"In this house, you fell down the stairs. That's what happened. That's all that happened. Now drink your coffee."
Midtown Manhattan. Osborn Industries.
The building was all glass and steel, a holographic DNA helix rotating across the facade, throwing cold blue light over the plaza. Inside, the lobby opened up three stories high, packed with school groups and journalists and people in suits pretending to understand the exhibits.
Peter slid down the entrance railing and stuck the landing. I took the stairs like a normal person.
"Show-off," I said.
"Jealous," he said.
We walked through the main hall side by side, hands in our pockets, heads turning left and right. The displays were everywhere — glass cases, holographic projections, interactive screens, all of it bathed in that cold Osborn blue.
Peter stopped in front of a case labeled Infrasonic Resonator and leaned in, reading the placard.
"Okay, so — imagine you could shatter a kidney stone without cutting someone open. Just sound. Targeted sound. You point this thing at the right frequency and the stone just..." He made a popping gesture with his fingers. "Gone. No surgery. No recovery time."
"That's actually cool."
"Right? Now imagine someone points it at the wrong frequency." He grinned. "You could liquefy someone's brain from across the room. Like a microwave for people."
"And you think that's funny."
"I think it's terrifying. But also a little funny." He nudged me with his elbow. "Come on, you laughed."
I had. A little.
We moved on. Past an anti-gravity prototype that was making a pen float inside a vacuum tube — Peter stared at it for a solid thirty seconds, whispering "no way, no way, no way" — past a wall of Osborn patents, past a miniature particle collider that looked impressive until my analysis kicked in and showed me a cooling system held together with hope and bad math.
[Energy conversion: 43%. Cooling flaw. Overload probability after 4 hours: 12%.]
I kept that to myself.
Peter stopped at another case. A big green cylinder behind reinforced glass.
"Oh, dude. Dude. Osborn's new exoskeleton battery. Seventy-two hours continuous power." He turned to me. "You know what that means? A full military exoskeleton — running, jumping, lifting a car — for three straight days without plugging in. Imagine search and rescue with that thing. Earthquake hits, you send in guys who don't need to stop for three days. That's insane."
I glanced at it.
[Electrolyte unstable. Concentrated acid gas leak probable on impact.]
"Pete."
"Yeah?"
"Step back from the acid canister."
He looked at me. Looked at the battery. Looked back at me.
"It's a battery."
"It's a battery that'll melt your face off if someone trips and bumps the table."
He squinted. "You're messing with me."
"When have I ever messed with you?"
"Literally all the time. Every day. Since we were five."
"...step back from the battery, Pete."
He laughed — the real kind, not the nervous kind — and bumped his shoulder into mine as we kept walking.
We were heading toward the Bio-Genetics wing when it happened.
A younger kid — maybe fourteen, skinny, wearing a visitor badge from one of the middle schools — was trying to get past a group of varsity jackets blocking the hallway. Yellow and blue. Midtown High colors.
The kid said "excuse me" twice. The third time, the biggest one in the group — blond, wide shoulders, chewing gum — turned around and flicked the kid's visitor badge hard enough to snap the lanyard against his neck.
"Excuse you."
Eugene "Flash" Thompson. Starting quarterback. Walking cliché.
The kid flinched and tried to go around. Flash stepped sideways and blocked him again. His buddies closed ranks. Three of them, one scrawny middle-schooler.
"Where you going, little man? The children's section is that way."
I felt Peter tense up next to me. I knew what was coming before he opened his mouth.
"Pete, don't—"
Too late.
"Hey." Peter stepped forward. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried. "Come on, man. He's just trying to get through."
Flash turned. The grin spread slow.
"Parker." He said the name the way you'd say something you scraped off your shoe. "I didn't know they let the AV club in today."
"They let you in, so the bar's pretty low."
A couple of people in the crowd snorted. Flash's grin tightened.
"You got a mouth on you today, Parker."
"I've always had a mouth. You've just never listened."
Flash stepped forward. Right into Peter's space. He had four inches and forty pounds on him, and he used every bit of it — chest out, chin down, the posture of someone who'd learned that being big was the same as being right.
"Say that again."
Peter didn't step back. His hands were shaking — I could see the tremor in his fingers — but his feet didn't move. He looked up at Flash and held it.
That's my brother. Stupid. Brave. Stupid.
Flash's hand came up and shoved Peter's shoulder. Hard. Peter stumbled back two steps, caught himself on a display railing. Flash followed.
"What are you gonna do, Parker? Huh?" Another shove. "You gonna cry? You gonna—"
I stepped between them.
Didn't say anything. Just stepped in. Hands in my pockets. Standing about six inches from Flash's chest, looking up at him with the kind of calm that made people uncomfortable without being able to explain why.
Flash stopped. His hand was still up, mid-shove.
"Move, Parker's brother."
"His name is Leon," Peter said from behind me.
"I don't care what his name is. Move."
I didn't move.
"You done?" I said. Quiet. Not aggressive. The way you'd ask someone if they were done using the bathroom.
Flash's jaw worked. His fists clenched. He looked at me — really looked — trying to find the angle, trying to figure out why a kid six inches shorter than him was standing in his way without blinking.
Behind us, a security guard had noticed the commotion and was heading over.
Flash saw him too.
"Whatever." He shouldered past me — hard, deliberate, trying to make a point with the contact. I didn't budge. His shoulder bounced off mine and he kept walking, his boys trailing behind him like ducklings.
The middle-school kid had already disappeared into the crowd.
Peter came up next to me, rubbing his shoulder where Flash had shoved him.
"You didn't have to do that."
"You didn't have to mouth off to a guy twice your size."
"He was picking on a kid."
"I know."
We looked at each other. Peter cracked first — a small, crooked grin.
"We're both idiots."
"Runs in the family."
He bumped his shoulder against mine and we kept walking.
The Bio-Genetics Hall was darker. Blue-purple lighting, ozone smell, rows of glass cases with UV strips running along the bottom. Quieter than the main hall — fewer school groups, more researchers with lanyards and clipboards.
Peter went straight for the center display.
"Oh. Oh, wow."
He pressed himself against the glass. His eyes were huge.
"Cross-species genetics. They actually did it. These spiders are carrying combined DNA from three different species — look at the spinnerets on that one, Leon, the silk output alone would be—"
He kept going. I stopped listening to the words and watched his face instead. The pure, uncomplicated fascination of a kid who loved science more than anything in the world. No agenda. No ambition. Just wonder.
Enjoy it, Pete. This is the last time everything is simple.
The Omnitrix warmed against my skin.
[High-concentration radiation source detected.] [Target: Genetically Modified Spider — Specimen No. 15] [Carries retrovirus. Capable of rewriting human DNA.] [Threat Level: High.]
I scanned the display. Fourteen spiders in the case. The placard said fifteen.
One missing.
I found it. Near the top of the case, clinging to the edge of a vent cover that hadn't been screwed in all the way. Red and blue markings. Compound eyes reflecting the UV light. Legs twitching.
"Strange," the tour guide was saying, counting against her clipboard. "There should be fifteen..."
Peter wasn't listening. He was leaning on the railing, left hand resting on top of it, reading the information placard with the intensity of a man reading scripture.
Above his head, from the gap in the vent, a dark shape descended on a strand of silk so thin it was almost invisible.
Dropping.
Slowly.
Silently.
My hand came up. Instinct. Reflex. Sixteen years of protect the family. One flick of my fingers and that spider is dead, and Peter Parker stays Peter Parker. Goes to college. Gets a job. Marries someone nice. Lives.
My fingers were an inch from the silk.
The Omnitrix pulsed.
[Tactical Deduction: Active]
[Option A — Intervene.] [Peter Parker does not mutate. Spider-Man does not exist. Chitauri invasion, Thanos event — key combat asset absent. Parker family survival rate in future events: 0.001%.]
[Option B — Stand by.] [Peter Parker undergoes forced genetic mutation. Spider-Man is born. Parker family survival rate: 68%.]
My hand stopped.
I looked at the spider. Six inches above Peter's hand. Descending.
I looked at Peter. Reading about spinnerets. Happy. Safe.
If I save him from this, I'm killing him later.
Without Spider-Man, Peter was just a kid. A brilliant, kind, defenseless kid in a world that was about to fill up with gods and monsters and things that could crush a city block. The Chitauri were coming. Ultron was coming. Thanos was coming. And when they did, I'd need every ally I could get — including the one standing next to me reading about spider silk tensile strength.
I needed Spider-Man.
Spider-Man needed this bite.
My nails dug into my palm hard enough to draw blood.
I'm sorry, Pete.
"Leon?"
Peter had turned his head. He was looking at my hand, frozen in the air.
"You okay? You look like you're about to karate-chop the glass."
I swallowed. My throat was tight.
I pulled my hand back. Slowly. Inch by inch.
"Noth—"
The spider landed on Peter's hand.
No hesitation. No warning. Fangs into skin, venom in, done.
"Ow! What the—"
Peter yanked his hand back. The other hand came down on reflex — smack — and the genetically modified, one-of-a-kind, worth-more-than-a-house spider became a red and green smear on his skin.
"What happened?" My voice came out rough.
"I dunno, some—" Peter was shaking his hand, looking at the swelling bump on the back of it. "Some bug bit me. Probably a mosquito. For a billion-dollar company, you'd think they could afford pest control."
He laughed. That easy, throwaway Peter Parker laugh that meant nothing was wrong and everything was fine.
He had no idea. Right now, a retrovirus was flooding his bloodstream, ripping his DNA apart, getting ready to rebuild him from the ground up.
I looked at the smeared spider on the railing. Then at Peter's face. Still smiling. Still clueless.
I could have stopped it. I chose not to.
"Pete."
"Hmm?"
"If you start feeling off — anything weird, anything at all — you come to me. Okay? Not a doctor, not a teacher. Me. I'm your brother."
He gave me a look. Half confused, half amused.
"Dude, it was a mosquito."
"Just... promise me."
Something in my voice must've landed, because the joke died on his face. He looked at me — really looked, for a second — and nodded.
"Yeah. Okay. I promise."
Then the moment passed and he was Peter again — arm around my shoulder, pulling me toward the stairs, talking a mile a minute.
"Come on, Osborn's speech is starting. The guy kinda freaks me out, honestly, like, you ever notice how he smiles? It's like he's doing it from a manual. But his work on regenerative cell therapy is insane —"
We headed up the stairs together.
Second floor. Behind one-way glass.
Norman Osborn stood in the VIP observation room, whiskey in hand, watching the Bio-Genetics Hall below. The cold blue exhibit lights caught the angles of his face — sharp cheekbones, deep-set eyes, the kind of face that looked like it was always calculating something.
He wasn't watching the exhibits.
He was watching the two teenagers walking toward the staircase. Specifically, the one on the left — Peter Parker. The kid who kept shaking his hand. The kid with the swelling bump.
Norman smiled. It was the kind of smile that had too many teeth and didn't reach his eyes.
"Specimen fifteen found a host."
He swirled the whiskey. Took a sip. Then his gaze drifted to the other one — the dark-haired kid walking beside Parker. The one who'd been standing behind his brother with his hand in the air, frozen, for just a beat too long before pulling back.
Norman's eyes narrowed.
Most people wouldn't have caught it. A hand raised and lowered — nothing. But Norman Osborn hadn't built a billion-dollar company by missing details. That kid had seen the spider. Had reached for it. And had chosen to pull back.
"And an interesting companion."
He drained the glass. Set it on the windowsill. Ice clinked.
"Welcome to the world of evolution, children."
Plz throw power stones.