Chapter 506 Daily Activities"That wretched, damned arachnid! Has he abandoned his responsibilities as an Avenger? The despicable Spider-Man has once again infested our streets and alleys, carrying out his vigilante crusade purely to stroke his own moral superiority!"
J. Jonah Jameson's voice practically vibrated through the Daily Bugle's digital broadcast. "I see absolutely no public benefit in his return to the gutters! He's just bullying ordinary, hard-working police who don't even need his so-called help!"
Gwen Stacy stared at her phone screen as the city bus rattled over a pothole. She let out a dry, exasperated laugh. "Good lord, Jonah. How could Spider-Man be so incredibly mean?"
"Anyone with eyes can see I'm basically his crutch," Peter Parker said, leaning his head against the vibrating glass window. "A guy with a broken leg needs a crutch to walk. Jonah needs Spider-Man to talk."
It was absurd, really. Jameson had built a surprisingly complete, almost academic theoretical framework for his anti-vigilante politics. He didn't need to use Spider-Man as his universal scapegoat. But he did. He twisted his entire worldview to make it seem like Spider-Man was the root cause of every societal ill, which made it absolutely impossible for Peter to ever feel bad for the guy.
Then again, Spider-Man was definitely a financial crutch for the Daily Bugle. Subscription metrics had skyrocketed ever since Jonah launched his daily anti-web-head crusade. Like it or not, Spider-Man sold papers.
Peter stared blankly at the seat in front of him. If he hadn't joined the Avengers, and if he didn't have their legal team managing his merchandising rights, Wilson Fisk—the Kingpin—or Hydra would probably be bootlegging Spider-Man toys to fund their operations. Just imagine it. A bunch of Hydra agents or mob enforcers getting their teeth kicked in by Spider-Man during the day, only to go back to their safe houses at night and sew little plush Spider-Men to meet their quotas.
Actually, they'd probably be sewing them in prison.
Wait. What if it was a private prison?
"Earth to Peter." Gwen waved a hand directly in front of his face, her blonde hair swaying as the bus turned a corner. "You're spacing out again. What is going on in that head of yours?"
"I'm just wondering if the private prisons holding the street guys I bust are actually owned by the Kingpin through some shell corporation," Peter said, his tone entirely deadpan. Fisk was currently running his empire from a tailored jumpsuit inside a double-suite at Rikers Island. "What if he's making the inmates work sewing machines to pump out pirated Spider-Man toys? He could be clearing millions a year off my likeness."
Gwen stared at him. Sometimes, Peter's brain completely abandoned scientific logic and took up residence in a bizarre, paranoid dimension.
"Okay, let's say that insanely specific conspiracy theory is true," Gwen sighed. "What are you going to do about it? Ask the Kingpin for royalties? Are you planning to sue a mob boss who is already in federal prison and make him serve a few extra years for copyright infringement?"
Peter blinked. He actually thought about it for a second. It made a weird amount of sense.
The bus hissed to a stop. They stepped out onto the pavement, walking toward the F.E.A.S.T. Center. After taking a break from world-ending multiversal threats and returning to his street-level roots, Peter finally felt like his nervous system was resetting to baseline. When the Avengers originally recruited him, the pitch had been simple: they wanted him to protect New York using their resources while they deployed on global missions.
Instead, he had been dragged into fighting everything from space dragons to time-traveling warlords.
Honestly, Peter was managing the trauma surprisingly well on his own. The rest of the Avengers were a mess of exhausted psychology. Tony Stark was still battling massive anxiety and a fear of insufficient firepower following the Battle of New York. Steve Rogers carried a quiet, crushing disillusionment. Hank Pym was constantly agonizing over the moral line between pacifism and necessary violence. And Bruce Banner was literally managing a gamma-irradiated split personality.
The only guy on the roster who seemed genuinely well-adjusted was Thor. His parents were alive, he commuted between the Nine Realms, and he looked completely baffled by his teammates' neuroses. We are protecting the people and saving the world, Thor's expression always seemed to say. Why are you all brooding?
Returning to his daily life was exactly what Peter needed.
"Aunt May is going to be thrilled we're here," Peter said, adjusting his backpack strap. "She's been complaining all week that the charity banquet is understaffed."
As they approached the building, Gwen stopped on the sidewalk. She frowned, pointing at the shelter's pristine white exterior walls. They were covered in fresh, aggressively sprayed graffiti.
"What happened here?" Gwen asked, stepping closer to inspect the mess.
"You know Mr. Li's philosophy," Peter said quietly. Martin Li, a wealthy philanthropist, founded the F.E.A.S.T. Center specifically to help the homeless and unemployed get back on their feet. "The shelter helps people find jobs. But a lot of guys realize the jobs are hard work, so they quit and try to come back here just for the free room and board."
Despite his warm public persona, Li was surprisingly ruthless about this. He actively drove out anyone he caught purely freeloading.
"But he's literally a superhero now," Gwen whispered, glancing around to make sure no one was listening. "He's Mister Negative. Isn't he worried about the PR backlash?"
"He says F.E.A.S.T. needs to preserve its resources for people who actually need the help," Peter shrugged. "Honestly, I get it. If you're physically capable of supporting yourself, you shouldn't just loaf around waiting for handouts—assuming the pay matches the labor, anyway. For that, we can thank the President"
Gwen blinked, completely derailed. "What does the President of the United States have to do with this?"
Peter kept his mouth shut. He didn't want to explain that he'd seen alternate multiversal timelines where a different administration had caused a whole cascade of societal issues.
Regardless of politics, President Ellis possessed two very rare qualities. First, he acknowledged the country's historical mistakes and actively tried to correct them. Second, he genuinely loved superheroes. The federal government was slashing police budgets nationwide. In Ellis's own words: If we have vigilantes catching criminals in every major city for free, why do we need so many cops? The current "Age of Heroes" was practically subsidized by the Oval Office.
Peter and Gwen pushed through the shelter's double doors and headed straight for the industrial kitchen. The staff waved at them; Peter was a regular fixture here, and they knew he was a hard worker.
"Oh! Peter! Gwen! You made it!"
Aunt May beamed, wiping flour off her apron as she bustled over to them. She kissed Peter's cheek.
"Your timing is absolutely perfect," May said, gesturing toward the back prep stations. "Felicia is currently rolling out the cookie dough. You two can go wash up and help her out."
May turned and hurried back toward the ovens.
Gwen froze. Her posture went rigid. She slowly turned her head to look at Peter, her eyes narrowing into analytical slits.
"Felicia Hardy?" Gwen asked, her voice dropping an octave.
Peter swallowed hard. He hadn't exactly mentioned to his girlfriend that the Black Cat was spending her free time baking cookies with his aunt.
Chapter 507: A Day at the Charity BanquetF.E.A.S.T. hadn't changed much on the surface, but the underlying dynamics certainly had. Martin Li's philosophy for the shelter was already strict, but ever since his split-psyche empowered him as the Defender known as Mister Negative, the local troublemakers had gotten the memo. Li's alternate persona had severe violent tendencies, which meant nobody dared to freeload or start a brawl in the dining hall anymore.
"Good afternoon, Peter. And... this is Stacy, right?"
Felicia Hardy didn't miss a beat. She stood by the industrial ovens, sliding off a pair of heavy mitts. Though Felicia and Gwen had definitely crossed paths, Felicia's deliberate, casual dismissal made Gwen's eyes narrow. The casual first-name basis between Peter and Felicia wasn't lost on Gwen either. She crossed her arms, analyzing the two of them, clearly trying to map out a history she wasn't privy to.
Felicia ignored the glaring. She pulled a massive baking tray from the oven, sliding the cookies onto a cooling rack. "Let them cool for a minute, then we can serve them." She immediately pivoted to the next batch of dough.
Gwen inhaled the rich scent of chocolate and butter, her defensive posture dropping slightly. "Okay, fine, they smell amazing. Give me a second to grab an apron."
A few minutes later, Peter and Gwen pushed through the swinging doors, carrying trays of fresh cookies out to the F.E.A.S.T. residents. Near the front information desk, a line of people waited patiently for job placement resources—people actually trying to get back on their feet.
Peter pushed back into the kitchen. Felicia was aggressively flattening a sheet of dough with a rolling pin. She didn't look up. "Grab those cutters and press the molds for me, will you?"
Peter picked up the steel cookie cutters and started stamping out perfect circles. He moved fast, his enhanced muscles meticulously dialed back to avoid shattering the table. Felicia watched his hands, her eyebrows raising at his raw physical control.
"So," Felicia asked, wiping flour from her cheek. "What brings you to F.E.A.S.T. today?"
"Honestly? A severe lack of crises," Peter shrugged, pressing another mold. "Most of the New York Criminal all sitting in federal holding. The major New York crime families are basically gutted. It's just minor-league players left."
Felicia hummed in agreement. With the major mob bosses off the board, she didn't have any criminal empires to investigate or dismantle. In fact, she'd been so bored lately she actually caught herself looking into high-end art acquisitions, mirroring her late father's old cat-burglar habits. Fortunately, she kept her promise to Peter—she was just window-shopping, not actually stealing anything.
Her tone shifted, dropping the playful edge. "Jessica's condition is deteriorating." Felicia leaned against the counter. "I know Uncle Jonathan is buried in research trying to find a treatment, but... I don't know if they have enough time."
Peter stopped stamping cookies. He met her gaze. "It's going to be okay. You have to trust Dr. Drew. And you have to trust that Jessica is strong enough to hold on."
Felicia let out a quiet, frustrated breath. She couldn't understand why Peter was so blindly confident that Jonathan Drew's experimental ALS treatments would work. From her perspective, the clinical odds were terrible. "I obviously want her to pull through," Felicia said, shaking her head. "But if things go south... could you check in on her? As yourself, I mean. She spent so much time looking for Spider-Man."
Peter wiped his hands on a towel. "Do you genuinely believe Jessica is completely in the dark?"
Felicia blinked. "What do you mean?"
"She's the president of the Detective Club," Peter pointed out. "Her deductive reasoning is terrifying. She literally triangulated my patrol routes during the Europe trip. You really don't think it's weird that she just abruptly dropped her entire investigation into my identity?"
Felicia stared at him, the realization clicking into place. Jessica hadn't hit a dead end; she had deliberately stopped digging to protect him.
Before Felicia could respond, Gwen pushed through the kitchen doors, returning her empty tray. Peter immediately stepped aside, grabbing a fresh sheet of cookies and sliding them into the oven to physically escape the impending crossfire.
Unfortunately, he didn't escape fast enough. The girls started talking. It began innocently, just polite small talk about the shelter, but then Felicia flashed a brilliant, entirely fabricated smile.
"Oh, I absolutely love volunteering here," Felicia lied smoothly. "Peter actually recommended it to me. He said it was a great place to spend time together and give back."
Peter felt Gwen's gaze snap toward the back of his neck like a sniper laser. He kept his eyes locked on the oven timer, refusing to turn around.
Once Gwen finally left the kitchen to run another batch, Peter spun around and glared at Felicia. "Why did you just make that up? You found F.E.A.S.T. on your own. I had nothing to do with it."
Felicia propped her hip against the counter, an unapologetic smirk on her face. "What? Isn't it fun watching a girl mark her territory over you?"
"Your personality is a hazard to my health," Peter groaned, shaking his head. He pulled his apron off, intending to go find Gwen and do some aggressive damage control.
His burner phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out, read the encrypted caller ID, and stepped into the pantry. He spoke quietly for a minute before hanging up.
Gwen walked back in just as he pocketed the phone. She caught the tension in his shoulders. "What happened?"
"Nothing good," Peter sighed. "Captain America just called. The Avengers intercepted new chatter regarding the Winter Soldier's movements. The core team is deploying to investigate. Steve ordered me to stay grounded in New York and hold the fort."
Peter rubbed his temples. He knew Steve Rogers was just trying to protect him. The Winter Soldier was heavily tied to Hydra, and Otto Octavius's recent alliances proved the Doctor had deep Hydra connections. If Otto leveraged that intelligence network, the newly formed Sinister Six could launch a coordinated strike at any moment.
"I don't like flying blind," Peter muttered, grabbing a fresh apron. He spent the rest of the afternoon working the serving line at the banquet, his spider-sense dialed up to maximum, waiting for the Sinister Six to kick the doors in.
They never did.
Chapter 508: The Sinister Six Take Action"Has it been confirmed that the Avengers are still in Europe?" MacDonald Gargan—the Scorpion—asked, watching the news feed.
"At least for now, we don't have to worry about them intervening," Gargan added, his mechanical tail twitching.
"What about the rest of the capes?" Max Dillon, Electro, asked, his voice crackling with static. Dillon and Gargan were practically vibrating with eagerness to make Spider-Man bleed.
Otto Octavius sat in his mechanical life-support frame in silence. "Someone else will handle them."
Otto had brokered a deal with a former A.I.M. contractor named Griffin. The Winter Soldier's sudden appearance in Europe wasn't just a Hydra trap; it was a distraction orchestrated by a higher power manipulating Hydra's network. Otto didn't care who Griffin really worked for. His contract had one singular objective.
Exterminate Spider-Man.
"Let's get to work, Dillon," Otto ordered.
"I can't," Dillon spat, electricity sparking across his knuckles. "Whatever the Avengers did to the grid before they left, I can't interface with New York's primary network. We're locked out. What's Plan B?"
Plan A had relied on Electro absorbing the city's entire electrical grid to seize control of Manhattan. Otto adjusted his thick goggles. The Avengers had planned ahead to prevent another Raft blackout.
"We change tactics," Otto declared. He turned to the hulking figure in the corner. "Mr. William Baker. Prepare to bring a dust storm to New York."
Flint Marko smirked.
June 1, 2013.
A towering, apocalyptic wall of yellow sand swallowed the Manhattan skyline. A gargantuan Sandman rose from the dust, terrifying the citizens below.
Inside Avengers Tower, Peter Parker drained a glass of water. He looked up at the ceiling. "Ultron, can you get the Fantastic Four on the line?"
"The Baxter Building communications array is completely unresponsive," Ultron's synthetic voice replied.
Peter's jaw tightened. "Where did they go?" He tapped his comms. "Ultron, patch me through to the X-Men."
He didn't wait for confirmation. He triggered the quick-change zipper on his backpack, the classic red-and-blue suit assembling over his frame in seconds. Beneath the fabric, the Venom symbiote pulsed with eager, violent anticipation. To take down the newly reformed Sinister Six, they were going to have to stop pulling punches.
The colossal Sandman didn't rampage. Following Otto's strict parameters, he used the abrasive sand to physically shred the local power grid's infrastructure. He forcefully tore the system open so Electro could bypass the firewalls.
Peter swung into the storm. He dropped onto a shattered streetlamp. He threw out his hand, attempting to channel the mystic arts to yank Baker's spiritual anchor straight out of the sand. The spell sparked and fizzled. Sandman's molecular cohesion defied logic. Magic was useless here.
"Hey, William!" Peter yelled over the howling wind. "Did you find a new ringmaster for your circus, or did you just hire a terrible new magician?"
The sand beneath Peter's boots shifted. A dense, human-shaped mass coalesced directly behind him. Massive, abrasive arms wrapped around Peter's torso.
"Regarding that," Sandman's voice grated like grinding stones. "Belasco sends his regards, Spider-Man!"
Peter froze. Belasco? The exiled Lord of Limbo?
Venom surged. Peter unleashed a blinding burst of bio-electric lightning from his pores. The intense heat instantly flash-fried the binding sand into brittle glass. Peter shattered the glass. He flipped backward. He landed in a crouch.
Sandman didn't flinch. He dissolved back into the swirling vortex. He weaponized the blinding storm to mask the approach of his teammates.
Peter's spider-sense flared. It wasn't a general hum. It was a razor-sharp, directional spike.
He backflipped instinctively. A massive, pneumatic metal stinger whipped through the empty space where his head had just been. Peter fired a web-line mid-air. He plastered the mechanical tail to the asphalt.
"Scorpion!" Peter quipped, landing lightly. "Did you forget how I ripped your last spine out, Mac? Didn't think you'd be eager for a repeat!"
"You're not walking away this time, bug!" Gargan snarled. He yanked his tail backward.
The sheer kinetic force ripped Peter off his feet. He planted his boots, expecting a standard tug-of-war. Instead, Gargan yanked so hard the concrete beneath Peter's soles buckled. Peter raised his forearms just in time to block a devastating, piston-driven punch.
The impact launched Peter backward. Gargan's raw strength was exponentially higher than their last encounter. Peter skidded to a halt. He wiped grit from his lenses.
Where is my backup?
With Illyana Rasputin's stepping discs, the X-Men should have breached the perimeter seconds after his call. With Emma Frost's telepathy guiding the strike, the Sinister Six should have been flanked and overwhelmed.
Nobody came.
Peter took a short, shallow breath. The Sinister Six hadn't diverted forces to attack Xavier's school. The X-Men had run into a completely different wall.
Miles away, Cyclops had mobilized the X-Men the second Peter's distress signal came through. Leaving Logan behind to guard the students and investigate Mister Sinister, Scott Summers ordered Magik to portal the strike team directly into downtown Manhattan.
Illyana swung her glowing Soulsword. She tore open a golden stepping disc into Limbo. The team stepped through.
They stopped dead.
Floating in the center of the demonic dimension was a man sitting casually in a sleek, purple hovering chair. The X-Men had never met him. But the Avengers' intelligence-sharing files made his identity instantly clear.
"Kang," Scott stated, his hand hovering over his quartz visor.
"You mutants are so wonderfully predictable," Kang sneered, standing up from his throne.
Scott didn't hesitate. He unleashed a devastating, ruby-red optic blast.
The beam passed through empty air. Kang vanished.
The dimension around the X-Men violently warped. They stumbled, hitting solid asphalt instead of Limbo's jagged rocks. Illyana cursed. Her sword sparked. She hadn't completed the transit spell.
Howling yellow winds whipped against their uniforms. They had been forcefully dumped into the heart of the Manhattan sandstorm.
"Where exactly are we?" Scott yelled over the gale. He turned to the White Queen. "Emma, sweep the perimeter!"
Before Emma could project her telepathy, a figure stepped out of the swirling dust.
He was a towering, grey-skinned man draped in ancient Egyptian linen. Intricate blue tribal markings mapped his face. He possessed an aura of suffocating, ancient power. He looked at the assembled X-Men with cold, mechanical curiosity.
"I am En Sabah Nur," the immortal mutant rumbled, his voice cutting clearly through the storm. "Slave of Pharaoh Rama-Tut."
The grey giant tilted his head. "Who are you?"
The Kang Dynasty had officially begun.
Chapter 509: Spider-Man vs. the Sinister SixSomething had happened to the X-Men.
Peter's white lenses narrowed against the howling Manhattan wind. The mutant cavalry wasn't coming. If Otto Octavius had engineered this delay, Peter needed to stay sharp. But if Kang the Conqueror was pulling the strings? Peter clenched his jaw under the mask. Kang wielded the Time Stone. He could manipulate the battlefield from a thousand years away. But Kang had ghosted them since the Limbo crisis. Why resurface now?
"What are you daydreaming about, bug?!"
His spider-sense didn't scream. It just hummed, muffled and distorted.
A serrated metal stinger whipped toward his skull. The Venom symbiote surged out of Peter's pores, catching the lethal strike with a mass of dense black biomass. Peter gripped the mechanical tail. He yanked hard. The cybernetic spine was the only thing supporting the mercenary's dead weight; Peter hoisted MacDonald Gargan's paralyzed legs clean off the rooftop and slammed him brutally into the concrete.
Gargan's faceplate retracted. Peter blinked. Gargan's skin was a sickly, reptilian green. His jaw jutted out with pronounced, insectoid mandibles. Otto hadn't just built Gargan a new tail to fight through his paralysis; he had pumped him full of an Erskine-derived animal serum.
"Geez, Mac," Peter quipped, stepping back. "You're looking a little green around the gills. Skip breakfast, or did Otto just cheap out on the moisturizer?"
Even heavily mutated, Gargan couldn't overpower Peter's raw strength. He didn't try. The Scorpion just smiled—a cold, malignant grin.
Peter's dulled spider-sense finally spiked.
A blinding torrent of high-voltage lightning crashed into his chest. The strike moved faster than Peter's enhanced reflexes could track. He braced for the agonizing burn of pure plasma.
Instead, Max Dillon screamed.
Underneath the black liquid of the Venom suit, Peter was wearing his Velocity Suit. The symbiote instantly peeled back from the impact zone, exposing the Stark-tech polymer. The suit's capacitors swallowed Dillon's electrical current, completely grounding the lethal charge.
Peter stood up, his bio-electric reserves humming at maximum capacity.
"You always fall for the grounding trick, Max," Peter sighed, rolling his shoulders. "You really need to read a physics textbook. And—"
A massive, armored horn ripped through the rooftop access door. The Rhino charged straight at him.
Peter vaulted backward, sticking to the side of a water tower. "Aleksei? How did an eight-foot-tall Russian tank even get up here? Unless Otto built you a really big jetpack..."
Peter tapped the side of his mask. The Mk 2 suit's sonar system flared to life, projecting a monochromatic topographical map across his HUD.
The Rhino swung a massive fist. Peter dodged purely on instinct. He glanced at his HUD. The sonar showed absolutely nothing in front of him. Empty air.
Peter exhaled sharply. Otto hadn't hacked Ultron to blind his sensors. The Rhino wasn't here. Electro wasn't here. Even the massive Sandman tearing up the financial district down below was a ghost.
Only Gargan and Quentin Beck were actually on this roof. Gargan's mutated pheromones were actively suppressing Peter's spider-sense, and Mysterio was handling the rest. Beck had even hacked Peter's visual HUD to display a fake battery drain from the Electro strike.
"Quentin, cut the projector!" Peter yelled, scanning the green smoke for Beck's fishbowl helmet. "Whatever Otto promised you, it's a lie! You don't have to do this!"
Mysterio stepped out of the fog. "I am done listening to your lies, web-slinger!"
Beck raised his hands. Arcs of holographic lightning shot toward Peter. They weren't real, but the Shi'ar hard-light technology wired into Beck's suit made the impact bruise Peter's ribs anyway.
Behind Peter, Gargan's mechanical tail split open. A high-frequency sonic cannon spooled up.
A localized sonic boom slammed into Peter's back. Venom shrieked in Peter's mind, violently retreating from the deafening frequency. The symbiote strained, desperate to rip the Scorpion apart before the sound waves dissolved its biomass.
Then, Beck dropped the illusion.
The fake Rhino vanished. The real sky reappeared. High above the Manhattan skyline, the real Max Dillon hovered in the clouds. Electro was funneling massive, sustained lightning bolts directly into the city's power grid. He laughed, a manic, crackling sound echoing across the boroughs.
An unprecedented electromagnetic pulse swept across the island. Every light below went dark.
A Daily Bugle news chopper, hovering a block away to cover the fight, lost its tail rotor power. The engine sputtered. The helicopter dropped out of the sky like a stone.
Peter didn't hesitate. He ignored Gargan. He ignored Beck. He sprinted to the edge of the roof and dove into the empty air.
He calculated the chopper's descent trajectory in his head. He fired consecutive, thick web-lines against two adjacent skyscrapers, forming a massive, reinforced net to catch the falling aircraft.
Peter landed on the chopper's open side-door frame. He lunged inside to grab the pilot.
The pilot and the cameraman were slumped over the control panels. They weren't breathing.
A heavy titanium tentacle whipped out of the shadows and clamped around Peter's neck.
Doctor Otto Octavius stepped out of the chopper's darkened interior. He looked down at Peter, his freshly cloned, twenty-something body standing perfectly upright.
"Hello, Spider-Man," Otto smiled, his voice smooth and clear over the rushing wind. "Your movement patterns remain tragically predictable. I give you a falling civilian, and you blindly throw yourself into the meat grinder."
Peter choked. He channeled a lethal burst of bio-electricity through his skin to fry the tentacle.
The current sparked and died. Otto had perfectly insulated the metal.
"Look at you," Otto asked softly. "What do you think you can do? You are the subject being observed. I am the one who has been studying you."
Peter commanded Venom to strike. Black, liquid tendrils erupted from Peter's back, shooting straight for Otto's chest.
Otto didn't flinch. A sickening, blood-red biomass suddenly poured out of Otto's collar. The artificial red symbiote coated Otto's mechanical tentacles, catching Venom's strike in mid-air.
Otto reached out with his own, fully functional organic hands. He caught Peter's swinging fist in his palm.
"You see," Otto whispered, "my hands are finally free to move."
Peter struggled against the metal grip crushing his windpipe.
"Ever since I recovered those parasite samples from the bottom of the Hudson River, I have studied their flaws," Otto continued, his red symbiote rippling over his armor. "I found a way to breed them artificially. And I discovered their true vulnerabilities. Fire and sound are so primitive."
Otto leaned in close. "What happens to a molecular organism when its molecular stability is forcibly unbound?"
Chapter 510: Targeting the PlanPeter had absolutely no idea what Otto had just done, but he knew one thing for certain: it worked.
The Venom symbiote shrieked in Peter's mind. A blinding, unprecedented agony ripped through the alien biomass. The black liquid bubbled and surged wildly before evaporating into thick smoke. Peter felt the symbiote violently tearing itself away from his cells. It was an unstoppable, physical severing. Underneath the agony, a cold, clinical cleansing sensation washed over his nervous system.
Otto didn't stick around to gloat. The Doctor threw himself out of the plummeting helicopter, leaving Spider-Man to burn.
The chopper hit the pavement and exploded in a massive fireball. Otto hit the asphalt, expecting to watch the wall-crawler burn to ash. Instead, Peter dragged himself out of the wreckage. The last remnants of the Venom symbiote receded completely, fusing back into the dormant matrix of Peter's Velocity Suit. Peter was stripped of his alien enhancements, but he was alive.
Otto wasn't so lucky.
"Ah! Damn it! You damn bug! What have you done?!" Otto roared. He crashed heavily into the street. He tried to stand, but his massive mechanical tentacles violently sparked and locked up, sending him plummeting face-first into the concrete.
Peter walked out of the flames, shaking the soot off his shoulders. "I left a little parting gift on you, Doc. Do you like it?"
Without Venom, Peter couldn't rely on brute alien strength. But Otto wasn't going anywhere either.
"It's a contact-based electronic virus," Peter explained, tapping his wrist. "It specifically targets and paralyzes the neural-interface of your prosthetics. It would have been completely harmless if you hadn't tried to strangle me inside that chopper."
Peter sprinted toward the downed scientist. "You're completely out of your mind, Otto! You don't care how many innocent people you kill!"
"They don't matter at all!" Otto babbled, his eyes wide and frantic from the ground. "I saw the truth! They mean nothing! Rhino!"
Before Peter could even process Otto's manic rambling, a brick wall across the street exploded outward. Aleksei Sytsevich charged into the open. If the Rhino's old metallic skin and exoskeleton made him look like a humanoid armored vehicle, his new upgrades made him look like a walking armored train.
The sleek, powered mechanical suit was gone. It was replaced by a massive, insanely thick layer of unpowered, ultra-dense polymer plating grafted directly to his skin. Aleksei lowered his horn and charged.
Peter executed a flawless backflip over the Rhino's head. He fired two web-lines, sticking to Aleksei's broad back. Peter channeled his bio-electricity into the armor, trying to short out the suit.
"Stop, Aleksei! Cut it out!" Peter yelled over the crunching asphalt. "You don't belong with these guys! You're not a psychopath like Otto or Gargan!"
"I can't stop!" Rhino roared. He plowed blindly down the street, slamming into dead, powerless cars and tossing them into the air like toys. "Octavius cured my Oksana! I owe him! I can't stop!"
"Does your wife want to see you turned into a human wrecking ball?!" Peter shot back.
"At least she'll be alive to see it!" Rhino reached over his shoulder, grabbed Peter by the leg, and hurled him into the air.
Peter caught himself mid-flight. He fired two thick, conductive web-lines. He attached one end to Aleksei's back and the other to the chassis of two abandoned taxis. Peter surged his bio-electricity through the webbing. The massive voltage slammed into Rhino's metallic skin.
The current essentially turned Aleksei's specialized polymer armor into a massive, high-powered electromagnet. The two taxis violently slammed into Rhino's sides, pinning his arms. As Aleksei struggled, more loose metal debris magnetically ripped across the street, burying him under tons of scrap.
Two down. Four to go, Peter thought.
He looked up at the churning, black sky. Max Dillon was hovering over the financial district. Electro's localized electromagnetic storm had completely paralyzed Manhattan's infrastructure. Government buildings and hospitals were running blind.
Peter took a deep breath. His Velocity Suit was still insulated and active. He dumped a massive reserve of his own bio-electricity into the suit's micro-capacitors, pushing his speed past the sound barrier. He blurred up the side of a skyscraper, launching himself directly at the glowing villain.
Electro vanished in a flash of lightning. A split-second later, a massive kinetic blast hit Peter in the chest, launching him backward through the plate-glass window of a corporate office floor.
"Hey, Spider-Man! You really didn't think I was that slow, did you?" Electro materialized inside the office, crackling with pure, living plasma. He threw his head back and laughed. "I wasn't even full last time! You and your little speedster buddy fought a drained battery in that hamster wheel! Now? I've got the whole grid! Doc Ock and the Rhino might not be able to crush you, but I'm going to fry you to ash!"
Peter groaned, sitting up amid the shattered glass. "You know, Max, it's entirely possible I realized you were holding back."
Peter tapped his wrist. "I also knew you'd waste time monologuing. Check your six, Sparky."
Electro blinked. He turned around. When Peter had crashed through the window, he hadn't just tumbled; he had woven a massive, specialized web-trap across the entire back wall. Peter yanked the anchor lines.
Electro sneered. He transformed into pure electricity, attempting to phase effortlessly through the gaps in the webbing. The second his energy hit the silk, the trap snapped shut. Dillon shrieked in agony, solidly bound by the glowing fibers.
"What the hell is this?!" Electro screamed, thrashing against the webbing.
"Energy-dampening silk," Peter quipped, walking up to the trapped villain. "Did you really think I wouldn't consult Magneto about handling electromagnetic fields while I was visiting Genosha? You're completely cut off from New York's grid."
Peter pressed his hands flat against Dillon's chest. "Now, if you don't mind, I need a quick recharge."
"Get away from me!" Electro shrieked.
A minute later, Peter swung back out of the shattered office window, his Velocity Suit humming with a fresh, maximum-capacity charge. He mentally ran the numbers.
Three left. Mysterio and Scorpion had severe upgrades, but Peter knew how their tech worked. He could counter them. But Sandman was the real wildcard. William Baker's soul had been tampered with by Belasco. Theoretically, the Demon Lord of Limbo shouldn't even be able to influence Earth-616 anymore. How did he modify Sandman?
Peter's HUD suddenly glitched. The sonar feed completely desynchronized from his visual layout.
Peter sighed, adjusting his stance. Mysterio's neural illusions were back online. The real fight was just starting.
Chapter 511: Spider-Man Dies in the SunsetPeter's HUD flared. Combined with his new, refined spider-sense, he began to physically "see through" the electrical stimuli powering Quentin Beck's neural illusions. The hallucinations still warped his vision. He could still smell the phantom ozone and feel the phantom heat. But his brain finally recognized the gaps in the code. He could move freely.
The simulated reality around him was still entirely unhinged.
The concrete roof behind Peter violently folded upward, slamming shut over the skyline like a massive pop-up book. Peter knew it was a digital fabrication. He still felt the crushing, phantom weight bearing down on his spine.
Fortunately, Peter had a countermeasure for the stolen Danger Room technology.
Quentin Beck is just a mortal man in a fishbowl helmet. Beck was not a telepath. The processing speed required to manually construct and adapt photorealistic, tactile illusions could not keep up with Peter's raw physical speed.
Peter dumped power into his Velocity Suit's micro-capacitors. He broke the sound barrier.
By the time Beck's neural interface registered the movement, Peter was already standing directly behind him.
"Enough, Quentin."
Peter crossed the distance. He drove his fist directly into the glass dome. The acrylic shattered outward in an explosion of jagged shards. Quentin Beck flinched, his face pale, exposed, and terrified.
"The magic show is over."
A metallic whine shrieked behind Peter.
"Oh, really, Spider-Man?"
Peter ducked. A serrated mechanical stinger shattered the concrete where his head had just been. Gargan lunged. The heavy cybernetic spine bolted to Gargan's back sparked. Pneumatic servos forcefully drove the mercenary's paralyzed legs forward, launching his dead weight across the roof. Gargan threw a devastating, Erskine-fueled uppercut.
Peter raised his forearms. He caught the punch. The sheer kinetic force pushed him backward.
"How's it going, bug?" Gargan grinned, bearing his teeth. "Spider-sense not quite as sharp as it used to be? Because my scorpion senses are having an absolute blast!"
Peter planted his boots. "Come on, Mac! All those upgrades and you still punch like a guy who skipped his protein shake!"
Peter dumped the Velocity Suit's entire stored bio-electric charge directly into the mercenary's chest plate.
A blinding arc of voltage scorched Gargan's armor to a crisp. The massive electrical surge fried the Scorpion's tactical harness. The mechanical tail whipped around, completely out of control. Automated weapon pods ejected from the carapace. Machine guns, laser emitters, acid sprayers, and flamethrowers fired wildly in every direction.
Mysterio screamed in terror. Beck grabbed a hovering projection drone and blindly flew away from the rooftop.
"I never knew Quentin had such strong arms," Peter quipped, dodging a stray acid stream. "Well, Scorpion, given your current technical difficulties, I'm going to have to administer some emergency maintenance—"
A wall of dense, abrasive sand slammed into Peter's back.
The yellow grit instantly bound his arms to his sides. Mysterio's lingering neural hallucinations had completely scrambled Peter's optical sensors. Neither his suit's sonar nor his own eyes had registered the airborne sand. His spider-sense had tried to warn him, but Gargan's mutated pheromones had dulled the alarm to a vague, useless throb.
"It's over, Spider-Man," Flint Marko grated. The Sandman solidified, locking Peter in a crushing, granular vice.
Across the street, Doctor Otto Octavius staggered to his feet. He leaned heavily on his artificial red symbiote suit. His mechanical tentacles hoisted Aleksei Sytsevich up, ripping the Rhino free from his magnetic restraints. Overhead, Max Dillon tore through his dampening webs. Electro hovered in the storm, crackling with raw, unstable voltage.
Peter didn't stop fighting. The Velocity Suit's capacitors were drained, but his own cells were still running at maximum output.
Peter channeled his internal bio-electricity. The searing heat flash-fried Sandman's binding arms into brittle glass. Peter shattered the glass and broke free.
"Do you still think you can win this, Otto?" Peter yelled, his chest heaving. "You threw the kitchen sink at me! Six on one, and you still can't keep me down!"
Doctor Otto Octavius didn't rage. He just smiled.
Quentin Beck drifted back toward the group. A massive, thick cloud of green smoke suddenly deployed from Mysterio's shattered suit.
Otto barked a sharp command. Electro grabbed Gargan by the harness, launching into the sky. Otto's tentacles contracted, pulling him backward over the ledge.
Peter fired a web-line to pursue. He swung straight through the dense green fog.
Peter inhaled sharply. He didn't smell the chemical taint. Mysterio's localized illusions had completely scrambled his olfactory receptors. He just tasted dry smoke.
Otto laughed. The Doctor gripped the side of a fire escape, shouting in absolute triumph. "It's over, Spider-Man! You fell for it! That wasn't one of Beck's parlor tricks. You just breathed in a concentrated dose of the Restoration Serum!"
Peter froze mid-swing.
"The radioactive peptides in your blood are unraveling as we speak!" Otto roared. "You will lose all of your powers! You are no longer Spider-Man!"
Otto let out a dry, ragged laugh. Spider-Man had systematically dismantled the entire Sinister Six. Without the retro-mutagen serum trap, the villains would have been entirely routed. Otto had genuinely risked his own life to act as the bait.
But it was over.
Peter staggered on the rooftop. He tried to speak. His jaw wouldn't open.
An unprecedented, violently overwhelming wave of nausea hit his stomach like a lead weight. His muscles locked. The setting sun flared in his vision, and then everything went completely black.
Peter plummeted from the roof.
In the crushing darkness of free-fall, three distinct spiders flashed across his dying consciousness. The Savage Force spider that bit him at the Osborn Tech Expo. The modified Spider-42 from the Cosmic Alchemy Corporation. The mystical Totem Spider from the Shadow Universe.
Deep within his cells, Venom shrieked. The symbiote was forcefully evicted from Peter's unraveling genetic structure. The black biomass pooled over the Velocity Suit. It stretched out, forming a massive, makeshift parachute of alien webbing to slow Peter's terminal velocity.
Otto watched the black parachute deploy from the street below. He mistook the survival reflex for a conscious re-bonding.
"Find him!" Otto screamed, his mechanical arms tearing up the asphalt.
The Sinister Six crashed into the alley. They found nothing.
Spider-Man was gone. The empty, discarded Velocity Suit lay draped across a rusted dumpster.
"Damn it! He slipped away!" Otto snatched the suit with a titanium claw. He gritted his teeth, tossing the fabric back into the trash. "Search the perimeter! Find him! Once his cellular structure stabilizes, that parasite will bond with him again!"
The Sinister Six scattered, tearing into the surrounding blocks.
Only Mysterio lingered. Beck glanced down the mouth of the alley. A beat cop was gently leading a pale, violently ill teenager away from the wreckage.
"Spider-Man is no longer a threat," Beck muttered to himself. He turned his back. There was no need to harm a sick, defenseless kid.
Deep in the shadows of the alley, Eugene "Flash" Thompson crouched behind a shattered crate.
Flash had witnessed the entire massacre from afar. He stared at the empty alley in absolute disbelief. Spider-Man had lost. Six against one. It was an outrage.
"Where did he go?" Flash whispered, creeping toward the dumpster. "Why is his suit just sitting here..."
Flash reached out. His fingers brushed the fabric.
A torrent of living black fluid violently erupted from the Velocity Suit. The alien biomass leaped, completely enveloping Flash in absolute darkness.
Chapter 512: Future InvasionOtto Octavius glared at the empty alleyway. No Spider-Man. The bug had slipped through their fingers. Otto pivoted, his fresh, twenty-something cloned body moving stiffly.
"Dillon. Take the New York grid. We use the surveillance network to hunt him down."
Max Dillon hovered above the asphalt, crackling as a being of pure, living plasma. "Why rush, Doc? You hit the kid with the serum. He's done. Besides, didn't you hire outside help to keep the rest of the capes busy?"
Otto's jaw clenched. "Just take the grid, Max."
Dillon grinned. He dissolved into pure current and surged into the subterranean power lines. He overran the city's infrastructure in seconds, effortlessly breaching the automated defenses of Avengers Tower. Artificial intelligence required electricity, and Max Dillon was the god of electricity.
But before Dillon could hijack the broadcast networks, every screen in Times Square flared to life on its own.
The signal overrode S.H.I.E.L.D. feeds in Washington and Avengers comms in Europe. It wasn't Otto. A man sat on a hovering throne, clad in purple-and-green high-tech armor.
"Citizens of the twenty-first century," the man announced, his voice carrying the absolute, arrogant certainty of a god. "I am Kang the Conqueror. I rule the thirty-first-century empire, and I have come to save you. In the year 2015, a multiversal incursion will tear your reality apart."
Kang stood up. "To prevent the destruction of your world—and mine—I am assuming direct control of your timeline. All Earth governments are hereby dissolved."
In low Earth orbit, a massive, sword-shaped armada materialized out of thin air. Kang didn't fire. He simply let the warships loom in the atmosphere, then abruptly cut the feed.
Down in the city, Otto Octavius immediately seized the radio and television frequencies. He couldn't care less about time-traveling warlords right now. He had a city to conquer.
"Hello, New York," Otto's voice echoed across Manhattan. "As you can see, the world is quite busy. The Avengers are in Europe. Kang has stranded the X-Men in the past. The Fantastic Four are incapacitated. And your last line of defense, Spider-Man, has been completely eradicated."
Otto smiled. "The Sinister Six now control Manhattan. Electro has erected a lethal electromagnetic grid around the island. Anyone trying to cross it will be incinerated. Do not resist."
Outside a Queens apartment block, Dr. Jonathan Drew clutched his daughter, Jessica, tightly behind him. Jessica's ALS was rapidly deteriorating, and Jonathan had been trying to evacuate her before the city went into lockdown.
A towering wall of shifting sand blocked the street. MacDonald Gargan stepped out of the shadows, his green, mutated skin stretching into a vicious smile as his cybernetic tail snapped against the pavement.
"Sorry, Doc," Gargan grinned. "You're not going anywhere."
"What do you want?" Jonathan demanded.
"The boss just wants a front-row seat to watch you cure your precious daughter," Gargan laughed. Otto's cloned body was degrading from ALS. He needed to watch Jonathan perfect the experimental spider-peptide treatment on Jessica so he could steal the cure for himself.
"The spider-serums are completely unstable!" Jonathan pleaded. "We don't know how they'll impact her genetics!"
"Not my problem," Gargan shrugged. "Move."
Two blocks away, Silvija Sablinova exhaled slowly. Silver Sable adjusted the scope of her sniper rifle, tracking the mercenaries. She couldn't guarantee a clean extraction against Sandman and Scorpion. The hostages were safe for now; Otto needed Jonathan alive. Sable needed to focus on finding the missing Spider-Man.
Miles away, at the S.H.I.E.L.D. Triskelion, Cindy Moon gasped.
She gripped the edge of a briefing table, her knuckles turning white. Her Silk-sense tied her directly to Peter's physical state. She could feel his bio-rhythm crashing. The connection was flatlining. He was dying.
Cindy sprinted for the hangar bay, catching Otto's ultimatum on the overhead monitors. Manhattan was a sealed cage.
She tapped her S.H.I.E.L.D. earpiece. "Director Fury."
Nick Fury's voice crackled on the secure line. "Agent Silk."
"I'm calm, sir," Cindy said, her voice dead and focused. "But I need insertion. I need you to contact Gwen Stacy and Kitty Pryde. They can get me through the grid." Gwen's 'Ghost' power made her invisible to sensors, and Kitty could phase them through the energy barrier.
Cindy stepped into an armory vault. "And I need a requisition of Pym Particles."
Fury was silent for a long, heavy moment on the other end of the line.
"Bring him back."
Chapter 513: Octopus CityThe European operation was a total bust. The Avengers hadn't found a single trace of the Winter Soldier. Instead, they caught two incoming transmissions that effectively announced the end of the world.
First: Manhattan had fallen, and Spider-Man's fate was unknown. Second: Kang the Conqueror's armada had materialized in near-Earth orbit, threatening global subjugation.
Inside the Quinjet, the Avengers were completely fractured on how to respond.
"We can't just abandon the kid in Manhattan!" Tony Stark slammed his palm against the briefing table, glaring at Steve Rogers. "What exactly are we waiting for?!"
"They have an entire city held hostage, Tony," Steve said, his voice maddeningly level. "And we cannot confirm Spider-Man has fallen. A tactical retreat is not a defeat."
Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling a sharp breath. "It's just a guy with a lightning complex. Send Thor in to fry him."
"I'm afraid New York is facing a much bigger problem than a localized thunderstorm, Tony," Hank Pym said, sliding a starkpad across the table. "And that's assuming Mysterio isn't already running neural-interference fields to scramble Thor's targeting. Look at this."
Tony looked. The Stark Industries satellite feed displayed an absolute nightmare. A sprawling, mechanized swarm of octopus-like drones was pouring through the streets of Manhattan. They were heavily armed, brutally efficient, and currently engaging the Defenders and isolated pockets of street-level heroes. Otto Octavius hadn't just taken the city; he had built an occupying army.
And sitting directly above them was the much larger threat. Kang the Conqueror's futuristic fleet was looming in the upper atmosphere, holding position and waiting for the Avengers to make a move.
Nick Fury's encrypted message pinged the console. The S.H.I.E.L.D. Director was secretly building a covert strike team to infiltrate Manhattan and dismantle the Sinister Six. More importantly, Fury confirmed Spider-Man was still alive.
Then, the bad news kept compounding.
"The X-Men vanished en route to New York," Hank reported grimly. "Given the timeline, we can make a pretty safe deduction. The Sinister Six had Kang the Conqueror's support. The ground war was just a distraction to pull the mutants off the board."
Kang was likely the only entity in the universe capable of quietly erasing the core X-Men roster without a fight. The Xavier Institute was now entirely empty, save for Wolverine, Rogue, and a handful of students.
Worse, the Fantastic Four had gone dark.
"Reed was tinkering with his temporal platform to counter Kang," Tony groaned, pulling up the Baxter Building's diagnostics. "The building is completely unresponsive. Kang must have hit them before they could launch."
As it turned out, the Fantastic Four's temporal jump had gone perfectly smoothly. They had successfully landed in the Early Cretaceous period. They even got to see a few dinosaurs baring their teeth. And then Kang the Conqueror quietly stepped out of the timestream, blew their temporal shuttle to kingdom come, and stranded them. Unless Reed Richards could synthesize a chronal-navigation processor out of fern leaves and a T-Rex femur, the Fantastic Four were officially out of the war.
Ignorant of the dinosaurs, the Avengers stared at a second message from Nick Fury. With Manhattan completely lost, the United Nations had summoned world leaders to Shanghai for an emergency summit regarding Kang.
No sovereign nation was going to voluntarily dissolve its government and hand the globe over to a time-traveling dictator with a thousand spaceships. They needed a counter-strategy. Conventional military hardware couldn't scratch Kang's orbital dreadnoughts. The UN's only viable solution was to replicate the Battle of New York—unite every superpowered organization on the planet into a single, massive strike force.
Steve strapped his shield to his forearm. "Fury says he has a plan for Shanghai. We have to trust him."
Tony rolled his eyes hard enough to cause a headache. "My god, Cap. It's Nick Fury. You actually believe him?"
"I don't believe Fury's words," Steve said, his jaw locked. "I believe in his capabilities. And I believe in the kid. Set a course for Shanghai."
Queens, New York.
There was no broadcast footage showing exactly how the Sinister Six had defeated Spider-Man. But the fact that Otto's mechanized forces were currently rampaging through the city unchallenged proved it: they had won.
Inside the Parker living room, the television blared. After Electro restored the city's power grid, J. Jonah Jameson had immediately commandeered the airwaves. The Daily Bugle had lost an entire news chopper crew to the electromagnetic storm. Jameson's eyes were bloodshot. His tie was undone. He wasn't screaming about a menace anymore.
"Despite my personal distaste for that wall-crawling vigilante," Jameson barked into the microphone, his voice raw, "I am absolutely certain Spider-Man fought them to the bitter end! He fought until that Bugle chopper went down!"
Jameson slammed his hands onto his desk. "I am certain that as long as Spider-Man is drawing breath, he will fight! He might be injured. He might need a minute to rest. But he will stand back up! And J. Jonah Jameson and the Daily Bugle will stand with him—"
Before Jameson could draw another breath, a violent explosion obliterated the studio wall. Concrete dust and shattered drywall flooded the broadcast room.
Gargan dragged his legs through the rubble, his massive cybernetic tail acting as an articulated spine, violently propelling his dead weight forward. The Scorpion flashed a vicious, mutated grin.
"Good evening, Mr. Jameson..."
Gwen Stacy stood in the center of the Parker living room. Uncle Ben and Aunt May sat perfectly rigid on the sofa, terrified to watch but unable to look away. Gwen pulled out her phone. Peter wasn't answering. Her father wasn't answering either.
Was Peter staying off the grid to protect his location? How bad was he hurt?
Gwen spun on her heel, stepped out of the living room, and dialed a secure number.
"Cindy?" Gwen whispered frantically. "When are you getting here? Are you absolutely sure he's..."
"I'm sure he's alive," Cindy Moon's voice crackled over the line, dead serious. "But his condition is terrible. I'm almost there."
"Oh my god! Is that Peter? He's alive!"
Aunt May's sudden gasp pulled Gwen back into the living room.
Gwen stared at the television screen. An astonishing scene was unfolding in the ruined Bugle studio. A figure wearing a pitch-black Spider-Man suit had just crashed through the rubble, tackling the Scorpion in a brutal, heavy collision to get him away from Jameson.
The suit was completely black and heavily plated with aggressive, jagged armor. It moved with a raw, unrefined brutality. Gwen's eyes narrowed.
She knew exactly how Peter moved. That wasn't him.
Chapter 514: Spider-Man: Not That BlackThe figure that crashed through the Daily Bugle's broadcast studio to beat the Scorpion senseless was not Peter Parker.
It was Eugene "Flash" Thompson.
Minutes earlier, Flash had touched the discarded Velocity Suit in the alleyway. The Venom symbiote, desperately seeking a temporary host to draw the Sinister Six's attention away from a dying Peter, had immediately surged over his skin. The alien parasite had only intended to puppet the teenager as a disposable decoy. It didn't expect a perfect, highly-adaptable genetic match. It definitely didn't expect a die-hard Spider-Man fanatic.
Venom's voice echoed directly into Flash's cerebral cortex, explaining the grim tactical reality: Spider-Man had been ambushed by a ruthless hit squad. He was severely injured. He needed someone to put on the mask, swing through the city, and act as a distraction so he could survive. It was practically a suicide mission.
Flash's eyes widened behind the white lenses. His heart hammered against his ribs.
"Are you kidding me?!" Flash yelled, completely ignoring the danger. "I get to help Spider-Man?! I'm in!"
Moments later, a brand new, pitch-black Spider-Man launched into the Manhattan skyline. Max Dillon was the first to spot the imposter. Electro unleashed a massive torrent of living plasma, expecting to fry the bug to ash. But Venom had bonded seamlessly with the insulated Velocity Suit. The current grounded out harmlessly. Flash didn't even flinch before delivering a brutal, symbiote-enhanced right hook that sent Electro crashing through a billboard.
Dillon's humiliating defeat only cemented his belief: Spider-Man was still alive, and he was pissed.
Which led directly to the Bugle studio. MacDonald Gargan dragged his legs across the ruined broadcast floor, relying entirely on his massive, cybernetic tail to prop up his dead weight. Before the Scorpion could fire his tail-mounted sonic cannon, Flash crashed through the drywall, delivered a rapid-fire sequence of heavy blows, and sprinted away at blinding speed.
Flash landed awkwardly on a nearby rooftop, panting heavily as the black suit rippled around his shoulders. "Okay. Where to next? Whew."
The Web HQ is compromised, Venom's dark, rumbling voice echoed in his mind. The Six have locked down the city. We need to cure the host. The retro-mutagen is stripping his genetics.
Venom processed Peter's memories, isolating the most viable target. Dr. Jonathan Drew was being hunted. That left only one man capable of reversing a genetic stripping agent: Dr. Curt Connors. He was currently working out of Osborn Technologies.
We are going to Oscorp, Venom commanded. Norman Osborn is also a primary target for the Ock. We will intersect them both.
Inside Oscorp Tower, Norman Osborn felt the shift in the city's atmosphere the second the Sinister Six launched their assault.
Whether Spider-Man could survive Otto Octavius's gauntlet was irrelevant. Norman had a much more pressing, immediate problem. Ever since his own internal purging of the Green Goblin persona, he had been actively trying to repair his relationship with Harry.
Which meant Harry was currently in the building.
Norman sprinted into his private, reinforced executive office. He bypassed the biometric locks on his concealed vault. The steel doors hissed open, revealing a fully integrated arsenal. A bat-winged glider rested on hydraulic struts. Rows of pumpkin-shaped incendiaries lined the walls.
Norman bypassed the weaponry. He reached for a sleek, metallic sphere resting on a velvet pedestal—the temporal capsule Kang the Conqueror had delivered to him. Inside rested a pristine vial of Erskine super-soldier serum, tethered to a localized destiny-manipulation matrix.
"Dad?"
Norman spun around. Harry stood in the doorway, staring blankly at the hidden vault.
Norman didn't waste time on explanations. He crossed the room and shoved the heavy metal sphere directly into Harry's hands. "Listen to me, Harry. Take this."
"Dad, what is this? What are you doing?"
"This contains something that could save your life," Norman said, his voice hard and absolute. "Get out of Manhattan. Now."
"But what about you?" Harry pleaded, gripping the sphere.
"Otto's target is me. As long as you leave the island, you are safe," Norman ordered. He took a deep breath, his posture rigid. "I know Otto. He won't kill me quickly. He wants me to watch him dismantle Oscorp brick by brick. Take the sphere, Harry. Go. If Spider-Man falls, you contact S.H.I.E.L.D. You contact the Avengers."
Norman shoved Harry out the door and locked it behind him. He turned back to the vault. He systematically strapped the heavy, emerald-green composite armor over his chest, slid the terrifying, grinning Goblin mask over his face, and waited.
Hours passed. Norman stood motionless in the dark, listening to Kang's orbital broadcast and Otto's city-wide ultimatum.
Finally, the heavy reinforced doors of the executive suite violently buckled. Four massive titanium tentacles ripped the steel frame apart. Otto Octavius stepped into the office, his fresh, cloned body moving smoothly within his life-support harness.
"You are much slower than I expected, Otto," the Green Goblin rasped.
"Apologies, Norman," Otto said casually. One of his mechanical claws extended, lifting a cold cup of coffee off Norman's desk. "I had to wait for Dillon to take over the entire city grid. It takes time."
Otto adjusted his goggles, taking in Norman's armored appearance. He smiled. "It seems you aren't just sitting around waiting to die. Good. Very good."
A few minutes later, Flash and Venom landed on the glass facade of Oscorp Tower. A deafening explosion rocked the upper floors, shattering windows and raining debris onto the street below.
Flash peered through the smoke, catching a glimpse of the Green Goblin engaged in a brutal, high-speed aerial dogfight with Doctor Octopus.
"Holy crap," Flash muttered, his adrenaline spiking. "Should we go help?!"
No, Venom growled. Unnecessary.
Venom calculated the Goblin's raw physical output. The armor and the serum made Osborn incredibly lethal. Otto Octavius was brilliant, but he was currently fighting a monster. The Goblin didn't need help, and the duel would buy them the time they needed to locate Curt Connors.
Down in the lower R&D levels, Connors was running for his life.
Aleksei Sytsevich smashed through a reinforced concrete wall, his massive, polymer-plated rhinoceros frame tearing through the lab equipment. Otto hadn't abandoned his objective to secure the Savage Force scientists.
Before the Rhino could gore Connors, a black blur dropped from the ceiling.
Rhino blinked, skidding to a halt. "Spider-Man? You aren't dead?"
"I'm not dead!" Flash yelled, pointing a finger. "I mean, no, wait, that's not the point! The point is—"
Shut up, Venom hissed, seizing control of their shared motor functions.
Thick black tendrils erupted from Flash's wrists. Venom snagged Connors by the waist, violently yanking the scientist backward into the ventilation shafts before the Rhino could charge.
Flash swung wildly through the ductwork, bursting out into an adjacent, abandoned loading bay.
A blinding red laser dot painted the center of Flash's chest.
Flash froze. He looked up. Standing on the catwalk above them, Silver Sable had her high-caliber sniper rifle aimed directly at his heart.
She is an ally, Venom supplied instantly. Put the scientist down. She will escort him to the host.
"Uh, thank you, Spider-Man," Connors gasped, adjusting his glasses as Flash set him on his feet.
Before Connors could finish his sentence, the black-suited Spider-Man fired a web and vaulted back into the rafters. Sable kept her rifle raised, the laser sight tracking Connors's chest, silently gesturing for him to move toward the extraction point.
High above the city, Flash swung through the artificial night, the symbiote pumping pure exhilaration into his veins.
"Haha! Yes!" Flash shouted to the empty skyline. "Our mission is to keep fighting! We have to let all of New York know Spider-Man is still in the fight!"
Even if he wasn't the real deal.
Chapter 515: Is Spider-Man Dead?Harry Osborn did not evacuate Manhattan.
Despite his father's strict orders, Harry had refused to cross the bridges before the lockdown. He pressed his back against the dusty window of an abandoned clothing boutique just blocks from Oscorp Tower, peering through the slanted blinds. A massive, crackling wall of high-voltage lightning stretched from the asphalt straight into the clouds, completely severing the island from the rest of the world.
Electro had locked the cage. Doctor Octavius had seized the city. And Spider-Man was nowhere to be found.
Was Peter dead?
Harry gripped the edge of the window frame, his knuckles turning white. He refused to believe it. Peter always found a way to win. But the oppressive silence gripping the city told a different story.
Harry sat down on the hardwood floor and pulled the heavy, metallic sphere his father had given him out of his jacket. He twisted the locking mechanism. The sphere popped open, revealing a sealed glass vial containing a glowing, iridescent blue liquid.
The Erskine Super-Soldier Serum. The exact same formula that had forged Captain America.
Harry stared at the vial. He knew the serum amplified whatever was already inside a person. Good became great; bad became worse. If he injected himself right now... could he save his best friend?
He let out a harsh, self-deprecating breath. No. Even if Steve Rogers himself were standing in this boutique, Captain America couldn't punch his way through the entire Sinister Six alone. Harry slipping on a tactical vest wouldn't change the math.
But what if Peter took the serum?
Harry's eyes widened. If Peter's own powers were failing, the Erskine serum could push his biology past its limits. But to do that, Harry had to find him.
"I can't just sit here in the dark," Harry muttered, slipping the vial into his inner pocket.
Harry pulled his hoodie over his head, kept his chin tucked to his chest, and slipped out the backdoor of the boutique. He stuck to the shadows of the alleyways, calculating the fastest route to Avengers Tower.
Smack.
A small chunk of asphalt bounced sharply off the top of Harry's skull.
Harry flinched, biting back a yelp. He looked down. A heavy iron manhole cover shifted to the side. Felicia Hardy poked her head out of the subterranean darkness, her white hair stark against her black tactical armor.
"If you're trying to be stealthy, walking down the middle of an alley in a bright hoodie isn't exactly elite espionage," Felicia whispered dryly. "Get down here before a patrol drone spots you."
Harry blinked, thoroughly caught off guard. "Felicia?"
He scrambled down the rusted iron ladder, his boots hitting the damp stone floor a little too hard. He slipped, landing squarely on his backside in an inch of murky water. He grimaced, wiping his hands on his jeans as he stood up.
"What are you doing in the sewers?" Harry asked, keeping his voice low.
"Same reason the ninja turtles live down here," Felicia said, effortlessly sliding the heavy iron cover back into place above them. "The guys causing trouble up top don't like the smell. Come on. Keep your head down."
She turned, activating the night-vision lenses on her domino mask. "Octavius grabbed Uncle Jonathan and Jessica from their apartment. They're hostages."
Harry's stomach dropped. He understood why Otto wanted Jonathan Drew—he was Oscorp's top geneticist. But dragging his daughter, Jessica, into it was a ruthless leverage play.
"What about Peter?" Harry asked, hurrying to keep up with her brisk pace.
"He's alive," Felicia said, her tone completely devoid of its usual playful edge. "But he's in bad shape. You'll see. We managed to pull together whoever was still breathing, but we don't have the firepower for a counterattack right now. You aren't going to believe what Otto actually did."
They walked in silence for what felt like miles. The modern concrete drainage pipes gradually gave way to ancient, crumbling brickwork from the New Amsterdam era. The air grew thick with the metallic tang of rust and decay. Harry stepped carefully over a rotting, waterlogged skeleton tucked into an alcove, his breath hitching in his throat.
"Is it actually safe down here?" Harry asked, glancing nervously at the shadowed tunnels.
"It's a maze," Felicia replied, not missing a step. "There are centuries of overlapping tunnels. Nobody on Earth has an accurate blueprint of this level. We're ghosts."
A faint, flickering light appeared at the end of the tunnel.
As they approached a retrofitted subterranean maintenance hub, Harry heard a familiar, fast-paced voice echoing off the brick walls.
"Yeah, I get the mechanics of it, but if my base DNA wasn't permanently overwritten, then why can't I..."
Harry pushed past Felicia into the chamber. He stopped dead in his tracks.
There were two Peter Parkers.
One Peter was a translucent, glowing blue astral projection, floating casually a few feet off the ground, arms crossed over his chest.
The other Peter was lying completely motionless on a military cot. His physical body was sheathed in a sleek, stark-white suit, dominated by a massive, jagged black spider emblem across the chest. It was the exact inverse of his Venom armor.
Astral Peter stopped mid-sentence, looking toward the tunnel entrance. "Harry? What are you doing in Manhattan?"
"I... what is going on with you?!" Harry stammered, pointing frantically between the floating ghost and the comatose body. "I'm literally looking at two of you!"
"Otto engineered a localized retro-mutagen based on Gargan and Dillon's genetic alterations," Astral Peter explained, floating down to eye level. "He managed to aerosolize it. The good news is, the serum failed to permanently scramble my DNA. The bad news? It completely stripped the radioactive spider-peptides from my cells. I have exactly zero superpowers right now."
Harry pointed at the cot. "Okay, but what is that?"
"Peter fell several dozen stories and took massive internal damage," a new voice said.
Martin Li stepped out of the shadows, wiping blood off his hands with a towel. The F.E.A.S.T. founder looked exhausted. He had only just learned Peter's secret identity hours ago, and he was profoundly grateful Aunt May hadn't been scheduled for a shelter shift today.
"I attempted to heal his internal injuries using my Lightforce abilities," Li explained softly. "But the cosmic energy violently reacted with the microscopic traces of the Venom symbiote still lingering in Peter's bloodstream."
Li gestured to the white suit. "The Lightforce inverted the parasite's biology. It spawned an entirely new, restorative symbiote. But the shock to Peter's nervous system locked his physical body in a coma."
Using the mystic arts Doctor Strange had taught him, Peter had forced his astral form out of his body just to stay in the conversation.
"I've analyzed the bloodwork," a deep, rumbling voice echoed from the corner.
Dr. Curt Connors stepped into the light. He towered at a massive seven feet tall, possessing the impossibly dense musculature of an Olympic heavyweight, missing his right arm. The Lizard persona was gone, but the physical Erskine/reptile enhancements were permanently locked into his frame.
"Your baseline DNA is simply too complex to be neutralized by Otto's crude reverse-transcription," Connors said, adjusting his glasses with his remaining hand. "The spider-mutagen in your cells is merely suppressed. If we can introduce a massive biological catalyst, we could shock the system and reactivate your abilities."
Connors sighed heavily. "But we completely lack a sufficient stimulus."
Harry didn't hesitate. He reached into his jacket, pulled out the metallic sphere, and tossed it to the giant scientist.
Connors caught it effortlessly. He popped the seal, his eyes widening as he looked at the glowing blue liquid. "What is this?"
"Erskine serum," Harry said firmly. "My father gave it to me."
Connors held the vial up to the light, his scientific mind racing. "Otto's own experiments on Mac Gargan already proved the Erskine strain is highly compatible with the Savage Force genetic markers. This could work. But there is a secondary hurdle."
Connors looked at Astral Peter. "To trigger a cellular rewrite of this magnitude, the serum requires an immediate, colossal surge of raw electrical voltage to bond with your suppressed DNA."
The room fell dead silent. Everyone knew exactly who was currently hoarding every single kilowatt of electricity on the island of Manhattan. Max Dillon.
Astral Peter drifted slightly higher into the air. A slow, familiar smirk spread across his translucent blue face.
"You know," Peter said, cracking his spectral knuckles. "I actually have an idea."