Chapter 1: Absolute Spider.
Synopsis: 17 year old Peter Parker was never bitten by the irradiated spider to become Spiderman. In fact, that fateful school trip to Oscorp would inspire him to pursue a carreer in bio-science. 10 years later, he's working a good job, is married to the love of his life, Gwen Stacy and even has a 3 year old daughter, May Day Parker.
Things are looking up for him but destiny has a way of always catching up and he's bitten by a new generation of Irradiated Spider. But this Spider is not the one you know of. This version is the...
Absolute Spider.
The 27 old Peter has to master strange new abilities and learn what it means to be the ABSOLUTE SPIDERMAN, or risk losing everything to the new threats rising.
-0-
(Peter's P.O.V)
I woke up to the sound of May yelling about cereal. Which, honestly, is how most of my days start.
Gwen was already up—half-dressed, one sock on, hair twisted into some strategic mess that somehow still made her look like a Vogue cover. She shot me a look from the kitchen as I staggered into the hallway, still pulling on my Oscorp ID badge.
"Coffee's hot. May spilled milk. And you're late."
I love her.
"Daddy!" May ran into my legs at full toddler speed and attached herself to me like a little starfish. I scooped her up and kissed the top of her head. Vanilla shampoo. Cookie crumbs on her cheek.
"You smell like a crime scene," I muttered.
"Daddy, you're silly," she said. Serious as a judge.
The world wasn't on fire yet. Not today. The city might've been crumbling outside, but in our apartment, everything still worked. The old fridge; a gift from Aunt May(rest in peace Auntie) hummed, the clock on the stove blinked the wrong time, and the radiator knocked like it owed someone money. I didn't mind. That noise meant I was home.
Harry Osborn, my best friend since middle school and the son of the boss of the boss of my boss, texted at 7:03 sharp:
"Car's warm. You bring the bagels or am I driving angry?"
I grabbed the bag, kissed Gwen goodbye—twice, just in case—and headed downstairs.
Harry's car smelled like pine air freshener and overcompensation.
"Still clinging to the dream of street racing through Manhattan?" I asked, sliding into the passenger seat.
Harry just grinned. "This car's an investment in our future. Yours, too, once I convince my dad you're more than a glorified lab tech."
"You did get me hired."
"And I regret nothing," he said. "Even if you wear the same two shirts on rotation."
We drove in silence for a minute. The skyline cut through morning fog like the blade of something ancient and hungry. News played softly in the background. J Jonah Jameson's complaining about organized crime in Brooklyn and the emergence of a villain with electrokinesis powers. Another arson case. Three disappearances near Midtown.
"City feels…off lately," I said.
Harry tapped the steering wheel. "Yeah. Dad's been locking down projects left and right. Defense contracts, black boxes. You should see the security around Sublevel D."
I glanced out the window. "You think it's a coincidence?"
Harry shrugged. "In this city? Nothing's a coincidence. But hey—at least we've got decent coffee and lab-grade microscopes to keep us distracted."
I smiled, but something in my gut twisted. Just a little.
At the time, I thought it was just bad coffee.
Oscorp's lobby always smelled like bleach and ambition.
I swiped my badge and nodded to the front desk guard, Marcus, who gave me the usual raised eyebrow and smirk combo. He always thought I was in way over my pay grade. Maybe I was.
My lab was on the twelfth floor—Genetics and Bioengineering—but today I barely made it past the coffee machine before my name came over the intercom.
"Peter Parker to Sublevel C. Immediate. Clearance override issued."
Clearance override? I blinked. That didn't happen. Ever.
I took the elevator down with two security guys who didn't talk much. One of them had the Oscorp "O" branded on his uniform shoulder in deep black. Not navy blue like the others. Black. That was new.
Sublevel C felt colder than usual. No windows, no casual chatter, just pressure. Industrial lighting hummed overhead.
I was met by Dr. Rosalind Ketter, one of Norman's right hands. Clinical, brilliant, robotic. She handed me a digital tablet without saying a word.
(PROJECT: A-0 | Autonomous Adaptive Arachnid)
STATUS: Containment Review
OBSERVER: P. PARKER)
I stared at the screen. "This isn't in my wheelhouse."
"You studied arachnid genome plasticity at ESU, didn't you?" she said, leading me down a hall with red hazard lights glowing low along the floor.
"That was... years ago. And mostly theory."
"You're not here to run the experiment, Peter. Just observe the patterns. Record reactions. You're a neutral pair of eyes."
That word stuck with me—neutral. Why would Oscorp need neutral?
We stopped at a pressure-sealed door. On the other side: a white observation deck, and beyond the glass, a sealed bio-containment cube. Inside it was a web.
Not a web like you'd see in a barn or attic. This thing looked almost... symmetrical. Like it had been engineered.
A spider sat in the middle of it—shiny black, veined with silver filaments under its abdomen. Sleek. Fast-looking. Not big, not monstrous. Just wrong. Like Unnatural wrong.
"That's A-0," Ketter said, typing something into a panel. "Absolute Spider. Designed for defense and medical integration. Neural plasticity off the charts. Reacts to threats before they form. Self-modifying."
I stared at it. The spider twitched as if it noticed me watching.
"Why Absolute Spider? Strange name."
Ketter adjusted her glasses. "Ever heard of a Chinese practice called Gu?"
I nodded. It was a method of poison creation where venomous creatures would be sealed in a container where they would fight and devour each other. The surviving creature undergoes the same process a number of times until only one remains, the strongest and most venomous of all.
"She killed the rest and devoured the remains." Ketter stated.
I stayed in that room for thirty minutes, logging activity. It spun its web constantly, rearranging threads like it was solving a math problem.
Every ten minutes, a mechanical probe entered the chamber and fired a low-frequency pulse at it. Each time, the spider dodged before the pulse even reached full intensity.
It was predicting stimuli.
Adapting.
I couldn't stop watching. There was something familiar about it. Something human, almost. And the longer I watched, the more I felt this… pull. Like it wanted me to see something. Like it was aware. Not just alive.
Later, I found Harry outside the cafeteria, scrolling through something on his phone, looking way too casual for someone sitting in the middle of a corporation slowly going full dystopia.
I sat down across from him. "You ever hear of Project A-0?"
He froze.
Then: "That's above your pay grade, Pete."
"I was just in the room with it."
His face hardened. "What?"
"Rosalind pulled me in to observe. Strangest spider ever. Bio-engineered. Reacts faster than physics should allow. I can still feel It watching me."
Harry looked around like the walls might be listening. Then he leaned in. "Whatever they're doing in those sublevels—it's not just weapons. My dad's been paranoid lately. Something about perfecting the formula and evolutionary pressure. Selective Apotheosis events that can turn men into Gods. And it all revolves around A-0."
"Sounds like science fiction."
"Yeah. Except Oscorp's been building science fiction since before either of us could shave."
He had a point. In an age of billionaires flying in suits of armors, the impossible became plausible.
I walked back to my lab a little slower that day.
Somewhere between the coffee and the containment chamber, the day had shifted. Something was wrong. Not dramatically, not explosively—just slightly off-axis.
I didn't know it yet, but the axis wasn't tilting.
It was cracking. And A-0 was to blame.
The next day, I got a security badge upgrade without asking for one.
No note. No memo. Just a notification in my Oscorp inbox:
(Temporary Clearance Level: C-Red
Assigned: Parker, Peter B.
Duration: 48 Hours
Directive: Project Observation)
I asked Harry about it. He just gave me a tight smile and said, "Welcome to the deep end."
Back in Sublevel C, they ran things differently. No names on lab coats. No casual banter. Everyone moved like they were being watched—and probably were.
They gave me a seat in a sealed booth above the containment cube. Same spider. Same impossible web. Only now, the lights were dimmed and the spider had started weaving vertically—long, tight strands that dropped from the top of the chamber like reinforced cables.
I kept thinking: it's building something.
Two floors below us, a full lab team was prepping something new. I could see it through the glass: mechanical arms, drones, a sealed injection pod.
Then a warning light blinked red.
They ignored it.
I didn't.
The spider was already moving—before anything triggered. It leapt from its web and vanished from the camera feed.
Someone in the lab swore. I heard it through my headset. Ketter barked an order. A security drone moved in. A containment shield tried to activate.
Too late.
The spider reappeared on the inside of the viewing glass—my side—and for a second, I forgot how to breathe.
It wasn't just fast. It was... precise.
It didn't attack. Not yet. Just crawled, slow and steady, until it was right above my workstation.
I backed up.
Glass between us. Should've been safe.
Then the glass cracked.
Not shattered—cracked. A hairline fracture where the spider's front legs touched it. Like it had punched a stress point. On purpose.
Another warning light flashed.
This time, they paid attention.
The whole room locked down.
Steel walls dropped. Lights turned red. Automated gas flood protocol kicked in.
Problem was—I was still inside.
I hit the emergency override on the console, but the system had already gone manual. Emergency lockdown meant no movement. No exceptions. Unless someone with higher clearance pulled me out, I was staying put.
So I did the only thing I could do—I ducked under the console and waited.
I could hear the hiss of gas vents above. The drone's electric whine. Footsteps in the corridor outside. And somewhere, so close it sounded like it was inside my ear...
...the tap of spider legs on metal.
Then it dropped.
Fast. Silent. Straight onto my shoulder.
I froze.
For a moment, it didn't move. Neither did I.
Then—bite.
Sharp. Like a scalpel dipped in fire. It hit harder than any injection I'd ever had. Not just skin-deep—like it drilled through me. Straight into my nervous system.
I gasped and flinched, but by the time I reached to swat it away—
Gone.
Just gone.
The steel doors hissed open ten minutes later.
I was already on my feet, pretending I was fine. No wound, no blood. Just a burn near the base of my neck that pulsed with heat.
Ketter walked in with two guards, face unreadable. She didn't ask how the spider got out. Didn't ask if I was okay. Just nodded, checked a console, and told me I could go home early.
I asked, "How are you going to catch it? Call me crazy but I think it can turn invisible."
She paused, just long enough.
"We have protocols for this specific scenario. Just go home and rest Parker."
She was lying.
I made it outside without collapsing, but by the time I got to Harry's car, my hands were shaking.
"You look like death, man," he said.
I buckled in. "You ever think your dad's building monsters under Oscorp?"
Harry frowned. "Sometimes I think he's building monsters out of Oscorp."
Neither of us laughed.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
The heat under my skin wasn't fading—it was spreading. Every few minutes, it pulsed like a second heartbeat. I stared at the ceiling until morning.
And the whole time... I never once thought of going to the hospital, almost like something compelled me not to.
I made it through the next day pretending I wasn't falling apart.
Oscorp felt different. Not louder—quieter. Everyone kept their heads down. Even the elevators seemed slower, like the building itself knew something had gone wrong.
I didn't tell Gwen about the bite. I couldn't. Not until I understood what was happening. I made it home early, told her I was just burned out from another long day. She believed me. Mostly.
May clung to my leg the second I walked through the door, babbling about crayons and a monster she saw on TV. I held her a little longer than usual. Maybe too long. Gwen noticed. Said nothing.
By midnight, I couldn't lie to myself anymore.
My heartbeat wasn't normal. I could hear it. Like a subwoofer buried in my chest. Steady, rhythmic, layered under everything else.
I stood in the bathroom staring at myself. My skin looked fine—no rash, no swelling—but it felt different. Denser. Like it wasn't just skin anymore.
I scratched my forearm lightly and watched the scratch fade in seconds.
No scab. No pain. Just... gone. Like the spider bite.
That was the first time I really got scared.
The next morning, everything felt brighter.
Not metaphorically—literally. The world looked HD. Colors were deeper. Edges sharper. I could read a newspaper on the kitchen table from across the room while brushing my teeth.
My reflexes started glitching, too.
I dropped a mug and caught it behind my back without thinking. Muscle memory. Only it wasn't my memory.
Gwen stared. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Just... lucky reflexes."
She didn't believe me, but she let it go. For now.
I rode into work with Harry again. He was talking about the Knicks or his dad's latest tantrum, but I wasn't really listening. My brain kept pinging with weird signals—snippets of conversations through windows, a siren four blocks away, a fly beating its wings near the dash.
Everything was louder, even inside my head.
"I think I'm sick," I said finally.
Harry glanced over. "What kind of sick?"
"Like... body-rewriting-itself kind of sick."
He didn't even blink. "That from the A-0 project? You're not the first Lab tech to turn up sick after working there. Exposure to exotic radiation I think."
I looked at him, surprised.
"What did your dad create, Harry?"
He sighed. "Probably something he can't control."
Back at Oscorp, my clearance had already been revoked.
Badge didn't scan. Security waved me away. Apparently, Sublevel C was on lockdown and the project frozen. A-0 had yet to be found.
I wasn't supposed to be bitten. Luckily, I was the only one who knew.
I told my supervisor I needed time off. Used "family emergency" as my excuse.
He didn't argue. He didn't even look up. Just signed off.
That night, I had my first real blackout.
Not fainting—more like time skipping. I was in the kitchen reaching for a glass of water. Blinked.
Next thing I knew, I was standing on the ceiling.
Barefoot. Holding the glass.
Heart hammering.
I dropped it and it shattered loudly.
Gwen came running in. "Peter?"
I was already on the floor by the time she turned the corner. Pretending nothing happened. She saw the shards. Saw the panic. Didn't ask questions.
Just knelt down and started cleaning up beside me.
I didn't sleep again.
By 4 a.m., I was sitting in the bathroom floor under a shower of cold water, heart racing, skin burning, vision flickering. Something was coming alive under my skin—something I didn't recognize, didn't ask for, couldn't stop.
I thought about calling someone. Harry. My former physics professor Doctor Otto. Ketter. Gwen. Anyone.
Instead, I stared at my hands until the sun came up.
And then, just as the light hit the window...
...a glowing blue screen blinked into existence in the air in front of me.
{ABSOLUTE SPIDER INTEGRATION: COMPLETE.}
{ADAPTIVE SPIDER PHYSIOLOGY UNLOCKED.}
I didn't move. Didn't blink.
Then the words shifted.
{WELCOME, PETER B. PARKER OF EARTH 5598X TO THE ABSOLUTE SPIDER GUIDE SYSTEM.}
{YOU ARE THE DESIGNATED ABSOLUTE SPIDER TOTEM.}