The city didn't need mercy tonight.
It needed Spider-Man.
And whether I liked it or not…
I was still him.
I launched off the rooftop, the sunrise already fading into the haze of early morning. Beneath me, the city moved like a machine that didn't know it was breaking. Sirens. Shouting. Choppers. People running from a danger they hadn't even named yet.
But I could feel it.
He was still here.
Norman hadn't been hiding.
He'd been waiting.
The Oscorp lab MJ had found was buried beneath an abandoned garment factory in Midtown—condemned, fenced off, forgotten.
But the fence had been cut.
And inside, the lights were on.
I landed hard on the rooftop, glass rattling beneath my boots. MJ's voice came through the comm again, quieter now.
"Peter… there's something down there. It's not just research files."
"What is it?"
"Pods. Holding tanks. And… movement."
"Get out," I said immediately. "Now."
"I already copied what I could. I'm on the fire escape."
"Good."
Because the moment I tore open the skylight and dropped into the dark—
I smelled it.
Not air. Not chemicals.
Something alive.
Thick, wet, hungry.
The room pulsed with it.
Walls webbed in strands of black. Machinery overgrown with organic tendrils. Monitors glitching with static and red biometric warnings. And in the center—what used to be containment tanks.
Now shattered.
Leaking.
Empty.
They'd been breeding more.
Testing hosts.
Some human.
Some not.
And then—
"Welcome, Peter."
His voice came from the far end of the lab, behind a curtain of twitching biomass. I stepped forward. The symbiote hissed softly under my skin, like it remembered the shape of him.
Norman stepped into view.
But he wasn't the same.
He wasn't even close.
The man I'd fought in the alley, who had killed May, who had twisted Harry's legacy into a weapon—he'd merged.
Not just with Venom.
With everything.
He stood tall, composed—his flesh a lattice of obsidian armor and exposed nerves, the suit fused not as clothing, but as organism. It pulsed with him. Responded to thought. Moved in silent rhythm with his breath.
His eyes glowed like dying stars.
And he smiled.
"You've seen the anger. The brute force," he said, stepping forward. "But that was only half of us. The half that needed breaking in."
I clenched my fists. "What is this?"
"Evolution."
He spread his arms, and the suit peeled back slightly, revealing a glimpse of the twisted fusion beneath—bone, sinew, wet black tendrils laced with circuitry and fluid lines of neural mesh.
He was no longer wearing the symbiote.
He was the symbiote.
"Venom was rage," he said. "But rage is blind. It needed… focus. Vision."
"You mean control."
He smiled wider. "Symbiosis."
I stepped closer. "That what this is to you? Some perfect merger?"
"To survive a broken world," he said calmly, "we must become something it can't touch."
I shook my head slowly, stared at him. "You're just a man who lost his son and couldn't grieve."
His expression flickered—then returned to calm.
"I didn't lose him," he said. "You did. He loved you. So I took that love. And I weaponized it."
My throat tightened.
"You could've helped him."
"I did. I gave him purpose."
"You gave him death."
The smile fell.
"He was weak."
"No," I said. "He was human. And you couldn't stand it."
Silence
We stood in silence for a long time, the black veins on the walls pulsing like a heartbeat. My fingers twitched. The red and blue suit buzzed with tension, every fiber locked in anticipation.
Then—
He tilted his head.
"You still feel it, don't you?" Norman said, voice soft. "The pull. It remembers you."
"I don't want it."
"But you need it because it understands. It never leaves. It never dies. It remembers everything you've lost… and it offers you the strength to never lose again."
I swallowed hard.
Because the worst part?
It was true.
My skin itched where the symbiote had once lived. My muscles remembered the weight. The power. The clarity.
The fury.
"No," I said. "I chose to walk away from it."
"You only walked," Norman said, "because you haven't seen the end of the road yet."
And with that—
He lunged.
Not like before. Not wild.
Precise. Surgical.
We collided in the center of the lab, and the floor cracked beneath us. His blows weren't sloppy. They were measured. Efficient. Calculated destruction.
He wasn't just fighting like a monster now.
He was fighting like me.
I ducked a tendril slash and drove a kick into his ribs, but he absorbed the impact, twisted, and slammed me against a column. Rebar snapped. Pain bloomed in my spine. I rolled, flipped, webbed a desk into his chest—and he caught it with one hand.
"You're slower," he said.
"I'm holding back,"
He laughed. "Then you haven't learned anything."
He came at me again, faster, stronger. Every blow pushing me closer to the edge of control. I felt the old rhythm creeping back—the instinct to stop dodging, stop saving, and just end it.
But I couldn't.
Not yet.
I needed answers.
I webbed to the ceiling, landed on a support beam.
"Why the water?" I called. "Why infect the whole city?"
He stepped into the shadows, voice echoing.
"You still think this is about New York?"
My heart dropped.
"What are you talking about?"
"There are more tanks," he said. "More hosts. More versions. You've only seen what I left behind."
I shook my head.
"No. This ends tonight."
"You're too late," he whispered.
And then—
The walls breathed.
The black mass behind him peeled open, revealing something enormous.
Not just one.
Hundreds of new symbiotes.
Small. Developing.
Dormant.
Waiting.
"MJ," I whispered into the comm. "Get to safety. Now."
"No," she said. "I see it too. I'm above you. I… I think I found the control node. But it's not just releasing into the water system."
"What then?"
"It's broadcasting."
A pause.
"Peter… he's trying to infect the air."
My pulse roared in my ears.
The rage came back fast—like an old wound reopening, mouth full of blood.
I dropped down again, straight toward Norman.
He looked up at me with eyes full of static and shadow.
And smiled.
"Welcome to the new world," he said.
We collided mid-air.
And the lab exploded.
"Welcome to the new world," he said.
We collided mid-air.
And the lab exploded.
Fire tore through the room, hurling us in opposite directions. The heat peeled paint from the walls, shattered every window. A wall of smoke swallowed my vision as I crashed into a row of scorched metal cabinets.
Everything rang.
I tasted copper.
I tried to move—and screamed.
My ribs were cracked. Maybe broken. One leg wouldn't bear weight.
Get up.
I staggered, breath shallow, the suit torn in strips. My lenses were fractured, a red warning blinking in the corner of my vision:
BIOFEEDBACK CRITICAL – SYSTEMS COMPROMISED
I couldn't stop shaking.
I wasn't ready for this
Not this.
Not… him.
He rose from the flames, unburned.
His body healed as he moved. Veins of obsidian webbed across his chest, flexing, alive, adapting. His arms looked longer now. Legs rooted deeper. His voice deeper.
More alien.
"You're breaking," he said, stepping through the smoke.
He wasn't wrong.
I'd never fought something like this. I wasn't trained. I wasn't hardened.
I was just trying to hold it together.
And for the first time, I felt it settle into my bones—
I don't think I can win this.
Somewhere above—
MJ watched the inferno erupt from the rooftop hatch, the fireball punching into the sky like a signal flare.
She flinched, heart slamming against her ribs.
"Peter," she whispered, clutching the comm. "Talk to me. Please."
Nothing.
Only static.
She crouched by the access panel she'd found minutes earlier—disguised as a rusted electrical box embedded in the building's central spine. Wires spilled out like tangled veins. Most had been fried by the blast, but the core module was still pulsing.
The signal was still live.
Her fingers flew.
Oscorp's interface was proprietary—encrypted six ways from hell, red-laced prompts, dead-end subdirectories, recursive firewall traps—but she'd been tearing into their systems for days.
She knew this language now.
She understood their sickness.
Lines of code spilled onto the screen. Upload protocol. Data fragments. Neural resonance sequencing.
And one word over and over again:
INITIATE BROADCAST.
INITIATE BROADCAST.
INITIATE BROADCAST.
MJ gritted her teeth. "Not tonight."
She reached for the bypass trigger—and froze.
Another line flashed.
Backup Release Active – Satellite Sync: 67%
Her eyes widened.
They weren't just using the water system.
They weren't just broadcasting through the lab.
They were using OrbitNet.
Oscorp's private low-orbit satellite relay.
She was looking at a city-wide airborne infection system.
Once it hit 100%, the spores wouldn't just infect Manhattan.
It would reach every borough.
Back underground—
I was bleeding inside the suit.
I knew it.
I could feel it pooling behind my ribs, warm and wrong.
But I kept moving.
Because I had to.
Because May was dead.
Because Harry was gone.
Because if I didn't stop this—everyone else would follow.
Norman struck again.
I dodged, barely—his tendrils slicing a generator behind me. The room sparked, lit up like lightning. His silhouette was impossible now—long limbs, jaw split wider than humanly possible, black teeth twitching with hunger.
"You feel it, don't you?" he said. "The doubt. The fear. The truth."
I didn't answer.
I couldn't.
I webbed across the debris, trying to keep my distance, scanning for anything I could use. A power line. A nitrogen tank. Anything.
"You were never meant to wear that mask," he hissed, stalking me.
"You don't get to decide that."
"You're not a hero, Peter. You're an accident. A thief a mistake ."
He lunged—I countered, planting a boot in his gut and flipping over him. Landed hard. Pain tore through my side.
He kept talking.
Because that was the real fight.
Not the fists.
The voice.
"I gave you your origin," he said."
I turned slowly.
My breath ragged.
"You're not a god," I spat. "You're a broken man in a monster's skin."
He paused.
Then his smile returned.
"That may be true."
And then—
He charged.
And I didn't move.
I couldn't.
The doubt had hollowed me out.
No training guilt and borrowed courage and the dying words of the people I'd failed
And yet—I still stood.
Not because I thought I could win.
But because I had to.
Above, on the rooftop—
MJ's hands flew over the interface.
Satellite sync: 79%
"Come on… come on…"
She traced the relay, found the core link—there. A single encrypted folder. Untouchable by code.
But not by a bullet.
She reached into her coat, pulled the revolver she never wanted to use.
One shot.
One core.
She aimed—
And fired.
The screen burst in a shower of sparks.
The satellite feed died.
Broadcast terminated.
Below—
Norman stopped.
He felt it.
His head twitched sharply. His chest stilled. The veins along his neck writhed.
"No…"
I looked up.
And for the first time—
I saw fear in him.
"What did she do?" he growled.
He turned—toward the ceiling, toward the sky.
And I saw my opening.
I didn't think.
I moved.
I dove into him, shoulder-first, webbed his arms down, wrapped every tendon, every fiber I had, around his twisted body—and drove him through the floor.
We crashed into the sublevel, into coils of wires and shattered tanks. Alarms screamed.
And I didn't stop.
I pummeled him.
Not with hate.
Not with vengeance.
With everything I had left.
Because the city had one more chance.
And so did I.
The sublevel split open beneath us, a gaping wound of concrete and steel. I pulled Norman down with everything I had, webs lashing, elbows cracking across his ribs. We hit the ground with a force that cratered the floor—metal groaned, sparks flew, ceiling tiles collapsed in chunks around us.
He writhed beneath me, teeth bared, suit twitching like something rabid.
I didn't let go.
I couldn't.
The lab had been built deep—farther down than any normal Oscorp facility. The walls here were unfinished, old beams and wires twisting like roots through dirt, half-lit with emergency backup power. The fire from above hadn't reached this far yet.
But it would.
We only had minutes.
Norman snarled, black claws swiping. I ducked, barely, his talons scraping the wall beside me.
"You ruined everything," he hissed, trying to rise.
I webbed his leg and slammed him down again. Dust exploded from the impact..
"You chose this," I said "You put this thing on."
"I perfected it!"
He surged forward, ripping the webline free, and drove a shoulder into my ribs.
I gasped—pain knifed through me. The crack from earlier felt worse now. Every breath scraped.
"Face it," he rasped, shoving me back. "You're not a warrior. You're not ready. You're just a kid in a suit."
And that was the truth I'd been trying to outrun.
Just instinct and guilt and desperation.
And right now, I was losing.
He lunged. I rolled, snagged a piece of piping from the floor, used it like a staff. Swung hard—caught his jaw. He staggered.
I followed up—two quick punches, one to the gut, one to the head. He tanked both.
Then—he grinned.
"You fight like someone who's scared of what he might become."
I froze.
Because I was.
He slammed me into a pillar.
The world spun. Dust in my eyes. Static in my ears.
"I'm what you could be," he whispered, dragging claws down my mask. "If you stopped pretending to be noble."
I twisted, headbutted him, broke free.
We crashed through a rusted support door, landed in another chamber—cold, wet, humming with dying lights.
I stumbled.
He advanced.
And then I heard it—MJ's voice through the earpiece, cutting through static.
"Peter—whatever you're doing, you need to finish it. Fast. The building's collapsing. I'm getting out now—meet me at the fallback point."
The fallback point. The rooftop across from May's old house. Our emergency rendezvous.
If I made it out of here.
Norman roared again—full voice now, echoing off the steel walls, a bestial sound warped by human rage. He didn't sound like a man anymore.
He didn't move like one either.
He was adapting. Learning me.
But I'd learned something too.
He liked control.
So I took it from him.
I webbed a loose power conduit—ripped it from the wall. Sparks flew. He hesitated just a second.
Long enough.
I leapt, jammed the conduit into the mass of tendrils along his spine.
Electricity arced across his back.
He screamed.
The symbiote spasmed. Limbs flailed. He dropped to a knee, clutching his chest.
I didn't waste it.
I unloaded everything.
Punches. Web-strikes. Elbow jabs. A full knee to the temple.
It wasn't pretty.
It wasn't clean.
It was survival.
He collapsed into the mud and wires.
Chest heaving. Black tendrils twitching.
Still breathing.
Still alive.
But not moving.
And me?
Barely standing.
Above—
MJ bolted from the control room as the ceiling cracked, pipes bursting from the heat below. Smoke poured through the vents. The floor tilted slightly, like the whole building was shifting on its foundation.
She coughed, covering her mouth with her jacket sleeve, stumbling down the fire escape.
A second explosion rocked the building—somewhere deeper down. She glanced back just once.
No sign of Peter.
Don't think about that.
Keep moving.
She leapt to the next rooftop. Rolled on impact. Her knees scraped. Didn't stop.
The city was sirens now. Helicopters circling. Power surging back to blocks one by one.
Someone would be coming.
But she couldn't wait for someone.
She had to trust that Peter would find her.
Just like he always did.
Below—
I staggered to the wreckage of the service ladder.
My leg barely worked.
But I started to climb anyway.
One rung at a time.
No strength left.
Just will.
I'd survived.
He wasn't dead.
But for now…
He was down.
And I was still alive.
Spider-Man was still alive
Barely.
I reached the top of the twisted ladder, dragging my leg over the ledge. Smoke rose from the wreckage below. My suit hung in ribbons, my breathing shallow. Every inch of me screamed to collapse.
But I couldn't—not yet.
I glanced back down into the darkness.
Norman wasn't moving.
And for one impossible moment…
I let myself believe it was over.
Then—
The scream.
It didn't sound human.
Not anymore.
It echoed from the pit like something ancient. Something evolving.
My stomach dropped.
"No…" I whispered.
I turned back, limbs trembling, blood in my mouth. Dust choked the air. The concrete cracked behind me.
And then—
He rose.
It wasn't just Norman anymore.
He'd healed.
Faster than before. Smarter.
The symbiote had learned from the fight.
His frame was even more monstrous now—twisting upward, jagged with bone and armor. The veins across his chest pulsed in time with his heartbeat. His face was a half-mask of black sinew and exposed teeth, eyes hollow and bottomless.
But it was still him.
Still Norman.
"I tried to make you better," he rasped, voice gurgling with venom and hate. "But you couldn't handle it. You stayed small."
He stepped onto the debris, smoke parting around him like it obeyed.
"You killed May," I said, my voice low, shaking.
"She was a lesson." His tongue flicked like a blade. "You can't protect what makes you weak."
I clenched my fists.
He'd said too much.
And maybe he knew it.
Because in the next second—he attacked.
We collided again—harder than before.
This wasn't a brawl anymore.
It was war.
I ducked under a claw, kicked off the rubble, landed on a steel beam and fired two webs straight into his chest. He tore through them like string and leapt after me—faster than anything that size should move.
I rolled, dodged, webbed him in the face, yanked his head sideways, then dove into his gut with both feet.
He barely flinched.
He grabbed me mid-air and slammed me down.
The ground cracked.
My spine lit up with pain.
But I twisted, drove an elbow into his throat, then scrambled backward, grabbing a loose rebar pipe.
"You're not getting out of here," I said.
"Neither are you," he growled—and lunged.
I swung the pipe hard, smashing it into his arm. It bent.
He didn't.
He clawed across my chest—ripping into fabric, skin, muscle.
I screamed.
But I didn't fall.
Because somewhere in that pain—I remembered what May said.
"Fear means you still have something to lose. That means you're still you."
I roared and shoved forward, punching him with everything I had left.
Over and over and over again
He slammed me against the wall—but this time, I didn't let go.
I drove us both through the concrete.
We crashed into the foundation level—deepest point of the lab. Pipes burst around us. Water sprayed. The air turned cold and sharp with steam.
Norman laughed as he stood.
"You're persistent. I'll give you that."
He raised his hand.
A new tendril formed from his palm—long, razor-edged.
"I was going to let the symbiote spread. Let it drown the world."
He pointed the blade at me.
"But this'll be quicker."
I rose to my knees.
I could barely stand.
My body wanted to give out.
But my heart—
My heart still beat.
And I still had one choice left.
He charged.
And this time—I didn't dodge.
I ran toward him.
Let the blade come.
Let it pierce.
I caught it mid-thrust with both hands.
It ripped through my side—but I held it.
Blood poured. Heat faded.
I looked into his eyes.
And I saw it.
The man who once loved his son.
The man who lost him.
Who never came back.
And I said, voice trembling—
"I'm sorry for Harry," I whispered.
His eyes widened.
And then I flipped the blade, twisted it from his hand, and drove it back into him.
Right beneath the ribs.
Right through the core of the mass.
He choked.
The symbiote screamed.
Not him—the thing inside him.
It writhed, spasmed, black goo spilling from his mouth, his chest, his back.
He stumbled back—eyes wide—clutching the wound.
"I… I can't…"
He reached for me.
For help.
But I couldn't.
Because if I pulled it out—it'd start again.
It had to end.
"You chose this," I whispered.
The light in his eyes flickered.
He fell.
Hard.
The black peeled off him like ash in wind.
Then—
Silence.
The symbiote was dead.
And so was Norman Osborn.
I stood over him.
Covered in blood.
Shaking.
And for a long time—I couldn't move.
Because I'd done it.
I'd crossed the line.
Not in rage.
Not in revenge.
In survival.
And it didn't feel like a victory.
It felt like a funeral.
Above—
MJ reached the fallback point—her breath ragged, her hands trembling.
She kept scanning the rooftops.
Looking for that red and blue streak in the sky.
Nothing yet.
The wind picked up.
The sirens got louder.
She sat down.
Waited.
Hoped.
Below—
I dragged myself up the final tunnel shaft.
My suit torn. My skin raw.
I didn't swing.
I crawled.
Slow. Weak. Real.
When I reached the surface, dawn was breaking again.
Another new day.
Another world burned behind me.
But the black?
It wasn't chasing me anymore.
It was gone.
I reached the rooftop.
She was there.
She ran to me, eyes wide.
"Peter—oh my god—"
I collapsed in her arms.
And for the first time—
I didn't have to hold it in.
I just let her hold me.
No words.
No mask.
Just me.
I don't know how long she held me.
Long enough for the sun to rise.
Long enough for the pain in my ribs to fade into something else—deeper, heavier. Something guilt-shaped.
MJ didn't ask questions.
She didn't need to.
She just knelt there with me, on that cracked rooftop, arms around my broken body like she was holding what was left of a world.
I let her.
Because for once—I couldn't be strong.
Didn't want to be.
We got back to her place after dawn.
I moved like a ghost.
The gash in my side needed stitches, but I didn't care. She cleaned it with steady hands, quiet the whole time, like if she spoke too loud I'd vanish.
She wrapped the wound, taped my shoulder, gave me water.
Then she sat down on the couch beside me.
"You're not okay," she said finally.
"No," I murmured. "I'm not."
I stared at the window. The city was awake. Helicopters in the distance. Sirens. Flashing lights.
The noise of survival.
"Norman's dead," I said.
She didn't look surprised. Just tired.
"How?"
I hesitated.
Then answered honestly.
"I killed him."
Her eyes didn't flinch.
"He would've killed me. Again. And again. He wasn't Norman anymore. The thing inside him—" I swallowed. "It was learning. Evolving. Every time I fought him, he got stronger. Faster. It wasn't going to stop."
"You did what you had to."
I shook my head.
"That's the problem. I keep saying that. But that doesn't make it easier."
She reached out, took my hand. Held it tight.
"You're not a monster, Peter. You're just a kid who's been through hell trying to stop something no one else could."
My chest cracked at that.
Because I was just a kid.
bruises, blood, and loss. Aunt May. Harry. Norman.
Me.
I didn't even know what version of myself I was trying to hold on to anymore.
MJ stood.
"I need to write," she said softly.
I looked up. "About Oscorp?"
"About everything."
I nodded slowly.
"Tell the truth. Don't protect me."
She knelt beside me again.
"I'm not going to write a hit piece."
"You should. The city deserves to know what happened. Even if they hate me for it."
Her voice caught. "Peter—"
"You saw what was down there," I said. "You saw what I was up against. If people turn on Spider-Man because I crossed a line to save lives… fine. They can hate me. I'll live with it."
I paused.
"But I won't lie to them."
She was quiet for a long moment.
Then she pressed her forehead to mine.
"Okay," she whispered.
That night, the article went live.
"What We Lost Underneath: The Fall of Oscorp, the Rise of Something Darker"
by Mary Jane Watson
She didn't name me.
But she didn't hold back either.
She told the story of a company obsessed with control. With reshaping the world through shadows and science. She laid out the leaked files, the illegal trials, the missing people.
And she told them what came of it: a monster born from grief and power, and the masked boy who tried to stop him.
A boy who, in the end, had to choose between mercy and survival.
The response was… divided.
Some people called it a tragedy.
Others called me a murderer.
The Bugle ran a rebuttal the next morning:
"Spider-Man Kills Billionaire in Lab Explosion: Hero or Homicide?"
Same old Jameson.
But this time—his voice wasn't the only one.
People started asking questions.
Protesting Oscorp.
Holding vigils outside the ruins of the lab.
Someone painted on the wall near Midtown High:
SPIDER-MAN SAVED US
And beneath it, in smaller letters:
At what cost?
We didn't talk much that week.
MJ and I stayed in her apartment. I kept my mask in a drawer. My suit in a duffel bag under her bed.
We watched the coverage in silence.
I sat with my wounds.
And she sat with me.
Sometimes we didn't need words.
Sometimes her hand brushing mine was enough.
But one night, I found her crying in the kitchen.
She tried to wipe her face when I walked in, but I caught her wrist gently.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
She didn't answer at first.
Then finally, in a whisper:
"I thought we were going to die."
I pulled her close.
Held her against me, even though my ribs ached.
"I did too."
"I couldn't lose you, Peter. Not after everything."
"You didn't."
She looked up at me, eyes rimmed red.
And I kissed her.
Not desperate.
Not like it was the end of the world.
But like it was the beginning of something else.
Something we hadn't dared hope for.
Later that night, she curled beside me.
We stayed like that for hours.
No Spider-Man.
No story.
Just two people who survived something no one else would ever understand.
And in that quiet, I finally closed my eyes.
For once—not afraid.
Elsewhere—
A room flickered with monitors.
Footage from the Oscorp servers.
Blueprints. Test logs. Voice recordings.
A gloved hand scrolled through them slowly.
Paused on one file.
"PROJECT: BLACK REGENESIS – PHASE 3."
A deep voice murmured, "Not yet."
Another screen lit up with Spider-Man's face.
The gloved hand clenched.
"Let him think he's won."