The uniform clung to him like a accusation.
Every seam pressed against his skin—too tight across the shoulders, loose at the waist, the fabric stiff with dried sweat and the ghost of Chen's body heat. The name tag sat heavy over his heart: CHEN, M. A man who'd probably had a family. A mortgage. A favorite brand of cheap beer.
A man who'd died because he'd walked down the wrong hallway at the wrong time.
Stop it, he told himself, but he didn't know which voice was doing the telling anymore.
He moved through the corridor with Chen's tired shuffle—shoulders slightly hunched, one hand resting near the radio, the other loose at his side. The transformation jutsu hummed beneath his skin like a second pulse, reshaping his face, his posture, even the slight limp Chen had favored on his left side. The chakra cost was negligible. Hashirama's memories supplied the technique with the casual ease of muscle memory.
I'm wearing a dead man's face, Peter's voice whispered, horrified. This is wrong. This is—
This is survival, Hashirama's presence countered, steady as bedrock. The battlefield demands adaptation. Hesitation kills.
The clone—he still couldn't think of himself as anything else—said nothing. He simply walked, watching everything with senses that felt too sharp, too *aware*. Every flicker of the failing fluorescent lights registered. Every drip of condensation from overhead pipes tracked across his consciousness like radar pings. The building's decay was palpable: rust eating through support beams, mold creeping along ventilation ducts, the electrical systems gasping on their last reserves.
This place was dying. Had been dying for years.
So why keep us here? The question crystallized as he passed another row of containment pods. Most were empty, their glass cracked or completely shattered. But some still held... occupants.
He stopped in front of one, unable to look away.
The thing inside had probably been human once. The bone structure suggested Peter Parker's face, but the flesh had collapsed inward, skin gray and sloughing off in sheets. Its eyes were milky white, unseeing. A thin stream of bubbles still rose from its mouth.
Subject-#SP04. The designation glowed faintly on the pod's cracked display. Status: Cellular degeneration 94%. Termination recommended.
Recommended. Not completed. They'd left it here to rot, still technically alive, because someone had decided it wasn't worth the effort to finish the job.
His jaw clenched. The wood stirred beneath his skin—not consciously summoned, but responding to the surge of rage like a faithful hound sensing its master's anger.
We're all just numbers to them.
"Hey!"
The shout snapped him back. Two guards emerged from a side corridor—one tall and lanky with nervous energy radiating off him like heat shimmer, the other older, broader, moving with the economical efficiency of someone who'd done twenty years and stopped giving a shit around year fifteen.
The clone's heart hammered, but Chen's face remained neutral. Bored. The transformation held.
"Jenkins. Miller." The names came from Chen's memories, surfacing like bodies from deep water. "Sector C is clear. Just finishing rounds."
Miller, the nervous one, glanced past him toward the pod chamber. "You went in there? Man, that place gives me the creeps. Did you hear that crash earlier? I swear something's moving around—"
"It's the pipes, Miller." Jenkins rolled his eyes, voice gravelly with cigarettes and contempt. "Same as last week. Same as every week. This whole facility is falling apart."
"Still creepy." Miller's hand drifted toward his sidearm, fingers drumming against the holster. "Place feels wrong, you know? Like... I don't know. Haunted or something."
You have no idea, the clone thought.
Jenkins snorted. "Haunted. Jesus Christ. It's a decommissioned research facility, not a Stephen King novel. You want creepy? Try working the overnight shift when the generators kick off. Can't see your hand in front of your face."
"That happen often?" the clone asked, keeping Chen's tone carefully casual.
"More than it should. Higher-ups don't care enough to fix it properly." Jenkins spat to the side. "We're just babysitting an empty building until the demolition crew shows up. Another few weeks and this whole place gets leveled."
Demolition. The word settled in his gut like a stone.
They were going to bury the evidence. Collapse the tunnels, destroy the pods, erase every trace that Project Webborn had ever existed. And any clones still in containment when that happened...
Miller was still talking, voice picking up speed the way anxious people do when they're trying to fill silence: "I heard they're shutting down other sites too. Whole project's getting scrapped. Something about 'unacceptable failure rates' and 'misallocation of resources.' My buddy over in Sector A said—"
"Miller." Jenkins's voice was flat. "Shut up."
"What? We're all getting laid off anyway, it's not like—"
"Shut. Up." Jenkins cut his eyes toward the clone. "Operational security. You know the rules."
Miller's mouth clicked shut, but his eyes lingered on the clone with sudden wariness. The atmosphere shifted—subtle, but there. Suspicion creeping in at the edges.
They're wondering why Chen is asking questions. Chen never asks questions.
The clone felt the moment crystallize: stay and risk exposure, or leave and seem normal. His body tensed, ready to move in either direction. The wood coiled beneath his skin like compressed springs.
Then Jenkins waved a dismissive hand. "Whatever. Shift change is in twenty. You heading to the control room?"
"Yeah," the clone said. "Need to log the round."
"Cool. We'll finish this sector." Jenkins jerked his head toward Miller. "Come on. Let's check the north corridor and get this over with."
They walked past him, Miller still muttering about haunted buildings and Jenkins telling him to grow the fuck up.
The clone waited until their footsteps faded completely. Then he moved—not toward his supposed destination, but deeper into the facility, toward the section Chen's memories marked as Research Administration.
If they were planning to bury this place, there would be records. Orders. Names of the people who'd signed off on Project Webborn, who'd authorized the creation of disposable human beings and then discarded them like failed prototypes.
You're going to kill them, Peter's voice said quietly. It wasn't a question anymore.
Yes, Hashirama's presence agreed, equally quiet. But know why you're doing it. Revenge is poison. Justice is necessary.
The clone's hands flexed. "What if I can't tell the difference?"
Neither voice answered.
***
The control room sat at the facility's heart like a spider in a web—one level down, accessible only through a security checkpoint that had been abandoned months ago. The blast door hung half-open, hydraulics frozen mid-close. Emergency lighting painted everything in shades of crimson.
He slipped through, senses flaring.
Three heartbeats. Two in the main room, one in the adjacent server bay.
The main room was a tomb of outdated technology: banks of monitors flickering with static, filing cabinets with drawers hanging open, papers scattered across metal desks like autumn leaves. Coffee cups grown cold weeks ago. A jacket draped over a chair, never reclaimed.
Two men in gray maintenance coveralls stood at a terminal, arguing in low voices:
"—telling you, we need to pull these drives before the demo crew shows up. If anyone finds out what was really happening here—"
"Not our problem. They said leave everything. We're just maintenance."
"Maintenance that's been cleaning up corpses for six months! You think they're going to let us walk away with what we know?"
The second man's face went pale. "Jesus. You really think—"
"I think we should've quit the day they started shooting the clones that woke up screaming."
The clone stood in the doorway, perfectly still. The transformation jutsu had dropped—he'd let it fall the moment he'd entered, too focused on listening to maintain the disguise.
Both men turned.
For a frozen moment, nobody moved.
Then recognition dawned in their eyes—not of his face, but of what he was. The pale skin. The uncanny features. The designation number that would be printed on his pod: SP07.
"Oh fuck," the first man breathed. "Oh fuck—"
He lunged for the alarm panel.
The clone moved faster.
Wood erupted from the concrete floor like a breaching whale—roots as thick as a man's arm, moving with predatory speed. They caught the first man mid-stride, wrapped around his legs, his waist, his chest, lifting him off the ground with a strangled cry.
The second man got his hand on his radio: "Code Black, Code Black, containment breach in—"
A spike of hardened wood punched through the radio, through his hand, through his throat.
He dropped without another sound.
The first man was screaming now, thrashing against the roots, eyes rolling white with terror. "Please! Please! I was just following orders! I have a daughter! Please!—"
The clone looked at him. Really looked—at the tears streaming down his face, the genuine human fear, the desperate invocation of family as if that should matter to a thing born in a tube and marked for death.
He's begging for his life, Peter said, anguished. He has a daughter.
He stayed, Hashirama countered. He knew what this place was and he stayed. He chose.
The clone felt nothing. That was the most terrifying part—not the rage he'd expected, not even the cold satisfaction of revenge. Just... nothing. A vast, empty neutrality.
"You didn't save us," he said quietly.
The roots tightened.
The screaming stopped.
***
Alarms shrieked to life three seconds later—blaring klaxons that turned the facility into a cacophony of red light and mechanical screaming. The PA system crackled:
"CONTAINMENT BREACH. SECTOR C COMPROMISED. ALL UNITS RESPOND. ANOMALY CONFIRMED IN CONTROL CENTER."
The clone stood among the bodies, roots withdrawing into the floor with wet, sucking sounds. His hands were steady. His breathing was calm.
Somewhere in the distance, he heard the thunder of boots—security teams mobilizing, loading weapons, preparing to contain the threat.
Let them come.
He was done hiding.
End Chapter 2