"It's time for Peter Parker to go home."
The night wind whipped across the fabric of his mask, carrying the sharp scent of gun smoke and the wail of receding sirens. Peter fired a webline, launching himself up into the skyline. He cast one last glance down at Times Square.
Herman Schultz was standing in the center of a media circus. The guy was talking a mile a minute, gesturing at his armor, eating up the camera flashes like a washed-up actor finally landing a primetime spot. Peter let him have his moment.
He needed to figure out an excuse for Aunt May. Coming home this late on a school night meant a guaranteed interrogation. On top of that, his phone had buzzed in his suit pocket five minutes ago. A text from Tony Stark. He wanted Peter at Avengers Tower tomorrow afternoon for a chat.
"I mean, I get that they unmasked me when I was passed out," Peter muttered, vaulting over a water tower. "But texting a teenager on a school night? Boundaries, Mr. Stark. Boundaries."
Peter broke his swing.
Someone was standing forty stories up. Not on a rooftop. She stood on thin air, suspended perfectly between two glass curtain walls.
The woman wore a beige windbreaker that snapped wildly in the wind. Aviator sunglasses caught the bleeding neon lights of the city below. She held two steaming cardboard cups of coffee. She didn't spill a single drop.
"I've been watching you for a long time, Spider-Man." The woman reached up, tucking a lock of dark chestnut hair behind her ear. "We need to talk."
Peter dropped onto the vertical glass, crouching flat against the window. "Wait. I know that voice."
The memory clicked into place.
"It's you," Peter said. "You're the one from my dream."
The woman smiled. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Julia Carpenter. I am a messenger for the Web of Fate. You might know the title better as Madame Web."
Madame Web. Peter blinked behind his lenses. Right. Anyone familiar with Spider-Man lore is probably picturing the blind elderly woman in the hovering wheelchair from the '94 animated series. Or maybe you're thinking of that 'epic' cinematic masterpiece from the Sony universe played by Sydney Sweeney. But Julia Carpenter is supposed to be the second-generation Spider-Woman. Except Jessica Drew is currently a senior at my high school, and Julia is standing right here drinking coffee on invisible floorboards. The timeline in this universe is giving me a headache.
"So, ma'am," Peter said, pointing at the floating woman. "What's the play here? Magic? Divination?"
"How about we just have a cup of coffee?"
A few minutes later, Peter sat on a steel gargoyle near the spire of the Empire State Building. He pulled his mask up past his nose and took a cautious sip of the coffee.
"In my dream," Peter said, wiping his mouth. "You said to find another spider. Was that you?"
"I am merely a messenger. I don't dictate the search." Julia didn't drink her coffee. She just wrapped her hands around the cup, letting the steam curl between her fingers as she stared out at the sprawling grid of Manhattan. "Have you heard of the multiverse?"
"Yeah. Reed Richards published a theoretical observation model back in 2008. People replicated the math, but nobody actually understands the underlying mechanics."
"The Web of Fate is a higher-dimensional construct," Julia said. "It anchors itself across countless universes through spider totems. For most Peter Parkers, a radioactive spider bite is that anchor."
Peter nodded slowly. He knew the lore, but he couldn't let her know that.
"Among those countless totems," Julia continued, turning her head toward him. "You are an anomaly. You didn't become Spider-Man simply because Benjamin Parker survived."
Peter choked on his coffee. He coughed, thumping his chest with his fist, and waved a hand for her to continue.
Julia's smile never wavered. "You were supposed to be born three years later in this universe. But the nodes of the Web shifted. A unique totem was created. You are the Patriarch."
The Patriarch? Peter knew about the Bride, the Other, and the Scion. But a Patriarch?
Julia didn't offer a glossary. "As the Patriarch, you resonate directly with the Web of Fate. When it vibrates, it indicates a structural failure in another reality's Spider Totem. You possess the ability to travel through the multiverse to that exact coordinate. You will repair the broken strands."
Peter set his coffee down on the gargoyle's wing. "Ma'am, I barely have a handle on Queens. How am I supposed to fix a multiverse? Isn't there a Multiverse Avengers hotline I can call?"
Julia just watched him. The wind whipped her chestnut hair around her sunglasses.
Peter sighed. His shoulders slumped. "Fine. What do I do?"
"You will feel the first tremor soon. But before that happens, you must find the second spider in your universe. You share a totem. Your destinies overlap. You need them as your anchor, or you won't be able to find your way back from the multiverse."
"If you can see the future," Peter said, gripping the cold steel. "Why don't you just give me a name?"
"I don't write destiny, Peter Parker." She didn't raise her voice over the wind, but the syllables hit like anvils. "I read it."
Down in Times Square, the police and disaster control agencies were establishing a hard perimeter.
The media was boxed in, but they didn't care. Herman Schultz was a goldmine. He pointed at his yellow-and-brown armor, breaking down the kinetic recycling system and the alloy tensile strength. He took every ounce of the credit. He didn't mention Otto. He didn't mention the Kingpin. He was a professional.
Behind the police tape, the crowd shifted. Carl King stood near a shattered billboard panel. He wasn't cheering. He stared at the twisted metal.
A strand of white webbing clung to the jagged edge.
Carl reached out. He pinched the silk between his thumb and forefinger. It was sticky. Highly tensile.
His breath caught.
He pictured the Midtown High chemistry lab. He remembered the residue on the desk Peter Parker had just vacated.
"Peter Parker is Spider-Man?" Carl whispered. He let out a short, harsh laugh. Skinny, unremarkable Parker?
But Parker hadn't been skinny or unremarkable lately. Parker was fast. Parker had put him on the floor. Twice.
Carl rubbed the webbing between his fingers until it pilled into a hard knot. He thought about the Oscorp Expo. The glass breaking. The radioactive spider. He remembered scooping it up, bored, and dropping it down Parker's collar just to see him jump.
Did that spider turn Parker into this?
Carl's jaw tightened. He dropped the webbing. No. We can't be sure. He was so lost in thought he didn't notice the man in the rumpled press pass pushing past him.
The reporter slipped out of the media scrum, lifted a burner phone to his ear, and blended seamlessly into the retreating crowd.
"Hello. It's me, Mr. Wilson," the reporter said. His voice was perfectly modulated. Featureless.
He ducked into the doorway of a nearby diner, pushing past the out-of-order sign on the restroom door. He locked the stall behind him.
"Your new employee is performing exactly as expected," the reporter murmured, listening to the deep, rumbling silence of Wilson Fisk on the other end. "He likes the cameras. He knows what to keep quiet. You don't need to worry about him."
The reporter looked into the scratched mirror above the sink. He reached up to his collar. He didn't peel off a mask. His skin simply began to ripple.
The artificial tissue shifted. The bone structure underneath ground together, snapping into a new configuration. The irises in the mirror bled from hazel to ice blue. The fingerprints on his free hand smoothed out and reconstructed into an entirely new pattern.
"Yes," Dmitri Snerdyakov said, adjusting the vocal cords of his new throat. "I have observed Spider-Man's entire operational pattern. The gait, the micro-expressions, the quips. I can mimic his performance perfectly."
He smiled. The reflection smiled back. It was a flawless, empty imitation.
"If your projection technology is as good as you claim, Mr. Wilson," the Chameleon said, turning off the phone. "I guarantee you... Spider-Man will soon be the most hated thing in this city."
PS: While Julia Carpenter is best known to modern fans from her live-action debut played by Sydney Sweeney in the horrible Madame Web film, her comic origins go way back to the 1984 Secret Wars event. She was introduced as the second Spider-Woman, getting her powers from a secret government experiment involving spider venom and exotic plant extracts. She didn't officially take up the mantle (and the precognitive powers) of Madame Web until the "Grim Hunt" storyline in 2010!