MJ, we need to go."
"Wait—"
She pointed to the screen. The flickering feed struggled to hold an image, but there he was. A man—or what was left of one—walking with slow, deliberate steps down a corridor. The hallway lights above him sparked and hissed as he passed, each one dimming, like they couldn't bear to illuminate what he had become.
A dark sheen coiled across the walls—black tendrils dragging behind him like the fingers of a drowning man trying to claw his way back up. But there was no one left to save. Not really.
MJ's voice trembled. "Peter…"
The figure paused. As if he heard her.
The camera buzzed with static, then sharpened—just long enough for us to see his face.
It was Norman Osborn.
But not the man I'd met at Harry's house. Not the man who smirked through champagne at charity galas and towered over everyone like he owned the world. This… thing wasn't standing tall. He was hunched, like the weight of whatever was inside him was pulling his body downward.
His skin was pale, bruised like it had been starved of oxygen. Thick black veins traced under his eyes like spider legs. His jaw twitched. His eyes were wrong—lit from within with a faint glow, and too still, like they were watching something the rest of us couldn't see.
And then—he smiled. Slow. Unnatural. A cruel stretch of teeth that didn't match any expression a human being was supposed to make.
My heart dropped into my stomach.
"He's already gone," I whispered.
MJ looked over at me, her hand still on the monitor. "Then what's left?"
I didn't have an answer. I didn't even have a week under my belt.
Everything was unraveling.
I'd only been Spider-Man for seven days. Seven days since the bite, since the fever, since I woke up and realized the world would never feel normal again.
And now I was supposed to fight him?
Norman Osborn.
Harry's father.
The man I shook hands with. The man who once told me he was glad Harry had a friend like me.
Now… he was a walking nightmare. A thing wearing skin. A shadow stretching across the last pieces of my life.
And the worst part? Harry told me to stop him.
He knew something was wrong. He'd known, and he'd begged me—Peter, not Spider-Man—to do something.
And here I was, seconds from losing everything.
"We can't just leave," MJ said.
"I'm not leaving. You are," I told her.
Her eyes flared. "No. No way. You're not doing this alone."
"I'm not arguing, MJ. This place is going to collapse or catch fire or worse in about five minutes. And I—" My voice caught. "I need you safe. Please."
I tried not to look at her too long. I couldn't afford it. If I did, I might stay.
But she stepped forward, placed a hand on my chest, and said quietly, "You're not a soldier, Peter. You're just a kid. You don't have to be everything to everyone."
"I know."
I lied.
Because if I wasn't, who would be?
I made sure she was out of the building before I moved.
Down the service stairwell. Through the hallways that stank of chemical decay and scorched metal. The alarms were still blaring, echoing like screams across the facility, but no one was left to hear them.
Just me.
And him.
I saw the bodies as I passed.
Some of them security guards. Others in lab coats. All of them sprawled at impossible angles, like they'd been thrown. Their faces twisted—not in pain, but in confusion. As if they couldn't comprehend what had come for them.
He didn't kill like a man. He killed like a force of nature.
I stopped in front of the sealed chamber. The window was cracked. Through the reinforced glass, I could see him.
Norman. Or whatever he was now.
He stood at the center of the lab, back to me. Breathing slowly. The black substance—the symbiote, I was sure now—slithered over his arms and down his spine, like it was settling in, like it had found home.
He was whispering to himself. I couldn't hear the words.
I pressed a hand to the glass.
"Norman…"
He turned.
I don't know what I expected. Recognition? Rage?
He tilted his head. The veins at his temples pulsed. The black curled tighter around his throat.
"I know you," he said. His voice was wrong. Not deeper, but doubled. Like something was speaking alongside him. Or through him. "You were in my house."
I swallowed. "Yeah. Peter. Peter Parker."
He took a slow step forward. The black webbing peeled off the floor like tar stuck to his feet.
"Harry's… friend," he said, almost thoughtfully. "The one who asks questions."
"What happened to you?" I asked.
His smile returned.
"The truth. The truth happened. The skin peeled back. The weakness stripped away. The mask gone. And what was underneath… what was always there… finally got out."
He stepped closer to the glass.
"You want to stop me. But you can't even stop yourself. You think this mask makes you strong?" His lip curled. "You're still shaking."
I was.
I was terrified.
Because no part of this was a game. No part of this was me saving a cat from a tree or swinging over rooftops pretending I was some kind of hero.
This was real. This was blood. This was life and death.
This was me about to fight the father of my best friend—and maybe kill him.
I could still feel Harry's voice in my head:
"Please… whatever he's planning—stop him before it's too late."
It already was too late.
I didn't wait for Norman to finish whatever speech he was building up to.
I shattered the glass with a web shot and launched myself in.
The symbiote reacted instantly—tendrils snapping toward me like snakes.
I dodged left, somersaulted, fired a shot at his face.
He caught it.
Literally reached up and caught the web like it was nothing.
"You're fast," he growled, voice crackling. "But you don't know how to fight."
He was right.
I'd trained by instinct. Watched videos. Practiced in alleyways. Beat up a mugger. Saved a few lives.
But I'd never fought a monster.
I barely managed to duck the next strike. His arm stretched, elongated, and slammed into the wall beside me, blowing out concrete like it was drywall.
I scrambled to the ceiling, tried to web his feet—he ripped through it.
"I am evolution," he roared. "You're a child with a toy."
"I'm trying to help you!" I shouted.
"You can't help me. You can't even help yourself."
He grabbed me mid-air, slammed me through a table.
The world went sideways. Blood filled my mouth.
His face hovered inches from mine now, the symbiote pulsing across his features.
"I was a man once. Now I'm more. And you, Peter Parker, are just in the way."
Then—he hesitated.
He blinked.
"Peter…"
It was softer. Quieter.
"Harry…" he muttered. "He… told you… didn't he?"
I pushed against his chest.
And for just a second—I saw the man beneath the monster. The father. The scientist. The broken, hollow man whose ambition opened a door he was never meant to walk through.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
Then I kicked with everything I had.
He stumbled back. The spell was broken.
I leapt to my feet and ran—not out of fear. But because I couldn't beat him head-on. Not like this.
I needed time.
I needed a plan.
But even more than that—I needed to survive.
The lights in the hallway flickered as I sprinted. Alarms still screamed. Smoke filled the air.
I looked back only once.
Norman wasn't chasing me.
He was watching.
Just standing there in the wreckage, the black crawling across his chest like it was alive, like it was home.
Maybe it was.
Maybe the scariest part wasn't that the symbiote changed him.
Maybe it just revealed him.
Outside, MJ waited.
When she saw me—bloody, shaken, limping—her expression cracked.
But I just collapsed in front of her and said the only words I could manage.
"It's not over."
She crouched beside me, gripping my hand.
Her voice was steady. "Then we find a way to end it."
We didn't speak much after that.
Not until we were back at her place, lights off, the weight of everything pressing down from the ceiling like a second atmosphere.
She stitched up the gash near my ribs without asking questions—her fingers trembling, but her eyes locked onto the thread like it was the only thing keeping either of us from falling apart.
I winced.
She paused. "Sorry."
"It's fine," I lied. "Stings less than Norman."
Her jaw tensed at the name. "He's not Norman anymore."
I didn't answer. Because part of me knew she was right. But the other part—the part Harry still lived in—hoped that some small piece of Norman was trapped under the symbiote, screaming to be saved.
And if there was…
God help me, I didn't know if I had the strength to do it.
After the bleeding stopped and I finally peeled off the torn mask, MJ looked at me.
Really looked.
The cuts. The bruises. The bruised confidence, maybe even more than the body.
"You can't keep doing this alone," she said.
"I don't think I ever was," I said softly.
Her eyes dropped to the suit in my lap, the fabric torn and scorched.
"You're just a kid," she whispered.
"I'm Spider-Man," I whispered back. "And I don't even know what that means yet."
The silence after that was long.
But it wasn't cold.
The next morning, I woke up on her couch.
MJ was already awake, her laptop open, surrounded by papers she must've taken from Oscorp before we fled. Her hair was pulled back, eyes red from sleeplessness but locked in a stare-down with whatever secrets she was trying to crack.
"You ever sleep?" I mumbled, sitting up slowly.
She smirked. "No. But thanks for asking."
I stood, joints aching, and limped over to her. The screen was a mess of diagrams, file numbers, and redacted text.
"What is all this?"
"Stuff Oscorp buried," she said. "I found encrypted folders labeled Project Blacksite. Everything's scrubbed, but these files aren't just scientific. Some are military. Contracts. Funding requests. And…" she clicked a few windows forward, "…this."
It was a video. Grainy. Night vision.
A test subject in a sealed chamber.
Male. Mid-40s. Screaming. Imploding.
The black substance devoured him from the inside out.
I turned away, bile rising in my throat.
"Norman was experimenting with the symbiote," she continued. "Trying to force it to bond with humans—said it could cure disease, maybe even create super soldiers. But every subject lost control. Violent psychosis. Internal collapse. Mental fragmentation."
My voice was dry. "And he tested it on himself?"
She nodded grimly. "I think he got desperate. Or arrogant. Maybe both."
For the next few days, we worked in shadows.
I trained. Alone. In silence. In pain.
Every punch into a sandbag was a memory I needed to forget.
Every time I swung through the city, I thought about what would happen if I failed. If Norman got out. If Harry ever saw what was left of his father.
But I wasn't just fighting him anymore.
Something else had started whispering.
Not in words.
In feeling.
Like static crawling up my spine when I put the suit on. Like my senses were sharpening beyond what I could control. Like rage was becoming easier. Faster. Comfortable.
I didn't tell MJ. Not yet.
But I felt it.
The darkness that lived in Norman… it wasn't just his anymore.
She noticed before I did.
"You okay?" she asked one night as we worked through Oscorp's corrupted logs.
"Yeah. Why?"
"You're… twitchier than usual. And you didn't flinch when I burned my hand on the kettle. Like, not even a glance."
I tried to laugh it off. "Focus mode."
But it wasn't focus. It was distance.
Whatever the symbiote had started—it didn't end with Norman.
I remembered the night I got bitten. The Oscorp labs. The sealed room I wasn't supposed to be in.
Had it been more than just the spider?
I clenched my fist. Felt the strength in it. The pull.
The voice whispered again, wordless and low.
We took breaks, but not many. The more MJ dug, the deeper the rabbit hole got.
She found receipts for offshore shipments. Labs that didn't exist on any map. Photos of prototypes—armor, weapons, even other suits—designed to contain or harness the symbiote.
But the most important file wasn't digital.
It was handwritten.
A single entry, dated two months ago:
"If the symbiote cannot be controlled, then it must be convinced. Bond through trauma. Through loss. Let it speak. Let it learn who we are before we bend it to who we should be."
Signed:
N. Osborn
That night, after hours of staring at screens and feeling like we were drowning in rot, we stepped outside.
The stars were pale and thin. The city's noise still hummed, but quieter here. Distant.
MJ leaned against the railing of her apartment balcony, arms folded. I joined her.
Neither of us said anything for a while.
Then she spoke.
"You ever think maybe we're not meant to win?"
I looked at her.
"I've thought about a lot of things," I said. "Most of them lately involve dying."
She smiled. Not big, not bright. But real.
"You've changed."
I nodded. "I think I'm still changing."
Her eyes flicked to mine.
"I liked you before all this. Quiet. Awkward. Funny when you weren't trying to be."
"I still am."
She looked down. "But I like you now, too."
I didn't breathe.
For just a second, the world slowed. The weight lifted.
And maybe… maybe I leaned in first.
Or maybe she did.
But when we kissed, it wasn't perfect. It wasn't fireworks. It was tired and shaky and held together with everything we hadn't said.
But it was honest.
It was human.
And right now, that felt like the one thing worth holding on to.
Later that night, when she was asleep and I sat alone in the dark, staring at my mask, the voice came again.
Clearer.
He's weak.
It didn't sound like me.
But it came from inside.
You can be more. You can be better. Just let go.
I stared at my reflection in the window.
I didn't recognize the eyes looking back.
Not quite.
Not yet.