The morning was long, the school day heavy on the shoulders and the city lazy in its usual rhythm; but Queens had an honest way of returning the body home: footsteps that already knew every step of the sidewalk, a smell of oil and beans coming from the neighboring houses, the sound of children inventing games in the street.
Peter Parker crossed the street, his chest still warm from the small victories of school, conversations that worked, a provocation that happened to turn in his favor, and felt, as he turned the corner, the predictable comfort of home.
May's house wasn't large, but it felt like a fortress made of clean cloths and strong coffee; warm light streamed through the curtains, and a small amount of steam rose from the stove, a domestic sign that announced presence and care.
May stood in the kitchen, her apron wrinkled, laughter beginning in the corners of her eyes. She had made a cake, a simple, homemade one, made with vanilla sugar, which filled the air with promise.
In that recipe, there was the repetition of gestures practiced a thousand times: beating the dough in a rhythm that sounded more like a conversation, feeling the consistency with your touch, testing with a toothpick, and smiling even before it came out clean. Peter entered slowly, as if unwilling to interrupt a ritual, and watched the scene with a gratitude that came clean and straight from his chest.
"Look who arrived."
May said, with a warmth that was a hug in the form of words.
"It just came out of the oven. Would you like a hot piece?"
Peter smiled, the laughter flowing with the naturalness of someone who finds shelter. He sat at the table, took off his shoes, and May served two slices: one for him, one for her.
The cake was exactly how he remembered the good things from childhood: moist batter, melted butter, and a light frosting on top that clung a little to my lips. Each bite brought back calm, as if chewing were also chewing a minute stolen from his rush.
They talked about small, essential things. May talked about her neighbor who needed medicine, about bills to pay, about a plant that had withered on the windowsill.
Peter recounted his day with his usual blend of humor and honesty: Professor Warren, a successful demonstration, and his conversation with Jessica and Angelica. May listened with eyes that blended curiosity and pride, moving her spoon around her plate with the rhythm of someone listening to a story unfold.
"Are you well?"
She asked, her tone a mix of caution and the slight uneasiness of someone who knows how to read the smallest signs.
"You doesn't seem like the Peter who is always thinking about physics tests."
He looked up, held the cup in both hands as if it were a small trophy, and smiled.
"I am. Just tired. And a little uneasy about this Ava Ayala…"
He said, measuring each syllable.
"Nothing to worry. Just… a few things I need to look into later."
May nodded and, unhurriedly, spoke in a low voice:
"Take care of yourself, love. And if you need anything, call me. And don't forget to buy milk."
She said between joking and complaining.
"I can't stand coffee without milk anymore."
Peter laughed, kissed his aunt's cheek, and pushed away the last shred of guilt that was still clinging to him.
Eating was, there, a small act of humanity: the cake anchored and warmed him.
After washing the dishes, with the care of someone who makes up an excuse to stay longer in the kitchen, he picked up his notebook and returned to his room. There was something that kept drawing his attention: Ava Ayala, the girl who appeared too often in the same rooms as him.
It was more curiosity than fear; something that called for a simple investigation.
In the bedroom, the voice of the house grew distant. The window let in the afternoon with warm light, the monitor already alert. Peter sat down, the chair brushing against the wrinkles in the carpet, and opened the browser with fingers that typed with the haste and precision of someone who had searched this same thing before in other lives, the mental history of what was coursing through the city's veins: Hector Ayala, White Tiger.
Notes, clippings, reports that wrapped around a name that, for some reason, resonated loudly in his head: the White Tiger, the trial, the violence, the tragedy.
The first page that appeared was a compilation of news stories about the case: reports of the trial, the investigation, and, finally, the public outcome. The headlines echoed the same phrases that were repeated online: "murder in Harlem," "accused arrested," "digital evidence confirms presence at scene."
A clean and technical narrative: they found fingerprints, security footage, and audio recordings with a voice that sounded like his, the one Tyler Lane. The lines explained that, for weeks, experts had summarized the sequence: Tyler Lane had been seen in the footage heading to the scene; his fingerprints were identified; cell phone recordings and voices placed him at the scene, and he reacted, at trial, with desperation, insisting on his innocence.
Matt Murdock appeared on record as the defense attorney, someone who, if you were to trust legal instinct, was one of the best around. Still, the evidence would have been enough to convict him. Peter read it all with shallow eyes: something there reeked of an overly easy conclusion, and it ignited a spark that wasn't just youthful skepticism.
He then opened articles about the trial itself. Courtroom videos showed Tyler Lane panicked, shouting in words that sounded sincere. There was testimony that said the man sounded sincere and disoriented, not the profile of a calculating criminal.
Matt Murdock, in the images, banged on the table with the verve of someone looking for holes in the narrative, but the verdict came out in favor of the prosecution.
Furthermore, after the court, there was talk on social media and forums that the speed with which the evidence "matched" one another seemed, at the very least, too lucky for a case involving urban scenes, faulty CCTV systems and fallible human witnesses.
That's when an old member of Spider-Man's rogues gallery came to Peter's mind, like a comic strip flashing back to memory: Dmitri Smerdyakov, the Chameleon, a specialist in impersonations, disguises, and schemes who constructed false identities as skillfully as a tailor makes a suit.
The Chameleon's ability to mimic voices, plant evidence, and fabricate scenarios was legendary, and it fit perfectly into the "too easy" framework. Peter hadn't reached a conclusion; he was simply jotting down hypotheses to test later.
Suspicion grew for a practical and uncomfortable reason: forensic technology is good, but not miraculous. Fingerprints, for example, don't appear out of thin air, and recordings can be manipulated, overwritten, or fabricated.
Peter envisioned a forensic year zero in which someone highly talented, capable of mimicking timbres, manipulating audio waves, and, most importantly, planting physical traces, could fabricate a chain of evidence so polished that it would force even the best lawyer to fight against seemingly incontrovertible evidence.
Tyler's own sincerity in court was, oddly enough, a component that made the play more convincing: nothing convinces a jury like real desperation, and no one would suspect a man who pleaded his innocence as if that were the very way to prove guilt.
To Peter, it made sense: the perfect trick was to make the accused desperate and willing to be sucked into false evidence. There was something theatrical about it, and the theater that changed identities came with a name.
After hours of hazy reading, he closed tabs and tucked the information away in a corner of his head, a file to revisit.
But the investigation needed another line of evidence: if it was true that someone had manipulated evidence, perhaps there was a connection to someone with the technical capacity to do so within the local ecosystem.
So, before dragging theories into the open, Peter decided to do something else that hurt him less: to confirm a personal trait that always dragged him down with unanswered questions: his parents.
He descended to the basement as if returning to a familiar cave. The air there was cooler, with notes of old paper, solvent, and metal. The dim light flickered as he switched on the lamp; the stairs creaked as if murmuring memories.
Among toolboxes and boxes of plastic clothing, there was a suitcase. It was the kind that closed with a sturdy metal clasp, its surface marked with leather, an executive briefcase that didn't seem to invite prying eyes, and he recognized it before even opening it: identical to the one he'd seen once in images and movie scenes, Richard Parker's briefcase, the story echoing the film's portrayal of a secret father, a man who left more questions than answers.
He opened it with fingers that hesitated for a second, because there was, there, an innocence of memory and a wound at the same time.
Inside, the logic of the object spoke in objects: old newspaper clippings with photos of Richard Parker and Curt Connors (as in the public images that circulated about scientists who worked on risky research), an eyeglass case, an old calculator, three collector coins, folded papers with scribbled formulas and, of course, an Oscorp badge with Richard's name.
There was also a secret pocket, a precisely stitched hidden fold, and in it, painfully bright with revelation, a file titled "Decay Rate Algorithm." And something else that turned the discovery into a broader confirmation: a SHIELD badge and a photo of Richard and Mary Parker in uniforms reminiscent of agents of a clandestine government organization.
The image of the two of them, side by side, hard-eyed, with the posture of scientific missionaries, was a powerful slam dunk. It was impossible to deny: the neat papers, the Oscorp badge, the SHIELD badge, it all fit into a version of the truth that Richard and Mary Parker were agents and scientists, or at least worked on missions that aligned them with SHIELD.
And if Richard was a scientist at Oscorp, as more than one version of the stories suggested, then there was a confluence of worlds, industrial science and intelligence operations.
Peter knew, in that instant, that many of the questions pounding in his chest had real roots and possible answers. This wasn't just a collection of juvenile theories; the documents were raw concrete.
He ran his hand over the papers, reading with attentive calm: the "Decay Rate Algorithm" seemed to describe variations in stability and energy loss in a system; the words were dense, full of technical terms and equations that, to someone with his repertoire, made sense.
He sighed; the same man who had once been just "the kid in the backyard" now found himself entangled in a larger web, scientists, agencies, manipulated spiders. Off the map. It wasn't a complete surprise, because pieces of that story had been around him his entire life; but the concreteness of the evidence in the basement was like putting his hand on a truth that hurt.
He folded the sheets of paper with extreme care and put everything back in the suitcase. He stuffed it into a plastic bag and placed it in a corner of the closet, where forgotten items often hide.
The precision with which he performed the act was almost reverent: he closed the lid, fastened the clasps, and placed the case beneath a wide board where boxes of old toys were piled. It was like burying a secret, not to hide it, but to preserve it.
Going upstairs, he thought he'd be greeted with the same calm as before; he was wrong. May was in the living room, immersed in her shopping list, her purse open on the table. Her face lit up with a casual plea for help.
"Peter, dear."
She called.
"Can you stop by the store and get some groceries? I'm out of sugar and I need milk and some…"
She enumerated suddenly in a marathon of domestic precision.
He agreed without thinking twice, it was a small promise, but it carried an emotional weight that he valued, and he was already closing his backpack when something deep in his chest took hold of him: a tightness that could have been a premonition, intuition, or just that old voice that said "be careful."
It was a feeling that always warned him of less explicit risks; it wasn't exactly fear, nor was it heroism, it was just practical, almost scientific caution.
Without explaining anything, he opened the desk drawer and took out the carefully rolled-up homemade suit, the scarred web shooters, the small tool for servicing the nozzles, and the containers of fluid stored in a cloth-covered metal case.
"I'm going to go buy things."
He said from the bedroom, already putting the suit on under his shirt as if it were a second skin that promised caution.
"I'll be right back."
May held out the shopping bag and shared a slice of cake between its folds, a gentle gesture.
Peter walked out with his bag and backpack, his warm suit against his body and his launchers securely fastened. Outside, the wind carried the scent of distant rain. He felt the city stretch with possibilities: there were purchases to be made, true; but there were also clues to follow, questions to be sorted, and, in the pocket of his heart, the briefcase that lay in the basement like a nucleus of answers.
Before crossing the street, he stopped, feeling that pang again, the same one that had made him grab his suit. He looked at the sky for a second, then at the bag in his hands, and walked on.
In his chest, the sound of footsteps marked a rhythm: everyday life would demand his attention for hours; and, if by chance it were necessary, there was another life, the life that watched over the city hanging on threads and decisions, ready to pull the string.
Although he denied it.