Chapter 3 – Through the Door

If you've ever ridden a good roller coaster then you have a tiny inkling of the feeling Peter Parker felt, flying through the air, the strength in his arms and his webbing the only support he needed to swing from building to building. Peter didn't spend a lot of time thinking about the physics of what he was doing, not up in the air. It was a free fall, it was a rush, and in a way that was hard to explain, it was all his. There were super humans that flew around this city, ran around it, even others that climbed the walls, but none of them spun a web like Spider-man. He could hear Ned, chattering in his ear about grid mapping programs, and he knew he had a job to do but just for a bit Peter simply flew Spider-style and enjoyed the moment.

When he got into the meat of patrolling, he didn't have to shush Ned. His man in the chair had the sense to go mainly silent when Peter warned that he had found someone in trouble or someone causing trouble. Peter worked his way east, helping people in small ways, sometimes without even being noticed. He used his webbing to patch torn grocery bags for a mother with four small children. He helped a cabbie who had lost his jack change a tire. For his most challenging save of the night so far, he spotted two groups, rival gang kids, before either group spotted the other and webbed the way forward so they couldn't run into each other, at least not tonight on this particular street.

Feeling pretty good about the night's efforts, Peter headed for Benham Street and the other reason he was out tonight. "Okay, so you have my tracker on your map simulator?"

"I've got you," Ned confirmed.

"Excellent. I'll let you know when we're in the hot zone and when we come out," Peter said.

"Ready to map."

It was sort of fun crawling the walls and swinging high, mapping the dangerous zone on all axes. Peter was looking to get a bit higher, when something new tingled his spider sense and he moved to get a look at what was happening. A woman and a man were struggling. Peter didn't spring straight into action, mainly because he recognized the woman. This was her corner. She used the street name Razzle Dazzle and what little she wore tended to be sequined. As a rule Peter stayed clear of vice crimes. Drug users and prostitutes were hurting no one except themselves, and Peter figured the real police could figure out the grey areas like that. It became clear after a moment watching that this wasn't a transaction but a robbery or maybe something worse.

Peter took advantage of the man's preoccupation to sneak up and spin him clear of his victim. It only took a few short seconds to web the sour smelling man, but Razzle Dazzle did not linger after she was freed. Clothes ripped and bloody from a wound Peter couldn't see, the woman tore away surprisingly fast in a pair of four inch heels. "Ma'am," Peter called. "Can I get you help? Are you okay?"

Following the woman out to the street, Peter was shocked that he didn't see her. Forced to trail her by the spots of blood she left on the sidewalk, he followed her trail to a dead end on the sidewalk, right out in the open. "Ma'am?"

"Peter, you there?" Ned asked.

Where only a moment ago, Ned's voice had been crisp and clear, it barely came through now, gravelly and broken. "Come again, Ned? I lost the victim. She vanished."

"Peter? Your signal is cutting in and out. You're on the map program and then not and I think you need to get away from where you are man."

He couldn't hear one word in three, but Peter wasn't exactly an idiot. He took a single measured step back, and the intensity of his spider sense subtly decreased. "Ned, am I back in the map program?"

"Dude, yeah. Do you think that's the epicenter? What does it look like?" Ned asked.

"It doesn't look like anything. We need to get access to Mr. Stark's drones out here. They will have recorded what happened. Ned, I'm going to hang up now. I have to make another call." Peter climbed a nearby building and settled into a nook that gave him a nice view of the bad spot of sidewalk. He slipped a cell phone out of his backpack. "Hey Happy, it's Peter. Could you please ask Mr. Stark to send me the latest data from those drones he sent to Benham street? Tonight about ten, I think the thing, whatever it is, ate a prostitute. Okay, that sounds bad, but it's what seems to have happened. She was hurt; someone was mugging her and I stopped it, but then she ran away and the thing that's been sitting on that sidewalk for over a month ate her. In the interest of not getting eaten, I backed off, but maybe we should close this part of the road down until we figure out what is out there making people disappear. I'm thinking I might make a little mess to keep people off the sidewalk until you can get it shut down. So yeah, call me."

Lilly Frazier, known as Razzle Dazzle in what passed for her professional life, did not start her day with any great sense of impending doom. Her job wasn't exactly the safest, but she was good at it, and like everyone in the world not living under a bridge she had rent to pay, not to mention a grandmother on very expensive medicine and a three year old son who still thought she was perfect. No, she didn't get a magical hint that a sleaze ball was going to shake her down, knife her, and steal her hard won earnings.

Queens' own freak in tights appeared out of nowhere and saved her bacon, but Lily hadn't dared to stick around. She hadn't ever heard of the Spider-thing running in working girls, but she didn't plan to take a chance that he might web her up there with the extra-sleazy sleaze ball.

If her adrenaline hadn't been pumping, the unconscious protection that had steered thousands of pedestrians away from the spot of danger on Benham street might have saved her from the misstep that was going to make her day worse. One moment she was running toward home, her small stack of cash miraculously still safe in her purse. The next she was falling into a pile of strange metallic boxes.

Lilly screamed, the deep stab wound in her side throbbing viciously. "What the Hell?" she gasped. Looking around, she couldn't see an exit, just a round room without doors or windows. Strange red writing covered the walls and the boxes that littered the floor. "Is anyone there?" Lily turned slowly, exhausted and scared and so very confused. "What the Hell is going on here?"

Sixteen drones circled the room, unable to communicate with the new arrival. Deprived of a connection to their home base, their A.I. continued with the last command they received as best it could interpret and recorded the new arrival. Though they were small and designed to avoid notice, in a room without another thing moving, Lily quickly spotted her audience.

"What are you? Are you watching me? Who the fuck are you?" Lily started ripping the room apart, throwing things at the tiny, silent drones. After a few short minutes, she collapsed on the floor, exhausted and dizzy, the deceptively small stab wound still bleeding steadily. "I don't want to die," she moaned. "Someone, please."

Resting against one of the many crates she smashed open, Lily tried to put pressure on her bleeding wound. Desperately she prayed for someone, anyone to find her.

If Lily had any power of precognition, she would have prayed for something else.

Three small round objects dislodged by her destruction shimmered only a few inches from her and the expanding pool of blood beside her. The sphere closest to her rippled, its no longer solid surface extending and distending toward the pool of blood. The milky white substance dipped delicately into the blood and emerged, streaked in red, like strawberry sauce into yogurt.

Lily didn't see it coming. One moment she was trying to keep breathing and the next she was being engulfed in a warm wave of cream and red entity.

The human mind is a complex system even for humans who never learn to use it to its greatest potential. Complex systems are not always robust and some are far more delicate than others. Lily Frazier would have told you that she was strong, that her life had built a callous around every part of her until she could withstand just about anything, but the truth was, Lily wasn't as strong as she thought. At her core, under the callous that let her function in her life, she was a fragile thing, barely held together by spindly glass fibers and when her mind was invaded by an alien intelligence there was no hope of a proper merger.

Lily shattered into a million pieces.

The mind that shattered her, a relatively formless thing that had never existed outside its dormant egg, tried desperately to hold the human mind together, grasping at pieces and pasting them onto itself but the final product was a monstrous amalgam confused about everything, only really sure of its hunger.

The mortal wound to her side now healed, Lily pulled herself up. Her new eyes could see more than a closed box. The room had hundreds of doors and one was ajar. Driven by hunger, she stepped toward the exit, but Lily felt a connection to the small eggs still lying dormant behind her. Children. Too confused to understand that though she was a mother, these were not her children, she took the eggs with her, cradled safe and close.

She pushed her way to the crack in the wall and back into the world.

Peter was rather proud of the mess he had made on the sidewalk blocking pedestrian traffic from all directions. Using webbing formula four that wouldn't dissolve until a nice strong rain shower hit it, he had built a barrier of trash cans and random detritus. Karen had assured him that no rain was in the forecast for at least two days.

Peter was watching when the spot on the sidewalk shimmered and the woman who vanished less than an hour earlier appeared. No longer covered in blood, or anything else, she stood barefooted and naked, long curly black hair falling past her hips. Impossibly large brown eyes stared out in a lost, dazed way that tugged at Peter's heart. He barely took notice of the two spheres she held in the crooks of her arms, one black and one midnight blue. "Crap," Peter muttered. Keeping people away from the dangerous patch of sidewalk had been his goal. He hadn't considered that he might be sealing the mugging victim with it if she found her way out.

He hadn't called Ned back, but he was tempted to now. What was the protocol for helping a naked lady who you had technically trapped in a sort of small sticky prison. Clothes would fix the naked bit, Peter decided abruptly. He pulled his backpack off his shoulder and freed his white button up shirt. "Hey," Peter called. "I'm going to come down there. Don't be scared, okay?" He leapt lightly to the sidewalk and offered the staring woman his mostly clean shirt. He turned his head aside while waiting for her to take it. She tugged the shirt out of his hand and he gave her a long ten count to get covered up before he looked back.

In the time he had looked away, she had stepped closer to him. At least she had slipped the shirt on, but she was way inside his personal space. In a resoundingly odd move she took a long slow sniff of Peter, then smiled with a hint of recognition in her eyes. "I like you," she said.

Distinctly glad that he was thoroughly covered by the suit and no one could see his ears turning red, Peter laughed uncomfortably. "I can help you get over the barrier I made. You should probably see a doctor, you know? Do you mind telling me where you went? I mean, I've been working this mystery for a while and you've seen it. I mean, it ate you. How did you get out?"

She took a long look at one of the spheres in her arms and she offered the shimmering black one to Peter. "I like you," she repeated.

Unsure how to say no in this situation, Peter accepted the sphere, a warm soft object that settled into his palm and rolled down into the crook of his arm like it was magnetized to him. "Thank you?"

The woman he only knew as Razzle Dazzle changed then, her forehead split open, her hands and feet grew claws, and a set of wings sprouted from her back along with a wickedly sharp tail. Her mouth gaped too wide with a double row of razor sharp teeth. She was still smiling at him though. She even waved. As though it weren't seven feet tall, she leapt clear of Peter's makeshift barrier and flew away. "Okay, wow, I don't think she could do that before. Karen, deploy droney; send it after her. I, crap, that really just happened. Please tell me you recorded that, Karen. You need to send that to Mr. Stark, like 911 if you can. Can you send that?"

The spider drone deployed almost silently and set off in rapid pursuit of the flying woman. "Sending Mr. Stark the footage of your encounter, high priority. He would have set off in pursuit too, but Karen's next words stopped him short. Peter, your suit integrity is rapidly decreasing. A biological agent is eating through your suit. Would you like me to activate safety protocol forty seven? If action is not taken in thirty seconds, your suit will be breached."

In the few seconds distraction of the woman's transformation and escape, the warm black sphere had expanded rapidly and virtually imperceptibly. Peter hadn't felt a thing and his spider sense hadn't tingled a bit more than it had before in this particular location. "Karen, I don't know what safety protocol forty seven is, but if you think it will help, do it."

Peter tried to shake free of the viscous black liquid spreading over his body. He looked at his hands, horrified at how completely they were covered already. "Karen, where is that safety protocol?"

"Safety protocol failed, transmitting distress signal. All suit systems failing." Peter could feel himself hyperventilating as the goo spread over his face blocking his vision. "Suit integrity ten percent. Peter, breach imminent. Repeat, all suit systems failing."

In desperation Peter ripped off his suit's mask and tried to escape his suit before the tarry black substance could touch his actual skin. "No," Peter gasped before he was completely overwhelmed.

Happy got Peter's first message and had to listen to it three times before deciding that, no the kid wasn't playing a prank on him and yes, he should probably send Tony a message immediately. "Hey Boss, the kid has his suit back one day, and he's in over his head. You need to listen to the voicemail I just sent and after you figure out what the kid is in the middle of, could you maybe get the kid's aunt to ground him again, just till he's twenty or so. He's giving me an ulcer."

"Let's be honest, the Thai food is giving you an ulcer. Peter is barely a contributing factor," Tony said. "I've got it. Forward anything else the kid sends on to me tonight."

In all honesty, Tony hadn't given the report Peter sent weeks ago about Benham Street a great deal of thought or concern. He dispatched some very smart, very expensive drones to monitor the situation but when nothing came of it after a few weeks, other issues pushed it out of his mind. Now, Tony tried to bring those drones online and found not one of them responding. It took him a few seconds to locate their last log of data. He got to watch all sixteen drones eaten by the Benham Street anomaly.

"That's interesting." Tony tapped the uderroos icon on his desktop. "Karen, I've got Peter on my tracker at Benham street. Is there a reason he hasn't vacated the area for someplace safer?"

"Mr. Stark, Peter has isolated the point of danger on Benham street. He is building a barrier around it so that it doesn't harm any other passerby."

"Show me," Tony ordered.

Karen displayed Peter's eye cam, and Tony smiled at the lopsided, sticky mess Peter was making of the sidewalk. He restrained himself from having Karen actually patch him through. The kid was handling the situation responsibly enough. He wouldn't appreciate hovering. "Cut feed."

Tony didn't waste a lot of time trying to figure out who to call to get the area on Benham officially rerouted. He called one person. "Pepper, before you kill me, I'm calling on Avenger business." Without mentioning prostitutes, he read her in on what was happening and what he needed from the city. "Ideally they'll reroute the entire street temporarily and not issue a warrant against Spider-Man for defacing public property."

"I don't work for the Avengers, Tony," Pepper said. "But I'm on it."

"You don't happen to know where Bruce slunk off to? I could use another train of thought for this one. The only reliable litmus of this anomaly is in Spider-Man's head. And while it's great that he could point out the "bad spot" I'm going to need a little more information if we're going to do anything about it."

"I haven't heard from him, Tony, but you should reach out. Maybe he'll answer this time?" Pepper disconnected without actually saying goodbye.

Tony pulled up his email and started a new one. Unlike the last dozen he had sent to his friend, he typed this one as a case report and a request for consult. If Bruce was done with their friendship, fine, he might still feel like helping the world when it had issues like hungry sidewalks that ate multimillion dollar drones and people without leaving a trace. Tony had barely sent the email off when another alert hit his desktop. A video feed had just arrived from Peter, followed quickly by a distress signal. Tony set the video to play even as he chose a suit to wear.

"Woah, naughty bits. The kid did say prostitute." It was sort of endearing, listening to Peter stammer through trying to help the naked woman. Tony caught the woman's transformation out of the corner of his eye and had to replay it, to see the full effect. "F.R.I.D.A.Y. Patch me through to Peter."

"Communications are down, sir."

"Eye cam?" Tony snapped.

"No communication with the Spider-Suit is operational at this time."

"Well that's not acceptable. I guess we better check on the situation in person." Tony stepped into a gleaming red and gold suit that seamlessly sealed around him and blasted his way toward the last location Peter's suit had pinged from.

Author's Note:

My favorite guilty pleasure of the cinema is the B-horror flick and I've seen them all (well not all but a really lot of them, thank you Netflix). The movie SiREN is almost a crossover here. The movie and the short that preceded it in VHS pretty much inspired this entire fic. Any of you who share my enjoyment of the genre and have seen the movies in question should recognize the character I've rebooted into this universe through the lens of a Klyntar symbiont. *Cue creepy music*

Additionally, as it was asked, you do NOT need any knowledge of SiREN to enjoy or understand this story.