They got the call ten minutes ago. Some trash picker had made a weird find that morning. Even in New York you didn't tend to find some naked guy in the trash. It just wasn't his day, he'd been supposed to go off duty in half an hour, but with his luck he'd spend all morning at the station filing reports.
They parked the cruiser and went up to the shelter; some volunteers were serving food, most everyone was trying to stay on one side of the room. Except for May Parker who was trying to talk the kid into looking up. Vin stood shocked when she saw why. The guy looked just like his roommate. In fact, if it weren't for the glowing white eyes, Vin would be pretty sure that it was his roommate.
"Did you run?" Those eyes formed shadows over a face that looked too young for the horror it held. "That's how it happens. They run and you jump after them, they try to hide and you pull them back out, sink your teeth in their flesh and tear it to ribbons till the blood gushes over your gloves and your mask is torn." Peter, or someone who looked just like him, crouched towards him, face forward, on hands and feet. His voice sounded like his friends and him in the scouts had tried to sound, while they sat over a campfire, trying to sound creepy. Yet somehow it failed to be even slightly funny.
Vin shivered and tried to keep from shaking under those empty white eyes.
"I'd bend their spines and snap them. Bad bad Peter under the hat, cops tops, bullets won't hurt. Can I hurl now, and go bye bye Peter, off to the clouds he went."
O'neill mouthed "Bonkers", but went up to the guy anyway.
"We're just here to help." He said.
The guy sat there looking at them and didn't even bother to put up a fight. All Vin could do was look at those eyes and fear. It couldn't be Peter, could it? Was insanity of your roommate a valid reason to get out of a lease agreement? If this was really Peter, then he hoped it was.
A weight fell of his chest when he saw a familiar face appear in the door. Peter Parker, himself. Good, that meant he wouldn't have to start looking for a new roommate just yet. It was strange that Peter seemed more annoyed than anything to find out he had a mad double. Almost as if it was nothing new.
Peter wanted to come along to the hospital with them, and Vin didn't know how to tell him no. There was no reason why Peter should go along, but no reason that he shouldn't either. And they would have to ask him some questions about the double, like how Peter had suddenly gained an identical twin. Vin kept quiet while O'Neill asked the questions and all the while that strange double kept muttering on and on, not a single bit of it making sense. Vin stepped into the ambulance just as he saw Peter getting into the cruiser with O'Neill.
They strapped the guy up in the back of the ambulance, Peter two just looked at him and it was like having someone step on your grave.
"Watch him. Carefully, if you're his friend, then one day he'll carve you up and eat you like steak."
"Watch who?" Vin sat down on the bench next to the stretcher that they'd tied the guy to.
"Him me, anyone that wears the blue and red or other colors." His voice sounded soft, eery. "We all fell that day, even the most pure amongst our number." As if you wanted to pat him on the back, but didn't out of fear that he'd take it as an invitation to sink his teeth into your flesh.
Vin kept staring out of the window. He had to stop himself from pouncing on the front of the ambulance to get them to tell him if they'd arrived, so he could get away from the guy. And no, it wasn't just because the guy was some kind of superhuman freak with glowing white eyes. He wasn't that much of a … what's the word, racist, speciist? Who gave a damn.
"Like you?" He answered; almost ten minutes after the double had started talking.
"No," The man laughed and Vin felt hell freeze over as he did. "I was never pure, too creepy and crawly for that. But even the children fell when the hunger came."
Vin kept trying to come up with a way to describe how it felt, but not a single expression in the English language went deep enough to describe the sheer terror that voice evoked in him.
The double fought the straps and Vin almost grabbed for his gun as he did so.
"You're all dead you know." Vin wanted to get away from him, but in the close confinement of the ambulance there was nowhere to go. "It's not your fault that you aren't real. I'm just insane, seeing all of you, while the others are probably laughing at me for seeing all these dead bodies when there's nobody left." Vin would almost expect him to start crying at that. "This is just a dream. But I shouldn't be dreaming. We don't sleep you see. Can't dream without sleeping, can't see MJ without dreaming. I can't feel the guilt when I don't see her eyes."
Vin was still trembling when the doctors took the guy off their hands. He was staring through the glass as they took him to the mental ward. The initiative was already sending someone. Seems like whomever their double was, he was unregistered.
Vin wondered if they were going to talk to Peter as well. He really didn't want to look for a new roommate.