Chapter 4 – Dream On

Sitting atop a building too tall to really exist, Peter could see the entirety of his home, New York City and all her boroughs. He felt completely secure, his hands stuck solidly to the slick surface. The sounds of the city somehow reached him all the way up here in the clouds, comforting city sounds-car horns, hydraulic brakes and the constant low murmuring of a thousand human voices. He wasn't wearing his Spider-Man gear, just a faded red t-shirt and an old pair of jeans. The sun beat down in gentle warm waves. Peter flexed his bare feet on the building feeling the grip of his mutation, at perfect peace.

The easy comfortable moment shifted. He wasn't alone up here. A sleek black creature clung to the sheer surface beside him. A pair of wide white eyes looked between Peter and his city. There were no words from its gaping mouth, but there was a question.

"It's my home, my city," Peter explained. "I protect it. If you're here to hurt my home, I won't let you."

Still no words, but the creature stretched and leaned closer. It shifted, becoming almost canine, web lines appeared on its body, mimicking the texture of Peter's suit. It looked again between Peter and the city, saying everything without saying anything.

"I don't need your help. I've got this. You can go away. Help someone else."

It morphed again, becoming humanoid, an almost perfect reflection of Peter but painted in shades of gray and black and textured in the pattern of his Spider-suit. It took Peter's hand and the communication became so much more.

Peter pulled back but the copy shifted so that they were hand to hand, foot to foot, foreheads leaned together.

"We are protectors," Peter said, almost against his will.

The world around them shifted and rumbled. Peter's mind flexed and groaned, resisting the new mind that wanted to share its synapses, but where Lily had shattered, Peter stretched, the world filling with otherness.

Still no words.

But there was a question.

Peter lost his grip on the building and he was falling.


Tony was prepared for just about anything when he came looking for Peter. Finding him pulling on a t-shirt and hopping into a pair of tennis shoes was a relief. His suit scanned the teenager for injuries and reported nothing but regular vitals. "Yo, Spider-Man, what happened to the very expensive, suit I loaned you?"

"Mr. Stark, hi." Peter slouched dejectedly. "Sorry about the suit, sir. The mugging victim that I saved earlier, she sort of dissolved it." Peter pulled all that remained of his suit out of his backpack, a mostly melted mask. "I guess I'm lucky she didn't dissolve me."

"Yeah, I think this particular situation has officially escalated out of friendly neighborhood Spider-Man territory. Leave the rest to me and the big guns. The drone you dispatched still has our flying, suit-dissolving menace in sight, so I'm going to head that way. Are you good to get home?"

Peter nodded and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

Before he flew away, Tony took pity on the poor teenager. "Peter, don't worry about the suit. I'll get you a replacement. Spider-man mark-2 is already in production. I might have thought I had a bit more time before you'd need it, but you can't predict these things sometimes. I'm glad you didn't get dissolved."

"You and me too. Mr. Stark, you're going to try to help her, right?" Peter asked. "She didn't wake up a monster this morning."

"My goal tonight is containment," Tony said. "I got your message and the video." He noticed Peter shivering even though he nodded and even smiled. Tony silently rescanned the teenager for injuries, but the suit found nothing concerning. It was probably a little touch of shock. The kid was going to have PTSD before he ever started college. Tony sent one of his suit's drones to escort Peter home from a distance, just in case.

For his part, Peter didn't feel traumatized not like the time the building fell on him. No he felt off, tilted and scrambled. The last thing he remembered, he had been in a bad situation, black metal-tasting ichor clogging his mouth and nose, suffocating him. When he woke, still outside and entirely too close to the dangerously hungry sidewalk, Peter hadn't been able to stand at first. Wobbly and uncoordinated as a toddler, he had used the wall of webbing and trash to support him while he found his feet. It took him entirely too long to notice his lack of Spider-suit or any other stitch of clothing.

Thank goodness he had his backpack and a change of clothes to pull on. Still feeling awkward and gangly in his own body, Peter had barely managed to pull on his tennis shoes when Ironman arrived to check on him. There were things he should have been saying to Mr. Stark about the woman and the anomaly and what had happened to him, but Peter let the moment pass without explaining anything properly. His spider-sense kept up a faint tingle beyond the norm even after he was well clear of the hot zone but Peter resolutely ignored it. He would feel better when he got home and took a shower to rinse away any lingering alien goo.

Peter stopped several times on his walk home to stare at his hands. The color was right. There wasn't any evidence of the black substance from earlier, no change in texture or character, but they felt dirty, askew. It didn't feel like they were properly connected to his arms, alien hands.

Peter almost laughed at himself. What a stupid thought to have about his own hands.

It stopped being funny a block later when he couldn't go on until he had examined his feet. He sat on a set of stairs and pulled off his shoes. They were his feet, crooked little toe on the left and all. He massaged them curled them and tried not to panic. Of course they were his feet. He had to get it together and just get home.

He had been shivering on one level or another since waking up naked on the city street, but those shivers were worse now and he could barely get his shoes back on. There was a phone in his backpack. He should call Happy or Tony or May. He should call someone and tell them that he had alien feet.

He couldn't help laughing then, painful hysterical laughter that made his side ache and his head hurt.

By the time he was trudging up the stairs to his apartment, Peter had mostly pulled it together and if he still felt a bit oddly about his most distal extremities, it was to be expected after the night he'd had. Right?

May greeted him at the door. She hugged him and fussed over him. She made him recite the evening's patrol in detail. The words came easily, just perfectly how they should, but Peter felt disconnected from the recitation. The when it came time to talk about Benham Street, he barely told her anything at all. She plied him with a steaming cup of hot chocolate and something in him melted, a hunger that had just barely begun to register was sated in that cup of thick chocolaty goodness.

"You make the best cup of cocoa," Peter gushed, feeling more himself than he had since Benham street. "Could I maybe have another?"

"There are about ten thousand calories in one of those, but yeah, Mr. Spider-metabolism, you can have another."

Stuffed to the brim with chocolate, Peter drug himself to the shower and turned the hot water to the max. He soaped himself up over and over, cleaning every crevice. He took stock while drying off, looking for any evidence of contamination. He used the mirrors to check his back and any part of him not otherwise easily seen. Nothing was there. He stretched his joints to the limit, bending back farther than he ever would or could have before his spider bite. The odd feeling of disassociation with his limbs lingered faintly, but he could almost ignore it.

Peter crawled into bed, pulled the covers over his head and slipped quickly into exhausted sleep. It would all feel better in the morning.

Probably.


By the time Tony caught up to the monster Peter's drone was trailing, she had already had a snack and it wasn't a pretty sight. Her impressive double row of teeth were snapping through bones and making short work of a pile of hamburger that probably used to be a man. As she seemed quite absorbed with her meal, Tony circled her to set a trap.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y. bear catcher protocol," Tony said. A small army of medium sized drones deployed around the noisily crunching creature. "And trigger."

An impressive spray of white foam hit the creature from all directions, rapidly expanding to completely fill the back alley. Without being told, one of the drones transformed into a drill and using echo location tunneled straight to the creature's face, providing an air hole. Solid in a stretchy way, the foam had been inspired by Peter's web fluid. It would allow the captive to breath and move a bit, but wouldn't allow enough traction for it to tear free. "Let's get the biohazard transport in. F.R.I.D.A.Y. update the local authorities and let them know we have a casualty. I don't know who wants jurisdiction of this thing. If it were a killer robot I'd keep it and dismantle it. Bio-threats are not my scene. The Avengers are willing to keep jurisdiction of the actual Benham street anomaly for now."

Tony landed and positioned himself to wait for the local police. "Mr. Stark, we have indication that the C.D.C. Is willing to take the biological specimen if it is safely contained."

"Great. Soon as I have it boxed up, we'll get a transfer scheduled." The first of the police arrived with a screech of tires and flashing blue lights.

It would take mobile biological containment a little longer to arrive. It was an unwieldy device he and Bruce had designed together, something tough enough to keep a Hulk level threat boxed up safely. Overkill for this particular beast? Probably, but Tony was delegating the problem, Better over-contained if he was going to let the federal government manage it.

"Mr. Stark, we have increased activity within the sealed zone," F.R.I.D.A.Y. reported. Tony activated his sonar view and watched as the bear slipped its trap. The creature's form morphed, becoming rigid and sharp, then returning to it's more stable shape. With increasing ease, it was shredding right through the immobilizing agent.

Tony powered up his pulse weapon, prepared to defend the police behind him. Peter would be disappointed that they hadn't been able to help her, but she was eating people. Sometimes you couldn't save everyone.

The creature emerged; its too-white skin and monstrously deformed face were covered with blood in a way that implied an enthusiastic and voracious eater. She hissed and morphed, returning to her human face and form as easy as blinking an eye. Peter's white shirt still hung off her shoulders, now hopelessly stained. How lucky was that kid that she hadn't attacked him instead of just dissolving his suit?

"If you're willing to surrender, we can do this peacefully," Tony said. "Otherwise, we can't let you eat any more innocent New Yorkers. I'm sure you understand."

She smirked, a so very human expression and she sang.

"Well isn't that just precious. Off Broadway…" Tony's mind disengaged, like a car knocked out of gear, he was no longer in the moment facing a monster. Every man within the sound of her voice had suffered similar fates, going still and vacant. Fortunately for the officers facing her and for Tony as well, the N.Y.P.D. had sent a couple of female officers to the scene and while the creatures high pitched song, raised the hairs on their necks, they were not rendered insensate.

The ranking officer of the two women, Hernandez, stepped forward and raised her weapon. "Cease the verbal assault, put your hands in the air and surrender, or we will open fire."

A few moments later both women were peppering the banshee with bullets. It cut off her song and she abandoned her human face for the more aggressive, toothy face she used for eating.

When she fled, neither officer gave pursuit. Of course if a perp sprouts wings and flys off, you typically waited for the fellow in the jet boots to handle the chase. "Mr. Stark?" Hernandez asked.

"Yes, officer?" Tony stared at the mountain of immobilizing agent in front of him and tried to remember how he had gotten here.

"Are you going after it, sir? She flew west," Hernandez said. The other male officers were coming around, but to a man looked dazed and confused.

Tony frowned, not used to his mind letting him down in any situation. "F.R.I.D.A.Y. Give me a recap of the situation. Assume I don't have a clue what's happening."


Peter's dreams had always been full of color and sound, as vivid as real life. Now that he was dreaming with a partner, that hadn't changed. The other Peter, grayed-out and silent, pawed through things in their shared mindscape, asking questions with its gestures and expressions. For its latest question it morphed its hands and feet, making them into sharp, vicious looking claws.

"I know it seems like an improvement, but I don't kill my enemies. Giving me lethal claws would make my life harder, not easier." Peter sighed. "Also, I know it's a foreign concept to you, but humans, we don't communicate the way you're used to. A human sees a beastie with big gnarly claws, they assume monster. It scares them. So it's nice that the option is there, but no, I'm not game for full-time clawed mode."

Gray-Peter took its full-color counterpart's hand and pulled him into closer proximity, arm wrapped around his back. It didn't like having to frame things as words between them.

"How do I get myself into these things?" Peter didn't shrug his twin away. As frightening and alien as it could be, it was also an infant and needed guidance to know what to be. "Teenage parent to an alien goo-monster-I'm an after school special, a really weird Star Trek after school special."

Every second of every day it was learning from Peter, becoming more complete. It wanted to teach too, to show what it could do, what it could be. It had just started to show Peter what it was capable of, and claws were really just the tip of the iceberg.

"Why don't I remember you when I'm awake? Are you making me forget?" Peter asked but he already knew the answer, radiating up Gray-Peter's arm and directly into his mind. "You wouldn't think that my conscious brain could manage that level of denial. That's like looking at the sky and convincing yourself it's green."

Both Peters laughed; a series of jokes passed between them without words. They settled together, arms intertwined, heads resting against each other. "We're protectors," Peter said. He repeated it over and over, the most important thing for Gray to learn. "We're protectors."

Gray didn't answer, but it listened, less to Peter's words than to the images and emotions behind them.