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He came to slowly, and when he realized he was waking up, he decided he wanted to lay in bed a bit longer. He was so warm and comfy, it was like his bed had never been so soft, his blankets so insulating, and he wanted to snuggle right in and sleep some more.
Well, actually, his bed was a cheap, old spring box with very little cushion, and his blankets were thin and fraying, so this couldn’t be his bed, and this couldn’t be his apartment.
He didn’t want to open his eyes and look around because that would wake him up more, and he wanted to stay like this for a little longer. He tried not to move at all, tried to focus on the sounds of the city and let them lull him to sleep—but there were no sounds of the city.
There was no sound at all. Not even the electricity buzzed through the walls, and he couldn’t help but fling his eyes open at the realization, more than a little surprised, needing to figure out what was going on.
Why couldn’t he hear anything?
He could hear his breathing, his blood pumping, and the bed creaking as he sat up, but there was nothing else, nothing beyond this room—what was this room?
Hospital.
He was in the hospital, an IV in his arm he somehow didn’t notice, monitors to the right of his bed mysteriously broken, daylight streaming through the window to his right. The door to his room was on his left and he tried to focus on it, listening for movement in the hallway beyond or even the floors above and below, but still, he heard nothing.
Were there really no people here—what was this, some kind of apocalyptic dream?—or were his powers failing him?
One way or another, he needed out of here. Usually, when he woke in a hospital, he had been injured as Spider-Man. Peter Parker hasn’t been in the hospital in a long time. So he’d probably been hurt fighting crime, and—and—and he couldn’t remember it.
He couldn’t remember what put him in the hospital.
That was concerning. Hopefully, it had been a head injury that was simple to heal from—and hopefully he’d heal from it real soon.
He needed to figure out what was going on, what had happened. He’d obviously lost, but against whom?
He needed to call Yuri for the sitrep and MJ next for the details.
He surveyed the room, looking for his suit because normally the kind nurses would leave it on a chair or in a wardrobe, but this room was very small, lacking such items.
Now that he thought about it, it was peculiar that they had left him in a room with a window. Concealing his identity normally meant he was recovering in an unused room, windows covered in boxes for storage, out of the way of prying eyes trying to glimpse Spider-Man’s true face.
Maybe he had been admitted as Peter Parker, then?
But still, where was his phone? His wallet? His clothes?
It was as if he was John Doe #3 in the Walking Dead or something. Creepy.
He swung his legs over the side, eyed the IV under his skin warily, and gently—oh so gently, he hated needles so much, it was so wrong how he could feel them under his skin and in his veins, and his heightened senses only made it that much worse after he’d been bitten—removed the needle from the crook of his inner left elbow.
This could prove to be an experiment of his powers, making sure they were working fine—it was super freaky that he couldn’t hear anything. It’d been so long since everything had been this quiet, and every second of silence just upped the creep factor—and yep, they were.
The IV prick healed over immediately, not a drop of blood lost, so yeah, his powers were just fine.
Which made it worse, because that meant this hospital was actually empty, and the monitor that he could see was very clearly still plugged in and yet not working meant that there was no power—no power in his room or no power in the hospital?
What was going on?
Like, seriously, his spider-sense wasn’t even bugging him, yet he’d never been more creeped out in his life.
He was only dressed in a hospital gown, so getting out of bed sent chills up his spine—actual, cold chills, cause his spidey-sense was ominously absent.
The moment his feet touched the floor, he heard movement on the floor below, sounded like a door softly closing, most likely trying to be as silent as possible, but his spider-ears still caught it.
There was someone here!
Someone whose profession was hopefully a nurse or similar hospital staff—oh, nevermind that, he was fine! He just needed someone to tell him what was going on.
He was wearing socks—yay! Free socks and they had pads on the bottom!—so his footsteps were all but audible as he opened the door and peered down the hallway. Empty, of course. However, strangely not even a wheelchair graced the pathway. Utterly empty.
Peter gulped, trying to find that sound again as a distraction—there, three floors down, footsteps, barely there at all—and he crept as fast as he could, choosing the stairs without even considering that the elevators would be out of service. The stairs were just all-around quieter and, for him specifically, faster anyway.
In three-point-seven seconds, he was closer to the footsteps, and without the stairwell door blocking off most sound, he could hear pencil on paper.
He was only a corner away, but he flattened himself against the wall first—gathering his courage because he was slightly frightened? Pssh! Noooo—listening for anything indicating that the person on the other side was an adversary.
He reminded himself that he was not Spider-Man right now, and turned the corner slowly, trying to not startle the nurse (hopefully, and his intuition was often right).
She had a constitution of steel, already looking at him as he turned the corner—oh yeah, that even more creepy, how was she able to see him before he saw her???—from her perch on the edge of the counter. Her expression was nothing but surprise.
“Spider-Man! You’re awake!”
Spider-Man?
Okay, no suit in sight, no staff in sight, no electricity or sound at all, only him and her, and her knowledge that he was in fact Spider-Man. What that ever-loving—
Her face morphed into straight glee, and before he could open his mouth, she spoke with excitement, “I can go home! Oh, thank God!” She hopped down and twirled as if she came straight out of a musical, “I thought this day would never come!”
Was she only here for him? To watch over him?
“Wha—“ his throat was scratchy, dry, and he cleared his throat before continuing, “What’s going on? Where is everybody?”
How long has he been here for his throat to feel like he hasn’t spoken in days?
The nurse turned back to him, concern on her face, and she approached for a closer look, “Are you feeling all right? Do you not remember?”
“I’m fine and dandy as ever!” He cocked his fist up in a power move and repeated his question more urgently, “What’s going on?”
Concerned still, she squinted to gauge something, probably his reaction, but he wasn’t sure.
“You were found unconscious on the roof of the Raft, blood everywhere, twenty-six broken bones, and skull cracked in two places. You’ve been in a coma for twenty-four days. We thought you’d never wake up from the extent of the injuries, but you never died either.”
Brows pinched and jaw agape, he stood there absorbing her words in shock.
He didn’t know which part to be shocked at first. The part where he was found on the Raft—he remembered!
He remembered what had happened! The prison break, the prisoners rioting and tearing the place apart, his toughest enemies outnumbering him five to one then beating the hell out of him. Doctor Octavius’s appearance and subsequent thrashing.
…Doctor Octavius…
Doc put him here, beat him unconscious, probably thought he was dead and left him there, and if not he still left him to die. That must be how his skull had been cracked.
God, Otto had those, those tentacles, those arms. That was the technology that he helped him build. Otto snatched it from right under his nose, after Peter told him it was defective and dangerous, and used it to kill people.
Which made Peter an accessory.
He’d helped build and perfect those prosthetics. This was all his fault.
They had the Demon’s Breath! They were going to release it in the city! He had to stop them!
But he’d been comatose for weeks! Did they already do it, did they hurt anybody!?
…Was that why the city was so quiet?
Why was the city so quiet?
He was afraid to ask, afraid that he’d, in fact, failed everybody in the worst way, let everybody die. He could have stopped this! He could have saved them!
He supposed he had been quiet for too long, the nurse spoke again, softly, filling in the gaps, “A lot of people have passed away. An airborne drug. We don’t know for sure what it was, but a local reporter says it was called ‘Devil’s Breath’.”
That was it. This was his ultimate failure. He didn’t deserve to be Spider-Man, letting so many people die—May and MJ! Were they okay?
He had to go find them! He had to leave and—and he wasn’t wearing any underwear…
He finally spoke, voice weak and still scratchy, “…Do you know where my clothes are?”
“The suit was stained with blood, practically unsalvageable, and Doctor Ling had to cut pieces off to treat some of your injuries. Hence, it was thrown away a while ago. The doctor thought it would help hide who you are anyway.”
Yeah, she had a good point, but he couldn’t exactly go walking around the streets of New York in a hospital gown. His bare ass would be exposed for cameras…
“Are there any clothes around that I can wear instead?”
She nodded, thought for a second or two, then turned and led him down the hall into a storage room—honestly, he was super jealous, because this room was bigger than his bedroom.
From a basket on the shelf, she pulled some vacuum-sealed bags containing various articles of clothing. There weren’t many, since there weren’t many patients left in the building—Ha! He was the only one, so he got his pick of clothes first!—and he hoped there were some that were his size.
There were, and funnily enough, he grabbed a bag whose contents belonged to one special Peter Parker who had the exact same taste in clothes as he did—and coincidently, wore the same size—wait a sec, these were his clothes. Did Mary Jane or Aunt May stop by to see him or something?
He couldn’t ask cause his name was written right there and that’d be way too obvious, but he’d ask MJ or May when he saw them—if he saw them—no. No, they were both fine, and he’d see them soon, no need to worry unnecessarily.
He excused himself to change, and then discretely crawled through the vents so the nurse wouldn’t see him leaving. She already saw his face, but she hadn’t seen him in his casual wear. He was taking every precaution he could, considering that five of his—guess it was six now, huh?—six of his toughest enemies were prowling the streets.
He considered going back and asking her to keep this whole thing a secret, not to tell anybody that he was awake and living. If the city thought he was dead, then he’d have an amazing advantage.
He needed to go to the lab first, build a new suit and grab some of his normal clothes—just in case the ones he was wearing weren’t his and it had just been a crazy coincidence. Hopefully, there’d be a spare phone there, and he could check up on May and MJ—Miles, too.
So as Peter, he ventured out into the city from the hospital. His earlier thoughts of the Walking Dead were proven true. The streets were vacant and empty, not even animals in sight, and even in these barest conditions did J. Jonah Jameson still haunt him. The newspapers that flew in the breeze screamed his failures to his face.
Where was Spider-Man?
Was Spider-Man involved in the Prison Break?
Did Spider-Man join the Sinister Six?
Spider-Man abandoned the city. Spider-Man doesn’t want to save us. The people are dying and Spider-Man is nowhere to be found. Spider-Man doesn’t care anymore. Spider-Man failed.
Spider-Man Failed.
Peter just shook his head and tore the paper in two, tossing it aside to fly alongside the others. He wasn’t going to think about that right now. He couldn’t do anything about it. He needed a new suit, and then he could take out his anger on petty criminals—no, no he wouldn’t cause that was wrong, and he didn’t do that.
Standing there on the edge of the abandoned curb, Pete couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the past thirty minutes and the information contained within.
How could this have happened? How could everything have gone so wrong so fast? He knew he couldn’t help that he had been unconscious; head wounds do that, especially when five super-villains gang up on you, and Doc Oc cracks your skull in two places, but surely, surely this wasn’t fate.
Peter wasn’t one to believe in destiny, and he wasn’t going to start now, but there had to have been a way to stop them, to stop this. Had he seriously been the only one capable?
Guilt and shame haunted him as he ran up a building and jumped between rooftops. There was nobody left to spot him.
There was just nobody left.
The buildings were all empty. He could hear the rats scuttling in the attic to his left, the dog snoring in the apartments to his right. He had never heard silence quite this loud, and his heart started to race. FEAST was a block ahead and he couldn’t hear anything, no movement, no breathing, no heartbeats, nothing. Maybe May was back in her Queens house again. Maybe she was out of the state visiting the grandparents.
He slowed to a stop as he neared the FEAST building, an ungodly stench radiating out. Windows were broken and boarded up. Heavy chains and a padlock adorned the front door handles. Flies flew in and out of the side vents.
Peter stood horrified, every muscle in his body locked in position. He knew without a doubt that hundreds of corpses slept in those beds.
This was so, so much worse than anything he could have imagined.
People had died because of his mistake. People had died, and the survivors had left the bodies in the FEAST shelter.
The truth was all too real. He couldn’t deny it any longer.
If MJ or Miles or Aunt May knew he was in the hospital, one of them would have told the others, and MJ would have known, and MJ would have known that he wasn’t dead, and MJ would have either been there when he woke or left a note. The absence of either clearly indicated that MJ did not know. If Peter were to go missing, the hospitals would always be the first place MJ would look. If MJ had looked, she would have found him. If MJ was okay, she would have looked.
Therefore, MJ was not okay.
He collapsed to his knees in an empty street, all hope absent, and in its place, despair.