Chapter Text
DeWolff had let him know they were close to busting this ‘hacker squad,' and as she usually did, asked him to check out a few of the more remote locations that her already stretched-thin forces didn’t have the time for. Things had been slow for a while, so he’d figured, why not. Give him a chance to explore.
Of course, the parking level under the abandoned mall that she’d flagged as ‘suspicious’ had a big van in it with enough wires going in and out of it to be suspicious. He’d just turned the handle on one of the back doors to open it when the shots rang out.
His spider-sense flings him into the air as the bullets impact into the car just below him. He huffs a sigh of annoyance, now attached to the ceiling.
“Man, I wasn’t even going to arrest you or anything! I was just curious! Why’d you have to shoot?” He calls out to the shooter, an average looking white guy with grey and black street clothes. The man’s face is panicked, eyes wide, and his pistol shifts upward for another shot.
Spider-man flips off the ceiling, hears the bullets impacting into the concrete, and slips behind a support column. After a couple more impacts, his sensitive hearing picks up the click of the bolt, signaling the magazine’s empty.
He quickly darts from his position and swats the weapon away before the man can react, giving him a couple light hits to keep him off balance and dodging a messy swing before finally kicking the center of his chest, forcing him against the wall where he can be safely webbed to immobility. The man grunts against the webbing covering his mouth, eyes wild and bloodshot, and Spider-man wonders for a moment if he’s on some substance.
“Look, dude, I don’t want to cause any trouble with you if you’re not with the people I’m looking for. I’m just gonna make sure you don’t have any illegal stuff in your van and if you don’t, I’ll leave you alone. Sound good?” The man doesn’t seem to understand him, still struggling in a panic, and he sighs before turning back to the van.
He heaves open the heavy back door and pauses to look at its contents. There’s several toolboxes and what looks to be a control panel of sorts. In the center is an unassuming cylinder made of some kind of silvery metal, marked with organized ridges and a few small buttons, a seam crossing the middle that implies it could possibly be twisted open. Something about it unsettles him, but he can’t find anything immediately alarming. There are a lot of wires feeding into it, the ones that snake out of the van to god knows where. He absentmindedly thinks he should find their source, turning his attention to the panel.
He sadly notes that none of the buttons or switches are labeled. It looks almost like a reactor control panel, with some of the dials lined up to glowing meters that could indicate temperature or water level, except that it’s small and, well, in a van. He does a quick scan of the cylinder with his headset, and sure enough, it’s emitting very low levels of radiation, though he can’t determine what type.
There’s a ripping sound behind him, and a flash of panic darts through his chest as he turns around. The man hasn’t gotten free, and the gun remains where he’d kicked it several meters away, but he has managed to tear off some of the webbing from his mouth, jaw open and chest full to shout,
“Code-592-B!”
The sudden pulse of sheer adrenaline pumped into him by his spider sense has Peter whipping another web to seal off his mouth before his brain processes the words. His mouth thwaps shut, but his wide bloodshot eyes meet Spider-man’s white lenses, shining with a mixture of victory and fear.
The device behind him beeps, and his spider sense has him shooting another web, this time to sling away, but it’s too late. An explosion engulfs his senses, head snapping forward from the blast of the device behind him, web trailing off uselessly as he’s flung through the air. He hits a wall, somewhere, and the air bursts from his lungs as he impacts, the concrete buckling around his body and crumbling onto him.
A groan escapes him, but he recovers quickly, shoving dusty grey chunks off of him. He stands, frantically looking around for the man - his first inhale is overtaken by a cough, but with the second, he calls out, “Dude, are you alive?!” Then softer, “What the hell?!” His voice echoes, unanswered.
The building shudders and groans around him, and he knows that a critical support must have been damaged - his experience in that empty warehouse tells him what’s about to happen. Ignoring the warnings flashing across his headset, he deftly hops his way across the fractured ground to where tufts of webs peek out, tossing aside several large chunks of rubble to reveal a bloodied, pale face, mouth webbed shut.
Not sparing the time to check his pulse, he stabilizes the neck best he can and he pulls the man out, gently holding him as he runs out on foot, unwilling to risk slinging and injuring him further. He sees the garage door he entered through and beelines towards it, fresh air meeting his lungs just as the ceiling collapses behind him and throws up a final cloud of dust. He doesn’t slow until he’s far enough away that no part of the building can fall on him.
He spies a picnic table in front of a closed restaurant and heads to it, gently laying the man down. He finally presses his fingers to his pulse, waiting one second, two, three… nothing.
Fuck. This guy is definitely dead. Now that he has a moment to breathe, he sees the dent in the man’s skull, the lifeless eyes. His head falls to his chest as his arms brace himself against the table, eyes squeezing shut. Why had he let his curiosity overcome him? Why hadn’t he webbed him more securely? That was sloppy. Stupid, reckless, incompetent.
He feels that dark wave rising up in him, and instead of shoving it down like he used to, he breathes through it, letting himself feel the guilt and pain as it washes over him. It’s overwhelming for a moment, his breath hitches and his cheeks grow wet, but eventually it ebbs, and his mind clears a little.
He opens his eyes, finally reading the warnings on his headset.
!!!WARNING: HIGH LEVELS OF UNIDENTIFIED RADIATION!!! Flashes brightly, and he pauses. It’s the same radiation the cylinder had been giving off, something extremely concentrated yet unfamiliar to him. He does a quick scan of the surrounding area, and is relieved to find that it hasn’t spread beyond the now collapsed parking garage. He is not relieved, however, when a self-scan shows that the blast had caused him to become highly irradiated.
“Great,” He mutters. “More radiation on top of my normal levels. That’s gonna make my DNA super healthy.”
Similar to the radiation in the garage, it’s not spreading off of him, and honestly is decaying fast enough that’s he’s pretty sure a couple hours on the top of the empire state building will let it fully disperse harmlessly. The man - the body - is also irradiated, and with a sigh, he starts dialing DeWolff to explain the shitshow he’s created.
***
Their game night the next day is unusually subdued. Most likely it’s because Ned and MJ can sense that something’s off about Peter - he’s melancholic, more so than usual. When they nudge him about it after a few games of Uno, he lets them know that someone died, and they leave it at that.
There’s still an undercurrent of nervousness to him, though, that isn’t quite explained, and he’d only eaten half a pizza slice, and he’s squinting like the light is bothering him... MJ brings back a couple ibuprofen and a cup of water from her next bathroom break, and he accepts them with a guilty look.
“Sorry-”
“Don’t apologize. You obviously have a migraine,” She stops him, turning off the living room lights so the glow from the bathroom is the only illumination.
“You don’t have to stay if you aren’t feeling well,” Ned offers, putting the deck down, but Peter shakes his head.
“No, it’s not… I’m not sick, if that’s what you’re worried about,” He responds.
“I’m not worried about getting sick,” MJ says, returning to her seat. “I drink my Emergen-C.”
“Yeah, dude, I just don’t want you to stick around out of guilt if you feel like shit.” Ned’s concerned gaze meets Peters, and he smiles slightly.
“No, I… honestly, I don’t feel that bad. Just a little headache and some… spaciness. Probably ‘cause I got slammed into a building that then decided to collapse on me.” He brushes past that as Ned and MJ give each other a look. “Honestly, spending time with you guys is the best part of my week. I’d have to feel a lot worse to give it up.”
He pops the ibuprofen in his mouth and swallows them down with the water, then meets their eyes sheepishly. “Turning the lights down did help, though, so thanks. I think I have a few more rounds left in me. And then maybe a movie?”
The other two smile in return, and Neck picks the deck back up and deals the cards back out, while Peter tries to ignore the crawling under his skin.
***
A few days later, his worst fears are confirmed. He tries to turn the brightness on his monitor lower, but it’s already as low as it will go, and he groans in response, shutting his eyes against the building migraine. He’s trying to read the results from his most recent blood analysis, but the screen swims and doubles in front of him. The last few had been relatively normal, if not mildly concerning, but these results are obviously abnormal - and scarily familiar.
They look just like the ones from a few months ago when he had been mutating out of his control. Except this time, when he presses the inhibitor he’d hastily rebuilt to the back of his neck, nothing happens.
He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, letting out a low moan as the pressure builds behind his forehead. He’s sweaty, and nauseous, and his skin itches. He tears the inhibitor off in frustration, and it falls to the desk with a clatter. Obviously, the radiation - which he still hasn’t been able to identify - had not only accelerated his mutation, it had done something to prevent siRNA inhibition, and he’s smart, he knows he’s smart, he could figure this out, but his thoughts keep getting lost in his head like they’re swimming in a foggy lake.
“I don’t want to do this again.” He whispers, feeling his throat begin to choke with a pathetic sob. His attic hideout suddenly feels impossibly cold and empty behind him. Alone, he was alone again, and mutating into something terrible. That same despair is welling in him, and it scares him, almost more than the results on the screen.
Then he pauses. Maybe… Maybe he doesn’t need to be alone this time?
He turns to look out the window, the rain bashing against its thin sheen. Ned and MJ’s house isn’t too far… he could make it there in this weather. He doesn’t want to sling over, not in this weather and his condition, but he could walk… and maybe they’d be able to help.
His thoughts feel like sand through his fingers, but one lands solidly - MJ and Ned will help him. MJ is smart, so smart, surely she can figure out what’s wrong with his inhibitor just like she did last time. He’s on his feet and moving, unconsciously pulling on a jacket to cover the top half of his suit, and before he processes it he’s outside, walking in the rain, the cold barely registering in his mental haze.
A stumbling half-hour later, he’s on the doorstep to their building, and he slips in as a nicely dressed woman with an umbrella opens the door on her way out, an eyebrow arching at the sodden boy, but not commenting. He finds the stairwell and slowly makes his way up, relying heavily on the railing. Finally, he stands in front of their door, wet footsteps trailing behind him, and a shaking hand rings the doorbell.
He hears footsteps, and with his hearing oh so sensitive, he can track them from where he knows MJ’s room to be up to the door. He senses her eye through the peephole, and then almost immediately, he hears a lock unlatch, then another. MJ pulls the door open, and for a moment all Peter can do in his haze is stare at her in her pajamas, thinking how she looks nice.
“Peter? Are you ok? What’s wrong?” She steps out a bit, almost wary. Her sharp eyes pull him out of his stupor for a moment, clarity suddenly hitting him, and she sees his eyes widen in distress.
“I need help.” He mumbles, before his eyes half-lid and he’s swaying forward into MJ’s arms.