Chapter Text
Peter ran. His body was moving as fast as it could, lungs burning. The taste of the amniotic fluid from the tank he had just escaped left a nauseating film in his mouth.
He wasn't entirely sure what was happening. He couldn't remember anything beyond the fact that Doctor Strange had apparently been forced to send him to a new place—a new universe—when he realized that erasing everyone's memory of who Peter Parker was wouldn't work.
He had told him he was sending him somewhere Peter Parker didn't exist. A safe place, fitting for his existence. Yet, as Peter ran barefoot in a lab coat and oversized trousers, chasing a blue-eyed girl who didn't look much older than twelve or thirteen—clutching a folder to her chest like her life depended on it—he wasn't so sure Doctor Strange’s definition of "safe" was quite on point.
"Run faster!" the girl yelled urgently. Her hair was a shade of black with blue reflections. She was barefoot just like him, wearing an enormous men's pink shirt and trousers that looked like they'd been chopped off at the knees to keep her from tripping.
The clothes were clearly an attempt to cover her obvious nudeness, leading Peter to assume she had emerged from a tank recently, too. Maybe just a few minutes before him, considering she actually seemed to have some idea of what was going on.
A gunshot echoed behind them, shattering a glass panel down the corridor. Shards rained over the metal floor like freezing rain. Peter choked back a groan as a piece of glass grazed the sole of his bare foot; his spider-sense, far from giving him a clear warning, buzzed inside his head like a dull, throbbing headache. Something about this universe felt wrong, as if the laws of physics didn't quite line up with the ones he knew.
"Left!" the girl shrieked, making a sharp turn that nearly sent her skidding on a puddle of viscous liquid.
Peter pressed himself against the wall to keep his balance, leaving wet footprints on the floor as he scrambled after her. He stole a quick glance over his shoulder, and what he saw made his blood run cold. They weren't cops or ordinary security guards. They were tall, disjointed figures in unbranded gray tactical suits, their faces hidden behind reflective metal masks. They were firing suppressed weapons that launched bolts of bluish energy.
"Don't kill them!" a woman (definitely a scientist, or maybe a doctor) screamed as she ran alongside the men.
"Damn it," another scientist (or doctor, Peter couldn't tell) grumbled, shoving one of the armed men. "You can't kill them, you idiot! They're the only working prototypes! Don't ruin our work!"
Peter didn't fully grasp what was happening, though the word prototype rang loud in his mind despite the chaos. Still, he didn't have time to overthink it; they were being hunted, and judging by the girl's panic, it wasn't for anything good.
"Who are they? What is this place?" Peter yelled, barely keeping pace with her. The air tasted like ozone and industrial chemicals.
"I don't know!" she shot back without slowing down, squeezing the plastic folder against her chest. Her small fingers were smudged with ink and incubation fluids, and she looked terrified. "All I know is they pulled me out of one of those huge tanks about an hour ago, tried to force me to use abilities I don't even have through torture, and if they catch us, they're throwing us right back in!"
Damn it.
"They were gonna do the same to you! I heard them say it! So as soon as I managed to break out and saw you there, I had to get you out!" the girl said on the move. She seemed to know where she was going despite claiming to have no idea where they were. It was strange.
But everything happening here was even stranger. Strange had promised him a universe where Peter Parker didn't exist. A place where no one would suffer because of him, where he could start fresh. But the reality in front of him didn't look like a sanctuary, it looked like a massive incubation lab.
The buzz of his spider-sense lashed his temples again. A fresh bolt of blue energy slammed into the wall inches from Peter's face, showering his shoulder with sparks and glowing paint flecks.
The buzzing flared once more, and he reacted on instinct. "Watch out!" Peter yelled, grabbing the girl by the waist and scooping her out of the projectile's path.
He moved again, leaping to avoid another bolt, accidentally sticking to the wall in the process.
Okay. He could do this. Damn it, at least his powers weren't completely gone. Maybe they were just misfiring because he was disoriented.
The girl shrieked and began swatting frantically at his arm, seemingly uncaring that Peter could carry her effortlessly despite being roughly the same height, or that he was currently clinging to a wall. "Keep running! They're gonna catch us!"
Peter didn't think twice. He unbonded from the wall with an awkward but effective push, sprinting forward with the girl tucked under one arm. "Hey, hey, easy! I got you, I'm not gonna drop you!" he blurted out in that rapid-fire, slightly high-pitched tone that always took over whenever panic started winning the race. A blue bolt grazed his ear, leaving behind the sharp stench of burnt plastic. "Okay, yeah, they are definitely not playing hide-and-seek."
"Over there! The vent!" the girl squeaked, pointing her free arm toward a high vent grate at the end of the hall, perched right above a tower of humming generators.
"There? That's... kind of small, don't you think? I mean, not that I'm complaining! I love tight spaces, second favorite thing right after not getting shot at by guys in mirror masks!"
Peter used the wall to launch himself upward, landing an impossibly high jump that defied the room's gravity. He hooked one hand onto the metal frame of the grate while holding the girl against his chest with the other. In one swift, desperate motion, he used raw finger strength to rip the reinforced metal right off, snapping rivets that scattered like marbles against their pursuers below.
"Damn it! The kid has super strength! Aim for his legs!" the scientist's frantic voice echoed from down below.
"In, in, go!" Peter muttered, shoving the girl in first before squeezing through himself, pulling his legs in just as a barrage of energy bolts obliterated the entrance.
The inside of the vent was narrow, cold, and smelled of stale dust. Peter crawled on all fours at top speed behind the girl, trying to ignore how his heart felt like it was hammering against the metal. His spider-sense kept buzzing at the base of his neck like static on a dead radio channel, but at least the immediate threat was left behind.
"Okay... I think we lost 'em for a second," Peter whispered, collapsing onto his back at a vent intersection to catch his breath. His lungs hurt like hell.
God... Doctor Strange had said "a safe place." His literal words. "You'll be safe, Peter." Instead, he was in... whatever this place was, running for his life from a threat he couldn't even comprehend, alongside a little girl.
It was complete crap. Peter had thought things couldn't possibly get any worse than they were before he got shipped off to another universe. But apparently, yeah, they could.
It was the 'Parker Luck,' he supposed. How else could everything go sideways right after thinking it was all going to be okay?
Peter cursed under his breath. He'd bet Doctor Strange was sitting in his Sanctum right now, sipping tea, while he was stuck in... in some low-budget sci-fi movie.
"We have to get out of here," the girl whispered with quiet urgency. She unzipped the folder, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and snapped the folder shut right after. She unfolded it to reveal a floor plan of the facility. "There's a path to some kind of exit. It's through an elevator, I think, so we have to get in there. It looks like we're really, really deep underground, so we'll have to climb. Or you can use your stickiness to climb us both up to the surface."
"How did you get this?" Peter blinked, bewildered as he scanned the layout.
"I stole it," she said, without a trace of shame. "I have a good memory, so I memorized the route from where we were in the tanks all the way to where the guards were while they were moving me to that scary room. I figured there might be floor plans in the guard area, so as soon as I managed to escape, I looked for them and took one. Then I went back for you."
"How did you even manage to escape?"
"I bit the doctor and stabbed one of the guards in the eye with a pencil." The girl actually looked a little embarrassed saying it.
Peter blinked, his mind going completely blank for a full second. He stared at the tiny, barefoot girl in her giant pink shirt and incubator-stained fingers, then shook his head side to side like he was trying to get water out of his ears.
Right. Okay. Fine. He was not going to think about what she'd just told him, and he was going to focus on getting both of them out of here alive first. Then he'd figure out what on earth was going on.
"Okay... pencil in the eye. Duly noted: never make you mad," Peter muttered, throwing his hands up in a playful gesture of surrender, trying to sound a lot less panicked than he actually felt.
He studied the map under the dim light filtering through the grates. It showed a massive subterranean facility, at least twenty-five levels deep below the surface, marked with high-security seals. The vent duct they were in connected directly to the main freight elevator shaft.
"Alright, good news is the map is perfect. Bad news is climbing twenty-five floors manually while my spider-sense gives me a migraine was not on my bucket list for today," Peter sighed, rolling his shoulders. "But hey, I'm good at climbing. I'm... well, I used to be a bit of a specialist at it. I'm Peter, by the way. Peter Parker."
The girl stared at him for a few seconds. Her oddly intense blue eyes seemed to scrutinize him with curiosity, as if she knew something he didn't.
"I'm Marinette," she said by way of introduction. "Marinette Dupain-Cheng."
"Nice to meet you, Marinette," Peter said, trying to offer a reassuring smile that came out rather lopsided from sheer fatigue. "If we pull this off without getting turned into lab casserole, I owe you an ice cream. Or a new pencil case, judging by your track record."
Marinette didn't return the smile, but the tension in her shoulders eased just a fraction. She squeezed the folder tight against her ribs and cast a nervous glance down the dark stretch of the vent. The constant hum of the air conditioning muffled the distant blare of alarms, which had begun pounding like an angry metal heartbeat deep within the facility.
"We need to move now, Peter," she whispered, trying to swallow down her panic the same way he was—a nearly impossible task given that her eyes were as expressive as an open book.
He nodded, and they crawled forward through the ventilation ducts until the girl brought them to a halt. Peter squeezed past her to lead the way, prying the vent slats open as best he could before poking his head out. Pure darkness stretched both above and below; he'd have to climb with extreme care unless he fancied ending up dead, especially considering he didn't have his web-shooters.
"Think you can hold on tight to me?"
The girl looked at him, terrified, before taking a deep breath and giving a firm nod. "I can."
"Alright. I'm gonna step out first, and as soon as I give you the word, I need you to come out too and hold onto me as tight as you can with your arms and legs. It's a tight squeeze, so we can't both get out at the same time."
Man, the kid was going to have to be ridiculously careful coming out, or she'd end up falling. Peter would do everything humanly possible to prevent that, but still... there wasn't much margin for error without his webs to catch her.
Peter didn't wait for hesitation to paralyze her. He carefully backed out of the vent, pressing the soles of his bare feet and the palms of his hands directly against the freezing, slick metal of the elevator shaft. Panic spiked when his hand slipped for a fraction of a second—as if his powers had briefly cut out—but he managed to stabilize himself quickly.
He glanced around, taking in how far the opposite walls were and staring down into the abyss beneath his feet, which faded into a pitch-black void broken only by the pulsing red glow of emergency lights rotating several floors below. He looked up to see the exact same thing, save for a tiny pinpoint of light at the very top that he assumed was the ground floor exit.
Peter held his breath, clinging to the metal with just enough force not to slide on the residual moisture covering his skin. He turned slightly, reaching a firm arm back toward the narrow vent opening.
"Alright, Marinette. You're up," he said, using the calmest voice he could muster despite the headache hammering at his temples. "Slow and steady. Keep your eyes on me, don't look down. Absolutely no looking down, got it? There's nothing interesting down there anyway, just bad air."
The girl nodded, her lips pressed into a tight, thin line. She swung her legs out of the duct with cautious slowness and pushed herself forward. The instant her feet hit empty air, she let out a muffled gasp of panic, but Peter caught her immediately, wrapping his left arm around her back. Marinette reacted on pure instinct: she locked her arms around his neck with surprising force and wrapped her legs around his waist, clinging to his torso like a limpet. Her ragged breath puffed directly against his shoulder.
"I've got you. You're doing great," Peter murmured, double-checking her hold before planting both hands firmly back onto the vertical wall of the shaft. "Now, hang on tight and don't let go. We're going up a few floors."
He began the climb. Every single movement was a test of willpower and focus. Without his suit or web-shooters, his wall-crawling depended entirely on his ability to channel his strength through his fingertips and the soles of his bare feet, which were quickly becoming scraped raw by the rough metal surface. To make matters worse, the extra weight on his back and the erratic flickering of his powers made every gained meter an exhausting ordeal.
Halfway up, a metallic crash echoed from the depths of the shaft.
"They're activating the manual elevator brakes!" Marinette shrieked against his neck. "They're gonna bring the platform up to crush us against the ceiling!"
"Wow, how creative," Peter muttered, gritting his teeth as he picked up the pace, scaling hand over hand at a breakneck speed. "And here I thought lab villains only knew how to shoot laser beams."
The hum of a heavy motor and the screech of rusted pulleys began gaining ground from below. A massive mass of steel was coming up fast, threatening to seal the shaft. Peter pushed his muscles to the absolute limit, feeling his lungs burn from the accumulated strain. Just as the elevator's huge shadow came within a few meters of flattening them, he spotted an upper maintenance hatch.
With a desperate push off his legs, Peter launched himself upward, hooked his arm onto the hatch frame, kicked the lock with his heel until the latch snapped, and pulled himself and Marinette inside—seconds before the elevator platform roared past with a deafening impact.
They both slammed onto a cold ceramic floor, skidding a few meters. Ow, ow, damn it. That hurt.
"Peter!" the girl cried out in panic. He looked up, only to see guards standing just a few meters away.
Fuck.
He scrambled to his feet, helping the girl up, and broke into a run, never letting go of her hand for a single second. They were being pursued again, obviously aiming to recapture them.
"Bathroom!" Marinette yelled.
"Not a great time, Marinette!" Peter shot back because, seriously, now was not the time to need a bathroom break.
"Not that! Bathroom!" the girl repeated as they sprinted. "The sewers!"
"Got it, bathroom it is!" Peter exclaimed, sharply veering off just as a volley of blue energy bolts pulverized the tiles to his left.
They skidded into an adjacent service hallway. The metal sign on the wall pointed toward a staff locker room and restrooms. Without hesitating, Peter kicked the solid wood door, sending it flying off its hinges.
The restroom was deserted, lit only by a fluorescent light that flickered with a annoying hum. Peter headed straight for the center of the room, scanning for the main drainage access cover. Right in the middle of the gray tiled floor, a heavy cast-iron cover blocked access to the facility's underground sewer network.
"Stand back, Marinette," he warned.
He dug his bare fingers beneath the iron edges. With a roar of effort that echoed off the tiled walls, he ripped the cover off completely and hurled it toward the doorway just as the first mirror-masked guards burst in. The iron lid slammed into the front two operatives with projectile force, temporarily blocking the threshold.
The stench of stagnant water and chemicals instantly billowed up from the opening.
"You first. I've got you," Peter said, scooping the girl up under her arms and lowering her quickly down the narrow vertical shaft before dropping down right behind her.
They plummeted about four meters, landing in a drainage trough. The cold water came up to their knees. Above them, the blasts from the energy weapons began tearing through the restroom floor, showering debris down into the channel.
"This way!" Marinette squeaked, consulting the map route from memory as they stumbled through the murky current.
They ran through the gloom for what felt like hours, guided only by the faint ambient light filtering down through the city's storm grates above. The throbbing ache in Peter's head refused to quit, but the sheer urgency of reaching the surface numbed the fatigue in his scraped legs.
Finally, a wrought-iron ladder embedded in the brick wall offered an upward escape route. Peter climbed first, using his shoulders to heave the heavy manhole cover aside, and signaled for Marinette to climb up right after him.
Emerging onto the surface, the air they breathed didn't smell like flowers or pure freedom, it smelled like smog, burnt gasoline, and hot asphalt.
Peter helped Marinette out of the hole and slid the cover back into place to hide their tracks. He leaned against the wall of the dark alley they had exited into, utterly exhausted, trying to catch his breath while looking down at his feet, which were covered in mud and minor cuts.
"We... we made it," Peter gasped, wiping a trembling hand across his filthy face. "We're out. We're actually out."
They stepped cautiously out of the alley and onto a main avenue to gauge their surroundings. It was night, but the city was fully illuminated by massive promotional screens and skyscrapers featuring an imposing, monumental, and clean futuristic architecture—almost surreal. Sleek, aerodynamic vehicles zipped down the streets at high speeds.
However, something on the horizon stopped Peter dead in his tracks.
Several kilometers away, dominating the city skyline, stood a colossal skyscraper made of dark glass and steel, crowned by a massive "L"-shaped structure glowing with golden light at the top.
Peter frowned, a chill running down his spine that had nothing to do with his wet clothes.
"Wait..." he whispered, staring at the signs on nearby buildings and then at the massive LexCorp tower. "Marinette... do you have any idea where we are?"
The girl, clutching the folder against her chest with one hand and adjusting her oversized pink shirt with the other, stared up at the towering skyscrapers with wide eyes.
"I haven't the slightest clue," she whispered, taking a step back as a giant hologram drifted across the facade of a nearby building. "It doesn't look like anywhere I've ever seen."
"So this definitely isn't New York either, then," Peter added under his breath, feeling like the 'Parker Luck' had just scored another point.
So he really was in another universe. They were probably in some random city in the US, judging by the fact that the main language still seemed to be English.
They needed to figure out where they were, fast. No—first, they needed to get actual clothes to blend in. It was obvious they'd be hunted, and while Peter was used to fighting, this little girl definitely wasn't. That meant it was up to him to be the responsible adult and keep her safe until he worked out what was going on.
Maybe they should even run away from the city and get as far as possible. Though that would be tricky considering they had no money, no ID, and nothing besides a folder the girl seemed reluctant to let go of.
"Okay, step one: don't look like two lab patients who just escaped from a B-movie," Peter muttered, looking down at his filthy lab coat and cropped trousers floating around his waist. "Step two: get shoes. Please, shoes."
He looked at Marinette. The girl stood beside him, shivering slightly under the giant shirt, but keeping her knuckles white around the folder. Her blue eyes darted constantly, scanning every alleyway with an alertness that didn't fit someone her age.
"Alright, the plan is simple—" Peter said, suddenly noticing that he and the girl were the exact same height.
Wait, wait, wait. Why were they the exact same height? He was seventeen years old, for crying out loud. He couldn't be the same size as a twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl. He was positive he wasn't that short.
"Peter?" Marinette called out, confused and worried as she saw him trail off.
"How old do I look?"
"Twelve or thirteen," Marinette replied without hesitation, her brow furrowing in confusion. "Why?"
Damn it.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
This was not cool. Not cool at all.
What on earth had Doctor Strange actually done to him?
His pulse hammered in his ears with the violence of a hydraulic press. Peter brought both hands to his face, feeling the soft texture of his skin, there was no trace of the faint stubble that usually started showing up in the mornings, nor the slightly more defined features he had grown into over the years. His hands were smaller, his knuckles less prominent.
"Twelve... or thirteen," he repeated in a choked whisper, feeling his stomach plummet into a bottomless, terrifyingly dark pit, sending him spiraling straight into panic.
No, no, no. This can't be happening.
A suffocating knot lodged itself in his throat. Aunt May's death, the sacrifice of having MJ and Ned forget him forever, the utter isolation in that freezing little New York apartment... he had lived through all of that as a seventeen-year-old on the brink of adulthood, someone who was supposed to shoulder the weight of the world. But this... stepping back in time within his own body, or worse, being forcefully shrunk down while his mind retained every single scar, every trauma, and every memory of what he'd lost.
A wave of pure panic threatened to paralyze him. His breath hitched, lungs burning as if the amniotic fluid from the incubator was still trapped in his chest. Mr. Stark was gone. May was gone. Doctor Strange... Strange had completely ruined it. A sharp pang of rage and helplessness pierced his chest. All he had wanted was to help, to fix the mess, and in return, he had been thrown into a foreign universe, stripped of his identity, his webs, and even his age.
He was going to break down right there, right in the middle of the alleyway loading dock, under the light drizzle that was starting to fall.
Then, a small tug on the sleeve of his oversized lab coat brought him snapping back to reality.
He looked down at the girl in front of him. Marinette was watching him, lips pressed into a tight line, her eyes wide with fear. She was shivering, barefoot on the freezing asphalt, clutching that crumpled folder as if it were her only anchor in the world. She had no one else. In this hostile, unknown universe, he was the only thing standing between her and being locked back inside a glass tank.
A seventeen-year-old trapped in the body of a pre-teen.
Damn it. A kid was depending on him now, and to make matters worse, he looked like he hadn't even cleared thirteen.
Peter swallowed hard, forcing air back into his lungs. His sense of responsibility—that invisible yet crushing weight May had etched into his blood—took control over the panic. If he fell apart now, they were both dead. He had to be the adult, even if his body claimed otherwise. He had to be Spider-Man, even without the suit.
"Okay... okay, it's fine. It's just... a minor technical glitch," Peter said, forcing a lopsided smile that didn't reach his eyes, his voice rushing out in that involuntarily high-pitched, frantic tone he always got when trying to hide the fact that he was dying on the inside. "For some reason, I thought I looked older, like seventeen. I just needed to figure out what I looked like to see if I could pass for an adult, but I don't think that's gonna work." He lied.
Marinette looked at him, confused, but seemed to buy it. "So, what do we do?"
"First, we need clothes so we can blend in. And money," Peter told her. He was going to have to figure out how to get those in this city without alerting adults to two kids wandering the streets in clothes that obviously weren't theirs. "What do you have in the folder, by the way?"
"I don't know," Marinette answered. "I just grabbed it. It looked like it had important stuff in it, so I swiped it from the doctor while they were trying to study me. I skimmed through it a bit, and there's info about both of us, though not a lot." She hesitated before adding softly, "I think we're... like, experiment babies."
She handed him the folder, and Peter took it without thinking twice, reading as much of the documents as he could.
Right. So physically, his body was thirteen years old. And his body had been artificially created. He was a test-tube baby. A clone? No, that didn't seem right. According to the files, he was more like a baby born from the sperm of some guy named R. G. and the egg of a woman named C. F. He had no idea who they were—the initials didn't tell him much—but they were the genetic donors. Which meant Peter Parker obviously didn't exist here, and Strange had somehow managed to send him to a place where he didn't exist, but clearly altering something along the way so Peter could live here as part of this universe.
It was complicated math that Peter didn't have time to process right now.
On the other hand, the files also mentioned that the girl, Marinette, was his sister. His twin, apparently. Though Peter was sure she'd be more like his little sister here, considering he was mentally seventeen.
"Hold this for a second," Peter asked Marinette, handing the folder back with shaking hands as he tried to process the avalanche of information.
His brain, accustomed to solving quantum physics equations at breakneck speed under pressure, was working overtime to keep from collapsing. It all fit together in a grotesque, mathematically grim way. Strange had tried to send him to a universe where "Peter Parker didn't exist." But to physically exist in a flat, tangible universe, biological mass had to belong to the fabric of that reality. The spell hadn't constructed a body out of thin air for him; magic—or fate, with its terrible sense of humor—had bound his seventeen-year-old soul and memories to the only compatible genetic template available in gestation: this lab project.
An accelerated embryo. Born from two strangers with the initials R. G. and C. F. A test subject grown in an artificial womb to age at a rapid pace, reaching a biological thirteen in a matter of months or a few short years.
Twins, Peter thought, feeling a chill of absolute detachment. A genetic hybrid of two strangers in the wrong universe. Suddenly, the scars of his past life, the loss of Uncle Ben, May's smile right before she died in his arms, the science sessions in the workshop with Mr. Stark... it all felt like the ghost of someone who didn't even have the right to claim that past anymore. Was he really Peter Parker, or just the memory of a dead kid trapped in the shell of a lab experiment?
A distant beep from the city snapped him out of his mental spiral.
No. Stop it, Parker. Focus. Panic was a luxury he couldn't afford. If he started doubting his own existence now, he wouldn't survive the night. The girl—his "sister," or whatever she was in this twisted equation—was staring at him, waiting for the older brother to take charge.
"Alright... alright, let's break down the problem like a physics equation," Peter muttered out loud, pacing in a small circle and rubbing his temples, falling back on his unconscious habit of talking fast to process stress. "We've got a mass and metabolic acceleration issue. If those scientists grew us at this rate in those tanks, it means our bodies burn through calories like a fast-combustion engine. Which explains why I feel like I'm gonna pass out if I don't eat something in the next ten minutes."
Though, he supposed, that didn't make much of a difference from how his body usually worked, considering he'd always been starving before thanks to his accelerated metabolism. Plus, he still felt like he used to in his original universe, and he seemed to retain all the abilities he got after being bitten by that radioactive spider, even if those powers were acting up every now and then while surviving here.
Peter shook his head, forcing himself to focus on practical matters. The constant buzzing in his ears was a mix of the headache caused by his miscalibrated spider-sense and the rumble of his stomach.
"Okay. Physiology aside," Peter said, looking at Marinette with wide eyes, gesturing in the air with that classic fast-paced habit of his whenever he explained things too quickly. "Priority zero is camouflage. We can't wander around looking like extras from a low-budget fugitive movie. If a cop sees us, they'll drag us to a station or a juvenile center. And if those lab guys have pull—which, spoiler alert, they always do—they'll find us in five minutes."
He glanced out toward the alley. The light rain was beginning to slick the asphalt. About fifty meters away, across the street, the yellowish glow of a clothing donation recycling bin stood out near the back of a community center.
"Look over there," Peter whispered, pointing at the metal bin. "Clothing drop box. Not the classiest option, and it definitely won't smell like lavender fabric softener, but there are no cameras on this side of the alley, and it's free. Lucky us."
"I get that sometimes," Marinette told him with a timid smile as they both moved cautiously toward the container. "Maybe Tikki helped me this time," the girl whispered to herself, and Peter wouldn't have been able to hear her if it weren't for his super hearing.
He decided not to overthink whatever she meant by that. It was probably just something to make her feel less nervous. A made-up thing, maybe. Kids tended to do that when they went through trauma, based on what he remembered from a particularly awkward and long lecture about mental health they'd given him after the 'Blip,' following Thanos's defeat.
"Tikki, right... totally, Tikki sounds like a great lucky charm," Peter improvised in a rush, forcing a light smile as he guided her into the shadow of the bin. "I mean, if Tikki's the reason we didn't end up turned into mush by the freight elevator, I owe her a massive pizza."
He picked up the pace, feeling the soles of his bare feet ache with every stone on the wet ground. On the inside, his mind was pure chaos. Tikki? An imaginary friend? A defense mechanism from childhood trauma? It made total sense. This poor kid had been through who-knows-how-many hours of torture and experiments before escaping. If she needed to believe in an invisible pet to stay sane, he wasn't about to break that illusion. Lord knew he would have given anything to hear Mr. Stark's voice in his earpiece at that very moment.
When they reached the recycling drop box, Peter inspected the heavy security latch on the container. Under normal circumstances, the chute for dropping off clothes was designed to prevent people from reaching in and pulling bags out. But this was a simple equation of levers and superhuman strength.
"Alright, keep watch on the corner. If you see anyone, cough really loud or say something like... I don't know, 'What a lovely day for a walk!'" he whispered, making an exaggerated hand gesture.
Marinette nodded, sticking close to the brick wall with the folder held tight against her ribs once more, her blue eyes intently scanning the deserted street.
Peter jammed his fingers into the iron flap of the bin. He felt the resistance of the metal, cold and hard. Holding his breath, mindful of his flickering wall-crawling ability and the throbbing headache behind his eyes, he applied pressure with his wrists. The lock gave way with a dull, almost imperceptible snap. He pried it upward until the hinge bent enough to create an opening big enough for a small body to reach through.
"Perfect. 'Parker Luck' gives us a break for the first time tonight," he muttered under his breath.
He peeked inside the dark container, sniffing the air heavy with accumulated fabric and dampness. Awkwardly, he reached inside and began rummaging through the black trash bags filled with donated clothes. He pulled out the first bag he managed to snag and hauled it out.
"Let's see what this city's fashion catalog has in store for us..." Peter murmured, kneeling down to rip the plastic open with his fingernails.
He searched frantically, his mind running at a million miles an hour as he sorted through the fabrics. They were either way too big or way too small. Or really ugly—though he knew that last one shouldn't rule anything out, since he was in no position to judge in the first place.
"I'll check the bag," Marinette said, moving over to him. "Try to grab another one. If we happen to find a backpack, we could stuff more clothes inside and avoid spending money on clothes once we get some cash."
Peter nodded, trying to ignore the fact that Marinette had obviously just stopped keeping watch for anyone coming. Fine. He couldn't blame her. The kid obviously wanted to help, so he'd just have to ignore his headache and try to stay alert for any noise nearby.
"Good idea, I like how you think," Peter replied, giving her a small grimace that was meant to pass for an enthusiastic grin. "Teamwork. Logistics above all."
While Marinette began dumping the bag onto the ground to sort through the clothes with surprising agility, Peter turned back to the metal drop box. His stomach rumbled again, a sharp cramp doubling him over slightly. He pressed his forehead against the cold iron of the bin for a second, closing his eyes to stave off the dizziness.
Focus, Parker, he repeated to himself, like a mantra to keep his sanity intact.
He couldn't afford the luxury of processing the biological nightmare he was trapped in. Lab baby? Initials in a file? Twins? His scientific mind fought to break down the data: the artificial incubation, the hormonal frequencies for accelerated growth, the fact that he didn't have a single cell in this body that belonged to the Peter Parker Aunt May had raised. The realization that his aunt, his Uncle Ben, and even his original identity were orphan memories imported into this genetic host made him feel dizzier than his misfiring spider-sense.
But no. If he stopped to think about the sheer scale of what Doctor Strange had done to him just to keep him from vanishing completely from existence and keep him safe, a panic attack would leave him sprawling on the asphalt. Right now, his only job was to be the kid's shield.
Marinette was an actual thirteen-year-old, as far as he knew, and the product of a horrific experiment. She didn't have the tools to survive on her own. He did. He had fought vultures with mechanical wings, sorcerers, aliens, and space titans. He had fought everything he could as Spider-Man. So a few dark streets in an unfamiliar city weren't going to break him.
He reached both arms into the container and ripped open another bag inside, dragging the contents out. This time, luck leaned slightly in his favor.
"Bingo!" Peter whispered in a hushed whistle, pulling out a somewhat worn blue canvas backpack with working zippers. "Look at this. Roomy, sturdy, and with a subtle student vibe that screams 'I'm just a normal kid doing normal kid things.'"
Marinette looked up, a small smile breaking across her face for the first time. In a matter of minutes, the two of them conducted an impromptu inventory on the wet asphalt, managing to gather at least two pairs of pants each that fit well enough, a few tacky colorful t-shirts with silly words on them, a pastel pink sweater for Marinette (which she said she'd wear), and a blue hoodie for himself that he set aside to put on immediately.
They didn't find any more wearable clothes, but they did score two pairs of thick socks and, after a deeper dive into the bin, Peter managed to find sneakers. They were old and worn, but good enough for both of them for now. And they fit. Well, maybe they squeezed his feet a little, but it was barely noticeable, and Peter wasn't about to complain when the alternative was staying barefoot.
They dressed quickly, and Peter made sure to hide the clothes they'd been wearing at the very bottom of the bin. Even if someone found them, he and Marinette would be far enough away by then that no one could track them down.
He slung the backpack over his shoulder, glancing sideways at Marinette, who was now wearing a black zip-up hoodie over her new pink sweater. "Let's go," he told her, picking up a baseball cap they had found and placing it on her head. "We still need to get money."
He pulled up the hood of his own sweater to conceal his identity as much as possible from any cameras, took the girl's hand, and pulled her along hurriedly to get away from the area. Hanging around nearby wasn't a smart move.
They walked at a brisk pace through the drizzle, moving away from the drop box location. The wet asphalt reflected the distant neon lights of the city, creating blue and golden glints that stung Peter's eyes. The borrowed sneakers pinched his toes, but the simple fact that he couldn't feel the freezing ground against his skin was an immense relief.
On the inside, Peter's head was a mess of racing thoughts. He moved on autopilot, gripping Marinette's hand with just enough strength not to hurt her, while his mind tried to process the absolute insanity of the situation.
Initials? R. G. and C. F.?
He couldn't stop obsessing over what was written in that file (now tucked inside the backpack). In his universe, DNA was something sacred, the fingerprint of who you were. But here, he was the result of a test tube, a mix of genetic material from two people he didn't even know. He felt like an impostor in his own body. Or worse, like a ghost inhabiting someone else's prototype. Who on earth were R. G. and C. F.? Had they sold their DNA? Were they victims, too?
The sharp pang of anger toward Doctor Strange resurfaced, bitter and hot in his throat. "You'll be safe, Peter." What a joke of a definition for safety from the Sorcerer Supreme.
"Hey... Peter," Marinette's voice broke his spiral of thoughts. The girl was walking beside him, adjusting the baseball cap that was slightly too big for her and shadowed her blue eyes. "You're squeezing my hand really hard."
"Ah! Sorry, sorry, my bad," he apologized hurriedly, loosening his grip slightly and forcing a lopsided smile beneath his hoodie. "I was... concentrating. Thinking about step two. Money. Because, you know, free clothes are great, but free food usually involves pigeons or trash cans, and I'm not that desperate... Yet."
They turned another busy corner where the city's architecture felt overwhelming. Massive billboards displayed smiling faces and advertisements for advanced technology, dominated by that ubiquitous LexCorp logo (what on earth was LexCorp anyway?). The street smelled of exhaust fumes, dampness, and fried food from a nearby stall, a scent that sent a fierce cramp ripping through Peter's stomach.
They passed the front of a noisy bar where heavy music blared and the sharp smell of stale alcohol drifted out. Near the entrance, several men were shouting in conversation. One of them, a burly guy in a leather jacket who had clearly had way too much to drink, stumbled out the door and bumped straight into the two kids.
"Hey! Watch where you're going, pipsqueaks," the man slurred, grabbing the doorframe to keep from falling as he squinted down at them. "What are two kids doing wandering around at this hour?"
Peter reacted on instinct, stepping forward to put his body between the guy and Marinette.
"Sorry, sir, we were just passing through," Peter said, holding his hands up in a peaceful gesture. "We're heading home right now, no trouble meant."
The drunk let out an unintelligible grunt, waving a dismissive hand in the air before clumsily turning around to stagger back into the bar, tripping over his own shadow. Peter breathed a sigh of relief as his spider-sense—or whatever was left of it—finally stopped buzzing.
"Phew, okay. Let's keep moving before that guy decides to—"
"Peter..." Marinette interrupted him in a quiet whisper after they walked a little farther from the bar.
Peter turned toward her. The girl stood a step behind, her eyes glued to the pavement with an expression that fell somewhere between embarrassment and victory. She slipped her hands from her pockets, revealing a rather worn, bulky brown leather wallet.
Peter froze right in the middle of the sidewalk. He blinked once, twice, three times. He stared at the wallet, then at Marinette, and then back at the bar entrance where the guy had just vanished.
"Wait... where did you get that?" Peter asked, dropping his voice to a panic-laced whisper. "Don't tell me..."
"It was sliding out of his back pocket when he bumped into you," Marinette explained sheepishly, flicking open the wallet's clasp with fast, practiced fingers. "You said we needed money. And I saw an opportunity... turns out I'm pretty good at taking things without people noticing."
"Marinette! That's stealing!" Peter gasped softly, bringing his hands to his head in a gesture of pure moral horror. "We can't... I mean, we're the good guys! Or, well, I am... anyway, it doesn't matter what I am, but stealing is wrong!"
A violent ethical crisis surged through Peter's chest. In his mind, May and Uncle Ben's teachings slammed headfirst into the harsh reality of being barefoot, starving, and hunted by a lab full of mad scientists. He was Spider-Man. Spider-Man caught thieves, he didn't travel with one.
"But it's the only way we can get money," she muttered guiltily. She looked like she might burst into tears at any second.
"I..." Peter licked his lips nervously.
Even if he hated the idea of stealing, Marinette was right. They had no other way to get cash, and people weren't going to hand out jobs to two thirteen-year-olds with zero ID. If anything, adults would likely call the cops or Child Protective Services if they saw two kids begging or asking for work. Stealing was, unfortunately, their only option for now.
"Okay, fine," he told her. Maybe she didn't even realize stealing was wrong in the first place, considering she had just escaped from a lab and, if he was right, had been 'born' just a few hours ago. "But don't do it again. Stealing is wrong. I'll handle getting money and stuff like that—you don't worry about it."
Marinette lowered her head, shoving her hands into the pockets of her black hoodie, but gave a slow nod. The sight of the girl looking so small and guilty made Peter's heart ache. Guilt was eating at him too; the thought of keeping a drunk guy's money turned his stomach, but the raw logistics of survival overruled his ideals.
He crouched beside her in the gap between two dumpsters to inspect the wallet's contents, away from the eyes of passersby.
"Alright... let me see what we've got here," Peter murmured, carefully opening the worn leather as if it might detonate. "Fifty... seventy... about two hundred and fourteen dollars in cash. And a couple of cards we obviously can't use."
He pulled out the bills and tossed the wallet as close back toward the bar as he could. This was... an involuntary loan. An emergency fund, he rationalized to himself, trying to silence Uncle Ben's voice echoing at the back of his neck.
He stashed the cash into the backpack, making sure to zip it tight, while keeping a ten-dollar bill handy in his pocket just in case they stumbled upon an open shop to grab something to eat.
"Okay... so now we just need to get something to eat and figure out where we can buy bus tickets to get out of this city."
Marinette took his hand again the moment she saw the chance as they started walking. Peter offered her a small smile to try and ease her mind. The girl was clearly terrified, and as her supposed (older) brother, he was going to step into the role and make her feel as safe as humanly possible.
They walked a couple of blocks in silence, keeping up a steady pace. The ten-dollar bill in his pocket felt like a burning ember against his thigh—a physical reminder that they had just crossed a line the Peter Parker from Queens would have never dreamed of stepping over.
With great power comes great responsibility, he remembered. But what did responsibility even mean when you didn't even have your own body? When your powers were an unstable mess, and your only immediate duty was making sure a thirteen-year-old girl—his... sister?—didn't starve to death or wind up locked back inside a glass box?
Peter swallowed hard, a bitter taste lingering in his throat. The guilt was a lingering shadow, but exhaustion and hunger were rapidly gaining ground. He shot a side-glance at Marinette. She was walking glued to his side, holding his hand with a tight grip that betrayed a primal fear of being left alone.
D. G. and C. F.
The initials from the file flashed across his mind like a nagging bolt of lightning. A father and a mother. Real people, with real lives, whose DNA had been tampered with in a test tube to create the two of them. Did those people even know what had happened? And what on earth was he in all of this? The consciousness of the Peter who fought Thanos and watched May die was currently inhabiting an artificially engineered genetic shell. He felt like an impostor. An intruder in the life of a girl who believed he was her tank mate, her brother, her only anchor in the world.
He couldn't tell her the truth. He couldn't look into those blue eyes and say, "Hey, I'm actually a seventeen-year-old guy from another dimension who used to swing off buildings in a spandex suit, and I hijacked your brother's body when I got here—oh, and I can't go back!" Marinette was already on the verge of a breakdown; dropping quantum physics and the multiverse on her head would destroy her or make her think he had lost his mind. He had to keep quiet. He had to play the part of the big brother, even if he was falling apart on the inside.
"Let me see... a food stall or a shop..." Peter muttered, looking up to scan the sidewalk and noticing with relief that a 24-hour convenience store was open. If he was lucky, he might find some of those pre-packaged meal trays or instant soups.
They were having almost too much luck, but Peter wasn't about to get paranoid over it right now when he had more important things to worry about, like the fact that they needed to eat to regain their energy and then get out of this city. Maybe take two or three buses to different towns to throw off anyone tracking them through cameras.
They entered the small convenience store with cautious steps. The overhead fluorescent lights flickered with a high-pitched hum that made Peter's temples throb. The smell of cheap coffee, disinfectant, and warm plastic filled the air. Behind the counter, a sleepy clerk didn't even bother to look up from his phone screen.
Peter squeezed Marinette's hand and they walked toward the back aisles together, trying to keep a low profile. "Pick out whatever snacks you want," Peter whispered in her ear, making sure his voice sounded as calm as possible, even though anxiety was eating him alive on the inside. "We're going to take a long bus trip, so I'll go look for something we can eat right now in the meantime. I saw some seats by the window, so we can eat there and then head straight to the bus station."
Marinette nodded and quickly darted off to look for a few things. Peter, meanwhile, stood frozen in front of the pre-packaged food display, his gaze drifting toward the reflections in the glass.
In the glass door of the freezer, he saw his reflection clearly for the first time. And his stomach plummeted all over again.
A face that was far too round, childish, with features he vaguely recognized as his own but molded by a youth he had left behind years ago. His shoulders lacked the width he had built up through fights and training with the Avengers; his arms looked skinny inside the hoodie's sleeve. It was the face of a thirteen-year-old pre-teen, with brown eyes and hair slightly darker than Marinette's, though instead of being straight, it was slightly curly, just as it had always been in his original universe.
Now that he really looked, he hardly resembled the girl at all, except for her nose and that small curve of her lips. Other than that, he still looked like himself. Even his curls were still there. Those curls May had always loved and...
A sharp pang of physical pain shot through his chest.
He thought of May. He thought of how she used to hug him in the kitchen back in Queens when he was fourteen, telling him she'd always be proud of him. What would she think if she saw him now? It wasn't just that he was millions of miles from home, or that he was in a dimension where nobody knew who Spider-Man was. It was that even his own skin didn't feel real, even if he looked almost completely identical to how he used to. He felt like he was stealing the life of a kid who was never actually born—a hollow shell that Doctor Strange's magic had forced his soul into.
"You'll be safe, Peter."
A cold, burning rage rose in his throat. Strange had sent him to a biological dump. He had thrown him into a lab culture tank to save him from the spell, without caring about the consequences, without giving him a choice. He felt deeply betrayed. He wanted to scream, he wanted to punch through the wall, but he couldn't. He had to pretend. He had to adapt. If he started talking about the multiverse or how he was actually seventeen and came from another Earth, Marinette would think he was insane—or worse, she'd realize the "brother" she woke up with in that lab was nothing more than a stranger occupying her brother's body.
"Peter... I got these," Marinette's voice pulled him violently out of his painful mental spiral.
The girl was holding a shopping basket with a few packs of cookies (a mix of sweet and savory), two sweet pastries filled with something, a couple of water bottles, and a small, pink, childish handbag clearly meant for young girls her age.
"Can we get the bag?" she asked timidly. "It's just that I'll feel better if I'm carrying something, too. And we can store the cookies and stuff in there."
Peter wanted to tell her no because he wasn't sure if they'd have enough money and they needed to save every penny, but the hopeful look in Marinette's blue eyes stopped him from refusing.
"Sure," he said, before grabbing two trays of spaghetti and meatballs from the frozen food section. "I'll go pay. Wait for me over there in the meantime." He pointed to the stools by the window, where there was a small counter obviously set up for people to eat inside the store.
He wasn't sure if the ten dollars would be enough, so he prepared himself mentally to spend a little more. He was going to have to discreetly pull out whatever extra cash he needed from the backpack if he didn't want the guy at the register to get suspicious or start thinking they were runaways or something like that.
Peter walked up to the checkout counter, pinning the backpack against his ribs with one arm to hide the movement of his other hand, which reached in with acrobatic clumsiness to slip an extra twenty-dollar bill from the wad inside. His heart was hammering wildly against his ribs. Every step felt like walking a tightrope with no safety net.
Calm down, Parker, he told himself. This was a basic transaction. Nothing out of the ordinary. He had bought stuff hundreds of times back in Queens, so now he just had to act normal, like he was buying things back home, and not like he had a wad of stolen money on his back.
He placed the basket onto the scratched formica counter. The clerk, a young guy with dark circles under his eyes and an earbud in, didn't even meet his gaze. He scanned the items with the apathy of someone who'd seen it all by two in the morning: the water bottles, the pastries, the cookies, Marinette's little pink bag, and the two frozen trays.
"That'll be twenty-two fifty," the cashier grunted in a monotone.
Peter breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He handed over the twenty-dollar bill along with the ten from his pocket, forcing a lopsided smile, that nervous, slightly clumsy grin that always slipped out whenever he was on the verge of a panic attack.
"Here you go. And, um... could you heat these trays up in the microwave over there? Please," Peter asked, trying to make his voice sound less like a kid's and more like someone older.
The guy behind the counter just nodded with a grunt, took the trays, tore open a corner of the plastic wrap, and popped them into the humming microwave in the back. The smell of artificial tomato sauce and melted cheese began to fill the air, making Peter's mouth water almost painfully.
While waiting out the three minutes on the timer, Peter turned his head toward the window stools. Marinette was sitting on one of them, her legs dangling quite a few inches off the floor. Her shoulders were hunched, and she was staring intently out at the wet street through the glass. Under the store's bright white light, she looked so fragile that Peter felt a squeeze in his chest.
Alright, I've got this, he told himself. He just needed to get out of this city, keep Marinette safe, and figure out what to do with this new life he had been given. It was for the best, after all. He knew better than anyone that he could never go back home. He had nothing left there anyway, not even his own name or identity.