Otto's abandoned base smelled like rust, ozone, and the ghost of bad decisions. Peter kicked aside a tangled mass of robotic tentacles—some still twitching with residual neural feedback—as he adjusted the teleporter strapped to Miles' chair. The kid's head lolled forward, mask lenses reflecting the flickering overhead lights in jagged shards. Peter tapped the device's readout screen, watching numbers scroll past in a sickly green glow.
Peter leaned down "Hey, rookie," he murmured, fingers tightening momentarily on the kid's shoulder. "Don't sweat the kidnapping thing. As soon as Dracula's discount cousin shows up to suck your spider-juice, I'm hitting this button—" He tapped the teleporter's activation panel with a metallic click "—and you're back in Brooklyn"
The neural enhancer helmet hissed as Peter settled it on Miles's head. its segmented plates slithered over his head like a living thing—Otto's last cruel gift, finally repurposed. Peter watched the black alloy spider-legs flex and tighten around Miles's masked head
The thing was meant to upgrade Otto's Spider sense while he was possessing Peter's body. He never finished the project. Now it would serve to keep Morlum's attention on them after Peter enables it. It might also signal the rest of the Spiders that have probably woken up from their rooftop 'dance off'. It wont matter, by the time they sense it, Miles will be back at his place. "Guess you're getting a waking up party once you get home" Peter joked humorlessly.
The neural helmet hissed like a living thing as its segmented plates sealed over Miles' skull, the faint glow runes pulsing along the spider-leg protrusions. Peter exhaled through his nose—three sharp breaths—before slamming his palm against the base's master control panel.
The security system activated with a sound like vertebrae cracking.
Hydraulic blast doors sheared down from the ceiling, sealing all of the base's entrances and exits with twelve inches of reinforced steel. Peter watched the emergency lighting flicker to blood-red as the air filtration system stuttered into lockdown mode. His reflection warped in the main console monitor's surface—a dozen fractured Parkers staring back, each with shadows too deep for the lighting to explain.
The emergency lights bathed the lab in a pulsing crimson glow as Peter dragged his thumb across the shotgun's barrel, feeling the latent magic hum beneath his fingertips. The last reinforced blast doors had sealed giving a notification on the main console in front of him —three doors each of twelve inches of cold steel and a series of labyrinth like corridors— separating an unconscious Miles' and a vengeful Peter from the rest of the rest of the world.
He flicked a switch on the control panel with his pinky—casual, effortless—and the room shuddered as the secondary containment protocols engaged. A series of intricate golden sigils flared to life across every surface, their glow intensifying as they etched themselves deeper into the walls. Peter had spent an hour painting them with a mixture of his own blood and magic. Also made use of Otto remaining drones to help in the process, having them paint a few inside walls and vents. Now they pulsed like a heartbeat, thrumming with energy.
"Anchors," Peter muttered to the empty lab, tapping one glowing rune with his shotgun's muzzle. The metal sang softly under the contact. "Just to keep you in after the kid is gone... no soul gets out once the party starts. especially yours, Morlun."
Peter exhaled through his nose—slow, deliberate—as his fingers danced across his arsenal. The shotgun's weight was a familiar comfort, its stock worn smooth from countless adjustments against his shoulder, he had shorten its barrel to make it a bit more compact.
He'd modified the Mossberg himself with runes: every millimeter calibrated for butchery. His thumb traced the runes etched into the receiver, feeling the magic hum beneath cold steel like a sleeping predator.
The combat knife came next. He flipped it once—casual, effortless—and the blade caught the lab's crimson emergency lights in a liquid streak. Damascus steel, folded seventeen times.
Then the Beretta. His fingers paused over its polymer grip. The pistol had been an afterthought—scooped from the old SHIELD bunker on his way to back Otto's base after the rooftop *party*.
Its serial number had been filed off with surgical precision. Professional. Peter racked the slide just to feel the mechanism's butter-smooth action. A ghost of a smirk tugged at his lips when the thought surfaced again: 'Remember, switching to your pistol is always faster than reloading'. The phrase looped in his skull like a broken record until he took the gun.
Miles groaned, his head lolling to the side as consciousness seeped back in like spilled ink. The neural helmet's segmented plates whirred softly against his skull—each tiny adjustment sending fresh spikes of pain through his temples.
"Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty," Peter drawled. The words carried that particular brand of sarcasm that meant he'd been waiting awhile. "Don't worry, the spinning stops after the first three concussions."
Miles' vision swam—blurred lenses resolving into Peter's face hovering inches away, backlit by emergency lights that painted his stubble crimson. The shotgun's strap creaked as Peter leaned closer, studying Miles' pupils with clinical detachment. "Welcome back to the land of the living, kid. How's the headache? Scale of ten to 'Reed Richard's common sense'?"
"What... the hell..." he slurred, tasting copper and static. His fingers twitched against the chair's restraints—some high-tech hybrid of Octavius' tentacle tech and SHIELD-grade polymer. The neural helmet emitted a low, insectile whine when he tried to move.
He snapped his fingers in front of Miles' mask lenses. "Hey, focus up. I know Otto's neuro-juice feels like a frat party in your cerebellum, but we're on a schedule." He tapped the helmet with one knuckle, producing a metallic ping that reverberated through Miles' skull like a church bell, starting to transmit trough the Web of life. "That? That's just the spider-sense amplifier I jury-rigged. Totally safe. Probably."
He blinked hard, the world tilting nauseatingly before righting itself. "You... drugged me." The accusation came out weaker than intended, diluted by the throbbing behind his eyes.
Peter's grin was all teeth. "Drugged, kidnapped, and strapped to a supervillain's science project? Yeah, rookie. Welcome to the big leagues." He tapped the neural helmet again, softer this time. The reverberation still made Miles' teeth ache. "And for the record, it was for a good cause."
Miles blinked up at him, the neural helmet's interface projecting jagged red diagnostics across his lenses. "Good cause?" His voice came out thick, slurred by residual neurotoxin and betrayal.
"Uh-huh." Peter leaned in close enough that Miles could smell gunpowder and old leather. "See, there's this vampire—"
The sigils shrieked to life with the sound of tearing metal—three distinct pulses before Peter's shotgun was already leveled at the empty air where reality had begun to ripple. The air tasted like burnt copper and ozone, the scent curling around Miles' tongue as the neural helmet's spider-legs twitched violently against his temples.
"Showtime," Peter muttered, thumbing the shotgun's safety off with a click that sounded absurdly loud in the suddenly silent lab. His other hand tapped a sequence into the teleporter's control panel—too fast for Miles to follow—before he glanced back at the kid with an expression that might've been apologetic under different circumstances. "Your part's done, rookie."
The neural helmet whined as Miles strained against it. "Wait—"
Peter was already vanishing—not just invisible, but gone in that unsettling way where even the air didn't seem to remember he'd been there. Only his voice lingered, disembodied and strangely gentle near Miles' left ear: "You're a good kid, Miles... Don't let Spider-Man be everything you are."
The air split like like a shutter door—a sliding, tearing sound that left Miles' ears ringing. Two figures stepped through the rift, their silhouettes warped by the containment glyphs' golden light. Morlun's skeletal grin came first, teeth glinting like tombstones. Then Daemos, hulking and silent behind him, his fingers already reaching toward the neural helmet still clamped around Miles' skull.
"Ah." Morlun inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring as if tasting the air. "The Parker boy's scent is all over this trap." His tongue darted out, lizard-quick. "But where—"
The teleporter flared to life with a sound like shattering glass. Miles vanished mid-scream, his figure dissolving into blue static just as Daemos reached for him. The Inheritor's claws passed through empty air with a furious snarl.
He whirled toward one of the glyph-etched walls, muscles coiling. The magic hissed around them, tendrils of smoke curling upward. "We're caged."
Morlun tilted his head, listening to something beyond human hearing. His grin widened. "No matter. The child was never the meal." He turned slowly, leather coat whispering against the floor. "Just the invitation."
His grin froze mid-snarl as Peter's voice echoed through the lab—directionless, omnipresent, bouncing off containment glyphs in mocking stereo. "You know," the disembodied words dripped with amusement, "for an ancient, dimension-hopping parasite, you're really bad at pattern recognition." A shotgun shell clattered to the floor near Daemos' feet—appearing from thin air like a magic trick. "Was the neon 'THIS IS A TRAP' sign too subtle? Should I have spelled it out in entrails?"
Daemos lunged toward the sound, claws shredding empty air where Peter's voice had been. His massive frame collided with a wall.
The laughter kept echoing—not just from the walls, but from the ventilation shafts, the flickering monitors, even the dripping pipes overhead. It was the kind of sound that made Morlun's ancient bones itch, a calculated mockery woven into the lab's very infrastructure.
He pivoted with supernatural speed, his talons slashing through what should've been Peter's throat—only for his claws to sink into polymer and wiring. The decoy drone's single lens flickered before exploding in a shower of sparks, its shattered remains clattering to the floor with a tinny finality.
"See?" Peter's voice materialized from the ceiling speakers this time, dripping with amusement. "Finally putting Otto's abandoned toys to good use. Bet he's rolling in his grave—or would be, if the fat tub could."
Morlun didn't turn. His leather coat barely stirred as he addressed the empty space where Daemos should have been responding. "Enough games, brother. Time to hunt properly—" The words died in his throat when his outstretched claw met only air.
He turned slowly, the realization crawling up his spine like frost. Daemos stood rigid—not poised to strike, but frozen mid-snarl, veins standing out like black ink beneath his pallid skin. A single drop of blood fell from his gaping mouth and shattered on the lab floor with the sound of a broken clock.
Then Peter materialized behind Daemos like a developing photograph, one arm casually draped over the paralyzed Inheritor's shoulder. His other hand held a combat knife buried to the hilt between Daemos' third and fourth ribs.
"See, that's the thing about hunting spiders trough the web, that you guys seem to forget" Peter whispered directly into Daemos' ear, as his free hand twisted the blade with clinical precision. "The web belong to us." He yanked the knife free with a wet schick—and vanished again before the arterial spray could paint his stolen Vietnam jacket.
Daemos collapsed like a marionette with severed strings, his body hitting the floor with a meaty thud. The sound of Peter's laughter bounced off the walls—not from any one direction, but from everywhere at once, layered with the ghostly echo of a hundred dead Parkers.
Morlum lunged toward his fallen brother, the scent of scorched ozone and Daemos' blood filling the air like cheap cologne. His claws skittered uselessly against the floor as Peter's voice slithered through the lab's ventilation shafts—amused, disembodied, and dripping with mock concern that made their ancient teeth grind together.
"Ohhh, does widdle Daemos have a tummy ache?" The words bounced off every surface at once, layered with static and something darker underneath. A shotgun shell clattered to the floor near Morlum's knee—appearing from nowhere like a cruel joke. "Don't worry, big guy. That's just a teensy bit of gamma radiation coating my blade. Barely enough to sterilize a cockroach."
Daemos convulsed, black veins spiderwebbing beneath his parchment skin as his fingers clawed at the invisible toxin in his bloodstream. Morlum barely registered the wet tearing sound of his brother's nails ripping through his own chest—too busy tracking the scent of Peter's laughter curling through the air vents like smoke.
"Honestly?" Peter materialized for half a heartbeat—just long enough to tap the shotgun's muzzle against Morlum's temple in a staccato click-click-click before vanishing again. "You'll walk this off with some chicken soup and bed rest. Maybe cry it out to your mommy during the commercial breaks."
Morlum whirled, claws shearing through empty air where Peter's face had been. The movement sent Daemos sprawling—his massive frame twitching like a downed power line, tendons standing out in sharp against his necrotic skin.
"Tsk tsk, Morlum," Peter's voice oozed from the walls, the lab's emergency lights strobing in time with his words. "You should really be more careful with your brother—he's not feeling well." A wet, choking sound echoed through the vents as Daemos convulsed on the floor, black bile frothing between his teeth. "Such a bad brother. Poor Daemos. Maybe...—"
The blast came from everywhere and nowhere—a deafening roar that sent concrete dust raining from the ceiling. Morlum's left arm exploded from the elbow down in a shower of black blood and splintered bone, the force spinning him halfway around before his regeneration could kick in. "—...you should share some of his pain."
Peter materialized for exactly 4 seconds—just long enough for Morlum to see the smoking Mossberg braced against his hip, the Vietnam jacket flaring around his waist as he cocked the weapon with a brutal one-handed jerk. Their eyes met across the lab's crimson-lit expanse—Peter's pupils blown wide with manic glee, Morlum's narrowing to reptilian slits.
"Tag," Peter whispered, blowing smoke from the barrel before vanishing again. The laughter that followed wasn't entirely human; it layered Peter's signature snark over something deeper, older, like a recording played backward through broken speakers.
The overhead lights flickered like dying fireflies as Peter materialized atop a rusted surgical rig, his boots balanced precariously on a swinging IV stand. He twirled the shotgun in one hand—casual—before leveling it at Morlun's chest. "Tick-tock, Count Dracula," he drawled, tapping a glowing wrist display with the barrel. "In about... oh, let's say five minutes, this whole place gets real cozy with enough gamma radiation to microwave a Celestial."
Morlun's nostrils flared as he sniffed the ozone-thick air. "You're bluffing." His voice was dry bone rattling in an empty coffin. "even if the radiation kills us, will be back"
His grin was a scalpel dipped in honey. "Oh, sweetheart" Peter kicked off the IV stand, flipping midair to land between Morlun and the convulsing Daemos. "But see, I know your creepy brother Jennix has been playing Frankenstein with clones—which, ew, by the way—resurrecting you guys like some messed up family reunion." He tapped the glyphs pulsing on the walls. "But here's the fun part—for that to work, your nasty little souls gotta leave first."
Daemos gurgled, black blood bubbling between his teeth as Peter crouched beside him. "And guess what these pretty golden doodles do?" He traced a rune with his shotgun's muzzle, watching it flare brighter at the contact. "Anchors Glyphs. they don't just stop you from dimension-hopping out of here, they also make it so no soul gets out once the party starts."
the energy vampire's remaining arm twitched—not from pain, but from the realization crawling up his spine like frostbite. He bared his teeth in something approximating a smile, black blood dribbling between cracked lips. "You think this ends with me?" His voice scraped like rusted nails across glass. "My family will peel the flesh from your bones before dawn."
Peter leaned back against the surgical rig. The emergency lights painted his grin crimson. "Ohhh, right—the whole 'Inheritors' thing." He waved the Mossberg like a conductor's baton, and then disappeared "Let me guess: Daddy Solus sends Jennix and Verna with their little clone army, they swarm the place, and suddenly it's Parker Tartare for brunch?" His laughter bounced off the containment glyphs, layered with static. "Except—oops—your family doesn't even know you're here, do they?"
The silence stretched just long enough for Daemos to choke out another wet cough.
His laughter wasn't just sound—it was a weapon— Making Morlun's ancient marrow vibrate with the wrongness of it, layered with the static of a hundred dead dimensions. Peter materialized sitting on Daemos' convulsing form, shotgun braced casually across his thighs like he was sitting on a barstool.
"Oh, Morly," Peter crooned, patting Daemos' frothing mouth with the barrel. "You absolute dumbass. Did you really think this was gonna be another fun little spider-snack safari?" His voice dropping to a stage whisper. "You were so proud and happy of catching my scent, you didn't even tell the others, did you?"
He twirled the shotgun, the movement lazy as a cat stretching in sunlight. "Seriously, Morly," he drawled, tilting his head toward Daemos' twitching form with exaggerated sympathy. "Look at your poor brother. Frothing like a rabid Chihuahua. And where's the cavalry? Where's Verna with her 'I-want-to-speak-to-the-manager' haircut? Jennix and his creepy little clone daycare?" He clicked his tongue, shaking his head. "Face it, buddy—you got greedy. Wanted all the spider-juice for yourself."
Morlum lunged with the speed of a starving predator—his remaining arm a blur of talons and desperation, the scent of Daemos' blood still clinging to his shredded sleeve. Peter exhaled through his nose—once—and squeezed the trigger.
The glyph-loaded round left the Mossberg's barrel slower than a normal slug, spinning lazily through the air like a drunken firefly. Morlum had time to register the golden runes etched into the shell casing before it punched through his sternum with a wet thwump.
Then it detonated.
The explosion wasn't fire or shrapnel—it was concept, the magic unspooling in Morlum's ribcage like a grenade made of pure negation. His chest cavity lit up like a Halloween lantern, skeletal shadows flickering against the lab walls as golden flames licked upward from his esophagus. The force sent him skidding backward, boots carving furrows in the concrete until he collided with the containment glyphs. The runes flared white-hot where his shoulders touched them, searing twin smoking silhouettes of his outline into the wall.
Morlum's ribcage knit together with the wet sound of sinew stretching over bone, black veins pulsing as regeneration flooded his ravaged torso. He exhaled through gritted teeth—a rattling sound—just as Peter's laughter evaporated from the air vents like steam. The lab's emergency lights flickered erratically, casting jagged shadows that made Daemos' twitching silhouette seem to fracture against the containment glyphs.
"Brother..." Daemos choked out, black bile dripping from his lips as he dragged himself upright using Morlum's coat sleeve. His fingers left smears of necrotic tissue on the leather. "The glyphs—they're anchoring us—"
Morlum wrenched his arm free from Daemos' grasp, the regenerating flesh of his chest still smoking as he snarled, "Silence, worm. Your weakness disgusts me." Black blood dripped from his reforming ribs, sizzling where it hit the glyph-etched floor. He inhaled sharply through flared nostrils—searching for that familiar coppery tang of spider-blood beneath the lab's sterile stench of ozone and magic.
His brother coughed up another glob of black bile, wiping his mouth with a trembling hand. "I tried," he spat, veins pulsing like ink beneath his pallid skin. "The glyphs distort everything—his scent, his heartbeat, even the vibrations in the walls."
The ventilation system groaned like a dying animal as Peter's voice echoes. "So let's recap—gamma bath scrambles your meat suits, glyphs trap your souls like bugs in amber, and dear inheritors get to mourn their favorite pair of brothers permanently." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Unless..."
Morlum's regenerated fingers flexed, black talons scraping against the wall. The air smelled like burning ozone and overcooked meat. Peter's laughter dripped from the ceiling vents—half-amused, half-unhinged.
"Oh, don't give me that look, Morly," Peter's voice echoed as he materialized atop a shattered monitor bank. He twirled the shotgun like a baton. "There is an exit. Wide open somewhere." He tapped his temple. "Just gotta find it before..." A wrist display beeped. "Whoops. Three minutes left."
the still kneeling Daemos coughed black bile onto the floor. "How do we know you're not lying?" His voice sounded like a dying radiator.
His tilted his head, grinning. "You don't." Peter flipped the shotgun's safety off with his thumb. The click echoed. "But what else you gonna do? Cry?" The display beeped again. "Two-twenty now. Tick-tock, Count Chocula."
Morlum dragged Daemos down the first corridor they found, their footsteps echoing like gunshots in the sterile hallway. Emergency lights flickered overhead, casting jagged shadows that made the walls seem to pulse. Peter's laughter followed them—not from behind, but from the air vents underfoot, the ceiling panels above, even the rusted pipes lining the walls. The sound made Daemos' regenerating tendons twitch with every step.
"For hunters," Peter's voice mused from a cracked intercom speaker, "you two have terrible sense of direction." A shotgun shell clattered to the floor ahead of them, rolling to a stop at the base of a dead-end wall.
The vampire snarled, pivoting on his heel so fast his torn coat flared like bat wings. The adjacent hallway yawned dark and empty, its flickering lights revealing a trail of runes etched into the floor tiles. Daemos limped after him, his regenerating chest wound still oozing black blood.
"Ohhh, now you're getting warmer," Peter crooned from the ceiling. The voice dripped downward like melting wax. "Or colder. Honestly? I stopped paying attention."
Daemos' claws scraped against a ventilation grate as he rounded another corner—only to freeze at the sight of another dead end. This one was different: the walls were lined with octagonal containment cells, their glass fronts cracked but still humming with residual energy. Inside one, a single playing card—the King of Hearts—was taped to the glass. Someone had drawn fangs on it in red marker.
His claw twitched toward the defaced playing card, the motion disturbing decades of dust motes that swirled in the containment cell's flickering light. The King of Hearts grinned up at him with red-inked fangs—a crude mockery that made his tendons tighten.
The cell door hissed shut with the sound of a guillotine's descent.
Morlum spun at the noise —not having noticed when his brother had stopped following— he turned back, coat snapping like a wounded crow's wing. He made it to the containment area and lunged—too late—as containment seals engaged with a series of hydraulic thunks. The glass frosted over instantly, obscuring Daemos' silhouette except for the frantic smear of his palms against the inside.
Then the radiation pulsed.
A sickly green light flooded the cell, etching Daemos' screaming shadow onto the glass in afterimage burns. Morlum recoiled as his skin burst into flames where it brushed the doorframe, the scent of burning leather mixing with something sweeter, fouler—the stench of Daemos' flesh sloughing off in wet ribbons.
His claws dug furrows into the containment cell's glass as Daemos' screams turned liquid—the sound of a man drowning in his own dissolving flesh. The radiation pulsed again, bleaching his brother's silhouette into a grotesque negative where bones glowed brighter than skin. Black veins stood out like cracks in porcelain before the flesh sloughed off entirely, revealing the wet red underneath.
"Brother—!" Daemos' voice came out a wet gurgle, his jaw unhinging unnaturally wide as his tongue swelled and split like overripe fruit. One eye burst in its socket, spraying vitreous fluid across the glass in a starburst pattern. His remaining hand—reduced to skeletal fingers webbed with clinging tendons—scraped weakly at the inside of the cell. "Please—"
Peter's laughter oozed from the ceiling tiles like syrup from a wound. "Sixty seconds," he sang, the words syncing perfectly with the lab's emergency lights flickering to a faster tempo. Somewhere beneath their feet, machinery began whining like a dying dog. "Tick-tock, Count Fuckula."
Morlum's regenerating chest heaved. Every instinct screamed to tear through the glass, consequences be damned—but the containment flared warning green where his talons touched the frame. His brother's remaining eye locked onto his, the pupil blown wide with pain and something worse: understanding.
Then the second radiation wave hit.
He didn't hesitate—not really. That fraction of a second where Daemos' liquefying fingers left streaks on the glass counted as hesitation enough. He turned with his brother's final, bubbling scream still hanging in the air like smoke, and ran faster than he'd ever run toward prey.
The corridors blurred. Emergency lights strobed overhead, turning his shadow into a flickering monstrosity that raced ahead of him. Peter's voice slithered from the walls in mocking stereo: "Ohhh, Morly. Leaving poor Daemos to microwave alone? That's cold." A shotgun shell clattered to the floor just ahead—another of Parker's breadcrumbs.
Morlum kicked it aside with a snarl, boots skidding on tile slick with Daemos blood. He knew this path. Hadn't they just—? The hallway twisted left where it should've bent right. The walls seemed to breathe, containment glyphs pulsing like a slowing heartbeat. Somewhere behind him, the radiation alarms hit a crescendo, and the air tasted like scorched copper and burnt hair.
"Sorry about your brother, but... ~he was not the dish I was interested in… he was seasoning~" Peter sang from the ceiling vents, voice dripping faux empathy. "Come on, big guy. Think. Which way did you actually come in?"
Morlum's claws scraped concrete as he rounded another corner—and froze.
His breath hitched—daylight. Actual, honest-to-god daylight bleeding through the emergency exit at the end of the corridor. The sight punched through centuries of predatory instinct like a blessed bullet. His boots pounded the cracked floor, each stride eating up yards as the exit grew larger, brighter, more real. The hinges were rusted, the panic bar sun-bleached to pale yellow, but none of that mattered because beyond it lay sky. Real sky. Not containment glyphs or radiation chambers or Parker's fucking voice—
His right foot came down on something that clicked.
The explosion wasn't fire. It was mathematics—precise, elegant, a sphere of pure concussive force that atomized his legs mid-stride. Morlum had time to register the absence of pain, the surreal sight of his own femur protruding from vaporized meat, before physics remembered its job and slammed him face-first into the exit door. His forehead left a spiderweb crack in the floor.
"Whoops," Peter's voice chuckled from a shattered overhead speaker. "Forgot to mention the landmines."
Morlum rolled onto his back, black blood gushing from the ruins of his pelvis. The stumps twitched—once, twice—then lay still. No regeneration. No familiar itch of cellular reconstruction. Just... nothing.
He turned and crawled.
His fingers scraped against the floor, blackened nails leaving smears of necrotic tissue as he dragged himself forward. The air smelled wrong—not just the ozone and scorched meat, but something sharper underneath, like copper left too long in the sun. Radiation. His marrow thrummed with it. The realization crawled up his spine faster than his regeneration could stitch flesh back together: Parker hadn't been lying about the gamma bath.
"Tick-tock," Peter's voice echoed from a shattered sprinkler head overhead, the words dripping with mock concern. "Feeling warm yet, Count Dracula?"
Morlum's talons scraped against the floor, black blood pooling beneath his ruined torso as he dragged himself forward inch by desperate inch. The emergency exit loomed above him—its promise of freedom mocking him with every ragged breath. His fingers brushed the panic bar, the cool metal slick with his own blood, and for one delirious moment, he thought he smelled fresh air.
Then the world shifted.
The door's exterior vanished like a mirage, revealing not sunlight and sky, but the cramped interior of a janitor's closet—mops and bleach bottles stacked neatly where freedom should have been. Even the exit sign above the frame flickered and died, leaving only a blank rectangle of scorched metal. It was a hologram.
Slow, mocking applause echoed behind him.
He materialized against the wall near Morlun's ruined torso, one boot propped casually against the baseboard as he clapped with exaggerated slowness. "Bravo, Count Spinula," Peter drawled, tilting his head to admire the blackened smear Morlun's body had left across the floor. "Four-point-seven rotations midair—solid form, if we're being technical, but the landing needs work." He said in reference to his time airborne after the mine went off. "Seven-point-five from the Russian judges."
Morlum's fingers curled into the shredded floor, black talons scraping sparks as he snarled up at Peter. "You pathetic worm—you'll die with me!" His voice was raw, the radiation scorching his throat from the inside. "This whole place is flooding with gamma! Even if you kill me, your own bones will—"
Peter's laughter cut through the lab like a chainsaw through wood. He leaned against the janitor's closet doorframe, casually twirling a spent shotgun shell between his fingers. "Ohhh, buddy." The shell flicked upward, catching the emergency lights before he snatched it from the air. "There is no radiation flooding. Except..." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder pointing back down the corridor where Daemos had met his end "Well. You know. Seasoning."
Morlum's remaining eye dilated—the pupil flickering between reptilian slit and human round—as Peter pushed off the wall and crouched eye-level with him. "Jesus, Morly," he whispered, tapping the Inheritor's forehead with the shotgun shell. "Who the fuck walks into a trap that easily? Did you leave your one collective brain cell with Verna's hair gel?"
Black veins pulsed beneath Morlum's parchment skin as he choked out, "Liar! I feel it—the radiation isn't letting me heal—"
Peter sighed, rolling the shell across his knuckles in a fluid motion before pressing it to Morlum's forehead. The metal sizzled where it touched necrotic flesh. "Ding-ding! Partial credit!" He leaned closer. "See, the shells I shoot you with and the ones I've been throwing around were laced with a bit of gamma —so was the mine you just tripped— Just enough to fuck up your regeneration... long enough for..." He gestured vaguely around. "All this."
He tilted his head, watching with clinical detachment as Morlum turns face up and convulses. The Inheritor's ribs cracked audibly as another radiation-fueled spasm wracked his body—like a dying insect pinned to a collector's board. "Funny," Peter mused. "All this time I thought you guys were apex predators. Turns out?" He kicked Morlum's exposed pelvis with his boot. "You're just glorified Hot topic rejects"
Morlum's remaining eye rolled wildly, black veins pulsing beneath necrotic skin as he choked on his own trachea. Peter crouched beside him, close enough to smell the scorched-meat stench of failing cellular reconstruction. "Ohhh, right," he murmured, tapping Morlums temple with the shotgun's muzzle. "The whole life-force thing. You don't hunt—you graze. Like fucking cows with fangs."
A wet, bubbling snarl escaped Morlum's ruined throat. Peter sighed—the sound of a disappointed teacher—and pressed the shotgun barrel against the Inheritor's chest. "See, Morly, here's the thing about real hunters." His voice dropped to a whisper, threaded with something darker. "We don't go for defanged prey."
The lab's emergency lights flickered, casting Peter's shadow across Morlum's face in jagged strobes. For a heartbeat, it wasn't just Peter looming over him—but a hundred other silhouettes, their movements synchronized like a spider's legs. "Your whole family?" Peter continued, idly tracing containment glyphs in the air with his free hand. "You've been feasting on monks. Spiders who pull punches. Baby seals with web-shooters." Golden light dripped from his fingertips, forming a rotating mandala of interlocking runes. "But stand against something that bites back?" His grin split his face like a wound. "Oof. Suddenly you're the ones bleeding out in the snow."
Peter sighed dramatically as he nudged Morlum's twitching legless form "And here I thought Inheritors were supposed to be smart." He stood and gestured toward the glowing Anchor glyphs on one of the walls with the barrel of the shotgun. "You didn't even try to scratch these, did you? Not one little claw mark?" His laugh was sharp enough to cut glass. "Wouldn't have worked anyway—Otto's drones etched secondary layers inside every wall, vent, and... oh, about thirty-seven percent of the floor tiles. But still." He crouched, tilting his head like a disappointed schoolteacher. "Lack of effort hurts more than the failure, Morly."
Morlum's jaw unhinged with a wet pop, black blood bubbling between his teeth as his regenerating trachea fought to form words. His talons twitched—not in attack, but in something resembling a death rattle—before he managed a single, guttural syllable: "Why?"
He blinked slowly, tilting his head like a professor considering an unexpectedly deep question from a freshman. He exhaled through his nose—once—before breaking into a grin that showed too many teeth. "Oh, Morly. There's so many reasons it'd be easier to count the atoms in this shotgun." His boot came down on Morlum's chest with the casual finality of a judge's gavel, pinning the convulsing Inheritor as black veins spiderwebbed across his decaying flesh.
Morlum's talon twitched upward, fingers brushing Peter's calf with the weak desperation of a dying man reaching for water. The contact lasted half a heartbeat before his hand spasmed violently—blackened fingertips blistering instantly as gamma radiation flooded his compromised system. Peter watched the reaction with clinical interest, tracking the necrosis as it crawled up Morlum's wrist like ink in water. "Oops," he murmured, adjusting his stance to put more weight on the Inheritor's sternum. "Forgot to mention—I took a gamma bath too. Just a liiittle dip." He wiggled his fingers in a mocking splash motion. "Enough to make sure any last-ditch energy vampirism would feel like french-kissing a nuclear reactor."
The emergency lights flickered erratically, casting Peter's shadow across the ruined lab in jagged strobes. "back to the original question" He leaned forward, the Mossberg's barrel coming to rest against Morlum's forehead with the cold precision of a mathematician's compass. "Since you asked so nicely..." Peter's voice dropped an octave, all theatrics bleeding away like stage lights dimming. "Two reasons to do this—all of this" His thumb caressed the shotgun's trigger guard. "One. There was this little green-skinned girl. Elaine." The name came out weaponized—each syllable sharper than the last. "Smart as hell... a beautiful little green ball of energy" The shotgun's muzzle tapped Morlum's forehead twice—tap-tap—like a teacher underlining a crucial point. "You broke her neck like a fucking breadstick."
Morlum's remaining eye rolled wildly, his disintegrating lips forming silent curses as Peter's boot pressed down harder. The second reason came wrapped in a smile so vicious it could've flayed flesh. "And two?"
"Despair....adds a unique flavor to things."
The shotgun blast tore through Morlum's skull like a freight train through wet paper—bone fragments and blackened brain matter erupting in a slow-motion spray that painted the floor in Rorschach patterns of gore. Peter exhaled through his nose, watching detachedly as the Inheritor's headless corpse twitched once—twice—before turning into a twitching heap of disintegrating flesh. The smell of scorched ozone and overcooked meat thickened the air.
Peter stood there, Mossberg still warm against his palms, watching Morlun's remains dissolve into blackened sludge. He waited—shoulders loose but fingers tense on the shotgun's grip—half-expecting the vampire to reassemble himself like some grotesque jigsaw puzzle. When nothing stirred except the lab's flickering emergency lights, he exhaled through his nose and turned toward back towards the main area.
Three steps down the corridor, the hairs on his neck prickled. Not spider-sense—something softer, like the brush of cobwebs against bare skin. He pivoted on his heel, shotgun snapping up and aiming in one fluid motion. "What the fu—" The sight that greeted him punched the air from his lungs.
Another Peter stood there—, dressed in casual, with Elaine cradled in his arms like she'd never been broken. Her tiny fingers clutched his shirt's collar, her green skin glowing faintly in the dim light. She blinked at him with those wide, curious eyes—alive, so damn alive—before burying her face in her father's neck. The other Peter pressed a kiss to her hairline, then met his gaze with a nod so full of gratitude it ached.
Then they were gone. Not like a hallucination dissolving—more like a door clicking shut between worlds. The whisper that followed didn't echo so much as unfold inside his skull, gentle as a spider lowering itself on silk:
Thank you.
Peter's finger hovered over the shotgun's trigger. He'd seen enough temporal psychosis episodes to know this wasn't one—no acid-trip colors, no fractured voices overlapping. Just... clarity. The kind that left your ribs feeling hollowed out.
Peter stood there for a moment despite how tired he was, a sense of immediate relief invade him like intravenous morphine hitting his bloodstream. The Mossberg's barrel clicked faintly as it cooled against his palm. He stood there tasting gunpowder and something sweeter on his tongue—maybe justice, maybe just temporal psychosis flavored with wishful thinking. he turned to leave and while doing so mutter his replied to the empty corridor.
"You're welcome"
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Done!
so that's that.
All that is left is: the Avengers situation and a chat with May
After that Peter is out of NYC
*still not sure which route to take....*
a. Road trip route
Peter travels around, basically doing tourism while dodging the xmen and encountering all manner of problems, eventually in occasions having to drop back in NYC
b. Retired in remote area route
Peter leaves. There is a time skip of at least a year and due to extenuating circumstances he is forced to interact with the hero world again... not as spiderman. Though many will try —and fail— to talk him back into the mask.
comment on whichever one you prefer... or if you have a better option...
currently leaning towards B