Queens buzzed with noise. Car horns blared. Sirens wailed in the distance. A radio blasted music from a corner deli. It all felt like a normal day—until the sky over Roosevelt Avenue ripped open like wet paper.
Purple light poured out, cold and eerie. A shockwave blasted down the street. Windows shattered. People screamed.
A man in a suit grabbed his chest and fell to his knees. His skin bubbled and twisted. Bones shifted under his flesh. Metal spikes pushed through his arms. His jaw stretched wide in a wrong way. He let out a roar that sounded like a machine coming to life.
He wasn't alone. All along the block, bodies changed fast. Fingers sharpened into blades. Spines sprouted armored plates. Eyes glowed with black light. In seconds, the city turned people into monsters.
Spider-Man swung in from the east. He perched on a traffic light and stared down. "Not aliens. Not magic. Got it."
One of the monsters tore the door off a taxi. The driver screamed and tried to crawl away. Spidey flipped down, shot webbing over the creature's face, and yanked it back. But the thing ripped through the webs like they were nothing.
"Okay," Spider-Man said, his breath coming quick. "Tougher than the usual bad guys."
Something slammed into the monster from the side—a huge metal fist, big as a car door. The hit sent the creature crashing into a bus, denting the whole side.
Spider-Man spun around. A kid about his age stood in the street. Black hair, orange jacket, goggles pushed up on his head. His arms weren't normal anymore—they'd turned into machines. One was a massive gauntlet. The other hummed with glowing lines.
"Back off!" the kid yelled. He charged another monster and smashed it with one punch. The machines on his arms folded away, and his hands turned human again. He knelt down and pressed a palm to the fallen creature's chest. A soft orange glow spread under its skin. The metal plates melted back into flesh. The man coughed and went still, back to normal.
Spider-Man blinked. "He just healed that guy."
The kid looked up, his eyes narrowing at the red-and-blue hero across the street. "You. Are you an Evo?"
Spidey pointed at himself. "Me? Nah. I'm your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. I do quips, pay rent, and deal with killer back pain."
"Stay back," the kid warned. His arms twitched, like they wanted to shift again. "If you're infected—"
"Buddy," Spidey said, hands raised, "if I was infected, I'd be way uglier. Hard to picture, right?"
The sky let out a scream.
The rip widened, inch by inch. Thick smoke poured out like ropes. It slithered down buildings and across the pavement, heavy and alive. Wherever it touched people, more changes happened.
A tall figure stepped through the glowing tear. Pale skin, long hair tied back, wearing a dark coat that seemed to move on its own. He scanned the city like a thief eyeing an open safe.
The kid's stomach dropped. "No way."
Spider-Man leaned in. "Friend of yours?"
"The worst guy alive," the kid said.
The man, Van Kleiss, breathed deep, like the air was candy. "No nanites in the air here," he murmured, his voice a soft hiss that carried far. "So clean. Untouched. All mine."
Spider-Man groaned. "Great, the vampire's a talker."
The monsters closest to Van Kleiss shook and turned toward the fleeing crowd. He raised a hand, and they charged.
"Move!" the kid shouted. He ran ahead, his arms whirring as they turned into giant fists again. He slammed one down on a spiky brute, cracking the street beneath it. The other fist swatted a crawling monster into a stack of newspaper stands. The machines retracted, hands normal once more. He touched the brute's chest—orange glow—and it turned human.
Spider-Man zipped over to a mom pulling her kid under a bus shelter. He scooped up the child with one arm and webbed the mom to safety. "You're okay! Well, it's not okay out here, but you're safe now!"
A news van screeched to a stop at the corner. A camera popped up from the roof. The reporter talked fast into her mic. "We're live in Queens, where a rip in the sky has unleashed mutants. A teen seems to be reversing the changes—"
"Awesome," Spidey muttered, webbing a slasher's wrists. "We're going viral."
The kid healed another victim, then one more. Each time, he had to pull back his machines and touch their skin. His face tightened with effort. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he dodged a swipe from a nearby Evo, its claws scraping the air where his head had been. "These things don't quit," he grumbled, slamming a fist into another one before curing it. The chaos was ramping up—screams echoed louder, cars crunched under monster feet, and the smoke thickened like fog rolling in from the river.
He glanced at Spider-Man. "If you're not an Evo, what are you?"
"Spider-Man."
"That's not helpful."
"Blame my marketing team."
The ground rumbled like a subway train roaring underneath. The kid braced his feet. Spider-Man tensed. The tear shimmered and spat a ring of light, blasting wind down the block. Papers flew. Signs rattled.
"Rex," the kid replied.
"Rex, huh? Cool. I'm Peter." He paused. "Wait, no—I'm not Peter to you. I'm Spider-Man."
Rex stared. "You're weird."
"Yeah," Spidey said. "I hear that a lot."
Bright repulsor beams lit the street white. A red-and-gold suit dropped from the sky, hovering low, kicking up dust.
Iron Man.
"Okay," Spider-Man said. "Dad's here."
"Not your dad," the suit replied. The faceplate cracked open a bit. "But I gotta ask—why's my city crawling with tiny killer machines?"
Tony's HUD zeroed in on Rex right away. The kid lit up like a signal flare—not Wi-Fi, not radiation, but something alive and techy. Nanites. A new kind Tony hadn't seen. He hated surprises. "These readings are off the charts," Tony muttered to himself, scanning the rip in the sky next. It pulsed like a wound, spitting more smoke that twisted toward the crowds.
"Kid," Tony said, aiming a repulsor palm, "hands up where I can see 'em."