I slipped back into the hospital room just as the door opened.
"Mr. Parker?"
A doctor walked in, clipboard tucked under his arm. He stopped mid-step, eyebrows shooting up. "Well, I'll be damned. Awake already?"
I blinked. "Uh… yeah. Just now."
He scanned me, eyes widening slightly. "And on your feet. That's… unexpected."
I tilted my head. "Unexpected how?"
"You've been out for almost two days," he said, walking closer. "After what happened in that lab, most patients wouldn't survive an hour. And yet here you are—standing tall. Quite literally taller, I might add." He chuckled, gesturing at me with his pen. "I don't remember you being six feet when you came in."
Heat crept up my neck. "Yeah, uh… growth spurt?"
The doctor laughed, shaking his head. "If only it worked that way. No, Mr. Parker, this isn't normal. Not by any medical standard."
"So… waking up jacked after being bitten by a genetically engineered spider is… unusual?" I deadpanned.
That earned another laugh. "Unusual, yes. But miraculous, too. You seem perfectly fine. Better than fine. If you're feeling well enough, I see no reason to keep you here. Oscorp has covered all expenses."
I blinked. "Oscorp… paid for me?"
He nodded. "Generous of them, isn't it? You should count yourself lucky."
Or watched, I thought. Definitely watched.
"Now," he continued, "you'll need clothes. Something tells me your old wardrobe won't fit anymore." He glanced at my too-tight gown and chuckled again.
I grinned awkwardly. "Yeah, unless ripped sleeves are in fashion now."
He tapped the clipboard. "Get dressed, and you're free to go."
Oscorp had left a small duffel bag of my things. I slipped into my old jeans—they strained against my thighs but managed. My T-shirt? Forget it. The seams screamed the moment I pulled it down. I sighed, grabbed the hem, and tore the sleeves off, leaving a makeshift tank top that gave me enough room to breath.
I eyed my glasses sitting on the bedside table.
I didn't need them. I knew it without even trying. The world looked crisp, sharper than I'd ever imagined.
Still, habit made me reach for them. I held them up, hesitating. Then I sighed and dropped them into the trash can by the door.
"Guess that's over," I muttered.
When I stepped into the hall, heads turned. Nurses. Patients. Visitors. Eyes flicked up and down, lingering. Some smiled. Some whispered. More than a few girls did double-takes.
And guys, too.
For the first time in my life, they were looking at me.
Not past me. Not through me.
At me.
I walked out of the hospital wing with a grin tugging at my lips and a thousand questions burning in my chest.
New York never sleeps.
That was the first thought that hit me as I walked out of Oscorp's hospital wing and onto the busy streets. The air smelled like exhaust, hot dogs, and faint rain even though the sky was clear. Horns blared. People shoved past without even a glance. The world moved, indifferent to the fact that my entire life had just been rewritten.
I shoved my hands deeper into the pockets of my too-tight jeans, tugging absently at the torn sleeve of my shirt. My body felt… wrong. Not in a bad way. More like someone had fine-tuned every cell, every nerve ending, until I wasn't just Peter Parker anymore. Every sound hit sharper, crisper. I could hear the hum of a streetlight buzzing two blocks away. The tang of burnt coffee drifted from a café across the street like someone had shoved the cup under my nose. I could feel the rumble of the subway beneath the concrete as though the city itself had become a living drumbeat inside my bones.
It was exhilarating. Terrifying. Addictive.
And through it all, my brain wouldn't shut up.
What timeline is this?
That question gnawed at me, harder than the hunger in my stomach or the electricity still coiled in my veins from the bite. Because if this was just Peter Parker's usual cursed life, then I already knew how it played out. Spider bite. Uncle Ben. Wrestling match. Burglar. Guilt. The mantra that haunted every version of me across ink, film, and memory: with great power…
But this? This was different.
Oscorp was here. I'd seen it, towering over the skyline like a glass-and-steel monument to ambition. Norman Osborn's fingerprints were all over the city, subtle but undeniable. That alone screamed Raimi or Ultimate timeline. And yet… Stark was here too. Stark Industries alive and thriving. Oscorp and Stark standing like rival titans, both reaching for the future with claws bared.
The MCU.
If this was truly that world, then everything was just a giant, ticking clock. Every domino already lined up in perfect order, waiting for the first to fall: Tony Stark kidnapped by the Ten Rings in Afghanistan. That was the spark. The ignition of Iron Man. The anchor point that locked the universe into its path. From there came everything—the Avengers, Ultron, Sokovia, Civil War, Thanos. And, eventually, Tony's sacrifice.
Tony Stark wasn't just important. He was the keystone.
I stopped at a crosswalk, letting yellow cabs and honking delivery vans screech past. My reflection in a shop window caught my eye—same messy hair, same too-big glasses—but behind it, something sharper. Someone new.
"Everything starts and ends with him," I muttered under my breath.
A woman walking her dog shot me in the side-eye like I was crazy. Maybe I was.
Because if this was the MCU, then I had time. Not much, but some. Right now, the world is deceptively quiet. No Norse gods falling out of the sky with hammers. No gamma-green rage monsters smashing Harlem to dust. No alien portals cracking open above Manhattan. Just corporate chess moves, Stark versus Osborn, while the rest of the board stayed untouched.
Which left me.
And here was the part that really made my stomach twist.
I couldn't just think of the MCU. Because comics bled through too. And if even a fraction of those stories were fair game? Norman Osborn wasn't just some ambitious CEO—he was a monster waiting to be unleashed. And the multiverse… the multiverse had teeth. If I was wrong, if this world blended more than I thought, then the MCU's clock wasn't the only one ticking.
I exhaled slowly, tightening my fists in my pockets.
So the real question wasn't what timeline I was in.
The real question was: where did I fit?
The thought sat heavy on my shoulders as I spotted the Public Library across the street. It loomed like a temple, stone lions guarding the stairs. My feet carried me there before I'd even made the conscious decision.
Inside, the air was cool and hushed, a stark contrast to the chaos outside. The smell of paper and old wood wrapped around me. I approached the front desk where a librarian with square glasses looked up.
"Excuse me," I said, trying to sound casual. "Do you have public computers I can use?"
She nodded, sliding a laminated card across the desk. A six-digit code was printed on it. "Second floor, back row. Just type this in when prompted. You'll have an hour."
"Thanks."
I climbed the stairs, the card clutched in my hand. My reflection caught in a nearby window—taller, sharper. For a second I didn't recognize myself.
I shook the thought off and sat down at a computer, typing in the code. The screen flickered to life, humming softly. My heart beat faster.
"Alright, let's see where the hell I landed," I muttered.
I opened the clunky browser on the library computer, the fan inside humming like it was two keystrokes away from giving up the ghost. The fluorescent lights above buzzed faintly, mixing with the soft shuffle of pages and the occasional cough from someone buried in a stack of dusty books.
I typed in the obvious first.
Tony Stark.
Pages of results popped up—Stark Industries, defense contracts, military tech expos. Stark's name was tied to weapons demonstrations, his company hailed as America's crown jewel in military innovation. Pictures of missiles, articles about "the Jericho," stock prices ticking upward. The man was everywhere, just not as Iron Man. Not yet.
Next: Norman Osborn. Oscorp.
Biotech, pharmaceuticals, robotics. A golden boy of innovation. Stock photos of clean-cut labs and glowing headlines about Oscorp's "dedication to the future." All very polished, very corporate. Nothing about super-soldier spiders or goblin-shaped nightmares lurking in the shadows.
I scribbled notes in my battered notebook, filling the pages with quick arrows and shorthand.
Stark = weapons contracts. Osborn = biotech + expansion. Timeline not yet triggered.
Then I went broader.
S.H.I.E.L.D.
At first, nothing useful. News blurbs about "a division of Homeland Security," articles dismissing them as rumor or conspiracy. But buried on the third page of results, I found something that made my pulse spike—an actual government site. Sleek, sterile, .gov domain.
The official logo glared back at me: Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.
The homepage was dull on the surface. Public-facing stuff: information on field agents, recruitment drives, "careers in service." A basic online shop with tactical gear, surveillance tools, even branded field manuals. All legitimate enough to pass inspection, all carefully designed to look boring.
But digging through their public database, I tripped over something unexpected: a set of declassified files. Historical.
Project Rebirth. Super-Soldier Serum.
The file was sanitized—most of the pages blacked out—but the outline was there. Experiments in the 1940s. One successful candidate: Steve Rogers. Status: Missing in Action, presumed KIA, 1945.
My chest tightened. Cap was out there, frozen under the ice. Right now, the world thought he was gone.
I exited the page immediately, wiping the history trail as fast as my fingers could type. A government site like that? Best not to linger.
Still, I wasn't satisfied. I wanted more. I needed more.
I glanced around the quiet library—no one watching, no cameras near this old terminal. Perfect.
Time to push further.
I slipped into the backend with practiced ease, fingers flying over the keyboard. My past life hadn't been wasted—I knew how to crack firewalls, piggyback through unsecured ports, and peel back layers most people never saw. I tunneled deeper, chasing whispers in the code, searching for the good stuff: hidden archives, redacted histories, classified networks.
But there was nothing. No mention of Avengers initiatives. No hidden dossiers on gods, aliens, or sorcerers. If S.H.I.E.L.D. had them, they were locked behind walls thicker than I could break without drawing attention.
Frustration simmered in my gut. It was like staring at a puzzle with half the pieces deliberately scrubbed away.
Still, I didn't leave empty-handed. I stumbled across some strange websites while digging—encrypted forums that looked like black markets for tech, rumors about enhanced individuals in whispers and half-coded slang. One even claimed to sell Chitauri weapon fragments, though that was probably a scam. Another mentioned a "Hammer Project" in vague terms, buried in government procurement reports.
I bookmarked them in my head, planning to come back later with a safer setup.
For now, though, I had enough to chew on.
I leaned back in the creaky chair, rubbing my temples, notebook open to a page filled with frantic arrows and scribbles.
Stark. Osborn. S.H.I.E.L.D. Super Soldier Serum. Rogers = MIA. Future = uncertain.
I drummed my fingers on the desk, trying to quiet the electric whirl of possibilities. The library smelled faintly of dust and lemon polish, but beneath that, the city's tang leaked through the windows—car exhaust, roasted peanuts from a cart, the distant wail of a siren that could be routine or a warning. The world outside kept moving, oblivious.
Then, like a lit match flaring in the dark, an answer struck.
The Ancient One.
Of course.
She knew the future. The past. Every possible timeline. She could see the convergence points, the events that would shape everything. If anyone could tell me precisely where I was—what this world's timeline looked like, what events were already in motion, and how close I was to the moment that mattered—it was her.
I didn't need to piece together scattered articles, hack hidden servers, or chase rumors through encrypted forums. I just needed the one person who had always understood the bigger picture.
And more than that… she could train me. Teach me some of the Ancient Arts. Help me sharpen my mind, my body, and maybe even my perception of time itself.
Just because I had spider powers didn't mean I had to be the same old Spider-Man. Why should I follow that mold? Why should I wait around for some criminal to shoot my uncle just to kickstart my career as a guilt-ridden vigilante? Screw that.
If the world was heading toward gods, monsters, aliens, and mad titans, then I needed more than webs and wall-crawling. I needed magic. I needed foresight. I needed an edge.
The Ancient One could give me that.
The thought set my pulse racing.
I closed my notebook and stood, brushing the library dust off my jeans. New York was waiting. The Sanctum would be waiting. And I had a feeling this was going to be the first step in something far bigger than anything I had ever imagined.
And then another thought slid in, sly and tempting.
What if there was an artifact? Something to boost my brain. To bridge the gap.
I frowned as I pushed through the library doors, sunlight spilling over me. In my past life, I'd spent years absorbing everything I could. And sure, this Peter Parker was supposed to be smart too—but I didn't have the luxury of years. The clock was ticking. The MCU timeline moved fast. Tony's kidnapping wasn't far off, and once that domino fell, everything else came crashing down.
I didn't have time to study my way up to genius.
So why not cheat?
The idea made me grin, wicked and hungry.
Not cheating, I told myself as I walked down the library steps. Just… a little brain boost. A shortcut. The multiverse was full of relics and artifacts that could warp reality itself. Surely one of them could bump my IQ a few hundred points.
I didn't have to stay locked in the same cycle. I didn't have to be just Spider-Man.
I could be more.
And for the first time since that spider bite, I knew exactly where to start.