The house felt too quiet when I got there.
It was late afternoon by the time I finally stepped off the last bus and started up the familiar block, the one that belonged to Peter Parker long before it belonged to me. Rows of brick houses, each one a copy of the last, stood shoulder-to-shoulder like worn-out soldiers. Lawns half-kept, kids' bikes on sidewalks, old ladies watering their flowers even though the sun was going down.
My feet carried me to a house I'd only seen in flashes of memory and movies, but my hand didn't hesitate when it reached for the key.
It slid into the lock like it belonged there. The door opened with a soft creak.
I stepped inside.
The first thing that hit me was the smell—faint detergent, old books, a lingering trace of coffee. The Parker house. My house, now. The thought felt wrong in my chest, like I was trespassing in someone's life. Because I was.
The hallway was narrow, walls lined with picture frames. I slowed down to study them, each one a snapshot of a life I hadn't lived. Peter at ten years old, grinning with two missing teeth. Aunt May held him close, her smile soft and proud. Uncle Ben was laughing as he ruffled young Peter's hair.
Three days. That's all it had been. Three days since I woke up in this body, since I stopped being… whoever I was before. And already, I was standing in this house, pretending it was mine.
"Sorry, Peter," I muttered under my breath, dragging my fingers lightly across one of the frames. "Guess I'm the one living your life now."
The house was quiet. Aunt May wasn't home—probably working late. Which was a blessing, because I didn't have the energy to fake being a nephew yet.
I climbed the stairs and pushed open the door to Peter's—my—room.
What a disaster.
Clothes piled everywhere, crumpled notes scattered across the desk, socks on the floor like some kind of weird landmine field. It smelled faintly of sweat and dust. I let out a long sigh.
"Guess it's up to me to make this livable," I said, rolling up my sleeves.
I spent the next hour cleaning, stacking books, folding clothes, shoving half of it into the closet. My brain was on autopilot as my hands moved, but I couldn't help cataloguing every piece of Peter Parker's personality in the mess.
Plaid shirts. Nerdy science tees with corny equations on them. More khakis than any teenager should legally own.
I held up a shirt with a periodic table joke printed on it and groaned. "Oh god, Peter. No wonder you never got laid."
By the time I was done, the room looked halfway decent. That's when I spotted the piggybank on the shelf.
A fat little ceramic pig with a smug grin.
I picked it up, gave it a shake. Coins rattled. A lot of them. I grabbed a screwdriver from the desk and popped it open.
Bills spilled out, crumpled but very real. I counted fast, my fingers moving like I'd done this a hundred times before.
Five hundred thirty-eight dollars and thirty-four cents.
I stared at the stack, the weight of it sitting in my hands.
"Thanks, Peter," I said softly. "I'll put it to good use. Promise."
I slid the cash into my wallet, ignoring the small twist of guilt in my gut. Survival first. Sentiment later.
The bookshelf caught my attention next. Rows and rows of books, neatly lined up like soldiers on parade. I crouched in front of it, running my fingers along the spines.
Robotics. Coding. Biology. Engineering. Physics. Photography. Fitness.
That was it. No comics, no novels, no fun. Just pure, unfiltered academia.
I snorted. "Figures. Nerd."
But my hand lingered on one of the books. Principles of Robotics, Third Edition. Heavy, worn from use. I pulled it off the shelf, flipping it open.
God, there was so much. Equations, diagrams, theories. The kind of stuff I'd normally need weeks to really digest. I groaned.
"Man, it would be so much easier if I could just… I don't know… absorb all this by touching it."
That's when it happened.
A voice. Female, smooth, almost amused. It spoke directly into my ear, though the room was empty.
Do you wish to absorb the knowledge contained within this text?
I froze. The book slipped in my grip. My eyes darted around the room, but nothing was there.
"Uh… what?" I whispered.
Do you wish to absorb the knowledge contained within this text?
The voice repeated itself, patient, calm.
My throat went dry. "Y-Yeah. I mean… sure?"
The moment the word left my mouth, the book in my hand burned hot. I yelped, clutching it tighter out of instinct.
A jolt ran up my arm, searing into my skull. The book trembled—and then crumbled into ash between my fingers. The pages disintegrated, falling like gray snow to the floor.
And then the flood hit me.
Equations, diagrams, theories—all of it slammed into my brain at once. My vision blurred, my knees buckled. I clutched my head, gritting my teeth as the pain seared through me.
When it finally ebbed, I gasped for breath. My heart pounded like I'd run a marathon.
But I knew robotics.
Not in the way I had before—not vaguely, not high school level. I knew it. Theories, design schematics, practical applications. My brain hummed with formulas and concepts I'd never studied.
I staggered to the desk, grabbing a pen and paper. Without thinking, my hand scribbled down an advanced equation for servo-motor efficiency. I stared at it, my own handwriting, my own brain supplying the answer effortlessly.
"Oh… oh shit."
A grin spread across my face.
"Oh shit!"
I laughed, half-mad, half-exhilarated. The ashes of the book still littered the floor, proof that I hadn't imagined it.
I turned slowly toward the bookshelf.
"Sorry, Peter," I whispered, eyes gleaming. "Not sorry."
I reached for the next book.
And the next.
And the next.
One by one, they turned to ash in my hands. Each one burned through me like wildfire, each one filling my head with more. Biology, physics, coding, engineering. My brain screamed under the weight, but it didn't break. It adapted.
By the time I was done, the shelf was empty. The air smelled faintly of smoke. My hands shook as I pressed them against my temples, my skull buzzing like an overcharged battery.
The room hummed with a low, satisfied silence—my head still rang from the textbook avalanche, my pulse a thrum of electrical aftershocks—but the panic that had chased me all morning had finally thinned out enough that I could think straight. The knowledge was settling into neat compartments inside my skull like crates in a well-organized warehouse. I could almost feel the shelves snapping into place.
I let out a shaky laugh and, for the first time that day, I really looked around the room. The bed was rumpled; the curtain by the window cast a late-afternoon stripe across the floor; the ash from a dozen books lay like gray confetti in a little mound by the trash can. The smell of burnt paper lingered in the air and it made me smile like an idiot.
I cleared my head until the buzz between my ears settled into something like focus, then I called out, more to break the silence than because I expected an answer.
I closed my eyes, swallowed, and called out softly.
"Uh… hello? Are you… still there?"
For a second there was nothing, just the creak of the old Parker house and the faint hum of the fridge downstairs. Then, like someone sliding into a phone call, the voice returned.
Greetings, Mr. Parker. How may I assist you?
I nearly jumped out of my skin. "Okay—yep, you're real. Great. Who… who exactly are you?"
There was silence for a beat, almost as though it was thinking. Then it answered, clinical and precise.
Would you like the User Manual downloaded?
I blinked. "What?"
User Manual. Comprehensive index of system functions and origins. Confirm download?
My heart skipped. System? Functions? Origins?
I took a deep breath, pinched the bridge of my nose, and muttered, "Yeah. Confirm."
The flood came instantly.
It wasn't like absorbing a book—this wasn't equations or diagrams. This was raw, technical data, schematics, clinical explanations that burned into my neurons like I was reading them off a screen inside my skull. I gasped, clutching my head as I staggered back against the bedframe, riding it out until it ended.
And when it ended, I knew.
Nanobots. Billions of them. Infused into my bloodstream. Controlled by a chip wired directly into my brain. The voice wasn't some disembodied AI—it was the chip itself, serving as the interface between my mind and the swarm inside me.
I let out a shaky laugh. "Holy shit."
I ran a hand over my face. "Okay, so… nanobots in my blood, brain chips in my head. Who the hell put you there?"
The answer came without hesitation.
Richard and Mary Parker administered the nanobot injection at age five. Subject compatibility: 99.8%.
I froze. My parents. My parents.
So they weren't just government scientists or secret agents like some of the comics hinted. They'd… experimented on their own son. On me.
I didn't know whether to feel betrayed or grateful.
I pushed that thought down for now. "Fine. Alright. Then tell me—what can you do? What abilities do I have right now?"
There was a brief pause, then the voice listed them out like a machine reading an inventory.
Current unlocked abilities: Enhanced senses. Accelerated vision. Superhuman strength. Superhuman endurance. Superhuman agility. Superhuman speed. Wall-climbing. Healing factor. Organic webbing. Retractable talons.
I blinked. My jaw actually dropped. "Wait… wait, wait. Back up. Organic webbing?"
My eyes went wide as I yanked up my right sleeve. There—barely visible unless you were looking for it—was a thin, almost surgical slit in the skin of my wrist.
"No way."
I pressed a finger gently against it. Immediately, I felt something twitch inside, a strange pressure, like a hidden muscle I'd never noticed. When I pulled my finger back, a trail of sticky white webbing clung to it, stretching, glistening in the light.
I laughed in disbelief, flicking it off. "Oh, that is so much better than building web-shooters."
Excitement surged through me. I wasn't just Spider-Man—I was Spider-Man with built-in upgrades.
But before I could ride that high too far, the voice cut in again.
Warning: anomaly detected. Cellular irregularity present.
My smile faltered. "Uh… what kind of anomaly?"
Analysis complete. Anomaly identified as mutant X-gene.
I blinked. My mind went blank for a second. "…I'm sorry. Did you just say mutant? As in X-Men mutant?"
Affirmative.
I rubbed my temples. "No freaking way. I actually have the X-gene?"
Correct. However, X-gene expression is currently suppressed due to cellular alterations caused by spider venom.
My brain was spinning. "Suppressed? So what—you're telling me I could've been a mutant and Spider-Man?"
Correction: X-gene has adapted to integrate with the arachnid genome. Resulting ability: arachnid manipulation. Subject possesses latent capacity to command and influence spider species.
I stared at my hands, then back at the empty room. "…You're telling me I can control spiders?"
Confirmed.
A slow grin spread across my face. "Okay. That's… actually insane. Creepy as hell, but insane."
I was about to ask more—what limits, what potential applications—when the sound of the front door opening snapped me out of it.
I froze. Voices drifted up from downstairs.
Aunt May. Uncle Ben.
Groceries rustled, bags crinkled, shoes shuffled on the linoleum. May's familiar, warm voice carried through the house. "Peter? Sweetheart? Are you home?"
Panic flared. My heart raced.
"Y-Yeah! I'm up here!" I called back, trying to sound casual even though my brain was doing cartwheels.
I left my room and headed downstairs, forcing my body to move like nothing was out of the ordinary. Except it was. Because when I stepped into the kitchen, both May and Ben turned to look at me—and their faces froze.
Uncle Ben nearly dropped the bag he was carrying. "What the hell—?!"
Aunt May gasped, eyes going wide. "Peter…"
I glanced down at myself. Right. The new me. Taller, leaner, muscles showing through the too-tight shirt I'd thrown on earlier. To them, it must've looked like I'd gone through six years of puberty in three days.
"This—this isn't possible," Ben stammered, setting the bag on the counter. "What happened to you?"
May rushed forward, cupping my face with trembling hands. "Oh my God. Peter, are you sick? What happened? Who did this?"
I swallowed hard. Crap. Of course—they wouldn't know. Oscorp hadn't exactly called home to give a progress report after their super-spider bit me. And the landline—
"Wait," I said quickly. "You guys… you didn't get any phone calls?"
Ben shook his head, frustration on his face. "Phone's been down since those damn squirrels chewed through the wires. We were gonna get someone to fix it this week."
I let out a long, shaky sigh. Figures.
So they didn't know. Not about the bite. Not about Oscorp. Not about anything. To them, their scrawny, nerdy nephew had gone out on a school field trip and hadn't been home for three days before returning back looking like a Greek statue.
I looked at their worried faces, at May's trembling hands, at Ben's furrowed brow.
I could lie. I could brush it off, tell them I'd been working out, tell them not to worry. But the thought made my stomach twist.
No. If anything happened—if things got dangerous—they deserved to know. And if I really was going to be Spider-Man, I'd protect them no matter what. It was Peter's choice to keep his identity secret as he wanted to protect them. No... this was my choice as I knew that I would be able to protect them.
I drew in a deep breath. "Okay, so a lot has happened in the past few days. Both of you… sit down."
May blinked, startled by the firmness in my voice. Ben looked suspicious, but after a moment he pulled out a chair at the table. May followed, clutching his hand.
I stood there, heart hammering in my chest, and forced myself to meet their eyes.
"I've got… a lot to tell you."