September 4th. Year Unknown.
The cage hums.
It's always humming. A low, constant thrum that vibrates through the bone, a song of a billion captured worlds. They call it the Great Web of Life and Destiny. A pretty name for a prison. I know a prison when I see one. This one's just bigger, the walls made of light and screaming possibilities instead of concrete and steel.
Today, the hum changed. It became a shriek.
A tremor ran through the floor plates of my cell, a violent shudder that wasn't mechanical. It was organic. The Web, the great and powerful beast they all worship, had a seizure. The threads of reality, visible through the reinforced portal of my containment unit, pulsed with a sickening, unnatural light. An alarm, shrill and insistent, bleated through the complex. Noise. Meant to create panic. I felt the real warning in my teeth. Something was feeding. And it was hungry.
They let me out. Not out of trust. Out of necessity. The guards, costumed children with too much power and not enough fear, kept their distance as I walked the sterile white corridors toward the command chamber. Their lenses narrowed. Good. Fear is a rational response.
The chamber was a dome of chaos. Holographic displays flickered, showing the frayed edges of a dying universe. Earth-7102. I smelled the report before I read it. The stink of ozone, burnt chrome, and perpetual, acid rain. A city worse than my own, if such a thing is possible. A place where hope had been outlawed and surgically removed. On a screen, a static-laced image showed a husk. It wore a Spider-costume, something cobbled together from synth-leather and scavenged armor. But it wasn't a body. It was a shell, drained of life, of essence, of everything that made it a Totem. A desiccated fly in a cosmic web.
The room was filled with them. The Spiders. A congress of brightly colored costumes and exaggerated postures. The kid, Miles, his face a mask of determined grief. He sees a fallen comrade. I see a data point. The blonde, Gwen, her arms crossed, radiating a tense energy that was part fury, part terror. She sees a threat to her friends. I see an obstacle. Pavitr, the boy from Mumbattan, spoke in low, urgent tones with the girl, Mayday, who clutched a stuffed animal like a holy ward against the dark. Children. All of them.
Their leader, the one they call Captain Spider, stood before the central console. He was old. The lines on his face were a map of wars I'd never fought, on worlds I'd never seen. His uniform was tactical, worn, the bright colors muted by time and grime. He didn't waste time on eulogies. He understood. This was not a time for mourning. It was a time for hunting.
"We've confirmed the energy signature," the Captain's voice was gravel, worn smooth by a thousand commands. "It's the same one that hit Earth-90214 and Earth-138. It's getting faster. Stronger. I'm assembling a strike team. We go now. We cut the head off the snake before it lays its eggs."
The kid, Miles, stepped forward. No hesitation. "I'm in."
The blonde, Gwen, was right beside him. "You're not going without me."
Pavitr and Mayday took their places. A neat little line of righteous anger. A firing squad aiming at a ghost. The Captain started rattling off assignments, coordinating portal trajectories, and assigning support roles. He was building a scalpel to perform surgery on a hurricane. Futile.
I saw the shape of their failure before it happened. They would go in loud. They would rely on teamwork, on trust, on the pretty lies they tell themselves about strength in numbers. They would be predictable. The predator would see them coming. It would pick them off. Feed on their hope.
I stepped out of the shadows. The conversations stuttered to a halt. Every lens in the room turned to me. Good. Let them look. Let them see the face that doesn't change.
"This predator's mine too," I said. The words felt rough in my throat, unused to this clean, recycled air. "Hunt isn't yours alone."
The silence that followed was heavy, thick with disapproval. It was the blonde who broke it. Her voice was sharp, a shard of glass.
"No. Absolutely not," Gwen snapped, taking a step between me and the Captain. "We are not taking him."
She pointed at me, her finger trembling slightly. Anger. Or was it fear? The two are often interchangeable. "He doesn't follow orders, Captain. He doesn't believe in any of this," she gestured wildly at the Web, at the assembled Spiders. "He's a rogue element. A psycho in a trench coat who thinks breaking fingers is a conversation. He'll get someone killed."
Her eyes, visible through her mask's expressive lenses, then locked on Miles. The accusation was raw, personal. "And you," she hissed, "stop treating him like some kind of project. He's not a stray dog you can rehabilitate, Miles. He's a rabid one. You let him off the leash, he's going to bite."
The kid flinched. The words hit their mark. I felt nothing. She was describing a tool, and she was right about its function. I don't follow. I lead the hunt. I don't believe. I act. Her fear was a validation of my methods.
I let her finish, let the poison seep into the room. Then I answered.
"Masks talk," I growled, my voice a low rumble. I looked from her, to the kid, to the Captain. "Predator acts. I act."
That was all. The truth doesn't need embellishment.
The room fractured. Some of the background Spiders muttered their agreement with Gwen. They saw me as a contamination, a sickness brought into their sterile world. But the kid… he was different. He had seen what I could do. He had stood with me on the precipice when the Weaver's Child, a creature of unravelled thread and cosmic hunger, had tried to devour a nascent reality. He saw not the madness, but the result.
"He's right, Gwen," Miles said, his voice quiet but firm. "I don't like it either. But I was there. I saw him stand against the Weaver's Child when everyone else was coordinating a retreat. He doesn't run from the monsters. He runs at them." He looked at the Captain. "If he wants to hunt predators… maybe a predator is what we need right now."
The Captain's gaze rested on me. It was a heavy thing, full of calculation. He was weighing the risk. A loose cannon versus a guaranteed casualty list. He was a logistician. He understood the grim math of war.
"Fine," he finally conceded, the word tasting like ash in his mouth. "He's on the team." He pointed a thick, scarred finger at me. "But he answers to the mission. He answers to Miles. Any step out of line—any deviation from the objective—and you're back in that cell for good. Understood?"
I gave a single, sharp nod. Words. Meaningless. There is only one objective.
Back in the cell. My sanctuary. The quiet hum of the cage was a comfort after the noise of the command room. I was inspecting the grapple launcher—a crude, gas-powered device I preferred to their silent, elegant web-shooters—when a shadow fell across the floor.
It was the cartoon pig. Spider-Ham. He stood there, leaning against the doorframe, a ridiculous smirk on his face.
"Tough crowd, eh, trench coat?" he said, his voice a squeaky parody of a hardboiled detective. He tossed a small, metallic disk at me. I caught it reflexively. A comm device. Sleek, efficient. A leash.
"Welcome to the club," he added with a wink, then vanished as quickly as he appeared.
I turned the comm over in my gloved hand. It was light, flimsy. A child's toy. But it might be useful. A way to listen to their chatter, to anticipate their foolish, heroic moves. I pocketed it. The club was a lie. There was no club. There was the flock, and there was the wolf.
I sat on the hard metal cot and pulled out my journal. The pen scratched against the cheap paper, the only sound in the cell.
Journal. September 4th. Another totem dead. Another city of ghosts. They scream and posture. Children afraid of the dark. The blonde sees the truth of me. Calls me a rabid dog. Good. Dogs are loyal. I am loyal only to the hunt. The kid speaks for me. He sees a weapon. Does not understand the weapon has its own will. The Captain agrees. A calculated risk. He will be right. I am a risk. But not to his mission.
They gave me a radio. A leash. Let them think they control me. The Web opens a door. Not an ally. Not a friend. Just another hunt.
My hand trembled as I wrote the last word. A slight, almost imperceptible tremor. It wasn't fear. It wasn't weakness. It was the opposite. It was the coiled spring of purpose, finally released. For days, I have been a caged animal, pacing, listening to the screams from other jungles. Now, the cage door was open. My hunt. My purpose. The thing that carved me out of the man I used to be. It was waiting for me on the other side of the light.
The portal platform was a disk of hard light suspended in an abyss. Around us, the multiverse glittered. A trillion stars, each one a screaming world, a dying hope. The rest of the team gathered in a small, tight circle. Miles gave a final briefing, his voice echoing slightly in the vastness. Gwen stood with her arms crossed, her mask angled towards me. Pavitr spun a web between his fingers, a nervous tic. Mayday was gone, replaced by Spider-Woman, her posture radiating a confidence the child didn't have.
I stood apart from them. The interdimensional wind, a cold, sterile breeze that smelled of nothing, tugged at the edges of my trench coat. I looked at the shimmering gateway they had opened to Earth-7102. It roiled like dirty water. I could smell the prey on the other side. The scent of ozone and stolen life.
The others saw a mission. A rescue. An act of vengeance.
I saw a balance that had to be restored. A stain that had to be scoured.
Miles looked over at me, his lens widening in a silent question. Ready?
I didn't nod. I just stared into the swirling vortex. My prey was strong. It was fast. It was an aberration.
My lips moved, the words a muttered prayer to a dead god.
"Strong. Fast. Wrong."
I took a step toward the portal, the darkness of my own world clinging to me like a shroud.
"Not running this time."