September 12th.
The Web hums. Not with life. With anxiety. A nervous system stretched to breaking point. They call this chamber the Nexus, the heart of their so-called destiny. Looks like a tomb. A cage woven from light, trapping insects who think they're gods. The air is thick with ozone and self-importance. Strands of fate, shimmering gold and silver, drift like dust motes in a sunbeam. They illuminate faces contorted with fear and indecision. My face remains a shifting void. Good. Let them see only the mask. Let them see the end.
The senior totems sit on thrones of hardened light. The original, Parker of the prime Earth, looks weary. Seen too much. Compromised too often. The woman, Drew, watches with a predator's stillness, but her eyes betray the same weakness. They all have it. The rot of hope. They called this meeting. A trial, masquerading as a debate. My trial.
A hush falls over the chittering swarm. The ghost steps forward.
Gwen Stacy. Drummer girl from a world that's slowly dying. She radiates a brittle righteousness, a belief in rules that have already failed her a dozen times over. Her white and pink costume is an obscenity in this ethereal space, too loud, too clean.
"He has to go," she begins, her voice echoing in the vastness. It doesn't tremble. It's sharp, honed by grief. "We can't have him here. He's a sickness in the Web."
Her eyes, visible through the lenses of her hood, find me. I don't flinch. A stare is a weapon. I have practiced.
"Look at him," she demands, pointing. A hundred pairs of eyes follow her finger. I am a statue of ink and grime amidst their carnival of colors. "He doesn't swing. He stalks. He doesn't subdue. He breaks. In the battle for Earth-7102, I saw him tear the Weaver's Child face…" She swallows, the memory a physical thing in her throat. "…that wasn't self-defense. It was punctuation. He enjoyed it. He feels pleasure from his so called 'Justice'."
Murmurs ripple through the assembled spiders. They are a herd, easily spooked.
"He is dangerous," she continues, her voice rising, a crescendo of conviction. "He's a killer. He wears our symbol, but he is not a Spider. He is a stain on everything we are, everything we fight for. Peter taught us—all of us, in our own ways—that we don't kill. That there's always another way. Trusting him," she spits the word, "is a betrayal of that. It risks all our lives, and it costs us our souls."
She finishes, breathing hard. The silence that follows is heavy, accusatory. They are looking at me, judging. Seeing only the filth I wade through, not the necessity of the act. They see the blood. They don't see the disease it holds back.
Then, another voice. Younger. Less certain.
"She's wrong."
The kid. Miles Morales. He steps forward, not with the ghost's confidence, but with a hesitant shuffle. He still looks like he's growing into his own costume, into his own skin. He can't meet my gaze, focusing instead on the senior totems.
"He… he's not like us," Miles admits, and his voice quavers on the admission. The boy is honest, at least. A rare quality in this place. "But on Earth-7102, when the Weaver's Child attacked...we were pinned. We were trying to save people, regroup, trying to find a pattern. He didn't hesitate."
He finally looks at me, a flicker of something in his eyes. Not admiration. Awe, maybe. The kind you feel looking into an abyss.
"He didn't look for a pattern. He just went in. He stood toe-to-toe with that thing when we were still talking strategy. He created the opening we needed to evacuate the sector. Lives were saved because he was there. Because he did what we wouldn't."
His argument is weak. Based on emotion. On the shock of battle. But it contains a kernel of truth they don't want to hear. Their strategies are webs of indecision. My strategy is a straight line.
"The Web showed us his mask for a reason," Miles insists, his voice gaining a sliver of strength. "It chose him, just like it chose all of us. It means something. If we exile him now… if we throw away the one person the Weaver's Child seems to actually fear… we might be throwing away our only chance to win."
He falls silent. He's made his case, but the tremor in his hands gives him away. He's defending an idea he's not sure he believes himself. He's defending a monster because he thinks he might need it. Smart kid. Scared kid.
The dam of silence breaks.
"Miles is right." The voice is smooth, quiet. Silk. Cindy Moon. She leans against a pillar of light, arms crossed. She looks tired. "I don't like him. I don't trust him. He's brutal, and he reminds me of Morlun in ways that make my skin crawl." She shudders involuntarily. "But he gets results. The Weaver's Child is not Doc Ock or the Green Goblin. It's an extinction-level event given hateful sentience. Pretending we don't need a weapon like him is denial. It's suicide."
A ridiculous figure waddles forward. The pig. Spider-Ham. He adjusts a non-existent bow tie. The air is so thick you could choke on it, and he's about to tell a joke. Predictable.
"Ya know," he says, his cartoonish voice cutting through the gloom, "sometimes a fella gets a real tough stain on his trousers. You can try soap, seltzer, a little dab of this, a little spritz of that." He pauses for effect. No one laughs. "Or ya can just use bleach. It ain't pretty, and it might burn a hole right through, but the stain's gone." He looks at me. "Sometimes the Web doesn't need silk. Sometimes it needs claws. Or maybe a mallet. Whaddaya think, folks?"
His strange, allegorical defense works better than Miles's plea. It simplifies the problem. It gives them an easy image. The chamber erupts.
"He's a psychopath!" a Spider-UK shouts.
"He's effective!" counters a Spider-Woman from a future timeline, her voice metallic.
"Our methods are what separate us from the monsters!"
"Our methods are getting us killed!"
Factions form in moments. The idealists, the pragmatists. The hopeful, the hopeless. They argue, pointing at me as if I am a piece of evidence. A murder weapon on a courtroom table. Their noise is meaningless. A storm in a teacup. The real storm is coming, and they are busy debating the color of the umbrellas.
Finally, the main Parker holds up a hand. The noise subsides, replaced by a tense, expectant quiet. Every eye in the Nexus—dozens, hundreds of them—turns to me. The floor is mine. They want a defense. An explanation. A plea.
I give them the truth.
I step forward. The sound of my boots on the crystalline floor is stark. Final.
"Not leaving," I state. My voice is gravel. It does not echo. It is absorbed by the silence. "Not exile."
I look from the ghost girl to the scared kid to the weary man on the throne.
"This debate is pointless. Your rules. Your morality. Your hope. All luxuries. All child's play." My gaze sweeps the room, dismissing them all. "You think this Web is a holy place. A network of heroes. Wrong. It's a cage. A cosmic fly trap, and something much bigger than you is the spider. You are all caught. Waiting to be drained."
I let that sink in. Let them feel the cold.
"I am not here for you. Not here for the Web. I am here for the job. The Weaver's Child is an obscenity. A knot of cosmic filth that must be scoured clean. It is the only job that matters." I pause, then deliver the final dismissal. "Your teamwork is a liability. Your mercy is a suicide pact. Stay out of my way."
The reaction is instantaneous. A wave of outrage washes over the chamber. But it's the ghost who ignites.
"You son of a bitch!" Gwen screams, her voice cracking with pure fury. "You talk about filth? You're the one who crawled out of the gutter! You're no better than the Inheritors! You're just another monster who likes to kill!"
She lunges. A flash of white and black, fury given form. She's fast. But the kid is faster. Miles shoots a web, catching her arm, and plants his feet, pulling her back.
"Gwen, don't!" he pleads, straining. "Don't prove him right!"
She struggles against the web, her face a mask of hate directed entirely at me. The division is no longer a debate. It's a physical reality. Miles Morales, standing between their righteous anger and my cold purpose.
I don't move. I don't raise my hands. I just watch her. I let my mask go blank, a perfect, unending pattern of black and white. A Rorschach test of their own fears. My silence is louder than her scream. Half the room takes an involuntary step back. They see it. They see that I am not arguing. I am stating a fact. A promise.
The tension peaks, holds for a breath, and then breaks. Not with a bang, but with a sigh of defeat from Parker on the throne. The meeting is over. Nothing is resolved. I have fractured them. Good. A fractured tool is useless. They will stay out of my way.
I turn my back on them all. On their debate, their fear, their pathetic, clinging hope. I walk out of the chamber, my journal already in my hand. The hum of the Web feels different now. Less like a nervous system, more like the buzz of a fly caught in a jar. Trapped. With me.
I flip open the journal as the light of the Nexus fades behind me, replaced by the dimmer, infinite corridors of the Web. My pen finds the page. Mumbling the words to myself, carving them into the paper, into my own mind. An oath. A reminder.
"Web thinks it owns me. Wrong. Hunt is mine. Mask is mine. Filth dies on my terms."