Morning light filtered through the thin curtains of Ethan's inherited home, catching dust motes as they drifted lazily in the air. The downstairs hall—once a neglected, clutter-filled space—was now halfway restored to livability. Cardboard boxes lay flattened and stacked near the wall, the old carpet had been vacuumed twice, and a faint citrus scent from the cleaning spray hung in the air.
Ethan Vale stood in the center of the hall, hands on his waist, chest rising and falling with a tired breath.
"For a fifteen-year-old… I'm doing better than expected," he muttered with a small, satisfied smirk.
He tossed a final rag into the trash bag, tied the knot tightly, and dragged it outside. Once the door clicked locked behind him, he took a last glance at the house.
His house.
The thought still felt foreign, almost unreal. A gift from parents he could no longer speak to… one they never got the chance to show him.
With a small inhale to steady himself, he turned and jogged toward school.
The school grounds buzzed like every other weekday—students shouting across the quad, someone skateboarding past the 'No Skateboarding' sign, teachers sipping coffee like they hated the world. But as Ethan walked through the gate, backpack slung over one shoulder, something felt… wrong.
He scanned the crowd once, then again.
Peter wasn't here.
No messy hair.
No shy grin.
No nerdy rambling as he and Ned waited near the fountain.
Ethan narrowed his eyes slightly.
So it's starting already.
"Ethan!" a voice called out, breaking his thought.
Ned hurried toward him, breathing heavily, waving with arms that moved too much for the early morning. His backpack bounced with every step, and his jacket was unevenly zipped—classic Ned.
"Morning," Ethan said.
Ned slowed to a stop, catching his breath. "Dude—Peter's not coming. His aunt called—he's sick. Like, really sick."
Ethan kept his tone carefully neutral. "What happened?"
Ned rubbed the back of his neck. "Yesterday while going home, he suddenly got dizzy. Like—really dizzy. He nearly fell over. He was sweating a ton too. I told him he should probably see a doctor, but he insisted it's just a flu or something." Ned frowned. "I've never seen him like that."
Ethan nodded, though inside his mind was running a hundred miles an hour.
Symptoms appearing within hours… rapid biological changes… spider venom rewriting his DNA.Yeah. Peter Parker was changing.
But Ethan wouldn't let his expression show anything more than mild concern.
"I hope he gets better soon," he said calmly.
"Yeah," Ned sighed, shoulders sagging. "It's gonna be so boring without him. He was supposed to help me fix the Lego quadcopter. Now I'm stuck doing it alone."
Ethan chuckled under his breath. "You'll manage."
The two headed inside the building. Ned chatted about homework, the latest movie trailer, and a new coding meme he found online, but Ethan's thoughts drifted constantly—cycling between Peter's transformation, the pendrive containing Apocalypse's entire self-built cloud, and the new house waiting for him.
Three major developments.
All within twenty-four hours.
His life wasn't just changing—It was accelerating.
And he needed to keep up.
Because if Peter Parker's story had begun…
Then Ethan Vale's story was unfolding right beside it.
And his wouldn't be the same.
The bell rang, echoing down the hallway like a rushed exhale. Students shoved books into bags, grumbling about assignments and lunchtime lines, but Ethan moved with a different purpose.
His steps were quick. Focused.
He didn't turn toward the cafeteria.He didn't join Ned, who waved and shouted, "Dude, you coming to eat?!"
Instead, Ethan called back, "I'll join later! Need to check something in the club room!"
Ned made a confused face but shrugged it off.
Ethan slipped down the quieter left wing of the school where the robotics club room sat—dusty, forgotten, and ignored by 95% of Midtown High. Perfect for him.
He pushed open the door.
A familiar stillness greeted him—the hum of outdated computers, shelves filled with old circuit boards, wires coiled like sleeping snakes, and a faint burnt-metal smell from old solder attempts.
Ethan locked the door behind him.
Then he set his backpack onto the table with a solid thunk.
Inside were the disks he'd quietly purchased from the repair shop's second-hand section—old hard drives, SSDs with minor errors, and a stack of weird components that most customers ignored. The owner had given him permission to take a few extra defective pieces home to "practice repairs."
He intended to use every one of them.
Ethan rolled up his sleeves.
"Alright… time to make you a body, Apocalypse."
He spread everything out on the table—three stacked HDDs,two hybrid drives,a half-working SSD,a leftover motherboard from the shop,and several small components the owner let him borrow.
Nothing matched.Everything was dusty.Most parts were decades old.
But Ethan had something no technician in the world did:
Alternative — letting him see the best possible use for everything.AI Making — guiding him in integration.Detect — ensuring nothing exploded in his face.
He took a seat at the robotics club computer, typed rapidly, and began designing a modular storage core—a custom system with layered drives, chained memory access, and heat-diversion based on improvised parts.
The screen filled with code and diagrams.
He attached the first HDD, adjusted power flow circuits, then the second, then the hybrid drive. His fingers never stopped moving. His heart raced with excitement.
Within thirty minutes, he had a prototype.
Clunky? Yes.Ugly? Absolutely.But functional?With Alternative guiding his hands—
Perfectly.
He wiped a bit of sweat from his forehead.
"Time to upload."
Ethan plugged in the pendrive.
The computer froze for a second, as if sensing what was about to awaken inside it. The transfer window popped up.
COPYING: APOCALYPSE_ROOT (6.8GB)ESTIMATED TIME: 12 MINUTES
He leaned back, chest rising slowly.This was it.His first independent system.His first AI-host prototype.
A home for Apocalypse.
He checked Detect to make sure everything was stable.
The skill pulsed faintly in his vision—
[DETECT: SYSTEM STATUS]—storage integrity: acceptable—heat levels: stable—AI presence: dormant—intelligence pattern: unreadable (classification: unknown / evolving)
He let out a low whistle.
"Of course your intelligence level can't be read yet… You were growing even without me watching."
Rows of data poured into the makeshift storage cluster. Bits transferred. Drives hummed. And inside those disks, in those strange mismatched pieces…
Apocalypse was taking shape.
Not on a school computer anymore.Not as a fragile script on one terminal.
But as Ethan Vale's first step toward something far greater.
A true AI core.
A foundation.
A future.
And Ethan felt it—
His life had already left the rails of normalcy.
He just hoped he could keep up.