George Stacy operated out of the 12th Precinct in Manhattan. It wasn't a desk job. Being a patrol sergeant meant he spent his days on the asphalt, grinding through shifts and managing units across his sector. He didn't clock back into the bullpen until exactly six o'clock every evening.
He had barely dropped into his creaking office chair when a rookie tapped his shoulder, pointing toward the hallway. George stood up, pushed through the swinging double doors, and found his daughter standing in the corridor. She was holding a heavy, grease-stained paper bag from a local Chinese restaurant.
"Welcome to the NYPD," George said, pulling her into a tight hug. He released her, chuckling at Gwen's slightly embarrassed expression. "What brings you all the way down here to visit your old man?"
"First of all, you aren't even fifty yet. You aren't old," Gwen said, handing him the bag. "Second, I brought dinner. I bet you haven't eaten."
"I was just about to," George lied effortlessly. "I was on my break."
Gwen eyed him with deep suspicion. "What were you going to eat?"
"...I hadn't figured that part out yet. Have you eaten?"
"I grabbed a bite before I came. The place on the corner is actually pretty good."
"You went by yourself?" George paused, his brow furrowing into a stern, paternal lines. "Eating out all the time isn't a good habit. Once or twice is fine, but... I really wish Helen was still here. She would have taught you how to actually use a stove."
Gwen maintained a polite, rigid smile. She looked up and down the bustling precinct corridor. "So. Are we eating dinner out here in the hallway?"
"Of course not. Come on."
George led Gwen back into the bullpen and over to his desk. It was cluttered with case files, cold coffee cups, and scattered pens. But Gwen's eyes immediately locked onto a piece of lined notebook paper sealed inside a clear plastic evidence bag.
She leaned over and read the messy scrawl: The spider silk will decompose automatically in two hours. Please be prepared to receive it. —Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. "Wow," Gwen breathed. "This is a note Spider-Man actually left for you?"
"Yeah. We originally planned to log the webbing into the evidence locker, but we completely ran out of space when the stuff just evaporated," George grumbled, taking a container of lo mein out of the bag. He tapped the plastic evidence bag with his pen. "I stared at this for an hour. I kept thinking the handwriting looked familiar. But I know for a fact it wasn't written by Peter."
Gwen froze. "What?"
"I pulled Peter's file to compare," George said with the absolute confidence of a veteran detective. "I'd never mistake Peter's chicken scratch. I remember it perfectly from his middle school field trip waivers. Not a match."
Gwen stared at the note for a few seconds longer. She nodded slowly.
Of course it doesn't match, she thought. Peter Parker's right-handed penmanship looked entirely different.
Across town, the Chameleon was actively destroying his vocal cords.
He had spent the entire day impersonating Spider-Man, jumping between rooftops and beating up street-level thugs. Wilson Fisk had wired an abandoned construction site to the gills with high-grade explosives. The trap had been primed since yesterday afternoon.
But Spider-Man never showed up.
"Your bullshit deductions are completely useless!" Dmitri roared, hurling a metal wrench across the warehouse. He glared at Mac Gargan. "He's a high school student! We're supposed to lure him out after the final bell! Where the hell is he?!"
"My logic is flawless," Gargan replied, his voice entirely deadpan. He sat on a wooden crate, cleaning his fingernails with a combat knife. "The problem isn't the trap. The problem is that you are a coward. You won't actually commit a crime because you're terrified the Punisher is going to put a sniper round through your skull."
Gargan refused to take the blame. As far as the private investigator was concerned, Dmitri's reliance on holographic projections was a joke. If Dmitri didn't actually steal anything or kill anyone, the real Spider-Man had no reason to intervene.
Dmitri ground his teeth, completely helpless to argue. The real issue was the tech limitation. Every time he triggered a holographic projection, he had to physically hide within a hundred yards to maintain the signal link. If he didn't need to be near the construct, he would have abandoned this suicide mission days ago.
"Hey. Guys."
Quentin Beck pushed through the heavy warehouse doors. He walked over to the work table and tossed a smooth, metallic sphere to the Chameleon.
"Latest tech update," Beck announced, looking incredibly smug. "I finally integrated the invisible light spectrums into the projection matrix. Thermal imaging reads infrared light. The holograms now project artificial heat signatures. He can't see through them anymore."
"Perfect," Dmitri whispered, rolling the projector sphere in his palm.
"Tomorrow, Spider-Man dies," Dmitri said. "If the little freak actually takes the bait."
"Don't worry," Gargan scoffed, sliding from the crate. "I'll accompany you to the ambush site tomorrow. You'll see my math is absolutely correct."
The next afternoon, Carl King's condition had not improved. It had degraded into a living nightmare.
Mrs. King stood in the hallway, her hand trembling on the bedroom doorknob. She pushed it open a crack. "Carl?" she whispered. "Are you alright?"
Carl couldn't answer. He lay paralyzed on his sweat-soaked mattress.
Mrs. King stepped into the room. She approached the bed, her eyes widening in sheer horror. Carl's body was bloated, his flesh covered in massive, pulsing red blisters. Heartbroken and terrified, she reached out, her fingers gently brushing his feverish arm.
Squelch.
Carl King's skin ruptured.
The flesh tore open like wet paper. Thousands of fist-sized spiders violently erupted from beneath his epidermis, a tidal wave of chittering black legs and mandibles splashing directly onto Mrs. King.
She opened her mouth to scream, but the swarm didn't hesitate. They poured over her face, driving their fangs into her skin, tearing through muscle and sinew.
As they consumed her, the hive mind absorbed her nervous system. Flashes of her life bled into the collective consciousness of the swarm.
They saw a mother working tirelessly from dawn until dusk, praying her son wouldn't turn into a violent criminal like his father. They saw a woman working three part-time jobs just to afford groceries for a teenager who needed to play varsity football. They saw her waking up four times a night, exhausted to her bones, just to check his temperature.
The thousands of spiders finished their meal. They dropped to the carpet, swarming over each other in a writhing, chaotic mound. They began to stack, coalescing first into the rough outline of Mrs. King, before shifting and expanding into the towering, muscular silhouette of Carl King.
The spiders simultaneously secreted a thick, viscous mucus. The fluid coated the outer layer of the swarm, hardening rapidly into a flawless mimicry of human skin.
Carl King flexed his new hands. He stared down at the glistening white skeleton resting on the bloody carpet. His stomach churned for a fraction of a second. Then, he looked up, caught his reflection in the closet mirror, and smiled.
"Self-righteous woman," Carl muttered, his voice echoing from a thousand tiny vibrating mandibles. "Dad was right about her."
He looked at the digital clock on the desk. It was late afternoon. School was out. He had spent two days rotting in this bed. It was time to go for a walk.
Ten minutes later, Carl strolled into a local comic book shop he rarely frequented. He walked past the racks of graphic novels, heading straight for the back aisles.
A brief, wet scream echoed from the rear of the store. A wet tearing sound followed.
Moments later, Carl emerged from the shadows. He had ripped a cheap Spider-Man cosplay suit off a customer, shoving his shifting, arachnid body into the tight red-and-blue spandex. He adjusted the mask, casually stepping over the pooling blood, and walked out the front doors into the Queens sunlight.
"So, Peter Parker really is Spider-Man," Carl whispered to himself. "Where are you hiding?"