Say hello to darkness.
Peter was moving again.
Not enough to escape. Not enough to earn another injection or a containment spell—but enough to drive anyone watching into a state of nervous tension. His leg bounced restlessly against the mattress, fingers twitching like he was playing piano on invisible keys. His head jerked to every movement outside the glass, his body never fully at ease, like something inside him needed constant momentum or it would tear itself apart.
Tony watched from the corner of the room, arms crossed, jaw tight.
“Kid,” he said eventually, “you’re like a caffeinated squirrel in a microwave.”
Peter didn’t laugh. He just shrugged, eyes wide, pupils still blown to black. His skin was pale, veins standing out stark against the surface—some of them spider-webbing up from his collarbone now, faintly glimmering beneath the skin. The restraints had been loosened slightly, enough for comfort, but Peter kept wiggling. Testing. Slipping a wrist loose, refitting it. Tugging one ankle, then stopping when he saw Stephen glance over.
“You’re nothelping your case,” Strange said, tone clipped.
Peter rolled his eyes. “I feel like I’m gonna explode. Sitting still makes it worse.”
Stephen didn’t respond immediately. He just studied him, then turned to Tony.
“Distract him.” Tony blinked. “With what? Magic tricks and interpretive dance?”
“Ask him anything.”
Peter huffed, annoyed. “I’m not a toddler.”
“No,” Tony said dryly, “you’re something way more terrifying.” Still, he stepped closer and leaned on the foot of the bed. After a second’s pause, he fired the first question.
“You ever break a bone?”
Peter blinked, surprised. “What?”
“Humor me.”
“…Uh. Yeah. A couple ribs. Collarbone once. Left wrist. I broke two fingers junior year punching a guy.”
“Did he deserve it?”
“Definitely.”
Tony smirked. “Good answer. Stitches?”
Peter gave a wry little nod. “Yeah. Chin, thigh, back of my head. A few on my eyebrow when I fell into a garbage can chasing a purse thief.” His voice drifted a little, his restlessness easing just slightly.
Stephen stepped forward now, quietly curious. “Any head trauma?”
Peter hesitated.
“Yeah. Six concussions. At least.”
Stephen’s brow creased. “At least?”
Peter shrugged like it didn’t matter. “First one was when I was seven. Fell off a fire escape. Fractured the base of my skull. That one I remember ‘cause my aunt freaked out and told my principal I wasn’t allowed to climb anything above two feet for the rest of my life.” He gave a crooked, humorless smile. “Didn’t last.” Stephen froze mid-note on the tablet. “Fracture at the base of the skull?” His voice changed. The clinical mask fell into place. “That’s the posterior fossa. Cerebellum region. You would've had nausea, dizziness, loss of balance, possibly cranial nerve disruption. Did they check for intracranial bleeding?”
Peter nodded slowly. “Yeah. I remember lights being too bright. Threw up a lot.”
“Subtle damage to the brainstem or cerebellar pathways could absolutely affect developmental neurology,” Stephen muttered, more to himself now. “Especially if compounded by repeated concussions in adolescence—” Tony lifted a brow. “Doctor Mode: Activated.” Stephen ignored him. “You grew up in Queens, right?” Peter shrugged again. “Yeah. You know how it is. Rusted fire escapes, broken fences. You fall, you bounce. You learn.” Stephen’s face was unreadable. But something behind his eyes shifted. Not pity, exactly. Something more clinical. More haunted.
Peter noticed.
“You don’t have to do the whole ‘sad child’ routine. It’s not a big deal. Everyone I knew got stitches or hit their head growing up. It's just…where I'm from.”
“Where you're from,” Stephen said quietly, “shouldn't require that kind of endurance.”
Peter didn’t respond.
For a while, the silence hung low.
Then Stephen walked over to check the restraints again, eyes narrowing when he noticed the right one was already halfway undone. “Nice try.”
Peter gave him a mock innocent look. “Wasn’t trying. Just…fidgeting.”
Stephen reached down to refasten the strap.
It happened fast.
Peter moved with a flicker of muscle memory—his head snapping forward, fangs flashing as his jaw opened far too wide to be human.
His teeth clipped Stephen’s wrist. A warning. Just skin. No puncture. But venom dripped from the curved tip of his upper canine like a threat. Thick, oily, iridescent.
Stephen didn’t flinch.
He just stared down at him.
“Are we done?” he asked, voice low and cold.
Peter, breathing hard, shrank back a little. The rage behind his eyes flickered—confusion, guilt, shame. Then something darker tried to rise in its place again.
But Stephen's presence kept it tethered. Peter didn’t answer. He just slumped back against the pillow, chest rising and falling in uneven waves. The restraints were tight again. This time, he didn’t resist them. Stephen wiped the venom off with a cloth and checked his pulse. It was rapid. Borderline tachycardic. His body was pushing itself to the edge of some invisible precipice, begging for action, for change.
But the mind—what was left of it—was still trying to hold the line.
Barely.
Tony leaned back against the wall, arms crossed. “So…venom. That’s uh, new.”
Stephen didn’t speak.
He turned away from the boy in the bed. Instead, he took the tarot card from his coat pocket again, running his thumb across the etched sigils. The Devil card still pulsed faintly, as if it too was aware of the rage and hunger taking root in the young man’s bones.
Something was pulling Peter Parker apart from the inside.
And if they didn’t find the root soon, it wouldn’t be Peter left in that body at all.
x x x x x
The first thing Peter registered was silence.
Not the high-pitched buzzing static of a fluorescent ceiling. Not the steady beeping of his heart monitor. And definitely not the low, infernal whispering he hadn’t told anyone about—the one that echoed along his brainstem like wind over broken glass, whispering move, feed, change in some ancient language only his body seemed to understand.
Just…silence.
His eyes blinked open slowly. No pain. No red. The lights weren’t searing into his retinas like acid, and when he sat up—carefully—there was no sense of his muscles twitching to disobey him. Just dull, groggy soreness. He flexed a hand. Still his. No black veins. No claws. No shaking.
Just Peter.
He exhaled.
Then immediately inhaled, because his chest ached like he’d done a thousand crunches. His skin felt raw where the restraints had been. He looked down—hospital gown, IV reinserted, wrists lightly bruised from being tied down. But his eyes. He fumbled with the little mirror left on the bedside tray. His heart stopped.
They were brown again. His actual, human, deeply unremarkable irises. No red. No black. No halo of demonic haze or starburst pupils.
“...Okay,” he breathed. “Okay.”
The door slid open.
Stephen entered, expression unreadable. Tony followed a few steps behind with a cup of coffee and a datapad under one arm.
“You’re awake,” Stephen said, stating the obvious.
“Yeah. And normal,” Peter said quickly, trying to smile. “See? Not evil. No venom. Not a single fanged death threat today.”
Tony didn’t smile back. “Define normal, kid.”
Peter’s smile faded. “What’s wrong?”
Strange sighed and held up a tablet. He tapped the screen, and a cascade of numbers, graphs, and glowing red warning signs bloomed into a 3D projection between them.
“Your labs are completely unhinged,” Stephen said bluntly. “I’ve run them twice. Bloodwork, vitals, EEG, metabolic panels, you name it.”
Tony set down his datapad and scrolled. “Hemoglobin’s low, white count’s all over the place. B12’s tanked. Ferritin is basically nonexistent. Glucose is high, cortisol’s through the roof, and your inflammatory markers are off the charts. Your whole endocrine panel looks like someone put it through a blender.”
Stephen added, “You’re anemic, borderline hypermetabolic, and your neurotransmitter levels suggest you’re either coming off a weeklong meth bender or your brain is actively being hijacked.”
Peter blinked. “I…feel okay?”
“That’s notreassuring,” Stephen replied. “You should feel like death.”
“Maybe I’m just used to it,” Peter muttered, his voice quieter now. “Maybe this is my new baseline.”
Stephen’s face twitched. Just once. Barely a flicker of something pained.
Tony leaned in, tapping a particular section of the scan. “We ran a functional MRI while you were sedated. Strange noticed something in your hippocampus and amygdala—electrical misfiring. Not enough to be a seizure, but close. Like your brain’s trying to reroute something it can’t understand.”
Peter swallowed hard. “So…I’m completely fucking messed up.”
Stephen took a seat, voice gentler now. “You’re being messed with. There’s a difference.”
Peter didn’t reply. He just stared down at the IV line in his arm. It burned a little, but not in a bad way—more like heat from something ancient pulsing just beneath the skin.
Tony crossed his arms. “You remember anything from yesterday? From the break room? You kinda…ate a watermelon whole. Then tried to chew on frozen ground beef like a starved wolf.”
Peter’s face twisted instantly. “Oh God.”
“Yeah. And the ice. Which, by the way, is common in iron-deficiency states,” Stephen added clinically. “Pica cravings. Ice, raw meat, dirt. Classic symptom. You don’t just have anemia, Peter—you’ve got symptoms layered with metabolic chaos, hunger drives, and elevated aggression hormones. You’re in a fight-or-flight loop your body won’t...or can't, shut off.”
Peter laughed once—dry, bitter. “So I’m a monster with a craving for barbecue and glacier cubes.”
Stephen didn’t laugh.
He studied Peter for a long moment before continuing, tone darker now.
“This…thing inside you—it’s not just mutating your cells. It’s rewriting you. How you sleep. How you metabolize. How you respond to pain. You’re adapting, Peter. That’s the terrifying part. You’re not just being attacked from the outside—you’re conforming to it.”
Peter went very still.
He didn’t breathe for a few seconds. Then he said, softly, “How much of me is still left?”
Stephen paused. Then said, just as softly, “Enough.”
But he didn’t elaborate.
Instead, Peter turned, eyes darting around. “Where’s my bag?”
Stephen blinked. “Why?”
“I—I just want it. There’s a notebook. Something I was writing before this started. Just—please. I need to see it.”
Strange hesitated. Then he nodded to Tony, who handed over the battered backpack.
Peter rifled through it with trembling fingers. At first it was just scribbled blueprints, snack wrappers, broken headphones. But then—he froze. Pulled out a thick tarot card, edges worn. A single crimson stamp on the back. No name.
Just a symbol.
Stephen’s heart stopped when he saw it. He walked forward, hand slow and careful, as if touching it might set something off.
The image on the front was The Fool.
Peter looked up. “It was shoved in my locker two weeks ago. I thought it was a joke.”
Stephen said nothing at first.
Then, quietly, “Where did you say you found this?”
“Midtown. At school.”
Stephen’s expression shuttered. “Right.”
Peter blinked. “Why? Do you know who it's from?”
Stephen’s voice was low. Controlled.
“...Yes.”
He didn’t say the name. He didn’t have to.
The card had come from someone he hadn’t spoken of in years. Someone who once used this exact style of divination when all other warnings failed.
Peter turned the card over again, frowning. “Is it cursed?”
Stephen didn’t answer.
Instead, he whispered to Tony, “This just got worse.”
Peter didn’t hear the whisper.
But he felt it.
Something in his chest—something deep and ancient—shifted.
Like it had been waiting for this moment.
Waiting to wake up all over again.