Chapter 2
“There you are!” Lyla calls, blinking from her spot to stand beside Miguel as he steps through the portal back into his office. “Where were you? I was trying to call you!”
“I told you,” he brushes her off, “I was out.”
“You could’ve at least told me you were going to turn your device off!”
“I couldn’t afford any distractions. Now, what is it you wanted?”
“Oh, nothing. I just couldn’t reach you.” Returning to her station, Lyla goes back to typing away, pulling up and throwing screens around.
“Great conversation.”
“What bit you in the ass?”
“It’s been a long day.”
“Day? It’s not even 10.”
“Exactamente.” At his own space, Miguel types in the coordinates of 1589, scrolling through any information he can find on that Miguel O’Hara. In the time he had spent watching, it had never occurred to him to keep track of their lifestyle. He had, more or less, just been watching them like one would a TV show - a happier, healthier version of himself with a family. To be thrown into that role without prior rehearsal and no script isn’t something he can completely improvise.
“Whatcha lookin’ at?” Immediately, Miguel closes the screen, a fraction of a second too late for Lyla to have not seen. “Miguel,” she sighs, “again?”
“This is the last time.”
“You’ve been saying that for a while now, you know. This isn’t healthy behavior.”
“It’s harmless.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Are you lying to me, Miguel?”
“No.”
“Was that a lie?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. Lyla.” Running his hands through his hair, he turns to his hologram and gives her an exasperated look. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t appreciate the one-worded answers.”
“I don’t appreciate the nagging. You aren’t my mother.”
“I could be.” Lyla’s image begins to flicker and Miguel lunges for her, grabbing at where she last was.
“Don’t you dare.”
“Well that finally got your attention,” and her regular self reappears. “Now come on, talk to me.”
“No.”
“Migs,” throwing her hands up, Lyla groans. “Ever since you started obsessing over that alternate reality you’ve been a real shocking jerk. Give it a rest already.”
“I told you, I am. This is the last time.”
Clicking her tongue, Lyla turns away from him. “You’d better be serious about that.”
“Would I ever lie to you?”
Over her shoulder, Lyla gives him a sad look, an expression she rarely uses; it says much more than a programmed emotion could portray.
The question goes unanswered.
Distantly, Miguel can hear sounds of others milling about. When wanting answers, they came to him. When wanting confirmation, they came to him. When wanting advice, they came to him. Miguel wore far too many hats for what he was trying to manage. It made escaping into his fantasy more dangerous in the long-run, but had immediate results of momentary bliss.
“Lyla.”
“Yes, Miguel?”
“I need to set a message for myself. When I’m unavailable, all questions should go to you. Emergencies go to…” pulling up a list, he scrolls through names. “Jess, Ben, Kaine, and Peter in that order.”
“Which Peter?”
“Earth-616.”
“Gotcha. Ready for that message whenever you are.”
Clearing his throat, Miguel idly taps in the coordinates back to 1589. “When anyone wants to talk to me, repeat the following: ‘Miguel currently cannot be disturbed. Any questions go to his assistants.’ Okay, Lyla? Good girl.”
“Got it. And Miguel?” Looking up, Lyla finds herself alone in the office, the fading glow of an orange portal still reflecting off the floor. “That guy, I swear.”
No sooner than the low hum disappears does Lyla hear the doors to Miguel office open and close, followed by the soft fwip of webbing attaching itself to the platform, then hushed footsteps of someone approaching.
“Hey, Lyla?”
“What’s up…” Lyla scans them over before their name registers. “Pete?”
“Is Miguel in? I wanted to ask him something.”
“Miguel currently cannot be disturbed. Any questions go to his assistants. Okay, Lyla? Good girl.”
“O…kay.” Shifting weight between their feet, Peter squints. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“Dunno,” she shrugs. “I’ll ask next time I see him.”
“Cool. Thanks.” Giving her one last look, Pete hops off the platform and swings away.
Miguel slips back into his office within the hour, once he’s sure no one is likely to drop in. Lyla, of course, is immediately on him.
“Pete from 734 stopped by, and—”
“Did you answer their question?”
“They wanted to know when you’d be back.”
“Oh.” Tapping a finger to his chin, Miguel hums in thought; Lyla takes the moment to look him over. He’s donning a change of civilian clothes - and different from his usual wardrobe at that.
“Do some shopping?” She teases. “Add some shades, then you’ll be the coolest middle-aged man at the function.”
“That’s the idea,” he mumbles. “I’ll be in… twice a week.”
“Mmkay. And Miguel?”
“Hm?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing,” almost nervously, Lyla fidgets with her glasses. “But be careful, alright? Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”
“Of course not.”
“Could you at least keep me updated on things? For me?” She adds, pouting her bottom lip.
“I’ll consider it.”
“That’s a no.”
“I said I’ll consider it.”
Giving up on trying to persuade him, Lyla peers over his shoulder. Back to 1589. While she stops from commenting on how last time was the last time, she’s instead distracted by the object of his attention - the little girl he’d been watching, his alternate’s daughter.
“Migs,” Lyla starts, Miguel immediately deleting the screen. “I was serious. This is a problem.”
“Leave it, Lyla.”
“I’m worried you’re going to do something stupid.”
“You can’t worry. You don’t have emotions.”
“That’s true. But I know when behavior is concerning.” Sighing, she appears before him, blocking his view to any screen. “You do remember what started this whole mess, right?”
Grinding his teeth and raising his eyebrows, Miguel waits for her to continue, which she hesitates on.
“Kingpin wanted to bring his family from an alternate dimension into his because they’ve died. Some things just aren’t meant to happen in our reality.”
“Do not compare me to him,” he hisses, baring his fangs; though it would have no effect on her, it is still meant to intimidate. “I know what I’m doing. I’m handling it.”
“So you are going there, is that it? Playing pretend?” For a moment, Lyla glitches out, processing data and when she returns to Miguel, a programmed expression of uneasiness is painted on her face. “Miguel… what did you do?”
“Nothing.” Sharp, punctuated. End of discussion.
“You can’t—”
“Lyla, power down.”
“You’re running away from this? I—”
“Lyla. Power down now.”
Before she can get another word in, her visual fades into nothing, no longer offering the glow from her hologram. Pulling up a screen with her coding, Miguel types in a command that prevents her from mentioning Earth-1589, his variant, his daughter, his plans. Erasing evidence of their conversation.
Setting her to come back online after applying the updates, Miguel dips back into the portal before she’s active again.
Miguel was able to view the last 24 hours of 1589, tracking what seemed to be Gabriella’s schedule. She takes the bus home and lets herself into the apartment while Miguel seems to be running errands of odds and ends. Does he have a job? That’s something he should figure out now .
They eat frozen pizza for dinner and Gabriella does her homework at the kitchen table while he folds laundry on the couch. Almost a picturesque family evening.
Entering the apartment, he adds new clothes into his wardrobe, brings some of his own bedding (sue him, it’s custom-made to not rip from his talons), and starts on dinner.
3 o’clock rolls around. 4 o’clock. 5. No sign of Gabriella. Fear runs cold in his veins that something happened to her and he has no way of knowing, not having any of his technology with him. As the clock ticks later and later, Miguel finds himself pacing when he hears voices, followed by the door opening.
“I’m home!” She calls, and relief washes over him.
“Mija, where—” he stops when he sees someone else standing beside her, shrugging off her jacket to hang on the hooks.
“Hi, Mr. O’Hara,” a girl - same height, same age, with glasses and short blonde hair pulled back with a headband - greets, then follows Gabriella into the kitchen like it’s her own home.
“Oh, hi, girls. I made dinner.” She brings friends over? Is this Sara? Don’t guess, it’ll look suspicious if you use the wrong name.
“We already ate at my place,” the blonde tells him, “but thank you.”
Well-mannered for a girl her age. Miguel only was when his dad was around because he liked being able to sit. He would never…
“We’ll be in my room,” and that’s the last thing he hears before her door closes, finding himself alone in the kitchen once more.
Warming up and serving himself, Miguel eats and strains his ears to catch a name from Gabriella’s conversation. They seem to be watching a movie that makes them giggle and chatter together.
His attention is grabbed by the sound of something chirping. Turning his watch towards him, there’s no notifications, still disabled. The sound comes from his bedroom, as he follows it to his bed, then on the floor where it seems like his phone fell.
Cell phones. Frankly, he hated these things. Growing up in the 2070s, there was no longer a need for them, as everything was delivered via holos, video calls or the occasional email used for work. He knew people had them - practically everyone at the Spider Society used something of that nature, and despite how often Miguel had been nagged about it, he refused to get one.
Taking it in hand, he scrolls through the messages. Texts from Gabriella telling him she’s going to ‘a friend’s house’ - still no luck with a name - and another when she’s on her way back. Missed call from an unsaved number. Emails that seem low priority but might offer him more insight to who Miguel O’Hara was .
But it’s password locked.
Great.
It’s not activated by fingerprint or eye scan but a simple 4 digit code. There’s 10,000 possible combinations. Great.
He tries the current year. Gabriella’s birth year. He doesn’t know her birthday. Wonderful. 1589 is no dice, either.
On a whim, he tries 5952 - LYLA.
It works.
However his alternate self knew that or what it meant was something to be looked into later but for now he had access to new information about his new identity.
If he knew how to work a phone.
Sitting on the couch, he copies important notes onto his notepad.
“What’re you doing?” Gabriella asks, startling him.
“I was thinking of getting a new phone and wanted to save the information,” he explains, and her friend giggles, saying something under her breath about how he’s such an old man.
“You know you don’t need to do that. They’ll just swap the chip out.”
“Ah, well. Better safe than sorry.” That gets another laugh plus an eye roll from Gabriella. The friend tells Miguel that she’s leaving, thanks for having her, and she’ll see Gabi at school tomorrow. After locking the door, Gabriella crosses her arms over her chest and leans against it, staring him down.
“Are you sure you’re not sick?”
“Yes, mija.” Standing, he pulls her in and kisses her forehead again. “Just haven’t been sleeping well. What’d you have for dinner?”
“Em’s mom made spaghetti.” Em.Emma? Emily?
“I can make spaghetti.”
“Yeah, but she makes it from scratch. Last time you tried we ended up getting carryout.”
“There’s nothing wrong with carryout.”
“It is when you’re expecting spaghetti.”
“Mhm, you’ve got a point.” Pulling open the fridge door, Gabriella frowns and looks over her shoulder. “What?”
“You never bought milk.”
“Shock, sorry. I’ll go do that, you get ready for bed, okay?”
Still illuminated by the glow, her expression is dubious. Miguel grabs his things and dips before she can prod him about anything.
He’s reluctant to go back to the corner store. Yes, he was shot in an alleyway, but it was broad daylight, just earlier today. The uneasiness of the slim possibility that someone who witnessed his murder would see him return to the store forces him to take a much longer walk to find milk, also giving him the opportunity to get a better understanding of his surroundings.
It’s not like the New York he knows, but it’s easy enough to figure it out. Cars drive on wheels on the road, people use the sidewalks for foot traffic. There are cameras and glaring signs around him, voices talking over each other as lives flow together seamlessly.
A pharmacy. Walk in, get milk, check out, walk back. Easy. No one suspected anything. He’s perfected hiding his identity as Spider-Man and the traits he developed from it over the years, acting as if he knows what he’s doing even when he is, truthfully, paranoid that someone can sniff him out. No, he performed a regular and routine interaction and nothing bad happened. You can do this, Miguel.
The light in Gabriella’s room is still on when he comes home. Putting the milk away, he knocks and gently pushes the door open.
“Gabi?”
Laying on her bed, she’s got headphones on and is tapping away on her phone at a speed Miguel can only describe as glaringly obvious she’s grown up with it. No wonder her friend made fun of him, acting like he’s never touched the thing before.
“Gabi,” he repeats, louder. His looming shadow catches her attention, looking up and sliding her headphones off. “Lights out.”
“Ugh,” rolling onto her back, she throws her arms up dramatically. “It’s not even that late!”
“It’s a school night.”
“And?” She shoots back.
“And you should go to bed.”
“Papaaaa,” moving around to sit up, she pouts out her bottom lip. “Ten more minutes?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Okay! Good night!” Almost immediately she’s back to what she was doing, as if Miguel was just a minor inconvenience.
In his own bedroom, he returns to copying information from his phone. Despite how the calendar looked, the late Miguel kept very thorough notes in his phone. Contacts with names, addresses, birth dates, photos. Reminders of appointments with locations, as well as when to call in for medicine refills. Missing are the finer details of his life, like what Gabriella’s favorite meal is, her class schedule, where they like to vacation.
Going through the phone, Miguel realizes there’s little to no information about this Miguel. Appointments seem to be annual, he has no upcoming outings, most of the media on his phone is obviously his daughter’s - music, movies downloaded, photos taken. Strange.
Almost an hour passes when Miguel catches Gabriella laughing in her room, light still flooding in from the hallway. He can’t find it in himself to remind her to turn everything off and go to bed, especially because he knows he won’t be sleeping tonight. Aside from how alight his nerves are, there’s too much to take care of that he can’t waste time sitting around.
The body, for example. Miguel O’Hara is still cocooned, the rigor mortis has definitely set in and it’ll only be harder to move the longer he waits. It’s a little eerie, he thinks distantly, to be waiting for a child to go to bed so he can move her dead father’s body. Still, he has to handle it before someone else stumbles upon it.
Eventually, the light goes out. Waiting silently in his room, Miguel waits until he’s sure she’s asleep before stalking down the hall, peering into her bedroom. The shape of her outline steadily inhaling and exhaling is as much evidence as he needs before he’s at his own bedroom window, sliding it open and climbing onto the fire escape.
Activating his suit, he scales the building, swinging to the rooftop where he hid the body. As predicted, it’s stiff and awkward. He’s carried heavier, but it’s certainly not pleasant. While he has little fond memories of the place, Miguel still knows his ins and outs of any Alchemax building. Where the cameras are, what doors he can open without having to use an access card, where he can store a body in a cold environment that won’t easily be discovered. Funny how there are some consistencies across universes.
It’s not a permanent solution, but it temporarily solves the issue.
On his way back out, he takes a detour, swinging between buildings with more ease, no longer lugging a body around. Bright lights honing in on him cause him to stop and hold a hand up over his eyes, trying to see against the glare.
“You there!” A voice yells. “Put both of your hands in the air!”
“I can’t do that!” Pressing one foot against a wall, Miguel holds his weight with a web from the roof. “It’s one or nothin’.”
“Both hands up!” The voice booms. As his vision settles, it occurs to Miguel that someone shouldn’t be at this height, yelling at him like they are. Watchdogs? Couldn’t be. Those didn’t roll around until 2065 at the earliest. “I said—”
“Alright, alright.” Cutting the web, Miguel jumps from the wall and plummets down, using the fabric of his cape to glide onto a nearby balcony, using his talons to hold himself still and watch for whatever had been after him.
“Where’d she go?” A second voice, separate from the first, asks.
“I don’t know,” the first answers. “Just dropped down.”
“You moron!” Thunk. Something was thrown and struck said moron, who yelped in pain before two engines roared off. Miguel hadn’t even noticed a second vehicle, hovering in the air as they scour the area for him.
“Not good.” Making sure to stay in the shadows, Miguel finds his way back to his landing, makes sure the coast is clear and slips back inside his bedroom window.
Doing one last round, he passes Gabriella’s room and sees the dim glow of her phone, though it is quickly turned off as she hides it upon hearing him. Opting to ignore it, he continues down the hall, checking all the locks before settling in himself, knowing very well he won’t sleep. Laying in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar home in an unfamiliar universe, Miguel focuses on the feel of his own sheets, raking his talons against the fabric, and plans his script for the next day.