Annihilate

Tommy finally caves and follows his instincts, whirling around to face the train tracks.

It’s eerily quiet. He can see well in the darkness of the abandoned station, even now that Ranboo and Tubbo have taken their light sources (also known as their phones) with them, but it’s still a little too dark for his liking. The hairs on the back of his neck are standing up, and he slowly moves to his backpack and starts collecting all of the cans still scattered around the station.

Move move move danger danger behind you behind you behind you get out get out getoutgetoutgetout quick–

He pulls the hood of his favorite red sweatshirt deep into his face before he shoulders his backpack and ventures onto the tracks.

No subway is coming. One usually passes every couple minutes, but it’s dead silent now. Tommy listens, on high alert, but nothing reaches his ears.

Something’s wrong. Something’s really, really wrong. New York is never quiet.

Tommy slowly starts to walk on the tracks, turning every once in a while to look behind him.

But there is nothing behind him. Just a dark, endless tunnel and abandoned rails. His heart is beating wildly in his chest as he tries to move as soundlessly as possible. Since it’s easier, he slips off his shoes and socks to walk on the wall, stuffing them into his backpack and wincing at the sound it makes when he closes it.

His phone rings and he startles, muttering a curse under his breath as he fishes it out of his pocket. It’s Tubbo.

Huh?

Tommy picks up, looking behind him one last time before walking on the ceiling. He has no vertigo. “Tubs?”

“Tell me you’re not in the subway tunnels anymore.”

He pauses for a moment.

“Uh. I am.”

Tubbo exhales. He sounds pressed.

“You have to get out of there. Right now. They put half of Manhattan on lockdown, no subways are driving.”

Tommy frowns. “What do you mean, on lockdown? What the fuck’s going on?”

“Something from our labs escaped during that break-in and they have no idea where it is,” Tubbo says. “My dad won’t tell me what it actually is, just that it’s dangerous. Tommy, please, just– walk to the 96th and get the hell out of there as fast as you can. They think it’s in the subway tunnels.”

His spider-sense goes off, stronger than all the times before. He turns around and sees it.

It, being a lizard.

Walking – standing – on two legs, at least three meters tall, with grotesquely humanoid features, just staring him down from maybe ten feet behind him. Way too close to him. Tommy registers its slit pupils, the razor-sharp talons at the end of its feet and fingers, the widely stretched mouth and scaly skin all at once. All at once, he sees clearly that this thing was human once.

And that it isn’t anymore.

For a couple of seconds, nothing happens. Tommy is upside down staring at the lizard and the lizard is upright staring at him.

Then Tubbo asks, “Tommy? You still there?”

The lizard’s eyes do something weird, and then it roars and lunges at Tommy.

His instincts save his ass from getting ripped to shreds, but they also make him drop his phone to use his hand in pressing himself flat to the ceiling. He barely escapes the swipe of the humanoid lizard’s claws, uses his free hand to push himself into standing again, and then turns on his heel and starts running to where he came from as fast as he possibly can, abandoning his phone and Tubbo’s frantic voice.

Adrenaline rushes through his veins. The lizard is coming after him, on all fours instead of two legs now which makes the entire situation even more outlandish. Tommy runs as fast as he fucking possibly can, instincts screaming at him to cram it the fuck out of there and quick, and he just wishes he would’ve listened to his spider-sense and kept looking behind him.

The lizard is faster than him.

Tommy’s senses tell him to jump, so he jumps, launching himself to the right and barely out of the way once again as the lizard jumps and claws at the ceiling where he was seconds ago. It lets out another roar, foam building at its mouth, and attacks again.

He trusts his instincts, but he’s never exactly been in this kind of situation before so his instincts are mostly just run run run. Tommy yelps as he ducks under a close call in form of a taloned hand and tries to get around the thing, but the lizard lashes out with its tail and it hits him square in the chest.

All the air goes out of Tommy’s lungs and he goes flying, landing on the rails painfully, metal digging into his shoulders as he tries to roll off and get up again. The lizard is on him in less than a second and pins him down, clawed hand coming up to end his sorry existence–

Nuh-uh. He still has shit to do.

Tommy punches the lizard in the side, a mean jab to the ribs, with all the strength his anger and fear-infested body will offer. The lizard nearly keels over as an audible crack rings out, and it roars in pain now, digging its claws into Tommy’s shoulder – he screams as white hot agony rips through it all the way down to his collarbone, and aims for the same spot, cleanly punching the thing off of him this time.

Struggling to get a breath of air, he scrambles to his feet, and the lizard attacks again, relentlessly pursuing him. Tommy jumps onto the wall and flips over its head, causing it to turn in a circle and flail awkwardly. He gets the sense that neither of them have really been in a fight before.

Doesn’t matter. He has an attack plan now. Which consists of him jumping onto the wall again and roundhouse kicking the motherfucker in his scaly face.

The lizard stumbles, taken off guard by the strength of Tommy’s spider-bite-fueled muscles, and he jumps back onto the ceiling and starts running again. He can hear people talking and his spider-sense is yelling at him to put his damn shoes on right the hell now, but he makes it to 91st street and jumps onto the side platform, pulling on socks and shoes in record time.

It reaches him. Tommy ducks under its claws, desperately tries to avoid its tail, but he’s so out of breath that every inhale and exhales comes out wheezing and hurts like hell where it hit him with its tail. He ends up abandoning his plan of going to 96th and just books it over the walls by using his hands to stick to the ceiling, jumping over barriers blocking anybody from entering over the old entrance to the station. For a second, as he catches sight of the stairs leading up to the surface, he has hope, hope that he’s going to make it–

Then he gets linebacker-tackled by the lizard.

Tommy hits the ground hard, his nose breaking as he hits the hard tiles face first. He can’t help it, he cries out when its claws dig into his sides, and he tries to twist under it, but its dumb stupid fucking tail is weighing him down. His cheek is pressed into the floor. He thinks he might pass out.

His strength allows him to turn, his back cracking. He catches the lizard’s claws just inches away from his face, holding against it with all he has. Its slitted eyes are full of pure bloodlust. It opens its mouth, presenting a row of just as sharp teeth, and prepares to just bite down on him.

Somehow, Tommy manages to cross his arms, and its teeth sink into the flesh of his hands instead. He manages to bring his feet up to his chest and kicks it as hard as he can, sending it flying. He gets up fast this time and bounds up the stairs, leaving the lizard behind.

He books it out of there and then just doesn’t stop running. His breathing is still coming in painful, wheezing heaves, but he feels absolutely nothing aside from how hard his hands are shaking, spit and blood running from the bite marks where it ripped off his flesh. He can see his bone through the wounds.

That aside, he thinks his adrenaline is doing a pretty good job at carrying him.

Panicked as he is, he doesn’t pay attention to where he’s going, only runs away from the horrible subway tunnel, farther and farther. His feet find familiar alleys and streets, he climbs up rainwater pipes and vaults over the sides of buildings, and suddenly, he’s right on top of Deo’s apartment.

Tommy halts and almost keels over, holding his aching side and trying to catch his breath. He feels like he might die for a couple seconds, his chest constricting painfully as he tries to inhale and exhale somewhat evenly and fails, coughing. He doesn’t want to crash up here, and Deo has a landline he can use; so he climbs down the fire escape even though the movement burns through his entire body hauls himself over Deo’s balcony railing.

He’s surprised to find light shining from the living room. Shaking, Tommy knocks as loud as he can without breaking the glass of the door leading to Deo’s bedroom. Seconds later, his friend comes out of the living room and stares at him with wide eyes before rushing to open the door.

“Tommy? What the fuck– hey.”

Tommy collapses into his arms and bursts into helpless, oh-my-god-I’m-alive, hysterical tears. Deo catches him, slinging his arms around his shoulders and steadying him when his legs threaten to give out. “Hey. Hey, it’s okay. Shhh. Everything’s okay. I’ve got you.”

Nothing is okay. He just almost died to– whatever the fuck that thing actually was. Escaped from the Oscorp labs. What the fuck are they doing at this company? Is he going to turn into something like that too? Tommy cries in lieu of a better thing to do in the face of the situation he’s in, and Deo holds him as he sobs. It reminds him of the foster home, where Tommy used to endlessly cry. He feels six or ten or thirteen again, more hopeless with every year. Deo was his only support back then. He feels like he may just break without him now.

It takes him a while to calm down, but eventually, he does. Deo carefully separates them, eyes going wide and worried at the injuries Tommy only half-heartedly covered with his hoodie.

“Okay,” his old friend says, “I’m gonna patch you up, and in the meantime, you can tell me what the fuck happened. That good with you?”

Tommy nods, trying his hardest not to start crying again, and lets Deo sit him down on the brink of his bathtub. He disinfects his injuries while he stumbles through explaining the field trip and the missing spider, the lightning strike and the bite. Deo peels off the plaster on his cheek and takes a look at the by now healed mark the spider left, just two tiny pinpricks in his skin that have scarred over slightly. Such a tiny sign of the thing that warped his entire life.

Deo listens, even though the story is insane and sounds unbelievable. He listens to his retelling of seeing the city from above, the subway station, the lizard, and while he listens, he carefully bandages Tommy’s hands, stitches his shoulder up, feels for breaks in his sides and leg. It reminds him of the old days. Of the old them.

“I missed you so much,” Tommy blurts out when he’s done talking about his fucked origin story, and then he tackles Deo in another hug. His friend catches him like Tommy isn’t a 6‘1“ freak but still a small kid, rubbing calming circles into the tense bit between his shoulder bits.

“I missed you too, kid. I’m… I’m sorry, Tommy. I’m so sorry, about everything.”

Tommy shakes his head. “The fuck could you have done to stop it from playing out like it did? I’ll live, man, I’m just… freaked out.”

“Nah, you– Tommy, promise me something. Whatever you do with this– these abilities you have now, I know whatever you’ll do with them will be great. But you have to promise me to never tell anyone.”

His lip wobbles. He bites down on it to keep it from quivering. “I don’t know how. Deo, I barely managed not to tell Ranboo and Tubbo today.”

“Don’t tell the Osborn kid,” Deo says sharply, taking him by the shoulders. He looks so insistent that Tommy startles. “If they ask you about the spider, don’t tell them anything. Tommy, Oscorp… what they do, they make it out to be for the good of mankind, but they’re not good people. You could be in danger if they find out what you can do. Real danger. Stay away from Oscorp.”

Tommy shakes his head again. “You can’t ask me to do that. I barely know anything about the spider. And now– after this, what I saw down there– Deo, they’re not just wronguns, they’re fucking criminals.”

“And what, you think you can take it up with them? You’re a teenager, Tommy, get your head outta the clouds. You could get killed.”

Yeah, he could. Going up against Oscorp is borderline crazy, even with his abilities. The lizard fucked him up real good and that was just something in their labs that escaped. One thing. Out of who knows how many. Tommy gets up and starts pacing.

“I get what you’re saying, yeah, but someone has to fucking stop them. That’s– I can’t just let them do whatever they’re doing just because they’re rich and scary and might sick a hitman on my ass.”

“So I’ll tell Vulture,” Deo shrugs. “He’s got more connections to authorities than you’d think.”

“You know Vulture?”

“Not personally, idiot. That would kinda defeat the whole purpose of the secret identity thing. I got in contact with him on a job I did in Brooklyn. He’s a chill guy, and you know he hates people like Oscorp.”

“For all I know, he’s the one that broke in today,” Tommy bursts out, “and freed that lizard. I don’t know him. I don’t trust him.”

Deo sighs. “You don’t have to. We’re… we’re gonna figure something out, Tommy. I promise.”

He sits back down and heavily breathes out, leaning his head back. His phone is gone to the subway tunnels, and he’s sure as fuck not going back now to get it. Tubbo must be worried about him, considering what predicament he was in when their call was cut short. He needs to get home.

Fucking hell, he really wants to go home.

Deo moves in front of him and rests his hands on his shoulders. “You’re a good kid, Tommy. Always have been. Let me walk you home, yeah?”

For once, he just nods.