Another Chance

In a dark room, in Nueva York, Miguel was face down on a crumpled bed, unmoving. If someone walked in, he might’ve looked more like a corpse than a hero… or a human. A soft buzz came from the ‘watch’ on his bedside table. Still unmoving, he let it keep ringing until a voicemail played softly.

“You have one new message from [Peter B. Parker]. Voice message will automatically play after the beep. -[*BEEP*]-”

‘Heyyy Big guy, uhh… just wanted to let you know that the rest of the spider gang at HQ and I are holding down the fort. I just wanted to check and see how you were doing…. Again…. God I’m horrible at this. Look Miguel, I’m not pushing you to come in, but please at the very least call me back. I just wanna make sure you’re at least alive… Please just let me know, okay? Hope to hear from you soon…’

“[*BEEP*] would you like to reply or call back? If no answer is detected in 10 seconds, it will be added to the other voicemails to be dealt with.”

No answer. No movement. Nothing. Even the air felt completely still.

Through the silence, a different voice spoke up.

“Miguel. You have to get up and eat something, or at the very least shower. You look like a dead possum.” Lyla was giving off a soft glow in the otherwise dark room, arms crossed and looking down in sympathy. Still no answer.

“Miguel, come on. I’ve been studying your vitals, you’ve lost heaps of weight and you’re extremely dehydrated. you need to get up and take care of yourself or you’ll die.” she moved herself so she was directly in front of his face.

Slowly, Miguel's face moved to look at her. Extremely prominent bags rested under his eyes, caused by days of no sleep.

“What’s the point?” he croaked out. His voice had become scratchy from disuse.

“She’s gone… and it’s all my fault”

Lyla sighed, knowing Miguel wouldn’t get up without physical intervention.

“So… you’re not going to get up?” There was silence shared between the two of them and then Lyla smirked.

“Alright Boss, you give me no choice then” Miguel was about to ask what Lyla was on. He began to remind her that she couldn’t physically move him, when all of a sudden the blinds of his room flew open letting sunlight in. On top of that, Lyla started playing a blaringly annoying alarm.

“LYLA, TURN THAT OFF NOW!!” Miguel threw his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut. The light in the room felt like it was burning his eyes.

“SORRY BOSS I CAN’T SEEM TO HEAR YOU!! CAUSE OF THIS REALLY LOUD ALARM!!” Lyla screamed back at Miguel, smirking mischievously. Miguel sat up, utterly enraged, and blindly searched for his sunglasses with his hands. He managed to knock over his multiverse watch and a half-filled cup of water in the process. Finally, his fingers connected with the cool plastic of the sunglasses he had been longing for. Quickly, he put them on and turned to where he last heard Lyla speaking, pointing a taloned finger at her. His gruff voice boomed with hostility.

“OH YEAH?! I WONDER WHO’S FAULT THAT IS!! Oh wait, ITS YOURS! NOW TURN IT OFF!!”

Lyla teleported closer to Miguel, grinning, and shrugged. She shouted, barely comprehensible over the noise. “WELL I WOULD IF I COULD, BUT IT SEEMS THE ONLY WAY TO TURN IT OFF IS MANUALLY FROM THE CONTROL PANEL!! WHICH SEEMS TO BE NEAR THE DOOR!!!”

Without thinking, Miguel growled at Lyla before jumping out of bed and stomping over to the panel where one button sat, bright red and blinking. It was marked, ‘turn off alarm’. he pushed the button, turning off the alarm, before breathing a sigh of relief. He took a few deep breaths before sharply turning toward a now cackling Lyla. the AI floated there holding her nonexistent stomach.

“Why do I even have you!! All you do is make my life a living hell!!”

Lyla only smirked and floated around in his face, saying, “Well… I did get you out of bed didn’t I~?'' Miguel frowned and then turned back to his warm bed. Of which he was no longer laying in. He scowled, turning back towards Lyla. “I hate you so shocking much right now. You’d better hope I don’t reprogram you.” he reached out, futiley trying to strangle the hologram. A move that obviously did not work.

Lyla teleported away, opening the bedroom door to reveal the living room and kitchen.

“Awwww, I love you too, Miguel! But seriously, you need to eat and drink something. Fortunately, I took the initiative to order you some food. Which should be arriving right about…“ as she finished her sentence,a motion at the door triggered the camera, informing Miguel via the electronic panel that the food delivery had arrived.

“Now” Lyla finished her sentence with a satisfied smile.

Miguel grumbled in Spanish to himself while rubbing his eyes with one hand, but did end up walking to go grab the food Lyla had ordered for him. He meandered back to his couch and dropped the food down on the coffee table, not caring if it got cold. He wandered off to have a quick rinse off in the shower, dragging some semi-clean clothes from the floor of his bedroom into the bathroom with him using his foot.

He didn’t dare look in the mirror, knowing he looked less like a man and more like a drowned racoon. He turned on the shower just standing under the spray of warm water. He couldn’t be bothered to take off his week old clothes, just letting the water wash over him. He tried desperately not to think about anything and everything. Taking a few deep breaths, he began the actual process of scrubbing off the layer of nasty that had accumulated. He threw the old clothes into the electric washing basket and quickly rinsed off. 3 weeks worth of not showering washed down the drain.

Lyla popped up sometime later to give him a soft reminder to finish up so he could actually consume something before the flys got to it. He sighed, just turning off the shower and grabbing his towel to dry off before starting to get dressed into some new(-ish) clothes.

He started making his way back to the living room to go eat his, most likely cold, food but stopped at the open sliding door. He glanced over at his multiverse watch gizmo, and slowly grabbed it from the floor where it had fallen earlier while he had searched for his sunglasses. Thankfully, he didn’t need them anymore as Lyla had tinted the windows so the sunlight was at least bearable now. Gently picking the watch up, he walked over to his couch and sat, placing the watch down on the coffee table before he opened up his food. It was Chicken tortilla soup. Not really one of his favorites, but he hadn’t wanted food in the first place.

He slowly began eating the now cold food. About halfway through, he did start to feel better. Lyla appeared next to him glancing curiously.

“Sooo feeling any better?” He sat there for a bit before nodding begrudgingly. she hummed and appeared in front of him a moment later.

“You wanna know what’s happening at HQ?” Miguel sighed and nodded, not having the energy to fight with her anymore.

Lyla pulled up a few screens of information along with some pictures. “Well, good news is, no further issues or damages have occurred over the past 3 weeks you haven’t been there. Peter B and Jesse have been taking over and managing everything in your absence. I’ve also been keeping a close eye on them and helping them when needed, but thankfully there’s only around 60 members so it really isn’t that difficult to keep an eye on everyone. Other than that, you’ve gotten around 61 voicemails. 56 are from Peter B, and the other 5 are from Jesse, they were both trying to check on you after… the incident.” Miguel nodded, slowly taking everything in. he’d wanted to expand the spider people members to make a unstoppable team sometime in the future, but it was all still so new and he was still figuring out what makes a spider person a good fit for all this in the first place, which was harder than he’d like to admit.

“And there haven't been any other dimensions that have collapsed…” Lyla frowned and shook her head at him. Miguel nodded before he stood up and grabbed the watch, attaching it to his wrist before proceeding to go through the messages he had gotten during what Lyla had affectionately cataloged as his ‘sob-fest’.

“If anything changes in that regard, let me know immediately. And don’t tell anyone. It was my mess, and if it starts to happen to another world then I need to be the one to see it or attempt to fix it, if the latter is even possible.”

Lyla sighed and looked up the video from 3 weeks ago and displayed it up on the screens in front of her. “Are we ever actually gonna talk about that? What happened 3 weeks ago, when we first saw a dimension collapse? Try to work out why? How abou-“ Miguel slammed his hand on the table, effectively shattering the table where his fist had met it.

“WE KNOW WHY IT COLLAPSED!! IT’S BECAUSE OF ME MESSING AROUND WITH SOMETHING I SHOULDN'T HAVE!!! BECAUSE OF THAT, THE DIMENSION IS GONE!! I DESTROYED IT!! I… I… I destroyed it… and because of my selfishness I got her killed… because I wanted to be with her so bad… I was the thing that… that caused her and her entire dimension… We can’t let it happen again… we can’t…” Lyla looked back down at Miguel, leaving the screens where they were before floating next to where Miguel sat while he broke down again.

“Miguel, I understand that it’s only been 3 weeks since you lost her, but you can’t bring her back. you’ve tried to do that for 2 weeks straight and found that there was a 0% chance. You weren’t even letting yourself grieve! I may not be human, but I can tell you that’s not healthy. I mean, if she was here right now do you think she’d be happy with this?” Lyla crossed her arms. getting no reply, she began to speak up again before a bright red notification popped up on one of the many screens, along with his watch.

Lyla zoomed over to the screen and her eyes widened.

“No… NononoNoNONO!! It’s been fine for weeks!!! what changed!? MIGUEL!!! Something is happening to a universe! I promise you, it was all fine when I checked a minute ago! I don’t know what happened!” Miguel ran over to the screen to have a look, his eyes widening in fear.

“But… BUT HOW?! There shouldn’t be anything, or anyone, in any other dimension! Lyla, are you sure all spider people at HQ are accounted for?! None are staying in a dimension they shouldn’t be in?!” Lyla pulled up more screens, zooming around to look through all the information.

“Yes I’m sure! I checked this morning before coming over here! Right after Peter B sent you that voicemail!” Miguel silently began panicking. If the multiverse started collapsing now after being fine for so long, he’d be the only one to blame. After all, the only thing that had changed was him staying somewhere.. somewhere he hadn’t belonged.

“LYLA! Which dimension is it!? We need to go down there, see what could’ve caused it! Now! before it’s too late!!” Lyla floated there, momentarily stunned, before she snapped out of it. She pulled up a massive screen displaying the file on the collapsing dimension. “Its dimension- 1610 they have, or maybe had, a blonde Peter Parker variant. Normal as a Spider-Man can be. No special powers, no special weaknesses. He’s like the spiderman equivalent of white bread.” Miguel nodded and input the dimensional coordinates for 1610 before activating his spider suit. It hugged his body in a reassuring, yet hauntingly familiar way. As soon as the portal opened up, he jumped in. He didn’t have a moment to lose.

As he arrived in 1610, the nightmares that had plagued him after Gabi’s death surrounded him, engulfing him in grief. The glitching of buildings going in and out of solid objects, Cars crashing into things before disappearing. But the worst part… the worst part was watching the people. Their cells glitched and decayed, causing insurmountable agony for them. Within minutes they would disappear, their bodies unable to support them in the dying universe. The screaming… The agonizing fear and pain… the-

“MIGUEL!!” Lyla’s desperate shouts snapped him back to the present. He hadn’t even realized he had begun to hyperventilate.

“I’m sorry but we don’t have much time. It's collapsing, and fast. If we want to figure out what happened here so it doesn’t happen again, we need to move.” Miguel slowly nodded at the panicking AI and got his breathing back under control more sure of what he needed to do now.

“Yes… of course. Lyla! Scan the area, find anything you can!” Lyla nodded and saluted him saying, “aye aye cap’n!” before she began to start her Anomaly Correction protocol. Miguel started running around, looking for anything to give him any sort of clue. Anything to tell him why this seemingly average universe was collapsing, hoping that it wasn’t his fault. He nearly jumped out of his skin when someone grabbed his arm to stop him. A woman stood there, glitching. She looked to be in pain, tears streaming down her face. She swore in Spanish and gritted her teeth, trying her hardest to speak through the pain.

“Please- AGH! P-Please help me!” His heart sank in his chest. Seeing this all again made him want to throw up.

“I’m so sorry, I can’t! Your dimension… it’s collapsing in on itself. Your cells are decaying, it’s why you’re glitching! it’s why everything is glitching! I can’t… I can’t do anything! I’m so sorry!”

He tried to get her hand off of him, but she only gripped tighter.

“¡Por favor! ¡No puedo dejar a mi hijo! ¡No puedo dejarlo solo! ¡Por favor, ayúdalo! Por favor, te lo ruego! (Please! I can't leave my son! I can't leave him all alone! Please help him! Please, I beg you!)” she was sobbing and Miguel had to tear his eyes away. They were all suffering. This mother was about to lose herself and her son to this mess and he couldn’t do anything about it.

“¡No puedo ayudarte a ti ni a tu hijo! No puedo ayudar a nadie. Una vez que el glitching y la descomposición celular están en este punto, ¡nadie sobrevive! Lo siento mucho, ¡perdóname! (I can't help you or your son! I can't help anyone. Once the glitching and cellular decay is at this point, no one survives! I'm so sorry, please forgive me!)” The woman glitched again, her hand having to let go as it had glitched through Miguel's. He moved to walk away when she whispered just loud enough for Miguel to hear.

“But he’s not glitching…”

He stopped and whipped his head around. Sure enough in the woman’s other arm, was a small infant, swaddled in a red blanket. The poor child was whimpering, clearly terrified. His eyes were shut tightly and his tiny hands reached for his mamá. To Miguel's utter shock, the woman was correct. The baby seemed perfectly normal.

“¿qué? (What?)” He ran back over and dropped to his knees catching the woman as she fell, too weak to support herself anymore. He lowered her to the ground gently. she was glitching heavily, barely conscious. She, and the world itself, didn’t have much time left.

“How- how is he not glitching?” Miguel took off his mask and looked towards the woman. She gave a weak laugh, trying to cope with the gravity of the situation.

“I… I don’t know. I was at home with him w-when… when everything started happening. I- I went to go find my husband. He’s a cop so I thought he’d know what was going on, but as I started running to the police station, the worse it got. I… I was about to give up and just stay here with my son. Then I saw you. You seemed completely fine. I thought… I thought you’d know how to stop it or at least how to save him. I didn’t even realize my hijo wasn’t glitching until you said something. I’m… I’m absolutely terrified. If I’m not here to take care of him, who will? Who will kiss him goodnight? Feed him, bathe him? Who would be there to kiss his injuries? To care for him when he’s sick?” The woman started sobbing trying to keep it together. The infant began to cry, as if sensing something was horribly wrong with his mamá.

“I’ll look after him” The woman stared at Miguel with a glimmer of hope. Miguel hadn’t even realized he had said it until it was too late.

“What’s- what’s your name?”
The woman smiled, she didn’t have much time left.

“My name is Rio Morales. My husband's name is… was Jefferson Davis. And this? This is our strong little man. Our hijo pequeño (little son). His name is Miles. Miles Morales.” Miguel smiled, tears welling up in his eyes. buildings started to completely disappear behind him as he tried to smile. To reassure her.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you Señorita Morales. I’m Miguel O’Hara. I wish we could’ve met under better conditions, and I know you don’t know me very well, but I lost a daughter not long ago. If I could have been the one to take her place, I would have.. but no matter what, I wouldn’t have wanted her to be alone. If you’ll allow me, I’d like to try and save your son. While I still can…” he murmured solemnly.

Rio smiled and snuggled closer to her son with tears gushing down her face

“Hola mi apuesto y fuerte hijito. Lamento mucho no poder estar más en tu vida, y que no podré verte crecer ... Por favor, perdóname, Miles. Hice todo lo que pude... (Hello my handsome, strong little son. I'm so so sorry I can't be in your life anymore, and that I won't be able to see you grow... Please forgive me, Miles. I did all I could...)” she kissed the top of her son’s head and began to pass Miles to Miguel, whispering, “be good for Señor O’Hara, okay? I won’t be there to scold you if you are rude to him, so I need you to be a good boy. For Mamá. Okay niño?” She held onto her son's hand, rubbing it softly. As she started to fade, the last thing she whispered to her child was, “Mamá and Papá love you more than you could ever know… we love you so much hijo”

And just like that, she disappeared, glitching out of existence forever. Upon opening his eyes and not seeing his Mamá, Miles’ whimpering turned into loud sobs. Miguel quickly stood up, trying to rock the poor, distressed baby, holding him close to his chest. Miguel looked up, realizing that only the ground remained, knowing he had very limited time left.

Lyla appeared next to him, always there when he needed her.

“Okay, I’ve searched through everything I could. We need to head back to our dimension before-….. Miguel what is that?” Lyla blipped down to eye level with Mile. She was bent at the knees, staring down at him in combined confusion and glee.

“Well hello there little guy, aren’t you a lucky one for not glitching out of existence! Miguel, why didn’t he glitch out of existence?” Miles hadn’t stopped crying, but did quiet down to sad whimpering, looking at Lyla. With his teeny, little hands, he tried to reach out to touch her. An action that obviously didn’t work, but thankfully distracted him in the meantime.

“I- I honestly don’t know. His name is Miles. For whatever reason, he doesn’t seem to be affected by all of this. We can figure it out later. Right now, I think we should leave. I don’t wanna be here a second longer. Lyla. Open a portal, please” Lyla squinted at him and crossed her arms, refusing to follow his demand.

“What? Lyla, open the goddamn portal!” he squeezed Miles tighter to him as the baby started crying again.

“Miguel, what happens if we bring a child, the only thing left living in a destroyed dimension, back to our dimension? What if ours collapses as well? What then? You can’t seriously think that this is a good idea, especially after what happened to Gab-“

“DON’T YOU DARE SAY HER NAME!” Miles was full on crying now, to the point where he looked like he was about to puke from the effort. Miguel looked down worriedly and began bouncing him, apologizing profusely in both English and Spanish. Lyla sighed and reluctantly opened a portal to their home dimension.

“Fine, we can keep Miles for the time being. Half because this is the most alive I've seen you in weeks, and half because I'm interested to know why he isn’t glitching. But! If he’s what caused the dimension to collapse, we’ll need to find another way to contain him. We can’t put our dimension at risk over one baby,” Lyla stressed to the man, hoping he’d get her point. Miguel understood where she was coming from, he really did, but he just couldn’t let another kid go. Especially one that was in this position. Alone. As helpless as he was.

“Of course! I understand! We’ll do some scans and tests when we get back to our dimension to make sure it’s safe. Right now I need to make sure he’s safe!” he walked into the portal, refusing to look back.

Just like that, dimension 1610 was no more.