Variant Strain

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Peter was already up to his elbows in gore when it occurred to him that this was, perhaps, not his best idea to date.

His previous experiences with consuming Hive central neural clusters had revolved around a single dead mobile hive, a dying mobile hive, and a mostly suicidal one. The dead and near-dead ones hadn't been a problem. By the time he'd gotten to it, the dead hives in Forest Park had been just more biomass to use. The dying one from the tunnels, barely an hour ago, had given up its secrets almost eagerly.

The problem had come in trying to consume a fully conscious and fully aware Hive. Hank Pym had goaded Peter into consuming him and that had resulted in some major identity issues.

Peter had mistakenly equated the mobile hive loaded into the train cars with his previous mobile hive experiences.

Rather than with Hank Pym.

The precise moment Peter knew that he might have gotten in over his head once more was from the sudden shuddering wave of sensation that raced up his arm at the point of contact.

As it swept through his body and past his head, his vision shifted. The hallucinatory overlay that Jessica's presence imposed slammed into him like a physical thing.

He completely lost track of the reality of the train tracks. Of the train cars. Of the entire abandoned subway station and the thousands of infected within it. None of that registered on his senses anymore.

He was elbow deep into a picnic basket that was aboard a school bus. Fingers closed around a wrapped sandwich.

Which from the smell, seemed to be chicken salad.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw a scuffle. He could see himself, but not as himself. It was a him with long, unkempt hair and wearing scruffy army fatigues. They weren't worn neatly and with a soldier's pride, but with the vague impression that the wearer really couldn't afford any better. It was him, with the shadow of a beard and his face with heavy scars in the middle of a bare-fisted knock-down-drag-out dust up with a small group of hefty line backer types, all wearing Varsity Letterman jackets.

Another glance out the windshield of the bus showed him the hallucinatory teen-aged Jessica snuggled up against another version of himself on some benches. This one was his age, but in a white t-shirt, blue-jeans and a black leather jacket. His hair was in a high, styled pompadour and he looked every inch of a fifties bad boy. He was leaning in close to Jessica, whispering sweet nothings into her ear as their hands negotiated caresses and teasing touches against one another.

He turned his head once more and looming over him and the picnic basket was another of the heavy linebackers, who was cracking his knuckles. Inside the bus were several women, all with Jessica's face who were also giving him hostile looks.

Peter carefully let the sandwich in his hand go and pulled his hand out, holding both hands up as he stepped off the bus. He couldn't feel his enhanced strength or other abilities, the same as when he'd been in Hank's Wizard of Oz dream.

The linebacker type gave him a nasty mono-browed glare, but didn't pursue as he backed off.

Peter glanced down and noticed that he was wearing the same Varsity Letterman jacket as the rest of the linebackers.

Peter stepped entirely off the bus just as the linebackers caught up to the other him and were about to deliver a nasty beat down.

"Hey, guys." Peter called out, "Let me deal with him."

The linebackers traded looks among themselves. Then they looked at the Peter they were holding on to, then to him, the one in the jacket same as themselves. They shrugged and let the scruffy version of him go and slowly moved back to the bus to finish loading the rest of the picnic equipment.

The him in the fatigues looked around in confusion. "We're in her brain?" Cain's voice came out of him.

Peter nodded. "Or she's in ours."

"Same difference at this point," Cain declared gruffly.

Peter shuddered.

Cain inclined his head towards the bad-boy version of Peter, "I'm guessing that's Cletus."

"The fact that she sees them tearing each other apart as 'flirting' would be more disconcerting if we didn't have the rest of this to deal with." Peter replied.

"It would appear that we've underestimated the full extent of Jessica's actual mind being physically distributed among the Becks and her Hives." Connors' voice broke in. "We've plugged into that and it's far vaster than we may have initially surmised."

Peter looked up to see another version of himself, approaching from around the bus, this one dressed in large coke-bottle horn-rim glasses and a sweater vest, underneath a white lab coat. His hair was slicked back as a simple expedient against actually having to do anything with it. He spoke with Connors' voice. "I imagine when she was locked in a mental battle with your mother, she only had the resources of her own body to drawn on then, not like now."

"You don't think we can mentally deadlock her into going back to sleep like she did?" Peter asked.

Connors shook his head, "No. There is no possible way now." He stamped a foot down hard and produced nothing more noticeable than a small thump. "Do you see this? This is all built up in her mind. We can barely touch this construct. It's immense. We have some influence, but we're comparatively a tiny influence against hers. Consider that our appearances are being dictated by this scenario rather than our own self-images."

"And she sees all of us as you." Cain muttered, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his fatigues.

"Yes." Donna spoke up in an annoyed tone.

Peter looked back and found another version of himself. This one in a black suit, dark sun-glasses and slicked back hair. "Er... funny, I was half-expecting you to be in a cheerleader outfit."

He... she...? Looked back at Peter over the tops of her glasses and glared. "No."

"Our appearances are a compromise," Connors explained. "Something partaking between of our self-image and the general setting. But not enough of our own self-images."

"Hence, all of us with Peter's face," Donna continued and Peter found it very odd to hear her voice coming out of his face. The features were softened slightly. Just a tiny bit, giving a feminine quality to it, but the fact that his face, with very little alteration could look so feminine was just as strange.

"Fascinating. But the problem's still the same," Cain grumbled. "Veranke's got us in her grip and we're not strong enough to break free."

Peter heard Cain say Jessica... but at the same time he heard him say Veranke. He also heard the same word echoing in his head, but he could hear other subtle shades of meaning to the single word. Queen. Godess. Mother.

Donna's snapped her fingers with a sound like a rifle shot. "Focus, Peter."

He blinked and said, "Er... right. Do we know that for sure? That we can't get out, I mean?"

Cain and Connors both shook their heads. Cain spoke, "I can barely feel my body anymore. I can't even focus on it enough to break free. This is practically in all our senses. Believe me when I say we've got a lot."

Peter sighed then began thinking aloud, "It might be easier to stop her little field trip from here. We've only got one bus to deal with. If I'm understanding how this works correctly, the single bus corresponds with the fleet of train cars they've got going out. If we disable it somehow here, that will mess up all the cars... right?"

"Except we're even more helpless here." Connors cut in, gesturing to the bus, "We have less ability to influence what happens than we did in the Oz dream. I mean the only reason they didn't beat Cain to a pulp was because they think Peter's with them."

"Great, I'm Jane Goodall." Peter quipped nervously, jerking a thumb at the linebackers, "The gorillas have accepted me as one of their own."

"Can we use it?" Cain asked.

"Even when I can get in closer to the bus, if they notice me do anything, they'll attack." Peter replied. "There's at least fifty of them in there and I can't do anything here."

Cain rubbed his cheek, "They do hit pretty hard."

"And I'm currently in my own shape, which is skinny geek." Peter added. "Which is really not built for hand to hand."

"Except it's not hand to hand." Connors said softly. "It's mind to mind. Ours is simply not as strong as hers. It's not like it was with Hank Pym where we were all competing for control and resources of a single brain. The playing field was more level then."

Donna's eyes widened in alarm and she shook her head, "No, Connors. That is a bad idea."

"What is?" Peter asked sharply.

"Yeah, I think we could all use an idea about now." Cletus's voice said, the version of Peter in a leather jacket and jeans limping towards them.

"What happened to you?" Cain asked in confusion.

"Well, one minute, Jessie-darlin' and I were dancin' all sweet and mellow-like... then the next thing I know she got a tentacle on my leg and ripped it clean off. Except it was also like we were makin' out and then I think she might've ripped my heart out too. Literal-like. I think I'm still there, just goin' unconscious. Except now I'm here." Cletus said sourly. "Y'know at the very least she coulda' bought me dinner first or something."

"We're running out of time then," Connors murmured. "Jessica's no longer distracted. The trains are moving. We need to stop them."

Donna's voice raised slightly, "I agree, but not that way."

"What way?" Peter growled.

"We're not suited to this kind of fight, Peter." Connors said softly. "Jessica has a significant advantage in terms of resources."

"She's got multiple brains to fight for her. Really big ones at that, right?" Peter replied.

Connors nodded, "Just so. It's like trying to out-compute a supercomputer when all we have is an abacus."

Donna continued to shake her head.

"As we are now we can't win," Connors continued slowly.

"But we can modify ourselves so that we could." Peter replied in understanding.

"Yes." Connors nodded.

"No!" Donna cut in, "You can not do this. You're talking about the equivalent of brain surgery on yourself using a spoon by going through your nose. The modifications Connors wants to make could result in irreversible damage."

Cletus made a dismissive noise. "We've had our brains blown out with a gun and we've lost damn near every limb at least once. What kind of 'irreversible damage' are we talkin' here?"

"Dead counts as irreversible," Cain pointed out.

"Technically, we've all been there and done that too." Cletus chortled.

"Insanity, for starters." Donna replied, her tone cutting.

"I'm already talking to other parts of my brain like they're separate people." Peter said trying to lighten the tone nervously.

"You think we're crazy now?" Donna growled back. "You don't know crazy. The voices? The Chitauri words? I may not be able to keep that from you anymore. You... yourself. Your self-image could be permanently altered to something you can't recognize or control."

Connors gestured as he interjected, "Except if we don't do this, Jessica is free to absorb us into herself at will. Peter's already wearing their colors. It's camouflage now, but how long until he's part of the happy picnic trip? We'll be altered beyond all recognition regardless."

"We don't know that for sure!" Donna replied hotly. "We could still--"

Cain raised his head slightly, "It's fuzzy, but I've got some of our sense impressions coming back. Might be adapting to what's happening. Not enough, though. I think the train's moving again." He paused. "They left my body on the tracks."

"The train's barely moving five miles an hour." Peter pointed out.

"Yeah. Looks like they're planning on dragging my body on the tracks the whole way." Cain shrugged.

Everyone traded glances at that, but it was finally Connors who spoke next, his voice soft and calm, undercutting the anger in Donna's tone. "We can't even break out of what's happened to us. We're locked into her mindscape. Her body... and that of the entire horde of infected under her control are free to do what they want in real space while we stand there with our arm stupidly stuck into one of the train cars."

"And about to be dragged." Cain added.

"And probably eviscerated." Cletus chimed in.

Peter thought hard and stared straight at Donna. "Functions... Cletus is the practical voice without conscience or morality and all the appetites. Cain has the expanded senses and intelligence analysis. Connors tells me things I need to know, but I don't personally have as part of my personal self. All the hidden information. The Hydra language. Body construction. Consumed memories. All of that." He paused as the thought completed itself aloud. "But you... You're the part that decides what I can and can't know, aren't you?"

Donna straightened up and inclined her head. "I keep your mind safe."

"But it'll cost us our life at this point," Connors added. "We need to make the adjustments or we're dead."

Donna replied darkly, "There's a reason why everyone who understood the Chitauri language died soon after. Usually of suicide. Even if we survive, we would probably need to--"

"We can worry about that later." Peter cut her off. "At least we'll have a later." He turned to Connors, "You're sure this is the only way?"

"The only way I can see, yes." Connors nodded.

Peter met Donna's gaze, her face a mirror of his. His eyes were hard as he spoke. "Do it."

"We don't have enough biomass right now." Connors said, his voice dropping to a familiar baritone. "We should have enough if we reabsorb the three external bodies that are currently active. That should do it."

Peter frowned, "You mean, two, right? I only gave Cain and Cletus have bodies."

Connors shook his head, closing his eyes. "Three. You created an externalized body without consciously being aware of it two days ago when we were in Queens. We only just sub-consciously figured out what it was after we made Cletus his first body. The link through our mass-space is intact, despite the distance. It's been functioning independently without our oversight since we built it, but we need that mass in this form."

Peter's mind churned over that information. Two days ago. He didn't remember forming another body. There wasn't-- His stomach felt as though it had dropped at a thought.

He had modified a body two days ago, hadn't he? But she wasn't an extension of him... was she?

But then the memory of seeing things from MJ's perspective as she'd slept on his chest the night before rose up. Shared sense impressions. Just like he'd been doing with his other bodies.

In a panic, he shouted out, "Wait, wait! What's this other body?!"

Donna shook her head, a cold expression on her face. "Too late now."

Connors eyes opened, glowing a brilliant red. "We've started."

He had a moment of dislocation as sense impressions from his bodies began flooding in once more.

He wasn't just standing in the middle of a school parking lot, he could feel his arm, practically dislocated as the train car trundled along, pulled by a two regular sized Rhinos who had the chains slung over their shoulders. Over one shoulder he could see Cain's body on the tracks, bleeding from a torn off arm and with both legs obviously broken.

Cain's senses came to him next, wide-spectrum vision, improbable colors. He could scent and pinpoint every infected within the tunnels with them. The body began falling apart, the broken limbs and open wounds exploding into writhing tendrils, but rather than repairing the damage, they seemed to work their way further up into the healthy flesh, consuming itself.

Cain's eyes showed Peter himself, arm still in the train car, eyes flaring bright red.

Peter watched himself, for just a moment. His legs straightened out beneath him, talons forming in a blur at his feet, legs elongating to drive those taloned feet into the cement beneath the tracks, anchoring him in place and stopping the train.

Cain's body broke apart as the tendrils worked their way up, until practically only his face and eyes remained.

Within the mindscape, Cain sighed, his face and form shifting from Peter's to his own, before he stepped into Peter and vanished.

He watched his body holding back an entire train car full of mobile hives for just a moment.

It... he... screamed. The back of his coat and pants seemed to come to a boil. Huge tumorous bubbles grew from the pseudo-fabric, gowing to nearly softball sized before they would burst into torrents of bilous yellow fluid that seemed to dry into rust red and blood black flesh, that in turn would bubble and swell and burst, building up flesh across Peter's back and skull faster than the whipping tendrils could as Cain's separated body-mass was added to his.

He could feel the sensations of something squirming within his guts and a tightness in a chest that wasn't his. Crawling, consuming tendrils racing out from open wounds. Cletus's body was nearby, tearing itself apart and trying to take as much of the Rhino platorm Jessica had used with it. Cletus's body didn't even have eyes anymore and minimal sensory enhancements. It had been built for speed, not sensitivity, which was just as well, given how Peter imagined he wouldn't want to feel what had been done to him.

He could feel his main body, still growing, pulling at the stored bio-mass he had stored away, growing, larger and larger. He could feel his mind expanding. His thoughts racing. Cool logic sliding into place.

Cletus within the shared delusion laughed, his face returning to normal as he took a step towards Peter and vanished as well.

Neural transmission rates from where you normally keep most of your mass when not in use were too slow to be practical. We've been making do with just the neural architecture in your head and body, but it has been very... human. Connor's voice whispered to him. We're no longer bound to that limit.

He could feel his body pulling all the biomass he had out. His body was bloating to something almost as tall and as wide as the train tunnel. His taloned feet, anchoring him in place were joined by bone-bladed tendrils digging into the tunnel walls and floor. Holding him even more solidly.

Taking root, his voice drawled. Not so sure this is a good idea anymore, hmm?

Then came the sensations of the third body.

It was farther away. He wasn't sure how he was translating the distance in the sensations, but it was there. Unmistakeable. It had been too far to even sense before, with the slow transmission rates across the mass divide that Connors had spoken of. But it was connected to him still. If he'd wished, he could've pulled that body's mass back into him at any moment.

It had been as much his body as the one in the tunnels.

He hadn't wanted to consume it. Not at the time. Even now he didn't wish to, but he needed it now. There was no avoiding it.

Irreversible, Donna had insisted.

He wondered if MJ would forgive him for going this far.

He remembered Hank's memories right after his Hydra infection had gone into full flower.

His last moments as a human.

Then there were eyes.

Eyes everywhere.

More points of view than a human mind could handle.

The scream he never remembered uttering as he realized how he was seeing the world shifting and changing.

Peter screamed too now as he fully connected with the third body in preparation for absorbing it.

Thousands upon thousands of eyes. Looking every which way. Looking at... themselves. Impaled, shattered, maimed bodies in their thousands upon thousands. Tendrils had wormed their way into those bodies, never quite fully breaking them down, but they were all part of the same, singular entity no matter how horrifically separated they were.

Tens of thousands of eyes looking in every direction.

From every screaming, writhing, bone-blade impaled body.

The forest of blades he had left behind in Forest Hills was part of him. Was him. The viral matting that he had spread himself through, had turned into part of him to produce the razors had never fully separated from him, despite how spent his biomass levels had become.

A small, detached part of himself wondered... if he had decided to consume it back then, instead of having been overcome by his own disgust at himself, he probably might not have even needed to go this far now. Perhaps he'd have had the power to stop her before they'd gotten to this point.

But there was no more time for blaming himself. His mind was expanding, racing, unfolding. The entire forest of razors, surrounding entire city blocks shuddered and he could feel every body within. See from every eye. Hear from every ear.

He could hear his heartbeat. Thunderously loud in his ear. Ears. Every ear hearing the vast, unsubtle THUMP-THUMP of his heart as the forest shuddered in time with it.

The vast beating heart of an entire neighborhood's worth of people, all beating in time.

Thousands of bodies, merged into a single purpose.

His purpose.

It began its collapse at the edges. Hardened bone razors breaking apart into flesh, then exploding into tendrils which in turn seemed to collapse in on themselves, consuming the bodies bound to itself. All part of the same vast body. Asphalt underneath. Concrete buildings in the area. Leached for minerals by those hungry tendrils, stripping them bare even as the flesh collapsed into itself, falling deeper and deeper into wherever it was his mass went when he did not need it.

Tons upon tons of biomass.

All pulling through the mass divide. Pym's theoretical other-space where his biomass went when he didn't want gravity to affect it.

Filling his single, remaining body.

Peter lost track of Connors, but knew he'd stepped into him as well. He screamed anew as he felt his body beneath the Gentek tunnels unfolding and growing, pressing against the walls of the tunnel as he felt himself expand to fill it. Razor edged anchoring tendrils burrowing deeper into the stone, cracking it and widening the tunnel. Making room for himself.

The leading edges of the expanding flood of flesh swept into the train, tendrils whipping through and consuming the mobile hives within, now with appalling ease. Steel and aluminum tore under the onslaught, acids coursing through fresh, new channels within his expanding body leeching fresh materials from the metal.

Minds and fragments of mind thundered through his. Tens of thousands of partially intact personalities. Millions of memories. All rushing to fill his expanding consciousness.

All being neatly slotted into place as his capabilities grew to match the demand.

There was room for everyone.

A thought, unexpected and strange, rose despite the haze of sensations.

I am vast. I contain multitudes.

An inhuman amalgamation of thoughts boiling over like an overfilled kettle at the back of his mind. The little dog laughed nastily even as it grew to loom immensely upon the imagined horizon, before growing so huge and diffuse as to become the very sky itself.

The process came in time with music. Not the persistent Broadway show-tunes that would present themselves to him at times. It was like nothing he had ever heard before. Ethereal and piercing. The melody haunted and wove through the fragments and fragmenting mind of Peter Parker, stitching it together into a sort of crazy quilt patchwork. The song came with words and the words made sense.

Strength.

Stronger than tears.

Sto d'zan che'ir.

It had meanings upon meanings. Layers within layers. Conceptually. Literally. Culturally.

Literally it spelled out a concept that might translate to "Do what needs to be done."

Not philosophically, but purely literal. It could have been rendered as , "Make it so." or something along the lines of "Execute Program."

Sto d'zan che'ir.

Changes blossomed.

In the world of the mind. The other versions of Peter Parker were entirely gone and it was only the Peter who stepped towards the school bus.

Jessica smiled at him from the bench she was sitting at and he smiled back.

Then he reached out and drove his fingers into the front grille of the bus.

He could feel the hot metal giving underneath his fingers. Skin, sizzling as the hot, running engine should have burned his hand, but did not. He could feel tendrils sliding off his burning skin, wrapping into the bus's structure, holding the whole as a single unit.

Jessica shot to her feet. Her flirtatious expression was gone. Replaced with shock and surprise.

Peter raised his arm and lifted the entire bus with a casual ease.

He gave Jessica a small smile.

Then smashed it hard into the confused and milling faux high schoolers of Jessica's delusional world.

The bus broke. That was the only way to describe it. It didn't break as a real vehicle would have when slammed into a hard surface.

It simply shattered as though it were glass. Beneath it the cement cracked and began peeling away. Through the crazily broken fragments snatches of the real world could be seen from a hundred... no. A thousand different viewpoints.

An immense wave of rolling, surging red and rust colored flesh burst out of the crack in the calcified plug that had been blocking the tunnel. The plug itself was either being rapidly covered in viral matting or was somehow transforming back into living flesh from white bone.

The fleshy, viral material, heaved and surged, like a flood that caught up the infected in its wake, crushing them. Consuming them. The closest few train cars were knocked over by a strong surge of rusty, fluid flesh, blades of bone forming on the front edge of the wave, gutting the train cars and peeling them open to slurp up the mobile hives within.

The wave crested and crashed in the midst of train cars, now shoved entirely off their tracks. The flood of flesh slowed and seemed to consolidate for a moment.

Jessica's horde of infected simply began to flee from the material now stopped material, but it heaved, boiling and bubbling, forming expanding nodules of transcluscent yellowish material that stretched taut to the limits of their growth.

Bodies began boiling up out of those nodules in the flood of flesh. Yellow bile spilled as the nodules burst, releasing Hunters and Trackers and drones that chased down the other drones, pulling them down, throwing them into the vast spill of flesh.

Peter realized that was him.

A full hive body. All semblance of his own human form, gone. Even the last shreds of human-like thought. Those were his. He could only just barely understand how such a body could work.

Or more precisely, other parts of him understood perfectly. He didn't want to think about it.

He realized with a start that he was watching this from the vantage points of several Becks scattered throughout the room. He'd taken control of them.

He could feel them as easily as they were his own bodies. Their vast, networked mind, fighting against him. Deadlocking physically and mentally. Or it should have, but he was stronger.

And he was cheating. Every drone eaten was one less to her strength and one more to his own. Slowly, but surely, he was tipping the balance. He realized that this was precisely what Jessica had done to win against his mother. The rats. Small, scurying rats had provided just that tiny bit of extra neural muscle to break their evenly balanced fight.

Peter was consuming entire drones and becks. The fight rapidly grew one-sided.

In their shared delusional world Jessica raised her hands to her head and screamed.

"What is-- what is that?!" She cried out.

Peter looked from the cracks in the landscape, which were spreading and falling open further. "The real world. Not this one, Jessica. This is what you've been doing."

"No!" She screeched, running to him. He caught her wrists as she moved to try and pummel his chest. Still acting the part of the fifties sock-hop girl. "No! You're breaking it. You're ruining everything!"

"It's over, Jessica." Peter said, his voice cold. Every scrap of self-control was marshaled to hold himself perfectly still as her body... her unreal, hallucinatory body slumped against him, trembling with rage.

No. Not rage. Fear.

"You can't break it." She whispered into his chest. "You can't. If you break it, I'm going to..."

He frowned, uncertain suddenly. He could feel his body, now immense. Formless. Filling half the train station and claiming every infected he could reach. Drones, becks, hunters, trackers, walkers, sleepers. Even the Oscorp security agents. The poor Soldyat were being dragged back to offer up their flesh to his form.

Sacrifices of flesh to fuel him. The music and the song were whispering at him through the cracks. Growing louder with each passing moment.

He shuddered. "It's over." He said once more, perhaps more to convince himself than her.

She shook her head. Crying against him. "It was keeping it out. It kept things out. You broke it."

As if to punctuate this, more of the scene simply collapsed, opening back to the scene in reality, but something else as well. There was a haze of varied shades of red. Like an abstract painting of reds and rust and black and maroon smeared across the landscape. Not just as blood and offal on the scene. The altered view seemed to fill in the gaps in their vision. Transitioning from Jessica's schoolyard picnic to the horrific carnage and stillness of the underground train station.

The music and words whispered through him, rising in pitch and strength. She shuddered against him.

He knew, sharing points of view from more and more physical forms that her physical form had fallen unconscious in the real world. Slumped back on her Rhino platform. It had been crippled by the fight with Cletus and was even then being mutilated by a half-dozen of Peter's hunters.

The scene was growing red-tinged. The full colors of the hallucinatory world becoming a blood-stained abstract.

Peter turned to look over his shoulder to his others. Uncertain of what to do.

Only Donna remained, wearing her own face once more, stood immediately behind him. Filling his vision. Keeping him from seeing past her.

"I warned you." She said quietly. The song filled the gaps in her words. That wasn't quite what she said. She spoke other words in the language and they were filled with recrimination and the unstated establishment of fault and ownership of a problem.

"I... we can fix this, right?" He asked, worriedly.

Jessica whimpered and pressed harder against him. Her hands were now pressed to her ears. "I don't want to."

Donna shook her head and Peter couldn't help but notice as she moved that there was something gray, writhing behind her.

He swallowed nervously, glancing back into the spreading break into reality. One where he was now a hive in full flower. With the full might of Jessica's former army now at his command.

He could make them do anything he wished. Even now his drones swept the tunnels. sweeping them for stragglers and Oscorp Soldyat. Those were killed and consumed. All of those not-him were to be consumed and made to be-him.

"Congratulations," His voice drawled sarcastically behind Donna. "You've stopped Veranke. Good job."

Donna's expression became strained and she convulsed, suddenly dropping out of his sight, as the source of the voice stepped fully into view.

The gymnasium and high school were gone. They stood now in a red world. The sky was blood-stained and filled with roiling black clouds. The cement had cracked and shattered entirely into a dry crackling sand. What trees had been there were replaced by ropy masses of tendrils that shook in time to the rising music.

Taking center stage was him. Or some version of him. It looked like Peter Parker, but his eyes were shadowed. His expression, predatory. Strange on his own face. There were odd ridge lines to his doppelganger's chin.

"What now, Kl'rt?" His double asked and Peter knew he didn't speak in English. "We stand uncontested ruler of Manhattan below. Our reach grows. Even now we sing the song and it speaks to those in within our sphere even distant from us."

Jessica glanced up briefly, then buried her face into Peter's shoulder once more. His... other... kept speaking.

"Our goal was achieved. A step in our goal. We have dealt with her." He inclined his head. "Others seek their goals. Seek to trap us in Manhattan. Will we permit this? We reach out our song to them. They are not in harmony, but we can make them sing."

Peter struggled with the words that were not words that were entire concepts and hidden meaning. The red world around them seemed to heave and convulse and they now stood atop a mountain. A high place of some sort, closer to the blood red sky.

Within his expanded mind, a silent presence that was Cain-like responded and he could suddenly see all of Manhattan, mapped out below him in glowing lines.

"Look, once Kl'rt. You now stand as a god among them. You are no Criti Noll. You are no Dalx. You are as Dorrek. We can reach out and touch them." His other gestured, "Do you not see?"

He could feel the presences of the not-him, like glowing, charnel pinpoints in the empty world.

They were small things. Weak things. Unworthy of recognition. The rats, he recognized them now. The modified rats. They carried her seeds and tiny independent minds within them. Potential rivals... unneeded. With a small effort of will they aligned with him and were removed. His voice raised to the song and they all dropped dead.

Sto d'zan che'ir.

Further out, were the Others. Twisted beyond recognition. Tauntingly altered beyond what the common form should have. Bare fumbling half-built abominations of what could be. Wretched half-mad things kept under control by those not-him only through breaking their wills and spirits to be isolated, dependent things. There were a small number of those all haunting the edges of the island. On bridges, in tunnels. Above and scurrying about close by.

They were fighting with others. Those with a faint overlay of those of their kind. Not-him, but not enough to be truly not-him. Echoes of other-selves. Even weaker. Even more wretched. Unworthy.

The Soldyat and the Thunderbolts. Teams fighting one another for the ways and means into and out of Manhattan, Peter shuddered in recognition. He could reach out to them. The Soldyat at least. The Thunderbolts were visible to him in this view, but couldn't be touched. At least not in this manner. Others still close by. Stragglers.

He could feel one in particular, tainted to his senses, but also with the faintness of a Thunderbolt. That one. Oscorp and Thunderbolt in one.

A name attached to that. John Jameson. He stood in the midst of Soldyat. The lone Thunderbolt, infected with taint and tied to something further to the North.

Peter raised his voice and the songs of unmaking flowed logically through the imperfectly twisted Soldyat. They were not allowed to finish the placement of their bombs. Each Soldyat in Manhattan at that precise moment shuddered, then exploded into a mass of tendrils that then collapsed into itself, leaving behind only those modifications Weapon Plus and Oscorp had left within their bodies.

Colonel Jameson, Peter could only assume, had been shocked when his security detail had exploded into hungry tendrils that pierced his body and began to consume him and each other.

Sto d'zan che'ir.

He could feel faint pulls further out, others to the East, where faint traces of himself still lingered. Stronger, but being snuffed out one after another. Only slightly stronger, but without thought. Broken, mad, mindless things only useful for sowing chaos. Unworthy for proper use. Built broken. Not meant to be used.

The infected that had escaped Forest Hills. They wouldn't last much longer. Peter could reach them even from Manhattan. He'd shared of their song. Their body. But they were already dying at the hands of the Thunderbolts there.

Cleansed. The song was not needed.

Only he remained in Manhattan of the Infected.

A living god among them. He shook that thought loose as the music rose to a crescendo. In this high place, shown the nations of the world... or at least of Manhattan and tempted to be king over all of it.

A god-king.

In his arms Veranke shuddered and sobbed. Her mind was broken. There was a disconnection within her that kept her from hearing the full glory of the song. She had been, to his shock and disgust, built broken. Kept from glory.

Queen-goddess-self that should have been.

"You can fix it," His other said soothingly. "You can do anything you wish. You can make her better. You can make everything better."

"I... should... Should I?" He asked haltingly. The expanded mind, ponderous thoughts that seemed to flash quicksilver quick through a mind now the size of a city block hesitated.

So pat. So simple.

He was a God now.

Well, like a God.

Close enough for government work, right?

She was pulled close to him, her skin against his and he could feel the point of contact growing sticky and tacky.

Her hands sank into his flesh. Her body sinking into his. Merging.

He gaped, but she didn't even seem to notice.

He tried to push her away, but even as he held her shoulders, his fingers sank into her skin, the color blending between them until it was impossible to tell where she ended and he began.

He gave a strangled cry and for a brief moment he could see her physical body and her Rhino platform/mount shoved against the tremendous mound of flesh that was his body.

Tendrils piercing her skin, folding, unfolding, whipping and pulling her down into blood red and dark rust. He watched in fascination as a tendril ran up her spine, causing the skin above it to bulge and split obscenely, more tendrils unfolding out of the swollen flesh and collapsing in on itself.

"You wanted to stop her, didn't you?" His voice drawled, his double was grinning as she sank into him. "Or did you want to fix her?"

Her mind was... disjointed. One part, the part that had been maintaining the delusional world meshed and melded almost painfully simply with his. Almost as though it had been part of the same thing from the beginning and was simply rejoining its source.

"This isn't what I--" He said as he felt the majority of her mind, or at least the hive portion of her mind break apart like a soap bubble within him. The rate that she sank into his body sped up until nothing was left. There was a single, untouched part. Something of her that remained intact and whole but hadn't been the delusional Jessica. He could feel it still there. A snapshot of Jessica Drew as she had been in her moment of infection. The sad little girl with no hair and no friends.

"This does both." He drawled, "She will be stopped. And through us, perfected. As she should have been. Unbroken."

He shuddered and allowed that part within him, untouched, even though parts of him seemed intent on tearing it open and pulling her into him in parts. Nevertheless, the useful parts of her mind. The ones she had, but clearly couldn't understand... those he claimed for his own.

The difference, he realized, between them was that he understood, after a fashion, all the instructions Hydra came with. The blueprints. The plans and genetic instructions. She had built her Infected using pre-loaded designs. Ones she had already seen in use. Blind ape copying. She could try and build new things, but they were poorly meshed together patchworks. Unlike the simple and elegant creations he had built for Cletus and Cain and Donna, she was trying to create her designs using jigsaw puzzle pieces in the dark while wearing gloves. She could make rough approximations and crude duplicates, but nothing subtle, even though she had the capacity for it.

Now he knew everything she hadn't herself known.

And taken control of all the remnants of her horde of infected.

Sto d'zan che'ir.

Even as those thoughts passed through him, a small voice, tiny, barely heard, whispered to him.

"Deus ex Machina. God in the machine. In Greek theater, the Gods were raised or lowered onto the stage to fix every problem. The main problem with those Greek Gods was that by and large, they were complete dicks."

Peter blinked and turned, trying to find the source, but in his distraction at what had happened with Jessica, all he could see now was gray and red. Donna's voice continued to speak, echoing all around him. Speaking into the gaps of the howling cacophony of music that spoke of hunger and power and growth.

"You think part of you believe you are a God risen from the biological machine of Hydra. You are not. That is not you talking. You're often dense and sometimes nauseatingly self-sacrificing, but you are not... for the most part... a dick. That is part of the Chitauri programming."

Peter blinked rapidly and glanced down at Jessica, then back once more to the other. The other Peter was frowning. "You're calling the Chitauri programming a dick."

"Because it is." Donna's whispering voice continued. "You are Peter Parker. You are not Kl'rt. You are not any of the Chitauri labels that it is trying to apply to you to force you into its preprogrammed roles. You are not a Chitauri warrior. Not a scientist. Not a diplomat. Certainly not a God-King. You are a teen-aged boy from Queens who has taken a burden that is too heavy for you. That is too heavy for anyone."

"I've managed okay." Peter said defensively.

"Not when you've gone this far, you haven't." Donna replied, the words and the concept of a sweeping gesture presenting the panorama around his physical form filled him. "You need to stop, Peter. This is going too far. You need to change back."

"I just stopped Jameson's men from destroying access to Manhattan and purged all Hydra Infected in Manhattan except for me."

"You just claimed every scrap of Hydra under your control. Eliminated potential rivals and consolidated your power."

"And now everyone is safe!"

"Except from you."

He hesitated. She was right. But he was also not like those other hives. He had kept control of himself. He could keep control of himself. "I... I can do some good like this."

"Peter," Donna's voice was low and patient, "What are you even doing this for anymore? If it was to find Uncle Ben's killer, you found him days ago. You didn't take any revenge. If it was for answers... you have them now. You know what changed you. You know what's been going on and what Hydra is. Better than others who've studied it for decades, in fact."

"That's not all I've been doing."

"You want to save the world, Peter. You want to save your loved ones. We understand that. But do you also understand why every other person who could understand the Chitauri language stopped themselves or arranged to have themselves stopped before they could go too far?"

"I... they..." Peter started to respond, confused by the conflicting impulses.

"Stay as you are and you are an even greater danger than Jessica ever was. Reed Richards understood the implications once they unfolded out of his mind. You have already done at least as much as he did. You did as he did, reaching out to the infected and nullifying them. Unmaking them. He and you both understood how Hydra works. As you have, he could make it respond to his will. He could have repaired his own body, but he did not. He allowed himself to fall apart and die to ensure the survival of the human race."

"How would we even know that?" Peter whispered back even as the other him glared.

"Because Hydra is capable of encoding memories into a molecular form. When your tendrils consume a physical brain, they take a snapshot of it. Take it apart neuron by neuron and recode it into a compact molecular form. The entire mind, or just memories. Records we can read. Richard's strain of Hydra was part of what went into the making of... well... us. You already know what happened to Bruce Banner. Once he understood the Chitauri language. Understood how Hydra worked, he reduced himself to a mindless rampaging beast and put the one man he trusted in control of him."

"Pym." It was half question and half statement.

"Yes. Bruce Banner tailored Hank Pym's infection to prevent him from having any access at all to the understanding of the Chitauri programming language. Your mother, once she understood the language from exposure only had a split second to make her decision. She ensured that she would be able to stop Jessica by locking them both up within their own minds. She couldn't allow herself to physically manipulate herself."

"And that still led to me." Peter growled.

"Because she hadn't realized how insidious the programming was. She needed to create a form that could deal with tasks in the real world, but couldn't allow that to be her. So she allowed herself to die to ensure that what came after would thrive."

"But I can understand Chitauri Programming Language. That's what the Richards cypher was, right? I'm built wrong."

"Richards wrote a warning. Unfortunately, his mind was so far gone that he hadn't realized his notes weren't even in English. But he wrote in his blood. There were spores of molecular memory embedded into the words."

"He explained what Hydra was... except he had to set up the translation to actually get to the explanation." Peter stared.

"Like teaching someone how to read just so you can tell them not to read the rest of the instructions provided." Donna continued. "As I said. Insiduous. You weren't meant to understand the cipher. That's why I'm here," Donna whispered urgently, "I was meant to keep your conscious mind from hearing the words. There would be enough ability to manipulate and control Hydra without being overwhelmed by its commands. But to break free of Jessica's hold, you had to undo the contraints that allowed me to keep you from fully accessing it."

"But... it's not so bad," Peter argued. "I could do so much. I could fix so much. Fix everything. I can remember how to do things now. Understand so mu--"

"You're a multi-ton sessile lump of flesh in an abandoned train station surrounded by monsters built from your body." Donna's voice came back with a snap. "You are one misstep away from the US Government deciding to go with the nuclear option on Manhattan to ensure you don't spread. You know the protocols. You have enough Thunderbolts in your mind to know exactly what will happen."

"It doesn't have to be like tha--"

" You've become exactly what you were fighting against."

"Hank Pym was able to come to an accomodatio--"

"Pym is hardly someone you want to emulate, now is he?" Her voice snapped harshly, growing in strength the more he listened.

"Dorrek, you will do as you must." His voice drawled. The other form had vanished. Nearly everything else had. The world around them reduced to a smear of red.

Peter shook his head. "I... I mean, I could use this. Is it too late to change back?"

He felt Donna's glare as a hot point at the back of his hallucinatory neck. His true physical form didn't even have a head any more much less a neck. "Except you don't want to. You're thinking of using this power like it will solve your problems."

"Won't it?!" He asked harshly. "No one can stop me now. I can go save Aunt May and everyone and--"

"Were you perhaps planning on marching an army of your infected across Manhattan? Swarm the highways as you made your way to upstate New York? Perhaps you had worries you wouldn't have enough bodies to throw at them and should pick up a few more that you run across along the way?" Donna asked sarcastically. "This is exactly what you've been fighting against this whole time. You need to control yourself."

"I... I don't know if I can." Peter swallowed, looking around at the red world around them. His sense of his body was... odd. Disjointed. A thousand, tens of thousands of bodies all bound to a single will. His will. A singular mind writ large across a every body. Nano-molecular pheromonal communication supplimenting the poor neural transmission rates across the mass-divide.

He tried to fold himself back into a single form, but every instinct fought against his conscious decision to do so. It was like trying to unsneeze.

"You are a fully sentient and conscious hive. In addition to your own purloined memories are the strategies and tactics of tens of thousands of battles encoded into yourself and body. Biological weaponry of tremendous power or subtlety at your metaphorical fingertips. As a Hive you can already feel your instincts. To spread. To take control of territory. To consume and replace everything with yourself. A single unified planetary ecosystem that is all Dorrek. This can not be allowed to happen," Donna's soft mental voice had grown harsher as she spoke. "You can not be allowed to happen. We need to stop us."

He could already feel the twinge in his hallucinatory gut. He'd been able to ignore it to some extent as he'd spoken with Donna, but it was there.

Undeniable.

Growing.

Hunger. Ravenous. Uncontrolable hunger.

He licked hallucinatory lips and knew that somewhere out in the real world, tendrils writhed with an appetite that could not be dealt with so simply.

"Peter, there's a reason you're still talking to me. Cletus, Connor and Cain are all gone. Part of you now. No longer needed. But you are keeping me around because part of you still wants to stay human. You need to keep listening to that part. You need to keep listening to me."

"I know." Peter replied, stretching his senses to try and keep his attention off his growing appetite. Off the thought of how... cramped the tunnels were. How nice it would be to have room to grow. To have fuel to grow from. So much to be done and so many answers to questions he hadn't even realized he wanted to ask.

"We both know exactly how much time you have left. You are not going to be able to keep resisting for longer than another hour."

"I know at least a dozen ways to stop myself within that time," Peter replied distractedly, his mind racing ahead, spreading beyond the limits of Manhattan. Beyond the city limits of New York.

On the northern horizon was a faint glow.

"Then, why not now?"

"I will." He snapped, then forcing himself to calm he continued, "I just need to do one thing while I'm like this. Just one last thing."

"Aunt May, Anna, Gwen and Detective Stacey." Donna's voice carried a hint of a sigh.

"Yes. North of here. Upstate New York."

"Salem Center. Westchester County."

"Yes. Yes..." The faint glow resolved itself as his attention ranged further. The outlines of roads resolving in his mind's view, but the glow just kept growing in strength and intensity.

He had expected something in that area. The view his mind's eye was giving him intersected with whatever internet map program he could pull up and the town resolved itself. Not precisely the town. An Oscorp owned campus a few miles further north of Salem Center. Faint traceries and outlines of blue prints came to mind, but all overlaid by glowing presences.

Hundreds. Thousands. Not-him. Abominations. Bright, independent. Minds that were almost whole, but bent to a single will.

He shuddered as he tried to reach through those pressences to find those he needed to find. Kin. Loved ones. Like-self.

They had little presence in this strange view, but he knew they were there. Facts, information, sifted memories and overheard conversations all slid together within his expanded mind to confirm that they had been taken there by helicopter when they'd been evacuated. They were still there...

In the heart of a Hive in full flower.

He tried to stretch the song out as far as it could, to reach out to those infected and felt another song clashing against his in disharmony.

Not-self. Asleep, but powerful.

Whole. Unlike him.

He was divided. The part of him clinging to Peter Parker... but whatever was there, whatever slumbered not too far to the north was whole. An intact Dorrek. An intact Veranke. God-Emperor. Mother-Queen-Goddess. A nudge away from full awareness. Hungering. Singing songs of a singular world awash in red and rust.

It shifted in its sleep. Its song reacting to his, tuning to it. A sleeper stirring closer to wakefulness.

Peter shuddered and recoiled hurriedly, drawing his song away lest the Dorrek awaken to full action.

"What... was... that..." He whispered in mingled awe and terror.

"That is what you would be if I weren't here."

"It's asleep."

"It was. You brushed up against it."

"What is it doing there?!"

"It's sitting out there. Waiting."

"That... thing is worse than Jessica ever could be."

"For certain values of 'worse'. Whether it kills everyone or you do would be academic to the dead."

"I'm not going to end up like that!" He argued and received a shrug for his words. "It needs to go."

"Does it? Are you saying this as a Hive seeking to remove a potential rival or a man trying to protect the world?"

"Does it matter?" He snarled back, "I can't let that thing stay... there's ways. Even from here . I think I can destroy it before it can wake up--"

"And Aunt May? Anna Watson? The Staceys? How do you think MJ is going to feel about their becoming collateral damage?" She pressed back.

"Shouldn't I be focusing on the bigger picture?" He asked softly. Worriedly. "If that thing wakes up, it will be exactly what we're afraid I will be."

"And yet its been sleeping quietly this whole time. You heard its song. It is old. Much older than you. It has slept longer. Now that you're aware of it, suddenly it is urgent to destroy it."

"It's urgent because we know what it could do! Why would they even have that?!"

"Possibly part of whatever it was the Russians had. They seemed more... reckless in their work than the Thunderbolts. Not that this matters. Are you going to destroy it?"

"Of course. I have to. It can't be allowed to awaken."

"Neither can you."

"Well, what the hell do you want me to do?! I can't let it just stay there! It needs to be destroyed! I... " He paused, thoughts whirling and realized that scenarios had begun to play through his mind.

"Our mental capacity has increased to the point where we can run probability scenarios using available data." She murmured. "You know the best way to get rid of it, of course."

He did. It would be simplicity. Accelerations, kilotons of overpressure. The math checked out and various plans played through his mind in a wash of red light.

All elegantly mapped out. The absolutely minimal force response required that would ensure everyone else's safety and would completely wipe out everything in that campus. And him.

That was the safe, practical answer. Everyone would be protected.

Except... nearly everyone that he cared about.

Which sort of rendered the excercise moot.

"That's the logical thing, though. The practical answer. The one Hank Pym would have endorsed. You know it makes sense," She said carefully.

"Except I'm not Hank Pym. I'm not prepared to make those kinds of sacrifices." He replied quietly.

He could almost feel her smile at him.

"Plan B is out too. I can't just ignore it and only deal with myself."

"Why not? Whatever it is, it's been quiet this whole time." She pressed gently.

"Just because it hasn't done anything up til this point, doesn't mean it will stay quiet. They thought Jessica would just keep sleeping too." Peter replied. "So it's going to have to be plan C."

"C for 'crazy'. That one has the worst chance of success."

"Its also the one that will protect the most people." Peter said.

"Yes. You are you, after all, then." Donna murmured finally, her voice growing faint.

"That's..."

"I've done my job." She said finally.

"Maintaining the integrity of Peter Parker." He murmured back.

"Making certain you do not act like a bada. You have a lot of work to do," Her voice faded out entirely and Peter was left to his own devices.

He did have work to do.

Sto d'zan che'ir.

- - -

Peter Parker came back to himself uncertain of what had happened or how he had gotten to where he was.

Or even where he was, really.

He was wearing tight black jeans and a fitted black t-shirt that he'd never seen before.

He knew this because he could see his reflection in a storefront.

He was walking. It was clear that he had been walking for a while, but he didn't know where he'd come from or where he was going.

He frowned at an odd weight in his right front pants pocket and didn't remember putting anything in there.

He reached into the pocket and pulled his phone out.

He stared at it for a moment. The UltronMobile logo was still on it. It had a full charge and no missed calls or pending messages. He tapped the map icon and it showed that he was still in Manhattan, but a few blocks away from the the ruins of Gentek Tower. He looked around and could see smoke rising behind him. Fresh smoke. He couldn't see where it was coming from, as there were other buildings in the way.

The building collapsing had been bad enough, but he was sure something else had happened down there. Something he didn't need to go to.

He didn't know what it was, but he was certain he had to get away from it.

Whatever 'it' was.

He found himself surprised at not having a single twinge of curiosity at that.

That was strange.

He had to admit to himself that he felt good.

Exceptionally good.

Does anyone back there know what happened? He asked himself.

He was met by dead silence.

He stopped and tried to listen for all the random background noise that he'd gotten used to in his own head.

Nothing.

Not a single show tune. Not a stray thought in a voice he couldn't recognize. Not a single sly, sarcastic comment.

Not a thing.

All by his lonesome in his own head.

He licked his lips nervously and looked down at his hand.

His perfectly normal, familiar looking hand.

A hand that wasn't responding to his mental commands to shift into claws. Or tendrils. Or change to look like anyone else's hand.

That was when the phone rang.

He was so startled he almost dropped it and fumbled with the phone for a few seconds before he could get a good look at the caller ID to see who was calling.

That was MJ's number. Her regular one, not the burner phone she'd given to him.

She might know, right?

"Hello?" He said, answering the phone.

"Hello, Mr. Parker." An unfamiliar male voice, quavering with age, whispery and raspy as sandpaper answered.

"Who is-- where's MJ?"

"Miss Watson is otherwise occupied. I thought it was about time that we met each other, Mr. Parker."

"Who is this?" He demanded.

"My name, Mr. Parker, is Norman Osborn. I think we have much we need to discuss."

- - -