Prologue
Fourteen, two months, and nineteen days.
Peter was bit by a radioactive spider on a school field trip.
Fourteen, four months, and six days.
Peter’s uncle, Ben, died from a gunshot wound. Peter was there. He couldn’t save him. He watched one of his last two guardians die right in front of him. He watched as his uncle choked on his own blood until he eventually took his last breath.
Peter vowed to protect the citizens of New York the best he could.
Fifteen, one month, and seven days.
Peter started breaking into labs. He started using his (literally) sticky fingers to steal. He managed to get better materials for his Spider-Man suit. He stole the materials from the labs he managed to break into.
He convinced his teachers to set up another field trip to Oscorp, and while they were there, he used his webbing to discreetly snatch things he might need.
Peter took internships. He would go to school and then immediately hurry over to the newest one. Peter only stayed long enough at each one to get what he needed without raising suspicion.
Peter started stealing food and clothes from stores like Wal-Mart or Target. He’d ask for fabric in the sizes he needed, and then he would go to the bathroom and flush the tags down the toilet so he didn’t set off the alarms at the doors. He would then do his best to conceal the fabrics in his clothes.
Peter had even been lucky enough that he was in town at the same time as some S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had been. He was even luckier that they were in a quinjet, and that he had been on patrol when he stumbled upon it. He went in, webbed up the few agents still inside, and stole anything he thought he needed.
This had all worked out so far.
Sixteen, two months, and one day.
Peter’s suit had been upgraded so much in the past two years. His webbing could stop a moving train, if need be, and he had even managed to make his suit able to turn invisible due to the cloaking technology he had found on the S.H.I.E.L.D. quinjet.
Peter had managed to give his webs the power to electrify by studying and taking apart the tasers he stole. He just wanted to use them to subdue someone if need be. Keeping up with his whole spider theme, he decided to call them his “venom strike.” He’d have to change that if he ever did get poison, which, considering his whole no killing policy, probably wouldn’t happen.
Probably.
Sixteen, two months, and three days.
Aunt May was dead. Hit by a car, the doctors told Peter. The car had been speeding, and it ran a red light at the same time as the pedestrian crossing light turned white. May had been killed on impact. Peter had been called in to confirm that the dead body was her, and he almost couldn’t even recognize her. The speed of the car had sent her flying over, and her skin had been ruined by the asphalt.
Peter almost threw up as soon as he saw her.
Peter was put into the foster system.
Sixteen, four months, and twenty-seven days.
Peter hadn’t meant to do it.
It was an accident.
He just went a little too far, and he couldn’t stop himself in time.
He didn’t want to kill that man. He just got so angry, and he couldn’t control himself. He had released his venom strike before he even realized he had, and by the time he had realized that he was using his electric webs, it was too late.
Peter had killed a man. A man who, despite being in the process of attempting to rape a girl, Peter did not want to kill.
Peter couldn’t believe what he had done. He almost threw up, but he managed to hold it in. Well, he managed to hold it in until he climbed back into his room in the orphanage. As soon as he was in the privacy of his room, he ripped off his suit and ran to the bathroom.
He was surprised he still had a stomach by the time he was done throwing up.
When he was done, he sat on the bathroom floor, and he cried and cried and cried. His mind kept providing him with one single thought, and it played over and over and over in his head.
How am I any better than him?
Sixteen, four months, and twenty-nine days.
Peter ran away.
He couldn’t stand to live in the cramped building anymore, and he felt like he no longer deserved anything his caretakers could provide him.
If he died in the streets, so be it. At least he would finally get what was coming to him.
Sixteen, four months, and thirty days.
Missing posters for Peter had already been put up.
Peter tore down all the ones he found.
Sixteen, five months, and zero days.
Peter got a fake I.D.
He got drunk for the first time in his life.
Sixteen, five months, and nine days.
After twelve days, Peter stopped crying over his accidental murder.
Sixteen, seven months, and sixteen days.
Peter accidentally killed another person. It was a woman this time. She had attacked him, and he couldn’t control his strength for a moment.
They had been fighting on the roof of a hotel. He meant to push her over. He threw her over the side. He sprinted to the edge of the roof and shot a web to try to catch her. He caught her, but the sudden stop killed her.
Her neck broke.
Just like May, he thought.
He cried over it for a week—five days less than last time.
Seventeen, eight months, and thirteen days.
His eighteenth birthday was only one hundred and ten days away.
Peter had killed eight bad people since the woman on the roof.
He had stopped crying over them after the third.
He had stopped feeling bad about it after the fifth.
Seventeen, eight months, and twenty days.
Nine people.
Peter added a poison to his weapons list.
He renamed his electric webs to his “electric strike.”
Seventeen, nine months, and fourteen days.
Ten people.
With every person he killed, he could swear it felt like he was dying too. He felt like he was losing more and more of himself, but he also knew he was only killing bad people. He was only killing the murderers, the rapists, the armed robbers—the lowest of the low.
They can’t do anymore harm, he told himself. They can’t hurt anyone anymore.
The thought helped.