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The city’s skyline loomed under a sickly green haze, its skeletal buildings clawing at the ash-choked sky. Spider-Man’s web snapped taut as he swung low over Fifth Avenue, boots skimming piles of rusted cars and charred debris. His spidey-sense screamed—not the usual prickle, but a white-hot knife twisting behind his eyes. They were close. A guttural chorus rose as he landed, the sound wet and jagged. Dozens emerged from storefront carcasses—shambling figures in tattered business suits, firefighter uniforms, summer dresses. Their eyes burned with the same eldritch glow he’d seen in the lab explosion footage. One still clutched a half-eaten hot dog in bone-gray fingers. “Okay, Pete,” he muttered, sweat stinging through his mask’s eyelets. “Swear you’ll get therapy after this.” The quip tasted like blood. His web-shooters hissed, twin lines of polymer striking a construction crane. The arm swung down like God’s own flyswatter, crushing six… seven… eight of them. Ribcages popped like overripe melons. They kept coming. A child-sized one crawled through the wreckage, jaw unhinged like a snake’s. Spider-Man’s breath hitched. Maria’s kid from 12B had worn that Minions backpack. His hesitation cost him—cold fingers closed around his ankle, nails black and splintered. The sting of infection burned through the suit before he kicked free, launching the thing into a subway grate. “No cure,” he remembered Stark’s last transmission, the static eating his voice. “Fire. Or dismemberment. Your call, kid.” He chose both. Acetylene tanks from a bike shop became improvised bombs. Web-grenades filled with StarkTech thermite turned Wall Street into a charnel house mosaic. When the grappler lines ran out, he fought with rebar clubs, the metallic *crunch* of skulls vibrating up his arms. Every kill felt heavier. These weren’t demons or aliens—they’d been teachers, baristas, someone’s screaming baby on the F train. Dawn found him crouched on the Chrysler spire, counting remaining web-fluid cartridges. Three. The river glittered poison-green below. Somewhere beneath those irradiated waves, the source pulsed—the biomatter reactor Osborn had sworn would “save humanity.” Spider-Man’s laugh came out broken. “Should’ve stuck to stopping bank robbers,” he told the wind, then leapt into the smog. The city needed its hero. Even if that hero’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
