"Harry Osborn gave it to you."
"Harry Osborn? He…died."
"But you know him. You met him."
"Y-yes, I've met the boy. He used to come over for dinner a long time ago. When Gwen was in school." George was quiet as if thinking, 'Those were good times. From another lifetime.'
Spider-Man turned slightly, his masked gaze moving across the apartment slowly. Methodically. The Sheath was here. It had to be. The signal had led him to this building.
But where?
His eyes passed over the kitchen. The small hallway. The coat rack by the door. The shelf above the television with its row of framed photographs, their faces turned away from him.
'Think.'
It wasn't on him. George hadn't received it knowingly, that much was obvious from the man's face. So it had arrived some other way.
"Mr. Stacy." Spider-Man turned back to him. "Your mail."
George blinked. "My mail."
"Yes. Have you received anything recently? A package, maybe. Something you didn't order."
The former captain's expression shifted. Not suspicion exactly. Something closer to embarrassment, which on a man like George Stacy looked uncomfortable, like a coat that didn't fit.
"I…" He exhaled through his nose. "I haven't checked it. Not in a while."
Spider-Man was quiet for a moment. "How long is a while?"
George's jaw worked. His eyes moved briefly to the newspaper, still folded on the table, Gwen's name hidden underneath the crease.
"Weeks. Maybe longer." A pause. "Most of it's hate mail. People who think she's a murderer. People who think I raised her wrong." His voice didn't break. It had been broken too many times already to manage it again. "I throw it out when I'm told there's something there. But I don't read it. Haven't for a long time."
Spider-Man was quiet.
George glanced at him. "What?"
"I disagree with that."
"You disagree with—" George stopped. "You disagree with me not wanting to read letters calling my daughter a monster."
"I disagree that that's all they say."
***
The mailboxes were in the lobby, a narrow row of metal slots set into the wall beside the elevator. It was a surprisingly cheap place. What George Stacy did not know was that a couple SHIELD agents were sent to observe him at all times. And after Gwen's capture, additional agents were instructed to keep a strict eye.
Except Herbie intercepted those transmissions and told the opposite. He instructed them to return to base. Consequently, there was no SHIELD agent secretly watching the cameras or at a corner. George Stacy was left alone for once.
George's box was number fourteen. When he turned the small key and pulled the door open, the stack of envelopes that had been leaning against the inside tumbled forward. He caught them against his chest by reflex.
George looked down at the pile. There were perhaps thirty letters. Maybe more. He hadn't expected that. He had expected a few crumpled things with ugly handwriting and no return address.
"Open one," Spider-Man instructed quietly. It was just the two of them here.
George looked at him sideways. "Just one."
The former captain set the rest on top of the adjacent box and selected an envelope at random. Plain white and a return address from somewhere in Queens. He tore it open and inside was a single sheet of notebook paper. The handwriting was large and careful, the way children wrote. Felix smiled behind his mask. George stared.
Dear Mr. Stacy,
My name is Lily and I am 8 years old. I wanted to write to you because Spider-Woman saved my dad. He was in the building that fell down on the news two years ago and Spider-Woman went in and pulled him out. The news people didn't show it but I saw it. She held up a whole wall so he could get out.
I heard people say bad things about her. My mom says people say bad things when they're scared. I don't think your daughter is scary. I think she is the bravest person in the whole world.
Please don't be sad.
Love, Lily
George He stood very still. His thumb pressed against the corner of the page.
Spider-Man waited. "So?"
"That's…"
After a moment, George set it down on top of the pile and reached for another. He didn't say anything. He tore it open.
This one was typed. A woman's name at the bottom, a mother from Brooklyn.
…I don't know if this letter will reach you. I don't know if you're still at this address, or if you even read these. But I needed to write it regardless. My son was on a school trip when the incident on the bridge occurred. He was fourteen. He's nineteen now.
He wants to be a paramedic now.
I thought you should know what you gave the world, Mr. Stacy. I thought you should know.
George's hand lowered the letter slowly. He reached for another without being asked. A father this time, handwriting rough and uneven, the pen pressed hard into the paper.
—She pulled my wife out of the water. Didn't make the news. Probably too small for them to bother. But I was there on the bank watching my wife go under and then she was just— there. Red and white and she joked too! She was a funny gal!
Your daughter is a good person, sir. I'm sorry the world has been too loud for you to hear the rest of us saying so.
George set the letter down on top of the others. He didn't reach for another one.
He stood with his back slightly turned, one hand resting on top of the mailboxes, his head bent just enough. His other hand came up and he pressed the back of his fingers against his eyes.
A minute passed. The overhead bulb buzzed. From somewhere above them, a door closed.
George straightened. His hand dropped. His eyes were red at the corners but his face had reassembled itself into something composed, the old disciplined mask of a man who had spent decades not crying in front of others.
"Haah…"
"Yeah. Sometimes, you only remember the bad and never the good," Felix murmured. "It's good to remember the good, even if it feels selfish."
"Yeah. Yeah, you're right." George swallowed. "You said you needed a box."
"I did."
"Then let's find your box."
A key was tucked at the far back. See, for packages too large for the regular boxes, there was a special shelf and a key was deposited in the person's mailbox to open it. The key, after opening the tall shelf, was to be dumped into an envelope-sized bag slit. Simple stuff. Opening the irregular shelf, there were two other parcels there, brown and ordinary. And then there was the third.
It was small and wrapped in a box. Staring at it, his Spider-Sense went off.
'There it isss…! The danger! The danger! THE DANGER—!'
George Stacy picked up the box and handed it to him. He tried not to shake. Spider-Man opened up the cardboard and felt up a strange black metal encasing. His finger ran down the cover.
'A special encasing…interesting.'
With Rash hissing and fearing, he lifted the cover off and his eyes darkened. Not from emotion or fear or from Rash but from the reflection of the Sheath. It was pure black and of a size no longer than his forearm. Whatever sword was meant to be sheathed inside, it must have not been long.
Cracks flowing like magma, slow and red.
The scabbard screamed silence.
Grabbing it, his world was consumed by black.
The black swallowed everything. Total and ancient and breathing, the kind of black that existed before the stars. A void, perhaps? Or perhaps beyond human comprehension?
He understood why Gwen would go mad. No, he wondered how she didn't. Felix Faeth felt himself fall without falling, felt the floor of the lobby dissolve beneath him, felt the cardboard box and the metal casing and even the Sheath all vanish from him.
Felix Faeth was standing in space. Somewhere that was nowhere.
He looked down. He was naked. Stripped of the suit, stripped of the red emblem, stripped of everything Rash and Herbie had built around him. His hands were his own hands. His feet stood on something that had no surface.
Around him, in every direction, there was the black of Symbiotes. His stomach churned.
A breathing, shifting, endless congregation of black and dark and older-than-dark, layered over one another like the inside of something enormous, walls made of living things, ceiling made of living things, floor made of living things. He saw tongues and crescent-shaped white eyes ogling him down. Tendrils that were also faces. Eyes that were also voices.
It was like black lava and vomit. It was the best and worst of living organisms.
The attention of a billion things landing on one person felt like standing under a collapsing sky.
"YOUUU WILLL NOOOT!!"
He wasn't attacked or absorbed. Not with Rash pouring out of him like smoke and then like water. Rash wrapped around Felix protectively.
The hivemind of Symbiotes stopped.
They did not speak one at a time. They never had and damn it hurt his ears! His soul!
"— host —"
"— bonded —"
"— the bond is wrong the bond is—"
"— not wrong DIFFERENT—"
"— examine it —"
"— we have examined it we are examining it—"
"— it is like the other one the girl the—"
"— no —"
"— no not the same —"
"— she resists her Symbiote. The girl clings for survival! Her red holds her! Red suffers! Red endures! Red—"
"— this one—"
"— this Symbiote—"
There was silence, all at once, like applause at a football field suddenly ending. It was the first pause. The whole mass of them breathing together.
"— this Symbiote wants to be here."
Something rippled through the billions of them. Felix swallowed. This must have been shock or something close to the biological response of shock. A collective reorientation, a turning inward to compare and confirm what had just been observed.
"— the girl and her Symbiote are survival —"
"— yes —"
"— mutual necessity —"
"— desperation shaped like a bond —"
"— but this—— this is—"
Another pause. Longer.
"— choice!"
Rash tightened around him. Felix felt him as a second heartbeat. As a presence that had decided, without being asked, simply to stay.
The hivemind did not dare advance. When they finally spoke to him directly, it arrived as something almost singular. As close to one voice as billions could manage.
"What does Felix Faeth want?"
This…was a spirit world. This was like Bast. He had expected to feel afraid. He was, of course, but the question returned him to normal.
"I want to know what you are," Felix answered. "What this Sheath is. I want to understand."
The hivemind considered him. The turning of billions of minds was visible as a physical thing — a slow rotation in the dark, like watching a galaxy shift.
"We are the core," the Sheath's hivemind said finally. "The oldest congregation. We were built — not born — built by billions of our kind under the command of Knull, God of the Abyss, in the age before your sun was named."
The memory arrived in Felix's mind like cold water, too fast and too much: vast images, impressions more than pictures, the scale of something cosmic and awful. A god tearing the head from a being made of starlight. The Necrosword drinking.
"The Necrosword was hungry after that. Always hungry. And Knull was— diminished. He needed rest. Rest that could not be found in the void, where the Necrosword would never silence itself. So we were made. A Sheath. A resting place. A silence. We were poured into this form by billions of us who did not survive the pouring. What you hold is not metal. It is us. The ones who remained. The core.
Felix was quiet. Rash was quiet with him.
"We have been here long. Our presence seeps. Slowly. Constantly. Into the ground, into the air, into the spaces where other forces once lived."
"What do you mean?"
"The absorption is, perhaps, why this Earth lacks the supernatural,"the hivemind said, and there was something in the layers of their voice that might, in a human being, have been called apologetic. "But that has changed. We no longer live in the Earth. And now…science may be defied."
A long silence. Felix had never conceived the fact that the lack of magic was because of the Sheath crashing into the Earth. The hivemind had no reason to lie to him either.
"So…in all likelihood…"
"We were the plug. The state of the supernatural will grow henceforth."
Felix's jaw clenched. It was the process that Harold wished to stop entirely.
…he couldn't blame him for it.
"What is it capable of? The Sheath itself. What can it—you actually do?"
Again, that pause. That collective breath. When they answered, they answered without embellishment.
"Teleportation," they said. "Across distances. Across realities, if the will is sufficient. We gift immortality. Not the absence of death. The refusal of it. Sustained for as long as the Sheath is held and the bond is maintained. And…most of all….creation. We can build. Given enough — time, will, sacrifice — we can build a universe. With its own laws and its own darkness."
Felix felt the enormity of that settle over him.
"But we cannot destroy,"they continued. "We have NEVER been able to destroy. It is the opposite of the Necrosword in every way that matters. The sword ends. The Sheath begins. To use one is to move away from the other. Knull understood this. He kept both anyway."
"And Gwen Stacy?"
"Her anger and rage and fears overwhelmed her. She let her friend take us. Harry…Osborn. To spread our powers further."
"Do you think he could have done it?"
"That woman…understood us. She understood the Symbiotes." Elsa Brock, that was who they referred to. "In time…in ten years…maybe less…maybe. Maybe. But…they are not here. The question is…what will Felix Faeth do?"
Teleportation, immortality, and creation.
Madness too.
"What do you want then?"
"We…simply wished to be used."
"YOU LIE!" Rash screamed, momentarily taking over Felix's face. "YOU WISH FOR MADNESS! CONTROL! YOU WISH FOR USSSS!!"
The hivemind murmured. The hivemind all had different answers, different expressions of disagreements.
"Control, control...!"
"Control him! Before it is too late!"
"No, no, no, we cannot force it!"
"Grant yourself immortality~!"
"Grant those you love immortality! We can do it! We can!"
So many voices, all demanding something. Felix closed his eyes to ignore it all.
In the nothing of this place, closing his eyes changed very little. But the gesture meant something mentally. He breathed.
Meditation was key here. With Bast and with this hivemind, it was all the same.
He thought about a little girl named Lily who watched Spider-Woman hold up a wall and count children like they mattered more than the fight.
He thought about a father on a riverbank watching his wife go under.
He thought about an old man in a small apartment who hadn't read his mail in weeks because he was afraid of what it would say.
Felix Faeth was human again.
"—hey. Hey."
A hand on his shoulder.
"Spider-Man?"
Felix opened his eyes to reality, to the lobby ceiling and the buzzing bulb. The metal mailboxes and the smell of old carpet and the cardboard box on the floor at his feet, the black metal casing inside it open. The Sheath rested in his hand with its red-magma cracks running slow and volcanic along its surface.
George Stacy was gripping his shoulder with both hands now, his face tight. "You with me?" George asked.
Felix looked at him, then the Sheath. 'This thing, this Sheath, I need to study it properly. With Xina and Hobie's help, maybe I can get some clearer answers. Hobie, your first impressions?'
'IT IS...CALCULATING...CALCULATING...CALCULATING...PHYSICAL CONTACT REQUIRED. LABORATORY REQUIRED. DETECTIVE MODE INSUFFICIENT.'
Figured as much.
"Yeah," he said to the captain. His voice came out steady. He was surprised, faintly, that it did. "Yeah. I'm with you. Your daughter…was something."
"Huh?"
"This…she once touched this. To be able to come out sane was…"
Spider-Man exhaled. George's hands stayed on his shoulder for another second. Then, slowly, they withdrew. The former captain was wide-eyed. "Gwen…my Gwen…what, is this hers?"
Felix looked down at the Sheath. He closed the metal casing carefully. "It's…complicated."
"You said Harry Osborn sent this. Is…" George sucked in a breath. He suddenly swore. "Dammit. Dammit. You said something about Gwen and helping her! Please, tell me!"
Spider-Man met his gaze. "It will. But…"
He looked into the eyes of the desperate father. His daughter, Gwen Stacy, was taken into custody. What could he do to comfort him?
This was a sudden change in gears. With George here and the Sheath in possession, he had two new chess pieces on the board.
Czarina was inside the underwater prison. Hobie and Xina were with him, along with their super high-tech equipment.
As for Harold: the Control Symbiote and teleportation tech was at his disposal. Anybody could theoretically become a pawn of his.
"I think I'll need your help first, Captain Stacy."
His eyes widened and then he nodded gravely. "Anything."
"I need you to speak out. I need everyone you know to speak out. For Gwen."
"For Gwen's—to free her? But…" George looked away. "You saw the fight. There's no way…"
"If there is a will, there is a way. Public protests will ultimately need you to lead it." He put a hand on his shoulder. "People will come to support her. Believe me."
"How do you know?" George asked quietly.
'Harold isn't the only one that can control the masses. The internet and lawmakers…and those secret documents detailing the experimentation SHIELD has been conducting on people…'
It was time to reveal it all.
It was time for the spider to cast his web.