For this battle, for this Big Man capable of shape-shifting into anyone, the emotional baggage needed to go. That was the logic of it. To be better, to be stronger.
The mind could often trick itself.
Church bells rang. It was officially midnight.
Surrounded by dark greenery and upright grey stones, the eyes became a temporary means of understanding. Just one small part of the vast imagination and power dwelling within a person. This graveyard was a small pocket of death in northwest Harlem. A large, bell-ringing church headed the graveyard.
The eyes could never not spell out the memories or the emotions here.
"..."
The marked grave spoke enough of the man that once lived:
REED RICHARDS
GENIUS TO ALL
*VICTIM OF THE OSCORP BOMBINGS*
A victim of the "Oscorp Bombings". Felix put down a bouquet of red flowers. Resilient roses, according to the florist he bought them from. She was a nice middle-aged brunette.
"Apparently," Felix began, "the florist was saved by Spider-Man a long time ago. I guess…what comes around, goes around. Huh, Reed?"
He didn't receive a response. He did not expect it. He was alone with the moon as his witness. It was so dark and late that when he arrived at the flower shop, the florist was just about to close.
"Our work has…changed the world. People have lived. And died. I…actually visited Eleanor Bishop before you. Didn't have to give her flowers though. Her daughter Kate already visited. You don't know her but she's…she's nice. I've met lots of nice people. I've gotten close with older people too. Remember Rio? I'm with her now."
It was awkward. It was strange. Felix decided speaking to Reed like this was not for him.
Still. Better than nothing. Right?
"...you were really special. You were way smarter than me."
So special and smart that Reed was on SHIELD's list when he was a boy As a matter of fact, during his investigation of the Emporium Auction, Felix discovered a transmission between Nick Fury and Peggy Carter. Peggy wished to take Reed's corpse to study his brain. Fury managed to persuade her against it, citing that there were plenty of up and coming geniuses to learn from. What would be the point?
When Felix arrived here, he checked. Logistically, it was impossible. It couldn't be a fake Reed. He was right. His Advanced Glasses did a quick X-ray and MRA scan and it confirmed that it was indeed Reed down there.
For that, he thanked Fury and a solemn beat of guilt passed his heart.
So much death. By his hands. By the chain reaction of what happened that day.
"Alistair, Peggy, Fury…" Felix clenched his fists and tried to muster a smile. "Even Liv has been arrested. Me...I'm still going."
Spider-Man was still going.
The system that created Cindy, that created greed and evil was coming apart. That was what he believed he was doing and was continuing to want to do.
Was this "Big Man" Reed that went astray? Could he be persuaded to be good?
"I'll try, but…" His eyes darkened. "I'm sorry, Reed. I really am. If this other version of you wants to do evil, I'll have to put him down."
He dropped to one knee. In the darkness of his eyes was a glimmer of hope. He caressed the gravestone.
"But at the end of the day, it's not you. That other Reed is not your legacy. I'm your legacy. I avenged your death. I killed Crossbones. Cindy has been punished. Everyone involved has been served justice."
His fingers stopped.
"Goodbye, my friend."
***
ONE WEEK LATER - DAXTER BUILDING
Water bubbled. The tank hummed.
Twelve feet of reinforced glass stood tall, filled with viscous green-blue water. It was highly pressurized. Felix Faeth floated in the center of the tank. A loose breathing tube dangled nearby, but it was no longer needed. Cables ran from his temples to a bank of monitors outside.
Water was his greatest enemy. The thing that used to make Rash recoil and peel back like burnt paper.
'Forty hours now.'
His nose flared from a loud exhale, inhaled, and flattened.
"HEART RATE STABLE. BRAIN ACTIVITY AT ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT PERCENT BASELINE."
Telepathically and physically, Herbie was no longer muffled. Felix's eyes flung open and he eyes his own veins rise up through his forearm like tree roots breaking pavement. It hurt. God, it hurt.
Blood curled out from the corner of his left eye, a thin red ribbon dissolving into the water. Another line traced from his ear, unspooling like a threat pulled from a sweater. The scarlet suit retreated and reformed constantly. It was never in balance. It was always in flux. The water pressed too hard. Rash didn't like this. Rash hated this.
'We can stop.'
A fundamental weakness, born from the day he was born. The thought to stop came from that instinctual weakness. Except…who was it? Who was telling him this? A week ago, he might have said it was Rash talking. Now, he wasn't sure there was a Rash to talk to.
'No.'
Fists clenched harder. His knuckles went white, then a deeper white, then till bone glimpsed.
Day one had been screaming, muffled and wet, bubbles rushing up past the glass. He gave up one hour in and required another four hours of rest. Every following attempt led to the same thing. He didn't sleep and that led to day two. Day two had been silence. He sealed his own lips with webbing.
Day four, his nose had started bleeding on a loop, clotting and reopening every ninety minutes like clockwork.
Day five, he practiced with the tendrils. They burned away like rope lathered in oil and lit up by small fires.
Now it was hour forty of the seventh day. Technically, the eighth day. He didn't count it as such. He just kept going.
"MASTER FAETH, YOUR CORTISOL LEVELS ARE ABOVE ANY RECORDED HUMAN THRESHOLD. I MUST RECOMMEND CESSATION."
He shook his head, water dragging his skull.
'Not yet! Np!'
Rio didn't know he was doing this. Maria didn't know. Nobody knew and could knew, because if they saw him like this, veins bugling black-red under his skin, blood weeping out of his ears in lazy spirals, they'd pull him out and tell he was insane. For him, this was fighting against the laws of mother nature itself. The same humans could not develop a resistance to being set on fire, he was trying to resist water.
So what?
Spider-Man was all about breaking what was possible.
It wasn't just about Extremis, it was willpower.
The pain had rhythm. It crested and it dropped and it crested again, higher each time, like waves slamming on a hull. He tried to count the waves to logically push through this. It didn't work.
Willpower was all that this was about.
His heart was beating hard and suddenly…it cracked open. The blood in the water thickened for one heartbeat, and then, for the first time in a week, it stopped. His heartbeat stowed.
"MASTER FAETH, BLEEDING HAS CEASED."
Felic didn't need Herbie to tell him. He could feel it. The water inside his lungs wasn't pressing or hurting anymore. It was like breathing heavy air. A little difficult but manageable. It was like standing in rain and feeling nothing but the rain. His pulse dropped. His still visible veins were thick as rope under his skin.
'There it is.'
"MASTER FAETH, YOUR VITALS ARE…PERFECT."
He opened his eyes underwater. No sting or burn greeted him. He could see the glass and the shapes beyond the glass. The lab outside blurred into soft colour, and then slowly but surely, details.
He smiled.
"Herbie," he tried to say, and it came out as a garbe of bubbles. Herbie caught the cadence of it anyway due to the telepathic link.
"YOU WISH TO EXIST THE TANK."
'Yes.'
The hydraulics kicked in and the water began to drain. First from the top, a slow retreat that exposed his shoulders, his collarbones, the black-red veins criss-crossing through him. It did not fade yet. He coughed out of reflex, then exhaled.
The glass door of the tank split open with a pressurized sigh, releasing a curtain of mist into the cold lab air. Felix stepped out onto the metal grating, bare feet slapping the water steel, and rolled his neck.
"Good, good…everything feels good."
The red-black veins started to fade away. Water dripped off him in sheets. It didn't bother him at all. He loved it. When he used to shower, it was a bit of a problem. He couldn't, for example, shower with Rio because she'd see what seemed like steam oozing off him. It wasn't steam, water temperature didn't matter, it affected the same regardless.
Or at least it used to.
Thwip!
From his wrist, unbidden, two thin tendrils of red flicked and dispersed the mist. It tested the air like a snake tasting the air for the first time. The tendrils curled back into the hole in his wrist without a single command given.
Little robotic Herbies suddenly surrounded him, scanning him in every way. X-ray scans and MRIs in real-time, checking to see if everything was good.
"YOUR VITALS STILL REMAIN STABLE."
"Herbie, log it. Weakness eliminated," he said, dripping and alive. The Herbies did not let up though. They kept scanning him.
The scarlet Symbiote costume swallowed him whole. Huge white eyes and a grand white spider symbol. The new Spider-Man had arrived.
"STILL STABLE," all the flying Herbies announced. They were cute little things. Felix chuckled.
The costume then retreated into a pair of red shorts and a red tank top. He smiled and travelled to the center, where he turned to the right and headed to the Fantastic Computer. Chinese food was leftover all over the table. Although Herbies continued to buzz around him like bugs, more of the little robotic Herbies whizzed past his shoulder to clean the garbage up.
"Thank you guys," he said. The little Herbie shoved everything into a white garbage bag and then carried it away to the garbage chute. It was right next to the elevator that led to here.
Felix sat down, exhausted and yet with a smile.
"Phew. Well, that's that. My weakness to water is gone and the portal is complete. I do have my weakness to high-frequency sound waves left, but…"
"WE HAVE THE MARK X TO COMPENSATE FOR THAT."
"Correct." He ran a hand through his hair. It was mostly dry due to the Symbiote costume thing. "But that weakness won't matter at all if I take out my enemies before they know it."
"MASTER FAETH, YOU HAVE DECIDED ON A PLAN OF ATTACK?"
Felix smiled. "I have."
"WE CALCULATED AND DEVELOPED PLANS A TO D. WHICH DO YOU WISH TO USE."
A head down to one shoulder, then the other. He had made up his mind already, but just in case, he was redoing the calculations. "We're doing Plan B. We're ambushing and killing all the cyborgs currently here."
There wasn't a moment's hesitation. The opposite, he was looking forward to this. These bastards thought they could just come here and sneakily spread their influence. They thought that just because they were from a technologically superior Earth that they had a right to change their destiny.
No. Earth 65's business was Earth 65's business. The mistakes, the successes, all of it should have been up to them.
"We do that, take their corpses, and use them to bring the Big Man here."
Whether it was him or an army, it wouldn't matter. He already had plans for both.
"Me and him fight here on my turf and I put an end to him. After that, I go to Earth 2099. With the Big Man dead, or if we manage an alliance with him, everything will be all nice and safe. Maybe we meet Peter Parker or that other Miles Morales while we're at it. I don't know what's going with that whole situation, but I do want to help."
He wanted to help in part because of the time difference. He could spend a week or a month or a year over there and not much time would pass on Earth 65. It was the ideal scenario. He could pick up right where he left off regarding the Oscorp separation and Parker Industries.
"WHEN WOULD YOU LIKE TO BEGIN?"
"Two days." Elbows on the table, he folded his hands together and leaned forward. "The cyborgs have been in New York long enough."