KNICKERBROCKER AVENUE STATION
Abandoned and echoing, the train station platform was empty at this hour. Fluorescent tubes buzzed overhead. It was an immense struggle. Still, darkness never quite settled. Trash skittered along the tracks in the tunnel wind.
Dark glasses coated the handsome features of the woman eyeing the dark station. Red coat buttoned to the throat, keeping him toasty in the cold tunnel air. The red-suited male checked his watch repeatedly. He stood alone in the train tracks with no fear.
Footsteps arrived and his dark-red shades peered over his shoulder.
"Abraham. Finally."
Abraham Lincoln came down the stairwell, tall in his jeans and red employee vest. Dark and moody-eyed, he managed to be somewhat young.
"Mr. O'Hara. You as well?"
O'Hara's brow lifted behind the glasses. "I'm surprised he called you."
Lincoln hopped onto the train tracks. "Mr. Henton does prefer you, so yes, I am surprised."
A silence passed between them. These men looked like they did not cross the same paths of life. Yet, both were here. An investor and a cashier. A well-pressed suited man and a jean-shirt wearing bearded youth.
"Both of us, eh?" O'Hara murmured. His hair was rather luscious and he ran a hand through it. "Why here though?"
"Who knows? Perhaps it has to do with Oscorp. He did mention meeting with their new CEO, no?"
"Not CEO," O'Hara corrected. "He said their leader."
"Hrm. Right."
The conversation didn't feel right. This didn't feel right. Behind the dark lenses, the eyes of O'Hara calculated.
The calculations of the brain could have gone on for a year. It would not have mattered in the face of overwhelming power. A drop in the temperature pricked at their skins, the tubes overhead suddenly died, and all at once, darkness rushed at them.
Calculated instinct in the wiring beneath and luck saved O'Hara and he ducked under what he felt was a manifestation of the darkness. His partner was not so lucky.
The black—no, the red found Lincoln. From the black of the tunnel mouth, tendrils thin as wire and then, in the space of a blink, thick as a man's arm, wrapped around Lincoln's throat and chest and legs all in the same motion. A nest of scarlet rope that didn't so much grab as swallow him. Lincoln couldn't do a thing and he simply vanished into the mass of writhing red, and lifted a foot off the train tracks.
"What in the shocking—" O'Hara stumbled back and his head snapped behind him. He saw nothing. He tried to jump.
A crackle, then a hiss, and then the whole rail bloomed with a sick blue-white arc that climbed his leg and locked every muscle in his body rigid. It was a trap! He hit the ground hard, twitching, glasses skidding off. He rose anyway, grunting and forcing himself up.
He was not weak.
Yet, once again, willpower paled in the face of overwhelming power.
He saw red. The red came for him. It wrapped around his ankles, his wrists, and his throat in that order, and cinched tight enough that his vision starred. He was promptly and easily hoisted up beside Lincoln's cocoon like a fish on a line.
Both of them dangled there, twisting slightly, forced by the tendrils to face the same direction. Toward the tunnel mouth. Toward the thing that was walking out of it.
The worst part was confidence, the ease, and how damn easily they fell for it, O'Hara would think later, if there ever was a later. Two thick tendrils sprouted from the shoulder blade and the waist, ripping with a wet muscular motion. It was neither fabric nor flesh.
"W-what in the world are you…?"
The bad light chose that moment to flick back to life and to show the white lensed eyes, huge and expressionless. A symbol stretched grand and pale across the scarlet-blood chest.
He did not need an introduction.
"Spider-Man…!" O'Hara choked out. Only his face was still exposed, and intentionally so as well.
Spider-Man drew closer, and the tendrils holding them drew closer with him. The captives hovered level with his masked face, close enough that O'Hara could see his own terrified reflection twinned in those white lenses.
"..."
The Spider-Man titled his head, considering the two. First the red-swallowed Lincoln, and then O'Hara. It was like he was proving a point…or checking something. The tendrils around O'Hara pumped and suddenly started crawling across his face. "N-no…!"
Thinner than the rest, they slid up and into the O'Hara. He tried to clamp his jaw, it didn't matter. It found the seam of his lips and forced them open, sliding in past his teeth and down, filling with this throat with this liquidy copper rot. Another thread pushed into his nose, and he could feel it, feel it crawling behind his own eyes.
He would have screamed if his throat hadn't been full.
"Hrm." He was thoughtful in that he was not cruel. "You're androids, not cyborgs. You're not actually alive. That's good to know. Although, hrm…that also means you're based on someone."
"Mmmppph…!"
"And you…" Spider-Man kept looking at O'Hara. "You're pretty strong but more than that…they're something off…I wonder who you were based off?"
He received no question. However, there was no doubt he was going to find out. Spider-Man turned and the tendrils turned with him. He sealed O'Hara the same way he did Lincoln and carried the cocoons with him.
Like insects, they wound up in the spider's web.
***
The entrance opened and Spider-Man arrived. Everyone, Maria and Hobie and Xina stopped to look at him. All were also near two new beds, next to the dismantled android.
"Woah! Mission success, huh?" Hobie commented.
Spider-Man was dragging the androids along the ground, cruel and uncaring. He casually hurled them fast, then to a stop, setting them down like butterflies. His tendrils also went out and dropped their phones and electronics on a table. Maria quickly started inserting Herbie-infested USBs to hack them.
"Good work," said Xina. Her eyes flicked toward Spider-Man as the cocoons unwrapped. The human androids unveiled, there was no need to fear. Vibranium cuffs were already applied too. They were stuck to the bed no matter what they did—and they were unconscious.
"Oh my god! Oh my shock!"
Xina stumbled back and rammed into her van. Still, her hand clung to her mouth. The usual Xina Kwan, a black-haired Asian lady in her middle-ages that attempted to carry herself with dignity, evaporated.
"No fucking way…! No way!" Now it was Hobie's turn to dramatically gasp and react. "M-Miguel!? What the actual fu—"
Felix gave Maria a look. She didn't get it. Whatever was causing these reactions, it pertained to Hobie and Xina only. Quickly, Felix said, "Calm down, you two—"
Shockingly, Hobie lost some of his cool and he hopped onto the bed, onto Miguel. He looked at the face of the brown-haired man, breathed heavy, and then snapped at Felix. "How can I be calm, mate!? That's Spidey! That's another Spider! That's one of us!" He pointed a finger downward without breaking eye contact. "One! Of! Us! It's Miguel O'Hara! The Spider-Man of 2099—!"
"He's not. Whoever this Miguel is, your friend, I checked, it's an android."
"W-what…?"
"It's not a living person," Felix corrected. "Unless your friend is an android, which I assume he's not, this isn't him."
Hobie looked up and down, up and down. Between Felix and Miguel. Xina as well managed to collect herself, standing up straight and staring at the face.
'Another Spider-Man…I didn't feel a strong connection to him like I did with Gwen and Hobie. But I felt a little stir. Was that what that was?'
The androids were based on real people it seemed. First Anderthrop Henton, now this Miguel O'Hara.
"And if he's Spider-Man, I doubt he'd be working for Anderthrop Henton," Felix continued. At this point, the mask dropped down to reveal his nonchalant face. "Come on guys, think. Don't get emotional. We have a job to do. Scan these androids. Learn about them so use them to bait the Big Man."
"Yeah…" Hobie back-flipped off the bed and dusted himself. "Yeah, you right, you right. Sorry for getting all pissy. Wow, that thing just…that looks so much like him." He still couldn't believe it though. Hobie approached and touched the android O'Hara's foot. "God damn. This tech is terrifying."
"A lot of tech is terrifying," Felix said, and no one could disagree.
While Xina and Hobie recovered from the shock, Maria got to injecting them with needles. There was a long beat of silence as she worked.
"Did…did this android Miguel say anything?" Hobie asked, arms crossed, twinning Felix. "Was he tough?"
"It was a trap. It was over in a minute. I only saw him scared," Felix replied, while not tearing his eyes off them.
"I would say something like, 'The real Miguel wouldn't have been so easy to take.' But you're also the strongest guy I've ever met, so..." Hobie decided to move on. "Fair, fair. Still, would it have killed ya to bring me along?"
Felix gave him a look. "No, it wouldn't. But it's my work." Felix was not anti-teamwork. Not at all, he loved working with people.
To a point anyhow.
Every team and team-up in his career was done with the foresight and knowledge that there was a task that Felix simply could not do and that an extra was required to do it. Key word: required. Doing optional team-ups wasn't his memo. He liked being solo. If another person was not needed, then they were not needed. Pure and simple.
When Felix informed the group he was bringing in the cyborgs, they offered their help. It was a kind offer and he was polite in his response too: don't interfere. Maria, Xina, and Hobie were capable, yes. They also wouldn't make a lick of difference in the trap. They would be unnecessary, pointless additions to the trap he set. In the realm of fighting, of heroism, this was his turf and he preferred to do it alone.
"I feel ya. This is your city, your shit, and you do that shit good. I felt the way all the time when Scotland Yard interfered in my fights." Hobie threw a grin. "And what d'ya know, I got to sleep and we suddenly got two live subjects too." His eyes dwindled in their emotion. "Even if one of 'em is a twin of my friend. This is so freaky…"
Two alive subjects. That was the key part here. They could interrogate them, experiment with them, or anything else.
An hour later, every type of scan was conducted and finished. Maria was off to the side, awaiting the conclusions while Xina and Hobie were looking over the brain scans. Their professionalism returned. The more they looked and saw, the more they realized this was not their friend. It did not prevent the occasional glance or grimace or wince to seeing him that way, of course. That was natural though.
Felix imagined Aaron or Gwen on there in Miguel O'Hara's stead; it would felt wrong and shook at him, no matter how much he tried to disassociate the real from the fake.
"Fascinating." Xina pointed at the hologram in front of her, device in her palm. "I had Herbie and Marilyn analyze their leftover neuropaths and try to flashback to what they were feeling before. Look, they don't feel emotion. There's hardly anything in the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex. Like a cocked-up extreme psychopath."
"And Miguel is the most hot headed guy I know," Hobie murmured.
"They're androids, it's all wiring, is it not?" Maria questioned.
"It is, yeah," Hobie replied. "Weird, innit? Big Man went out of his way to create a superintelligent being, just for it to be eerily similar to a human. Except without emotions, I guess."
"Without emotions? Are you sure?" Felix suddenly said, looming at the front of the beds in red. The eyes of the androids were closed. They lay on ordinary hospital beds whose metal side-guards were replaced with Tertiary Adamantium. Combined with the Vibranium cuffs and the presence of Spider-Man himself, even if they awoke with the adrenaline of fear, they would not be able to escape. "I felt fear. I felt the same from Henton."
"Are you sure you weren't seeing manipulative behaviour?" Xina asked. "The behaviours in these things are highly advanced. Memories are copied and inform their algorithms."
"..." Felix fell silent, thinking. "Behaviours of known people…but without emotions…"
Everyone was thinking the same thing. Only Felix dared to ask, however.
"What has happened to the original then?"
What happened to the original Miguel O'Hara? The Spider-Man of Earth 2099?