The space between was not meant for living things.
I didn't pause to orient myself. Orientation was a luxury. The Child's domain lay ahead, through the crawling dark where husks moved like maggots in a wound.
My hand found the grappling hook at my belt.
The attack came without warning.
Venom-charged fist, aimed for the base of my skull. I twisted left on instinct, felt the electricity sear past my ear close enough to smell burnt air. Miles Morales materialized from the collapsing breach-space like fury given form, mask cracked, costume torn, eyes blazing through the broken lens.
No words. Not this time.
He came at me with everything.
I blocked the first strike, deflected the second, but the third caught me in the ribs—bio-electric discharge strong enough to stop a heart. I felt my muscles seize, forced them through it, drove my elbow into his solar plexus as I dropped below his guard.
He took the hit and kept coming.
Good. Words were always a waste. This was clearer.
His webbing lashed out, trying to bind my arms. I rolled under it, used the momentum to sweep his legs. He jumped, impossibly high, spider-sense giving him that fraction-of-a-second advantage. His heel came down where my head had been, cratering the not-ground hard enough to send cracks spiraling outward.
I was already moving. Grappling hook to his web-shooter, yanked hard enough to throw off his next attack. He compensated mid-air, fired from the other hand, caught a collapsing pillar and swung around for another strike.
We met in the center of the space with the sound of bone on bone.
The environment was deteriorating. Reality folding in on itself, surfaces that existed one second and vanished the next. A Totem—some Spider-variant I didn't recognize—clung to a distant platform, trying to web-anchor what remained of a support structure. Miles saw them. Adjusted his positioning. Put himself between me and the collapsing geometry, using his body as a shield for the vulnerable.
Predictable.
I went through him.
My shoulder check sent him sprawling. He rolled with it, came up firing venom blasts that I barely dodged. One grazed my coat, burning through to skin. Pain. Irrelevant. I closed distance again, got inside his reach where speed mattered less than mass and leverage.
Chokehold. Standard application. He thrashed, stronger than he looked, fingers clawing at my forearm. I tightened my grip, felt him starting to weaken—
His venom discharge exploded at point-blank range.
The world went white. My muscles locked. I felt myself falling, forced my grip to hold through the seizure, but he was already slipping free. His knee found my face on the way out. Blood filled my mouth, tasting of copper and failure.
I hit the ground hard. Rolled. He was on me before I could stand, raining down punches that I blocked more by geometry than sight. One got through. Then another. My vision swam.
I caught his wrist mid-strike, twisted, heard something pop. He screamed but didn't stop. Neither did I.
We grappled in the collapsing space like animals, all technique dissolving into pure violence. He tried for another venom burst—I slammed his hand into the not-ground before he could discharge. He headbutted me. I responded with a knee to his already-damaged ribs.
Around us, the Web began to scream.
Not metaphorically. The threads—those impossible strands that held reality together—were pulling taut under the strain of our conflict. Some snapped with sounds like breaking bone. Others reformed, coiling around the battlefield like serpents, as if reality itself couldn't decide which philosophy should prevail.
The Child's presence pressed closer. I could feel it watching, weighing, amplifying the instability with its attention.
Miles threw me off, created distance with a desperate web-shot. I rolled to my feet, tasting blood, feeling at least two ribs cracked. He was in worse shape—favoring his left side, one arm hanging wrong, breathing like a bellows.
Neither of us stopped.
He came in low this time, trying for a takedown. I sprawled, caught him in a guillotine choke. He lifted me—impossible strength—and drove me into the nearest surface hard enough to shatter what remained of my grip. I kneed him in the face as we separated. He caught my leg on the next kick, twisted, tried to hyperextend the knee.
I let him. Used the momentum to bring my other boot around into his temple.
We both went down. Both got up. Both kept fighting.
This was what it came down to. Not arguments. Not philosophy. Just two methodologies trying to beat comprehension into each other through sheer force, hoping that pain would translate into understanding where words had failed.
He fought to stop me. To prevent me from reaching the Child, from doing what I knew was necessary, from accepting isolation as the only effective path forward.
I fought to pass him. To get through the obstacle, eliminate the variable, proceed to the objective.
We were evenly matched. His spider-sense and bio-electricity against my experience and willingness to endure. Neither gaining ground. Neither yielding.
The Web coiled tighter.
"Rorschach! Miles! STOP!"
Silk's voice cut through the chaos. I glimpsed her and Spider-Ham breaking through the collapsing breach-space, Ham firing webbing to separate us while Silk positioned herself between—
The Child moved.
Not directly. It didn't need to. Behind me, reality tore open with surgical precision. A secondary rift, silent and intentional, blossoming like a wound in space. The gravity shifted immediately, pulling toward the new tear with inexorable force.
Silk's webbing fell short, caught in the sudden distortion. Ham tumbled sideways, struggling to anchor himself. Miles looked past me, spider-sense screaming, and I saw the recognition flash across his face.
Trap. Separation. Exactly what the Child wanted.
He lunged forward anyway.
I met him mid-charge. One final exchange—his venom-charged fist against my palm strike, electricity arcing between us. For a fraction of a second we were locked together, both exhausted, both bleeding, both absolutely unyielding.
His eyes met mine through the cracked mask. Brown. Young. Still believing that trying was the same as succeeding.
"Don't," he said. One word. No longer a command. A plea.
I drove my fist into his sternum.
He staggered. Dropped to one knee. The venom around his hands flickered, guttered, failed. He looked up at me, gasping, trying to rise, body betraying the will.
Behind me, the rift pulled harder. The Web groaned under the strain, massive threads snapping like cables under too much weight. One fell between us like a closing jaw, writhing with corrupted energy.
Silk was screaming something. Ham was firing more webbing. Miles was reaching forward, fingers extending toward my coat—
The Web sealed itself.
Reality snapped back into place with the sound of breaking glass. The rift behind me became a singularity, gravity inverting, and I felt myself being pulled backward into darkness. Miles' fingers brushed my coat—so close, so desperately close—
Then the distance became absolute.
I watched his face vanish behind the sealing Web. Watched the breach-space collapse like a fist closing. Watched the light disappear as the Child's domain swallowed me whole.
Silence.
No sound. No sensation. Just darkness and the feeling of falling without direction, moving without motion.
The Web was gone. Not broken—absent. Cut away like a severed limb. I couldn't feel the threads anymore, couldn't sense the vast interconnected structure that held every reality together. It was like losing a sense I hadn't known I possessed until it disappeared.
Isolated. Completely.
Exactly as the Child intended.
I stopped trying to orient myself. Let the darkness take me. Felt it pressing in from all sides, thick and textured and almost alive. The Child's presence was everywhere here, woven into the fabric of this non-space, watching with terrible patience.
No path back. No signal. No trace.
Miles was probably still reaching for where I'd been. Still trying to save everyone, even the person who'd chosen to walk away. Still believing that connection mattered more than effectiveness, that refusing to compromise was somehow noble.
He was wrong.
But for a moment—just a fraction of a second before the Web had closed—I'd seen his face. The desperation. The conviction. The absolute unwillingness to abandon even someone determined to be abandoned.
And some part of me, distant and clinical, had recognized it as the same thing that drove me forward. The same refusal to compromise. The same certainty that personal cost didn't matter compared to the objective.
Different methodology. Same absolutism.
The darkness pressed closer. Somewhere in the void, the Child waited. Not to kill me. To understand me. And perhaps, to show me what I'd become when stripped of every variable except my own conviction.
I'd walked into this deliberately. Chosen isolation over compromise, effectiveness over connection, because the alternative was waiting. Hesitating. Letting the thing that fed on compromise grow stronger while we debated the ethics of survival.
The math was simple.
The Web had sealed behind me. Miles and the others would have to hold the Nexus without me, defend the vulnerable with their half-measures and hope, trusting that caring was enough to overcome something that had learned to eat entire realities.
They would probably fail.
But I would reach the Child. Face it without distraction, without compromise, without anyone to protect except the abstract concept of survival itself.
And when I did, I would do what was necessary.
No matter the cost.
The darkness became absolute. Sound died. Sensation faded. Everything reduced to forward motion and cold certainty.
I kept moving.
Alone.
Exactly as it had to be.