Chapter 188: The Chain Reaction of the Forgetting Spell
In the New York Sanctum of Earth-1999999—
Doctor Strange stood with his arms crossed, staring at Spider-Man with the particular expression of a man who has run out of patience and is now operating on pure principle.
Peter's incessant interruptions had unraveled the spell entirely. Strange had been holding the working together through four — five — six alterations, and each one had frayed it further, until the whole thing had simply given up.
"You shouldn't have done that," Strange said, pointing at him. "This is exactly why the spell didn't hold." His voice had the flat, clipped quality it got when he was furious and trying not to show it. "It was completely out of control. If I hadn't terminated it when I did, we would be having a very different conversation right now."
Peter looked at him with that expression — the one that was somehow both guilty and confused, like he genuinely hadn't processed yet that what he'd done was a problem.
Which, Strange reminded himself through gritted teeth, was because he was a child.
"Stephen, I'm really sorry—"
"Mister."
The word came out harder than intended. Strange turned away briefly, composing himself.
If it weren't for Tony — for the memory of Tony, for what Tony would have wanted — he wouldn't have agreed to this in the first place. A global amnesia spell, cast for the benefit of one teenager, because said teenager couldn't figure out how to manage a secret identity like every other person in history who'd ever had one.
And then said teenager had spent the entire casting interrupting him with exceptions.
He heard Peter swallow.
"Sorry. Mister."
Strange exhaled. Looked at him again. Saw, for a moment, not the Spider-Man who had fought beside them through things that would have broken most people — but a kid. Just a kid, fresh out of high school, who didn't want his aunt and his friends to forget his face.
"After everything we've been through together," he said, and his voice came out quieter than he'd intended, "I keep forgetting how young you are. You're just a kid, Peter."
He meant it. That was the part that was harder to be angry about.
He told Peter to try talking to MIT first. Or to get Tony to lean on the admissions board. There were options that didn't involve rewriting the memories of eight billion people.
Peter's response stopped him cold.
"Can I just... call them? I've been meaning to, I just haven't had the chance. And Mr. Stark — I haven't actually seen him since the battle. He kind of disappeared after everything."
Strange stared at him.
"Call them," he repeated.
"Yeah."
"So you haven't spoken to the school yet."
"Not... yet."
Strange walked toward him slowly, the way a man walks when he is selecting his words very carefully.
"Let me make sure I understand." His voice was almost gentle now. "You haven't contacted the school. You haven't tried to resolve this through any ordinary means. And so your first move was to come here and ask me to erase the memories of every person on Earth."
Peter opened his mouth.
Strange pointed at the door.
The door opened itself.
"Out."
The door closed behind Peter.
Strange stood alone in the Sanctum and allowed himself one moment of genuine, unguarded profanity.
"Damn it. Thank god that didn't cascade into something worse."
He had no way of knowing that it already had.
The failed spell hadn't dissipated cleanly. It had rippled — outward, sideways, through the connective tissue between realities. In Ethan's universe, and in others, the fabric had shifted. Not broken. Not yet. But moved.
The multiverse registered the disturbance the way a spiderweb registers a touch at its center.
Universe 928. Nueva York. The Spider-Society.
The room was very quiet.
That was how you knew Miguel O'Hara was angry — not by the volume, but by the silence that preceded him. Every Spider-Man present had found something interesting to look at that wasn't his face.
Miguel stood in front of the web display, watching the threads shift and tremble in real time, one after another.
"Did you find it?" he said, very quietly. "What caused the disturbance? Which universes? Which Spider-Man was on site?"
Margo Kess didn't look up from her keyboard. She was the only one in the room who kept working when Miguel went quiet like this.
"Two separate events," she said. "First pulse originated from a minor Spider-Man universe — Ghost-Spider is currently there on a cleanup operation. Second pulse came from Universe 1999999 — Doctor Strange attempted a large-scale memory spell on behalf of their Spider-Man. The spell destabilized. Multiple cross-dimensional channels have opened."
Miguel's hand came down on the console.
Not a slam. Controlled. Which was somehow worse.
"Strange." He said the name the way you'd say the name of a recurring problem that kept reappearing despite your best efforts to contain it. "Of course it was Strange. Do you know how many universes he's personally contributed to destroying? The Ancient One should never have made him Sorcerer Supreme — in any universe."
He straightened up.
"Get me Ghost-Spider. I need to know exactly what she encountered and whether she's compromised a canonical event." He turned toward Spider-Woman — Jessica Drew — with an expression that said this was not the first time he was going to say what he was about to say. "I told you we shouldn't have given her the watch."
Spider-Woman said nothing. She'd learned there was no point arguing with Miguel when he was in the middle of being right about something, even if he was also wrong about parts of it. And she was fairly sure she knew Gwen well enough to know this wasn't her.
No Miles in that universe, she thought. Can't be her fault.
"Margo," Miguel continued, "keep monitoring the web. Anything shifts, you tell me immediately." He turned to address the room. "Everyone else — we move. Find the open channels. Bring back whatever came through."
The Spider-Men mobilized, the room filling with the sounds of suits activating and web-shooters loading.
From the back, one voice cut through the noise — measured, unhurried, carrying the particular calm of someone who had been at this longer than most.
"You know," said the middle-aged Spider-Man, the one with the stroller who everyone called Pavitr when they weren't in earshot of Miguel, "you don't have to make it sound quite so catastrophic. We've handled worse. All of this — everything we do — it adds up. It's not wasted."
Miguel looked at him for a long moment.
Then he went back to the web display without responding, which was as close to acknowledgment as he ever got.
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