Open Wars
Spider-Man's eyes fluttered open to a world of smoke, twisted steel, and suffocating silence. His old work place, the place that he owed so much to, the great Oscorp Tower now lay in ruins. Jagged spires of broken glass jutted from the ground like the teeth of some great, long-dead beast. Dust swirled in slow, mournful eddies, as if the city itself mourned.
He shifted under the rubble pinning him down, gritting his teeth as the agony in his limbs flared to life. It wasn't the rubble, it was the radiation. That Gamma Breath. It burned half his suit off! The left leg and arms were ripped and the nanotech was ruined. A large slab of concrete rested against his chest. Grunting, he shoved it aside. Again, it wasn't the rubble, it was fucking radiation.
'My lungs...fuck...!'
As he staggered to his feet, his gloved hand brushed against the cracked emblem on his chest.
The remains of Oscorp Tower loomed above him—a skeletal monument of steel beams and shattered dreams. He swayed slightly, gazing up at the creature responsible for this destruction.
Creature Z.
The Lizard stood in the distance, unmoving for now, but its towering frame radiated malevolence. The green glow of its dorsal fins illuminated the surrounding devastation. Spider-Man's heart sank as he scanned the horizon. The city was dying. Fires raged unchecked. Skyscrapers leaned at unnatural angles. Entire neighborhoods had been flattened.
He wanted to jump fifty high, activate his webwings, and strike back. He took two steps forward and tripped.
"Gnnh...!"
The interface and lenses were nonexistent. The box on his back containing the nanobots had a huge hole in them. The bones in legs ceased to work...it was like...
'J-just how much...do I have to heal...?'
Spider-Man did not know but the Gamma Breath had melted nearly all his organs from the inside-out. The only reason he was living, much less conscious and breathing, was because of his willpower and the portion of his brain that had remained.
He couldn't run because his bones were literally not there. They were trying to reconstruct themselves.
He gasped. He breathed.
The realization hit him like a freight train: he couldn't win.
There was no fucking adapting to that. Extremis was not all this powerful conceptual godly ability. It was based on biology. It was based on brain knowing, feeling, seeing, and deconstructing.
If his a portion of his brain melted halfway through, how could he adapt? Hell, even if he could adapt, the Lizard would just adapt in turn. The creature's adaptive biology would nullify anything he threw at it. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say it possessed an Extremis of its own.
"...so tired."
'I'm tired. I've been travelling and fighting and web-swinging for nearly twelve hours straight. I haven't had anything to eat or drink - and he's not even tired. But I am. I'm hurt and I'm tired and I want to go home and I want to sleep and I don't want to be here...can I let this one go? Can I let it be someone else's problem, just for a minute, so I can rest?
....
No.
No. I can't.
But I wish I could. God, but I wish I could.'
He had to keep going. But how? He couldn't stop Creature Z, not like this.
"Haah...haah...Herbie?" he called out. The interface and lenses were broken. There was nothing to call out to. The nanobots were clamoring together and trying to repair them.
He was alone.
Spider-Man was on his own.
Tired. So tired.
That didn't mean he was giving up. His legs healing and shaky, he crouched low, his eyes surveying the wreckage of Oscorp. It was then that he noticed an old sight. Czarina's desk and, if his memory was correct, a cracked elevator shaft ahead. The elevator itself hung precariously between floors, its doors jammed halfway open, sparks spitting from its damaged wiring.
"Wait..."
Memories came flooding back. Oscorp's safety protocols, the emergency procedures drilled into every employee. After the last attack on Oscorp, the company had fortified its underground levels and created reinforced tunnels designed to withstand natural disasters—or worse. Beneath the building, there were laboratories, bunkers, and escape routes leading outside the city.
Whether it was a natural disaster or a mercenary, they had plans now. Czarina, Dr. Octavius, Kavita, Jane, and Darcy, they were all alive. They had to be.
They were alive. The smartest people he knew were alive.
Not just them...
But...
Yes. That had to be alive to.
Spider-Man sprinted toward the malfunctioning elevator and he reached the jagged opening in seconds. Without hesitation, he ripped open the doors and peered down into the darkness.
The elevator shaft yawned before him, its depths shrouded in shadow. There had not been people here. The elevator automatically went up and down during emergencies in order to get as many people as efficiently as possible. He leapt into the void. The confined darkness was claustrophobic, the walls closing in around him as he plunged deeper into Oscorp's underbelly.
Each floor blurred past—B1, B2, B3—until he reached B5. Thwip! He slowed his descent with a web and landed silently, crouched like a predator preparing to strike. The air down here was sterile and cold, the hum of machinery echoing through the closed elevator door.
He forced it open. B5, a floor intended for the most secret project of all. For the one woman who had neither an department nor a profile on their website; who Felix had only met once during a funeral.
This was the laboratory of Elsa Brock.
Machines at the sides. A suspicious green light beaming down on him and everything else in the lab. To the left were chambers. Black humanoids, black splatters, or simply empty husks.
Spider-Man walked past the failures.
Ahead, at the very end was a containment chamber lined with weaponry and satellites and scanners. Suspended in the glass containment unit was the ultimate prize: a mass of black, shifting tendrils. It pulsed faintly, as if alive, and Spider-Man could feel its presence like a whisper in the back of his mind.
The Symbiote.
"Wait! What—what are you doing here?"
The voice did not startle him. He expected to see her, Elsa Brock, the lead scientist of this little project. Her lab coat was disheveled, her blonde hair falling into her wide, terrified eyes. She clutched a tablet tightly, as though it could shield her from the figure standing before her.
Spider-Man said nothing and walked up the stairs.
Elsa's voice trembled as she continued, her words tumbling out in a rush. "How—how did you even get down here? O-only Mr. Osborn is supposed to..."
Spider-Man was on the platform, on the same level as the containment unit. On the left side was a computer room protected by glass. On the left side was a generator.
"W-what do you want? Look, if you're here to stop Creature Z, I—I swear there's nothing here. T-this is...we're working on something, but it's not ready yet! You can't just—"
He went to the computer room. Her eyes darted toward the containment chamber and the color drained from her face.
"No," she whispered, chasing after him. She blocked the entrance. "No, no, no. You can't. It's not stable. It's not ready!"
Spider-Man shoved her aside and kicked the door open.
'Just because you can't complete it doesn't mean I can't.'
It was an emergency. No Herbie, suit malfunctioning, webwings gone. All he had was his brain.
He arrived at the computers and their many keyboards. He pressed a single button. Suddenly, the containment unit hissed and the Symbiote writhed violently inside the chamber, its black tendrils coiling and snapping against the reinforced glass like a trapped beast. It was alive, yet incomplete—a half-finished masterpiece of alien biology and human ambition.
Because he saw the data. He memorized it. He saw the project. Something was...different about this.
Already he was mapping out possibilities, deconstructing equations, and reassembling them in real time. The data displayed on the main three consoles glared back at him like an unsolved riddle.
Elsa ran into the room. "What are you doing? You're not even trained in this! This thing—it's not just some suit you can tweak! It's a half-artificial, half-alien parasite! You have no idea what it's capable of—"
Thwip!
He sealed her mouth without looking.
"Mmmpph!"
Thwip!
Then glued her arm to the wall.
Spidey's fingers flew over the console, inputting commands faster than Elsa could comprehend. Streams of data filled the screen, most of it unfinished. The Symbiote's genetic structure was a chaotic, tangled web of proteins, enzymes, and alien compounds.
He scanned the notes left behind by Elsa and her team, sifting through years of research in minutes.
'Gamma-based stabilization matrix… incomplete,' he muttered to himself. 'Cosmic radiation as an energy source—of course. But it's leaking. This…this was freshly caught. This was freshly installed. Don't tell me...this combination, this fusion...that's why Creature Z is here. This thing, this Symbiote, is drawing it in.'
He glanced at Elena who clawed at the webbing. He needed her to explain. He ventured a guess.
'You. You caused this happen because you wanted to experiment?'
Elsa Brock went wide-eyed. That calm, lethal gaze...he knew what she had done. He knew! And she...thought she would deserve whatever punishment he would give her. Her screaming muffled died off and she suddenly seemed ashamed of herself.
He walked up to her and ripped the webbing off her mouth.
"I...it wasn't..." Elsa Brock hung her head, arm still stuck. "I just...I...I just wanted to help people..."
He couldn't bear to look at her. He went back to the consoles and the history of this experiment.
'Elena Brock had created her own artificial Symbiote and then added to it. Beefed it up. It's stronger than the one she gave to Gwen Stacy. What she added...'
Typing, typing...
'...was the original component. The alien parasite on the moon. Judging by the data and Creature Z's arrival…the alien must have arrived a little after or during the Oscorp factory explosion.'
The Symbiote twitched violently in its containment unit, its movements growing more erratic. Spider-Man glanced at it briefly before returning to the screen. His mind worked at a frenetic pace, fueled by Extremis-enhanced clarity and adrenaline.
'Think, think! Think! You don't have time! It's a living organism. It doesn't need stability. It needs symbiosis.'
Symbiosis that infected people. Killed people. If he just put it on, it might kill him or vice-versa.
He looked further back. Some months ago, Elsa introduced Gamma Radiation to the base template for greater stability. After that, weeks ago, she added the alien parasite.
What was the connection? What changed? He checked the data and then ran his own simulations.
He pulled up a simulation, watching as the Symbiote's genetic strands unraveled into chaos, destabilizing every time they interacted with external stimuli. He frowned, digging deeper.
'What's missing…?'
Extremis rewrote the brain. The Super Soldier Serum amplified it. The Symbiote acted as a separate entity fusing with it. Always separate, fused, but never the same thing.
'If my Extremis fuses with the Symbiote…it will kill it.'
He had to teach the Symbiote not to see him as a threat. To never see him as a threat. That was the only way.
He cross-referenced Elsa's previous tests with his knowledge of Extremis and the Super Soldier Serum. He then accessed Symbiote's control protocols. This console could make tiny adjustments to its genetic code as well as introduce it to tests. Flames, water, plasma, ultraviolet rays, that sort of things. Its genetic framework was not compatible with his current self. He had to figure out a way for that not to be the case. He needed himself to be a host that the Symbiote would accept, sustain, and grow in a short period of time.
It was a delicate process. His Extremis-enhanced body would serve as the foundation for the bond, his biology overriding the Symbiote's corruptive tendencies.
But it could not and should not overwrite everything. That was the delicate part.
The Symbiote was beefed up. Therefore, it required a beefed up host in turn. Ideally, somebody with the Super Soldier Serum.
'That's why they were rushing Project Rebirth. They wanted us to compliment it with this thing.'
The Super Soldier was theoretically perfect. Alas, Spider-Man was no super soldier. He was so much more than that. He would kill this thing, as powerful as it was. Extremis was too different in the very way it functioned.
So what did he have to do to make it function? There was only one way. He needed to introduce the Extremis protocol into the Symbiote's structure. He needed it to experience what he was like and, if luck was on his side, accept it. To do that, he had to emit his brain waves.
The containment unit had everything in terms of tools. However, he did want to run a simulation before he did this. On the back of the Superior Suit was the box of nanobots. Each nanobot was installed with an iteration of Herbie. He ripped the box from his back, wiring and all, and checked to see if any nanobot survived.
Yes. One did.
One out of three hundred nanobots lived.
An ordinary eye wouldn't have been able to see it. Felix Faeth did. His enhances eyes could see the tiniest detail.
"Herbie," Felix called out. "There's a USB-C port. Connect to it and the console. You won't be able to run your whole program, I know. That's going to take too long, what with us being underground and the city being overrun by radiation. Just give enough to run a small simulation program for me."
His finger went over to the port. The nanobot crawled over. It took a whole minute of waiting but eventually...
"There."
It worked. He installed a Herbie-esque simulation program on the console.
The simulation already saw what he was planning. The conclusion? Too many brainwaves and the Symbiote would kill and overwhelm his brain when they bonded. Too little and Extremis would overwhelm the Symbiote. There had to be a medium.
FURTHER DATA REQUIRED FOR THIS EXTREMIS HUMAN.
It had no reference of what "Extremis brainwaves" looked like. The original Herbie had but, well, that data was not currently available.
'Now, to duplicate my Extremis brainwaves and apply the simulation…'
That meant he had to do it himself.
In two minutes, Felix wrote the entire code of Extremis into the console. The simulation accepted the code and its affect on a normal human. The new brainwaves were here for analysis. Felix had no time to introduce the spider-bite, unfortunately. Certainly, the bite had an effect on his brain but god dammit, if he wasted another minute, the Lizard would wake up.
The simulation began. The experiment would take twenty seconds.
The simulation's chances of success were....46%. He made smaller adjustments. 47%. He did not have time to make those odds better. It was now or never.
"Containment unit now following simulation procedure."
Although mildly powered by Herbie, this was Elsa Brock's AI. It was so much more primitive than Herbie. Nevertheless, it was enough for the current situation. The containment followed the simulation, two satellite-shaped tools appearing at the corners of the unit, and directing brain waves at the Symbiote.
The Symbiote screamed at first.
It screamed for an awfully long time. Felix's heart hammered. 'Please work, please work...! Don't die on me...!'
It did not. Slowly, the Symbiote calmed down. The Symbiote adapted. It learned about these strange brainwaves and its blood pressure slowed.
Symbiosis.
Spider-Man slammed his fist into the emergency release button on the containment unit.
Hissss!
Several layers of glass had to open up. In that time, Spider-Man walked past Elsa Brock and through the door. Finally, he was facing it. Awaiting it.
His Spider-Sense tingled. For the first time, he not just ignored it; he welcomed it.
The Symbiote surged forward the moment the last layer of glass opened up, spilling out of the containment chamber in a writhing mass. It sat one foot away from him. It was a disgusting little thing. Felix waited for what it would do.
The Symbiote was not as eager as he anticipated, likely because of the brain waves it just received. It was feeling...strange. To his relief, the tendrils latched onto his leg. He didn't resist.
The bonding process was…
"Gah!"
Painful.
The Symbiote had only recently experienced the overwhelming brain waves of Extremis. It wrapped around him like liquid shadow, its tendrils sinking into his broken suit, his skin, his very being. He dropped to his knees as the alien organism fused with him, its presence invading his mind. It wasn't like anything he had experienced before.
"Felix Faeth!
Feliiix Faaeeth!
Faeth! Why are YOU ALIVE?
YOU WISH TO CONTROL US! US! US!?
WE ARE ONE
Forget, forgeeet! ForgEEET!"
The Extremis in his system roared to life and reacted violently to the Symbiote's presence. For a moment, his body convulsed, caught in the struggle between the two forces.
"GOD IS WITH US!
NOBODY IS WITH USSS!
USSS! US! US!
Yes...yessss....us!
It'sssss okay, there is no birth without screaming. Let it become you. Let us heal you."
It wasn't clicking, it wasn't clicking...!
The pain was excruciating, but Spider-Man endured it in silence.
Calm yourself.
Calm yourself.
Don't view him as a threat. Don't view him as anything except help.
The intentions of the brain waves had to be neutral. If it was too positive, the Symbiote might eat him away. If it was too negative, he might eat it away.
"Haaah....
Yes...!"
Gradually, it clicked. Gradually, he was able to feel his nerves and bones again.
Black tendrils enveloped him completely, reshaping his suit into something darker. The red accents of his previous costume faded, replaced by jagged white streaks that formed a spider emblem across his chest. His lenses glowed faintly, a piercing white light that cut through the shadows.
The transformation was complete.
Spider-Man rose slowly to his feet. The power coursing through him was....smoother. Stronger, certainly, but it was this smoothness between his synapses that made the difference. He clenched his fists and the tendrils reacted.
Elsa Brock stared in stunned silence through the window of the computer room, her arm stuck and back pressed against wall.
"W-what have you done?" she mouthed.
Spider-Man turned to her, his glowing eyes fixing her with an unblinking stare. He raised a finger to his lips, the gesture as chilling as it was deliberate.
The message was clear: don't speak of this. To anyone.
Without a word, Spider-Man turned and vanished into the shadows.
***
The news camera struggled to keep steady, its lens struggling against the smoke-clogged skyline. Oscorp Tower now lay in ruin, a corpse of steel and shattered glass. Dust hung thick in the air, choking the city's breath, turning the night into a dull, blood-orange smear. Christine Everhart, the broadcaster, she was back and she was more scared than ever. She stumbled and shook and kept speaking, narrating the horror unfolding before the world.
"We are—w-we are witnessing—uh, reports confirm that Spider-Man was caught in the collapse of Oscorp Tower after sustaining a direct hit from Creature Z's Gamma Breath. It...it has been some time now. Creature Z itself has been..."
The camera shifted over to the statue-esque lizard.
"Unmoving. It appears its clash with Spider-Man drained it of its energy. But the military...oh good."
It was moving again. Oh god, it had taken its first step...!
"We... we don't know if—wait! Wait! Something's happening!"
The camera swung sharply back to the wreckage, zooming in. The rubble shifted. A low, sickening squelch echoed through the canyons of broken steel. Then, like ink spilling from the mouth of an unseen wound, black goo oozed forth from beneath the ruins. It was unnatural, writhing, slithering, and suddenly it surged upward, stretching and taking shape.
Gasps. The world watched as the form solidified into something humanoid.
The camera locked onto its face—or what should have been a face. White jagged slits of eyes. A gleaming black suit, muscles coiled like high-tension cables beneath a surface that pulsed as though alive. And at the center of its chest, a distorted, jagged white spider emblem that turned...
Red.
"I-it's Spider-Man! Spider-Man is alive, everybody!"
Spider-Man was still alive.
A pause, heavy as thunder before the strike. And then—
ROOOOAAAAARRRRRR!
Creature Z bellowed, the force of its roar splintering nearby structures. Its 1,700-foot bulk cast a shadow over Midtown, its massive, spiked dorsal fins flashing an eerie green, its reptilian eyes locking onto the newly risen Spider-Man.
It knew. It had been waiting.
The streets below became a warzone.
The moment Creature Z lunged, Spider-Man was already moving. He didn't leap. He didn't swing. He launched—a blur of black and red bioelectricity, crashing into the beast's chest with a shockwave that shattered windows for blocks.
The monster staggered.
Spider-Man struck again.
And again.
Lightning-wreathed fists slammed into Creature Z's armored scales. The bioelectricity pulsed violently, the red streaks in the black tendrils disabling its regeneration upon contact. More than ever in this entire catastrophe, Creature Z felt pain.
With a shriek of fury, it retaliated.
Its skyscraper tail hurtled toward Spider-Man.
He did not dodge.
He countered with a tendril of his own—a monstrous, writhing appendage of black, reinforced with crackling energy. It clashed mid-air with Creature Z's strike. The resulting shockwave blasted cars into the air, tore the tops off buildings, and sent civilians screaming into whatever cover they could find.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
Spider-Man's giant tendrils overpowered the Lizard and smacked it several feet back. Never before had the Lizard conceded ground. It was always hunted, it was always the predator.
'There's fIRST time for everything!'
They fought across the ruins of Midtown, the battle stretching across shattered rooftops, weaving between the remains of New York's tallest skyscrapers. Creature Z blasted past the Empire State Building which had been spared from the battle so far.
Crunch!
Spider-Man raced up the angled wreckage of a collapsing tower, reaching the peak and then summoning tendrils as a slingshot. These webs were equally as attuned as his organic webbing, if not more.
'Yes, yes, yes, yesssss!'
His own mind was loving it. This control, this power...
It was a rush to experience. Any fear of heights, any fear of falling or losing or being inexperienced, none of it was there. If such an emotion like fear existed, it was buried deep into the Earth's core.
Back, back, back, he went. At the very tip of the Empire State Building, the black tendrils tightening and thinning out for greater force.
Snap!
He was off, using the momentum to launch himself toward the beast's head like a missile.
CRACK!
His fist connected with its snout, a detonation of Symbiotic force and bioelectricity. Creature Z reeled, its hands trying to smack him away, but for the second time Spider-Man didn't dodge.
He caught it.
His tendrils wrapped around it, latching onto its burning-hot scales. The Symbiote flexed, muscles shifting in unnatural ways as he heaved, ripping Creature Z off balance.
The beast crashed through the Chrysler Building.
At least it would have if not for the enormous black tendrils seizing the creature by the neck and reeling it back into another punch. Spider-Man was not punching willy-nilly. He glanced down. He stretched his Spider-Sense across.
He saw the future.
All his powers were coming as one.
All his powers were becoming clear.
The military had to evacuate the people. New York had a population of eight million people. Homeless, rich, young, old. Families and children and parents and siblings. People like Rio. People like Reed.
He didn't have the power to protect them before. He didn't have the power to keep this thing at bay.
Smack! BAM!
'This is amazing! This is...!'
Now he did. Now he could confidently fight it off until everyone in a given area was evacuated.
'This is what I need!'
The wanton destruction was unfortunate but necessary. The lives of people mattered more than the buildings themselves. A hundred stories of steel and glass collapsed in a nightmare. Spider-Man didn't flinch.
BAM!
Because another area had opened up, courtesy of SHIELD's evacuation. Creature Z nearly fell for the first.
1,700 feet of height. Spider-Man refused to let it fall completely. He knew it it did that its weight could cause an earthquake so massive that it would kill hundreds of thousands.
The tentacles whipped out and always kept it standing despite the beating he gave it.
But Creature Z wasn't going to stay the way it was. It adapted, just like he did. The Lizard opened its mouth and spewed out fire.
Spider-Man already had an answer. A massive black tendril-made shield, reinforced with black and white lightning. He was not exaggerating when he said ALL of his powers were working in tandem.
Fire blasts from Creature Z's mouth crashed against them, but the shield held. The moment the fire ceased, Spider-Man launched himself forward at supersonic speed, closing the gap between them in a blink.
Creature Z's tail smashed into the side of the City Hall, using it for leverage, and hurled its full 1,700-foot mass toward Spider-Man.
Spider-Man met it head-on.
It was now or never.
He overpowered it.
Their impact tore through the Freedom Tower like wet paper. Seven giant-sized tendrils wrapped around its limbs and pushing. Pushing, pushing, pushing. Spider-Man did not stop.
They slammed into the Lower Bay. A near tsunami-sized wave cascaded into New Jersey's shores. Water erupted into the sky, as though the ocean itself recoiled from their battle.
It was falling, falling, falling.
Into the waters. Back where he would completely finish it off.
As Creature Z fell, its dorsal fins glowed green.
'Gamma Breath.'
Spider-Man reacted instantly.
With a bone-crushing strike, he slammed both fists into its throat, forcing the attack to abort just as it was about to fire. The result was catastrophic.
The unfinished energy burst detonated inside Creature Z's mouth and bursts of uncontrolled radioactive force lashing out from its throat. The sheer force ended the struggle of recovery and the the monster crashed into the ocean, submerging it completely.
The water boiled. The surface roiled with nuclear fire.
Spider-Man prepared to follow. Time to end this. Time to finish the fight now. He leapt into the waters.
The Symbiote screamed.
An ear-splitting, otherworldly shriek of agony ripped through Spider-Man's mind. His body lurched violently. The tendrils around his limbs spasmed, contorting against his will.
Something was wrong.
The Symbiote was rejecting the water.
Before Spider-Man could react, the Symbiote's tendrils lashed out violently—hurling him backward, away from the ocean's edge. He skidded across the ruins of Battery Park, trying to regain control, but the Symbiote fought him, retreating inside him like a wounded animal. It was afraid.
Spider-Man landed hard, bracing himself. His mind reeled. The Symbiote was bonded to him at an almost molecular level. If it was reacting like this, then that meant—
Water.
The Symbiote was weak to water.
Not sound. Not fire.
Water.
Something about its artificial composition made it vulnerable. A fatal flaw. A crippling weakness. It was still on him, still active, but hesitant. It was no longer wanting to conjure up giant building-sized tendrils anymore.
Spider-Man clenched his fists as he watched Creature Z rise from the Lower Bay, its monstrous silhouette framed against the burning waters. The lizard's slit eyes gleamed with a sick intelligence. It had felt Spider-Man's hesitation. It knew.
A low, menacing rumble echoed from its chest. A predator recognizing another predator. A battle unfinished.
Spider-Man exhaled.
His fingers flexed into fists. His tendrils writhed. His bioelectricity pulsed.