Chapter 6 – "Inheritance of Spiderweb"

Sunday night

Peter's room was lit only by the dim light that filtered in from the hallway. On his desk, scraps of tools, scraps of black cloth, polymer tubes, and small electronic devices formed a scientific battlefield.

The suit was hung in front of him.

It wasn't armor. It was not a marvel of nanotechnology. It was polymer-reinforced fabric of his own invention, flexible, lightweight, perfectly fitted to his body. Matte black, with a dark red pattern that climbed up the chest, forming an abstract and fierce spider. It had no sequins, no glitter, no badges of pride. He was silent. It had purpose.

Peter watched him in silence. His fingers were shaking.

I'm ready?

He picked up one of the web shooters—compact, almost invisible as they were placed under his wrists—and lit it. The small buzz confirmed that they worked. He had burned the last three days refining the chemical mixture for his synthetic web: resistant, biodegradable, with a programmable adhesion. Each cartridge contained a formula that would have given any Stark Industries engineer a heart attack... although, in part, he used designs leaked from them.

How much did all this cost me...

Between recycled electronic parts, special polymers and altered thermal cycling suits, he had invested almost $3,000 in total. All financed with the money he took from thieves, traffickers and petty mobsters in Queens and Brooklyn. In other words: social investment.

He sat up on the bed, still staring at the suit. It seemed as alien to him as it was his own. I knew this was necessary. I knew that someone had to fill the void left by the absence of neighborhood heroes. And yet...

"What if it's not him?" He murmured in a low voice, barely audible.

He felt like I was stealing something from him. Not just the name. The symbol. The hope that Spider-Man represented.

The weight of that word was stronger than any blow he had received on his nights on patrol. Since his arrival in this world, he had shielded himself with pragmatism: think like an engineer, act like a strategist, plan like a survivor. But this... this was different. It was assuming a legacy. An identity that, somehow, still belonged to someone else.

He slowly got up and walked towards the mirror. He slid the suit over his body with precise movements. Each section fit perfectly, like a second skin. The dark cloth extinguished any trace of humanity in his forms. When he put on the mask, his reflection no longer seemed like that of a teenager. Now he looked like a shadow. A warning.

A sigh.

"It's not because of me," he said to himself. It's because of them. It's to save the world.

He clenched his fists.

"And if it's not him, then..." I will be something more. I'll be my own.

He jumped out of the window. The night wind embraced him familiarly. He was no longer a makeshift guard dressed in black. He no longer needed to hide. Tonight, for the first time, Queens would have a Spider-Man.

📍Tuesday through Friday – Early mornings in Queens and Brooklyn

The days passed. The nights too, but with cobwebs hanging from poles, with criminals tied to the bars, and with rumors growing in the alleys like mushrooms in the humidity.

Peter —or Spider-Man, as some conspiracy blogs began to call him— had woven a silent routine: Dinner at home. Chemistry study. Change of clothes. Suit.Mask.And then... the city.

Frustrated robberies. Clandestine laboratories dismantled. Stolen cars recovered. And always, always, he left before the police arrived. He never left a signature. Just cobwebs. Only silences.

At police stations, some officers began to call him "the Spectre." Others, "the Vigilante of the Cobwebs". No one knew what it was like. Not even if it was a single man.

Peter kept a low profile on purpose.

He knew he couldn't expose himself yet. Not to the police, not to the media... or the world. Not yet.

📍Friday Night – Brooklyn, Industrial District

Warehouse 44C was shrouded in shadows, like a sleeping giant among rusty cranes and abandoned containers. The only lights were the tactical flashlights of the special team, coordinated by Captain George Stacy.

We confirm our position. Stacy muttered over the radio. We are advancing in three. No one shoots without my order. We repeat: high-risk technology.

The agents moved in formation, silent, calculated, like an urban surgery group.

Inside the warehouse, everything seemed deserted. Pallets with metal boxes, stacked shelves, switched off monitors. But there was a buzzing sound. Barely noticeable. As if the walls breathe.

"Doesn't that seem too much... clean? whispered one of the officers.

And then, the trap was activated.

A metallic hissing sound preceded the first explosion. A shockwave swept through the entrance. Reinforced doors closed automatically behind them. Activated lasers. Silent alarms. An ambush.

"Coverage!" Retreat! Stacy shouted as a cloud of smoke filled the air.

Drones descended from the roof like birds of prey: fast, armed, modified with untraceable parts. Each fired electromagnetic pulse projectiles and paralyzing nets.

The officers responded with fire, but their bullets ricocheted off makeshift energy shields. The criminals came out of the shadows, dressed in adapted exosuits: light armor powered by Stark batteries and Oscorp stabilizers. A monstrous hybrid of military design and industrial robberies.

One officer was dragged by a power grid and slammed into the wall. Another fell from the impact of a sonic launcher.

Stacy was shooting accurately, backing away as she covered her team. But they were overcome. This was not a home gun shop. It was a technological trench.

"This place is a war zone!" One of the agents growled, as a drone exploded after knocking down his shield.

In the chaos, Officer Rodriguez — a rookie, 22 years old, an only child, always anxious – tripped over a fallen structure and was trapped. His leg caught between a metal scaffold that had collapsed with the first detonation.

He tried to free himself. Cried. He asked for help. No one heard him.

Two criminals saw him.

One carried a bionic arm that buzzed with static energy. The other had an exosuit with thrusters in his ankles. They walked towards him like hyenas towards prey.

Rodriguez paled.

He pointed his gun, but his hand was shaking.

"No, no, please, wait!" he begged.

"Too late, cop," replied the one with the bionic arm, pointing.

And then...

Thwip.

A white line crossed the darkness and tore the gun from his hand as if it were made of paper. The second barely turned his head before a black figure descended from the ceiling like an infernal bat.

Spider-Man landed with the metallic creak of the supports under his feet.

"Do you harass rookies now?" He said in a cold tone, amplified by his voice modifier.

The former failed to react. A hook straight to the jaw lifted him off the ground. The second tried to ignite its thrusters... and Peter glued them to the ground with a net that solidified on contact with the metal.

One by one, the drones began to fall. Cobwebs thrown at engines. Cables disconnected in the air. Combos of punches that broke the laws of physics and balance.

But Peter didn't stop there.

Rodriguez panted in the background, still trapped. And when Peter looked at it... He saw it.

Not to Rodríguez.

To his father.

An image. An emotion not his. A memory distorted by tiredness, by sleepless nights, by the fusion of souls that did not end up separating.

"Dad," he whispered. His eyes burned behind the mask.

And the fury devoured him.

Spider-Man lunged at the last enemies with a violence he hadn't shown before. One of them barely stood up when he was kicked and thrown against a column. Another received three consecutive blows to the chest before his suit short-circuited.

Peter lifted him by the neck.

The criminal's eyes filled with terror.

"I said don't touch anyone else!" He roared, and his fist began to shake, ready to fall.

Rodríguez, still on the ground, watched without understanding.

Peter didn't listen. I only felt the echo of loss, of helplessness, of having always arrived too late.

And then...

"Enough!" A voice shouted behind him.

Peter stopped in his tracks.

He let go of the criminal, who fell like a doll.

He turned his head.

Stacy was there, gun in hand, aiming not to shoot, but to impose authority.

"We are not murderers," said the captain, firmly.

Peter nodded... but something in his gaze was distant. As if he wasn't sure who was saying those words to him.

As if for a second... I would have heard another voice.

Nearest.

More familiar.

But there was no one else there.

Just the smoke.

Just the cobwebs.

Only him.

Spider-Man turned around without saying a word and vanished into the shadows of the ceiling.

📍Saturday, 04:26 a.m. Peter Parker's Room – Queens

The slight hum of the window frame opening was the only interruption in the stillness of the early morning.

Peter walked in quietly. At every step, the boots of the suit barely creaked the wood on the floor. He took off his mask with slow movements, as if it weighed a ton, and dropped it on the desk, among the tools and remains of the first prototype.

His breathing was irregular.

The air was loaded. Not because of the sweat, nor because of the adrenaline. But for something else. An emotional weight that I did not know how to put into words.

He slumped into the swivel chair, sinking his elbows into the desk, burying his face in his hands.

For a few seconds, there was only silence.

In his mind, the image of Officer Rodriguez kept coming back. Lying on the ground. About to die. The desperation in his eyes. The blood on the forehead.

But above all... the face.

For a fleeting moment, Peter had seen his father in that face.

It wasn't him. Of course not. But something, something in his gaze hit him like a hammer to the chest.

And then... Something inside him broke.

What came next had not been strategy, nor calculation, nor combat technique.

It had been fury.

It had been pain.

It had been something he didn't want to acknowledge as his own.

"Almost—" he murmured.

I couldn't even finish the sentence.

He clenched his fists tightly, until his knuckles cracked under his gloves.

Part of him wondered what would have happened if Stacy hadn't stopped him.

Another, darker, wondered... if that would have bothered him.

He decided to clear his head. He opened the browser and searched urban policing forums.

#SpiderMan

#TheOneInBlackSuit

#DarkAngel

#SilentVigilante

A new video was circulating. A sharper one. It showed him descending through the smoke, throwing a spider web, striking with surgical precision. In the comments, some called him a hero. Others, monster.

Peter didn't react. He just closed the laptop and stared at his reflection on the off-screen.

"I can't lose control like this again," he whispered.

But a part of him, deep down, knew that this fury was not new.

But ancient.

📍Somewhere above Manhattan...

One screen showed the same viral video, repeated in a loop. The brightness of the visor illuminated an aging face, furrowed by wrinkles and scars. Attentive, inquisitive eyes.

The man turned off the video. He turned the chair and dialed a number on an old phone.

"We have a new player at the table," he said in a deep voice. And apparently... Use spider webs.

On the other end of the line, a female voice responded:

"Do you think it's the same?"

"No. It's someone else. It carries a symbol. And if you use Stark technology... Tony is going to want to know.