Breakfast.
Aunt May stood by the table, watching her nephew with worry.
"Peter, are you really not going to eat anything? I just made beef patties—have a taste."
Peter—Lino in truth—was packing his bag, head bowed as he answered Aunt May in a low voice.
"I already ate a little, Aunt May."
"When was that?"
"Just upstairs. I had some cheese bread."
Peter lifted his head and offered a faint smile as he spoke. Uncle Ben had already left for work; only the two of them remained in the living room.
Aunt May opened her mouth to say more, but Peter hoisted his bag.
"I'm going to school, Aunt May."
Without waiting for a response, he slung the bag over his shoulder and left.
"Alright—be careful, and call me if you need anything."
Aunt May saw that her nephew's spirits were off and didn't press. She only gave a few gentle reminders.
Once outside, Peter's mood was indeed rotten.
Last night he had tried every method he could think of to check his body. The conclusion was unavoidable: the Alien embryo still existed inside him.
No matter how absurd the fact, he had to face it—an embryo had taken root inside him, and its breaking free was only a matter of time.
Once an Alien embryo implants and develops in a human, the placenta-like tissue bonds with the host like a cancerous growth. Even if surgeons attempted to rip it out, the host usually died. Twenty-second-century surgical tech couldn't extract it cleanly; certainly current medical capabilities here couldn't.
No.
This was the comic-book world—magic and strange powers existed. Maybe Tony Stark could help with an operation.
Peter snorted and shook his head. Right now Tony Stark was just a detested playboy—why would he help Peter?
He tilted his face toward the glaring sun and squinted.
The one actionable plan left was to follow history's path: become Spider-Man.
Only by becoming Spider-Man might his body's mutation be powerful enough to strangle the embryo's development. Spider-Man's formidable healing would also mean that if the embryo did burst out, Peter might survive without bleeding out.
He had to buy time; he had to become Spider-Man before the embryo fully matured.
Peter remembered internal reports he'd seen back in the Weyland facility. In the "First Alien Incident," the host Kane fell from a Facehugger detachment to chestburst death within four to five hours. In the "Second Alien Incident," a female host found barely clinging to life in an Alien nest survived for more than seventeen days.
That showed the embryo's development time depended not only on the host's health but also on nutrition—the more the host ate, the better the embryo grew.
So Peter refused breakfast.
Starving himself was meant to slow the embryo's growth; though he'd be engulfed by hunger, such self-inflicted suffering was small compared to what awaited if he did nothing.
"Become Spider-Man."
He whispered it to himself and looked out across New York, a jungle of steel towers.
Dawn bathed the city in light.
Midtown High.
Following the memory he'd inherited, Peter went into the school building and headed for his classroom. Even with the constant threat of death, he kept his composure. He couldn't change his situation—so he would accept a bleak life for now. That had always been his creed.
"Hey! Catch it, Peter!"
A voice called from behind. Peter turned as a massive football sailed toward his face.
To him, the hurtling ball looked like a Facehugger, mouth gaping, covered in a mocking, teeth-like roar.
"Thud!"
The next moment Peter caught the ball single-handedly; it landed in his palm with a dull thump.
Calmly, he moved the ball away from his face and revealed a cold, impassive expression.
His eyes, icy and hard, fixed on the person who'd thrown it.
Josh Rob—an imposing player on the football team and one of the regular bullies—stared, mouth hanging open.
When did this bookworm get so fast?
"Nice catch, Peter. Hand the ball over. Let's try again—maybe you've got the makings of a quarterback," Josh said, coughing up a laugh, assuming Peter had just been lucky.
He meant to throw the ball hard enough to smash Peter's glasses and humiliate him.
"You can come and take it yourself."
Peter shook his head, daring Josh to approach.
Josh hesitated, then reached for the ball. Peter flicked his wrist and the ball flew into the other hand.
"How can someone your size be clumsier than a bear?" Peter sneered, striking at his core.
Josh's temper flared. He readied his signature "football charge" to slam the mocking nerd into the ground.
But the next instant, his throat was seized.
A choking pain shocked him. The world flipped.
"Crash!"
Josh's back slammed into a locker and he groaned in pain.
His spine felt like it might snap. He slid down the dented metal, limp and stunned.
The physical pain was secondary—what horrified him most was that the weak, easy-to-abuse nerd he'd always bullied had just unleashed terrifying strength.
The sound of the impact echoed down the corridor, drawing a crowd. Voices rose in alarm.
"Oh my God! What happened?"
"Jesus! That's Josh!"
"Peter Parker—he beat Josh up! What did I just see?"
Under stunned, unbelieving gazes, Peter glanced once at the frightened Josh and then turned away without expression as whispers swirled.
Impossible.
Peter walked the hall, equally confused and shocked. Though he'd mastered countless guns and combat moves in the Alien world, his new Peter Parker frame should be too frail to let him exert such force. Yet just now he'd somehow hurled Josh several meters with one hand.
Was the embryo inside him at work?
From everything he knew, the Alien embryo absorbed the host's nutrients and genetic material to grow stronger—Alien implants took from the host, not the other way around. He'd never heard of the host absorbing Alien genes.
But then he thought of Ellen Ripley—the legendary heroine of the Alien series. After she died, scientists cloned her; because she carried Alien genes, the clone had astonishing combat ability, even able to hand-to-hand it with Aliens.
Had his body fused with some Alien genes?
When he'd shoved Josh, a brutal, predatory fury had risen inside him—an instinctual drive to hunt. The violent, lethal aura had sprung up unbidden.
"I need a full-body scan with better equipment," Peter thought as he entered the classroom.