Both the original Shadow Spider-Man (TL-This is Spider-man Noir) and the Peter who'd been swept along by him sat stunned by what they'd just seen. Neither could accept it... and yet neither could deny it.
Peter wiped his palms on his jeans and forced himself up from the crate-strewn floor. He had to go to the Daily Bugle. He had to see Jonah Jameson face-to-face and hear the truth from the man's mouth.
When he got to the Bugle office, he found Jonah... or what looked like Jonah.
Sprawled on the floor, a dark stain spreading across his chest. The figure that had held the gun minutes earlier was gone, but uniformed officers were already there, mouths open, as if they'd walked in at exactly the right second to witness the whole thing.
Peter felt the sky tilt. Jonah had been shot in the office. The police had seen someone with a pistol. Nothing about this lined up sensibly.
He ran. He ran until he couldn't hear sirens over the rush in his ears. He slipped into the police station morgue later that night like a shadow and stared down at the body they labeled as Jonah Jameson. Something about the face set wrong when he looked, an edge to the cheek, the way the mouth relaxed. He'd seen that look before. It belonged to someone else.
Back in his little room of boxes and stolen truths, Peter tried to make sense of the files Urich had left behind. He pressed the photos flat, read the notes, rewound the loop of memories in his head. That's when the other presence pushed back in, not maliciously, just… present. He felt the pain in his skull dissolve. The web in his mind stilled. The flood of memories and instincts stitched together into a single cold certainty.
He wasn't just Peter Parker anymore. Maybe he was both Peters: the kid from Queens and the older, harder Spider who'd been living that other life. Maybe he was neither. All he knew was this: in that world, in one of the many threads the web was showing him, there were people like him, people bitten and changed and forced to act.
And in that world, things were worse.
He spread the photos out and focused. Underlined names. Circled faces and Criminal acts.
Sergei Kravinov- "Hunter Kraven." Animal trainer. From a place Peter's merged memory called Russia . Adrian Toomes- the Vulture. A gaunt man with a mouth full of fangs. Nationality: unknown. Dmitri Snergakov- the Chameleon. Half-brother to Kravinov, born in Russia, with an uncanny ability to replicate others' faces.
"The mob picked their crew from freak shows and circus troupes," the other Spider's voice, the Shadow, said inside his head, cool and clinical.
Peter felt his reasoning sharpen, like a lens finding focus.
"The Goblin's lieutenants are showmen," Peter said aloud, more to himself than anyone. "Not surprising they're weird. They've got tricks."
The pieces slid into place faster than he expected.
"The Jonah they found is fake. Someone's using disguises," Shadow concluded. "If they can make Jonah look like Jonah and then kill him, then capture the real Jonah... the Goblin's cleaning house."
"Why take Jonah?" Peter asked.
"You're Urich's partner," the merged memory pushed back. "Urich planned to use Jonah to publish the evidence. The Goblin learned. They captured Jonah and planted a Chameleon as a decoy, and killed the decoy to frame things... Felicia Hardy stole Urich's evidence in the chaos and fled. She said she saw 'Jonah' shoot Urich. That fits... the Chameleon could have pulled the trigger while disguised."
Peter's chest tightened. "So Urich was the target, Jonah the bait. They'll come after Felicia next… and Urich's closest associates."
There was only one related face that made his gut lurch.
"Me," he said. "They'll go after me... and Aunt May."
Even though these memories weren't all his, the connection to Aunt May... Aunt May in the other life felt real and painful. The warmth and safety he'd stolen from those ghosts tightened his throat. He couldn't sit still.
He moved like a man with adrenaline in his marrow. By the time he reached Parker's house, his heart was a jackhammer. He pounded on the door.
"Peter, are you home?" Aunt May called from the other side.
No answer. She opened the door. The place smelled faintly of laundry and lemon cleaner domestic and ordinary. She crossed the room toward the window, noting it was ajar.
A cool draft hit her face. She muttered, "This kid...how many times do I-?"
She never finished the sentence.
Something huge and black dropped down behind her. She turned, mid-step.
It was a man with a bald head and a cowl that made his shoulders look like wings. His grin was a maw of teeth. When he spoke, his voice rasped like something that ate glass.
"Peter?" Aunt May managed.
The creature's eyes slid over her like a scavenger appraising meat. "Hissss… old bones," he said with contempt. "Your husband was plumper and had More flavor…"
The words hit like ice. Aunt May's breath stopped. The implication! That the man who'd mangled Ben had been eaten by something like this. It tried to wedge through her skull and snap her in half.
From the doorway, another figure stepped into the light, robes like oil. He loomed, a silhouette of malice. He pinched Aunt May by the arm and lifted her with casual cruelty.
"Spider-Man," he hissed, "you got web? You move fast... how fast though? Fast enough to stop me? I could tear her neck right now, yo know-"
Peter let out a sound that was half scream, half animal. He had been a scared kid for most of his life. But the other pieces inside him, Sharpened instincts, hardened will, took control.
They moved faster than thought. From his windbreaker pocket he felt the cool weight of metal, a revolver, not something he'd ever carried before but now found in his hand like it belonged to him. Noir's memories, his habits, handed him the gun as simply as if he'd always owned it.
"I can," he said.
The shot was a bright, clean punctuation.
The barrel kicked against his palm, but Peter hardly felt it. The bullet punched straight between the Vulture's eyes. There was no theatrics and no long monologue, no slow-motion fall. The Vulture's body gave, crumpling like a puppet with its strings cut. Brain and bone couldn't survive that hit.
Aunt May collapsed to the floor, coughing, shaking. The man who'd held her still trembled where he'd fallen, eyes glassy.
Peter's hands shook as he lowered the gun. He had done something final. He had killed.
Somewhere in the shadow-meld of memories, a voice, older, world-weary, whispered, Sometimes you have to do what's necessary.
Peter stood in the ruined quiet of his living room, the smell of gunpowder sharp in the air, and realized the truth he'd been running from... this world... these worlds, were not simple stories where good always won.
They were messy, dangerous, and cruel. And now that he'd seen what people were willing to do, he couldn't pretend ignorance anymore.
He'd saved Aunt May. He'd stopped one monster. But the net was closing, and the Goblin's hands reached farther than he'd thought.
He looked down at the gun in his palm, then out the window at the city that had given him everything and taken so much. The web in his head thrummed, quiet now but not gone.
Whatever this Shadow was, whatever other Spider-Men existed on other threads, one thing was real, Peter Parker could not go back to being just a kid.
Not after tonight.