The first rule of vengeance, Aria quickly learned, was that it required darkness.
She wasn't mourning the hero of the headlines; she was mourning the stranger whose DNA matched hers, and she needed to do it on the ground where the lies died. Peter Parker had been buried with ceremony, pomp, and a tidal wave of public tears, but his actual resting place, tucked away in an old Queens cemetery, was quiet and shadowed by weeping cherry trees.
Aria stood on the wet grass, the ground soft beneath the worn soles of her sneakers. She wore her first complete stealth suit: a patchwork of reinforced Kevlar panels and tactical nylon, dyed charcoal black with crude crimson highlights along the seam lines. It was heavy, hot, and smelled faintly of burning plastics—a far cry from the sleek, high-tech armor her brother must have worn. It felt like a disguise designed by paranoia, not protection.
Her new senses were a curse here. The scent of damp earth was overwhelming, and she could hear the subtle, organic process of decomposition beneath the soil. Every rustle of the leaves felt like a gunshot. Her unstable powers, still humming beneath her skin like a faulty circuit, made her twitchy, dangerous, and desperate for control.
She found the simple stone marker. PETER B. PARKER. Below it, the city had placed a small, polished bronze plaque: THE HERO WHO GAVE EVERYTHING.
Aria knelt, tracing the name. There was no hidden code, no lock mechanism, no obvious sign of the thumb drive her mother's journal had promised. Peter, the genius, wouldn't hide something so vital in a public place, but he might hide a hint.
He would have trusted MJ. He would have known where to leave the key to the truth.
Her investigation was interrupted by the sudden, profound absence of sound. The low, distant thrum of traffic, the rustle of the wet leaves—it all vanished, replaced by a deep, unnatural silence. Her spider sense, raw and agonizing since the injection, didn't just tingle; it hammered a warning deep into her skull.
She spun, moving with a jerky, inhuman speed that still shocked her.
Perched atop a granite mausoleum twenty feet away was a silhouette against the moon-stained clouds. Black and red. But where Aria's suit was matte and rough, this one was fluid, high-contrast, and impossibly sleek.
Miles Morales. The new Spider-Man.
He dropped lightly to the grass, his landing silent, effortless. He was shorter than Peter had been, his movements younger, but the mantle weighed heavily on his shoulders. He didn't look like a vengeful specter; he looked like a tired kid trying to carry the world.
"You shouldn't be here," Miles said, his voice modulated, slightly digitized behind the mask. He wasn't yelling; he was warning.
Aria stood, her fists clenching, the cheap webbing material embedded in her gloves biting into her palms. "You don't recognize this place, hero?" she spat, the word laced with venom. "This is where they start sweeping the truth under the dirt."
Miles tilted his head, his white eye lenses narrowing slightly. He walked slowly toward Peter's grave, stopping a respectful distance away. "I know exactly what this place is. And I know you're not mourning. You're hunting." He turned his attention back to her. "The people you hurt at NovaGene last week? They weren't responsible for his death. They were just clean-up. You're attacking the symptoms, not the disease."
Aria felt her control snap. How did he know? Had NovaGene already alerted him? Was he protecting them?
"Get out of my way," she growled, her voice tight with suppressed rage. "This isn't your fight. This is mine."
"Peter's fight became my fight the day he put this suit on me," Miles countered, taking a defensive stance. "And Peter never started a war in a graveyard." His tone shifted, becoming softer, recognizing the grief beneath her rage. "Who are you? I can sense… something familiar. Stop before you do something permanent."
Familiar. He senses the blood. The idea that Miles, Peter's protégé, could sense the toxic, unstable power running through her veins only fueled her resentment. She was the dark mirror, the failed copy.
"I'm the consequence," Aria hissed. She didn't wait. Vengeance demanded action, not dialogue.
She launched herself forward.
Her attack was brutal, fueled by raw strength and the agonizing surge of the AP-002 serum. It wasn't the fluid grace of the original Spider-Man; it was a wrecking ball of pure kinetics. Miles sidestepped, surprised by the sheer ferocity and the lack of finesse.
Aria's first punch, driven by her unstable enhanced muscle density, struck the stone mausoleum behind where Miles had been standing. The heavy granite cracked, leaving a visible fissure that shocked both of them.
"Easy! Too much power!" Peter's voice screamed, a frantic whisper inside her skull, accompanied by a spike of blinding pain.
Aria ignored it, the pain now a welcome anchor to her rage. She fired her web-shooter, not to swing, but to blind Miles. The sticky, dark web hit his mask, obscuring his vision.
"What is that?" Miles grunted, ripping the unstable webbing away. He couldn't use his camouflage; he was too close to Peter's grave, too exposed. He relied on his reflexes and the bio-electricity that was his unique gift.
Miles tried to end the fight quickly, relying on tactical skill. He darted around her, his movements light and quick, attempting to disable her arms. He managed to land a clean blow—a non-lethal, focused strike to her ribs.
It hurt, but the blow only triggered a violent surge in Aria's power. Her internal struggle bled outward.
Her eyes began to glow. Faint, spider-web patterns of crimson light flared across the skin visible beneath her mask's edge. The air around her grew thick with the smell of ozone, the same scent that had filled her apartment during the transformation.
"You don't fight like him," Aria muttered, grabbing Miles's arm mid-punch. "You fight like a child."
She twisted, using her newly acquired strength to pin his arm behind his back, forcing him to his knees. Miles felt a chilling, inhuman strength in her grip, a violent commitment Peter had never possessed. He tried to unleash a venom blast, but she was too close, too connected to the same genetic source. The electricity fizzled, consumed by the unstable AP-002 inside her.
Panic started to set in for Miles. This wasn't a criminal; this was someone in genuine, agonizing pain, capable of tearing him apart.
Aria slammed his head against the cold, wet grass, her shadow covering him entirely. Miles struggled, trying to pull his arms free, the pressure on his wrist becoming unbearable. In the darkness, he saw her crimson eyes, burning with a light that wasn't hero, wasn't villain—it was pure, unfiltered trauma.
This is it. I'm going to kill Peter's legacy.
She raised her clenched fist, the reinforced knuckles gleaming. She could feel the delicate structure of his neck beneath her other hand. One simple, swift motion, and she would silence the only other voice of reason in this city. Vengeance would be absolute. The thought brought a sickening rush of relief.
Just as she brought her fist down, a sound erupted that wasn't the cemetery, wasn't the city, and wasn't her own rage.
It was Peter's voice, amplified to a deafening roar inside her skull. "STOP IT! DON'T YOU DARE! THIS ISN'T JUSTICE, ARIA! THIS IS WHAT KILLS US!"
The hallucination was so intense, so physically painful, that Aria gasped, clutching her head with a guttural cry. The voice wasn't just auditory; it was a flash of memory: Peter dying, Peter struggling, Peter's final, agonizing moment, all imposed violently over her own consciousness. The sheer trauma of the shared genetic experience forced her hand away from Miles.
Aria screamed, collapsing back onto the grave marker. The crimson light faded, leaving her trembling, hyperventilating, and suddenly drenched in cold sweat. The sheer intensity of the vision—the fear, the responsibility, the finality of Peter's sacrifice—had broken her focus.
Miles, gasping for air, scrambled away. He saw the shift. The venomous intent in her eyes had been replaced by a familiar, searing, agonizing pain. He recognized that look from Peter's darker days—the look of a person pushed beyond their breaking point, struggling with a power that demanded too much.
He stared at the black-and-red figure huddled over Peter's grave. Her cowl was torn, revealing the lower half of her face, tear-streaked and pale.
Miles didn't know what she was. A clone? A weapon? But he knew one thing: she was a Parker. She was connected to the same volatile web, and she was seconds away from destroying herself.
He didn't move to recapture her. He couldn't.
"Go," Miles choked out, his voice hoarse, touching his bruised arm. "I don't know who you are, or what they did to you, but go. Don't come back here. If I see you again, I stop you."
Aria didn't look back. She stumbled to her feet, her hands still trembling from the violent intervention. She was weak, dizzy, and profoundly shocked that she had nearly killed an innocent person driven by a ghost's rage.
She fired her web-shooter, aiming for the nearest water tower. The web caught, and she launched herself into the stormy night sky. Her swing was still jerky, unprofessional, and painfully earned, but she was moving away from the grave, away from the ghost, and away from the hero she had almost murdered.
Miles stood alone, rubbing the growing welt on his head, watching the dark figure disappear into the urban shadows. He walked back to the grave marker, resting his hand on the cracked granite where she had slammed her fist.
He pulled his phone and activated a secure line to a trusted, off-the-books contact.
"I need you to look up someone," Miles whispered into the comms. "Someone named Parker. Female, early twenties, unstable powers. And she has the same eyes."
He looked up at the NovaGene tower, now visible through a gap in the clouds. "I think NovaGene didn't just kill Peter. I think they made a monster to replace him."