Chapter 184: Two Spider-Men!?
The Garfield-verse Peter was running the math and not liking how it added up.
A stranger had appeared from nowhere, exhibited power that registered somewhere between significant and alarming on his spider-sense, had frozen him in place with what appeared to be magic, and had then fed his dying father-figure a bean that made him stand up like nothing had happened. All of this in about forty-five seconds.
He wasn't sure if he was grateful or terrified. The answer seemed to be both.
Ethan looked at him and, not for the first time, reflected that the Garfield version was genuinely the best-looking of the three. Even post-battle, covered in grime and dried blood, the man had a face that functioned as a statement. It was slightly annoying. Ethan filed this observation in a folder labeled not relevant to the mission and moved on.
He was about to release the hold on Peter when George spoke.
George Stacy, who had been lying on concrete twenty seconds ago waiting to die, was standing with the specific uprightness of a man who had been a cop for long enough that getting back on his feet was a reflex that bypassed conscious thought. He was holding his shotgun. It was pointed at Ethan.
"Thank you for the save," he said, in a voice that was professionally level. "I mean that. But you know things you shouldn't know, you showed up at a very specific time, and I've been doing this job long enough to know what that usually means." He held position. "Who are you? What do you want?"
"You're pointing a gun at the person who just kept you alive," Ethan observed.
"Yes," George said. "I am."
Ethan released the hold on Peter, who immediately crossed to George and checked him over with the urgency of someone who needed to see it with their own eyes.
Then he looked at Ethan.
"He's right. Who are you?"
Ethan considered how to handle this. Then he disassembled the shotgun with a gesture — magnetic field, slow and deliberate, the components separating cleanly and settling on the ground — and said: "My name is Ethan Cross. I'm from a parallel universe. Specifically, I'm not from this world."
Silence.
George looked at the shotgun. Looked at Ethan. The expression of a man who has just watched his weapon come apart without anyone touching it, processing this alongside the prior facts of the evening.
"You escaped from somewhere?" he said.
"No."
"Parallel universe," Peter said, slowly.
"Yes."
Peter was thinking. Ethan could see it — the specific quality of attention of someone who was genuinely smart working through something that contradicted his prior model. He wasn't laughing. He wasn't dismissing it. He was checking it against what he'd already witnessed and arriving at a place of uncomfortable openness.
A bean that cures fatal wounds. Immobilization without physical contact. Disassembly of a firearm from across the room. Descending from the sky without equipment.
Parallel universe tracks better than the alternatives, he thought.
"If there's a parallel universe," Peter said, quietly, "would there be — would there be a version of me there? Would he have—"
He didn't finish the sentence. Ethan understood what was in it. Parents. A family that wasn't taken from him.
"That's a conversation for later," Ethan said, not unkindly. "Right now we have a situation to—"
The web hit George's wrist from behind.
All three of them turned.
Someone was crouching on the parapet twenty feet away — same proportions, same silhouette, same general design language as the person standing next to Ethan, but different details. Different suit. Different web pattern. The held pose of someone who'd arrived mid-situation and made a fast read.
George looked at the webbing around his wrist. Looked at the figure on the parapet. Looked at Peter, who was standing right next to him.
"That's not you," he said.
"That's not me," Peter confirmed.
The figure on the parapet lowered into a cleaner crouch and studied the tableau — Ethan, George standing with a disassembled shotgun at his feet, and a Spider-Man who was clearly not from this neighborhood.
Tobey-Peter, who had spent enough time traveling with Ethan to have developed a rapid-assessment approach to new situations, released the web and dropped to the roof.
He pulled off his mask.
George Stacy looked at the face underneath it.
Then he looked at the other Peter Parker standing three feet to his left.
"Two Spider-Men," he said.
He said it with the flatness of a man who had reached his capacity for extraordinary things this evening and had decided to just state facts going forward.
The Garfield-verse Peter stared at his own face on someone else.
"Is that—" His voice came out quieter than he expected. "Is that another version of me?"
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