Spider-Man's Arc

Chapter 6 of 10

The tunnel opened into a wide chamber. The dogs' wands lit the walls, and Spider-Man's spider-sense flooded back. But these spiders were wrong. They were bigger, pale, and slow, clinging to the deep rock in clusters. He reached for one with his mind. His bond touched it and slid off, like a hand off wet glass. He tried again. Nothing came. He held his full twenty-three, but not one of these new spiders answered. "They won't take," he said. "I pull, and they don't move." Gwen stepped up beside him, hood back on. She studied the pale cluster. "Different breed. Your bond's built for the small ones. These are strangers to it." She named the problem fast, the way she always did. It stung less this time. "You can't grab what you don't know." Heavy steps shook the floor. Hulk ducked through the tunnel mouth, green shoulders scraping stone. He carried Miles Morales on one arm like a sack. Miles hopped down, quick and small in his black-and-red suit. He had brought the masked dog once, taught Spider-Man the trick with the barking. Now he crouched by the pale spiders and frowned. "They're not attacking," Miles said. "They're just waiting. You keep reaching from far off. Get close. Let one crawl on you first. Learn it before you pull." Hulk grunted and set his huge palm flat on the cold rock, steady, a wall at their backs. "Hulk keep the dark out. You do the spider thing." Spider-Man walked to the nearest cluster. He held his hand against the stone, still, and waited. A pale spider tested his glove with one leg. He did not pull. He let it climb onto his wrist. It was heavier than the others, its steps slow and sure. He felt its mind, foreign and cold, nothing like the quick small ones on his arm. He learned the shape of it. Then, gentle, he pushed his bond into that shape instead of forcing his own. The bond caught. The pale spider settled into his mind. Twenty-four. His skull throbbed. He held it, then reached for a second of its kind, shaping the pull to match. It took. Twenty-five. Sweat ran under his mask. He stopped there, shaking, before the strain tore the whole bond apart. "You did it," Miles said. "You bent your bond to fit them." Gwen looked past him, deeper into the chamber. The pale spiders covered the walls in the hundreds, far more than the small ones behind. "You can hold their kind now," she said. "But there's a whole nest of them. And each one costs you more than three small ones." Spider-Man wiped his mask. His two pale spiders sat on his wrist, huge and calm. He had cracked the strangers. But his bond ached at twenty-five, and the chamber held a swarm his cap could never reach. He had learned the lock. Now he needed a bond wide enough to swallow the whole nest.