A Glitch in the System ⇝ ᴀᴛꜱᴠ

ᴛᴇɴ

[Spoilers ahead, sort of]

If it was tense for Miles before, then after witnessing what he just saw made it a whole lot harder to not start shaking from fear. His eyes wide staring at the empty space, the images playing over and over in his head like a broken record. M/n wasn't just a broken spider, he was a lost one.

Losing the one thing spider-man's purpose was; to protect others.

The watch on M/n's wrist glowed, flickering with code on the screen as the male lifted his arm to stare at the device.

"After Miguel and Peter came to save me right before I disappeared along with it, I had no choice but to adapt and live here." M/n's soft voice brought Miles back as they all intensively listened to his words.

The only thing Miles could bring himself to say was, "I'm so sorry." But it still brought a bit of a smile to M/n's face.

Many questions flowed in his mind, but nearly all of them came off as insensitive. Who was that villain? Where is he now? What caused the explosions? (How was M/n even supposed to know that?) The one that seemed the easiest to ask was a simple one.

"How..how are you still alive?" Even that felt like too much yet the gaze M/n gave to him eased his heart rate of a million beats per second.

"You'd think a man living in a highly developed technological dimension would be able to spare me a bit longer, wouldn't you? The watch had to be programmed to help keep my atoms at bay from not only being in another dimension, but since mine's gone it gets a little more technical."

He frowned. "But..wouldn't that mean?"

M/n nodded, walking forward a bit to stare off into the dark void. "It can't keep me here forever. My atoms can only be held together for so long in a dimension I don't belong in. Especially when my rightful one no longer exists."

Miguel looked between them before cutting in. "We don't know that for sure, so we can't be making assumptions-"

"Miguel, it's a basic scientific fact." M/n cut him off. "If the only string that's keeping me here snaps it's only logical what happened to my people and yours will happen to me."

"There are ways we can prevent that!" Miguel raised his voice slightly but M/n knew—they both knew deep down M/n's words were the truth.

"We both know no matter what advanced technology you put on me, at the end of the day it will happen and we have to accept that." The two glare at each other clearly becoming stressed by not only M/n's risk of glitching out, but now the possibility of Spot destroying all their universes.

Neither responded after that until Miles cut the silence with another question.

"Did...did you also lose people? Before it happened?" M/n turned to him with a surprised expression, observing Miles then crossed his arms.

"My story went the same way everyone else's' did. The good and bad happen so..yeah." It was quiet so M/n turned to him only to find him staring at him expectantly, so he started hesitating to go further

All of them had lost someone or a fair few, whether it be your uncle, aunt, mentor, parent, caregiver, whoever it was they had all struggled with it.

M/n however hadn't actually told any of them who he'd lost. Miguel knew of course, he's got eyes everywhere and M/n trusted him to see his vulnerable side. But never had he mentioned it to his other friends.

Quite frankly he didn't really want to talk about it now especially with the others around but seeing Miles, his pure brown eyes that seemed to know that the loss of his loved ones hit hard for him. M/n felt comfortable to say what happened in his, like a need to just tell him. The words were already flowing out of his mouth before he could think.

"My mum. She was one of the few I had left until.." waving his hand in clear obviousness. "But I had this friend who got caught up between me and the anomaly, and It killed her." Giving a hard stare towards Miles.

"The bad chapters of our lives all go the same way. Yet that guy took so much more from me that...that I never guessed would have happened."

"M/n you don't have to talk about it," Jess intercepted, taking a few steps forward to the man who shook his head, clenching his jaw.

"Miles needs to know what will happen so if Spot does the same thing, we can try to prevent that. I can't let you lose everything, Miles. Not after I did. "

Miles not only was distraught by the story of M/n, in the back of his mind he was starting to become worried. His universe was in danger because of Spot, people could die like M/n's, and that's not something he wanted, but how could he prevent that?

A sharp pain suddenly overtook his head making him groan. Flashes of Spot breaking in half and coming together, destroying his city with no remorse as his voice echoed in Miles' head. "I'm going to take everything from you. Like you took everything from me."

Images of his father seeing a child about to be crushed and running to try save them overtook his mind. Miles opened his eyes in a panic as his body shook slightly on the new information. Spot was messing in his head, showing him things he knew that would make him scared.

"My father...p-people in New York. Spot does it. He kills them." He informed shakily to the group that all watched him silently.

M/n intakes a sharp breath, brows furrowing in worry at what Miles just told them. It was an inevitable scenario for the boy, so if they wanted to protect him, the multiverse, they'd need to act fast sooner than later.

—

I might shorten the chapters so I can get them out quicker, hopefully that doesn't bother anyone but I'm continuing to ignore my assignments to write so don't worry ;) also if anything doesn't make sense (plot wise or grammatically) tell me so I can fix it straight away 🥲👍

Anyways how is everyone, what did y'all do today???? I personally went to classes, my laptop died so I couldn't do the work then went to the gym (I died) and ate subway. Productive day if I say so myself.

Thank you for reading everyone, hope you enjoyed <3