Mara Lee is just your regular teenage girl living a double life as New York's friendly neighborhood Spider-Woman. Until one fateful day when she's thrown through a strange orange portal and everything she's ever known changes drastically. Trapped in...
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Darkness has a reputation for being a bad thing.
For being cold and unforgiving. For being all consuming.
But darkness can also be a very good thing. It can be comforting. It can help you to quiet your endless stream of painful thoughts. It can help you to embrace the numbness. To sit, unfeeling, unmoving, a part of the shadows.
If only it lasted for longer.
"Her signature isn't being properly processed through the system. We can't find out where she landed."
"To hell with her signature! I told you to deploy spiders into all possible universes weeks ago! The fabric of reality is dependent on it!"
"I'm aware! Believe me, I'm trying! It's not as easy as you think!"
The voices were loud, and each word sent jarring swirls of violent color swimming before my vision. I couldn't make out where they were coming from. It felt like the edge of my consciousness was being teased with the haziness of dreams. Nothing quite made sense. I couldn't discern up or down. I couldn't even feel my body. I was just floating in a murky, inky well of broken thoughts.
"She'll turn up."
"How can you be sure of that? She's been missing for months!"
"Ma'am, we're trying our best. There are no leads at the moment. There's no clues as to where she may have gone. If you could just tell us if there would be any place she might go to clear her mind–"
"Mara wouldn't!"
I floated further, feeling an odd sense of duality come over me, fragmenting my mind before reassembling as a two-toned piece. Like a double-edged sword.
Something cool was placed on my forehead. I itched to move it off, but it felt external... it wasn't here with me in this in between. It was outside.
Outside...
I needed to go back.
But to what? What was I missing?
"Spider-Freak."
Familiarity doused me like an icy bucket of water.
"Spider-Freak. You've gotta wake up. It's almost time for the next challenge, idiot."
The rush of memories hit me full blast–
–I jolted up. Bakugo stared at me, red eyes wide with surprise.
"Finally," he said gruffly, turning away.
I was in UA's medical ward. Bakugo and I were alone. He sat in a chair beside my bed. The reality of my earlier failure sank in. I let my head flop back against the pillow.
