PTR Arachnid 24601

Ch 35 - There's an old sheriff no longer in town

WARNINGS: some mild swearing (I use more bad words in this chapter but not much), some blood/injury, character death (not major character, dw)

3rd POV

The break flew by faster than expected and Peter managed to get his life more in order.

Though he was still wary of the glances he got from Steve, Tony, Bucky, Bruce, and now Natasha and Dorothy. They'd quickly figured out that something is wrong with Peter and even though they never discussed it aloud, he knew they had mutual knowledge of whatever was happening.

Especially Dorothy, as she was a former psychologist and was probably analyzing the hell out of him whenever something was slightly off.

(He caught glimpses of the way she looked at him, eyes curious and calculating, but not cold. Moments where she thought he wouldn't notice).

(He did).

(He always did).

He simply shrugged their gazes off and kept his eyes forward, continuing to do whatever he was doing. 

The two voices in his head, especially the HYDRA one, still didn't want him to talk to anyone. The HYDRA one was already pissed enough that he told Bucky (the backlash gave him headaches). He wouldn't risk telling someone else.

It's fine, he told himself through the pounding headaches, confusion from gaps in his memory, and harshness of the HYDRA voice.

I'm fine.

Peter's Spidey Sense had been pounding in his head for the past week. It had slowly began to build up but was now just a continuous sledgehammer of pain in the nape of his neck.

Something big was going to happen. Something terrible. But he didn't know when or what.

Right now, Parker was patrolling the streets of Manhattan. He decided not to go as far as Queens today because his spider was telling him to Stay close to home. Stay. Stay. Stay.

He strolled aimlessly through some less busy parts of town, feeling too tired and too cold to swing around high up with the skyscrapers. (Besides, he had a few injuries from a bad encounter with some armed robbers and his joints felt too sore to do anything physical. Call him lazy, he doesn't care). It was a crisp, barely below freezing night and a fresh couple centimeters of snow had fallen earlier that day.

Approaching a quiet intersection in a dead street, Peter heard a gurgling noise. It sounded like water rushing and splashing against stone.

He was suddenly reminded of his fight with the Lizard in the sewers. How the rushing water had deafened his ears and rendered him nearly unable to discern whether or not the mutant was nearing. How the water swallowed him up, filling his lungs until they burned, and spat him out at a disgusting sewage plant. How slippery things were and how powerless he felt when he couldn't stick to things like he wanted to.

Peter shuddered, not just from the cold, and stopped in his tracks.

The sewers!

That's it! That's where Dr. Connors will be if he's planning anything, right? He can't do anything in Oscorp, otherwise he'll be found out. But he can do what he wants in the sewers!

Spider-Man rushed over to the nearest grate, beaming and internally congratulating himself on coming to this realization. He slipped down into the god-awful underground, shivering violently every few seconds, and hurried through the tunnels.

The teen desperately ran around trying to find something–– anything that could point him in the right direction.

He was about to kick the wall in frustration when he saw a little green lizard skittering down a tunnel. The same kind of lizard that was there before Connors attacked him.