Hunter of Marvel - Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Gwen Stacy

The yellow plastic of the ballpoint pen refused to obey the laws of gravity.

Gwen Stacy sat perfectly still at her desk in the middle of AP Biology, her breathing shallow and deliberate. Her hand rested flat on the black laminate surface, palm up. The pen was stuck to the pad of her index finger. It wasn’t balanced. It was defying physics. If she tilted her hand vertically, the pen remained firmly attached, hanging suspended in the air.

She stared at the microscopic ridge where her skin met the plastic. She could feel a strange, static-like tension there, a localized molecular adhesion that she could turn on and off with a mere thought. With a sharp, mental ‘snap’, she released the hold. The pen clattered onto the desk.

Mr. Harrington continued to drone on about cellular mitosis at the front of the classroom, oblivious to the fact that one of his best students was currently experiencing a complete physiological mutation.

Gwen rubbed her temples, trying to filter out the overwhelming sensory data flooding her brain. It had been happening for the last few days, a terrifying cascade of biological changes that defied every textbook she had ever read.

The first thing she had noticed was the fat. It was just gone. She had always been relatively slim, but the soft, natural curves of a normal teenager had been incinerated overnight. In their place, her body had woven dense, hyper-efficient muscle fibers. Standing in front of her bathroom mirror two days ago, she had stared in absolute shock at the carved definition of her abdomen and the sleek, powerful lines of her shoulders. She possessed the physique of a professional fitness model, or an Olympic gymnast, achieved without a single hour in a gym.

Then came the eyes. She had reached for her contacts in the morning, only to realize the world was already in agonizingly sharp focus. She could read the tiny, faded print on a billboard three blocks away. She could hear the rhythmic ticking of a wristwatch on a student sitting four rows behind her.

And then there was the strength.

A cold shiver ran down Gwen’s spine as she remembered the incident in her driveway yesterday morning. Her father, Captain George Stacy, had dropped his spare set of squad car keys, and they had slid perfectly beneath the rear tire of his two-ton Ford Crown Victoria cruiser. Without thinking, Gwen had crouched down, wedged her fingers under the heavy steel bumper, and lifted.

She had intended to just jiggle the car. Instead, the entire rear axle had hoisted a feet off the concrete, the heavy shocks groaning as the tires dangled in the air. She had held it there, one-handed, with the ease of picking up a heavy grocery bag. She had kicked the keys out, dropped the car with a violent ‘slam’ that had nearly blown the tires, and sprinted inside before her father had walked out of the house.

She squeezed her eyes shut. ‘I am a freak. A terrifying, biological freak.’

She knew exactly when it had happened. Oscorp Industries. Dr. Curt Connors’ laboratory.

Peter Parker, her oldest and sweetest childhood friend, had practically begged her to come see the lab. Peter was brilliant, operating as Dr. Connors’ lead intern on a revolutionary cross-species genetics project. They were trying to isolate and weaponize the regenerative properties of reptilian DNA—specifically lizards—to cure human amputations and cellular decay.

She had been fascinated. She had leaned over a glass terrarium, marveling at the genetically modified arachnids they were using as synthesizing hosts. And then, a sharp, searing pinch on the back of her neck. A spider, glowing with an unnatural, bioluminescent blue hue, had bitten her.

She had gone home, collapsed into a violent, feverish sweat, and woken up as something entirely different.

She desperately wanted to tell Peter. She wanted to march into Dr. Connors’ lab, demand a blood test, and approach this scientifically. But every time she picked up her phone, a paralyzing dread seized her chest.

She was smart enough to know how the world worked. She had seen enough late-night science fiction movies, but more importantly, she understood the ruthless pragmatism of corporate science. Oscorp wasn’t a charity. If they discovered that a girl possessed the proportional strength and adhesion of a genetically engineered spider, she wouldn’t be treated as a patient. She would be classified as property. They would lock her in a subterranean, sterile white room. They would strap her to a steel table, draw her blood by the gallon, and vivisect her to replicate the anomaly.

Fear, cold and rational, kept her silent.

Instead, she spent every waking moment of the last few days desperately trying to mask her existence. She focused on controlling the sticky micro-hairs that periodically erupted from her fingertips, pulling her sleeves down, and intentionally scoring lower on physical education tests so she didn’t accidentally throw a dodgeball straight through a cinderblock wall.

But hiding her own powers was only half the problem. The other half was the alarm bell currently ringing inside her skull.

The bell rang, signaling the end of the period. Gwen gathered her books, her movements precise and careful. She stepped out into the crowded hallway, instantly assaulted by the cacophony of slamming lockers, shouting teenagers, and the heavy scent of cheap cologne and anxiety.

She navigated the sea of students with newfound agility, her body instinctively weaving through gaps in the crowd without her conscious input. And then, she felt it.

It was a sensation she had only developed since the bite. A sharp, electric buzzing at the base of her skull. It wasn’t a sound; it was a pure, physiological spike of adrenaline, a primal warning system screaming at her that a predator was nearby. The hair on her arms stood straight up. Her heart rate tripled.

Gwen stopped dead in her tracks, clutching her biology textbook to her chest. She forced herself to breathe, scanning the hallway with her enhanced vision.

There.

Ten feet away, walking toward the cafeteria doors, was Veer Pratap Singh.

He was wearing his usual oversized, faded green hoodie, his shoulders hunched. To the rest of the school, he was the ultimate victim—the scholarship kid from India who had been brutally beaten into submission by Flash Thompson over a text message to Mary Jane Watson. The entire student body ignored him or pitied him.

But Gwen’s brain was screaming in absolute, unadulterated terror.

‘Danger. Lethal. Run.’

It wasn’t romance. It wasn’t the fluttering butterflies of a high school crush. It was the genetic instinct of a prey animal locking eyes with a tiger hidden in the tall grass.

Gwen pressed her back against a row of metal lockers, her breath catching as Veer walked past her. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t look at anyone. His dark eyes were flat, devoid of emotion, staring straight ahead. But as he passed, the static buzzing in Gwen’s head became so loud she almost clamped her hands over her ears.

‘How?’ she thought, her analytical mind violently clashing with her instincts. ‘How is he dangerous? He’s the punching bag of the junior class.’

The terrifying contradiction had gnawed at her for days. Gwen couldn’t let a puzzle go unsolved, especially one that triggered her newfound survival instincts. If her body was telling her that Veer Pratap Singh was a lethal threat, she needed empirical evidence. She needed to know why.

So, she had started investigating.

What she found terrified her even more.

She had followed him. From a distance, using her enhanced eyesight, she had mapped his routine. He didn’t sleep like a normal teenager. He woke up at an ungodly hour and walked to an abandoned handball court in Queens Park. From the branches of a nearby oak tree, Gwen had watched him.

He wasn’t a weak, limping nerd. Underneath that baggy hoodie, Veer was a machine. She had watched him perform physical feats that defied human endurance—hundreds upon hundreds of explosive plyometrics, moving with a speed and ferocity that blurred the air. He trained like a bull on steroids, pushing his body to the absolute brink of failure, only to suddenly stand up perfectly refreshed a moment later and begin again.

She had seen the musculature he hid beneath his clothes. The broad, dense width of his back. But the absolute confirmation had come two days ago. An old, rusted sedan had been parked illegally, blocking the exit to an alleyway Veer was walking down. Gwen had watched from a rooftop as Veer, without breaking his stride, had simply placed his hands beneath the car’s rear bumper, lifted the two-ton vehicle effortlessly, and shoved it sideways onto the curb to clear his path.

He was like her.

He had powers.

So she started to collect evidence.

The school day finally ended, the harsh afternoon sun beating down on the concrete steps of Midtown High. Gwen waited by the front gates, adjusting the strap of her backpack. She watched Veer exit the building, perfectly maintaining his pathetic, injured shuffle. Mark, his painfully awkward roommate, was walking beside him, talking animatedly about something.

Gwen hung back, giving them a two-block lead.

Tracking them was almost insultingly easy. Her senses picked out the heavy, rhythmic thud of Veer’s fake limp and the nervous, rapid heartbeat of his roommate. She followed them through the winding, bustling streets of Queens, keeping to the shadows of the fire escapes and the blind spots of the crowds.

They eventually arrived at a rundown, brick apartment complex. Veer and Mark went inside.

Gwen didn’t take the stairs.

She slipped into the narrow, garbage-strewn alleyway running parallel to the building. She looked up at the third-floor window she knew belonged to Veer’s bedroom. She took a deep breath, the cold New York air filling her lungs. She reached out, placing her bare hands flat against the rough, red brick.

The micro-hairs on her skin engaged. She pulled herself up.

It was exhilarating and terrifying all at once. She crawled up the sheer vertical face of the building with the silent, creeping grace of an arachnid, her sneakers and palms sticking perfectly to the masonry. She reached the third floor and shifted her weight, anchoring herself sideways beneath the ledge of the window.

She slowly raised her head, peering over the chipped paint of the windowsill.

Inside, the room was small and sparsely furnished. A mattress, a desk, and a wardrobe. Veer was standing in the center of the room. He had dropped the oversized hoodie, wearing only a fitted black t-shirt that clung tightly to the heavy, carved muscles of his chest and arms. He didn’t look injured. He looked like a soldier preparing for a drop.

Gwen watched, her heart hammering against her ribs, as Veer closed his eyes and planted his feet shoulder-width apart. He raised his hands slightly, taking a deep, slow breath.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Gwen frowned, her enhanced eyes scanning the room. ‘What is he doing? Yoga?’

And then, reality warped.

Gwen couldn’t see the massive, violent projection of aura that Veer called ‘Ren’. She lacked the Nen nodes to perceive life-force. But she could absolutely see the physical consequences of it.

The air inside the room violently exploded outward.

A localized, concentrated hurricane erupted from Veer’s body. The sheer atmospheric pressure displaced the oxygen in the room with a concussive ‘whoosh’. The curtains on the window snapped violently against the glass, making Gwen flinch back. Papers on his desk flew into the air, swirling in a chaotic vortex. The posters on his wall tore at the corners, flapping wildly against the plaster.

Gwen’s jaw dropped. She clung to the brick wall, staring in absolute shock.

Veer stood in the dead center of the tempest, completely immovable, his eyes shut tight in deep concentration. The wind whipped around him in a ferocious, howling gale, rattling the window frame so hard Gwen thought the glass might shatter.

‘He’s controlling the wind,’ she thought, her mind racing to categorize the impossible. ‘Atmospheric manipulation. Telekinesis. He’s generating a localized pressure front.’

Her hands were shaking. Not from fear, but from a sudden, overwhelming surge of validation.

She wasn’t alone.

She wasn’t the only freak hiding in the halls of Midtown High. This boy, this quiet, supposedly broken kid, was harboring a secret just as massive and destructive as hers.

Moving carefully against the vibrating wall, Gwen reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out her smartphone. She unlocked it, her sticky fingers clumsy against the glass screen, and opened the camera app. She hit record, angling the lens through the window to capture the swirling papers, the violent thrashing of the curtains, and the immovable, statuesque figure of Veer standing at the epicenter of the storm.

Minutes bled by. Gwen’s muscles burned from clinging to the wall, but she refused to move.

She recorded him for ten minutes. Then twenty. Then thirty.

The sheer stamina required to maintain that level of supernatural output was unfathomable. Gwen knew her own strength was immense, but maintaining an active, violent exertion of power like this for so long was beyond anything she could comprehend.

Forty-five minutes later, the storm abruptly died.

The papers fluttered to the floor like dead leaves. The curtains slumped against the window.

In the center of the room, Veer collapsed. He dropped to his hands and knees, his chest heaving violently as he gasped for air, his black shirt soaked in sweat. He looked completely and utterly drained, hovering on the absolute brink of unconsciousness.

Gwen stopped recording. She lowered her phone, her mind spinning with a thousand different calculations.

She had the proof. She had indisputable, digital evidence of the impossible. Veer Pratap Singh possessed superpowers. He was a superhuman, hiding right under everyone’s noses, perfectly content to let Flash Thompson and the rest of the school think he was garbage.

A sharp, confident smile touched the corners of Gwen’s mouth. The crushing, suffocating loneliness that had plagued her since the spider bite lifted, replaced by a burning, scientific curiosity.

She pushed off the brick wall and descended into the alley with rapid, graceful movements, hitting the pavement without making a single sound.

The walk back to her own house in Forest Hills was a blur. The buzzing in her skull had quieted, replaced by the humming processors of her own intellect. She knew how she was going to handle this. She wasn’t going to go to Oscorp. She wasn’t going to tell Peter.

She walked through the front door of her house, bypassing the kitchen where her mother was cooking dinner, and went straight up the stairs to her bedroom. She locked the door behind her.

Gwen sat down at her desk, flipping open her sleek, silver laptop. She connected her phone via a USB cable, her fingers flying across the trackpad. She opened a secure, encrypted folder she had created specifically for her own biological anomalies, and transferred the forty-five-minute video file of the indoor hurricane.

She opened the video, maximizing it on the screen. The footage was incredibly clear, highlighting the impossible wind, the floating debris, and Veer’s unnatural concentration.

She watched it once, her blue eyes reflecting the chaotic motion on the screen.

She unplugged her phone, a determined, fierce light settling into her eyes. Tomorrow at school, she wasn’t going to hide anymore. From all these collected proofs, she was ready to confront Veer.