What’s going on with me?
Something weird is happening.
Why are all my thoughts so loud?!
“Are you okay?”
Miles turned to see the new girl, the one he had talked to the other day in physics class before he got in trouble.
“Huh?” Miles asked, out of it.
“Why are you so sweaty?” she asked.
Miles thought for a second, and realized that she was absolutely right—he was sweating profusely. His mind was racing, wondering if this was a side effect of that weird spider bite, and what that might mean.
Am I dying?
“It’s a, uh, a puberty thing,” Miles said, trying to sound like he knew what he was talking about. “I don’t know why I said that. I’m not going through puberty. I mean, I am, but—”
He saw the new girl just looking at him like he had five heads.
Change tack, Miles.
“So, you’re, like, new here, right? We got that in common,” Miles said, trying to sound cool.
“Yeah,” the girl said, agreeing with Miles, but not really. “That’s one thing.”
“Cool, yeah. I’m Miles.”
“I’m G—Waaaaanda,” the girl said.
“Wait, your name is Gwanda?” Miles said, genuinely interested.
Gwanda nodded. “Yes, it’s African. I’m South African. No accent, though, ’cause I was raised here.”
While they talked, Miles thought that maybe it was time to try the shoulder-touch thing that his uncle had told him about. But what if it backfired? What if she thought he was a creep?
Why is this so scary?
He took a sudden, sharp breath, and touched Gwanda’s shoulder, just a little.
“I’m kidding,” she said. “My name is Wanda. No G. That’s crazy.”
“Hey,” Miles said, white-knuckling the moment.
“Okay then, I’ll see you around,” Wanda said.
“Oh, see you!” Miles said.
Wanda turned to leave, but Miles found that he couldn’t let go of her shoulder.
Literally.
His fingers were stuck to her shoulder as if they had been glued in place. He tugged, but nothing happened.
“Hey, um, can you let go, please?” Wanda said, struggling to break free. Miles tried to pull his hand away, but as Wanda squirmed, her hair got in the way, and suddenly, he was stuck to that, too. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow! Calm down!”
“I… can’t let go!” Miles said, pulling as hard as he could.
“Miles, let go!” Wanda said impatiently.
“I’m working on it!” Miles shot back. “It’s just puberty!”
“I don’t think you know what puberty is,” Wanda snapped. “Just relax.”
“Okay, I have a plan,” Miles said.
I do have a plan, right?
“Great,” Wanda said sarcastically.
“I’m going to pull really hard,” Miles said.
Wanda thought for a second. “That’s a terrible plan.”
“One… two…”
“Don’t do this,” Wanda warned. When it became clear Miles was going to go through with it, she shouted, “Three!” and to Miles’s shock, Wanda flipped him over with ease and slammed him onto his back with a loud thud.
He walked down the hallway, staring at his hair-covered hand. He couldn’t believe that they had to go to the nurse, and that she had to cut Wanda’s hair in order to get Miles’s hand off.
Everyone’s staring at me, Miles thought. I feel like such a freak.
He was lost in his thoughts and hardly noticed when a security guard rounded the corner.
“Hey!” the guard said, recognizing Miles. “I know you snuck out last night, Morales!”
Miles’s heart jumped, and he bolted as fast as his legs would take him.
“Come back here!” the security guard yelled, and gave chase.
Miles darted ahead and raced around a corner. He opened the first door he saw, entered, and slammed the door shut behind him.
I’m safe, I’m safe, I’m safe.…
Then he saw whose office it was. Photos of the security guard on the wall. And a big plaque on the desk that said MARK WITTELS, SECURITY GUARD.
I’m not safe, I’m not safe, I’m not safe.…
Instinctively, Miles pressed his hands against the door to hold it shut just in case—
“What are you doing in my office, Morales?!”
In case of that.
The security guard was already outside the door. There was nowhere to run.
That’s when Miles realized that his hands were positively glued to the door. He tried to pull them away, but it was just like with Wanda’s hair. He tugged—and nothing. So he yanked even harder, and his hands came away, along with the door’s plywood veneer.
He tried to wipe his hands on his shirt, knocking the veneer to the ground, but now his hands were stuck to his shirt. In a frenzy, Miles accidentally hoisted the shirt over his head, blocking his eyes. Panicked, he ran directly into a bookshelf and stuck to that, too, pulling it down in front of the door, blocking it.
“Morales!” the security guard bellowed. “Open up! Open up! Security!”
“Why is this happening?” Miles said out loud.
“Hey! Open up, right now!”
Not done stumbling, Miles tripped and hit the wall, sticking to it. His momentum threw him upward, and before he could do anything to stop it, Miles found himself rolling up the wall, around the ceiling, and toward the other walls!
“Stop sticking!” Miles said to himself. “Stop… sticking!”
Right on cue, Miles fell from the ceiling and onto a desk chair. Then the chair started to roll, sending Miles straight for an open window.
The chair smashed into the wall, and Miles was flung free. Instinctively, he kicked out right as he went through the window, and his feet caught the windowsill. They stuck. Now Miles was standing—horizontally—outside the building.
He heard the security guard hammering on the door, trying to enter the office.
Not knowing what else to do, he stuck to the wall again and started to roll to an adjacent window. A class was in session inside, and the students were so transfixed by the lesson that they didn’t notice the stunned face of Miles Morales staring at them, looking for help.
Unable to enter through the closed window, Miles started to roll again, taking himself on a solo tour around the exterior of the building itself. Only too late did he become aware of the flapping sound of the birds that flew right past him. Miles tried to shoo them away, but like everything else, now the birds had become affixed to his hands.
The birds started to peck at Miles’s eyes, flapping their wings in a bid to escape.
Shaking his hands as fast as he could, Miles somehow managed to unstick himself from the birds. He kept rolling around the building until he finally came to a window he recognized.
His room.
He rolled right through the window and landed on his floor with a loud thud. He saw a pile of books around him, including some of Ganke’s comics, the ones he had been reading the other night. One of them stood out in particular.
It was a Spider-Man comic, with a cover line that blared, The True Story of Spider-Man’s Origin!
In wonderment, Miles picked up the comic, his hands sticking to it, ripping the paper just a bit. As he flipped through the pages, he saw nearly the same events that had just happened to him. Except in the comic, it wasn’t Miles. It was a kid named Billy Barker. Everything was there. The spider bite. Pulling on the door, rolling out the window, hitting the floor.
“How can there be two Spider-Men?” Miles wondered. “There can’t be two Spider-Men!”
“Open up!”
Miles jerked his head toward the door to his dorm room. It was the security guard.
“Hey! Open up right now!”
A second later, the door opened, and the security guard poked his head inside.
Miles wasn’t there.
The guard scratched his head, muttered under his breath, then turned away and closed the door.
With a relieved Miles stuck smack to the back of it.
CHAPTER 7
“Come on, Uncle Aaron! Pick up! Pick up!”
Miles paced down the Brooklyn street as the sun set, desperate to get his uncle on the phone. Maybe he would know what to do.
That’s nuts, Miles thought. What am I gonna tell him? Hey, Uncle Aaron, you know how we were out tagging subway walls last night? Well, I got bit by a glowing spider, and now I have all sorts of crazy powers and I’m taller and I sweat a lot and also I stick to stuff like hair.…
“Yo, it’s Aaron,” came his uncle’s voice, and for a second, Miles was ready to unburden himself. Until his uncle kept talking: “I’m outta town for a few days. Hit you when I’m back. Peace.”
No, no, no, no, no…
Suddenly, Miles heard the screeching of tires on pavement. He looked up to see that he had wandered right into the middle of the street, and a car was barreling toward him. That was it. His number was up.
Except it wasn’t.
Because Miles vaulted over the car and landed some twenty feet away.
What the—?!
Some kids on the street saw what happened and broke into spontaneous applause.
Freaked out, Miles raced into the subway entrance just up ahead. He looked down at his phone and briefly thought about calling his parents. But talking to his uncle was one thing. Telling his mom what was going on? Or his dad?
I don’t think so.
He continued down the stairs and waited for the next train on the platform.
Miles got off the train and waited for the subway to leave the station. Then he leaped down onto the tracks and walked into the tunnel. After a while, he came to the fence that he and his uncle had jumped the previous night.
And tonight, he really jumped it. One jump and over. No climbing.
He came upon the mural that he and his uncle had been painting. Then he started his search in earnest.
Gotta be around here somewhere…
He combed the rubble on the ground, looking for any sign of it.
There it is!
The spider that had bitten Miles was on the ground, dead. Flipping it over, Miles saw that it was still glowing. Maybe not as bright as it had been last night, but glowing nonetheless.
“See?” Miles said aloud. “It’s a normal spider. So normal. It’s, like, boring how normal the spider is.…”
A low rumbling sound in the distance broke Miles’s train of thought, and he looked up. Beyond the mural, there was an entrance to a dark, abandoned subway tunnel. The rumble grew louder, and Miles felt the vibrations in his feet.
And he felt something else.
It was like a burning… no, it was more like a buzzing sensation at the base of his skull. Like someone was taking an electric razor and pushing down on his neck in one spot.
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any weirder…
Miles took a step toward the abandoned tunnel, and he felt the strange tingling at the back of his neck intensify.
“Please tell me there’s a way to turn this off,” he said softly, hoping someone, somewhere was listening and could do something about it.
Pressing a button on his phone, Miles activated a flashlight app to throw some light on the situation. He entered the tunnel. It was practically silent except for the sound of his own breathing.
He was breathing hard.
This is scary.
As he walked ahead, he came across a shiny metallic surface that looked like a tube. Coming closer, Miles saw there was writing on it: ALCHEMAX
The rumbling continued, and there was now a humming sound added to the mix.
The feeling at the back of his neck grew stronger. So Miles kept going.
He started to run, noticing that the farther he went, the more intense the sensation at the base of his skull became. He turned a corner, and the sensation flared to the point where Miles was sure he was going to jump out of his skin.
Jump!
Almost reflexively, Miles did jump and narrowly missed getting wrecked by a subway car that was hurtling out of the darkness through the air.
Miles landed safely on the ground just as the car smashed into the wall.
Oh man, oh man, oh man…
Miles whipped his head around to follow the car’s trajectory and saw a hole in the wall beyond. Peering in, he couldn’t believe his eyes.
CHAPTER 8
“Norm! Norm. Look at me. You’re a scientist—you know how dangerous this experiment is?”
That’s… that’s Spider-Man! Miles thought. The real Spider-Man!
And it was. As he looked through the hole in the wall, Miles saw him, jumping and flipping around a room full of scientific equipment. But he wasn’t jumping and flipping around just to get a workout. He was avoiding something.
Someone.
“Why aren’t you helping me stop it?” Spider-Man said.
“It’s not up to me,” came a dark, threatening voice.
Miles turned and saw a twenty-five-foot-tall beastly- looking creature. It was definitely more monster than person. It had wings, and a long, gross blue tongue.
It was the Green Goblin.
Miles had seen videos on YouTube of him fighting Spider-Man before but never thought he’d see a battle like this up close.
“To whom is it up?” Spider-Man asked.
“I think I’m gonna go,” Miles said quietly.
“Why, why don’t you quit?!” said the Goblin, unfurling his wings.
“I could ask you the same thing. You know, I guess I like Brooklyn not being sucked into a black hole. Staten Island, maybe. Not Brooklyn!” Spider-Man quipped. “For a man with such large ears, you’re a horrible listener, Norm!”
I can’t believe this is happening.…
The Goblin threw a handful of something at Spider-Man, and the somethings exploded, knocking Spider-Man to the ground. One of the bombs rolled, unexploded, over to Miles.
“Oh, come on!” Miles cursed as he rolled away, narrowly avoiding the coming explosion. Unfortunately, he was now out in the open, an unwilling participant in a battle between Super Hero and Super Villain. Every time someone threw a piece of equipment, it jostled the ground, knocking Miles about. He tried to take cover behind some debris, but the Goblin’s wings brushed it aside. Miles slid noiselessly down the floor and scrambled to gain his footing.
This is way too real.
Miles took note of his surroundings and saw that he was inside a massive chamber that contained a huge piece of equipment with tubes leading into it. He seemed to be on a platform elevated about midway through the room.
Then he heard a computerized voice say, Initializing secondary ignition sequence.
I like the other room better, Miles thought.
What happened next was all a blur to Miles. He saw Spider-Man and the Goblin up above him, fighting on another elevated platform. The ground rumbled. Miles slipped from his platform and fell.
Then he stopped falling.
Because Spider-Man caught him.
He swung with Miles, and they landed on a deck high above all the equipment below.
“Did you know your shoes are untied?” Spider-Man said.
Miles was speechless. He could barely say, “Uh-huh.”
“This is a onesie,” Spider-Man continued, “so I don’t really have to worry about that.”
Then Miles felt that weird buzzing at the base of his skull again.
Spider-Man looked at him, then cocked his head. Like he was recognizing something.
Someone.
“I thought I was the only one,” Spider-Man said. “You’re like me.”
How does he know?
“I don’t want to be,” Miles said.
“I don’t think you have a choice, kiddo. Got a lot going through your head, I’m sure.”
“Yeah” was all a stunned Miles could manage.
>
Spider-Man motioned for Miles to sit tight. “You’re gonna be fine. I can help you. If you stick around, I can show you the ropes,” he said, trying to reassure Miles. Then Spidey turned away to face the ledge. “I just need to destroy this big machine real quick before the space-time continuum collapses. Don’t move. See you in a bit!”
Jumping off the platform, Spider-Man executed a swing-flip, and suddenly he was hanging upside down from the ceiling.
He scampered across the ceiling to a panel. He tore it open, and Miles saw a slew of complicated-looking multicolored wiring. Then Spidey pulled something from his suit. Miles couldn’t see exactly what it was, but the wall- crawler plugged it into a port hanging from the panel.
What’s he doing?
“All right, folks,” Spider-Man yelled, “the party’s over!”
“The party, Spider-Man, is just beginning,” a deep voice said, resonating throughout the chamber. “And I don’t recall inviting you.”
A man stepped out of the shadows. But he wasn’t just a man. He was a huge man. Massive. Built like a wall.
Miles knew who he was. Wilson Fisk. Fisk Industries.
“The party metaphor was a bad idea,” Spider-Man said, looking up. “Oh boy.”
Miles could do nothing as the scene unfolded. In a flash, a blur of purple moved before his eyes, striking Spider-Man. It was a man wearing a mask, with clawed gloves and heavy boots.
“Prowler, man, I was in the middle of something!” Spider-Man said in a daze. It was clear that the Prowler’s blows had him shaken. “I am so tired.…”
The Prowler jumped right for Spider-Man, but the web-slinger recovered enough to dodge the claws and evade the kicks.
Until he couldn’t, and the Prowler connected with a roundhouse kick, sending Spider-Man into the wall of the giant machinery below.
“Are you mad at me?” Spider-Man asked. “I feel like you’re mad at me.”
Dumbfounded, Miles could only watch. Not knowing what else to do, he grabbed his cell phone and snapped a picture of the web-slinger in action.
“Is that all you got?” Spider-Man asked, catching his breath.
Miles peered down and saw the Goblin land on Spider-Man, pinning the hero to the ground.
“Ugh, so gross,” Spider-Man groaned, jerking his head away from the Goblin’s slimy tongue.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: The Junior Novel Page 3
