desiderium | m. o'hara

five

The rain grows heavier. I step closer to Miguel, head turned to him. He avoids my gaze as he recounts his past, eyes trained on the sidewalk full of walking shoes before us.

"Three years ago, I was the lead scientist for Alchemax, spearheading a program to replicate the powers of the original Spider-Man," Miguel begins. "But it went wrong when a human test subject died after being injected with the serum."

My eyes widen. Questions pop up on my tongue but I force them back, not wanting to interrupt him. Miguel notices and gives a half-smile.

"I didn't want to go through with it. It was too early, the serum too unstable, but Tyler Stone's the hardest of hardasses." Miguel shoves his hands back into his pockets and frowns deeply. "He brought in a criminal with three life sentences. Mr. Sims." Miguel smiles ruefully to himself. "I don't even know what his first name was. Isn't that awful?"

I watch a leaf float down the street's gutter. "Why didn't you just walk out?"

"I wanted to," he answers. "God, I wanted to. But if I left, then Sims wouldn't have had a chance - not with people like Aaron and Tyler. If I was there, he'd at least have a shot." He glumly shrugs a shoulder. "Hoped he did, anyway."

"What happened?" I carefully prompt.

Miguel lifts his chin and stares at the clouds. Rain drops splatter onto his face. "When we opened that pod, it wasn't a man that came out. It was a monster. He attacked me. He didn't even last thirty seconds." He closes his eyes. "He died."

I turn my head away. My Miguel worked for Tyler Stone, too. Is he just as awful as this Miguel's boss? Did he force Mig to battle his morals, experiment on people before they were ready? The more I learn, the more I realise just how much he kept from me.

"And then?" I whisper.

"And then I quit," Miguel says. "Or I tried to. Tyler's a son of a bitch on his best days." At my questioning look, he elaborates. "He slipped rapture into my drink."

My blood runs cold. Rapture - I know rapture. Everyone in Nueva York knows what rapture is. A hallucinative drug that's fatal if you try to quit. If you fight it, it makes you see things. Bad things.

"But that didn't happen to my Miguel," I murmur, but now I'm suddenly unsure and frightened by how much I don't know. I look up at him. "Did it?"

"It did."

My breath shutters. "How didn't I notice?"

"Remember when he left suddenly on a work trip?" Miguel asks. "He didn't even have time to say goodbye to you or Rosa in person."

I think back to three years ago. Rosa would've been only nine, I was still only an assistant at the Daily Bugle. I remember it - getting the weird phone call, and the two weeks he was absent thereafter.

"Yeah," I murmur.

"He did exactly what I did," Miguel continues. His expression tightens, folds into grief. "Except I- I told my Y/n what I was doing. If I knew- if I knew what would happen, I'd... I'd do things differently."

"You wouldn't have told her," I say quietly.

"I wouldn't have told her," he echoes.

He suddenly stops walking. I reel backwards and look at him questioningly. He nods his head to the side and my eyes follow, finding us outside the cafe Mig and I used to frequent.

My gaze shoots back to Miguel. Again, I'm stunned by how much he knows. These parallel lives are really starting to turn me in circles.

He holds the door open for me and I squeeze past, sliding back my hood and appreciating the cozy warmth of the bakery immensely. Miguel follows after me. His size draws stares.