Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Spider doesn't know much about the others, because they aren't like him, they aren't perfect. Or at least that's what his coach, Amanda, says when he insists too much.

"Why can they play?" Spider asks cautiously, shifting his feet to distract himself from his nervousness.

She looks at him with a frown, crossing her arms. "You're not like them, 003," Amanda says, as she looks at the children playing before returning her gaze to him. "You're perfect, our greatest invention, much better than they'll ever be."

At that, he shrugs; he doesn't want to be better than the others. But he won't say it; that will probably only anger Amanda.

He nods silently, extending his hand toward the woman.

She takes the shot delicately; her nails are long and scratch over it, sending a shiver through it.

Maybe he could relax a little under her touch, but he can't, because she's hitting him with a hammer. It doesn't hurt, not like the last time, but he still flinches.

The hammer bends, leaving Amanda with a satisfied look. "I notice that Experiment 003 still feels the blow, but his body is more resilient and stronger. If we apply a few more tests, he shouldn't feel even the slightest blow from this hammer at all."

The woman takes notes, without taking her eyes off her notes.

Spider shrugs. For a long time, all he's felt is the slightest impact of the blows, but there's no pain. Not after being injected with too many vaccines.

"You're better, that's why we do this," Amanda always explains, every time Spider is close to tears. "Or would you rather be as worthless as they are?"

And like many of those times, Spider remembers the stench of blood from the other experiments that weren't as perfect as his.

He doesn't want to end up a pathetic, imperfect bloodstain. So every time, he swallows back his tears and puts on a serious, firm expression.

Because it's Hydra's best project.

Dismantling Hydra should be a piece of cake, but it turns out to be a goddamn nightmare.

They take down one base, and before they can even celebrate, another one pops up. And another. And another. It's like cutting off the head of a snake only to watch it grow two more. Tony starts to wonder how many more goddamn lairs these guys have, because this seems to go on forever.

He sighs, shaking his head as he brushes aside a piece of charred debris.

"Hey, Cap, how's it going there?" he asks, with a hint of annoyance over the communicator.

"I found a few agents, but that's it, Natasha?"

“I'm investigating the computer data, to see if we've left anything out,” the clicking of keys comes over the communicator. “Hydra is an expert at hiding information.”

Tony snorts, nodding to himself as he continues rummaging through the remains of the building.

Amid the dust and debris, something catches his eye: a crumpled sheet of paper, surprisingly intact despite the chaos of the building.

He picks it up with his gloves and frowns at the title printed at the top.

“Certification / Experiment Data Reports.”

Great. Nothing good ever came from a document with that kind of heading.

“Hey, I found something about some experiments.”

Blood trickles across the white floor in a sickening contrast, spreading in thick pools that reflect the sterile light of the room. Amid the intense red, intestines writhe like disemboweled snakes.

Spider barely manages to contain a gasp, his breath ragged as he brings a bloody hand to his mouth. He didn't mean to do this. He wasn't supposed to hurt her like this. But he did.

“Experiment 003 pushed its limits again…”

Amanda's monotonous voice echoes in the room, indifferent, almost bored. Spider hears her, but doesn't process it. His mind is caught up in something else. In the blood-soaked blonde hair. In the eyes that, little by little, lose their sparkle.

His vision blurs, tears build, and he hates it. Because crying is for the weak. For lesser experiments.

So… what is he now?

Because the water falling from his eyes mixes with the blood on his face, and no matter how hard he tries to stem it, he can't stop himself.

Chapter Text

Hanna's blonde hair hangs dirty, sticky, stained with blood. It no longer shines. It no longer moves with life. Now it looks like a sick wig, abandoned on the floor.

There's no face to look at. Or at least, not a complete one. Half of it has crumbled like broken china, like those old dolls they sometimes let her have, before taking them away without warning.

Amanda strokes his back. Her long nails scrape gently, as if the gesture were tender.

But Spider feels no comfort. Only the burning in his throat as he fights to contain his gag reflex. The vomit wants to come out urgently, but he holds it back as best he can. If he vomits, if he cries, if he fails, it will only make Amanda angrier.

The tears keep falling. Slow, hot.
And that's enough to deserve punishment.

His body trembles. Muffled sobs escape between his clenched teeth, while the taste of vomit fills his mouth.

Then, through his tears, he sees her; Hanna's body. Even without half her face… she- her body moves. It writhes.

"You did well," Amanda says. Her words ring hollowly, like the echo of a broken bell.

"Hanna failed, after all."

"Experiment 003," says a monotonous voice in the video. "We've developed a new subject. More docile. More perfect than all the ones before."

Tony frowns. Beside him, Steve bites his lower lip, his eyes fixed on the screen, as if expecting the worst.

The voice continues, impassive.

"We collected the DNA of all the superheroes. Those who beat us… again and again. But it doesn't matter."

The image flickers. The video seems about to cut out, filled with visual noise, dark and poorly recorded. A vial appears on the screen. A thick liquid, of an uncertain color, bubbles inside.

“It was difficult to make all the DNAs compatible. Too many differences. Too many flaws. We had to make some… adjustments.”

Pause.

“It has a little of each. A little more of some than others. But it doesn't matter.”

One last sentence, barely a whisper, almost admiring: “It'll be perfect.”

The recording cuts off with a dry whir, as if the machine itself had decided it had had enough.

Tony is silent for a second before turning to the pile of charred papers. The sheets are burned around the edges, wrinkled, damp in places, as if they've been through hell. Keywords peek out from between smears of soot and smeared ink: genetic synthesis, combined DNA, confidential location, controlled failures.

Frustration rises in his throat, and for a moment his fingers tense, ready to crumple the paper. But he stops.

Because he can't. Not with this.

As useless as they may seem, these documents are all they have: their only lead in tracking Hydra, in exposing what they're doing… and in stopping it. If he destroys them, if he damages them any more, they'll lose any chance of tracking them.

And that's simply not an option.

Spider walks through the white hallways as Amanda tugs at his arm tightly. She doesn't ask if he's tired or tell him where they're going. He doesn't need to. He just has to move when he's told to. The sedative is still running through his body, making him feel like he's floating, like he weighs nothing. He doesn't even feel his footsteps.

He passes several glass doors. In each room, there are other children. Some are laughing. They're playing with rubber balls or pushing each other. As if they have time. As if they won't die soon.

Spider watches them out of the corner of his eye, without slowing down. He doesn't envy them. He doesn't pity them. They are weak, and he knows it.

All those children are going to fail. Like the ones before. Like the ones who ended up screaming until they lost their voices, until the doctors turned off the lights and took them away.

Laughter is the first sign that something is wrong. That something in their brains hasn't been corrected.

Amanda tightens her grip on his arm as she passes a room where one of the children is screaming. Spider doesn't flinch.

He's heard enough screams. Some of them came from mouths he knew, like Hanna. Sometimes, he can still remember their names. Sometimes, he can't.

The children who laugh now will end up the same. Broken. Useless.

Not like him.

He's the one in charge of silencing their laughter.

Chapter Text

“You’re Hydra’s greatest invention, you know that, right?”

Amanda smiles at him, but there’s no real sweetness on her face. Just a polished mask, devoid of affection. Her eyes don’t shine with pride, but with a surgical indifference, typical of someone observing a machine, not a life.

She takes Spider’s left arm with precise, cold movements. Her gloved fingers grip firmly as she prepares the injection. The needle flickers for a second in the white light of the lab.

“Now we’re in the final phase, the one that will decide everything, 003.”

Spider barely feels the puncture. The world spins around him, hazy, unreal. He’s too numb, too anesthetized to react. But he does feel the exact moment the liquid enters his body. It’s like liquid ice passing through him, creeping through his veins with an intention that isn’t his own.

He stifles a gasp. He twitches slightly. Not from pain, but from something deeper, more primal. It's as if the injection has touched a dormant nerve inside him, wrenching him from the enforced lethargy he'd been living in.

The numbness begins to fade. It leaves him exposed, raw. Then he chokes, gasping, desperately scratching the injection site. His skin burns.

"The super-soldier serum is not to be taken lightly," Amanda says, striding confidently away. "It can turn out very well... or very badly."

Spider raises a hand toward her. It's a shaky, almost childlike gesture. He's not trying to stop her, just... to make her not abandon him. To look at him, to comfort him. But Amanda doesn't stop. She doesn't turn around. She barely gives a fleeting glance before closing the door behind her, as calmly as one turns off a light.

"I hope you don't let us down, 003."

There are many recordings. Too many.
And that makes it even more terrifying.

Each file is a glimpse into an inhuman reality, meticulously documented. Different experiments, different numbers, most of them failures, are recorded without emotion, without hesitation. The voices narrating don't waver. They don't tremble. They speak with a mechanical, almost robotic coldness that makes the blood run cold.

"Experiment 018 has shown a failure of its abilities..."

Tony turns off that recording without saying anything. His fingers, tense, load the next one.

"Experiment 103 has shown signs of rejection of the new serum..."

They are different voices. Men. Women. Scientists, probably. None seem affected by what they say. They just report. They confirm.

Most of the files end the same way: in death. And yet, that's not what's most shocking. It's not the number of children who died, or the reactions to the chemicals, or the cellular ruptures.

It's how they describe them.

They're not children to them. There are no names, no ages, no stories. Only numbers, bodies, results. There's something so brutal about that dehumanization that you can't even feel compassion like you would for an injured child. The mental images they evoke are worse than that. They're horror. Pure and simple.

And in the end, each recording ends in the same way.

"It doesn't matter if it failed. It's just a preview so we can test what works with Experiment 003."

Tony fast-forwards one of the recordings.

"If it works for him..."

His breath catches in his lungs.
And then, the last sentence confirms it. A firm, almost satisfied voice:

"Hydra will be back on top."

.

.

.

The video is blurry, as if time itself had eaten away part of the image. It has that dull tone of tapes that are too old, those that should have been buried.

For a moment, there's no image. Only a woman's voice is heard, clear, firm, and emotionless.

“November 12, 20XX. It's four in the afternoon. First test on subject number 003. We are testing a new serum containing arachnid DNA. If the subject is able to accept the modification and the results are optimal, further experiments will be authorized.”

As the voice continues, images begin to appear slowly, distorted at first, then sharper, advancing frame by frame until they stabilize.

Different tissue samples are shown, labeled vials, DNA graphics superimposed with arachnid structures. The images stutter. The video changes shots. Now there is a child.

He is alone, sitting on a metal stretcher. He wears a hospital gown too large for his thin body. His brown hair, slightly wavy, falls in disarray over his forehead. His brown eyes are large, frightened. He bites his lip. His fists are clenched tightly.

“Does it hurt a lot?” question.

The question is so simple, so human, it hurts. His voice is soft, painfully young. Natasha feels something break inside. Her mind, unwillingly, drags her back to that damned red room.

And she hates it. She hates it with every fiber of her being.

“No,” the woman replies. She has a dark haircut. Her expression is cold, impenetrable. Her straight hair is tied back in a ponytail that doesn't move even when she walks.

“You'll feel a little tingle. If all goes well… it shouldn't hurt.”

“Oh.” The boy nods, but his eyes never leave her hands. He watches every movement as she prepares the needle, tense, as if expecting punishment. “Okay,” he finally whispers.

The woman approaches. She places a hand on the back of the boy's neck and tilts his head with almost mechanical gentleness, leaving his neck exposed. She searches for the vein. She finds it. And without further ado, she inserts the needle and injects the contents.

What follows are screams. High-pitched. Inhuman.

The image shakes. It cuts out.

The next shot shows the woman facing the camera, as if nothing had happened. Sitting with her back straight, her face neutral, her voice lifeless.

“The experiment has been a complete success,” she says.

No emotion crosses her face. No pride, no doubt. Only efficiency.

“Thanks to this, we can move on to Phase one of Project Spider. Amanda out.”

Chapter Text

In the Tower, the silence is barely broken by the sound of keyboard clicks. Tony's voice pierces the air, projecting the files onto a giant screen.

"A single experiment, that's what these reports indicate. Only one is still ongoing. The others were completely dismissed."

Steve frowns, crossing his arms.

"Can we really be sure of that? Hydra falsifies data all the time. There may still be more children out there... maybe they're not dead."

"And how do you plan to find them, Rogers?" Tony spits out, more sharply than usual. "They don't exist. Hydra literally erased them, and if there were any trace, they were probably silently eliminated. To the world, those children never existed."

Steve's eyes shine stubbornly.

"Even so, we should keep investigating."

Tony pinches the bridge of his nose, exasperated. “What do you want me to do, Roger? There’s nothing. There are no ages, no names, if we can even call a number like “003” a name. There’s absolutely nothing.”

In the bowels of Hydra, alarms blare through the halls. Red tinges everything, intermittent, like an open wound that won’t stop bleeding.

“Protocol 0.0.3 Hydra. Run. Run.”

The AI’s metallic voice reverberates relentlessly, almost drowned out by desperate screams. The echo of hurried footsteps resonates against the metal, mingling with labored breaths, gasps, and pleas.

“Protocol 0.0.3 Hydra. Run. Run.”

Spider staggers forward. Every inhalation is a rumble in his chest, every exhalation a burning pang. Her eyes, glassy from crying, barely make out the figures running around her.

"Spider!" a woman gasps at the sight, but her cry is cut short when he grabs her arm. Her small, bloodied fingers clench with an unnatural force.

The bone gives way like rubber. The arm comes loose with a sickening snap.

The woman's shriek cuts through the air. She falls to the floor, writhing, crawling in a desperate attempt to escape.

Spider follows her with reddened eyes, and with a sudden movement, he steps on her chest, immobilizing her. The impact echoes in the hallway, stifling her sobs as it crushes her lungs in mere seconds.

The alarm continues, repeating like a mantra.

"Protocol 0.0.3 Hydra. Run. Run."

His hands are covered in blood, a red too bright yet too dark that can only be clearly seen when the red light on the alarm flashes. He continues on his way, leaving behind the woman, who is now gasping as the light disappears from her eyes.

She looks like Hanna.

He suppresses that thought by punching one of the walls, which cracks from the force of the impact, revealing more doctors.

"Where's Amanda?" he asks timidly, which contrasts sharply with his hands, his shirt, and most of his body, which are stained with blood.

"We don't know!" a doctor shouts, pointing a gun at him. "B-back up!" he says, trembling. The other doctor raises her hands, trembling as well.

"I don't want to die!" the woman sobs, sobbing in an annoying way, too loud, too anguished. "I was never cruel to you!" The woman cries, and Spider feels his stomach twist.

Was it really like that? Spider doesn't remember. Spider doesn't remember many things, really.

The other doctor fires.

The bullet slices through the air... and stops in Spider's palm. The boy crushes it like clay, throwing it to the ground. He moves forward. The man barely manages to scream before Spider snatches the gun from him, and with a sharp blow against his temple, his head splits open. The sound is repulsive: bone cracking, skin tearing. The man's eye bulges grotesquely from its socket, hanging only by a thread.

He applied too much force.

Spider looks away, fighting the urge to vomit. He can't. Not now. He chooses to focus on the woman.

"Please..." she mumbles between sobs, but her voice is so high-pitched, so annoying, that it irritates him.

A web shoots out, covering the woman's mouth, sticky and rough. The woman moans, struggling uselessly to tear it away. Her breathing becomes frantic, like a trapped animal.

It's annoying.

Spider reaches out and digs his hand into her neck. His fingers pierce the skin with ease, tearing flesh and arteries in a hot torrent that drenches him anew. Blood spurts like a fountain, slipping through his fingers, dripping in torrents. The woman kicks, clawing at her arm, leaving useless marks before falling limp.

The world is in chaos. The flashing red light burns her eyes, her ears throb, barely distinguishing the roar of alarms amid all the screaming.

But none of that matters. He just has to find Amanda.

"Over here!" Voices shout, armed men. Spider snarls, leaping up the walls and climbing to smash into them. His feet feel disgusting beneath the hot, sticky blood.

“Well, according to these analyses…” Bruce hands out a piece of paper to everyone, “Spider doesn't have all of our DNA mixed together. What we found is that barely 10% of its genome matches ours.”

Everyone frowns, intrigued. Bruce clears his throat before continuing, “Apparently, the incident with the spider wasn't just that it bit him, but that it injected a load of radiation-altered genetic material into his body. This DNA integrated into his genome, replacing much of the original material. It's as if the spider had “rewritten” entire sections of its biological code.”

Clint frowns. “Is that even possible?”

Bruce sighs thoughtfully. “Under normal conditions, no. But radiation can cause mutations, and apparently the spider's organism was artificially or experimentally modified… so yes. What happened was a massive integration of genes, something similar to what some viruses do: they insert their information into the host cell and alter how it functions.”

Banner uses the digital screen to zoom in on the image. “The difference is that this wasn't just a few infected cells. It was his blood, his bone marrow, his entire hematopoietic system. That caused his body to reprogram itself, eliminating much of its old code and replacing it with a new one.”

“Are you taking the super-soldier serum into account?” Natasha interrupts, raising an eyebrow.

Bruce shakes his head slowly. “No, but if you consider it, the serum represents only about 5 percent of his DNA. The interesting thing is that the integration of the spider-altered DNA not only helped him adapt to that component, but also partially rejected it.”

Tony crosses his arms, tilting his head. “Like the plague.”

Bruce nods. “Exactly. The spider's genetic material seems to behave like a filter: what it doesn't consider useful, it blocks. It's as if its own body has decided what to keep and what to discard in order to maintain a stable balance.”

Thor shrugs. “What good does it do us to know his DNA? Doesn't that kid have, like, the same strength as Steve's friend?”

“We don't really know that,” Tony interrupts. “Like Brucie says here—” Banner frowns. “Um, we don't know if that spider DNA gave him super strength or if super strength just comes from the super soldier serum.” Tony changes the image, showing the boy. “If the spider DNA gave him powers, we have no idea what we're dealing with. But if he has powers more related to the super soldier, he'll be easy to handle.”

“Amanda,” the boy sobs, stumbling as he reaches out a hand toward the dark-haired woman. “Amanda,” he hiccups.

The woman trembles, backing away as far as she can before slamming her back against the wall. She's unarmed, her hair in disarray, and her teeth gritted.

“Spider,” she says with venom, but her voice trembles.

The boy sobs louder before running into Amanda's arms. They greet him not with love, but with a tense, trembling body and labored breathing. "It hurt so much, Amanda! It hurt so much!" The brunette bursts into tears, wrapping his short arms around Amanda's waist as best he can.

"Oh..." Amanda whispers, running her hand through the boy's curly brown hair. "How many did you kill? Let me be proud."

"Twenty!" he says, pulling away and smiling at her, the hands that caressed his hair gently moving down to his neck.

"Oh yeah?" Amanda smiles. "I'm so happy..."

The woman barely manages to try to prick the boy's neck with the needle, but is stopped by Spider’s hand.

"Miss Amanda," asks a high-pitched voice, broken and worn from crying. "Why do you all hate me so much?" Spider mutters, squeezing the woman's hand, which bends at an odd angle. The syringe also breaks, stabbing into the woman's hand.

Amanda screams, writhing as she falls to her knees on the floor. "You're a monster!" she snaps, her eyes bloodshot with rage.

"No," Spider replies, grabbing the woman's face in his hands. "Like you said before, I just get rid of the useless stuff."