Chapter Text

🕷️ Ghost in Gotham — Chapter 1: The Girl Who Fell

(with Voice Over intro)

Gwen Stacy

“Hi. I’m Gwen Stacy.
No… not that one.
Not anymore.

Long story short? I died somewhere else, woke up here, and now everything hurts—especially the parts I can’t explain.
If the universe is playing a joke, I’m not laughing yet.

And now, I guess I’m the Spider-Ghost of Gotham.
Sure… it has a ring to it.”

The Girl Who Fell

Rain hit her face like cold static. Each drop felt sharp enough to sting, little electric needles prickling across her skin. The first breath burned—wet asphalt, copper, and ozone. It filled her throat like she’d inhaled a dying battery.

Thunder rolled overhead, making the air taste metallic. The rumble vibrated through her bones, a low, animal growl from a sky that never forgave.

Gwen opened her eyes to the flicker of neon reflected in a puddle. Pink-blue-pink again: ACE CHEMICAL SUPPLY. The light strobed across the water like a broken warning sign, bright enough to blur her vision.

Her skull throbbed—an earth-shattering headache. Not anything like the time Mary Jane snuck them some grape schnapps she drank on a dare. That had been a bad morning. This felt like she was about to die.

She swallowed hard, nausea rising in hot waves. For a terrifying second she wondered if she’d hit her head too hard, if this was concussion logic scrambling her brain.

Hold on—that name.
With the thought, her stomach twisted before she even remembered why.

Then her brain supplied a dozen comic panels at once—clowns, vats, acid scars—none of them comforting. Her pulse ratcheted upward.

No, no…

She pushed herself upright. Mud sucked at her palms, thick and cold, clinging like it didn’t want to let go.

The pain that shot through her ribs screamed of broken bones she’d never had. A deeper pain followed—her whole body burning from the inside, like her nerves were trying to reboot. She gasped, bracing herself on the wall, the burn rolling in waves that made her vision flash white.

Then, under the agony, a stranger’s memory pulsed:

A badly reset rib.
Someone else’s pain.
Someone else’s trauma.

Hold on—what?
Where did that thought come from?
She had never had an injury like that.

For a heartbeat she wondered if she was hallucinating. But the sensation—the memory—felt too real, too sharp, like a bruise pressed from the inside.

Every breath was a shard of glass sliding under her sternum. But slowly, the burning faded into the background.

With the fading pain, her mind cleared—and she felt new memories forming. Not full, not kind; nothing so lucky.
Fragments.
Flashes.
Pieces of a week from a life that wasn’t hers.

Her host’s body had been badly abused.
Kidnapped.
Interrogated.
Hurt for a reason Gwen couldn’t grasp yet.

The knowledge sat in her chest like a cold stone.

She blinked through rain until the blur sharpened enough to make out a shape near the gutter: a soaked wallet, black leather waterlogged and dripping.

A weird déjà vu rolled through her. Her fingers moved before she could think, reaching for it like muscle memory from a life that wasn’t hers.

Inside, a plastic card:

GOTHAM UNIVERSITY — Engineering Division
STACY, G.
Room 241-B.

Her own face stared back—but paler, with a bruise blooming under one eye, the kind that came from being hit, not falling. A life lived in fear, in stress, in constant wrong-place/wrong-time.

“Oh, no. No no no no no.”
The words spilled out in a shaky exhale more than speech.

Every worst thought collided in her skull.
This was Gotham City.
That place was just… wrong.

Oh, sure—the comics were great reads.
But living here? Actually surviving here?

Evil.

People weren’t safe.
Not here.
Not on their best day.

Just one bad afternoon and someone like the Joker would show up simply to prove a point.

But Gotham… this could be bad news.

A word that should have existed only in comics.
A place meant for cautionary tales—dark alleys, bat-shaped silhouettes diving through industrial smog.

She’d read these stories between gigs and lab nights, curled on couches with the Mary Janes, laughing at how over-the-top Gotham villains could be.

Now the skyline above her wore that same grim architecture. Towers rose like jagged teeth against the clouds, all sharp edges and shadow. And a weak halo of light shimmered where the Bat-signal should have been, diffused by fog into a smear of pale gold.

A siren wailed, jagged and close.

Gwen staggered deeper into the alley, one hand pressed to her ribs. The impact sent pain shooting up her spine, bright and nauseating.

Her body didn’t respond the way it used to—heavier, slower, like someone had dipped her bones in sand. But when her fingers brushed brick, they stuck, anchoring her in place.

She jerked them free with a wet pop.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Even injured, part of her warmed with relief. At least some things came with her.

Two sets of footprints shimmered in the puddle:
One ending where she’d fallen.
Another smeared with blood, trailing toward the alley’s mouth.

She followed the second set with her eyes—hesitating, dread crawling upward like cold vines.

Memory—or someone else’s—flared behind her eyes:
running,
shouting,
a knife catching streetlight,
the panic,
the collapse,
cold hands on wet pavement.

This world’s Gwen Stacy had died here.

Her breath caught. She felt the echo rip through her chest like a ghost wearing her heartbeat—not a voice, just a surge of emotion so strong it almost knocked her back.

“Okay,” she whispered to the rain. “Multiverse physics one-oh-one—body swap, soul graft, possession. Sure. Fine. You’ve handled worse.”

It was a lie.

She’d handled monsters, mutated friends, supervillains with too many teeth—
but not this.
Not living someone else’s last moments.

Her laugh broke halfway through, turning into a trembling breath. The rain masked the sound, like the city was trying to spare her embarrassment. Or maybe Gotham didn’t care enough to notice.

Lightning cracked overhead, illuminating the alley in white-blue glare.

Gwen felt very small.
Very alone.
Very, terrifyingly real.

Someone had wanted something from this body.
Someone had asked questions the host Gwen couldn’t answer.
And if Gwen didn’t figure out what they wanted…
they’d come back.

Campus Maze

By dawn she’d scavenged a jacket from a trash bin and limped across campus.

She did not cherish the idea of walking around downtown Gotham looking like a victim. It would draw the wrong crowd, for sure. But the jacket hung off her like wet cardboard, smelling faintly of old pennies and cigarette smoke—yet it kept the cold from slicing into her skin.

The early morning fog swallowed everything below knee height, turning the walkways into floating stone paths.

As she passed an alley her spider-sense tingled—a soft, insistent buzz behind her ears. A warning: don’t go that way. It happened a few times.

Dark alleys in Gotham City were no joke… or if he was down there, it was a joke. Just not a good one.

Gothic towers rose through fog, gargoyles glaring down like stone witnesses. Their cracked mouths and chipped wings seemed to follow her with silent judgment, like they knew she didn’t belong here—like they were keeping count.

She clung to the keycard like a lifeline. The plastic felt warm from her grip—the only proof she hadn’t hallucinated the wallet or the ID photo that wasn’t hers.

She wasn’t putting it away. Not yet.

Maybe this was a hallucination. Maybe Mysterio had cooked up something elaborate.

Hopefully.

That would be preferred to Gotham.

The ID clicked her through the outer gate—a small miracle she didn’t fully trust. The gate unlocked with a soft buzz, as if surprised she was allowed inside.

Inside, everything smelled of wax and wet stone. Echoes bounced along the hallway like footsteps she couldn’t see, and every flickering light made her jump. The temperature dipped the deeper she went, the kind of cold that clung to concrete even after summer.

She followed hallway numbers printed beneath buzzing exit signs—A-Wing, B-Wing, C—each corridor another page in a book she’d never read.

Her spider-sense twitched at every intersection—not warning of danger, just overwhelmed by information: voices through walls, machinery humming above ceiling tiles, the faint thrum of distant generators.

She felt like a radio tuned to too many stations at once.

241-B took forever to find. She passed the number twice without realizing it—the hallway folded on itself in a way that felt deliberately hostile. Her breath fogged the air as she backtracked, boots squeaking against polished tile.

When the sensor finally blinked green, her hand shook so badly she missed twice. Her fingers felt numb, stiff from cold and exhaustion, and the card clattered against the reader with a pathetic plastic tap.

On the third try, the lock disengaged with a tired click.

The door swung open on a stale gust of coffee and detergent. It was the kind of air that only accumulated in college dorms: too many late nights, too many microwaved meals, and windows that hadn’t been opened in months.

A stranger’s life, perfectly paused. And now her own.

Textbooks stacked neatly on the desk.

Textbooks.
What?
Oh no.

“If I got sucked into a school-life drama in Gotham, I am going to be… well, ticked off.”

Shoes lined up by the bed.

“Was my host a neat freak?”
She hoped… so?
“That would make things neater and clearer for sure. Silver linings, Gwen. I feel I’ll need all I can get here.”

A half-drunk bottle of water sat capped, waiting for a hand that would never reach for it.

The room wasn’t haunted.
But it felt empty in a way that haunted her.

Like the girl who’d lived here had been erased, and Gwen had stepped into the outline she left behind.

Her skin prickled—not danger, not spider-sense, just a quiet, awful awareness:

She was alone in someone else’s life.
And the life she’d taken over hadn’t ended peacefully.

Echo

She shut the door and leaned against it until her legs stopped shaking. Her breath came in tight, uneven pulls, each one shuddering out as if the room itself were pressing inward.

The silence felt heavy—too heavy—the kind that settles in old buildings and knows your name even when you don’t speak it.

Across the narrow room, a mirror caught a slice of dawn. The pale light warped across the glass, stretching thin like it didn’t want to settle. The frame was slightly crooked, as if someone had bumped it recently.

Or fought near it.

Considering that Gwen had been kidnapped… yeah. That might be exactly what happened.

She didn’t want to look. Every instinct screamed at her to ignore it, crawl into bed, bury her head, pretend this world wasn’t whispering to her in the dark.

The lingering pain in her head was still there—a dull throb now, not the skull-splitting drill from before. Like the pain had burned itself out, leaving only a faint echo behind.

When she did look, the face staring back was almost hers—same jaw, same mouth—but with exhaustion etched deeper, an unfamiliar set to the brows. Her hair was plastered to her temples from the rain. The bruise under her eye showed in sickly purple through faint morning light.

If she judged right, it would be gone by tomorrow afternoon. Her spider healing had to still be working. She’d stuck to that wall earlier—that counted for something.

But the difference wasn’t physical.
It was wrongness, something in the expression that belonged to someone who had lived a different pain.

Her reflection lagged a heartbeat behind. Or at least, it seemed to.

An impossible delay—subtle but unmistakable—like watching your movements through water, or a frame skip in an old tape.

When she lifted her hand, the other Gwen raised hers a moment late and mouthed silent words.

Her lips moved in a shape Gwen knew far too well—she’d seen people whisper those words before:

Help me.
Why her.

And then a new one that twisted her stomach:

Mine.

That one hit differently.

Gwen hadn’t meant to come here. If she’d had a choice she’d be back home tightening her drum kit before that gig MJ had set up.

She couldn’t tell which phrase the reflection was forming—the words smeared like fogged glass.

A whisper slid through the glass, felt more than heard:

This is my life. You stole my life.

A chill crept along her shoulders, the kind that felt like a cold breath brushing the back of her neck. But she forced herself to breathe through it.

This wasn’t a ghost.
This wasn’t supernatural.

This was the host’s emotional residue—trauma bleeding into her nerves. Fear, anger, desperation. Gwen could feel it because she was tangled in the last moments of a dying life.

She understood.
And she sympathized.

Gwen stumbled back, pulse racing. Her heel hit the desk, sending pens clattering across the floor. Her breath hitched; for a moment she wasn’t sure her legs would hold.

“Not dealing with ghosts tonight,” she muttered, forcing her voice steady. It sounded weak even to her own ears.

She focused on something she could control: tools, circuits, logic. If she kept her hands busy, maybe her mind wouldn’t spiral. Maybe she could pretend the reflection behind her wasn’t staring with eyes that didn’t match her heartbeat.

Maybe she could pretend this wasn’t a haunting—
or a warning.

But even as she crossed the room and reached for the scattered drone parts on the desk, she felt the mirror watching.

The air behind her still held the echo of that emotional imprint, clinging to the silence like a fingerprint she could not wipe off.

After Hours Lab

“I can’t sleep. Too wired. Might as well see what kind of toys I can find here.”

The engineering labs stayed open for graduate students. This seemed to be the same in all universes—no matter the world, sleep-deprived engineers always had universal access to bad lighting and caffeine.

She swiped the keycard again—241-B matched to Building C—and slipped inside. Fluorescents hummed overhead, too bright, too white, the kind of light that made every surface look guilty.

The headache flared all over again, a sharp, blooming pulse behind her eyes. She winced at the pain, pressing fingers to her temple until it settled into a dull, stubborn ache.

A workbench held abandoned projects: a miniature servo arm, a tangle of copper wire, half a WayneTech logo on a scrap of casing.

Perfect scavenging material.

She moved toward the bench on instinct, the familiar smell of metal filings and ozone wrapping around her like a blanket she actually trusted.

She dismantled a drone rotor, repurposed its actuator, and cobbled together a wrist housing from a cracked stabilizer ring. Chemical stores gave her the rest: industrial adhesive, ethanol, a half-empty jug of poly-silicate solution.

Her hands moved on muscle memory, tapping a quiet rhythm like a drummer keeping tempo.

Tap-snap-tap.

A beat from a life that felt further away with every passing hour.

She mixed the web fluid as best she remembered—moisture draw, polymer base, protein catalyst. It clotted wrong twice before she coaxed it into a thin, pearlescent syrup.

Her nose wrinkled at the chemical tang—familiar, comforting, home.

When she loaded the cartridge and tested the trigger, a single thread snapped out, clinging to the ceiling beam.

“Still got it,” she whispered.

The sound echoed through the empty lab, swallowed immediately by the heavy, damp Gotham quiet. Not the hush of a school building at night—the quiet of a city listening, waiting, deciding if it cared what she was doing.

Well, if nothing else, I can make this work.

She twisted the wrist housing a few times, tightening the mount, testing the catch-release. It felt good. Solid. Hers.

And in the few hours she spent working on her new web-shooters, she hadn’t noticed the pain fading away. It had slid slowly from her ribs to her neck, then retreated to the back of her skull.

Now it sat there like a faint echo—almost nothing.

If she’d paid closer attention, she might’ve realized it wasn’t just her healing.

Something else had gone quiet too.
Something that wasn’t ready to wake up.
Not yet.

The Call

A scream tore the night—short, raw, too young to be anything but human. Her spider-sense ignited behind her eyes like someone yanked a fire alarm inside her skull.

Don’t do this, she told herself.
Stay small. Stay anonymous. Survive.

Another scream—closer this time. Panicked. Cornered.

Her whole spine lit up with instinct.

She pulled up her hood, slid the crude web-shooter beneath her sleeve, and headed for the stairwell despite her ribs’ protests.

The roof smelled of rain and copper. Below, Gotham muttered in its sleep—traffic in the distance, wet tires, an occasional siren swallowed by fog.

A test-fire—pop, filament catching on the railing.
It held.

“If you swing,” she murmured, “you mean it.”

She stepped off the ledge.

Gravity grabbed her for one terrifying heartbeat—then instinct kicked in.

Web—snap—catch.

Her shoulder jerked, ribs screamed, rain blurred her vision.

She swung anyway.

The city rotated around her, wind slicing cold across her cheeks, heartbeat syncing to the rain hitting steel.

For a moment—just a moment—she felt like herself again.

The alley came into view:

Three college kids pinned against a graffiti-scarred wall, backpacks tossed aside.
A broad-shouldered thug loomed over them, knife flashing under the streetlamp.

“—I said empty it! All of it!” he barked, spittle flying. His voice cracked with that specific Gotham blend of desperation and arrogance.

Gwen didn’t even land.

She angled low, fired a short burst—

Thwip-thwip-thwip.

Webbing slapped across his ankles, sticking them together mid-step.

“What the—?!”

He toppled sideways like a falling refrigerator, knife skittering across the concrete. The impact shook the puddles around him.

The students stared, wide-eyed.

Gwen hung upside down from her webline like a dripping ghost and whispered:

“Run.”

They didn’t need telling twice. Shoes slapped the pavement, fading fast into the night.

The thug groaned, still trying to pull his legs apart.

“Who the hell—”

But when he twisted to look up—

—she was already gone.

One swing, two, three, and she vanished into the rain—
a pale blur slipping between gargoyles like a rumor carried on the fog.

For the first time since waking in this world, Gwen smiled behind her mask. Small, shaky, but real.

“Alright, Gotham,” she whispered as she landed lightly on a rooftop.
“Let’s see if your nightmares can keep up.”

The adrenaline faded as she trudged back toward campus. Her ribs throbbed. Her head pulsed. The pain settled low and deep, almost numb.

She told herself it was just exhaustion.
Just overexertion.

But something else had gone quiet too, slipping deeper into stillness.

Waiting.
Dormant.

End of Chapter 1 — “The Girl Who Fell”

Chapter Text

🕷️ Chapter 2: The Morning After — “Rash / Nox Seed”

Sunlight woke her before her eyes opened.
Not warm sunlight—Gotham didn’t do warm—
but a thin, pale strip that crept across her cheek like an unwelcome reminder she’d survived the night.

Gwen groaned and rolled onto her side.
Every muscle throbbed.
Her ribs pulsed like someone had hidden a heartbeat inside them.
Her skull felt thick, stuffed with wool and static.

The adrenaline from last night was gone, replaced with a bone-deep ache that made her question every decision she had made after midnight.

“…should’ve waited a day,” she muttered into her pillow.

She pushed herself upright, wincing as stiff joints protested.
Her shirt clung to her back—sticky, uncomfortable.

Gwen frowned.
Peeling it off hurt more than it should have.

Then she caught her reflection in the mirror—
and froze.

Her entire upper back, from shoulder blade to spine, was mottled with dark, branching lines.
Not bruises—she knew bruises.
This was… different.

Veins.
Raised and spider-webbed like black lightning beneath her skin.
The pattern pulsed faintly, as if responding to her breathing.

“…Nope,” she whispered. “Nope nope nope—this is new.”

She twisted, trying to get a better angle.
The marks were clustered exactly where her back had hit the ground during last night’s fight—
the same place her host’s blood had soaked through her clothes.

Gwen sucked in a sharp breath.

Road rash.
That had been her first thought.

Except road rash didn’t pulse.
Road rash didn’t radiate heat like a fever.
Road rash didn’t look like it was… mapping itself.

Her spider-sense gave a quiet, uneasy flick at the base of her skull.
Not danger. Not exactly.

More like:
Pay attention. Something’s wrong.

Gwen forced her fingers to touch the darkened skin.
A tingle shot under her nails—a faint static snap, like touching a balloon a second before it shocks you.

She jerked her hand away.
“Oh that’s— that’s not normal.”

A memory flash buzzed behind her eyes:

A broken vial.
Glass cutting her palm.
Something warm spreading under her host’s skin before she collapsed.
Shouting. Boots on concrete.
She doesn’t have it—she lost it—check her again—

Gwen pressed her palms to her face.

“Great. Fantastic. Perfect. I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours and I already caught Gotham cooties.”

She dressed quickly, careful not to brush the sensitive skin, and paced the tiny dorm room.
Her mind buzzed with possibilities:

Infection?
Contaminant?
Alien pathogen?
Dimensional residue?
A chemical someone forced into her host?
Or something worse—something alive?

Her spider-sense twitched again—unhelpful, vague, like static interference.

Gwen opened her laptop and pulled up a search bar.
Her fingers hovered.

What was she even going to type?

Help, my back looks like it’s trying to draw a subway map?
Alien rash?
Gotham weird skin thing not Joker related?

Instead she typed:

symptoms of… parasitic contamination

The results were immediate—and horrifying.

She slammed the laptop shut.

“Nope. Not helpful.”

Dropping onto her bed, she dragged both hands through her hair.

Whatever was inside her…
wasn’t just an injury.

It was spreading.
Slowly.
Patiently.
Waiting for something.

Gwen took a shaky breath.

“Okay,” she whispered. “One step at a time. Find out what they wanted. Figure out what broke on me. Don’t die. Preferably in that order.”

She scanned the room again in daylight.
The silence pressed close.

Bookshelves heavy with engineering manuals.
A desk too neatly organized to be hers.
A faint lavender detergent scent she couldn’t place.

Time to learn the life she was supposed to live.

Her stomach growled loudly, echoing off the wall.

“But first… coffee,” she muttered. “Then learn and don’t die.”

She grabbed her bag, slung the strap over her shoulder, and stepped into the hallway.

Behind her, inside her skin, a faint pulse traveled down those darkened lines—
slow, rhythmic, almost…

curious.

Nox slept.
But not deeply.

The Search

After she returned from coffee—and something to fill her belly that wasn’t pure panic—she started with the desk.

She glared at it like it owed her money.

“Come on, Gwen. Your father taught you better than this.”

The first drawer slid open with a soft scrape.

Gum wrappers.
Student-loan mailers.
A half-eaten protein bar that had definitely lived too many lives.

Gwen made a face.

“Okay, so… not as much of a neat freak as I thought in the dark. Great. Now I’ll need to clean this place from top to bottom—wait, does that make me the clean freak? No. Pass.”

The second drawer was more promising.

Lab goggles.
Mechanical pencils lined like soldiers.
Half-finished diagrams: servo mounts, stress curves, gear arrays.

She traced one with her thumb.

“Mechanical engineering,” she murmured. “Okay. I can fake that. Mostly.”

Honestly? It wasn’t even faking.
Physics was physics.
Mechanics were mechanics.

And she hoped to every god watching Gordontown that the math worked the same here.

Her gaze snagged on a photo pinned to a corner of the desk.

Host Gwen—bruised eye gone, smile bright—stood with two friends.

Barbara Gordon.
Dick Grayson.

All three looked painfully normal.

Gwen’s ribs pulsed again.
Right. Illusions shatter fast in Gotham.

She lifted the photo closer.

Barbara Gordon.
That name rang every bell her comic-reading brain had.

Batgirl.
Unless she wasn’t.
Unless she was and didn’t know Gwen yet.
Unless Oracle hadn’t happened… or wouldn’t… or—

“Ugh!” Gwen flopped back in her chair. “I just had to land in a comic universe I know, but with so many reboots and retcons, it’s impossible to know which one. Joy.”

She pushed herself up and moved to the bed.
A pile of notebooks slid aside, revealing a slim laptop.

Her heart kicked.

Answers.

She powered it on.

Password prompt.
Of course.

She scanned the room for clues:

Band-name stickers.
A “pink noise calibration” scribble.
A photo of a dog with a bow tie—tag engraved KIP.

Worth a try.

Kip.
Denied.

P!nkNoise.
The screen chimed open.

“Cybersecurity was not your thing, other me,” Gwen sighed.

Desktop folders loaded:

Assignments
Projects
Personal
Gordon-Grayson Lab

She stared longest at that one.

She wasn’t just in classes with Barb and Dick.
She was working with them.

And whatever had gotten Host Gwen kidnapped…

was probably here.

Homework of the Dead

She opened Projects first.

Graphs. Data tables.
Lines of equations marching like tiny drill sergeants.

A half-written engineering report:

Dynamic Stress Response of Polyfiber Structures — Draft 3

She skimmed it.

“Okay… oscillation… resonance… tensile modulus… yeah, it’s physics. You got this.”

It made sense in a fractured, sideways way—
like remembering a song but forgetting the middle notes.

She clicked Mail.

Last thread: Barbara Gordon.

Upload your part.
Dick says if you skip lab again he’s docking your credits.
Also the prototype’s readings were weird Thursday. We’ll troubleshoot Monday.

Gwen’s breath hitched.

Thursday.
The night Host Gwen died.

Not a coincidence.

She turned to the mirror—
just her reflection this time.

No lag.
No echo.

If the ghost-imprint watched, it was silent.

“Ugh! I am not haunted—or hunted—or whatever,” Gwen groaned, rubbing her temples.

Her eyes drifted to the small rug on the floor.

“You’re not haunted, are you?” she asked it.

The rug said nothing.
Rude.

“Fine. Homework from a dead girl, weird readings on the exact night she died—yeah, no way that’s a breadcrumb. Nope. The Web of Life and Destiny is not that cruel. I hope.”

She faced the mirror again.

“Okay, Gwen… I got this.”

Her back pulsed.
Sharp. Sudden.

“Oh, kiss my ass!”

The branching lines under her skin seemed to thrum with her heartbeat.

Not painful.
Just… responsive.

Like something heard her panic
and answered.

Friendship Ghosts

She opened the Personal folder.

Photos spilled across the screen:

Campus fair.
A concert.
Barbara with neon glow bracelets.
Dick pretending to bench-press a cardboard Batmobile.

Normal life.
Bright, silly, painfully alive.

Gwen’s throat tightened.

“You had friends,” she whispered. “And I… I’m going to have to pretend to be you.”

The guilt pressed cold against her ribs.

“And pretend I don’t know they hunt at night like I do,” she added.
“I can see the awkward talks in my future.”

Another picture loaded—
the three of them at a science expo—
and grief hit her sharply.

These people cared about Host Gwen.
They would notice every fracture in her performance.

And she would have to lie to all of them.

Rebuilding a Life

She opened a blank document, encrypted it twice, then finally typed:

THINGS I NEED TO FIGURE OUT:
– Class schedule
– Lab partners
– Mom? Dad? (check database)
– Email password (reset it!!)
– Barbara & Dick dynamic; Batgirl and Robin? Or Nightwing yet??
– Don’t say “spider” in public. (Seriously, Gwen.)
– Build better web-fluid. Current version too traceable. Fix ASAP.

She hesitated, then added:

– Find who is responsible for Gotham Gwen’s death.
– Figure out what she was carrying, why a vial broke, and why I look like a horror-movie poster under my skin.
– Determine if this is cursed tattoo / parasitic goo / dimensional residue / all of the above.
– Try to be someone worth saving. (Hard mode.)

She exhaled shakily.

Seeing it all written out made the situation… real.

She saved the file in the Homework folder, encrypted it again, then updated every password she could find with references from home.

1. 
   Parker.
   Band names.
   Inside jokes.

Little pieces of her world hidden in plain sight.

When she finished, Gwen finally closed the laptop and let out a long breath.

She felt… safer.
Not safe.
This was Gotham.
Nothing here was ever truly safe.

Especially not her.

Evening Light

The sun dipped behind Gotham’s skyline, staining the room in amber and gray.
Light slipped through the blinds in fractured bars, turning dust motes into drifting sparks.

It almost looked peaceful—
right until a cruiser screamed down the street below.

Sirens pulsed—familiar now, almost rhythmic.

“Of course Gotham sounds like a police scanner set to ‘chaos playlist.’” Gwen muttered.

She packed the laptop away and leaned against the cool dorm wall, pulling her knees to her chest.
Her muscles ached.
Her ribs throbbed.
Her back prickled with faint pulses.

But somewhere beneath that…

Direction.

She should have felt hopeless.
Scared.
Overwhelmed.

Instead, she felt something like momentum.

Classes.
Assignments.
People expecting her.
A life to rebuild.
A secret to keep.
Jerks who killed her host to track down.
A city full of nightmares to navigate.

“Thursday night I fell into a new universe,” she whispered.
“Saturday morning I’m already trying to live in it.”

Outside, Gotham answered with distant thunder—
a low growl, more like the city clearing its throat than actual weather.

Gwen closed her eyes and let the hum of Gotham blur into a tired lullaby:

Traffic.
Sirens.
The heater’s weak click.

Not comfort—
but close enough to breathe.

For a moment, she let herself believe she might actually pull this off:

Solve the mystery.
Pass the classes.
Hide the powers.
Avoid getting punched by Batgirl.

Her back gave a soft pulse beneath her skin.
Not painful.
Not urgent.

Just present.
Waiting.

Gwen let her head rest against the wall.

“Yeah,” she murmured to the empty room.
“I hear you. One thing at a time.”

And for the first time since crossing worlds, she let sleep take her
without fearing she wouldn’t wake up again.

End of Chapter 2 — “Rash / Nox Seed”

Chapter Text

🕷️ Chapter 3: “Trying to Act Normal”

Sunday had passed in a daze.

Gwen barely left the bed except to pace, stretch, and pry through the digital footprint of the girl whose life she had inherited. Gotham Gwen’s notes and social media posts stretched back almost two full years, and—wow.

This girl could post like mad.

Photo dumps. Class rants. Late-night memes. Half-baked engineering thoughts. Three different playlists labeled “Study But Also Cry.” A running commentary about cafeteria food that made Gwen wince in solidarity.

“If she had a secret,” Gwen muttered at one point, scrolling while lying sideways across the mattress, “it’s buried under fifteen thousand posts about ramen, calculus, and dog videos.”

Still—
buried under all the noise were the threads Gwen needed.

Class schedules. Casual mentions of friends. Clubs. Study habits. Places she liked to sit.
Just enough to get Gwen through the week without screaming imposter.

After that?
She found absolutely zero reason to risk leaving the dorm room.

Her ribs still burned occasionally.
Her back pulsed.
Her head throbbed with leftover melding-pain.

So she curled under the blanket, convinced herself that sleep counted as “recovery protocol,” and called it an early night. It seemed smart—heal as much as possible before Monday.

“So I won’t look like a zombie,” she whispered to the ceiling. “I’ll still feel like one, but at least I won’t look worse than any normal sleep-deprived student.”

And so…

Monday morning came too early for someone who had technically died a bit over 48 hours ago.

Morning — 7:58 a.m.

Gwen pulled on a hoodie and winced as the fabric brushed the branching rash on her back.
The dark lines flexed beneath her skin like ink deciding where to spread next.

“Yeah, okay,” she muttered, adjusting the hoodie.
“Still gross. Still horrifying. Still pretending this is fine.”

Her spider-sense gave a tiny, irritated flick.

Not danger.
More like:
Yes, genius, we noticed.

Like it agreed with her mood.

She stuck her tongue out at nothing.

Campus – 8:14 a.m.

The quad looked normal in that exhausted-college-student way—
backpacks slung low, half-finished coffees clutched like life support, people power-walking like the pavement was lava.

Gwen tried to mimic the swarm:

Normal pace.
Normal posture.
Normal breathing.
Normal everything.

Except she wasn’t normal and never would be again.

Her backpack shifted on her shoulders.

That’s when she felt it—
the rash pulsing beneath her skin.

A slow, warm throb…

tap
…tap
………tap

She froze mid-step.

“Nope,” she whispered sharply. “We are not doing Morse code on my spine today.”

A passing student glanced over, eyebrows raised.

Gwen forced a smile—too wide, too teethy—and kept moving.

Her inner monologue sprinted at full panic speed:

Act normal. Don’t say “spider.” Don’t say “multiverse.” Don’t say “dead girl.” Don’t say “symbiote.” Don’t say ANYTHING, Gwen.

Her spider-sense buzzed again—soft as static.

Not a warning.

More like…
a question.

Like something inside her was testing the radio channels.

Gwen swallowed.

“Okay,” she whispered under her breath, “I really hope that’s just nerves and not the horror goo trying to form an opinion.”

But the pulse in her back answered anyway—
quiet, warm, curious.

And Gwen hurried toward her first class, trying to pretend her body wasn’t beginning to hold two heartbeats.

Mechanical Engineering 201

Gwen took a seat in the back, hoping nobody looked at her too closely.
The lecture hall was already half-full — rows of squeaking plastic chairs, the faint buzz of the projector warming up, students shuffling in with coffees clutched like lifelines. The room smelled like burnt espresso and dry-erase markers.

Barbara slid into the seat beside her like it was the most natural thing in the world — bright, awake, and terrifyingly observant for someone who definitely patrolled rooftops at night.

You got this, Gwen. You read every post this girl made. She’s smart, a bit flighty, and has an unhealthy obsession with dog videos. She must want a pet or something. Well, at the very least it’s not a haunted carpet — that would be creepy.

“Gwen! You okay? You disappeared Thursday.”

Gwen’s pulse spiked so hard she felt her fingertips prickle.
She forced what she hoped passed for a casual shrug.

“Oh—uh—yeah. Stomach bug. You know how it is.”

Barbara raised an eyebrow with the same precision she probably used when aiming batarangs.

“Stomach bugs don’t usually give people bruises.”

Crap.

Gwen tugged her hood up a little farther, trying to hide both the bruise and the panic climbing up her throat.

“Ran into a door?”

Barbara didn’t buy it — the disbelief was clear in the tight way she pressed her lips together —
but she didn’t pry either.

Instead, she handed over a notebook, already flipped to a page filled with neatly color-coded notes.

“We’re still on track for the project. Dick uploaded new stress-test data last night.”

That line hit Gwen harder than it should.
Sharp relief cut through her, leaving her a little weak-kneed.

Normal.
Almost normal.
Something simple to latch onto that didn’t involve dying, symbiotes, or multiversal nonsense.

She flipped open the notebook—

—and the pulse on her back twitched sharply, like a startled heartbeat waking up under her skin.

A cold spark shot up her spine.
Her vision flickered for a second:
colors draining at the edges,
the hum of conversation flattening into one long mechanical tone,
like someone muted the world except for one single, vibrating frequency.

Nox stretching.
Tasting her nerves.
Curious.

The sensation wasn’t painful — just wrong.
A presence without a voice, learning the shape of her nervous system.

Gwen clenched her jaw until the feeling receded, letting out a breath she didn’t remember holding.

Focus.
School.
Normal.

She forced her breathing to steady and pretended nothing was happening inside her skin.

Barbara didn’t look directly at her, but Gwen caught the way her friend’s eyes flicked sideways — subtle, sharp, taking in the tension in Gwen’s shoulders, the stiffness in her grip on the notebook.

Barbara Gordon was definitely clocking her.

Gwen swallowed.

Act normal. Please, just act normal.

The professor cleared his throat at the front of the room, tapping the digital pen against the smartboard.

“Good morning, everyone. Today we’re covering dynamic load distribution—”

Perfect.
Math.
Physics.
Numbers that didn’t care she’d stolen a dead girl’s life.

Gwen forced her eyes forward.

Her back pulsed again.
Faint this time.
Rhythmic.

Like something inside her was listening to the lecture too.

🛠️ Mechanical Engineering 201 — Lab Session

The lab smelled like heated plastic, metal filings, and the faint electrical tang of overworked machinery — a smell Gwen actually trusted.
Compared to the Gotham air outside, this room felt almost… sane.

Rows of workbenches hummed softly with active equipment. Servo rigs twitched in idle mode. Oscilloscopes blinked. A 3D printer chugged in the corner like it was one bad hour away from catching fire.

Barbara headed straight for their assigned bench.
Harper hopped up on a stool like she owned it.
Cass stood beside the workstation, silent and still, hands loosely folded behind her back.

“You’re with us,” Barbara said, gesturing Gwen forward.
It wasn’t a question.
It was… comforting, almost.

Gwen set her bag down — carefully — trying not to wince as the rash pulsed beneath her hoodie.

Normal. Be normal. Please be normal for like five minutes.

Harper shoved a set of safety goggles into her hands.
“You missed Thursday’s run,” Harper said. “Dick nearly set the wiring on fire, so honestly? Your timing was perfect.”
She grinned. “Welcome back from the land of the mysteriously vanished.”

“Stomach bug,” Gwen repeated weakly.

Cass’s eyes lifted to her — quiet, soft, but too sharp to ignore.

Her spider-sense flickered.
Like static brushing her nerves.

Not danger, Gwen reminded herself.
Just… being perceived by someone who sees EVERYTHING.

Barbara tapped the tablet on the bench. “Okay, we need to rerun the stress-test from last week. The polyfiber composite acted weird. Data spiked off-chart.”

Weird.
Thursday night.
The night her host died.

Yeah, no red flags there.

Gwen leaned over the project — an experimental flexible-armor weave stretched across a frame.
It shimmered faintly under the lab lights.

Nox pulsed.
Just once.
Low.
Curious.

Gwen swallowed and forced herself to focus.

“Okay,” she said, channeling all her engineering knowledge from her world, “your strain gauges might be misreading because the anchoring points aren’t parallel.”

Barbara frowned.
“Did… did you study ahead or something?”

Panic.
Panic.
PANIC.

“Oh! Uh—just… y’know.” Gwen waved her hands vaguely. “Figured it out. With math. And… uh… vibes.”

Harper snorted loud enough to startle the servo rig.
“Gwen, you’re such a nerd.”

Cass — still silent — tilted her head again.

Not judgment.
Not confusion.

Recognition.

Like she’d seen someone fake-normal before.

Barbara handed Gwen the sensor array.
“Want to hook it up?”

Yes.
God yes.
There was no way better to blend in than to actually do the work.

But as Gwen reached forward, the branching lines beneath her hoodie pulsed — a crawling warmth that slid up her spine like a question mark.

Her fingers twitched.
The sensor slipped from her grip.

Cass moved instantly, catching it before it hit the floor — precise, almost elegant.

Gwen blinked.
“Whoa. Nice reflexes.”

Cass simply nodded and handed it back.

Harper elbowed Gwen. “Right? Cass is like a ninja.”

Barbara didn’t look up from the tablet. “She is a ninja. We just don’t put that on the syllabus.”

Cass’s lips twitched — almost a smile.

Gwen’s spider-sense buzzed again — light, whispery, like a tuning fork.

Something inside her answered with a faint pulse.

Nox.
Awake enough to notice people now.

Great.
Perfect.
Add alien goo awareness to the list of things she had to hide in front of Batgirl, her best friend, and her maybe-proto-Nightwing class partner.

Gwen took a slow breath and fitted the sensor properly this time, hands steadier than she felt.

The data flowed across Barbara’s tablet.

“Looks good,” Barbara said. “Actually better than before.”

Harper leaned over the weave. “It didn’t even ripple like last time. Huh. Wonder why?”

Gwen kept her expression neutral.
Inside her hoodie, her back pulsed once — warm, slow, pleased.

She definitely did not react.

Cass watched her — not suspicious, not hostile —
just… aware.

Like she saw a puzzle piece move.

🍽️ The Cafeteria — Noon

Gwen sat alone with a sandwich that tasted like wet cardboard and regret.
The bread squished soggily when she poked it, like it was offended by existing.

“Ah yes,” she muttered, “the famous Gotham University culinary experience. Five stars. Michelin should fear you.”

She shifted in her seat — and immediately regretted it.

A hot ripple moved under her skin from shoulder to spine.
Not infection-warm.
Not fever-warm.
Alive warm.

She pressed her palm against her hoodie, pretending she was scratching an itch.

Beneath her fingers, the branching lines pulsed slowly, almost content.

Whenever she swallowed, she could feel the slightest internal drag — something settling, repositioning, like—

Like a sleeping cat kneading a blanket.

She froze, staring down at her tray.

“Oh no,” she whispered. “If you’re going to eat my organs, at least wait until finals.”

A freshman walking past misheard the last part, stared in horror, and speed-walked away like she’d threatened him with a biology demonstration.

Gwen sighed and crumpled her napkin.
“Great. Gotham Gwen really was the weird girl, wasn’t she?”

A pulse answered under her skin.
Light.
Curious.

Almost like it agreed.

🟧 Barbara Again

Because the universe hated her — specifically her — Barbara Gordon plopped her tray down across from Gwen with a cheerful thunk.

Gwen nearly jumped out of her seat.

“You’re jumpy today,” Barbara said, sipping from a mug that smelled like the kind of coffee that could remove paint.

“Me? No. I’m—”

Her back pulsed.

Sharp, sudden, like someone flicked a warm fingertip right against her spine.

Gwen sucked in a breath through her teeth.

Barbara’s eyes narrowed instantly —
because of course she noticed everything.

“Okay,” Barbara said slowly. “Something is wrong.”

Panic clawed up Gwen’s throat so violently she had to put the sandwich down before she choked on it.

“I just didn’t sleep great, okay?” Gwen blurted.

Not a lie.
Just barely even 4% of the truth.

Barbara’s expression softened into something warm and disarming — the kind of concern that hit harder than any punch Gwen had taken in a dozen universes.

“Look… if you ever need help,” she said gently, “you can talk to me. Seriously.”

Gwen blinked.

The sincerity hit harder than expected — deep, immediate, like someone cracked her chest open and poured hot tea inside.

Then Echo hit.

A ripple — faint but unmistakable.
Host Gwen’s leftover emotions bubbling up from wherever they lived inside her nerves.

Trust.
Fear.
Embarrassment.
And a soft, painful burst of I wish I’d said yes last time.

Gwen’s throat tightened.

She swallowed hard, fighting to keep her expression neutral.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Thanks.”

Barbara smiled — small, genuine, unaware of the emotional landmine she’d just stepped on.

And under Gwen’s skin, Nox shifted again —
gentle, watchful.

Almost like it was listening.

🚪 Locker Room — 3 p.m. 

By mid-afternoon, Gwen’s nerves were frayed down to threads.
Her back had been pulsing on and off all day — little warm flicks, slow tight pulls, almost rhythmic.
Like breathing that wasn’t hers.

And now?

Now it was itching.

Not a normal itch.
Not skin-deep.

A deep, electric itch that crawled along her spine like someone dragging a fingertip under her ribs.

“Nope,” she hissed under her breath as she crossed the hall. “We are not doing this in public.”

She needed a mirror.
She needed privacy.
She needed five seconds without people who knew “her” watching her like she might faint.

The nearest restroom was occupied — giggling freshmen, hair dryers, gossip echoing through the tile.

Too risky.

Across the hall:
Women’s locker room.
Mostly empty between PE blocks.
Quiet.
Private.
Perfect.

She slipped inside, letting the heavy door thump shut behind her.

Silence swallowed her.

Industrial gray tile.
Benches.
A faint scent of chlorine from the shared pool next door.

Good.

She darted into the nearest alcove, grabbed the edge of a mirror, and pulled her hoodie and shirt over her head in one motion—

🪞 Locker Room — Still

The veins on her back had shifted.

Not a lot.
Barely a millimeter.
But enough.

Enough to see.
Enough to understand.

Almost like they were organizing themselves.
Following some internal blueprint she didn’t have access to.

Her breath stalled halfway in her chest.

“Okay,” she whispered, voice cracking. “No. Absolutely not. You do not get to move without permission.”

Her spider-sense flicked once in agreement — a small spark behind her eyes.

The veins flicked back.

A warm ripple.
Like something saying I heard you.

Gwen slapped a hand over them like that would stop anything.

“Stop it,” she muttered. “Stop—rearranging yourself. I am not a LEGO set.”

Her reflection wobbled faintly —
not the unsettling lag from the Echo-mirror,
just a shimmer of stress, like bad fluorescent lighting bending around her fear.

Echo was quieter today.
More distant.
Fading.

But the emptiness she left behind didn’t feel comforting.

It felt like something else had taken her place.
Something settling in.
Learning her patterns.
Mapping her nerves.

She caught her breath on a sharp inhale.

“Oh fantastic,” she whispered. “It’s nesting.”

Evening Walk — 6:30 p.m.

Gwen walked back toward the dorm, hoodie pulled tight like armor.
The sky had dipped into that Gotham twilight — not dark, not light, just a bruised purple fading at the edges.
Streetlamps buzzed overhead in sickly halos, the kind that made everyone look a little more haunted than they probably were.

Her sneakers scuffed the pavement in uneven rhythm.

One step.
Then another.
Trying to pretend she wasn’t shaking.

A breeze cut down the street, thin and cold, carrying the distant copper tang of industry and the burnt-sugar smell of someone’s food cart.
Gotham always smelled like it couldn’t decide between survival and ruin.

She had survived the multiverse.
She had survived villains.
She had survived losing people she loved.

But this…

Something crawling under her skin.
Something learning her heartbeat from the inside.
Something memorizing the curve of her spine like it wanted to wear her perfectly.

This scared her in a way nothing ever had.

She shoved her hands deeper into her pockets, knuckles whitening.

“Okay,” Gwen whispered into the wind, voice thin and shaky.
“One night at a time.
One day at a time.
And absolutely no freaking out.”

Her breath fogged the air in uneven bursts.

Behind her ribs, the branching pattern pulsed again —
slow, gentle, almost… reassuring.

Like a hand pressing between her shoulders.
Like a soft, curious hello.

She stopped mid-step, glaring down at her own spine as if she could see through her hoodie.

“Don’t you dare try to be comforting.”

A cab honked in the distance. Someone shouted. A siren wailed two blocks over. Gotham continued being Gotham — loud, grim, indifferent.

But she kept walking.

She didn’t push the feeling away.

Not yet.

Because as terrifying as it was…
she wasn’t sure which was worse:

Whatever Nox was…

—or being completely alone in this world.

End of Chapter 3 – “Trying to Act Normal”

Chapter Text

🕷️ Chapter 4: “Almost Normal… Almost.”
Tuesday — 6:45 a.m.

Gwen woke before her alarm.

Not from pain —
for the first time since waking in this universe,
she wasn’t hurting.

No skull-throb.
No rib-fire.
No muscle ache like her bones were made of wet gravel
and someone had shaken her like a maraca.

Just… stiffness.
The kind runners complain about.
Or overachieving lab students who haven’t slept since midterms.

She blinked up at the ceiling, the cheap dorm plaster blurry and off-white in the early morning light.

“…Huh.”

She lay still for a moment longer, almost scared to trust it.
Her body had betrayed her enough times lately.

Then she sat up slowly, carefully, testing everything like she expected a booby trap wired to her nervous system.

Ribs: sore, but not stabbing. A dull echo of trauma instead of the sharp, breath-snatching misery of Sunday.
Neck: fine, no painful tug from sleeping on a terrible pillow.
Back: warm… not painful.

Warm like something had curled up against her spine and decided to stay.

She pressed her palm against the hoodie-clad area, hesitating before making contact.

The branching lines beneath her skin pulsed once —
not sharp, not aggressive —
just a calm, steady I’m here.

Gwen sucked in a breath she didn’t mean to.

“Morning to you too,” she muttered. “Please don’t eat my pancreas.”

Her voice was only half joking.
Mostly joking.
Maybe 30% joking.

Her spider-sense buzzed faintly in response —
not danger, not urgency —
just a soft, curious vibration
like a radio testing signal strength.

Like two frequencies trying to match up.

The idea made her stomach flip.

She wasn’t sure if it was fear…

…or the beginnings of something else entirely.

Something she didn’t want to name yet.

7:32 a.m. — Getting Ready

She moved around the tiny dorm room with cautious optimism —
the kind you get right before you open a mystery box and pray it’s not full of spiders.

Her joints felt strong.
Her muscles reacted instantly when she stretched.
Her balance was perfect — dancer-perfect, superhero-perfect, too-perfect for someone who got beaten half to death 72 hours ago.

Her breathing didn’t hurt.

Objectively?
She felt better than she had in weeks back in her own universe.

Subjectively?
She felt like a horror-film protagonist moments before they discover a new limb or realize the soundtrack has shifted to “ominous violins.”

She ran a hand through her hair and ventured toward the mirror.

Pause.

Deep breath.

Turned slightly.

Lifted the edge of her hoodie—
slowly, like peeling back a bandage she wasn’t ready to see under.

The mark was still there, of course.

The branching black lines had softened overnight.
Not vanished —
no, they’d reorganized again, tighter, more efficient, like someone had redrawn them with intention.

Like a blueprint refining itself.

Some lines seemed darker, pulsing faintly like they were synced to her breathing.
Others had faded into thin, delicate threads, mapping along nerve paths she didn’t remember having.

“Okay,” she whispered to her reflection, voice wobbling despite her best attempt at bravado.
“Not worse. Not… great. But not worse.”

The mirror showed only her.

Her reflection blinked normally.
No shimmer.
No lag.
No ghostly double watching from beneath the surface.

No Echo.

Just her.

She wasn’t sure if that was comforting…
or terrifying in an entirely new way.

Because now there was no Echo watching.

Now something else was.

And it was watching from inside.

8:10 a.m. — Campus Walk

Gotham University looked different in morning light.
Less haunted.
Less like someone had cursed its architecture during a full moon ritual.
Almost… normal.

Students milled around the quad with steaming coffee cups, half-zipped backpacks, missing notebooks, and the shared aura of people who barely survived Monday and were currently pretending Tuesday would be kinder.

Gwen blended as best she could.

Normal walk.
Normal posture.
Normal non–spider-powered-girl-living-in-a-dead-girl’s-body energy.

She adjusted her hoodie, tucked her chin down like everyone else, and joined the shuffling herd of under-caffeinated academic casualties.

And for once, she almost believed she could pass for normal.

Until—

Her back pulsed in time with her heartbeat.

tap
…tap
………tap

A slow, curious stretch under her skin.
Like Nox was waking up and gently poking the inside of her spine to say good morning.

“Do not stretch in public,” she hissed under her breath. “Bad alien goo. Bad.”

A professor passing her on the walkway paused, frowned at her like she was a sentient cry for help, then kept walking.

Perfect.
Amazing.
Day two and she already looked like she argued with her own organs.

She forced her shoulders to relax and kept walking, pretending she totally wasn’t one rogue pulse away from screaming and sprinting across the quad like a feral raccoon.

8:30 a.m. — Mechanical Engineering Lecture

Barbara was already there.
Bright smile.
Perfect posture.
Caffeine potent enough to be regulated by the FDA.

“Morning, Gwen!” Barbara chirped. “You look better today.”

Gwen froze halfway into her seat, her binder halfway to falling out of her hands.

“…Do I look worse normally?”

Barbara shrugged the most terrifyingly casual shrug Gwen had ever seen.
“Yesterday you were pale and twitchy. Today you’re… less pale and only medium twitchy.”

“Progress,” Gwen declared solemnly, placing a hand over her heart like she’d just been knighted.
“Big progress.”

As the professor launched into a passionate rant about dynamic load distribution (which, judging by his tone, he took extremely personally), Gwen forced herself to take notes.

Mechanical pencils scratched.
Projectors hummed.
Students pretended they understood sine-wave modeling.

Her spider-sense wasn’t spiking.
Her back wasn’t burning.
Her ribs weren’t screaming every time she breathed.

Just a steady warm pulse under her skin—
almost syncing with—

Oh no.
No no no—

Her spider-sense gave a soft buzz.
The smallest tug of pre-awareness.

And immediately—

Nox answered.

A soft ripple, like someone trailing warm fingers under her shoulder blades.
Like two frequencies trying to match.

Like… harmonizing.

She gripped her stylus tighter.

“Nope,” she whispered urgently, “no team-ups. No crossovers. You don’t get a matching ringtone.”

Barbara’s eyes flicked sideways.
Sharp.
Too observant.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yep!” Gwen squeaked at a pitch only small dogs should hear. “Totally fine! Love physics! Love load distribution! Love—math!”

Barbara stared.

“…Right.”

Nox pulsed in amusement.

Gwen mentally screamed back:
Stop bonding with me during class.

10:00 a.m. — Lab Session Check-In

Cass was waiting at the side door before class.

Silent.
Still.
Posture perfect, like she’d been carved out of calm marble.

Her eyes, though—
sharp enough to cut glass,
brighter than the hallway lights,
watching Gwen with the kind of attention that made her spider-sense tighten in her ribs.

Gwen slowed her steps, trying not to show the mild panic fluttering in her throat.

“Morning… Cass?” she offered.

Cass nodded once, a tiny dip of her chin—
an acknowledgment, a greeting, and a subtle assessment all at the same time.

Then—without a word—
Cass lifted one hand
and pointed directly at Gwen’s shoulder.

Gwen’s soul tried to exit her body.

“What?” she squeaked. “Is something there? Is it moving? Do I look weird? Is something crawling—?!”

Cass blinked.

Then reached out with two fingers
and plucked a leaf off Gwen’s sleeve.

A leaf.
A tiny, harmless, utterly mundane leaf.

“Oh.” Gwen deflated like a collapsing balloon. “Yes. Of course. Thank you. That makes… so much sense.”

Cass’s lips twitched—
just a millimeter—
like she was suppressing a laugh.

Or worse:
like she found Gwen entertaining.

Gwen wasn’t sure which was more dangerous.

Nox pulsed once under her skin.
Amusement.
Echoing Cass’s reaction.

“Great,” Gwen whispered. “Now both of you are laughing at me.”

Cass didn’t reply.
But her eyes softened—
a small kindness Gwen wasn’t expecting.

🛠️ Mechanical Engineering 201 — Lab

Today was supposed to be simple.

Review tensile tests.
Run new strain gauges.
Try not to dissolve into a puddle of raw anxiety on the floor.
Keep the alien goo from revealing itself in front of three Batman-adjacent vigilantes.

Reasonable goals.

Instead—

Nox decided it wanted to participate.

Every time Gwen handled the flexible-armor weave, her back pulsed with faint little flicks—
curiosity, interest, sensation.

Like some part of it was mapping the material.
Testing tension through her skin.
Taking notes like an overenthusiastic intern.

Harper noticed nothing.
Barbara noticed everything.
Cass noticed… more than Gwen wanted her to, probably.

Barbara leaned over the tablet, ponytail swishing like it was judging Gwen too.

“You okay?” she whispered. “You’re twitching more than usual.”

“Just… caffeine,” Gwen lied.

“You don’t drink caffeine.”

“Well, I drink panic,” Gwen said brightly. “Same thing!”

Barbara stared with the deeply concerned expression of someone who absolutely knew that wasn’t the same thing.

Harper snorted so hard a resistor rolled off the desk.

Cass made a soft exhale—
barely audible—
that might have been a laugh,
or a sigh,
or a warning that she knew exactly how fast Gwen’s heart rate just spiked.

Gwen hooked a sensor into the anchor point—
hands steady, breath not steady—
and felt Nox surge quietly in her spine.

Not danger.
Not hunger.
Just a pulse of intention.

A quiet, wordless:
I can help.

Gwen froze.

“Nope,” she whispered under her breath. “You do not get to help with homework. That’s cheating. And horrifying.”

Nox pulsed again in what felt like mild offense.

The flexible-armor weave shimmered faintly under her hands—
then stabilized smoother than it ever had.

Perfect tension.
Perfect alignment.
Perfect reading.

Barbara blinked.
“…Huh. That’s smoother than last week.”

“Yep!” Gwen chirped, too fast. “Totally normal! Absolutely not alien-related!”

“…What?”

“Nothing.”

Harper stared between them like she wanted so badly to ask but valued her life too much.

Cass tilted her head—
that small, calculating gesture—
eyes narrowing a fraction.

Not suspicious.

Not hostile.

Just… noticing.

Not the cause.
Not the symbiote.
Not the science fiction glowing under Gwen’s skin.

Just the fact that
Gwen Stacy
was acting like a girl with a secret too big for her hoodie.

And Cass noticed secrets like most people noticed weather.

🍽️ Cafeteria — Noon

Her sandwich still tasted like soggy cardboard optimism.

But for once, she didn’t feel sick.
Didn’t feel dizzy.
Didn’t feel like her organs were secretly being replaced by experimental Gotham horrors.

Actually…

She was starving.

Like she’d run ten miles before breakfast.
Like her metabolism had been replaced with a jet engine.
Like someone had hit a “consume calories now” button inside her chest.

She inhaled the sandwich in under two minutes.

Her stomach rumbled again — louder this time.
Embarrassingly loud.

“…Okay,” she muttered. “That’s new.”

Her back pulsed in agreement.

Warm.
Hungry.
Almost encouraging.

“No,” she hissed quietly. “You do NOT get lunch.”

Two tables away, Barbara, Cassandra, and Harper all turned their heads at the exact same time, like a flock of extremely judgmental owls.

Gwen froze mid-chew.

Barbara called across the cafeteria, “You want to sit with us?”

Gwen hesitated.

For a single, ridiculous second she considered saying,
“Sorry, can’t, my dorm rug is haunted and I need to spiritually supervise it.”

Because honestly?
It might still be true.
Everything else in Gotham seemed possessed, corrupted, or weird.

But no, that would be a later problem.

She sighed, grabbed her tray, and forced her legs to cooperate.

Finally she stood and walked over.

Harper grinned. “You look less dead today.”

“High praise,” Gwen said. “Truly. I will treasure that on my tombstone.”

Barbara studied her — eyes scanning her with the precision of a medical-grade laser.

“You sure you’re okay?”
Barbara asked it softly, like she already suspected the answer was “No,” but was trying to give Gwen the dignity of lying.

Gwen scraped together her best fake smile — the “I’m totally fine and not dying in twelve different metaphysical ways” smile she’d perfected back home.

“Yeah. Just… adjusting.”

Cass nodded once.

A small, subtle movement.

But it hit Gwen like a whisper:
I see the truth under that.
And I won’t say it out loud.

Gwen swallowed around the lump in her throat.

She didn’t deserve any of this kindness.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.

But she was grateful for it anyway.

🚪 Locker Room — 3:10 p.m.

It happened again.

The warm pulse.
The soft, crawling shift beneath her skin.
A strange, deliberate movement — like something adjusting itself, settling deeper, reorganizing its home.

Gwen ducked into the locker room, heart hammering.

She made sure it was empty—
voices gone, showers off, no footsteps echoing on the tile.

Good.

She pulled her shirt over her head—

And froze.

The pattern on her back had changed.

Sharper.
Cleaner.
Tighter.

No longer random branching like lightning strikes.

It had refined itself overnight.

Not into a symbol.
Not into a picture.
But a structure.

A deliberate one.

Like circuitry.
Or a vascular map.
Or the scaffolding of something biological trying very, very hard to make itself efficient.

“Oh come on,” Gwen whispered. “What are you building? IKEA furniture? A bunk bed? A… spine add-on?”

Her spider-sense buzzed faintly.

Not fear.
Not danger.
A soft, steady hum —
as if acknowledging what she was seeing.

And Nox answered.

Warm.
Slow.
Perfectly in rhythm with that hum.

A response.
A recognition.
Two frequencies aligning.

She slapped her hand over her back.

“Stop syncing! We are not becoming a duo! There will be NO matching Halloween costumes!”

The pulse eased.

Not because she’d commanded it.

But because it was patient.

Like it knew she would adapt.
Like it knew she wasn’t going to get rid of it.
Like it was waiting for her to catch up.

For a moment, Gwen just stared at the mirror.

Breathing hard.
Trying not to panic.
Trying not to scream.

Trying not to admit the truth forming deep in her gut:

Whatever Nox was…
it wasn’t just inside her.
It was learning her.
Building something with her.

And it wasn’t going anywhere.

🌆 Evening — 6:30 p.m.

She walked home under a bruised purple sky.

Gotham twilight wasn’t real twilight.
It wasn’t soft, or peaceful, or pretty.
It was an accidentally-on-purpose aesthetic —
the kind of filtered doom-color that happened when pollution, sunset, and creeping dread all shook hands.

Cold wind slid under her hoodie, chilling straight to the bones she technically didn’t fully own anymore.

Streetlights buzzed and flickered overhead, each one sputtering like it was debating whether it wanted to stay alive.
Some gave up entirely, leaving long patches of sidewalk swallowed in murky shadow.

Fog gathered at ground level — a thin gray tide rolling in across cobblestones and cracked pavement.
Like Gotham was laying out its nightly welcome mat:

ENTER IF YOU DARE. NO REFUNDS. POSSIBLE MUGGING.

Her hoodie felt too thin against the evening chill.
Her breath fogged in front of her, dissolving into the heavy air.

Her thoughts were too loud.
Racing.
Colliding.
Tripping over each other like panicked commuters in her skull.

She felt better today.
Healthier.
Stronger.

Almost too strong — a quiet hum under her muscles she wasn’t used to.

But she didn’t feel like herself.

Not really.

Something else was in there with her.
Something pacing behind her heartbeat.
Something learning her faster than she was learning it.

A presence.

A pattern.

A passenger she hadn’t invited.

Nox pulsed again — slow, gentle, almost… affectionate.

Like a warm hand resting between her shoulder blades.
Like a quiet I’m here.

“Don’t you dare try to be comforting,” Gwen muttered into the wind.

Her voice sounded thin in the wide Gotham street, like it evaporated as soon as it left her lips.

A car honked somewhere behind her.
A siren wailed two blocks over.
A fire escape rattled as a cat darted across it.

Nox pulsed again — calm, steady.
Patient.

She glared down at her own spine like she could scold a symbiote through fabric.

But she didn’t push the feeling away.

Not yet.
Not tonight.

Because as terrifying as the truth was…
as horrifying as it felt to have something alien mapping her nerves…
as terrifying as it was to know she was no longer alone in her own skin—

She wasn’t sure which was worse:

Something crawling under her skin…
—or being completely alone in this universe.

And as the fog curled around her ankles,
as Gotham’s night swallowed the last of the daylight,
as Nox settled into a soft, rhythmic warmth along her spine—

Gwen realized she wasn’t ready to choose between those two terrors.

Not yet.