Miles - Webbing and DNA

“Yeah, Miles, I’m fine! Listen, that bird guy you webbed earlier? In East Harlem?”

Mr. O’Flanigan?

“Yeah?” No need to tell Ganke who that really was that was trying to kill us. Ganke would never look at our biology teacher the same way if he knew he tried to peck us to death. “What about him?”

“He got better! For like a split second, I swear it!”

***

“But,” he continues, “I think that means your web might have some… extra potential, if you know what I mean! Some spider webs have antiseptic powers, you know? Like, real spiders. Why not yours? Try webbing people and see if you can reverse some of this damage! Couldn’t hurt, right?”

Wait… how does this make sense? My web can just… what… disable nanotechnology then?

“Ganke, thanks, but I don’t buy it. Antiseptic powers? This bird situation is due to nanobots. What would antiseptic even do to tiny robots?”

“Uh… the webbing seemed to do nothing… by itself. But with your blood on it…”

I sigh.

“Was there anything special about how you got your powers? Something’s giving your DNA some extra oomf.”

I think back to the spider that bit me in my room. It just looked like a regular old spider. Nothing all that special about it.

“You sure it wasn’t a robot spider? Alien spider? Genetically modified spider? …Demon spider?”

“Wait, go back. It was a genetically modified spider!”

The first thing Peter did after I first jumped up onto the ceiling and asked him what the hell was happening to me, and he jumped right up there with me to assure me that what I was going through wasn’t something to be afraid of, was take me to the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility to have my DNA analyzed, and they said I was likely bitten by a spider that was… not normal. They used the words “genetically modified,” which I’d forgotten until now.

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Chapter 14