Shaking
His phone buzzed at lunch and the text from Cindy was five words: My mom invited him back.
Peter stared at the screen. The cafeteria was loud around him, Harry talking about the weekend, Flash throwing a grape across the room at a kid who wasn't paying attention. The grape missed. The kid didn't notice.
He texted back: Coming.
She replied: He's here for dinner. 6pm. My mom is wearing the conference cardigan.
The conference cardigan. The one Mrs. Moon brought out for parent-teacher nights and visits from the Korean church elders and the time Cindy's aunt came from Seoul. Ezekiel Sims was getting the conference cardigan.
Peter made it through the afternoon. He didn't remember what any of his classes covered. The compass sat at a steady four, Cindy's baseline when she was angry at him, which she'd been since the leather smell and the knife emojis and the conversation they still hadn't had. Underneath the anger now there was fear. The compass didn't separate the two but Peter could tell. The anger was old and constant. The fear was today.
He got to Cindy's house at ten to six. Front door open. Voices from the kitchen, the measured cadence of an adult male voice he'd only heard once before, months ago, at a meeting that had ended with Peter telling him to stay away from Cindy Moon.
Ezekiel Sims was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea between his hands. Grey at the temples. Dark suit that fit too well for someone who claimed to run a nonprofit. His posture was relaxed and his hands on the tea were steady and he looked like the kind of person a mother would call back.
Mrs. Moon was at the counter pouring from the ceramic pot that only came out for guests. Conference cardigan buttoned to the collar. She looked relieved when Peter walked in, which was concerning because Peter was fifteen and Ezekiel was a grown man with resources and a facility and a very nice suit and Mrs. Moon was looking at Peter for reassurance.
"Peter. Cindy's friend. Come sit."
Cindy was in the corner chair. Back straight, hands flat on her thighs, recording. She looked at Peter when he walked in and the compass jumped to six.
He sat down.
"Peter." Ezekiel smiled. Warm. "It's good to see you again. I was just telling Mrs. Moon about the research we've been doing."
"Research," Peter said.
"Into the phenomenon your generation is experiencing. The spider-related manifestations." He sipped the tea. "Mrs. Moon has been very gracious in allowing me to explain."
Mrs. Moon set a cup in front of Peter. The tea was too hot and too strong and smelled like the good leaves, the ones that lived in the cabinet above the refrigerator. He didn't drink it.
Ezekiel talked for twenty minutes. Peter sat at the kitchen table and listened and hated how much of it was accurate. The Web of Life, the multiversal structure connecting spider-totems across realities. The Inheritors, an alien species that fed on totemic life-force, targeting spider-avatars specifically. The classifications: the Other, the Scion. The Bride. He described each one with the precision of someone who'd studied the taxonomy for decades. He sounded like a researcher presenting at a conference, and the MCU gave Peter nothing to check it against because Ezekiel Sims wasn't in any movie he'd seen. The cheat sheet had a hole where this man should have been.
Mrs. Moon listened with her hands around her tea. She asked good questions. Cindy sat in the corner and her hands were flat on her thighs and her spine was a straight line.
"Cindy is a particular target," Ezekiel said, looking at Mrs. Moon. "In the totemic classification, she's the Bride. It's a designation that makes her uniquely visible to the Inheritors. She's not just a spider-totem. She's a primary node."
Mrs. Moon's hands tightened on her cup. "What does that mean? In practical terms?"
"It means the people who would want to hurt her aren't local. They're not criminals. They're not human, Mrs. Moon. They're predators from a place most people will never know exists, and they will find her eventually. The question is whether she's prepared when they do."
Cindy's hands were flat on her thighs. Fingers pressed white against the denim.
"I run a facility," Ezekiel said. "Secure. Private. Designed specifically for individuals with Cindy's profile. Training, protection, monitoring. She would be safe."
"For how long?" Cindy said. Her voice was flat.
"As long as necessary."
"So you don't know."
"The timeline depends on several factors-"
"You're talking about locking me in a building."
"I'm talking about keeping you alive."
Mrs. Moon looked at Cindy. Looked at Ezekiel. Looked at her tea. "He's offering to help, Cindy."
"I don't need his help."
The kitchen was quiet. The clock above the stove ticked, analog, the second hand jerking through each beat. Peter could hear it because nobody was talking and the tea was cooling and Cindy's fingers were white on her thighs and Ezekiel was sitting there with his good posture.
"We'll think about it."
Peter said it. The words came out of his mouth and he heard them at the same time Cindy did. Her eyes went from Ezekiel to Peter and the composure cracked. The compass spiked to eight.
Mrs. Moon nodded. "That's sensible. We'll discuss it as a family."
Ezekiel stood. Shook Mrs. Moon's hand. Left a card on the table, cream-colored, embossed. He paused at the door and looked at Peter and his eyes were calm and Peter wanted to break his jaw and couldn't because Mrs. Moon was right there in the conference cardigan and the tea was still on the table. Ezekiel walked out the front door.
The door closed. Mrs. Moon started clearing cups. Cindy stood up and walked to her room. Controlled. Spider-strength held in check.
Peter followed her upstairs. Closed the door.
"Cindy-"
"You sat there and said 'we'll think about it.'"
"I was trying to-"
"Like it's our decision. Like you get a vote." She was standing by the window, back to him, fists at her sides. Silk starting at her fingertips, thin threads forming and dissolving. "My powers. My body. My life. And you sat at my mother's kitchen table and said WE."
"I know-"
"You don't get to 'we' my life, Peter." She turned. Her eyes were wet and furious and the compass was at nine. "You don't get to sit next to the man who wants to lock me in a bunker and say 'we'll think about it' like you're my father or my handler or-" She stopped. Her jaw was tight and the silk was running from her fingers and sticking to the windowsill behind her.
She shoved him. Both hands on his chest, spider-strength behind it, and he went back two steps and his shoulders hit the wall and the plaster cracked behind him. She was shaking. Silk on his shirt where her palms had been.
He caught her wrists. Instinct. His hands around her wrists and she was three inches from his face and the compass was at ten and the bond was screaming through both of them. Her eyes were wet and her breath was hot on his mouth and the silk from her fingertips was sticking to his fingers and her pulse was hammering under his thumbs .
"Don't touch me when I'm mad at you."
Quiet. Shaking.
He let go.
She pulled her wrists back. Looked at the silk stuck to his shirt. To his hands. Her chin was up and her eyes were wet and the compass was still at ten and she was standing in her own bedroom with her fists shaking and the silk dissolving at her fingertips.
She went out the window. One motion, hands on the frame, body through the gap, gone. The curtain blew in the November air and the compass started dropping. Ten to six in the time it took her to reach the next roof.
Peter stood in Cindy's room. Her shampoo. The chemical edge of dissolved silk. The duct tape on her hockey stick unwinding from the handle. A textbook open on the desk with a highlighter uncapped next to it and a bright yellow line that stopped in the middle of a sentence.
The compass was at four.
He peeled the silk threads off his hands. They dissolved between his fingers. He looked at the window and the curtain was still moving in the cold air.
You're a good person, Peter. You just can't stop saving people long enough to let them save themselves.
He didn't know if she'd said that or if his brain had composed it from the look on her face. It sounded like her.
The compass settled at three.
He left through the window. The night was cold and Queens was below him and his wrists had silk residue on them and the pronoun "we" had claimed a decision that wasn't his to claim.