162. Containment Protocol (Patreon)

Miguel POV:

The world was pain, pressure and metal.

My head slammed against the deck as an armored fist drove into my ribs, the servos whining like an angry machine god. My talons sparked against the floor when I tried to rise but a second blow from Iron Man’s gauntlet sent me sprawling again, denting the reinforced wall of the Helicarrier control deck.

“Stay down, Empanada Cullen!” Tony’s voice came through the modulated helmet, half sarcasm, half frustration. “You’re lucky Banner’s on a leash right now. He’s been dying to add ‘Spider purée’ to his résumé.”

A roar shook the air as Hulk stepped forward, eyes burning with feral anger. The ship itself seemed to groan under his weight.

Frank Castle stood nearby, his MJOLNIR Mk.VII armor gleaming gunmetal black under the flashing alarms, a heavy pulse rifle aimed dead center at my chest.

“Try another lunge,” Frank said evenly, voice filtered through the armor’s comm system. “See what happens.”

I spat blood onto the floor, my chest heaving. Mask flickered between opacity and transparency, revealing my furious eyes beneath. “You idiots don’t understand...” I growled, clutching my side. “You think you’re saving worlds but you’re playing with a dimensional nuke! If you drain that thing, this entire universe could destabilize!”

Tony scoffed. “Oh, I love that word. Every interdimensional doomsayer uses it right before we win.”

“You think this is a joke, Stark?!” I barked, struggling against the binding field Tony had projected around me. The energy flared as I strained, claws scraping, muscles trembling. “The Spot’s not a creature anymore. He’s a dimensional singularity barely held together by negative quantum tension! You pull that string, and 1610 unravels from the inside out!”

“Cute theory,” Hank replied from behind the transparent containment wall. “Except Kingpin's Collider mess and Spot's power trip through the multiverse already weakened the barriers between dimensions. We’re not unravelling realities. We’re stabilizing it.”

“Stablizing?” I hissed. “You’re gambling on math you barely understand!”

Frank took a step closer, rifle humming with power. “Enough talk. Orders were clear. Nonlethal but decisive.”

Tony lifted a hand toward him, stopping him. “No. Let him scream a bit longer. The more he panics, the more I’m convinced Pete was right about him.”

My snarl twisted into disbelief. “Right? RIGHT? You’re talking about a man who’s weaponizing realities...”

Hulk’s roar cut me off.

The vibration of that one roar rippled through the deck like thunder. I froze as the green giant loomed closer, nostrils flaring.

“You talk too much,” Hulk said flatly and with a sudden backhand, he sent me crashing through the control table and into the far bulkhead.

I slumped, suit flickering and blood at my lip but my voice still burned with rage.

“You’re dooming everyone.” I rasped. “You’re just too blind to see it.”

The forcefield shimmered around me again but this time to protect me from the Hulk's rage. Stark reinforcing the stasis cage.

Frank stepped forward, voice lower now. “And you’re too arrogant to admit that maybe just maybe Parker’s the only one seeing the full board.”

My laugh came sharp and bitter. “Then God help you all.”

---

The Helicarrier trembled. Not from engines or weapon fire but from the fabric of space itself twisting.

The air turned to glass. Light bent in impossible curves. The very color of reality fractured into ribbons as the Spot screamed somewhere below, his voice echoing through dimensions.

The viewports showed Manhattan shifting. Skyscrapers flickering between frames, gravity inverting for split seconds before stabilizing again. Quantum echoes rippled through the clouds. Every electronic system wailed in dissonance.

Banner was back in his regular form, eyes widened. “Dimensional field’s dropping!”

“The space time fabric of 1610 overloading!” Tony barked, slamming holographic keys in midair. “We’re getting bleed-through from the wall! Detabilisation has begun.”

---

Peter Parker POV — The Containment

The storm above New York was black lightning and broken geometry.

War Pattern Helios Mk.II descended through the chaos, thrusters screaming against the pull of a gravity that wasn’t meant to exist. Below him, The Spot writhed inside the shimmering hexagonal cage of the Dimensional Dampener Emitter — a living paradox, tearing and reforming in loops of dark energy. His body was no longer flesh but a constellation of holes, each one a screaming wound into another world.

Opposite him, on the roof of a collapsing building, stood Miles Morales — or rather, his hardlight double, glowing in scarlet and black, piloted remotely by Scarred Peter from another universe.

The hologram spoke with Miles’s voice, calm but resolute.

“Guess you don’t stop, huh, Spot?”

The creature’s answer was a shriek that wasn’t sound it was spatial geometry tearing. “You took everything from me! Every world you fix, another dies!”

The Helios armor touched down with a seismic crash beside the hologram, glowing blue eyes locking onto the maelstrom within the cage. Peter’s voice came through the storm, steady, commanding.

“Enough,” He said. “Containment Protocol: Phase Three.”

Clanker’s voice chimed in his ear. “Acknowledged. Quantum dampeners charging. Seventy-five percent.”

Spot screamed again, flinging rings of black through the cage’s edges. Each one distorted space like ripples through liquid air. The holographic Miles deflected one, dispersing into static before reforming mid-leap.

“Peter!” Scarred Peter’s voice came through the comms, strained. “He’s breaking the cage integrity!”

“Hold him steady,” replied Peter. “Redirect power from the auxiliary core to the emitter field. Full surge on my mark.”

Miles’s hologram charged, throwing a punch that tore through a black portal and emerged behind the Spot, slamming into his fractured form. The impact flared white-blue, the energy crackling through the cage.

Peter stepped forward, armor plates shifting like interlocking blades.

“Listen to me, Jonathan,” He said. “You’re tearing yourself apart. This isn’t revenge anymore. It’s entropy.”

The Spot’s reply came through static and anguish. “You… you made me this! You and your machines! You think you can cage a singularity?”

Peter’s gaze was steel. “Not yet. But I can stop it from consuming another home.”

He raised his hand. The forearm modules unfolded, forming a glowing gauntlet interface. “All systems — full inversion sequence.”

The cage erupted in blue fire. The Spot screamed as his black orifices began to collapse inward, pulled into the singular core of the dampener. Each fragment of his body was sucked into itself — an implosion of nightmares.

The hardlight Miles raised his arm to shield his face as the implosion consumed the rooftop. Wind roared. Reality blurred. And then — silence.

When the light faded, all that remained was Peter — standing alone amid drifting ash, holding a compact cube no larger than a heart. Inside, dark light swirled, muted and furious.

Clanker’s voice broke the quiet. “Containment complete. Dimensional energy stable.”

Peter exhaled. Slowly. The armor’s glow dimmed to a soft blue.

Scarred Peter’s voice came faintly through comms. “He’s… gone?”

Peter looked down at the cube, eyes reflecting its faint, terrible light.

“No,” he said softly. “Just sleeping.”

The holographic Miles deactivated, fading into amber particles that dissolved into the wind. The city below shimmered with residual dimensional cracks, like veins of broken glass across the sky.

Peter turned, the cube cradled in his armored hand, and began to walk through the rain.

Above him, the Helicarrier’s shadow cut across the moon — silent, colossal, and burdened by the weight of what had just been done.