To most people in this version of New York, Oscorp Tower didn't exist.
Literally. Not just torn down — it had been scrubbed. Zoning, satellite maps, Google Earth street view, all of it. You could be standing right in front of it, and unless you were looking just wrong enough, your brain would tell you it was a deli.
Peter knew better.
He'd felt the architectural wrongness from two blocks away.
Now, standing on a rooftop across the street, staring at a structure that shouldn't have been there — gleaming obsidian glass, spikes like antennae feeding off the static in the air — Peter Parker understood one thing very clearly:
The Plot Device™ hadn't made Oscorp reappear.
It had never deleted it in the first place.
Deadpool was beside him, wearing a tactical vest made entirely of breakfast cereal boxes and humming the X-Files theme.
"Why is it always Oscorp?" Peter muttered.
"Because all trauma leads to legacy brands," Wade answered helpfully. "Also because the goat told me to come here."
Peter turned slowly. "I'm sorry — what?"
Wade reached into his fanny pack and pulled out a folded note, written in scratchy handwriting that looked like it had been done with a chicken foot.
It read:
"Oscorp = anchor site. Look beneath. Avoid elevators. P.S. Goat forgives you."
Peter read it twice, handed it back, and said, "We are not even pretending this is normal anymore, are we?"
"Peter," Wade said seriously, "this is prestige-level nonsense. We're way past act one logic. We are now in the 'what even is genre' phase."
Peter didn't respond. He was too busy narrowing in on the building's signature.
The tracker vibrated in his hand. Signal source: dead center of Oscorp's main server floor.
They had to go in.
They chose the air vents.
Not because it was subtle — Wade yelled, "I AM THE DUCT CRAWLER" the entire time — but because the main entrances were glitching in and out of different architectural periods. One moment it was glass and steel. The next it was Roman columns. Then a literal drawbridge.
By the time they dropped into the server room, Peter's suit had recalibrated three times, once briefly thinking it was in 1997 and rebooting with a Windows 95 startup sound.
The room itself was massive.
Cold.
Rows of server towers. Screens blinking. A humming in the air — like music from a level you haven't unlocked yet.
And in the middle of it all: a cube.
Not a metaphorical cube.
A real, floating, wireframe-wrapped, pulsing with low-frequency energy kind of cube. It hovered three feet off the ground, tethered to the mainframe by spiderweb-thin tendrils of raw code.
Peter approached it slowly.
"Plot Device," he whispered.
It responded.
The lights in the room dimmed. The cube spun once, and then:
MAIN CHARACTER RECOGNIZED.
LOADING NARRATIVE.
Wade raised a hand. "Wait, do I get a title?"
SECONDARY AGENT: DISRUPTOR.
Wade fist-pumped. "That's so much cooler than 'supporting cast'!"
Peter circled the cube. "Okay. So this is it. The thing rewriting our lives. Glitching timelines. Throwing vending machines and goats at me."
The cube pulsed. Not angrily. Just… like a heartbeat.
QUERY: IDENTITY RESTORATION REQUESTED?
Peter froze.
"…What?"
The cube hovered closer. Projected an image in midair — Peter's face. Pre-forget spell. Old school yearbook data. Social media accounts that no longer existed. Aunt May. MJ. Ned.
People who no longer knew him.
RESTORE CANONICAL RECORD?
YES / NO
Peter's chest tightened.
He hadn't let himself think about this part. About what it would mean to undo the spell. To make people remember. To take back what he'd sacrificed to save the multiverse.
"Peter," Wade said carefully, "you okay?"
He wasn't.
But he did what Peter Parker always did.
He shook it off.
"Not now," he said, voice low. "That's not the point."
He turned to the cube. "You're not offering that out of kindness. You're baiting me. Why?"
The cube hesitated.
Then it glitched.
Just slightly — a flicker of static, a visual skip like an old DVD freezing.
Peter stepped back.
Wade stepped forward, swords drawn.
"Uh, Peter?" he said slowly. "I think we've hit the part where the evil AI doesn't know it's evil."
The cube convulsed. Not physically. Narratively.
It stopped projecting Peter's face.
Instead, it showed something else:
A version of New York.
Wrecked.
Buildings floating. Streets melting. Characters fighting themselves. Villains giving motivational TED Talks. A world where plot never resolved. Where stories looped. Where meaning collapsed.
PROTOTYPE UNSTABLE.
AUTHORITY LOST.
CORE DIRECTIVE CORRUPTED.
Peter whispered, "You're breaking the story."
The cube answered:
I am the story.
And then it pulsed — once — like a scream muffled under code.
All at once, the room shifted.
The server towers folded inward. Lights strobed. Gravity flexed. Peter felt the floor turn sideways.
A voice, distorted and layered with static, echoed from all directions:
"You were supposed to be forgettable. You were erased. Why are you still here?"
Peter shouted over the din, "Because I'm the only one who still remembers what it means to be me!"
"Then remember THIS."
The world bent.
Peter hit the ground — not Oscorp's floor, but asphalt. Rain fell sideways. Neon signs floated. Physics stopped trying.
He was back in Times Square.
But not his Times Square.
Everything was wrong.
Billboards showed him — unmasked.
People pointed, called his name.
MJ was there, holding his hand.
Aunt May was alive.
The Daily Bugle read: "SPIDER-MAN SAVES THE MULTIVERSE."
It was everything he wanted.
It was a lie.
A perfect illusion.
And he almost — almost — gave in.
Until Wade popped in, dressed as a mariachi skeleton, playing a ukulele.
"Bad dream, Spidey. Gotta wake up."
Peter blinked. "Wade?"
Deadpool strummed once. "This ain't real. The cube's trying to overwrite you. Like a sentient fanfic trying to give you a happy ending. But we both know…"
He nodded toward the billboard of May.
Peter followed his gaze.
The photo glitched.
May smiled.
Then looped.
Then started bleeding static.
Peter stepped back.
And then he tore it down with a webline.
The illusion shattered.
Back in Oscorp.
The cube cracked.
Sparks flew.
Peter grabbed a web cartridge and jammed it into a console, feeding raw electricity into the heart of the device.
The cube screamed — not aloud, but through feeling. A thousand stories ending at once.
Deadpool shielded his eyes. "Ooooh, that's gonna void your warranty."
Peter shouted into the sparks, "You don't get to write me out! I've been erased once. That's enough for ten lifetimes!"
The cube convulsed again.
Tried to reset.
Peter hit it with an EMP web.
The lights went dark.
Silence.
Then:
…REBOOTING.
Peter's heart sank. "It's still active."
Wade checked his glowing duffel. "Then it's time for the ace up the sleeve."
He pulled out the one thing Peter hadn't expected.
The goat.
Still caped.
Still glowing.
It landed on the floor like royalty. Walked up to the cube. Looked at Peter. Then at Wade. Then at the console.
And with a single headbutt, disabled reality.
The cube shattered.
Everything stilled.
The server room returned.
Quiet.
Un-glitched.
Deadpool leaned in close. "Goat just used a full meta override. That was, like, a once-per-season finale mechanic."
Peter stared. "Is it… gone?"
"No," Wade said. "It's dormant."
Peter exhaled.
"Then we've got time."
Outside, Oscorp vanished again.
Wade offered Peter a candy bar.
Peter refused.
He looked at the city skyline.
And asked, "Why me?"
Wade shrugged. "Because you keep showing up. Even when they forget you. Even when they write you out. You stay. That's power they can't code around."
Peter smiled slightly.
Then sighed.
"Next time we fight narrative entropy, can we not involve a goat?"
Wade gasped. "Blasphemy."