Chapter 1: A Friendly Visit Turns Dark
The late afternoon sun spilled honey-colored light over Meadowgrove, gilding the rooftops and stretching the shadows of the picket fences. Ben landed with a soft thud in the backyard of 1423 Chestnut, tucking a grocery bag under one arm. He’d changed in an alley two blocks over, leaving the suit in its hidden compartment. Now he was just Ben, in jeans and a worn-out band t-shirt, knocking on his best friend’s back door.
It swung open. “You’re late,” Harry said, but he was smiling. He looked the same as always: thin frame swimming in a collared shirt, glasses perched on his nose, the faint, clean scent of lab soap clinging to him.
“City doesn’t save itself, man. Brought the goods.” Ben held up the bag. “Czech pilsner and those jalapeño chips you pretend you hate.”
“I do hate them. They’re an assault on refined taste buds.” Harry took the bag and stepped aside. “Come in. Lab’s a bit of a mess, but the living room is clean.”
They ended up in the basement anyway. It was their usual routine. The couch was pushed against a wall littered with schematics, and a long workbench dominated the space, cluttered with beakers, soldering irons, and half-dismantled electronics. The hum of a ventilation fan was a constant, soft white noise.
Ben cracked a beer, took a long swig, and collapsed onto the couch. “God, I needed that.Mrs. Henderson’s cat, again. In a tree taller than my apartment building.”
“And you, being you, had to make a whole production of it,” Harry said, sitting in the armchair opposite. He hadn’t opened his beer. He just held it, turning the cool bottle in his hands.
“The kid was crying. What was I supposed to do? Use a ladder?” Ben grinned, flexing his wrist subtly. A single, silken thread shot out, snagging a stray screwdriver from the bench and depositing it in his hand. He spun it around his fingers. “Elegant solutions, Harry. That’s my brand.”
Harry watched the screwdriver spin. Something flickered in his eyes, gone too fast to name. “Elegant.Right. Must be nice.”
There was a weight to the words. Ben paused, setting the tool down. “You okay? You seem… tense. Is it the funding thing for the research?”
“No. No, the funding’s fine. I actually… I’ve made a breakthrough. A real one.” Harry finally opened his beer, took a small sip, but his gaze didn’t waver from Ben. “It’s about you. About your… biology.”
Ben relaxed back into the cushions. This was familiar territory. “What’d you find? Am I secretly a mutant cockroach? Please say no.”
“Nothing so simple.” Harry leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Your system, Ben. The metabolism, the cellular regeneration, the polymer synthesis for the webbing… it’s a perfect, self-sustaining engine. A blueprint. For years, I’ve been trying to reverse-engineer it. To find the catalyst that could jump-start a similar process in a normal human physiology.”
A prickle of unease crawled up Ben’s spine. He took another drink to wash it down. “Harry, we’ve talked about this. That kind of power… it’s not just science. It’s a burden. You don’t want this.”
“You don’t get to decide what I want!” The words were sharp, sudden. Harry took a breath, visibly forcing calm. “Sorry. It’s just… frustrating. Watching you have it all. The strength, the purpose, the glory. While I sit down here, in the dim light, just patching you up. Giving you advice. The brilliant, invisible friend.”
Ben sat up, the beer forgotten on the floor.“Hey. That’s not fair. You’re my best friend. You’re the only one who knows. You’re not invisible to me.”
“Aren’t I?” Harry stood, paced to the workbench, his back turned. “Everything you are… it could have been mine. Should have been mine. We were in that lab together, Ben. The accident that gave you these gifts… it was my theory.My setup. You just happened to be standing closer.”
The air in the basement cooled. The hum of the fan seemed louder. Ben felt a lightness in his head, a tingling in his limbs that wasn’t right. He tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate. They were heavy, numb. “Harry… what did…”
“Catalyst, Ben.” Harry turned around. His face was calm, placid, but his eyes were lit with a cold, intellectual fire. “The final component. It requires a massive, concentrated dose of your essence. Your unique biological signature. Not just blood. Something far more… potent. Far more you.”
The room tilted. Ben’s vision swam. He looked at the bottle at his feet, the golden liquid inside. “You drugged me.”
“A mild paralytic. It won’t hurt. It just keeps you still. Keeps you honest.” Harry walked over, and with a surprising, wiry strength, hauled Ben upright from the couch. Ben’s body was a limp, leaden thing. He could feel his fingers, his toes, but moving them was like trying to command stone.
Harry dragged him across the room to a heavy, metal-framed chair Ben had never noticed before, bolted to the floor near the bench. He propped Ben into it, securing his wrists and ankles with thick nylon straps. The process was clinical, efficient.
The panic hit then, cold and sharp, cutting through the fog of the drug. “Harry, stop this. This isn’t you. Let me go, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”
“I can’t forget.” Harry crouched in front of him, adjusting the strap on Ben’s right wrist. His touch was deliberate. “I’ve devoted my life to this moment. You call it a burden. I see it as evolution.” He stood, walked to the bench, and returned with a syringe and a small vial. He inserted the needle, drew a clear liquid. “This will counteract the paralytic partially. You’ll regain somatic sensation. Motor control will remain inhibited. I need you… responsive.”
He injected it into Ben’s neck. A burn, then a flood of feeling rushed back—the cool air on his skin, the bite of the straps, the grain of the metal under his thighs. He could feel everything. But he still couldn’t move.
“Good.” Harry pulled up a stool and sat directly in front of him. He reached out, his fingers deftly undoing the button of Ben’ not his. He was naked from the waist down. The cool basement air kissed his skin.
Ben’s breath hitched, a mix of terror and raw, visceral confusion. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Harvesting.” The word was flat, precise. Harry’s hand, cool and dry, closed around him. Ben flinched, a full-body spasm he couldn’t control. “Your neuro-chemical profile during arousal is unique. The production of certain proteins spikes exponentially. That’s the catalyst. That’s what I need.”
“Harvesting?” Ben asks, the word tasting foul in his mouth. His mind raced, scrambling over the cold, clinical term. It sounded like something from one of Harry’s old textbooks, not a thing you did to your best friend while he was tied to a chair in a suburban basement.
“Yes.” Harry’s grip tightened, not painfully, but with a firm, proprietorial certainty that made Ben’s stomach lurch. “The preliminary formula is in my system. It’s inert.Waiting. Your… climax. The unique biochemical cascade that accompanies it… that’s the trigger. The spark for the engine.”
He began to move his hand, a slow, deliberate stroke. Ben shuddered, a wave of unwanted sensation crashing through him. It was a violation so profound it short-circuited his thoughts. This was Harry. Harry, who’d stitched up his wounds after the Silvercrest building collapse. Harry, who brought him soup when he had the flu. This pale, clever man with his glasses and his quiet jokes.
“Stop.” The word came out ragged.“Harry, please. You’re my friend. Don’t do this.”
“I am your friend.” Harry’s voice was low, intense, his eyes magnified behind the lenses. He didn’t stop his methodical motion. “I’m giving you a purpose greater than catching cats or thugs in alleyways. You’ll be part of a new genesis. Your gift won’t die with you. It will live in me. We’ll be… brothers. Truly.”
The hypocrisy was breathtaking. Ben felt a hot surge of anger, cutting through the humiliation. “This isn’t brotherhood. This is theft. You’re a fucking thief.”
A flicker of irritation crossed Harry’s face. His rhythm stuttered for a second. “Semantics. All great advancements require sacrifice. Yours just happens to be… enjoyable.”
It wasn’t. It was a grotesque pantomime. Ben’s body, trained to peak performance, was traitorously responsive. His skin was hypersensitive, every nerve ending singing a discordant tune of panic and forced arousal. He clenched his jaw, trying to focus past the feeling, to find the core of his strength. He strained against the nylon straps. They bit deep into his flesh, unyielding. His powers were muscular, metabolic. He couldn’t sweat webs without the flexion, the specific tendon tension. Strapped flat, he was just a man.
“You won’t get away with this,” Ben gritted out, his breathing becoming unsteady.
“I already am.” Harry’s other hand came up, not to harm, but to trace a line across Ben’s abdomen, following the defined muscle. “Your physiology is a marvel.So efficient. So… productive. Do you know the yield I’m expecting? It’s extraordinary.”
The touch was worse than a blow. It was intimate.It was studying. Ben threw his head back against the cold metal of the chair, staring at the exposed ceiling joists and the humming ventilation duct. He sought a flaw, a crack, anything. His eyes stung.Not from pain. From a betrayal so complete it felt like the floor of his world had given way.
Harry leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Think of it, Ben.No more secrets between us. No more you having to bear it alone. I’ll understand.Completely. I’ll know what it feels like to have this power coursing through me.” His hand worked faster now, a ruthless, practiced efficiency. “We can share everything.”
The manipulation was as precise as his science. It probed at Ben’s loneliness, the secret weight he carried every day. It offered a twisted version of the connection he’d always craved. For a dizzying second, the logic seemed to warp, to almost make sense. That was the true horror.
“That’s not sharing,” Ben gasped, fighting the building pressure in his core, a response he desperately didn’t want. “That’s you taking. You’re not doing this with me. You’re doing it to me.”
Harry didn’t answer. His focus was absolute, his gaze fixed on his task. He was a technician at the final, critical stage of an experiment. Ben could see the feverish anticipation in his eyes, the hungry avarice that had replaced friendship.
Ben’s body tightened, a coil winding toward a snap he couldn’t allow. He tried to think of cold things, of empty spaces, of the feeling after a long fight when every muscle ached and he just wanted silence.
It was no use.
His hips gave a tiny, involuntary jerk against the straps. A low groan escaped him, choked with shame. He was close. So close.Harry saw it. A small, triumphant smile touched his lips. “There it is.Perfect. Now, Ben. Give it to me.”
He stroked faster, his thumb sweeping over the head with exacting pressure. Ben’s vision whited out at the edges. The climax gathered, a tidal wave of intense, degrading release.
And then Harry stopped.
His hand froze. He pulled it away completely, leaving Ben achingly, brutally on the edge. The sudden absence was a physical shock. Ben cried out, a raw, ragged sound that echoed in the chemical-scented air. His whole body shuddered, straining against the straps, desperate for a conclusion that had just been snatched away.
He slumped, panting, sweat beading on his forehead. The ache was deep, a throbbing pain of unfinished business that clouded his thoughts with foggy, animal frustration.
Harry stood, wiping his hand on a clean white cloth from the bench. He looked down at Ben with the cool assessment of a curator examining a prized specimen. “Good.Very good. The preliminary neuro-chemical spike is exactly what the formula needs for phase one integration. The pain, the frustration… it heightens the potency. Makes the final harvest purer.”
He walked to the bench, picked up a small, wicked-looking device with a glass reservoir at its base. It looked like a hybrid of a syringe and a pump.
Ben’s breath hitched. His mind, fuzzy with adrenaline and denied release, finally focused on the true horror. Harvesting wasn’t a metaphor. It was literal.
Harry turned, the device gleaming dully under the workbench lights. He approached the chair, his shadow falling over Ben.
“The foundation is set,” Harry said, his voice calm, almost gentle. “Now, we cultivate.”
He knelt.