What if…The CEO Defeated Spider-Man 2099? – 2
(a Spider-Man fan fic)

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2099

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Mary Jane Watson opened her eyes slowly. It took a moment for her vision to clear, for everything to come into focus. She found herself staring at a domed ceiling supported by dozens of thick, steel beams and titanium buttresses. The ceiling glimmered and sparked. Mary Jane almost thought she could see the night sky – a partially cloudy sea of diamond stars – but then she blinked and it was gone. Her head was aching; she must be imagining things.

Beneath her, the floor was cold and hard. She wiggled her fingers and toes; they tingled. At least she hadn't broken her neck.

She closed her eyes a moment – her brain piecing together what had happened.

She remembered going to Alchemax's head office. Peter worked there – in the genetics department under Dr. Otto Octavius. She'd spoken to him earlier that evening; they had a date.

When she'd gone to meet him, Peter wasn't there. Peter was always late and Mary Jane knew better than to worry; Peter Parker was Spider-Man – she'd always known. She feigned ignorance to avoid suspicion, but she'd come to expect tardiness and cancellations, rain cheques and unexplained absences. It irritated her, but she understood his commitment, his responsibility, and tried not to give him a hard time too often.

Tonight, though, something had bothered her; an overwhelming sense of dread that she couldn't quite explain. A voice in her head told her to call him. She did. There had been no answer. She tried again five times with the same results. It gnawed at her for a while – the feeling that something was wrong; Peter was in trouble and if she didn't do something, she may never see him again.

Their relationship had gotten off to a rocky start and Mary Jane knew she was to blame. They hadn't been eager on meeting – either of them – and although Peter had been attracted to Gwen Stacy at the same time, it was Mary Jane's own devil-may-care attitude that finally pushed him into her arms.

The fact was, Mary Jane was afraid. She'd seen – first hand – what commitment, what marriage, could do to a man. She didn't want to become her mother and marry her father.

Although it took time – and a lot of self-discovery – Mary Jane realized that Peter was not her father; and Peter had been through much worse. In fact, Peter was everything her father wasn't. And unlike Flash, Harry or the other men she'd dated, Peter complimented her quite nicely.

To the world, as Peter Parker, he was a dedicated and kind man with an enormous heart and more than a little chip on his shoulder. As Spider-Man, he was confident, noble, strong and witty. To Mary Jane, he was all of these things; a blend of Peter Parker and Spider-Man. And she was just Mary Jane. There was no need for masks, no need to pretend.

When Mary Jane needed him, he was there. He was her friend, her saviour, her support. When she was captured, he would free her. When she fell, he would catch her. And when she had a bad day, he would crack a joke to make her smile.

She loved him.

Although it was after hours, Peter had given her his password – specifically for nights like this when he was working late and they'd arranged to meet. When she didn't find Peter in his office, she decided to try the genetics lab. She was under no assumptions that she'd simply be allowed to walk into the genetics lab; even with a password. Any major corporation knew to hide the skeletons in their closet and Alchemax was a vault. Almost anywhere and everywhere that wasn't the lobby, private offices or the rest room was armed with state-of-the-art security systems – upgraded annually – including DNA and retinal scans, firewalls, passwords, vocal recognition and armed, armoured security personal.

Mary Jane knew she'd have to either bypass security – the hard way – or attempt to convince security to let her in – the harder way.

It hadn't come to that.

Mary Jane was attacked by enormous, fleshy, metal tentacles on her way to the genetics lab. They chased her, manipulated her into boarding an elevator in a damaged shaft. An explosion shook the entire structure and those tentacles caused the cables to snap. The elevator began to free fall and Mary Jane was sure she was going to die.

She hadn't, though; she was rescued by a man who called himself Spider-Man. He certainly looked the part; blue and red spandex – but electrically charged – an expressionless mask with large, menacing eyes.

It wasn't Peter; Mary Jane knew immediately. This Spider-Man was fuller and taller than Peter; large, thick muscles, powerful thighs. Peter had always been slim, but strong.

He'd never told her his name or where exactly Peter was – just that he was speaking with him at the very moment he'd saved her. She was weak, so he'd carried her to solid ground – someplace safe – and assured her she was safe now. When she asked about Peter, he told her not to worry – he would handle everything; Peter would be all right.

Mary Jane wanted to believe him, but that nagging feeling hadn't gone away and after the Spider-Man left, she'd resumed her search. She knew the Spider-Man knew where Peter was, so she'd followed him as best she could, making a conscious decision to avoid any more elevators.

At times, she lost him. He'd slip through an air vent or run through a door, and she was forced to find another way around. It hadn't been too difficult. Alchemax security was as tight as ever – but whatever the Spider-Man was doing had caused emergency protocols and technological malfunctions.

Eventually she followed him to the 66th floor, and into a room with a strange sort of gateway; metallic arches surrounding a bright, swirling mass of energy. The Spider-Man vanished into the void, and after a moment, Mary Jane ran through as well.

The next thing she knew, she was here.

The question was: Where was here, exactly? And – more importantly – where was Peter?

Every muscle in Mary Jane's body screamed as she sat up. She felt as though she'd just been run over by a jet plane. She looked around. She was in a circular, empty room. Everything was made of the same steel and titanium as the ceiling's support structures. At four perpendicular points of the room, enormous turbines generated a crystalline, honey-comb-shaped, translucent force field.

And there, at the far end of the room was another gateway, churning the same electrical energy as the gateway she'd come through. In fact, now that she took the time to consider it, the room looked exactly the same as well.

No. It didn't; not exactly. Although Alchemax's technology was always developing, always upgrading, the room seemed newer – somehow – than when she'd lost consciousness.

What was going on?

Mary Jane stood up – staggering. She was still weak from what'd happened earlier. Once her vision focused again and she'd retained a sense of balance, she left the room.

The hallway that led away from the room and branched off into dozens of laboratories and private offices seemed new as well. It was almost as though someone had renovated the entire building in the few minutes she'd blacked out.

Mary Jane tried to come up with some sort of logical explanation, but ever since Peter had come into her life, things had been anything but logical and she hated to admit it but her thoughts kept returning to three possibilities: A) She'd never actually passed through the gateway at all and she'd simply passed out due to the emotional strain of almost dying – but that didn't explain the sudden change in décor. B) She was going insane and all of this was simply her wild imagination – but she didn't like the thought of that. Or c) She had passed through the gateway and was currently in some sort of alternate dimension; a place where everything was the same, but at the same time, different.

Although she had a tendency to stop listening, Mary Jane remembered Peter mentioning something about alternate dimensions; that some scientists believed there were more than three dimensions – that there were, in fact, thousands of parallel universes.

Mary Jane's head ached and she leaned against an air vent for support. The circulating air was cool and dried the fever from her brow.

Suddenly, the wall shook and the grill vanished. The air stream disappeared. Suddenly, Mary Jane was leaning against a cool, glass window, staring out at the dark cityscape of tall buildings and speeding cars, hundreds of feet above the ground.

She definitely wasn't imagining things.

"Peter!" she screamed and staggered away from the window.

The laboratory and office doors slid open as though on cue with a simultaneous hiss of air. A small army of security personal flooded out. The officers surrounded Mary Jane with their weapons raised; assault rifles pointed at her breast and forehead and electric batons sizzling with charged energy.

"Sir," stated one officer who looked to be in charge. "The target has been apprehended."

There was a moment of deadly silence - a moment Mary Jane feared would be followed by an order of execution - and then Mary Jane could just barely hear a deep voice speak from the communicator inside the officer's helmet.

"Thank you. Please escort Ms. Watson to my office. Ensure that she does not escape, but do not use force."

"Sir?"

"Ms. Watson is not a threat. If I find that she has been harmed – in any way - I will ensure that every officer in that squad will wish they'd never been born. Do I make myself clear?"

The officer swallowed – visibly shaken. Whoever he was speaking to was a man of great power; a man who did not make idle threats. "Yes, Sir."

The officer gestured to Mary Jane with the end of his gun but withdrew his finger from the trigger. The other officers lowered their weapons. Two men took her roughly by the arms.

"Come along, Ms. Watson," the officer said. "The CEO would like to speak with you."

Mary Jane gave in without a fight. She knew that even with the CEO's strict order, she hadn't any other choice. She couldn't fight all of these men, and even if she could, she had nowhere to go. She didn't even know where she was.

She felt her eyes fill with hot tears and squeezed them shut; wishing Peter was around to save her.

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Disclaimer: Spider-Man and all its related characters belong to Stan Lee, Steve Dikto, Marvel and all other respected creators.

Author's Notes: First of all, thank you for all the lovely reviews. I have been out of the Marvel Comics fandom since 2008 – just prior to the "One More Day" arc – so I'm still learning about all of the changes.

Since Spider-Man: The Edge of Time has a few inconsistencies (The future Peter Parker's comment about saving Captain and Gwen Stacy – I can't remember where he says it, but I definitely remembering him saying it – obviously means that it is supposed to occur in the comic universe and I believe that Anti-Venom appeared after "One More Day"; however, Peter Parker is obviously still involved with Mary Jane Watson) I'm setting this fan fiction in a time where the Amazing Spider-Man and Mary Jane are still just dating, but the future Peter Parker has already lived through their marriage, the Civil War and "One More Day".

There are still some continuity errors, but I'll try to explain them as best I can – I'm not even going to touch the Anti-Venom thing.