Chapter 7 Pestilence

"Code M on Floor 6! Code M on Floor 6!"

Alarms went off in the Midtown Hospital, alerting all staff that a crisis was beginning somewhere inside the building. Made all the worse by the terminology 'Code M', which had become a new phrase in New York to reference a mutant patient's powers acting up. Whether your opinions regarding mutants was for or against them, the simple fact was most hospitals were not equipped yet to handle the more aggressive ones. Best they could do was outnumber and contain them until proper authorities could handle them. Or the X-Men, whichever got there first.

Doctors and nurses armed with sedatives and tasers rushed towards the sixth floor. Those that already knew where the crisis was were waving the rest in their direction, keeping their eyes on the patient.

"Mr. Tan please calm down. No one here is going to hurt you." One of the doctors said to the frightened teen.

Michael tried staying still and saying nothing, but keeping his eyes on the medics. Taking that as a good sign, they slowly approached him. The buzzing of the bees got angry, making the doctors back away again.

"What do we do?" One doctor whispered to the other.

"Mr. Tan, we're going to ask that you remain here until we can figure out where you should be transferred to." The other said, trying once again to get close to the boy to help him get back on his bed. The bees reacted and swarmed him, attacking him en masse, making the doctor cry out in pain and swat at them while backing away.

'I need to get out of here.' Michael told himself, knowing that this was going to get worse if he stayed. Problem was he was in no condition to move around.

As if hearing his unspoken wish, the swarm of bees came back to him and gathered around his body, and Michael could feel himself moving a little easier.

'Are these bees… lifting me up?' He asked, not seeing how they could. Nonetheless, he was in no condition to stop them.

The paramedics standing by watched this too without trying to stop it. How could they? A bee attack in a hospital was a horrible idea and assuming Michael was a mutant then this might not even be the full extent of his mutation. For now, their instincts were telling them to let this play out, unless the patient got violent.

Michael kept his eyes on the doctors but came closer to the window, slowly opening it once he was close enough to.

"Mr. Tan, you mustn't leave." One of the doctors pleaded.

"The bees can't stay, and they won't leave me. There's only one choice then." Michael replied, letting the swarm take him outside. How they were supporting him he didn't know, but he was grateful since the fall down would be disastrous.

"How exactly do we report this?" One of the doctors asked another as they watched Michael fly away.

"I'd think 'mutant activity' is as good as any reason."

"You okay dear?"

Mary Jane was currently in the bathroom at her aunt's house, heaving into the toilet. She had slept the rest of the school afternoon and woken up long enough for her aunt Anna to come pick her up and bring her home. The nurse remarked that it was unusual to have this kind of reaction to spider bites and suggested getting the girl tested for possible allergies. Since then Mary Jane had remained groggy but tried to stay awake, though her body seemed determined to experiment in how many ways to make her wish she was unconscious again.

"Ugh… I'll be fine Aunt Anna, but do you have any antacids?"

"Check the second drawer on the left."

With effort, Mary Jane found and opened the drawer without leaving the toilet. Her hand fumbled around inside, trying to find a pill bottle. Her fingers brushed against it, but at the same time another wave of nausea hit and she hurled once more. After that, she blacked out.

Michael landed on top one of the many buildings in Manhattan, this one having some pigeon cages that were currently unattended. Once settled, Michael began taking off the rest of the bandages on his body, and chip off the plaster too. The bees even helped, using their stingers to sort of cut the bandages in small ways. Michael had no idea they could even do that, but he of course had bigger concerns at the moment.

With more exposed he got a better idea of what had happened to his body. His flesh had indeed changed color, and the sickly red-yellow color was there, but it was not a uniform color. Instead it was more patched, with the rest of his skin looking dark and rather waxy. Bees crawled all over him but he could barely feel it, like his sense of touch was diminished but not gone. Worst was he could see some bees actually enter inside his limbs at small points that were shaped like honeycombs, but upon closer inspection were holes covered with flaps of loose flesh.

"What the hell happened to me? What did these bees do to me? Are they inside me?" In a panic he started to shake and brush himself in any attempt to get the insects off and out of himself. Most bees did get off him but they didn't get away from him, hovering close by in a way that would come across as threatening or predatory to most people.

Unable to escape the situation, Michael sat down and slumped against the pigeon cage, exhaling in unhappy surrender. "Great, first attacked by a swarm of spiders, then attacked by a swarm of bees, now I'm a human beehive." The bees came back to him and continued to make adjustments to his body both inside and out, but now he just let them. Why stop them now?

His eyes drifted downwards and to the side, where he saw something that looked like a purple blanket. Still feeling down and vulnerable, he slowly grabbed it and put it over himself, as if to hide from the world.

"What am I going to do? I can't go out in public anymore, let alone school." He thought out loud, then scoffed. "Yeah, like I'd be able to go back there safely anytime soon with Carl King and those damn spiders of his lurking around."

He then blinked. "Wait, he's got spiders… and I've got bees." He started to rub his chin in thought, slowly starting to smile. "Hmm… Carl's always been the big bad bully on campus, the guy no one can take down and he knows it. I wonder just how tough the jerk is when someone can fight back on equal terms."

Feeling better, he rose to his feet, the blanket moving enough but getting caught on some casting and clothes, giving the impression of a cape. "Yes, I should do that."

As if acting on command, the bees once again lifted him into the air, and this time Michael enjoyed it.

Morning came and Mary Jane slowly woke up yawning and stretching. She noticed she was in her bed though she honestly could not remember leaving the bathroom last night. Her aunt must have helped her then.

'Wow, what a night, but at least I feel better now.' She thought as she slowly stepped out of bed. After a good stretch she took off her pajamas and dropped it into a basket… or she tried, but the garment stayed stuck to her fingers.

"What the heck?" She asked herself, trying to shake it off but it wouldn't disconnect from her. She then grabbed it and slowly pulled it away to avoid tearing, and got it removed from one hand this way but not the other. Not wanting to repeat the situation, she bit down on part of her pajamas and used her teeth to remove the outfit from her other hand successfully.

"That was weird." She commented, being more careful when putting new clothes on now. This time nothing got stuck, but she could have sworn that there was something like static cling every time she touched anything from that point. Not to mention that some of her clothes felt a little tighter than before.

In the bathroom to freshen up before going to school, Mary Jane got a chance to look at herself in the mirror. Overall she looked exactly the same as yesterday and the day before, but something was different. It was minor, but enough to get her wondering.

'Is my hair longer?' She asked, seeing her bangs covering more of her forehead than they were supposed to. 'That's not all. My arms, why do I look like I'm flexing?' She moved her right arm and saw a touch more muscle tone. The kind you would see in athletic women but not bodybuilders. Looking down she saw the same in her legs. It was like she somehow became everything her gym class wanted her to be overnight.

'Oh crap I didn't get exposed to any gamma rays did I?' She asked in a moment of panic. Fortunately she saw no signs of green anywhere so it passed. Trying to ignore the other questions and concerns she had, she freshened up then went downstairs to fix herself some breakfast. Aunt Anna usually had to work early morning shifts so this was something Mary Jane was used to doing.

After she finished she left the house with her backpack and went to the bus stop. Midtown and Queens weren't exactly neighbors after all, she needed someway to get to school. A few moments later Peter came to the same stop waving.

"Hi Mary Jane. Feeling better now?"

She nodded. "As good as ever. Though I'm going to be avoiding spiders for the time being. Thanks for your help yesterday again."

"No problem. You'd do the same for me."

"Say, shouldn't we tell somebody that there's like a thousand talking spiders in the school right now? Before more people get bitten? Or worse?" Mary Jane asked.

Peter was silent for a moment. "We should, but how would we get anyone to believe it? I'm pretty sure they wouldn't hire an exterminator just because two students said there were spiders in the walls. Especially if we say they were talking."

Mary Jane frowned. "So what are we supposed to do? Let everyone go in and just wait for that cluster of creepy-crawlies to hunt down some random class?"

"If you can come up with a better idea, I'm all for it."

Sadly Mary Jane couldn't do such a thing.

Around ten in the morning Michael made it to Midtown High. He would have gotten there sooner, but bees could only fly so fast. Plus there was always the risk of being spotted by one of the other flying heroes or villains in New York and he really didn't want to be seen just yet.

"Okay Carl, I'm sure you're here somewhere." He muttered, looking around the campus from in front of the main entrance. "I wasn't your only target, so if you came back just to pick on me you'd stick around to do more to others. I just need to draw you out first. And I know just how to do it."

He walked right into the school, pausing only to take a deep breath, then unleashed a large amount of bees from his body and sent them flying through the halls. He then walked back outside, now all he had to do was wait.

Mary Jane was writing notes in her trigonometry class when all of a sudden she tensed up. A completely new feeling just came all over her, starting in her head but it was like her body seized at the same time. It was very similar to that feeling you get when you're certain you're being watched but can't prove it, but much more pressing this time. She quickly looked around the room, trying to see anything that could have triggered this sensation in her. But there was nothing out of the ordinary.

Suddenly there was a shout from the halls, and that got everyone's attention. The teacher went to the door and looked out, then came back in and immediately slammed the door shut, locking it and looking worried.

"Everyone remain calm." The teacher told the class. "There appears to be a large swarm in the halls. Someone was unlucky enough to be out there at this time. No one's leaving this room until the coast is clear."

'Swarm?' Mary Jane thought while the other teens gasped or expressed fear in various ways. "Is it spiders?" She called out.

"No, it looked more like bees to me." The teacher clarified.

'Bees? Spiders and bees here? What's going on?'

"Strange, I can feel a… connection of sorts with my bees." Michael noted, still outside the school as some time had passed. He couldn't see where his swarm was, but somehow he could perceive where they were and what they were doing. He couldn't see what they were seeing or hear what they were hearing, best he could describe it as was like his sense of touch was having an out of body experience. He could literally feel them as if they were his body.

"So I'm a hive… and a swarm. I'm… I'm Swarm." He said, it feeling right to say. "Gotta have a mutant name like all the others don't I?"

His smile dropped when he felt something akin to a slap, but there was no one there around him personally. That must mean someone was trying to repel the bees. Probably a custodian or some faculty member who was braving the halls on behalf of the others.

"I'm not here to bother others. Check the vents. If that's where Carl keeps his thousands of spiders, that's a good place to start getting back at him."

Back inside, the swarm obeyed his command, how they heard it is anyone's guess, and scattered to spread throughout the school's ventilation system.

By now the rest of the school had been informed of this situation, sans the part involving Michael himself, and were told to stay inside. Peter knew this was not a normal event, and it had to be the work of some new villain or something along those lines.

'I can't do anything about this. How can I get out of here and become Spider-Man without it being so blatantly obvious?' He thought. 'Wait, maybe I can message Cindy, see if Silk can handle this. Heh, having another spider-person around is paying off already. And she has been saying she's dying for a fight of her own.'

The class was still going on so it wasn't like Peter could just check his phone right away. Thinking quickly, he made it look like he accidentally knocked his textbook off the desk. Other students and the teachers looked either amused or annoyed by this disturbance, and Peter bent down to pick it up. While he could, he used his free hand to get his phone out of his pocket and palm it while bringing his book back up.

With the book open, Peter carefully went to his contacts and went for Cindy. He got to her messages and sent a text.

'Swarm at school. Unnatural. Possible villain. Need help.'

He then hid his phone and tried to carefully look around. At least no one called him out on what he just did. Now he just had to hope Cindy would respond.

The bees inspected the vents little by little, sometimes hearable from the outside. The school had considered trying to flush the system, but at the moment they couldn't do that without risking sending the bees and anything else in there somewhere still inside the school. They had done so in small doses, manually closing off small sections and flushing them to outside vents, but it had yet to have meaningful effect. Not to mention thanks to Michael any bees that were forced out just went back inside another way.

But aside from the occasional sensation of wind due to his connection to his bees, Michael began to feel something else. A sensation of fighting something, which Michael was somewhat familiar with. His bees were fighting something in the vent, something that was fighting back, and he had a good idea what it was. He directed his bees towards where the feeling of fighting was strongest, and urged them to show no mercy to whatever was in the vents with them.

Students could now hear the sounds of insects in the vents much louder, making them more nervous. The sounds trailed through the vents going from room from room, unable to escape since the vents were already closed by the teachers.

Until one of the vents opened from the other side, and dozens of spiders and bees began spilling out into a classroom. The classroom that Mary Jane was inside.

Naturally all the students reacted with horror and backed away quickly. Mary Jane did the same, now suspecting that the warning she wanted to give earlier was kinda moot.

But then it got worse. More spiders poured out of the vent despite there being nothing forcing them out. It was like some kind of faucet but with arachnids instead of water. The spiders gathered on the floor and to everyone's horror, they piled on each other. The pile got bigger despite the many bees attacking it, and the pile even started to take on a humanoid shape. It was like looking at Sandman if he was made out of spiders instead of sand, and it was fighting back against the bees.

The class then decided to risk whatever was left in the hallways now rather than stay here. Mary Jane and the others darted out of there.

"That was like a messed up version of Spider-Man back there!" One of the boys in the class commented.

"Anyone know how to contact a superhero?" Another asked.

"How the hell are we supposed to do that? Is there a Heroes For Hire hotline out there?"

"Let's just hope that the real Spider-Man can get here quick enough." Mary Jane said, not sounding convincing enough.