Empire State University, biochemistry laboratory building.
8:07 a.m.
Peter Parker sat at the lab bench, his eyes fixed on the volumetric flask before him, but the glass dropper in his hand hung in midair, refusing to move.
He hadn't slept last night.
More precisely, he had spent six hours lying in bed, rolled over more than forty times, flattened his pillow into a pancake, and nearly stuck a hole in his bedroom ceiling with his webs.
Felicia's silhouette as she sat on the edge of a skyscraper.
The way Felicia had closed her eyes.
And after he had pulled his mask back down, her icy words: "You were avoiding me just now."
Those scenes kept playing through his head in turns.
He couldn't switch them off.
"Peter."
Someone beside him gently nudged his elbow.
Peter jolted, nearly flinging all the blue reagent in his dropper into his own face.
"I'm here!"
Gwen Stacy frowned and reached out to steady the test tube rack before it tipped over.
"What is wrong with you today?"
She wore a white lab coat, her short blond hair tied back. She had no makeup on, yet there wasn't a trace of fatigue beneath her eyes. Compared with Peter, she looked like the latest model of lab equipment, freshly charged.
Peter glanced at his reflection in the glass.
Messy hair.
Heavy dark circles.
Even his glasses were crooked.
He looked as if someone had stuffed him into a sack, thrown him off a rooftop, then run him over with a truck.
"Nothing." Peter pushed up his glasses. "I just spent last night studying a few aerodynamics problems."
Gwen looked at him.
"Aerodynamics?"
"Right." Peter nodded. "For example, at high altitudes, the trajectory of a swinging human body can be affected by wind speed, the distance between