Marvel: What If . . . Wanda Maximoff and Peter Parker Were Siblings? (A Scarlet Witch & Spider-Man Story)

Marvel: What If . . . Wanda Maximoff and Peter Parker Were Siblings? (A Scarlet Witch & Spider-Man Story)

Chapter One

Meet the Parkers

“How is winter in Latveria this much colder than winter in New York?” Mary looked out the window, its thick panes of glass distorting the snowy landscape. “I want to get home to Peter.”

“Peter’s fine,” said Richard, in the tone of a man repeating something he’d already said a dozen times or more. He didn’t take his eyes off the papers on the hotel desk. “Ben and May are spoiling him rotten. You know that.”

If he had to leave his son with someone, Ben and May would always have been his first choice, even if they hadn’t been family. He turned a page, making a quick mark in the margin, and kept reading.

“I do. And I also know he’s nine months old,” said Mary, turning away from the window. “Fury promised he’d reduce our field assignments after Peter was born, but here we are in Latveria. This feels like the field to me.”

“I know, sweetheart,” said Richard. “But these events have been escalating. The reality distortions have gotten strong enough that we can pick them up from North America. That means we need to find their source before there’s a disaster we can’t recover from.”

“There are other agents.”

“As good as us?”

Mary didn’t answer.

“I’m the one who isolated and triangulated in on the pattern to these events. It would have been a personal insult for Fury to send anyone else.”

“You couldn’t have done that without the anonymous tips. I still think it’s strange for some whistleblower to contact you directly rather than going to the bureau.”

It was even stranger that the whistleblower in question had dropped the documentation showing the mathematical cascades at the Parkers’ home, rather than delivering it to the S.H.I.E.L.D. offices. It was like someone had wanted them to perform the investigation. But that was where things started making sense. There were no field agents better than the Parkers when it came to this sort of event. That was why they were here, following a tenuous lead into the frozen countryside, trying to collect enough data to convince Fury to secure diplomatic clearance for a full team.

Reconnaissance was no one’s favorite part of the job. But at least it wasn’t boring.

“Whoever it is came to us, Mares, because they knew we’d follow this to the ends of the Earth,” said Richard, with the calm, unruffled tone of someone who had had this discussion many times—they weren’t fighting, they were reciting two sides of a well-known script. “Science gone awry is a risky beast to wrestle with.”

“Yeah, well, most men don’t drag their wives into situations where they might get mutated into something less appealing than Xavier’s show ponies,” said Mary, flopping backward onto the bed. “Will you still love me when I’m sweating acid and trying to hug you with my eighteen tentacles?”

“I’ll be getting mutated right there with you, and we will have many loving, acidic years ahead of us,” said Richard. He paused, eyes flicking between columns, comparing the numbers. “Mary, come over here.”

“What?” She sat up. “Why?”

“Because I think I found the key to predicting where the next event is going to occur. Come look at this.”

Dutifully, Mary rose and crossed to the desk, looking at the numbers Richard indicated. Her eyes widened marginally as she studied them. “I think I see it.”

“If these figures are correct, these events have been corresponding to specific fluctuations in the Earth’s energy field, and the next set of ideal conditions will occur tomorrow night, about seven miles from here. We’ll be home by the weekend.”

Mary grinned at him, a feral light in her eyes. “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve said since we got here. Now, does that mean you’re done for the night?”

“It does. We can get some sleep.”

Mary grabbed his tie and hauled him out of his chair. “That’s not exactly what I was thinking,” she said, in a low tone.

Richard Parker was a brilliant man, and as he caught his wife’s meaning, he returned her grin, then swept her into his arms and carried her back to the bed.

Outside their hotel, the wind wailed, and the aurora danced across the sky, an elegant ripple of light created by solar winds entering Earth’s atmosphere. It wasn’t something that needed to be stopped, but a beautiful reminder that science was a glorious thing when not turned to the wrong ends.

#

Richard’s numbers told them when and where an incident was likely to occur, but not what form it was going to take. Without more proof, Fury couldn’t get clearance to send them backup or support: They were on their own until they verified the math.

They left the hotel at seven the next morning, having only waited until the sun was high enough that they wouldn’t be traveling in the dark; they were both armed to the teeth, and Richard let Mary take the lead as they walked to their snowmobile. Of the two of them, she was the better driver and the better shot; he handled theory, and she often found herself managing the practical aspects of their fieldwork. While they could both handle themselves in a fight, this division of labor was part of why they were among S.H.I.E.L.D.’s most effective analysts. Anyone could learn to work with a partner. They didn’t need to learn it. They worked together instinctively, and trusted each other absolutely.

As they raced into the white-dipped Latverian forest, their snowmobile’s engine revving to a steady buzz, Richard had to wonder—not for the first time since Peter’s birth—whether their insistence on working together was going to orphan their son one day. They loved him more than anything, but they knew what they were good at, and more, they knew how important what they did was to national security. Without them, America would be in a more precarious position, and neither of them could live with that. Director Fury had already floated the idea of splitting them up if they didn’t want to leave fieldwork completely, and the idea turned his stomach. It was bad enough being in the line of fire with his wife. If she were out there without him to keep her safe, he wasn’t sure he’d ever sleep again—or vice versa. Mary had saved his life as many times as he had saved hers.

The trees whipped by like black slashes against the snow. The evergreens were lush and green, living up to their names, but the oaks and elms were bare-branched and skeletal, adding a haunting aura to the scene. Then, without any warning, the trees were gone, as the snowmobile zipped into a wide clearing that had no business being there. Richard had been poring over maps of the area since his research had started to point in this direction; every clearing and trail wider than a deer path had been meticulously mapped by the locals, who wanted their children to know how to get out of the all-consuming woods when they heard wolves in the distance, or when they wandered too far from their familiar routes.

This clearing was easily an acre of open space where forest should have been. More, there was no sign the forest had ever been there; the snowy ground was smooth and unbroken. A matte black cube occupied the center of the clearing, slightly larger than the storage shed Ben built in the backyard of their house in Queens. An adult could stand upright in there, if they didn’t mind close quarters; they’d have to do it alone, however. Any company would make the space unbearably crowded.

Assuming there was space inside, and it wasn’t just a solid piece of . . . something. Mary reversed the snowmobile into the shelter of the trees and cautiously dismounted, service pistol already in her hands and pointed at the ground. She didn’t look to see whether Richard was following. They’d been working together for too long for her to insult him like that; he was already sliding down and drawing his own weapon, falling into a defensive position.

“So much for the element of surprise,” she muttered.

“This isn’t supposed to be here,” said Richard.

“Here isn’t supposed to be here; that isn’t supposed to be anywhere.” She jerked her chin toward the black cube. Looking at it felt like the visual equivalent of dragging an iron nail across a chalkboard, metal scraping across stone, setting every nerve she had on edge. That thing was dangerous. It was unearthly. She didn’t want to get any closer to it, and her job told her she needed to do exactly that, and at moments like this, she wished she’d chosen a less dangerous career. Shark wrestler, maybe, or municipal fireworks quality control engineer.

They continued inching closer, exposed against the snowy background, no backup, no escape plan. If something happened, they could be in genuine trouble.

Naturally, something happened.