The Anomaly - Ch. 13
Ch: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
They dragged Miguel’s unconscious form through the portal. Miles huffed, frustrated that the man was so heavy to him despite now having super strength. It didn’t help that it was impossible to have a good hold on the limp body. Still, the two of them managed.
“Get him on the table,” Mr. Ohnn said. He ripped open the drawers for the medkit. Miles hefted Miguel over to the metal work table. He had to contort his body to shove and slide the mountain of a man off his shoulders and onto the smooth surface.
Mr. Ohnn ran around washing his hands and gathered clean water into a metal basin. “Take his shirt off.”
Miles scowled but obeyed. Why did he have to do all this for fucking Miguel O’ Hara? He activated his gauntlet to slice through the thin fabric.
“Don’t give me that look,” Mr. Ohnn said. “You wanted to keep him, not me.”
“I get it,” he snapped back. Revulsion turned in his gut. The thought of saving the life of the man who ruined his was abhorrent, had his jaw clenched tight and fighting off the desire to just kill the man right here and now. He avoided looking at the beaten and bleeding man on the table and tried not to think of his hands wrapping around his throat. He couldn’t continue Miguel’s misery if he was dead. Focus on the job.
The wound was still bleeding sluggishly. Miguel was fully unconscious and had no reaction to the two of them flitting around him.
“Wash your hands and put on some gloves.” Mr Ohnn said, taking out the packaged needle and gauze to set them aside. “And grab a clean towel.”
Miles hurried around the room doing just that. “You didn’t need all this last time,” he grumbled.
“Yeah, well, ‘last time’ the wound was already closing and all I had to worry about was a little infection. This–” Mr. Ohnn snapped some gloves on. “This doesn’t look so good.”
“He said he was weaker.” Miles gestured to Miguel. “Said he needs his serum that his powers were tied to genetic stability or something.”
“Serum?”
“The green goo.”
“Oh,” Mr. Ohnn opened a portal to gather the vials and injector. “Must be why his healing factor is kind of shit right now.”
Anger flared anew. “He was weakened the whole time,” Miles snarled. The whole time he believed he bested the Miguel O’ Hara, Spiderman of the future, leader of the Spider Society, the man that took everything from him. But he didn’t. He thought he finally did something right, but it was a hollow victory. He was still that weak little kid trapped in the stupid orange box. And who knew how long it had been since his last serum dose. Everything he and Mr. Ohnn had been working on, training for, he still couldn’t beat Miguel on even ground.
“I would love to reassure you or give you some words of encouragement, Miles, but we’re kind of busy here.”
After drying his hands off, Miles joined Mr. Ohnn at the table. “I didn’t win.”
Mr. Ohnn snapped to him. “Of course you did.” He grabbed an x-ray scanner from the otherside of the table and positioned it over Miguel’s wound. He double checked to see if the scan was running before turning to grab Miles’ shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “Listen, we are not gladiators in the colosseum. It doesn’t need to be an honorable 1 v 1. You had an opportunity and took it. Recognizing those moments of opportunity and capitalizing is what separates the winners from the losers. You hear me?” He jostled Miles with a little shake.
Of all the people that should have been there for him, supported him, the Spot should have been at the bottom of the list. And yet, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Mr. Ohnn was the only one who was there for him, the only one who could understand him.
Truthfully, Miles didn’t know what he did to have Mr. Ohnn choose to help him, let alone stay with him. He would never be able to express how grateful he was to the man for picking him above all else.
“I hear you,” Miles said.
“Good,” Mr. Ohnn squeezed his shoulders before letting go. “Because I’m kind of panicking right now, so if we could save your crisis for later, would love.”
Miles snorted. “Sure.”
Mr. Ohnn looked over the scanner results and let out a sigh of relief. “No internal organ damage, thank whatever for that, because I may have a doctorate, but not that kind of doctor. I do know, however, I gotta replace these,” He pulled the gloves off and put on some clean ones. He picked up the injector and turned it over in his hand. “Clean the wound for me, would you?”
Miles wiped the blood from the surrounding skin, making it easier for Mr. Ohnn to work later. He dunked the bloodied rag into the once pristine water, casting a reddish cloud to the basin. Soon he revealed three distinct slashes. He dabbed away at the wounds, careful not to accidentally undo the work of any clotted blood. He tried not to focus on who was on the receiving end of his diligent care.
Mr. Ohnn had all he needed laid out on the table nearby. “I’m going to seal the opening, then give him the goo and some antibiotics.” he said. “It’s not exactly sterile, but once his healing factor is back to top form, it’ll take care of any infection for us. You with me?”
Miles snorted. “And you say you’re not a doctor.”
“I just watched a lot of medical dramas when I was in undergrad.” But despite his words, his deft fingers worked quickly on the sutures. Perhaps it was his previous lab work that trained his steady hand; that and all the practice he had on Miles and now Miguel.
Miles watched as Mr. Ohnn completed stitch after stitch. Miguel had not stirred once, but he was still breathing, which was… a sign. But Miles’ anxiety was ratcheting. If Miguel died here on this table, what was next for them? This was… everything. This was what he worked towards for years. And if he didn’t have this…
“Hey, Miles, wanna help?” Mr. Ohnn asked.
“What?” A spike of nervous energy pulled his spine straight.
“If you could help put some stitches in that top laceration, you’d save us a lot of time,” he said. Eyes solely focused on closing up the middle tear which was the longest and deepest cut by far.
“But I don’t know how–”
“Pull up a video. It’s not that hard.”
“He’s dying,” Miles stressed.
“You learn best under pressure.” Mr. Ohnn pulled up a projection of a youtube video showing how to make a simple interrupted suture. “Besides, he’s in no condition to complain about bad stitches.”
His palms started to sweat. “I don’t know–”
Mr. Ohnn handed him a needle and thread. “Experience is the best teacher.”
Miles took it and sighed. Mr. Ohnn wasn’t going to back down from this. Fine. He threaded the needle and watched the video once. When he turned back to look at Miguel, another pair of forceps were in front of him. Well, now or never.
He grabbed a piece of skin with the forceps and pried the wound open a little to get a better view. He slowly pierced the flesh with the needle in his other hand, brows knitting in concentration to keep his hand steady.
“You’re holding it too tight,” Mr. Ohnn said. “You’re making yourself tremble.”
“Well, sorry for being nervous,” Miles hissed as he fully pulled the needle out to the otherside.
“Don’t be. You don’t care about this guy. Who cares if he has a shitty stitch?”
He was right. Why was Miles trying so hard for this asshole? He wanted to get it right, sure, but the best person to fuck up on was Miguel O’ Hara. The surgeon’s knot seemed easy enough. He wrapped the thread around the forceps three times just like the video and pulled the leftover thread through and tugged.
“Pull it tighter,” Mr. Ohnn corrected.
So he did. And did the knot two more times before standing straight and looking up for confirmation.
“Not bad, kid. Now do it again.”
Miles preened under the praise and got to work. The next one he finished faster and the one after that. Before he realized it, he finished seven stitches and sealed up the top laceration.
Mr. Ohnn patted him on the shoulder, gloves off and having already finished sealing the other two wounds. “Good job.”
Seeing Mr. Ohnn’s straight and neat stitches next to his more crooked ones, did nothing to deter the smile off his face. Practice was practice. “Thanks.”
“Almost done, just the goo and the antibiotics.” Mr. Ohnn inserted the serum cartridge into the injector and shot it right into the meat of Miguel’s shoulder.
The rest of it should have been easy. Miguel was unconscious and hadn’t even so much as twitched as they worked on him. So they weren’t expecting it when his eyes snapped open and began thrashing.
“Oh, that’s not good.” Mr. Ohnn said unhelpfully. His attention focused on the wound. “Hold him down. We don’t want his stitches to tear.” He held Miguel’s legs down or at least tried to.
Miles went into his gauntlet to lock down Miguel’s wrist, but that didn’t stop him from trying to twist out of them, which was causing blood to seep from the freshly closed wounds. He tried to push down on Miguel’s chest to stop his torso from writhing, but he was still pulling at his stitches. “Miguel, stop!”
“We’re trying to help you, buddy!”
Miles didn’t even bother to correct Mr. Ohnn. “You’re making this worse for yourself, man!”
“I worked really hard on those sutures!”
Miguel continued to try and buck them off.
“Maybe shut up, Mr. Ohnn. I think your voice is setting him off.”
“Oh, like yours doesn’t?”
Was this part of ‘genetic maintenance’? If so, Miguel really needed to elaborate more on what that entailed because this was not what he had in mind. His eyes darted around wildly, confused, and fearful.
And while Miles wasn’t opposed to that expression on Miguel’s face, it ticked him off that it wasn’t him causing it. He climbed onto the table and straddled the man’s chest. He gripped Miguel’s face between his hands and made him focus. “Hey!”
Miguel’s eyes still tried to look around. “Where am I?”
“So he speaks!”
“Miles? Wh- what happened?”
“You got your ass beat by that Scorpion. Remember that?”
A twitch in Miguel’s brow. “I did not lose to the Scorpion,” he snarled. “I lost to you kicking me into a building.”
“Seems coherent enough,” he said over his shoulder to Mr. Ohnn. “Promise not to move around and tear your stitches?”
“Wha– yeah, just get off.”
Miles hopped off and undid the locks. Miguel immediately tried to sit up.
“Ah,” Mr. Ohnn said, pushing him back down. “Don’t ruin my hard work.”
Miguel rolled his eyes. “I didn’t mean to.”
“When you said genetic maintenance I didn’t think you meant it made you go ballistic!”
“No. No, I didn’t– I just– The fluorescent lights–” He bit his lip. “I thought I was somewhere else.”
Miles raised an unimpressed brow. “So you don’t normally get that violent?” he asked for clarification.
“No, I don’t.”
“Good, because if that was a regular thing, you definitely weren't going to be getting your weekly steroids.”
“There not–” Miguel did a double take the best he could laying flat on his back. “You’re going to give me my serum doses?”
“You’d die without it, wouldn’t you? And I can’t have that, can I?”
Miguel scowled. This was exactly where he belonged; at Miles’ mercy. Mr. Ohnn was right in a sense, it didn’t matter that they got here with less than fair means. Still it didn’t sit right with him, but now he would amend that. Miguel would never taste freedom again, not even in death.
Miles snickered, finally disposing of the bloodied gloves. “Didn’t think it was that easy to get away from me, did you?” He patted Miguel’s cheek condescendingly.











