It all depends on luck

      Felicia didn’t immediately realize what had happened. In an instant, the colors and silhouettes of passersby around her went into a frenzied disco. Felicia’s legs gave out and she felt nauseous. She tried to step toward the nearest building, wherever it was, but the loss of coordination only made her fall to the pavement. She tried to step towards the nearest building, wherever it was, but due to a loss of coordination, she only fell to the asphalt.              And then everything disappeared at once. Even the lump that rose to my throat went down in time.       “Miss, are you all right?” A passerby loomed in front of her.       Felicia found herself sitting on the sidewalk with her back against the wall of the building. She found him after all. Felicia rose cautiously to her feet. To her surprise, she felt great, as she always did.       “Yes. I just tripped,” Felicia replied.       The passerby nodded and walked on.       Felicia’s intuition was screaming at her that something was wrong here. There’s something wrong with this place. It seems to be the same street. Same time of day. But the surroundings seemed alien for some reason.       Felicia’s gaze lingered on the unfamiliar barbershop across the street. Felicia remembered that there was always an appliance repair shop there.       At first, Felicia thought she was just not feeling well and the owners of the repair point had simply closed or moved away. However, the further Felicia walked, the stranger the city seemed to her. Familiar streets and buildings, but completely different stores, small businesses, signs, balconies and windows, even parked cars.       Felicia was finally confused when she didn’t find the large and recognizable Oscorp building in its usual place. Felicia hadn’t worked there in years. But the tall building with its honeycomb outer frame was visible even from a few blocks away. And now instead of it there was a completely different building: it was lower and looked completely unattractive, practically not standing out against the background of the rest of the skyscrapers of New York. It was certainly not something that could have been rebuilt in just one day.       Searching for answers, Felicia stepped off the sidewalk, pulled out her smartphone, and logged onto social media only to find that her accounts no longer existed. Not a single one.       “That’s weird.”       Sure, weird things happen to her a lot. But this was real weird.       Felicia continued poking around on the Internet. Just two minutes of searching, and Felicia felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end from the information she received.       First of all, there is no such thing as Oscorp. Instead, countless so-called superheroes and supervillains have been operating all over the planet for years. Earth has had several alien encounters. Of the most high-profile in recent times — a stone head and arm of a colossus of inconceivable size, which appeared right in the middle of the ocean.       It all seemed alien and even absurd. For a moment, Felicia almost thought she was going crazy. But having managed to control herself, Felicia continued to search further, this time using other familiar landmarks.       For example, Spider-Man. As it turned out, his identity became known to the public, and the noise around Peter Parker has not subsided for several months.       Except it was a completely different Peter Parker.       Of course, Felicia knew who was hiding under the Spider-Man mask, and had known for quite some time. No, Harry Osborn, her former employer, hadn’t told her anything. Especially since she’d quit that job after Osborn Jr. had injected himself with that ill-fated spider poison and turned into an ugly psychopath. No, Felicia found out all this on her own while she was still working for his father.       Norman Osborn hired her to spy on the Parker family: wife Benjamin and May and their nephew Peter, who was only a little younger than Felicia herself. The gravely ill Norman Osborn hoped that one day some information about the research of the once-living Richard Parker, Peter’s father, would surface. Norman also secretly shared with Felicia his suspicions that Richard Parker might have survived rather than died in that plane crash.       Norman valued Felicia, and for good reason. The precocious Felicia quickly proved her efficiency in her work. She got the closest to the Parkers, watched the longest, sometimes even penetrated even into the Midtown School, where Peter studied. And when Peter went to Dr. Curt Connors' home to ask about his father, it was Felicia who overheard their conversation. Thanks to her, Norman reduced the staff of agents who followed the Parkers to three people — Felicia herself and two other employees who only substituted for Felicia in her spare time.       Peter’s encounter with Connors, as well as a sudden breakthrough in the latter’s research, had aroused Oscorp’s appropriate suspicions. Shortly after Peter’s uncle’s death, Felicia broke into their home. She found Richard Parker’s old briefcase and a folder of scientific documents, and she took detailed photos. The briefcase was lying in a prominent place in Peter’s room, and the folder with documents — in his school backpack, which led Felicia to the conclusion: the briefcase was found only recently and, most likely, accidentally. It wasn’t much more than that.       It was Norman’s only major catch since the departure of Richard and Mary Parker. Norman was inordinately pleased, but only until he learned that this information was not enough to continue his research, much less save his life.       There were few fools at Oscorp, however, and even they had noticed the connection between Peter Parker and the suddenly announced Spider-Man. But Felicia knew more. She had seen Peter Parker, even before Spider-Man showed up, spending his free time at the harbor, climbing walls and swinging on chains like some Tarzan on vines. At that point, Felicia decided to hold off on the report for a bit. No matter how well Norman treated her or how much he paid her, he frankly frightened her. And the goblin’s appearance, caused by a strange disease, had nothing to do with it.       A couple weeks later, Felicia inadvertently witnessed Peter Parker don a primitive red mask, release a spider’s thread from his hand, and soar into the sky. And then, for perhaps the first time in her life, Felicia acted on her conscience. Peter, who had lost his parents as a child, had recently lost another loved one. Unfortunately or fortunately, Felicia was familiar with his feelings. She not only concealed Peter’s alter ego, but did everything she could to keep the paws of Oscorp away from him.       The agents who worked alongside Felicia were far inferior to her. They could lose sight of Peter before he’d gained his abilities, before he’d become faster and more cautious. Needless to say, they often lost sight of the elderly May and Benjamin. All Felicia had to do was fake Peter’s alibi to assure Oscorp that he was most definitely not Spider-Man. And they believed her.       In the last year of Norman’s life, when he was already struggling to get out of bed, his interest in Peter waned dramatically. Norman took Felicia off the streets, made her his own assistant, and actually began to run Oscorp’s business through her. For this reason, Harry, when he became the new head of the company, also began to keep Felicia close to him.       The Normans trusted Felicia, but she never told them the biggest secret — who Spider-Man was, and how he was connected to Richard Parker’s spiders research. Felicia knew many of Oscorp’s secrets, and its dealings were far from always clean. And Peter Parker had been through enough as it was.       And now Felicia found herself in a very different New York, where a very different Spider-Man and a very different Peter Parker lived and heroed. If she had been told a story like this, she would never have believed it, but in this story, the hero was herself.       Forgetting all the previous cases, Felicia rushed to her home, but found that other people lived there. This time, however, Felicia expected something like that and was not surprised.       Back on the street, Felicia found a quiet café, where she could continue her search for information about this alien world, which only at first glance seemed so familiar and native.       

***

      The identity of local Peter Parker was revealed by supervillain Mysterio before his own death. Mysterio posed as a hero, Spider-Man was made out to be his killer, but the court ultimately sided with Peter Parker, completely acquitting him and finding the evidence of guilt to be fabricated. The Daily Bugle news channel disagreed with the court’s decision and continued to follow Peter, waiting for him to make any blunder so that they could immediately put out their provocative news. At times, Bugle would create news out of literally nothing or once again remind people of long past events involving Spider-Man. To Felicia’s surprise, the face of the channel’s director, John Jonah Jameson, looked exactly like the face of the Daily Bugle’s editor-in-chief, John Jonah Jameson, from her home world.       Felicia had long since come to terms with the fact that she had become a sort of traveler through dimensions, but such an exact coincidence even amused her. Ironically, the Peter Parker of her world worked for Jameson, who had no idea how close the object of his hatred was. And also that he was paying him and thus sponsoring the so-called “Spider Threat”.       The Spider-Man of this world has fought many supervillains, even participating in a sort of “Civil War” of superheroes and a battle with aliens. But out of all of Spidey’s adversaries, Felicia only recognized the Vulture, Adrian Toomes. Of course, the local Toomes had a different face and completely different wings, much more imposing in size.       Suddenly, Felicia came across reports of an event that had happened just half an hour after she had arrived in New York. The Internet was ablaze with pictures of a battle between an eight-legged Spidey and a man with four long and flexible metal tentacles.       Felicia instantly identified him as Dr. Otto Octavius, who had become better known by the pseudonym “Dr. Octopus.” Like the Vulture, he was one of the members of the Sinister Six, a boyband that Harry Osborn had assembled when he escaped from Ravencroft Prison. In addition to them, this villainous clique included Aleksei Sytsevich — a thug in a robotic rhino suit, Craven the Hunter — a hunter himself, preferring more traditional weapons, and Venom — terrifying monster from nightmares, remotely resembling Spider-Man himself. The six of them tried to deal with Spider-Man, but thankfully Peter dealt with them.       Before, Felicia had thought she was the only one who had been affected by something she couldn’t even explain. But this Dr. Octopus had appeared too suddenly and almost simultaneously with Felicia herself to draw any conclusions. The photos and videos on the internet were not of good quality, but Felicia thought that this Dr. Octopus looked a little different. For example, his tentacles are darker in color and their segments are much better defined. Also, Felicia didn’t remember Octavius favoring a coat over green overalls, but at least it could hide his bulging sides. If he had any, of course, because Felicia felt that this was a very different Dr. Octopus.       Harry looked terrible then. He had recently lost his father, and now he knew that exactly the same thing would happen to him. The disease has already manifested itself in the form of peeling skin and muscle cramps. Felicia watched as retroviral hyperplasia literally ate Norman alive, and she didn’t want the same fate for his son. Harry seemed kind to her, and she appreciated it. Felicia was the only person in the Oscorp tower who, after Norman’s death, did not want to get her piece of the pie by deceiving Harry, who was young and unprepared for such a turn of fate. Or at least Felicia was much better at hiding her intentions.       In the end, Felicia herself was on the plus side, but she berated herself for having a hand in creating the Goblin. In all the sacrifice and destruction the Goblin had wrought, Felicia saw part of her guilt. Consumed by her conscience, Felicia had spent more than one sleepless night, and the grin of a distraught Harry had given her nightmares.       If the Goblin was really here with Felicia, she could only wish the local Spider luck and hope that he had the guts to do what the Spider from her world couldn’t. Though given his background, that was unlikely.       

***

      Felicia put the phone down and rubbed her eyes tiredly. Her neck was stiff, too. Several hours of staring into the small screen of the phone had done its job. Besides, it was nearing evening outside, and Felicia didn’t even have a place to sleep now. Her apartment was occupied by other people, all her old contacts were useless, and her city information was no longer up to date.       But Felicia still had one interesting option left. Before her phone was completely dead, she found Peter Parker’s address on the Internet. After revealing his superhero life to the world, not only fans, but Spidey haters as well, began to follow his home relentlessly. Because of their increased intrusiveness and outright threats, Peter and his aunt were forced to move out of their official residence a few weeks ago. Where exactly, no one knows, but in the intervening time people have lost interest in their home. Today, however, the apartment was definitely empty.