BIOGRAPHY - Page 2
When Tyler Stone arrived at Miguel's apartment later that week, Miguel was surprised to learn Tyler had apparently reached his own conclusions about the accident at Alchemax. Tyler declared Spider-Man must be Aaron Delgado, who was missing since the explosion. Ever the snake, Tyler feigned regret over the Rapture incident, and offered to accept Miguel back at Alchemax, letting him take Corporate Raider wherever he wanted, at whatever speed forward he wanted. Miguel reluctantly took his job back, both to avoid further suspicion and keep access to Alchemax genetic facilities so he could search for a cure for his condition.
On his way in to work, however, Miguel was met by Gabriel. Gabe's girlfriend Kasey Nash had been kidnapped by a samurai (no, seriously) and Gabe hoped Miguel could throw his weight around at Alchemax to get the Public Eye involved in searching for her. He needn't have worried -- the samurai was a Stark-Fujikawa headhunter known as the Specialist, on loan to Alchemax, who bought Kasey's criminal record and had her declared an experimental test subject. Kasey broke free and, by "coincidence," ran into Tyler and Miguel in Alchemax's hallways. She took Miguel hostage to make her escape and filled him in on what was done to her once she realized he was "Gabe's slimeball brother." Kasey left Miguel behind as she kept running, and Mig saw the Specialist in pursuit of her. Muttering about how "with great power comes great guilt," Miguel reluctantly changed into Spider-Man to help protect Kasey in order to look Gabri in the eyes again.
Spider-Man was not as successful against the Specialist as he was against Venture. He only intended to engage the Specialist long enough for Kasey to get away, but the Public Eye boxed the two fighters in, preventing Miguel from breaking off the fight. The Specialist mocked Miguel for his lack of killer instinct during their duel. Luckily, Kasey chose not to leave the S-Man to the Corps once he helped her. She hijacked a Public Eye sky-cycle and swooped through the blockade to EVAC Spider-Man. The Specialist grabbed hold as they flew by, however, leaving the two of them dangling from Kasey's sky-cycle as she tried to dodge the Public Eye. The Specialist nearly died when they hit a low bridge and fell free, but Miguel snagged him with a web-line. When the Specialist showed his gratitude by taking advantage of the rescue to attack Miguel again, Spider-Man snapped and cleanly slit the assassin's throat with one flick of his talons. In shock over his actions, Spider-Man was caught off-guard by the Public Eye and blasted off the raised walkway, tumbling to the ground far below. [Spider-Man 2099 (1st series) #4-5]
Miguel fell into the ghetto ruins of old New York below Alchemax's pristine upper levels, the under-city known as "Downtown." His talons and a web-chute managed to slow his descent somewhat, but Miggy still landed hard in an alleyway, in desperate need of medical attention. He managed to get to a Doc-in-a-Box to get patched up, but was still unsteady when the Public Eye arrived. Spider-Man was rescued by an unlikely ally: Vulture, leader of a gang known as the Freakers. 
It was Vulture who gave Miguel his first real taste of Downtown, a state of constant gang warfare between warring factions while the "official" police force in the Watchdogs were often worse than the gangs. As a cannibal anarchist, the Vulture and his Freakers were among the worst gangs, and so the S-Man found himself allied with Kasey Nash and her Throwbacks when the fighting broke out. While battling the Vulture under the support structure for Uptown, he knocked the villain senseless. As the Vulture began to fall, Miguel reflexively prepared to save him with a web net but, after recalling the incident with the Specialist, Spider-Man pulled back and let Vulture fall to his fate. [Spider-Man 2099 (1st series) #6-8]
After finally emerging from Downtown, Miguel was caught flatfooted by a Public Eye cop, but managed to subdue him. Hoping for a quiet ride home, Miggy stripped the flyboy and "borrowed" his uniform to fly his sky-cycle back to Babylon Towers. On the way, however, Miguel was dragged into a Public Eye call for service and learned of a disturbing new trend -- Spiderites. Tales of his heroism after being declared the Harbinger of Thor led a group of Thorite worshippers to form a spinoff religious order, declaring Spider-Man a holy symbol. Miguel accidentally revealed his talons and webbing while saving a Spiderite from a long drop, and tried but failed to get the hero worshipping kid to stay home and stop imitating him. [Spider-Man 2099 (1st series) #9]
When their mother faked a sudden change in her health at the rest home, Miguel was dragged out to see the Crazy Lady by Gabriel and Dana. Miguel was in no mood to put up with his mom's nonsense, starting an argument between them. He was shocked to see Conchata had taken to idolizing Spider-Man as well, calling him a real hero to the people. 
On a whim, Miguel tried to shake Conchata's hero worship by revealing HE was Spider-Man, her "good for nothing son." He even displayed his fangs and talons, but his mother was laughing so hard at the ridiculous idea she didn't look up to notice. Instead, Conchata told Miguel it was very sweet of him to get jealous of Spider-Man, and maybe he wasn't as bad a son as she thought. While thinking through the last few days, Miguel realized just how bad off the 21st century was, and that Spider-Man could actually do some good to combat the evil Alchemax brought upon the people. [Spider-Man 2099 (1st series) #10]
While Miguel was newly devoted to his role as Spider-Man, Alchemax was equally devoted to hunting him down. Stone outfitted select Public Eye officers with SIEGE (SItuational Emergency GEar) armor to counter the S-Man if he made public moves against the MegaCorps. Miguel's civilian life wasn't too rosy at the time, either. Tyler Stone had decided to sleaze his way into the life of Miguel's fiancé, Dana, by using her as the Synthia rep for the Valhalla project. With Corporate Raider spinning its wheels, Miguel also had to compete with a new Alchemax hotshot, Jordan Boone, who was trying to get his Virtual Unreality project off the ground and noticed by upper management, even if it came at Miguel's expense. [Spider-Man 2099 (1st series) #11]
A disturbance at the Virtual Unreality project led to Jordan Boone getting kidnapped by an unknown superhuman who exited his dimensional portal. After learning that Boone accessed top secret Alchemax files before departing, Miguel decided to investigate Boone's disappearance as the S-Man. The files pertained to known superhumans, and Boone's digital fingerprints were on the file of John Eisenhart, the future version of the Hulk who was meeting with Stark-Fujikawa that night. On his way to the restaurant meeting, Spider-Man was intercepted by Blink and the Exiles, who explained the situation: a body-hopping, dimension-hopping serial killer named Proteus was in town looking for a new host.
Spider-Man and the Exiles failed to stop Proteus before he claimed Hulk 2099 as his latest body, and then used his reality-warping abilities to turn the entire Stark-Fujikawa building against the heroes. On a lark, Proteus also unmasked Spider-Man when he got too close, exposing Miguel O'Hara's face to Tyler Stone and the heads of several other MegaCorps, who were intrigued by the Public Eye reports about Proteus' power and had been monitoring the situation. Proteus was looking to deal, too, in the hopes of finding a way of stabilizing his hosts to stop body-hopping all the time. Alchemax, Stark-Fujikawa, Pixel and even Doom 2099 holographically offered to make a deal with Proteus. Miguel and Boone warned him away, though, pointing out that none of the MegaCorps were trustworthy, and would jump at the chance to make him a lab rat. Proteus realized they were right and jumped away to the next dimension, granting Miguel his life as repayment for his honesty.
With his secret identity exposed to some of the most powerful and least scrupulous men on Earth, Spider-Man realized that life as he knew it was over. That, and his sense of responsibility for loosing Proteus on the rest of the multiverse, led Miguel to offer his skills to the Exiles as they prepared to continue their hunt for Proteus. Blink agreed, and Spider-Man teleported with them back to the Crystal Palace. [Exiles (1st series) #75-76]
[Note: The reality of the Exiles' Spider-Man 2099 picks up between #11-12 of his original series. In fact, the arrival of Proteus may specifically be an altered version of Jordan Boone's experiment from the opening of Spider-Man 2099 (1st series) #12. The influence of Proteus and the Exiles on Miguel's timeline created a divergence, with the original 2099 timeline continuing as Earth-928 while Miguel's new history is taking place on Earth-6375.]
The Exiles continued to hunt Proteus across several realities, including the worlds of the Squadron Supreme, the Maestro and finally the Counter-Earth of Earth-616. The villain was finally contained when he possessed the body of the Exiles' shapeshifter Morph, whose unique properties to Proteus’ surprise would not degenerate over time. Some behavior modification technology from the Squadron Supreme's Earth was then used to alter Proteus' mind, making him believe he really was Morph. Since Proteus' powers allowed him full access to his host's memories, and since killing the host would only free him to start hopping bodies once more, leaving him trapped and brainwashed inside Morph was a worrisome but functional solution. [Exiles (1st series) #77-82] 
As the Exiles settled into their new status quo, Spider-Man agreed to remain with the group full time. He went home just long enough to confirm he was still a wanted man in 2099. Miguel touched base with Gabriel and learned that the Megacorps weren't hurting his family, but they were being watched 24-7 in case Miguel returned. [Exiles (1st series) #84]
Initially, Spider-Man was thrilled by the experience of being with the Exiles. Miguel was fascinated by the Exiles' home base, the Panoptichron outside the natural flow of reality. He was practically obsessed with the flight rings being used by the Shi'ar Imperial Guard on one mission, and was begging for a look at the schematics before the Exiles left that reality. [Exiles (1st series) #85-89] Over time, however, the Exiles' missions seemed to take a darker turn for Spider-Man. On one world, half the team was captured by the Hand and HYDRA, brainwashed into acting as warrior slaves to the Imperial Hydra. Miguel and Blink only recovered thanks to the genius of Reed Richards. [Exiles (1st series) #90-94]
In the reality of Victor von Doom and the Four Fantastics, Spider-Man and the Exiles found a nearly idyllic world. Unfortunately, it was idyllic because Doom was suppressing the free will of the entire population so that they acted only as extensions of himself. They weren't zombies, as they retained their original personalities, but Doom's needs superceded all. In a struggle between Doom and Reed Richards (one of the last free men on Earth), the Exiles fell into both camps. Spider-Man and Sabretooth were partially indoctrinated as Heroes of Doom, 
and Miguel also quickly fell in love with that world's Gwen Stacy, and she with him. The struggle between Doom and Reed reached the point of mutually assured annihilation, as the life of all of Doom's subjects was sacrificed for his cause. The Exiles were abandoning the world before they were caught in the conflagration, but Miguel would not leave Gwen behind. Gwen could not disobey Doom but, because she wasn't specifically told to sacrifice the Exiles as well, she chose to save Miguel instead of letting him die with her. In her last act, Gwen had Sue Storm force Miguel back to the Exiles so that he transported away with them. [Exiles (1st series) #95-98]
The forces unleashed by Reed and Doom scrambled the Exiles' transit, tossing them across space-time so that they all materialized on different worlds. Spider-Man arrived on Earth-6375, the splinter timeline created by the Exiles and Proteus' influence on his original world. Miguel washed up on the shores of a beach. He was saved by a woman named MJ, who brought him home with her to rest and recover. Miguel was emotionally broken by Gwen's death, but his time with MJ helped him to heal and taught him to love again. He became a chef at the seaside diner MJ owned, and the two of them forged a life together. Because of the different flow of time between worlds, it was months from Miguel's perspective before the Exiles tracked him down. By then, he was at peace and decided to remain with MJ in the new home he had made for himself. [Exiles (1st series) #99]
[Note: Although Miguel supposedly was back home, this world sure didn't look like the 2099 future. No signs of Alchemax or the Megacorps were seen in this timeline. It's also not clear if Miguel appeared in the year 2099, or somewhere in the past or future. The woman he met was clearly intended to be Mary Jane Watson, but that makes little sense in context. Her situation bears little resemblance to the Mary Jane of the present era, and there's no reason she should be in 2099 either.]
Even in his new home, Miguel still enjoyed tinkering and he managed to reconnect with the Exiles at one point to acquire some of their dimensional technology. Some time after his retirement with Mary Jane, Miggy became aware of Morlun and the Inheritors as they killed their way across the Great Web. Their prey were any spider-powered beings, or "totems," especially Spider-Men. Alternate versions of Miguel O'Hara were no safer than Peter Parkers, and Miguel tried to find a way to stop Morlun. His Exiles tech allowed him to view Morlun's slaughter while also tracking other versions of himself. Miguel intended to unite different Spider-Man 2099 incarnations to stand against the Inheritors, but was unable to get ahead of Morlun's feasting, and continued to arrive too late.
In his research, Miguel learned that Morlun feared the Spider-Man of Earth-616, who was the only Spider in history to successfully defeat and even kill him for a time. With a version of Spider-Man 2099 also present on Earth-616 at the time, Miguel thought he would make a perfect ally. Exiles technology in his headband allowed Miggy to zero in on Earth-616, and he prepared to walk through his dimensional portal to meet his alternate self... but it was too late. 
Morlun was aware of Miguel's monitoring, and tracked him to Earth-6375. Right at the portal's boundary between 6375 and 616, Morlun grabbed Miguel and snapped his neck before the eyes of his counterpart. As Miguel fell through the portal, already growing cold, the infuriated alternate Spider-Man 2099 screamed at Morlun to come at him, but the Inheritor was still terrified of Earth-616, and refused to step through the portal even to retrieve his prize. The portal closed, and Miguel O'Hara of the Exiles was quietly buried by Miguel O'Hara of Earth-616. [Spider-Man 2099 (2nd series) #5]