"Physically stable for now. The mutation appears contained rather than eliminated. We'll need to monitor him, figure out if the suppression is permanent or if it might reactivate."
"And if it does?"
"Then we deal with that when it happens." Alex looked at his friend, taking in the exhaustion and pain clearly written across his face. "You did good work today. The cure worked. He's human again, mostly."
"Mostly." Peter looked at the sleeping form of Curt Connors, missing an arm again, marked permanently by whatever he'd done to himself trying to fix that absence in the first place.
"It's sad, you know? He just wanted to be whole again. And now he's stuck like this. Worse off in some ways."
"He's alive. He's himself, or close enough to it. That's more than a lab table would have given him."
Peter nodded slowly, then seemed to remember something. "You need to get back up there. Play injured, right? Cover story?"
"Right." Alex had already started running through the plan in his head, hospital, vague story, quiet exit. Then he stopped himself mid-thought, the flaw surfacing so clearly he almost laughed at having missed it.
"Wait. No. Scratch that."
Peter frowned. "Scratch what?"
"The hospital idea. Norman already knows Connors is the specimen. He said it himself in the briefing, three days absent, no communication, direct confirmation this was connected to him before we even went underground." Alex knelt beside Connors again, checking the man's pulse out of habit more than necessity.
"Which means Connors' name is already flagged somewhere. Hospital systems, missing persons networks, whatever channels a joint military-corporate program uses to track a valuable asset. The second his name hits an intake form anywhere in this city, it gets back to Norman within hours."
"So the whole plan's dead."
"The hospital part is. We need someone off the grid. Someone with real medical credentials who won't ask questions and definitely won't be filing anything through normal channels." Alex pulled out his phone, already scrolling through contacts most people would never guess he had. "I've actually been in touch with someone for a while now. Not for this specifically, just general contingency planning. Advanced medical and biological expertise, someone who understands unusual physiology better than almost anyone alive."
"Who?"
"Not important right now. What matters is they're reliable and they're close enough to reach tonight." Alex typed out a message, careful and deliberately vague even in text.
"I'll have them meet you here in a few hours. You'll know it's the right person when they mention the reference point I'm about to give you."
"Reference point?"
"They'll say the word 'gamma' somewhere in the first few sentences. That's confirmation."
Peter's eyebrows went up slightly at the strange specificity but he didn't push. "Okay. Cryptic, but okay. What do I do until they show up?"
"Keep him stable. Fluids if he wakes up enough to take them. Watch the scaling on his shoulder, if it spreads or changes color, that's important information to pass along." Alex stood, checking his torn sleeve one more time. "I need to get back and give Norman something believable before he starts wondering why his consultant vanished for two hours."
"And Connors? No family we need to worry about? Wife, kids, anyone who'll report him missing on their own timeline?"
"No. He's alone. Divorced years back from what I found in his personnel file, no kids, lives by himself near the Oscorp campus. Which is honestly part of what made him vulnerable to all this in the first place. Nobody around to notice him spiraling until it was already too late."
Peter looked down at Connors' sleeping form, something somber crossing his expression. "That's rough. Guy loses his arm, loses his marriage probably because of everything that came with it, and then loses himself trying to fix the one thing he thought he could fix."
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