The automatic doors of Oscorp's Super Soldier Program Center hissed open, releasing a blast of over-conditioned, sterile air. Dr. Jonathan Drew swiped his Level-5 keycard, ushering Peter inside the facility. Peter tapped the cheap plastic VISITOR badge clipped to the chest of his jacket, looking around the sprawling laboratory.
Unlike the black-ops CIA black sites or hidden underground military bunkers, Oscorp's "Savage Force" division wasn't a secret. It was loud, proud, and aggressively PR-friendly. If you were going to fleece the Pentagon out of billions of dollars in advanced defense contracts, you had to put on a good show. The lab was a masterclass in corporate theater—gleaming white tiles, floor-to-ceiling glass, and scientists walking around with purposeful strides.
"Good morning, Kurt," Jonathan called out, his voice echoing over the low hum of machinery. "I brought a friend along. Hope you don't mind."
The man hunched over a heavy-duty electron microscope at the far bench straightened his posture. "That heavily depends on the friend, Jonathan," Dr. Kurt Connors replied, turning around.
His pristine white lab coat hung loosely on his right side, the empty sleeve neatly folded and pinned up at the shoulder. He adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses, his sharp eyes landing on Peter. A warm, albeit exhausted, smile broke across his face. "You must be Peter Parker. You look remarkably like Professor Richard. I've heard a lot about you, and frankly, I think you're the best candidate to inherit your father's research."
Connors was likely referencing the genetically modified arthropods Richard Parker had developed, but Peter kept his face perfectly neutral. He hadn't exactly planned on inheriting his dad's research via a radioactive spider bite to the hand.
"It's an honor to meet you, Dr. Connors," Peter said.
Connors extended his left hand. Peter met his grip, his eyes briefly flicking to the pinned sleeve. It wasn't a secret that amputees in Universe 616 had vast medical options. Between Stark Industries' cybernetics and Oscorp's own advanced biomedical divisions, walking around with an empty sleeve was a deliberate, conscious choice.
Connors caught the glance. "It's a reminder," he said, his tone entirely devoid of self-pity. "It keeps me hungry. If I woke up every morning with a high-tech titanium prosthetic, I might lose the motivation to fix the actual biological problem."
He gestured with his chin, leading Jonathan and Peter deeper into the facility. The lab had undergone a massive overhaul since Peter's last unauthorized snooping session. The terrariums of genetically modified spiders and insects were mostly gone. In their place stood massive, reinforced aquatic tanks and heavy-duty steel enclosures.
A loud, rhythmic CRACK-SNAP drew Peter's attention to a floor-to-ceiling cylindrical tank. Inside, a cluster of massive eels coiled lazily around copper grounding rods. Blinding blue arcs of electricity discharged from their dark scales, striking the rods and feeding directly into a massive capacitor bank strapped to the tank's exterior. The faint smell of ozone bled through the reinforced seals.
"Electrophorus voltai. Highly modified," Connors noted, his eyes tracking the blue flashes. "We've reprogrammed their genetic output. They can discharge over three thousand volts. That's roughly four times their natural peak."
"So... human trials?" Peter asked, raising an eyebrow.
Connors snorted. "Theoretical research hasn't caught up to Jonathan's spider trials yet. If we injected a human subject with that eel sequence right now, their nervous system would flash-fry before they hit the floor. Guaranteed fatality."
Peter filed that terrifying bit of information away. A genetically modifiable, three-thousand-volt electric eel. Note to self: do not let anyone fall into that tank.
"Come here. Let me show you the real breakthrough," Connors said, practically dragging them toward a smaller, temperature-controlled observation deck.
Inside the enclosure, several green iguanas rested lazily on heated rocks. Connors tapped a command into the console. A precise, high-intensity medical laser dropped from the ceiling. Zzzzt. The beam cleanly severed a lizard's tail, taking a good chunk of its hindquarters with it.
The smell of singed scales hit the air vents. Peter tensed, his shoulders dropping defensively. But before the lizard could even bleed, the charred flesh bubbled. Bright green, raw tissue rapidly expanded outward, knitting bone, muscle, and scales together in real-time. Within ten seconds, the lizard flicked a brand-new tail.
"I isolated the regenerative sequence and forced a systemic spread," Connors said, his breathing growing shallow with excitement. "This is a monumental leap, Peter! Imagine grafting this onto a human genome. Amputations, spinal cord injuries, degenerative diseases—erased overnight."
Peter nodded slowly. He knew the U.S. military was already chasing this exact dragon, though their black-ops divisions preferred harvesting the DNA of mutants with healing factors, like Wolverine. He kept that thought to himself. "So... have you pushed this into higher mammal trials?"
Connors' smile vanished. His shoulders slumped. He gestured silently toward a heavy steel blast door at the back of the lab.
Jonathan swiped his card again. They stepped into a dimly lit isolation room. A thick wall of reinforced ballistic glass separated them from the test subject.
A primate—or what used to be a primate—paced the floor. It was a macaque monkey, completely hairless. Its skin had been replaced by thick, overlapping emerald scales. The moment the creature saw them, it shrieked. It threw its entire body weight against the glass. BANG. Bloody saliva smeared across the pane as it bared rows of needle-like teeth, tearing at the reinforced barrier with razor-sharp claws.
Peter took a half-step back, his heart kicking against his ribs. The sheer, suffocating aggression rolling off the creature was intense. Connors had stopped the serum from being lethal, but he was still just creating literal monsters.
"If the Pentagon wants raw strength paired with a healing factor, they might order a whole batch of these," Jonathan offered, trying to lighten the heavy mood in the room.
"I doubt it," Connors sighed, rubbing his forehead with his left hand. "The cerebral cortex is completely overwhelmed by the reptilian brain. Intelligence drops to zero. Brain activity spikes, but it's purely instinctual. You can't give an order to a berserker."
Peter watched the creature repeatedly hurl itself against the glass, tearing its own shoulder open only for the wound to instantly seal shut. "Can you turn it back?" he asked.
Connors blinked, pulled from his frustration. "Excuse me?"
"Can you reverse it?" Peter clarified, pointing at the screaming monkey. "Flush the reptilian genetic modification and revert it back to a normal macaque?"
Silence hung in the room. Both older scientists stared at the glass. Peter could practically hear the gears grinding in their heads.
"In the current process, the serum introduces an aggressive genetic payload," Connors murmured, pacing a short line across the floor. "It overwrites the host DNA and accelerates cellular division to complete the transformation..."
"But if you introduced a counter-agent," Jonathan picked up the thread, his eyes widening. "Something carrying the original genetic blueprint to overwrite the altered genes."
"You'd need a clean blood sample from the subject prior to the initial injection," Connors finished. He spun around, a renewed fire in his eyes. "A baseline anchor! The body wouldn't reject its own original sequence. Peter, that's brilliant. If we applied this logic to a stabilized super-soldier serum, we could eradicate genetic diseases by overwriting sick DNA with a healthy baseline sequence."
The tiny hairs on the back of Peter's neck suddenly stood straight up. A cold, sharp hum vibrated at the base of his skull.
"And if our friends in the military decide they need to turn their soldiers back into monsters... they'd have a switch for that, too."
The voice was smooth, cultured, and carried the heavy weight of absolute authority. Peter turned slowly.
Norman Osborn stood in the doorway of the isolation lab. He wore a charcoal, thousand-dollar suit, his reddish-brown hair perfectly coiffed. His eyes—cold, blue, and impossibly sharp—locked directly onto Peter. The corner of his mouth twitched upward into a smile that completely failed to reach his eyes. He stepped forward, extending a hand.
"Welcome to Oscorp, Peter."
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