Gwen Stacy held her breath until her lungs burned. She stood frozen just inside the threshold of the hidden room, the heavily encrypted stealth suit rendering her completely invisible to the naked eye. She watched as Norman Osborn stepped up to a bank of security monitors built into the wall, his eyes scanning the live feeds of his empty office and the locked corridor outside.
He tapped a few keys, satisfied the lockdown protocols were active, and finally let his rigid posture drop. He rolled his shoulders, exhaling a long, heavy sigh.
Gwen slowly let her breath out through her nose, taking stock of her surroundings. She had expected a subterranean dungeon. A mad scientist's laboratory filled with bubbling vats of chemicals or stolen military tech. Instead, she found herself standing in what looked like a billionaire's private speakeasy. The walls were paneled in rich, dark mahogany. A massive leather recliner dominated the center of the room, flanked by a vintage record player and a fully stocked wet bar that smelled faintly of expensive scotch and cedarwood.
It was a sanctuary. A place where Norman Osborn could completely drop his public mask.
Norman walked over to the bar. He didn't rush. He pulled a crystal decanter from the top shelf, pouring a generous measure of dark red wine into a glass. He pressed a button on a remote, and the soft, sweeping strings of a classical cello concerto filled the room. Humming a low, tuneless melody under his breath, he walked over to the recliner and sank into the leather cushions.
Gwen adjusted her grip, her boots making absolutely no sound on the thick Persian rug as she carefully circled around him. She stopped near a polished oak side table.
Sitting under a warm reading lamp was a framed photograph. Gwen leaned in closer. It showed three people: a much younger Norman Osborn, his late wife Emily, and a chubby, deeply awkward-looking man with thick glasses.
Given everything Peter had told her about the vicious, deeply personal feud currently tearing the city apart, Gwen instantly recognized the third man. It was a young Otto Octavius.
Earlier that evening, Peter had forwarded a secure NYPD dispatch alert to her phone. Doctor Octopus had been brutally assassinated by an unknown sniper. Shot cleanly through the head.
Norman swirled his wine glass, his eyes fixed on the photograph.
"You were always a brilliant man, Otto," Norman said aloud. His voice was smooth, conversational, echoing slightly over the cello music. "But unfortunately, you were entirely too idealistic. You fixated on the purity of science, completely blinding yourself to the only thing science is actually meant to generate. Profit."
Gwen's thumb hovered over the side button of her Stark-tech phone.
"Money," Norman sneered, taking a slow sip. "You disdained the very concept of it. Naturally, I could have tolerated your academic arrogance. But when your personal demands exceeded the margins of profitability? When you started funneling millions in company R&D funds to fix your own failing nervous system? I'm sorry, Otto. I simply couldn't tolerate the dead weight."
Gwen hit the record button. The screen glowed a faint, muted black as the high-fidelity microphone picked up every syllable.
Norman wasn't confessing to a priest. He was monologuing to an empty room, rationalizing his own ruthlessness to the ghosts of his past. Gwen kept her breathing shallow, her eyes locked on the back of his head.
"And then, you chose revenge," Norman chuckled, a dark, humorless sound. "Revenge. A wonderful motivator. How long did you spend drafting your little master plan? How many bodies did you drop? How many enemies did you make? The public looks at you, Otto, and they see a monster. Pure, unadulterated evil. They look at me, and they just see a ruthless businessman. Compared to you, I'm practically a saint."
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, staring intently at the young Otto in the frame.
"But you were still a loose end. You knew that breaking me meant destroying Oscorp's stock value. You tried to ruin me commercially, but that guaranteed the Military would simply absorb you. You failed, my old friend." Norman took another long sip of wine. "And since you failed to ruin my company... I knew exactly what you would target next. You would have come for my life. You would have come for my family."
Norman raised his glass to the photo in a mocking toast. "So, I am truly sorry I had to expedite your departure. But I hired the absolute best in the business. I hope it was quick, Otto."
Gwen's blood ran cold. The ambient temperature in her stealth suit couldn't combat the sudden, icy chill crawling up her spine.
Norman ordered the hit. It wasn't a shock to anyone in Peter's orbit, but now she had the audio file. Admissible in court or not, she had Norman Osborn dead to rights confessing to a contract killing. What else could he drop? She silently urged him to keep talking.
"The real tragedy in all this..." Norman murmured, his voice dropping an octave, losing its smug edge. "Peter doesn't trust me anymore. It's a truly heartbreaking development."
Gwen almost stumbled. Her boot caught the edge of the rug, and she had to forcefully lock her knees to keep from falling.
"Oh, Richard," Norman sighed, tipping his head back against the leather chair, speaking to a man who had been dead for over a decade. "You left me the richest legacy imaginable. You handed me a project with limitless biological potential, and three incredibly gifted students. I still don't know why you tried to burn the research down and run. But... thankfully, your son inherited your exact genetic sequence."
Norman smiled, a wide, deeply unsettling expression. "He can still be the Spider-Man. Perhaps not as flawlessly engineered as you would have been, Richard, but he is more than adequate. The tech expo I prepared for him was a spectacular success, wasn't it?"
Gwen's grip on her phone tightened so violently her knuckles popped.
The Osborn Tech Expo. The field trip. The spider bite.
It wasn't an accident. It was never an accident. Norman Osborn had deliberately engineered the entire event, manipulating the school board, the logistics, and the security grid specifically to force a radioactive spider onto Peter Parker's hand. He had manufactured Spider-Man.
"The exposure was perfect," Norman lamented, swirling the last dregs of his wine. "But now Peter will never trust me again. Such a profound waste. He is so brilliant. So adaptable. If he had just taken all that raw energy he wastes swinging around in tights and applied it to corporate engineering, he would have been my perfect successor. Instead, he fights me."
Norman scoffed, tossing back the rest of his drink. "How wonderful it would be if he were my actual son. Or if I had just had a daughter instead."
Gwen blinked, her shock momentarily derailed by the sheer, narcissistic absurdity of the statement. Put aside the horrifying implication of Norman wishing he owned Peter—what would having a daughter change? She mentally filed the comment away, sliding her phone into her pocket and stepping quietly away from the recliner.
Norman was clearly stuck in a nostalgic, self-pitying loop. He started complaining about Harry, muttering about his son's disappointing lack of killer instinct. Gwen tuned him out. She needed physical evidence.
She drifted around the perimeter of the lounge, her gloved hands ghosting over the mahogany cabinets. She checked the drawers beneath the wet bar. She scanned the bookshelves.
Nothing. The room was clean.
She turned back to Norman. He had set his empty glass down and was now reaching inside the breast pocket of his tailored suit jacket. He pulled out a folded manila file.
Gwen's eyes narrowed. Unlike the chaotic, alien-blueprint Counter-Earth dossier Harry had found upstate, this file looked entirely mundane. But Norman handled it differently. He didn't leave it in a vault. He carried it physically pressed against his chest.
He flipped the folder open, resting it on his lap.
Gwen crept closer, stepping carefully onto the thick rug right behind the recliner. She leaned forward, looking directly over his shoulder.
The header of the document was stamped with Oscorp's advanced medical division logo. It wasn't a weapon schematic. It wasn't a biological enhancement formula. It was a specialized blueprint for a neuro-cranial helmet. A medical device.
Gwen squinted, reading the executive summary.
Targeted Neural-Inhibitor. Primary Function: Chemical suppression and psychological containment of Dissociative Identity Disorder.
Gwen tilted her head. Dissociative Identity Disorder? A split personality?
Why was the CEO of a multi-billion dollar weapons manufacturing firm carrying around a prototype cure for a psychological fracture? Unless...
Gwen looked down at the top of Norman's neatly styled hair.
She leaned slightly further over his shoulder, following his gaze to a paragraph highlighted in bright yellow ink at the bottom of the page.
[WARNING: This device remains entirely in the theoretical stage. Any premature clinical application or electro-chemical therapy could trigger a severe psychological rebound effect. Attempting to suppress the secondary identity may inadvertently exacerbate the Dissociative Identity Disorder, permanently locking the patient into the dominant, aggressive state.]
Norman traced his finger over the word exacerbate. His hand was trembling.
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