The vision of Earth-65 shattered like broken glass. Peter's muscles suddenly unlocked. He was still in free-fall over the freezing, dark waters of the Hudson River.
Black sludge instantly flooded his peripheral vision. Venom didn't wait for permission; the symbiote seized motor control, manipulating their aerodynamic drag to keep them from hitting the surface like a dropped brick. Peter gasped, the icy wind filling his lungs as his mind slammed back into his own body.
Are you okay, Peter? Venom rumbled in his mind.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good," Peter groaned, shaking his head to clear the residual static. "Just a terribly timed multiverse ping. I couldn't save Connors in the vision."
Peter recognized the dimensional signature of the hallucination. It was Earth-65. The reality where Gwen Stacy caught the radioactive bite instead of him. A universe where everyone adored Spider-Woman, provided she remained tragically isolated and never actually fell in love.
He didn't have time to unpack the existential dread of parallel timelines. A booming, incredibly angry voice echoed across the water.
"Spider-Man is a shameless, thieving menace!"
The audio wasn't in Peter's head. It was blasting from the upper deck of a passing tourist cruise ship. A massive LED screen mounted near the smokestacks displayed a live feed of the Daily Bugle news desk. J. Jonah Jameson's red, vein-bulging face filled the monitor.
"He is misusing corporate property without authorization!" Jameson bellowed, slamming a fist on his desk. "As the President of the Daily Bugle, I solemnly declare that we did not lend our news chopper to this masked vigilante to go iguana hunting! Even if Tony Stark walked in here right now and bought the building, this is a shameful, illegal theft!"
"Seriously, Jonah?" Peter muttered, firing a web-line straight up. The silk attached to the undercarriage of the hovering Bugle helicopter. "Couldn't you find a better angle? Why not protest the City Council for failing to install adequate 'spider-grappling points' along the Hudson?"
Peter swung forward, using the chopper's momentum to launch himself downriver.
Below him, the Lizard breached the surface, sprinting across the shallows before diving back into the murky depths. Peter released the web-line and spread his arms. The black symbiote shifted, instantly forming sleek, high-tension web-wings beneath his armpits. He glided low over the water, tracking the massive green shape beneath the surface.
Suddenly, a sharp, electric spike dug into the base of his skull. The Web of Fate was pinging him again. It wasn't a vision this time; it was a physical pull. Another Earth was violently calling out for his help.
"Almost done here!" Peter gritted his teeth, his Spider-Sense buzzing like a trapped hornet. "Can't you put me on hold for five minutes, Web of Fate?!"
I suspect the multiverse utilizes an automated warning system, Venom noted dryly. It clearly lacks a human resources department.
"Wasn't there a literal Weaver goddess running this thing?" Peter grumbled, adjusting his glide angle. "Did she call in sick?"
Directly ahead, a sleek, civilian speedboat was cutting across the water. The Lizard didn't swim around it. The beast lunged from the depths, grabbed the fiberglass hull with both hands, and violently capsized the vessel, hurling the entire multi-ton boat directly into Peter's flight path.
Peter reacted purely on instinct. He killed his web-wings, dropping into a tight dive to slide inches beneath the flying hull. In the same breath, he fired two thick web-lines at the boat's stern. He pulled backward with bone-crushing force, using his own downward momentum to violently right the capsized vessel before it hit the water.
The speedboat slammed upright onto the river surface with a massive splash.
Simultaneously, thick black tendrils erupted from Peter's shoulders. The symbiote lashed out, grabbing the three screaming crew members right out of mid-air and depositing them safely back onto the deck. Peter landed lightly on the bow, fired a final web to completely gum up the throttle, and killed the engine.
"Alright, gentlemen, please remain seated," Peter said, releasing the web-lines. "I hope you enjoyed the Oscorp Pirate Ship experience."
The three crew members scrambled to the railing and began vomiting violently into the Hudson. One of them managed to weakly raise a thumbs-up without turning around.
Peter didn't wait for a verbal thank-you. He fired another line and launched himself back into the chase.
"Connors is escalating," Peter said, his heart hammering against his ribs. "He's getting desperate. If this keeps up, civilians are going to get caught in the crossfire."
Perhaps we are the catalyst for his desperation, Venom suggested.
"What do you mean?"
We are simply too strong, Venom explained. Even a heavily mutated, super-soldier-enhanced reptile realizes it cannot defeat us in direct combat. His instinct is purely evasion. If we wish to draw him into a fight, perhaps we should feign weakness. Allow him to believe he has the advantage.
"Not a terrible plan," Peter admitted, feeling the dimensional pull in his skull growing agonizingly strong. "But we also have to stay sharp for the actual heavy hitters."
Peter pushed his speed to the absolute limit. He swung low, released his line, and dive-bombed directly onto the Lizard's massive, scaly back just as the beast surfaced near a commercial dock.
Black tendrils instantly whipped around the Lizard's shoulders, locking his arms in place. Peter reached down, grabbed the beast's jaw, and tried to violently pry its mouth open to administer the aerosol cure.
The Lizard thrashed wildly. He whipped his heavy tail, knocking Peter off balance, and clamped his jaws shut, refusing to open his mouth. He kept swimming furiously toward the concrete retaining wall.
"We need to dry him out!" Peter yelled.
Four thick symbiotic tentacles shot from Peter's back, anchoring deeply into the concrete pylons of the riverside warehouse. At the same time, Peter wrapped his arms in a chokehold around the Lizard's thick neck.
Physics took over. The Lizard was swimming forward at forty miles an hour. Peter was anchored completely solid. The kinetic energy had nowhere to go.
With a deafening, sickening crack, the Lizard's cervical vertebrae snapped.
The momentum threw them both onto the docks. They crashed violently through a stack of wooden shipping pallets, sliding across the rough concrete. Peter hit the ground hard, his breath leaving his lungs in a sharp rush.
He looked up. The Lizard was already standing.
The beast reached up with a massive green hand, grabbed its own twisted head, and violently wrenched it sideways. The bones popped back into place with a crisp, wet crunch. The super-soldier healing factor was already knitting the spinal cord back together.
The Web of Fate screamed in Peter's mind. The dimensional pull felt like a fishhook caught behind his navel.
"Take a message!" Peter yelled at the sky, scrambling to his feet. "Leave your number! I'm busy!"
The four-meter-tall reptile didn't give him time to breathe. The Lizard lunged, jaws snapping open, aiming directly for Peter's head.
Peter threw his hands up, catching the beast's upper and lower jaws, physically holding the mouth open to prevent the lethal bite. He planted his boots against the concrete, his muscles screaming against the sheer, hydraulic pressure of the Lizard's jaw strength.
Then, something shattered inside the beast's mouth.
A thick, burning cloud of green smoke billowed out from between the Lizard's razor-sharp teeth, hitting Peter directly in the face. He saw jagged shards of broken glass mixed in the toxic vapor.
Connors had hidden a concentrated vial of the Savage Force mutation serum in his mouth, waiting for the perfect moment to bite down and dose Spider-Man.
Do not panic! Venom roared in Peter's mind. I am filtering it. I am capturing every individual molecule of the mutation serum before it breaches your respiratory system. It will not enter your bloodstream.
The black sludge rapidly sealed over Peter's mask lenses and mouth filters.
However, this requires my complete focus, Venom warned. I cannot assist you offensively. Administer the cure now!
"Got it!" Peter gritted his teeth.
He fired two standard web-lines, pinning the Lizard's arms to the concrete. He shifted his weight entirely, driving his right boot up and burying it directly into the Lizard's throat to pin the beast to the ground. Freeing his hands, Peter snatched the custom aerosol canister from his belt.
He shoved the nozzle directly into the Lizard's open mouth and hit the actuator.
A thick burst of compressed blue smoke blasted down the reptile's throat. The Lizard choked, seemingly absorbing the vapor into its lungs, and began to violently stagger backward.
Peter dropped to one knee, a sudden, intense wave of vertigo washing over him. The docks spun. He shook his head, wondering if a fraction of the green serum had bypassed Venom's filters.
But it wasn't the serum.
The air three feet to his right began to hum. Space literally tore open, revealing a jagged, glowing, multi-colored rift in the fabric of reality.
Is it time? Venom asked, the symbiote peeling back from Peter's face. Or did the toxic exposure cause a localized failure in your dimensional control?
"I have no idea," Peter breathed, staring at the glowing portal. "I've never let a multiverse call ring this long before."
Ten feet away, the reversal serum took effect. The Lizard threw its head back, letting out a garbled, half-human scream. The massive reptilian dermal plating began to recede. The beast shrank rapidly, the tail dissolving back into the spine.
But the transformation stopped early. Connors didn't revert into a one-armed scientist. He stabilized at roughly seven feet tall. The dense, scaled hide was minimize, his skin still green and the hulking muscle mass remained. The Erskine Super Soldier serum was permanently baked into his DNA; the aerosol mist could only strip away the animal genetics, not the super-soldier enhancements.
Connors dropped to his knees, staring at his two perfectly intact, human hands. His eyes were wide with shock, the human mind desperately trying to process the nightmare.
"Dr. Connors," Peter said, his voice straining over the humming roar of the portal. "We can fix the rest. The cure is working. Stay with me."
Connors looked up. Confusion bled into his features, followed rapidly by a flash of agonizing pain.
Peter took a step forward, but the gravitational pull of the spatial rift violently hooked him. His boots scraped across the concrete. He was being dragged into the breach.
He raised his wrist, firing a thick barrage of high-tensile webbing, securely cocooning Connors to the dock.
"I have to go!" Peter shouted, fighting the pull just long enough to lock eyes with the scientist. "The Avengers are sixty seconds out! When they get here, you tell them everything, Doc!"
Peter couldn't hold on any longer. He surrendered to the pull, stepping backward into the blinding light of the spatial rift.
As the portal swallowed Spider-Man and half a ton of shattered concrete from the docks, Peter saw Curt Connors' face change one last time. The human confusion completely vanished. The scientist's eyes locked onto the portal, his pupils narrowing back into jagged, feral, reptilian slits.