As he got close to school he spotted two familiar heads near the entrance and started toward them.
On the way he caught Flash watching him from across the courtyard with the expression of someone who had been building up to something for two weeks. Peter made direct eye contact, put on his most deliberately arrogant smile, and drew one finger slowly across his throat.
Flash's face went through three distinct shades before he turned and walked away stiffly. Peter burst out laughing, and the sound made Gwen and Missy spin around simultaneously.
"Hi, Peter!"
"Hi." He reached them, leaned in, and kissed Missy on the cheek and then Gwen, which produced identical wide smiles from both of them. "Did you finish the notes Missy lent you?"
"I did," Missy said. "It was easy thanks to you." She kissed his cheek in return. "That is a thank you."
Gwen's expression shifted for just a moment, a small frown that she replaced with a smile before most people would have caught it... Peter caught it though.
Gwen: Come on, we need to get to biology. Dr. Connors came to speak to the school this morning!
Peter's internal monologue paused.
'Wait, what? How is Connors here?
I was supposed to encounter him at Oscorp. It seems the butterfly effect has already started deviating ahead of schedule and this was definitely not in the movie. I hate this kind of thing.'
"How exciting," he said, with the smile of someone who means approximately the opposite. "I had no idea."
The three of them made their way to the biology classroom and got settled before the other students filled the seats.
The teacher ran through some administrative things that Peter filtered out completely, and then the door opened and a man who looked very much like Rhys Ifans walked in, present in this universe with one arm, and stood at the front of the class with the relaxed ease of someone who had given this kind of talk many times before.
"Good morning," Connors said. "My name is Curt Connors, and if you were wondering, yes, I am left-handed."
A few students laughed. Gwen, Missy, and Peter did not.
"I have twin PhDs in biology and biochemistry, which I mention not to impress you but because it is relevant context. For years I have been studying herpetology, which is the study of reptiles for those who are not familiar with the term. I am here today to give you a talk about my research at the request of Norman Osborn, and also because one of your classmates, Miss Gwen Stacy, has been assisting me with that research as an intern at Oscorp."
He smiled at the class through his glasses, and his eyes moved across the room with the unhurried attention of someone who was genuinely interested in what he was looking at.
They paused on Peter.
Then they moved on.
Peter: 'Of course Connors eyes are already on me. Great. This is going nowhere good but I cannot do anything about it right now.'
"I want to ask you all something," he looked around.
"Have any of you ever watched someone with Parkinson's disease? Watched their body slowly stop listening to them, day by day, while their mind stays completely aware of what is happening?"
The room went quiet in anticipation.
"....Or imagine someone with macular degeneration. Waking up every morning watching the world go a little more blurry, a little more gone, with nothing they can do to stop it."
He raised his left arm slightly to show that he is the one.
"I lost mine on a day I would rather not describe in detail. But losing it gave me something I did not have before, which was a reason that was personal. I stopped researching lizards academically and started researching them urgently. Because the lizard does something that no human body can do. It loses a limb and grows it back.... Completely.... The cells know exactly what to do and they do it without any external instruction. Now imagine giving that same capability to a human body. Not mechanically, not artificially, but biologically..... Evolutionarily."
"Could stem cells be involved in that?", a random student in them could not help but asked it.
"A genuinely promising direction. But what I am looking for is something a bit more radical than that. Anyone else?"
When he saw no one is raising the hand he continued. "What I want to create is a new world. One where losing a limb is a temporary condition. Where Parkinson's is something the body simply corrects. Where the things that make us fragile become optional. For ten years I have been researching, moving from complete failure toward what I now believe is very close to success. And once I get there, there will be less pain, less suffering, and a way for people to heal in a way that evolution itself would be proud of."
The class applauded when he finished the main portion.
Peter exhaled slowly and thought about a giant lizard tearing through a school building and how urgently he needed the formula correction already sitting in his father's briefcase to reach Connors before Connors reached himself.
Beside him, Flash leaned toward a girl on his other side and muttered something that Peter caught regardless.
"What a lunatic. Completely delusional. I cannot believe someone actually hired him."
The girl was blonde, slim, and looked like Kaya Scodelario. She laughed quietly. Peter noted her face and filed her away. Liz Allen, if the memories were reliable.
Connors was talking about the future now, about what the world would look like when the research was complete, which was the kind of optimism that had its own specific gravity in a classroom setting. Peter was approximately three minutes from falling asleep despite his best efforts when Missy's hand went up.
"Dr. Connors? I have a question, if I may?"
"Yes, of course. Miss....?"
"Kallenback! Missy Kallenback."
"Please, Miss Kallenback."
"Are you researching only lizards and their regenerative capabilities, or is your work broader than that?"
Connors smiled, and it was a genuine one.
"I am a scattered-brained scientist by nature," he said, which drew a small laugh from the room, "so naturally my interests span several areas. Enhancing organisms using cross-species DNA, artificial evolutionary development, cutting-edge biotechnology, and more. But regeneration is my primary focus. It always comes back to that."
"I see. Thank you Doctor."
Connors left after an hour to continue his research. Peter took notes on anything genuinely useful and deliberately skipped everything related to Oscorp's artificial enhancement program since he had access to his father's research at home and did not need Connors' secondhand version of it.
'I am going to have to find a way to see what stage they are at with the formula,' he thought, closing his notebook. 'If it is too far along and too dangerous I may have to find a way to slow it down. Nothing good comes out of that research while it is sitting in Norman's hands.'
After Connors left, the teacher resumed his regular class, but stopped just before the bell rang with the expression of someone who had been saving something.
"Attention, students. I have more excellent news today. Thanks to Miss Stacy's position as an intern at Oscorp, this Wednesday we will be taking an excursion to Oscorp Industries to see the facility and its research divisions."
Peter felt his heart stop for one precise second.
Wednesday.
Wednesday was the day he had been tracking since the moment he had confirmed this world's timeline.
Wednesday was the day everything changed, the day the trajectory of his life in this universe stopped being theoretical and became real.
He had known it was coming. He had not expected it to arrive with quite this much immediacy.
He breathed out through his nose and let his expression stay exactly where it was.
After class the room emptied in the usual direction of the cafeteria and the courtyard, and Peter was nearly through the door when someone blocked his path.
The redhead.
He recognized her immediately as the T-1000 who had been tracking him for two weeks, and he felt the specific exhaustion of someone who knows they have run out of time.
"Peter! Wait!"