Oscorp. Restricted research wing. Nighttime...
Two scientists in white coats stood at a safe distance while Norman Osborn paced in front of a containment chamber, muttering numbers under his breath that neither of them fully followed.
"Sir," the older one said carefully. "Your heart rate on the monitor is elevated. We should pause the session."
"I did not ask for a medical opinion." Norman did not stop pacing. "I asked for the compound to stabilize."
The younger scientist glanced at the readout, then at Norman, then back at the readout. Something in his face changed.
"Dr. Osborn." His voice dropped, careful in the way people get careful right before they say something they cannot take back. "Your pupils. The tremor in your hands." He hesitated, then pushed through it. "Sir, have you been dosing yourself with this?"
Norman went very still.
"That's not possible protocol," the young man pressed, too nervous to stop now that he had started. "If you've been self-administering an unstabilized compound, you need to tell us exactly how much, and when. We cannot help you otherwise."
"Shut up."
The words came out flat, almost quiet, and then Norman's hand moved faster than anything in the room was prepared for. The young scientist hit the far wall before he finished his sentence, and did not get back up.
The lab went silent.
The older scientist did not wait to process what he had just seen. He turned and ran for the door.
He made it four steps.
A sealed sample case left Norman's hand and crossed the room too fast to track. It struck the older man between the shoulders. It detonated on impact.
BOOM!
Chemical fire filled the doorway. When it cleared, nothing near it was still standing.
Norman stood alone in the wreckage, breathing hard, and started to laugh. It built from something low and disbelieving into something with no restraint left in it at all.
"Time for the final upgrade," Norman said to the empty room, to the two bodies, to no one who could hear him and object. "A being so perfect as myself has never been seen before!"
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Queens. Later that night.
Smoke was already pouring from the second floor windows by the time Peter's spider-sense caught the heat signature three blocks out.
He hit the fire escape running, and by the time he reached the building he already had a plan built from a dozen scenarios FSIS had war-gamed with him months ago.
"Family status," Peter said through the earpiece.
"Thermal imaging shows four occupants," FSIS said. "Two adults on the ground floor already exiting through the front door. Two children on the second floor, rear bedroom, blocked by fire in the hallway."
Peter didn't slow down.
He hit the second-floor window feet first, glass giving way around him, and found both kids exactly where FSIS had said they would be, huddled by the window with a wet towel pressed under the door the way every fire safety pamphlet taught and nobody actually remembered until it mattered.
"I've got you. Hold on to me, both of you, as tight as you can."
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