The two figures slowly stepped into the light.
"No, look closely. These two are different from the one we fought before. They look a little bulkier," Gwen said as she kept her eyes on the two lizard men through the holographic screen.
"Mm... yeah." Peter nodded slowly. "These two look even more dangerous."
"Oh no! Those hostages are in danger. We need to save them!" Peter said anxiously as he watched the two lizard men walk toward the terrified hostages.
"No. We don't know how many lizard men are inside. I think those twenty men the gang already sent were transformed into lizard men. If we go in now, it'll be difficult to save the hostages. Besides, they're safe for the moment," Gwen replied calmly.
Peter didn't know who the Lizard Man really was, but Gwen did. After everything Jack had told her, she couldn't help but suspect that Dr. Connors might be behind all of this.
"What? That means just the two of us can't save those hostages if there are twenty lizard men in there. The last lizard was already a little stronger than us with its raw strength and regenerative abilities," Peter said, finally realizing the seriousness of the situation.
"Don't worry. I already sent a message to Hero Blur asking for reinforcements. For now, let's just follow them," Gwen said as she sent everything that had happened to Jack.
On the other side, Jack, who had just been planning how to find Dr. Connors, received Gwen's message. But instead of looking happy after finding a clue, his expression became more serious.
"Daddy, why do you look so troubled?" Emma asked curiously. "Isn't it a good thing? Mom found a clue just when we needed one."
"I just have a feeling... don't you think this looks like a setup? Just when we needed to find Dr. Connors, we found a clue related to him. Not before, not after — just at the right time. We searched for him everywhere for a week and found nothing at all," Jack said, voicing his thoughts.
"Ahh, who would do that? I think you're overthinking it," Emma said, feeling like her dad was making things more complicated than they needed to be.
"You two stay here. I'll take care of it." Jack put those thoughts aside, transformed into XLR8, and disappeared in a blue blur.
"He left us behind again," Emma complained as she crossed her arms.
"He always does that," Morgan replied with a helpless smile. The two girls looked at each other for a moment before a mischievous smile slowly appeared on both their faces.
"This place goes underground," Peter whispered as he crawled along the wall of the tunnel. From a distance, he and Gwen followed the lizard men using the signals from Gwen's tiny spider trackers.
"They've reached the other side," Gwen said, bringing up a holographic display. The live footage showed the lizard men forcing the hostages into what looked like an underground laboratory.
"Only ten more humans this time," one of the lizard men reported to another who seemed to be in charge.
"Only ten?!" the lizard in charge hissed in annoyance. "Those humans are really useless. They can't even capture more people. I would've caught more myself."
"No. The boss told us we need to stay hidden, so the human gang was needed to capture them," a bigger lizard man replied calmly.
"Hmph." A one-eyed lizard sneered. "Why should we obey that human? We lizard people shouldn't be hiding like cowards. We should become the masters of these puny humans."
"That's right!" "The humans are weak!" "They should be serving us!" Several other lizard men immediately echoed his words, their eyes glowing with excitement.
The terrified hostages instinctively huddled together. Some lowered their heads, too afraid to look at the monsters, while others trembled uncontrollably, tears filling their eyes as they listened to the lizard men's conversation.
"What's all the noise out here?" A middle-aged man wearing a white lab coat slowly walked out of the room, his cold gaze sweeping across the lizard men. "Are you planning some kind of rebellion?"
The moment they saw him, the excitement on most of the lizard men's faces disappeared, replaced by fear.
"Human, you have no right to order us — DIE, BASTARD!" the one-eyed lizard roared as he charged toward the scientist. Inspired by him, several other lizard men also rushed forward.
But before any of them could even touch him, the metal collars around their necks suddenly flashed.
"UGGGHHH!"
The attacking lizard men instantly collapsed to the ground, their bodies twitching in pain as they let out miserable screams.
"Idiots." The scientist looked down at them with an expressionless face. "Did you really think you could escape my control?"
Seeing the man effortlessly bring those terrifying lizard monsters to the ground, the hostages became even more horrified. Some took a few steps back instinctively, while others didn't even dare breathe too loudly. Without another word, the scientist turned around and calmly walked into what seemed to be the main laboratory.
"It seems we found the mastermind," Peter said quietly as he watched everything unfold on the holographic screen.
Gwen frowned. She had assumed Dr. Connors was behind all of this, but from what they had just seen, Dr. Connors was nowhere to be found.
"Gwen, I've reached your location." Suddenly, Gwen heard Jack's voice through the communicator.
"That was fast. We're in the tunnel. Come quickly." The moment she finished speaking, a gust of wind rushed past them.
Whoosh! XLR8 was already standing beside them.
"Woah!" Peter instinctively threw a punch, but XLR8 easily sidestepped it.
"Peter, stop! He's an ally," Gwen said quickly.
Peter looked more carefully at the alien in front of him.
"Wait... you're Hero Blur!" His eyes lit up. "It's nice to finally meet you! I'm actually a huge fan. I still remember when you stopped that bank robbery—" Before he could continue, Gwen cut him off.
"Peter, later."
"Right... sorry," Peter scratched the back of his head awkwardly.
"Hello, Spider-Man. Nice to meet you too," Jack replied. "And my hero name is Omnix now, not the 'Hero Blur' name the media came up with."
"Oh, right. Omnix," Peter nodded. "I think that name sounds much cooler."
"So, what's the situation?" Gwen immediately explained everything that had happened and who the enemy was.
"Okay, I understand. Those lizards are being controlled by the metal collars around their necks. If we can crack those collars, we can deal with all twenty lizard men easily. Otherwise, we'll have to take them down one by one," Jack said. "Red Queen, can you or Friday crack those collars remotely right now?"
"Master, I can't. This place seems to be operating completely offline," Red Queen replied.
Seeing there was no other option, Jack canceled his transformation and returned to his Plumber suit. Peter stared at him in surprise.
"You can really transform? I thought those were just rumors the media made up."
"Let's go. We'll take them by surprise." Jack simply walked toward the tunnel.
"Aren't you going to transform?" Peter asked, seeing that Omnix hadn't changed into any other form.
"No need."
Peter blinked in confusion. Seeing Omnix still wearing the futuristic suit, he couldn't help but wonder if this was another one of his transformations. Even Gwen looked at Jack curiously, not fully understanding what he was planning.
A/N: The Patreon version is already updated with 20 advanced chapters. If you'd like to read ahead of the public release schedule, you can join here:
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