Otto Octavius abhorred answering to anyone.
But even a certified genius had to bow to certain logistical realities. First, he was entirely out of capital. Second, he could not afford to be caged by S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Avengers before he personally ripped Norman Osborn's empire to the ground.
In a world filled with telepaths and enhanced interrogators, secrets didn't stay buried for long in federal custody. Even if mind-reading wasn't admissible in a courtroom, a covert strike team wouldn't care about legal precedents. Otto needed a fortress. He needed infinite funding.
Wilson Fisk had provided a temporary shield, but the Kingpin's resources were currently locked behind the walls of Rikers Island. That was precisely why Otto had taken the elderly Japanese scientist's hand in the sewers. Dr. Oyama hadn't just offered him a lab. He had dialed a highly encrypted frequency, handing the receiver to Otto. The voice on the other end belonged to the United States military. They offered Otto complete immunity from S.H.I.E.L.D. in exchange for his brilliance.
Otto's mechanical tentacles hissed, the heavy titanium claws clanking against the steel floor grates. "Why build a covert research facility in the most densely populated city on the planet?" Otto demanded, his thick goggles reflecting the harsh fluorescent lights. "The risk of detection in New York is an unnecessary variable."
Dr. Oyama walked smoothly beside him, his hands clasped behind his back. "Because we reached a critical phase of our biological trials, Dr. Octavius. We required an uninterrupted supply of human test subjects. New York provided an ocean of undocumented vagrants. We originally conducted the procedures in the underground levels of Rikers Island. Unfortunately, one of our more resilient subjects recently breached the containment wall. We were forced to relocate here."
Oyama pressed his palm against a biometric scanner. A massive, circular blast door hissed, rolling back into the wall.
They stepped into a sprawling, underground bunker. It was built directly into the bedrock beneath the Hudson River. The air smelled of wet concrete and ozone. Heavily armed military personnel marched across the catwalks, shouting drills over the whine of heavy machinery.
"I deeply admire your work, Dr. Octavius," Oyama continued, gesturing to the sprawling facility. "As a pioneer in neurobiology and cybernetics, you single-handedly salvaged the primary experiment for Project Two. That proves your unparalleled utility."
Otto's lower actuators flexed, lifting his boots an inch off the ground. "You are referring to Mac Gargan. The Scorpion."
"Precisely," Oyama smiled thinly. "The integration of radiation-altered animal genetics to create a superior biological weapon. That is the core directive of Project Two: Savage Force. We originally contracted the project out to Osborn Technologies. Unfortunately, Norman Osborn failed to recognize the sheer scale of the endeavor. He dragged his feet. You delivered results."
Oyama stopped walking. He gestured toward a woman standing near the security checkpoint.
She wore a pristine, dark green tactical uniform. Her hair was dyed a vibrant, toxic green at the tips, fading into jet-black roots that swept down to obscure the entire right side of her face. She exchanged a rapid, clipped greeting in Japanese with Oyama before turning her cold, calculating eyes to Otto. She extended a black-gloved hand.
"Dr. Octavius," she said, her voice a smooth, venomous purr. "I am Ophelia Sarkissian. Director of Security for this installation. You may call me Viper."
Otto glanced down at Oyama. "A private military contractor?"
"Do not underestimate her," Oyama warned softly. "Viper Security is an elite division. Every operative under her command is an active test subject in our biological upgrade initiative. Ms. Sarkissian herself was injected with a localized, lightweight variant of the Super-Soldier Serum."
"The metabolic integration was far from optimal," Ophelia said, dropping her hand when Otto didn't take it. "But it elevated my baseline attributes well beyond human limits. Follow me, Doctor. I will escort you to your laboratory."
"I must return to the lower levels," Oyama nodded. "I have several failed biological assets to incinerate."
Otto didn't ask what he would be working on. He simply commanded his harness to follow Ophelia. His titanium limbs carried him effortlessly down the corridor, the servos whining with each heavy step. Ophelia bypassed three separate security checkpoints before opening a reinforced set of double doors.
Otto stepped inside. He froze.
The laboratory was massive, pristine, and entirely empty, save for a massive reinforced containment module occupying the center of the room. The module held two massive, human-sized glass cylinders. Five smaller, heavily pressurized glass jars were embedded into the walls.
Inside the glass, thick, gelatinous masses of living fluid writhed.
As Otto stepped closer, a pool of bright, blood-red viscous liquid violently slammed against the glass. The sludge instantly mutated. A jagged, gaping maw filled with razor-sharp white teeth ripped open across the liquid's surface. Two white, asymmetrical eyes formed, glaring at Otto as the creature let out a silent, terrifying shriek through the reinforced glass.
"These are your new primary subjects," Ophelia stated, standing perfectly still by the door. "And they are—"
"Symbiotes," Otto interrupted, his voice dropping to a reverent whisper.
He stepped up to the glass, his mechanical arms curling around the cylinder. "I accessed Norman's heavily encrypted military files before I destroyed his servers. You extracted these parasites from a meteorite that crashed in Arizona. They require a biological host to stabilize their molecular structure. In exchange, they exponentially augment the host's kinetic output."
"They can also generate temporary biological mass to replace severed limbs," Ophelia added. "We have run preliminary trials on several amputee volunteers."
Otto's eyes darted across the room, eagerly cataloging the alien samples. His gaze locked onto a jar in the far corner. A mass of inky black sludge sat at the bottom of the glass, barely shifting. It looked lethargic.
"That one," Otto pointed a titanium claw at the black mass. "The biological feedback is incredibly weak compared to the red variant."
"That is Sample One," Ophelia said, pulling up a digital tablet. "It possesses the most generalized baseline abilities, but it is highly hypersensitive to environmental stimuli. Its cellular structure violently destabilizes when exposed to high-frequency sonic waves. Extreme heat outright destroys its biomass. Curiously, it also exhibits a severe physiological panic response to high-voltage electrical currents."
Otto processed the data instantly. He turned around, waving a mechanical arm dismissively at the door. "Leave. I require absolute silence to work."
Ophelia's jaw tightened, but she turned on her heel and marched out, the heavy blast doors sealing shut behind her.
Otto immediately tapped into the base's mainframe, pulling up the previous researchers' logs. The data was a bloodbath. The symbiotes were unmitigated nightmares. Almost zero human hosts could sustain a stable parasitic bond. The alien biology hijacked the host's nervous system, inducing extreme, violent psychosis. Worse, the symbiotes were carnivorous. When a host burned out, the parasite simply devoured them from the inside out.
The military hadn't figured out how to safely bond them to soldiers yet. But they had mapped the control vectors perfectly: sonic weaponry, incendiary rounds, and heavy electrical discharges.
Otto leaned back, a dark smile spreading across his face as the larger puzzle pieces finally snapped together.
This entire bunker. Dr. Oyama. Ophelia. The Rikers Island vivisections.
It was all under the umbrella of Weapon Plus.
The military was attempting to recreate and surpass their historical successes, numbering the programs in Roman numerals. Project I: Erskine Captain America, Project II: Rebirth belonged to Dr. Oyama. The arrogant fool was attempting to synthesize a serum one thousand times more potent than Abraham Erskine's original Captain America formula. It was absolute, delusional hubris.
And then there was Otto's new domain.
Project V: Symbiote.
The Pentagon didn't want to create standard super-soldiers. They wanted to deploy these alien parasites onto active battlefields, forcefully bonding them to wounded, dying, or outright dead infantrymen, forcing the corpses to stand back up and continue firing.
Otto looked at the black sludge in the jar. "Fascinating."
PS: In Marvel Comics lore (specifically established during Donny Cates' incredible Venom run), the military's attempt to bond soldiers with Symbiotes during the Vietnam War was officially classified as the Weapon V (Weapon Five) program! This is a direct continuation of the Weapon Plus initiative that created Captain America (Weapon I) and Wolverine (Weapon X)!