Peter didn't even hear Felicia's complaints over the comms. As he dropped down the exterior of the Oscorp building, a violent, strobing flash of Vita-Rays erupted from the 35th floor. It was the exact bio-genetics laboratory belonging to Dr. Curt Connors—the very same room Peter and Gwen had toured just hours earlier.
With a deafening crash, the reinforced glass window shattered outward. Peter swung inside, landing in a crouch amidst the flying debris.
"Dr. Connors? What happened—?"
Peter froze. Looming in the center of the ruined laboratory was a nightmare.
A monstrous, four-meter-tall reptilian beast let out a deafening roar. It possessed two massive, muscular arms—a sharp contrast to Dr. Connors' missing limb. The creature grabbed two of Doctor Octopus's titanium tentacles with its bare, scaled hands, effortlessly overpowered the bionic actuators, and violently slammed Otto Octavius into the shattered floor tiles.
Connors turned into a Lizard? Peter's mind reeled. How is that even possible? He would never willingly inject himself with that unstable serum! Unless...
Peter's white lenses snapped toward the bruised, gasping Doctor Octopus.
"Otto!" Peter yelled, his voice laced with fury. "What did you do?!"
"Just a... minor experimental miscalculation, Spider-Man," Otto wheezed, coughing up dust as he struggled to prop himself up. "I theorized that injecting the Erskine Super-Soldier serum would rapidly enhance the aggressive, bestial nature of the Lizard DNA. I simply didn't anticipate it would accelerate the cellular mutation quite this violently."
Despite being thrown into the floor, Doctor Octopus let out a dry, manic laugh. He pointed a trembling, mechanical claw at the towering Lizard. "Look at it! The entire world will see the surveillance footage! Everyone will know that Norman Osborn forced his lead scientist to become a monster!"
"You mutated an innocent man just for a PR stunt?!" Peter roared.
"Is this all I've done?!" Otto snapped back, his arrogance flaring. "I have worked in the shadows for months for this exact moment! I am going to systematically destroy everything with the Osborn name on it!"
"And what does Dr. Connors have to do with your petty grudge?!"
"He is the catalyst," Otto smirked, wiping blood from his lip. "He helps me destroy Osborn's reputation. That is his only purpose."
Before Peter could launch himself at Ock, a sickening crunch echoed through the lab.
The colossal Lizard had smashed open a reinforced bio-incubator. It dragged out a genetically modified macaque monkey, effortlessly bit the primate's head off, and swallowed the rest of the carcass whole.
It was starving. The sheer caloric energy required to sustain a sudden, massive mutation was astronomical. Yet, despite two large humans standing right next to it, the beast's residual human consciousness seemed to be fighting back, actively choosing to devour the lab animals instead of attacking Peter or Otto.
"Dr. Connors?" Peter took a slow, cautious step forward, holding a hand out. "Doc, can you hear me? It's me Spidey."
The giant reptile froze. Its golden, slit-pupil eyes darted toward Spider-Man. For a fraction of a second, a flash of painful recognition crossed the monster's face. Then, the beast's survival instinct violently took over. The pupils constricted into razor-thin lines, and the Lizard spun around, charging blindly toward the shattered window.
"No you don't!" Peter shouted, firing two heavy streams of webbing directly onto the beast's back.
The Lizard didn't even slow down. The sheer, raw physical strength of the Super-Soldier-enhanced monster snapped the high-tensile webbing like cheap string.
Realizing standard webs wouldn't hold it, Peter let the symbiote loose. A massive torrent of black, liquid biomatter erupted from Peter's arms, surging across the room and violently binding the Lizard's arms, legs, and torso. The beast shrieked, thrashing wildly as it crashed into the window frame, teetering on the edge of the hundred-meter drop.
The Lizard's golden eyes trembled frantically. It looked back at Spider-Man one last time.
Then, with an agonizing, deafening wail, the beast did the unthinkable.
Flexing its massive back muscles, the Lizard forcefully ripped its own carapace apart. Thick chunks of scaled skin and muscle tore away from its spine in a geyser of dark blood. Leaving its entire back—stuck to the symbiote binding—behind like a shed exoskeleton, the Lizard violently ripped itself free.
Freed from the webbing, the bleeding, skinless monster plummeted out the window. It free-fell a hundred meters, slamming into the pavement below with enough force to crack the street. Ignoring the excruciating pain of its torn flesh, the beast tore through a manhole cover with its bare claws and vanished into the dark, labyrinthine sewers of New York.
"Well. That is one massive, ugly monster."
Felicia Hardy dropped smoothly from the ceiling, hanging upside down from a customized grappling line. She surveyed the destroyed lab. "Are we going monster hunting, Spider?"
"No. We have to secure Doctor Ock first," Peter said, his voice grim. "Black Cat, I'm pinging your HUD with a secure Avengers frequency. Contact S.H.I.E.L.D. or Cap immediately. Tell them to send a protective detail to Dr. Curt Connors' house. Once that beast loses control, it might try to seek out its family."
"On it," Felicia nodded, tapping her earpiece and grappling back up into the shadows.
Peter turned his full attention back to Otto. Seeing the Lizard escape, Doctor Octopus was already using his tentacles to drag himself toward the hallway doors.
"We aren't done here, Otto!" Peter commanded the symbiote. A thick wave of black tendrils shot across the floor, aiming to securely wrap around the scientist's mechanical harness.
Unexpectedly, Otto's four titanium tentacles reacted. They violently spewed out a massive volume of thick, viscous red biomass. The red sludge intercepted Peter's black symbiote, wrestling aggressively with the tendrils in mid-air.
Otto offered a highly satisfied, arrogant smile.
Peter frowned deeply. He had noticed the red coating on the tentacles earlier but assumed it was some kind of synthetic hydraulic fluid or advanced polymer. He never imagined Otto was using a symbiote.
"Wait," Peter muttered. "All the symbiotes were incinerated months ago. Even the residual Knull dragons lost all biological activity..."
[They possess no consciousness,] Venom's dark voice rumbled in Peter's mind, analyzing the red sludge. [It is dead tissue. He has artificially reanimated the necrotic cells of a Grendel symbiote using electrical impulses.]
Peter's eyes went wide. Otto hadn't just built better mechanical arms; he had figured out how to neurologically interface with deactivated alien biomass to augment his technology.
"You can't stop me, Spider-Man!" Otto roared, his red-coated tentacles easily ripping through Peter's black tendrils. The symbiote enhancement made his mechanical limbs exponentially faster and stronger. "I am superior!"
"Really, Otto? Why do you guys always assume I'm out of tricks?" Peter sighed.
With a sharp flick of his wrist, a blinding flash of cold, mystical light illuminated the lab. A flawless, razor-sharp broadsword materialized in Peter's right hand.
Without hesitating, Peter lunged forward. The blade sliced through the air, effortlessly severing two of the reinforced, symbiote-coated tentacles clean off Otto's harness.
While Otto shrieked in shock, Venom surged forward. The black symbiote morphed into a molecular state, violently ripping the dead red biomass directly out of Otto's remaining actuators, absorbing the hostile tissue completely. In the same fluid motion, Peter swung the sword again, cleanly amputating the final two mechanical limbs.
Otto collapsed to the floor, completely disarmed and defenseless.
The glowing sword instantly retracted, dissolving back into the dimensional pocket integrated into Peter's web-shooter.
"You probably didn't know that a sorcerer friend of mine gifted me an indestructible, magical Dragon Fang sword," Peter quipped, casually webbing Otto tightly to the floorboards. "And honestly? I'm pretty sure most of the readers completely forgot I had it, too."
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