Let's rewind a few minutes.
Deep inside the Spider-Man the Web base, Janet van Dyne was losing her patience. As the operational manager who kept the Avengers running, she didn't have time for stubborn prisoners. She stood with her hands on her hips, glaring down at a heavily webbed Roderick Kingsley. The Avengers knew Roderick had voluntarily joined the Goblin nation. That meant he had actionable intelligence, and Janet fully intended to extract it.
Across the room, Jane Foster—a Manhattan-born nurse currently caught in Thor's orbit—was meticulously wrapping sterile gauze around Spider-Man forearms, treating the severe second-degree burns inflicted by the Goblin gliders.
Near the medical bay, Bruce Banner stood in front of a reinforced glass containment cylinder. The gentle, brilliant scientist methodically dropped squares of dark chocolate through a secure feeding slot. Inside the tube, the black mass of the Venom symbiote sludged around, hungrily absorbing the candy. Despite its enthusiasm, the alien was a mess. The intense heat of the pumpkin bombs had scorched away a significant percentage of its bio-matter.
"Did you hear the news, Kingsley?" Janet asked, leaning over the bound man. "Captain Rogers just bagged your Goblin King. Barton Hamilton is in custody."
Roderick let out a wet, mocking laugh. "I've met Dr. Hamilton. I promise you, that empty suit isn't the King. He's a middleman. Whoever is really pulling the strings is still out there."
Banner turned away from the symbiote jar, his brow furrowed. He picked up a tablet displaying Peter's latest blood panels. "Spider-Man, I'm taking you off the active roster. You need to keep the symbiote benched for the next few days."
Peter winced as Jane tightened a bandage over his knuckles. "Dr. Banner, I'm fine. I can control my emotions—"
"It's not just about your emotional state, though the symbiote's chemical feedback is a factor," Banner interrupted gently, setting the tablet down. "The alien suffered catastrophic cellular trauma from those blast waves. If you bond with it now, you risk permanent neurological damage. Its molecular structure needs at least a week of pure isolation to rebuild to a functional baseline."
Peter glanced at the sludgy black mass in the jar. He gave a sharp, reluctant nod.
Suddenly, the primary monitor on the base's main terminal flickered. The standard desktop vanished, replaced by a jagged, low-resolution cartoon goblin face.
Hello, friends! the synthesized voice practically sang through the speakers. I am the Green Goblin, and I have officially taken control of this facility's entire—
Spider-Man didn't hesitate. He launched himself out of his chair, bolted across the room, and slammed his uninjured palm into a heavy industrial lever mounted on the wall.
The room plunged into absolute darkness. The hum of the servers died instantly.
A second later, the dull red glow of the isolated battery backups kicked on.
"What exactly was the point of cutting the power?" Janet asked, her bioelectric stingers sparking reflexively in the dim light.
"Hardline network isolation protocol," Peter said, his chest heaving. "Tony and Hank built it to guard against Ultron scenarios. It physically severs the base from the external internet."
Peter turned to face Banner. "If the Goblin hijacked this local network, it means he accessed the Oscorp mainframe. The firewall I built is too thick for an external brute-force hack. Only two people on the planet have the administrative clearance to bypass it from the inside."
"You," Banner said softly. "And Norman Osborn."
Before Peter could confirm the theory, a heavy, metallic knock echoed from the reinforced steel door.
"Hey, special delivery. Open up," Tony Stark's muffled voice called out.
Peter's spider-sense remained dormant. He hit the manual release. The heavy door hissed open, revealing Tony Stark in his sleek Iron Man armor. The gold faceplate slid up with a sharp metallic clack.
"Good, you're all here," Tony said, stepping into the red-lit room. "We have a situation."
Tony didn't waste time. He rapidly outlined the nightmare scenario playing out across town. Norman Osborn wasn't just a man; he was a host. His biological brain was actively being overwritten by the Green Goblin persona. Worse, a purely digital AI duplicate of the Goblin was currently infecting the global network, orchestrating the chaos from the cloud.
Peter absorbed the information, his tactical mind spinning. "Wait. If the Goblin AI's ultimate goal is to delete its digital footprint and hide in plain sight... why the theatrics? Why launch a massive, highly visible army of Goblin thralls? Hamilton could have caused enough chaos on his own."
Tony froze. The billionaire engineer stared at Peter, his eyes widening as the logic clicked into place.
"He's a narcissist," Tony breathed. "He has an absolute god complex. He doesn't just want to escape; he wants a grand finale. He needs a performance to validate his own superiority."
"It's a magic trick," Peter said, the dread pooling in his stomach. "A misdirection. He wants the Avengers to publicly defeat his army. He wants us to think we scrubbed his AI from the servers. He feeds us a victory, we declare the world safe, and he walks away perfectly clean to rebuild in the shadows."
Banner rubbed his temples. "So... he needs a decoy. A 'big guy' to take the fall."
"Exactly," Tony said. "He needs a patsy durable enough to survive the crossfire, but loud enough to convince us the threat is neutralized."
Peter looked between the two scientists. "Mr. Stark, how does a highly advanced AI completely scrub its own existence from the internet and hide from a global diagnostic sweep?"
Tony and Bruce exchanged a heavy look.
"You don't stay in the cloud," Banner said slowly. "You download the entirety of your source code into a localized, offline host."
"A closed-loop hardware system," Tony added. "An advanced robotic chassis. Or..."
"A human brain," Peter finished.
The biological Green Goblin was taking over Norman Osborn's body. The digital AI Goblin needed a vessel of its own to survive the impending server wipe.
Peter grabbed the edge of the medical table and stood up.
"Kid, stop," Banner warned, stepping forward. "Your symbiote is out of commission. You don't have the healing factor right now."
Peter didn't look at the glass jar. He walked straight past Banner toward a display mannequin in the corner of the room. He grabbed the sleek, all-black fabric suit Felicia Hardy had tailored for him.
"I'm not Venom," Peter said, pulling the dark mask over his head. The white lenses snapped into focus. "I'm Spider-Man. And I know exactly what he's going to do."
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