Walking home, Alex thought about how much easier that conversation had felt than anything with Norman or even some of his strategizing with Peter.
No angles to manage. No information to control. Just two people who liked each other talking honestly, mostly.
'I should do more of this,' he thought. 'Not because it's useful. Because it matters.'
The thought felt important enough that he actually wrote it down later that night, a small note in his private journal among all the strategic calculations and contingency plans.
Gwen. Real friendship. Don't let work eclipse this again.
....
The news broke Friday morning while Alex was getting ready for school.
A local station ran grainy footage from a sewer maintenance crew, something large and reptilian glimpsed in the tunnels beneath the Lower East Side.
The anchor's tone walked the line between serious and sensational, calling it "possibly an alligator" while the chyron underneath read CREATURE IN THE SEWERS in bold red letters.
Alex watched the footage twice, freezing it at the clearest frame.
The shape was wrong for an alligator. Too upright. Too humanoid in its movement even at a quadrupedal gait. Scaled skin caught what little light existed down there, greenish and rough.
'There it is.'
Dr. Connors.
Had to be.
The timeline fit, the desperation Alex had seen in the man's eyes during their work together, the missing arm he'd surely been trying to regrow using compromised research.
His phone buzzed.
Text from Peter. "Did you see this? Sewer monster thing?"
"Saw it," Alex typed back. "I have a theory about who it might be."
"Who?"
"Need to talk in person. Not over text."
"Tonight?"
"Tonight."
Alex set the phone down and stared at the frozen frame on his screen a moment longer.
Connors had been brilliant, dedicated, trying to solve the problem of his missing arm through legitimate science before something pushed him toward more desperate measures.
'Norman's going to want this,' Alex thought, already running through scenarios. 'Going to want it captured, studied, dissected if necessary. Another enhanced specimen for the collection.'
He thought about the Catalyst X data sitting in his private archives. About regeneration formulas and unstable genetic modification and a man who'd lost a piece of himself trying to become whole again.
This wasn't going to be simple. Connors wasn't a villain in the way Toomes had been, not someone purely motivated by revenge.
This was a good man who'd made a desperate mistake and was now trapped inside a monster's body, probably barely in control of himself anymore.
Alex grabbed his school bag, mind already working through angles.
How to keep Norman's people from getting to Connors first.
How to help Peter handle a confrontation that would likely be far more dangerous than street thugs or even Toomes had been. If he should even be actively involved like Peter.
How to find a cure before things got worse.
'Another problem stacking on top of the others,' he thought, heading out the door into the morning light. 'Norman, Felicia's new client, Gwen, Peter's grief, and now this.'
The list kept growing. But for the first time in weeks, Alex didn't feel overwhelmed by it.
He felt ready.
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