Later that evening, Peter returned to his house in Queens and immediately fired off a secure, encrypted debrief to Tony Stark.
Even through the digital comms, Tony was clearly taken aback. It was incredibly rare for a notoriously paranoid control freak like Norman Osborn to take such a massive, calculated risk. Inviting a rival billionaire to buy a controlling stake in his own empire just to block a Military takeover was an act of sheer corporate desperation. However, since Stark Industries and Oscorp primarily operated in entirely different technological sectors, a sudden buyout wouldn't even trigger federal antitrust laws.
Recognizing that international corporate acquisition law was vastly beyond the paygrade of a high school sophomore, Tony smoothly benched Peter from the financial side of the mission. Tony took over the Wall Street strategy personally—which, in reality, meant he was going to dump a mountain of terrifyingly complex paperwork onto Pepper Potts' desk first thing in the morning.
Peter sent a quick, encrypted text to Harry to keep him in the loop, then finally let his shoulders drop.
After washing up, Peter collapsed onto his bed. He pulled a heavy, encrypted Stark Industries satellite phone from his backpack to ensure the line couldn't be tapped by S.H.I.E.L.D. or the military. He dialed a private number.
"Hello? Is this Felicia?" Peter asked, keeping his voice to a low murmur.
"Well, hello there. Is something wrong at the detective agency?" Felicia Hardy's smooth, amused voice drifted through the receiver.
Felicia was currently lounging in her own apartment, scrolling through financial news feeds on her laptop, watching Oscorp's stock price plummet in real-time. Hearing Peter address her so formally meant he was treating this as a strictly professional call.
"It's not the agency," Peter whispered. "We've got trouble brewing by the Hudson. Huge corporate trouble."
Felicia instantly read between the lines. Her eyes flicked to the Oscorp ticker on her screen. She raised an eyebrow, a predatory smirk touching her lips. "I see. Shall we schedule an immediate consultation? Say, tonight?"
"Yeah. The roof of the Oscorp building. Two hours."
Felicia nodded to herself, memorizing the rendezvous protocol. But before she could confirm, she noticed Peter's voice was dropping to an almost inaudible, panicked whisper. Just as she was about to ask if his comms were compromised, a muffled, exasperated shout echoed through the phone.
"Peter Benjamin Parker! Why is your light still on?! Go to sleep!"
"Right away, Aunt May! I was just finishing homework!" Peter squeaked, frantically clapping his hand over the receiver.
Unfortunately for Peter, Felicia's Super-Soldier serum enhancements included vastly heightened auditory senses. She heard the entire exchange perfectly. She burst into a fit of quiet, genuine laughter.
"Are you laughing at me?" Peter groaned into the phone.
"No, no, of course not, Spider-Man," Felicia teased, entirely failing to hide her amusement. "I'll see you in two hours."
Two hours later, the midnight air high above Manhattan was freezing.
Felicia Hardy, fully clad in her sleek, leather Black Cat suit, sat casually on the edge of the Oscorp Tower's roof. She swung her legs over the dizzying drop, watching a dark shadow swing silently out of the concrete canyons.
Peter touched down without making a sound. He wasn't wearing his standard red and blues, nor the glowing TRON-suit from the blackout. He was wearing the pure, liquid-black symbiote suit, a stark white spider emblem stretching across his chest.
"Going stealth tonight?" Felicia purred, standing up and stretching her arms. "I suppose basic black is always in season. Though, considering you can literally turn invisible, I'm guessing that suit has some serious ambient camouflage upgrades."
"Something like that," Peter muttered, walking toward the rooftop access door.
"So," Felicia smirked, leaning against the doorway. "Does the big, bad Spider-Man still have a strict, state-mandated bedtime?"
"Most of the time I just turn my bedroom light off when she tells me to," Peter sighed, his white lenses narrowing in mild embarrassment. "If there's a crisis, I usually just wait until my aunt and uncle are deeply asleep before I crawl out the window."
Felicia's teasing smile softened. She remembered meeting May Parker during a charity banquet a while back. "I remember her. She seemed like a genuinely wonderful, kind woman."
"She is. It's just..." Peter rubbed the back of his neck, leaning against the cold steel door.
It was an exhausting balancing act. Uncle Ben knew his secret. Ben understood the crushing weight of the responsibility, but it didn't stop the older man from staying awake most nights, silently agonizing over Peter's safety. As for Aunt May? Peter strongly suspected she already knew he was sneaking out, but Ben was likely running interference to keep her from having a panic attack.
Peter constantly wrestled with the idea of just coming clean and telling May the truth. But the paralyzing fear that the revelation would cause her to live in a state of perpetual, terrifying anxiety always kept his mouth shut.
"You should really consider telling her the truth, Peter," Felicia said gently, crossing her arms. "You can't keep a secret that massive forever. The longer you lie to her face, the deeper the betrayal is going to feel when she inevitably finds out."
Peter swallowed hard. He didn't want to think about it right now. He desperately chose to deflect.
"Did you ever tell your mom that you spend your nights running across rooftops investigating the truth behind your father's murder?" Peter countered.
"My mother lives in Europe," Felicia smiled, effortlessly parrying the deflection. "She is entirely incapable of monitoring my extracurricular activities. Geographic distance is the ultimate alibi."
You are completely unbeatable when it comes to psychological defense, Peter thought, shaking his head.
"Alright, enough domestic therapy," Felicia said, her tone shifting back to business. "Why did you call me out here to freeze on a rooftop?"
"Do you remember the massive blackout that crippled New York last month?" Peter asked.
"Hard to forget," Felicia nodded. "A living blue lightning bolt flew through Manhattan and killed the grid for two hours. It ruined my phone battery. What about it?"
"That guy was a mutant, but he wasn't born with that kind of apocalyptic power," Peter explained, his voice turning grim. "He stole a genetically modified electric eel from Oscorp. And it turns out, the Military used a stolen, black-market gene-editing device to surgically splice the eel's DNA into his X-gene."
Felicia's relaxed posture instantly vanished. Her green eyes went cold.
"Okay," Felicia said, her claws flexing slightly. "So what does the military's latest science project have to do with Norman Osborn?"
"Earlier today, a top-ranking Military general showed up to personally put pressure on Oscorp," Peter stated. "Simultaneously, a massive block of Oscorp retail stock was mysteriously dumped onto the market, and the Military has been quietly using shell companies to buy it all up."
"A hostile, backdoor federal takeover," Felicia muttered, her tactical mind easily connecting the financial dots. "No wonder Osborn's stock price is in a violent free-fall."
Felicia frowned, looking at the heavy steel door. "But that still doesn't make sense, Spider. If the Military is the bad guy trying to steal the company, why are we breaking into Oscorp?"
"Spider-Sense," Peter tapped the side of his mask. "I have a gut feeling that Osborn is hiding something massive regarding his existing contracts with the military. He's playing the victim, but I need to know what his Super-Soldier program has actually accomplished. I need your help to rip the skeletons out of his corporate closet."
Felicia nodded slowly. She looked out over the sprawling, massive Oscorp complex. It was past 11:00 PM. The entire building was practically pitch black. The executive floors were completely devoid of life.
It was the absolute perfect environment for a ghost and a cat.
For Peter and Felicia, infiltrating a multi-billion-dollar corporate fortress wasn't even a challenge; it was a warm-up exercise. With Felicia's unparalleled skills as a master thief and Peter's ability to turn completely invisible and crawl across ceilings, they bypassed the outer perimeter security in less than three minutes.
Peter used the symbiote's liquid tendrils to flawlessly short-circuit the interior laser grids and motion sensors, clearing a direct path to Norman Osborn's lavish executive office.
Once inside the dark room, they split the duties. Black Cat immediately went to work silently picking the heavy, biometric physical locks on Norman's private filing cabinets, while Peter slid into the CEO's leather chair to aggressively decrypt the encrypted mainframe on the desk.
Just as Felicia popped the first tumbler, a violent, deafening shockwave ripped through the building.
It wasn't a minor tremor. It felt like a massive, concussive explosion detonating somewhere deep in the lower sub-basements. The heavy mahogany desk vibrated violently, and several framed awards crashed off Norman's walls.
The two intruders froze, sharing a sharp, tense look in the pitch-black office.
Someone else was breaking into Oscorp tonight. And they were being a lot less subtle about it.