Rewinding just a few minutes before the massive shockwave rocked the Oscorp building, Dr. Curt Connors was alone in the genetics wing.
Having dismissed all the overtime research staff for the night, Connors was personally conducting a final sweep of the bio-facilities. It was a testament to his unwavering dedication. As the head of the Savage Force laboratory, it was his absolute responsibility to ensure the containment protocols were foolproof. There could be zero leaks.
It was one thing for a rogue mutant like Electro to suddenly attack the city, but if a genetically modified, radioactive specimen escaped and bit an unwitting civilian? That would be a catastrophic nightmare. Not everyone possessed the perfect genetic compatibility to become a Spider-Man. If the DNA didn't match the host flawlessly, it wouldn't grant superpowers—it would trigger fatal cellular degradation, or worse, create a mindless aberration.
"Alright, we actually made some viable progress today. We successfully downregulated the aggressive reptilian influence in the primate trials by 0.03%..." Connors muttered to himself, marking a digital clipboard as he gave the reinforced incubator holding the latest test subject one last check.
He glanced up at the wall clock. It was pushing 11:00 PM. If he didn't head home right now, his young son Billy would definitely be asleep, and his wife Martha would rightfully scold him for burying himself in the lab again.
Satisfied that the floor was secure, Connors tucked his clipboard under his remaining arm, turned off the primary overhead lights, and walked toward the exit.
Just as he raised his keycard to the electronic scanner, something shot out of the shadows.
A thick, metallic coil violently wrapped around his waist. Before Connors could even shout, he was hurled backward into the laboratory, slamming painfully against the reinforced steel door.
He groaned, his glasses knocked askew, and propped himself up against the floor tiles. He looked up, expecting to see a corporate spy or an industrial thief. Instead, his blood ran cold.
Standing in the dim emergency lighting was a short, heavy-set man wearing dark, circular sunglasses. He held a cup of coffee casually in his right hand.
But it was what extended from his back that made Connors freeze. Four massive, bionic mechanical tentacles writhed and coiled in the air like living serpents. The titanium claws were coated in a strange, viscous layer of dark red biomass.
Connors recognized the man instantly.
"Dr. Otto Octavius?!"
"Doctor Connors," Otto smiled, taking a slow sip of his coffee. "I must admit, I didn't expect the current roster of Oscorp researchers to still look at me with such reverence."
Otto stepped fully into the lab. His mechanical limbs easily supported his weight. He looked at Connors' empty right sleeve, a dark chuckle escaping his lips. "Aren't you the least bit surprised that a man diagnosed with terminal ALS can walk through your laboratory with such nimble grace?"
Connors was profoundly shocked to see the fugitive Doctor Octopus standing in front of him, fully operational. He scrambled to his feet, opening his mouth to call for security.
A mechanical tentacle lashed out faster than the eye could track.
One titanium claw clamped violently over Connors' mouth, silencing him instantly, while a second tentacle wrapped around his ankle, dragging him helplessly across the floor.
Simultaneously, Otto's third mechanical arm effortlessly pierced the reinforced glass of the bio-incubator, slicing through the electronic lock as if it were wet tissue paper. The fourth tentacle elegantly hovered over the main laboratory console, its metallic digits flying across the keyboard to initiate a rapid chemical sequence.
"It really is pathetic," Otto mused aloud, his voice dripping with condescension. "Norman Osborn is an incredibly arrogant, incredibly stingy parasite. He plagiarized my life's work and claimed it as his own. He clearly had the capital to push the boundaries of science, yet to save a few pennies on the margins, he didn't even bother to rewrite the underlying code of this building's security system. He is still using my old algorithms. Utterly stupid."
Helplessly pinned to the floor, Connors watched in horror as the automated lab machinery whirred to life. Under Otto's precise keyboard commands, the centrifuge pulled a vial of concentrated mutant lizard DNA, synthesized it, added harsh chemical catalysts, and rapidly neutralized the fail-safes designed to prevent human cross-contamination.
Within seconds, a glowing vial of pure, weaponized reptilian serum was completed.
The tentacle finally loosened its grip over Connors' mouth.
"That serum... the human trials haven't stabilized yet, Otto!" Connors gasped, struggling against the metal coil holding his leg. "You can't create super-soldiers with that! You'll only create monsters!"
"Yes. A monster," Otto smiled warmly, his sunglasses reflecting the glow of the laboratory monitors.
Connors' stomach plummeted as he finally deduced the madman's plan.
"I've been inside this mainframe several times," Otto explained, pacing around the room. "Not physically, of course. But my digital memory was more than sufficient to perfectly map this lab. Tomorrow morning, the world will see a tragic story unfold. They will see that, in a desperate bid to fight off a Military acquisition, Norman Osborn ruthlessly pressured his own lead scientist, Dr. Curt Connors, to accelerate the program. Yielding to his boss's cruel demands, the good doctor was forced to use himself as the primary human test subject... ultimately twisting himself into a terrifying, bloodthirsty lizard."
Otto chuckled. "Don't worry. I have fabricated a flawless, un-faked digital video trail that will prove Norman's guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt."
One of the mechanical tentacles gently lifted the glowing vial of Lizard serum. Otto admired the transparent green liquid, uttering a heartfelt sigh of appreciation. "Behold. The first step in my absolute destruction of Norman Osborn. A small, but perfect gift."
Realizing his life and his sanity were about to be violently erased, Connors tried to reason with him.
"Do you honestly believe the public will buy such a conveniently flawed narrative?!" Connors yelled.
"I don't care about the public. I believe the Military will," Otto replied coldly.
Two tentacles suddenly hoisted Connors off the floor, pinning him brutally against the wall. A heavy oxygen mask was clamped over his face to muffle his screams.
The third tentacle violently plunged a pneumatic syringe into Connors' neck, injecting the entire payload of the unstable Lizard serum directly into his bloodstream. But Otto wasn't finished. From a hidden compartment within his fourth tentacle, another vial popped into place—a glowing blue liquid.
"This is the truly fascinating part, Dr. Connors," Otto whispered as he injected the second serum into Curt's opposite shoulder. "The Erskine Super-Soldier serum we replicated at the Military cannot effectively induce safe mutations on its own. It requires the user's extreme physical willpower to adapt. Failure means death. But thanks to Max Dillon—the fool who stole your electric eel—we discovered a loophole. If we use Erskine's formula in combination with unstable animal genetics, we can force a violent, guided enhancement. One plus one becomes far greater than two."
Connors' eyes rolled back into his head. His veins instantly bulged, turning a sickly, toxic black as the two volatile serums went to war inside his cellular structure.
Leaving Connors pinned to the wall to convulse, Otto casually walked back to the main console. He plugged a specialized USB drive into the Oscorp mainframe, effortlessly bypassing the firewall to access the deepest black-book files.
While the data downloaded, Otto didn't even look back at Connors. The empty palms of his two free mechanical tentacles flared to life, flooding the room with intense, blinding Vita-Rays—the exact radiation required to forcefully induce and accelerate the cellular mutation.
"After all, an ordinary monster is absolutely no match for Spider-Man," Otto muttered, his eyes rapidly scanning the decrypted Oscorp files on the monitor. "Let's see what Osborn has been hiding in his vault all these years... Military hardware... genetic sequencing... Spider-Man telemetry... Ah. As expected. He scrubbed the vigilante's true identity from the servers."
Otto clicked his tongue in annoyance, opening another folder. He suddenly froze. His mechanical limbs tensed.
"Wait," Otto whispered, staring at a classified bio-manifest. "A genetically modified spider specifically engineered to cure retroviral diseases? To cure ALS?! Jonathan Drew's proprietary arachnids... they aren't here!"
Realizing the only permanent cure for his deteriorating nervous system had been moved, Otto spun around, his voice rising into a furious roar. "Where are Jonathan Drew's spiders?!"
His shout was entirely drowned out by a deafening, guttural hiss that shook the walls of the laboratory.
Through the blinding, localized glare of the Vita-Rays, a shadow rose from the floor tiles. The creature was monstrous, hunched forward on terrifyingly thick, scaled legs. Even leaning down, its crocodilian snout hovered nearly four meters in the air.
A massive, serrated tail whipped through the air, shattering the laboratory tables.
The Giant Lizard locked its glowing, slit-pupil golden eyes directly onto Doctor Octopus.