"Good morning everyone."
"As you probably know, my name is Gwen Stacy. As Dr. Connors mentioned on Monday, I am an intern here at Oscorp and I will be guiding your visit today. The rule is simple. Do not stray from the group. If you remember that, everything will be perfectly fine. If you forget it..."
She let the pause do the work and finished it with a sweet smile that carried a specific quality when Peter caught it at the right angle.
".....Shall we go?"
She turned and led them forward.
They followed her through sections of the facility that were genuinely remarkable, moving through corridors and research floors that made Peter feel the dual awareness of someone who knew what this building was going to mean for his life while also being sincerely amazed by the science happening inside it.
They rounded a corner and came to a section where several scientists were working, and someone familiar came out of a side door.
Connors nodded at the group. "Good morning, Gwen and students."
"Good morning, Doctor," Gwen said.
"Many of you already know me from Monday, but for anyone who was not there, my name is Dr. Curt Connors. I am a chief scientist here at Oscorp working in herpetology. You have heard me mention the regenerative research. I have a question for you all. Is there anyone here who was not present on Monday who has an idea of how I approach it?"
'Part of me wants to say the line exactly the way Peter said it in the movie', he thought. 'The other part wants to stay anonymous as long as possible. But Connors is going to figure out whose son I am eventually regardless, and delaying it is not going to change the endpoint.... To hell with it.'
Missy gave him a small push from behind. ~Come on Peter, you can do it!~
"Okay, okay. 'Ahem. Genetic crossbreeding of species.'"
Every head in the room turned toward him.
Mary: ~That is it Peter, show them!~
Missy: ~Come on, surprise them!~
He kept going, steady, arms crossed, eyes on Connors.
"Parkinson's disease involves a decrease in the production of dopamine in the brain. The zebrafish has the ability to regenerate its own cells autonomously.
If the specific mechanism behind that capability could be introduced into a Parkinson's patient, the body could theoretically correct what the disease destroys."
Connors looked at him with the particular quality of a scientist who has just heard something worth following up on. "Interesting. And you are..."
Gwen moved to introduce him and Peter spoke before she could.
"Gwen's biology classmate. The top student in our year. Then there is Gwen in second place."
Connors glanced at Gwen.
"The second best, is that right?" Gwen said, staring at Peter with an expression that was doing a great deal of careful work.
"Yes, the second one."
"You are certain about that?"
"Completely certain, Miss Stacy."
Connors' phone buzzed.
He stepped back and glanced at the screen. "I am afraid duty calls. I will leave you in the very capable hands of Miss Stacy. It was wonderful to meet you all."
He left with a warm nod.
"Alright everyone, if you can form a circle please." Gwen gestured toward the central display ahead of them.
"This is Oscorp's Tree of Life. The biodiversity of our planet is immense, and in Oscorp's crossbreeding division we work to understand and apply the relationships between species at a genetic level..."
While the class was moving into the circle and Gwen was speaking, Peter was drifting quietly toward the edge of the group, one small step at a time, until the professor and Gwen were both facing the display and he was no longer technically part of the circle.
He spotted Rajit Ratha moving through the corridor ahead Oscorp executive and Connors' immediate superior, cold and efficient, the kind of pragmatic that had long since stopped distinguishing between practical and ethical because the distinction had never been particularly relevant to his objectives and followed at a distance that looked like coincidence.
Rajit turned a corner and Peter followed.
A few corridors later they arrived at the section he had been navigating toward, the laboratory where the spiders were kept.
He waited while Rajit went inside, came back out with two colleagues, and left. Peter checked the corridor in both directions, approached the door, entered the code from memory, and slipped inside.
The lab was built around a central machine that was actively spinning webs and feeding them into capsules identical to the ones the Andrew Peter had used for his web-shooters.
He noted that and moved past it toward the inner door, which was what he had actually come for.
Beyond the inner door was a nest, or at least the closest word he had for it, a room full of geometrically perfect web structures holding dozens of spiders in suspended positions.
He moved through it slowly and carefully, doing exactly what he had seen the Andrew Peter do in the film, and prayed with genuine sincerity that the Parker Luck cooperated.
When he touched one of the main web threads the machine outside reacted and the spiders nearest to him began to fall.
He stood still and let them land, waited a few seconds, then shook them off one by one and checked his hands and arms carefully.
Two of them he caught in the small glass jars he had brought for this specific purpose, sealed them, and pocketed them.
He left, checked that the corridor was clear, confirmed there were no cameras covering this section, and walked until he was a reasonable distance away.
He found a vending machine near a junction, bought a bag of crisps and a coffee, composed himself into someone who had simply wandered away looking for a snack, and started walking back toward where Gwen had been conducting the tour.
She appeared around a corner before he reached the group, and the expression on her face was not angry exactly but was also making no effort to be friendly.
"Where were you?"
"Hmm. Looking for a snack." He held the bag out to her. "Would you like one?"
"Why did you not tell me you were leaving the group?"
"Because you looked happy and I did not want to interrupt. Also, you look genuinely striking when you are being serious. It really suits you."
He said it with complete composure and watched Gwen's expression run through its rapid sequence of states before landing on flustered.
"Do not do that again and warn someone next time. Now go back to the group, Mr. Parker~"
The way she said the last part did not entirely match the content of the sentence, and she turned and walked back toward the class with a very particular quality to her movement.
"Right away, Miss Sta— ARGH."
He stopped. A sharp pain hit him from somewhere below his right shoulder blade, brief and precise and completely unmistakable.
It has started, he thought, already moving to follow her. I did not think the bite would be this immediately painful. I have a certain amount of time before I start feeling properly bad. I just need to hold it together until I am home.
Gwen turned immediately. "Are you alright?"
"Yes, yes, come on." He kept his voice level. "Let us not keep everyone waiting."
She moved ahead to continue guiding the group and he rejoined Mary and Missy where they were standing.
"Where did you go? We were looking everywhere," Missy said.
"I went to find a snack. I got bored."
Mary raised an eyebrow. "You got bored and just wandered off?"
"I found a vending machine. It worked out."
They both let it go when they saw the bag of crisps and he asked what he had missed while the tour continued toward the exit.
"This is all incredible but I genuinely do not understand any of it," Mary said, looking around with the honest bewilderment of someone encountering a world that had existed in parallel to their own without any overlap.
"We are in the same boat," Missy said. "I followed maybe half of it."
"Do not feel bad, it happens to everyone..... ARGH." He stopped.
Mary turned toward him immediately. "Peter, are you alright?"
"Just a bit dizzy. I am fine."
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely."
They both accepted that and kept walking.
He felt the first chills beginning as they reached the exit, held his body still and his face neutral, and did not let either of them see it.
Outside the building the group dispersed.
Missy headed home. Mary's friends had plans in the city.
Gwen stayed because her shift was not finished. Peter ended up walking to the kerb alone, which was exactly what he needed.
He flagged a taxi, gave his address, paid when they arrived, and walked quickly to the front door.
May was cleaning the front room when he came in and looked up with a smile.
"Peter, you are back already! How was the Oscorp trip?"
"It went spectacularly." He leaned against the doorframe. "I cannot talk much right now, I am exhausted and I want to rest. Could you wake me a few hours before eleven tomorrow? I have an appointment at Baxter."
"Of course. Do you not want something to eat first?"
Peter looked at her for a moment. His internal filter was currently operating at reduced capacity due to whatever was moving through his bloodstream, and the next sentence came out before the filter caught it.
"Are you on the menu? Because if you are, I would like you for dinner and dessert~"
May's face went through every available shade of red.
"Ahem.... No. I am fine. See you tomorrow, May~" He walked past her and up the stairs before she could compose a response.
She stood in the hallway staring at the empty staircase.
Good May: Okay... That did not happen...forget it...
Evil May: It absolutely happened....
Good May: He is your nephew, May.
Evil May: I know who he is...
Good May: Then stop....
Evil May: I am just noting that he is very.....
Good May: Do not finish that sentence.
Evil May: .....tall.
Good May: That is not what you were going to say.
Evil May: You do not know that.
Good May: May.....
Evil May: Also he was shirtless this morning. In the kitchen. Just standing there being.....
Good May: BAD MAY.
Evil May: I am just describing what I saw.
She shook her head hard, as though the image could be physically dislodged if she tried with enough sincerity, and went back to cleaning the front room with great and deliberate focus.
In his room Peter took the two jars carefully from his jacket and placed them in his desk drawer. He straightened up and noticed that the room temperature had become a personal and specific problem.
"Damn, it is hot." He pulled off his shirt and stood for a moment. "It is too hot."
A pause.
"Damn, now it is cold."
He hugged his own arms and felt the shaking start in his hands before it moved through the rest of him. The room began to double at the edges. He knew exactly what was coming and he knew there was nothing to do about it except get horizontal and let it run its course.
He threw himself onto the bed, pulled the covers up around himself, and lay there listening to his heartbeat doing something unfamiliar and hoping with calm and genuine sincerity that whatever this was, it would be finished before Thursday at eleven in the morning.