If I've learned anything, it's that being alive is not enough to get you saved from this world. If anything, being alive is the minimum effort you can put into existence. Being alive isn't enough, not when your existence has limitless potential. Pulling through, getting through to the next day, simply isn't enough anymore. It isn't enough when the rest of the world falls into pieces around you and all you're doing is watching it crack and crumble along the edges. You have to do something and not just for yourself. You have to do something for someone somewhere who isn't you. You need to try to be something for somebody and make it be more than yourself. You need to stop being so selfish and to stop whining. You need to pick yourself up, get out there and do something.

As much as Gwen Stacy wanted to smash into Oscorp and burn that rotting cesspool to the ground as it so rightfully deserved if, and only if, what Doc said was true, she simply couldn't find the time. As of three days ago, the New York PD was hyper-focused on two super-wanted individuals in particular. One of them continuing to be the still innocent Gwen Stacy a.k.a. Spider-Woman and the other being the absolutely guilty without a doubt in her mind The Lizard. Thus far, these past three days, Gwen had been trying her best to keep an eye on her father who was a prime target of The Lizard and her ever-beloved cop pal Terry Lee. Lee may not have been a target in The Lizard's line-of-sight, but he was one of the many police officers in pursuit of the fanged abomination.

Gwen was beginning to realize that there was a limit on exactly how long Spider-Woman could go without sleep. It had been more than seventy-two hours at this point and watching after her father or Terry had taken up all of this time. This in itself provided frustration because she was certain that if she broke into Oscorp and found the possibly incriminating evidence that Strange alluded to, she might have an increased chance of finding this lizard. However, that was no guarantee. As well, turning her back from her father or Lee could result in something she didn't want to think about. Problem was, there were no leads, zilch.

After The Lizard made his grand entrance in Central Park and decided to kill a handful of New Yorkers, not a single sighting had been made. There was nothing. It was as if The Lizard disappeared into thin air which led to another big question: How was he doing it? How does something that large and that dangerous appear one moment and vanish the next? Gwen had a bad feeling about the possibility that like herself, The Lizard could turn invisible. But unlike herself, The Lizard clearly had greater control over this cloaking ability. No matter, in thinking all of this, it doesn't mean it's true. Maybe The Lizard was just talented at avoiding street cameras and lights and pedestrians and witnesses of all kinds. But sooner or later, if it was George he was after, the thing was going to have to show itself in the light of day. Or the dark of night, but either way he was going to have to show up somewhere.

Sleeping half an hour here and there where she could, a week rolled by without progress. The Lizard was playing the long game; he had time to kill where she didn't. The longer this took the worse it would be on Gwen and the more exhausted she would become. Eventually, she would reach the point where she wouldn't be capable of squaring off with the gnarly menace. She still had no idea what kind of powers this thing could have and in addition to that, she constantly recalled the dream where she had a rooftop rendezvous with the scaly being. As fate would have it, eventually Gwen's dreams come true.

Gwen hadn't seen or heard from Strange in over a week, and although he did frustratingly haunt her mind from time to time, contacting him wasn't on her list of priorities. Maybe she wanted to avoid him, maybe she was mad at him, again, or maybe she was never sure what to think of the man. If only he had told her about The Lizard long ago; if only he would have said something earlier. It was impossible not to be angry at someone who kept a secret so dire and so important that people's lives literally depended on it… And yet, she understood why he never said anything about it, to begin with. If Oscorp was really up to no good, it's even a surprise they would let Strange go in the first place. Unless there was something else Stephen wasn't telling her.

It's not easy going around town dressed as the wanted criminal Spider-Woman, so she preferred to exclusively dawn her disguise after nightfall. As much as Gwen wished she could cloak herself twenty-four-seven, it was nearly impossible. Half-an-hour here and there was always doable, but as time went on and exhaustion set in, even that became more difficult. And thus, this left Gwen Stacy adorning the outfit of a normal-looking human being in baggy sweats with her bleach-blonde hair tucked up tightly underneath a baseball cap. And on this bright, shinning, late spring day, the cap offered much-needed shade from the headache-inducing big ball of burning annoyance that hung in their sky.

It was infuriating, how little cops seemed to do; how unexciting their lives were, but perhaps that was for the best given the current situation. As of now, she stood across the street from one of the hundreds of generic-nothing-particularly-special-about-them donut and coffee shops that officers stereotypically couldn't resist. Her Dad sat at the driver's seat of the white and blue police cruiser that was parked on the narrow street while his fellow officers gathered much needed unhealthy sustenance for the lot of them. He was seemingly absent-mindedly flipping through that morning's edition of The Daily Bugle (and Gwen doesn't even know why physical newspapers are still a thing, but people are weird like that) when a look of concern was plastered across his deep features. Only a few seconds later, George Stacy pulled out his phone and in another two seconds, Gwen's phone started buzzing.

Oh shit, was the first thought to cross her now panicking mind. She turned her back at the cruiser and nudged herself behind a lamppost and public garbage bin. Gwen pulled out her phone from the front pocket on her sweater and desperately hoped her father hadn't spotted her. I mean, it's not like watching her father from a distance was illegal or something. Well, unless that constitutes as stalking in which case it is most definitely illegal. She could explain that it was a coincidence and she was out for a walk and happened to pass him by; just a coincidence is all. Next time, she'll remember to wear sunglasses to complete the pedestrian disguise.

"Yeah…?" Gwen spoke as she ceased the buzzing of her phone.

"Hey, Gwen," her father softly replied. "Are you doing okay? Are you alright?"

"Oh, you know, fine." It had been well over a week since Gwen's encounter with The Lizard and not too surprisingly, her wounds had faded into lesser gashes. Still alarming, but not as shocking as before. It would have been difficult to tell that she had recently been assaulted by a giant blood-thirsty lizard man.

"Are you sure?" George slowly questioned her. "You can be honest with me; you know you can be open with me, right? I know you spent some time with him and you two must be friends…"

"Excuse me?" Gwen had no idea what her father was going off about. "What are you talking about?"

"Stephen?"

"Stephen?" Gwen repeated back.

"Did you not- have you-" He stuttered. "Have you read the paper or seen the news this morning, Gwen?"

"You know I don't care about that sort of thing…" A knot started to build in her stomach and she could feel it rising into her chest.

"Gwen, do you not know what happened to your friend, Stephen?" He waited for her response.

"I… Don't… Know…" But the dream about Stephen came back to her. Twisted metal, contorted shapes, dripping blood, sinking in the pool of vermillion. "He's dead, isn't he?"

"From what I just read, I don't think so." George shuffled through pages of the newspaper and Gwen could hear the movement over the speaker. "It says he was in a pretty bad accident. I don't know, the pictures don't look good. They said he was drinking at the time…"

"Right, of course," Gwen nodded at no one and suppressed her tears. "Okay, well, thanks for telling me…"

"Gwen, are you alright?" George's low voice was filled with concern.

"Yeah, perfect. Just peachy," she croaked out a response trying not to sound distraught.

"Gwen, it's okay to be upset. I know he's your friend-"

"He's not my friend," she interrupted him. "He's an asshole and I'm sure he deserved it."

"I know you don't mean that, Gwen."

"You're right, I didn't mean that." She pressed her free palm across her cheeks to remove whatever tears that managed to escape from the feelings she couldn't repress. "I shouldn't have said that. That was an awful thing to say."

"Maybe you should go see him," George suggested.

"Bye, dad. I'll talk to you later."

The very obviously beautiful young female doctor that met with Gwen seemed woefully unimpressed by the disheveled girl with the healing, yet unsightly, gashes across her face. Why did Gwen think this woman was so obviously beautiful? Because she was and as much as Gwen wished she didn't notice these things or compare herself to others, she couldn't help it. Anna, the lovely doctor, had thick brown locks, perfect makeup, and a jawline you could cut yourself on. God, I'm a mess, Gwen thought inwardly.

"He's doesn't want to see anyone." Anna gave the frumpy girl a flat response.

"So, he's awake?" Gwen raised a brow.

"Yes; however, he was in surgery for over eight hours and right now he is more upset than a teenage girl who didn't get a Corvette for her sweet sixteen."

"Sounds like him," Gwen shook her head knowingly. "Can you tell him it's Gwen? That Gwen wants to see him?"

"He was explicit that no one is to see him," she shrugged back. "And he is just exercising his right to do so."

"I know, but can you tell him it's Gwen?" Gwen repeated.

"I'm sorry," the doctor reached out and grabbed Gwen's shoulders, attempting to swivel the girl around to face back to the lobby. But, as expected, Gwen stood solid as a rock and as unmovable as ever.

Anna showed Gwen an exasperated scowl. "If you don't leave, I'll have you removed."

"Fine, whatever." Gwen flapped her arms. "I can't force that asshole to see anyone and you know what? This is not even my problem."

"Alright." Anna's scowl morphed into a look of pity. "How about you leave me your number and if he changes his mind, you'll be the first to know."

"If he wants me to see him, he can call me."

Two weeks; it's been two long weeks since anyone has seen The Lizard. Still, day in and day out, Gwen kept her unwavering personal escort mission when it came to her father and Lee. More so her father than Lee, but if time allowed it, she'd make sure Lee was safe, too. But this must be it, Gwen thought. Before anything else happened, she was bound to die from exhaustion and frustration. The Lizard was waiting for something to happen or maybe he was gone entirely, but that was unlikely. If anything, now was the time to strike and to stop uselessly pandering around while she lost her mind from the boredom of following even more boring cops.

She worked briefly for Oscorp and it would be ignorant to think that some of the world's most brilliant minds didn't work there because they did. Peter was one of those people and Gwen was not one of those people. But in saying this, Gwen had an advantage that most people did not; she could become invisible. She was on the edge of exhaustion, but after consuming eight bagels which rounded out to about two-thousand calories and a half-hour nap, she was mostly sure she could break into Oscorp in the brightness of the day and find whatever it is she needed to find. Maybe it was in a secret lab or hanging out in a server somewhere or who really knows, but she'd be the one to find it.

Without a doubt, Oscorp was the premier high-tech company of New York's future. Probably everyone's at that. Overwhelmingly, the public loved Oscorp and everything they did for the human race. Their focus was to excel humanity, create renewable resources, revolutionize medicine, and all of that crap. The lobby of the Oscorp building, which screamed with the ego of tech gods, opened up to a grand atrium that stretched through the towering one-hundred-eight floors. Glass displays of flashing information illuminated almost every surface you could think of. And despite all of this show, when Gwen worked here she was still crammed in a cardboard-cutout cubicle in an office full of other cardboard-cutout cubicles with other cardboard-cutout people. Peons got shafted, but the scientists, the researchers; their offices were grandiose.

Gwen was aware that Oscorp wouldn't plaster 'Secret Labs' or 'Evil Information That Can Compromise Us' on a directory, so she would have to do some detective work. All floors were restricted without a key fob and most employees only ever had access to one. Peter was working in the Computer Engineering division, but The Lizard likely had something to do with medical research. It would have been useful if Strange told her what floor he did his super-secret research on or… Strange; she didn't want to think about him right now. She warned him, told him, explained to him that this was going to happen, but she wasn't expecting him to live. He was dead in her dream or vision or whatever you want to call it. There was still the possibility that he simply hadn't died yet. If Gwen knew anything, it's that situations usually got worse before they got better.

"Miss?" A voice startled her out of her trance.

"Wha?" Gwen had been standing in the middle of the atrium next to some plants you've never seen before that resembled tiny palm trees as she blankly stared up into the glaring skylight one-hundred-eight stories above her.

"Are you alright?" A man with reddish hair and stubble glanced down at her with a tiny smirk across his mouth. His suit was impeccable; perfectly tailored to his well-built physique. He was as annoyingly generically handsome as Anna was annoyingly gorgeous. "You seem upset."

"Excuse me?" Gwen blinked a tear from her eye that she had not noticed until then. "Oh yeah, I'm fine." She pushed the water away from her face with an unsteady hand.

"Are you sure?" His expression twisted with apprehension.

Gwen noticed him examining the thick cuts along her left cheek. "Oh, don't worry about this. This is fine." She raised her hand to cover the marks.

"Do I know you?" He asked leaning in closer to inspect her features.

"I've never met you…" His closeness put her on the edge of discomfort. What was it with men and their uncanny ability to break the boundaries of a woman's personal space?

"Alright then," he pulled his head back and held out a stiff arm. "Allow me to introduce myself; I'm Harry Osborn."

Opposite from what she experienced earlier that day, Gwen felt a rock in her stomach that was threatening to drag her body to the floor. "Ha- Harry Osborn; like Norman Osborn's son?" She managed to squeeze out.

"The one and only." His grin widened as he lowered his hand back down noticing that Gwen was too stunned to reciprocate the gesture. "Yes, I am the son of Norman Osborn, founder of Oscorp."

"You know, I used to work here before I got fired," Gwen released a faint squeal of anxiety.

"Oh, that's a shame. What'd you do?" His laugh sounded warm and kind and sincere and it made Gwen feel even more awkward.

Hold it together, Gwen, she assured herself. This guy could be the most goddamn evil fucker in New York for all you know. He could be behind what happened to her all of those years ago. Although, upon immediate reflection, she realized that Harry was around the same age as Gwen; therefore, he could not have been behind what happened to her. This option; however, did not entirely eliminate the possibility that he was behind what happened to Peter or The Lizard.

"I uh, never showed up for work," she swallowed.

"Then, I think you deserved to be fired, yeah?" He laughed again.

"That's okay, I just ended up volunteering at the homeless shelter my mother-in-law runs, so…" Gwen had no idea why she was rambling at this man. This man who knew Peter… He knew Peter.

"Volunteering? That's very noble of you." He kept smiling at her. "But, that probably explains why I recognize you."

"Did you know- Were you friends with-" she stopped her own speech to nervously wring her hands.

"Peter Parker!" he almost shouted at her as he snapped his fingers. "You were Peter Parker's friend. I remember you. He showed me pictures of the two of you. He talked about you a lot. The two of you must have been very close."

"Yeah, well, he was my best friend before… Before he died…" Gwen recoiled at the thought of Peter's death.

"I'm sorry. He was a good man." The ever-wide smile faded from Harry's lips. "And he was my good friend, too."

"Yeah, I know- he talked about you." Unaware, Gwen rolled her eyes. "Highest praise I've ever heard come out of someone's mouth."

"Peter told me how brilliant you are." And just like that, the comforting smile lifted Harry's features once more.

"Not nearly as brilliant as Peter." Gwen shrugged having no better response to offer.

"No one was ever as brilliant as Peter Parker was." Again, he scrutinized Gwen's cut face with a look of deep contemplation.

Gwen furrowed her brows at him in a fit of confusion, and the deep expression left his face.

"Would you like to get a coffee with me?" He bluntly asked, without instigation.

"Um, like when?" That's not what Gwen wanted to say, but it's what she ended up saying.

"How about right now? Are you busy?"

I'm about to steal your company secrets, Gwen thought to herself. So yes, she was a bit busy.

"I don't really have the time right now…"

"That's alright, can I get your number then?" This man did not beat around the bush for one second. "Peter talked a lot about you and I feel like it would be a shame if I didn't get to know you better."

"Oh, okay then." Snap out of it, Gwen, she yelled at her inner stupidity.

With an outstretched arm, he handed her his phone. "Go ahead," he pointed at it as she took it from him. "Just put in your number and we can set something else some other time."

Gwen feigned a smile at the device and put in her actual number before handing it back to Harry.

"It was really nice meeting you, Gwen." He tapped at the screen on his phone. "I'll text you soon, okay?"

"Yeah, sure," she gave her final reply with a look of confusion painted on her scarred face. "That was one-hundred-percent weird." She began wandering off in the direction exactly opposite of Harry.

"That was one hell of a detour," Gwen sighed at herself. There was no way to tell who Harry Osborn truly was until she got to the bottom of The Lizard. Not meaning the bottom of him as person or creature or whatever, but as in the bottom of this case. If this is a case; that really wasn't part of the point, though.

With enough eavesdropping, cloaking, leaping from floor to floor through the open atrium, Gwen was able to narrow down the exact floors the medical labs were on. Floors fifty-eight through seventy-two housed some of the world's most advanced medical research labs, but what Gwen found more informative than anything, was that no one ever mentioned floor sixty-four. Could it be a server room? Who knows; there was no mentioning of such by anyone thus far. More likely, these could be personal labs where Norman Osborn (and probably his son, too) performed their own unsanctioned research. Again, this all did come down to one little factoid. Was Doc telling the truth about what he saw during his brief stint with Oscorp?

Breaking into the labs on the sixty-fourth floor wasn't a difficult feat. All of the floors had balconies that opened up into the vast atrium, so access wasn't a problem. There was no way to know what was in the labs themselves for they were all hidden behind grey tinted glass. Irritatingly enough, there were keypads on every single door on that floor that kept outsiders exactly that. You'd think that Gwen Stacy, the tech-savvy individual she was, would be able to hack a silly little keypad. And this was exactly her intention until exasperation opened up a new way for her to freely access whatever she needed.

"I hate this," Gwen had been staring at the inner workings of one of the keypads after she had pried the face of it off. "I should have brought a computer or something. You know, a way to hack this like a normal person."

Suddenly, a spark of electricity shorted out the pad and the door silently slid open.

"Okaaaaay," Gwen narrowed her eyes at the open door. "That was so convenient." Gwen stared down at her gloved fingers. "I hope you can do that again." But Gwen would soon come to realize there wouldn't be a point.

The lab was shrouded in darkness besides the occasional blinking lights from a sleeping computer or terminal. It reeked of bleach or ammonia or some other pungent cleaning chemical. Gwen could feel warm humidity coating her face which could not have been good for any of the computers in that room, but for all Gwen knew Oscorp invented waterproof PCs or something crazy like that. Anything was within the realm of possibilities when it came to Oscorp, including but not limited to genetic mutation and splicing human DNA.

Gwen quickly found a terminal and started randomly slapping away at the keyboard. Not very hackerish, but her only intention was to wake the computer up. There was a chance that activity on these computers was monitored on a regular basis, so the quicker the better!

There were no locks on the terminals and access to the information they stored was given freely. "Wow, security," Gwen commented to herself. Oscorp hadn't imagined a scenario where someone unwanted had access to that floor and the doors and then the terminals. "Security starts at both back and front end, you losers," Gwen smirked at no one.

Despite the information overload, it wasn't long before Gwen found what she was seeking. There were files on Peter; a lot of them. They were reports of daily medical diagnostics that were run on him; blood-tests, tissue-samples, the whole nine yards. But it wasn't just Peter Parker who had test being done on him; another name consistently arose through her browsing of the multiple files. The name was Doctor Curt Connors. According to what Gwen found, he had been performing medical research at Oscorp for the past twenty years.

"I'll have to take this to go," Gwen removed a thumb drive from the front pocket on her sweat pants and inserted it into the terminal.