A/N: Hello, again, friends, and welcome to Chapter Four! Thank you for your continued support of this series, and please don't hesitate to review, comment, ask questions, follow, and favorite! Assuming that it's actually a favorite, I'm not trying to pressure you or anything.
Chapter Four
Peter was about to walk through the turnstiles at the subway station when he realized he didn't have a working Metro Card. Mostly because he never took the subway and travelled everywhere by web.
Dammit, why did Steve have to insist that I walk back to the lab?
"The last thing you need to be doing is drawing attention to yourself," Steve had said. "I've already made some calls. The streets will be clear on your way back. No trouble you need to worry about. If something changes, I'll call you personally."
Peter slumped his way out of the building, nearly taking a few floor tiles with him as he shuffled his feet. Rather than being able to look up and know where he was by the buildings and landmarks in the Manhattan skyline, Peter was instead forced to try and remember cross-streets and subway stops. This did not do well for him, as he was an hour and a half later getting back to his lab than he would have been.
He slammed the file down on his desk, and immediately picked it up again, checking it for damage. He knew that the contents of that file made it one of the most valuable items in the world. He knew whole countries that would gladly wipe out their neighbors for just a glimpse of whatever was in that folder.
Hands shaking, Peter set the dusty old file back on his desk. He stared at the U.S. Army insignia, his thumb resting on the tab. After a few seconds, he pursed his lips and opened the cover. To his great surprise, the inside didn't start glowing and melt off his face. Instead, it was full of musty and yellowing pages: medical test results, most of which were massive failures; a page with a photo that looked something like Steve, along with a basic bio; a page of pre-and-post serum administration exam results. No formula for the serum itself, which Peter had known would not be there. It was no secret among the Avengers that Erskine had memorized the formula for the Super-Soldier Serum, and that his death had rendered Steve the only one who would receive the treatment. Still, Peter had hoped that the serum was what Steve had been talking about.
After a few more pages of Steve's exploits with Bucky and the Invaders, the yellowed sheets ended. Peter imagined this was the time period where Cap was encased in ice. But instead of the next page being the Avengers thawing Steve out, it was instead the Army's attempts at recreating Erskine's research, most notably with Frank Simpson, alias Nuke, a maniacal and schizophrenic individual augmented with cybernetics and a second heart. Steve had told Peter that the file wasn't actually his, exactly, but was the Army's file on its Super Soldier experiments. Peter had thought Steve was the only Super Soldier alive, but dozens of pages showed nothing but failure after failure.
Peter flipped through the rest of file, not finding anything that could help him with Carol's case. Frustrated, he threw the folder back onto his desk and bent over to pick up a slip of paper that had fallen out of the back. Opening the folder from the back, Peter saw something that looked strangely familiar. Resting against the back of the file was a folded, browned sheet of white paper, one that looked like a flyer. Reaching out, his hand trembling, Peter took the paper and unfolded it. "Oh, God, you've got to be kidding me."
Unfolded, the flyer read: "Science Exhibit. Experiments in Radio-activity. Open to the Public. Room 30."
Peter didn't realize that he'd crumpled up the slip of paper in his hand for a few minutes. His brain was still trying to process the information. This flyer was outside the room where the spider bit me. He leaned back, but forgot that he was sitting on a stool. His ability to maintain equilibrium kept him from falling, but he felt like he wanted to crash to—and through—the floor.
He had to wonder if the demonstration had been some kind of plant. Had they wanted someone to be bitten by the spider that day? No, there's no way could have scripted something like that so perfectly. A random spider crosses into the beam and bites someone? Definitely not a plan. But what, then?
Peter started digging further into the file, skipping the Vietnam era altogether, pushing closer to his own time period. He found in the last few pages before the flyer the notes of one Dr. Randall Fletcher, who had apparently been studying Vita Rays, the radiation that Steve was exposed to in order accelerate the Super-Soldier Serum. Several pages mentioned the "formula" Dr. Fletcher received from his father, though nothing of the sort was written down. Then, on the final page of Fletcher's notes, was a paper clip and a blank square where the formula had been. Peter looked down into his clenched fist and slowly unfurled his fingers.
Inside was a small square piece of paper, crumpled to be barely legible, but there was the formula. Peter knew that this was what he was looking for, the key to saving Carols' life.
Peter spent an entire day pouring over Dr. Fletcher's notes. The man was pretty good, he had to admit. It seemed that his father, Colonel James Fletcher, had been part of Project: Rebirth, and a close friend to Dr. Erskine. Though Erskine had never written down the Super-Soldier Serum itself, he had written down the components to create the synthetic radiation he used to accelerate the serum's growth in the subject, and had given the formula to the Colonel for safekeeping the night before the experiment on Steve. When Colonel Fletcher died at the hands of the Red Skull, Steve brought his body back to the U.S. for proper burial, and his effects had been passed to his family, including the formula (evidently the army hadn't known what they were looking at, otherwise it never would've ended up in the Fletcher home). Dr. Fletcher had become obsessed with the formula as a boy, and took up science to uncover its mysteries.
To Peter, this was absolutely fascinating. There were roughly four types of ionized radiation occurring naturally that would affect humans in adverse ways: X-Ray, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. Nearly all of these would be fatal in large doses, or, in the case of Gamma radiation, might turn the individual into a mindless engine of mass destruction. What Erskine had done was essentially create an anti-radiation, one that would energize cells rather than destroy them. It was absolutely brilliant. Peter suspected that Erskine might have been on par with Reed if he'd had more modern resources and hadn't been focused on defeating the Nazis.
Taking a sample of his own blood, Peter started to examine his cellular structure against the formula he'd now scribbled into the massive white board on the lab wall. What he found was a near-perfect match. Ignoring the parts of his DNA that were more spider than man, Peter saw the chemical construction of that formula repeated over and over again in his cells. It was clear that the spider that bit him had been juiced with Vita Rays.
His initial observations showed that the bonds holding his DNA together were exponentially stronger than they should have been. It was the reason the spider's venom had altered him rather than torn his cellular structure apart. He was barely able to contain his excitement, and he called Carol to give her the good news.
"Hello," said a man's voice.
"Uh, hi," Peter said, his energy suddenly drained. "Is Carol awake?"
"No, no, she's asleep right now," the man said, and Peter heard the slight creak in the chair that sat next to Carol's bed. "She was up most of the night having some coughing fits, so she's trying to rest now. Who's this?"
Peter felt the plastic buckling beneath his fingers. "Spider-Man," he said.
"Oh, hey, Spidey, it's Simon Williams. Wonder Man," Simon said. "Yeah, Carol told me you were checking this out for her. You got some news? I'd be happy to give her a message once she wakes up."
The steel of his work table was bending under the pressure Peter's fingers were putting on it. "No, thanks, Simon, I was just calling to see how she was doing. I've got to get back to work."
The phone did less clicking than it did cracking, and Peter knew he would have to get a new one. He needed a distraction.
He found one in diving into experiments with the Vita Rays. Now that he knew essentially what they did, all he had to do was find the right amount of radiation to apply so that Carol's DNA structure would be able to heal itself and, if they were lucky, be stronger than ever before.
Unfortunately for all the lab rats Peter ran tests on, even the smallest exposure to the radiation caused eventual cellular deconstruction. Peter couldn't figure it out. Vita Rays were designed to be the anti-radiation, to restore and strengthen cellular membranes, but here they were killing everything with which they came into contact. Peter assumed that the only reason he wasn't affected was because he already was, in a way.
Peter examined the blood of one of the lab rats he'd exposed to the Vita Rays, and found something disturbing. The radiation was indeed performing its intended function, but, after a few minutes, the cells started to burst.
It's the Vita Rays' own version of radiation sickness. With other forms of radiation exposure, without treatment, cells just start dying. Here, the opposite is true to the same effect. The cells are becoming energized to the point of bursting. And if all your cells burst at once, well, Peter looked to the rats that were laying on his table, dissected, you don't really get up.
He paced about his lab, walking up the walls, crossing the ceiling. Then why did Steve and I survive? He crawled into a dark corner, where a house spider had built a thin web. It has to have something to do with the Super-Soldier Serum and the spider's venom. Those are the only variables I can't account for.
He felt the spider leave its web and crawl onto his arm. He watched it, in the darkness, attach a web to the underside of his forearm, then swing to the other side of the corner, slowing as the web line reached its apex. Oh, my God, that's it!
Peter leaped down from the corner and started sifting through the papers he'd strewn across the lab. It's damping! The serum and the spider's venom dispersed the radiation energy enough for it to affect our cells without destroying them! He scraped through page after page, not sure what he was looking for, but knowing he would know it when he saw it. All I have to do is find something that can dampen the Vita Rays long enough for Carol to absorb the energy!
The explosion nearly snuck up on him, and had it not been for his Spider-Sense, Peter would have been crushed by a large chunk of his door. As it was, Peter was able to duck beneath his desk and rise on the other side. He was confronted with a sight that he could honestly say he never expected to see.
"Peter Parker," came the metallic, nearly robotic voice beneath the metal mask. "Doom has need of you."