Author's Note: Hehehe yep shit's getting bad and this story will be drawing to a close soon. I own nothing.

34. Breakout

Four hours passes. Dr. Connors had passed out about an hour ago, the pain of re-growing a limb finally catching up to him. His hand was about halfway through re-growing. Piper couldn't look at it. Glen shook his head.

"The serum creates new variants of lizard DNA faster than I can identify them. I don't know how we're gonna do this in time." Piper yanked her mask off and scrubbed at her face. Tony had locked down this level for the day when they'd arrived, no one could enter the level if they didn't want them to save the man himself.

"Octavius' notes survived, so did most of Doc Connors' but I can't make heads or tails of Octavius' findings. It seems like he hadn't had the opportunity to test this particular project of his. Piper let out a shaky breath and flipped to the ceiling. Glen glanced at her.

"What are you doing?" Piper sat of the ceiling for a moment.

"Getting a new perspective." She frowned. "Wait maybe that's it. What if we're going about this the wrong way. We've been trying to come at this from the lizard side of things, what if we came at it the other way. A human DNA filter, something that will knock out anything that isn't human, not just lizard but anything. Like the noise filter on a cellphone." Glen stared at her for a minute.

"That's just crazy enough that it might work." Glen pulled up the information they had. "I think we have everything we need to do it too." Piper nodded and they both jumped as a groan sounded from the small couch at the edge of the room. Piper was faster than Glen and made it to the couch first. Dr. Connors was convulsing on the couch, Piper pushed Glen behind her.

"Doc?" His eyes blinked open, but instead of their usual brown tone they were darker, red and the pupil was no longer round but thin like that of a venomous snake. Piper swore colorfully.

"We're running out of time." Glen nodded running back to his station to work on the new formula. Piper stepped closer to Dr. Connors.

"Doc?" He looked up at her his tongue flickered out, the end had separated, leaving it forked. Piper tried not to show how badly this was affecting her. Dr. Connors was one of the few people who had known her parents. When she'd told him who she was he'd invited her over to his apartment and gone through decades old scrapbooks to find the few pictures he had of her parents telling her everything they had worked on together. He'd even had a picture from the baby shower before she was born. Aunt May and Uncle Ben were in the photo, he'd insisted she take that one. She didn't have many photos of all of them together.

"You still with us Doc?" He nodded. "Can you talk?" He blinked at her for a moment.

"Yess. I think sso." His voice was hoarse but if that was from pain or his short nap Piper couldn't tell. There was a hissing lilt to his tone that Piper didn't recognize.

"That's good, we had an idea. We're gonna create a gene filter, something that will target any non human DNA." Doc Connors nodded slightly then looked up at her again, his eyes almost glowing.

"Even sspider." That hadn't actually occurred to her but in theory yes, the cleanser they were working on could be a cure for her spider powers. She blinked at him as he shook and groaned again. He shook as Piper watched bone and tissue stretch and grow into four functional fingers and a thumb. The nails were longer sharper than a regular humans.

"Maybe." He shrieked as he shook and grunted as several scales pushed their way through his skin.

"Glen! How are we doing on that filter." Glen shook his head.

"I need more time." Piper shook her head as long yellow claws dug into the couch.

"We don't have time Glen." Glen swore as he kept working as fast as he could. The sound of bones snapping and resetting themselves echoed through the mostly empty lab. Piper had to stifle a sob as Dr. Connors started to scream.

The light around him was bright, warm. It was nice. A long tongue flicked out, tasting the air. There were two people in the room. One smelled different though, the sharp tang of something non human on her skin. He shook his head and blinked slightly head tilting as he looked up. It looked like someone had put a color saturation filter over the world, everything was in much sharper detail than he'd ever seen. There were indeed two people in the room, one in stunningly bright red and blue the other in a white lab coat. The figure in red and blue was much more interesting. The red was shot through with fine lines of gold. Here eyes were sparkling blue but he could make out a slightly purple tint to the veins in her eye. He could smell the venom on her breath, just a hint of it there. He blinked at her, a transparent third eyelid sliding over his eye as his tongue flickered out again.

"Doc, you still in there?" Words were difficult to reach for but after a few more flicks of the tongue he managed it.

"Yesss." The blonde let out a frustrated noise as the one who smelled like spiders stepped forwards gently laying a hand on his shoulder.

"I can't figure out what Octavius did to his formula." Dr. Connors hissed as his tongue flickered out again.

"How about we asssk him." He leapt over the two and stalked over to the briefcase that still lay where he'd left it the night before.

"Doc you need to sit down. We don't know what this has done to you, there's every chance that this transformation had affected your mind." His tongue flickered out over the briefcase. Metal and unwashed hair was not a smell he would say he enjoyed but it would be easy enough to track, he leapt over the two again and skittered to a window.

Piper swore and fired a web, near his head, a warning shot.

"Doc, I can't let you run around New York like this. You need to listen to me." The giant lizard roared at her and smashed its head into the glass before tumbling out of the forty first floor of Stark Tower.