Chapter One
From great powers come great responsibilities, as Uncle Ben says in most of the Marvel takes on Spiderman's origin story (the Amazing Spiderman sticks out as a sore thumb among others). What if this wasn't the case?
Do not worry, dear reader, this does not involve Peter Parker. This story is about another guy, Sean O'Donnell, an Irish-American dude who was doing his internship at Oscorp. Odd jobs like doing photocopies and guiding the local schools' classes through the building were day-to-day duties of our protagonist.
"As you can see here," Sean pointed at the many glass containers behind him, "Oscorp has a wide collection of genetically-engineered spiders from Professor Connors's lab. We wanted to test how their metabolism works to hone our hypothesis and to see if we could optimize the amount of toxins they secrete."
"How did you alter their DNA, Mr. O'Donnell? Did you use a vector or did you go with homologous DNA recombination in a fertilized egg?" asked one of the students from Sean's alma mater, Midtown High. It was the average nerd, both by his looks and his questions. He reached about Sean's shoulder, but it didn't mean he was short, rather that Sean was well over six feet tall and that girls were prone to swooning around him.
"Little is known about viruses that infect spiders, so we went for a more straightforward approach, albeit less efficient method. You are?"
"Parker, Peter Parker, sir."
Sean grinned at that.
"You can drop the 'sir' Peter. I've just turned twenty-one. You can call me Sean."
"Are single, Sean?"
It was a lass of brown hair and somewhat too developed for a sixteen year old student, but Sean brushed off the question as their homeroom teacher scolded the girl without much bite.
"We have a total twenty spiders as off now . . ."
He went on, only to be interrupted by a student, yet again. One of the spiders was missing. At first Sean thought Connors might be running some experiment with it, but he didn't recall anything scheduled.
In the background a timid Ouch was heard, but no one aside from Gwen Stacy paid attention to Peter Parker's misadventures with said spider. It was what happened later that changed Sean's life forever. He had just left the class a couple of minutes to look around when the brown-haired bimbo called him over. At first, Sean wasn't interested, but the girl insistently tugged his lab coat.
"Look, I think I found your spider," she pointed toward the floor, "just don't let me pick it up."
With his back cold with sweat just thinking about Connors's scolding if he found one of his precious spiders laying about, Sean took out one of his nitrile gloves, slapped it on and carefully tired to pick up the spider. The damn beast wouldn't hear of it as it writhed all over the place and just when Sean thought he had it the arachnid crossed the space between his covered fingers to his wrist like lightning. The beast stabbed its tiny fangs into the tender flesh. Sean swallowed a yell, took the spider with the other and hand and quickly rammed it back into its cage.
"Thank you," he said to the girl, who looked at him worriedly.
"Are you okay?"
"Yes," he said, "none of the spiders are lethal to man. Were I a small mouse it would be another story: I'd be stone-cold dead within the minute." The last part was half a lie, since the mortality rate in mice was about seventy percent at best, but he enjoyed the anxious look on the girl's face.
"By the way, I'm Liz. Can you tell me you phone number?"
"Highly doubt it's appropriate, Liz."
The rest of the school trip went smoothly. Had Connors passed by he would have kidnapped young Mr. Parker and offered him an internship, Sean was sure. For the past quarter hour his head had started pulsing like drum and aching.
"Are you alright, Sean?"
It was Professor Curtis Connors in his office clothes, a sober brown jacket and a washed-out green shirt. His most noticeable feature was the lack of his left arm, which left the sleeve pending lifelessly.
Sean called it a simple headache, but his superior was far from convinced.
"Go home, you need a good rest. Looking after teenagers can be quite tiring, trust a father's word."
Taking him up on the offer, Sean packed his laptop and notebook and walked out to the subway. He took the it towards Hell's Kitchen and he was home before dinner.
The O'Donnell had a flat for rent, a shabby and old place. With three kids, monthly expenses and Empire State University's tuition fees to pay, Jessica O'Donnell née Manfredi had to work two jobs just to make ends meet. Sean's siblings were doing their homework on the kitchen table. When he crossed the door all sweaty and pale, Alex shot him a worried glace.
"I'm just tired man, going to sleep. Can you tell Simon and tell him I call in sick tonight? I don't feel like serving customers, at all. Also, you'll have to cook dinner yourself if I'm not better in half an hour."
The road between the kitchen and their bedroom was short and after dropping his backpack about the bed, Sean got undressed and dug into the blankets. The fever was rising.
He didn't wake up until morning, when his mother woke him up. With a summersault Sean hit Alex bed above his own, breaking the slat.
"F*ck! Hey mom, how goes it?" the bed felt somewhat shorter and smaller than usual. He could feel the tips of his toes getting cold and out of the blanket.
"You tell me, Sean. And language for Pete's sake," she said making the sign of the cross, "Alex and Ellie told me you came home sick yesterday. You alright?"
Coming out of bed, Sean was looking at his mother from at least two inches higher.
"Look at you, Sean! Frank didn't tell me you hit the gym so hard these days."
"What are you talking about?"
Sean looked down at himself, seeing his pecs and biceps swelling more than usual, as if he had spent the whole day at the sack and lifting weights.
"Well . . . I guess I have. What do we have in the fridge? I starving here."
He picked up a pair of trousers. They were tighter and the same thing went for his favorite t-shirt. A little flex of his muscle and Sean felt it would rip. Strolling into the kitchen it was quite a surprise when the fridge's handle simply stuck to his hand when Sean tugged at it.
"Damn, today is starting crazy. Mamma! The fridge's is broken, I'll fix it before I go. Where did you put the screwdriver?"
He still managed to open the damn thing by sticking his fingers in between the fridge and its door, taking out a bottle of milk and some cereals from the cupboard.
"You okay, Sean?" asked his younger sister Ellen, or Ellie for short, before her eyes popped out seeing the added centimeters to her brother's height.
"Oh my God! You've grown!
"Quite good, in fact, sweetie. Thanks for asking," he kissed her brow gently.
"Where's Alex?"
"Dolling up, as usual. I guess he wants to make a good impression on Liz Allen today."
"Liz? I think I know that name."
"Of course you do," said his other sibling, coming out of the bathroom, "She was at Oscorp yesterday on a school trip. Never wrote me a word, but she spent all night yesterday asking me about you. She even asked for your number, dude."
"You didn't give her my number, I hope. How do you think it would look, if I went out with a teenager?"
"What could I do?" Alex raised his hands, "she insisted."
Sean was already doing his magic with the screwdriver fixing his fridge by the time he had finished chastising his brother. He looked at the clock and swore under his breath. It was late and he wanted to be on time for his lecture at ESU.
"As you can see, we can use PCR for a whole lot of purposes like diagnostics, creating libraries and mutagenesis in organisms like Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The average primers range between 19 and 21 nucleotides, with a different GC percentage based on the desired melting temperature."
Professor Connors went about his lesson during Sean's third year of ESU. Sean was sitting beside his friends Timmy and Nathan, both of whom were paying less attention on their teacher and more on their hidden smartphones.
Sean had to be mindful of his abnormal strength after he nearly torn off a handle in the subway train, letting it go only when he felt the painful screeching of the bolts that fixed it down. He had broken his pencil like a twig while he was distracted for a moment.
Sean took his courses in Systems Biology and Biochemistry as usual before leaving for Oscorp. The one thing for sure was that there was absolutely nothing normal about that spider, and Sean had found it dead in its container.
Looking around the lab, Sean extracted a bit of DNA from both himself and the spider to run the NGS machinery in the lab. Sequencing their DNA wouldn't hurt even if it took away the better part of Sean's afternoon, especially if he didn't want anyone to notice.
It was five o'clock when he waved goodbye to Connors and he went for Frank's gym, near his house. He smirked as he passed the revolving door under the lustful watch of Oscorp's secretaries. He was six feet one already before the transformation, with curly dark hair and Irish green eyes. Paired with a well-toned body, Sean had little difficulty turning heads.
Frank Williams was a family friend, a childhood friend of Sean's father before he took a bad turn toward jail. The man had made his day in the boxing circuit before MMA was a thing, opening his own gym and changing to the new trends. Outside the gym Sean eyed Arthur 'Artie' Brown and Jimmy Jones talking, but didn't pay mind to it.
Joe welcomed him with a nod. He was the local guitar hero and wannabe fighter who was in fact working as a secretary for Frank.
"Are you doing fine? Your brother told me you were sick yesterday. Got a problem with my laptop, but I couldn't find you at Simon's."
"Do you have the it with you now? Well, you can bring it to my house when you're off, I'll take a look at it. Since you're a friend, twenty five bucks will do, if it's something simple. Only if it's something simple, are we clear? Last time I spent hours troubleshooting."
"Thanks mate."
Sean usually left weights at the end, if he wanted to do them at all, but today he had something to check. Asking one of the gym buddies if minded switching at the bench press. Sean started with his usual two hundred pounds to warm up, but he barely felt them.
"Mind adding another forty pounds, Harvey? I feel good today."
That was the first time, but Sean had yet to break a sweat when he lifted three hundred pounds easily and he didn't want to gather too much attention.
He took his gloves and went to the bag, trying some combos and jumping the rope until Frank asked him up the ring.
"If you want to do any good in the upcoming tourney, you better train hard. Rodriguez here said he wants a challenge, too. See how you do against him."
Charles Rodriguez was Frank's golden hen, a huge South American that looked as bad as Iron Mike. He was going for pro in some small time competition and already drunk on dreams of grandeur.
Sean looked down on his sparring partner, in the literal sense. He and Charlie had a couple of fights, but the dude was going pro for a reason.
"Ready for a beating, O'Donnie?"
Today wouldn't go as usual, however. Just as their sparring started, Sean felt his whole body buzzing, his whole hair standing up. Rodriguez who came at him swinging, yet he dodged out of reflex. The counter punch had been so ingrained in Sean's mind he had no control over it, but he did dial down his strength to minimum. Rodriguez still felt it pretty badly, nearly going down.
Sean wasn't surprised as he dodged and played with Rodriguez.
"You going pro with just this, Charlie?" he mocked, exposing his face at arm-length only to duck before Rodriguez's punch connected. In his eye's corner Sean saw Joe with his dusty Blackberry making a video of the fight and he smiled at the camera with bravado.
Sean threw a low-kick that dropped Rodriguez off balance down on the mat. Sean tackled him, hammering down his fists to the other until Frank separated them.
"The f*ck was that, dude?" told Joe to his pal, while Frank was telling Rodriguez off. Artie Brown was looking at Sean with a shining eyes, just behind the small crowd of athletes.
Frank was no less impressed and all optimistic about the 'Zuffa' tournament organized in five months. "We must up your grapple game, just in case.. Don't ever provoke an opponent like you just did, Sean, or I'll skin you alive and send you back to Jess."
Out of the gym and after a good shower, Sean found Artie waiting for him.
"Good fight, O'Donnell. You have much of your daddy, now that I think about it. He was good with his fists as well."
If knowing Sean's father didn't list put Arthur Brown on the blacklist, the fact he had some shady dealings with criminals put Sean on guard.
"What is it, Artie?" he asked.
"How's the piccioli back home?" said Artie making the typical Italian gesture for money, rubbing his thumb with the index and middle fingers, "I've seen Jessica at McCoy's. I thought she worked as a cashier at the mall, however."
"Back when your papa was around, things were smooth and you didn't need to work at Simons's. By the way, I heard you're good with computers as well, bravo. That's some sh*t you have going on, between university and the like. Now, seeing how good you are in the ring and how good I am at sniffing money, I have a deal for you, lad."
Artie acted like the big boss in town for a moment, in a bad impression on Don Corleone from Coppola's 'The Godfather' with his passable brown leather jacket.
"There this place, around Harlem, where good dudes like you . . . entertain respectable people. For money, of course," he went on.
"This is not my gig, Artie. You have an iPhone that isn't working, or a PC, I'm the man. Beating the crap out of dudes in a dark alley . . . not so much."
Before he could march off on his way, Artie ran after him, placing his arm around Sean's shoulders like a protective father would do, or try to do at least.
"Wait, wait, wait . . . we're talking about three grand, five if it goes smoothly, and I wouldn't mind giving you a large share, on top of the standard winnings of two thousand dollars, cash. Are you sure you wanna pass on this? Four or five thousand dollars, Sean. Five. Thousand. Dollars. Cash."
Artie saw a gleam in Sean's eyes, he smiled and distanced himself.
"Think about it, lad. You know where to find me, should you change your mind. See ya."
Sean walked his way home. The door was still looking fine after Alex had painted it new, but it was a little creaky as of late.
"I'm home," he said to Alex and Ellie, who were tending to dinner.
"Mom stopped by, asked if you were alright. She just left for the pub."
It was half past seven.
"She's going to return late, today as well," said Sean.
Sean's two younger siblings were highschoolers, with Alex being a junior and Ellie a freshman at Midtown High.
"I'm going out this Saturday," said Alex, "Liz and Flash are going to the 50/50. A friend of theirs can let them in."
Sean glanced at him sideways, "You know how mom feels about nightclubs."
"That's why you should come, too, man."
"F*ck you, Alex."
"Whoa, cool. Don't leave me hanging, bro. Everyone has been pestering me to bring my 'hot-as-f*ck brother', quote. You can't do this to me."
"What about Ellie? Who's going to look after her?"
That surely irritated his sister, who thought she didn't need to be looked after.
"Can I stay at Cindy's place?" she added her own two pieces.
Before they could wear him down, Sean begun doing the dishes and the cutlery. Fun thing was, one of the dishes adhered to his hand as if it was glued to it. Sean had literally to rip it off, sending it in pieces on the wall.
"Damn it!" he cried out, when they knocked at his door.
"Who the hell is it?" he yelled, but he remembered he had told Joe to drop by with his stuff.
He had scared the dude off for a moment, but he showed him in while Alex and Ellie greeted him.
"Want some coffee, Joe?" Sean asked.
"Not the strong shit you drink, man. That moka pot you Italians have is the devil's stuff."
"I'm not Italian, Joe. My grand-father was. I'm American as you are."
"Says the man with the Irish surname and the Italian coffee in his hands," retorted the fully American dude, whatever that meant.
"My twenty five bucks?"
Joe left the money on the table while Alex luring him to the 50/50 as well.
"Cool, dude. Why don't we go, Sean! I heard there's one of my favorite DJs."
Sean was positively going crazy by now.
"Didn't you listen to Killswitch Engage, Joe?"