After dinner, Peter took the box of Uncle Ben's Army gear up to his room, and placed it on his desk, to sort through after he got back from school the next day.
Not that I'll need to look too hard… Peter thought. I'll bet he's got a funny story about how these binoculars got scratched if he's kept them this long.
Peter showered, and went to bed.
Back at the Oscorp Science Center...
At the Oscorp Science Center, employees had scoured the entire facility for the entire day in search of the missing specimen. Once Norman had found that the Spider wasn't in the monitoring habitat, or the quarantine habitat, he'd ordered the display habitat examined… And they'd found a nearly imperceptible hole at the base, caused by a flaw in the molding of the material that Subject Fifteen had managed to work itself into and press apart, using its' enhanced strength.
"Highly impressive work." Norman said, marveling at the escape route the spider had taken. "Even after careful selection, assembly and sealing, Subject Fifteen managed to find a tiny weakness, all but imperceptible to a larger eye, and undermine decades worth of engineering and scientific progress." He replaced the empty habitat upon the stainless steel table before him.
"Doctor Strom," He said, turning to a nervous-looking bald man. "Any progress retrieving Subject Fifteen from the premises?"
Strom shook his head. "Not at this time, Doctor Osborn." He responded shakily. "Uh, we've scoured the building from top to bottom, and we haven't even found a web. Dillon's been working overtime on the RF trackers, he says that the tags should function for up to a mile in the open air."
Norman sighed. "Spare me the buildup, and cut to the chase. I presume if we had any tracking signals from Subject Fifteen, we'd already have a team honing in on it, which means that a spider tagged with a tracking device has somehow managed to evade our sensors, meaning it's likely breached our facility, correct?"
Strom nodded nervously.
Norman sighed again, and clapped Strom on the shoulder.
"Listen Mendel." He said, flashing another toothy smile. "This isn't anyone's fault. It would've taken superhuman eyesight to spy that flaw in the habitat. That being said, if we can't recreate Subject Fifteen precisely, there may be further consequences. Not from me," Norman said, placing a hand on his chest. "But from Uncle Sam, who just so happens to pay our bills." He said, gesturing to the entire facility. "If we shut down, everyone loses their jobs, including me, and including you. You know what the loss of Subject Fifteen means, correct?"
Strom gulped, and nodded.
"It means we'd have to breed another generation of spiders."
Norman shook his head, perhaps a bit more vigorously than he'd intended, as his hands trembled in… Not rage… Definitely not fear.
"No, Mendel, it means we'd have to find another way to patch up our Super Soldier Serum. We'd have to take it-"
"Back to formula…" Strom and Norman chorused together.
Norman smiled again.
"And taking it 'back to formula' would require time… Time I-" Norman cut himself off as he clasped his hands together to stop their trembling. "We, do not have. You… We, I suppose, are simply lucky that, at the moment, we have other projects in the works which may yet prove fruitful. How is Curtis's reptile project coming along?"
"Uh, slow, but steady." Strom replied. "He's used everything you, he, and Parker discovered…"
"Parker…" Norman said, rubbing his chin. "I wish he'd written down whatever he'd found out. Such a shame for that brain of his to die like that." Norman appeared wistful and distant for a moment, then snapped back to the present with a toothy smile. "And that's why documentation and preservation is important, Mendel. You can't destroy even a worthless test subject, even a seemingly worthless sample without knowing what makes it up, and losing one?" Norman shrugged his arms apart, and let them drop to his sides. "Losing one is as good as destroying it, except, for all you know, one of your competitors might snatch it up! And the last thing we need is for Tony Stark to add another feather to his cap."
The following morning at the Parker household, Peter got up, and got dressed. He considered what to do…
If I time it all right, I can probably swing by Doctor Conners' office after school. Who better to ask about these… Changes, than one of the experts, right?
Peter rifled through his father's briefcase, and glanced back through the documents and contents.
Should I take this with me? He wondered. No… I don't want to risk this stuff getting lost or damaged. He thought as he glanced back over the "Decay Rate Algorithm" again. Crazy to think they were working on this all those years ago. All because of a wartime experiment. A million little things, big and small, lead to this.
Peter put the contents back into the briefcase one by one… Until he got down to the glasses case and Oscorp ID. He gave the ID a long look, scouring over his father's face, then held the ID up to the mirror on his wall.
I'm practically the spitting image of him. Peter thought. I'm just not wearing any glasses. Peter pondered for a second, then tossed the ID back into the briefcase, and put the glasses case safely inside his backpack.
Peter slung his backpack over his shoulders, washed his hands, then walked downstairs, where May and Ben were already having breakfast.
"Back to a normal schedule today?" Ben asked as he sipped his coffee.
Peter shrugged noncommittally as he set his backpack down next to his chair, and sat down.
"Maybe." He replied as he speared a sausage link off the serving plate in the center of the table. He placed it on the plate in front of him, and grabbed a piece of bread, and buttered it. "I have some stuff to check out after school, so I might be back a little late, is that alright?"
"Try not to be too late, Michelangelo!" Ben replied as he set his mug down on the table. "Remember, we've got to paint the kitchen later!"
Peter froze in the process of wrapping the sausage link in his buttered bread. "Right!" He exclaimed. "Almost forgot."
"What are you doing after school?" Aunt May asked.
"I wanted to see if I could talk to Dr. Conners about…" Peter trailed off. About that bite I had…
"About Richard?" Ben asked.
Peter just nodded. Well, it's not exactly untrue.
"By the way," Peter added. "Would it be alright if we sat down in front of the camera sometime this week and talked about your time in the Rangers?"
"Sure!" Ben replied. "Anything you want to know, I'm an open book!"
"Awesome!" Peter exclaimed. "I'll clear it with Harrington, and we can do it… Maybe tomorrow?"
"We can do it tonight if we have time." Ben said. "Shouldn't take too long to get the kitchen put back together."
Meanwhile, at Oscorp Tower, Curtis Connors' office…
Doctor Curtis Connors was loathe to allow the fact that he only had one arm stop him from working on his own. Had he been left with his dominant hand, things might have been easier, but, ever since the Afghanistan incident, he'd been rendered an eternal southpaw.
Curt Connors' lab in the Oscorp Tower was covered in reptile and small mammal habitats, featuring creatures of all shapes and sizes, with many different genetic advantages, or disadvantages.
Every day, I wonder what I would give to have my arm back… Curtis thought as he filtered through the incomplete Decay Rate Algorithm, and attempted once more to patch the holes left behind so long ago through a combination of careful calculation, and trial and error.
Curtis extracted a segment of DNA from a blood sample taken from a chameleon, and added the synthetic retrovirus to the sample, then injected the viral sample into a mouse, who'd been born with three legs, near the missing leg.
The mouse's name was Freddie. Curtis hoped beyond hope, as he mounted Freddie in the harness, then retrieved the preparation from the centrifuge, and injected the poor little mouse, that he would wind up with a new limb, or at least, the precursors to one.
Once the solution was administered, Curtis used the restraint harness to drop Freddie into an observation chamber, and freed the little mouse, so he could be observed. Not just by Curtis, but by cameras and microphones in the enclosure, as well.
Curtis heard a sharp knock at his door, and looked up from his equipment to find…
"Doctor Osborn!" He exclaimed as Norman opened the door, and stepped through it as though each step carried the weight of the world behind it. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Norman clicked his lips, and shook his head in disappointment as he shoved his hands into his pants pockets.
"Not so much a pleasure, as much as an obligation, Curtis." Norman said somberly. "I wish this visit were precipitated by good news, but I'm afraid there's been a fairly major setback with regards to my spider project."
Curtis stood up from his instruments swiftly as concern washed over his features.
"They haven't all died, have they?" He asked in horror.
Norman held up a hand in a calming gesture.
"No, no no…." He said softly. "However, Subject Fifteen, which was the most promising example of our mutual work, has managed to escape the facility."
"Escape?" Curtis asked incredulously. "How?"
"There was a microscopic flat in its' enclosure." Norman replied as he paced around Curtis's laboratory, observing the many reptilian test subjects within. "I suppose we bred them to be too smart, more's the pity. I was… Hoping that your experiments with our…" Norman trailed off as he locked eyes with a monitor lizard in one of the enclosures. "Scaly friends, were closer to returning results."
"I've just administered a new solution." Curtis said, gesturing to the enclosure in front of him. "I believe I have made significant progress."
"Oh?" Norman said as he stooped to look at Freddie as the little white rodent wandered about in his plexiglass enclosure.
The mouse was starting to show the signs of limb regrowth in his damaged leg. Freddie sniffed at his leg as the bones and flesh regrew at an alarming pace.
"I believe I have all but recreated the major breakthroughs of Richard's research," Curtis said as Freddie began to step onto the new limb. "However-"
His words were cut short as the growth in the mouse's limb grew tumorous, and… Scaley. The pink flesh sprouted not white fur, but hard, green scales.
"Unfortunately, the tests are proving unfruitful." He concluded as Freddie attempted to drag his now overgrown, scaly limb across the enclosure.
Norman sighed in irritation at the results of the experiment, and shut his eyes tightly as his head trembled. He clamped his right hand over the bridge of his nose tightly, and the trembling stopped.
"Just typical." He whispered. "No success with recreating the decay algorithm?"
"Less than I'd like." Curtis admitted. "As Richard said in his last eMail, we need precise calculations in order to attack the genetic code correctly. Tell the virus what to attack, where to find it, when to stop, and what to leave alone. Unfortunately, short of manually editing the genetic code chromosome by chromosome, I can't think of any other solution. Selective breeding only gets us so far, and that doesn't help us in humans."
Norman rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"Have you tried single gene editing?" Norman asked.
"In higher life-forms?" Curtis asked. "That'd be the equivalent of programming a computer using stone tablets. Hypothetically possible, but we'd be old men by the time we managed to get one person's code changed in any meaningful way."
"And even with a fully sequenced genome," Norman said ponderously. "There's not necessarily a way of telling what the effects are in humans, much less if one subject will have a similar reaction to another."
Curtis nodded.
"The solution would have to be administered on such a long scale that people in dire need would see no benefit. They could die before the solution takes effect, or the solution might not work at all, if the patient's code begins to 'repair' itself."
"The single gene method seemed like such a good idea when we were working with the new spiders…" Norman said wistfully as Freddie's fur began to fall out in clumps, with green scales now growing in place of the fur all over his body. "But you're right. It only works because of their short lifespans… And Subject Fifteen was all but perfect! We only needed one more generation before we had the ideal pattern, and we could have used it as a template to solve everything!"
"Did you at least manage to get a full map of Subject Fifteen's DNA?" Curtis asked.
Norman shook his head sadly as the poor little mouse grew less mobile as he grew more lizardlike.
"If we did, I wouldn't be asking about the lizards, Curtis." Norman said as the instruments monitoring Freddie's vitals showed him slowing down… "They were brilliant, but, alas, too small to accurately sample without damaging the creature. We were planning to allow it to breed, then perform a full sequence after it expired."
"Damn." Curtis replied.
Seconds later, the instruments said that the little mouse was dead.
"Subject: Deceased." The robotic voice of the computer said over the speakers.
"Time of death, eight fifty-five AM, Eastern Time." Norman said with a glance at his watch. "Any luck with other subjects?"
Curtis shook his head.
"It's just like Rick described." He said with a gesture towards a curtained-off section of the lab. "The decay rate either activates too quickly, and defects occur or the splicing ends prior to the desired outcome, or we wind up with mice with scales and cold blood. It's unacceptable."
Norman looked over at the section, then strolled across the lab, and drew the curtains back, to reveal a wall of misshapen, strange hybrids of mice and lizards. All of which were more alive than Freddie was, but none of which appeared to retain the essential characteristics of a mouse.
"I see…" Norman said softly as his hands began to tremble, and shake across the curtain, rattling the curtain hooks against the rod as his body began to shake as though overtaken by an earthquake.
Norman clenched himself tightly, and as quickly as his body would permit him, slammed his right hand into one of his jacket pockets. Curtis heard a device click, and Norman's body ceased to spasm as the tremors subsided into his normal motions, almost inhumanly so.
"Curtis, do you know why I pursued this contract so heavily?" He asked as he turned to face Curtis. "It's not just because it was snatched from our grasp by the death of one of our dearest friends, although that is a compounding factor. It's because of a chronic diagnosis made about my health several years ago."
"I'm sorry to hear that." Curtis replied. "Is it-"
"None of your concern at this time, Curtis." Norman replied coldly, cutting Curtis off. "What is your concern is twofold. One, that my patience is limited by my time, and my time is running out faster than I'd like. Second, is that, until we are able to recapture or recover Subject fifteen, the bulk of the weight of our cross-species genetics project rests upon your shoulders. That means the fate of the contract, the company, myself, and my son, rest in your more than capable hands."
Norman looked at his friend, and immediately winced as he realized what he'd just said.
"Sorry, hand." Norman said with a pained expression. "Nevertheless, I expect to see more results, and more information out of your experiments soon, or I may have to reconsider your position at this institution."