"Long time no see, Peter. What's this?"
"Uh, nothing?" Peter jumped, nearly hitting the ceiling.
"Hey, Harry? It's been a while. I almost didn't recognize you. Didn't you go off to boarding school?" he said, tossing his draft behind him and leaning against the doorframe to block Harry's view of the room's contents.
Harry's attention was indeed diverted, but he didn't tell Peter the truth: "Benny called me, so I came out for a walk. It's like a prison in there."
"We haven't seen each other much since Uncle Norman sent you to boarding school!"
Seeing his old friend again, Peter was clearly delighted. If his room hadn't been filled with all sorts of junk, he would have definitely invited Harry in for a chat.
"How about we play some games?" he said, stepping out and quickly closing the door. "Benny borrowed a new game from a classmate a few days ago."
"A new game? Awesome! I'll have a blast even if it's just a tank battle!" Harry immediately nodded, then took a closer look at Peter, and this time it was his turn to be surprised. "Peter, you've grown a lot!"
Peter looked very different from how Harry remembered him.
First, he was no longer as thin and small as before. Peter was now almost taller than Harry and seemed much sturdier. Besides that, he had also ditched his glasses.
"Did you have surgery on your eyes?"
"No, I just wear contact lenses," Peter quickly replied.
He quickly led Harry to Benny's room, pushed the door open, and turned on Benny's computer.
Although Peter felt a bit bad about using Benny's things without permission, he had no other choice now to distract Harry.
"By the way, where's Benny?"
"Downstairs. I saw him heading for the kitchen," Harry said, his hands gripping the game controller as if he were steering a wheel. His eyes were practically glued to the computer screen now. "Hurry up, Peter!"
Harry urged him on.
Although his home game console was much larger than Benny's computer, and the speed and graphics were incomparable, Harry found games somewhat boring when he got home for some reason.
But here, before the game had even started, he was already impatient, even a little nervous.
Clearly, he hadn't realized that the best setup for gaming has never been the equipment, but the friends.
A moment later, Benny came up with three cups of juice.
Looking at Peter and Harry engrossed in their game, he felt a bit like their parent...
"Come play with us, Benny." Peter had initially just wanted to distract Harry so he wouldn't discover the secret in his room, but now he was clearly immersed in the game.
"I have other things to do. You two play," Benny said, putting down the drinks and leaving the room.
He wasn't lying. He actually had a lot of things to do. Although he had "convinced" Harry to invest, there were still many trivial matters ahead.
"The money Harry gave isn't enough to buy a building. I need to find a way to get my own lab. And once the products are made, I'll need distribution channels to sell them. At least I need to get the word out."
Actually, Benny had plenty of knowledge about advanced weapons in his Grey Matter, but he didn't plan to develop them, at least not for sale.
Even though the market had immediately become vacant after Stark Industries announced it would stop producing weapons, Benny couldn't bring himself to sell weapons to Old America.
"Lab, market research, marketing... I should start with something for civilian use first."
"This way, the equipment doesn't need to be very advanced," Benny thought. Since the nanotechnology project was temporarily shelved, he wouldn't need overly precise instruments for a while, which would save some expenses.
"Civilian electronic devices in this world aren't very advanced."
Both Benny's computer and phone were older models.
After all, it was currently 2008 in this world, and Apple had only released its second-generation iPhone. If he were to be honest, he had a lot of novelties he could introduce.
"But I need to hurry. In a few more years, all sorts of strange and wonderful technologies will emerge."
Actually, before Tony became Iron Man, the world's overt technological level wasn't that outrageous.
But after Loki's invasion of New York with the Chitauri army failed, the technology left behind by those aliens caused an explosive leap in Earth's technological development.
Thinking of the Chitauri, Benny sighed again:
"Thanos is also a problem. I wonder if this world will develop like the movie universe I'm familiar with."
He didn't dwell on this issue for too long; it was too far off.
Compared to that, he was more interested in building a secret laboratory beneath Uncle Ben's house, like Spider-Man in Into the Spider-Verse. However, he couldn't start construction without Uncle Ben and Aunt May knowing.
Benny was sketching out plans in the living room, his mind racing. Harry's money hadn't arrived yet, so he couldn't take action.
Meanwhile.
Just as Peter and Harry were happily playing games, Dr. Connors at Osborn Enterprise was being cornered by a group of people.
"Dr. Connors,"
An executive from the Osborn Corporation, with an arrogant and disdainful expression, led a group into Connors's laboratory. He walked casually to the table and picked up a small vial of green serum.
"You succeeded," he said.
Connors, not yet realizing the danger, excitedly shared his progress: "It's not complete yet. I've only tested it on white mice so far. But it's coming soon. Just give me a little more time—"
"There's no more time," the executive interrupted him rudely, leaving Connors stunned.
"Mr. Norman has no patience and no more time to wait. We're proceeding with human trials immediately!"
"What?! No, you can't do that!" Connors exclaimed. "It's not ready for human trials—"
"I said, there's no time to wait for you to take your time. You've already delayed long enough, Connors."
The executive paid no mind to the agitated Connors. Why would he care about a disabled person who wasn't even whole?
"This isn't a request, it's a notification," he said coldly.
But Connors stood firm in front of him, "No, I absolutely won't allow you to do this!"
He had dreamed of inventing a serum that could regenerate lost limbs, to save countless unfortunate people who were physically incomplete. However, conducting human trials with an incomplete serum completely violated his original intentions.
"In that case, you're useless."
The executive gave a look to those behind him, and they immediately sprang into action, carrying things out of the laboratory.
The most important thing, naturally, was the serum invented by Dr. Connors!
"What do you think you're doing!"
Connors tried to stop them, but with his missing limb, he was completely unable to. Instead, he was shoved to the ground.
"I'm just taking back what belongs to me, what belongs to Osborn."
"This is my invention!" Connors roared in grief and indignation from the ground, facing the thuggish behavior like a ferocious dinosaur.
But he clearly didn't intimidate anyone.
Or rather, these vampires had long grown accustomed to hearing people's heart-wrenching cries.
"No, it doesn't belong to you."
The executive shook his head dismissively, slipped a small vial of serum into his suit pocket, and then stepped on Connors' empty sleeve cuff, letting out a discriminatory sneer.
"Osborn paid for you to do research, Connors."
"Otherwise, what value could someone like you possibly have?"
Connors froze in place.
At this moment, his heart felt as incomplete as his body.
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