Norman Osborn wasn't the type to wait for permission. While the rest of New York was settling into their evening routines, grabbing takeout or catching the late-night news, the chairman of Oscorp was lurking in the shadows of his own empire. He knew the clock was ticking. After Connors' little "stunt" earlier that day, the board would be looking for any excuse to skin Norman alive. He couldn't afford a public spectacle—not yet. This had to be done in the silence of the night, under the flickering fluorescent lights of the restricted labs.
Dr. Mendel Stromm, the man who had spent decades chasing the ghost of the original Super Soldier Serum, looked like he was about to have a heart attack just watching Norman prep the equipment. His hands were shaking so hard he could barely hold his clipboard.
"Norman, stop! You're being reckless," Stromm pleaded, his voice cracking with genuine terror. "Just because Connors got lucky and grew an arm doesn't mean you'll survive this. My formula is... it's volatile. It hasn't been balanced!"
Norman didn't even look up. He was busy calibrating the pressure in the inhalation chamber, his movements precise and frantic. "Lucky? Connors didn't get lucky, Mendel. He showed initiative. Something you've lacked for twenty years."
"I need more time," Stromm argued, stepping forward but keeping a safe distance from the machine. "Give me three weeks. We can find a drifter, someone the city won't miss, and a full medical team. We can do this the right way!"
Norman finally turned, his eyes bloodshot and wide. "Three weeks? In three weeks, the board will have me in a deposition and the bank will be changing the locks on this building! Do you think the military withdrew their funding because we were 'almost' there? They want results, Mendel. And I'm going to give them a goddamn masterpiece."
Without another word, Norman grabbed a beaker containing the green catalyst—a thick, swirling liquid that looked like liquid emerald—and downed it in one go. He slammed the glass onto the table and climbed into the experimental chamber, his face a mask of sweating determination.
"Start the sequence, Mendel. Or I'll find someone who will."
Stromm hesitated, his finger hovering over the 'Execute' button. He looked at the man who had been his benefactor for years and saw only a stranger. With a heavy sigh and a prayer he didn't believe in, he pressed it.
The machine roared to life. A thick, glowing green vapor began to fill the chamber, swirling around Norman like a hungry ghost. Within seconds, the screaming started. It wasn't the sound of a man in pain; it was the sound of someone being torn apart and stitched back together at the molecular level.
"AHHHHH! GOD, MENDEL! IT'S BURNING!"
Stromm panicked. The heart rate monitor was screaming—180, 220, 260 beats per minute. "Norman! I'm stopping it! It's too much!" He slammed the emergency kill switch, the machinery grinding to a halt as the green mist was sucked away.
He rushed to the chamber, pulling back the heavy glass door. Norman was slumped against the interior wall, his skin a sickly, pallid gray. Stromm reached for a pulse, his fingers trembling against Norman's neck.
Nothing.
"No, no, no... Norman, wake up!" Stromm started chest compressions, his breath hitching. "Don't do this to me, you crazy old man! Wake up!"
Beep...
Stromm froze. He looked at the monitor.
Beep... Beep...
The line was spiking. But it wasn't a normal heartbeat. It was jagged, aggressive. Suddenly, Norman's eyes snapped open. They weren't blue anymore. They were a piercing, predatory yellow, burning with a mix of absolute clarity and total insanity.
Before Stromm could even gasp, Norman's hand shot out, catching the doctor by the throat. The strength was impossible. Norman didn't just grab him; he hoisted the grown man into the air with one arm as if he weighed nothing.
"You... you useless parasite," Norman hissed. His voice was deeper now, rattling with a gravelly edge. "If you hadn't been so 'careful' for the last ten years, we would have owned this city by now. You wasted my money. You wasted my life."
"Norman... please... the rage... it's the serum..." Stromm wheezed, his face turning purple. "It... failed..."
"Failed?" Norman let out a bark of a laugh that sounded like glass breaking. "I feel like a god, Mendel. I can see the molecules in the air. I can feel the rotation of the earth. And I can feel how much I hate you."
With a casual flick of his wrist, Norman hurled Stromm across the room. The doctor slammed into a rack of high-voltage equipment with a sickening crunch. He hit the floor, his spine shattered, gasping for air that wouldn't come.
Norman stepped out of the chamber, his muscles rippling under his skin. He felt taller, broader, and infinitely more dangerous. He walked over to the dying Stromm and looked down at him with genuine disgust.
"The military wanted a soldier," Norman whispered, his boot hovering over Stromm's head. "But I'm going to give them a king. And kings don't have time for failures."
CRUNCH.
The sound of the skull collapsing echoed through the empty lab. Norman didn't even flinch. He spent the rest of the night systematically stripping the lab of its most sensitive data, erasing his digital footprint, and packing a specialized flight suit and a set of prototype 'pumpkin' explosives into a reinforced crate. By dawn, Norman Osborn was gone, and Oscorp was nothing but a tomb.
Across town in Queens, the morning sun was hitting Peter Parker's face, but for the first time in his life, he didn't groan and pull the covers over his head.
He sat up with a jolt, feeling like he'd been plugged into a wall socket. He felt... weird. Not 'sick' weird, but 'I can hear the neighbor's cat breathing' weird. He looked down at his hands and blinked.
"What the...?"
Yesterday, he'd been a scrawny kid who got winded climbing the stairs at school. Now, as he stood in front of his closet mirror, he saw a stranger. His chest had filled out, his shoulders were broad, and he had a set of abs that looked like they'd been carved out of granite. He looked like those guys in the fitness magazines, except he hadn't touched a weight in his life.
He reached for his glasses on the nightstand, sliding them onto his nose by habit.
"GAH!" He ripped them off immediately. The world had turned into a blurry, distorted mess. Without the lenses, however, everything was crystal clear. Better than clear. He could see the individual fibers in the carpet across the room. He could see the dust motes dancing in the sunlight with microscopic detail.
"Am I a mutant?" Peter whispered, his heart racing.
It wasn't a crazy thought. Ever since the X-Men had helped establish that mutant nation, everyone knew about the X-gene. Maybe the stress of that spider bite yesterday had triggered it?
"Okay, okay. Stay calm," he told himself, pacing the small room. "If I'm a mutant, what's my power? Am I going to shoot lasers from my eyes? Can I fly?"
He spent ten minutes staring intensely at a pencil, trying to move it with his mind. Nothing. He tried to turn invisible. Still nothing. He felt stronger, sure, but he didn't feel like a superhero. He just felt like a version of himself that had been upgraded to the 'Extreme' edition.
"I need to talk to Huang Liang," Peter decided. Liang was the only person he knew who dealt with 'weird' on a daily basis. If anyone could tell him if he was turning into a freak of nature, it was the guy who lived with a guy who had claws coming out of his hands.
Meanwhile, in a quiet neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, the morning peace in Logan's house was shattered by a door swinging open.
Logan, who had been enjoying a rare moment of post-sleep silence, instinctively grabbed the edge of the quilt to cover his nakedness as Raven—Mystique—walked into the bedroom like she owned the place.
"Really, Raven? Ever heard of knocking?" Logan growled, his voice a low rumble.
"Don't flatter yourself, Logan. I've seen it all before, and frankly, I'm unimpressed," Raven said, her voice dry and professional. She didn't even look at him, instead turning her gaze toward Jean Grey, who was sitting up in bed and rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
"Phoenix, we have a situation," Raven continued. "The NYPD just sent over a priority report. We have a suspected mutant-related homicide at the Oscorp building. It's messy."
Jean frowned, her telepathic senses already starting to buzz as she fully woke up. "A mutant? Are they sure? The news didn't say anything about Oscorp being attacked."
"That's because the bodies haven't been cold long enough for the press to find them," Raven explained, leaning against the doorframe. "A Dr. Mendel Stromm was found with his head crushed by what the forensics team is calling 'inhuman force.' The entire lab was wiped clean of data and experimental tech. It looks like a high-end robbery, but the physical strength involved suggests someone with a very specific set of gifts."
"There's more," Raven added, checking her tablet. "Yesterday afternoon, another doctor at the same facility—Curt Connors—is reported to have injected himself with an experimental serum, grown a limb in seconds, and jumped out a fourth-story window. He didn't die. He just disappeared into the city."
Jean stood up, her expression turning serious as she reached for her clothes. "Two incidents in twenty-four hours at the same company? That's not a coincidence."
"Exactly," Raven nodded. "The NYPD is out of their depth, and since there's a 'superpowered' element involved, they've kicked it up to us. We need to get there before the forensic evidence gets trampled by a bunch of beat cops."
Logan grunted, finally standing up and reaching for his pants. "I'm coming too. If there's a monster running around the city, I want to be the one who smells it first."
Jean looked at him and nodded. "Let's go. If this is a new mutant hitting the scene, we need to find them before they cause more damage—or before someone like Norman Osborn decides to hunt them down."
As the three of them prepped to leave, none of them realized that the "monster" they were looking for wasn't a mutant at all—and that the real threat was currently flying over the city, testing his new strength against the wind.