Peter had been sitting against the tunnel wall for three hours when he heard footsteps approaching from the maintenance access.
Slow, deliberate, someone moving carefully through unfamiliar territory. Peter's hand drifted toward his web shooter out of habit, tension coiling in his shoulders despite the earpiece Alex had given him staying silent.
A figure emerged from the shadows, medium build, rumpled clothes that looked slept in, glasses pushed up on a tired face. Not what Peter expected from one of Alex's mysterious contacts.
"I was told to expect someone here," the man said, voice quiet and careful. "Gamma. That's the word I was given."
Peter relaxed slightly, though caution still colored his posture. "That's the one. You're the guy Alex mentioned?"
"Bruce." The man offered a small, tired smile. "Alex said there was someone who needed help with an unusual biological situation."
Peter studied him a moment, something tugging at his memory. "Bruce. Wait, are you... didn't you use to publish research? Gamma radiation stuff, cellular biology? I read about you in a science magazine years ago, and then you just kind of disappeared."
Something flickered across Bruce's face, wariness mixed with practiced deflection. "I stepped away from public research a while back. Personal reasons. I'd rather keep the conversation focused on your friend here."
"Right. Sorry." Peter let it go, filing away the vague recognition without pushing further.
Peter gestured toward the cot where Connors lay, still unconscious, the green scaling along his shoulder faintly visible in the dim light. "This is Dr. Curt Connors. He's a scientist, was working on regeneration research, and something went really wrong."
Bruce crossed the tunnel and knelt beside the cot, examining Connors with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd spent years studying things about his own body most people would find horrifying. His fingers traced carefully along the edge of the scaling, checking texture, color, warmth.
"Genetic integration," Bruce murmured, mostly to himself. "Foreign DNA forcibly merged with human cellular structure. This is sophisticated work. Whoever designed the delivery mechanism understood cross-species genetics at a level most labs haven't achieved publicly."
"That would be Alex," Peter said. "He's the one who figured out the counter formula too. Reversed most of the transformation already."
Bruce looked up, genuine surprise crossing his features. "Alex did this. On his own."
"Yeah. He's kind of terrifyingly smart."
"I'm starting to understand that." Bruce returned his attention to Connors, gently probing the stump where the regrown arm had vanished during the reversal. "The reversion was incomplete. There's still active mutation signature here, suppressed but not eliminated."
"Can you fix it? Fully, I mean?"
Bruce was quiet for a long moment, studying the readings from a small device he'd pulled from his bag, something that looked cobbled together from spare parts but clearly functional. "I can try. But I want to understand the full formula first. What exactly did Alex use to reverse the initial transformation?"
Peter pulled out his phone, the technical files Alex had shared with him days ago already saved for exactly this situation. He handed it over and watched Bruce's eyes move rapidly across the data, absorbing it with an intensity that reminded Peter oddly of Alex himself.
"This is remarkable work," Bruce said quietly. "The compound structure, the delivery mechanism. Whoever built this understands things about cellular reversion that most published research hasn't touched." He looked up. "How old is Alex, exactly?"
"Seventeen."
Bruce actually laughed, short and disbelieving. "Of course he is."
...
Alex arrived forty minutes later, having finished his performance for Norman and shed the borrowed tactical gear somewhere along the way. He found Peter and Bruce hunched over Connors' cot, a small portable analyzer running between them, wires connected to sensors taped along Connors' shoulder and remaining stump.
"You made good time," Bruce said without looking up, still focused on the readings scrolling past.
"I had motivation." Alex knelt beside them, studying the data. "What's the assessment?"
"The mutation is suppressed but not gone. Genetic markers are still present in his cellular structure, dormant right now but active enough that regrowing the arm properly means working with the mutation rather than against it." Bruce pointed to a cluster of data points. "If we force full reversion, we risk losing the arm again permanently, along with whatever regenerative capability the modification provided."
"So we don't reverse it completely as there's higher risks. We stabilize it instead."
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