He left the lab with Selina on his shoulder and Caesar walking beside him, and found Susan Storm in the corridor with her arms crossed and the expression of someone who has been patient for a significant period of time and has reached its end.
"Mr. Parker," she said, in the tone that was stern and also was not entirely stern. "What have you been doing locked in that laboratory for almost a whole week?!"
"Six days and eight hours," he said pleasantly. "Not precisely a week."
"Do not correct me."
"I was just...." He paused. "Is it wrong that I find this attitude extremely attractive?"
"You are a terrible liar."
"I would argue we should agree to disagree on that point."
"You!" She stepped forward and put her finger against his chest. "What have you been doing all this time in that laboratory!?"
"Working," he said, with Saitama-level poker face that he maintained at all times. "On a project."
"Really?" She looked at him and said sarcastically. "I thought perhaps you had been watching porn and playing video games."
"Hentai is superior," he said in a wise tone while stroking his nonexistent Dumbledore beard.
" I agree..." She stopped. "That is not the point!"
"Haahaa You almost agreed with me," he said. "You were about to agree."
"I was not!"
"You are very straightforward to get a reaction from," he said, reaching over and patting her head once. "It is endearing."
"Do not treat me like a child," she said, swatting his hand away without real force. "I am considerably older than you."
"And that means?"
"That means you cannot tease me. Only I am allowed to do that."
"Why can I not?"
He leaned in quickly, and she went still because his face was dangerously close enough that the air between them had run out, and she felt her pulse do something inconvenient, and then what arrived was not what she had been expecting, which was his lips going to the corner of her mouth instead, just the edge, barely contact, and she made a sound she had not planned to make.
"The fact that you are older than me," he said, very quietly and very close to her ear, "makes it considerably more interesting, not less."
She opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
He straightened up, patted her on the shoulder once, and walked past her toward the stairs.
"I am going to shower and then I am going home," he said, cheerfully. "Have a wonderful day, Boss."
"Peter," she said, after a moment. "You are a complete and utter jerk."
"It is called sweet revenge," he said, from the stairwell. "The enjoyable kind. See you later."
She stood in the corridor for a moment after he was gone.
"Silly girl," she said to herself, pressing the back of her hand against the warmth in her face.
---------
The shower was hot and long and completely necessary.
He left the building with Selina on his shoulder, Caesar walking beside him with the deliberate pace of someone who has decided to treat the world as interesting rather than threatening, hailed a taxi, and got in.
The driver looked at Caesar.
"Look straight ahead and drive," Peter said, without looking up from his phone. "I would prefer not to be in an accident today."
The driver looked straight ahead and drove.
....
The house looked the same as it always looked, which was exactly what he wanted.
"Selina," he said, standing outside. "Caesar. This is your new home."
The funding for the new house was coming. It would come from the combination of the patrol income, the medical consultation fees that had started arriving as a result of the cancer treatment's success, and the Baymax licensing revenue. This house served its purpose for now.
"May!" he called, stepping inside. "I am home!"
Footsteps on the stairs, and then May appeared in the hallway, moving with the energy of someone who had been worried for five days and was genuinely relieved to see him, and then she saw what was with him and the relief converted itself into something else.
"Peter, you are back...."
She stopped.
She looked at Caesar.
She looked at Selina.
She looked at Peter.
"Oh my God."
"May, I would like you to meet Selina and Caesar. They are part of the family from today."
"Peter." She pointed at Selina carefully. "Is that a cat? And is that a monkey?"
Caesar crossed his arms.
"That is a Bombay cat," Peter said. "She was quite thin when I found her. She is considerably healthier now, as you can see.
And the correct term for your other concern is chimpanzee, not monkey, and please try to remember that, as he has opinions about it."
Caesar did have opinions about it. They were visible.
"I...." May looked at him. "I do not understand."
"You do not need to," he said, kissed her cheek, and walked past her toward the kitchen.
"Come on. I am very hungry and I would like help making something for four people. Come on."
"Oh, okay." May said.
She looked at Selina, who was exploring the hallway with the methodical attention of a cat conducting a survey. She looked at Caesar, who was doing the same thing with more visible intellectual interest.
"May! I need a hand!"
She sighed. "Peter! I am coming!"
--------------
Norman Osborn's laboratory.
Mendel Stromm watched the readout on the monitor and felt his stomach drop.
"Oh my God," he said, very quietly. "Abort! I have to abort!"
He moved to the control panel at a speed he had not moved at in years and began deactivating the delivery mechanism.
The gas flow stopped.
The hatches opened.
The monitor showed Norman's heart rate doing something the monitor was not designed to display without triggering an alarm.
"Please," Mendel said, under his breath, moving toward the capsule.
"Please be alright, Mr. Osborn. Please."
The heart rate on the monitor dropped.
Dropped further.
The line went nearly flat.
"No," Mendel said. "No, no, this cannot...."
The capsule shattered.
Not from outside pressure. From inside.
Mendel hit the floor on instinct, and the thing that had been in the capsule straightened up and looked at its own hands with an expression that was not Norman Osborn's expression, which had never contained what this one contained, which was a kind of naked, total delight at the specific fact of its own existence and capabilities.
"HAHAHAHA!"
The laugh was not Norman's laugh either.
The creature turned its face toward the light and the jagged, irregular teeth caught it and the eyes in that face were not eyes that were processing the world the way Mendel's were processing it, not evaluating situation and consequence and appropriate response, but simply registering everything with an appetite that had no category it was excluded from.
"This," it said, spreading its arms wide, "is power."
It saw Mendel.
Mendel tried to stand up and could not make his legs cooperate.
The creature crossed the room with a speed that should not have been available to a human body and put its hands into Mendel's back before he had completed the first half of a step toward the door.
"No!" Mendel said. "I helped you! I helped you!"
"No one can know," the creature said, in a voice that had the specific quality of someone who has decided something and is not performing the decision but simply implementing it.
"No one can know about this.
Only the Goblin knows. Only the Goblin possesses it."
It pulled him closer. "No one. Not Spider-Man. Not Pierce. No one."
Its hand moved.
Mendel Stromm stopped moving.
The creature watched the light leave his eyes with the focused attention of someone observing a process that interests them, and then it began to shrink.
The monstrous aspect receded. The human face returned.
What came back was not quite Norman Osborn either.
It was something that wore Norman Osborn's face and had Norman Osborn's memories and would use Norman Osborn's name, but the thing behind the eyes was not the same thing that had gone into the capsule.
Norman looked down at Mendel.
He smiled.
"The Goblin," he said, "will not let anyone stand in his way."
He laughed.
He sat down.
He laughed some more, and the laughter was the laughter of a man who has lost something and does not know it yet because what replaced it feels, from the inside, like having found something instead.
Whether he was still human was a question that was becoming increasingly difficult to answer in the affirmative.
Whether it mattered was a question that Norman had stopped being capable of asking.
He had a list.
Spider-Man was on it.
Pierce was on it.
The list would grow as he thought of more names. For now, the two he had were enough to occupy the part of him that had replaced the part that used to plan things for reasons other than this.
He would take them apart with his own hands.
He would enjoy every second of it.