And the Super Spider that had been slapped was not entirely dead.
It curled its eight spindly legs like a crumpled piece of colored paper and drifted light as air from Peter's collar.
After tumbling twice in the air, it finally landed on the smooth, cold marble floor, less than five centimeters from the heel of Peter's sneaker.
The surrounding students were watching Peter's comical reaction; some whispered, others snickered.
Harry Osborn walked over quickly with a worried expression, seeing his friend's distress.
No one noticed the twitching bug at their feet.
Nor did anyone notice Alice standing in the shadows.
"System, switch character card—Kato Megumi."
"Presence Thinning, activated."
In an instant.
The cool, scientist girl who had been standing at the back of the crowd suddenly seemed to be removed from the focus of the World's camera.
She was still there.
But in the subconscious of everyone around, that spot was automatically ignored.
Just like ignoring a speck of dust or a wisp of air.
Like a ghost, Alice slipped through the gaps in the spectating crowd, passing behind two girls who were chatting.
The red and blue Super Spider lay on its back on the floor, its legs still twitching in their final neural spasms.
The radioactive venom within it had already been injected into Peter, and its life force was rapidly fading.
If not retrieved now, it would be swept into a trash can by a cleaner in a few minutes or crushed into a smear of mud by a passing shoe.
Alice stepped behind Peter, pulling a pair of long medical tweezers and a borosilicate glass test tube with its cap already unscrewed from her backpack's side pocket.
She leaned down.
Her hair fell forward, obscuring her profile.
The tweezers precisely gripped the spider's abdomen, lifting it into the test tube before she jammed the rubber stopper in.
She placed it into a lead box inside her backpack to isolate any potential trace radiation signals.
She stood up, stepped back, and returned to that inconspicuous corner.
"Deactivate character card—Kato Megumi."
"Load character card—Ai Haibara."
As her aura shifted, the bystander feeling vanished, and the cold, forbidding atmosphere returned.
But because she had been standing on the periphery the whole time, no one noticed she had completed a theft in that single second.
Except for...
Sensing something, Alice looked up at the surveillance camera in the corner of the ceiling.
The pan-tilt camera with facial recognition happened to be rotating to the other side at that moment.
"Perfect."
Alice lightly patted her backpack.
"Peter, are you okay? You look terrible."
Harry Osborn supported a wobbling Peter, his face full of concern.
At this moment, Peter's condition was deteriorating visibly. Fine beads of cold sweat covered his forehead, his gaze began to drift, and his pupils dilated and constricted irregularly; clearly, the genes in his body were undergoing a violent storm of recombination.
"I'm fine. Maybe I just missed breakfast, a bit of low blood sugar."
Peter waved his hand weakly, trying to squeeze out a smile, but it looked worse than crying.
The spot where he'd been bitten felt like magma flowing under his skin. That scorching torrent was racing up his spine toward his brain, making the World spin before his eyes and stretching and distorting every sound.
"I think I... I need a good sleep. I have to head back first."
"Hang in there, buddy. I'll have the driver bring the car to the entrance."
Harry Osborn was frantic. He tried to prop Peter up, but due to the violent reaction of the gene recombination, Peter's body felt as heavy as lead, making it clearly difficult for Harry alone.
A fair but strong hand reached out at the right moment, steadily supporting Peter's left arm.
"I'll help."
A cool voice spoke up abruptly.
Harry was startled and whipped his head around.
He looked in surprise at Alice, who had appeared beside him without him noticing.
In his impression, this transfer student was always a loner, radiating a forbidding chill, and he clearly remembered there was no one else near Peter just a moment ago.
"Alice, when did you get over here?" Harry asked, somewhat bewildered. "And, I thought you didn't like this kind of... uh, thing."
He wanted to say "meddling," but swallowed it for the sake of politeness.
Alice didn't explain how she had appeared out of thin air.
"Based on his pupil constriction response and the amount of cold sweat, if he isn't given physical support immediately, he will go into shock and collapse in three seconds."
"Alright, anyway, thank you, Alice." Harry breathed a sigh of relief. "Then I'll count on you to help me get him to the elevator."
"Let's go."
Alice was concise.
As the two of them supported the groggy Peter and left the lab, Alice took the chance while turning to cast one last look at the still-empty compartment 14.
The researcher was still droning on about the commercial value of these fourteen spiders, a professional fake smile plastered on her face.
Little did she know that the most precious asset in the entire Osborn Tower—the fifteenth spider, capable of changing the World—was gone.
Half of it had turned into the fate-altering venom now surging through Peter Parker's veins.
And the other half, as an invaluable genetic progenitor, lay quietly in her backpack.
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