Containment Breach

The exhibit rooms they set up to show us their experiments with animal DNAs are on another floor which annoyingly enough means that we have to go through the whole elevator farce again.

While walking to the exhibit room, I notice that we have clearly entered a more secure area of the tower as security guards on this floor have switched out their pistols for assault rifles.

We reach a locked-off metal door with security guards stationed on both sides. Curt shows them his Oscorp identity card, and they open the door to let us through.

"These are some of the least dangerous animals we have here at Oscorp, but despite that, please be careful as not to push over any of their containment boxes," Curt says.

There are tables with glass cases on them inside the room containing all kinds of different animals, including toads, scorpions, lizards, among many others. The one that interests me is, of course, the spider exhibit where I see dozens of the arthropods wondering about inside their case.

Who thought it was a good idea to put dangerous modified animals in glass cases and then let a bunch of teenagers near them within touching distance? I could oh so easily knock over one of these and let the animals inside go free.

Curt calls all of us to circle around the first table, which has two containers on it. The first holds lizards, while the second one has rats.

"Everyone, please take a look here. This is one of the experiments I am in charge of, and I promise you, it is exciting." Well, I know where this is going, didn't think he started on it before losing his arm, though.

Curt explains, "Lizards have the ability to regrow lost limbs. We here at Oscorp have been trying to bring that ability over to other animals and, most importantly, humans."

Some of the class lets out sounds of awe while others are practically falling asleep. I take the opportunity to level up my Observation skill a little by using it on literally everything that dares draw breath in this room.

"In the current stage, we have managed to transfer lizard's genes over to rats. It's not perfect, and we are years away from human experiments, but it is still a revolutionary breakthrough in gene technology."

Curt proceeds to lift the lid off of the rat's cage and take out a knife from his pocket. "If any of you are squirmish, I recommend you look away for this next part."

I'm not squirmish at all, but I still decide to take a step back… toward the spider's cage, of course.

Once everyone who wanted to has had time to look away or step back, Curt brings the blade's sharp edge to the rat's leg and cuts it clean off. That must require quite a bit of strength, right? Aren't there like bones to cut through?

The dismembered leg falls to the table with a splat, and in less than 30 seconds, the rat grows a new leg. While this is really an amazing sight, the fact that the new leg looks identical to a lizard's rather than a rat's takes away from the achievement just a little.

Curt puts the rat back into the container and fastens the lid before continuing on to the next table. I stay standing near the spiders. All I need is some sort of distraction to get one out…

As if hearing my request, the lights shut, and by the sounds of panic coming from outside, it's not only in this room.

"Everyone stay calm. This is nothing to worry about, probably just a short outage…." Our teacher attempts to calm down the panicking students, very unsuccessfully, may I say.

Curt is already on the phone, presumably trying to figure out what happened. It would be a shame if someone were to 'accidentally' push the spider's container to the ground amidst all this chaos...whoops.

No one notices the glass container shattering on the ground as a security officer barges in, telling us that everyone has been ordered to evacuate the building immediately.

To the teacher's credit, he is finally able to get the students to calm down and start lining up in an orderly queue, the armed security officer standing next to him, glaring at the students, probably helps out with that.

Before we start leaving, I quickly crouch down and pick up one of the spiders that has crawled onto my shoe, placing it on my neck.

Come on, bite me, you bastar- OUCH!

"Peter, are you okay?" Gwen asks after seeing me suddenly flinch and rub my neck.

"Oh yeah, I'm fine, just got a stiff neck," I say, downplaying the horrible pain I am feeling right now. I probably should have expected this from being bitten by a radioactive spider.

The evacuation went smoothly despite the power being down in the entire tower, I knew taking the stairs was the quicker alternative to elevators.

Once outside, we are told to get on the bus that will bring us all home. I wonder what happened

to cause the sudden evacuation.

[DING!]

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[Quest Completed - The Beginning]

[Reward - Spider-man class]

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Yay.

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After arriving home, I wanted to have a look at my new class right away but instead decided to check in on Gwen first.

I take out my phone to call her, but before that, I look at my contact list to see who else is there.

I'm somewhat shocked to see that there are only three numbers saved on my phone. Aunt May is obviously one of them, but there is also uncle Ben.

Looking through Peter's memories, I find that Ben had died during a burglary over a year ago when some people broke into our house. Apparently, Ben had made a sudden movement that one of the burglars thought meant he was pulling out a gun and decided to shoot him.

I feel bad for the man since he was a good guy in all the movies he appeared in, but since it was the old Peter that knew him, not me, I don't feel much of an attachment to the guy.

The last number saved on my phone is Gwen's, which I call. The phone doesn't even get a chance to ring once before she picks up.

"Hey, Peter, what's up?" She asks. I hear the sizzling of a pan in the background, she was probably in the middle of cooking which reminds me that I am hungry myself.

"Hey, just called to see if you made it back home alright with all the stuff that happened today, do you have any clue what even went down to cause the power outage?"

"Peter, do you not read the news at all?" She asks me. I do, of course, I just haven't had the chance to yet, but I probably should have instead of calling her.

Hearing me stay silent, she instead starts explaining, "The news articles say that some incompetent electrician had messed up when working on the building and somehow managed to fry the entire power grid."

"And obviously, something like that had to happen on the day we had our trip there, did the electrician survive, or what happened to him?" I ask, secretly thanking the poor guy for creating a distraction when I needed it the most.

"That's the weird thing, reportedly he survived the huge electric shock and went completely nuts. He killed 15 guards and injured many more by shooting electricity from his hands before escaping, people are saying that the shock must have activated his mutant gene."

Wait, that sounds like the origin story for Electro. Great, it hasn't even been 24 hours, and I already got my first villain out on the run.

We continue to make small talk for a while until Gwen excuses herself to focus on her cooking, and we hang up the call.