Befriending the target

Enrolling into the university with my fake identity had been easy when I remembered everything that Lex had taught me and it turns out I even got a dorm room out of it. I would still have to pay rent but at least Lex had taught me enough to get around tuition.

Turned out I had to share my dorm room with someone else but they hadn't turned up yet, which was good for me considering I didn't have any belongings or personal possessions which would look strange for a new student just moving in.

I was kind of hoping they would never turn up.

I sat in my new room and just waited for something to happen, my classes didn't start until tomorrow and I had no idea if my target would even be here yet, so after a while I decided I would try exploring the campus.

I wanted to try and make at least one friend before my target so he wouldn't be suspicious but I figured I could just wait until room mate showed up.

Before leaving I hid all the DNA taking equipment that Lex had given me such as plastic bags for hairs, forceps for skin flakes and even a cool looking syringe thing with multiple test tubes for blood.

Walking around outside I noticed that most people were attached to their phones, they would either be looking at it or listening to music on it or even showing their friends something on it.

Lex had given me 50 dollars to spend on necessities and I considered maybe buying a phone but I shook off that thought, I might need it for something else after all.

It shrunk down to 35 dollars after I bought a backpack, multiple notebooks and a large box of pens from the campus stationary store.

I wanted to buy a newspaper so I could familiarize myself with current events and cross reference what was happening with some of the history taught to me by Lex when I saw it…

A headline that was spread across every newspaper: 'Spider-Man Real?!'

I was already too late to stop the anomalies!

Lex said that spider-man was the first recorded anomaly that had been brought to Earth but that there could have been more that had managed to keep themselves hidden.

I went back to my room defeated and saw a bunch of boxes piled up on the other side of the room, yay guess my room mates finally shown up.

I sat myself at the desk on my side and began to write down all of Lex's teachings into notes that I could refer to like basic hacking, mechanics and electronics, espionage, psychology.

They were all very minor parts of subjects that I knew I would need to work on my mission to learn more about each of them.

I spent over an hour just going over each of them committing them all completely to memory when the sound of a guy clearing his throat came from behind me.

"Hey I guess I'm your room mate!" said a young black guy who had begun to go back to unpacking his boxes.

"Hey man! How's it going? I'm Zero." I said shaking his hand.

"Hey I'm Miles, what do you study?" He said.

My new room mates name was Miles and spider-man had been spotted. I was kind of caught off quard for a second trying to see if spider-man was my room mate. I looked him up and down for any sign of him being spider-man but I couldn't really tell.

"English Literature. What about you?" I said after after a moment.

"Audio engineering. Hey we should probably go out somewhere right? You look like you've been studying the same few pages of that notebook all day."

Miles and I went to a pizza place near campus and talked to each other.

The clues were beginning to fall in place, Miles said he came from New York, his dad worked for the police and his last name was Smith.

I practically wanted to blurt out that he's spider-man but I managed to keep being normal and we had a good night out together before getting back to the dorm.

"Hey your side of the room is really empty you don't even have sheets or pillow cases." Miles said looking around at my side of the room whilst unpacking.

"Yeah I didn't really have anything to bring with me when I came here from Canada." I said which made Miles look a little sad I guess hearing about my orphan background and then him unintentionally bringing it up was making him feel bad.

I pretended to go to sleep that night but after Miles began to snore I crept around to find a piece of his DNA. If he really was Spider-Man Lex could check and I might even be able to gain his powers, although it would only be a small fraction it would still be cool.

I found the shirt he had been wearing earlier thrown on the floor and put his hair into one of my plastic bags. Miles woke up right as I put it in my pocket but immediately went back to bed once I said I just needed to go to the bathroom.

The next rolled around and Miles shook me awake knowing I didn't have a phone he said he would help me to wake up for my classes.

According to my timetable I had a lecture first thing. Finally I would have a chance to meet my target, I imagined that if he could summon these anomalies he must be easy to spot.

I pictured him surrounded by friends but when I got into the lecture hall I noticed that no one was surrounded by friends, I mean it was the first day but I still expected the mission to go a little smoother than this.

I tried to look around and see if I could spot him anywhere but gave up and sat down, I could always find him at the end of the class.

"Hey can I maybe borrow a pen?" A shy voice came from next to me.

I turned my head to hand over one of the dozen I had bought the day before and saw my target sitting right next to me.

"Thanks for that I'm Callum." He said taking the pen.

This shy guy was supposed to be my target!

The lecture kept going and I took notes throughout but my gaze kept drifting to the person sat next to me, the guy who would cause the apocalypse.

"Hey Callum did you hear about that Spider-Man thing?"

Callum stopped writing and just took a pause before saying, "Yeah what about it?"

"I think it's awesome! I'd love to find the guy that made that happen and thank him."

Callum after hearing this relaxed his shoulders and was put at ease by what I said.

"Yeah it is really cool!" Callum said smiling at me.

"Hey what are you doing after class? My room mate and I were going to go out for food, wanna come?"

Callum started beaming and said, "Yeah I'd love to!"

This way I could kill two birds with one stone, I could see if Miles was spider-man and I could befriend Callum.

We walked out of class and back to my dorm together and Callum was confused when meeting Miles, I guessed he was just as unsure as me if he was Spider-man.

We all went out and had a good night together, we learned more about Callum and all 3 of us became closer.

That night I waited for Miles to sleep again and snuck out using my watch to get back to Lex.

I once again fell on my face coming out of the portal and heard Lex shuffling about in the next room.

"Debrief me Zero!" Lex commanded whilst tinkering with my Kolto tank.

"I befriended the target and I may be room mates with an anomaly." I said to Lex handing him the plastic bag with the hair in it.

"Interesting, which anomaly do you believe it is?"

"Spider-Man."

"Well undress and get into the tank. Within a day you can come back out and feel the effects. I can monitor what mutation you will receive and begin working on a lesson plan."

I did as he said and undressed whilst thinking about how I had been sure Lex would be more upset that I couldn't stop the anomalies before they happened. Asking him about it while stepping into the tank he said, "I had a theory that since the time travel was an anomaly I believed that there was a possibility that it would not be able to travel further than the beginning of your target's mistakes."

I had to say I was excited to see what power I might get. The lessons were all of a sudden a lot less of a reward when I thought about the fact that I could gain actual super powers.