Chapter 5

"Tell me, Graham." Principal Coulson leaned his back on his chair. "Why did you beat your colleagues, I think you know that this is... wrong, right?"

Victor blinked his eyes, principal Phillip Coulson was a weird person. He had this confident smile on his face, and his shaved military hair to make his image more imposing somehow.

"Is it? Why isn't Flash here with me then?"

Coulson smiled increased slightly as he took a file and put it in front of Victor. "See this?" He opened the file and pointed to a field where it showed the name of his parents. "The Thompsons are one of the biggest donors for us, I can't risk giving him a big punishment and cause the school to lose one of its source of money."

Victor frowned as he looked at the file. "You sure are open about this."

"I am, indeed." He stood up and took a bottle of... juice from the freezer? And two glasses, he put some for him. "You can pour some juice for you, if you want, this one is made with fresh Brazilian oranges, really tasty."

"You gotta be kidding me..."

"No, I'm serious! I went there personally to buy it from the best farms." He smiled, but after seeing the frown on Victor's face he sighed.

"Look, Graham, I also can't really punish you, and you know that, let us make things easier for each one of us. I want you to do community work for the school."

"Like what, exactly?" Victor asked as he raised an eyebrow, he was feeling that this was too suspicious.

"Dr. Octavius is our AP Biology and Computer science Professor and we also fund his research and experiments, I want you to stay one more hour every day and three hours at school on Saturday to help him with his classes and his work starting from tomorrow. Of course, this could be basically considered an internship as well, it will also count as extra credits when you enter a college...

"Besides, I heard the money your father sends you is getting lower every month, you would have to find a job sooner or later, so why not help here at your school? You will receive an hourly wage of 16 dollars. So, what do you think?"

Hearing this Victor felt like he was actually being rewarded, he was so startled that he didn't know what expression he should do nor what he should answer. Coulson somehow noticed this and said.

"You don't have to answer today, but when you go out, if someone asks, please say that I punished you, just don't tell the details, it's not like it matters." He laughed and left the principal room, leaving Victor alone sitting on the chair without understanding what the hell just happened.

When he left the principal's office, he found Peter waiting for him outside.

"We need to talk..." Peter looked at him in the eyes with determination.

...

Norman Osborn never did anything in a small way.

So it was fitting that the industrial complex that housed most of his enormous corporation sprawled endlessly over a stretch of Long Island. Huge smokestacks spewed black filth into the air, long low rows of cinderblock office buildings sat in perfect lines, and the giant OSCORP INDUSTRIES sign towered over the main gate in large red neon letters.

Deep in an underground laboratory, almost directly below this sign, Norman Osborn stepped briskly down a hallway.

His nervous assistant Mr. Simkins followed, struggling to keep up with Osborn's rapid pace. They stepped through a pair of doors that slid open automatically and proceeded into the sprawling main lab of the research-and-development section of OsCorp.

"How is the progress with the human performance enhancers?" Osborn's voice echoed through the lab, the other researchers not even looked at him as they continued their work.

"Further tests have shown m-many results... Some individuals have shown an increase in eight hundred percent of their strength, and other attributes as well, but..."

"But, what!?" Norman gave the man a cold piercing gaze, making him shudder with fear.

He readjusted his glasses and started flipping through his clipboard. "One of the subjects, showed severe side effects, including violence, aggression, and, eventually, insanity," Mr. Simkins replied, avoiding eye contact with his boss.

Osborn lowered his head and clenched his fists, soon after he sighed and asked calmly. "Does your team have any suggestions?"

"Well... we think that we should get rid of the current decaying rate algorithm, and start from scratch, redesign it."

"Redesign the formula!" Osborn shouted, seething with rage. "If the Human Performance Enhancers haven't had a successful test on a human in two weeks' time, the United States government will stop funding us and ran back to those bastards of Quest Aerospace. You know exactly the price I'm paying for this, I can't afford mistakes here, the life of my son in on the line! Fail and you can forget any future prospect! Oh, and just so you don't take me too lightly, remember what I did to Otto, you will be the next!"

The researchers just watched as Norman Osborn left, fuming with rage through the doors that led to the lab. They wanted to laugh about Simkins's fate, but they knew very well who would be the next in line to have his life destroyed if they failed.

...

"... well then, let me see if got that right," Victor took the can of soda from the machine and leaned his back on the wall as he looked at Peter. "You're saying that spiders bite us, and now we have spider-powers?"

"Well, as I said it isn't that simple. The genetically designed radioactive spiders venom somehow caused changes to our DNA and-"

"Okay, okay, I got it." Victor massaged his forehead as he forced all the science stuff Peter spoke about for half an hour down on a dark corner of his mind. "So what do you think? Will this thing kill us or something?"

"I... I don't know..." Peter sighed

"Great, now we have superpowered cancer or something? Because I really feel like I was 'improved'" Victor added quotations marks on his last words as he threw the can of soda perfectly inside a trash bin fifteen meters away from them.

"Well, Oscorp was working on inter-species genetic blend-ing, the possibility is that they somehow succeded and doesn't know, the first results actually prove that there are only benefits up to this point. If we wanted to truly make sure of its effects, I would have to conduct detailed research on the subject."

Victor nodded, he looked at Peter for a moment then he said. "Well, then have you tested it out?"

"What?" Peter blinked his eyes, unsure of what Graham was talking about.

"Your powers, Peter! Did you try them?"

"Ah, yes, I did." He nodded. "Overall I noticed that my powers are Spider Physiology, Wall-Crawling, Superhuman Strength, Superhuman Speed, Superhuman Stamina, Superhuman Durability, Superhuman Agility, a low Regenerative Healing Factor, Enhanced Immune System, Superhuman Equilibrium, Superhuman Reflexes, and Spider-Sense."

Victor frowned for a moment, he then took out his notepad from his backpack and threw it at Peter. "Read the last page, I did some tests, to see my limits, my capabilities, etc."

Peter nodded and started reading from the last page. After some time he had an astonished look on his face. "This... Could it be that another spider has bitten you?"

"Why? Are there any problems?"

"Not really, but..." Peter scratched the back of his neck and started tapping his foot impatiently. "Your powers are somewhat different from mines, some are basically stronger, if not extremely stronger, and you seem to have some powers that I don't. Are you sure this is correct?"

"What do you mean, 'Are you sure'? I'm not stupid Peter, my grades are still better than that of the kids who can't enter midtown high." Victor gave him an enraged glance but shook his head soon after.

"Let's go, Peter." Victor stood up and went down the hallway.

"Wait! Where are you going?"

"To your lab or whatever."

"What!?"

"Didn't you wanted to make some tests? I don't have time tomorrow, we will be doing it today." Victor increased his pace, and didn't even care if anyone was seeing, he simply jumped from the stairs of the second floor directly to the ground floor, only rolling at the end to avoid suspicion of how he did that.

Parker could only facepalm and ran down the stairs, taking care to not bump into any of the jerks sitting there without a care in the world.