Maxwell Dillon worked as an Electrician for a company that subcontracted many companies. One of their best clients had been OsCorp. He had been brought onboard to fix a little problem.
The man walked forward and made his way to the lab. There was a short of power and it could interfere with some of the experiments that were going on. He didn't ask too many questions because he wasn't paid to ask questions.
Dillon made his way into the lab area, and he saw a research scientist make her way out of the lab, carrying a tube of some kind of chemical. The two of them couldn't stop each other in the nick of time.
The research scientist smacked had long into Dillon. She slid back onto the ground and landed hard on the ground.
The chemicals she carried splashed on Dillon's chest. He recoiled for the slightest second. Then there was nothing for several minutes. He stood there, not really affected by anything that the chemicals did to him.
"Sorry, sorry," she said. She stammered in an apologetic voice and raised her eyebrows.
"Not a problem," Dillon said in a gruff voice and he reached forward.
"Don't worry, it won't hurt you," the scientist said. She was a tiny woman, so running into someone like Dillon shook her up something fierce.
Dillon was just going to have to take her word for it. He took her hand and picked her up to the ground.
Only half of the chemical spilled out of the tube that she held. She eyeballed it nervously, rolling it over in her hand and departed, to leave Dillon with his work.
Dillon was glad that he didn't drop any of his tools because some of these that he had couldn't be replaced that easily. He made sure his equipment was secured and placed his hands on the door.
He felt a cold snap of air flying through the lab, or so it seemed. He shuddered for a second, brushing off that as if it was nothing. The man shook his shoulders back and walked his way to the lab.
'Autumn starts sooner every year, I swear,' Dillon thought. The electrician took a moment to compose himself and breathe heavily. He shakily removed a key card from his uniform.
He swiped the keycard against the door and waited for it to click open. He smiled at the success that he had and awaited for his entrance into the lab.
He looked around and saw all of the generators in place. There were tanks with electric eels in it, part of OsCorp's green energy program. It was their part to make sure that they did what they could to help the environment. One might argue that they had more sinister motives in mind, but that was not any of Dillon's concern. He was just here to make sure the electrical outlet worked properly.
Dillon made his way towards the table and placed the toolbox down. He felt a bit weak momentarily and gave a cough for a second. He felt a flash of cold, followed by a flash of hot. Then seconds later, he felt perfectly fine.
When he kept feeling fine seconds later, Dillon shrugged. He had new energy through him and went into his toolbox, getting the tools that he needed to fix this problem.
The lights flickered above him one more time and he blinked. Shrugging, he got back to work.
Harry and Gwen finished lunch and the duo now walked their way over past the consoles of the lab.
"So?" Gwen asked, her curiosity getting the better of her. She somehow regretted doing so. "What is it you want to show me?"
"It's just something that I wanted to look into, remember, you did see a glimpse of it the other day," Harry told her. Harry pushed through the door. Gwen followed him.
Realization slowly dawned on her where they were going. Gwen paused, her shoulders slumping for a second. "Oh, that."
She wasn't going to say that this was going to be a favorable encounter with something like that. In fact, she hoped to make her interaction with those things to be minimal.
Harry was only half paying attention to what Gwen was doing. He figured that she should mandate his full attention. The problem was that Harry could feel that there was a lot of untapped potential with this legacy that Richard Parker left for them to speculate. There had to be a reason why they kept these spiders around. It wasn't as a monument.
Harry suspected that they tried to unlock those secrets that he kept to his grave. He left no notes behind, and he didn't know how much his widow knew about what he was up to. That was one of the reasons why many suspected an ulterior motive in Norman's marriage to the former Mary Parker.
Not that Harry concerned himself with such rumors, frankly because it was none of his business.
Gwen hitched in a breath that she held. She had to admit that they were magnificent looking creatures. Some that had this many eyes and far too many legs was not something she could trust.
"What's the matter?" Harry asked her, squeezing her hand.
Gwen jumped back into focus when Harry did that action. It did cause her to be calm, slightly, somewhat at least. "Nothing, really, it's nothing."
Harry frowned at her. "You're pretty jumpy for nothing, aren't you?"
"Well, I guess that I am jumpy because of something," Gwen said, shifting against her legs and bending her knees slightly. She rocked herself up and down and got herself back on track.
"The spiders?" Harry asked her. "Oh, they're harmless, especially when they're locked away. They've barely even moved all the time I've been here."
Gwen could have sworn that one of them moved right then when she was standing there. She turned her gaze to give Harry a cross look.
"Barely, and I think they're only moving because they know that we're here, it's some kind of territorial thing," Harry said and he pressed his hand on the other side of the glass. He carefully looked at the spiders. "As limited as it might seem, that glass case is their home, the only one that they've ever known."
Gwen could see two of the spiders move around and she watched Harry make his way over to the console. He pressed a few buttons where something flashed up on the screen.
"Have to wait a minute to get this up," Harry said, and he clutched Gwen's arm against his own, or rather she clutched his into hers. "So what's the deal, I've never seen you seem so squeamish."
Gwen closed her eyes and Harry wrapped his arm tightly around her. She felt a little bit more relaxed, a little more at least, although not entirely with Harry's arm around her. It helped a lot. Gwen diverted down that long trip down memory lane.
"You don't have to tell me, if you don't want to," Harry said. He leaned in to give her a light kiss on the forehead, which caused her to shiver. "I just think that it might help a little bit."
Harry followed the progress of the spiders and he realized that they were here for another purpose. He frowned when he saw the spider silk that was harvested from them. His frown deepened the more that he thought about this.
'Curious, really curious,' Harry thought, but he didn't really bother himself with this point that much.
Gwen thought about what Harry said. "I…..well this brings back all kinds of memories…from back in grade school…..and it's really stupid."
"No, it's not," Harry told her and Gwen frowned.
"How do you know, I haven't even told you?" Gwen challenged him.
Harry waved his hand towards her and told her to continue.
"Eugene, you know Flash Thompson," Gwen said. Harry nodded; he knew exactly who Gwen referred to. "Well, he thought that it would be funny if he dropped a spider on my head in the middle of science class."
Harry could see that it freaked her out. He tightened his hand around her.
"Yeah, Eugene thought it was a laugh riot, but he has a bit of a simplistic sense of humor," Gwen said, with a frown on her face. "Of course, the fact that he got knocked out by an errant dodgeball during the next gym class was purely coincidental."
Harry honestly had no idea why schools still decided that dodgeball was an appropriate sport to play. It just seemed like a recipe for headaches and concussions.
"So ever since that happened…..I haven't been too fond of spiders," Gwen said. She tightened her arm around Harry's arm when she held her in tightly towards him.
"You're afraid of them, aren't you?"
"Not afraid, more slightly squicked out by them, and if you've seen some of them up close, you know what I've meant," Gwen said.
Rose told him about the giant spiders in the aptly named Forbidden Forest that had human speech. Harry shook his head, whoever thought that introducing something like that into the forest was a good idea might be a little bit touched in the head.
"Don't worry, honey, I understand," Harry whispered. He rolled his fingers through her hair, causing her to relax a little bit underneath his touch.
Gwen smiled and she saw something more interesting than spiders and how repulsed she was by them.
"Otto told me that these spiders survived one of the rounds of OZ testing," Harry told her. He made sure that he had Gwen's attention before he explained what he found out earlier.
Gwen looked awestruck about what she found out. "They must be older than I thought…..I was under the impression that these were recent test subjects, you know like in the last few weeks."
"I think that's the impression that they want us to have," Harry said as he finally made proper use of his security credentials to bring the image of the Spider DNA front and center.
He compared it side by side with a normal Spider DNA strand. The differences between the two of them were obvious.
Harry noticed some kind of anomaly with them and he frowned deeply. He had to make sure and he tried to find something within the strand of DNA.
"That's odd," Harry whispered. In response to this, Gwen stood up straight, confused by what Harry classified as odd. He decided to tell her. "The spiders were exposed to a completely different version of Oz then the one that we have here on record."
Gwen frowned ,that was extremely odd.
"I don't know if they knew that it was this different," Harry said.
He wondered if it was stable. The fact that the spiders were here for this long could point to the fact that something was stabilized. There was also the very obvious fact that they were extracting and collecting silk from the spiders.
Gwen watched the screen and soaked in the complex DNA sequences. Mostly because of the fact that it allowed her to look away from those spiders on the screen, which she found to be a good thing.
Harry's arm tightened around her waist and he held her in tightly to him. She lazily leaned against his body, content with the position she was put into.
It was one that she felt secure in.
After Dillon's initial dizzy spell, he felt really fine regarding what he had to do. He looked at the panel to check out the problem. When he found out what he saw he took out a screwdriver. It was really a low tech method to get things done, but you know what, it got the job done.
The screws disconnected and he pulled the access panel back from the wall. He gently placed it to the side and made sure the screws were all in one place.
"Okay, let's see if I can find the problem here," Dillon said. He had his walkie talky set on his toolbox, if he needed to give a warning that the problem needed an evacuation.
There was a potential possibility that he would have to shut the power completely down for all or part of the building. The part he thought had the problem didn't have anything vital or that was what Donald Menken told him. If he had work anywhere else, then he would have had to make an announcement, so the obvious safeguards could be made.
That was the problem with working with these big companies, there was so many legal hoops to get through. Instead, he really wished that he could just do his job and get his shit done.
'I've got a good idea what the problem is here,' Dillon said, frowning deeply. He pulled a scanning device out of his toolbox and ran it over the cables. He nodded. 'Could have been worse, could have been a lot of better.'
There were six cables and one of them shorted out big time. It worked some of the time, but not all of the time. He would have to replace it.
Slipping on a pair of safety gloves, Dillon unhooked the cable. He was glad that they were set up like this, like a series of tubes. It was set up where he only had to remove one if something was wrong. It made his life so much easier.
He made his way over to the storage closet, whistling. After that earlier dizzy spell, there was a renewed spring in his step when he walked over the storage closet.
He reached into the closet and pulled out a new cable. Taking his scanner, he ran it over with his scanner. The scanner rang positive and he smiled.
"Perfect," Dillon said. He leaned in to replace the cable. After one more check to ensure that there was no other fault equipment, he could call it a day.
There was a problem, he felt completely light headed again. After a long time of uninterrupted health, now his dizzy spells returned.
Dillon fell down hard onto the ground, ramming the live cable into his midsection. Sparks flew in every direction and he screamed in agony when he launched into the air. His next destination was the tank of eels that were nearby.
He slammed through the glass hard, still electrified from the live wire in his hand. The eels reacted in the matter that one would expect, lighting up Dillon. His shrieks of agony punctuated with a great deal of pain.
His blood curdling scream could be heard down the hallway. The door to the room was locked and he could barely hear frantic pounding on it.
The electricity burned him extremely badly and his body spasmed in agony. His screams died off completely and he barely registered the doors being knocked open to save him.
The limp and blackened body of Maxwell Dillon laid there. He felt a jolt of power go through him and then his world went dark.
Then lights in the building went extremely bright around him and then dimmed. Sparks flew from his body when he twitched.
"He's still breathing, hang on, help is on the way!"
The electrical pulse danced through the building. Huge ramifications would occur suddenly.
"So what do you think?" Harry asked Gwen. He held her hand tightly. The glint of red coming off of his watch shined in the light of the lab.
"Well it's just like you said, it's very odd," Gwen responded back.
Harry used a USB flash drive to copy over the genetic information. It could be useful for him to look over before. He wondered how the greatest minds OsCorp had to offer overlooked something like this.
Or maybe they didn't, but they couldn't figure out the key that bound them together. Harry would have to figure that out later. He settled for downloading the data to the flash drive and perusing it later at his own leisure. Perhaps he could figure out what the missing puzzle piece is.
The lights flickered for a second when Harry removed the flash drive. At first he thought absolutely nothing of it.
Then there was a huge explosion from an electrical pulse and the tank that contained the spiders exploded. This action caused a shower of glass and genetically altered spiders filled the room.
Harry's super heightened senses allowed him to spin Gwen around and use his back to shield her from the majority of the impact. He managed to also shield himself from a lot of it as well. His back got sliced up decently from the impact.
"Harry!" Gwen yelled and she was past the point of freaking out. She clutched Harry's hand tightly and looked into his eyes.
"I'm fine, really I'm fine," Harry managed, feeling his wounds sting. He put on a face that indicated that he was fine.
Gwen wasn't really fooled by it for a second. It almost distracted her from the fact that she got showered in spiders as well. That caused her to start breathing in heavily and very nearly freak out.
Calm breath, deep breath, calm down.
One of them shifted on her shoulder and Gwen panicked ever so slightly. It moved over and got panicked, biting her collarbone.
Gwen screamed, she screamed hard. Not so much because of the fact that the spider bit her, even though that didn't really help her to be honest. It was due to the fact that the bite stung something fierce. She wasn't sure if this was even your normal spider bite and the Oz formula flowing through its veins caused her to go rigid.
Harry would have screamed as well if he didn't have his own worries and needed to keep a cool head. He barely noticed the spider biting him between the shoulder and the neck. The only visible reaction Harry gave was a slight gasp.
Gwen's pupils dilated and she violently went into a seizure. Harry watched her reaction and he knew that he had to act quickly.
"Hang in there, Gwen," Harry whispered to her.
Harry did the best that he could to stabilize her until he could get her some place safe to be the proper treatment. He couldn't even begin all the consequences of a genetically enhanced spider bite.
He realized that she needed medical attention and in the worst way. There was only one problem, and that was all the power of the building was out. He didn't really notice because of his good eyesight. However he stood in complete and utter darkness.
He was going to have to make a split decision as to what to do. He wrapped his arms around her tightly, and teleported her away from the lab.
The lab was silent, most of the spiders perished from the explosion. Even the two that bit Gwen and Harry were dead, their bite to these two humans being their final act of defiance.
The destruction at the lab of Curt Connors would be a problem that would have to await another day, for there were far more problems that they had to deal with.
OsCorp plunged into utter darkness and it was hard telling if anyone else suffered any accidents. Once Harry got Gwen away, his own concern was her. He figured that it would be the responsibility of others to sort everything else out.
Doctor Curt Connors returned to his lab at a dead run. In the middle of the meeting he had, the power completely blacked out at the lab. While he understood that there was someone who was working on the power, he didn't think with the way that things were set up the entire lab would have blacked out.
He quickened his pace and he could see people evacuated out of the building.
"It's the Electrician, he's not responsive," one of the other scientists said. Connors tried to get through but he was trapped.
With the bottleneck in the hallway, he wouldn't be able to make his way up to his lab anytime soon. He needed to make sure everyone was okay.
Connors mentally thought of the consequences that a sudden and unexpected power outage could cause. The computers should be safe, because they were surge protected. It would take a lot of power to mess with some of the experiments.
"There was an explosion down there, the Eels are on the floor!" one of them said, watching the last of the EMTs disappear down the hallway. Others reached the electrician already.
"Everyone stand aside, we're not going to lose this one."
Connors saw one of the EMTs preform CPR on Dillon. He was in a state where he wasn't moving.
The utility room was trashed, and there was no telling what the consequences of this accident ended up being.
"One more time, he has a faint heart beat, I can feel a pulse…"
"But the pulse is fading, it's like he is shorting out," one of the EMTs declared.
Connors frowned, but he couldn't do that much.
"Get the paddles out and clear."
The paddles stuck to the chest of Maxwell Dillon. Using the defibrillators, they shocked him.
"One more time, and clear!"
Another shock and Dillon's eyes snapped back open. He started coughing madly. His body went into a seizure and he could barely hold himself up. The shivers blew over his body.
The lights came back on in the building the moment that he was brought back to life. They were too relieved to see that he had been brought from the edge of certain death.
Connors wasn't the only one who breathed a sigh of relief.
"We're doing a full evacuation of the building, everyone is out by now."
Connors realized that checking on the state of his lab will have to wait. He assumed that Gwen had gone out to lunch, which she planned to do after she got the work done for him. Therefore he didn't have to worry.