Chapter 521: Where is Kang?June 2, 8:00 AM Eastern Time. Eighteen hours since Otto Octavius locked down Manhattan.
Thor's strike team had been tearing through Kang's armada for hours. It was a grinding, agonizing slog. Kang's future warships possessed dense, kinetic-absorbing force fields. Breaching even a single hull required a focused, god-tier assault.
But the real nightmare was the respawn rate.
Thor would swing Mjolnir, shattering a cruiser into burning shrapnel. A split second later, the exact same cruiser—down to the identical paint job—would slip out of a temporal rift to replace it. A brazen, infinite mockery of their efforts. A ship destroyed in this timeline was instantly replaced by a pristine version pulled from another.
It took them eighteen hours to finally punch a permanent hole through the defensive perimeter and land on Kang the Conqueror's flagship.
Standing on the slick metal hull, Thor raised his hammer. Lightning arched into the vacuum of space, tearing open the Bifrost. A blinding column of rainbow light slammed onto the deck, funneling the rest of the Avengers and the Thunderbolts directly into the warlord's lap.
"I'm starting to doubt if winning is even mathematically possible," Hank Pym muttered, adjusting the dials on his helmet. He had brought Ultron along specifically for this chronal nightmare, hoping the AI's processing speed could match Kang's variables. "We kill this Kang, and the Kang from one second ago just steps over his corpse to keep fighting."
Captain America strapped his shield to his forearm. He didn't blink. "We fight to the very end, Hank. That's the only option we have."
Tony Stark's Iron Man faceplate slid back with a sharp mechanical hiss. He stepped forward, scanning the glowing alien bulkheads. "To be perfectly honest, the thirty-first century isn't as... advanced as I thought it'd be," Tony said. "If Kang really does come from our future, Earth must have hit a massive technological dark age."
The tech was highly advanced, but it was still built on principles Tony could roughly parse. It didn't look like a thousand years of uninterrupted human progress. It looked like the surviving scraps of a species that had bombed itself back into the Stone Age.
Walking at the front of the formation, Doctor Doom silently curled his gauntleted fingers. Green mystical energy sparked across his knuckles. In the thirty-first century, science still hadn't mapped the essence of magic. Doom found this highly acceptable. It meant he was still the most dangerous variable in the room. He ran his hand along the corridor wall, already cataloging which futuristic components he was going to strip-mine for Latveria.
"If Kang has the Time Stone, then why isn't our Goatee Holmes here?" Tony asked, stepping over a scorched conduit.
Doom didn't answer.
The corridor ahead suddenly dilated. Enormous robots, built to resemble ancient Egyptian scarabs, crawled out of the floor plating. They locked their optic sensors onto the heroes, blocking the path entirely.
Hulk didn't wait for a strategy. He roared, launching his massive green frame forward. Fists the size of engine blocks slammed into the lead machine. Metal shrieked. Hulk tore through the scarabs, leaving a trail of sparking, crushed wreckage across the deck.
He took another step.
Behind him, the wreckage began to glow with a sickly chronal light. Crushed plating snapped back into place. Severed hydraulic limbs reattached. The machines reversed their own localized timelines, healing to full functionality in seconds.
The scarabs lunged at Hulk's back.
Simultaneously, glowing force fields slammed down from the ceiling, dividing the corridor into isolated kill-boxes. Thousands more scarab robots poured from the bulkheads.
Kang was stalling.
Deep inside the flagship's command room, Kang the Conqueror stood before a glowing, empty pedestal. He stared at the metallic outer shell resting on top of it, his jaw clenched tight.
He was running out of time.
To combat the impending 2015 multiverse collision crisis, Kang needed a power source capable of matching a dying universe. He needed a Cosmic Cube.
He had adopted the alias 'Mr. Griffin,' infiltrated A.I.M., and used their stolen Hydra data to forge a containment shell capable of holding a dimensional rift. The hardware was finished. All he needed to do was open a rift to the Beyond Realm, channel its infinite energy into the shell, and the Cosmic Cube would be complete.
Then, Kang slammed into a wall of hard cosmic physics.
The Cosmic Cube—an artifact capable of reshaping reality and rewriting foundational mathematics—had a fatal flaw. The power of the Beyond Realm was strictly linear in time.
It was utterly immune to chronal manipulation. It could not be targeted by the Time Stone. It could not be loaded onto a time-ship. If Kang finished the Cube in the thirty-first century, it stayed in the thirty-first century. He could not bring it back to 2013 to stop the collision.
But Earth in 2013 completely lacked the technological infrastructure required to open a rift to the Beyond Realm.
"The complete Cube cannot travel," Kang muttered, tapping a sequence into his holopad. "So the shell must be brought to the past, and the energy siphoned here."
He was stalling. He was throwing infinite waves of disposable warships and self-healing drones at the Avengers because he needed the clock to tick down. The rift was opening. If the Cosmic Cube had been fully operational, he would have erased the heroes from existence hours ago.
By the twenty-sixth hour of the siege, the Avengers finally shattered the last scarab drone and blew the heavy vault doors off the command bridge.
The room was empty.
Doom swept his gaze across the glowing control panels. "He was here moments ago. A tactical retreat."
"You think he's running, Tony?" Pym asked, his breathing heavy. "Trying to drag us out with an endless time loop?"
"He isn't running," Tony said. He walked up to the primary console, his armored fingers tracing the residual energy readings floating in the holodisplay. "It's pointless to run when you control the clock. He's cheating."
Tony turned around, his Iron Man faceplate snapping shut.
"How's the situation in Manhattan?"
Chapter 522: The Place in the New WorldLet's rewind the clock.
Eighteen hours after Doctor Octopus initiated his total lockdown of Manhattan. June 2, 6:00 AM.
As a new dawn broke over the caged city, J. Jonah Jameson's voice crackled through the static. He had rested for exactly one night before firing his pirate radio broadcasts back up, delivering a relentless, aggressive play-by-play of the resistance. No one knew where he had hidden his transmitter, but Jameson was still fighting.
He wasn't the only one.
When the sun crested the skyline, the street war began. Silver Sable's Wild Pack mercenaries poured out of the sewer grates, opening fire on Otto's octobots and the heavily bribed NYPD riot squads. The resistance couldn't gain a definitive tactical advantage, but the sight of a well-trained, heavily armed paramilitary force fighting back injected a desperately needed surge of morale into the suffocating city.
The Wild Pack held the line. Enhanced by Martin Li's Lightforce and backed by Frank Castle's brutal, pinpoint sniper cover, they turned the avenues of New York into a grinding miniature battlefield.
But a strange tactical anomaly hung over the firefight: the Sinister Six were nowhere to be found.
The apex predators who had terrorized the city the day before hadn't deployed. Instead, they had simply emptied their offshore accounts, hiring massive swaths of local thugs, street gangs, and rival mercenaries to act as a meat-shield against the resistance.
Otto Octavius had much more important things to do.
At the peak of Avengers Tower, Jessica Drew lay unconscious on a repurposed medical cot.
Otto reviewed the telemetry on the monitor beside her. Her vital signs were perfectly stable. The aggressive cellular degradation had stopped, and her dormant cells were actively reactivating as the Savage Force peptides rewrote her DNA. Otto's synthetic lips curled into a cold, satisfied smile.
He left the medical bay and glided into the penthouse conference room. The Sinister Six were waiting.
"It is time to pull back the curtain, my friends," Otto announced, resting his metal tentacles against the polished floor. "You have undoubtedly deduced that the timing between the futuristic armada in orbit and our own hostile takeover was far too perfect to be coincidental. You are correct. Kang the Conqueror is none other than our silent benefactor: Mr. Griffin of A.I.M."
A heavy silence fell over the room. None of them had any idea who Mr. Griffin was.
Mac Gargan leaned back in his chair, idly shuffling a deck of playing cards. He was trying to rebuild his fractured detective memories by memorizing the deck order. He flipped a Queen of Spades onto the table. "So, this is the grand strategy, Otto? You're working for some time-traveling dictator who wants to rule the planet, just so you can award yourself the title of Grand Duke of Manhattan?"
"It is infinitely greater than that," Otto sneered. "Kang generously pulled back the veil of time for me. He came here to save our world. The Avengers, in their boundless arrogance, rejected his offer. But that is entirely irrelevant."
Otto activated a holographic projector in the center of the table. A glowing, tesseract-shaped cube materialized.
"Kang holds an unfathomable weapon," Otto continued, his voice dropping into a reverent hum. "An artifact so profoundly powerful it can reshape the fundamental architecture of the universe to its user's exact will. If Kang wishes for a specific Avenger to have never been born, they cease to exist. If he wishes for Captain America to be his loyal attack dog, Steve Rogers will crawl on his knees and beg to serve the Conqueror."
Otto paused, letting the weight of the statement settle. "And our final payment is directly tied to this artifact."
Kang didn't intend to conquer Earth through military attrition or political persuasion. He was going to use the Cosmic Cube to overwrite reality itself, altering the foundational settings of the universe to instantly forge the 2013 Kang Dynasty.
"Imagine it," Otto said, his eyes gleaming behind his thick lenses. "Aleksei, your beloved wife never contracted her terminal illness. Quentin, you are universally recognized as the greatest director and actor in Hollywood history; your visual effects dictate the entire industry. The true power of this weapon is that it grants us our ultimate ambitions. Even the ones biology and time have permanently stolen from us."
There was no medicine for regret. But a Cosmic Cube was a flawless substitute.
The atmosphere in the room instantly shifted. The Sinister Six weren't just hired guns anymore; they were fanatics staring at the Holy Grail.
Max Dillon practically vibrated, blue electricity arcing across his collarbone. "You're saying... he's just going to grant our wishes? Just like that?"
"He requires administrators to help him manage this New World," Otto said, calmly pouring himself a cup of coffee. "I have zero interest in political governance. I spoke with the Kingpin. Fisk will act as the Mayor of New York in this rewritten reality. Kang will preserve the memories of those who cooperated, allowing us to remember the old world so we can properly appreciate the new one."
Otto took a slow sip. He had already plotted his own exact reward. He didn't want to be a king. He wanted to own a high-tech monopoly that completely eradicated Osborn Technologies from the history books.
As for Norman Osborn, Otto had a beautifully petty fate in mind: Norman would be stripped of his intellect and his wealth, reduced to a minimum-wage janitor sweeping the floors of Otto's laboratories for the rest of his miserable life.
"However," Otto said, setting his mug down with a sharp clack. "There is one condition. We must completely eliminate Spider-Man. That is the singular requirement from our generous employer. The moment the spider is dead, our payment is secured."
Flint Marko frowned, shifting his sandy bulk in his chair. "If this Kang guy is basically God, why doesn't he just use the magic cube to squash the bug himself? Why do we have to do it?"
"The artifact is so intensely powerful that transferring it from the thirty-first century to our era requires time," Otto explained. "Kang must ensure the chronological transfer is absolutely secure. Spider-Man is the single most dangerous variable to that process."
Otto didn't know the exact mechanics, but he could make an educated guess. It had to do with whatever reality-tearing trick Spider-Man had used to decapitate Nimrod in Paris. Whether it was Kamar-Taj magic or some latent Totem ability, Kang viewed it as a legitimate threat. And since Otto was absolutely confident he could crush the boy, he gladly took the contract.
Gargan chuckled, tossing the rest of the cards onto the table. "So that's why you're ignoring the street war outside. The Wild Pack is just Spider-Man's bait, trying to scatter us so he can pick us off one by one. Unless the bug shows his face, we hold our position."
"Precisely," Otto nodded.
Let the Wild Pack exhaust their ammunition on the drones and the street thugs. The Sinister Six only had one target.
Following the briefing, the Six dispersed to their claimed private quarters within the tower.
In a luxury guest suite, Quentin Beck collapsed into a leather armchair. He reached up, twisted the locking seals on his collar, and pulled the heavy glass dome off his shoulders.
He tapped a button on his wrist console, dropping the localized holographic illusion he used to mask the dome. The massive, jagged hole Spider-Man had punched through the reinforced glass during their fight at Osborn Technologies was still there. He had been covering it up purely out of vanity.
"My God, Quentin..." Beck muttered to himself, rubbing his exhausted eyes. "What have you done?"
"You can still salvage this, you know."
Beck leaped out of his chair, nearly dropping the dome.
A teenage girl was sitting cross-legged on the edge of his mahogany desk. She wore a white-and-pink hoodie, her blonde hair falling over her shoulders. Gwen Stacy dropped her cosmic Ghost camouflage, becoming fully visible to the room's sensors.
Beck scrambled backward, his hands desperately searching for a weapon. "You—you're Spider-Man's—!"
"You know he really did take his mask off for you, right?" Gwen interrupted, tilting her head.
Beck froze. He stared at her, his breathing erratic. "I... I didn't believe it at first. Otto told me it was a trick. He said the moment I covered my face, the psychological profile would dictate..."
Gwen sighed, hopping off the desk. She walked over and gently picked up the shattered fish-bowl helmet.
"I told you, Quentin. You still have a chance to fix this," Gwen said, looking him dead in the eye. "I heard him say that you helped him escape the tower. Didn't you?"
Beck swallowed hard, his shoulders slumping. He looked at the cracked glass.
"So..." Gwen asked, turning the helmet over in her hands. "How exactly do you use this thing?"
Chapter 523: Peter Parker is Spider-Man? Why Would I Have Such a Dream?Jessica Drew was asleep. More accurately, Dr. Jonathan Drew had administered a heavy synthetic tranquilizer to force his daughter into a deep, restorative coma.
Jonathan paced the Avengers Tower medical bay, agonizing over the ticking clock. They had less than twenty-four hours. Whether Otto Octavius was satisfied with the experimental data or not, Jonathan knew they were liabilities. Dead ends. He had managed to broadcast a covert distress signal to the underground resistance, but the rebels were severely outgunned. No cavalry was coming. They had to survive this on their own.
Jessica, however, was completely unburdened by her father's anxiety. Inside her sedated mind, her neurons were firing at a frantic, enhanced pace. The dormant detective within her was actively piecing together scattered fragments of the past few months.
Her subconscious laid out the variables like evidence on a corkboard.
First, Spider-Man had undeniably been present in Europe during the Midtown High tour. Second, he had a pre-existing dynamic with Felicia Hardy. Third, while he wasn't a trained investigator, he possessed an absurdly specific, genius-level scientific baseline. Fourth, his height—roughly five-foot-eight. Fifth, he knew her father, which placed him directly in the Osborn Technologies orbit. A Midtown High science intern.
Sure, Harry Osborn fit the physical profile, but Felicia's behavioral analysis definitively ruled Harry out. The only remaining variable was Peter.
Peter Parker is Spider-Man? How did I even reach that conclusion?
Jessica sat up with a violent gasp, her eyes snapping open as if waking from a nightmare. She blinked, her breathing heavy, staring down at the medical bay's tiled floor.
Wait. Why was she looking down at the floor?
Jessica stared in absolute shock. She was crouched flat against the ceiling, her palms and bare feet securely anchored to the smooth metal panels. She released her grip and dropped, her landing light but slightly uncoordinated.
Dr. Jonathan Drew nearly dropped his datapad. He rushed forward, his hands hovering frantically over her shoulders. "Jessica! Are you alright? How do you feel? Don't move, we need to run a full blood panel—"
Jessica ignored the medical panic. The haze of the tranquilizer faded, replaced by the sharp, terrifying reality of being a hostage in an occupied fortress. She looked at the reinforced laboratory doors. "Dad," she interrupted, utterly bewildered by her own biology. "Shouldn't we be figuring out a way to escape?"
"Listen to me, Jessica, we can't right now. Just—wait a minute, let me get a sample..."
Jonathan fumbled with a syringe. If he was entirely honest with himself, he had never wanted this. He only wanted to cure her ALS. He never wanted his daughter to inherit the radioactive curse of the Savage Force program. As a man who had helped supply the Spider-Man base, he knew the horrors Peter Parker faced on a daily basis. New York had enough superheroes. It didn't need his daughter bleeding in an alley.
From a medical perspective, however, Jessica's body was currently operating at peak biological efficiency.
She shifted her weight and suddenly found herself hovering an inch off the ground, a localized bio-electric field mitigating her gravity. "Good news is I can't shoot webs," Jessica noted, staring at her hands. "But I think I can glide. Let's just break out."
"You can't escape, Jessica. Don't."
"At least let me try," she muttered. She marched over to the bulkhead and drove her fist directly into the metal.
A dull thud echoed through the room. Jessica hissed, shaking her bruised knuckles. Avengers Tower had been specifically structurally reinforced to accommodate the Hulk's temper tantrums. A baseline super-punch barely scratched the paint.
Suddenly, the heavy pneumatic locks disengaged.
The blast doors slid apart, and Otto Octavius glided into the room, suspended on his four mechanical tentacles. The Sinister Six fanned out behind him, a wall of heavily armed muscle blocking the corridor.
Otto smiled, a cold, synthetic sound. "I am delighted to see you recovered, Miss Drew. I entirely understand your desire for freedom, but I'm afraid I cannot permit your father to leave until the Spider is permanently eradicated."
A titanium claw snapped out, casually shoving Jonathan away from the console. "Now, step aside, Doctor. Let us review the telemetry."
Otto scrolled through the data streams, his mechanical lenses whirring. "Unbelievable," he muttered, clapping two metal tentacles together in mock applause. "Exquisite. You have successfully perfected the spider-serum your mentor failed to stabilize. In essence, you have truly completed the Savage Force Project."
"No, you don't understand," Jonathan argued defensively. "The peptides need to be genetically tethered to the specific user's DNA. Every sequence is entirely unique—"
"I am well aware, Jonathan," Otto interrupted smoothly. "The moment you injected your daughter, I accessed your mainframe and re-sequenced the remaining spiders in the lab. They no longer carry the Parker genetic markers. They are now Otto Octavius's spiders."
Otto beamed, a terrifying radiance overtaking his stolen face. He finally had all the pieces. He wasn't just going to acquire Spider-Man's abilities—he was going to eclipse them entirely. If Parker was Spider-Man, Otto would become the Superior Spider-Man. The Ultimate Octopus.
"Rest, Doctor," Otto commanded. "You have ample time. When the new Octavius Industries rises from the ashes of Osborn's legacy, I might even hire you as a lab tech. For now, simply remain here with your daughter."
Otto turned on his mechanical limbs, sweeping out of the medical bay. The Sinister Six followed, leaving the captives behind.
Jonathan slumped against the nearest counter, burying his face in his hands. He had just handed Otto Octavius the keys to a god-tier genetic upgrade. He had created an unprecedented nightmare for Spider-Man. But looking at his healthy, breathing daughter, he couldn't bring himself to sacrifice their lives to stop it.
Jessica ignored his despair. She padded quietly over to the blast door, inspecting the control panel.
"I noticed something, Dad," Jessica said.
"Jessica, please," Jonathan sighed, exhausted. "Tony Stark designed those security protocols. They are absolutely foolproof. You cannot pry that door open."
Jessica reached out and tapped the manual release lever. The heavy door slid open with a soft hydraulic hiss.
She looked back at her father, tilting her head. "They didn't lock it."
Jonathan stared at the open corridor, utterly bewildered.
Chapter 524: Hero RebornOtto Octavius stalked into a private subterranean laboratory beneath Avengers Tower.
He voluntarily commanded his artificial symbiote to retract, peeling the living biomass off his clone body. He uncoupled his mechanical harness, letting the heavy titanium tentacles drop to the floor. He was conducting this experiment entirely alone. He didn't exclude the Sinister Six out of paranoia regarding their loyalty. He excluded them because he fundamentally despised their intelligence.
"The Spider might anticipate my actions," Otto broadcasted over the Tower's internal comms, addressing his mercenaries waiting in the penthouse. "Or he might flail blindly. Regardless, understand this: unless I issue a direct command, none of you are to engage. Am I understood?"
Otto didn't wait for a reply. He climbed into the reinforced Vita-Ray chamber. The heavy glass cylinder hissed shut, locking him inside. Automated intravenous lines snaked forward, piercing his skin. The synthesized spider-peptides and the Erskine Super-Soldier Serum flooded his veins simultaneously.
Above him, the Avengers Tower Arc Reactor flared. Otto redirected the reactor's entire output into the chamber. It wasn't enough. The system aggressively began siphoning power from the surrounding Manhattan grid, plunging entire city blocks into rolling blackouts.
It was a beacon. A colossal, undeniable signal.
"Move, move! Octavius just started his run!" Peter barked.
On a deserted pier at the edge of the Hudson River, Kitty Pryde set down the shoebox-sized cube containing The Web. She triggered the Pym Particle release. The miniature structure expanded instantly, slamming onto the concrete with a heavy metallic thud.
Peter and Dr. Curt Connors sprinted through the airlock.
Outside, Flash Thompson—currently wearing Venom over Peter's Velocity Suit—stepped up to Electro's lethal energy barrier. Flash jammed his left hand directly into the crackling electrical wall. He grabbed The Web's heavy jumper cables with his right. He was a living conduit, siphoning Electro's raw output straight into the lab.
"Power levels are stabilizing," Connors shouted over the hum of the machinery. He held up a thick syringe glowing with blue Erskine serum. "Logically, a direct injection into your mutated DNA should bond naturally. You shouldn't require the Vita-Ray catalyst like standard test subjects."
"We don't have time to wait for naturally," Peter said, stripping off his shirt.
Connors frowned, adjusting his glasses with his single hand. "No. We don't."
Peter climbed into the Vita-Ray pod. He gave Connors a sharp nod. Connors threw the primary breaker. He stepped back, joining Cindy, Felicia, and Silver Sable behind the blast glass. Connors took one look at the heavily armed women and quietly shuffled a few feet to the left.
A blinding, sustained flash of white light erupted from the pod.
Connors gripped his clipboard, his knuckles white. The Vita-Rays were violently accelerating the Erskine transcription sequence, forcing Peter's cells to rapidly divide and mutate. It was an agonizing, biologically destructive process. Most baseline humans died of sheer shock under the lamps.
Felicia bit her lip. She knew the fatality rates of Erskine trials. She braced herself for Peter to scream.
He didn't make a sound.
The hum dialed down. The harsh light faded.
The heavy steel door buckled, then ripped completely off its hinges from the inside. Peter stepped out. He was drenched in sweat, his chest heaving.
He didn't look like Captain America. He hadn't grown a foot taller or packed on two hundred pounds of steroid-thick muscle. His physique remained lean, corded, and compact. To the naked eye, he looked exactly the same.
Silver Sable lowered her rifle, eyeing Peter skeptically. "Is that a success?"
Cindy stepped forward. Her Silk-Sense flared. She didn't just feel Peter's bio-rhythm; she felt a roaring, localized hurricane of kinetic energy radiating off him. He was exponentially stronger than he had ever been.
Peter rolled his shoulders, testing the tension in his joints. A stark white liquid mass bled out from his pores—the Anti-Venom symbiote—coating his skin in a sleek, protective under-layer. He flicked his wrist. A web-line snapped out, snagging his classic red-and-blue fabric suit off a nearby mannequin. He yanked it into his hands.
"If I'm going to punch Octavius in the mouth, I want to wear the classics," Peter said, pulling the red mask over his head. He caught Cindy staring at him. He paused. "Uh, do I have something on my teeth?"
Cindy blinked, shaking her head quickly. She had felt a sudden, bizarre gravitational pull to just walk up and touch his chest. She ruthlessly squashed the impulse. "No. You just look... healthier. Are we doing this or not? It's time to break the Six."
"Right," Peter said, snapping his web-shooters onto his wrists. "Except for Mysterio, I've walked you all through the counter-tactics. Stick to your assigned targets. Don't improvise unless you have to."
He pulled his mask down, the white lenses snapping wide. "The final play is at Avengers Tower. Otto's procedure is finishing right now. He isn't running. He's waiting for me."
Felicia narrowed her eyes. "Sorry to interrupt the dramatic monologue, but how exactly do you know that?"
"The Erskine serum integrated my second mutation," Peter explained, his voice entirely steady. "My Spider-Sense isn't just an early warning alarm anymore. Dr. Strange was right. It's a localized anchor to the timestream. I can see the immediate future."
He walked past them, stepping out into the Manhattan gloom. "It's that simple. Let's go see Otto."
Meanwhile, at the peak of Avengers Tower.
The Vita-Ray irradiation cycle finished with a heavy, metallic clank. The pod doors blew open.
A young man in his mid-twenties stepped out. He was tall, his musculature dense and perfectly defined. He inhaled deeply, a cold, arrogant smile spreading across his face.
A pool of synthetic black liquid slithered up his legs. The artificial symbiote bonded to his fresh skin, rapidly forming a sleek tactical suit. The legs were pitch black. The torso was a stark, armored white. A jagged black octopus emblem sprawled across his chest.
It was a twisted, arrogant mockery of Spider-Man's own suit.
Four heavy titanium tentacles, heavily upgraded with stolen Stark Industries tech, snapped into the neural ports along his spine.
Otto Octavius threw his head back and laughed.
"An artificial symbiote. A perfected neural interface. The Erskine serum. And now, the radioactive spider-mutagen." Otto admired his reflection in the reinforced glass. "I am no longer simply superior. I am the Ultimate Octopus!"
"Hey, Doc? You done baking in there?" Max Dillon's voice crackled over the PA system. "The Spider is here. And he brought a whole lot of friends."
Otto didn't flinch. He let his mechanical tentacles raise him two feet off the floor.
"Hold your position, Dillon," Otto sneered. "Let them come to us. I have always wanted to kill an Avenger inside their own home."
Chapter 525: Dividing the Battlefield"If what you say is true," Felicia said, adjusting the tactical harness over her chest, "then there are entirely too many Spider-Men running around these days."
She reached down, double-checking the secondary seals on her gear before prepping her specialized canisters. Her primary target was Flint Marko. She didn't feel the need to sprint blindly toward Avengers Tower; her tactical role lay elsewhere. Standing beside her was Silvija Sablinova, Silver Sable herself.
Both women shared a dark, complicated history with Sandman. Felicia had uncovered the truth about her father's death while investigating the Elementals, while Sable had spent years tangling with Marko across international borders.
Peter didn't weigh in on the comms frequency, but Felicia wasn't wrong. Including Peter and Cindy, who carried the original radioactive mutation, the current roster of spider-adjacent operators in Manhattan was absurd. There was Gwen, who had recently injected herself with alternate-universe isotopes to boost her physical baseline; Jessica, whose body had been forcibly rewritten by her father's Savage Force peptides; Flash Thompson, riding an alien symbiote that mimicked Peter's genetic template; and Otto Octavius, currently parading around as the 'Ultimate Octopus.'
Manhattan was practically crawling with them.
"Stick to the protocol," Peter's voice crackled through their earpieces, steady and focused. "Sandman and Electro are the priority. If we take those two off the board, the occupation breaks."
"Easier said than done," Sable muttered, checking the action on her assault rifle. "The National Guard breached the perimeter an hour ago, but they're stuck in a meat-grinder with Octavius's bribed NYPD units." She clicked her tongue in disgust. "Your National Guard is a joke. We'd have better luck waiting for a real military division."
"Expecting the military to handle a supervillain siege?" Peter replied, his voice laced with familiar dry humor. "You might as well put your faith in a teenager in spandex."
Up ahead, the gleaming, metallic spire of Avengers Tower loomed over the skyline. Peter didn't slow down. He plunged straight through the shattered glass of the upper terrace, landing in a low, perfectly cushioned crouch.
The Sinister Six were waiting for him. Their eyes locked onto his white-and-black Anti-Venom suit, but Peter's attention remained entirely fixed on Otto Octavius.
"Plagiarism is a bad look, Otto," Peter said, rolling his shoulders as he stood up. "Has anyone ever told you that suit has some serious copyright infringement issues?"
Through his Spider-Sense, Peter felt the familiar, vibrant bio-frequency radiating off Octavius—his spider-powers were fully restored. Otto felt it too, matching Peter's stance with a cold, arrogant laugh.
"Is that so?" Otto sneered, his four mechanical tentacles flaring out behind him like a metallic peacock. "A few surface similarities, perhaps. But it matters very little. You are about to discover just how powerless you truly are."
Otto didn't waste time talking. He triggered a hidden wrist-dispenser, firing a thick cloud of aerosolized Restoration Serum directly at Peter's face.
It was useless. The stark-white Anti-Venom suit had already sealed over Peter's skin, filtering out the chemical compound entirely. Peter didn't even flinch. He leaned casually to the left, letting a heavy titanium claw miss his head by an inch, completely denying the synthetic symbiote on Otto's back a chance to make physical contact.
Max Dillon seized the opening. Transforming into a blinding bolt of raw, blue electricity, Electro rode the air currents, charging straight at Spider-Man.
Peter moved before Dillon even fired. Driven by his enhanced, future-predicting Spider-Sense, Peter leaned backward, falling flat on his back and letting the lightning arc harmlessly through the air where his chest had been a microsecond prior.
"Don't think you can run, Spider-Man! You're dead!" Dillon shrieked, his voice distorted by high-voltage static.
Dillon gave chase, electricity crackling wildly along the outer bulkhead. Peter flipped onto his feet and sprinted vertically down the glass facade of Avengers Tower, dodging blinding lightning strikes with terrifying, effortless precision.
Above them, Sandman dissolved his physical body, cascading down the side of the building like a localized avalanche of coarse grit. Mysterio boarded a heavy tactical drone, rising into the sky to provide air support.
That left Mac Gargan and Aleksei Sytsevich standing on the ruined terrace. Neither of them possessed the mobility to fight on a vertical Z-axis.
Gargan cracked his knuckles, looking down at the street. "So, do we go down there and crush the bug, or..."
He didn't get to finish the sentence.
His instincts screamed a fraction of a second too late. Gargan dove to the right as two blurs shattered the skylight behind them. Cindy Moon and Flash Thompson slammed onto the deck.
Flash—fully encased in the towering, black Venom symbiote—singled out the Rhino, charging the giant brute like a runaway freight train. Cindy swept low, driving a kick directly into Gargan's ribs before he could recover his footing.
Gargan tumbled across the concrete, but as he rolled, a thick layer of synthetic black biomass surged over his skin—the artificial symbiote Otto had gifted him. He bounced back to his feet, snarl forming on his face.
Flash paused mid-stride, eyeing Gargan's new suit in shock. Before he could react, Sytsevich roared as a matching layer of black symbiote slithered over his dense polymer armor, doubling his massive frame.
Otto knew his frontline brawlers were vulnerable. Giving them artificial symbiote suits was the easiest way to bridge the physical gap.
Cindy didn't panic. She threw a quick hand signal at Flash—ignore the Scorpion, drag the big guy down.
Flash didn't argue. Transforming into a terrifying, monstrous iteration of Venom, he tackled the upgraded Rhino over the edge of the terrace. The two behemoths plummeted toward the pavement hundreds of feet below, tearing into each other on the way down. Falling a few hundred meters wasn't going to kill either of them; their symbiote plating absorbed the kinetic force effortlessly.
Gargan slowly rose to his feet, his jaw working as he stared at Cindy. A flicker of recognition flashed behind his eyes.
"I know you..." Gargan growled, his voice rasping through the symbiote mask. "No... I should know you! But because of that damn Spider-Man, I can't place your face!"
He glared at Cindy, his eyes burning with chaotic rage. "It's your fault my head is so messed up! You're dead!"
Gargan lunged.
Before he could bridge the gap, the ceiling and floor panels hissed open. Dozens of concealed acoustic projectors deployed from the internal bulkheads, locking onto Gargan's position. High-frequency sonic waves detonated in a concentrated blast.
The synthetic symbiote on Gargan's body shrieked, violently peeling away from his skin. Gargan collapsed to his knees, clutching his bleeding ears in absolute disbelief.
How was Avengers Tower's automated defense network targeting him? What the hell was Dillon doing with the security grid?!
The answer was simple: Electro was currently drowning in chaos.
While Spider-Man was actively drawing the combined fire of the Ultimate Octopus, Sandman, Electro, and Mysterio, Shadowcat phased straight out of the structural wall. Kitty Pryde's intangible form passed directly through Dillon's electrical core.
The shock disrupted Electro's molecular cohesion. Dillon's energy body disintegrated for a fraction of a second, shattering his hold over the tower's mainframe before he could reform.
In that single microsecond of signal loss, the system rebooted.
Ultron was back online.
The moment the AI reclaimed the tower's processing core, it immediately categorized targets by friend and foe. Cindy had no idea why Tony Stark had installed so many lethal, high-tech defense systems inside his own home, but she certainly wasn't going to complain about the support.
Outside, Kitty tumbled through the open air. Peter swung past, catching her cleanly around the waist. Kitty wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, riding his momentum as they floated above the avenue.
"Ugh," Kitty shuddered, shaking her head. "That felt so weird. Like static electricity everywhere."
"Considering Dillon is literally made of lightning, static electricity is a pretty best-case scenario," Peter said, swinging them back toward the building structure. He set her down safely on a window ledge. "Get clear."
Seeing Dillon lose control of the security grid, Otto barked into his comms. "Dillon! Fall back and support Gargan! Without the tower grid, he can't survive the automated defenses!"
Otto turned, looking for his second heavy-hitter. "William! Where the hell are you?!"
The Ultimate Octopus froze, realization dawning on him. Sandman was gone. He had been standing right beside Otto a second ago, and now the sky was completely clear of sand.
Or rather, Otto thought Sandman had been beside him.
Miles away, inside an abandoned soundstage on the lower levels, Sandman's swirling cloud of grit coalesced back into human form. He thought he had been pursuing Spider-Man down an elevator shaft.
Instead, he found himself standing across from Quentin Beck.
Beck reached up, unlatched his heavy glass helmet, and casually tossed it aside, letting her long, blonde hair spill over her shoulders.
Gwen Stacy adjusted the hood of her white-and-pink Ghost Spider suit. She had been wearing it under Beck's heavy illusions the entire time.
"I brought you the target, just like I promised," Gwen said, tossing Mysterio's cracked helmet at Sandman's feet. "And you get to keep the fishbowl."
Sandman stared at her, completely bewildered, before turning his head. Standing in the shadows behind him were two very familiar, very dangerous faces: Black Cat and Silver Sable.
Flint Marko was entirely unaware of the trap he had just walked into.
Gwen didn't stick around to watch the fight. She pulled her mask down, stepped back into the shadows, and faded out of sight, heading back to reinforce the main front.