The wind was a roaring river in Aaron's ears, a symphony of urban freedom. Kate's shrieks of terror-turned-joy were a counterpoint melody, blending into the city's din.
"Woooo! I saw Mom's building! I think I waved!"
"That's my school down there! They are never going to believe this!"
"Faster! Go higher! This is the best thing ever!!"
With no Spider-Man yet gracing New York's skies, their aerial traversal was a premiere. Aaron, with his Superior Agility and Kinetic Refinement, moved with an instinctive grace that felt born, not learned.
Each thwip of webbing was a perfect calculation, each swing a controlled burst of kinetic energy. To the scattered pedestrians who glimpsed the duo arcing between sunlit towers, they were a fleeting mystery—a silhouette of impossible mobility.
When Aaron finally descended, alighting with feather-light silence on a rooftop garden, Kate was vibrating with adrenaline. Her legs wobbled as he set her down, but her face was alight with pure, unadulterated exhilaration.
"That. Was. Incredible!" she gasped, clutching his arm for balance. "It's better than any roller coaster! Better than anything! You're like a human falcon!"
She jabbed a finger at the webbing residue on her dress. "Though this stuff is kinda sticky. And itchy."
Aaron glanced at the horizon, where the sun was beginning its descent behind a bank of peculiarly thick, green-tinged clouds.
"Your parents," he said, his voice cutting through her euphoria, "undoubtedly have rules about curfews, especially for young ladies unaccompanied by their personal aerial transport."
"Aww, do we have to?" Kate's face fell comically.
"We do."
This time, the return journey was swifter, more direct. Aaron had mastered the rhythm. The city became a grid of anchor points, his body the pendulum. The thrill, he admitted privately, was not lost on him. The childhood fantasy of web-swinging, rendered real, carried a potent, visceral joy.
He deposited Kate on the manicured front steps of the Bishop townhouse, where Eleanor stood with two stone-faced bodyguards. Aaron gave a brief, casual wave.
"Mom! You won't believe it! We flew over the whole city! I saw everything!" Kate babbled, rushing to her mother's side.
Eleanor's eyes, wide with a mixture of awe and deep-seated anxiety, met Aaron's over her daughter's head. He offered a slight, reassuring nod.
Before Eleanor could formulate a question, Aaron took two steps back, fired a web-line into the darkening sky, and was yanked upwards, becoming a shrinking figure against the twilight.
"Hey! I'm coming over tomorrow! Save some web-time!" Kate shouted after him, cupping her hands around her mouth. A distant, backward wave was her only answer before he vanished into the urban canopy.
"Kate," Eleanor breathed, pulling her daughter into a tight, wordless hug. Her mind raced, trying to reconcile boardroom strategies with the sight of a man defying physics.
"Mom, he's amazing! He's like… the real deal. He can glow, and change his voice, and swing, and he's so strong…" Kate's words tumbled out in a rush.
Eleanor knelt, her hands on Kate's shoulders, her expression deadly serious. "Katherine, listen to me. What you did today, what you saw… that is a secret. A very important one. Telling people could cause serious problems for Mr. Aaron. Do you understand?"
Kate's excited expression sobered into one of solemn recognition. She nodded firmly. "I know. Secret identities. I won't tell a soul. Not even Dad."
"Good girl." Eleanor pulled her into another hug, her own heart pounding with a strange cocktail of maternal relief, wild speculation, and a sharp, undeniable envy. What did that freedom feel like?
Elsewhere in Queens, a yellow school bus rumbled through traffic. Peter Parker rested his forehead against the cool glass, tuning out Flash Thompson's bragging. Suddenly, a collective gasp rippled through the bus.
"Whoa! Look! On the buildings!"
"Is that a guy?!"
"He's flying!"
Peter pressed his face to the window, squinting. High above, a dark figure arced between the skyscrapers of midtown with impossible, fluid speed, a graceful parabola of power against the bruised sky. For a few breathtaking seconds, he was there—a symbol of liberation—and then he was gone, swallowed by the city's vastness.
"Cool," Peter breathed, a spark of yearning igniting in his chest.
To be that… unbound.
For a moment, the complexities of high school faded against the vision of such sheer, physical prowess. He slumped back into his seat, the mundane reality settling back over him. Such things, he thought with a resigned sigh, didn't happen to guys like him.
Aaron, unaware he had just previewed a future icon's destiny, came to rest atop the observation deck of the Empire State Building. The city sprawled below him, a circuit board of light and shadow just beginning to ignite with evening energy. The scale of it was humbling.
A day. Less than a single rotation of the planet in this new reality, and he had been remade. The path from here stretched toward a horizon he could barely imagine.
And yet, I'm still a minnow, he thought, the cold calculus of his Superior Cognitive Matrix overriding fleeting pride. Forty tons of lift is a party trick to a god. My durability is a local phenomenon. In the grand tapestry, I'm a footnote. The hunger of the Primal Furnace echoed his own ambition. More. Deeper.
His gaze, sharpened by Hyper-Spectrum Vision, scanned the skyline, locking onto a distinctive, monolithic structure. A corporate logo, sleek and modern, was emblazoned near its summit.
OSCORP.
A smile, thin and devoid of warmth, touched Aaron's lips. Norman Osborn. A name heavy with future chaos. A fountain of volatile, transformative potential.
In the silent space of his own mind, he became a ghost in the machine. His Network Interface Protocol activated, not as a blunt hack, but as a subtle infiltration. He slipped past the outer firewalls of Oscorp's network like smoke under a door, his cognitive processing speed allowing him to mimic authorized data packets, riding legitimate signal traffic into the heart of their security grid. In less than twenty seconds, he was a silent overseer in their surveillance nexus, his consciousness skimming through camera feeds, access logs, and internal schematics.
His target was not data. It was a man.
Found you.
Deep within the Oscorp Biogenetic Research Wing, in a sterile, state-of-the-art laboratory, Norman Osborn stood over an observation chamber. His white coat was pristine, his glasses reflecting the cold glow of monitor banks. Inside the reinforced enclosure, a white rat moved with frantic, hyper-accelerated speed, a blur of abnormal energy.
Norman's face was a mask of tense expectation. He scribbled notes on a digital pad. "Subject 847. Neuromuscular enhancement stable at 850%. Aggression index rising. Cognitive function… degrading."
The rat scrambled up the glass, then suddenly froze. A violent tremor wracked its body. With a sickening pop, it collapsed into a twitching, lifeless heap, a trickle of blood leaking from its nostrils.
Norman's fist slammed onto the console. A muted, furious curse escaped his lips. He took a deep, steadying breath, his knuckles white. With meticulous, almost robotic precision, he logged the failure. "*Recommendation: Recalibrate serum-R34A synaptic integration matrix. Lethality threshold remains unacceptable.*"
He placed the data tablet into a biometric safe, the fatigue of countless failures etched into the lines around his eyes. He removed his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"The stabilizing agent… it's the key. But the molecular bonds…" He muttered to himself, the genius and the madman in a quiet, desperate debate.
A soft, electronic hiss broke his reverie. The laboratory's hermetic seal door, which should have required his keycard and DNA scan, slid open.
Norman turned, irritation flashing across his features. "I gave explicit orders not to be—"
His words died. In the doorway stood a man he had never seen before. Tall, composed, with an unsettling aura of calm that seemed to absorb the sterile light of the lab. The man's eyes were not looking at him, but through him, scanning the room, the equipment, the notes on a secondary screen, absorbing it all in a single, comprehensive glance.
"Who are you?" Norman demanded, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous register. His hand drifted subtly toward a silent alarm under the console. "How did you get in here?"
Aaron took a single step into the room, the door sealing shut behind him with a definitive click. He ignored the question, his gaze finally settling on Norman Osborn. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, perfectly level, carrying a weight that seemed to still the very air in the room.
"Who I am is irrelevant, Dr. Osborn. The only pertinent question is: do you wish to survive what's coming for you?"