"Unknown Subject Codename: Batman."
"Estimated Abilities: Superhuman strength, superhuman speed, superhuman reflexes, healing factor, web-spinning, danger precognition."
"Abilities highly similar to 'Spider-Man.' Suspected to be an alternate identity of 'Spider-Man.'"
"He may, like my father Norman Osborn, have injected himself with Super Soldier Serum and subsequently developed a split personality. That would explain why his behavioral patterns are completely different from the Spider-Man of the past."
"He sent my father, Norman Osborn, to a psychiatric hospital, yet he has never once made contact with me."
Tony Stark blasted the glass on the twentieth floor of Oscorp Tower to pieces with a repulsor blast, switched to scanning mode, and began searching the area. Behind the massive desk, he found a hidden compartment.
Inside the compartment lay a vial of pale-green serum and a stack of documents.
The documents contained a long string of analyses about Spider-Man, along with the initial draft of the "Spider-Slayer" project.
The pale-green serum was the very dose Norman Osborn had set aside for the Spider-Slayer project before everything went wrong. (Chapter 11)
Both the Spider-Man files and the Spider-Slayer files had huge red X's scrawled across them in marker; clearly, these documents had been voided.
But beneath the Spider-Man dossier was a single separate sheet of paper, covered in hurried black-ink handwriting.
Tony Stark hadn't been particularly interested in any of this until the handwritten note mentioned "Batman." The moment he saw that name, he snatched the page up.
Tony Stark didn't understand the Spider-Slayer project in the slightest; he'd never paid attention to the string of incidents that had rocked Oscorp.
But he did know a few things about what had happened to Oscorp's Norman Osborn.
Norman Osborn had donned the goblin suit and become the Green Goblin, first slaughtering the Spencer family, then bombing the Manhattan police precinct in the middle of the night. Batman had captured him in Queens, only for Osborn to mysteriously reappear at the precinct doorstep that same night.
After a psychiatric evaluation diagnosed him with schizophrenia, he wasn't sent to Rikers Island; instead, he was transferred to the Ravencroft Institute in upstate New York.
Staring at the vial of pale-green serum, Tony hesitated.
Both Harry Osborn and Miles Warren were on the verge of death. His Mark III suit simply wasn't capable of safely transporting two critically injured people to Metropolis General Hospital at the same time.
There was a very real chance that, in trying to move both of them, he'd end up killing them both instead.
Tony could carry only one at a time, which meant the other would receive no treatment.
From a pure "save lives" standpoint, the optimal choice was to inject Harry Osborn with the serum and then fly Miles Warren to the hospital.
But the problem was the serum itself. Norman Osborn had turned into a murderous, firebombing Green Goblin because of that stuff. What would happen if they injected it into Harry Osborn?
Tony stood frozen in place, his mind tearing itself apart.
He faced an impossible dilemma:
Option one: Take the serum downstairs, inject Harry, then fly Warren to the hospital. That would save both lives, but Harry would very likely become the second Green Goblin.
Option two: Pretend the serum didn't exist, fly one of them to Metropolis General, and watch the other bleed out and die right in front of him.
For a moment Tony desperately wanted a drink, something strong enough to make him blackout drunk so he wouldn't have to think about any of this anymore.
But he couldn't do that.
He raised his hand and fired several repulsor blasts into the walls of what was now Harry Osborn's office, hoping to find a hidden bedroom, maybe a bathtub or a big bed, anything that might give him another option.
Unfortunately, neither Norman nor Harry Osborn had ever turned their office into some kind of workplace affair den. It was just a normal office.
That crushed Tony's last sliver of hope, and time was running out.
The street below Oscorp Tower had turned into chaos after Morbius's fall. The ambulances Happy had arranged still hadn't shown no sign of arriving.
Tony couldn't stand there and watch either Harry or Warren die. Every second counted. In the end, he grabbed the pale-green serum and rocketed back down to the twentieth floor.
Having made up his mind, Tony didn't hesitate this time. He drew the serum into a syringe and injected it straight into Harry Osborn's body.
Without waiting to see Harry's reaction, Tony scooped up the nearly folded-in-half Miles Warren in his arms and blasted off toward Metropolis General Hospital.
"Move, move, move!"
The emergency department at Metropolis General already had doctors and nurses on standby.
When they saw Iron Man descending from the sky in his Mark III armor, cradling a man whose body was practically broken in two, the medical team sprang into action.
Tony carefully laid Miles Warren onto the prepared stretcher. Just as he turned to leave without a word, a microphone suddenly appeared in front of his face.
Tony's irritation flared again. It had only been a few minutes since he'd called Happy to arrange emergency surgery, how the hell were reporters already here?
Metropolis General doing its job and having doctors and a stretcher ready was fine, but these vultures showing up in minutes like blood-sucking leeches?
"Back off," Tony said icily. He really wasn't in the mood.
The reporter refused to budge, acting like he wouldn't rest until he got something out of Tony.
"Iron Man, what do you have to say about your boss Tony Stark claiming he'll never build weapons again, only to turn around and build that suit of armor you're wearing?"
On any other day Tony might have humored them with an answer, but not now. He just gave the reporter a cold stare.
"You're not even wearing a press badge. What's your name?"
The reporter glanced down at his empty chest. Real journalists usually wore press badges, but Eddie Brock had been fired from the Daily Bugle long ago.
"Eddie Brock, freelance journalist. Iron Man, care to answer the question?"
Tony ignored him. The thrusters in his boots flared, and he shot straight up into the sky, leaving Eddie Brock standing there looking foolish.
A few minutes later, on the rooftop helipad of Stark Tower, Tony hovered half a meter above the floor and killed the thrusters.
Thud!
He crashed onto the helipad and didn't get up for a long time.
"JARVIS, get the Mark III off me," Tony said weakly. He braced one hand on the ground and the other on his knee just to stand.
The helipad floor split open, panels sliding aside as mechanical arms emerged and stripped the armor from his body.
Tony staggered over to the bar, poured himself a glass of scotch, downed it in one gulp, then simply sat on the floor. He lifted his shirt and pulled out the miniature arc reactor embedded in his chest.
Inside the reactor, the power plate was charred black and smelled of burnt metal.
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