As soon as George Stacy left, Norman Osborn arrived at the precinct.
As Oscorp's chairman, Norman had little trouble getting to the holding cell where the Spider-Slayer—Spencer Smythe—was being kept. He cleared his throat twice through the bars.
"Norman!"
Hearing the sound, Smythe—handcuffed—scrambled to the door, clutching the bars as if he could shove his head through the gap. "It wasn't a spider. It was a bat!"
"A bat?" Norman frowned. "Describe exactly what happened."
Smythe didn't waste time. He told Norman how he'd spotted "Spider-Man" heading toward Central Park and tailed him—only to discover the one who took him down wasn't Spider-Man at all but someone marked with a bat. Then he begged, "Norman, I still have value, right? Get me out of here and I can keep delivering! I've got a kid who needs his father. I can't rot in here!"
Technically his current charge was "destruction of protected flora and fauna," but even that meant three to five years by the book.
"You said his methods were more ruthless. More violent?" Norman mused.
Smythe nodded hard. He couldn't forget how, with all his tricks, he'd been undone by lime, shocks, explosions… "Norman, I swear I'll bring him in alive next time—just pull me out!"
Swish!
Norman shot a hand through the bars and clamped it around Smythe's throat, his features twisting. "Next time? No. You've already failed once. I'm not wasting another cent on you."
Though past fifty, Norman hoisted Smythe one-handed like an eagle clutching prey. "You know too many Oscorp secrets. You'll kill yourself before midnight tonight… or your child, your family, your friends—will die, one by one, because of you."
Clack.
Norman released him. Smythe dropped hard to the floor. By the time Norman turned away, the contorted mask on his face had vanished, replaced by a worried look befitting a CEO whose company had just suffered a massacre.
"Father."
Harry Osborn had stayed in the car rather than follow his father inside. Seeing Norman step out wearing that pained expression, he hurried around to open the passenger door and slid back behind the wheel. "Do you know who did it? What did Smythe say?"
Norman shook his head bleakly. "Nothing. He doesn't even know what the killer looks like—and thanks to some 'bat' he's charged with damaging protected wildlife. He won't be out for years."
Harry stamped the gas and merged into Manhattan's jammed traffic. "Weird—why are so many cars from Brooklyn heading into Manhattan? Is today a holiday?"
…
"Chief Stacy, I'm Fick, special-operations captain from Brooklyn PD assigned to assist you. All residents near the suspected Octavius location have been evacuated to adjacent districts. We're ready to move."
At a Brooklyn intersection, Chief George Stacy shook Fick's hand.
Per the power utility and Brooklyn PD, the abnormal power draw began right after Dr. Octavius disappeared—almost certainly related. The anomaly lay right beneath this crossroads, within about a one-kilometer radius.
"Thanks, Fick," Stacy said, then started issuing orders. "Teams One, Two, Three—enter the sewers from three directions and search for anything suspicious.
"Captain Fick, take your unit in from the fourth approach."
Fick saluted and began coordinating his squad with Manhattan PD's teams.
Meanwhile, Batman slipped past the cordon and into Octavius's lab.
Where a dozen machines had stood, the space was now bare—save for three-toed claw prints on the floor and walls the size of a motorcycle helmet.
"The four metal arms… inspiration from the Squid-Man—gear to assist his fusion work.
"He's mounted them to his back and moved the whole lab."
Batman exhaled silently.
Peter Parker was too broke—flash too much cash and it would raise flags. Batman had never told Octavius he was working to cover the research funding. He'd planned to solve the thirty-million shortfall in three days, even rush-registering a company to bankroll the project.
Too late. Octavius's hunger to finish fusion had outstripped Batman's timetable.
"I can't go down into the sewers right now. Without the suit, confronting police or chasing Octavius would blow my cover.
"And even with the suit, I don't have standing with NYPD. They'll shoot and arrest me, not hand Octavius over."
Clear-eyed about the situation, he didn't linger. He headed back to Manhattan.
He still needed a lawyer. With Oscorp hit by both human-experimentation revelations and a murder spree, the stock would crater. Before, the aim was to stop Kingpin from laundering clean; now it was to keep him from walking away unscathed.
Either way, he needed a capable, fearless attorney to go after Fisk—unless he found Kingpin himself first. If he got hard evidence on Fisk, he could send him straight to prison without the legal dance.
…
Elsewhere in a Manhattan mansion, Oscorp shareholder Valentin trembled so hard the stench of urine made the men around him hold their breath.
"Look—Oscorp will be crippled for months, maybe years, by your human experiments and last night's butchery. And I'm still willing to pay top dollar for your shares.
"I'm a generous man—no one more so. Sign this and we're friends. Otherwise…"
Head bowed, Valentin could only see a pair of gleaming dress shoes and crisp white trousers. He didn't dare look up; a sharp pair of scissors pressed against his ear, a twitch away from piercing skin.
"I willingly transfer my fifteen percent stake to you, Mr. Wilson Fisk," he said carefully.
The man before him—the one not dumping stock in a crisis but forcing buy-ins—was none other than Kingpin, Wilson Fisk.
~~~
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