Alex walked to the equipment he'd prepared. A simple strength testing apparatus he'd built using salvaged gym equipment and reinforced steel.
A weighted bar sat in the rack, rated for five hundred pounds.
He gripped the bar and lifted.
It came up like it weighed nothing. No strain. No effort. Just smooth motion like lifting a pencil.
Alex set it down carefully and stared at his hands.
'In the comics I remember from my old life, strength gets measured in classes. Class one lifts maybe a ton. Class ten lifts ten tons, that's roughly where Spider-Man sits in most continuities. Let's see where I land.'
He added more plates. A thousand pounds total.
Still manageable. His muscles barely registered the additional weight.
Fifteen hundred pounds. Now he felt something. A slight strain in his shoulders and forearms. But the bar still rose smoothly off the rack.
Clang!
He set it down and added the rest of his available weight plates. Two thousand pounds exactly. The absolute maximum his bunker's equipment could hold.
Alex gripped the bar again. Took a breath.
This time he had to actually work for it. Tendons standing out in his forearms. A grunt escaping his throat as he forced the bar upward.
It rose. Slowly but steadily. He held it at full extension for three seconds before lowering it back to the rack.
"Two tons confirmed manageable with effort," he said aloud, recording for the equipment he'd set up. "True maximum likely higher. No way to test further with current resources."
'Call it somewhere between two and three tons of lifting capacity. Right in the range I designed for. Comparable to Peter, maybe a notch above.'
The kid who used to read Marvel comics late at night, years ago in another life, was practically vibrating with excitement underneath the analytical calm.
Alex let himself feel it for just a moment. The pure, unfiltered wonder of being something more than human.
Then he moved to the next test.
Speed and reflexes. He'd rigged a simple mechanism: a tennis ball launcher set to fire without warning, positioned to throw projectiles from random angles.
Alex stood in the center of the room and activated it remotely.
The launcher fired.
Thwip!
His hand snapped up and caught the ball before his conscious mind even registered it was coming. The motion felt automatic. Instinctive.
Another ball fired from a different angle.
Thwip!
Caught again. This time he watched his own hand move, fascinated by how it seemed to anticipate the trajectory before the ball had fully left the launcher.
He set the machine to rapid fire. Three balls in quick succession from three different launchers positioned around the room.
Thwip! Thwip! Thwip!
Alex moved between them. Not running exactly. More like flowing. His body shifted weight and position with a fluidity that felt completely foreign to his old, malnourished frame.
He caught all three. Two in his hands, one against his chest where he trapped it with his forearm.
"Reaction time estimate," Alex said, breathing harder now, "somewhere in the range of fifteen to twenty milliseconds. Human baseline is roughly two hundred fifty."
'Daredevil levels, maybe. Without the radar sense. Just raw enhanced reflexes.'
He moved to durability next. This was the test that made him nervous, even with his enhanced confidence.
He'd rigged a pneumatic piston, padded but still capable of significant force, calibrated to deliver a punch equivalent to a professional boxer at full power.
Alex positioned himself in front of it. Set the trigger on a five second delay so he couldn't anticipate the exact moment.
He waited.
BOOM!
The piston connected with his torso. Alex staggered back two steps, breath knocked out of him, but he didn't fall. Didn't break.
He pressed a hand against his ribs. Sore. Definitely sore. But no sharp pain that would indicate a fracture.
"Durability confirmed above human baseline," he gasped out. "Estimate withstood force equivalent to approximately eight hundred pounds per square inch without structural damage."
He increased the piston's force by twenty percent and triggered it again.
BOOM!
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