"You stole my technology! And you used it to steal my project!"
The memory echoed through the dark, bouncing around the inside of his skull like a trapped hornet. Adrian Toomes thrashed against his damp bedsheets. The suffocating anger of that day in the Oscorp lobby clawed its way back up his throat. In the nightmare, Norman Osborn's cold, aristocratic face began to stretch. The skin tore, shifting and bubbling into a grotesque, terrifying green monster. The creature unhinged its jaw, baring rows of jagged teeth, and lunged.
Adrian bolted upright with a sharp, ragged gasp.
He slammed his hand against the nightstand, fumbling until he clicked the bedside lamp on. Harsh yellow light flooded the small bedroom. He sat there for a long moment, chest heaving, listening to the quiet hum of the refrigerator down the hall. He looked at the empty side of the bed. It had been empty since his wife passed. He dragged a calloused hand down his face, wiping away a layer of cold sweat.
Why am I still dreaming about that bastard? Adrian thought, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress. I have the A.I.M. contract now. The money is real. I don't need to give a damn about Osborn anymore.
He glanced at the digital alarm clock on the dresser. 4:12 AM. He groaned, rubbing his temples, expecting the familiar, bone-deep exhaustion of a man in his fifties operating on three hours of sleep. But the fatigue wasn't there. Instead, a strange, electric heat hummed beneath his skin. His heart pumped with a steady, aggressive rhythm. He felt a sudden, almost violent surge of restlessness. He was practically vibrating with an inexhaustible, unnatural energy.
Adrian stood up. His knees didn't pop. His lower back didn't ache.
He didn't question it. He walked straight into the garage, flipped on the overhead fluorescents, and walked over to his workbench. The anti-gravity flight harness lay in pieces across the steel table. He picked up a soldering iron.
Normally, the complex aerodynamic equations and repulsor calibrations gave him a migraine. Tonight, his thoughts flowed like liquid mercury. The math untangled itself in his head effortlessly. His fingers flew across the circuitry, stripping wires and locking down hydraulic servos with a speed and precision he had never possessed. By the time the sun began to peek over the Queens skyline, the complete redesign of the wings was finished.
Adrian checked the time. He walked into the kitchen, quickly whipped up a stack of pancakes for his daughter, Liz, and left a note on the counter. Then, he hauled the massive, heavy metal rig out of the garage. It weighed over two hundred pounds, but he lifted it into the bed of his beat-up Jeep with a single, smooth heave. He didn't even break a sweat.
He threw a waterproof tarp over the machinery and drove straight to the state-of-the-art laboratory A.I.M. had set up for him in upstate New York. He beat the rest of the research team by two hours.
By the time the pristine, white-coated A.I.M. scientists began swiping their keycards to enter the lab, they stopped dead in their tracks.
The 'semi-finished' bionic wings detailed in their corporate reports were completely assembled. Adrian Toomes was already strapped into the heavy, mechanical harness, wearing a thick leather flight jacket. He looked over his shoulder at the dumbfounded young researchers, a wide, predatory grin splitting his face.
"What's wrong?" Adrian chuckled, rolling his shoulders to test the weight. "Don't you think she's beautiful?"
A lead technician pushed his glasses up his nose, blinking rapidly. "Yes, Mr. Toomes, but... according to the schematics, the power-to-weight ratio shouldn't be finalized for another three weeks."
"Yeah, well, it wasn't finished yesterday," Adrian said, his voice brimming with arrogant confidence. "But it's finished now."
Adrian reached down to the control rig strapped to his chest and flipped the primary ignition switch.
There was no roar of exhaust. No blast of heat. Just a deep, bass-heavy hum that vibrated the fillings in the researchers' teeth. The massive, metallic wings unfolded with a sharp mechanical clack. Adrian's boots simply lifted off the linoleum.
The A.I.M. scientists gasped, scrambling backward as Adrian floated three feet in the air. This wasn't thrust. This wasn't repulsor technology mimicking flight. It was a localized, authentic gravity-displacement generator. The wing shape was entirely a personal design choice; the harness itself was doing the impossible.
"Haha! I did it!" Adrian roared, clenching his fists in the air. "I actually did it!"
Pop. Hiss.
A spark arched across the left wing joint. Thick, acrid black smoke instantly billowed from the primary generator housing. The anti-gravity field collapsed. Adrian dropped like a stone, the two-hundred-pound metal rig crashing onto the hard laboratory floor with a deafening metallic crunch.
"Mr. Toomes!" The researchers panicked, rushing forward with fire extinguishers and medical kits.
Adrian coughed, waving the smoke away. He pushed himself up off the floor, dusting off his jacket. Despite taking a dead-weight fall strapped to a heavy steel anvil, he didn't have a single scratch. He didn't even feel bruised.
The lead technician stared at the smoking rig, then up at Adrian, his eyes wide with raw excitement. "You're okay. And... the engine didn't fail. It just overloaded the secondary capacitors. The core anti-gravity field stabilized! It actually works!"
The room erupted. The A.I.M. researchers cheered, clapping each other on the back. Adrian threw his head back and laughed. The rush of adrenaline, the absolute clarity in his mind—he had never felt better in his entire life.
The euphoric high carried him and his new colleagues straight through the morning. By noon, the lab was littered with greasy pizza boxes and open cans of cheap beer. Adrian was leaning against a server rack, casually picking pepperoni out of his teeth with a toothpick, when his cell phone buzzed in his pocket.
He pulled it out. The caller ID flashed: Norman Osborn.
Adrian's thumb hovered over the screen. A week ago, he would have ignored it, his stomach twisting into anxious knots. Today, the heat under his skin flared. He hit the green button, put it on speaker, and set it on the lab table right in front of the A.I.M. scientists.
"Toomes," Norman Osborn's cold, aristocratic voice echoed from the tiny speaker. "I never imagined a blue-collar insect like yourself could be so... despicable. Using a child to get revenge on me?"
Adrian's grip tightened on the edge of the table. He didn't cower. He bared his teeth.
"Fuck you, Norman," Adrian snarled. He had never felt such pure, unadulterated venom flow through his veins. It felt amazing. "Our business is our business. What the hell does the kid have to do with anything? That boy didn't even tell me he was your son, and frankly, I don't give a damn if he is. He's a good kid. A hell of a lot better than you, you arrogant bastard."
There was a stunned silence on the other end of the line. Norman Osborn was entirely unaccustomed to being spoken to this way.
Adrian didn't give him a second to recover. "Using your kid for revenge? Is that how your twisted brain works? You think everyone is as psychotic as you are? You think everyone uses their own flesh and blood as pawns on a corporate chessboard? You even suspect his girlfriend is just trying to hustle you! Not everyone looks at their children and sees a profit margin, Norman!"
"Toomes, you listen to me—"
"No, you listen to me!" Adrian roared, his voice echoing off the sterile white walls of the A.I.M. lab. "Why the hell would I want revenge on you anymore?! I found a new supplier! A better one! I'm finishing my anti-gravity engine, and I'm going to be providing technical support to the kinds of people who actually matter. Go earn your measly little money, Osborn! We're done!"
Adrian slammed his finger down on the screen, killing the call.
He exhaled a long, heavy breath. His chest puffed out. He rolled his neck, listening to the satisfying crack of his vertebrae. Giving Norman Osborn a piece of his mind was the most cathartic experience of his life.
Miles away in Manhattan, Norman Osborn slowly lowered his phone, his eyes narrowing in utter bewilderment. He had called to threaten Toomes into keeping Liz Allan away from Harry. Instead, he had just been verbally bulldozed. Osborn rubbed his chin. Toomes was loud, aggressive, and entirely transparent. A man that emotionally volatile was incapable of executing a long-term, manipulative scheme against the Osborn family. Harry was safe from corporate espionage.
Though, Osborn thought grimly, I should be highly concerned about Harry picking up that man's atrocious vocabulary.
Back in the A.I.M. laboratory, the room had gone dead silent. A dozen young researchers were staring at Adrian, their pizza slices halfway to their mouths. They had just listened to their new project lead absolutely eviscerate one of the most powerful billionaires on the planet.
Adrian looked around at their wide eyes. He grabbed a fresh can of beer from the cooler, cracked the tab with a loud hiss, and raised it high.
"Norman Osborn is a disgusting corporate parasite!" Adrian declared, his voice booming with infectious charisma. "Yeah, his products are cheaper. Yeah, he stole my technology. But you know what? Who cares!"
Adrian grinned, the green flecks in his eyes catching the fluorescent light. "Let him make his shitty money! Guys, we are here to create the future!"
"Creating the future! Woo!" the lead technician shouted, raising his own beer.
The rest of the researchers instantly joined in, raising their cans and cheering wildly, completely swept up in the magnetic, aggressive enthusiasm of Adrian Toomes.
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