Marvel's Shendu: Dominating the Multiverse

Chapter 167 Peter Goes to See Doctor Octopus

Parker sprang off the roof quickly, but the four robotic arms reacted at speeds far beyond human capabilities. One arm swept in from the side, but Parker twisted his waist in mid-air to dodge, using his feet to push off the wall and flip to the other side of the alley. The second arm slammed into the spot where he had just been crouching, denting a large section of the roof.

"Wait." Octavius ​​raised his hand, and the four mechanical arms stopped.

He looked at Parker. Parker was crouching on the opposite wall, one hand and one foot clinging to the brick surface, the other hand's launcher pointed at him.

"You can stick to the wall," Octavius ​​said.

Parker did not answer.

Octavius ​​pushed up his glasses: "How old? Your voice sounds like a high school student."

Parker still didn't answer. He was assessing the escape route. Six meters above his head was the edge of the roof, within reach of the spiderwebs.

"Don't be nervous." Octavius ​​took a step back, his mechanical arm retracting behind him. "I don't need you to keep it a secret that I stole from Oscorp; nobody can do anything about it anyway. What I'm more curious about is you."

Parker moved. Spider silk shot towards the roof, and his body rose up.

A robotic arm caught up. Without attacking, the three-pronged claw at the end of the arm opened and clamped onto his spider silk.

Parker gave a strong tug, the spider silk slipped from the pincers, and he climbed onto the roof and ran away.

Octavius ​​stood in the alley, a small piece of fiber torn from a spiderweb in his hand. He held it up to his eyes to look at it, then put it in his coat pocket.

"interesting."

Three days later, Parker ran into Octavius ​​again in the same area.

This was no coincidence. Parker was injured while stopping an ATM robbery; a piece of shrapnel grazed his ribs. The injury wasn't serious, but he had lost a lot of blood. As he tended to his wound against a trash can in an alley, Octavius ​​walked in from the alleyway entrance.

"Do you need any help?"

Parker instinctively sprang up, wincing in pain.

"I won't hurt you." Octavius's four mechanical arms were tucked under his coat, with only a faint red glow visible at their tips. "I'm a scientist, not a criminal."

Parker assessed the credibility of this statement as very low. This person had just stolen from 0scorp last week.

But Octavius ​​had already come over. He took a first-aid kit out of his pocket—a scientist who always carries a first-aid kit—and knelt down to professionally clean and bandage Parker's wounds.

"The healing process should be quick, right?" Octavius ​​asked as he treated her. "Your basal metabolic rate looks abnormal. Your body temperature is high, and your heart rate is faster than normal."

Parker pulled his clothes up to cover the wound.

"I analyzed that piece of spider silk you were using," Octavius ​​said, standing up. "The molecular structure is incredibly intricate. Independently designed?"

silence.

How old are you? Fifteen? Sixteen?

"What exactly do you want?" Parker finally spoke. His voice was terribly hoarse.

Octavius ​​looked at him for a moment. "What have you lost recently?"

Parker didn't say anything.

"I can see that." Octavius's tone was flat, devoid of sympathy or comfort; he was simply stating a fact. "Your movement pattern has changed. Last week, your reaction was swift; you ran when you needed to. Today, you took a hit from shrapnel you shouldn't have because you were distracted for a fraction of a second. You're punishing yourself."

Parker clenched his fist.

“I have a lab,” Octavius ​​said. “Fully equipped, a hundred times better than what you could cobble together at home with a 3D printer and old watches. You can come here whenever you need a place to stay.”

He handed me a business card. It was white and had only an address and a string of numbers on it.

Parker didn't answer.

Octavius ​​placed the business card on the trash can lid. "Come if you want, don't come if you don't."

He left. The four robotic arms subtly adjusted their positions beneath his coat, emitting a low, mechanical hum.

Parker sat in the alley, looking at the business card.

My phone vibrated.

That number.

"Don't go."

Two words. Parker stared at the screen for a long time.

He picked up the business card, folded it, and stuffed it into his pocket.

Queens, 11 p.m.

The Holy Lord stood on the rooftop opposite Parker's house, putting his phone back in his pocket. In the Mind Stone's perception, Parker's emotional signals were more stable than in the past few days, but something else was missing.

Sense of direction.

Not the good kind. It's the kind of sense of direction you get when you've walked in the dark for too long and just walk towards any light you see. Octavius ​​didn't hand Parker a business card; he handed him a lamp.

The Holy Lord had a basic understanding of Otto Octavius. The neural interface of the robotic arm had a reverse influence on the user's mental state; the longer it was used, the stronger the desire for control became. Octavius ​​was still rational, but his interest in Parker was not benevolent. It was the interest of a researcher who had seen a rare sample.

Parker still went to that address.

On Tuesday night, after completing his usual route through Queens, he turned into Brooklyn and found the street listed on the business card. It was an old industrial area, converted from abandoned warehouses. From the outside, it looked nothing special; the iron gates were rusty, and the house number had been repainted.

He squatted on the roof of the building opposite for twenty minutes.

The spider sensed no alarm. This didn't mean it was safe, it just meant there was no immediate threat. Parker could tell the difference, but he still flipped over.

The door wasn't locked. Pushing it open led to a downward staircase; the walls were painted with moisture-resistant paint, and the light bulbs were newly replaced. At the end of the stairs was a fire door, with a fingerprint lock and a numeric keypad on the panel next to it. Parker tried the number on the back of the business card.

The door opened.

The laboratory was much larger than he had imagined.

The ceiling is at least five meters high, and in the center is the prototype of a ring-shaped particle accelerator, surrounded by various modular components. The entire left wall is lined with tool racks, and on the right are three industrial-grade analytical instruments that Parker had only ever seen in academic paper images. The air smells of ozone and solder.

Octavius ​​sat at the innermost workbench, a welding torch in his hand, while four robotic arms performed four different tasks: one held a circuit board, one tightened screws, one flipped through documents, and one took parts from a drawer.

"There are slippers by the door." Octavius ​​didn't look up.

Parker looked down at his shoes, then at the ground where there was indeed a pair of blue plastic slippers.

He didn't change.

"Where are the things you stole?" Parker stood in the doorway.

“It wasn’t stealing. Oscorp owes me three years’ worth of research funding and all patent attribution rights. What I took was rightfully mine.” Octavius ​​turned off the welding torch and spun around in his chair. The four robotic arms retracted simultaneously, forming a neat arc behind him: “You’ve come.”

"Let me take a look."

"Look around as you like."

Parker took a few steps inside. He noticed a microscope on the workbench, and next to it, a small piece of white fiber was fixed on a slide—his spider silk.

"I measured the molecular weight; it's approximately 300,000 Daltons. With such a high crosslinking density, the tensile strength should be around 1.5 GPa."

"That's all." Octavius's tone was almost as if he were discussing the weather. "What solvent did you use? This protein should precipitate at room temperature."