"Ah… ah—!"
Faint screams and broken moans echoed through the laboratory buried deep beneath the headquarters of Osborn Group. The room itself was bright, sterile, and immaculate—its white walls and polished floors cruelly indifferent to the suffering they contained.
Batman had found the place within minutes.
The moment he breached the building's internal network, he traced abnormal power draws and encrypted traffic patterns down to the second basement level. Security checkpoints, patrol routes, and reinforced doors meant nothing to him now. He slipped through blind spots in the surveillance like a phantom, stopping only when the truth stood naked before his eyes.
Rows of transparent containment tanks filled the chamber.
Inside each tank floated a human body.
Or what remained of one.
The man closest to Batman was barely recognizable. His clothes were torn and filthy, skin caked with grime. His ribcage protruded grotesquely forward, forming a warped, pigeon-chested deformity that pressed against the glass.
There were more than fifty tanks.
Most were dark.
Empty.
Dead.
A few still glowed faintly, life-support systems keeping their occupants alive by force alone. Those inside drifted in and out of consciousness, eyes unfocused, bodies twitching with involuntary spasms—the unmistakable signs of prolonged torture.
Whatever had been done to them had gone far beyond failure.
Batman's jaw tightened.
"They can't be moved," he thought grimly. "The moment these systems shut down, they'll die."
Beyond the deformities, one detail united them all: their appearance. Unkempt. Emaciated. Forgotten.
"Or perhaps they were forgotten long before this," Batman reasoned. "Taken from the streets. No names. No families asking questions."
Beggars.
Drifters.
Invisible people—turned into test subjects.
"By protocol," Batman thought, "this evidence should go straight to the police." A full investigation. Warrants. Arrests.
But protocol wasn't enough.
"Is this backed by the government?" he wondered. "The military?"
If so, burying it would be easy.
Exposing it publicly might be the only way.
Batman scanned the lab's layout, identifying the control room that monitored this level. He would need the surveillance feeds—raw, unedited—and a fast outlet.
Daily Bugle would do.
Wearing only a stealth suit—far from the full capabilities of his old Batsuit—Batman moved quickly. He located the monitoring terminal, extracted the live and archived footage, and sent it to a secure drop linked to the Bugle's investigative inbox.
Transmission confirmed.
Only then did he begin digging deeper.
He rifled through digital files and paper folders with surgical speed, eyes scanning test logs, autopsy reports, and progress summaries.
One entry stopped him cold.
> Experiment Subject No. 5
Results: Enhanced physical abilities confirmed.
Strength measured at eight times the average human.
Side effects: Development of eight cephalopod tentacles.
Subject acquired full aquatic adaptations consistent with squid physiology.
Status: Only successful experiment to date.
Batman's mind snapped the pieces together.
Squid Man.
Another line followed:
> Conclusion: Provides a new direction for the Super Soldier Serum.
Note: Subject escaped containment. Recapture failed.
The rest of the files were stamped with a single word.
FAILURE.
Every other subject.
Every other life.
Then—at the bottom of the archive—Batman found something that hadn't been cataloged at all.
An unnumbered entry.
> Unnamed Subject
Codename: Spider-Man
Assessment: Potentially more stable and successful than Subject No. 5.
Identity unknown. Presumed outsider who stole serum, self-administered, and manifested abilities.
Batman's breath caught.
> Estimated abilities: Super strength. Super speed. Enhanced reflexes. Accelerated healing. Web secretion. Danger sense.
The words blurred.
For the first time since arriving in this world, Batman felt the ground shift beneath him.
"Peter Parker…" he whispered.
The weight of it slammed into his chest like a physical blow.
"Did Osborn do this?" he thought. "At the cost of dozens of lives?"
For a heartbeat, the room seemed to close in around him.
Then his will snapped tight.
No.
This didn't add up.
Batman forced himself to remember—clearly, precisely—Peter Parker's own notes. The diary. The sketches. The first trembling entries written by a terrified teenager.
A field trip. A genetically altered spider. A bite.
An accident.
Not a serum.
Not a lab.
Not this.
"This is Osborn projecting their failure onto success," Batman concluded. "They saw Spider-Man appear and assumed he was theirs."
Wishful thinking.
But assumptions could still get Peter killed.
"I need proof," Batman decided. "I need to see the biotech division."
The Osborn Group's biotechnology base sat openly on the twentieth floor and above—the crown jewel of the company, the public face that brought in grants, contracts, and prestige.
Unlike this basement.
Batman inhaled, steadying himself, and abandoned the paper trail. He jacked into a lab terminal and pushed past surface-level firewalls into Osborn's core research servers.
Most files were legitimate—gene therapy, regenerative medicine, agricultural biotech.
This corporation hadn't risen on fraud alone.
Then alarms blared.
Intrusion detected.
Red warnings pulsed across the screen.
Batman prepared to disengage—until one filename froze his hand.
SPIDER-SLAYER.
He opened it.
> Assessment: Subject Spider-Man likely holds key to Serum stability.
Compared to Subject No. 5, Spider-Man is active, predictable, and easier to lure.
Proposal: Spider-Slayer Project.
Blueprints scrolled into view.
> Utilize humanoid power-armor adapted from military platforms.
Integrate glide-wing systems.
Objective: Capture Spider-Man alive for study.
Batman's blood went cold.
They weren't hunting a theory.
They were hunting Peter.
Crash!
Heavy footsteps thundered down the corridor. The security door—previously bypassed—was kicked open, metal shrieking as it slammed against the wall.
Fifty-one weapons were cocked almost simultaneously.
Batman melted back into shadow.
A sharp, controlled female voice cut through the chaos.
"The system says there's an intruder."
Disbelief edged her tone.
"…Damn it. Norman Osborn never told me he was running human experiments."
From Batman's angle, he saw only her back.
A silver-white combat suit molded to a powerful, athletic frame. Short silver-gray hair. A stance that radiated discipline and lethal confidence.
Silver Sable.
Someone murmured behind her, defensive. "President Sable—we were ordered to guard the exterior. The doors were sealed. We didn't know."
Silver Sable went silent.
Then, clipped and furious, "That sounds exactly like something Norman would do."
Another voice, uncertain. "Orders?"
She didn't hesitate.
"Catch the intruder. We'll earn Osborn's contract fee."
A beat.
"Then I'll personally send Norman Osborn to prison to be lectured by missionaries."
She turned, already pulling out a camera. "No gunfire. Some of these people are still alive."
Her team fanned out.
Batman didn't argue with the development.
More witnesses meant fewer ways for Osborn to bury this.
Still—he couldn't be caught.
There was too much left to do.
Batman flicked his wrist and sprayed a minimal smear of Gel onto the floor—barely enough to notice. He slipped away to a safe distance, pressed a concealed trigger, and—
Boom.
The blast was small but sharp, echoing through the lab.
Every head turned.
That was enough.
One versus fifty? Batman thought calmly. Good odds.
He burst from the shadows.
---------------------------------------------
Visit our Patreon for more:
Get membership in patreon to read more chapters
Extra chapters available in patreon
patreon.com/Dragonscribe31
----------------------------------------------------- .