"Tell me everything," I asked her softly.
"We were all fresh out of college," she admitted, "geneticists from the top universities in the world. We were recruited and asked to replicate a formula, some kind of genetic enhancer. We didn't know what it did, but the challenge was exciting. We were well paid and well funded. And around two months ago we cracked it."
I nodded, two months ago the children started to disappear. "What happened next?"
"They-they brought in the children," she looked sick, "so many of them. They made us inject the children with the formula, trying to...I don't know what. The gene was supposed to make them powerful, beyond human. But...something went wrong. They died, they all died."
Experimentation on kids? Why did I feel like killing someone? "Did anyone participate willingly?"
She shook her head, "no, nobody did."
"Then why?" I couldn't keep the hate out of my voice.
"Because they threatened us, everyone one of us," she explained. She told me that before, but after what I just heard….I needed to know they had no choice in this as well.
I looked at her, she was scared. But I knew she was also feeling guilty, maybe she could help me.
"How many guards in the building?"
She looked surprised at the question, "ah, well, 10 on each floor and 30 in the basement."
"What's in the basement?"
"T-that's where the gas chamber is," she gulped, "we have to supply the formula through the air. No other choice. So the children are….are…."
"It's okay, you don't have to say it," I stop her, "tell me..."
"Betty, Betty Cooper," the woman supplied.
I blinked, "like the Archie Andrews comic books?"
She chuckled, "yup. I'm surprised, I didn't realise superheros...well, read comics."
I scoffed, "woman, I am a comic." She laughed, and for a moment everything seemed better. I sighed and spoke, "Betty, I need your help."
She looked afraid, "w-what? Me? But what can I do?"
"You can get me proof," I told her, "you have files of your experiments, yes?"
"Yes, we all do."
"Well I need them."
"Why? What can you do with them?"
"I've been sent by the government, originally I thought it was just a kidnapping ring, but now it is so much more than that. I need proof, I need information so that my employers can track them down. The people that forced you to kill children, they don't deserve to hide in the shadows and play around with human lives. Help me, help you."
I moved back and waited. She looked conflicted for the longest time. And then she looked up at me with determined eyes, "I-I'll do it!"
I nodded, "good. Now," I kicked open the stall door, "let's go save that kid."
We snuck out and I followed Betty's lead as we snuck into her lab. There I hacked into the system and downloaded the building's plans into my SA. She and I then split ways, she went to the main data storage of this entire building, while I made my way downstairs.
I quickly found three guards down the corridor. I smiled, I leaped up and kicked the one in the middle right in the back sending him flying forward.
"What the-," the one on the right said just as my fist meet his face and my left leg kicked the last guy in the groin before I kneed him in the face.
I grabbed all three and stuck them to the wall with my super hard webbing just as my phone rang.
I picked it up and put it on speaker, "hello, you're on speaker."
"Why? Isn't this supposed to be a stealth mission?" came Nat's drowning voice.
"It was, now it's more like a get to the basement as fast as you can kind of thing," I webbed two more guards before they even noticed me and quickly ran into the elevator at the end of the corridor.
"Spider, is there anything you wish to tell me?" she asked slowly.
"Yeah, tell the Director he should have had someone on this the moment the kids started to vanish," the elevator dropped to the first floor. "Someone's been experimenting on them, trying to mutate them with some mutagen. Even the scientists working here are doing so under protest. Every child so far has been killed, only one's alive, and I'm not planning on letting him die."
"Spider you should wait for backup," Natasha hissed.
"No," I growled back "it's now or never. Sorry Widow, but I'm not the kind of guy who sits back and lets a kid get killed," the elevator slowed down, "bring people to my position, don't hurt the scientists, the guards on the other hand are fair play."
"Fine Spider," she sighed, "just...just don't die, okay?"
I chuckled, "okay Widow, I promise," I hanged up just as the doors opened and two guards looked at me in surprise.
"What the fuck-" I grabbed them both and pulled them inside. I threw them into the lift and started to beat on them. The doors slowly closed and when they opened I was the only one who walked out with the other two unconscious bodies behind me.
I snuck along the shadows of long and dark corridor. According to the schematics of the building there should be a large room further ahead. I found it quickly, but soon realised it was locked, not with a key too, it was the digital kind. Luckily I had just the thing for something like that.
I took out the Oscorp decoder box I stole from Rhino's crew and set it against the digital lock, the machine activated and whirled, running quickly through numbers before I heard the door unlock.
I took the decoder box and quietly walked into the room, closing the door behind me. Inside looked like a villain's lair if I ever saw on.
The walls were lined with machines and screens, scientist walking around looking at calculations, and for each scientist there were two guards with machine guns. And in the middle of the room was a glass box chamber with an unconscious boy inside it, pipes connected to the inside.
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