Field Alpha buzzed faintly in the stillness of early morning, casting a soft blue glow across the darkened room. Gwen sat in the central console chair, fingers flicking rapidly across her tablet. The air smelled faintly of warm circuitry and recycled ozone. Every few seconds, one of the overhead drones gave a soft chirp, confirming that the city-wide grid scan was still active. She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and leaned closer.. Gwen stared at the stream of code flowing across her screen, her jaw tense.
"It's the same encryption," she said, eyes flicking over data points. "I matched it with Oscorp's dormant off-site data archive. This isn't just a coincidence."
Luffy hovered nearby, sipping from a thermal mug. "You think this is coming from inside the city?"
"I think it never left," Gwen muttered.
She tapped several keys. A holographic map unfolded in front of them, layers of old subway lines intersecting with a radiation heatmap. One line blinked red.
"Here," she said, pointing. "Underneath the old Lafayette tunnels. Officially sealed in 1997. But this data says otherwise."
Luffy's eyes narrowed. "Underground blacksite. You think it's Oscorp?"
"I think it's where they've been hiding the real plan."
Night draped the city in silence as Gwen and Luffy approached the abandoned station entrance. It looked like nothing — a rusted service gate beside a graffiti-covered maintenance shed.
But Gwen's visor highlighted residual thermal signatures and faint EM radiation pulses. Someone had been here recently.
They dropped silently through a rusted rooftop vent, descending into pitch-black corridors that reeked of mold and stagnant water. The air was thick and damp, each footstep echoing faintly off graffiti-covered concrete walls. Old posters from the 1980s, now peeling and faded, clung to the stairwell like ancient memories. Their breath fogged slightly in the cold air as they descended deeper. At the bottom, they found a steel bulkhead with biometric locks. The metal was pristine—recently maintained..
"Horizon tech," Gwen said quietly, running her fingers across the biometric pad. "This is one of our prototypes — months old, modified. They've been watching our upgrades and copying us."
Luffy's fist curled slightly. "Let's see what they built."
The door slid open with a hiss.
They slipped inside.
The corridor was sterile and cold — unlike the decay above. Neon panels lit the narrow hallways. Automated turrets turned slowly in ceiling recesses, their movement smooth but quiet. Everything about this place reeked of precision and intent.
"No guards," Gwen whispered. "Just machines."
"Cheaper," Luffy muttered.
They reached a door marked with biohazard symbols and old Oscorp insignia.
Inside, the lab was eerie in its stillness. The terminal buzzed faintly, a faint blue glow illuminating the room filled with faint whirs and the pulsing of power lines embedded in the walls. Gwen stepped up to the console and paused. Her eyes caught a faint Oscorp logo buried beneath layers of interface—long deprecated, but unmistakable. She tapped the interface, and instantly, it unfolded with polished, high-level security clearance—far above standard corporate access. Whoever was behind this had legacy control..
Gwen accessed it.
Lines of data flooded her display. Test subject records. Growth cycles. Genetic modeling. Mutagenic correction logs. She paled.
"They're engineering enhanced humans," she said. "Muscle reweaving, neural integration, even prototype neuro-adaptive implants. This isn't theoretical."
"They're making soldiers," Luffy said quietly.
In the next room, four cryotubes lined the walls.
One was empty.
The others held subjects suspended in viscous green fluid — muscular bodies, wires embedded in their skin, blank expressions behind fogged glass.
"Subject X-01: Failed — Reassigned to Surface Field," Gwen read aloud.
She took a step back. "One of them got out."
She inserted a microdrive into the terminal and downloaded everything.
"Let's go."
As they retraced their steps, warning klaxons blared to life. Red lights stuttered along the corridor edges, casting pulsing shadows. Gwen's visor lit up with detection markers—motion tracking was online. Above them, vents shifted as security drones deployed with sharp, metallic screeches. Gwen threw herself sideways behind a wall brace as energy blasts scorched the air where she'd just been..
"They know we're here," Luffy said.
"Disabling sensors now," Gwen responded, sliding beneath a rotating turret and slamming a disruptor patch against its base.
Luffy moved ahead, stretching his arms to vault over drones as they emerged from wall panels.
He deflected stun blasts with his reinforced sleeves, grabbing one drone mid-air and slamming it into another.
"Go!" he shouted. "I'll buy ten seconds."
Gwen sprinted to the elevator shaft, launched upward with a webline, and yanked the service hatch open.
Luffy followed moments later, bruised but breathing hard.
They escaped into the night through a half-flooded emergency tunnel.
Back at Field Alpha, Gwen moved in tense silence. Her hands hovered over the console before inserting the microdrive into STRAW's primary port. The AI flickered to life, processing thousands of files in seconds. Screens burst open with surveillance logs, biometric patterns, test subject notes—each one darker than the last. Gwen's breath caught as one video revealed a subject convulsing mid-procedure before going still. She looked away, blinking hard. Beside her, Luffy watched quietly, fists clenched.'s secure container.
The system displayed the Oscorp logs — surveillance videos, trial notes, failed subjects.
One clip showed a blurred figure walking through the East Side docks — stiff, inhuman movement. Subject X-01, weeks ago.
Gwen sat back, shoulders heavy.
"They didn't just copy our tech. They used it to finish Osborn's final legacy."
Luffy nodded, eyes focused on the screen. "And now it's walking around."
Gwen looked at him. "We just walked into their den and walked back out with proof."
"So what's next?"
She closed her laptop slowly.
"We bring down the hive."