Test Chapters

Spider-Man and The Giving Tree

Bill rubbed his face as he walked unlocked the door to his apartment. He had just returned from a long day at work, and was dead tired.

Horizon was making large strides in every field of research it had touched. He was given almost complete freedom and an almost unlimited budget to achieve his project from Max Modell himself. 

Bill was an accomplished biochemist, and specialised in human enhancement. He had been working for Oscorp for a long time, before eventually resigning after one too many fiascos involving his colleagues, not to mention his boss. He was a New Yorker to the core, though, and so didn't move to Germany or Latveria along with the vast majority of his friends. Though the aforementioned countries were heavily funding research, especially in his field, he didn't want to leave his city.

'Superheroes were all well and good, but they cause all sorts of damage around us normal folk,' he remarked inside his head, idly remembering the times he'd had to pay for renovations to his apartment. Due to the excessive superhero presence, and the resulting confrontations with supervillains, property prices in New York had shot through the roof, along with the 'super insurance' rates, which were already astronomical. For good reason, too; his car had been smashed three times in four years, and his apartment had been busted into from the outside twice, both times due to Iron Man crash landing in.

So it made sense that he wasn't able to afford much, especially when he'd just resigned his job, until Max Modell had personally come to seek him out in his tiny one room studio, offering him a deal he couldn't even imagine on his best day. It was a no brainer that he'd accept, and he hadn't looked back since.

He blearily opened the door and stepped in, only to be greeted by the familiar smell of sweat and dirty clothes. A groan escaped his mouth as he realised that he hadn't done the laundry for a week, and he'd have to get on that before he could collapse in his twin bed.

He grumpily switched the lightbulb on, turning to head into the kitchen for a glass of water, only for a strange sight to catch his eye. A pool of blood was sitting on the ground. It still seemed fresh (he'd been near enough blood to know the difference), and there was a trail heading further into his apartment, near his bedroom. It appeared like whoever had bled here had been dragged in.

Bill warily crept forward, his shaking hands reaching for the nearest item he could defend with, which happened to be a kitchen knife from the counter. He trembled in fear; despite the fact that he was accustomed to New York being on fire, or under siege, or affected by any number of disasters, there was still something terrifying about being affected yourself.

He wiped the sweat off his brow, before slowly opening his bedroom door. He found the corner lamp on, the only light source in the whole room. The next thing he noticed almost caused him to throw up. A body was laying across his bed, Bill's sheets soaked with freshly dripping blood. There was a large bullet wound in the middle of the chest, and an expression of terror across the face which he knew he'd never forget for the rest of his life. It took him a second before he realised that he knew the person. It was Walt, the elderly security guard who'd always greeted him cheerily.

"Hello, Doctor," came a robotic voice from the other side of the room. Bill quickly swivelled around, his knife held tightly in his trembling hands. The majority of the figure was hidden from the light, with him only being able to make out a black trench coat in the dim light of the lamp. The voice was modulated, with different voices being superimposed over each other to give a very creepy effect on the listener, which, Bill supposed, was the reason.

"Wh-who are you?" he stuttered, cursing internally as his voice shook more than he would have liked. "What do you want with me? Is it money? I don't have much, but you can have what I-"

"I don't need your money," the thing cut him off. "But I do need something else from you."

"A-and what would that be?" he asked quietly, eyes not leaving the figure, both for suspicion of harm, and also because he knew that if he focused on the body anymore, he would throw up.

"A particular project of yours," came the reply. "I believe it goes by the name of 'IX-LM2K'."

Bill paled. That was a top secret project, that only his team and boss knew about. He had just come from conducting the trials for it, and it was a remarkable success. He also knew that he couldn't possibly give something like that to a psychopath, for it could have disastrous consequences in the wrong hands.

"I-I have no idea what you're talking about," he stammered, the statement sounding less than believable to his ears.

Apparently, the figure agreed, because within a split second, he was held aloft by his throat. He thrashed, trying desperately to get rid of the arm that choked his windpipe. He could feel his breath leaving him, his lungs struggling to draw more air into them.

"Please don't lie to me," the even wording didn't change. Neither did the hand, which didn't move even with all his strength pressing down on it. "I know what it is, and I know what it does. I just need to know where it is, so don't make this more difficult and tell me what I want to know."

The project was a serum. It had been a brainchild of his from long ago, around the time of the debut of the X-men. Bill had wondered why regular people couldn't have fantastical powers like the mutants, or the inhumans. 

Since then, he'd been working to create a formula. One that would give powers, random powers, to anybody who used it. It didn't need a genetic quirk, or some ancient prehistoric biological engineering to succeed. It worked independently, transforming the user into a superhuman.

Horizon was hiding it from everyone, as such knowledge could be catastrophic to everyone. However, it seemed that they had a leak, one to a very dangerous individual.

Involuntarily, Bill's eyes strayed towards the corner of the room. The black wearing figure turned it's grim reaper like mask towards the same corner only to see a small satchel sitting snugly against the wall.

The person dropped Bill, before marching to the corner and ripping open the bag. Inside was a metallic container, filled with a blue liquid. On it was the clear label reading 'IX-LM2K'.

"Wait," Bill rasped from his place on the floor. He knew he shouldn't have brought the vial home, but his scientific mind couldn't resist the temptation to play with it privately. "Wait, you don't know what you're doing."

"Thank you for your cooperation, doctor," the black figure said, before a bang was heard throughout the apartment building. Bill lay still with a hole in his head, slowly bleeding onto the carpeted floor.

"And don't worry," the person continued as if nothing had happened. "I'll make sure that you're creation won't go to waste. You have my word."

Hey guys!

So a test chapter, just like the previous one. This would be a detective story, not unlike the 'Court of Owls' run of Batman.

I want this to be a conclusive story, to end the 60+ year run of Spider-Man. If I decide to write this, I hope it would serve as a decent ending for the character.

Most importantly, it would be written to test his idea of 'With great power, there must also come great responsibility' . I would write it to see how far that applies, and what others might think about it (the people of New York, not his friends). 

Tell me what you guys think, and I'll see whether this has any promise.

- BuddyBoy27