When Peter opened his eyes again, he found himself—or rather, Amazing Spider-Man—in a place without the slightest trace of daylight.
Beneath him was a web woven from countless strands of spider silk, each one stretching deep into a different tunnel.
"Huh? Where am I?"
Peter began receiving the information.
Images of some of Amazing Spider-Man's important activities from that day appeared.
That morning, the part about fooling around with his girlfriend Gwen on the field had been cut off.
That afternoon, after school, Amazing Spider-Man had gone to the Osborn Group, where he had seen two people arguing.
Coincidentally, he knew both of them.
One was Gwen's mentor, the genetic biologist Doctor Curt Connors, who had also been a former colleague of Peter's father, Richard Parker.
Previously, while investigating why his father had left without explanation and disappeared all those years ago, Amazing Spider-Man had sought out Doctor Connors and given him the string of zero-decay-rate formulas Richard had left in his notebook.
The other man was the disgusting guy Peter had saved last night, who called himself the head of Osborn Bio Research and had looked at Peter like he wanted to devour him.
His name was Niles, right?
When Amazing Spider-Man arrived, the two of them were in the middle of a heated argument for some unknown reason.
The glass was too thick and the soundproofing too good, so Amazing Spider-Man could only vaguely make out several keywords: "lizard," "super," and "spider."
Soon afterward, the two men broke off their argument and went their separate ways.
That guy named Niles stormed out, glanced at Amazing Spider-Man, and failed to recognize him without his Spider-suit.
After that, Amazing Spider-Man spoke with Doctor Connors.
During their conversation, he sensed that something seemed off about the doctor.
After leaving behind some strange, baffling remarks, the doctor hurried away.
Amazing Spider-Man then saw a once-docile white mouse in the lab transformed into a savage, bloodthirsty beast, gnawing on the corpse of one of its companions.
Amazing Spider-Man remembered that the mouse was named Fred, and that it had been missing a leg.
Not long ago, Doctor Connors had used the zero-decay-rate formula Amazing Spider-Man provided to perfect his serum and injected it into Fred, with highly encouraging results.
Fred's missing leg had grown back!
But now, it...
If he remembered correctly, Doctor Connors's serum had used lizard genes as its basis.
But clearly, there was a severe flaw in the serum that increased the recipient's aggression.
It unleashed a reptilian sort of savagery!
That was why Fred, the white mouse injected with Lizard Serum, had shed its formerly gentle temperament and become so brutal!
Amazing Spider-Man suddenly understood everything.
So Doctor Connors was the Lizard-Man who had appeared on Williamsburg Bridge last night!
He hurried to the police station and told Gwen's father, Captain Stacy, about it.
But Captain Stacy did not believe him. He even thought Amazing Spider-Man was pulling his leg.
Left with no other choice, he could only try to capture Doctor Connors after he had turned into the Lizard-Man himself—or perhaps he should call him Doctor Lizard.
Without any leads, he happened to see something about how lizards liked burrowing into sewers. That gave him the idea of trying his luck in the sewers and seeing whether he could find Doctor Lizard.
Peter took over just as Amazing Spider-Man had come to the sewers to try his luck, finished setting up the web lines, and waited for the "lizard" to come to him.
Apparently, his urge last night to keep looking for Doctor Lizard had not come from him alone.
Amazing Spider-Man had felt the same way.
Did that mean the two of them had thought alike without discussing it?
"Web lines connected to web lines, Peter entering Peter. Interesting. As expected of me," Peter snickered.
He turned over and continued lying on the giant woven web.
It had to be said that this was actually a rather stupid method.
But he had no choice.
If he searched one place at a time, then given how complicated the sewers beneath Queens were, he might not find Doctor Lizard even by next year.
And whenever Peter recalled Doctor Connors's words before leaving, a chill ran down his spine.
"Don't worry, Mr. Parker. I'll be back soon. Good things are about to happen—very, very good things!"
His instincts told him Doctor Lizard was plotting something huge!
He had to find him as soon as possible!
As soon as possible? Easier said than done.
How could waiting for a lizard to take the bait be quick?
Wait quickly in the same spot?
Peter lay on the web in boredom, wondering whether he had come too early.
Would it have been better to log out first and come back after Amazing Spider-Man found Doctor Lizard's trail?
Bored, he pulled out his phone, planning to play a round of Bubble Bobble to kill time.
But after lighting up the screen, he found an extra line on the wallpaper.
"Hey, bro."
"Oh?" Peter's eyes lit up. It seemed the message he had left had been received by Amazing Spider-Man.
Still, that was the only line he found.
As for why.
He actually had a guess. Perhaps the things he did while possessing other Spider-Men would leave behind corresponding memories after he left.
But they probably could not read his memories.
With that thought, Peter left a greeting on the phone wallpaper: "Hi, bro. I'm Peter."
After doing something so silly, Peter grinned foolishly for a while.
He felt like he truly had an older brother from another world, unrelated by blood or family.
The feeling was rather strange.
They should count as Parallel Universe Counterparts. Different experiences and environments had shaped them into different people, but theoretically, they should still be the same person.
Their relationship was complicated.
It depended on how one looked at it.
But one thing was certain: perhaps they were even more like real brothers than ordinary brothers related by blood.
After that, Peter checked the web-shooters again.
After making some minor adjustments to them, the web-shooters had been completely renewed.
Still, given what had happened before, Peter needed to inspect them.
If they failed on him in the middle of a fight later, that would be bad.
Thwang~
One strand of web suddenly twitched.
Peter's expression hardened as he immediately put away the phone he had been using to play Bubble Bobble.
Something had touched his web!
There were plenty of creatures in the sewers, but his webs had been fired relatively high up. Small creatures could not possibly reach them.
In these sewers, there was only one being that could trigger the webs.
Doctor Lizard!
As Peter focused, his Spider-Sense switched from passive to active mode and began spreading outward.
He immediately detected something.
A source of danger was slowly approaching him through one of the tunnels!
Before you continue