Doctor Lizard felt the steel guardrail suddenly grow heavier.
Before he could understand why, a massive figure appeared at the other end.
Blonsky.
At over a ton in weight, his sheer mass turned the guardrail into an unwieldy lever. Doctor Lizard could no longer lift it.
CLANG!
The twisted metal crashed onto the bridge.
Doctor Lizard hissed and lunged forward with claws extended.
He never made it.
A massive hand closed around his head.
Then his world disappeared.
BOOM!
Peter Parker, who had only just managed to get back to his feet, felt the entire bridge shudder beneath him.
Blonsky slammed Doctor Lizard's skull directly into the concrete.
Spiderweb cracks exploded across the bridge surface.
The concrete caved inward.
Doctor Lizard felt his skull groan under the pressure. Scales split open. Blood poured from shredded flesh.
"ROAAAR!"
The reptilian monster bellowed in rage and struggled to rise.
BOOM!
The giant hand drove him back down.
The bridge shook again.
More concrete shattered, exposing twisted steel reinforcement bars beneath.
This time, his skull actually burst.
Blood, brain matter, and tissue sprayed across the fractured roadway.
Yet Doctor Lizard's regeneration was astonishing.
Even with catastrophic brain damage, new tissue rapidly formed. Flesh knitted together. Bone regrew.
Within moments, he was healing.
Blonsky frowned.
This was annoying.
Drex had specifically ordered the creature captured alive.
The problem was that if Blonsky used too much force, he'd kill it.
If he held back too much, its regeneration made every attack meaningless.
After a brief moment of consideration, he released his grip.
Doctor Lizard let out a pained hiss.
Despite the mutation's effects on his mind, his survival instincts remained intact.
The creature standing before him wasn't an opponent.
It was a predator.
He turned and ran.
He barely took three steps.
WHAM!
A fist buried itself in his abdomen.
The force punched straight through layers of muscle and scales.
The shockwave liquefied his internal organs.
Doctor Lizard collapsed.
Chunks of blood and ruined organs spilled from his mouth as he coughed violently.
Even with his regenerative abilities, restoring damage of that magnitude would take several minutes.
Yet notably, despite everything he'd endured, he still didn't revert to human form.
Blonsky ripped another long section of steel guardrail free.
The supposedly rigid metal twisted in his hands like cloth.
With a sharp snap of his wrists, he wrapped the railing around Doctor Lizard several times over, binding him securely.
By then, the Administration's armored transport vehicles had arrived.
Personnel quickly loaded the captured mutant into one of the transports.
In the shadows nearby, several Hydra operatives watched the scene unfold.
Their eyes practically gleamed with greed.
"Are we really not going to take that thing?"
One agent couldn't help himself.
"Did you see what it did on the bridge? That kind of power..."
Another operative immediately shut him down.
"Do you have a death wish?"
He pointed toward the armored convoy.
"Abomination is riding in that vehicle."
"If we attack, the best-case scenario is complete annihilation."
He shook his head.
"No. A much smarter approach would be infiltrating the Human Supernatural Strategic Defense, Attack, and Logistics Administration."
The others reluctantly agreed.
Inside one of the armored transports, Blonsky sat quietly.
Officially, he was escorting the prisoner.
Unofficially, he was there to discourage anyone from getting any bright ideas.
Not that he considered Doctor Lizard particularly dangerous anymore.
Back at Administration headquarters, the atmosphere couldn't have been more different.
The staff were having dinner.
A very large dinner.
Premium wagyu flown in from Japan sat beside prime American Angus beef. Several professional chefs worked furiously over blazing stoves.
One chef stood before a roaring burner, wearing insulated gloves while flipping enormous cuts of beef in an oversized skillet.
The meat had been marinated with oregano, thyme, rosemary, and other spices.
As it hit the scorching pan, rich aromas filled the room.
Normal cooking methods simply couldn't keep up with a room full of Hulks.
The chefs had long ago learned that speed mattered more than presentation.
After receiving the serum, everyone's appetite had become absurd.
Any one of them could probably bankrupt an all-you-can-eat buffet single-handedly.
A banquet table designed for ten people groaned beneath the weight of food.
Massive steaks.
Roasted lamb.
Corn tortillas.
Fresh salads.
Premium alcohol from around the world.
A whole roasted sheep occupied the center of the table like a conquered beast.
Nobody worried about drinking too much.
Their enhanced bodies metabolized alcohol almost instantly.
Drex had already confirmed it through testing.
Assuming nothing unusual happened, most of them could smoke, drink, and generally abuse their bodies for centuries and still live beyond five hundred years.
Wolverine grabbed a fist-sized chunk of sizzling beef straight from the serving platter.
A few bites later, most of the plate had vanished.
Unlike many directors, Drex didn't isolate himself from his people.
He sat at the same table as everyone else.
He took a long drink of chilled orange juice before tearing a leg from the roasted sheep.
Wrapping crispy lamb in fresh lettuce, he took a bite and nodded approvingly.
The vegetables had come from suppliers that specialized in luxury restaurants.
Even Drex, who overwhelmingly preferred meat, had to admit they were excellent.
Fresh.
Sweet.
Perfectly crisp.
A short while later, Blonsky returned.
He casually drained an entire bottle of whiskey before joining the feast.
For Drex, the Doctor Lizard incident seemed finished.
Case closed.
Problem solved.
Unfortunately, parallel universes were rarely identical.
Sometimes, a single difference was enough to change everything.
Norman Osborn watched footage of Doctor Lizard's rampage on the Brooklyn Bridge.
The video continued until Abomination descended from the sky and subdued the creature within minutes.
Norman sat silently.
Then he smiled.
"So the Lizard Serum still isn't enough."
Fortunately, he had found something far superior.
Ever since the Parker family incident years ago, Norman had secretly monitored Curt Connors' research.
Every stage.
Every formula.
Every test result.
As a consequence, he possessed everything necessary to reproduce the Lizard Serum himself.
The problem was that he didn't want a stronger lizard.
He wanted something greater.
Something capable of curing the Osborn family's hereditary illness while also granting power beyond anything humanity had ever seen.
Power equal to Abomination.
Equal to the Hulk.
Or perhaps even greater.
Years earlier, in the Philippines, a mining operation owned by Universal Western Mining had uncovered something extraordinary.
A cave-in exposed a hidden underground chamber.
Inside lay enormous radioactive mineral deposits.
And something else.
A skeleton.
A truly impossible skeleton.
Over one hundred meters tall.
A tail stretching more than one hundred seventy meters.
Even the largest dinosaurs known to science would have looked insignificant standing beside it.
Osborn Industries had spent years studying the remains.
Their conclusions were staggering.
The creature's lifespan may have extended for hundreds of millions of years.
If Norman could successfully integrate its genetic material into his own body, he could eliminate the Osborn hereditary disease forever.
More importantly...
He could achieve immortality.
True immortality.
Among Earth's modern species, lizards possessed the closest genetic relationship to the ancient organism.
That was the real reason he had funded Connors' work so aggressively.
The Lizard Serum had never been the final goal.
It had merely been the foundation.
Now, in a secure laboratory, Norman carefully recreated Connors' formula.
Every step remained the same.
Every chemical process.
Every catalyst.
Only one ingredient differed.
Instead of lizard DNA...
He added the DNA extracted from that ancient colossal creature.
...
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