"He's becoming more terrifying. It's like watching a cold-blooded monster take shape," Venom remarked, stunned by Lizard-Man's actions.
Maverick gritted his teeth, fending off the attacking lizard minions while trying to come up with a plan. His eyes fell on the device Lizard had been guarding so closely.
If he guessed correctly, that device was Dr. Connors' latest creation—the recombinator. This instrument was more powerful, compact, and effective than its predecessors.
Determined, Maverick started moving toward the recombinator while keeping the lizard minions at bay. Once he had the device in sight, he shot out a web to pull it towards him.
But just as his web attached to the device, the enraged Lizard leapt from a distance, severing the web.
In the brief moment it took, Lizard's previously severed limbs had already regrown, almost fully restored except for their slightly smaller size.
"Don't touch my things, you wretched creature!" Lizard roared, commanding the lizard minions to intensify their assault on Maverick.
At that moment, another web shot down from above, snatching the gene recombinator from Lizard's grasp.
"How could you have such a lively party without me?" quipped Peter as he swung in, examining the gene recombinator.
"Hold on a bit longer. I need two minutes to recalibrate this device and reverse its function," Peter called out to Maverick, sending a few lizard minions flying with his webs.
Maverick replied, "You'd better hurry. They can't hurt me, but it's getting hard to hold back. These lizard minions were once hostages. I don't want to hurt them too badly."
Seeing the situation, and the sudden appearance of Spider-Man, Lizard grew even more furious, charging towards Peter to reclaim the gene recombinator.
This device was crucial for his plan to purify humanity and create a new race.
"Damn wall-crawler, why are you stopping me? This is a critical step in human evolution, the inevitable future."
"Can't you see how superior and powerful we are now? Why would you stand in the way of humanity becoming better?"
Peter dodged Lizard's attacks with agile leaps and bounds along the walls, quipping, "Are you sure you've become more superior? I bet you can't even type on a keyboard, let alone hold a slice of pizza."
His hands moved quickly over the gene recombinator, configuring the reversal program. Previously, the device was set to fuse human and lizard genes, then recombine them. Now, Peter aimed to reverse this process, remove the lizard genes, and amplify the human genes to restore everyone to their original state.
After chasing Peter fruitlessly, Lizard halted and retrieved several vials of bright green liquid from a nearby lab drawer. These vials were a deeper, more vibrant green than the one Maverick had seen before, and the dosage appeared much larger.
*Bang! Bang! Bang!*
Lizard hurled the oversized glass vials to the ground, and the green liquid seeped out of the shattered glass, vaporizing into the air. This mist was far denser than the previous one.
"Hold your breath!" Peter shouted urgently as the mist rose. "This is an aerosol made from lizard DNA. It used to be liquid injections, but now it's designed for mass production of lizard people."
The original experiment involved injecting DNA and then using the gene recombinator for gene fusion. This was how Dr. Connors conducted his limb regeneration experiments on mice. He had since refined the process, turning injections into aerosol form and miniaturizing the gene recombinator for portability and ease of use.
It was clear that Dr. Connors intended to spread the aerosol throughout the city on a large scale and mass-produce lizard people. In his view, this was a purification and enhancement of human genes.
"It's a good thing we got here in time. If he had managed to spread this, it would have been a disaster," Peter thought to himself while holding his breath and making the final adjustments to the device.
As he focused on the adjustments, the massive silhouette of Lizard suddenly lunged out of the mist and tackled him. They both fell from the wall and plunged into the water below.
On the platform below, numerous lizard minions lay unconscious, knocked out by Maverick. The remaining lizard minions, stimulated by the green mist, began to grow even larger. Their scales hardened, and their claws started to lengthen.
'Damn! This mist is enhancing their lizard DNA. Peter needs to hurry up; we'll be in trouble if we can't reverse this.' Maverick thought anxiously while fending off the increasingly savage lizard minions.
After several more seconds, a blinding white light suddenly illuminated the water below. Spider-Man, Peter Parker, emerged from the water, pulling a now human Dr. Connors with him and returned to the platform.
"Phew, just in time," Peter said, lifting the gene recombinator and aiming it at the rampaging lizard minions.
"I'll count to three! Get ready to dodge!" Peter shouted to Maverick, who was still grappling with the lizard minions.
"Got it! Hurry up!" Maverick shouted back.
"Three, two, one!"
A beam of white light shot out from the device, targeting the lizard minions. As the countdown reached one, Maverick shot a web line to the ceiling and swung off the platform just in time.
The white light bathed the ferocious lizard minions, causing them to freeze. The red in their eyes faded, their green scales receded, and they gradually returned to their original human forms.
As the light dissipated, the platform was now scattered with the hostages who had been transformed into lizard minions.
"Finally, it's over. These lizards were tough to deal with, especially since we couldn't use lethal force," Maverick sighed in relief.
°°°
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