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Marvel: King of The Swarm Chapter 41: Integrated
🕑 Added 2025-06-23 17:15:08 +0000 UTCGwen didn't know what to expect as she swung her way toward the coordinates Harry had sent.No—if she was being honest, she did. Part of her was expecting a trap.
It was a paranoid instinct, sure, but not an entirely unreasonable one. Logic told her it made no sense—Genesis had already crushed her, dismantled her resistance without lifting a finger. He had nothing to gain from theatrics. And yet, something about Harry's cryptic offer to help her and the consistent clinical tone of his voice made her skin crawl.
The coordinates led her to a mostly forgotten stretch along the Hudson River, a sliver of urban decay where weeds outnumbered people and the skyline gave way to crumbling warehouses and rusted fences. No gleaming laboratories. No Oscorp satellite facilities. Just cracked pavement, sagging light posts, and silence. The kind of place people avoided without knowing why.
Which made it the perfect hiding place for something impossible.
Her webbing caught the edge of an old streetlamp, and she perched for a moment, scanning the structure below—a squat brick warehouse that looked like it hadn't seen legitimate use in decades. But as she narrowed her gaze, a tiny glimmer of color caught her attention: a small, cherry-red light on the roof, blinking like a beacon in the dark.
He's actually here.
Her chest tightened.
When she landed softly on the rooftop, Gwen found Harry Osborn waiting. He stood near a rusted ventilation shaft, cigarette smoldering at the edge of his lips, dressed in nothing more than a pair of cargo pants and a tank top, exposing his board shoulders. Looking at his face Gwen couldn't help but feel some unease, as her eyes felt drawn to Harry's visage. Every feature of his face was perfect, almost uncannily so, like someone had analyzed calculated, and crafted the most scientifically attractive face.
"Hmm. Right on time," he said without turning. Smoke curled upward around his face like steam, "Looks like you took my warning seriously."
Gwen wrinkled her nose at the cigarette. "You know, for someone who can manipulate biology on a cellular level, it's kind of ridiculous that you still smoke."
Harry turned toward her, exhaling a plume of smoke from his nose in a slow, practiced stream.
"Regenerating alveolar tissue and neutralizing toxins makes for excellent daily training," he replied. "Besides, self-destruction is part of the human experience. I'd rather not grow out of it entirely."
Without another word, he turned and approached a low, rusted elevator door built into the roof itself. Gwen stared after him, then followed—her unease sharpening with each step.
"I thought you said you couldn't use your powers anymore."
"I said they were recovering," Harry corrected, pressing his palm to the biometric pad. "When my father drained my bioenergy, he didn't realize—or didn't care—that my body couldn't function without it. That energy fuels every one of my regenerative systems. Without it, I entered what I call Bio-Stall—a systemic collapse. Imagine trying to run a supercomputer on the power from a AA battery."
The elevator groaned as it opened. Inside, dim blue lights buzzed to life.
"For three years," Harry continued as they stepped inside, "every ounce of energy I could generate was rerouted to keeping myself alive. Repairing what was broken. Realigning DNA. Now I have just enough left over to start pushing the limits again. But it's like rebuilding a muscle. It takes time."
Gwen raised an eyebrow. "So... how much time are we talking?"
Harry gave her a sideways look and chuckled.
"At my current regeneration rate? Ten years."
Gwen's eyes widened in disbelief as she tried to imagine going a decade without her powers, she'd rather lose a limb. "Ten years?"
Harry smirked. "Well, that was the timeline until I came up with a plan. And part of that plan involves you."
They descended deeper. The elevator creaked, echoing down into silence.
"And what happens when you're back at full strength?" Gwen asked, folding her arms. "What's the endgame, Harry?"
He didn't miss a beat.
"I take over the world."
Gwen blinked before frowning. "That's not funny."
"I'm not joking," he said, dead serious. Then, after a beat: "...Okay, maybe a little. I meant it in the figurative sense, here let me show you."
The elevator doors slid open with a hiss, and the temperature shifted.
Gwen's breath caught.
Before her stretched a biological cathedral—a lab, unlike anything she had ever seen. The sterile white tiles of the floor gleamed like bone, reflecting pale blue ambient light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Holographic screens floated above steel consoles, projecting endless streams of data and simulations in languages she didn't recognize.
But the centerpiece was what lay beyond: a living museum of genetic anomalies. Towering terrariums lined the walls, each containing lifeforms altered beyond recognition—reptiles that glowed with radiant bioluminescence, fish whose fins looked more like articulated claws, and an ant colony the size of a midsize dog kennel, each insect moving with eerie synchronicity. Every tank hummed with quiet energy. Every creature pulsed with design.
"What... the hell is this place?" Gwen asked, stepping forward as if in a dream.
"My biolab," Harry said simply. "My cathedral of progression."
He strolled past her, gesturing at the space as though it were no more unusual than a garage workshop.
"I can't wield my power fully," he explained, "but I still understand life. Intuitively. I see the connections, the hidden blueprints. Combine that with bleeding-edge gene-editing systems, and I can still bend biology—just more slowly. More precisely."
Gwen walked past a terrarium housing what looked like a flowering plant with pulsing veins and bioluminescent thorns.
"And... all this is just your practice to grow your powers?"
Harry stopped at a nearby terminal and typed a command. A section of the floor slowly sank away, revealing a platform lined with cylindrical growth chambers—each containing mutated organs floating in a viscous, golden solution.
"No, this," he said, "is the future of the human race."
Gwen stepped closer, squinting. Some organs looked familiar—a heart, a liver, a pair of lungs. Others were twisted into completely alien shapes. Some glowed. One was pulsing independently.
"You're growing organs?"
"I'm perfecting them," Harry said. "Livers that can neutralize heavy metals and break down nuclear waste. Lungs that filter particulate toxins down to the nanoscale. Immune systems pre-adapted to eradicate every known disease vector, viral or bacterial. Imagine... a body that can survive a chemical war zone. Or eat once a month and not feel hunger. What happens when a billion people no longer suffer from famine or chronic illness?"
Gwen's lips parted, but no words came. A quiet war raged behind her eyes—disgust, awe, fear, and the faintest glimmer of hope.
"And how exactly do you plan to give all of humanity new organs?" she asked finally. "You're going to install state-of-the-art fully staffed hospitals on every street corner?"
Harry smirked at Gwen's sarcasm, "Of course not, that's why I need to recover faster. That's why I need your suit. Whatever Genesis embedded in it... it's accelerating your cellular reactivity. If I can reverse-engineer that process, nothing will be beyond my reach."
The platform lowered, vanishing again into the floor. In its place rose a massive device—three curved arms surrounding a circular platform, each arm bristling with sensors, articulated scanner nodes, and instruments that looked like a hybrid of surgical precision and alien architecture.
Harry walked to a nearby control panel and activated the interface.
"But, I'm going to be honest with you," he said, typing quickly. "There's no telling what Genesis might have left in that suit—fail-safes, kill switches, passive defenses. You might be wearing a living weapon. Or a ticking bomb."
Gwen swallowed trying to think about it. "...You're saying I might literally explode."
"I'm saying I don't know," Harry repeated, his voice even but edged with tension. "Which is why I need you to step into that scanner—so I can finally see what we’re dealing with."
Gwen hesitated for only a moment before stepping up onto the circular platform. The scanner’s arms, smooth and serpentine in their motion, began to hum as dormant systems flared to life. A cascade of lights blinked on—soft blues, harsh reds, and a golden pulse that echoed like a heartbeat. Then the arms began to move.
They rotated around her in calculated arcs, sweeping her body from head to toe in synchronized rhythm. Thin beams of light scanned her with razor precision, flickering like strobe patterns across her skin. The low thrum of energy built steadily, the sound reverberating through the platform beneath her feet like the breath of some great machine drawing in.
She clenched her jaw and kept still, resisting the urge to flinch as something warm, almost sentient, passed over her. The suit didn’t respond. Yet.
Then, as quickly as it began, the scanner slowed. The arms retracted, folding back like the petals of some metal flower. The humming died, replaced by an eerie silence.
A monitor on the far wall flickered, and then the image appeared.
Gwen turned—and felt her breath hitch in her throat.
The display was a hybrid visualization: skeletal structure layered over muscle, organ systems rendered in sharp detail, all interwoven with glowing golden threads. They didn’t just wrap around her body—they infused it. Intricate tendrils of luminous material curled around her spine, coiled through her lungs, branched along every artery, and wrapped tightly around her heart like ivy gripping stone.
Her voice came out hollow. “That’s… not good, is it?”
“No,” Harry muttered, eyes locked to the screen. His cigarette had gone out in his hand, forgotten. He exhaled slowly, not from smoke, but from the weight of realization. “No, it’s not.”
He stepped closer to the screen, tracing a path along her femur, then her rib cage. His fingers hovered over the network of golden filaments with a mix of awe and concern.
“It’s everywhere,” he said quietly. “Every muscle fiber. Every nerve. It’s not just bonded to you—it’s integrated. Embedded in your circulatory system. Interwoven with your lymph nodes. Threaded through your endocrine glands like it’s rewriting how your hormones regulate.”
Gwen swallowed, hard. “And that explains the power boost?”
Harry nodded, jaw tight. “Yeah. The suit’s not just enhancing you. It’s rebuilding you. You’ve likely already experienced neurological enhancements, increased cellular turnover, maybe even organ reconfiguration. You’re stronger because you're not entirely human anymore.”
She looked down at herself, suddenly hyper-aware of the skin-tight material beneath her hoodie, as if she could feel the golden tendrils shifting beneath the surface.
“But if it’s helping me,” she asked slowly, “why does it feel like I’m on borrowed time?”
Harry didn’t answer right away. He leaned back from the monitor and folded his arms, the muscle in his jaw twitching.
“Because it’s not just helping you,” he said. “It’s adapting to you. Learning from your body. And if—when—it decides you’re incompatible... it has the biological access to shut everything down. Your heart. Your lungs. Your brain. All of it. Instantaneously.”
He looked her in the eyes for the first time since the scan.
“If this thing ever turns against you, Gwen... it won’t fight you.”
“It’ll kill you.”
