𝙎𝙋𝙄𝘿𝙀𝙍-𝙈𝘼𝙉 ¹ | 𝙈𝘾𝙐 𝙍𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙄𝙣𝙨𝙚𝙧𝙩

8.08 - 𝙒𝙝𝙤 𝙒𝙚 𝘾𝙝𝙤𝙤𝙨𝙚 𝙏𝙤 𝘽𝙚

STAFF MEMBERS FOR Kingsley Corp were in an offsite facility clearing out various equipment, technology, and prototypes they were working on. They were ordered by Norman Osborn, the now-current CEO and big boss of the company.

Roderick had been pronounced dead after police found the car wreck two weeks ago. They figured his body had washed away along with the two other officers transporting him. Norman had no time to think about it and simply moved on with business.

With him out of the picture, he was now in charge of the company. People had a sour taste in their mouths after finding out their previous CEO was the Hobgoblin, so he planned on operating off a clean slate and reviving it.

So, he had a new name in mind for the company: Oscorp Industries.

The first order of business was to clean out anything Roderick was designing or had planned to. The staff members were in the offsite warehouse doing just that. But...they weren't told to destroy them. Norman still wanted them in his possession...just in case they were needed.

For the benefit of the company, of course.

The staff consisted of 6 men and 3 women. Some were outside loading the equipment into trucks, and others were inside, taking count of the various prototypes.

"Look at these..." One man holding a clipboard spoke. He was eyeing a glass case containing orange spheres. "Wide-area fragmentation explosive rounds?"

His colleague chuckled. "Ha. WAFER."

They laughed together. A woman passed by them and rolled her eyes at their immaturity. She stopped at a table and started jotting down details.

"Razor-sharp bat-shaped projectiles?" She shook her head. "Mr. Kingsley had a theme going, huh?"

"Hobgoblin?" One man replied as he read a magazine article. It was about the aforementioned villain and published by Empire One. "Why couldn't he go with one more fitting like...Jack-O-Latern?"

"Ha. That's a good one."

"I'm on a roll today."

Nearby, a woman removed a trap from a large equipment hanging over a table. She gazed upon it and was in awe.

"Holy shit."

A couple looked over at it, too. It was a prototype glider. It seemed just about finished.

"Ah, it's that shit he flew around in." A man said. "Looks gnarly up close."

"Sure does." One added.

The woman pulled out her radio and called a colleague outside who loading things into their trucks.

"Make sure we got room. We got a big one in here."

She waited for a response...but there wasn't any. Her coworker usually replied rather quickly and had been doing so the entire time they were there.

"Dan? Do you copy?"

Unbeknownst to them, the staff members outside were all lying on the floor, dead. It was a rather bloody scene, with them suffering stab wounds or broken necks. The woman's voice came out of the radio beside Dan's body.

"Dan?"

Inside, she was still trying to radio him. Suddenly, all the lights in the facility shut off, and it was almost pitch black. Their only source of light came from the evening sky through the skylight.

"Shit. You got your flashlight?" One man asked his friend.

"Yeah."

He pulled it out and turned it on. The woman told him to check on the breakers in the office nearby.