The call came at 3:47 AM, jolting Harry Osborn from the kind of deep sleep only exhausted college students could achieve. His phone buzzed against the nightstand of his cramped dorm room at Oxford, the harsh light cutting through the darkness like a blade.
"Mr. Osborn?" The voice was clipped, professional. "This is Bernard Houseman, your father's assistant. I'm afraid there's been a... situation. Your father needs you to return to New York immediately."
Harry sat up, instantly awake. Norman Osborn didn't do "situations." Norman Osborn solved problems before they became situations. The man who had built Oscorp from a mid-tier chemical company into a global powerhouse didn't call his son home from university unless something was seriously wrong.
"What kind of situation, Bernard?"
A pause. "I think it's best discussed in person, sir. There's a plane waiting for you at Heathrow. Can you be ready in two hours?"
Harry stared at his reflection in the dark window. Twenty years old, studying biochemistry because his father expected it, living three thousand miles away because he needed the distance. The last conversation they'd had ended with Norman accusing him of being weak, of lacking the "Osborn killer instinct." Now the old man needed him?
"I'll be there."
The flight back to New York felt endless. Harry couldn't shake the image of his father from their last video call two weeks ago. Norman had looked... different. Older, somehow. More frantic. His usually perfect hair was disheveled, and there were dark circles under his eyes that spoke of sleepless nights. When Harry had asked about it, Norman had snapped about "ungrateful children questioning their betters" and ended the call.
Now, as the plane descended through the clouds toward JFK, Harry wondered if he should have pushed harder. Should have asked more questions. Should have been a better son.
The Oscorp driver met him at the airport, silent and efficient. As they drove through Queens toward Manhattan, Harry watched the city wake up around them. Hot dog vendors setting up their carts, early commuters hurrying toward subway entrances, the eternal dance of New York beginning another day. It struck him how normal everything looked when his world felt like it was tilting off its axis.
Oscorp Tower dominated the Manhattan skyline, its distinctive green and silver facade catching the morning sun. Harry had grown up in that building's shadow, literally and figuratively. As a kid, he'd thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world. Now, at twenty, he mostly saw it as a monument to his father's ambition, a reminder of expectations he wasn't sure he could ever meet.
Bernard was waiting in the executive elevator, his usually immaculate appearance slightly rumpled. The man had been with the Osborn family for fifteen years, and Harry had never seen him look anything less than perfectly composed.
"How bad is it?" Harry asked as they rose toward the penthouse floors.
"Your father has been... volatile recently. The military contracts have been demanding, and the board has been pressuring him about cost overruns. He's been working eighteen-hour days, barely eating." Bernard's voice carried a weight Harry had never heard before. "I'm worried about him, Mr. Osborn. Truly worried."
The elevator opened onto the executive floor, and Harry immediately heard the shouting. Norman's voice, raised in fury, echoed down the hallway from his office. Harry caught fragments: "incompetent fools" and "years of work" and something about "enhanced performance parameters."
Harry knocked on the heavy oak door. The shouting stopped.
"What?" Norman's voice was sharp, dangerous.
"It's Harry, Dad."
Silence. Then the sound of papers being shuffled, a chair scraping against the floor. When the door opened, Harry barely recognized the man standing before him.
Norman Osborn had always been imposing, a man who commanded rooms through sheer presence. But this version of his father looked hollowed out, consumed by something Harry couldn't name. His hair was unkempt, his shirt wrinkled, and his eyes... his eyes held a manic gleam that made Harry's stomach clench.
"Harry." Norman's smile was too wide, too bright. "Good. You're here. We have so much to discuss."
The office was a disaster. Papers covered every surface, technical diagrams and chemical formulas scattered across the floor. Multiple computer screens showed streaming data, graphs with lines that spiked and dipped in patterns Harry couldn't decipher. In the center of it all sat a metal briefcase, its contents hidden but somehow radiating importance.
"Dad, what's going on? Bernard said there was an emergency."
Norman waved dismissively. "Emergency. Crisis. Opportunity. It all depends on your perspective, son." He moved to the window, staring out at the city below. "Do you know what separates the Osborns from ordinary people, Harry? What made us great?"
Harry had heard this speech before, in various forms, throughout his childhood. Usually it led to lectures about strength, about taking what you wanted from the world, about the weak deserving whatever happened to them. But something felt different this time. More desperate.
"We do what others won't," Harry said, giving the expected response.
"Exactly!" Norman spun around, his eyes bright with fervor. "We push boundaries. We evolve. We become more than human nature intended." He gestured toward the briefcase. "And I've found a way to do exactly that."
Before Harry could ask what he meant, an explosion shook the building. The windows rattled, and car alarms began wailing in the street below. Norman's eyes went wide, not with surprise but with something like excitement.
"It's starting," he whispered.
Harry rushed to the window. In the distance, the sky was tearing open. Massive shapes poured through the breach, alien in design and clearly hostile. As he watched, one of the creatures fired some kind of energy weapon at a building, reducing it to rubble in seconds.
"What the hell is that?"
Norman laughed, a sound completely devoid of humor. "The future, Harry. The end of the old world and the beginning of something better." He moved toward the briefcase, his hands trembling as he opened it. Inside, nestled in foam padding, was a mask. Green and purple, with eyes that seemed to stare directly into Harry's soul.
"Dad, we need to get out of here. Those things, whatever they are, they're attacking the city."
"They're called Chitauri," Norman said absently, lifting the mask from its case. "And they're not attacking. They're cleansing. Removing the weak so the strong can inherit what's rightfully theirs."
The words hit Harry like a physical blow. "You knew this was going to happen?"
Norman's smile was terrible to behold. "Knew? Harry, I helped plan it."
Harry backed toward the door, his mind reeling. This couldn't be happening. His father couldn't be involved with alien invaders, couldn't be betraying the entire human race. But as Norman donned the mask and reached for what looked like a military flight suit, Harry realized he didn't know his father at all.
"The Osborn legacy will continue," Norman said, his voice now distorted by the mask's speakers. "But not as you might have expected."
Harry ran.
The building's emergency systems were in full activation, alarms blaring and automated voices urging evacuation. Harry ignored the elevators, taking the stairs three at a time, his heart pounding with more than just exertion. Behind him, he heard the distinctive whine of some kind of aircraft starting up.
He burst through the stairwell door on the fortieth floor just as his father, now fully suited in green and purple armor, flew past the windows on what looked like a military glider. Norman's laugh echoed through the building's intercom system, maniacal and utterly without remorse.
"Goodbye, son. Try to survive what's coming."
Harry watched through the reinforced glass as his father joined the alien forces attacking the city. The man who had raised him, who had taught him about responsibility and strength and the Osborn legacy, was now firing weapons at fleeing civilians.
The next few hours passed in a blur of violence and chaos. Harry found himself in the building's command center with Bernard and a handful of other Oscorp executives, watching news feeds of the battle raging outside. The Avengers had assembled, these larger-than-life figures Harry had only heard about in news reports. Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, and others, fighting desperately to save the city.
And somewhere in that chaos, Norman Osborn was trying to destroy it.
Harry lost track of time. At some point, someone brought him coffee that went cold in his hands. At another, Bernard tried to get him to eat something, but food was impossible. All he could do was watch and wait and try to process the fact that his father was a monster.
The end came suddenly. One moment the sky was full of alien ships and energy blasts, the next it was eerily quiet. The news anchors were calling it a victory, praising the Avengers for their heroism. But Harry felt no relief, only a growing dread.
"Sir?" Bernard's voice was gentle. "There's been... there's been a development."
Harry looked up from the screen he'd been staring at without seeing. Bernard's face was grave, his usual composure cracked by something Harry had never seen there before. Pity.
"They found him, didn't they?"
Bernard nodded. "His glider malfunctioned during the final battle. He... he didn't survive the crash."
Harry closed his eyes. He should feel something. Grief, relief, anger, anything. Instead, there was just emptiness. The man who had raised him was gone, but Harry wasn't sure if he was mourning his father or mourning the discovery that his father had never really existed at all.
"I need to see his lab," Harry said quietly.
"Harry, I don't think that's wise right now."
"I need to see it, Bernard. I need to understand."
The journey to Norman's private laboratory felt like descending into hell. Hidden behind false walls and security systems that would make SHIELD jealous, the lab was a testament to years of secret research. And as Harry walked through room after room of advanced weapons, genetic enhancement serums, and detailed plans for mass destruction, he began to understand the true scope of his inheritance.
This wasn't just about the family business. This was about a legacy of violence that stretched back years, maybe decades. Every contract Oscorp had ever won, every breakthrough they'd achieved, every success that had built the Osborn fortune, it was all built on this foundation of darkness.
In the final room, Harry found his father's personal files. Video logs, research notes, correspondence with shadowy figures whose names he didn't recognize. And in those files, he found the truth about Norman Osborn, about the Green Goblin, about everything his father had hidden behind the mask of respectability.
Harry sat alone in that sterile underground chamber, surrounded by the evidence of his father's true nature, and felt something inside him break. Not just his heart, though that was shattered beyond repair. Something deeper. The faith he'd had in the world, in the belief that people were fundamentally good, in the idea that family meant something pure and uncomplicated.
The Osborn name was poison now. Everything he'd inherited, every advantage he'd ever had, it was all built on blood and betrayal. He was twenty years old, heir to a fortune that had been bought with innocent lives, and he had no idea how to live with that knowledge.
But as he sat there in the wreckage of his father's secrets, Harry Osborn made a choice. The same choice, he would later realize, that would define everything that came after.
He was not his father. He would not be his father.
And somehow, someway, he would find a way to make the Osborn name mean something different.