The Running Clock

'I'm sorry about this, Peter.' Wanda says softly, as she places her hands on Peter's head, her eyes glowing red.

'No, Wanda, don't!' Peter cries, his eyes wide with fear and... guilt? Wanda however ignores his pleading and focuses.

Sleep. She tells him, Just sleep. You're okay. Go to sleep. Don't you want to go to sleep? Sleep is nice. It's calm. Go to sleep.

Peter's eyelids start to flutter and Wanda concentrates even more, then turns to Peter, offering him a sad smile: 'It'll be okay Peter.' she coos as once again she orders him to sleep, her fingers pressing softly against his temples.

Peter's eyelids flutter one last time, then they close and stay closed.

Wanda sits back with a sigh, her eyes returning to their normal blue-green colour.

'He out?' Steve asks, not daring to remove his arms just yet.

'Yeah, and he'll stay so until I order him to wake up.' Wanda confirms with a sigh. Slowly Nat, Clint and Steve remove their death grip from Peter's arms and Steve stands up from where he had been sitting on the teenager's legs.

'Uhm... guys?' Tony says from behind them, his voice wavering ever so slightly.

'What?' Bruce asks, his eyes narrowing , immediately looking Tony up and down, checking for injuries.

'FRIDAY just told me... uhm ... she told me there are nanobots in his system laced with explosives. They're set to explode in 15 minutes.' Tony answers, his eyes wide in shock, as if not even believing what he is saying.

Natasha curses under her breath: 'So that's why he didn't want us to find him. He was running to the field so he could explode without anyone dying but himself!'

'Annoying self-sacrificing kid.' Clint grumbles shaking his head, tears glistening in his eyes, 'What do we do?' he asks, turning to Tony.

'Well, we need to remove them from his system, or disable them somehow.' Tony mutters, more to himself than to the others, 'FRIDAY, put a countdown on the screen, inform me when we're down to five minutes.'

FRIDAY chirps in reply: '14 minutes, 29 seconds left.'

Wanda scoots away from Peter, her eyes drooping as she tries to stay awake. She doesn't normally knock people unconscious telepathically. She doesn't normally do it because it requires a lot of energy.

She feels Natasha sit down behind her and rests her head on Natasha's shoulder. Her eyelids fluttering. Natasha shifts into a more comfortable position for Wanda as they both look towards Tony, who is pacing and muttering to himself. Steve can't pick up much from what he is saying, there are just a bunch of calculations.

'12 minutes left.' FRIDAY chirps. Has it really already been 2 minutes? Steve groans: why can time not go slower? It always does when you're bored, why can't it now?

Tony suddenly gasps: 'Bruce, what if we used an EMP of 90 GHZ? That would shut the nanobots down, right?'

Bruce scrunches up his nose in thought: 'Don't think it would. For a normal human yes, but Peter's enhanced, we'd have to go higher. Way higher.'

'Then we do that!' Tony cries happily, grateful to have found a solution to the problem. The kid will be okay. They're going to save him.

'9 minutes left.' FRIDAY says, making Tony frown.

'Tones, EMP's are bad for human beings, if we do this, especially at such a high voltage, it could kill him.' Bruce says, his brows furrowed, 'His heart could stop, and I don't know if we'll ever get it to work again.'

Tony curses under his breath: he hadn't thought of that. 'What other option is there Bruce?' he asks, his voice strained.

'I think giving him a heart attack might be the only one.' Bruce sighs, his hands wringing through his hair.

'Then we do it.' Tony decides. 'Clint, get the quinjet here, I want it to be ready when his heart stops. Bruce, with me and the rest of you, get out of the blast radius. One heart attack is more than enough.'

The avengers nod sullenly as they position themselves far behind Tony and Bruce. Clint runs off to get the quinjet and flies it in a minute later.

'5 minutes left.' FRIDAY intones solemnly.

Tony grounds his feet and turns to Bruce, his voice cracking: 'Ready?' 

'Ready.'

Tony points his blaster at Peter and starts fiddling with the settings, turning nobs and bringing up a touch-screen with code.

'Give me a second,' he grumbles, 'I usually have it at 50 HZ only.' Finally, after another painstaking minute and FRIDAY's chilling voice telling them there are only 3 minutes left on the clock, Tony is done reconfiguring his EMP blaster.

Tony breathes in some air to settle his bouncing heart. He aims. He fires. Bruce holding up a screen he made FRIDAY pull to keep track of the nanobots.

'70 % left.' he notes solemnly after 5 seconds. '40 % left.' he says a few seconds later. '10....5....3....1....0.'

As soon as Bruce says this, Tony shuts off his blaster and the whole team surges forward.

'FRIDAY, vitals.' Tony commands.

'He's stable for now, sir.'

'Thank goodness.' Wanda sighs.

'Sir, his vitals are no longer stable.' FRIDAY reports suddenly, 'Sir, his vitals are dropping.' Tony gasps, already at Peter's side, furiously clicking buttons on his armour, 'Sir, his heart has stopped.'