Chapter 13
Forty minutes in, and Peter had finally made a dent in the code.
He swallowed dryly, a drop of sweat beading against his bloodied temple and sliding down his tensed neck. His fingers felt stiff and his body was practically screaming at him to just lay down already, but even a single pause risked him losing all the progress he’d made. He hissed out a breath, wincing. One of his ears was ringing through the pounding in his skull, and he honestly couldn’t tell if that was from earlier’s close call with a repulsor blast or just because of the near crippling migraine that was making his eyeballs throb in time with his pulse.
“Just - gh, lemme through already,” Peter muttered raspily, grimacing at how that'd felt like gravel crunching in his throat. Of course, since he obviously spent all his paltry luck on finding the room in the first place, saying what he just did immediately jinxed him.
He was not let through, having to keep picking his way around thick, tangled throngs of convoluted code that was shielded even more heavily than usual in some parts thanks to the current protocols set in place, and he could now hear footsteps coming from somewhere. Which was great. Really.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, making the skin there twinge painfully as his Spidey Sense kicked into a higher gear than it had been, and Peter grit his teeth, molars grinding against one another. He leaned forwards until his nose nearly touched the computer, fingers scrambling across the keyboard as the light from the screen seared into his pinpricked pupils.
“Hurry uuuuup,” he hissed to himself just as he barely managed to squeeze through a crack in the mainframe, jamming down rapid fire on the enter key and a string of numbers. He kept half an ear out - or more like his good ear out, ha - on what was going on around him, but he couldn’t tell for the life of him - and it very well may be for the life of him - where in the fricking hell the sounds outside of his room were coming from. Wherever they were, they were definitely moving, and that wasn’t something Peter wanted to just be stuck here to find out about first hand. He needed to hurry this up.
He was pretty sure he'd gotten through almost everything now (apparently, there’d mostly just been that nasty-to-get-through outer wall instead of a multi-layer type of thing, bless whatever the hell kind of god that wasn’t Thor out there) and... yep. Peter cracked his neck and immediately regretted that decision, pointedly ignoring the renewed shrieking in his skull. All that was left was sending a message.
“Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruuuce,” Peter chanted quietly, spam opening every contact app he saw and swiftly clicking on the first one that loaded, which just so happened to be Facebook, of all things. There was an ominous creaking sound that came from what Peter was pretty sure was above him and some distance to his left, and the tension in his body ratcheted up another notch, his fingers spasming on the mouse. He clicked open Bruce’s profile and then his chatbox, breaths beginning to speed up with his nerves as he wrote out a message as fast as he could. “This ‘s Peter… Avengers.. compromised… Gas making them attack, um, me… Theyyy can’t talk, seems instinctive… Tower’s in Box-In protocol…” Peter muttered hurriedly along with his typing, coming to a pause as he wrote the last word. He swallowed. His gaze flickered towards the closed door then back to the computer. His fingers haltingly tapped out one more line. ‘Please hurry.’
He quickly exited out of the chatbox, already having hacked through the account to make sure Bruce would get the message even if he’d had his notifications turned off for the app, and he shakily rose from his seat, ribs twinging. He would’ve liked to contact SHIELD directly, but he didn’t have the time to figure out how to reach them.
He moved to step away, but he hesitated at the last moment, his sweat-slick fists opening and closing in a nervous tic. His indecision only lasted another second before he caved and hunched back over the desk, ignoring the pain that ignited against his torso and neck, rapidly searching for another user profile. He clicked enter.
Peter couldn’t stop the way his eyes welled up even if he wanted to. He had to blink rapidly to clear them, drinking in the image of May’s static, radiantly smiling face, her glasses skewed on her nose and aged crinkles outlining the corners of her crescented eyes. It was an older picture, from before Ben… From before.
Peter’s hands shook as he opened up the messenger box. He flinched heavily as a harsh boom sounded from closer to him, and he squared his shoulders.
He wrote three words, and he darted away as quickly as his broken foot allowed him.
‘I love you.’