Chapter 1
Peter was being honest; he’d say he forgotten May’s voice.
May is a touchy subject and most people avoided the conversation. It was hard to even have a conversation these days. Peter was too busy to even think about it most days.
He’s barely eighteen years old and he’s got the freaking trifecta of a depressing life; a dead aunt, 30 thousand dollars of debt, and an internship at the world’s most prominent tech company…getting coffee and delivering mail.
He hasn’t thought about May in a while, and it sends a pang of guilt in his stomach when he remembers her. He tries to think about her in the few fleeting moments before he falls asleep. He tries to think of May before she got sick, her kind smile, her confident laugh, and her eyes. But most of the time he thinks of May in a hospital bed, thin and weak from the chemotherapy and the drugs. In her last days she wasn’t even conscious.
So, he tries his best not to think about her.
Or anything at all.
Peter’s routine has changed since May died. Her life insurance paid enough out so that he could pay for a decent burial and gravestone. He dropped out of high school, got his GED, and started working in a desperate attempt to keep a roof over his head.
He gets up every day at four in the morning. He showers, dresses, and heads off to his morning job as a barista at a local coffee shop. He opens the café, wipes down tables and chairs, takes the orders from equally groggy New Yorkers on their way to their own jobs. By seven thirty, he changes in the back room of the café from his uniform to casual clothes to wear at Delmar’s. He rides the train with day-old croissants and stale coffee in his hands. By eight, he’s stocking the corner store with that morning’s deliveries and working the register. By two in the afternoon, Delmar sends him out with sandwich with extra pickles (the way he likes) on day-old bread. Peter hops the turnstiles on the subway, and he takes the train with two transfers uptown to Stark Tower.
He changes in the lobby bathroom into his one long-sleeved shirt and worn but well-kept and pressed pants. He puts his badge over his neck, goes through security and pends the afternoon and early evening delivering mail from the mail cart, refilling the coffee machines, and collecting mail.
He’s supposed to end his shift at 8, go home, eat the sandwich Delmar gave him, shower and go to bed.
Supposed to, being the key word.
Peter knows he’s not the most graceful guy, especially when it comes to words, but he’s made a good impression on the scientists in the tenth-floor lab. That’s where he is now, thinking about May as he palms a large manila envelope in his hands.
“Peter!” a friendly voice calls to him. Peter blinks himself from his thoughts. It’s Gwen Stacy, a scientist at StarkLabs. Peter knows she’s from New York, her father works for the NYPD, and she’s getting her third doctorate in… something at Empire State. She’s friendly and generally cheery and seems to genuinely enjoy talking to him. It’s a nice change from the stares and occasional grunts he gets from the other employees when he delivers mail.
“Hey Gwen. Got this for you.” Peter extends the folder. Gwen takes it gracefully and folds it under her arm, not bothering to look at it. She checks her watch and grins at Peter. It’s past eight now, and most of the lab techs have gone home.
“How much do you know about microchip implants?”
“Not enough.” Peter readily agrees, an equally conspiratorial smile on his face. Sure, he’s not technically supposed to touch any of the lab equipment but… if Gwen needed help and Peter was the only one there, who was he to deny her?
Gwen had picked up on Peter’s interest on science the first time he had walked into the lab. After chatting over their lunch break, Peter told her about trying to save money for school, his idea for a collapsible drone the size of a dinner plate. One thing led to another, and whenever given the chance, she lets Peter have free reign of the lab, mostly at the end of his shift.
“Not a bunch,” Peter says, pushing up his glasses. “What about that arc reactor project?” he asks, walking over to the shelf with the safety glasses on them. Reckless or not, Peter enjoys having both his eyeballs.
“That’s old news.” Gwen states firmly, straightening her lab coat. She passes a spare coat to Peter who slides it on over his clothes, all his weariness from the day forgotten.
Gwen motions for him to follow, and he does so, double-checking the fit of the safety glasses over his own.
“Check this out,” Gwen says, pointing to her lab table. “I’ve been working on something. Microchip implants.”
“Don’t they already exist?” Peter questions.
“Yeah, but mostly in the world of pets. But they don’t possess any tracking capabilities. They only transmit identification information to a scanner held a few inches away using a simple radio frequency, and they don't require batteries.”
“You want to make implants require batteries? That ambitious of you.”
“Shut it, Parker.” Gwen says without any real bite, “What I’m trying to say is they’re weak. I’m thinking, why not try a little harder? If we can improve on the already existing technologies, I think we can figure out a way to implement their use in children. You know, to track them if they become lost?”
Peter frowns down at the table and her notes.
“Kids aren’t dogs. Besides, you wouldn’t be able to track them in body.”
Gwen snaps her fingers. “Exactly, because of current GPS technology. It requires too much battery power to even think about trying to run tracking on a chip that could be injected into a body.”
“Wait, so are you trying to improve on GPS tech? Or the chips themselves?”
Gwen’s eyes sparkle in that way that makes Peter’s heart skip a beat. “Neither. I said improve. That means no more GPS and simple microchips. I’m talking about nanotechnology, Peter. Which is where you come in.”
“Me?” Peter asks. “Didn’t we just discuss about me knowing next to nothing about this sort of thing?”
“Not the point, Parker. You think on your feet. That’s why I need your help to develop this. I’m talking about developing tech that's implemented on a molecular level. Atomic. Sub-atomic, even.”
Peter can feel Gwen’s excitement, and it’s contagious.
“That would change everything- even the way-,”
“Exactly, Parker! Want in?” Gwen asks.
“Duh.”
That was two years ago.
Now, it’s almost one in the morning when Gwen shakes Peter from his work. He blinks blearily at Gwen.
“Huh?” Peter asks, brain still stuck in the design of the nanotech. It’s small, smaller than anything he’s ever worked on, smaller than a human cell.
Gwen looks as exhausted as he feels. Her normally pristine blonde hair is pulled into a loose, messy bun.
“We should go to bed.” Gwen says.
Their project, Q-Blood has consumed their days. Gwen spends all day on it at the lab, and Peter finds himself jotting down notes in his old school notebook in between customers at the café and at Delmar’s. When he finally saved up enough money to take some college courses and starts his degree, he doesn’t pay attention in class. Instead, he writes down ideas and spends hours on end at the library doing research.
It’s going well. Almost too well. Peter and Gwen have realized that when they put their brains together, progress is inevitable. Two years is a long time. Peter is now almost old enough to drink legally, and Gwen’s been seeing some guy for more than a year and has moved out of her family’s home.
First, they had started based off what they already knew, GPS. Then onto an almost near-nanotechnology, micro-electromechanical systems. It’s only good for tracking guns, but after countless hours and all-nighters, they’ve developed something of use; nanobots of microscopic size. Not anywhere near where they’d like it to be and nothing has worked with any accuracy so far, but they’re very, very, very close. Close enough that they had started to talk about drafting up a proposal to get some funding kind of close.
Most importantly, they’ve kept it very low profile. All Peter’s coworkers and classmates know is that he’s been doodling in his notebooks. Gwen has gotten even less attention at work, instead keeping her mouth shut and assisting other scientists on their projects. They only work on one computer in StarkTower and they both keep their notes on their person at all times. Gwen confessed to Peter one late night in the lab that she sleeps with her papers under her pillow. Peter doesn’t think that’s silly at all; he does the same thing.
That’s why Peter freaks out when he’s sitting on a bench waiting for his bus and a man in a suit sits next to him.
“Peter Parker. My name is Grant. I work for Oscorp.”
Peter blinks. He hasn’t been sleeping very well recently, too preoccupied with the Q-Blood project to really rest.
“Okay?” he says, unsure.
“I understand you’re working on a project at StarkLabs. Oscorp has taken an interest in your ability. We’d like to offer you a position.”
Peter’s heart skips a beat, and then two. Grant looks at him with dull, glazed eyes. Peter realizes he’s forgotten how to breathe.
“I’m sorry, I’m not interested.” Peter says to the man in the suit. The man’s right eye twitches, almost imperceptibly.
“I must insist, Mr. Parker. Oscorp can offer you generous compensation. A scholarship, even. Funding for a lab of your own.”
Peter swallows, hard, a tickle running up his spine. “How-, how did you find me?”
The man simply smiles and presses a heavy-duty cardstock business card into his palm.
“Think about it, Mr. Parker. I’ll be awaiting your call.”
The man in the suit walks off. Peter doesn’t even look at the card. Instead, he yanks his shitty by-the-minute phone out of his pocket and dials Gwen. She picks up on the first ring.
“Peter?”
“Gwen, seriously we need to talk.” Peter half yells, half whispers into the phone. His bus pulls into the stop, but he’s on his feet and walking away before the doors open.
“Tell me you didn’t just get a job offer from Oscorp.”
“Literally five minutes ago.”
“Oh no. Okay, I’m still at Stark Tower.”
Peter looks at the time. It’s late and he’s got work at the café in the morning hours, but he’s buzzing with so much adrenaline right now it doesn’t matter.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
He books it to StarkTower, breathing hard and wheezing as he swipes into the building. Gwen is waiting for him by the elevator, dark circles in her eyes. They both pile into the elevator and Gwen pushes the button for the tenth floor. She waits until the doors close before speaking.
“I just got a phone call a maybe twenty minutes ago offering me a job at Oscorp.”
“Someone in a suit talked to me on my way home.” Peter says. “He was talking like he knew what we were working on.”
Gwen rubs her hands into her eyes. “They mentioned Q-Blood by name to me when they offered me the job.”
“How did they know?”
“I don’t know! There’s only you and me working on this-, and the only people with access to the database are high-level StarkLab employees.”
“There must be a leak somewhere.”
“Really? I hadn’t thought of that.” Gwen hisses at Peter. She immediately shrinks into herself, feeling bad about being harsh. “Okay. Okay. Scary guys offering us jobs and threating us about not taking them. Peter, I know this research is important, but I think the stakes are getting too high for us to handle.”
Peter’s heart drops into his stomach. “You want to destroy the project?”
Gwen purses her lips together. “Q-Blood is dangerous. We didn’t even think about any other way it could be used other than helping people. Think about it, Peter. Nanotechnology that can track every single human in the world?”
Peter takes off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. He sighs heavily. Gwen is right. She’s always right.
“We need to destroy it.” He agrees miserably. He dreads it; months of work about to be torched like a Christmas tree in a bonfire.
The doors to the elevator open, and it’s a quick trip to the lab. Gwen double checks the lock on the door before heading to her computer. She looks mournfully at it.
“This is the only device hat has the information on it. We didn’t even enter the StarkLabs network. It’s just this.”
Peter bits his bottom lip, tasting iron.
“Are we sure?” he asks, looking up at Gwen. She’s turned the computer on, and her eyes look even more blue in the lights of the LED screen.
“Yes.” Gwen says, nodding as if trying to convince herself.
They get to work, first deleting the files from the computer, then clearing the caches and the deleted files folder. Then Gwen sits patiently as Peter uses PowerShell to clear the files, then types in the cipher command.
Peter spares a glance at Gwen, who nods. Peter hits the enter key. The computer runs a few lines of codes, and the files are gone.
“Not good enough.” Gwen says. They both look at the computer tower. Peter frowns.
“Are we going to get fired for this?”
“Lab accidents happen all the time.” Gwen says simply.
They disconnect the monitor from the tower and work quietly. Peter unscrews the computer from the hard shell and Gwen separates the motherboard and microchips. This time, neither of them question the other.
There’s a certain mournful feeling in the air as Peter takes a hammer to the motherboard and every other electronic piece he can find. Gwen takes a cauterizing pen and draws thin lines in a hatch-pattern across everything. It takes nearly three hours, but by the time they’re done the labs smells like burnt plastic and heated metal. They divide the destroyed pieces in two different bags. Gwen places one bag into her purse, Peter shoves the other into the backpack.
“Okay, we won’t tell the other person what we do with our half.” Gwen tells Peter. “Just get rid of it somehow.”
“Got it.” Peter confirms.
They separate. Peter isn’t sure what Gwen does with her half, but Peter separates his half into four parts. He throws each part away in different trash compactors across the three floors he has full access to: the mail room on floor three, the lobby, and floor ten.
When he goes back to the lab, Gwen is already waiting for him.
Now it’s time to look at their paper notes. Peter’s notebook is all scribbles and doodles; it looks like it’s been dragged through the mud. Gwen’s notes are written in neat type, held together in a binder. He starts to rip the pages from the notebook piece by piece, tearing the pages in half, ad half again. Gwen manages to find a pair of scissors and they cut and tear and slice the pages until they’re the size off confetti.
“Now what?” Gwen asks. “We start a fire?”
Peter blinks, and then snaps his fingers.
“Bathroom.”
They gather the bits of paper in their hands and huddle together in the woman’s bathroom. Peter puts handfuls of paper into the toilets and Gwen goes from stall to stall, flushing everything.
By the time they’re finished, the sun is rising in the horizon and Peter’s go so many papercuts his fingers are aching.
Gwen checks her watch.
“Coffee?” she asks tiredly. Peter shrugs. He’s already late for work today, might as well not show up. He shoots a quick text to his boss at the café, faking sickness, and he and Gwen leave StarkTower just as things are starting to get busy.
They walk three blocks to café, not the one Peter works out, and for once peter doesn’t protest when Gwen hands her credit card over to pay for their coffee and pastries. The find a quiet enough corner and silently drink their coffee. Peter eats three doughnuts.
It’s maybe seven in the morning when it feels like he can breathe.
“That should have worked, right?” He asks. Gwen plays with her empty coffee cup, running her fingers along the plastic lid thoughtfully.
“I’m sure. There’s no way any trace of that data exists anymore.”
Peter places his head on the table sadly.
“So much work,” he commiserates.
Gwen leans back in her chair and crosses her arms. “It was dangerous. We should have been more careful.”
Peter taps his fingers on the table.
“Now there’s the matter of how they found out.”
Gwen shrugs. “I can put in an anonymous complaint about a mole. I doubt there’s any way you or I could really look into it without drawing more attention to ourselves.”
Her phone buzzes and she picks it up, brows furrowing.
“My boyfriend is wondering where I am.”
Peter checks his own phone. There’s one text from his boss wishing him well, but that’s it.
“I want to shower and go to sleep. Let’s get out of here.”
They clean up their table and head out of café and down the street. Gwen fiddles with her StarkPhone’s buttons. It’s a new model, one that’s not even out on the market yet. She’s been field testing it for the company. Even Peter must admit it’s nice a piece of technology.
They turn down the street and cut through an alley they know is the quickest way to the subway station they both need to catch their trains. It’s only one block away from StarkTower, and they’re both familiar with it.
That’s when the butt of a gun slams into the back of Gwen’s head.
She drops like a stone to the ground.
“Gwen!” Peter exclaims. A cloth-covered hand covers his mouth and strong arms wrap around his waist, trapping his arms to his sides. Peter tries to lean back to get free, but he only manages to get himself lifted off the ground like he weights nothing. He trashes violently in the firm grip around him and bites hand around his mouth.
“Son of a bitch!”
Peter does not let go of the hand, gripping the hand so tight with his teeth that the cloth rips.
Another person comes from the side and punches Peter across the face hard enough that he relaxes his grip. His glasses fly off his face. Things are blurry, too blurry now to see what’s happening. He tries another approach.
“Gwen! Get out of here! Get out of here!”
He starts to scream at the top of his lungs, trashing so hard he feels his lungs burn with the effort of it. He kicks his feet and legs, still hovering off the ground. One of his shoes flies off his feet and his one of their attackers solidly in the head.
He can barely make out the form of Gwen on the ground, scrambling for the busy street just outside the alleyway. His screaming and thrashing have appeared to have distracted the attackers long enough for Gwen to stumble into the opposite streetside.
“Shut him up!” someone yells.
Someone punches Peter across the face again and everything drops to black.
Gwen stumbles into the street, dizzy. Blood is pouring from the back of her head, sticky and hot.
“Help!” she screams. People walk around her, avoiding eye contact. Gwen yells in frustration. Stupid New York.
New York. Stark Tower! She knows the way there like the back of her hand. She runs as fast as she can, the world tilting and rolling.
She manages to make it to the entrance of Stark Tower, bursting through the doors of the public lobby, still screaming.
“Help! Help!”
One of the security guards by the receptionist desk (David? Dale? Derrick?) recognizes her.
“Dr. Stacy?”
“You have to help! They- we-,” a wave of nausea rolls over her and she falls to the floor on her hands and knees as she vomits that morning’s coffee onto the recently cleaned tiles.
The security guard is by her side, radioing something to someone, and Gwen is trembling, her blood dripping in front of her face and in her eyes.
A pair of leather shoes steps in front of her, a solid hand clapping on her shoulder. Gwen looks up, her vision finally going from blurry to fuzzy.
It’s the most powerful man in the world, his hand on her shoulder, wearing a three-thousand-dollar tie.
“Who are you,” Tony Stark asks “and why are you bleeding all over my lobby?