Chapter 9
Ashley had spent over an hour on the phone to Matt that night, which was killing her battery. She had even been on the phone to him mid-flight as she returned to her tent, keeping an eye out the whole time. Someone had clearly been following her, so they might have already known that she was living in the woods behind the school. All she could think about was the list of names. She had told him almost everyone who was on the list, although she left out the Sampson family. The unknown that was marked next to them helped to reassure her. Even these people who were after her didn’t know where they were, which meant Lucas was safe.
“Matt they’ve been following me. They have a picture of us from Tuesday! They know who you are… They know about Karen and Foggy too! They even knew about my birth parents.”
“Hey, Ashley calm down!” Matt’s voice was stern on the other end of the phone. He could hear the rising tone in her voice, panic overtaking as her breaths came out in short, sharp pants. “We can deal with this… Now tell me, who’s on this list?”
Ashley took in a few deep breaths, but it didn’t help as tears began to cascade down her face. “Umm… M-My name. They’ve got Carter and Sampson down as my last names. My birth parents’ names are both on their and it says deceased next to them.” She tried to muffle the broken sob that came out, but ultimately failed as she broke down into a fresh round of tears. “Th-Then it s-says your name, and F-Foggy and K-K-Karen’s names.”
“Okay, you’re doing really well, Ash. Tell me where you are, and I’ll come get you.”
Ashley looked at the trees surrounding her tent, as she landed. “N-No, I’ll be fine…”
“You don’t sound fine. Just let me come get you. You can come back to my place and we can look out for each other?”
“No!” Ashley shouted down the phone. “I can’t be around you, Matt. I-It’s not safe.” She paused, taking another look at her surroundings, trying to see if she could pinpoint any figures in the distance or see any sign of a disturbance near-by. She was met with silence except for Matt’s breathing down the phone. “It had your other name on their too…” She spoke quietly. “Daredevil and Spider-Man were both on the list with unknown next to their names. I don’t think they know…”
“That’s good… We can work with that.” Matt let out a loud sigh on the phone. There was some shuffling going on in the background, but Ashley was too exhausted to pick out the sounds. “Just tell me where you are. I don’t feel right leaving you on your own right now. Are you still at that building?”
“No,” she whispered, voice getting trapped in her throat. She let out a series of harsh coughs, hacking up the concrete dust that had gotten into her lungs. “I’m fine now, Matt.”
“Yeah.. It sounds it.”
“If something happens, I promise I’ll call you.”
Matt let out another resigned sigh. He accepted when he wasn’t going to win an argument, and sadly she would always be able to fly faster than he could run, so if she didn’t want to be found by him, she wouldn’t be. “You better. I’ll put my ear to the ground, see what I can find out about this Karito… Just do me one favour.”
“Sure…” Ashley replied quietly.
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but you should still go to Stark’s tomorrow. If anywhere in this city is safe, it’s that damn tower of his. I know I said he’s dangerous, but I think you’ll be safer there. And no patrolling for a while… Not until we can figure this out.” Ashley nodded, before letting out a strangled noise that Matt interpreted as an affirmative. “Like I said before, if you need anything you call me straight away, you got that?”
“Yes Matt.”
Matt checked with her once more to make sure she didn’t want him to come get her before finally hanging up the phone. She turned the phone off to try and conserve some of the battery life before she could charge it up at school the following day. Ashley didn’t sleep a wink that night. Instead she sat in the dark, legs curled up into her chest as she hugged herself, tears streaming down her face as the same thoughts ran through her head on a torturous loop. ‘You’ve put them in danger. They cared about you and this is how you thank them? If they get hurt, it’s your fault! Your parents’ deaths must have been your fault too.’
The thoughts kept her up until the sun rose and her alarm went off the next morning. She turned her phone back on at seven in the morning, uncurling herself to change her clothes. She pulled on a different pair of jeans, a fresh t-shirt and her black hoodie with the skeleton print. It wasn’t enough to keep her warm, but she didn’t have many other clothing choices. Once her phone had turned on, the silence of her tent was permeated by the familiar ding of a text coming through, except it was on repeat like a broken record.
Matty: Tell me if you need anything. 00:23am
Karen <3: Matt told us what happened. Do you need me to come to you? 00:42am
Matty: Please stay safe today. 05:02am
Matty: Make sure you go to the tower after school. Try and take your mind off everything by impressing that over-pompous billionaire. 05:36am
MJ: Hey, nerd. Do you want to hang out for a study date this weekend? We can study at my place. 06:28am
Fogggy: Let me know if you want somewhere to crash. We’re all here for you and none of us are going anywhere. 06:47am
Iron Man: Movie night tonight. Happy will pick you and Peter up outside school. 06:51am
Karen <3: I know you’ll knock them all dead at Stark Industries. Love you x 07:00am
The texts put a small smile on her face. The smile didn’t last very long though, when she realised that all of these people who had texted her this morning were in danger because of her. When she read MJ’s text again, the tears from the previous night began to well up in her eyes. MJ wasn’t on the list and she needed to keep it that way. If that meant ignoring her best friend again, then so be it. She would do anything to keep MJ, Peter and Ned safe.
Ashley set off for school early that morning and found a quiet corner in the library to charge her phone before class. The school was mostly empty when she first arrived, with most of the teachers not even there yet. It didn’t take too long to charge the phone up to fifty percent, which is when she unplugged it and made her way to her first lesson of the day – Chemistry with Mr Harrington. Students were just starting to fill the corridors by this time, chatting at their lockers while they crammed in a quick breakfast snack before lessons started. Ashley instead dived straight into her classroom and made herself as comfortable as she could in her seat. Which wasn’t easy given she was fairly certain she had a sprained ankle and the whole right side of her face was hurting as if it was on fire. She tried to cover her face with her hair as much as she could, but as soon as Mr Harrington stepped inside the classroom, his eyes widened at the sight of her. He quickly closed the door and moved to Ashley’s desk near the back of the classroom. He pulled out a stool from the desk in front and sat in front of Ashley, eyes fixed on the ugly, indigo bruise sporting almost half her face.
Ashley’s eyes dropped down to her notebook, unable to meet her teacher’s gaze as he started talking. “Ash, what happened?”
Mr Harrington had always been one of her favourite teachers. He was kind and he cared about his students. He always wanted to see them succeed and would always lend a helping hand where he could. Which is why the sight of one of his best students, sat alone at her desk; a large, blackened bruise on her face, absolutely broke his heart.
“I tripped on the stairs last night…” Ashley mumbled, trying to feign embarrassment at her ‘clumsy’ actions. “I sprained my ankle and gave myself a black eye.” She chuckled humourlessly, trying to sell the act, but she really couldn’t bring herself to laugh.
Mr Harrington surveyed her, taking in the worn, tatty clothes, the way her left foot hovered over her right one and the tangles of unkempt hair she was trying to use as a shield to hide the bruise. Something didn’t quite add up. “Ashley, I want you to know if there’s something bothering you, you can come to me.” When she didn’t respond, he decided to push further. “Is everything alright at home?”
Ashley nodded. “Yeah, of course. I’m just really clumsy, sir.”
As Mr Harrington stood up, students started filing into the classroom. The unmistakeable sound of whispers informed them both that the large bruise hadn’t gone unnoticed. He turned back to Ashley briefly before walking up to the front of the classroom to get two hall passes. He handed one to Ashley and gave the second to MJ before she could take her seat across the aisle. “At least get yourself checked out by the school nurse. Michelle can go with you.”
This was definitely the last thing Ashley had wanted. She was thankful for the brief silence as MJ walked with her down the now-empty school corridors, carrying both her own bag and Ashley’s. MJ had even wrapped an arm around her waist when her steps fumbled from putting too much weight on her injured ankle. In the nurse's office, MJ helped Ashley up onto a bed and sat next to her silently as the nurse checked her over. The nurse was just as suspicious as Mr Harrington was.
“Miss Sampson, can you tell me how this happened?” The nurse asked as she placed a cold compress against Ashley's face, advising her to keep holding it against the bruise. She then perched on a chair at the of the bed and began wrapping Ashley's ankle. Ashley winced slightly as she pressed down on her ankle particularly hard. Through gritted teeth, she replied to the nurse.
“I was carrying groceries upstairs, but I tripped on a broken step and smacked my face on one of the stairs.” Ashley hoped her story was believable enough, seeing as she couldn’t tell the truth. That actually, she had gigantic wings and had been attacked on top of a building by what she suspected to be Japanese thugs... Yeah, that probably wasn’t going to go down too well. The nurse seemed to buy it, as she didn’t question Ashley any further. Instead, she told Ashley to rest for a bit, while keeping the ice-pack against her face. The nurse told MJ to watch Ashley for any signs of concussion before she left the two in the office to attend to an incident that had happened in the gym. It was only once the nurse had left that MJ spoke up.
“So, what really happened?” she asked. MJ tried to keep her tone of voice neutral, but she could hear the undercurrent of worry.
“Like I said, I tripped over...”
“Bullshit!” MJ exclaimed. Ashley turned on her side, placing her back to her friend. “Is this because of the Stark Internship? Did your parents do this?”
Ashley huffed but refused to turn to face MJ. “No, it has got nothing to do with that. Nobody hit me. I just fell over. So just leave it alone.”
But MJ didn’t want to leave it alone. “You know this isn’t right, don’t you? Why are you letting them get away with treating you like this?”
Ashley's patience was wearing thin. She was exhausted, her whole body ached, and she was paranoid that someone could be watching her right this second. She sat up, wincing as she jostled her ankle, which was propped up on a pillow. “What part of nothing happened don’t you understand?” Ashley seethed. MJ looked taken aback for a moment before she schooled her expression into its usual indifferent facade. “My parents did not hurt me last night. They weren’t even home when it happened!”
MJ sat back down in the chair and crossed her arms across her chest. Clearly something in Ashley’s expression told her that her friend was telling the truth, so she decided to leave it be. Five minutes passed in agonising silence before MJ spoke up again. “Did you get my text this morning?” she mumbled, pretending to read the book she had plucked from her backpack. But she couldn’t really focus and instead kept stealing glances at Ashley when she wasn’t looking, afraid she would disappear before her eyes.
“Y-Yeah I did...” Ashley paused, wondering how best to turn her friend down. “I don’t think coming over is a great idea this weekend.” Ashley stared down at her lap to keep from seeing the hurt expression that was no doubt on her friend's face. But Ashley couldn’t risk bringing MJ into the drama that was now her life. She couldn’t put her in the line of fire like that.
Ashley had expected MJ to start shouting at her again, or to call her names, anything really except the muttered ‘whatever’ she received. It hurt, but Ashley knew it was the right thing to do, but that didn’t stop a stray tear running down her cheek. The pair stayed in total silence for the next half hour until the nurse came back and gave Ashley the all-clear to return to lessons. MJ ignored Ashley for the rest of the day, and despite how much that was what Ashley wanted, she couldn’t deny the pain she felt.
By her last lesson that day – art – Ashley was struggling to maintain her focus. She was trying to complete the write-up to submit with her portfolio, but every time she stared down at the page the words started to move and blend together. The staring and the near constant stream of whispers she had been surrounded with all day did not help her at all either. At first she tried to focus her hearing to check if perhaps there was someone nearby watching her or following her, but it only served to amplify the voices of her fellow classmates. Her paranoia was putting her on edge, and she couldn’t even find solace in the library at lunch time as even that proved to be too noisy.
As soon as the final bell rang, signalling the end of the school day, she was quick to leave her art classroom and hurried down the corridor to collect the study books from her locker she would need over the weekend. She tried to block out as much sound as she could as she busied herself in her locker, so when Peter came up behind her, she couldn’t hear him calling her name. When he tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention, Ashley gasped loudly and quickly spun around, pressing herself up against the lockers, a frightened expression on her face. Peter was quick to take a step back, his eyes never leaving Ashley’s.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to creep up on you.” Peter bashfully scratched the back of his head, doing his best to look guilty for scaring his friend. “Are you ready to head out?”
Ashley nodded her head and quickly closed her locker. Out of the corner of her eyes, she could see Ned and MJ stood at the other end of the corridor, watching her. MJ’s eyebrows were narrowed, and she had her arms crossed against her chest. She was giving off an angry aura, to which Ashley sighed in relief. As long as MJ was angry at her, just maybe she would be safe. Now she just had to work on keeping Peter safe as well. If someone was watching her, they were probably watching as Peter and her climbed into a black Audi that was parked up in front of the school.
She greeted Happy, who did a double-take when he saw the kid. He was clearly just going to wave them off or grunt out a half-arsed greeting of his own until he saw the large bruise that Ashley was really trying to cover up. She wished she had money for make-up, or even knew how to apply it. It would have certainly spared her a lot of grief today.
“Jesus kid… Did you get into a fight at school or something?”
Ashley couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle at that. “No, I tripped over. Wasn’t looking where I was putting my feet.”
“Great… How many more uncoordinated teens is Tony going to let into his highly dangerous lab?” Happy mumbled more to himself than anything but both Peter and Ashley heard, and both tried to stifle snorts of laughter.
Peter spent much of the car ride to the tower rabbiting on about some robotics project he was working on with Ned over the weekend. Ashley distracted herself by looking through some more texts she had received on her phone whilst she had been in school.
Karen<3: How was school today? Let me know if you want to have a chat and I’ll give you a call. 14:38pm
Fogggy: Do you want to meet up for some lunch tomorrow? We can go back to that café and get mint mochas! 15:07pm
Matty: I’ve been working a source. Meet us tomorrow around 12. Karen and Foggy want to see you. 15:19pm
Matty: Also, I hope everything’s ok. Let me know if you need anything. 15:21pm
Once they’d arrived at the tower, both teens headed straight for the lab, after FRIDAY notified him both ‘Boss’ and ‘Lady Boss’ were in meetings until four-thirty. As they entered the lab, FRIDAY had another announcement for them, stating that all school work had to be completed before they could do any tinkering in the lab. Sighing, Peter pulled his homework out of his backpack and sat at his desk, staring at the bottles of web-fluid every so often as he worked on the algebra homework that was due in on Monday. Ashley had chuckled to herself at the protocol, which had been named the ‘All Work and No Play’ protocol. Having finished all of her own work, Ashley settled down at her desk, which was now considerably less bare than it had been on Wednesday. There was a stack of books on one corner: Advanced Coding, Troubleshoot Your Code and How Not to Destroy Humanity: A Guide to Building AI. On top of the books was also a collection of research papers, all published by one Dr Bruce Banner. In the middle of the desk sat a sleek silver laptop. It was much slimmer than the one she was currently borrowing from the school, and when she picked it up, it must have only weighed a fraction of the bulky school laptop. Next to the laptop was a brand new Stark Pad, decorated with an Iron Man cover to protect it. There was a pink sticky note on top of the cover, messy writing indicating that it was perhaps written out quite hastily.
These are yours to keep. There are basic apps and programs on them, but if you need any other programs downloading let me know. FRIDAY will enact the All Work protocol, so make sure your school work is done first. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Tony.
“I can get you a new cover for your Stark Pad if you like,” Peter spoke up from the desk in front of her. “I think a Spider-Man cover would look best. Or if you wanna annoy Mr Stark, we could get you a Captain America cover.” Peter snickered at the thought himself. He pulled out his own Stark Pad, which had a red and blue colour scheme, with black lines drawn across it in spider-web patterns.
“I probably shouldn’t be in the business of annoying my new boss,” she countered. “But a Black Widow themed cover would look pretty awesome.”
Peter grinned widely. “We should make one!” Peter then proceeded to waffle on about how he could probably create one with Mr Stark’s 3D printer.
Ashley left Peter to it and opened up the laptop. It had an incredibly fast boot-up time, she noticed as the home screen had loaded in less than a minute. She was quick to set up a password for the computer before she started browsing through the programmes Mr Stark had installed on the system. She dug her notepad out of the desk drawer and had flicked to the rough designs she had drawn up for Spider-Man’s web-shooters. She stood up and walked over to Peter’s desk, where the boy was humming along to himself, earphones in his ears as he tried to rush through his homework. Once he’d noticed her presence, Peter pulled one of the earphones out of his ears, letting it dangle above the edge of the desk.
“Hey, can I borrow those prototype web-shooters?” she asked. Her eyes flickered down to the page Peter was working on and caught onto the problems on the page. “Also, number twelve is wrong. X equals sixteen, not twenty-three.”
Peter thrust the web-shooters towards her as he re-read the problem and his working out. “Shit, you’re right. Thanks!”
Upon returning to her desk, Ashley started working on creating a user-friendly interface for the web-slinger, based on her sketches and notes from Wednesday. She was about an hour into her code when Mr Stark entered the lab. He watched the pair as Ashley typed out on the laptop keyboard at incredible speed and Peter rushed through his homework. A small smile stretched across his face as he watched the two teens working hard before he made his presence known.
“Afternoon kiddies. How was school?” The smile didn’t last once Ashley lifted her head up, jade eyes meeting Mr Stark’s gaze. “What the hell happened, kid?” Tony gestured to the right side of his face and then pointed at Ashley. He walked over to her desk and pulled a chair over, sitting in front of the girl. He held her face in his hands and gently prodded the bruise with his thumb, eliciting a sharp hiss from the young girl.
“I got into a fight with some stairs. The stairs won.” She spoke with a dry tone, a humourless smile on her face as Tony inspected the bruise closely.
“Did you at least get a few hits in on the stairs?” Tony asked. The concerned tone in his voice, outweighing the humour of the question. He very gently pressed the pad of his thumb down on her cheekbone, which was a furious shade of purple. Ashley twitched in her seat, a small whimper escaping her lips. Although some of the swelling had gone down after the time she spent in the nurse’s office earlier that morning, it still stung.
“I think when my foot went through the bottom step, it splintered, so the stairs didn’t get away totally unscathed.”
Tony’s eyes then dropped to her feet underneath the table, a slither of a bandage peeking out above her tattered converse on her left foot. He shook his head as he stood up, placing his chair back at his own desk. “Geez kid… It doesn’t feel like you’ve broken your cheekbone or anything. It’s just a bad bruise. Do we need to wrap you up in bubble wrap?”
“No, sir. I’ll be more careful.” Ashley untucked her hair from behind her ear and let it fall in front of her face as she turned back to her laptop.
“What are you working on there anyway?” Tony inquired. He walked back over to Ashley and stood behind her, eyes scanning over the meticulous code on screen. “Talk me through it.”
Ashley cleared her throat and gestured to the rough sketches on her notepad. “It’s an interface for the new web-shooters. I’ll need a full use of the web-fluid’s capabilities so that different actions can be assigned, but so far this would enable Spider-Man to be able to cycle through the different fluid-types that would be loaded into the shooter. It would be a holographic interface that would be programmed into the web-shooters but could also be voice controlled for easy access.”
“Wow kid… And you’ve done that in the last hour?” Ashley nodded. “Great job. Did you hear that Pete?”
“Yeah, that’s so awesome! I’ve been working on compressing the web-fluid further so that we can fit the same amount currently into those disks. Maybe once that’s done, we could try them out in the new shooters?”
“Brilliant idea! But do your homework first. Ashley, is yours done?” Peter huffed but nonetheless turned back to his workbook. He only had two questions left, so he would power through those as quickly as possible.
“Yes, Mr Stark.” To prove it, she pulled her maths book out of her bag and showed her the completed exercise that Peter was currently carrying out. “Oh! And thank you for the laptop and the Stark Pad.” She placed her school books away and pulled out the folder she had been carrying around with her since Wednesday evening, with the completed and signed internship contract. She handed it over to Tony, who was quick to look over the last page. Ashley waited with bated breath as Tony skimmed over the contact details, bank account details and the signature she had forged at the bottom.
“Perfect! Welcome to the team officially, Miss Sampson.”