asleep
WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 — 6:27PM
Riri Williams doesn’t like to stick around past six o’clock; when it gets around the time to bring Peter before the cameras, she usually asks Zhiyuan to use her as tattoo practice or for Haroun to give her a ride in Nick’s truck. She doesn’t want to watch; neither does Haroun.
Zhiyuan’s passed out in the barracks, and Haroun’s already a little high. He’s not into angel dust like Charlie—he always says it makes him too crazy—but he’s been on benzos and opioids for as long as she’s known him. Even now, laying on the floor beside Charlie, his head tilts to the sky. Haroun’s eyes are half-closed. The bearded Charlie has his hands propped beneath his head, and he giggles to himself, whispering something to Haroun, who has one hand tracing swirls in the air. Haroun is only a few years older than her, but when he’s like this, he looks so much older. To be fair, he’s lived in Charlie’s world much longer than she has—a life of the day-to-day, of a constant wondering where to get their next high. It wears on the body.
“Haroun,” she says, and he hmphs in response, opening his eyes just a fraction wider. His shirt has risen up on his chest to reveal a sheen of sweat and two thin scars spreading across his chest, double faint lines that line the bottom of his pectorals.
It takes a second for his eyes to land on her, and when he finally does, his hand drops from the air to thump against his chest. “Riri,” he answers.
She nods at her wrist, where her plastic Iron Man watch blinks dimly.
Haroun sighs once, gently through his nose, and his eyes drift to Charlie. “Hey, man,” he says, “me and Riri gonna go for a drive.”
Charlie snorts and wipes at his eyes. He’s smiling—how much fucking angel dust is he on? “Yeah, sure, just…” He waves at the wall, where a stack of Stark’s prototypes line up like soccer trophies against the wall, each glowing varying shades of blue. “Try out the new one. The, um…” Propping himself up on his hands, he nods to the leftmost one. “Glowy one.”
Haroun stands up, sways, and falls against the wall, heavy-bodied. He’s in no shape to pick up a weapon, let alone wield it, so Riri steps between him and the sprawled-out Charlie to grab the gun. It’s hot in her hands, so warm that she has to shift it off of her fingers and onto her sleeves so as not to burn herself.
Haroun’s in no shape to drive, but Riri doesn’t have anything in her system, so she offers. He staggers out with his hand braced against the wall, but she doesn’t have anything in her system, so she can walk normally.
On their way out, they pass the row of star-painted cells, and at the end: Parker and Cassie’s cell. Peter, she thinks to herself, and the first name has so much weight that she can almost hear Stark screaming it over the phone. Inside the cell, she can hear Cassie crying and wailing. She can hear Parker talking, but his voice sounds raspy and slow. He’s hushing her, saying something like, “They’re coming, they’re coming.”
Just for a moment, Riri pauses outside of the kids' cell. The pair have gone quiet now, but she can still hear Cassie breathing, gulping in big, stilted gasps of air. If she opened the food slot right now, she could probably see the two of them huddled together like a pair of Victorian orphans, hugging each other like it's their last moment on Earth.
The sun has started to set, and a dim orange-yellow dips through the trees as they leave the bunker. The entrance to their bunker is deep in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and so far from any trail or road that they have never seen another person near the entrance. Their vehicles, even, are parked an hour-long walk away from the bunker.
She keeps walking.
“Your turn,” says Haroun, dropping the gun into the dirt and shaking his lightly-burned hand. “Damn—that fucking hurts.”
The sun has not yet begun to set, but the birch trees surrounding them batter the light into stripes and streaks, making the sky seem darker than it actually is. Riri reaches for the Stark weapon; before picking it up, she wraps her hands with medical tape and tosses the roll of tape to Haroun. “Here.”
As he wraps his own hands, she picks up the weapon and they begin their trek, searching for other animals in the underbrush. “Look,” Haroun says finally, hushed.
There’s a pair of deer a hundred feet away, lower on the mountain. It looks like a mother and a baby, one small and gangly, the other tall and sure.
“Haroun,” whines Riri. “Come on. Let’s wait for another.”
“Another?” he scoffs. He squats lower to the ground, and she can see his toe protrude through the tip of his sneaker. “What, they’re too cute for you to kill?”
A hot annoyance rises in her. “No,” she refutes.
“You were fine with the squirrel last time.”
“Yeah, but—”
“And the fox.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
They watch as the mother and little deer traipse closer, hopping between trees and nudging bushes with their snouts. “They’re just a little bigger, that’s all.” Riri picks up the weapon. There’s no viewfinder on Stark’s gun, but she closes one eye anyway, pretending to be Hawkeye.
Haroun clicks his tongue and nudges the weapon with his finger so that it points farther right. “Not that one. The little one.”
She scoffs. “Seriously? I’m not gonna kill the baby.”
Haroun stares at her. “Riri,” he starts, as she drops her arm, letting the gun hang heavily at her side, straining her shoulder. This time, he speaks very deliberately, so much so that she thinks he must be sobering up: “I don’t think Charlie cares how old the test subjects are.”
Riri wants to laugh, but she’s sure that would be in poor taste. Charlie is the one who took them from drugs to kidnapping to torture to murder. “I don’t care what Charlie thinks,” she shoots back.
Haroun stares again. And for a moment he just watches her with his lips pressed together. It’s not sober clarity she’s seeing, but the clarity one reaches when they are finally free of pain. “Yes, you do.” He waves in the direction of the deer. “Besides, if you kill the mom, then the little guy will just die anyway. Then you’ll just be killing them both. You don’t want that, do you?”
Riri ends up firing anyway, and she catches the baby deer in the rear.
It squeals as it dies.
Maybe she’s not Hawkeye. Maybe she's... Maybe she's the bad guy.
They head to a McDonald’s just before seven, so they’re gone by the time the screaming starts. It’s not like they can hear it from outside of the bunker, but the proximity alone is enough for Haroun to complain of nausea. They order a couple Happy Meals for Parker and the girl, and some burgers and fries for most everyone else. A Big Mac for Mason. Nuggets for Zhiyuan. Cheese for Renee, no cheese for Jon.
On their way back to the bunker, holding the crinkled, warm bag of food, Riri mentions, “You wanna know what Stark told me?”
Haroun huffs. He takes a swig of something from a Gatorade bottle—not Gatorade. “Do I?”
She can’t help it. “He said… He might not be able to make the weapon. The real one, I mean. The one that can, like, disintegrate people. The way Charlie wants it.” She doesn’t look at him; Riri keeps her eyes on the road and her hands at nine-and-three. “He said that the thing HYDRA had was different because they had some other thing, this like magic thing—”
“You have to stop talking to him,” snaps Haroun suddenly. The bottle is back in its cupholder and Haroun is staring at her. “What the hell are you guys doing chatting it up, anyway? You’re supposed to get in there, give him what he needs, and get out, remember?”
Her chest burns, as does her face, but her dark skin hides the heat in her cheeks. “Um.”
“Of course he’s gonna tell you he can't do it! He wants you to think that so we’ll let Parker go. He wants us to give up, but we can’t. We can’t.” He stabs a finger at the front windshield as though Stark is standing on the hood of the car. “Those kids aren’t going fucking anywhere. Stark’s gonna make us what he promised.”
“I know,” she says, “but what if—”
“Riri,” he says, and she shuts up. This time, his hand is on her wrist, and it’s clammy. “Charlie knows what he’s doing. He—I know he gets carried away sometimes, but he—he knows what’s best for us. He does.” Haroun squeezes her arm, and she keeps her hands stiffly on the wheel. “Once we get that weapon—you can have anything you want, man. Anything in the world.”
“I know,” she echoes.
“So don’t doubt him, okay? He knows—he knows what he’s doing. The whole journey to peace isn’t gonna be rainbows and butterflies, you know?” He tilts his head back against his headrest and stares at the ceiling. “Gotta have some bumps along the way. I don’t like it either, but sometimes pain is necessary, man.” His face is slack, save the wrinkle between his brows. “No pain, no gain, huh?”
By the time they get back, it’s nearly dark, with only a faded blue sky, a waning crescent, and Riri’s phone flashlight to light their way home.
After parking Nick’s truck and walking the way to the bunker in silence, Haroun stops her. They are now outside of the entrance, with the hatch just a few feet away. “Wait,” he says, and he looks suddenly sad. He’s on something—he smoked something on the way up. “Listen.” He looks guiltily at the hatch. “You’re not addicted yet,” he says, “so for you, you could do it. You could get out of here. You’re still, like, a kid.” He sniffs. “You don’t have to stay cooped up here like the rest of us. I know you miss your brother…” She can’t help but wince at the mention of him, and she stares pointedly at the dirt, scuffing her pink Converse on some tree roots. “We miss him, too, but I’m sure the others would understand. You’re not like us, and I don’t—I don’t want you to be. You’ve still got a chance. You could do it. You don’t have to sit in a dungeon all day reading comic books or whatever.”
Sometimes, Riri thinks about leaving. About packing a bag and walking out into Nowhere, New Hampshire and getting away from this place. But she wouldn’t know what to do. She’s spent her life with these people—she hates them, she loves them—and they’re her family. Sure, they screw up, but they’re doing their best. Right?
“I could,” Riri answers, squinting at him, “but I can’t leave my best friend behind, can I?”
He smiles, and then he sighs, and his relief is as clear as the starlit sky.
Haroun nudges open the slot with his foot, and Riri pushes the first Happy Meal through. She’s not the one who usually does this; but Ava’s gone now. Someone’s gotta take the job. She pushes the second Happy Meal through the slot and a small, pale hand hooks onto her fingers. “Ava?” asks the Lang girl. She sounds like she’s been crying.
Riri yanks her hand back, but Cassie’s hand still waves through, fingers waggling, half of her teary face visible through the slot. “Ava? Ava?” Parker must be asleep; usually when Cassie gets too close to the others, he jumps to her rescue like a mama bear. But right now she doesn’t even hear him complaining.
“Not Ava,” she answers, and the girl’s name feels like acid. “Riri.”
Haroun pushes Cassie’s hand back inside and closes the slot.
“She shouldn’t know your name,” says Haroun. “Seriously, Riri, that’s not good.”
“Why?” asks Riri, and her face goes sour. “It’s not like they’re going anywhere.” She looks up at Haroun. “Right?”
WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 — 9:16 PM
“It’s not too bad,” Dr. Cho comments, tilting Rhodey’s face to examine the burn further. “Second degree. Just a graze.” With her rubber-gloved hands, she prods at the edges of the blistered skin. “I’m going to give you some antimicrobial ointment for it, but the pain will be minimal. And it shouldn’t scar.”
After dressing the wound, Cho turns to Pepper, who’s sitting on the other side of the Medbay room with her hands tucked beneath her legs. “He was right about this one, Pepper. It’s really not bad at all. How did it happen?”
For obvious reasons, Pepper doesn’t want to talk about it. She just shrugs as Rhodey says, “Just practice with one of Tony’s suits.”
“Why were you practicing with your faceplate up?”
“Caught me off guard.” Rhodey pats the new bandage on his face as though to make sure it’ll stay in place.
“Didn’t realize anything could catch the Iron Patriot off guard,” she jokes, pulling her gloves off and tossing them into the nearest trash can.
Rhodey laughs half-heartedly. “Actually, Helen,” Rhodey starts, “as long as we’re in here, do you think you could check on Pepper? She’s been…” He glances at her, wrongfully hoping she’ll finish his sentence for him. “...having some nausea...and…”
“It’s nothing,” Pepper interrupts, clipping her hair back. “Probably a mild stomach bug—nothing too serious.”
Helen gives her a look. “You don’t pay me to sit around and watch you suffer, Pepper. I’m here for a reason.” One of her nurses guides Rhodey off the exam table and into one of the chairs by the wall before exchanging the sheet on top for a fresh one.
“I’m telling you, I’m fine.”
“I can give you a more specific explanation than ‘I’m fine,’” Cho reminds her.
“Aren’t you a geneticist?” Pepper mutters, as Cho ushers her onto the exam table. She’s too tired to protest, anyway.
“I’m also your friend,” she says. “Which means if you’re suffering, I’m gonna tell you why. Besides, I like putting my M.D. to good use. Rhodey, do you mind…”
Rhodey tips an imaginary cowboy hat and leaves the room.
“Now,” Cho continues, this time with a clean pair of gloves, “care to tell me what’s going on?”
Pepper sighs and tips her head back against the headrest. She’s lying horizontally now, her hair-clasp digging into the back of her head. “It’s complicated.”
“Rhodey shows up with a second-degree burn from an Iron Man gauntlet and all I get is ‘it’s complicated?’” Helen unbuttons Pepper’s shirt and presses gently against her stomach. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
Pepper does her best to explain, but it’s difficult. So, like the incredibly open person she is, she talks about how Tony refuses to leave his lab, about his recent hostility, even about Peter and how he hasn’t contacted her in weeks. “I know he’s at that research program,” she says dismissively, “but I worry, you know? The kid spends so much time with us, he practically lives here. Tony has a room for him and everything, but he’s too shy to ever take us up on sleeping over here… I just…”
Helen guides her to a sitting position and presses the cold chestpiece against her back. “A couple deep breaths for me, please.”
Pepper does as she says.
Every breath she takes feels like it’s full of needles. She can’t stop thinking about how Tony shoved that gun into that spot beneath his chin. The violent determination in his shaking hands. The way his eyes screamed for help. The pasty glaze over his skin. It was terrifying.
“Again.”
He was ready to pull that trigger. Tony’s expressed to her some suicidal ideation before; this is not news to her. Beneath his haughty veneer lay a man who was constantly afraid, and would do anything to not feel that fear again, whether it meant sleeping in his lab or putting poison in his chest.
But whenever Tony expresses things like this, she’s comforted by what he always reminds her: he’s never acted on it.
Yet she saw his finger on that trigger, his hand twitching, body wrought with tension. He would’ve pulled it. If they had gotten any closer, he would’ve…
“Again, please.”
She does, and it still hurts.
She loves Tony more than she could ever explain. He’s seen her at her best and her worst, and she’s seen him the same. He’s the only person she can ever truly be honest with. They complete each other. She knows he would never betray her, and yet...he did. Her conversation with Helen fades away, and all she can see is her fiancé (ex-fiancé, she thinks, and the word tastes like the salty tang of blood) and his twisted expression, the barrel of his gun dug deep into the soft of his under-chin.
She once found him looking like that.
Tony’s sitting on the floor in the living room, and the television’s on. It must be a home video, Pepper determines, because the camerawork is shaky and the video’s upside down and it’s more pixelated than anything that’s been on that screen in months. A VCR sits beside him, whirring softly, cords streaming to the wall. The sound is faint, but her boyfriend’s so extraordinarily close to the screen that every time the camera moves, light shifts over his face. His legs are drawn up a little, and both hands are set on his knees like a kid watching the Flintstones instead of a grown man watching his own company’s hundred-thousand dollar television. What is he watching?
It’s a short video—only a few minutes, as the image of the empty kitchen Pepper saw when she first entered the room reappears. How long has he been sitting there, watching these same few minutes?
The video onscreen is barely displaying anything; it’s set viewing half of the Stark family kitchen as Edward Jarvis, the man Tony speaks of so fondly, stands with both hands gripping the kitchen counter, hunched over a little. The camera is turned over, making the video upside down so that Jarvis is standing on the ceiling instead of the floor. He’s clearly forgotten about the camera he just set down, which might’ve been taken out for the purpose of a couple family photos. To anyone else, he looks like a stiff older man just doing his job, perhaps taking a break due to back trouble. The most important part of the video, however, is the background noise: from the other room, a shout and a shuffle and a “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” as Jarvis bows his head, with a taut expression of distress, before the camera. The older man takes a breath and holds it, his hands tightening around the counter-edge. Another shout, and a sharp smack, and Jarvis winces, turning his face away from the camera.
“...one more time!” Another slap, this time followed by a yelp and a wet sob. The audio is troubled, struggling to choose between the background noise—crack after crack after crack—and the barely perceptible rustles of Jarvis’ clothing. A string of pops in the man’s back as he shifts, alternating his weight between his feet. A rush of hushed arguing, a series of footsteps, and then—
Sudden silence. It takes a moment for Pepper to realize that Edwin Jarvis is holding his breath.
Only a few seconds pass before a boy of maybe eight years old runs into the room and directly into Jarvis’ leg, knocking him back into the counter behind him. The video is still upside-down, so it takes Pepper a second to recognize her fiancé, just forty-some years younger.
Tony’s hair is cut and clean and oily black, swept into a gelled cowlick, and he is dressed in Christmas colors from head to toe: a wrinkled cream dress shirt, an unbuttoned emerald sweater vest, a pair of sangria-colored worsted-wool pants with a matching jacket, a jacket that is now inside out and bunched up. The rush of tears is immediate, and Tony presses his face into Jarvis’ thigh, and all is quiet, even his tears—the sound has cut out.
Jarvis looks younger now that he’s looking at Tony; he looks like a father. “Young sir,” he says gently, as the audio crackles to life, “we only need a few more minutes for the advert… Afterwards, we can go for sandwiches, yes?” Inconsolable, the boy continues to sob. When Jarvis places his hand on his back, he gasps sharply and gathers his fists into Jarvis’ pant leg. Pepper watches with slightly-disturbed intensity as Jarvis’ entire face suddenly tightens, brow to jaw to neck. Both hands now on the boy’s small shoulders, barely ghosting the fabric, he tilts his neck back as though ready to pray and blinks up at the ceiling. They stay like that for a moment, Jarvis facing the sky and Tony hiding his own face. “Master Stark,” he says finally, like the little boy crying into his pant leg is already a CEO, “where?”
Tony only seems to sob harder.
Instead of prying the kid away from him as Pepper expects, Edwin Jarvis kneels, sliding to the floor so slowly and achingly that Tony lets go, hanging his arms at his sides until the older man and the boy come face to face. The man’s knees must ache, but still he kneels, and the audio cuts out once more. He touches the kid’s head, then both sides of his face, and starts to speak.
Whatever the butler says seems to comfort Tony, because the boy eventually nods, sniffling, tears still threatening to bubble over. He removes the kid’s vest, half-thrown on, and then rebuttons the wrinkled shirt beneath it. The whole time, Jarvis keeps speaking, and Tony keeps nodding. He adjusts the vest, and then, with surprising difficulty, turns the jacket from inside-out to its rightful state by pulling the sleeves through their holes. He doesn’t make him turn around; instead, he maneuvers the boy’s hands through the sleeves and pulls on the suit jacket with care, slowly. Adjusting the boy's collar and smoothing all visible wrinkles, he finally dabs at the kid’s face with the edge of his tie, which he then tucks back into his buttoned vest. They’re still speaking, but Jarvis has turned, so only Tony is visible. The boy shakes his head, and shakes again, and Jarvis thumbs away a fresh round of tears before Tony embraces the older man.
A shout from Howard, caught halfway through by a choir of static and an eruption of noise: “Jarvis! Camera!”
“Yes, sir!” answers the man, and he grips the edge of the counter to lift himself back up. Jarvis pats Tony’s small shoulder, and he scoops up the camera from the counter—and the video starts over.
Pepper kneels next to him. She picks up the remote from where it is settled beside him and presses pause—onscreen, Jarvis stands alone, his hands braced once more against the gleaming counter, pained, his head bowed and his face twisted in a perpetual wince.
Tony, the one hugging his knees in front of the television, continues to stare. “It’s a Beta,” he says, and he doesn’t turn away from the television to look at her. “First camcorder, you know. Sony didn’t release them for another few years, but my dad—he got a prototype early.”
“Tony,” starts Pepper, and she’s not sure if she should touch him. He’s not crying, but he’s so wrapped up in his arms that it might take a crowbar to pry him free.
“Jarvis didn’t know how to work it, I don’t think. He was maybe seventy here… He grew up with radio, you know, not video cameras, so he laid it upside down—on top of the record button. He didn’t mean to record this. He wouldn’t have, I mean. He didn’t like cameras—Howard fucking loved them.”
“Tony…”
His eyes are still on the screen. “We were taking home videos on it—supposed to be used for commercial ads, you know? I kept screwing around, fucking up the video, and he…” He sniffs. “He used the charging cord. All the marks were under my shirt—couldn’t hit my face, you know? Would’ve ruined the ad. We ended up sending copies of the videos—the good takes, I mean—with our Christmas cards that year, whenever it was… Seventy-eight? Seventy-seven? Everyone loved them. Kept saying how adorable I looked in my fucking suit and tie.”
She doesn’t say anything this time, and he takes a shuddering breath. She comes closer to Tony, scooting forward on her knees. Pepper puts one hand on his knee, the other on his shoulder, and he keeps talking.
He stares and stares at stares. “He didn’t get rid of the video—you know? You’d think he would but—I think—it didn’t matter if he was ashamed about what he did. It was the first commercial use of that camcorder, so of course Howard couldn’t bear to get rid of it. So I found it in the box with all the other test runs, like there was nothing…” He sniffs again. “Like there’s nothing wrong with it—like that’s a normal fucking video for people to keep.”
At last, he looks at her, and he’s so shattered it scares her. His eyes are pinkened, but he does not cry. “Do you think,” he says, like he’s been working up the courage, “he ever loved me?”
Pepper feels small and stupid, like a child trying to learn her multiplication tables. He’s looking at her like she’s the world, yet she’s only a speck in it. “I think,” she answers, “he wasn’t as much of a father as he was a guardian. He remembered he loved you when it was convenient to him. But I do see a father in that clip, Tony. It just isn’t Howard.”
His face looks even sadder when he smiles. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
“Pepper.”
She looks up. Helen’s got that look again; she’s holding her tablet, stylus poised, waiting for a response. “What?”
“I said, are there any other symptoms you can tell me about?”
She shakes her head. “It’s really not much, Helen. Just some nausea and headaches. Nothing unusual.” It’s only the fact that it won’t go away that perturbs her.
“Any chest pain, stomach pain? Tenderness? Dizziness?”
“Nothing,” promises Pepper. “I’ll let you know if I do.”
“Well,” says Helen, “Could I take some blood? We could run some tests and see if anything’s up. Otherwise, it might just be stress, Pepper. And I can give you something for that, but…”
Pepper waves her hand in understanding. “It’s alright, Helen. Really, bloodwork’s fine, but Rhodey’s making a mountain out of a molehill.”
Helen asks her to meet her at the clinic tomorrow, and not to eat or drink anything, save a few exceptions, so that the blood is as untampered as possible. “You take on too much, Pepper,” she says before she goes. “Don’t put Tony on your scale, too.”
WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 — 11:54PM
Jim pulls into a hurricane of police lights and first responders, of gloved hands and wet grass, as Officer Paz waves him into a faux parking spot between some cedar trees. They’re far from their home in the city—in a small town called South Hero settled on Lake Champlain, which borders Vermont and New York. He can’t think of the last time he’s been to Vermont, and when he opens his car door, the air reeks of forest, so thick with maple and freshwater that he can barely smell the car exhaust.
“Jim,” says Officer Paz, her face shrouded in night. She looks grim as he and Maggie exit the car. “I need you to stay calm for this, understand? We haven’t found Cassie and we don’t know what this means yet. We’re just trying to stretch this lead as far as we can.”
Jim’s never felt this unhinged at a crime scene, so he understands exactly why she says it. He’s giving off all the wrong signals for a police officer—anxious, twitchy, and breathing hard—so he takes a tight breath. “Got it,” he says stiffly, and Maggie squeezes his arm a little harder.
They were both briefed on the situation on the car ride over. Some civilians out fishing in the lake caught her in their net and called the police. They’re still here—a man and his teenage son—sitting on a log a few feet from the pier. They’re speaking to each other, leaned in so close that their shadows overlap, and the man’s got his hand on his son’s back, rubbing as the boy ducks his head into the crook of his father’s neck. Jim’s chest hurts at the sight; he draws his hand over his own shoulder, as though he can feel the tickle of Cassie’s breath there.
According to the other officers, the woman didn’t have any identification on her, and she wasn’t local to South Hero: a small, white, farming town with a population the size of Cassie’s middle school.
Any biological evidence from the surface of her skin was washed away in the lakewater, but they did identify a hair on her as belonging to Cassie. “It’s a start,” Paz continues, as she leads them under a strip of yellow tape. She clears her throat. “But if you could identify her…that would be even better. The rapid-DNA test gives us general accuracy, but we can’t be sure until we wait for a more accurate test.”
They creep through the late-night mud, the red-and-blue lighting up the lakefront, until they reach the small fishing boat; beside it lies a woman’s corpse, sprawled out with eyes open. Her face is smashed in, so swollen that she’s impossible to recognize. Ratty brown hair frames her face, and her brown skin is wrinkled and sallow with water. She’s wearing only a gray T-shirt and a set of faded blue cut-offs, and she’s barefoot. “Anything?” Officer Paz prompts. On the lake, police boats creep through the water—searchlights ignite the surface in a blinding white.
Maggie shakes her head. Jim doesn’t recognize her either. But a new voice beside them inhales sharply. Hope Van Dyne stands beside them, flanked by a shorter officer; she’s staring open-mouthed at the corpse before them.
“That’s the…?” she starts, shaking her head. They haven’t seen Hope in a while, but she looks thoroughly cold; her hair barely touches her shoulders now, shorn in a clean line, and her makeup is thick and jarring. “I know her.”
Surprised, Paz takes out her notepad and pen. “How?”
“We…” Hope shakes her head again. “Me and Scott… We know her. We helped her with… It’s hard to explain.” Hope’s face is completely unreadable. “Her name’s Ava.”
MONDAY, MAY 14 — 8:59AM
I’m gonna die here.
It’s the briefest thought, but as soon as it floats through his mind, the truth of it starts to sink in.
So many have died in this bunker already, and not just Ava. From their cell, they’ve heard more than one person die. Barely a week into their abduction, one of the addicts—RJ was his name. Peter remembers that he had long hair—overdosed. They didn’t know what to do with his body, so they left him in the hallway until he started to smell. They ended up burying him outside. Renee, the red-haired woman, came back after their ceremony and cried in the cell beside them until it was time to take Peter out, and when he got back, someone had slid an expired package of candy corn through their food slot.
A banging on the door. Cassie startles awake. Over a month in this place has trained her well, as she knows that the knocking in the morning means she has to go under the bed and hide. The upper slot in the door, the one meant for a pair of eyes, slides open and Mateo peers through. “Against the wall, Parker.”
After four escape attempts, they know better than to come in without their guns drawn and Peter against the wall. His head still aches with every movement, and he’s dizzy enough that it takes him three tries to get up from his reclined position. He plants one hand on the ground, pulls himself onto both arms, and groans from the weight of his skull on his neck. His head. Charlie’s hammer really got him yesterday. Yesterday? No, it was right after their escape attempt… Which was what, a week ago? Cassie knows better than he does. He raises a hand to touch his head and collapses again, and when his head hits the concrete he lets out an audible whimper.
Now that he’s on the ground, he can see Cassie from under the bed—he can almost spot the whites of her eyes from here.
A warning bark from Mateo: “Parker!”
If he weren’t in so much pain, he’d respond with something stupid like, Sir, yes, sir, but right now he can hardly lift his own legs. “Coming,” he says, and the vibration of his voice hurts his head. He heals quickly, just not as quickly as usual, so it’s only the injuries from the past couple of weeks that bother him. The recent knife wound in his stomach wasn’t as bad as he thought—just a few slashes, shallow enough that he didn’t bother wasting their thread to sew it up. He’s lost a couple fingernails, too, which hurt like hell and require a lot of attention. The waterboarding was pretty bad, too—but at least it left no lasting marks. There’s some bruising on his bad leg, which he doesn’t mind so much because he still has one good leg left.
His head, though. His head. The pain of it is so bad that if he moves too fast he has to sit immediately or he’ll throw up.
He tries again: plant one hand, then the other, then reach for the railing of the bed—damn it! His hand misses the railing and hits the floor, so he’s back where he started.
The door opens, and the light from the hallway is far too bright. He winces, but he doesn’t have the strength to turn his head away, so he closes his eyes. Mateo and someone else walk in, and he hears the click of the safety. Someone put their gun away; if he was stronger, maybe he could use the moment to—
“Haroun, take it back out,” says Mateo.
“Look at him. He’s practically asleep.”
Peter opens his eyes again, wincing at the light, so Haroun kicks the door closed with his foot. “Not asleep,” says Peter.
They set up like usual, forcing Peter to lay flat on the bed. He’s on a constant rotation of sedation. Every morning, when Charlie and the addicts wake, he’s given a hefty dose of sedation fed through a vein in his inner arm by the tall, black guy—Matt or Mateo, they usually call him. It puts him straight into a state of nothing—a tingling wave of numb followed by another of nausea—he wants it so badly right now that the muscles in his legs tremble. Mateo sets his bag down beside Peter, and Haroun holds his arms still. They’ve moved on from syringe injections to an IV bag setup, simply because he is receiving so much sedation now that it’s a waste of needles and could kill him if they give it to him all at once, like it almost did the first time.
He still doesn’t like needles.
He doesn’t bother asking if they’re clean anymore—he doubts they have an unlimited supply. They look clean, but he can’t really tell. Not like he had a lot of experience with intravenous drugs before he was kidnapped. He always healed so fast—so medication wasn’t usually required, save antibiotics that he could take by mouth. The couple times sedation was required, they had to use leftover drugs from Steve Rogers’ medicine cabinet. Then, it was a matter of underdosing instead of overdosing.
When they first took him from that upside-down wreck of the car, they had to use multiple doses of the sleepy stuff to take him down. They kept him on high sedation for a couple days, even afterwards, until they understood his limits and felt they could control him properly. Then, he was on maybe three or four doses of Winter Soldier sedation to take him out, two after that, and then one once they knew how strong he was. He's been growing used to the drug, and once he’s clear enough he will try to escape, but each time he has failed. Once Mateo notices he’s a little more lucid, he ups the dosage. He’s now up to three doses to keep him ‘weak’—all delivered via IV bag so that Mateo doesn’t force an overdose by giving it all at once.
Mateo snaps on a pair of gloves and lifts Peter’s bruised arm. “Can I get some light, Haroun?” Haroun raises a smartphone and shines a white light; as Mateo ties a tourniquet around his upper arm, awaiting the appearance of a vein, Peter closes his eyes again. His body craves it; he has been growing used to it, more and more every day. As he gets his dose every morning, it’s in the late hours of the night and the early hours of the morning that he starts to feel his withdrawal. Sweats. Dry heaves. Hot flashes. It is during this time that his mind is clearest, and therefore it is when he formulates his great escape plans. “I’m going to count to three,” says Mateo.
“It might be a little uncomfortable,” adds Haroun, pinning his arm down still. “On three. One, two…”
Peter almost laughs at that.
They’ve tried to escape four times. The latest one he still struggles to remember. The first one, which is the clearest, they called Operation Falcon, because Peter could only convince Cassie to stick to the ceiling if she pretended she was flying. They’d forgotten to dose him, and he broke out after a full day without his sedatives, slamming through the door as soon as it was opened, dragging Cassie with him, and crawling on the ceiling with her in tow. What he didn’t take into account was how badly his battered body would fight him. With his busted knee, he dropped her, and she hit the ground hard. Once they had her, he stopped fighting. He couldn’t escape without her.
The second attempt: Operation Black Widow. Once his leg had healed enough, they stuck to the ceiling. Peter clung to the ceiling, and Cassie clung to him. Once a confused guard named Mason walked in, finding the room empty, he leaned over to look under the bed. Peter carefully lowered Cassie to the ground and took a strip of the bedsheet they’d torn off—pulling it around the man’s neck tight until he passed out. Cassie got his gun, and they made it all the way to the bunker door—but the door had a passcode which they didn’t have.
So they needed the passcode. The third attempt, sometime in the second week, they named Operation Captain America. Cassie hated this one, but Peter and she were running out of options. They identified a weak link—and, when they caught him, used him as a human shield, tried to get them to give up the code. Renee wouldn’t have it—when the guy leaned over, trying to get away, she shot him through the neck. Their leverage was gone, and the man, a forty-year-old with a hooked nose and a picture of his kid in his pocket, died there on the floor.
The sedative is coming through him now, and then pain in his head lessens to the point where he can finally open his eyes. Haroun looks up from the IV line. They’ve finished, IV bag hung on a metal pole. “What, no witty comebacks?”
Peter Parker has no room in his body for witty comebacks.“Thank you,” Peter breathes, and he feels the euphoria of no pain, no pain, no pain. The cocktail of sedatives they give the Winter Soldiers includes a mild analgesic that washes over him like a cold glass of water, soothing his aching skull.
It’s not always bad. Sometimes Haroun will give them some painkillers or Riri will sneak them extra food. Once, one of the guards even brought them a tub of antibiotic ointment hidden in a set of new clothes (HYDRA captive garb, sure, but new clothes are new clothes). They’re mostly left alone—the door only opens if they’re causing trouble, if he needs more sedation, or if it’s time to take Peter away at seven. They have the freedom to try for some ongoing missions, like Operation Ant-Man: in each set of garbage they throw out, they hide tiny messages written on the garbage, and try to place some kind of DNA inside. Blood, hair, dead skin, fingernails… Operation Ant-Man has yet to be successful, but it’s one thing they can do every day to try to get free.
Haroun stares at him; he looks funny—amused, maybe—but Peter doesn’t have the energy to read his face. “You okay, Parker?”
Peter smiles at the ceiling. “Yeah,” he says. Numb, his head swirls, and for a moment he can’t remember where Ava has gone. She’s usually the one to help Mateo with the sedation process. He opens his mouth to ask, but he’s much too tired.
Under the bed, he hears Cassie whisper to herself: “Iron Man, Iron Man, Iron Man.”
Aunt May wasn’t pissed that they hadn’t told her, but amazed that they had kept the secret for so long. “You thought you’d never get caught?” she had said. “By me? Ha! That’s some bullshit—I’m smarter than you think, Peter.”
So she didn’t ground him; instead, she borrowed an entire stack of books from the nearby library (she always claims Wikipedia is a scam, and that books are the only real way to learn) and is now reading thoroughly through each to learn more about the extent of his powers. “So,” she says, “spiders have incredibly sensitive nervous systems. They have these things called trichobothria—little hairs—all over their body.”
“Don’t humans have those, too?” asks Ned.
May crumples a piece of paper and throws it at Ned’s head. “Go back to your Wikipedia page, Ned. As I was saying, with the little hairs they can detect lots of micro-movements, and because of their hypersensitive nervous system—are not like humans. They can tell motion made by a fly in mid-air, or dust moving below them. They don’t have to be touching it to know—that might be your—well—tingle."
“The Peter-tingle,” adds Ned, proud.
Aunt May stares at him for a second before absolutely losing her shit. She laughs so hard that the book falls off of her lap, cackling until she is wheezing and red in the face. “The Peter-tingle!” she cries, just about dying from laughter. “The smartest kids of your generation right here—and the best you could come up with was Peter-tingle!”
They read through the rest of the books while listening to Imagine Dragons, which, according to Ned, was originally inspired by Spider-Man. “They were big fans,” he claims. “They wanted to make a musical about you and everything.”
May asks Peter to tell him more about his powers, particularly about his climbing and sticking abilities. They manage to narrow down which ones of his powers seem to be from actual spiders, as well as which seem to be from the experimentation on the spider itself. From the spiders came exceptional night vision, strange visual acuity, incredible strength and speed, and the ability to climb, even upside down. Otherwise, he got agility and a high metabolism adjusted to his new abilities.
“Here it is!” says Ned. “Scopulae. Or, setae?” He explains that spiders have microscopic hairs all over their body that allows them to grip moisture on the surfaces they walk on. “That’s probably what helps you stick.”
At first, he’d thought that he could only stick with his feet and palms—but May insisted on finding out more. “What am I supposed to do?” protested Peter. “I can’t stick if I’m wearing shoes or, like, gloves. That’s all we need to know.”
“But some spiders have those little hairs all over their bodies—maybe you do, too. Do you think if you were naked—”
He blushed. “May!”
“What? This is important!” They discover that he can stick to surfaces with any part of his body, as long as the skin is bare or the fabric is skintight. But still, the hairs only stiffen to grip surfaces when he wants it to. May comments that it looks like he’s taking on characteristics of spiders more than he is becoming one. They discover the spider that bit him, even—the noble false widow—and realize that its coloring affected him, too. He had some discoloration in his skin that matched the noble false widow—so faint it was difficult to tell unless you were really close, a rusty red color like his calves had been dipped in tomato juice. “I hadn’t even noticed,” said Peter.
May lowered the book she was reading onto her lap. “Peter—you should really pay more attention to your body. You’re going through, like, a second puberty, honey. You gotta be more aware.”
They read and read and read until the night comes, and May makes herself coffee and hot chocolate for the two of them. When Peter complains that it doesn't even matter if he has caffeine because his metabolism won't let it affect him, she gives him a look and tells him, like usual, that he's still too young.
“Are you venomous?” asks Ned suddenly, excited. He half-closes his laptop to look at his best friend.
Peter had never thought about it, but most spiders were venomous, weren’t they? He touches his teeth and smiles sheepishly. “I don’t think so.”
“Try! Bite me.” His best friend offers his arm. “Here! Bite me!”
“I’m not going to bite you, Ned.”
He looks visibly disappointed. “Well, maybe if you think about biting someone the fangs will come… like a vampire! Think about biting?”
While feeling utterly stupid, Peter does his best to think about becoming New York City’s newest Edward Cullen. He bares his teeth. “Eh?” he says, mouth still open.
So, no venom. But they did discover, like some spiders, that he could hold up to a hundred and fifty times his weight, and that the substance on his hands had a purpose. A sticky substance that appeared to his hands at will. Peter thought, originally, that it was a failed spider-power, that maybe it was supposed to be a spinneret or a spigot, but with May’s research, they discovered that some spiders had a series of widened pores instead of spigots. Some had a cribellum, which contained dozens of thousands of spigots, all of which produced a thin fiber. So maybe that’s what he had.
The pores at his wrist and hands did seem to become visible when he willed the stickiness to come to him. “It’s not a real web, though,” said Peter.
“Maybe it just takes time,” says May, with a kiss to his head as she passed him with a cup of coffee, “and then you could create your own webs.” They spread from the base of his wrist over his palm to his fingertips. They were by no means a web shooter, but they were something. To Peter, that meant that it was proof—proof that this spider, whatever it was, was imperfect, and that the transfer of its power to him was imperfect as well.
May disagreed. “Come here, guys,” she said, settled on the couch. “Ned, stop looking at Wikipedia.”
“It’s up to date!” he protested. “And faster!”
“It’s convenient,” she said. “And you’re gonna fry your brain. Get your butt over here.” Once they sat on either side of her, she pointed at the page of her book. “This one says that the zebra tarantula, here, doesn’t have spinnerets. It just has silk producers on its feet.”
“Like me,” says Peter.
“Yes, like you.”
“But I didn’t get bit by this one.”
She smiles, and for the first time that night Peter feels hopeful about his powers. “See, that’s the funny thing.” May closes the first book and opens a second, one about the origins of arachnids. “These guys say that the zebra tarantula didn’t evolve as far as modern spiders. Original spiders didn’t make webs, but used their sticky feet to help them climb. Later, their silk-producers evolved into spinnerets, which they used to make webs and catch prey.”
Ned is staring open-mouthed at the book; Peter is staring at his hands. He wills something sticky into his hands, and feels the swell of the substance at his disposal. “So, I’m just…”
“…the original spider,” finishes Ned. “Dude, that’s so freaking cool.”
May continues, “So the silk comes from your hands—that’s what it’s supposed to do. These spiders even leave footprints of their silk on surfaces—all to avoid falling and enable them to climb anything. It’ll help you stick to things, or do anything else, I guess."
Peter finds himself teary at her memory.
When May said anything else, Peter didn’t suppose she meant what he was doing now: putting layers of the silky substance over his wounds and Cassie’s to help keep their injuries clean and safe. It wasn’t thick enough to stop significant blood-flow, but it could close wounds, stick bandages to skin, and assist stitches. It surely doesn’t help with his more drastic injuries, like his knee. It’s still so messed up from that first day; it never healed correctly, so shards of smashed kneecap healed among fucked ligaments and tendons. He doesn’t remember what exact ligament the front one is; MJ was always better at anatomy than he was. He can barely straighten his knee—when he walks, he staggers, doing his best to put no weight on it. Charlie’s hammer (or Mason’s hammer? Who had it originally?) took out his knee and his ability to walk properly. It’s smashed to uselessness, much like Cassie’s finger. Charlie’s punishment, he thinks, was less focused on pain and more focused on permanent damage.
Charlie…
As soon as he’s well enough, he’s going to strangle Charlie with his bare hands.
He thinks about killing the man so much that the thought alone has become soothing. He thinks about killing Charlie more than he thinks about escaping.
Peter thinks of taking those pills he loves so much and shoving them down his throat until he chokes, of slapping a hand over his mouth and pinching his nose shut and forcing him to swallow until foam bubbles at the corner of his mouth and his twitching body goes limp. He thinks of slipping him a needle full of sedatives, of grabbing him by the hair and stabbing—with one of those black-handled knives, maybe—once through his cheek, and another through each arm, and finally through each wide eye.
Peter thinks of grabbing him by the throat and pressing his thumbs into his windpipe until he shuts the fuck up, of pressing and pressing until his words die out into a faint wheeze, of watching as he struggles beneath him, rasping for air. He thinks of watching those wide eyes go blank and roll up into the back of his head, of watching his bearded chin tilt back, limp.
Peter thinks of the hammer—that fucking hammer—and grasping it with both hands like Thor. Lifting. Wielding. Standing. And, with a wide grin, swinging the hammer from side to side. Circling the man, brushing his fingers and feet and the side of his sweating face with the heavy hammer. Saying something like didn’t you remember the rules? or stay still, little freak or you’ll do exactly as I say, or I’ll take out Parker’s other leg—
He feels suddenly sick.
“Toilet,” he gasps, bile bubbling in his throat, and Cassie scrambles to her feet, grabbing his good arm and pulling, yet he feels heavy. He manages to get both palms on the floor and crawls forward. he doesn’t make it. He collapses on one side and coughs; out of him spouts of flow of sick—mostly water. He's had trouble keeping down anything at all for the past couple days.
He thinks back to May. He tries not to think too much about her; doing so only results in him fretting over the last memory he has of her—a memory that he can hardly remember save for the blood. It happened over a month ago, and still all he can remember now is the fact that she was bleeding, unconscious, and upside down. There was blood, so much blood—but he can’t remember for the life of him where it was coming from. Her head, neck, stomach, chest?They must’ve been driving—right? But what happened after… Did she get herself free? Did Peter get her free? Did she wake up at all?
Did Peter even bother to check if she was still alive? Did he call the police?
Did she die that night?
He misses his phone—oh, God, does he miss his phone. May would laugh now if she heard him say it. She’s always complaining about how much time he spends on his phone. He and Cassie created a little game where they take these rectangular pieces of cardboard, pasted together, and pretend to talk to each other on the phone. They used to sit on other sides of the room and play; now, Peter barely moves from the toilet to the bed, so Cassie moves wherever she feels as far enough to pretend that they are in different places. She’ll shout, “I’m texting you a poop emoji!” and giggle maniacally to herself. Cassie didn’t have a lot of access to phones before she was taken, so most of their phone games involve her pretending to call people.
If May had lived…wouldn’t she be looking for him? Did his friends know he was missing? They had to by now, didn’t they? Maybe they’d forgotten him. But how hard could it be to look for them? His backpack had his suit, and his suit had his tracker, and if only he could find his backpack, then Tony could come find them…
A small voice. “Peter,” says Cassie. She is kneeled beside him on the floor, eyes wide in the dim light. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?” he asks, and he remembers that his mouth still tastes of vomit.
The little girl in front of him looks so weary. Her hair is dark and unwashed, oily and sticky and reeking slightly of dirt and dried blood. “You’re being weird,” she says. “I don’t like it.”
He tries to smile at her, but his vision is getting spotty and he has trouble focusing. Her figure wavers in front of him—he can’t tell if he’s moving or she is. If he could hold her now, he would; instead, he tips his head up, to find her and feels a shock of such pain in his head that vomits again, coughing up water, water, water—
MONDAY, MAY 14 — 12:56PM
Tony has spent years working with arc technology. He created a new element, even, that came close to replicating the Tesseract’s power.
But science and magic, no matter what Thor likes to claim, are not the same. There is no way for Tony to create that kind of power. The kind of power that can disintegrate people at close-range without repercussions for those around them. Surely someone who wants a weapon with such strength understands that a power that can do much more?
Close-range disintegration without radiation required something like the strength of a missile, all condensed into a single shot, confined by the boundaries of its target.
It’s impossible.
And yet it’s hard to believe that these people even want a weapon. It seems to Tony that they want a power source, something rivaling the Tesseract—something safe enough that it can be mass-produced into handheld weaponry, yet strong enough that the one who wields it has immense power. Through him, they are fast-tracking Project PEGASUS: to use the Tesseract (or something similar, like Tony’s arc technology, which was much more accessible) to create a near-unlimited energy source. Tony generally considers Project PEGASUS completed the moment he completed his arc reactor, but these people… They want something more than sustainable energy. They want power. War. Devastation. All able to be held in the palm of someone’s hand.
He needs time to think.
How can he create this kind of power for Charlie and his band of merry men? He doesn’t have access to magical resources, at least not from inside the lab, so what kind of scientific adjustments could he add that would allow for this alternative power source? There’s nothing wrong with the gun—it’s the power that needs changing. He’s tried many forms of the gun, all to supplement the power of his arc technology with explosives and complementary power sources. None of them have worked thus far. They aren’t powerful enough, or they aren’t limited enough, or they just don’t fucking work.
He’s tried everything. He has to alter the arc reactor somehow. Strengthen it. Then he can save Peter and go back to Pepper and tell her she’s sorry and take Peter to the medbay and get him fixed up and finally, finally, be free.
Beside him, Dum-E taps at his arm, holding a glass of water. He knows how often Tony should eat and drink, even if Tony doesn’t know what time it is or the last time he ate something. He gets enough nutrition, usually, when he remembers to eat and listens to Dum-E’s instructions, but he knows he’s not sleeping enough. He can’t sleep—how can he rest when Peter is in such pain?
It is as though Tony is already buried, and Charlie is dancing upon his grave; there is not a moment where Tony may calm, knowing that every day Peter suffers because of his shortcomings.
He has to figure this out. He has to find a way to warp the element he has (what he likes to call Badassium, or the New Element) and turn it into something weaponizable. How did HYDRA do it? Does he need a new element altogether?
He’s not sleeping enough—or too much, maybe. How much did he sleep last night? Did he sleep at all? He needs more time—lots more time. Peter will never be free at this rate. The next time Riri comes, he will ask for more supplies. Not for the gun, but to solve his other problem: the problem of time.
He’d overseen a study of the chemical Orexin-A back in 2007, before Iron Man was even a thought in his head, of a group of rhesus monkeys who were kept awake for periods of thirty to thirty-six hours, and, given one microgram per kilogram—roughly seven and a half micrograms per monkey. When deprived of sleep and given dosages of Orexin-A through injections and nasal spray, they performed better on cognitive tests. The drug seemed to reverse some of the effects of sleep deprivation and improve cognition to that of someone with a full night’s rest. They passed their sleep-focused PET scans and acted, well, normal.
That’s what he needs. He needs to stop wasting time sleeping and start working on weaponizing the New Element. He theorized a chemical process ages ago that could allow for someone to use Orexin-A to keep themselves awake, but it had never seemed important enough. He pulls up his old plans and considers its ingredients. He needs Modafinil, maybe Orexin-A, some stimulants… All could create something fit for humans, something that could create the outcome that the rhesus monkeys experienced. Something that could keep him awake consistently enough to make Charlie's weapon. Peter's weapon.
He asks Dum-E for a piece of paper and the robot just wiggles the glass of water in his hand. “Fine…you…fucking…” He grabs for the glass of water his hands shake with its weight, so much so that he has to use both hands to drink. Dum-E watches him drink, and when he’s finished, hands him an unopened can of beans. “You gotta do it for me, buddy,” he says, handing it back. “Got the can opener?”
Dum-E does not have the can opener. He swivels around, looking for it, and skirts across the room like a man on a mission. Tony remembers, vaguely, helping his father build Dum-E in his lab. When his father was gone, he’d program the robot with more human qualities: looking around when scanning the room, tilting in confusion, nodding…
“And heat it up, okay?”
From across the room, Dum-E whirs in response.
Tony maps out the structure for his prospective sleep-replacement chemical. Eventually, Dum-E sets the steaming can of beans on his table with a spoon, and he takes occasional bites as he works. In the corner, his robot U moves back and forth between a possible power source and a weapon, testing as Tony told it to. Beside him, Dum-E awaits further instruction. “Think it’s a bad idea…huh, Dum-E?”
Dum-E tilts its arm and clicks lightly.
Peter would tell him it’s a terrible idea. “You need to sleep, Mr. Stark,” he would say. “May says eight hours at least.”
Tony would laugh and say, “You’re one to talk, sneaking out every hour of the night to respond to police scanners.”
“I won’t ignore people when they need me,” Peter would say, or something equally as earnest.
With his new drug, he could get—instead of a fitful four-sih hours of sleep each night—even less than that, all while feeling well-rested and being able to properly focus on Peter.
Peter…
He wonders what the kid’s doing now. He doesn’t ever see what happens once they drag him away, but sometimes he looks cleaner, so they must be washing him. A couple times his clothes have changed, usually when the old ones get too tattered to stay on his body. He’s gotten thinner and thinner from what Tony can see, and he’s stopped talking during the seven o’clock sessions. He just sits there, letting out the occasional plead, but mostly he screams and cries and waits for it to be over.
The other night, when Peter was dragged onto the screen, he didn’t start to fight right away. He sat quietly, and he let them lock him into the chair by each wrist and each ankle, and again around his upper torso, all without a fight. It’s not until the ringing starts—the ringing of the phone—that Peter finally starts to move, twisting his arms and legs in their restraints, pulling his chest against the vibranium. And when Tony finally picked up, he flinched. “Wait,” he said, turning his neck to Charlie and away again. “Wait, please—”
When Tony’s voice came through, it was like he was being tortured already. “No!” he screamed. “Wait, no, nonono, just one more minute, one more, one—I’m not ready—”
“Shut— shut up!” Charlie snapped. “So fucking annoying… Talk again, Parker, and I’ll get out my hammer! You want that, huh? Is that what you want?”
Peter didn’t answer; he tugged at his bindings, his breathing molting to whimpers, his teeth bared, neck taut, trying his best to get away from Charlie.
“I’ll take out that other leg of yours—how will you be Spidey then, Parker? I’ll make you like Scott here—fucking useless—take you out completely!”
Peter is so quiet these days. He never protests but to ask for more time. He has stopped trying to communicate with Tony, stopped making jabs at Charlie and his crew, and stopped fighting almost entirely.
He’s stopped thinking that Tony will save him.
Tony is going to do everything in his power to let the kid know otherwise.
MONDAY, MAY 14 — 2:30 PM
Hope’s on her third cup of coffee; Maggie is sipping at a cup of green tea, now long cold.
It’s been a few days since they located Ava Starr’s body, and a few more for processing forensic evidence. Today, they were called back in by Officer Paz.
They’ve graduated past interrogation rooms, supposes Maggie, because they are settled in what looks like a break room. Instead of a metallic table and chairs with links for handcuffs, their room is adorned with throw pillows and a coffee table. Jim’s gone to the bathroom, but he hasn’t been back for a half-hour at least. “You know,” says Hope, “the last time I saw Scott, back in April?” She sniffs. She’s incredibly composed, but her hands give her away. As she tries to apply another coat of scarlet lipstick, her hands jitter, enough that she has to set the tube back down before adding any real color. “I told him I never wanted to see him again. I didn’t text, I didn’t call… Not until what happened to Cassie. I wanted him to really feel how pissed I was.” She takes a deep, slow breath, and then exhales through her nose. “If I’d just called, if I’d just texted him once, then maybe…”
Almost automatically, Maggie shakes her head. “It would’ve happened no matter how many times you called, Hope. They took my Cassie in broad daylight. It would’ve just meant putting you in danger, too.”
Hope runs her tongue over the edge of her teeth, and she picks up her cup as though the coffee will warm her. “Well,” she says, “either way. I wish I’d said something different.”
“One fight won’t make him forget,’ says Maggie.
“Sure,” says Hope, sounding entirely the opposite.
They sit in silence, save the occasional sip or cough. Maggie doesn’t want to think it, but she can’t remember the last thing she said to Cassie. She hopes it was something good.
When Officer Paz finally enters, she is holding two cups of coffee, one of which she tips back with a swallow and tosses in the nearest trash-can. The officer looks as though she’s just woken up. “Mrs. Paxton,” she says first, with a tired nod. “Mr. Paxton. Ms. Van Dyne.” Behind her, Jim emerges, his face creased into a deep grimace.
Both Hope and Maggie make various greetings, and Maggie’s husband settles on the couch beside her as Paz sits across from them in an upholstered armchair. “The autopsy came back this morning—the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head.” She passes a folder across the table and opens it wide to a photo of a waterlogged woman’s corpse. Ava Starr. Beneath it is a form, stamped and signed, with REPORT OF POST MORTEM EXAMINATION at the top, which Paz separates from the photo and taps with her fingernail.
JURISDICTION: Grand Isle County
NAME OF DECEASED: Starr, Ava Catherine
AGE: 24 yrs RACE: Black SEX: F
RESIDENCE OF DECEASED: N/A
DATE OF INCIDENT: May 9, 2018 TIME OF INCIDENT: 5:00p
PRONOUNCED DEATH: 5:30p
EXAMINATION: Champlain Islands Health Center
Maggie scans the rest of the form. Most information about her is unknown—marital status, children, medical history… “She was killed,” says Officer Paz. “The medical examiner determined it was murder.”
There it is:
CAUSE OF DEATH: Blunt Force Injury to Head
MANNER OF DEATH: Homicide
A paragraph full of descriptions—body hair, odors, hygiene, dental exam—is paperclipped to the autopsy report. “She had high levels of opiates in her system,” continues the officer, “but nowhere near enough to kill her. Analysis of her hair showed she was a long-time abuser of opiates, benzos, you name it. Her body,” she says with a pointed look at Maggie, “did not show any signs of sexual trauma. Only physical. There’s bruising showing what looks like male fists, maybe shoes, and blunt injury from something heavy that left flakes of rusted copper. Probably a pipe.”
“So,” says Jim, “she was dead before the lake?”
Paz nods. “She died on her back—livor mortis had already started by the time she went in the lake, although it does look like her body was moved a lot in the first couple hours after she died.”
“Livor mortis?” echoes Hope.
“The blood,” she clarifies, “settling in the body.”
“But no…” Both hands clasped together, Maggie swallows before asking her question. “No…sexual…”
For once, Paz looks relieved. “No, Mrs. Paxton. No sexual trauma. No traces of sperm or external pubic hair on the body. It looked normal.”
Relieved, if just slightly, Maggie sits back. Jim rubs her back, and she tips her head into his shoulder. He feels strange beside her, stiff. She thinks it must be strange for him: to sit on the other side of the table. He’s still focused on the autopsy report. “And the hair? Cassie’s…hair?”
Before she speaks, Paz takes a generous sip of coffee—hazelnut, maybe. “We received confirmation early this morning. It’s her hair. It’s definitely hers.”
Jim’s hand pauses on her back. “You’re sure?” When Cassie had first been taken, they provided the police with everything they could—partial fingerprints from her bedroom, her recently used toothbrush, her hairbrush—so forensics had enough hair to compare to the one they found on Ava’s body.
Paz nods. “An exact match.” She passes forth another paper to their side of the coffee table; this one bears their daughter’s name. On it, bar graphs of different colors, all bearing a series of letters and numbers that Maggie doesn’t quite understand.“The hair was found in Ava’s pocket, inside of a fast-food wrapper—McDonald’s.”
“And you checked—” starts Jim.
“Yes,” clarifies Paz, and she takes another drink of coffee. “There are twenty-nine McDonald’s in the state of Vermont—and we have officers talking to each one of them as we speak.” She raises her phone. “So far, nothing.”
Cassie hates McDonald’s, thinks Maggie, as her husband frowns. They didn’t usually go, just for that reason. Whenever Maggie brought some back home, when neither she nor Jim could cook, Cassie would wrinkle her nose and pretend to gag. Gross, Mommy! she’d cry, poking at the nuggets. For a moment, Maggie can’t pull Cassie’s disgusted expression to her mind, and she panics, fumbling for her phone to click on her home screen. At the sight of her daughter’s face under the time and date, she calms.
“The problem with Ava Starr is that she is not just an addict. That would make this case a hell of a lot easier.” She brings forth another sheet of paper. “She worked with SHIELD until she disappeared in 2014, when she turned eighteen. Since then, she reappeared in 2017 and killed an FBI agent—alongside robbery, trespassing, battery, whatever else you can think of, before she disappeared again.”
Hope looks as though she will be sick.
“With information we’ve gotten from Hope and her father, we contacted SHIELD to” —she opens her phone and taps lightly before turning it off— “provide us with more background information about Ava Starr.” Now, perhaps answering Paz’s text, Woo enters the break room holding a thick navy folder, and he smiles, close-lipped, at the three on the couch.
He has them sign forms before he starts talking. They’re not non-disclosure agreements, but they might as well be. He then explains that he has worked formerly with SHIELD and re-obtained the proper clearance in order to provide information about Starr’s case. Agent Woo clears his throat. “Using the information Hope gave us, we were able to recover her identity and gather more information about her. Her name is Ava Catherine Starr, as you know—she was born in Argentina, where her father worked for SHIELD with Hank Pym. In one of her father’s failed experiments, both her parents died and in a blast of quantum energy…” Agent Julian opens the folder and points at a new photo, this one of the woman disguised in a gray suit and matching mask. He talks about Ava Starr for far too long—he’s in the middle of talking about her molecular intangibility and her ability to move through materials when Maggie finally interrupts him. “...phase in and out of solid materials, a power that caused her extreme pain.”
Maggie sniffs, clears her throat, and draws her cardigan around her shoulders. “What does this have to do with Cassie?”
Woo’s nostrils flare. “Mrs. Paxton—”
“No, I’m serious,” she snaps. “We’re sitting around here talking about this girl who is long dead while you could be out trying to find my daughter!”
The man shifts uncomfortably. “We are doing everything we can to locate your daughter, Mrs. Paxton. There are officers in the field right now trying to track down where they found this woman’s body. But right now, our best lead will be anything you can possibly recognize in Ms. Starr’s history.”
Maggie’s clearly still hating the fact that she can’t be doing more, but she settles for a tight nod.
“Whatever we can do,” Jim adds. He rubs his hand over Maggie’s back. He’s felt so useless in these past few weeks, so at least going through Ava Starr’s profile will help him feel like he’s helping Cassie. If Cassie’s still… still…
Jim swallows.
“Good,” says Agent Woo. “Let’s continue, then.”
Because of her fractured relationship with Hank Pym, she somehow also knew Hope and Scott, and had some bad blood with Scott before Janet Van Dyne, Hope’s mother, temporarily healed Ava’s disease with some quantum machine.
She went on the run with Bill Foster, her pseudo-father, and immediately afterward kept in touch with Janet. The fix provided a physical solution for her body, and kept her molecularly stable but didn’t fix her chronic pain. She came back to New York after a week and raided the Van Dyne house for painkillers, quickly going down a route of drug abuse until she was nearly unrecognizable, according to Hope. About a month after her fight with SHIELD (and her murder of the FBI agent), in about August of 2017, Ava Starr dropped off the map. SHIELD, knowing she succumbed to drug abuse and, without her powers, was no longer of use as a field agent, considered her no longer a threat.
SHIELD apparently had some trouble locating Bill Foster, who is still a fugitive for abetting Starr’s crimes, but did get enough information from Hank Pym and Hope to understand exactly what had happened. “Toxicology reports on Starr’s hair,” says Woo, “confirms long-term drug abuse, of mostly opioids, up until the day she died.”
Maggie’s going to scream. These people have barely even mentioned Cassie for the past twenty minutes.
Woo, sensing her discomfort, echoes her unasked question. “So—what does this mean for Cassie? Well, the strange thing is that Ava Starr had an entirely different array of drug use in her system. Starr had opioids and benzos, morphine and any pain medication you can think of. It makes sense, with her history. But when we analyzed Cassie’s hair…” He points at Cassie's toxicology report. “We had Forensics go over the hair that we found of Cassie’s,” she says. “And we have some good and some bad news.”
Jim and Maggie exchange looks.
In front of the officer, there’s a photo of what must be Cassie’s hair, but blown larger; Woo points. “The good news is it looks like she’s still alive. Hair from a dead person has a marker we call post-mortem banding. You can see it here” —he places the hair toxicology report from Ava Starr’s file beside it— “on this strand of hair, taken from Starr’s head the day after she was found. That dark spot, there.” On Ava’s hair, there is a blackened stretch near the root; on Cassie’s hair, there is no spot. “Her hair also hasn’t been bleached or colored. She’s also staying hydrated but she is malnourished—you can see the differences here.” He puts out another toxicology report, this one, says Officer Paz, of Cassie’s hair from before her abduction. “The hair is much more brittle, it’s slightly thinner, and a little lighter. “That probably explains why it was in Ava’s pocket in the first place. Because of her malnutrition, her hair is much more prone to breakage and falling out from the root.
“The reports also can tell us what kind of drugs were in her system, like Ava Starr. The Vermont forensic team” —another paper from the folder— “and our forensic team” —and another paper— “ found some high levels of propofol, hyoscine, and methylphenidate. Strangely high levels of thiopental, but only from about three separate instances. That may have been what they dosed her with to move her. This…isn’t good. It looks like she’s been…dosed with these drugs a significant amount over the time she’s been gone, significant enough that if you get her back, she may struggle with some withdrawal. Propofol could be used as an anesthetic to keep her still, but with a combination of a stimulant and hyoscine… It could be painful, but we’re not sure the exact purpose.” He scratches his head. “The drug use is increasing. Each time, it’s a higher dose. We can also tell the amount she’s been sweating, which is a lot—and definitely more than a child should be, unless she is highly active or really nervous. The report won’t tell us why. Hair toxicology reports are useful for frequency like this, but we can’t tell you any exact dates, just general timelines.”
Withdrawal. Highly active. Nervous. Maggie’s struggling to take all of the information in; beside her, Jim is stiff, his arms folded at his chest. “And the…drugs…” she starts.
Woo nods. “There was no overlap between the drugs found in Ava’s system and the one’s found in Cassie’s. This…cocktail of drugs in her system is confusing. It doesn’t look like drug trafficking. We could be looking at drug dosage related to sex trafficking, but even the kinds of drugs we're seeing here would be unusual.”
“I don’t understand,” says Maggie. Her heart clenches painfully. “What’s the good news?”
Agent Woo looks her in the eyes; his gaze is warm. “The good news is that she’s probably still alive, after all this time.”
“Probably,” echoes Maggie, a choked word.
Paz looks away. “We can’t be sure, Mrs. Paxton,” she says. “but there are a lot of good signs here. If she’s alive, her hair color is still the same, at least from what we can see from the one strand, so we can still expect her to look the same, and the hair is longer than when we last saw her, which means she’s been alive a while. What's important to remember is that she was alive at the time the hair was removed from her head, which, if it was right before Starr died, means she was last alive sometime last night.”
Probably. Probably. Probably.
Jim’s arms are tightly wound against his chest. “So what do you think happened?” he asks.
Woo blinks. “What?”
“What,” repeats her husband, “do you think? Happened to Cassie?”
Agent Woo swipes his hand over the back of his neck. Is he…sweating? “Julia?”
With her dull, tired eyes, Officer Paz sighs and sets a final photo out onto the table in front of them: Scott Lang’s mugshot. “Listen to me. Maggie. Jim. Of the kids that go missing in the US, ninety percent of them are abducted by one of their parents. Less than one percent of kids actually get abducted by strangers, and your ex-husband has a record. Even worse than that, according to Hope, he had an…unpleasant relationship with Ava Starr. Lang’s the only one that has both motive to kill Ava and to abduct Cassie.”
Neither Jim nor Maggie says something to Scott’s defense; with barely a swish of her black hair, Hope gets up, grabs her jacket, and walks out of the room. Paz nods at her, and Woo follows her, shuffling after her clicking heels, calling out, “Ms. Van Dyne! Ms. Van Dyne!” until the door closes behind him.
Paz continues, “My guess is he hired the people who took her, staged an argument with Hope and an accident for himself at his friend’s place, and found somewhere to hide. This wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened. There’s been no ransom, no photos of Cassie on the Internet, no signs of drug trafficking in her hair sample, and she’s still alive.”
“But the drugs,” says Maggie. “He… Someone drugged her. Someone’s still drugging her. Scott wouldn’t do that.”
Paz sighs. “I’m just telling you the odds. And Scott’s done time, so it would stand to reason that he knows dealers. He might be drugging her to keep her from running away, or when he moves her from one place to another… I don’t know. But this could be good, because Scott cares about her. This means she’s probably still out there.”
All Maggie can think is: Probably.
MONDAY, MAY 14 — 9:04PM
The Parker kid won’t wake up.
Riri and Haroun are playing cards in the bunker break room when Cassie starts screaming. “Peter!” she cries. “Peter! Peter! Peter!”
Upon hearing her, Haroun takes another pill from the orange canister and crushes it on the table. “Your turn, Riri,” he says. He crushes and crushes and lines it up.
Riri hums and tries to ignore the little girl; in one move, Haroun snorts up the pill. “Got any eights?” she asks.
Haroun wipes his nose and shakes his head. “Go fish.”
Another scream, followed by a series of wails. “Peter, wake up! Wake up!” Riri glances up from her cards, looks to the door, and then meets Haroun’s eyes. “No, no, no! No, no, Peter, Peter…” He shuffles through his cards, sorting.
“Haroun,” says Riri.
He snaps, “Go fish.”
Far away, a little girl shrieks: “Peter, Peter, please! Peter!” Fists on the door. “Help! Help! Ava, Ava, Ava, help! Peter! Peter! Wake up!”
Haroun doesn’t move at the sound of his friend’s name; Riri has yet to pick up a card. “Haroun!”
Haroun looks pissed; his pills haven’t kicked in yet. “Fine—fine!” He scoots up from the table, sending his chair skittering back, and storms out of the break room. Down the hall, Cassie is crying Peter’s name. “Get away from the door!” he shouts, and they can hear the girl scamper away. Haroun has the key—it must be his turn—so he unlocks the door, throwing it open with his gun ready.
She can’t see inside, but Haroun rushes in, saying, “Ah, shit!”
Riri pulls out the handgun she has tucked in her pants. She knows better than to enter their cell unarmed.
She’s ready.