i need you
THURSDAY, JUNE 29 —10:57 AM
Through Agent Woo’s connections with SHIELD, they’re able to get a meeting with the director of SHIELD—Director Phil Coulson—by the end of the following week. So after a quick breakfast of coffee and conference room donuts, Officer Julia Paz and Agent Jimmy Woo drive four hours out to Washington, DC, where the Triskelion, otherwise known as SHIELD Headquarters, is located.
It’s stationed on Theodore Roosevelt Island on the Potomac River, so they have to drive up a skinny bridge with three separate security checkpoints to enter the place. Luckily, Agent Woo’s security clearance makes the drive easy and entrance to the Triskelion even easier. Still, they have to sign multiple non-disclosure agreements just to step on the property.
Director Coulson’s office has a row of massive glass window-panes instead of walls, and he has a sprawling agarwood desk that’s mostly empty and a wallful of black filing cabinets behind him. Above the filing cabinets are paintings of the original six Avengers in action: first Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Captain America; then a SHIELD insignia; and finally Iron Man, Thor, and the Hulk.
As soon as they arrive, flanked by security guards, Phil Coulson gives her a warm handshake and Agent Woo a firm hug. “Good to see you, Jimmy,” he says. “What can I do for you?”
Julia Paz has prepared for this moment. She’s printed all of the photos, collected all of the post-mortem reports, and searched all the available files. “We were wondering what you could tell us about HYDRA,” says Julia.
Before Director Coulson can ask, Woo assures the man, “She signed all the NDAs already.”
Phil turns to her with a thin-lipped smile. “You have to understand, we typically reserve information about HYDRA for members of SHIELD—and otherwise, on a need-to-know basis. So, if you don’t mind… Why do you need to know?”
Julia has seen videos and photos of Phil Coulson on TV, usually addressing the American public in some way or another. He's a tallish, baldish, niceish looking man who doesn’t stand out in any particular way. “Director Coulson…” She refrains from telling the man that this “Charlie Keene” is her brother. She doesn’t want the man to think she’s not a legitimate cop on a legitimate case. She explains the basics: a group of addicts who went missing in April have been found with tattoos of the HYDRA symbol on their bodies. Freshly—the tattoos were all done after they disappeared in April. “There’s seventeen of them, and we’ve already found three of them dead. All with a HYDRA tattoo.
“Homicides?” asks Coulson.
“Overdoses,” she says, although that’s not technically true for the two most recent dead.
“Where were the bodies found?”
“One in the Bronx, two in New Hampshire.” Julia pulls their post-mortem examinations out of her file: Lyle Getz, Mateo Garza, and Megan Kinney. Coulson takes the pages as Julia continues, “All of the addicts are clients of drug dealer Charlie Keene.” She hands him a list—the same list she gave to the medical examiner last week. “This should be all of them.”
Phil Coulson frowns at the paper, flipping it over and back again, scanning the whole page. “There’s only a few last names on here. Some of these don’t even have last names.”
“Why would a dealer know his customer’s last name?” shoots Julia. “This is all of the information we could collect on the missing addicts. Listen—their names aren’t important. What’s most important is this.” From her tablet, she opens a voice memo app and clicks open a voice memo from back in April—one from a conversation she had when Ty first came to her about the fact that Charlie, his dealer, had disappeared with most of his customers. She replays the conversation for Coulson… Ty’s recorded voice talks and talks, and finally he says, “They was gonna change the world, make it a better place… Last time I saw them, their place was some abandoned, creepy-ass dungeon or some shit, fuckin’ snakes on the walls…” Julia pauses the recording with a swift tap. ““Snakes. Did you catch that? Snakes.” She points again to the photos of the tattoo. “When I first saw it, I thought they were snakes coming out of a skull. If the symbol Ty described is the same, that means that the group who disappeared was living in a place that had HYDRA symbols on it. HYDRA, director.
Phil Coulson shakes his head. “So this guy, he’s saying that his missing friends—your missing addicts holed up in a…what? HYDRA base?”
She nods. “So we were wondering if you could grant us access to those bases. Jimmy said we’d taken over all HYDRA outposts and bunkers—do you think you could give us a map? Or at least a list of possible locations?”
Phil Coulson slides the papers back over to her. “Officer Paz,” he says, addressing her. “Agent Woo. As much as I’d love to help, we don’t grant people access to HYDRA bases over a couple of missing people. Yes, it’s not uncommon for homeless to hole up in places like that—but actual HYDRA bunkers? Those are on strict lockdown since we took them over back in 2014. And unless you have some verifiable signs that HYDRA—the organization—is up and running again, I’m afraid I can’t give you access. Do you understand the kind of danger the American government would be in if we granted every police officer access to that kind of technology?” Director Coulson shakes his head.
“But HYDRA could’ve—” Julia swallows. She’s trying to keep the emotion from creeping into her voice. She swallows, swallows again, and tries to speak with a calmer tone. “It’s possible that our missing persons were taken by a reboot of HYDRA, some kind of neo-Nazi regrouping, right?”
The man hesitates. “It’s…possible. But we’d have other signs—Avengers alerting us to HYDRA activity, missing weaponry, loss of classified information… And we’ve had none of those—no verifiable signs that HYDRA is alive and going again, so…” Phil clears his throat. “Officer, the likelihood that your missing people are there… I’d say you’re looking in the wrong places.”
“But—”
“Besides, none of this matters because I don’t have jurisdiction over abandoned HYDRA bunkers. I’m not the one to talk to. I can’t give you the access you want. Every bunker has been confiscated by the U.S. government—the main branch, not SHIELD.”
Paz scoffs. “So who do I talk to about getting access to these bunkers?”
Coulson gives a polite shrug. “Not me, Officer. The last of the American HYDRA branches were wiped out in 2014. Pretty sure anything that belonged to them is now under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense. Last I heard, they were making plans to turn those bunkers into safe houses for government higher-ups, but that was a few years ago.”
She feels as though Coulson’s playing games. Is it that hard to answer such a concrete question? “So who should we talk to?”
Coulson shrugs again. “My guess? The Secretary of Defense. Secretary Thaddeus Ross.”
TUESDAY, JULY 3 — 2:30 PM
Secretary Thaddeus Ross is not having a good day.
First Ava Starr, then that little methhead, and now that car crash on the mountain? That shit killed a whole family, and now is getting enough news coverage that the mountains with that bunker is crowded with people.
Ross gave them three rules for how the master plan was going to go: one, don’t tell anyone ; two, keep everything under the radar ; and three, don’t fuck this up .
Clearly, they’ve royally screwed rules one and two because they’ve had two newsworthy incidents in the past month and seven dead bodies total. Charlie’s now running out of people to keep the spider and those other idiots in line.
He’s getting a migraine because of these morons.
Ross hates the way that man begs, but he’s right. He needs more men. He’s so close to a breakthrough—something that will turn Project Manticore into a weapon that’s feared by all. It’ll put the United States of America back on top as the most powerful, regardless of superheroes and other enhanced creatures. With this weapon, he could vanish anyone with the press of a button, could disintegrate an entire town and leave its ecosystem still intact.
Secretary Ross makes a list of a few people from his contacts—doctors, scientists, engineers—anyone who owes him enough that they’ll participate in Project Manticore. “Kate? Kate!” he snaps.
His secretary Kate Bishop comes rushing in, dressed in a sleeveless collar and bootcut khakis. “Yes, sir!”
He taps the list. “I need you to get in contact with a few people. As soon as they respond, put them through, got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
It doesn’t take long; by the end of the hour, Kate’s announcing over the phone: “I’ve got one on the other line, sir.”
“Which one?”
“Quentin Beck. I couldn’t get ahold of the others.”
“Alright, put him through.”
Over the line, Quentin Beck has a pleasantly low tenor and there’s music playing behind him—Huey Lewis and the News. “Ross!” he says first. “Good to hear from you. What can I do for you?”
Ross’ mustache itches, so he scratches at it. “I need a favor.”
“What kind?”
Quentin Beck owes him. Almost a decade ago, Ross got the man a stable job as an engineer in the Defense Department after he was fired from Stark Industries from ‘inappropriate conduct’ or something equally idiotic.
“Well, I’m working on something a little different. Off the books.”
“Off the books?” The man on the other line sounds intrigued.
“That’s right. Something good. Something that’ll truly put the U.S. on top. Think you could take some time off? I’ll promise, it’ll pay better than whatever you’ve got going now.”
“How much better?”
“Depends. How soon can you get to New Hampshire?”
THURSDAY, JULY 5 — 5:15 PM
Happy and MJ take the train to the hospital—it’s located in Brooklyn by Marine Park, so they take the train to Brownsville and a bus that drops them off at the emergency room entrance.
“I’ve followed him here like a million times,” says the girl. She’s dressed like she’s going to war—with a thick denim jacket lined in white sherpa, a set of baggy black cargo pants, a camo tee shirt, and a baseball cap that reads SAVE FERRIS in bold letters, and worn combat boots. “He skips school, skips practice, skips everything… And he just comes here.”
“Who’s here?” asks Happy. “He got a grandma in here? Parent? Anyone?”
“I don’t know,” says the girl with a bland shrug. “He just comes and visits this lady. Sits with her. I’ve seen her—forty-ish, Italian-looking, long dark hair. She’s in a coma.”
“You don’t know her?”
“Nope.” They’re at the front desk now. “I don’t think he knows her, either. I asked a doctor—the lady’s a Jane Doe.”
Jane Doe, he knows, is just a patient they haven’t identified. Why would Ned be visiting some middle-aged woman he didn’t know? “You’ve got some weird friends, Michelle,” says Happy.
Michelle scoffs—a half-laughing sound. “No,” she refutes, “Peter’s got weird friends. Me and Ned are just friendly by association. Transitive property, right?”
Happy blinks at the girl. “What?”
Michelle sighs, exasperated, like he’s the one who’s bringing up random high school math in the middle of a normal conversation. “If x is related to y by something, and y is related to z by that same thing, then x is related to z by the same thing. So If I’m cool with Peter, and Peter’s cool with Ned, then me and Ned are cool. Capiche?”
This is why Happy hates teenagers. “Sure. Whatever.”
The two of them have reached the front desk by now, where an elderly couple is arguing about insurance. Michelle Jones-Watson, however, seems to know where she’s going. They take the elevator to the third floor and down a wide stretch of white-tiled hallway and to a corner room. From the doorway, they can’t see the mystery patient—only a round, brown-skinned boy with a band-style striped tee talking to a nurse with green hair. “…looking much better,” the nurse is saying, one hand on the boy’s back. “Yesterday, she opened her eyes a few times.”
“But she didn’t say anything?” says the boy, head in his hands.
“She shouldn’t,” says the nurse. “I’d be more worried if she started talking straight out of a coma. This is the way people wake up, Ned. First their reflexes, then small movements, like the eyes or the fingers. Recovery takes time .”
That’s when, with a pat to Ned Leeds’ back, the nurse turns and spots the pair standing; the woman startles with a sharp squeak. “Oh!” she says, and Ned turns around, too.
“MJ,” says the kid with a gasp. The boy’s eyes are pink-red, like he’s been crying. “Uh—um—“
MJ looks about as stiff as her denim jacket. “I’m not here to spoil your moment,” the girl snaps.
There’s a cord of tension between them so tight Happy could’ve walked across it without a problem. The girl, Michelle, looks positively fierce, glaring at the boy in a way that seems far deeper than he’s Peter’s friend .
In an attempt to sever the tension, Happy clears his throat. “You’re Ned Leeds?”
Ned seems frozen in his spot; he nods wearily, eyes still on Michelle.
He hands the kid his business card—one that reads HAPPY HOGAN, HEAD OF SECURITY, STARK INDUSTRIES. “I’ve got a couple questions for you, if that’s okay.”
The nurse, who has yet to see the card, interjects: “Are you here for the Jane Doe?”
“Who?” The patient? Happy shakes his head; MJ is frowning so hard she’s got a wrinkle between her brow; she’s way too young for wrinkles. “I don’t care about that. I’m just here for —”
Then Happy sees her, and his own voice cracks like a tween boy’s. Ned , he was going to say, but he can’t seem to muster up any words.
Because he knows the patient in that hospital bed.
It’s May. Peter’s Aunt May. May Parker.
She looks nothing like herself. Her hair is an inch or two longer and braided close to her scalp—probably for the ease of the medical personnel. She’s extraordinarily pale, and there’s a wide tube down her throat—connected to a machine that breathes for her.
Confusion renders him mute; if MJ knew that was May Parker in the bed, then why didn’t she say anything?
But the parts start to slide into place.
MJ doesn’t know what May looks like. She’s heard her name, of course, and heard the stories, but MJ hasn’t been friends with Peter long enough to have met May. They haven’t gone on any real dates, and although MJ said they did kiss once, they’ve never been official. It's not like Peter got a whole lot of opportunity before he went MIA. So MJ could have followed Ned all the way into the hospital room, have stared at May’s unresponsive body for hours, and never have known that it was Peter’s aunt.
All this time that MJ’s been worried about Peter—she’s been holding onto the key to finding him: May Parker.
Ned’s looking around like he’s been caught hauling a dead body to a dumpster; which, Happy supposed, he kind of has. Because Ned knows exactly what May Parker looks like and hasn’t said a word to anyone.
“Ned,” says Happy, and the word is more than the boy’s name. It’s a plea, a demand, a question, and a threat. “Where’s Peter?”
THURSDAY, JULY 5 — 7:56 PM
“Peter? Can you tell me what day it is?”
The doctor’s talking, and he’s waving a penlight over Peter’s face. “Peter?”
Peter blinks. “Yeah… I’m here, doc.”
“Lost you there for a second, Pete.”
Peter gives the man a dulled smile. “Still here.” He drops the smile almost as fast as he picked it up.
“Can you tell me what day it is?”
Peter just stares at the doctor. “You think I know what day it is? Look around you, man. I haven’t seen the sun in a month…” At least, he thinks it’s been a month. He knows that the toys that come with his Happy meals change each month, so the month has changed at least once—but now they’ve started taking the toys out to punish them for trying to escape. If he got here in April, it’s at least May. It could’ve been May for what, two weeks? “I dunno.” Thinking is becoming increasingly difficult. He’s had a hard time keeping track of time since they upped his sedation. “Is it May?”
He’s remembering and remembering. The sharp pain of knife. The dull pain of a fist. The echo of electricity after the caddle prod leaves his skin. The freezing sensation of a blowtorch—when its heat is so high that it feels cold, like his flesh is breaking off in frozen pieces one atom at a time.
He remembers pain. Pain that swallows him like a tight-mouthed whale. Pain that engulfs him like a icy wave. Pain that whispers and whispers and whispers until it screams.
“It’s July,” corrects the doctor, with an expression bearing so much pity it burns in the back of Peter’s throat. “The fifth. A Thursday.”
“A Thursday,” echoes Peter, and suddenly he feels a hundred and sixteen years old. He can feel every pore of his bruised skin, every welt in his battered back, every scar on his mutilated face. “Oh.” His birthday’s in May. His birthday ’s in May.
“That’s okay,” he says. “How about… Just, look up for me please?”
Peter knows how to obey; he looks up, down, and side-to-side. He remembers the light used to hurt at the doctors office. It doesn’t hurt so much anymore. He supposes a little light is nothing compared to a blowtorch to the ear or hammer to the knee or a knife through the cheek.
“Your eyes…” He shines the light again. “They’re almost reflective—it’s hard to get a read on your pupils… Is this because of your enhancement?”
Peter blinks at the man for a second. “Wh-what?”
“You heal fast, Peter. I assumed you’d been enhanced somehow.”
“Oh.”
“So how’d it happen?”
Peter remembers that day so well. The field trip to Oscorp. Coming home. The purple-black spots in his vision, the blood-speckled vomit on his bathroom floor, the feverish heat coming over him in crashing waves, the vicelike cramp in every muscle he had. He remembers contorting on the bathroom floor, puking up every liquid in him, leaking red from every orifice: his eyes, his ears, his nose, his mouth. “Spider bite,” he says, like the process was that simple. “I was fourteen.”
“I heard the other guys call you that,” says the doctor. “Spider-Man, right? The one from New York?”
Peter nods; his head hurts. They didn’t hit his head today—he’s only got a couple cuts and a couple bruises, but he still needed some stitches.
The doctor seems to sense his despondence. “You do a lot of good things, hon. You’re one of the good ones.”
Not doing so much good anymore, he thinks. He wants to say it out loud, but he keeps quiet. Instead of patrolling and saving people, he’s stuck in this fucking bunker as he rots away.
Dr. Skivorski passes his penlight over Peter’s eyes again. “You know, before I operated on you, I checked your eyes—they didn’t look like this before. ”
“Happens,” says Peter with a weak shrug.
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes,” says Peter, “when my body goes through something really stressful, something where it thinks I’m gonna die or whatever… It develops something new.”
“Like how?”
He thinks back to Homecoming. “Like, I didn’t used to be able to summon stickiness to my hands. I could still stick to things, but stuff like glass, dirty surfaces… They were harder to do. But then a building fell on me and… I had to get out. So ever since then, I can get my hands to stick to anything. I can get, like” —he demonstrates, opening his hands to will the stickiness to come— “them to stick just by thinking about it.
“Wow,” says the doctor, prodding the gluish paste on his palms. “Like you adapted.”
Peter shrugs.
“Sounds to me like you’re still mutating.”
They’re quiet then, him dabbing gently at a cut on his throat. They didn’t get him too badly this time—a couple beatings and a knife held to his throat, but nothing like the bad days. “I think… I think my vision got better after that guy hit my head.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Everything looks crisper. Brighter. I can see, like, remnants of other things. Traces of blood where it used to be, the sweat on people’s skin, light where there isn’t any… I don’t know, it’s weird. I thought maybe I was just hallucinating at first, but… I guess I’m not.” He doesn’t tell the doctor the most important one: when he caught a glimpse of that dead addict’s cold body, the man didn’t look alive—he looked dull, waxen, pallid, like the color had been siphoned from him. “I think I can see, like, other things.”
He frowns. “What?”
Peter shrugs. “I don't really get it, either.” Peter hasn’t had much control of his body since the spider bite.
The doctor says, “Well, they did hit your occipital lobe—that’s the part I repaired.” His head’s much better now, his skull healed over into solid bone. There’s still a bone callus there where the crack once was, a bump that he can still run his fingers over. “It’s mostly responsible for your vision—color, form, motion, stuff like that. Follow the light for me.” His eyes follow. “Yeah, I’m no ophthalmologist, but I’d say your eyes are a little larger than normal, and reflecting a lot more light than the average human eye.” The doctor passes his otoscope in front of Peter’s face again. “You know at night, if you see a pair of eyes on the side of the road, it’s usually a fox or some other creature—humans don’t have that kind of reflection in their eyes. Just animals, lizards, bugs…” He puts down the scope. “Let me try something.” He leans over to the wall and turns off the light with a soft click . “How many fingers?”
Even with the lights off, Peter can see the doctor perfectly, every bit of him—the wrinkles in his face, the sweat on his palms, the heat in his cheeks, and, of course, the three white fingers he has raised. “Three,” he says, and the doctor turns the light back on.
He’s looking at Peter. “Your eyes started to bleed, you know, when you woke up. It must’ve been from your eyes mutating. Your body thought your vision was in danger, from the hit—”
“—so I adapted,” says Peter. “To see in the dark.”
The doctor’s scribbling on a pad of paper; Peter wants to ask for it—the paper, the marker—because they don’t have it in their cell, but he bites his tongue. If Charlie found them stealing from the doctor, they’d have a worse punishment than just not being able to write. “You can use that, you know,” he says. “Your eyes. We can use that, to try to get out of here.”
Peter glowers at the man. “I’ve tried getting out,” says Peter, and he knows he sounds like a whiny kid but that’s all he has in him right now.
The doctor is taken aback by his sudden hostility; he puts down his notepad. “I know,” says the doctor gently. “I know you have.”
There’s so much he wants to say, but he doesn’t have the energy. He wants to say—no, scream— I’m fucking tired! Everything hurts, all the time! I can’t get out of here, I’m never going to get out of here! He wants to grab the doctor by his stupid fucking lab coat and shake him and scream, Do you know what it’s like to be in pain all the time? Every hour of every day? To be afraid all the time? To be scared to go to sleep and scared to wake up, so scared all the time that you’re even being tortured in your dreams? But he doubts the doctor has known even a fraction of what he goes through outside of the operating room. He doesn’t know what it’s like to come back to a cell to a little girl who just wants to hug her dad—and instead, she gets you. To sit with her every day and try to keep her happy. He doubts that Dr. Skivorski has ever felt hunger the way he and Cassie do. Every morning, they await their meals like a dog with a bowl of tasteless kibble. Just the sight of the door’s food slot is enough to make his mouth water. He doesn’t know that every time they escape they get something else taken away—their mattress, their blankets, their pillows, their toys, their vitamins, their bandages… Anything that could be taken away from them has been.
But the doctor doesn’t know; he couldn’t possibly understand. So Peter doesn’t say any of this. Instead he says, in such a dull voice that it doesn’t even sound like his own, “We do. It’s just…hard. I’m never” —able to walk without his leg crumpling underneath him— “in good shape. Neither is she. They keep me” —so doped up that he can barely focus his eyes properly, on so much shit that his mind feels like it’s swimming in pea soup— “so sedated that I can’t do much.”
The doctor shakes his head, and his star necklace sways over the front of his scrubs. “It's okay. That’s okay. We can still figure out a way to get you out of here. Don’t give up—let’s go through it again, okay?”
“Okay,” says Peter quietly. There’s a miserable ache in his stomach. “To get out, I gotta get out of the cell—it’s reinforced by vibranium, stuff I couldn’t break through even at, like, max strength. Then I gotta get me and Cassie down the hall and to another door—that’s reinforced too, and guarded by at least two people, with a keypad. Then I gotta get up a ladder and to the bunker door, which is on the ceiling and it’s got another keypad. I’ve never even gotten that far.” His throat is raw from all of the talking—he’s not used to speaking this much. Even he and Cassie mostly just sit these days, quiet and still like broken dolls in the bottom of a toy bin.
He’s still sitting on this operating table, and at last he’s calm enough that the doctor has come close. The man asks permission to insert a syringe of local anesthetic to the worst of his cuts. Peter hadn’t realized that this whole time he’d been gripping his left arm in lieu of a tourniquet, squeezing the wound so tightly it’d cut off most of his circulation. “Can I?” Dr. Skivorski asks, and Peter stops, staring down at his arm where his hand is clamped over the wound. When he pulls his hand away, he finds a bloody mess. He doesn’t remember Charlie doing that; he doesn’t remember grabbing his ram like that. “I promise, it’ll hurt less—”
“I know,” Peter says. That’s not the problem. The problem is, he doesn’t remember Charlie doing that. What had Charlie done to him today? When he tries to remember, the moment’s hazy, awash with thick vibranium cuffs and Mr. Stark’s raw voice. “Yeah, fine.”
The doctor does it quickly, and soon Peter’s arm is numb and heavy. The stitches are slow and careful, nothing like his and Cassie’s in the beginning, and when he’s done there’s nothing but a criss-cross of wire instead of a gaping wound. He and Cassie used to use dental floss and sewing thread and anything else they were gifted that would do the job. Not this—clean, even, and safe.
“Deeper than usual,” mutters the doctor. “What did this?”
“Knife,” he says, and he mimes the rest of it: Charlie grabbing it with the blade pointed down, thrusting the tip into his restrained forearm, and pushing deeper and deeper every time Peter stopped screaming. He’s lost in the memory then, and Peter keeps thinking it on repeat—deeper, deeper, deeper. Every time Peter thought the blade had gone far enough, Charlie would smile and call out, “Tony, you watching?” and would yank it out and stab it back in nearly the same spot.
The doctor’s saying his name again, and finally he finds himself back in the real world—sitting on the papered operating table, arm deadened by anesthetic, the doctor standing far too close. He finds himself shaking again, and the doctor says, softly, “We might have a chance this time, Peter. They lost a few people recently, so we could…” He’s still talking about an escape plan, and Peter finds himself with a searing sensation in his chest, like someone’s put his lungs on a griddle and is waiting for them to cook all the way through. “...know who has the keys, then if you take him out…”
He has a hate, suddenly, for the doctor’s naivety, for his hopefulness, for his aspirations to escape, and he feels the hate grip him like a clawed creature in his chest. Still trembling, he snaps, “Forget it. Even if they were all dead, I’d still be stuck here. I don't know the password and I can’t break through the vibranium and I can’t take out anyone because I’m—I’m—I’m—” Weak , he wants to say, but he can’t choke out the word. Look at me! he wants to scream. I’m nothing! I’m nothing anymore! “We’re fucked, okay? We’re never getting out of here!”
He used to be stron g. He could pull apart walls like paper, he could snap bones like toothpicks. He could close his eyes and tell exactly who was a threat and who wasn’t. And now… he’s nothing. He can barely walk. He’s so used to being hungry that he doesn’t even feel it anymore, just a constant ache in his gut. He can barely hit someone, let alone heal up properly. He’s just wasting away.
The doctor tries, “Peter…” but Peter’s not listening. All he can think is: I’m seventeen, I’m seventeen, I’m seventeen.
Seventeen, and still stuck in this hellhole.
THURSDAY, JULY 5 — 8:42 PM
Happy Hogan’s gonna burst a blood vessel. Or have a stroke. Or whatever it is people have when they’re stressed.
Because if what Ned just told him is true—and, well, why would the kid lie?—then Peter Benjamin Parker has been missing for weeks. Months.
Peter’s been missing for eighty-eight days.
And the only one person who knows where he is—the man of the hour: genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist Tony Stark.
Happy hits the gas. Right now, he doesn’t care if he gets a ticket, he doesn’t care if he bumps one car or a dozen on his way upstate, but he’s got to get to Pepper.
The kids are in the back of his car, whispering to each other in only the way best friends do. Whatever bullshit Michelle—MJ, he corrects himself—had told him about how she and Ned weren’t friends, she’s clearly been lying. When Happy adjusts the rearview mirror, he can see them both. Seatbelts strained across both of their chests, they’re whispering to each in rushed, frantic tones; MJ’s got a hand on Ned’s shoulder, talking, and Ned’s got his head bowed again, nodding. They’re definitely friends. That cord of tension he saw before has snapped.
They drive and they drive and Ned won’t stop asking, “Are there any cameras in the car? At the house? I—I know you guys have, like, a ton of cameras at Stark Industries, but you have to remember what I said—“
“I remember,” says Happy. He remembers because Ned started freaking out the first time he relayed the conversation between him and Tony. If I do anything, Peter dies, Ned gasped in huge, hiccupy sobs. If I tell people about him, he dies. If I tell people about May, he dies. If I try to go looking, he dies. Please, please don’t tell anyone. “Don’t worry about it. We got tinted windows, attached garage, the whole thing. We’re going straight to the big house where Pepper” — and Tony , he thinks bitterly— “live, so no one will know you’re here but us.”
When they get to the house, he parks in the attached garage and hurries the kids inside. Pepper’s waiting there, still dressed in her work clothes: a loose magenta pantsuit and black blouse. “What’s going on?” Pepper asks. The cut of her blouse and the waist of her pantsuit hides her bump well; neither Ned nor MJ say a word about it, not even a surprised stare. “You wouldn’t tell me over the phone, so—spit it out.”
“You might want to sit down for this,” says Happy, and he pushes a stool away from the counter for her.
She sits.
Happy nudges the kid forward; the kid shuffles a couple steps to Pepper, still clasping his backpack in front of him. “Go on, tell her. Tell her what you told me.”
Ned gulps. “I'm just like—you know how Mr. Stark's been gone? Well not like, gone gone, but just like not coming out of his room gone? I mean, of course you know”—he slaps his own forehead— “what am I saying, of course you know—”
“Ned,” says Pepper stiffly, “please.”
“Sorry. Right. Um…” The kid glances at Happy and then helplessly at MJ, who nods in some completely teenage way. “Peter went missing at around the same time that Mr. Stark went into his lab. I got worried—Peter hadn’t answered any of my texts to, like, anyone , so I called him. Mr. Stark, I mean. I called him, like a million times until he picked up in like a second, and I… I talked to him.”
Happy can see the puzzle pieces shifting behind Pepper’s eyes. “You talked to him?” she echoes, now glancing between the two of them. “Okay, so what did he say?”
“I, uh, asked him about Peter. Told him what was going on. And he seemed… I don’t know. He said, um, Peter isn’t coming back for a while .” Ned looks suddenly embarrassed; he takes a step back now that all of Pepper’s attention is on him. “He told me not to tell anyone, that I needed to stop looking into it, because if people got suspicious…” The kid swallows. “...Peter could die. I thought maybe it was an Avengers thing at first, but after a while…”
“Do you remember anything else?”
“Yeah.” Ned swallows. “He said Peter’s life was in my hands.”
THURSDAY, JULY 5 — 9:02 PM
Pepper’s pacing is wearing a hole into the floor.
“So where’s Peter?” she asks Ned.
“I don’t know,” says the kid miserably.
“Happy? Where is he?”
Happy looks at the floor.
“So you’re telling me,” she says, as she makes another pivot and turn, “that this whole time—not only has Peter not been at an internship, but he’s been missing for two months?”
“Yes,” says Happy, weakly.
“And Tony knows? And that’s why he’s…” She waves her hands; Happy knows what she means.
“Yes,” he says again.
“…and his aunt’s been in the hospital—this entire time?”
There’s no need for Happy to say yes again, but he does nonetheless.
“…and this whole time you’ve been…what? Who the hell have you been talking to?”
“Not talking,” says Happy miserably. “Emailing.”
Pepper can feel the weight of Peter’s absence as suddenly as if he were standing on her shoulders. “Okay—okay.” She doesn’t give herself time to think about it. “Happy, alert the nearest police station to Peter’s apartment—then the NYPD Missing Persons Unit, and try to—”
“No, no, no!” Ned panics, and the kid’s way closer to Pepper than she’d like. “Don’t do that! Mrs. Potts—Ms. Potts, um—you don’t—we can’t do that!” His hand-waving is becoming frantic. “We can’t tell anyone—Mr. Stark said. Something will happen to Peter if we do.”
“They’re police,” counters Pepper. “They know how to do things discreetly.”
Ned’s shaking his head, near-tearful. “Mrs. Potts,” he says. “Mr. Stark hasn’t told the police this whole time . If he hasn’t, that means he knows there’s no way he can without…something happening. And if he couldn’t figure it out…”
The kid doesn’t finish; he doesn’t have to: If Tony Stark couldn’t figure it out, then who could?
She paces and paces. If Ned and Happy and MJ are right, then Tony didn’t lock himself away to piss her off or to brood alone or to hide from the world. He locked himself away to save Peter; she doesn’t know how or why, but it’s something . But that would mean… That would mean Peter’s in major trouble.
She can figure this out. She’s CEO of Stark Industries in more than just title. She is the thing that holds the entire company together; she can find a missing teenager.
“Pep—”
“Shut up and let me think.”
She thinks and she thinks.
“Okay. okay. Here's what I need to happen. Happy, I need you to get Tony’s old AIs—anything pre-FRIDAY, anything that has no connection to Peter or the lab—so anything from when we still had the Tower or earlier, okay? Then I need—okay, Ned?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you know where the car crash was?”
Ned rattles off an address.
“Okay, Happy, I need you to track down the satellite footage of that spot from the date of the crash—maybe a weeklong span, got it? Don’t use Stark Industries equipment.” She feels so stupid. The AI. The same day Tony went into the lab, FRIDAY was hacked. “I need you to do this the old-fashioned way. I need physical copies, understand me? Tapes, DVDs, flash drives, whatever you can get me. No email, no Internet. If you can, follow the vehicles and anyone involved in the crash as far as you can. See if you can find where he went.”
She turns to the kids. “Ned, MJ, keep up the impression. Peter is at an internship. Happy, keep communicating with that email. Nothing has changed, got it? Nothing. Don’t come back here. I’ll find a way to contact you if I need you.”
The kids nod like a couple of bobbleheads. MJ looks like she’s going to be sick; Ned keeps squeezing his fists into tight balls at his side.
FRIDAY, JULY 6 — 1:10 AM
Cassie wakes to the bunker door opening.
Not the cell door, no. The bunker door. The one to the outside. It doesn’t open very often—only when the group needs to go on food runs or get supplies for the gun that they’re making. Cassie knows all of this.
But Charlie’s people don’t tend to leave the bunker in groups of more than three—so Cassie Paxton-Lang startles awake when she hears the bunker door open followed by a series of voices—three, four, five at least?—entering the bunker, and also the voices—five, six, seven?—that greet them.
There’s way too many voices all at once, and they’re yelling.
Peter’s still asleep; when she wakes, her head is still resting on his stomach. They always sleep like this—the way Mommy always used to sleep beside her when she had a nightmare—with Peter closer to the door, a shield from the bad guys, and Cassie against the wall with her head against Peter’s chest as a pillow. They lost their pillow a while ago—she doesn’t remember why.
She and Peter don’t have pajamas, either. They always sleep in their daytime clothes—and, because they tore up their regular clothes to make bandages in the first couple weeks, now they just wear the black-dyed jumpsuits that they have in the bunkers. Peter calls them prisoner’s uniforms , and that’s kind of what they look like, just dyed black. They’re way too big for her, so Peter helped her sew and fold over the sleeves and the pants to make it extra thick to keep her warm.
She gets up slowly, so she doesn’t wake him, and she scoots over the warmed concrete to the head of the bed and slides off onto the floor. Usually, she would crawl to their Treasure Chest, the little bucket nailed to the other side of the room, but there’s something far more pressing: the yelling. All of the yelling.
She crawls over to the door—Cassie’s much too tired to stand—and lays her head by the food slot. It closes and locks from the outside, so she can’t poke her head through, but the slot is thinner than the rest of the cell door, so the sound comes through.
They’re not angry, exactly, but they are definitely high and there’s way more of them than usual. “…said you needed more people.”
“My people,” snaps Charlie. She knows the bearded Charlie’s voice better than anyone’s—she could pick his out of a whole crowd of people. “I wanted more of my people.”
A laugh. “What, more homeless junkies?” His is a new voice. Someone soft-spoken, with a smile hidden inside each word. “No, no, no. Clearly, you’re not getting the job done, because Ross sent me in. You should be grateful, really.”
“Grateful?” The sound of spit hitting ground. “This is my mission! I’m gonna save the world!”
“In order to do that, Keene, you still need a couple more hands. That’s what we’re here for. Me—I’m an engineer. I can help construct the weapon, and these guys behind me, they can help, too—”
“Who are they?” A female voice. Renee, the redhead.
“Soldiers—good ones. Loyal to Ross and loyal to you. They can help pin the kid down.” The man pauses amongst a few grumbles of assent. “There is a kid, isn’t there?”
“Yeah. Parker. We’ve got him in here.”
Footsteps coming. Coming for them. Cassie jumps back from the door, and she scrambles to the bed where Peter is, whispering, “Iron Man! Iron Man!”
Peter stirs with a groggy flail but doesn’t get up the first time, so Cassie grasps his bandaged wrist and squeezes; it’s still cut up from the last time they tied him down.
Peter wakes with a pained gah! and Cassie says it again, almost teary because the people are so close— “Iron Man! Iron Man! ” and at last he seems to understand because his eyes go wide.
He wraps his arms around her and rolls off the bed, landing hard on the ground with a thunk just as the key slips into the lock of their cell door—a thlick sound that frightens her so badly now that she loses control of her bladder for a split second.
Peter moves quick —rolling them both backwards and under the bed, all the way, until Cassie’s back is at the wall. Cassie knows the routine—don’t make a sound, no matter what, but she has to warn him. “New people,” she whimpers, and there are tears coming down her face but she’s trying to be quiet.
“Black Widow,” he whispers back. That’s one of their code words— stay quiet and do as I say. Just as the words leave his mouth, the heavy cell door squeals open. Cassie squeezes her eyes shut, so hard that she sees sparkles of purples and whites on the back of her eyelids. She can be quiet. She has to be quiet.
Peter plants his hands on the wall behind her head, and she curls into his chest. This way, if they try to grab him, they have to pull his sticky hands from the wall, which is pretty hard to do.
The first voice they hear is Charlie’s: “Ah, shit—yeah, they do that sometimes. Glenn, Jon, you know what to do.”
Because Peter’s on the outside, it’s easier for one of them to grab him, one reaches under and grabs Peter by his leg—his good one, and he kicks back, nailing him in the face. That’s Jon’s already-broken nose—and he cries out, falling back. His nose is already bleeding, and red falls all over Peter's leg in great big drops. “Ah—fuck! Are you kidding me?” She sees the guy try to kick at Peter, who’s already tucked his legs back under the bed to shield Cassie again. She can feel his pants tickle against her bare feet.
“Fine, Parker, you wanna play this game today?” There’s some shuffling and some more shuffling and then Charlie’s voice is coming closer. He mutters, “Little spider-bitch.” Peter’s not as his best. He’s tired, so when Charlie yanks at his leg, he breaks it free on the first try. “Let go, Parker! Let” —he pulls again— “go!”
Cassie knows in the way that Peter moves—he’s way too slow. Maybe they hit him too hard or or maybe he’s hungry or maybe he didn’t get enough sleep or maybe—maybe he’s just sad and remembering the bad things. Whatever it is, he’s too slow to fight back, and too slow to hang on, and when Charlie pulls again, Peter’s yanked out from under the bed so fast that he yelps.
“Got him!”
Keeping her eyes closed and her mouth shut, Cassie trembles beneath the bed; she can hear the voices all at once now, a rush of people complaining and shouting and congratulating each other—there’s too many people . “Her, too,” says a girl voice—Renee. “Haroun?”
A male voice sighs. “Sure.”
Then there’s a hand under the bed then, reaching for her like out of those scary movies Daddy likes to watch. She screams and puts her hands on the wall like Peter does, but she doesn’t have sticky hands like him—so when the guy gets his hand around her ankle, he pulls her so fast that her clothes scrape on the concrete floor.
Cassie’s body floods with panic—“No, no!” as she scrabbles at the concrete; her nail catches and snaps on a crack in the floor—“ Peter! ” —and they’re gonna hurt her, they’re gonna beat her, they’re gonna stick a needle in her! She’s crying now, because she knows what’s going to happen and she knows it’s going to hurt a lot ; Cassie just wants Peter to hold her and tell her everything’s gonna be okay.
She thrashes and she screams and she hits a warm chest, screeching and smacking and biting into the first hand that claps over her mouth, sinking her teeth until— “ Ah! Little cunt!” She knows Renee’s smell—the red-haired woman’s clasping both her wrists now in one hand. She hits Cassie so hard in the gut that Cassie coughs and gasps and keels forward.
The whole time, Peter’s screeching against the wall: “Don’t touch her! Don’t touch her! Don’t touch her! ” Charlie’s people have Peter pinned against the concrete wall; a big blond guy has Peter's right arm and a bald guy has his left arm and an elbow braced against Peter’s back.
Renee finally gets her arms around Cassie’s neck, getting her into a chokehold, and she twists Cassie’s still-casted hand behind her back so far that she cries out—pain in her shoulder!
She can see the whole room from where she’s standing; Cassie has never seen a lot of these people before. She’s not usually the one who leaves the cell—that’s Peter—so maybe they’ve been here before, but she doesn’t remember. There’s six people she doesn’t know—a brown-haired man with a scruffy beard, and five people dressed like army soldiers but in all black. The brown-haired man steps forward with a laugh towards still-thrashing Peter, “Alright, I got him, I got him. Let him go.”
He grasps Peter gently by the back of the neck, almost tenderly, and the man says in a voice as plain as a blank sheet of paper, “Peter, if you don’t calm down, we’re gonna have to hurt that little girl over there, won’t we?”
Cassie’s wheezing, her voice a dry whine through Renee’s chokehold; Peter slows, and the other two men let go of his arms, backing away so that the brown-haired man can come forward. He moves forward and forward until his body blocks her view of Peter—his chest, his hips, his legs consuming Peter’s form—and he says placidly, “Say okay.”
Peter’s voice is quavery. His legs are stiff now, like two crowbars extending from his waist. Quietly, meagrely: “Okay.”
“Good. So you’re the boy, hm?” the man says, with a tilt of his head. He’s still got a hand on Peter’s neck, but his other hand is hanging by his side. “You’re Tony’s boy? Peter?”
Peter’s not fighting back anymore. Peter’s eyes look dark, and he twists his neck so that he’s not looking at the man. He doesn’t say anything.
“Say yes,” says the man.
“Yes,” says Peter.
He laughs. “God,” says the man, and he sounds hungry. “Ross is a fucking genius.”
He claps Peter on the back twice; Cassie knows the hit isn’t hard enough to hurt Peter, but the way Peter jolts into the wall when the man’s hand meets his back—it makes it seem like the hit really did hurt him. “Stay,” says the man, like Peter is a dog and he’s the master.
And with that, they’re gone as quickly as they arrived; the red-haired lady releases Cassie and dumps her on the ground as the new people file out, even the soldier-looking ones. The brown-haired man says as he leaves, following Charlie’s swaying form, “Let’s get this party started, huh? Show me what you’ve got so far.” Followed by: “You and you—come with me. What do you usually test them on?”
Their voices fade out into nothing—into pieces of shouts and mumbles and laughs, so Cassie stops listening. Her tummy’s still sore from where Renee hit her, and she hugs it tightly.
Peter’s still against the wall, standing where the brown-haired man left him. She knows his bad leg must be bothering him because he’s got all his weight on one leg. What’s wrong with him? When he finally turns around, sitting awkwardly on the floor with his messed-up leg, Peter says, “Cassie,” and he sounds weird, like he’s just come back from a session in the Chair. “Do you remember what that man looks like? Beck?”
Yes. She doesn’t know the man’s name, but now she does. Beck. Brown hair, scruffy face, wandery brown eyes. Cassie remembers; she nods.
“If… If he comes near you? If he looks at you, if he talks about you, if he—if he touches you, you have to tell me, okay?”
“Okay,” she says, and she’s confused. Cassie is very, very confused. Because that man—Beck—barely looked at Cassie. He paid as much attention to Cassie as he did to the toilet in their cell.
Quentin Beck never really looked at Cassie; he only looked at Peter.
“No, Cass, I’m serious. Promise me.”
Why does Peter suddenly sound so much like Mommy and Daddy and Jim? “I promise,” she says.
He rubs his forehead with his palm over and over and over until the bruise there has pinkened with irritation. “Good.”