pyramid song
MONDAY, AUGUST 27 — 4:14 AM
Monday is a difficult day.
Pepper finds herself wandering the Tower sleeplessly, calling lawyers and discussing press releases and emailing doctors.
And outside the elevator, she finds Jim Paxton standing outside the double doors, still dressed in those pajamas he’d arrived in a few days prior. He must’ve been washing and re-washing the same clothes this whole time, having left home so abruptly; she should send them some fresh laundry.
“Mr. Paxton,” she says, addressing the girl’s stepfather. “Can I help you?”
He straightens up as she approaches, his arms broad and at his sides. “Your guy—he locked off all the stairwells,” he says, pointing a finger at her, and at the elevator behind him. “And the elevators.”
He means Happy; she nods.
The man looks slightly unhinged—exhausted and worn thin, and still he continues to speak. “And if that’s not a fire hazard, I don’t know what is. Maggie and I—we want to take our daughter home, and—and—if you don’t let us out of here, I’ll have you all arrested for—for—”
Pepper looks the man hard in the face. “Mr. Paxton,” she says, echoing his name, “there is a killer on the loose—do you understand that? Someone who killed six men in their jail cells. Someone who’s willing to break into a military prison and murder four soldiers to cover up what they’ve done. Do you think they’ll hesitate to come after you in your home?”
Her words seem to rattle the man, because he winces then, glancing down at the floor.
“This is the safest place for her. You know this. Until we found whoever killed those suspects, you and your family need to stay here.” She takes a breath. “Now, I won’t keep you—but I need you to understand that I won’t put that little girl at risk. And you shouldn’t, either.”
Jim Paxton slumps back against the elevator doors; a silence stands between them, pervaded by the smell of hospital disinfectant and blood. “I just want to take her home,” he says after a while. “She doesn’t… She’s having a really hard time.”
“I know,” she says, and she does. Tony’s not much better. He barely has conversations with anyone but Peter—talking to everyone else like a robot, slow and jilted. And Tony keeps mentioning things, little things that make the rest of the Avengers turn their heads in disturbed astonishment.
“I just—we—we didn’t even bring her anything from home. Her toys. Her blanket. Her animals.” He pinches the bridge of his large nose hard enough to leave a red mark. “We—we left so fast, we didn’t even think…” He shakes his head again. “We thought we lost her. And now… Now we just want to take her home.”
Pepper approaches the man, close enough that she could place a comforting hand on him—but she does not. “I’ll have someone pick things up for you,” she says. “Whatever you need from your home.”
Jim Paxton nods, hand still pinching his nose. “Thank you,” he says.
MONDAY, AUGUST 27 — 6:00 AM
All of the Avengers reconvene on Monday morning.
Tony is not present at the meeting, yet no one pauses to ask where he is; they all know precisely where he is—at Peter Parker’s bedside.
Someone has managed to locate Thor, so he’s there as well, dressed in full armor; in the corner, Dr. Bruce Banner is speaking to him, his hands less expressive than usual—Bruce keeps ducking his head and wincing as he speaks.
And even Thor, a god who’s been around for so long that he’s older than Islam and the Middle Ages—his expression of horror is something Steve was completely unprepared for. Before Bruce is even done talking, Thor falls to one knee, his red cape dragging over the conference room floor.
The god of thunder has one hand over his mouth and a look of wrought despair on his face. Thor hasn’t even met the kid—and still, the horror of the situation weighs on him.
Bucky, Clint, and Natasha return from their mission soon thereafter—walking into the conference with a purpose.
“How’s the kid?” says Bucky, crossing the room immediately to meet Steve.
Steve sniffs. His bruising has faded significantly, his face now mostly clear save a few yellowed stains. “Better,” he says. “His heart’s been stable, they’re saying. His healing’s really pulled through.”
Happy leaves the conference room suddenly, phone pressed to his ear.
“How was…” Steve trails off, his eyes traveling down the Soldier’s figure. “Buck,” he says, “your hand.” His vibranium hand is unharmed, of course, but his right hand: the knuckles there are split to the bone, blood crusted beneath his fingernails. Even his metal arm is coated in a sheen with blood, like he dipped his hand in it up to the elbow, the stuff dried into the cracks of the mechanisms.
Steve reaches for Bucky’s flesh-and-blood hand, and touches lightly, drawing his left thumb over the back of Bucky’s right. “I’m alright,” Bucky says quietly. The other members talk and argue around them.
Bucky’s dressed in his Winter Soldier getup, too; there’s blood on his face.
Absent-mindedly, he shakes his head. “What did you…” But Steve already knows the answer to that question—and he knows he doesn’t really want to hear Bucky say it aloud.
Across the room, Thor’s booming voice: “Since April?”
“Yes,” says Bruce quietly, wringing his hands in front of him. “Since April.”
“You did not contact me—I would have—”
“We didn’t know,” he says miserably. “We didn't know.”
In that moment, Happy burst back through the double doors, phone gripped in one hand. The man is in desperate need of a shave; he’s looking more bearlike by the day. “Pepper,” we can’t hold it off much longer,” he says. “News outlets are already speculating.”
He looks tired—they all look tired. Who can sleep knowing what’s happened to Peter Parker for the past five months?
“Hold what off?” asks Clint, who’s unstrapping his bow from his back. “What’s going on? Did someone…”
Pepper shakes her head. “Press conference, that’s all.”
Happy nods in agreement.
Steve’s seen some of the news lately—all asking questions like who’s the mystery teenage and why was Tony Stark locked in his lab? Everyone has something to say about it.
“And that’s not all,” says Happy. He taps on his phone a couple times, and the screen on the far end of the conference room lights up. “Guess who’s paying us a visit.” High-definition security footage appears on the screen; it looks like the Tower lobby on the first floor. At the front desk are four cops in various stages of police gear—two with guns and kevlar vests, two in suits with police badge dangling around their necks.
Nat huffs, sitting down in one of the conference room chairs; she’s still dressed in her Black Widow getup, too, her hair braided back. “What do they want?”
Happy explains, “They’ve gotta question their witnesses. Probable cause hearings are this afternoon for all of the suspects, so they need more information if they wanna keep them all no-bail.”
Pepper rises from her seat. “Alright, Happy—you handle them. And if they so much as rustle a hair on Peter’s head—they’re out of the building, got it? I’ll handle the press conference.”
“Alone?” echoes Rhodey. “Let me help. Public’s more likely to believe you if you’ve got a government figure on your side.”
“Fine,” she says, and then she turns to the recently-returned Avengers. “So—did you find our guy?”
Bucky nods—Nat takes Happy’s phone from him and displays a series of photos on the screen: of a buff, square-jawed man with a buzzcut. She says, “Don’t have a name yet, but apparently people call him ‘The Sandman.’ Enhanced—can turn into sand. Assassin-for-hire. Uses his power to sneak in high-security buildings undetected.” Natasha waves her hand generally toward the door. “But as long as you keep this building sealed, you should be safe here.”
“I will find this man of sand,” says Thor, rising from his chair. He’s got an eye patch—since when does Thor have an eye patch? “No harm will come to Peter Parker on my watch.”
“Good. Bruce, go with him just in case. Sam?”
Sam Wilson looks up. He's dressed in a simple sweatshirt and jeans—one of the only ones in the room not in uniform.
“If you could, I need you and Nat to run a couple errands for me.” Pepper explains briefly about the conversation she had with Jim Paxton in the hallway. “I’ll text you a list. Go there and back to the Parkers’ apartment in Queens—see if you can find anything we can take back here. Anything that might be familiar to him.”’
Surprisingly, neither of the pair argue, despite having been given a more civilian job.
“And if you can’t find anything there…” She winces. “Go back to the compound. Peter had a… A room there.”
Both Sam and Nat nod.
Steve and Bucky vote to remain at the Tower, to watch over Peter and Cassie in case the Sandman returns for them.
And eventually, each group filters out of the conference room to complete their respective missions.
MONDAY, AUGUST 27 — 8:23 AM
Maggie Paxton sets the food tray in front of her daughter.
It’s not much—just a cupful of sweetened oatmeal and a bottle of orange juice. But Cassie’s refusing to even look at it, curled up in her hospital bed with a white knitted blanket pulled tightly over her shoulders. She’s sucking on her thumb—an action that Maggie hasn’t seen her do since she was two —and squeezing her eyes shut. “Cassie,” says Maggie, inching closer to her daughter. “Come on, baby, just a couple bites.” She holds up a spoonful of the oatmeal, and Cassie starts to cry silently, all hitched breaths and soundless tears.
She can hear Cassie’s stomach rumble, can practically see the hunger in her eyes, but for some reason her daughter just won’t take it.
When the nurse comes in, some college-aged girl with bleached-pink hair and visibly dark roots, Maggie tries to explain. “She just won’t eat it,” she says. “It—it worked before, I don’t know…”
The nurse tries as well—encouraging Cassie that there is nothing wrong with the food, that no one will hurt her—but Maggie’s daughter cannot be consoled. So the nurse retrieves her supervisor, Dr. Cho. Cho says with a weary sigh, “Steve Rogers mentioned something—he said that when he was locked in there with them, they ate from cans.”
“Cans?” echoes Maggie.
Helen nods. “Like something dug out of a fallout shelter. Beans and peaches… Tomato sauce…” She shrugs, frowning a bit. “It’s unorthodox, but… It just might work.”
So they bring back Cassie some cans. One of the nurses—the one with the bleached hair—crimps the sharp edges of the can so that she won’t cut herself on them. They fill one can with the oatmeal mixture and the second with the bottle of orange juice and place them on her tray instead.
Then to their simultaneous relief and dread, Cassie grabs the can, pinning it between her hand and her cast like she’s done it a thousand times before, and starts gulping it down so fast they think she might throw up. And when she’s done, she sticks her hand inside, swiping her little fingers around for more food, and licks her fingertips clean. The whole process takes less than a minute, and then she returns to her blanket shroud, sucking on her thumb once more. She’s calmer now, casted hand held loosely in her lap, blanket over her shoulders.
There’s something sickening about it. This is what Cassie must have done every day while she was in that horrible place—eating out of cans, dragging her hand along the inside for the last semblance of taste.
But at least she’s calm.
Unfortunately, Cassie’s sense of calm does not last long.
Peter Parker and Cassie’s rooms are connected—which means that Cassie can hear most of what happens in the wounded boy’s room. And it becomes a simple equation: if Peter freaks, than Cassie does, too.
As of the past twenty-four hours, Peter Parker has seemed to have stabilized. Dr. Cho tells them that although he’s physically doing much better, he has something called delirium, but she can never quite define what the condition actually is. All it means is that Peter spends the entirety of his time awake in a foggy daze, startling at every person who enters, mumbling in frantic tones, inconsolable on all fronts.
It’s like he’s stuck.
And Cassie has noticed the obvious change in Peter—it’s caused a palpable change in her, drawing out a course of fear they only saw on the first day: a panic-stricken violence at every single person who enters. An brown-haired orthopedic surgeon enters the room around seven o’clock to discuss an upcoming hand surgery, and Cassie starts kicking and screaming and scratching so viciously that she tears the surgeon’s earring off—right through the lobe.
The surgeon leaves a trail of blood on her way out of the room, and then her sweet Cassie goes deathly quiet, her chest heaving as she inhales, hugging herself until her eyes take on that glazed daze.
No questions, no “Mommy”s, not even a “Where’s Peter?”
Later that morning, another nurse tries to adjust the bandages on Cassie’s head, but as soon as his hands come near her, she’s fighting like a wild animal, howling, “PETER SAID NO! PETER SAID NO!” and scratching at his face with such a violence that she leaves lines down the man’s skin.
And afterwards, she tucks herself into the corner of the hospital room, far away from both her mother and her stepfather, and cries for Peter Parker.
Sometime around nine o’clock, Dr. Cho finally locates a child psychiatrist who’s willing to take the risk—a former Stark Industries employee who worked with kids struggling after the Battle of New York.
The woman dresses in pleasantly pink scrubs and has her brown hair tied back in a half-bun. A badge lanyard dangles around her neck lined with Captain America shields. The psychiatrist—Dr. Alexis Miranda —and meets them outside of Cassie’s hospital room. They explain the situation quickly and without much thought, and the woman seems to absorb the information, nodding and asking questions. “Some kids like to have things that remind them of home—comfort items—do you have anything of hers? Toys, blankets?”
“We didn’t—” Maggie says, her voice trembling. “We just left with what we had, and now—now that we’re here—we can’t—”
“That’s okay,” assures the psychiatrist, with a light smile. “That’s okay. Let’s try to stay calm, okay? If you’re calm, she’ll be calm. She just wants to know she’s safe. And” —she removes something from her bag: a stuffed zebra— “I brought her something anyway. Helen mentioned she liked animals?”
Maggie nods tearily. “Yeah. She does.”
They re-enter Cassie’s room one at a time—first Maggie, then Jim, and at last, a few minutes later, the psychiatrist, who knocks lightly on the door with the palm of her hand. She introduces herself then to Cassie, lingering in the doorway and raising the stuffed animal like a peace offering. And when Cassie doesn’t respond, she turns her attention away from the girl and to the stuffed zebra instead, introducing the zebra, too.
Still, the kid eyes her warily, thumb pressed firmly between her teeth, sucking quietly, her head tipped into her mom’s chest.
She feigns a conversation with it, moving the zebra as she does, tilting its head and moving its legs like a kindergarten teacher would for her class. Her every movement is careful and steady—all so she will not frighten the girl in the hospital bed. No sudden movements. No sharp noises. “Oh, no,” says the psychiatrist gently, playfully, “I don’t think our friend the zebra has a name—would you like to give it one?”
She looks so confused . Frightened out of her wits. She stiffens and says nothing, but her eyes do follow the zebra as Alexis moves it about the room. Eventually, Alexis asks again, and Cassie nods—just a slight tilt of her well-bandaged head.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” she asks, and after a long period of thought, Cassie moves one of her scar-lined fingers and taps her own chest. “A girl? Alright. And does she have a name?”
Every one of Cassie’s responses takes time. But they wait for her to do so, letting her take in the situation and absorb the question before whispering, “Ava.”
“Ava,” repeats the psychiatrist. “That’s a good name for a zebra. Ava the zebra.”
They play this game a little longer—adding characteristics to the zebra, mostly in yes or no questions that Cassie barely has to answer—until at last Alexis offers the stuffed animal to Cassie.
Maggie’s daughter stares at the zebra like the psychiatrist offered her a pipe bomb instead of a plush toy. Her hand wiggles, like she wants to reach for the toy zebra but she traps it against her chest, curling it in next to her casted hand.
It takes a few more tries—a few more pseudo-conversations, a few more gentle shakes of toy, even pretend-brushing of the zebra’s mane—before Cassie finally, after watching the psychiatrist place the toy on the bed, picks it up herself.
She hugs it like a baby, like she’s never had a toy in her life.
Maggie’s gonna buy her a thousand toys. She’s gonna fill her little girl’s room with stuffed animals: zebras, lions, monkeys, belugas… She’s gonna take her to every zoo in the state and then some—she’s going to spoil this girl silly. After what she’s been through, Cassie deserves the entire world.
Cassie’s saying something now, in that uber-quiet whispery voice she uses now; her words are so hushed that even the psychiatrist leans in closer to hear. “...don’t want…”
The psychiatrist, Alexis, attempts to pry the words from her, but Cassie just falls silent, unresponsive as she usually is, hugging her new toy.
In that hour that follows, the psychiatrist attempts to pull some basic information from the little girl now that she’s somewhat comfortable. “Cassie,” she says, gently getting her daughter’s attention, “the zebra wants to know—she just wants to know—do you know where you are?”
Cassie just watches her, her dark eyebrows pulled into a childlike frown. Doesn’t respond. Her arms tighten around her zebra, her pupils flicking between her toy, the psychiatrist, and the closed door of the hospital room.
“It’s okay to answer. Would it be okay if we maybe…?”
Then it happens—Alexis reaches for her bag, but the motion is too learned. She moves just a smidge too fast, and Cassie curls into her mother’s chest with a vigor, breath snaking into her in a sharp rasp, gasping out muffled words into the fabric of Maggie’s blouse, her entire body a wiry ball of tension. Her eyes are wide then, her pupils blown like balloons, entirely focused on Alexis’ hands.
“Okay,” says the psychiatrist, in a low whisper that matches the cadence of Cassie’s, “that’s alright. I’m just taking out some pictures.” And she does.
Slowly, as though before a spooked horse, Alexis pulls a series of cardstock pages, white edged with cartoon images on each. She moves them each slowly, allowing Cassie time to get used to the sight. And, once she’s ready, Alexis raises the first pair of pictures.
The first two are places: one a cartoon forest, the other a cartoon city skyline. “Okay, Cassie, can you point to which one we’re in?”
Cassie looks suddenly confused, some of the fear draining from her little legs as her eyes move from one image to the next. After a few seconds (and a few squeezes of her stuffed zebra), she points, hesitant, to the forest.
In that moment, a pit of ill realization grows in Maggie’s stomach.
“Okay,” says the psychiatrist. “Good job, Cassie. Good job. That’s very good.” And then she shows her two more pictures: a cartoon hospital and a cartoon jail, and asks Maggie’s daughter the same question: Can you point to which one we’re in?
And Cassie points, after some time, to the jail.
That pit in Maggie’s stomach solidifies, a bezoar hardening in her intestines. “Cassie,” she says, horrified, unable to hide her dismay. “Cassie, honey…”
Cassie thinks they’re still in the bunker.
They’ve said a thousand things to Cassie since they found her— I love you, you’re safe now, no one will hurt you— but no one ensured that she understood the most obvious, basic term of her escape: that she was no longer in that bunker.
They’d dragged her from place to place, from hospital to hospital, but no one told her that those drug addicts weren’t stalking the hallways, that Peter’s room wasn’t a torture dungeon, that her doctors weren’t captors in blue scrubs.
And—Maggie looks around now, at this white windowless room—to someone who’s been locked up in one room for the past five months, a hospital room could resemble a cell.
She’d been so engrossed in having Cassie back—Maggie hadn’t even thought to show her daughter to a window.
MONDAY, AUGUST 27 — 10:38 AM
The police linger in the lobby until Happy Hogan comes to fetch them.
They’re in a pack of four: two men, two women. Pepper’s already prepping for her press conference, so Happy greets them alone, unshaven and dressed in a suit he’s been wearing for two days straight. “Couldn’t wait to pounce on these kids, could you?” he growls, impatient, as each of the police officers types their badge numbers into Happy’s tablet.
“We don’t enjoy this any more than you do,” says one of the female officers, solemn, as her partner finishes entering her information. “We waited as long as we could.”
Happy’s the director of security—he is well-versed in the justice system—so he knows she’s right. Waiting this long (nearly three and a half days) to question witnesses for a probable-cause hearing is practically unheard of.
Happy was expecting a more aggressive presence from the police officers—but truly, the police officers are acting like everyone else has these past few days: in a state of dazed shock at the violence they’re bearing witness to. They do everything they’re asked: relinquishing their weapons, giving up their badge numbers, even washing their hands before entering the Medbay.
They find Tony almost immediately, talking blearily to Dr. Cho in the hallway, and one of the male officers quickly escorts him away for his questioning. The rest of the police officers follow Happy: the other male officer darts into Cassie’s hospital room, and two female officers follow Happy to Peter’s room next door.
“He’s not, uh,” tries Happy as they approach the kid’s room, but his voice catches on the thought of Peter in that hospital room, completely unaware. “He’s not—he hasn’t been, uh, talking. Not more than a word or two since he got out.”
Can’t they give this kid a break? Hasn’t he been through enough?
“That’s alright,” says the first officer, a woman who introduced herself as Officer Stone. Her hair is very short—some kind of design shaved into the sides—and she has a mole on her upper lip. “We have protocols for that—yes or no questions, that kind of thing.” She’s just as tall as him, but her pace is a little quicker. “We’re just here to help, Mr. Hogan. Really.”
The other officer, who has yet to introduce herself, is a little quieter—younger than her partner, with a scar on her right cheek and her black hair in long twists. She follows behind them both.
At last, they reach Peter’s door, and Happy finds himself faltering. “I don’t think you understand,” he says, his voice tinging in something hysteric. “Peter—he’s been through a lot. He’s not—I don’t think he’ll be able to answer your questions.”
“Maybe,” says the other officer, in a slight accent, “but we do still have to try.”
Try as they might, the officers’ first entrance goes poorly.
As soon as they step foot in the room, the kid goes fucking ballistic , fighting his restraints with such violence that Happy thinks he might tear right through them. He starts screaming something—maybe words, or maybe just terror—and all three of them leave the room just as soon as they’ve entered—and shut the door behind them.
The second time around, Happy convinces Dr. Cho to run another dose of sedatives through him for the interrogation. With one tired, tired look at Peter’s hospital door, the doctor nods. This time, they give him enough to make his head droop, and the officers enter without issue. Both officers and Happy sit against the wall in a row of chairs, careful not to get too close.
Happy knows that seeing Peter—skinny as a rail, ropey scars overlayed over his open skin, hospital gown swallowing his pale, bruised body—is a shock. But both officers seem to swallow their astonishment, getting right to work. “Peter,” says Officer Stone, voice wavering just a little, taking out a manila folder from her satchel, “my name’s Officer Stone. This is my partner—Officer Atwood. We’re gonna ask you a few questions, is that okay?”
Peter doesn’t respond. He doesn’t even blink. The only movement from his side of the room is his frequent tug on his metal-lined leather restraints: clink, clink, clink. Officer Atwood’s eyes drop to the restraints, and she breathes in sharply but says nothing.
“Happy here said you’re having some trouble talking, is that right?”
Peter’s eyes travel over the room, drifting over Happy and then back to the two police officers. Clink. Clink. Clink. His bony knees shift under the hospital sheets.
“That’s okay,” says Officer Stone. “We’re just here to try and understand…what happened. We want to hear anything you want to tell us. Do you think you could write it…?” The officer realizes at once what she’s saying, her eyes falling onto the leather restraints. “Um. Sorry. I didn’t, uh. Never—nevermind.”
Peter’s dark hair has been brushed and washed, it seems, yet it falls over his eyes like a doll’s, drifting stringily over his eyes as he watches them.
He just…watches them.
Growing more uneasy by the second, Officer Stone clears her throat. “Okay. That—okay. Maybe some yes or no questions, is that okay?” She tries a couple: You remember getting in a car crash? or Do you remember who gave you those marks on your back? But Peter doesn’t even acknowledge her presence in the room.
He’s so goddamn quiet.
“Alright,” says Stone, “maybe we need to start” —the woman winces— “smaller. That’s alright. We can, um… Do you think we could look at some pictures, Peter? Would that be okay?
Clink. Clink. Clink.
“You can just nod… Or shake your head… Or…” The officer swallows. “I’m gonna show you a series of pictures, okay? It’s called a lineup—you know what a lineup is?”
The boy is still so silent.
He watches her then, especially her hands, as they move and tap. “A lineup is just a bunch of pictures of people—but only one of them is going to be the person who hurt you. Okay? I just want you to try and recognize the person from the photos. That make sense?”
Peter Parker gives no indication he heard her or understood her, and still the officer continues. “We usually do these in person, but in your case… This works, too. I’m gonna show you five photos, Peter. Five. This is number one.”
The first picture is of a dark-haired, bearded man with large eyes.
She shows him the rest in a steady succession, one after the other, and at number three there’s a visceral reaction from Peter—his head sort of jerks back and he looks up and around the room, suddenly distraught.
“Is that him?” asks Happy, feeling something insectile crawl in the pit of his belly, just as the officer says, “Atwood, mark number three” to her partner.
It’s sickening how the mere face of such an ordinary-looking man could cause so much terror in someone—the entire room feels it now—a souring of the air itself, as Peter’s quiet stability unhinges itself like the broken door of a cabinet. His breathing turns to sound, low whines in the back of his throat, and his wrist clanks insistently at the bar of his bed, clink, clink, clink — faster and faster now, his shoulders twisting as he tries to move.
Officer Stone looks pained. “Can we get the kid another round?” she says, like she’s offering him a beer and not another dose of sedatives. “Doctor?”
Dr. Cho is there already—how long has she been standing there? just lingering in the doorway?—dark-haired and steady-eyed, with her hands tucked in her white lab coat. “If I give him any more,” she says, solemnly, “he’ll likely pass out.”
Peter’s muttering to himself now, squeezing his fists into balls in quick succession, tears absently passing down his cheek without even trying. His mouth opens and closes, his jaw resetting, his entire body the picture of tension. “Not ready,” he seems to be saying, “not ready.”
A look of nausea comes over Officer Stone’s pale face. “Okay,” she says, as though convincing herself. “Okay. Alright.”
Happy wishes suddenly that Tony were here—to calm the kid, to touch his hand, to bring him back to some fragment of grounded stability. But the other officers are busy questioning Tony, too. Just like this.
They wait a few more minutes before continuing, but even with the break, Peter is not much better. With each consecutive photo, the kid only spirals more, at some point throwing his head backwards into his pillow, hitting the cushioned head of his bed with muffled thuds .
“Just one more,” says Officer Stone, her voice high with worry, “Peter, alright? One more. That’s it. Just one more.”
She pulls out her final series of photos then—a bunch of brown-haired, bearded men with dark brown eyes. One photo, then two, and Peter’s eyes just keep flicking around, and up to Happy and back. And then they get to number five, and Peter has a reaction like none other.
Peter Parker goes very, very still.
And his eyes don’t leave the photo, but all of them hear the sudden hitch in Peter’s breath. “Peter?” says the officer. “Do you recognize this man?”
And then he looks, with sudden and newfound horror, at his leather restraints, at the chains that buckled each restraint to the railings of the bed.
“Peter?” says Happy, leaning forward in his chair, trying to wake the kid up a bit. “You’re okay, buddy. It’s just a picture.”
Peter looks up—sharply—like he’s seeing the man for the first time and his eyes have a sudden shine: a petrified, duck-feathered gleam. His hair shakes—barely a shiver of motion.
“Atwood,” says Stone carefully, glancing worriedly between Happy and Peter as she puts the photo in her lap, “mark number five.”
Her partner doesn’t make a move for her pen; Officer Atwood’s eyes are on Peter, who has suddenly begun to tremble. He’s making a noise now—like a keen, like the whine of a white-tailed deer full of a buckshot.
“Atwood,” repeats Officer Stone. The woman has paled slightly, and she swallows hard, her expression taut. “Number five. Mark—mark number five.”