THE VISITOR
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 — 7:31 PM
Tony has spent the past two hours trying to hack into the Oscorp’s database.
They’ve got everything locked up pretty tight, but Tony’s got decades of practice hacking corporate databases, so he knows he’ll be able to do it. His regular lab is where Pepper lives now, so instead of bothering her, he heads down a few floors to one of the public labs, locks the door, and sets up shop inside. His phone keeps buzzing—Pepper, asking where he is. He says he’s working on something for Peter and she leaves it be. It’s not a lie.
He’s exhausted by nine, and even worse by ten, and by eleven he itches for his sleep supplement pills so badly that he takes an aspirin just to replicate the feeling. It’s been a while since he’s had something like this—a productive task, something not as fruitless as Peter or the weapon.
The thought passes through his mind quicker than he can stop it. Peter is gonna get better. It’s not fruitless, and he hates himself for thinking that. He’s improved, he has. Just a week ago Peter went to see his aunt May again for the first time, and was so afraid that he refused to talk to her. Now, he…
Well, now he isn’t talking at all.
He tries to find an upside and he can’t. A couple days ago, Peter was talking with May. He was playing with Cassie—or at least watching her play. He was talking to FRIDAY and walking up to the roof and asking Tony questions. Now Peter’s treating his room like a fucking cell, a cell that Tony’s never seen, a cell that Tony put him in, that Tony trapped him in, that Tony left him to die in.
He’s imagining it again. Peter in that room. Peter banging on the door, Peter hiding under the bed. Tony remembers Steve telling them, He was quiet in there. Really, really quiet. At first he didn’t talk at all—not until I said his name, and even then… I mean, he was scared. Jumped whenever I moved. Jumped whenever I breathed wrong.
Tony tries not to picture it but he does—Peter bloodied in that black jumpsuit, sitting with his arms curled around his knees, flinching away from Steve Rogers whenever he moved. Is that what the rest of Peter’s life was going to be like? Back and forth between three-word-sentences and complete silence? Between eating as fast as he can shovel food in his mouth and refusing to eat at all?
He keeps working and working, trying new methods to bypass the authentication mechanisms, redeploying new ways of getting inside until finally he gains access. He sneaks inside the database, crawling through each and every folder until he finds what he needs, and extracts the data carefully, making sure to blur his footprint with another set of algorithms to erase his tracks; all the while, there are images of Peter still stamped on the backs of his eyelids, like he’s stared at a bright light for too long and he’s trying to blink away its greenish afterimage.
Sometime around midnight, Tony hears a knock on the door, and then he hears it creak open. Happy—and he’s dressed in a suit like always—black jacket, white shirt, thin black tie. The tie is loose around his neck, like he’s been wearing it too long, and his shirt is tight around the belly. He takes a couple steps inside. “Pepper’s worried about you,” he says, letting the door fall shut behind him.
“I’ll be back before curfew,” Tony says dryly, returning to his computer. “I’m working.”
“Yeah?” the man replies, taking a few more steps towards Tony and craning his neck to get a look at his computer. “Doing what exactly?”
He shuts his computer before Happy can spot his screen, and the monitors in front of him shut down, too. “Nothing.”
Happy stops in front of his desk, and taps his hand once on the edge of the desk. “Tony, you’ve got a lab upstairs.”
“This one’s better.”
“It’s not.”
“Absolutely is.”
“Tony.” His friend sighs. “Come on. What’s going on? What are you doing down here?”
He figures the man doesn’t want to see a rerun of the last time he locked himself away in his lab. How’s Happy supposed to know the difference. Tony opens his laptop then and bares the screen to Happy so he can see it for himself.
“Oh,” he says. “Is that where…”
“Yeah.”
He sighs again, a deep sigh, and his tie dangles loose around his neck. “And you’re going?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Is there anything I could say to convince you…”
“With or without a bodyguard, Hap.”
“Fine,” the man says, “but we’re stopping for breakfast.”
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 — 7:02 AM
It’s a three-hour drive.
They stop for food at a diner just outside of Albany, and Tony finds it almost comforting being around so many people, and he orders a couple pancakes and downs three cups of decaf coffee before Happy gives him an odd look. “Good,” he says through a mouthful of pancake.
“Yeah, that’s because you’ve been eating Medbay food for the past three weeks,” Happy says. “Real food tastes good.”
Happy gets a full breakfast—french toast and a couple eggs sunnyside up, a heaping side of bacon and toast slathered in jam. He gets orange juice, too, and is on his phone for most of it. They sit in silence, eating, while occasionally pulling out his phone every time it buzzes. “It’s Pepper,” he says, with his mouth half full of toast. “Just keeping her posted.”
“She know where we’re going?”
Happy gives him a mildly amused look. “Tony, with your track record, yeah. I let her know as soon as you left the Medbay floor.”
Happy cleans his plate, and Tony gets through most of his, and when they’re done he gets a cup of decaf to go and Happy pays with the company card, tipping heavily, and they drive the last hour in mostly pleasant silence.
Peter would like this, he thinks. If only they could get him to leave that hospital room, Tony could take him out to get food. Pancakes for breakfast, pizza for lunch, Thai for dinner. Whatever the hell he wants. Then he pictures it: the tube snaking across Peter’s right cheek; the milky sludge his lunchtime meal; the nurse slowly pouring and watching it drain up the tube, and Tony’s full stomach sours.
At some point Happy’s phone rings, and the man fumbles for a grip on it, one hand on the wheel and one hand holding it to his ear. “Hello?” Some talking on the other end. “Wait—wait—hold on.” More talking. Loud talking. Familiar talking. He knows that voice, even if he can barely make out any of the words. “Kid, I told you to stop calling.” More talking, urgent and loud, and Happy interrupts it. “Stop, stop. The answer’s no. I told you to just forget about Peter, okay? Go to school, Ned. Go. Bye. Yes, go. Goodbye.”
He fumbles again to hang up without taking his eyes off the road, manages it, and drops the phone with a clatter into the cupholder. “Sorry,” he adds. “Kid won’t stop asking about Peter.”
Ned. Tony almost forgot about Peter’s friends. He’s put up photos in the kid’s room of the two friends together, but he hasn’t spoken to the kid since before Peter was taken. Not since before he threatened the boy to keep him from looking into the kid’s disappearance. He can’t remember exactly what he said. All he remembers is Charlie telling him what to say on the other line. Echoing Charlie’s words into the phone. Ned’s confused, worried young voice.
“What’ve you told him?” Tony asks.
“Enough,” says Happy. “He knows Peter’s hurt…and that it’s taking a while. That’s about it. I didn’t want to… You know.”
“Right,” Tony says, feeling tired. “Probably for the best.”
They get there around seven, just before the place opens, and for a while Tony and Happy sit in the parking lot in the still-running car, just waiting. “You still think this is a good idea?” he asks. “These people… I mean, do you think this is healthy?”
“It’ll be fine,” Tony says. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, Hap.”
“Tony, I mean… Sunday really shook you up. Maybe it’d be better if we just waited a few more days… Or let me go? I could go in, do all the talking…”
Tony shakes his head. “It has to be me,” he says. “I won’t be long.”
It’s a red brick building surrounded by a sprawling wire fence with two blue doors at the front of it. There are several cars in the parking lot already, and when he walks in around eight, there’s a few other people walking in as well: a middle-aged woman in a large beige sweater, a youngish man and his wife, and another woman, slightly younger, whose face is puffy from tears, carrying a large purse. He enters through the front doors, where he has to strip of all his gadgets, including his watch gauntlet and his phone. Before he steps into the metal detector, he has to warn them about his pacemaker, and they wave him through even as the whole body scanner beeps and blinks with red lights. They pat him down, too, and eventually he’s pointed to a second blue door where he writes onto a sheet of paper who he’s there for and what his name is. He gives a fake name, and a fake signature, and a fake driver’s license he specifically made himself last night, and at last he’s led into a room with a couple long cafeteria-style tables, with benches attached. There’s several people already there: on one side, a row of people in khaki-colored jumpsuits, and on the other, the He’s told to sit at the end and wait, and he does.
There’s a hum of talking in this room—mostly coming from Tony’s side of the table—that teary-eyed woman is speaking to a boy about Peter’s age in one of those khaki uniforms. He looks a little like Peter, come to think of it. Longish hair and bloodshot eyes.
“Oh,” says a voice, and Tony looks up.
It’s Riri.
She’s dressed in the same khaki uniform as the others, cinched at the waist, and she’s wearing that same white long-sleeve beneath it that Tony saw on her on Sunday. Her hair’s pulled back, and she looks better than she used to. Well-rested. There’s no trace of the bruising from her mug shot photo, save the slight crook in her nose. “Uh,” she says, sitting down on the other side of the table and looking at him. “They didn’t say…”
“Sorry,” Tony says. “Couldn’t exactly walk in as myself, could I?”
Riri’s clasped hands are resting on the table, and she shrugs. “Didn’t they recognize you?”
Tony shrugs again. “Not sure if anyone recognizes me anymore. If I shaved, maybe.” He scratches at his face; his beard’s the longest it’s ever been.
“Your fiancée know you’re here?”
He stares at the girl.
“I saw her at the hearing,” she says. “She’s, like, really pregnant.”
“Yep,” he says, like it’s that simple.
“So you’re back together then?”
“Yeah,” he lies.
“Oh, wow.”
It’s strange, this eerie politeness. Riri has pulled him unconscious from the lab floor; he’s seen her tear-beaten face after one of her friends dropped dead. And now they’re sitting a table apart.
“Heard you, uh…” He gestures vaguely, and then adds, “Finally did it. Stopped your friends.” Drugged them, he thinks, based on the testimony on Murdock’s files. She laced their drugs with a little of that super sedative, enough to knock them all off their feet. Not enough to kill them, but enough to give Peter and the others a head start.
“Not my friends,” she says, and she looks down at her hands. “You’re my first visitor, you know. Everyone else is…” Riri waves a little, and Tony gets the idea. Prison or dead, that’s everyone she knows.
They’re quiet for a while—it’s awkward, talking to her and Tony looks down the table to see all the other juveniles in matching khaki uniforms. All teenagers, and all of them with the same tired expression on their faces.
“So, uh, why’d you come?”
“Peter,” he says, and for the first time Riri looks startled.
“Oh, um,” she starts. “Saw him there, too. He looks better.”
He shrugs.
“His leg? How’s it…”
“Still bad,” he says. He clears his throat. “After the hearing… It… He…” He rubs his forehead. “It really messed him up.”
Riri looks down at the table.
“I don't blame you for what happened,” he says. “You’re not the one who did that to him.”
“Yeah,” she says, “well, still. I sure didn’t do him any favors.” She taps her fingernails against the table, frowning slightly.
“I just want to know something that’ll help him,” he says. “Riri.” She looks at him, and she looks for a second like she used to—standing at his lab door with a box of supplies like a deer in headlights. “I just want something that’ll help him. Anything.”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I wasn’t ever really in there. After what happened with Ava, we all tried to kinda stay out of the kid’s room. I tried not to…” She swallows. “I mean, yeah. I’m not the right person to ask. Really didn’t spend that much time with him.
“Ava?” Tony repeats, his mind drifting to that stuffed toy of the little girl’s.
Riri blinks at him. “He hasn’t told you…?”
Tony grimaces. “Hasn’t really said much of anything.” And, recently, nothing at all.
“Well,” she adds, “Haroun—you know him? He was down there more than I was—he might be more help than I am. He used to help with Park—with his meds, especially after Mateo left.”
Tony remembers Haroun. The guy who stood up at Peter’s hearing and tried to apologize to him. He remembers the guy dragging Peter into the room and forcing him into the chair. He remembers Peter screaming to the guy for help, and the guy pushing him into the chair anyway.
“He’s not a bad guy,” she says. “And he’ll talk to you, I know he will. He’s been writing to me—they’ve got him at a federal prison not far from here.” She looks up at him. “You won’t hurt him, will you?”
“No,” he assures her. “Just talk.”
She gives a decent enough description of where he is, enough that Tony can google it and figure it out pretty easily. He plugs in the location into a navigation app and thanks her.
She shrugs.
He asks her if she’s okay in here. She says she’s fine. He asks her if she’s sure. She says she’s safer in here than she was with Charlie, which, he supposes, is true.
He gives the kid his phone number before he goes. His cell phone number. She doesn’t have a paper or pen so she just repeats it a couple times and nods like she’s memorized it.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 — 10:01 AM
A hand places a stapled packet of paper facedown on Ned’s desk. As his teacher passes him, he pulls up the packet and reads the front: a C+ written in dark green ink followed by a see me after class! He folds it up and throws it into his backpack, cracking open his laptop instead. He scrolls through articles about the Stark Seven until the bell rings.
Once the class period’s over, everyone else files out of the classroom and he heads up to his English teacher’s desk. He waves the paper at her with the green-inked message. “Ned,” his teacher says pleasantly, folding her fingers. “So—about your last paper…”
A C, and not the first C he’s gotten since the semester started. He got a couple at the end of last year, too, when Peter first vanished. How could he sit through class when Peter was missing? How could he write a paper knowing his best friend might be dead?
“...having a hard time, but I’m still missing your summer paper and the homework from last weekend…”
It all seemed so stupid now. Idiotic. He wants to go back to his laptop and read more about Peter. He wants to call Happy again or go to work or play video games or do anything, anything that’ll make him feel better.
“...Harrington talked to me, and I’ll give you an extension on your missing papers—as long as they’re in by Monday, on one condition.”
He stares at her. She’s a young teacher. Happy. He bets she’s never lost anyone; he bets she doesn’t know what this feels like.
“I scheduled a meeting with the school counselor for your free period this afternoon. Seventh period, can we do that? One-thirty.”
He nods and mutters something back.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 — 11:46 AM
The second prison is much more guarded than the first. There’s a tower out front with a man inside, and two separate metal detectors. He schedules the visit for noon and they refuse to let him in until the clock hits twelve. They check if he’s on a pre-approved visitor list, which, thanks to some work from his laptop on the way over, he is. He’s escorted into a room with a row of about ten booths, each one separated from the other by sheets of metal on either side. It’s empty; not a single person inside save the guard in the corner. At the front of each table is a short desk and a handheld phone connected to the right side of the wall, all facing a pane of plexiglass. He sits down for a while, and eventually, on the other side of the glass, a dark-haired man in an orange jumpsuit is led in, flanked by two guards. He’s gained some weight, and he’s shaved his face, and his hands are cuffed together in front of him. Haroun looks younger than Tony remembers. Twenty-one, he thinks, or at least that’s what he said at the hearing. Just a couple years older than Peter. College age. He has some of those reddish marks that Charlie has on his face—an array of blemishes, the kind that come from years of drug abuse, and when he sees Tony he stops in his tracks. It’s hard to hear them through the glass, but it’s clear that they’re arguing. After a few moments, the guard knocks his elbow into Haroun’s arm, says something that sounds like, “Make a decision,” and he sits.
The pane of glass between them is smudged with other inmates’ fingerprints and scratched all over. Tony picks up the phone first, and when he presses it to his ear he almost expects to hear Charlie’s voice on the other end; instead, he hears only static as the other man grabs the phone from the wall. “What happened to your face?” Haroun asks.
Tony’d almost forgot about his face. His nose. Steve’s fist flying towards it. Riri hadn’t said anything about it, and he’d gotten some painkillers this morning so he hadn’t felt it much at all. “Nothing,” he says.
“Whatever,” he says, and the hostility’s there, like grit ground between his teeth. “I already pled guilty, so what the hell are you doing here? Rubbing it in?"
Tony’s finding it hard to come up with anything to say. Anything, anything at all. He’s starting to think of Peter again, and he can’t help it. He thinks he’s seen Haroun on that television screen, holding a crowbar. Peter’s head dropping to his chest, making short gasping sounds, as the side of his bare chest swelled and reddened. The dark-haired man raising the crowbar again, turning it in his palms and gripping it again.
“Are you even allowed to be here?” His voice is warped by the phone, tinny and flat.
“Not exactly.”
He remembers hearing this man’s name. Peter saying it, howling it as Charlie circled him like a predator. He must’ve helped him, then. He must’ve been kind, maybe, or someone like Riri. Peter wouldn’t ask someone for help who’d hurt him. But he’d asked Charlie to let him come back to the bunker, hadn’t he? He’d thanked Dr. Cho even as she’d injected him with sedative. Maybe he had hurt Peter. Or maybe he’d helped him. Something in between.
“Oh,” says Haroun, sitting back, and the cuffs jangle at his wrists. “You’re here about Parker.”
“His name is Peter,” Tony says stiffly, and all of a sudden he remembers himself and Ross in the bathroom, the man’s smirk. “It’s Peter.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Sorry. Peter. Is he…”
Tony’s not sure how the guy’s gonna finish that question. And for a second, he keeps looking at him and everything about him seems familiar. He remembers him. With one hand on Peter’s wrist or poking a gun at his back. Checking his pulse. Pushing Charlie away. Opening the door as someone dragged Peter inside.
The other man swallows, and his arms stiffen—he lowers the phone a second, adjusting it. “What happened?”
He almost sounds like he cares.
Tony’s hands are sweating and the phone slips a little in his hands. “He… He hasn’t talked.” The dark-haired man shifts in his chair. “Not since the hearing.”
“He does that sometimes,” the man says, swallowing. “He’ll come out of it.”
“Tell me how to fix it.”
He looks wildly uncomfortable, and he adjust the phone again, awkward with both his hands cuffed together. “I—I don’t know. That’s not really…”
“You owe me that much,” Tony spits. “You did this to him.”
The man blinks, and a silence spreads between them. Harounn’s chest is still for a moment, like he’s forgotten to breathe, and his brow lowers, lowers, and he shifts his jaw from one side to the other, like he’s grating his teeth against each other.
“Yeah,” the man says, and his mouth barely moves as he talks, “well. You did, too, didn’t you?”
For a second, Tony hears Steve Rogers’ voice in his head: This is on you, what happened to him—not us! He was your responsibility, you did this to him, you—”
“I never wanted him dead,” he says, his voice low, “I never wanted any of this. All you had to do was make what we wanted, and we—we would’ve let him go.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?” Tony spits into the phone, incredulous. “You—you had me in there day and night, and I told you it was impossible, I told you—”
“Well, he’s alive now.” The man’s voice hums low in the phone, and Tony swears he can hear it echo: staticky sound: alive, alive, alive. “You got what you wanted.”
“Sure, he’s breathing,” he says, “but whatever the hell you motherfuckers did to him in there, he’s barely even—he’s not talking! He’s not—talking! ” He’s talking so fast now that he feels out of breath, that he feels lightheaded; the anger presses hot at him, five months of pent-up rage, and he slaps his hand down on the table. “It’s been a month. A month, and he can barely walk. He’s stopped talking, stopped eating—”
From the expression on Haroun’s face, this is no surprise.
“—and you’ve ruined him! You’ve fucking ruined him!”
“I was nice to him—”
“Oh, so you never laid a hand on him?” Tony says, and the memories are coming up like vomit, like acid in his throat, and he can see it now—a dark-haired man with a crowbar, a dark-haired man with a wrench, a dark-haired man is looking at him now, oddly, and there’s a a permeable pain to his gaze, like the claw of a hammer, like the toe of a boot.
“I didn’t have a choice,” Haroun retorts, and his face looks all twisted up—distraught. He sounds so sorry. He sounds so fucking familiar.
“Didn’t you?”
“I tried to make it… I didn’t—look, it just got to a point, and we—we—look, he’s gonna be fine.”
“Fine?” he echoes. “He thinks everyone’s trying to beat him or trick him or trying to—to—
The other man winces, looking down quickly, and Tony’s stomach clenches. “Yeah, you knew about that, too, huh?”
The man shakes his head, and Tony can see him again, hearing him again, some screaming, You hit him too fucking hard! Look at his face! And the dark-haired man standing beside that metal chair clutching something metal, looking suddenly at the camera and back.
“I didn’t do any of that,” Haroun’s saying, and his eyes are red, and he’s squeezing the phone very hard, “I’d never—God, I’m sorry. I’m—I’m so sorry.”
Tony leans forward, still clutching the phone in one hand, the plastic pressed against his ear. “Sorry won’t fix him. Sorry won’t take back everything you did to him—I hope you fucking rot in here. You deserve everything that’s coming to you, motherfucker, everything!”
He throws the phone down and it clatters against the table, and Toyn has the sudden urge to grab it and slam it into his skull until the memories stop coming—Peter bleeding fast from his head. Peter lying limp in the chair.
The dark-haired man looks like someone just punched him in the gut, and as Tony stands to go, he hears through the phone a sudden, “Wait, wait, wait!”
He pauses, half-standing, and presses the phone back to his ear.
“He went a couple days like that once,” he says, “after Beck got him pretty bad. That was…August, early August, maybe. Didn’t talk to anyone. He, uh… He was…”
Tony doesn’t. He doesn’t remember seeing Beck ever hurt him, and he tries to sift through his memories now, and all he gets is a man in khakis lurking in the back of his television screen.
“That’s probably the worst one,” he says, “but he came back from that one. He always comes back. Usually we gave him an hour after…for the doctor to take a look at him and everything, and that usually helped. He was the only one who could get him off that, like, stuck-in-his-head shit. Got him out of that one, too, after a while.”
“What? How would he do it?”
The guy looks pained, and his handcuffs jangle as he shifts. “Doc was the only one who could, and we weren’t, like, in there with him.… I don’t know, I’m not a doctor. Talk to him? Hold him? We weren't really down there, I tried not to interrupt... I don’t know what to tell you—there’s no magic trick. He’ll come back. Just give him some time.”
Nothing—this guy’s got nothing. Nothing that can help Peter except vague stories and apologetic bullshit. The man looks like he's going to apologize again, just like he did at the hearing, and Tony can't look at him anymore.
Tony shoves the phone down for a second time, hanging it up with a clatter, and this time Haroun doesn’t protest.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 — 1:40 PM
The counselor’s office is too hot and it reeks of incense.
There’s a massive green couch on one side and a matching upholstered chair on the other. Spread on the floor is a fuzzy orange rug, and back behind the chair is a wooden desk with stacks of papers and a large computer. The counselor is fifty, maybe fifty-five, and she’s wearing a long colorful skirt; her office is full of similarly colorful knickknacks.
Ned hates her already. The tabletop fountain on the windowsill, the candy bowl on her desk, the dreamcatchers hanging on the door.
The counselor pulls up his file on her computer and talks about his grades for a while. He ignores her. Instead, he stares out the window and thinks about Peter’s super-suit while she talks; he wonders what the landlord did with it; he wonders if it’s laying in a thrift store somewhere or in the bottom of a dumpster. If Mr. Stark would pick up the phone, then maybe Ned could get the GPS reactivated. Maybe he could figure out where it ended up—maybe if he brought Peter the suit, then his friend would let him come visit. Peter would appreciate it, unless he’s dying in a hospital bed. He keeps thinking those guys messed with his memory—they must’ve. There’s rumors going around that the guys who took him were affiliated with HYDRA, so maybe that’s why. Maybe he’s been reprogrammed or brainwashed or mindwiped, and that’s why he’s been ignoring Ned.
There has to be a reason. Maybe he blames Ned for not doing enough—for not telling Happy about it sooner. What if he’d gone to Happy when he first figured it out? What if he’d saved Peter four months earlier?
The woman drones on and on about healthy coping mechanisms, and then she asks him if he has any plans to kill himself, and he says no. She asks if he’s having thoughts of harming himself, and he says no again. She asks him about college. He says college is a scam and he’s got more important things to do. She hands him a worksheet and tells him to have ten schools on it by Friday.
He says he’s not going to college. She tells him to do it anyway.
Then she gives him a piece of chocolate from the bowl on her desk, tells him to focus on his schoolwork, and gives him a pass to his next class.
He tosses the worksheet in the trash can as he goes.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 — 3:27 PM
After the whole Project Manticore mess, all Ross has to show for it is this sparking pile of half-constructed junk made by a lunatic. Laying in front of him on his desk is Stark’s latest project: the forty-ninth prototype of Ross’ weapon, and after forty-eight failed attempts, it’s just another piece of shit. He shoves on a pair of heavy gloves and picks it up, tries to fire it; the last time he did this he almost burnt off his palm trying it. This is Quentin’s department, this is what he fucking paid him for, and now Quentin’s locked away in a supermax prison and Ross is stuck here with this useless fucking thing.
Quentin’s got years of Stark’s technology info under his belt alongside months of military technology experience, and Ross had him working on weaponized drones and high-definition cloaking devices before he moved him onto Project Manticore. He’s the only one who can help him with this.
But at three, he knows, Quentin’s being let out for a medical appointment—a fitting for his new prosthetic fingers with some kind of medical prosthetist. He’s being taken to a hospital upstate, and Ross meets the man there; he pays the guard several thousand dollars to go on a smoke break and slips inside the exam room.
Quentin is sitting on an exam table and scratching at the side of his head with one hand. He’s wearing his orange prison jumpsuit although it’s been pulled down to his waist, and he’s got a white undershirt beneath it. He’s got some kind of glove contraction over the end of his ruined hands, and he’s turning his wrist around and around. “This isn’t what I asked for,” he says, as soon as Ross shuts the door behind him. “I asked for a halfway decent prosthetic, Thad, not some barely moving plastic shit.”
“You’ve still got a couple weeks until the scarring heals,” Ross says. “We can’t do another major surgery on your hand until it’s—”
“I know,” he snaps. “Fine—fine. Has the kid dropped the charges yet?”
“It’s only been a couple days—”
“I thought you said you were gonna help me get out of this,” Quentin says, and he clenches his good hand around his bad one. “And here I am—rotting in a fucking jail cell day after day. They’ve got me in solitary, on fucking suicide watch—Osborn practically had to sell his soul to let me out for the prosthetic appointment! For me! I’m not a fucking serial killer—Charlie’s the fucking murderer here, I mean, that Williams girl is more of a danger to society than I am, and she’s only getting a fucking year with her deal as a fucking informant!”
He sighs, and the remaining fingers of his bad hand curl up into his palm, clench hard, and relax.
“Just get me out of here, Ross, is that so fucking hard?”
Ross shakes his head, sitting down in one of the chairs beside the exam table. “I don’t know, Q, I mean, the judge’s really sympathizing for the kid—you fucked him up bad… ”
“Not my fault the kid looks like a cutting board,” he grumbles. “I’m not the one who did that to him. That was Charlie, all Charlie.”
“Williams girl’s testimony says you beat him within an inch of his life.”
The other man falls silent for a moment. “That was different,” he says. “You weren’t there—you didn’t see what he—”
“Look, it doesn’t matter. What’s done is done—all that matters is the weapon. I’ve got some people working on Stark’s last couple prototypes now, but—it’s not going well. I need you back on this, man, we need this done by the end of the year, or my funding goes out the window, and this was all for nothing.”
“Just get me out of this,” Quentin says, clenching again his bad hand. “And I can fix that weapon—I’ll give you exactly what you wanted.”
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 — 5:41 PM
Ned tries to work on those missing assignments, but he can’t bring himself to focus. It all seems so trivial. He thinks about texting MJ again, but he hasn’t heard from her since the hearing, and she barely even talks to him anymore anyway. Instead, he eats an early dinner, opens up his laptop again and types in: stark seven trial.
Nelson & Murdock Seek Indefinite Delay for Upcoming Trial.
What is racketeering? A guide to the Stark Seven case and the allegations made by the prosecution.
Judge Sets Date for the Stark Seven Sentencing: Death penalty for Charles Keene?
The Stark Seven: 11 new details from the recent hearing.
Norman Osborn: ‘The Law of Collateral is More Important Than Ever.”
An updated timeline of the Stark Seven case and the story behind the high-profile racketeering trial involving the recluse Tony Stark.
Ned clicks on the last one—the rest of the links already purple—and he scrolls through it. The article gives a general timeline of events starting from where the Stark Seven were arrested outside of Gorham, New Hampshire on August 24th to when they first appeared for the hearing on Sunday almost a month later. It includes the six suicides by several of the arrested captors, as well as an in-depth explanations of the charges against each of them. It gives history about Charlie Keene and his relationship to the deceased Officer de Paz, a play-by-play of his previous arrested for drug-related crimes, and a summary of the law of collateral as an aside.
And finally, Ned finds what he’s looking for: information on Peter.
There’s not much known about the young vigilante at the heart of this case: and as a minor, we’re not at liberty to share any identifying information. According to testimony given by one of the Stark Seven, the teen was sixteen at the time of his alleged abduction. The several of the allegations against several of the Seven are rooted in injury he faced during his captivity, which alleges months of physical injury and sexual abuse during the length of his five-month capture. When questioned, attorney Matthew Murdock stated, “We will be pressing all charges against Keene and the others, including those committed against our client.” When asked for further information on the minor, he declined to comment.
At every turn, they’re all Ned can find. Nelson & Murdock. Nelson & Murdock. Nelson & Murdock. Besides the Avengers, they’re the only ones who seem to know anything about Peter. They’re the only ones making statements to the public, and they’re the only ones not locked up in that stupid Tower. Their office is in the city, somewhere in Manhattan, and it looks like they’re a small firm founded only a few years ago. What the hell are the Avengers doing working with them?
His bedroom door creaks open.
It’s his little sister, Daisy, and she’s holding a video game remote. “Ned, Mom won’t play with me and she told me to ask you—are you done with your homework yet?”
“No,” he says, slamming his laptop shut. “Get out of my room.”
“But Mom said—”
“Daisy, get out of my room!”
She huffs and runs down the hallway into her room, leaving his door half-open.
Ned gets up from his desk, grabs the door, and slams it shut.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 — 6:30 PM
There’s a small voice in the back of his head. Peter… Peter… Peeeeterrrr…
His skin feels numb, like a sheet of winter-shot ice, and his muscles ache like hell. There’s pain in his head, a low, thrumming pulse, and his knee hurts worse, but mostly he’s not in much pain. He feels heavy with something, and he thinks of Mateo for a moment, blue rubber gloves and a metal-tipped needle, and he glances towards the door but it’s closed. Vibranium-metal door, white-painted door. Cement floor, white linoleum tile. Blanketed mattress, cement slab. He knows where he is; he knows where he is; he knows where he… and he just wants to go back home, and Uncle Ben’s standing in the kitchen, humming, stirring a pot of something. Peter isn’t tall enough yet to reach the stove. He wants to see. “Careful, Pete,” the man says. “It’s hot.”
“Let me see! Let me see!”
He feels the man’s hands under his armpits, and then he’s midair, hovering above the pot, and he can smell butter and salt and chives and he looks down to see a potful of mashed potatoes that he wants right now, right now. Beside it is a dish draped in a green-striped cloth, and it smells sweet—cornbread, it smells just like cornbread. A second dish sits beside the first two—browned pork chops covered in herbs, and Peter’s mouth waters.
“Go set the table, okay?” his uncle says. “Your aunt’ll be home any minute.”
It’s cold outside, and there’s pork chops in the oven and cornbread cooling on the stove and the whole room smells like heaven. May’s home almost minutes later, just like Uncle Ben said, wearing blue scrubs and a fluffy brown coat and a woolen red scarf, and when she flings the door open she looks cold, too, her nose and cheeks pink. “Baby, the day I’ve had,” she says, and she throws her arms around him.
“Go shower,” he says. “You’ve got hospital all over you.”
She ignores him, pecking kisses over his face, and Uncle Ben mutters, “Oh, the plague,” while still stirring the pot with that wooden spoon, the other hand at her waist. “Malaria. Smallpox. You’re killing me.”
“Oh, please.”
“Hurry up and shower so we can eat, Nurse Parker,” he says. “Pete almost ate the spoon right out of my hand.”
“Yes of course, Mr. Parker,” she says, kissing him again, this time on the mouth.
“Yellow fever.”
“What’s yellow fever?” Peter asks.
“It’s… well… Go set the table, Pete, or are we supposed to eat with our hands?”
There’s a hand on Peter’s arm, and he blinks, and the world stutters around him. The kitchen. His bedroom. The Medbay. Uncle Ben’s grave. The bunker. The lab upstate. They’re all blurring together, and he wants to go home. Home, to his aunt and uncle. Home, to Mr. Stark’s lab. Home, to the bunker, hiding under the bed. Cassie is looking at him under the bed, Cassie is looking at him now, and there’s a can in his hands, slightly warm metal, and he stares down at it. He wants to go home. He wants to go home but he ran, he remembers running, he remembers running, HE REMEMBERS RUNNING—
He remembers a man carrying him. A man carrying him, shuffling forward, and his head is tucked into the man’s shoulder. “Almost there,” the man said, out of breath, “almost there.”
A white coat. A doctor’s white coat.
Voices beyond them, shouting. The man picking up his pace. Faster. Peter holding tighter. And tighter. And tighter. “Almost there.” The man twisting his head to glance behind him, and speeding up into a run, Peter’s body jolting with every step. Him, clinging onto the white coat.
“Almost—”
He remembers it, he remembers running.
Over and over and over he remembers, and he should’ve known, Charlie coming back for him, he should’ve known. There is a muffled, buzz of a voice somewhere near him, and there’s that blonde-and-pink haired nurse sitting beside him with a syringe. He remembers running again. The doctor reaching down for him. The brown-haired man lying still on the floor of their room. More and more and more of the same, grass and running and trees and the feeling hitting him that CHARLIE WAS COMING FOR HIM—Charlie running, or the doctor running, or maybe it was Peter running, and Charlie yelling, Charlie screaming, Charlie waving a gun.
Charlie told him not to run. CHARLIE TOLD HIM NOT TO RUN— don’t run, you can’t run, never run— WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU RUN WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU RUN WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU RUN—
A white coat, and some relief over him, white coat and blue scrubs and blonde-and-pink hair, and he looks up—a woman. Talking to him. Kneeling next to him. He can feel her fingers at his sweatshirt, at the crook of his neck, and he tilts his head away so she can do what she wants and he dreams for a while longer. He sleeps a while; he’s nothing for a while. He sleeps and then he’s awake, and he thinks he eats something because there’s a weird taste in his mouth and Cassie is asleep beside him and he wakes up and goes back to sleep and dreams again, one arm bringing Cassie safe and closer—SHE’S SAFE—SHE’S RIGHT HERE—and when he forces his eyes open, Cassie’s holding something out to him, and he sees it. A small, curved piece of pizza. Cheese. Pepperoni. She sinks her teeth into a bite and he watches her, makes sure she eats, that she gets it all down. And that’s yours, she says, and she points to the second can. Mr. Tony brought it. Yellow pieces of pineapple. Pinkish curled pieces of ham. TIME, he thinks, IT’S TIME.
May cooked him dinner. Used to cook him dinner. Uncle Ben was the one who always used to cook, and May could barely handle meatloaf. May was a terrible cook and Charlie killed her. No, not dead. Upside down in a car, bleeding. In a hospital bed. Dead, if Charlie told him so, but May took him. May folding a tie around his neck. May in a nice violet-colored dress, sitting on his bed, saying, “Peter, honey, stop, stop. Look at me, baby.”
He’s little, and May’s hand is big on his back, warm and soft, and she is patting with a rhythm, smoothing the fabric there. “You’re gonna leave me,” he sobs, forcing his tears into his pillow, and the world feels like it’s coming apart at the seams, and he’s gonna lose her too, and he’s gonna lose Uncle Ben, and then he will have no one at all.
“That’s not true, baby, come on now, look at me.”
He does.
Her hair is down, and her dress is purple, and they’d been gone all night. Date night. She looks pretty. She looks like a different person. “Peter,” she says, “why do you think we’re gonna leave you?”
Sniffling, he wipes his nose, and looks at her with teary eyes. There’s a thousand reasons. A million reasons. A million and one. “You’re gonna make a new baby,” he whispers, “and then you won’t need me anymore.”
“One baby’s enough for me, Petey,” she says, and with one hand she strokes her hair back, “you’re my only baby, you hear me? You’re just enough for me.”
A hand poking at his cheek. Two dark brown eyes and someone pushed a can into his hands. Cassie, just Cassie, and she’s not bleeding but his spider-sense is still grating at the back of his neck—like fingernails pressing deep, a slight pain. He remembers running. Peter was running, but that didn’t make any sense, he didn’t run. He can’t run—can he even remember his feet touching earth? Charlie would never let him get that far HE WOULD NEVER GET THAT FAR—
—dinner. It’s good, it’s really good, I promise. Peter. Peter, Peter, Peter.
—he hears Cassie’s voice and all he thinks is Charlie. Charlie in an orange jumpsuit, Charlie with a hammer. Charlie circling the back of his chair. Charlie, crouching by the end of his chair and staring at him, touching the burn on the side of his head, and pressing in with his thumb, asking if it hurts and pressing deeper. He wants to go home, and Cassie keeps dragging him back up above water. He wants to go back—to that kitchen, to Uncle Ben and Aunt May, but he keeps finding himself back here.
—Peter—
Cassie is sitting next to him and she’s safe. Sitting next to him, safe. The door’s closed. She's holding out a can to him, and she's looking at him.
—you promised.