#28--May 11, 2019
Tony Mirror Kidnapping--Pt. 2
Flashes of pain and bright lights and cold hands and cold beams of metal holding him down flash through Peter's mind. He jolts upwards with a start, looking around himself wildly as his chest throbs dully in pain. His heart pounds against his ribs as he takes in the blackened room. He can see only vague shapes but it seems that his usual sharpened vision isn't working, and now that he thinks about it, he feels weak. Weaker than he's felt in the past year.
Peter slumps back against the wall, wincing as his chest flares in pain. Looking down, he can see that he's no longer wearing his shirt and there are bandages wrapped around his torso. Looking at his arms, he can see that there are bandages there, too. He's beginning to peel them off when a voice cuts him off.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Peter jumps and looks up. How he hadn't seen the person when he first woke up, he has no idea. Now that he thinks about it, the person is only a teenager that looks about his age. "It took them a while to bandage you up, their meds didn't work on you so you were half-conscious through them removing the metal shards from your chest and arms."
Peter continues to stare at the boy. "Wh-Who are you?" he croaks out, scrunching his face up a bit at the scratchiness of his throat. The other teenager hands Peter a glass of water and he takes it without a second thought. The other teenager looks to be in the same boat as him if the bruised knuckles and the cuts on the boy's face say anything.
"He didn't tell you about me?" the guy asks sarcastically, lifting an eyebrow. "I'm Harley Keener." It takes a second for it to click and suddenly Peter's choking on the water that he had been sipping.
"Y-You're Harley? The Harley? The one who helped Mr. Stark four years ago when everyone thought he died from that terrorist attack?" Peter spits out, leaning forward as he looks at the guy. The kid, Harley, leans back a little at Peter's sudden spout of words.
"Tony's told you about me?" Harley asks, bewildered. Peter nods his head wildly.
"Dude, you're like a legend!" Peter says excitedly. "Mr. Stark's told me all about how you helped him with his suit after it got busted. Dude, you got to work on his suit! Like, he barely even lets me touch it when it's busted. And you got to work on it! And, I mean I'll take apart some of his old ones--" Peter's cut off when the cell door is thrown open, colliding with the wall with a clang.
Three men stand there, one in front of two others. The one in front is wearing a sickeningly familiar symbol and it makes Peter's heart stutter in his chest. Both boys immediately scramble onto their feet at the sight of the men, both tensing and their hands curling into fists. The man in front smiles at them.
"Hello, boys," he says. The back of Peter's neck prickles at the man's voice. It seems that he still has his spidey senses even though it seems that he's lost the majority of his other senses. "It's nice to meet the two kids who Tony Stark has taken a shine to." Peter shifts uneasily and sees Harley do the same. "Now, boys, nobody has to get hurt. All you have to do is build us an iron man suit."
Peter narrows his eyes at the man while Harley speaks up. "Why the hell would we do that?" He asks snarkily. "So you can kill a lot of people with it?" The man nods to the two boys and the two guards behind him rush forward. Peter does his best to fight the man off, but he's bigger than him and he's still weak and he doesn't have any of his enhanced strength. The guard manages to pull Peter's arms behind him and Peter sees that the other guard has Harley in the same hold.
"You're going to build it or we're going to force you to build it," the man says. With nods towards the door, Peter and Harley are dragged out of their cell and pulled down the brightly lit hall. They're dragged through a few rooms before they're both kneeling before tubs of water. They're sat across from each other, and as Peter stares into Harley's dark blue eyes, he sees fear there. Real, cold fear.
Before either of them can say anything, Peter's head his wrenched forward and held under the water. Almost immediately, he begins thrashing, remembering the time the Vulture dropped him into a lake where his parachute wrapped around him and stopped him from being able to escape. When his head is finally pulled away from the water, he can hear Harley shouting from behind his gasping. After a few breaths, his head is thrown back under. This happens a few more times before it's Harley's turn.
Peter can't tell what's worse; his head being held underwater or Harley's. Peter nearly screams himself raw by the time both of the soaking boys are dragged to their cell, both shivering and huddling together as soon as they're released. Through the pounding in his head and the ringing in his ears, Peter can hear the Head Honcho speaking. Through blurry eyes, Peter can see a red light and what resembles a camera.
After a few mumbled noises that Peter can vaguely recognize as words, the Head Honcho leaves with who Peter's deemed as Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Peter's shivering so hard that his teeth are constantly clicking together, but from what he can tell, Harley's doing better because he can actually thermoregulate like a normal human being instead of like a DNA-mutated-spider-human.
After a few moments, Harley speaks up. "We're fucked. We're so fucked." All Peter can do is nod. Because fucked indeed.