Prologue + Hacking into HYDRA
Prologue
Have you ever seen a cat, that has managed to catch a bird?
A small, tawny, baby bird. All soft feathers and wide brown eyes, innocently hopping along the ground, pecking at small pickings, completely unaware that mere feet away, a seemingly harmless house cat was readying itself to pounce.
Once the cat pinned the chick down with extended claws, it dragged the fledgling back into its den. But have you ever considered, that maybe the bird was still alive…
Still struggling.
Still fighting for its life and its freedom.
----
Have you ever watched the bird’s wings? Have you ever paid close attention and seen as they fold up against the bird’s back in protection? Or noticed how the poor fledgling yearns to be outside again, where they truly belong.
Now, imagine that same bird, who has never been outside before - imagine that animal, which has been trapped indoors, strapped down to lab tables and locked in cages for the entirety of its life. The bird who was never able to fully unfurl its wings, and never had the proper nutrition to allow their feathers to strengthen, or to allow their wings to grow to their full size.
And now, after you’ve pictured that baby bird, imagine that bird’s saviour.
Imagine that small fledgling stepping outside for the first time, fully extending their wings, smelling, seeing, hearing the nature which now surrounded them, unlike the walls of their dog crate, caged prison.
The world outside which was so unlike the endless maze of bland, white walls, and dark stains of long since dried blood. The fresh air, so vastly different to the sterile smell which clouded the rooms that bird didn’t even have the freedom to roam.
----
Now, imagine Peter as that young bird.
Imagine Tony as his saviour.
Imagine HYDRA as that cat, making Peter and Tony the birds that were perpetually running, looking behind their backs for fear of being caught in that cat’s mouth so it could drag them, kicking and screaming, back into the house and away from the outside world which birds were always supposed to have freedom within.
The world which birds has always been made to soar through, to leave behind a beautiful trail of feathers in their wake.
The mountaintops they would brush, the clouds they would materialise through as they dipped and dove through the sky like shooting stars that flowed through the night.
Gliding through summer rainfall, bouncing through freshly fallen snow. Sending warm tinted leaves floating into the air as they took off into the sky with a flap of mesmerising wings. All the colours of spring matching their bright feathers, all the affection they displayed, and metaphorical meanings they held, like doves and love. Birds were supposed to represent freedom, but not when they were caged and restrained, locked away from the world like a horrid secret.
End of Prologue
Hacking Into HYDRA
“Sir?”
There was a long sigh before the sound of a scalpel being gently placed to the side, resting on the metal operating table.
“What?” The man in the horribly white lab coat asked, peeling off one of his yellow gloves and dropping it into a hazardous waste bin before rubbing a hand over his face as if he were tired. “Have you gotten through the list already?” He snatched the laminated sheet from the second head operator, frowning as he saw the permanent marker lines that had nullified each item on the list, starting at ‘spinal tap,’ and finishing on ‘spinal fusion.’
“Yes, we finished the list after two months. If I may suggest…” the man paused, flickering his gaze up from where it had been watching the unconscious subject’s chest rising and falling in time to the heart monitor. “I believe we’re going to need the original subject back,” the head surgeons eyes narrowed. “We’ve done everything you’ve asked, there are barely any more procedures or tests we can complete without healthy wings. We don’t have the resources to keep our current subject’s health in good enough condition for his to grow to their full size.”
“I see where you’re coming from, especially if we’re going to take some readings on actual flight tests, because this one’s practically a lost cause at this point.” The man’s un-gloved hand waved lazily in the direction of the small form stretched out over the operating table. The movement of his arm ruffled a few of the bland, coppery grey feathers. They were sparse, and most were still damp at the edges, a few patches were almost transparent, each row growing steadily unhealthier than the last.
The tips had been pinned down against the table, so that the head surgeon had easy access to the subject’s spine, it was nearing the end of the second month, and that meant they had almost finished the spinal surgeries and experiments, the next two to four months would be spent on the next area of the subject’s body.
“So, you agree then?” There was a nod, and then the man resumed his work as he rolled a fresh glove over his free hand, before picking up a more precise scalpel, which wasn’t stained a deep red.
“I’ll speak to the supervisor about contacting Howard, or Obadiah. Someone will need to make a note for financing because I can guarantee, they’ll want to squeeze all the cash out of us in exchange for their feathered friend.” The second in command grimaced slightly at the idea of having to deal with more budget cuts just for another beak they had to bother feeding.
The water they provided racked up a large price, especially with all the drugs, artificial vitamins and necessary fluids that were mixed into them each day, or every second day, depending on how much the subject acted out.
Both of the surgeon’s heads turned when the monitor peaked slightly and a few seconds later, the subjects finger twitched where it rested by his side. “Don’t worry about it, I just gave him a small dosage this time, it wasn’t a long one. I’ll radio the guards, he’ll probably conk out as soon as they put him in the cage.” He leaned over to the bench beside the operating table and pressed a ridged button on the side of the walkie-talkie. “Yeah, birdie’s ready for lights out. Time to pick ‘em up and walk him back down to the cage.”
There was a pause, and then a staticky reply that the head surgeon somehow managed to decipher as an understandable affirmative. “Thanks, just you tonight, he’s so drugged up, there won’t be any problem.”
----
Privatised Message Archives: HYDRA Facilities, to Howard Stark & Obadiah Stane.
HYDRA Facilities: Provided you are able to present us with the original subject, and the avian DNA is still biologically present, as well as the wings, feathers and skeleton, we are willing to exchange a fixed payment in return for possession of Anthony Edward Stark. Please reply so we may discuss price points privately, in addition to settling on a set date of transfer, assuming you accept this offer.
Stark Industries: Anthony is in healthy condition, as far as we are concerned, his wings developed at a natural pace and although they are never on display to the public, they can support his weight in flight. He still presents multiple avian qualities, we have not tested his blood since he was a child, but there isn’t any chance the avian DNA could have been removed or altered without our knowledge. We are not willing to keep any hard copies of these exchanges, and request to discuss payment in person.
HYDRA Facilities: You will be contacted directly by the supervisor, you will meet in person to discuss payment.
----
May 29th, 1970.
Maria Stark was contacted by an anonymous research company. They offered a large payment if she gave written permission for them to analyse the DNA makeup of her child, who she had named Anthony Edward Stark. She was wary, but Howard, who had been contacted all the same, except the guise of ‘anonymous research company’ had been dropped for HYDRA, was less on the fence about giving permission. Obadiah was the one who pushed both of them over the edge, ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’ He had argued as he scrawled his signature over the official request, sliding it over to Howard, and then Maria, who took a much longer time to finally relent.
Turns out, the worst they could do was inject a previously synthesized serum into the child, which caused a genetic mutation.
Of course, Howard and Obadiah took great care to not only hide the now winged child from Maria, but from the public too. Tony grew up, he learnt to slip his wings into the slits in his back, which ran up along beside his spine and allowed him to hide the wings and feathers. Albeit, there were still noticeable lumps which were obvious if he wore normal clothing, but Howard was fine providing larger sized sweatshirts and rain jackets if it meant the ‘embarrassment of his mutant child would stay a secret,’ as he so often said.
As Tony aged, his inheritance of Howard’s intellectual capabilities became much more apparent. He was never to be ‘the face of the company,’ because Obadiah deemed it too much of a risk, but he was however, the man behind the scenes who designed and engineered to his heart’s content in private labs which he would lock himself away in for hours, and sometimes days.
There were times when he was younger, where he would shut the blinds and make sure his lab was closed off to any prying eyes, and he would take the time to cut two strips of fabric from his sweater, and slowly, carefully, unfurl his wings. Sometimes, on the rare occasion he felt safe enough to do so, Tony would gingerly swipe his long appendages up and down, until he felt his head brushing the ceiling as a wide grin broke across his face.
As a younger child, they were easier to hide, because the wingspan barely reached a length that was difficult to stuff away against his back. But, as a teen and young adult, they became harder and harder to hide, and the time it took him to stuff them under a large jacket extended. Howard banned him from ever revealing his feathers around home, let alone in public.
----
December 16th, 1991.
Maria Stark didn’t make it home in time for Christmas. In fact, she didn’t even make it to the airport. The coroner said she would have died on impact, the semi-truck hit the driver’s side and she wouldn’t have felt pain.
Tony felt like he got the pain instead.
It had always been hard to keep his wings from his mother, but he never knew the reason why he was supposed to. Despite that secret, Tony loved his Mum, much more than he ever would his father, perhaps it was because his mother didn’t sneer at him if she found a stray feather in the laundry basket like his father did.
----
Howard told Tony he would have to go to Afghanistan for a weapons demo with him, because he wasn’t trusted not to ‘fly around the labs,’ when he was home alone.
Rhodey, who Tony had happened to befriend, took it upon himself to look through some encrypted email files between Howard, Obadiah and a separate organisation who happened to wire a large payment across to private accounts, not connected to Stark Industries.
The fact that Tony wasn’t overly surprised that his father had traded him for money, was probably the worst part, but Rhodey didn’t stop him when he found his friend holding two duffel bags filled with clothing, cash and a flash drive labelled ‘A.I’s.’
“So, you’re going off the grid then?” He asked, looking at Tony and trying to find the fear that should have been present in his gaze.
“Yep,” the genius replied, popping the ‘p.’ If Rhodey was being honest, the only thing he saw in his friend’s eyes was excitement, and if he put himself in the man’s shoes, he understood why the prospect of leaving home and avoiding being sold off to an ethically challenged organisation which planned to use his DNA for something, was such a preferable option. “I set Jarvis and F.R.I up to wire me a portion of the company’s revenue every few days,” it was definitely not enough for Howard to notice, but enough for him to live comfortably.
“I’ll make sure to keep an eye out in case he does realise what’s going on,” Rhodey offered, helping Tony sling the last bag over his shoulder. He flicked a mock salute and Tony rolled his eyes.
“I’m not carrying devices, I don’t want to be tracked that easily. But anytime I stop at a town or somewhere with connection, I’ll send you updates.” Tony rocked back and forth on his heels, hesitating for a moment before Rhodey punched his arm and pulled him in for a brief, but sincere, side hug.
“You’re a good person Tones, you deserved better than Howard and Obadiah.” The look of aversion that always crossed Tony’s face when things got too heartfelt cropped up again, and Rhodey eased the fresh tension. “And you owe me at least a postcard per year,” Tony smiled at the humour in his friend’s tone.
“See ya platypus, don’t keep hacking into encrypted files if you don’t want to harbour runaways.” It was Rhodey’s turn to roll his eyes as Tony walked out of the door and returned the fake salute.
----
Tony found his way out of New York and travelled far enough away from populated areas that he was comfortable enough shrugging off his thick jumper and stretching his wings out, smiling as the sun hit his feathers.
The first town he found where there was no way anybody would recognise him, was where he decided it was safe enough to plug his flash drive in. He spent four hours hacking his way into HYDRA’s database, and by the end of the night, he figured his nose had permanent lines from how much he had wrinkled it in disgust at what he dug up.
There were at least eighty-two failed experiments in which the same serum that mutated him was injected into other ‘subjects,’ as HYDRA deemed them to be. The way they were each affected, ranged from scaly skin all the way to telepathic attributes. Clearly, HYDRA had been looking for a specific mutation, because each of the people, who Tony was going to call the ‘victims,’ were released after barely any time.
After Tony had scrolled through the records and hit nineteen-ninety-six, everything went blank. He would have been twenty-six that year, and that was the only relevant thing Tony could think of while he tried to figure out why all the data from that year onwards had been removed.
----
July 6th, 1996.
After over eighty failed subjects, the head surgeon was hanging on by a loose thread. If he couldn’t get the serum to create the desired mutation on a subject, he would be kicked to the curb. At this point, he was willing to try almost anything.
“I know, you’re disappointed and you think I’m wasting resources, but I’m telling you Sir, this will work.”
“You want me to give you the DNA sample from over twenty-five years ago, so we can try to clone the original? Do you realise how much of a risk that is? If it fails, or you mess it up, we would have lost the only sample from the subject who actually mutated the way we wanted them to.” The head surgeon crossed his arms, eyes flicking over to the vault where Anthony Stark’s DNA was stored.
“I’m positive this will work, each person’s DNA has a different reaction to the serum, that’s why every subject mutated in separate ways, so if we create our own subject using Stark’s DNA, it will have the same result once we add the serum.” The head surgeon had no other practical option aside from continuing to test on subjects who would no doubt fail.
“Fine, but you aren’t leading, you’ve messed up enough over the past twenty-six years, so I’m in charge of this one.”
----
August 10th, 1996.
“It took over a month, but it’s done, subject eighty-four is a success.” The head surgeon was holding a new born in his hands, he placed it on a metal bench. The small child had two small appendages protruding from its back, ruffled feathers peeking out under harsh lab lights. They were stubby, but incredibly fluffy, and not well organised. Someone had dressed the baby in a diaper, his head was topped with curls that flicked up and out in every direction against the soft forehead and cheeks. One of the child’s thumbs was slid into its mouth, suckling gently as dark eyelashes fluttered lightly.
“It’s perfect,” one of the other surgeons pointed out, his finger curling towards the baby’s back. “Can I turn it over, so we can see?” The head surgeon waved a hand and the rest took it as blanket permission to move the child, all immediately scrabbled to get the first access to the tiny wings. “Stop, stop, I’m turning it over, don’t touch the wings yet,” the first surgeon who spoke slid his hand under the baby’s shoulders, his fingers brushed past soft feathers as he rolled the child onto its stomach, pulling out its wings until they were fully unfurled and stretched out across the metal bench.
They couldn’t have been more than half a ruler’s length each, and there was no way the baby would be coordinated enough to fly on its own, let alone push away the prying hands which stretched and unstretched the drab wings. One of the surgeons pushed away another gloved hand so he had room to run gentle fingers along the length of the wing, stroking through the feathers and lightly scratching, as if the child was no more than a pet.
A small snivel escaped the baby’s mouth, and not soon after came the wailing. The longer the surgeons diverted their attention to carding their fingers through the sensitive feathers, the louder the child whimpered and blubbered, its small fists smacking the metal benchtop with little strength.
----
14 Years Later.
Peter jerked awake as the sound of his cage door creaking open echoed throughout the small room. A hand reached in through the top of the cage and presented the familiar water bottle with clouded, grey tinged water swirling around inside.
“Drink.” The usual guard said, the patience in his voice was non-existent. Peter shook his head and shifted further back in his cage, careful not to back up into the wall in case another guard managed to pin him against it by holding his wings. “C’mon birdie, I know you don’t wanna keep doing this, but it’s part of routine, and you know what happens if you don’t follow morning routine.”
Peter kept his lips together in a harsh line, his teeth grinding against each other as the guard sighed and circled his cage, his eyebrows lowering when the teen shifted away from where he stepped. “You want me to call in for backup? You want one of my other colleagues to come in here and hold you still, like last week? Huh?” Peter said nothing, only winced when the man tried to swipe at him through the narrow bars. “Stop fighting or you won’t get any time before lights out, you want to lose your book for tonight?”
The small boy’s hands began trembling slightly, his eyes squeezing shut for a moment before he slumped, his shoulders dropping and wings wilting minutely in defeat. “Good boy,” the guard praised, grinning as if he had just won an argument. He held the drink bottle out and shook it from side to side, urging Peter to take it and shakily unscrew the cap, so he could tilt it back and sip at the contents.
The teen brought the bottle back down to his lap after a few gulps, and the guard frowned, nudging the bottle in warning. “More…” he hissed, watching smugly as Peter’s shaky hands tilted the water back once more. “There we go, how ‘bout I just give you a little hand,” the man muttered as his fingers pushed the bottom of the bottle up higher, spilling more water down into Peter’s throat as he choked slightly at the rapid change in the size of the stream.
When the bottle was emptied, and Peter had finished coughing, the guard pulled him out of the cage with a hand under each of his arms, as if he were lifting a toddler. Once the boy’s feet touched the ground, the palm settling on the small of the teen’s back pushed him forward slightly and guided him down the halls.
“R - room... fo - four?” Peter asked hopefully, his voice croaky and mildly pained from his daily dosage of the water.
“No, room two. You have more skin grafting today.” If it was possible, Peter shoulders hunched even more as he realised he wouldn’t get what he longed for. “Cheer up chick, you haven’t lost your book for the day yet. Just keep your head down, do what the surgeons say, and you’ll get time before lights out.” The teen was led into the second surgery room which he knew like the back of his hand. The surgeons were already pulling on their gloves and waiting for him.
“Thank you, agent. Come on eighty-four, you get anaesthetic today.” Peter looked at the floor as he was guided to the metal bench. A latex-covered hand brushed over his left wing and he couldn’t help the involuntary shudder as he was laid down against the table. A mask was pulled and placed over his face, it dug into the bridge of his nose, but he breathed in when one of the surgeons poked at his sternum in signal. He made sure to take a large breath, wary of the times he hadn’t been dosed enough before a surgery.
“Very good, in, and in again. Good eighty-four, there you go…”
The uncomfortable metal of the benchtop faded away, as did the surgeons words when Peter let himself fall into unconsciousness.
----
“Up, come on. Out now, you’re done.” Peter blinked groggily as he felt a hand tapping his cheek, he distantly felt someone slipping out his I.V, but he wasn’t sure of anything in the moment. “Eighty-four, you’re done for the day, go hose off.” Hands on his shoulders helped him up into a sitting position before the guard in charge of his showering draped an arm over his shoulders.
“You did good bird-boy, very well done today.” Peter didn’t bother to look up at him, if he had, his drug-infused water would have ended up over the floor as his nausea bubbled dangerously. The guard leaned to the left and the teen’s feet scuffed on the linoleum as he tilted down the hall and was pushed into his showering room. “Right, go toilet, you have five minutes, you know the drill by now.”
Peter pulled the thin, blue curtain to give himself as much privacy as possible. He could feel his shaky knees tremoring under his own weight as he turned toward the toilet.
When he had finished, he flushed as a signal of completion, and the guard pulled back the curtain, twisting the handle on the wall and turning on the hose to its highest setting. Peter turned his face away just as the cold spray hit his side, the pressure made him stumble slightly but he regained his footing quickly enough to not slip over like he had done many other times.
Peter shivered, but ultimately let the water begin to wash away the crusted blood, sweat and iodine staining his bare chest and pants. After all, he would rather be dripping wet and uncomfortable each night until he dried off, over being covered in years’ worth of dirt, blood and chemicals.
“Turn,” the man called lazily, tilting the hose away as Peter obediently switched to face the opposite wall, gasping when the water blasted his other side. “Back,” he swivelled and yelped as the water slammed into his shoulder blades, spine and wings. He felt as his feathers began to dampen and grow heavier with the pressure of the extra weight.
Because there were a multitude of books focused specifically on birds and types of wings, Peter was very familiar with how water was supposed to roll off his feathers. He had learnt as he grew up, a lot of things about his wings were wrong, the water absorption was because his malnourished state didn’t allow for his feathers to get the proper nutrients and strength, which was what helped them grow. It was the same reason his wings were so tiny, the same simple explanation to why he had never flown before like a real bird.
It was why the head surgeon was so angry at him when he never grew strong enough to support his own weight in the air.
“Are you still a new born?! Why aren’t you growing, why are you so damn weak? Huh!” Peter coughed, and his arms gave way as he slapped against the concrete floor of what the guards had called ‘the flight room.’ “Answer me! Filthy avian DNA doesn’t make any difference on you eighty-four, because you’re pathetic either way!”
“I - I don’t know… ‘m sorry. P - pl - please lemme keep my book time…” The surgeon scoffed and nudged the small boy’s ribs with the toe of his boot, rolling him slightly onto his side and exposing his left wing.
“These here,” he drawled, rubbing the heel of his boot against the primary feathers on Peter’s wings. “Useless,” he spat, dragging his foot across the floor and pulling out a few of the feathers as he did so. He looked as disgusted as ever when Peter howled, rolling over onto his stomach and curling his wings up against his back as if he were trying to hide them.
“Aghh. P – please don’t! It hurts, it hurts!” The boy brought his quaking knees up to his chest and furled in on himself helplessly, not able to do anything even as the surgeon bent down on one knee and peeled his wing back, rubbing his fingers over the bald patch where he had just ripped three of the feathers out. Peter squirmed uncomfortably and whined high in his throat, trying to pull his wing back as he caught the surgeon’s eyes, which were beginning to soften slightly as he took in the small beads of blood that welled up in the places where three feathers had just been.
“I’m sorry eighty-four… here, shh, shh.” Peter dropped his forehead to the floor and breathed out, pushing away the feeling of bile crawling up his throat as the surgeon danced his gloved fingers over the bone in his wing. “Shh, it’s okay, I’m sorry I lost my temper. You didn’t deserve to lose any of your feathers… I’ll try to stay calmer next time.” The young boy ground his teeth together as latex rubbed against the bald patch in a sickening mockery of what ‘soothing’ was supposed to feel like.
“I wan’ Ben to take me back to my cage now… m’ sorry I couldn’t fly today.” The surgeon smiled lightly as he accepted the apology and finally moved his fingers away from Peter’s wing.
“It’s okay chick, you did your best.”
“Face me,” the guard called, having the decency to turn the hose strength down to its average setting. “Try not to breathe for a minute,” he warned as Peter scrunched up his eyes and clamped his mouth shut in response. The water hit his face and it somehow felt much icier than it had when it was drenching the rest of his body. The streams which dripped down his forehead, into his eyes, up his nose and over his mouth, triggered the switch in his brain that fired up old memories, and he spluttered after a moment, wishing the feeling of claustrophobia wouldn’t continue to drench him as much as the water was.
“Hey!” Peter reeled as the water grew much more intense and his cheek stung from the sharp and apparent slap he had just been dealt.
“O - ow…” he looked up to the guard, who was frowning at him, and he realised he’d faded into another anxiety attack. Peter tried his best to read about them in a psychology book, but some of the long words in biology books still confused him.
“Do your hair and then you’re done.” The water came back and fell over his head. Peter reached up shakily and rubbed his scalp with his nails, scratching away crusted blood and flakes of dry skin, even some disinfect from yesterday’s stitches.
The water from Peter hair flicked around him as he rubbed his hair harshly to try and finish washing himself before the hose was shut off from the timer. He must have shaken his head too hard because when he looked up, the bottom of the guard’s jeans were lightly soaked.
“S - sorry, I didn’t mean t -” His stuttering was roughly cut off as the man tilted the spray down and gripped a fistful of hair at the back of Peter’s neck, tugging down and forcing the boy’s face up, further into the spray.
“Disgusting bird water! I have seven hours left in my shift and I have to walk around covered in your mess. Do you know how dirty you are? You’re filth!”
Peter gagged as he felt more water crawling back up his throat, if he had eaten that day, there would be solid food coming out of his mouth along with it. The hose water was dripping up his nose at the angle his head was held at, and if the timer hadn’t clicked the stream off, he could have drowned.
He dry heaved as his stomach settled, the teen blinked, and his fingernails dug into the grout between the tiles as he caught his breath.
He bit his tongue and tried not to tell the guard that his entire body was soaked, and he still had to sit in his cage until it dried overnight. But Peter had learnt to hold back all of his remarks a long time ago. Since he started talking, he had been conditioned not to, unless he was answering direct questions or apologising for something the guards and surgeons believed he had done wrong. The boy knew that as a younger child, he had babbled happily to himself on the regular, all nonsense and unintelligible strings of words, but that habit had been quickly lost as enforced routine forced him to cut any noise out after dark.
“Get up,” the man demanded gruffly, tearing his eyes away from the slightly dampened cuffs of his jeans. “Get up or I’ll drag you back to the cell,” he repeated. Peter stood slowly, slipping slightly on the watery tiles.
“B - book?” He asked meekly, averting his eyes downward and letting the guard grip his wrist to walk him forward.
“I’m gonna get bird flu or something like that, you don’t deserve a bloody book.” Peter’s head snapped up and he shook his head twice, heartbeat pounding in his throat. “If you make noise after lights out from all your stupid crying, I’m the one who gets his head bitten off for taking away book privileges.”
The man tugged Peter to the left and by now, the teen had memorised the routes so much that they had been permanently burnt into his mind.
“Th - thank you Sir.” The guard didn’t reply, just kept his head facing forward as he led Peter into the library, his hair and clothing still leaving patches of water wherever he stepped.
“Choose. You got one minute and that’s it.” Peter knew the drill, as soon as the man let go of his wrist he scrabbled forward to the third bookshelf on the left, two rows up. It was the second to last bookshelf that didn’t contain the books he had already read. His eyes dashed past the spines. If he remembered correctly, last night’s book was a blue hardcover, some sort of research on aquatic life, but he had loved it.
His eyes caught the one beside it, a faded red, almost pink cover with a bent spine and cracked, golden lettering. He skimmed the blurb and smiled, even as the guards’ watch beeped from behind him, and he was pulled back towards the door by the waistband of his pants.
He read as he walked, letting the guard steer him past the other labs and back to his dog crate cage. “You got…” he looked down at his watch, “thirty-two minutes. Don’t make noise or you’ll regret it.” Peter nodded as his door was opened and the man walked forward to adjust the timer on the lights, before watching the teen carefully as he crawled through the top of his cage and scurried to the back, curling in on himself as he peeled apart the musty pages of the book and began reading feverishly, his eyes rolling across the page as if he would disintegrate as quickly as the book would in a fire if he didn’t finish it before lights out.
“T - th - thank you,” he murmured quietly, his small hands clutching the cover of the book as his eyes followed the guard while he closed the door and left the boy on his own.
----
The crushing silence would have pressed down on Peter like debris, if it weren’t broken every minute or so by the crinkling of an old page flipping over.
It was a poetry book, the small haiku's roamed across the page in patterns to form shapes. The ink wasn’t raised, but Peter still ran his hand over each page, caressing the words that he waited for each day.
He got twenty-four pages in before the lights shut out and he was left in the pitch black. The slit at the bottom of his door was opened and a food tray was kicked in a few minutes later. The bowl of brownish-grey sludge barely fit through the bars of his cage, and he had to tip the contents out onto the unwashed tray and scoop it up with his hands, so he could pull it inside his cage and actually consume solid ‘food.’
It tasted what Peter imagined his water would taste like if it were boiled and mixed with gelatine. But he couldn’t complain, especially considering the fact that the solid food was one of the things keeping him alive. Once he had scraped the last of the sludge from the serving tray, he pushed it away from his cage and tried his best to clean his hand on the back of his pants.
He sighed and rocked back until he laid face up at the bottom of his cage, his knees instinctively pulling up to his chest and his arms lifting to cover his face and head. He pulled his wings flush against himself, trying to use them as a means of warmth, but failing miserably as they were, like always, too small to provide anything beneficial.
Sometimes on lonely nights, Peter considered humming to himself, but he only ever resorted to that if it had been a bad day. He had read about the risk versus reward principal in a book once, and on most regular nights, Peter decided the risk of punishment for making noise after lights out, was not worth the reward of some white noise to drift off too.
It didn’t usually take the teen longer than half an hour to completely fall asleep, because most of the time he was so overtired or exhausted from his routine during the day, that staying awake wasn’t a viable option. Peter wasn’t a stranger to nightmares, but he did seem to have trouble finding his way back to sleep after them. Normally his dreams only consisted of the things he had read in all the books, but a few times he would dream of something large and fiery, tearing through the halls in a blaze of ash and soot, its wings melting the walls of his cage like a chocolate bar in the sun.
“You are safe now, Peter. I’ll take you under my wing.”
Those nights confused him the most. He had never heard anyone say his name, aside from himself and a single guard who was long gone by now, but he preferred not thinking about it that often, it was too painful.
He always woke up before his fingers could stretch out enough to touch the wings of dark embers mixed with galaxies and raging fires which painted his face with a soft, golden hue.
Peter wasn’t sure how long he slept at night, but he knew each morning was a struggle to force himself out of the cage. His joints and bones popped, shuddering back into place, groaning and aching in protest of how Peter stayed curled on the floor each night.
And so, the cycle of routine began again. Peter woke up, still stiff from the floor, a bottle of cloudy, drugged water was thrusted at him. He was walked to the operating theatre or experiment rooms, either put under, or kept awake for the agony. Then he was hosed down, taken to the library and given a minute to choose a book, assuming he hadn’t lost his book privileges for the day, and escorted back to his cage. From there, he read, the lights would shut off, his bowl of greyish sludge was shoved in, he had to reach through the bars and scrape up the slop with his hands, chewing slowly and grimacing as the aftertaste burnt his tongue and then he slept until it began again.
Sometimes, Peter wondered if the surgeons and guards weren’t that far off target when they called him an animal…
----
It took Tony a whole second day to figure out how to find the missing files. He tried almost everything he could think of before asking Jarvis for his opinion.
Of course, being the snarky AI that Tony has programmed, the only helpful suggestion he offered was to ‘think outside the box, Sir.’
After rolling his eyes so much that Tony could probably see his brain, he did actually take Jarvis’ advice. In the end, he gave up on looking for the files on the server, and instead, he tried to trace any paper versions.
He had to hack into each printer stored at the HYDRA facility, but after a few hours of painstakingly gruelling and repetitive work, he had scrounged up majority of the information he was looking for.
“Oh my god…” he murmured to himself, running a hand through his hair as his teeth worked on his lower lip in worry. “How the hell - no, no that can’t be true, F.R.I.D.A.Y, check the maths and figure out if this is even possible.” Because there’s no way this could be true, right?
“It is indeed possible, and if I may offer an analysis, I believe it is very plausible for you to have a -”
“No! No, don’t - just… just don’t say the words yet, I need time to process this.” He swivelled in his chair and rubbed his face, his stress leaking through obviously. “What am I gonna do if this is real… if - if he’s real?”
“I would suggest getting in contact with him,” F.R.I.D.A.Y said in his ear. Tony blew out a long breath before letting his forehead rest against the wood of his desk. This wasn’t a movie, he wouldn’t go on a journey to find someone who may or may not be… he couldn’t even think the words, how was he ever supposed to say them?
“And how am I supposed to do that? If everything on here is true… he’s still - he would still be there now… Am I going crazy? There’s no way I can do this, not when there are people looking for me too, right?” Tony fumbled through the several pages of information that took him almost forty-eight hours to dig up, not bothering to wait for a reply.
Subject: 84.
Name: N/A.
*Began to call itself ‘Peter’ and refuses to comply with regulation names.
Age: 14 years.
DNA: Created from Original Subject’s DNA, (Anthony Stark).
Mutation: Wings and small percentage of Avian DNA.
Intellectual Capacity: Understands basic to complex scientific and mathematical concepts, is unaware of social normalities, learns new concepts easily, is of high intelligence.
Compliancy: Has an aversion to new employees, will revert to physical defensive methods if threat is apparent, has difficulty following morning routine, becomes aggressive when anaesthetics are not issued for surgical procedures, is overly protective of feathers and refuses to be pet or pampered, often makes attempts to hide or escape when endurance tests are administered, will stay compliant if placed in room four or given singular book before lights out, reverts to violence when put in tank one or two, often experiences anxiety attacks or panic attacks, has adverse reactions to being compared with birds, can be left up to four days alone at one time.
Tony ran a hand through his hair worriedly and absently tapped his earpiece that connected him to F.R.I.D.A.Y and Jarvis. “I can’t leave him in there…” Tony mumbled quietly, staring at the number on the page intently.
Fourteen. The human made from his DNA, his child was fourteen years old. That number was somehow equally as big as it was small. On one hand, it was such a young age, painfully youthful, and yet, fourteen years was such a horrible amount of time to be locked up at HYDRA. If he was a ‘test-tube baby,’ there was a large possibility that the boy, Peter, had never even heard of him. It would make perfect sense for HYDRA to keep the kid oblivious to the fact that he was made from Tony Stark’s DNA.
“Jarvis, how long is a flight to Russia?” He tapped a pen against his knee and thought about how insane it was that only two days ago, he was still at home living with Howard, and now he was flying to Russia, to rescue a child he didn’t even know was his.
“Approximately ten hours.” Tony let the AI’s book him a normal, public flight as he printed off a fake I.D and started picturing what a smaller clone of himself would look like.
The flight was booked for that evening, and although he wasn’t overly fond of how many security scans there were at an airport, he couldn’t take his time and find another way to Russia. Not when he had a very possibly traumatised child to save.
Not when he had a son who needed him.