From the Top

Breaking into Stark Industries had never been high on Peter’s to-do list. Sure, it’d crossed his mind and he’d given it a careless thought as one might hypothetically strategize for the zombie apocalypse, but he really never thought he’d find himself sneaking around Iron Man’s techie playground.

Ostensibly much of their research was still conducted in Los Angeles but he’d nosed around and seen that Liv Octavius’s work was based in New York. Perhaps Tony Stark wanted to keep the particle physics research within arm’s reach. Knowing him, he’d wind up creating a black hole.

Peter had a head start on your usual burglar; he had a strong suspicion that prized real estate in New York did not much vary from one universe to the next and there weren’t a lot of places to stick a giant particle collider. So back he skipped to the underground labyrinth of subway tunnels that ran like veins beneath the city.

“Ugh,” he muttered through the ski mask he’d found for the occasion. He wore dark clothing and gloves, further courtesy of library charity bins, and resolved he’d donate spare clothes to the ones in his Queens as thanks. Knowing there was a Spider-Man here, Peter dared not wear his suit in the event he was spotted and the kid took the blame. It would be best if he minimized his footprint in this universe now that he wasn’t the only Parker breathing in it.

Sadly, noble intentions didn’t make the tunnel any more fragrant.

He navigated partly by intuition and partly by Miles’s description of the underground network that had first led him to the collider. “Ah, the life of a hero,” he said to a rat that scurried away at his approach. “So glamorous.” At least it wasn’t a sewer this time.

Maybe he’d write a memoir one day. More Sewers than Advertised, he’d call it. Chapter One: “An Allergic Reaction.” When he’d first noticed how swollen his spider bite was getting, he’d actually taken Benadryl in hopes of calming the reaction. Peter snorted; he hadn’t thought of that in years.

“OK, here we go,” he said once his spider-sense announced he was standing where X marked the spot.

What Tony Stark wouldn’t give for the ability to synthesize an internal compass like spider-sense. It tugged at Peter like a string wound round his wrist, and led him around corners and up shafts no normal human could have climbed.

Soon he came to grates that flanked the control center around the collider. Through the slats he could see two white-coated technicians crossing the hallway, and wondered if they were armed to the teeth like the scientists at Alchemax. Just what kind of operation was Stark running in this universe?

The door he sought was open. When he angled his head at the grate he could just see the control center behind it. Past that, through a viewing window made of bulletproof glass, would be the cavernous chamber where the collider was housed.

Peter scooted around and clambered up the shaft until he found himself at a ventilation grate above the control center, just outside a panel leading into the chamber itself. It took maybe five minutes of waiting until the lollygagging technician wandered out in search of coffee, then Peter discreetly dropped into the room. The service door leading to the collider was opened by a wheel, which he spun as quietly as possible.

Like much of this world, the collider was a modified take on the ones before it. It seemed more streamlined, somehow. Well, Ock had rushed things under Kingpin’s pressure; maybe Stark had loosened the reins and she’d had more time to develop the product. Maybe Peter wasn’t glitching yet because the science on this one was more refined.

“What the hell you need this for, Stark?” he mumbled. Did the other Avengers know about this? Stark had never exactly sent out a weekly newsletter but this was the kind of thing that would have come up in conversation over shawarma.

He climbed quickly to where he knew the original Goober was located and rapped around the area.

…Nothing.

What?

His spider-sense came up blank. Peter frantically checked for a panel somewhere, mindful of his limited time. No panel. No Goober?

“Shit shit shit,” he breathed. Had Ock refined the damn thing to the point it didn’t require the USB anymore?

He was out of time. Peter reluctantly dropped back to the door and slid through it, silently cursing as he darted back into the ventilation shaft. No sooner had he replaced the grate than the technician strolled into the control center, blowing on the top of his coffee, looking for all the world like he worked for any harmless lab.

Now what?

There was always a Goober. Villains always monologued, explosives were always disarmed with one second left ’til detonation, and there was always a Goober.
“If I were a Goober, where would I be?” he muttered to himself.

He crawled around the vents aimlessly. Some time passed while he went from grate to grate, peering at scientists alternately fiddling around on computers and talking shit about colleagues who were out of the room. In the space of ten minutes, Peter knew who was cheating on their diet, who stole other people’s lunches from the fridge, and who had a shameful hookup at the holiday party. Then: a familiar voice.

“…budget, scrape some from the margins,” Octavius’s voice drifted into hearing. “The usual ways.”

She paused beneath the vent where Peter was currently shimmying. He stopped cold and instinctively tugged his mask down. This time he wasn’t about to let her commit the ultimate no-no.

Octavius sipped her latte. She wore her usual lab coat, beneath which Peter guessed her adamantium tentacles were curled up like the legs of a dead spider, fused to her spine by the accident that had also been the birth of her corruption. “I’ve gone over the data from Trial One. It was a real success. Extra bagels for the break room! You’ve earned it.”

The technician said eagerly, “What about those asiago ones from Martin’s Deli?”

“You’ll earn asiago if we get to Trial Two,” said Ock briskly.

Maybe it was time for a course correction, Peter mused. Her friends might call her Liv, but to Spider-Man she could be Goober.

“Trial Two will have to wait another day or so. Stark’s showing off the megaconductor at the expo in Queens tomorrow.”

“We could do the trial without it…” said the technician cautiously.

“And blink out half the power grid? Stark wouldn’t like that,” said Ock dismissively, waving her latte. “Not very discreet, you know, and discretion’s got us this far. We need the megaconductor.”

Megaconductor? What was that, a super-duper-superconductor?

Peter rolled his eyes. See, this was what happened when you used ‘super’ as your baseline. Everything that followed had to get progressively flashier. He’d always sort of expected to eventually run into some powered-up idiot calling themselves a megahero or jumbo-villain when they decided ‘super’ was too mundane these days. This megaconductor was just the prima ballerina of the choir of superconductors needed to run the collider.

Okay, so the collider needed the megaconductor to control its energy usage sneakily, without alerting the city to a major and sudden draw on power. Peter felt himself getting pissed at Stark. So much for the man’s heel-turn into the light. This was the kind of crap Peter might have expected of Stark Industries before their CEO’s reinvention, but it had no place in the age of the Avengers.

He started to wriggle backwards, away from Ock and the technician. Easier said than done. Maybe he would lay off the pizza, see if he could fit into his old slacks when next he saw MJ.

You are so lucky, he told Ock silently. You coulda been a Goober.

So…an expo, huh?

.

The Stark Expo was familiar to Peter from his own dimension, an exciting week of marvels unveiled to the wide-eyed public like the automatic dishwasher which had once dazzled people at the 1893 World’s Fair. Under the glassy roof of the convention center Peter passed robots and virtual reality simulators and high-res hologram projectors the size of a pea. Most of these things weren’t new to him, but he still paused at the self-cooking hot dog. Neat.

It had taken about five minutes to sneak into the expo the next day and filch a pass, which Peter clipped to the lapel of his shabby coat. He’d lost the mask, caught a few hours sleep in a park, scrounged up change for the laundromat and found a shower at a YMCA, but he still felt disheveled and gray in this company. Many of the scientists wandering around were frenzied-looking enough themselves that Peter didn’t feel too out of place, but there were plenty of glossy executives there too, wafting in clouds of perfume.

As MacGuffins went the megaconductor left a lot to be desired, but he didn’t have a lot of choices outside of wrecking the collider—the very very last of last resorts—or kidnapping Octavius, who he still needed to actually turn on the damn thing. And Peter wasn’t eager to add kidnapping to the list of principles he’d let slide by the wayside.

First he’d try to talk to Stark, who surely couldn’t be too surprised his collider had tracked in some mud from the next dimension over. The billionaire had his moments of rationality. If that didn’t work, well…

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Octavius talking animatedly to a small cluster of people who listened with glazed smiles. He edged away.

In his own universe, in more empathetic days, Peter had felt sorry for Otto Octavius and what his prized research had done to him. It was a case of something like, but for the grace of God… What if the spider that had bitten Peter all those years ago had not only imbued him with amazing powers, but had addled his brain as well? He might have ended up like Ock, blind to his own madness, a hero in his own eyes only and a villain to the world…

Peter shook his head. No more funks.

Now, where was the megaconductor? He consulted a schedule and saw Stark’s lecture was to be held in Hall C in an hour. Peter felt jittery for some reason. Nerves hadn’t bothered him during a mission in years.

Though other companies and scientists were annually invited to the convention, Stark Industries had its own setup in the hall with hologram banners proudly touting this year’s innovations. It looked like the thoroughbred in the room, easily more attractive and impressive than any other entity represented even though it generously allowed the other businesses to strut their best. He craned his head for a look and wasn’t surprised to see that the megaconductor and Stark were nowhere to be seen. That was hall-caliber stuff, and was probably being prepared for the presentation to come.

Well, they were handing out samples of that hot dog. Peter went over to inspect, trying to ignore the gnawing sensation from his spider-sense. Too bad it had never developed a Morse code.

.

“Dude, it microwaves itself,” said a kid behind Peter delightedly to his friend. “All it needs now is a self-toasting bun.”

Peter squeezed some mustard on the dog and chewed. Not as good as a Nathan’s dog, he thought.

“Not as good as a Nathan’s dog,” echoed a voice from behind. “But not bad, either? I don’t think you’ll see it at a Mets game anytime soon.”

Craig Pelton, the inventor, scowled at them from across the counter. Unable to disagree, Peter shrugged at him and moved away, finishing off the dog and hoping he’d come across a self-frying funnel cake next.

“Oof!” he grunted, stumbling into someone who had stopped short in the packed crowd.

“Oh, sorry man,” said the kid in front of him, wobbling and recovering himself. “It’s like sardines in here…”

Then he turned to the man he’d jostled, and Peter Parker stared at Peter Parker.

 Absurdly, Peter’s first thought was: I had that shirt…

The kid froze. “Uncle Ben?”

Peter’s heart stopped. “What?”

Already the kid was stammering: “No—sorry—you look like someone I—stupid, sorry about that…just surprised me…”

Peter rocked back a step. Aunt May had always told him he looked just like Ben. He was less than a decade younger than his uncle had been when he’d died, and somewhere along the line he’d become enough Ben’s likeness to scare the shit out of a teenager who was still freshly removed from his tragedy.

Ned Leeds stood beside him looking similarly like he was seeing a ghost, and Peter wasn’t ready for this either. Both of them wore attendee passes clipped to their collars.

Whitefaced, without completely knowing why he said it, Peter told him, “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” the kid mumbled. Then he frowned, and Peter could almost see the recognition spark behind his eyes. “Hang on…”

“Oh, I uh, hear someone calling me!” said Peter hurriedly; he elbowed his way gracelessly to lose himself in the crowd, feeling shaken and cursing every machination of fate that had brought them face-to-face.

So much for minimizing his footstep. What the hell were they doing there? They attended a technology magnet; maybe the passes were a reward for honors students. He could imagine Harrington’s thinly suppressed envy. It could truly have been an accident.

Still…how coincidental could it be that this universe’s Spider-Man was attending a convention featuring an Avenger?

How possible was it that Tony Stark knew Spider-Man’s true identity?

Now that thought gave Peter the willies. Not so much that it was Tony Stark, but that at this point in the kid’s career, anyone knowing was a major red flag. Peter had gone a solid seven years completely undiscovered. Seven years, alone…at the time, there’d been a sort of nobility to the isolation…but if nothing else, hadn’t the last few days taught him the value of fellowship?

There was no less value in secrecy. He hoped this Peter knew who to trust. At any rate, it wasn’t Peter’s problem.

He didn’t want to admit to himself the encounter spooked him. It wasn’t like running into Miles, or even seeing his own ghost on the screen in Times Square. He had to move fast, because he’d seen the kid’s spider-sense perk up and if Peter knew Peter like he knew himself, the kid wasn’t about to sit on his heels after that.

Lines were formed well outside of the convention hall where Stark was due to show off his company’s latest. People chattered and strained for peeks as convention volunteers flitted in and out of the doors, looking important.

Peter glanced at the excited queue and walked past it, rounding a corner and spying a back hall. He needed a private word with Stark.

Lingering near an exit in a lonelier stretch of the hall, he was considering how best to do this (what was the vent situation here?) when a low tone caught his attention. He edged toward the cracked door.

“I still don’t like this,” grumbled a deep voice. Peter stepped to the side and pressed his back against the wall. He heard the speaker nudge the door a hair wider. “There’s too many of these idiots around.”

“We’re not gonna get a better chance,” hissed a second speaker. “Better to grab it now. After this clown show it’s going back to Stark Industries under their lock and key.”

With Peter’s luck, they were talking about the megaconductor.

“Are you sure the cases are identical?”

“Oh, yeah—it’s the same one. Stark’s arriving in fifteen. Vess is gonna swap it with the conductor any minute and we’ll get the hell out of here.”

“OK, but I want to try one of those hot dogs on our way out.” The voices moved away from the door.

Peter slunk away, muttering obscenities under his breath. Wasn’t that just perfect! And he didn’t like that he had a goal in common with a couple of thieves—corporate espionage, possibly, or someone nefarious, wanting to power a superweapon on the sly? There were about a thousand cliches he could come up with from the top of his head.

Stark wasn’t here yet. Peter maneuvered closer to the back hall and spotted a suited man carrying a bulky suitcase. He’d evidently filched some credentials, because he was able to get past the outer security with minimal effort and started to disappear through a door. Peter ducked back through the exit and jogged down the back hallway, eyes peeled for the two speakers he’d heard. Only a couple of convention volunteers were visible and Peter walked confidently down until they’d gone out of sight round another corner.

Vent time. Peter sighed.

At least convention centers weren’t the Pentagon, he thought grumpily a few minutes later, or Stark Tower. Those vents probably had motion sensors.

It was easy enough to locate the room containing the megaconductor, especially once he spied a pair of unconscious security guards sprawled on the carpet. He removed the grate and dropped down just as Suit Guy was about to swap his case with one lying on a table.

“Woah!” he exclaimed, and Suit Guy whipped around. “I’m guessing this isn’t the can. Those hot dogs blow themselves up in more ways than one.”

Vess spluttered. Up close, he didn’t exactly strike fear into Peter’s heart. He could have been any one of the thousands of scientists wandering around the convention hall. “What—who are you?” he demanded.

‘What’ was probably more accurate. “Just your average egghead. Whatcha doin’ with that?”

The man’s eyes darted to the unconscious guards as though he wasn’t really sure whether Peter had spotted them. One hand drifted to a pocket that showed the rectangular outline of what was almost certainly a stun gun.

“Nah,” said Peter, and darted to catch the man’s wrist.

Suddenly Vess spoke urgently: “Backup needed! In the—”

Peter reached forward and flicked him between the eyes. Vess jerked and clutched at the third eye Peter had tattooed into his brow and he took the opportunity to pluck out the earpiece. “What kind of backup we talkin’ about?” he asked.

“The kind that’s gonna lay you flat,” snarled Vess. Peter giggled.

“Easier said than done. What were you gonna do with that megaconductor? Who are you stealing it for?”

Vess just glared. Peter glanced over his shoulder, wondering how long he had. Would the two he’d heard in the hallway be the only backup, or were there more? He wasn’t worried about what they could throw at him so much as who might get caught in the crossfire. He should nab the thing now and apologize—or accuse—later.

Abruptly his hand spasmed. Peter cried out and tried to clutch it as though he could shepherd the stray atoms into place, back how they belonged. They belonged in another universe. Only a few seconds after the glitching started, it stopped and he breathed easier.

“Wondered when that would start up,” he grunted.

Vess’s eyes were huge. “What the hell was that?”

“I think I’m reacting to those hot dogs. OK, if you’re going to be uncooperative, it’s lights out,” he told Vess, and tapped him on the head.

Vess slumped and Peter lowered the man to the floor. He looked around, finding he was in a kind of green room. “What, the stupid Goober gets its own dressing room?” he muttered. The two unconscious guards had handcuffs he used to bind the thief’s wrists and ankles.

He found a pen and paper and wrote: “BAD GUY, TRIED TO STEAL THINGIE.” He’d started to write more, but his spider-sense warned him there wasn’t a lot of time. Most likely Vess’s backup would get here first and retrieve their comrade before security got to the scene, but Peter stuck the sign on the man’s chest anyway and stood to face the case on the table.

It didn’t have a code system or anything. Probably it couldn’t, not without interference from the conductor itself. He flipped the case open.

Okay, it was one hell of a prima ballerina, he had to admit.

Its makeup was a mystery to him. It was ceramic, but not; like porcelain, only way different? It was shaped into a large ring about a foot in diameter, and seemed to emit a low hum that spooked the little hairs in his eardrums.

A particle collider was one of the few environments in which a superconductor operated best, given that the extreme temperature at which it needed to operate could be regulated there, but one that could function at room temp, on this scale? It was easily worth lots and lots of millions.

“So you’re the one ring to rule them all,” he muttered to it.

Stealing a prized brainchild of Tony Stark’s was not exactly how he’d envisioned minimizing his footprint here. Peter quietly snapped the case shut. Maybe he should just go to the Avengers first and hope there was time to explain. They dealt with weird shit all the time. Surely this was just a drop in the bucket. Lifting the megaconductor before he had a chance to justify himself was a good way to end up on the Raft.

But if any one of a seemingly indefatigable number of ne’er-do-wells got their hands on it first…

Then again, since when had he tiptoed around the Avengers? It was Stark’s fault he was here in the first place; if this thing kept him from messing around with the collider for the time being, it was better to keep it away from him. For Peter’s own good.

Peter stared at the case. “Yoink,” he said, and swiped it from the table.

"That is definitely not yours," came a voice from the doorway.

Before he even looked up to see Spider-Man standing there, Peter groaned.