Wedding Crashers
“No!”
Peter’s shoes came to a screeching halt against the parking garage pavement. Any harder and he was sure they would’ve caught on fire.
“No, no — c’mon, no!” His index finger tapped repetitively against the device, practically smashing his bone against the already cracked screen — if his outburst caused more damage along the way, he honestly wouldn’t have known. “You had enough juice left to turn on! C’mon, turn on again!”
As many times as Peter tried, the little bit of ghost power he managed to capture was all but gone. It didn’t matter what button he pressed, how long he pressed it for, how many times he smashed his fist against the screen — definitely causing a crack that time.
“Turn on again, please turn on again, please please please just turn on again!”
The parking garage captured his voice in an echo.
It was the only response to his plea.
Peter ran a shaky hand through his hair, careless to how the fidget in his fingers messed up the style he had perfectly created earlier that morning. A large strand fell in front of his eyes; undoing hours of work and almost blocking his view of the black screen.
The reflection of his face against the dead cell phone was almost enough to make him say a very, very bad word.
This was not good.
This was not good at all.
“Great.” Peter threw his head back with a groan that rattled every rib bone in his chest. “Mr. Stark’s going to kill me.” And yet not even that was enough to vocalize how bad things were.
Bad was running late for Mr. Stark’s wedding — a wedding that over a year ago he would’ve never dreamed to be invited to, let alone be a part of the ceremony.
Bad was running even more late because he couldn’t find where the groom’s suite was, and bad was even needing the bride to walk him there, inducing an amount of embarrassment he wasn’t sure he’d ever recover from.
Bad was forgetting how to dress his tie — but this?
Losing Mr. Stark’s wedding rings?
Peter’s face grimaced tight enough that his eyes squeezed shut and his eyelids felt like were starting to rip apart. Mr. Stark had made those wedding rings. He couldn’t believe he lost those rings, the same exact rings he watched Mr. Stark personally handcraft in his workshop — handcraft with material that wasn’t exactly something he could pick up at any store, as if the rings could be easily replaced and remade.
The thought was startling enough that Peter could feel his teeth grind together even harder.
He knew those rings came from the arc reactor that got Mr. Stark home from Afghanistan.
He knew all about how Pepper was the one to insist Mr. Stark keep it, turning it into a memento that stayed with them throughout the duration of their relationship.
During their first lab nights together, Peter would always catch eye of it across Mr. Stark’s workshop, in awe of what he got to see in person — always amazed with the stories Mr. Stark would tell him; the events of a heroic tale that wound up being the very beginning of who and what Iron Man was.
He’d always listen with a deep sense of respect, always noticing how the lights created a shine against the words that were encased safely inside a glass box; ‘Proof That Tony Stark Has A Heart’ always on display for everyone to see.
Up until now, that was.
Peter smacked an open palm against his face.
This was so bad.
“Okay, I have like…twelve minutes. I just need to retrace my steps back to wherever Ms. Potts was, and hopefully find the rings somewhere in that room.” Peter squeezed his phone tightly, while his other hand scratched roughly at his head — any hopes of maintaining his hairstyle long gone by now. “This can’t be too hard, right? I just gotta remember which direction May and I went before we split up, and go from there…”
While the parking garage was barely a minute’s walk to the cathedral, Peter knew once he got back to the church, any direction could lead him just about anywhere. He’d already wound up lost in the building once before, now he didn’t have a single second to waste in finding his way around.
The parking garage went one of two ways. Peter looked left, then right, then left again, before—
—a sharp tingle sent goosebumps throughout his skin—
— Peter spun around, instinctively, impulsively, without thought—
“—sleeeeeeeeeepppp.”
A hand yanked at the back of his head, tugging at his hair, forcing him to stay still as something pressed firmly against his mouth — no, sealed around his mouth — leaving no room for fumes to escape anywhere else but inside the depths of his lungs.
Peter’s eyes rolled to the back of his head as his knees slowly sank to the ground, eventually collapsing onto the pavement; with the hold he had on his cell phone growing weak and lax, until it fell away from him completely.
His vision went as black as the cracked screen of his phone.
The whole room was spinning.
Swaying, tilting, spinning…
So much spinning.
It was all he could feel; the way each wave hit him with a disorienting force, leaving him rasping for air against the weight that held him down, pushing against his chest in a way that paralyzed his every muscle.
A thick fog settled over his head, weaving in and out of his ears, covering his brain in a way that laced everything with a confusing, muddling haze.
The floor was falling and rising, swaying and tilting, an ongoing sickening rhythm that cramped his stomach into knots and brought bile up into his throat.
His throat burned.
His nose burned, his chest burned — the air wasn’t fresh, what little of it he could get wasn’t pure, wasn’t oxygen.
It tasted foul.
Peter tried to loll his head, but even that was asking for too much. It felt like his whole body had been dipped in Novocaine. His fingers could barely twitch, his legs didn’t work — he couldn’t feel his butt.
It was a familiar sensation.
He’d felt this before.
Desperately, Peter focused on it — anything to stay grounded, to stay conscious. He tried to stay awake, reaching for a memory that was sitting on the tip of his dry and heavy tongue, but he couldn’t grasp it.
Thoughts were as slippery as fish, darting away as soon as he got a hold of them.
But he remembered the sensation.
He remembered the smell of sulfur water, ocean life — fish.
He remembered fish.
He remembered being kidnapped; held hostage by a lunatic and psychopath with weapons behind their intellect, lost in a bunker deep in the ocean — helpless against whatever concoction of chemicals they exposed him to that kept him there.
Oh, crap.
Peter knew exactly what this was.
“N’t…cool,” he mumbled, his voice thick with the cotton that coated his tongue. “Pe’ple…gotta sto’p…druggi’n me…”
Two fingers pressed against his eye, separating and pulling his eyelids apart with force.
“Ackgk — d’de!” Peter squawked as his vision was blinded by a piercing white light, the sensitivity of his overblown pupils burning with what felt like the strength of the sun. “G’t off!”
His mumbled words barely got through his lips, caught by the croak that splintered his voice in half.
The fingers pulled away right as the light blinked out.
“Stop resisting,” a voice rasped from nearby, dry and husky — guttural and deep. It took with it the light that shined into Peter’s eyes, leaving halos to dance erratically on the ceiling tiles above him. “You’re only expending energy that further skews my calculations and disrupts the entire analytical balance. Stay still, I can’t afford a single error in this process.”
Peter blinked rapidly, fighting to clear his vision from the blobs of color that fluttered across the ceiling; the tiles lining the roof were already a blur, with his pupils failing to shrink even a centimeter against the bright lights surrounding him.
The effects of chemicals in his system showed as intensely as he felt them.
Seconds passed as he failed to understand at first who it was that spoke; unable to hear anyone beneath the vocal cords that sounded as if fire had scorched them dry. The fog felt thick in his head. His pupils, black dots that were enlarged and impaired, took in the bright light with delayed senses.
It came to him a minute later.
Oh, shi—
“—mr’…’sborn?”
Peter’s eyes widened, frantically, as the realization pulled him into lucidity.
Oh shit, shit , shit—
“—Mr. Osborn…is ‘at ‘ou?”
Coherency came to him in fleeting flashes, pulling his thoughts into one and grounding him when his body otherwise wanted to drift away.
He couldn’t move, there was no way to look around — his butt was numb . He couldn’t see anyone, he couldn’t see anything past the ceiling tiles above him; and yet, he heard him.
There was no denying what he heard.
Peter tried to swallow. But he could barely get his throat to budge.
He was screwed.
He was so, so screwed.
“Heyyyy, man….” Peter made a weak attempt at sounding casual. The gulp that lodged in his throat didn’t help. It bounced against his larynx, pressing hard against the band that fastened flush against his neck — he hadn’t noticed there was a strap against his neck. Not until his Adam’s Apple jumped against it, making it even harder to swallow. “How’s it going?”
The waver in his voice did a bit too much to reveal his nerves. Peter figured it was kinda hard not to be anxious — what little strength he could build up in his arms jerked at his sides, weakly, finding that the same straps that were bound against his neck were also wrapped firmly around his shoulders and forearms, restraining his limbs where they were.
Though he still couldn’t feel his butt, he figured his legs were done no differently.
There was definitely a good reason to be nervous.
The only response he heard were footsteps, each stride of shoe clanking against metal floors, echoing the room in a way that spoke to its nature. Peter’s eyeballs danced around, looking to every corner of ceiling that he could glance his eyes over.
It was hard to turn his head and see any further — what little he could make out were lights, nothing but lights, forcing his eyes to squint against the large, dome-like lamps that burned with intensity. The heat from each light bulb was only amplified by the metal dome surrounding it.
They reminded him far too much of the ridiculously over-sized type of lamps he’d find in hospitals; the kind used for examinations and operations.
If Peter’s eyes could focus, he could’ve sworn that he was able to see his reflection in one.
And yet it burned out his vision, forcing him to rely on his ears to do what his sight couldn’t; listening intently as footsteps crossed the room, waiting for a vocal response that never came.
Each step clanked against metal. What noise Norman ’s feet didn’t make against the floors, his hands did — messing with something, many things, the tiny echo's of clings and clatters bringing a flutter to Peter’s heart.
He could practically feel how hard his pulse was in his chest. Peter swallowed again, squeezing his eyes shut as the gulp pushed against the strap across his neck.
He had to remain calm. Even kidnapped, even restrained, even with the burning gas that came through plastic tubes fitted snugly inside his nose, with each nasal canal stinging against the chemicals that traveled into his lungs, causing his head to spin a thousand times over—
Even with all that, Peter knew he had to remain calm.
It was his only chance at escaping.
“Is this, one of those… fancy, modern…rich-people steakhouses?” Peter did what he did best when he was nervous. He talked. “Cause, you know, you wanted to take me and Harry out for steak…that one night…a while ago…”
His eyes may have very well been loose ping-pong balls with how fast Peter bounced them corner to corner, using the time he spoke to take in his surroundings with as much haste as his lethargic, sluggish brain could muster up.
The room felt clinical, technical.
It felt clean. Too clean.
If Peter didn’t know better, he’d say it felt like a lab.
“It’s a little, you know…sterile. For the aesthetic. Not really my thing.” Peter really didn’t want to entertain that idea. So, forcing himself to stay calm, he didn’t. “But hey…I’m still good for steak, if you want steak.”
Even with the feeling slowly returning to his body, Peter could barely give a tug of his arms — restraints kept him bound, and he had no strength to fight them. His eyes followed the direction that he heard footsteps take off to, his head painfully still and aligned with the rest of his body; weighed down by a led in his veins.
The table he laid on suddenly sent a chill through his core. There was a spinning that took him in all sort of directions — up and down, back and forth. Only once it slowed into a steady wobble did he feel the gradual return of sensation to his limbs, sending warning signals all across the back of his neck.
His spider-sense had grown loud enough to cause him pain.
“Speaking of Harry…is he here…by any chance, Ms. Osborn?” Peter kept on rambling. It bought him time as he started to get feeling back in his finger tips. “It’s cool if he’s not. I just haven’t heard from him in a while, and I-I saw what happened…on the news, you know…with your place, catching on fire and all, and I just thought—”
“Can it, Spider-Man.”
Norman held little to no volume in his voice, and yet the words crashed through the room with force.
Peter’s heart stopped.
It hitched in his chest, audible in his ears — not just his pulse, not just in the way his veins throbbed against the temples of his forehead.
The panic that struck him echoed back in sound, signaling life to a heart monitor that spoke every hammering beat of his heart-rate.
A cast of his eyes downward and Peter understood the how to the noises he heard — pads pressed against his chest, glued there, his bare skin exposed through a dress shirt that was unbuttoned and spread wide open.
It explained the stickiness he felt, an odd sensation that mixed with the tingle of numbed nerves slowly waking back up; no different than he was. The sounds he heard came from his own pulse — his own heart.
Discomfort left him entirely for fear.
He couldn’t speak, even if he wanted to.
The heart monitor spoke for him.
“Do us both a favor…don’t play stupid.” Norman sounded far away when he broke the silence, his voice barely reaching over the erratic beeping that whined from the nearby machines. “A boy of your intellect is sure to deduce the discernible by now. And talking only wastes your energy. Even the slightest increase to your heart-rate will disrupt the process of speed to the venesection drainage. I need this all to be very precise.”
With each word, his voice drew closer — so painfully dry and hoarse, Peter was sure he had to be imagining it. It sounded as if charcoal suddenly had a means to speak.
Laying rigid on his back, it was hard for him to see his surroundings — his neck could barely move against the strap, the same kind wrapped around his shoulders, around his waist, his thighs — he couldn’t see far ahead of him, but he didn’t need to see Norman approaching him to feel the heat from his body, so strong it sent goosebumps across his skin.
“Besides,” Norman started, his feet taking one final clank against the metal floors as leaned closer to the table — and closer after that. “As intrepid as your act of innocence may be, by now I’ve long since run any tests needed to confirm my suspicions.”
A light shinned against his face. Peter squinted one eye shut, the other blearily able to make out a scialytic lamp that was pulled closer to him, so close that the bulb should’ve left a burn mark against his skin.
Peter didn’t realize how cold he was until the heat from the lamp soaked into him, sending a tremble down to the tips of his toes.
He was freezing.
A moist air suddenly hit against the side of his cheek, the strong waft of breath striking near his ear as Norman violated what little space remained between them.
“Did you know that your bone marrow brine's with arachnid DNA?” he whispered, close to Peter’s face, taking in a breath so deep that it tickled the hairs inside Peter’s ear. “I can smєll it on you…”
The silence that passed felt all consuming, searing into every rapid beat of his heart, publicly announced by the machine that captured his pulse.
Peter couldn’t move his eyes anywhere but straight ahead, caught onto Norman’s face as the man hovered over him — for a moment staying quiet, before he finally moved the scialytic lamp away, tilting it around and casting shadows into the crevices of his face; digging the darkness into the lines on his skin.
When the light was gone, Peter had to blink erratically to get his vision back. The loss of blinding heat against his eyes left him fighting for focus, and the sudden change in lighting sent his senses array.
Even without his vision, even with his hearing delayed, the vibrations against his neck wouldn’t stop. It was the only sense that stayed stable, stayed the same — piercing, painful — warning him of danger.
His senses kept warning him of danger, of an immediate threat that he couldn’t escape from.
Peter tugged at his arms again.
They barely twitched.
“H-...how’d you find out?” he forced through a clenched jaw, too disoriented to open his mouth any further; each word pressing hard into his throat, bouncing against the strap flush against his neck.
The surface he laid on was far from providing any comfort in his horizontal position. It had the same warmth and mercy as the slabs of metal they’d use in his chemistry classes.
It reminded Peter a little too much of the experiments they’d do in those same classes.
“I always had my suspicions — for years, ever since the day my spider perished.” Norman spoke as he walked, his legs taking him somewhere off in the distance. The size of the room proved itself in the way his voice went from one of Peter’s ears to the other, all while his shoes clanked repetitively against metal floors. “Years of studies, my sweat, my soul poured into that creation. My best brilliance, the world’s next watershed for humanity, the cure for any human ailment — bred into the DNA of a spider, a single spider — suddenly, gone.”
Peter’s eyes kept following the way the voice went. The more he managed to look around, the more he could make out of his surroundings; lifting his neck just enough that his chin could make contact against his chest to give him a better view of things.
Norman wasn’t looking at him when he spoke. His back was turned, and his hands messed with something Peter couldn’t make out —
Peter’s head suddenly collapsed back against the metal table, hitting with a thud that vibrated harder than his spider-sense.
He was still weak, and still freezing cold.
“Before we all would know it, Spider-Man shows up. In New York City…months after that devastating day I endured — the same that day you, supposedly, had presence in my labs.” Norman was oblivious to Peter’s discomfort. Or, if he wasn’t, Peter figured he didn’t care. The many utensil's he messed with were the background noise to his discourse. “For years, I kept asking myself — why else would any vigilante stay so close to one localized territory…unless, of course, that was the territory he called home.”
His footsteps went back and forth, left and right. Peter could hear him cross one side of the room to the next, with his voice following the same path.
“It was in front of my face, the whole time. But without the knowledge, without evidence — facts.” Norman dropped something. Peter couldn’t tell if it was intentional or not. “Without everything that came from your very mouth to confirm it…”
The pause that proceeded was tainted by the sound of Peter’s own uncontrolled stress. No matter how calm he fought to keep himself, his pulse spoke a different story. The speed that he felt each thrum against his chest almost made him feel nauseous; he couldn’t tell if it was the panic that pummeled inside of him, or something else entirely.
All he knew was the ache that settled deep in his ribcage, the bones in his chest throbbing from the pressure of each beat that rattled within him.
His heart was beating hard. And fast.
Peter knew, even with the haze that delayed his senses, something wasn’t right about that.
It wasn’t until a minute too late that he realized Norman was back at his side, the chemicals messing with his head still lingering in a way that made it hard to stay focused. His eyes flickered off to the right, watching as the man loomed over the top of his head.
“Stark Internship,” Norman scoffed, his back rattling in a way Peter noticed would rustle the lab coat that covered his frame. At least he was pretty sure that was a lab coat — his vision went in and out of focus, but the white Norman wore stood out among the other colors in the room. “It was all right in front of me…”
Norman’s voice stayed dry, no matter how many words he spoke; no amount of his own saliva moistened the vocal cords in his throat. He stood hovering over Peter, messing with wires and tubes — Peter watched, blearily, noticeably looking at the exposed hands that the lab coat didn’t cover.
His skin was dirty. Ashy. Covered in dark smudges of soot that stood out among the clean, sterile room.
“My wife, she’d always say…coincidences mean you're on the right path. Simon Van Booy. Her favorite book, before she…” Norman paused, detaching a wire only to replace it with another. He scantly looked down to Peter, briefly, just for a glance.
Peter noticed.
As his words trailed off into an otherwise quiet room, the unspoken was consumed by erratic beeps that sung from overworked machines, capturing every sign of life that came from Peter’s body.
“Queens one and only Spider-Man…none other than a Peter Benjamin Parker. Just a good ‘ol boy from Queens himself, ” Norman’s voice felt as hot as it sounded, striking close against Peter’s cheeks when he leaned forward, callous and dirty fingers readjusting the nasal cannula that kept the burn flowing through his nose. “Not a single soul would suspect it…not even myself. Had you not so foolishly left me the evidence I needed. Coincidences, after all…mean you're on the right path.”
Peter blinked, rapidly, insistent to keep his eyes focused. The fog only felt heavier the more that the fumes reached into his chest, building a strong haze that took away his coherence.
“That spider — my spider…it bit you.” Norman’s face blurred in front of him, in and out of focus, with the patches of black filth and dirt caked into his skin standing out amongst the crazed look in his eyes. “And now, you’re…you’re going to fix me.”
The beeping from machines sped up.
Elevators doors split apart the moment it reached the R&D level of the compound, each side practically pushed open by both Tony and Steve — both already stepping out of the elevator before it had even come to a full stop.
“Okay, people! Get me answers, pronto!” Tony’s shout reached across the length of the room as he quickly passed by the multitude of monitors and advanced equipment lining the way; yet his fast strides weren’t fast enough to keep Steve from staying close at his side the entire time. “I want to know everything, from everyone — let’s go, go, go!”
Tony’s mere presence brought up an array of holograms from each monitor, projecting the different screens in a way that made it easier to multi-task; something he wasted no time in doing.
His hands swiped meticulously fast at the images that greeted him, the tight furrow between his brow squinting his eyes harshly with the stress that he wore outwardly on his sleeve.
He wasn’t the first to react. Across the room, Clint bounced from computer to computer, hunching over the keyboards as he frantically typed away with a laser-sharp focus.
“I’m on surveillance recon,” Clint answered, stoically, and yet unable to hide the strain that laced subtly into his voice. He hurriedly passed by Steve on his way across the room, quickly yanking at a chair with wheels and dropping himself down onto it. “Every camera surrounding New York is about to be at my finger tips—”
“We have technology that can find him!” Quill’s voice shouted not far from where Clint wheeled himself off to, rounding the staircase that led up to the room, bounding two steps at a time until he reached the top. “But we need at least four ounces of his spit, six strands of hair, and ideally an eyelash. The eyelash has be fresh. No bueno without the eyelash.”
The sudden interruption took most of everyone’s focus — everyone but Tony, who kept his eyes locked on what he was doing.
Steve had a good feeling not even an asteroid crashing down could break that focus of his.
Drax suddenly pushed through the crowd of his own team, nearly toppling Quill to the ground with his haste.
“Nonsense! These computers will get you nowhere!” Drax leaped up the staircase with his hand closed into a fist and pressed firmly against his chest — exposed and bare, with the shirt he wore being unbuttoned down the middle — and he looked Steve head-on, unblinking. “When it doubt, one must follow the stench of death.”
Steve arched an eyebrow, high.
And said nothing.
Next to him, Tony didn’t pay them any attention — none of them, too busy absorbing the slew of different information that flooded his eyes, each page populated through his own technology bombarding his mind at a pace not even he could keep up with.
So focused on finding something, anything, he never noticed the glow of orange that sparkled from the corner of his eyes. The room sizzled with vivid cinders that lit and dissipated no sooner than it all materialized.
By the time Tony faced the magic portal, it had already fallen into embers, littering the ground that Strange walked on.
His feet weren’t alone; each step he took matched that of both Romanoff and Barnes, standing not far behind him.
“Maybe not the smell of death,” Bucky was the first of the three to speak up, his one hand going to to loosen the dress tie that he still wore around his neck. “But we did follow something.”
Tony twisted on the heels of his feet, so fast that his own tie — already undone and slung around his neck — nearly flew right off.
Natasha held that same kind of pace, wasting no time as her high-heels made swift steps towards him.
“We retraced his footsteps based off Quill’s lasting sighting of him, and where he said he was going to next.” Natasha’s tightly controlled energy showed in the hair that fell against her face, victim to the rushed speed that took away her neatly styled bun. She wasn’t the only one to see some dishevelment to her formal wear — no one even knew where Clint’s tie went off to. “He made it to the parking garage. But I don’t think he left on his own.”
If Tony’s brows furrowed together any tighter, he figured they’d have left a dent in his skull. The blue glow emitting from surrounding computers and holograms was harsh enough to color the skin of his face, otherwise having gone as pale as the white lights that struck down from the above.
Those same ceiling lights made the object in Natasha’s hand all the more discernible.
“We found his phone on the fifth level, laying underneath a Honda Accord,” she explained, tensely; the rectangle device that she held suddenly making more sense.
Bucky slid off his tie and tossed it against the nearest workbench.
“It wasn’t far from where the kid’s aunt was parked,” he followed up with, already undoing a button on his shirt as he made his way to one of the computers Clint was working at — the writhe in his hands speaking to his need to do something.
Clint saw it without even looking at him. His chair slid to the side, giving Bucky access to work.
Bucky was already typing at a keyboard before Clint had moved away.
“May was right, his phone had died.” Natasha looked to both men before turning back to Tony, a harsh frown pulling at her lips as she did. “We got a charge to it a few minutes ago. This was the last thing on it — but he never hit send.”
With her hand reached outward, Natasha offered Tony the phone, with the screen lit to life and ready for view.
He didn’t usually take well to things being handed to him, but for once, Tony couldn’t have snatched up the device any faster if he tried.
A beat later, and he was more than happy to stuff it deep inside his pant pocket — out of sight, out of mind, and out of his ever growing frustrations.
“If he kid would just learn to get to the point,” Tony muttered under his breath, pushing the sleeves of his dress shirt further up his elbows as he turned back to the many holograms — each containing data that moved too fast for anyone to see, each holding an inkling of possibility that he could end this nightmare before it spun out of his control.
The growing pit in his stomach was starting to tell him that this was all way out of his control.
“Speaking of getting to the point,” Stephen’s voice approached him from behind — Tony didn’t turn around to face it. “I trust there’s something to this matter that I’m not aware of?”
Tony’s eyes darted the screens frantically fast.
“It’s bad, that’s what you need to be aware of,” he said, swiping and pushing at static images, his wrist flicking up, down, left and right. “If Osborn is anywhere near Peter, it could, unmistakably, cost him his life.”
Stephen didn’t seem satisfied with that answer.
“I take it there’s not enough time to explain why that is?” And he vocalized as much.
Tony twisted at his hips, one hand still mid-air and working with various different 3D components that were translucent to his touch.
“You get me a location on him, and I’ll tell you everything and anything your heart has ever desired to know,” he answered, firmly, sternly. Desperately.
Stephen had seen that desperation before. Even he couldn’t stay hardened to it.
“Locator spells aren’t that easy,” Stephen began to explain, in a tone that sounded as if he’d already explained it once before. “They only work best on family — like Thor, and his father. Even a single strand of hair between blood is the foundation to that spell. Without that connection, I need something physical, tangible, and strong enough to fill that missing link.”
Tony found himself looking at Strange, and the man stared right back at him — his eyes strained, but his face speaking to his growing concern.
“Remember that it took half a day to find Dimitri through Natasha’s past encounters with him.” Stephen looked to the woman in question when he spoke, before his eyes found their way back to Tony. His expression almost said it all.
Tony had absolutely no stamina in his tired body to engage with that possibility.
Unfortunately for him, his mind had already taken off full speed some time ago.
It was impossible for him not to run down the list of likelihoods, knowing full well what he knew about Osborn; what the crazed scientist had done to people, what he did to people — knowing the vivid details of documents he found laying to waste in an abandoned bunker, all the way down in the depths of the ocean, hidden away in the Bermuda Triangle.
Tony suddenly felt cripplingly sick with reality.
They didn’t have half a day to waste.
He needed to find his kid, now.
“Wanda, take him to Peter’s quarters,” Tony didn’t waste an ounce of urgency from his voice as he spun around, locating the younger girl amidst the crowd of many others. His arm held firm as a rod when he pointed to Strange, and he snapped his fingers, fast. “Find something, anything. Find him, now!”
Though they stood on opposite ends of the room, it was Stephen who decided to make his way to Wanda — hurriedly, pushing through the others with a sense of impatience that almost masked the subtle sense of worry even Tony could hear play into his voice.
“We can walk. You can explain to me on the way.” Stephen met Wanda where she stood, and kept his pace after the that, forcing her to catch up from behind.
Wanda’s heels stumbled as she picked up the bottom of the maroon dress she wore, hasty to match his pace, with only a few glances thrown behind her before she and Stephen left the room through closing elevator doors.
Tony tried not to let his frustrations with Strange get under his skin.
“Make it quick!” His shout reached across the walls, his voice cracking at the final word — he wasn’t doing a good job at controlling his frustrations.
It didn’t matter to him, he kept working. His hands moved about the air, sloppily in some regards, steady in others.
A hand laid firmly on his shoulder, but Tony barely gave Bruce a look of acknowledgment at the touch.
“I’m going to get FRIDAY to run a few algorithms, try to enhance the specifications on them myself,” Bruce told him, with a single nod of his head speaking to his dedication. He went to pat Tony’s shoulder again, only to take off across the room instead — his steps awkward, but urgent.
Tony looked that way, following him and finding Clint still bouncing from monitor to monitor — using the aid of his chair to wheel flawlessly across the floors.
Barnes stayed stationed at one computer while he saw Natasha at another; turning his head, he could see Wilson across the room, working with two different computers all by himself.
Not far from them all, Vision watched them silently, absorbing information in his own way.
They were all working on the same goal, and yet Tony felt like it wasn’t enough.
“You need eyes beyond these machines,” Thor’s bold voice overtook every keystroke in the room as he approached them, quickly. The sound of his hammer swinging at his hip sounded like wind rushing alongside his footsteps. “I will take to the skies, and seek out the child from there.”
Steve lifted his chin slightly, watching the Asgardian tower over them both, looking to Thor with a squint in his eye.
“You really think you can find him that way?” he asked, curious — but hopeful.
Tony kept working, though the slightest pause to the wave of his hands was noticeable by them both; his own hope showing in his stuttering movements.
Thor saw that look of hope cross across Tony’s face. The soft upturn of his lip spoke to it.
“I am no Heimdall, but it would be a shame if I did not try.” Thor didn’t waste any time with consoling gestures — wasting time with social cues wasn’t much to his nature, anyway.
He was out of the room before the flow of his red cape could catch up with him.
“Bam!” Clint’s cheer broke from across the way, sounding with the harsh clap of his hands. “I got surveillance recon!”
“So do I,” Natasha chimed in, her back facing Clint as they both stationed themselves on opposite ends of the room.
Not far from where Clint sat, Bucky straightened his posture from the hunch he had over the keyboards, giving one final clack of a key that lit up his monitors one by one.
“Make that three,” he announced, standing straight with arms crossing firmly over his chest — the line in his brow spoke to his focus, and not even the young girl walking up behind him could change that.
“Make that four!” Mantis’s cheerful cry, however, did get Bucky’s attention.
Tony shot his head around, turning away from holograms as Mantis all but plopped down to the floor, sitting cross-legged in front of the dozen or so monitors that filled the room — swaying side-to-side with a smile that stretched her lips wide, all while the footage played in front of her.
“This is a nightmare,” Tony couldn’t keep his thoughts in any longer. His will was breaking, and the way Mantis proceeded to watch the camera’s with glee — well, that was becoming his final straw.
Give her a bucket of popcorn, and he figured she’d be good to go.
He was about to lose it. And standing so close to him, it was impossible for Steve not to notice.
“Hey.” Steve looked at him, earnestly. A firm hand on his bicep kept Tony from returning to the holograms. “It’s going to be oka—”
Tony harshly shrugged that hand away.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me you couldn’t find Peter in the church?”
The abrupt bite in his tone almost took Steve aback. Tony’s anger, though, while quick to heat up, was far from the genuine rage he had dealt with in the past.
“Because I didn’t want to make a big deal out of things,” Steve explained, patiently; knowing better than to respond to an anger that was hiding something far more profound. He’d learned from that mistake once already. “You’re right, I didn’t tell you that he wasn’t in the groom’s suite. I got back from looking for Pepper, he was gone, and the ceremony was about to start. So I held onto the rings—”
“—you didn’t think it was a big deal that the ring bearer went missing?” Tony wasn’t cooling off, not easily, not this time. In fact, each word stressed harder than the last, with the tightness in his voice adding more tension to a room that was already breaking at the seams.
Quick to feel that tension, Steve did all he could to defuse the bomb.
“Tony,” he said again, firmly, but still patiently. “I could see how stressed you were getting. I wasn’t going to make things worse by—”
“This isn’t worse!?”
It may have been too late for Steve to defuse that bomb.
As Tony’s eyes blew wide open with a raw indignation that looked unfamiliar on him, Steve's face suddenly softened with an empathy that eased every line the last five years had etched into his skin.
He didn't need to be a genius like some of the others in the room to tell Tony wasn't angry. He may have appeared that way, that much was obvious — but after so long, Steve had finally gotten a good read on the billionaire, in a way most others didn’t.
The way he worked frantically against the holograms, his fingers shaking on every swipe, missing images the first time and needing to run his hand through them again —
Steve could tell this wasn’t anger. It was unbridled panic.
And if left unchecked, he knew it could do far worse damage than even a nuke to New York.
“I figured…knowing Peter, knowing that we’re in the city…” Steve trailed off, trying to put together the words that could easily come off the wrong way. “I thought he may have run off to some kind of trouble, that he got caught up with something…Spider-Man related. I know how he can get.” Steve dipped his chin, sincerely. “He means well. But sometimes, he acts without thinking. Especially when he means well.”
Steve had never curbed his thoughts on Peter before — from the day he watched Spider-Man unmask and reveal himself as a fifteen-year-old boy from Queens, he’d always been vocal about Peter’s involvement in things, he’d always been upfront on his stance about someone so young getting involved in something so dangerous.
He’d never withheld his opinions before, and of all times to start, Tony knew it certainly wasn’t going to be now.
So as angry as he wanted to be, he knew the man was right.
God, he hated it when Cap was right.
“I had the rings on me, I wasn’t going to let anything go wrong with your wedding,” Steve insisted, as placatingly as possible. “And clearly Peter felt bad for thinking he lost them—”
“So you were going to cover for the kid, without even knowing what he did?” Tony resisted a huff of humor for something that wasn’t all that funny to him.
The lines against Steve’s cheeks drew tight with a flush that just barely tinted his skin.
For a moment, he looked away.
“I was going to have his back,” he clarified, purposefully driving his voice down low. When he looked back at Tony, his face was harder, more serious. “Peter’s come a long way, but don’t forget that he’s still just a kid. He doesn’t need pressure.” There was a beat that held his next words. “He needs support.”
Tony craned his head over to look at Steve — really look at him, the kind of piercing stare that would intimidate most anyone who was unfortunate enough to receive it.
It didn’t matter how badly he wanted to be mad at Rogers.
He knew the man was right.
Tony really, really hated it when Cap was right.
“Damn it!” he cursed, swiping away the images in a fit of hysteria. The holograms all spread out at once. “He had one job — one! Why couldn’t he hold onto the damn—”
The elevator doors split open no sooner than the holographic images dissipated into a fit of static.
"That woman’s temper should be considered a danger to society, Tony!"
Rhodey’s voice sounded above all other noise in the room — he didn’t even give Mantis a passing glance as he quickly marched past her, oblivious to her happy-go-lucky mood while she watched a dozen security camera’s play from around the city.
He went straight for Tony; who spun to face him, his jaw unhinged to the floor.
"You don’t think I already know that?” Tony all but shouted — the panic was starting to show now. “How do you think I felt after the ruggrat exposed himself to her in all his leotard glory!?"
Steve grabbed Tony’s bicep — he didn’t just lay a hand there, he squeezed hard, ensuring Tony had some sort of grounding contact that kept him from going over the edge.
A quick glance to the man was all he needed to see the frenzy that pooled in his eyes. The panic was only getting worse.
“How’s May doing?” Steve gave Tony one more look, clearly concerned, before he kept focus on Rhodey; who approached them both with heavy strides of his leg braces.
“Pissed,” Rhodey bluntly answered, turning to look Tony dead in the eyes. “But mostly at you.”
“At me—!?” Tony balked. “You don’t think it’s bad enough that we couldn’t keep Peter out of this—!”
Rhodey dropped his shoulders. “I didn’t say —”
“Now we’ve dragged in his aunt of all people—!” Tony went off.
“I know, I know!” Rhodey held one hand into the open. “I don’t disagree—”
“The more people involved, the worse this gets!” Tony’s voice no longer kept tone, his words breaking and his throat scratching the louder he shouted.
It was too much — he turned around, rubbing both hands down the length of his face with force. Any harder and he’d go blind from the pressure he put against his eyes.
Steve furrowed his brows when he looked back at Tony. He watched as the man paced away, just a few steps away — enough distance to keep anyone from seeing him fray at the edges.
Steve certainty didn’t discourage it.
“Where is she now?” Steve turned back ahead to ask Rhodey, a firm sense of leadership clinging to his voice.
For what it was worth, Rhodey could read a room, let alone hear the command in Rogers words. He calmed himself down, if only by a bit, just enough that he and Tony didn’t wind up going at it at the worst possible time — it wouldn’t be the first time either of them did.
“She’s with Pepper, in Tony’s Manhattan safe-house,” Rhodey answered, lowering his voice enough that the camera footage playing throughout the room almost had more volume than he did. “Happy’s got them both under his watch, he’s not letting either one of them out of his sights. They know to stay there, indefinitely.”
“Good.” Steve gave a firm nod, swiveling his head left and right to keep an eye on the activity happening around him. Each monitor played something different, keeping everyone’s attention in some way, shape or form. “That’s good. Their safety is less we have to worry about.”
Steve found his focus diverting to the computers while Rhodey cocked an eyebrow when he turned back to Tony — who was now at a computer of his own, each smack of his fingers threatening to break the very structure of the keyboard beneath him.
“You should know May’s never going to let this one go,” Rhodey told him, matter-of-factly.
Tony didn’t seem the least bit surprised.
“First we need to give her something to let go,” he stressed, subtly acknowledging his friends rough encounter with the side of May Parker no one should mess with — the side Tony unfortunately had all too much experience with. All the while, he kept typing away on the keyboard, his focus steadfast on the screens. “We have no idea where the kid is, satellites aren’t finding anything, the only traceable technology is now in my hands — Osborn could have him underground by now, for all we know.”
Across the room, Sam craned his head around to face the group from afar.
“Or underwater,” he chimed in.
Tony threw him a look hot as the sun.
Even Natasha, closest to Wilson, broke away from her screens to ensure he caught wind of her bewildered expression.
“So, what’s the plan from here?” Rhodey once again kept the tension from building too high, quickly intervening before any arguments could distract them from the actual problem at hand.
For once, Tony didn’t speak up — usually quick to devise an idea, always the one to lead charge, he stayed painfully quiet as he worked with intense focus on the multitude of his own technology.
They all focused in on the same goal, quietly, wordlessly. Even when Rhodey turned to Steve, the one who always gave orders suddenly had nothing to say.
It was Quill who stepped forward, with one hand raised outwardly in the air.
“I may be able to make it work with an ounce of spit,” he offered. “But it’s gotta be at least an ounce.”
There was noise.
It kept Peter awake, kept him focused — wheels moved, screeches sounded, there were clicks and clanks — the noises gave him answers, and he tried to focus on them the best he could.
He needed answers.
He needed an escape.
And to escape, he needed to stay awake.
“Mr. Osborn, you haven’t-you haven’t mentioned what’s, uh…what’s-what’s wrong with you…yet. You haven’t mentioned that yet,” Peter stammered, listening with a painful cringe as his words echoed in the room. For as calm as he tried to stay, there was no denying the waver of panic that sat in his throat. He could hear it bounce off the walls. “I just-I just figured, you know, if I’m going to fix you…I should know…you know. Know what’s wrong with you. And stuff. I should get to know what it is I’m fixing…right? I think so, anyway.”
There was little of his surroundings Peter could make out. Even as coherency fought through the drugs that clouded his mind, he could only see so much of what confined him.
No matter how many times he tried to fight against his restraints, his muscles were too heavy, too leaden. The straps were only leather, he could feel it against his skin — it wasn’t some sort of special, experimental metal that would take all his strength to escape from. It was nothing but run of the mil, medical grade restraints that all tied back to the metal table he laid on.
It was downright embarrassing to know he ’d broken through far worse than just leather before.
But the drugs still coursed through him, burning against his nose, zapping any strength that gave him the ability to do more than bend a couple fingers.
Even that was a laborious task.
Still, he tried.
“It’s only fair,” Peter kept on, even as he didn’t get an answer in return. He used the time to keep bending his fingers, pulling his arms every so often to make some kind of freedom against his binds. “Don’t you think?”
There were clicks and clanks that sounded, but nothing in response
Peter tried to lift his head again, but his chin rolled against his chest and his neck lolled to the side, bouncing back with the strap that held him in place.
He couldn’t keep his head up, he couldn’t break away from the straps around his shoulders, the ones that wrapped around his thighs, his ankles — the feeling was returning to his body, but there was a lingering, bone-deep weakness that weighed heavy against him.
He couldn’t move.
He couldn’t escape.
Still, he needed to stay awake.
With as much strength as he could muster up, Peter rolled his neck, pushing against the strap and digging the back of his skull against the cold slab of metal he laid on. He didn’t stop until his ear pressed flush to the table and he could look off to the side.
His vision was still blurry, almost fuzzy. Like a dirty, murky film had sat over his eyes. But slowly, he could make out the machines that packed the room, the multitude of equipment that filled the space around him — surrounded him.
He noticed the numerous different lights, lamps that shined bright, many different glass beakers, trays that glimmered with the utensils of all sharpness, centrifuges, more centrifuges, walls of refrigerators and incubators—
—it was a lab.
Pete heard his own realization from the very machines around him. There was no doubt about it, everything he saw, everything that surrounded him. It was the kind of room he’d had only ever seen educationally. Like Stark Industries, or—
—Peter swallowed, hard, as he remembered his school field trip to OsCorp.
He was definitely in a lab.
He just didn’t know what kind. Or where.
Or why.
“Is this about…that spider…that was supposed to cure cancer, and stuff?” Peter tried to buy time for distraction; it was the best he could do in his situation. What he was seeing around him certainty didn’t look promising, and his arms could only give weak spasms when he desperately tried to tug at them. “Because, you know…if I had known that….about the spider. I mean, it still probably would’ve bitten me…but it’s not like I made that happen on purpose—”
“Stop resisting!”
Norman’s shout echoed across the lab.
It froze Peter in his place.
He didn’t need to be told twice.
“The more energy you expend, the further off my calculations become,” Norman’s voice stayed deep and low, even at a distance. “This process is assiduous, it’s methodic. Each microgram of anesthetic is carefully being measured out to balance every millilitre of bloo— yes, I ҜnꝊᙡ! I’m ᙡꝊɌҜĬᙁǤ on it!”
Peter squinted against the blurry haze that coated his eyes, finding it hard to focus as he watched Norman grab his head — clutch at his hair, pull at his scalp with pale white knuckles that were caked with ash and dirt.
“This has to work,” Norman’s harsh muttering nearly sent a shock wave through Peter’s spine, creating a buzz against the back of his neck that could’ve been an electric shock. His spider-sense intensified as he watched as the man paced back and forth, crossing the same path multiple times. “It needs to work, it needs to work…”
Even with an unshakable fog of incoherent confusion, Peter could tell something wasn’t right with Norman.
The frantic footsteps, the repetitive tinkering with equipment, the black dirt that coated his skin, dried out his voice —
“Mr. Osborn…what happened to you?” Peter swallowed, more times than once, to get the weakness out of his voice. It weighed as heavy in his throat as it did against the rest of his body. “Why do you need that spider all of a sudden?”
Footsteps quickly hammered against the metal floor.
“It was mine to begin with!” Norman snarled as he hastily stomped over to where Peter laid, grabbing the edge of the table until it rattled with his strength. “I’m finally taking it back from you.”
The heat returned in a way that reminded Peter of the ice buried deep beneath his skin, causing a chatter of his teeth that loudly trembled his jaw. He took a few swallows to control the cold that cascaded through his every muscle.
The silence that filled the moment brought attention to the racing beat of his heart, audible by the heart monitor nearby.
Then, suddenly,
“Shut ЦP̃!”
A shout that bordered the power of a scream had Peter at a loss for breath. The hissing of the air flowing through his nose became louder than his own pulse; the burn started to sting against his nostrils as he refused to breathe in through anything other than his mouth.
Even still, the bitter taste of drugs singed the inner linings of his lungs.
He closed his jaw, opened to speak — closed again, and gulped.
“This isn’t usually the case, but…” Peter’s eyes followed the sound of footsteps as Norman paced away. “I didn’t say anything.”
More clicks and clacks filled the space of any response.
Peter wanted to open his mouth and say something — anything to fill the unnerving silence that ate away at his ears, clawed at his chest like razor sharp claws — but a wave of dizziness quickly enshrouded his entire awareness, stripping him of his voice and suddenly spinning his head in circles.
The lightheadedness was as strong as the vibrations that stung against his neck, as strong as the prickling that coursed through the muscles in his arms. It was like he'd accidentally caused a climb to fall asleep. Only instead of just sitting on his leg for too long, it was everything — his whole body.
Static ran through his nerves, enough to clench his eyes tight, with pins and needles ripping through his limbs as the feeling came back with deliberate slowness.
Peter didn't like that feeling.
He tried tugging at his arms again — something tugged back.
This time, it wasn’t just the restraints.
A grimace pinched his face right as a sharpness dug deep into the crook of his elbows, stinging with a pain that ran up both his arms.
He may not have been able to see far around the room, but with as must strength as he could muster up, Peter managed to look down at himself — his neck lolling halfway there, his chin tucking deep against his chest, nearly getting caught up in the multitude of wires from the pads that littered his sternum.
The sleeves of his white button down were pushed all the way up, exposing the inner bend of his arms, where on both sides he could see a glimmer of silver from the metal embedded into his flesh.
Huh.
Those were definitely needles.
Needles that were definitely connected to tubes.
Needles in his arms.
Wait a minute. Did that mean he had a leak?
Peter tried to shake his head.
That wasn’t right.
The drugs were messing with him, they had to be.
“You, uh, you clearly knew a lot about the spider that…the one that bit me,” Peter smacked his lips to get some kind of moisture back on them. He couldn’t fight past the stupor that shrouded his focus, positive now that the chemicals he inhaled were also apart of the chemicals being pumped into his veins. “Is that how you’re able to drug me right now?”
Peter rolled his head to follow Norman while the man paced, watching when his lab coat swung behind him.
“I drugged you.”
And yet Norman provided a different answer, barely heard across the lab.
Peter frowned, squeezing his eyes tight to use every bit of effort on concentrating. Looking down at his arms — the best he that could look — it was clear that there were needles inside him. Needles in his body almost always indicated one thing, and usually one thing only.
It felt just like the drugs Mr. Stark had created for him, months ago, unbeknownst to even Peter that painkillers were something the spider-bite had forever changed for him — something that he unfortunately had to discover the hard way, with the always helpful aid of Parker Luck.
Only this felt ten times worse, somehow. Like a bad version — a version that made him sick with dizziness, an extreme vertigo that sent his body askew, created a never-ending cycle of motions that turned his body into a carousel running on a broken axis.
Mr. Stark’s drugs felt calming, controllable — like a warm blanket that eased every ache and pain he’d ever endured.
This wasn’t that.
This wasn’t that at all.
Peter swallowed as his stomach twisted into a tight knot. The bile that burned his throat left a sting like the chemicals that stung against his nostrils.
“The anesthetic has mostly left your system, right as I timed it to. This was all about timing,” Norman explained as if he heard Peter’s thoughts out loud. His footsteps went with his voice. “There’s only thirteen percent inhalant being released through your nasal canal at this present moment. It’s barely enough to produce even the most mild of fugue state’s. I drugged you, yes. But you’re currently the most sober you’ve been since I brought you here — a bit problematic, to be frank, seeing as you’re also the most coherent during this transitional period.”
Peter could feel the crease that furrowed his brow. There was no denying that his head felt full of cobwebs — very, very dusty cobwebs, taking his train of thought before he could find a good grip on it.
Surely, he wasn’t understanding what he was being told.
He almost hoped he didn’t understand what he was being told.
Norman’s footsteps paced in complete disregard to his anxiety, heard clearly through heart monitors surrounding them.
“Your recent resistance has been a hindrance, to say the least. The balance between sedation and slow controlled hemorrhaging has to be precise, and with each outburst you have, it only increases the speed to the output of your blood,” he rasped, each word dryer than the last. “A single oversight to my calculations could ruin everything for me — you could easily return to full strength with the sedation being tampered off, and then your healing factor, already a pestering nuisance, will disrupt the entire process I’ve worked so carefully to achieve.”
Listening to Norman talk, Peter found each that each breath he took in was harder than the last. There may have well been no oxygen in the room whatsoever.
With his eyes fixed on the ceiling above him, he didn’t see Norman again until the man hovered over his head, with a glass vial hanging between his finger and thumb — the same vial that he hung over Peter’s face, as if for show.
“It’s take some time, but you’ve finally held steady at twenty-four percent hemorrhea, after about five different spikes occurring in your hematorcrit levels — truly, one pestering healing factor.”
Norman looked to the tube in his grip, eyeing it studiously, twisting it around in a way that caused the scialytic lamp from above to catch a shine of crimson.
It wasn’t until a beat too late that Peter realized the man was holding a tube of blood.
“I must say, though, it’s fascinating to see your body replenish its own blood loss. While the average person person falls into hypovolemic shock around fifteen to twenty percent loss, you’ve bounced between those levels for hours now. Every single sample of your blood I’ve tested, your cell counts continued to fluctuate — they repair themselves.” Norman twisted the tube until it blocked the light entirely. “Finally, with some patience and much repetitive drainage, your mutation has finally weakened to the point it can no longer rebound what you’ve lost. I can slowly tamper off the drugs that were required to keep you subdued, and collect what I need from there.”
It took effort to focus on the glass tube Norman held in his hands.
Peter blinked, a handful of times.
By the time he realized it was his blood, Norman had turned away — taking it with him.
“It’s not the drugs you’re feeling, though I’m sure the sensation is quite similar.” His voice carried on with his footsteps. “What you’re feeling now are the effects of exsanguination start to take place, producing a sedation effect of its own.”
Each word Peter heard almost sounded as if Norman had been talking underwater; garbled and distant, hushed but still loud. It was as if his ears were stuffed with cotton, his mouth too dry to fix — no matter how many times he swallowed, his throat burned.
It took a moment for Peter to find his voice.
“Exsang-what?”
Even then, it broke in pitch — cracking with either the dryness of drugs or the pain of puberty — Peter had a gut feeling it was both. It was the only other thing he could feel in his gut beside the twisting knot that screamed panic, right alongside the hum in his neck that desperately warned him of danger.
Norman paid no mind to the response that sounded from distressed machines. His pacing continued.
“Of course, knowing what I know about you now, you are right to question how my drugs had an effect on you in the beginning,” Norman kept talking as if Peter’s shock wasn’t still echoing through the lab. His words boomeranged against the beeps that screeched from surrounding heart monitors. “And that’s how, but of course — they’re mine.”
Peter felt like his muscles had been replaced with cement, and yet he dug for any ounce of strength that allowed him to twist and pull at the straps on his arm. His shoulder buckled and his wrist kept turning, but it was nothing compared to the energy in Norman’s erratic, chaotic footsteps.
He paced, but went nowhere.
“You see, we knew A.00 would have a higher resistance to any nerve-deadening drugs. We knew, because I saw it all in the initial transmutation trials.” Norman turned to look at Peter when he spoke. He gestured the vial of blood as if it were nothing more than a pen; nothing but a tool that aided him in his scientific findings. “So of course, someone had to create a kill switch to settle those eight feisty little legs when they got too worked up. And who else would that someone be, but myself? If you want something done right, you do it yourself, as I’ve always said.”
Peter’s jaw began to tremble at the tightness that clenched his mouth shut. The ache in his chin was still nothing compared to the thrashing beat of his heart inside his chest. He could feel the desperation for each pump of blood — it hurt.
And yet still, careless to any of it, Norman kept pacing; throwing him an occasional glance, while still gesturing the vial of blood along the way.
“The anesthetic was simple, a basic formula, I had scribbled it down on the back of a napkin in a hotel room before a chairman’s meeting with the board of OsCorp. Created it while at my Manhattan penthouse the very next day — everything I ever need is there, all the essentials a man needs for innovation.”
Norman finally discarded the tube, setting it down into a rack that held many others — each slot filled with a deep crimson container, each tube shinning bright underneath the harsh lights in the lab.
“All it took was extracting the liver from a puffer fish, and creating a soluble compound that would produce a vapor mixed with the toxins found inside that liver, causing long term effects through the lungs that would paralyze even the most drug-resistant blood-brain barrier's. It’s all about the capillaries in the lungs, the most sensitiveness capillaries in the body. By inducing the subject with an inhalant instead of anything intravenous, the toxins of the puffer fish will successfully paralyze them. Which is how I’ve gotten you here. That — that part was easy.”
A heat drew closer to Peter. He slowly found his arms lessening each tug that buckled his shoulders in an attempt to escape. By the time Norman’s aimless pace had brought him closer, Peter had stopped moving entirely.
He hovered, messing with the machine nearest to him, handling tubes that connected to slots that all tied back to Peter.
“The paralysis from the drugs seems to be wearing off, now,” Norman explained, far too nonchalant for Peter’s liking. “And yet as you fall into hypovolemic shock, you stay subdued. Just as I timed it to be. Methodical, precise…but achievable.”
There was a heat from the man that no lamp or light bulb could replicate. Peter felt a cold sweat rise against his skin as Norman leaned in close, the burn from his very body temperature sending Peter’s body rocking with vertigo.
His brow stay hardened as he looked up at Norman — his vision unfocused, but still not daring to take his eyes off him for even a second.
It was only when Norman paced off to the side, and Peter’s head lethargically followed, that he caught sight of the other side of the room — and everything else that surrounded him.
His brows furrowed even harder, the side of his cheek pressed firmly into his shoulder; it was hard to see over the cuff wrapped snugly around his bicep, squeezing his arm even as he tried to jerked it away — as if he could break away from the tubes that connected back into him, attached to needles that dug delicately into the soft tissue of his inner arms, all leading back to the bag that hung low to gravity, dangling to the floor, just scarcely out of sight.
Only once Peter saw it was he unable to look away.
Each drop of red pooled inside the bag, collecting in size as the seconds passed on, matching the same beat a hand would on a clock. They made ripples against the liquid, like pebbles thrown into in a river, one drop at a time.
The tubes that led into his arms led right to the bags below him.
“Are you…are you taking my blood?”
Peter didn’t think it was too silly of a question to ask out loud. He kinda figured it was a fair question; watching silently while another drop created ripples in the bag down below. And another after that.
“Every last ounce,” Norman wasn’t shy to answer. Clinks and clacks followed — he stayed busy, preoccupied. And Peter stayed staring at the bags of blood. “I told you that you were an intelligent boy. You figured this out on your own just fine.”
For the subject at hand, Norman didn’t seem the least bit bothered by what he spoke of.
Peter, however, was stuck spinning the wheels on the same word that kept playing back in his head, over and over again—
Exsanguination.
Not even a ton of falling bricks came close to the crushing realization Peter had.
Exsanguination.
“Dude!” Peter’s squawk wasn’t all at the reigns of puberty — the distress in his voice broke through his foggy haze with an abrupt speed. “You’re…you’re stealing my blood!?”
Hearing it aloud, Peter was almost sure it was too absurd to be true.
Surely the drugs had to be messing with him.
“How else would I retrieve my spider’s DNA?”
And yet once again, Norman provided a different answer.
Peter’s jaw slacked open, half-enraged, half-strengthless to keep it shut. “What—!?”
“You see, that DNA — what’s in your DNA, in your blood….” Norman crept up on him in just a few quick footsteps. Peter was watching him hover the table before he’d even blinked. “That’s what’s going to fix me. And I’ve been working quite diligently to execute this procedure, so be assured that you will not take that from me as well, is that clear!?”
Norman’s voice finally broke with a shout that echoed the lab.
For a moment, it was the only thing that sounded in the lab.
Even the machines briefly went quiet.
No sooner than Peter could blink again, Norman turned his back; and so torpid, Peter nearly couldn’t open his eyes once they closed shut. The strength to keep watching Norman nearly fled him, with a rush of stupor pulling him downward in a spiral that sent his senses array.
Against it all, the vibrations on the back of his neck never let up.
Peter was ready to rip his head off from it.
“You told me…” Peter didn’t recognize his voice when he first spoke up again. His words were starting to mumble. His tongue was getting too heavy to talk. “You said that spider was meant for…meant for some kind of formula. One that…could cure cancer.” He had to take a breath to keep speaking. His chest felt heavy, the air felt thin. “When you said that…you were talking…about the Oz Formula, weren’t you?”
Norman’s face was blurry when Peter finally locked eyes on him. There were two of him, at that. And they both looked pissed off.
Something told Peter he was better off keeping his mouth shut.
“Oz…” Norman’s words came in a single breath, with slow, steady footsteps bringing him back to the table. He stood hovering over Peter for a minute, his head tilting far to the side. “How do you know of my Oz?”
Peter never did know when to keep his mouth shut.
His shoulder buckled, but it wasn’t from an attempt at pulling on his restraints. The chill that iced his bones sent a tremble through his awakening muscles, curling his toes until he could feel them bend into his feet; pushing against the dress shoes that had already been too uncomfortable to wear.
Norman was right — this wasn’t the drugs he was feeling. Peter remembered the feeling of shock a little too well to mistake it for drugs.
He almost preferred it when he couldn’t feel his butt.
“A cure..a cure for any human illness, a-a super solider, that’s what you were trying to make—” Peter gulped past the pulse that blocked his airway. It beat harder by the second. “That was Oz, wasn’t it? That-that was the thing you said you needed the spider for, the thing..the thing that was supposed to cure cancer — make people invulnerable. Make them dangerous. You called it Oz.”
There was a crystal clear echo to his words, ringing against the machine’s that continued to sound with noises; even after Peter had kept quiet.
Norman stared back at him.
Peter knew he didn’t look very intimidating laying exposed and restrained to a table he was pretty sure also handled the bodies of corpses — but for what it was worth, his unfocused and glassy eyes met Norman’s with a firm line drawing his lips tight.
“Stark, right?”
It was Norman who addressed the elephant in the room.
Peter wasn’t able to hide the way his composure responded. It sounded from the machines.
It also answered the question without him needing to.
Norman shook his head, disgusted — a snarl puling at his upper lip.
“Of course, it was Stark…σf cσЦrŞє,” his voice was tremulous against his teeth, his head leaning to the other side as he stared down at Peter, unblinking. “How pathetic…for a grown man to involve a child in his never-ending woes against weaponry.” Norman arched an eyebrow, high into the dust and soot that coated his hairline. “And yet poetic…that he’d inadvertently lose his favorite one — to me.”
When Norman’s feet took off, Peter didn’t try to keep him in his sights.
What little energy he had, and with muscles that were still far too heavy to maneuver, he pulled at the strap around his forearm, frantically — one tug at a time.
Tug.
His panicked eyes flittered between the floor and his restraints.
Tug.
The strap was trying to loosen.
Tug.
The bags of blood were filling fast.
His arms were pinned to his sides, his shoulder was growing numb from each buckle as he tried to break free. The skin around his wrist was turning red; he could see it, chafing with from each twist and turn he frantically made trying to get his arm free.
He just needed to get his arm free.
TUG.
He just needed to get Mr. Stark.
“Why can’t you just make another spider?” Peter had hoped his voice would hide the sound of the metal table rattling underneath each jerk of his arm. He wasn’t too sure how successful he was in that. “That way you can-you can just use that spider, and, you know, you don’t…you don’t gotta do all this.” If Norman had noticed his frantic fighting against the restraints, he failed to show that he cared. “Besides, that way it would be-it would be better, you know? It wouldn’t just be whatever there is left over in my blood, like…like bad leftovers. There’d be a whole…you know, a whole fresh spider. Why not do that?”
Norman’s back was facing him, Peter could tell — he looked frantically between the man and then down at his own arm, each tug loosening the leather just a smidgen. He was losing strength with each attempt made.
“It’s as I’ve said before—” Norman affixed his voice to the sounds his hands made, working with glass vials and pressing buttons that sounded sharp beeps. “There were only one set of documents for the Arachnid Number 00 formula. The bunker they were kept in…it sank to the bottom of the ocean.”
Holding a pause on his resistance, Peter briefly looked over at Norman. He couldn’t see clearly the chemicals the man was working with, his vision growing too blurry to make out the beakers in his hands, each letting off a vapor that poured to the floor beneath him.
But Peter could still see an outline of him.
And looking back down at his arm, it was no different than how he could see the outline of a black bracelet strapped around his wrist, underneath the leather strap that tied him down.
TUG.
“Right. Bummer.” Peter pulled at his arm until he was sure it would break. “You should really…” he tugged, “…work on…” and tugged, “…keeping backups of those kinda things.” He only stopped to take a breath. And then another after that. “I had this school essay once, and I forgot to save it, and the power at my apartment does this weird thing sometimes where all the electricity will cut out but the breaker switches won’t flip, so one night there was this really bad storm—”
“I said, ŞӇЦŤ ЦP!”̪͙͎̖̲
It wasn’t a shout that tore through the lab. It wasn’t even a scream.
Peter froze in place, his muscles turning rigid, his chest not daring to take another breath.
The guttural voice hit every corner in the room, bouncing off the walls until slowly, eventually, it ebbed away.
Even then, watching as the outline of Norman’s figure bend at the knees, clench at his head, squeeze his temples with muscles that were starting to bulge at the seams of his lab coat — Peter wasn’t entirely sure if what he heard came from him.
It didn't sound like it came from him.
“You’re not talking to me…are you, Mr. Osborn?” he forced out the question through a throat too tight to speak.
Norman held his head, tightly. “I’ll GΣƬ it for him — I’ll ƒίx̛ this!”
Peter didn’t need an answer to his question. Though there wasn’t a single object in the room he could see with focus, he didn’t need to see anything other than Norman’s blurred outline to understand something was terribly wrong with the man.
“Yes, I Kꞥσ₩! Yes, I —!”
Back and forth, back and forth — Peter’s eyes darted as Norman went left to right, discarding a beaker on one table only to pick it up again on his way back, suddenly losing sense of each step he desultorily took.
Watching him pace the lab only intensified the sickness in Peter stomach. He tried to close his eyes to keep what liquids inside of him that he could, but just a blink too long and he was fighting for consciousness again.
Not good. He needed to stay awake.
If he couldn’t escape, he needed to stay awake.
“Harris-he’s…Harr-ƒίx̛-ƒίx̛-he’s—quiet, be quiet, will you just be—fix ₣ЇЖ—”
“Wait, wha’?” Peter forced his eyes to clench shut, as tight as possible, before forcing them wide open. It took all the effort he had. He thought he jerked at his arms again, but they barely twitched at his side. “Did you—‘id you say—what’d ‘ou…” Peter cleared his throat, harshly. It felt like his windpipe was starting to close shut. “What’d you say about Harry?”
It was hard to determine if Norman heard Peter or not. He spoke softly, and Norman spoke to himself, erratically.
While Peter had assumed his subtle attempts at escaping were simply overlooked, now he wasn’t too sure that Norman was ever fully present to begin with.
The way he paced the floors, muttered words aloud, spoke in unison to a voice not heard—
“₣łӾ—₲Ɇ₮ it—Ʉ₴Ɇ it—ƒίx̛—” Norman’s feet burned a hole through the floors as he rambled, his hands searching the surfaces of tables around him, his movements suddenly a frenzied rush, “—quiet—quiet—quiet—₣iӾ—”
A chill shot through his spine at the same time Peter heard Norman approach him, the many layers of cadence in his voice reverberating off the walls as he started to mess with equipment nearby.
“Mr. Osborn…did something happen to Harry?” Peter raised his voice as loud as he could. It barely broke the surface above him. “Mr. Osborn!”
The only answer was shattering glass. Vapors spread out across the floor, the glass of the beaker shattering near Norman’s feet.
He quickly disregarded it for another.
Peter couldn’t get his throat to swallow again. He figured that was a good thing; had there been moisture in his mouth, he would’ve choked on his own spit.
Instead, he stuttered on his next breath.
He watched, for once quietly, as Norman rummaged desperately through drawers of cabinets, quickly sweeping the surfaces of the tables that surrounded him.
All the while, talking to himself.
“₣ł₦Đ Ⱨł₥—пѳ, нёяё—Ʉ₴Ɇ ł₮—пѳ, fїж—₦Ø, ₵Ø₦₮ⱤØⱠ—!”
Peter couldn’t tell if the blood loss was making him hear things. There was certainly a ringing in his ears that he couldn’t shake, but he was also pretty positive that belonged to another monitor sounding his vitals; all of them were starting to sound more angry by the minute.
It was easy to tell why. He had enough sense left to know his lungs weren't supposed to feel this heavy in his chest. Each breath was a fight for the next, and then the next after that.
Still, even as he felt his hold on consciousness begin to slip, Peter had an unsettling feeling that the different voices he heard sound into one, the layers that clung to Norman’s words, spoken from one mouth with a chorus of many overlaying in a chaotic, corrupt harmony—
—Peter had an unsettling feeling he'd heard something similar before.
Just like the sensation of shock working its way through his body; a familiar feeling, one that he didn't need his spider-sense to warn him of.
Not when Mr. Stark had already warned him about this.
“You don’t…you don’t need my DNA to make Oz work…do you, Mr. Osborn?” Peter couldn’t get any volume to his voice. His vocal cords spasmed in his throat as he forced out each word through weak and numb lips. “That’s not…why you brought me here, is it?”
Norman kept his back to him, a blurred outline that only grew more hazy with time. “₣ł₦Đ—₣łӾ—₦Ø, ₣łӾ—₵Ø₦₮ⱤØⱠ—₣łӾ—quiet—QɄłɆ₮—quiet—quiet—͙͙̫̲̥̝̃͘͟͡F̝͍̼͔̫̽I̴͎͚͘Ӿ."
There was very little acknowledgment from Norman, if any at all.
Peter didn’t expect any to begin with.
Not with another voice in his head.
“You were…sick, wer’t ‘ou?” Peter lolled his head, forcing himself to shake off the gray that started to eat away at the edges of his vision. He could barely stare at the ceiling, the task of keeping his eyes open suddenly far too overwhelming. “You…you took Oz…to cure…you.”
The hold on his consciousness was waning; he tried to tug at his arm again — nothing happened.
His eyes closed shut, and nearly couldn’t open them back up.
“But, it…” Peter slurred through a jaw too heavy to move, rolling his head to the side until he could blearily see the bags that hung underneath the table; all quickly filling to the brim, expanding with the rich, thick crimson of his blood. “It turned you…into a monster…didn’t it? Oz, it…created…a monster."
It had grown painful just to stay awake. Each blink lasted longer than the last, until Peter closed his eyes and thought for sure he wouldn’t be able to open them again.
"Th'ts…that’s what's wrong w'th 'ou.”
Eyes that were already half-mast and closing into tiny slits began to squint even further, dropping with the weight of his eyelashes, falling shut against the heat that suddenly neared him — making the comfort of sleep all the more tempting, replacing the warmth that was quickly being drained out of his body.
It washed over him like an inferno, searing into his mind as everything else faded into darkness.
The last thing he remembered was seeing Norman staring down at him, the same blazing heat that cascaded off his body simmering in the molten flames coiling from his eyes.
If he hadn't blacked out, Peter would've said a very, very bad word.