Unlikely Alliance
“You have to be shittin’ me!”
Clint’s frustration wasn’t just heard in his shout. The loud smack of his hand bounced throughout the room; his palm struck the table he sat at, disrupting the lingering, ongoing silence that came from their collective focus.
It drew attention from everyone but Tony.
“Not a damn thing! I’ve been stifling through footage for hours, and not a damn thing!” Pushing himself away from the computer, Clint let the wheels of his chair take him halfway across the room — passing by Mantis on the way, still sitting cross-legged on the floor. He paid her no mind. “Facial recognition hasn’t found anything even remotely close to him, the entire state of New York is coming up empty—”
“Coming up empty for Peter, yes,” Rhodey curtly interrupted, looking up from his own monitors and locking eyes right onto Clint. “For Norman, no. So you keep looking.”
There was a gravity in Rhodey’s tone that said everything he didn’t need to. A gravity that Tony had scarcely heard before — and standing off to the side of the room, with his back against the wall and forehead heavy in his hand, Tony wasn’t sure he wanted to think back on the times he’d heard his friend sound so grim.
The situation shook his bones, seized his muscles — he couldn’t move, couldn’t think past the same haunting, indelible reality. The same one that he’d been fighting against all year, the same one he’d been fighting to protect Peter against—
—it was happening.
This was happening.
Tony suddenly pinched at the bridge of his nose, hard, and swallowed a mouthful of reflux that came surging up his chest.
Osborn had gotten to him.
This was real , and it was happening.
They all worked swiftly, urgently. But when Thor returned to the compound empty-handed of answers, and Strange still struggled with magic that was supposed to surpass them all — well, Tony fully understood why Rhodey sounded how he did.
Every minute was critical. And the minutes were passing by quicker than they could work.
“There’s no telling how Osborn got to the church.” Clint wasn’t oblivious to the Colonel’s tone. Still, his frustrations showed. “The last any camera picked up on him, he’d entered the F.E.A.S.T shelter one week ago, and it’s only safe to assume that’s him leaving exactly forty eight minutes later.” A finger pointed to the furtherest monitor up ahead, and he kept it there for some time. The tremble was almost noticeable. “You try keeping tabs on every person in New York who looks like that — that, right there, that is your average vegabond drifter! I’ve got a five hundred and sixty eight results that come up for each minute of the each day when trying to narrow down facial recognition to that! The man went off the damn radar, he’s as a good as gone!”
“Keep looking,” Natasha didn’t spare Clint from the obstinacy in her voice. It was a feat she could speak at all, with her focus unbreakable on the multitude of different screens, her eyes darting them without delay. “As long as Rhodey keeps these firewalls down, you have unlimited access to every red light camera, traffic camera, speed camera—”
“—and they’ve all got nothing, Nat!” Clint threw his frustration right back at her. He wheeled his chair in the opposite way, rolling back to the computers ahead; though not eager to get back to the task at hand. “We can’t pin-point Osborn when he looks like every homeless bum wandering around in the city, and that parking garage was the last place any camera picked up on Peter—”
“Recognition algorithm for identity facial features complete,” FRIDAY’s voice announced from above. “No results found.”
Across the room, Tony managed to bury his head even deeper into the palm of his hand. His fingers massaged the temples of his forehead with enough force to fracture his skull into a dozen tiny pieces.
“Try again.” Tony didn’t even look up when speaking to his AI. It wasn’t the first time he made the request. But each time he did, he prayed it would be his last.
Clint, once again, let his frustrations show — this time in the sound of a low-throated growl that overtook each keystroke his fingers rapidly made. The screens changed as he multi-tasked, typing and clicking with a nearby mouse, the haste of their situation evident in his every move.
“Maybe he vanished,” Sam suggested, twisting his chair around to face the others across from him. Only a few looked his way. “You think we have another Mysterio on our hands?”
Of the few still standing, it was Thor who turned to look at Sam; a confused furrow to his brow highlighting the unfamiliarity behind his eyes.
“Mist-tier-io,” Thor repeated, slowly — curiously. He looked to Tony, and then to Steve; both close enough to one another that he didn’t need to turn far when sparing each a passing glance. “This creature you speak of, it sounds very odd.”
Sam couldn’t hold back his scoff. “Oh, you have no idea.”
“There’s other possibilities,” Natasha sounded from the opposite side of where Sam was stationed. She spun her chair around, just slightly, somehow keeping one eye on the screens while she looked to the others. “Peter’s phone was found on the fifth floor of the Main Street parking garage. The last any camera had on him, it was on the fourth floor. According to the blueprints of the garage, there’s a blind spot in the turn leading up to that level. And there’s no camera’s on the fourth and fifth floor stairways due to the narrow turns in the architectural build making it impossible for cable installation.”
Standing with his arms firmly crossed against his chest, Steve gave Natasha his full attention, a deep frown looking like confusion that was masquerading his concern.
Natasha knew him well enough to see that concern a mile away.
“If Norman purposefully went for these dead zones, it would make sense why they both went off the radar,” she spoke what they both didn’t want to hear.
“Clever son of a bitch,” Sam muttered underneath the clacking of his keys. He pressed firmly on the spacebar before turning his chair to face Natasha. “Escape down the right stairway, hide his face from any facial recognition, take Peter away from street camera’s — make a getaway, essentially creating a ghost trail. He knew what he was doing.”
Natasha looked to Sam, her brow arched high. “He planned what he was doing.”
Steve took a deep breath in and dipped his chin low, the drop of his shoulders practically taking his gaze down to the floor.
He really didn’t want to hear that.
He tried not to let his stress show, especially with Tony so close by — he refused to let the man out of his sight, even if all he’d been doing was leaning up against the wall, with his head buried so deep into the palm of his hand that it was a feat he could breathe at all.
It wasn’t that he was worried Tony would go and run off on his own — it was that he wanted to make sure the man knew he didn’t have to. Even if that meant never leaving his side to make that known.
Steve tried to stay composed, but even he couldn’t deny that the weight of what could be ahead of them made the daunting task of leadership chew away at his reserves.
Looking behind him to Tony, he quickly forced himself to pushed those feelings aside.
“Recognition algorithm for identity facial features complete,” FRIDAY’s voice was laced heavy with her Irish accent, and sounded no different than the few minutes that she spoke before. “No results found.”
Tony barely moved at her announcement — didn’t respond, didn’t look up — the muscles in his knuckles flexed as he squeezed at his temples, but it was all he did.
Steve noticed it.
Less than five steps were separating them. Steve was speaking before he even made three.
“We’re not going to let anything happen to him, Tony,” he insisted, reassuringly, with a tone as hard as stone.
Suddenly, Tony shot his head up; a scoff shaking his back so roughly, it pushed him right off the wall.
“There are times when you astound me with your nativity, you know,” he easily responded, smooth enough that it was almost impossible to tell he was fighting for control — of what, exactly, didn’t matter. It was clear he just needed it, any sense of control he could get his hands on.
Everyone kept working around them, determined — dedicated. But so far, they came up with no answers. Just more questions that were starting to push Tony to the brink of his patience.
Steve frowned. He could tell.
“We knew this was ahead of us with Peter,” he said, seriously, firmly, right to Tony’s face. “All of us, we’ve all been preparing for this.” Steve took another step forward, his dress shoes hitting the floor with resolve. “And we’re all prepared to do whatever it takes to make sure Norman doesn’t harm him in any way. You have my word on that.”
For what it was worth, Tony met his look — his eyes stayed as hard as Steve’s, the fear painting his expression one that Steve wasn’t fond of seeing.
“Right…right, right—” Tony swiped at his nose, quickly. “Just like all the people who’ve been involved in OsCorp’s experimentations?”
Tony, no different then Natasha, also wasn’t afraid to speak of what no one wanted to hear.
Even Clint looked uncomfortable at what had finally been vocalized, turning back to his monitor without any remark.
Meanwhile, Tony didn’t break his attention away from Steve.
Steve didn’t look away from him, either.
“The Mysterio’s, the rock android’s, the re-assembled, violently programmed Chitauri bombs.” Tony took a step forward, closer to where Steve stood. “How about those unsuspecting, hung up of some quick cash college students who found themselves electrocuted until they became farm grown vegetables? Or the outright revolting archives of Experiment X that I saw, first hand, with my own eyes — or, I know, how about the symbiote project—”
“Stop,” Steve firmly interrupted. He shook his head, hard. “You can’t think like that—”
“—for all we know, the kid’s strapped to a table right now being dissected like a frog,” Tony choked out, forcing to speak through a throat that was tightening by the word. “The nuremberg code has never once stood in the way of what Osborn wants. And now he knows what he needs — now he has it. There’s no telling what he’ll—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!”
Quill wasn’t shy in interrupting what was clearly a tense conversation.
He quickly made his way towards Steve and Tony, both whipping their heads over to face him — Tony far more agitated than Steve — but not even that got Quill to slow down.
“You guys haven’t mentioned that this fella of yours tortures people,” Quill, for once, sounded serious; even as he made a face that crinkled his brows into one long, oddly shaped line across his forehead. He shook his head while marching forward. “Not awesome, man.”
Tony couldn’t have thrown Quill a more wild expression if he had tried, with his eyes wide enough that they were a threat to fall out of their sockets.
“I’m sorry,” he stressed, each word tighter than the last, “was I talking to you!? Does this involve you!?”
Tony’s shout could’ve echoed the R&D room, if the noises from computers and machinery didn’t already sound over their own voices. The video footage kept playing and keys continued to clack on, and each minute they stood around agitated his nerves harsher than the last. He could feel himself starting to crack at the seams.
“Dude!” Quill returned Tony’s look with his own. “It’s kinda hard to mind your own business when people are talking about other people being experimented on!” Quill pointed a finger firmly against his chest. “I’m part people, I kinda care about that!”
A inquisitive hum sounded not far from behind Quill.
“That is right,” Drax spoke up, staying in the corner where he sat away from the others, sitting on a stool that hunched his body forward. “You are half weakingly. I forgot this about you.”
Quill spun at the hips to throw Drax a dirty look, glaring with enough aggravation that Steve knew right away to intervene.
“I appreciate your worry.” Steve held a palm outward in the air, waiting until Quill returned his attention before speaking again. He was firm in his response. “But we don’t want anymore people getting involved in this than necessary. There are things that Norman Osborn has done—”
“What kind of things?” Quill wasn’t playing around this time. There was a noticeable shift in his posture. “Cause I’m not sure if you’ve been able to tell, but we aren’t the type to just stand about and let certain kind of things happen, if you know what I mean.”
Quill puffed out his chest — just slightly, enough that they all could see — and it was the first time Steve noticed the sense of sternness in his tone, unwavering through and through.
In a way, it sounded familiar.
A little too familiar.
“Oh, good God,” Tony exasperated the words in a single exhale, turning his back on both Steve and Quill — walking away the few steps that could give him extra breathing space.
Steve didn’t chase after him.
He still kept him close in sight.
“It’s…it’s complicated.” Turning slightly to face Quill, Steve crossed both arms over his chest, keeping one eye on Tony while the man paced the computers repetitively searching camera’s of New York. “Norman, he’s…he’s a very smart man — one who’s done terrible things with that intelligence. He’s used—he’s killed…people…for genetic engineering. He claims it’s all for science—”
Across the room, Bucky scoffed. Loudly.
“Yeah? And so did Unit 731.”
Bucky didn’t raise his voice.
He didn’t need to.
The whole room heard him.
Steve spared a look to no one, eyeing the ground for a passing moment before finally returning his attention to Quill; tough, but grave.
“We’ve been trying to stay ontop of him for months now,” Steve had to clear his voice to talk again. He worked his jaw along the way. “We’ve only recently found out what it is he’s done. Who he’s experimented on, how he’s experimented—”
A chair screeched from across the room.
“Now hold on a d’ast flarkin’ minute!” Rocket jumped onto the nearest table, knocking over his chair the process. “You trying to say that scrawny, awkward, weird, runt-sized, talks-a-lot, nervous looking funny kid is in trouble of getting experimented on?”
The bluntness of Rocket’s exclamation shot through the room like a bullet, and Steve nearly lost his balance when whipping his head over to Tony — who continued to pace, holding his head in the palms of both hands as the conversation kept on.
A deep frown sunk the lines around Steve’s face. The stress in the room was starting to weigh on him worse by the minute.
As if sensing that tension, Mantis slowly stood from her cross-legged seating on the floor.
“I don’t think you’re helping the situation, Rocket,” she tried to offer the group, sincerely, somehow just as stressed as them all. Her empathy showed now more than ever.
Rocket didn’t care.
“I ain’t letting no one,” he ranted on, with a claw shaking her way, “especially no tiny Terran, be experimented on by nobody!” Rocket quickly turned to Steve, the same claw pointed his way. “You hear that, Stars! I dare you to try and keep me out — you can’t possibly keep me out! You wanna know what happens to the people who try to keep me out? They can’t!”
A beat momentarily wedged between them.
Quill craned his head around to find Rocket, pointing a finger at him once located.
“He’s kinda right, just so you know,” Quill casually mentioned. “We grounded him from six different jobs and he still managed to show up to them all. Ruined them all, too.”
It wasn’t hard to tell that the low, deep-throated growl that sounded from the furthest corner of the room came from Rocket.
No one seemed eager to address it.
“Thank you,” Steve furrowed his brows. “I think.” And just as quickly, he shook it off. “But you don't have to—”
“We are.”
Gamora’s voice wasn’t loud enough to sound over Steve’s. And yet standing across the room furtherest from them all, her words still managed to travel with a volume that wasn’t there.
Quill was the first to turn and look at her.
Steve the second.
Even Tony looked up, briefly, before he returned to the back-and-forth pacing that kept his feet busy and his mind from ruminating; the firm pinch on the bridge of his nose only increasing with strength along the way.
“I…I guess we are, then,” Quill drawled out, looking between Gamora and Drax, with an occasional glance to Rocket — before holding firmly on Gamora. He brought his neck forward, by a smidgen. “Are we doing this as like, a job, specifically a paid job, or…or is this like, a favor to Big T—?”
“Please stop calling him Big T,” Gamora didn’t hesitate, glaring at Quill long after she shot out the words.
Quill frowned.
As did Thor.
“Recognition algorithm for identity facial features complete,” FRIDAY announced, no different than the few minutes before. “No results—”
“Run it again,” Tony stressed, a little too strongly. The break in his voice drew attention in a way that only brought more weight to the tension surrounding them.
Though usually oblivious to the many social cues around him, Thor wasn’t blind to that tension.
With his hands perched firmly against his hips, leaving his hammer to dangle from the strap wrapped around his wrist, he turned until he was facing Steve head-on.
“It does not feel wise to stand around and wait for answers.” Thor looked around them, patiently, but agitated. His hair briefly got in his face with each turn of his head. “What more can we do to help this child?”
It was a billion dollar question that Steve figured not even Tony could purchase. Even with all the tech surrounding them, all the fancy equipment and surveillance at their finger tips, they weren’t finding answers.
Where technology failed, Steve knew there was still the element of magic on their side. Though hours has passed since Strange went to try and find Peter with his own abilities, he knew they had more than just the Sorcerer to rely on these days.
The quietest of them all, Steve whipped around to face Wanda; the girl not having said a word since returning from taking Stephen to Peter’s personal quarters. She stayed seated in her chair; knees high to her chest and a clenched fist pressed firmly against her mouth.
It was clear the turmoil had wrecked her silent. Even Vision had given her the space she needed — standing close by, but at a distance he couldn’t reach her.
“Wanda, is there anything your magic can do?” Steve asked, almost hesitantly. His eyes softened when Wanda noticed he was looking at her. “Is there anything Strange has taught you that—?”
She shook her head, fiercely.
Steve left it at that.
Arms uncrossed from his chest and his hands fell to his hips, perching there as his head bowed to the floor. He could still hear Tony pacing — that was good, it meant he hadn’t run off on his own yet.
But with time passing and no momentum towards answers, Steve was starting to question if he should split everyone up after all.
Thor was right. Standing around waiting for answers wasn’t wise.
“So, okay, here’s the deal—” Quill’s voice suddenly sounded in his one ear. When Steve looked up, the man was inching closer to him, his hands moving about in a nonsensical way. “If we’re going to do this together, you should know that I’m usually the one that comes up with a plan—”
“Ha!” Drax shouted from behind them, slapping his knee in a way that resounded through the room. “You do no such thing!”
Steve shot his hand into the air before either one of them could start bickering.
“We need to figure out where Peter could be before we come up with any plan,” he quickly steamrolled any agitation that Quill was about to let loose. The command in his voice seemed to reel everyone in, and he used that to his advantage. “Until we know where to start looking, we all stay here, and we get ourselves some answers.” Silently, his eyes counted the bodies in the room, along with those he knew were nearby. It was a beat later when he finished. “Seventeen heads are better than one. We have better chances of finding him with everyone looking.”
With a deep brow of contemplation, Quill crossed both arms over his chest, wrinkling the once neatly pressed white button-down that had long since been untucked from his pants.
“Okay, well…what’s he got on him that could be traced?” he asked Steve, but it was Tony who responded — at first with the screech of his dress shoes bringing his pacing to a sudden stop, and second with the exasperated sigh that emptied his lungs completely of air.
“Yeah, Bon Jovi, because we’d never think of that first,” Tony dryly drawled out, reaching deep into his pant pocket to retrieve the device that had more spider-cracks along the screen than any of them could count — gesturing it forward with a bout of obvious frustration. “His cell phone is right here, and unless I decide to microchip the damn kid, which is sounding more enticing by the day, there’s nothing on him that can be—”
Tony stopped mid-sentence.
Right at the same time he looked to the phone in his hand, gripped so tightly between his fingers that it was a wonder the screen didn’t completely shatter underneath his grip.
It wasn’t the phone Tony was looking at.
It was his wrist.
When Peter came to, it was to the sound of splashing liquid.
The sound came from a distance — at least it sounded from a distance — and at first thinking, he assumed was a bucket of water being carelessly tossed into a tub.
His eyelids cracked open, slowly, barely reaching past half-mast slits. It felt like each individual eyelash on his eyes was suddenly replaced with lead, keeping him weighed down and flattened with exhaustion.
Despite it, Peter didn’t need coherency to know how bad things were. He was loosing blood — a lot of blood. He remembered that feeling a little too well; the feel of his heart gasping as it tried to pump depleting blood throughout his body, the arctic, bone-freezing chill that came from shock, his pulse weakening further as he lay there. Helpless.
It was a feeling he never wanted to feel, ever again.
And yet here he was.
Parker Luck really needed to cut him a break.
His vision swirled, blurry and doubling in layers that wouldn’t stay in focus. It took a handful of passing minutes until he managed to make out the rough silhouette of Norman on the other side of the room.
Peter watched blearily while the man squeezed a clear plastic bag between both his hands, with enough force that it caused a gush of liquid to splatter into the sink below; dousing the silver metal with a bath of crimson.
Not only could Peter feel the blood loss and all its similarity from before, but he could see it; watching with his head lolled to the side while Norman proceeded to paint the sink red.
“…what…a…waste,” Peter slurred, hardly recognizing his own voice. The sound was barely audible, swallowed up by the faint splashing that echoed through the lab.
“Indeed.” And yet still, Norman heard him. Responding so easily, with such chilling nonchalance, that it made the second gush of liquid sound all the more audible. “If I wouldn’t have had to keep drugging you, I wouldn’t need to dispose of so much.”
Norman tossed one empty bag and reached for another from the tray next to him.
The bag gushed into the sink, the metal glistening as crimson liquid pooled, spilling with every twist of Norman’s grip. Peter’s double vision made it difficult to make out the details, but even in his hazy state, he knew that tray of bags — those countless blobs swimming in his blurred view — had all come from him.
His blood.
Each bag being poured down the drain like May tossing out a pot of burnt pasta sauce.
“As long as the anesthetic is running through your system, I can’t use anything I take from you. It’s far too contaminated — trust me, I’ve tried.” Norman’s voice was calm, clinical, fading in and out of Peter’s earshot. “I can’t pull the DNA from your leukocytes while they’re actively charged from chemical abuse. The leukocytes won’t bind to the double helix strand. I need it pure, untainted. No trace of anesthetic can remain. Once the effects of hypovolemic shock fully kick in, I won’t have the need for any further intoxication to keep you subdued. The drugs will stop there shortly after, only once your blood loss becomes it’s own form of paralysis.” Another gush interrupted Norman. He made sure to wait until the noise went away before stating, “And only then can I use what I take from you. The rest, sadly, is indeed a waste.”
Peter desperately wanted to say something to that — the wit was on the tip of his tongue, begging to come out — but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get his lips to separate.
A splash of liquid sounded in the place of any witty remark he could’ve conjured up.
Norman noticeably squeezed the bag harder, twisting it to ensure every drop of liquid from inside the plastic had been wasted. Once done, he reached for another, clearing the tray in time.
Peter could feel his pulse quicken, the struggle to keep himself awake suddenly feeling more impossible than lifting a collapsed building off his back. A painful shiver coursed down his spine as he rolled his head to the side, forcing his cheek against the frigid, metal table — stiffening his muscles until they spasmed from the exertion of his own cold.
Blearily, he looked down at his hand. Watching in muted horror as his forearm gave a frail, pathetic tug against the leather restraint.
He just needed to get a signal out to Mr. Stark.
He just needed to get his wrist free.
He just needed to—
— weakly, Peter tugged.
“There’s only two percent inhalant of anesthetic being released to you at this very moment.” Norman’s voice was a faint drone, his words almost lost as Peter’s ears rang with the pounding of his own heavy pulse. “I’ve replaced the rest with oxygen to ensure your heart doesn’t give out too soon. Hypovolemic shock is tricky, easily fatal, if not treated quickly. As it stands, I’ve had to take such an extreme amount of your blood for your body to finally stabilize into that shock. It’s unfortunate, but I wasn’t able to use any anti-coagulant in the linings of the collection bags in fear of contamination to the purity of your samples. So returning all I’ve taken is simply not an option, and testing isn’t possible once the clotting takes effect. Sadly, all of it must be disposed.”
With eyelids fluttering and threatening to close shut, Peter could feel his grip on consciousness drifting. The only thing keeping him from blacking out was the harsh burn of leather rubbing relentlessly against his wrist, each pull and yank of his arm — as feeble was it was — digging the strap into the tender tissue of his arm.
He welcomed the pain. Each tug pulled harder then the last. Pushing him to muster the willpower to keep trying.
“You see, Mr. Parker,” Norman’s feet paced alongside his words. Peter could hear it, faintly, with the sound of splashing finally coming to the stop. Footsteps easily replaced the noise. “The way your mutation kept rebounding your hematorcrit levels — it’s as I’ve said, I can’t use anything taken from you with the sedative still effective in your bloodstream. And I saw, first hand, during the clinical trails of A.00…just how enhanced the immune system becomes — with an extraordinary degree of superhuman healing a result of your genetic modification.”
Norman’s words were accompanied with distant clinks and clanks of tinkering that Peter didn’t have the energy to try and locate. He was too busy using what strength he could muster up for each weak jerk of his shoulder, fighting to loosen the restraint, pulling at his arm over and over—
“Over and over again, your circulatory system replaced what I’ve taken, over and over — and by now, I’ve simply taken too much. When the body of .00 was tested against endurance, it was only at the point of near death we’d see its healing factor finally weaken,” Norman explained. “I’m afraid there’s very little volume left in your body at this point. I won’t have any left to spare for your mutation to rebound in effect again. What will remain is everything I need to fix me. And not a micro-gram less.”
Peter wasn’t sure if he could feel much of his face, but he was almost positive his eyebrows had furrowed together like a fuzzy caterpillar — it was an attempt, anyway.
The confusion was enough to halt his movements, combined with the surge of ice that shot down his back; sending a tremble through his body that he couldn’t fight.
Even disoriented, Peter knew something was off; the way Norman wasn’t shy about talking, giving answers to questions that had yet to even be asked…there was something deeply unsettling about that.
He knew enough about bad guys to know they didn’t want others knowing about their plans.
So why was Norman telling him his?
The leather burned against his chafed and torn-up skin. Peter kept twisting to loosen the strap — he really didn’t want to find out that answer.
“I do apologize, Peter,” Norman began, turning around to face him — all while squeezing another bag empty. He barely came into focus as he said, “But you should know that this procedure is going to kill you.”
Too late.
The answer Peter never asked for drained him faster than the blood that was leaving his body. He lolled his head to the other side, his cheek planting hard against the metal surface of the table, his skull rolling before it came to a stop. He could barely keep his eyes open, let alone any control of his muscles.
Still, he fought for an escape.
“—how’s…how’s my…blood…even gunna…help you? ‘N’w?” Peter slurred, heavily. He blinked hard to force his eyes to stay open. Even then, he kept tugging. “…y’ve alr’eady…taken…Oz.. It’s…too l’te.”
With the strength Peter was almost positive could be outmatched by a premature new born baby, he kept tugging at the leather strap around his forearm — swearing to himself that after this, he would never, ever, ever take the small things for granted.
Things like being able to break free of a single restraint that tied him to a metal table, or knowing which way was up and which way wasn’t tossing him in a radically, never-ending, high-speed spin that put a broken carnival ride to shame.
The sink Norman stood at — once clean and sterile, now dripping with a deep, dark red — wasn’t far from the machines that surrounded them, each making their own noise and sounding an alarm that all tied back to Peter’s body.
Norman didn’t seem too concerned over those sounds.
Peter was.
“In the name of science, nothing is too late.” He reached for another bag, and repeated the process.
Though Norman didn’t pay any mind to his own equipment, the noises they made caught Peter’s focus. They sounded angry, frantic. Calling for attention that Norman failed to provide them.
Peter lolled his head back, painfully, slowly. He squinted his eyes to make sure he could see, just barely, looking past Norman’s dilapidated state of being — the dirt that covered his skin, the ash that made his hair dusty and gray, caked with soot.
It wasn’t the filth that Norman hid beneath a clean lab-coat that Peter looked at. He focused his eyes off to the side, where the man stood next to a bulky machine; the equipment blinking lights too fast, in a way that Peter couldn’t focus on.
They haloed in his vision, oranges and reds and yellows and oranges and reds —
They highlighted the jacket hanging over the machine, coloring it with a rapid fire of lights that all screamed warning, danger, critical, warning, danger, critical.
Those same lights reflected back in Peter’s eyes as he stared ahead at his suit jacket, the same one he was wearing for Mr. Stark’s wedding — his glassy gaze looking straight at the pockets of the very expensive material.
All of it just scarcely out of reach.
It was all he could do to keep tugging at his forearm, each jerk of his shoulder pulling at the leather strap that kept him tied to the table.
If he could just get a signal to Mr. Stark—
—if he could just buy some time to get Mr. Stark here—
His arm kept tugging, frantically, anything to get some movement in an escape plan that he could barely get off the ground.
This wasn’t some underwater bunker, this wasn’t a place he was doomed to die in—
—Peter tugged and pulled.
He had options, damn it.
“Oz simply needed 00’s DNA for stabilization, it shouldn’t matter how it’s provided — before, after — I just need it.” Norman’s pacing resumed, each step as frantic as his muttering. “Once it binds with me, merges with my DNA, cycles through my circulatory system — it’ll stabilize my cells, repair the broken chromosomes, keep me from burning up, control the combustion…control him.”
Each footstep sounded against the metal floors, with each step Norman took nearly masking the frantic sounds that came from Peter’s throat as he tugged relentlessly at his restraint. His heart hammered weakly as he twisted his wrist, feeling the leather cut deeper into his skin.
He could scantily make out the black watch, tucked underneath the leather strap that tore his skin raw.
Peter kept twisting and pulling.
“I can’t reverse this. But I can fix it,” Norman rambled on, his footsteps increasing in pace. “I can fix me, I can control the mutation, I can fix Ha—” Suddenly, he stopped. “I’m worɌҜĬᙁǤ on it!”
The shout rumbled with a dark rasp that halted Peter in place, almost instinctively. Even the machines went quiet, for just a second.
Quickly — lethargically — his gaze drifted back to the restraint, seeing how the skin around his wrist was inflamed, glaringly red with every desperate tug.
He forced his fingers to curl, feeling the scrape and sting of his broken skin against the leather.
Peter gathered enough breath to choke out, “..b’rning…up? ’utation?”
The words were barely louder than a whisper, too faint to pierce Norman’s frantic pacing and feverish muttering.
Oblivious, Norman kept on, spitting out words faster than his feet carried him; pacing a ceaseless, frenzied path across the lab.
“ƒίx̛-quiet—ƒίx̛—quiet—ƒίx̛—ƒίx̛—ƒίx̛—”
Glass shattered out of sight. Peter instinctively flinched, his body tensing tightly — he yanked his wrist instinctively, feeling the restraint give just enough to allow him a wider range of motion.
“—just need to run the data, pull the—precise, no errors—” Norman’s voice cracked, syllable’s shattering against his dryness of his throat. “Vitals are stable, declining, stable, steady, ƒίx—need to…”
Peter forced his jaw to open further than a few centimeters. It felt like his mouth was filling with quickly drying cement.
“..wh’d ‘ou…” his head rolled to the side, forcing himself to watch as Norman’s blurry figure paced the lab. It took every ounce of effort he had to drag in an inhale of breath. “..wh’d ‘ou…take…Oz? You…’ou knew…it w’ldnt work…‘ithout my DN…A.”
Peter swallowed. Hard.
“…w’y…take it?”
Norman suddenly stopped, abruptly, his fist clenching as he seemed to lose himself for a moment.
His head shot around, his neck whipping at bone-breaking speeds.
“What I took was supposed to kill the cancer,” Norman’s voice cracked even from a distance. “It was a chance at life. And every man — every man — has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it.”
Peter watched, blearily, feeling the clench of his jaw tighten with chills as Norman quickly sped off to the sinks furthest in the room; fighting against the haze clouding his thoughts, pulling at his arm until he was sure it had gone completely numb.
His toes were tingling.
It didn’t feel good.
“Even taking everything back to formula, even after they redesigned it…without A.00’s DNA, it..it broke my gene structure, mutated my genome….change the very structure of my chromosome material. The genetic body suit couldn’t bind to my cells, it ripped them apart — it….”
A wave of dizziness rolled over Peter. He swallowed, his focus zeroing in on Norman’s face, on the barely concealed rage simmering just beneath the surface — too blurry to see in full clarity.
“My mind is now…” Norman twitched as his hand brushed over his temple, fingers digging in as if to steady himself. “Occupied.”
Suddenly — a shudder rippled through him, his shoulders tensing, his fingers splaying against his forehead like claws.
“Ƒίx it—ƒίx—”
Peter flinched, feeling the restraints dig deeper as he instinctively pulled against them.
Norman paused for a second that felt far longer.
“For weeks after that…after he emerged, after—….I-I survived, weeks that I…that I walked. Nowhere.” Norman looked confused. Even with unfocused eyes, Peter could see that. “Here. Eventually, I walked here.” His voice softened, growing empty. His gaze remained unfocused, as if staring beyond the walls around him. “He found me. If it weren’t for him, I’d never have gotten here. Sym—the adrenaline, the—the adrenaline he gave me, gives — the shots, they — it keeps me focused. For a while. It keeps нїѫ quiet.”
Peter’s nerves tingled like static as his muscles fell heavy with led, but he didn’t need to feel his heart stop to know that it did. He could hear it from the monitors; the sound of multiple voices speaking from one more than enough to send chills through his body, the type that didn’t stem from blood loss.
Norman’s hand lifted, almost absently, his fingers tracing invisible lines in the air before he clenched every finger into a tight fist.
“But it’s not a cure.”
Peter’s breaths came in shallow, erratic gasps, every muscle in his body tensing as he pulled his wrist against the restraint, feeling the material give — just a fraction.
“Yes, I know—” Norman spun on the heels of his feet, frantically, almost hysterically. “He said-I Kꞥσ₩! I Kꞥσ₩! I know!”
It was hard to tell from a distance — it was hard to see to begin with; a blurry film played over Peter’s eyes, taking focus from even the nearest object to him. But he could make out Norman’s figure pacing the room, hurriedly approaching the same machine that Peter had found his attention on just moments prior.
The jacket still laid draped over it. Peter couldn’t see much, but he could see that.
Right alongside Norman making a move straight for it, reaching without much hesitation.
“…’ou…wh’…whe…” Peter tried desperately to distract Norman from going any further, his pulse audibly spiking as he watched the man extend his hands out for the very expensive jacket — knowing full well what still laid tucked away inside the pockets. “…wh’n…when ‘our…the…’ire…th’ fire…”
Peter tried to muster the words out of his swollen throat, but his lips had gone far too numb to manage anything more.
He watched Norman lift the jacket with a trembling hand. There was a brief pause as his fingers disappeared beneath the fabric near one pocket, lingering — pressing for a pause. Only after did he fold the jacket, delicately, with an odd sense of care.
“It’s not my fault,” Norman lamented, his voice barely a whisper.
The web-shooter’s tucked away in his jacket pocket suddenly weren’t a care to Peter anymore.
Norman continued to stroke the fabric, folded neatly in his hands, before eventually he gently draped it over the machine once more.
“The fire, it was…I didn’t know it would…I hadn’t meant…”
It took every ounce of strength Peter had to make sense of what Norman said next. He stayed silent, watching, every muscle taut with effort — fighting against the pull of unconsciousness as Norman’s gaze turned back to him.
His expression was hollow.
“You have the spider’s DNA, you have what I need to fix this — a singular strand extracted is all I’ll need to get started,” he explained, his voice croaking with dryness. “Once the drugs are clear of your system, every ounce I take from you will go into a new formula, one that will repair Oz — repair me. I’ll be able to control the mutation, control the transformation — control him. I will fix this.”
A pause stilled the air.
Not a second later, a strangled laugh escaped Peter.
“Du’de…” Peter’s head lolled to the side as his chest exhausted every ounce of air he had for every chuckle that shook his body. “You ‘re…out of ‘ur mind…”
Caught between insult and anger, Norman’s face fell painfully flat — and with glassy, unfocused eyes, Peter watched as he quickly turned away.
“Repair serum is ready for composition.” Norman stated, speaking to himself more than he was anyone else — hastily striding from one side of the lab to the other, the tail end of his lab coat the only thing Peter could make out in his swift steps. “Anesthetic is now set to zero. Fresh collection is set for the next cycle, vitals beginning to drop, steadily — not too fast. Precisely as I timed it to be.”
Only then, with no obstructions blocking his line of sight, did Peter realize Norman had been working at a bench all a long, all while they had been talking. The tubes and beakers led back to the concoction he’d been creating — multitasking, re-creating the very formula that mutated him to begin with.
This time, with its missing competent.
Peter didn’t like the way that realization felt. He much preferred the feeling of tingly toes.
“Pulse rate reaching fifty-one, holding. Blood pressure failing to hold, quick decline.”
Alongside the multitude of lab equipment were a dozen or more syringes with used needle tips, each one exposed and out in the open, catching a shimmer from the many overhead lights within the room.
Peter caught sight of Norman right as he injected one of those syringes, full of liquid, straight into the jugular of his neck. He shot the adrenaline into his veins with the same casualness of brushing his hair. Clearly having performed the task for as many used syringes laid scattered about the tables.
Peter gave one more tug of his arm.
And another.
And another.
“Just need to ƒίx — pulse fluctuating, drainage no longer effected — ƒίx, ƒίx—”
The strap was weakening. One side pulled free, digging into his skin as he yanked harder — harder —
His teeth ground together as the ache in his muscles spread like fire through his arm —
Almost there.
Just one more—
“Subject set to heart failure in approximately thirty minutes — ƒίx — pulse fluctuating, could be twenty minutes — drainage complete in no later then twenty nine minutes— ƒίx, ƒίx—”
The strap broke free at the same time Peter saw stars dance across his eyes, nearly blinding him out of consciousness.
It took everything he had left in him to swing his freed arm across his chest, his fingers all but pulling at the skin of his sternum, desperate to get his arm near his other hand —
—to call for help—
—to survive.
Just—
Just a little bit—
Peter grimaced as he dug his nails into his skin, his hand crawling over to the opposite side of his body.
Just a little bit closer—
—a hand suddenly, violently, grabbed at his forearm.
A single, guttural shout echoed alongside the POP! of his shoulder.
“Guh—!” Peter gasped. “—HUGGUUHHH!”
Shit.
The audible disconnect of bone leaving its socket bounced against the chillingly silent corners of the lab, lasting longer then the echo’s of his own strangled cry as his shoulder was brutally disconnected.
Peter’s face grimaced against the pain radiating through his arm, flames of agony paralyzing any movement from him — keeping him helpless against Norman’s crushing grip.
He was strong now.
Really, really strong now.
“If only Stark hadn’t snatched you up first.” Norman clenched his forearm in his grasp, holding Peter’s lax arm with a grip tight enough to leave deep indentations against the skin— paling his limb even as the color had already left him. Norman never once looked away as he eyed the device strapped around Peter’s wrist, surrounded by deeply reddened, cracked, and bleeding skin. “A boy of your intellect, under the right guidance..there’s no telling what you could’ve done. Instead, you were wasted on a grown man’s fantasy of false philanthropy hidden beneath bright colorful costumes.”
A scowl sounded from between Norman’s clenched teeth as he twisted Peter’s arm, slightly — slowly using his other hand to slide two fingers underneath the sleek, black bracelet wrapped snugly around his wrist.
Peter tried to swallow the pain of Norman’s burning finger tips pressing harshly into the bone of his wrist. The sizzle of his own charring flesh sounded alongside the shattering of a billion nanoparticles that made up the device, creating sparks of embers that flashed around them both.
“You could have been so much more,” Norman spoke easily over Peter’s grunted and choked cry of pain. He lifted up both fingers wrapped underneath the watch, lifting Peter’s arm along with him — creating more sparks from the damaged technology, each ember mixing with the smoke of burning skin. “I could’ve led you to amazing places, Peter.”
Nanite rainbow particles emitted off the bracelet as Norman easily stretched the device, no different then a rubber band. All the while, gray smoke poured from both his digits; each finger that held the bracelet and each finger against Peter’s skin burning with the internal flames that no one could see.
Without warning, Norman pulled at the watch with an impressive strength — ripping the device right off Peter’s wrist, shattering the nanites into broken particulars that scattered down like stardust.
He threw it to the floor, right down at his feet.
“It’s a shame Stark led you here.”
Norman crushed the watch beneath his boot, stomping on it with an audible crunch that reached far above the machines sounding alarms around them.
Peter never saw the thousands of millions of pulverized nanites reach their demise underneath the weight of Norman’s foot. He didn’t need to once the sound hit his ears, reverberating against the walls, telling him everything he needed to know—
—and some Norman didn’t.
Peter felt a the smallest smirk tug at the corner of his mouth.
“…I’m g’ing…say a r’ally…bad word now…okay?”
Disgusted at the fleeting attempt for humor, Norman carelessly tossed Peter’s arm back down to the table, cold and unconcerned as Peter’s diminishing strength kept him from doing anything but dangle that arm down below him.
“Stop wasting your energy,” Norman harshly bit back, aggravated as he strapped the restraint back around Peter’s wrist — pulling harshly to ensure it remained snug. There was no resistance from Peter. “Your heart will stop shortly. By then, I’ll long have what I need to reformulate my serum. Don’t be cruel to yourself by inducing panic into your final moments. I would suggest allowing yourself to sleep — it’s the most peaceful way to go.”
Peter’s could feel himself fleeing from consciousness. Norman’s voice barely hit his eardrums, his head felt too heavy, the world tilted sideways and everything felt like water slipping away between his fingers.
Still, the smirk on his face stayed.
“’’y’re...so...” Peter took a deep breath in as he exhaled, “fudged.”
Realization hit him at the same time he realized he was blacking out.
“Dam’it!” Peter’s eyes slowly flickered to the back of his head, discovering a minute too late that it was too late to fight for consciousness. “I m’nt...to say...fu…”
Before he knew it, he passed out.
Not even Tony’s technology could keep up with the fast pace of his typing.
His fingers practically slammed down on the numerous keys, his mind inputting data using the keyboard, all at a speed too fast to properly display on the monitors.
Everyone around him watched, tensely quiet.
“I don’t get it.” All but Clint, anyway; who finally let his steam loose with a question loud enough to layer over Tony’s frantic typing. He stood next to the man, gesturing wildly at the computer monitors up ahead. “You told us you couldn’t track Peter through that watch-thing you two have going on. How you suddenly gunna make that work now?”
The multiple different screens processed data quickly with each keystroke of Tony’s fingers, blueprints coming and going from the monitor’s with a slew of different coding superimposing them all.
Tony’s eyes were laser focused on everything in front of him, bouncing from one screen to another without ever needing to look down at the keyboard as he blindly typed away.
“Just need…a minor adjustment…” he muttered, his jaw fiercely tightening. “And a miracle, preferably.”
The computers couldn’t keep up with Tony’s hasty pace, and neither could some of the others — Steve being one, his brow furrowing so deep that it added lines to his forehead that likely wouldn’t go away anytime soon.
“Can you, Tony?” Steve crossed his arms firmly against his chest; almost as if to close in on himself to ease his own stress. “Are you able to do that?”
A glance to where Steve hovered over him — a quick, but noticeable glance — and Tony decided it best not to acknowledge that stress. It was all he could to do stay focused on the task at hand.
If it were at all possible, his typing sped up.
“The watch was built with firmware that I purposefully designed to keep myself out,” he relaid, the frustration lining his tone with enough weight it could’ve drowned them all. He didn’t look away from the screens as he spoke. “I wanted the kid to have his privacy, I didn’t want the tracker to activate unless he personally activated it — that required keeping the code beneath five-hundred-dozen different levels of firewalls—”
“—I am Groot.”
The tiny squeak from across the room nearly stole their attention.
Though some looked back to where Groot and his companions stood across from them, those like Natasha and Tony didn’t dare break away from the screens up ahead — as if afraid to miss any passing information that may come their way.
Steve lifted a single brow when finding the tree in question, sitting on a computer monitor with his legs dangling over the edge; all while data and code continued to scroll on the screen itself.
He didn’t waste a beat before turning his attention back to Tony.
“But can you?” Though already impossibly close, Steve managed to take another step forward. At this point, he was breathing down Tony’s neck. “If Strange comes up empty—”
“He will find an answer,” Wanda’s voice chimed in from afar; opposite of where their guests were located. She still sat by herself on a chair low to the ground, with her knee resting high up to her chest, holding herself tightly as she spoke. “But by the time he does, it may be too late.”
“I am Groot.”
Sam threw a dirty look to the high-pitched voice that sounded from behind him. The tree’s interruption was easily ignored the second time around.
“I don’t want to talk like that,” Sam argued, spinning his chair away from the group of aliens, tree included, until he was facing Tony head-on. “You created those things, you gotta be able to hack them—”
“Nobody says hack anymore, it’s not the 80’s.” Tony rolled his eyes hard enough that it caused a brief pause in his typing.
“I am Groot!”
It made Groot’s third repetitive cry all the louder.
Tony didn’t even need to try and ignore him; the engineering at hand was daunting enough to absorb every fiber of his focus. “Once I get through the firewalls and beneath the microcode, theoretically, I should be able to activate the location tracking trigger on his end—”
Clint slammed down both his hands on the table’s surface beneath them.
“So why didn’t you do that last time!?”
Tony quickly shot his chair around to face him.
“Because I don’t think I can do it this time!”
“I AM GROOT!”
The shrill of a tiny voice came from the creature equally as small, stirring a reaction from every occupant in the room — his own companions included.
Somehow, Quill managed to look even more baffled then both Steve and Tony combined. If his face twisted together any harder, it would’ve broken his jaw.
It was Rocket who remained neutral through their collective confusion, pointing the claw of his thumb in the direction of Groot with a distinct casualness to his movements.
“He says look at your watch, you scut-bag,” Rocket explained. A second later, and he gave a half-hearted shrug. “I added in the scut-bag part.”
Tony was ashamed to admit that his reaction time was delayed. His focus stayed on Rocket for an lingering moment, caught in a stupor of confusion — long enough that the thick Irish accent of his AI had spoken up before he ever could.
“Boss,” she announced, right as Tony shot his head down to his wrist — the reflection of his eyes bright with flickering pulses of red and blue. “Spider-signal has currently been activated—”
“I see that,” Tony dully interrupted her, a sense of realization suddenly bringing his overly active brain to a grinding halt.
No different then those around him, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the watch; each pulsating light alerting him from the device, shining against his pupils with sharp intensity.
So busy caught in a trance watching those lights flicker between two indicative colors, Tony never noticed when a hologram shot out from his wrist, splaying out in the room for all to see.
“Is that live tracking?” Natasha’s voice was all but a bomb in Tony’s ear, startling him to finally look up ahead; a deep crease digging into the skin of his forehead once the information he saw full sunk it.
“It was, Ms. Romanoff,” FRIDAY answered from above. The hologram zoomed in on the map displayed. “Unfortunately, my readings for the spider-signal have gone offline as of one minute and six seconds ago. My inability to reconnect via satellite indicates permanent damage to the outer structure of the watch. Obtaining a live location is no longer possible.”
Tony came to that conclusion that long before his AI had informed the others.
The data that was displayed — it had no details to tell them, nothing besides a single dot displayed on a map. And Tony knew the designs of his creation like the back of his hand, he knew that there was a distinct difference when activating the panic signal, or removing the device entirely, or—
“This was its last known location.”
Destruction.
Tony didn’t blink — couldn’t blink, staring at the map and the flashing dot that drew his attention far more then the lights flashing around his wrist. Those pulsating red and blue’s came to an abrupt stop as the map instead stayed lit for view, completing its function of sending out its final distress signal.
“Tony…” Bruce was timid in each step he took; nearing the man slowly, giving frequent glances to the hologram that shined up ahead, casting a harsh light against their faces. “That’s—”
“—I know.” Tony barely got the two words out of a quickly narrowing windpipe. They all but choked out of his mouth.
Everyone else glanced around, looked around — caught similar expression’s of confusion shared among one another, but Tony never once looked away from the hologram ahead.
Quill finally broke the silence. “What is it?”
There was a no-nonsense tone coating his tone, almost foreign from the way he behaved days prior.
Bruce could easily tell the space-man had no interest in staying out of the loop. Looking to the others, he realized their guests weren’t the only ones.
Those like Bucky, Sam, Clint — they neared closer, breaking what distance had once separated them. Those already close, like Steve and Natasha, remained put.
They turned to Bruce for answers.
“That, uh… that—that dot, that…that GPS location?” Bruce pointed ahead with a shaking finger directed at the map, clearing his throat along the way. Twice. “That used to be a full-fledged, government funded scientific research facility. It was-it was run by a company called BioLabs — they were partnered with OsCorp, up until this past month. OsCorp bought them out of their shares — and it’s no wonder why, they specialized in genetic engineering, advanced diagnostic testing, they had Cas9 gene-editing platforms —they were doing next-level work. Not to mention all their labs were equipped with CRISPR.”
Tony’s face went slack, his thoughts ricocheting in his skull like piercing bullets lodging into his brain. He couldn’t tear his gaze from the map, couldn’t look away from the glowing red indicator glaring back at him — taunting him.
Bio-Labs.
Labs.
Peter was in a lab.
His gut twisted again, that sharp, bitter edge of dread crawling up his throat like bile. No amount of blinking eased the burn of his eyes. No amount of blinking changed the map ahead.
Suddenly, he couldn’t stop seeing the documents he found laying to waste in an abandoned ‘research facility’ concealing the true nature of an operations lab that violated every law of the Geneva Convention — but couldn’t be proved well enough in court to bring Osborn’s mad scientist experiments to light, and ultimately to an end.
The voices around him surged forward, barely registering over the pounding in his ears.
Tony couldn’t hear anything past his heartbeat.
For a minute, it was all consuming.
“Alright, we don’t have long,” Steve’s voice finally cut clean through the mounting deafness that had nearly swallowed Tony’s eardrums whole. His tone was crisp, commanding — a clear anchor in the storm of chaos swirling through the room. Silencing everyone without pause. “We gotta move, and we gotta move fast. There’s no telling what he wants from Peter, or how he’ll go about getting it…or god-forbid, what he’s done so far.” Steve’s lips drew tight as his jaw tensed fiercely. “We know what he’s capable of, we know what he’s been out to get — so if this could be the last place Peter was located, then this is an all in mission to get him back. No one opts out.”
Tony dragged in a shallow breath, his eyes flickering toward Steve’s calm determination. The man was a statue of unwavering resolve.
If Steve felt the noose tightening around them, he sure as hell didn’t let it show.
“What’s your plan?” Quill broke through the tension with an awkwardness of his own, his hands wringing together with a clear nervous furrow to his brow. “Not that — not that I can’t come up with one. Just — what’s yours, first? Lemme hear yours first. We’ll weigh our options from there.”
Though Quill tried for nonchalance, the jitters were clear as day as he darted his eyes between Steve and the map — a faint undercurrent of worry slipping through his casual front.
Steve allowed himself a long pause before responding. Not a single individual wasn’t watching the wheels in his head churn and turn with a steady, deliberate determination — awaiting his command with tense, baited breath.
“Wanda, go get Strange. Quickly.” Just like that, Steve’s orders came like machine-gun fire — sharp and unrelenting. He turned, his eyes briefly scanning the room, locking on each face in rapid succession. “Everyone else, suit up, gun up — meet back here and bring your best weapons with you. We’re acting on minutes, is that clear?”
Standing behind him, Quill gave quick, jerky nods of his head.
“I like that, good plan,” he acted nonchalant as he patted Steve’s shoulder, his other hand tapping the side of his head with a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “That’s exactly what I was thinking, would’ve said the same thing.”
Quill twisted toward Gamora, now standing closer to the group as they all drew nearer. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, directing it at Steve. “Gamora, did you catch all that?”
Gamora gave him the smallest flicker of a glance — the annoyance on her face somehow showing more expression without her features changing much at all. It was her eyes that spoke for her — telling Quill will you be serious, damn it , without ever needing to say a word.
The interaction went unnoticed by Steve. He gave one last look to the map before he turned away from it completely, the blue in his eyes burning something sharp and unshakable as he turned to face the group, stepping center of them all — drawing everyone’s attention like a magnet.
“We go in this together,” Steve said, his voice low, powerful, each word landing like a drumbeat. “All of us. We go in together, we stay together, and most importantly — we get back one of our own. No causalities, no man left behind.”
The room stilled, shoulders straightening along the way. The lines etched on faces like Bucky’s and Natasha’s hardened into something grim and resolute. Sam’s jaw tightened; while Rhodey’s mechanical legs shifted slightly with a low hum.
Those like Wanda had finally stood from her chair, nearing the group and nearing herself to the comfort of Vision’s presence — standing tall in front of him, with a determination that showed ruthlessly in her eyes.
It was no different then Clint’s expression, firm and bold and nearly mirroring Thor’s — showing the same amount of determination as the others, ready to fight for his friends regardless of his distance to their connection.
There wasn’t a single soul in the room who didn’t stand unfaltering to the task ahead. Some looked to one another as if to confirm as much — even their guest showed the same fortitude as those who surrounded them.
Drax, in particular, looked downright ecstatic at the prospect of a fight.
Steve acknowledged their alliance with a single nod. Almost immediately after, he turned to the others.
“We knew this was coming, ever since the ocean bunker mission,” his voice grew softer, the weight of the past pressing against his next words. “We knew back then that Norman would try to become a threat. A dangerous threat, one who — if left unchecked — could unintentionally, and violently, destroy all of humanity.” With a hard swallow, Steve turned and looked at Tony — not once looking away once there. “So I say, it’s time we show him what a real threat looks like.”
A charged silence followed — so heavy it felt ready to snap.
Tony gave him singular nod back.
It said it all.
With his jaw clenched tight, Steve lifted his chin, his voice steady and clear as he announced, “Avengers….assemb-”
“I am GROOOOOTT!”
Steve barely got the words out before Groot’s word boomed through the air, breaking through anything that any of them could’ve possibly said. The shattering voice pierced sharply, so high-pitched that Clint found himself reaching to adjust his hearing aid.
The rest of them shot their heads over to the source; some startled to find Groot standing triumphantly on top of the computer monitor where he was once sitting, his tiny-twig arms shot in the air and his already-tiny mouth unhinged wide.
Steve forced focus back to them all, denoting them into action with two mere words that ricocheted against each corner of the room.
“Clear out.”
They spread out like wildfire, chairs scarping against the floor and boots pounding as they all scattered to the exits — some leaping down the stairs that lead to the floors below, some taking the elevator to higher locations.
Of them all, Tony was the first one out.
“You heard the old man, FRI—bring out the best we’ve got.” His voice was sharper now, a grim edge replacing any trace of nerves. The sound of his shoes against the marble floors echoed in his ears as he raced down the corridor, his mind narrowing into a laser focus. “Suit me up in Bleeding Edge.”