10

"Extras," Tony had said.

Some extra Spider-Man suits.

He hadn't mentioned that there were, like, thousands of them.

Peter stood at the entrance of Hangar D-12 with his mouth wide open.

Closet-sized containers filled the room, each one displaying a Spider-Man suit behind glass. Some of them were stacked on top of each other, making the room look bigger than it really was. At a glance, Peter could count ten suits, but there had to be over thirty in the hangar.

"You overdid it, Mister Stark," Peter mumbled to himself, looking around in complete awe. "You really, really overdid it."

The first few suits actually looked pretty close to his original original suit – red on the chest, entirely blue arms, and short red gloves equipped with webshooters. The further they went, though, it was apparent that Tony's own influence had trickled in. The suits became far more streamlined, more trim, and there were various experiments with different colors.

Peter tried to shake himself off; he didn't have enough time to geek out over each and every suit, and he had to choose fast.

After a moment, he picked a suit that looked the closest to his own. It had the same red coloring as his, but the blue parts were silver instead of blue. Also, the 'spider-webbing' lines traced all over it were thinner and silvery, making the suit look almost shiny in texture.

There were credit-card-sized keypads on the wall beside every containment unit. Peter tapped the button labeled RELEASE, and the suit immediately slackened and slipped off its stand.

Peter grabbed at the floppy suit before it could fall to the ground. Giving a glance over his shoulder, he wrestled his shirt off and started undressing.

Stripped down to his boxers, he shoved his clothes into the empty containment unit and pulled the suit on. It was loose and billowy, and he tapped the Droney in the middle of the chest.

Immediately the slippery fabric swiveled tighter around his body, settling into a snug fit like a second skin.

Peter couldn't believe how good this felt. He had his suit back – well, he had a suit back. This one was definitely different from his own, but he couldn't place exactly why it felt so weird. It felt. . . heavier, almost? Maybe he was just imagining it.

He pressed the trigger of the suit's webshooter, and the display came to life in front of his eyes. Blue holograms spun around the webshooter, indicating that he had a similar range of webshooter combinations to the ones in his own suit.

"Yes," he whispered, and he realized there was a huge smile plastered on his face. Finally.

Looking up at the ceiling, he raised an arm and shot at the ceiling.

A flashing error message popped up.

[[WEB CARTRIDGE ERROR]]

"What?" Frowning, Peter lowered his arm and pressed the web cartridge on his wrist.

The panel popped open, revealing. . . an empty pocket. There was no web cartridge in it at all.

Oh. Right. Stupid. Of course there was no web fluid. Why would there be? Mister Stark didn't have the formula for his webbing; Peter made it himself.

He looked over at his clothes he had shoved into the empty storage unit. He had taken his one remaining webshooter off when he had gotten dressed. Kneeling, he popped the web cartridge out of his webshooter.

It felt way too light in his hands – he was going to have to be careful to not use it up too fast. He quickly fitted the cartridge into the suit's webshooter, and the error message disappeared.

Racing over to the open door, Peter leapt up onto the wall and started crawling up it. He crawled out of the hangar upside-down, figuring that he had the least chance of being seen on the ceiling.

The song blaring over the loudspeakers seemed even louder in the hallway, and it took Peter a minute to get his bearings. Especially hanging upside-down.

Unfortunately, much like the walk to the first hangar, HEL had somehow killed all the lights. The hallway was pitch-black, which meant none of the exit signs were lit up either.

So much for Tony's plan of escape.

Taking a random stab, Peter started crawling across the ceiling towards the first corner he saw. Corners should eventually lead to another hallway, right?

He suddenly had an idea. "Karen?" he asked in a tentative whisper. He tapped his ear, waiting for any kind of response. "Hey, Karen, are you in this suit? Anybody?"

A positive beep came from the mask. "Top of the morning, boss. How can I help?"

That was definitely not Karen.

"Oh, uh, hi. . . suit AI," Peter said, still in a whisper. "Sorry, but – who are you?"

"Boss calls me FRIDAY, but you can call me what you like."

Peter wasn't great with determining accents, but he guessed the voice was some kind of Scottish. Irish, maybe? That's like Scottish, right? "FRIDAY?"

"Aye. I'm afraid I haven't got any record of a 'Karen' in my database. Want me to check the network for a 'Karen'?"

"Uh, no, it's okay. FRIDAY's fine," Peter said. He prowled silently across the ceiling over to the corner and peeked around it. He narrowed his eyes into the dark hallway, hearing the lenses whir. "Do you know how to get out of here?"

"I'm afraid not," FRIDAY responded, and Peter could swear it sounded like she was frowning as she spoke. How does Tony even program these things? "My last records show that Mister Stark stored this suit in the Toy Box, and all schematics of the Toy Box are unavailable for security reasons."

"Great," Peter muttered to himself. He looked both ways, then went left, padding as silently as he could across the ceiling.

Crawling past a speaker in the ceiling, he suddenly had a much better idea. "FRIDAY, can you ID this song?"

"Currently playing is 'Iron Man' by –"

"Yeah, it's okay, I know what it's called," Peter interrupted. "Do you know how long it is? How long does it have left to go?"

"There are three minutes and eighteen seconds remaining," FRIDAY responded diligently.

"Three minutes. Okay, got it."

Not one minute later, Peter was pretty sure he was nearing at an exit.

He was even more sure when he encountered a guard. Why else would HEL have posted security, if there wasn't a way out nearby?

Almost cheerfully, Peter said, "Behind you!"

The guy whipped around, surprised. Peter shot a web at his mouth, preventing him from shouting out.

Peter shot a web on the ceiling and swung down, letting momentum carry him in a smooth arc down to his quarry.

His feet connected with the man's shoulders, and the HEL agent went flying backwards. He slammed against the wall behind him and ricocheted off, eyes rolling.

Peter quickly dropped to the floor and let the guy's unconscious weight slump forward onto his shoulders, preventing him from hitting the hard floor.

Compared to lifting trucks and pulling ferries back together, handling a human body felt as light as a rag doll. And it was about as awkward. Peter squatted, letting the agent down to the floor as gently as he could manage, even though he was pretty sure the guy didn't deserve as much.

"Okay, you're a bad guy, so. . . web, web, web, aaaaand web for you."

Just to be safe, he webbed the guy's wrists and ankles to the floor. It would dissolve in just a few hours, but hopefully by then both Peter and Tony would be far away from here.

"How many of these guys are there, anyways?" Peter muttered, peering around the corner for any more.

FRIDAY spoke up. "You have got a cloaking system in this suit. D'you want to give that a spin?"

"Cloaking?" Peter's spirits soared. "That's perfect. Yeah."

A weird, squirmy feeling shivered across his skin. He raised his arm and studied it in interest. It looked like the suit was moving.

It was hard to tell exactly what happened, but it looked like thousands of tiny little mirrors popped up on the suit's surface to make a solid sheet of shimmery fabric. He raised his arm in interest as he felt the suit moving against his skin.

Within a matter of seconds, it seemed like his arm had completely disappeared.

"That is awesome!" Peter said, struggling to keep his voice at a whisper. He moved his hand back and forth, marveling at the way the tiny mirrors kept his arm completely camouflaged.

"Someone's coming," FRIDAY warned in his ear.

Peter quickly snapped back to reality. Flattening himself up against the wall, he turned to see a man coming down the hall. He couldn't keep a huge grin off his face as the guard walked right past him

"This is, like, the perfect surveillance mode," Peter whispered to FRIDAY. "Why isn't this in is my suit?"

"All the prototypes equipped with cloaking had a high percentage of short-circuiting and electrocuting the wearer," FRIDAY responded diligently.

"What?!" Peter yelped out loud. He dropped down to the floor and looked quickly at his hands. "You mean this thing could electrocute me?"

"Past trial runs indicate that you would have to be near or in water for the suit to short-circuit," FRIDAY said.

As if that mattered. "Turn it off!" Peter hissed.

The tiny mirrored panels seemed to swivel into themselves, and the red fabric covering Peter's hands became visible again.

"They're still there, though, right? The cloaking panels?" Peter asked. He could still feel his heart pounding.

"With the cloaking disabled, the chance of electric shock is extremely low."

Even still. Peter shivered.

"Hey!" A voice bellowed from the hallway, and Peter jumped and looked up.

He hadn't realized he had made so much noise. The same guy he had just managed to hide in plain sight from was right in front of him. Only this time, Peter really was in plain sight.

Without hesitating, the agent raised his gun, meeting Peter's eyes through the viewfinder.

"Yikes!" Peter leapt straight up into the air like a cat, flipping himself over just in time to press his hands and feet to the ceiling.

Growling in annoyance, the agent raised his gun higher. At the same time, Peter shot a web, hoping to muzzle the gun like he had with the others.

He was greeted with a horrible, dry whirring.

"Gah!" Peter stared at the webshooter in horror as he realized had used up all his webs. There was nothing left.

"King," the man spoke into his wrist, "I have eyes on the kid. He's out of the garage, repeat, he's escaped from the garage."

No! The panic surged higher in Peter's throat. If an alert was sounded, he would never get out of here. Without really thinking, Peter let go of the ceiling and dropped straight down on the man.

His heel struck the guy's forehead, and the agent collapsed to the floor beneath him, unconscious.

Peter sucked in a worried breath and sprung to his feet. "My bad," he whispered. Kneeling, he carefully felt the back of the man's head. There wasn't any blood, but he could already feel an egg-sized lump swelling up. He winced. "Ooh – I'm really sorry. That's gonna hurt."

Obviously, he couldn't web this guy up like he had the last one, so instead Peter awkwardly pushed him to one side of the hallway and hoped no one would notice.

It didn't matter. His gaze was fixed on a door he had noticed in the hallway up ahead, and he felt a thrill as he padded quietly up to it.

Air. He could smell fresh air. Mixed with something else, too – a woodsy smell. Pine, maybe? It definitely smelled close enough to the evergreen-colored candles May bought around Christmastime.

Unexpectedly, Peter grinned. If that comparison didn't label him as a city kid, he didn't know what would.

He pushed the door open, straining against the reinforced metal, and stumbled outside.

Darkness greeted him. Peter blinked in surprise – he hadn't realized it was so late.

The Toy Box seemed to be surrounded by woods, and the screech of crickets was almost overwhelming. Actually, it kind of felt like the middle of nowhere. With the insects screeching so loudly, Peter couldn't even hear any road sounds.

He came to the sudden and brilliant realization that he had absolutely no idea what he was supposed to do next.

Tony had said 'get out', so. . . check.

Now what?

"FRIDAY?" he asked softly. "Do you know where we are?"

"Already on it," she replied, as if the AI had read his mind. "Triangulating coordinates now."

Suddenly, Peter became aware of a soft, thumping sound coming from the trees. It was kind of a chuffing noise, like a helicopter, maybe. He frowned and looked up.

There was something in the distance, but it was coming closer. Peter squinted, trying to discern a recognizable shape.

Tiny red lights blinked along the outline of the dark shape, like the guide lights on a helicopter.

Peter's eyes widened. "Is that. . . . Is that a Helicarrier?"

"Looks like it, boss," came FRIDAY's voice. "I think I can spot a SHIELD logo."

Peter perked up. Sure enough, in a corner of his vision a rectangle swept into view, and it was a zoomed-in image of the shape in the sky. The image was blurry and shaky, but he could just make out the SHIELD logo printed on the side.

His flash of hope was short-lived as he frowned.

"Uh-oh," Peter said. He spun around and flattened himself up against the side of the building. "Hey, FRIDAY?" he whispered. "I just thought of something. What if these guys are, like, HEL's reinforcements or something?"

"It's possible," FRIDAY responded. She paused. "I can't pick up on any of their radio frequencies from the outside."

Peter was almost tempted to enable the cloaking again, but the idea of getting shocked kept him from even suggesting it. Instead, he pressed himself as close as he could to the concrete side of the building and hoped they wouldn't see him.

Of course, of course, he just had to have red and blue as his suit colors. He might as well have been an American flag flying from the rooftop.

Without really meaning to, Peter started inching himself backwards up the wall, using his fingers and toes. It felt like he was getting away, when really, he was just getting higher and becoming an easier target.

The Helicarrier descended slowly, its powerful turbines swirling dirt and dust into the air. Before it had even touched down, Peter realized there was already a group of people on the ground. He held his breath as he watched them, hoping they wouldn't notice him.

Naturally, he wasn't so lucky. They swarmed straight over to him, so fast and efficiently that Peter thought they must have some kind of tracking device on him. He held completely still, feeling his heart pounding in his chest.

They all held weapons. Guns – big guns.

There seemed to be a leader. She wasn't wearing military-grade armor like the others, but it was clear she was the leader. She strode forward towards the wall until she was so close Peter could see her bright blue eyes.

"Are you Peter Parker?" she asked.

Peter opened his mouth, his first instinct telling him to respond with a 'yes'. But the secondary instinct washed over his brain, and he snapped his mouth closed.

"I'm – Spider-Man?" he said instead. Crap. It wasn't meant to sound so much like a question.

Unexpectedly, she smiled. "Don't worry, Peter. We know who you are." Lowering her gun, she raised a closed fist, and all the surrounding agents lowered their weapons too.

"Who are you?" Peter asked. His question extended past the actual woman's name, because as glad as he was to see SHIELD roll up, he wanted to make sure they were the real deal.

The agent slid her gun back into the leather holster on her thigh and glanced back up at him through smoky eyelids. "Maria Hill," she said by way of introduction. "We need you to come with us."

.

A/N: Yaaaay, Hill is finally in this story! I've been planning on having her come into it since the beginning, and I'm really excited the chapter is finally upon us. I've never mentioned it before, but Agent Hill is one of my most favorite characters in the MCU. :D Thank you for reading!

Thanks to cargumentluv, KHARAKI TAKAN, Shadow-wolf48, and AppleSpongeCake for your reviews! I'm so happy you're all enjoying the story!