A/N: Hello again, friends, and welcome to Chapter Eleven! Thank you so much for reading and supporting this series, it means so much to me! Please read and review, as it helps me know if you like how the story is turning out. Thanks again!

Disclaimer: All characters owned by Marvel.

Chapter Eleven

"I don't think you'll find capturing me so easy, Doom!" Cap said, hurling the shield at Doom's face. The vibranium made a satisfying sound as it bounced off the metal mask, and Doom reeled from the force of the impact. Instinctively, Steve ran to where the shield would be coming down after flying up and away from Doom. However, the Doom statues that lined the columns began to activate, their eyes glowing and crackling with sinister green energy.

Beams started firing from the statues, and Cap dodged what he could, blocked what he couldn't, and reflected several blasts into other statues, destroying the heads. Doom roared, rising from the floor, and started firing energy from his gauntlets. "Captain," he said, "This resistance is futile."

"You're kidding, right?" Cap said, blocking another blast. "Even I know you shouldn't have said that." He kept looking for an opening, somewhere that he could go on the offensive, but there were too many things shooting at him. It was all he could do to keep the shield moving; the few times he'd managed to reflect a shot into another statue felt more like luck than an actual plan.

Ducking behind the columns, Cap tried to give himself some breathing room. He was starting to understand why Bucky always carried a gun. The statues couldn't reach him there, but Doom appeared around the corner, one hand raised to fire another blast from his gauntlet, the other glowing with blue sigils. Cap knew from experience with Doctor Strange that the sigils meant some magic was in the works. Most likely, Doom expected him to deflect the energy beam with his shield, but the force would push him back into a binding spell. So, just as Doom fired, Cap jumped to the side and flung the shield again, striking Doom's wrist and shattering the tech beneath.

Reflexively, Doom pulled his arm back, leaving Cap with another opening. Rushing forward, Steve grabbed the shield out of midair and smashed it across Doom's face, feeling the vibranium reverb in his hands. Doom fell to his back, and Cap landed atop him, the shield raised to bash the villain in the face again; instead, Steve was thrown to the side and into the wall, creating a crater in the stone. They'd fallen within range of a statue, which had blasted Steve off of its master. He could already feel the skin on his back blistering from the heat. He tried to pull himself free of the wall, but Doom was up before he could.

"Doom does not jest, Captain," Doom said, grabbing Steve by the shirt and slamming him back into the wall, knocking free more of the stone. "As I told you, I was prepared for the Avengers." Doom pulled Steve out of the wall only to backhand him across the face. Steve felt the left side of his jaw give way. "It was truly a futile effort."

A holographic interface, much like the one in Tony's armor, appeared over Doom's still-functional gauntlet. "Ready," Doom said, and Steve turned his head to see dozens of laser cannons appear in the walls. At another phrase, this one Steve didn't understand, several glowing blue glyphs appeared in the walls and floor.

Doom threw Steve to the ground, cracking the floor. Steve cried out in pain, but couldn't really hear the sound. He knew blood must be in his ears. Before he could move, an armored foot stomped on his chest, and Steve felt several of his ribs snap beneath the pressure. He would've shouted again, but he didn't have the air.

"Though it was a valiant effort," Doom said, checking the damage to his right wrist.

To his great surprise, Steve started giggling.

Kneeling down, Doom gripped Cap around the throat and lifted him. The shield fell to the ground with a clang. "I fear I've given you a severe concussion, Captain," he said, turning his wrist to shift Steve's head from side to side.

The laughing stopped, and Steve opened his eyes. They were bright, his eyebrows knitted together, the rage there enough to catch Doom's breath. "Spider-Man is still out there," Steve winced out through his shattered jaw.

Doom had to suppress his own laughter, then. "Captain," Doom said, patting the unbroken side of Steve's face as though he were a child, "Spider-Man is currently in my vault. Where did you think all of my guards were?"

XXXXXX

Spider-Man stared into a room that, for once, had managed to render him speechless. He had seen dangerous, he had seen galactically destructive, and he had seen apocalyptic, but he had never seen anything that made him so downright afraid. The dungeon was massive, so much so that Peter couldn't see its edges in any direction, and spreading across the floor on every stone were large, glowing blue glyphs, much like the ones he had seen on Doom's gauntlets. The light from the floor illuminated the massive stores of technology that permeated every inch of the room. At least, every inch that wasn't occupied by Doombots.

Upon seeing Spider-Man, the sentries took to their task, and raised their hands to start firing. With his Spider-Sense still trying to put him into a coma, Peter didn't know where to jump to dodge, so he just acted on instinct, jumped straight up, and started bouncing off the walls, trying to take in the whole scene and give himself some perspective. The Doombots were dangerous enough, but the tech was what was really catching his tongue. In addition to his own inventions (like the Time Platform, which Peter saw sitting in a corner, seemingly discarded) Doom had apparently been scavenging, and the things he'd found would have been enough to give any of the Avengers pause. Surrounded by a regiment of guards was the remnants of an Ultron, fused with some of Doom's own tech; the torso of a Sentinel was laying in one of Doom's inventions, the sides inscribed with more of the magical runes; another Doombot was lying off to the side, pieces of Kang the Conqueror's armor attached to it. Against the back wall, floating in a tube, was a Skrull wearing Doom's armor, presumably one that had tried to replace him during their invasion.

And hanging above it all, suspended from the ceiling by steel cables that looked like muscle fibers, was a gigantic skull, which resembled a framework of Doom's mask but was the size of Galactus' head. The blue lights from the glyphs in the floor gave it the visage of someone standing over a bonfire telling a ghost story.

Just past the Skrull, however, Spider-Man found another array of tubes, one that would have stopped him in his tracks if he weren't constantly dodging laser fire.

And he finally realized what this room was.

Above every tube was the name of a different hero, and inside each was a different type of robotic fusion of salvaged tech and magical runes. Within Thor's tube was the cybernetic Thor clone Reed and Tony had created during the Civil War, with more magical runes carved into the hammer; inside Wolverine's was an adamantium skeleton, complete with claws, glowing glyphs etched into every inch of the metal; Doctor Strange's held what appeared to be another version of the Eye of Agamotto, this one constructed mostly of tech.

Peter then came to his own, and had left the Doombots scrambling the path he'd bounced so as to buy himself a few seconds of rest. His tube contained one of the latest versions of Alistair Smythe's Spider-Slayers, upgraded with more of Doom's tech: shoulder mounted blasters and missle launchers, chemical injectors along the extremities that Peter was sure would probably render him powerless or kill him outright, and more runes carved into the machine's gauntlets. And sitting atop the robot, in a small vial, was a slithering black substance Peter knew all too well. He was well aware that his chances of escaping the dungeon would be greatly diminished if any one of these creatures woke up.

This was possibly the most dangerous room in the world. Because it was full of nothing but Doom's contingency plans for every hero and villain on the books.

Spider-Man snuck through the tubes, carefully trying to avoid the now-patrolling Doombots. He still had to try to find those pages, even though he desperately wanted to just start smashing everything in sight. His conscience was torn. There was no way he could let these things stay where they were, intact and just waiting for Doom to send them against anyone and everyone. But he couldn't waste time and risk not getting back to Carol at all. At that moment, he crossed the tube with her name above it. Speak of the devil… Doom hadn't yet changed the plate over her tube from "Ms." to "Captain." Inside, Peter saw far less than he'd seen for all the other heroes. Sitting on a small glass shelf were two thick golden bands, which looked wide enough to be worn on a man's wrist. I know these... they're Mar-Vell's Nega-Bands! From when he was bound with Rick Jones!

Peter thought back to what he could remember about the time Mar-Vell had spent psychically linked with Rick Jones. Admittedly, he and Mar-Vell had never really known each other that well, but from what he could remember, the Kree Supreme Intelligence had unlocked some kind of latent psionic powers in Rick, which drew Mar-Vell to convince Rick to put on the Nega-Bands. If Peter was right, striking the bands together would send the person wearing them…

Doom, you son of a bitch.

You want to send a Venom-fueled Spider-Slayer after me? Bring it on. But trapping Carol in the Negative Zone? Over my dead body.

If Peter remembered correctly, when Rick would clap the bands together, he would travel to the N-Zone, where Mar-Vell had been trapped, and the Kree hero would take Rick's place in the positive dimension. But it worked that way because they were bound. If there was no link with another being, would the wearer just be trapped in the antimatter dimension with no way out? Or would it not work at all?

Peter didn't want to speculate. If Doom had those bands in a case to use on Carol, then his plan couldn't be good.

He needed to destroy this room. Starting with the case that was right in front of him.

Spider-Man punched through the glass, shattering it, and grabbed the bands. He could feel energy thrumming through them, vibrating his hands as he held them. The problem, however, was that an alarm began to sound in the room, and Doombots were rushing right for him. He took several steps backward, back in between a row of tubes, until he bumped into something behind him. Something that was hissing. Something that didn't set off his Spider-Sense.

Crap.

Peter turned around and saw the Spider-Slayer, the round orb of its head staring down at him. He knew this only because it was clear, and underneath the outer shell the symbiote's white eyes and bared teeth were ready to devour him. The viscous black fluid flowed through clear tubes in the machine like blood, and the metal arms tensed, preparing to crush him.

"Hey, there big guy, try the latest fashion statement!" he said. In a bout of inspiration, Spider-Man slapped the Nega-Bands onto the robot's wrists and pulled them together with all his might. They clapped with an audible boom, sending a shockwave throughout the dungeon. Peter was thrown away from the sound, and fell onto his back. When he sat up, only the bands sat on the ground, a few inches apart, smoldering.

Just as Peter was about to reach for them, however, a blue glowing hammer slammed down on one, then the other, shattering them. Spider-Man looked up to see the Thor clone standing over the smoking remains, along with the Ultron and Kang bots, as well as the army of regular Doombots behind them. In the distance, he could see one glowing eye coming from the giant Doom head in the ceiling.

Double crap.