Peter snapped awake to someone shaking him. "Peter! Peter!" he looked around frantically until his eyes met those of his Aunt. his… very frazzled Aunt. "Peter! Where's Danny?!" And then Peter was just as awake as Aunt May, as the night - Morning?- came back to him.
"I… oh shit! They're gone!" he exclaimed, and Aunt May leaned away as Peter shot into a sitting position. "Aunt May! Peter and Danny aren't here!" May frowned at him
"Yeah, I'd kind of gathered. Where did they go?" she asked. Peter shook his head.
"I don't… I don't know. They weren't here when I got back from patrol, but that's all I know. I was kind of hoping that they would be here when I woke up." Peter looked up, and actually looked at his Aunt. it was very clear that she had just gotten home from work herself, her hair still up in a bun, and bags under her eyes. "What… what should we do? We can't just call the cops and tell them the extra-dimensional teen we were hosting has disappeared. Oh god! What if Hydra kidnapped them?!" May grabbed Peter's shoulder before he spiraled too far.
"We call Stark, that's what." Peter looked at her. "We call Stark, like we maye should have when Wade showed up here, and we tell him to fix this, because this is too much stress to be putting on a kid your age." Peter felt his eyes burn.
"Mr. Stark hasn't been answering his phone." he said quietly, cringing back as Mays eyes darkened.
"He what? But he's been honouring the Internship deal, right?"
"I mean… I get to work in the labs, but I've mostly just been working with the college interns, which is cool. But, um, Mr. Stark hasn't worked with me in at least a month?" Mays eyes went darker as her face twisted into a scowl. Peter watched as she stood up from her position next to his bed and left his room, and he scrambled to follow. "Wait! Aunt May, what are you…?"
"I'm going to call Stark, and I'm going to give that man a piece of my mind, and then I'm going to tell him that Danny is gone, and he is damn well going to listen to me, or he'll be waking up in a ditch." Mays voice was cold as she dug her phone out of her purse, and her words caused Peter to sit heavily on the couch, speechless.
May dialled Mr. Stark on her phone, and from the way her frown deepened, it had gone to voicemail. She dialed again, and again, her scowl deepening each time the phone went to voicemail, until Peters spider sense had started up a low hum and Peter had pressed himself fully into the corner of the couch. Just as Peter was convinced that May was going to grab her things and go over to Stark Industries to give Tony a piece of her mind in person, he heard the faint click of the phone being picked up.
"Please tell me this is something important, May. I'm kind of in the middle of something."
The words that May said to Mr. Stark did not bear repeating, and Peter was pretty sure that he'd tuned them out for his own safety anyway. By the end of the conversation, May looked a lot calmer, and Peter hadn't heard Mr. Stark try to defend himself for the last half hour of the conversation. May was silent for a minute, and Peter didn't think he'd ever heard Mr. Stark sound as small as he did when he spoke next.
"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Parker. I promise I'll think about what I'm doing more in the future."
"You damn well better!"
"Was… was that all?" May was silent for a short moment, as she gathered her thoughts.
"No. that was not all." Peter could almost swear he heard Mr. Stark whimper. "Danny's gone missing." and those words were all it took for to sound himself again.
"What?! How long has he been missing? Never mind, I'll be there in fifteen minutes, we can go over everything then. Is your apartment secure? Are you two safe? Did Hydra take him?" Peter breathed a sigh of relief. Help was on the way.
Dr Stephanie Martin stared at the blue folder sitting innocently dead center of her desk as though it had personally offended her. Inside the folder, if she cared to open it again, were the reports from the remaining eight soldiers who had returned from her fatally failed operation to capture the 'ghost'. In front of her desk stood the soldier who had spearheaded the operation. Dr Martin glanced up at the soldier, who stood at attention with her hair in a ponytail, wearing a stoney expression.
"You're telling me that a madman and the subject wiped out nearly two hundred soldiers on their own, with no help from anyone else?" Dr Martin asked, her tone carefully devoid of the horror that she felt at the knowledge.
"Yes, ma'am." The soldier responded promptly. Dr Martin ran a hand through her hair, tugging slightly on the ends.
"You're sure you were the only eight alive?"
"Yes ma'am. If anyone else was alive, they aren't anymore." The soldiers tone was blank, completely devoid of any emotion, past the point of forced nonchalance, clearly lacking any emotional response. Dr Martin nodded to herself.
"At ease, soldier. You are dismissed." At Dr Martins words, the soldiers shoulders relaxed slightly, and she saluted before turning on her heel and leaving Dr Martin to her thoughts.
Dr Martin cursed into the silence of her office. She was dead. She had eight soldiers left to her name, all of whom were loyal to hydra, and hydra only. It would only take a single word from a higher up for them to turn around and kill Dr Martin in her sleep.
Dr Martin flipped the folder open, and stared at the first page again. It was a list of numbers and letters, each combination representing a soldier. Eight of them scattered throughout the page had a little green check next to them. The rest were crossed out in red. The other eight pages in the folder were brief accounts of the mission, each from another of the surviving soldiers.
The words contained on those pages told a bloody account too brutal for Dr Martin to read through a second time, but she knew what was contained on those pages. She knew exactly what the subject and the madman were capable of.
Dr Martin dropped her head into her hands. She was dead, no matter what she did. She had another two months before madam hydras next check in, but even if she got close to recapturing the subject, either the madman or the subject would kill her. Dr Martin sucked in a ragged breath. She needed leverage. Something that would stop them in their tracks. Something to lure them in.
Peter sat with his legs folded watching the sunset from the top of the building where he met with Daredevil for training. Mr. Stark had been very frantic when he had arrived at their apartment, and after a brief rundown of the last few weeks, and Mr. Stark chewing him out for even talking to Deadpool, they had come up with a gameplan. Which, to Peters dismay, had basically amounted to "Tell Daredevil what happened and wait".
So wait Peter did, under the purpling sky streaked with pinks and reds, for the second night in a row. Peter had told Mr. Stark that it would be more productive to talk to Daredevil at his next training night, tomorrow, when double D was expecting him, but Mr. Stark had waved him off and told him something like "I'm sure the man will notice if you hang out on the roof long enough". Peter stood up and stretched. He figured he might as well do a little swinging around before coming back to the building, seeing as he didn't think that Daredevil was going to show tonight anyway.
When Peter came back to the roof, an hour later, his spidey sense started up a low hum. He scanned the surrounding roofs, and, finding nothing, settled back down to wait, although he settled into a crouch this time, instead of sitting down like he wanted to. After about fifteen minutes in a crouch, his spidey sense finally seemed to calm down, and Peter relaxed a little, standing up and stretching his legs.
"You are an entire day early." Peter let out a totally manly, not-shrill-what-so-ever shriek at the voice behind him, spinning around and landing in a fighting stance, before relaxing at the sight of Daredevil standing, arms crossed, right in front of him. Daredevils lips were pulled into a barely there smirk, and Peter narrowed his eyes.
"You did that on purpose!" Peter exclaimed. Daredevils lips twitched.
"Day early." Daredevil said. "Why are you here? Did you forget what night we usually meet?" Peter shook his head.
"No, no I needed to talk to you." Peters shoulders slumped, and Daredevils head tilted slightly as he waved his hand as though to say 'go on'. Peter cleared his throat. "Sooo, um." Peter coughed guiltily. "Ah, Danny may have, or well, no he definitely, and Deadpool too, um, well. They were, you know, both of them were staying at my apartment, right? So, um. Danny's been like, really clingy with Deadpool, and I guess that makes sense, because he said that he watched Deadpool die, which would be, um, super traumatizing, but I don't know how someone could die and then not be dead, unless they were resuscitated, but they didn't mention any-"
"Kid!" Daredevil snapped, cutting off Peters nervous rambling. "Is there a point to this?"
"Oh, yeah! Right. So Danny and Deadpool disappeared." Daredevils jaw tightened at Peters words, and any hint of a smile on his face completely vanished. "Like, three days ago. Mr. Stark thought you might be able to help."
"Deadpool took Danny with him when he skipped town?" Peter nodded jerkily. "Dear Lord, forgive me for my ignorance. I truly thought Deadpool would have more self control than this." Daredevil muttered to himself. Peter got the feeling he wasn't supposed to have heard that, so he didn't say anything about it. "Alright, when does Stark want to talk to me, and what's the current plan?"
