A/N: Hi, and welcome to this fic I created because the idea grabbed me around the throat and choked the life out of me. I'm 8,000 words in and regret nothing but my own playlist's inadequacy. And my inability to create a good summary for this.
Title is from the Glitch Mob's song.
I'm not completely happy with this beginning, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I did my best. Second chapter should be up in a few days, there are some tweaks I have to do. If y'all have any questions, I will be happy to answer them. Anyway.
Enjoy!
Animus vox- the voice of the soul
"616! Report!" Peter's commanding officer, a man by the name of Scheill and with greasy black hair, shouts at him.
"All systems are engaged, sir," Peter tells him, fingering the wrench in his fingers. The small robot on the table behind him whirrs softly. "It should be ready in approximately 8.56 hours."
"Good," Scheill says. "513, report!"
Tony looks up from his hologram at Scheill. The number written on his bicep in green catching Peter's eye for a moment before he looks away, to the task at hand.
Later, he tells himself.
"Almost ready," Tony informs Scheill, his eyes cool and calculating, though his face is blank.
"Good," Scheill says, and then he leaves, boots clacking on the concrete floor. Peter messes absently with the hem of his standard issue white shirt. Tony sighs.
"Peter, give me the size 8 wrench," he says, and when Peter hands it to him, smiles faintly before frowning at the number tattooed on Peter's arm. 616.
"Tony?" Peter asks. They aren't friends, exactly, no one was friends within HYDRA. You had only allies. But Peter and Tony were close to an extent, a friendliness that extended beyond the silence they often found themselves in.
Peter had been sent to Tony at 15, when he had learned everything HYDRA could teach him about engineering. He is Engineer 616, the last artificial child HYDRA had conceived before they had shut down the program in order to focus on the rebels plaguing them, as he is constantly reminded.
Everyone had a purpose under HYDRA, and Peter and Tony's happened to be creating machines for them.
"I'm fine," Tony replies, and his eyes are weary. He doesn't sleep much anymore, drinking enough coffee to awaken the dead and building, building, building.
"Okay," Peter answers. They work in silence, until the guards come and take them to their individual rooms.
-.-.-
Peter lays on his bed, frowning at the plain white ceiling. The loose cotton sweatpants and shirt he wears seem to chafe uncomfortably on his skin and he tugs at them.
His room is plain, clean. He has a small bookcase with tomes about engineering and a desk with blueprints and a hologram, a chair, and a cot. There are white walls and a concrete floor that's too cold.
It's better than what the rebels had. Peter had been told about their predicament, about how they lived like savages in the world above the bunker he resided.
How they killed each other for food.
The rebels called themselves the Avengers, and sometimes Peter wondered what they thought they were avenging.
He turns on his cot uncomfortably, wondering about the rebels. He had never been out of the bunker, except for the two occasions he had to be transferred.
The world above was apparently a wasteland of sorts, people living like savages within the densely forested hills surrounding the bunker. He wouldn't even know where in the world he was if it weren't for the atlas he'd been given at 7 for school. He's in what was once Canada, about seventy miles from the Northern border of the United States.
History had been a subject he didn't often learn about, but he didn't know there was a war between HYDRA and SHIELD, which backed the Avengers, after the latter took over governments and turned countries against HYDRA and its allies. The war had eventually consumed most of the world, and there were rumors of a country in Africa surviving the war. But HYDRA had never found it.
The bunker was created before the war, and they used solar and wind energy to power it. The generator hadn't broken in years.
Peter's parents were apparently some of the Viatoribus, roamers of the countries, living off the land until HYDRA found and recruited them.
He'd never met them, and he'd heard they'd died on a mission. Tony apparently knew them, though he rarely mentioned them.
-.-.-
"616! Get up!" Scheill's voice awakes Peter from his slumber. He leaps out of bed and faces Scheill, who has a strange look on his face.
"Yes, sir?" Peter says, blinking the sleep from his eyes and clasping his hands behind his back.
"You're needed in Sector 34, move," Scheill tells him, that peculiar expression still on his face. Peter nods before following Scheill. Two guards, who had been stationed on either side of the doorframe, fall into step behind him.
"Sir, why are we going to Sector 34?" Peter asks, struggling to keep up with Scheill's long-legged stride. Peter might be 5'10", but Scheill was close to 7 feet tall.
"You are needed there," Scheill answers tersely. They turned several corners until they are at a steel door. Scheill knocks and pushes it open.
It's a lab, filled with beakers and strange formulas.
"Is this him?" a familiar voice asks, and Bruce Banner comes up to them, a clipboard in his hands and wearing a labcoat stained with spots of varying colors. The number 743 was on his collarbone, exposed by the short V of his shirt. His hair is tousled and greying.
"Yes," Scheill says. "Peter Benjamin Parker, Engineer 616."
"Good," Bruce answers. Scheill nods and leaves, as do the two guards. He turns to Peter, who watches him blank-faced.
"I bet you're wondering why you're needed here," Bruce says, and Peter nods. He knows Bruce from a previous project that was trying to merge bio-molecules with machinery, and Bruce had been part of the team sent from Sector 34 to the Engineers.
"You were part of the group screened for an experiment that we are doing to see the effects of mixing human and animal DNA," Bruce explains. "Your results were most fitting for what we needed."
"What kind of animal DNA?" Peter asks.
"Spiders," Bruce says.
-.-.-
After a thorough explanation on how they had doused a spider in radioactivity and the experiment would work, Bruce had Peter strapped to a table in a separate room.
"With any luck, you'll get abilities as a result of the bite," Bruce had told him, fingers clasped around the clipboard tightly.
Peter recalls a former experiment, one that Bruce had been the subject of. It was in an attempt to create a serum to make someone superhuman. While he didn't know the exact results, he did know it failed, and left Bruce... changed.
Bruce gives him a look and takes his leave. Peter's left alone with his thoughts until the door opens.
"Okay," Peter says, mostly to himself. Another scientist, a lady with cropped hair and pouty lips, comes forward with the cage containing the spider Peter's supposed to be bitten by. With sure, gloved fingers, she unlatches the door to the cage. The spider crawls out, black eyes studying Peter and long legs scuttling it forward.
A flash of fear strikes through Peter, and he tugs at his restraints frantically.
"Stay calm, Peter," Bruce says over the intercom, presumably behind the mirror on the wall to Peter's right. The spider drops down, onto Peter's stomach. He tenses, then relaxes. The other scientist leaves, cage in hand.
The spider regards him again before it's off in a flash, scrambling up Peter's chest and around his shoulder. It stops at the junction of his neck and shoulder, seemingly making a decision.
Fangs sink into the back of his neck. Peter thrashes against his restraints as pain courses through his veins. His head slams back against the table he was strapped to. There is a wet crunch as the spider is crushed by his writhing shoulders.
His knuckles go white from the force he used to make a fist, nails biting into his palms. Blood wells up and drips between his fingers, dripping on the ground. Scarlet.
He blacks out.
-.-.-
"Subject appears to be waking," someone says. There's the sound of a pen scratching against paper. "Heartbeat increasing."
"Get a tissue sample," another voice answers, cold and professional. A needle pierces his skin and he frowns. Rustling fabric as someone adjusts their shirt, nails scratching against skin.
The whine of the lights and the fans above, heartbeats in the space around him, he hears it all.
Peter sinks back into unconsciousness, silence reigning once again.
-.-.-
He wakes in a cold room, arms and legs strapped down and everything grey.
"Welcome back," Bruce says dryly from beside him. "You've been asleep for six hours."
"Wha-" Peter begins before a bout of coughing interrupts him. He twists his neck to look at Bruce, and the back of his neck twinges in pain.
"The experiment was successful," another person says, stepping up to Peter's line of sight. Cold eyes regard him, eerily similar to how the spider had looked at him. As if he was prey. Something pings at the base of his skull, like a warning.
"Collin Harpy," the man introduces himself. "And you, Peter Parker, are our newest agent."
-.-.-
After he had been fully informed on his new duties as an agent and what that would entail, Peter is taken to his cell and left with a new outfit.
It's a lightweight suit made of thin material. It includes a half mask, which Bruce had told him was only for missions.
He was an agent now. Peter stares at the suit, picking it up. The mark of HYDRA is on the upper sleeve, and he studies it.
There is a knock at the door, and Peter tenses, wondering who was there. He opens the door, expecting Bruce or another scientist.
To his surprise, it's Tony. His eyes are a little brighter, and it looks like his shirt had been freshly washed.
"Hey, underoos." Tony hasn't called him that in years. Peter sets down the suit and throws his arms around the other man. Tony laughs and hugs him back warmly. Peter buries his face in Tony's shoulder. The other man smells like he always does, motor oil and soap and something that was undeniably Tony .
"How are you here?" Peter asks when they break apart, rubbing at his jaw. Tony smirks in answer.
"Pulled a few strings," he replies cryptically, and Peter smiles. They fall into silence, Tony going to sit in the chair and Peter on his cot.
"So you're an agent now?" Tony asks, and Peter doesn't ask how he knows. He wouldn't get the answer and Tony has a way of finding or figuring things out.
"Yeah," Peter puts his chin on his knees.
"I hear that you're going to get an alias and whatnot," Tony continues, flapping his hand. "Probably something interesting."
Like the Winter Soldier? Peter wants to ask. There were rumors about him, the assassin that was kidnapped by the Avengers and brainwashed into fighting for them. About how he never missed his marks, his metal arm with the circle and star.
"So what did you get?" Tony inquires, voice carefully blank but with a thin veneer of curiosity, and Peter rouses himself from his thoughts. "What?"
"I said," Tony enunciates the two words sarcastically, "what abilities did you get?"
"I don't know, really," Peter answers, looking down at his own palms. They look the same as they did before the bite, no stronger or different. "I'm hungry, though."
"I'm being told to make a better suit for you," Tony nods toward the suit next to him. "That's a training suit."
Peter looks at Tony then. There's a certain weight to his words, a hidden meaning Peter can't extract or deduct.
"I've gotta go," Tony says, then gets up. He stops at the door frame. "Stay sane, underoos."
He's gone in the next instant, and Peter is left staring at the wall.
-.-.-
He's awoken the next morning by an annoyed guard. He rushes around, struggling to get into the training gear. When he's dressed, the guard, whose number is 387, leads him to Sector 18. Training.
Bruce is there, along with a tough-looking woman. The guard leaves him with the two, in a room with several targets, guns, and knives. The same ping starts in the back of his skull when the woman looks at him.
"Hello, Peter," Bruce greets him. "This is Amanda Callison. She will be your training officer."
Callison says nothing. Her cool blue eyes survey Peter's brown coldly, before she opens her mouth.
"616, are you ready to comply?" she asks abruptly, voice commanding but quiet. Her voice has a particular resonance in the room, and Peter has no idea how to react, except to obey.
"Yes, ma'am," he answers, staring directly back at her. His back straightens, feet pulling together, and his chin is up.
"He's ready," she tells Bruce, who readies his pen and clipboard.
They start with throwing knives. Callison teaches Peter the correct stance, how to grip the knife and throw it properly. The first few tries leave the knives embedded in the wall behind the targets, until he manages to get a knife in the outer circle, then the middle, and finally, the center. When he lands his fifteenth perfect center, Callison nods and Bruce writes something down.
Peter finds he can hear the wood splintering, the exact instant when the force of a throw launches the blade into the target. He can pinpoint the whistle of the splinters flying through the air.
"616, throw the knife with all your force," Callison instructs him. She never uses his name, only his number.
Peter stands in front of the target, feet apart. He grips the knife and prepares to throw it.
At Callison's nod, he throws the knife, using every bit of his strength. The blade goes through the target before shattering when it hits the wall. The handle clatters to the floor to the applause of a hundred splinters and bits of metal.
Peter turns to look at his companions. Bruce looks impressed, jotting something down on his clipboard. Callison stares at him, before her lip moves just slightly.
She smiles.
-.-.-
They keep training for several hours afterward. Peter progresses from knives to other weapons, until Callison makes a nod at the corner of the room, and the door opens.
Behind it is a blue-eyed blond whose face is familiar. Flash Thompson, 576. Another agent, and Peter's childhood torment.
"You are going to spar," Callison tells Peter, her eyes staring directly into his.
"Yes, ma'am," Peter replies, and they move to the middle of the room. Flash stretches lazily, shaking out his fists and keeping his stance loose.
"616, 576, spar!" Callison commands them.
Flash moves first. His fist moves toward Peter's face before sharply veering down. The ping is back at the base of his skull, and out of instinct, he dodges, grabbing Flash's fist and using his other hand to push him back several feet.
He skids back five feet before stopping, his expression incredulous before it hardens into determination and he's moving forward again.
A foot aims for Peter's knees, and when the ping comes a split second before, he jumps on impulse, using momentum to launch up and land a kick of his own at Flash's knee.
Contact. Flash lands on one knee, but he's up again in a moment. Peter dodges his fist again, spinning around before landing an elbow to the middle of his back. All the air whooshes from Flash's chest with a heavy "oof!". He lands on the floor.
Peter grins, adrenaline rushing through his body. He feels quick, light, almost invincible. Like he could go forever. When Flash pushes back up, he gives a quick punch to the stomach and kicks out his knees again, so he's down on the ground as quickly as he got up.
"616, you have won," Callison says when Flash doesn't get back up after a few seconds. "576, go back to your commander."
"Yes, ma'am," Flash replies, pushing to his feet and walking out.
"Well done, 616," Callison tells Peter. A grin takes over his face.
"Thank you, ma'am," he says sincerely. Over in the corner, Bruce scribbles.
-.-.-
Peter continues training for days afterward. On the sixth, he finishes building what he hopes are going to be his primary weapons.
Callison had been skeptical when he'd asked to build himself weapons, but had let him after a bout of bargaining.
Snapping the two web-shooters on is a breeze, the palm trigger light and flexible. The synthetic liquid inside had taken three days and a lot of chatting with Bruce, but it was done. But he's hoping it will work the way he wants it to.
"616, who do you serve?" Callison asks him when he arrives in his training suit and with his web-shooters on his wrists.
"HYDRA," Peter answers, and the ghost of a smile is imprinted on her lips.
"Good," she says. Bruce steps forward and hands him two gloves, the material on the palm and inside of the fingers thin.
The obstacle course is ahead. After a nod from Callison, he starts.
There are several "buildings" on the course, each one as tall as a small house. Peter aims toward one and presses the trigger on his palm with his two middle fingers. He exhales.
A stream of artificial web connects him to a building and he launches himself toward it, resisting the urge to whoop. Then he's off, racing through the course in record time.
"Very good," Callison tells him when he touches back down in front of her, grinning and panting with exertion. "I'm glad to see that allowing you to build your own weapons has worked, 616."
"Thank you, ma'am," Peter says, and Bruce smiles.
-.-.-
The days pass, then the months. Peter gets better, stronger, faster. After the discovery that he could stick to walls and ceilings, his training shifts.
It changes in other ways too. More rigorous questions about his allegiance to HYDRA. On one day, they strap him into a chair and invade his head, using probes to test him. They find his healing factor and how long it takes to heal. It's painful, but Peter endures it.
"743, what is his record?" Callison asks one day after he clears another course.
"3.23 minutes," Bruce answers, flipping to a page.
"His most recent time?"
"2.34 minutes," Bruce replies in a toneless voice.
"Congratulations," Callison says, turning back to Peter. "Your stage of training has been completed."
Peter grins. "Thank you, ma'am."
Geometer - Slidecamp