"We need to get out of here," Peter said. He rushed to Harry and helped him into a sitting position. His mind and heart were racing, coming up with ways to get Harry out of the building.

"I can't," Harry said, his voice a bit hoarse. "I can't walk."

"Then I'll swing us out," Peter said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"I don't think I can hold on," Harry said. He did look pretty weak. Peter knew he hadn't lost much blood, but there was a good chance Harry was in shock.

His leg had just gotten sliced open. Not everyone was as good at working through pain as Peter.

"So, what? We just sit here and wait?" Peter asked.

"You aren't coming up with anything better," Harry said. Peter made a frustrated noise and put his face in his hands.

"I'm going to go put on my suit, because, like you said, we're fucked, and then we're going to come up with a plan to get out of here," Peter said. His brain was scrambled, and every plan he came up with was impossible. He had never been good with plans, and any plans that had ever halfway worked—like the breakout—fell apart in the third act.

"You could leave me," Harry said.

"You fucking drama queen," Peter snapped. "After everything that we've been through, I am not leaving you for Ravencroft."

He tore his hands from his face and looked into Harry's eyes—his blue eyes, still cold from the adrenaline and pain. There was something on Harry's face he wasn't sure he had ever seen before.

"We're sticking together," Peter said, and he bent down and pulled Harry's face to his own. The kiss was gentler than the momentum would suggest, and the knot in Peter's stomach made him realize, with mild horror, that he hadn't gotten to give Gwen a kiss before she died, and he wasn't going to make that mistake with Harry.

And then he wanted to kick his own ass, because he wasn't going to let Harry die.

"Be right back," Peter said, and he ran out of the exam room, across the lab, and into the elevator. Vaguely, he was aware that it was a lucky coincidence that he had moved his suits into the closet just below the lab.

His Spidey Sense was unbearably loud. For once, it wasn't helping. He knew the danger was incoming, but he didn't know how to avoid it.

As Peter changed into his suit—which he had turned into an art form reliant on speed—he tried to come up with a plan. Not even a perfect plan, just a plan.

Peter had barely pulled up the zipper on the back of his one non-ruined suit when his Spidey Sense changed. It had taken several years of danger for Peter to truly understand the complexities that caused the ringing in his ears, and even then, it sometimes continued to elude him.

But Peter understood this change loud and clear. The vague, general threat of a tracker in Harry's leg had changed to something more concrete. Something more immediate.

Something was coming.

Peter grabbed his mask and ran back to the elevator, not wanting to lose a second.

Ravencroft was basically in New Rochelle, which meant that he and Harry had some time. It was hard to tell how long it had been since the tracker had been activated, but it wasn't nearly enough time for Ravencroft to muster up a small army and start driving south, let alone make it into the city.

"Harry!" Peter called when the elevator doors opened. "Talk to me!"

"In a lot of pain," Harry called back, limping out of the exam room and again wearing Peter's sweatshirt. Peter could tell that even with the webs holding the wound closed, Harry was still bleeding. There was a dark stain growing on the side of his pants, and Peter came up with a plan.

"We're going back to my aunt's house," Peter said. "We can hide there and she'll get you stitched up."

"That's the same plan you came up with last time we were running from Ravencroft," Harry said.

"It's a good plan," Peter said. He checked his webshooters as he walked and noticed they were getting low. It was fine—there was a chance he and Harry wouldn't even need the webshooters if they got lucky. All they needed was an empty subway to get them into Queens, and then May would pick them up from the station.

"It's a shitty plan," Harry said. "But I trust you."

Peter wanted to live in that moment, in the simple admission that Harry trusted him enough to go with his stupid, half-baked plan.

Instead, he had no choice but to shove his mask on, leap for Harry, and pull him behind one of the lab tables as the windows blew in.

The world morphed into a storm of glass and noise, and Peter knew that if he had hesitated for even a second, Harry might be dead.

"Okay, new plan," Peter yelled. It was so loud all of a sudden. "Stay alive!"

"Your plans are fucking awful, Peter!" Harry yelled back, and Peter knew they were in deep trouble by the use of his full name.

Peter put a hand on Harry's neck to keep him low as Peter stuck his head above the table to see what was going on.

Just outside of the now shattered windows was a monster made of sleek metal. It wasn't the first time Peter had ever seen an opponent made of metal—hello, weird Russian rhino—but as he stared at the shrieking propellers on either side of its massive arms and looked at the blinking red lights on its helmet, Peter realized there wasn't even a person inside of the metal.

"You guys couldn't even send a real person?" Peter yelled. "Are we that unimportant?"

"After ten years of experiments on Harold Osborn, we realized we would need to make something strong enough to handle him should he ever break out," a voice said over the sound of propellers. Peter noticed the speaker built into the drone's chest immediately.

"You hear that, Harold? They think you're a threat," Peter said, not passing up an opportunity to rub Harry's stupid name in his face. He still had a hand on Harry's neck, and he risked rubbing his thumb in a circle over Harry's skin.

"Smart guys," Harry said, sounding a bit faint. Peter was sure the dorne couldn't pick up what he was saying. "I've got a superhero boyfriend protecting me."

"Boyfriend, huh?" Peter asked, not sure if his heart was racing from the drone or Harry dropping the b-word. "Do you really think now's the time?"

"Well, that thing is here to kill us," Harry said. "Figured it was as good of a time as any."

Peter glanced down at Harry, and he wasn't sure if the situation had made him panic to the point of imagining things or if Harry was looking much more pale than usual.

"You have something of ours, Spider-Man," the drone said. "Release Mr. Osborn and we will leave you alone."

"Sorry, man," Peter said. "I don't share."

Peter had been studying the drone as well as he could when there were several dozen yards between them. He could see two propellers next to what looked like guns. The glowing red dots were surely the thing's eyes, and Peter figured he could at least buy some time if he covered those.

So he did. He jumped out from behind the table and fired two exact webs as he ran toward the window.

Harry was yelling.

Peter couldn't hear what he was saying.

Peter launched himself out the window and into open air—only for a moment. He hit the front of the drone and immediately pulled it down. He instantly wished he had built some sort of noise canceling device into the mask, because the noise of the propellers instantly filled Peter's ears and drowned out the world around him.

The additional weight of one Spider-Man pulled the drone down by several floors, and Peter began feeling the drone for any weak spots. The machine was more well-made than Peter assumed it would have been, and Peter couldn't get his fingers under any of the metal. He slapped his hand onto the chestplate and pulled, hoping his stick would be enough to pull the drone apart.

"What are you made of?" Peter yelled when he was unable to dismantle the drone by hand.

"This device is made with vibranium, a very rare metal that Oscorp was known for importing and using in their top-secret weapons projects," the drone said. Whoever was speaking to Peter from Ravencroft sounded borderline bored.

"If it's top secret, how did you hear about them?" Peter asked. He really didn't care, but he figured that talking would distract the drone's operator slightly. Basic engineering dictated that something fully articulated needed joints, and Peter just needed to find a way to start fusing them with webbing.

"Mr. Osborn was more than happy to tell us all about Oscorp's activities when he was in our care," the voice said, and Peter could hear a menacing grin even with dozens of miles between himself and the operator.

"He isn't a very cooperative guy," Peter said. As the drone struggled to ascend back to the top floor, Peter noticed an opening by the drone's shoulder.

It was exactly what he had been looking for.

"No, but we had our techniques," the voice said. Peter froze, his left wrist pointed at the opening he had spotted. He knew he needed to work fast and not get distracted—because Gwen had always been quick to point out that he always got distracted and wrapped up in fights—but as his brain moved from suspicion to shock to rage, he was unable to make the move that would have brought the drone closer to the ground.

"You tortured him for information," Peter said, looking at the web-covered eyes of the drone. There wasn't a person in there, and the person he was talking to was in New Rochelle, but Peter felt like ripping the drone apart piece by piece as realization sunk in.

"We don't use the t-word here," the voice said. "Think of it like… incredibly persuasive methods. He was very helpful once he realized the alternative."

A rage Peter hadn't felt in years was building beneath his skin. He was flying somewhere above the sixtieth floor but couldn't be bothered to think of what would happen if he took the drone down in that moment.

"You know, it was the funniest thing," the voice continued. "Every time we would take him in, he would scream that he knew Spider-Man. For a while, he kept saying you'd come save him. And it looks like you can't."

Peter tried focusing on the joint in the drone's shoulder.

"Sometimes, when he'd be pumped with whatever drug we were testing, he'd talk about you. He'd always say you were his best friend and that he knew you'd come one day. I took great pleasure in watching that hope die," the voice said.

Gwen's voice was in Peter's ear, telling him that whoever was behind the drone was just trying to get a rise out of him. It was tragic that Peter had always had trouble listening to that voice.

"I was his doctor for ten years," the voice said. "The first time I cut him open, he screamed for you. After that, we started putting him under. He was far too noisy."

Peter lost it. He dove his hand into the shoulder opening he had noticed—webs weren't enough, not when he wanted to tear the world down. He was screaming, aware of the rise of the drone but not caring.

Harry had been bruised and battered when Peter had broken him out. He had been a different person.

Because of Ravencroft. Because of whoever had come to take him back.

When his fingers hooked under the metal plate connecting the arm to the rest of the drone, Peter was shocked. His body seized, completely immoble, and he would have fallen if not for the drone's other arm grabbing his body and throwing him through one of the intact windows leading to the lab and directly into one of the work tables.

Even with his brain fried, Peter could find it in himself to be annoyed at the fact the drone had ignored the already broken windows when throwing him.

"Spidey!" Harry yelled. Peter looked up, and he couldn't see him.

The lab was ruined. Several of the tables had been flipped, and a few of the expensive-looking machines were smoking. Fire alarms had been activated, but no sprinklers had gone off yet.

"Harry," Peter yelled, "don't you move!"

The air was knocked out of Peter's lungs as he was tackled from behind and knocked to the floor. His face hit the tile with a smack that left him blinded for a few moments. There wasn't a doubt in Peter's mind that his nose had been broken—he could feel that it was out of place.

And then he was smashed into the floor again, his brain rattling against his skull. Peter managed to flip over, to look at the drone. He could feel broken glass digging into his back, cutting into his suit, his skin.

The drone didn't care. Its hand smashed onto Peter's chest, and he could feel a few of his ribs crack as another shock ran through his body.

Peter told himself that it wasn't different than fighting Max. He had been shocked before.

Even though his arm felt a bit shaky, Peter raised his hand and fired into the weak spot he had created in the drone's shoulder. It was one of his rapid shots, and he watched his immense satisfaction as the drone's arm had difficulty moving. The drone returned to its full height and eased off of his chest.

Peter pulled in deep, gasping breaths as he dragged himself away from the drone. It wasn't the worst he had ever been hit, but he felt weird all over from the shocks. He wanted to stand and run, but crawling was hard enough.

He managed to get a few yards away from the drone and roll back onto his stomach.

"Harry?" Peter called.

Harry stepped out from behind a wall, limping and looking like he had been through hell.

"That wasn't a signal to come out!" Peter yelled. He started pulling himself into Harry's direction. "Get out of here! I'll hold them off."

"I'm not leaving you," Harry said.

Peter's words from the night before. There was something sharp on Harry's face, something new that made Peter feel fear deep in his stomach. Again, his Spidey Sense changed.

He thought it was because Harry had put himself in the open, right where the drone wanted him… until he saw Harry holding something.

"No!" Peter yelled when he realized what was in Harry's hand. "Harry Osborn don't you fucking dare!"

Harry just smirked at Peter as he rolled up the right sleeve of his sweatshirt—Peter's sweatshirt—and exposed his pale arm. Even from across the room, Peter could see how his right hand—the one holding an electric syringe filled—shook near uncontrollably.

"Harry, I swear to fucking god!" Peter said. "Don't—!"

Harry didn't break eye contact with Peter as he slid the needle into his arm and injected himself with the cure.

Time slowed. Peter had the same feeling he did when Gwen was falling.

For the longest moment of Peter's life, nothing happened. He and Harry stared at each other—Peter screaming Harry's name, Harry keeping the smirk plastered to his face.

The cure drained into Harry's veins. Harry stood looking at Peter. Peter reached out his hand to—somehow, impossibly— close the space between himself and Harry.

For a moment, nothing happened.

And then Harry's eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he collapsed to the floor.