4
The tribute had descended into chaos.
Coming back down the stairs from the projectionist booth, Peter was met with a swell of panicked noise. Everyone had gotten up out of their seats and were pressing towards the exits, creating a tidal-wave-like pull of bodies.
With effort, Peter pressed his way through the crowd, his eyes flicking over the faces, trying to find one he recognized. He had taken the Spider-Man mask off and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.
Finally, he spotted a familiar face in the crowd. His hopes lifted.
"Agent Hill!" he called over the chaos. "Agent Hill, wait!"
He realized that he hadn't seen her tonight up until now. She was wearing a flowy sleeveless pantsuit and heels, but she couldn't have looked more like an agent as she strode purposefully through the crowds.
Hill glanced behind her, and she seemed relieved as she caught sight of him. Without breaking her stride, she jerked her head in the direction she was moving. "Parker! With me!" She had to shout over the room noise.
Peter trotted quickly alongside her to keep pace. "What's going on?" he asked. "I missed, like half of that."
"We have a civilian threat," she said back, her face and voice cold. She checked something on her wrist, and Peter realized that there were holograms extending up from the slim surface of her watch. "Eleven fifteen. We have less than an hour. Our time limit's closing."
Peter swerved to the side as someone nearly crashed into him. "What's gonna happen at twelve A.M.?" he asked, then realized that she was no longer in front of him. "Agent Hill –!" He ran to catch up to her.
Hill glanced over her shoulder and gave him a once-over. "Do you have your suit?" she asked.
Peter's hand absently went to his chest where the nanotech suit sat tucked against him. "Yeah?"
"Then suit up. We're moving out."
"Where?"
Hill looked at him again. "You didn't see it?"
"No, I told you, I was too busy trying to see if I could stop it."
"Nothing we know for certain yet," she said back. "But he has hostages."
Hostages? Peter had missed a lot. "Wait, who does?"
"I need evac," Hill spoke into her wrist. They reached the exits, and she pushed open the heavy door. Cold air swirled around them as they stepped out.
Peter tried again. "Agent Hill. Who has hostages?"
Hill flicked her wrist communicator off. "He called himself Silenzior."
The name was eerie, but it wasn't familiar. "Silenzior," Peter repeated to himself.
He heard the whirring of a jet engine and looked up to see a Quinjet coming down out of the sky, hovering itself lower towards them.
"We'll give you a ride," Hill said.
"What, me?" Peter asked. He glanced behind him. He could have sworn that he'd seen Falcon at the tribute earlier. "Are the others coming?"
"Others?"
Peter spun around to face her again, his brown eyes wide. "Well, yeah – the other Avengers, I mean. I thought the message was to all of –"
"Unavailable," Hill said. "Or otherwise assigned." She strode for the Quinjet as it settled into a hover just a few feet above the pavement.
"Okay," Peter said uncertainly.
There Hill paused, one hand grasping the handle on the inside of the jet. She looked back at him and met his eyes, seemingly for the first time that night.
"Parker," she said, "this time, there's no backup, no other Avengers." She nodded her head up at him. "You're up."
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As the Quinjet tore through the sky, Hill filled him in on what he had missed.
"Silenzior is holding seven NYPD officers hostage at an undisclosed location in Queens." A small holographic map flickered up off of Hill's wristwatch. The building and the path leading there were highlighted in red. "He showed the coordinates onscreen. He wanted us to find him."
"So it's probably a trap?" Peter asked as he wriggled out of his white button-down shirt. The nanotech suit had already spawned itself over his body, but his clothes were loose above it.
"I'd say likely. He's attracted attention to himself. Only reason to do that is to get an audience."
Peter bent forward to retrieve two web canisters from the suit jacket he had thrown on the floor. He put one between his teeth and fitted the other one into the first webshooter of the suit.
"You ever met him?"
Peter glanced up. "Hoo, Hilenzior?" he asked around the web fluid canister. "Uhm –" He spat the canister out into his palm and shook his head. "No, I haven't even heard of him. What about you guys?"
Hill shook her head once. Her face was grim. "He's never come up on our radar before."
Great. Peter snapped the canister into place, and the webshooter gave a positive whirr. "What does he look like?"
"He never showed his face."
Even better. "So you don't know anything?"
"The whole video was demanding silence. From civilians as well as heroes," Hill said.
"Silence? What do you mean?"
"That's what you're going to find out," Hill said. "What's important right now is getting those hostages to safety."
"Yeah, fair enough." Peter glanced out the window of the Quinjet. "Can I track on the ground?"
Hill nodded. "We'll drop you about a half mile out. We don't want him to know SHIELD is backing you up."
Peter looked up with a frown. "Isn't that what he wants?"
"He asked for the Avengers, not SHIELD," Hill said. "We're not taking our chances." She glanced outside the window and straightened. "We're at the drop point," she said.
The suit's nanotech mask closed over Peter's face, and the bright white lenses narrowed. He stood up from his seat.
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"You're there," came Hill's voice in Peter's ear. "Next rooftop."
Peter swung his body up into an arc and skidded to a landing on the building's roof. "What, here?"
"Those are the coordinates." Hill paused. "He's not there?"
The air was cold. A few frozen snowflakes filtered down slowly through the sky, seeming to move in slow motion, as Peter looked around. The rooftop seemed barren – there was nothing but a few ridge vents, some wiring strung between metal poles, and. . . .
A dark mass over in the corner of the roof.
His heart dropped. "Wait, I think I see them."
He ran over to the mass. Sure enough, it was the seven police officers Hill had described.
They were all unconscious, but they looked unharmed. Keeping his voice low, Peter tried to rouse them. "Hey. Are you guys okay?" He reached for the duct tape around the first guy's mouth.
"I wouldn't," came a voice from behind him.
Peter spun around.
A man was standing on the other side of the rooftop.
He was tall and thin. A heavy silk cape, dark white, hung from his shoulders down to his feet, but Peter's eyes were locked on the mask.
A white mask covered the man's face, fitted and shaped to be in the exact shape of a second skull. The eye sockets of the mask were so deep and black that Peter couldn't actually see the man's eyes. It was eerie.
Peter backed up a step, his eyes narrowing. "You're Silenzior," he said.
"And you must be Spider-Man." Silenzior's voice was calm and dry, almost lulling. "You got my message."
It wasn't exactly a question, but Peter answered anyway. "Yeah. Everybody did."
Silenzior tilted his head to one side, as if trying to see something behind Peter. "Where are the others?"
Peter cleared his throat and straightened up, trying to make himself taller. "Um, nobody. Just – just me."
"Just you." The way Silenzior parroted it back, it sounded like a taunt.
This guy was starting to creep Peter out. He cleared his throat and spoke up, hearing his voice echo against the wind. "Look, man, what do you want?"
Silenzior looked back at him. "Your silence," he said.
That was what Agent Hill had said, too. "What does that even mean?"
"Don't worry." Silenzior raised an arm and flexed his fingers in the air. Peter squinted at what he was doing. It looked like there was black smoke trailing around the man's fingers, but instead of dissipating, it coiled around and around his hand like a snake. "You're going to find out."
"Okay okay okay, hey." Peter held out his hands placatingly. "Maybe we can work something out or –"
"It's too bad your Avengers friends didn't show up," Silenzior said. "I would have liked to silence you all at once."
Peter was getting a bad feeling.
Silenzior's hand formed a fist, and the black smoke gathered into his palm. "I suppose you'll have to do for now."
Spider-sense flared in Peter's head. Duck!
Silenzior's fist shot forward, and the dark black smoke jettisoned off his fist. Peter ducked out of the way, and the blast went fizzing past his ear.
Peter spun around. "What the hell was that?" he asked. He ducked again as another blast fired into the air, just narrowly missing him.
When he looked up, Silenzior was running straight towards him. "Whoa whoa whoa –" He put both hands up, defensively, and they locked fists. They stayed there for a moment, grappling against the other's grip.
"I don't want to hurt anyone," Silenzior said, his voice so soft it was like a whisper. "I don't want to hurt you."
"Then you don't have to do this," Peter grunted.
"You misunderstand," Silenzior said. "I'm telling you that this isn't going to hurt."
Peter felt something tingly buzzing up his fingers, into his palms. He looked up quickly and realized that the black smoke Silenzior had been firing at him a moment ago was creeping off Silenzior's hands and onto his.
"Gah!" Peter sprung away and shook out his hands, dispelling the smoke. "What is that stuff?"
Silenzior didn't reply. Taking advantage of Peter's distraction, he dropped to the ground and swiped his leg under Peter's feet. Peter hit the ground with a surprised cry.
Just as swiftly, Silenzior sprung back up and pressed his foot to Peter's chest, pinning him down. His other foot pinned one of Peter's wrists.
"Gah –!" Peter grasped Silenzior's ankle with his free hand.
Silenzior leaned over Peter's face, leaning his weight onto Peter's chest. Peter grunted and wriggled, but he couldn't break free.
"I'm not going to hurt you," Silenzior repeated. "I just need your silence. . . ."
He grabbed Peter's throat. Peter grabbed his arm.
"Stand down!"
A new voice broke into their conversation, echoing off the buildings around them. A bright light flared onto them, and Silenzior shielded his eyes with a pained cry.
"This is SHIELD. Stand down or we will open fire."
Blinking against the white light, Peter looked to the side. He could hear the roar of the Quinjet engines more than he could actually see it.
Silenzior's head turned back to Peter. "Tell your SHIELD friends that if they don't stand down, I'll silence you right now. I know you have an open communication to them."
Peter hesitated, but he raised a hand up to his earpiece. "Agent Hill?"
"Go, Parker."
Peter looked up and met Silenzior's gaze. He made a split-second decision. "Just a sec!" he said into the com. With his free hand, he shot a web at Silenzior's face.
The man reared back sharply, giving a muffled roar of surprise. His foot lifted off Peter's chest as he stumbled backwards.
Peter rolled out of the way and sprung back up to his feet. He touched a hand to his earpiece again. "Agent Hill, I need some help!"
"Copy."
Silenzior had torn the webbing off his face. His head raised as Peter spoke, his eyes narrowed into slits. "You just made a mistake."
Panting, Peter straightened up. "I'm not gonna let you do this," he said.
"You're going to try," Silenzior said. "But you are going to fail." His head shifted incrementally to the left, then back to Peter's face. "Now, shh," he said.
Pain exploded through Peter's head, and he blacked out.
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A/N: Whassup, team! Hope you enjoyed chapter four. What do you think of Silenzior? I've had absolutely way too much fun designing him and coming up with his powers. I did want to note that Silenzior's name is pronounced "suh-LENZ-ee-ore", for your reading ease. :)
Thanks heaps to Shadow-wolf78 for your review!
