6

Peter and Ned stood in front of Peter's bed.

"I can't believe we're gonna do what we're about to do," Ned said.

"Yeah," Peter said.

"I mean, Tony Stark literally made this thing for you. Rewired it in, like, under five hours just so you could go beat up bad guys more effectively."

Peter's voice was a little slower. "Yeah. . . ." A worried little line appeared in his eyebrows.

"Can you imagine how mad he would be if he knew you were dissecting your suit –"

"Okay, Ned. Stop." Peter blew breath out his cheeks. "We need this for our presentation, and if we just walk in with this –" He held up the Spider-Man suit, "–people might ask questions."

Ned relented with a little sigh. "I guess so."

"Besides, it's fried anyway, remember?" Peter pointed to the bullet hole in the suit's left shoulder. This was – or, at least, it had been – the Mark 19 suit from when Peter had fought HEL. Peter had known he could use the cloaking technology embedded in it for something, and this was as good an opportunity as any.

Ned ran his finger around the wiry edge of the hole. "I still can't believe you actually got shot."

"Yeah, it was not fun."

Peter knelt onto the floor in front of the bed to look at the suit more closely.

"Okay, so we need to disengage a panel that's pretty close to the mechanism," he said in a low, focused voice. "It still needs power to the main hub if it's still going to work." He tapped the Droney in the middle of the suit's chest.

"But we can't bring Droney into class," Ned said, sliding down to his knees beside Peter.

"Right, so we've gotta remove his casing." Peter picked up a screwdriver and flipped it around in his hands. Taking a deep breath, he set the chiseled edge at the base of the spider, where the black acrylic casing joined the fabric, and began wriggling the screwdriver into the slim gap.

Ned winced as the casing popped up, but Peter was just fascinated. He lifted the casing up and tossed it aside.

A neat crisscross of gold and green microchips stared back up at them. Without Droney's casing, it was impossible to tell that it was a spider shape. Peter grinned. "Perfect."

The next thing to do was separate one piece of fabric from the rest of the suit. They couldn't exactly haul the entire thing around school, so they had to extract just a small piece to demonstrate the retroreflective panelling. This process was somewhat more complicated, and it took a few minutes of carefully snipping the silver fabric and separating the suit's internal wires to extract a nondescript square roughly the size and shape of a paperback.

Peter held it up triumphantly, grinning. It had been the left side of the suit's chest area, just below the bullet hole. Wires poked out at all the edges, but they could easily hook it up to Droney now without having to carry the suit around.

Ned was looking at it a little bit more doubtfully. "You think the edges are gonna fry?"

Peter looked at him, then back to the fabric. "No," he said, more confidently than he felt. "It'll work."

Ned shrugged. "Should we try the power?"

They hooked the heavy piece of fabric up to the Droney power hub. It gave a low-frequency hum as it connected.

Ned looked at Peter. "Ready for the test run?"

"Yep." Peter picked up the suit material. "Apple in place?"

Ned solemnly set a red apple down on Peter's desk. "Apple in place."

"Here we see the apple," Peter said dramatically. He draped the fabric over the fruit and set the Droney hub down on the desk.

"And here we see the apple disappear," Ned said slowly.

Peter picked up a pair of pliers and touched a wire to the Droney hub, activating the power.

There was a minor explosion. Sparks spat out in an arc across the desk, and smoke puffed from the fabric. "Whoa –!" Peter turned away, raising a hand to cover his face.

"Peter?" May's voice sounded from the other side of the wall. "What's going on in there?"

Crap crap crap crap – Peter spun around, blocking the charred machinery with his body. "Uuuumm," he called back through the wall.

"God, please don't say 'um'." May's voice came closer to the other side of Peter's bedroom door.

Peter's eyes darted towards the suit on the bed. "Ned, the suit. The suit," he hissed at his friend.

Panicked, Ned flipped the suit's legs up onto the bed and sat on the whole thing, covering it up.

The door swung open. May stood in the doorway

"Hey," Peter said, his voice squeaking.

May was giving him a strange stare. "Hey."

Peter raised his eyebrows a few centimeters, amping up his innocent expression. "What?"

May opened her mouth, then closed it, then gave Peter a kind of puzzled look. "You guys do know I know about the suit, right?" she asked. She raised her eyebrows. "Ned's not even covering it up all the way."

Ned looked down. A bright red-and-blue sleeve was sticking out his left side.

"Oh yeah." Peter relaxed. "Force of habit, I guess."

May paused, a frown coming over her face as she looked at something behind him. "Is that smoke?"

"Hm?" Peter's innocent expression turned to panic as he spun around.

The material of the suit was completely on fire, delicately roasting the apple underneath it. "Gah!" He flipped the cloaked fabric off the apple and rapidly slapped it with his palms, trying to put out the flame.

Once it was fully extinguished, he spun back around to face May.

"No explosions while I'm here, okay, please?" May said. "Or, actually, you know what?" She paused in the doorway. "No explosions when I'm not here, either."

"No explosions, ever," Peter agreed. "Got it."

May gave him a strained smile and left, but this time she left Peter's door open.

Peter turned back around. "Okay." He bit a corner of his lip, deep in thought. "That piece must've been too close to the fried spot. Let's take a piece from the back and rewire it to Droney."

Ned nodded agreement and they both got to work, carefully dissecting a piece from the suit's back.

They had almost finished extracting their second piece when Peter's phone pinged with a text. He quickly checked it, feeling his pulse quicken slightly.

It was SHIELD again.

Parker, status.

Peter picked it up and tapped out a quick reply.

Working on a school project. Why?

"Who's that?" Ned's voice broke into Peter's thoughts, and he looked up.

"Um –" Peter flipped his phone over so Ned couldn't see it. He couldn't remember if Agent Hill had mentioned anything about secrecy. "It was no one, just –"

"Were you texting MJ?" Ned asked before Peter could decide.

"What?" Peter asked, completely caught off-guard. "No, I wasn't, why would you think –"

Ned gave Peter a look. "Dude. It's kind of obvious you like her."

"Seriously?" Peter grimaced and ran his hands over his face. "Do you think she knows?"

"MJ knew Mrs. Larkin was pregnant because of the way she drank her coffee. I'm pretty sure she knows."

Peter groaned.

His phone pinged again, and they both automatically looked over at it.

"So who are you texting then?" Ned asked.

Peter checked the text.

Just a daily check-in.

Peter relaxed. So there was no news on Silenzior. "It's SHIELD," he said.

Ned's eyes lit up. "About Silenzior?" he asked. "I knew you didn't tell the whole story about that night."

Peter recapped the night as quickly as he could. He was a little embarrassed at how he had been knocked out of the fight so early, and he didn't elaborate on the ending as much.

". . . And SHIELD said they'd tell me when they have news," he finished. He held up his phone. "Nothing so far."

Ned looked disappointed.

"Anyway." Peter had to get his mind off it, otherwise he would be too distracted to work any more. He held up the fabric. "I think you were right. We've gotta seal these edges." They were essentially dealing with hundreds of little loose wires at the seams of the fabric.

Ned's attention returned to the project too. He touched the edge, feeling all the raw wires there. "We're gonna need electrical tape."

Peter glanced up and looked at the shrunken, blackened shape on his desk. "And another apple."

Ned stood up. "You want anything else from the kitchen while I'm there?"

"Uum," Peter said, distracted as he studied the fabric. "Oreos."

Ned left, and Peter focused down on the suit.

A minute later, he heard Ned come back, but his friend didn't say anything.

"We still had tape, right?" Peter asked, looking up.

It wasn't Ned.

"Whoa!" Peter scrambled to his feet, startled. "Agent Hill?"

She was standing in his doorway. "We have a mission update," Hill said.

"Does May know you're here?" Peter stepped around her to check the hallway.

Hill was tapping some kind of code into on the screen on the inside of her wrist. She didn't look up. "Not exactly."

Peter frowned, puzzled, and glanced in the general direction of the front door. "How'd you even get in?"

"You wanted to be informed?" Hill said. "This is us informing you."

Peter looked back at her. "Right." He closed his bedroom door and cleared his throat. "What's going on?"

"We have a potential location on Silenzior," Hill said.

That caught Peter's attention. "Where?"

"Underground subsystem," Hill said. "Abandoned subway tunnels in southern Queens."

"The lairs are always abandoned subway tunnels," Peter whispered to himself.

Hill didn't comment on that. She collapsed the hologram. "Fury wants you there to check it out."

Peter glanced at the phone on his bed. "I wish you'd told me you were coming."

"This is time-sensitive information. You needed a quick escort." Hill stopped suddenly. She had caught sight of the half-dissected suit sprawled out on the bed.

Closing her eyes, she turned back to Peter without opening them, as if holding off a headache. "Tell me that's not your suit," she said.

"That's not my suit," Peter said quickly. "My real one's in the closet."

Hill shook her head with a short sigh, half-incredulous, half-relieved.

A voice sounded from the hallway, partway muffled through the wall, and suddenly, the door to Peter's room swung open. "Hey, Peter, turns out you don't have any electrical tape –"

Hill had her gun out of its holster and cocked in her hands in an instant, the muzzle aimed straight for Ned.

"Whoaaa –" Ned raised his hands and stumbled backward a few steps, dropping a package of Oreos on the floor.

"It's fine it's fine it's fine, it's just my friend," Peter said rapidly, jumping up to step in between them.

Hill watched him over the top of her gun's muzzle. "Ned Leeds?"

"Yyyy– uh," Ned stuttered, eyes still wide from shock.

"Yes," Peter answered for him. He strode over to Ned. "Ned, this is the agent I was telling you about," he said in a whisper.

"Agent Hill?" Ned asked, even as he was out of breath.

Hill lowered her gun, pursing her lips. "Damn it."

Peter spun around. "What?"

"Civilian."

"No, it's okay. He knows," Peter said. "About the – y'know, the Spiderman thing."

"That's not what I meant," Hill muttered. Before Peter could process what she meant, she re-holstered her gun and nodded her head up at Ned in a nod. "Good to meet you."

"Y-yeah, it's." Ned blinked and seemed finally able to speak again. "Ma'am – uh – Agent – it's great to meet you."

"So what are we gonna do?" Peter asked Hill.

Her gaze returned to him. "We have to get you there now. Silenzior may be on the move."

"Um," Ned said from the doorway, and both Hill and Peter looked over at him. "What about MJ?"

Peter frowned. "What about MJ?"

"She's kinda. . . coming over," Ned said uncomfortably.

"What?" Peter asked. "You invited her here?"

"Well, we were pretty much finished with the suit, and I thought since you bailed on us earlier she could come over and work on the project now!" Ned said defensively.

Peter squeezed his eyes shut and pressed a hand to his forehead. "You have to tell her not to come."

Hill's eyes darted to Peter. "Who's coming?"

"Michelle. MJ," Peter said quickly. "She's a girl that goes to my school. We have a group project with her."

Hill glanced out the window. "Well, meeting's cancelled," she said. "Get your suit."

"Uh." Ned straightened up, and half-quirked one hand in the air. "If I could say something, agent, ma'am, I'm very, um, proficient? When it comes to computers?"

Hill stared at him for a moment, looking half-confused, half-pained. She looked back at Peter.

"He can help," Peter said.

"I can help," Ned repeated excitedly.

Hill sighed and rubbed her forehead. paused in the doorway. "Alright," she said. "Bring Leeds."

"I can come?" Ned asked, his voice squeaking into a whisper.

"Yeah. Yeah, come on." Peter patted his arm and followed after Hill. "Come on!" he shouted over his shoulder when Ned still didn't move.

Ned started, and ran after Peter.