10
TEMPORARY SHIELD HEADQUARTERS
LOCATION: CLASSIFIED
"Before you go running off into battle again, I want you to see something," Fury said. "Thought it might be of interest to you."
Peter nodded, even though he knew Fury couldn't see him – he was following behind the Director, keeping up the man's swift pace.
When he got no response, Fury turned his head to look at Peter without breaking his stride. "Or are you still sulking?"
Peter ignored the jab. "What did you have to show me?"
After a moment, Fury turned to face front again and answered over his shoulder. "You'll see soon enough."
SHIELD had summoned Peter with a phone call, and he'd been led (via the coordinates he entered into Karen's GPS system) to a nondescript concrete building. The outside was unassuming, but on the inside was actually a temporary SHIELD base. According to Fury, this was where SHIELD was housing the people who had been struck by Silenzior's silencing blast. Peter was now following the Director down winding hallways, heading towards the back of the building.
Peter reached up to scratch his ear. Or at least, he pretended to.
Peter was a little jumpier than normal. He'd done something that was probably pretty stupid, but under the circumstances, he thought it was best.
Not too long ago, he'd discovered that Karen was equipped with more powerful decryption and hacking software programs than he'd thought. So, just before he'd entered this SHIELD base, he'd enabled every program that Karen had available, asking her to download everything SHIELD had on HEL.
He couldn't trust SHIELD to tell him stuff anymore. So, he would find out himself.
Walking a few paces directly behind Fury, he secretly thumbed his hidden earpiece. "Karen?" he whispered now, almost completely silently. He'd asked her to update him on the progress.
"Still working on the firewalls," she said back, her voice low in his earpiece.
Peter nodded silently to her. That was pretty much what he'd expected.
"SHIELD's working on a majority of the damage," Fury continued, and Peter quickly pulled his hand away from his ear. "We're still running diagnostics on the affected. Seems that that blast somehow paralyzes the vocal chords. Are you paying attention, Parker?"
"What?" Peter snapped to attention. He thought he'd heard Karen say something else, and hadn't even realized he'd been tuning out. "Yeah, yeah. Of course."
Fury stared at him for a minute, letting his gaze burn into Peter's face. "Good," was all he said after a minute. "Because I'm going to need you to pay attention and stick close."
They had stopped in front of a concrete door. Peter realized he could hear noise on the other side of the wall, the collective noise of a lot of people gathered into one space. His heart rate picked up a little, wondering what was behind there.
Fury pushed the door open and strode through. Peter followed him, straight into the swell of noise.
Instantly, all the thoughts of the hack left Peter's mind. They'd entered into a huge space; it seemed to be some kind of warehouse. Large sheets of cloudy plastic had been hung from the ceiling and taped to the floor, forming flimsy makeshift walls all over the space. Dozens of people, mostly SHIELD agents, darted in and out of the sheets. Bright white LEDs illuminated in all in harsh brightness, and it took Peter's eyes a second to adjust.
When they did, he realized he'd fallen behind Fury, and trotted quickly to catch up. "What is all this?" he asked, raising his voice a little.
"I thought I told you SHIELD was working on damage control."
Peter dodged out of the way of an agent who was rushing past. "Wait, these are all the people from the airport?" he asked. He tried to angle himself to catch a glimpse behind a plastic sheet, but he couldn't make anything out.
"How many did you say there were again?" he asked, but suddenly they passed an open area. No longer blocked by the plastic sheets, Peter could see them clearly. He stopped in his tracks for a moment, shocked.
There had to be hundreds of people here, all with black X's marked on their throats.
Some were sitting on gurneys, some were on the floor, some were up and pacing. Others were just leaning against whatever was closest to them. They all had a glazed kind of expression in their eyes. And, of course, they were all completely silent.
Fury seemed unfazed, but Peter was having a hard time grasping what he was seeing. And what he was hearing – for all the people that were gathered in one space, it was so. . . silent.
"Parker, come on." Fury's voice came from up ahead of him.
Peter broke his gaze away from the crowd. He had to fix this.
He hurried after Fury. He licked his lips, feeling his throat was dry. "Look, Director Fury –"
"There's someone I want you to meet," Fury said, cutting him off before he could speak.
Peter looked to where Fury indicated. Standing in one of the narrow hallways created by the plastic sheets was a young woman, talking to a little girl on a bed. She was kneeling in front of the gurney so as to be eye-level with the girl.
Hearing them approach, the woman glanced over at them, her dark blonde hair swinging out of her face.
Peter stopped short, a ghost of a grin coming over his face. "Hey, it's. . . wow. You're – you're Captain Marvel, right?"
She gave a small smile and straightened up. "That's me." Her head tilted as she studied Peter through slightly narrowed eyes, and her mouth lifted into a smile. "It's Parker, right?"
"Yeah. Peter. Parker." Peter shook her offered hand.
Fury looked between the two of them as they pulled apart. "I take it the two of you've met?" he said.
"It was more of a hasty acquaintance," Captain Marvel said without taking her eyes off Peter.
Fury pursed his lips. "Alright, well formally, Danvers, this is Peter Parker. Peter, this is Carol Danvers." He waited a second. "Or did you already know that too?"
"Captain Danvers," Peter said by way of an answer. "It's an honor to meet you up close. I mean, to see you up close. At least – not while we're being shot at."
She smiled. "Agreed."
"So, what are you doing here?"
"I called Captain Danvers in," Fury said.
Carol made a scoffing sound. "That's cute, Fury. I've been onworld for two days now. You're just lucky I don't have to stop another world implosion right now."
"Lucky for that," Fury agreed.
"You stopped a world implosion?" Peter asked in a slightly-hushed tone.
"Twelve, actually," Carol said. "Courtesy of a reckless inter-dimensional being with a penchant for popping planets like balloons. But that was just Tuesday." She gave Peter a wry smile. "How's your week been?"
"I – obviously better than yours," Peter said, breathing out a nervous chuckle.
Carol's smile faded. "I wouldn't say that," she said, and she glanced around to indicate the silenced people. "You're dealing with quite a mess here yourself."
Fury nodded his head upwards. "Let's go somewhere quieter," he said.
.
.
"What's HEL's involvement in it all?"
"Crowd control," Fury said. "They can manipulate whatever they want to get large groups of people together in one spot, make an easy target for Silenzior."
Peter nodded. They'd moved into an inner room, one that actually had walls instead of plastic. Fury and Peter were sitting in the chairs around a table.
Carol stood a little ways away in the corner of the room, swiping through information on a data pad on the inside of her wrist. She glanced up at the mention of Silenzior.
"Speaking of," she said. She nodded her head up at Peter. "What species is he?"
"Um." Peter hadn't really considered that Silenzior was anything other than a human. "Human, I think."
She nodded her head, as if she were expecting that. "If he's human, he probably doesn't know how to control powers like this."
Peter looked up at that. "Wait, you've seen this before?"
"I've seen something like this before," Carol said.
"As she can tell you, Miss Danvers here has had some experience with outer-planetary beings," Fury said.
Peter turned to Carol, his eyes wide. "You think Silenzior's from space?"
"I think his powers are of intergalactic origin," Carol said. "Whether they've been derived from the biology of an alien race or celestial body, I can't say for sure."
Peter's mouth moved silently for a minute. "Oh," he said. He tried again, slowly. "So. . . you think Silenzior's from space?"
Carol smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners. "Yeah," she said.
"That's great," Peter said, absently at first, but then his face lit up. "You know what, this is great! That means you can handle Silenzior, right? You know how to stop him?" he asked. "I mean, I saw you over Wakanda. You literally destroyed a tank. You have the –" Peter gestured with his hands, "– the glowy powers, right?"
Carol grinned at his excitement. "Photon blasts," she corrected.
"Exactly," Peter said, then paused. "Wait, photon blasts? Really? Can I see one?"
"Not," Fury interrupted them, "here. We're trying to deal with one disaster at a time, please, thank you."
"Photon blasts wouldn't do much good anyway," Carol said. "A biological power like this isn't really that simple. You can't just tackle the bad guy and take him down. We need to keep him alive if we want to fix the people he's damaged."
Peter looked horrified. "Oh my God, I wasn't gonna kill anybody," he said as quickly as he could.
Fury spoke up. "Can you fix the people he's already silenced?" He addressed the question to Carol.
"I'm good, but I'm not that good," Carol said back, a touch of amusement in her tone. "We're going to need some equipment that you don't have here."
"But you can find it," Fury said, asking a question without really asking.
Carol looked a little smug. "Oh, without a doubt."
Karen's voice suddenly sounded in Peter's ear. "I'm in, Peter."
Excitement erupted in Peter's chest. "Really?" he blurted, accidentally aloud.
Both Fury and Carol looked at him. Peter froze. The term 'deer in the headlights' suddenly made a lot more sense to him.
"I. Mean. That's really good," Peter said haltingly, patching together the thought as he went. "Right?"
Fury seemed to almost roll his eyes as he turned back to Carol.
"I'm ready to run search for all available SHIELD files on HEL," Karen said, her voice staying low. "Shall I execute search?"
Peter glanced up, looking between Carol and Fury.
"Veylo 4 isn't exactly a quick trip, but it's also our only option," Carol was saying. "Here on Earth, your equipment is a little more primitive."
"I'm afraid this is a potentially hazardous search using a highly advanced protocol. I need confirmation," Karen prodded.
Peter pretended to smooth his hair back behind his ear, pressing the earpiece as he did so. "Mm-hm," he said, keeping his lips closed.
He was trying to be loud enough for his AI to register, but soft enough so that Fury and Carol wouldn't pick up on it.
As if he would be that lucky. Once again, both Fury and Carol looked over at him.
"Do you have something to add, Parker?" Fury asked. It was apparent that his exasperation was turning into irritation.
"Running scan now," Karen said, and Peter's gaze snapped back to Fury. The man was still staring at him through his one eye with an incredulous expression. "No, I just – primitive. Like you said." He actually had no idea what Carol had just said, but he'd caught the last word. He cleared his throat. "Sorry, um, keep going."
Carol turned back to Fury. "Our first priority is to find Silenzior," she said. "Once we do that, we can focus on fixing the mess he's made. And more than likely, the next attack is going to happen within the next seventy-two hours."
Fury nodded. "My thoughts exactly."
A soft beep sounded in Peter's ear. "All files have been downloaded, Peter," Karen said.
Exhilaration flooded through Peter's chest, but he made sure not to make a sound this time.
Karen continued. "We now have all SHIELD files on HEL," she said. "Including several potential locations."
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A/N: huh. well. I guess carol's here now whoops
thanks for the reviews, seriously, they make my day every time. y'all are lovely.
