11

It'd worked.

Wow.

Peter had all of SHIELD's files now. The rush of exhilaration he felt at first was replaced quickly with nerves, like he'd just been splashed with cold water.

He stood up. "I gotta go," he said.

Fury gave him a look. "We're not finished here," he said.

"You have Captain Danvers now!" Peter said in protest, gesturing to her. "She can help you guys take down Silenzior."

"I suppose you're willing to lend Ms. Danvers your webshooters, then?" Fury said.

That stopped Peter for a second, and he gave Fury a startled, confused look.

"Or weren't you paying attention to that part, either?" Fury asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Look, sir, with all due respect, I can't deal with this on my own," Peter said, gesturing at the door towards the crowds of people outside. "I don't know where to even start."

"You're not on your own," Fury said, feigning a sort of mock puzzlement in his voice. "You're part of the team now. And you have a potentially world-threatening event on your hands, Spider-Man."

"It's in your hands," Peter said, his voice rising in defensiveness. "You don't need me anymore. You have all of SHIELD and Captain Danvers now –"

"But only you can take down HEL, right?" Fury asked.

Peter's mouth moved soundlessly. "No," he said finally. "No, I – I didn't say –"

Fury leaned back in his chair, folding his hands over his stomach. "Isn't that why you've been downloading all our files on them?"

Peter froze. Fury might as well have said Busted.

"Sorry, secretly downloading," Fury added.

Carol looked between them but didn't say anything.

"Believe it or not, we've upped our security since Stark broke into it the first time," Fury said.

Peter grimaced. Whoops. Of course – his suit was fairly new, but Tony's programs would probably already be outdated by SHIELD's software.

Fury got up from his chair, sliding something out from his front lapel pocket. "I'll go ahead and erase those from your AI's databanks now," he said. Taking a few steps forward, he held the pen-sized device up to Peter's ear and pressed something on it.

A high-pitched whine sounded in Peter's ear, like microphone feedback, and he flinched. He could hear snatches of Karen's voice processor glitch for a few seconds before falling silent.

"Thank you," Fury deadpanned, sliding the device back into his pocket.

"Director Fury, please," Peter pleaded as Fury returned to his original spot, not even sure what he was asking for.

Fury turned around. "You're part of a team now, Parker," he said. "Which means you yield. You desist. You go where you need to go for the good of the team."

Peter looked away, clenching his jaw.

Fury leaned forward, bracing both hands against the glass table. "You're going to have to decide if you're really all in or not."

Peter rubbed his forehead with his fingertips, hard. Taking a deep breath, he looked up and met Fury's eyes. "What do you actually want me to do?" he asked quietly.

Fury held his gaze for a moment, not moving, not saying anything. Finally he broke his gaze to exchange a glance with Captain Marvel.

She seemed to take Fury's hint. Matching eyes with Peter, she gave him a nod. "Come with us."

.


.

"We've come up with a bit of a battle plan, with Ms. Danver's help." Fury tapped something, and a latch inside the wall seemed to open up. He gestured to the wall as a compartment unfolded from it. "Donated by Mrs. Potts."

Peter came closer, blinking against the LED-lit box.

Nestled in the polyethylene foam were hand gauntlets from one of Tony's suits, a matching set.

"Mister Stark's suit?" Peter asked with a frown.

Carol explained. "Number one priority in battle with superpowereds like Silenzior is always the hands," she said. "Disable the hands, and you disable the power. Attack, disarm, seal them off."

Peter pursed his lips thoughtfully and nodded. "Makes sense."

"Silenzior strikes fast and hard," Carol said. She cocked her chin towards the metal case. "So we strike back smarter, not harder."

"These are self-propelled gauntlets," Fury said. "Which means they'll do all the hard work for you." He gestured to one. "We'll need to modify your webshooters so you can fire the anchor points onto Silenzior's wrists. From there, the gauntlets will attach themselves to his hands."

Peter looked up. "And that'll stop him?"

"It'll stop the smoke," Carol corrected. She gave Peter a nod. "Then it's up to you and me to stop him for good."

"Right." Peter glanced back down at the gauntlets. "Yeah."

"We believe Silenzior will be striking next within the next seventy-two hours," Fury said. He raised one eyebrow. "And as your ill-gotten files would have told you, we have a pretty good guess as to where."

Peter looked up. Both Fury and Carol were looking at him, waiting, expectation in their eyes.

Peter's mouth opened and closed, hesitating, searching for words. "Can I have just a second?"

Without waiting for a reply, he turned and left the room.

.


.

"Hey," Captain Marvel's voice came from behind him, echoing in a strange way around the abandoned lot.

Peter twisted around. He was sitting on a concrete divider, legs braced, his elbows on his knees. He straightened up as she came closer.

"You got a little flustered back there," Carol said. "You okay?"

"I'm just–" Peter hesitated. Shaking his head, he looked away. "I don't know."

Carol stepped over the divider and sat down beside him. She waited for him to talk.

Peter took a deep breath. "Thanos was kind of my first?" he said, accidentally making it a question. "Like, the first major, big-league kind of bad guy I ever had to fight."

Carol gave a wry smile. "Rough initiation, huh?" When Peter didn't respond, she added, "You realize we won, right?"

"Yeah, but – just –" Peter roughly shook his head and dragged a hand through his hair. "So many people got hurt."

Carol frowned. Angling her head towards his, she tried to meet his eye. "No one else will get hurt now," she said seriously. "Not if you stop this now."

Peter cleared his throat, but his voice still came out husky. "I just don't know if I'm ready for all this again."

Carol let the silence stretch. Finally, after a few long moments, she spoke again.

"You know, I never had – this." She gestured backwards, at the SHIELD base behind them. "The camaraderie, the sense of a team –" She paused and flicked her eyebrows up, looking down at her hands. "Not one I could trust, anyway."

Peter didn't look at her, but he stayed quiet, listening.

After a moment Carol raised her head again. "But you have a real good opportunity here, Parker," she said. "I think Stark knew that somewhere along the line, you were going to need some backup."

Peter blinked. Backup. He hadn't thought about it like that.

Tony didn't know he was going to die, but he always had safety nets in place for Peter to fall back on. Sometimes literally, in the case of the parachute above the lake. Tony himself wasn't always there, but his presence was; his safeguards, his protocols, his suits.

"So?" Carol said. Her eyes moved over Peter's face, as if she were searching for something. "You think you're ready for this, Peter Parker?"

Peter took a deep breath. "Yeah," he said. "Let's do it."

.


.

"Disaster struck in Queens today, when a masked assailant let off a type of smoke bomb at JFK airport . What initially appeared to be a suicide attempt as the man dropped from the rafters quickly turned into a biological attack of possible alien origin."

The footage on the TV screen cut to a handheld video, obviously taken with a phone, of Silenzior dropping from the ceiling. Black smoke billowed up from the floor, and the footage blurred away as the holder of the phone started to run.

King watched the news report out of the corner of his eye; it wasn't hard to miss, as he was facing a wall of TV screens projecting the news.

The main media room was dark and warm, humming with the muted noise of dozens of screens.

"Hey, boss," King called out across the empty warehouse. "You're on TV."

Silenzior didn't look at him. "So be it."

King shrugged. "Well, that's what you wanted, isn't it? Get your name out there, get people scared."

Silenzior kept pacing. "We still have work to do."

King regarded the back of the man's head.

Silenzior didn't associate with HEL too much, but King could tell something was off. Normally, he didn't really care about Silenzior's feelings; the man was on the weirder side of eccentric. King himself had never seen him without the mask covering his face. And besides, any person demanding to be called "Silenzior" probably couldn't be classified as totally sane.

Nonetheless, King got up and walked over to him. "What's pissing you off?"

At that, Silenzior's head tilted up. "He came close."

King exchanged a glance with Marcus. "What, the kid?" King snorted. "He usually doesn't."

"I don't want him to have the opportunity next time," Silenzior said.

Novikov looked up, interested, and walked over. They were all assembled now; King, Novikov, Marcus, and Silenzior.

King frowned. "Meaning?"

"I want him gone," Silenzior said. "By any means necessary."

King glanced at the other two men, hoping to exchange a glance with Marcus, but he realized that Marcus was nodding silently, his eyes locked on Silenzior.

"Wait, wait, wait." King scoffed. "You're talking about killing him?"

Silenzior's mask angled toward him. "Heroes have always been our problem," he said. "One less. . . ."

Novikov raised one eyebrow at King, like a challenge. "Problem?"

King looked to Marcus. The other man avoided his eyes, and in that second King realized that HEL's MO had changed.

It seemed he'd missed a lot in five years.

"Okay," King said after a long moment. "I'll do it."

"Oh, you'll do it?" Novikov repeated tauntingly.

"Yeah, I will. Problem?" King sniped back.

"Enough."

Silenzior stepped between them. His face angled toward King's.

"King. You kill the boy. Be back by tomorrow."

.

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