Hello, friends, and welcome to Chapter Eleven! Oh, it's about to get nasty...
Hope you enjoy! As always, please read and review, I greatly appreciate it! Thanks!
Disclaimer: All characters owned by Marvel.
Chapter Eleven
"Peter?"
The voice was muffled, like a siren through roaring fire.
"Spidey? Wake up."
This one was feminine, smooth, familiar. Still muddled, glue sticking to the words, but the voice rang. Peter turned his head toward it, but his eyelids felt like thousand pound weights. What's going on? A hand fell on his shoulder, shook him. I was locked up.
He coughed and felt the dispersal of his breath over his face.
His mask was still on, then.
The weights lifted from his eyelids, and through the lenses he saw his friends.
Steve. Tony.
Carol.
"Oh my God," he said, unable to keep the emotion from his voice. He tried to rise, but Carol's hands fell onto his shoulders, gently. Looking to Steve and Tony, he said, "I gotta stop waking up to you guys standing around my bed."
"Try to relax, Peter," Steve said. Carol's hands still rested on him, holding him down. "We're not sure what's been done to you."
Carol let go of his shoulders, reached down to the floor, and pulled several leather straps over his chest, continuing the process down to his feet. When she was finished, she disappeared behind him, and the table on which he lay winched up until he was standing slightly forward of vertical. Had the straps not been holding him up, he would've fallen.
She passed back in front of him. "Carol?"
The overhead lights clicked off, replaced with two spotlights, bright enough to force Peter's eyes down toward his feet. The floor below was white tile, as were the walls; Peter saw Carol's red boots walking around his table, saw as they turned to face him, though the lights prevented him from looking up at her face. Tony and Steve crossed before his eyes every so often, mumbling things about tests.
Finally, Peter brought his head up and looked at her, squinting against the blinding white lights. Her arms were crossed under her chest, the fingers of her right hand running along her bottom lip—he could see the light shining off the material of her gloves. A small smile played at one corner of her mouth.
Tony approached and stood to Peter's right. "Now Pete, you're gonna feel some pricks, some stings, and you might have a few aches later, but it's all part of the plan. We just wanna make sure Ock didn't stick you with anything serious."
Peter nodded his thanks, and Tony vanished behind the table again. "Carol," Peter said, "Are you guys sure about this?"
She took a step forward and placed her hands on his shoulders again. "Don't worry," she said. "Everything's going to be fine." She turned around again, and disappeared into the white space between the spotlights. "I'll be right back, okay?"
Peter heard a door open, the sound of creaking, hulking metal, and a clang as it closed behind her.
XXXXXX
Carol stepped through the sliding door and approached the cell in the center of the room.
The Feds had wanted custody of him as soon as Carol had brought him in.
The Avengers refused. Flatly. And with a broken nose to one of their agents when they tried to force past the heroes.
"Sir," Steve had said into the phone, "I am Director of SHIELD. One of my agents captured the fugitive and brought him into custody. I have full jurisdiction over both the crime scene and the prisoner." He'd paused, a frown growing on his face with each shouted word Carol could hear. "If you feel that way, sir, I suggest you get a court order to have him released to you. Until you do, this man has information that could assist in the welfare of one of my people," his voice had changed, then, grew sterner, with a hard edge and animalistic growl. "And I will not have him gone until I know what he does."
"Problems?" Carol had asked.
His head had shaken. "If the FBI wants Electro, they're going to have to plow through the red tape to get him."
Now Carol stared up at the emaciated, broken form of Max Dillon, stuck inside a box of non-conductive material. She'd absorbed nearly all of his power during their battle, but they kept an inhibitor collar on him just in case.
"Dillon," she began.
"Piss off, lady, I ain't sayin' a word," he cut in.
Rage shook Carol's fist at her side, but she willed herself to not smash the cell open and rip his skinny head from his shoulders. "What have you done with him?" she asked, unable to keep her teeth from grinding at the words.
Electro remained silent, turning his back to her.
Carol heard the door open. Steve approached, stopping at her side. "He's still not talking, huh?"
A deep breath rang through Carol's chest. "No."
Steve shook his head. "It's unfortunate his energy form can resist our usual methods of persuasion," he said.
"It may be time for something drastic," Carol said.
He frowned at her. "I won't allow it," he said. "I don't care how important…"
"And what if P—Spider-Man dies?" Carol asked, her voice louder than she intended. "What then?"
Electro laughed.
Steve and Carol both turned to him.
"Oh, man, you guys are totally in the dark." He laughed on, cackling into the walls. "There's so much planned for him, for all of you, you won't even see it when it hits you." He brought his fingers up and snapped them, a small spark shooting off of his middle finger. "Like lightning. Boom."
Steve stepped forward. "Well, you're in here with us," he said. "Which means whatever is coming for us is coming for you too."
Electro gulped, and his expression changed: his eyebrows knitted together, and his eyes started darting back and forth across his scarred face. "I, uh… I hadn't thought of that."
"So tell us," Steve said, taking another step. "Tell us how to help Spider-Man, and we'll stop whatever's coming. You might even receive some leniency for helping an Avenger."
Leaning forward, Electro placed his hands against the transparent wall. "Okay, here's what you do," he said. "Head out East 34th Street."
Carol's ears perked up, hyper-aware. At last she was getting some answers.
"When you reach the East River, you'll see a pier on your right hand side." Electro's face grew a wide grin, and his eyes seemed to spark for a half-second. "At the edge is a concrete block."
He started laughing, in hysterics, slipping off the wall and rolling onto the floor of his cage. "Pick it up, and jump in the river." He was having trouble speaking through the snorts and tears. "Now listen, this is really important. It's gonna feel weird, but whatever you do, don't let go."
Electro calmed, abruptly, like he'd flipped a switch. His voice dropped an octave as well, turned vicious, a blade scraping against concrete. Only the grin remained, bright white teeth set against burn-scarred pink flesh. "It'll take you right to him."
Carol screamed, her fury burning white-hot in her eyes, and she raised her fist. A photon blast ripped from her body, straight toward Electro, but Steve had stepped between them and deflected the beam with his shield. She flew forward, her fists raised, but Steve slammed against her with the shield, hard; a small shockwave rippled through the room as the shield absorbed the force of their impact.
"Enough!" Steve shouted. "Letting him goad you is getting us nowhere!"
Electro laughed again. "Oh, I could goad her in a few different places, I think."
Steve turned, pointing his index finger toward the cell. "You shut your mouth before I find out if lightning can lose teeth."
The villain clammed up, but the smirk remained.
Carol leaned against the far wall, a heavy breath escaping through her nose. "I'm sorry, Steve. I just…"
"I know," he replied. "It's alright."
Steve left her there and walked back up to the cell. "Aren't you worried, Dillon?" he asked. "That whatever your boss has planned could come crashing down on you too?"
Electro shook his head. "Let me tell you how this is gonna go down. My guys are gonna walk in here, drop you guys like so many bad habits, and open this cell." He rose, pressing his palms and forehead against the plastic. "Then, I'm gonna walk over to that wall over there, lick my finger, and jam it into that socket. I'll be halfway to Michigan with a couple million banked before you can even blink."
Carol walked up to the cell again. "Let me tell you what I think, Dillon," she said. "Let's say, for the sake of argument, that your friends do show up. Let's even say that they beat us, just for the hell of it. Why would they release you? If you stay locked up, you don't get to bank that couple million. You rot. They're just that much richer."
As much as it could, Electro's face paled.
She knew she'd gotten to him, and despite her frustrations a hint of smile peeked the corner of her mouth. "I guess you're not the brightest bulb in the box, are you?"
His brow furrowed, but she could tell from his body language he knew she was right.
Carol pressed her advantage. "Tell us what we want to know, help us, and we'll do what we can for you."
Slowly, Electro nodded his head.
"Now," Carol said, "What have you done with Spider-Man?"
Before Electro had a chance to answer, Jessica ran into the room.
"Cap, Carol," she said, out of breath. Carol guessed that she must have run all the way from the elevator. "You need to come see this."
XXXXXX
Pain.
The air surrounding him was ice—fire, he knew, would hurt more in the short term, but eventually the nerves would fuse and the pain would stop. But cold… cold would just keep growing, shaking the body as the water in his cells solidified and the frostbite set in.
Each breath burned, as it would. Peter wondered what kind of tests Tony could be running that would be hurting him so much. Especially considering that the air had not changed. The cold had snapped around him; initially comfortable, then suddenly crystalline.
He tried to keep himself from screaming.
The metal groaned again, clanking echoes through the room. He heard Carol's voice, but realized there must have been blood in his ears when it was muffled.
It hurt to pull his eyelids apart. But there was no fog on his lenses, no mist in the air around her. She approached casually, and no expression crossed her face as she placed her hands on his shoulders.
"Hey, hey," she said. "Try to relax, Spidey."
Peter's weight crumpled beneath him. The leather straps holding him up strained against the table, the sound of their stretching light in contrast to the hum of the machines in the room. He breathed out, heavily, wheezing air in a rattled breath.
Tony approached on the other side, a hand appearing from behind a blood-stained lab coat. "I'm really sorry about this, Peter," he said. "I just want to be thorough."
Peter's mask lifted up from the back of his neck, a small pinprick piercing his skin. Acid burned through his veins now, exploding through his chest and boiling behind his irises. He feared his eyeballs might burst from their sockets.
Coherence left him. Sense of place, or time, was separated from him by agony. He thought his voice might have sounded, ripped from his chest, but he had no way of knowing. When he could manage a return to himself, his eyes focused on Carol, and the small smile twitching at the edge of her mouth.
"Spidey," she said, trying to hold him, to prevent him from convulsing too hard. "Spidey, listen. I'm worried you might choke if you keep screaming like this. Let me take your mask off."
The pain subsided, only by fractions, but enough that Peter could remember some things. That when Tony had stuck him in the neck, his Spider-Sense hadn't sounded. That it hadn't sounded at all while he'd been conscious. That a low hum had been present in the back of his skull, like it was trying, but drowned beneath the Hudson in a potato sack.
As Carol reached for his face, he knew one thing: something was wrong. Terribly wrong.
XXXXXX
The screen flashed regularly, occasionally with old school white noise, more often with a short hiccup in the signal. The Avengers sat transfixed around the common room, watching petrified as Peter sat helpless, strapped into a table in a room resembling something out of a horror film. Haphazard torture devices lay around the area, and they could see Peter leaning forward against the straps, breathing heavily, blood staining purple the blue sections of his costume.
Carol had seen enough. She took the elevator back down to the cells.
She marched toward Electro's cell, pressing the button on the console on the wall as she passed it.
The door lifted, slowly; too slowly for her tastes, and she shoved it upward, sparks shooting from the mechanisms.
"Hey, hey, hey!" Electro shouted, scooting away from her and toward the corner.
Carol didn't listen. She grabbed him by the inhibitor collar and hurled him into the wall. He slammed against it with force, cracking the plastic, and she heard him groan. Kneeling beside him, she pulled his face up to within centimeters of hers, her eyes burning bright.
"Where is he?!" she shouted.
"Jeez, lady, calm down," he said before she punched him in the mouth. Red blood spurted out of his jaw and onto the plastic floor.
"You answer me or I start breaking bones!" she said, her hand wrapped around his wrist.
Electro was sweating. "Listen, I don't know what happened here, but I was totally ready to…"
"Too slow," she said. She squeezed his arm, felt the give of the bone like putty. She heard him cry out, but ignored it. "Answer me!"
Voices called out behind her, but she ignored those too. Suddenly Cage, Steve and Logan were pulling her away, or trying to. She remained motionless, her grip on Electro like a thousand-year-old tree in the earth. Her palm braced against the villain's sternum, she asked again.
When he didn't answer, she pushed down, shattering his chest bone and pulling his right arm out of socket. He screamed again, then lost consciousness.
"Dammit!" she said, letting him go. She turned to the men around her. "Someone give him a jolt. Wake him up."
Steve shook his head at her. "We can't condone this, Carol. This isn't how Avengers behave."
"I don't give a damn what you condone." She slapped Electro across the face. "Wake up!"
Logan reached down to her. "Listen, girl, we all want to find him, but…"
None of them noticed how close Logan had gotten to Electro. The villain snapped up quickly, grabbing Logan's bare calf.
"Argh!" Logan cried, looking down at his leg.
Electro was gone.
Steve dropped down to examine the inhibitor collar. "Must have been damaged when he hit the wall," he said.
Suddenly Logan screamed again, and lightning shot out of mouth and eyes. A form appeared in the air, briefly, before bolting across the room to the wall outlet. Electro then, in full body, undamaged, stood next to the wall. "Woo, bio-electricity, baby! Ain't nothing like it, especially from a mutant. Good thing you got that conductive skeleton, furry."
His claws popped and Logan charged, but Electro was too fast. He jammed a wetted finger into the socket and sparked away before any of them was halfway across the room.
"The building's self-sustaining, right?" Cage said. "Lock it down. He can't get outside through the power."
Steve shook his head. "All he has to do it pop up in the lobby and run outside to a street light. We can't lock down that quickly."
Carol screamed, her voice tearing from her throat, and slammed a fist into the wall, destroying the plastic. The three men watched as she demolished the cell, rising from the rubble with shaky breaths.
"Let's get upstairs," she said, stepping out of the dust cloud. "I want to see what's happening."
As it rose, the elevator shook with the power radiating from Carol's body. She noticed the men beside her unconsciously cramming themselves into the corner of the car, but it didn't matter. Right then, the only thing on her mind was making sure Peter was still alive.
They walked back into the common room, where Tony and the rest of the Avengers were still watching the screen. A holographic interface hovered over Tony's forearm, his fingers frantic over the yellowed light. "Tell me you've got something," Steve said as they entered the area proper.
"Nothing yet," Tony replied. "Whoever's doing this is bouncing the signal all over the tristate area. I'll be able to track it down eventually, but," he cut himself off as he looked back to the screen. A man looking vaguely like him, dressed in a bloody lab coat, was lifting the back of Peter's mask and puncturing his neck with a syringe. "Not in time."
Carol watched as her doppelganger held Peter by his shoulders, told him she was worried about him choking. She knew what was coming next.
"Steve," she said.
"Clint and Natasha are already on their way to Boston," he replied.
She nodded. Her fist clenched tightly into her side, so much so that it shook against the outside of her thigh.
Thor rose with a roar from where he'd been seated, slamming Mjolnir into and through the solid oak table before him, cracking the tiled floor. "This is an outrage!" he said. "Our comrade and friend lies suffering! How is it we are unable to find this place?"
"I'm doing the best I can, big guy," Tony said.
Shouting erupted around the room, Avengers arguing amongst themselves. Only two remained watching the scene before them.
"When is it enough?" Carol said, softly, hoping it was only to herself.
But Steve looked to her, and she knew he'd heard. "What?"
Carol looked back at him, tears welling against her eyes, but refusing to fall. She wasn't sure if they belonged to pain, or rage, or fear, but at that moment, she it didn't feel like it mattered. "When does the universe decide that he's had enough?"
They watched as Peter's mask slid up his neck, exposing the short brown hair on the back of his head. Carol reached over and grabbed Steve's arm, bracing herself for the moment when his whole life would come crashing down.
Except it never came.
As soon as the mask reached his face, it stopped moving. They saw Carol's double strain against the fabric, pulling with genuine effort, but it didn't budge.
They heard a question come out of Peter's mouth, his voice broken and hoarse, but Carol knew then that he wasn't finished.
And she prayed.
XXXXXX
Peter could feel the fabric rolling up the back of his neck again. The hairs on head stood up as they were exposed to the air, and a part of him said it would just be easier to let it go. That his life would just be so much simpler, regardless of however much shorter it might be.
I'm too tired.
The fabric crested the top of his head; exposed his Adam's Apple.
Aunt May.
He felt the skintight cloth rolling up the underside of his chin, pushing the hairline down toward his forehead.
Carol.
"Just take it easy, Spidey," Carol said. "It'll all be over soon."
She keeps calling me "Spidey."
Tears streamed down Peter's cheeks.
The mask reached his face, and Peter stuck the material to his skin.
Carol pulled, hard, then harder, but the mask never moved.
Peter sighed. "Carol," he said, "What's my name?"
She stopped pulling.
He saw fear in her blue eyes, but her eyes just made him angry. Because they were so close, so right, but all wrong at the same time.
He had to ask, because he knew; he was aware that he had never been rescued, that he was still held captive by Octavius and allies. But he didn't want to believe it. So he asked. Just to keep hope alive for another moment.
Carol let out a light laugh. "C'mon, Spidey," she said. "Stop kidding around. Let me get your mask off. I'm worried about you."
Tony had backed away from Peter's table and taken several steps toward the metal door.
Through the pain, the acidic pulsing flowing through him, the frozen air surrounding him, a single thought flashed in his mind, a lighthouse beacon against the fog of the torture he'd endured.
She knows my name.
Throughout their relationship, until Carol had left for space with the Guardians, she and Peter had been very careful to keep his identities separate. Captain Marvel and Spider-Man were comrades in arms, fellow Avengers, and even good friends, but she and Peter maintained a respective distance in costume. They wanted the world to see Peter Parker with Carol Danvers, not Spider-Man.
Peter raised his head, looking at the Chameleon dead in the eyes. "She knows my name, Dmitri."
Chameleon let the mask slip out of his fingers, backing away from Spider-Man. Just as he turned to run, Peter leapt from the table, ripping the leather straps free like so much tissue paper. He grabbed Chameleon about the throat and lifted him into the air, where Chameleon struggled to free himself from the iron grip around his neck.
"She knows my name!" he shouted, hurling Chameleon into the brick wall in front of him.
Fury tore from his throat like a volcanic storm, and Peter sprung on Chameleon in an instant, the villain attempting to push away an immovable object.
"She!" A crack sounded, Chameleon's left forearm bent backwards.
"Knows!" Another pop, this time Chameleon's jaw tearing free of his skull.
"My!" The clinking of brick shards falling to the tile floor echoed as Peter threw Chameleon into the stone again.
"Name!" Peter kicked Chameleon in the ribs, and a sickening crunch sounded as the bones cracked. Chameleon fell to his knees, clutching at his stomach, and bloody vomit spewed onto the floor.
Tony stood transfixed in the corner, watching the scene in horror.
Peter turned, stepping over Chameleon, slamming the steel door shut as he passed.
He gripped Tony by the collar of his bloody lab coat and lifted him into the air. "Mysterio," he said, his voice low and full of malice. "Stepped up your game from parlor tricks, I see. Hallucinogenic gas? Your costume and… what? A mannequin dressed like Cap to influence my visions?"
Suddenly Mysterio began laughing, and Peter heard a snapping of fingers. A bright light exploded in the room, and when Peter's vision cleared, Mysterio was gone.
"Mysterio!" Peter shouted. "When I get out of here I'm gonna smash that fishbowl into your eyeballs!"
Peter heard a hissing sound coming from the vents in the room, and knew his time was limited. He could already smell the gas, could already feel it numbing his senses. He walked over to Chameleon and lifted the man off the ground. "What was the plan, Dmitri? Why torture me?"
Chameleon spat on him.
"Talk or I start breaking whatever bones you've got left," Peter said, gripping Chameleon's index finger.
Chameleon wheezed, and when he spoke, it was with Carol's voice. "Octavius… told us… to leave you alone."
The voice unnerved Peter, and he let go of Chameleon's hand. "But… I will not be denied my revenge… for Sergei."
Peter dropped him to the ground, and Chameleon grunted. "You wanted me exposed." He looked around and found the camera, situated in the corner.
He considered smashing it, but thought the better of it. "Well, I can't be sure where this is going, but I can guess. Hello, New York. I'm your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man."
Waving to the camera, Peter sat down on the tile floor. "As you can see, I'm in a bit of a spot. I won't be conscious here for too much longer. But I want you to know something."
XXXXXX
Carol watched as Peter beat her senseless. Heard his screams. Part of her feared Chameleon's appearance fueled Peter's violence.
When he turned to the camera, she could feel him. He wasn't talking to New York. He was talking to her.
"But I want you to know something," he said.
Yes, Peter. Tell me, I'm right here.
"I'm going to get out of this. And I'm coming back to you. Count on it."
The feed cut just as he fell to the floor and the metal door flew open, another Spider-Man standing in the doorway.
"Tell me you managed to track it down before it went dead," Steve said.
Tony shook his head. "They're definitely in the city," he said. "Best I can do."
The Avengers scrambled, preparing themselves to head out into the city and find Peter. But Carol stayed still, looking at the screen where it had frozen on the image the self-styled "Superior" Spider-Man standing over Peter's unconscious body.
She hadn't noticed before, and she doubted Peter had either, but there was so much blood on his costume that the majority of the blue was staining a shade of purple. Some of it was Chameleon's, yes, but most of it was it his own.
And there was Octavius. Standing there as damnable evidence that Peter had been right all along.
We have to find him.
Carol turned, ready to fly out into the city and resume the search, but Steve was standing behind her. He was looking toward the floor.
"Steve?" she asked. "What's wrong?"
"I just got word from Clint and Natasha. They're on their way back from Boston."
Oh, no. Oh God, please, no.
"You asked earlier. 'When does the universe decide he's had enough?'"
Carol's face scrunched up, trying to hold the tears at bay. She felt herself frowning at him, silently begging him not to say what she knew he was going to.
Steve handed her his phone, showing the photos Natasha had sent him.
It took all of Carol's willpower not to crush the device into her palm.
He took the phone back from her, and sighed. "Not today."
Carol turned and took one last look at the screen, where Octavius stood over Peter. And then she screamed, and drove her fist through the plastic, right on his head.
She turned back to Steve. "We need to find this man," she said. "Whatever it takes."
"I agree," he replied. "Whatever it takes."