A/N: Here's the next chapter! Thanks for your patience while I was away. Thank you to all who reviewed, favorited, and followed!

WARNING: Rating may go up. This chapter contains slightly darker suggested themes!

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing! I make no profit off of this. This is solely for my enjoyment and hopefully for the enjoyment of others! ;)

––––––––––

There were no windows in Peter's cell, no were there any in the hallway. There weren't any in the room that he was taken to when Greenie continued his experiments to learn how quickly Peter healed.

No clocks were found in the training room where Peter was routinely dragged and forced to face off against different opponents in the giant cage in the center of the room. Bleary eyes occasionally caught sight of a timer counting up as he half-heartedly fought back his challengers, knowing that he could cause them serious harm if he wasn't careful.

His circadian rhythm was shot to hell as his captors only let him sleep for short stints of time before rousing him for mealtimes, showers, or rigorous workouts that pushed even his physique to the limit.

The only constant that never let up were the round-the-clock drugs running through his system. He hated them, but he knew it was his own fault. There'd one incident where Greenie had been gleefully tearing off Peter's fingernails, the teen had ripped through the enforced bars holding him down. He'd managed to hurl the man's camera across the room before Greenie had hit a button on his little remote and electrocuted the Spider into unconsciousness.

After that, they'd kept Peter drugged in a state of semi-consciousness, eyes never fully focusing, train of thought derailing every few minutes.

"Docile and complaisant," Greenie had said. Peter'd learned pretty quickly that disobedience earned him fairly harsh consequences. He'd been at the receiving end of blowtorches, crowbars, baseballs bats, steel-toed boots, cattle prods, and twice he'd been strangled.

Total that up with the meager rations they were feeding him, the infrequent torture sessions, and the average savagery of hand-to-hand combat, Peter was a mess.

His healing factor was doing the bare minimum if even that. As Peter laid on his cot, half-lidded eyes staring up at the ceiling, he tried to mentally total up what was and wasn't in working order.

'Right ankle? Fine. Left ankle? Pretty sure I sprained it earlier.'

Peter flexed his foot carefully, wincing as a sharp twinge raced up his leg. 'Okay, ow. Maybe a little more than sprained. Knees are good. Stomach's bruised as hell but what's new? Okay, ribs?'

He inhaled deeply, pleased to find that he could do so without enormous amounts of pain, though there was a deep soreness that stretched along his lower left ribs. He was almost certain that those were bruised it not at least cracked. Peter bit back a sigh as the memory of a booted foot colliding with his side pushed to the forefront of his mind.

'Next. Shoulders. Both okay. Left one is still a little jank, but it's still doing it's job.'

One of the more vicious opponents he'd trained with in the cage had gotten a little feisty during training one day and had pulled Peter's arm out of socket. Greenie hadn't called time out on the sparring match thought. Oh, no. The session hadn't ended until Peter had the girl pinned to the mat for a full ten seconds.

Oh yeah! That was another thing. Apparently underground wrestling came with it's own set of rules. Dirty fighting rules. Peter wasn't allowed out of the cage on training days until he won against whomever he was fighting. It could take minutes, it could take hours. Peter couldn't rest until he had won. And his body was paying the price.

'Elbows are good. Wrists: left fine, right, still broken.' He had no one to blame that on but himself. He'd slipped in the shower and landed funny on his right wrist, knowing instantly that he'd broken it when he'd heard the sickening crack that had followed.

Greenie had been delighted, however, when he'd seen the purple and blue swelling around the joint, taking a picture with his new camera and declaring that it was going to be perfect for his research.

Peter, on the other hand, had been silently fighting back tears as the man had poked and prodded at the damaged wrist. That plus his slowly healing fractured fingers rendered his right hand all but useless to do anything but to maybe hold a pencil, or pinch someone.

The tears were not only from the current pain, but also of the pain that was to come if Peter could no longer fight back in his training sessions. What if he couldn't win with only one hand? Not prevailing in matches usually meant some kind of injury inflicted on the teen's already battered body that left him curled in a ball in his cell, unmoving until they came to retrieve him for whatever else was planned for that day.

"Hey!"

Peter jumped at the sudden call, sitting up quickly to see the figure suddenly standing outside his cell.

In the yellow light of the hall, Peter recognized the back of Jason's head as the man leaned up against the bars of Peter's cell.

"Big day tomorrow, huh?" Jason said, casually picking at his nails.

Peter's eyes narrowed slightly in confusion. Tomorrow? What was tomorrow? He tried to think back on if anything was mentioned to him about a special event or circumstance happening.

"Hello?" Jason raised his eyebrows, turning around when he received no response. "The Mattermind semi-finals are tomorrow?"

When confusion continued to reign over Peter's face, the man shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Jesus," he muttered. "I told him all those drugs were going to rot your brain. Now all you've got is a pretty face."

Jason turned around until he was facing into the cell, staring into the teen's blank eyes. "You know, I asked him to let me have you for a night. Just one," he said, his tone dropping into a whisper.

Even through the drug haze clouding his mind, Peter could practically feel the raw sense of hunger seeping from the man's pores, rolling off of him in waves. Peter pulled his knees up to his chest, scooting back towards the wall as Jason continued to stare at him, eyelids lowering as his mouth hung open ever so slightly.

Peter was suddenly very grateful for the iron bars of his cell that not only kept him in, but were keeping Jason out.

"But he just kept telling me to wait, that I'd have a chance, that there were other 'toys' here to play with," Jason spat, hands gripping the bars so tightly that his knuckles were beginning to turn white. "But none of them are like you, sunshine." His head tipped sideways as he studied the clearly horrified teen through the bars. "Innocent, young, naive, fresh."

Nausea churned in Peter's stomach, what little food was trapped in there threatening to make a violent return. Hot and cold chills raced across his skin as Jason licked his lips, pressing himself even closer to the bars.

"Not to worry though," the man smiled foully. "I've been promised a reward for the both of us should you qualify for the finals."

Peter could barely hear the man's laugh over the blood rushing in his ears.

Ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodpleasenopleasenopleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease.

He hugged his knees to his chest as Jason disappeared from view. Hot tears leaked down his cheeks, soaking into the knees of his sweatpants as a choked sob forced its way past his lips.

He didn't even notice as he began to rock himself back and forth in a sorry attempt to comfort himself.

"Please, Mr. Stark," he gasped through the tears. "Please come find me…"

––––––––––

Is a rescue coming for Peter? Thanks for reading! Drop me a review if you've got the time!