The small team all moved toward Peter, almost in lockstep with one another. The same smile, on his face, the wild hair, the same young eyes Steve had looked into just moments before on the other side of the room looked back at him.
"Peter… are you ok?" Steve said, not sure how to approach him. Was this even Peter?
"I'm fine!"
"Where are you?" Bruce asked, stepping through the data stream.
"I'm in the room, with the rest of you." His brows knit together and his forehead wrinkled up showing his confusion. "Where else would I be?"
"Is he even aware of what he is?" T'Challa asked in a low voice. "We had already created the hologram. Somehow, someway, the real Peter has become one with it."
"There was no place to hide when that crazy lady shot those flash beams at us, so I ducked into the vent and then… well, here I am!" he exclaimed. The same mannerisms, the same expression of wonder when he experienced something new, it was all Peter.
Wanda immediately broke away from the group, returning to the vent. She sent out an exploratory beam into it. Peter flashed on and off.
"Wanda, stop!" Steve commanded. "We're sorry, Peter, but something happened when you hid in the vent. You somehow became one with your hologram."
"That's impossible! I'm…. I'm…" his voice trailed off as his hands traveled upward to his head and then down the sides of his body. He raised them up to stare at them."I feel as real as I ever did," he said.
"Peter," Wanda said. She moved back across the room and inched to him. "I'm going to send out a small bit of energy. It shouldn't hurt."
Peter nodded, his eyes wide. A small red beam escaped from her fingers to the image. After a moment it returned. She let her hands go down to her side and sighed.
"He is the same as Regina, but more alive if that makes any sense," she said. "She was fading away."
"What the…!" Bruce said, his voice so loud they all turned around in unison. He was staring at the data stream, still suspended in midair. "The corruption, the missing pieces. It's all cleaned up. It looks like all it needed was fresh data to fix it."
"Wanda, stay close to him. Try to keep him calm," Steve said to Wanda, keeping his voice low. She nodded and moved closer to Peter, a wide forced smile on her face and spoke to him in a low reassuring tone. Peter still had the face of a frightened wild animal. If he wasn't already sick at the idea of losing Bucky, the transformation of Peter was another hard hit. They came here to find him. Steve's mind went to Tony, somewhere out there, deep in dreams waking to find the boy gone. He wouldn't let that happen.
"It looks like your suspicions were correct, Captain. These people could upload their consciousness to this network and it has taken Peter," T'Challa said. "Much like Armin Zola."
"But where is his body?" Steve said keeping his voice as low as possible. "It has to be in the vent somewhere."
"If it is, he might be in a fugue-like state," Bruce said. "We shouldn't risk any of us going in there to search for it. This might happen to us.."
"And that would mean more of the team down and we can't afford that," Steve said. "Maybe we can use him to get information. If he's part of the system now, he should have a knowledge of the system, shouldn't he?"
"A logical thought Captain," T'Challa said. "But he doesn't seem to have any awareness he is not Peter Parker,"
"Neither did Regina. Zola did. He bragged about what he was," Steve said.
"If we were on earth, under normal conditions, I would say the first thing to do would be to shut down the system, but as that system is keeping us alive…" T'Challa said.
"Can you separate the two?" Steve asked.
"We can try," Bruce said, keeping his eyes fixed on the data stream. "But there's more to it than just plain science and technology. There's an unknown element, a procedure binding the two together that we might not replicate…"
"Magic," Steve said. The desire to hit things rose inside him but he pushed it back down. "Well, we have our own form of magic. Let's see what we can do with that. Wanda!" he motioned her over. "Wanda, we're going to need you to stay focused. You can't let down your guard, not for a minute. We don't know what else they're going to throw at us, or what they're going to take away. We might need you to go above and beyond. I don't know your limits, but you might have to stretch them. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Wanda breathed deeply. She took a long look around the room, her eyes coming to rest on Peter. "I'll do my best."
Steve was about to return to Peter's side when the room filled with a bright intense light, so bright they had to shield their eyes. When they opened them again, Peter was still there but the hunted look has gone from his eyes.
"Whoa!" Bruce said, stepping back from the data stream, his hands in the air. The stream was moving, revolving in place, almost as if it was alive.
"Our doctors and scientists, are gone," Peter said, his voice menacing. "The plague is taking our people. You brought your people back. That's all we ask, for you to do the same. We are desperate. Bring them back!"