AN: I forgot the page breaks in the last few chapters again. : / ... Sorry, I fixed it.
Chapter 7
Tensions are high in the lab. Simmons and Vision have joined Fitz, Daisy, and Tony. Its 8 am. They are staring at the live feed of Peter. For the past two days the crazy doctor has begun her little fun at 6 am sharp, but today, nothing. Peter has moved a couple times, groaned and then passed out again. Simmons estimates the concern for his health right now is hydration and infection. Two things his super healing won't be able to fix on its own. Fitz was able to regain control of Friday around 4:30 am early that day, but there had been no breakthrough in locating Peter. Natasha came back about 15 minutes ago looking less than pleased. The ringing of her phone is the only interruption to the silent tension.
"Barton." She answers flatly. "You are on speaker phone. Everyone is here."
"Okay." Clint begins. "We have Linda Sherwood, and she's definitely the mastermind behind all of this. Her daughter is really just a puppet. I doubt she even planned anything without at least the approval of her mother."
"Okay, what else. Do you have a location, an affiliation with an organization, any more partners, a timeline... anything else?" She asks hopefully. "All my leads turned up dry."
"I doubt there are any other partners, and from what I can tell there is no affliction with an organization. It's just a crazy woman and her crazy daughter." Clint explains. "She isn't giving a location. That's why I called you, do you have any reason for me to wait to continue the interrogation process?"
Natasha looks around the room. Tony looks eager, Simmons hopeful, Daisy uncomfortable as she is the only one in the room who knows what the two super spies are referring to, Vision looks... well pretty much like he always does, and Fitz fell asleep an hour ago. Natasha takes the conversation off speaker phone and walks into another room.
"You are off speaker phone." She informs her partner. "What do you know?"
"There isn't much to know," Clint admits. "She hasn't really told us anything we couldn't have figured out on our own."
"Okay, then lets piece this together. What do we know?"
"We know who Tiffany Sherwood is." Clint begins. "We know that she doesn't really have the dominance to do anything without her mother's approval or guidance. We know they are both crazy. We know the only reason they took Peter was to get back at Tony, which leaves the question of whether they plan on killing the kid or not."
"The end game." Natasha's breath hitches.
"What?"
"Yesterday I could tell Tiffany was preparing for her end game and today her pattern has changed up. She is nowhere to be seen and normally she is knee deep in Parker screams by now."
"That's not good," Clint mutters. "What has been her patterns over the past couple of days."
"Day one was knifes and electricity." Nat begins. "Day two fire and a lead pipe. Day three was a game of operation and something with battery acid. Day four... I think was just a repeat of all the other day." The two are silent while they think.
"Linda Sherwood sure is a crazy bitch isn't she," Natasha grumbles.
"Dr. Sherwood actually," Clint says mimicking the woman from earlier.
"What?" Nat laughs lightly.
"Oh, I called her Mrs. Sherwood earlier and she corrected me. A real narcissist this one."
"Clint!" Natasha gasps "Linda Sherwood has a Ph.D. in chemistry."
"The Congo!" The two partners gasp at the same time.
"But Tiffany doesn't have any chemistry abilities, does she?" Natasha asks.
"No, and I doubt her mother would allow her to try on her own, especially if this is the end game."
"That means-"
"The retirement home!" Clint rushes back over to the room in which he left Wanda, Sam, and the dear old doctor. "You two go back to the retirement home and look for Tiffany Sherwood to show up!"
A flash of panic breaks the old woman's cold and confident grin, but only for a moment.
"Why?" Wanda asks as she and Sam begin to follow orders.
"Nat will call you on the way to explain." He tells them as he puts the phone back up to his ear. "I'm continuing to enhanced interrogation." With that, he hangs up and walks over to the old woman with a bucket of water and a towel he grabs from the corner of the empty warehouse.
"Barton, you aren't really going to waterboard an elderly woman!" Wanda protests.
"GO!" Clint barks, and with that he and a nervous elderly woman are alone.
"What was that about?" Tony snaps angerly as a focused Natasha walks back into the room.
"We don't have time for your childish protests Stark," Natasha growls at him. It's go time. "I don't have time to explain to you how I know what I know or why I do what I do. I just need you to listen."
"What's going on?" Simmons asks.
"We know Tiffany's end game." Natasha begins to explain as she rapidly texts a bunch of people on her phone. "She is going to inject Peter with some type of chemical cocktail."
"What?" Tony panics.
"I'm not sure what the chemical is and I don't know the chemical will do to him. It could do nothing or kill him or do something... worse."
"How-"
"What did I just say!" She snaps, but she softens her expression when she sees the faces of her teammates. "Criminals like to think they are unique and creative. Like nobody like them has existed before, but that's just not true. A couple years back Clint and I saw almost the exact same pair of partners and pattern of escalation in the Congo on a mission."
"Did that guy... you know..." Daisy asks.
"Not at first, but he did eventually," Natasha answers softly.
"What do we need to do?" Fitz asks yawning slightly.
"Keep working on the hack. We are going to need a backup plan if Clint's plan doesn't work. Simmons, I emailed you a list of all the chemicals Dr. Linda Sherwood has bought over the past year. See if you can make sense of any of it, and prepare to receive Spiderman. Sam and Wanda are at the retirement home we picked Linda Sherwood up at. They are waiting for Tiffany to show up and hopefully, they are going to find her and be able to follow her back to Peter. Vision I need you to come with me to assemble a team to retrieve Spiderman."
"I want to be on that team," Tony interjects.
"Yeah me too," Daisy adds.
"And me!" Fitzsimmons add together.
"Uh no, I need you guys here. Trust me, the situation will be better served doing this. Plus we need to keep this low profile. The last thing we need is to have Iron Man all over the scene." Tony grumbles something in response but seems to understand Natasha's reasoning.
"Why did I let you drive!" Sam screams as the tires squeal around the corner of the parking lot into the Happy Hills Retirement Complex. "Do you even have a driver's licenses?"
"Oh, course not. I spent most of my life on a Hydra base being trained and tested by mad scientists." She laughs through her heavy accent. "I'm not even a US citizen so I don't think I could even get one if I wanted to!"
"Then why did you offer to drive?" Sam yells.
"Becuase I like driving!" She laughs as she slams the breaks in front of the building. After grumbling a few profanities, Sam jumps out of the car and rushes into the building with a picture of Tiffany in one hand and a fake badge in the other. He runs up to the front desk.
"FBI!" He yells at the woman. "Have you seen this woman today?"
"I.. what..." The woman panics.
"Dammit, woman we don't have time for this!" Sam yells pounding his fist on the counter.
"Uh, YES... YES, I have she left about an hour ago!" She shrikes. "But I don't know where she went! I can ask her mother and father if you would like!"
"No, we don't have time for that!" Sam yells without missing a beat, and he runs back out to Wanda. The last thing he needs is for the worker to discovering a man put in a deep sleep and his missing wife.
"GO GO GO GO!" Sam exclaims fanatically as he jumps back into the van. Without protest or question, Wanda hits the gas and the two speed away.
"I can tell you are enjoying yourself more than you'd like to admit!" Linda Sherwood laughs through her gasps of breath. The old bag is tougher than Clint would like to admit. A serious psychopath, no question.
"Why don't you take a break and listen to this old woman's story." Linda baits.
"As much as I would like to chat... oh wait... I don't want to chat." Clint shrugs as he once again continues the process of water enforced enhanced interrogation.
"What do you mean she was already gone by the time you showed up?" Natasha growls.
"I'm sorry but we missed her." Sam painfully admits. "Please tell me you guys are having better luck?"
Natasha checks for a message from Clint, nope. From Tony or Daisy, double nope.
"Not yet." She grumbles.
"What do we do now?" Sam asks. She wants to send them back to Clint to help him step up his progress, but the bottom line is it takes a special type of person to do what Clint has to do. Natasha doesn't want to put that type of blood on their hands.
"Just stay put," Natasha tells them. "And send me your exact location. I'll let you know if we find anything."
Natasha hangs up her phone and sighs.
"That bad huh?" An Asian woman asks walking over to Natasha.
"Yeah." She sighs rubbing the side of her face.
"Here." The Asain woman hands the super spy a water bottle.
"Thanks, May." Natasha smiles.
"No problem Nat, now let's go get that kid."
Nothing, absolutely nothing." Tony growls. "We've been working on this for days and nothing!"
"Calm down Stark," Fitz tells him. "Losing your mind isn't going to help anyone."
Tony wants to tell the little Scotish pipsqueak to can it, but he doesn't really have the energy.
"I've reached a dead end with the chemical list Agent Romanoff sent me," Jemma announces sadly as she enters the room.
"More good news," Tony grumbles sarcastically. "Friday what time is it?"
"It is 10:22 am." She informs him.
"Any news from Natasha?" He asks his AI.
"No sir."
"Of course there isn't."
Tiffany Sherwood walks up the building she had been keeping her little pet in for the past 5 days. She practically skips down the stairs and into the room where she has her live feed broadcasting from. A broken young boy lies on the table she has him strapped down to. She positions herself in front of the camera.
"Well Anthony Stark, it looks like you haven't been able to crack my code. That's too bad, it would have made this adventure a little more interesting." She shrugs. "Oh well, like they say. All good things must come to an end."
And with that, she happily skips over to Peter Parker.
"Nooooo." The young boy moans. "Please..."
"Oh I'm sorry honey, but it's your time." She lifts up a small syringe and places the needle into the boy's neck. "Your contributions to the fight for equality have been greatly appreciated."
She places her thumb on the end of the plunger of the syringe, grinning ear to ear.
"Move a muscle and I shoot."
Hey so life is busy and I won't be able to update unless I get some interest. Sorry.
