Lying Heart
When Peter wakes, his entire body is pulsating and aching. He tries to lift his head and at first he thinks he must have been blinded somehow—he can't see a thing—but then he realizes as his eyes adjust to the darkness that he is in a dimly-lit room, with all of his limbs restrained to a lone chair.
He tries to rip his arms out of their bindings, even though he knows it's stupid to try. Whoever that man is, if he has taken the care to do this to him, he is not going to make it so easy for Peter to escape. Still, he struggles and tugs in vain, until he feels the sharp stab of pain in his side reminding him of where the shot went through him earlier.
The antidote. Oh, jesus. He has no idea where he is but he's certain he'll never free himself in time to get to it.
"Hello?" Peter's voice is raspy. He clears his throat. "Hello?" he tries again, louder. "Is anybody here?"
His eyes dart to all the corners of the room he can see, but it's completely empty. He struggles again, until the muscles in his arms and legs are screaming for release, and yells, "Where the hell am I? Hey!" It occurs to him that his mask is off, that he is utterly exposed. He tries to calm himself down but the panic has already escalated. Aunt May. Gwen. Jesus, how many people did he just put at risk? What the hell does this guy want?
"You can't do this!" Peter yells. "Whoever the hell you are, you can't just—is anybody even there?" Nobody answers. His head sinks down to his chest. "Oh my god," he mutters to himself. He's been left here to die. Everyone he cares about is in danger and he's just going to sit here and die. "Oh my god, oh my god."
The lights come on so suddenly that Peter gasps, reeling away from the brightness. He can't look up right away, it's so intense. He hears footsteps. It's the man from before, still in his sunglasses. Peter ducks his head to obscure his face, but he knows it's far too late for that.
"What do you want with me?" Peter asks between grit teeth.
The man stares at Peter, or at least seems to—it's hard to tell with his eyes hidden behind dark shades. "You stole something from me," says the man. "You must have, or you wouldn't have these abilities."
Peter shakes his head. "I didn't steal anything," he insists. "Who the hell are you, anyway?"
The man ignores him. "I didn't think much of it when I first encountered you. I haven't been in New York for a long time, or I would have known right away. Your abilities are a product of cross-species genetics, of a feat that should be impossible."
Peter stares down at his hands. "People will come looking for me," he says.
"They won't find you," the man says confidently.
Peter sets his eyes on the man. He is in no position of power, but it has to be said. "If you hurt anybody—"
"I can assure you I have no interest in your personal life," the man says, irritated, "so you can save your long-winded hero speech. What I need from you is information."
Peter fidgets uncomfortably under his restraints. "Let me out of these first."
"No."
Peter tries again to free himself to no avail and cries out in frustration. "What the hell did you do to me, anyway? Why can't I get out?"
"I developed a serum that is progressively absorbing itself into your immune system and preventing your cross-species attributes from activating themselves. It should last several hours. Hopefully you will cooperate; I don't think your body will take too kindly to another dosage so quickly."
"It won't matter in several hours," Peter snaps. "I'll be dead. You're the robot expert here, don't you know what's in those lasers?"
"Yes. That is another unfortunate consequence we'll have to face if you fail to give me the information I need."
Peter feels the back of his neck start to sweat. "You're just gonna let me die here," he says in disbelief. "You know I'm not going to tell you anything, so you're just gonna let me die."
The man doesn't answer.
"I didn't do anything to you," Peter yells. "I tried to help you—that's all I've been trying to do, is help, and what do I get? Some crazy guy ties me to a chair and watches me die?" He throws his head back on the chair, nearly toppling it over. "You can't do this!"
"If you could stop behaving like a petulant child, you would realize that it is in both of our best interests for you to be forthcoming about your abilities. You may not realize it, but you are a threat to society, and a threat to yourself and everyone close to you." He paces across the room, staring at the wall. "You're just a boy. You have no idea how to handle these abilities, and you lack the necessary maturity to make wise decisions with them. I've seen you—you're impulsive, thoughtless."
Peter grits his teeth, trying not to retaliate and prove the man right.
"However you obtained these abilities was clearly not by any means sanctioned by OsCorp, which is the only known facility capable of producing formulas cross-species genetics." He walks back toward Peter again. "But even OsCorp doesn't have the technology to create something like you. So tell me how this happened."
"Why do you even care?" Peter snaps. "What's done is done."
"That is not necessarily true. It would be in everyone's best interests, including your own, if I could create a permanent counter-serum to your abilities—"
"No," says Peter, "you can't—"
"—and that aside, by knowing how this happened, I could prevent it from happening to another person." He clears his throat. "I acknowledge that while you are reckless and, quite frankly, rather stupid with these abilities of yours, your intentions could be a lot worse. Don't you want to prevent someone with worse intentions from obtaining your abilities?"
Peter flinches as the man draws nearer to him. The man's bottom lip curls up knowingly.
"The Lizard. Dr. Curt Connors. You faced him yourself, didn't you?"
Peter doesn't answer. The man already knows, there's no point.
"Wouldn't you hate to live with the knowledge that you could have prevented a horrific event like that," the man continues, "if you had just told me the truth?"
His bones chill at those words. He looks up at the man searchingly. There is no way he could know about the formula, know way he could know it was Peter who gave it to Dr. Connors. But the way the man's eyes are trained on him, it doesn't matter whether or not the man knows the truth. The guilt ebbs at Peter just the same, and despite himself, he sees that this man might have somewhat of a point.
"I wandered into OsCorp," Peter says lowly. "I wasn't supposed to be in there, in this room with spiders developing biocables. I was just being stupid and poking around. After I left one of the spiders bit me." Peter looks up at him. "And then I turned into this. Are you happy?"
The man considers him for a moment. "No," he says. "You're not telling me everything."
Peter tugs at his bindings in frustration. "What? What more do you want?"
"I looked into that night, that very highly publicized showdown between you and the mutant version of Dr. Connors." He stares at Peter as if he is picking apart his brain. "You know more about his transformation than you're telling me."
"No, I don't," says Peter, too quickly.
"Then how else would you know how to stop him? How else did you know how to find an antidote to project across the city?" the man demands.
Gwen, thinks Peter, because it is the truth. He did nothing but provide the formula that nearly got everyone killed; she was the one who cleaned up his mess. But he will die sooner than say anything about Gwen's involvement.
"I know for a fact that there is only one man who has developed a formula to create such a thing as that lizard, and that man is long since dead—dead for protecting that formula from ever leaving his hands."
"Richard Parker," Peter says before he can stop himself.
The silence is halting. Peter doesn't breathe. He can't believe he has said something so stupid. It will only be a matter of time before the man connects the dots, and even if he ever lets Peter leave, he will forever know who he is and how to find him. The only peace of mind he has is that the formula is destroyed. Peter made sure that any trace of it left was either burned or deleted from OsCorp records, and he personally found the vials of it that were meant for transport and incinerated them in a biocontainment furnace.
"How do you know that?" the man asks, his voice eerily quiet.
"I don't," Peter stammers. "I just read somewhere—"
"Impossible!" the man shouts, loud enough to make Peter cringe away from him. "How do you know that, you tell me, you tell me right—" The man suddenly halts, blanching. "Now," he finishes softly.
He stares at Peter for a long time. Peter squirms; it is only a matter of time before the toxins kill him, and every second he wastes is another second closer to his demise. But he doesn't want to set this guy off any more than he already has, not if he has a chance of being let go.
The man mutters something under his breath that sounds like "my God," and then leaves the room.
Peter tries very hard not to panic. He counts to ten. He has to believe that the man will come back, that he is reasonable and won't just leave him here like this. He stops counting at about six, because he can't focus and he's just so frustrated, so angry, so terrified that he just might scream.
Right at the peak of his horror, though, the restraints release him with a neat click. Peter stares down at his hands in disbelief, but only for a moment. He leaps up off the chair, pain ripping through all of his muscles, but he doesn't care. He's free.
The man enters the room again.
"You're letting me go?" asks Peter.
"For now."
"No," says Peter, his voice shaking. "Don't leave it like that. You don't get to just shoot me down and kidnap me again. You may think I'm just some snarky kid in a suit, but I have a life, I have to go to school, I have—" I have people who worry about me, he thinks, but he doesn't want to admit that and give the man any leverage. "If you want to get in touch with me again, you do it like a civil human being. I did nothing to deserve what you just did to me."
The man doesn't say anything, but he nods just slightly, enough that Peter knows that they've reached some sort of fragile understanding between them.
"You should know," says the man. "It's Wednesday."
"What?" asks Peter incredulously.
"I kept you unconscious until I developed the serum. You've been here for four days."
"But the lasers—"
"I injected an antidote shortly after the attack," the man says curtly.
"And the robots—?"
"Taken care of," the man says. "For the time being."
Peter doesn't want to push his luck by asking the man to elaborate. Really, more than anything in the world, he just wants to get as far away from this place as he possibly can. He'll deal with the rest later.
"My mask," he asks quietly, seeing it dangling in the man's hand.
He hands it to Peter without any hesitation, but his hand lingers in the air for a moment after Peter takes it, and he seems to watch Peter put it on with an uncomfortable scrutiny. Peter wonders if he is trying to memorize his face.
"I meant what I said before," says the man. "Stay out of this."
The man has said this to him numerous times, but this time is different. It almost sounds like he is concerned for Peter's well-being. Peter wonders if this man knew his father well, because it is the only explanation he can think of for this radical change of heart.
Peter walks toward the door without answering. They both know he isn't going to stay out of it no matter how many times the man asks.
"Once you leave, take the staircase to your left, and it will lead you to the street," the man instructs him. "The next time I request your presence, you'll know where to find me."
Peter almost laughs at the absurdity of it, but he's too exhausted. "Alrighty, then," he says. The door slams behind him. Peter shuts his eyes and wonders, not for the first time, if he has blown his cover and put his entire little world in danger. But something unexpected gnaws at him, fighting his better judgment, and he decides tentatively to trust the man for the time being. Right now he's the closest thing to an ally Peter has.
So. Guys. Tonight's my birthday party. My apartment is about to be packed. But then I remembered I hadn't updated-remembered that I made a promise to update every day-and so I, like Peter, dragged my tulle-covered princess sparkly butt (yes, I'm 21 and this is a tea time princess themed party) over to the computer amidst this amazing impending chaos, just to update this story and KEEP THAT PROMISE.
Because I love you guys.