Lying Heart
It feels like Peter is dreaming. Were his abilities ever this spectacular before? Maybe it's just the relief of them returning, or maybe he is even more agile and strong than he has ever been, but this is the closest he has ever felt to what he imagines a drug high in like. He soars through the air, fearless, invincible.
He sees the menacing new model of the robot only a block from him and doesn't even feel the usual skip of his heartbeat that accompanies encountering a large threat. He grins. He's so happy. The tips of his fingers are practically on fire, the air in his lungs is so fresh and easy, everything is electric, and he is going to win. He knows the man said to distract it and Peter suddenly is sure he is more than capable of this feat.
He hears the man below calling his name but Peter doesn't care. He has this under control.
After about thirty seconds of web-slinging—god, this is the best feeling in the world—Peter has caught up to the robot, which seems to be scoping out the ground and shooting at fleeing targets. Peter doesn't even have to think, it's like his muscles are fifteen seconds ahead of him. He slings two webs at the robot and propels himself toward it, landing with a crash at its chest.
It barely leaves a dent, but it's something. The robot doesn't react at first, but then it spins wildly, as if trying to shake him off.
"Sticky hands, man," Peter announces, laughing with the exhilaration of it all. "My hands can stick again!"
It clubs him abruptly in the back, so hard that his teeth rattle. Peter still clings to it, climbing up toward its arms, intending to disable the lasers by finding some way to detach them.
He smells it before he feels it—the sharp, acrid smell of burning spandex and skin—and reflexively he moves his hands away and lets himself fall. The robot has heated its own metal plates and burned him. He stares at his hands, the skin red and angry and soon to blister. Then he remembers he is falling.
He shoots another web, one that sticks to the robot's feet. "That's the best you can do?" he challenges it.
It turns its bright green pinpoint eyes toward Peter and fires. The laser cuts through Peter's arm and through the biocable connecting them. Peter falls again, and this time slings a web toward a building and propels himself out of its sightline, inviting it to start a chase. The man said he wanted to distract it for as long as possible, and Peter would do whatever it took.
That's when he sees it—there are directed heat missiles flying over Manhattan. Peter's eyes widen and for a moment he sticks to a building, stunned. He can't stop a missile. He shoots a biocable at one of them but it's so heated and so fast that it flies on as if he merely brushed it. He keeps shooting anyway, his chest welling in panic. He tries to count—he can see at least three of them.
He can't save anyone from this, he can't even save himself. He doesn't know a lot about weapons like these, he has never seen anything quite like this before, but he knows enough. Nobody could survive an impending missile attack like this.
He braces himself, his whole body tensing in anticipation of the moment one of them finally hits a target, but then he sees that they are all swerving in and out of buildings. Not only that, but they don't seem to have any relation to the robot at all; in fact, the robot has shifted its attentions from Peter completely and is shooting at them instead.
Peter wishes he had a watch, or at least some indication of how much longer he needs to be perched up here, antagonizing this robot in the midst of the most bizarre weapons display he has ever seen. The robot is now shooting through buildings in an attempt to hit the missiles. Peter wonders why it even bothers, but then it occurs to him so quickly and obviously that he feels stupid for not having figured it out before—the robots, all the ones they have encountered in the past, are heat seeking. He knows because they have continued to shoot at him even when he was out of sight.
The robot thinks the missiles are Spiderman.
It's genius, really, and Peter knows instantly that the man must have thought of this. It's a cheap diversion, one that could maybe buy them a minute or two, tops, but it might just be enough.
Until the robot shoots through one of them. The explosion is contained by missile standards, but the debris still scatters violently through the air; Peter feels glass piercing his skin and when he opens his eyes, the entire area is obscured by dust.
He can't see a thing, but that doesn't mean the robot can't. He's blindly shooting a web before he can even fully see through the haze, hoping it will connect with something, anything, and by some miracle it does, and Peter hoists himself up just before the shot intended to kill him fires through the air and hits the space of the building he was clinging to mere seconds before. He collides with a part of the building that juts out at the roof and he clings to it, climbing up on top of it, hoping he can get some sort of aerial view of the situation.
One missile. He can see one missile and the robot is nowhere in sight.
Weren't there three missiles? What happened to the other one? He would have noticed another explosion, it was loud enough to hear from thirty blocks away. He looks around wildly, both for the robot and the other missile, when, with a certain indescribable horror, he sees them both.
The robot has thought better of shooting through the missiles. Now it has grabbed one—not only has it grabbed one, but it is aiming it right toward Peter.
His first instinct to get out of its way is to jump and let himself fall, but he can't fall faster than it flies. He wonders if the missile will blow on its own accord at some point, or if the man has some measure of control over when and where it explodes. And if he does, will he detonate it now that it's so close to Peter, and now that it might prematurely destroy the robot itself and prevent them from getting a location on their creator?
Either way, they lose, because even if the damn thing doesn't detonate it doesn't change the fact that the robot has figured out their little game and has its sights set permanently on Peter.
In a desperate attempt to shake it off, he swings at another building, one that will take him on a sharp angle away from it, but he misses. He curses as he falls through the air and tries again, barely latching on, wishing that he could propel himself ten times faster than he already is flying even though there is no way the combination of his mass and the biocable technology would allow it.
He simply isn't a match for this new model. When it strikes him clean in shoulder he isn't even surprised; his teeth are already grit as if he had been hit ten seconds before.
He knows he's in trouble now, though, with only one arm capable of swinging from. He hears it behind him, the same way he has with every model of this robot in the past, but this time it's different, this time the whirr of it against the evening sky is so quiet and deadly that he is sure he is the only one who can hear it.
It fires again, but Peter stumbles and by chance it misses him and flies through the window of an empty office building. It fires a third time and hits him in his good arm, and then in his leg—the pain is white-hot and immediate and he is so stunned by it happening all at once that all he can manage to do is close his eyes and keep slinging biocables blindly as he falls.
Just when the blackness starts crawl at the edges of his vision, just when he has given up on his biocables connecting with anything useful, he hears it: another explosion—the missile has gone off and the robot is blown to smithereens—and the blast is in such close range that he is knocked sideways in the air, into a building and straight through a glass window.
He doesn't know how long he lays there, trying to overcome the shock. He opens his eyes but he doesn't want to move. Right now is okay. Right now is deeply uncomfortable, right now is not ideal, but right now he doesn't feel the rush of pain he knows will come with trying to get out of this place, and so he stares up at the ceiling and breathes in and breathes out.
He needs to get out of here. As he slowly comes to his senses he hears police sirens in the distance approaching and he knows that his return will not have gone overlooked. He forces himself to let awareness sink back in, to accept the pain and move anyway. First it's just his neck—he cranes his head up, trying to get a better view of what seems to be the waiting area to a dentist's office, and his vision swims.
The sirens have reached the street beneath him. They must have, because at the peak of their noise they have all stopped.
He hoists himself up as gingerly as possible. There are shards of glass embedded in his back and the backs of his arms and legs.
"Brand new suit," he laments, unable to help the scowl on his face. "Brand new."
Being annoyed about the ripped spandex is the only thing that serves as a much needed distraction from the pain of trying to get to his feet. He can't even move the arm of the shoulder that was shot straight through, isn't even sure if he can feel it anymore. His leg is in similarly bad shape, but he limps over to the broken window anyway, and all of his fears are confirmed: below him are at least twenty cop cars, undoubtedly full of men prepared to open fire.
He backs away from the window before they can see him.
He tries to consider his options. The window is obviously out of the question. Not only would he be right line of fire of New York's gun-happy finest, but he is not at all confident in his abilities to sling out of here. He considers the roof, but he has no idea how tall this building is, and he can't fathom walking up the stairs in this condition or taking an elevator that surely the cops were smart enough to shut down.
In the end he settles for running to the other side of the building. He is sure it is surrounded by now, or it's about to be, but he'll take his chances. He limps the distance of the waiting room to an open hallway, forces open a door leading to a plastic surgery practice, and heads to a window that leads to a different street.
He was right, he is surrounded, but this side is skeletal compared to the other one. He doesn't think twice before punching open the window; he's such a bloody mess that another few shards won't make any difference. He takes a quick breath, determined to make this work, to get out of this mess and make it home to Aunt May tonight, and shoots a biocable toward the building parallel to him.
They almost don't notice him; right before he makes it to the other side a few shots ring out, but they miss him, in the only merciful moment the night has offered him. He shoots another web and he stumbles, barely making it across a side street, and that is the moment he knows something is wrong, something beyond his injuries.
His abilities are dissolving again. He slings another web as fast as he can, wondering if he can outrun his own deteriorating body, but finds no such luck. His aim is terrible, his aim is that of a stupid seventeen-year-old who grew up wearing contacts without playing any sports requiring hand-eye coordination. He can't latch onto anything and he tumbles out of the sky, falling into an open dumpster with a thud.
It takes every ounce of willpower he has left in him to roll out of the dumpster and onto the ground. He may be humiliated beyond measure, he may be more useless to this city than a subway, but he will not be cuffed and arrested as dumpster boy.
"There you are."
Peter closes his eyes, not sure whether his groan is one of irritation or relief.
"Can you get up?"
Peter blinks at the man towering from his position on the ground. "Eventually," he says. He doesn't want to look pathetic in front of him, doesn't want to admit to his weakness. For some reason this man has intimidated him from the start and laying here powerless as ever in front of him only surfaces memories of those four mysterious days in that basement he will never have back.
To his surprise, the man crouches down beside him, grabs his shoulders and helps him sit up against the dumpster.
"Where did it hit you?" he asks.
"Uh." Peter furrows his brow, trying to remember. "My shoulder. This one. And my other arm. And my leg—ah," he exclaims, as the man jams a needle into his injured shoulder without any warning. "Jesus."
"That was a stupid thing you did."
Peter would protest, but he can barely lift his head up to scowl at the man.
"Stupid, and reckless, and entirely like a teenage boy. This is why I didn't want to work with you in the first place," he says, and it sounds an awful lot like he is scolding Peter, in a way he can really only remember his aunt and uncle having done in the past. "You could have waited another ten seconds for me to explain the plan—"
"I figured it out," Peter says, "and besides, it was just shooting at people and—shit, a little warning, please?"Peter snaps after the man jabs at him again, this time near the exposed leg wound.
The man ignores him. "Your abilities are gone again, aren't they?"
Peter nods, just once.
"You were just going to run out in the street with any abilities at all. That's not heroic, Peter. That is stupid."
The back of Peter's eyes burn. He doesn't want to be sitting here with his entire body stinging in pain, so bone-tired he can barely move and listening to this hostile, unyielding man berate him like a child.
"The only thing you would have succeeded in doing is getting yourself killed."
"What do you care?" Peter challenges him petulantly. He looks up at the man, trying to level with him by meeting his eyes despite the fact that he is still wearing sunglasses. The man doesn't bother to look at him, just sticks Peter again, this time in his arm. Peter can feel his eyes starting to grow heavier. He remembers the last time the antidote froze through his veins, how he tried to resist the quiet and calm that it brought because it only let him think of Gwen, but this time he welcomes the slack feeling in his muscles and the buzzing sensation in his head.
When he looks up again, the man is removing one of the larger shards of glass from his leg. "You have to fix this," Peter says, almost pleading. "It might have been a stupid thing to do but it's who I am now, with or without the abilities. Please."
The man nods solemnly. "I know. I will."
Peter takes a long breath out, trying to sink into the sensation of the antidote coursing through him so he can ignore the pain. A thought occurs to him and he can't believe he didn't ask before.
"Did you get it? The coordinates," Peter asks. "Did I buy you enough time?"
The man's face is grim. "Yes."
"What's wrong?"
The man takes a breath as if he is going to say something, but then he backs up from Peter, giving him a once-over and apparently thinking the better of it. "I have a driver who will take you back to Queens with a note explaining when and where I need you to meet with me next. You're probably not going to be conscious much longer with that much concentrated antidote in you."
Peter doesn't even really have the energy to nod at him, let alone protest to getting in a car with a stranger.
The last thing he remembers before everything gets too hazy to hold on to is the man helping him to his feet, presumably to leave the alley, and saying a very quiet, clipped, "Thank you. For your help."
Peter can't help but grin. "My stupid, reckless help."
Then the part he is sure he has imagined, after he is situated in the back of a black car with tinted windows and the man is about to shut the car door—he hears it like a ghost, maybe, or a whisper of a memory, but as his eyes finally, blissfully start to slide shut, the words are unmistakable in his consciousness: Be good.
Splendid news, everyone! I won't be evicted today! It turns out I may have procrastinated a bit on renewing my lease. And by procrastinated I mean my lease expired today. Woooooops.
How was I supposed to fill out all that paperwork? Don't they know I have Spiderman fanfiction to write?
Anyway. I get to keep this smelly, furniture-less apartment a million miles away from campus for another year. The gods of apartment leases smile upon me.