Lying Heart
"I'm not going to take you to her," says Fisher.
"Then tell me where she is," Peter demands, and even though he knows it is the least productive move he can make in this situation, he takes another step forward, intending to intimidate Fisher, who sidesteps him with the grace of cat. The frustration overwhelms him and Peter swings his fist, misses, and yells, "How are you doing this?"
"Your dad's not the only master of cross-species genetics left in the world," says Fisher smugly. Then, as if to make a point, he grabs Peter by the back of his shirt collar and swings him through the wall connecting to the living room with a thud that echoes through the whole house.
Peter sits there on the floor, spluttering and outraged. It's impossible. Even if Fisher's father were able to create his own formula, how is it that he is this much stronger than Peter?
"I don't know what you want," Peter yells. "You clearly don't need the formula, you don't need me—why are you doing this and what have you done with Gwen?"
Fisher strolls into Peter's living room with a casualty that makes Peter's jaw set forward in impatience.
"This," says Fisher, flexing his fingers ostentatiously, "is only temporary. It's as far as your father ever got on record; these files that he thought he hid from you, my father has had access to them for eleven years." Fisher leans down and narrows his eyes at Peter. "Pathetic as you are, your abilities are permanent. You contain a formula that is every bit as much my birthright as yours."
"What—what are you talking about?"
"Our fathers worked together, all those years ago," says Fisher, "and just when they completed the formula that created you—" He pauses, regarding Peter with disgust as he stumbles to his feet. "—your father disappeared, and the formula with him."
"My father's dead," says Peter reflexively.
"Don't patronize me," says Fisher. "I know full well he is alive, and so does my father. The results of the formula are unmistakably inhuman. He knew you had been injected the moment those robots first encountered Spiderman, and it was only a matter of time before the trail led straight back to the Parker family, and straight to your moronic father, who could not have revealed his return in a more public manner when he saved your useless, spandex-clad ass."
Peter knows he should be upset about all this, that it concerns not just his and his father's safety, but the safety of the world as they know it, but his heart is pounding in every vein in his body, through his throat and against his skull, every beat of it consumed with the thought of Gwen, snatched away and terrified and waiting for him. He processes it all as if another Peter, out of his own body, is dealing with the facts: Fisher's father worked with his father on the cross-species project, Fisher's father created the robots that have been attacking the city for weeks, Fisher's father has figured out his identity and this may be the end of him ever hoping to lead a normal life again.
None of it matters. None of it matters but her.
"I don't care about any of this. Tell me where she is."
It takes him a full half an hour to even reach Manhattan, even slinging across the bridge at full speed without any heed to the ice or the cars below him. After Fisher bluntly informed him that Gwen was waiting for him at Midtown Science, Peter demanded to know how that could even be possible, where she had been all day if she was suddenly being held there now, but Fisher had left his house quickly and by the time Peter chased him out the door he had slipped away somewhere without a trace.
Peter is smart. He considers that this is a trap, that there is a possibility that Gwen isn't even there, that this is the most colossally stupid thing he has ever done, but even as he acknowledges all of this, he is simply out of any other options. He will go to Midtown Science regardless of the consequences because it is the only place he can go, the only option he has. He brings with him extra biocable devices and all that is left of the antidote that Gwen supplied him with last month because he has no idea what to expect.
He's nearly to the front doors when something collides with him hard enough to knock him off his feet.
"Dad?"
The word escapes him reflexively; he would never say it with any real sentiment, except he is so stunned to see the man on the ground beside him that he doesn't have enough time to think of old grudges.
He gets up much faster than Peter does. "You're not going in there."
"Like hell I'm not," says Peter, throwing his body weight back toward the front doors, but his father knocks him back down before he can even get off the ground and immediately pins him down by his shoulder. Peter tries to wrench away but they are hopelessly, evenly matched. "Let go of me!"
"You aren't thinking straight—"
"They've got Gwen!" Peter screams, finally ripping his body out from under his father's hold, accidentally kneeing him in the face in the process. The other man reels away and Peter runs for the doors, but suddenly jerks back; he feels the familiar tug of a biocable attaching to him, and turns around in complete astonishment and says to his father, "Are you fucking serious?"
By the time he untangles himself his father has caught up to him and grabbed his arm. "Would you just listen to me before you go running in there like a complete lunatic?" he growls.
"Listen? To you? That ship sailed a long time ago," says Peter. He swings up a fist but his father dodges it, almost as if he was expecting it before Peter even thought to do it. Peter stares at him in disgust. "So you did inject yourself with the formula. Then you stole my biocables—how did you even know where I was?"
"Your phone," his father says curtly. "The moment it broke I knew something was—"
"You tapped my phone?" Peter asks incredulously. "What is wrong with you? Is there anything you won't do?" He unsuccessfully tries to wrench his hand out of his father's grasp again and says, "You've had these abilities this whole time, where have you been?"
"Yes, I injected myself with the formula," says his father, "because I was young, and I was stupid, and it got your mother killed. Would you please just listen to me?"
Peter rounds on him. He knows what he has to do to get inside; he can feel the weight of the answer in his backpack, and he will have to be quick.
"If you ever loved my mother, the way I grew up thinking you did, then you will get out of my way right now. Because you'll understand. I don't have a choice."
He has given his father a chance to step out of his way, but he doesn't take it and that is how Peter rationalizes what he has to do next.
"You never loved her," says Peter, not because he thinks it's true, but because he needs to hit him with the hardest blow he's got, or else he's going to realize what Peter is doing too soon. Just as Peter thought, his father reels back, the hurt in his eyes raw and telling. It is the fraction of a second Peter needs to grab the antidote out of his partially unzipped backpack—grab it, and stab it into his father's side with all of his might.
It's a temporary solution, a muscle relaxant that will probably only slow the man down for the next few minutes, but it is more than enough time than Peter needs.
His father's eyes widen, staring down at the needle as he pulls it out. "Peter," he says disbelievingly, sounding so injured and stunned that Peter feels a twinge of remorse.
He has to act fast, though. "I'm sorry," he mumbles, and then he balls his fist and clocks the other man in the face so hard he hits the ground, unconscious.
Fisher didn't give Peter specific details on where Gwen was being held, but Peter doesn't need them. Once he is in the building something primal and instinctual commands him, and he runs at impossible speeds through the halls, narrowly avoiding lockers as he skids to make turns. His feet lead him to the gymnasium; he shoves open the doors with enough force to knock them off their hinges.
"Peter Parker."
He whips around. There is a short, fat, balding man halfway across the gym from him. Peter all but ignores him in his search for Gwen—he sees another one of the robots, this one much smaller, the exact replica of the one that he saw the plans for in OsCorp, but his eyes sweep right over it—he can't find her.
"Where's Gwen?"
The man, presumably Fisher's father, looks nothing like Fisher. The only indication that they are related is that he walks with the same smug, maddening confidence that Fisher does. "She's safe."
Peter backs away from the stout man as he starts to approach. He peels off his mask—there is no point now, and he feels like he can't breathe in it now that he has swept every corner of this room and can't find her. "You won't get anything from me until I see her, until you let her go."
The man walks past Peter and toward the supply closet, which is partially ajar. He kicks it open. Gwen is sitting tied to a chair, her eyes wide, her hair a mess, but otherwise unharmed. The sight of her breathing in that chair may be the most precious thing he has ever laid eyes on. At this moment she is alive. At this moment he still has a chance to keep her that way.
"Peter," she says, her voice barely above a whisper. She's shaking her head at him. He's running toward her, ignoring her reaction, but just then the stout man shouts that he'd better not get any closer, and Peter sees that the unmanned robot is pointing all of its weaponry at Gwen's pale, shaking form.
He skids to a halt. She is so close.
"We have matters to discuss, and if you decide to cooperate, the girl will walk free."
"I'll do it," says Peter, "what do you want?"
"Peter, stop," says Gwen.
The man's eyes are gleaming, looking at Peter with a hunger in his eyes. "I want the formula embedded in your DNA," he says. "But more than that, I want you out of my way."
"It's you, then. You've been sending these robots all around Manhattan," Peter says lowly, careful to stay in the sightline of the robot with its weapons set on Gwen.
Now that he is closer Peter can see his receding hairline is dotted with beads of sweat, but it only serves to make him seem more threatening and unpredictable than before. "Yes." He turns his back on Peter, his hands crossed behind his back, and Peter can tell he is in for a long-winded explanation that he doesn't want or need.
Peter turns slightly to look over at Gwen. Her eyes are wide and glassy and wet. She shakes her head at him again, and all the noise seems to funnel out of the room; the man is talking, but Peter doesn't hear him, all he hears is the nothingness of Gwen shaking her head at him and essentially asking him to leave her here to die.
He has to look away from her. He hates himself for inspiring this sort of insanity in her, he hates that she would take everything for granted for him, after he has done nothing but cause her pain.
When he faces the man again he is mid-monologue.
"… Initially, I was angry. I was furious. How could they reject a design as flawless as this, a design with the potential to change the face of modern warfare? So I had to show them. They would regret rejecting my proposal. They would see what it was capable of as a fully developed product, and feel foolish for having ever dismissed me in the first place."
Peter has some vague understanding of what he's saying, but his mind is far removed from the madman, to twenty feet away in the open supply closet where the only girl he has ever loved is trying to die for him.
"But then I saw something much more valuable," the man says. "Something I thought had died with Richard Parker over a decade ago."
Peter nods solemnly. "The formula. Me."
"I don't need you," the man says, scowling. "I need your DNA, and I need you to disappear. I don't know what you have been doing to corrupt my robots, but it won't happen again—not only is this model far more advanced than the previous ones, but it is operating on a frequency that can pick up changes in my nervous system. I can control it from here without even needing to move." He regards Peter with irritation and disgust. "You won't be able to tamper with it again."
"Fine," says Peter, "I'll leave them alone. I promise. Just let her go."
"Your promises mean nothing to me, boy. I need a permanent solution." He produces a serum not unlike the ones Peter has dealt with in the past few weeks and holds it out for Peter to see.
"You're going to disable my abilities?" asks Peter.
"No," he says simply. "I'm going to preserve them with this."
"Preserve them?" asks Peter skeptically.
The man nods, holding the needle further from himself, as if displaying it for Peter's benefit. "Once it has ensured that the material embedded in your DNA will not deteriorate, the serum will slow the activity of your organs, little by little, until it kills you."
"No!" Gwen is screaming before Peter even walks forward; they both know his choice has already been made.
"You untie her first," says Peter.
"Peter, don't." The plea is strangled, desperate, heart-wrenching. "Please," she begs, "please, please, don't do this!"
The man says, "Sleep," and Peter watches the life die out of the robot's eyes. "I've disabled it. She isn't in any danger now and will be released upon your cooperation—I have no use for her after this."
The walk toward the serum is effortless, the decision easier than any he has ever made.
"Oh god," Gwen screams. "Peter, stop—oh god, oh god."
He turns to her briefly. He wants to tell her that he loves her, but this is all wrong, this terrible moment that will be his last. He watches her as she struggles against her bindings just short of knocking the chair over, gasping dry, panicked sobs, her eyes locked on his, begging, pleading.
He ducks his head down slightly. It's the closest to telling her that he will ever come, and she stops struggling for a moment, hiccupping and shaking but without a doubt understanding what it means.
The man grabs Peter's arm, holding up the needle. Peter looks at Gwen one last time. There are a hundred more appropriate things to say, but all he manages is one simple, "I'm sorry."