Gwen was exhausted after her sleepless night. She shuffled about the apartment that morning as she prepared for her day at Stark Industries. She wasn't a coffee person, ever, she used the single use coffee pod to make herself one and put a mountain of sugar in it. She choked it down. She barely made it downstairs for Toby's arrival. He greeted her warmly. She mumbled a response as she got in the car. She promptly fell asleep. She woke to him gently shaking her shoulder. She mumbled an apology before heading up to see Obadiah. He saw her appear at his office door, he rushed over and gave her a tight hug.
"Are you alright Gwen? Jake filled me in on the details. Awful, simply awful. Come in, sit down."
Gwen shuffled to the offered chair and sat down.
"I'm fine, just tired."
Obadiah sat down behind his desk.
"You could have taken the day off; It would have been understandable. Your work ethic is admirable, but self-care is also important. I suppose as your mentor I should have made that clearer. I apologize for that."
Gwen shook her head.
"I'm fine. I cope better if I'm fiddling with something. I was hoping… before we got into the meeting, we could talk about something."
Obadiah nodded and leaned forward.
"What do you need Gwen?"
Gwen fiddled with the hem of her skirt for a few moments.
"How did an explosive round I designed for Stark Industries end up on the streets of New York City?"
Obadiah steepled his fingers and tapped them.
"That is a question I've been asking myself since legal had a call from the NYPD last night asking for the provenance of that batch of TX-01. System says it doesn't exist. I assure you; I am taking this seriously and I am personally looking into it."
Gwen breathed a sigh of relief.
"Thank you. I am… two people were killed, one was an innocent man just driving our limo."
Obadiah stood up and sat on the edge of his desk.
"Gwen just because you invented something, doesn't make you responsible for how it is used. You didn't put the TX-01 in that man's hands. You didn't force him to shoot your limo. Even throwing baseballs at him, you were defending yourself and your boyfriend. It was you or him. I know I'm just your business mentor here, but I'm going to risk being unprofessional here and drift into personal life advice. All you can do is make sure you do right by you and yours. What everyone else does is on them. You cannot be responsible for all the wrongs of the world. You're working here because you want a good future. You're doing good work. You're being paid well for your time. We manufacture weapons. If you don't do it, someone else with less ethics will. Your conscience should be clear on all of this. You are no more responsible for this then Oppenheimer was for the nuclear attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima."
Gwen nodded to Obadiah.
"Good. If you need to talk about this further. My office door is always open for you. Now, let's get on to today's business."
Gwen pulled out her tablet, crossed her legs and prepared to take notes. Obadiah sat back down behind his desk and clicked around on his computer.
"Alright, this afternoon I have arranged a demo for some VIPS of your new tracking device and integration with TX-01 drone missiles. I'd like you there to answer any questions they have."
Gwen glanced down at herself she was dressed for a day in the lab assembling her spider-bots.
"Obadiah, I'm not really dressed for that sort of thing."
Obadiah waved his hand.
"I assumed that might be the case. I've had my assistant order a suit tailored and delivered to your lab. Should be there by noon."
Gwen nodded.
"Whatever you need Obadiah, you're the boss."
He smiled.
"That's right I am. Now, for your next project I was hoping you could review the designs for the guided artillery shells. I don't trust the research team working on it. They say they can't make it any smaller. That the technology doesn't exist, that it isn't feasible with current fabrication technology. I want you to prove them wrong. I want a working .50 BMG sized bullet system by June."
Gwen nodded.
"I'll take care of it."
"I know you will, which is why I'm handing it to you. I'll have them working in parallel. There are six of them. If you beat them to the solution, you get the bonus. And by bonus I mean the bonus the entire team would have gotten."
Gwen nodded. She'd never complain about more money. Midtown wasn't a cheap school and without her mother, her father had been struggling financially. With her work at Stark Industries, she'd been able to help her father out, against his protests of course.
"Good. I'll let you go to work."
Gwen nodded. She picked up her backpack and turned to leave. Obadiah snapped his fingers.
"One more thing, Gwen."
Gwen turned to him. He had a black envelope with gold trim.
"Got you in at the last minute. This is your invitation to the dinner Wednesday night."
Gwen smiled and took the envelope.
"Thank you, Obadiah."
"Don't mention it. I'm excited to see how you do with the guided bullet design."
Gwen nodded and made her way out of the main office building. She walked to her lab. She glanced at her desk and considered collapsing into the chair for a nap. She shook off the thought and pulled out the completed parts for her spider-bots. She started a playlist on her tablet and began the painstaking assembly. She set up a production line and had it down to ten minutes a bot. It was still going to take her almost eight hours to build them all. She got through half of them by the time she needed to get ready for the demonstration Obadiah wanted her at.
Gwen got dressed in the provided skirt-suit. She looked very professional. She also looked markedly older than her fourteen years. She still looked much too young to be taking part in an important military demonstration, especially with her pink tips. She sighed and went about applying make up to make the bags under her eyes vanish. She wasn't much of a make-up wearer but with the supplies provided by Obadiah's assistant and a YouTube video by the end she looked even older, and the bags had vanished behind concealer and various other magical creams. She slid her phone into the inside pocket of her suit jacket and gathered the makeup supplies. As she was doing one more check in the mirror another woman entered the washroom. She didn't recognize her. She was older and was wearing a visitors pass.
The woman pulled out a compact and started touching up her own makeup. She glanced at Gwen.
"The things we go through to look presentable."
Gwen gave a half-hearted smile and nodded. The woman closed her compact up.
"So, who are you with? You look young, Senator Allen, right? He likes young looking interns."
Gwen shook her head.
"I'm with Stark Industries."
"Oh, one of the staff."
Gwen nodded and waved as she gathered her supplies.
"See you at the demo."
Gwen started making her way back to her lab to drop everything off. She walked out of the building and found that the VIPs for the demonstration were gathering there. Tents had been erected with drinks and a nice spread of food. She started to weave her way through the gathered visitors and staff. She was about to pick up one of the steak skewers when she heard someone trying to get her attention. He had a southern accent. He was an older balding man. He was in army greens and had two stars on his shoulders.
"Now, sweet thing won't you be a dear and get me a whiskey."
She blinked at him. Not that she felt above that, but she was fairly sure as a minor she wasn't allowed to serve alcohol. He looked her up and down.
"Don't understand English?"
Obadiah appeared beside him.
"General Lane, I'll get someone to take care of you, this is actually one of our research engineers."
He motioned to one of the staff who approached. He told them to get the general a drink. The general laughed.
"You're recruiting them young these days, Obadiah."
Gwen smiled at the pair and went about collecting various finger foods on a plate. With her accelerated metabolism she never turned down food. Especially good food. She took one of the sparkling waters and sipped it while watching Obadiah working the crowd like a professional salesman. She realized she could learn a lot from him. Obadiah's assistant approached Gwen and handed her a tablet.
"Gwen, Mr. Stane would like you to review the presentation thoroughly beforehand."
Gwen took the tablet and read over the demonstration script and after the hob-knobbing stage of the demo everyone was loaded onto a pair of luxury buses and driven to the bomb range portion of the Stark Industries complex. Obadiah got up on stage and started talking up the crowd, telling a few jokes. He was about to start the actual presentation when he paused, his eyes focused on the side of the temporary seating. Then he looked at Gwen.
"I'm going to let the woman whose ingenuity and outside the box thinking has made these weapons possible show them off. Gwen, please join me."
Gwen blushed and hurried towards the stage, trying not to run. Obadiah met her halfway across the stage. She whispered to him.
"Obadiah, I'm a fourteen-year-old girl, this is too much."
Obadiah put his arm around her upper back and leaned down.
"You want to be the next Tony Stark? Prove it. Sell these weapons."
Gwen took a deep breath and walked up to the microphone. Obadiah had rushed off the stage. Her eyes followed him, and she realized he had stopped mid-presentation to divert an approaching Tony Stark and Pepper Potts. She had grown to respect Obadiah a great deal, but she still thought putting her up here was irresponsible. It was like he was trying to show her off. She looked out at the expectant eyes of a lot of very powerful members of the military and government and took a deep breath.
"When Obadiah told me he was going to expect a lot of me, I didn't think he meant throwing me into the deep end. If it will make the presentation more impactful, I'd request you imagine me as a six-foot tall ruggedly handsome bald man with a majestic grey beard."
The crowd responded with a good amount of laughter. She looked down at the plastic case holding the tracking device she'd developed. She held it up for the crowd to see. She started following the script Obadiah had prepared.
"In this box is one of the things your enemies fear. Once you've gotten this near them, there is no place they can hide."
She pulled the tracker out and walked to the edge of the platform and flicked the tracking device. A camera zoomed in and followed it as it crawled along the surface of the tank and slipped into a small opening where the communications array for the tank was housed. The tank started driving further into the bomb range. A real-time feed of the tracking device showed the tanks precise location on a map.
"GPS is good. This tracking device is better."
She tapped the tracking device on the map her tablet was displaying. Then when a menu showed up, she tapped launch. She smiled while she waited. Five seconds before impact she spoke.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you laser guided precision, without the laser."
The bomb impacted the tank precisely where the tracker was located. The initial explosion took out the top armor. Then the subsequent splash of the thermite like substance created by the TX-01 melted through the rest of the tank. This caused secondary explosions as the simulated shells in the magazine exploded. The crowd clapped. She paused before continuing when she noticed Tony was watching her intently from the sidelines. When the crowd had grown quiet again Gwen continued with the script.
"Precision is great. But sometimes what you want is area denial. For that we have the TX-01 Area Denial Bomb. I like to call it the Rain of Death."
She pressed the second launch command for the drone. This one was targeting another tracker placed on an old military truck. There were two Humvees driving in formation around it. Suddenly a rain of small balls fell from the air. The entire area was engulfed with small but powerful explosions. They triggered the secondary thermite reaction turning the truck and armored Humvees into smoking wrecks. The crowd clapped again. Gwen finished the script off.
"That is our demonstration for today, thank you for coming. Please feel free to inspect the remains of the test vehicles. We will be returning to the refreshment tents in forty-five minutes. Where I guess, according to the script I'll be available to answer questions."
That elicited laughs from the audience. Gwen made herself scarce. She was pretty mortified at the whole giving a speech in front of a crowd of people. She hated making presentations at school. For some reason it was easier to talk to random strangers as Spider-Woman then it was as Gwen Stacy, likely because if she screwed up no one knew who she was. Obadiah seemed pretty determined to keep Tony from speaking to anyone alone. When they returned to the refreshment tents Happy tracked her down.
"You did great up there Gwen."
Gwen had her mouth full of strawberries when he spoke. She eventually swallowed.
"Uh, I guess. It was so embarrassing."
Happy picked up a small chocolate square and popped it into his mouth.
"Well, you did well just getting tossed into it like you did. Even Tony said so."
"I'm surprised he was there after what the news said he went through."
Happy nodded.
"He wants to get back into the saddle or so he says. Anyway, good luck with this crowd. I don't envy you."
Happy wandered off. When Gwen turned around, she realized why. General Lane had been walking up behind her. He smiled at her. She greeted him with a polite smile.
"Hello General."
He looked her up and down.
"So, is it true you developed all of that tech out there?"
Gwen nodded.
"Well, the TX-01 was me. The rest of it, I just adapted from other projects."
He took a drink of his whiskey.
"Now tell me, how does the tracker work?"
Gwen decided to go with an Obadiah style answer.
"Its simple, you throw it at your target it, it finds the darkest deepest corner of the target it can. You can track it within three miles with just the builtin signal. If it loses communication with the base station it seeks out any open wifi or Bluetooth signal to boost the range. Works on a vehicle, person, building. Whatever you'd want precision targeted."
He nodded.
"And the TX-01 is it a thermite-based explosive, it seemed to melt the armor."
Gwen shook her head.
"No, the thermite is just a side-effect of the explosive reaction. Secondary damage."
He smiled at her.
"You know if you ever get bored working in the private sector, I'm sure DARPA would love to get their hands on you."
Gwen smiled.
"I don't think they hire high school students."
"High school student?"
Gwen nodded.
"I'm turning fifteen in three weeks."
General Lane took another drink of his whiskey.
"I'll be damned. Fourteen? I'm going to keep my eye on you."
He wandered off. Gwen let out a sigh of relief. She was really not loving this new aspect of her job. She felt in way over her head. Obadiah was pulling her further into his orbit with every one of these events. She still wondered if he remembered she was only fourteen. She couldn't even drive a car and he had her launching bombs from drones. She should be worrying about the cheerleading tryouts Jessica was trying to drag her into. Not landing multibillion dollar defense contracts. She hoped she could go out as Spider-Woman tonight. That was simple. This was complicated. At least when she was Spider-Woman the bad guys were obvious.
As things started to wind down Gwen retreated to her secure lab. At least in the lab no random senator, general or admiral could find her. She put on loud music and went back to building her spider-bots. At least she thought no random person would end up in her lab. She heard the door open. Her danger sense did not go off but she was doing something she didn't really want noticed so she covered her tray with an antistatic sheet and spun her stool around. She slid her magnifying glasses on top of her head. She saw an older man with a receding hairline. Brown hair and kind blue eyes that reminded Gwen of her Uncle Ben. He had a visitor's pass on. He nodded to one of Happy's security guys who closed the door to the lab. He flashed a badge.
"Hello Ms. Stacy, I'm Phil Coulsin from The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division."
Gwen blinked at the mouthful of words he threw at her. She crossed her arms.
"I've never heard of the Strategic… whatever before. Sounds made up."
He slipped his badge into his jacket's inside pocket.
"I assure you, we're quite real, Ms. Stacy."
Gwen was still skeptical as she responded.
"Well, if you're law enforcement, shouldn't I have legal counsel or an adult present?"
Phil smiled at her.
"No, it's nothing like that. I just have a few questions about the incident you were involved in last night."
Gwen shook her head.
"No, no way. I already gave a statement to the police. I won't say anything without a lawyer."
He still kept his pleasant demeanor while he leaned forward and tapped the pause button on Gwen's tablet. She was starting to get annoyed at him now. She reached back and pressed play. He reached out and pressed pause again.
"I'm starting to feel a little harassed here, Agent Coulsin."
He smiled pleasantly at her. Somehow it made her want to punch him more.
"Truly, Ms. Stacy, you have nothing to worry about, just a few painless questions and I'll be on my way, then you can get back to work."
Gwen narrowed her eyes. She was getting really suspicious now. She palmed one of her completed spider-bots and dropped it on Coulsin's shoe while she spoke.
"When people say I have nothing to worry about, it tends to make me worry more."
Phil adjusted his jacket.
"Ms. Stacy, this doesn't have to be unpleasant, or antagonistic. I am honestly just trying to get to the bottom of a national security matter."
"Is that a threat, Agent Coulsin?"
"No, nothing of the sort."
Gwen frowned at him.
"Well, I'll be happy to answer your questions, with a Stark Industries lawyer present, or Obadiah Stane's permission."
Phil nodded.
"Well, if that is how it needs to be, Ms. Stacy."
He nodded to her.
"Have a good day, Ms. Stacy."
He left the lab. Gwen lifted up her phone and tapped the app she wrote for her Spider-Bot monitoring and tracking. She tapped the one she'd planted on Phil Coulsin. She watched as he rode in a car away from the research park. She tapped the listening module when her bug picked up an incoming call. The number scrolled across her screen. She put her earbuds in and listened.
Phil Coulsin: "Hello Sir."
Unknown: "Did you get anything from the girl?"
Phil Coulsin: "No, sir. She was uncooperative."
Unknown: "Define uncooperative."
Phil Coulsin: "She's refusing to answer questions without permission from Obadiah Stane, or a Stark Industries lawyer present."
Unknown: "Then bring her in, question her here."
Phil Coulsin: "I do not think that would be a good idea at this time. It might alert the target."
Unknown: "I don't want this going on longer than it has too. Get the evidence we need and get this over with. These weapons are getting out of hand."
Phil Coulsin: "Of course, sir. I'll update you when I have something."
Gwen pulled her earbuds out and put them down as the call ended. She sighed. This was getting way more serious than she ever thought a simple part-time job would. She mumbled to herself.
"Guess there is a reason they're paying me twice what my father makes."