Levering myself into a standing position, I undid the straps that were still attached to my right wrist and ankle, then hobbled toward Peter. I almost tripped over my own feet, steadying myself with both hands on his gurney before looking at him properly. He was completely unconscious, a large, ugly yellow bruise across the right side of his face and jaw. There was no sedative drip, so he hopefully wasn’t going to be out of it in the same way I was if I managed to wake him.
What was I going to say to him? God, I hoped Ned and May were still alive. Would HYDRA have killed them, to eliminate the witnesses? I honestly didn’t know and I couldn’t really stomach thinking about it. If I’d gotten them killed… I shook my head to clear it and immediately regretted it, the room spinning around me in a way that made me feel viscerally nauseous.
After taking a few seconds to breathe, I raised my head. I really, really didn’t want to have to carry Peter out of here. Sitting on a folding chair next to his gurney were some odd-looking contraptions that I was pretty sure were his web shooters, but there was no sign of any of my stuff—my jacket must have been removed at some point to get better access to my arms, and I remembered dropping my phone on the floor of Peter’s apartment, so it was probably still there. There was ice in my veins as I realised that my sling ring was nowhere to be seen. I’d had it on when I’d passed out… had it slipped off my hand? Losing it would be utterly devastating.
“Fuck,” I swore, pressing the heels of my palms against my eyes for a moment before looking around the room again.
A nearby workbench was cluttered with a small, disorganised collection of medical equipment, including labelled syringes. I picked them up, one at a time, squinting at the words, my vision still swimming. I didn’t know if the sedative that was impairing my magic even had a reversal agent—Dr List had always just let it run its course and wear off naturally. However, assuming that Peter had been put under the same way I had been, I did know what the reversal agent was for that and I should be able to get him back on his feet. It was an assumption, and one that could potentially prove dangerous for him if I got it wrong, but I really wasn’t seeing a lot of other options.
Finding the syringe I was looking for, I uncapped the needle, took a deep breath to steady myself again, then administered it to the unconscious teenager. The next handful of seconds crawled by, feeling like the longest of my life, until Peter twitched slightly, eyes working behind his closed eyelids.
“Peter?”
A few moments later, his eyes fluttered as he slowly started to regain consciousness. All of a sudden, his body tensed and he sat up with a sharp intake of breath, eyes flying open. There was a moment where the restraints at his wrists held him—he glanced toward them uncomprehendingly for the barest second before snapping them with casual ease, looking around wildly. “May?!” His eyes focused on me. “Where’s May? Is she okay?!”
“I don’t know. We—” I stopped as Peter reached down and ripped off the restraints on his ankles, barely slowing down as he hopped off the gurney and promptly almost fell over. I caught him and he leaned heavily on my shoulder, his legs still wobbly. “Woah, easy. Peter, stop, breathe for a second.”
He obliged, but I wasn’t sure if it was intentional or just because he could barely get his feet underneath him. “Where are we?”
“No idea. HYDRA captured us, but they’re gone now. Hard to explain.”
“HYDRA?!”
“Can we just…” I sagged under his weight—he wasn’t heavy, and if I wasn’t sedated, I’d have had a pretty easy time manhandling him, but as it was my balance was already off and he wasn’t helping. I managed to extricate myself from under him and got him to perch back on the edge of his gurney. “Okay. Give it a sec. It’ll take minute or two before you can walk properly, at least.”
“I need to make sure May’s okay.” His tone was laced with fear and anxiety. “They… he… the guy with the skull. He had her.”
“We’ll find her. I’m sure… I’m sure she’s fine,” I lied, my voice slightly shaky. I’m not sure I sounded very convincing. It didn’t look like May was here, so there was probably nothing we could do—it had been hours since the attack, so either she was okay and would continue to be okay, or she was already… “Listen, we need to get to Avengers Tower. I don’t know what HYDRA is planning, but we have to warn them.”
“I… I have to find May. Oh, God. Ned. He was there, too.”
“We will. The Avengers will help, I promise.”
I really, really hoped we were still in New York and not an hour outside the city or anything like that. I didn’t think there was any conceivable way that Strucker could get past the Avengers, but he had said something about them being busy chasing after me, which had me worried. He clearly had some kind of plan, so the quicker we got to the Tower, the quicker we could warn the others and we could go from there. I really, really wasn’t happy that I couldn’t find my sling ring, but with any luck it might just still be in Peter’s apartment. We’d go and coordinate with the Avengers and Strucker would never get a chance to leave the city. Zemo… well, he’d let us go, so I wasn’t inclined to pursue him.
“Here,” I said, scooping up his web shooters. “We should move quickly when you’re ready.”
Peter stared at the bundle for a moment before accepting it, looking around. “If someone sees me…”
I grabbed the gurney I’d been lying on, standing it upright again, then struggled for a few seconds to pull the sheet off it. “Here, we can… I don’t know. Rip it, wrap it around your head. It should be fine, right?”
He looked unenthusiastic, but nodded and set about fashioning a makeshift head-covering. A few minutes later, his face was hidden and we started making our way out. He was recovering a lot better than me, as expected; not labouring against the effects of a sedative the way I was. My legs were wobbly as I shuffled slowly along and even being careful there were a few times where I lost my balance mid-step and had to catch myself against Peter or the wall.
The building seemed empty. We were clearly in some sort of basement level and it was only a short walk to an elevator up. Inside, the only button that would work without a keycard pass was the carpark level, so that’s where we went. The carpark was deserted—there was a security guard booth, but it was empty. Peter broke the lock on a side door and we found ourselves coming out onto a city street.
“Where the fuck are we?” I muttered, squinting in the afternoon sun. The building we were standing outside of was helpfully labelled with ‘Hammer Industries’ in large silver lettering, so that was at least a partial answer.
Peter took a few steps out, his head on a swivel. “I think we’re still in Queens.” He looked back at me. “I’m sorry, but I’ve gotta go find May… I need to make sure she’s okay.”
As he turned and raised a hand to fire his web shooter, I crashed into his back. “Wait!” I blurted out. “Don’t… you can’t just leave me here. Okay, if it’s not far, let’s check on May, but then we really do have to get to Avengers Tower. It’s important.” Stepping inside his personal space, I reached over and pulled myself in close to him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders and neck.
He blinked, flinching slightly at the sudden closeness. “You… want me to carry you?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve never really carried anyone while I’m swinging around before. I don’t know if… I’m still a bit woozy.”
“So am I, but we’re in a bit of a rush and I don’t exactly have taxi fare.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, hesitating. A little bit of colour had risen in his cheeks. “You can barely walk straight. It’s a bit… you might pass out.”
“I’m sure. It’s fine. Pietro carries me all the time, I’m used to it.”
“Who’s Pietro?”
“My brother—look, I know what I’m talking about, we’re just wasting time.” I tucked myself into his body, pressing against him to making myself as small as possible. Gingerly, he put one arm around my waist and swallowed nervously. A second later, we were in the air and I realised that I had made a terrible mistake.
I’d been carried by Pietro countless times before. The initial acceleration was a bitch and it always felt like my organs were trying to migrate to one side of my body, but I was pretty well adjusted to it by now and I figured that Spider‑Man swung around slower than Pietro moved so it’d be fine.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
It was not fine.
It was very not fine.
It might have just been the sedatives. I knew if I was dizzy or whatever, Pietro carrying me around made me nauseous, after all. But this felt completely different to being accelerated by a speedster. Pendulum swings that made my stomach do flipflops interspersed with periods of weightlessness, harsh decelerations when he landed, far too sudden changes in direction and velocity… it took everything I had just to hang on and not throw up.
When we landed on top of his apartment building, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I took half a shaky step away from him and collapsed onto my hands and knees, retching violently as I splattered the contents of my stomach across the roof.
“Are… are you okay?”
“Wow, I really had no idea what I was talking about, did I?” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, chuckling deliriously to myself.
“I’m going to—”
I waved him off. “You go ahead, give me a second.”
He nodded and jumped back off the side of the building, hitting the edge of the roof with a web to swing himself down to his bedroom window. I started to try to clamber back to my feet, but it was too much effort so I gave up and flopped backwards, lying flat on the roof and squinting up into the cloud-filled sky. My head was still spinning—the web slinging had not helped with that at all.
After a minute, I laboriously pulled myself back to my feet and walked slowly and carefully over to the roof access door. It had been wedged open with half a brick, so I headed down the steps toward Peter’s apartment. Going down the stairs was a challenge and I stumbled a couple of times, leaning heavily on the railing to avoid falling. Breaking my neck falling down some random stairs after escaping from HYDRA would have been a pretty embarrassing way to die. There was police crime scene tape blocking the entrance to Peter and May’s apartment, the door hanging wide open, the lock and handle smashed in. I heard Peter’s voice inside.
I tried to duck through the tape, my foot catching on some of it and almost making me faceplant as I landed heavily on the other side.
“Yeah, I told you, I’m fine. I’m just… I was so worried about you,” Peter said, watching my arrival with his brow furrowed he had a phone to his ear. “Look, I gotta… I gotta go. No, I know, I’m sorry, it’s… something’s come up and I’ll explain it all to you later, but someone needs my help. I’ll see you soon, okay? Love you.”
He hung up the phone as I straightened up, then offered it to me. I stared at it, uncomprehendingly. “What?”
“Don’t you… you wanted to warn the Avengers?”
I grimaced. “I don’t know any numbers, they’re all in my phone.” Saying that, I looked around, hoping against hope that my sling ring or my phone would just be lying around on the floor somewhere. Knowing my luck, they were both probably inside a police station’s evidence locker. The apartment looked like a bomb had gone off in it. Holes in the walls, furniture ruined and strewn about. “May… she’s okay?”
“Yeah. She sounds… she sounded scared, but she’s okay. She’s staying with a friend. Ned’s okay, too. He’s home with his lola.”
I let out a long sigh of relief, my fuzzy mind racing. I was so worried that they might have killed them. Why would they leave witnesses alive? Unless… witnesses placing Crossbones at the scene would tie it directly to HYDRA. Had that been Zemo’s plan? He’d said he’d anticipated Strucker’s actions, so was that what this was? A smokescreen pointing to easily-disavowed assets, giving the Sokovian officer cover for his operation? I had no idea, it was just speculation. All I could do was be thankful that they were alive.
If anything, my little web-slinging experience had made my head worse than before, but it wasn’t like I had a lot of options if I wanted to get to the Tower quickly. Making an exasperated noise in the back of my throat, I turned to Peter. “Go get your costume on. I need you to get me to Avengers Tower as fast as you can.”
--
Strucker watched, a frisson of excitement and anxiety building in his chest, as Rumlow and his men did final checks on their weapons and other tactical gear. He wasn’t normally a ‘lead from the front’ type of commander—his preference was usually to be overseeing operations from a safe vantage point—but that wasn’t a particularly viable option here and he had to admit that it was rather thrilling, being in the thick of it.
His forces were divided between two unmarked civilian delivery vans as they made their way through the city streets toward Avengers Tower: four HYDRA troopers with Rumlow and Strucker in the back of one, eight crammed into the other, rounded out by the two plainclothes drivers.
They were expecting some resistance. Regardless of the Avengers’ presence, Stark’s Iron Legion protocol would no doubt defend the Tower in their absence. Beyond that, while their observers had visual confirmation that Iron Man and the Quinjet had departed, there was no way to tell if any of the hero team remained in the Tower. If they hadn’t been able to determine Tony Stark’s whereabouts, he may have called off the mission entirely—with Thor off-world, Stark and Banner were the two biggest concerns. They’d prepared a Hammer tech sonic countermeasure to use as a lure to draw the Hulk away if Banner happened to be there, but Stark was a much more difficult opponent to deal with.
Zemo hadn’t been entirely wrong when he’d dismissed a raid on the Tower as being too dangerous. It was a calculated risk with a pricelessly valuable reward. This Mind Stone, the source of the sceptre’s power… it must have been used in the creation of the AI model in the sceptre that he’d been building towards. While he would need to find a new location—one where the Avengers could not easily locate him—with the Stone in hand he could restart his AI development. Stark may have had the technological advantage over them for now, but a loyal HYDRA intelligence as advanced as the one in the sceptre had been would turn the tables quite neatly.
Strucker’s phone vibrated and he checked the message he’d just received. Their secondary observation post had just confirmed that the Avengers’ course was consistent with their destination being San Francisco. Strucker smiled to himself, relieved that his plan appeared to be working. He caught Rumlow’s attention with a curt gesture and then nodded to confirm that everything was on track.
He’d been planning this for a little while, waiting for an opportunity to get the Avengers out of the Tower, and what Wanda had dropped in his lap had been like a gift from heaven. Hammer Industries had specialised decryption software that had let them crack her phone—Strucker had gone in hoping to find actionable intel in her messages, but instead found a built-in duress alarm that was quickly integrated as the lynchpin of his scheme. A quick call and secure transfer of data to a Hammer Industries location in San Francisco and they were able to spoof the signal, making it seem as though Wanda had activated her alarm from the other side of the country.
Fifteen minutes, in and out, while the Avengers chased their tails. Twenty at most. They had Hammer tech that would prevent any outgoing communications from the Tower for a time, but their margins were wide enough that they should be able to retrieve the Stone and successfully exfiltrate the building even if that failed and the Avengers immediately turned around to come back.
The van slowed and Strucker leaned toward the front, peeking through the cloth divider to see that they had arrived at their destination. The roller doors of the rear loading dock of Avengers Tower were firmly shut, but Strucker’s other hires were already taking care of it—a pair of men in red tracksuits, bald and bearded, tipped their heads in acknowledgement as the vans approached. One retrieved a card from his pocket and held it against the entrance’s card reader. A moment later, the roller doors started to retract, granting the vans access to the dock proper.
The plainclothes HYDRA trooper behind the wheel retrieved a thick envelope of cash from the seat next to him as the Tracksuit Mafia members approached the side of the van. He lowered the window and tossed the payment to them—it was tucked away inside one’s jacket and the criminals grinned before wandering off casually, their part in the plan done.
Rumlow looked around at the rest of the men as they drove inside the building, a grimly determined expression on his scarred face. “Alright, guys. Nice and easy, like we talked about. In and out.” He nodded at Strucker before sliding his skull-painted helmet onto his head. The door on the side of the van was opened and Strucker waited as the others rushed out to secure the area, sitting patiently for a minute until he heard Rumlow call that it was clear.
Carefully, he stepped out of the van, watching as the troopers did their work. No instructions were needed, they were all already clear on their roles. One thing that Strucker had to give Rumlow credit for was the team he’d built—these were not mere replaceable mooks, but hand-picked from among the finest that HYDRA had to offer. To a man, they were all seasoned SHIELD veterans, and some of the most professional and experienced operators he’d had the pleasure of working with.
One trooper stood at the ready, waiting for him, and turned to allow him easy access to the large, bulky device he was wearing as a backpack. Strucker flipped a few switches on it, then pulled his cell phone from his pocket briefly and watched the service bars almost immediately vanish. The military signal jammer would knock out any wireless communications in an area large enough to almost cover an entire city block. With luck, it would also interfere with the deployment of the Iron Legion. It would be noticed—it was hardly a subtle measure, after all—but not by anyone in a position to do anything about HYDRA before they managed to escape with their prize.
Briefly nodding to the trooper, Strucker continued toward the elevators, where Rumlow was standing vigilant over another of his men who had already levered off the access panel and was connecting a device to the internal wiring. A second later, a light on the tool flicked from blue to green. “Sir,” the trooper said as he approached, retrieving a rugged computer tablet from his pack and handing it to Strucker.
He took a quick moment to scan the screen before a few quick taps at it enacted the next stage of his plan. Hammer Industries had been developing a nasty little worm on contract for the US military, designed to disrupt and seize control of local systems, which had just been delivered successfully into the Tower’s network. Stark’s pet program had almost immediately locked down most systems in response to the intrusion, but, before it had, they’d managed to secure what they needed—all external communications and data connections were currently offline, right down to the phone lines.
Strucker tapped at the screen again, summoning the large elevator that connected directly to the Avengers’ main floors near the top of the Tower. Stark’s program was fighting back, but the military worm had been designed specifically to stymie attempts to bypass it and regain access to systems. HYDRA would lose control eventually, of course—Stark’s systems were far too robust for it to be otherwise, but his intent was to be long gone before that happened.
The elevator doors opened and he strode in, followed quickly by Rumlow and ten of the twelve HYDRA troopers, two remaining behind to ensure that the loading dock remained accessible. Strucker let a smile spread across his face as the doors closed and they started to move upwards. Soon the Mind Stone would be within his grasp.