Chapter Text
Percy woke up in a white room.
His head was pounding, bright fluorescents stabbing into his skull. He let out a low groan.
“Oh, good, you’re awake,” a sharp, crisp voice echoed throughout the space. His head throbbed, and he brought up his hands to massage his temples.
Or, at least, he tried to.
Instead, he found that both of his hands were strapped to the metal table beneath him, leather cuffs mirrored around his ankles, too.
“Wha…” he mumbled, tongue heavy and mind hazy.
Another voice, deeper and more gravely, chimed in. “Man, he is out of it, huh?”
What the hell was happening?
Percy desperately tried to blink the fog from his eyes, but unfortunately it seemed to be more of a mental thing than anything else. Drugs, likely– and wasn’t that a thought? The great demigod, felled by average pharmaceuticals.
Normally, he was being accosted by literal monsters, not metaphorical ones.
There was something significant here, too, something wrong , but Percy couldn’t remember what it was for the life of him. Couldn’t remember how he got to the room, what he was doing before, nothing . It was all covered by the sticky haze of artificial sleep.
“-ackson? Mr. Jackson, are you with us?” the first man asked. Only then did Percy realize the guy’s face was hovering over him, wrinkled and sun-spotted and with a stern, silvery mustache. Like Colonel Sanders. An evil Colonel Sanders, because yeah , this guy was bad news . No doubt about it.
Percy had learnt to trust his instincts on these things. He ignored how Luke’s face flashed through his mind.
Suddenly, more light was directed into his eyes, and Percy hissed in pain as it exacerbated his headache.
“Hm, the pupillary reflex is less noticeable than usual, but that’s not abnormal with propofol still in the system…” Colonel Sanders muttered from above him, flicking a pen light back and forth across Percy’s face.
What the hell was happening?
“When will he be ready for the next phase?” the deeper voice asked.
“Soon. Give him at least an hour to rest.”
Well that wasn’t ominous. Not a bit.
Shit.
“Good. Boss is gonna’ wanna’ meet this one. None of the others made it.”
“Oh, did they not? Shame. I suppose it just makes this one more interesting, then.”
Oh yeah. Yeah no. Percy didn’t like this one bit. He forced his mouth to move, to form words, still desperately trying to blink the dizzy, unreal feeling away. “Where…?”
Colonel Sanders raised his brows. “Hm, recovering quickly, huh? I guess that means we can start the last phase.”
Shit. Shit shit shit.
“Hope so. Police are gettin’ closer to finding us out. We gotta’ get him back before anyone realizes this twerp didn’t show up to school today. ”
Police? What the hell? Who were these guys?
“Damn. What about that spider-freak? Mr. Osborn seems pretty convinced that he’s getting close, too,” the Colonel asked, flicking a finger against a glass syringe filled with some kind of nasty looking liquid that Percy did not want anywhere near him, despite its blue hue.
Oh, gods, this was bad.
SHIT.
“What about that spider-freak?” a voice chimed in from someplace above, cheerful and clearly young, and hell if Percy didn’t recognize that brand of false bravado. He had a feeling the so-called “spider-freak” had arrived.
“Fuck!” the deep voice cursed, the sound of his equipment jostling as he scrambled for his gun.
“Oho! Don’t mind if I do–” the spider-guy said cheerfully, and Percy heard a quiet ‘thwip’ noise before Deep Voice cursed angrily.
Really, though, despite the strangeness of the situation, Percy found that some part of him was almost relieved , though he wasn’t sure why. Regardless, the relief was strong enough to lull him back towards sleep, though Percy valiantly tried to keep his eyes open.
His mission became even more imperative as Colonel Sanders quickly approached him, syringe in hand. Percy let out a small distressed noise, but couldn’t do anything else, seeing as he was literally tied down, still drugged, and hopelessly out of his depth.
No no no no no…
Still, when the guy got close enough, Percy managed to give him the good ol’ Glasgow kiss, smashing his forehead into the Colonel’s nose. He cursed and reeled backwards, blood streaming down his face.
A white tendril shot out from someplace behind Percy’s head, slapping into the Colonel’s broken nose with a sticky thwack noise. The syringe fell to the ground, shattering into a thousand shards of broken glass.
…Percy couldn’t say he was upset about it, really. Fuck Colonel Sanders.
He let out a shaky breath.
A thump sounded throughout the room as the spider-guy knocked the Colonel out. It was quiet, save for the sound of Percy’s panicked heartbeat, racing in his ears.
And then it was loud .
Blinding-hot pain erupted from beneath Percy’s skin, boiling him from the inside out. He only had just enough cognizance to realize that the shattered syringe had no evidence of the blue serum, save a couple drops, when surely the concoction would have stuck out plainly against the all-white floor.
Fuck Colonel Sanders.
Bastard was quick to inject, apparently. Gods knew he’d managed to get close enough.
Not that it seemed to matter too much when Percy felt like his face was melting off.
Fuck shit OW–
“Oh, shit –” the spider-guy muttered, his hurried footsteps quickly growing closer, till he was hovering above Percy like a hummingbird– a bit jittery, yet incredibly skilled and smooth. The mask was kind of strange, though. Like if a lucha libre mask had all the holes plugged up.
Percy distantly felt as the leather cuffs were torn away, giving him the freedom for his body to contort restlessly, as though it could get rid of the foreign burning sensation sinking into his bones by writhing around enough.
“Hey, man, c’mon, you’re gonna be alright…just gotta wait it out, you’re gonna be alright…” spider-guy murmured softly to Percy, a comforting hand rubbing against his back, guiding him onto his side when he threw up from the agony of the whole experience. What the hell was in that syringe?
After a minute or so, Percy had finished coughing up bile, heaving heavy breaths in through his mouth and out his nose, just like every single school counselor had said to do when he was feeling overwhelmed. Or was it in through his nose, out through his mouth? Damn it…
He leaned over the edge of the metal cot, teeth gritted with pain. Still, slowly but surely, the pain began to dissipate– not completely, but enough for him to start asking questions.
“What….?” he croaked helplessly, throat raw and scratchy from the stomach-acid betrayal and subsequent coughing fit. “What happened? What’s happening? Where am I?” he sputtered out, voice broken and pathetic even to his own ears. He wiped at his damp cheeks– gods, when did he start crying ?
“We’re in Queens, right off of the river,” spider-guy offered. Good. That was good. Not too far from home, or from the water, if need be. It wasn’t a response to all his questions, but at least it was something …
He continued staring down at the shattered syringe. “What the hell was in that thing?” he muttered to himself– though his rescuer seemed to have heard it just fine.
“...It kinda smells like fish?” the guy offered apologetically.
Percy wished things could just be easy for once in his life.
“... Fuck ,” he whispered emphatically, coughing once again for his troubles.
The guy beside him snorted. “Got that right,” he quipped easily. “What’s your name, man?”
“Percy. Jackson. Percy Jackson,” he supplied, slowly coming down from the adrenaline rush that complete and total pain always seemed to spark. It was only then that he recovered enough of his mental faculties to examine the man before him carefully.
A red and blue body-suit, with a web-like grid spread across it, alongside a black spider emblem in the middle of the chest. ‘Spider-freak’ indeed…
“Where’re you from, Percy?” he drawled, New York accent prevalent but light in a way that only true teenage natives were able to emulate. This guy couldn’t be much older than Percy– if he was even older at all .
“Manhattan. East Harlem,” Percy answered. He wasn’t an idiot– he knew his rescuer was using distraction tactics to help him calm down, but hey, they were effective. Percy had employed them enough times on wounded demigods to know that fact first hand.
“Oh, sweet, you by Central Park?”
“Closer to the river. Off 1st Street.”
“Ah, nice area.”
“We don’t have to do this, you know.”
“Do what?”
Percy leveled as deadpan a look as he could upon the guy– which was fairly ineffective, considering the two men who had just injected some experimental drug into a sedated Percy were lying unconscious on the ground in front of him. “I’m fine . I don’t need you to coddle me.”
“I’m not tryna’ coddle you, man, I’m being…I don’t know, friendly! Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man!”
Ah, so that was the guy’s name. Spider-Man.
“Well, Spider-Man , if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to get out of here,” Percy snarked, his usual defenses returning as the anesthetics from earlier wore off. He winced as he forced himself to a seated position on top of the table, achy and sore absolutely everywhere.
“Oh, uh, yeah, about that–”
“Spider-Man! Come outside with your hands above your head!” a voice echoed through the room, as though being projected through a loud-speaker.
Though Percy couldn’t see Spider-Man’s face, he got the distinct feeling that the guy was wincing– whether from the sound or the circumstances, Percy wasn’t sure. One thing was clear, though.
“You’ve gotta’ go,” Percy finished his sentence.
Spider-Man nodded apologetically. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”
Percy shook his head. “Go, dude.”
“Huh?” He quirked his head to the side like a confused puppy.
“ Go ,” Percy repeated.”If the cops ask, I didn’t see a thing. Get out of here.”
“No, I heard you, it’s just–”
“ Spider-Man !” the voice on the speaker boomed. The guy in question whipped his head toward the sound, before turning back to Percy. He looked toward the sound once again.
Gods, it was like he was playing a mental game of ping-pong with his priorities.
Percy wasn’t exactly sure what was going on– like, at all . Not what “Spider-Man” was going for with the costume, or what the hell he was doing in a lab(?) of some sort being experimented on when the last thing he remembered was arriving at Camp for the holidays, but damn it , Spider-Man had saved him. He was in Percy’s good books, now, and clearly the police wanted him for some reason.
And Percy Jackson was nothing if not loyal.
Percy met the guy’s eyes– or, well, where he assumed they were, beneath the mask. “I understand, man. Go .”
Spider-Man stared back for a charged moment, before giving him a silent nod and leaping higher than any human should be able, in order to return from the vents from whence he came.
Then he was gone.
Percy was alone. Nothing but him and his mounting panic, now that Spider-Man wasn’t there as a distraction. Stuck in a locked room with the figures of who he assumed to be his kidnappers laid before him. White walls, white linoleum, white door, white lights, and no windows. No way out. Not from the inside, at least. Especially not while Percy felt like a feather could knock him over.
He stared at sparkling shards of glass from the smashed syringe, only barely aware as he heard the clomping of first responders grow closer and closer.
As a general rule, Percy had a bit of disdain for law enforcement. But right now? He couldn’t be happier to see them.
Especially since it was getting harder and harder to keep his focus– like his mind was drifting away.
He managed to keep himself rooted in reality for a little while more– just long enough to stumble out of the building, leaning on a tall, broad police officer. Just long enough to stumble into his mom’s arms, as she ducked beneath the crime scene tape and barreled into him.
Just long enough to note, absently, that she didn’t seem to have quite as many gray hairs as he remembered.