Chapter Text
Peter groaned in pain as he came to, his head aching terribly. Shifting in the chair he found himself in, he realized that he was restrained. Glancing down, he could see that his feet were strapped to the chair's legs with handcuffs. Jerking his arms confirmed that his hands were trapped behind him. Peter attempted to stand up along with the chair, but to no avail. A further examination of the chair revealed that it was bolted to the floor. Despite his enhanced strength from the spiderbite, Peter doubted that he'd be able to break his way free that easily.
A cold chill went down Peter's spine when he realized that he wasn't wearing his mask- or any of his costume, for that matter. His web-shooters were gone as well. He seemed to be wearing a generic set of clothing he didn't recognize.
His identity was out in the open for everyone to see.
(Or at least, for whoever had trapped him to see.)
"Now," Peter muttered to himself, his eyes flickering around the small concrete room. "How did I get here again?"
Concentrating hard let the memories trickle in, one by one. Peter let out a sigh.
(Ah yes.)
(That's how.)
--
Coulson let out a breath, concentrating on keeping his composure. He looked up with a bland look at the agent in front of him.
"You have reason to believe that Mr. Parker may have run into some… trouble, Agent Blake?" Coulson confirmed, leaning forwards onto his desk.
"Yes, sir," the agent replied, nodding curtly. "As you're aware, myself and Agent Murray are assigned to the security of May Parker and the… surveillance of Peter Parker. Late last night, Peter Parker left the residence, as is typical. However, he did not return in the morning. May Parker attempted to contact him via his cell phone upon discovering his disappearance, but he appeared to not answer. At this point, Agent Murray arrived to take on his shift, and I returned to SHIELD headquarters to report this situation to you."
"Thank you, Agent Blake," Coulson said, after a moment of contemplation. "I will take over things from here on out. If you don't have anything more to add, you're dismissed."
"Just one thing, sir," the agent added quickly. "A new super appeared yesterday night, right? One that didn't seem to be on our side. I heard people saying that another superhero was with him or fought him or- well, I'm sure that you know more than me, sir. Could he have something to do with Parker disappearing?"
Coulson paused, before nodding slowly. "That does seem likely. I'll be sure to look into it. You can go now."
Nodding curtly, the agent headed out of Coulson's office, leaving Coulson to lean back onto his chair with a sigh. After spending that briefest moment relaxing, Coulson got to business. Clicking on a name on his computer, he waited until a video screen popped up before talking.
"Agent Johnson," Coulson greeted shortly.
"Agent Coulson," the man on the screen replied, just as shortly. "Did you need something?"
"You're in charge of investigating the new super, correct?" Coulson asked. The question was mostly rhetorical. He wouldn't have contacted Johnson if he hadn't known that he was investigating the new supervillain. "What were you calling him again-"
"The Goblin's what he calls himself, according to one of our witnesses." Johnson shrugged. "I'm sorry, but we don't know much yet, if it's info you want."
"He may have run into one of the superheroes under my jurisdiction," Coulson explained. "Spider-Man, to be precise. Give me anything you've got."
--
The metal door in front of Peter opened with a creak. Peter looked up half-heartedly. It had probably been at least a few hours since he had woken up, and he was thirsty and bored. At least he wasn't hungry yet.
Peter's eyes flickered up and down the person in front of him. He raised an eyebrow.
"Not really what I was expecting," Peter commented, forcing a bored tone into his voice. He hoped he sounded convincing. "I mean, suit, tie, manicured fingernails? I was totally expecting some sort of deformed man-monster who spoke in a growly voice. You just look like you're gonna sit down and talk about the weather or something."
The suited man in front of him glared at him with a dark look, clearly unamused.
"What, it's true." Peter shrugged. "Not my fault if you can't take the truth. Don't feel bad, I'm sure you're a super scary supervillain deep down. You've already got the 'kidnap innocent sixteen-year old boys' part down pat. Wait, now that I think about that, that's pretty creepy. Your Goblin hireling has the creepy part, you don't need to add to it, trust me."
"The Goblin isn't our hireling," the man interjected. "We were under the assumption that he was your ally that betrayed you, but I see that isn't the case."
"So he's a third party then," Peter muttered. He shrugged again. "Whatever, doesn't change the fact that you should really let me go. I have friends in high places."
"I'm sure you do," the man said condescendingly. "But then, so do we- Peter Parker."
Peter gulped at the sound of his name. Well, so much for his secret identity.
"It was a surprise that it was you under the mask," the man commented. "But at the same time, it's not something that wasn't that unexpected."
"Which is it? Are you surprised, or are you not surprised because you expected it?" Peter cocked his head to the side. "Are you one of those crazies, because that was a total logi-"
"-Richard Parker's son," the man interrupted through gritted teeth. "I can't really see the resemblance. Richard knew when to shut up."
Peter slammed his mouth shut. His heart gave a jolt.
(This got a whole lot more interesting.)
"Say," Peter started, a falsely sweet smile on his face. "I never did get your name."
"You can call me Dr. Killian," Killian replied. He looked down at Peter with a holier-than-thou look. "I'm the one mainly responsible for those powers you have."
"Yeah?" Peter raised an eyebrow and proceeded to lie through his teeth. "How does that work? Because I'm 99% sure I got my powers from a genetically altered spider. So unless your superpower is transforming into a spider, I don't see how you could've given me my powers."
Killian shook his head in obviously fake sadness. "Oh, Peter, Peter, Peter. The spider was only a key. The groundwork was laid in your genome years before, by myself and your father."
Peter took a deep breath. He had to keep Killian talking. His answers were right in front of him. He couldn't mess this up.
"So is that's why you kidnapped me?" Peter asked carefully. "Because you experimented on me?"
"About fifteen years ago, I was the leader of a small think tank," Killian said abruptly. "We were trying to create a new breed of super soldiers. We called it 'Extremis'- the Extremis virus, to be precise. Only, you see, things weren't going so well. Things exploded. The virus wouldn't do what we wanted to the subjects."
(He was monologuing.)
"That's when your father came in, you see," Killian continued. "Tony Stark-"
Peter nearly jumped at the name.
Killian couldn't know, could he?
"-had just turned down an offer to join our think tank, in a rather rude way, to say the least." Killian scowled deeply. "I was… rather down. I attended a convention about, oh, biology stuff you wouldn't understand, and there I met your father. He was working at OsCorp at the time, but he was interested in my work and ended up on the team as a part time member."
(Okay, Peter could work with monologuing.)
"Your father understood what people needed to do in order to get results. Or rather, he used to," Killian hissed, flipping around to give Peter a dirty look. "Until experimenting on you suddenly gave him a moral fiber. He had agreed to it- he knew that the type of experimentation would be harmless at worst. But no, suddenly it was wrong and immoral to do these sorts of things. He was going to go to the authorities! We couldn't have that, and so we had him killed."
(But seriously, monologuing?)
"Richard died in a plane crash," Peter pointed out. "You're saying that you had enough power and influence to crash an entire plane just to kill one guy? You said that you were a small think tank."
"Oh, by that point we had been taken in by our current employers. Ironically, it had been your father's work with splicing animal and human DNA that had attracted them to us in the first place," Killian smiled widely, a hint of insanity to the smile. "And trust me, they had more than enough power to kill your father…"
Peter didn't know what to feel. His memories of Richard were blurred and vague. And from all he knew of him, he hadn't really been someone Peter could've looked up to. Peter supposed he should be angry that Killian had took his chance to have a real father, but- Richard had already taken that chance away himself with his actions. Peter really couldn't bring himself to get mad.
"…and your mother, of course. We couldn't afford any loose ends. You were lucky to get spared, but in the end we decided it would be too suspicious if the entire family died at once."
Peter's blood froze.
His mother hadn't died in a car accident. It had been a car crash, but not an accident. Not in any way an accident.
Richard was one thing- he wasn't even his biological father- but his mother, his mother was different. Aunt May was very dear to him, but Peter wouldn't be lying if he said that he had never thought about what his actual mother would be like. And this man- this insane doctor in front of him- had orchestrated it. Orchestrated her death.
Peter clenched his fists tightly, nails carving little crescent moons into his skin. Now, now he was angry. Not as angry as he had been with Uncle Ben, but he still felt furious. What right did this asshole have to kill people off just like that? Not just Richard, not just his mother, but everyone he'd experimented on, the other people on the plane Richard had been on.
"What's your game then?" Peter snapped, struggling to unclench his teeth. "Why capture me?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Killian said, surprised. "We're going to study you. Figure out how to duplicate your powers. Something completely new like Extremis is one thing, but now we have a working sample of someone with animal spliced DNA, it shouldn't be as difficult. Though, you won't survive the process, of course."
(Experimented on. He was going to get experimented on. Again.)
"Our original plan was to get Osborn to cough up his personal forays into animal/human splicing, as well as the altered GG Formula that he originally got from us, but this is much simpler." Killian shrugged. "Besides, it seems as though Osborn has no intention of paying up anyways."
"Osborn?" Peter repeated. He jerked up. "You're the people who kidnapped Harry Osborn!"
"I'm not saying anything," Killian replied in a bored tone. He whipped out a syringe from somewhere and walked towards Peter, feet tapping loudly on the concrete floor. "Now, I suggest you stay still, or this will be a lot worse for you."
Peter swallowed his pride and obediently didn't struggle. He couldn't escape from the chair anytime in the next few seconds, which meant that struggling would be meaningless and make things worse for himself. Peter winced as the syringe entered his shoulder. He watched as blood gushed into the syringe, filling it up. After what seemed like an eternity, the syringe was removed.
"It's in our interests to keep you alive for as long as possible, lucky for you," Killian explained, carefully examining the syringe in his hand. "We'll start with blood samples, but we'll move up to samples of more… irreparable things… soon enough. I suggest you prepare yourself."
Killian exited the room from the solitary door in the middle of the wall in front of Peter. Peter could hear the lock click, which brought his chance of escape down quite a bit. He had already examined the entirety of the room that he could see. Unfortunately, the only non-concrete parts were the security camera in the corner, the metal door, and the glass light above him. Not exactly the ideal tools for escape.
He was such an idiot.
He had just been released from the hospital the day before yesterday, and he had been getting antsy. Bruce and Steve's words still bothering him, he had decided to go out as Spider-Man.
Peter had barely been out for fifteen minutes when he had spotted the weirdo on some sort of glider-skateboard thing. He had confronted the guy (about his questionable sense of fashion- really, green and purple?) but had very nearly gotten a bomb in his face for his troubles. After being attacked, well, Peter hadn't had any choice but follow the weirdo (who had by then declared himself the Goblin in a creepily maniacal tone) and try to take him down, Bruce and Steve be damned. There hadn't been any time to contact the Avengers, and besides, Peter had been sure that the guy was small fry.
He had followed the Goblin into a nondescript building, at which point his memory got a little fuzzy. Peter remembered a lot of smoke, weird people wearing a lot of yellow, and cursing himself for being stupid.
Peter looked up to stare at the security camera. Maybe he could do something in the camera's blind spot. If he could just get one bolt loose, he could maybe force the rest of the chair off the ground and maybe attack someone who entered the room.
Biting his lip, he painstakingly wrapped a part of the chain connecting his feet to the chair legs around the large bolt. He pulled, hard.
The bolt moved the slightest bit. Obviously, these things hadn't been tightened that much.
Peter let out a breath he didn't realize he had been holding. He casually looked towards the security camera, making sure that his body was still covering up his feet. He returned his gaze to the door, in order to avoid suspicion, and returned to trying to unbolt the chair from the ground.
Once he could get the chair off the ground, he could work on escaping his handcuffs.
No way was he gonna stay here and let himself be used to make mercenaries or weird super soldiers or whatever 'Dr. Killian' wanted to make.
Also, if he didn't escape by himself, the Avengers would probably never let him hear the end of it.
--
"Are you going to contact the Avengers?" Johnson asked from his chair, giving Coulson a sidelong glance before returning to the files in front of him. They were an incomplete set of information on the super(villain?) that had appeared yesterday. Johnson was attempting to round up all the information in a concise form, and he appeared to be succeeding.
"I don't think their expertise is necessary just yet," Coulson replied. Crouching down, he examined Johnson's files over his shoulder with a critical eye. "The Avengers are in charge of more… global threats. I'm sure you know that since the HYDRA attack on the bridge, we've been expecting some sort of more… major attack. We can't afford for them to be distracted. SHIELD can deal with the situation. It's not as if we don't have a whole department dedicated to the observation and, if necessary, the imprisonment of superpowered human beings."
Johnson nodded in agreement. "Here's the files you wanted. Any questions?"
"Have we got any idea who the man behind the green mask is?"
Johnson grimaced. "It was the middle of the night in a pretty abandoned sector of the city. Not many witnesses- didn't even make it on the news. Rest assured though, the next time he appears, we'll have him."
"I expect we will," Coulson murmured. Straightening up, he gave a curt nod in farewell before making for the door. Halfway there, he paused and glanced back. "Agent Johnson-"
"-Yes?"
"Have you submitted any of your information or your report to the archives yet?"
"No, not yet." Johnson blinked once, the only outward indication of his confusion. "Why?"
"Could you delay your report for a day?" Coulson asked. "We still haven't plugged Stark's hole in the systems, and we're relatively certain that 'Spider-Man' is one of the terms he's flagged. It'll make my job easier if I don't have to deal with him for a little longer."
"We're never going to plug Stark's hole in the systems," Johnson muttered pessimistically. He sighed and waved Coulson away, a vaguely irritated look on his face. "Fine, I'll delay the report. You owe me one."
"Thank you." Coulson gave Johnson a short smile before leaving, this time not pausing.