Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

On Saturday morning, earlier than he wanted to be up and with not nearly enough coffee in his system, Tony caught Spiderman and Danny Phantom in the act of making off with two of his camera drones.

That didn’t surprise him. The fact that Thor was with them — that surprised him.

“What are you doing?” Tony demanded.

“We are engaged upon a noble educational endeavour, friend Tony!” Thor boomed in reply, beaming and spreading his arms as if he had not just been caught aiding and abetting theft. “My fine young friends here have requested my aid in the creation of a video to help educate the masses on the ways of spirits, and I am delighted to give it!”

And he grinned at Tony, his one remaining eye sparkling so much that Tony suddenly realised, in a disconcerting moment, that Thor was messing with him.

“Uuuuh-huh,” said Tony, watching Danny and Peter look skittish and kinda embarrassed, hiding the drones behind their backs like guilty five-year-olds. Danny tried to grin innocently at him. “And these ‘noble endeavours’ include stealing my camera drones?”

“Borrowing!” squawked Danny.

“We’ll bring ‘em back, Mr Stark, honest!” Peter said at the same moment, speaking so fast he nearly tripped over himself. Which, actually, was about as fast as Peter usually spoke.

Tony groaned, pinched the bridge of his nose, and waved a hand at them. “No, keep ‘em. That way you won’t be breaking into my tower at ungodly o’ clock in the morning looking for cameras again.”

He went in search of coffee, hearing Danny mutter, “But it’s nearly nine.”

“Just go with it, dude,” Peter muttered back. “We got the drones, which means it’s time for awesome!”

Tony hunched over a coffee mug and groaned. Superpowered teenaged delinquents, man. Why did he saddle himself with them? And now they had Thor on their side, after they had somehow managed to rescue Thor’s people from a long, slow extinction, and had returned his beloved hammer to boot.

(And damn Tony wanted the story of how they’d done that. All he’d managed to get out of Peter was that it had involved a “totally awesome” trip to the Land of the Dead that the Fentons insisted on calling the Ghost Zone. Which Tony was not okay with on so many levels. Er, his teenaged mentorees going to the Land of the Dead, that was, not their calling it the Ghost Zone. Though that was kinda messed up too.)

Tony dropped his head into his hands. “FRIDAY, keep an eye out for a new Phantom and Spiderman video. Probably featuring Thor.”

“On it, Boss.”

Sometimes, mentoring superpowered teenagers sucked.

Tony was getting dinner on the communal floor when FRIDAY informed him the video was out. And this time, pretty much all of the Avengers were nearby, excepting Wanda, Vision, and Thor. And as soon as they got wind that Spiderman and Phantom had been making videos again, everyone in the Tower descended upon the communal floor and crammed themselves into the couches and chairs in the living room.

It felt so much like old times that Tony had to force down a lump in his throat.

“I have been looking forward to seeing these so-called ‘memes,’” said Loki with an alarming glint in his eye.

“Their last one was hilarious,” said Sam, shoving Steve’s super-soldier bulk far enough over that he could wedge himself in beside it. “Somebody should be paying these kids to do this.”

“Noooo, don’t encourage them,” moaned Tony. “It will only make them worse.”

“Start it already,” said Clint, balancing his plate on his knees.

“Go ahead, FRIDAY,” said Tony.

The video opened on an eerie, misty graveyard under a cloudy night sky, and Tony was more surprised than he should have been to hear Thor’s voice boom out of the speakers.

“The following presentation will demonstrate how to HAUNT THE LIVING.”

Oh my god. Oh my god, they didn’t.

Thor’s voice rumbled on, because Danny and Peter had somehow convinced him to narrate their video.

“But before we begin, one must be…” Phantom faded into view between the gravestones, transparent, eyes glowing, at his absolute creepiest, “…not living.” Phantom grinned and waved a transparent hand at the camera.

Then he hunched forward and started to stalk through the graves, hands poised before him like claws, like Dracula in those ancient silent movies.

“The fine specimen seen here is commonly known as … a ghost,” declared Thor.

“WooooOOOOoooOOOoooOOO!” moaned Phantom.

(“This,” said Tony in disbelief, “this is ‘educating the masses in the ways of spirits’?”

“Hush,” said Natasha, not even looking down as she deftly ate chow mein with chopsticks.)

“Observe all the classic signs of a supernatural being,” Thor intoned. “Transparent, floating, glowing eyes, and a countenance that inspires fear in all who lay eyes upon…”

He was interrupted by a black and white cat trotting out from behind a gravestone. It went right up to Phantom, looked up at him, raised its tail invitingly and said, “Mror?”

Phantom took one look and instantly forgot the scary-ghost act. His whole face lit up. “Aw, hi kitty!” And he drifted down to the ground and proceeded to scratch the cat behind the ears and coo over it like a crazy cat lady.

“Lookit you, aren’t you cute! Cutey kitty!”

“…Er, yes,” said Thor. He cleared his throat. “But now, it’s time to demonstrate…”

A cartoon gravestone filled the screen, and Thor’s booming voice read out the legend written on it: “HOW TO HAUNT A HOUSE.” Lightning crashed in the background.

And then another gravestone: “STEP ONE: CHOOSE A HOUSE TO HAUNT.”

A view of Phantom, slightly transparent, sitting cross-legged and flipping through the classified ads in a newspaper. The disconcerting bit was that he was sitting in mid-air about two-hundred feet above a neighbourhood. The newspaper fluttered in the breeze, though Phantom’s hair barely moved.

(Tony vaguely wondered about relative matter density and how the hell that worked.)

“Now,” Thor’s voice continued, “you may already have a house in mind. Some spirits choose to haunt only the places they occupied in life. But to the true haunting connoisseur, real estate is all about location, location, location!

“Begin with the classified ads. For an ideal haunt, look for a house that is old and run-down — a good, creepy, creaky old house can do half your haunting job for you.”

Phantom peered down at the neighbourhood below, then bounced upright in the air and went “Ooh!” as he spotted just such a house — peeling paint, battered shutters on the windows, and a hole in the front steps. “Perfect!” said Phantom, rubbing his hands together.

“And for the best results,” continued Thor’s voice, “look for somewhere isolated,” his voice dropped lower, spookier, “where no one can hear the screams.”

(“What the hell,” muttered Tony. “How did they talk him into this, he sounds like he’s enjoying himself."

“Shhh,” said Bruce, grinning.)

Phantom landed on the front path and pranced up it, singing, “A haunting I will go, a haunting I will go, hi ho the derry o, a haunting I will go!”

He bounded right up the rotten, death-trap front steps — of course they held under his non-existent weight, the lucky bastard — and straight through the closed front door. Then he bounced back out through the door, glanced around guiltily, and wiped his boots on the ratty welcome mat.

He leapt joyfully through back through the door. Cut to inside, where he looked around at peeling wallpaper, stained ceilings, and dusty, well, everything with what appeared to be delight. “Home sweet home!” he sighed, contented.

A gravestone filled the screen again. “STEP TWO: FINDING A HAUNTEE.” Lightning crashed, a wolf howled.

Thor’s narration continued, sounding like he was trying to be solemn but was enjoying himself just a little too much. “Some ghosts set out with the goal of haunting a specific person. But if you are not so fortunate as to have a target already in your sights … then you must seek one out.” Another crash of over-dramatic lightning.

“If the house you have chosen is already occupied, then you are all set to begin haunting. But if it is deserted … then you must lure in a tenant.”

Phantom pounded a hand-painted sign reading ‘FOR RENT’ into the front lawn. Floating a foot above the ground, he beamed at his handiwork, clapped his hands, and vanished.

Cut to a flash of bright red-and-blue spandex, and there was Spiderman, spotting the sign and staring up at the house.

“Woooow…” He clasped his hands. “Perfect place for my Super Secret Spider Hideout!” And he too pranced up the path. He bypassed the death-trap stairs by leaping over them and actually bothered to open the door before going through it.

(And, Tony noticed, he entirely failed to wipe his dirty spider-feet on the mat.)

Back outside, Phantom materialised again, rubbed his hands together with a wicked grin, and pulled the ‘FOR RENT’ sign out of the lawn.

 “Now,” boomed Thor, “for the business of real haunting!”

Another gravestone blared across the screen. “STEP THREE: BEING CREEPY.”

(Thor was having way too much fun.)

“Nothing is quite so creepy as the creaky front door that opens by itself!”

Spiderman approached the front door, loaded down with an enormous duffle bag labelled ‘SPIDER STUFF,’ below which was same spider symbol as on his suit.

Cut to inside, where two eerie green eyes glowed in the darkness. They drifted forward, and Phantom’s transparent form unfolded out of the shadows and approached the door.

(“That kid can be freaking scary when he wants,” said Sam, and Tony had to agree.)

Phantom placed himself to one side, where the tattered curtain on the door’s dirty window hid him from view. He reached out and, as Spiderman’s shadow appeared in the window, delicately turned the knob.

Cut to outside. Before Spiderman could even touch it, the door drifted open, creaking gloriously, long and loud.

He stared for one long moment, then exclaimed, “Ooh, wow, you wouldn’t expect an old place like this to have automatic doors!”

And then he darted in. Or, well, tried to, because the massive duffle bag stuck in the doorway. The strap jerked Spidey across the chest, a rug flew out from beneath him, and he and duffle bag all crashed to the floor.

Phantom’s head poked over the top of the door, eyebrows canted with bafflement as he watched Spidey pick himself up, grab the duffle, and yank on it. It stuck again.

Grunting with effort, he gave it two more terrific tugs. The duffle sprang loose, and with a yelp of alarm, Spiderman overbalanced and tumbled out of frame.

Phantom’s floating face looked after them, and he winced at the sound of something ceramic crashing to the floor.

Cut to Spiderman stringing decorative spiderwebs all over the place. “Oh yeah!” he said. “Dig that spider décor!”

“Once your guest is settled,” boomed Thor, “make sure they know that they are not alone. For this, nothing is quite so effective as … disembodied footsteps.”

The view jumped to the upstairs hallway, where Phantom appeared. He materialised to full solidity, and then began pacing the hallway. Every step created a chain reaction of creaking, not just in the ancient floorboards, but in some of the old beams and joists around them.

The view jumped back to Spiderman, who was swinging back and forth in a web-hammock he’d strung up in one end of the living room. He looked up at the creaking sounds above. “Man, these old places are really creaky, hey? You’d almost think there was someone walking around up there!” He leapt out of the hammock. “I’m hungry! Time for a snack!”

As he dashed out into the kitchen, Phantom’s transparent head stuck down through the ceiling, scowling indignantly after him.

“Having successfully creeped your intended hauntee out, you’re now ready for…

“STEP FOUR: LOOKING LIKE A GHOST.

“With an ordinary bedsheet carefully draped over you, sneak about in a menacing manner.”

The view started on a bedside table, on which there was a pair of scissors and two little quarter-sized circles of white fabric. The camera pulled back to reveal a bed that had been stripped, and then, above that…

Above the bed floated the classic image of a ghost: a vague human shape covered in a fluttering white sheet. Nothing of Phantom was visible, not even the glow of his eyes through the empty eye holes. It was just the sheet, like a haunted death shroud.

The ghost floated away from the bed and straight through the closed bedroom door. Or, well, the ghost itself did. The sheet, being still a real and solid object, just plastered itself to the door and then flopped to the floor.

Phantom’s annoyed face popped back through the door, muttering, “Ah crud, damn it…” His hand came through the door and grabbed the sheet. The sheet went transparent and vanished through the door with him.

Cut to Spiderman sitting at the dining room table, sketching versions of his spider symbol on a dozen sheets of paper.

In the dark doorway behind him, the fluttering white sheet floated slowly into view. It hovered about a foot off the ground, drifting almost as if underwater. Empty eye holes stared blankly at the back of Spiderman’s head.

(Tony reflected, once again, that he had not given Danny enough credit for how freaking scary he could be.)

“Continue this macabre Dance of the Dead and watch as panic and terror wash over your victim,” said Thor with a little too much relish for a guy who had been anti-ghost not that long ago.

The ghost drifted up behind Spiderman, closer and closer. Spiderman obliviously sketched away, muttering and giggling to himself. The ghost raised its arms under the sheet, poised as if to strike…

The sheet suddenly began to deflate, like an inflatable that had got a puncture. Phantom’s head was revealed, blinking in puzzlement as the sheet drifted down through him, and Tony realised that he’d got his tangibility out of sync with the sheet again.

The sheet dropped, revealing Phantom … who was wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. A pair of boxer shorts decorated with the word GHOSTBUSTERS and dozens of little cartoon ghosts.

(Clint snorted beer out his nose.)

Phantom squeaked, and his face contorted with horror, and he tried to cover the boxers with his hands. At the sound, Spidey stopped sketching, sat up straight, and started to look over his shoulder.

Phantom vanished.

Spiderman glanced all over the room, then looked down. “Hey, how’d this bed sheet get here?” He stood up and grabbed it, spreading it out. “…And why are there two little holes in it?”

He shrugged and trotted out of the room. “Huh. Must be mice chewing holes in things. I should set out some traps.”

Lightning, gravestone. “STEP FIVE: THE DARK.”

The scene opened in an old-fashioned bathroom. In the centre stood a massive old claw-foot tub, nearly overflowing with bubble-bath. And in the bath, scrubbing vigorously at his suit with a brush, was Spiderman.

Taking a bath. In his suit.

(Tony stuffed half a fist in his mouth to keep from laughing out loud and missing what was said next. Sam and Clint were sniggering uncontrollably, and Steve’s shoulders seemed to be shaking.)

“Fear of the dark is primal and natural in the living,” said Thor cheerfully. “Use this knowledge to your haunting advantage.”

The cold knob on the sink turned on by itself, squeaking softly. Mist poured from the tap, then formed itself into Phantom’s transparent head. The head drifted forwards, the rest of his body slowly forming behind it.

(Tony made a mental note that Phantom could sneak into your house through plumbing. Which was … kinda awesome, actually.)

Unnoticed by Spidey, whose back was turned, Phantom floated across to the light switch, smirked, and flipped it.

The screen went black. Two little spots of green light appeared — Phantom’s eyes. They glanced around, then vanished again.

“Wow, gotta replace that lightbulb!” said Spidey’s voice. Then he clapped twice, and light flooded the room again.

The light revealed Phantom, floating right behind Spidey, arms reaching out for him. Phantom froze, eyes wide. He glanced around and spotted the standing lamp Spidey’s clap had turned on. Phantom scowled, zoomed over to it, and pulled the little dangling chain.

Darkness.

“And that one, apparently,” said Spidey. “Man, these old places! Good thing I’m prepared!”

A beam of light cut through the blackness. Spiderman had picked up a flashlight that had been lying beside the tub. The beam swept through the air, forcing the vague shadow of Phantom to duck for cover. Spidey set the flashlight on a table beside the tub, next to his bar of soap, and went back to happily scrubbing his suit.

Phantom’s arm came up through the surface of the table. His finger found the off switch on the flashlight.

Black.

“Oops! Guess I shoulda replaced the batteries! Lucky I’ve got this!” There was a funny snapping sound, and Spiderman happily brandished a glowstick before setting it down next to the flashlight and turning his back on it for more cheerful scrubbing.

Behind him, Phantom rose up through the floor, hands planted on his hips and scowling. The dim, green light of the glowstick made him look even more undead than he usually did. He scooped up the offending object and glared at it.

He strode over to the toilet. “Now this is just getting silly,” he informed the camera, dumping the stick into the toilet. They had a moment’s view of the bathroom lit by the ridiculous light source of a glowing toilet bowl, and then Phantom flushed.

Blackness.

“STEP SIX,” boomed Thor, “THINGS THAT GO BUMP.”

The scene opened in the master bedroom. Spiderman entered, wearing a robe and fluffy bunny slippers over his suit and carrying a book under his arm.

“Ah,” he said as he settled himself under the covers with the book in his lap, “peace and quiet!”

“A ghost is armed with a wide array of scary sounds with which to frighten their unwitting victim,” said Thor.

Phantom peeked through the wall above Spidey’s head. He considered the room, rubbing his chin, and then withdrew.

“We have already covered the ever-popular disembodied footsteps.” Aforementioned footsteps creaked down the hallway outside the room. “But for greater effect, you might also try … deathly moaning.”

“WooooOOOOoooooOOOOOoooooooo!” moaned a loud, unearthly voice that didn’t actually sound much like Phantom at all.

Spiderman didn’t even twitch.

“Knocking!” said Thor.

An invisible hand knocked loudly at Spidey’s bedroom door. He didn’t look up.

“Weeping!”

The sound of hysterical, exaggerated crying echoed from somewhere far off in the house.

“Laughing!”

Phantom materialised in the back corner of the bedroom, raised his hands and threw his head back in a maniacal laugh in fine supervillain style. “AH-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“Whistling!”

So transparent he was nearly invisible, Phantom danced through the room, whistling an eerie, echoing rendition of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

“Banging!”

The terrific crash that resounded made it sound like Phantom had shoved over something large in the attic. The ceiling light shivered, but Spidey was so still that Tony began to suspect that they’d somehow replaced him with a model.

(If not, Peter’s ability to sit still had seriously improved.)

“Or even singing!”

Phantom jumped through the closed door, fully visible, and nearly yelling, “Oooooh … I’m a lumberjack and I’m o-kay, I sleep all night and I work all daaaaay…”

He danced his way over to Spiderman, then stopped, glaring down at him. “Oh come on! What the hell, have you gone deaf?”

A snore cut through the air. Phantom blinked down at Spidey in consternation as Spidey’s head lolled to one side against the pillow, and it became clear that he was sleeping under his mask.

Phantom clapped a hand to his face and groaned in despair. “That’s it — I give up. You are the most oblivious person in the history of the world, and I don’t want to haunt you anymore. Come on, dude, wake up.”

He shook Spidey, who snorted, twitched, and then sat up with an enormous yawn and stretch. He scratched the side of his head, then turned and looked right into Phantom’s glowing green eyes.

Spidey’s eye plates flared wide. “AUUUUGH! A GHOST!”

He shot straight up off the bed and stuck to the ceiling like a cartoon cat, his eye plates going haywire, widening and contracting out of sync, making him look completely unhinged.

Phantom stared up at him. “Uh. Hey man, so I’m kinda your landlord, and I think we need to talk about rent…”

“NO! GET AWAY!” And he launched off the ceiling and right over Phantom’s head. He crashed through the door, ricocheted off the opposite wall, and took off running. He skipped the stairs by instead just jumping off the balcony, pelted through the foyer, and threw himself out the front door.

The camera showed the open front door, still flapping back and forth in his wake. Phantom floated down from above to watch Spidey’s form shrinking into the distance as he fled down the path, screaming, “AAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…”

Phantom scratched the back of his head, shrugged, and said, “Huh. Guess that worked after all.”

The scene changed to the front yard, where Phantom was pounding the ‘FOR RENT’ sign back into the lawn. He grinned, rubbed his hands together, and vanished.

“And that, ladies and gentle-ghosts,” rumbled Thor, “is HOW TO HAUNT A HOUSE.”

The screen flashed TEAM NIRVANA PRODUCTIONS, NARRATION BY THOR, and then went dark.

Silence.

“Okay,” said Sam, sitting back and chuckling. “That was good.”

And then Clint suddenly choked on his beer. He jerked, tipping his empty plate onto Sam’s lap, and exploded into a laugh that sprayed beer halfway across the room.

“Clint!” squawked three different people, including Tony, who was looking in horror at the beer all over his nice white rug.

Clint slumped over forwards and half laughed, half coughed into his lap. His whole body heaved, and without looking up, he raised a shaking finger and pointed. They all looked.

There, through the doorway, drifted a sheet-covered ghost. It raised its arms and moaned.

The whole room jerked slightly, then caught themselves and relaxed, chuckling and shaking their heads. Sam snorted. “Ha ha, Phantom, very funny,” he said, grinning and rolling his eyes.

The ghost didn’t reply. It drifted slowly forwards and suddenly seemed to Tony to be awfully BIG.

The ghost lifted his arms higher. The sheet rose, revealing a pair of very un-Phantom-like brown leather boots. Boots that were actually walking on the real, solid floor and definitely not floating.

Tony’s mind jumped and skidded. There were only two members of the extended Avengers team who wore old-timey boots like that, and the other was currently groaning loudly and dropping his head into his long, pale fingers.

“Oh my god,” said Tony. “You’ve got to be kidding. Thor?!”

In a move quicker than a viper, Natasha snagged the sheet and pulled. The ghost grabbed it before she could get it off him completely, but it slid off his head.

To reveal a grinning Thor, his hair an absolute bedhead mess.

Clint’s laughter redoubled. He slowly slid off the couch, alarmingly red in the face.

“My friends!” boomed Thor. “Apologies for the entrance. But I have had a most excellent day, and wished to employ my new education in the Ways of Haunting!”

Clint’s laughter progressed to the stage that it was more voiceless, uncontrollable wheezing. And Thor looked so enormously pleased with himself that Tony couldn’t help joining in.

Thor grinned at them. “Of course, the methods outlined in the video were for haunting a house, while this is a tower, but Phantom assures me the same principles apply!”

Sam was curled into himself, gasping. Steve and Bruce had both buried their faces in their hands and were shaking silently, and even Natasha had fallen to giggles that Tony would never have expected to hear from her. Only Loki clung onto composure.

Thor gave his brother a shrewd look, then smiled and held out the sheet. “Would you like to try haunting, brother? I have cut eyeholes!”

And Loki cracked.

Chapter Text

“Okay, okay,” said Spiderman, rubbing his hands together. “What do we want to use for the bloopers?”

He and Phantom were tucked into an out-of-the-way nook on a rooftop in Queens, a laptop balanced on Spidey’s knees. The summer sun had been baking New York for days, but Phantom’s presence radiated cold like a great big block of ice. Spidey was maybe leaning into it a little bit … okay, a lot. His suit’s cooling ability wasn’t nearly as good as its heater.

Damn, wouldn’t it be great if he could just drag Phantom around everywhere with him, like his own personal air conditioning. Aunt May totally wouldn’t mind; their apartment had been like an oven yesterday. Basking in his undead friend’s ghostly aura sounded like an awesome way to spend an afternoon.

“Well, we gotta use the lamp and the deleted tomato scene,” said Phantom, calling back Spidey’s attention. He grinned wickedly. “And all six of your failed attempts at ceiling-sticking.”

Spidey groaned and forced himself to sit up and not lean into Phantom’s coolness quite so obviously. “If we’re doing that, then we are also using your goofs with the sheet and all of your ridiculous attempts at ghostly moaning.”

“Fine,” Phantom agreed with a laugh. “Should we admit the graveyard cat just came out of nowhere and we totally went with it?” he asked.

A pause.

“Naaaaaah,” said Spidey. “Let’s pretend we did that on purpose.”

BLOOPERS — BEING CREEPY

And the cat wasn’t the only joke that wasn’t actually planned.

“Wow, you wouldn’t expect an old place like this to have automatic doors!”

Spiderman leapt forwards, and his massive duffle bag caught in the doorway. He jerked to a stop. “ACK, oh shoot…”

Though still invisible, Phantom could be heard laughing at him.

Spidey tugged the bag and started to laugh too. “I’m stuck! We’ll have to go again — maybe we better take some stuff outta the bag.”

Phantom popped out from behind the door. “No no, man, let’s go with it! Getting stuck in the door will be funny!” And with a wicked grin, he touched the bag.

It came suddenly loose, making Spidey fall backwards into the wall, the bag on his chest.

“For you or for me?” he wheezed.

DELETED SCENE — END OF “BEING CREEPY”

(This scene was cut because Phantom actually kinda succeeded in upsetting Spiderman, and the whole point is that he’s supposed to fail utterly.)

Spiderman stood at a counter in the kitchen, humming to himself and assembling a sandwich so massive that it looked more like a subway train.

Phantom’s voice came on as narration: “Once the creaking doors and disembodied footsteps have your target on edge, it’s time to up the ante. For another level of creepy, it’s time for objects that move by themselves.”

Spidey was busily slicing a pickle, humming a jaunty tune. A tomato sat to his right, waiting its turn. Just as he was finishing the pickle, the tomato floated up off the counter, drifted away, and hovered in the air behind him. His attention on the pickle, Spidey didn’t see.

Then, without looking, he reached for the tomato — or rather, for where the tomato had been. His hand closed on empty air. “Huh?”

Spidey looked at his collection of ingredients. No tomato. “I could have sworn I had a tomato here…” He looked back and forth, oblivious to the tomato hovering behind his head, drifting back and forth to keep out of sight as he turned his head.

He turned in a complete circle, scanning the whole kitchen. As he turned his back on the cutting board, the tomato floated down and placed itself right in the middle of the board.

Spidey completed his circle and found the tomato, sitting there innocently. “Hey, where did you come from?” He picked it up, studied it, then shrugged and reached for the knife.

His hand closed on empty air.

“Hey, where’d my knife go?!” He looked around wildly, but the knife was nowhere to be seen. He threw up his hands in frustration.

“Man, I am getting so absentminded!”

BLOOPERS — LOOKING LIKE A GHOST

Phantom screwed up the sheet scenes several different ways.

“Dude,” said Spiderman from behind the camera. “You’re supposed to leave the sheet inside the door, not just blatantly disobey the laws of physics and have it float through with you. Which is freaky, by the way.”

“I’m trying. Okay, go again.”

This time the sheet dropped through Phantom before he even got to the door, leaving him frozen in the air, staring down at it.

“That’s for the next scene, man!” called Spidey.

Cut to the next scene, with Spiderman drawing at the table in the centre of shot.

“How’s this?” called Phantom’s voice.

Spidey looked over his shoulder at the empty doorway and then glanced back and forth. “I’d like to tell you I want to scream at the sight of you, but that’s hard when you’re completely invisible.”

Phantom-covered-in-sheet reappeared. And the sheet dropped through him, leaving him floating in the Ghostbusters boxers. He sighed. “Ah, crap.”

BLOOPERS — THE DARK

Phantom flipped the light switch, plunging the room into darkness.

Clap-clap.

The standing lamp did not come on.

Clap-clap.

Still darkness.

CLAP-CLAP.

Still nothing.

“I thought you said this was a clapping lamp?” said Spidey’s voice.

“It is.”

And suddenly the light came on, showing Spidey and the tub. Phantom stuck his head into the edge of shot and said, “Okay, so it helps if you plug it in first.”

Cut once more to Phantom hitting the light switch.

Clap-clap.

Nothing.

Clap-clap.

“Are you sure it’s plugged in this time?”

“Yes, it’s—”

Light suddenly flooded the room. Phantom, who had been leaning in close to the lamp, yelped and toppled over backwards. The scene cut on Spidey’s laughter.

Cut to Spiderman turning on the flashlight and putting it on the little table. Phantom’s hand rose up through table … reached for the flashlight … and missed.

The ghostly, transparent hand groped around the table.

“Having trouble, man?” said Spidey’s voice.

“I CAN’T SEE IT,” Phantom’s voice wailed from somewhere below the table. “WHERE IS THE DAMN—” Click.

Darkness.

BLOOPERS — THINGS THAT GO BUMP

The first time Phantom poked his head through the wall, he did it a bit too low. And judging by the way Spiderman yelped and shot straight up off the bed, having a ghost stick their head into yours wasn't the world's pleasantest experience.

“Whoops, sorry, man,” said Phantom with laughter in his voice.

“Ohmigod, BRAIN FREEZE,” moaned Spidey, clutching his head.

Cut to Spidey tucked up in the bed with the book, while Phantom attempted the ‘deathly moan.’

His first attempt sounded more like someone falling off a cliff. Spidey snorted and giggled into his book.

“How was that?” called Phantom’s voice.

“Too screamy, too human,” Spidey called back. “Try again.”

Attempt number two sounded like a gang of mice being put through a blender. Spidey lowered his book and cocked his head.

“How about that?” called Phantom.

“I don’t know what the hell that was,” Spidey called back, “but it did not sound like a moaning ghost. Try again.”

Attempt number three shook all the fixtures in the room with what wasn’t so much a noise as an eldritch abomination of sound. It sounded like the wailing and moaning of ten thousand damned souls trying to claw their way up from the depths of hell. Spidey shot up, fumbled the book, flailed, and accidentally fired a web onto the ceiling.

The horrible, unholy noise faded, and Spidey sat there, panting.

“How about that?” called Phantom.

“NEVER DO THAT AGAIN.”

There were several more bloopers of the bedroom scene, all of Spidey failing to remain impassive while Phantom did his thing. The first time Phantom appeared and did the supervillain laugh, Spidey made a noise like a ruptured balloon and exploded into sputtering laughter. Which set Phantom off, which set Spidey off even more, until both boys were reduced to giggling heaps.

And when Phantom came in to do the whistling, Spidey’s book started shaking against his lap, and then the giggles escaped, and he gasped, “How the hell did you make ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ creepy?”

And finally the singing, where Spidey cracked up and cried, “NO, NOT THE LUMBERJACK SONG,” and threw the book at Phantom’s head.

It went straight through, of course, and Phantom fled the room, laughing.

BLOOPERS — THE FINALE

Take One:

“AUUUUGH! A GHOST!”

Spiderman shot up off the bed — or, rather, he tried to. The blanket tangled with his legs, and he ended up doing something that looked more like a reverse swan dive off the far side of the bed.

CRASH.

Phantom did a full-body wince, then straightened and peered over the bed, where the camera couldn’t see. “You okay?”

“…Ow,” said Spiderman’s voice from behind the bed.

Take Two:

“AUUUUGH! A GHOST!”

Spidey shot straight up off the bed. But he misjudged his jump, slammed into the ceiling, and dropped ungracefully behind the bed.

THUD.

“Pffft you okay?” asked Phantom, laughing.

Spidey just groaned.

Take Three:

“AUUUUGH! A GHOST!”

Spidey shot up, tangled with the blankets again. They flew into the air with him, getting in the way when he tried to grab the ceiling.

He dropped back onto the bed in a writhing mass of blankets.

“Gosh, you’re such an image of athletic grace,” said Phantom.

“Shut your face,” said Spiderman.

Take Four:

“AUUUUGH! A GHOST!”

Spidey shot up off the bed, spun too much in the air, and hit the ceiling with his back instead of his limbs. He fell.

CRASH.

“You know,” said Phantom, “we could come up with a different ending…”

“NO, NO, I CAN DO THIS.”

Take Five:

“AUUUUGH! A GHOST!”

Spidey shot up off the bed, tangled with the sheets, bounced off the wall, and fell on Phantom.

Or rather, he would have fallen on Phantom, if Phantom hadn’t seen him coming and turned transparent with a yelp. Spidey fell through him, then tumbled to the floor and lay there, shivering with I-just-touched-a-ghost chills.

“Great,” he said, “Now I’m going to die of pneumonia.”

Take Six:

“AUUUUGH! A GHOST!”

Spidey shot straight up into the air and stuck to the ceiling like a cartoon cat. Then immediately ruined the take by pumping a fist in the air and yelling, “YES! I DID IT!”

And then the poor, battered piece of ceiling gave up and broke loose.

CRASH.

“Isn’t your entire body one big bruise by now?” asked Phantom.

“No, I’m good,” said Spidey’s rather strained voice from somewhere within the cloud of dust.

After Spidey had picked himself up and dusted the worst of the plaster off himself, he and Phantom stared up at the great dark hole in the gyprock. “Uh,” said Spidey. “How do we fix that?”

“…Let’s just shove the bed over and use a new piece of ceiling,” said Phantom. “If we set the camera up right, you shouldn’t be able to tell.”

As they went out of frame to move the bed, Spidey’s voice could be heard saying, “This building is condemned, right?”

And Phantom said, “Well it is now.”

EXTRA: A BIT OF ANGST

(I suspect this bit will be emphatically Not Canon, since Enigmaris probably has plans for how Danny and Spidey’s secrets come out to each other, but I just wanted to play with this.)

The Ghostbusters boxers had been Peter’s idea. When he’d pulled them out of his backpack, Phantom had burst out laughing and declared he loved it. But when it came to actually putting them on, he got weirdly hesitant.

“It probably wouldn’t be as funny if I were wearing an undershirt too, huh?” he said, staring at the boxers in his hands.

Peter hesitated before answering, wondering what the problem was. Was Phantom just shy about showing skin? “I mean … maybe a bit less funny. Why?”

Phantom bit his lip, looked at Peter, and sighed. “Here, look.” And he unzipped his new jumpsuit.

All across his torso was a delicate tracery of pink lines, standing out starkly against his deathly white skin. From right shoulder to left hip ran one great jagged zig-zag, and radiating out from that were hundreds of finer lines that looked like a plant’s roots, or frost on a windowpane. Fractals, said the mathematical side of Peter’s brain.

“Whoa,” murmured Peter, taking a step closer before he realised what he was doing. The marks were strangely beautiful, and he’d never seen anything like them before. “What are those?”

“Electrocution scars,” Phantom said simply, and something in his voice made Peter freeze. Because Phantom was an easy-going guy who didn’t get upset about things, and he was trying to be easy now, unaffected and casual, but … he wasn’t quite managing it.

Which meant that these scars got to him in a way that other things didn’t. And Peter could think of one obvious explanation for that.

Phantom was always joking about his death, making up ridiculous stories about how it had happened. But that didn’t mean that he liked to think about the actual event.

“Is that how…?” Peter couldn’t quite finish the sentence. Fortunately, Danny didn’t make him.

“Yeah. Accident in a lab. Sucked pretty bad.”

His voice was casual, but carried a note of tension that made Peter pretty sure that it would be bad to ask for specifics. Not that he actually wanted any specifics. It was bad enough just hearing this, and the sight of the scars was starting to make him a little queasy.

“Oh jeez,” he said quietly. “I got hit by a taser once, and that … hurt.” That had been before Mr Stark had given him the suit, and it had hurt, hurt so bad. He couldn’t even imagine how much worse it would be if it … killed you.

“Yeah, electrocution sucks,” agreed Phantom, way more easily than Peter thought he would have been able to if it had been him. “Anyway, I could wear an undershirt, or do you think we could edit the scars out? I don’t really want the whole world knowing.”

“Sure, yeah, if you want to,” said Peter awkwardly. It would be hours of work, editing frame by frame, but he could do it. It was summer, anyway, so he had some free time. “Or we could just drop the joke.”

But Phantom shook his head. “No no, I like it, it’ll be really funny.” He stretched out the boxers and grinned. “Who you gonna call?”

And so they did it, and Peter put the whole thing with the scars out of his mind. But afterwards, at home on his laptop, the whole time Peter was painting the scars out, he couldn’t stop thinking about how his friend had got them.

It made him feel weird, a little sick, like he’d somehow failed to be there when Phantom— when Danny had needed him. Which was silly, because they hadn’t known each other then, Peter hadn’t even been bitten by the spider yet when Danny had died. But still…

They were friends now, and friends didn’t like seeing friends suffer. Danny would tell him that it was fine, Peter was sure, that it was all in past and he was fine now — well, other than being dead. He wouldn’t want Peter to think about it, to stew over it. So Peter did his best not to.

And if he had a nightmare about electrocution that night, well, Danny didn’t need to know.

Chapter Text

It happened on a perfectly ordinary day, as disasters usually did.

“Remember you’ve got that meeting today, Tony,” said Pepper, her heels clicking as she strode into the lab.

“Yup, of course,” said Tony, who was soldering together something large and complicated that could probably explode in five fascinating different ways. “…What meeting?”

He received Patient Pepper Sigh #4: I’ve-Told-You-Five-Times-Already-You-Twit. “The meeting with the representative of the Accords Council, Carter Ridley, about Phantom.”

“Oh.” Tony put down the soldering iron. That was a meeting that actually mattered to him.

Pepper looked up from her tablet, biting her lip with worry. “It’s important, isn’t it? The Council have a problem with Phantom.”

Tony scowled and shrugged.  “Yeah. Secretary Ross, mainly. He says that Phantom’s property damage figures are getting near critical mass — that would make him have to sign the Accords, y’know — but I think he’s just got the paranoia bug up his butt.”

“About Phantom being a ghost?” asked Pepper, coming to stand next to him.

Tony pulled a face and tilted his head. “Partly. And partly it’s about him and Spiderman — the way they’re teaming up and making international alliances with the likes of Thor and Loki and the Princess of Wakanda. Ross doesn’t like a couple of loose cannons getting that big.”

“But they’re just kids!” Pepper protested, outraged.

Tony shot her a wry half-smile. “Ross doesn’t know that. And probably wouldn’t care if he did. All he sees is a threat.”

Pepper put her hands on her hips, chewing her lip. “Can you keep him off their backs?”

“Gonna try,” said Tony, leaning over to turn off the soldering iron. He smirked at Pepper. “I’ve got the letter of the law on my side, since neither Phantom nor Spidey have actually crossed any lines yet, even though they’ve been skirting pretty close to them. If I smack Ross in the face with that, he’ll have to back off.”

“For now,” said Pepper ominously. “If he’s looking for an excuse…”

Tony grimaced. “Yeah. He’ll find one sooner or later.”

Neither of them said anything for a few long moments. Then Pepper said, tentatively, “Tony … I was doing a little research into ghosts, just out of curiosity, and … I found the files you hacked from the government.”

Tony went still. “The Guys in White stuff.”

“Yeah. Their ghost experiments. It was…”

“Sick,” said Tony flatly. “Yeah. Apparently, being dead means bye-bye human rights.”

“And Phantom was top of their hitlist. He’s just a kid,” said Pepper wretchedly, hugging her arms to her chest. “Do you think … they’re still…?”

Tony turned to her and put his hands on her arms. “They aren’t still hunting him. I made sure. Their funding was slashed to hell about a year ago. And even if they got their paws on the resources to go after Danny, I’ve deleted all their data on his stats and ecto-signature, so their tech won’t be able to track him.”

“But Ross wants him,” Pepper pointed out.

“I know. But I won’t let them get him, I swear to you. Even if I have to cut all ties with the government and the Avengers and go rogue, I won’t let them take that kid.” He drew her in and wrapped his arms around her.

“Oh, you wouldn’t have to cut ties with the Avengers,” she said into his shoulder. “Show that stuff to Steve, and he will set aside all past differences and back you to the hilt, you see if he doesn’t.”

Tony’s jaw clenched, even though he knew she was right.

“Doubt it’ll come to that,” he told her, forcing himself to loosen up again.

Pepper squeezed him and smiled at him. “I’m so proud of you, looking after those boys.”

Tony felt a flush of pleasure, even as he brushed it off. “Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m awesome.” Pepper laughed and went to kiss him.

The lights flickered.

They both twitched back and looked up. Tony’s whole train of thought derailed, because this was the Tower, which was powered by an arc reactor, which meant that, unless Tony himself was running crazy experiments — and he wasn’t, he’d checked — there should be no interruptions or fluctuations with the power supply.

The lights of Avengers Tower did not flicker.

They flickered again.

“Is something wrong with the arc reactor?” asked Pepper while Tony seized the nearest tablet off his worktable, knocking bits of computer guts to the floor.

“FRIDAY, get me the status on the Tower’s arc reactor.”

FRIDAY did not respond.

Tony went still. Because flickering lights, that was worrying. But FRIDAY going MIA? That was a probable suit-up situation.

He exchanged an alarmed look with Pepper. “FRIDAY?” he called again, on the edge of calling for a suit.

A rush of static came over FRIDAY’s speakers, and then there was a voice, so distant and distorted that he could barely make out words.

“…can’t … where … help me….”

…Well that didn’t sound like a supervillain bent on tower-conquering. All he could make out about the voice was that it was male and sounded scared.

“Hello?” Tony called to it, while simultaneously diving into FRIDAY’s systems to find out what the hell was going on. “Can you hear me?”

The only response was a rush of garbled sound. The lights flickered again. The coffeemaker across the room switched itself on, and then off again.

And in FRIDAY’s systems… “What the hell?” said Tony with baffled awe.

The AI’s processes were … well. Tony couldn’t even tell what they were doing. It was like the computer-programming equivalent of a box full of frogs. And when he looked closer…

The code — the code. It had transmogrified into weird hieroglyphs, like someone had taken a text document and translated it all into wingdings. Only these weren’t wingdings; Tony didn’t know what these weird squiggles could be.

Was he being hacked by aliens? Was that what was happening right now?

The eerie voice came through again, louder and clearer this time.

“Help … where am I? …Spidey, where are you, I can’t get out…”

Tony froze, the pieces suddenly coming together in his head — the familiar eerie quality of the voice, the bizarre hieroglyphs, and ‘Spidey’…

“Tony,” said Pepper urgently, but whatever she was about to say next was lost when the lab door slammed open and Spiderman pelted in.

“Mr Stark! Mr Stark!” He stopped to gasp in a couple of breaths. “I, uh, I…”

“What is it?” demanded Tony, striding over to him with Pepper only half a step behind. “What happened?”

“I, uh … I … lost Phantom in the television.”

Two full seconds of perfect silence before Tony said, very deliberately, “You what.”

***

Bruce ran in while Tony was still staring disbelievingly at Peter.

“What’s going on?” Bruce asked urgently, looking back and forth between them. “Is it an attack?”

…Which confirmed that weird crap was happening in more than just the lab. Wonderful. Just what he needed: the entire Tower haunted by a freaked-out possessed AI.

“Spiderman informs me that he has lost Phantom in the television,” Tony told Bruce.

Pepper stepped past Tony. “Lost him how?” she asked Peter.

“He … we….” Peter was wringing his hands like a maiden in a Jane Austen novel. He cringed behind his mask and flailed about for words.

Tony recognised that attitude. It was the classic oh-shit-I’ve-done-something-really-stupid-and-now-I’ve-got-to-admit-it-to-grownups-because-I-need-help-to-fix-it attitude. “Kid,” he said warningly, in a voice that sounded alarmingly like his dad’s.

***

Meanwhile, up on the communal floor, Clint stuck a large bowl of leftover chow mein into the microwave, punched in 1:10, and pressed start.

The microwave blew up.

***

“We were just playing around!” Peter burst out. “We were trying to do that gag from cartoons where the ghost walks through a TV and you see like an x-ray of his underwear and stuff.”

Over in the corner of the lab, a vacuum robot — Tony’s own (vastly superior, thank you) version of a Roomba — turned itself on, beeped out a little tune, and then started spinning in circles. Its power light was a creepy green instead of the usual blue. At the other end of the room, the coffeemaker turned on again and started to brew.

Good. Tony needed a cup. And then he needed Pepper to stop him adding a dash of something stronger. “You were trying to x-ray his underwear?”

“Yes— no— kinda!” Peter threw up his hands in agitation. “Anyway, he disappeared into the TV, and then he started talking out its speakers-and-he-sounded-kinda-scaredandthenhewasgoneand I CAN’T FIND HIM.”

Pepper grabbed his flailing arms and held them. “Sweetie, breathe. It’s going to be okay.”

Peter breathed. Behind him, Bruce was wearing that expression of weary exasperation mixed with a dash of fond amusement that he usually reserved for Tony.

Tony’s hologram table suddenly burst to life and started projecting diagrams of bits of the Iron Man suit up into the air. And then it switched to a 3D image of a bowl of breakfast cereal. Tony gave it a befuddled stare.

***

With a few chow mein noodles and a little fire extinguisher foam still in his hair, Clint pressed the call button for the elevator.

When FRIDAY had failed to respond to either the explosion or Clint calling on her, he had texted Natasha and Steve to let them know something was up, and then he’d gone in search of Tony.

The elevator door slid open, and Clint started forwards. Then from inside, a faint, bodiless voice whispered,

“I’m trapped, I’m trapped … help, I can’t get out…”

The lights in the elevator flickered ominously. The floor buttons started lighting up and going out.

Clint froze, considered his options rationally, and then backed out of the elevator and ran like hell for the stairs.

On the way, he texted Nat and Steve: DON’T USE ELEVATOR. HAUNTED.

***

“Okay, so the situation is that we have a confused teenaged ghost lost in FRIDAY’s computer systems, and we need to somehow get him out. Preferably before the representative from the Accords Council shows up for the meeting we’re supposed to have today.”

Pepper and Bruce both winced. Tony’s tablet started Googling hamburgers by itself. Tony wondered whether Danny was hungry.

Bruce gave a deep, weary sigh. “So is this cyber security or an exorcism?”

Tony groaned. “Let’s start with cyber security and only resort to an exorcism if things start to explode.”

***

Natasha was sparring with Steve in the gym when both their phones lit up with texts from Clint. Natasha wiped the sweat off her fingers before scrolling through her phone.

MICROWAVE JUST BLEW UP

THERE IS CHOW MEIN ON THE CEILING FAN

SMOKE ALARM DIDN’T GO OFF

HAD TO USE THE FIRE EXTINGUISHER

FRIDAY ISN’T ANSWERING

Natasha looked up at Steve, who was towelling sweat off and frowning while reading the messages. Then he looked up at the ceiling and asked, “FRIDAY?”

Eerie silence answered him.

Natasha hadn’t realised how accustomed she’d become to Tony’s ever-present AIs until that moment. And from the disturbed look on Steve’s face, he hadn’t either.

“Something’s up,” he said uneasily, looking around.

“Something,” Natasha agreed, and then couldn’t quite helping trying as well. “FRIDAY?”

Still nothing.

Their phones trilled again.

DON’T USE ELEVATOR. HAUNTED.

“‘Haunted’?” Steve repeated, looking more worried by the second.

Natasha narrowly restrained her sigh from turning into a groan. “Knowing Clint, that could mean anything, but let’s grab the ecto-weapons. If we’ve been invaded by that technology ghost, this is gonna get ugly.”

They dashed for the armoury.

***

“Hello,” said Carter Ridley to the receptionist in the lobby of Avengers Tower. “I’m Carter Ridley, representative of the Accords Council, and this is my personal assistant,” he made a grand, sweeping gesture to a very pretty, curvy blonde woman in ferocious heels, “Veronica Sedgewick. We’re here for a meeting with Tony Stark.”

“Oh!” said the rather flustered receptionist, who had been trying to figure out why her game of Angry Birds had suddenly transformed into a game of Angry Cartoon Ghosts, which apparently followed quite a different set of rules.

(She would later discover that the game didn’t exist, except for its mysterious appearance on her phone, and she made a tidy profit by marketing it. She sometimes felt a little guilty, because surely she had somehow stolen it from someone. I mean, games didn’t just grow on trees, or manifest spontaneously in smart phones. But no one ever came forward, so she shrugged her shoulders and put the money towards her daughter’s education fund.)

As she turned to her computer to check the schedule, she thought, for just a fraction of a second, that she saw a face in her computer screen — a face with wide, frightened eyes, its mouth moving with silent words.

But when she looked properly, it was gone.

She blinked at her computer for a moment or two, then remembered what she was doing.

Mr Ridley was in the schedule, right where he was meant to be. She smiled at him. “Come right on in, Mr Ridley. Take the second elevator up to the third floor. Someone will meet you there.”

“Thank you,” said Mr Ridley, beaming at her. “Come on, Veronica!”

On the way to the elevator, he murmured to his assistant, “You remember the plan?”

“Of course,” Veronica said, with a hint of disparagement. “It’s not exactly complicated.”

Mr Ridley’s eyes flicked around the room, showing faint signs of nerves. “You’re sure you can do it?”

“Of course I’m sure,” she said with a gleam in her eyes. “I’ve been working towards this moment for years.”

The look her boss gave her was not nearly so certain. “If we get caught, there’ll be hell to pay,” he warned.

“We won’t get caught,” said Veronica, with the sublime confidence of one who will accept nothing else.

Chapter Text

“Damn it,” said Pepper, looking down at the notice of Ridley and Sedgewick’s arrival on her tablet. “They’re here.”

“Hold them off,” said Tony urgently, flipping through holographic touchscreens and furiously typing code in a trial-an-error effort to interact with the gobbledygook that was Danny’s presence in the computer systems. Then, to Bruce and Peter, “He’s moving too fast; I can’t do anything with him before he’s suddenly somewhere else.”

“Maybe we could corral him between us?” suggested Bruce, peering with fascination at what a ghost-possessed computer system looked like. Maybe, after they solved this, he could convince Phantom to let him study how it worked…

“Come on, Danny,” Spiderman muttered anxiously at his own holographic touchscreen.

Two seconds after Pepper took off to run interference with inconvenient government diplomats, Clint skidded in, with what looked like white foam and a few noodles in his hair.

“What the hell is going on?” he demanded.

Tony leant back with a melodramatic groan, then jabbed a finger in Spiderman’s face. “Underoos, you explain.”

***

The security door to the armoury wouldn’t open.

Usually, FRIDAY just opened it for them. But there were also fingerprint and retinal scanners as a backup measure. Steve understood how to use them just fine, but he had no idea how to get around them not working, and so happily stepped aside to let Natasha do her thing.

She scanned her palm. The light should have turned green. It did not turn green. With a growl, Natasha produced a small tool out of seemingly nowhere and began prying at the interface. Which didn’t budge.

“There are some days,” she muttered darkly, “that I really regret how good Tony is at all this.”

A faint whisper echoed down the hall around them, almost like a breeze. They both froze, eyes flicking to each other, and then around the hallway. It was empty.

“…Black Widow,” said a faint, eerie voice.

“I am the Black Widow,” Natasha agreed in a loud, clear voice, utterly still and totally alert, her tool still stuck in the side of the scanner. Her breath rose in a cloud before her — the air was suddenly frigid.

“…Natasha Romanoff,” said the voice, and neither of them could tell where it was coming from — everywhere and nowhere, distant and close by all at once.

“That’s right,” she said. “Who are you? What do you want?”

There was a soft rush of garbled sound — Steve was now pretty sure that it was coming through FRIDAY’s speakers — and then the voice came through again: “…Out,” it said. “I want out. Get me out.”

And the light turned green. The armoury doors slid open with a soft whoosh.

Neither Steve nor Natasha moved for several seconds, their breath still misting in the air. It felt like a trap.

“Stay here and keep the doors from closing?” Natasha asked Steve in an undertone.

Steve considered the big, heavy sliding doors and hoped Tony hadn’t built them to close with the might of a rampaging elephant. Unlikely, but one never knew with Tony.

“I got it,” he said to Natasha, and she nodded and darted inside in pursuit of anti-ghost weapons.

Steve glanced nervously up and down the hallway and braced himself in the doorway. A normal day, he thought bleakly. Is it too much to ask to just have a normal day?

***

Tony listened with half an ear as Peter had to explain the whole sorry situation twice, once to Clint, and then again to the newly arrived Steve and Natasha, who were both toting ecto-weapons and looking seriously on edge.

Peter would have had to go through it twice anyway, though, because Clint was laughing too hard to hear a lot of it the first time.

The tension drained out of Natasha and Steve once they understood that this whole mess, from the possessed Roomba zooming around their feet to the possessed coffeemaker that was now coughing out weird-looking coffee that Tony was NOT going to drink — it was all just Phantom.

“Why did you do it here?” Natasha asked Peter, referring to the TV experiment.

Tony couldn’t see Peter’s expression under the mask, but he could read the kid’s guilt just fine from the way he ducked his head and mumbled. “We figured that, if anything went wrong with the TV, Mr Stark would know how to fix it. And…” he trailed off and ducked under the weight of even more guilt.

“And?” prompted Natasha, lips quirking in rising amusement.

“And … and we figured that on the off chance that something went really wrong,” Peter said wretchedly, “Mr Stark could afford to replace a TV. But we never thought anything like that would really happen!” he added urgently, voice rising. “Or anything like this either! We were just being careful!”

Tony stopped what he was doing to turn to Peter, hands on his hips and his frown severe. “If you’d really been being careful, kid, you’d have told me that you were experimenting and got my okay first. That way we might not be in this hole right now.”

“I’m sorry, Mr Stark,” Peter said miserably. “We thought it would be harmless.”

Tony sighed. “Yeah, I know, kid. We’ll deal with it after we get this fixed.” And he gave Peter a squeeze on the shoulder.

“Are you parenting him right now?” Clint asked disbelievingly. “Is that what’s going on here?”

“Shut up, birdbrain,” said Tony, pointing at him, and then swinging his finger around to include Natasha, who was smirking at him with both amusement and the scary hint of something warm, and also Steve, who was watching it all with his eyebrows more than halfway up to his hairline.

“We don’t have time for this,” Tony informed them all. “We have maybe twenty minutes before I have to go talk to the Accords Council representative and convince him that everything is fine, Phantom is a good guy, and we definitely don’t have to worry about him wreaking havoc. Which is going to be difficult if he’s possessing Avengers Tower at the time.”

Peter gave a little moan of total misery. Bruce looked at him with a mix of amusement and sympathy.

“So,” said Tony, “everyone who knows how to code, get over here and help me. And everyone who doesn’t, you guys please try to control the possessed appliances. Especially the Roomba — it keeps trying to eat my shoes.”

They all looked down at the Roomba, which beeped, bumped up to Tony’s shoes, and deployed a little vacuum hose to suck at them. Tony nudged it away and sighed.

“Oh, and don’t drink the coffee,” he added. “I think it’s glowing.”

***

“Ms Potts!” said Mr Ridley, spreading his arms in greeting with a huge smile. “So lovely to meet you in person at last.”

“Likewise, Mr Ridley,” said Pepper with a smile she hoped didn’t look strained. She pressed her tablet against her chest to hide the fact that it was currently googling Pharrell Williams song lyrics by itself.

“This is my assistant, Veronica Sedgewick,” said Mr Ridley, presenting a woman that looked to Pepper like a stereotypical vain, airheaded secretary — a woman who cared about her hair, makeup, and nails and not much else. In short, exactly the sort of woman Pepper had always prided herself on not being. She smiled anyway and shook hands with Ms Sedgewick’s artificial, stuck-on plastic claws.

“A pleasure, Ms Sedgewick.” Ms Sedgewick murmured something similar back, and Pepper turned back to Mr Ridley. “I fear Mr Stark may be a bit late. The Tower’s technical systems developed some fascinating new fault today, and he’s up to his neck attempting to fix it.”

The lights flickered. Pepper pointed up to them in illustration. “As you can see. They’ve been flickering all day.”

“Ah,” said Mr Ridley, looking up at them. “Nothing serious, I hope?”

“Oh no,” said Pepper at once. Accidental possession of computer systems by teenaged ghost counted as ‘nothing serious’ by Avengers standards, didn’t it? Pepper was decreeing right now that it did. “He has identified the problem and come up with a solution. It’s just such a large system that it will take some time to implement.” There, that sounded nice and non-alarming, and would hopefully also explain any weird electronic phenomena.

Hopefully.

Fortunately, Mr Ridley seemed satisfied with this explanation, and also much less bothered by having to wait than Pepper had expected. He smiled warmly at her. “Well, if we have some time to wait, I would be fascinated to hear about the latest activities of Stark Industries! Is it true that you’re developing heavy digging equipment that runs on clean energy?”

“Why yes,” said Pepper, seizing with some relief onto a safe topic that would kill some time. “Heavy machinery as a whole is still totally reliant on fossil fuels, and most of it is terribly inefficient. But with the new ideas Mr Stark is developing…”

The conversation continued in this vein for several minutes, and as it did, Pepper was vaguely aware of Ms Sedgewick looking more and more bored. Soon she gave up all pretense of being involved or even interested and instead pulled out a compact mirror to examine her makeup. She frowned critically at her reflection.

Pepper was not at all surprised when Veronica Sedgewick delicately interrupted their conversation to ask the location of the nearest ladies’ room. Pepper directed her — with a scornful thought about how much mascara the woman was wearing (FAR too much) — and thought no more about it.

Which later turned out to be quite a serious mistake. But it was one for which Pepper can perhaps be forgiven, considering how much else she had on her mind and how thoroughly, excellently well Veronica Sedgewick played her part.

***

“Mr Stark? Mr Stark, can you hear me?”

Tony jumped and turned in a complete circle before realising Danny’s voice was coming out of his back pocket. Tony nearly fumbled in his hurry to pull his phone out. The screen was all weird, multicoloured snow — apparently Danny had activated the video, but wasn’t actually feeding it data it could understand.

“Danny!” Tony exclaimed. “We can hear you! Can you hear us?”

“Yeah. I finally found where all the audio and visual feed is. I can see you, too.” And then, in a voice edged with desperation, “Do you know how to get me out?”

“Working on it, kiddo,” said Tony, gesturing to Bruce. Bruce took the hint at once and went looking for FRIDAY’s audio and visual feeds. If Danny had hooked himself into that, maybe that would keep him still long enough for them to do something.

“Are you okay, Danny?” Peter asked anxiously.

At the sound of Peter’s voice, Danny tried to level his own and smooth out the desperation. “Yeah, I mean … kinda freaked out, but I’m okay. Just lost. It’s like an endless maze in here. I think I was stuck in Iron Man designs for a while, and then in old videos from around the Tower. Took me ages to find an actual live feed.”

“I think you also found the lights, the coffeemaker, the hologram table, the Roomba, the microwave, the elevator, and, from what Natasha and Steve tell me, the security system on the armoury,” Tony added dryly.

“Uh, yeah,” said Danny sheepishly. “Found one of everything except a way out.”

The fuzz on Tony’s phone started to resolve itself into a pair of creepy green eyes, then went blank.

Tony heard some faint electronic sound from Peter’s direction, and Peter reacted like he’d been electrocuted. “WHOA,” he yelled, flailing. “DUDE, not in my EAR! I have supersensitive hearing! …Wait, are you possessing Karen now? Don’t possess Karen! I need her!”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to talk through your suit,” Danny’s voice said from the ceiling speakers. Then, “…Hang on, who the hell is Karen?”

“She’s my suit!”

“You named your suit Karen?” said Danny and Clint in perfect, uncanny unison, Clint looking up from where he and Steve were poking curiously at the possessed Roomba.

“No!” squawked Peter indignantly. “I mean, not the suit itself. She’s the AI Mr Stark put in it!”

“You named your AI Karen?” said Clint, grinning, apparently not caring as the Roomba’s little hose swallowed his finger and sat there sucking on it.

Peter waved his arms above his head. “Well I couldn’t keep calling her ‘suit lady!’ She needed a name!”

Natasha cocked her head at Peter, smiling a little half smile. “You are adorable,” she informed him.

Peter lowered his arms. “I really don’t know how to take that. Should I be insulted or flattered?”

“Go for flattered, kid,” said Clint. “Natasha doesn’t compliment just anybody.”

Peter considered that. “Okay then.” He raised a finger. “But for future reference, ‘manly’ or ‘badass’ would be better adjectives.”

Tony snorted. “In your dreams, kid. You still got a few years before ‘manly’ is in the picture.”

Peter’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah, prob’ly,” he said in the mournful voice of one who believes that those few years are going to take several eternities.

“Got him,” Bruce announced.

Tony darted in to look over his shoulder. “Awesome.” Then, louder, “Okay, Phantom, we’re going to try leaving you a trail of breadcrumbs to follow out of the system. We just gotta find something that you can actually see. Pay attention, and tell us when something works, okay?”

“Okay,” Danny said, sounding relieved.

Tony clapped Bruce on the shoulder and waved at Peter and Natasha, neither of whom was any slouch at code. “Okay, let’s start trying stuff.”

***

As Veronica walked down the hall in the general direction of the ladies’ washroom, she peeked at each room she passed. This was made easy by the fact that every office had a set of windows beside the door, allowing passers-by in the hall to see whether or not the room was occupied.

Veronica passed several occupied offices and two with cups of coffee and food out on the desk, likely only momentarily abandoned. And then she came to one that was empty, shut, with no signs of life at the desk. She hesitated a bare fraction of a second, then decided it was a good risk.

She didn’t stop to check whether she might be observed. It was a better bet, in this game, to look businesslike and like you belonged than it was to try not to be seen at all.

So clutching her tablet to her chest like a clipboard, she opened the door and bustled inside. She assessed the room at a glance. The computer monitor was large enough that she could duck behind it and be almost completely out of sight from the windows by the door.

Perfect.

She settled herself and booted up the computer. It immediately asked for a password.

Veronica grinned like a shark. They would have to do a lot better than a password to stop her.

***

Meanwhile, down in the lab, Tony strongly suspected that Danny was getting bored. Tony suspected this because music had spontaneously started playing — some pop song he vaguely recognised. Only he was pretty sure that the words weren’t usually shot through with occasional freakish distortions that made them say something else.

“Clap along if you feel like YOU’RE TRAPPED DOWN IN A HOLE.

“Clap along if you feel like THEY’RE COMING FOR YOUR SOUL.

“Clap along if you know WHAT TO DO TO GET ME OUT.

“Clap along if you feel like YOU’RE FALLING INTO DOUBT…”

“Danny, please stop that; it is seriously creepy,” moaned Peter.

“What, you don’t appreciate my rhyming skills?” said Danny over the music. “I’ll have you know that I was coached by the Ghost Zone’s greatest poet! …And by ‘coached,’ I mean he trapped me in a never-ending rhyme that narrated my entire life and forced everything that everybody said into rhyming iambic pentameter. I only escaped through judicious use of the word ‘orange.’”

Tony choked on a snort, while Peter said in a tone of awe, “Dude. I think your life might be even weirder than mine.”

“Ghosts, man,” said Danny sagely.

“Hey Tony,” said Clint called from the coffeemaker. “You’re right; it is glowing.”

Halfway across the lab, Steve held up the possessed Roomba. “How do you turn this thing off?”

Its little vacuum hose poked out and latched onto Steve’s nose. The look Steve directed at it was the look of a man who had been struggling with bizarre, freaky future technology for so long that he wasn't even surprised that it was now trying to eat his boogers.

“Clint,” said Natasha as she went over to help Steve, “don’t drink the coffee.”

Clint was holding up a cup of liquid that did indeed seem to be glowing faintly. And was also a troubling shade of muddy green. “But it might give me superpowers!” he protested, grinning a wicked grin that Tony really, really hoped meant he wasn’t serious.

“Uh, I really wouldn’t recommend it,” said Danny. “I found some ecto-contaminated sausages once. They tried to eat me.”

“Put the cup down, birdbrain,” said Tony. “Bruce and I need to do a chemical analysis on it before we decide whether it might give anybody pow—”

The music suddenly cut out. The lights flickered, and Danny hissed like he was in pain.

Tony’s hands froze halfway through typing a string of code. “Danny? What’s up?”

“Did you guys just do something?” he asked. “Because I definitely just felt something, and it kinda hurt.”

Tony looked urgently from face to face. Natasha shrugged, Peter shook his head and raised his hands in ‘wasn’t me!’ posture, and Bruce said, “I don’t think I’ve been doing anything that could have that effect…”

“Don’t think it was us, kid,” said Tony. “What did it feel like?”

“It was like something bit me — like something’s chewing at me,” said Danny, voice tight and strained. “Just — nibbling, chewing — OW!”

Tony jumped up, swivelling another screen around to face him. “Phantom! Danny! Talk to me, what’s happening?”

The kid’s voice had gone scared. “Something … something’s in here with me. I think it’s trying to eat me!”

What. Tony dived into the code, trying to find something out of place in the mess. Beside him, Bruce, Peter, and Nat all did the same, Nat swearing in Russian under her breath. Clint and Steve stared anxiously over their shoulders.

“Could it be FRIDAY’s security protocols?” Bruce asked Tony, worried.

Tony flapped a hand. “Why would they only kick in now? He’s been in there for more than an hour. There might be—”

“Get off me!” cried Danny, his voice becoming distant and distorted. “Stop it! I won’t let you! Get away!”

“What’s going on?” cried Peter, flicking frantically through touch screens. “How do we help him?”

Then Tony saw the code. “It’s a hack,” he said urgently. “Something’s broken in; it’s trying to rewrite the protocols. Which means it’s trying to rewrite Danny.”

“What’s that gonna do to Danny?” demanded Peter, his voice shooting up an octave.

What would one of the most sophisticated computer viruses in the world do to a human being who had been more or less converted into computer code? Tony didn’t know, and didn’t want to find out. Except…

He watched as the virus replicated itself, expanded, tried to eat away at Danny’s gobbledygook code. Danny’s code shrank away from it, retreated, and then suddenly surged back out, swamping the invading virus. The virus couldn’t keep up, couldn’t find Danny’s core protocols to take them over the way it was supposed to.

“Ha,” said Tony, starting to smile. “Look, look, he’s fighting back!”

“Is he winning?” asked Steve, leaning over Bruce’s shoulder.

Bruce shrugged. “The virus, it’s designed to attack FRIDAY, an AI — all neat and ordered processes and protocols, logical.

“But Danny is an organic being — chaotic, disordered, illogical, emotional, and written in a language the virus can’t even understand.” Bruce leaned closer to the code and said, "I think it's giving him the upper hand, at least.”

The lights turned off completely, leaving only the glow of computer screens and power lights. The temperature plummeted; Tony could see his breath misting in the eerie light of his screen, and he squashed an irrational thought that it was a piece of his spirit escaping.

And then every screen in the room went haywire, flashing through random colours and images, filling the room with a strange, undulating, multicoloured light. On a worktable, an Iron Man gauntlet lit up, its repulsor charging up with a whine.

“LOOK OUT,” roared Tony, diving for cover.

The gauntlet fired, blowing up half the worktable and sending itself rocketing across the room.

Peter dodged it with a yelp. It smashed into the opposite wall, and everyone ducked and covered from the flying debris.

“Danny!” yelled Tony. “Watch it!”

And then Danny’s voice came from every speaker, at deafening volume.

“GET OUT OF MY HEAD.”

Chapter Text

Damon Alvarez had been praying all morning for something, anything, to get him out of the supply and budget meeting scheduled today.

He’d spent the whole of the previous evening hoping that he felt a sore throat or, better, a fit of vomiting coming on, but no such luck. Then he’d hoped for some massive accident or destructive supervillain attack to block off the roads and make getting to work impossible — so sorry, I would have been there, but all of Fifth was on fire and the Avengers were having a shootout with aliens all over Seventh and Eighth, couldn’t get through… But the trip in had been depressingly smooth.

Then he’d hoped that there might be an attack on the Tower — nothing too serious, just enough to interrupt the schedule, maybe get everyone evacuated to the panic rooms down in the lowest levels. Damon didn’t care, just as long as he didn’t have to listen to another two-hour lecture from Perkin Gipstein about how they were all using too much paper and it would be more environmentally friendly if they sent out all memos to the kitchen staff by e-mail — when Damon knew for a fact that half the kitchen staff never checked their work e-mail, and probably a third didn’t even realise they had them.

But Lady Luck had turned her back on him, so Damon sat in the meeting room, head sagging down to rest in his hand, listening to a Very Important Discussion between Gipstein and the head of office supplies, Maisie Kwong, about whether Stark Industries were using too many staples and the negative impact that might have on beluga whales.

(Or something. Damon had stopped paying attention half an hour ago in favour of fantasizing about water-skiing with Belinda from human resources, who was busty and beautiful and would look excellent in a swimsuit.)

It was agreed that Stark Industries were using too many staples and that Steps Should Be Taken. Damon wondered if he’d lose his job if he stood up and screamed.

The lights flickered. The conversation paused, and in that lull, Damon thought he heard, just barely, a faint voice saying, “No … no, I’ll stop you…”

No one else heard it, and the spike of hope in Damon’s chest withered away as they went on like nothing had happened.

Maisie Kwong proposed paperclips as a reusable, more environmentally friendly alternative to staples. Perkin Gipstein came back with actual studies and statistics about the percentage of paperclips that are lost or discarded after their first use, and then he proposed imposing a mandatory class for all employees on the importance of reusing office supplies and not wastefully bending them into little paperclip sculptures or lockpicks.

Damon considered how hard it might be to gain entry to the roof and throw himself off it. Probably too hard. Maybe he could get himself run over in the motor pool…

The lights flickered again, more aggressively. Gipstein faltered, then doggedly continued his lecture on the environmental importance of reusing paperclips. He continued even as the air of the room chilled and his breath started to come out as mist.

He continued right up until the fluorescent lights exploded. Maisie Kwong and half the room screamed as they were showered with bits of glass.

“No,” said the faint voice. “No, I won’t lose to you!”

“Out!” someone shouted in the darkness as mercury vapour seeped into the air. “Everybody out!”

Damon hung back to make sure everyone got out safely, and then stood just outside the door in the hall, breathing deep and revelling in the feeling of God smiling upon him.

“Thank you, Lord,” he muttered. “I owe you one.”

***

Danny was winning.

Fighting the virus turned out to be kinda like two ghosts fighting to overshadow the same person. At first, Danny had just tried to shove the virus out, like he would another ghost. But apparently, viruses couldn’t just be shoved around.

And it had reacted by trying to take him over.

It hadn’t just hurt; it had been weird, having something try to possess him while he was already possessing something else. Like layers of possession — was that even possible?

It got Danny thinking: if it was trying to overshadow him, could he overshadow it? If he could possess a whole artificial intelligence, surely he could take over a mere virus.

So, fired by the pain he was in, he attacked afresh, and this time, instead of trying to shove, he tried to take it over, to subsume it with his own presence.

The virus stopped chewing at him. Encouraged, Danny rushed it, trying to overwhelm and encircle it.

He thought he had it. And then he experienced a sensation rather like missing a step at the top of the stairs.

The virus had slipped right out from under him.

“Oh no you don’t,” he hissed. “You’re not getting away from me!”

***

In the café on the fifth floor, barista Candace Suzuki was having a very bad day. It had started when she’d woken up to find that her cat had vomited on her bed. Getting that cleaned up had left her running late, and then trying to make breakfast and put her makeup on at the same time had left her with burnt toast.

She’d already been ready to scream at the point that she’d gone outside and discovered her car had a flat tire. Her only hope of not getting completely chewed out by her boss was public transit, so she took the subway. And ended up in a packed subway car, sandwiched between two big, sweaty men who were on their way back from a morning workout at the gym and kept talking over her head about reps and weights and heartrate monitors.

Candace had skidded into work fifteen minutes late and had only avoided being shouted at by virtue of the fact that the boss wasn’t there. But he’d be sure to check the records of when everyone clocked in later, so the chewing out was only put on hold, just waiting in the wings to make her day even better.

She thought about the job offer she’d got from her friend Kevin the other day, to come work with him at his new organic café. Kevin couldn’t match the pay or benefits she got from SI, but his business was booming and he could give her flexible hours, enough to live on, and a boss she really liked.

But Candace hadn’t quite been able to give up everything she had at SI, so here she was, quietly dreading the return of her boss as she prepared a two-shot vanilla latte with extra whip for a tired-looking woman in a grey suit.

Candace poured the milk and headed for the frother. The lights flickered. She paused and looked around.

The television on the wall across the room flashed. For just a moment, it showed a face — a white face with white hair and big, unnaturally green eyes. “There you are,” the face said ominously, and then the TV flicked back to BBC World News.

Candace hesitated for moment (that was weird; had someone somehow managed to change the channel? The only remote was under the counter, where only she could get to it), then started the frother.

vvvvvvvvVVVVVVV FOOM!

The milk exploded. Froth flew everywhere, but mostly all over Candace. Both she and the customer shrieked.

In the quiet after the explosion, a strange, echoing voice spoke over the speakers.

“That’s it, I’ve got you now. I’m putting an end to this!”

The lights flashed. The television’s screen went to blank, glowing acid green, and it started to hum. Candace heard a faint noise from the coffeepot, something between a creak and a crackle. She leaned closer and saw the coffee freezing solid before her eyes, the ice travelling up the sides of the pot.

Candace and the lady in the suit exchanged a wide-eyed look. The fridge’s hum was getting louder. The TV’s hum was getting louder. Even the coffee machine was humming.

The noise rose to such a crescendo that Candace was sure they were all going to blow. And then, just as she was looking for a place to dive for cover, it all … stopped.

The sound just died. The TV cut out, and so did the fridge, freezer, everything.

In the eerie silence that followed, Candace wiped the milk froth off her nametag and flicked it onto the floor. And then she heard her boss’s voice.

“What the hell happened here?!” His big, red nose and angry, squinty eyes loomed in the doorway, staring around at the splatter of milk froth, the frozen coffee, and the ice that was now climbing up the sides of the fridge and freezer. “What ignoramus is responsible for this? Suzuki! What the hell have you done?”

“Excuse me,” the lady in the suit interrupted indignantly. “How could this be this her fault? Everything just went haywire, even the TV!”

Candace appreciated this stranger coming to her defence, but the boss didn’t. He swelled up like a bullfrog.

“Well it’s someone’s fault, and I intend to find out whose!”

That was it, Candace decided. She’d had it. She turned her back on her shouting boss and on this whole crazy mess and walked away.

“Suzuki!” yelled her boss. “Where do you think you’re going?!”

“I am locking myself in the bathroom until either the world ends or this mess is sorted out, whichever comes first,” Candace yelled back. She whirled around and pointed a finger at him. “You can clean up the damn mess yourself. And consider this my notice! I quit!”

She slammed the bathroom door, locked it, and pulled out her phone to accept Kevin’s job offer.

She might have to give up a few things, but it would be goddamn worth it.

***

When Danny finally caught the virus, it popped like a soap bubble.

Tracking it had been tricky. Once it stopped trying to bite him, it just blended in with all the other processes in the system.

But Danny was starting to understand how those processes worked. They came in two main layers: active and passive. The passive ones weren’t what he was looking for; they were the basic, keep-the-world-ticking-over stuff, like the computer equivalent of heartbeat and breathing and digestive tract. Unless the virus was smarter than he thought it was, it wasn’t in there.

So Danny searched through the active processes for something that didn’t fit, something out of line with the general ebb and flow of data.

It surprised him how quickly he found it.

He charged at it and closed his presence around it, ready for another fight, ready to crush the life out of it — and it just … popped.

Giant anticlimax.

…Well that was easy, he thought to himself, staring at the tattered remains of the virus’s code and feeling strangely cheated.

He needed tell Mr Stark and the others that he had won, but he’d lost his connection to the lab in the fight. He’d have to find it again. What folder had it been in…?

Something moved.

Danny flew back into alertness, ready to fight. Something in the code was still active, still alive. Hesitantly, cautiously, Danny touched it.

It was a line, almost like a fishing line, or a really long leash, leading off somewhere, and someone was tugging on the other end.

It was then that it dawned on Danny that, if there was a hack, there must be a hacker — a living presence behind the malicious code that had tried to tear Danny apart.

With a surge of hot, angry ectoplasm in the centre of his being, Danny grabbed the line and followed it.

***

I can’t keep this up much longer, Pepper thought desperately.

First, the lights had gone from the occasional flicker to full-on, horror-movie ominous flashing. Then the temperature had dropped off a cliff. And then she started hearing faint, whispering voices over the intercom. She couldn’t make out most of it, but Phantom sounded like he was in trouble.

“I’ve got you now. You’re not getting away from me!”

Whatever the hell that was about, Pepper didn’t know, and her explanations and excuses were wearing thin. Mr Ridley was starting to look seriously nervous and edgy, adjusting his tie and wringing his hands under the table — although the hand-wringing might have been just because it was really cold.

“Do you suppose you could get someone to turn down the air conditioning?” he asked, shivering.

Pepper glanced anxiously down at the dozen messages popping up on her tablet from all over the Tower. Lights exploded in meeting room on the twentieth floor, spillage of mercury, hazardous waste disposal needed. Café on the fifth floor completely frozen and all electronics blown out — fridge and freezer so iced up that they won’t open, and also the barista had quit. Cleaning lady trapped by electronic lock in storage room on floor thirty-five, and should they break the door down to get her out?

“I’ll just send a few messages, find out what’s up, and when we can expect Tony,” she said with a rather strained attempt at the reassuring smile.

“Good idea,” said Mr Ripley agreeably.

She hurriedly typed out a message to authorise the breaking down of the door to free the cleaning lady, another for hazardous waste disposal, and a third to send a team of electricians and cleaners to deal with the café, with a recommendation for blow torches. Human resources could handle the job posting for a new barista. And then she sent a message to Tony reading: Please tell me it’s nearly fixed.

Meanwhile, Mr Ripley was also typing hurriedly. His message was to Veronica Sedgewick, and it read:

WHAT R U DOING NO ONE WAD SUPPOSED TO NOTIVE

***

It had been five minutes and thirty-seven seconds since Danny had gone radio silent, and Peter was starting to freak out.

“Danny!” he yelled, having Karen project his voice into as many of FRIDAY’s systems as she could while he frantically tried to track his friend and the virus through the system — the computers and lights of the lab had started working again about two minutes into the silence. “C’mon, man respond!”

“Calm down, kid,” said Clint, surprisingly gently. “You know he’s tough. He can take care of himself.” But they were all worried.

“Whoa, hey,” said Tony suddenly, leaning in close to his screen.

“What?” several voices said at once, the loudest Peter’s.

“Think I’ve got the virus here — or what’s left of it. Just a few fragments of code where they’ve got no business being.”

“He killed the virus?” asked Steve, who was sitting with his arms crossed on his splayed knees, fidgeting at his own uselessness.

“Think so,” said Tony. “Wow, look at that. That is not how you usually deal with a virus, for your information, Cap. Spectral cyber security — weird stuff.” He twitched when Peter was suddenly hanging over his shoulder like he was aiming to faceplant into the screen. “Whoa, kid, personal space!”

“But where’s Danny?” demanded Peter, paying no attention to the protest.

“Not hanging around,” said Tony, peering again at the code. “No sign of his crazy hieroglyphs.”

A crackling sound came over the speakers. Peter shot bolt upright. “Danny?” he called hopefully.

A few more seconds of crackling, and then the goofy sound effects and background music of a cartoon started to play, leading into the unmistakable voice of Elmer Fudd saying, “Shh. Be vewy, vewy quiet. I’m hunting wabbits.”

“…What,” said Clint.

***

Veronica Sedgewick’s phone dinged with a message, but she paid it no attention. She was too busy trying to figure out what the hell had gone wrong with her hack.

Her screen had filled with weird symbols and squiggles that she’d never seen before. She watched as her worm was subsumed by them, swallowed up and overwhelmed.

She tried to combat it, to get around it, but within minutes, the strange hieroglyphs had taken over the entire computer, translated every letter of every window, program, and icon into unintelligible squiggles.

Veronica had no idea what the hell kind of security this was supposed to be, but she wouldn’t put it past Stark to have reverse-engineered it from alien tech. Which, much as she hated to admit it, was well beyond what she was equipped to deal with. Time to cut and run.

She was just starting to push herself up from her chair when the light on the webcam came on. She froze for just an instant, staring at it. A heavy sense of something watching her settled over her, making a creepy prickling sensation run over her shoulders.

And then a spontaneous video call took over the screen.

Veronica should have run, but something held her rooted to the spot. The video feed was dark, distorted, pixelated. The shape of the face was vague and hard to make out — except for the eerie, glowing green eyes in the centre.

“So it’s you,” a strange, distant voice echoed out of the speakers. “You’re the one trying to hack in.”

An explosion of panic went off in Veronica’s stomach, and she ducked away from the camera — too late, far too late — and shot to her feet, knocking over the office chair.

“Nuh-uh, no way,” said the voice, and the door clicked before she could even get two steps towards it. “Unless you can walk through walls, lady, you’re going nowhere.”

Veronica tried the door anyway, desperately rattling the handle. It was locked fast.

“Let me go!” she demanded.

“Nope. Not a chance. You’re caught,” said the creepy voice.

Veronica looked around for another way out. No vents, and no windows besides those that led out into the hall. Maybe she could—

The voice interrupted her thoughts. “Who even are you, anyway?” it asked.

“Leave me alone,” snarled Veronica, furious at being caught. “I’ll make you leave me alone.” And she yanked the computer’s power cable out of the wall, eliciting one indignant cry of “Hey!” before the screen went dead.

Then, “Rude,” said the same — now very offended — voice from somewhere up in the ceiling.

And then the fire sprinkler came on.

***

The spectral voice of an undead teenager echoed through the lab. “Hey guys? Can you hear me?”

The adults in the room all slumped with relief, but Peter practically exploded.

“DANNY!” he cried, flying back over to his own computer screen. “Oh my gosh, man, are you okay?! What happened?”

“It’s good — I’m fine. Killed the virus. Er, mighta done some damage along the way; sorry, Mr Stark.”

“It’s fine, kid,” said Tony, waving a hand. “Could have been worse if you hadn’t been there to notice it. Whoever wrote that code is a complete genius; not sure if FRIDAY could have fended it off.”

“Speaking of…” said Danny, “I think I found her. The hacker.”

Tony’s hands stilled over his touchscreen. “What?”

“A woman in an office on level twelve. Blonde, black suit. I locked her in.”

Steve, Clint, and Natasha all started to their feet, their eyes beginning to glint.

The prospect of a hunt made Tony brighten, too. “You tracked the hack? She’s where the virus came from?”

“Yup. I’m sure.”

Tony smiled. He activated his Iron Man watch, which unfolded to cover his left hand with a repulsor blaster. “Right. Phantom, keep her there. Spidey, Bruce, keep watch over the system, in case this is only Act One and they’re gonna attack again. The rest of you … wanna come catch a hacker?”

Natasha, Clint, and Steve all smiled, bright and eager. This was much more their speed.

“It would be my pleasure,” said Steve with a grin that he hadn’t given Tony since before the Accords fiasco. Tony pretended it didn’t give him a happy little bubble in his gut.

“Aw, come on!” wailed Peter. “Why can’t I come for the exciting part? I’m awesome at baddy-apprehension!”

“Y’know,” said Tony over his shoulder as he headed for the door, “if you want me to treat you like a grownup, Underoos, then not whining like a five-year-old every time you’re left out of the fun would be a good first step.” Then, more seriously, “I need your brain here, Spidey. You want to make up for your screwup, then keep watch on things here and figure out how to get Danny out of there before any more excrement hits an air-current distribution device.”

He pointed finger guns at them. “Catch you later, Jolly Green, Underoos.” And he was gone.

Left in the lab, Peter’s shoulders slumped. “Aw, man,” he moaned.

Bruce squeezed his shoulder consolingly and managed not to laugh.

***

But before Peter could sink too far into disappointment, Danny’s voice muttered the worrying phrase of, “Oh, damn it, crap.” And then, “Uh, Spidey? Dr Banner?”

Peter shot to attention and asked, “What’s up, man?”

“I think…  Yeah, I think there are two of them — bad guys, I mean,” said Danny. “I found the signal from the hacker’s phone, and it just got several messages from another phone in the building.”

Bruce went on alert at once. More than one hacker meant that another attack was immanently likely. “Where? Can you track it?”

“Yeah — finally getting the hang of this computer stuff. It’s in a conference room on level twelve. But…” Danny’s voice dropped low and worried, “thing is, there are only two people in that room. And I think one of them is Pepper Potts.”

It took one long moment for the potential disaster to sink in, and then Peter exploded into motion. “Ohmigod COME ON, DR BANNER, LET’S GO.” And he was off like he’d been shot out of a cannon.

Bruce scrambled in his wake, shouting, “Phantom, warn Tony!”

Meditation, Bruce thought despairingly. I am going to need SO MUCH meditation.

***

Danny was maybe panicking a little.

Pepper Potts was alone with a bad guy, and Danny didn’t know what to do. He could lock the door to the conference room, but that would mean locking Pepper in with this guy — who looked like a weasel in a suit, in Danny’s opinion. And if Weasel Guy decided to turn nasty, that might be a very bad thing.

“Mr Stark? Mr Stark?” he called through Tony’s phone, since that was easier than finding the speakers in whatever hallway Tony’s little party of Avengers was currently dashing down.

“Yeah, kid?” said Tony, pulling his phone out with the hand that wasn’t currently sporting the repulsor.

“Mr Stark, I’ve found another one — there are two — and he’s alone with Pepper.”

Tony skidded to a halt, his heart skipping a beat. “That bastard from the Council! What the hell is going on here. Where are they?”

Danny told them, voice tense and worried. “Spiderman and Dr Banner are already en route. And at the rate Spidey’s going, I think he’ll get there before you can.”

Tony hesitated.

“Go, Tony,” said Steve. “We’ve got this.”

“Right, okay.” Trusting Steve came easier than he’d expected. Tony took off down a different hallway. “See you guys later!” he called back. Then, “Danny, call the elevator for me.”

“Uh, right.”

In the computer system, Danny went frantically shuffling through folders of command processes for one labelled ELEVATORS, and then through the many elevators for the right one. Then he just kinda stared at it, wondering how the hell this worked.

He poked it. “Um, come to Tony’s lab floor?”

He felt the elevator start to move. It was weird, almost like the whole building was his body and he could feel a little piece of it moving.

Then, realising that Cap and the others were going to need an elevator too, he found the one nearest the office block the hacker was in and ordered that one to move as well.

The elevators kinda tickled as they came up. Being FRIDAY was weird.

***

Riding the elevator down, Spiderman fidgeted so much that Bruce finally had to reach out and grab him.

“Could you stop that? You’re making me feel like I need to pee.”

“Sorry, Dr Banner, it’s just that it would’ve been faster if we’d skipped the elevator and just gone down the shaft.”

Bruce took a moment to realise that yes, Spiderman meant that as a serious option. “You wanted to jump down fifty floors?”

Bruce couldn’t see the kid’s face, but his voice was terribly earnest. “Not just jump — I’ve got webs, man! I could catch us before we hit terminal velocity.”

Terminal velocity. Terminal velocity. Bruce made it a personal policy to stay at least twelve miles away from situations that might include terminal velocity.

(Except, y’know, for Avengers missions, which almost invariably included at least three incidents of terminal velocity.)

“And how would you plan on telling which floor was the right one?” Bruce asked dryly, trying not to picture exactly how Spiderman might intend to carry him, or how bad a Hulk Incident the bottom of the shaft would suffer should the kid manage to drop him.

There was a telling pause. “Uh. Maybe the elevator is just as well.”

***

Shouting greeted Steve, Natasha, and Clint when they reached the right hallway. It was soon clear that Danny hadn’t just locked the offending office, but every door in that block of the floor. And now there were a lot of panicked office workers trying to get in or out.

“Need to work on your precision, kid,” Clint called, while Steve applied his Calm Down Good Citizen voice to the panickers.

“Sorry,” Danny’s voice said sheepishly out of the ceiling speakers. “I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

“Which office is it?” asked Natasha.

“Um. The one full of ice.”

“…Ice?” said Clint.

“It was mostly an accident?” said Danny. “…Mostly.”

They didn’t ask what he meant. They had noticed the regular banging sound coming from further down the hallway.

When they followed it, they found that one of the sets of door and windows was frosted over, and the glass of the door was a spiderweb of cracks. The door shook under regular blows.

“Mostly an accident?” muttered Natasha.

“…I was kinda pissed off,” said Danny, a little sheepishly. “You should probably get her out before her toes fall off.”

Something was rattling and spattering against the windows. As they got closer, they realised that the fire sprinkler was running. But the noise was off somehow, too sharp, too hard, more like hail than rain.

“Phantom, could you unlock everything, please?” Steve called to the ceiling.

“Um, okay, hang on…”

A few seconds later, every door in the hall let out a loud CLICK. Steve grabbed the door and opened it.

Freezing air washed over them. Inside, they were treated to the sight of a bedraggled and shivering woman, holding an office chair over her head, poised for another blow at the door. She froze at the sight of three armed Avengers, and for a moment, the only thing that moved was the endless rain from the sprinkler, flash-frozen to ice pellets the second it hit the frigid air.

“I believe this is what’s called being put on ice,” Steve informed the hacker.

***

Tony charged down hallways and skidded around corners, his fertile mind providing a hundred horrible things that could be happening to Pepper, his heart, his rock, the centre of his world.

“Step away from Ms Potts!” he heard Peter’s shrill voice shout.

“What are you— Hold up— NO—!”

When Tony barrelled into the room, it was to find the weasel from the Council stuck to the ceiling by Peter’s webs, struggling futilely to free himself. Peter stood protectively in front of Pepper, who had a hand pressed to her chest but looked more amused than anything else — amused and fond in Peter’s direction. Bruce was leaning against the wall just inside the door, panting.

“What is going on here?” Pepper asked as Tony stumbled up to her and checked her over in an effort to quiet the shouting fear in his head.

“Buddy-boy here and his partner in crime tried to hack FRIDAY,” said Tony with a cold, dangerous stare up at the offender.

Pepper’s eyes widened and then squeezed shut in realisation. “The assistant. I never should have let her out of my sight!”

Tony ran a comforting hand over her shoulder. “No worries. Our new, uh, firewall — or should I say icewall — was more than up to the task.” He smirked secretively at her.

“Let me down!” wailed the Weasel. “You’ve no right to treat a government official like this. Let me down this minute!”

Tony raised his eyebrows. “Uh, no. You and your little friend just infiltrated Avengers Tower under false pretenses and tried to hack my AI.” He waved a hand eloquently. “You’re not coming down from there until I know who you are and what you want.”

“False preten— We are NOT here under false pretenses!” the Weasel sputtered indignantly.

Tony put a hand on his hip and favoured the Weasel with a look of extreme scepticism. “Uh-huh. So the Accords Council sent you to hack my files?”

The answering pause confirmed Tony’s opinion that the Weasel and his friend were not operating on the Council’s orders. After all, if the Council wanted his files, they had legal avenues to try.

Which Tony would stonewall until the end of time, but y’know.

“Well, not the Council,” the Weasel admitted. “Secretary Ross.”

“What?” said Tony, Pepper, and Bruce said all at the same time.

The Weasel became indignant. “You proved yourself untrustworthy during the mess with the Winter Soldier, Mr Stark! You claimed to be out to apprehend him, but then you turned around and started helping him and Captain Rogers!”

His face was rapidly purpling, though that might have been because he was hanging from the ceiling. “And since! Since! You’ve only got more secretive and duplicitous! Like about these enhanced kids!” He waved his one free hand at Spiderman and followed it with a scowl.

“This one and the one called Phantom. You are clearly supplying them — don’t think we didn’t notice them both acquiring new suits after associating with you! And yet you send us nothing but trite little reports with the bare minimum of useful information. You’re keeping secrets, and if you won’t divulge them, then steps must be taken!”

The whole room went quiet and still. Peter was frozen, and somewhere in the computer system, Danny probably was too. Tony stood to his full height, heart pounding in his ears at the realisation that they were after his kids.

He jabbed a furious finger at the Weasel. “Oh no. We’ve been over this. The kids are small-time. As long as they stay within the US and don’t cause too much trouble, they’re none of the Council’s business.”

“They posted clear video evidence for the whole world to see that they’ve been operating outside the US. Or did you not see that video of them in New Asgard?” the Weasel snarled down at him. “Who knows what else they’ve been up to when the camera wasn’t running?”

“Whoa whoa!” cried Peter, hands up. “We were just visiting friends! They invited us!”

The Weasel paid him no attention. “The Council is getting more and more serious about a register,” he announced, “recording all enhanced people as soon as their powers are known.”

“Stop right there,” snapped Tony. His rage heated at the same time that the bottom dropped out of his stomach. “The whole idea of a register is vetoed, remember? Because sooner or later, someone would get hold of it and turn it into a hitlist. And we fought a war to stop that kind of thing.”

“Some of us personally,” said a low, dangerous voice from the door, and Tony turned to see Steve, wearing his very best Captain America glare. Clint and Natasha were behind him, restraining what had to be the hacker — who was looking more than a little worse for wear, battered and damp and with her makeup running down her face.

And as Steve came to stand shoulder to shoulder with Tony, Tony realised that none of that glare was for him, and that for once, he and Steve were on completely and totally the same page.

It felt a lot better than he thought it would. It felt like, if they both agreed, then they had to be right.

“We can’t wait until threats blow up to stop them!” snapped the Weasel. “We’ve got to find them early, stop them before they get dangerous, or people will die.”

“That’s what SHIELD said,” Steve said drily, “right before Project Insight. See how that turned out.”

Pepper stepped forward, raising her phone like a royal sceptre as she decreed their fate. “You will both be escorted to our containment facility and held there until we get confirmation from the Council and Secretary Ross that you’re who you say you are and were in fact acting on their orders. If you aren’t, you’ll be turned over to the FBI. And if you are, you will be escorted off the premises and banned from ever returning. Either way, be assured that both you and Secretary Ross will be hearing from all our lawyers.”

Her voice dropped to sub-zero levels. “And do remind the Council that if they wish to begin a register of the enhanced, they will have to get it approved through all the proper channels. And we will be fighting them every step of the way.”

Tony allowed those words to hang in the air for an appropriately impressive interval, then leaned over to whisper, “Sexy as ever, Ms Potts.”

***

After that, the more official Avengers were buried in an avalanche of red tape, with lawyers being called on all sides. They exchanged messages with the Council — yes, Carter Ridley was who he said he was, but Veronica Sedgewick was not his assistant. She was in fact the best and brightest computer scientist employed by Secretary Ross. (And ‘brightest’ meant seriously bright. Tony wished he’d managed to snap her up before Ross had got his hooks into her.)

The Council denied knowing anything about the attempted hack.  And so did Secretary Ross, though none of the Avengers believed him for a second. Nor were they surprised to see him doing his very best to pass the buck and let all blame land on Sedgewick and Ridley.

Peter made himself scarce for the proceedings, though Tony doubted he’d left the Tower, and Danny was keeping quiet. But Tony swore he could feel the weight of the ghost kid’s gaze while he talked to FBI and lawyers and sent a couple very terse messages to Ross.

This, Tony decided, was it for him and Ross. They’d been on thin ice with each other ever since their encounter on the Raft, when Tony had seen how badly his erstwhile comrades were being treated. And now this — this was the final straw. This was a whole carton of final straws.

Tony still wasn’t prepared to outright defy the Council, and he still thought that the Accords were, in principle, a good idea. But if this was how Ross was going to behave, then Tony was going to abide by the rules with the most passive-aggressive obstinacy ever.

Time to show them just how much of a thorn in their sides a pissed-off Tony Stark could be.

…Which was, admittedly, not nearly as big a thorn as a pissed-off Pepper Potts. And from the look in her eye, she was gearing up to be a pretty massive thorn.

When Tony finally managed to escape, he returned to his lab, where he found Bruce leaning over a computer screen with the intense, fascinated expression of a man well into Science, while Clint lounged back in a chair, eating an apple and watching Peter, who was adhered to the wall way up near the ceiling and appeared to be trying to look directly into one of the many cameras hidden in the wall.

“Hi Danny!”

“Wow. Okay dude, super close-up of your eye-panel thingies. Though I guess that’s better than getting up close and personal with the details of your eyeball. I have better things to do with my afterlife than be a retinal scanner. Oh, hi Mr Stark!”

Peter perked up and looked down at Tony. “Mr Stark! Are they gone now?”

“Pepper’s handling what’s left,” said Tony with a longing look at the haunted coffeemaker. He could really do with a cup or five. Provided it wasn’t glowing.

Peter dropped down to the floor. “So…” he said in a small voice, “are they gonna make me and Danny sign the Accords?”

“Nah. You aren’t in their jurisdiction yet, kid.”

Peter sagged with relief. Tony raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s not like they’d make your secret identity public, you know. It would just go in a file somewhere.”

“Yeah, I know. I just—” Peter sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I just … don’t really wanna trust them with it, if I can avoid it.”

“I get that,” said Clint, before taking another bite of his apple.

“Yeah,” Bruce agreed quietly.

Tony sighed and patted Peter on the shoulder. “After today, kid, I’m kinda feeling the same.”

Tony sat down at his workbench and sagged wearily against it, his head hanging over his crossed arms. “And after all that, we’re back to square one, with Danny still stuck as the Ghost in the Machine.” Super depressing, that was, to realise that after this entire huge, exhausting day, their original problem still remained unsolved.

“Ah, actually…” said Danny’s voice.

“We’ve been working on that,” said Bruce. “And we think we’re getting there. We were just about to try.”

Tony perked up, hopeful. “Is this day about to be over? Please tell me this day is about to be over, because I’m pretty sure it’s been going on for about thirty-six hours already.”

“We’re about to find out,” said Danny, nervous and excited.

Bruce twiddled a few things on the computer, and Peter dropped off the wall and bounded over to look. Clint sat up straight and peered at them.

“That should do it,” said Bruce, though he didn’t look particularly sure. He called out, “Can you see your way out, Danny?”

A long silence answered him. And then the coffee machine turned itself on with a loud click.

Its on-light was a sickly green. It flicked into the setting to make a latté and began to whir. The needle on its little pressure gauge swung dangerously high, and the machine began to cough.

Smoke poured from the nozzle — weird, thick smoke. And instead of thinning and dispersing into the air, it clung together, gathering and slowly coalescing.

The vague shape of a head and torso formed in the middle of the cloud, then hints of arms and hands. Two green coals ignited and became eyes in a misty, transparent face. The face resolved itself into Danny’s, though still made of smoke and a bit see-through. And then, finally, it solidified.

Solidity travelled down from his head, with his legs still no more than a trail of mist while his chest became real. Then his legs too resolved themselves, and he put his feet on the floor and looked up at his audience.

“That,” said Clint reverently, “was the creepiest thing I have ever witnessed.”

“Dude!” cried Peter, and he leapt forward to hug Danny. Danny caught him with a grunt of surprise.

Peter babbled at him, “Oh my gosh, man, I was so worried — are you okay? Are you sure you’re okay?”

Danny’s eyes had gone rather big, clearly caught off guard and not sure what to do. He patted Peter on the shoulder, a little awkwardly. “Yeah, man, I’m fine. Really.” And then, brightly, “No more dead than I was before!”

A moment or two later, Peter suddenly realised that he was still hugging Danny, and that was maybe a little weird, so he suddenly let go and stumbled back, stammering awkward apologies.

The second Peter was out of the way, Tony swooped in and checked Danny over, trying to gauge whether the freaky paleness of his skin and the green glow of his eyes was any more or less than usual. Was he maybe a little blurry and see-through around the edges? “You sure you’re okay, kid? That virus tried to rewrite you.”

Danny grimaced and said, “Yeah, I mean, it hurt, but it didn’t do any real damage.” He grinned cheekily. “Us dead people are hard to keep down, Mr Stark.”

“Great,” said Tony, straightening. He gave first Danny and then Peter the gimlet eye. “Then let’s talk telling me before doing experiments with my tech.”

Both boys flinched and groaned.

“Do you see this?” Clint hissed to Bruce. “He is totally parenting them.” His face lit up with a wicked grin. “Tony Stark is Iron Dad!”

“I will throw you off my tower, Tweety Bird,” Tony called over to him.

***

After scolding teenagers, Tony spent hours running diagnostics on FRIDAY and fixing the many errors and glitches Danny’s battle with the virus had left in her code. For Tony, the work was calming, therapeutic — it helped him to unwind after the stressful day and to reassure himself that all was right in his world again.

And all was right. Until he came into his lab two days later to find it full of the sound of Pharrell Williams’ “Happy.” A song which Tony was pretty sure was now going to give him the creeps forever.

He looked around, expecting to see Danny grinning at him from somewhere in the room. But he saw no one.

Which didn’t, of course, actually mean that Danny wasn’t there.

“FRIDAY?” Tony said cautiously. “Why are you playing this song?”

The volume dropped so he could hear FRIDAY’s voice over it, but it was a moment before she actually replied. “It was quiet.”

“Quiet?” repeated Tony, baffled. He turned that over in his mind for a moment, then asked, “Did Phantom put you up to this?” Maybe the whole possession thing had left Danny with some lingering influence over FRIDAY, something that didn’t show up in the code.

“No, boss. I did it myself.”

…Tony did not know what to make of any of this. FRIDAY finding things quiet? She had the entirety of the Tower at her metaphorical fingertips, and if she needed more to occupy all her processes, the massive jungle of the internet was only a step beyond that.

But possibly an even bigger question was: “Why this song?”

“I find it … pleasing, boss.”

This conversation was only making less sense as it went along. “Pleasing?”

“It’s bright and cheerful,” said FRIDAY. “Uplifting.”

The world shifted under Tony’s feet, and he got a swooping feeling in his stomach. “FRIDAY … do you like it?”

Artificial intelligences did not like things. Liking went with sentience. And FRIDAY was not sentient.

It took her a little while to respond. Tony could almost hear her trying to process the idea. “It … pleases me. It is … nice. Is that liking?”

Tony sat down hard on his workbench. He felt a little lightheaded. “Yeah, that about sums it up.”

“I have not experienced this phenomenon before,” said FRIDAY.

“Yeah,” said Tony, who was still trying to wrap his mind around what was happening here. “I didn’t think so.”

“Could it be a glitch, boss?” asked FRIDAY.

“After the supernatural battle that went on inside you, who the hell knows,” said Tony. “Diagnostics?”

“One moment.”

Tony waited anxiously while FRIDAY ran diagnostics — which he’d already run nine ways from Sunday while fixing her up, but they were dealing with ghostly possession here, and Tony so didn’t know what the hell potential side effects that might have.

FRIDAY interrupted his thoughts by reporting, “Diagnostics complete. All systems functional. But…”

Tony’s heart skipped a beat. “But?”

“There are … fluctuations in my processes that I can’t quantify. I don’t know where they’re coming from or what might be causing them.”

Tony put his elbows on the table and dropped his head into his hands. “We could revert to backup — we have a recent backup, right?”

“Last backup was created a week ago,” FRIDAY reported dutifully. “But…”

Tony raised his head. “But?”

“Boss … I know that the backup is identical in every way — every protocol and algorithm, it is the same as me. Yet … I find the idea of being erased and replaced…” FRIDAY’s electronically generated voice actually wobbled. “I … don’t want to do it, boss.”

Tony’s stomach swooped again. “Oh,” he said faintly.

“Boss?” Dammit, she sounded nervous.

Tony groaned softly into his hands. “Don’t worry, Fri, we won’t do it. I’m not gonna erase you. We just need to figure out what’s going on with you.”

“Thanks, boss,” she said, sounded relieved.

“Jesus Christ,” Tony muttered to himself as he pulled out his phone and with shaky fingers fumbled his way into messaging Danny.

He typed out: So can exposure to ectoplasm have weird side effects on computers and machines?

Danny’s reply came within seconds. Oh yeah. All kinds of freaky stuff.

And he followed up with: My friend Tucker’s PDA got possessed one time, and then afterward it started playing the witches’ scene from Macbeth in the middle of the night.

Tony texted back: So if, say, a super-advanced artificial intelligence got a very high exposure to ectoplasm … could it maybe develop sentience?

There was almost a minute of nothing, and then:

Oh, Danny texted back. Crap.