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Peter doesn’t know what to do. His head pounds. The smell of dried blood is almost as strong as the nausea pushing at his stomach. His ribs ache, and he can hear his bones grinding together. He retches into the corner of the room, but nothing comes out.
They haven’t fed him much since he got here; they just kept him in that chair, cuffed with a metal stronger than him.
A man, Glas, had told him to be quiet. That is the first rule , he said, never speak without being spoken to. Second rule, don’t look me in the eye. We are your superiors. You will pay attention when I am talking to you, Spider-Man.
“Hello?”
Peter jerks his head up, eyes and ears scanning his small cell. He hears a distant heartbeat and steady breathing to his left.
“Is- is somebody there?” he asks, voice cracking. He hasn’t spoken since… since Glas put a knife through his stomach to test how fast he healed.
The voice speaks again, louder this time, “Hey, Mayday, we got a new one.”
Another voice responds, a soft and gentle voice. “Hey, kid. Looks like you’re our new neighbor. I’m Gwen; that’s Harry. Don’t mind him, he’s an idiot.”
Peter moves toward the first voice, Harry, and only stops when his forehead hits the stone of the wall. “What do you mean, a new one?”
Harry chuckles. He moves toward their shared wall, accompanied by some sort of clicking noise. “You might want to sit down, Spidey.”
“How do you know who I am?”
“We’re all Spiders here. That sounded ominous, didn’t it? Sorry about that. Gwen? Can you explain? I’m not that good at it.”
Peter hears a sigh from Gwen, and he crawls back to her wall.
“What’s your name, kid?”
What does he say? Hydra knows he’s both Spider-Man and Peter Parker, so what more could happen? He’s already been kidnapped and tortured.
“Peter. Call me Peter.”
“Alright, Peter,” she says. Her voice gets closer. He can hear her breathing now. “I assume you know who’s taken you? Yeah. Hydra started taking us a while ago. I’ve been here for a couple years. Harry got here permanently a year ago, but he’d been making visits since he was little.
“His dad is big in Hydra. He’s the one who made us what we are, him and his scientist friends. You might have heard of him; Norman Osborn. I can tell by the way your breathing picked up that you know him. It’s probably through his company that you got bit. Same with me and Harry. You have any questions?”
Peter’s back slides down the wall, and the back of his head hits it.
“Why did they take me?”
“Their spiders got destroyed. We’re the only ones left, and Glas has got this crazy idea that our DNA can help create a new one. Glas took over the project after Norman moved onto lizard DNA.”
Peter clears his throat. He remembers the spider that bit him. It was a field trip to Oscorp, every student’s dream. He had slapped the spider off the back of his neck. It was red and blue and inspired the look of his suit. He didn’t connect the dots until weeks after, but he did get that spider from Oscorp. By then, Norman Osborn had moved to another country, or so the papers said.
“You said there are others?”
“There were. As far as we know, we’re the last of us.”
“They- they stabbed me. What else will they do?”
“Everything,” Harry says.
“Shut up, Cosmic,” Gwen cuts in, a sudden edge to her voice. “As long as you comply, it’s not as bad as it could be. Harry here isn’t great at following orders.”
“Why do you call each other that? Are they nicknames?”
“Something like that. We gave each other a name after they turned ours against us.”
“What?”
“The scientists found a way to make us behave. Do you watch any sci-fi shows? They turn our names into trigger words by using them when they hurt us. For us, it’s our last names. Junior, the boy who was here before you, was controlled by his public name, Arácnido. Glas has a hard time pronouncing it though, so he got one of his colleagues to torture him.
“So, each of us has a name. It reminds us that we’re not what Hydra thinks of us. We’re still human. I’m Mayday. It was the name I wanted to use before they got to me. I was going to save people. Harry, here, is Cosmic. It’s because of his eyes. They look cool.”
Peter lets himself take it all in. He’s stuck here. It hadn’t set in until now, not even when Glas cut him open.
“Where’s Junior?”
Gwen doesn’t answer. Her heart beats faster from the other side of the wall.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Harry says. His voice is empty of the joking tone Peter had heard before. “Yeah, he’s dead.”
The air feels stale around him. It burns his throat. Tears come to his eyes, and he lets them trace paths down his cheeks. He hasn’t cried while he’s been here. He’s stayed strong until now. But this is too much. He’s stuck here, being tortured with his new neighbors and controlled by Hydra scientists.
“What are they looking for in our DNA? If their experiment hasn’t worked, then why try again?”
“They’re scrambling. They have a deadline and no results, so they’re trying every option. Apparently, you’re one of their last options. Junior’s DNA didn’t work with ours, but Harry and I are a perfect match. They want to know if you’re the missing puzzle piece in making more of us.”
“That’s messed up.”
“Yeah.”
They lapse into a comfortable silence, well as comfortable as a cell can be. Peter shifts against the wall. His head hurts. He can hear the thrum of electricity from the lights outside his cell, and it burrs into his skull.
His own blood stains his skin red. He tries to wipe it away with his spit, but it doesn’t leave. His whole world is red. The red got to him after Ben died. He can’t let it get to him again, not after what he went through that time.
“Go to sleep, Peter,” Gwen whispers.
He falls asleep to the sound of her heartbeat and Harry’s steady breathing.
The next day, Glas pulls him out of his cell by his shirt collar. He says it’s time for training. Peter lets himself be led. Glas shoves him into a large room. He stumbles and lands on his hands and knees.
“Fight.”
He feels the door slam behind him.
A soft hand helps him up. Gwen. He recognises her heartbeat. She has long blonde hair that falls in her eyes as she pulls him to his feet. Her eyes shine a muted green, a contrast to the gray that coats the walls of the facility.
“Hey, Peter,” Harry’s voice shouts from across the room. He stands on the ceiling and waves the hand not gripping the wall.
“Hey,” he mutters, knowing they can hear him. His hands hurt from hitting the stone floor, and he wipes them on his bloody jeans. “What did he mean by fight?”
Gwen tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Every other day, Glas throws us all in here and makes us train. Well, that’s what they like to call it. Basically, we fight until one of us goes unconscious or they tell us to stop. Sometimes, if they’re in a particularly bad mood, we don’t stop until one of us is close to death.”
Peter pales. His heart quickens, and he glances nervously around the room. There are bars on the ceiling and obstacles on the floor. He sees red stained into one of the blocks sticking out of the floor.
“Don’t worry, we’ll go easy on you this time,” Harry snickers as he drops down onto his feet.
“Shut up, Harry,” Gwen says in a tone close to a growl. Peter can’t help but smile.
Gwen goes for Harry first, dropping low to sweep his feet out from under him. Peter looks on in awe as they dance around each other, fighting on the walls as if gravity doesn’t affect them. This must be what it’s like to see Spider-Man fight.
His Spidey Sense tingles. He dodges out of the way just in time to catch the fist coming at him. Instinct taking over, he twists his arm and sends Harry to the floor. Gwen laughs, and Peter wonders if maybe this will be enough.
Time passes quickly after that. The days blend together, and Peter falls deeper into Hydra’s hands. He learns not to question his orders. He learns to behave. He learns that he’s nothing without Hydra, nothing without Glas.
Peter spends more time with Glas in that sterile, white room. He sees Gwen and Harry less and less. The only time the see each other is when they’re beating the shit out of each other. He misses them. He misses May. He misses Tony and the other Avengers. He misses his old life.
The first time Peter comes to the realization that he’s not going to get away, Harry slices open his leg. As he bleeds out, he stares into the camera above, waiting for Glas to bust in and rush him to the medbay.
Peter loses his belief in Hydra, not that he ever had any in the beginning. Now he knows that they don’t care about him. He knows nobody’s coming for him.
Then, the brown recluse bites him. His muscles ache as he goes through the steps of mutating for the second time. He grows fangs. He’s stronger. He can spin webs without his tech. Harry gets more eyes, while Gwen grows an exoskeleton. It’s painful, but they survive.
Peter debates on choosing a name for a long time. Harry has Cosmic, and Gwen has Mayday. Peter used to have Spider-Man, but that was ruined the second Glas got ahold of him. If he chooses a name, it’s real. Hydra will have him, and all hope will be lost.
Glas burns him, and he chooses. Silver Spider. Harry says his fangs look silver in the dim light of the facility, but Peter chooses it because of the stars. He hasn’t been outside in so long now. He misses the way the sky pulses silver with the light of the stars. He misses the lights of the city that remind him of his purpose.
Silver Spider, he tells them late one night. That’s who he is now.
The burns continue.
“Silver,” Harry whispers into the air of his empty cell. “Are you alright?”
Peter presses his cheek into the crease between the roof and the wall and sighs. His chest stings. The burns are healing into scars, but he can still feel the heat of flaming metal on his skin.
“Yeah.”
“Mayday?”
Gwen shifts against the pain, turning towards the wall connecting her cell to Peter’s. She pulls the thin sheet up to her shoulders.
“I’m great, Spidey.”
Peter flattens himself on the ceiling, one hand on Harry’s wall as he faces Gwen’s. “Cosmic?” He hears Harry sigh.
“What can I tell you, Petey Boy? At least they’re done now, now that we’re officially branded. I’m right as rain.”
Peter feels a tear fall from his face. It hits the floor with a splash, and he knows that they can hear it. They don’t let themselves cry. It’s weak. They can’t let themselves be weak in front of Glas and his soldiers.
He hears Gwen move, her skin hardening. He hears her exoskeleton brush against the wall, her hand moving to form a fist. He knows what’s about to happen before it does.
“Gwen,” he speaks softly, stopping her with her fist an inch away from the wall, “don’t do it. It’s not worth the punishment you’ll get when Glas sees.” Her breath stutters, and he can almost see her blink away the emotion clouding her eyes.
“Hey, Mayday,” Harry says, “don’t go soft on us. You’re the only one who can get us the good lunch. Your connections with the chef do our healing wonders. WHat would we do without you?”
“Starve, probably,” Peter says with the ghost of a smile.
“Shut up, you two.” Her shell slides back under her skin. “Cosmic, you’re a bad influence on our Spider-Boy. He’s at a young and impressionable age.”
“I’m a year younger than you and a month younger than Harry,” he protests with a huff.
“Whatever, Pipsqueak,” Harry chuckles.
There’s a silence. Peter wipes away the tears that have collected in his eyes. He hears Harry do the same. Harry blinks all six eyes, a familiar sound by now, and Peter relaxes back onto the ceiling.
“Guys?”
“Yeah, Silver?”
“Do you think we’ll ever get out of here?”
“I don’t know,” Gwen whispers. “But whatever happens, we’ve got each other.”
They don’t have each other forever. Peter breaks. He lets Glas know he’s weak, and Glas takes care of his weaknesses.
“Spider-Man,” Glas calls. Peter snaps to attention, but the buzz in the back of his mind isn’t as strong as it always is when he hears that title. It’s fading. That fear of being punished is lessening.
His shoulders straighten, but his face doesn’t go blank like it should. He knows he’s messed up by the rare fury in Glas’ eyes.
“Stallard,” he says to the guard at the door, “I think it’s time to get rid of the other projects.”
Peter steps forward. He can’t let this happen. They’re the only ones he has, the only ones he can count on. He won’t let them kill his friends. He moves to intercept Stallard, but Glas clears his throat, and Peter instinctively freezes.
“Stand down, Spider-Man, unless you want them to die slowly. Or better yet, you could torture them yourself.”
He lets the tears flow freely this time. They’re gone. His only salvation in this hell he’s trapped in is gone. Dead. So, he behaves. He lets Glas control him. He kills, and he tortures, all with Glas smirking behind him. He becomes the perfect weapon. Spider-Man.
Then, the Avengers arrive.