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Spider-Man landed on the street, trying to gauge what was going on in dusky light. The police scanners cited several men gathering with weapons in the street. Citizens nearby had been advised to take cover, and law personnel was ordered to stand back until more backup came or there were shots fired. Spider-Man being Spider-Man though, he completely ignored that advice. The moment he landed, all weapons turned on him, and he put his hands up, looking at the group of assembled men in front of him. They were several cars away from him, so they shouldn’t shoot at him for now.
“Hey guys, no need for hostility..,” Spider-Man said carefully. They didn’t seem to have a goal here- at least not one that Spider-Man could see. “Now you’ve got the right to assemble, but peacefully . What’s with all the weapons?” Please don’t be a gang war… please don’t be a gang war…
“You,” Someone answered. Spider-Man raised his eyebrows under the mask. Was that a growl about him being here? Or was that the answer? They wouldn’t do this just to kill him.
“Look, before this gets all messy, I just want to request that you put the weapons down. We can talk it out with the police if you want to have a gun rally of some sort,” Spider-Man said. Those who had guns lowered them, but not all of them had guns. There were baseball bats and brass knuckles too. It looked like they were prepared for a brawl. Still, they were no longer aiming at him, which was progress. Spider-Man took a step toward them with no reaction.
“Okay, now let’s put them away, can we?” Spider-Man requested. He wasn’t this good with negotiating usually. Captain Watanabe always yelled at him for trying to-
“Come and get ‘em,” Someone challenged. Yup. There it was. Still, no weapons up. Spider-Man walked toward them, closing the distance. About four cars away from them, his spidey sense spiked. He looked, but no one even had weapons up. His AI flashed on a remote in someone’s hand. The car next to him beeped.
“Wait-” The car to his right suddenly exploded in a ball of flames, and the force sent Spider-Man sideways, into the car on his left. He left a sizeable dent in it before hitting the pavement. A high whining noise had filled his ears, making everything else sound distant and muted. Get up...
Spider-Man clutched his left ribs with one hand and stuck to the car with his other, using it pull himself to his feet against the car, ignoring the spinning vision that resulted. Everything was a swirl of colors- so much so that Spider-Man didn’t notice the bat until it was hitting him in the face. The blow knocked his head back into the car, leaving another dent. Spider-Man fell back to his hands and knees, head radiating pain. It’s okay, Spider-Man. You can do this.
Spider-Man stayed on the ground while the man reset, waiting until the last moment to shift out of the way of an incoming blow. He scrambled to his feet, albeit dizzily. He could make out the men assembling in front of him. They were behind him now too. Spider-Man shook his head, trying to clear it. Someone came for him with a knife, and Spider-Man parried him, flipping him to the ground and webbing his hand against the street. The edges of the knife blurred in and out of his vision.
The men came at him from all sides, and Spider-Man swore that there were more now than there had been before. He trusted in his Spider-sense to fight them off. Granted, his spider-sense was mixing in with the whine of a probable concussion, but they were only getting occasional blows in. However, as the fight went on, the men seemed to just keep coming, and the landed hits to Spider-Man’s body began to grow in frequency.
One man hit his side with brass knuckles, right where Spider-Man suspected his ribs broke with the explosion. Spider-Man cried out in pain, clutching his side. He raised a hand to block the man, but he only slowed the punch to his face from landing. Spider-Man kicked the man in the side, knocking him into the car and webbing him there. Spider-Man turned to face his next enemy. Strangely, none of them had actually fired shots at him- probably because their friends were too close with the hand to hand.
This next thug had noticed the teenager’s weakness before, and he aimed his fist for Spider-Man’s left side. Spider-Man thought his spider-sense was with him, but he was apparently just a little too slow, taking the hit with another burst of pain. Spider-Man grunted and caught the man’s wrists. The man kneed him in the gut, earning an ‘oof’. Spider-Man twisted the man’s arm and flipped over to the man’s other side. However, someone grabbed his arm, yanking him out of the air and causing him to slam into the ground shoulder-first.
Spider-Man was about to get up when a foot kicked him in the ribs, followed by another on the other side. Spider-Man’s body curled in instinctively but his head whipped back when someone kicked him right in the face. He groaned, feeling another hit land on him. Then another. And another.
“Sir, Peter’s vitals indicate unconsciousness within the suit. You asked me to alert you when he falls into this state,” Friday chimed. Tony immediately straightened up from his newest invention.
“Baby monitor. Now,” Tony ordered. The image that came up seemed to just be pavement and some moving feet. There were shuffling noises and the sound of thuds. It shook every so often. A hand reached into the vision of the camera, and the world tilted a little. A cloth was tied over Spider-Man’s head, covering the camera too. The slightly lit black of the camera switched to a connection lost screen.
“Shit. Friday, bring up his location,” Tony said. He clapped his hands together twice, and his nanobot compartment flew toward his hands. He attached it to his chest.
“Live location is now offline, as is the suit,” Friday answered. ”But his last location is noted as 69th street and 44th Avenue. Your ETA is 23 minutes.”
“Let’s make that shorter,” Tony said, walking to the edge of the lab. He opened the door and shot out, letting autopilot steer him into the fastest route to Peter’s location.
When Iron Man landed with a crack in the street, all he found were police and a few downed bad guys. There was debris from an exploded car, and near it, another car with dents and broken windows. Iron Man marched over to it. He’d watched the rest of the footage on the way here. Those were Peter’s dents. He lightly touched the metal, grateful for his protege’s enhanced bones. He hoped nothing was broken.
“Scan for Pete’s biometrics,” Iron Man said. A blue filter ran across his vision but came up with nothing. A detective started to move toward Iron Man, and the nanobots peeled back, revealing his face. His mouth was set in a hard, grim line. “Where’s Spider-Man?”
“Spider-Man?” The detective asked. She looked at where a beat cop was trying to cut a thug free. “We’re assuming he was here, but when we converged on the scene, no one conscious was here. We don’t have any ideas on suspects. I was actually going to ask if you had anything.”
“Not yet,” Iron Man muttered, looking around. There had to be something— anything that could help him track down Peter. He ran a search for nearby camera’s and found one that had been shifted to point directly at the street where Iron Man now stood.
He watched the footage from that vantage point. He watched Spider-Man land. He winced as the car exploded, sending Spider-Man into the other car. He watched as his boy took multiple hits, fighting much sloppier than usual. It ended with Spider-Man on the ground, and Iron Man watched them tie the thick blindfold around his head. That was where Spider-Man’s footage had stopped, but the surveillance camera kept going.
The thugs continued to beat Spider-Man up, kicking and punching him long after he’d seemed to pass out— after Friday had reported his unconsciousness. He felt his stomach churn when they finally moved back from the limp body. They had only moved back because a van had arrived. It was driving the wrong direction for Iron Man to see the plate. Someone picked Spider-Man up, and they disappeared behind the truck. They must’ve gotten in. The rest of the men hopped into the back of the van, and it drove off. The footage showed another 78 seconds before the first police cars arrived.
“They took him,” Iron Man whispered. “Why?” He replayed the footage, and he thought he saw a weird pixel. He played it back. One of the thugs had found the pocket where Peter hid his phone, and the phone was carried into the van. Iron Man scanned for Peter’s phone. Nothing came back. Except, however, he noticed he had a text from Peter. It was a long link. Iron Man pulled it up.
A bland website came up, a media player sitting in the middle. A number on the bottom of the screen. Where the media player showed an error, a message read: “Spider-footage coming soon.”
“Trace this website.”
“It goes to an underground hub in Berlin, sir— a hub known for its privacy and VPNs,” Friday explained. Iron Man swore. No. No, no, no! He was not losing his kid again.
“Let me know if the website changes,” Stark ordered. He headed for the detective, hoping she had some ideas as to who these people were.
“Sir, a video is being uploaded to the site you asked me to watch.”
“Full screen,” Iron Man said immediately. He had put a hand up to stop the neighbor he’d been questioning. A man with a bow tie filled the right half of a split screen, his face lit deviously in the light.
“Hello, Stark,” He sneered. “We assumed you’d have found the site by now. I know your secret. Your dirty little secret.”
“It only takes a few conversations at Stark Industries to find that you love this ‘Peter Parker’. Of course, the world already knows who he is, but they don’t know that you’d do anything for him. That’s the secret,” the man continued. On the left side, a red light began to illuminate a room, showing Peter tied to a chair, maskless. A man in sunglasses gripped the teen’s head by his hair, and once the light was up, the man moved his head.
“We have your boy, Stark. If you want him to live, I’d suggest paying the 50 million dollar ransom to the number below,” The man on the right side said. Tony could see injuries on either side of Peter’s face as he was turned, and Peter seemed slow to react. It was only on the second turn that Peter sensed something going on. He lurched against the binds, but they held fast, keeping him in place. Peter’s face turned to an expression of pain.
“You can take as long as you’d like within the next 24 hours to pay it, but until then, we’ll just continue to have our way with your precious son-figure. Like I said, I know your dirty little secret,” The man smirked. On the left, someone punched Peter in the stomach. He let out a whimper of pain right as the screen cut out. Tony’s heart dropped.
They had his boy. They had Peter. They took him for ransom. They took him because of Tony. Tony felt sick. He rested his left hand against the wall, trying to steady it.
He’d find Peter. No matter what it took.
“Friday, pull up security camera footage. See if we can track the car,” Iron Man asked his AI. Almost two dozen screens obscured his vision, and they kept shrinking as Friday pulled up more footage. “Whoa, pause. Why are there so many?”
“They appear to be taking a route nearly devoid of cameras- my system sensors aren’t advanced enough to detect the car from glimpses of nearby intersections. You’re going to need a more manual analysis,” Friday explained. Tony’s chest tightened. These people knew what they were doing.
“We’ll go to the penthouse and I can sort it out there.”
Tony stood among a dozen blue screens projected around him, searching for any streak of white as they played their security footage on loop. Friday was creating loops that contained only the estimated time stamps where the van might’ve driven by, but the process was still painstakingly slow. Their route passed a minimal number of cameras, and most of his indicators of the van were just blurry guesses. Sometimes he had to skip an intersection on the map and pick the van up somewhere else. He could only hope he hadn’t accidentally switched vehicles at some point.
Tony ran a stressed hand through his messed up hair as he marked another point on his city map. It had already been two hours. They might have killed Peter already. Pepper was making the money arrangements, just in case, but Tony intended to find Peter long before the 24 hours were up. He pulled up the next set of cameras, and he hoped that they were getting close to stopping. The van, assuming it was still the right one, had approached the warehouse docks, so Tony was hoping there wasn’t much futher to go. The van seemed to be maintaining a relatively straight trajectory toward the area. The next time he marked a point, a more regulated set of security feeds popped up. They were all from a van rental company. Finally .
A few vans pulled in during the projected time, but one of them had a covered license plate. Tony was already on his way. Peter had to be there. He shot toward the docks, constantly scanning for Peter’s suit or biometrics. Nothing came up.
Iron Man crashed through the roof of the warehouse, landing with a crater. Peter would’ve heard that. He had Friday already scanning for the boy’s voice. Employees jumped in surprise, swearing and staring at the billionaire superhero. Iron Man scanned the warehouse. He saw a burst of motion in the corner of his eye. Someone was running.
The man ran into the upstairs office, heading down the hallway towards the exit. Iron Man burst through the thin wall, grabbing the man’s neck and pinning him to the wall. The man immediately reached for a gun, shooting at Iron Man’s chest, but the bullet just bounced off. Iron Man grabbed his hand and twisted it, forcing the gun to fall to the ground.
An old woman in the hall screamed in another language about him breaking the wall. Iron Man didn’t even look at her. “Bill me.”
“Where’s Spider-Man?” Iron Man demanded of the trapped employee. He wasn’t gripping tightly enough to choke the man- just enough that he couldn’t escape.
“What?”
“Where is he?!” Iron Man yelled, charging up his chest repulsor. The man squirmed like a cockroach.
“What are you talking about?!” He shouted. Iron Man grit his teeth.
“I saw the van come in here! Where are they?”
“I saw the van, but they didn’t have Spider-Man” The man said. Iron Man tossed him toward the desk in the office, letting his body hit the floor in front of it.
“Who rented the van?” Iron Man questioned. The man stumbled to his feet, grabbing for some papers.
“They gave no name. Just a lot of cash for an unidentified van with no record. They returned and took another van.”
“Where did they go?”
“Left a long time ago,” The employee said, a non-answer.
“Where?! What’s the plate number?!” Iron Man held up his repulsor, watching as the man frantically flipped through the messy pile of papers.
“Here,” The man pointed at a license plate number and van number on a list of entries.
“Friday?”
“On it boss. It looks to be Coney Island. Some sort of construction site there,” Friday responded after a long moment of processing. Iron Man pushed the man against the wall and trapped him there with a giant version of a staple.
“On my way.”
Peter sat in his chair, head buzzing. He felt someone pinching his arm, but he didn’t really react to it. He couldn’t see what they were doing anyway. His body hurt. His chest hurt. His head hurt. His side hurt. Everything throbbed with a steady ache, and his weak attempts at breaking the metal chains had done nothing but make his wrists hurt too.
He felt a wave of nausea as the blurry body moved away, and the body became two people. Peter blinked slowly. His heart beat against his chest, a slow and steady thump that was almost soothing. One of the bodies came back to Peter, grabbing his chin and turning his head rather quickly. Peter’s face snapped to the side as he took a punch, and the room spun again. He coughed, feeling something wet in his mouth despite some thirst, and he let it fall out.
There was a white noise rising, and Peter closed his eyes, imagining that he was on a jet. He heard the clinking of something, like fingertips against a glass and later like someone closing their seat tables aggressively. That was rude. The person in front would be uncomfortable. Peter opened his eyes to tell them off and saw red and yellow in front of him. Where did the plane people go?
“Peter! You okay?” Iron Man knelt down in front of Peter, catching his gaze- or at least… trying to. Peter’s eyes took a moment to land on him, and he smiled a bloody grin.
“M’st Stark,” Peter mumbled happily. “Whuh oo do’un?” Tony blinked and demasked so Peter could better see his face. He set a careful hand on Peter’s face. He didn’t look in good shape at all. Friday was showing multiple injuries on his display- and a dangerously low heart rate for Peter’s normal fast beat.
“Let’s get you to Strange,” Tony said, worry covering his features. They must’ve given him a really bad concussion. His armor formed a blade sharp enough to simply slice through the iron chains, freeing Peter. “Come on,”
Tony hooked an arm under Peter’s, helping the boy to his feet, as Friday wasn’t showing any broken bones below the waist. Peter tipped forward, and Tony ended up having to catch him rather quickly. He expected Peter to cry out from the impact on his broken ribs, but he didn’t. He just made a small ‘oop’ sound. Tony’s frown deepened. What if they had really, really hurt him? What if they caused some sort of brain damage from all the hits? He knew Peter was hardy, but enough hits could theoretically- no. Tony needed to focus. Peter was leaning almost all of his weight on Iron Man’s arm.
Tony kept his arm as still as possible while he rotated around Peter, trying to pick him up on the side that would protect his left side better. He settled Peter into his arms, letting the nanobots cover him loosely to make sure Peter wouldn’t slip. Peter smiled and snuggled against the armor. Normally Tony would love to have Peter curled against him, but in this case, it just worried him. The superhero would’ve had to have taken several dozen hits by now.
Friday prompted Tony with a notification to send Doctor Strange, which Tony approved. Strange responded that Iron Man could bring him to the sanctum and to try and keep him awake. Iron Man looked down at Peter as they flew. His mask was missing, but it was dark and they were much too high for anyone but Tony to see his face. Peter had his eyes closed, enjoying the feeling of the wind, but he opened them when Mr.Stark called for him.
“What hurts?” Tony asked, flying as smoothly as he could.
“Me,” Peter mumbled, and Tony wasn’t sure that Peter quite understood the question.
“Does your head hurt?” Tony asked. Peter was staring at the city below them. “Pete? Look at me.”
“Pretty,” Peter responded, and Tony tried to clarify.
“It hurts pretty bad?”
“Wha’?” Peter asked. Tony concluded that he wasn’t going to get any straight answers at the moment. He landed at Strange’s sanctum, nanobots extending to push the door open as he carried Peter inside. Strange was waiting, and he motioned to an open portal leading into a hospital room.
“This way,” Strange said, walking through the portal. Tony’s grip on Peter tightened slightly. He knew Peter hated hospitals, even if the kid wasn’t giving off indications of protest at the moment. Still, he didn’t know what, if anything was wrong with Peter.
“Stephen, we talked about-,” A doctor started.
“He’s a kid, Christine,” Strange interrupted. The redhead stopped talking when she realized it wasn’t Strange that was hurt.
“On the bed,” Christine said quietly. Tony quickly but carefully set Peter down on the white sheets. Peter whined at the loss of his mentor, but he didn’t reach for Tony like he normally would’ve.
“What happened?” Dr. Palmer asked, setting her fingers against Peter’s neck to feel his pulse.
“A group nabbed him. I found him like this,” Tony explained. “He got smashed into a car on his left side. I don’t know what else. I’m worried he has brain damage.” Christine grabbed a flashlight and shined it into each of Peter’s eyes.
“His pupils are equally dilated,” She told Strange.
“That would make sense,” Strange agreed.
“What does that mean? Is it-”
“Quiet,” Strange cut Tony off. Tony felt a flare of anger shoot through him, but he pushed it down. Peter was the priority right now. That was what mattered.
“Can we get the suit off?” Christine asked. She opened a drawer and grabbed a pair of scissors.
“It’ll slide off,” Tony interjected, putting his hand on Peter’s chest to loosen the suit. Christine helped slide the suit off, leaving Peter in his boxers. It revealed an array of bruises covering the superhero from the neck all the way down to his toes. Tony felt sick looking at it. He turned to Peter’s face, touching his hair gently. Christine pushed his hand away. She connected the pulse monitor to Peter’s finger before returning to his head.
She felt around and behind his head, returning to a spot on the left of his scalp. “Minor hematoma here,” Christine explained, pulling Strange’s hand to feel it.
“What does that mean? Does he need surgery?” Tony asked, wanting to grab onto Peter’s hand but also being afraid to hurt him.
“With his heart rate and the way his eyes are blown out, he might just be drugged to the nines,” Christine responded. She pressed gently on Peter’s head.
“Spider-Man, can you feel that?” She asked. Peter’s eyes glanced upward after a few beats.
“Hmm?” He hummed in confusion.
“That would be my guess too,” Strange conceded. He grabbed a bag of fluids and handed it to Christine so she could set it up. Christine grabbed his elbow, but she stopped, frowning.
“It looks like there’s puncture here,” Christine pointed to a small, red dot on Peter’s tricep. Tony stretched to look at it and felt his anger sink a little deeper. Not toward Strange, but toward the kidnappers. They’d drugged his kid. How dare they?!
“He’s enhanced, so we’re gonna need a lot of these to sober him up, Christine.”
“I’ll grab some more. Watch him,” Christine ordered. She left the room to grab more supplies. Tony looked between Strange and Peter, shifting his weight between his feet. It didn’t go unnoticed.
“Assuming it’s just a drug, he should be alright. We won’t know until it’s out of his system though,” Strange explained. Tony frowned.
“What about the broken bones. Friday said he had at least a couple fractures. Could there be internal bleeding?” Tony demanded. Strange crossed his arms.
“We can’t do many kinds of scans until he’s either more coherent or his bloodstream is clear enough to give him anesthesia- and we would need Banner to let us know the proper amount to give him.”
“Peter. You hear me?” Tony asked.
“Mih Stark?” Peter slurred. Tony frowned. Christine bustled back in at that time with a crate of IV packets and some other supplies.
“He talking?” Christine asked.
“A bit,” Strange answered for them. Christine grabbed some gauze and disinfectant from the crate, setting it on the side-table and pulling on gloves.
“Mr.Stark, could you hold his head still please? I want to clean these cuts, but I don’t know if he’s going to try to move,” Christine requested. Tony nodded, cupping Peter’s right cheek with his left hand. As expected, the teenager turned into it, giving a small smile. Tony forced a smile back and lightly rested his other hand on Peter’s forehead to keep him still.
Christine took the gauze and gently wiped the blood away from the cut on Peter’s cheekbone. She dabbed at the cut itself, and Peter frowned a little. He started to turn his head to look, but Tony stopped him. “Nuh uh. Look at me, kid.”
“Wha’” Peter’s face switched to one of confusion.
“Dr.Christine is just cleaning a cut, Peter,” Tony explained, rubbing a thumb against Peter’s slightly-too-warm forehead.
“Palmer,” Christine corrected quietly.
“Oh,” Peter mumbled. He let the weight of his head fall back into Mr.Stark’s hand, and to his credit, Peter did stay relatively still for them. As Chrstine pulled away from Peter, she noticed Strange struggling to change out the IV bag. His hands were shaking with the effort.
“Stephen,” Christine said quietly, taking it from him. Strange didn’t respond, looking across the room into space instead of facing either of his companions.
“Let’s switch sides,” Christine told Tony, and they swapped places. Tony frowned at the bit of blood on his hand from the cuts, and he wiped it off on his pants before helping to turn Peter’s head the other direction. Peter was even more compliant this time, and his eyes even focused on Mr.Stark’s face briefly.
“The IV seems to be helping with the drugs, if that’s what it is,” Christine commented, and Tony nodded.
“Dugs?” Peter asked, leaving the ‘r’ out of it. Tony wasn’t sure if Peter had misheard or misspoken.
“It’s okay, kid. I’m right here,” Tony assured, wishing more than anything that he could be more helpful. Christine finished cleaning up the cuts that the kidnappers had left on his face, and she threw the gloves away in the trash bin under the table.
“Do you remember what happened, Peter?” Christine asked.
“What happened?” Peter repeated, asking her as much as himself.
“He might remember more as he clears up,” Strange commented. “Stark, you mentioned some fractures?”
“Friday said that Peter’s AI indicated a few possibilities. Likely his left ribs and right shoulder blade. He does heal at a superhuman speed though. It’s probably why he’s sobering so quickly,” Tony reported, glancing at the second IV that was nearly empty. Christine nodded and set a very careful hand on Peter’s shoulder.
“Can you sit up?” Christine asked. Peter shrugged.
“Think so,” He mumbled. Christine and Tony helped push him upright in the bed. Peter swayed slightly, but he didn’t try to lay back down on them. Christine reached around, hovering her hand near Peter’s torso.
“I’m going to just press gently on your ribs, okay?” She said. Peter nodded in consent. She rested her hand on his side, and Peter hissed, gritting his teeth together. Tony looked up at the noise, trying to think of how to make Peter be in less pain. He noticed how pale Peter seemed to be.
“I- Can I-,” Peter shut his mouth, and then he was vomiting into the trash can that Dr. Palmer was holding how. How she’d gotten it there so quickly and how she’d known he was going to throw up was beyond him, but Tony supposed that was why doctors were paid the big bucks. He laid a gentle hand on Peter’s back, comforting him as he heaved up whatever his body wanted out of him. When he was done, Peter wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, frowning when he found the IV on it. Tony could tell just how sick he was feeling by the fact that Peter didn’t even mention it.
“Better?” Christine asked, and Peter nodded. “Okay, good. I’m going to have you lean back down, and we’ll worry about x-rays when you feel up to it, alright?”
Peter nodded again, and the two adults helped him lean back against the bed that Christine had tilted upward. Peter turned his head to look at Mr.Stark. “Are you going to stay?”
“Of course, Pete,” Tony laid a hand on his shoulder. “Anything for you, kid.”