Chapter Text
Peter's been maintaining the same routine for about a hundred and sixty years now, which is why it takes him less than a second after being jolted awake by the tinny blare of his communicator to realize that something must have gone seriously wrong.
He stumbles towards the communication unit on the wall, his mind circling through every awful possibility - the Brotherhood of Iron attacking, an issue with one of the arc reactors, a malfunction of the molerat repellers leading to the little bastards chewing their way through the walls.
And above all, irrationally, Tony. Peter can't imagine anything happening to Tony, safely ensconced as he is in the Pen (or anything happening because of Tony, come to think of it) but his heart still jumps. Tony is safe, he tells himself as he pushes the talk button on, and with no computer access, no security privileges and no ability to go against Peter thanks to Doctor Calvert's little tweaks, odious as Peter finds them, Tony's safe in every sense of the word.
"Parker," He announces, and Kellogg's voice immediately blares from the little speaker.
"We're in deep shit here, Boss."
"Report."
"Calvert's dead. Permanently. The cleaning robot went at him while he was asleep. His brain is mush, and the Jarvis torched his augmenter to a nice crispy brown. Then the thing just connected to the mainframe, called security on itself, and switched off."
Peter suppresses the urge to curse, wishing harder than ever that raw material shortages hadn't caused them to forego mobile communicators. He could be listening to Kellogg and moving at the same time. What to do first?
"Who else knows?" he asks.
"You, me, the night shift security boys. I've had them switching through the cameras trying to find anything out of the ordinary. No other bodies turned up on the footage so far," answers Kellogg and Peter doesn't miss the implication.
Nothing on the footage. Except if this isn't just a Jarvis malfunctioning, which seems unlikely with how meticulously Doctor Calvert's been destroyed, someone managed to reprogram an Institute robot. The encryption on them is different, but nearly on the same level as that of the mainframe. If that has been compromised, security footage isn't reliable. Communications aren't reliable, even, and Peter's sure that if Kellogg could, he'd have come up personally to bang on Peter's door. The fact that nobody's allowed near Peter's quarters while he's sleeping has saved his life more than once - now for the first time it might have bitten him in the ass.
"No need to keep this under wraps," he tells Kellogg. "Call in all available security. Have them start door to door sweeps. Begin with Filmore and whoever else she says she needs to comb through life support systems. See if anything there's been tampered," Peter orders. No matter how unlikely it is that someone who wanted to exterminate the whole Institute would first attract attention with a single murder, Peter can't take the chance. "I also want Brezinski and half a dozen of your guys to retrieve the Jarvis’s processing module. Then have her examine it. I'll instruct EDITH to assist her. I'm on my way."
He ends the call to Kellogg's affirmative grunt. He'd have liked to be there while the Jarvis gets dissected, but he has so much else to do. Several people have seniority on Brezinski in robotics, but any of them might have had ambitions to remove Calvert as head of the division, and Brezinski, while an excellent engineer, isn't what you'd call a keen political player and couldn't have hoped to win anything from Calvert's death. Unfortunately, Peter isn't a good enough coder to do the job himself, chemistry and biology being his real forte, so he'll have to rely on her and hope EDITH will make up the difference.
That out of the way, he can't help but waste precious moments in order to sit at his computer and access the security feed to the Pen. His fingers don't shake on the keyboard, but that's only because of decades of experience in denying and controlling his emotions. It would not have been a good idea to single out Tony in front of Kellogg, to imply Peter was worried about him as more than an experiment.
It takes a moment to connect, a moment during which Peter isn't breathing, and then he can see Tony in the Pen, sleeping peacefully in that way he has, half on his back and half on his side. Peter never had the opportunity to observe the real Mr. Stark sleeping, but he likes to think this is one quirk that came through from the original.
Still not completely soothed, since the cameras aren't above suspicion yet, Peter nevertheless zooms in to see Tony better. In the clinical confines of the Pen - glass walls, white floor, white bed with white sheets, white toilet bowl, white clothes - Tony pops as the only spot of color. He's healthfully tanned in this place where everyone, even Peter, is sickly washed out, and he has a full beard and hair longer than Peter's even seen on Mr. Stark, but that's how Mr. Stark actually kept it when he was younger. Since Tony's body is a copy of Mr. Stark when he was about 38, it fits.
Peter allows himself to look for a few moments more, unblinking, before abruptly closing the feed. He'll check on Tony in person later, but for now he has other responsibilities to attend to. Still, it won't hurt to make double sure. Peter hesitates, but then he also confirms Tony's location through his subcutaneous transmitter. The little blinking dot is still in the lowest point of the Institute, where the Pen is, just as it should be.
That done, Peter pulls on a standard pair of overalls, if you don't count the unique blue markings reserved for the Director. Symbols are important, which is one of the countless things Peter learned from Mr. Stark. He fastens his web shooters to his wrists next, double checking the cartridges are full. He almost skips combing his hair, but he's all too aware he can't appear sloppy right now.
In the small bathroom mirror, his own large and deceptively innocent eyes look back at him as he hastily smooths back his bangs. His face gives him a small surprise these days - perfectly unchanged since the first time he looked at himself after the spider-driven transformation, when he noticed he looked older, leaner, with more settled features. Now it's the opposite, he is old and much changed on the inside, but his face doesn't reflect it.
He hopes his people have learned to look past it though, as he makes his rounds through Security, Advanced Systems and, finally, Robotics. The news is no news -there aren't any substantial developments. Security hasn't stumbled into any other bodies, Filmore's crew hasn’t discovered any evidence of sabotage. Brezinski's the only one who actually has anything to report.
"The murder order was simply inserted into the Jarvis’s daily tasks!" she tells Peter, a little indecently excited. She clearly isn't lamenting the late Doctor Calvert anymore than Peter is, which isn't particularly suspicious. Calvert was the kind of asshole who couldn't stop acting like one even if it went against his self-interest. "It combines an elegant bit of coding with an ingenious circumlocution of the Asimov paradox failsafe, it's really quite... Anyway, the matter was accomplished by designating Doctor Calvert as vermin to the Jarvis, which was then obliged to dispose of him in a thorough manner."
"And that's all the Jarvis was instructed to do?"
"No," Brezinski pauses, for the first time looking like someone just kicked out of bed to investigate a murder and functioning mostly because of large amounts of caffeinated water. "No, before it contacted security and turned off, it used Doctor Calvert's terminal. The last log-in record was after his death, and the Jarvis shouldn't have been able to log in or needed to in order to call security. But I'm still working on finding out exactly what it did."
"Hasn't EDITH been any help?" asks Peter.
Brezinski gets fidgety, like nearly everyone in the Institute when EDITH is mentioned. EDITH answers only to Peter and can take over Institute systems, which are a paler copy of her anyway, at any moment. Plus, as arguably the most advanced piece of technology to survive the Great War and the only unique one, she inspires almost superstitious awe even among scientists who should be beyond that. There's even talk that Tony Stark somehow gave her the ability to predict the future.
Peter supposes it stemmed from his own miraculous escape from the war. When the bombs fell, he was just a nobody 19-year-old, showing his aunt around the more accessible parts of the subterranean lab complex in which he'd been allowed to work because the Stark foundation, which funded the whole lab, had insisted on it.
Except somewhere between May raiding the complimentary snack bar and lunch break, all hell broke loose. The lifts to the surface collapsed, cutting the concourse and its 200 inhabitants from the scorched surface. Peter was at the perfect place at the perfect time to survive, and so was the only family he had left. People always wondered if EDITH hadn't expected something.
"No, sir. Um, it doesn't seem to get I'm allowed to ask it to do things."
Good old EDITH. Mr. Stark liked to plant the seeds of different personalities into each of his AIs. EDITH turned out to be fiercely loyal and protective, resentful of taking orders from anyone but Peter, and suspicious bordering on paranoid.
"She does that sometimes. I'll set her on the task personally."
Peter leaves Brezinski to it, ordering the security detail at the door not to let anyone else in, no matter how high-ranked. It looks more and more like an inside job. Someone looking for a quick promotion or settling a score with Calvert, maybe. Only about a quarter of the personnel of Robotics and Advanced Systems are permitted to reprogram Jarvises, which considerably lowers the count of suspects. It's actually the better option than an attack from the outside. If his suspicious pan out, Peter will come down on the offender like a ton of bricks, but the Institute as a whole won't be jeopardized.
By then it's officially morning, and since it doesn't seem like the roof is falling over, the people who aren't assigned a special task are going about their day. Peter passes staff, files of Jarvises carrying crates of seedlings or samples, cleaning, all the usual.
Peter could order one of them to bring him up caf water to his office, but right now he's happy to have something to do, so he heads into the mess on his own. Inside, first shift for breakfast is well underway, people frowning at their trays of spinach, mushrooms and the perennial algae sludge.
A couple nod to him, and Mary Kellogg, at a corner table with her mother, even waves at him. Peter remembers baby-sitting her a couple of times, telling her stories of the great Tony Stark and his clumsy robot friends in his own lab, with Jarvises hovering over microscopes and rattling pipettes. Now Mary's a woman of 60 who looks 30, and who's one of the few people here who don't fear Peter.
Peter picks up his caf water, an extra, and a few lichen rolls. Almost without thought, he bypasses all the empty tables for the elevator. And of course, he takes it down to the Pen.
The lowermost level of the institute is the narrowest. Throughout the years, they'd dug down as well as sideways, adding several new levels to the concourse, but it's been some time since the last expansion, so the basement has been just that for a long time. It was repurposed several times for sensitive experiments over the years, housed gorillas among other things, which is how the name stuck. It was eventually abandoned since it was only reachable through the elevator and energy conservation became an issue, until finally Peter took it over for the Infinity project.
Calvert wanted to call it project Frankenstein, and for all Peter was sure Mr. Stark would have loved the cheesiness of it, he himself found it in bad taste and... unlucky, almost. Frankenstein's experiment was ultimately unsuccessful. Now, as the elevator doors glided open, it occurs to him that Frankenstein's creation turned against him.
The lights start turning on as Peter walks down the hall. The system is designed to shut down the lights in any unoccupied space, and it only considers Tony's immediate glass cell occupied, so whenever Tony is alone it becomes an island of light in the empty lab. Peter's step picks up a little, just so he can outpace the reaction of the lights and catch Tony in this state of darkness, like an artwork being framed for the adoring public.
It's hopelessly self-indulgent, but then Tony's been conscious for only a week, so Peter tells himself it's just that the novelty hasn't worn off yet.
Tony must have been reading on his bed, but when Peter catches sight of him he's already on his feet. The blanket is strewn with magazines, two hundred year old Teslas and Hot Rodders, some of them come out after Mr. Stark died, scavenged from locker rooms and abandoned libraries.
"Hey, kid. I was beginning to think you forgot about me," Tony grins at him through the glass, leaning on it on one elbow. His smile is a little strained, but then all of Tony's smiles have been this way. Peter supposes that no matter how convinced he is that he isn't a prisoner - and Peter went to some effort to convince him - some wariness is bound to persist. He does plan to let Tony out soon. This stage of the experiment seems like a resounding success, and he'd like to see Tony interact freely with his environment and other people. Just not yet. Just for a little while longer he will be Peter's only.
Especially now Calvert is out of the picture.
"I could never," says Peter honestly. He approaches the Pen slowly, lifting the tray to show Tony the contents. "I'm actually about to treat you to breakfast."
"I'm touched."
"Fair's fair. You treated me a lot back in the day."
Tony smiles again, thinly. "How things have changed, huh?"
Peter doesn't answer. He finds it easier to converse with Tony when he answers like he would if it was really Mr. Stark before him, back from the dead. Tony certainly sees himself that way. From his point of view he came in for a tour of this lab at the invitation of the MIT, only a couple of months before two aliens landed on Earth to steal a necklace from a wizard. There, he had his brain scanned by an experimental device as a publicity stunt, and then woke up on a slab in the same lab hundreds of years later with his protégé leaning over him.
Of course, Peter knows better. There's no cheating death, and this is not really Peter's old... mentor? Friend? Hero? Predecessor? Doomed first love? Whatever you call it, Tony isn't it.
Peter picks up one of the caf waters and a roll, and slides the rest through the Pen's feeding slot. Predictably, Tony goes for the water like a man dying of thirst.
"Oh, sweet elixir," he says after he gulps down half of it in one go. "I do miss the taste of coffee, but I think I'm getting used to this too. As long as it does the job."
Peter had run every possible test on Tony through EDITH. There's no way he's physically craving coffee. His body isn't accustomed to functioning on stimulants, and his schedule is far different from Mr. Stark's, and yet he's still acting like he needs it. Peter really should have someone from Medical who specializes in psychology check Tony out, but he can't imagine Mr. Stark reacting favorably to a shrink, so he doubts Tony will either.
While Peter's staring and thinking, and taking in Tony's sheer Mr. Starkness, Tony munches on a lichen roll completely unselfconsciously.
"So, while Doctor Zhivago is catching up on his beauty sleep and we're alone," he says, because of course there's no one who could have told him Calvert's dead, "we could have another heart to heart."
"I don't have much time," Peter says. Tony shrugs.
Eventually, Peter drags in a chair and sits down in front of the glass screen, and Tony follows suit on the floor on the other side, his legs folded and the tray balanced on top like Peter's a favorite TV show, or a fascinating experiment worth observing for hours.
The silence is uncomfortable, or so it seems to Peter. They haven't had much time alone, and Peter has to contend with a whole minefield of topics to avoid. So far they've kept it to the war, the extend of the damage to the surface, how Peter and the Institute managed to survive the first few years. Tony never asked about Ms Potts, probably because he realized, one way or another, she must be gone by now. Peter's glad for his sake Tony doesn't remember Morgan even existed.
So he expects something in this vein, but Tony surprises him.
"I've been thinking about what you've accomplished here. Specifically, the teleportation. Your pet monkey likes to brag," Tony explains, noticing Peter's shock. He doesn't dare think about what else that idiot Calvert let slip to Tony. "I realize we never got to the more philosophical aspects of physics, but I'd have assumed you'd figure out the problem with teleportation on your own."
"I'm not an idiot, Mr. Stark," Peter says, and is briefly horrified that he called Tony that. And Tony doesn't even blink, like it's only expected to be addressed this way by Peter. "Once the first teleporter was operational, I had the same objects, and eventually animals, teleported hundreds of times and monitored for any inconsistencies down to atomic level. If teleportation was simply the destruction of one object and its copying in a different place, eventually there would have been errors."
"That's not conclusive. Any other method of replicating matter produces differences because of inherent imperfections in the method used. Teleportation is copying information on a quantum level. It's not the same as a wonky fax machine, Pete."
"Where are you going with this?" Peter asks impatiently, this time managing to keep the Mr. Stark behind his teeth.
Tony jumps up, pacing the length of the Pen like a caged animal. He comes to a rest where he started, in front of Peter, leaning both of his fists on the glass like he's about to beat against it.
"If I'm a copy of Tony Stark, it's also highly likely that you are just a copy of Peter Parker. Maybe you're even younger than me, depending on when you used your teleporter last. What I'm saying is that you should reconsider your justification for keeping me here."
Tony knocks on the glass separating them, the look on his face identical to the one Mr. Stark used to wear when he was still trying to be patient with Peter, even though he thought Peter was fucking up.
Peter rises so quickly, the chair legs screech against the bare floor. He keeps his eyes averted from Tony's face as he speaks.
"I explained before, you're not being kept here. You must be monitored for a while longer for your own good. I'll come again when I have time."
He strides away quickly, trying to convince himself he's not running away. At his heels the lights click off, leaving Tony in his pod of darkness-cradled light once more, like a toy put back in the box.