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Hulk want space. Can’t breathe. Can’t think.
Banner can’t think either. Banner drugged. Banner no words.
Banner never spoke good anyway. Banner always lock Hulk up. Did lock Hulk up. Locked Hulk away longer than Hulk alive.
Banner tied up. Barely conscious. Strange room. White soft pillows stuck to walls. No windows.
More drugs. Stick them in Banner’s food. Shoot more into Banner’s shoulder.
Banner weak, like Banner always is. Now all Banner do is drool.
But Hulk still awake.
Hulk not drugged. Hulk not drool. Hulk still think.
Hulk will do what Banner can’t. Hulk will get out. Hulk will find way.
If Hulk can’t think of way out, Hulk will force way out.
Hulk figure out rest later.
Hulk always does.
***
What the hell is wrong with me?
Jean Elaine Grey walked alone in the brisk September evening, wearing a green hooded windbreaker over a yellow T-shirt. A well-worn pair of blue jeans and black shoes that were running out of tread completed her ensemble, such as it was. It was approaching ninety, and it was much too hot to wear clothes like this, but it was what she had. She would endure like always.
It was the same road she had traveled eleven months prior. She had taken a bus then. Now, she was heading back down it in reverse and on foot. She had blown perhaps her only chance at belonging, at being around people like her, and the worst thing was, she didn’t even know why she did.
All she knew was that she was alone yet again. She knew they would never forgive her for what she did. It didn’t matter what the reason was, or how she could justify or explain it. No rationale could explain blowing up the interior of a building, breaking all of the windows in it, leaving nothing but dust and fire in its wake. Endangering if not maiming, or even killing, people who absolutely didn’t deserve it.
Once again, I have no one. And it’s my fault.
She stared down at her hands for a brief moment. Not that her hands had anything to do with it. All of the damage she had done to that mansion was the result of her mind, not her hands. She had barely done anything with her hands, actually.
But you didn’t need to use your hands, did you?
Jean squashed that part of her mind. If she started beating herself up too much, she was going to wind up like she did when she was trying to find her sister. And she knew where that led.
They’re going to hunt me down for this. They’ll say I’m too dangerous and then I’ll be locked up forever, or they’ll just kill me.
She couldn’t blame them for that. They were kind people, supportive people, understanding people, even. But she had seen the glass fly into one of the children, and then another, and then another. She had lost control, and the young, the innocent, the witnesses… they were the ones who paid the price. Just like before.
And then she ran away, like always. Then she hated herself, like always. And then she didn’t know what to do next, like always.
I need to go somewhere where they won’t find me. Where they won’t hunt me. Where someone might help me.
She needed to disappear and restart. She was running out of chances to do this. Even though she was going to turn twenty-one in a matter of weeks, she felt like she had burned through all of her chances in life. She really only had the one left, one she didn’t want to turn to because of how much he had suffered when she had last met him, suffering she had played a major role in forcing on him.
A person she knew so well, she might as well have known him like the back of her hand. She had spent weeks inside his brain, after all. She had kept him alive after he had taken a high-caliber rifle round meant for her. She had spent weeks inside his mind, making sure he breathed, making sure his consciousness stayed intact, making sure he stayed in this mortal coil.
On her worst days, it felt like the only worthwhile thing she had done in her life.
Her hands clenched into fists briefly at the side of her body.
I don’t have any choice. If I don’t go to him, I don’t have anywhere else to go.
Her eyes misted at the thought of seeing him again. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and made herself look straight ahead.
No more mistakes. This is your last chance. If you blow it…
She didn’t want to contemplate the consequences if she did.
Memories of his life passed through her brain like gusts of wind. If she allowed herself to contemplate too much, she would become lost in the visions of his life for hours. She would see it through his eyes. Battles with villains and criminals, terrifying scenarios with world-ending consequences, and perhaps, the one she hated to see the most but the one she always found herself finding…
The vision where he disintegrated into dust, and there was nothing he could do other than disappear.
If I go to him, I can’t make him suffer again. I have to be better.
The thought of hurting him like she had back then was anathema to her. He was the only one who had tried to reach out to her when she was at her lowest. She had done cruel things, horrific things, not just to him, but everyone around him, just to rescue a sister who was already dead. She could not be who she had been back then if she went to him now. She had to try her best to be someone he would like… someone he would carry no regrets in saving. Someone who would bring a smile to his face.
His words echoed in her brain, just like they did almost a year prior. “You have me.”
She bit her lip. I must be better.
She stared out straight ahead, put her hands in her pockets, and picked up her pace.
She would not stop until she made it back to where she met him, no matter how tired she got.
And then she would run away no more.
***
Michelle Jones felt like she was left out of the loop a lot these days. It was like Ned and Peter had a secret club and she wasn’t invited.
They were messing around playing one of Ned’s old video games on a PS2 video game console that, somehow, was still working despite dating back to 2003, 2004? A long time ago like that. Saying playful little insults to each other while mashing the buttons as the anciently-rendered video game characters punched and kicked each other senseless.
She wanted to get on their nerves, playfully of course. Give them little digs like informing them they had failed to grow up and the like. But instead, she felt envious. They had something she didn’t.
A secret bond, a secret past, a secret friendship, that she didn’t have. Or remember, at the very least.
Peter Parker, the friend she could not remember, the man who apparently loved her yet resided in none of her memories, threw up his hands in playful frustration. Ned Leeds had won their Tekken 5 match and he was letting out a belly laugh as he pumped his fist into the air in triumph. “That’s right! I just beat Spider-Man!”
“Don’t shout that at the top of your lungs,” Peter said, turning towards Ned and raising an eyebrow.
“Oh yeah. Oops,” Ned said through a silly, wide grin.
Ned gave her a knowing look. Michelle suppressed an urge to roll her eyes. Oh no.
“I just beat Peter Parker!” Ned yelled instead with the same silly grin. Peter, for his part, just shook his head and chuckled it off.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourselves playing old video games,” Michelle said. “By the way, I’ve finished patching the Spidey-Tracker. Instead of having Spider-Man in a random adjacent neighborhood ninety percent of the time when he visits, I’ve lowered it to seventy-six percent of the time.”
“Yes! That’s perfect!” Ned got up from the couch and rushed over to Michelle. “Thank you!”
“I expect my check on Friday,” Michelle said with a smirk.
“Oh, you’re getting enough that I’ll need to give you a tax form next year,” Ned said. “It’s worth the extra paperwork. We needed that patch so badly.”
“Trying to make it more realistic without cluing people in that I’m visiting?” Peter asked.
“Something like that,” Michelle replied. “Ned wanted me to do the legwork this time just so I can get better at programming.”
Peter’s grin turned melancholic and gentle, like it always did. It was a caring look, but it depressed Michelle to see him wearing it. Always aggravated her too. Because what would happen next was-
“Still no luck on a consistent job?” Peter asked.
“I don’t have a leftover A.I. from Stark Industries making cash on sports betting,” Michelle sighed.
Peter held up his hands. “I have successfully held down a job at a local bookstore for the last six months. ”
“You got that job because Ned’s dating the owner,” Michelle shot back. “And she knows who you are, which is why you haven’t been fired.”
Ned and Peter both looked at each other. This was yet another way Michelle felt left out. It was almost like they were communicating without needing to say anything at all. Or maybe they just shared a single brain cell whenever they were next to each other.
“I can ask Junko to interview you for a job too,” Ned finally said after both young men turned to look at Michelle.
“I’m not interested,” Michelle said. She knew she needed to change the subject, she knew she wasn’t doing so hot from an employment angle herself and didn’t need further reminding. “Well, Peter? Has E.V. needed to bet lately?”
“E.V. has occasionally needed to bet. Also, I developed her myself, she’s not a holdover from Stark Industries.”
“You still used Stark A.I. chatbots as the base or inspiration,” Michelle said. “Ned said so himself.”
“E.V. has hit ‘legally distinct’ territory, I think,” Ned said. “After spending a couple of weeks studying E.V. at his apartment, I think that while Peter’s certainly demonstrated that he knows how Stark Industries programming code works and can model his own code on what he’s observed, I actually have not found any sign that he’s used Stark code for E.V.”
Michelle shot Ned a side-eyed look. Not helping, Ned…
Ned was not a mind-reader, for better or worse. “What? I’m the C.E.O. of a custom web app. I have to know these things.”
Michelle rubbed the temples of her forehead. “That’s not it. Don’t worry about it.”
“You’ll find a consistent job and not just contract work soon enough,” Peter said. “Maybe look and see if a video game or software developer is hiring?”
“I wanted to be a scientist, not a software developer,” Michelle groaned.
“Yeah, but Ned’s clearly got a job position open for you,” Peter said with a gentle nod. “Sometimes life turns out differently than you have planned and the best thing you can do is, you know, adjust.”
Michelle looked back at Ned. Ned just grinned. Michelle turned back to Peter with another sigh. “I’ll think about it.”
Staring at a screen for a zillion hours a day isn’t what I wanted to do with my life either. Though the only C.E.O. of any company that’s met my standards is Ned and his tracker app, unfortunately. And I can’t keep working only gig jobs, not with my mountain of college debt.
She reached her hand around her black dahlia necklace and gripped it hard. How it felt like there was always a void in her head these days. That something should be there and it wasn’t. Especially since it was clearly there with Peter and Ned.
Things needed to change.
“Maybe I’ll start working for your Spidey-tracker app full-time,” Michelle grumbled. “If I can’t find anything by the end of the year.”
“Oh yeah, of course!” Ned said, clapping his hands together. “And I can talk to Junko when we go on our next date, before-”
Peter’s cell phone went off before they could continue. Peter pulled it out of his pocket. “We’ve got some big guy in a strange armored suit rampaging in Brooklyn. I gotta go.”
“Good luck, Pete,” Ned said. “Remember, though, your shift starts in forty minutes. Don’t make me look bad!”
Peter laughed. “I’ll get it done in thirty.”
“That’s the spirit.”
Peter and Ned did their handshake deal in front of Michelle, and all she could do was watch. Why? Why don’t I have anything like that? Why does Ned remember and I don’t?
She wasn’t even sure why she felt jealous. After all, she had a boyfriend herself. She was doing okay outside of the college debt. Maybe it was because of the nagging feeling something needed to be there, something that had been gone for a long time.
But as she watched Peter leave, she knew she needed to find out what that something was, whatever it was, before it was too late.
And she had the faintest feeling that was coming, and soon.
***
“Say hello to the new and improved Alex O’Hirn, bug boy!”
Everybody’s got a gimmick now.
“Now I’m bigger and better!” The newest addition to Spider-Man’s lengthy list of empowered villains swung his gray fist at Peter, followed rapidly by the power. Peter sensed both blows coming, backpedaling to avoid the first one and ducking to avoid the second.
“Gotcha!” Peter used the second miss to get in close and fired his webbing at O’Hirn’s feet. He was using a mixture of organic webbing and his web fluid, an experimental attempt at further empowering and strengthening the formula. A massive, almost seven feet tall foe like Alexander O’Hirn was the perfect test for it.
It worked in a sense. O’Hirn’s body, enhanced by the peculiar rhino-like armored suit he was wearing, tore through the webbing; but he still tripped and fell down on his face while trying to turn and face Peter. O’Hirn let out a muffled curse as his face impacted the Brooklyn asphalt.
Not sure if my webbing can hold him. If this doesn’t work, I might have to knock him out!
Peter got to work, webbing O’Hirn to the ground by all four of his limbs before the behemoth of a man could try to get up from the ground.
“Oh come on!” O’Hirn shouted from the ground. His head looked up at Peter in embarrassed indignation. “That’s not fair!”
“You’re the one who rammed an armored truck, I say that went out the window five minutes ago,” Peter said.
O’Hirn struggled against the webs pinning him to the asphalt. “This suit was supposed to make me crush you, once and for all! It wasn’t supposed to end like this!”
Peter blinked behind his mask visors. “Do I know you?”
O’Hirn stared at Peter like he had grown a spider’s head, his blue-grey eyes widening to the point where Peter could see the white plain as day. “You serious? You don’t remember the heist in Midtown in August last year?”
“That’s like Thursday for me. I’m sorry, but I don’t,” Peter said. He honestly felt a little bad that he could not recall this guy’s face or face, but only a little.
O’Hirn, however, took it like the gravest of insults. With a roar, he flexed his muscles under the peculiar gray, rhino-like suit and lifted himself off the ground, breaking enough webbing strands to stand upright. His fingers were still closed shut, but, Peter noted, that still made them pretty effective, if padded, fists.
Looks like it’s gonna have to be a K.O. after all.
E.V.’s voice came in through his mask headset, confirming what he already thought. “It seems his strength is being augmented by his suit. It seems to be of a biomechanical nature.”
O’Hirn stomped out of the webbing, cracking his neck. His tone took on a sassier demeanor than the thuggish style he was speaking in beforehand. The change, while subtle, gave Peter the feeling of a change in the air, even if it wasn’t sending his ‘spider-sense’ haywire.
“Skewered spider is on the menu today! Take this!”
Leading with his horn, he charged Peter head-on making an almost-cartoonish snorting sound in the process. Peter was instantly reminded of the way the cyborg man he had fought a couple of years ago, “Ramrod” as the Daily Bugle podcast called him, always tried to charge him headfirst in their battle together.
O’Hirn is bigger and stronger, but I bet I can beat him the same way. Just gotta get him to hit the right surface!
Peter leapt out of the way and O’Hirn missed him. Missed him by a surprisingly large margin; Peter realized he didn’t need to move as much as he had to ensure the dodge after he landed. O’Hirn crashed into a brick wall on the other side of the street, his horn-like appendage stuck into the wall.
Maybe that knocked him out?
O’Hirn placed both hands on the wall and pulled his horned head out of the wall. He turned around, his forehead bleeding from what looked like a gash. He grinned at Peter maliciously.
“That ain’t enough to take me down! I didn’t feel a thing!”
Suddenly, O’Hirn’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and his tongue suddenly rolled out of his mouth. It was quite possibly the stupidest facial expression Peter had ever seen on a person.
“Oh. Now I feel it,” O’Hirn slobbered. He fell on his back, staring up at the sky.
It was so comical Peter had to chuckle a bit as he walked up to O’Hirn. He took aim, aiming to cover his whole body in his mixture of organic and synthetic webbing. “Not the way you should use your head!”
“Shaddup,” O’Hirn groaned. “You may be smarter, but I’m hornier.”
It took Peter a moment to process that. “I’ll do us both a favor and forget you said that.”
“Said what?” O’Hirn groaned from the ground. “What happened? My head hurts.”
That concussion from slamming into the wall must be really bad for him to already forget what he said. As Peter webbed him thoroughly in place so he’d stay still until the police came to collect, he pondered how that whole sequence had gone.
Even before the charge, something had been weird. O’Hirn had basically announced to the planet that he was going to charge him before he did. While O’Hirn clearly liked to bloviate, he had never given Peter a clear indication of what he was going to do. Plus, the way he talked, it reminded him of how people talked to him when Jean Grey was possessing them, even when she was trying to keep them in character…
He paused as he finished his work. Nah, it couldn’t be. I’m overthinking it.
Charging straight into a wall and having a briefly delayed reaction to it wasn’t unheard of. Concussions were strange like that. Still, he hadn’t heard from Jean in nearly a year.
“E.V.,” Peter said as he walked away from O’Hirn’s groaning body, “Search for signs of activity that could be related to Jean Grey in the last eleven months. Anywhere in the New England area, from Philly to Hartford.”
“Understood. I will compile a list for you when you return to your apartment. In the meantime, I know you prefer to debrief with Detective DeWolff, but you will be late for work in five minutes. You may wish to prioritize your day job and talk to DeWolff later.”
Peter reacted to that news right away. He knew where he was, and it was going to take him close to ten minutes to get to his job from where he was. “Understood, E.V. I’m gonna haul ass, don’t bother me with the results until after I’m done with my shift!”
“I deduced you’d prefer to focus on your day job, don’t worry,” E.V. replied.
“Thanks!” Peter aimed at the nearest building and took off at a run, swinging into the air just as the police pulled up to secure O’Hirn.
Hopefully Detective DeWolff won’t be too mad at me for rushing off!
***
Peter was bored as he finished organizing the non-fiction shelves for the umpteenth time. Can’t people put books back where they belong? Ever?
He supposed this was better than not having anything to do and just being bored the entire time. He was the closing supervisor, after all. He needed to make sure everything was in order, clean, and set to go for the morning before he locked up and everyone went home.
It wasn’t a great job and wouldn’t pay the rent without E.V. winning some cash through betting on sports, but it was definitely something stable and plausible for someone his age to have. Especially with only a G.E.D. in his education history.
Before he could get too far, his boss, Junko Watanabe, poked her head around the corner with a charming smile. “How’s it going, Peter?”
“I’m making progress,” Peter replied. “I should have nonfiction reshelved by the time you leave.”
Junko nodded in approval. “Excellent. Remember, it’s just you and Debra tonight. I don’t need the store perfect, but get it close enough that Zoey and I can put the finishing touches on it before we open tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry,” Peter said. He returned her smile. “I’m not going to take off on you, I promise.”
“Just double-checking,” Junko replied with a wink. While she was born in Japan, she had spent most of her life in the United States and sounded like it.
“Usually what happened this morning doesn’t come in pairs,” Peter said. He took a step closer to his boss and whispered to her. “No one is close by, right?”
Junko peeked around both the aisle next to them and then behind her. “No, it usually gets pretty slow right around now.”
“I’m gonna need to talk to Detective DeWolff before you leave,” Peter said quietly. “I kinda bailed on her before we could talk about what happened.”
“No worries.” Junko chuckled. “You can do that after you’re finished with this aisle, how about it?”
Peter nodded. “Perfect, thank you.”
Junko leaned in closer. “Just try to get here on time more often, got it? I can look the other way when you’re three minutes late, but not eight.”
Peter sighed. He hadn’t taken into account the time needed to get changed into his civilian clothes for the job. This was why Ned insisted on Junko knowing his identity as Spider-Man, because this means she would understand if things happened, plus she was supposedly reliable at keeping secrets. So far, it seemed word hadn’t spread he was Spider-Man since having to admit the double life to his boss, so apparently things were working out.
“Yeah, I’m sorry. That whole situation in Brooklyn messed everything up,” Peter replied.
“It happens in this town. Just don’t let it happen again if you can help it for a few more shifts,” Junko replied with a smile. “Anyway, I’ll let you get back to work. Don’t let Debra get you down, she’s in a bad mood today.”
“I won’t,” Peter replied. He knew that Debra Whitman didn’t exactly like him, like his mere existence seemed to offend her, but the best thing he could do was do his job, get Debra to do hers, and try to avoid a situation where the two of them would have an argument.
“Awesome. Talk to you in a bit,” Junko replied, and she vanished around the corner. At least she was nice and understanding, which he would accept at this point. He needed someplace relaxing with less pressure for a day job, and this fit the bill, as long as he could keep it.
He could see why Ned liked her and was dating her. Junko was an older woman in her mid-thirties but looked younger. She was on the short side, barely over five feet, but she was charming and friendly with straight black hair with a timeless style parted down the middle. A stable business owner with good looks, she was a strong match for Ned outside of being maybe a decade older than him.
As he finished the aisle, he stepped out and took a look outside at New York City in the windows. The sun was setting, giving things a golden hue. And standing behind the window was a young woman in a green jacket, a few inches shorter than he was, staring at into the bookstore-
Peter blinked. She was gone, like she was never there at all.
I see her when she’s not even there. He sighed ruefully. You gotta focus, Peter. It’s not even clear Jean had anything to do with the way O’Hirn went down. Just his speech pattern and him saying stupid things. That’s not enough.
He put the reshelving cart out of the way and got to work tracking Junko down. He really needed to fit that call to DeWolff in before he ran out of time…
***
Peter jammed his key into his apartment’s keyhole and turned the lock. Thankfully, he heard the lock click into place. This dramatically reduced the possibility of breaking and entering.
He walked into the apartment and shut it behind him. He walked up to E.V., which was still in a complex computer station in the center of his apartment. His senses weren’t going off either, which put him at ease. If Jean was lurking nearby, she’d surely be setting them off.
He put his hands on the office chair as he leaned over and looked at the screen where his personal A.I. was waiting. “E.V., we’re going to fall about a grand short of the rent this month. Please put in a bet on the games the Yankees and Mets are playing tomorrow night. Bet so you win the Yankees bet and lose the Mets one, losing the Mets one by a smaller margin. If you need to make a third bet, the Cubs are also playing tomorrow night and bet accordingly so we still come out ahead but only enough to pay the rent off.”
He paused. “And enough left over so I can order a pizza, please. I need a pizza so bad.”
“I can do that. Margin of error will be approximately thirty-four dollars and fifty-five cents. Would you like my report on Jean Grey’s prospective whereabouts?” E.V. asked.
Peter collapsed on his office chair, slumping in it. “Yeah, that would be good, thank you.”
“There were no obvious signs of Jean Grey until this past week. First of all, a building by Albany suffered what’s being claimed to be a fire, but it involved a suspicious amount of broken glass and what seems to be a concussive force in the center of the building. It is being explained as a gas main explosion, but photographs from the scene indicate minimal fire damage.”
“So it’s likely a cover-up,” Peter muttered aloud. He spoke louder and more clearly to E.V for his subsequent question. “What’s the name of the building?”
“A private academy called Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters. The concussive blast there is consistent with the damage she inflicted on Damage Control last year.”
Peter nodded. “And when did this happen?”
“Last week. Specifically, Friday, September 7th.”
“Six days ago,” Peter said. “Got it.”
He rapped his fingers on the desk. “And has there been any other activity?”
“Yes, today, in fact,” E.V. said. “Breaking and entering a private apartment approximately one hour thirteen minutes and forty-two seconds ago.”
Peter sat up. “Here in New York?”
“Correct,” E.V. said.
“Where?” Peter asked.
“Your apartment, Peter.”
Peter leapt out of his chair and spun around. All of a sudden, like she had appeared out of nowhere, stood Jean Grey, her hands in her jacket pockets, a somber expression on her face.
She looked exhausted, like she hadn’t slept in days. Her bangs were messy and seemed to be glued to her forehead by multiple layers of dried sweat. Her smile came out more pained than anything else, made further agonized by the melancholic look in her shimmering bright blue eyes.
“Hi, Peter,” Jean said softly.
The pieces quickly fitted together in Peter’s head. Even without the greater details, he could make the pieces fit. What must have happened by Albany, and how it led Jean to appearing in his apartment.
“I felt you would prefer it if I did not call the police,” E.V. replied.
“No,” Peter said as the edge went out of his body. It was clear Jean would not attack him unless he made the first move, and he had no interest in starting a brawl in his apartment. “You made the right call.”
“I’m sorry,” Jean said, her voice still soft, barely a whisper. “I messed up really bad. I think… I think I hurt people. I need… I need a place to stay while… while I think about things.”
Peter nodded. He was still wary, but it seemed like Jean wasn’t out to attack him or make his life miserable. His ‘spider-sense’ wasn’t going haywire like it always did when anyone hostile was near him.
However, it was time to find out how long she had been here. He couldn’t just accept her arrival at face value, especially since she had broken into his apartment.
“Was that you who manipulated O’Hirn?” Peter asked. “Made him do a blind charge and say silly things afterwards?”
Jean smiled, but it was slight. “How did you know?”
“The way he talked, the way he attacked that guaranteed he would hurt himself if he missed, which he did,” Peter said. He chuckled softly. “Also, that last line you made him say was a little too dumb.”
Jean’s smile widened, and there was genuine mirth this time, much to Peter’s relief. “Yeah, I was trying to make you laugh. You don’t always have a lot to smile about, so I wanted to try.”
“It was corny, but I admit I chuckled a little,” Peter said with a grin.
“Glad to hear it,” Jean said, but then she fell silent.
That answered one question. But he had remembered seeing her peer inside the bookstore window. “And were you outside where I work at all?”
Jean shook her head. The smile faded. “No. After you swung away from O’Hirn, I just started walking towards your apartment, though it took me a few hours to get there.”
She walked around the apartment, looking between Peter and the computer console that housed E.V.. “I don’t have any money and I didn’t want to attract attention, so I got here the hard way.”
She gave him a thumbs-up. The smile came back as a lopsided grin. “Congrats on the job, though.”
“Thanks,” Peter said as he put his hands in his pockets.
Peter studied her body language. He was by no means a living lie detector, but it seemed she was telling the truth. Perhaps it was just one of those things where you just saw something out of the corner of your eye, but it wasn’t what you thought it was.
After thinking it over while watching Jean pace around the apartment with amped nervousness, he decided he would believe her for now. “So, can you tell me why you blew up a mansion-sized school?”
Jean froze in place and held up her hands in front of her. They shook like she had just pulled them out of an icehouse. “It… it wasn’t intentional. I just… couldn’t handle the device. They called it ‘Cerebro’ and they wanted me to test it. It overloaded me… or I overloaded it. I don’t know which.”
She buried her head in her hands. “I don’t know what happened. I blacked out. All I know is that after I woke up, it was like a giant flashbang grenade had gone off. All the windows in the building were gone, and everyone was bleeding, and I realized if I didn’t run, they were probably going to kill me.”
Her fingers gripped the side of her head. For a moment, Peter was worried Jean was going to pull her hair out, but she thankfully didn’t go that far. “I didn’t mean it! I swear I didn’t! I just… messed up, and I don’t know how, and I don’t know why. I didn’t want to hurt anyone Peter. I mean it.”
She looked up at Peter, her lips trembling. “Please don’t turn me in. At least let me try to figure things out. Please.”
Peter’s lips curled as he pondered what to do. He would need to find out if Jean had a warrant out for her arrest or something worse. If she did, the logical thing would be to turn Jean over to the police, especially if she did cause such a massive explosion that hurt or even killed people.
But judging by the way she looked in that moment, if he did do that to her, who knew what she would do? At the very least, he needed to hear her out first. Then he could decide what to do, whether to turn her in or try to help her. Even if there was a warrant out for her.
She told me she had no one, and I told her she had me. I have to try to help her first. It’s the least I can do.
He took a breath and exhaled. He stood up from his chair and took a step closer to her and offered his hand for her to shake it. “Alright, we’ll work this out. I promise. We can talk this out over dinner.”
She didn’t smile, but there was a subtle glimmer of hope in her eyes that was enough to tell him he had made the right call by choosing to stand down. “Thank you.”
She walked forward and, instead of taking his hand, she fell into him, wrapping her arms around him. Peter froze for a minute, but the moment he heard Jean begin to cry, he reacted immediately. He wrapped his arms around her and let her quietly sob into his shoulder.
“E.V.,” Peter said. “I think we’re gonna order that pizza right now. Make it a large.”