Chapter Text
“Ms. Silverstein,” a doctor said urgently, rushing into the office, “we’ve had a breakthrough.”
After a beat of silence, she drops the paperwork she had been working on and abruptly stands up. Buttoning her jacket, she walks briskly toward the door. “I want a full report from your team within the hour. How many do we have?”
The doctor clears his throat slightly, “Just one, ma’am.”
A small frown flits across her face before it is replaced by the same stone-cold expression as before, “Disappointing, but not surprising. Very well. As soon as you are able, we will begin testing. After all, it only takes one successful mutation to be incorporated into a species’ DNA. We’ll make do.”
With that, she pulled out a phone, already dialing a number as she turned down a different hallway.
-
Peter was staring at the blank white wall. He didn’t know how much time had passed since he collapsed into bed. He tried his best not to think. Not to close his eyes and see a blank stare looking back at him. Not to focus too much on his hearing and listen to the echoes of the sickly moans and wheezing breaths stuck in his head.
And so he stares, letting the time pass in a blur.
At some point, a woman came in dressed in hospital scrubs. She pulled him out of his ball at the end of the bed and propped him up on some pillows. She then checked him over, writing down her findings on a clipboard.
But Peter remained detached, letting her put a hand to his forehead and check his temperature or poke him with a needle as she set up an IV. And before long, she left, leaving Peter in the suffocating silence.
How had this happened? It couldn’t have been more than a day or two that everyone had fallen ill, and yet everything had changed. He had known that things wouldn’t remain in the precarious balance for long, but he never would have expected their experiment to be so swift and ruthless.
He should have tried to look for an escape sooner. Maybe he could have at least gotten one person out. Maybe Jess would still be here. Because now that there was nothing to focus on, he could truly hear the facility, and it was clear that there were no other young heartbeats.
It was just him. There was no one else left, and no one was coming. He didn’t even know of anyone who would know he was gone, much less look for him.
The loneliness and grief felt familiar, like something he’d felt before. And in that way, it was unsurprising. He would endure, his body remembering the pain of survival like muscle memory. Yes, he would endure and he would escape. These people would not be successful in eliminating them all, he would make sure of it.
And so Peter let blissful unconsciousness claim him, not even noticing the faint green that clouded his vision at the train of his thoughts.
-
Peter woke up to the door to his room being thrown open somewhat forcefully. Half wiping away the sleep from his eyes, Peter positioned himself defensively facing the doorway.
Two dudes walked in, each muscular enough to look like they could break him with a pinky finger. The one removed his IV while the other tossed a pile of clothes at his feet, causing him to flinch slightly.
“You have 5 minutes to get dressed and out the door,” said the one man simply before they both left just as quickly as they’d appeared.
Deliberating for only a moment, Peter got up and quickly changed into the provided clothes, a simple black tank top and shorts with matching black socks. Well, at least they had a theme.
He walked up to the door and paused. He needed a way out, but now isn’t the time. He needed more information, and it wouldn’t help to piss off the two giant men right off the bat.
He took a breath and opened the door to the men standing on each side of his door. They were both holding guns, which, come on, seems a little dramatic. And then, the one on the right turned to him slightly and simply raised an arm and pointed to the door across the hall.
“ What do these people have against using their words? ” he grumbled to himself as he walked across the hallway. The men fell in behind him, flanking either side, and he opened the door to a decently sized, medical-looking room.
Having hesitated briefly, one of the men pushed him forward from behind. Rude .
At their entrance, a senior-looking man stood up from a desk in the corner. He took off his glasses and flashed Peter a brilliant smile that sent a jolt of fear through him. Something just a touch unnatural with how many teeth he showed.
Danger.
Oh cool, a disembodied voice-feeling. It’s not wrong, though, so Peter decided it wasn’t really the biggest priority at the moment.
“Well, hello there, E-788! Can I just say what an honor it is to work with you?” He slowly began to circle Peter, tapping his glasses against his chin as he analyzed the figure standing before him.
Peter stood still, stiff, and refusing to show a semblance of unease under the scrutiny of the man.
“You really are quite the specimen, aren’t you? A statistical wonder.”
He stops in front of Peter once again, looking at him as if he were some sort of trophy. And with a gut-sinking realization, Peter concluded that that’s exactly what he is. During his short time here, not a single person had called the children by anything other than their assigned numbers. They were never viewed as people by the scientists or doctors, just test subjects. Data points. Nothing more.
“But that’s the beauty of science, you see,” the man continued. “Naturally, there’s the pomp and circumstance of an unanticipated success, but the true progress comes from the study. Understanding exactly why there was success in the first place. After all, if you have a result and no ability to replicate it, have you really achieved anything at all?”
The man looks at Peter expectantly, a glint in his eye. But Peter refused to look at him, staring at a point on the wall behind him as he felt a pit of anxiety forming in his stomach.
The man chuckled slightly to himself, giving an unnerving illusion of a sweet old man. “No, no real progress at all. Follow me,” he called behind him as he turned around and walked towards a medical bed.
One of the guards behind him shoved his shoulder, and he stumbled forward again. They really gotta cut that shit out.
He perches on the edge of the bed as the doctor walks over with a tray of equipment.
“Just have to take a blood sample first. We want to see if there have been any obvious changes from what we can compare to your pre-exposure samples.”
Peter frowns slightly at that. First of all, the amount of blood he’s given to these people is already insane. But secondly, he wants to know what they could have injected him with that would show something substantially different in his blood.
After a relatively short and painless process, the doctor cleaned up the space and brought the samples back to his desk and equipment area. Before long, the doctor returned with a tray of food.
Setting it on the bed next to Peter, he says, “Go on, can’t have you passing out from blood loss, can we?” Then, after giving Peter that old man wink, he made his way back to the desk.
As soon as the man’s back was turned, Peter pulled his legs up onto the bed and sat criss-cross applesauce as he dug into the warm meal. He didn’t even know the last time he ate, but it must have been a while, judging by the gurgling as the food hit his stomach.
It was more food than he’d had for the duration of his time here, and there was even a tall glass of chocolate milk, which Peter gulped happily.
Feeling somewhat content, Peter sat and waited while the doctor ran test after test on his blood. Every once in a while, he’d hum or mutter to himself as he received the results, but mostly the room was left in silence.
After several hours of sheer boredom, the man came back over carrying a giant binder and a clipboard.
“Alrighty then, we’re going to start with some questions. After recovering from the sickness, have you felt any adverse effects?”
Peter’s eyebrows pinched slightly. He knew that there had been changes to his body, but if he wanted a shot at escape, he needed to try and keep some secrets close to his chest. That would mean giving away just enough to keep them satisfied with their study, but never enough to understand the full picture.
“No, sir. I’ve been a little more sleepy, but I think that might just still be the recovery.”
He grunted. “Are you hungry?” the doctor asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
“Uh, I could eat, I guess.” That was a lie. Even in just the few hours since the last meal, Peter felt like he hadn’t eaten for a majority of the day.
The doctor hummed and wrote something down on his clipboard before moving on. “Have there been any physical changes to your body?”
Peter looked down at his hands. Had there been? It felt like he was seeing and hearing better, and there was that strange voice, but those weren’t really physical traits, were they? Eh, plausible deniability or whatever.
“No, I don’t think so.”
And so the questions continued, and as they got more specific, Peter tried his best to answer the doctor just enough to keep him content. He thought he had been doing a pretty decent job until they reached the end of the questions on the clipboard.
The doctor set the clipboard down and leveled Peter with an unimpressed look. “Have you been lying to me throughout these questions?”
Peter felt a flash of panic before trying to calm himself. “Of course not,” he said, in possibly the most inconvincing voice possible. God curse his inability to lie effectively.
The doctor hummed in annoyance. “Do you think me incompetent? There’s a reason I am the lead of this study above anyone else. Your lies were worthless! I will discover the truth through our experiments together, but I don’t appreciate being taken as a fool.”
Peter had never seen an adult come so close to a tantrum before, but he supposed there was a first time for everything.
The man stood up suddenly, shocking Peter slightly.
Wary, danger.
Peter agreed with the voice, but it didn’t feel immediate. He definitely pissed off the doctor, though.
“We will finish today with a fitness test, and then our study will be over for the day. Follow me.” The semblance of a sweet old man was gone, replaced by cold indifference.
Peter walked with him to a large treadmill, and the doctor began hooking him up to a bunch of monitors.
“You will run until I tell you to stop, understood?”
Peter just nodded his head mutely in return and began to run as the treadmill started up. It soon became apparent that he wouldn’t be stopping anytime soon, and so Peter let his mind wander. He definitely hadn’t been able to run like this during the first fitness test he took when he got here.
The doctor left for a period of time, although he remained under the constant watchful eye of the guards at the door. It felt like forever before the doctor returned and signalled that Peter could stop. After disconnecting him from the monitors, the doctor once again gave Peter a tray of food and a large water bottle.
Peter drank from the bottle greedily and ate the food as the doctor stood next to him, silently going through some paperwork.
Once Peter had finished, the doctor glanced up, “You are dismissed,” he said simply. And then, addressing the guards, continued, “I need the subject back here at 7 AM tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, sir,” they responded in unison. Peter took that as his cue to leave and followed the men back to his room across the hall.
Alone in the room once again, Peter took the chance to shower and change into an identical set of clothes he found in a dresser. He went to put his dirty clothes in a hamper, but as he let them go, he found them sticking to his hands.
Peter stared at the fabric clinging to his hands unaided. Then, as if stretching an unused muscle, he released the barest of tension he felt on his skin and watched as the clothes were reclaimed by gravity, smiling slightly at the display.
Making his way back to the bed, Peter laid down and stared up at the ceiling. That strange voice was right, there was a danger here, and he needed to escape it before it was too late. But if he could get control of that stickiness, he was one major step closer to finding a way out.
-
The following morning, the same two men came into the room as the previous day. Peter decided he would dub them Tiny and Pipsqueak because personally, he thought that was fuckin’ hilarious.
What was not hilarious, however, was that each man walked up to either side of his bed and, without warning, clasped heavy metal cuffs around his wrists.
“Hey, wait!” Peter started, trying to pull his hands away, but each man held firm, and Peter didn’t think he’d be able to talk his way out of pulling down two literal tanks with his string bean arms. And it definitely felt like he could; Tiny and Pipsqueak’s pull barely registered to him.
As soon as the cuffs were secured on his wrists, Tiny unceremoniously picked him up under his armpits and placed him standing up on the floor.
“Thanks for the fashion statement and all, but you guys really didn’t have to,” he said with words dripping in sarcasm.
Tiny and Pipsqueak just stared at him. Tough crowd. He was rudely shoved yet again , and Peter got the hint and made his way to the lab.
Things were set up differently from the day before. A large metal table was centered in the room under several bright lights.
Get out. Danger. Run.
But as Peter took a step back, large hands clasped around his upper arms and started dragging him forward. He dug his heels into the ground as he looked up at the two guards.
“Hold on, stop!” he yelled, but got no response. The men threw him onto the table, and as soon as the cuffs made contact with the metal table, they stuck like an industrial scale magnet. Peter pulled at them, but he soon realized that the cuffs were likely to break apart before he would be able to pull them off the table.
In his moment of distraction, the guards had put the same cuffs on his ankles and activated them. A flash of anger burned through him, and green bordered his vision.
“What the fuck guys? Let me go!” He screamed at them, but the only response was Pipsqueak attaching a matching collar around his neck. He pushed his shoulders down before activating the collar as well and rendering Peter immobile.
He felt like he had the strength to break the restraints, but in a minuscule moment of clarity, he understood that it was far more important to leave that ability hidden. And so, Peter took a breath and let the strange green fade. He needed to wait this out. He could deal with whatever the stupid doctor had in store, and when the opportunity arose, he would be gone. He would use everything he had to get out, but until then, he needed to do his best to play the helpless victim.
“Oh perfect, you’re already here,” a voice rang through the room, leaving a chill down Peter’s spine. The large binder smacked down near his head, and Peter repressed a flinch.
The man was dressed in a full lab coat today and the same terrifying smile. “Well E-788, we have a lot of questions to answer, best get started, shouldn’t we?” And with that, the doctor put on a mask and opened the binder to the first page out of many.
Peter stared up at the ceiling and took in a shaky breath.
-
Time passed in a blur. The experiments were horrible, some painful, some not. But each exposed and studied Peter in a way that left him nauseous. After several experiments, the doctor removed his mask and deactivated Peter’s neck and hand restraints.
Peter rose weakly into a sitting position, and the doctor handed him a food tray before sitting down and humming a cheery tune as he began to eat his own meal. Peter sat there, baffled for a moment at the display. This was clearly some type of emotional manipulation, but Peter needed the food and therefore didn’t particularly care at the moment.
As soon as Peter finished his meal, though, the doctor’s mask came back on and his restraints were reactivated. The second half of the day began. Peter weathered each experiment, and the second portion ended similarly to the first.
Peter spent his fully lucid moments analyzing and memorizing the room around him. There were three air vents near the ceiling, and during the intermittent quiet moments, he used his hearing to focus in on the echos faintly coming from each.
One had a whirring sound of machinery, and another held distant voices and conversation. But the third held faint sounds of a city. That would be the one to get him out of the facility, he decided.
At the end of the day, Peter was brought back to his room, not given the mercy of having the cuffs removed. He stumbled to the bed and slowly lost consciousness as he practiced sticking parts of his legs and arms to the bed sheets and releasing them.
-
The following day was the same. Experiments, food, experiments, food, sleep. Same for the day after that, and the day after that.
Peter slowly lost count of how many days had passed, and yet the doctor and his guards never slipped once. They remained armed, they never left him alone. It was starting to grate on his nerves. Why did they have to be competent?
Maybe sometime around the second week, Peter was dragged back into the lab, and after only barely seeing the doctor sitting at his desk, his stomach let out a loud and painful grumble.
The doctor looked up and chuckled with a smirk on his face. He met Peter at the table with another tray of food.
“Stupid Pavlov and his stupid fuckin’ dogs,” he angrily thought to himself. He did not want to associate this man with anything good, and here his body was, betraying him like that.
But Tiny and Pipsqueak remained just a few steps away and at the ready, so taking another stupid-ass calming breath, Peter ate his food quietly.
And so the pattern continued, day in and day out, as Peter waited for his opportunity.
-
“Good afternoon, Ms. Silverstein. I have the progress report for E-788 ready for you.”
The doctor was sweating slightly but kept his head held high as he stood before the organization's head.
Ms. Silverstein’s eyes flicked to him, and she gestured at the chair across from her desk. The man hurriedly sat down and began rifling through the papers he had gathered.
“It’s looking very promising, ma’am. Many of the traits that were biologically engineered are present in the specimen, and I believe there is the potential for more to adapt given the right advancement.”
Pulling out a large list, he cleared his throat. “Notable discoveries thus far include the following: increased metabolic rate directly correlated with an increased healing ability; heightened senses including touch, hearing, and sight; increased sensitivity to temperature, with cold resulting in a dormant state; and increased strength and general fitness.”
“The presented traits appear consistent with the physical attributes of the spider DNA used in the formula for E-788. Likewise, the negative results seem to be specifically related to the contributing DNA. They could likely be filtered out with continued engineering.”
The doctor shut his binder with a snap and looked at the woman in front of him expectantly.
Clasping her hands on the desk, she leaned forward. “And what of the effects from the Lazarous portion of the formula? What is your conclusion on the mental stability and capacity of the subject?”
“I would describe it as a resounding success,” the doctor said with pride. “After effects are still evident, however, it is my belief that the increased cellular regeneration and healing abilities of the subject have nearly eliminated the usual damages from the serum. There have been several instances where I have managed to invoke a pit episode, but the subject seems to be able to regain control within just a few minutes.”
A smile graced Ms. Silverstein’s lips as she met the doctor's eyes. “Well, I would say that that is very good news, very good news indeed.” Turning some pages in her paperwork, she makes a few notes. “When do you think you’ll be able to progress to our next phase?” she asked.
The doctor blew out a breath. “Oh, would two weeks be acceptable?” he asked. “That would just give me the time to ensure that everything has been properly documented and give the test subject the chance to recover to full capacity.”
“I think that is acceptable,” the woman acknowledges. “I can allot you up to one month, but I want progress by then at the latest.”
“Yes, of course, ma’am,” the doctor said, rising to his feet. “You won’t be disappointed.”
Her smile resembled that of a shark, “Of course I won’t.”
-
“Hey there, Anne,” he said, handing over a backpack of blankets, food, and water.
The little girl took the bag with a shy smile.
Sitting down at her level, he asked gently, “Have you heard any of the older kids talk about more missing friends lately?”
“No,” she responded, already pawing through the bag for her favorite dried apple slices. “The big kids are saying that they think we’re ok to come out again, Sam even let me go to the park the other day!”
The man didn’t let his tension show. “That’s great, kiddo! But promise me you’ll still be safe, alright?”
“Yeah, of course, Red Hood,” she says with a toothy smile.
The man chuckles and stands up. He pats the girl on the head before reaching an arm up and deploying his grapple gun to the top of the building.
Flipping up onto the roof, he peers down below, making sure Anne makes her way safely.
“Any news?” the voice of Nightwing calls behind him.
He turns to look at his brother, “No. No missing kids in almost a month.” There’s an edge to his voice when he says it.
“Maybe someone else took care of it?” Nightwing asked, hopeful.
Red Hood scoffed lightly, “C’mon, detective. With the rate at which those kids were going missing, this is big. And if someone had taken it down, we would have definitely heard about it.”
Nightwing sighs. “So that means either whoever it was moved onto somewhere else, which is plausible, or…”
“Or,” Red Hood cuts in, “they found what they were looking for.”