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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE We Are The Ants
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THEY DIDN'T GO HOME. Which, given how long he'd known them for, was something Mr. Stark should have honestly predicted. Peter was stubborn as hell, refusing to give up on a fight until he was practically unconscious, and Cecelia was used to pushing through conflicts in order to appease Richard. Neither of them was the type to so easily throw the towel in, even after they'd both nearly died already. The conflict had just begun, after all. And Mr. Stark may have been Iron Man, but even Iron Man needed backup once in a while. Especially when he was going toe-to-toe with alien invaders.
So, instead of letting their parachutes carry them back down to Earth (which would have taken hours, anyway, given the pace they were drifting down at), Peter and Cecelia were quick to disable them and make their way back to the ship. Peter held them both up with webs, and Cecelia activated the thrusters in her boots for good measure, trying not to think about the fact that they were completely outside of Earth's atmosphere now. But then she made the mistake of looking down, and nearly passed out for a second time.
There was Earth. A great blue sphere (take that, flat Earthers) with patches of green and brown. The sun shone over it, giving it a white halo, bigger and brighter than Cecelia had ever seen it before. From Cecelia's vantage point, whole countries could be seen, broken up only by bodies of water. It managed to be both immensely vast and minuscule. The United States, the corner of the world Cecelia had grown up in, was suddenly nothing. Nor was she, really—from this high up, she couldn't even see buildings, much less individual people. It really hammered home how insignificant she was.
Her breathing shortened again, though not from lack of oxygen. It was her anxiety, dragging her down, reminding her that human existence wasn't even a footnote in the Earth's history. The planet had been around for four and a half billion years. Humans had been around for around six million. And that wasn't even the modern homo sapiens of today.
Creator. It was not the right time to have an existential crisis.
Fortunately, she wasn't lost in her own thoughts for long. "Look!" Peter shouted, pointing up. Cecelia followed his gaze, and her eyes locked on what appeared to be a way inside the spaceship. The doors were beginning to close, but they moved at a snail's pace. If Cecelia and Peter could get up there, then they might actually be able to stand again.
"Please get us up there!" Cecelia begged. She knew Peter wasn't going to drop her, but having a sixteen-year-old boy—Enhanced or not—and her boots as the only thing keeping her from literally going adrift in space was predictably nerve-wracking. "I'll help you out!"
"Okay!" Peter wrapped one arm around Cecelia's midsection, freeing his other. With a flick of his wrist, a strand of webbing shot out and met the platform leading inside. Then he began to climb, moving gracefully up the wall. Cecelia's boots helped him out, propelling him upward at a quicker pace. It didn't take long before they were right before the platform. There, Peter finally let go of the wall and just latched onto the web.
