Nobody knows the beginning

Chapter 17

Tony's P.O.V

It has been three days since Hydra took the kid and after watching the surveillance footage no one has been able to sit still. The entire tower is restless and I've been working my ass off trying to find hydras bases so that we can finally bring them down for good.

Barnes has been out since the kid hit him but Bruce says he should wake up any time now.

We were all still trying to figure out what he was capable of and if there was a way to stop him then get him help. We had written a list of his abilities from what we had observed: super strength, wall climbing, shooting webs from his wrist and predicting the future? We're not entirely sure on the last one but we know that he can somehow know what's gonna happen before it does which is why stopping him is going to be difficult.

Nat has been working alongside me and it was only now that I noticed as she sat next to me going through all the hundreds of shield files that she was beginning to doubt herself.

I stopped what I was doing to look at her and said, "what's wrong?"

"Nothing" she said, not taking her eyes off the screen.

"Nat, we're going to find him and we're going to put a stop to hydra completely. I swear it."

She shook her head and said "I'm not worried about that anymore, I want to help him but I don't know if i should."

"What do you mean?" I asked, a little surprised at her comment.

"I mean that this kid might be too far gone and I honestly don't want to see someone who I remember being sweet and kind and funny and cute to be in pain." she said coolly.

I looked back to my screen and sighed. "I get it. I do. Seeing someone you love in pain is a whole other level of hurt, but we shouldn't completely give up because he's still a child, he still has a whole life ahead of him. He could still go to college if he wants. Make friends. Get a girlfriend. He still has a chance"

Nat had tears in her eyes and I could see her desperately trying to blink them away.

She then nodded and walked out of the lab.

Nat's P.O.V

I had been scrolling through the seemingly endless files from shield but couldn't get anything on where the base may be. What Tony had said to me about Peter was going over and over in my head and i couldn't stop the tears that came when i thought about the life he had missed out on and probably hundreds of other kids had missed out on as well because they had been in the firing line of hydra's wrath or they were turned into killing machines.

I was sitting on my bedroom floor with my back against the door trying to think how I could get rid of hydra and make them pay.

That's when someone knocked on my door and when I asked who it was Wanda answered. I stood up and opened the door for her to come in and she hugged me softly but firmly and I had never felt so loved until that moment.

"I came to let you know that Barnes is awake and we're going to start asking him everything he knows about Hydra." she said once we had pulled away.

I stood up, wiped the tears that were welling in my eyes and said "okay let's go" and together we walked down to the med bay where the assassin was sitting upright in a hospital bed with almost all the avengers surrounding him both sitting and standing.

The room fell quiet when we entered and every pair of eyes was on us.

"Alright" Tony said, taking a sip of his coffee. "Who wants to go first?"

When no one said anything he continued "okay well i'll go first if i must. How long have you been with hydra?"

"73 years" he replied. "When I fell off the train-" he paused briefly and looked at Steve. "They took me and put me in and out of ice. Pulling me out only when I was needed for a mission."

We were all a little shocked at what he had just said.

"When you first attacked, why didn't you remember me?" Steve asked.

The assassin looked a little embarrassed but answered. "We were subjected to electroshock "Therapy" was what they called it but it was more torture than anything. The electricity shocked our brains so much that we were forced to forget and our brains were pretty much useless if we weren't being told what to do"

"Before, you said something about trigger words? What's that?" Tony asked.

Barnes looked horrified by this question and gulped then said "we all have a different set of words, sort of like a vocabulary that is drilled into our brains (metaphorically) and whenever they're said they are like on buttons. Used to control us if we ever got emotional or needed a quick transition."

"Tell us everything you know about the kid," I said after a moment of silence.

"He's been with Hydra since he was five years old, as soon as he came in they began training him in combat, archery and he has been able to shoot the perfect shot of a gun since his first month of training. I was in ice when they first brought him but because we were made partners I needed to know everything about him. He's known as 'The Black Spider'. And he's Hydra's most prized possession. He has been not only electroshocked but he has been pumped with drugs every day that make him easier to control. He also has a chip in the back of his neck that has been put there so that he can be basically switched off."

My breath caught in my throat and my stomach knotted itself inside-out at hearing this. He didn't deserve all that. Nobody does.

"How did he get his abilities?" I found myself questioning.

"When he was about ten, I think, he was put in an experimental program where they put kids of all the same age in a room full of radioactive spiders and only kids who had a certain type of DNA makeup would survive being bitten and he was the only survivor. Which is also why he needed drugs as well as the electroshock because he gained a crazy fast metabolism and was able to break out of the electroshock mindset."

I didn't know if I could keep listening anymore. It was sick and disgusting what they had done to not only Peter but how many other kids had felt this pain and endured this suffering?

"Do you know where the base is?" Steve asked.

He nodded.

"Can you take us there?"

He shook his head "if i go back they will kill anyone who they think helped me back in and my guess is that it will be the kid"

"Okay, well, that's fine. Just tell us where it is and we'll go." i said

So for the next two and a half hours we went over the location, the layout and what we would do once we got there and before we knew it I was warming up the quinjets engines while the rest of the team suited up.