East of Eden | Peter Parker

「o. caught in a war」

PROLOGUE : WEEK FOURTEEN
A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE

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The boy in the spider suit is beyond baffled; somehow the masked assailant he's trying to take down is leaping out of the way of his webs just as quickly as he's able to shoot them out. "Okay, how the hell are you able to keep up with this?" he asks incredulously as she dodges yet another burst of the material that has already successfully trapped many others.

The girl stiffens abruptly at the sound of his voice, realization slamming into her like a familiar punch to the gut. She's distracted long enough to whisper his name softly under her breath in amazement, as if saying it out loud might make it easier to wrap her head around. That is her mistake.

She's so caught up in her own head that she lets her body stay still long enough for the last drone left in the air to take aim. The ground beneath her disappears as a storm of miniaturized missiles and bullets rain down from the sky. Her cries of surprise stick in her throat as she tumbles through the wind, but as she collides with the hard, unforgiving bottom of the shipping crate - the roof of which she's just fallen through - they're ripped from her mouth along with every last bit of air in her lungs.

Still stunned from the impact, she barely registers the gash running down her arm. It isn't until hot, red blood appears in her line of sight that she realizes the mutilated metal had cut through her skin like butter on the way down. She doesn't have time to dwell on any of her new injuries though. Something heavy rams into the side of the crate, shaking it hard enough to dislodge it from where it'd been placed as a decoy earlier.

The ground beneath her begins to slip, and the otherwise empty crate tips precariously. Her brain screams for her to get to her feet and race to the doors so she can leap from the falling container before it drags her down with it. She's vaguely aware of voices speaking in her earpiece, but it's impossible to make out the words. It's like hearing them from underwater. All she can focus on is struggling to the doors so she can escape and reorient herself.

Arms trembling, she pushes her aching, bruised body forward and pulls the doors open, flinging herself out in the nick of time, before the shipping crate crashes down to the deck below. Just as she begins to climb shakily to her feet, the same familiar voice from earlier shouting holy shit! startles her so much that she almost falls off the edge herself.

When she looks up to see what caused the outburst that unbalanced her, she has only enough time to curse loudly herself and start to duck before the hard metal body of a deactivated drone tumbling through the air slams into her shoulder and sends her flying off the containers and towards the ground.

Though her vision is starting to blur and turn black, she manages to stay alert long enough brace herself for the inevitable impact. The moment she feels her feet graze the deck, she curls her body into a tight ball and rolls out of the crash landing. While her actions mean that she doesn't break any bones in the fall, she still feels a sharp pain shoot up her leg right before the back of her head smacks into the double bulkheads.

As much as she wants to simply stay where she is, crumpled on the ground like a discarded piece of trash, there's still a fight raging on around her. Through half-open eyes she sees Mori surrounded by flames, along with a handful of her opponents, including the one darting through the air on webs. She isn't focused enough for her brain to be as surprised by the scene in front of her as it should've been, so while she groans and stumbles away from the action, she barely gives her comrade's fighting conditions a second thought.

"Montgomery, I'm down. Finish it without me. I'm sorry," she breathes out once her back is pressed against the small tower of boxes she's using for cover, and she's certain that the pain quickly spreading through her body will make it impossible for her to continue fighting. When she receives nothing but static buzzing in her ear, she pulls the mask off her face so she can rip out the broken piece of tech and toss it onto the ground in bitter disappointment.

As much as she hates knowing that she's failed to do the one job she'd been given, the agony filling her as she stifles continuous cries of pain makes certain that there isn't anything she can do to change her fate. The burning in her lungs and throat, coupled with the numbness that's staring to consumer her are all so eerily reminiscent of her painful induction, that all she wants to do is fade into the open arms of unconsciousness and forget it all. Everything is finally too much for her to take.

Just as she begins to let her eyes fall shut though, something large and out of control comes barreling past her. She yelps softly, ducks her head, and rolls out of the way. Once the air stills and she squints through the smoke to see what had fallen from the sky, her heart begins to pound painfully in her chest.

As soon as she sees that the boy in the red and blue suit isn't moving, every ounce of common sense drains from her body. She stifles a sob at the pain that shoots through her as she pushes herself to her feet, but doesn't stop moving until she has collapsed to her knees in front of the figure on the ground. 

She reaches out with trembling hands, her fingers ghosting over his shoulder as she prays to her mother's God that he's okay, even though there isn't the slightest chance in hell that he is. When he jumps at the contact and throws his hands up in self-defense, she wilts with heavy sigh of relief. 

He isn't dead.

The relief drains from her quickly though, as not a moment later, his panicked eyes land on her face and he freezes, every thought in his mind but one coming to an abrupt and screeching halt.

"Phia?"