Hanging by a Thread 🕷 Peter Parker

nine

Alexandra

When they reached Ned's apartment, Alexandra and Peter said hello to Mrs. Leeds and she offered them snacks. She was always offering them some sort of food to eat, which was always without fail delicious.

They followed Ned back to his bedroom, which was extremely messy. Alexandra wasn't sure what she had been expecting, he was a teenage boy, after all. Ned had several computer monitors set up at his desk and two keyboards. Ned sat down in front of the computers and spun around in his chair to face his friends.

"You are such a computer nerd," Alexandra said, looking at Ned.

"I'm his guy in the chair!" Ned exclaimed in protest. "I've gotta have three monitors in case Peter needs me to pull up multiple things while he's out in the field. Though, he doesn't usually ask me to do stuff... What exactly do you need help with?" He turned to Peter who, up until this point, had been watching his friends bicker with amusement.

"Oh, right." Peter walked over and bent over so he could look at Ned's computer monitors. "I need you to look up Dr. Otto Octavius."

"That's a weird name." Ned chuckled a bit as he typed the name into the search bar. "And also weird that you couldn't do it yourself. You know how to use the Internet, don't you?"

"You wanna be my guy in the chair or not?" Peter asked.

"All right, all right." Ned laughed.

A plethora of links appeared. Ned clicked on the first one, which happened to be a Wikipedia article. "Whoa, he's a nuclear physicist, atomic research consultant, inventor, and lecturer." He looked back at Peter. "What's so special about him? Other than the obvious genius aspect."

"Are there any recent news articles on him?" Peter asked.

Ned checked, and there were. "Oh, here we go." He clicked on one titled, Dr. Otto Octavius Experiment Gone Wrong. "Looks like he was trying to invent... wait a second—holy crap... is this that guy who tried to rob the bank the other night? The one with the mechanical arms?"

Peter nodded in response and Alexandra's eyes widened. "He's the guy you were fighting?" She asked. "As in, the guy with the giant metal arms who was throwing cars around and almost killed you?"

"He didn't—I was fine!" Peter said. "I have to find him and stop him before he seriously hurts somebody. I don't think he's actually himself right now, those arms are doing something to him; controlling him or—I dunno—something."

"That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?" Alexandra asked, standing up straight and folding her arms across her chest. "How could the arms...?" Her eyes widened in realization. "He... designed those things with artificial intelligence?"

"Yep," Peter replied, popping the p.

"Jesus Christ... you didn't do that, right?"

"Well, no, I mean—'cause technically Mr. Stark designed my suit," Peter said. "It uh, does have an A.I. installed though. Her name is Karen."

Both Ned and Alexandra paused, glancing away from the computer screen and up at Peter with equally confused looks on their faces. Peter stared straight ahead, pretending he didn't see their stares. In his defense, it was a good name! Especially for an artificial intelligence program—Spongebob references aside.

"Ooooooookay..." Ned trailed off.

"Mr. Stark designed your new suit, but didn't you design your first one?" Alexandra asked.

Peter nodded. "Yeah, I made my own web shooters and everything!" He sounded quite proud. He grabbed his backpack and dug around inside before pulling out two small, identical contraptions that Alexandra had never seen before. "I kept them! Just in case of an emergency."