Family is More Than Blood

The Mob

"Oh my god," May said. She was pacing the living room, hands clutching long strands of brown hair. "You're saying that the man who was entrusted with my son's safety is completely useless?"

"Happy is bedridden, yes," Tony said. He himself was fighting the urge to jump off the sofa and take a few shots at the wall of May's apartment but he had to maintain the appearance of calm. "He's not useless. It's not his fault someone got the jump on him."

Oh god, Peter, where are you?

"I put a tracker on his spider suit, that was dumped in a random alley. I've been trying to reactivate Karen, Peter's AI," Tony said, "That's when I got the call about Happy. His memory's been wiped. He has no recollection of yesterday's events."

"Well, lets go," May said, grabbing a small brown bag off the counter.

"Go?" Tony asked, momentarily confused, "You want to come with me?"

"I can't stand sitting around doing nothing while my baby is missing," May hissed. Tony understood more than he cared to admit.

Don't think about it. Don't think about Peter sitting alone, terrified, in his cell. Don't think about him waiting for you, only to be let down again. Don't think about the pain inside you right now, don't think about the fact that you want to cry, don't think about the cracked thing inside you that people call a heart.

It was getting harder not to think about anything relevant.

The pair arrived at Stark Towers in less than twenty minutes. Tony had decided to ignore a few traffic rules (all traffic rules). In his lab, Peter's suit was suspended right above his table.

"I've tried contacting Karen, boss," FRIDAY sounded over her speaker, "Nothing."

"May, you can sit down wherever," he gestured to the mess around him. "Fri, try running a scan on Karen's latest messages."

"One hit within the past twenty four hours," FRIDAY said immediately, "She sent out a distress call and a video recording. Unluckily for us, it can only be accessed by herself."

"Lucky for us, I created her," Tony said, his words not quite matching the intensity of his tone, "I can hack her in two minutes."

Tony brought up Karen's security code on the holoscreen in front of him. He tapped out a few lines of code and the screen whirred with commands, crashing through Karen's state of the art firewall. One and a half minutes later, Tony found the video and pressed play.

There was a bulky man and woman approaching the suit. Tony heard Peter's voice, asking for a negotiation. He nearly doubled over, feeling his heart breaking in half. That was his kid, forever kind and gentle. The attackers were not moved. The woman sent a punch at Peter's face which he ducked with no problem - straight into the man's arms. Faster than Tony had ever seen a normal human move, he plunged a needle into Peter's neck. No normal syringe would've been able to pierce through the suit, and no normal formula would've been able to take Peter out. Apparently this wasn't normal, because Peter slumped in his arms. The woman cast a glance towards Peter's fallen backpack, stripped him of the suit, and stuffed it in the pack, and zipped it up. The feed went black with lack of sunlight, and then it stopped.

"FRIDAY run face recognition on the assailants," Tony instructed, struggling to keep his voice even."

"Sir, they've both been identified as part of the Chicago Mob."

"I didn't even know Chicago had a mob," Tony muttered, which wasn't strictly true but kept his mind off more important things. Unfortunately, May was not wasting time with distractions.

"How the did the Chicago Mob know how to deal with Spider-Man?" She demanded, "How did they know Peter was Spider-Man? And what the hell do they want with my son?"

Tony hung his head with weariness, then lifted his head again, determination filling his eyes. He would find Peter Parker, no matter what it took.