Saving Grace

Fifty Four

Peter hides the piece of tech before going to bed, then puts it in his backpack the next morning, deciding to try to figure out what the heck it is in shop class; he'll have tools in there.

So, now, here he is, hitting the purple, glowing, metal-encased core with a hammer when Ned walks over, not paying any attention to what Peter's working on. Peter starts pulling apart the now-broken casing as Ned irritatedly says, "Hey, thanks for bailing on me."

"Yeah, well, something came up," Peter replies.

Ned looks down, forgetting his grievance. "Whoa, what is that?"

Peter continues to pull it apart, trying to get to the glowing center. "I don't know. Some guy tried to vaporize me with it."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"Awesome," Ned says. Peter gives him a look, and he corrects himself. "I mean, not awesome. Totally uncool of that guy. So scary."

Peter looks back down and starts trying to pry off the metal with a screwdriver. "I think it's a... a power source."

"Yeah, but it's connected to all these microprocessors." Ned points to something on the metal. "That's an inductive charging plate. That's what I use to charge my toothbrush."

"Whoever's making these weapons is obviously combining alien tech with ours," Peter replies.

"That is literally the coolest sentence anyone has ever said. I just want to thank you for letting me be a part of your journey into this amazing-"

Then, Peter practically slams the hammer down on the core, finally getting it to pop out of the metal. The loud noise causes him and Ned to turn to their teacher nervously. But Mr. Hapgood is reading a book and not paying attention. "Keep your fingers clear of the blades," he says.

Peter and Ned turn back around. "I gotta figure out what this thing is and who makes it," Peter says.

"We'll go to the lab after class and run some tests," Ned replies.

"Let's do it."

Still looking at the core, they do their secret handshake.

~~~~

After class is lunch, so they take the glowy thingy in Peter's backpack and start heading down the empty halls to the lab.

"First, I say we put the glowy thingy in the mass spectrometer," Ned says.

"First, we gotta come up with a better name than 'glowy thingy,'" Peter replies.

"You're right."

Peter is about to say something else when he spots two men at the end of the hall — one of whom he remembers from the night of Liz's party.

"Crap," he says, darting to hide behind a corner, made by a hall perpendicular to the one they'd been walking down.

Ned, meanwhile, just stands there, confused.

"Come on, come on, come on," Peter quickly urges.

Ned ungracefully shuffles over to hide with Peter, who takes a peak around the corner. Ned joins him as the men begin talking.

"High schools creep me out," the man who Peter remembers says. The both of them are walking down the hall, towards Peter and Ned. "They got this funny smell, you know?"

Peter and Ned duck back behind the wall. Peter looks at Ned. "That's one of the guys who tried to kill me."

Ned's eyes widen. "What?"