Whatever It Takes

Chapter Seventeen

Peter awoke with his head throbbing and spinning. The van carried on to who knows where and hit a pothole, giving the multiple rickety cages inside a shake that nearly felt like an earthquake in his skull. Peter grasped his head in one hand and groaned, lifting himself to his feet with a small stumble and listened to Suit Lady reporting a mild concussion. He used a cage to steady himself as his sight adjusted to the dim florescent lighting, quickly remembering the night before. The van, the heist, the Vulture. Portal, head, lights out. He looked around, taking in the truck's contents, "where am I right now?"

"I'm not sure," Suit Lady confessed, almost perplexed as Peter peered into one of the cages, "the container walls are hindering my censors."

Peter spun around, starting to feel the situation buzz past his symptoms, "wait a minute," he balanced himself, "they must have hijacked the truck and taken me to their evil lair." As he thought before that the gas station was the evil lair, he silently hoped that this one was cooler. And not the warehouse Emma had searched up. His voice became quiet, "okay, Suit Lady, we're going to have to fight our way out of this one," Peter informed. He turned and started to ready himself like a cat about to pounce. Setting a firm heel on the ground, Peter counted down from three and darted towards the back doors of the cargo truck. To his luck, he busted through them and sent them flying of their hinges, but what he expected to be an evil lair from a comic book or maybe even the middle of nowhere in an open field revealed itself as just what his sister had found with a simple Google search: a well lit warehouse that Peter appeared to be alone in. He made a more successful barrel roll this time and readied to be attacked, but all was quiet. The echo of the clattering doors went on for a few seconds. More giant crates like the ones Peter found himself in lined the area and stacked on top of one another. Peter panted a few times, head flicking all around, "what is this place?" he gasped, "Suit Lady, where am I?"

"You're in the most secure facility on the eastern seaboard," Suit Lad reported, "the Damage Control Deep Storage Vault." Peter's hands flew to his head as anxiety and realization swelled in the boy's chest. "No! Seriously?"

Peter spent the next several minutes attempting to escape. He tried prying open the two concrete security doors with no luck, grunting and groaning until finally giving in at the method. "The door will most likely remain closed until morning," his AI told him while he gave the doors an annoyed kick. Exhasted and aching, Peter set up camp between to crates. He swung gently in a makeshift web hammock and tried not to agonize over what would come next. "Hey, Suit Lady? I feel kind of bad calling you "Suit Lady," you know?" Peter thought as he swung. He rested his hands behind his head, "I feel like we should probably give you a name." The boy thought for a second, landing on the first name he thought of, "Like... Liz. No, no, no!" Peter stopped himself quickly. The thought of giving his voice assistant the same name as his crush instantly left him feeling off. "God, that's... Really weird." Peter went back to thinking. He got down from his hammock and swayed by one arm from a thick web he stuck up above. "What about... Karen?" Peter let go and plopped to the floor. The AI agreed, sounding enthusiastic, "you can call me Karen, if you would like." Later peter ready a manual upside down, calling on his newly dubbed suit. "Hey, Karen, what else can my suit do?"

Now wearing his yellow jacket, Peter played with his web shooters, bringing up his Emma - dubbed bat signal on the concrete door and deciding on running the refresher course Karen had mentioned earlier. He ran through multiple kinds of webs. Ricochet webs that bounced off the door to a crate behind Peter after ducking. Splitter web which was the unsuccessful web Peter tried against Vulture earlier. Web grenade, which Peter made a point to announce the name of loudly, presented itself as a device the burst into a large, thick web that could easily engulf a few enemies. Soon, tested webs covered the walls. Some big, some small, some thick and some thin. Peter made a jump rope out of his web to pass time, only to soon after delve into a deep conversation with his AI. Peter laid on atop one of the crates, staring blankly into the ceiling and picturing his sun-kissed crush in his mind. "Should I tell Liz I'm Spider-Man?" he wondered aloud.