Chapter Text
- OSCORP – SUBSTRUCTURE CONTROL NODE – HACKING TEAM -
The room was colder than the tunnels.
Tucked beneath Sector B, it was buried behind a locked hatch and three layers of forgotten clearance codes. Sam had cut through two. Peter took care of the third with a quick web-loop over the final relay.
They slipped inside. Bucky stayed by the door.
The room pulsed with light—screens flickering, data streaming from floor to ceiling. Surveillance feeds. Motion trackers. Sector overlays.
It was Oscorp’s eyes.
Peter slid into the main console, fingers already flying. “Okay. Disabling looped feeds first. Then internal sensors. Then blackout.”
“Quietly,” Bucky reminded him.
Peter glanced back. “Subtle as I can.”
Sam stood over a side monitor, watching the floor layouts scroll. “Melina gave us a fifteen-minute window. After that, people start noticing the cameras aren’t glitching—they’re gone.”
Peter cracked into the root node.
The feeds shifted—looped, scrambled, staggered. Corridors went black. Elevators froze in place. A loading hallway flickered with false silence.
Then—
One screen held.
Uncorrupted. Real-time.
Peter paused.
It showed Sublevel West.
A transport unit. Two guards. A gurney.
MJ.
And Gwen.
Peter leaned in, breath catching.
And just as the image began to distort, something moved past the far edge of the frame—just a blur of color.
But unmistakable.
Auburn hair.
Not MJ.
Not Gwen.
Gone in a blink.
Then—static.
Peter froze.
“Rewind that,” Bucky said, stepping in.
Peter tried—but the footage corrupted instantly, eaten by the blackout sweep.
Sam frowned. “That door behind them…”
He pointed to the half-seen panel in the frame. Heavy. Curved. Faded yellow paint around the rim.
“That’s not part of this facility.”
Peter stared at it. “It looks like—”
“Transit access,” Bucky said quietly. “Old line. Pre-war maybe. Probably sealed off.”
“Or not,” Sam said.
Peter’s voice was tight. “If they’re moving them… they’re taking them somewhere no one’s supposed to know exists.”
A beat.
Then Peter grabbed his gear.
“Then we follow.”
——
- OSCORP – EXECUTIVE SERVER CORRIDOR – SAME TIME -
The hallway hummed like a heartbeat.
Rows of reinforced doors stretched into the distance, each one coded, numbered, and unnervingly silent. The lights above them buzzed faintly, always two seconds too slow to respond.
Norman walked with his hands behind his back, surveying the world he once ruled like a man revisiting a painting he no longer recognized.
Otto tapped at a wall-mounted tablet, his fingers moving fast, eyes narrowed.
“Your surveillance matrix isn’t just corrupted,” he muttered. “It’s been rerouted.”
“Rerouted where?”
“That’s the thing,” Otto said, flicking between data streams. “Nowhere on file.”
He handed the screen to Norman.
One sector was missing. Not offline—gone. Like it had never been there.
Norman stared at it. “That shouldn’t be possible.”
“Which means someone built it to be impossible.”
He turned back toward the corridor.
That’s when he noticed the walls—they didn’t follow the architectural pattern. The spacing was off. There was too much blank space between panels, too many power lines vanishing into the floor where nothing should need them.
Otto stepped closer to a sealed bulkhead.
“No access pad. No signage. And this?” He rapped the metal with his knuckle. “Reinforced. Not decorative.”
Norman tilted his head.
There was a sound behind it.
A faint clang. Like metal shifting on metal. Then silence.
His voice dropped.
“How deep does this building go?”
Otto looked at him.
“I think we’re standing above the part of Oscorp no one was meant to see.”
—-
- OSCORP – CELLBLOCK SUBLEVEL – MOMENTS LATER -
The door hissed open.
Peter 3 stepped in first, shoulders tense. He scanned the room—eyes darting from corner to corner, mask pulled back just enough to see the pain in his face.
Peter 2 followed, holding a device Melina had handed him—Oscorp’s old access scanner, rigged to track biometric residue.
The hall was long. Empty.
Six cells. Steel doors.
Silence.
Peter 3 moved to the first door and peered inside.
Nothing.
The second—nothing again.
Peter 2 checked the scanner. “There was movement here. Recent. Two people.”
Peter 3 opened the third cell.
Gwens sweater was still on the cot. Folded. Too neat.
Like someone had been forced to leave it behind.
He picked it up slowly.
Then clenched it in his fist.
“She was here,” he said.
Peter 2 opened the fourth cell. MJ name was scratched faintly into the corner of the wall.
“She was too.”
They looked at each other.
Too late.
Peter 2 stepped into the hallway. “If they’re not here, they’re being moved. We need to find the access logs.”
Peter 3 didn’t move.
He looked at the empty bed again. Sweater in hand.
Then whispered, “I was supposed to be faster this time.”
Peter 2 paused. Then turned back, walking towards him, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder, saying softly
“We still can be.”
- OSCORP – MAINTENANCE NODE – SECURE COMMS – MOMENTS LATER -
The secure channel crackled to life.
Peter 2’s voice cut through first—clipped, breathless.
PETER 2 (COMMS):
“We’ve made it to the cells. But the girls are gone.”
A beat.
Then Sam’s voice came in, sharper.
SAM (COMMS):
“We know. We saw footage. One hallway cam got corrupted during the blackout. But just before… we saw them. They’re being moved.”
Bucky leaned in toward the comm unit in the control node.
BUCKY (COMMS):
“And our snow leopard is with them. Moving past a sealed door. Looked like an old transit access.”
Static. Then Otto’s voice joined—cool, observant.
OTTO (COMMS):
“That door doesn’t belong to Oscorp’s original plans.”
NORMAN 2 (COMMS):
“It’s the line. The one they buried decades ago. Private transport—untraceable. It may connect to the Jersey facility I’m supposed to be at today.”
Everyone froze.
PETER 1 (COMMS):
“We have to follow them. If not…”
MELINA (COMMS):
“They’re trying to vanish them.”
Yelena’s voice cut in, sharp.
BUCKY (COMMS):
“Exactly. We follow.”
YELENA (COMMS):
“I’ll send the signal.”
⸻
- NEW YORK STREET – PARKED AROUND THE BLOCK – NIGHT -
Inside the getaway sled, Alexei’s comm unit lit up.
He glanced down. A coded light pulsed red-blue-red.
He cracked his knuckles.
ALEXEI (COMMS):
“Going to Jersey.”
He started the engine
——
- OSCORP – CELLBLOCK SUBLEVEL – MOMENTS LATER -
The door hissed open, and the cold, sterile air of the sublevel swept in.
Harry stepped in quietly, his footsteps deliberate, but slow. He kept his distance from the girls, trailing behind them like a shadow. The guards didn’t notice; they didn’t need to.
His suit clung too tightly to him, but he didn’t adjust it. Didn’t feel the need to. There was a weight to it that had nothing to do with the fabric—nothing to do with the role it forced him into.
Gwen felt his presence before she saw him. His absence from their side, the coldness that had replaced whatever warmth had once been there. He moved silently behind them, a reflection of what they used to know, but… somehow lost.
“How nice of you to join us, Miss Osborn,” a Hydra agent sneered.
Harry didn’t flinch. Didn’t react.
“I was called to help with this,” he replied flatly, his voice cold and empty, but with an edge of frustration buried deep. “Not to be mocked.”
The agent sneered again but said nothing. He gestured to the door, signaling the move forward.
“Move it, girls.”
The shackles around Gwen’s and MJ’s wrists didn’t offer them much comfort. They walked ahead, but Gwen’s eyes flicked back, catching the faintest glimpse of Harry behind them, silent, following with an eerie precision. She couldn’t decide whether it made her feel safer or more unnerved.
Harry kept his gaze ahead, footsteps never faltering. He didn’t look at them. Not once. Not even when Gwen’s eyes burned with something far too familiar.
She wanted to call out to him, scream, ask him what the hell was happening to him. But there was no point. The cold distance between them stretched further with every step he took.
Gwen’s grip on MJ tightened, her fingers aching with the need to say something, anything. But she stayed quiet. She had no words left for Harry, not if he wouldn’t hear them.
They reached the heavy door, the old metal creaking as it swung open.
Gwen and MJ passed through without a word.
And then, Harry.
He was the last one to slip through the doorway, his form momentarily lit by the flickering light. His auburn hair caught the dim glow, but his face remained unreadable as he stepped through the door into the unknown.
In that moment, the flicker of his hair—barely visible on the security feed—was the last thing Peter 1 and Sam saw.
The door closed behind him with a hiss.
And for a moment, there was only silence.
—-
- OSCORP – SUBTERRANEAN TRANSIT TUNNEL – NIGHT -
The air shifted as they stepped through the threshold.
It was colder down here. Older. The sterile hum of Oscorp’s polished upper corridors was gone, replaced by the low, mechanical exhale of ventilation units that hadn’t been updated in decades. The concrete beneath their feet was damp, and the rails along the center of the tunnel were lined with rust and shadows.
Gwen and MJ were at the front of the group, wrists unbound now but no freer than before. Two Hydra agents followed closely behind, another just ahead of them, silent but watchful. No words. No explanations.
Just motion.
Behind them, several paces back, Harry walked alone.
He didn’t speak. Didn’t look at them. His footsteps echoed with precision—unbroken rhythm, like a metronome set by someone else’s hand.
MJ glanced at Gwen, her shoulder brushing hers as they walked side by side. Gwen’s grip had gone rigid again. Tense. Every line of her posture wound tight as piano wire.
She didn’t look at MJ. Her eyes were fixed on Harry.
Watching him.
Waiting.
He never turned his head.
Not once.
“He’s not even pretending anymore,” Gwen said, her voice low, sharp like a whispered blade.
MJ blinked, followed her gaze.
Harry’s face was unreadable—eyes locked forward, jaw set, suit pristine. There was no trace of the boy they’d known. Not even a flicker.
“We don’t know the whole picture,” MJ said softly, hesitant.
“Don’t we?” Gwen snapped, not looking at her. “Because that looks like someone who’s made peace with it.”
She turned away before her voice could crack.
Ahead, the tunnel curved downward, disappearing into shadow. The lights grew dimmer the further they walked, until it felt like the air itself was pressing in, heavy and unsympathetic.
Harry didn’t change pace.
He hadn’t looked at them.
Not once.
Gwen bit down on whatever she wanted to say. Because if she said it, and he still didn’t look at her—if he heard her voice and did nothing—then that would break something inside her she wasn’t ready to name.
So she stayed quiet.
So did he.
The group disappeared into the dark.
And whatever was waiting below… was closer now.