[2020 Watty Award Winner!]
[BOOK 1 OF THE HAVOC SERIES]
❝you may be the best web-slinger
around, but you're terrible
at keeping secrets.❞
in which even though peter has a new,
high-tech suit, it doesn't stop a girl with
common sense from discove...
┌────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──────┐ chapter three THE CALM └────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──────┘
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THANKFULLY, GRAHAM ANSWERS HER Skype call fairly quickly. He's in his bedroom — school had ended about half an hour ago, so he must have just gotten home. She thanks every force above that he hadn't had band practice today.
"Where are you?" he demands almost the instant their call connects. "This whole spaceship thing's all over the news. We had a lockdown at school and then got dismissed early. You were all over television! Is Tony really missing? What the hell is going on?"
Lena lets him pause for breath before asking him, "Are those all of the questions you have?"
"Yeah, and I expect answers to all of them." Graham crosses his arms over his chest and tilts his head to the side in expectation. His undereye circles have practically vanished since his powers had first surfaced, so instead of looking sickly, he can glare at her with all of his might and look undoubtedly threatening while doing so.
She sighs and adjusts her weight on the bed. After meeting James Rhodes, he'd directed her to a spare bedroom beside Vision's old one and across from Wanda Maximoff. The walls are painted gray, the bedspread a rich red, and the rest of the furniture black. There's even a flat-screen television on top of a table near the far wall, though Lena is not really surprised. She'd just been grateful for the opportunity to change into her normal clothes and use someone's laptop to call Graham on Skype.
"I'm in the Avengers Compound. Yes, Tony's really missing. A huge, purple alien who's already slaughtered most of Asgard is coming to Earth in search of something called an Infinity Stone because he wants a collection of them on his fancy glove, and if he gets all of them, he'll be the most powerful being in the universe. Also, one of those stones is in Vision's head. Peter got beamed up into that spaceship along with a wizard with a necklace that we were supposed to save. Tony went up to get him and I haven't heard from him since."
After rattling all of that information off without a break, Lena exhales deeply and waits for her friend's response. He merely blinks his brown eyes at her a few times before burying his face in his hands. His short, black hair is the only thing his webcam picks up. And then, slowly, she realizes that his room is getting darker, and it's not just his webcam adjusting to the lighting coming in from his curtained window. Shadows leak out from the edges of his body. Gradually, his skin blends into the background until she can't discern where the darkness begins and his shoulders end.
Graham is still struggling with the side-effects that his new powers have brought. One of them is expelling darkness when he's faced with enough agitation. Usually, he can hide it fairly well, but in the safety of his own room, with only her to see...
