Veins and Wires // Peter Parker

Destruction and Realization

"So it's over?" Hill asked looking over at me in the passengers seat as I leaned on the car door for support.

"With the Elementals, yeah," I answered with a raw, tired voice. Nicholas forced me to let Hill drive me to the hotel so she could help me activate my plan and after five minutes of arguing, Peter refusing to leave my side and me not wanting to do anything Nicholas says, we had begrudgingly conceded.

"Question, how the hell did you manage to get palladium poisoning?"

"I-I don't have palladium poisoning, I just have the same symptoms of it. Father, the dumbass, didn-ah, didn't fix my system properly when I was dead so now I have a jacked up body that I have to fix," I hissed, wincing as I gently touched my chest but immediately stopped when it felt like I just stabbed myself. I lifted up my shirt to reveal my entire torso wrapped in dark blue vein-like lines making Hills eyes widen.

"How does not fixing it correctly do that?" She gestured in shock and horror.

"My body is rejecting the flawed system like how your human body rejects viruses except my body slowly kills me instead," I huffed as I tapped the emblem in the middle of my chest making the nanoparticles that enveloped my body retract into the housing unit. I ripped the shirt fabric that now sat on top of the unit and carefully started the process of removing the emblem from my chest.

"What the hell are doing?!" Hill demanded as I slowly twisted the metal compartment out of my chest, leaving my chest with a empty hole lined with metal as the compartment hung from it with only a line of wires connecting it.

"I need to start now or I'll die, Maria!" I said as I stuck my hand down the hole to disconnect the wires making Hill gag.

"I don't give a shit, not in my car!" She scolded, holding back vomit before gulping and cringing in her seat bitterly

"Are you serious right now?!"

"Very. I will not have synthetic pus on my seats!"

"You'll live!" I shot back as I very delicately tried to slid the nanoparticle unit out of my chest without the wires hitting the metal edges in the hole. Suddenly, Hill jerked the wheel to the right to make a sharp turn making my hand jolt and the wires to hit the walls of my chest. "For fucks sake, Hill!" I cried out as I was hit with pure agony, my body crying out as well to just kill me.

"Well you shouldn't be doing that in here! That was your own fault!" I gave her a look of complete bewilderment before turning back to the task at hand. Finally, I reached the end of the wires and a giddy laugh of relief escaped my laugh.

"Ha! I did it! I'm a goddamn genius! Now all I have to do is prep it for the backup and I install that while trying not to kill myself or dying by the corruption or it killing me," I boasted making Hill glance at me with confusion as I shoved my arm up to my elbow in my body to work on my rotten system.

"It killing you? What do you mean kill you?" She demanded incredulously as I busily worked on the inside metal so the backup unit could attach to me.

"Well I don't actually know if it will actually work..." I trailed off awkwardly making her eyes widen as I fiddled with my body.

"You don't know? How the fuck do you not know? You're entire thing is that you know shit," Hill demanded, gobsmacked that I hadn't actually thought this fully through.

"There's like a 50/50 shot that I either die an agonizing death from it overpowering my weak-ass body or I become even more badass and strong," I muttered, embarrassed as I continued to work on my chest.

"You are absolutely astounding sometimes," Hill shook her head at me before turning to focus on road as we sped closer to the hotel.

"I know," I grinned before cringing again at another shot of pain that shot up my spine. "Gods, that hurts like a bitch," I hissed under my breath and forced myself to keep working until we finally arrived back at the hotel.