First Cause • Spider-Man: Homecoming [Unedited]

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At regular intervals, when the sweat from running gathering on her forehead and pooling above her eyebrows drips into her vision, obscuring it, Gadea presses her back to the wall of whatever hallway she sprints down and takes off her helmet to wipe at her face with the sleeve of her jumpsuit.

At regular intervals, she has the luxury of doing something so daring without worrying about being caught, because if that Retrieval and Obedience ship reminded her of a graveyard, the entire south-west wing of the Black Ash is limbo. Purgatory.The halls are twisting and curving where the rest of the ship is all angles and sharp corners, and they are continuously lifeless. Echoes of snippets of conversations come through here and there, but every time Gadea winds around a curb, it's always empty. Eerie.

Her guard remains firmly in place. Her gun retains its position lying against her chest and her arms, the scope raised to her helmet, forever ready to take aim at every phantom voice or faraway reverberations of footsteps going away from her.

At regular intervals, she comes across doors like the one she faced on the Slingshot ship, barring her from entering the cockpit. Big and grey with a parting in the middle. Instead of blasting the thing all the way to the edge of the universe though, she uses Piscapan's timekeeper to project the image of a pixelated barcode onto the receiving pad. Every time, it works, and she slides through unrestricted. Every time, the overhead camera is conveniently looking in the opposite direction.

Running through the halls is tedious, frightening and sweaty work, but it's work Gadea finds she's excited to be doing. If not excited, dignified to an extent.

Making the decision to go after Anathem as vigorously as she intends to go after Umbra gives her a jump in her step, urging her to forgo that little rest, push the complaints from her aching muscles under the water until lungs fill with the fluid and they stop kicking. To keep going.

It's that forward propulsion. That she's finally doing it, or at least she's on her way to finally doing it. And it might be unpleasant and morally despicable and the ghost of her deceased sister may think it isn't a good call and doing it may result in the alienation of the small handful of people on a little blue planet that have managed to make an impression on her, but.

But.

"But." Gadea huffs, slowing her sprint so she can round a corner more effectively. But.

It needs to be done. She needs to be really, truly free. No one else is going to do it.

This is for the greater good. This is her one last good thing. Her one last good thing.

It needs to be done.

Gadea carries this sentiment all the way to the entrance of the secondary deck, a non-descript looking set of doors, the only set of doors really, on a long and straight metal-paved hall. Cameras, nearly half a dozen of them, litter the ceiling of the hall, and the red blinking light usually installed into them to indicate they are on and currently operating is nowhere to be seen.