Home isn't just a place

Chapter Seventeen

"The Avengers can't help with Hydra's interference, yes," Fury said. Tony scoffed, opening his mouth to yell at the man for calling him away from his son for no reason when Fury continued. "But the Avengers can help with the New Experiment."

"The what?" Clint asked.

"Our intel picked up a secret transmission from a Hydra base in Australia." Fury said. "We decoded it and found out that there is a new experiment. Your mission is to go to Australia, destroy the base, and recover the experiment."

"What kind of experiment?" Natasha asked, picking up the folder with the mission report in it. "Why is it important?"

"The experiment is called 'The White Spider'," Fury said. "Otherwise known as, Experiment 2177."

At this, everyone in the room froze. Tony felt his insides clench because he knew exactly what Fury was saying. Hydra started another experiment. A new subject.

A new Peter.

"When do we leave?" Steve asked, standing up.

"Now." Steve nodded, and the team stood, moving towards the door. Tony stayed rooted to the chair. Fury raised an eyebrow at him. "Stark?"

"I'm not going." he said. The team stopped.

"Excuse me?" Fury demanded, uncrossing his arms and moving them so that they rested at his hips.

"I'm not going." Tony said again. "I need to stay here. With my family."

"You need to go on this mission---"

"Let him stay." Steve said, nodding at Tony. Tony sent him a thankful glance. "We can do this one without him. Let him stay with Peter."

Fury gave him one last look before sighing loudly and pinching the bridge of his nose. "Fine. Whatever. Just get it done."

Steve nodded.

"Will do, sir."

_________________________________________________

"This is fucking creepy." Clint whispered into the comms. "There's no one here."

"Clint. Focus." Steve said, silencing the archer. But it didn't matter. Clint was only voicing what everyone was thinking.

When they arrived in Australia, the base was completely empty. There was nothing and no one around. They entered together, the team splitting up to scope out the base, only to find nothing. The base appeared to be deserted.

"They knew we were coming." Natasha said, looking at the burnt file room. It looked like they had taken a flamethrower to every important room, destroying all the evidence and information that they were looking for.

"How?" Clint asked.

"I don't know." Natasha said, toeing through the ashes to see if anything survived.

"I'm not finding any evidence of someone living here." Steve said. "It looks like this place was used to hold weapons."

"Any weapons left, Cap?" Clint asked.

Steve shook his head. "No. Nothing." he said, closing the door to another empty gun cabinet. "It looks like they cleaned the house."

"For us? They shouldn't have. We don't care about the mess," Clint said with a shit-eating grin. "They should see the tower."

"What would an experiment be doing here?" Steve asked. "This is a weapons facility. Not a..."

"Cap, they consider successful experiments as weapons." Natasha said. A grim silence followed.

Steve stared at the cabinet doors for a second, fighting a wave of revulsion. Hydra seemed to get more and more inhumane every day. "Do you think it's a person?" Steve asked.

"Probably."

"Do you think they're, ah, willing participants?"

"Probably not."

Steve grimaced. "Do you think they're like Peter?"

"What do you mean?" Clint asked.

"Like, they were kidnapped from a home?" Steve clarified. "What if they're just a kid? With a home?"

"Steve..." Natasha said slowly.

"We would be able to get them back home, right?" Steve asked.

"It's not that simple." Natasha said. "Peter... Peter was different because he escaped. All the conditioning and trauma wore off in the repressed memories. When it started coming back, we already knew who he was and who his family is and we were able to get him help."

"So why can't we do the same here?" Steve asked.

"We don't know how long they've been here," Natasha said. "How deep the conditioning goes. If it's anything like Peter..."

"We're going to do what we can for the experiment." Clint said. "But I wouldn't get your hopes up. It'll probably be messy."

Steve sighed. "I know." he turned away from the cabinet. "Natasha, anything survive the fire?"

Natasha bent down, brushing through the ashes and soot and overturned furniture. "It doesn't look like it..." she said with a sigh. "They cleaned up pretty well---"

She stopped as her finger brushed the edge of a folder. "Wait, I've got something." she said, lifting up the folder.

"What is it?" Steve asked.

Natasha eyes the folder. It was tattered and torn and a part of the end was burnt from Hydra's attempt to get rid of it but it was otherwise intact. In bright red lettering lay the ominous words Experiment 2176--Dr. Zemo.

She sucked in a harsh breath. "Something bad." she said. "Or good, depending on the way you look at it."