Picking Up The Pieces

56. Ready For It

  The leader of the Inhumans, despite dressing like a hobo, turned out to have an amazing apartment.

I sat on the scratched countertop in his kitchen with my legs crossed, digging into a can of vanilla frosting I had found in his pantry with a spoon. A metal chain had been latched around my ankle would jingle every so often against my jeans when I moved. Crude? Most definitely, but the only reason I didn't try to obliterate it was to maintain their trust. What little I had of it, anyway.

I smirked to myself as I heard the front door the apartment swing open, followed by a shocked sigh. "You didn't try to escape?"

"Where would I go, Wonder Boy?" I answered sarcastically, throwing my head back so I could take Peter Parker in upside down. He'd changed from his earlier clothes, now boring a red suit with white and black markings that had a spider emblem on his chest. With the better lighting, I could now see the dark bags under his eyes and the frizz from his dirty hair. "Dude, you need to take a serious nap." Peter scowled at me from my upside down view. "Just saying."

"Are you seriously eating frosting or are my eyes deceiving me?" he asked, ignoring my advice. I merely shrugged, knowing it was rhetorical. "You're disgusting."

"And you're not Inhuman," I shot back, rolling my eyes as I slinked off the counter. Parker had already turned away, but I could see his shoulder blades stiffen through his suit. "HYDRA doesn't know that, by the way."

"What.. what made you guess that I'm not Inhuman?" he stuttered, trying to play it off. I pursed my lips at him, tilting my head disapprovingly. "Because I am."

"Says the boy with webshooters attached to his wrists," I pointed out smugly. Parker glanced down at the devices, clenching his fists. "At first I thought to myself it was just to channel your powers, and then you stepped into that bar. I know what an Inhuman aura feels like, and you don't have it, which raises the question... what are you?"

"I don't have to explain anything to you," Parker said back quickly with an angry shake of his head before scoffing at himself. "Why didn't I just go with my gut and lock you up in the station?" I stayed quiet, knowing better than to snark again. There wasn't anything physically stopping him from going along with his original plan.

"You called it a prison camp," I said out loud, keeping my voice calm. The Inhuman camps were never referred to prisons back at HYDRA, and Wanda and Pietro had told me they were in place to readjust Inhumans so they could live in the world peacefully. "You said HYDRA and my siblings have murdered thousands of Inhumans."

"I really don't want to deal with your snaky brainwashing bull-"

"Is it true?" I asked him with narrowed eyes. I didn't know why I was suddenly questioning the truths I had been raised to believe. Something about Parker was making me feel weak, like everything I had known was a lie and he was the only one who knew what was real. "About Inhumans being murdered."