Cracks in The Wall

Chapter Twenty-Seven

"How did you manage to convince her?" Tony inquired of Carol, the group of scientists having taken her aside, out of earshot of Fries. "Did she and Cap bond over being popsicles or something?"

Resisting the urge to roll her eyes at Tony's comment, Carol shook her head. "She didn't realize the effects the storms were having on the city. She's decided to help you stop them."

Tim narrowed his eyes in skepticism. "There's definitely more to this arrangement than you've mentioned. I may not know Nora Fries that intimately, but she doesn't seem like she'd do this entirely out of altruism. You've made some sort of deal with her."

"We have," Carol confirmed, "but that isn't the biggest concern right now."

"Carol's right, unfortunately," Peter remarked with a slight frown under his mask. "We don't really have the luxury of being choosy with our help," he reminded Tim.

Tim conceded their point with a sigh, nodding in reluctant agreement. "I just hope that whatever you've offered in exchange for this alliance doesn't come back to bite us, Captain."

Carol simply gave a short nod and moved on, making it clear that she wouldn't discuss the subject further. "Steve and I are heading back out. We'll call if we find any of our missing persons," she informed them as she went to exit the lab, shooting Nora a warning glare to behave before leaving.

With a low hum, the lab doors sealed behind Captain Marvel, leaving the room dead silent. As all eyes met one another, the tension in the air grew so thick that one might have felt they were drowning in it. Tony's lab was meant to fit at least a dozen people, but even with just the four of them, it suddenly felt stiflingly crowded.

Fries sighed dismissively. "If you are all done wasting time, I believe we have work to do," she remarked as she walked past them to look at their notes. "And if your current progress is any indicator, you clearly need my help."

The three heroes glanced at each other, all frowning as they simultaneously came to the silent conclusion that this would not be a pleasant working experience.

Ignoring their expressions, Fries quickly began writing down her own equations, as well as annotations about what was done incorrectly when compared to the work she had done initially.

"Hold on, this doesn't make sense," Red Robin argued, pointing to one of the boards she'd written on. "Your calculations work mathematically, but they look like derivative values of the variables we have already confirmed."

"Clearly we need to rework what you have, then. Compared to the formulas I had before, yours look very similar, but are different enough to make a difference. I know for certain that my formulas work. I'd assume human error is the issue here," Nora concluded, shaking her head at what she perceived to be incompetence.

"The only problem with that assumption is that we compiled most of the data using my A.I." Tony countered, sounding offended at the insinuation that they botched such an important project. "Even for the math we did manually, we checked it using FRIDAY, and it melded seamlessly. There's no reason we should be getting different results."

"Maybe you've recalled your equations incorrectly?" Spider-Man suggested. "We have copies of your notes, so maybe you could use that as reference. Though, we already incorporated them into our work, so I don't know why it isn't matching up."

Nora narrowed her eyes at the wall-crawler. "How did you get my notes?"

"You've been very busy, Mrs. Fries," Tony replied patronizingly, with a healthy dose of faux professionalism. "Though you should really know better than to leave your research lying around where people can find it."