The Weight of Us ｡ Peter Parker [3]

15 - All Fall Down

Trouble always did seem to find me; she waited in the shadows with her hands combing dust from her shoulders and her mind ticking away with all the ways she could push somebody into chaos and watch the world burn. Trouble liked me; she must have, since she always came back to play. Maybe she liked to watch how despite everything, all the pain and the mind games, how I pulled through. Maybe she simply waited for the one time, when I was not resilient to her ways. Maybe tonight was that time. 

Hands circled tightly around my waist, the metal cold to touch. Peter Parker was pulling my body upwards, hurrying against the ticking clock. Above us the train carriage ceiling started to cave, a groaning noise sounding like alarm bells in the tunnels that lived and breathed under the city. Gwendolyn heaved her best friend's body weight against her side, her eyes filled to the brim with fear. She looked so tiny attempting to carry Colton Parsons by herself. 

"What's the plan?" My voice sounded strange; frozen with too many emotions. My eyes were glued to the different brother who had spoken my name like I was his own flesh and blood. Currently, his limbs were too heavy to stand and his mind would have been clouded from the lack of water and sunlight. He looked drained. 

Peter's hand went to his ear, listening to Karen. "We've got about four minutes before this carriage kills us all. We've gotta' move." 

Gwendolyn stared up to the ceiling, watching the metal inch towards our heads. From the broken window pane, a swish of a giant green scaled tail swung into view. A choked gasp stilled on my tongue. "This was a recuse mission," she said, "We didn't plan for Connors."

"He wants us," Colton jerked his chin upwards, trying to be stronger than his body allowed him to be right now. He steadied himself against Gwendolyn. "You both should go. We'll kill some time to allow you both to get out of these tunnels. Then, I'll flood the place."

Peter frowned. "Flood the place? How?"

A smirk, so familiar, but so different, pulled at Colton's lips. He may have been drained, his life dangling between the darkness of sleep and the light of the sun above, but something hidden inside his bones and blood flared. He shoved out his hand in midair, palm faced downwards, and suddenly, water from the river below the carriage, started to slip up through the cracks. Water pooled around our feet within seconds.

"You've got powers," I noted quietly, my heart thumping against my ribcage. 

Colton gave an effortless shrug. "My parents, well, our parents, played with something they probably should not have years ago. Science is a tricky thing, and I kind of got stuck in the middle of it all." He paused, eyes searching my face. "Wait, do you have powers, too?"

"Yeah," I breathed out, trying to picture the events of my life turned on its head. Colton Parsons had lived with the death of his sister, guilt eating him alive. He had been caught up in a dream of enhanced DNA by his own parents and turned into an experiment. Water manipulation was his own secret ability. However, through all the struggles, he did not have a Peter Parker to balance him. He had nobody. "Visions. Not as cool as your ability, though."

Colton continued to smile, teeth on display. He had not smiled like this in such a long time. "Hey, you got a pretty cool suit, I don't have that." He leaned forward, a palm on the nitinol. "Is it heavy? Does it have an interface? What about a cooling system? You know, a part from my work at A.R.M.O.R., I like to tinker a little bit with superhero suits—" 

A thunderstorm of a roar made the train carriage shake. Gwendolyn Poole heaved out a long sigh. "This is all very touching," She waved her hands around crazily. "But let's do family catchup later. Spider-Boy, Oracle, move it."