Like You'd Know How It Works

Chapter 5

With a circular motion of his hand, Strange opened another portal. Were they really expecting Peter to just come along into the wizard's lair? Peter was still on the opposite side of the room, a comfortable distance from Strange. He was avoiding Nebula's black stare. Those eyes alone could probably scare him into just going along with it.

"You and Lang need a place to work on the scanner. Somewhere we don't have to look over our shoulder all the time," she said.

"Yeah, I don't need to look over my shoulder when the backstabber's right in front of me." His hands shot up and massaged his temples. Memories from the spaceship and Titan clawed their way to the surface. Nope. Nope. Nope. The pressure of his fingers didn't help at all and he groaned in frustration.

A quick rush of adrenalin struck him and his eyes flew open just before Nebula's hand closed around his wrist and pulled his hands off his face.

"Stop that. Do you want to save your father or not?"

Of course, he did.

A few minutes later the four of them were gathered in a huge library-style room somewhere in the Sanctum. It definitely looked like a place out of this world, or at least out of this century. It was dark and almost entirely lit by candlelight. The heavy curtains probably wouldn't let in much light even on a sunny summer day. There were bookcases that went all the way up to the ceiling. One wall was equipped with ladders that gave access to a second level walkway lined with even more books. Peter was in awe of the place. Under any other circumstances, he could have lost himself flicking through all the knowledge gathered right in front of him. But now, only the quest was important.

He had the suit retract and detached one of the housing units. He placed it on the carpet between himself and Lang, then had Karen project his suit's underlying coding in front of them and started hacking the code. Lang and Nebula first stared at him and then went to exchange confused glances.

"What are you doing, Parker?" Nebula stepped closer to him and studied the code.

"I'm disabling some of the monitoring functions so FRIDAY can't track me down if they were to start looking for me."

Strange was busy at the other end of the room picking out a number of books from different places on the bookshelves. He spoke up and didn't even bother to turn and look at what Peter was doing.

"The Sanctum is protected. They wouldn't be able to find you here anyway."

Peter shook his head. "It's not just that. Karen monitors everything I do. Mr. Stark is recording everything I do when I'm in the suit and FRIDAY has access to all that. Video, audio, location, data files..."

Now Strange did turn to stare at him. "Are you telling me your suit has been broadcasting everything we have been discussing to Stark's AI meaning that Pepper Stark could access our entire strategy as soon as they start looking for you?"

Peter shrugged. "Well, yes and no. None of the data is automatically shared unless my vitals show that I'm in physical danger or extreme distress. She would still be able to access the files if she wanted to but she'd have to actively ask FRIDAY to download them. There's a loophole though. Karen doesn't record anything if I'm out of the suit, so I just need to copy that part of the code and implement it as a default command for all of her coding and lock FRIDAY out of all the files Karen has access to. Voila!"

He closed the file with a pleased smile on his face. Strange's eyebrows shot up.

"How do you even know that the command would work?"

"It's a deal Mr. Stark and I made. He gets—" Peter cleared his throat. "He got to supervise my movements when I'm in the suit, but when I'm just... just Peter Parker... he promised me privacy. So, I just picked out that part of the code."