Spider-Man: Unmasked

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Peter woke up with a groan. His hand went to his head as he used his other one to sit himself up. He looked around tiredly, trying to piece together what had happened.

He was on the floor, in front of what looked like a cell with some boxes inside. In front of him was a ginormous room. There were robots flying around, and what looked like even more robots being made. But closest to him, was Ultron himself, working on something. What it was, Peter couldn't tell.

Peter gasped and backed up, hitting his head on a metal bar from the opened cell door. He rubbed the back of his head, wincing.

"I wasn't sure you'd wake up," Ultron's voice rang, not looking up from what he was working on. "I hoped you would. I wanted to show you."

Ultron finally looked up at Peter, who was shaking a little. He felt powerless. He noticed that his web cartridges were gone.

"I don't have anyone else," Ultron continued, glancing back down at his work.

Peter sat himself up a little more. "And you wonder why, huh?" Peter spat. "Maybe because you're trying to destroy humanity."

"I'm not destroying it," Ultron said coolly. "I'm helping it. I'm allowing it to evolve." Peter just rolled his eyes and slumped against the cell doors behind him.

"I think a lot about meteors," he went on, almost ignoring Peter. "The purity in them." He looked sharply up. "Boom! The end. Start again. The world made clean for the new man to rebuild."

Ultron looked at Peter. "I was meant to be new." He looked back up. "I was meant to be beautiful. The world would have looked up to the sky and seen hope, seen mercy."

He shot a robot glare at Peter. "Instead they'll look up in horror. Because of you." He started marching Peter's way, causing him to back up a bit, nervous.

"You've wounded me. I give you full marks for that," Ultron said, stopping in front of Peter. "But like the man said, what doesn't kill me..."

Suddenly, a searing hot metal hand tore through Ultron's head, followed by another through the gut. Peter gasped and watched as Ultron's body fell, torn apart.

For a brief, brief moment, Peter thought it could be help. Had his dads found him somehow? But what he saw behind Ultron's collapsed body made him go slightly pale.

From behind the torn apart Ultron stepped a new, improved Ultron. What looked like Vibranium, the strongest metal on earth, seemed to go through him. He was bigger and by the looks of it stronger than before.

Peter backed up as quickly as he could, shocked and slightly afraid. He backed up right into the cell, now resting a little on one of the boxes.

"...Just makes me stronger." Ultron 2.0 closed the cell door, trapping Peter inside.

"Okay, Kelly," Peter muttered as Ultron walked away, leaving Peter in a cage, shaking and breathing heavily. He held onto the box and looked up at the ceiling, heart pounding.

Okay, Peter thought, I've just been kidnapped by Ultron, a murder bot that plans on killing me and my family. No big deal.

Peter looked around for a glimpse of sunlight but saw none.  The only light was from the building of robots in the giant room.

Where was he?

He knew he was far from the Avengers.  Ultron wouldn't be that close.  Other than that, Peter was completely lost.

"How am I supposed to let them know where I am when I don't even know where I am?"  He muttered.  "I don't know how to tell them anyway."

His eyes widened as he thought of how his dads had to be handling it. This had to be like Tony's terrible vision Wanda Maximoff had put in his head.

Guilt filled Peter. This was his fault. His dads' guilt, him getting kidnapped in the first place.

"At least Aunt Nat is safe," Peter murmured. That was the one good thing about this whole fiasco. He was glad Natasha wasn't in this situation. His dads, on the other hand, might not be so glad about that.

Think Peter, Peter thought. How are you going to get out of this mess? He looked around for anything that might help him, but he found nothing.

He had been stripped of anything that might help him. His web cartridges? Gone. His mask?  Gone.  At least he had his suit-

"Oh no, that evil robot son of a-"

He looked down at what he was wearing and groaned. He was wearing some too-big plaid shirt and some jeans that just barely fit.

Where the heck did Ultron get these? Peter thought, looking around for his suit. He let out a sigh of relief as he saw the Spider-Man suit on a nearby table. He couldn't reach it, it being on a table outside the cell, but at least he knew where it was so that way he could grab it on his way out.

If he could get out, that is.  Because honestly?  At the moment, he was doomed.  He was stuck in a killer robots' cage with no suit, no visible sunlight, and no way of telling anyone where he was.

He slumped against the bars and sighed.  "I'm sorry, Dad," he muttered.  "I'm sorry, Pops.  I failed you.  You wanted me to be better and I blew it.  I'm sorry."

He held back the tears that threatened to spill down his cheeks. He missed everyone. His dads, his 'aunts and uncles', Ned. Who knows if he'd get to see them again? He had no clue what Ultron was going to do with him.

He just closed his eyes and let sleep take over him, hoping that when he woke up, it all would have been some dream. The Maximoff twin never would've gotten into Tony's head, Ultron never would've been created, he never would have been kidnapped, and humanity wouldn't be in danger.

But Peter knew that when he woke up, nothing would have changed.