The sensor doors on the ground floor of Stark Tower had long since shattered into nothing.
Veyric crunched across a carpet of broken glass and looked up, scanning the lobby. Dried black blood and smashed display cases everywhere, but the LED strips along the corridor edges still glowed their cold, tech-sleek white.
His gaze swept the team as he cinched the straps on his tactical pack. "In and out. Everyone grab what they need."
He turned to Spider-Man. "Peter, the lobby and perimeter are yours. Watch the surrounding blocks. Anything moves, you call it in on comms immediately."
"On it!"
A flick of the wrist, a line of web, and Peter swung upward, launching himself toward a high vantage point on the tower's exterior.
Colossus headed straight for the underground garage to find transport. Falcon spread his wings and shot toward the upper R&D floors to scavenge drone equipment.
Blade tugged the hem of his coat straight and dropped a single cold line: "I'll check the armory."
He slid his sunglasses on and walked toward the weapons development level alongside Hawkeye, who was hunting for his specialty arrows.
Veyric stared at the labyrinth of directional signs in the lobby, gave up on navigating within three seconds, and turned to the redheaded agent beside him with zero shame.
"Hey, mind playing tour guide? I can't even find the server room in this place."
Natasha gave a slight nod.
"Follow me."
As a founding member of the Avengers, her clearance in this building ran deep. She walked straight to a private elevator at the far end, pressed her finger to the biometric panel, and held it there.
A soft chime. The doors slid apart.
They rode all the way to the core level. The ride ended at a blast-resistant alloy door outside Tony Stark's private data center.
"Rooms at this classification level are above standard clearance. Tony didn't even let us into the server room." She produced a compact decoder and pressed it against the physical access panel. "Give me a minute."
Less than sixty seconds of work. A crisp click, and the alloy door retracted into the walls.
"Top-tier spy for a reason," Veyric said.
Cold air poured out. The low hum of running servers filled the empty space.
Rows of transparent data storage cells lined the center of the room, neat and clinical.
Veyric walked up and started searching through them. Each cell had a sticky note on it, dates and shorthand scrawled in Tony Stark's own handwriting.
"D-45, Mark armor backup protocols..."
"D-89, clean energy calculation drafts..."
He stopped, turned to Natasha.
"When did the zombie virus fully break out?"
Something dimmed in her eyes for a fraction of a second before she answered, precise as a timestamp from a date that belonged in hell.
"May twelfth."
He nodded, traced the May entries forward, and found what he was looking for tucked in an obscure corner.
The sticky note read one line: "Jarvis: May 9."
He hit the eject button and pulled out a physical hard drive, dozens of centimeters long.
"Hard to believe." He turned the heavy slab of metal over in his hands. "Something this size holds the smartest artificial intelligence on the planet."
From a parts cabinet nearby, he retrieved a specialized anti-static, shock-resistant case, sealed the drive inside it, and nestled it into the deepest layer of his tactical pack with care.
That done, he dusted his palms off and looked at Natasha. "Primary objective secured. Let's do some shopping on the way back."
Over the next half hour, they swept through several key labs.
Veyric found a cache of high-density Stark portable arc batteries and packed them away.
"These guarantee the bunker's backup power supply. One less thing to worry about."
Natasha pulled several sealed silver canisters from a temperature-controlled cabinet.
"Unformed nanomaterials. Let's bring these back for Beast. Hank's always had a thing for this stuff."
Passing through the upper residential floors, Veyric made a detour into an absurdly lavish private dining room.
The oversized refrigeration unit was still humming with power. He pulled open the door and found rows of beautifully packaged premium handmade chocolates, dozens of boxes stacked with precision.
He didn't bother reaching for his pack. He tapped his own chest.
"Venom. Feeding time."
Before the words finished leaving his mouth, the symbiote engulfed his right arm and reshaped into a gaping maw.
Venom let out an ecstatic shriek, lunged at the fridge, and in three ravenous gulps swallowed a dozen boxes of chocolate whole, fancy wrapping paper and all. Didn't even bother chewing.
A thunderous belch echoed through the dining room.
Venom retreated into Veyric's body, radiating pure contentment.
[Ding!]
[Satisfaction from large chocolate consumption detected from Venom]
[Venom Affinity +10. Current: 120]
An hour later, everyone converged in the underground garage as planned.
The garage blazed with light. Colossus was hauling tons of specialty steel and construction materials into the heavy cargo truck like he was stacking bricks, tossing each load in with terrifying efficiency. Two full bays were already packed.
The others had done equally well.
Blade had two bandoliers of high-explosive grenades slung across his body, a comically oversized automatic grenade launcher in one hand, and two single-operator rocket tubes strapped to his back. His expression behind the sunglasses hadn't changed one fraction, but the sheer volume of ordnance on his person made his satisfaction obvious.
A rush of wind from above. Falcon descended through the atrium carrying two silver mechanical transport cases, wings folding as he touched down.
He set them at Veyric's feet and tapped the lids.
"Latest-model military recon drones. Hook them up to J.A.R.V.I.S.'s system and we can surveil every inch of New York."
Hawkeye emerged from the stairwell next. His quiver bulged with specialty arrows, and he carried a heavy tactical case in one hand.
But he didn't join the loading effort. Instead, he drifted to a shadowed corner of the garage wall.
Head down, brow knotted, eyes locked on some small device in his palm.
Veyric paused what he was doing, grabbed an unopened bottle of water from a nearby supply crate, and wandered over. Casual. He held the bottle out.
"You look rough. Thirsty?"
Clint's hand flinched. He shoved the device into his pocket before taking the water.
"A little, yeah. Thanks."
Veyric watched him take a few sparse sips and let it go. No follow-up questions.
As everyone prepared to load up, Falcon's voice cut through the garage.
"Hey, guys! When I was grabbing the drones upstairs, I spotted something on the rooftop lawn pad. A Quinjet, fully intact! Anyone feel like flying it home?"
Natasha's head turned. Her eyes lit up, and her gaze landed squarely on Veyric.
One eyebrow arched, a hint of mischief behind it. "Captain, care to experience S.H.I.E.L.D.'s ride of choice?"
Veyric grinned.
"Peter, Colossus, you two take the truck. Retrace our route back to base." He made the call without hesitation.
A Quinjet, the kind of thing he'd only ever seen in movies. No chance he was passing this up.
Minutes later, on the rooftop landing pad.
The engines screamed to life. Blue fire hammered from the Quinjet's ventral thrusters, and the massive airframe surged skyward with brutal force.
The sudden force slammed Veyric into his seat, and the ruined cityscape shrinking at terrifying speed outside the viewport reminded him of something he'd conveniently forgotten.
He was afraid of heights.
This was ten thousand times worse than when Spider-Man had swung him over New York on a web-line.
"Jesus, is this thing a plane or a rocket..."
He sucked in a sharp breath, both hands white-knuckling the harness straps, veins standing out on the backs of his hands.
From the pilot's seat, Natasha caught every bit of it.
She hadn't expected that. The captain who stayed ice-cold in combat, rattled by altitude.
She said nothing. Her hand eased the control stick forward, and the jet's speed dropped a notch, smooth and subtle.
Veyric, scalp tingling and teeth clenched, was in no state to notice anyone else's adjustments.
His eyes were squeezed shut, and only one thought burned through his mind with absolute clarity:
Until he unlocked Falcon's Paratrooper Elite talent, he was not swinging between skyscrapers as Spider-Man. Not if the system gifted him Web-Shooting on a silver platter.
Absolutely not.
---
A/n - Sorry for the inconsistency last week ;-; I got a bit caught up with my other JJK fic. But starting this week, I'll be consistent again.
The remaining bonus chapters from last week will be uploaded in a few hours. For this week, let's go with 200 PS per bonus chapter :)