"Nat, you almost out of there?" Clint's voice whispered in her ear, jolting Natasha to action. His voice echoed strangely, meaning he was still in the vents and they hadn't started attacking yet. She still had some time, but not much. 

"Almost," she hissed back, crouching to make eye-contact with the hunched form under the bed in the corner. They had gotten little to no intel due to the urgency of the mission, but no one would be prepared for this. 

"Hello," Natasha inched forward, but was met by another whimper. "Please, I'm sorry please-please just... please just leave me... leave me alone." A strangled voice begged in between tears. It made everything in Natasha bristle, she just wanted to take this sorry lump of a human somewhere safe and dry their tears. She had been this pathetic once; it hurt to remember. 

"I'm not going to hurt you," she reassured, inching forward again. "I know," came the response, and a sucked in breath. Natasha stopped again. She couldn't forget that this person was - apparently - Project 001_15, a dangerous bio-weapon, one of the most successful Hydra experiments to date. 

"Are you going to hurt me?" She asked softly. Another shift, and she could see the person's eyes. They were chestnut in color, large and imploring, but bloodshot. "I... I really don't want to." They sniffled. "If you leave me alone, I definitely won't." 

Natasha let herself smile comfortingly, taking another step forward. A crash sounded not far from the hallway, she could hear the guard checking in with his fellow agents. She was running out of time. "I can't do that," she explained softly, "I have to get you out of here." They seemed to sit up straighter at that, enough for Natasha to identify four limbs and shaggy brown hair. 

"You're not... you're not here to take me for more..." they trailed off, Natasha used their distraction to close the distance. The figure was a young man, horribly bruised and malnourished, with the biggest eyes and sweetest face she'd ever seen. He looked like he couldn't have been over sixteen, all gangly limbs and youthful innocence. 

Well, Natasha doubted this boy had any innocence left. 

"Come on, it's alright," she reached out painfully slowly, even as the sounds of struggles grew. If the man outside realized she was part of all the crashing, he could lock them in and it would be over. 

"Fjerda," the guard called, making Natasha freeze, "you look after the freak, I'm going to the bridge - there's been a breach!" He ran off, the tension in Natasha's shoulders leaving with him. She turned back to the boy. 

"We have to go. My friends are tearing this facility apart. They can't hurt you anymore." He gripped his knees tighter in response, shaking his head. "No, this is a test, if I go with you, they'll make me..." he looked at her hopefully, "are you, by chance, a bad person?" 

Question catching her completely off-guard, Natasha just stared at him. He took it as an opportunity to explain. "I know you're not Fjerda, even though he thought you were. I know what she looks like," An involuntary shudder shook his frame, "but if you're a bad person anyways, it'll make me feel better when... in the end." He looked back at her with those doe eyes. 

Natasha looked away, trying not to imagine all the times she stained her ledger, all the things she'd done. "Yes," she muttered, "I'm a bad person." 

The boy uncurled, crawling out from under the 'bed' and getting his shaky feet under him. He was shorter than Natasha, and she suspected that he still would be even when she took off her heels. She grabbed his arm, trying not to notice how frail it was, decorated with rounded bruises from injections. 

Knowing his black tank top and cargo pants wouldn't protect him from the winter they were about to lunge into, Natasha took off her suit coat and wrapped him in it. Despite his height, his shoulders were broad; it barely fit him. 

 Natasha left the same way she got in; the hole in the maintenance closet that Tony had cut when he disabled their outer security systems. The man himself was waiting for them when they stumbled through the hole into the snow. The boy had bare feet, Natasha worried about frost bite. 

Tony looked at the duo in shock, his mask folding back into the suit. "Excuse me? Where's the super cool shooty-thingy weapon you were supposed to get? What is this, a pathetic excuse for an intern?" 

"We were never actually sure it was a physical weapon, Tony." Natasha reminded, tossing her wig into the snow and stepping on the glasses pointedly. The real Fjerda wouldn't be needing them at the moment, tied up as she was in another closet. 

Getting her key card and clothes had proved to be quite a challenge, despite having the element of surprise. Natasha would have to patch up the bullet grazes in her side and arms in the jet. 

"So you're telling me Hydra's super dangerous must-get-away-from-them-now immediate threat bio weapon is this scrawny teenager?" Tony sighed, looking the kid up and down. Something akin to pity washed over his expression at the boy shivering in the snow, eyes wide and wild. 

"Is... is this real?" He breathed, looking between Tony and Natasha, "are we... leaving?" Natasha turned to him, resisting the urge to rub his arms up and down to try to generate some heat. 

"I told you we were getting you out of there." She explained while Tony had a slight breakdown about 'Steve and Bucky freaking out' and 'how am I supposed to feed a teenager' and 'is this my responsibility now'. Both stopped when the boy suddenly started to cry, falling to his knees in the snow. Natasha followed, careful not to touch him yet. They really needed to get moving. 

"I always dreamed of l-leaving," he sobbed, squeezing handfuls of snow in his fists, "but I always thought he... he would be... with me." He hiccuped, hunched almost until his forehead touched snow. 

Natasha looked up at Tony. She was supposed to hand the 'package' off to him at this point and go back to help the others. She had to make sure Tony could handle this. He nodded sincerely, discreetly dropping her weapons and proper footwear in the snow next to her, walking to the boys other side. 

"What's your name?" Tony asked, disengaging his suit to kneel next to the kid. "Peter." He answered, almost too quickly, a soft smile toying at his haggard face. "Peter Parker. I almost forgot..."

"Peter Parker?" Tony clarified as Natasha got dressed and slipped back in to the facility. Peter nodded. "I've heard that name before," Tony muttered to himself, mentally making a note to check it out with FRIDAY later. "We have to go, Peter. As in now. Right now. Up you get."

Tony reached over to haul Peter to his feet, but at the touch Peter shot several feet away from him, eyes wild. Tony put his hands up in surrender, approaching slowly. "Sorry, kid, didn't mean to freak you out." At his voice, Peter seemed to remember where he was. His fight stance melted away, eyes going glassy again. The kid had enough mood swings for Tony to be tempted to diagnose him as bipolar. 

"I'm sorry, I just... I'm sorry. Let's go." He started walking, Tony watching his bare feet in pity. 

"You can't walk to the jet," Tony began, holding up a hand as Peter moved to protest, "really, no one can. We have to fly there and pick up the others." The deadline for extraction was in ten minutes, so they needed to get to the jet, like, yesterday. 

Peter looked at him with big eyes and the most deadpan expression, "I can't fly." Tony burst out laughing. "Yeah, no duh! I read the file kid, the bio-weapon was related to radioactive spiders, not radioactive flying squirrels." Peter blushed a deep crimson at his misunderstanding. 

"I can fly. I'll carry you." The blush was gone as all the color drained from Peter's face. 

"I can wait here..."

"Nuh uh. We were planning for an inanimate object, so you have to pretend to be an inanimate object, or this whole thing goes to hell in a hand basket." Peter looked ready to cry again at Tony's declaration. See, this was why Tony didn't want kids. Next time Pepper or Steve, or any insane person asked him again he would gesture to this kid and scream. 

Tony got back in his suit and let the metal fold comfortably around him. When he could see through the mask again, he registered Peter's awed expression and smirked. He extended his arms and beckoned the kid over. 

As Peter approached - painfully slow as it was - Tony managed to scan him. The kids metabolism was off the charts, and practically running on empty. If the kid didn't get a meal soon he would pass out. There were no severe injuries, just over all neglected health. He was dehydrated, malnourished, presumably exhausted, and covered in bruises of various origins. Tony noticed the bruise on the kids face looked smaller than it had when he first stumbled out of the hole in the wall. 

Finally, Peter was close enough for Tony to scoop him up under the arms and fly up. "Don't look down," he advised. The kid gave a little yelp, reaching up to grab his arms for support. 

After a sharp turn, FRIDAY gave Tony an error message. Two of his external plates were damaged, but they hadn't even hit turbulence. Looking down, Tony saw the kid had dented the plates on both his forearms, just by gripping them. 

Add super strength to the list, Tony concluded.