The first thing that fails is the HUD.

No warning—just a hard flicker, then static washes across your vision. Jarvis’s dialogue cutting out as your holograms flicker.

“Dad,” you say, hushed. “I just lost—”

A low-frequency pulse rolls through the warehouse, vibrating up through the walls, the lights in the wear house flickering. Your suit doesn’t shut down so much as it locks, hinges and joints going stiff, everything shutting down with a low grumble.

You hit the floor with a metallic crash as the deadweight of the suit hit you, taking a mental note to figure out a way to make it lighter once you get back to the lab.

“…telemetry,” Tony’s voice cuts in, distorted. “Okay, listen to me—don’t fight it. If it’s the scrambler I think it is, the suit’ll default to shield mode—”

The comm goes dead.

Emergency lighting kicks on in the hall, bathing the rows of crates in red. Footsteps echo as the group you were tracking fan out, weapons trained on you now that you’re grounded.

One of them nudges your shoulder with a boot. “Armor’s still live.” He mutters gruffly as he try’s to pry at your chest plate.

“Yeah,” another replies. “Stark alloy. Adaptive. Let’s just crack it and kill the kid off. Buyers will be here in a hour.”

Tools come out.

You stare up through the eye slits in your faceplate as they get to work—blunt ends of weapons, pliers. The suit responds with layered coding-thanks to your overprotective father.

Layers shifted, redistributing force. Each impact rings through your bones, but nothing gives.

Not yet.

You exhale, calculating your chances while maintaining a level head- “You’re wasting time.”

A knife’s blade bites into the edge of your visor. A fracture creeps across your vision, thin as a hair.

“Maybe,” the man says. “But we only need a minute.”

The crack widens.

Then—

THWIP.

The blade jerks violently sideways, tearing free and taking its owner with it. He slams into a container and doesn’t get back up.

A second later, webbing snaps across the room—clean, efficient. Weapons are yanked away. Two men are lifted off their feet and stuck to opposite walls.

A red-and-blue figure drops in from above, landing light, already moving.

“Alright,” Spider-Man says, glancing at the fractured visor. “I’m here-” he says, probably talking to Tony through his comms.

One of the remaining attackers fires. Peter pivots, webs the muzzle, and pulls the gun out of the man’s hands with a sharp tug.

“You pissed off a lot of bad guys-“ he lets out an awkward laugh. Yanking on the web, the man loses his footing and falls backwards, head meeting concrete.

Silence settles, broken only by the hum of the scrambler still pulsing somewhere in the room.

Peter steps closer to you, tilting his head slightly as he studies the suit—not alarmed, just assessing.

“Shield mode,” he says. “Kinda like a turtle.”

He looks down at you through the mask.

“…you uh…okay?”

The warehouse lights flicker. Somewhere, the scrambler keeps ticking.