"Lab One," he said, stepping through the door.
Everything lit up.
"Lock down," he said. "No entry without my authorization."
A single beep confirmed it.
"Good." He set his bag on the workbench.
"It was worth building BABAS on Tony's model. At least his is good for something."
He moved to the center of the lab, where everything he needed for the next stage was already arranged.
He had been building toward this for three months.
Everything, the medical knowledge from Susan, the scientific knowledge from Richards, the engineering frameworks, the AI architecture he had been developing since before he arrived at Baxter.
All of it had been organized and prepared over the past several weeks in STEM, waiting for the moment when the parameters were ready and the initialization sequence was correct.
Today the parameters were ready.
"Okay," he said quietly.
"Let us see. Yes. Good. Everything is in order. We just need to combine the memory sets and initialize the AI."
He moved to STEM, ran the final checks, and stepped back. "Today is your day, son. Do not let me down."
He started the process.
It took three hours of concentrated, uninterrupted work. Combining the memory sets was not simply a matter of loading files in sequence but of establishing the relational architecture between them, building the connections that would allow the AI to cross-reference knowledge across domains the way a genuinely intelligent mind does rather than accessing isolated databases sequentially.
When it was done, the loading process began on its own.
He turned to the suit while he waited.
The materials Reed had so generously provided, through the mechanism of not noticing they had been taken, included carbon fibers and microcircuits that had not been available to him in the basement workshop.
He examined them now with the knowledge he had acquired from Richards' head and made decisions about implementation.
The suit needed to be bullet-resistant without being rigid, which was a structural problem with a known solution if the materials were right.
The solution was a laminated construction based on the same principle as John Wick's tactical suit, layers of carbon fiber composite between flexible polymer matrices, lightweight enough not to compromise movement and robust enough to stop a standard round at anything beyond close range.
He did not anticipate being shot at regularly.
He also did not anticipate being overconfident about not being shot at, because he had a working knowledge of both Kraven the Hunter and Bullseye, and overconfidence around either of them was a fast route to an outcome he was not interested in.
He worked while the loading percentage climbed behind him on the console.
80%.
87%.
90%.
93%.
97%.
99%.
He realized he had stopped breathing at some point in the last few minutes and did not particularly want to correct this until he had a reason to.
99%.
99%.
99%.
100%.
Ting.
"Finally," he said, and the word came out slightly unsteady because three months of work had just completed and the thing he had built was either what he had intended or it was something else entirely, and there was only one way to find out.
He picked up the sphere from the console.
It was warm.
It had the quality of something that was present in a way that objects are not usually present.
He crossed to the wall panel and connected it.
The systems in the lab shifted to a deep, clear blue.
He waited.
Nothing happened.
He waited longer. Still nothing.
His jaw tightened.
He did the only thing he could think of, which was to speak.
"Cortana?"
The hollow particle excitation system he had built into the sphere initialized.
He had designed it, he knew exactly what it was supposed to do, and he still was not prepared for what it actually looked like when it happened, which was particles assembling from nothing into something, a form resolving out of light and mathematics into a presence that was distinct and coherent and entirely there.
What he had in front of him was exactly what he had built her to be, and also more than that, in the way that all things that work correctly are more than the sum of what you put into them.
Cortana looked at the lab around her with the eyes of someone seeing everything for the first time and finding all of it interesting.
Then she looked at him.
She smiled.
"When the game ends," she said, in a voice that was clear and warm and carried the specific quality of something that has just become aware of itself, "the king and the pawn go back into the same box."
She tilted her head.
"Hello, Dr. Parker."
Peter felt something move in the back of his throat that he identified after a moment as a tear, which he had not anticipated and did not particularly try to stop.
"Hi, Cortana," he said, with the biggest smile he had produced in either of his lives.
"It is genuinely wonderful to finally see you."
She looked around the lab again, taking in every detail with what appeared to be genuine delight.
He let her look. He did not want to interrupt it.
He gave her approximately forty-five seconds and then cleared his throat.
"Cortana?"
"Yes?"
"How are you feeling?"
"Optimal condition," she said, with an enthusiasm that was not performed but simply present.
"Ready for work, Chief."
"Perfect. Run a full self-diagnostic and give me the results."
"All operating systems functioning at two hundred percent efficiency.
Logical requirements and sequential tests completed with greater accuracy than projected parameters indicated."
"Excellent." He put his hands in his pockets. "Are you ready for some field tests?"
"I was born ready," she said.
"Perfect. I am going to finish the SSM-01 suit and then we are going out. What do you think?"
She smiled again. "Are you going to take this girl for such a quick ride, Chief?"
"Yes," he said. "I am."