A Rumble of Frost chapter 17

February 15th 2001, 177A Bleeker st. 10:30 AM EDT

"Cat,  sweetie. Are you SURE this is the direction we should be going?" I did  my best to keep the annoyance out of my voice, because pissing off the  only one of us with ANY sense of direction in the endless hell maze of  interlocking stairs would be bad, but I was pretty sure we were lost. I  could hear the explosions from Strange's fight with Xandu, but I'd been  hearing that for about half an hour and that shit wasn't any closer.

Felicia  whirled on me with a glare. "Are you saying I don't know where I'm  going? Do YOU want to decide which stairs we take? Because you can be my  fucking guest, this is giving me a headache already."

I  shrugged. "I'm just saying I'm pretty sure that I've seen that weasel  statue before." I pointed off to the side into an alcove where a golden  statue of a weasel was striking a bodybuilder pose.

Peter shook his head. "Nah, the other weasel statue was doing the splits. Similar design but the poses are way different."

"No."  I disagreed. "It's the same statue. It just moved. There's a knick on  the left foot near the third toe. Looking at the statues helps calm down  my vertigo so I've been focusing on them as we walk by. That's  definitely the same one, it just switched poses to fuck with us."

They  both turned to look at the thing incredulously. Peter narrowed his  eyes. "Ok, I'll say it. Why are there even alcoves with statues in this  place? Is it just to mess with us? Because based on this, I kind of feel  like all the statues might be able to move and just be there to throw  us off. Like how many nearly identical weasel statues are sprinkled  around this place to make this harder. This Doctor Strange guy is the  worst."

He wasn't wrong. "It's not ideal. I'd just start  punching and try to bust us out, but these steps go in a LOT of  directions, and some of them seem to be upside down. I'm worried the  space here is unstable and if I break it we might all fall into a  bottomless abyss or some shit." I turned to Felicia. "Which is why I  asked if you're SURE we're going in the right direction. No blame here  kitten, just trying to get an idea what's up."

She groaned  and buried her face in her hands, flopping back down onto the landing,  resting one head on a step. "No. I'm not sure. I haven't been sure for a  while. My head hurts from looking at these stupid stairs. Why are there  so many stairs? I wish I could find the guy who invented stairs, and  then push him down these stairs, and then his legs would be broken and  he wouldn't be able to climb stairs anymore, and his wife would leave  him and go be with the guy who invented elevators, because everyone  knows elevators are much sexier than stairs, and oh my God we're never  getting out of here."

Peter snorted out a laugh at that,  but wilted as our incoherently babbling teammate turned to glare at him.  I chuckled and stepped between them before she could lunge at him.  "Alright kitten, got that out of your system? It's fine. We just need to  take a minute to think this through." I smiled reassuringly at her then  turned to Peter. "Spider-man, as team leader I'm delegating the task of  thinking this through to you. Good luck, we're all counting on you."

Now  it was Felicia's turn to burst out laughing. I couldn't see Peter's  face under the mask, but I could hear the universal huff of offended  disapproval that all teenagers made when forced to do something we  considered unfair. Seeing both of us looking at him he just groaned and  massaged his temples. "I swear I have to do everything." He muttered to  himself as he turned to try to look over the steps again.

Reaching  into his pocket he pulled out a small notebook and a pen. I saw Felicia  open her mouth and reached down to pinch her ass. She yelped and gave  me a 'what the fuck?' look, but I just shushed her. She rolled her eyes  and leaned back on the steps. In the meantime, Peter had started doing  some kind of equations on the paper. He measured the individual steps  under our feet, then started counting the numbers in each staircase,  then started sketching out models and doing complicated math formuli.

I  watched with interest, and noted that I probably should have considered  doing this ten minutes ago, but live and learn I guessed. Finally,  after five straight minutes of muttering and pen scratching I decided to  ask. "Any chance you'll share with the class? It's your nerdly duty to  let your jock friends copy your homework you know? And in return I made  sure nobody shoves you in a locker."

He rolled his eyes at  me as he looked up. "Hardy har har. But sure, I can tell you what I'm  doing. I'm mapping the whole structure. This is some kind of puzzle. I  thought it was just a set of Escher stairs at first, but the structure  isn't stable. There's a loose thread, a spare staircase that probably  leads out of here and prevents it from being a closed system. I assume  as an exit for the owner so they don't get stuck in here by accident.  I'm just having some trouble figuring out which one it is."

"Well  that's...good news." It was also gibberish to me. I wasn't sure how  math was telling him the way out, but I couldn't give less of a fuck if I  tried. As long as we could dip out of here I didn't care if he found  the exit with fucking tarot cards. "So, is there anything we can do to  help narrow it down?"

He opened his mouth to dismiss me  and then...stopped. "Actually. There might be. Cat." The blonde was  snoring lightly off to one side, having fallen asleep from boredom while  we were waiting, but at the sound of her name she jerked awake,  smacking her head on the stone step behind her and yowling in pain. She  cradled her head, glaring at Peter, who shrugged apologetically. "Sorry.  But I need you two if we're going to get out."

Felicia wiped some drool from her lip. "You could have woken me nicely. But fine, I hate this place. What do I need to do?"

Peter  pointed off in one direction. "You need to go that way. Cataclysm will  go in the other direction, and I'm going to web each of you to make sure  we don't get separated. With three data points I can triangulate out  location related to the other staircases and use that to calculate the  overall structure of the steps. That'll give me the last variable I need  to find our exit staircase."

She shrugged stepping over  to where he'd pointed and waiting as I did the same on the other side.  Peter shot a stream of webbing at each of our backs, then gave us  precise directions on where to go and how to get there. I followed the  instructions carefully, not wanting to mess up our way out, and when I  turned back to look at him I had to hold down the urge to vomit.

Peter,  or rather, possibly I, was upside down. The gravity on this staircase  was different to the one he was on, and I could see the webline waver  slightly as the changing gravity took effect on different parts of it.  We hadn't run into any problems with this so far because we'd stayed  close together, but I was glad he'd used the lines, because we  absolutely would have gotten separated and died here if he hadn't.

For  his part, Pete was ignoring us as he scribbled quickly in his notebook,  muttering to himself even more than before. He did that for ten minutes  before finally shouting. "HA!" I jumped, and Peter looked up at me with  a grin. "Alright guys, follow the line back. I know how to get us out  of here."

It took a minute or two to get out bearings and  get back to where he was standing, but finally we made it to the landing  outside the weasel alcove. "Ok. So we need to do this carefully. It'll  be easy to get lost if not. I'm going to send one of you to the  staircase we need, then when you reach the end of the webline, I'll  follow halfway. Then you'll head to the end and step out of the trap to  actor as an anchor, and the other one will follow to the bottom of the  exit steps."

He pointed down. "These landings are anchor  points that hold the space together, and we need to make sure we keep at  least one anchor point connected to all of us at all times, or we could  get completely turned around and fall back into the trap all over  again." Cutting off the weblines, he kicked them into the void of steps  before having us spread out on the landing and webbing us again. "I've  calculated the lengths of the steps exactly, and these new lines should  be the exact length we need."

Once that was done, I  volunteered to be the one to head out onto the steps first. Felicia  looked worried and tried to convince me she should go because of her  luck powers, but I just shook my head. "Not this time. I need to take  the lead. My ability to break space is a bigger asset now that  Spider-man has taken all the luck out of things with his giant nerd  brain. Plus I'm sturdier." I winked at her. "Can't let anything happen  to my cute little kitten."

She actually blushed at that,  looking away with a pout, and I chuckled. Felicia liked to vamp and play  the bad girl, but once she decided she cared she was an all in kind of  person. I was important to her revenge, so she'd let herself get  attached. I trusted her word, but if I hadn't I still wouldn't have been  too worried she'd bail after we finally took down kingpin. She was one  of us now. Even if she didn't know it.

Peter clapped a  hand on my shoulder. "Alright man, just follow my instructions exactly  and we'll all get out of here fine." I nodded to him and he started  giving me exact steps to take. In a literal sense. As in, 'walk five  steps forward, turn thirty degrees'. The landings connected to a whole  bunch of staircases and most of them came off in a weird direction or  strange unnatural angle to help make the overall trap structure, so it  was important for me to walk exactly how I was told so I didn't  accidentally end up on the wrong staircase. Some of them were close  together, and with the clusterfuck that space was here even a slight  misstep would have fucked us.

When I mounted the  staircase, I followed it easily enough until Pete called me to a halt,  then I waited for him to ascend to the halfway point. He'd had Felicia  take up a position at the bottom of the steps, and when he reached the  halfway point I climbed the rest of the way to the top, finally stepping  out of that warped space and through a door a lot like the one we came  in through. Once I made it to the top I called back down to him and he  started his climb up, with Felicia following behind him step by step,  both of them using me as an anchor. It looked fucking weird because the  steps seemed to be a vertical drop from my point of view but the lines  weren't pulling at all.

Finally, they both stepped out and  spun to slam the door behind them. We all slumped against the wall in  relief as out brains readjusted to linear space. "Just to be clear." I  said with a grimace. "I'm absolutely planning to jump out a window to  leave rather than go through that clusterfuck again. That was fucking  nightmarish."

"Well." Said a voice from off to the side.  "It isn't really supposed to make intruders feel welcome." We all froze,  and it was around that time I realized I hadn't heard any explosions or  cackling in quite a while. We turned slowly to see a tall dark haired  man with a receding hairline and a fu manchu mustache floating across  from us, a large red cloak billowing behind him.

I looked  him over skeptically. "The nineties called, and even they don't want  that popped collar back. Seriously, your head looks like a satellite  dish." Felicia giggled madly at that and Pete jabbed me in the ribs with  a finger. I winced and glared at him, but then decided he was right,  and with a sigh decided to backtrack. "Sorry. My head still hurts from  your awful stairs. We're the Wreckoners. We came to talk to you but  heard your fight with Xandu and figured we could come help you out." I  looked him over. "Doesn't seem like you need it."

He  grimaced. "I'd ask how you knew his name, but considering he kept  shouting it at the top of his lungs that question doesn't really need to  be posed. Seems like you all just walked in my front door, but that's  honestly more expected than anything these days. I suppose whether I  help you depends on what you want. Though I have to ask." He pointed at  Peter and I. "You two have about as much mystical potential as bottle of  water, and she clearly has zero training. How did you get out of the  mobius steps?"

I pointed at Peter. "We don't need magic.  We have the power of nerd. Spider-man calculated your whole spell out  with his massive super brain and guided us to safety."

Strange  actually looked impressed. "I...hadn't realized that was possible.  That's a five dimensional spell construct. You must be extremely  intelligent." He shrugged, which was weird to see since he was floating a  foot off the ground by his shoulders. "Alright, follow me. I suppose I  can make you some tea or something while you tell me what you want. If  nothing else, you've impressed me enough to earn a few minutes before I  toss you out."

Ignoring the implied threat I grinned and  slapped Peter on the back as Felicia mussed up his hair. He lowered his  head a bit, clearly embarrassed, but I was pretty sure he was smiling  under the mask. Good. He deserved it. I was already glad I decided to  get him onboard, having a genius around was pretty damn useful. Now, we  just had to get through tea with a wizard and get the information we  needed. I wondered if he had any chamomile?