Chapter 1: This is How the World Ends

The trip to Washington DC was supposed to be an educational stress relief and an attempt to "connect with state officials and American history while learning about the democratic process." Or at least that's what the promotional email had promised. With just a few weeks left until finals, May had suggested the trip for Peter as a good escape from the rigors of school and his "internship." At first, he had been adamantly against the idea. The one and only time he had been to the capitol city, he had kind of broken a very important and historical landmark to save his friends from a danger he had inadvertently exposed them to. This argument hadn't impressed May in the slightest.

"Honey, you can't keep pushing aside your life for your after-school activities," she had firmly told him over Mexican leftovers one night. "I think you should go to DC. It would be good for you. I don't want you to regret any lost opportunities to be a normal teenager for once."

And that was that. After everything that they had been through together over the past two years, Peter couldn't say no to the woman who just wanted what was best for him. And you know what? His aunt might be right about taking time to enjoy his friends without the responsibilities of being a superhero. So that was how he found himself, just a few short weeks later, on the school bus to the heart of America.

Washington DC in the early summer was hotter than Peter expected. The sun glared down on their small party as they tramped across the National Mall. Sweat crawled down the teen's neck in the humid haze of the mid-morning and soaked into his collar. His skin tingled and something insistently niggled at the back of his mind. He wasn't entirely sure if this was a weird sense of foreboding, the fear of another Washington monument incident, or simply lack of hydration. He tugged at his uncomfortably moist T-shirt at the thought and looked back at the obelisk rising into the sky. The monument was still covered in scaffolding as crews worked to fix the structure he had inadvertently broken not even a year before.

"You saved our lives there," Ned whispered in his ear, "how cool is that?!"

Peter jumped and glared at his best friend, "Ned! Not in public!"

Ned just shrugged and shaded his eyes to peer up at the monument. The boy turned in a large circle, taking in the Smithsonian Castle, the illuminated overhangs of the Native American Museum, the Capitol dome, the spire of the old post office, and finally the various Smithsonian museums lining the grassy Mall.

"This is so cool!" he enthused as he spun around again, faster this time. "Do you think we can go see the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum? Ooh, ooh, or maybe the Air and Space museum! Or, or, how about the African American museum, I heard that was supposed to be pretty good."

Peter laughed at his friend's excitement, turning in circles with him to take in the DC skyline. His stomach rumbled abruptly, and he turned his attention to the sundry of food trucks lining the streets, "I vote we start there."

"Come on losers," MJ appeared behind Ned almost silently, "Ms. Andrews says there's a Hard Rock Cafe near Ford's Theater, we're stopping there for lunch."

Peter's stomach rumbled again at the mention of food and MJ arched an over-expressive eyebrow at the noise. She pushed past Ned and bumped a not unfriendly shoulder into Peter as she went. Her arms securely cradled a copy of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. A bookmark sticking out of the top showed that she was almost two-thirds of the way through.

"Do you have any idea how she does it?" Ned asked.

Peter cocked his head to the side, "does what?"

"All that reading outside of class work." Ned huffed a bit as they nearly jogged to catch up with their group. He paused to wipe sweat from his brow, "it's unnatural."

Several yards ahead of them, Michelle turned to glare out of the corner of one eye, her middle finger stroking the spine of her book before she turned back to her teacher with a stomp of her combat boots.

"Shit, dude. I think she heard you ." Peter laughed at MJ's calculating side-eye.

The two best friends filed into the back of the group just as Ms. Andrews called for everyone to move towards the escalators disappearing into the underground Smithsonian Metro station. Ned and Peter jockeyed for position for several seconds at the top of the moving stairs, before the larger boy pushed himself forward and onto the steps first. Peter tried to step on behind him when a briefcase connected with the back of his knees as a man in a suit pushed past him to hurry onto the escalator. Without so much as an apology or 'excuse me', the man charged down the left side of the stairs, roughly shoving aside students and tourists with a well aimed elbow as he went.

"How rude," Peter's voice was high pitched and indignant and from a third of the way down the elevator, he heard Ned laugh at his reference. With an affectionate smile, Peter finally stepped onto the escalator and held onto the railing as the stairs rode smoothly down. Carefully, he stepped over the grate at the bottom and fumbled in his jean pocket for his SmartTrip Card. He joined one of the lines waiting to enter the station and stood on his tiptoes to catch a glimpse of his class on the other side of the gate, getting on the escalator that wound down to the platform.

"Hey, wait!" he called after the group. Still on tiptoes, he could see Ned's face turn towards him before the escalator carried him down and out of his view.

He drummed his fingers impatiently against his leg as the line steadily moved forward towards the gate. Finally it was his turn and he quickly scanned his card over the reader and then he was pushing his way past tourists and business, scampering down the escalator in pursuit of his class. At the bottom, he desperately looked up and down the platform before spotting Ned's hat disappear into a car just down the way.

"Come on, Peter!" Mr. Jones, one of the chaperones, stuck his head around the door after Ned and called.

Peter sprinted towards him, deftly dodging briefcases, backpacks, and small children as he wound his way through the crowd that had just exited the train. "Sorry, sorry, sorry," he apologized as he went.

"Step back, doors closing," a smooth, feminine voice announced. Peter desperately lunged for the doors, trying to squeeze in before they slid shut. He was too late. Mr. Jones and Ned pressed against the closed doors as the metro train hissed.

"Stay here, Peter. We'll turn around and come back for you!" Mr. Jones yelled through the shut doors. And then the train was pulling forward and zipping into the tunnels with a rush of air.

He stood on the platform for a moment, before whirling to check the arrival board for the next train. The electronic board suspended from a concrete post above him signaled that a blue line train was just arriving but that the next orange line was 12 minutes out. Flashing lights caught the corner of his eye and he whirled around again to see the warning lights on the opposite platform start up. The squeal of brakes set his teeth on edge and a moment later another train arrived with a gust of air that ruffled his hair and baggy t-shirt.

Peter sighed as he stood on the platform before the arriving train. The same smooth, feminine voice cautioned commuters to step back for the doors to open and then people were streaming out of the train in front of him. He was buffeted by a group of private school kids bedecked in plaid and following a large cardboard George Washington head held aloft by an overly peppy teacher. Business men and women shuffled past, either heading to meetings or returning from a late lunch. The echoing click of high heeled shoes against the concrete filled Peter's ears. The cacophony and echoes were overwhelming and he clapped his hands over his ears to try and stifle the noise. An open bench caught his attention and almost without willing them to, his legs lurched towards it. The bench was concrete and not terribly comfortable, but Peter sank onto it gratefully and deposited his backpack between his legs. He dug around his front pocket for his headphones and sighed when he slipped them into his ears and the noise dimmed. Slowly, the platform around him started to clear out.

Peter slumped back into his bench and stared at the arched concrete ceiling, counting the gray squares without any real interest. The back of his head hurt, an insistent drumming that set his entire body on edge. A heated gust of air blew towards him and then he was on the ground, staring up at the same ceiling as it spun drunkenly around him. Ringing assaulted his brain and he scratched desperately at his head to make it stop, wondering where his headphones had gone. His hands came back bloody and Peter jerked upright in shock.

Dust clouded the air around him. Jagged pebbles tore at his sneakers as he tried to stand on wobbly legs. Confusion contorted his face. The platform in front of him was gone, sagging under rubble, concrete, and sparking wires. Red stained the rubble and streaked across the spaces of tile that were still intact. A stroller lay on it's side in front of Peter, covered in blood and dust and twisted beyond repair.

Two people clawed their way out of the rubble towards to front of the platform and staggered to their feet. One lurched towards the escalator, trampling the other one in their desperate struggle to escape. They tripped and stumbled the entire way, hands thrown out in front of them to stop their falls and push them back up. Peter could only stare as the person stepped over a lone leg and finally latched onto the handrail of the escalator. A muffled cracking sound pierced through the ringing in his ears and Peter frantically looked up to see a piece of ceiling coming loose and then fall. It slammed into the escalator with a deafening crash, tearing a large section of it away from the upper floor and pulling it to the ground.

Everything suddenly came in to focus. There was a perfect pandemonium of sound. Peter was screaming, but so was everyone else around him. The sound of disaster and human panic bounced off the curved walls of the station, echoing and multiplying as they went. Everything hurt, his clothes were ripped and stained with blood. He fell back onto his knees, hissing in pain as debris cut into him. What was happening?

A hand latched onto his upper arm and he was pulled roughly to his feet. A woman dressed in a park ranger's uniform shouted something into his face and started dragging him towards the train tunnels and the emergency pathways. Another park ranger stood at the entrance to the right tunnel, beckoning urgently to them. Too stunned to fight back, Peter let himself be pulled along. The two had barely tripped through ten yards when the trashcan at the end of the platform exploded. The park ranger standing next to it was just gone.

The concussive force threw him back, slamming him into a concrete bench. It felt like his body molded around the bench for a moment before it went too far and Peter howled in pain. Something slapped against his torso and he reached down to clutch at it.

Blood, tissue, and bone met his frantic fingers. And, oh god, was that a hand?! He breathed heavily through his nose as the world narrowed around him and his mind shut off. Nothing mattered except getting out of here. Nothing mattered except surviving. He shoved the severed hand off of him and staggered once more to his feet, adrenaline giving him the strength to push through his pain. His head whipped about on his shoulders, trying to take everything in at once.

The upper platform was mostly buried and both of the tunnels on that side were collapsed. He swiveled around to face where the trashcan had been. One of those tunnels was completely blocked by debris. The other was heavily damaged, but had an opening at the top where the emergency tunnel lights shown through. Peter lurched towards the damaged tunnel, feet dragging as he stumbled over the destroyed platform.

The park ranger who had tried to help him before was on her knees in front of him, staring out into the collapsed tunnels. The back of her uniform was torn almost completely off, baring her bloody back to the world. The teenager stopped for a moment to stare at her quivering shoulders. Nothing made sense, but she was hurt and Peter's minimal training and experience was screaming at him to hurry up and get them both out of there. Peter limped his way over to her as fast as his wobbling knees would take him. The closer he got, the more he could hear her sobbing. He tried to block the sound out, tuning his ears to focus on something, anything else. A grating sound filled his ears instead. He focused all of his energy on moving his feet forward. Shuffle, step, stumble, drag. His legs moved as best he could will them to over the uneven ground. The grating sound grew louder the closer he got, punctuated by staccato cracks. He was within ten feet from the ranger when the cracking became too much to bear.

Peter looked up to see a section of wall crumble and roll, almost like a liquid. Great slabs of concreted seemed to hang in midair for a second before crashing forward.

"Watch out!" Peter hurled himself forward as the cracking on the wall overhead gave way to the thunderous cacophony of falling debris. He slammed bodily into the stunned park ranger and hunched over her before raising his arms to protect his head. The slabs crashed into him with sickening force, crushing into his arms and head. The world went gray.

This story is based somewhat off of a childhood fear of mine. I am absolutely terrified of parking garages or metro stations collapsing on top of me. This fear was mostly triggered by 9/11 (considering that I've lived just outside DC for most of my life, I got a front row seat to the terror of waiting to hear from loved ones that day).

Full disclosure, I have no clue how a metro station/tunnel would realistically collapse or the amount of energy required to compromise the structural integrity of the underground stations. I am also too lazy to try and figure it out through Google.

I am also aware that the timeline of this story would put it just after Infinity War, but I started writing this nearly a year ago when I didn't know the timeline, so please excuse that continuity error.

The phrase "a perfect pandemonium" pops up throughout the mid-19th century with most of the references I can find being between the 1840s-1870s. It was used by a soldier of the 1st Tennessee to describe the scene of battle around him directly after the firing of an artillery battery at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. The phrase was also used by the New York Times in its 1876 article about the first crossing of the Brooklyn Bridge by master mechanic EF Farrington when he crossed the two finished towers of the bridge on a seat suspended from a traveling wire. This crossing made quite the spectacle and thousands of people turned out to watch him. Given the connection to New York and its use in describing battle, I figured "a perfect pandemonium" would work well for this story. Enjoy