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Marcus stood over Raza's corpse for exactly three seconds. Not mourning. Not celebrating. Just... confirming.
The terrorist leader was dead. Promise kept. Revenge complete.
He felt nothing.
Good, he thought distantly. Emotions would just slow me down right now.
He turned away from the body and the spreading pool of blood, walking back toward the cave entrance where Yinsen waited. The doctor was watching him with that same complicated expression—part horror, part understanding, part pity.
Marcus didn't want his pity.
"Let's go," he said curtly, not meeting Yinsen's eyes. "Tony's bought us enough time. We need to move."
As for Raza's name? Marcus hadn't bothered remembering it. Didn't care. The man was just another corpse now, another obstacle removed. Remembering dead men's names was a waste of mental energy better spent on survival.
He moved to the cave entrance and cautiously peered around the edge, rifle raised and ready.
The valley beyond was absolute chaos.
Tony Stark, encased in two hundred pounds of crude steel armor, was single-handedly dismantling the entire Ten Rings base. The Mark I's flamethrowers roared streams of liquid fire across defensive positions. Small missiles—crude but effective—launched from shoulder mounts and detonated against fortified positions in orange fireballs. Terrorists scattered like ants from a kicked anthill, some firing wildly, others just running for their lives.
It was beautiful, in a terrible sort of way.
"Jesus Christ," Yinsen breathed, coming up beside Marcus. "He's actually doing it. He's actually winning."
"Never doubt a Stark with a grudge and too much time on his hands," Marcus muttered. He scanned the battlefield, his enhanced brain processing tactical data at lightning speed. Thirty, maybe thirty-five terrorists still active. Most focused on Tony. Ammunition depot on the left—still intact, probably where Tony was heading. Escape route to the right—relatively clear. "Come on. Tony's got their attention. Time to disappear."
They'd planned this carefully during those long hours building the Mark I. Tony would be the hammer—loud, obvious, impossible to ignore. Marcus and Yinsen would be ghosts, slipping away while everyone was distracted by the metal giant stomping through their base.
It was a good plan. Simple plans usually were.
Marcus moved out first, keeping low, rifle up and ready. Yinsen followed close behind, his breathing tight with tension but his steps steady. Good man. Scared, but not panicking. Exactly what they needed.
The outer tunnels of the cave complex opened into a network of trenches and defensive positions the Ten Rings had dug into the valley floor. Most were abandoned now—their occupants either dead or converging on Tony's position. But not all of them.
Marcus spotted the first threat thirty yards ahead: a young terrorist, maybe twenty years old, emerging from a bunker with an AK-47. The kid's eyes went wide when he saw Marcus and Yinsen.
Marcus shot him before he could raise his weapon.
One round. Center mass. The terrorist dropped without a sound.
"Keep moving," Marcus said quietly, already scanning for the next threat.
They advanced through the trench system, moving from cover to cover with practiced efficiency. Marcus led, Yinsen followed, and the bodies piled up behind them.
Two more terrorists appeared from a supply depot. Marcus dropped them both with four shots total—two each, center mass then headshot, clinical and efficient. They fell like puppets with cut strings.
"Oh my God," Yinsen whispered, staring at the bodies. "Marcus, your shooting—it's not just good, it's impossible. Nobody shoots like that."
"Lots of practice," Marcus replied, which was true even if it wasn't the whole truth. Eighteen months on NZT, hundreds of hours on virtual ranges, perfect recall of every successful shot and every mistake. His brain processed trajectories, wind resistance, bullet drop, and target movement in microseconds. Shooting had become as natural as breathing.
They encountered a group of four terrorists rushing toward Tony's position, too focused on the battle to notice Marcus and Yinsen until it was too late. Marcus put them down in less than six seconds—controlled bursts, one target at a time, moving through them like a machine.
"You're using a rifle like it's a sniper weapon," Yinsen said, his voice edging toward something that might have been awe or might have been fear. "How is that even possible?"
"Clean living and good genetics," Marcus deadpanned. "Come on, keep moving. We're almost to the perimeter."
Another explosion rocked the valley—Tony had found another weapons cache. The shockwave rippled across the desert floor, kicking up dust and debris. Perfect cover for their escape.
They pushed forward, leaving the cave complex behind and moving into the open desert that surrounded the valley. The fighting was concentrated around the central depot now—Tony's armored form visible in the distance, wreathed in flames and smoke like some medieval war god.
Marcus and Yinsen made it another hundred yards before they encountered the last threat: three terrorists manning a machine gun nest, positioned to cover approaches to the valley. They spotted Marcus and Yinsen immediately and swung the heavy weapon toward them.
Marcus dove left, Yinsen dove right, and the machine gun opened up with a sound like the world's angriest zipper. Bullets chewed through sand and rock where they'd been standing a heartbeat before.
Okay, this is a problem, Marcus thought, pressed flat behind a boulder that was rapidly being reduced to gravel by the sustained fire. Machine guns were not something you could just shoot your way through—not without getting very lucky or very dead.
He needed a better plan.
His enhanced brain ran calculations at superhuman speed. Distance: forty yards. Cover: minimal. Enemy position: elevated, good firing arc. Available weapons: AK-47, two grenades on his belt.
Grenades. Right.
"Yinsen!" he shouted over the gunfire. "Stay down! I'm going to give them something to think about!"
He pulled one of the grenades from his belt, yanked the pin, counted two seconds, and threw it with every ounce of his enhanced strength. The grenade arced through the air in a perfect parabola—his brain had calculated trajectory, wind, and distance—and landed directly in the machine gun nest.
BOOM!
The explosion silenced the gun. When the smoke cleared, the nest was empty except for three very dead terrorists.
"Holy shit!" Yinsen crawled out from behind his cover, staring at Marcus with wide eyes. "You just—did you just calculate that throw in your head? While being shot at?"
"Must've gotten lucky," Marcus said, which was absolutely a lie. But they didn't have time to discuss his capabilities right now. "Come on, we need to get clear before more show up."
They ran—or rather, Marcus ran and Yinsen did his best to keep up, breathing hard but determined. They put another two hundred yards between themselves and the valley before Marcus called a halt, both of them dropping behind a sandy ridge that provided decent cover.
"Okay," Marcus panted, checking his remaining ammunition. Down to his last magazine. "This should be far enough. Time to signal Tony."
He pulled out one of the signal flares they'd prepared—bright red, Tony's favorite color, impossible to miss even in broad daylight. Marcus struck it against the igniter and held it high, the flare spitting red smoke into the clear desert air.
Now they just had to wait for Tony to see it and make his exit.
In the valley, Tony Stark was having the time of his life and simultaneously the worst five minutes he'd experienced since being captured.
The Mark I was performing beyond expectations. The armor had taken dozens of hits from small arms fire without significant damage. The flamethrowers worked perfectly. The small missiles had been devastatingly effective. He'd killed or scattered at least forty terrorists, maybe more.
But now they were adapting.
The initial panic had worn off, replaced by organized resistance. The Ten Rings fighters had pulled out the heavy weapons—anti-tank missiles, mounted machine guns, even what looked like an honest-to-God ZPU-4 anti-aircraft gun that someone was trying to depress enough to shoot at ground level.
And every single one of those weapons had been built by Stark Industries.
Tony felt sick looking at them. His designs. His weapons. Being used by terrorists. This was exactly the nightmare scenario he'd spent months staring at in this cave—his legacy being used to hurt innocent people.
No more, he swore to himself. After this, I'm done. No more weapons. Never again.
An RPG streaked toward him, and Tony barely managed to sidestep. The rocket detonated against the cave wall behind him, showering him with rock fragments. His armor's heads-up display—such as it was, basically just holes to see through—showed multiple threats converging on his position.
He needed to leave. Now.
But first, he had one more thing to do.
Tony stomped toward the main ammunition depot—the massive warehouse where the Ten Rings had been storing all the Stark Industries weapons they'd acquired over the years. Crates and crates of missiles, grenades, rifles, everything Tony had designed to keep America safe being hoarded by terrorists.
Not anymore.
He raised both arms and fired his remaining incendiary missiles directly into the depot. Four missiles streaked across the hundred-yard distance and punched through the warehouse walls.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the entire depot erupted.
The explosion was magnificent and terrible in equal measure. The initial blast wave knocked Tony backward despite the Mark I's weight. Secondary explosions followed as crates of ammunition cooked off—a rolling chain reaction that turned the entire warehouse into a miniature sun. The heat was intense enough that Tony felt it even through his armor. Flames reached a hundred feet into the air, and smoke billowed up in a massive pillar.
Dozens of terrorists who'd been too close simply... ceased to exist. Vaporized by the blast or torn apart by shrapnel. Others were thrown like ragdolls, some on fire, all screaming.
It was horrific. It was necessary. Tony didn't look away.
That's for every person these weapons killed, he thought grimly. Every innocent life ended by something I designed.
Through the smoke and flames, he spotted a flash of red in the distance—Marcus's signal flare. His friends had made it out. Thank God.
Time to go.
Tony activated the Mark I's flight system—a crude setup of compressed air jets and minimal thrust, barely enough to achieve liftoff but it was all they'd had time to build. The hydraulics groaned. The jets fired. And Tony Stark, wearing a suit of armor he'd forged in a cave, lifted off the ground for the first time.
It was incredible. It was terrifying. It was barely controlled.
"Okay, easy, easy—" Tony tried to adjust his angle, but the flight system was responding sluggishly. "Come on, baby, work with me here—"
He shot upward far faster than intended, the thrust more powerful than his calculations had predicted. The desert floor dropped away below him. Fifty feet. Hundred feet. Two hundred feet.
"Too fast, too high, abort, abort—!"
He tried to cut the thrust, but the controls were locked—some kind of mechanical failure in the crude flight system. The Mark I continued to climb, spinning slightly, completely out of control.
Below him, the ammunition depot detonated in one final, massive secondary explosion. The blast wave hit Tony like a physical wall, sending him tumbling through the air.
The flight system cut out.
Gravity reasserted itself.
And Tony Stark, genius billionaire philanthropist, plummeted toward the desert like a very expensive lawn dart.
"Shit, shit, shit—"
He hit the sand hard enough to leave a crater.
The impact would have killed any normal person instantly. The Mark I's armor, crude as it was, distributed the force enough that Tony merely felt like he'd been hit by a truck instead of liquified on contact. The arc reactor's containment held. The chest plate stayed intact. Various bits of external armor shattered and fell away, but the critical parts held together.
Tony lay there in the sand, half-buried, stunned and aching but miraculously alive.
"Ow," he said to no one in particular. "Ow ow ow. Note to self: work on the landing."
He tried to move and immediately regretted it. Everything hurt. The armor was heavy, partially buried in sand, and several of the servo motors had seized up from the impact. He was stuck.
"Great. Just great. Survive terrorists, survive explosions, get killed by sand."
He struggled for several minutes before accepting that he wasn't getting out of this on his own.
"Hey!" he shouted, hoping Marcus and Yinsen were close enough to hear. "Little help here!"
Two miles away, Marcus and Yinsen had watched Tony's uncontrolled flight with increasing alarm.
"Is he supposed to be spinning like that?" Yinsen asked, wincing.
"Definitely not," Marcus replied, already calculating trajectories. His enhanced brain tracked Tony's ballistic arc, factored in air resistance, wind speed, angle of descent. "He's going to crash... approximately two point three miles northeast of our current position."
"How can you possibly know that?"
"Math," Marcus said, which was true. Very, very fast math performed by a brain operating well beyond human baseline. "Come on, we need to get to him before the Ten Rings regroup and start searching."
They took off across the desert at a jog, Marcus leading with absolute confidence in his calculations. Yinsen followed, struggling to keep up but not questioning the direction. He'd seen Marcus do too many impossible things to doubt him now.
The desert terrain was uneven—rocky outcroppings, sandy washes, the occasional thorny bush clinging to life in the wasteland. Marcus navigated it all with the efficiency of a GPS unit, constantly recalculating their path to account for obstacles.
Twenty minutes later, his calculations proved correct.
They crested a low ridge and found Tony Stark half-buried in a massive sand drift, pieces of the Mark I scattered around him in a fifty-foot radius. The armor had broken apart on impact—chest plate intact but arms, legs, and helmet separated or severely damaged. Tony was struggling weakly, trying to dig himself out with limited success.
"Hey!" Tony's voice was muffled by sand but unmistakably relieved. "Lo, Yinsen, guys—I think I need your help!"
Despite everything—the violence, the death, the narrow escape—Marcus found himself smiling. Because Tony Stark, even half-buried in sand and covered in his own broken armor, was alive. They'd actually pulled it off.
"Hold still," Marcus called, jogging down the slope. "We'll get you out."
He and Yinsen set down their weapons and started digging. The sand was loose, which helped, but the armor was heavy and partially locked up, which didn't. It took ten minutes of sustained effort to excavate Tony enough that they could start removing armor pieces.
The chest plate came off first—carefully, because the arc reactor was still active and glowing. Then the leg pieces, which were completely trashed. The arms were easier, mostly because they'd already separated from the main assembly.
Finally, they pulled Tony free. He looked like hell—covered in sand, bleeding from a dozen small cuts, bruises already forming on his face and arms. But he was grinning like a madman.
"We did it," Tony said, voice full of wonder and exhaustion. "We actually did it. We're out."
"We're out," Yinsen confirmed, collapsing next to Tony in the sand. "Against all odds, we survived."
Marcus stood apart from them, rifle still in hand, eyes scanning the horizon for threats. Because they weren't safe yet. Not by a long shot.
"Okay," Yinsen said after catching his breath. "We escaped the Ten Rings. Now what? We're in the middle of nowhere with no food, limited water, and no idea which direction to go."
"That's where you're wrong," Tony said, still grinning despite the pain. "I told you guys—my best friend is looking for me. Colonel James Rhodes, United States Air Force. He won't stop searching until he finds me."
Marcus nodded. "Tony's right. Rhodes has been combing this region for months. Now that we're out of the cave and can signal him, it's only a matter of time."
"I've got signal flares," Marcus added, patting his pack. "Several of them. Tony's favorite color—bright red. Hard to miss from the air."
"Red and gold, baby," Tony said proudly. "My colors. Rhodes knows that. He'll recognize the signal."
"Alright then," Yinsen said, pushing himself to his feet with a grunt. "We should move to more open ground. Somewhere a helicopter can land easily."
They quickly prioritized what to keep and what to abandon. Most of the Mark I's armor was too damaged and too heavy to carry—they left it scattered in the sand. The chest plate with the arc reactor, Tony insisted on keeping, carefully securing it in a makeshift pack. A few tools, the remaining flares, their weapons and ammunition—everything else got left behind.
Then they started walking, Tony limping slightly but keeping pace, heading toward higher ground where they'd be more visible from the air.
Three hours later and fifty miles away, Lieutenant Colonel James "Rhodey" Rhodes was losing hope.
He sat in the passenger seat of a Black Hawk helicopter, staring down at the endless expanse of desert scrolling past below. The same desert he'd been searching for two months and seventeen days. The same desert that had swallowed his best friend without a trace.
"Still nothing on thermal, sir," the pilot reported. "No heat signatures, no signs of movement."
Rhodes nodded tersely, not trusting his voice. Tony was out there somewhere. Dead or alive, Rhodes would find him. He'd made that promise to Pepper, to himself, to Tony's memory.
You don't get to die in some cave, you arrogant bastard, Rhodes thought fiercely. You owe me too many favors. You're going to live through this so I can punch you in the face for making me worry.
His radio crackled to life. "Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes, we have something. Large explosion detected at coordinates—" The operator rattled off numbers. "Significant smoke plume visible from satellite. Multiple secondary detonations."
Rhodes's head snapped up. "How large?"
"Major ordnance, sir. Consistent with a weapons depot detonating. Intel suggests possible Ten Rings activity in that region."
A weapons depot. Exploding.
Tony had been captured to build weapons. He'd escaped. What would Tony Stark do after escaping terrorists who'd forced him to build weapons?
He'd blow up their entire arsenal, Rhodes realized, a grim smile spreading across his face. Because he's a vindictive, dramatic son of a bitch who never does anything halfway.
"Change course!" Rhodes ordered. "Head for those coordinates, maximum speed!"
"Sir, that's outside our authorized search grid—"
"I don't care if it's outside the solar system, Captain. My friend is over there, and we're going to get him. Now move!"
The helicopter banked hard, accelerating toward the coordinates. A second Black Hawk from their search wing radioed in and fell into formation, both aircraft pushing their engines to the limit.
Ten minutes later, they spotted the smoke—a massive pillar of black and gray rising thousands of feet into the air, visible for miles. As they got closer, Rhodes could see secondary fires still burning, the ground scorched for hundreds of yards around what had clearly been a major installation.
"Jesus," the pilot breathed. "What the hell happened down there?"
"Tony Stark happened," Rhodes said with absolute certainty.
That's when he spotted the red smoke.
A signal flare, bright crimson, standing out against the beige desert like a beacon. Standard military issue, the kind Tony would have known about from all his time on military bases demonstrating weapons.
"There!" Rhodes pointed. "Put us down near that flare!"
As they descended, Rhodes could make out three figures standing in the desert. One was tall and moving with confidence. One was older, slightly built. And one—
Rhodes's breath caught.
One was wearing a makeshift pack and waving both arms overhead, jumping up and down like an idiot despite clearly being injured.
"That's him," Rhodes said, his voice rough with emotion he didn't try to hide. "That's Tony. Get us on the ground. Now."
The Black Hawk touched down fifty yards from the three figures, rotors kicking up a sandstorm. Rhodes was out before the wheels fully settled, running across the sand.
Tony Stark—covered in sand and blood, bruised and battered, grinning like he'd just won the lottery—opened his arms wide.
"Rhodey! I knew you'd find me, you beautiful son of a—"
Rhodes punched him in the shoulder. Not hard, but not gentle either.
"Ow!" Tony clutched his arm. "What was that for?"
"For making me search for two months, you asshole," Rhodes said. Then he pulled Tony into a fierce hug. "Don't you ever disappear on me again."
"Missed you too, buddy," Tony said, returning the hug with equal intensity. "Missed you too."
Rhodes finally pulled back, giving Tony a once-over with professional efficiency. "You look like hell."
"Feel like hell too," Tony admitted. "But I'm alive. We all are, thanks to these two." He gestured to Marcus and Yinsen, who stood a respectful distance away. "Colonel James Rhodes, meet my saviors. Dr. Yinsen, who kept me alive when I should have died. And Marcus, who—well, Marcus did a lot of things I still have questions about."
Rhodes shook hands with both men, his grip firm and grateful. "Thank you. Both of you. For keeping him alive and getting him out."
"It was a team effort," Yinsen said modestly. "We all survived together."
Marcus just nodded, saying nothing. His eyes were scanning the horizon again, always watching, always ready.
Rhodes noticed. "You expecting company?"
"Always," Marcus replied. "Until we're in the air and far from here, we're not safe."
"Smart," Rhodes approved. He keyed his radio. "This is Rhodes. We have three civilians for extraction. Prepare for immediate evac. And get a medical team ready—we've got injuries."
Within minutes, all three of them were loaded into the helicopters. Tony, Yinsen, and Rhodes in one aircraft. Marcus in the second with the backup crew.
As the Black Hawks lifted off, Marcus looked down at the desert below—the cave complex he'd called home for two months, now just a smoking ruin in the sand. The bodies of terrorists scattered across the valley. The wreckage of the Mark I glinting in the sun.
It was over.
He'd survived. He'd escaped. He'd kept Tony Stark alive and ensured the birth of Iron Man.
But as the helicopters turned south toward civilization, banking away from the wasteland, Marcus felt that same empty coldness in his chest. No relief. No joy. Just... completion. Mission accomplished.
I should feel something, he thought distantly. I should be happy. Relieved. Something.
But there was nothing. Just the clinical awareness that Phase One was complete. Tony Stark was alive. Iron Man would be born. The MCU timeline could proceed.
And Marcus? Marcus had work to do. Plans to make. A future to navigate.
But first, he was going to enjoy the feeling of the helicopter's air conditioning and the knowledge that he'd never have to eat terrorist rations again.
Sometimes, the small victories were enough.
[End of Chapter 18]
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