Tony reached Pepper's office before he settled on an explanation. The laboratory would have been safer in practical terms, with reinforced doors, several unfinished drones, and tools he understood. Pepper's office had Pepper. Lucius respected her authority, or at least paused long enough to argue with it. Tony stepped inside and shut the door.
Pepper looked up from a report. "Why are you here?"
"I work here. Occasionally."
"You have a laboratory for that."
JARVIS interrupted before Tony could improve the answer. "Sir, Mr Noctis has accessed the behavioural model. He is hacking into my security systems."
Tony stopped beside the chair opposite Pepper's desk. "Did he succeed?"
"He has enough access to identify your location."
Lucius appeared in front of the windows, wearing a dark suit with one cuff still open. Tony had seen his larger body in the Greenwich footage, but the recordings had flattened the scale of him. Pepper's office had been designed for executives, not seven-foot shareholders who had just discovered a lie. Lucius looked at Tony, then at the untouched chair.
Tony sat down. "Before you say anything, this is a much better meeting room. Natural light. Responsible management."
"Where is the board?"
Pepper's attention shifted to Tony.
"Developing," Tony said.
"There is no meeting," Pepper replied, removed her glasses and placed them on the report. She did not look away from him.
Lucius walked closer. "I left three Dark Elves in my bed because you used her name."
JARVIS supplied the fact without enthusiasm. "At least three female voices were audible during the call."
Lucius glanced at the nearest camera. "Thank you, JARVIS."
Tony leaned back, buying room he did not have. "For the record, I called a shareholder. Whatever diplomatic incident was underway at your house was not in the calendar."
"They had silver hair, bad tempers, and better uses for my time."
Tony's eyes moved once toward Pepper. She saw it. "No."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
Lucius's irritation eased enough for possession to replace it. "You will not meet them."
"Wasn't asking."
"You were calculating."
Tony raised both hands. "I am in a committed relationship, very happy, and conducting no calculations."
Pepper let the silence sit until he lowered them.
Lucius turned to her. "He claimed you called an emergency board discussion about changing the tower's name."
"I did not."
"The proposal remains pending," Tony said.
Pepper ignored him. "What else did he tell you?"
Lucius began counting on his fingers. "A shareholder vote. Independent verification of the Project Insight thrusters. A security inspection. A laboratory dispute. He also claimed the intelligence he is training required exposure to catastrophic judgment."
"That one was legitimate," Tony said.
"It told you to use a mirror."
Pepper turned her chair toward Tony. Her voice stayed level. "You interrupted him repeatedly, invented a board meeting, and attached my authority to the lie."
"Attached is strong. I referenced a known executive resource."
She waited. Tony looked at Lucius instead. "You took your time getting here."
Lucius's face changed, and JARVIS answered the question Tony had not asked. "Mr Noctis remained at Sands Point for several minutes after the call."
"JARVIS."
"Yes, Mr Noctis?"
"I will remember this."
"I have recorded that, sir."
Pepper reached for a blank page from the folder beside her. "What do you want?"
"Ten per cent of his income for the next quarter."
Tony's amusement disappeared. "No."
"Then ten per cent of the tower's letters."
"Also, no. Those are MY letters."
Lucius looked toward the windows as though the sign might be visible through several floors of steel and glass. "Your warning about them was detailed."
Tony stood. "Because you tried to steal the letters T and R."
Pepper wrote a figure on the page. Neither man saw it until she turned the paper around.
"Five per cent of Tony's personal income for one quarter," she said. "No company funds or ownership transfer. No change to the tower, its name, or its letters. This settles the interruption and every excuse that led to it."
Tony stared at the figure. "You're paying him for being a crybaby."
"You are paying him because you lied about me."
"I was avoiding an image I can no longer remove from my head."
Pepper slid a pen across the desk. "That is a horrible attempt at defence."
Lucius read the terms twice. "The naming proposal remains pending."
"It remains exactly where it was," Pepper said.
Tony did not take the pen. He looked at Lucius, who had arrived angry and now stood quietly enough to be dangerous. The money was not the real point. Tony had pulled him away because if he was not having fun with alien beauties, neither should he. Unfortunately, Pepper had noticed it, as she usually did when Tony tried to convert discomfort into snarky remarks.
He considered objecting on the principle that personal income should remain personal. Pepper had already heard every version of that argument during years of expense reports, weapons prototypes, and decisions Tony described as necessary after making them. None would survive this room.
He signed the symbolic agreement. "Five per cent for one quarter. The letters stay where they are."
Lucius signed as well and fastened his open cuff. "I will spend your money without restraint."
"You already do that with yours."
"Mine deserves respect."
He vanished, and the displaced air stirred one corner of Pepper's report. Tony remained standing while Pepper collected the agreement, placed it inside the folder, and returned to the page she had been reading before he arrived.
"Don't you have a laboratory?" She asked softly, dismissing him and his childish rivalry with Lucius.
Tony made it to the door before stopping. "Do you think he can make a height potion?"
Pepper looked at him over the report.
He left without an answer.
-
Nick Fury ended his call with Maria Hill two blocks before the first tail appeared. The sedan stayed three cars back through a green light, changed lanes when he did, and failed to pass when the road opened. Its plates belonged to a police pool vehicle that had been decommissioned six months earlier.
Fury called Hill again and used the phrase reserved for a compromised system. She went silent for half a second, long enough to understand and short enough not to confirm anything aloud.
"I will handle it," Hill said.
Fury ended the connection and checked the mirrors. The sedan had gained a second vehicle. Whoever had used his credentials inside SHIELD knew his routes, his access habits, and at least one of the homes that did not officially belong to him. That ruled out a lone mole. It also made the SUV's connection to SHIELD a liability.
He disabled the navigation uplink and selected a route he had never entered into the vehicle. The tail adjusted before the second turn. They were not following a destination. At the next intersection, a false police cruiser struck the driver's side.
The collision drove Fury against the restraint. A second vehicle blocked the lane ahead while a third stopped behind him, and armed men emerged. Rounds hammered the windows as the SUV sealed the cabin and displayed damage across the windscreen.
-
Days later, the world was told that Nick Fury had died. Lucius did not believe it. Fury kept emergency homes behind false identities and secrets behind people who did not know they carried them. He would doubt Fury's death even if it was him who killed the bastard.
The world was moving according to plan. The Winter Soldier sequence had reached the part Lucius remembered. Steve would discover what had been growing inside SHIELD, and HYDRA would discover that Captain America was difficult to contain once he chose a direction. Interfering now offered Lucius nothing he could not collect later.
His Nokia beeped. Pierce had prepared the cash and wanted to finalise the exchange. Strucker and the sceptre were absent from the message. Lucius confirmed that he was ready, then walked to the front window at Sands Point.
The first armoured SUV appeared fifteen minutes later. Twelve followed at measured distances, with an escort helicopter holding position above the convoy.
Lucius sent a command through the Nexus. Four squads moved across the estate while the gates remained closed, taking their assigned positions, checking the road, and covering the vehicles before the lead driver reached the entrance.
Inside the SUVs, HYDRA agents looked first at the guards and then past them, searching the grounds for whatever justified men of that size.
Lucius let them look.
One and a half billion dollars was enough for them to have an insight into his forces.