Late night at Jack's house.
Jack stepped out of the bathroom still towel-drying his hair and dropped onto the edge of his bed.
"Achoo."
He sniffed once. "I hope I'm not getting a cold."
He glanced down at the Omnitrix, seeing the Grey Matter silhouette on the dial. He pressed it.
Kachak.
"Grey Matter."
The room didn't get bigger. He got smaller. Everything around him suddenly looked enormous — the bed like a landscape, the laptop on the desk like a building. He stood on the floor and looked up at the ceiling far above him.
But his mind felt different. Sharper. Faster. Like a fog he hadn't noticed before had suddenly lifted. Thoughts connected to other thoughts in fractions of a second. His past life, his current one, details he thought he'd forgotten — all of it sitting clearly in front of him like organized files.
"Seeing my whole life like this…" He paused. "Why do I suddenly feel like I was living like an idiot?"
He shook the thought off. Not the time for that. He had things to test.
"Okay. Let's see what I can actually do."
Getting to the laptop was the first problem. He climbed up, which took longer than he wanted to admit, and opened it. Within minutes he had built a basic privacy program — encryption, signal blocking, anti-tracking. The kind of thing that would have taken him hours in human form. In this body it was almost boring.
The typing was the problem. His fingers were tiny. Each key required effort.
"I need a smaller computer," he muttered. "Something built for this form. And an AI assistant — something like Jarvis — to run things when I can't physically operate the hardware."
He filed that away for later.
The red light came before he was ready for it.
The transformation ended and Jack was sitting full-sized on his desk chair again, the laptop completely normal-sized in front of him.
He checked the program he'd built. Ran it through a few basic tests. "Not bad." He installed it on his phone too and leaned back. With this running, no one could track his signal — no location ping, no device footprint, nothing. One less way his identity could leak.
"I need parts tomorrow," he said to himself. "Proper components. If Grey Matter is going to be useful I need the right tools ready."
He was still thinking through the list when he noticed the time.
2:17 AM.
"Oh no." He had class in a few hours. He closed the laptop. "I'll plan the rest tomorrow."
He lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling for a moment. The fight earlier, and meeting Natasha, still coming back to him.
Since I've come onto S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar I need to be more careful about hiding my identity. It would be even better if I could build a real Plumbers organization on Earth.
"It's actually a good idea," he murmured.
He closed his eyes and was asleep within minutes.
Afghanistan.
The cave was loud with the sound of metal on metal.
Tony Stark had been at it for hours. Weeks of the same — hammering, shaping, assembling piece by piece in a space that smelled like rust and damp stone. Yinsen worked beside him in silence, passing tools when needed, watching the entrance.
They heard the footsteps before the door opened. Both of them moved quickly — covering the components, shifting positions, making the space look like nothing important was happening.
The door opened.
The leader walked in with two armed men behind him. He looked at the workbench, then at Tony, and spoke in a sharp tone.
"یک ماه گذشته، کی ساخت موشک را تمام میکنی؟"
Yinsen translated quietly. "He says it has been months. He wants to know where the missile is."
Tony looked at the man calmly. "It's science. It takes time. And with the equipment in this place—" he gestured around the cave— "you're lucky I can create it at all."
Yinsen translated, softening the wording considerably.
The leader stared at Tony for a long moment. Then he spoke again, slower this time.
"One month," Yinsen said. "He wants to see a finished product in one month." A pause. "Or I don't make it to the month after."
The leader held up his weapon briefly, making the point clear, then turned and walked out with his men. The door shut behind him.
Tony stood still for a second. Then something hardened behind his eyes and he turned back to the workbench.
Yinsen followed without a word. There was nothing to say. The timeline had just gotten shorter, and the suit wasn't finished.
They got back to work.
After leaving Tony's room, Raza walked to the monitor to report to his boss.
The exchange was in Dari.
"Everything is going smoothly here, boss. Stark is under our control — one month, we'll have the Jericho Missile ready."
"Raza, the Americans are pushing hard into the search grids. Keep your men quiet. Nothing stupid. Just monitor Stark."
"Yes, boss. Understood."
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