SHIELD Headquarters, Triskelion
"Natasha, I need you near Stark. Starting immediately."
Natasha Romanoff sat across from Nick Fury's desk with the particular stillness of a woman who could kill you seventeen different ways with a paperclip and saw no reason to advertise it. Her red hair fell past her shoulders. Her expression gave away nothing.
"What happened?"
Fury didn't waste time. He never did.
"Obadiah Stane was transferred from our black site to a federal correctional facility two weeks ago. The transfer didn't require my authorization, so I wasn't informed until after the fact." His one good eye narrowed. "Last night, that facility had a fire. Seventeen dead. Stane is listed among them."
Natasha processed that in under a second. "Transferred without your knowledge, dead within a week. That's not a coincidence."
"No. It isn't."
"Visitors during that week?"
"None on record. Everything looks clean on paper. Too clean." Fury leaned forward, hands flat on the desk. "Stane isn't dead. The fire was cover for an extraction. Someone went to considerable effort to move him from a black site I controlled to a facility they could breach, and then staged his death."
"And you think whoever did this is coming for Stark."
"Stane tried to kill Stark once. He failed because of our mysterious sorcerer friend. If Stane is alive and free, with resources and a grudge, Stark is the obvious target." Fury paused. "I need eyes on him. Yours, specifically. Get close, stay close, and find out what's happening before it blows up in our faces."
Natasha uncrossed her legs and stood. Fluid, unhurried. "And the sorcerer?"
"If Stark still has contact with him, feel him out. The Avengers Initiative is moving forward. We need assets, and a mage who can stun a man in power armor with a wooden stick is exactly the kind of asset I want on our side."
"Understood. I'll leave within the hour."
"Good luck." Fury almost let her go. Then: "Barton wanted me to ask. He's in Mexico, comms are spotty. Says do you want anything."
The faintest ghost of a smile crossed Natasha's face. "Hot sauce. The local kind."
"I'll pass it along."
She left without another word.
Fury waited until the door closed, then picked up his phone and dialed.
One ring. "Coulson."
"Change of plans. Shelve the Mexico operation for now. I need you to locate the package I told you about. Howard Stark's materials. The ones he left for his son." Fury turned toward the window, looking out at the Potomac. "When I give the word, you deliver them to Tony personally. Not before."
"Understood, Director."
Fury hung up. Outside, the Triskelion's angular silhouette cut the afternoon sky like a blade.
I hope you're smarter than your old man, Tony. Because Howard couldn't crack the problem, and if you can't either, the timeline I'm working with gets very short.
Tony Stark's Mansion, Malibu, California
Several days later
Tony saw the news on his workshop display while running diagnostics on the Mark VI prototype.
OBADIAH STANE DEAD IN FEDERAL PRISON FIRE. 17 KILLED.
He stared at the headline for a long time.
Something about it sat wrong. Like a puzzle piece that fit the hole but showed the wrong part of the picture. Obadiah, transferred from whatever hole SHIELD had buried him in, dead in an accidental fire less than a week later. The timing was surgical. The convenience was obscene.
Either someone wanted him dead, or someone wanted everyone to think he was dead.
Tony turned the thought over for thirty seconds, then deliberately set it aside.
His life. His death. Not my problem anymore.
He reached for the glass on his workbench. The green mixture inside had gone lukewarm, which somehow made the taste worse. Bitter, vegetal, clinging to his teeth. He drank it anyway, grimaced, and checked the mirror mounted on the wall beside his tool rack.
The grey lines were still there. Spreading outward from the arc reactor, tracing the map of his circulatory system in dull ash. But slower now. Whatever Abel had done in the backseat of that car, it was working. The veins that had been creeping toward his neck had stalled at his collarbones, the advance blunted.
Bought time. Not a cure. Abel's words.
Bought time. I'll take it.
"Sir," JARVIS said, "I'm detecting an unidentified airborne object approaching the residence at high velocity. ETA approximately fifteen seconds."
Tony's head snapped up.
"Origin?"
"Unknown. No transponder signal. Flight profile suggests powered flight, not ballistic. The object is decelerating."
The words registered. The implications hit him a quarter-second later.
Not a missile. A person. In armor.
The mansion shook.
The impact came from above, punching through the roof of the workshop with a sound like a car accident played through stadium speakers. Concrete and steel rained down. Tony threw himself sideways, rolled behind the workbench, and lunged for the drawer where he kept the Mark V suitcase.
His fingers found the handle. The case cracked open with a mechanical whine, and the armor unfolded around him in overlapping plates, locking into place joint by joint, the HUD flickering to life inside the helmet. Emergency armor. Lightweight. Minimal weapons. Designed for exactly this kind of situation and nothing more.
The dust cleared.
Something stood in the crater where his workshop ceiling used to be. Seven feet tall, easily. Iron-grey plating, thick and brutal, built for brute force rather than elegance. No curves, no streamlining, just raw tonnage wrapped in metal. The armor looked like it had been forged in a scrapyard by someone who prioritized function over form with religious intensity.
The faceplate opened.
Obadiah Stane smiled.
"Miss me, Tony?"
The world tilted. Tony felt something cold slide through his chest that had nothing to do with palladium.
Dead in a prison fire. Right. Of course not.
"Obadiah." Tony's voice came out flat through the Mark V's speakers. "The funeral was a nice touch. I almost sent flowers."
"I couldn't wait for you to mourn properly. I've been too busy." Obadiah flexed one massive armored hand, the servos whining with raw power. "New armor. New reactor. Everything I needed to come back and finish what I started."
Tony's eyes swept the suit, cataloging details through the HUD. The arc reactor in Obadiah's chest glowed with a cold blue-white light. Different design from Tony's. Cruder, but functional. The armor itself was thicker, heavier, built to absorb punishment rather than avoid it.
He has an arc reactor. Someone built him an arc reactor. Who the hell can build an arc reactor?
"I have to be honest, Obie, the aesthetics haven't improved. The first suit looked like an industrial accident. This one looks like a dumpster that learned to walk."
"Always the comedian." Obadiah's smile vanished. "Let's see if you're still laughing when I rip that reactor out of your chest."
Tony raised both palms. The repulsors whined, building charge.
He fired.
Twin beams of arc energy slammed into Obadiah's chest and helmet. Direct hits, center mass and head. The kind of shots that would drop a normal man, shatter concrete, put a hole through a car door.
Obadiah rocked back one step.
One.
The scorch marks on his chest plate were cosmetic. His faceplate, which had snapped shut the instant he saw Tony's hands rise, showed a hairline scratch. Nothing more.
"Is that all?" Obadiah's voice came through his helmet speakers, distorted and amused. "Because I have to tell you, Tony, I'm disappointed. You used to be more creative."
The Iron Monger charged.
No repulsors. No ranged weapons. Just mass and momentum, seven hundred pounds of armored fury crossing the distance between them in two strides. Obadiah's fist came down like a sledgehammer.
Tony dodged. Barely. The Mark V's servos screamed as he threw himself sideways, the fist cratering the concrete where he'd been standing. He fired again, point-blank into Obadiah's side. The impact staggered the bigger man for half a second.
Not enough.
Tony activated the boot jets, launched himself to the second floor through the hole in the ceiling, and sprinted toward the armory. The Mark V was a stopgap. A band-aid with repulsors. It couldn't take hits from Iron Monger II. It couldn't dish out enough damage to matter.
He needed a real suit.
Behind him, the floor exploded upward as Obadiah smashed through it like it was made of cardboard.
"Running, Tony?" Obadiah's voice echoed through the house. "Your father would be ashamed."
My father would have had a contingency for this. Multiple contingencies. And a drink.
Tony ran.
END CHAPTER 39