by Alex Irvine
Tony sat in front of the podium eating his cheeseburger. “Hey, would it be all right if everyone sat down?” he said to the reporters. With some puzzled looks, they did. Then before Stane could step in, he cleared his throat and got started.
“I…” Tony began, “I never got to say good-bye to my father. There’re questions I would have asked him. I would have asked him how he felt about what this company did. If he was ever conflicted, if he ever had any doubts… or maybe he was every inch the man we all remember from the newsreels.” Tony paused and then went on. “I saw young Americans killed by the very weapons I created to defend them. And I saw that I had become part of a system that is comfortable with zero accountability.”
Reporters shouted questions over each other. Finally, one voice rose above the rest.
“Mr. Stark,” a reporter said. “What exactly happened to you over there?”
Tony looked thoughtful for a moment, and then all his emotions seemed to overflow.
“What happened over there?” he repeated. “I had my eyes opened. I came to realize that I have more to offer this world than just making things that blow up. And that is why, effective immediately, I am shutting down the weapons manufacturing division of Stark Industries.”
In the pandemonium that followed this thunderbolt of an announcement, Rhodey sidled up to Pepper. “Weren’t we taking him to the hospital?” he asked. She shrugged.
Onstage next to Tony, Obadiah Stane’s jaw dropped, and the lobby erupted into chaos. Stane moved to cut Tony off.
“We’ve lost our way,” Tony continued. “I need to reevaluate things. And my heart is telling me that I have more to offer the planet than blowing things up.”
Tony put his arm around the flustered-looking Stane. “In the coming months,” Tony said, “Mr. Stane and I will set a new course for Stark Industries. ‘Tomorrow Today’ has always been our slogan. It’s time we try to live up to it.”
Reporters shouted questions as Tony stepped back and Stane took the podium.
“Okay,” Stane said. “What we should take away from this is that Tony’s back, he’s healthier than ever, and as soon as he heals up and takes some time off, we’re going to have a little internal discussion and get back to you. Thank you for coming by.”
Tony stepped off the stage, beaming. Pepper had never seen him so enthusiastic. He quickly worked his way through the crowd to where she and Rhodey were standing.
“Do you mean that?” Pepper asked.
“Wait and see,” Tony replied. He headed out the side door and into the company’s sprawling campus.
Stane found him near the Arc Reactor building. “That went well,” Stane said sarcastically.
“Did I just paint a target on the back of my head?” Tony asked.
“The back of your head?” Stane replied. “What about the back of my head? How much do you think our stock is going to drop tomorrow?”
Tony thought a moment. “Forty points.”
“Minimum,” Stane said, concerned. “Tony, we are a weapons manufacturer.”
“I don’t want a body count to be our only legacy,” Tony said.
Stane frowned at him. “What we do here keeps the world from falling into chaos.”
“Well, judging from what I’ve seen,” Tony said, “we’re not doing a very good job. There are other things we can do.”
“Like what?” Stane asked. “You want us to make baby bottles?”
“We could reopen development of Arc Reactor tech,” Tony mused.
“The Arc Reactor was a publicity stunt,” Stane said. “We built it to shut up the hippies.”
“It works,” Tony observed.
“Yeah, as a science project,” Stane replied. “It was never cost-effective. We knew that before we built it. Repulsor Arc Reactor Technology is a dead end. Right?”
“Maybe,” Tony replied.
Stane looked at him anxiously. “There haven’t been any breakthroughs in thirty years. Right?”
Tony shook his head. “You’re a lousy poker player, Obadiah. Who told you?”
“Come on,” Stane said with a big grin, like they already were sharing a secret. “Let me see the thing.”
“Was it Rhodey?” Tony asked.
“Just show it to me,” Stane said.
Tony ripped open his shirt, revealing the glowing electronic unit in the middle of his chest.
“Well,” Stane said, marveling. He took a deep breath. “Listen, we’re a team. There’s nothing we can’t do if we stick together. No more of this ready-fire-aim business. No more unplanned press conferences. Can you promise me that?”
“Maybe,” Tony said.
Stane straightened up. “Let me handle this,” he said. “I did it for your father; I’ll do it for you, but, please, you just have to lie low for a while.”
But “lying low” was never something Tony Stark was good at.
CHAPTER 9
The Stark mansion came alive as Tony walked through the door. Jarvis, the house’s computer system, turned on the lights, changed the color of the windows, switched the TV to Tony’s favorite channel, and adjusted everything to Tony’s preprogrammed preferences.
“Hello, Mr. Stark,” said Jarvis’s almost-human voice.
“Hello, Jarvis,” Tony replied.
“What can I do for you, sir?”
“I need to build a better heart,” Tony said.
“I’m not sure I follow, sir.”
“Give me a scan and you’ll see what I mean,” Tony replied.
“Shall I prepare the scanner in the workshop, sir?” Jarvis asked.
“Please. I’ll need a full analysis.”
Less than twenty minutes later, Tony sat in the scanning booth in his lab. Laser beams and ultrasound imagers flashed over Tony’s body, analyzing him from head to toe.
“State your intentions for the RT device in your chest, sir,” Jarvis said.
“It powers an electromagnet that keeps shrapnel from entering my heart,” Tony replied. “Can you recommend any upgrades?”
“Why are you talking to me like a computer?” Jarvis asked, his electronic voice betraying not a hint of irony.
“Because you’re acting like one,” Tony replied. “I remember you having more personality than this.”
“Should I activate sarcasm harmonics?”
“Fine. Could you please make your recommendations now?”
“It would thrill me to no end,” Jarvis said.
A smile tugged at the corners of Tony’s mouth. “Ah. That’s more like it.”
“Would you like them on-screen, or shall I talk for the next three-point-two hours?”
“On-screen would be great,” Tony said.
A series of recommendations and schematics appeared on the lab’s monitors. Tony studied them quickly, his keen mind taking in every detail.
“Great,” he said. “Perfect. Just what I had in mind.”
“Of course, sir,” Jarvis said. “Shall I begin machining the parts?”
Tony loaded raw metal stock into the lab’s machine-tool facilities and watched as Jarvis began cutting.
Half a world away, in the deserts of Afghanistan, a swarm of ragged men scoured the sand dunes, looking for items to scavenge.
“Over here! I found something!” one man called, pointing to a battered gauntlet protruding from the sand. He tugged the metal glove free and held it high, as though it were a trophy.
A corroded pickup truck bounced over the dunes toward the discovery. In the back of the truck stood a powerful man holding a mounted machine gun. A banner showing ten conjoined rings fluttered over the machine gunner’s head.
The truck pulled up next to the discoverer and he threw the gauntlet into the back. He smiled up at the machine gunner’s scarred and burned face, hoping for approval.
Raza, the scarred man, merely nodded.
“There’s more here!” cried a man atop another dune.
“And here!” called another, farther on.
Ra
za picked up Iron Man’s battered helmet from the truck bed and stared into the helmet’s empty eye sockets. “Keep looking,” he called to his men. “Bring me every piece of armor you find—no matter how small. I want all of it.”
Pepper hung up on Agent Coulson for the third time—he was getting to be a real pest—and knocked on Tony’s bedroom door. When no one answered, she poked her head inside. The bed was made but not slept in, though the TV was on. A finance advice show blared news about Stark Industries.
“I have one recommendation,” the moderator was saying. “Sell! Abandon ship.” Behind him, the day’s newspaper headlines blazed across the screen—STARK RAVING MAD?, STARK LUNACY, and other similar rants.
When Tony’s voice came over the bedroom intercom, Pepper jumped. “Pepper, how big are your hands?” he asked.
Frowning, she hurried through the security doors and down to Tony’s lab. When she arrived, she found the workshop dimly lit, dirty, and disorganized. Tony was sitting in a chair, shirtless, his chest plate glowing slightly.
Pepper steeled herself. Though she knew the device implanted in his chest had saved Tony’s life, she still hadn’t gotten used to it.
“I need you to help me,” Tony said.
She stared at the glowing Repulsor Tech device in his chest. “So that’s the thing that’s keeping you alive.”
“That’s the thing that was keeping me alive,” he said. “It’s now an antique. This is what will be keeping me alive for the foreseeable future.” He held up a similar device that looked much more high-tech and powerful.
“Amazing,” she said.
“I’m going to swap them out and switch all functions to the new unit,” Tony said.
“Is it safe?” Pepper asked.
“Completely,” he assured her. “First, I need you to reach in and—”
“Reach in to where?” she asked warily.
“The socket in my chest,” Tony said. “Listen carefully, because we have to do this in a matter of minutes.”
“Or else what?”
“I could go into cardiac arrest,” Tony replied.
Pepper’s stomach twisted into a knot. “I thought you said it was safe.”
“I didn’t want you to panic.”
She felt the blood drain from her face.
“Stay with me,” Tony said. “I’m going to lift off the old chest piece—”
“That won’t kill you?”
“Not immediately. When I lift it off, I need you to reach into the socket.…” Tony kept talking, giving quick but complete directions so she could replace the unit.
Somehow, Pepper managed to get through the procedure without passing out. Afterward, she gazed at the old “heart” while one of the lab’s robot arms finished installing the new unit.
“Can I wash my hands now?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said, continuing to talk as she went to the sink. “The new unit is much more efficient. This shouldn’t happen again.”
“Good,” she said, drying off, “because it’s not in my job description.”
“It is now,” Tony replied.
She frowned at him and picked up the old unit. “What should I do with this?” she asked. The tiny power plant glowed slightly in her hand.
“That old thing?” Tony replied. “Throw it out.”
Pepper frowned. “You made it out of spare parts in a dungeon. It saved your life. Doesn’t it at least have some nostalgic value?”
“Pepper,” Tony said, “I have been called many things, but nostalgic is not one of them.” The robot finished the installation of the new unit; the center of Tony’s chest glowed brightly.
“There,” Tony said. “Good as new. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Pepper said, feeling greatly relieved. “Can I ask you a favor? If you need someone to do something like this again,” she said, “get someone else.”
“I don’t have anyone else,” Tony replied.
He looked into her eyes and, for a moment, she felt something for him she’d never felt before. She turned away. “Will that be all, Mr. Stark?”
“That will be all, Ms. Potts.”
CHAPTER 10
Before he went further with his new project, Tony felt like he had to set a couple of things straight with Rhodey. He caught his army pal in the midst of a presentation, where Rhodey was arguing that the air force would always need pilots. “No unmanned aerial vehicle will ever trump a pilot’s instinct, his insight, his ability to look into a situation beyond the obvious and discern its outcome… or his judgment.”
“Colonel?” Tony called out. “Why not a pilot without the plane?”
Rhodey saw him and rolled his eyes. “Give us a couple minutes, guys,” he said, and started walking with Tony. “Didn’t expect to see you around so soon,” he said.
“Rhodey, I’m working on something big,” Tony said. “I want you to be part of it.”
“You’re about to make a lot of people around here real happy,” Rhodey said, thinking Tony was talking about a new military project.
“This is not for the military,” Tony said. “I’m not… it’s different.”
“What, you’re a humanitarian now or something?” Rhodey asked.
Nobody believed Tony had actually had a change of heart. “I need you to listen to me,” he said.
“No,” Rhodey cut him off. “What you need is time to get your mind right. I’m serious.”
Tony knew people, and he knew when he wasn’t going to get anywhere by arguing. “Okay,” he said, taking a step back. He had hoped to show the new project to Rhodey so his friend would understand, but Rhodey was still thinking like a soldier.
That was part of the problem Tony wanted to fix.
Sketches and designs lay scattered across the worktable in Tony’s lab as he tinkered with his newest invention—a pair of shining metal boots. “Jarvis, you up?”
“For you, sir, always.”
“I’d like to open a new project file, index as Mark Two. Until further notice, why don’t we just keep everything on my private server?”
“Working on a secret project, are we, sir?”
“Don’t want this ending up in the wrong hands,” Tony said. “Maybe in mine, it can actually do some good.”
“Still having trouble walking, sir?” Jarvis asked.
“These aren’t for walking,” Tony replied.
He finished the adjustments, put the boots down, and marked a circle on the lab floor with electrical tape.
“Why are you marking up the floor?” the computerized butler asked.
“It’s a test circle,” Tony replied. “It’ll help me gauge the experiment’s success.”
“I’ll inform the cleaning staff,” Jarvis said.
Tony put on the boots and stepped to the center of the circle. He draped a bandolier-like control device around his shoulders and hooked it all into his chest unit.
“Ready to record the big moment, Jarvis?” he asked, gripping the bandolier’s joystick controls.
“All sensors ready, sir.”
“We’ll start off easy,” Tony said. “Ten percent power.” He pressed the activators on the joysticks.
The boot jets fired and he shot toward the ceiling. He wrestled with the controls, flipped sideways, barely avoided the ceiling, and careened around the workshop before finally crashing into the wall and falling into a pile of cardboard boxes in the corner.
As Tony lay upside down amid mounds of plastic packing material, Jarvis said, “That flight yielded excellent data, sir.”
“Great,” Tony replied.
Days later, Pepper came into the workshop as Tony fiddled with a pair of metal gauntlets. He put the gloves on, pointed them across the lab, and activated the Repulsor Technology pads in the palms.
A blast of light issued forth from his hands. It hit a toolbox fifteen feet away, knocking it over and scattering the wrenches inside across the floor.
Pepper frowned. “I thought you were done inventing we
apons,” she said.
“It’s not a weapon,” Tony replied. “It’s a flight stabilizer.”
“Well, watch where you’re pointing your flight stabilizer, would you?”
He gave a sheepish grin.
“Obadiah’s upstairs,” she said. “Should I tell him you’re in?”
“I’ll be right up,” Tony replied.
As she left, she placed a small box on the edge of his worktable. Intrigued, Tony took off the gauntlets and ripped the package open.
Inside was his old chest device, encased in shatterproof plastic. The reactor glowed faintly inside the clear material. Tony knew it would continue to glow for years. The casing had an inscription: PROOF THAT TONY STARK HAS A HEART. Tony chuckled and headed upstairs.
He reached the living room just as Obadiah Stane set a pizza down on the coffee table. Stane flashed the billionaire a concerned smile. “It went that bad, huh?” Tony asked.
“Just because I brought pizza from New York doesn’t mean it went bad,” Stane said. Then, after a pause, he added, “It would have gone better if you were there.”
“You told me to lie low,” Tony said. “That’s what I’ve been doing. I lie low and you take care of all…”
Stane nodded, appearing genuinely touched. He took a deep breath, too. “Come on,” he said. “In public, sure. The press. But this was a board of directors meeting?”
“It was?”
“The board is claiming you have post-traumatic stress. They’re filing an injunction.”
Tony’s jaw dropped. “What?”
“They want to lock you out.”
Tony began pacing again. “How can they do that? It’s my name on the building—my ideas that run the company!”
“Well, they’re going to try,” Stane said. “We’ll fight them, of course.”
“With the amount of stock we own, I thought we controlled the company,” Tony said.
Stane shook his head. “Tony, the board has rights, too. They’re making the case that you and your new direction isn’t in the company’s best interests.”