Extremis

by Marie Jevins

  “Extremis protocol dictates that the subject be put on life support and intravenously fed nutrients just prior to the incubation phase. For the next two or three days, the subject remains unconscious within a cocoon of scabs.”

  She waved the photo one last time and said, “It’s pretty gross, as you can imagine. Extremis uses the nutrients and body mass to build new organs. Better ones. We loaded in everything we could think of. The hypothetical we were given was to build a three-man team that could take Fallujah on its own.”

  Tony ran his hand through his hair and sat back. This was bad. “And this Extremis is what was stolen from Futurepharm? A super-soldier biological compiler? And someone took the serum without following your protocol. Survived, obviously. Could be unstable. Probably already was. And is now…what a mess.

  “You’re going to have to hand details of the process over to the authorities.”

  Maya winced. Tears started rolling down her cheeks. “It’s my life’s work, Tony. We were so close to success.”

  “Hey, Maya, easy.” He stood up and walked over to her, put an arm around her. “You’ll find something else. Look at me. One day, I’m making weapons, the next I’m completely reformed and out saving the world. And I’ll help you. I’ve got some pull here and there. The authorities like me pretty well. I’ll talk to them—maybe you can destroy Extremis instead of handing it over.”

  She looked up at Tony, shock across her face.

  “So…destroy your life’s work? Yeah, maybe that wasn’t the right thing to say. I’ve got empathy down, but I’m still working on timing.”

  Tony put both arms around Maya now and drew her close. He could feel her warm, wet tears on his shoulder and wondered briefly whether they’d leave a stain on his suit. He could feel her shaking, heaving slightly as she tried to contain her emotions.

  Her hair still smelled like apples.

  He absentmindedly brought one hand up to her hair, stroking it while wondering about the chemical composition of the smell—thinking idly that one day, when he had some free time, he’d look into the science of creating smells. That might be useful to Stark Enterprises’ appliance division, if they could figure out a way to introduce a hint of smell into certain appliances. Humidifiers, for example, or an in-house food composter that smelled nice.

  Tony’s cell phone buzzed, jarring him back into the moment. He realized he’d been holding Maya much longer and tighter than was appropriate for someone claiming to just be helping out a friend. He stepped back so he could reach into his pocket to pull out his phone, but Maya didn’t release him. She tugged at him. Closer.

  Tony remembered he liked apples. He reached down and pulled up Maya’s chin so he could see her face. Her mascara had run down her cheeks, dripping from her tears. He wiped the smudges away, one side at a time.

  “You’re still so beautiful,” he said, gently caressing her upper arms, then sliding his hands down to her waist.

  She stretched up to reach his face and kissed him.

  He let her, held her tighter, and stroked her back. She was barely larger than she had been when they’d first met, though he was sure her work schedule allowed for very little physical activity.

  She probably skips a lot of meals, he realized.

  And then they were kissing, first tentatively and then sloppily. Tony tried to think of all his resolutions to be a new man, to convince Pepper that he was done being a womanizer, and that she should take him seriously. But what if Pepper never loved him back? What if she always saw him as just a friend and boss?

  Maya was smart and beautiful. Possibly a genius equal to Tony himself. Hadn’t she just done the impossible, overwritten the human brain as if it were a hard drive in need of new software?

  Smart is sexy, Tony thought.

  She moved back, took his hand, pulled him toward the jet’s sleeping quarters. He took a step toward her.

  His phone buzzed again. He glanced down. Mrs. Rennie. He gently pushed Maya away. What was he doing?

  “I have to take this.”

  “Tony…”

  “Maya, no. I’m sorry. This is wrong. I’ve changed.”

  “People don’t change, Tony.”

  “I have. I’m a better person now, and I’m not done changing yet.”

  She turned away as Tony voice-activated his phone.

  “Mrs. Rennie. Why do you keep calling me?”

  “Markko in Engineering has been trying to get you on the phone, Mister Stark. He claims it’s extremely urgent. Something personal.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Rennie. For everything.”

  “What?”

  “Put him on...Markko! Stark here. You did? Excellent. I’m on the plane, so send—”

  He waited a moment as Markko talked excitedly. “Okay, I’m listening. What have you got?”

  As Tony listened, he glanced at Maya, who had her back to him. “Good job, Markko. I owe you dinner. That Greek place with the belly dancer you like. Yeah, I’ll move you out of appliances for a while. Send the decrypted files to my secure personal server. I’ll go through it when I get a chance. Nice work.”

  Tony had no time for subtlety. He turned to Maya.

  “My guy hacked your dead boss’s files. He gave Extremis to a group of militiamen south of Austin. Domestic terrorists.”

  Maya closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands.

  “I have to make some calls,” said Tony. “We’re landing in a minute. Happy will drive you back to Futurepharm.”

  “You’re not coming?”

  “I’m going to find your super-soldier, Maya. You saw what he did at the FBI. Guns won’t stop him. It’s got to be me.”

  He left Maya alone and went into the next room, which was dark aside from a blue projection screen. “Initiate Iron Man warm-up sequence,” said Tony. He used his fingerprint to unlock a storage panel that slid back, revealing his armor. “Next, access Avengers liaison channel. Priority A-1. Iron Man.”

  He paused a moment while the voice-recognition system cleared him. “Information regarding attack on FBI station, Houston. Forward to all relevant law enforcement entities. Upload of related files to follow ten seconds behind this message.”

  The projection screen now showed a diagram of the Iron Man armor and the words “Iron Man warm-up sequence engaged.”

  “Perpetrator of Houston attack is in superhuman aspect, possibly suffering side effects of process. Local law enforcement should not engage alone. Repeat, perpetrator is in superhuman aspect, do not engage alone or without further information. Perpetrator and associates likely to be in transit from Houston to Bastrop at this time. Details of superhuman aspect pending. Review files for background.”

  The Iron Man diagram was now glowing red. Ready.

  “Iron Man is available for intercept and engagement.”

  Tony put the phone down, then spotted his reflection on the projection screen, superimposed over the Iron Man diagram.

  He saw the future.

  And this time, he didn’t look away.

  T E N

  “Mallen, gimme a beer.”

  Mallen grunted something unintelligible from the back of the van. Beck turned around.

  “Huh?”

  “No more beer.”

  “Nilsen, pull off at the next exit. We need beer. Mallen, do you still drink, now that you’re all…uh…?” Beck motioned at Mallen—whose appearance had transformed during his time in the slaughterhouse, from man to creature, then deceptively back to normal man—and shrugged.

  “I can drink you under the table, Beck.”

  “You can’t. You still owe me ten bucks for the last time you tried that.”

  “You wanna find out?”

  Beck shook his head, demonstrating a bit of common sense for a change. “No. After what you did back there…Mallen, did you have to burn the whole building? We could’ve just gone after the guys that killed your—”

  “Shut up, Beck. People that join the Feds make a choice.”


  “If we don’t get beer soon, I’m going to make a choice, too. A choice to drive through the window of one of these crappy gas stations so we can get some beer. Why the hell does everything close so early here?” Nilsen had pulled off into a small Texas town that seemed to be little more than a rest area along the highway.

  “Remember back at the group home,” said Beck, “when we used to swipe beer from Old Man Cecil down at the guard shack?”

  “No, you stole beer from Old Man Cecil. I used to hang with him. He was all right,” said Mallen.

  “You just liked him cuz he knew your dad.”

  “My dad used to make bets with him. Like telling him he’d give him his old Civil War musket if Cecil could skin a rabbit all in one piece.” Mallen chuckled. “Cecil always lost.”

  “Like with you and my ten bucks.”

  “Shut up.”

  Beck shut up a lot faster now than he used to, Mallen noticed. There were fringe benefits to being the strongest, fastest, most invulnerable man in town. In the state? The country?

  The world?

  Mallen hadn’t thought about his father’s Enfield musket in years. He had wanted it, wondered where the Feds had taken it after the raid. No family possessions had come with him to the county shelter or the group home—or the first foster home, or the second or third. He’d been allowed nothing that belonged to his parents. The government took it all.

  They took his parents, too.

  Mallen had been ten years old, sitting on the floor playing with his .22—he’d just gotten it for his birthday—in the corner of the old cabin, when his father pulled up outside in the ’57 Ford pickup.

  His dad ran in, shouting. His mother, older brother, and uncle looked up from their poker game.

  “It was a Goddamn trap! A government trap!”

  “What?” said his mother. “ATF? FBI?”

  “They were waiting for me to buy the guns. Hell, they were the ones selling me the guns! It was all I could do to get out of there! And then they followed me on to our property—”

  “Are they here now?”

  “I think…I think I killed one.”

  “Mr. Mallen.” A voice over a bullhorn echoed through the cabin.

  Ten-year-old Mallen checked his .22 to make sure it was loaded. He clicked the safety back and forth a few times. He’d never shot more than a bottle or a squirrel. Maybe that was gonna change today.

  “Oh, God,” said his mother. She grabbed and loaded her Winchester.

  “Mr. Mallen, we’ve surrounded your property,” came the bullhorn-voice again.

  “See? Our property,” said his brother as he reached up the cabin wall to unrack the Enfield. “This is entrapment. They lie to you, trespass…this ain’t right, Pa. We’re free people! They can’t just lie to us because we scare ’em.”

  From Mallen’s spot on the floor, he had a good view of his mother’s calves below her skirt as she stepped over last night’s leftover beer bottles on her way out the front door. She waved her rifle.

  “Why don’t you shove it right up your—”

  The government’s bullet went straight through his mother’s head, exploding her skull and sending her brains splattering on to the cabin walls. His brother and uncle went next, baseball caps and hair drenched in blood. Finally, Dad was shot through the skull as he cradled Mom’s head.

  Mallen had wished many times that he’d run outside with his .22 that day, a ten-year-old fighting with honor before going down in a hail of Federal bullets. He’d never have had to move from foster home to foster home, never have been returned over and over to the group home like an unwanted holiday gift or defective appliance being sent back to the store. But instead of running outside, young Mallen had stayed crouched against the wall.

  Much as he was crouched against the side of the van today.

  “You okay, Mallen? You were making some noises,” said Nilsen from the driver’s seat.

  “Fine,” said Mallen. He looked up at the top of the van. He wasn’t going to stay crouched this time. “Just fine.”

  “Good,” said Beck. “Because we’re going to drive a few more miles up to the next exit, and then I’ll need your ten bucks. Unless you want me to steal the beer.”

  From above, the van didn’t look suspicious. Iron Man watched it pull back on to the interstate.

  “I’m streaming you video from my cameras. Confirm that as the vehicle identified from surveillance footage?”

  “That’s a confirm, Iron Man,” said a crackly voice from highway patrol headquarters. “Only gray 1990 Econoline in the region. Sorry it took all afternoon to find—we were looking west on I-10 until a trooper called in the missing plates. They’re coming up on the off-ramp.”

  “Understood,” said Tony from inside his Iron Man armor. “Jarvis, toggle to thermal-imaging scope and fix on target.”

  Iron Man’s video feed switched to hazy infrared. He could pick out shapes inside the van now.

  “Okay…one driver, one front passenger…very hot spot in the back…that’s our boy. That’s a lock.”

  Iron Man sped up a little and arced across the evening sky. He felt omnipotent when he was flying, and there was no better use for the Iron Man armor than protecting innocents.

  “I’m going to engage the vehicle on the off-ramp when it’s isolated from other traffic,” Iron Man explained to highway patrol via radio. “I’ll be using repulsor weapons. These are reactionless force protection—one-way push. Get in the way of one, and you’re risking broken bones and internal organ damage. I want all police officers pulled back until I’ve subdued the target. You’ll be responsible for the two men in the front. I’ll free them up for you. Do not approach the man in the back under any circumstances. He can only be taken down by my repulsors, not by regular ammunition. Stand by.”

  Tony switched off his two-way radio and voice-activated his armor munitions. “Jarvis, set repulsors at 40 percent. That should be enough for this. Don’t want to vaporize the two accomplices.”

  Glowing circles on Iron Man’s palms fired up into white plasma; like lasers, two repulsors streaked through the sky toward the Econoline. The repulsors swiftly and neatly sliced the van in half. The front of the van, carrying the driver and one passenger, careened down the off-ramp on two wheels, sparking wildly as it swerved toward the guardrail and the waiting state troopers.

  The rear of the van veered erratically and somersaulted off the exit ramp, flipping twice before it crashed to a stop amid a storm of debris.

  A figure emerged from the steaming wreckage. Mallen was unhurt, but was roaring and furious. Whatever Maya’s serum had done to the man, he didn’t look all that different from any other enraged person. He appeared mostly average, if average had a temper and was wandering around the highway having a really bad day.

  “Target. Zoom in,” said Iron Man. His optical zoom bracketed the man on the ground and brought him into sharp focus. Jeans. Leather coat. T-shirt. Average height and weight, Caucasian male in his mid-30s, short brown hair. But wait. Tony frowned and zoomed in closer. His eyes…his teeth. The man’s gums and irises had a coppery sheen to them. And the look on his face—the clenched, exposed teeth, the tense, furrowed brow, the slitted eyes. He looked vicious, like a killer in attack mode.

  Iron Man hovered, then landed on the ground. He extended his arm toward Mallen, palm out, repulsor glowing white.

  “Lay down on your face with your hands behind you and cross your ankles,” said Iron Man. “There’s no reason this has to be difficult.”

  Mallen’s face con torted with rage. His hands were clenched.

  “Yes, there is,” said Mallen. “Ask your FBI friends what they did to the Mallen family and then you’ll see. Lots of reasons.”

  Fine, thought Tony. He hit Mallen with a repulsor.

  Mallen absorbed it in a fiery glow. He moved slowly forward, inconvenienced but not overwhelmed, as if pushing through a pile of fresh snow. Tony saw Mallen’s jaw relax a bit.

  “Increas
e repulsor to 80 percent, Jarvis,” said Tony. He blasted Mallen again, with no effect.

  Okay, thought Tony. This is surprising.

  Mallen ducked away from Iron Man’s barrage. How? He leapt aside as Tony followed, blasting only dirt and grass with his repulsor. Damn, he’s fast.

  Then Mallen was there, right in front of Iron Man. He blasted Tony with flames, heating up the armor on the right side.

  “All systems to 100 percent,” said Tony, confirming his power levels visually on the internal-armor holographic display. “We’ll do this the hard way.”

  He grabbed Mallen by the throat, choking off his flames and lifting his feet off the ground.

  “You’re under arrest,” said Iron Man.

  Mallen felt his air being cut off as his fiery breath turned into red mist, evaporating into flames spewing from his open mouth. His fire had no effect on Iron Man’s fire-repellent armor. He started to choke, then felt a tingle in his left hand.

  Claw-like electrodes, sparking blue, extended from his fingers.

  Huh, he thought. Didn’t know I could do that.

  Mallen’s powers appeared to be evolving.

  He grabbed Iron Man’s forearm and sunk his claws into the armor. He felt them penetrate the outer shield, then watched as an electric charge jolted through billionaire Tony Stark, electrocuting and short-circuiting the armor.

  Iron Man crackled and fell.

  “Rich jackass can’t even stand up in that costume without power,” snarled Mallen. “Here, let me help you.”

  He swiftly lifted the seemingly lifeless figure over his head, then threw Iron Man. Threw the weight of the Iron Man armor and the man inside, with no more effort than a kid would toss a softball.

  Mallen watched as Iron Man receded to a dark speck in the sky.

  The Iron Man armor flatlined across Tony’s in-helmet holographic displays. The Heads-Up Display sparked and vanished, along with his ocular controls and Jarvis. That left Tony Stark alone and merely human inside what had become, for the moment, a worthless, heavy shell.

  Extremis appeared to be rewriting Mallen’s abilities on the fly. At the FBI, it had granted him superhuman strength and fire-breathing capabilities. Here it extruded claw-like electrodes, emitting an electrical field specifically adapted to interrupting its opponent’s—Iron Man’s—armor. Extremis was a biological weapon, not hampered by the same limits as traditional AI. Was it gradually giving Mallen unlimited powers, or just adapting to whatever threat was at hand?