by Marie Jevins
“You just blew it, Stane. Yes, their deaths are my responsibility. But here’s why you can’t use that against me. Thousands of deaths in war-torn countries around the world have been my responsibility. Small children picking up firewood. Women going to fetch water. Innocents in the line of fire, stumbling over land mines. I already can’t look at myself in the mirror. You can’t drive me to drink because I already live part-time in Hell, right here in my head where you’re paying me a visit. You can’t scare me any more than I scare myself.”
Stane’s head fizzled and disappeared.
“Oh, and Stane,” Tony called after him. “Iron Monger is a stupid name. And my dad thought you were a jerk.”
He willed himself to fall back asleep, to exist in the suspended state between awareness and dreamland, but Extremis wouldn’t cooperate. Extremis was still focused on the evolution of Iron Man.
His origin continued to play out in his head.
In Tony’s dream-haze, his chest glowed from the arc reactor. He fired a blast at the door that had been keeping Yinsen and himself imprisoned. Yinsen fell back as Tony—clumsy in the armor he’d built—stumbled, then dragged his steel-and-iron-covered frame through the door. He emerged into the tunnels that honeycombed these caves, deep in the Afghan mountains.
Insurgents with guns—men in camouflage and combat boots, with their heads covered against the sand and sun outside the caves—poured into the dark tunnel, racing toward the huge gray creature that Tony had transformed into.
He stood for a moment, glowing from his arc reactor—towering, invulnerable, and powerful in his steel shell.
Five men turned and fired their assault rifles at Iron Man. Tony shielded his eyes—which, in the first armor, had been exposed behind slits—with the metal gauntlet on his left forearm. The bullets pounded his armor, but did not break through.
“You people wanted Stark micro-munitions?” he asked. “Have some.”
Iron Man stretched out his right arm toward the insurgents and fired a quick barrage of pellets cannibalized from a defunct seedpod, one from each finger. They exploded at the terrorists’ feet, engulfing the men in an explosive blast of flame.
Tony heard bullets pinging off his back, not unlike the sound of heavy rain echoing on a corrugated metal roof. More men were running at him, attacking from behind ammunition-storage sheds, firing machine guns and rifles. He spotted the muzzle flashes and turned around slowly—the first Iron Man armor hadn’t been very nimble—and aimed a hand at the men. He depressed a switch inside his palm guard. There had been no artificial intelligence in the first armor, either. Everything had been manually controlled.
A repulsor beam blasted the men, knocking them aside and leaving them lifeless on the rocky ground. Tony clicked a lever in his left glove, igniting a spark. Flames shot from his outstretched hand, incinerating the ammunition sheds and everyone he saw on his way out of the cave. He could smell the burning bodies.
Another bonus of his modern armor: It was airtight.
And then there was daylight. He breathed the outside air and gazed at the sky. How long had it been?
Tony heard an engine and the squeal of brakes. He turned to see a Jeep pulling around a building, screeching to a halt, its passenger aiming an Uzi right at him. Tony wanted to fly away, but he hadn’t yet invented boot jets.
BLAM BLAM BLAM. Tony was struck three times right in the chest. He glanced down to see small dents where he’d been hit. This armor is tough, he thought.
He raised his head slowly, angrily, and his arc reactor glowed.
“Weapons test,” said Iron Man. A fiery uni-beam blast shot out of his chest, annihilating the Jeep.
And then there was only fire, thick black smoke, explosions, and the foul stench of burning diesel.
Iron Man stood triumphantly among the flames.
F I F T E E N
“Aaaah!” Maya yelped with surprise as Tony’s chest repulsor blasted through, lasering away his rigid Extremis cocoon-shell.
Tony had regained consciousness a moment ago, and found himself still unable to move. Enough of this, he’d thought. Get this bio-metal off me. No more restraint—Mallen had too much of a headstart on Iron Man. Tony didn’t have time for Extremis to finish processing, to naturally dissolve its husk.
So, with a single thought, Tony sent out a network of Extremis-powered mini-bursts throughout the cocoon. The electromagnetic bursts followed his neural path network, sizzling red below the hard cover and burning it away.
The bio-metal evaporated and fell to the floor as if it had been shed. Tony lay naked on the operating table, the lab around him dark aside from the blue lights of the computer monitors and the white glow from his chest. He sent one more thought-command out through his system.
Remove electrodes and IV. The connectors and tubes snapped off him, sparking as they dissolved.
“I’m alive,” said Tony. “I’ll be damned.” He lay still for a moment, marveling that all the pain he’d felt was gone, the delirium had vanished. He felt fantastic, alive, alert, ready to arm-wrestle Captain America and the Hulk at the same time, one with each arm, while simultaneously rescuing Pepper from an alien invasion.
“Tony, don’t try to move!” Maya stood over him, a panicked, high-pitched edge to her voice. She held out her hand to stop him.
“I am so sick of people saying that to me,” said Tony. He sat up. “How long was I out?”
“Twenty-four hours. This is way too fast.”
Maya was checking Tony’s vitals and pulling up his eyelids, looking to see whether all was normal. “I made a few alterations to your compiling program while you were out of the room,” he said. “Removed some safeties. Ow, stop poking me.”
“You did what?” She stood back, stunned.
“Improved your work, Maya. When I said you were smarter than me? I was just trying to make you feel more confident. You seemed nervous, you know? So, what—were you just staring at me for 24 hours? Take a nice long look? When did I lose my circuit-skin?”
“You still had your underwear on when the cocoon grew, if that’s what you’re wondering,” said Maya, averting her eyes as Tony stood up. “You must have burned it off yourself, show-off. And there’s nothing new to see here, so don’t flatter yourself. Whatever you grew must be on the inside.” She smirked.
“And I didn’t just stare at you, for your information. I was busy playing with this amazing device.” She waved Tony’s phone. “I watched Billionaire Boys and Their Toys and kept an eye on your messages in case you got something important from Nick Fury or the president. Who’s Pepper?”
“Why, did she text?”
“Only fourteen times.”
“Not so loud,” Tony winced. “I think I’ve grown new ear tissue.” He held out his newly repaired right hand and examined it. He clenched and unclenched his fist. “How about that? Brand new. Hey, that looks like what I’d plug my stereo speakers into when I was a kid.” He’d noticed a port in his forearm. He glanced down at his chest to find additional ports all over his body.
“Let’s see if the other stuff I grew works,” he said. “Start.” Tony felt a mild humming sensation in his muscles and realized: I’m online.
“These things are on your back, too, and they’re symmetrical,” said Maya, her scientific curiosity overcoming her modesty. She examined one closely. “Tony…this wasn’t part of Extremis before. What have you done?”
Tony smiled a toothy grin. The humming had subsided; he was no longer tired or delirious. He really felt spectacularly well.
“This,” he said. The port on his shoulder blade turned golden. It grew and multiplied, transforming into a web of copper-colored biometal that honeycombed across his skin, spreading quickly over his entire body to cover him in a conductive subskin layer that was part of his actual anatomy. It moved up his body within moments, blanketing his neck and skull, leaving only his face exposed.
“Supercompressed and stored in the hollows of my bones, Maya. I carry the c
rucial undersheath of the Iron Man suit inside my body now. That’s why I won’t be needing to wear it or carry it around. That’s why Extremis dissolved the sheath I used to wear.”
He turned and faced her. “It’s wired directly into my brain. I control the Iron Man with my thoughts now. Like it was another limb.”
He glanced across the room at the case that held his armor.
“Look, watch the briefcase that Mrs. Rennie sent me.”
The briefcase popped open with a thought. Tony didn’t even need to touch it to reveal the parts of the Iron Man armor within.
“How did you do that?” Maya was astonished.
“I sent the signal from the lockchip in my arm.”
Maya’s phone buzzed, and she glanced at it. “Oh, Hell. Don’t do anything for a second,” she said. “I have to take this…”
She put the phone up to her ear, keeping an eye on Tony as she did so. “Maya Hansen.”
“Hello, Maya. It’s Tony.” She held the phone a few inches away and stared at it as the voice continued. “Note carefully how my lips are not moving, and that there’s nothing up my sleeve. If you like, I could do this while drinking a glass of water.”
“Stop it, Tony! You are freaking me out,” yelled Maya. She threw the phone at him. He ducked easily, and it hit the wall behind him, then clattered to the floor.
“Don’t watch this next bit, then,” Tony said, laughing. He raised his arms dramatically.
The Iron Man suit, section by section, rose up out of the case as if by magic. The pieces levitated and moved toward Tony through the air, seemingly propelled only by thought. They attached themselves to him, each section placing itself carefully where it was intended to go, then clicking into place. The shin guards clung to his shins. The chest guard covered his chest. The helmet enveloped his skull and face, and clicked together with no visible seam.
“How are you doing that?” Maya was a scientist. She didn’t believe in magic, but she was stumped.
“Vectored repulsor field.” Tony was casual in his response. “Just lightly pushing stuff from different angles.”
Fully assembled now in familiar red-and-gold armor, Tony stepped forward into the light, clenched the fist on his rebuilt right hand, and struck a proud pose. The new Iron Man suit was sleeker and more stylish than the one destroyed in the battle with Mallen. The slotted eyes glowed an eerie white against the smooth golden mask. The arc reactor shone through the alloy chest plate in a pale-yellow triangle. He flipped the visor on his helmet up and down with a thought, testing an extension of his body that now felt as natural as his own arms and legs.
“I am Iron Man,” said Tony. “Inside and out.”
“My God.” Maya stood in front of the results of her collaboration with Tony Stark, small next to the Iron Man armor. She reached out a hand, brushing the arc reactor faintly with the tips of her fingers, almost caressing this physical manifestation of her years of dogged research. “We have to run some tests. Remember Sal’s warning about emergent-tech tendencies, Tony. You’ll still be evolving in the near future. You can’t anticipate the changes you’ll go through! That’s dangerous. And the strain on your internal organs…”
“Grew new ones.” Iron Man turned away and walked out the lab door. “I need to go to work. Mallen’s still out there, and he’s a day closer to Washington, D.C., now.”
Maya chased along behind him. “We don’t know exactly where he is.”
Iron Man stopped, turned, and stared at her. “Maya, I can see through satellites now.”
He turned and strode away, alone, down the darkened hallway.
S I X T E E N
Mallen heard the mountain man, blowing the harp in an old stone quarry, long before he saw him.
Mallen was hiking through a forest, somewhere in Virginia. There wasn’t too much farther to go, he knew, before he got to the suburbs of Washington, D.C. He’d seen signs along the eastbound highway a few hours back when he’d emerged from a protected mountain valley at Front Royal. He’d veered away from the interstate and even the back roads to avoid altercations. Not that the authorities had a chance against Mallen’s new powers, but he didn’t feel like fighting all the way to the United States’ capital city.
The harmonica echoed through the forest of old oak and hickory trees. Whoever was playing it was extraordinary, creating train sounds and mimicking whooping and hooting. Mallen was no music or blues aficionado, but he knew this was exceptional.
He followed the sound of the music down a ridge from a dirt road. But it stopped when he got closer, and the sound of howling dogs filled the air.
Mallen ran closer, leaping over boulders as he rushed down a slope to arrive at the edge of a small quarry. A wiry old mountain man covered in whiskers stood above the quarry on a small Caterpillar bulldozer. He held a harmonica in one hand and a half-full unmarked bottle of clear liquid in the other.
“Shaddup, Bob! Blue, sit down! That bear ain’t gonna hurt you. Shut the hell up. I was playin’ the harp up here.”
A black-and-tan coon dog and a bluetick hound were braying at a medium-sized black bear that had been unlucky enough to stumble on to the scene. The dogs had cornered the bear up against the rock wall of the stone quarry.
“You need some help here, mister?” Mallen leapt down into the quarry and strode past the dogs. He grabbed the bear’s midsection with his hands and, holding it upside-down, lifted it above his head.
“Down, boys!” the mountain man hollered at his dogs. They kept howling and jumping at Mallen. The bear wriggled its legs furiously.
Mallen pitched the bear, feet first, up over the quarry and into the woods. The dogs set off, chasing the bear as if it were a stick, howling all the way.
“Thank you kindly, sir,” said the mountain man. “Though it ain’t bear season right now.”
“Well, I don’t see a game warden around, Mister, uh…”
“Lee Jefferson Davis Tecumseh Sherman, but you can call me Slim.”
“All right, Slim. This your place?”
“Hell no, boy. This here’s my quarry. My place is up yonder.” Slim motioned up the mountain. “You wanna drink?” He held out the unmarked bottle.
“Sure.” Mallen took a swig of the liquid. It tasted fiery and gross. He spat it out on the leaves, accidentally breathing sparks and starting a small fire.
“Sorry,” said Mallen. He stamped out the fire.
Slim laughed. “My moonshine ain’t never done that before. What brings you ’round here, stranger?”
“I’m from Texas, on my way to have a talk with the government. I’m going to set things straight.”
“Good for you, boy,” said Slim. “I stood up to the Feds, too. They wanted to take this mountain for a national park. I said fine, you can make all the parks you want, but this is my quarry and my land, and you can’t take it cuz my wife and I been living here thirty years and this is how I make money. So y’all make your Bull Run National Park around my land, and I’ll be in a little island in the middle, but I want y’all to blaze my land as private property to keep out trespassers when they come hiking nearby. Cuz otherwise, I might shoot ’em or my dogs might eat ’em.”
“So you stopped them?”
“I sure as hell did. I went down to community meetings, and I wrote letters to the editor. I played the harp through my nose, and I sang my ballad, and I clogged for the rich neighbors at the meetings, and they said this here’s a real mountain man, let’s help old Slim here hang on to his home. Of course, they like their land, too, but they can’t clog, so they had to do it with city lawyers.”
“Whatever works,” Mallen agreed. “Me, I got something a little more direct in mind. You see what I did with the fire? I have this stuff in me, makes me stronger than everyone. Got it from a lab guy down in Texas. He was in the bar downtown, a few stools away from me and my buds, and he was tryin’ to be cool. ‘Hey, bartender,’ he said, ‘here’s ten bucks.’ Then he winks at the guy, like he’s Ginger on Gilligan’s
Island, like he’s a girl, and asks if any of his customers might have a bug up his butt about the government or military. Bartender told him to go to hell and still kept his ten bucks.”
Mallen laughed now, and Slim laughed, too.
“We went and talked to the guy then. Got something from him, an injection. Stick it right in the base of the skull, he told me and my friends. That’s the nerve center. It’ll make you stronger. Well, it did. I’m a walking weapon. I can make my point, and they have to listen.”
“You’re a regular freedom fighter then, boy,” said Slim with a chuckle. “Come on up the hill. My wife will have coffee brewin’, and then I got something to show you, freedom fighter.”
“What’s that?”
Slim slid down off the bulldozer and started walking up the hill. Mallen followed him.
“I found some ruins in the hills. I found some artifacts. I think it was a fort from Mosby’s Rangers.”
“Who?”
Slim stopped and stared at Mallen.
“Boy, if you weren’t from Texas, I’d clobber you right now. You’re walking through the front lines of the Civil War. Right where we’re standing, didn’t you know this land changed hands more than thirty times?”
Mallen looked blankly at Slim. He came from an entirely different part of the country and hadn’t paid much attention during history class. Plus, he’d dropped out as soon as he legally could.
“Mosby was a freedom fighter—the gray ghost of the Confederacy. A colonel,” explained Slim, with exasperation. “His rangers rode through these hills, harassing the other side. He was what you wish you were, and he did it without breathing fire, with just regular manpower. Come on—I’ll show you.”
The dogs—Bob and Blue—came running back and escorted the two men as they picked their way over the boulders up the slope to the dirt road. Mallen marveled that Slim could make out the trail. Even with his Extremis-enhanced eyesight, he could barely see it.