Author's Note: Thanks, as always, to my betas-and-writing-buddies szzzt and MountainRose. You guys rock.
Technovore lunges across the hallway and crashes into Tony like a freight train. Its weight slams his back into the floor, knocking all the air out of him, but terror gives him the strength to grab at its forelimbs anyway. It's a glorified wipe utility, he thinks hysterically. It's built to clear hard drives. Why the hell is it so heavy? The thing hisses above him, shooting ice down his spine, and he wrenches at its claws with everything he has.
It takes absolutely no notice of his struggling. Instead it rears above him for a moment, snarling like sheet metal being shredded underwater. Questing rasp-tipped probes unfurl from its lampreylike maw, taste the air, and plunge into Tony's reactor.
They might as well have torn straight into his heart. Fire explodes outwards from the reactor, igniting every nerve in his body, and Tony howls in agony as Technovore worms its way inside him. He can feel the tendrils wriggling, gnawing at the delicate mechanisms, making the housing judder in his ribcage. His vision goes white with the pain, or maybe that's just the searing light of the core sparking against open air. His heart seizes, locked in electrical spasm. Something crackles deep in his chest.
Then, somewhere, an impact - red swept away by a flash of black and silver. Some distant fragment of lucidity recognizes it: Maria. She's knocked the thing off him.
But its probes are still wrapped deep inside the reactor, and it does not want to let go. The wriggling rasps lock rigid, clawing into the reactor, and the tendrils are jerked taut against Technovore's full weight. Where the housing fuses into Tony's ribcage, bone and titanium screech a tortured duet, and something right between his shoulderblades pops sickeningly. He chokes and his back arches up off the floor, pure reflex fighting to ease the horrible pressure, but he's rewarded only with the burrowing agony of Technovore clawing deeper. It's wrenching his ribs apart, turning him inside-out, but still can't quite hold on; it falls aside and the rasps are dragged out of him, pulling all his innards with them as they go.
He must black out then, because when he comes back to himself he's lying huddled on his side, hands curled over the arc. His whole torso burns. Breathing hurts. The damaged reactor buzzes and sparks, little shocks pulsing through him every few seconds. He can't feel his toes. He can't think. How did he...
Technovore.
The burst of adrenaline lets him roll himself most of the way upright before his chest seizes up and yanks him to a stop. He gasps, dropping back to one knee to clutch at the reactor. The headrush is slow to fade, but when his vision starts to clear, the first thing he can pick out is a slim figure in black - a figure braced between him and the ominous haze of red.
"Maria," he gasps. Thank fuck. She's still standing. He can't have been out for long. They don't have much time. "Run! Get to the arc reactor, stop AIM." He drags himself a little farther upright, his voice cracking against the strain. "I'll hold off Technovore as long as I can."
She doesn't even look at him, keeping her pistol trained steady on the weaving nanotech beast. "You can barely stand." Another jolt shudders through him, and he can't keep from flinching; the glance she tosses him says that he's making her point for her. "I'm not leaving you."
There's no time to argue. Technovore rears above them, its whirr-chitter-growl rising to echo through his brain. Its camera iris whines delicately as it fixes on Tony. Even Maria flinches. Tony steels himself. If that thing hits him again... His pacemaker's half fried already, his heart staggering against his ribs. From the way the reactor's flickering, the core containment fields are also damaged. Say what you will about Tony's recklessness, but he does not want to die, not from cardiac arrest and not in a blast of hot plasma -
But the thing doesn't charge. It weaves back and forth, hissing; its cameras turn aside to zoom deep on some point beneath their feet. With no more warning than that, it launches itself aside. The elevator doors buckle and melt before it.
Maria bolts after it. "Where's it going?"
"Down." The Tower's arc reactor is down there. Rhodey's down there, with Cap and Panther and god only knows how many AIM goons. Tony staggers to the elevator doors to watch Technovore go: its spiralling descent is definitely the most surreal thing he's seen all day. "Did you bring your jet pack, by any chance?"
Her answering grin is positively predatory. She waves a compact little cable ascender. "I'm an agent of SHIELD. I'm prepared for anything."
Tony dredges up a smile and flings his aching body after her. The whole ride down, clinging to the too-small handle and counting the thumps of his straining heart, he still can't help but wonder... where was she keeping that thing?
- o -
The signs of Technovore's exit are really, really hard to miss. Cold-molten metal, warped by the passage of voracious nanites, has jabbed backwards into the elevator shaft. There's gonna have to be some serious cleanup before these lifts will work again, Tony thinks, absently cataloguing the damage as Maria's ascender squeals to a stop. Adding up the cost in time, labor, and materials keeps his mind off the strain of hurling himself off Maria's back and through the wreckage of the elevator doors. It doesn't help much with the landing, though: the impact with the cement floor rockets up through his body to detonate in his spine and chest, and it's all he can do to stay conscious. Keeping his feet is out of the question.
Maria's boots hit the floor beside him, and he lifts tear-blurred eyes to see her extend a hand. "Stark?"
Between them, they manage to lift him back upright, and he takes stock of their surroundings. Dark concrete, utilitarian architecture. Yellow-suited corpses scattered like jacks, but he can ignore those for now: there are far better things in this room. A smile lifts the corner of his mouth. "Over there," he rasps, pointing to one of the nearest armor cases.
"Technovore went that way." Maria frowns.
Yes, thank you, Acting Director Obvious; he's neither blind nor stupid. (The gaping hole in the concrete is kind of a dead giveaway.) "Yeah-huh. 'N the Suit's over there."
For once, she doesn't argue further, instead wrapping his arm around her shoulders and half-carrying him to his armor. It's a bit of a struggle to hold himself upright long enough for the assembly arms to do their work, but he manages. It'll be worth it.
...Oh, fuck, is it ever worth it. The Suit's cuirass closes around his chest, its power couplings click gently into the arc reactor's ports, and just like that its medical systems come online. JARVIS murmurs in his ear, something about tokamak flux loss and sinoatrial feedback, but the AI has to know he's not paying full attention; the IV that J just planted in his wrist was full of pure, cool relief, and with the couplings cycling up, the reactor's already quit shocking him. Yeah, Tony's head is clearer with the pain dulled, but the sudden respite is enough to make it swim all over again. He sags against the chestplate, breath whooshing out of him, and just... rests for a minute.
Eventually, JARVIS' voice calls him back. "Sir?"
He sucks in a long slow breath. The hurt is distant, muted, but it's still there. J, bless his motherboard, hasn't given Tony the Good Stuff - they both know he still has to fight today. "Yeah," he rasps. "M'here."
"Sir." The synthetic voice sounds relieved, but only for the space of that one word. "Your arc reactor is badly damaged. You should-"
"-go fix it right now, yeah, I know." He squeezes his eyes shut, then makes himself open them again. "Can't. Rhodey's..."
"I know, sir." JARVIS has 'affectionately exasperated yet resigned' down to a science, Tony thinks numbly. How did he ever make someone so damn awesome? "The Iron Man armor's power couplings and medical systems can be used to stabilize the reactor's core containment and your heart function. Such stability is projected to last no more than ninety minutes, but that time should be sufficient to aid Colonel Rhodes and return to the mansion."
"Yeah." Tony smiles, and for the first time since the scarlet apparition battered down his office door, it's genuine. "Thanks, J."
"However," and J's tone edges back up towards 'worried' and 'foreboding', "sensors also indicate a posterior dislocation of your left third rib. The resultant misalignment of the reactor housing is -"
"Yeah." Tony knows. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt, burned it symbolically first chance he got. "Can you set it?"
"In theory, the new anti-G system could be used to apply the correct force, but -"
"JARVIS. Can you set it."
The AI hesitates. "Yes, sir."
Tony leans his weight forward, letting the armor hold him up, and rests his forehead on the helmet's frontal cushion. "Then hit me."
JARVIS doesn't answer, but the Suit leans Tony farther forward, then locks its joints all around him with a wave of tiny clicks. When the anti-G pressure gel in the cuirass hums into life and begins prodding gently at his upper back, Tony grits his teeth and braces himself.
"Deep breath, sir," JARVIS instructs after a long moment's painful poking, "and breathe all the way out -" but Tony misses anything else the AI might have said, because just as his lungs empty the Suit stabs him in the spine, right at the locus of the pain, and something right against his vertebrae pops horribly. He'd screech if he had the air for it. The armor pins his flailing limbs.
After that, though, the relief is nearly instant. The tight knot at the middle of his back melts away; the reactor port settles in his chest, releasing the burning pull on his ribs. He'd drawn breath to swear, but instead he lets it out in a rush, reveling in the lesser sting of damaged reactor connections. "Oh God, J. Don't ever do that again."
"Gladly, sir. In return, might I request that you refrain from causing yourself further dislocations? The anti-G system is most certainly not designed to handle orthopaedic emergencies."
"Shit, don't make me laugh," Tony gasps, but he's grinning. "Still hurts."
"I wouldn't dream of it, sir."
JARVIS finally boots the display cameras, opening the HUD properly. Tony lets out one more breath (feels the armor compensate with him, cuirass easing the motion) and steps out of the armor case. The Suit smoothes his movements, supports him, lets him walk with confident grace; even with the reactor still flickering, the casual observer would never know he's not 100%.
Maria's there, still standing in front of the case; her arms are folded and she's eyeing him narrowly, probably wondering what took him so long. "Good to go," he grins, popping the faceplate. "You go through the hallways, get this to Steve. I'll follow Technovore and Rhodey."
She turns her skepticism on the shield-generator cuff that he's just shoved into her hands, but quickly looks back up at him and just nods. "Move, Stark" is all he gets, tossed back over her shoulder as she turns and lopes away.
"Yeah, yeah." Move. Pfft. He's suited up now. In this thing, he can fly.
- o -
- o - o -
- o -
Author's Note: There's a fair bit of Marvel movieverse in this, because I may or may not adore movie-JARVIS a bit, and also because headcanon.
This piece is already written except the last hundred words or so, and I'll post one chapter per week until it's finished. About darn time I finished something, heh. No, I have not forgotten my other works; they're still on the way.