According to his schematics, JC Denton knew that after hacking this keypad he would be in Tony Starks armory. His goal was clear. Secure the suits against Stark and then proceed upstairs and arrest the rogue billionaire. The security so far was a nightmare. The premises were riddled with security gadgets made by Stark himself, making them almost impossible to bypass without burning out his stack of multitools. Cameras, lasers, infrared detectors, pressure pads. Most doors, even the ones that led to the bathroom, required fingerprint scanning switches. Even outside, the perimeter was protected by many virtual fences. It has taken Denton hours to make it this far. Hours of moving in absolute silence, with tech goggles squeezing his head, wearing an overheating, because of its heavy usage, thermoptic camouflage and all that while carrying the heavy weaponry he would need if something would go wrong. So when Denton hacked the last digit of the keypad with his multitool, he couldn't help but sigh in relief. The door to the armory opened and a cool breeze cooled him off. Stark was keeping his workplace at a cool 19 degrees Celsius. The air was cleaned by the air conditioning filters, but while at first it smelled fresh, someone could discern the smell of motor oil, solder and welded metal. JC looked around with his tech goggles and he saw a line of luxury antique cars, a bench with various scraps on top of it and lastly a display with all of Iron Man suits.
As soon as he took his first step inside the armory, a painful blinding light filled his goggles, along with the sound of a charging capacitor. He felt a blast at his hand. Monomolecular plates reinforced his skin against the blast and polyanilene conductors tried as hard as they could to dissipate the heat. But no matter how efficient his augmentations where, his left arm felt numb with pain. It would have been his chest, but his arm was raised to remove the goggles that were blinding him. He was knocked back to a wall when a second repulsor started firing. This time Denton expected it, and he put both his arms in front of him like a boxer for defence. The light from the repulsor gauntlet, illuminated the face mask of an Iron Man suit. The second blast broke the bone of his left arm and his right arm developed a bad hematoma. His breath was taken from him and he couldn't keep his arms up. The third shot hit him straight to the chest. JC fell to his knees gasping for air.
"If it isn't the greatest spy in the world, JC Denton! Weren't you supposed to ambush me and arrest me?" said Iron Man. Denton could almost feel Stark grinning behind his mask. "You ok down there? Still alive?"
"Sorry to disappoint, but I am a hard man to kill," said Denton. Iron Man walked towards him, towering over him like a metal giant. "So.. Nice place you have here."
"Don't even think about stalling. I'm up to date to your little tricks. The second I see you healing, I'm taking you down. But yeah, my place is awesome! I build most of it, including security. Did you enjoy it?"
"It was interesting," said JC while still gasping for air. "Although Ι think I did a good job. When did you spot me?"
"As soon as you tried to enter the perimeter. My tech have redundancies to prevent hacking attempts," said Stark matter-of-factly. "I just didn't wanna spoil the opportunity of wearing you down mentally."
"Clever man...," JC marmered.
"Yeah, Ι get that a lot," Stark retorted. "But not even I can understand why would you rebel against Majestic 12, just to become a pawn for the Illuminati."
"How do you know those names?" asked JC. He wasn't surprised. After all, Iron Man had attacked many of their secret operations.
"Majestic 12 tried to recruit me. Even before Ι created the Iron Man technology, I was considered quite the technological genius and my company was influential even without conspiratorial connections. I believe they considered me a very valuable ally," said Stark,while sounding extremely pleased with himself.
"Never heard a more smug person in the world and I met a guy who tried to become a god."
"Oh, please. I'm not smug, I'm self aware. As for the Illuminati, they contacted me too. First a few months after the fall of MJ12. I refused. Then I was ambushed in Middle East. I got wounded and was forced to create this to keep me alive and escape," said Stark and tapped his Arc Reactor with his finger. "I escaped, built my first fully functional suit and took down the guys that wounded me.
"When the Illuminati got intelligence about my mission and my suit, they asked me to join them again. But this time I was up to them. The leader of the terrorist group said to me, that it was Obadiah Stane, my fathers right hand that ordered the hit on me. After some investigation, I uncovered that Stane was part of the Illuminati. They tried to kill me. So you see? Those whom you follow now are not that different than your old masters. They too assassinate people for power."
"The Order does not kill millions of people, like MJ12 did. I do not pretend to like what we do all of the time. But it is the moral thing to do. The world needs guidance, it needs a plan, and for us to be able to guide them, we need absolute control. Maybe you have a vision for the future and maybe it's a good one, but we can't allow two organizations with different goals to shape the future. It leads to conflicts and then instability and death. You were invited to a council, a place where your ideas would be heard and you would hear others. All the confrontations would be contained within council meetings and when a decision was met, we would apply it to the world, as one body.
"But you don't want that. The only reason you did not agree, was because you wanted the whole world to see what a genius you are, you want to lead them from the spotlight and pretend to them and yourself that you are giving them free choice to follow you, like the option to stay behind technologically is a valid one.
"I have news for you. You are just an egotistical son of a bitch, that only cares about having only your own way," said JC and stood up. His healing augmentation kicked in and healed all damage he had sustained. "And I can prove that by the way you act. You build battle suits and go on missions to stop us, and you don't stop for a second to consider the orphans and the widows of innocent men that you create in the process. You are close to creating your own nano augmentation project, the Extremis Virus — yes we know, guess I'm not that crappy at corporate espionage as you thought — so you can build an army to stop as. You are not building a future Stark. You are just trying to destroy the one we are making."
"I'm not using it to build an army," said Stark.
"We've looked at Extremis. It's build mainly as a weapon. The nanite project Chimera, was designed to enhance the abilities of those chosen few, who will use those abilities to lead more effectively. But you still think like a weapons constructor Stark." said Denton.
"You have been misguided," said Stark as he shook his head. "I wish I could believe that your "Order" has the best in store for the people of this planet. But that is not the case. I know from my missions that the Illuminati have no intention of doing anything good. They are holding the world behind to ensure that the future has them in power. I will do what I must. My conscience is clear."
For a few moments both men stood still and considering their options. Denton pulled back his duster and reached for the EMP grenade that was holstered on his belt. He activated it and let it drop on the floor. The grenade exploded as soon as it hit the floor and a blue energy sphere filled a 20 feet radius. Denton felt a tingling sensation under his skin, as the Nanoscale EMP generators protected his bioelectric energy levels. He looked up and saw that the Iron Man suit was still operational.
"I guess that means that we have to do this the hard way...," said Denton.
Iron Man raised his hand ready to fire another repulsor blast, but he ended up firing at the ceiling. Denton had activated the augmentations that were interwoven with his leg muscles and tackled Iron Man with force, throwing him to the floor, with him on top of him. Without losing any time, Denton activated his combat strength augmentation and struck Iron Man in the face with the palm of his hand. Iron Man's head hit the floor hard, and it shook Starks head inside of it. But the force of the strike was so great that Denton ended up with some broken bones. It didn't matter of course. With so much adrenalin flowing he barely felt the pain and his healing augmentation started healing it almost immediately. He repeated the same strike with his other hand with almost the same results. The floor underneath Iron Man's head made a small crater. He was about to deliver a third strike, when he listened to a repulsor ray charging. Iron Man's chest was glowing, as he was getting ready to unleash his Unibeam. By the footage that Denton has seen, he knew that the Unibeam took a little bit longer to warm up, but if it hit him, he would probably die instantly.
In those few moments that it took for the Unibeam to charge, JC jumped off Iron Man and hid behind the bench. Iron Man missed, and the beam made a hole in the ceiling, but at least he was free to press on the counter attack. Denton has proven much faster than Iron Man had anticipated, but it was nothing his armor couldn't handle. He flew behind the bench were Denton has taken cover. He locked-on to him and flew towards him. Denton tried to dodge that too, but Iron Man managed to punch him. With the full weight of the suit, multiplied by the small speed he had gained by flying towards him and the powerful actuators that moved the suits arms, Denton flew back several meters and hit the wall with force.
He almost passed out from the blow. He was dizzy. While his healing augmentation was fixing the damage to his internal organs, that were all bleeding horribly internally by now, his brain was hungry for oxygen. He had lost every concept of spatial awareness, he didn't know where his enemy was or what he could use as cover. When he heard the repulsors charging he just instinctively jumped out of the way and he fell on the glass door of Starks armory. Tiny little pieces of glass tried to cut him, but his skin was too hard to pierce, thanks to his skin augmentations. Another repulsor charged. One more time Denton jumped out of the way, this time towards the antique cars. He tried to regain his composure, see things clearly and come up with a plan. His HUD informed him that internally he was ok, but his mind was still confused. A third repulsor blast was charging. Denton decided that he was gonna take the hit, establish his surroundings and plan for his counter attack. He rised both his hands in front of him and took the blast there. He felt his skin scorching, despite the protection his augmentations offered. He listened to Stark flying towards him for another flying punch, but he was ready now.
At the crucial moment, he sidestepped him, he pulled out his GEP gun, and fired a rocket at Iron Man's feet. Stark lost one of the thrusters and spinned in the air before falling to the floor. While on the floor a second rocket hit him in the back. The suit absorbed much of the shock, but Stark's spinal cord started to complain by sending some small throbbing pain. Sure it wasn't something that could really hurt him, but he had to do something about it. Still on the ground he turned around just in time to shoot down a rocket with one of his repulsors. A second repulsor beam was shot at Denton who easily dodged it and fired another rocket. The two men traded a few blows like that, but it was clear that they couldn't hurt each other, even though Stark had the upper hand, by forcing Denton to dodge his every attack.
"Is that the best weapon that the Illuminati has given their star pupil to take me down with? I'm getting disappointed. I've seen faster reloading missiles in security bots. Although to be fair, they were Stark Industries security bots.." said Stark.
"I wouldn't know that. They couldn't even find me while I was strolling in your Extremis labs, let alone fight me." answered JC. Truth was, he could use a faster rocket launcher than the GEP gun, but those missiles tended to be a lot weaker. A more powerful missile launcher would be too cumbersome for a stealth mission. So he has taken with him the GEP gun, that his brother gave him, at the first day of his job and modified to maximum efficiency in his quest to overthrow MJ12. But even with all the gadgets and tricks Denton installed to make it reload faster, it was still too slow to take on Iron Man.
Once he realised he couldn't do much from such a distance, JC started to close in, while he was dodging repulsor blasts. When he was close enough, he jumped so high, that he almost touched the ceiling, and fired a rocket directly at Iron Man's mask. Stark couldn't believe the speed that the young agent was moving. He was feeling slow and felt that the response time of the suit was slowing him down even more. He made a mental note that Extremis should be programmed to allow him to control his suit by thought. Watching Denton jump so high, even though he knew about the power of his augmentations, felt unreal. The rocket felt like a punch in the face. Before he could react, he saw Denton descend on him, with the GEP gun raised above his head. Denton hit Iron Man on the back of his neck with all his augmented strength and made him bow down.
He stepped back at a relatively safe distance, loaded another rocket and fired, but this time at Iron Man's chest. Iron Man stepped into the rocket, making the blast hit them both. Denton was thrown back from the explosion, but Stark only felt like he has taken a light jab. The chest was the strongest part of his armor.
"Using a GEP gun like a club. What are you gonna try next? Throwing rocks at me, like some kind of a stone age lunatic?" said Stark while he walked towards his wounded opponent. He wasn't going to give him the chance to dodge this time. He was planning to fight him up close. Denton started healing his broken ribs and organs. He wished the healing augmentation could grow new teeth too, when he spout out blood and broken teeth.
"No, not rocks. But how about something from the bronze age, like a sword?" said JC and he activated the Dragon's Tooth Sword. The nanites of the sword, forged the blade instantly. A light blue light came out of it and it illuminated the wounded face of JC Denton.
"Dragon's Tooth... You just made a huge mistake Denton. I was searching everywhere for this blade. If I get it, I can reverse engineer it, and then I will have a self repairing armor and a way to make it portable," said Stark. Even though his voice was masked by the computer, it was obvious that he was very eager to get his hands on that blade.
"If.." answered Denton and charged him.
Stark, knowing in theory how effective a non-eutectic solid blade could be, started dodging and parrying by hitting the flat of the blade. The sword broke a few times, but it was instantly reforged. Stark was feeling more excited with the potential of this technology, than worried about Denton, who was struggling to keep dodging punches, while looking for openings, all while his bioelectric levels were failing.
Denton tried to calm his mind and remember what he had learned about sword fighting back in Hong Kong, under the guidance of the Luminous Path. There was a counter to overly aggressive attackers who were over extended. The italians, he was told, called it "il passata sotto". He was never able to pull it off in combat, because he never achieved the inner state of calmness but also awareness needed to draw your opponent off his safe zone. He tried to use the Meditation of Illumination. He hadn't really used this technique in combat and he was pretty sure that there was some kind of rule against using the ritual for that purpose, but he did it all the same.
His attacks got slower, while he was trying to concentrate. That gave Stark the room to be more aggressive but Denton had a better understanding of his attacks. It was a matter of time before Stark overextended and he did. He tried to punch Denton's face. A very small target. He overshot and his body was left open for the counter. Denton ducked and thrusted the Dragon's Tooth Sword at Iron Man's abdomen.
His strength was coming from the augmentations on his legs and his arms, all focused on the tip of the sharpest sword ever made. The blade made it through the first plate of titanium armor. The second piece slowed it down considerably and finally it embedded itself inside Stark's guts. Stark felt vulnerable. He left out a scream of pain and panic, as Denton retrieved his blade. In his rage he jumped back and raised his hand to blast Denton from a close distance, but Denton slashed upwards and destroyed Iron Man's right blaster.
Stark weighed his options. His flying capabilities were ruined, he only had one repulsor left and his opponent was too fast and had the advantage on an enclosed space like this. But he was almost running out of bioelectric energy. If he could manage to do enough damage to him at once, maybe he wouldn't be able to repair it.
Denton didn't expect the Aggressive Defensive System to go off like that. The bleeping was deafening, as the system registered 10 different missiles. But Stark was too close and the missiles would blow them both. He gave the command to disable the ADS, but as he gave it, he felt it was too late. The aerosol nanoparticles had already launched. Denton knew that he had less then a second and that nothing he could do could save him. As a final move, he would try to take down Stark with him. His sword came down to Iron Man's head. The helmet was slashed across the face , but before the cut could go deeper, the explosion from all of Iron Man's rockets combined pushed Denton back.
Stark was knocked back too. The open mask let the noise from the explosion deafen him and he was confused. His arms were broken, as the missiles exploded almost inside their casing. The wound in his armor's abdomen, was pushed a bit inside, opening his wound a bit more. But his plan had worked.
Denton was not so lucky. He was laying, almost unconscious, with severe wounds all over his body. His energy had given up while the fireball from the explosion was still burning, so his neck and face got burned and had blisters. From the force of the blast several parts of his body burst open. His left leg had exploded like a balloon, showing the bones inside. His abdomen was ripped open and his intestines were spilling to the floor from a small opening, while he was trying to get them back in. He tried to yell in pain, but both his lungs were almost destroyed and they hardly provided enough oxygen to survive.
Iron Man walked towards him. Denton expected the final blow. Iron Man removed his slashed helmet and he looked at Dentons bright electric blue eyes, his sunglasses were gone from his face.
"You are dying...," he said, but Denton couldn't hear him because his eardrums were raptured. He kneeled and removed all the weaponry he could from JC with his half broken hands and kicked the Dragon's Tooth far away. Then he left Denton and when he got back he had two medkits in his hands, which he threw at Denton. With all the strength he had left, backed with the will to survive, JC managed to inject the first medkit. The effects were almost immediate. His lungs regained some functionality and that gave him some reassurance and calmed his death anxiety. He greedily tried to get a deep breath, but halfway through the pain in his lungs got unbearable. Most of the bleeding had stopped too and his eardrums were somewhat repaired.
"You're gonna get to a holding cell. There you will have medical attention from a bot and of course an intense course of medication to prevent any infection. Also I'm guessing you're gonna need some surgery, the nanites don't repair everything correctly you see," said Stark.
"I... I guess you... you can't just let me go... to a normal hospital?" answered Denton, struggling to talk.
"Well, I could, but then you would go back to protecting the Illuminati and I can't have that. Besides, I doubt you could get better care anywhere else. There is no tech, like Stark Tech. J.A.R.V.I.S. use two robots to escort to his cell and get me a goddamn medbot down here. My hands are killing me," said Stark.
Denton tried to think of a plan, so that he could reverse this horrible situation. Not only he have failed his mission and he would be imprisoned, but he also gave Stark the Dragon's Tooth technology. He felt rotten inside by the thought that Stark had saved him and he was thinking about betraying his mercy, but this battle was above an individual's feelings of honor. Thats what the Order would say. Practicality above sentimentals. He used the contents of the second medkit entirely to heal the leg that still had some functionality.
"Stark...," Denton whispered and Stark turned around. His hand found his sunglasses beside him on the floor.
"Don't try anything," said Stark and from his shoulder raised the Multiple Projectile Launcher. "You don't have any bioelectric energy left, even those small calibers can kill you."
"It.. it looks like.." continued Denton while gasping for air. He wore his sunglasses again. "Like you have a hole in your faraday cage." he said and jumped at Iron Man, using his one good leg. Iron Man shot him and riddled him with 12 small caliber bullets all over his body, but did not manage to hit any vital parts. The destruction of the Iron Man's mask had saved Denton's life. JC reached him and rammed his hand along with an activated emp grenade inside Iron Man's abdomen wound.
"Son-of-a-" Stark said and kicked him hard in the face and broke his jaw and made him fly back to the wall. The sound of an emp grenade firing was sounded and the Iron Man suit froze in it's place. JC stayed sitting the way he fell, with his back on the wall. He searched his pockets for bioelectric cells, while Stark commanded his robots to get him out of the suit. Most of the cells were broken from the explosion, but he managed to find two. With some of his energy recharged, Denton healed most of his more heavily damaged limbs .
"You've won Stark. But you should have killed me. When the state of the world is at hand, you can't afford to be merciful," said JC.
"That's the difference between me and the Illuminati. Maybe it was a mistake, but killing you in cold blood or allowing you to die by inaction, would make me just like the thing I'm trying to fight. I choose to believe in people JC, and I hope that I didn't make a mistake. I'm sure that you are not a bad guy JC. I hope that you only follow those bastards, just because you think they are the lesser evil. Will you at least give me a chance to convince you before you turn me in? I think you owe me that much."
"Alright. I'll listen, but don't expect anything else from me. And if this is some sort of trick, if you try anything that will put my mission to jeopardy, I'll be forced to kill you.," said Denton.
"Sounds fair. Look, there is a better solution than what you've been offered. I'm a futurist, I work and create technology to transform the lives of the people on this planet for the better. Soon it became clear to me, that we had the technology to offer every human on the planet the chance to live a good life. Life with works that do not break the human body or spirit and they require very few and stress free work hours, leaving plenty of time for family, recreation, art or science. I wanted to make a world where violence, crime and war was a thing of the past. I started working on plans to achieve this goals, even though I was fought on every turn by the MJ12 and now by the Illuminati. You know that I was trying to make a Universal Constructor, a type of machine that uses nanites to construct anything out of thin air as long as it has energy. With my invention of the Arc Reactor, that provides almost unlimited energy, it could have brought abundance to the world. But of course the Illuminati pressed for a passing of nanotech regulation laws, all around the world. With that development I was left to try to create it alone, in my secret lab. And honestly I couldn't create it for another 100 years. But then I was approached by my allies and we had some limited success, which led to the creation of the Extremis project. Now I had a way to make all humans truly equal in mind and body, level the playing field between rich and poor. I could offer humanity a way to raise everyone to near-perfect levels of health, productivity, mental acuity and emotional balance. Society is only as good as the individuals it contains," said Stark. All that time his robots had taken off his armor and two medbots had rolled in the room. One of them tended to Stark and the other to Denton.
"The world needs leadership, it needs guidance. We elevate the morally and intellectually capable to a position of authority, where they can do the most good for everyone. What you are offering is the end of true leadership and a descend into chaos. We can't allow every person in the world to have this kind of power. You would be planting the seed for world destruction. Even with emotionally healthy individuals, you can't rule out a scenario where someone would want to destroy the world or throw it into chaos and with augmenting their intelligence you are giving them the means to plan something like this. I would have thought that you of all people, who you have fought so many people with great power, would know better," said Denton.
"Well I'm not done yet with our plan. By augmenting the human brain of each individual, we would have the means to know what everyone thinks...," started saying Stark, but before he could finish he was interrupted by Denton.
"You want to have a peek at everyones mind? And you think your world view is more free than the world we have designed?"
"Not me, I can't stand in front of a computer screen and monitor every person in the world anyway. But what about a synthetic being. People have no trouble with their computer knowing their thoughts. I'm talking about a system that will understand each person's life and opinions at a glance," said Stark. JC was now listening very carefully. Something didn't feel right. "A system with enough processing power to handle all governmental power worldwide, legislative, executive and judicial. It will be the perfect democracy, where every opinion is heard and considered, before making decisions. Decisions that can be made in daily or even more frequent basis."
"Do you have such a system ready? Where would you find so much computational power?" asked JC, knowing the answer, but half hoping he was wrong.
"I have an AI prototype, made with the help of my allies, but it can't handle what I'm talking about. That's what i need you for. I need access to the Aquinas Router. That way I could distribute our AI to every computer on the planet. With the power of distributed computing, backed by the unlimited bandwidth of Aquinas, I can have the system ready in a few months. So what do you say?" said Stark, but he found JC much less excited than he expected.
"The answer is no. Disable your security systems to allow for an extraction team, I'd hate to carry you unconscious," said Denton with a very cold voice. Stark was disappointed. He was healed up by now and out of his suit, but he knew that he couldn't take the agent. He had to hope that his allies could mount a rescue. He could surely give them the means to do it.
"As you wish. J.A.R.V.I.S, disable the security systems. We don't want to give Mr. Denton a reason to attack me," said Stark and Denton's infolink finally made contact with the world outside. The jammer was disabled. "and Code Evac"
Denton didn't have time to react. The last sentence was spoken very quickly. The suits took flight and he couldn't do anything to stop them. He hoped that the perimeter .CO had around the house, would take care of them. He turned his attention back to Stark.
He posed no immediate threat to him now that he was out of the suit and killing him wouldn't get him the suits back. So Denton punched him in the face, throwing him down. He then took out his riot Prod and shocked him, until he fell unconscious.
Denton listened to the sound of an incoming transmission. It was Morgan Everret
"JC, thank god, you've been offline for hours. Are you ok?" asked with his soothing caring voice.
"I'm ok... Son of a bitch scrambled his suits to an unknown location. They are on autopilot. I hope you can pull of a few strings to have them followed," said Denton.
"Yes, of course. Don't worry about that. The important thing is that we got Stark," said Everret.
"Yeah, about that. I think we have a hell of a bigger problem in our hands..."