Chapter 2


"Tony!" Clint scrambled down into the crater as he threw his bow to the side, sliding across the loose rock to his friend's side. "Tony, wake up," he demanded, shaking the Iron Avenger's shoulder "Wake up, man. Come on!"

The billionaire genius let out a weak groan as he weakly opened his eyes. "Hey, Clint. Hope you don't mind me dropping in."

"You kidding, man? After all we've been through together?" The archer groaned as he draped Tony's arm across his shoulder, lifting him up to his feet as he dragged him out of the hole. "I thought you were retired, Tony."

"Avengers don't retire. You'll learn that soon enough."

"Don't count on it. Laura!" Clint shouted as he kicked his way into the back door. "Laura, get the med kit!" The retired Avenger gently laid his friend on the couch, where he finally got a good look at the battle-tested Iron Man.

His face was drenched in sweat. His jet black hair was turning grey. His goatee was thick and bushy. A trail of blood trickled from the left side of his mouth. A bruise was forming on his right eye. And his shirt was soaked in blood. Clint tentatively rolled up , revealing a large seeping gash across his ribs.

"Jesus Tony," Clint gasped, grabbing a blanket off the floor and pressing it to the wound "What happened to you?"

"Ten Rings."

"Ten what?'

"Terrorists," Tony answered in a series of ragged breaths "hacked my servers...stole...armor designs."

"Are you telling me that terrorists are running around with a bunch of knock-off Iron Man suits?"

Tony nodded, his chest heaving as fought to keep his eyes open. "Tracked the leader to Hong Kong...still...out there."

"I'm calling the others."

"No." Tony grabbed Clint's wrist as he reached for his phone "Not...secure. Listening."

"Tony, I've got a Sat phone upstairs-,"

"Clint...trust me," the wounded billionaire winced as he fought to sit up "Need to...trust me."

Clint looked into his friend's eyes, the dark brown irises begging for him to listen. "I trust you."

After taking a deep breath, Tony reached into his pocket and pulled out two thin metal bracelets. Stark smartbands. "Take these...wait for...SHIELD to call."

"SHIELD? What's SHIELD got to do with this?"

"Clint...do you remember that time...we got the gang together...and took Cap to...Mall of America?" Tony's lips formed into a brief yet pleasant smile "That was a good day."

"Tony. Tony." Clint quickly shook the billionaire's shoulder as his eyes slipped shut. "Come man, stay awake."

"Need...sleep."

"You've lost a lot a blood. Trust me," Clint gave his friend an insistent look as he kept pressure on Tony's wound. "sleep is the last thing that you need."

"Relax Barton." Tony brought a weary hand to the arc reactor in his chest "Nano tech. Heals me...while I sleep."

"Tony? Tony." Clint's eyes widened the billionaire slipped into unconsciousness, a strange silver liquid oozing from his wound in Iron Man's stomach, surrounding it and stopping the bleeding. Clint let out a sharp breath as he poked it with his finger. It was metal. Cool and liquid. Realizing that his friend had once again thought of everything, Clint glanced at the smartbands in his hand, a feeling of dread forming in his stomach.


"Got to admit, not how I thought this play out." Phil Coulson stood in his office with May and Bobbi, trying to come to terms with what they had found. Children.

Eight kids, four of each. Three with an agent of SHIELD for a mother. Bobbi's son. FitzSimmons' daughter. May's son. May's son. Coulson was really having a hard time wrapping his head around that one. The rest like, James and Torunn, were descendants of the Avengers. They had been using a SHIELD safehouse like it was a mountain retreat. Apparently, the cabin had been retired by 2030. Or at least, it would be. They were all still a bit shaken up when the agents found them, so they hadn't said much about who or what attacked the Iron Man from the future.

"What I don't get is how those kids get their hands on a time machine in the first place?" Coulson marveled.

"Stark's daughter," Bobbi answered "Morgan. The future Avengers keep all their confiscated alien tech in a vault for study. Audrey likes to break in there whenever she's bored."

Coulson chuckled. "She's a Stark alright."

"When her dad started having trouble with whoever or whatever it was he was fighting, she tried to modify the Chronosphere to send the kids back in time fifteen minutes before the attack," Bobbi explained "So they could warn Stark. But they ended up traveling fifteen years instead. Stark took the fight to the skies and they haven't seen him since."

"Well this day just got weird. Even for us." Coulson sighed. "We'll keep the kids here for now. If future Stark tries to contact them, we'll send back-up. Are any of the kids enhanced?"

"Just Torunn," May answered. "She threw Mack into a tree like he was ragdoll."

"Wish I could've seen that." Coulson commented "What were the kids doing up there anyway?"

At that moment, Simmons appeared in the doorway to the office. "You have got to see this."


It was his birthday. It was Bobbi's son's birthday. The children sat huddled together in the rec room, a massive plate of cookies, candy and snack cakes sitting in front of Frankie Barton as his friends sang.

"Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday, dear Frankie. Happy Birthday to you!"

Bobbi felt a hand drift to her stomach as she walked over to her son's side as he blew out the candles. Just this morning she found out she was pregnant, and now her child was celebrating his birthday. This truly took time flying to a whole other level. The blonde-haired agent smiled as she kissed her son's cheek. "Happy birthday, sweetie."

"Mom, cut it out!" Frankie pleaded as his cheeks turned red "I'm fourteen, not four."

"Want one, Mom?"

May felt her stomach twist in knots as her twelve year-old son Jack offered her a chocolate chip cookie, his dark eyes identical to her own, only far less hardened and burdened. "Pass."

"I'll eat it," Lillian Fitz-Simmons announced, the eleven year-old girl with short dark curls and her father's eyes smiling her mother's smile as she snatched the cookie from her friend's hand and stuffing it into her mouth. "It's one of Mom's."

"Yelena," James handed his sister a soft pink inhaler as she started coughing "take it."

Yelena, who was a perfect little blonde copy of her mother at the age of seven, shook her head she continued to cough. "I don't need it."

"Could've fooled me."

"It's just a cough James," Yelena managed as she started to wheeze "I'm fine."

"You got three seconds before I shove thing in your mouth and make you take it. One...two,"

"Fine." Yelena snatched the inhaler from her brother and took a big breath of the medicine, sighing as her breathing leveled out. The daughter of the Black Widow tossed the inhaler back to her brother and crossed her arms. "Happy?"

"Very."

"You always carry your sister's inhaler?" Bobbi asked.

"If I don't, she won't," James justified.

"My asthma's not that bad," Yelena protested "My doctor says it gets better every year."

"Doesn't mean you can throw out your inhaler."

"Doesn't mean you and mom can treat me like a baby."

"We're not trying to treat you like a baby, we're trying to keep you breathing," James sighed, glancing around the room right before he gave his sister a very Captain America-like look "Give it back."

"Give what back?" Yelena asked as she batted her eyes.

"These."

Bobbi's eyes widened as James pulled her batons out of Yelena's back pocket. "When did you-?"

"My sister has sticky fingers."

"Since when are we running a daycare center?" May whispered to Coulson.

"As long as it keeps the kids out of trouble." The Director of SHIELD tilted his head as he mentally counted only seven children. "I thought you said there were four girls."

"Bobbi." Daisy marched into the rec room as she dragged the missing child behind her, an eleven year-old girl with big brown eyes and long auburn hair behind her, a glowing arc reactor hanging from a gold chain like a necklace. Morgan Andrea Stark.

"Do you have Stark's number?" Daisy asked.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Because his kid just turned half my laptops into spare parts,"

"I paid for them!" Morgan justified as she tried to pull her arm out of the Inhuman's grasp.

"One hundred bucks doesn't cover it."

"You're right. That junk was barely worth twenty."

"Junk!?"

"Daisy," Coulson quickly stepped between his agent and the little girl genius "Let me talk to her. Handling Starks is kind of my specialty." The Director SHIELD smiled as he knelt down to little girl's eye level. "It's Morgan, right? Why did you take agent Johnson's laptops?"

"I needed the parts to build a signal booster," she explained "If I can amp up the signal from my smartwatch, I can find my daddy. He could be lost or hurt or-,"

"I understand." Coulson felt his face soften at the worry in her eyes. "Daisy, take Audrey to lab. See if you and Fitz can help her out."

"Her? Help me? Please," Morgan scoffed "Have you that pitiful excuse she calls coding? Amadeus!"

A ten year-old, curly-haired Asian boy with big brown eyes looked up from his plate, his mouth covered in Hostess cupcake crumbs and filling.

"It's science time," Morgan announced "Come on."

"Remind me never to have kids," Daisy whispered, leading the children to the lab.

Torunn, who was sitting on the right of James, leaned over and whispered into her best friend's ear. "She's right, you know. Uncle Tony could need our help."

"That's why I'm coming up with a plan to get out of here."

Torunn should've known. He was eating a bowl full of jellybeans. He always ate those when he was scheming. "What are you thinking?"

"That I need more jellybeans."


"You are so much like your father." Bobbi smiled as she found her son in the gym, taking practice shots with his archery set after the children raided the base for every last sugary sweet.

Frankie looked at his mother out of the corner of his eye, lowering his bow in his hand as he walked over to the bullseye and removed his arrows. "You say that a lot." Frankie faced his mother and frowned "Why do keep looking at me like that?"

"Sorry." She couldn't help it. Bobbi tried her best not to stare, but the more time she spent with him, the more she saw herself in him. The way he tilted his head. The stride in his walk. The color of his hair and the shape of his cheeks. She saw Clint in him too. The concentrated look on his face when he fired an arrow. The sound of his voice and the color of his eyes. He was Clint and Bobbi rolled into one. A perfect testament to their love. "This is all just… a little overwhelming."

Frankie nodded, knowing all too well that life for the Avengers had a tendency to get strange. "Was Auntie Tasha like that when James showed up?"

"Natasha wasn't pregnant."

Frankie missed his shot by a mile. "Am I really growing inside of you right now?"

Bobbi nodded.

"This is giving me a headache. No wonder soldier boy didn't want us using that thing."

Bobbi frowned when she saw her son start to twirl his bow. "What's wrong?"

"That guy Uncle Tony was fighting. What if he comes back?"

Bobbi gave him a deeply supportive look once she saw the fear in her son's eyes. "If he does, we'll stop him."

"What if you can't? Audrey's right, Mom. Compared to the stuff in Uncle Tony's suit, your best tech is junk. And this guy, he's like, like..."

Bobbi became increasingly worried as she noticed to the terrified look on her son's face. "Like who?"

"The Mad Titan."


"Unbelievable."

Morgan's eyes widened in shock as she walked into the lab with Daisy, Mack and Amadeus, where Fitz and Simmons were waiting with welcoming smiles.

"Well?" Fitz smiled as the children's speechlessness "Pretty brilliant, right?"

"Brilliant's not really the word I would use," Morgan confessed "I was thinking more like...garbage."

"This is stuff is pretty old," Amadeus agreed.

"No, Uncle Steve's phone is old. This stuff belongs in a museum," Morgan exclaimed "My daddy is running for his life and all I have to help him is a bunch of tech fossils!"

"This kid is seriously getting on my nerves," Daisy whispered, rolling her eyes as she checked the latest alert on her phone "Uh-oh."

Mack did not like that tone. "What's up, Tremors?"

"We're being hacked." The other agents gathered around Daisy as she quickly grabbed her laptop and got to work. "Someone just broke through half our firewalls in less than a minute."

"How is that possible?"

"I have no idea! I coded those firewalls myself. It should take hours to get through them. Even with a super computer!"

"Told you your coding was garbage," Morgan commented.

"Can you stop it?" Simmons asked.

"I'm trying. But this code… i-it's beyond anything I've ever seen. Even on the dark web." Daisy glanced nervously at the other agents "Something tells me our secret base might not be so secret much longer."

"Fitz, help her," Mack ordered "I'll tell Coulson. Help him get started evacuating the base."

Morgan took one look at the screen of Daisy's computer and paled. She'd seen that coding before. "James!''


Coulson sat behind his desk, a grim look on his face after receiving Mack's news. "How much time do we have?"

The engineer shrugged. "By the way Daisy was talking, next to none."

Coulson sighed. "Evacuate the base," he ordered. "Assign all agents separate rendezvous locations. Recover as much crucial data and resources as possible and destroy the rest. Then tell Bobbi to grab the kids and meet us on Zephyr One."

"Yes sir."

As Mack rushed off to carry out Coulson's orders, the Director quickly put brought the hacker turned Inhuman on video call "How we looking Daisy?"

"Not good. The boys and I have pulled just every trick we can think of and it barely slows this guy down. I can't believe I let this happen."

"Don't blame yourself. Just be glad you caught the hack before it was too late."

"It's already too late. Coulson, we have five minutes until they have our location," Daisy revealed "Tops."

Coulson pulled a go bag out from under his desk and strapped a gun to his hip. "That's five more than we had. Grab your gear and meet us at the plane. We're leaving."


James stood with Yelena, Morgan, Torunn and Amadeus in the hall, a nervous look on his face. "Are you sure?"

"Totally," Morgan confirmed "I've been helping my dad study that code for months. It popped on my smartwatch just before he showed up at the cabin."

James' heart started pounding. "He's looking for us."

"What are we going to do?"

Amadeus tugged on James' sleeve. "Plan G?"

"NO!" the children said together.

Amadeus pouted. "But it's my favorite plan."

"We need a plan big brother," Yelena insisted "One that isn't Plan G."

"I know. I know." James sighed as struggled to think, watching the SHIELD agents run past. Rushing...hurrying...not paying them any attention. The son of Captain America's lips shifted into small smirk. One that could only come from the Black Widow.

Torunn knew what that meant. "You've got a plan don't you?"


"Family bonding time's over you two," Hunter announced as he came barreling into the gym, tossing Bobbi a packed duffel bag as he came to a screeching halt. "We've got to move."

"Hunter, what's going on?"

"Some bugger's digging through Daisy cyber walls like a rabbit in a carrot patch. We've got less than five minutes before they have our location."

"Frankie." All eyes turned to James as he burst into the gym, a panicked and nervous look on his face "We've got a problem."

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

"This is serious farm boy. He's after us!"

"Who?"

"Who do you think? The Mandarin!"