Author's Note: So, not a lot of response to the prologue. Not any response at all, actually. But it was only a prologue, so here's some actual content for you to read. If...anyone is reading it, that is. Um, I don't really mind having this story to myself, because that was kind of why I wrote it in the first place, but I would very much appreciate feedback of any kind. So if you read this chapter, I'd very much appreciate if you dropped a little review for me to see. Thank you very much for reading, and enjoy!
1
2013
The hours ticked by, and Tony still hadn't slept. He'd pulled all-nighters before, but now it had been days. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the wormhole. He saw the nuke drifting away from him towards the Chitauri base. He felt the weightlessness of space, the emptiness of the black that surrounded him. He didn't sleep because he couldn't; not sleeping gave him a lot of time to think.
Tony couldn't think clearly unless he was doing something with his hands. At least, not when he was running at 36 hours with no sleep. He tinkered with his suits, fiddled with Dum-E and U. Gave JARVIS upgrades that he didn't need. Created more Iron Man suits than he meant to. And he thought. The whole point of staying awake and working was to keep his mind away from the things that were haunting him, and for the most part, it worked. Most of the time, he was too busy focusing on his projects to pay any mind to the invasive thoughts that lurked in the back of his mind. But sometimes, work was the gateway for them to come in. Sometimes, his hands began to move of their own accord, and again he saw the wormhole, the tesseract, and silver-blue eyes that never left him.
The images flashing across his mind made him jolt; he sat up in his seat, realizing that he'd fallen asleep halfway through his work. He ran a hand over his eyes, burning beneath the lids, placing his elbows on his desk. He knew he was hurting himself like this, he knew he needed to sleep, but he couldn't let himself. Standing, he began to pace the workshop in search of something else to keep him occupied. He needed something that would keep his mind actively working, something that would keep him awake and would keep his monsters out of his head.
It only took three minutes of pacing for Tony to notice the box tucked away in the corner.
He'd hardly given his father's old files a second glance after creating the new element, hadn't bothered to go through everything and see what else his father had thought up during his lifetime. He dragged the chest over to his desk and started going through it all. He sorted through the things he'd already read, tossing them off to the side. Everything else, he skimmed through, and if it didn't catch his attention, he tossed it aside, too. There were several times where he found something interesting, flipped through stacks of notebooks or reading through files of formerly-classified SHIELD inventions. He placed one or two notebooks on his desk, making a mental note to himself to take a more in-depth look at some blueprints his father had drawn up.
Nothing had caught his interest for an extended period of time until he found a thick file which read INVESTIGATION: THE GENESIS PROJECT all across the front. What intrigued him most was the dark red CLASSIFIED stamp right beneath the title. Curiosity piqued, he opened the file.
At first, he thought that this would be another one of those files that looked a lot more interesting than it actually was. He skimmed down the page, picking up things like 'information leak' and 'unauthorized project,' things he'd seen in other files in the chest. He flipped through the first few pages, taking a brief glance of each page of the investigation overview. He was just about to close the file and toss it in the discard pile when he caught sight of a section titled: HOWARD STARK'S ACQUISITION OF SUBJECT 12. Frowning, he read on.
Shortly after the laboratory was locked down by SHIELD agents, Howard Stark was brought in to determine the nature of the illegal experimentation that was being conducted by the defectors. During his inspection of the facility, he discovered the patient labeled as Subject 12. Although much documentation was destroyed during the firefight, Stark recovered a single file regarding Subject 12. [SEE EXHIBIT F]
At approximately 22:41, Subject 12 awoke and quickly became volatile and confused. Agents were able to restrain Subject 12 with minimal damage. After being subdued, Subject 12 was taken from the scene by Howard Stark. Although Stark was given instructions to escort Subject 12 to SHIELD Headquarters, he had Subject 12 brought to his home. Afterwards, SHIELD access to Subject 12 was lost.
Stark has informed Director Carter that Subject 12 is currently being held in a cryogenic chamber in the secure basement of a Stark Industries storage facility in southern California in order to prevent -
Tony stopped reading. His heart was racing, brain going wild with the implications of what this meant. He could no longer focus on the passage in front of him. Instead, he flipped to the back of the file in search of Exhibit F. It was a photocopy of an original document, apparently still somewhere in his father's possessions. The document was a basic outline of someone's - Tony assumed Subject 12 - attributes; their gender, appearance, birth date. The information on the document was, regrettably, quite sparse. There was very little aside from the description and an incredibly vague overview of Subject 12's role as a test subject. Frowning, Tony turned the page to view the document that was paper clipped beneath. And his heart stopped.
Even without her silver-blue eyes, he recognized her. She looked exactly as he remembered her, pale and sickly, with dark bags beneath her closed eyes. The photo looked almost as though it had been taken of a dead person on an autopsy table, especially given the near-white shade of her skin. Tony drew in a shaking breath. She was Subject 12, and his father had hidden her away in a cryogenic chamber in a storage facility. Tony knew where she was.
Slipping all of the documents back into the file, he grabbed a random set of car keys from his desk, paying no mind to the fact that it was half past three in the morning. The way to the storage facility was an hour and a half drive into a remote area of the southern California desert. Howard Stark had created several storage facilities throughout the country, in places where it would be convenient for him to access, either while he was at home in California, working in New York, or doing SHIELD business elsewhere in the country.
Tony never had much use of the storage facilities. He never kept anything he didn't want to use, unless he genuinely thought he might want to do something with it later, in which case he stored it at home, close to him. It had been years since he'd been in this storage facility - or any of the old Stark Industries storage facilities, for that matter. It didn't occur to him until he'd gone inside that he didn't remember this facility having a basement.
It took some looking, but Tony was smart - smarter than his father, many believed. It didn't take him very long at all for him to determine the most likely place a secret entrance would be. In the end, it was a bookshelf - it always was, wasn't it? - that held a lever which, when pulled, moved the bookcase to reveal a thick metal door. Finding the door wasn't a problem, but opening it soon proved to be. To Tony's relief, the door didn't require a finger print or an eye scan. It did, however, require the correct number code on a keypad. The electronic screen indicated that the code was only four numbers long, so that ruled out several options. Standing back, thinking hard, Tony decided to start simple.
He input his mother's birthdate. Denied. With a quiet huff, Tony cocked his head. His father's birthdate was also denied, as was his own. Too simple, then. He decided to try cryo - 1796. Denied. What other four-letter words had relevance to Howard? Tony knew his father well enough to know that the odds of the number code being random were low. The answer would be in plain sight. With a reluctant hand, feeling as though he were once again young and foolish, Tony typed in a new code - 8669. Tony.
With a hiss, the door unlocked and slowly swung open. Tony stood rooted to the spot for a second, surprised that it had worked. Blinking, he began to descend the stairs, lit by flickering lights. There was yet another door at the bottom of the spiral stairway, but when Tony reached out to try the handle, he found that it wasn't locked.
It took a moment for the lights to boot up when the door opened. There was an eerie quiet in the lab that sent shivers down Tony's spine. He wandered around the lab, examining equipment, getting a feel for the place. After several minutes, he found the cryogenic chambers. There were five, all lined up in a row, metal doors with nameplates on the front. None of them said anything except one: the one metal door that had a green light behind it and was thrumming quietly. When Tony approached it, and wiped off the thin layer of dust that had settled, he found that it was labeled Eve.
Beside the chamber doors were several buttons: freeze, terminate, and defrost. Tony's hand hesitated briefly before he pressed the defrost button. There was a sound of decompressing, the green light behind the door fading to orange. Beneath the buttons, an electric screen flickered to life and began a countdown. 03:59:54...03:59:53... Sighing, Tony turned back to the lab, realizing he had a lot of time until the defrosting process was finished. He wandered over to an empty table and pulled up a seat, setting the file down in front of him and opening it to the first page again. He read through three quarters of the investigation overview before his heavy eyes closed and he slumped over the table asleep.