Chapter 2: Too late
Hi again! Thank you all for your great reviews! For once I wanted to defer to some of your reviews, so here it goes:
LaNaturalBreezeOf-Books: Thanks for all your reviews so far (I mean also the once from my other Avengers story) and I wanted to tell that yeah I found it creepy too as I wrote the part about Tony talking like a child but I thought that the Red Room had to mess with his brain somehow (more than it already had) even if they couldn't brainwash him.
Mel72000: Thanks for your review and to tell you the truth I already finished this story on paper and the explanation of how Howard sold to the Russian wasn't really planned to be explained... My thought went more like this; Howard Stark was a powerful man in his time and since his family life was something the media was interested in, he couldn't just get Tony out of the way without bad press and so he told the world that Tony died of an illness and sold him in reality to the Russian by contacting them through shady contacts that even SHIELD didn't know about at that point. And yeah that was my train of thought, I mean he was a Stark and if they want something they get it...
Anon: Thanks! Tony's new additions actually were oriented on the arc reactor and I am happy that you like my writing style!
So now that I took that load of my mind: Enjoy!
Ho Yinsen had given his best to teach Tony and Natasha about things they weren't taught because they were seen as 'unnecessary'. After some time he got them even to open up so far as to tell him their real names instead of their designations. They also told him what kind of experiments were being down in this facility as well as their own 'improvements'.
Yinsen had already been with them for half a year when it became clear that something had happened. The scientist got nervous, trying to hurry with their experiments despite the years they had put into the projects before.
"Maybe someone had finally caught wind of what is going on here?" Yinsen suggested one night as they sat together in the room where they slept. "Or someone is putting pressure on them to finally finish the projects?" Natasha threw in.
"Whatever is going on, I am sure that they will soon take one of us - or maybe even everyone of us – to give us the 'finished touch'." Tony said solemnly, remembering Leonid as he said that.
Yinsen nodded in agreement and took of his bracelet and his necklace he had been allowed to keep (for whatever reason). "I am pretty sure I will be the first to be taken since I am not as important to them as you two and if they screw up with me, it won't be that fatal for them. So I want to give you two the only thing I can, besides my knowledge…" He held out the necklace to Natasha and the metal bracelet to Tony. They both took the items reluctantly, not just because of what it would mean for them if Yinsen would end up being right but Tony because he also would be punished severely if he was caught with something out of metal in his possession. But even though they took them and put them around their neck or rather the wrist. Then suddenly Yinsen took them into a bear hug and the two let for once their guard a bit down and hugged him back.
The next day Yinsen's prediction came partly true but instead of taking just him, they took all three – separating Natasha from the two males of the group and tied Tony and Yinsen up on two operation tables that were opposite of each other.
The scientists first worked on Yinsen, injecting the older man with something that caused him great pain, making him scream out in pain, simultaneously they started cutting into Yinsen's flesh – holding the poor man down while doing so – and started to insert mechanical parts to replace biological ones. Meanwhile Tony couldn't do anything but watch someone that had grown close to him reduced to nothing but a screaming, bloody body. The code in the chip that had once been transplanted into Tony, keeping him from just transforming Yinsen's bracelet into a knife but that didn't mean that he wasn't still trying to do something – anything!
Suddenly Yinsen's screams stopped and the heart monitor that had been connected to the man began to wail instead. For a moment Tony thought his own heart had stopped (which it hadn't because then his heart monitor would have made a noise too) and then his world became one of strong, dark emotions, clouding his rational mind. The metal cuffs that had tied him to the table snapped and Tony felt the bracelet change it form into something new. He moved swift and deadly – the scientists didn't even know what came over them.
Once everyone in the room was dead, a sea of blood lay to Tony's feet as he made his way over to Yinsen's dead body. Even in death you could see the agony he had felt in his last moments on his face and Tony closed the eyes of the other man so that his dead eyes weren't staring into nothingness any longer.
Then as if someone had flipped a switch back, Tony sunk to the ground – his grey trousers changing into red as they soaked in the blood of the dead. His hands lay limp in his lap (changed b, something wet dripping on them and as Tony lifted one hand to his face he realised that he was crying.
Before he could get lost in his thoughts, he could make out the sound of man running down the halls, throwing open doors and instinctively Tony crouched into a ready position to attack whomever would come through the doors but while his body was ready his head wasn't and so he was frozen in his ready-attack-stance when the doors burst open.
Men in suits stormed through the door, guns directed at him once they saw the dead bodies surrounding them. Some became slightly green in the face as their eyes landed on Yinsen's mutilated body. A man stepped through the door and Tony growled like an animal (yes his brain was still on standby) as the man stepped closer to him and Yinsen's dead body.
The man raised his hands in the global gesture of 'I am unarmed' (as if!) and said slowly and in a calm tone in Russian with an American accent: "Relax, we are not here to harm you" 'As long we don't have to' was left unspoken. "My name is Agent Coulson. What's your name?" The man – now identified as Agent Coulson – took another slow step towards Tony but before he could get to close, something fell from ceiling and hit the ground hard. A young man, with quiver and bow had fallen out of the air duct system and was followed by a bad-tempered Natasha who landed gracefully in front of Tony – handing him her metal necklace with one hand and holding a gun in the other. At the sight of his little sister, Tony's brain seemed to finally reboot and he stood up from his crouching position, changing the bracelet and the necklace into weapons and giving the once-necklace-now knife back to Tasha.
Meanwhile the archer had stood back up and positioned himself beside Agent Coulson who hadn't moved from his spot and had followed Tony's display of his ability with well-hidden curiosity.
"AES… Y" Tony nodded in understanding of what Tasha was trying to say without giving something important away as she had glimpsed at Yinsen. It was also her way of saying 'we have to get away from here, from them – now!' and so Tony jumped up to the opening of the ventilation shaft, convinced that Tasha would follow him.
And she did but not before giving the suits a cold look. Together, Tony and Natasha navigated their way out of the underground facility – strangely without being followed – but they never left their guard down during their escape.
Back in the lab with the pile of dead bodies, Agent Coulson was still staring at the ceiling where the boy and the girl had disappeared in. The archer turned puzzled to his superior. "Sir? Shouldn't we follow them and take them in?"
Agent Coulson turned shifted his gaze from the ceiling to the younger man. "Agent Barton, I am sure that we will see them again one day and till then we still have much work to do, like giving this poor man a proper burial and making sure that nothing like this will ever happen again in the world."
Barton nodded in understanding, hearing the unspoken 'I am curious what they will do with their new found freedom.' To be honest Agent Barton too was curious what they would do after years of being experimented on…
