"I demand a lawyer." Tony said as he fiddled with his handcuffs. He was in an interrogation room, just like the ones in all the movies. It was hardly lit, camera watching him in the corner, metal table and chairs. They left him in here alone, probably to sweat the information out of him. He was fucked. Probably going to get tortured.
Then the door opened as Agent Coulson and… the homeless redhead from a few weeks ago walked in. Interesting. She looked nicer, cleaned up and dressed in a leather bodysuit. She was probably where these guys found out Tony was going to take off. Idiot couldn't keep his mouth shut. It was to be expected.
"Well, you clean up nice. Did you find that apartment?" Tony put on his best "I'm not utterly terrified of being put in a scary government prison for the rest of my life" smile and leaned towards her as they sat down.
The redhead, Natalie but that was probably not her real name, smirked at him. It was one of those smirks that struck fear into the hearts of everyone, especially Tony. Coulson sat down across from him and began flipping through numerous papers. Papers probably about him, about all the terrible things he did and the even worse things they are going to do to him. Tony thought about hiding under the table, but decided against it. Wanted to face his punishment like an adult.
"So two weeks ago our technical analysts discovered a breach in security. They tracked the signal back to your apartment building, but couldn't get any information regarding identifying the hacker. We didn't know what they took until a few days later when the Avengers were having their bi-weekly television marathon that they noticed Netflix was replaced with our confidential files regarding Hammer Industries." Coulson leaned back. "Did I miss anything?"
"A lot of other people live in my building Agent. Might not have been me. Unless I'm under arrest please let me go before I'm late for my mama's fantastic dinner." Tony said. No one would care if he was gone all day, but his dad thought it was too disrespectful to be out too late at night.
"We did extensive background checks on everyone in the building and undercover agents interviewed anyone with an intelligence high enough to do this, that's just you. Not only did you express interest in leaving the area, but we found a large sum of money in your room. Care to explain?"
"I'm an excellent gambler." Tony nodded to the man. If there is one thing he learned growing up in his neighborhood it was to keep lying even if he was caught red handed.
"And I wanted to spend my hard earned money moving somewhere warm, like Hawaii. Oh, I haven't thought of Hawaii."
"Thought you were going to college?" Natalie, queen of lies and intimidation, said. She crossed her arms and leaned forward to glare at him. Tony was reconsidering cowering under the table.
"I was. I am. The um- The University of Honolulu. Fantastic school. The robotics team is really impressive." Tony smiled at her. He wasn't sure if there even was a University of Honolulu but he was going to bluff until the end of his days, which might be soon.
Natalie, or whoever she was, furrowed her eyebrows and turned her attention to Coulson. "Are you sure about this? He's not a very good liar and we haven't even threatened him yet."
"Well, you can be very intimidating, Romanov." Coulson smiled at her. Tony sighed internally. They were going to play buddies while threatening pain of death.
"So here is how is how it's going to work, Mr. Stark. Given the nature of your work, we gathered someone hired you to either steal or erase our files on Hammer. I think you're a good kid, didn't want to get in the way of us stopping a very bad man so you made sure we still had what we needed. However, given the nature of your circumstances you needed the money so you took the job any way. Do you understand?" Coulson said matter-of-factly. Tony nodded and looked at the table.
"So, was it Hammer who hired you?" Natalie, no it was Romanov now, said. Tony wanted to say yes, he really did. However, that would involve selling out one of the richest men in the world whose primary form of income was making weapons of mass destruction for the military. No thank you. Also, that Obadiah Stane didn't sit right with him. Tony had the feeling that if he mentioned Stane he would end up murdered in his sleep. So Tony just shook his head and looked away.
"It was definitely Hammer." She smiled. Tony put his head in his hands and groaned. What was the point of him even being here if they were just going to figure all this stuff out anyway?
"Mr. Stark, would you like to go to prison for the rest of your life? We have a nice one buried deep underground were you will never again see the light of day." Coulson said as he straightened his tie.
"No, Agent." Tony answered simply. The agent pulled a metallic bracelet from his pocket and quickly secured it around Tony's wrist, locking it in place. He then took off Tony's handcuffs. Tony yanked at it but it would neither open nor slip off.
"Then here is what will happen. That will monitor all of your activity on any electronic device. You try to hack into SHIELD again, we'll know instantly. You somehow manage to get it off, it'll send us a signal informing us and then you'll be in a maximum security prison for the rest of your natural life. I generally don't like threatening kids, but you did manage to gain access to information that could put our global security into jeopardy so don't test us." Once Coulson finished explaining the bracelet Tony had stopped trying to rip it off his arm. He nodded and pulled his sweater sleeve over it.
"Alright, Agent. So…. I'm not going to prison?" Tony could almost laugh. In fact, he did. This was going better than he could ever dream. He was only being interrogated by scary government people, but not going to prison.
"Not today. However, our… involvement with Hammer Industries is official Avengers business. You'll be telling us everything you know about what the company is doing and also Fury thinks you could be useful into gaining an insight on the company." Romanov said, standing up.
"You want me to work with the Avengers?" Holy shit, this was incredible.
"They are going to babysit you while gain intel on Hammer. Under no circumstances are you to interfere with their other missions, you are to have no communication with Justin Hammer or his associates, and you will speak of this to no one. Understood?" Coulson spoke quickly and Tony just nodded along. This was better than he could have ever hoped for. "You should also apologize to Barton for tampering with his computer."
"Natasha Romanov, The Black Widow." She held out her hand and he quickly shook it. He was meeting an Avenger. "Come on, I'll introduce you to the team and then you can go home."
