Even the faint glow that was the local equivalent of daylight had now disappeared. It would've been completely dark if not for the light of the suit's chest beam, which rose to the sky like a shining golden pillar. Thanks to it, Tony could still see the snowflakes.
He felt like he was caught in some sort of a sensory deprivation experiment. The same visuals all the time, and no sounds except for the wind and his own labored breathing. Of course, there was Jarvis, but Tony felt too tired and almost too out of breath for proper conversation. He had Jarvis switch him on extra oxygen, to make getting air slightly easier, though he knew it would only be a temporary relief.
He still couldn't believe he was dying. He wasn't going to die out here. That was just unacceptable. Unthinkable. It couldn't happen. No way. Rhodey would find him. He would. He had to be near already. How long had it been?
"Are we there yet?"
"It has only been ten minutes since you first inquired Mr. Rhodes's estimated time of arrival."
"Impossible."
"Sir, I am incapable of lying to you, and my clock is perfectly accurate."
"I know. Damn, I could use some entertainment."
"Would you like me to play some music, sir?"
Of course! What a complete idiot he had been, again. Even though Jarvis couldn't connect to the internet or Tony's server, he still had a wide collection of music with him in the suit. But what would he listen to? After all, it might be the last thing he'd ever hear. Should he pick something melodramatic? Funeral music? Or on the contrary, something encouraging? "I Will Survive?" No, now he knew. He'd hit an iceberg. "My Heart Will Go On." That would be almost literally true with him. Yuck. The thought of dying with Celine Dion ringing in his ears... He didn't know whether to cry or laugh at that one.
In the end, he found himself completely unable to decide. That wasn't normal. He always knew what he wanted. He was also starting to feel slightly chilled.
"Shall I use shuffle?" Jarvis suggested, waiting for Tony's answer.
"Jarvis, is the heating still working all right?"
There was a pause before Jarvis replied, as he took the time to double-check all systems. "There is nothing wrong with the suit, sir," he said slowly, with extra weight on the word "suit".
Jarvis didn't need to elaborate, Tony could figure it out himself. Nothing wrong with the suit. Everything wrong with him.
"Within half an hour, you said. It's been ten minutes. This is too fast."
"Actually, sir, ten minutes is within half an hour. Nevertheless, I must admit that my first estimations may have been overly optimistic."
"There's got to be something I can do!" he exclaimed forcefully, and regretted it instantly. It set him coughing, which felt like someone was poking holes in his shoulder with a power drill. He could taste blood.
Again, Jarvis was silent for a while. Tony could almost hear his CPU working hard on that request. He was glad he had the AI as backup, because it seemed he was rapidly losing the ability to think straight himself.
"Sir, I do have an idea, but it is a desperate one, and highly uncomfortable."
"Desperate's my middle name," Tony rasped. "Shoot."
"Have you heard of a medical treatment method called therapeutic hypothermia?"
"You want to cryo-freeze me?"
"Most definitely not, sir. Actually allowing tissue to freeze would lead to irreparable damage. Instead, I suggest we turn off the suit's heating, and lower your body temperature to a level that could be considered harmful."
"You want me to die faster?" Maybe Tony was being somewhat slow on the uptake, but he had major trouble trying to understand what Jarvis's mad master plan was.
"It would delay the onset of brain damage if the worst comes to pass. You would have better chances of surviving."
"Can't we just wait and see whether I make it, and freeze me if I don't?"
"That would decrease your odds, since the prognosis is better if hypothermia is the actual cause of clinical death. Lowering your temperature will take time. The sooner we begin, the less blood you will have lost, and the more likely the rescuers will be able to resuscitate you."
"Clinical death... Jarvis!" The conversation had become so disturbing that Tony was starting to have serious trouble catching his breath. "Are you suggesting... You really do want to kill me? Make me so cold that my heart stops? That's crazy!"
"I'm afraid it'll happen within the hour, no matter what we do, either because of bleeding and shock, or as a consequence of respiratory arrest. As I just said, it is better if it's caused by cold instead."
"So, I get to pick between freezing, suffocating and bleeding to death. This really sucks."
"I did say it was desperate."
"I'm not a machine you can just turn off and on again."
"I am well aware of that, sir."
His head was swimming. Did this really make sense? He didn't think it did. Was Jarvis out of his mind? He couldn't be, that was technically impossible. It was far more likely that Tony was.
How could he make a life-and-death decision when he couldn't even decide what music to listen to?
"Give me numbers."
"The basic fact is that in normal circumstances, a human being will suffer irreversible brain damage in three minutes after the onset of cardiac arrest. However, people who have been clinically dead with hypothermia have been successfully revived over an hour later."
"How about the scenarios without any dying?"
"Sir, it has only been fifteen minutes since my initial assessment, and you are already beginning to show symptoms of shock. Even if Mr. Rhodes should arrive before your vital functions cease, he would still need to transport you to medical facilities, which will take at least another half an hour. It is highly unlikely that you will last that long."
Right, and Tony should have understood that earlier. He had only considered the future up to the point when help got here, he hadn't even begun to think what would happen later on.
"Without induced hypothermia, I estimate your chances of surviving would be less than five percent. With it, presuming that the rescuers will know what to do - which they will, once I am able to inform them of the situation - the chances are raised to twenty-two percent."
The odds sucked, but that did make it sound like an easy choice. Twenty-two was way better than less than five. Still, this was insane.
He'd just have to trust Jarvis. He had programmed Jarvis. Trusting Jarvis was like trusting himself. He could do that.
"Okay," he said, even though it scared the hell out of him.
"There is one thing you need to do before we begin, sir. When you'll start growing colder, your thought processes will be affected. It will also be very uncomfortable. You may not wish to continue, and if you'll insist, I will be unable to disobey your direct orders."
Shit. Jarvis was right, of course. It was entirely possible Tony would try to stop it. He had to prevent that. There was one fast and easy way to do it.
He swallowed nervously, and said the words. "Jarvis. Voice recognition: Tony Stark, system administrator. Remove all privileges from Tony Stark. From this moment on, no commands from the specified user will be binding."
There. He had now signed his own death warrant. "All right. Let's do it."
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Pepper wrapped her fingers tightly around the steaming mug of tea. It did nothing to banish the terrible chill that had settled deep within her, like a cold hand gripping her heart. And she was the one sitting inside behind a computer screen, in perfect safety and comfortable warmth.
The screen in front of her showed the map with the red circle of Tony's assumed position, and a bright blue spot that marked where Rhodey was. So far, everything had been all right, Rhodey had had no trouble with his armor. During the half an hour that had passed so far, he had approached the target steadily, and now, the two markings finally converged.
"All right, I'm here," Rhodey announced on the radio. "Dropping altitude to get a better look."
She set the mug on the table. The thought of actually drinking the tea made her nauseous. She crossed her arms, shivering slightly. She was no longer worrying just for Tony, but for Rhodey, too. So far, he hadn't complained, but surely it couldn't be easy to fly in weather like that. It just wasn't like him to complain. He constantly kept astounding her by how much crap he could take from Tony with barely a word of objection. She was glad he was around, so that she didn't need to take all of it by herself. Tony was such a complete jerk. And now he was out there and might be hurt. If he wasn't, she was so going to kill him for doing this to them.
"I swear, the next time he voluntarily tries to do something dangerous just for the thrill of it, I'm going to knock him out and handcuff him," she said out loud.
"Yeah, I promise I'll help," Rhodey replied.
"As will I," Jarvis added. Pepper actually found her mouth twisting to a crooked smile at that. With friends like them, no wonder Tony wasn't afraid of his enemies.
"No sign of him at the center of the area," Rhodey announced, quickly erasing the smirk from her lips. "I'm going to proceed in a widening spiral from here."
"At your current speed, covering the entire area will take no more than fifteen minutes," Jarvis informed them.
"What if he's not there?" Pepper asked softly.
"He'll be here. He's got to be."
But fifteen minutes passed, and there was still no sign of him, no sign of anything but snow and ice.
"All right, I'm going to continue in a spiral wider than the originally marked area. It's perfectly possible that the GPS might've been off, and he may have moved," Rhodey said.
"Sir, I would like to note that the snow is getting inside your flaps, and there is ice forming on your suit. Staying for much longer might seriously impede your steering," Jarvis chimed in. The voice came through the radio, meaning that it was the instance of Jarvis uploaded into his suit who was speaking.
"It's nothing, Jarvis. I can't give up yet."
"Rhodey..." Pepper began, not quite knowing herself what she wanted to say. She didn't want anything bad to happen to Rhodey, but if Tony was injured, he was probably Tony's only hope.
"Pepper, believe me, I've no intention of sacrificing my life for him or anything like that. I'm not that much of a martyr. I'll stay for another fifteen minutes. That sound reasonable, Jarvis?"
"Within acceptable limits, sir," the Jarvis at Rhodey's end answered.
Five minutes went by, then ten, and still, nothing. Pepper wrapped her hands around the mug again, trying to draw some warmth from the china, but it was no good. The untouched drink was barely lukewarm now.
"The time is up," Jarvis announced.
"Just a few more minutes..." Rhodey insisted.
Pepper stared at the big clock on the wall. A minute. Two minutes.
"Hey, look!" Rhodey exclaimed eagerly, all of a sudden. He took Pepper so completely by surprise that she actually dropped the mug on her lap, spilling tepid tea all over her clothes.
"Jarvis, what's that, over there?" he asked.
"A high-intensity beam of light, coming from the ground. The wavelength and shape are a perfect match to those of Iron Man's chest beam."
Feeling too relieved to speak, Pepper whispered a soundless "Yes!" - exactly in time with Rhodey's loud whoop of joy.