Al Jazeera aired the video first, but CNN and Fox got their hands on it within minutes. Obadiah Stane viewed the footage before anyone else from Stark Industries, having reported that one of his connections at CNN emailed him directly. He had been in New York meeting with investors since the first of the week, but boarded a plane to LA immediately after hearing the news.

Thus, Happy and I got our first glimpse of Tony on prime-time CNN, right along with the rest of the western world. The terrorists arranged him in a classic Middle Eastern prisoner pose, kneeling and powerless, surrounded by his heavily armed and unkempt captors. They even left a few flecks of blood on his face, no doubt for theatrical effect. He did appear injured to some degree, but ultimately alive!

Oddly, in one hand he held a metal box with a number of protruding wires.

Once I had taken in the whole scene with its ostentatious display of automatic weaponry and ammunition, my eyes lasered in on Tony's face. Ahhh, just to see that face again . . . I felt a jolt inside. What did his expression reveal? The Tony Stark signature cockiness had evaporated. He looked a little scared, but not terrified. Alongside the fear, a quiet resolve emanated.

I latched on to that resolve, aiming to draw some strength of my own. Happy and I shared a glance. With proof that Tony was alive, or at least had been when the video was shot, we could begin to hope.

"Why on earth is he holding a car battery?" mused Happy out loud.

"Is that what the box is?" I asked. The clip had finished and now CNN's "experts" were debating the possible terms of Tony's release.

"It sure looks like an old DieHard to me, and I've been around cars my whole life."

"With our man Tony, there is no telling what he is making that car battery do," I said, and we both grinned. It felt okay to smile in the midst of this disaster, in fact it felt pretty good.

We had many hoops to jump through before we could bring Tony back from the other side of the globe, but one hurdle had been cleared. Mr. Stark appeared to be alive.


"Pepper! Pepper!" Tony screamed over and over. "Pepper!"

His cries echoed up to me from under water. I rushed towards the sound of his voice. I could see his face below me contorted in terror, desperate for me to come and save him. I reached into the cold water, yet he floated just beyond my grasp.

"Tony, I'll help you! Don't go away. Stay with me! "

Despite my frantic efforts, his face retreated deeper into the water and his screams became weaker and weaker. I was losing him.

Even as I slowly realized it was all a nightmare, I was unable to rouse myself and banish the desperate images.

By day I presented a strong facade to the world, but when it came time to sleep my fears prevailed. I don't know which was worse, the conscious thoughts or nightmares. In the throes of advancing sleep deprivation, my dreams took on a convoluted, sinuous quality, as if they had been hand-painted by Salvador Dali himself.

For several consecutive nights Tony's captors came into my bedroom to negotiate with me. Sometimes they brought a beaten and broken Tony along, and he raised his head to fix his dark eyes on me in a silent plea for help. Those nights terrified me the most; with the scenes taking place in my own home I could not readily differentiate between reality and subconscious.

After that I took to spending most nights in the unofficial Pepper Potts suite at Tony's house. Before his capture, I had never stayed there as often as he liked, but now the surrounding home and security systems soothed me enough to ward off the worst of the nighttime terrors.

Obadiah Stane and I held frequent powwows, pondering the purpose of Tony's captivity. With his boss absent, Stane became the acting CEO, a role that he increasingly relished. Before I joined Stark Industries, Obadiah held that same position during the time period between Howard Stark's death and Tony's coming of age. Some whispered that Obadiah had not taken the transition well, and I worried that he would struggle once again when ... and if... Tony returned.

"Just like all terrorism, they are trying to frighten us, to demoralize us," Obadiah maintained. "Tony is a beloved, high profile American. Because of him, the Taliban now has the attention of an entire nation."

"I'm not so sure," I disagreed. "What does Tony have that these people need? Money and weapons. I'm surprised we haven't been contacted for some sort of ransom."

"Don't hold your breath, Pepper," Obadiah cautioned. "If those warlords wanted a ransom, we surely would have heard by now. They're more interested in power and posturing. You can't apply your logic to their way of thinking."

It did not make sense. Tony's nimble mind had developed the leading military technology of our era; what warring faction would not want to coerce him into handing over his secrets? Technology stolen from Tony could literally tip the balance of power in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It continued to mystify me that Stark Industries had not been contacted by his captors.

Since his elevation to CEO I had fallen into the role of Obadiah's de facto personal assistant. If nothing else, Obadiah made me understand how much Tony, for all his swagger, truly valued and relied on my opinion. While Mr. Stane and I enjoyed a pleasant relationship, he saw me as more of an underling than a confidant. Regardless, I admired Obadiah's knack for operational management and was grateful that he kept Stark moving along during Tony's absence.

So we waited, in agonizing silence.