They had gone off plan almost as soon as they'd begun. If there's one thing Tony hates, it's being on the back foot.
He's not sure how they lost the element of surprise. One minute he's doing a count, relaying positions to Rhodey in the tree line over yonder, and the next people start running around like someone's stirred up their ant nest with a stick. A pointy stick. That's on fire.
He'd told Vision to wait for the signal, dammit.
He pulls the power relays and fries them. Quick and dirty, but the time for subtlety has passed. They're not really ready. They're going to have to improvise this thing.
"Vision," he says into his comm. "In case you were unclear, that was the signal."
"Noted," Vision replies with his usual measured tone. "I should report however that I remain beyond the boundaries of the base as we discussed. I thought perhaps your activities had been noticed."
Oh. Well colour him humbled.
As if the dying lights aren't enough of a giveaway, someone starts cranking a siren. It's like one of those prison camp movies from the 60s, only with fewer Nazis.
"Rhodey, what do you see?"
"A whole lot of pissed off people," Rhodey replies. He's sounding worried, and Tony can't say he blames him. "Are we still thinking we're doing this? Because I'd say our cover is blown."
Tony doesn't like this. He really doesn't like this. But this might be the best they can hope for now. "If we don't try we might lose our chance. They'll move him, and they'll be better prepared for uninvited guests. I say we go with it."
They're closing the gates. A row of armed personnel scrambles for strategic points along the fence line, and snipers take up position in the two guard towers. Dogs are barking. Engines are running. Claxons are blaring. This is not exactly what he'd hoped for.
"Would you like me to begin?" Vision asks.
"Go," Tony agrees. "Do your thing. But let's try to keep the fireworks to a minimum, shall we? In and out. Rhodey, keep 'em occupied. I've got the back door."
"One shock and awe, coming up," Rhodey confirms, and Tony hears the tell-tale sound of repulsors before he sees him. War Machine streaks over the yard to the astonishment of the men below and draws their fire. He has their attention. Now he just has to keep it.
Tony doesn't see Vision enter the building, but he trusts him to do his part. He'll search out their target, in whatever state he may be in. Tony's job is to clear a way out.
There's a skylight towards the back of the building that looks promising.
"Three heat signatures, boss," FRIDAY supplies, and that's good enough for him.
He drops through in a shower of dirty glass fragments to the surprised yells of his audience and lands among long canteen tables. Three people in chef's whites scurry away from him and he lets them go. They're just the worker bees. What he needs is one of two things: a clear route towards the sweet spot in this joint or someone in the know who can lead him there. At this point he's not too worried about which it is.
FRIDAY displays the immediate layout for him in crisp night vision. The dead, glassy eye of a security camera stares sightlessly at him from one corner of the room. The remains of several meals stagnate on their trays along one table. There are three exits to the hall (other than the impromptu one he's just smashed through the ceiling). One leads onto a kitchen which he dismisses. Another is the route the canteen staff have just taken, which he guesses could lead to an exit from the building. He picks the third.
The trail feels warm. Almost immediately he passes what looks like a guard checkpoint, although there is no one on duty. The distant sounds of gunfire clatter outside as Rhodey puts on a performance, and the muffled slap of boot soles on vinyl echo from somewhere further into the building.
Tony heads towards them.
"Vision, any joy?"
There's a moment of silence before Vision replies. "I believe I have managed to avoid detection, but I am yet to locate our Asgardian friend."
"Keep looking," Tony tells him. "Let me know when you find anything. I'm headed your way."
"Of course. There is something else however. I have found several persons in need of medical attention."
Tony grimaces at that. "Prisoners?"
"I do not believe so. They appear to be base personnel."
That brings him up short. "Injuries?"
"Various. I suspect more than one may already be dead."
Oh, wasn't this just turning out perfectly. "Okay. Urgency level just got bumped up to eleven. Find him, Vis."
FRIDAY pre-empts his next thought. "Shall I alert emergency services?"
"As soon as we're done. Ten minutes, tops."
He hits pay dirt not long after. Two goons in riot gear skid to a stop ahead of him and curse colourfully. Tony's not sure of the translation, but he doesn't need a dictionary to make an educated guess. They don't hesitate to fire on him, and the shots deflect harmlessly off the suit.
When they pause, he aims a single repulsor blast at the ceiling above them and they cover their heads with their arms.
"Fair warning," Tony says. They don't take the hint.
The two men barrel towards him and he lets them come. He uses their momentum to throw one of them bodily into a room behind him and pins the second to the wall with an arm across his chest.
"Look, Incredible Bulk. This is a no win for you. So how about you take me to the goods, and we'll take the guy off your hands."
The man stares back at him uncomprehendingly. He really should have taken the time to upgrade FRIDAY's language centres.
"You know what, never mind."
He throws the guy to join his friend and pulls the door shut, melting the handle just enough to jam it closed before he goes. Further down the corridor he comes to an intersection. He's deciding which direction to take – would it kill them to put up signs? – when he hears the sound of wood splintering a fair distance ahead. He heads towards it.
Light is filtering in from somewhere nearby and it gets brighter as he walks. When the corridor turns a corner it widens into a larger hallway, elevator doors gaping open in the wall to his left. Bingo. He'd lay money on a trip downstairs being his ticket out of here.
Angry shouts behind him whip him around, and again he receives a peppering of bullets. When this does little to inconvenience him the goons decide instead to box him in. One of them lunges in close enough to thwack him with a stick that goes as far as to leave behind a small dent. They're really not getting the message.
He's about to point this out to them when he's tasered. The suit absorbs the charge, but it shorts out a joint closest to the point of impact and forces FRIDAY to compensate. Okay. He's had enough of this now.
Twin repulsor blasts send the whole bunch of them flying in pleasingly varied directions.
There's a resounding crash from a neighbouring room. "Rhodey? That you?"
"Kinda busy here, Tony," Rhodey replies, which he guesses means 'no'. Only one way to find out for sure.
The scene he's presented with when he steps over the busted door is one it takes a moment to absorb.
A cabinet lies on its side across the doorway among a stack of toppled chairs. There's broken glass everywhere. A battlefield scene is playing out beyond the shattered window, and a woman in a lab coat is sobbing loudly beneath a desk in the corner of the room.
And in front of him stands Loki, tattered, bloodied and dirty, a man as chalky white as the lab coat he's wearing clutched in front of him. He has a wickedly sharp piece of glass pressed flush against the guy's neck, thick ropes of blood snaking down his forearm. He is utterly still but for the trembling of the poor sap in his grip, and he's eyeing Tony like he's weighing up his options.
"Huh," Tony says. "Well, this I was not expecting. Do me a favour, Cuckoo's Nest – put the mad scientist down."
Loki tilts his head like he's said something completely incomprehensible. He flicks his eyes to the doorway at Tony's back and shifts his weight just so, and Tony raises his hands very slowly.
"Please," the lab coat says in heavily accented English, and Loki bares his teeth. The glass is slicing the guy's neck now, and he's beginning to whimper.
"Woah, okay," Tony says, taking a cautious step forward. Loki backs up and drags the man with him. "I get it. It's been a long day. Tensions are running high. This douchebag probably has it coming. But you don't have to do this. I can't believe I'm actually going to say it, but we're here to help."
Loki narrows his eyes. "You won't take me back," he says with quiet menace, and it's so gravelly Tony wonders how long it's been since he's spoken more than three words together.
He has to think carefully about how he's going to handle this. He's not going to promise something he can't deliver, and he fully intends to find a way to get Thor on the phone as soon as he's got a minute. It's not that he has a problem with lying to the guy, more that he knows trying to bullshit his way through this would only embarrass them both.
"Look, that's really not priority one at the moment," he tries, going for patient. And possibly not succeeding. "And I gotta be honest here, I'm not even sure how we'd do that just now. So how about we focus on getting the hell out of dodge, and we can talk about calling the folks later. Deal?"
Loki doesn't so much as blink. Tony wasn't expecting gratitude exactly, but maybe he should have been a bit more prepared for uncooperative, surly and fractious.
He's thinking of a way to get through to the guy when Vision phases through the wall beside him. Loki's eyes widen. The man in his grip goes rigid, but whether it's from the shock of what he's seeing or the tightening grip Loki has on him, Tony's not sure.
"Ah," Vision says delicately when he notices the situation. "I see my timing leaves something to be desired."
Not taking his eyes off Loki, Tony extends a hand towards Vision to warn him against approaching any further. "Vis, why don't you go lend Rhodey a hand? I've got this."
He sees Vision consider this out of the corner of his eye, then turn and leave the way he came. But the damage is already done.
Loki's gaze snaps back to Tony with a wild edge that wasn't there before. Tony has just enough time to register the sinking feeling in his gut when Loki shoves his hostage forward and vaults cleanly through the broken window behind him.
The terrified scientist knocks into Tony with enough violence to stagger him backwards, and it's a moment or two before he's untangled himself enough to follow. By the time he's made it out into the yard, Loki is nowhere to be seen.
Tony curses to himself. "Rhodey. Vision. Anyone got eyes on?"
The sound of gunfire comes from around the corner of the building, and a dull explosion throws flaming pieces of vehicle chassis several feet into the air.
"Fire escape," Rhodey supplies a little breathlessly, rifle reports loud across his comm. "And you might want to hurry it up. I'm running out of ways to—oh shit."
"Colonel Rhodes?" comes Vision's concerned voice.
"Rocket launcher," Rhodey confirms. "That's definitely a rocket launcher."
"I've almost got him," Tony tells them, and hopes he's not far off. "You're doing great."
He scans the roofline overhead and just catches movement disappearing over a ledge. His thrusters make short work of the distance, taking him up and over in seconds. Loki is already halfway across the flat roof at a sprint.
"God dammit," Tony mutters to himself as he pursues. This is not how today was supposed to go.
He's aiming to take the guy out at the legs when Loki anticipates his approach. He banks sharply and leaps the gap between the roof and the one adjacent, tucking and rolling as he hits the other side. He's back up and running again without breaking stride, heading directly for the high wall enclosing another storey of the building. Tony can see what he's about to do. He won't reach him in time, but he heads that way anyway.
"No, no, no," he chants to himself, "don't—"
Loki does. He throws himself shoulder first through the large window and disappears back inside the building.
"God dammit," Tony swears again, moving to follow. This is going to be fifteen times more difficult in close quarters. And Loki's counting on that, the little shit.
There's a smear of blood on the wall opposite where Loki has braced himself, and plenty more on the floor besides. Tony tries not to wince at the thought of bare feet among all this glass as he follows the trail it's left for him.
When he catches up he has to duck back to avoid being flattened by the body hurtling backwards in mid-air. Two more guards are attempting to parry strikes from their enraged prisoner and taking a beating for their efforts. Loki fights with a feral desperation that leaves Tony in no doubt of how the bodies Vision found came to be there. He needs to put a stop to this before more people get seriously hurt.
He steps in and yanks the two bouncers out of the way. "Okay," he says with his 'in charge' voice. "That's enough. Just stop."
Loki rounds on him and damn, he's fast. He takes several hits that push him back, and when Loki hooks an ankle around his to topple his balance it's only his repulsors that keep him upright. When he finally gets a grip on the slippery little sucker he's determined not to lose it. Tony pins Loki face first against the wall and twists an arm up behind his back. "We done?"
Loki struggles. Even leaning all his weight on him, Tony has to fight to keep him there. He almost loses his grip on one particularly violent heave and decides he's not making his point clear. He slams Loki back forcefully enough to loosen plaster from the wall.
He realises his mistake too late.
There's a suction at his ears that he shouldn't be able to feel through the controlled atmosphere of the suit and a sudden absence of sound that's deafeningly loud. He only registers he's flying backwards when his side clips something hard and sends him spinning to the ground, his in-helmet display fizzing and glitching as he goes.
He sits up and raises his face plate to see Loki stagger back away from him, looking about as dazed as Tony feels. He almost trips over the downed guard at his feet.
Loki jerks when a hand wraps itself around his ankle. The guard lurches forward from his position on the floor and slams his fist against Loki's calf. When it comes away it leaves a red-tipped dart behind.
Loki rips himself away with a snarl and snatches the thing out. He flings it angrily to the ground and pushes himself from the wall at a run.
It takes Tony a couple of tries to push himself up from the floor and he has to shake his head to clear it. He feels fried. And bruised. The suit's joints are stiff and slow, and FRIDAY's voice stutters incomprehensibly. This is not good. This is very not good.
He takes off at a loping trot in the direction Loki took, his gait heavy and clumsy. A door clicks shut just as he rounds a corner, and he opens it onto a stairwell. Tony looks over the railing and sees Loki standing on the landing below, one palm against the wall. He seems to notice he's being watched and looks up, wobbling unsteadily. He wears the look of a trapped animal.
"Stay right there," Tony tells him, and of course Loki does exactly the opposite. He lurches away from the wall, grips the bannister and flips himself neatly over the edge. It's two floors down.
Tony raises his eyes to the heavens and breathes. Aw, what the hell, he thinks. With much less grace and a hell of a lot more noise, he takes Loki's example and follows.
The impact is a heavy one but the shock absorbers take it. The floor's going to need remodelling, though. He extracts himself from the crater he's just punched into the concrete and straightens. He hears the clicking of safeties and the readjusting of firearms and does a cautious scan of the room around him.
He's surrounded on all sides by men bristling with weapons. Several train rifles and handguns on him. The rest are busy barricading the door against the battlefield they've given up on outside.
Between him and them stands Loki, his shoulders heaving, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. The room is silent but for his harsh breathing.
Tony slowly raises his hands. "Uh, guys?" he tries sotto voce into his comm. "Need a little help here." It gives a pained splutter in response but otherwise produces nothing of use. Oh boy.
One of the armed men gestures aggressively with his rifle and shouts an order of some kind. Surrender or else, Tony supposes. When neither he nor Loki reacts, the man repeats himself, and a number of his men shift their grips on the trigger.
"Hey!" Tony says, stepping forward. He needs to defuse this thing, and fast, or there are going to be stains on the wall that probably won't come out. "Just… everybody chill for a second. Nobody do anything stupid."
And of course that's when things go sideways.
Some trigger-happy genius fires a dart that Loki snatches out of the air and sends sailing back at his assailant, pointy end first. Tony has just enough time to tackle him to the ground as the other men open fire in response, and the shower of sparks the bullets strike off the suit leave golden smears across his retinas.
He may as well be trying to shield a large and angry cat for all the help Loki gives him. Loki struggles and thrashes beneath him, trying to buck him loose. He bears down as much as he can until something sharp is jammed into a seam in his armpit and twisted. It doesn't quite pierce his skin, but it does screw with the circuits in his shoulder joint and makes moving even more difficult. He wraps his arms around his reluctant charge and cinches them tight, and if he's a bit more rough than is needed he doesn't exactly feel bad about it.
He sends a small prayer to anyone who might be listening and engages the thrusters. His left boot fails altogether, but the right chokes into life with enough intermittent power to force the pair of them past the surrounding ring of men and through the doors behind.
They careen down a short row of concrete steps and thud to an uncomfortable stop in the turf of the yard outside.
Tony sits up and wrenches the jagged piece of metal from beneath his arm. It comes away with a fair few components he'd rather have kept hold of but frees up a bit more movement. Men begin pouring from the exit he's just made from the building but hang back warily, their eyes scanning the sky. It's a two minute reprieve, but not one Tony wants to waste.
Loki rolls away from him with a shove and tries to get up. He staggers sideways a short distance before dropping again to one knee, seemingly running out of juice. This could make things easier, or it could make them even more difficult. The suit's fried, and the guy is heavy.
Tony backs towards him, one eye on their audience and another on the sky around the building. Come on, guys, he thinks to himself. A little back up would be welcome right about now.
He hauls Loki up and drapes one arm over his shoulders. "Got any more surprises for me or can we go now?" he asks as he starts dragging, but he gets no reply. He ducks and moves faster as a smattering of pot shots narrowly miss him.
Loki leans more heavily on him the closer they get to the gates, and Tony begins to worry that he won't be able to hold them both up. He stumbles when Loki suddenly goes slack and has to readjust his grip. He gives him an impatient shake, and Loki just about regains his footing. "Oh no you don't. No checking out. Not yet."
There's a sharp whistle from the group of men still lingering by the cover of the building, and Tony's blood runs cold to the sound of baying dogs. He forces the both of them around and raises his free hand, jerking it forcefully. His gauntlet tries to power but doesn't quite catch and he grits his teeth hard. He tries again with the same result. "Come on."
A pack peels away from their handlers and thunders towards him, slaver flying in their wake. His gauntlet fails a third time. He doesn't have time to try for a fourth.
The dogs are brought up abruptly by a beam of light that slices the ground before them. Vision's cape settles behind him as he alights silently on the scrubby grass, and the animals scatter whimpering and yelping before him. Always with the dramatic entrances. Tony wonders where he gets it from.
"About time," he grumbles, tugging Loki's sagging arm a little tighter around his shoulders.
"You're welcome," Rhodey answers as he sets down at his side, flipping his face plate as he does. "What happened to 'check in regularly'? And what's with the new look?" He runs a metal finger over the pock marks and dents decorating Tony's flank with a barely restrained smile and Tony swats his hand away.
"Can we save the snarky debrief until after we finish the mission? Here." Tony thrusts an armful of slumped demigod into Rhodey's chest and gives him a saccharine smile. "And be careful. The little bastard shanked me."
Rhodey frowns. "He okay?"
"I'm fine, thank you."
The men at their back start to reform and advance, although the effort seems decidedly half-hearted. Time to go.
"Might I lend assistance?" Vision offers with a tactful but pointed look at Tony's busted suit.
It's not his preferred way to travel, and it's been a while since he's needed a lift, but Tony's not about to walk to the jet. "Let's hit it," he agrees, and with Rhodey following close behind with his burden, they peel off into the surrounding trees.