Crawling into the vent feels like being swallowed. Mr. Jarvis had read Tony a story once that had a boa constrictor in it and Tony had learned all about snakes. This is what he imagined being eaten by a snake would feel like, if the snake were a robot snake made out of metal. The vent even breathed like a snake might breathe, blowing hot air into Tony's face and making him want to cough.

It is hot and tight and Tony never knew that wriggling on his belly could make him so tired. It is also black, except for the pale blue light from his flashlight. It isn't a lot of light, mostly because it's aimed mostly under Tony and there isn't move to sit up like a seal so the light can go in front. That's okay, though, because it's only a little space it has to light up, just enough to make the black not black anymore.

Sometimes the vent splits into two ways or even three, and he has to decide which way to go, or sometimes the floor disappears for a little bit. The first time that happens, he only stops before he falls into the hole because of his flashlight that lets him see it. Then he has to stop for a long bit because he doesn't know how to go on and because he is tired. He tries to see if it is deep, and it deeper than his arm because he can't feel a bottom, but he can feel the other side and he thinks he can sort of slide over the hole and not fall in. He tries it very carefully, by lying across it. It works, until he's almost completely across, and then suddenly his toe slides off the edge into the hole and he isn't expecting it. Luckily, all his body is heavier than his foot, so he just makes some noises and bangs loudly a bit on the sides of the vent, and then he wiggles on.

Tony wiggles and wiggles and he doesn't get stuck and he doesn't cry and he doesn't find himself in the bad place inside his head. Tony is a brave monster fighter, and he can see a tiny bit and he's going to save his friends.

Every so often, the vent has more window sort of openings, like the one he had crawled in through, and these let in even more light, and Tony can look out. What he sees is a hallway, and then an empty room that isn't a control room, and then another hallway. This hallway isn't empty. It has yellow suit people running and shouting and shooting their guns, and it has a robot. The robot is big and black and scary and the most awesome thing Tony has ever seen. The robot isn't at all scared of the yellow suit people or their guns. It fires back and the yellow suit people fall over and some of them cry and some of them run away and some of them lie very still and don't move at all.

Tony keeps crawling. Maybe the robot is awesome but maybe it's scary and Tony doesn't want it to shoot him and he doesn't want to lie still and never ever move again. He can hear sounds still. They echo around his ears from all over; shouting and gunfire and zaps and anger. Everyone seems to be fighting. He doesn't like it and he listens very hard to his own heart, and tries to pretend its beating so hard that he can't hear anyone screaming or crying or angry at all.

He has to rest for a little bit near the next window vent because he is very tired and the vent isn't breathing hot air on him at that moment but now the air is very still and he's too hot and too tired and he's sliding even more like a snake because he's all sweaty. Climbing through vents is not fun. This vent window looks into a laboratory, the kind with fizzing beakers, except none of the beakers are fizzing and there are no scientists to do the fizzing either. Some vials are knocked over and broken, and a puddle near a table is hissing and eating at the ground, and another puddle is just being a puddle and looking shiny.

He wonders if he should come out here, and maybe he can find chemicals to make a bomb. His dad taught him a little bit about making bombs once. He didn't tell Tony to go away and he didn't leave, and he told Tony interesting things about bottles of cleaner that Tony had never known about before. That was a happy day. His mom and Mr. Jarvis were not happy at all though and shouted a lot, and his dad hasn't told him any more about it.

But he doesn't really want to make an explosion, he wants to find a phone and call Mr. Phil or Miss Pepper or even the police. Then maybe his friends won't be hurt and they can stop all the monsters, and if the robot is a monster then maybe they can fight it, and if it's a friend then Tony can look at it again.

The next time the vents split up, Tony takes the wrong way. He knows it's the wrong way because it ends in another drop, but this time it also has a wall on the other side instead of more vent. He doesn't want to go down the drop because maybe it's very far and maybe there's no way out again. Also, he hears angry voices coming from the hole.

"Bucking brats," someone is growling, or maybe it's not that; it's hard to hear because the voice is bouncing out of the hole all muffled and low. It might have been 'buck ring rats' or 'fun king bats'. It doesn't make any sense anyway. All Tony knows is that the voice is very angry. "Should've all tops seed them all when we had the chance," the muffled voice says, or something like that.

"Did we at least get the blood?" a second voice asked.

"No," says the first, still really angry, "Psycho brats are sitting on a trucking goldmine in there. No blood, no art reactor, and what's left is set to blow in ten. Least they won't be walking free either. There is rat."

Tony really doesn't want to go down the hole and meet the voices. They don't make any sense and they sound angry and mean and scary, and maybe Tony is a brave monster fighter, but also maybe he's only four and small and all alone. So he decides to be brave somewhere else.

He has to crawl backwards for ages and ages until he's back at the fork. This time he goes the right way, and he knows it's the right way because this time it doesn't lead to a drop with mean voices. It leads to a vent window, and on the other side is a room with computers. Computers means Tony can talk to people. Computers means Tony can find a way to stop the bad men. Tony is good at computers, even future computers that he only knows a little bit about. Tony is a fast learner.

Unfortunately, the room is not empty. There are two yellow suit men sitting in there, doing something on the computer.

Luckily, they don't stay. Tony only has to stare at them for maybe one whole minute before they push in a code for their computer, and then hit a big red button, and then run out the door. They left the computer set to a clock and Tony thinks it says it's ten o'clock, and that's really late, but then the clock changes its mind and says it's 9:59, and then 9:58, and it's a funny clock because the numbers are going backwards. Not that Tony cares much about the backwards clock, because he has more important things to think about. Now the room is empty and it is full of computers, and probably a phone, too.

Getting out of the vent is much harder than getting in. This vent has a cover on it, and it doesn't come off when Tony pushes it. He pushes really hard, but it doesn't move. Tony bangs on it, and his eyes want to cry and make the room all blurry because the computers are right there, and Tony crawled forever and ever, and he can't get out.

Then he closes his eyes, and his mind goes back and remembers how he crawled in, and remembers how the cover had a little latch, and how they needed to undo the latch with the scalpel. Tony doesn't have the scalpel, but he does have some bits of wire in his shoe.

Bits of wire turn out to be better than a scalpel, because they fit through the holes in the window and they bend. It's really hard because he can't see the latch, but he holds his memory of the other opening inside his head and he can see that latch perfectly. And when he moves the wire the way his memory says it has to go he can feel the wire catch. A wire isn't a scalpel, but the sharp bit of metal he wrapped it around goes under the latch, and then he yanks really hard.

What happens is that the metal bit goes flying away into the room and the wire is just a wire and he thinks maybe his tool is broken and his metal bit is lost and he is trapped, but when he pushes against the opening it moves. He pushes forward and his head is out, but he's still way up high and he can't even turn around so his feet jump out first because there isn't any room.

The clock on the computer thinks it's 6:18 now, and he doesn't know what happens when the clock says 0, but maybe it's not good, and maybe he needs to hurry. He doesn't know why, but seeing time running away makes him feel unhappy, like maybe when it says 0 it will be too late and the bad people will come back or the computers will stop working or something horrible will happen to all his friends. The last time he saw a countdown like that, it was for a rocket ship, and he doesn't want to be on a ship and blast off either, because maybe he will never see anyone again because he won't even be on earth.

He has to go down and he has to make the countdown stop counting down so that the worried feeling in his tummy will go away, and then he can use the computers or the phone and find help.

But he can't do any of that because he is still trapped super high up. First, he has to get his feet out without falling on his head. He remembers the vent opening again from when he first saw it, and he reaches up his hands and he finds a very tiny edge for his fingers to hold. If he were a big person then his fingers would be too big to hold on, but he is small and his fingers are small, and he holds on tight and his chest and arms and head are all out of the vent and he's sitting on the vent with his legs inside it.

His fingers hurt from holding on and his arms feel weak and his legs feel sore and he really, really doesn't want to drop and fall because that will hurt. His legs don't want to come out though, because his knees can't bend without hitting the vent's ceiling and if he pulls out any further his fingers are going to drop him.

This way isn't working at all. He sits and he holds himself up and he thinks. The clock says 3:23. There is almost no time left, and he needs enough time to find out how to make it stop. Maybe he can just push the red button again?

It's funny how time works, because it feels like he is taking hours and hours, and his thoughts are zipping inside his head so fast and all at once, so that his head is crowded with thoughts about his friends being hurt, and black robots, and yellow suit men, and having to stand in time out forever, and being hit with rulers, and counting down clocks, and living on the moon, and how computers work, and phone numbers, and angels, and how he might come down. He can come down feet first, but only if he climbs all the way back down the vent until he reaches the fork and can turn himself around. That will take up minutes and minutes though, and that is too long. Or he can go down head first. That might hurt.

"I am a monster fighter," Tony says out loud, "I am brave."

He drops down head first. He doesn't fall. He hangs down out of the vent by his knees, just like he sometimes does in the garden with a tree branch. He hangs upside down and then he reaches back up, and it's really hard, but his fingers grab the vent's edge again. Then he wiggles and pulls at his legs until they fall, and now he dangles over the air by his fingertips.

It's still a really far drop. It's a much bigger drop than when he hopped off the bed.

The clock says it's 1:15.

Tony drops.

It's a really far drop, and his legs fold beneath him when they hit the ground with a hard jolt, and his bottom hits the ground and he rolls backwards and his head bangs against the wall, and for a moment he just feels jolted and a bit like he left his breath all back up in the vent. Then his head remembers that it went bang against the wall and it hurts, and his bottom hurts and his legs hurt, and he wants to cry and scream and he wants Mr. Jarvis to come or Dr. Shaw to make him better and give him a red sucker.

He can't cry though, because the clock says :44, and that's not even a whole minute before blast off, or whatever happens when it says zero.

He stands up, and his legs don't want to, and it feels funny to walk on jolted legs, like maybe they don't remember how to walk. He climbs onto the chair by the computer and he pushes the red button, because maybe the red button made the clock so maybe it will make it go away.

The clock doesn't go away. It keeps counting numbers, :26, :25, :24, but the numbers move up to a corner and in the center it says: password.

Tony isn't very good at reading, but he recognizes that word because computers always like to use that word before it lets you do anything. Sometimes what it means is that it wants to read his fingerprint or look at his face to see if its him, but sometimes it means he has to push in a secret code. This computer looks like it wants a secret code.

Tony doesn't know the secret code, but he does know what buttons the man pushed before he pushed the red button. So Tony holds the memory in front of him so he can see it again, and he pushes the same buttons.

The timer says :15, :14, :13, and Tony presses the last key, and the words change.

Abort self-destruct? Yes/no.

Tony is very good at numbers. He's good at codes too. He isn't very good at words.

:9, :8, :7 says the clock. Tony doesn't know what the computer wants. Should he try pressing yes or no? He knows those words. There isn't a yes or no key on the keyboard though. And he doesn't know if the answer is yes or no.

:4, says the clock.

:3

:2

A finger that isn't Tony's presses 'Y'.

:2 says the clock, :2, :2. It's flashing. The words changed again.

Self-destruct aborted.

Tony turns around. The finger that had pushed the button is attached to a hand. The hand is attached to a body. It's a woman with dark hair and a dark outfit on and a really serious expression. Tony doesn't know her and maybe she's scary, but she isn't wearing a yellow suit and she made the clock stop counting so maybe she is a good guy.

"The self-destruct is aborted," she says, but Tony thinks she is talking to someone else because she isn't looking at Tony's eyes, and she has a tiny ear phone in her ear. She pauses for a moment and then says, "Thanks, but it wasn't really me. I've found Stark." Then she pauses for a bit more and then says, "Still the same Stark. No obvious injuries. I don't see the others."

Tony watches her, and then he slides off his knees where he was kneeling to reach the computer, and he sits properly in the chair, because his legs feel really sore and don't want to hold him up anymore. Stopping the clock countdown seems to have made all the strength go out of his legs and his head go all fizzy. He wants it to be time to sleep, but he still needs to call Mr. Phil and he still needs to save his friends and maybe the woman is a good guy but maybe she is a kidnapper and he should run away.

"Tony," the woman says, and this time she is looking at his eyes, so she is talking to him. "Where are the other children?"

"I have to call Mr. Phil," Tony tells her, because if she is a kidnapper then he doesn't want to say where his friends are. But if she helps him call Mr. Phil then she is a good guy and Mr. Phil will come and everything will be alright.

The woman looks at him, this time like she is thinking.

Then she grabs his chair and pushes really hard and Tony and the chair spin across the room and crash into the wall. Tony is really surprised so it takes him a moment after the chair stopped moving to notice the two yellow suit men. The men are crumbled on the floor and not moving at all and the woman is standing but her arm is bleeding.

Tony stares at her.

Then she falls over on top of the yellow suit men. Tony's brain must be really tired, because it takes him a really long time to figure out she fell over because Natalia was standing in the doorway and she had shot her with the gun that makes people sleep.

Then Steve is there too, and Clint and green Bruce, all crowded in the doorway. There's also Andrew, with his hands tied.

"Tony!" Steve says, except trying to whisper, "We found you! Andrew said this is where the computers were, and I thought you'd go where computers are. Bruce helped us get out of the room. We've decided we're leaving, all of us, and then we'll call Mr. Phil for help."

"But we can call from here!" Tony says, and he tries to slide off the chair to go to them, but his legs seem to have stopped working and he sits on the floor instead.

"Tony?" Clint says, and Steve runs into the room and climbs over the jumble of sleeping people and picks him up.

"Come on, Tony," Steve says. "You can keep watch again."

Tony doesn't think he's very good at keeping watch because he's really sleepy, and it's too hard to explain about the countdown clock or the lady who helped him before Natalia shot her.

"We need to call Mr. Phil," he says instead, because that's the one thing he is sure of. That's what he climbed in the vents for. He's glad his friends are safe, though.

There's a wall phone on the wall, and Steve carries Tony on his shoulders over to it and Tony pushes Phil's number. It doesn't work, though, and keeps giving error sounds.

"Er," says Andrew. "You have to press 9 to dial out."

Tony's brain doesn't want to make sense of this but Andrew finally explains it properly. "Press 9 and then…er…Mr. Phil's number. And tell him I'm a good guy, while you're at it."

So finally Tony gets to call Mr. Phil. But it doesn't ring like it's supposed to. It goes to a voice that says Tony can leave a message for Mr. Phil. Tony doesn't want to leave a message; he wants to talk to Mr. Phil. But maybe if he gives a message, Mr. Phil will be able to find them anyway.

"Hello Mr. Phil," Tony says, and "It's Tony. Some yellow suit men kidnapped us…"

"They're called AIM," Andrew put in helpfully.

"And we ran away from them, I crawled in a vent and there was a clock and Bruce helped the others…"

"And a nice guy named Andrew helped too…" Andrew shouted into the phone.

"…and now we're escaping. So please come and get us. Thank you. Goodbye." Then Tony turns to the others and says, "It wasn't Mr. Phil, it was a message. I guess we can leave now."

"I'd say we could just stick around and wait for your friends, but I hear they started they started the self-destruct sequence, so…perhaps we should hurry?" Andrew says.

Self-destruct sequence didn't sound like a nice thing at all. Almost as bad as a countdown clock. So Tony sits on Steve's shoulders and kept lookout and tried not to fall over because he is sleepy, and Andrew leads them down the hall and up some stairs and up some more stairs and up some more stairs and then outside.

Then they look around for where to wait for Mr. Phil to hear his message and come.