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Intervention- Chapter 12

It was an amulet. Of course it had to be an amulet.

It wasn't even a tasteful one; it was on a garish gold chain, set with an opulent red stone that was bigger than any ruby he had ever seen. Cut glass? Some kind of crystal? A demon's heart? Who could say.

The setting was trimmed with carvings of eyes, tiny irises and pupils and lashes that stared lifelessly out at the viewer. It would have been creepy, had it not been the one thing they needed. It would have been funny, draped around the thick neck of the mythical god of thunder, had it not been the piece Doctor Strange had spent two long weeks in making. It would have been Tony wearing it, had it been big enough to fit around the armor's head- so at least there was that.

There weren't a whole lot of positives, here. He took what he could get.

"Can we not be nearer?" Thor asked him, for what had to be the twenty-seventh time.

"You heard your dad," Tony told him. "Nothing living goes in. If there's some kind of of mystical alarm system set up to tell him we're trying, the last thing we want to do is trip it by accidentally getting too close." Inside the armor, his eyes flickered back and forth across the presented data, checking the angle at which the drill was cutting into the ground. "So just stand there and model your jewels. Soon as he's out, he's all yours."

Beside him, the man folded his massive arms across his chest. It was the kind of body language a sulking kid might use, and Christ, there was something else that would've been funny in any other situation. "Doing naught to assist had long become wearisome. I find I have had my fill."

"Well, you're gonna have to top off. We've got a bit longer to wait." Tony paused, glancing over the geological scan data that Bruce had dug up for him. Mineral type and structure, the basic lay of the land- the works. He compared it with the information being routed to him from the construct currently out of sight beneath the rocky soil, gaze flickering back and forth between the two.

"Sir," Jarvis told him, "Current readings report that an underground cavity is near at hand."

"Slow the approach by sixty percent and scan for structural instabilities before we try and break through that ceiling. We'll take it down around the side if we have to." The new data that flashed before his eyes reflected the changes, and Jarvis told him, "Very good, sir."

To Thor, Tony said, "But not a whole lot longer, it looks like."

The man was as easy to read as one of those signs all in pictures and symbols, just in case the person looking had trouble with things like words put together in phrases. The expression on his face was open and perfectly legible, was full of things Tony didn't like to think about long enough to put a name to."Have you laid sight upon my brother?"

"We've got a cave coming up." The HUD had broken down the structure of the ceiling for him, and the spots with cave-in potential were highlighted all in red, splatter-marks that showed up harsh and intrusive against the green. There were a half-dozen of them, splashed here and there like a mass-murderer forgot to pick up after himself. "Thinking it's what we're looking for." Inside the armor, the expression hidden from his teammate's view, Tony frowned at what he saw. "Jarvis, bring us around to the right and slow us down another twenty percent. We're going in."

It was like a video game- the nail-biting kind that are really well designed, those timed stages where you find your breath coming faster and your heart beating harder. The construct that was doing the digging wasn't one he had to control, not entirely. It wasn't completely remote-based, because from where he was, seeing what he needed to see in order to give the commands he needed to give was going to be tricky. Its sensors should take care of most of the snags, and if something catastrophic happened midway, he ought to be able to give the override and switch to manual control.

But if something catastrophic happened midway, Thor's brother might well end up a smear of strawberry jelly on the rock. The fact that that was better off than he was now wasn't much comfort.

In from the right came the drill, inch by inch, and Thor was saying something. Tony blocked it out- blocked everything out- in favor of concentrating on what was going on below them. There was no room for error in this. No room at all.

"Sir," Jarvis warned, just as the red splash marks spread across the wall, like Odin was running some kind of haunted hotel in Earth's sub-basement.

"Shit," said Tony.

"Is ought amiss?" said Thor.

The wall was coming down. The whole damn thing was coming down.

"Go," Tony said. "Go. Screw slow and gentle, get in there now."

"What has happened?" Thor was asking, but Tony didn't have time for that- not now. He was trying to calculate how long he had before their rescue mission got them back nothing more than a smear of meat.

It wasn't long. The place was falling apart, and even in his moment of crisis, even when the adrenaline had kicked him into high gear and his thoughts were racing at the speed of sound, even now his brain took a cynical moment to wonder if the man's dick of a father had picked this place for precisely this reason. Structural instability, no windows or doors. Charming way to make sure your prisoner stays for all eternity.

He was in override mode now, much as he'd hoped he wouldn't have to be, watching not so much the world around him as the interior of the cavern displayed on his HUD. The outline of the rock showed up in simple contour lines, physical properties listed in dry, matter-of-fact symbols and figures, and there was Loki in thermal display, the shape of his body nearly the same cool blue as the snake coiled above him. The oddity of that hardly registered, not in the intensity of the moment. He didn't have to tell himself to wonder about it later, because his brain was already pushing on to bigger and more important things, like making sure there was a later. Like trying to guide the construct in without taking down more of the wall. Like getting the man who'd tried to destroy Manhattan the hell out of that cave before this went any worse.

Consequently, he missed it when the mythical god of thunder lifted that massive hammer of his, slung it over his head, and spun it round and round, then let go. He wasn't paying attention when Thor stopped asking questions and ceased standing beside him. He didn't realize what his teammate had gone to do at all, in fact, until Jarvis said, "Forecast time remaining is now two minutes, sir. Presuming the current development holds, of course."

The current development being that the crazy bastard had flown his legendary body-building physique in there was holding up the wall. Christ. Now Tony was going to have to phone Atlus and let him know his gig got swiped.

Inside the metal casing of the armor, Tony found himself grinning, a triumphant flash of teeth that came and was gone. He didn't waste any time- not when they had so little to spare- but guided the construct in past Thor's knee, straight over the rubble where it had fallen. He hadn't expected to need it, but the tank tread had paid off; the robot didn't stall or hitch, but only lumbered on, unconcerned by the jagged and oddly-shaped pieces of rock obstructing its path.

The buzz saw unfolded exactly as planned, and Tony watched the read-outs attentively, eyes flickering back and forth. This would be the most difficult part: cutting the shackles from the rock without, say, taking off the prisoner's arm in the process. He'd wanted to take this slow. He'd wanted to make sure he did it safely. It was looking like that wasn't going to be an option.

"One minute and thirty seconds remaining," Jarvis informed him.

The saw bit into the rock, and Tony had never been more glad he'd had a sample of the mineral to work with than at this moment. It was tough, nearly level with rhenium diboride on Mohs hardness scale, but he'd had time enough to make sure his construct could handle it. It slipped in with what he was sure was a squeal of contact and a shower of sparks, and he said a mental sorry to Loki for the damage that was likely to do. Better a few burns than eternity chained up in a pit, though- and so he pressed on, moved from wrist to wrist, leg to leg.

"Forty-five seconds remaining." Jarvis' voice was cool and collected, no more alarmed than it ever was.

The metal arms were based on human arms, of the same design as the ones on his suit but on a larger scale. They lifted the prisoner princess-style and the robot flipped into reverse, rolling backward over the debris that blocked its path. Probably, there was more coming down. Possibly, both Loki and the construct were taking hits in transit, but at this point there just wasn't a good alternative.

Still, they had it- they were in the clear. The construct was level with the hole drilled in the rock, and any second now, it would be clawing its way free, bringing forth a man who hadn't seen the light of day in two years.

Typically, it was no sooner than he'd had the thought that something went wrong, little blinking red symbols on the HUD that warned him: the prisoner was gone.

Dropped? Crushed? Who the hell knew. There was no data where there should have been, was no explanation, but whatever it was, it hadn't been meant to happen. There was damage to the joints of his robot- and Loki, after all this, was missing. Tony swore and gunned the jets, shot forward with the rush of speed that had become second nature to him.

The world sped by him in a blur, a rush of deep green pine trees, of low shrubbery and jagged rock, and then there it was: the hole that his robot had dug in the ground, and standing there above it like the painting of some old-fashioned virtue like Charity or Grace or Benevolence, was Thor, his brother cradled gently in his arms.

Tony pulled up short, arms stiff at either side so that the propulsion would allow him to hover. "Did you pry my robot's hands half off so you could have dibs?"

He was not, all things considered, terribly surprised at being ignored. Not when he could catch it out of the corner of his eye however much he tried not to look: the bloody raw-meat wreck that the prisoner's face had become once more. "Let us return, my friend," Thor said. "My brother has not time for your jests."

"Lucky him, they'll keep till he wakes up." But Tony took the hint and opened up the com link, spoke briefly into it. "Hey, guys," he said. "We're incoming."