"Sir?" Jarvis asked politely.
"Nothing." The door beeped and opened. As Clint stepped in, all the robot arms stopped what they were doing and lifted to stare at him. "Uh, hi, guys. Your boss told me to come in here."
The arms all looked at each other, then the one who had brought him the bean bag, the one Tony had called Dummy, trundled up to him. It stopped and looked him up and down.
"Come on, dude, I was just in here. You brought me the big green bean bag."
The arm beeped.
"Yes, Dummy," Jarvis said sternly, "you certainly did bring Mr. Barton the bean bag. I'm sorry, sir, Dummy is very idiosyncratic."
Clint pulled out his pass card. "Anyway, your boss gave me a key, so you're not allowed to object."
Dummy reached out and clamped down on the card. Clint tried to pull it back, but Dummy held on. He stopped pulling, but Dummy didn't try to yank it away.
"Dummy, you are being silly," Jarvis scolded.
Clint grinned. "I am not throwing this across the room so we can play fetch, dude." Dummy made a sad noise. "Come on, I need that." Dummy slowly let go. Clint patted his head, and Dummy took hold of his fingers with the claws at the end of his arm. "I need those, too. A lot more than I need the card." Dummy slowly raised his head up and down, shaking Clint's hand. "Yes, hi, I'm Clint and you're Dummy, pleased to meet you."
Dummy let go of his fingers and zipped away, going up to one of the other arms and beeping at it.
Clint snickered. "He just said nyah-nyah to that other robot, didn't he."
"Yes," Jarvis sighed, "I'm afraid so. You and Butterfingers are not as forward as Dummy is."
"They're not identical?"
"Hardly. Dummy is the oldest of us. He started small when Sir was quite young, and he has been Sir's test bed for ideas on cybernetics for years. So some . . . peculiarities have crept in."
"I can only imagine." He pulled out the envelope with the disc. "So where should I put this?"
A countertop halfway across the room lit up. "Please place the device on that surface, sir."
He went over and slid the disc onto the countertop. A scanning beam went over it, and schematics began building in midair.
The lab door slid open, and all the robots looked up again. "Hey, kids, Daddy's home!" Tony called as he came in. All the robots beeped greetings. "And hello to you too, Merida. Is that the toy that was left behind?"
"Yep." Clint took in Tony's sharp-edged suit, fine dark wool with the barest pinstripe, not the kind of shiny suit he wore when he was playing the press. He was even wearing dress shoes, not trainers. His tie, shirt, and pocket square were perfectly arranged; even his beard looked razor edged. "Did someone else dress you today?"
Tony shrugged. "I may have popped into Pepper's office for an inspection before I left, but I picked out all my own clothes, mother." He smirked. "I may not follow the rules, but I know very well how to play the game."
"How many people did you leave crying?"
"Only one, but I think it was despair that I didn't have time to do more than smile at him." He dropped the suit jacket off his shoulders and tossed it vaguely towards a lab table. Clint winced when it hit the floor. One of the robots other than Dummy zipped over to pick up the jacket, shake it out, and hang it on a coat rack. Obliviously, Tony took out his cuff links and rolled up the shirt sleeves. The cuff links were tossed onto the counter next to Clint. He picked one up and wondered if the red part of red and gold design actually was ruby.
Tony perched on a stool and studied the schematic. "That's a transceiver, but the range on reception and transmission can't be very long."
"No, sir," Jarvis confirmed. "Given the shielding on the building, any signals would need to be generated just outside the building or inside."
Clint frowned. "So it's supposed to pick up a signal then send another signal on?"
"Yep. But from where and to where? Jarvis said you want to search the lobby."
"Yeah, if they were planting stuff in one place, odds are they're planting things in other places."
"Jarvis, bring up a plot of where our friends went in the lobby."
Another aerial screen came up with a floorplan of the lobby. Three dots entered the front door, not so close together as to be obviously together. They moved slowly through the other people, staying away from the elevator bank and the security desk, as well as from the Starbucks and cafe and the newsstand. One circulated near the door, and the other two wandered over to the window wall that faced the street, with about ten feet between them.
"Keeping watch on the street for you?" Tony commented.
"Maybe," Clint said. "I did foil a couple of observers on the street, so they may not have had warning. I still want to check those spots. When does traffic drop off?"
"Most everybody's out by seven, but the brokerage houses keep a night shift for the foreign markets. Most of the elevators shut down at eight, which is when the front doors lock." Tony checked his watch. "Evening rush hour is starting, you probably don't want to go down now."
"Jarvis, is anything broadcasting out of the lobby?"
"Nothing that has not already been authorized or being monitored."
Tony grinned. "The Stark-Bucks wifi node is very popular."
Clint rolled his eyes. "So what did you find-" The crystal chime of Natasha communications came out of his phone, and he pulled it out. "Damn, just a text."
Tony peered over his shoulder. "How did she figure out how to do an hourglass?"
"Ask her when you see her." He tapped the text, and a snippet of "Star-Spangled Man" played. "Oh, good."
"Does she often send you tidbits of your favorite song?"
"No, idiot, it means Steve's with her, and there's no code to say 'Get here now, I need someone to distract bad guys.'"
"You two have your own language, don't you."
"Yep, and there are ten thousand ways to say 'Stark is an ass.'"
"An ass that gave you the keys to the kingdom."
Clint winced. "Yeah, about that-"
Tony waved a hand and stepped away. "Deal with it. If you need access somewhere, I don't want you to have to fuck around to get approval. Jarvis will know if you use it, and he knows to ask questions if things are weird."
"It's too much."
That got him the patented "I'm Tony Fucking Stark" side eye. "Like I said, deal with it. Drop it in wet concrete if it really upsets you." He headed for the other side of the room.
Clint hadn't heard that brittle "I know I'm a rich asshole, fuck off and die" note in Tony's voice in a long time. "I don't want to be a security risk. Again."
Tony stopped moving, but he didn't look around. "I have security protocols you've never imagined, Legolas. You don't have to be betrayed and blown up too many times before you start making paranoia a virtue."
And maybe having someone out in the world who could get into a possibly endangered Stark facility without needing any help was part of his paranoia. "Fair enough. Though you better not bitch if I start sneaking around the air shafts."
What he could see of the side of Tony's face crinkled with a faint smile. "I'll try to remember to re-program the pest control bots." He clapped his hands. "Jarvis, let's dig into this transceiver. Who made it, what freqs is it working on, the works."
Clint leaned back against a lab table as Tony began speaking geek with Jarvis. The three goons had had plenty of time to plant whatever they wanted in the lobby before they jumped Clint. Why did they need a transceiver, why not just set up something that would receive a signal directly? Another level of complexity, to foil detection?
"So a transceiver would pick up a signal and send one out, right?"
"Right," Tony said, poking at an expanded view of the schematic.
"Why bother? Why not send the signal directly to whatever is going to be signaled?"
"Because this does more than send a signal. There's a timer involved. Ten minutes after a signal is received, a signal is sent out."
"Fucking hell, it's a bomb." Somebody sends a signal and is far away when it goes off . . .
Tony drummed his fingers on his chest. "Of some sort. There are scanners for explosives on the door, no one gets in with any of the standard components of a bomb without attracting a lot of attention."
"You've disabled that thing, right?"
"Oh, yes. Which leaves something in my tower that's waiting to be activated. Get down to the lobby, snoop around where the goons were, see what you can find. Screw the traffic, I'm not letting something like this sit down there with all these people around."
A pissed Stark was not someone you argued with, especially when you agreed with him. "You got an earwig of some sort so I can talk to you and Jarvis?"
"Yeah." He rolled his stool over to another table on the other side of the room and dug around in a box, then pushed back to Clint. "Here you go. There's a camera in it, too, so we can spy on you. Warn us if you go to the bathroom."
"No problem." He checked his pockets for his leatherman and a knife, then headed out.
The private elevator made a swift, non-stop trip to the lobby. Someone he didn't recognize was at the security desk, but the guard recognized him. He got a small nod, then the guard went back to watching the lobby and the monitors.
The lobby was two stories high, with one of those bright, wiggly glass sculptures hanging from the ceiling. Shades of green and blue, surprisingly, not red and gold. Pepper must have made the art decision here. Several dozen people bustled through the space, some heading for the door, some for the Starbucks. Clint maneuvered through the crowd towards the far side of the lobby from the elevators, where Crippen, Smith, and Jones had occupied themselves. He parked himself in the lee of a potted evergreen bush.
"OK, Jarvis, were you able to pinpoint their movements any closer?"
"Please check your phone, sir."
His phone didn't used to have an app that showed scalable floor plans of Manhattan skyscrapers. "Did I get an upgrade?"
"Just a few downloads of useful apps," Tony cut in. "It looks like they focused on two columns." The floorplan zoomed in on the area in question.
The wall that bordered the sidewalk was solid windows-armored glass from the way light played on the surface. A yard in from the windows were columns with light sconces on them that reminded Clint of both Buck Rogers and George Jetson. The lights were above easy reach, and the footage from the lobby didn't show any suspicious crouching or reaching up. The column surfaces had a subtle ripple to them that made spotting stray shadows tricky.
"Can I get a plot of their movements on this diagram?" Clint asked. "I want to see where they lingered." Two dots moved slowly around the columns, pausing slightly on each side. They circled three times before they took off briskly towards the dot that represented Crippen. "Dammit. Did Crippen get close to any walls or columns?"
"No, sir," Jarvis said.
"Oh, well, time to stare at some columns and hope nobody gets curious."
98 percent of the occupants of the lobby were staring at their phones as they traveled through. It was an end-of-the-workday crowd with better things to do than wonder what that one guy was doing over on the far side of the room.
Clint studied the surface of the column, fixing the flow of the structure in his mind, then he put his mind into surveillance mode, studying the terrain and watching for anomalies. Nothing caught him on the sides facing people, but his brain poked him as he looked at the side of the first column facing the window.
"Sir-" Jarvis started.
"I've got it."
On the underside of a ripple just below waist height was a slight, inch-wide bulge the same color at the column surface. Clint crouched down to give himself and Jarvis a better look. A small domed disc was attached to the column.
"Why is this on the window side?" he mused.
"I can think of many bad reasons," Tony said grimly. "It's not emitting any signals. How tricky does it look like it'll be to take it off? It could be booby trapped."
Clint unfolded his knife and gently slid the edge between the disc and the column, leaning a bit around the corner just in case. The disc popped off the column and fell to the floor. He heard Tony's bitten-off gasp and was pleased he'd long ago learned to keep his startles silent.
"OK, it doesn't appear to be booby trapped," Tony said.
Clint flipped it over with the tip of his knife. "It looks like suction attachment with a little bit of sticky. It's not very heavy."
"Doesn't have to be, for a gas attack. Hang on, containment is incoming."
Security Woman herself came striding up. "What are you doing to my building, Mr. Barton?" Ms. Zanandrea said, handing him a small box.
Clint grinned. "Finding presents left behind by a naughty Easter Bunny, Ms. Z." He lifted the disc with his knife and slid it gently into the box. Ms. Z closed the lid smartly. Clint looked the column up and down. "Jarvis, does it look like there's anything else on this column?"
"No, sir. Please proceed to the second column."
There was another disc on the other column, at pretty much the same height. Clint got his hand under it as he slipped the knife edge under it, and it plopped off as easily. He set it in Ms. Z's box.
"Bring that on up to the lab," Tony ordered. "Matilda, set us up with double security shifts for the next few days, start up sniffer and inspection runs in all publicly accessible locations."
She tapped her own headset. "You got it, boss. Mr. Barton," she nodded, then walked away.
Clint strolled around the other columns for completeness sake, then did a quick scan of the doorway. "They could just as easily have attached something to the outside of the building," he said softly.
"There's a sensor grid that covers anything reachable from street level," Tony said. "It means we have to scrape off a lot of gum and concert fliers, but nothing gets put on this tower that we don't know about."
Clint headed for the private elevator, which opened promptly for him and headed up. "Let me guess, anything aerial gets taken out by the defense grid?"
Tony bit off a snicker. "As per Stark Industries protocols, I categorically deny that there are any weapons emplacements on this tower that can be used against aerial targets in the near airspace of this address."
"Ah, long range weaponry only, good to know."
When Clint reached the lab, Banner was there as well. Clint raised an eyebrow at Tony, but Banner saw it.
"Tony knows that I like to know when there is a threat to my residence," Banner said mildly. "It reduces the surprise if something happens."
Clint shrugged. "Fair point. Here you go," he said, handing the box to Tony, who took it and sent his wheely stool to an enclosed box against the wall. He put one of the discs into the containment chamber and closed the door.
"Full containment protocols, Jarvis," he ordered. He wheeled back away from the box, and a light grid popped up around the box.
"That will contain anything biological," Banner said.
"And if it blows up?" Clint asked.
"There's an extensive first aid kit in the cabinet with the red door over there."
The robot arms rolled up to peer over Tony's shoulders. "Standard battle stations, boys."
Dummy lifted a fire extinguisher, the second robot arm took hold of the edge of Tony's stool, and the third one held up a heavy blanket.
"All right, J, passive scans."
A whole Cirque du Soleil performance of lights poured down on the disc. "No emissions or signals detected, sir. The material seems designed to block scanners."
"There has to be something to receive a signal, though, right?"
"That will require active scanning, sir."
"And active scanning could trigger something. Bruce? You sure you want to stay here for this?"
Banner smiled faintly. "Someone will need to clamp off your arteries if something happens."
"You complete me, Brucey. Do it to it, Jarvis."
Clint looked at Banner. "How does he not drive you mad?"
That actually got a chuckle. "I'm not really sure. I think I get distracted from the frustration by wondering what the hell he's going to do next."
A loud beeping came from the containment chamber. "Down!" Tony yelled, diving for the floor. Clint tackled Banner to the floor and shielded him. A giant bang rattled everything, followed by the sound of a fire extinguisher and Tony yelling, "Dammit, Dummy, not me!"
"All clear, gentlemen," Jarvis announced.
Clint held still and considered Banner's condition. "Doc? How you doing?"
"My knees hurt," Banner complained. "Not that the Big Guy cares. Let me up, Clint."
Clint rolled to his feet and gave Banner a hand up. Smoke billowed around the containment chamber, contained by the light grid. A fan inside the area began sucking out the smoke. "So. Bomb after all."
Tony sat on the floor brushing fire retardant powder off of himself. "Yes, a bomb. SHIELD planted fucking bombs in the lobby of my god-damned building, in the middle of the working day, with the population of a large-ish town in the place!"
"Uh oh," Banner said softly.
Clint studied the dispersing smoke cloud. "That actually wasn't that big a blast. I've done worse with legal fireworks."
Tony glared at him, then at the dissipating smoke. "Jarvis, strength of the blast?"
"It was a strong blast, sir, but it was directional. The disc is a shaped charge, designed to go off in a designated conical direction."
Tony frowned. "And they were on the outside of the columns, towards the windows. Someone wants to blow out the lobby windows?"
"Chaos on the street?" Banner said. "Something to look like a terrorist attack going off?"
"Something to justify a SHIELD response, maybe," Clint said.
"They planted them before they ambushed you," Tony said to Clint. "I bet they were going to plant the transceiver on their way out, if everything went to plan. So what, they wander around planting little surprises wherever they go, just in case?"
Clint wagged his head back and forth. "I have, on occasion, set up an op zone with a few extra goodies, in case I need something to . . . mix up the playing field."
"It's not a bad idea, actually," Banner said. "Especially if you're the one expected the distraction and have a response ready."
"A well-timed boom has saved my butt before in tense situations," Clint said.
The lab door swished open. "Hello, boys," Pepper said as she strode in.
"Hello, Pepper!" Tony said, the robots echoing him with whistles that exactly matched the tone and cadence of his greeting.
She stopped and smiled at Banner and Clint, also still sitting on the floor. "Good evening, Bruce, Clint."
"Hello, Pepper," Bruce said. Clint waved.
Pepper looked around the room, focusing on the still-smoke-shrouded containment system. "Does this have anything to do with that security update that showed up in my email half an hour ago?"
Tony put a hand up, and one of the robot arms reached down to give him a lift up. "Yes, Mistress of all She Surveys, it does. Our friends at SHIELD decided to plant some party tricks in the lobby to make life more interesting."
Pepper glared at the smoke. "Tricks that blow up?"
"Set up to blow out the lobby windows for some reason we're not sure of yet. They're set to be activated by a received signal." Tony tapped the small box the other disc was in. "The other toy is safely confined."
"And those are the only ones?"
Tony sighed. "The ones we know that were planted today. They don't trigger our sniffer systems. I told Matilda to start inspections in all public areas."
Pepper stared at the box. Clint told himself it was his imagination that he saw a flicker of flame orange in her eyes. "Is this something Fury would have authorized?"
"I don't put anything past Fury," Clint admitted. "But I don't think he'd have authorized something like this here." He quirked a smile at Tony. "He liked you, he never spent that much time swearing about people he didn't like."
Pepper tapped her fingers on her arm. "Who do we complain to about this?"
Tony grimaced. "We can't prove the SHIELD goons planted the bombs, and we can only insinuate that Jones planted a transceiver under a table. We have nothing to tie the two things together, no proof that the transceiver would trigger the bombs."
"Should we take this to Pierce?"
"Any contact with him will put SI collaboration with his surveillance scheme on the table. He'd ask for a quid pro quo."
Pepper nodded. "You're right, I don't want us getting pulled into government surveillance schemes. I miss Phil," she whispered.
She wasn't the only one. Clint knew that he'd done terrible things in the middle of a civilian population, he really didn't get to criticize agents doing things he had done, but dammit, someone was setting up for a move against a corporation that had provided huge amounts of support to SHIELD. Most of the helicarrier probably had the name Stark inscribed on its components; ninety percent of the body armor agents wore was specially designed by Stark himself. Clint knew Tony was copied on reports of armor failure, and redesigns showed up within days. SHIELD was turning into something Clint didn't like, and it worried him how fast the changes were happening. Someone had to have been waiting for Fury to fall. Maybe had given him a push. Clint didn't think he could work for an organization like that. Maybe it was time to pay more attention to those daydreams about green fields that reminded him of an Iowa he never really knew.
"All right," Pepper said firmly. "Is there anything else to be done in here that will give us information that is useful to us right now?"
Tony looked at various screens, then sighed. "No."
"Do we have anything actionable that needs to be handled tonight? Tony, did you get anything interesting from your visit to SHIELD?"
"The repulsor engines are being used in a next generation of helicarrier, further information is beyond my clearance, I was referred to Pierce. Jimmy Woo said the small devices continue to be appreciated and they'd love to see more. The RFPs for computer control systems are still more vague than I'm comfortable with."
Pepper grimaced. "Business as usual, then." She took a deep breath, held it, then let it out and fixed Tony with a look. "My shoulders hurt."
Tony perked up. "Delighted to leave all this behind and become your grossly overpaid cabana boy, ma'am."
Clint bent over and buried his face in his knees. "Please make them stop."
Banner patted his shoulder. "They're leaving."
Clint listened to the footsteps leaving and the lab door closing behind them. He shouldn't be pissed at them, it wasn't their world falling to pieces around them. They'd done that last year. "I'm tired."
Banner's hand was still on his shoulder. "I'm guessing it's not the kind of tired that would be taken care of by going to bed early."
"No."
"Even for somebody in your line of work, you've had a lot of loss to deal with."
"I avoid the base shrinks for a reason, doc."
Banner chuckled. "As I keep telling people, I'm not that kind of doctor. But I still have eyes. Do you ever get to rest?"
"You mean, like an actual vacation, instead of a trip to a gorgeous location where I get a couple of days leave after I put in arrow in somebody's eye socket? Or where I m cooling my heels in a comfortable resort waiting for someone to whistle me in?"
"Yeah, like that. A trip to a gorgeous or relaxing location without any work-associated excursions."
"I've tried, but I start getting very twitchy waiting for gunshots after about thirty-six hours. Occupational hazard. I'm not really sure what I'd do with real peace and quiet."
"I know the feeling."