Chapter Twentyone
Brittanygreenway22- Well, I'm happy to say, you're going to get the answers to all of those questions in this chapter. Kind of. You're pretty much getting those answers. Or are you? Just kidding. Or am I?
Jodyowl11- Thanks, my trip was great. I hope your out of countryness is great too. As for the door, just read on. I've got the answer to that in this chapter.
Toni42- It pretty much depends on who you ask.
Tony wakes up slowly. Extremely slowly.
And it's cold. The floor that he can feel beneath him and the air pulling into his lungs is all sucking away at him. It's the kind of cold, that while cannot be exactly described as bitter, is familiarly associated with finding yourself left outside in the wind after being asleep over heating vent for the last two hours. Minus the wind.
The air's too still for there to be any wind near him, letting him know that wherever he is is especially the exact opposite of where he wants to be. At least the other room he had been locked in had some air circulation. Knowing that he was supposed to and willing to be there also helped raise his rating of it-
Tony bolts up from the coarse, earthy floor beneath him.
What had just happened?
Where was he?
These are all very important questions that assault Tony with the force of a Hulk slamming into him. He was literally just staring at that metal door, waiting for teleported dude to come back when...Something happened.
Someone happened.
Oh, no, no, no. Tony blinks in the darkness around him that doesn't seem to want to give a hint to the teen of his captivity.
Someone opened that door and...Urg. He just can't remember who or what or anything after looking at the lock and noticing something. Had the lock opened?
That would make sense as something inside of the orphan is telling him, whispering in his ear, that he had known the person on the other side of that door.
Tony reaches to his arm as a sharp twitching burrows its way to the front of his mind. He hisses slightly at a small dot near his elbow that doesn't react well to him scratching at the area and pulling the skin around it.
That could possibly explain the mind blank he's run into and his headache, Tony considers and rubs his head.
The young genius turns his entire body from side to side as he examines the room.
From what he can see, it consists of rounded walls that's jagged edges are just barely noticeable with only a small slit toward the top of a door providing any light from one corner.
There are some kind of objects attached to the walls. They glint a small burst of yellow from the slit and...are extremely similar to chains and manacles.
Tony swallows at the lump in his throat.
The boy backs up from his vulnerable feeling place at the center of the dark pit, feeling at least some comfort at having his back against a physical surface. Though, it did little to settle the chills combing up and down his arms.
He's all alone in here.
And he has no way to get out.
Okay, Tony shakes his head. There's no thinking like that. He couldn't think like that when he was alone before and he can't-
Where had that come from? When he was alone before? Man, those people had really gotten to him.
He just needs to get out. Now, how that's going to happen is a very good question. It's going to require him getting up from his nice corner and at least examining the door and it's one slit that could probably tell him a lot.
And he needs to remember.
Tony decides on starting with the easiest of the two tasks. Then after a few seconds of back and forth and which would be considered the easiest, he decides on picking himself up from the hard floor.
He sweeps off the pebbles that were stuck to his hands from the ground.
The sound of his feet against the ground seems to boom across the room and the teen winced with each step. It takes too long to reach the door and even longer to get it together enough to steel himself for the slot in the door.
A part of Toby knows that he probably isn't going to see much but a hallway or something, but another part is slightly less rational.
Tony puts his hand against the thick wood of the door and leans forward to-
"This seems a bit extravagant." A light voice echoes through the hall with disdain.
"Messy but quick. It is how we work." An unfamiliar and foreign voice shrugs. "The doctor does not seem to mind so much."
"I believe you've forgotten that I am also a doctor." The woman sighs, following a noise that sounds very similar to the clicking of a Blackberry.
Tony's breath quickens. He knows her.
The memory of who exactly was standing behind that door as the lock was burned off becomes extremely clear to Tony.
The circle completes itself with Tony's heart pounding in his ear and the lock clanks to the ground like a thousand pound anchor being dropped from an airplane onto a trash truck. The noise seems loud enough to burst Tony's eardrums at least a couple dozen times over and then some.
The door swings open and a pair of SHIELD regulation boots greets him instead of the high heels that would usually be found on the CEO in front of Tony.
"Dr. Stane?"
Olivia's eyes light up at seeing him, but somehow her frown also seems to grow deeper.
"Tony, we need to leave right now." She starts and pockets the stranger laser device under her belt. Her entire outfit consisted of a black uniform that is completely unlike her.
"What's going on?" Tony looks around the apartment for what exactly was happening.
"I've been betrayed and you need to come with me far away from here."
"What?" Tony's eyes widen as Stane decides to stop waiting and pulls him forward by his arm to the hallway. "Where are the, you know, those other agents and the Avengers?"
Stane laughs with a fair level of bitterness in her voice.
"They're going to be more likely to arrest me than listen to me in just a little while."
It doesn't register in Tony's head for a moment just what had been told to him. And when it does, the teen doesn't have the time to thoroughly express his rampant disagree and utter confusion before a sharp prick immediately dulls the sound of a shout right next to him.
The strange thing was, that the shout sounds just like Olivia.
Olivia Stane.
The fear that had held Tony back before suddenly disappears and he peeks out from the edge of the slit to see exactly what was commencing just outside of his newest prison. He does his best to keep his eyes out of view, moving forward.
"I hate these things." The Middle Eastern appearing man complains, examining a phone as he is the one that is actually working around on on Olivia's Blackberry. He finally find the piece that slides out to reveal the battery.
The man holds the battery out in front of him for a second before sliding it into his back pocket.
"You're making a very bad mistake." Stane turns to the man and Tony can see the handcuffs around her wrists for the first time.
"Somehow, I do not believe so."
"I can help you." Olivia says, not bothering to resist the man as he pushes her into the dark room directly across from Tony's. She whirls around before he can slam the door. "The boy in there knows me. He trusts me. I can get you anything."
"We are very capable in our own."
Tony ducks, the man flashing a look in his direction. He holds his breath and waits to see if he was discovered.
After a slight pause outside, he figures he hadn't.
Olivia's door is shut and locked, leaving them both trapped and one of the, still reeling over what was going on.
"This is all my fault." Steve starts slowly, tearing his hands through his dirty blonde hair. The walls of the helicarrier command room seem to close in closer and closer to the man even though practically half of them are made of glass. "I knew better. I knew better than to send Tony right under the Hydra's nose."
"It's not anyone's fault. The operation was safe." Coulson shakes his head, his eyes showing his own conflicting emotions.
"Much safer than most of our own." Bruce says.
All around their circle, the entire windowed bullpen is a rush of activity. People move in and out of the only entrance as information swarms in from everywhere they can pull information from.
Not that it is doing much good.
All of the prime real estate of resources devoted to tracking down one kid and to Captain America's utter chagrin, it's turned up nothing.
"How did this happen?" Clint looks back and forth between the other Avengers and agents around him.
"As soon as we know exactly what it is that happened," Coulson crosses his arms. "We'll be able to answer how it happened. Right now, though, it's unclear of who exactly would be able to get through the perimeter we had set up around the building." Coulson tells them.
"What about Yinsen? Could he have double crossed us?"
"No." THe SHIELD agent immediately drops the idea. "He's completely accounted for. We were tracking him remotely."
"Then. who was it?" Hawkeye's eyes go cold. "No one would even had known about Tony's location unless they were told."
Coulson looks down and seems to contemplate whether or not to say what he is considering telling them.
"We've been unable to contact Dr. Stane."
The air that had stood so eerily still just a moment before between the ground is suddenly as hard as a block of ice encasing them.
"What does that mean?" Steve's words are tight.
Coulson is stopped from responding as a presence echoes across the room and commands all of its occupants. Director Fury gaze sends everyone back to work quickly.
He stops right at the edge of the group, scanning each of them as if he knows exactly what each of them are thinking.
Fury clears his throat.
"It means that it's time you were given some very sensitive information." He tells them, keeping his eye especially on Steve.
The Director lifts a palm to stop any of them from trying to bombard him with questions to clarify exactly what he means. He instead just gestures behind him and leads the way back into the halls without another word.
Now, the workers of SHIELD have been very acclimated over the past year or so to the comings and goings of the Avengers through the halls. Agents Romanoff and Barton for the far longest amount of time intimidated the other agents with bows and arrows and electric gloves while Captain America and Bruce were new additions with similar if not somewhat more impressive impressions.
Thor was a category of his own.
It isn't as often, though, that they saw certain members of this group of superheroes looking quite as angry, furious even, as now. Not that anyone was able to get a good look. Fury led them down the halls as quickly as possible with the location he had in mind becoming clear after just a few turns.
All roads lead to Stane.
Raza had been shredding papers for the past forty five minutes.
There were a lot of tasks that the "intern" had been put through in his time working underneath Stane, but this probably has been the one he hates the most.
He should be back at home base by now. Celebrating. Accepting his rightful praise.
Instead, he's here, making Olivia Stane look even guiltier than she already did. It isn't exactly a hard or necessary task with her already going off by herself for some unintelligent reason that is beyond him.
Raza hadn't even bothered to check what papers he is shredding. It doesn't matter at this point. It'll take even SHIELD a good, long time to put any of them back together with the quality of Stane's shredder, so whether it is some coffee receipts or the documents he first had to spy on to find that brat's location makes no difference.
As long as it looks bad, then he's golden.
"As you all well know, it was no accident that thirteen years ago Hydra was able to discover and steal the Stark Laptop and its contents, Project Beta." Fury doesn't stop his walking pace, but does take a deep breath. The Avengers follow beside him, clearly not enjoying being so left behind in all of this. It seems so far away that this began as a mission to simply recover a laptop.
"There was a leak, a mole." Fury continues. "We never were able to find out who exactly that was, but there was one suspect who stood out above all of the others."
"What?" Steve is suddenly beside the director. He had never been told of any prime suspect toward this or even been given a definite suspect list of who might be the reason for his friend's past murder. "Why were we not told about this?"
"As I've said, it's sensitivity is...high."
"I hope we're past sensitivity at this point." Steve grits out.
Fury frowns.
"That's one way to put it." Clint tries and the director nods in his direction, at least somewhat agreeing with the archer.
"Another way to put it is that Obadiah Stane was that suspect." Fury tells them.
"Stane?" Steve repeats. It does not sound like a question and Fury does not bother to answer it. "Her father was the mole? He died just like Howard and Maria."
"Yes, he did."
"Does that matter, though, knowing Hydra?" Bruce pipes up. His knuckles seem to be both tinted white and green at the same time.
"No, I don't believe it does." Fury responds. "But, anyway, Obadiah had access and he had made some suspicious contacts that he believed we would never find out about."
"Did Olivia know about this?" Natasha asks.
"She knew about our suspicions." Fury starts and continues before any of the others can interrupt him again. "Olivia seemed, for all meanings of the words, to want to prove her father's innocence. That's what all of this has been to her."
"Then, where is she now?" Bruce says, pushing back his glasses as they finally reach the doors to their destination.
"That," Fury stops and presses his hand against the glass panel next to the automated door. It glows green immediately, the door sliding open in turn to reveal an unusually empty office compared to its usual brimming of workers.
A lone figure stands at his desk in front of Olivia's office next to a paper shredder surrounded by huge stacks of documents.
Steve shares a glance with Clint. That was one of Stane's guys? They both remembered him standing outside the elevator just a few days ago. The same elevator ride that's video was used against them by Stane to Tony.
"Is where it gets much more complicated."
Next time on Not So Stark, Tony, Tony is forced to go back to a time where he really doesn't want to go.