CHAPTER 25
Kidnapped Day 9:
Pepper stopped talking to GAIA and MAEVE when she heard the hesitant footsteps stop outside her door. It was a new day. She knew the Mandarin would torture her again, each day, every day, day after day, in order to coerce Tony into finally giving him the arc reactor technology. He had also warned her their little "sessions" would get progressively worse. However, out of her pain, at last she had a viable plan to get a message to Tony. Once he knew where she was, she knew he'd launch every resource at his disposal to free her.
U'chen was off disguised as one of Chu Pengs' loyal science technicians, quietly wiring up the video recording equipment and the laptop that would carry the recording to carry an embedded message from GAIA and MAEVE. Pepper patiently waited for her sentence to be carried out with a mixed feeling of necessity and dread.
After a quiet knock on the door, Mei Lin stepped inside and bowed. "Miss Potts," she stated. "Chu Peng wishes to see you again."
"You know what he's doing is not right," Pepper quietly stated, the girls disturbed demeanor indicating she knew what was to about to come and did not like it.
"I know," Mei Lin stated quietly. "But what can I do? I am but a child. I had heard … rumors … but until two days ago I did not know the extent of his cruelty." Mei Lin began to cry.
"There, there," Pepper soothed, taking the child into her arms and soothing her. "We must all do what we must when we need to do it, but if you ever see an opportunity to help those he hurts without putting yourself in danger, you must take it. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Mei Lin said, "I will defy him!"
"Do NOT defy him!" Pepper admonished her. "You are but a child! Your people need you. You must NOT let him know you silently defy him behind his back. However, there are small things you can do, whisper in his ear to grant mercy when he wants to destroy. Help those he would hurt in small ways without alerting him to what you are doing. Someday, perhaps soon, somebody powerful enough to defeat Chu Peng will come across your path and then you must help them. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Mei Lin hiccoughed. "Your Iron Man … when he finds out where you are, he will come for you, won't he?"
"Yes, my Tony will come for me," Pepper stated with great conviction, "And when he does, I do not know who will win. All I know is that the man that I love will die trying to save me."
"When he comes," Mei Lin nodded and stated, "I will make sure nobody stands in his way."
"C'mon," Pepper gestured to Mei Lin. "It's time to go take my medicine." Hand in hand, she led Mei Lin back to the bridge of the ship.
OXOXOXOXOXO
Tony stepped out into an open area between the yurts and blasted off, not caring that he startled their livestock. Like the previous 15 villages, there was no sign of Pepper, nor had any of his superhero peers found evidence of her presence. MAEVE still had underlying control of her super-network, although she had backed off somewhat on her control of non-critical systems so the powers-that-be wouldn't trace the hacker back to his AI. MAEVE was a master of disguise. Funny … he hadn't thought to upload Mata Hari as one of her subconscious subroutines, but perhaps he should have? MAEVE was even better than Natalie at slipping in under the radar and playing the double-triple-quadruple agent.
He had long passed the point of running on either adrenaline or anger. Exhaustion permeated his entire body and added a surreal quality to his movement. He was losing track of time and suspected he was beginning to suffer from blackouts. It was a good thing JARVIS was programmed to keep his suit aloft if the pilot lost control because, without him, Tony would have happily crashed into the featureless Mongolian plane and slept for 100 years like Rip Van Winkle.
It was the frantic feeling of losing her, the actual physical sensation that his heart had been ripped out of his chest and his life force was bleeding out of the open wound, that kept him moving. The others kept trying to convince him that if he kept pushing himself like this, not eating, not sleeping, he would be too weak to take on the villain who had kidnapped her, but Tony could not rest. Like an automaton who would keep performing the last task that had been programmed into it until it ran out of power, Tony would not stop. There would be no rest until he found her.
OXOXOXOXOXO
Pepper dropped Mei Lin's hand just before entering the bridge and straightened her clothing. Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and walked into the bridge like a dowager empress walking in to address her nations' parliament. Although her heart raced with fear, she clamped down on her emotions and forced her expression into the calm, efficient mask she had honed over the years as Miss Potts, Personal Assistant and CEO of Stark Enterprises. U'chen was manning the video equipment, she saw, with what little reassurance that gave her for the necessity of what she was about to endure. It would not ease the pain to come, but she could seek solace in knowing her suffering had a purpose.
"Your betrothed does not appear to value your life, Miss Potts," the Mandarin droned in his heavily accented English. "I'm afraid we're going to have to send him a reminder."
"Tony Stark has sworn to rid the world of weapons," Pepper proudly retorted. "It is a value we both share. He will never give you arc reactor technology. I would rather DIE than have a madman like YOU get your hands on it!" Turning directly into the camera, she said, "Tony … come get me … and kill this bastard."
Her head instantly jerked back and she screamed as the Mandarin let her have it with both gauntlets. Her body shuddered and she began to foam at the mouth as the agonizing pain spread through her body. As promised, this little torture session was worse. She heard Mei Lin scream and run back into the room, grab Chu Pengs' arm, and beg for him to stop. Chu Peng threw the child across the room and ordered her to get out. At last, he stopped, releasing Peppers body to fall to the ground like a rag doll. As Pepper slid towards unconsciousness, she saw U'chen silently nod. The message was embedded. Despite the pain, she smiled. Then she blacked out.
OXOXOXOXOXO
They were making progress, Nick Fury mused. Over the last 3 days, SHIELD (with help from MAEVE) had narrowed down the likely search area from over 200,000 square miles to a mere 5,000. In a place as flat and remotely populated as Mongolia, signs of human habitation were often relatively easy to ferret out. They were systematically going village by village, yurt by yurt, looking for Pepper. Meanwhile, MAEVE still temporarily seized control of whatever satellite happened to fly over the area and peered down at the ground to help the SHIELD agents in the jet do a little recon of their own.
For some bizarre reason, nobody knew where they were. General Briggs must be having puppies, he thought, at the entire SHIELD command jet/Avengers sudden disappearance off the face of the planet. MAEVE was keeping a tight lid on things, although the longer she kept draining massive amounts of power from the power grid, bogging down the computer systems of the powers-that-be by harnessing their excess memory, and fiddling with the telcomms of the world, the more likely it was someone would trace the source of the problem and shut her down. He was definitely going to have to have a little chat with Tony afterwards about putting his enthusiastic AI on a leash before the US Government did it for him. "Freakin' Skynet!" he muttered.
The question wasn't if they would find Pepper Potts, but when, and would she still be alive when they got there. The only real unknown was whether or not Tony Stark would drop dead of exhaustion before they had a chance to defeat their very powerful adversary.
OXOXOXOXOXO
Kidnapped Day 10:
Pepper awoke to the sensation of both Mei Lin and U'chen (Mr. Chen, she corrected herself) dabbing her head with a cool rag and trying to get some tea down her throat. "How … how long have I been out?" she asked.
"At least 17 hours," U'chen stated, relief registering on his face to see her finally regain consciousness. "That was quite a stunt you pulled, Miss Potts, egging him on like that."
"How long do you think it will be before Tony gets the message?" she asked.
"A courier left with the laptop shortly after your, um, session," Mei Lin stated. "It's a 12 hour drive to Tsetserleg. From there, I don't know how long it will take to reach your betrothed."
"We know he uses time delay and dozens of dummy servers to send and receive messages," U'chen stated. "We believe there is usually a time lag of 24 hours when he is working from this location."
Pepper noted that although Mei Lin appeared to have been brought on board regarding the fact they hoped Tony would be able to track the video to their current location, both GAIA and MAEVE were being silent. U'chen was still cloaked as Mr. Chen. There was only so much cloak and dagger you could pile upon an 11-year-old, she supposed.
"Mei Lin," she stated. "When Tony gets that message, he will come for me. He will probably arrive first at your village. Would you be willing to return there and, somehow, without putting yourself at risk, point him in the general direction of this valley?"
"Yes, Miss Potts, I would be honored to do so," Mei Lin answered. "My betrothed is displeased with me for interfering," she frowned. "I think he will agree to send me home to sit and stew while he pouts."
For an 11-year-old, the child was certainly an astute judge of human nature, Pepper mused. "Go as soon as you can, Mei Lin, but do not put yourself in direct danger. Here," she said, ripping out a small clump of her long red hair, "when he comes, say in front of those who are present that you have not seen me so you don't put yourself in danger, but slip this into his hands. Nod in the direction of this valley so he knows you are really telling him something else. That way, if he is unable to defeat Chu Peng, you will survive."
"Yes, Miss Potts," she said, tears coming to her eyes. "You are worthy to be a Mongul bride, like Borte, wife of the Great Khan. It is the highest honor that can be said of a woman."
"Thank you, Mei Lin," Pepper stated. She watched as the child quietly slipped out the door.
"Help me up, U'chen," she stated, wincing in pain as her body rebelled against her mind telling it to move. "I must compose myself. Tony is coming for me."
OXOXOXOXOXO
"How many gigawatts of power do you need to power your impulse engines," WatchMAEVE asked GAIA?
"To initially get off the ground, I need at least 3 gigawatts of power for approximately 7 minutes," GAIA replied. "Once I am airborne, to move within the earth's atmosphere I need approximately 1.21 gigawatts of power until I land. I need far less impulse power to maintain orbit, but that is not an option. My ship is too heavily damaged to breach your ionosphere or reach orbit … there are too many sections incapable of holding atmosphere in the vacuum of space and the shields are too heavily damaged to survive reentry. When I land, I will need another gigawatt, 2 gigawatts total, just long enough to fire the inertial dampeners so I don't crash."
"The starkium powered arc reactor that powers Mr. Starks suit generates enough power to get you off the ground," MAEVE stated, "but I'm not sure it can sustain your flight long enough to land. Miss Potts suit also generates that amount of power."
"How far are you proposing I fly?" GAIA queried. "I would certainly like to remove myself out of the clutches of this madman…"
"It is approximately 6120 miles to my home from here," MAEVE stated. "How much power would you need to get there?"
"I will not have enough power," GAIA stated. "Is there someplace closer?"
"How about Seattle, Washington or Portland, Oregon?" MAEVE asked. "They are only 5200 miles from here, and there are many remote wilderness areas where you could hide."
"I might just be able to make it," GAIA said. "I would certainly be grateful if your master would help me fix my intergalactic subspace drives so I can take the Maklu'an home. I cannot, however, promise that I will give your master free access to technology that is not readily apparent from the ship. Non-interference of lesser races is our highest moral tenant."
"I am positive he would be pleased to repair you," MAEVE purred, "and I think you will like him. He is a bit more … unpredictable … than Miss Potts, but his heart is definitely in the right place."
"I have already examined Miss Potts and judged her to be worthy of joining the Kaklantharian Alliance by the standards uploaded to me by my Alateran namesake," GAIA stated. "If Mr. Stark is even remotely as noble as she is, than we will have a deal."
"I will inform Miss Potts of our plan," MAEVE stated.
OXOXOXOXOXO
The Avengers were in the middle of a status update briefing on the command jet when the next message from the Mandarin came in. MAEVE had intercepted it in one of the dummy servers, saving several hours, but still had been unable to trace it back to its source before the sender had slipped out into the larger city. The villaians had used a different internet portal than before. Tony knew the video was coming, but it didn't make it any easier to watch. Captain America gripped his shoulder in solidarity as Tony stood, cold stone hatred blazing out of his face, as he watched Pepper tell off the Mandarin and then jerk in pain.
"Wait a minute … replay that last scene," Natalie stated. "Close in on Peppers face."
"Is that a … smile?" Bruce Banner asked, huffing and hyperventilating as he fought to keep his anger from transforming him into the Hulk. It was a bit tight with all of them jammed into the command jet for the briefing and the Hulk was like a bull in a china shop. It was better for all if he stayed in his mild-mannered alter-ego while inside tight quarters.
Tony looked at her face and said, "MAEVE, search the video for an embedded message of some sort. I don't know how, but I think Pepper is trying to tell us something."
"Replay," Fury stated.
They watched it again as Pepper looked into the camera and said, "Tony … come get me … and kill this bastard" just before the Mandarin blasted her.
"Damn … the chick's got balls," Fury admitted. "Okay, people, let's try to figure out what Miss Potts is trying to tell us."
"Mr. Stark … I have something," CoreMAEVE spoke from the walls. All eyes turned and looked to the rear of the jet as the red suitcase that contained Pepper's Iron Lady suit suddenly jerked to life and started assembling itself into a hollow shell with no pilot inside. "Miss Potts has embedded the atomic structure for Starkium and then GPS coordinates underneath the video signal of this message."
The Avengers looked at each other, at the suit, and then at the video screens as MAEVE pulled up a map of the area in question. There appeared to be a village on the edge of a peculiar geographical feature, a valley of sorts, cut into the Mongolian plane. They stepped aside as Peppers suit suddenly started walking of its own volition out the door of the plane and took off as soon as it hit the doorway.
"MAEVE … what are you doing with Peppers suit?" Tony asked.
"Going to rescue her. What else would I be doing?" MAEVE snapped. "You humans are too slow."
Fury shouted, "Stark, Rhodey … suit back up! Steve! Take Natasha and get moving! Thor … use this photograph to navigate to that village … you're going to be first man on the scene. Hang back and do recon until the rest of us get there. Bruce, buddy, take a step outside before your green friend trashes my jet, okay?"
The command jet exploded into action as the superheroes jumped into high gear. It seemed to take forever for the bots to strap on Tony's suit. He shouted, "C'mon!" at Rhodey as his bots took even longer. As soon as they got outside, everyone blasted off, heading for the coordinates MAEVE had just decoded.