A/N: Graphic content alert! This chapter contains some very gory scenes. You have been warned.

Chapter 25

"Hill, we have a 504 in the containment unit. Shut down the entire wing, get everyone out of here!" Fury ordered into his headset as everyone ran out of the control room. "Do you copy?"

"Yes, sir," came her response in everyone's earpiece. "Jarvis is heading that way for support. Do you need me there, sir?"

"No, Hill. Stay where you are; be ready to evacuate the base if need be."

"Copy."

At the front of the group was Tony followed closely by Bruce. Natasha and Clint walked behind the scientists while Rhodey and Steve paced forward right behind the assassins. The alarm in the containment unit was now going off, filling the halls with the red color of the sirens. Darcy and Jane stuck close to Fury, exchanging with each other worried looks.

A soon as the group reached the exit of the hall, the chaos truly hit home. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents of all ranks and levels scurried away from the wing, taking with them only the essentials and leaving computers on and projects incomplete. The walk to Killian's containment cell felt as if in slow motion and completely surreal.

"Romanoff!" Fury called from afar.

"Sir?"

"Take Dr. Foster and Miss Lewis to the backup control room in this wing so they can continue the recording of this incident for later analysis. We need all the data we can get our hands on. Stay with them in case this gets out of control, and keep your line open."

Natasha gave a quick glance toward Barton, the slight nod of her head barely perceivable to anyone else but the archer. Her eyes then returned to the two scared-looking women and pushed them forward in the direction of the control room. "This way; stay close and be ready to leave in an instant if it comes to it."

"Is Pepper going to be OK?" Darcy asked as she struggled to look over Natasha's shoulder and to the glass cell behind them. "Is she going to be alright?"

"She will be. The rest of us…I don't know."

Darcy scoffed. "That's reassuring."

"Come on. We're wasting time," Natasha said as she picked up their pace when they neared the entrance to backup control room.

xxxXXXxxx

Fury reached the other five Avengers who were standing by the entrance of the cell, staring helplessly as Pepper continued heating up the metal doors to make the metal too hot to touch, but not hot enough to melt and allow the team to force their way inside the cell. Fury knew the glass used to create the cage could withstand the impact of one well-placed Hulk punch, but he doubted it would sustain a well-placed superheated fire punch from Pepper.

"Listen up," Nick said to get everyone's attention. Steve, Rhodey, Clint and Bruce immediately turned to face the Director, but Tony had to be dragged away from the premises of the cell. "Alright, I don't think Pepper's going to be nice to this guy today, and I doubt there is anything we can say to her to calm her down. We can't activate the knock out gas from the backup control room, so we will need to put some in there manually."

"The vents?" Clint asked, already staring at the small vents in the top corners of the cell and planning how to reach their height. The containment wing was not the largest in the entire structure, but it was the only one with the most rooms. The wing had two levels. The first level was devoted to offices, labs, storage rooms, the backup control room and other empty closets. All of these rooms surrounded the containment cell where Killian was being held, right at the center of the first floor. The second level hosted the main control room that constantly monitored Killian's actions, and held some conference rooms as well. The second floor was open to the first, allowing any bystander on it to look down and stare at the glass-walled cell. While the design seemed flawed at this very moment, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s prisoners usually did not stay for long so the setup had worked so far; Killian was the first exception to this design assumption.

"Yes. Barton, go to the weapons storage room and get enough canisters to knock out an army, now." Fury ordered the archer who wasted no time in running toward his destination to complete his task.

"Rhodes; I need you to suit up and stand by the exit of the wing in case we can't keep everyone here. If you see anyone but us come out, shoot'em."

"On it!" Rhodey said already halfway out the containment wing.

"Steve, Bruce, stay here and be ready to suit up – both of you, in case we need to."

"Are you sure the Other Guy…"

"Have you seen Pepper this mad before?"

"Fine," Bruce reluctantly conceded.

"Tony…Tony? Where the fuck?" Fury's tone made Steve and Banner turn around and watch as Tony stood by the closest glass wall, pounding on it to try and get Pepper's attention. Pepper did not seem to notice him or was choosing to ignore him as she put her arms down when she was satisfied the door was going to be trouble for anyone who tried to come inside.

"Dammit! Banner, stay with him on this side of the cell. Rogers and I will take the other side."

Bruce nodded and the three of them quickly split to their respective posts. Steve was not one to stay put and watch without action, but he knew that without his shield there was only so much he could do against two powerful Extremis carriers. He hated to admit it, but for now all he could do was sit tight and hope for the best.

Banner reached Tony's side but his eyes were not on Pepper. The figure standing in the corner –the same he had seen in the video recording – had a wide smile on his face, almost as if he had been expecting for this fight to take place. "Tony?"

"Yeah?"

"He's still here. He…he's laughing!"

"The fuck?" Tony asked, his eyes trying so hard to see what only Bruce could see. "Where is he? Is he near her?"

"No, he's just…standing there. Is the recorder on?"

"I think so, yes. Dammit! Why isn't she listening to me? Pepper!" He pounded on the glass again. "Virginia Potts! Listen to me!"

Not even the mention of her first name shocked the arsonist. Her target in front of her was her only concern.

xxxXXXxxx

"You finally show your true colors, Virginia. I've been waiting for this moment since I made you who you are."

Pepper remained silent, slowly advancing toward the chair she had been sitting in. In a swift movement, she used the top of her foot to lift the chair off the floor high enough to allow her to kick it in midair and send it at neck-breaking speed toward Killian. He in response used his left arm to stop the projectile a few feet before it hit him, tearing the object into pieces.

By the time his eyes returned to Pepper, she was already in his face, and her hands flew to his shoulders. Her fingers dug into the flesh until she was able to use the clavicles as handles.

"For Steve." She lifted Aldrich from the floor by the grip she had on his shoulders' bones before slamming him onto the left wall, then the right wall, twirling in place a handful of times and releasing him to hit the back wall with enough energy to crack the glass. As programmed, the impact on the wall caused the cell's pistons to activate and the cell's width was reduced by two feet –just as Hulk's cell was automated be released to plummet from a great height, Killian's cell was programmed to compact and crush the occupant with prolonged assault on the inner walls. Only the outside spectators noticed the change in size of the room.

"Are you kidding me?" Tony fumed. "That's not gonna work."

Bruce's eyes flew from the vision to the corners of the room where the vents were located. As he feared, the vents did not move with the glass walls, meaning that if Barton did not hurry up, the chances of getting the knock out gas in the cell was going to become null.

Inside the containment unit, Killian slid down the glass wall but immediately stood up only to be hit by his own bed. Pepper had pushed the bed forward with enough force and speed that it flattened Killian's chest and again robbed them of two more feet of space.

"For Clint," she spat.

Aldrich spat out blood onto the mattress before Pepper pulled it away and threw it behind her, further blocking the entrance to the room and causing two more feet to be taken away from the width of the room. The pressure of the closing walls onto the wooden bed was too much, leaving it no option but to break it in half.

The 2.0 host did not allow a second of relief to grace the Extremis creator, and she grabbed him by his ankles. She pulled him off the bloodied glass wall and noted the virus was quick at work in rebuilding the broken bones and burst organs in a haste, but she did not care. She was faster. She was stronger. She was out to kill him.

She sat on top of Killian's still flattened upper body and stared down at him. Her hands cupped the sides of his face and she smiled at him as she caressed his skin. Her thumbs slowly slid up from his chin to his eyes, forcing the eyelids to close. Her smile disappeared and the frown of anger returned to her face as she dug her burning hot thumbs into his eye sockets.

"For Natalie," she said to him, and this time Killian had to scream.

xxxXXXxxx

"Oh, my God," Steve mumbled as he witnessed the vicious way Pepper was treating Killian. The man had definitely asked to be beat up by threatening Pepper and her family, but the Captain never imagined Pepper would respond with such aggression. Tony had been calling her name for a while now, but even the voice of her husband had not been sufficient to pull her out of the anger streak she was in. "She's really gonna kill him this time."

Fury exhaled deeply. As urgent as it was to stop the uncontrolled rage that clearly plagued Pepper, he was not going to risk sending anyone inside. The worst that could happen at this point was that Pepper killed Killian, and if that were to happen, his only hope was that she did not continue her fury release on them.

Barton finally returned with the canisters of the knockout gas but it was too late. The vents were too far away from the room now, and since only the left and right walls moved as a response to major impacts, the containers would have to be inside the room to have any effect on either Extremis carrier.

Clint's eyes flew to Pepper and then to Tony before they landed on his Director. Fury shook his head at him and Barton knew he had taken too long. There was no point in doing anything else at the moment. All any of them could do was wait and hope that she stopped.

xxxXXXxxx

Killian flailed his arms toward Pepper, trying to stop her attack on his now gone eyeballs. If she kept going at this rate, she would soon reach his brain and a direct impact such as this one would not give him a chance to piece himself back together. His attempts were in vain, but just when he thought he was down for the count – and for some unknown reason – Pepper stopped her punishment on him and stood up. She took a few steps back and tilted her head as if she was admiring a piece of artwork, a smile plastered on her face.

Aldrich was breathing hard, experiencing major pain for the first time since he had injected himself with the Extremis virus. He could only imagine what the fight between her and the Mandarin had been like, and he hoped he did not have to be their practice dummy for the next one. Just as his muscles began to relax and he thought Pepper was done with him, he felt her grabbing his feet by the ankles. She gracefully propelled herself in the air as she still held onto him and twirled in a somersault that ended with Pepper's feet landing on his stomach and Killian's legs bent forward until they popped.

"AAAAAHHHHH!" The former CEO of AIM screamed, the scene making everyone present cringe. Potts unceremoniously released her hold on his legs and they hit the floor with a thud before she spoke again.

"For Rhodey."

Killian's eyes regrew just in time to see her glowing hands move swiftly over his arms and cut them at the elbows. She bent down to whisper in his ear. "For Bruce."

She then grabbed him by his shirt and picked him up from the floor, and on his way down she flipped him so that her knee hit his back and broke it on impact. "For Phil."

"S-s-stop!" Killian pleaded, truly afraid for his life for the first time, but Pepper did not stop. She dropped him on the floor once more and picked him up by his legs. She again twirled a few times and threw him over to where the broken bed blocked the exit. "For my kids!"

Killian grunted when a post of his bed dug into his back and stuck out to his front. He tried to push himself off it to allow his cells to regrow but he was exhausted. Pepper walked slowly toward him, her right hand digging into her right pants pocket. When her hand came out of it she held a syringe in it. She took the needle to her mouth and removed the cap with her teeth, spitting it out somewhere on the floor. Aldrich again tried to move away but she was faster than him and pressed him against the broken pile of furniture once more. Her left hand pressed on his chest, heating it up enough to keep him in place. Her right hand with the syringe closed in on his neck and she stabbed him with it, pushing the liquid into his system without haste.

She finally pulled off the syringe and threw it behind her. She then bent her face toward him with an angry smirk on her features.

"For Tony," she whispered to him before her hands ignited as she pushed them onto his chest. The fire spread throughout his body, forcing Killian to scream in unbearable pain. Pepper's eyes were redder than before until a shock went down her back and her attack on Killian stopped. The sensation of not being able to breathe was familiar, and the last thing she heard was Tony screaming for her to stop.

xxxXXXxxx

Bruce's eyes shifted from Pepper to the vision of Agent Galaga standing right behind her touching her back. He had tried his best not to focus on him as to not scare him away, but it seemed the vision had nowhere else he needed to be. Tony watched in horror as Pepper's body was ransacked by another seizure and fell to the floor. Killian's body was still on fire but with the source of it away from him, it was now slowing down. Without thinking and filled with fear, Tony ran toward the entrance of the room and began slamming his body against the now cold doors. The sound of his efforts snapped the other four men out of their stupor and into action.

"Rhodey, Jarvis, come in, now!" Tony said into his earpiece. It only took them a few seconds to arrive to the carnage of the scene. Rhodey pulled up his faceplate and shook his head at what he saw. There was blood splattered all over the place, limbs on the floor, broken furniture, a burned body and a seizing Pepper on the floor.

"What in the name of a motherfuck?!" Rhodey yelped as his repulsors lit up. Jarvis was one step ahead of him and charged the chest RT. In one movement, both suits discharged enough energy to break a hole on all three doors, pushing what was left of Killian's body toward the back wall, bouncing off it and landing just a few feet from Pepper's trembling form.

The men ran inside the room in whatever way they could, stomping over pieces of burnt and bent debris. Bruce stared at the corner where Agent Galaga stood –or at least the vision of him. A blink later the image of Galaga was gone and had been replaced by the image of Bruce's father. A third blink from Banner was all it took for the figure to finally disappear.

"Pepper!" Tony ran toward her with Clint behind him. Between the both of them they turned her on her side when she began foaming from her mouth. Steve and Fury ran toward Killian, and Rhodey and Jarvis made themselves busy by cleaning up the entrance of the room.

"What did she inject him with?" Fury asked as he bent down to stare at Killian.

"I don't know," Tony answered with a huff and holding Pepper's head. "I didn't even know she had anything with her."

Bruce walked toward the discarded syringe and picked it up, his eyes widening when he read the label of the container. "Do you still want Killian to live?"

"What? Why?" Barton asked, not happy to see that Pepper's seizure was not stopping as quickly as the last one had.

"Because…she…this is the cure; the cure to Extremis 1.0."

xxxXXXxxx

Maria Hill pressed the pause button to the video playing on the screen when she noticed Pepper's eyes filling with tears. The video was yet to get to the most shocking part where Pepper had tried to burn Killian to ashes, but Agent Hill knew the arsonist had seen and heard enough. Pepper lowered her head and stared down at her hands, not believing she had lost complete control of herself.

"I…I don't…remember, any of it…it's just…" she said in a soft voice that sounded foreign even to her. She lifted her head once more and eyed everyone in the conference room, all staring back at her with the same look of pity towards her on their faces. "I swear…I…I can't believe…is he…dead?"

"No," Bruce answered. "We injected him with a low dose 1.0 just to help his body regenerate, but we doubt he will ever recover the strength he once had. We're just giving him enough to keep him alive; not giving him a full dose of the virus. It'll be easier to control him that way."

"The prototype cure was working, but it takes a few days to eradicate the virus in the host, so we were able to keep him alive long enough to counteract the effects of the vaccine," Tony added with an even tone despite his true feelings of desperation, of need to shield Pepper away from the pain she was currently feeling. After her seizure, she had passed out for almost two days and had just woken up this morning to having no recollection of the events that landed her in a bed once more.

"Do you remember what he told you before you…before it started?" Steve said, correcting his question to not sound as if he was attacking Pepper or judging her actions in any way.

"He said the Mandarin would come after me, and you, and everyone, and then…nothing. It's as if the memory just dropped off my mind. Is this due to the virus or…am I…" Pepper was unable to finish her question, fearing the answer would be that she was no longer in control –that she had never been in control. What if this was not an isolated incident? What if anything that upset her triggered this behavior? She had lost it a few times when fighting Extremis soldiers and the Mandarin, but something had always allowed her to stop in her tracks. This time, however, she had not held back and not even Tony's voice had helped her come back to her normal self.

"I don't know what to say…This is not me…" she covered her eyes and her shoulders began to tremble. "This is not me!"

Tony immediately stood up from his chair and walked over to her, grabbed her by her hands and pulled her to him. "I think we're done here for now," he said with a no nonsense tone that no one –not even Fury – dared to challenge. Seeing his word was final, he embraced Pepper and held her as they both stepped out of the conference room.

The rest of the team remained silent as they watched the door close behind Tony and Pepper, and it was not until Fury cleared his throat that everyone's eyes moved away from the exit. "I believe this is the best time for you to offer us an explanation of what happened, Bruce."

Bruce exhaled loudly and nodded. "I guess so. Where should I start?"

"The beginning is always the best option," Clint responded.

"Alright, well…uhm…" Bruce took a deep breath and rubbed the back of his neck. His eyes scanned the room and he saw how everyone was holding their breath awaiting his explanation, making him exhale again. "I see dead people," he finally said, not knowing how else to start the conversation. His statement made Darcy's eyebrows shoot up to her forehead.

"I saw that movie, too!" Her comment made Bruce realize this was going to be more difficult than he had originally thought.

xxxXXXxxx

The Mandarin and his guest sat on their respective sides of the table, feasting in celebration of the recent accomplishments. The actions of the guest had sped up the development of the Source, and she was now ready to fulfill the destiny written in books of the Makluan. The Mandarin had doubted the suggestion of the guest would work, but he was thrilled nonetheless that the risk had been worthwhile.

"You're a fast learner, my friend." The Mandarin sipped his tea. "Maybe the Makluan will see you as a good fit for their order and you too can to live forever like me."

"A generous offer, but eternal life is not what I seek," the guest responded as he handed back a ring to the Mandarin.

"Ah, of course!" The Mandarin exclaimed, taking back the ring and placing it back on his left ring finger. "I forget your goals are much simpler than that."

"I've learned that humble objectives fit me best."

"True, but you do approach your goals with much fierceness." The Mandarin said, recalling the images of how the guest had influenced Killian's behavior which had led to Pepper losing control and achieving the highest level of Extremis 2.0 power. "I admire that aggressiveness. However, Ember is now too powerful for us to handle singlehandedly."

"Perhaps, but I assume you had already anticipated that?"

The Mandarin hummed. "You assume correctly," he said as his right hand reached his left pinky, slipping off the ring he held there. "Some say that to fight fire, you must use fire. But I think that you fight fire with ice." He passed on the ring to his guest who took it with a smile.

"And I believe," the Mandarin continued. "That this ring is of better use in the hands of someone like you for that task."

"How soon do you want her to be here?" The guest asked as he picked a finger to place the ring on.

"That depends."

"On what?"

"When do you want your main goal to be fulfilled?"

A/N: Feedback? :)