Hello again! I know it's been a while since this fic has had an update, but this chapter was a toughy for me to bang out. I knew what I wanted to have happen, but I had a hard time getting the imagery to sound right. Hopefully, I've now succeeded!

Thank you all for the feedback and continued support! I love hearing from you guys and appreciate you all following and favoriting, reading and reviewing! Keep it up! :D

Happy reading!

"Experimental test number one. Data-collection nanobots have been administered to subjects A and B. Sedative has been administered to subject B. Experiment commencing...now," Bruce said, as he held a palm-sized video recorder which was pointed at Tony. "Nervous?" he asked his friend, as he placed it on a small work table beside Pepper's bed, angling it to face Tony and Pepper for the duration. They had brought the table into Pepper's room that morning. It held a computer monitor, a processor, a keyboard, a digital brain wave monitor, and an emergency defibrillator along with a long syringe full of adrenaline in case Tony had trouble coming out of the sedation, or if Bruce detected trouble and he needed to bring him back quickly. Tony laid beside Pepper on a gurney, with two electrical nodes attached to each of his temples, each trailing long wires that fed back to the brain wave monitor.

Tony shrugged and shook his head. "I'm just anxious to get started," he replied. He reached over to grasp Pepper's hand before he fell unconscious from the medication. "I'll see you soon, baby," he said to her, squeezing it lovingly.

"Okay. Here goes," Bruce said. "Any minute now, you should start feeling the effects of..."

Tony didn't hear the last part of what Bruce said because suddenly, he saw the hospital room become enshrouded in darkness, while the floor gave out beneath him. But, as frightening as it would have been in the real world, this wasn't alarming to him in the least here. It felt more like he'd been eased into deep water, and he was now slowly sinking down, farther and farther, into some kind of very dark, but very warm, abyss.

He'd hurried back to the lab the day Pepper had squeezed his hand at the hospital, anxious to tell Bruce what had happened. He, too, dismissed it initially as an involuntary muscle spasm, until Tony described in detail how it had seemed that she'd responded to him, not once but twice. This is what had spurred them on to explore the idea of entering her subconscious, and that there had to be a way to connect with Pepper inside her mind, and repair the damage that had been done. This had been several weeks prior to. And now, as they were finally to the point of being able to test their program, it was looking more and more likely they'd be making some very welcome progress. This first attempt would be purely an exploratory mission, just so that Tony could get a feel for what he would be working with. And then he'd go under for a second mission within the next few days to begin the repairs on Pepper's brain and nervous system.

He and Bruce had been working day and night to build this program. And it hadn't been without its pitfalls, least of all a fire mysteriously breaking out in their lab one night, and consequently being doused by the fire retardant sprinkler system, which destroyed most of their equipment. But Bruce had saved all of their software coding on an external hard drive, which traveled with him wherever he went. So it only set them back in terms of getting the equipment replaced, and continuing on their way.

Bruce was monitoring Tony's progress, reading the electrical pulses between the synapses in Tony's and Pepper's brains. She had a pair of nodes attached to each of her temples as well, identical to the ones Tony had. Bruce had injected both Pepper and Tony with a large dose of nanobots. Pepper's were programmed to gather information and transmit that information back to the nanobots in Tony's body in order to create a sort of road map for him to follow in his own subconscious while he was under, thus allowing a kind of "gateway" between them. Then, later on, during the second attempt, Tony would direct the nanobots he would be injected with then, that he and Bruce had designed specifically for the repairs, to quickly locate the damaged areas and replace the nerve and brain cells with newly synthesized cells while navigating inside of Pepper's subconscious through his own given the data this initial mission would provide. Given the bots' short life span, however, they would have to keep replacing the old bots with new bots after every 12 hours of work time. This meant there could be several future repair missions, patching Pepper up a little more each time, working to repair a specific part of Pepper's brain and nervous system as they went. This was the idea, anyway. But first, they had to get the lay of the land, and to see for themselves just how much work they'd have to do.

Bruce explained to Tony that there were dangers to having this much anesthesia coursing through his system on a regular basis, and he'd have to allow for time for his body to filter it out, meaning there would have to be a considerable break between procedures. And Tony accepted this, but not without Bruce knowing he'd push himself to the utmost limit to get Pepper well as soon as was humanly possible.

They first injected Pepper with the serum containing the data-collecting nanobots, and waited for them to go to work, documenting and transmitting their information. The men were elated when readings began coming across the screen and they were getting viable data streams from each of the bots. Then Tony had been injected with the bots that would pick up the transmissions and feed them back to his own subconscious to translate. And Bruce would be stationed at a computer, monitoring everything that was going on with each of their brain's activity. The last thing to be administered had been the sedative. And now, by all accounts, all systems were go.

"Okay. I'm in. I think," Tony said to himself, his voice echoing around him, as soon as the feeling of sinking into dark watery depths had ceased, and he could feel his feet fall flat onto an actual, solid surface again. Or as solid as was possible, given the circumstances. Tony couldn't remember falling asleep, but now, as he opened his eyes in this place, he realized he was actually still unconscious, and moving around in what felt like a very lucid dream state. He found himself in a pitch-black space, with no point of reference or gageable depth. "Hello? Pepper?" he called out, his voice echoing off of something his eyes couldn't make out in the murky darkness.

He stopped for a moment, and listened for a response. But he could make out nothing. He decided to call out again. "Pepper? Can you hear me?" He listened closely again, and this time, he could hear a very faint sound. It resembled a whistle like the wind would make through a cracked window. It was a very lonely, eerie sound, and he strained to be able to hear it again. He decided to walk in the direction he thought it was coming from. His footsteps echoed, like he was walking on concrete, and he looked around him, his eyes playing tricks on him with phantom images appearing and disappearing in his peripheral in the darkness as he walked, making him stop short each time. "Pepper?" he called again. "I'm here. Can you hear me?"

The distant whistle became louder in response, and soon Tony realized it wasn't a whistle but more of a moan. A woman's moan, anguished and despairing. "Pepper? Honey?" he called again. "Is that you?"

The moaning stopped for a moment. "Tony?" he heard back in response. His heart leaped, instantly recognizing Pepper's voice. He started to run, clueless on his direction, but desperate to get her.

"Yeah! Pepper! It's me! Where are you?!" he called out.

He heard her crying again, and it wrenched his soul to hear the agony in her voice. "Pepper, tell me where you are, baby. Where can I find you?!" he cried. As he ran, he could hear her crying getting louder. "Pepper! Where are you?!" he cried. And then suddenly, he stopped. Faintly, in the distance, he could make out a figure, in very dim light, huddled as if in a corner. The light was barely enough to make any detail out, but what little detail he could detect, made him gasp and he bolted in the direction of it. He saw it was a woman, with long strawberry blond hair, in a tattered hospital gown, and bare feet. She was shivering and crying, huddled in a ball on the floor.

"Pepper! It's me, baby! I'm here!" he cried, running. She lifted her head, and looked in his direction. And then slowly, made a move to stand.

"Tony?" she said. "Oh my God! Is that really you? Are you really here?"

He reached her, and Pepper instantly fell into his arms, sobbing, trembling. Tony wrapped his arms around his wife, and held her tightly, soaking in every bit of the way she felt against him, his heart breaking for how frightened she seemed.

"I'm scared, Tony! Why am I here?" she pleaded.

Tony fought to hold back his own tears. "None of that matters now, baby. I've got you. I'm here, and I've got you," he assured. He kissed the side of her head, and buried his nose in her hair, inhaling her scent, which pleased him to no end to find that it was exactly the same as it had always been. He then pulled back to look into her eyes, cupping her face in his hands.

"My God, how I've missed you," he said with great relief.

Pepper's face was tear stained and her eyes were bloodshot. She continued to tremble in front of him, clearly nearing her capacity to withstand the circumstances she was in. "Tony, I can't be here any more! I need you to get me out of here! I don't know how much longer I can hold on! Please! I'm scared...I'm so scared..."

Tony pulled her back into his arms, and shushed her. "I know, Pep. I know. And I'm working to get you out, okay? Please, baby. Just hold on a little longer, okay? I promise, I'll save you," he assured.

Pepper continued to cry softly into his shoulder for a few moments. But then he heard her mutter something. "No," she'd said.

He pulled back to look at her with a confused frown. "What did you say?" he asked.

Pepper shook her head. She looked around them, and was starting to panic. "No. Oh God, not now!" she cried, backing away from him. She flicked her eyes to Tony. "You have to run! It's happening again!"

Tony frowned at her. "What is? What's happening again?" he asked. But then, he felt the floor start to rumble and shake, the tremors growing more and more powerful by the second. He and Pepper backed further away from each other, and Tony tried to keep her in view, but she was stepping too far into the darkness for him to see now.

"Pepper! Come back!" he yelled, but he heard no response from her.

Suddenly, all around him erupted peals of lightening and thunder, and his ears rang from the deafening din. "PEPPER!" he cried again, and he strained to see her, but found she was no where to be seen.

Just then, the floor began to crumble. Long crags developed and split open under his feet and he scrambled backwards to avoid falling in to any of them. Then a long tall vine-like black spiral, massively thick in diameter, as if the curl of it could fill the inside of a room, erupted out of the ground in front of him, breaking through like it was a defiant vine trying to reach up to the sun. But there was no sun here. Just complete darkness. He looked upwards in amazement as it climbed higher and higher, the sound of it as it moved reminding him of metal as it was being stressed and strained by severe heat or cold. It curled up and up, into oblivion above him. And around the spiral was a corridor full of closed doors, side by side. Hundred of doors, he estimated, all the same shape and color, as if they were doors in an apartment building.

Soon, the spiral stopped its ascension, and Tony tried to reconcile what was before him. Cautiously, he stepped forward on the badly broken ground, now resembling that of a parched desert floor. It cracked beneath his feet as he walked, like broken pottery pieces. He came to the end of the spiral and look around him before proceeding to climb onto it. Upon closer inspection, he discovered it was made of a heavy, black, tightly woven, iron-like material, and when he went to take a step onto it, it creaked loudly. But it was sturdy, and held his weight easily. He took a few steps to the first door, and raised his hand to the knob to turn. But he quickly found that it was locked. He jiggled it, once gently, and then forcefully the second time, but it was to no avail.

"What the hell," he huffed with frustration. He moved to the next door, and found the same to be true for it as well. "Come on," he said, shaking his head. "What am I supposed to do with a bunch of locked doors?"

Just then a noise perked his ears, and he stopped to listen to it. It was the tinkling laughter of what sounded like a little girl somewhere on the spiral above him. "Hello?" he called back.

He heard the laughter again. "Hellooooo!" the child's voice responded, in a playful tone. "Come find me!" it said.