FRIDAY
Two days of nonstop lab sessions by Boss, Dr. Banner, and Ms. Ross, coupled with an intense workout of her servers, produced the modified versions of the Serum and Extremis that they wanted. Boss had also configured the nanoparticles with her and JARVIS's help to perform the coating.
Since no one knew how Mr. Howlett's healing factor might react to the nanoparticles, it had been decided that the nanoparticles would be injected first, when the healing factor was at its weakest. Once the coating process was complete, Extremis would be injected in his bloodstream, which should dissolve in Mr. Howlett's blood and kick start it once again.
FRIDAY had handed off the responsibility of helping Boss to coordinate the nanoparticles to DIANA. Nela's A.I. had been getting bored these days and had volunteered for it. Since the process would require a lot of attention, DIANA had been a perfect choice. Just as they were ready to begin the first step, JARVIS paused the entire process. Before FRIDAY could even enquire, JARVIS explained in a sort of sheepish voice.
"Sir, in our rush to help Mr. Howlett, we have not taken the time to get the permission of only living relative of Mr. Howlett for this experimental procedure. I would strongly suggest talking to Ms. Howlett first before proceeding. You once chastised young FRIDAY for doing exactly what we are about to do to Mr. Howlett. However good our intentions we should get permission."
FRIDAY thought on his inter-dimensional brother's word. She remembered how Boss had asked to not do anything to him without informing about what and why. And JARVIS was right, here they were going to do the same thing to another person. A person who has already been experimented on and has had his agency taken from him once already. She stopped the rising debate in the lab.
"JARVIS is right, Mr. Stark. Ms. Howlett must at least know that we are trying something. There is a 14% chance that something might go wrong in the process. If nothing else she has the right to know that what we are doing here just might kill her father. She has the right to say goodbye while there still is a chance that he can hear her. And if he can hear, there might be a chance that he responds better to the treatment knowing that someone needs him."
Boss, who had been the one against informing Laura, agreed-upon hearing that, although not without arguing with her and JARVIS for more than 10 minutes. He and Ms. Ross proceeded towards the room Laura had been staying, while Dr. Banner went over the entire process once more. The tense feeling between them was not missed by FRIDAY.
Laura had not left her room in two days. She had not reacted poorly upon after being notified about Mr. Howlett's condition, indicating that she already had an idea about it. But the signs were there for anybody who could them, signs that told she was spiraling towards depression. She was not sleeping well and was barely eating, she was also not interacting with Penny or Morgan and giving one-word responses or grunts when asked anything by an adult. As Boss walked towards the guest room, FRIDAY updated him about everyone in the 'group', as Boss liked to call it. Ms. Potts, Virgil, and Mr. Hogan were at the tower along with Ms. Romanova and Mr. Barton. Mr. Barton's wife and children had set up in their flat in one of the residential floors. Ms. Romanova's sister had also taken up one of the flats, with her brother scheduled to arrive in a month. Mordo was telling Morgan and Penny another of his stories while May Parker watched over them. Ben Parker was keeping an eye on Nela, who was trying something with her suit in the Mansion's garden.
Just before they entered the room, Boss stopped and addressed her. "She is a child, FRIDAY. Do we need to…? I mean how much can we really tell her? How much should we tell her? Can and should we really burden her with this information?"
"Yes, Mr. Stark. She might be a child, but she has suffered through a lot. It has been one of the most common observations in human history, that a person's wisdom depends upon their experiences, not their age." She replied in the poshest style she could create. In truth, I had told Morgan a general idea of what we were going to do and where we were hopefully going to end up. Yes, I kept it very age appropriate due to the fact she was 7 but I still kept her informed. If she had been Laura's age, I probably would have told her everything."
Boss shook his head with a small smile before entering the room. Laura was inside the room, reading one of the comics she had brought along with. What followed was an intense conversation, between a child and two adults, translated in English and Spanish every time Laura and Boss stopped speaking respectively.
In the end, Laura had agreed with the scientists and gave the go-ahead for the procedure but demanded to both talk to her father before anything was done and that she was going to be in the lab the entire time. FRIDAY got the impression that if anything was done out of order or any extra steps were taken then she would NOT be happy. After a few more minutes of discussion, Boss agreed with her, only adding a condition that she would stay out of harm's way no matter what happens.
An hour later, they were ready for the process to start. FRIDAY ceded the control of nanoparticles to DIANA, granting her partial access to Boss's personal systems. She could feel the Nervousness in DIANA's coding as the A.I. started integrating itself. FRIDAY always thought that DIANA had been the most human-like A.I. out of all her siblings. And there was a valid reason behind it. Unlike Boss's A.I.'s, DIANA had not been developed as a learning A.I. She did grow and learn under someone's guidance, rather she had to learn everything on her own. According to Nela, DIANA was born both as an accident and in the middle of a war. She was originally supposed to be a weapon handling program. What she had grown to become now, was all due to the experience she had earned and used to develop further. Much like a child, she learned everything on her own and with a steep learning curve. Nela and her version of Mr. Stark Senior did not mean to create life, they just did. This did give DIANA an advantage, one which neither FRIDAY nor any other A.I. had. DIANA was able to relate with humanity in a much more fluent way than any of the others. She regularly pulled pranks on Nela and Boss, was the only one who spent at least an hour speaking to Morgan every day about nonsense things and playing games with her, and would usually solve any issue the other A.I.'s had with their charges. TADASHI would frequently take DIANA's help in managing the HR department. Although FRIDAY didn't know whether it was due to DIANA's proficiency or TADASHI's not wanting to deal with good for nothing, old coots.
Few minutes after nanoparticles were injected into the body, an unexpected problem arose. Their theory that the healing factor would be too weak to deal with the nanoparticles, came out to be wrong. Nearly 30% of the particles were guided away from their target or being destroyed despite Boss and DIANA's best effort. With the supply of nanoparticles low, FRIDAY took immediate action. She dismantled one of the suits that she had brought along and informed both Boss and young Laura about it. That way the second injection didn't raise any alarms with the young girl, who was already on the edge. 2 minutes later, the vibranium based nanoparticles entered Mr. Howlett's bloodstream.
Things were moving smoothly from there until about halfway through when DIANA noticed something different. It seemed that unlike the Starkanium based nanoparticles, the Vibranium based ones were not being affected by the healing factor. They had not lost even one newly injected particle, but by this point, the original batch had been entirely flushed out of the bloodstream.
Dr. Banner had the most likely theory. "Vibranium is a natural element, while Starkanium is not. There must be something in Vibranium which must be making his healing factor categorize it as not a threat. Maybe it's the composition or maybe..."
She ignored the long tangent Dr. Banner went on, after all, if he said something important than one of her secondary processes or JARVIS would mention it to her, focusing, instead of on developing the idea on one of her always developing plans. After changing a few things on the suggestion of her siblings, the plan was initiated. Two nanotech suits disintegrated, their particles coating all three Mark 5 suits stationed outside the mansion. A moment later, the now camouflaged suits took off in a southeastern direction. Ulysses Klaue would never know that he lost his most expensive loot because of a small offhand observation made by a Dimension traveling A.I. during an experimental procedure. FRIDAY wondered about incapacitating the criminal and deliver him and his associates to the UN counter-terrorism unit, but then decided against it. She did leave a small hint about his location in such a manner that Wakanda might come across it.
Once the coating process was complete, Boss moved over to sit near Laura wanting to offer some comfort to the young girl while Dr. Banner prepared the Extremis injection. Since there was a chance that extremis might react negatively to everything inside Mr. Howlett's blood, the lab was emptied and the group took shelter behind the bomb-resistant observation glass that lined one wall, with JARVIS coordinating the final injection step. Nothing seemed to happen for a few minutes once the extremis vial was empty. The confusion was evident amongst the three doctors. But just as Boss made to enter the lab, Mr. Howlett's body lurched almost as if he was having a seizure and a hoarse yell was pulled from his throat. The restraints on the bed groaned as Mr. Howlett proceeded to thrash in place for a long moment before stopping.
JARVIS once again brought their attention to Mr. Howlett's body. It seemed that right in front of everyone's eye, the comatose body was getting de-aged. The wrinkles on his face were disappearing while his hair was losing the gray color. They could also see the redefinition of his muscles on a screen, as he was brought to full health but also as stored fat in his body was being used up rapidly. The changes went on for nearly 3 minutes before everything stopped. Boss immediately entered the room along with Dr. Banner, a suit following right behind them.
Suddenly, Mr. Howlett broke one of the restraints with a jerk on his arm. But instead of attacking anyone, he turned to a side and vomited a large amount of silver liquid. Fortunately, Dr. Banner had placed a container on either side for such a possibility. Mr. Howlett kept on vomiting for a long time, longer than FRIDAY had expected him to. Once he had finally finished he popped one of his claws to cut himself free of the elastic restraints and lied back on the bed, which had risen to allow him to sit inclined instead of lying flat on his back lay on his back, his eyes took in everything around him. FRIDAY was not sure whether he remembered what had happened, so she prepped the suit to gather Boss inside if anything happened.
Things changed when Mr. Howlett looked over his own body and caught a look at his reflection on the glass wall. His eyes focused then on Boss.
"What the hell did you do?" He asked in a confused and gruff tone.
"Cured you. What else?" Boss responded in an overly cheerful tone.
"Fuc..."
"Shhh, there is a child here, Logan." Boss stopped him, pointing towards Laura who was standing outside the lab. She was looking confused and worried and was almost vibrating in a place like she wanted to rush to his side. That seemed to calm Mr. Howlett down a little. Suddenly a single claw came out of his free arm with a snikt sound. He looked at it for a second confused before pointing it towards Boss.
"Explain, Bub."
Boss took a seat next to bed, not minding the threatening claw at all. He explained everything they had done to Logan's body in concise and simple terms. He also took the time to tell him that Laura was filled in on everything and she gave them the go-ahead to do what they did. Dr. Banner took over when he stopped.
"This is not a permanent solution, Mr. Howlett. The serum coating your bones will not nullify the poison. It will just keep it at bay, letting only a minuscule amount leak in your bloodstream. Your healing factor should be able to handle that amount easily. But if you ever are injected with Anti-serum, you will die in a short time. The time, which may depend upon how much time has passed since the coating, will be extremely painful for you, as all the held over metal will leak in your blood immediately. 1 year from now, you will die in less than 2 months. 5 years, in less than a month. Anything above 9 years, you will die in less than a week. 20 years from now, your survival will be a matter of hours or maybe possibly minutes. I would also advise you to avoid injuries that might let your bones face common air. The modified version of serum does not react well with it. If and until we can remove the metal on your bones, this will be a stopgap measure, not a true fix."
Dr. Banner hesitated for a moment before continuing.
"Honestly, I don't know if we can remove what was done to you, Mr. Howlett."
Logan was silent for a few minutes as his arm went down. He spoke softly after a few minutes.
"Laura?"
"That's why it is not a permanent solution. We are still looking into it. I do have some good news about Laura. I can tell you is that we did a full exam on her, with her permission and my girlfriend present to hit me if Laura asked. While her claws have been coated, none of her other bones inside her body have. This could be due to the fact that they didn't want to worry about her growth, or they didn't have enough metal to do the rest. We just need to find a method to stop the metal leaking from those claws into the tissue around them." Boss replied in a serious tone.
Logan was silent for a few more minutes before he spoke.
"Why am I so young? You said the cure was only supposed to restart my healing factor."
Boss shrugged.
"We have no idea. Extremis might be the reason, as it has already done so in Morgan's case. But in her case, it was coupled with Quantum energy. I can only say that your healing factor might be responsible for your current condition. Our best guess is that extremis combined with the healing factor for a fountain of youth effect. It essentially instead of just healing you, also took you right back to your prime."
The rest of the day went along nicely, with Boss and Dr. Banner performing multiple tests on Logan with his permission. FRIDAY had taken over the command of nanoparticles once again and moved them to a decontamination chamber. In cleaning them from the vomit sludge that came from Mr. Howlett's system, she was able to discover that a lot of what came out was a metal, which was quite close to the Vibranium in the element table, more close than Starkanium even. The rest was copper and iron. Nothing was toxic on its own, but it was not good for a human body. The cleaned suit was reformed an hour later. Logan also had a long conversation with Laura, helped by FRIDAY in translating once again. Boss had already told Logan that they needed to discuss more about Laura later during the dinner.
Most of the group had arrived at the mansion that night, at Boss's request. Logan had told them all a little more about his world and his powers. It was decided that since Laura was only a few months older than Penny, she would join her in the next academic session at the same school. Tony would make sure of it. In the meantime, she would learn more about the English language along with the other things little things to help her not stand out. Ms. Romanova had taken up the responsibility to teach and train Laura along with Logan. The only question Boss had was if Mr. Howlett wanted to meet his 'family' in this dimension. And if so what would he like the story to be. Mr. Howlett told them that he would have to think about that for a time.
THIRD PERSON'S POV
While the Starks and their friends were enjoying their dinner, none of them had any idea about the sinister plot brewing against some of them. HYDRA had managed to track down the source of social media accounts which had outed SHIELD and was threatening them indirectly.
Since they didn't know it was an A.I. who was handling the account, their guess had brought them down to a newly formed Research department. An inside source had informed them about the monthly meeting date of the entire department with Tony Stark.
A deadly plan was already in motion.