THE STRANGER
Lester Raise was a quiet and rather unremarkable man. But once upon a time, he was an Army medic on the team that rescued Tony Stark from a desert in Afghanistan. Lester performed first aid on Tony as they helicoptered back to Kandahar - treating him for dehydration, cuts, burns, and a lot of bruises. And then he gave Tony a shot of whiskey from his personal (and highly unauthorized) flask.
After taking a long and grateful sip of some of backwood Kentucky's better moonshine, Tony dug through his pockets and came up with a worn and tattered business card. Then he scrounged a pen and wrote on the back of the card: "I.O.U. one (1) shot of whiskey. And anything else you might need. Just ask."
Despite how shaky Tony's hand was, he still managed to sign the card with a flourish.
Tony was the most famous and important person that Lester had ever met, and the card became a keepsake that Les carefully locked away in his desk at home. But it never really occurred to him that he could use it to finagle a favor. Les simply wasn't that kind of man.
And Les became even more sure that the card was something deeply personal when he heard that Tony Stark had died saving half the world.
Les 'attended' the public memorial service for Tony Stark. Actually, Lester was just another face in a crowd that numbered in the millions and filled Washington to overflowing. At the service, Les carried in his breast pocket the card that Tony had given him. It just seemed right that he should.
Then, after the funeral, Les went home. And that might have been the end of the story.
But then, a few months later, Lester Raise became desperate. Very desperate.
So he called in a favor from a dead man.
Pepper was in the Manhattan office of Stark Industries when she got the message from Rhodey. It was text, because Rhodey was on a ship somewhere between Earth and Mars and the communication lag imposed by the speed-of-light was enough to be a problem.
She could almost hear Rhodey's voice as she read the message.
"Pepper, there's a guy named Raise who was with us in Afghanistan. Tony knew Raise and always figured he owed him. Anyway, Raise just messaged me and said he was in trouble and needed help, but there's no way I can get back to Earth in time. Could you talk to him? Maybe he's trying to hustle us - I hope not - but I don't want to let this slide. P.S. - have security check him out first."
After that, there was Lester's email address, a phone number, and a physical address.
Rich people usually have to acquire anti-grifter filters. As one of the wealthiest and most famous women in the world, Pepper was no exception. So she passed Rhodey's information to Stark security along with a request to get back to her as soon as possible.
The Stark employee who called Pepper later that night was a former FBI agent who quit because of the way politics was beginning to taint Federal investigations. Happy thought the world of the guy and that was more than enough for Pepper.
"Mr. Raise checks out," the former FBI man reported. "He's a senior paramedic in the Louisville, Kentucky fire department and has an exemplary record. He was on the team that pulled Mr. Stark out of the desert. There are no problems I can find in Mr. Raise's professional or personal life. Heck, ma'am, I just put him on the list of people we should hire if we ever have the chance."
Pepper nodded. "What does he want?"
"His daughter and granddaughter have gone missing. They were on a private plane that apparently went down in northern Canada last week. The Canadian authorities haven't been able to find anything and have politely scaled the search back. Mr. Raise is hoping we can do better."
Pepper winced. "A week ago?"
"Six days to be precise."
Pepper sighed and shook her head. "Six days. Northern Canada. In the middle of winter."
"It doesn't sound good," the agent admitted.
"I'll check on it," Pepper responded.
Being a superhero never sat well with Pepper. For one thing, there was a lot of violence involved. For another, being a super-hero had taken her husband from her. But Thanos had taught Pepper that violence was sometimes a necessary evil.
Pepper hated that. She hated that a part of who she was now had been forced on her by that madman.
Pepper made every effort to become good with her armor. But her approach to using it was different than that of the men she knew. She'd taken to calling her armor, 'the Rescue suit'. Oh, she could fight if she had to. She'd already proved that. But what she tried to do with her armor was just different.
She was sure that Tony would have understood.
The CH-47 is a beast of a helicopter that's mostly flown by the U.S. military, but Stark Industries maintained several of them. That design was characterized by heavy-lift capacity, a long-range, and sturdy reliability. It was more than capable of getting from upstate New York to the Canadian Rockies in a hurry while still carrying a heavy load.
Pepper was in her Rescue armor. It was the same armor she wore in that last fight against Thanos and his army. So she was wearing it when Tony died.
The technician standing next to Pepper slipped the helmet onto Pepper's head and then double-checked the seal. He then gave Pepper a thumbs-up sign. A 'bing' in the helmet confirmed the technician's judgment.
Then a clicking sound notified Pepper that she had an in-coming signal.
It was from Happy.
"Waddya doing, Pepper?" Happy Hogan asked carefully. Pepper wasn't exactly his boss any longer, but back in the days when they were both subordinates for Tony, they'd learned to respect each other. That had never gone away and never would.
"A search-and-rescue job," Pepper replied laconically.
"This have something to do with that Raise guy?" Happy asked.
"Yes. Look, Happy, there's no point in worrying. I'll do an overflight and use the suit's sensors to see if anything turns up. If I find anything, I'll vector in the helicopter to do a pick-up. I don't plan on ever setting foot on the ground."
Happy sighed. "Okay, but don't get your hopes too high. Canada is a big place."
"I need to try," Pepper said. Unspoken were the words, "Tony would have wanted this."
"I know. Good luck," Happy finished.
Then the communication ended. There wasn't much else to say.
Back in New York, Happy began making calls. He rousted Stark Industries' west-coast S&R team and got them moving. Then he began calling politicians. All of a sudden, the Canadian government and military became extremely interested in a missing light aircraft. And some very expensive satellites and drones deviated from their normal missions and began focusing on a rugged stretch of the Canadian Rockies.
Back in the helicopter, Pepper nodded at the crew-chief.
The crew-chief was wearing a massive set of cold-weather gear and had a safety harness attached around his upper body. He waved the armor-technician back into the crew compartment, performed a hands-on check of the Rescue armor that an outsider would have found startlingly intimate, and then lowered the back ramp of the helicopter. After that, he actually sketched a ponderous bow towards Pepper as a frozen wind ripped through the cargo compartment.
Pepper took a dozen steps and began free-falling down towards a snow-covered forest.
They combed the path listed on the missing plane's flight plan. It was tedious but the specialized sensors in the Rescue armor sped up the process.
Hours passed. And then something popped up on Pepper's HUD.
"Ma'am, what are you seeing?" the chopper pilot asked in surprise. He had a link to what the Rescue armor was "seeing".
The co-pilot immediately began radioing in their coordinates.
"It's a metallic signature about the right size and configuration for a Piper Bushmaster," Pepper answered as she double-checked her sensor readings.
Then there was a pause. "I think it tried to land, but it ended up sliding underneath a stand of trees and into a ravine. There's a good reason the plane wasn't found - it's almost completely hidden."
"Any heat signatures?" the pilot asked after a pause.
"No," Pepper replied flatly.
"Shit," the co-pilot muttered under his breath.
It was possible - just barely - that if someone was holed up in the wrecked aircraft and wrapped in multiple layers of blankets and sleeping bags, they could still be alive, yet still not visible to thermal imaging. The odds were way against that, but Pepper knew she had to check it out.
So much for not setting foot on the ground, but Pepper knew that plans sometimes changed.
Snow was still falling, but it wasn't quite a blizzard anymore as Pepper descended on her boot and hand jets through a dense layer of pine boughs, dodging tree trunks as she dropped. Her jets kicked up a flurry of snow until she finally landed. The ravine that the crumpled wreck of the aircraft was lying in was steep-sided and studded with savagely sharp granite. Both wings had been torn loose from the aircraft and the fuselage was twisted and broken open.
Actually, Pepper was surprised that the aircraft wasn't in even worse shape.
On foot, trying to be careful as she worked her way into the downed aircraft's wreckage, Pepper was surprised to find nobody in the debris.
"The hell?" she muttered to herself.
"Ma'am?", the helicopter pilot replied.
Pepper picked up a snow-covered book and shook the snow off. It was a children's book and it took her a second to figure out that it was the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
"There's nobody in the wreck," Pepper radioed back.
However, the luggage in the aircraft had been torn open. And there was no heavy clothing to be found.
Actually, some of the sensor technology in the Rescue armor was better than Tony and Rhodey's more combat-oriented equipment. Her gear was intended for a different sort of mission.
Pepper scanned a wider area around the crash. Further up-slope, she found a body that she assumed was the pilot, dead and half-buried in blowing show. Pepper winced as she examined the scavenged corpse. He'd apparently been pitched from the plane as it crashed and it looked like most of his bones were shattered.
At least his end had been quick.
Pepper cleared enough snow away from the body to determine that he wasn't wearing a coat or jacket. Of course, it was possible that he hadn't been wearing it while piloting his plane, but small aircraft weren't noted for stringently efficient cockpit heating. And there was something about how the pilot's body was laid out. It looked to Pepper like the pilot had perhaps been wearing a coat, but it had been pulled from his body.
"Ma'am?" the pilot returned. "The Canadians turned up a recent picture of Mrs. Langtry and her little girl and just forwarded it to us."
Something in the pilot's voice suggested to Pepper that he had a very low opinion of the governmental crash investigation so far.
A display in Pepper's helmet flicked on and displayed a picture of a youngish woman and a child. They were standing together on a beach and had broad grins on their faces as they loomed over an ambitious-looking, but slightly crooked, sandcastle. A text box identified the mother as Sarah Langtry. Her daughter was named Lucy.
Pepper focused on the little girl. She had dirty-blond hair, a pert nose, and a wide mouth.
"Here's hoping that Goldilocks didn't run into the three bears," Pepper muttered.
"Ma'am?" the pilot asked.
"Nothing, Sam. I found the pilot - he's dead. But there's no sign of the woman or the girl. I think they walked away from the crash. I'm going to widen the search pattern."
"Uh, ma'am, we're running low on fuel..."
"Head back. Search and rescue has another chopper on the way. They can back me up."
"Yes, ma'am."
The weather was breaking and the sun actually appeared. But just by looking west, Pepper could tell that was temporary. Another front was on the way.
But that was an opportunity and Pepper took it. She rocketed up to three-thousand feet - just below the lowest of the fast-moving clouds - and scanned the area with everything from a CIA-quality telescopic motion-sensor to her bare eyes.
She saw something. A dark figure was moving from one stand of conifers to another. Using optical magnifiers, she could more clearly make out her target. It was on two legs, but seemed top-heavy. The general shape and the body language suggested a man-like figure that was carrying something heavy. Thermal sensors indicated that it was trailing a warm liquid.
Putting her jets into stealth mode, Pepper began to slowly descend.
Then the moving figure paused. It seemed to lean back and look up at her. It was impossible, but Pepper knew she'd been spotted.
The figure vanished behind a tall outcrop of rock.
Nobody was present when Pepper arrived at the location where she'd last seen the moving figure. Instead, there were just tracks and a blood trail. The spoor led into a wild stand of pines and underbrush that circled a rocky ridge.
Pepper scanned the rocks and trees, but couldn't 'see' anything. That was both alarming and worrisome. Offhand, Pepper could only assume that her target was now hidden behind the rock.
The tracks were those of a barefoot human. They were also vaguely masculine, but small enough to have been made by a teenager. Pepper stared at them for some time, trying to understand what she was seeing. There had been no mention of a boy or young man being involved in the crash.
Pepper crouched down, deployed a sniffer probe from one of her gauntlets, and touched it to the narrow stream of frozen blood.
The probe reported that the blood was from a deer.
Pepper let out a long and relieved breath. She'd feared that the blood would be human.
But one thing was obvious. Whoever Pepper was following, he was a hunter.
The tracks broke up when they entered the trees, but by linking a pattern sensing program with her helmet sensor array, Pepper was able to determine the difference between actual tracks and disturbed snow that had been blown from nearby tree-boughs.
On foot, Pepper entered the tree-line.
In a space sheltered by trees, scrub, and boulders, Pepper found where the deer had been butchered. Meat had been taken from the creature's legs and flanks. The rest had been thrown up into a tree, to keep it reasonably safe from scavengers.
Pepper considered that. Then she opened her helmet. The cold wind was like a slap in the face, but she got what she wanted.
Somewhere off in the trees she could smell a wood fire. And also the scent of cooking meat.
Pepper followed her nose. Eventually, she determined that the fire was coming from a brush-covered overhang. Pinging the area with ground-penetrating radar, she determined that the overhang led into a cave.
Pepper re-secured her helmet, took a deep breath, and ducked under the overhang and into the cave.
Inside the cave, Pepper found the people she was looking for.
"Hello?" a woman's voice called out tremulously. "Who's there?"
Pepper could make out two heavily bundled forms - one larger than the other - by a combination of faint and flickering firelight and the thermal signature of their bodies.
Some freshly-cut wooden skewers, loaded with venison, were suspended over the fire. The smell was already mouth-watering.
"Miss Langtry?" Pepper said from just inside the cave mouth. "I'm from Stark Industries. I'm wearing a set of search-and-rescue gear that might look scary, but I'm here to help."
Then Pepper stepped into the firelight. After that, she turned her helmet light to its lowest setting. The dimly-lit cave interior became more illuminated. Pepper saw a single woman and a young girl, clad in a motley assemblage of heavy clothes.
Pepper didn't open her helmet - whatever it was that had brought food to the cave might still be around. However, she couldn't see any sign of anyone else. On the other hand, she had all of her sensor systems set to 'early warning'.
The woman understood what was worrying Pepper.
"He's not here," she said. "He went deeper into the cave. I think there's a way out from there."
"Who is he?" Pepper asked.
The woman shook her head. "He didn't say. But he doesn't talk much. He's... well... he's some kind of wild-man."
"He's not a bigfoot," the little girl piped up, her voice sounding very sure. "I asked him and he said he wasn't. And anyway, his feet really aren't that big."
Pepper stayed with the woman and the girl until the S&R helicopter showed up.
Once she got her charges bundled aboard the chopper, Pepper went airborne. She quartered the area and did a careful scan.
She found nothing. Whoever had helped the woman and her daughter was simply gone.
Late the next day, back in New York, Pepper received a deeply grateful call from Mr. Raise. He was obviously delighted to have his child and grandchild home and safe.
A few hours later, Happy showed up at Pepper's office and Pepper told him what happened.
"This guy who helped the girls..." Happy asked hesitantly. "What's the deal with him?"
Pepper shrugged helplessly. "Mrs. Langtry said he was almost naked when they first saw him. Except for some strange equipment. The last time she saw him, he was wearing a blood-soaked deer hide and nothing else."
A smile came over Pepper's face. "Lucy - she's the little girl - thinks we should send him some clothes. She and her mom had a fight about that when we got home."
Happy didn't smile - once a security man, always a security man.
Pepper leaned over and tapped her keyboard. A rotating holographic image appeared in mid-air. It showed a bulky silver helmet that would have encompassed a man's entire head and face, allowing him to see out only via a red-tinted plexiglass slit. There was also a belt-like conglomeration fitted with miscellaneous electronic equipment.
"This is what he was wearing when he ran into Mrs. Langtry and her daughter," Pepper said. "I found it dropped near the cave."
Happy raised an eyebrow at what he was seeing.
"R&D is taking a look at it," Pepper added. "They say the helmet could definitely do brain scans and transmit the data. It also has the ability to inflict pain or cause a soporific effect by direct electrical stimulation of the brain. And it might even be able to project virtual-reality scenarios to the wearer. The rest is tracking and telemetry gear. It's fairly sophisticated and they think it was being used for some kind of human testing. Dr. Hanover doesn't like the look of it. He says the person wearing it most likely wasn't a volunteer."
Happy frowned thoughtfully at the still-rotating image, "Do we know who built it?"
"Not yet."
The strange helmet and other equipment vanished a few days later. Happy had a fit and damn near tore apart the R&D department, but there was no trace of the missing gear. Eventually, a frustrated Happy just had to admit to Pepper that whoever stole the equipment was really good at what they did.
Time passed. Days turned into weeks, and then into months. Spring came and Pepper sometimes found herself thinking about the deep winter of northern Canada. She usually shivered whenever she did.
She also sometimes had nightmares where she was running through snow-covered woods. There was something close behind her as she floundered in the snow, but she couldn't see what it was.
Then, one day, Pepper went home and found her daughter sitting at the kitchen table, using a needle and thread to mend a rag-doll. That surprised Pepper since Morgan had never shown an interest in that sort of thing.
Morgan had a look of intense concentration on her face as she worked a needle through the tattered shoulder joint of the doll.
"Where did you get this?" Pepper asked as she sat next to her daughter. The doll was made of cloth and buttons and resembled something from a now-vanished time. Pepper could imagine a farm-wife in a wooden cabin, working on the doll by candle-light as her husband and children slept.
"It came in the mail," Morgan replied offhandedly. "Don't worry - Karl said it passed the security scan. But it needed some fixing."
Then she handed Pepper a scrap of notepaper. "This came with the doll."
It was a note written in pencil. The handwriting was simple and blocky, but legible.
I read: "The kid - her name's Lucy - left this back in the cave. Could you see she gets it back?"
Pepper frowned, accessed the kitchen's security station, and had a quick talk with the security team. There was no indication of any trouble.
"Do you know who sent it?" Morgan asked curiously.
Pepper looked at the torn-open package the doll had arrived in. There was no return address. The box was something you might scavenge from somebody's trash, the wrapping paper was a re-purposed paper bag, and the address was written in pencil and in the same plain hand as the letter.
Pepper made a mental note to send the packaging to the lab, but she didn't hold out much hope that they would find anything useful.
"I think I saw him once," Pepper told Morgan. "But we didn't meet. And we never had a chance to talk."
"Is he Lucy's friend?"
Pepper smiled at her daughter. "Yes, I think he is."
"Will we ever meet him?"
Pepper hesitated before answering. "You know, I have a feeling that someday we will."
Morgan smiled at that.
Several days later, Pepper spent the afternoon shoveling compost. It wasn't exactly a glamorous job, but it had to be done. And Pepper made a point of taking care of things like that on her property.
Eventually, she realized that she was being watched. She really didn't know how she knew that. She just knew. And she wondered if it had been decided that she should know.
Pepper jammed her spade into the compost pile and wiped the sweat from her face with her work gloves. She was wearing jeans, a simple shirt, and a pair of work boots.
"Hello!" she called out into the woods.
There was no reply.
"Everything's fine," Pepper continued. "Sarah and Lucy are okay. We got the doll back to Lucy. She worries about you."
Nothing.
"I'm worried about you, too," Pepper added. "My security people don't know about you. But it's only a matter of time till they spot you. And when they do, they'll try to do their jobs."
This time, the silence that surrounded her seemed somehow amused.
"Okay," Pepper conceded, "maybe you really are that good. But I don't want anyone getting hurt. So either come out into the open and say 'hello' or go away. This is creepy."
There was still no response.
Shaking her head and muttering to herself, Pepper finished her chore. Then she went back inside the house. Was it possible that she was imagining it all?
Apparently not. Someone had made Pepper a glass of lemonade. It was on the kitchen table. And a clean towel was draped over one of the chairs.
The lemonade was a little bitter but delicious. Pepper used the towel to wipe the sweat from her face and hair.
Pepper rinsed the empty glass and put it in the sink. Then she wrapped the towel around her shoulders as she glanced at the picture of Tony and Peter that was on a shelf near the sink.
In the window just above the sink, Pepper caught a flicker of motion.
"Hello," a gruff voice said from behind her.
Pepper turned carefully. The light-weight armored cuff on her wrist seemed suddenly heavier than normal. The cuff was both a weapon and a communicator. Hopefully, she wouldn't need it.
There was a man standing on the far side of the kitchen table. He was short, stocky, and muscular, with dark and oddly swept-back hair. His clothes - jeans and a flannel shirt - were rumpled and not terribly clean. He had piercing brown eyes and was oddly handsome, but in those eyes, Pepper saw something that seemed both haunted and very dangerous.
"Hello," Pepper said softly. "My name's Pepper. What's yours?"
"Sorry," the man replied with what seemed like genuine regret. "I don't remember a lot and I don't know my name. And I... I'm not good at pretending to be human. Not yet."
Pepper nodded. "If you're here about Sarah and Lucy..." she began.
The man interrupted her. "You said they were okay."
Pepper licked her lips. "Sarah says they wouldn't have made it without you. You got them to shelter, built them a fire, and found food for them."
The man shrugged restlessly.
"I was lost," he told Pepper. "I escaped from a place where people hurt me. I killed them all while getting out. Then I wandered around - hunting and hiding. After a few weeks of that, I smelled something on the wind. It was gasoline and oil and fear. I followed the scent and found a plane that had just crashed. There were people in it - a woman and a kid. I was going to kill and eat them ... but then I didn't. Everything was crazy and... and... didn't make sense. But when I saw those two, it was like the sun. They were lost. Just like me. So I helped them instead of killing them."
Pepper nodded slowly.
"I'm scaring you, aren't I?" the man added. He seemed disappointed by that fact.
Pepper paused before she answered. Then she said, "Yes. But you do make a pretty good glass of lemonade."
The faintest smile possible appeared on the man's face. "Sorry. I'm leaving now and won't come back. Oh, those gizmos you have that watch out for trespassers? They don't work - you can just walk around them. Get dogs instead. I think maybe shepards. They fight to the end to protect their people. I've seen that."
"I'll keep that in mind," Pepper said.
Then the man seemed to sniff the air.
"Your kid is back," he told Pepper.
Pepper's eyes flicked towards the window, where she could see a car entering the graveled parking lot. Fear lanced through her at the thought of Morgan being present at the same time as her... visitor.
But when Pepper looked back from the window, the stranger was gone.
"Jesus Christ," Pepper swore quietly.
The stranger was right about one thing. The best security equipment money could buy simply didn't seem to work against him.
The two German Shepherds that Pepper bought were just out of puppyhood and were lean, smart, and alert. They were polite and friendly with Pepper, but they utterly adored Morgan and she loved them back. It was obvious to Pepper that anything trying to hurt Morgan would have to do it over their dead bodies.
Pepper named them Tony and Peter.