A/N: This is a long chapter, but it didn't really make sense to split it up so here ya go.
HYDRA Base, Iceland
Agent Paul Wilmslow stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking down from an upper metal gantryway as the Soldier was cleaned up by the med techs below.
The Soldier had already been debriefed. It was mission protocol to debrief him before the wipe - a protocol from the 90s apparently, when not getting sufficient details at the end of a mission before wiping had led to some confusion about the outcome of one of the targets.
Wilmslow cocked his head. Hadn't been a problem since, as far as he knew. Occasionally the Soldier seemed discomfited, or confused, but that was solved easily enough with a quick command, and then the use of the machine. And the Soldier had done his job perfectly today.
One of their agents had decided to turn traitor. The Soldier got to the man before he could do any real damage, but he may have let slip the base location. So they were preparing to completely vacate the base, once they wiped the Soldier and got him loaded in the cryogenic transport chamber. A precaution, but one they would have to take for the safety of HYDRA.
The Soldier sat straight-backed and dead-eyed as the med techs ran a quick decontamination cycle. He had returned with his metal hand covered in blood, but that had been cleaned away. He was bare chested, with wires connected to his temples and chest to read his vitals and in preparation for the machine. Wilmslow peered into the Soldier's face, partially concealed by his mop of dark hair. There was nothing there - no hint of a thought at all behind those eyes, only grim resolve to comply.
"Prepare the machine," Wilmslow called down, and the med techs nodded. One of them held up a rubber mouth guard and the Soldier took it into this mouth without even looking at it.
Honestly. Wilmslow understood the need for protocol, but he didn't understand why his superiors were so anxious about the Soldier, sometimes. He crossed his arms as the Soldier leaned back in the chair while the device's arms cranked down, his face blank and his eyes almost glassy.
It wasn't like the Soldier was a man.
November 7, 2009
"Alright, the camera's rolling."
Maggie sat on the main workbench, her hair tied up and away from her face with an orange scrunchie, and her hand hovering over the big red button that would shut down all the power to the machinery strapped to Tony's body.
Tony stood in the center of the workshop on the floor mat, his arms and feet completely encased in machinery. The arc reactor glowed brightly on his chest.
He cleared his throat. "Alright, Day 11, test… what number test are we on, Margarita?" he glanced over.
She checked their log. "37."
"Test 37, configuration 2.0. For lack of a better option, Dum-E is still on fire safety." Tony glared over at the robot, and Maggie smiled behind her hand. Tony pointed. "If you douse me again, and I'm not on fire, I'm donating you to a city college." Dum-E let out a low whistle, but then his claw turned to Maggie. She shook her head reassuringly.
Tony widened his stance. "Alright, nice and easy…"
"It better be," Maggie said under her breath, her hand over the button.
Tony glanced over at her. "Easy with that, I feel like you're hovering by my hospital bed waiting to turn off the life support."
She wiggled her fingers over the button menacingly, and he rolled his eyes.
"Seriously," he said, then faced forward. "Just gonna start off with 1% thrust capacity."
Maggie eyed their math, completely digitized and run through several checking programs to be sure. She could see J.A.R.V.I.S. working through the repulsor computer program, setting the power limits.
Then Tony counted down, quicker than Maggie was ready for, and there was the familiar powering-up whine, followed by-
She flinched, expecting another violent explosion of sound and movement. There was a roar, and the white light of Tony's four repulsors pierced her retinas, but… Tony didn't explode backwards into the wall. His feet lifted off the ground and he wobbled, his arms flying out to steady himself, but then he hovered there. In midair.
Maggie's jaw dropped.
Tony teetered in midair, repulsors flaring, keeping him aloft and steady. He hovered just a few feet off the ground. Flying.
After a few seconds J.A.R.V.I.S. scaled down the power again, and Tony came back to earth with a skid of orange sparks. He wobbled again, but kept upright. "Okay," he breathed. His wide eyes met Maggie's.
Dum-E whirred, and Tony turned around. "Please don't follow me around with it either, because I feel like I'm going to catch on fire spontaneously."
Maggie wiped sweat off her brow and checked J.A.R.V.I.S.'s readings on the computer screen. "Okay, this is working."
Tony's eyes flicked back over her. "And again, let's bring it up to 2.5."
J.A.R.V.I.S. made the calculations, and Maggie ran her eye over them.
"Three, two, one-"
Maggie was ready for it the second time around. Tony's repulsors fired up and he lifted off the ground, steadier, a stream of exhaust and sparks raining down. He rose higher than last time and bent his knees to compensate. His arms drifted down and he slid over to the left in midair, toward the camera. He adjusted, arms flailing, and the boots made miniature adjustments as J.A.R.V.I.S. calculated Tony's balance.
Tony turned, his hair dripping with sweat, and suddenly went hovering backwards off the digital mat and over to the mouth of the driveway.
"Tony!" Maggie called.
"Okay, this is where I don't want to be," he gritted out, his knees bent and his arms flung wide. He veered through midair, unable to halt his momentum, until-
Maggie reached up to grip her hair. "Not the cars!"
But Tony had lost control. His repulsors roaring with jet exhaust as he hovered over the top of the first silver Audi, and Maggie glanced down at her power off button. "Not the car, not the car," he winced. "Yikes."
But Maggie abruptly forgot about the cars when Tony continued careening across the workshop - right toward her. When he roared over the first worktable, sending loose papers flurrying up into the air, her eyes widened. But he and his flaring repulsors just got ever closer.
She scrambled off her table and ducked away, crying out. "Don't come near me with that thing!" She felt the heat of the repulsors on her arm and danced away, hiding behind a table.
"Get out of the way, Magnet!" Tony called as he roared overhead.
She peered over the edge of the table she'd hidden behind, her last line of defense, just as Tony flung up both hands in front of him, halting his momentum.
They both let out a breath.
Then Tony went hovering back in the other direction, kicking up loose papers again. But he'd started moving his hands to direct himself, moving in a slightly straighter line. He laughed nervously as he hovered over U with the camera.
"Could be worse! Could be worse!" he called over the roar of the repulsors. "We're fine!"
Wobbling and grimacing, Tony directed himself back over the floor mat and somehow pulled it all together: he drew his arms steady and firm by his sides and straightened, and his wild careening came to a halt. For a few moments he turned slowly on the spot. Maggie looked up from behind her arms.
J.A.R.V.I.S. powered down the repulsors again and Tony slowly came down to earth, landing with a stagger.
Without the roar of the repulsors, everything else in the workshop seemed very loud: Tony's heaving breaths, Dum-E's low whine, and Maggie's heartbeat thundering in her ears.
Tony told off Dum-E again, for good measure, then looked back over and spotted Maggie as she rose from behind a worktable.
"Yeah," he said, eyes glinting. "I can fly."
Maggie grinned.
A week later, everything was in place for their first major test. Not for a single part of the suit, or a repulsor check, but a test of the first fully-made metal armor. It came together quite quickly once they were sure of their designs. Dum-E, U, and the automated assembly line that Maggie had built helped to manufacture the plating to cover the complex exoskeleton of wiring they had built, turning it into… something more. Maggie's fingers slid over sleek metal plates and intricate joints as they pieced it all together.
But she had yet to see the finished model. That's what the test was for: a full assembly to make sure every piece of the whole worked together, not hooked up to any external power or computers, but as a single unit. It had been a mess of external wiring and remote control through computers for so long that the idea of putting it all together was daunting. Maggie knew she'd miss her big red button. The final test would be uploading J.A.R.V.I.S. to the suit.
Pepper seemed to sense a different energy in Tony and Maggie when she visited that morning to drop them off breakfast burritos. She eyed them suspiciously. "What are you up to?"
"Probably just another day in the workshop," Maggie said evenly. Like today wouldn't be the culmination of all their efforts.
Pepper's eyes narrowed. "Is this about that blaster thing you were making?"
"It's not a blaster," Tony said through a mouth full of food.
Pepper turned on Maggie. "You're not working on something crazy, are you? Nothing's going to blow up?"
"Nothing will blow up," Maggie reassured her. "I've checked like, eight times to make sure that won't happen."
Pepper did not look reassured.
They did final checks and last minute wiring the rest of the day until finally, at sundown, all the pieces were in place. The assembly robots bristled with glinting silver metal, and a metal face plate lay face down on the worktable.
Maggie eyed Tony's determined face as she helped him slide on the armpieces. They still had to do the base parts by hand, which made Tony tense and jittery. "You ready for this?"
She was 99% sure that nothing would go wrong, but if something did… it would probably result in severe bodily harm for Tony. She'd never heard of assembly robots putting machinery on a person before.
Tony shot her a look. "I have done this before, you know." He flexed his fingers in the armpieces.
Right. Maggie chewed the inside of her cheek as she closed the last fastener with a click. "I know. I haven't, though." She stepped back, running her eyes over Tony. "You're ready."
Tony eyed Maggie, oil stained and tousle-haired, her face illuminated by the arc reactor. The teasing glint in his eyes faded. "Hey. Thank you."
She cocked her head. "What for?"
He gestured, making machinery whir. "For all of it. For staying. For helping. For… getting it. Why I'm doing this."
She met his eyes, touched. Tony wasn't one for solemn moments. "Thanks for coming back."
He nodded, then took a breath. "Alright, let's do this."
Maggie nodded once. "You stand there" - she pointed to the marked-out spot between the assembly robots - "and be still." He obeyed, keeping his feet shoulder distance apart and holding his arms out from his sides. Sweat glistened on his brow.
Maggie paced behind the computer array, double-checked Tony's positioning, and then eyed the lines of code before her. She let out a breath. "Okay. J.A.R.V.I.S., run it."
Half a second later the assembly robots whirred to life.
After so many days and weeks working on this, Maggie almost expected the process to take a while. But she and Tony had done their job well, and all in all the assembly only took about a minute. First two yellow arms pressed down and slotted chrome metal armor over the boots on Tony's feet - the plates slid cleanly over the inner frame, clicking and whirring into place. Tony didn't scream in pain, which Maggie took as a good sign.
Her eyes flicked up, to where the upper part of the assembly bot pressed the chest piece, back, and arms against Tony's body, smaller telescopic arms sliding out to screw in the elbow and shoulder pieces with a buzzing whir. Maggie stared from behind the computers as plating slid into place, almost fluid.
A second later the assembly bots retreated, leaving Tony almost wholly shrouded by metal, save for his face. Tony's eyes flicked over to Maggie, glinting, and then he reached for the metal mask on the table.
"J.A.R.V.I.S., you there?" Tony asked as he pressed the mask to his face. Like the rest of the armor it fit cleanly, sliding in with a hiss.
Maggie didn't hear what J.A.R.V.I.S. said in reply because the mask closed over Tony's face, but he must have said something, because like something coming to life, the mask's eyes lit up.
For a few moments, Tony stood completely still. Maggie could guess what was going on inside that helmet: the HUD coming to life, flooding in with data on the suit and the surroundings, and J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice.
Maggie didn't have any of that. She had… for a moment, it almost felt as if Tony had disappeared and left her in the workshop with this gleaming metal man.
He stood tall, plated in silver, with glowing blue eyes, a grim metal mouth, and the bright glow of the arc reactor. And it was… once of the most brilliant things Maggie had ever seen. The suit was almost otherworldly, an intricate artwork of machinery and metal.
Not a weapon. A shield.
"Alright, what do you say?"
Maggie flinched at the sound of Tony's voice, amplified and distorted by the helmet.
"I have indeed been uploaded, sir," J.A.R.V.I.S. said evenly, out loud for Maggie's benefit. "We're online and ready."
Maggie's stunned face broke into a grin.
"Can we start the virtual walk around?" Tony asked. He sounded much steadier than Maggie felt.
"Importing preferences and calibrating virtual environment."
Tony turned slightly, the metal clanking, until he faced Maggie. She looked into those glowing blue eyes and didn't know what her own face showed him. Tony raised his arms. "Well?"
She opened and closed her mouth a few times. "How does it feel?"
She could hear his smile when he answered: "Awesome."
She couldn't help her returning grin. "You're not done with the interface tests," she chided, mock-serious. "J.A.R.V.I.S., run the control surface check."
"As you wish."
Like a living beast stretching its muscles, Tony's armor rippled. First the plating on the boots shifted, sliding up and down, then flaring out, revealing the glowing blue mechanisms within. The knee plates were next, followed by the torso plates, smooth like a dozen origami folds, slotting together. The spinal column slid down and up beneath the aerodynamic flaps. Tony's arms rotated and the repulsors at his palm flared to life, glowing at his sides like fistfuls of light. Weaponry emerged from his arms for a moment so he bristled like an armory, before it all slid back beneath the smooth silver plating.
Maggie bounced on the balls of her feet. She couldn't see Tony's face but she could see him standing tall, shifting slightly with the movements of his armor. She wondered if he felt like she had, standing on that rooftop with her wings spread wide and black beside her. She wondered if he felt the power he'd made for himself. The potential.
But then:
"Test complete. Preparing to power down and begin diagnostics."
Maggie closed her eyes. She knew what she would do, and she definitely knew what Tony was about to do.
"Uh, yeah," he told J.A.R.V.I.S., "Tell you what, do a weather and ATC check, start listening in on ground control."
"Sir, there are still terabytes of calculations needed before an actual flight is-"
"J.A.R.V.I.S.," Tony chided. "Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk." His head turned, until those glowing eyes found Maggie again. "I'm not sorry about this."
She just shook her head at him. "Be careful."
"Ready?" he said, facing front again. "In three, two" - he took his stance, arms straight by his side - "One."
The repulsors flared to life with a steady roar, lifting him a foot off the ground. Maggie's breath caught in her chest and Tony leaned forward-
In the next second he had rocketed up the driveway, yelling, leaving the echo of rumbling engines in his wake.
Laughing, Maggie spun on her heel and dashed for the stairs, taking them three at a time until she burst out onto the roof of the mansion. The cool evening breeze whisked against her face as she turned, searching-
There. Tony was a glowing pinprick in the night sky, pinwheeling toward the city over the dark ocean. Maggie let out a whoop, grinning from ear to ear.
She wanted to spread her wings and soar up to fly with him, but… she didn't have her wings. And no one had seen them before, especially not Tony.
But his flight did look fun. She kept an eye on him until she could no longer distinguish him from the lights of the city, then took a seat on the roof, brushing her hair back. We really did it.
Her phone - or one of her phones, rather - pinged in her pocket. Still grinning, Maggie reached for it and pulled it out, squinting at the bright screen.
Her grin dropped from her face.
She'd had a search algorithm running for over a week now, using all the verifiable data from Aisha's intelligence to hunt for the Ten Rings holdout she'd been taken to. And the algorithm had finally isolated a viable location. Maggie eyed the coordinates, chewing the inside of her cheek, then closed the algorithm to go hunting down satellite imagery for the area. She found it soon enough, in the DoD database: a satellite had moved over the area a month ago.
On the tiny screen of her phone she isolated the coordinates and peered down, a virtual eye in the sky.
There. It didn't look like much - nearly impossible to distinguish if you weren't looking for it. But she spotted a narrow, winding dirt road in the mountains, leading to a hillside with shadowy pockmarks - caves? - and distorted, irregular shapes surrounding them. Maybe buildings. The imagery was too blurry to make out anything specific, but it was not a regular mountainside. She re-checked her search algorithm, running over the data it had collected on the site. Right geographical distance, right surroundings, and the algorithm had also picked up on intelligence reports of activity in the area, finding patterns over nearly a decade of intelligence from different agencies.
Maggie nodded to herself, eyes wide. The base Aisha was taken to. It's still there.
The Ten Rings.
J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice broke through her concentration. "Ms Stark, I have lost contact with Mr Stark. There was a buildup of ice and I believe the suit lost power."
Maggie shot to her feet, staring upwards. Her heart seemed to plummet. "Where is he?" She scanned the dark horizon. I don't have my wings. I don't have my wings, and Tony is falling. "We installed a parachute, didn't we?" That was certainly in the plans, but that had been Tony's job and they hadn't planned for him to be flying today-
"I have him," J.A.R.V.I.S. said, relief plain in his digital voice.
Maggie let out a shuddering breath and put her hand to her heart. A moment later she spotted Tony again, rocketing back to the mansion over the ocean. Maggie drank in the sight of the gleaming suit which grew larger and larger, trying to collect herself.
He soared up over the mansion, a glowing missile, before slowing and lowering down in front of Maggie, his eyes two tiny pinpricks of light. She walked over as he lowered to the rooftop, ready to yell at him.
"Kill power," she heard him tell J.A.R.V.I.S.
J.A.R.V.I.S. killed the power. Tony dropped, and plunged straight through the roof.
Maggie's jaw dropped and she ran over to peer down the hole he'd put in the roof. The sound of tinkling glass and car alarms blared up at her, and she squinted until she spotted Tony, two floors down, lying in the wreck of his blue sportscar. A moment later Dum-E turned and coated him with the fire extinguisher again, concealing him from view.
"Are you okay?" Maggie shouted down the hole.
Tony's helmeted head dropped back onto the car. "Yeah. I'm fine."
"You're an idiot!"
Maggie dragged Tony out of the armor and upstairs to the kitchen, where she made him an ice pack to put on his head, which he'd knocked against the back of the helmet. Tony wouldn't stop talking about his flight, but Maggie didn't mind. She let him talk while she gingerly poked at the bruise rising on his scalp, and checked his pupils for signs of concussion.
"Well, I suppose I'd better put a tarp over that hole in the roof in case it rains," Tony sighed. He stood up gingerly and looked down at her. "You coming?"
"I… I can't." She held his gaze. "I've got something to take care of. Somewhere to be." Aisha and her base in the mountains. Maggie itched at the mystery of it all, still seething at the people who'd taken her brother and confused about how they'd gotten Stark weapons. She could not ignore this key in her hunt.
Tony's face shuttered and he looked away. "Right. Of course."
She glanced up. "Tony, I'm not…" she sighed. "Don't do that."
"Do what? I'm not doing anything." He moved away, heading over to the hole in the floor with the pieces of shattered piano around it.
"Tony. I'm not leaving for good. I'm coming back."
He looked back. "You are?"
"Yes."
"But you won't tell me where you're going."
"I…" she opened and closed her mouth.
Tony waved a hand. "Forget I asked. You don't owe me any explanations, Maggie."
She shot to her feet and stormed over. Tony slid aside, walking into the kitchen as if he had pressing business there, but Maggie slid around him and got in his way until he looked at her. "Tony. You're my brother and I am going to come back. Probably in a day or two. I just… I can't tell you where I'm going. I'm sorry, but I can't." The armor wasn't ready, and neither was he. She could feel the Wyvern itching beneath her skin, ready to unfurl her wings.
Tony nodded slowly, then let out a breath. "Yeah, alright. Be careful though - if I'm a target for kidnapping then so are you. Maybe take Happy with you?"
She smiled, then leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. "I can take care of myself. But I'll promise to be careful if you promise to be safe about testing out the armor next time." She held out her hand.
After a few seconds, he shook her hand.
"J.A.R.V.I.S., you'll hold him to that promise, won't you?"
"I shall endeavour to, Ms Stark," J.A.R.V.I.S said in his ever-suffering tone.
Maggie met Tony's eyes. "See you soon."
Maggie chartered her own private jet. She'd already laid a trail of paperwork which would show anyone looking into her activities that she was headed to a private island in the Bahamas. But she set her flight computer for Pakistan - from there, she'd travel to the coordinates under her own steam.
As the jet's wheels lifted off the runway and she steered the jet up into the smoggy night sky, Maggie let out a long, slow breath. She had her Wyvern gear stashed in the bulkhead, and her computer processing further search algorithms while she flew.
After months of rest, the Wyvern was soaring back into the world. And Maggie didn't know quite yet what she planned to do.
Stark Mansion, California
Once he'd finished tidying up the hole in the roof, Tony made another icepack for his head and trudged back down to the workshop. There was a steady ache behind his eyes, and despite her reassurances he was worried that Maggie might never come back. Just when he'd thought they were getting somewhere, she'd taken off into the unknown again. He wished she would just trust him.
He kicked aside a rolling creeper board, then spotted a white mug sitting on a paper-wrapped box on his workbench. Picking up the mug, he eyed the coffee inside. It had a suspiciously shiny surface and the side of the mug was stone cold. Could've been there for days.
He paused, then glanced back at the box. A yellow post-it note on top read: From Pepper.
Frowning, Tony unwrapped the brown paper to reveal - a glass box. And inside, his old Arc Reactor. The one he'd told Pepper to destroy. She'd attached a metal rim that read: Proof that Tony Stark has a heart.
The heart in question thudded in his chest. Carefully, Tony tilted the box back so the glowing reactor seemed to gleam up at him.
Despite himself, a smile lifted on his face.
Kunar Province, Afghanistan
In a tent illuminated by fluorescent light Raza smoked a cigarette, watching his men put together pieces of dusty, charred metal armor.
Fayzabad, Afghanistan
Maggie didn't blend in very well in the small city in the mountainous northeast of Afghanistan, the closest city to her suspected Ten Rings base. But she was at least able to disguise herself so the locals believed her to be some nosy and stupid Westerner, instead of Margaret Stark.
She was perfectly happy to take her time with her questioning, until she spoke with a drunk former police officer in a bar. She spoke just enough Farsi to understand his dialect:
"There have been raids all the last few days, all along the northeast," he told her with a flap of his hand, when she asked about violence in the area. "Whoever it is, they must be gearing up for something big. Getting all the money and weapons they can."
Maggie frowned. Sometimes men like this talked big to show off. "How do you know?" she asked in her halting Farsi.
He peered blearily at her. "My cousin in Eshkashem called me just this morning to tell me they've been getting refugees from some raided village on the border. Took all the women, burned all the buildings." He shrugged one shoulder. "The usual."
Maggie's heartrate kicked up. "Who was it?"
He shrugged again. "Take your pick. Taliban, Al Qaeda. Though around these parts we mostly have the foreign group, the ones with the red flag."
Under the table, Maggie's hand clenched into a fist. She glanced out the bar window, where the setting sun bathed the city red. If the village raid had been early in the morning or last night, it was possible the culprits were still on the road. The roads around here were bad, winding through the mountains and ravines. It would take hours to get anywhere.
She turned her gaze back on the cynical ex-cop. "Tell me everything you know. Where was the village? When was it raided?"
He narrowed his eyes at her. "You sure ask a lot of questions."
"I do," she said firmly. "Give me the answers."
Stark Mansion, Malibu
Alone in his workshop, Tony closed his eyes at the cool feeling of the ice on his shoulder, soothing the ache from his recent ill-fated flight. The computer bay whirred around him, running calculations on the readings from the flight. The armor had done well. He and J.A.R.V.I.S. worked together on the issues he'd encountered, figuring that gold titanium might fix the icing problem.
But then the TV on the far wall switched over to a news report about Tony Stark's third annual benefit for the Firefighter's Family Fund.
Tony frowned. "J.A.R.V.I.S., we get an invite for that?"
"I have no record of an invitation, sir."
Tony picked up the face plate from the Mark II suit and flipped it over, considering it. He'd drawn some ideas in chalk on the surface. The blonde reporter on TV continued:
"The man himself has barely been seen in public since his bizarre and highly controversial press conference."
Tony pressed the deactivated mask to his face and peered through the eye holes as a still of himself at the press conference appeared on screen. Was this how people saw him? Injured, traumatised?
"Some claim he's suffering from posttraumatic stress and has been bedridden for weeks, being tended to by his sister. Whatever the case may be, no one expects an appearance from him tonight."
Huh.
"The render is complete," J.A.R.V.I.S. said, as if he could sense Tony's thoughts and wanted to distract him. The Mark III armor appeared on the closest screen, glimmering gold.
"A little ostentatious, don't you think?" Tony said, turning away from the TV.
"What was I thinking? You're usually so discreet."
Tony eyed his cars, landing on the one with the flame decals along the side. Now this was a suggestion that Maggie would tease him for. "Tell you what, throw a little hot-rod red in there."
"Yes, that should help you keep a low profile."
Turns out he didn't need Maggie here to get teased.
When J.A.R.V.I.S. was finished, Tony grinned.
"The render is complete."
"Yeah, I like it. Fabricate it. Paint it."
"Commencing automated assembly." This version of the armor wouldn't need him and Maggie painstakingly piecing each element together. They'd taught the assembly robots how to do it all. "Estimated completion time is five hours."
Tony checked his watch. Perfect. "Mhm. Don't wait up for me, honey."
Fayzabad, Afghanistan
After calculating travel times, Maggie isolated the cellphone and radio activity across a certain geographical area, until she zeroed in on a small stream of chatter that had to be a convoy of some kind. They were heading northeast, into the Tajik mountains. In the direction of her original coordinates.
Planning on the fly, Maggie grabbed some supplies from the Fayzabad market and then got ready behind an old warehouse. She pulled on her metal wingpack, gloves, and a pair of tinted welding goggles she'd stolen from Tony's workshop. She checked her phone, calculating, then activated her wingpack.
The wings spread dark and wide by her sides without a sound, seeming to absorb what light remained in the dusk air. Maggie flexed her hands, and the wings shivered in response.
For a brief moment she hesitated. What am I doing? She'd never done anything like this before. She never stepped into the unknown.
But then her jaw set and her head tipped back until she was looking up at the darkening sky. I promised Aisha.
More than that, she had already promised herself: she would find out more about the organisation which had stolen her brother and her company's weapons. And she would stop them.
She fired up her engines, a low whine behind the shopping centre, and kicked off the ground into the sky.
Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles
Cameras lit up the red carpet leading toward the hall as Tony appeared, wearing a tuxedo and a smile.
He found Obie halfway up the red carpet, being interviewed by a journalist.
"What's the world coming to when a guy's got to crash his own party?" Tony called, and Obie glanced over.
"Look at you," Obie laughed, though his brow had knotted. He looked Tony up and down, as if surprised to see him wearing anything other than jeans and a t-shirt. "Hey, what a surprise. Where's Maggie?"
"Better places to be, I guess," Tony said. "I'll see you inside." He moved to step past him.
But Obie turned to face him again. "Hey," he murmured. "Listen, take it slow, alright?" He brought his head close to Tony's and his voice dropped. "I think I got the board right where we want them."
"You got it," Tony promised. "Just cabin fever, I'll just be a minute." He peeled away again, eyes on the glittering Concert Hall. He didn't notice Obie looking after him with a frown.
Southern Tajikistan
It took Maggie an hour to find the convoy. She'd been able to fly in a straight line across the border, found the narrow back road she'd traced the radio activity to, and then followed it up until she found a convoy: three trucks and two armored cars chugging slowly up the narrow mountain road. The engines rumbled in the night air and two of the trucks were playing rock music - she could just hear it as she coasted above the convoy.
Silent in the air above the mountain road, Maggie wished she had heat sensors, so she could tell how many men she was dealing with. She wished she had a HUD like in Tony's armor. All she had was her eyes and her phone.
After following the convoy for a mile, Maggie eventually figured out which truck the captives were held in: the one at the front had a canvas cover, and after dipping down to peer through the back Maggie got a glimpse of a huddle of people - women, most likely. The drivers of the trucks and cars were all men, wearing khaki uniforms and bristling with weapons.
After another mile, Maggie had formulated her plan. As the convoy wound up to a more open section of road, she flew up behind the truck at the rear and slashed its back tire with a knife. The tire ruptured with a bang and the whole truck shuddered. Maggie banked out of sight, rising up against the rocky darkness of the mountainside.
As predicted, after some radio chatter the whole convoy came to a stop when the road widened out, the truck limping in at the end. They'd stopped on a rocky, scrubby outcrop on the mountainside where the wind whistled eerily through the air.
They kept their headlights on, and five men trudged back to the truck with the burst tire. The rest hopped out of their vehicles to stretch their legs and smoke.
Maggie's heart thundered as she dropped soundlessly down from the mountainside and crouched behind a jutting boulder. She waited a few seconds, listening for any shouts of alarm. But she heard nothing except the faint conversation from the men changing the tire at the end of the convoy, and the whistling wind.
Swallowing, she retracted her wings and pulled off her gloves and goggles, stuffing them in her jacket pocket. From her other pocket she pulled out a length of faded, embroidered fabric. She pulled the fabric over her head and body in the dark, tugging it down to cover her wingpack and arranging it around her face. This was a chador, the traditional head covering for Tajik women who lived on the northeast border of Afghanistan and Tajikistan. It didn't cover her face, but it would do for now.
With her disguise pulled on, hiding her flight clothes and wingpack, Maggie peeked out from behind her boulder. She was ten feet from the first truck in the convoy, the one with the captives. All of the men were on the other side of the trucks, where the headlights provided the most light, and Maggie hid in the darkness on the mountain side of the convoy. She craned her neck, but could not see anyone near the back of the truck. Why would there be? It's not like the women can go anywhere.
Maggie held her breath. Here goes nothing.
She darted out from behind her boulder and dashed for the open back of the truck, her footsteps sounding impossibly loud on the rocky ground. She set her hands on the edge of the flatbed truck and hurled herself into the gloom within, landing on her shoulder on the metal floor.
A collective gasp filled the inside of the truck at her abrupt arrival. Maggie struggled to her knees and tried to adjust to the darkness. She thought she counted sixteen women, all sitting together on the floor of the truck - there were no seats. They wore fabric headcoverings like her, their faces grimy and tear-stained. Several of them were bleeding from cuts to the face. They scrambled back from Maggie, staring, and she heard a sharply drawn breath as if someone was about to scream-
"Shhh," she breathed, pressing her finger to her lips as she looked back at the women. Thankfully no one screamed, but they all still stared at her.
Maggie glanced over her shoulder. No shouts of alarm, no weapons being armed. Her legs felt like jelly.
"Who are you?" Maggie knew enough Farsi to understand that, and looked up to meet the eyes of the woman who had asked the question. The woman's dark eyes were wide and fearful, and Maggie could make out a bruise forming on her cheekbone. She couldn't be older than forty, with tiny crows feet at the corners of her eyes.
"I'm here to help," Maggie whispered. The woman's eyes widened.
Before Maggie could think of anything else to say there were a few shouts from outside the truck, making her freeze. She reached down to her hip, where under the chador she'd stashed two guns and a knife. But then the truck engine came to life with a low roar, and the metal flatbed beneath her vibrated with it.
Moments later the convoy moved off again, with an extra passenger.
Maggie folded her legs beneath her and tried to steady her breathing, sitting with the other terrified women in the back of the truck. They stared at her like she was insane. And maybe she was.
Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles
Tony's head spun. Not from drink - no, his head spun from dancing with Pepper, the feeling of something slipping out from under him as they'd turned in a slow circle, hands clasped and her smile as she looked back at him.
And we're here, and I'm wearing this ridiculous dress, and then we were dancing like that, and then…
That impossible, glittering moment when they'd both been silent, angling toward each other. Tony had closed his eyes.
"I would like a drink, please," she'd said, and Tony had fled back here, to the bar, where he ordered two vodka martinis, one of them very dry with extra olives.
But then she showed up - the woman from the night before Afghanistan, the reporter. C… it definitely started with a C.
"Carrie?" he guessed.
"Christine."
"That's right."
"You have a lot of nerve showing up here tonight," she said with a smile. It was the sort of smile that made his muscles lock up. He realised he was physically leaning away. But then she quizzed him for his reaction, her questions growing increasingly more confusing, until she shoved a sheaf of photographs into his hand.
He glanced down. The one one top was a photograph of… a town, if he had to guess, half turned to rubble, with men standing on tanks wielding weapons. A slaughtered cow lay front and centre, bleeding into the sand.
"It's a town called Gulmira," Christine said. "Heard of it?"
It's actually a nice place, came the echo of Yinsen's voice. Tony flipped through the photos. Men carrying crates of weapons, gesturing with guns at the camera. His gut twisted, then twisted harder when he saw the logo on the crate of weapons. Stark Industries. He kept flipping until he landed on a photograph of a fully-assembled Jericho missile.
"When were these taken?" he said in a low voice he didn't recognize.
"Yesterday."
"I didn't approve any shipment," he said, meeting her gaze.
"Well your company did."
"Well I'm not my company," he shot back, fighting to keep his voice even.
Tony strode back through the crowd, past the glasses of champagne and the flashing camera bulbs, until he found Obie: still outside, shaking hands and smiling.
Tony grabbed his sleeve and pulled him aside. Obie waved off a nearby cameraman and turned on Tony with a look of consternation.
"Tony, what is it?"
"Have you seen these pictures?" he murmured, pressing the photographs into Obie's hand. Obie barely glanced down at them. "Huh? What's going on in Gulmira?"
"Tony," Obie sighed, pulling him further out of the public gaze. "You can't afford to be this naive."
Frustration boiled in his veins. "You know what? I was naive before, when they said here's the line, we don't cross it. This is how we do business." He leaned in, eyes burning as Obie just looked evenly back at him. "If we're double-dealing under the table… are we?"
Tony couldn't read Obie's eyes - they were dark, gleaming, but his face was utterly composed. After a moment, Obie gripped Tony's arm and turned slightly. "Let's take a picture, come on." Obie nodded at the nearby cameraman and smiled. "Picture time!"
His hand landed on Tony's shoulder.
Tony stared back at the cameramen, unable to muster up a smile, though Obie didn't seem to have any trouble since he grinned wide and white. He bent in to murmur in Tony's ear: "Tony. Who do you think locked you out?" Tony went still. "I was the one who filed the injunction against you."
Tony's breath seemed so loud in his ears.
"It was the only way I could protect you," Obie murmured. Then he clapped Tony on the shoulder once, and walked off.
Tony stood still as a statue on the red-carpeted steps, staring at Obie as he walked off to the line of cars.
Stark Mansion, California
Back in the workshop, Tony sat adjusting the wiring on the newly-fabricated arm piece, watching the news coverage of the violent takeover in Gulmira.
"... Recent violence has been attributed to a group of foreign fighters referred to by locals as the Ten Rings."
Tony clenched his fist in the armpiece, then got to his feet.
"With no political will or international pressure, there's very little hope for these refugees."
As the reporter kept talking, describing families torn apart and villages ransacked, Tony raised his arm. The repulsor in his palm glowed, fuelled by the arc reactor in his chest. Almost unconsciously, he fired it up.
The repulsor whined and then erupted, firing a bolt of energy that rocketed across the workshop and knocked down a light fitting in a shower of sparks. Tony's arm bounced back from the recoil and his eyes widened.
When the ringing in his ears faded he heard the TV again: "A child's simple question: 'Where are my mother and father?' There's very little hope for these refugees. Refugees who can only wonder who, if anyone, will help."
Tony glanced sideways, at the plate glass wall where his own reflection looked back at him: a man with shadows under his eyes and a glowing circle in his chest. By his side, the repulsor powered up. He flung his hand up and fired at the window, not flinching when it shattered into a thousand pieces. He turned, aiming, and fired on the next plate of glass, then the next. With a pile of shattered glass on the floor and his heartbeat thundering in his ears, Tony paced steadily to his worktable.
"J.A.R.V.I.S., you said Mark III is ready?"
"Yes sir, but I-"
"Start up the assembly."
South Tajikistan Mountain Range
They drove until the sun came up, and Maggie's legs went numb underneath her. When they finally came to a halt and the engine turned off, she let out a shaky breath and tried to regain feeling in her legs. She'd need it. The other women whispered amongst themselves, peering out the back of the truck and occasionally glancing at Maggie, then yelped when an armed and uniformed man appeared and shouted at them.
His voice was too harsh for Maggie to understand the rapid Farsi, but the intent was clear - he opened the back of the truck and jerked his machine gun at them, gesturing for them to climb out.
Shaking, the women obeyed. Maggie kept her head down as she climbed out in the middle of the pack, feeling gravel crunch beneath her boots. She stumbled slightly, then blinked in the dawn light and looked around.
The base was set into the mountainside, a collection of tin buildings and tents arranged on the flattest area, around a set of cave entrances: Maggie counted four entrances, reinforced by concrete. There was no way to tell how large the cave system inside was. A fleet of trucks, tanks, and armored cars lay to the right, and there was an outdoor mess area to the left where Maggie counted over twenty men sitting at metal tables eating breakfast. The place was a bustling hive of activity.
Her stomach sank. What have you gotten yourself into, Maggie? This base was much larger than she had been expecting. And this was just one part of the Ten Rings' operations in the region, if her ex-cop confidant was to be believed.
The other women seemed stunned by the scale of the base, too. They'd gone quiet, staring around.
The soldiers from their convoy were busy with the other two trucks, unloading the things they'd stolen from the village, while the others stalked off into the buildings and tents of the base, stretching their legs and greeting their comrades. One of these comrades walked out of a tent a few yards away and Maggie caught a glimpse of the interior before he closed the flap behind him: inside lay stacks of weapons crates. Her gut churned.
Only two soldiers seemed focused on the huddle of terrified women. And it was clear they'd done this before; when the last woman, a girl no older than twenty, stumbled from the back of the truck, they gestured their guns and barked a sharp command, directing them up toward the closest cave entrance. When the women didn't move quick enough the soldier on the left, a grizzled man with a nose that looked like it had once been broken, shouted at them, making the women flinch and hurry off. Maggie moved with them.
The women were crying again, shaking and clutching each other's hands as they paced up the gravel path towards the cave. Pale morning light streamed down on them, illuminating their dirty and bloodstained clothes. Maggie didn't know what the women made of her, but they huddled around her, so she was easily able to keep her face downturned.
Maggie peered around as they walked, making a mental map of the sprawl of buildings and tents, trying to guess at their function. She saw tents for sleeping, a few more weapons caches, store sheds, and even a medic tent. One of the sheds had a red flag mounted over it, flapping in the breeze: crossed sabres, circled by ten black rings.
I found them.
The grey rock of the mountainside seemed to loom up before them, and then the temperature dropped as they passed into the cave. Fluorescent lights were fixed to the low ceiling, painting everything a sickly white.
Maggie and the women trudged up the cave corridor, led by one guard while the other held his gun at their backs. Maggie suspected that most of this cave system had been blown out of the rock, from the jagged appearance of the walls. They passed a few other soldiers as they walked, who merely cast sneering glances at them. To the men in this base, these women were just another product stolen from a defenseless village: items to be taken, and then sold on.
A feeling mounted in Maggie's chest, expanding, putting pressure on her heart. Her skin prickled.
They took a few turns through the cave system before they approached a corridor with a room at the end. A room blocked off by a door made of metal bars. Beyond the bars there wasn't much to the circular, windowless room - just a few tattered blankets and a chamber pot. Maggie could see how this worked: the women would be shut up in that cage until another convoy was readied to take them to a slave market. Just as Aisha had told her.
As they drew close to the cage, a thrill ran down Maggie's spine.
You've seen enough. Now or never.
Under her chador, Maggie pulled on her gloves. She'd updated the gloves since their first design: they covered her whole hand now, black as tar and pointed at the fingertips with metal claws, with reinforced knuckles.
They paused outside the barred door, and the first guard bent over with a set of keys to unlock it.
Maggie squeezed out from the back of the pack of women, planted her feet and slammed her fist into the side of the rear guard's head before he could lift his weapon. Happy had taught her that move.
The man crumpled to the rock floor with a thud and Maggie sprang back toward the front of the group. The guard at the door whirled around at the sound and Maggie lunged, striking the hard edge of her hand against his gun hand, making him drop it with a cry. He moved to shove her, but Maggie twisted her torso and brought her elbow up into his face, where it landed with a crack. The man howled, making Maggie's heart pound, so she grabbed his head and slammed it into the rock behind him. He dropped. Thank god.
Maggie turned, trying to catch her breath.
The women didn't scream, thankfully. They stood there, staring at her. But this was a different kind of staring. Maggie crouched down and grabbed the fallen keys, then handed it toward the nearest woman, who looked to be about thirty, with a split lip.
"Drag these men inside the cage, and stay safe here," she whispered to them. The scale of her plan suddenly settled on her shoulders like a heavy weight, and she drew in a shaky breath. These women's lives depended on her. "I will be back."
To her relief, after another second of staring, two of the women bent down to grab the first soldier by the shoulders, and began dragging him toward the barred room. The woman with the split lip took the keys from Maggie, and the others sprang into action without a word.
Maggie tugged off her chador, then reached into her jacket pocket and pulled on her cowl: as dark as the gloves, it covered her face and her hair, leaving the end of her braid sticking out the back. She now stood in her dark, close-fitted flight clothes, face concealed, with her metal wingpack on her back. She cast one last glance over her shoulder at the sixteen wide-eyed women, then took off running.
Gulmira, Afghanistan
Three hundred miles away, Tony Stark landed in the centre of the chaotic town square with a clang.
He stood up, gleaming red and gold in the morning sun, and the Ten Rings soldiers looked into his glowing eyes.
Ten Rings Mountain Base, Tajikistan
Maggie made it down two corridors before she ran into another soldier. He shouted at the sight of her and fumbled for his gun, but it was slung across his back. He hadn't been expecting an attack from inside the base.
Maggie was faster. She slammed the heel of her hand into his chin, knocking him flat on his back, then rained down two sharp punches. The soldier's head lolled to the side, unconscious.
Maggie rolled the man over and freed his gun, checking the side of the weapon for the serial number. Sure enough, right by the serial number was the small Stark Industries logo. Her jaw clenched and she tossed the gun aside.
I am in way over my head. This whole operation was far bigger than she'd anticipated, and nothing like anything she'd ever tackled before. As the Wyvern she normally tracked down and surprised one person, not an entire extremist base. She knew Tony was building the suit, but it wasn't ready yet and she wasn't really sure what he planned to do with it - Tony had hinted at it, but hadn't said it outright. And Maggie hadn't wanted to put her brother back in danger again. So she'd come out here, alone, with nothing but her wings and her wits.
Maggie eyed the fallen soldier at her feet, and the crossroads ahead of her. A red Ten Rings flag was hammered into the wall. She'd come out here on a hunt for information, this wasn't -
No. I came here with my wings, and weapons. I got on that truck. Maggie had known, subconsciously, that this time she wasn't just going to slip in and out like a shadow, without making a difference.
Maggie licked her lips. Information first. She brought out her phone and ran a quick scan for electronic activity, before heading in the direction with the most activity. On the way she passed another carved-out rock room filled to the brim with weapons: the walls were lined with machine guns, ammunition clips, pistols, and rocket launchers, and crates full of missiles and grenades packed the floor. Maggie forced herself to walk past, sweat gathering on the back of her neck. Her phone led her back outside, to another cave entrance. She paused inside the cave for a moment, peering out.
There. Closest to the cave entrance stood a shed with thick power cables stretching out the back, snaking towards the main generator. A satellite dish bristled on the roof. There were a few dusty windows in the sides of the shed, showing the hazy shapes of computer monitors. The location made sense: computers wouldn't function too well inside the cave, but the building was close enough to the cave that they could transport their electronics inside if they were attacked.
Maggie reached for the weapons at her hip and waited for two soldiers to walk past, engaged in a conversation. Holding her breath, she slipped out of the cave - ignoring the primal prickling on the back of her neck - and toward the shed. She tried the handle - unlocked - and then let herself inside.
"Who are you?"
Of course it isn't empty. Maggie raised her right arm and fired the electroshock device in the wrist, launching two crackling bolts in succession at the two men sitting in front of the computer monitors inside the shed.
The men seized up at the surge of electricity before sagging and crumpling to the ground. Maggie let out a long, slow breath, then glanced around.
The interior of the shed was uncomfortably warm, no doubt because of the number of computers they'd crammed inside. Maggie had to admit she was impressed; it was a clean setup, with two server towers stored at the back of the shed, computer monitors lining both sides, and a communications hub near the door. They had a radio setup and a radar monitor. Cords snakes across the walls and the narrow desks, clamped in bundles and colour coded. Sure they'd set up their communications centre in a shed, but the Ten Rings knew how to organize. Even extremist organisations needed good IT support, Maggie supposed.
She got to work, sliding a data stick from her jacket pocket and installing it at the central monitor, her fingers flying across the keyboard. She was very aware of time slipping out of her hands. As she tore through their systems, stealing all the data she could and downloading it onto her data stick, she began working with their communication tech. Just as she finished crafting a broad-range signal, the computer let out a soft ding, letting her know that all the data had been downloaded.
The door opened. "Asif? Do you want to get breakfast- hey!"
Maggie made eye contact with the startled soldier just as his look of confusion turned into a snarl of aggression. He reached for his radio, but Maggie jumped out and kicked at his hand - the radio fell out of his grip, smashing on the floor, and the man yelled when her heel spur flickered out of her prosthetic foot and slashed across his fingers.
But this man moved quick - he launched forward and Maggie dodged backwards, tripping over one of the tranquilised soldiers. She fell back, jarring her elbow, and the soldier punched her in the jaw. The blow was glancing but it knocked her skull back against the metal floor, ringing her head like a bell.
Maggie blinked and focused on the soldier again as he raised his fist for another blow. He was a heavy man, with thick arms and a frightening look in his eye.
Maggie rolled to dodge the blow, but he didn't miss. His fist came down hard on her back.
The soldier let out a howl and Maggie turned over, back aching, to see him clutching his hand. She could tell from the odd shape of his knuckle that it was broken. A savage, wild feeling boiled up Maggie's throat - he'd hit one of the metal plates in her spine. He'd broken his hand on the metal on her bones.
Before the man could adjust, Maggie pulled her knees to her chest and kicked out, slamming her metal foot into the man's face. He fell back, out cold.
Maggie clambered to her feet, wide-eyed, then yanked her data stick from the computer console and hurried for the door. Time's running out.
She flung open the door and jumped down to the gravel ground, thoughts whirling, only to hear a shout to her left. She spun, lowering her centre of gravity, and made eye contact with the two soldiers staring at her from a few yards away. Their hands were already flying for their guns and Maggie was too far away to stop them. Her electroshock device only worked at short-range.
She whirled and her wings surged from her back, almost without a thought. They flared out, metal sliding, and half a second later Maggie felt the judder as a spray of bullets pelted against the wings. And bounced off.
Maggie's eyes widened. Okay.
Wing raised like a blast shield Maggie turned, freed the gun from her hip and fired twice at the wide-eyed men. They went down in two heaps.
Her breath burned in her lungs. She eyed the dark metal wings which now pulled tight against her back, cooling her skin. Until today, the wings had been more of a hobby. A way to get from A to B, a way to feel alive. But this was something new. She'd made them bulletproof, but she'd never intended-
A radio crackled somewhere nearby, and Maggie realized she could hear shouting and running footsteps.
Time's up.
Heart in her mouth, Maggie lurched back toward the nearest cave entrance. She kept her gun aloft and her wings assembled behind her as her feet pounded against the rock and the cool darkness of the cave fell over her.
She turned a corner and almost ran straight into two more soldiers, who were yelling into their radios. Maggie fired another electric bolt at one, then had to wrap herself in a wing as the other let off a rattle of machine gun fire. It felt like being punched by dozens of angry fists through a barrier of metal. When he paused, she spun towards him and snapped her wing out. It hit him full across the chest and slammed him into the cave wall. The gun clattered out of his unconscious hands.
Maggie didn't pause this time. She kept running, trusting her hastily-made mental map. When she reached the weapons room she fired on the three guards who'd appeared at the entrance, felling two and sending the third running in the opposite direction. Huh. Maggie had inspired fear as the Wyvern before, but that was usually through surprising her targets. But she supposed with her dark wings flared behind her, her cowl and her clawed fingers, she made a sight.
She stormed into the weapons room and began grabbing items. She took a few handguns, a rifle, two hand grenades, and for good measure hoisted a rocket launcher and slung it over her shoulder. At the door she pulled the pins from the hand grenades, tossed them in the general direction of the weapons crates, and then ran for it. She headed deeper into the cave system, circling back around the way she'd come, but she only made it a few yards before she heard two blasts, the sound thudding in her chest. She barely had a second to think: shouldn't there be a larger-
A juddering boom erupted behind her, the shockwave knocking her feet out from underneath her and the sound almost bursting her eardrums. The mountain itself seemed to shudder. Dust rained down on Maggie and the fluorescent lights overhead blinked and went out, casting her in darkness.
She rolled over, blinking in the gloom, to see that the corridor behind her had caved in. Maybe I shouldn't have done that while I'm still in the cave. But the way ahead of her was still clear, so Maggie pushed to her feet and kept running. Her right knee ached from the running and dodging on her prosthetic.
The caves were almost pitch black now, only a few of the fluorescent lights valiantly flickering. Maggie's footsteps were loud as she pelted through corridors. She passed three more men, who went the way of the others she had faced. One of them got off a shot which glanced off Maggie's outstretched wing and ricocheted against her arm, tearing through her sleeve and opening up a line of fire across her skin. Maggie winced at the pain even as she electrocuted the soldier, took a second to check that she wasn't about to bleed to death, then continued on.
She didn't make it all the way back to the cage room. A few corridors away she ran into the sixteen women - they were moving forwards as a pack, three of them wielding guns which they raised at Maggie, only to lower them a few seconds later. Maggie stood dumbly for a moment, staring at them. The women were breathless and wide-eyed, but they stood firm. Three guns - the women must have taken down another guard.
She looked into a few of the women's eyes and saw steel there.
Maggie smiled. "Well done," she told them. The warm glow of pride in her chest knocked her off balance. She unclipped the weapons she'd stolen from the cache and handed them over. Four more women came forward and took them wordlessly. Maggie ran her eyes over the group of them. "We need to be quick. Follow me."
Moving slightly slower so they could keep up, Maggie led them through the warren of corridors, back toward the cave entrance they'd come through first. More soldiers came across their path, only to fall beneath a spray of bullets. Maggie could only imagine what they looked like; sixteen dusty, tear-stained women jogging through the near-darkness, led by a black-clad woman with wings.
At the cave entrance, Maggie electrocuted another guard and peered out. The base looked like a swarming ants nest, with soldiers running every which way, flooding in and out of the far cave entrances, closer to where Maggie had set off the explosion. There were still dozens of men. Maggie thought she spied a few of the leaders over by the command tent, shouting orders.
Maggie ducked back into the cool shelter of the cave and turned to the women, who waited with wide eyes and their fingers on their triggers. The one who'd first spoken to Maggie, the one with the bruise on her cheekbone, looked back at her with burning eyes.
"Can any of you drive?" Maggie asked. About half of them nodded.
"Okay. Count to fifteen," she told them, "then run out to the left and take one of the transport trucks. Don't wait for me, just take the truck and go."
Before they could respond, Maggie darted back outside. Most of the men were concentrated around the other cave entrance, so they didn't spot her until she flared her wings and rocketed into the sky, her wings gleaming in the sunlight. Maggie made sure her engines roared, drawing every eye. For a few seconds they just stared at her. Maggie used those few seconds to grab the rocket launcher hanging from her shoulder, hoist it steady, and fired down at the tent full of weapons crates.
She was too close, again. The weapons tent went up in a roaring fireball, the heat scorching Maggie's skin and the light piercing her eyes. Metal and sparks spat out from the fireball and rained down on the rest of the base. Maggie banked and veered away, dropping the rocket launcher. With a furious shout from the leader, the men on the ground started firing up at her.
Maggie had never flown in battle before, but she'd spent hundreds of hours practicing. The moment gunfire rattled out beneath her she twisted into evasive maneuvers, roaring down into the base and zipping through the spaces between buildings and tents, using them as cover. The wind whisked over her face and her heart leapt as she turned down hairpin corners, the tips of her wings scraping against metal. A moment later she rose up again, flying faster and sharper than she ever had before. The gunfire followed her, slicing through the sky.
Maggie turned and saw, out of the corner of her eye, one of the armored trucks peel away from the rest, picking up speed as it headed for one of the narrow roads away from the base. A few soldiers noticed as well and turned, but Maggie pulled a handgun from her belt and dove, firing on the men and drawing their attention.
Like a bird of prey harrying a nest of small land animals, Maggie dove and darted on the Ten Rings base. The tents below were aflame, the Ten Rings flag burning. When the air grew too thick with bullets she dove again, retracting her wings and sprinting through the rocky crags, hiding herself on the ground, before flaring her wings and taking to the sky again. Her heart pounded steadily in her chest and her mind felt focused, sharp.
When her handgun clicked, its last round spent, Maggie shifted gears. She abandoned her close contact with the base and rocketed away, soaring around the mountainside and out of sight. She left the base smoking and spitting gunfire into empty air.
Once she was sure she had disappeared, Maggie banked around the mountain and found the dirt road the truck had taken. The sun shone warm on her back as she followed the road down, her wings spread. Her body thrummed with adrenaline, and when she glanced over her shoulder she could see smoke rising into the mountain air. Now that her ears weren't filled with the booming of guns and explosion, the world sounded awfully quiet - just the whistling wind and her own heartbeat.
She caught up with the truck a few minutes later. It raced down the road like a bat out of hell, bouncing over potholes and veering around the curves. It was a troop transport, with an armored cabin and a metal frame over the truck bed. There were a few paths through these mountains, but the truck had taken the one heading due west. Back home.
Maggie landed with a thump on the metal roof of the truck, and she heard the women inside scream. Thankfully, whoever was driving didn't veer off the road. The path was getting narrower and more precipitous, with the rock face of the mountain on one side and a steep slope on the other.
Maggie clambered along the roof until she reached the back of the truck, then leaned over and knocked on the back door.
A moment later it opened and a woman's flushed, sweaty face looked up at her.
"Salaam Alaikum," Maggie breathed.
The woman broke into a surprised laugh. "Wa-Alaikum Salaam." She retreated into the truck, holding the door open. Maggie slid in a moment later, retracting her wings to fit through the door.
Steadying herself inside the back of the truck, Maggie looked up. The women were all breathless and frightened, still clutching weapons, and they stared at Maggie with new eyes. Maggie stared back at them, not sure what to say. So she just nodded at them, hoping that communicated everything she thought and felt.
She shuffled forward until she reached the opening to the driver's cabin. The woman with the bruised cheek was driving, her fingers white on the wheel. She glanced over her shoulder at Maggie.
"Keep driving," Maggie told her. She gripped the woman's shoulder and squeezed. "We've done the hard part."
Edwards Air Force Base, California
In the bustling mission control room, Rhodey's cellphone rang. He glanced down, and Tony's face looked back at him. Dammit, he didn't have time for this. What with the chaos-causing unidentified bogey blowing up weapons depots in Gulmira, and these new reports about some kind of bizarre communication out of Tajikistan…
He picked up the phone. "Hello?"
"Hi, Rhodey, it's me."
He knew it. "It's who?" he pushed, needing to hear it.
"I'm sorry, it is me." Tony still sounded out of breath. "What you were asking about is me."
"No, see this isn't a game," Rhodey scolded. "You do not send civilian equipment into my active war zone. You understand that?"
"This is not a piece of equipment, I'm in it. It's a suit. It's me!"
Rhodey's eyes widened and he turned to look back at the mission room, at the dozens of men doing their best to identify and destroy the bogey.
"Rhodey, you got anything for me?" called his CO.
Rhodey stared back at him, the phone falling from his ear.
Then the live feed from the pilots in the field caught his attention.
"On your belly!" called Whiplash One, his voice high. "It looks like a… man!"
Rhodey's stomach dropped. Of all the crazy things-
One heart-stopping minute later, Rhodey raised the phone back to his ear with a shaking hand.
"Tony, you still there?"
"Hey, thanks," Tony replied breathlessly. He sounded like he was smiling.
Rhodey closed his eyes in relief. "Oh my god, you crazy son of a bitch." He let out a laugh. "You owe me a plane, you know that, right?"
Tony laughed. "Yeah, well, technically he hit me. So… now are you going to come by and see what Mags and I are working on?"
Rhodey shook his head even though his friend couldn't see. "No, no, no, the less I know, the better." Plus there'd be a lot to clean up after today. Even now on the other side of the room he could see another one of the COs coordinating engagement with the strange communication they'd picked up in Tajikistan. Christ, they were deploying F-22s as well.
"Now what am I supposed to tell the press?" Rhodey murmured into the phone.
"Uh, training exercise. Isn't that the usual BS?"
"It's not that simple."
Afghanistan-Tajikistan Border
Maggie had crawled into the passenger seat and opened the windows, keeping an eye out for any followers. About an hour into their drive they heard distant booms, making all the women sitting in the back of the transport stiffen. Maggie leaned out the window as the other woman - Amira - drove. When they rounded the next bend, Maggie looked back in the direction of the Ten Rings base to see a thicker plume of smoke rising into the sky. A moment later, she heard jet engines and looked up to see two F-22s rocket overhead, before turning back.
"It's the US Air Force," Maggie told the women when she leaned back into the truck.
"How did they know?" Amira asked, her voice tight.
Maggie smiled. "I told them." While downloading all the base's data onto her own device, Maggie had programmed an outgoing signal that would be picked up for miles around. It said, in Arabic, English, Russian, and Farsi: The Ten Rings are not afraid.
Maggie had guessed that the Tajik military would get there first, but clearly the US Air Force had been quick on the uptake today. But no matter who got there first, the Ten Rings were screwed.
Her smile lasted another hour, until Amira turned another steep mountain bend and stomped on the brakes. They screeched to a halt, coming to a stop just feet away from where the rest of the road had crumbled away in a rockslide, leaving an impassable barrier. For a few moments they just sat there, engine idling, staring at the missing road.
"I must have taken a wrong turn," Amira whispered, her voice tired and horrified.
In the back, a few of the women began to cry.
Maggie stared. The road was far too narrow here to turn around, with a ravine plunging down on their left, and who knew what they might find even if they could turn back. She wasn't so arrogant as to imagine that none of the Ten Rings had managed to escape.
Soft, suffocating hopelessness filled the inside of the truck. The chill mountain wind whistled around them.
Maggie glanced at Amira, but the woman was looking out her window, glaring with tear-filled eyes at the ravine beside them. It was a deep chasm, with a river glinting at the bottom. The sides were too steep to climb.
Amira let out a frustrated sigh. "On the other side is home."
Maggie followed her gaze to the other side. It was less mountainous there, the treacherous shale giving way to sand, then desert. In the distance Maggie could see a river. It was wide, and glinted in the sunlight. That must be the Pamir. The border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. The village these women had been stolen from was on that river.
Maggie eyed the steep ravine again, calculating. She gauged the distance.
Finally, she turned in her seat and looked at the tired women in the back of the truck. She swallowed. "Everybody get out of the truck."
Maggie made sixteen trips back and forth over the ravine.
When she came back for the last woman, Amira, her arms ached and her engines roared in her ears, but her wings held steady. Amira had been adamant about being last - she'd stayed by the truck, armed with a machine gun, her eyes on the road.
Amira's arms wrapped around Maggie's neck and Maggie grabbed her around the waist, as she had done with everyone else. "Hold tight," she murmured, and then fired up her engines once more. Amira yelped and tightened her grip, but did not scream as they sailed over the edge of the ravine and into empty air.
None of the women had screamed. Maggie's eyes prickled with pride and exhaustion as she soared over the vast chasm, and the group of women on the other side grew larger and larger. Her wings worked hard to take the extra weight, but she had designed them well. They beat once, twice, and then Maggie and Amira's feet touched down on the other side. They let each other go, and shared savage grins.
One of the other women (Javaneh - Maggie had asked each of their names as they soared over the gaping ravine) let out a short laugh. "I hope you can walk as well as you can fly!"
They walked for two hours across the harsh landscape, until they came to the border town of Eshkashem. The townspeople saw them coming when they crested the last rise, and by the time they had walked down to the river, refugees from the raided village had flooded out, running toward the women with tears running down their faces and their arms spread wide.
Maggie stayed on the rise, watching as the women collided with their husbands, children, and parents, weeping and laughing. There was joy there, but also grief, the refugees holding each other as they wept for their broken home.
When Maggie could find the energy to move again, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. She powered it on, and then frowned - there was a host of notifications from her various search algorithms and news subscriptions, as well as a communication from one of her most reliable shadow world contacts:
US Air Force is losing its collective mind over a 'metal man' in the sky over Gulmira. Seems like your kind of weird, Wyvern.
A thrill went down Maggie's spine. Surely not…? She put her phone away, her tired brain suddenly kicking back into gear. I need to get home. She powered up her engines again, rolling her shoulders, but a moment before she took off she looked down again, at the small crowd by the river.
The women were waving. They'd turned, as if noticing that Maggie was not among them, spotted her back up on the rise and were waving to her. Maggie could just make out their faces. Her heart lurched. She raised her hand, hoping that the gesture conveyed everything she felt.
Then the Wyvern flared her wings and soared into the sky.
I know you guys are impatient for Bucky! But I promise I've got a plan, and it's going to be very worth it once we get there ;)
Reviews
DBZfan45: I'm so glad you enjoyed the last chapter! It's good to have Maggie and Tony back in the same space and working together. Hopefully you enjoyed Maggie going Full Wyvern in this chapter ;)
Pervy sage: I'm excited to show you! We're still a ways off from Peter but we'll get there.
The1975Love: I agree things would be much simpler if Maggie was able to figure out Obie's creepiness early on! And I suppose normally she would, but this is someone she's known her whole life and that's a special kind of trust to break. Also "Magnificent" made me laugh, that's a good one!
MyCelestialFury: No worries, ff net can be very fickle when it comes to things like leaving reviews and just general functioning tbh. I'm glad you enjoyed the chapter! I hope you enjoyed this one too, I've been excited to get to it :)