Disclaimer: I make no money from writing this fic. I don't own Colter Wall and I don't own Iron Man. I just bolted them both together and am using them as a stand to split wood on. It's a lot of work. Maybe I should invest in a gas furnace.
Note: This has been Stane's theme song for me from the beginning.
Chapter 22: Click
Colter Wall- The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie
"So this is how he did it." Inside a drab canvas tent planted on the sands of Afghanistan Stane circled behind the rough mechanical armor in chagrined amazement. He only peripherally paid attention to Raza's explanation. It didn't really matter what the man said anymore.
His eyes raked over the dull silver of the humanoid shaped shell, calculating its immense potential - for monetary gain, but also for power. The one who held control over the technology would change the way the world made war.
"Stark has perfected his design," Raza claimed, pouring himself a drink. "He has made a masterpiece of death."
Yes, he had, but then that was what Tony was good for.
"And you dream of Stark's throne," the man behind him continued. "We have a common enemy."
Stane turned his head to regard the scarred man. He wondered what it was about Tony and Harper that had them both leaving burn scars on people.
"If we are still in business…" Raza hedged.
A soft scoff left Stane's nose. Obadiah considered the hole in the armor's chest plate. His fingers skimmed over the tooled edge. It had been designed with purpose.
The guerrilla and his group had been completely ineffectual in the last job he gave them. In fact, they had tried to double cross him. That Raza thought they could return to a working arrangement after that was quaint. He palmed the sonic taser.
A few moments later Stane pushed open the flap on Raza's tent, leaving the useless man paralyzed inside it. He paused to take in the sight of the men of the camp on their knees in the dirt, held there at gun point by his security team.
"Crate up the armor and the rest of it," he ordered, stalking back toward his SUV.
It was time to get started on the next part. SI's best should be able to reverse engineer and build him a prototype in a few weeks. He'd set them up under the arc reactor in section sixteen. No one bothered with what was essentially the basement of the power plant.
Retrieving his phone from his jacket pocket, he paused in thought. The Weapons Development teams would need to be left out of his little project for the time being. He couldn't trust that they wouldn't run to Harper. That woman had held an iron grip on the strings of her department since almost the moment she was hired. His mouth dipped in a tight sneer. So he'd have to settle for second best. Stane consoled himself with the fact that once he had her, he'd have them.
"Alright, let's finish up here," he demanded. The staccato crack of multiple automatic weapons firing filled the night behind him.
…...
"This is going nowhere," Angela complained bitterly.
She and Tony were squished together in front of her computer, legs touching. On the monitor before them the SI files JARVIS had tagged were open. They'd gone through them together multiple times but hadn't come to much consensus about what they suggested.
The man next to her hummed unhappily. "We need more detailed information, shipping manifests."
"We have no way of getting those," she pointed out.
He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms over his head. Resituating himself, he brushed against her side. "We have no way of getting those from here," he corrected.
"And what? One of us is going to go to SI?" Angela shook her head. "You'll get mobbed. I'll get kidnapped." She rubbed a hand under her eyes. "Although, of the two of us I'm the one with a reason to be back in the building."
"No," he immediately replied. "We agreed, no situations where you may need to use your kung fu powers without the suit.
Angela turned her chair to fully face him and Tony shifted to cage her legs with his own. "You have a better idea?"
In response he held a slim, black, lock chip up between his fingers. "All you need to use this is knowledge of the SI system." Angela still wasn't following his train of thought. "Pepper," he finally elaborated.
Pulling back in alarm, she protested, "No. No way!"
"She knows the system," he continued. "No one would think twice about her being there, even in my office."
"They are killing people to keep this quiet and you want to send in Pepper?" She asked incredulously.
Tony frowned at her rebuke. "She'll be in and out in five minutes. You would be stuck there all day, batting away board members and PR gremlins, if you didn't end up unconscious in the back of a van."
Angela looked off to the side and rolled her jaw, feeling mulish.
"For this to work you need a computer with full access, that means executive or IT," he pressed. "Neither of which you have a reason to visit."
Angela made a displeased noise. He was right. "I am not comfortable with this," she clipped.
"Yeah, that's going around," he rejoined wryly. Angela sucked in her lips at his jab. "But we're running out of choices," he finished.
Angela had to concede that Pepper could make her own decisions. It didn't make it more palatable. "Fine."
A few hours later Tony was working on the upper portion of his armor and Angela was working on her armor's hip joints. When she reached over for her soldering iron it was gone. She looked around and saw Tony had both soldering stations next to him.
With a long sigh she griped, "Really?"
The man she was addressing popped his head out from the bottom torso of his armor. "What?"
Angela gestured to the tools.
Humor lit up his eyes. "Come get it," he offered with a slightly wolfish grin.
She huffed to cover her discomfort but couldn't mask the cautious observation in her gaze. Part of her wanted to go over there, her body actually tilting forward slightly. Tony's predatory gaze switching to something more soft and patient actually made her more nervous.
Thankfully the considerable weight of his attention was diverted by Pepper entering the shop. He switched gears so abruptly Angela blinked.
"Hey. You busy?" He wiped his hands off on a cloth and strode over to his PA. "You mind if I send you on an errand? I need you to go to my office. You're going to hack into the mainframe and you're going to retrieve all the recent shipping manifests."
He picked the chip up from the workbench and handed it to the red head. "This is a lock chip. This'll get you in." Angela watched the expression on Pepper's face. It didn't look promising. "It's probably under executive files. If not, they put it on a ghost drive, in which case you need to look for the lowest numeric heading."
The cautious look on Pepper's face bled into her words. "And what do you plan to do with this information if I bring it back here?"
"Same drill," Tony declared. "They've been dealing under the table, and I'm going to stop them. I'm going to find my weapons and destroy them."
"We," Angela corrected him, earning a flash of brown eyes toward her.
Pepper's gaze was more direct and she turned her shoulders to face Angela like she was squaring up for a fight. "I knew you went with him. You're okay with this?" She asked.
"No," Angela admitted. "Because I think I should go instead of you." Blue eyes rolled in exasperation.
Meanwhile Tony leaned back, putting his hands on his hips. "Why do I feel like you're not intending to honor our agreement?"
"It was less of an agreement and more of you dictating," Angela shot back.
"Stop," Pepper clipped. She locked her gaze on Tony's back as he turned to continue working. "You know that I would help you with anything, but I cannot help you if you're going to start all of this again."
Leaning her hip against her work table, Angela crossed her arms defiantly. "We didn't start it."
From the corner of her eye she saw Tony clench his jaw, a subtle warning of his temper. "There is nothing except this," he began, carefully setting his tools down. "There's no art opening. There is no benefit." When he turned around, his face was tight and grim. "There is nothing to sign." His voice raised. "There is the next mission," he gritted, "And nothing else."
Pepper studied them both carefully. Angela wondered what she saw. "Is that so?" The red head asked softly. There was a dangerous tone in her voice. "Well, then I quit." She tossed the lock chip onto the table.
'Damn,' Angela thought. 'Too hard of a sell.'
"You stood by my side all these years while I reaped the benefits of destruction. And now that I'm trying to protect the people that I put in harm's way, you're going to walk out?" Tony accused.
"You're going to kill yourself, Tony." Pepper said forcefully. "I'm not going to be a part of it." Her gaze briefly cut accusingly toward Angela.
Walking around the female engineer, Tony sat down heavily. "I shouldn't be alive, unless it was for a reason," he mused. "I'm not crazy, Pepper. I just finally know what I have to do," he explained earnestly. "And I know in my heart that it's right."
Pepper, expression clearly torn, turned her attention back to Angela. "And you? You have to see how dangerous this is. You're encouraging him? Going with him? I don't understand. Why?"
Stretching her thumb back, Angela caressed the rim of her arc reactor. She locked eyes with her friend, feeling the smooth curve of metal press into the side of her finger. "I made a choice," she confessed. "I've seen what's happening out there. I can't get it out of my head. Someone has to act and I have the ability to intervene. I won't walk away from that, Pep. I never have."
Pepper gaze flitted between the two of them before she deflated with a long sigh. Heels clicking on the floor, she walked back to the table and picked up the lock chip. "Happy and I want a solid week off, of our choosing." She turned to Angela, steely blue eyes boring into green. "While we're gone, he's your responsibility."
Angela grinned and dipped her chin in solemn understanding of the double meaning.
…...
The elevator doors rolled back and Pepper stepped onto the executive floor. Her eyes raked the lobby, grateful that no one else was on the floor this far into the evening. With quick steps she made her way to Tony's office, pushing open the doors and ducking around behind his desk.
The leather of the executive chair was soft against her hips as she dug the lock chip out of her purse. She inserted it into the USB port on the side of Tony's computer, sucking on her lips in worry when a notification of security breech flashed on the screen. A command prompt screen opened and then access was granted.
It only took a few seconds for a ghost drive to be found. The files displayed on the screen and Pepper clicked through them, noticing folders worth of shipping orders and what looked like a secondary inventory log. Halfway through, the schematics of some huge mechanical suit came up. Her lips parted as she read over the personnel who had been diverted to the project in sector sixteen.
Clicking into a further file, Pepper was confronted with a hostage video. She froze, her skin raising into gooseflesh. A man in a tattered suit sitting amidst the armed insurgents suddenly had the bag pulled off his head. Bile rolled up the back of her throat. Tony blinked at his surroundings, obviously injured and disoriented.
With quick fingers, she typed in the command to translate. The audio changed to English. "You did not tell us that the target you paid us to kill was the great Tony Stark. As you can see, Obadiah Stane, you're deception and lies will cost you dearly."
Pulse doubling, Pepper's stomach dropped to her feet. Tony was adamant Obadiah was playing along under the orders of someone else, but Angela had pulled her aside to express her own worries.
She initiated the sequence to copy the files, cutting off the video mid-stream.
She couldn't begin to imagine the devastation Tony would feel when viewing it. The red head's heart howled for her friend's upcoming pain and she understood a sliver of Angela's reasoning for standing so stalwartly by their boss. But then, Angela's life had been irrevocably changed by Obadiah's perfidy as well.
"So." The sudden voice from the door caused her to gasp. She looked up to see Obadiah's large frame blocking the entryway. "What are we going to do about this?"
Her heart stuttered in fear that he had heard the video playing. Stilling behind the desk, she watched Stane cross the room to the bar.
"I know what you're going through, Pepper," he announced, grabbing a glass. Lifting the decanter, he took an appreciative sniff. "Tony," he commented in humor. "He always gets the good stuff, doesn't he?"
At the man's casual air Pepper forced a genial smile of agreement. Her face felt brittle. While Stane was busy she discreetly maneuvered a newspaper to cover the lock chip and initiated the screen saver.
"I was so happy when he came home. It was like we got him back from the dead," Stane mused. Crossing behind her, the sleeve of his coat brushed the back of her hair and she stifled a shiver. He sat down on the desk. "Now I realize, well, Tony never really did come home, did he? He left a part of himself in that cave." He took a slow sip of his drink. "Breaks my heart."
Feeling stiff and awkward, but trying desperately to play casual, Pepper hedged, "Well, he's a complicated person." She smiled and it felt as transparent as glass. "He's been through a lot. I think he'll be alright."
Stane regarded her for a long moment and she thought for sure that he knew she was up to something. She'd never make fun on her friend for smashing a coffee cup in someone's face again. He took a second sip and smacked his lips. "You are a very rare woman," he proclaimed. "Tony doesn't know how lucky he is."
Pepper gave a weak chuff of laughter. "Thank you. Thanks." She drew in a deep breath, anxious to get away from the mad man. "I'd better get back there," she excused, carefully disguising the removal of the lock chip by grabbing the newspaper.
Happy was going to be so angry with her, and Tony, and Angela.
She was adjusting her bag on her arm and attempting to casually make her way to the door when Obadiah called from behind her, "Is that today's paper?"
She froze halfway through the room, feeling the little hairs on her arms rise to attention. Turning quickly she confirmed, "Yes."
Obadiah crossed the room in a handful of ground eating strides. He held his hand out. "Do you mind?"
Handing the folded paper to him, she palmed the lock chip. "Not at all."
"Puzzle," he explained, gesturing with the paper.
"Of course." She couldn't help but lean away from him ever so slightly. Taking a step back, she kept a lock on her urgent need to flee as she continued toward the door.
"Take care," Obadiah called.
Once she passed the threshold she glanced back to see him watching her. He had to know. Tilting her head down to glance at the chip in her hand, she eschewed the elevator and made for the stairs. She needed out of the building in the fastest way possible.
…...
Obadiah watched the red head turn the corner and then immediately made for the computer. He didn't trust someone who had put up with Tony for so many years. She was too invested in the man. Like Harper, if Potts found out about any illegal dealings she couldn't be bought.
He jostled the mouse, waking the screen from it's idle. A damning notification of a completed download stared back at him. Sitting heavily in the chair, he cursed and ran his hands over his head. He wasn't ready for anyone to find out. He needed more time.
Lunging up, he briskly walked out of the office, making it to the railing in time to see Potts walk off with some man in a suit. Unable to stop her without causing a scene, Stane gritted his teeth. The timetable would have to be accelerated.
Without wasting further thought, he made for the power plant. He dodged through sector sixteen, pleased to see the suit complete but for a means to power it. Upon shoving open the doors to the main level reactor he saw the engineers he had recruited to the project clustered together talking. The majority of the group vacated the area when he charged up the steps to the short landing.
"Uh, Mr. Stane?" The project leader approached him. "Sir, we've explored what you asked us, and it seems as though there's a little hiccup. Actually…"
Stane put his hands on his hips, drawing his shoulders back in displeasure. "A hiccup?" Now was not the time for there to be more problems. He needed a solution. He needed the damn suit finished before Potts got wherever she was going with all the information she had stolen.
Simms, a man with the stereotypical look of an engineer in Stane's mind, elaborated. "Yes, to power the suit, sir, the technology actually doesn't exist."
Turning from his brief perusal of the plant's arc reactor, Stane pointed at the man. "Wait, wait, wait." Putting his hand on Simms' shoulder, he leaned in and wrapped his arm around the man's back. "The technology?" He pointed to the giant primary colored reactor in front of them. "William, here is the technology. I've asked you to simply make it smaller." He shook the man's shoulder in a cajoling manner.
"Okay, sir, and that's what we're trying to do." Simms leaned slightly away from him. "But honestly, it's impossible." He gestured in emphasis.
Impossible? No. It was not impossible. Stane had seen it. He'd seen two different people with it. Losing his hold on his temper he exclaimed, "Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave!" He advanced on the other man, shoving his finger into the engineer's chest. "With a box of scraps!"
Simms leaned back over the rail away from him, barely raising his hands in a placating manner. "Well, I'm sorry. I'm not Tony Stark."
Lips pressed in to a tight thin line, Stane regarded the man in front of him.
Potts was on her way somewhere with incriminating evidence. Evidence, that at the very least would implicate him in theft, conspiracy, and an assassination attempt on Tony. If anyone pulled on that thread hard enough he could be charged with murder for hire and treason.
He couldn't allow things to go that far. He'd have to take action immediately. His suit needed a power source.
Harper had well and truly gone to ground, unseen and unheard from since the botched kidnapping. He didn't have time to wait for the leverage he'd arranged for her. He'd have to go for a more accessible source.
…...
"She'll be alright," Tony assured.
Angela swiped the loose hairs away from her face in agitation. "I hope so."
The woman was going to worry the whole time Pepper was gone unless he did something about it. "How about I go order us some actual food while we wait?"
Her green eyes met his and he could see a faint spark of humor within them. "Do you even know what that is?"
The corner of his mouth turned up in a smirk. "After all your complaining, I think I can remember."
Now that he wasn't quite so spooked by his revelation, Tony promised himself that after this he'd take her out. He'd get her to agree, somehow.
"Well I wouldn't say no." She rubbed a hand under her eyes. Tired again, he thought.
"Good. Stay," He playfully grabbed her shoulders and sat her in front of the TV. "Menu's upstairs, I'll be right back."
"Don't get distracted. You take too long I'll find the menu on my own and order without you," she threatened.
He hummed in amusement and made his way up the stairs.
When he hit the top, he could hear the high warble of his phone ringing. A string of disquiet vibrated within him. There were only a handful of people who would call him, and despite his bravado, he recognized that what Pepper was doing was dangerous.
He crossed to the living room, searching the couch for the source of the noise. Fearing the other person was close to hanging up, he finally clasped his hand around the smooth plastic that was hidden under a throw pillow. When he pulled it out the caller ID announced 'Potts.' His anxiety grew accompaniment.
Tony thumbed the button to answer, drawing the handset to his ear. Almost immediately a high pitched noise surrounded him. His eyes widened and all of his muscles locked up.
"Tony? Tony, are you there? Hello?" Pepper's voice came over the line, but Tony couldn't move. His eyes jerked in panic as someone took the phone from him.
"Breathe. Easy, easy." Obadiah leaned him back against the couch. "You remember this one, right?" The sonic taser was held up in front of his eyes. "It's a shame the government didn't approve it. There's so many applications for causing short-term paralysis."
The hands around him were gone and Tony struggled to stay in the present. He was not back in the cave, tied down while they operated on him. He was in his living room in Malibu and Obie had just incapacitated him. The various pieces of information slotted together in his brain and Tony felt like an idiot.
The elder man crossed to the front of the couch and grabbed Tony's jaw to turn his head. He casually pulled a set of earplugs out of his ears. "Tony, when I ordered the hit on you I worried that I was killing the golden goose. That wasn't a large concern. I had a spare. But then," he clicked his tongue, "She had to stumble into something she had no business being in. Women," he shook his head.
Tony felt his insides drop. He'd told Angela that Obie wasn't a killer. She'd believed him. She was downstairs. Next to him he could hear some metallic clicking but it barely registered in the maelstrom of his thoughts.
"Such a shame, really," Stane mused. "If I could have waited one more day to fly out to Vegas she would have come to me with her information. The whole thing could have been neatly contained and posthumously blamed on you."
Angela never would have believed that. Tony knew her. She would have kept digging, but she would have been alone.
"But unfortunate timing required me to make the difficult decision to send her with you instead," Obadiah continued. The device passed in front of Tony's face before it was lowered to his chest and Tony knew what was going to happen next. "Two birds, one stone," the elder man joked. A mechanical whirr started and Tony felt sickening dread slide down his spine.
"But, you see," the man continued as the device in his hand buzzed, cutting free Tony's arc reactor and stinking up the air with the smell of hot metal. There was a click and Tony felt a pull through his chest. He grunted in pain. "It was just fate that you both survived that. You had one last golden egg to give." Stane lifted the reactor out of Tony's chest and smiled.
"You know, I think it's better this way," he said conversationally. "If I'd gotten my hands on Harper, I still would have needed to kill you. This unpleasantness has taught me a valuable lesson." He gestured between the arc and Tony. "I have come to realize that leaving the details to others rarely works out. They never have quite the right motivation."
The man rested his hand on the back of the couch next to Tony's head, peering into the inventor's twitching eyes. "Do you really think that just because you have an idea, it belongs to you?" Obadiah wondered, studying Tony's face. "Your father, he helped give us the atomic bomb. Now, what kind of world would it be today if he was as selfish as you?" He chided. With a yank the cable connecting the arc to his socket separated and Tony gave a hollow intake of air. Immediately he could feel the pressure start building in his chest.
Stane pulled the arc free from the extraction device and held it up in front of him. "Oh, it is beautiful," the man sighed, his face lit up by the reactor's light. He leaned in closer and held the piece up between them.
Tony hoped Angela didn't get restless and come upstairs. He hoped Stane didn't get curious and go downstairs. With a pang of regret, Tony realized he'd waited too long to kiss her.
His attention was drawn back to the elder man when Stane sat on the couch. "Tony, this is your Ninth Symphony. What a masterpiece. Look at that." He turned the arc in his hand admiringly. "This is your legacy. A new generation of weapons with this at its heart. Weapons that will help steer the world back on course, put the balance of power in our hands. The right hands." He turned back to Tony and met his eyes. "And in a few days, I'll even have the right engineer with the right incentive to build them."
The pain in his chest was blinding, competing for space with the betrayal and anger. There was fear too - fear that Stane knew Angela was in the house - that she would find his body and then go face Stane in the Mark III alone. Tony strained against his invisible bindings but couldn't do anything but stare in front of him as the man moved around him.
"I wish you could've seen my prototype," Stane continued. "It's not as," he trailed off searchingly. "Well, not as conservative as yours. Too bad you had to involve Pepper in this. It seems I have a few loose ends to snip before I head to Cleveland," Stane continued. From the corner of his eye Tony saw the man walk away.