THE WOMAN IN THE DARK CAVE
Tony suddenly sprung awake in a panic. His chest was heavy and it difficult to breathe for a moment. After he gained his bearings though, he found himself lying on a bed in a poorly lit room with a tube stuck down his nose. He reached for the tube and pulled it out, yanking the tape off his nose with his shaky hands. Tony turned to his right and saw a glass of water on a table beside him and reached out for it, but he suddenly felt a tug on his chest and he knocked the glass off the table by accident. The glass began to tumble to the ground but a white hand reached out quickly and caught it before it could crash. Long slender fingers wrapped around the top of the glass and the water sloshed only a little. Tony looked up to see who it was, but the darkness of the room prevented him from seeing them properly. He only saw an outline of a 5'4 person.
"I'd be careful if I were you." She gently set the glass back on the table. That voice. He knew that voice. Soft and velvety, graceful, and elegant. It was the same voice from the times he fell and out of consciousness.
Tony slowly looked to his left and saw a car battery on the table next to him with wires hooked up. He grabbed the wires and followed them and saw that they led to his chest that was wrapped up in gauze. His heart began to speed up when he patted something strange underneath. He quickly started to tear away at the gauze and reveal some sort of circular object embedded in the center of his chest.
The woman spoke up once again. "I don't have a diploma in this sort of thing, but I think I did a pretty good job if I don't say so myself."
Tony snapped his head to the woman when she stepped into the light. Anger and panic surging through him, ready to confront the monster who did this to him. He was taken back at first...when he saw was a beautiful woman with soft features, light blonde hair, freckles, and big brown eyes. She has this smile about her that made his stressed and scared heart feel relief. Her smile was warm and soft. She cranked her head to the side and her eyes crinkled only a little.
The mysterious woman hunched over a pan of beans and stirred them over the fire, all the while humming some sort of song to herself like they weren't in the direst situation of their life. In fact, she was strangled calm and never once showed the slightest bit of panic and had managed to keep a reassuring smile on her face the whole time. Tony didn't know if she might have lost her mind or if she's just being polite...for some reason.
Tony sat on the bed using a mirror to look at the device in his chest. "What the hell did you do to me"' He spoke in a weak and low voice.
The woman lifted her head, the smile gone from her face, but softness remained in her beautiful brown eyes. "Do to you?" She had a faint, unknown accent to her soft and delicate voice "You make it sound like I did something horrible to you. I saved your life If that's what you mean. I tried my best to remove the shrapnel from your chest, but not all of it, unfortunately." She set the pan and spoon down and stepped towards him to get a better look at the object. "The rest headed into your atrial septum." She looked behind herself and grabbed a small bottle off the desk and gave it to him. "This is what I found inside you." Tony looked at the shrapnel through the glass and moved it around in the light. "It's kinda interesting how the barbs take a week to reach the vital organs." She said with a very curious voice despite the morbidness of it.
"Quit playing around and tell me what this is?" Tony cut in sharply.
The woman blinked for a second, staring at Tony with eyes that made him feel like she was looking right through him. "It's an electromagnet. I hooked it up to your little car battery over there." she pointed. "It's stopping the shrapnel from entering your heart." The smile came back to her face. "No reason to get all snippy with me. I did my best to save you." She looked back to the pan of beans and continued to cook them.
Tony zipped up his jacket and covered the magnet back up. He took a moment to look over this mysterious woman. She had on white dress stained with dirt and mud, with very worn brown shoes with a green coat made of canvas. She, of course, had dirt on her face too.
Tony looked to the wall and saw a camera mounted to the corner, pointed down at them.
"That's right." She looked at the camera. "They're watching us right now."
"Where are we?" Tony asked, but before the woman can answer him, the peephole was opened on the door and a loud foreign voice called out to them.
The woman's eyes sharpened for a second and her voice changed if only a little. "You're about the find out." She walked over to Tony and grabbed him by his hand and pulled him up. "Stand up and do as I do." She warned him and stepped back, placing her hands on the back of her head. "Hand's up! Quickly!"
The door finally opened and four armed men walked in. They took aim at Tony and the woman who remained absolutely still.
Tony looked at the weapons in their hands. His eyes widen in terror and he turned as white as a sheep. "Those are my guns. How did they get my guns?"
"Please be quiet for now." The woman said in a pleading voice.
One man, in particular, raised his hand and said something in a foreign language. He began to speak to Tony in that language but he still didn't understand what he was talking about.
The woman eyed Tony. "He says, 'Welcome, Tony Stark, the most famous mass murderer in the history of America.' He's honored." The man continued to talk while she translated. "He wants you to build the missile. The Jericho missile that you demonstrated." He handed a picture to the woman and she showed it to Tony. "This one."
Tony looked at the picture and back at the man, staring him dead in the eyes. "I refuse."
Tony's head was suddenly shoved underwater repeatedly before him and the girl's head was covered with bags and they were led outside. They finally pulled them off and was met with the sight of a camp full of Stark weapons, the very weapons Tony built himself. Tony and this girl were shoved out of the cave while he carried his battery. The woman looked at the weapons then back at Tony while his eyes were wide in disbelief. They had everything. From missiles, guns, and ammo.
The man spoke again and the girl listened. The woman bit down on her lip and looked to Tony. "He wants to know what you think?"
Tony looked back to the man and spoke with a stony voice. "I think you got a lot of my weapons."
The man walked passed them while speaking.
The girl sighed. "He says they have everything you need to build the Jericho missile. He wants you to make the list of materials. He wants you to start working right away, and when you're done, he will set you free."
Tony looked down at the man's hand before smiling and shaking it. "No, he won't."
The woman nodded her head slightly and smiled at the man and nodded. "Obviously." Her smile broke when she turned her head and looked at the top of the hill, seeing a man who was looking down at them. He twisted a ring around his finger. The woman's eyes narrowed. "He will kill us."
The girl grabbed her coat off the bed and walk over to the fire that Tony was sitting down at. She sat across from him "I'm sure they're looking for you, Mister Stark. But in these mountains...it is unlikely. It's a maze down here."
Tony kept quiet as he faced the fire, wrapped up in a blanket and a hat to keep warm.
The girl tilted her head and opened her mouth for a second, but sighed. "This is your legacy. All that you made in the hands of those murderers. Is that how you really want to be remembered...Is that how you want to go out? Are you...you of all people, Tony Stark, going to let all this run its course."
"Why should I do anything? They're going to kill me and you either way." Tony spoke harshly.
The girl laughed a bit under her breath. "Kill...right..." she sighed. "They'll kill us in a week anyway, but..." She suddenly got up and stood in front of him, she placed one hand on his shoulder and stared directly in his eyes. "That is all the time you need anyways, right?"
Tony then slowly looked up to the girl and saw the smile on her face.
Tony began to give orders to the workers as they brought in materials as the woman translated for them. "If this is going to be my workstation, I want it well-lit. I want these up. I need welding gear. I don't care if it's acetylene or propane. I need a soldering station. I need helmets. I'm gonna need goggles. I would like a smelting cup. I need two sets of precision tools." He ordered like he was reading off a list with the woman speaking off his words as they came flooding out.
The day ran on and Tony and the woman were left in the room to work in silence.
Tony slowly unscrewed the missiles and began to take it apart. "How many languages do you speak?" Tony brought up out of curiosity.
"Hm?" She was a bit surprised that he was talking to her casually. "Well..." She looked away. "I speak a lot."
"Like?" He looked up to her.
"Ah..." She laughed a bit. "It's a list. From Arabic, Urdu, Dari, Pashto, Mongolian, Farshi. To Russian, German, French..." She stopped herself. "Too many to list, but I speak enough to understand this place."
Tony was generally impressed and shocked by how many languages she spoke. "That's kinda cool."
She smiled brightly. "Thank you."
He spoke once again but his voice had this sharpness in it. "Who are these people?" He reached inside the shell and pulled something else out.
"Loyal customers are what they are. They call themselves the Ten Rings." She looked to the camera on the wall. "They are always watching us. It even makes someone like me uneasy." She looked back to Stark and got to eye level with him. "You know...this might go a lot faster if you tell me what you're planning."
Tony knocked off the head of the missile. "You know ever since I met you...you seem to stare at me with eyes that seem to know exactly what I'm thinking. It's even getting someone like me uneasy." He smirked towards her.
The woman's eyes widen for a second before she let out a short laugh. "It's not the first time someone has said that to me and certainly won't be the last."
Tony yanked a piece off the inside of the missile. "Okay, we don't need this." He chucked it over his shoulder.
"That's... She looked closely at the small and thin piece in the clamps. "Palladium, right?"
"All 0.15 grams of it. We need at least 1.6, so why don't you break down the other 11."
She nodded her head and head towards the other missiles.
Tony set the palladium down. "Hey. I never caught your name."
The woman froze. She slowly looked over her shoulder. Her expression was strange and unreadable. "Abel. Abel Bamlett. That is my name." She responded in a delicate voice.
Tony nodded. "Abel... Like Cain and Abel?"
The woman suddenly giggled and stared at him with worn eyes. "Yes, exactly like that."
Tony looked over Abel's shoulders as she brought out the small pot of melted palladium from the fire.
"Careful. Careful, we only get one shot at this." Tony warned her.
Abel's eyes were as still as they can be. "It's fine. My hands are surprisingly steady." she calmly walked over to the mold and poured it in.
After it cooled. Tony brought out a thin ring. Slowly, the little project he was working on came together. He powers the small circular object till the light in the room where being powered down. The small object glowed a bright blue light.
Abel looked over Tony. "What is that?"
"It's a miniaturized arc reactor. I got a big one powering my factory at home. It should keep the shrapnel out of my heart."
"What could it generate though?"
"If my math is right, and it always is, three gigajoules per second."
Abel was left stunned and let out a sharp gasp. "That could run your heart for 50 lifetimes."
"Yeah, Or something big for 14 minutes.
Tony turned on the light and set very translucent papers over it. "This is our ticket out of here."
"What is it?"
"Flatten them out and look." He told her.
Abel reached her hand over the papers and flattened them out to show the outline of something that looked like a giant suit of armor. Abel let out a cutting breath as her eye lit up with amazement. "Amazing."
Tony nodded his head but couldn't help to give a winning smirk when he saw her excited look. "Thanks.