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We Walk on Water (Don't Let Go)
Chapter 3
[A/N:] I've been in this fandom three weeks and a day now. I can't believe how much I've written for it. Thanks to everyone who has supported me so far, as it encourages me to keep going!
"Would Stane have had access to your automated system?" Steve asked.
"He had access to everything." Tony replied, his voice flat. "I'm gonna go down and take a look at the system," He said, then turned and walked straight into Bucky. Tony wound up having to take a step back, Bucky didn't even move.
"Nice job imitating a brick wall." Tony said glibly, patting Bucky on the shoulder. "Keep up the good work." Then he slid his faceplate down, turned on the thrusters on his suit and flew down into the chasm.
There was a moment of quiet, and the Steve spoke over the earpiece. "Tony, who was Stane?"
"Didn't SHIELD brief you on that, Capsicle?"
"Sorry Tony. That wasn't in the file we gave him." Natasha said.
"I know SHIELD knew." Tony sighed. "Obadiah Stane was a friend of my father's who helped set up Stark Industries, and when my father died, he helped run Stark Industries. He ran it for a long time, actually. Eventually it came out that he was selling weapons behind my back to anyone who would buy them."
"Weren't you paying attention?" Steve asked.
Tony turned on the torchlight in his suit and flashed it on the wall under their feet. He studied a diagram on the wall as he replied. "No, Mr. Truth Justice and the American Way. At the time, all I cared about was making sure no one interfered with my booze budget or private R&D funds. Then I got kidnapped in Afghanistan by a bunch of terrorists who tortured me to try and get me to make them a missile. I built the first suit instead. Of course, by that time I was wearing an electromagnet in my chest to keep a bunch of shrapnel from killing me."
Tony turned off the communicator and looked at more of the schematics on the wall. "This looks like a fully closed system. FRIDAY, are you getting this?"
"I am recording it, sir." She replied.
"Are you analyzing it?"
"I am. It does appear to be a fully closed system."
"Are you hacking it?"
"I am attempting to do so, but it will take some time. Another A.I is keeping me out."
"Alright. See what you can get."
"Tony?" Natasha asked.
"Sorry, working out some problems down here. Where were we? Oh, well, to make a long story short, not only had Stane been selling Stark Industries weapons behind my back, he was the one who arranged to have me kidnapped and was trying to get me killed. He built a copy of the Iron Man armor and stole the Arc Reactor that I was using at the time to keep the shrapnel from killing me. He was defeated, but…yeah." Tony trailed off. "But that's over now. Looks like he stole a bunch of my stuff first, though. I wonder if he sold it, or gave it to 'em."
"You getting anything on those robots?" Clint asked.
"The system is fully automated, and closed. FRIDAY's trying to get in, but something's keeping her out. She says it's another A.I."
"It couldn't be…" Steve looked at Natasha, who shrugged.
Minor scuffling noises drifted up to where the others were waiting, then Tony flew back up out of the darkness. He landed and flipped his faceplate back up. "Someone definitely stole my stuff. I can't tell who's running it. FRIDAY, are you getting anywhere?"
"No, I am unable to access the controls. The other A.I is keeping me out."
"It's a different kind of closed system. It runs in a room behind locked doors. Things like raw metal and materials come in through different channels, and the finished product leaves out another door." Tony explained. "So it's like my system but with weird upgrades. I was gonna try and tear it up but I couldn't get in without blowing the floor up under everyone's feet."
"We've got to figure out who's running this." Steve said.
"Way ahead of you, Cap. FRIDAY, did you mange to trace the location of the A.I?" Tony asked.
"I have, sir. It appears to be housed in the center of this building."
Tony looked at the others. "Who wants to take a walk?"
The walk through the factory was taken in silence; the super soldiers and spies were listening for the sound of approaching footsteps, and Tony was scanning the rooms they passed through, looking for life.
"I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting nothing." Tony said.
"How far out from the middle of this place are we?" Clint asked.
"According to the map I saw before we left, we're not far." Steve replied.
"We're not. In fact, what we are looking for should be right around this corner." Tony confirmed. The group came to the end of the hallway and found another looked door.
"Looks like you're up." Tony told Steve, who stepped forward with his shield and quickly broke the lock on the door.
Tony was the first on in the room, and he went straight for the computer in the center of it.
"This looks familiar." Steve said, as he looked around at the computer towers in the room. These weren't the old-fashioned towers from Fort Lehigh, these were modern, and fewer as a result. But Natasha was nodding with him.
"What have you got, Tony?" She asked, walking towards him.
"This is an advanced system." The man replied as the other four joined him. "I'm almost impressed." He was rapidly typing commands into the system, which appeared to be rejecting them. Tony was in the process of overriding the computer. "Whatever this A.I is it doesn't want me in. Let's see what HYDRA is hiding." He finished typing and hit enter. The towers behind them whirred to life. Then the screen in front of them lit up and came to life.
"Hello, ugly." Tony quipped as he noticed the grotesque face on the screen.
And then Steve and Natasha's fears were confirmed as the face took on a clearer visage and they found themselves looking at Armin Zola.
"So good to see you again, Captain Rogers, Agent Romanov. Stark, Anthony; Barton, Clint. And Codename: Winter Soldier." The face said with a smirk. "I admit I did not expect to see any of you again, but especially you, Sergeant Barnes."
Steve swung around to look and Bucky and realized that the other man was starting to hyperventilate. "Bucky, are you alright?" Steve asked quietly.
Clint took command at that moment, grabbing Steve and Bucky and turning them: Bucky so he faced away from the screen, and Steve so that he was standing in the way of the screen.
"Stay with us." The archer said quietly to Bucky.
Zola seemed amused by the reaction he'd drawn from Barnes; now he turned to Tony. "And you, Anthony. How amusing that the son comes to finish his father's work."
Tony's eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about?" He demanded.
A newspaper clipping appeared on the screen, the headline of the paper announcing the death of Howard and Maria. "Sometimes, people learn things they shouldn't. Then they become obstacles."
"How did you survive?" Natasha demanded.
"I could ask the same question of you, Agent Romanov." Zola noted. "As for me, you carried me out of Fort Lehigh. When I was plugged back into a computer at your new hideout, I was able to upload myself to the Internet. I came back here to make use of the facilities and the information we obtained from one Obadiah Stane."
Tony was still staring at the screen in front of him as more headlines began to pop up. "Obadiah Stane was very useful to us." Zola explained. "More than willing to sell Stark Industries innovations to us, as you have already seen, Anthony. We were very pleased to hear about the kill order he put out on you, since once Stark Industries was under his control we were guaranteed a pipeline of weapons to aid our cause. Sadly, you escaped, and built a new way to fight. We wanted Stane to give it to us, but he never did. You got in the way of that. It was very helpful of him to agree to cut the brake line of Howard Stark's car, though."
"Tony!" Natasha said sharply. She had been trying to get his attention by saying his name quietly but to no avail. The sharper tone seemed to snap Tony out of the trance he had gone into. Her sharp tone attracted the attention of the other three men as well.
Tony exhaled. "So, that's your great plan, huh?" He asked. Zola seemed confused. "Build an army of robots? Because let me tell you what I'm going to do now. Do you think you're the first freak to try and hide on the Internet? We've seen that before. And when we get out of here, I'm going to call a friend. His name is the Vision. He's really good about cleaning up online ends like you. In fact, FRIDAY- "
"I have already contacted the Vision and sent him a detailed message apprising him of the situation, sir. I have also marked the message as top priority."
"Thank you." Tony told her before he turned back to the screen. "The Vision is more than capable of wiping every trace of you off the Internet. So enjoy your electronic immortality while it lasts, because it's going to end very soon. And we are all of us walking out of here, every last one."
"Are you sure about that, Anthony?" Zola asked.
"Sir, I have detected incoming hostiles." FRIDAY warned.
"That system," Tony realized. "How did you modify that system to close it up like Fort Knox?"
"That is something you will never know." Zola taunted. "And you will not escape."
"Don't bet on it. By the way, this stuff you stole from me by proxy? You're not gonna keep it and you're to going to use it again. The new Stark Family Legacy for HYDRA is a missile on this place when we leave." Tony told him.
A device on Natasha's belt beeped, she pulled it up and looked at it. "We've got company coming. We need to get out of here!"
"Let's go." Steve said, tugging Bucky away.
"Wouldn't you like to know if Obadiah was a member of HYDRA?" Zola asked as Tony and Natasha turned away.
Tony turned back long enough to blast the computer with one of his repulsors. "No. I don't need to know that. It doesn't matter anymore." Then he took the air and followed Natasha. They were the last to leave.
"Stark you designed these things." Steve said. "Tell us how to stop them."
"If you can, get the chest plate open, you'll find a handful of wires right there in the front. Rip them all out." Tony said. "That'll shut 'em down hard and quick."
They had made it back to the room the machinery was in, but now they could all hear that things below them were moving.
"How much raw material was down there?" Steve asked Tony as they ran.
"There was no good way to tell. Based on the schematics of the system it can't hold that much raw material. You might get…I dunno, let me run the math."
"Quickly." Hawkeye urged.
"If they keep to the schematics they'll get maybe ten based on my estimates of raw material that must have already been stored in the system. If they were as large as the one I took out when I came in, you're looking at four or five tops." Tony decided.
At that moment four robots burst up into the upper level.
"Everyone, take cover!" Steve shouted as the machines began to fire.
Natasha was the first to get out from behind cover and take on one of the machines, but when she jumped at it, the robots moved back out of her way and resumed firing at her.
Tony swooped down and pulled her out of the way before circling to try and drop her on the machine. It kept moving out of the way, forcing him to fly after and catch her over and over again.
Steve was not going to stand by and allow his friends to be the only targets out there, and he was the next to emerge. He threw his shield and managed to hit one of the robots on the neck, knocking it to the side, but it didn't go down as he had hoped.
Only Clint and Bucky where nowhere to be seen.
[A/N:] I found the Winter Soldier comics at a library the other day, the original comics, so I checked them out and read them. I have to say, they were alright, but I like the movie better. I think the emotional gut punch from the Winter Soldier's identity is better in the movie because the back story in the movie makes Steve and Bucky closer, but that's just my two cents.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who has supported me so far, and please leave a review and let me know what you thought!