Tony Stark was working as hard as he could to get their plan finished. He was worried about his daughter, about what they had done to her and where she was now. Whenever he or Yinsen asked, they wouldn't answer. When the doctor asked to see her to check her health, they refused. Neither of them had any idea where she was, or if she was okay.
The moment he realised they were going to take her away from him, he felt his heart pounding in his chest. He had wanted to stop them to keep her safe like he had failed to do before, but he had seen the glint in Ruby's eyes and knew she had a plan of her own. It didn't make him any less afraid, but he had faith in his daughter.
"I am sure she is fine, Stark." Yinsen told him, helping with what Tony was doing. "They know that if they harm your daughter, you will not make the missile."
"Why won't they let me see her then? Why won't they let either of us see her? You said it yourself, she was sick, they aren't going to care if she gets even worse. They're just going to let her suffer even more." He replied, trying to hard to focus on what he was doing.
"Maybe they refuse because she escaped. And if she escaped they can no longer use her as leverage against you." The doctor reasoned. "They do not know what we are doing in here. They still think we are making their missile."
"I hope you're right, Yinsen. I hope she did manage to get out. I hope that right now, she is back home and safe with Pepper looking after her." He said, before letting out a sigh. "It's been over two weeks now. I just need to know she is okay."
Yinsen nodded in understanding. He had seen how distracted Tony was getting, more and more distracted as the days passed by. He was hardly sleeping any more, always working on their escape or lost in his thoughts, thoughts of his daughter.
In reality, he was worried about her as well. He knew she hadn't been in the best of conditions when she was taken, and he knew that she wouldn't really have the strength to fight against them to escape. Her ribs were still healing, and the wound to her leg would still be making it difficult for her to use it properly. If he was being honest, he as confident that they had hurt her even more, not just taken her away to encourage them to work faster, even if that had been the outcome.
"Okay, so far so good." Tony told him, sitting on the edge of the workbench and testing out a mechanical leg. "What you got?"
Yinsen looked at the screen of the laptop they had been giving. "Everything is good." The man told him, noticing a small smile form on Tony's face.
"Do you really think Ruby is alive?" Tony asked him suddenly, still working on the leg and not looking up at the man.
The doctor didn't have the heart to tell him the truth, to tell him that he thought they she was probably dead by now. He couldn't do that, he still needed the reason to live, to get out of there alive. "From what I have seen of your daughter, I believe she is fine. She does not go down without a fight, you have seen that yourself." Yinsen reminded him.
Tony let out a sigh as he put the tools down on the bench. "I know, but I can't help worrying. All I keep thinking is that this is all my fault. I'm the one that brought her here, I'm the one who didn't listen and make her stay at home, where she would be safe. I dragged her into all of this."
"But if it were not for your daughter, you would probably already be dead." Yinsen told him, taking him slightly by surprise. "While you were still unconscious, your daughter told me of what had happened. She was doing everything she could to defend you, to protect you, including getting shot. She wasn't going to go down without a fight."
"Yeah, but now I have no idea where she is, or if she is safe." Tony told him, working on getting the mechanical leg off. "And it's killing me not knowing."
The hours started passing by slowly. Neither men were speaking, both just carrying on with their work, knowing that they needed to get everything finished as quickly as possible. They were only brought out of their own little world of thoughts when the large metal door was pulled open. Men with guns piled into the room, more than they had ever had there with them before.
Both men put their hands above their head as a man that they hadn't seen before walking in. "Relax." The bald man told them, the same bald man who had spoken to Ruby. "The bow and arrow, once was the pinnacle of weapons technology." Raza said, looking at the materials on the workbench of noticing the arc reactor in Tony's chest. "It allowed the great Genghis Khan to rule from the Pacific to the Ukraine. An empire twice the size of Alexander the Great and four times the size of the Roman Empire." Both Tony and Yinsen shifted nervously as the man picked up the plans for the armour. "But today, whoever holds the latest Stark weapons rules these lands. And soon, it will be my turn."
The man suddenly turned to face Yinsen, making the man shrink under the stare he was getting. "Why have you failed me?" Raza asked in a language that Tony didn't understand. Leaving him to stand there, looking baffled as he tried to follow the conversation.
"We're working. Diligently." Yinsen told him, worried about what was going to happen next. He knew what they were capable of, and he had a feeling he was going to be on the receiving end of it very soon.
The man started walking towards Yinsen, at a slow pace. "I let you live. This is how you repay me?"
"It's very complex…" Yinsen told him, as he stood in front of him now. "He's trying very hard."
"On his knees." Raza ordered, making two of the guards grab a hold of the doctor and get him to kneel on the ground. "You think I'm a fool? I'll get the truth." He said, picking up a hot lump of metal.
"We're both working." Yinsen told him, starting to feel the panic rising within him.
Raza just ignored him as he walked over, the red hot metal glowing as he brought it closer to Yinsen. "Open your mouth."
Tony just stood there, looking at the scene that was unfolding before him. "What does he want?" He asked, completely oblivious to the conversation and the danger that Yinsen was in.
"You think I'm a fool?" Raza asked him again, as the guards forced Yinsen's head onto a metal surface, the hot metal getting closer.
Tony could feel himself starting to panic now as well. "What's going on?"
"Tell me the truth." Raza demanded. Yinsen simply told him that they were building the missile he had asked for, but the man didn't want to believe him, he wasn't willing to take his word for it.
Tony knew he had to step in and do something, or at least try. "What do you want? A delivery date? I need him. Good assistant." He said, stepping forward and getting all the guns aimed at him in a heartbeat.
Raza looked at him carefully, before dropping the red hot lump of metal onto the anvil, a little close to Yinsen's face. "You have 'til tomorrow, to assemble my missile." He announced, getting ready to leave the cell.
"Where's my daughter?" Tony called suddenly. "I want to see her. You want this missile, I want my daughter." He demanded, having no idea where this courage had suddenly come from.
Raza stopped and turned to face him. "Miss Stark is safe. Complete the missile, you and your daughter go free. Fail to do so, and you will never see her again."
"I want to see my daughter." Tony demanded again, not ready to settle for anything less than seeing her, than knowing she was alive and safe.
"Your daughter is not here. She has been moved somewhere more secure. You have my word that she is safe and you will see her again when I have my missile." Raza didn't give Tony a chance to say anything else, as he left the room swiftly, the guards following behind him, locking the two men back in their cell.
"You okay?" Tony asked the doctor as he went over to check on him. "What happened, what was he saying?"
"We need to get to work. If he says he wants his missile by tomorrow, we need to be ready for tomorrow." Yinsen told him, ignore the concerned look that Tony was giving him.
Tony just watched as the man got straight back to work, as if nothing had happened, as if his life had not just been on the line. "Do you believe what he said about Ruby? That she's not here, that she's safe somewhere else?" Tony asked him, not able to shake the feeling that something bad had happened to her.
Yinsen didn't stop working as he replied. "I believe that she is safe. We need to focus on working."
Tony knew he wasn't going to get anything else out of the man, no matter how much he wanted to try to get some kind of honest response from him, he knew they needed to be prepared for tomorrow. They had a lot of work to do in such a short time, and Tony wasn't really sure that they were going to have enough time to do it all. But he had to try, they both had to try.
While Tony and Yinsen had been frantically working away to get the armour finished and complete their escape, Ruby was sitting in the control room at the air base, ignoring the world around her as she hacked into every single satellite she could. The moment she had been left alone, she knew what she had to do.
It was the dead of night, and there was hardly anyone around. She didn't feel like sleeping any more, so she decided it was time to get on and find her father. Sitting at the computer, she put on the headset, typing away furiously, her eyes never leaving the screen. "SWAIN, JARVIS, you guys there?" She whispered. Although she knew her tracks were being covered, and that she really wasn't going to get into any trouble, she still wanted to keep herself unnoticed and quiet.
"Miss Matthews, you have been missing for…" SWAIN started, his tone telling her that he was about to give her a lecture and then tell her off.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. We can talk about that later. New mission, find Tony Stark." She whispered, watching the screen as the screen filled up with a map of the area they were currently in. "Did either of you manage to pick up the signal? Pirate boy did, but he won't have the data that I need."
"I am afraid that neither of us were able to detect a signal, Miss Matthews-Stark." JARVIS told her.
Ruby let out a sigh and rubbed her head a little. Without that data, it was going to take a lot longer for her to trace her steps and work her way back to where they were being held, back to where her father was still being held. "Okay, SWAIN, get onto the pirate. Tell him I need anything and everything he has from the moment he picked up the signal. I want time, location, interference, anything. Whatever he has, and I want it now." She demanded.
"Of course, Miss Matthews." SWAIN replied, getting on with his task.
"JARVIS, give me a map marked with all the places that have been searched, including the routes taken, vehicles used, the lot. Got it?"
"Yes, Miss Matthews-Stark. All information regarding the search for yourself and Mr Stark has been logged and saved on SWAIN's secure server." JARVIS informed her. "We agreed to keep a copy of the data for your personal use. This includes certain military files which SWAIN insisted needed to be acquired."
Ruby couldn't help but chuckle a little at that piece of information. "Good old SWAIN." She mumbled to herself. "Okay, Take me to the village where Rhodes picked me up, show me the military routes around that area and any sightings there have been of insurgents."
The image on the screen changed, and Ruby let her eyes flick over it quickly. She bit her lip, knowing that she was going to need to use more than just the one computer. She needed to have several screens set up, she needed to be able to compare data, to see everything all at once, and a single screen was not going to be able to hack it.
"Okay, lads. We need to take over a bit more of their control room." She muttered, eyeing up several other computers and planning in her head exactly what she was going to do with them. "How do we feel about totally taking over the base? Well, half of it at least."
There were a few words of encouragement from SWAIN, and words of caution from JARVIS. Ruby didn't really listen to either of them, she was too busy yanking at wires and essentially destroying the control room.
An hour later, and Ruby was a bit more satisfied with the set up she now had. After taking things apart and putting them back together, she was now sitting comfortably with a set of six screens in front of her. JARVIS and SWAIN able to control each one of them. Ruby had found it rather easy to hack into the military, integrate SWAIN and JARVIS into the system, and give them access to everything she was using.
Everything she was doing, she was doing for her father. She didn't care if she was going to get in trouble, or of she had someone to cover up her tracks for her. Ruby knew that even if she had no one else to help her, to look out for her and give her everything she needed, she was still going to do everything it took to find her father and get him home alive.
"JARVIS, keep an eye out for any UAV. Anything that shouldn't be in the skies, anything at all. You log it, track it's flight path, and tell me." Ruby said, settling down, knowing that she was in for a long wait. "I know what my father is planning, I know how he is going to escape, so keep an eye on the skies."
"Certainly, Miss Matthews-Stark. Is there anything else I should be looking out for?"
A smile stretched across her face. "Yeah, explosions. Big ones. He knows I like big explosions, so he'll make sure to blow stuff up to get my attention." Ruby told him, grinning away at the thought of her father blowing up that stupid cave, along with all those Stark weapons that they had.
The hours passed, and Ruby had barely moved from her position. Every now and then she would stretch a little, but her eyes never left the screens. So far she was getting no where, just ruling out places that had already been searched. She was trying to back track her movements from when she was found, trying to find her way back to the cave, but it was proving to be more difficult than she had anticipated.
She had no idea how long she had been sitting there for, but crashed back to the real world when a voice boomed through the room. "What the hell are you doing?" A voice shouted at her, once that she hadn't heard before. Ruby barely even gave the man a glance before getting back to the screens before her.
"Sir, this is Ruby Matthews-Stark, daughter of Tony Stark." She heard Rhodey tell him. She hadn't even realised he had been in the room with her, nothing had registered outside of her search for her father.
"I don't care who the hell she is, look at what she's done!" He continued to shout. "What the hell does she think she's doing? Look at what she has done!"
Rhodey let out a sigh, he had seen this coming. The moment he had seen Ruby in the room, and the mess she had made by creating her own station and set up, he knew trouble was coming. "Sir, she is currently looking for her father. We know he is still alive, and she is the best hope that anyone has of finding him. She escaped, she will find him." He replied, his voice strong and firm. He didn't care if he was going to have disciplinary action taken against him for it all, he didn't care as long as Tony was found safely.
The man turned to look at Rhodes, the expression on his face unreadable. "You think that a child will be able to find him when we couldn't?"
Ruby decided to speak up now. She had barely spoken a word, and she didn't really plan on speaking to anyone either. They all just asked if she was okay, of she needed anything. They all wanted something, and she really couldn't be bothered with them all. "I'm not a child, but I am the daughter of Tony Stark. I created my own AI when I was nine years old. I've hacked into your system more times than I care to count. I can hack into any computer on the planet, almost, and you wouldn't even know it." She told them, still fixed on the screens. "I have access to every single satellite, all the information of your search for my father, and I will find him."
The man just stood there, his mouth hanging open slightly, while Rhodey chuckled lightly. "That's my mini-Stark. Every bit as smart and arrogant as her father."
"I heard that, Uncle Rhodey. Now hush, the lads and I are working." She said, before falling silent once more.
"Lads? Who are the lads?" Rhodey's superior asked him once he recovered from his shock.
Rhodey just smiled. "You know how we had two super intelligent computers trying to take over the search all the time?" He asked, getting a nod in response. "Those are her lads."
After that, Ruby was left in peace. Occasionally either Rhodey or Agent Goldstein would check up on her, bringing her food and water. But she didn't touch it. She was too focused on what she was doing to care about anything else. There was no way she was going to fail, she was determined to find her father, and go back home with him.
Home. That was still something new to her, even though she had been living in that mansion hanging over a cliff for months before everything happened, it was still strange for her. She was used to living in a house, a house that was filled with memories of her mother. She didn't have that any more, none of the memories or the familiar smells. But she was making new memories, and Ruby was damn sure that once her father was back they were going to have many more happy memories in that mansion.
"Ruby, go get some sleep." Rhodey told her, for the twelfth time in the past ten minutes. She hadn't moved from where she was sitting in almost two days, and she had hardly eaten either. She was living off coffee, douse with sugar, and nothing else. She wasn't really helping herself, but she didn't really care.
"I'm good. I just had a coffee." She told him, switching to another satellite and letting her eyes scan the area.
The man let out a sigh. "Ruby, you're going to make yourself ill. You're already in a bad state, you were shot, still have some pretty badly damaged ribs, and were held captive. You need to rest." He told her, just hoping that he could get through to her.
"I can rest when I'm home, with my dad."
"Ruby, I swear if you don't go and get some rest, I will have them sedate you. Don't even think for a second that I won't." Her Uncle Rhodey warned her. "Do you honestly think your father would be happy with you right now? With the fact that you're not taking care of yourself?"
"I never listened to him much, what makes you think I'm going to listen to you?" She asked, before realising how awful she was being to him when all he was doing was looking out for her. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that." Ruby told him, turning her head and looking at him. "I just want to find him, Uncle Rhodey. I just want him back."
He face softened as he saw the tiredness in her eyes. She was exhausted, but she was doing everything she could to battle it and keep working. "Hey, we both do, Ruby. But just look at you, you're tired, you need to eat and you need to sleep. You're not going to find him if that genius brain if yours if too exhausted. Just a few hours sleep. I will sit here and keep an eye on everything." He told her, hoping that she would finally listen to him. "The moment something comes up, I'll come and get you. What do you say?"
Ruby sat there, thinking about it. She knew that her exhausted state wasn't really going to help her for much longer. Sooner or later she would just pass out right there, and then she would have messed everything up. But if Rhodey were to keep an eye on things, and let her know, if she were to take control of it still… "Promise to wake me up in three hours if nothing has happened?" She asked him, giving him her best puppy dog eyes, which really wasn't that hard.
Rhodey smiled at her and nodded a little. "Three hours, I'll even get your lads to remind me. And then if you want to sleep longer after that, then you can. And I promise, if anything happens, anything at all, I will get you straight away, okay Ruby?" She nodded at him as she stretched herself out, all of her joints stiff and painful. "Go on then, I'll send Goldstein in with some food so get to bed."
Once again she nodded at him, but turned and surprised him by giving him a hug. "Thank you, Uncle Rhodey." She whispered, trying so hard not to let the sleepiness show in her voice. "We will find him, won't we?"
He didn't know how to answer that, because he didn't know if it was a question or a statement coming from the younger Stark. "Oh, we'll find him, Ruby. Now go to sleep."
Ruby was seriously dragging her feet as she stumbled through the base and to the room that they had given her. She had barely even been in there, so she was lucky that she remembered exactly where it was. She didn't get changed, or get under the covers, she simply threw herself on the bed and curled up into a ball, a few tears escaping from her tired eyes.
Ruby watched as the Humvee driving in front of them burst into flames. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and she was scared that she was going to have a panic attack. She watched as all the service men and women were killed, the ones her and her father had been talking to only a few minutes ago. They were now on the ground, dead. They wouldn't be seeing their families again.
She knew she had to do something, and suddenly she kicked into Agent mode, taking a stand and protecting the one thing that was really starting to matter in her life. Her father. She growled at him, telling him to stay down, to keep out of sight, before she had to dragging him from the Humvee as a rocket came flying towards it.
Everything was going wrong. They should have been saved by now, her friends should have come to get them out, but they hadn't, they weren't there. Ruby was going to have to deal with it all on her own.
Then her father started shouting at her, grasping her arm tightly and yanking her behind him before they were both blow off their feet. She groaned as she rolled over, finding that her whole body was aching now and blood was pouring from her leg. But then she noticed her father, and the blood seeping through his shirt.
Fear rose up inside of her, the thought of loosing her father too much for her to bear. But she knew she had to be strong, she had to keep focused and keep on hoping that help would come. She had to hope that they would make it out alive, and that she wasn't going to loose her father after only just starting to get to know him. If she lost him, she wouldn't have any family left. He was all she had, and she needed him.
Ruby sat up quickly, gasping for air as the tears streamed down her face. Every time she slept, she relived what had happened, and she hated it, it was one of the reasons why she didn't like going to sleep.
She glanced over at the clock on the small table beside the bed. She had only been asleep for an hour, and now she was too scared to try to sleep any more. Then she heard someone clearing their throat, causing her head to snap and look in their direction.
"Nightmare?" Agent Goldstein asked her softly. He had been informed of her nightmares, of how she reacted to them.
Ruby nodded. "Just a little, yeah. What are you doing in here?"
"Well, Colonel Rhodes asked me to bring you some food, but when I got her you were asleep. I noticed, as I was about to leave, that you were getting rather unsettled. I know about how you react to nightmares." He told her, handing her a glass of water as he did. "The Director has been asking after you. He wants an update from you."
Ruby rolled her eyes and grabbed the Agents phone, tapping away at it before placing it to her ear. "Director Fury, This is Agent Matthews." She said, going very professional very quickly. "I have SWAIN and JARVIS both working with my constantly to map out the possible areas to locate Tony Stark. We are using the data gathered from the military and yourself to eliminate certain areas. Unfortunately, so far we have come up with nothing. These guys a re good at keeping themselves hidden."
"And what about you, Agent Matthews? I hear that you haven't been eating or sleeping." Fury called back to her, a hint of concern in his voice.
"Sir, sleeping is just a waste of time. And I eat when I feel the need. I have a mission to complete, Sir. I will inform you of any further developments." Ruby told him, before ending the call and passing the phone back to Goldstein.
He was just looking at her with his mouth hanging open. He had only seen Ruby Stark, daughter of Tony Stark the billionaire genius. But now, he had witnessed Agent Matthews, the Red Cobra, and he was stunned. "I still think you need to eat something, Agent Matthews." He informed her. "I'm not telling you to go back to sleep, just eat a little food before getting back to work."
Ruby nodded at him, and watched him as he left to fetch her something to eat. She knew she really didn't have time to waste, that every second mattered when she was looking for her father. This was one mission that she was certain that she was not going to fail or completely mess up on. She was going to prove that she was just as much a genius as her famous father, she was going to do what everyone else thought was impossible. She was going to locate Tony Stark, and bring down the Ten Rings.
A/N: Hello everyone! I hope you all have a great Christmas, or whatever other holiday you may have celebrated. Happy New Year to you all as well, since the year is rapidly coming to a close.
We are also getting closer to the end of Afghanistan. Who's looking forward to seeing what happens when Stark and mini-Stark make it back to the US? All raise you hands!
Well, I'm certainly looking forward to it all, and I know you guys are as well, judging by all your wonderful reviews. I really do love them, so keep them coming in!
Time for me to be quiet and get back to working on something else now. Take care everyone, and see you all next year!
Pippa.