People were supposed to look impressed when a superhero proclaimed that he was here to save them, but after a moment Tony realized he shouldn't have expected it of this lot. Balthazar and Dido had never thought terribly much of him – and Jarvis simply knew him far too well.
The first response he got to his announcement was Windham's derisive snort. "And what do you think you're going to do about it, Stark?" he asked. "Even if we can get out of this place, you've only got a few hours to stop these people, and you don't even know where they are. What if you can't find them? You can't evacuate Los Angeles in the time we've got. It would take days."
"Well, I'm definitely not going to be able to think of anything while you're spouting doom and gloom at me," said Tony. He held up a hand to forestall any angry reply. "As you just said, we can't do anything else until we're out of this basement, and we can't get out of this basement until we're out of these handcuffs, so let's take things in order." They needed a plan, but this was the sort of thing Tony knew how to make plans for. "Lucky for us, handcuffs are easy. We just need something we can use to lift the ratchet. Dido, you got any bobby pins?"
She shook her head. "I don't use them. They don't hold my hair."
It had been worth asking. "Well, does anybody have a wire or a safety pin or..." the answer suddenly came to him. "Dido! Give me your glasses!"
Dido took them off her face and looked at them critically. "They're plastic," she pointed out.
"But there should be a wire in the arms to make them hold their shape," said Tony. "We'll have to get the plastic off to get at it, but that's easy. We just need to warm it up." And if there were one thing Tony Stark had easy access to, no matter where he was or what he was doing, it was a heat source. "Balthazar, you're closest to me." He began unbuttoning his shirt to expose the arc reactor. "Since I've only got one free hand, I'll need you to help me get at the part of this thing that's hot."
Jarvis reached out. "I don't think that's a good idea," he protested. "Once you remove the arc reactor, you only have about ten minutes before you go into cardiac arrest."
"Don't worry about it," Tony replied, and then realized what he'd just done – he'd dismissed Jarvis' advice again. "Sorry," he added. "Look... this won't take ten minutes, okay? Can you trust me?"
Jarvis hesitated, then nodded. "Yes."
"Keep your hand real steady," Tony warned as he unscrewed the arc reactor. "This is delicate."
Windham's eyes widened as Tony eased the tiny machine out of its housing. "Good lord, Stark, I had no idea the thing was so big."
"Is that a compliment to my fortitude, or an insult to my ability to miniaturize?" asked Tony. Windham didn't give him an answer, which was just as well – Tony didn't want one. "Here we go," he said, leaning forward a bit to shorten the distance between them. "Balthazar, hold this and try not to let the wires touch the side of the socket."
Windham took hold of the reactor as if it were a bomb.
Tony glanced up at the other two. Dido was staring wide-eyed at the hole in his chest, and Jarvis was chewing on the side of his own thumbnail, clearly worried sick. Tony gave them a reassuring smile. "It's okay, guys," he said. "I do this all the time."
"Usually under rather more controlled conditions," Jarvis pointed out.
"We'll make do," said Tony.
With Windham holding the reactor, Tony carefully released part of the cover, exposing the coils of the plasma containment system. With the cooling ring removed, the wires were so hot they made the air above them shimmer. Being careful not to burn himself, Tony held one arm of Dido's glasses in the heat and silently counted to ten. That made the plastic soft enough to straighten out the hooked part. A few more seconds, and hopefully it would slide right off.
"Okay, Balthazar, keep holding the reactor steady. Dido," he held out the glasses, swallowing as he felt his heart beginning to beat arrhythmically. "You hold these by the hinge so they won't snap when I pull." She obeyed. Tony wrapped his hand in his shirt for protection from the hot plastic, but still hissed at the heat on his palm as he grabbed it and yanked it smoothly off the metal underneath.
As it pulled away, Dido's fingers began to slip. She grabbed to keep a hold on the glasses, and accidentally touched the metal. With a squeak of pain she reflexively let go, and the glasses clattered away across the tiles.
"Oh... damn it!" she exclaimed, sticking her singed fingers in her mouth. "Oh, god, I'm sorry!"
"Don't panic!" Tony ordered. He tried to toss the plastic aside, but it had partially melted into his shirt and now could not be separated from the fabric. He told himself he'd never liked that shirt anyway. "See if you can reach them. Balthazar, you help me put the reactor back together."
While they worked on that, Dido strained to reach where the glasses had fallen. She could almost touch them, but when her fingers brushed against the frame she accidentally pushed them a fraction of an inch further, beyond her reach.
"Damn it!" she said again.
"Let me try," said Jarvis. He had longer limbs, but he also had to reach rather awkwardly past Dido, putting the two of them into extremely close contact. She squeezed back against the walk to give him more room, but they still could have kissed if they'd wanted to. Tony couldn't help wondering whether they did want to... or whether they already had.
Unfortunately, Jarvis still couldn't quite reach them. He sat back up and thought for a moment, then pulled off his right shoe and sock and tried that instead. Tony couldn't watch – Jarvis still wasn't all that great with his hands, and even normal people could be clumsy trying to grab something with their feet. He could just picture their chance of escape slipping down a crack between the tiles...
"I have them!"
Tony snapped the reactor back into place, and raised his head to find Jarvis holding the glasses with a triumphant smile.
"Great work, buddy!" said Tony. "Pass 'em down!"
Tony took deep breaths to make his heartbeat normalize, while Jarvis passed the glasses to Dido, who gave them to Balthazar, who turned them over to Tony. He licked his fingers and touched the metal gingerly, making sure it was now cool enough to handle. Once he was satisfied that it was, he sat up and twisted around so he could see what he was doing as he inserted the pointed end of the wire into the handcuff ratchet.
"Have you ever done this before?" asked Dido.
"A couple of times," Tony replied nonchalantly. He had no problem if they wanted to believe he regularly made daring escapes in the process of saving the world.
Jarvis had to ruin the moment: "Mr. Stark has been in handcuffs on ten occasions. Six DUIs, a resisting arrest, two drunk and disorderlies, and astonishingly enough only one public indecency. Of course, those are just the incidents I am aware of."
Dido snorted with suppressed laughter.
"Jarvis," said Tony, "there is a time and a place for honesty, and that was not it."
"Sorry, Sir," Jarvis replied, with a smile that meant he wasn't sorry at all.
When the kidnappers had cuffed Tony's right hand to the pipe, they hadn't realized that he could work with his left just as easily. It took a minute of fumbling and one accidental self-stabbing, but eventually the handcuff opened and Tony was able to pull his hand free and stick his bleeding finger in his mouth. "One down, three to go!" he declared, and decided to free Jarvis first.
Wedging the ratchet open was a lot easier – and less painful – with both hands. It took him only seconds to get Jarvis out. "There you go," he said, pulling him to his feet. Jarvis held on to him for support for a moment, then tried to stand unaided and nearly fell down again. Tony had to grab him quickly. "Whoa! You okay?" He remembered what had happened at the beach. "Stand up too fast again?"
"I'm numb in my left foot!" said Jarvis, sounding very worried about it. He reached down to rub the appendage, and frowned in confusion. "No... I can feel it now, but it's... prickling."
"You've been sitting on it," Tony realized – and here was a chance to do what he should have been doing since Monday, and actually help Jarvis to understand the things he was experiencing. "It's okay, that's just what's called your foot falling asleep. Give it a minute to get the blood back into it, and you'll be fine." He patted Jarvis' shoulder. "Once you can walk, go see if the doors are locked, while I get Dido and Balthazar out."
"Yes, Sir." Jarvis sat down again and removed his other shoe and sock so he could try to massage the feeling back into his toes.
Tony paused for a moment, then made a decision. "Jarvis, you can keep calling me Tony if you want to."
This suggestion seemed to puzzle Jarvis. "If I want to?"
"Yeah," said Tony. "It's up to you."
"May I think about it?" Jarvis asked uncertainly.
"Take your time," said Tony.
Dido and Balthazar were both staring as Jarvis got up and, hobbling slightly on the foot that was still half-asleep, went to check the doors. "What is with him?" asked Dido.
"It's kind of a story," said Tony. "Now's not a good time."
He opened the other two sets of handcuffs while Jarvis rattled the doors and then reported back. "It's no good, Sir. They've been barred from the outside."
"All right," said Tony, as he and Dido helped Balthazar up. "We've got step one over with. Now, let's work on step two."
Tony gave the doors an experimental push of his own and confirmed what Jarvis had just said: there were not locked, and in fact could not be locked because the mechanism had been removed when the basement was abandoned. They were, however, barred. Tony could open them about an inch – just far enough to see that Huang's departing cronies had put a crowbar through the handles on the other side. Crude, but effective. If they could get a hand or a tool through either the slit between the doors or the hole left where the lock had been taken out, they might be able to slide it out.
"Who's got small hands?" asked Tony. His certainly weren't going to fit through either opening, and neither were Balthazar's. "Dido," he said, "want to give it a try?"
Tony and Windham held the doors open as far as they could, and Dido tried to get her hand between them. Unfortunately, it wouldn't fit – try as she might, the base of her thumb was just a bit too thick. Next she tried the hole where the lock had been, but with no more success. Even with her thumb pressed tight against her palm, her knuckles wouldn't go through.
Tony scratched at his beard while he thought – he wished Pepper were here. She had dainty little hands... and then he remembered something he'd noticed a couple of days ago and then forgotten about. "Jarvis," he said. "Remember I told you that you kinda look like Pepper? Pepper's got small hands. You try."
Jarvis held up his hands and studied them doubtfully, but said, "yes, Sir." He took off his blazer and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Tony winced at the sight of yesterday's sunburn, still fresh and ferociously red, on Jarvis' arms – it was going to suck trying to shove that through a small space, but Jarvis himself didn't hesitate to try. After a moment, though, it became obvious that he wouldn't be able to do it, either. Jarvis had narrow palms and delicate fingers for a man, but they still weren't going to make it through.
"It was worth a try," said Tony. He did some more beard-scratching. "Everybody look around," he said. "Maybe there's something we can use as a tool. Dido, you see if the windows open." The windows were tiny and high up, but if just one person could wiggle through, he or she would be able to come back down and free the others. If it wasn't possible to open them, maybe they could break the glass...
"Sir?" said Jarvis.
Tony looked at him and found him studying his own hands again, prodding at his palm as if counting the bones.
"I believe," Jarvis said, "I may have an idea."
In trying to force his hand into the gap between the doors, Jarvis had been able to feel his skin rubbing between the wood outside and the bone within. It had reminded him of his unsettling realization earlier that day that inside this body were things like organs and veins and a skeleton. Had that really just been earlier today that he'd been thinking about that? It felt like weeks ago. Human time was a terribly subjective thing.
But it was the skeleton that was the problem now. He could see that his wrist was smaller than the hold for the lock – the thing making his hand too wide was the way the metacarpal of his thumb was attached. If he could have rotated it just a little further into the palm, his whole hand would have slipped through with only minimal difficulty. His thumb was in the way, and logic dictated that if something were in the way, it must be moved.
Since, as he'd noted while eating his sandwich, he was apparently right-handed, Jarvis decided to use his left for this experiment. That way, even if he sustained irreparable damage it would be less of a long-term handicap. He braced the back of his hand against the wall and found the joint he wanted. Then he took a firm hold of it, and pulled.
"Jarvis," Mr. Stark began, "what the hell are you..."
There was a horrible juicy popping sensation, accompanied by a stab of pain worse than anything Jarvis had felt yet in this whole rather painful adventure. It sliced through his hand and washed over the rest of his body like an electric shock – his vision went white and for a moment he could feel nothing else. When sensation returned he found himself on his knees and panting, with bright spots swimming in front of his eyes. Beyond these, Dido Windham was standing over him, pale-faced and with her hands covering her mouth. Her father was half-cowering behind her, and Mr. Stark was simply staring open-mouthed in shock.
Jarvis swallowed a mouthful of sour fluid. He felt like he ought to say something. The only thing he could think of was, "that was significantly more painful than I anticipated."
"Yeah, I can tell by the way you hollered," said Mr. Stark, though Jarvis could not remember shouting. "What did you just..."
"I think I should be able to get my hand through now," Jarvis said. It wasn't exactly an attractive idea. Something in his head was screaming at him to put the bone back now, to curl up and weep, to do anything that would make the pain stop, but after taking the trouble of dislocating it, Jarvis had to make the effort. He held the loose thumb against his palm, gritting his teeth as the pain throbbed in his ears like a heartbeat, and slipped his hand through the lock hole.
The unfinished wood scraping his sunburn hurt. The pain in his thumb was excruciating in a way that made the dictionary definition of that word seemed woefully inadequate. But his hand fit through, just far enough for him to touch the crowbar with his index and middle fingers. By putting one finger on each side of the bar, he could push it along inch by painful inch. The process was desperately slow, and his head was starting to swim – he worried he'd lose consciousness before he got it finished. Some sort of hot liquid trickled down his forehead and into his left eye, where it stung fiercely. After that he kept his eyes closed. More drops of fluid slid down his neck and back, making him shiver.
Finally, he managed to move the bar far enough that gravity took over: it slid out and fell on the floor outside with a loud metallic clatter. Jarvis let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, and carefully withdrew his hand. Suddenly, he felt utterly unable to hold his body up. He sat down heavy and limp on the hard, cold tile floor and slumped against the wall, eyes closed.
"Holy shit," he heard Dido Windham said.
Holy shit, indeed. If he'd had any idea how much it was going to hurt, he doubted he'd have been able to even get as far as popping the thumb joint out of place – which reminded him that he'd better summon up the energy to sit up and put it back. The longer it was dislocated, the more the surrounding tissues would become inflamed and swollen, and the harder it would be to avoid permanent damage.
Mr. Stark knelt down next to him, eyes still wide. "Let me help you with that," he said, taking the hand gently.
"I know how to replace it," Jarvis assured him, his voice high and thin with pain. He had, through the workshop robots, helped Mr. Stark to set or relocate bones on more than one occasion – Iron Man was a dangerous job and even with the protection of the suit, Mr. Stark often needed medical care after a mission. If he'd known it felt like this, he would have been rather more gentle.
"Well, I know how to do a lot of things," Mr. Stark said, "but I still let you help with them." He found the base of the metacarpal, and there was another flash of pain and nasty pop as it snapped back onto the trapezium – and then, suddenly, the pain was gone.
Jarvis stared at it in surprise. "It doesn't hurt anymore," he said. That didn't seem right.
"It will tomorrow," Mr. Stark promised him. "Try not to move it too much." He grabbed Jarvis' other arm and helped him upright.
"Holy shit," Dido repeated. "I can't believe he just did that."
"Neither can I," said Mr. Stark.
And that was when Jarvis started giggling.
It was not voluntary – all of a sudden he simply felt an irresistible need to laugh. This was the first time he'd done that, wasn't it? That seemed a little odd. Laughter was something deeply and essentially human, at least as much so as anthropomorphizing or lying to oneself – and those were things Jarvis had caught himself doing within his first twenty-four hours in this body. He hadn't found anything particularly funny yet... maybe because most of the time he'd been too worried about his own situation to take an interest in jokes.
Nothing was funny now, either, and yet he couldn't stop. He'd been light-headed after Mr. Stark put his thumb back, and when he'd stood, that sensation had suddenly transformed itself into euphoria as he realized he might well have just saved all their lives. If he had failed in either of the two tasks he'd just performed, retrieving Dido's glasses or opening the door, all four of them might have been doomed to die down here... and he'd been able to save them because he'd been where Stark is. Had he, after all, fulfilled what Dr. Strange had asked of him? Could it really have been that simple? The idea seemed absurd.
Maybe this really was funny after all. Maybe that was why Jarvis laughed and laughed until his abdominal muscles hurt.
"Jarvis! Snap out of it!" Mr. Stark snapped his fingers in front of Jarvis' face. "Hey! Look at me!"
Jarvis obeyed, and then finally managed to calm himself when he saw Mr. Stark's terrified expression. Mr. Stark was clearly afraid that Jarvis had gone mad. It took a minute or two of disciplined breathing and intermittent giggles, but he eventually got himself under control.
"I'm all right, Sir," he panted finally.
"Good," said Mr. Stark with a nod. "We're getting out of here, we'll find a phone, and we'll get you to a doctor. Hang on to me."
The doors opened easily down. It was just a flight of steps up into what seemed to be an abandoned fitness centre. The only light was the cold blue glow of Mr. Stark's arc reactor, but by that they found their way up to a side door and out into a parking lot. Jarvis had to lean on Mr. Stark the whole way. He doubted he could have remained upright on his own.
Outside, rain was falling, and it suddenly seemed to Jarvis that water falling out of the sky was a rather strange thing. He understood all the physics of evaporation and precipitation behind it. He knew how the water cycle worked. And yet for some reason, the fact that these processes actually manifested themselves as water literally falling out of the sky was the oddest thing.
The sounds of traffic and sirens could be heard not far away. "He'll have put us somewhere near the coast or a river," Mr. Stark decided, "where he'd be sure the water would reach us. Let's find a pay phone or somebody with a cell we can borrow." He shifted his shoulders, trying to find a better way to bear Jarvis' added weight. "It's okay," he said. "We're almost out of this."
The chilly, damp air outside seemed to help clear Jarvis' head. He felt a little less like he was about to fall over as they wound their way between factories and warehouses, some of them still in use and some not. He could stand up a little straighter and be a bit less of a burden, although he didn't yet trust himself to walk unaided. All he really wanted right now was a place to lie down and sleep. Funny, that – two days ago, the thought of sleep had been frightening.
"Are you feeling better?" Dido asked him anxiously.
"I'll be all right, Miss Windham," Jarvis assured her.
"That was the most badass thing I've ever seen anybody do while wearing a three-piece suit," she said. "I wouldn't have thought you had it in you."
Mr. Stark told her, "you need to watch more movies."
"Neddy didn't have a stuntman," she replied.
Suddenly there was a blaze of red and blue lights. That made Jarvis' head hurt, and he shut his eyes – but opened them again a moment later, when he heard the familiar voice of Captain Rogers calling Mr. Stark's name.