Agent Wheeler managed to find them a coast guard helicopter that seated four, counting the pilot: Rhodey took the controls, Tony the front seat, and Steve and Agent Wheeler the back. Clint and Natasha volunteered to contact Fury and try again to get in touch with someone who had actual superpowers, while Pepper and Dido emptied Stark Industries and called NOAA, trying to get the tsunami warning, or something like it, reinstated.

It wasn't the emergency, however, that was making Tony feel some deja vu. Here he was, flying low over the ocean with Jarvis' voice in his ears – that was a familiar feeling indeed, and the familiarity made the differences stand out sharply. A helicopter was a much louder, rougher ride than the Iron Man suit, and hearing Jarvis crackly and distant in the headphones was disconcerting, not at all like having him right there in the armour. Tony felt half-naked, heading into a dangerous situation without him.

The sea and sky today were deceptively tranquil. Last night's storm had cleared, and once the helicopter was out of sight of land, there was nothing but steady, brilliant blue stretching out to the horizon on all sides of them, interrupted only by a few fluffy white clouds and their reflections on the gently rippling ocean surface. Some people might have found it calming, but it was making Tony jumpy – when everything looked the same on all sides, there was no telling what direction a nasty surprise might come from. He found himself remembering a story Thor had told one night about his battle with the great serpent Jormungandr who lurked in the depths of the sea. It had been a hell of a tale, full of shipwrecks and mermaids and all sorts of deep-dwelling monstrosities... and Tony hadn't dared ask about the weird bit where the 'great serpent' was actually Thor's nephew.

"Tony," said Jarvis – every time he used the name he sounded as if he expected to be reprimanded for it, "there's news that may be relevant."

"Lay it on me," said Tony.

Tony had a laptop open on his knees so Jarvis could stream him updated maps and any other information he thought they'd need – now a series of photographs popped up one after another. "Satellite images from this morning appear to show pods of whales and dolphins moving north en masse. This is not their normal migration season."

"Duly noted," said Tony, clicking through them. As usual, only humans were dumb enough to move towards a threat. The wildlife had the good sense to get out of the way. Not all the pictures showed marine mammals fleeing – there was one that showed half a carcass of a sperm whale, with intestines trailing from its abdomen. The bite taken out was much too big for any shark outside of an Italian horror movie. "How's our friend downstairs?" asked Tony. "Looks like it stopped for a snack."

The laptop display flicked back to the latest map, with the movements of their unknown target picked out in a cloud of yellow dots. "Still proceeding roughly northwest," said Jarvis. "If it stays on its present course, you should cross paths with it in roughly fifteen minutes."

"Got it." Tony rotated the map with the trackpad for a better angle, and grumbled mentally about how much clumsier it was than the suit display that responded to the movements of his eyes. This might not be as user-friendly, but it got the idea across, and it was a pretty worrying idea. Whatever they were looking for, it was somehow able to seek out human presence. It had found the USGS boat and the Van Buren, and as more information came in they'd learned that it had also taken out an offshore oil platform – the latter was, thankfully, no longer functional and only used as a research station. An oil slick would have been the ecological icing on the cake of general disaster today was serving up.

But the creature's ability to find people was something Tony suspected was important. He had a theory about it, and had asked the coast guard for some equipment so that he could test it. The unknown animal had appeared after a seafloor explosion, and all the things it had destroyed so far were machines, with engines and moving parts. It reminded Tony of a film he really ought to make Steve watch.

"Jarvis," he said, "what was that Kevin Bacon movie with the big burrowing monsters?"

"Tremors," Jarvis replied. There was a moment's pause, and he asked, "do you believe this hypothetical animal is finding targets by sound?"

"Seems logical," said Tony. "Sound travels further in water than in air, and everything it's gone after has been loud." Even the whale – whales were famous for singing.

"Hey, Jarvis," said Rhodey, "that reminds me: I've always wondered, what's Tony's Bacon number?"

"Two," Jarvis replied. "He has twice dated actresses who were in Mr. Bacon's movies."

Steve frowned. "If that was a reference to something I didn't get it."

Tony watched the map update again, then reached out and grabbed Rhodey's sleeve. "This looks good," he said. "Let's drop the speaker and see if we can get this thing to come to us."

Rhodey put the helicopter into hover, while Steve and Wheeler got out the stuff Tony had borrowed from UCLA: an underwater speaker that could be lowered on a length of cable, usually used to study whale behaviour. Tony plugged a USB key into his laptop and opened the passenger side door. Salt wind whipped up by the rotor came roaring in. Steve dropped the speaker, and the cable began to unspool.

"Okay, Jarvis," said Tony. "Let's make some noise. Want to teach our new friend a thing or two about classic rock?"

"I can only hope it will be a more enthusiastic student than Captain Rogers," said Jarvis. A window popped up as the laptop downloaded a sound file – a moment alter it was done, and Black Sabbath came roaring out of the speaker.

"Only fair to warn it who it's dealing with," said Tony.

"It will take about fifteen seconds for the sound to propagate to the creature's last recorded location," Jarvis said.

Tony kept an eye on his watch. Twelve... thirteen... fourteen... "any reaction?"

"Not enough data yet," said Jarvis.

Several more seconds crawled by. The map did not change. "Jarvis?"asked Tony. "Keep me in the loop, buddy."

Jarvis didn't answer at first. Finally he said, "nothing."

"Nothing? It's not moving?"

"I don't know," said Jarvis, and there was a note of something in his voice that Tony had never heard before. JARVIS could sound concerned, but this was... tighter, more visceral. "I can only see where it is when it impacts the sea floor, and right now there's nothing!"

"Stay calm, Jarvis," Tony told him. "You don't see it. What do you think that means?"

"It's either staying still, or..." there was the sound of a nervous swallow. "Or it's moved up into the water column for greater speed."

Tony could tell which one Jarvis was worried about. "It's all right, we're watching out. Let us know the moment you see something."

"Nothing out my side," said Steve.

"Nothing here," Wheeler agreed.

"Clear in front," said Rhodey.

Tony didn't see anything, either. There was nothing to do now but wait and watch, so wait and watch they did. After the Black Sabbath, Jarvis sent over some Meatloaf and some Rolling Stones – and Tony noticed a pattern. Out of the Frying Pan (And Into the Fire) and Gimme Shelter both seemed terribly appropriate for the day they were having, and he had to wonder if Jarvis had done that on purpose. Ordinarily he would have chalked it up to coincidence: Tony had programmed his computer to pick music for him based on an analysis of his moods, but the idea of selecting songs with titles or lyrics to suit a situation would require a measure of creativity that no computer possessed. Again, Tony wondered how many other new skills Jarvis had suddenly picked up – and whether Jarvis himself were aware of them. Would he miss them once Dr. Strange changed him back?

That whole idea was making Tony increasingly uncomfortable. His new perspective on the situation – now that he was bothering to pay attention to it – had left him feeling that changing Jarvis back wouldn't be... quite fair. Could Dr. Strange have really intended to give him things like free will and creative thought, and then just take them away again?

Tony wasn't great at philosophical problems, any more than he was at people-related ones. He needed to sit down and actually talk to somebody about this. Having a voice answering him helped him to think – that was why he'd made his AI capable of conversation in the first place. Maybe he should try Rhodey again. Or maybe Bruce, if Clint and Natasha managed to find him. Sometime when there were no disasters happening. Today wasn't looking good.

"Another tremor," Jarvis said suddenly. His voice was strained, as if it were taking every ounce of strength in him not to shout.

Tony shook himself out of his thoughts and looked at the new dot on the laptop map. He could no longer see the green cross that indicated the position of the helicopter. "Where?" he asked.

"Right below you."

That was all the warning they got. Suddenly, the sea beneath them seemed to explode. The helicopter was hovering around a hundred and fifty feet up, but through the open door Tony was suddenly showered with cold salt water. Rhodey cranked the craft into a climb, and at the same moment, something below them grabbed the speaker and yanked. The reel of cable was ripped from the floor of the helicopter with a squeal of tortured metal. Everything lurched violently, and the laptop slipped off Tony's knees – he grabbed for it, missed, and knocked his headphones off against the door frame. They and the laptop both plummeted into the ocean.

Without the soundproof headphones, Tony had to clap his hands over his ears against the din of the rotors. He could just barely hear Steve shouting, "it's okay, Jarvis! He's fine! He just lost his headset!"

Agent Wheeler had already dragged a spare pair out from under her seat and passed them up. Tony put them on, and was shocked by what he heard: Jarvis was on the verge of panic.

"Can you hear me?" he was asking. "You need to come back! You need to come back right now!"

"We're not leaving, Jarvis," said Tony. "We came out here to see what this thing is – we're not gonna run away the moment we find it." He couldn't see anything from where he was sitting. Whatever had taken the speaker was hidden by the floor of the helicopter. "I'm gonna take a look," he announced, and began unbuckling his seat belt so he could lean out.

"Please don't do anything foolish!" Jarvis begged him. "You are not Iron Man without the suit!"

Tony opened his mouth to argue, but stopped himself. "You know what?" he said. "You are absolutely right." He looked around. "Have we got a rope or something so we can make sure I don't fall out or get grabbed?"

"I don't know if it'll do anything for getting grabbed," said Rhodey, "but there should be a rescue harness under the seats."

Steve reached over the seat to help Tony strap himself into that, and then Steve and Wheeler held on as Tony leaned out the open door for his first good look at what was below them.

At first he couldn't make any sense of what he was seeing. It was a shapeless, roiling mass of purple-brown spines, rippling with a ghostly blue-grey glow. It looked like a seafood hot pot gone horribly wrong, like something an underpaid animator might come up with for a Star Trek monster of the week, like an H. P. Lovecraft acid trip. Then more of it surfaced, and Tony found himself looking into an empty white eye the size of the helicopter. The slimy purple skin around the eye looked blistered and scarred... had the explosion blinded the animal? Was that why it went after loud things, because that was all it could find?

"Tony!" said Rhodey. "What do you see?"

"Hell if I know!" Tony replied.

And that was when, out of a clear blue sky, lightning struck the helicopter.

If it hadn't been for the harness, Tony would have fallen right into the monster's tentacles. As it was, Steve managed to pull him back in, moments before the craft's violent lurching slammed the door shut again. The radio died in a burst of squealing static. Agent Wheeler's startled scream hit a note that by all rights should have shattered the windows, and Rhodey swore like a sailor as he fought for control. When Tony's head stopped spinning, he found there was a fifty person in the helicopter. Wheeler had pulled out her gun and was pointing it with shaking hands at the giant of a man who seemed to be filling the entire cabin. She was clearly terrified.

Steve, however, was elated. "Thor!" he exclaimed.

"Lower your weapon, Lady of Midgard!" Thor boomed at Wheeler. "I come as a friend, defender of your realm!"

"It's all right, Agent Wheeler," said Steve. "It's only Thor."

Wheeler stared at him. "Only Thor? Only?"

"Thor!" Tony echoed. "Are we glad to see you!"

The god looked over his shoulder at Tony, wearing an expression like a thundercloud. "Alas, I cannot share your sentiment!" he said. "Do you know what you've done, Stark?"

"We were just working on that," said Tony, "but it's probably faster if you tell us."

Thor was not in a joking mood. "Your foolish explosion," he growled, "has awakened the Kraken!"

Jarvis had never panicked. He didn't know how. He hadn't been programmed for it.

But he could learn.

There'd been a tremendous bang, like a thunderclap, followed by half a second of utter auditory chaos. Voices shouting jumbled together with unhappy electrical noises faded into a roar of static and then... nothing. Something icy settled inside Jarvis as he realized the radio had gone dead, followed by a suffocating pressure on his chest as he understood that there was nothing he could do about it. For a moment everything seemed to have stopped. It was impossible to move or think. All he could do was stare at the screen where the blip of the helicopter's GPS had been – and where it now was not.

"Sir?" he asked. "T-T-Tony?" The name didn't want to come out. "Captain Rogers? Can anyone hear me?" The only reply was hissing static.

Miss Potts stepped up behind him and leaned forward, hands on his shoulders. "What happened?" she asked urgently.

"I don't know. They're gone!" Jarvis could feel his whole body pulsing in time with his heartbeat. He'd never been this frightened, not even when the security guard had grabbed him at the hotel on Monday morning. Not even when he'd found himself naked in the garden and realized what Dr. Strange had done. "Tony!" he repeated into the microphone. "Please, somebody answer me! Colonel Rhodes! Agent Wheeler!"

"Jarvis!" Miss Potts squeezed his shoulders. "Breathe! You're not allowed to freak out on me. Take deep breaths and just tell me what happened."

"I don't know!" he repeated. He wanted to replay the moment, to break it down into layers, analyze what each voice was saying and what each sound was, and calculate likely scenarios from the results – but he couldn't do that now. A human brain wasn't capable of processing information int hat way, and even if it had been, it wouldn't have done anyone any good because he couldn't get to them.

He leaned on the desk, pushing his hands into his hair and shutting his eyes, all while cursing the body that allowed him to express his frustration and fear in that way. Something hot pricked at the corners of his eyes as he grappled with the horrible knowledge that this was his fault. He'd done so many things wrong this week. If he hadn't upset Dr. Strange in the first place... if he hadn't gotten them all into this mess by letting Dido Windham manipulate him... if he'd drawn Tony's attention to the backups when he remembered them on Tuesday morning... if he'd been where Stark is in body instead of just in voice...

Wait.

That was it.

It was another amazing moment in which everything crystallized. What had been murky suddenly became perfectly clear, the answer appearing out of nowhere without any calculations at all: an inspiration. This one, however, was not exhilarating at all. It dropped into the pit of Jarvis' stomach like a stone and stayed there, weighing down his insides. He knew now exactly what it was he was supposed to do, exactly how he had to be where Stark is and why nobody else could do it – and he knew exactly what it was going to cost him.

"Jarvis?" asked Miss Potts.

He raised his head a bit, and saw her holding out a tissue. Her eyes were shiny with suppressed tears, and he realized that his own must look the same. And then, as suddenly as he'd been overwhelmed, he found that he now felt completely calm. He knew what he had to do, and he would need some help to do it.

Jarvis stood up. "Miss Potts," he said. "I need to go to the Malibu house. I'd appreciate it if you would drive me, please."

She didn't question it. "I'll get the car," she said, grabbing her purse.

"Dido." Jarvis turned to the other woman, who'd been pacing the room nervously during Jarvis' conversation with the people in the helicopter, and was now huddled in a corner, rubbing her shoulders through the sleeves of her blouse. "Would you mind accompanying us? There will be a certain amount of lifting and carrying involved, and an extra set of hands will speed things up."

"Of course," she said. "Where's my jacket?"

Jarvis retrieved it from where she'd left it hung over the back of a chair, and the two of them followed Miss Potts into the elevator. As the doors closed, Dido buttoned her blazer and asked, "what are we doing?"

"We are saving Tony," Jarvis told her, and then continued quickly so that she couldn't get a chance to reply. "Don't tell me that I don't have to do this. I know I don't have to do it. I am choosing to do this." He'd been terrified of his own ability to choose – but choosing didn't have to mean saying no. Choosing could mean saying yes, even when he didn't have to.

Dido looked insulted. "What do you think I am?" she asked. "This is completely different. It's one thing to let a guy tell you to sit and wait in his hotel room all night. It's something else to go save somebody's life!"

"You don't even like Tony," said Jarvis, surprised.

"I don't, but that doesn't mean I want him to get killed!" She folded her arms across his chest. "Humiliated a little, maybe, but not killed. No matter how obnoxious he is, he's still a human being."

Jarvis nodded slowly – he understood. "Humans are very complicated creatures," he observed.

"Yeah," Dido agreed. "We're kind of..." she stopped herself, frowning, and looked Jarvis over carefully. "I'm sorry," she said, "but you're, uh, you're not an alien, are you?" It wasn't a joke – her face was utterly serious and a little frightened. "I mean, I saw the cutlery lesson at lunch. I didn't say anything because I could tell I wasn't supposed to, and anyway I wanted to know how they got the thirty million out of Gyumri..."

For the second time in the last twenty-four hours, Jarvis laughed. Dido's question was at once completely understandable and also utterly wrong, and the fact that it could be both at once was funny. As before, the reaction was involuntary and irresistible: he laughed. Without the edge of fear given it by wondering why he was doing it and why he couldn't stop, it actually felt quite good.

Miss Potts stared at him, plainly unsure what to make of this behaviour. Jarvis quickly calmed himself and said, "no, Dido. I'm not an alien."

"Okay." She was visibly relieved. "I just... had to ask."

From Stark Industries in Los Angeles to the house on Point Dume in Malibu was normally around a fifty-minute drive. It was a bit shorter today, because Miss Potts exceeded the speed limit for nearly the whole trip. She, in the driver's seat, and Dido, in the back, were both nervous and fidgety – but Jarvis, in the front passenger seat, found it impossible to worry. He knew, with that indefinite but rock-solid intuitive certainty, that this was what he was meant to do, and therefore, they would be on time to do it. This line of reasoning was, of course, ludicrous, and a computer wouldn't have accepted the conclusion for a moment, but Jarvis wasn't a computer. Not anymore.

"What are we doing when we get there?" asked Dido, leaning forward between the seats of Miss Potts' Audi.

Jarvis explained: "Tony hasn't been keeping backups." It was easier to use Mr. Stark's first name, for some reason, when not addressing him directly. "He worries that somebody will find them and take advantage of the information contained. The last ones he made were shortly before the incident with Mr. Stane. The program won't be capable of running the more recent Iron Man suits, but it will suffice for the Mark Five," that was the one that could fold up into a suitcase, "which was designed to require minimal AI."

"Backups?" Miss Potts glanced at him. "Does that mean what I think it means?"

"I can't read your mind, Miss Potts, but I suspect it does."

She licked her lips. "You really... you really think you can get them working?"

It was a silly question, of course. Tony was very thorough about his computer security, but if anyone knew every nook and cranny of the system, that was Jarvis. He realized, though, that the question Miss Potts had asked was not the one she wanted an answer to.

"I know I can," he said.

She nodded.

Jarvis' first sight of the house was a strange feeling. He hadn't been back to it since he'd fished himself out of the rose garden and climbed into the Land Rover on Monday morning, and since then he'd acquired something of a new perspective on the place. It had been, in a sense, the world he lived in: an environment he inhabited and cared for, but not a part of himself. In the past few days, however, he'd begun to think of himself not just as a personality but as a thing, and looking at the house from outside was something of an out-of-body experience.

That was what Miss Potts had wanted to know: whether he was all right with the idea of confronting an earlier version of himself in what had once been his own place. He wasn't, not really – and he knew that once the house was back in working order, Tony would have no further use for this Jarvis. The one sitting in the car, in this body, wearing this uncomfortable suit. But he couldn't let himself think about that right now. He had work to do, and he'd need to concentrate.

"Where are the backups?" Miss Potts asked, turning onto the road to the point.

"In a safe in the workshop," Jarvis replied.

"The big one? I thought that would only open for Tony's retinal scan."

"It will also open for yours."

That surprised her. "Mine? Tony never told me that."

"He told me that I should tell you if it ever became necessary," Jarvis said. "It's necessary now."

They were almost there.

The first sign of something seriously wrong was the lack of guards. Tony had, of course, hired some people to watch the house and grounds while he was away and the security system inactive. There should have been somebody there to greet them, to ask them what they wanted, to need reassurance from Miss Potts that they were authorized to be there and meant no harm. There was no-one.

They drove down to the workshop garage entrance and there saw the second ominous sign: the gardens were wet. Plants in the lower parts of the grounds had been stripped of their leaves. Rosebushes had been uprooted, and were lying in the driveway among pools of mud. It couldn't have been more than a few hours ago that this place had been underwater.

Miss Potts pulled to a stop. "Flooded basements," she said quietly.

"What?" asked Dido.

"It was on the news!" Miss Potts removed her seat belt and climbed out of the car. "The closest we came to a tidal wave was flooded basements in the coastal areas this morning!" She hurried towards the garage door.

The calm and confidence Jarvis had felt on the way suddenly drained out of him, leaving him cold and shaky. The house had been flooded. Both the backups he needed and the Iron Man suits were stored in the workshop. The workshop was in the basement – and so, as Jarvis knew only too well, was the computer.