Okay, so it was a little later than I intended...but still, I have good news!
1). I've already started the next chapter. Hypothetically, it's halfway done, but as you can see, this chapter is a little longer than I expected too so...yeah.
2). I've kinda sorta got another piece that I'm working on (just a one-shot, don't worry. No monthly breaks for that piece) that may be ready soon(ish)!
3) You get a name finally for their kidnapper!
Here's some disclaimers I don't think I've made yet since I start this piece: I have no idea how technology works. Anything I've learned is from TV shows and movies (and therefore, probably doesn't actually work). Really, I'm just throwing techno terms around and hoping I'm not mortally offending anyone. Also, I don't know if you've noticed (you've noticed, don't worry), but I've changed the whole Exremis plot line. It's not how they have it in the movie (although I do make references to what Tony actually did in the movie) and it's not how it is in the comics. So yeah. There's that. I think that's everything (it's probably not, because I always think of things I need to tell you guys while I'm writing the piece and then I get here and stare blankly at my screen).
So! New chapter. Soon. Ish. Probably.
And, as always, read, review, and enjoy!
"What exactly is it?" Natasha asked, moving closer.
Tony, his eyes and one hand on the tablet still, raised his other hand and snapped several times. "Waiter! Waiter! This isn't what I ordered," he demanded, retracting the hand to flip through pages on the screen.
"Tony," Clint snapped. "What are you doing?"
The doors opened before Tony could be bothered to answer. "You must have been waiting outside the doors for this," Tony said pleasantly as the same man behind everything moved forward. Tony really needed to find out his name so he stopped calling him "the guy."
"Is there a problem, Mr. Stark?" he answered, just as honey-sweet. Tony could tell that he had spent a lot of time sucking up to the people around him. It was probably how he got so high in the ranks.
"I don't know if you even looked at who you were kidnapping, but the title after my name is 'engineer' not biologist or doctor. I don't do human bodies. You want Bruce for that."
"Thanks Tony," Bruce's voice came through dryly on the coms.
"Except for that whole, you know, green monster thing. So really, unless you wanted to watch him sleep-which is creepy by the way- or watch him turn green all the time-"
"Mr. Stark," the man interrupted. "Your problem?"
"Again, I work with inanimate objects. Not living beings."
"Yet you put a machine in your own heart."
"Yes," Tony said, trying not to grind his teeth. These people knew far too much about the arc reactor. Maybe it was about time to check those S.H.I.E.L.D files again. "In a hole that had already been made by a doctor. All I did was improve his work."
An eyebrow went up. "Is that so? Then maybe we should find him."
Tony smiled grimly at him, letting his poker face come into play. "You do that. And while you work on that, you might as well let us go, because I can't do this."
Natasha tried not to flinch—Tony admitting to not being able to do something? That didn't happen. There were many things he didn't know how to do, but he managed to pull them off anyway. For him to admit he couldn't do it meant that he probably could. She just hoped their kidnappers didn't know the same.
"Well it's a good thing we don't need a doctor then. We have consulted numerous biologists and they all say there is something in mechanical coding. And that," the man said with his cocky smirk again, "I believe you can do. If you need anything else, you've shown that you know how to get our attention."
The second he turned his back to them, the armed guards had their weapons aimed and ready, all the way until the doors shut behind the lot of them.
"Can we get explanations now?" Natasha asked.
"Ugh, Thor?" a gruff voice mumbled out. The words weren't as slurred as they had been last time Tony had heard him speak. Thor, who had been standing closest to him, grabbed the captain's arm and pulled him up, directing him to lean against the wall.
"Captain! It is good to see you aware again. I believe we are in need of your consul."
"Give the man some time to breathe," Tony said as he, Natasha, and Clint moved over to him. He leaned against a table, still looking the tablet, but he was watching Steve from the corner of his eyes. He almost smirked at the look of disbelief that struggled over the happiness and drugged gaze on his face.
"Tony?" Steve asked. "You said you were a hallucination!"
"Well I could have been!" Tony said, giving up the pretense that he wasn't paying attention. "I don't know what was going through your drugged brain! What if you were seeing me as a Hulked out Tony Stark?"
There was an exasperated sigh over the ear piece. "Can we focus here? Tony, give him his ear piece."
"Come here Steve," Tony said, reaching into his pocket to grab the last ear piece and moving forward to Steve. "Let me see if the drugs have completely worn off with that head wound."
Steve looked at him, confused, but tilted his head to allow access to the wound. Tony put one hand over the wound and the other over Steve's ear, allowing two fingers to slip the ear piece into place. Steve tensed under his hands but didn't make any other sign. The wound itself was slowly healing up. Probably in about fifteen minutes it would be completely healed up. In a half hour Steve would probably be back to full strength.
"It's starting to heal up so the drugs must be burning out finally."
"Nice of you to join us Captain," Bruce said. Steve's eyes widened, and once again Tony found himself hoping for their captors to just overlook it. "Can we get to business now?"
"Can you do this Tony?" Natasha asked.
"Can we back up? I have no idea what's going on. How did we get here?" Steve asked.
"It was one big trap," Clint filled in helpfully. "They needed Tony's help, so they got him out of the way, kidnapped us, and then Tony came here to 'save us'."
Steve stared at Clint, half appalled, half in disbelief. "That's….stupid. And overly complicated."
"They knew we'd be emotionally compromised if we were trying to avenge Tony," Natasha said, arms folded and voice angry. "They knew we would be easier to capture and they knew Tony would come back for us. It was a good plan."
"And what exactly do they want?"
"My help programming a virus. The idea is that, when injected into the body, these things-let's go with nanobots for the audience here-they remap the body. If you want an idea of what a person who survived the transition would be like, imagine Steve here, but anywhere from five to ten times more powerful."
"They discovered the super-soldier serum?" Steve practically breathed.
"Not really, but it is bastardized off of that serum. The results are better, but the chance that the person actually survives the transformation? Way lower."
"But the survival rate for the super-soldier serum was predicted to be incredibly low, about 10%," Steve said. Tony grimaced.
"The survival rate for just the Extremis transformation right now? About 3%."
"That is…not good," Thor stated for the obvious.
"Is there any indication on why that specific 3% survive the transition?" Bruce asked. He sounded frustrated, and Tony instantly knew why—their connection was only audio through the ear pieces. He had no way of seeing the code.
"Not that they can find. After injection, they noted that pain was immediate. About 10 minutes after injection, a dense shell of what we're calling the nanobots forms around the person. It takes about 24 hours for the transformation to be complete." Tony tried to disguise the nervousness bubbling through his skin as he read the next part. "Breaking through the shell causes instant death. Most of the subjects died while still within the shell. The 3% who emerged died hours after by either a heart attack or a brain aneurysm, but of those who did survive, 50% of them showed signs of…side effects. The best they could guess-mind you, these people were out of their mind-was that they appeared to be hearing others' thoughts, but others seemed to be…connected to the computers or moving objects with their minds."
"So nobody has actually survived this for more than half a day," Clint said, staring at the cave walls like it would give him the answers he needed. "And those side effects are way weird. How could that even happen?"
"How many people have they tested this on?" Steve asked, the anger back in his voice.
Tony grimaced. How had nobody noticed these people disappearing? "About 100 people."
"And they need you to fix the programming part of the code?" Bruce asked. "It sounds like a problem in the body, not the nanobots."
Tony shook his head. "It has to be a problem with the combination of the body and the program. The program is overloading the body and mind. If we think of the body as a computer, then it seems like part of the problem-for that 3% who survive-is that the program starts up too quickly and overloads the computer with too much information. So if we programmed this to be more like a computer program, then it would be a slower start up and it would give the mind time to adjust."
Natasha put her hand on Tony's arm, drawing him out of his work with a jolt. "Can you do that thing you mentioned earlier?" she asked, making it sound like it was a question for Tony, but it was clearly meant for Bruce.
"Give me fifteen minutes," Bruce responded. "Do you have the clip selected Jarvis?"
"I believe I do Dr. Banner," Jarvis said as Tony realized he should respond to Natasha's question.
"No," he answered, looking back down at the tablet like it had absorbed his attention again. "I'd need the programs back in my lab for that." Cough cough he needed Jarvis cough cough.
"While we wait, Jarvis and I managed to find information on the man holding you," Bruce said. "His name is Nathan Bracker. He was one of the up and comings in the army until he just dropped off the grid. Turns out he went CIA briefly, before they discovered he was dealing with anyone and everyone who offered him a good price. He escaped from his prison the year they put him in. Apparently he found himself some good allies."
"We can see that," Tony grumbled.
"How did he manage to sneak under everyone's radar, including S.H.I.E.L.D's?" Steve asked.
"They thought he was dead. CIA tracked him to a base and bombed the hell out of it." It was a sign of how angry Bruce was when he started swearing. He was almost as bad as Steve. Almost.
"I have the clip ready sir," Jarvis said. "It is, unfortunately, only between you and Agent Romanoff, discussing the Biomechanics Project."
The Biomechanics Project had been something he had considered and scrapped. Strangely, it was very similar to this except his had a different purpose—he had been trying to formulate a small chip that could be inserted into his body that would interface with his suit, allowing him to manipulate the suit with his body movements, even when out of the suit. Natasha had caught wind of it and went down to tell him all of the reasons it was stupid.
"But the concept of the project," Natasha started.
"The audio clip is in place now," Jarvis said.
Natasha kept the same facial expression, but she lowered her head, so the cameras would be able to see that her mouth was moving, but they would be at the wrong angle to read her lips. "Can you do this?"
The question caught Tony off guard. "Uh, yeah, I mean, I could probably get the code to work. Maybe I would up the survival rates a little, but like I told them, I'm not a biologist. If there were any problems with the biology part of the program, I would never know. I doubt there is though. The body just wasn't meant to handle things like this. Hell, a computer can rarely handle something this extreme."
"We're going to have to give them something. Is there any way you could rig the program so that the second we turn it over, it's destroyed?"
"Not in these systems. I can't get pass the firewalls on here to really take control of the tablet. Not to mention, the tablet doesn't have enough power for me to run a program like that on here. If I had a way to upload Jarvis…"
"There may be a way for me spread through their system from my location in the cameras to the tablet sir," Jarvis offered. "I would, however, need an opening."
"I'll see what I can do for you Jarvis," Tony said.
"The clip will end in 15 seconds sir."
"Any other questions?" Tony asked with a raised eyebrow as the rest of the team stared at him.
"Just focus on that program and we'll see about formulating a way out of here. Everyone, alternate between speaking and just moving your lips. The next time we go to pre-recorded audio, they won't know who's just muttering to themselves and who's actually talking."
"The clip will end with Agent Romanoff telling you that 'this is a stupid idea Tony' now," Jarvis' voice said, although Natasha's words were spoken in her own voice, directly from the audio.
"Well, if you have a better one, feel free to let me know," Tony said lazily, beginning to tap at the screen. Natasha turned away looking angry and went to stand by Clint. Their quiet voices actually helped set Tony's overdriven brain at ease, enough so that he could fall into his work trance.
Tony wasn't sure how quickly time passed—even if he had access to a clock or a way to tell time at all, he wouldn't have paid attention to it anyway. There was mostly just his work, broken up here and there by Natasha or Steve trying to force food down his throat. There was one memorable experience where Natasha tried to get him to take a break and Tony didn't even realize what was going on until he suddenly found himself picked up by Thor and deposited in the cot they had set up for him. They had all stayed nearby in an effort to relax him, although it probably wasn't necessary. He hadn't slept-unless you counted being in a coma-for almost a week. It could have been that, or the fact that just recently his body had completely shut down and restarted.
Actually, now that he thought about it, the drug they had used on him was probably a simplified version of what happened to a person injected with Extremis. Shut the body down to re-calibrate it, then restart it. If he could-
He didn't realize he was halfway off the bed until Steve's hand came down lightly on his shoulder, though still hard enough to hold him down. "Tony. Sleep."
Natasha was standing behind him, giving him her try it and see what happens glare. God, she was such a mother hen.
A scary I-won't-hesitate-to-kill-you mother hen.
Clint stood behind her, smirking at him. Thor stood behind all of them, his back to them, eyes on the door.
He shot a glare back at them and lay back down. And promptly passed the fuck out.
Even though he was exhausted, his body had reverted back to the instincts that it had adopted in Afghanistan—sleep for no more than a half hour at a time. At least wake up to make sure that the surroundings were still the same. They were, but he still got up. No sense in staying here longer than needed.
"If only Bruce were here," he sighed dramatically after what had probably been about an hour since he had gotten up. As expected, there was a brief pause, and then Bruce's voice came over the com.
"What do you need Tony?" Bruce asked. Clint heaved himself up onto the table next to Tony, echoing Bruce's question so Tony could answer without drawing the guards' attention.
"More time," Tony muttered, hoping Bruce or Jarvis would understand.
"I have another audio clip selected sir," Jarvis said. Bless that AI for always knowing what Tony needed. Although, he had programmed him to do it, so really Tony was blessing himself and wasn't that just a little conceited? "This one includes all Avengers' members, discussing things each wanted while waiting for the Loki situation to settle down."
Tony actually remembered that conversation. It had been a sleep-driven one, after they had all spent the day helping with clean up. For Tony, Thor, and Steve, that had meant heavy lifting. For Natasha, that had meant slipping into unstable buildings and pulling out survivors. Bruce had spent the day doing field medicine. Clint had been working with the police force, helping to direct all of the different branches of service that were helping out. They had talked about wanting a bed to sleep in, with absolutely no noise and no wake up calls. They wanted food that hadn't been prepared five hours in advance. Tony wanted a day uninterrupted in his lab. They all wanted the press to stop following them around. In other words, it was a conversation that would make sense in this situation.
"The audio clip has started now."
Everyone moved closer together and angled their heads down, hoping to hide the fact that they had no idea who was really supposed to be talking.
"The program is almost done," Tony said. "I've found a tiny loophole in the firewall that should be enough to get Jarvis in."
"I shall begin uploading myself now sir. When shall I destroy the program?"
"As soon I hand them the tablet, start deleting the program."
"They'll have back-ups too, on other drives, I'm guessing," Clint said.
"Once I have entered the tablet's system, I will have access to their main frame Agent Barton," Jarvis kindly explained.
"Once they discover that we have destroyed this program, do we have a plan to get to leave this place?" Thor asked
"Call the cavalry?" Bruce asked dryly.
"A good start," Natasha agreed. "But we need to stay alive until they can get here. We're weaponless." Everyone looked at Tony, who shrugged at their looks.
"I can't build anything here. They put all of the extra toys in here as temptation. If I start messing with them, we'll have people here in minutes. Probably seconds."
"It won't take much to wrench off some pipes," Clint offered. "I know it's not what we're used to, but we can flip some of the tables for a barrier from the guns. If they leave before they realize the program's been wiped, we could barricade the door too. Try, at least."
Steve sighed. "It's the best plan we're going to get. Hole up here until reinforcements can come. We just have to try our best. Thor, what about Mjölnir?"
"I fear that they have found some way to block it from my call," Thor said with a frown. "It is vital that we retrieve it before they destroy themselves."
"The audio clip will end in 30 seconds with Agent Barton saying 'I just want a damned bathroom of my own, with a door that locks and the privacy that no one will try and open it'," Jarvis said. "The clip has ended now."
Tony patted him on the back. "Buck up Clint. It'll get better." Tony turned to look at the cameras and snapped his fingers again. "Let's get this damned thing over with. I want the hell out of here," he told the watchers, even though he knew they would never let him go, no matter what he did for them. Still, he had a part to play—he had to cause some trouble.