This chapter is quite long and I hope not too confusing! There is a lot going on, so I hope it's easy enough to follow!

I dropped my head in my hands, I looked at my feet.

I felt Steve's hand on my shoulder, 'we'll figure this, you know we've got your back.'

'I don't know what to do.' I shook my head, 'he got to her in my building.'

'You're going to do what you always do, you're going to sit down and look at all the facts, you're going to put it all together the way you put things together and you're going to solve it.' Steve said passionately.

I looked up at him, he stood with his arms crossed, Fury and Clint stood beside him while Thor sat beside me.

'You can't give up, you came back from the dead, this is nothing.' Clint offered.

'This is just a computer program, you can beat this.' Fury said coolly.

'Can I?' I muttered, 'can I really?' I stood up and ran my fingers though my hair, 'all I seem to be able to do is make mistakes and screw things up.'

Thor stood up beside me, 'you're good at what you do, don't give up.'

"Thank you, all of you, I just need some space to think.' I walked away from them without looking back.

I walked and walked, I must have done seven laps of the whole helicarrier. I finally came to a stop at the lab Bruce and I claimed as our own. I sat down at one of the benches; I pulled the screen closer to me, 'Jarvis, bring up the data from the Stark building.'

Several smaller windows appeared within the screen, I looked through the data Natasha had recovered, I ran through the images over and over again.

At least two hours had passed before I felt my eyes burning.

I rubbed my face, agitation was growing and everything was irritating me. I stood up and pushed the chair away with my foot. It clanked loudly against a shelf.

'Maybe this will help.' Natasha walked in slowly.

She handed me the lock chip from the office.

'What else did you find?' I clicked it into the computer.

'Most of it is irrelevant data, but this,' she pointed to a highlighted section of the screen, 'is out of the ordinary, I think it's worth looking into.'

'What are you thinking?' I asked curiously.

'Well we know this is the Nano bomb, I think this may be a remote trigger of some sort, like a receiver?'

I nodded, I zoomed in to the image, 'it's worth a shot.'

'Anything is at this point.' She sighed, 'congratulations by the way.'

I looked at her sideways, 'thanks.' I smiled.

'Don't worry, Stark, we'll make sure you make it.' She grinned.

The light hearted chatter was a welcome change.

'Yes, that would be preferable.' I nodded.

'Now, Bruce and Pepper are in the building, so they're our best hope.' She explained.

I shook my head, 'I don't like it.'

'I know you don't, but they're our best shot at scoping the devices out.' She added.

I knew she was right, I sighed, I leaned against the bench before me.

'You know I'm right.'

I nodded, 'I know, I can't lose her.' I heard myself say.

I immediately glanced at her for a witty quip. None came. Instead she nodded.

'You won't, I won't let this fail, none of us will.' She looked at me with a serious expression.

'Ok.' I said finally, 'what's the plan?'

She pulled two stools over for us, 'this part of the building is isolated, the walls are six inch fortified steel, there are no electrical devices that I am aware of which can penetrate that.' She pulled up several angles of the footage on that room.

I nodded, 'yes, it was built by my dad as a nondescript bunker, there's no surveillance in there.'

'That's why we need to get in there; we need to be inside that room in order to be able to remain unseen.' She explained.

'Nothing will be able to give you readings from there, you need to work out what kind of frequency this is emitting, once we work that out we can work out how to deactivate it.' I added.

'This room here, this is where all the servers are stored?' She asked.

'Yes, it's directly above the bunker.' I smiled.

'That's where we need to be.' She smiled back.

'We'll get Bruce in there, he'll be able to get through the floor chemically, any explosions will draw attention.' I pulled up the remaining floors of the building, 'we need to get a signal jammer in there, then we can do what we need to.'

Natasha looked at the plans intently.

I continued, 'Jarvis, lose the exterior, and the concrete, show us the steel foundations.' I rolled my chair out to allow more room for the three dimensional image to pop up.

'What are you looking for?' Natasha leaned in to look at the image.

'From what I can remember as a kid, there's a failsafe in here somewhere which will shut down everything electrical within the building.' I spun the image around.

'Will it shut Jarvis down?' She asked.

I nodded, 'it will.'

'Can't do that Stark, we'll lose you too.' She said with a frown.

'Don't worry about me Romanov; I'll be backed up by the Arc Reactor. That powers everything including Jarvis, so if we lose him, I'll be able to remotely reboot.' I said with a grin.

'What if it shuts you down too?' She asked curiously.

'It won't, only an EMP can do that, we're not short circuiting the connection, we're only shutting it down momentarily, so as soon as they're in, I'll reactivate the surveillance and they'll be in there undetected.' I looked at her, 'they'll only have ninety seconds to find what they need.'

She nodded, 'ok, that's our plan, I'll meet you in command room and we'll brief with the others, you ok?' She stood at the door.

I looked down at my feet, 'yeah, just want this done.'

'We'll make this work.' She nodded.

I collected myself, 'let go.'

We walked through the halls together, silence was a pleasure we both appreciated. The sun had already begun to set; the days sped past me in whir of colors.

I followed Natasha through the ship, I couldn't stop my mind wandering through the dark chambers which lay in the depths of my soul. Guilt, sorrow, fear. Pepper. I tried to push the thoughts down, far enough to keep calm, yet close enough to drive me.

I sat in my office, keeping up appearances as much as I could. Once Natasha came and got me I followed her through the maze of underground rooms.

I ran through the plan a hundred times over and over in my head. Tony will cut the surveillance, we'll have ninety seconds to search the rooms, forty seconds for me to get a reading off the transmitter and take photos, fifteen to make it back to the server room.

Her voice was distant. 'The electrician is about to enter the lower levels, once the test is running, we'll need you to approve some changes.' She explained.

I nodded wordlessly; I took a deep breath and tried to look as collected as possible. Forty seconds to get a reading of the transmitter, fifteen to get back.

'This way Miss Potts.' Natalie stopped by the doors to the server room.

Bruce stood by the door with a welcoming smile, he nodded at me.

'Ok , we need you to look over the requested changes, once you're satisfied with what he's recommended you'll have a chance to take a look around and work out what else you'd like changed.' She narrowed her eyes, ensuring I understood her.

I nodded, 'thank you Natalie.'

She left me with Bruce; we stepped into the server room. I was caught off guard by the "electrician" who knelt beside a tower of hard drives, Clint.

I smiled curtly to him, 'what have you found so far?' I asked as naturally as I could.

He placed the tool kit down beside him and held up a bunch of wires, 'well this will need to go, it's out-dated and quite, old looking.' He grimaced.

I couldn't help but wonder, did he know anything about electronics, despite the fear of the task ahead of me I fought hard not to laugh.

'Ok, so we need to replace the old looking wires, when do we find out if we need new routers down here?' I asked curiously, trying to keep a straight face.

He glanced down at his watch, 'in about twenty seconds Miss Potts, just waiting for this to come back with a reading.' He looked at Bruce who took his place by the door ready to head out as soon as our window was open.

I couldn't be happier, having this team at my side gave me the confidence I needed to do this. I just imagined Tony pacing back and forth hating that he couldn't be here, he probably didn't agree to it easily. I knew Natasha had everything to do with it. She was the only one with the sharp sense of logic against which no one argued, even Clint masquerading as out electrician.

The wait was nerve wracking; we have all of five seconds for Tony to hack the system at a precise moment to give us ninety seconds to find what we needed.

'Ok, we're good, Stark, you're up.' Clint stood up briskly.

Within seconds all the lights in the building shut off momentarily before the generator kicked in and brought it back online.

'We're radio silent now, be efficient.' Clint spoke more so to Bruce than me, I nodded in agreement, so much could go wrong and being split up without being able to contact each other was difficult, but this needed to be done, I needed to do whatever I could to help.

Bruce pushed a large standing rack of servers and computers out of his way 'stand back,' I moved as he crouched down beside the shelf.

'We have eighty four seconds, make it count.' Clint said firmly.

Bruce nodded, he began pouring a liquid I didn't recognise along the edges of the wall, he then lit a match and dropped it. I didn't know what I wasn't expecting but certainly not what happened.

The flame ran swiftly along the liquid and as it went out the concrete below cracked in several spots.

He turned back to us, 'I need to break through the steel now, step back.'

As we did, I noticed his skin swiftly turn green, before my eyes he transformed into the Hulk, with one swift hit to the floor the weakened steel shattered beneath the force.

Clint pulled me up by my arm, 'you're up, seventy seconds, go.' I nodded, I rushed out of the room, I sprinted down the hall to the room which Natasha identified as being the room in which Rick had placed the receiver. Clint was assigned to the other room with the Nano bomb.

I located the transmitter; it sat within the wiring in one of the terminals. I knelt beside it and put the frequency reader to it, the lights on the transmitter flashed green. I dared not touch it.

The numbers flashed sporadically as the reading was recorded. I took the camera out and took several photos of every angle I could.

I looked down at my watch; we were all synchronized, forty seconds. I got up and sprinted back to the server room, Clint wasn't back yet, I looked down into the hole, Bruce was still down there.

'How are you going?' I asked anxiously.

'Nearly there, ten more seconds.' He breathed.

After an agonising wait his hand appeared first, he held up a small leather bound tool kit, I took it from him so that he could climb out. He pushed the server rack back into place, neatly concealing the hole.

'We're set down there, where's Barton?' He asked as he dusted himself off.

I shook my head, 'I don't know, fifteen seconds.' I looked around nervously.

'Back into position, he'll be here.' Bruce muttered, he took his place by the door.

I rushed back to the wall beside the server Clint had been kneeling beside, as the lights started to come up one by one I felt my hear constrict, before the final surveillance feeds came up Clint rushed back in and took his place beside the server. He held up the old bundle of wires, 'so these need to go, and you'll need to replace the camera wiring in the ground level.'

I nodded, 'thank you.'

Just as he finished filling out a mock job sheet, Natasha walked back in, 'Miss Potts, we had a momentary shut down of the systems but the generator took over.'

I feigned shock, 'was anything compromised?'

She shook her head, 'no, everything is fine, minor technical glitch.' She smiled sweetly.

'Alright, thank you, finalise this job and show the gentleman out.' I signed the papers Clint handed me, Natasha took them from me and continued on as my assistant.

Bruce and I walked down the halls to the elevator, we walked in silence. Once we entered my office I let a nervous breath escape.

'You did well Pepper, good job.' He smiled.

I nodded, 'I hope it helps.'

He plugged the flash drive into the computer, 'Once Tony has all the data we'll be able to remotely access the receiver and the Nano bomb.'

I held out the camera and the frequency meter, he took it from me and pulled out the memory card and inserted that into the computer too.

'Are you getting these Stark?' He spoke into his ear piece, he smiled, 'everything is going as planned.'

I sighed, I dropped into the chair, 'if anything went wrong he could have killed Tony.'

'This is us we're talking about, we don't do wrong.' He grinned.

I looked up at him, 'you're starting to sound like Tony, must be a genius thing.' I said dryly.

He laughed, 'I'm not on the same level as Tony, but thank you.' He sat down beside me; he flicked through several more files until Natasha and Clint joined us.

'Happy is waiting to take you to lunch.' Natasha said as she sat beside Bruce, Clint stood by the doors, 'you can go, we need to run some tests and then we're all set.' I looked at her with hesitation.

'Tony is looking over everything now, as soon as we know anything we'll call you.' She smiled sincerely.

I nodded; 'ok,' I smiled, lunch would be a welcome relief. I collected some files and made my way out to meet Happy. What a day, I exhaled a breath of relief, so glad that was over. I only hoped Tony could make use of whatever we got him.