The quinjet slid into the shadows as it pulled away from the bend in the road where they had disembarked. Tony jetted higher to regain his bearings in relation to the projections they'd been studying.
Friday helpfully cleared the HUD of everything but a map and indicators pointing out where they were and where the preliminary scans said people might need rescuing. There was also a huddle of people about a quarter mile down the road, which seemed likely to be a group of locals. He nodded in satisfaction and drifted toward to the ground, already relaying this information to the others.
"We'll work our way to those people, and by then we should have more data from the quinjet scans. Wilson, you're our pointman for injuries until the medical folks on the ground can get through."
"I've got some kit," Sam acknowledged, patting a belt pouch he wore instead of his guns.
"Let's hope we won't have to deal with anything major by ourselves," Tony said. "All right, Wilson, we're up."
Sam said nothing, but his wings snapped open and he joined Tony in the air while Steve moved forward down the road and Vision drifted behind him.
Tony took the lead, headed for the nearest marker on his display. The structure had been a single-level house but was now two walls, a collapsed roof, and a pile of tumbled stone.
"Are we also doing recovery?" Sam asked grimly, nodding toward a motionless hand peeking out from the rubble of a fallen wall.
He only paused a second before answering, and spoke into the comm to keep the others in the loop. "We're here for the living, not the bodies. We can move them if it makes sense during a rescue, but otherwise it's a waste of time better spent keeping more people from turning up dead."
"Acknowledged," Rogers said, the word concluding with a grunt of effort.
Tony resisted the urge to turn and see he was up to, instead focusing on the building in front of him. Sam was also studying it via Redwing circling the wreckage.
"I'm getting one, maybe two, in the southeast corner there," Sam said.
Tony nodded; that matched up with what he could determine. "The south wall is unstable, our best bet is to lift the roof."
Lifting the roof was not difficult. The corrugated metal was largely intact, which made it feel a little like peeling open a very large can to reveal the ruins of a bedroom. The repulsor bot held the roof up and out of the way.
Coaxing the two terrified children out from under the bed took longer than any other part of the process. Tony was ready to just flip the bed frame up and grab them but Sam managed to draw them out by teasing them with Redwing. Once the young boys emerged, they each grabbed one and lifted them to safety, carrying them up the hill to the nearest aid station.
By the time they returned to the house, the southern wall had also collapsed, crushing the bed.
Tony stared at it for a long moment before turning away and murmured, "Friday, log where we find the bodies so they can be retrieved later."
A little white cross briefly appeared on the image of the house before the next marker flared brightly on a building across the street and a few paces down.
They settled into a rhythm as they moved from one building to another, scanning, planning, then working together to dig out the survivors and relocate them to safety. Sam didn't ask about the bot until they started in on their third building. Once Tony explained, all he said was, "Redwing is still cooler."
"Of course it is. Redwing isn't meant to blow up on demand."
After an hour or two, Steve and Vision reported they'd made it to the knot of people Tony had pointed out. Toni notified the officials that the way was clear for additional rescue personnel, so a team of volunteer workers arrived and began tending to those survivors while Steve and Vision resumed clearing the road. Hours passed, each pair absorbed in their tasks but periodically checking in with each other and the jet.
By the time the hillside road was clear enough for the rescue workers to get through to the bottom, enough of the scanning had been completed for Steve and Vision to shift their attention to rescues with Toni directing them from the jet. Tony kept tabs on them via his display, which Friday quietly kept up-to-date.
Encountering dazed people digging frantically in the rubble was commonplace. Sometimes, they were able to rescue whomever had been trapped and it ended in a joyful reunion and the survivors being escorted to the aid station.
Others weren't so fortunate. Then, a shake of the head from Tony to Sam and a move toward the next crumbling structure was met with wails and pleas from the frantic mother or brother or cousin to just try to rescue their loved one, por favor. Please.
Worse, though, was tagging a building with multiple bodies and no one lingering outside and realizing no one was present to mourn the loss.
It was dirty, tiring, depressing work. Seeing a marker disappear with each person rescued was encouraging, but too often the white crosses seemed to multiply exponentially faster than the markers vanished.
As they progressed down the road, the rescues became progressively more complicated and hazardous. There, buildings were stacked atop one another, marching vertically up the hillside. Failures in supportive walls had sent multiple structures tumbling to the ground, laying waste to anything in their way, from other buildings to vehicles to people unlucky enough to be within range.
And some of the houses were little more than cinder block, plywood, and tarps. That kind of construction had no hope of standing up to the devastating force of an earthquake even a tenth of the strength of the one they'd experienced.
Shortly before dawn, Tony and Sam rescued a man whose leg had been crushed, so Sam flew him to the nearest hospital while Tony went to help Steve and Vision finish digging out a family from the middle building in a stack of three. That was three more markers off the map, but there were still so many more . . .
And there hadn't been any shaking since they arrived, which could only mean there might be an aftershock at any time. "Friday, identify the structures in greatest danger of collapse," Tony ordered, heaving a weary sigh when there were more than a dozen within a few blocks' radius. "How many have more than one occupant?"
That narrowed the possibilities somewhat, but it didn't feel right to base the decision on the number of poor bastards trapped. "Which ones could be rescued by the local personnel without risking their lives or limbs?" he asked next, and was pleased to see it was about half.
"Send that list to the jet," he ordered, then activated the comm line. "Toni, I'm sending you a list of rescues that the ground folks should be able to do," he said and explained how he'd narrowed it down.
"Understood," she said smartly. "Don't get crushed out there."
"I won't. I have a shiny metal suit to keep me nicely uncrushed."
"It's not so shiny at the moment," Sam joked as he returned, his own gear looking much worse for wear. "Where are we headed next? And are we doing it together or splitting up again?"
Tony studied the schematics of their first few targets, as determined by distance from their current location. They'd nearly reached the base of the hill they'd been working down, and roads extended out from the bottom like a spider's web. "Together might be the fastest, at least for now."
"Where are we going first?" Steve asked.
Tony led the way rather than answer, and they got to work again in the brightening daylight.
The fifth building they tackled began to crumble before they'd finished extricating an old woman and her small, yapping dog. Tony inserted himself as a pillar to make up for the wall that had given up while Rogers threw the woman over his shoulder in a fireman's carry and bolted out of there. Sam managed to chase the dog in the direction of the street. Tony was mentally measuring how much further they'd have to go to get out of range of the falling building when Vision appeared beside him. "Go, I will hold it. The collapse won't injure me."
"Right. Thanks," Tony said and jetted out of the line of fire, a billowing cloud of dust following his boots.
After that, the target buildings were in two opposite directions. "Vision, you can get the results of the scans from Friday, right?" Tony asked as soon as it was obvious that splitting up would be more efficient.
"I can," Vision confirmed.
Tony watched Rogers and Wilson return from dropping off the old woman and her dog with the aid people. Wilson looked almost as tired as he felt, and even Rogers seemed like he could use a breather. "All right, we're splitting up. Wilson, you go with Vision. Rogers, you're with me. We'll get through these next few buildings and take a break. Unless another earthquake stops us first."
"What, are you tired of my jokes?" Sam asked with mock offense.
"You call those jokes?" Tony shot back. "But maybe I'm just throwing my weight around. Because I'm in charge."
"Sure you are," Sam replied, then gave him an exaggerated salute and a grin. "Sir, yes, sir!" he barked as his wings snapped open and he took to the air again.
Tony waved him off and picked a direction, gesturing for Rogers to follow.
Their first rescue as a pair involved a lot of rubble-moving to reach two people huddled against the back wall of a former two-story that creaked around them while they worked. As Rogers moved deeper, clearing a narrow tunnel to the victims, the bot's energy output wasn't enough to keep the second floor from sagging, so Tony had to stop hauling debris out of the way and let the suit serve as additional reinforcement.
Being a human pillar was, of course, quite tedious, so he decided to ask something he'd been wondering since they'd all been on the jet. He switched his comm to a private line and said, "What's got you spooked, Rogers?"
There was a pause and Rogers passed him, dragging some twisted metal pipes out of the way. "What are you talking about?"
"You've been acting strange since we got on the jet. All uncertain and, dare I say it, compliant."
There was the sound of wood snapping, then Rogers said tersely, "I've got them. Coming out now."
A cat scampered past where Tony stood, followed closely by a woman probably around his age, though her dark hair was so dusty he couldn't tell if it was greying or not. She didn't even look at him as she hurried to safety. Rogers was helping the other woman, who was limping badly and had blood caked down the side of her face.
When their markers were clear of the building, Tony carefully released his hold on the support beam and beat a hasty retreat, catching the bot as he passed it.
Rogers was a short distance up the road, carrying the injured woman while the other clutched the mewing cat and looked back at what remained of the house, weeping.
"Should I take her?" Tony asked, coming around to hover beside them.
"That would be a good idea," Steve said, halting his steps and gently transferring the woman to Tony's arms.
He quickly flew her to the medical tent being set up at the bottom of the road they'd cleared and lingered until she was seated on a cot, shakily answering questions as a young man in a white coat examined her head wound. When he emerged from the tent, Rogers was escorting the other woman up to the tent.
Tony stopped where a teenaged volunteer was setting out cups of water and popped his faceplate long enough to gulp one down, watching out of the corner of his eye as Rogers followed his lead. "Thank you," he said in Spanish to the volunteer, who replied something that sounded like 'you're welcome.'
He walked back in the direction they'd come, waiting to make sure Rogers was following before he took to the air and examined their next target. "So what's the story, Rogers?" he asked conversationally while Friday highlighted the most promising path into the building.
"It's nothing," Rogers mumbled, sounding perhaps a bit aggravated that he wasn't letting the subject drop.
"Is it? You know I won't hesitate to bench you again if it's needed."
"There's nothing wrong with how I'm performing." Now Rogers sounded offended, which was quite a feat given that he was also jogging toward the building Tony was hovering beside.
"You remain quite capable of hefting large rocks," Tony agreed, lifting a large chunk of what used to be a cement-and-rock retaining wall away from the side of a house it had nearly crushed. "But I have to admit that you not questioning my every order is putting me a little on edge. It's not like you, Rogers. So what's up?"
"What's the approach for this building?" Steve asked.
Tony rolled his eyes and told him the plan. When they had settled into a rhythm of Rogers clearing away obstacles and Tony moving them where they could help reinforce what remained of the house, Tony debated whether to continue needling Rogers or leave him alone for a while. That Rogers was still more than capable of pulling his weight in doing the rescues was obvious, so maybe it didn't matter that his demeanor in doing so wasn't quite as uptight as usual.
"Dr. Tanya challenged me to respond to your orders as if they came from Wilson," Rogers finally confessed.
That was interesting. He could almost see it. "But why the walking on eggshells? You acted like I would scold you for looking at the maps without me."
"I thought it might look like I was taking charge even though you were officially in command," Steve admitted, looking a little sheepish.
"Oh. Well. At ease, soldier, I have no problem with making yourself familiar with whatever we're facing." He considered adding a quip about not hiding anything but thought better of it.
There was a brief silence, and when Steve spoke again, it was purely business. "Is it safe to move this?"
"Give me a minute," he said, carefully making his way over to where Steve was waiting.
The passage through the wreckage was narrow, so he stayed back and let Friday assess the situation for him. The odds of a major shift in the rubble was about fifty-fifty, so he summoned the bot to help support the ceiling, then placed himself where he could come to Steve's aid if needed.
"I won't promise nothing will happen, but that's the quickest way to the two survivors, so have at it," Tony said when he was as ready as he'd ever be. What he didn't mention was that the heat signature of one person was cooling rapidly; shock, probably, and if they didn't hurry up they would be recovering a body.
Steve nodded and took a deep breath, balancing himself before heaving up one side of the concrete slab and pulling it open like a door. He froze when the house gave a mighty groan and Tony stepped forward in preparation, but nothing came crashing down immediately. "Go," he said urgently, and Steve poked his head into the small space, the light of his headlamp glowing in the dimness.
"Hello?" he called. He backed out of the space with a motionless toddler in his arms and said urgently, "The mother is stuck. You'll have to cut her free."
"Get him out of here," Tony replied with a nod at the child. "I'll take care of it."
Steve retreated and Tony peered into the space, the reactor casting stark shadows over the bloody body. He had to swallow hard and look away for a brief second when he took in the scene; the woman had been impaled by a piece of shrapnel-a piece of a grate that had been over the window, from the looks of it-and it held her where she'd fallen. He quietly cut the metal rod as close to her body as he could manage, then gently gathered her into his arms, trying not to disturb her injury. "Rogers, are you clear?" he barked into the comm.
"Clear," Steve replied instantly.
"I'm going out the top," he said as he did so, barely feeling the impact of his back hitting what had been left of the ceiling and roof on the way out. "Friday, I need Toni."
"Yes, boss."
"I read you, Iron Man," Toni said a heartbeat later.
"I have a serious injury, where should I take her?"
It took what felt like ages for her to relay questions to him and his answers in return, but it was maybe a minute before she directed him to a hospital closer to the city center that was equipped to deal with trauma.
He landed on the helipad, where he was met by a pair of harried-looking medical personnel with a stretcher. Both had blood on their smocks, and he could only guess how many serious injuries they'd seen since the earthquake.
There wasn't anything he could do once they took charge of the patient, talking rapidly over her as they pushed the stretcher into the building. As he took off again, he said, "Friday, do they even have electricity?"
"This block is operating on generator power, boss," Friday reported.
"Right. Estimated time until the power grid is back up and running?" he asked curiously as he headed back to where the others were working.
"Unknown, boss. The aftershocks will interfere with repair efforts."
Which he knew, but it was still a grim reminder that the city would take time to get back to something close to normal. Cleaning up the rubble would take months, minimum, and restoring the power, water, and natural gas lines wouldn't be much faster.
"Rogers, status?"
"I'm ready when you are, shellhead."
"Next target is around the corner from our last position." When he braked in front of the building, he could see Rogers a short distance away, jogging up the street.
The target structure looked like it used to be two stories tall, its concrete defaced by graffiti and its windows blocked with plywood. The concrete had begun to crumble in the quake, and the walls bulged outward as the building sagged beneath its own weight. A narrow alley between the first story and the retaining wall that kept the ridge from encroaching on the building had filled up with debris and now seemed to be holding the structure together, such as it was.
"It looks abandoned," Steve said doubtfully as he approached.
"There were four heat signatures here when the jet went through," Tony replied, examining what he could detect in the building against the earlier scan. "From the looks of it, there's no way they've gotten out since then."
"Kids," Steve said, looking up and down the street before returning his focus on the heap before them. "Kids would play in a place like this. It's exciting because it should be off limits."
"They probably wish they'd picked a different spot," Tony said dryly.
"So what's the drill?"
Tony sighed heavily, examining Friday's analysis from every angle. "There's no good way in. Anything we do, we run the risk of bringing the whole thing down."
"Step carefully, got it. Can you direct me through it from out here?"
"From out here? Which one of us is wearing a metal shell? If only one of us goes in, it won't be you." His retort was almost purely on reflex, his attention focused on figuring out a way into the mess that wouldn't crush the kids inside.
"After you, then," Rogers said sarcastically, waving him forward.
"Easy there, Boy Scout. I almost have it." He approached the building, warily eyeing the metal railing dangling from what used to be a small balcony. The center area of the facade had the least damage, so he blasted aside the pile of rubble that had fallen from the second story and peeled off the plywood that was somehow still affixed over a broken window.
He punched out the remaining glass and gingerly stepped inside, rocks and gravel crunching under his boots. Steve followed him in, and for a moment they stood awkwardly close together.
"Don't touch that wall unless you want to get squished," Tony said finally, gesturing at the partially intact wall that ran perpendicular to the one they'd just come through.
"What about that one?" Rogers pointed to the other interior wall of the room.
"I don't know yet, but I wouldn't risk it if I were you."
"The kids are somewhere on the other side of it."
"I'm aware of that," Tony snapped. The strain of what they'd already seen, what they still needed to do, and working nonstop for over twelve hours were taking a toll on his patience.
"Sorry," Steve said after a moment of silence. "I just don't know what to be doing right now."
"Join the club," he replied heavily.
It was reassuring that all four heat signatures appeared to be at the proper temperatures, but it was maddening that they remained on the other side of at least one highly unstable wall. Finally he thought he had a plan and had Friday direct the bot to shadow their progress, keeping between the ceiling and Rogers' head. As he stepped away from Rogers, he said, "If you hear any rumbling, run."
This time, Tony was moving the rubble and passing it to Rogers, who piled it out of the way. It was exacting work but he did it as quickly as he could manage, carefully clearing debris away from a mostly intact doorway rather than punching through the wall like he was tempted to do.
When they emerged into the next room, a veritable landslide of cinder block, concrete, and random piping stood where the side wall of the building used to be.
"What's keeping it up?" Steve asked anxiously, looking up toward the cracked ceiling and blinking against a sudden shower of dust.
"Friction and not much else," Tony said grimly, already moving toward the back of the room at the edge of the heap. Even a dozen bots to hold things up wouldn't make him feel at ease with the situation. "Hello?" he called.
High-pitched voices responded in rapid Spanish, and he found the hole in the wall the kids had used to reach their hideaway. The hole was in the back of the building, so the kids were actually sheltered in the narrow alley behind it; only chance had kept the rubble from the collapsing building from crushing them.
Now that they were this close, he felt a rush of energy and began digging through the debris with less care than was perhaps warranted. Rogers joined him, and soon they had enough of a gap that the children could climb through.
Three emerged, two boys and a girl who looked to be around the same age as Cooper and Lila. They looked up at their rescuers with wide eyes before they began pointing back into the hole and chattering excitedly.
It took a moment for Friday to pick out the gist of their words. "The other girl is trapped by rocks, boss," she reported succinctly.
He passed the information to Rogers. "Get them out of here, I'm going in after the other one," he ordered.
Steve hesitated briefly, then nodded smartly and ushered the three youngsters out, talking to them in a mix of halting Spanish and English.
Tony stuck his head through the hole to see what he could see; Friday had already scanned what she could, but he still wanted to see it for himself. The remaining girl was sprawled on her front, her head resting on her arms, her legs disappearing beneath a pile of rubble much like the one on the other side of the wall. She peered up at him with wide, dark eyes, looking terrified. A pile of smaller rocks a short distance away led him to suspect the kids had done what they could to free their playmate.
"I'm coming," he murmured in English, and lifted the faceplate so she could see his face. "I'm Tony, what's your name?" he asked in Spanish.
"Maria," she whispered. Her dark braids were unruly and dotted with small rocks.
He looked at her and saw Lila, saw the little girl in Gulmira, and his heart broke. What was her home like, that she would play in and around an abandoned building? Were the other children her siblings? Other relatives? Or just kids from the neighborhood?
Not that it mattered. She was trapped, she was injured, and he needed to get her out of there five minutes ago.
But the suit couldn't fit into the narrow crevice where she was, leaning through the hole wouldn't get him far enough in to clear away what pinned her down, and getting out of the suit to move the stuff would be suicide. "Rogers, I need you back here, pronto."
"On my way." Almost as soon as he said it, he was standing next to Tony. "What have we got?"
"The suit doesn't fit, but I think you will. Her name is Maria."
Steve stepped forward without hesitating, and slipped through the wall. He said hello to the girl and began shifting the rubble, handing it through the hole to Tony.
It didn't take as long as it felt to clear away enough that Maria could be pulled carefully out from under the remaining rocks. She wrapped her arms around Steve's neck and whimpered as he climbed back through with her in his arms. Tony averted his eyes from her battered legs with a wince.
Steve had just stepped through when there was a rumbling from the back wall; he took another step forward and crouched protectively over the girl. Cursing his foolishness, Tony moved between them and the wall, crouching over both of them as rocks pinged off his armor.
An alert flashed in the corner of the HUD: ground sensors had detected an earthquake and it would hit in seconds.
"Rogers, get out now!" he shouted, grabbing his shoulders and shoving him toward the exit.
Rogers instinctively resisted being forced out of his huddle, but soon was moving under his own power, hurrying toward the wall and the window beyond. Tony saw the ceiling start to fracture and inserted himself between it and the crouching soldier, flying overhead while spreading his arms and legs to shield them from whatever might collapse next.
He had to wait for Rogers to climb through the wall first, watching in slow motion as the wave indicating the earthquake swept past their position. If Rogers had been clear of the building, he would have just fired his boot jets and gotten out of there, to hell with the consequences, but he couldn't bring everything down on unprotected bodies.
He was halfway through the wall and ready to hit his thrusters as soon as Rogers was clear of the window, when everything collapsed. "I always knew I'd die in the suit, but I didn't think it would be like this," he joked as the sudden weight of the building crushing him drove the air from his chest.