A/N: Getting into the longer chapters now. I just break off where it feels appropriate, so apologies for the fluctuations. Also, here's one of the times where I did some research and made some assumptions and guesses about science. It's all a little above my head but hopefully I fudged enough to make it passable / believable...
Disclaimer: Everything still belongs to Marvel, Disney, and all that.
Steve drifted off, pulled unconscious himself by the effects of the drug. When he awoke, Tony was still hanging limply from the chains. The only difference now being that Tony's shirt, shoes, and socks had been removed - the arc reactor casting its eery, blue glow around the darkened room. Thankfully, they had left his pants on.
Small mercies, Steve thought.
He couldn't understand what the man wanted from him...them...Tony. Steve knew he was drugged and wasn't all there, but he was pretty sure the man had said he had wanted to talk with Tony. What they had done to Tony, that wasn't talking.
With his head strapped to the back of the chair, Steve had a direct view of his friend. The man looked a mess. His arc reactor looked fine, but the rest of his chest was a mass of reds. Some spots had already started to discolor with bruising as well. Tony's head had also taken some licks and blood was slowly dripping down from his nose and a couple of cuts on his cheekbone and hairline. His hand - the one Bossman had squished like a bug - looked gruesome and disfigured. Steve hoped it would be salvageable - Tony needed his hands.
A moan from across the room broke his ruminations.
"Tttony?" His voice was still way too soft and slurred. "Tttony?" He tried again, putting as much force behind it as he could.
Tony struggled to come awake. He definitely didn't remember having a good enough time last night to warrant the hangover from hell he was currently experiencing. And there was this annoying trickle down his face and neck. Confusion gripped the genius as he strove to get his arms to cooperate and wipe the liquid away.
And then the pain hit - hard and fast. The sensation of being stabbed by a million knives up and down his left arm took his breath away, which set off the fire that flamed across his chest and sides. On a scale from one to ten, this was a solid twelve. Stumbling, trying to take the pressure off his arms - or at least one of them - Tony finally got his body to do as told and stand, albeit on extremely shaky and unreliable legs. As the pain receded a tiny fracture, Tony's breathing evened out and he was able to take in his surroundings.
There, across the room, sat Steve. Tony's brow wrinkled in confusion yet again as he watched the man's lips move but no sound made it to Tony's ears. In fact, all Tony could hear with any certainty was a loud, high-pitched buzzing. It was oddly familiar but he couldn't place it.
Shaking his head to try to clear the buzzing away only made his head and vision swim. It also sent a nice spike through his brain, so he resolved not to do that again.
"Steve?" Even his own voice seemed muted and disjointed. He watched as Steve's mouth moved a mile a minute. "Can't... Steve... Buzz... Head..." He closed his eyes against the pain. A whimper on his lips.
Steve watched as Tony whimpered, his shackled right arm being used to prop his head up. Tony was swaying drunkenly, trying to stay on his feet. Probable concussion then.
"Tony?"
Steve had tried to talk to Tony before, but it had taken the man a long time to even realize Steve was in the same room. Then, he had mumbled something about not being able to do something and maybe a buzzing? If only Steve's own brain didn't feel so fuzzy, he could decipher Tony's message.
A metal door behind him banged open. Bossman strolling into Steve's vision.
"Ahh, good. You're awake." Bossman moved over to Tony, manhandling his chin so he could stare into his eyes. "Do you remember me, Mr. Stark?" Blank eyes returned Bossman's scrutiny and Steve knew that even if Tony did know this man at some point in time, he didn't know him now.
"Mm." Turning around and walking back towards Steve, Bossman continued, "It's okay. Good actually." He dragged the chair he'd used previously from Steve's side and closer to Tony. "You may not remember me, Stark, but I remember you. And, at the end of the day, isn't that all that matters?" The sadistic look was back in the man's eyes. Steve didn't have to even see it - which he couldn't, staring at his back - to know; his voice displayed his glee loud and clear.
Surprisingly, Tony seemed unperturbed. Maybe the concussion was worse than Steve thought, but Tony just swayed in his chains, staring down Bossman.
The staring contest and the resultant quiet lasted for over five minutes before Bossman jumped to his feet and returned his chair back by Steve. He patted Steve's head patronizingly, walking back out the door. The clang of the metal slamming shut ringing through the air.
Steve wanted to ram his fist into the smug man's face.
"Doctor Banner, any theories as to who would take Mr. Stark and Captain Rogers and why?"
Bruce had been in his lab at the new Avenger's Tower when Pepper had crashed in, sobbing that Tony and Steve had been taken. Now, hours later, he was once again holed up in a lab. This time, however, instead of helping Doctor Cho develop actual, synthetic tissue, he was searching for his best friend and team leader.
"Well, I don't have a name or anything, but I've narrowed down the search area to a handful of locations." The disbelief on Fury's face matched Bruce's own feelings.
"Excuse me? How, may I ask, did you come to this conclusion?"
"The new element that Tony re-discovered and now powers his arc reactor emits a unique electromagnetic wavelength that can only be hampered by nanocrystalline grain structure ferromagnetic metal coatings without canceling out his reactor altogether."
"..."
Bruce sighed at Fury's blank stare. "A special enclosure that doesn't actually block the magnetic field, but rather draws in his EM field and provides a path for the magnetic field lines around the structure."
"Okay. So are these nanocrystals hard to come by?"
"No, they are used all over," Fury groaned at his words, "but there are a finite number of them in the world and that is significantly less than anywhere in the world."
"And you think they're being held in one of these locations."
"It makes the most sense."
Fury massaged his forehead with the long fingers of his right hand, sure signs of an oncoming headache. "Can you narrow it down further, Doctor?"
"I'm using some of Stark's servers with JARVIS' help to run a background check - if you will - on the most likely places; see if there are any connections with known bad guys."
"Keep on it, Doctor, and let me know if there's anything we can do to help. I just hope we can narrow it down in time for us to get them out alive."
Bruce's silent nod of agreement was all Fury needed before he headed back to the Bridge to inform the rest of the team of their one, albeit slim, lead.