a/n: aghhhhhhhhhh
this chapter is brought to you in part by lipton iced tea and rainy days.
"But it's much too late,
You're in the race.
So we'll press and press
'til you can't take it anymore."
- Foundations of Decay by My Chemical Romance
Breaking News: Injunction Filed by the Board of Trustees to Eject Tony Stark from Stark Industries
Tony's entire body felt like a walking bruise and an open nerve simultaneously.
His head was still ringing from being shot at by F-22 Raptors and then getting shot out of the sky by a tank all within the time frame of a few minutes. This wasn't exactly how he intended to have anyone find out about his extra curricular activities that he was meddling with in his basement.
The look on Pepper's face was priceless when she'd walked in on him getting taken apart by a series of robotic hands while being lifted in a giant metal suit riddled with bullet holes. He'd never seen her look so confused and mortified in her years of working with him. He imagined Rhodey's facial expressions were pretty amusing too when he'd first found out over-phone not long ago.
Tony did feel slightly guilty, mostly for Pepper's sake. First, the scandalous dance at the fundraiser event the night before and now this... He was shocked her hair stayed so red after all this time, he was 99% sure she was dying all of the grey hairs he'd been the cause of lately.
But even through the stress and anxiety of the recent news after finding out Obadiah was the one who filed the injunction against him within his own company, Pepper made it clear where her loyalties lied in this corporate mess of blood, metal and bullets.
"Do you need me to get you anything? A first aid kit? Do we need to go to the ER?"
It was endearing the way Pepper fussed after him as he haphazardly yanked himself free of all the metal chunks and pieces of the suit he'd just took on his first real mission in Gulmira. "Uh, no- nope. No hospitals, please. I do need some killer headache meds and maybe something to eat. No fats, maybe packed with carbs," he rubbed his temples as if trying to will away the pounding headache while Jarvis and the controlled robotic arms began to rebuild the suit again behind him.
"Oh- okay," Pepper nodded before rushing out of the lab, leaving the way she came through the shattered glass wall he'd shot through the night prior in a fit of rage.
Albeit, he admitted he probably shouldn't have trashed his work place the way he did, but it was hard to process the many emotions he'd felt after the fundraiser and what he'd learned that night. Originally, he'd gone only to stick it to the paps and every news outlet out there making it out to seem like he was some bed-ridden nutjob half out of his mind with flashbacks and panic attacks. Now he realized had he not gone, he wouldn't have run into the recurring stubborn personality of Jamie Archer.
After weeks of no calls, texts or emails back to him, Jamie Archer had returned from out of whatever hole she had been hiding in to smack a pile of photos in front of him and tell him the truth about his company and what was really going on beneath his nose. His head ached once more as he tried to will himself to remember what she'd told him that night.
"This is your life. This is your legacy. You're one of the most powerful people in the world, if you can't do something about this... no one can, Stark."
Tony glanced up from the ground to the unlit, empty eyes of the metal suit lying attached to cables and chords in front of him. This was his life. This was his legacy. He may have been blinded by all the flashing lights and the fame and the glory, but now he finally had his mission. And now that he knew he could withstand the fight, he knew what he had to do.
Pepper returned pretty quickly with a handful of Nature Valley bars, a glass of water and a bottle of ibuprofen. She set it down at the corner of Tony's makeshift set up surrounded by screens and metal tables in his fortress of coding and solitude.
"Thanks- hey, you busy?" Tony prompted his assistant, rolling his chair away from the suit for a second to pitch her his plan. "You mind if I send you on an errand?"
He knew he didn't need to ask. In the early years of Pepper's employment, Tony had once tested the skills of his assistant by requesting a multi-million dollar of rare wine fermented in the Swiss Alps thinking she'd wimp out and send in her resignation with smoke piping out of her ears... she'd had it delivered at his bedside four business days later just in time for his birthday that year and he knew never to question Pepper Potts' skills again.
After quickly downing three pills and taking a swig of water, Tony turned his attention back to Pepper. "I need you to go to my office. You're going to hack into the mainframe and you're going to retrieve all the recent shipping manifests. This is a lock chip." He handed her the gaudy black USB he'd put together for emergencies years ago. "This'll get you in."
He watched her eye the chip with a weary look in her eye. She was hesitant.
"It's probably under Executive Files," he said, turning away so he didn't have to see the kicked puppy look in Pepper's eyes as he continued. "If not, they put it on a ghost drive, in which case you need to look for the lowest numeric heading."
While he tampered with the turbine output on the screen across from her, Pepper prompted him, "And what do you plan to do with this information if I bring it back here?"
Fix it.
"Same drill," he answered. "They've been dealing under the table, and I'm going to stop them. I'm going to find my weapons and destroy them."
"Tony."
He peaked over the many wires and cables to glance up at Pepper this time. He knew she was serious when she didn't refer to him as 'Mr. Stark' the way she normally did. Or maybe 'serious' wasn't the right word. Pepper only ever really called him Tony when she treated him less like a boss and more like a human being, a person she'd come to care for in the years of working for and alongside the frustrating and eccentric man.
Pepper Potts had seen many shades of Tony Stark. Mr. Stark, the frustrating billionaire that like to collect over the top, expensive things like cars he never drove and paintings he looked at once. Tony Stark, the playboy who she'd found in compromising positions more times than she'd care to comment on, the man she'd fished from casinos and nightclubs drunk out of his mind. And Tony, the genius who would lock himself in his basement while he tinkered and built. The man who made cocky remarks and cracked jokes at the worst possible times.
This Tony- the one who looked like a faded ghost of all the shades of himself that came before the three months he was capturing in Afghanistan- he scared her the most.
"You know that I would help you with anything, but... I cannot help you if you're going to start all of this again," she stated.
"There is nothing except this," he couldn't even look her in the eyes as he made the declaration. This was his life. This was his legacy. "There's no art opening. There is no benefit. There is nothing to sign..." Tony turned to her now, fully. "There is the next mission and nothing else."
Pepper could only nod minutely. "Is that so?" She could feel a piece of her crumple a little at his uncompromising declaration that this horror- bullets and war- was what his life would be like from now on. She could deal with the partying and the drinking and the cockiness and the missing important meetings and endless travel and frustrating personalities... What she couldn't handle was losing him. "Well, then I quit."
She tossed the chip he'd handed her back into the box he'd taken it out of as a final show of defiance from this new Tony she could barely recognize anymore. She expected him to make a quip on her way out of the door, but was almost surprised when he called after her instead.
"You stood by my side all these years while I reaped the benefits of destruction," he called in a dark tone of accusation. She halted in her tracks and spun around to face him. "And now that I'm trying to protect the people that I put in harm's way, you're going to walk out?"
He still didn't understand, did he?
"You're gonna kill yourself, Tony," she shot back at him. "I'm not going to be a part of it."
Exasperatedly, she watched him fall into a seat nearby. "I shouldn't be alive," he confessed in a soft voice, a switch from his earlier frustration and anger. "Unless it was for a reason..."
"Don't waste your life." He could hear Yinsen's voice still echoing in his head and every night when he went to bed, he could still see him in his dying moments.
"I'm not crazy, Pepper... I just finally know what I have to do."
All of this time, he'd known something in his life was missing. He tried to fill it with big guns, even bigger missiles, expensive cars, leggy models, flash photography and flashier suits. But all of this time, and what he really needed was a wake up call. A call to action. A purpose. His blind eye to his company's wrongdoings had consequences and he was the only person capable of fixing it.
"And I know in my heart that it's right."
He bowed his head, seemingly accepting that Pepper was done. That this was his mission and his alone and dragging her into it was wrong to begin with. What he hadn't expected, however, was for Pepper to walk back over to the bin she'd thrown the chip into only to pick it back out carefully.
He glanced up at her, a questioning look in his eyes. She could only frown slightly, "You're all I have, too, you know." A silent pleading request rooted deep within her unspoken words. Don't get yourself killed, please.
So she'd do this for him. One last task to set him up on a better path, a path that he wouldn't take alone.
Because she knew if she walked away now he'd lose everything without her help and she'd hate to see a new Tony Stark, one that was helpless.
Jamie was helpless.
"Turn right at the next exit, then take your first left to arrive at your destination... Turn right at the next exit, then take your first left to arrive at your destination... Turn right at the next-"
Jamie shut the GPS off with a frustrated huff. This was useless. There was no way she was getting to Terminal 4 to pick up Logan through all of this traffic. If LA highway traffic was bad, LAX traffic was even worse.
She had been trying to get over to the right lane for the past ten minutes to no avail and she was starting to lose hope when her phone rang. The contact name? Logan. She quickly hit 'Answer.' "Logan!" she cried out in relief.
"Where are you?" Came his scratchy response.
"Stuck in traffic a few dozen cars are so away from the arrival gate," she groaned. "Think you could meet me halfway?"
"On it."
He hung up and it wasn't long after the call ended that she spotted his fluffy head of hair shoved beneath an army green baseball cap he'd picked up along his trip. Still stuck in traffic, Jamie unlocked the car door allowing Logan to hop in in the middle of the road.
"Wow, you weren't kidding when you said you were struggling with the traffic here," her photographer remarked as he dropped his bags to the car floor and fastened his seatbelt.
As another car behind her honked their horn, she merged into the lane while scoffing, "Yeah, you wouldn't believe how long it took to make it here from the hotel. Remind me to never take the New York subway system for granted again."
Logan chuckled, "You're gonna regret those words next time we have to catch the E-line."
Jamie cringed. "Ugh. Don't talk to me about the E-line when we're in standstill traffic at an airport right now."
After nearly half an hour stuck in traffic, the pair had managed to make it back to the hotel free of any scratches or accidents. Luckily, Logan had remembered to pay a little extra for the insurance on all their rental cars so neither of them had had to pay for damages after the accident. But insurance or not, it was still a little difficult for Jamie to drive so soon following what had happened. She was still anxious behind the wheel, wondering if at anytime Stane would send another fast car her way to finish the job the other one didn't finish. Each time she passed through an intersection, she hesitated and swore the left side of her body that had been riddled with bruises and cuts from broken glass hurt a little more passing under every intersection light.
Logan made sure he knew she was doing a good job on the roads even after the accident, even going as far as offering to drive them now that he was back from his impromptu trip, but Jamie politely declined and they'd finally made it back, much to her satisfaction.
Jamie wasn't an especially big driving person. Her knee always cramped up after so long and she hated the anxiety of being responsible of such a large vehicle on the road with other large metal machines of moving death. It was why Boston and New York were so appealing to her over the non-walkable streets of Los Angeles. She couldn't wait to be back home... if this trip ended the way she hoped it would.
Once inside the hotel, Logan carefully set down his bags on the table far off on the otherside of the room. Jamie quickly moved to help rearrange the table where she'd already set all of her notes and pre-written outline portions for the article they were working on.
"So," Jamie began, her hands on her hips as she watched Logan begin to unpack and piece together a small metal hunk of machinery the size of a briefcase. "How long does it usually take to get what's inside?"
"An hour or so," he answered, glancing at her from over his shoulder from where he leaned over the military-grade laptop looking device. "The army guy I worked with told me the encryption is built into the hard drive of this... computer... so however long it takes to decode itself then we can view the images I managed to get."
Jamie nodded, fully ready to wait weeks if she had to. They'd come this far, gone this much of the way through, a measly hour was nothing compared to the lengths Jamie had already gone to get the truth and evidence she'd worked so hard to get.
"How was it?" she couldn't help but ask her photographer as they waited for the laptop to finish breaking it's own encryption. They were going to be here for an hour and the curiosity bubbling within her couldn't be contained any longer. A part of her wanted to know how Logan's trip was in terms of a safety perspective; he had just gone into an active warzone with only a hired gun as an escort and his camera. The other part of Jamie just wanted to hear about this place she'd heard so much about, the last place her Dad had been before he'd been killed. His real resting place in a desert a couple thousand miles away from the measly marble slab in New York.
Logan leaned back from the computer and dropped his gaze down to his lap.
"You know how they describe these places on the news? Bloody, burnt, destroyed and war-riddled?" Jamie didn't need to nod for him to know she was hanging on every word and knew exactly what he was talking about. "When I got there, I was expecting to see what the news described, but when we touched down... James..." he trailed off for a moment, his eyes drifting somewhere far off and for a moment Jamie could tell he was no longer in that hotel room with her, rather back in the desert for just a split second. He turned to her when his mind returned to the present. "...It's even worse than what you could imagine. And he was at the forefront of it all..."
"The leader of the Ten Rings?" Jamie had heard all about the people who'd kidnapped Tony Stark by now. Who they were, what they were capable of and what they wanted. Chaos and bloodshed and control. It was why Logan had traveled out to Gulmira in the first place: to get a glimpse of the man and the organization that Obadiah Stane was selling weapons to.
Logan shook his head, surprising her. "Stane."
Jamie sat up straighter, pushing herself off the wall to glance between Logan and the laptop almost fully loaded up. "Stane was there? He went to Gulmira? Why?"
Logan slackened, "Because you were right. That theory about Stane double dealing to create an opposition for the military to get Stark Industries more military contracts? It was right all along. And he's not just a business partner with these people, he's like their ring leader."
"What- what do you mean? Why would Stane want to control a terrorist organization in the Middle-East when he's already the forefront of the powerful weapons company in the world?" she asked aloud. "I mean, I understand striking business with them for profit, but what does he gain from... controlling them?"
"I think there's something else we're not seeing. Some type of power dynamic controlled by something else," Logan shrugged, just tossing out his theory.
"Like what?"
"I don't know," he admitted, just as the laptop beeped in it's completion. The images were ready. Logan talked while he typed in yet another password to access to the drive. "When we were there, we had found a pretty decent hiding spot at the main camp. It was where the army guy- Marc something- said the Ten Rings' base of operations was. He thinks it's where Tony Stark had been held but he hadn't done enough reconnaissance during the time he was captured to know for sure... We thought we'd just be capturing images of the Ten Rings with Stark tech, but then at around 0300 in the morning, a bunch of black cars arrived out of nowhere and I recognized the guy getting out of one of them."
The first grainy image popped on the screen. Jamie leaned forward and strained her eyes a little to see in what looked to be an image captured using night vision. It was green, black, grey and white, but even through the dimly lit and oddly covered screen, Jamie could make out the unmistakable sinister grin of Obadiah Stane standing amongst a group of armored men with large guns.
"We think it was some kind of meeting. Clearly, these guys were expecting them though. They all just stood aside, as if he'd gone a dozen times before," Logan explained, switching to the next images. "Here the Ten Rings Leader- only known by the name of Raza- has some kind of interaction with him and the army guy had one of those fancy satellite microphones that captured the conversation. He had it attached at the end of the imaging. I'll play it later. But- look. See what happens once Raza and Stane go into the tent?"
On one slide the Ten Rings fighters were standing idly by the tent Stane had just stepped into behind Raza while the private security men Stane had hired stood on the opposite side. These weren't Stark Industry security. These were... some high-grade militia. Jamie made a mental note to look into what resources Stane had access to to get him security at this level beneath the radar.
On the next image slide, the men Stane had brought suddenly began to disarm and disengage the men from the Ten Rings. In only a few short seconds from when Raza and Stane had left the plane of sight, Stane's men had managed to subdue the entirety of Raza's men.
The final couple images, Stane arose from the tent... Raza did not.
"Here, I got a few quick photos, but when the shooting started, my escort had to get me out of there," Logan explained. The last image being stuck on Stane as he walked away from the men still surrounded the unarmed Ten Rings members on their knees huddled in a circle beside the tent Raza was most likely killed in, or at least Jamie figured he was dead.
Jamie furrowed her eyebrows once Logan's words caught up with her. "What do you mean shooting? They already subdued the Ten Rings."
A grim look passed over Logan's face before he could properly put into words the heinous act he'd witness. "He, uh... Stane ordered his men to open fire before walking back to the car." Jamie's face fell. He'd executed them. All of them. "I guess the Ten Rings figured he was there to broker another deal when in reality-"
"He was there to clean up his mess," Jamie surmised. "You said there was an audio clip?"
Logan nodded, the computer changing to the last file. He had to hit play on the screen where there was no video, only waves of sound as two distinct voices could be heard through the crackling of whatever device this was captured on.
"Compliments of Tony Stark." That wasn't Stane, which meant it must've been Raza. What he was referring to, she wasn't quite sure. Maybe the wreckage of his base Stark had somehow destroyed on his way out of Gulmira using whatever trinkets he'd concocted to escape.
"If you'd killed him when you were supposed to, you'd still have a face." That was Stane.
"You paid us trinkets to kill a prince."
Jamie felt her pace quicken with the realization of the fact Stane hadn't just bartered a deal with the Ten Rings to kidnap or intimidate Stark. He'd bartered the deal with them to kill him dead. And she guessed Stark repaid the Ten Rings by injuring the man in charge.
"Show me the weapon," Stane demanded.
There was a pause before Raza answered, "Come. Leave your guards outside."
The audio clip ended and the screen turned black once more.
Jamie, confused, turned to Logan. "Wait, what weapon? I thought Stane was the one supplying the Ten Rings with their weapons."
Logan shrugged. "I'm not sure. We couldn't get any closer to see what Stane had gone to see and whatever it was, he must've taken it after the slaughter because when we returned the next day to scope the place out, all we found were ripped pieces of blueprints."
"Of what? A new gun prototype? A bomb? A nuke?"
Logan shook his head. "No, it didn't look like any weapon I'd seen before. It sort of looked like a core of some sort. Maybe it was a bomb, but from the way the design looked, it kinda seemed more like a source of energy. Sorry, I... we didn't get any images of that either. We had to ditch the scene because remaining Ten Rings guys came back to find their people slaughtered and if we'd stayed-"
"You would've been killed." Jamie squeezed Logan's shoulder with gratitude. "It's okay. You got what you could. And this is... more than enough, Logan."
"I just wish we could've gotten a look at whatever weapon they were there for. Maybe it was something Stark built to escape."
"Maybe..." Jamie idly agreed, not really thinking about what he'd said until a wave of deja-vu overtook her. She paused for a moment upon realization that she'd associated Stark with a source of energy before, she just couldn't place her finger on where that vague memory came from. "Hey..."
"What?"
"You remember that clean energy project Stark Industries had been working on in- what- the late 60's?"
Logan paused for a moment, his eyebrows furrowing and his lips pursed. "Not really... Wait, a weapons company was interested in clean energy?"
Jamie shrugged, reaching out towards her laptop on the other end of the table to type something into the search box. Stark Industries 60's clean energy. "My Dad told me it was a publicity stunt to get the beatniks off their back during the Vietnam War."
"Beatniks?"
"It was the 60's," Jamie insisted as Yahoo loaded her results. "Aha! The Arc Reactor."
Logan leaned forward in his seat as Jamie turned the laptop screen to face him. Essentially, what he was looking at was a giant glowing donut made of glass with some type of white moving light inside surrounded by machinery that looked a little outdated. "What's this?"
"Stark Industries' clean energy project," she explained. "The Arc Reactor is essentially something Howard Stark tried to get up and running to power the SI HQ, but it never really took off past that. It was meant to be the solution to renewable, clean energy that didn't come from a nuclear power plant."
"How come it didn't make bigger waves in the news?"
Jamie shrugged. "Guess Howard Stark couldn't get it to work the way he wanted it to..." Her mind flashed to the newspaper clipping her Dad still had saved of Howard and Maria Stark's deadly car crash. Maybe he hadn't gotten the time to finish it before the accident. She couldn't help but shudder at the thought that that might've been her had she not survived Obadiah Stane's own attempt on her life.
"So, you think the weapon Stane and the Ten Rings were talking about was a version of this... Arc Reactor? A version that worked and was considerably smaller? How could Stark even manage to make something that big into something that small while trapped in a cave in the middle of the desert?"
"He's Tony Stark," Jamie shrugged. That seemed to be enough of an explanation for Logan, but Jamie was still stumped on something...
Logan pulled his gaze away from the laptop screen to turn to Jamie. He recognized that far off distant look she got in her eyes when she was trying to piece together a puzzle. "What?"
"Why would Stane and the Ten Rings want a renewable energy source? And why would it be miniaturized? What's it powering?" she wondered aloud. "It could be anything. A missile, a nuke, advanced weaponry. Renewable energy attached to something that powerful- in their hands-"
"They'd be unstoppable," Logan finished her sentence with a horrified expression on his face that nearly mirrored her own.
Jamie turned to face him fully. She knew what they had to do.
"We have to tell someone-"
"Stark already knows about the weapons shipments. He has to know it's Stane by now-"
"But that's assuming he has the means to take down someone who almost completely holds the power at Stark Industries by now. What's Stark going to do? Fire the man locking him out of his own Fortune 500 company?" she scoffed, shaking her head. "We have to take this-" she yanked the sim card out of the side of the odd laptop and held it up. "-to someone who can actually do something with it."
Logan paused. "Who?"
"You want me to what?"
Jamie Archer held her hands up in defense. "Just hear me out-"
Nick Park set his hands on his hips. "You know, when I finally got a call back from you, I thought it'd be to talk about whatever partially normal people talk about on first dates over a glass of red. What I wasn't expecting was you proposing I use my senior intern status with a California Senator to request the presence of federal agents at a private weapons company headquarters?"
"I know it sounds crazy-"
"It doesn't sound crazy, April O'Neil, it is crazy."
"Nick, please-"
"I could get fired, Jamie," he insisted. "I don't think you understand what you're asking me to do. I could lose everything-"
"And I already have!" Jamie shouted, losing her grip for a moment and allowing her frustration to overcome her outward emotions.
She quickly put her mask back down and caught her breath. Steady... Breathe... Try again.
Jamie took a measured step towards Nick, trying to maintain her composure in such a dire time. "I have lost everything for this. This is more than just a story I'm chasing. This is past my job, this is past your title. This is bigger than either of us can begin to imagine and it's only the tip of the iceberg. Nick..." she set her hands on his, her eyes pleading with as much pain and desperation she could bear to this man. If he blew on her too hard, her skin would shed away to bear her soul to him in this moment. "People are in danger. What we do now, in this moment, dictates the safety of the free world as we know it."
Nick opened his mouth, but Jamie held her index finger up to stop him.
"I'm not being dramatic, either."
Nick looked down at his hands being held tightly in Jamie's own smaller hands, gripping for dear life. He felt a tug in his chest. Guilt. Guilt that he was contemplating telling her 'no' again. Guilt that he'd have to watch this poor woman lose more of the hope she was holding on to for dear life.
And while his guilt was building deeply in his chest, it was only the gas fueling the idle flame of impulsiveness.
Nick sighed, his thumbs running along the backs of her hands. It felt mildly intimate, but if Jamie was uncomfortable, she didn't make it known.
Nick had to wonder if she was actually tricking him into doing some illegal shit with this odd act. Of course, the more rational part of his brain that trusted Jamie knew that even after having just met her, she wasn't someone capable of this twisted form of manipulation. But still... she had a way of somehow making him believe every word that was coming out of her mouth. Drawing him in like a siren and leading him towards a rocky death.
He gave her hands a squeeze.
"...This better not land me in federal prison, O'Neil."
Jamie's face split into a look of shocked relief and exuberant hope. He tried to mentally save this moment in time to be a mental reminder that this would all be worth it when he eventually got fired for what he was about to participate in.
He couldn't move.
Everything felt heavy... stiff. The only real thing Tony could feel was the almost deafening ringing in his ears as he lay paralyzed on his own couch. Blood trickled out of his ears and veins bulged out of his neck with how hard his jaw was clenched. His entire body felt like a clenched fist and simultaneously an open nerve.
He couldn't speak, his jaw felt like it was wired shut. Tony gasped as his body went into shock, his eyes widened in horror as he stared at the glowing core that had been keeping him alive for the past few months hovering over his face... out of his chest and in the hands of Obadiah Stane.
He grinned. That bastard had the nerve to grin down at him as if he'd just bested him of all he was worth, all for that miniature arc reactor he had built from scraps in a cave.
A part of Tony wondered that if he'd confronted Obadiah before this moment about what he'd been doing that he'd show remorse, regret. That he'd spill some kind of half-hearted sob story to stay in his good graces. But now, staring up at a man he once considered a mentor and close to family... he realized he'd been played like a violin. Or, a golden goose, as he'd just referred to him in the first few moments of his paralysis.
Tony tried his best to convey how much searing hatred that was brewing just beneath the empty hole in his chest through his eyes, as they were the only thing he felt like he could control while glaring back at Stane who moved to sit beside his unmoving form on the couch. Unable to move his head, all Tony could really glare at now was the removed arc reactor staring back at him.
It made his blood boil, seeing his creation he'd made in order to escape the clutches of captivity- where Stane had put him- now perched directly in his fingertips.
"This is your legacy," Stane exclaimed.
A tormenting wave of deja vu flushed over Tony. He'd heard those words leave Stane's mouth before. A proclamation at every major milestone in Tony's time since taking over the company after his Mom and Dad had died. This is your legacy. An argument Stane would make to get Tony to put more effort into SI. This is your legacy.
Obadiah held up the arc reactor with pride. "A new generation of weapons with this at its heart. Weapons that will help steer the world back on course, put the balance of power in our hands. The right hands."
Tony stared back emotionlessly at the arc reactor as memories of explosions, bullet holes, plumes of smoke and screams filled his mind. This is your legacy.
In an attempt to right the wrongs Obadiah Stane had committed while Tony stuck his head in the sand for all of this time, Tony had hand-delivered him exactly what he needed to fulfill his sadistic need for power and control.
"...Too bad you had to involve Pepper in this."
Tony paused for a moment. His inner turmoil halting to a stop when he tuned back in at the name drop of his assistant- executive assistant, he could practically hear her voice in his head correcting him.
"I would have preferred that she lived," Stane exclaimed as he shut some kind of box or briefcase that he'd stored the arc reactor away into, Tony couldn't tell. "But, what's yet another name on the list of collateral damage you've caused? First the reporter, and now Pepper? You always did have a thing for redheads, Tony."
The last thing Tony saw was Obadiah's wicked grin before his silhouette disappeared into the darkness headed towards the mansion's front door. He wanted to yell, shout, scream- willing Jarvis to lock down the mansion to keep Stane from leaving or to just threaten his life if he so much as touched a hair on Pepper's head.
But, alas, he was still stuck. Unmoving, useless, and about to be pretty lifeless when the shock completely overtook his body pretty soon if he didn't get another core in and quickly.
Tony couldn't clock out just yet. He may have been ready to throw in the towel more times than he could count in that cave. Ready for the next day to be his last, being reluctant each time it wasn't. He took each day with a grain of salt, willing for the infinite and unending torment to be over even if that meant so was his meaningless life. But the arc reactor wasn't the only thing Tony took with him back to the States. He also took a sense of gratitude, a sense of meaning and purpose.
No longer was he planning on spending a second of his life not trying to better the world he had a hand in chipping away at. He was going to give his life a purpose, make sure it didn't go to waste.
And he certainly wasn't going to let it end here. Not now, not like this.
Almost as if he willed it, Tony's fingers began to move as the rest of his body slowly regained it's mobility.
"Alright! Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls- if you'd please be so kind as to step away from your computer screens, hand over your phones and don't move. I advise you to not even think about touching any of the many paper shredders I'm sure Stark Industries has a stock full of in this building. Am I understood?"
Jamie chuckled at Nick Park's dramatics. Her and Logan hung behind the large crowd of agents Nick had managed to procure himself in a few hours notice.
Immediately upon their entry into the vast building at SI HQ, workers across the building began to file out to peek at what was happening. The receptionists behind desks in front of large screens instinctively held their hands up in compliance as they pushed themselves away from their posts, other workers across different offices began to do the same thing upon seeing the telltale navy blue windbreaker jackets with the bold yellow lettering on the back that read 'FBI.'
"How did he manage to get this approved?" Logan whispered to his colleague as they watched the agents begin to rifle through filing cabinets and open computers all while flashing around a lengthy warrant.
Jamie shrugged. "Something about a networking event that he met some high-up federal judge at while golfing in Maui."
Logan scoffed beneath his breath while Jamie could only watch Nick go to work in directing the agents to different offices. "Rich people..."
Jamie smirked, "I'm sure working with a senator also played a part, too."
"But how do you think he got the job in the first place?"
Jamie pulled her gaze away from Nick to glance back at Logan. She opened her mouth to defend the man that had just come to their aid, but found herself at a loss of words. Partially because she realized she agreed with Logan. She wasn't blind, she knew Nick definitely came from money. But was she supposed to feel so guilt for still kind of liking him, despite her experience with people just like him and most likely the family he hailed from.
This was ridiculous, she realized. They were in the middle of busting Stark Industries, the very thing they'd been working towards for months, and the one thing she was worried about in the current moment was a blossoming crush on the rich man she met just a few days ago.
"O'Neil!"
Jamie's attention snapped back to Nick calling her over near the large office at the end of a broad hallway.
Dropping the conversation, the journalist and her photographer quickly rushed towards the open office. A handful of FBI agents that had first stormed in with their warrant were already seemingly finished with whatever business they'd uncovered within the singular office down the hall and had already began to search several other offices around the grounds searching for any semblance of evidence against Obadiah Stane, and only Stane.
Jamie had made it clear that Stark had nothing to do with the illegal weapons deals when she'd enlisted Nick's help and she was sure to make it a salient point to mention so in her brief and vigorous statement she'd written as evidence for the federal judge. Even after the feds had offered to go after the entirety of the company, Jamie knew that wasn't what she wanted. It wouldn't have been what her Dad wanted from his death either. He would've wanted justice... and that was exactly what Jamie intended on getting.
"Take a look at this," Nick ushered the pair over into the large office that, by the looks of it, must've been Stane's office.
There was a large dark wooden desk with a brown expensive looking leather chair at the far end of the office, behind it was a floor-to-ceiling window that stretched across the entirety of the back wall. But even with the open windows, very little light traveled through this office that wasn't artificially lit by an electrical chord due to the shades being pulled down over every port of light.
Fitting, Jamie found herself thinking as she made her way over to the desk.
"What is it?" she prompted.
Nick began typing into a search bar, a gaudy USB already in the port. A full screen of various files in a saved drive began to pop up. As he rifled through with the mouse, he clicked at the top to scroll through, revealing even more unorganized files.
"Is this supposed to mean something to us?" Logan asked. Jamie shot him a look. He was spending too much time around Parker, it would seem.
Nick bristled, but didn't reply immediately. Instead, he dragged the mouse up to the search bar and typed out Jamie's name before hitting the ENTER key. Of what was once a few hundred files suddenly vanished away. All but one...
Jamie leaned forward as Nick clicked on the file under the name 'Jamie Archer.' Inside was what Jamie considered to be a portfolio of some kind. A quick search in any internet browser could get her the information she was looking at now. A few newspaper articles with her name on the byline, three very extensive looking pdf files of her multiple school transcripts and then... the kicker.
"Wait!"
Nick obliged, allowing her to lean over him as she reached for the mouse.
She dragged the cursor over to something that looked similar to that of a police report. But it wasn't the format that caught her eye. It was the date. January 3rd, 2008. The day of her accident.
When the pdf opened, she began to read the filled out form that seemed to have been scanned and input onto this drive. How Stane even obtained it, she didn't want to know. It looked to be that during the type-up of the form, someone had been giving a witness description of the driver and the car that hit her. Only... after the word 'suspect,' the rest of the words were all blacked out- sealed, deleted.
The attempt against her life having been confirmed after all, Jamie found herself with an uneasy feeling building in her chest at the thought that had she died in that car accident like Stane had intended her to, they would have gotten away with it. The set up, the cover up- it would've all been buried. Most likely the same way he had intended his double-dealing with Stark weapons to be: buried and invisible.
In this equation, Jamie was just a girl with a shovel.
"James," it was Logan who lulled her back to the present with a firm squeeze to her shoulder. "We got him."
Jamie gave him a wry smile, turning back to the screen. Now that this small piece of confirmation was taken care of, she went back to the search bar. ARC REACTOR. She'd typed in.
Nick frowned, "I thought you guys were interested in the weapons. Why are you looking at clean energy at Stark Industries?"
"We think Stane is planning to use this new type of technology to power a weapon of some kind," Jamie explained, the screen loading up several energy-labelled files, but none that seemed to line up with what she was looking for. "After Tony Stark escaped from his captors- that Obadiah Stane hired to kill him- he created some type of weapon to escape that we think Stane obtained after Stark was brought back to the States."
Nick crossed his arms, leaning forward to focus on the screen while Jamie scrolled further through some more undecipherable scientific nonsense about this large, gaudy arc reactor that helped power Stark Industries facilities. Jamie scrolled until a certain file caught her eye...
"What's Section 16?"
Logan and Nick simultaneously asked in unison, "Section 16?"
Jamie nodded, sliding the cursor over to select the file labeled as such. In it, she found several concerning file titles. Acute Paralysis, Jericho Missile, Arc Reactor, EMP Probe Launcher, Weapon Prototype- Model I. Jamie noted that last one had the most recent date and clicked. What projected made her heart sink.
They were blueprints. Blueprints of a very intricately designed metal suit. It was large, from the measurements it was nearly three tons in weight and well over twenty feet tall. The mask had white slits for eyes and an unnerving amount of weapons attached along the suit's arms. Guns, missiles, repulsors. And at the very center of the bulging chest piece was a small glowing core... the miniaturized arc reactor.
"Is that the weapon Stark built?" Nick asked no one in particular.
"...looks like it," Jamie answered in a horrified whisper.
Nick shook his head. He quickly grabbed the USB from the port and started after whichever FBI agent was seemingly in charge of the raid. While he was off playing hero, Jamie sunk into the expensive leather chair Nick had sat in earlier.
Logan glanced down at her dejected figure. "C'mon, James." He tried to shake her out of whatever trance she was in. "We've got him. Red handed. This is everything we worked for. Everything you've been chasing."
Jamie shook her head. Her eyes were still glued to the blueprints, those white dead eyes on the metal suit staring back at her. "There's no use... There's no way anyone can stop that."
She'd come so far only to be looking at the future, her end. The end of the world as she knew it all because she couldn't stop Stane in time. By now, he'd have already been building up this weapon of mass destruction for something like this raid to happen. It was, without a doubt, sitting at a Stark Facility being activated and ready to be mass produced and sold to the highest bidder.
Logan pursed his lips. Like a lightbulb going off inside his brain, an idea popped into his head. "Maybe there is..." Reaching for the cursor, he scrolled back up to another file that had caught his eye earlier in that same Section 16 file.
Pepper was in way over her head.
One minute, she'd been on the brink of quitting the night before in Tony's workshop. Yet, he'd somehow managed to talk her into doing one more idiotic stunt by 'hacking'- if she could even call it that- into the company's mainframe, which in turn led her here. In a dark, secluded lab. Surrounded by weird, secretive federal agents with little bombs that opened locked doors. Trying her best not to get her slim heel stuck in one of the many holes along the metal floor.
She wasn't even sure what she was supposed to be looking for in this 'Section 16' part of the lab she'd never seen before in all her time working at Stark Industries. Initially, she thought that this would be where Obadiah would be hiding out now that she'd figured out what he'd been hiding- everything ranging from him selling weapons to the Ten Rings as well as the US government, to him having Tony kidnapped in Gulmira for his own gain.
But now that she stood toe-to-toe with an empty hunk of metal with a large hole in the center of the chest piece, Pepper was really starting to reconsider not quitting.
"Looks like you were right. He was building a suit," Coulson remarked, his weapon lowered as he too examined the weapon that Tony Stark had built in an Afghanistan cave to escape his captors.
Pepper frowned. While she did recognize the make of the suit- the empty slits where eyes would be, the round head and the bulging, jutted out pieces of scrap metal poorly welded together- she couldn't quite figure out why she found this suit to be so... underwhelming. She'd seen the designs on Obadiah's computer when she pulled all those files onto Tony's USB, she could've sworn... "I thought it'd be bigger," she uttered.
While Coulson and his agents began to scatter and canvas, Pepper began to wander. It didn't look to be that anyone was present in the lab, or in this 'Section 16' area of the lab. But someone had been down there recently. Pepper could visibly see the scuffs marks on the ground from being walked all over, or even someone rushing to clean up the area of any evidence. Stane could've been there, or he could've been long gone by now. But Pepper couldn't help but feel like something was amiss. Like she was missing something...
Slowly, she found herself gravitating towards a sound. A sound of electricity popping and buzzing in the air, sounds she'd gotten so used to hearing as the assistant to a man who tinkered for a living. When she glanced up, she could see unconnected wires dangling from the ceiling, as if it had been powering something that was no longer there.
Well, that's a safety hazard.
Pepper couldn't turn the 'lawsuit waiting to happen' part of her brain off. Especially not after working for Tony for so long.
A tingle of fear trickled down her spine and she spun around to face the movement that caught her eye in her peripheral vision. Pepper tensed at the sighting of moving, dangling chains a few feet away. It was like a scene out of a horror movie.
She took a step, her eyes catching something in the darkness through the chains. Every part of her screamed at her to run, turn away. But the other part, the part curious to know what led Obadiah to doing something so... so malicious... urged her to go closer. So she did.
Until that thing that caught her eye in the darkness lit up. Those two life-less slits in the metal face of the hulking suit she'd seen earlier lit up. Only they were bigger, and were certainly attached to something... bigger.
Pepper gasped when she realized she was standing toe-to-toe with the enormous machine she'd seen in Obadiah's designs. He'd never left. And he wasn't just building a suit, he had one already built...
She screamed, dashing from her place in front of the giant metal man and sprinting for her life through a field of agents. Even through the shaking of the floor and the outpouring of gunfire, she didn't stop. She ran the way she'd come in, her heels catching through the metal openings of the gated floor more than once, but Pepper kept up her pace. The more she felt herself falter, the closer she could feel the monstrous steps of the machine gaining on her. The sound of moving metal had never terrified her more.
She could feel a rush of wind behind her as she narrowly escaped out of the 'Section 16' neon yellow door.
I should've quit!
Pepper kept running. Even though she knew she'd outran the metal man, it was only a matter of time before he reappeared. She only slowed down when she'd made it out of the front doors of the lab.
As if the universe had perfect timing, her phone rang. Tony's name appeared on the caller ID. She answered without hesitation.
"Pepper?" he called into his receiver, his voice echoing in her through the ear piece as she tried to focus on him and not the ringing in her ears.
"Tony," she gasped in relief. "Tony, are you okay?" Sure, she'd just narrowly escaped the clutches of an enormous metal monster, but she couldn't help but feel terrified after he hadn't answered any of her calls following their last interrupted call that probably had to do with Obadiah's second attempt to kill her boss.
"I'm fine," he assured her.
But that was all she heard before going into a panicked explanation of what was going on.
"O-Obadiah! He's gone insane!"
"I know. Listen, you'd better get out of there-"
"He's built a suit-"
"Get out of there right now!"
"And-"
The ground shifted beneath her feet. Pepper could feel the crunch and push of something emerging from the asphalt under her heels, only... that couldn't be right. There was tons of stainless steel and layers of rock and concrete between her and the basement beneath them. How could something break through-
Pepper's own question and worst nightmare was answered when she turned around to find a large chunk of road and rock began to rip open. A metal hand pushing through the Earth like a raised corpse from the grave.
She screamed and stumbled back as the machine rose from the ground, standing at full size above her. She could get a better look at it out now, out of the darkness of the basement and in the open. It was larger than the old suit they'd found hanging up in every way, nearly three times that in fact. The hole in the chest was wide and bright, lit up by some type of energy source she couldn't quite recognize.
Pepper thought the scariest part of all this was just how massive the weaponized suit was... until it spoke.
"Where do you think you're going?" the gritty, distorted voice of Obadiah Stane prompted her through the metal helmet.
Pepper froze, her entire body shaking in terror, only too stiff and tense to run. It was as if her fight or flight response was voided, cancelled out by the pure terror of knowing that she couldn't out fight this thing... and she couldn't outrun it either. There was only... facing it.
BOOM!
The air around Pepper vibrated as a large invisible force shot out from the right of her, vibrating until it connected directly into the enormous suit in front of her. This odd sensation seemed to knock all power from the suit. Sparks flew and the lights inside the helmet and nestled in the chest piece dimmed until the metal suit stood stiff and without motor function.
Pepper felt her body sag in relief.
She turned to face wherever the mysterious energy blast came from, only to find herself with even more questions than answers.
Standing a substantial distance away- holding an enormous piece of machinery that looked almost like a rocket launcher without a hole, rather a large square of little lights that seemed to be powering down- was a young woman. Her auburn curls poked out around the crown of her face, wind blowing it in every which way as she stood staring at what she'd done in shock and disbelief. Her grip on the oversized weapon in her hand she was barely keeping propped up onto her shoulder faltered as she let it fall to her side with a thud.
Behind her, a young man popped out of the vehicle parked a few feet away. "Are you okay?!" He called out to Pepper, a little out of breath.
Pepper jerked her head in a minute nod.
He slackened in relief before turning to the woman in front of him who was still staring slack-jawed at the enormous piece of machinery she'd just knocked out of power with the mystery weapon. "James. You good?"
The young woman- James- shook her head. Not because she wasn't okay, but because it looked as though she was still in shock at what she'd just seen and what she'd just done.
She took a deep breath and let out a shaky, uneven chuckle.
"Guess we know what the EMP Probe Launcher does now."
Logan turned to his colleague with an incredulous, almost offended, look on his face.
"Seriously?"
Jamie threw her hands up, or at least as high as she could with how sore they were from heaving and operating the heavy launcher. "What? This was your idea. You're the one who gave it to me to use."
"Because I didn't actually think you were going to use it!"
"What did you want me to do? Threaten the giant robot and try to negotiate with it?!"
"I don't mean to interrupt-" Pepper Potts cut in, out breath and on the verge of a panic attack. "But, uh, can we have this conversation when we've gotten away from the giant robot?"
Jamie and Logan both nodded in agreement. Logan quickly ran to jump over the broken pieces of asphalt surrounding the Executive Assistant, holding his hand out for Potts to take. She wobbled a bit, but managed to make it up the slope.
"We have to go back inside. There are Agents that can handle the situation-" The strawberry blonde gestured back towards the Stark Labs. But before she could divulge on any information about who these 'Agents' were, the sound of machinery powering up caught the group's attention.
They all turned with horrified expressions when they realized that the EMP didn't work quiet as efficiently as they were led to believe.
The Earth beneath them shook as if there was an earthquake. The metal suit slowly rose from the crumbled asphalt he'd been knocked down into, it's eyes back to full brightness and it's glowing core back to full power. Pepper stumbled back into Logan who carefully maneuvered her shoulders to place himself between her and the enormous metal man. Jamie stared up in shock as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing since she hadn't fully processed it in the heat of the moment when she'd gotten to shoot it down earlier.
She could place the object at the center of the metal suit's chest piece earlier, the so-called 'weapon' Jamie and Logan initially thought Stane and the Ten Rings were after... But now that Jamie was staring into the lifeless glowing eyes of the massive suit in front of her, she now realized that the small image of the miniaturized Arc Reactor was only a piece of the terrifying puzzle.
"You."
Jamie heard the deep, mechanical voice rumble from underneath the metal helmet. The young reporter turned to glance back at Logan. The photographer backed himself and Pepper Potts back towards the car, hoping to make a quick getaway if need be.
Jamie spun back around when the giant metal arm of the suit plunged into the ground beside her. She yelped, jumping back so not to get stomped on. She realized after the second arm pounded into the ground to the other side of her, effectively trapping her in one spot, that the giant robot wasn't after Pepper Potts... it was after her now.
"You've been a pain in my backside for months," the voice boomed, the full height of the suit coming into view as it stood tall above the hole it dug itself out of. Jamie felt her knees buckle beneath her as the metal man raised an arm to aim directly at her, the weapons array around the wrist on full display. She could vaguely hear Logan screaming her name from far away. "I should've killed you when I had the chance to back in Georgia."
Stane.
The name fell off her lips like a poison. She could hear the disdain in the robot's voice, as clear and terrifying as the vibrato of Stane's voice echoing in the parking garage from that night in Florida.
Stane.
"STANE!"
Jamie hadn't realized she had shut her eyes until she was forced to open them upon hearing a voice that wasn't hers shout. The young woman glanced up into the air and only caught a glimpse of something small and metallic. A fucking missile!
"Jamie!" Logan screamed at the same time she ducked, arms over her head as the onslaught of guns shots and loud clashing of metal rattled above her.
She was still crouched like a ball when she realized that she hadn't gone up in a ball of flames and explosives. Cautiously, Jamie raised her head and thanked any Gods above that answered her prayers that she wasn't dead. At least not yet.
"Jamie!"
"Oh my God- are you okay?!"
Logan jumped over rubble to reach her, his hands gripping onto her biceps as he pulled her up to her feet. She wobbled a little, still shaking from the shock of being mere seconds away from being killed a moment ago.
Close behind him, Pepper Potts rushed over, "Are you alright? Are you okay?"
"I'm- I'm fine," Jamie stammered. It was a lie because in all honesty, the ringing in her ears was only getting louder by the second and she could feel the vertigo caused by all the stress and adrenaline slowly kicking in. And while she knew she couldn't have been seeing things, she wondered if she was hallucinating the giant hole in the exact spot Stane's big bulking suit had been moments before. Had he just... plummeted? What had happened-
"You're bleeding," the Stark Industries employee pointed out.
Jamie could barely hear the other woman's cries of concern when she was so focused on the fact that she wasn't dead and had certainly heard a voice crying out Stane's name before everything ended in a puff of smoke- literally. The only real indication that she had been injured was when Logan raised her left arm sleeve up just enough to see a pool of crimson liquid trickling down the expanse from her upper arm, down her elbow to the tips of her shaking fingers.
"Shit, the stitches broke." The photographer hissed beneath his breath. His hands came up to grip her arm in the place where the blood was coming from; Jamie instinctively cried out in pain. "I need a belt, or a cloth- something! Quick!"
With her free hand, Jamie tried to pat herself down. She knew she didn't have anything on her. As if she'd ever worn a belt in her life outside of her old private school uniform and knew it was probably fruitless to try and rip a piece of cloth from off the FBI windbreaker she still had on.
"Er, here!" Pepper Potts was quick to rip the black shiny belt from around her slim waist. It paired nicely with her all black business dress and pumps. Even in a crisis, Jamie had to hand it to Pepper Potts that she still managed to look this good under pressure.
Taking the belt from Potts, Logan wrapped it around Jamie's arm above the broken stitching area that had only just been put back together by doctors a week ago. God, her insurance company was going to kill her... Well, technically since she was now employed, she didn't have anymore health insurance. Yet another brick to add to her pitiful shit storm of a life that was only getting worse by the second.
"What the Hell just happened?" Jamie managed to finally muster out through clenched teeth. Eventually, the entire reason Jamie and Logan had come to California in the first place was at the forefront of her mind. Stark Industries. Weapons. Ten Rings. Obadiah Stane. Tony Stark. Gulmira, Afghanistan. The auburn-haired woman turned towards the other ginger, a new fire in her eye. "What was that? Why did the COO of your company just try and blow us to kingdom come?!"
"You have to know, Stark Industries had nothing to do with this," Pepper Potts tried to explain through her hysterics. "Obadiah, he- he went behind the company's back. He was selling our weapons to-"
"To the Ten Rings in Gulmira, Afghanistan," Jamie cut her off sharply. When Potts stared at her, slack-jawed and confused at how she got this information, Jamie figured she owed her at least a partial explanation. "Yeah, we busted the case wide open almost four months ago- give or take. That Obadiah Stane has been double dipping Stark Industries' weapons business with US government contracts and terrorist cell buy-outs. He's the one who hired the Ten Rings to kidnap Stark in the first place-"
"I know! I know that. But... But how do you know?"
Jamie pursed her lips.
"Who are you?"
"I... I'm..." Jamie's name faded away from her own mind when she spotted something far off behind Potts's head.
Over the edge of the wall that separated the parking lot and the LA traffic below, Jamie looked up and watched as a small metal man- roughly four times smaller than the one Obadiah was in- shot up into the sky, leaving a trail of smoke behind him. But what left Jamie in shock wasn't only that sight, but the horrific sight that followed of the enormous suit carrying Stane flying up after it, a bigger trail of fire and smoke blasting to the ground as he rose to the clouds at an alarming rate.
"Holy shit."
a/n: had a lot of writer's block and mental shit go down. anyway, enjoy the cliffhanger :)
