vail_kagami | Marvel 616 Fic: Undo

summary and story information this way

The HOANU haven’t existed for a very long, as far as organizations with ambitions for global domination go. The have been around since the eighties, though, which explains why the men and women who founded them thought that “Harbingers of a New Universe” was a good name. They haven’t managed to do a lot of damage to the old universe as it was, but at least they have managed to stay mostly undetected through their attempts, which is more than a lot of organizations with the word "harbingers" in their names can claim.

They lasted, too, even though they never made it up to the status of being someone’s archnemeses, or even to being acknowledged as existing. That was never their ambition. Mostly, they operate from the background or hidden in plain sight, whenever they happen to have a high official or someone in a useful management position on payroll.

And there are many on their payroll. Not many know what the organization is about or even what HOANU stands for, but they have a network of agents and foot soldiers Hydra would be surprised to know about. And while they never did much by way of actively attempting to change the world, they did gather a lot of information and technology and made some interesting developments themselves.

Long-term was the plan in question. The people who founded HOANU knew there was no point in rushing things. They always intended to strike when the time was right, when their agents were perfectly positioned and they had managed to find a way around all defenses. If everything were over so fast no one even knew who struck the world and crippled it, that would have been fine with them. Ego was never much of a problem of theirs.

Poison, however, was. As were explosions. And car accidents. Even before HOANU got really big, some of its members saw the potential of their network and research and worked hard so they could move up the proverbial ladder. Some of the founders had since been killed off by their successors. another one for revenge, another wanted to leave and was killed for security reasons, and yet another one was smart enough to just leave without proclaiming it beforehand and be gone. He was found three years later, washed up on a beach in Southeast Asia where he had died in a sailing accident.

It became tradition, after a few years, to have the organization run by six people, each responsible for one part of the world. Those who made it to the top of the career ladder traditionally tried to fight the tradition of moving up the career ladder by murdering one's predecessor, but even if they were murdered for other reasons, murder was usually the way they vacated their positions.

Except for one, whose deadly car accident happened due to alcohol rather than anything else.

Daniel Serkwich never joined the organization. He just took it over. Originally, he had planned to start one similar to it; upon finding out there already was one that had most of the properties he was aiming for and was also active all over the globe, he decided to speed the process up a little.

HOANU has lost its focus over the years, he found. The global domination and change they started out aiming for had become little more than some abstract goal never to be achieved in their lifetimes. They were content being an exclusive secret society that made a lot of money behind the scenes and lost themselves in internal struggles for power. He solved those problems by taking all power for himself and reorganizing everything from the ground up.

There no longer were six leaders; that only caused problems and unnecessary discussions and people trying to swap the continents they were responsible for since no one ever wanted to be in charge of Australia. (Nothing ever happens in Australia, or so people believe.) Since the top of HOANU was so secret even from their own members, hardly anyone even noticed.

It was also him who pushed the technological approach of their endeavor. Knowledge is well and good, but they needed to find a way to use it, and technology is what dominates the world. Lacking anyone with serious superpowers at their disposal, it was the only way they could go. No one is going to take over the world with sticks and stones anymore. It’s not even about having the bigger stick these days. It’s about having the better stick.

And where technology is concerned, Tony Stark is the man to go to. Naturally, no one expected him to cooperate, but that, it turned out, wasn’t necessary. They could just take what they needed, even if it was stored only in Stark’s mind.

Three years before he gained control of HOANU, Serkwich got hold of some Kree machinery that was left behind by a group of aliens who died in Peru for reasons he will never know and doesn’t particularly care about. While he’s not Tony Stark, he’s not a bad engineer himself, and he knew other great engineers and programmers even then. They cannibalized what they found, got it to work again, but it was only with the means HOANU offered him that Serkwich managed to turn what was originally a pile of junk into something that would soon give him control over everything.

Just the way Stark has control over everything. The man might not use it, but Serkwich never had any doubt that if he so wanted, Tony Stark could have taken over every bit of technology on Earth at any time he wanted and thus gained global domination in a heartbeat. The Skrull invasion underlined that with painful clarity; it even made Serkwich fear that his chance had passed. And not only his own. When Stark lost that Extremis enhancile of his during that disaster, it seemed to have put a damper on his technological supremacy, but then it turned out he didn’t need that to potentially control everything, everywhere, at once.

Even with all these people and means at his disposal, Serkwich had never been able to keep an eye on what Stark’s new company, Resilient, was doing and how. It was mostly due to its small size and the fact that all of the few employees directly involved in R&D were so trusted by Stark that Serkwich prohibited any attempt at bribing or threatening them into HOANU’s service lest it give them away. With the things they built from the Kree junk, it wouldn’t be necessary, he’d decided.

He was proven right when Resilient announced their swarm network to the world. Serkwich knew then that this was the chance he had waited for. While the product launch happened in Stark’s absence and the company no longer belonged to him, it still had his fingerprints all over.

But Stark had disappeared and they had to wait for him to show up again. Not that HOANU didn’t know where he was. It was more that they had no interest in getting up against a nut job like the Mandarin and his considerable local army, especially when they didn’t have to. Historically, there was little doubt that Stark would win this one and that the Mandarin would once again be defeated. And then he was.

Stark returned.

And HOANU still waited for the right moment, for a second in which Stark was alone and far from his armor. They didn’t need for him to be careless once the other circumstances were met, since without his super-powered friends and his suit, Stark didn’t stand a chance of getting out of their trap.

Not that trap was quite the right word. They didn’t prompt Stark to do anything to play into their hands, they just waited and were there when he did. In the end it paid to have someone in a building next to the Avengers tower who alerted them whenever Stark left it in civil clothes.

He was out with Captain America—or rather, Steve Rogers—that day, which wasn’t particularly surprising. Serkwich was quite amused in the weeks that followed when the media went crazy over their romantic involvement, having known about it for months himself.

All it took was one unobserved moment and Stark went down, barely even realizing what happened. It took his companion several minutes to notice he was missing, and that was more than enough to take him away and get rid of all traces left behind.

For all that he’d been watching him, Serkwich had never before met Stark in person. Seeing him in one of his cells—a special one without any electronics—was very satisfying, but also somewhat disappointing. While good-looking and fit, Stark didn’t really cut a very impressive figure. He was tall, sure, about an inch taller than Serkwich, who towered over most of his closest associates, and his body was firm with lean muscles, but he was also a lot narrower in build than Serkwich had thought even after seeing so many pictures of him beside hunks like Captain America or Thor. His clothes and hair and beard were very neat when they grabbed him. He looked like a businessman rather than a warrior, and while he is a businessman, Serkwich had always thought he would be… more.

One should never meet one's heroes, or so they say.

At least Serkwich never talked to him in person. No one did, actually, since verbal communication was not needed for what they were planning. The only people who got in direct contact with the man for the first couple of days were the guards who stopped him when he almost managed to escape twice.

Which was kind of impressive, after all. It wasn’t like they had given him anything to work with besides bare walls and a bucket.

Serkwich allowed the guards to beat him, after the first time, because they didn’t need Stark physically healthy. Quite the opposite, actually. It was still a few days before they could finish their plan, so they needed Stark alive and more or less functioning until then and the guards had to hold back. Bruises and some broken bones were okay as long as it wasn’t anything important.

The next day, Stark actually made it to the front door. They kept him tied up after that and started with the drugs a little early.

After five days, the dosage was so high that the man couldn’t move anymore. That was the only obvious effect of the medication they were using: total paralysis of anything but autonomic body functions, which in Stark’s case are run by the device in his chest rather than his brain anyway. Thanks to that they didn’t have to be as careful with the dosage, and Serkwich appreciated that because otherwise they might have had to think of something else. They needed Stark alive for a certain amount of time, and the last guy they tested this on died of heart failure before they could finish.

The day they concluded that phase of their plan, Serkwich had his trusted men beat Stark up again. For one, it was a good way to see of the drug was working. When Stark remained conscious but made not the slightest move to protect himself, he concluded that it did.

Mostly, though, he had that done because the Kree machine works much better the worse condition the person whose mind is being hacked is in. Physical pain and a failing system keep the mental defenses down, and considering how strong-willed Stark is known for being, Serkwich decided not to take any chances. Not with the Avengers looking for them and closing in on them uncomfortably quickly.

The Kree equipment was too chunky to move easily, so there would have been no point in running with Stark in tow if the air became too thin. Instead, Serkwich gambled all on this one try, fully accepting that it would probably kill Stark. It wasn’t like they would need him afterwards anyway.

In the end, they made it with minutes to spare. Stark was fighting them even when he was dying, and his mind was far too familiar with computers, even ones based on alien tech, to not offer a bit of a challenge. Altogether, the process took the better part of a day, and when it was done, all they could do was secure the data they had and trigger the mechanism that would fry everything inside the machine before they got into their transporter and left, having set the station in their temporary base to evaporate as soon as the last one dematerialized.

And yet, it turned out that the whole thing was more successful than any of them had anticipated. They knew Stark had done something to his own brain during his fight with Osborn, had lost a lot of memories, and Serkwich had been worried too much crucial information would be gone. As it turned out, it was just buried, and their mechanism was more than able to unbury everything. For all intents and purposes, it had discovered the “undo” button of Stark’s mind.

About four hours after they made their escape from the temporary base, the news reported that the Avengers had found the missing Tony Stark in a basement in Brooklyn. Apparently there had been more time to spare than he had thought. It didn’t matter. Nor did it matter that Stark was still alive at that point and was expected to survive, since they had never sat him down and explained their evil plans to him, or even introduced themselves. Stark couldn’t give them away because he knew nothing.

Meanwhile, HOANU now knew everything they needed. The door codes to his tower and the Resilient facilities, construction plans for his suits, and, most importantly, a way to access the swarm were all there, once they managed to decode them, turn abstract knowledge into letters and numbers. It had worked perfectly. Stark had fought them, but in the end they won.

It took them weeks to realize that they had been fooled.

They tested their newfound knowledge on little things, at first. Like the bank information for Stark's private accounts. They didn’t take anything—it would have been a stupid thing to get traced by when they were so close to their goal—but to see if they could. The amount on money in those accounts was another disappointment, but then, the man had gone through some hard times lately and he doesn’t run a company anymore. He spends a lot of money on his suits and other equipment and doesn’t really make any. Still, it’s hard to imagine Tony Stark as anything but rich.

They tracked Starks personal cell phone, too, which was easy, even though it was never used after HOANU let him go. The news spoke of injuries that weren’t life-threatening and said that he had been released into the care of SHIELD, and without anything interesting coming up in that regard, they had looked elsewhere for stories and everyone simply assumed that the reason Stark wasn’t seen in public was because of the frenzy over his relationship with Captain America.

HOANU knew better, of course. They had people at SHIELD, if not many of them, and they hacked their databases with Stark’s knowledge. There was something wrong with the man’s mind. Apparently, they had broken it.

Not dead, but this was almost as good. And he didn’t remember a thing about being held captive. It was as if fate was giving them the go-ahead.

Until it wasn’t. Serkwich first got the horrible suspicion that something might have gone terribly wrong when the door code and identification override to the Resilient HQ didn’t work. But then, Stark no longer worked with them, officially. It was possible that they changed the system. And rewrote all of the computer code it was based on. Maybe there had been some kind of falling out between them and this was a part of the Resilient crew burning bridges. The data they extracted from Stark’s mind did not include this kind of personal information.

They tried Stark's codes at first and then they tried to hack the security with his knowledge about how it was structured. No success. They tried to hack the computer system, go directly into the swarm and make it follow their will everywhere on the planet. Surrender all data stored on it, use it to control all other computers as it could. But it didn’t work. It looked like it did but then it didn’t. Like a really good imitation of something functional.

Stark had fought them hard for something that was worthless.

Of course, had he given it up without a fight, they would have become suspicious from the start.

Understanding that they had been fooled was a hard blow to Serkwich’s ego, but it was an even worse blow to his plans. He had underestimated Stark. Even as they were using alien technology to hack his brain, the man had waylaid them and fed them fake data that was close enough to the real thing not to be immediately obvious. If he’d simply not given anything away, they would have tried harder until he did. This was clever. And took a damn lot of skill and will power.

Well, the man was a genius, after all. And not just in the engineering department.

Fortunately, he also wasn’t dead. After a couple of failed attempts to get anywhere with their plans and their department in Seattle nearly being caught by frigging Wolverine, Serkwich could no longer deny that they needed Stark one more time.

But Serkwich was no idiot either. He had prepared for something like this. Actually, it had been Arona, one of his more trusted assistants, who had suggested it, but he was not one to turn down a good idea just because it wasn’t his. He hadn’t expected to need it, but now he is glad to have listened to her.

He’s also glad they didn’t outright kill Stark, but left his survival to fate. If he were gone, this plan, at least, would have become impossible and there might have been years before another opportunity presented itself.

When they had the machine break into Stark’s brain, they also, on Arona’s suggestion, had it plant a receiver for remote control in his subconscious. With the way he managed to fool them, Serkwich hadn’t been convinced it would work until the team he sent to fetch Stark sent the signal and he willingly followed their orders. At least something was going well.

They couldn’t make him break into the swarm for them, though. The control didn’t go that deep, didn’t allow for them to use Stark’s higher brain functions. Hacking required decision making and judgment that would be seriously impaired by the control. If that had been possible, they would have just brainwashed Stark into working for them.

No, but they could easily catch him again by simply making him come. They could even make him fight off his own friends—in this case War Machine, according to the team’s report. Serkwich is there to greet them when they arrive, staying at a distance just to be safe but watching Iron Man land along with the others. An elegant suit, he has to admit, so powerful, fast and effective. They have never quite been able to create something like it. (Not that they were trying to. A fully functional battle suit with the protection of a tank and the firepower of a nuclear warhead is a little too high-profile for the way they operate.)

All they have to do now is put Stark into that machine again and get at it once more, this time looking out for any false paths he might be tricking them into taking. It will be tricky because they will have to hurt and drug him again, this time without risking death because they can’t let him go before they know it worked. More importantly, though, they have destroyed the one machine they had last time and it will take time to create a new one.

That is okay, Serkwich tells himself as he sees Stark take off his suit and hand it over willingly, his face blank. They have time. They have patience. That’s why they work so well. They don’t rush things and they won’t repeat their mistakes. No one will find them here. All they have to do is wait it out and keep Stark safe and secure in the meantime.

First, it seems, they will have to feed him. The man is far too thin, and he looks pale and wan, like he has been sick for a long time. Since apparently he’s crazy now, that wouldn’t be too far off. Fortunately, the mind control will make sure he’s not a high maintenance prisoner to keep.

Or so Serkwich believes until Arona tells him, two hours later, that they tried to make Stark eat and he just threw everything up. They had one of their medics check him over, and Serkwich was not above noting the irony of them worrying about his health after going through so much trouble to ruin it.

The next few days are almost business as usual. Serkwich has a team monitor the activities of the Avengers closer than usual, like the first time they took Stark, and just like the first time, the heroes around Captain America are looking in all the wrong places. Wolverine’s nose won’t help them because this time, using a combination of flight and teleportation, they didn’t leave a trail of scent behind. They were not seen by anyone. Their communications network is not connected to anything and the HQ is never contacted in an electronic way anyway. Some of Serkwich’s predecessors were paranoid bastards, and considering they were right to be, he had the organization keep up the tradition under his leadership.

There is no way to see them from space, either. Someone once compared their base with that of a James Bond villain, but Serkwich doesn’t like the comparison. Those bases were always destroyed by a smarmy Brit and his scantily clad girlfriend and the villain in question fed to his own pets. It is not an example he aspires to.

But Stark is no James Bond either. He’s a mindless puppet who does everything they tell him to do, be it “go there”, “stand here” or “repair this”. Even with most of his deeper knowledge of engineering blocked from use, he’s still very good at the simple stuff. It’s probably so ingrained in his being that he could do it in his sleep.

Ironically enough, sleep is something Stark gets with them probably more than he did before, because they can simply make him. Just like they can make him eat, and then wait patiently with a bucket until he throws most of it up again. Their control evidently doesn’t reach deep enough to keep him from having nightmares, though—there is not one night that goes without Stark screaming or crying in his sleep, calling for “Steve” or “Rhodey” or apologizing over and over. Evidently, the man has some issues.

They wake him up and he’s quiet and docile and calm. Serkwich should offer this surface lobotomy for sale to the medical world and give up in his bigger plans to live on an island surrounded by well-paid slaves. But then, money is something he’s had before. Only Bond villains who get fed to their pets settle for such small goals.

They have had Stark for more than a week when Serkwich finally gets close to him for the first time. There’s an idea he’s had, and he wants to supervise the execution himself. Has to, really, because it requires the kind of knowledge he doesn’t share with anyone, not even Arona or any of the others he sees no need for killing yet and who probably have no ambition to kill him.

He’s waiting in the computer room when the guards arrive with their prisoner. Their presence is not actually necessary; they could simply have told Stark to come here and he would have, but Serkwich is an old-fashioned and cautious guy who thinks that prisoners and guards go together rather well and should never be broken up no matter what the circumstances. Regardless, he lets the guards wait at the door of the large room while Stark comes over to him, within shooting range but too far away to see the computer screens, not that they’d understand anything of what’s being displayed on them.

Stark walks with fluid, almost graceful motions that seem to indicate a confidence he can’t possibly be feeling right now and mask the rather pitiful condition his body is in. If they could perfect their control to let him act more independently while still doing their will, they could send him out into the world to set it in their favor, Serkwich muses. They could take over politicians and scientists and important businessmen—a different angle than what he is planning, but altogether a good idea. Not executable in praxis, though. The only thing that makes this work so well with Stark is the fact that his mind is like a computer in many ways.

Up close, the illusion of health shatters. Stark is pale and actually shaking a little on his feet. He’s still thin, which makes his high cheekbones all the more prominent, and his eyes are strikingly blue under the strands of black hair that fall into his face. He’s attractive even now, even in the slightly oversized black coverall they dressed him in, Serkwich has to give him that. He thinks, briefly, of things he could do and then discards the thought in favor of stepping aside and leading Stark to a chair in front of a screen with a hand spread flat over his back and very aware of the knots of Stark’s spine underneath his palm.

As soon as he is situated in front of the computer, Stark’s fingers come to rest on the keyboard as if by instinct. They don’t quite sit right, the way they are supposed to be, with the index fingers on the F and the J key. The left hand sits where it should but the right one is too far up and to the right as if eager to get to the numbers. It probably has something to do with the fact that Stark usually doesn’t type novels on his computers.

Serkwich leans over him from behind, his arms reaching over Stark’s shoulders and typing in his own three passwords that open access to all the relevant programs. The first thing he does is open the code they originally pulled out of Stark’s mind.

“Do you recognize this?” he asks.

Stark answers without hesitation, his voice clear but somewhat toneless. “This is the code I wrote in order to fool you into thinking you had gotten what you wanted out of my mind.”

Very clear reply. True, too. “Was it hard?” Serkwich asks purely out of curiosity.

“No. It was already there as part of my security measures. I merely had to direct your efforts to what I wanted you to get.”

“You prepared for something like this?”

“I have very dangerous information stored in my mind. It needs to be protected even if I do not have the time and means to delete it.”

“Like the SHRA database,” Serkwich guesses.

“Yes.”

“Can you give that to me now?” It is one of the files he is very eager to get his hands on. Even if he succeeds in taking over the world as it is, the pleasure will be short-lived if he gets taken out by a bunch of pissed off superhumans five minutes later. They already have that database, of course, but knowing that Stark has been fucking with them, Serkwich won’t make the mistake of assuming that anything about the list they own is in any way accurate.

There is a second of silence, as if Stark has to think about it. “No,” he finally says, and this time, his voice sounds a little strained.

“I thought so.” Serkwich sighs, then perks up when another idea crosses his mind. “You do know the real identities of all the superheroes, do you not?”

“No. Not all of them.”

“But many of them.”

“Yes.”

“Then make a list.”

At once, Stark opens an Excel file and begins typing. Serkwich stares, his heart beating a little faster when he sees the names listed there. Superhero identities, real names, addresses of their homes, occupations in their civilian lives… if Stark knows it, he writes it down. He is very thorough.

And to think that they almost killed this man…

There are villains on that list, too. And people who have retired from the life. And superheroes from other countries. Crimson Dynamo. The Steel Guardian back three generations. All of the Power Division. Captain Britain. Sunfire. Alpha Flight.

Serkwich knew there were a lot of super powered people on this planet, but seeing them listed here makes him understand just how many they are. And how many they have to take out. They can’t just take care of the Avengers, the X-Men and Fantastic Four and the other American heroes. They have to get all of them.

At once.

“How do you feel about poison?” he asks Stark when the list is finally done, hours later. “Are all of those capable of being poisoned?”

“No. But most of them. I can add that to the list.”

“Do that.”

So Stark does. Everyone immune to poison gets a little X in a new line, and in some cases Stark writes down which poison would work when others don’t, or what substance the people in question are particularly allergic to. But a lot of names go marked with question marks because Stark simply doesn’t know. For those, Serkwich makes a mental note not to use poison or gas because the risk is too high.

By and by, they go through the list and several different ways of killing people. It takes them until far into the night but by the end of it, the list is almost complete.

It’s not the first list like this they have created. There has been one since before Serkwich took over; super heroes and other freaks have always been a source of concern, so everyone ever in charge of HOANU kept tabs on them as far as possible and collected all the information they could get. The law that forced superpowered humans and mutants to register their real identities seemed like a blessing. Much to their disappointment, they had never gotten hold of that database. Until now.

Their lists have never been this complete. Serkwich will have someone go through it, compare it to their old files, make corrections where necessary and add what was missing. Hell, he might as well make Stark do it. Even like this, the guy is a fantastic assistant.

Too bad they are going to have to fuck up his mind anyway, and soon. As soon as they complete the machine and set up the mass killing of superhumans.

For the mutants they only need something that attacks the X-gene, though history has already shown that some are always going to be immune to whatever they come up with, so they need back-up plans that are triggered the moment someone is not dead. Blowing up the Xavier Mansion in Massachusetts might be the easiest way to get rid of the biggest problems, though. Except Wolverine. In his case…

Maybe there is a good way to lure him into a tank of acid, or an active volcano, or shoot him into space. Along with the Hulk. And make sure they don’t come back this time.

They don’t have an awful lot of time to figure this out, because Serkwich doesn’t want to wait forever, and neither do any of the others. The superhuman problem needs to be taken care of before they put their plan into action, of course. That has always been how they were going to do it, and Serkwich actually finds himself grateful that they discovered they’d been tricked before they could attack the heroes, villains and freaks of this world—or at least those of the United States—with methods based on the corrupted database. That would have given them away even worse than the failed attempt to break into Resilient did.

And when they start the attack, there can be nothing, absolutely nothing leading to them. Because some will survive—either by dumb luck, or by misinformation, or simply because no one ever knew about them in the first place. They will come looking for whoever killed their friends and HOANU would do well not to be in the path of their anger until they have more important things to worry about.

The Avengers have to go first. HOANU already is in the path of their anger. Whether they can find this base or not, they are looking for them specifically and the sooner they are gone, the better. They are making a lot of people nervous as it is.

HOANU has the means to do it. Just because they never used them doesn’t mean they aren’t sitting on an arsenal of chemical, biological and explosive weapons. The upside of groups like the Avengers is that they tend to gather in one place and can be taken out all at once. And in this case, patience isn’t going to work. They need to do it as soon as possible and make it look like it was someone else.

Serkwich addresses the issue with his More Trusted Associates to get their opinion, and they generally agree. The consensus is that they need a trap to get as many of them in one place as possible. And what would be better for a trap than the one thing they are all concerned with right now?

“Hey,” he asks Stark the next time he sees him. “Do you think if you sent out a distress call to your Avenger friends, they would come?”

Stark blinks at him. He looks tired; having worked here through the night, that’s no surprise. When he speaks, his voice is even a little hoarse, and that is just perfect. “They will,” he confirms. “Where do you want them to go?”

The call reaches them at a quarter past five in the morning almost two weeks after Tony took off with the enemy to places unknown. It’s Carol who picks it up first, and when she answers she hopes she doesn’t sound as exhausted as she feels.

The last several weeks have not been kind to anyone, but the last two were the worst. Ultimo returned. Reed Richards accidentally opened a gateway to another dimension, the way he just did sometimes, that released a bunch of tentacle monsters into theirs. Some punk kids managed to take control of a Sentinel and tried to level Manhattan, apparently just for the heck of it. All of that are things the Avengers can’t ignore just because they have Tony to worry about.

So when Tony’s voice rings through the connection, sounding a little shaky and just as exhausted as hers, Carol’s heart jumps a little and she immediately presses the alarm that will alert all the others.

“Carol, that you?” Tony sounds a little disoriented on top of everything. Rhodey said he was being mind controlled or something, and Carol wonders how he managed to shake that off and escape.

“Yes, it’s me. Where are you, Tony? Are you hurt?”

There is a second of silence as if he has to think about it. “Yes, I’m hurt,” he finally says and immediately, Carol’s inner alarm bells start ringing as well. “I can barely stand. Need help getting away from here.”

“What about the armor? Do you still have it?”

“The armor is fine, but the repulsor in one boot is giving me trouble. Makes it hard to fly.”

“Well, at least there’s that. Tell me where you are and we’ll come get you.”

“No, that won’t be enough,” Tony says quickly. “I’ve just escaped their base. It’s huge, and full of weapons. They are planning on attacking the capitals of all states in the world with some sort of zombie virus. We need to stop them. Bring… bring everyone. The preparations have already started and we need to take them out all at once if we want to stop everything. There are several independent control rooms, one for every continent or sub-continent,” he adds by way of explanation.

“Okay, got it,” Carol assures him. She looks around, sees Jim Rhodes, Steve and Natasha Romanov standing around the room, listening intently and quietly. “I tracked your position from the call. We’ll be there in an hour. But Tony, how—”

Tony cuts the call without letting her finish her question and Carol spares a moment to stare darkly at the wall.

“So,” Rhodey says, his voice just as dark. “That’s a trap.” Though still recovering from his injury, he has been with them ever since Tony disappeared, helping them fight their various threats while cursing them and himself for not finding his friend more quickly. He’s grey with exhaustion and stress, much like Steve. The two of them don’t talk to each other; this is the first time they have even been in the same room outside a battle meeting.

“Yeah,” Carol agrees. “And a pretty obvious one, as well.”

Natasha nods grimly. “I have seen Tony fly across the world and fight super villains with malfunctioning armor while bleeding out from internal injuries. No way he would admit to needing help as long as the armor still keeps him upright.”

“The question is, do we fall for that trap?” Carol asks, already knowing the answer.

“We know where Tony is now,” Steve confirms her prediction. “Gather the others and meet me at the Quinjet.”

Just like Danvers said, it’s merely an hour after they made the call before the Avengers’ jet shows up on the radar they had Stark adjust specifically so it would pick up the aircraft that is usually shielded from detection. Serkwich, Arona and the others are standing around the controls, with Stark standing in the back of the room with his guards. The man has been amazingly compliant so far and he’s done really good work even without being able to fall back on his more complicated skills, but Serkwich won’t risk having him initiate the destruction of his friends himself. The chance of him breaking their control over it is very slim, but it’s there, and it would be stupid to test it when there is no reason to.

This whole thing is test enough, and really just a bonus to what they originally got Stark for.

“Are all the Avengers inside that jet?” Serkwich asks.

His aide shakes his head. “The Hulk didn’t board, and neither did Hank Pym. Seems those two weren’t at their headquarters when they got the call.”

That’s two they will have to take care of later. Serkwich didn’t really expect they’d get them all at once; what they got is actually a pretty good rate. “This wouldn’t kill the Hulk anyway,” he says.

“It won’t kill Wolverine either,” Stark mentions from the back. Serkwich half-turns to look at him and is met with the blank stare Stark portrays every time he isn’t specifically focused on something.

“We’ll take care of that. Wolverine won’t be a problem.” They might not be able to kill him, but they can incapacitate the mutant for a while. Decades, if things go well. Wolverine might be indestructible but he can’t fly. The explosion of the Quinjet will make him fall into the ocean below and probably be knocked out as well. Not for long, but long enough for the drones they have in the water to bind him so he can’t use his claws to get free and to take him down to the depths of the ocean. Maybe he can’t drown. Maybe be can. If he’s deep enough underwater, it won’t matter much.

Well, except to him, obviously.

“They will reach position X in thirty seconds,” the one at the controls, Irdid, informs them. Serkwich gets ready to give the command, finds himself smiling when he mutters, “This will be a day long remembered.”

Arona gives him a look. “Quoting Star Wars, Sir?”

“Star Wars is always relevant.”

“If you say so.” But her lips twitch. He knows she owns those movies in three different editions.

“Ten seconds,” Irdid says. “Nine. Eight.”

“Fire at the count of one,” Serkwich orders, and Irdid does.

The explosion rocks the entire station. It occurs far above them but even down here, the walls shake.

Something groans, like shifting metal and the pressure of a lot of water.

The dot that marks the Quinjet on the radar keeps moving towards them.

“What was that?” Serkwich snaps. “Did the missiles go off inside the base?” He doesn’t wait for anyone to reply to him but turns to Stark, who stands as unmoving as before. And he had nothing to do with the missiles being prepared and programmed, and the computer would have alerted them had he used any program other than Excel while no one was looking, but this is Tony Stark, and if something went wrong with their programs, he’s their primary suspect.

Stark meets his accusing glare without any sort of expression on his face. “I find your lack of faith disturbing,” he comments unblinkingly. “That was not the missiles. It was the first of your generators going off.” Another explosion shakes them, this time closer by. “And that was the second one,” Stark adds.

This is the point where everyone realizes that they are going to die if they stay here, and they begin to get nervous. Movements are made toward the exit and Serkwich doesn’t try to stop them. Threats of execution in case of desertion tend to lose their effectiveness once the people have to choose between certain death and certain death. Instead, he turns to the control platform Irdid just abandoned and puts in a code he never thought he’d actually get to use.

The lights flicker, for a few seconds, then are stable again. One second later they shut off only to be replaced by the emergency lighting.

Stark still hasn’t moved but everyone else has, and now Serkwich pulls out his gun.

Stark meets his eyes evenly with the gaze of a man who knows he’s won and that he won’t live to brag about it. “You have about ten minutes to get out of here before the whole place is destroyed."

“Don’t worry, I’ll make it.” Serkwich pulls the trigger and Stark jerks, once, as the bang rings about the metal walls. It’s unsatisfying to Serkwich’s cold, boiling anger, even when a few heartbeats later Stark’s legs give out and he falls to the floor. “Who knows? If you crawl real quickly, you might make it as well.” Hopefully, Stark will try. It would hurt and he would fight and he might think he can make it and be able to feel, just for a moment, the devastation when after all he doesn’t. Serkwich would very much like that.

He runs out, aiming for the stairs. Using an elevator would be idiotic at this point; they do tend to turn into death traps so unpleasantly quickly in situations like this.

When he reaches the exit, he throws one last look at Stark, but the man is still sitting there, with one hand pressed loosely to the wound in his stomach, like he doesn’t even care.

“Hey.” A voice sounds over the comm. System is cracked up, the connection already failing. “You copy?”

“Tony!” That’s Rhodes, speaking before Steve can. He also shoots Steve a warning glance, urging him to keep him mouth shut. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

A hoarse chuckle. “Blew up their underwater base. Good times. They will emerge about a mile from where you’re hovering, from the mouth of a cave. Get some backup and pick up as many as you can, will you? I’m sending you pictures of their leaders, so you know who to watch out for.” Sure enough, a data transfer is being initiated and seconds later, black-and-white security footage shows on one of the screens. “The dark haired one with the beard is the guy who runs the show.”

“I thought that was you,” Rhodes comments. “Seriously, Tony, couldn’t you have called us a little earlier? We were freaking out here.”

“Sorry, buddy.” There’s a gust of static, then the end of a sentence. “—thing I got to do.”

“What? Tony, repeat! You’re breaking up.”

“I’ve got—" Static and cackling noises. “—you guys lat—”

“What? No. We come and get you. Tony, where are you?”

There is no reply, only white noise. After a few seconds, even that stops.

“He’s still inside that base,” Carol says. “Right below us, about three hundred yards below the surface.”

“In the exploding base?” Steve snaps. “The underwater exploding base?”

“The same.” Carol sounds grim.

“He said the others are going to exit in a cave nearby,” Natasha points out. “So that would be a way inside.”

“Into the exploding underwater base,” Carol adds. “Okay, so who’s coming with me?”

“I’ll go,” Steve decides. “Everyone else stays here.”

“You’re crazy. You can’t do that alone,” Jessica tells him.

“And we want Tony to be safe, too, you know,” Carol reminds him.

“I know that. That’s not the point. But I won’t risk your lives if there is no need for it. All the bad guys are leaving that place, the only problem will be water and explosions. More people aren’t going to help. Besides, we need everyone there is to take care of what might be quite a lot of villains running from the fire.”

“At least let me come with you,” Carol insists. “I’m almost impossible to kill and stronger than you. I can blast through any obstacle on the way. You have a much better chance of saving Tony if I’m with you.”

She has a point and Steve is tempted to give in. He’s stronger and more enduring than an ordinary human, but chances are that he’s going to die when the facility is flooded or when something explodes in his face, and then Tony will be lost. But this isn’t just about Tony, and now they have reached their destination at the mouth of a cave, Steve has to accept that he can’t spare her here.

“You’re the best pilot we have in Tony’s absence,” Steve tells her. “Navigating the Quinjet that close to the cliff, getting people out of the water, is going to require all of your skills. I’m going alone.”

And so he does.

Rhodes goes with him. The discussion is short because they don’t have time for it and because War Machine is right when he says that he’s not an Avenger and Captain America can’t order him around. He’s also a very good pilot and could be of much help here but Carol can handle that on her own if she has to, and Steve knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that Rhodes won’t stay behind as long as there is the slightest chance to save his friend.

“He might flip when he sees you,” the man says darkly. “Got all his memories in order but we never got around to discussing why you are not, in fact, dead.” And that seals it then. Besides, War Machine is heavy artillery and Steve might need that going in there.

He can also fly. For the moment they put their differences aside and leave the Quinjet with War Machine carrying Steve with his arms beneath Steve’s shoulders, the way Iron Man has done so often. The fly into the large cave that opens just above the current water level, keeping low to avoid the ceiling with its hanging rocks.

Beneath them, dozens of people, men and women of various ethnicities, are running in the opposite direction. Most of them are dressed in normal street clothes, Steve notices. It’s good that they are in the middle of nowhere with a team of super heroes waiting for them in the only direction they can go; if they got the chance to mingle with the population of any town, they’d become invisible in a second.

Some of them take notice of the two masked, respectively armored men above them but no one cares enough to slow down. They are all very focused on getting away.

Eventually, the ceiling gets so low it forces them to land. Immediately, Steve starts running, and War Machine follows, much slower where the tunnel they now find themselves in doesn’t allow him to fly.

There are hardly any more people trying to get out. Steve and Rhodes encounter two. One is so focused on getting out that he runs past them without giving much of an indication that he even realizes they are there, despite the fact that he has to squeeze past War Machine in the narrow tunnel. The other one sees them, turns around, and disappears in a side tunnel. As they run past it, Steve sees that it’s no deeper than five feet but he ignores the guy crouching inside in favor of the elevator shaft he sees at the end of the tunnel.

The ground shakes in irregular intervals with the force of explosions deep below. Steve thinks of Tony down there, maybe already dead, and it gets harder with every second not to throw all caution to the wind and just run blindly.

There are stairs beside the shaft. Steve throws down a look, sees them intact. Good. They might need them to get Tony back up here.

Three hundred yards down, he thinks. That’s not much. And then a good bit to the west. They are basically almost with Tony. Just a little further.

The elevator cabin is somewhere below them. They don’t even attempt to call it, but jump into the shaft, with Steve grabbing the line and using it as an anchor to let himself down quickly and Rhodes firing up his repulsors and flying down the shaft much faster than Steve can follow.

So when there is an explosion right beside him and the wall caves in and throws tons of rubble into the shaft, Rhodes is the only one hit. Steve, hanging on the cable two dozen feet above, feels the heat of the shockwave on his face and clings for dear life. When he can see again, he still sees nothing. The shaft is full of dust.

He thinks he hears the sound of water running.

“Rhodes!” he calls when there is no large gray battle suit breaking through the rubble he knows has to be below him. “Can you hear me?”

There is no reply. Steve tries the comm.. “War Machine, do you copy?”

For the longest time, there is no reply. Finally, Rhodes’ strained voice sounds in Steve’s ear. “Yeah, I hear you.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m a little stuck. You need to go on without me, I’ll catch up.”

“The shaft is blocked.”

“I noticed that. I’m one of the things blocking it. Take the stairs.”

Steve looks around. There’s an exit from the shaft a few yards above him, so he climbs up and throws his shield at the flimsy doors as well as he can while hanging from the cable. The doors do him the favor of breaking on the first attempt and he swings himself into the corridor behind them, hoping desperately that it’s not a dead end.

He’s lucky. The access to the stairs is free and while some of the steel steps are missing or bent out of shape, there is enough left of them to run all the way down.

Long corridors await him in the dim light of emergency lamps, with rooms left and right and more corridors branching off. There is no map. Steve could easily get lost here. “Captain Marvel, directions,” he snaps into his comm., but it’s Clint who answers.

“Tony is about fifty yards from your current position, southwest. No, the other southwest,” he adds when Steve starts moving again.

“I have no means of orientation down here. Just tell me when I’m moving the right way.”

He gets the direction right soon enough, runs with water splashing left and right, has to take several detours when he runs into dead ends or the corridors are blocked by rubble. At some point he takes a short cut through some kind of laboratory and has to smash a window to pass to the next room. He jumps through the frame and lands in knee-high, icy-cold water.

There is water running down the walls. There was before, but never as bad as here. He imagines Tony unconscious on the ground, drowning in two feet of water, and starts smashing a metal door with his shield when it won’t yield.

At least the explosions seem to have stopped.

“Captain Marvel here,” Carol’s voice suddenly sounds in his ear. “I got War Machine out. He’s fine but the suit is trashed. He can’t help you.”

“You can help me by telling me if I’m still going the right way.” The door finally gives in and the water flows out of the room and into the corridor beyond, nearly pulling Steve off his feet and flushing him out. He finds his balance and starts running as soon as he can, the now much shallower water allowing him to move faster.

“You are. Thirty yards straight ahead.”

It was fifty yards what feels like an hour ago. This maze of corridors and rooms is taking far too much time to navigate through.

“Did you hear anything from Tony?” Steve knows the question is stupid; if Tony had called, they would have told him.

“No, Cap. But keep in mind that we don’t know if he moved since we had contact. He might well be on his way out.”

“I know.” Steve hopes he is, hopes he’s not floating dead in a puddle somewhere. A door opens to him willingly, another is blocked by something on the other side and he has to find another way once again. Fine smoke fills the air and the whole base groans under the weight of the water surrounding it.

Eventually he makes it to a room that looks like a control center. It’s not the first Steve has seen on his way through this base, but it’s the biggest one. The ground is slightly tilted; he can tell from the way the water is pooling on one side of the room, slowly rising. It’s trickling down the walls. The whole room feels chilly and wet. Chairs are thrown over, computers spit sparks into the air. This is where Tony called them from and when he can’t find him, Steve hopes against hope that he made it out and did not go somewhere else in this base where Steve might never find him. He sounded like there was something he wanted to do.

Steve should have brought Wolverine but it seemed like the mutant was more needed on the surface dealing with all the bad guys, and now it’s too late to call him down.

Steve is about to call Carol and ask if Tony made it out yet when he sees the blood on the floor.

It’s watered down and mostly washed away. In the light of the flickering emergency lamps, only Steve’s super human eyesight allows him to make it out at all. Just a dissolving red shot left in all the water, beside a block of steel that has crashed through the ceiling, tearing the hole most of the water streams in through. Next Steve makes out a leg, unmoving and almost invisible in black pants and sneakers.

For one terrible moment, Steve is convinced the block landed on Tony and crushed him.

But it didn’t. Tony is lying behind the block, a good bit behind it even. He is wet all over and with the black coverall they dressed him in, it’s impossible to tell what is water and what is blood. But the water running from beneath his back towards the ever-growing puddle that is lapping at Tony’s outstretched hand is dark. One hand is lying on his stomach; not applying any pressure, just resting there. Tony’s eyes are closed, long black lashes resting on white cheeks, and his mouth is slack and he doesn’t move when Steve removes the hand and presses his own to Tony’s stomach to have it come back red.

Steve hasn’t seen Tony in weeks. Tony doesn’t even know he’s alive.

The next thing he does is press his fingers to Tony’s neck to find a pulse that is fluttering weakly against his touch. Someone left a sweater hanging over the back of a chair and Steve tears it to strips and wraps them tightly around Tony’s body, hoping this is the only wound and that there’s still time. As Steve moves him, Tony sighs softly against his neck but doesn’t wake up.

He never even attempted to make it out. He called them and knew he was dying and didn’t say goodbye.

Something comes loose above them and the water begins to rush faster through the hole in the ceiling. Steve doesn’t have time to be as careful as he should be, but Tony doesn’t complain when he’s roughly hoisted into Steve’s arms. He hangs limply, deathly pale and cold and almost weightless to Steve’s strength.

Steve is silent for about a minute after finding Tony. “We’re coming out now,” he tells Carol when he calls again, his voice emotionless. “Have the medical unit ready.”

“Roger that.” Carol bites her lips, anxious to go out there and help Steve get Tony to safety. Get them both to safety before the base can collapse on top of them. Considering it hasn’t yet, Carol is pretty convinced that Tony rigged the explosions so that they wouldn’t destroy everything, possibly in case not everyone could make it out in time. He probably didn’t want to kill anyone if it could be avoided.

He still did a lot of damage and the place might yet be completely flooded. With Steve now knowing the way, Carol estimates about ten minutes for him to get out, even if he has to carry someone.

According to his brief report, Tony has at least a stomach wound where he was stabbed or shot and is unconscious. Carol glances over to Jim Rhodes, who is sitting on a bench with blood seeping through the bandage around his leg, staring down at the cave and the people who are being contained by Wolverine, Spider-Woman and Thor just at the water’s edge waiting to be picked up by SHIELD. His fingers are digging into the upholstery and it’s not because he’s in pain. Stomach wounds kill.

Time stretches endlessly. Carol checks the clock, sees that merely two minutes have passed. Absolutely no reason to worry yet. According to the sensors, the base is holding up, but she has no idea how it looks inside. There was the explosion that almost killed Rhodey, and Steve said some of the corridors are flooded. And Tony might be dying. Steve needs to hurry the fuck up.

Thor has grabbed a man by the neck who Carol thinks might be the leader of this bunch. She would like to do nothing more than go down and tell him that his base is intact and more or less safe; that he ran out and into the Avenger’s arms for no reason at all. Just to see his face. And then she would like to bash his teeth in.

Six minutes. “Cap, where are you?” she asks because she needs to make sure they’ll make it.

“Almost at the stairs.” Steve is still speaking in this toneless voice that says he’s completely focused on getting them out. The stairwell is long, broken; getting up it will take a while and is dangerous. Carol shouldn’t distract him, but she can’t help it. When she calls again three minutes later, she only gets a breathless “Roger” in acknowledgement. It’s enough for her.

Nearly another five minutes pass before they finally come into view, emerging from the shadows of the cave and making their way towards where the Quinjet is awaiting them, hovering so closely over the water every other wave gets vaporized by the engines. Steve isn’t running like she thought he would. He’s limping slightly and bleeding from a cut in his shoulder. Tony is a long, thin, dark shape in his arms.

Rhodes tries to get to them the moment they come aboard, but his wound causes him to fall. Carol sees it out the corner of her eye while she brings the jet to a comfortable height and away from the cliff. As soon as she can she lets her co-pilot, Natasha, take over the controls and runs back to where Steve is leaning against the wall, Tony still in his arms. Not entrusted to the medical unit. Not moving at all.

Jan is standing before him, holding Tony’s limp hand in hers. “Oh God, Steve,” she says quietly. “Steve, he’s—”

“I know,” Steve interrupts her, as if he can’t bear to have it said. “I know.” He makes a sound like a sob. “I couldn’t leave him there.”

It’s Rhodey who breaks the long silence that follows with a sound that Carol never wants to hear again.

chapter 7