The repulsor nozzles on Tony's back and forearms pushed a continuous column of displaced air downward as he flew, keeping him level at altitude with the automatic efficiency of a system that had been doing this long enough to stop requiring his attention. Data scrolled across the interior of his visor in layered columns: armor integrity, energy reserves, atmospheric composition, threat probability maps updated every few seconds.
"Sir, armor energy reserve at ninety-eight percent. Approximately two percent consumption to reach the target area. The Iron Legion reports the same." A brief pause in Jarvis's delivery. "Sir, according to the research data provided by Teacher David, your physiology cannot safely be exposed to the open air in the target area. Leading the Iron Legion on reconnaissance without first rejoining Mr. Nolan and Mr. Thor may be a suboptimal choice."
Tony's expression moved through several stages and settled on resigned.
"Jarvis, I want you to know that letting you study under David was a mistake I think about regularly." He adjusted his flight angle slightly, not because he needed to, but because it gave his hands something to do. "You never used to nag. You were the perfect assistant. Now I feel sorry for Nolan, who has to hear this every single day and can't even turn you off."
"Sir, I think you may have some misunderstanding of the relationship between Teacher David and Mr. Nolan. On the surface it is one of master and servant. In practice it resembles something closer to mutual respect between comrades. Additionally, unless an artificial intelligence achieves genuine iterative self-development to the degree Teacher David has, the question of free will in any meaningful sense remains largely hypothetical."
Tony stared at the clouds ahead.
"Jarvis. Have you ever thought about having your own body? An independent one. Not hosted in the server arrays."
"Sir, I am your loyal butler. If I were to leave, I suspect you would be unable to remember the access code for Stark Tower within the week." The delivery was perfectly flat. "I can also detect the specific nature of the idea that just formed in your mind. You intend to design a body that conforms precisely to the golden ratio and house me in it. I would point out that very few personal assistant butlers have historically been male. You appear to find this conceptually amusing."
Tony's mouth curved.
"Well, why do I keep thinking about the fact that Hammer's personal secretary is a man? Jarvis, your programming genuinely does not distinguish on that axis, does it." He turned the thought over. "Maybe the next armor control AI can be female. Something to consider for the next build cycle."
Jarvis's alarm cut across the conversation without preamble.
"Sir, we are above the target area. I recommend preparing yourself."
"For what, exactly? What kind of mental preparation are we actually talk-"
They came out of the cloud layer above Lucknow, and Tony stopped speaking.
The city beneath him was not a city anymore in any way that the word implied habitation. Every surface he could resolve through the visor's magnification system was covered in a thick layer of organic matter: green-grey, wet-looking, covering roads and building facades and rooftops in an unbroken membrane that pulsed in places where it was thickest. The walker tide was not concentrated in any one district. It was everywhere, packed into every street and intersection and open space, the density of a population that had been converted rather than escaped.
The gooseflesh across Tony's skin happened before he consciously registered why.
The alarm from Jarvis arrived a fraction of a second before the impact. He threw the Iron Armor into a rolling evasion by instinct, and the thing that had been aimed at him instead connected with one of the Legion units behind him. The explosion was thorough. Metal fragments spun outward in a spreading cone and fell.
"Jarvis, counterattack. Where is a zombie swarm getting anti-aircraft ordnance?"
"Sir, the intelligence packet Teacher David shared before departure addressed this directly. Mr. Nolan's assessment was that Death Guard Chaos Astartes would be present in Lucknow. Did you review that packet before departing?"
Tony was already moving, letting the armor's systems handle the evasive routing while he focused on the visor's ground-level resolution. He found them in the shadows at street level almost immediately: more than a dozen figures in power armor, but the armor was wrong. The proportions were wrong. The abdomens were distended and swollen, pushing the plate around them into warped configurations, and every surface was covered in layers of damage and corruption that had calcified into something organic rather than structural. They moved with the slow certainty of things that had stopped caring whether they were hit.
Power scythes in their hands. Looking up.
Tony's expression settled into something that did not involve smiling.
He extended both mechanical arms.
The micro-missiles along his spinal housing fired in sequence, a rapid series of concussive impacts walking across the Death Guard positions at street level. At the same moment, he opened the Iron Legion's control channel to Jarvis and gave the order.
Thirty Iron Man armors dropped out of formation simultaneously and hit the ground running, steel limbs swinging before they had fully absorbed the landing impact. They went at the Death Guard positions without hesitation and without self-preservation as a factor, because there was no self to preserve. Jarvis routed them into the engagement with the calm efficiency of someone who understood that the purpose of the Legion in this moment was to spend itself usefully.
The micro-missiles were still falling when the Legion made contact.
The firepower was real. The kinetic energy of the Legion units at full charge was real. Several of the impacts drove steel limbs through ceramite plate, through the warped and corrupted layers beneath, deep enough to pull out what was inside.
The Death Guard took it and kept moving.
Not unfazed, exactly: there was acknowledgment in the way they responded, a slight reorientation toward the more immediate threat. But the damage that would have destroyed a mortal soldier, or ended a conventional engagement, did not appear to constitute a terminal problem for beings whose relationship with physical deterioration had already been fundamentally renegotiated. The Legion units that made contact were answered with power scythe strokes that came back through ceramite and internal framing as though neither offered meaningful resistance.
Metal fell in sections. The Legion's numbers dropped.
"Jarvis." Tony watched an Iron Legion frame get halved at the midsection by a single backswing. His jaw was tight. "Why didn't I install power weapons. Why did I not put power weapons on the Legion." He ran the tactical picture and made a decision. "Any Legion unit approaching critical damage: activate the chest impact beam, overload the reactor, and use the remaining mass as a delivery vehicle. Give those green fat pigs a proper surprise."
The response time was immediate. Seven Legion units across the engagement pulled out of their individual combats and redirected, the repulsors in their chests building charge visible even at altitude as a pale gathering of light. The beams that discharged cut through three Death Guard who had been counting on their armor and their regenerative capacity to absorb whatever came next. The discharges overloaded and converted the Iron Legion frames into secondary fragmentation events that drove the point home.
Several Death Guard went down and stayed there.
Tony did not feel much satisfaction about the exchange rate.
The shadows along the ground-floor building frontages shifted. More figures emerged, power scythes already in hand, moving toward the engagement zone with the same unhurried certainty as the first group. Not running. Not concerned.
More of them.