Chapter 48: Lawrence Makes a Quiet Acquisition
The top of the Stark Industries building. Wind and the shriek of metal against metal.
"Nice try, Tony!"
"But you miscalculated." The Iron Monger grabbed Tony with both hands and applied force.
Metal screamed from every direction at once as the suit compressed around him. Tony understood immediately that if he didn't get free very soon, the only ending available to him was being crushed to death inside the armor he had built himself.
"Of all the times not to have called Matthew."
He was not someone who handled being rescued gracefully. Being pulled out of the fire once was tolerable. Twice was already pushing it. Three times and he was going to have opinions about what that said about him.
But right now, lying in the grip of a suit that was actively trying to end his structural integrity, he found that his feelings about pride had simplified considerably.
What did face matter if Obadiah Stane folded him into a small cube.
"Mr. Stark, incoming call. Mr. Lawrence."
"Accept it."
The connection opened. Matthew's voice arrived, mildly delighted.
"Mr. Stark. Do you happen to need some assistance right now?"
Matthew was standing on a nearby rooftop, binoculars raised, watching everything from a comfortable distance.
"I do." Tony got the words out in pieces.
"Wonderful. Business and friendship being separate things, there will of course be a fee. The company has expenses." A pause. "One hundred million. Flat rate."
"Fine."
"Excellent. Now tilt your head."
Tilt his head.
Tony didn't understand the instruction, but he was not in a position to argue with instructions from the only person currently offering to help him. He tilted his head.
The moment he did, Stane registered the movement and felt a brief flicker of something that might have been concern under different circumstances. He looked at Tony's helmet canting sideways under what appeared to be full effort.
The flicker passed. He laughed.
"Ha! Tony! Has the pain actually made you spasm? Look at you, your head's practically on your shoulder."
"Watching you like this is genuinely ple—"
The shot arrived.
It came from a distance and a direction that made it irrelevant whether Stane heard it or not. The round from Eleanor's modified rifle intersected with the Iron Monger's reinforced metal helmet and continued through it without particular difficulty. What it encountered inside the helmet, it dealt with in the same manner. The round exited through the rear.
Red and white leaked from the fist-sized hole.
Tony, who had a direct line of sight to this, found the view somewhat more clinical than he had been prepared for.
The Iron Monger's grip went slack. The suit stood motionless.
[System: Resolution of the Iron Monger crisis. +1,000 points.]
Matthew raised an eyebrow.
An unexpected bonus.
"Satisfied, Tony?"
Tony pulled himself free of the paralyzed suit.
"Extremely." He looked at the hole in the Iron Monger's helmet and then looked away. "A hundred-million-dollar bullet. That might be the most expensive thing I've ever been saved by."
"Did I solve the problem or not."
"I assumed you were sending Nemesis. That's why I offered a hundred million."
"Nemesis for that Iron Turtle?" Matthew laughed. "That would be flattering him. Remember to pay up." A beat. "Otherwise I'll have the PR department put together something nice about how the great Tony Stark doesn't settle his accounts."
"I always pay what I owe." Tony's tone had the particular quality of a man who was very tired but still had standards.
Down on the street, the NYPD was arriving.
As usual, it had timed its arrival for after everything was over.
Tony had been watching this phenomenon with increasing suspicion. Either the department had made a policy decision that he wasn't aware of, or the underlying logic of this city ran on code that a competent developer would be embarrassed to have written. The dispatch algorithm read something like: assess whether the event is ongoing; if event has concluded, proceed to scene.
Tony activated his backup power reserve and flew clear before the police reached the cordon.
From the rooftop, Matthew watched Tony disappear into the dark and ended the call.
He lowered his binoculars and looked at Eleanor, who was beginning to break down the rifle.
"Good timing on those police, by the way. They showed up fairly quickly after we wrapped up."
Eleanor, separating the barrel from the receiver, paused briefly.
"Their response time had nothing to do with departmental efficiency. I called the commissioner directly."
The implication was clear enough.
Calling emergency dispatch and expecting fast response was like choosing the slowest route and complaining about the traffic. Eleanor had bypassed the queue entirely.
She continued breaking down the M82A1 into its components, packing each piece into the case with practiced efficiency, and glanced toward Matthew, who had started moving toward the building's stairwell.
"Sir. Where are you going?"
"To pick something up." He waved a hand at her without turning around. "There's a car downstairs. Head back on your own. Don't wait for me."
He walked into the shadow of the rooftop access structure.
Then his silhouette blurred.
A red mist rose from where he had been standing, moving upward with speed that had no business belonging to something made of vapor, and disappeared into the cloud layer in the direction of the Iron Monger's remains.
He had stayed out of the fight deliberately, for two reasons.
The Iron Monger had not been a problem that required his direct involvement. And staying out had given him a clean alibi.
In Matthew's own assessment of the situation: the arc reactor in that suit was excellent technology, and it was therefore going to belong to him now.
As for Tony's opinion on this matter, he had no plans to let Tony form one. The reactor would be gone before the thought occurred to him, and Matthew was not going to walk up to the man afterward and mention it.
About an hour later, Tony arrived at the scene.
He took in the police cordon, caught Pepper's eye, and tilted his head slightly.
Pepper moved to intercept the lead officer.
At roughly the same moment, Coulson arrived in a separate vehicle, badge out.
The department he represented had recently completed an internal vote on its name. The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division had, after some consideration, formally adopted the name it would carry into history. Coulson was by some margin the most relieved person involved in this change. The previous name had required him to deliver a small performance every time he introduced himself. He would not miss it.
Between Coulson's credentials and Pepper's explanations, the police agreed to treat the incident as a research accident and lifted the cordon.
Tony went straight to the roof.
He found the Iron Monger where it had landed. He found the chest cavity exactly as Eleanor had described it through the scope.
Empty.
"It's gone?"
He turned to the nearest officer. "When you arrived at this location, was there anything in this compartment?"
He pointed at the Iron Monger's chest.
The officer frowned, consulted quietly with two colleagues, and came back with an answer.
When they had arrived, the compartment had already been empty. There had been nothing there.
Tony stood with this information for a moment.
"That's a problem."
Someone had pulled the reactor out of that suit before the police got there. Someone who knew what it was, knew where to find it, and had been in position to take it in that window.
He turned to Pepper.
"Find out who took it. All of it. I need to know who."
***
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