Marvel, page 22
“He’s taken Quinn and the hammer,” said Loki. “Even you could not catch them now.”
“Not now,” she replied, steely. “But we will not be idle and lick our wounds for long.”
Even though Rūna lived and there was joy in it, the hollow feeling remained.
“Oh,” he heard her say. “Loki, I’m sorry.”
He frowned. “This was my failure, too.”
“Not that,” she said. “Not the child. We will rescue her, I vow it, but I do not think your friend can be saved.” Slowly, with obvious aches and pains, Rūna leaned forward, gently scraping Brian’s body off the pavement. He could remember the way she rolled her eyes at every kindness Loki performed for Brian—at the mere presence of the gecko in Loki’s life. But the creature had been his only friend besides Donna. His to care for, his and his alone.
Rūna did not mock him now. She lifted Brian in both palms, her jaw set against an emotion that swept over her. It was the defeat in general, not Brian, that moved her, but Loki appreciated it anyway. He had once considered what it would be like if he quit his trailer in Buffalo, leaving Brian behind. Such a small creature could not feel grief or betrayal, but the image of Brian alone in his cage, waiting for a man who wouldn’t return, had haunted him. If he had to go out for something, he told Brian when he would return. Silly, but he didn’t want the lizard to fear abandonment. Loki himself had known abandonment, by others, by himself, and he couldn’t visit such coldness upon an innocent. He had decided that if ever he did leave, Brian would join him. Now the little guy would never reach the golden spires of Asgard or feel the soft grass of the palace gardens beneath his tiny toes. Brian had left first, and though it was the more likely end, it was no less unfair.
Fleeting joy. Brief color. He had made the loneliness of exile somewhat easier to bear.
“We will give him a warrior’s burial,” she said. “My Death Sense…his passing was foretold.”
Loki went to take the fallen creature from her. He was so little that he weighed almost nothing at all. He squeezed his eyes shut against a flood of emotion. “If Heimdall tells Odin what transpired here today…”
“He will invade the realm,” Rūna whispered. “Remain here with Donna. I will go to our king. More than that, I will bring the only other woman I know who might withstand his fury.”
23
AND THIS WAS WHY he would never have kids.
“I could take down this whole helicopter with lightning!” The little girl hadn’t taken a single breath since they left Buffalo airspace. “Zing! Bam! And we’re going down!”
“But you won’t,” Tony muttered, irritated. First-aid gel only went so far. He yanked off his shoe, blood spilling out of it like he was pouring from a carafe. His eyes stung. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept more than two or three hours. Letting Foster go to Buffalo ahead of him was a mistake. (Kevin didn’t count. What a pathetic sad sack that guy turned out to be.) Was it edifying? Sure. And illuminating. But this was messy. He had taken a kid.
The ends justify the means. It was a cliché, and Tony never wanted to be a cliché. He would just make sure nothing bad happened to her. If she didn’t get hurt, this was trauma, but it was livable. Hell, he had suffered as a child, and it had made him stronger.
“But I could!” Quinn Foster slammed herself back into the plush leather seat. She kept the hammer in her lap, cradling it like a kitten. As of final testing, his vacuum gauntlet was rated for twelve thousand pounds. That much suction power hadn’t moved the thing an inch, then this rambunctious little squirt lifted it like it was made of balloons.
“But you won’t.” J.A.R.V.I.S. would navigate them back to New York City. Tony ripped open the first-aid locker on the side of the helicopter. They were screaming at each other over the commotion of the blades. “Look, kid, calm down, all right? Sheesh. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Hissing through the pain, Tony hopped into the cockpit, grabbed two headsets, and tossed one on the bench next to Quinn.
She glowered at him. “Bad guys always say that, and they are always lying.”
“Well, I’m not a bad guy so it doesn’t count.” He sat down again across from her and nodded to the headset. “Put that on and buckle your seatbelt, you’re making me nervous.”
“You kidnapped me!”
“Under duress, under…there’s a lot here that you don’t understand and you’re, like, six, so I’m not going to bother explaining it to you.” Tony slid his headset on, hoping the muffling earphones would do something for the brutal headache he was brewing.
“I’m nine,” she fumed and hugged the hammer to her chest. “So why don’t you try explaining. I might surprise you.”
“Yeah, true. You already have. I guess it’s a long flight to New York, so settle in.” He pointed to the headset again. “And put that on. Buckle your seatbelt. See? Not a bad guy.”
“Pfft.” She rolled her eyes and did as he asked. God, he couldn’t wait to toss this brat to Pepper and never think about her again. He didn’t need her for much longer; there were dark-energy generators at the tower that were all ready to siphon power from the hammer. It was just one of several methods he wanted to try. Once he had a reliable way of storming the enemy’s gates, Quinn Foster could scurry back to her mother to get buried under a mountain of lawsuits. Dr. Foster had clearly violated her NDA, so they would start there.
Tony’s sleeve was torn and bloodied, but he rolled up what was left of it and tapped on his smart watch. Frank Sinatra crooned through the headset. The kid even rolled her eyes at that. At Sinatra! The gall.
“A little cliché, don’t you think?” she said with a sigh.
“No,” said Tony. “I don’t think. You were shutting up and listening, remember?”
Her pale eyebrows shot up. Still holding the hammer tightly with both arms, she slowly looked skyward. She couldn’t really send a bolt of lightning sizzling through the helicopter, could she? Subtly, she started to tremble. Tony leaned forward.
“Boo.” She shot forward, just enough to make him freeze in his seat.
“That’s messed up,” he said. “You’re a messed-up kid.”
“And you’re a dirty kidnapper, Phony Stark.”
For some reason the words I’ll tell your mother you said that sprang to mind. Probably because that was what the nannies always shouted when Tony misbehaved in his youth. Smiling, he mopped off his sliced heel with a towel, dropped it on the floor, then slathered the wound with sealing medigel, proprietary military stuff. It would glue his foot back together until he could get real medical attention. “We’re listening to Sinatra because it was Happy’s favorite.”
“Who’s that?” she asked.
“My friend,” he said. “My best friend. He died when a bunch of aliens fell out of the sky and started murdering civilians in downtown New York City.”
“And you killed my friend,” Quinn shot back. “Rūna.”
“I’m sure she’s fine. She’s another one of your gods, isn’t she? Probably just walked it off. My best friend was just a boring mortal, can’t come back from a plasma laser to the head.”
That shut her up. He could see the gears turning in her head. Tony had seen enough of the government’s cleaned-up footage to know that her father, somehow a bona fide god of lightning (Tony was still wrapping his head around, well, gods), had been wielding the hammer, trying his hardest to shut down the machine they had brought. When he felt his fury slipping, he took out his phone and laid it on top of his thigh, letting the footage from Happy’s memorial play, sound muted. William. William had been willing to die to get answers, to understand the warped funhouse mirror reality had become. Tony wasn’t just doing this for himself, and it wasn’t just for Happy; there were bigger questions that needed definitive answers.
He had never said anything to Pepper, but he understood William. He recognized the desperation and fear in the man’s eyes; he saw that same haunted look reflected back whenever he glanced in a mirror.
“I’m angry,” said Tony softly. He paused the footage and put his phone away. One glimpse of William had a galvanizing effect. “Aren’t you? The Destroyer killed my friend, and it killed your dad, too. I saw it happen. I saw it all happen.”
“Sure, I’m angry, but I’m not kidnapping anyone over it.”
Tony snorted, wagging a finger at her. “There’s nothing more dangerous than technology that can’t be controlled. The only thing worse? Tech that’s out of control, dangerous, and nobody takes accountability for it. But that ends soon. It ends with me.” They weren’t anywhere close to the city, but he gestured at the window and what lay beyond. “You’re a smart kid. I’m sure you’ve seen the news, seen the protests. The government is lying. The government is covering it all up because their hands are tied, because they don’t know how to fight back against an enemy from outer space. Americans cry out for justice, they cry out for answers, and I’m going to give them both.”
“Couldn’t you just ask nicely?”
Tony snorted. “Ask who what?”
“Ask to speak to the Asgardians. King Odin and Queen Frigga. They might listen, you know. They might say sorry.”
“Oh, kid, we’re beyond ‘sorry.’ ”
She crossed her surprisingly strong little arms over her chest. “That’s how bullies talk.”
“Maybe so.” Tony closed his eyes, exasperated. He was learning all kinds of things about himself on this ride. “Maybe so.”
The mechanisms were churning in her head again, her blue eyes spitting fire, but Quinn Foster stayed quiet. She looked out the window he had indicated but didn’t seem to be taking anything in. That was fine. That was just fine. It did feel weirdly bad to be so hated and judged by a child, but he could hardly blame her. There would be time to make amends later. Whatever she wanted—ponies, videogames, robots—he would make it happen. Or, Plan A, sue her and her lying mother into the center of the Earth.
It was worth it. It didn’t matter. His foot throbbed with the pounding of his heartbeat, the rhythm catching in his nascent headache and echoing there. The music flooding the headphones made it worse, but he refused to turn it off. Happy needed to be front and center. This was for him, for the city he loved, for the city they loved. New York. It was stench and heat and fog and hustle and buzz. It was every nose to the grindstone. It was art, art everywhere, so many people desperate to make art, they packed the subways, the sidewalks, the parks, the theaters. It was catching a summer breeze on the West Side Piers, coffee in Washington Square Park on a Saturday, letting an afternoon slip away at the Met Cloisters, the religious peace of the NYPL reading room. The murmur of idling trucks. Seagulls wailing over trash barges. A lonely midnight saxophone crying to an unkind city. A flashmob singing showtunes to a passing mob.
It was nineteen million people hurting and afraid, waiting for someone to punch back after taking a hard hit to the gut.
Resilient. The city was resilient. And he would be their icon of endurance.
An hour and a half later, the chopper touched down on the landing pad crowning Stark Tower. Pepper, thank God, was waiting for him. Her face was pinched, her usually unflappable demeanor somewhat flapped. Maybe it was the text he had sent in the helicopter warning her that things hadn’t gone smoothly, that there was a kid involved now. Tony’s personal physician, Rahul Banerjee, stood alongside Pepper. He was athletic and handsome, with soothing confidence about him and thick, expressive eyebrows.
“You weren’t joking,” Pepper whispered, eyes wide with horror as she beheld Quinn Foster huddling on the seat. She had kicked off her shoes, stripy socks visible while she sat crisscross applesauce. Mute, she shook her head from side to side.
“What?” he barked. Then put his forefinger in the air and swirled it. “Get her out of the helicopter. Doc, you can stitch me up in the work cave. We’re walking, we’re walking, we’re walking, people.”
“What do you mean, ‘What’?” Pepper asked, wiping her face with exasperation. The wind screamed at skyscraper height, tearing at them. Purple ribbons enfolded the city, night coming on. “I’m just trying to imagine what our legal department will say when this comes to light. What’s the preferred corporate neologism for child endangerment?”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” he said, touching her lightly on the shoulder.
“Tony, wait, I’ve stood by you for some crazy stuff, but—”
“I sincerely appreciate that, Pepper, and I think your salary adequately reflects that fact. Now get that kid and her alien tech out of my helicopter and into the office. We can load the maintenance elevator with the siphoning tech and bring it up here. I don’t relish the thought of a wormhole burrowing straight through my life’s ambition.”
“Yes,” said Pepper through her teeth. “We wouldn’t want that.”
“And get security up here,” Tony called to her on his way to the elevators, the doctor trailing behind. “Plenty of it. She’s feisty.”
Even with a completely busted foot, Tony hoofed it to the elevators. Dr. Banerjee was filling the empty air with extremely reasonable suggestions for treating his injury. That was all very good. Tony was two hundred and forty thousand miles away, or however far away this mysterious alien land of Asgard was. Far. So far. But it was closer now. Close enough that he couldn’t stop sweating with the wild, unmitigated possibility of it all. Neil Armstrong, who? Tony Stark would blast his way into the home of space Vikings and teach them a valuable lesson about interstellar politics.
“There seems to be a not-insignificant quantity of blood in the elevator, Mr. Stark,” the doctor was saying as they howled down the length of Stark Tower and into its underbelly. The doors chimed and opened. Tony rushed forward, exhilarated by the intoxicating churn and screech of the fabricators resizing the pieces of the Destroyer, and the melted-plastic smell of the hot filament oozing out of the 3-D printers. It was the perfume of industry. The symphony of progress.
Tony limp-hopped toward his desk, dropped into his chair, and propped up his injured foot on one of the open, discarded shipping crates. With a few furtive glances at the work going on around him, Dr. Banerjee knelt to tend to his patient.
“J.A.R.V.I.S., have the generators brought up to the office,” Tony said, twisting uncomfortably to keep his leg straight and access the workflow manager on his desktop. He had a knack for being always ten steps ahead—of the competition, of his employees, of everyone—but Tony had outdone himself with the Destroyer project. It wasn’t a seamless process, of course, but the efficiency was staggering. He surprised even himself. Any other manufacturer would have taken six months to a year just to cook up a prototype, and here he was, less than two months out from conception with a promising working suit. It helped that the Asgardian machine was already elegant in its design and form, beautifully simple, a fat ripe fruit begging to be plucked by a more ambitious inventor.
His inbox was filling up with replies from colleagues. He had sent out a few inquiries about his plans, about different power sources for the Destroyer, and about the cooling system it would require if a man were to integrate its most crucial parts into a usable suit. Tony hadn’t been shy about including full technical plans, since even the brightest stars in his field didn’t have the resources or grit to actually manufacture the thing.
Most of his peers communicated something along the lines of: This is probable but surely not advisable. There were a few naysayers, but there always were. He couldn’t remember making plans with Warren to kiss and make up, but then Tony had been pretty scattered lately. Days blurred like colors running together. Every minute was scheduled out, but somehow there was always something left undone—an email forgotten, a meeting skipped, sushi takeout left on his desk untouched. An undefined but real undercurrent of frantic energy made it feel like there was never enough time, promising that he could move faster if he wanted to.
Tony found a half-eaten protein bar amid the detritus on his desk and devoured it, ravenous. A shower of crumbs fell on the doctor, who shot him a glare. Tony grinned, mouth full, and cupped the sides of his head playfully. “Earmuffs, Doctor. You haven’t heard a thing.”
Banerjee grumbled something and went back to work.
Giggling, Tony leaned toward his monitor. “This is it, this is giving me tingles, J.A.R.V.I.S. Are the models accurate?”
“They are, sir. The initial assembly will be completed by oh four hundred hours.”
Tony scratched thoughtfully at his goatee. “I don’t love the exposed fueling system on these boots, J.A.R.V.I.S.”
“A regrettable by-product of integrating your design and the machine’s. Needs must, sir, if we are to meet your rigorous timetable for the Iron Destroyer.”
The Iron Destroyer.
The Iron Destroyer.
Thanks to the medigel, Tony couldn’t feel a thing as Dr. Banerjee sewed up his foot. Adrenaline would carry him through when the pain meds wore off. “Then tomorrow morning I’ll be in Asgard,” Tony murmured, amazed. “I’ll be indestructible. I’ll be revenge.”
Even J.A.R.V.I.S., an AI, sounded grimly satisfied. “It appears so, sir. It appears so.”
24
ACROSS THE RAINBOW BRIDGE, the silver and gold vanguards of Asgard prepared for war. Beyond the gates, along the walls, spear tips feathered the ramparts, drums pounded, summoning soldiers to their ranks. Under different circumstances, it might have filled Rūna with awe, but as things stood, it sent an electric ripple of fear down her back.
“That was thrilling,” Dr. Foster said, half dazed as she took her first steps under the dome protecting the Bifrost aperture. She had clung tightly to Rūna as they traveled the Bifrost to Asgard. “Thor always promised to take me. It’s way better than he described.”
