Of Neuromancy and Iron Wills 4 (Patreon)

An old TV set crackled as it showcased the press conference called by the Stark Bitch. The two men in the room watched, the wooden arms creaking under the grip of one while the knuckles of the other were white around a screwdriver in his grip. The first man’s grip loosened minutely as the freezing of Stark Industries weapon contracts was announced.

The second man spoke up as the press conference came to an end, “It seems that we will have to accelerate our plans. You’d think those muslim retards would at least be able to kill a woman. Instead they just held her for two months, and from her behavior they didn’t do shit. Useless fucks.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” the first man disagreed. “True, they didn’t kill her like they were paid to. But the last two months have given us a great deal of freedom to move and prepare. I’ll put out some feelers, find out how the bitch escaped and if there’s anything in it that can be of use.”

The second man turned to glare at his partner, who simply held up his hands, “I hate her and her whole misbegotten line, but I’m not going to pretend that she isn’t a genius. How do you think she got away? She’s never been in a fight in her sheltered life, has no military training, and even if she did, that’s not enough to just ignore from the sort of hardware we’ve been supplying them with in preparation for the hit. There was no word of a raid by American or allied forces, meaning she got out on her own. Which means she must have made something big, something that’s a game changer.”

The second man closed his eyes and took a deep breath, his grip on the screwdriver loosening ever so slightly. He turned to walk away, making it a few steps before he suddenly whirled around, arm extended. There was a deep, wooden ‘THUNK’ as the screwdriver buried itself into a poster of the sole living Stark, directly between her glittering, mischievous eyes.

Hatred burned in the man’s eyes; roiling, raw, unadulterated hate like a barely contained volcano as he growled, “No more proxies: I’m going to kill the bitch myself. Understood?”

“Crystal,” his compatriot agreed. “Do you have a plan?”

“You weren’t wrong about her making something. Do what you have to, just get it here so I can take a look at it and figure out how to improve it.”

The first man watched the second leave, sighing to himself and running a hand through his hair, “That man hates the Stark name far too much. And this is me saying that.”

The popping sounds of an arc welder echoed through the warehouse as the first man left, pulling out a cell phone and making some calls as a car pulled up out front. The door was opened, and he got in, trusting the driver to know where to take him.

[hr][/hr]

“Coulson, talk to me,” Fury said as Agent Coulson approached.

“We’ve confirmed that it is indeed Antoinette Stark, and identified the older man she escaped captivity with as Dr. Ho Yinsen, renowned scientist and surgeon, graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1987, has a daughter currently enrolled at Caltech. Likely the reason she’s still alive, if the forensic investigation of the kidnapping site was accurate,” the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent reported.

“And the other one?” Fury asked as Coulson paused.

“Nothing. We’ve managed to learn that he calls himself Will Gibson, but we’ve found no records of a man matching his description by that name. I’ve had the boys run his image through facial recognition, picked up some prints from the Burger King they went to before Stark’s show with the press, all nothing. It’s like he didn’t exist before he arrived wherever Stark and Yinsen were being held.

“Currently, the Stark Industries legal team is in the process of expediting a legal identity for him, on Ms. Stark’s request and dime. Once the paperwork is done in a week’s time, he will be given a research job at Stark Industries.”

Fury mulled the information over in his head, pushing aside the surprise at how quickly Stark’s lawyers worked. His first instinct was that the man was a plant, but if so, it was the sloppiest one he’d seen. The lack of any sort of records said that whoever he had been was wiped to such a degree required more resources and skill than any organization outside of SHIELD had, yet the lack of anything to replace it suggested a level of short-sightedness that meant any organization that could pull it off wouldn’t… or he wasn’t supposed to have inserted when he did.

“We need more information,” Fury declared at last. “See about arranging a meeting with Stark, as well as Gibson. Dr. Yinsen too; frame it as wanting a report on their time in captivity.”

“Yes, Director Fury.”

Coulson departed, leaving Fury to his thoughts until Maria Hill approached, “Sir?”

Fury glanced at her, a small, almost nostalgic quirk to his lips as he explained, “Been a while since I’ve had a mystery like this that didn’t have immediate, world shaking implications. Makes me think of the old days. When everything seemed… smaller.”

“World’s the same, sir. We just know more of what’s in it,” she pointed out.

Fury looked back out the window, “That’s just it, isn’t it. We know ‘more’, but never enough. How’d Romanov’s first assignment go?”

[hr][/hr]

Obidiah Stane was many things. A businessman, an arms dealer, a weapon manufacturer, a man with a temper that he did his best to keep under lock and key. But at this precise moment, what he was, was confused.

“Dr. Williams,” Stane interrupted the woman who’d spent the last fifteen minutes going on about some technobabble that he couldn’t begin to follow, before turning to the redheaded man who Little Toni had spent a small fortune in helping. “Can you explain why you’re here in my office?”

The man, Gibson, gave an apologetic smile, “I was going to wait until I had a physical product to show you, but I’m pretty sure I’ve developed a solution to rapidly grow carbon nanotubes.”

“How sure is pretty sure?” Stane asked, glad the other man didn’t delve into the technical details.

“I’ve run the math a dozen times, it all checks out. I was asking Dr. Williams to check my work, make sure there wasn’t something I was just assuming, or some variable I wasn’t taking into account, then she dragged me here.”

‘Dragged’ was an accurate choice of word, the dark skinned woman having hauled the taller man into Stane’s office by the sleeve of his lab coat.

“Sir, the chemical formula would allow…” Dr. Williams began, but Stane held up a hand.

“Doctor, save the science, will this sell?” Stane asked, partly out of genuine curiosity, mostly to avoid another rambling speech.

“How many batteries do you have on you?” Gibson asked, making Stane blink at the non sequitur. “Carbon nanotubes will make the tech in every single one of them obsolete. That’s just in one potential field. The reason carbon nanotubes aren’t in use outside of labs is they take both time and extreme temperatures to make. The coolest commonly used method I can think of is still over two hundred degrees Celsius.”

Stane gave a small whistle, “And you think you’ve figured out a practical way to mass produce them?”

Gibson took a breath, “Like I said, I don’t want to make any promises until I get a chance to actually test it, but I’m certain that this solution will allow for the production of meter long nanotubes over an eight hour period.”

“What’s the expense?”

“The thing it needs the most of is a source of powdered carbon. A couple bags of lump charcoal would work just fine, and the rest of the components aren’t particularly expensive, it’s in the mixing that it’s tricky and easy to screw up.”

Stane gave a considering hum. If Gibson’s hunch was correct, it would more than make up for the dip in Stark Industries’ stock drop. Still, probably for the best to get another opinion.

“Send me a copy of your data, I’ll have some people take a look at it,” he said after a few minutes. “If they think it’s worth it, we’ll write up a deal.”

Gibson nodded with a slight shrug, “Being perfectly honest, the money’s mostly so I can afford the materials to make more stuff like the doodles Toni showed you.”

Ah yes, the doodles. Detailing how to cut open a person to replace their organs with prosthetic ones. Little Toni kept going on and on about the schematics, but honestly the drawings of a person with their stomach cut open were just a little more graphic than Stone himself was comfortable with. Maybe it was because of all the drinking he’d been doing the last few months, and his mind equated the liver replacement with it being him that was to be cut open.

[hr][/hr]

I’d told Stane the truth about how I felt about money, but here I was, three days later: signing a deal that would put more zeroes in my bank account than I’d have imagined. The carbon nanotubes, along with the chemical bath I’d made for the metal plates back in Afghanistan, weren’t enough to make me a millionaire off the bat, but it was still five figures I’d be making every month.

I… had no clue what to do with that much money. Before I’d met CFU, I’d been living off less than two grand a month. Now I’d have more money from a single paycheck then I’d have made in ten.

For the moment Toni was letting me crash at her place, so I supposed I should be putting the majority of the money away to get my own place. After that… a pickup truck, sports cars weren’t really my style and I didn’t see the point in spending a fortune for a brand name. Once I had transportation and my own place…

I shook my head, there’d be time for that later. For the moment, it was back to the drawing board: I had work to do. If I was going to make some decent cyberware, I’d need more than just carbon nanotubes, I’d need to make better circuitry to run the hardware. A latex based skin-sheathe in order to keep from freaking everyone out the moment they saw me would also be nice. It was the beginning of May right now, and assuming everything went according to plan, I’d be able to install some military grade cyberware by the beginning of July.

[hr][/hr]

Antoinette “Toni” Stark looked over the files that Uncle Obie had emailed to her, taking a sip of her espresso. A possible easy source of carbon nanotubes? Toni barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She’d seen the sort of proposals the people in Stark Industries had made, if any of them could come up with something like this, they’d have done… it… alrea… Toni straightened up in her chair as she read. The components weren’t expensive or hard to get, but if the reactions shown here were correct…

“JARVIS, open up a new file, I need to work out some math,” Toni said, minimizing the files for the Mark II she’d started before receiving Uncle Obie’s request.

Toni’s eyes glanced between the files and her work, crunching the numbers and mentally running it through her head. When she finished, she sat back in her chair and let out a breath. It looked like it would work as advertised. It was years beyond what anyone else on the market had, or even the people at Stark Industries. The only people she could think of that could do work at this level were her and…

“JARVIS, call Uncle Obie,” Toni said aloud.

“Of course, Ma’am,” the AI agreed, shortly before the call went through.

“Toni, I wasn’t expecting you to call so soon,” her honorary uncle said, his voice slightly tired.

“Sorry if I woke you Uncle Obie, I just finished looking over those files you sent me, the ones about the carbon nanotubes, and the math all checks out. Who came up with the proposal?” Toni asked, deciding to keep the call short.

“That new guy, the one you came back from Afghanistan with, Gibson. You think it’ll work as he says it does?”

“If not, I can't figure out why.”

“I’ll have him get started in the morning then. Get some sleep Toni, I know you need it.”

Toni chuckled, “Same to you, Uncle Obie.”

The call ended, and Toni rubbed her hand across her chin as she thought. She had planned on keeping the armor work to herself, maybe telling Pepper. Will’s story about HYDRA surviving had unnerved her, especially if Project Shockwave really was about trying to make people as smart as she was.

According to Yinsen, Will had been brought into the cave with them almost immediately after he’d finished operating on her. So there wouldn’t have been time for it to have been arranged for him to be a plant…

“Aw fuck it,” Toni muttered to herself. “What’s life without taking a risk every now and then? JARVIS, send Will a message telling him I’d like to meet after work tomorrow.”