Fic: There is no 'I'... 3/11
Chapter 3
The fail-ninjas walked Tony into the office of a small warehouse and sat him down on a spindly chair that had seen better days.
“Just for giggles, you guys should know that the last people to kidnap me ended up really dead.” Tony thought it best to work on the psychological warfare from the get go. “Explosions, flames, bullets everywhere. You get where I’m coming from? So maybe…”
“Not going to work Tony, my boy, my friend.” Justin Hammer’s unmistakable burr filled the ply-wood box of an office.
Tony blinked and stared. Closed his eyes tight. Looked again. Sandy hair, expensive glasses, bad cologne. Nope, not a hallucination.
“Hammer?” Tony couldn’t smother the utter astonishment in his voice. “You…what? Hired people to kidnap me? Are you out of your low-rent, mundane, never-had-an-original-idea mind?”
His rival sauntered over from the door and crouched directly in front of Tony, resting his elbows on his captive’s scruffy knees. “No Anthony, no I’m not. But…I have discovered something very important about myself. Would you like to know what that is Anthony?”
“Really, really no.” Tony promised.
“Yeah you do. It’s easy to have a personal epiphany while sitting in a federal prison for nine months. So many days waiting for lawyers to argue and bribe me out of there. So many plans to make.” The fact that Hammer was idly tracing the hole in the denim over the seated man’s thigh while he made conversation made Tony’s skin crawl.
“Hopefully your plan is as good as your tech,” Tony forced out the slur to hide a cringe.
“Ha! I knew you’d say something like that, something bitchy and rude about my talent, but that’s fine Tony baby.” A sudden lunge had Justin right up in Tony’s face, noses touching, and nails digging into his knees with a bloodless grip. “Because my plan is happening right here, right now. I’ve got my new friends,” expansive gesture at the lurking guards, “the best money can buy. Plus, I’ve got Tony Stark strapped to a fucking chair with his goddamn metal suit back in its box somewhere. Am I right?”
None of the guards answered. They didn’t need to.
“So my plan, my nine month epiphany is this…” Tony’s breath hissed out as Justin leaned to one side to whisper in his ear. “I’m going to screw you in every possible way known to man, Baby.” His gut clenched in nausea, Tony forced himself not to shrink away. “Firstly were going to play with this.”
Leaning back Justin held in his hand a small device, somewhat larger than a blue-tooth mike with complex wiring and three small silver points along one face.
“You’ll love this Tony. “ All at once the creepy leer was gone and Justin the salesman was back. “As soon as I was released I went through everything that psycho Vanko was working on and you’ll never guess what he managed to hack into.” Tony felt cold dread begin at the base of his spine. The device looked…no fucking way…no way. “Stark Industries firewalls are some of the best in the world, but then again…so was Vanko.” Justin looked lovingly at the small piece of tech. “You designed this Tony so be proud. It’s gonna make us both legends. If you survive of course.”
“Justin…it’s a goddamn theory you fucking lunatic!” Tony snarled, gaze never leaving the black thing in Hammer’s hand.
“Biotech research and Ivan Vanko say otherwise Honeybunch and here’s proof. Completely self-contained, individual biological cybernetics. Converting a man into a machine for the armed services.” Hammer posed with a noble tilt to his chin.
Tony gritted his teeth. “It’s impossible, impractical and a fucking speculation I toyed with to freak out the generals…” A cold hand covered his mouth as Hammer once again leaned over him.
“No…it’s real and it’s here. The only thing missing…’ A lazy finger slipped from Tony’s chin down to the collar of his t-shirt, “…is an independent power supply.”
Deciding that that was way more than enough, Tony kicked up hard into Justin’s groin and twisted the chair onto its side. Scrambling quickly to his feet, he got about a dozen steps before he was tackled by one of the guards. Swearing the man forced Tony onto his back and essentially sat on his legs while another knelt at his head and held it steady.
“I really want to kill you for that Tony my friend,” Hammer gasped as he sank to his knees at his prisoner’s shoulder. “But I won’t. You’ll feel my full appreciation for that kick later on when the surgery is over…I promise.”
Tony really didn’t give a damn about Justin’s creepy threats of molestation because there was a huge fucking needle coming towards his eyes and god, no, no, no…
“Just a little paralytic to relax the optic nerve,” Justin explained as he tossed the needle aside, licking away a drop of blood from Tony’s temple. “…and now, we get to the fun part.”
The last thing Tony saw before his vision went white was Justin Hammer activating the device and small electric buzz reached his reluctant ears.
Then the pain started.
*****
Waking face down and blind in the back of a moving vehicle was low even on Tony’s extensive list of fascinating places to regain consciousness. He reached up to where his left temple felt heavy and numb. The ties on his wrists were gone.
There was something stuck to his face. Tony tried to wedge a fingernail underneath the cool metallic shape.
“He’s awake Boss.” One of the guards, somewhere to his right.
“Don’t let him pull it out!” Hammer’s voice was no longer confident, straining with tension and worry. “Who were the soldiers Tony? They weren’t feds, I know fed’s when I see them thanks to you.”
Dropping his hand, Tony cleared a throat raw from screaming. “To be fair, I didn’t make you hire a wanted terrorist Hammer…”
“Shut the fuck up!” The van lurched wildly to the right, causing Tony to roll into someone’s knees. He pressed his hands down so he wouldn’t break his face and grinned a bloody smile into the hard metal floor.
He smelled ozone.
“You’re not the only one who made new friends.” Because they were here, they’d found him.
The van stopped violently, everyone within hurled towards the cab.
“…lightening…god fuck…lightening right in front of us.” The driver’s yells were punctuated by a repetitive thumping down near Tony’s feet.
“Reverse! Reverse!” From one of the men with a knee in Tony’s back. The yells became a cacophony of panic.
“He’s been chasing us for the last mile on foot!”
“…keep going…” that was Hammer sounding scared at last, Tony was pleased to note.
“...we don’t have any front tires…
“…he’s here. Holy shit, holy shit…”
The scream of metal being wrenched apart filled the van and then gunfire exploded over Tony’s head.
“Now that’s not gonna work,” Tony muttered as the ricochets caused one of the men around him to slump down.
Several seconds of cold silence.
“If he’s dead…” Captain America should not sound as if he were a breath away from cold-blooded murder.
“Not dead,” Tony rasped, pushing at the guard whose hand still held him to the floor. Sitting up he crawled in the vague direction from where Cap’s voice had come. “Just get me out of this goddamn van.”
A sharp intake of breath and then a warm arm around his shoulders, a gloved hand at his hip to lift him out.
“What is that on your face?” Cap asked, voice still not completely under the usual precision control, concern and anger leeching through.
“A really modern hickey,” Tony joked before his knees went out from under him. Steve’s arm slipped to his waist and Tony could feel the shift in the man’s weight as he…
“Pick me up like a princess and I will magnetize your scale-mail, I swear to god I will.” Cap froze for a second before a reluctant chuckle brushed Tony’s ear.
“Tony!” Natasha sounded just as brutally calm as usual when two small, strong hands grabbed his face and turned it from side to side. “Clint’s tracking Hammer, he and Thor will bring him in. Huh. You’ve been blinded?”
Tony reached out with the hand not occupied on Cap’s excellent shoulders and caught a deceptively slender arm.
“It’s temporary, unless Hammer missed the nerve, which wouldn’t surprise me at all.” Tony did not even want to imagine what he looked like, new hardware, blood and all. “Natasha, call Pepper. I need all our research on the ICC tech from the Vancouver meetings last year.”
Natasha’s arm slid from his grasp to be replaced by her hand. “Her jet lands in twenty minutes.”
“What’s ICC?” Cap asked. Tony could hear booted feet crowding around him, muffled orders back at the van. SHIELD was here.
“There’s an ambulance.” Natasha said.
“Fuck that.” Tony replied. As long as Steve didn’t mind Tony hanging on him like a limpet, he’d be fine.
Cap jostled him around so they were face to face. In the back of Tony’s mind, the part that wasn’t dealing with returning sensation in his temple, shock, anger and dislocation, he was mourning the loss of that up close view.
“What. Is. ICC. Tony?” It was an order.
Tony wasn’t a soldier so he said nothing.
Natasha was. “Independent Cybernetic Conversion.”
He could practically see the small furrow of confusion between Steve’s eye brows.
“You won’t get the reference Cap, but essentially Hammer made me a Borg.”