Ghost in the Wires 2/10 (Tony/Steve--PG-13)
Dinner is a tense affair. Everyone’s mind is on Stane and the potential of him creating a weapon with palladium poisoning. Clint seems to be going over plans in his head, because even though Ms. Potts said no assassinations, Steve is pretty sure he’s still considering it, just in case. Natasha is cold eyes and her hand runs over her belt where all of her weapons are. He wonders if she and Clint are having some sort of silent communication. Between the two of them, Stane would be a ghost in the wind and no one would have a clue what happened. Bruce seems to be going over the possibilities of palladium poisoning, and checking his mental periodic table for what could possibly combat it.
After dinner, they all need to let off steam. Clint seems to shoot arrows viciously at his targets. Thor hurls Mjolnir at a triply reinforced wall. Natasha is sparring with Ms. Potts, teaching her katas before switching to a more vicious fighting style. Ms. Potts takes to it well, sparring in clothes she keeps in Natasha’s room, and going at Natasha without relent. Bruce meditates in the corner before fighting with Clint.
Steve takes to the punching bag, feeling the same anger he’d felt after he first woke up in this strange century and only barely containing his punches.
Everyone retires to bed shortly thereafter, though Steve is sure no one is actually going to sleep. This discovery they’d made today is without doubt preying on everyone’s mind. It sure isn’t letting up on Steve. He can’t even stay in his room for long. He sneaks out into the hall, trying carefully not to make a sound when he sees the lights under the other doors, save for the empty one across from his, snaking out into the dark. He lopes down the stairs, his feet knowing where to take him before even he does.
He’s outside Anthony’s lab, staring at the door in silent contemplation. Anthony’s AI will never be Anthony, but he feels compelled. He steps towards the door, wanting to ask Anthony, well, anything, but it doesn’t open for him.
“JARVIS?” he calls.
“Yes, Captain Rogers?”
“Will you let me in?”he asks, though it sounds to his ears like begging.
He half expects to be told no. He isn’t sure why but JARVIS has been secreting this place away for a while. It seems like he doesn’t want anyone to know about Anthony’s AI, although Steve isn’t sure who opened the door for him last night. That could have been JARVIS. It could have been Anthony.
But surprisingly the door does open and Steve doesn’t stop to look a gift horse in the mouth. He strides in and the lights come on immediately, showing all of Anthony’s half-finished creations. He glances at them listlessly, wondering if any of these were weapons. Shaking his head, he focuses again. “Anthony?” he calls out.
“That name is atrocious, I just want you to know,” Anthony responds immediately. “What can I do ya for, Cap?”
“What do you know about palladium poisoning?”
He can practically hear the snort. “I’m a computer simulation, Captain Rogers. I know everything about palladium poisoning.”
He almost doesn’t register the sad undercurrent in Anthony’s sound waves, but he stops when it does register. He stares at all the blank computers, imagining that the AI would be traveling through them. It gives him something to focus on.
He takes a deep breath. “Stane is developing a weapon using palladium poisoning.”
The silence is deafening. “Well, that’s not good at all, is it?” the simulation says quietly.
“Would you have endorsed it?” Steve asks, because he wants to know. He doesn’t know if the AI would know if his real self would have approved of such warfare, but it’s worth a shot.
This time there is no silence. As soon as the words are completely out of his mouth, Anthony answers, “Absolutely not. I don’t play in germ warfare. Or didn’t. Whatever, this is confusing.”
Steve sags in relief, walking slowly over to a swiveling chair and placing himself in it with a dramatic plume of dust. He doesn’t know what else to say all of a sudden. He had been so afraid that the AI would confirm his fears that Anthony would have been this much of a monster. Truthfully, he isn’t even sure why that made him nervous, but it had.
He takes another deep breath. “Bruce is looking up some ways to help with it. Is there anything you can think of to help?”
“Bruce? Who’s Bruce?”
Steve has to smile. Somehow, it doesn’t surprise him that this program would be quirky and focus on weird things. Steve is beginning to understand that Anthony must have been a little eccentric.
He leans back in his chair. “Bruce Banner. He’s a scientist who lives in the manor with me.” He pauses, thinks about confidentiality but decides, to hell with it. Anthony is just a computer program. Who would he tell? “I’m on a team of superhuman people. We’re called the Avengers. We live here, in your mansion.”
“That’s really fucking cool,” Anthony chimes in immediately. There’s a pause. “So, it’s you, this Bruce guy, Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton, and some character named Thor?”
Steve laughs. “Thor is a Nordic god.”
“Really? There’s a god living in my house? Is it still standing? What’s his power?”
“His power is the ability to eat a restaurant into bankruptcy.”
Anthony generates a laugh, and it’s so close to his videos that something catches in Steve’s chest. Reminds him that this isn’t real, but it could have been. It really could have. “That’s an impressive power. Tell me more about this team of yours.”
And so he does. He tells Anthony about them all, about Bruce’s ability to turn into the Hulk, and Black Widow and Hawkeye’s focus on stealth and honestly terrifying fighting skills. He talks about Thor’s godliness and skill to call a mean thunderstorm out of nowhere. And it’s like talking to a friend on the phone.
He doesn’t know how Anthony did it, but he’s made this computer version of himself, as well as JARVIS, sound like people, behave as people would. It’s comforting, in a way, because if Steve can’t have Anthony, at least he can have this. This ghost in the wires that acts almost precisely how Steve has been imagining he would.
At the end of it, Steve takes a deep breath and says, “Alright. I should probably go to bed, now. It’s pretty late.”
Anthony comes back with an easy, “Good night, Cap.”
Steve smiles. “Night, Anthony.”
The lights dim into darkness as Steve closes the door.
The lab is silent for many moments in the dark. Air oppressive, blackness hanging heavily around inventions long since forgotten.
A computer screen flares to life.
“JARVIS?”
A pause.
“Yes, sir?”
“Delete the conversation between Captain Rogers and this console.”
A longer pause.
“Yes, sir.”
IMCA
Steve wakes at six to take his morning jog, thinking over everything that happened last night all the way up to speaking with Anthony’s AI. He wonders what they’re going to do about Stane, if Natasha and Clint are still in the mansion, how Ms. Potts had felt staying the night in the mansion of her dead friend, whether Anthony would have had the power to fire Stane, if Anthony would have liked having so many people in his house.
He returns to the mansion, and it’s alive already. Natasha is in the kitchen making breakfast with Ms. Potts organizing the menu.
Thor and Clint are playing Wii Bowling, because that is their game. And Bruce is playing his iPod and watching the game from the couch.
Steve smiles and turns to his right only to realize no one is there. No one has been there since he woke up from the ice. He thinks of Anthony, and the empty spaces he leaves around the house and wonders if there are empty spaces around him now. He’s only spoken to Anthony twice but he feels the man, sharp suit and goatee, smiling next to him.
Like the ghost that he is.
Steve joins Bruce on the couch, because, god knows, if he went into the kitchen the militant duo would be all over him and he would be peeling potatoes like his days in the army. It’s sort of weird to be this close to people in the 21st century, because as he’s watching Clint and Thor play games, every so often Bruce will share his head phones and they’ll listen to a song they both love. Ms. Potts will come out and take votes on sausage over bacon, scrambled or singular order, hash browns or fried. Once even Natasha comes out with a spatula still in hand because she had heard Clint say something…well, not P.C.
It’s sort of entertaining to watch Clint scramble to the far side of the room in fear of what she could do to him with a cooking utensil.
Coulson arrives a few minutes before breakfast is ready, due to the fact that Fury’s assistant has not come back yet and he was sent to make sure she was okay. Ms. Potts is actually a large target and has been since before she quit Stark Industries. Ms. Potts seems to have already accounted for him and has his eggs set aside before he’s even to the living room, leaning against the entryway to watch as Clint and Thor play Wii Bowling.
When Natasha is finished with breakfast, there’s a mass of chaos as they all help to take everything to the dining room table, and then there’s a small tiff about who’s sitting where and if they can find another seat before the food goes cold, because this is a huge mansion. Natasha says Pepper can sit on her lap, but Ms. Potts says sharing a plate will never work. Thor says anyone is allowed to his on his lap, since he’s a god and really could care less about who sits their rear end in his lap. Steve just shakes his head and only blushes a little when Clint is walking by Agent Coulson and gets pulled into his lap.
That takes care of the problem. Clint eats from the plate he has in his hand and Coulson eats around him. Natasha pushes some of the onions she had cooked with onto Ms. Potts’ plate and Ms. Potts seems to have procured an extra helping of sausage just for her.
Steve tries not to feel jealous. Tries not to look to his right in search for a man who’s dead, because Thor will be there, and although he’s very fond of Thor, it isn’t who he’s looking for.
He doesn’t think on it. Thor seems to see words in his eyes and tags him in a conversation and hosts a small, unsophisticated battle with his fork. Steve isn’t even sure how it started.
IMCA
The next week is silent. No bad guys, small or large, threaten New York or the world, and if they do, the police take care of it rather swiftly.
Ms. Potts comes by with a sample of the palladium poisoning and Bruce now has notes everywhere from his room, to the kitchen, to the living room. He’s working harder than Steve has ever seen him to try and help the situation before the situation even becomes real.
Agent Coulson keeps them updated on any developments that may be happening in Stark Industries. He flocks around Clint and Bruce mostly. Clint because, well its Clint, and Bruce because he’s the one working on the antivirus.
Steve spends his time between Bruce’s room and Anthony’s lab. There are several hours in between where he assembles the Avengers to work through some exercise routines, but it’s never for more than two hours, which everyone seems to appreciate because what they’re fighting can’t be fought with new battle tactics.
Anthony had coined the term best when he said Stane was working in germ warfare. There aren’t a lot a flips and punches that can battle that. It’s weird to think, but at the moment, the entire team is resting on Bruce’s shoulders. Bruce knows science like this. He has the ability to counteract it and Steve doesn’t think anyone but Betty has been in and out of his room so much as the team has this previous week.
Steve is currently in Bruce’s room, listening to the scientist spout off so much, well, science it almost hurts his ears. He manages to catch, “I got an anonymous email, and it was actually pretty helpful. It didn’t give me a cure, per se, but it did give me a pretty good lead. If I use this element here,” and Steve is glad Bruce doesn’t go into more detail because he really doesn’t know. “It may have the ability to neutralize some of the more harmful effects of the poison.”
Steve leans in close to the computers in the room. “What effects are we talking about here?”
The scientist doesn’t hesitate. “With palladium poisoning, the effects are pretty vast. The toxicity levels alone have the ability to do damage on the body that is pretty far reaching.”
They’re interrupted briefly as Thor comes into the room, and…
Steve blinks.
He’s giving Clint a piggy-back ride.
“What news have you, great keeper of cures?” he booms, carrying Clint closer like he’s nothing more than a ragdoll. He jostles Clint a bit, but the archer has a firm grip around Thor’s shoulders and asks, “Can I shoot it through an arrow?”
Steve shakes his head. Sometimes he can’t believe this is really his life. When he glances at Bruce he can see his mirror image just looking at the two men. He looks quite confused about this sight and not sure which question he should answer. But Bruce is calm and collected and tells Clint he won’t be able to shoot it through an arrow for a while, but!
He relays everything he just told Steve, and Steve is happy to see that it almost goes right over their heads too.
Clint is a little concerned about the anonymous email and to be honest Steve is too, but he doesn’t know much about computers and Bruce was able to work with the information so he can’t find it in him to object loudly. Clint, though, Clint finds it in him to protest very loudly, demanding Thor to bring him closer to the computer and has Bruce bring up the email and gives all these orders. And this is new. Steve has always sort of believed that Clint’s electronic expertise was in game stations and the microwave. It turns out he can actually back track an email.
When nothing turns up, Clint hops off Thor’s back and basically takes over Bruce’s computer. He seems to be going through everything and Steve thinks that SHIELD must have taught him to do this, because he looks pretty dangerous right now and he doesn’t even have his arrows with him. But after an hour, Clint still has nothing on where the email came from. He looks peeved about it, but Bruce pushes him out of his way and says it helped so Clint can get over it.
IMCA
Steve is tired of robots. He’s pretty much tired of all villainy, but it seems robots are the flavor of the month. It seems like every time they’re called out now, it’s for robots that are destroying New York. He’s not complaining, well at least not like Clint is.
Steve is pretty sure that if he whines one more time Natasha is going to ‘accidently’ aim one of her knives his way. Thor and Hulk are having a hell of a time though. They’re both smashing robots with a strange sort of glee. Hulk actually has a smile on his face as he clashes two robots together and proclaims, “24 and 25! Hulk is winning!”
Steve tries not to be shocked that this has turned into a competition between Hulk and Thor, but he sort of is. However, it all becomes clear to him when an arrow smashes through the circuit board of the next one Hulk is after and Clint says through their hazy comm., “Sorry, buddy, that one’s mine. 24 and catching up!”
Clint. It all makes perfect sense now.
Hulk actually rips off the robot’s head and chucks it at the archer and Steve just barely has time to intercept it with his shield. “Hulk! We don’t throw at friends!”
He looks slightly abashed as he rips another robot in half and pouts out, “Hulk sorry.”
Steve shakes his head and runs after his shield which is currently imbedded in a brick wall. As he goes he smashes his fist into two robots and takes out their circuits as well. “Black Widow! Six o’clock,” he calls to her because she’s fighting on ground level with them.
He yanks his shield out of the wall and
“Hey, Cap?”
“Oh my gosh!” Steve nearly has a heart attack and almost flings his shield at an innocent car that is surprisingly still in one piece.
“Language, Captain America,” the voice that most certainly doesn’t belong to anyone on his team says with a hint of amusement.
Steve just barely has enough of himself to dodge an attack a nearby robot comes at him with. When the robot has been disabled he hisses into the comm., ”Anthony?”
He’s completely shocked. He doesn’t know how Anthony was able to patch himself into SHIELD’s comm. system but he has. He wants to ask how, but at the moment it seems a little frivolous.
“We’re seriously gonna have to work on that later, but it can wait. I’ve been going through some news feeds for you, and there are some big problems in Queens. Or one really big problem in Queens.”
“More robots?” Steve asks, and he really is just so tired of robots right now. He’s up to his ears in robots, and from the looks of it more of them seem to be rushing the team. They’re holding their own at the moment, but Hulk is getting really angry at this point and Thor’s hits are bordering on violent even for him. Natasha looks as if she’s itching for the gun she always has strapped to her thigh, but she’s refraining because discharging guns seems to lead to a public frenzy. Clint is even looking a little frustrated and though he has a never ending supply of arrows, he’s down on the ground with his back to Natasha’s and shooting robots that are coming at her from behind.
Steve starts running into the fray, slamming shield and fists into any robot that comes too close to him as Anthony says, “Not precisely. From the size of it, I’d say there’s a man or something in there controlling it, but it is metal and is very much resistant to bullets. A lot of people in black are getting their asses handed to them and it looks like half a block has been set on fire by a flame thrower that’s integrated into the suit.”
“Shit,” Steve grunts as he’s met with a literal wall of robots. He’s about to steamroll through them when they’re pretty much blasted by what looks to be webbing.
“Hey, guys. I’m new, but y’mind if I join in on the fun?” Steve looks over head and sees a red and blue clad man hanging off the side of a building. Literally hanging there with nothing more than his hands and feet.
“Oh that’s cute,” Anthony says in his ear, sounding a little nonplussed and Steve has to say, he shares the sentiment.
But he seems to actually be able to help. He doesn’t wait for Steve’s approval just jumps into the fray webbing and pulling at wires until the robots crumple. Steve returns to his conversation with Anthony, saying, “I got my hands full here, Anthony. This is a pretty big problem I’m looking at and it seems to be growing.”
“Yeah,” the AI replies sounding somewhat distracted. “That’s where I can help. As your resident intelligent computer program I am helpfully searching through data. With the way these robots are set up there has to be a central operating system. No one could program these individually.”
“How do you know that?” he asks as he runs towards three of the bots and flings his shield, perfectly slicing into all three circuit boards and disabling them.
“Watching the way they move on the reports. They’re attacking different parts of your team, but the movements they use are all pretty much the same. One fist moves to punch and they all do the same thing. They were mass programmed and I have a feeling if I can find the mainframe their programs are on, I can shut them down.”
Steve twitches a smile. “AI’s get feelings, too?”
“Don’t get smart with me, Captain Rogers,” Anthony comes back with quickly. “I’m a very intelligent artificial intelligence and with great knowledge comes great feelings.”
Steve laughs and it feels weird to laugh in the middle of a hostile robot melee. It feels weird to laugh in the middle of any fight. But it’s a good weird that only Anthony could orchestrate.
“You’re looking a little crazy there, cap’n,” the new kid says, swinging down from the building by one of his webs and landing next to him in order to blast two robots that Steve hadn’t even seen coming towards him. “Is it something you can share with the class or should we go ahead and add a pretty white jacket to your wardrobe?”
“Hey! How come he gets to crack jokes, but I don’t?” Clint complains as he slams one arrow through five different robots before actually shooting it.
Steve calls back, “I can’t make him run laps!”
“That’s cheap!” Clint says.
The new kid cackles a little and uses both hands to shoot webs at two robots and yanks, smashing them together.
Steve leaves them to their banter, because he has a feeling this is going to be ongoing through the rest of the fight, and moves closer to Hulk who has nearly twenty bots around him. Steve’s sure he could take them all, but he doesn’t see why he should have to take them all.
As he goes, he asks Anthony, “Tell me what’s happening in Queens and give me an estimation on how much time it will take you to disable these things.”
“Give me five minutes and I’ll have the clone wars ended. As for Queens, as soon as these robots are subdued, you better get your red, white, and blue ass in gear. Shit is hitting the fan.”
Of course it is. And of course, Anthony was programmed to cuss like a sailor.
He’s about to respond when every single robot just drops. “That was a quick five minutes.”
Anthony seems amused when he replies, “First time I’ve heard that.”
Steve is glad for the first time that Anthony is just an AI and can’t see him blush. “Switch me back over to the team’s comm. real quick,” he demands as a way to ignore the blush crawling up his ears.
“Sure thing, Cap.”
And then his ears are assaulted with the confusion of the other Avengers.
Clint’s repetitive, “What the hell? No, seriously, what the hell!”
Thor’s, “This is most baffling! I have never had such a formidable enemy surrender in such a manner.”
Natasha, naturally, doesn’t show her confusion, instead says, “I won, by the way. I got 97 robots. I believe you were only in your 70’s.”
He looks around to see their interloper poking at one of the robots with interest, as Clint goes haywire over how many robots he actually killed. Hulk is smashing the robots with his giant green foot, probably to make sure they’re actually disabled. Hulk’s thorough like that.
“Avengers!” he calls in his best commanding voice. “We’re not finished today. We’ve got more trouble. You,” he says turning towards their newcomer.
“Spider-Man,” he supplies helpfully, completely ignoring Clint’s “Spider-Man? That is so cliché.”
“You were very helpful to us. Would you be willing to help us in Queens?”
Clint’s “What web-head gets to go too?!” is ignored and over taken when Spider-Man perks noticeably. “What’s happening in Queens?” There’s an urgency in the man’s voice, and Steve doesn’t have to guess that that is where he hails from.
“Robotics again.”
“I am so tired of robots!” Clint wastes no time in inserting, which leads to Natasha punching him.
Steve has to bite his tongue to keep from agreeing. “Sources say that it could be a man in a metal suit. He’s resistant to bullets and so far I’ve been told there’s a flame thrower integrated into suit.”
“Like a demonic Iron Giant. That’ll ruin that movie for kids,” Clint says.
Natasha, however, shrewdly asks, “Who’s your source and where did you find time to listen to it?”
“Missing the point, scary lady,” Spider-Man says, and Steve is sure he sees Natasha move for one of her weapons. “Giant metal man with torches is just a little more important. Let’s go.”
Agent Coulson pulls up with a SHEILD suburban, only leaning his head out the window to say, “Get in, people. We’ve got problems in Queens.” He doesn’t even bat an eyelash when Spider-Man jumps into the passenger seat and begins giving directions on the fastest way to get there. Most of the team jumps into the back, including Thor, but Steve has to tell Hulk to hop his way over to Queens to see if he can get a handle on things without ripping anything’s head off.
He can just imagine the look of horror on Hulk’s face if he found a human head inside his robot.
And the public probably wouldn't react well to it either; Steve hastily amends in his mind.
Back to Part 1 or on to Part 3