Tony hand was still tied, crouched behind a parked truck, watching an armed man crouch behind the car across the narrow street from him. The man made eye contact and gave a slow, bewildered nod.
"People around here are crazy," Tony said.
The man nodded again. He seemed to agree.
Tony glanced back toward the bar. Through the blown-out front window he could see Ellen Brandt moving through the wreckage methodically, which was worse than if she'd been panicking. He was out of cover, out of armor, and working with hands zip-tied behind his back.
He stood up and ran directly at the bar window.
The glass frame caught him across the forearm, and he hit the floor and slid on the grit and broken glass until he came to a stop near the bar counter. He was already scrambling up when a local man with a double-barrel came through the back, leveling both barrels at Brandt with the kind of no-nonsense composure that came from living somewhere that still settled things the old way.
The sound of him thumbing the hammers back was the wrong move. Brandt turned, crossed the distance before the man could finish the motion, stripped the weapon, and put him down. Tony didn't watch the rest. He was moving for the counter when she swung the barrel at him.
He dove. The shot chewed into the wood above his head, and he landed behind the bar on his back, looking up at the liquor shelf.
A beat of silence.
He heard her set the rifle down.
That was worse.
He eased his head up just far enough to see her shrug off her jacket and start walking toward him with the unhurried confidence of someone who'd already decided how this ended. Tony ducked back down and pressed himself against the bar.
She came around the end of the counter and found him. What followed was fast, professional, and one-sided in a way Tony found genuinely humiliating—a short sequence of controlled impacts that walked him backward into the wall and left him pinned there, her hands moving to either side of his head.
The ambient temperature around her palms spiked. The air smelled like heated metal.
Tony got his cuffed hands up and looped them around her throat from the front, pulling the chain tight. Normal human—done. He watched the red light bloom under her skin at the contact point, and the chain links began to glow orange, then white, and then they separated. Tony fell backward, shaking his wrists free of the molten remnants. The metal hit the floor and continued burning.
He grabbed the spilled oil drum beside him, kicked it onto its side, and sent it rolling. Then he snapped the chain fragment—still hot—into the spreading oil. It caught immediately, a wall of low fire across the floor between them.
Brandt looked at the flames and walked into them.
Tony was already at the microwave. He unhooked the dog tag chain from his neck, dropped the metal nameplate inside, set the timer, and turned to face her as she came through the fire looking scorched but functional.
"Finally someone worthy of my time," she said. "All jokes and improvisation. Is that all you've got?"
Tony quietly reached behind him and found the gas line. He disconnected the fitting without looking at it.
"That's a generous title for my autobiography," he said.
He slipped through the back door and pulled it closed behind him.
The microwave dinged.
The concussive force picked Tony up and deposited him against the far wall of the alley, and he used the trash can lid he'd grabbed off the nearest bin to absorb what he could of the pressure wave. The lid crumpled and spun away. The bar's back wall came apart in sections.
When the debris settled, Tony straightened up and looked back. Ellen Brandt hung from the power line across the alley—suspended, scorched, motionless. He watched her for a moment.
Movement to his left.
The base of the water tower on the adjacent lot was glowing red—the structural steel columns going soft where Eric Seven pressed his palms against them. The metal groaned, then cracked, and the entire tank began to lean.
Tony ran.
He made it maybe twenty feet before the barbed wire fence stopped him. He turned—no time to redirect. The water tower came down across the adjacent building and the collected tons of water hit the street like a physical wall, carrying broken lumber and corrugated steel with it.
Tony crossed his arms over his face and took the impact.
The water swept him thirty feet before the pressure dissipated enough to stop him. He came to rest half-buried under debris, his legs pinned by a collapsed section of prefab roofing. He was bleeding from three different places, at least two ribs were protesting with real commitment, and the cold was now a factor.
He heard Eric Seven's boots on the wet pavement.
Then he heard Harley's voice: "Put me down!"
Seven walked to a spot not far from Tony and set Harley on his feet, keeping a grip on the boy's collar. He looked at Tony pinned in the debris and said, "Christmas wishes, kid. What do you want?"
Harley looked straight at Tony and ignored the question. "Mr. Stark. I'm sorry."
"Not your fault," Tony said. He caught Harley's eye and gave a small deliberate look toward his jacket pocket.
Harley reached in, produced the deterrent canister Tony had given him, and pressed the trigger directly into Eric Seven's face from six inches away.
Seven went down hard.
Tony allowed himself a moment. "Smart people always find a way. That's the lesson."
Harley broke Seven's grip and ran. Seven was already pushing himself up from the wet pavement when Tony raised his right hand.
The improvised palm cannon—built from the components Harley had sourced, barely enough charge for one discharge—fired. The shot hit Eric Seven center-mass in the head and put him back down with finality.
Tony let the device drop. It was already burning out, the capacitor exhausted. He tossed it aside and used a section of fallen timber as a lever to shift the roofing panel off his legs.
He was getting to his feet when he heard something hit the pavement near him.
The Dragon Ball had come loose from his inner pocket during the flood. It sat in a puddle of water, glowing its patient amber-gold.
Tony picked it up, dried it on his shirt, and put it back.
He checked Eric. No pulse. He fished the car keys from the man's jacket pocket, located the only running vehicle on the street, and went back inside the ruined bar to pull Ms. Davis's folder from where she'd dropped it under the counter.
Harley appeared at the car door just as Tony was pulling away from the curb. He'd changed his shirt—Tony chose not to ask where he'd gotten it—and stood with his arms crossed in a posture calculated to suggest he was fine with however this ended.
"You're welcome," Harley said.
Tony rolled down the window. "First, I got to you before he did. Second—yes, thank you." He pointed at him. "Third: if you help someone, don't announce it. It kills the effect."
"But I did help."
"You helped. Now go home to your mother." Tony put the car in gear. "Keep an eye on the armor. Keep the phone line clear. When I call, you answer. Understood?"
Harley's expression shifted into something more vulnerable. "Are you going to leave me like my dad did?"
Tony looked at him.
"Yeah," he said. "Exactly like that."
"I'm freezing."
"I know."
"Don't you care?"
"I know why you're cold."
"Why?"
"Because we're in Tennessee, and you're wearing a hoodie from 2005. Get a blanket"
Tony closed the window and pulled away.
In the rearview mirror, Harley stood in the street watching him go. After a moment, the boy uncrossed his arms, shook his head, and walked back toward the warehouse.
Behind them, in the debris field where the water tower had come down, the pool around Eric Seven's body shifted. A red light pulsed along the wound channel at his temple—once, twice, the edges of the damage knitting back together at the cellular level as Extremis reasserted control over the biology it had rewritten. The process took three minutes.
Seven sat up. Touched his head. Found it intact.
He looked at the pavement where the Dragon Ball had briefly rested. He looked at the direction Tony's car had gone.
Tony Stark was alive, unarmored, operating in the field alone, and carrying a Dragon Ball that Seven had seen with his own eyes.
He stood up, oriented himself, and started walking toward the road. Killian needed to hear this tonight.
Across the Eastern Seaboard
The Mandarin's broadcast cut through network programming simultaneously across sixteen states. Every major news network lost their signal for four minutes and forty seconds. When viewers got their screens back, the Ten Rings logo had already been there for thirty seconds, and the man sitting in the high-backed chair was already mid-sentence.
"Mr. President, I have two lessons for you—and I intend to deliver both before the Christmas holiday is over."
The man on the floor beside him—an accountant for Roxxon Oil, identified by name, explained as a decent man with a good job—had thirty seconds to live. The Mandarin gave the President a phone number. The President found it already in his contacts.
In the Oval Office, a senior aide said firmly that they could not negotiate with terrorists.
The President put on his glasses, looked at the number, took them off again, and said: "This is the right thing to do." He dialed.
The phone on camera rang. The Mandarin let it ring twice, then shot the man on the floor while the connection was still open.
The broadcast continued for another ninety seconds. When it ended, the President sat in silence for a moment, then stood up.
"Get me Ross. Tell him the Paragons' application is approved." He straightened his tie. "Have them find this man. Now."
Tony drove east with the heater on full and the folder open on the passenger seat, reading by the dashboard light when the road allowed it. The AIM letterhead appeared on two separate documents in the folder. A list of service members marked Missing in Action with notations alongside their names—participation codes, date ranges, outcome classifications that didn't match any standard military record-keeping format.
He'd seen one Extremis subject fight through fire and emerge functional. He'd seen another take a direct strike to the skull, go down, and—he was fairly confident—eventually get back up. The offensive capability was real but narrower than it appeared: high thermal output, structural heating, the ability to cause burns and melt certain materials. Physical strength wasn't dramatically enhanced. Durability was better than baseline but not in the class of something like the super-soldier formula.
What he hadn't yet accounted for was the regeneration ceiling. He'd assumed the head shot was terminal.