The aircraft banked south over the Atlantic coastline, and the conversation about Extremis samples had a few more minutes left in it.
Selene had been listening since Chen Haoran first raised it in the elevator. She'd used the flight's first ten minutes to read the technical summary herself—temperature curves, regeneration data, the detonation threshold mapped against a range of stress conditions. She understood what Chen Haoran was calculating. She also understood what it meant to put an experimental biological compound into a member of her team without institutional oversight.
She set the file down.
"Two samples each," she said. "Anyone who takes them is personally accountable for what happens to those samples. If another Extremis detonation occurs because of material that left this operation in someone's pocket, I will treat the responsible party the way we treated Killian." She looked around the cabin. "That means the team turns on you. Not as a matter of policy—as a matter of consequence."
A brief silence.
Chen Haoran said: "Understood. I still need them."
His expression was steady in the way it was when he'd already made a decision and was simply informing the room of it rather than asking for permission. Selene looked at him for a moment longer than necessary, then moved on.
T'Challa said: "I'll take two as well. Shuri has been working on cellular reconstruction for field injury treatment. This may give her a direction she hasn't had access to." He paused. "I accept full accountability."
The other Fraternity members—Selene, Michael, Alexei, Wesley—indicated they'd collect samples for organizational research. The Brotherhood's science division was equipped to handle experimental compounds without putting them into anyone's body prematurely. Wesley looked the least interested in the subject and the most interested in the tactical briefing still displayed on the forward screen.
Shang-Chi looked at the sample discussion and, after a moment's thought, accepted his two units as well. He had no particular research agenda and no one to hand them to, but declining entirely felt like drawing a distinction that didn't need to be drawn.
The aircraft descended toward Florida through the early morning light.
Miami — Pre-dawn
Xu Xialing had read the full Killian file by the time her plane crossed into Florida airspace. She set it on the seat beside her, looked at the Death Dealer across the aisle, and said: "He's been running this operation for eighteen months and he thought no one would trace it."
The Death Dealer said nothing. He rarely did on aircraft.
"His Extremis soldiers are the problem," she continued. "Close-quarters against someone who can generate enough heat to melt steel and choose to detonate—ordinary fighters get burned before they get close enough to matter." She looked at the weapons manifest her logistics officer had submitted before departure. "That's why we brought the heavier equipment."
She wasn't going into Rose Manor with hand-to-hand as her primary option. The Ten Rings had access to military-grade ordnance from three different continents, and Xu Xialing had spent six months restructuring the organization's supply chains with the specific intent of making sure its serious capabilities were untraceable to terrorism. Killian's people would find out what that meant when they tried to close the distance.
The plane began its descent.
Ahead of all of them, the Winter Soldier team had been on the ground in Miami for two hours.
Five operatives, all enhanced, all activated for a single objective: retrieve the Dragon Ball in Killian's possession and neutralize any resistance. The mission brief had included the Extremis data—Zola had been thorough—and the team had adjusted its approach accordingly. Distance weapons, controlled demolition where necessary, no prolonged close engagement with thermal subjects.
They were already in position around Rose Manor's perimeter when the sun began showing at the horizon, observing and waiting for the window Pierce had specified.
Killian's Office, Rose Manor
Eric Seven stood at the door while Killian thought through the morning's operational picture.
The actor—the Mandarin, the face of everything—was still useful for exactly as long as the Dragon Ball remained out of reach. Once Killian had all seven and could make his wish, the performance was over. The Extremis side effects eliminated, the formula perfected, and then AIM could operate openly with a product that actually worked. No more test failures. No more coverage operations. No more staged terrorist broadcasts.
The Vice President was a separate complication. Their arrangement had been straightforward when Killian needed policy protection and the VP needed leverage: AIM would remove President Ellis under Mandarin cover, the VP would assume office during the emergency, and the new administration would quietly defund the regulatory oversight keeping AIM from expanding. In exchange, Killian would complete the Extremis formula and treat the VP's daughter.
The Dragon Ball changed the math. If he could wish the side effects away directly, he didn't need presidential protection to continue the research. He didn't need the VP at all—or not urgently. The daughter remained valuable as leverage if the relationship soured, but there was no reason to accelerate the assassination timeline when he had a better path.
He'd keep the actor on standby. He'd keep the VP at arm's length. He'd focus on finding Tony Stark and the Dragon Ball.
"Keep the actor available," he told Seven. "And get eyes on Stark Industries and the Malibu site. If Tony Stark surfaces in New York, I want to know immediately."
Seven nodded and left.
Killian looked at the window. The sun was coming up.
Rose Manor Perimeter
Tony had parked two streets over and approached the estate on foot, moving through the pre-dawn quiet of a Miami residential neighborhood that hadn't woken up yet. The manor was substantial—stone walls, mature trees, security lighting on a rotation cycle he'd timed from outside for eight minutes before moving.
He found a tree with branches that cleared the wall on the east face and went up it with the efficiency of someone who'd been getting into secure facilities since his early twenties, when getting into the Stark Industries server room after hours had required similar techniques.
From the upper branch, he had a clear line of sight across most of the compound. He counted guards: four visible, two at fixed points, two on patrol patterns with overlapping coverage designed to eliminate blind spots. He timed the overlap. There was a window—brief, but real—on the northwest staircase approach.
He dropped down inside the wall, moved through the shadows, and reached the staircase.
The guard had his back to Tony. Tony picked up a loose stone from the garden border and threw it at the base of the stairs, angling for the stone riser—the kind of impact that would knock a person down, break the rhythm, buy three seconds.
The stone hit. The guard went down.
And then the guard got up.
Not stumbling—getting up with the controlled movement of someone whose body had already processed the impact and filed it as irrelevant. The face turned toward Tony, and in the pre-dawn shadow Tony saw the faint red luminescence moving under the skin as the Extremis formula handled the bruising in real time.
"Found him," the guard said, not to Tony. Into a radio. "Tony Stark, Area C. All units converge."
The word all told Tony exactly what he needed to know. The compound had been waiting for him. Killian had pulled his search teams back from Rose Hill and redirected them here. Every Extremis soldier on the property knew his face and had been briefed on his arrival.
He'd driven into the center of it.
Tony brought up the nail launcher and put a shot into the guard's neck before the broadcast finished. The guard caught it on the raised palm—the nail punching through the hand with enough force to pin it briefly, but the hand was already glowing red at the entry wound, the tissue knitting back around the shaft as the guard yanked it free.
A second operative came over the top of the wall from the left—had clearly been positioned there, waiting. Tony backed up the stairs, working the nail launcher in short bursts, buying distance. The problem was that distance didn't help much when the targets were pulling metal out of their palms and the wounds were closing before the nail hit the ground.
He cleared the magazine.
The two operatives pulled the remaining nails from their forearms simultaneously. Red light pulsed along the wounds and then they were gone, the skin smooth and unbroken.
Tony dropped the launcher.