Chapter 159: Three Nukes? Good Thing I Still Have Portals
Hell's Kitchen.
"Tony." Ethan swept an arm across the ruined street, taking in the collapsed storefronts, the cracked pavement, the general impression of a neighborhood that had been used as a sparring partner by something much larger than itself. "This place used to have something going for it. And then the federal government showed up and left it looking like this." He turned to Tony with an expression of practiced sincerity. "Surely Stark Industries — as a responsible corporate citizen — should have some stake in the economic recovery of—"
Tony looked at the hand clamped around his arm and then at the face attached to it.
He's smiling. He's standing in front of a disaster zone delivering a speech about civic responsibility, and he's smiling.
"Ethan," Tony said. "Hell's Kitchen was the city's open-air arms market before you got here. You know that, right? Everyone knows that. You are asking me to mourn the demolition of what was, by any objective measure, a functioning crime scene."
Ethan's expression didn't flicker.
"The structural damage—"
"You have magic. You have been demonstrably doing impossible things with your hands since I met you. Wave at it."
"I don't have that kind of magic."
"Then get that kind of magic."
"I'm working on it. In the meantime—"
Tony pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fine. I'll build something here. A lab, maybe — God knows you've been collecting PhDs like trading cards and none of them have a real workspace. But if you try to get me to pay for the roads I'm leaving."
Ethan opened his mouth.
"I mean it about the roads."
"There's an old saying," Ethan said pleasantly. "If you want prosperity, build the roads first."
"That's not — that's not a counterargument, that's a proverb."
"It's wisdom, Tony."
Tony was formulating a response to this when the holographic displays snapped open in front of him, pulled up by JARVIS without being asked. His hands moved across them in quick, practiced strokes, and his expression changed completely.
Ethan clocked it immediately. "What."
Tony looked up. There was something in his eyes that Ethan didn't see there often.
"The federal government just launched three nuclear warheads at Hell's Kitchen." A beat. "They're going to level the entire city."
Ethan went quiet for a moment.
Of course they did.
This was the second time. The first time, it had caught him without options. This time was different — he'd had time to think, to build, to accumulate exactly the kind of resources that made a situation like this manageable rather than terminal. The Fortress barrier could absorb the blast itself; the radiation aftermath was the real variable, and he had thoughts about that too.
What he was more curious about, honestly, was who had pulled the trigger. Fury wouldn't do this. Whatever else the man was, he wasn't the type to write off tens of millions of civilians to close out one problem. Someone else had made this call.
I'll find out later.
"Three minutes to impact," Tony said, his eyes moving fast across the displays. "I can't redirect them — not enough time. Tech side has nothing." He looked at Ethan, and for just a moment the unguarded version of his face showed. He'd solved the last one. He didn't know if Ethan had a solution for three.
Ethan patted him on the shoulder.
"Relax."
"There are three—"
"I still have portals." Ethan smiled. "You forgot."
Tony stopped. Processed this. Felt the specific relief of a man who has been bracing for the wall and just found a door.
Right. Portals. Open a portal, push the warhead through, close the portal. Where does it go? Doesn't matter. Somewhere that isn't here.
"Okay," Tony said. "Okay, yes. That works."
"Have JARVIS send a message to every phone in the city," Ethan added, already looking skyward. "Tell them not to panic. Tell them it's being handled."
"And if they don't believe it?"
"Some of them won't. That's fine. Do it anyway."
Then he was airborne, rising above the roofline and into the open sky, three separate trajectories already plotted in his head.
The message hit every phone in New York simultaneously.
NUCLEAR THREAT INCOMING. DO NOT PANIC. THE LORD OF HELL'S KITCHEN IS HANDLING IT.
The city did not, as a collective, take this instruction calmly.
The news moved the way fear always moves — faster than information, louder than facts. Within minutes the streets were transformed. Parents pulled children off sidewalks. Shop owners locked their doors and left. At Penn Station, Grand Central, JFK, the crowds thickened into something closer to a tide, people hauling luggage toward any exit that led away from the island.
Some people stopped and looked up, scanning the skyline for the thing they'd been told was coming, as if they could outrun it with their eyes.
Some people decided, in the particular logic of catastrophe, that if the end was coming they might as well take something with them. Storefronts went dark then bright with the orange of looting. Trash cans became barricades. The opportunists and the desperate blurred together into the same urgent, shapeless movement.
What almost none of them had done was read to the end of the message.
The part that said the Lord of Hell's Kitchen is handling it — that part, most of them had skipped.
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