The heavy iron doors slammed shut, the echo ringing through the damp cave. Tony sat on the makeshift chair, coughing, his entire body trembling.
The man was beside him in an instant, wrapping a coarse blanket around his shoulders. "Are you alright?"
Tony didn't answer immediately. He stared at his feet, the phantom sensation of the wet canvas still suffocating him. He had drawn a line in the sand, and they had drowned him for it. Worse, they had dragged him outside to see the reality of his life's work: a valley overflowing with Stark Industries weapons in the hands of murderers. Their leader had offered him freedom in exchange for the Jericho missile. But Tony knew the truth. The promise of freedom was a lie; he was their golden goose, and terrorists didn't let golden geese fly away.
Tony sat there in front of the fire while the man retreated to the workbench. "I'm sure they're looking for you, Stark. But they will never find you in these mountains."
"Look." The man sat down in front of Tony and spoke in a low voice. "What you just saw, that is your legacy, Stark. Your life's work in the hands of those murderers. Is that how you want to go out? Is this the last act of defiance of the great Tony Stark? Or are you going to do something about it?"
"Why should I do anything?" Tony rasped, his voice barely audible over the crackle of the fire. "They're gonna kill me, you, either way. And if they don't, I'll probably be dead in a week."
"Well, then. This is a very important week for you, isn't it?" Tony didn't blink. He stared into the orange heart of the fire, the gears finally beginning to turn behind his eyes. The defeat was still there, but it was being slowly crowded out by a cold, mechanical necessity.
"What do I call you?" Tony asked while looking at the man.
With a chuckle, the man replied. "My name is Yinsen."
"Yinsen. Nice to meet you," Tony said.
"Nice to meet you, too," Yinsen replied.
The next day, the damp cave was a flurry of industrial chaos. Terrorists hauled in heavy crates of Stark munitions, the metal screeching against the stone. Amidst the noise, Tony stood with a sharp, commanding focus, barking out requirements for the Jericho while Yinsen translated his demands to the watchful leader.
Tony disarmed a Stark missile while talking to Yinsen. "How many languages do you speak?" he asked.
"A lot. But apparently not enough for this place. They speak Arabic, Urdu, Dari, Pashto, Mongolian, Farsi, and Russian."
"Who are these people?" Tony asked while taking out the circuitry and guidance system of the missile.
Yinsen looked at Tony for a second, then replied. "They are your most loyal customer, sir. They call themselves the Ten Rings."
Out of the corner of his eye, Tony noted the blinking red light of the security camera mounted near the cave ceiling. He casually shifted his shoulders to block its line of sight.
Tony worked on dismantling another missile as Yinsen spoke. "You know, we might be more productive if you include me in the planning process."
"Uh huh." With that, Tony pried off the front of the missile, removed the internal guidance system, and started tinkering with it. He carefully extracted a tiny component with a pair of tweezers while tossing the rest of the guidance system to the back of the workbench.
"What's that?" Yinsen asked.
Tony held the small palladium silver pellet up to the light. "That's palladium. 0.15 grams. We need at least 1.6 grams. So why don't you go back and break down the other eleven?"
Time passed as Tony pressed the clay into a precise circular mold while Yinsen melted the salvaged metal.
With the melting complete, Yinsen carefully carried the crucible of glowing liquid toward the mold.
"Careful. Careful, we only have one shot at this," Tony warned.
"Relax. I have steady hands. Why do you think you're still alive, huh?" Yinsen asked in return.
Yinsen poured the liquid metal into the mold. After the liquid cooled into solid metal, Tony took out a small metal ring from the mold with tweezers, setting it on a metal plate. Tony carefully wound and soldered the copper coils around the ring, transforming it into a dense, bulky toroid.
After some time, glowing blue light shone on Tony's face as he activated the Mini Arc Reactor.
"Wow. That doesn't look like a Jericho missile."
"That's because it's a miniaturized arc reactor. I've got a big one powering my factory at home. It should keep the shrapnel out of my heart."
"But what could it generate?" Yinsen asked in a curious tone.
"If my math is right, and it always is, three gigajoules per second," Tony replied with a small bit of pride.
"That could run your heat for fifty lifetimes," Yinsen replied.
"Yeah. Or something big for fifteen minutes," Tony said, taking some plans on see-through paper and layering the translucent sheets one atop the other against the light. "This is our ticket out of here."
"What is it?"
"Flatten them out and look." Yinsen did just that and saw the complete blueprint for a metal armor.
"Well, well." Yinsen smiled a little. "Impressive."
Tony collapsed onto the makeshift bed, his jaw tight with pain as Yinsen helped him disconnect the heavy electromagnet and slot the new Arc Reactor into his chest.
Tony and Yinsen were playing backgammon with metal nuts from the dismantled missiles as he rolled the dice on the board and moved the nuts from one place to another.
"Oh, good roll, good roll," Yinsen said, impressed.
"You still haven't told me where you're from," Tony said as he poured some water from the kettle.
Yinsen looked up from the game at Tony. "I'm from a small town called Gulmira. It's actually a nice place."
"Got a family?"
"Yes. And I will see them when I leave here. And you, Stark?"
"Nothing."
"No? So you're a man who has everything and nothing."
Suddenly, they heard footsteps approaching and hurriedly swept the game aside and got to work. The guard on the other side of the door peered through the small hatch, found them working, grunted, and slid the hatch shut before stepping away from the door.
***
Author Note: I know some of you may not like it. And I understand that the focus of some previous chapters has been completely changed from Adam to Tony. But know this, that I want to capture what happened to Tony in the cave, how he changed from the Merchant of Death to Iron Man, that is why you guys might find these chapters as fillers. I totally understand your POV, so if you want to stop reading, go ahead; no one is stopping you. Just know that after one chapter, max two, the focus will return to Adam.
Other than that, thank you all who have supported me.