Chapter 33: A Year's Worth of Shock for Tony Stark
The moment Nemesis stepped out, the atmosphere on the battlefield changed in a way that had nothing to do with tactics.
On the dune above, the senior Ten Rings commander processed what he was seeing for approximately one second. Then he turned and ran.
Say what you want about rising through the ranks in a terrorist organization. The survival instincts that got you there were genuine.
His men, responding to the order to open fire that he had shouted over his shoulder as he fled, raised their weapons a beat behind the moment that mattered.
The rotary cannon was already warm.
Nemesis opened fire.
This was not a game. Nemesis did not posture or wait. His instructions were simple: locate Tony Stark, bring him out, kill everything else. He executed them with the mechanical efficiency of something that had been built specifically to do this and had no other relationship with the concept of restraint.
The rounds went through the gathered men and through anything standing behind them. The recoil that would have thrown a human being off their feet barely registered. He fired while moving, stable and precise, a biological weapons system doing what weapons systems do.
The Ten Rings had numbers. Against what was coming out of the containers, numbers were the wrong metric.
Their rifles couldn't penetrate his coat. The composite ballistic material, combined with the binding straps and the physical mass underneath them, made Nemesis effectively bulletproof to anything a foot soldier was carrying. Only sustained heavy weapons fire would have a chance, and Nemesis was not giving anyone time to set up heavy weapons.
Behind him, the other two containers had their own opinions about staying closed.
Three T-103 Tyrants walked out of two containers simultaneously. From the third came five Alpha Hunters and five Beta Hunters.
A Ten Rings member who had lost both legs to the rotary cannon and was still trying to crawl away looked at what was emerging from the containers and stopped moving. He closed his eyes.
"God above. Is this hell?"
Inside the cave, Raza's control room.
The senior commander hit the door with both fists, barely able to breathe.
Raza pulled it open. He had been watching his monitors for Tony and hadn't caught up with what was happening outside.
"What?"
"Out there , outside - !"
"What about it? Is it the government army?"
"It's not the government army, it's - it's -"
"What is it?" Raza hit him across the face.
The slap worked. The man came back from wherever he had been.
"It's not the government army. It's a monster. Something that came from nowhere."
"A monster." Raza's expression said what he thought of this.
"It's real! I swear it!" The man was almost in tears, gesturing at a size too large for the room. "At least three meters tall. Built like a vehicle. Carrying a cannon the size of a doorframe. Our people can't stop it. The front line is already gone. We need to run. Now!"
Raza studied him for a moment.
"...Are you on something today?"
"What?"
The man's hand moved unconsciously toward his pocket. His expression went briefly complicated. "Now that you mention it... I forgot today..."
He reached into his pocket for a cigarette that was not exactly a standard cigarette. A man needed something to take the edge off.
Before he could get it lit, a massive hand came around the corner of the corridor.
"It's over," the man said.
The hand put him against the wall the way someone puts a fly against a wall, and he slid down it and stayed there. The unlit cigarette fell from his hand and was ground into dust under a military boot.
Nemesis filled the corridor. Part of the binding straps across his face had broken during the engagement outside, and what showed beneath them was not improved by visibility. The scars that covered his features had the quality of something that had been put back together several times without much concern for the original arrangement.
His pale grey eyes found Raza in the doorway.
This was when Raza believed what he had just been told.
He couldn't move. The body had made its assessment and had no good options to offer. Nemesis was blocking the only exit.
"God above, I askâ€""
One punch.
Raza's head did not survive it.
Nemesis, who had not been programmed with patience for speeches, stepped over what remained and walked deeper into the cave.
Deeper in. The prisoner area.
Tony and Yinsen had the Mark I fully assembled and on.
The gunfire coming from outside had them both looking at the entrance with the same expression.
"That has to be your rescue." Yinsen looked at Tony, and there was something in his eyes that had been absent for a long time.
From behind the rough iron faceplate, Tony let out a breath that carried most of the past two months with it. "That's exactly what it is. We have a chance."
He had a private thought directed at Matthew Lawrence: I take back everything I said about you waiting until I was dead. Your timing was perfect.
"Yinsen. We're going out. I'm done with this cave."
Yinsen went still for a moment.
In the plan he had built in his head over the months, his own survival had never been part of the calculation. His family was gone. The survival instinct that required something to live for had been running on low power for a long time.
But the rescue sounded real. And close.
"Tony, I shouldâ€""
Tony's iron gauntlet hit his shoulder. "Don't. We agreed we're leaving together. And you saved my life. That means you don't get to have a different ending."
His voice settled into something certain.
"Stay behind me. I'll make the path. We're getting out."
He moved first, the Mark I loud and deliberate on the cave floor.
Yinsen watched his back for a moment. Swallowed whatever he had been about to say. Followed.
They were almost to the heavy outer door when it came off its hinges.
Not from the inside.
The door flew inward, and what filled the space it had occupied was not the outside.
Nemesis stood in the entrance. He occupied it entirely, top to bottom, side to side. The corridor behind him was visible only as a suggestion.
In the Mark I, Tony was not small. Next to Nemesis, he looked like something that could be misplaced.
A reasonable comparison: a normal-sized door standing next to a structure that had never been asked to consider doors relevant.
"WHAT... THE... FUCK?!"
Under the faceplate, Tony's expression had moved past the range of things that had words for them. Shock, disbelief, and the particular horror of looking at something your nervous system hasn't filed correctly, all running at once.
Was this a thing that existed on Earth?
Before he could process any of it enough to do something useful with his arms, Nemesis moved faster. A crimson tendril shot from his palm and wrapped around the Mark I's helmet with the speed and precision of something that knew exactly what it was doing.
It pulled.
The helmet tore free with a clang and hit the cave floor.
Tony Stark's face, bearded, exhausted, and doing nothing to hide how he was feeling, was now fully visible.
Nemesis's pale eyes fixed on him. Something was running behind them that was not cognition in the ordinary sense but was at minimum recognition. Several seconds passed.
Then he slowly lowered the fist he had been loading.
His enormous jaw worked.
What came out of it was English. Heavily segmented, each syllable arriving separately, like something read off a list.
"To... ni... Stark..."
Tony looked at the thing in front of him. He found a smile from somewhere. It was not his best work.
"...You know me?"
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