Obadiah tore through the second floor like a wrecking ball in human shape.
Glass guardrails shattered. Walls crumbled. The Iron Monger II plowed through Tony's mansion with the casual destructiveness of a man who enjoyed breaking beautiful things.
"Hahaha, Tony!" Obadiah's voice boomed through the helmet speakers, amplified and distorted. "I always hated your interior design. Doing this myself is therapeutic!"
The Iron Monger II was a different beast from its predecessor. Where the first model had been crude, powered by rocket thrusters and built for raw intimidation, the second generation had been rebuilt from the ground up. Six repulsor-style thrusters, two on the feet, two on the legs, two flanking the spine, all firing in concert with a fluidity that shouldn't have been possible for something that weighed seven hundred pounds. Whoever had built this reactor and redesigned the propulsion system knew what they were doing.
Tony knew exactly who that was. He just didn't have time to think about it.
The Mark V was a survival suit, nothing more. Two palm-mounted arc pulse cannons, one chest-mounted cluster beam, minimal plating, and flight capability that could charitably be described as "adequate." It wasn't built to fight the Iron Monger. It was built to keep Tony alive long enough to reach something that could.
Except Obadiah wasn't giving him that chance.
Tony ducked through a doorway, banked left down a service corridor, fired a repulsor blast over his shoulder without looking. The bolt struck something, he heard Obadiah grunt, but the footsteps didn't slow. The mansion's layout was the only advantage he had. Tight hallways, low ceilings, spaces too narrow for the Iron Monger's bulk to move at full speed. Tony knew every inch of this house. Every turn, every shortcut, every structural weakness.
If I can reach the workshop sub-level, the Mark VII is on the assembly rack. Sixty seconds to suit up. I just need sixty seconds.
Obadiah's fist punched through the wall to Tony's left.
Not around the wall. Through it. A massive armored hand erupted from the plaster and concrete, seized a chunk of wall the size of a car door, and swung it like a club. The impact caught Tony across the torso and launched him backward. He hit the far wall spine-first, felt the Mark V's frame buckle, and dropped to the floor in a shower of dust and broken drywall.
Pain. Sharp, immediate, radiating from his ribs. He coughed and tasted copper.
Cracked rib. Maybe two. The Mark V absorbed some of it, but not enough.
Obadiah's footsteps were measured now. Slow. Deliberate. The mechanical whine of servos and the heavy thud of armored boots on hardwood. The sound of a man who knew his prey couldn't run anymore.
"Tony, Tony, my dear Tony." The Iron Monger's silhouette filled the corridor, backlit by the fires spreading through the upper floor. "Nobody's coming to save you. Not this time. I'm going to break every bone in your body, one by one. Then I'll find Pepper. And I'll kill her. Everyone who crossed me, Tony. Every single one. I remember them all."
Tony's back pressed against the cracked wall. His HUD flickered, damage warnings scrolling across the display. Structural integrity at 31%. Right repulsor offline. Flight capability compromised.
He had one card left.
"JARVIS," Tony said, his voice low, controlled, betraying nothing. "Call Abel."
"Yes, sir."
Three rings. The line connected.
"Tony?" Abel's voice came through the helmet's internal speakers, clear and slightly confused. "It's early. What's going on?"
"Abel, listen to me." Tony kept his eyes locked on Obadiah, who was taking his time, savoring the moment. Ten meters and closing. "Pepper is at Stark Industries, the New York office. I need you to go to her. Tell her I sent you. Protect her. Whatever you need from my company, she'll authorize it. She runs everything now."
On the other end of the line, Abel had already heard it. The low rumble of destruction. The mechanical whine of powered armor. The particular quality in Tony's voice that said I might not survive this call.
"Tony, what happened? Where are you?"
"Don't worry about me. I'm in California. Just take care of Pepper."
"Tony—"
The line went dead.
Kamar-Taj
Abel stared at his phone. Tried calling back. Busy signal. Again. Busy.
He's in a fight. Someone attacked his home in Malibu. He called me to protect Pepper, which means he thinks he might lose. Tony Stark thinks he might die in the next few minutes.
Abel was already moving.
He left the laboratory at a run, wand in hand, heading for the practice courtyard. His mind operated on two parallel tracks simultaneously. Track one: emotion. Fear for Tony, the cold spike of adrenaline, the recognition that someone he was starting to care about could be dead before he reached him. Track two: strategy. Pure calculation, ruthless and fast.
I can portal to Pepper. I know where Stark Industries' New York headquarters is. But I don't know where Tony's Malibu house is. I've never been there. I need the address.
Pepper has the address.
He reached the courtyard, pulled his hood up over his head, and raised his wand. "Fumos." Black smoke erupted from the tip, curling around his body like a living thing, obscuring his face, his build, his features. Anyone looking at him would see a hooded figure wreathed in dark mist. Unrecognizable.
He slid the Sling Ring onto his left hand, focused on the mental image of Stark Industries' executive floor in Manhattan, and drew a circle.
The portal opened. Abel stepped through.
Stark Industries, New York
Pepper Potts was reviewing quarterly projections when a circle of fire appeared in the middle of her office.
She screamed.
A hooded figure stepped through the flames, wreathed in black smoke, wand in hand. The portal snapped shut behind him. Pepper scrambled backward, knocking her chair over, reaching for the panic button under her desk.
"Pepper." The voice was young. Direct. Urgent. "Tony sent me. He's in danger. I need the exact address of his Malibu house. Now."
"Who are you? What is—how did you—"
"You have two choices." The hooded figure didn't move closer, didn't raise his voice, but something in his tone cut through her panic like a scalpel. "You believe me, give me the address, and I go save Tony's life. Or you don't believe me, and when Tony dies tonight, you'll know you could have changed it."
Pepper Potts had not become CEO of a Fortune 500 company by being indecisive.
She gave him the address.
Abel committed it to memory. The Sling Ring's portal system didn't require physical familiarity with a destination. It required conceptual knowledge: knowing that a place existed, knowing where it was, having enough understanding to form the intent. An address was enough. A name and a location on Earth was enough. Abel had never seen Tony's Malibu mansion, had no idea what it looked like inside, but he knew it existed on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Coast Highway, and that was sufficient.
He raised his left hand and drew another circle.
The portal opened. Through it: ocean air, the sound of crashing waves, and, much closer, the unmistakable sound of destruction. Explosions. Collapsing walls. The whine of repulsor technology pushed past its limits.
Abel stepped through.
Pepper followed him.
Abel turned, saw her crossing the threshold behind him, and for a fraction of a second considered sending her back. Then he saw her face. Jaw set, eyes bright with terror and determination in equal measure. A woman who would walk into a war zone for the man she loved without hesitation.
No time to argue. And honestly, she'd probably fight me harder than Obadiah would.
"Find cover," Abel said. "Somewhere solid. You don't want to be a hostage someone can use against Tony."
Pepper nodded once, sharp, and moved. No arguments. No questions. She understood the stakes and she understood what she could and couldn't contribute to what was about to happen.
Smart woman. Tony's lucky.
Abel turned back toward the mansion. Half of it was on fire. Smoke poured from shattered windows on the upper floors. The sound of combat echoed from inside: metal on metal, explosions, the particular crack of reinforced concrete failing under impacts it was never designed to withstand.
He drew one more portal. This one opened directly into the mansion's main corridor.
Abel stepped through, wand raised, every sense locked on.
The scene hit him in a single frame.
Tony, in the shattered remains of the Mark V, pinned to the ground. Obadiah standing over him, one massive armored boot planted on Tony's chest, pressing down. The Iron Monger's faceplate was open, and Obadiah was smiling. The kind of smile that belonged on a predator standing over a kill.
Abel's wand snapped up.
"Bombarda Maxima!"
He poured everything he had into the spell. Not the measured, calculated output he'd used against the Dormammu cultists in Latveria. More. Five months more training, five months more power, five months of his magical core growing denser and stronger with every day of practice. The red light that erupted from his wand was blinding, a compressed sphere of destructive force that crossed the distance between them in less than a heartbeat.
The spell hit Obadiah center mass.
The explosion was enormous. A concussive detonation that blew out every window in the corridor, cracked the ceiling, and sent the seven-hundred-pound Iron Monger II flying backward like he'd been hit by a freight train. Obadiah's body smashed through one wall, then another, tumbling end over end before slamming into something structural and stopping. Dust billowed. Debris rained from the ceiling.
Tony, freed from the boot on his chest, rolled onto his side and coughed blood.
Abel was already at his side. "Tony. Can you move?"
"Kid?" Tony's voice was ragged, filtered through a helmet speaker that was barely functioning. "How the hell did you—"
"Later. Can you move?"
"I... yeah. I think so." Tony pushed himself to one knee, the Mark V groaning around him. "The Mark VII. Workshop sub-level. I need sixty seconds."
"Go." Abel turned to face the settling dust cloud where Obadiah had landed. "I'll give you sixty seconds."
Tony didn't argue. He activated what was left of his boot thrusters and half-flew, half-stumbled toward the stairwell leading down.
Abel stood alone in the wrecked corridor.
From the dust, a sound. Metal grinding on concrete. The whine of servos recalibrating. A low, ugly laugh.
Obadiah Stane rose from the rubble.
The Iron Monger II's chest plate was dented inward, the metal scorched and buckled where the Bombarda Maxima had struck. One of the shoulder joints sparked intermittently. But the armor held. The reactor still glowed. And Obadiah was still standing.
"Well, well." Obadiah's voice was different now. The amusement was gone, replaced by something colder. More focused. "The little sorcerer. I was wondering when you'd show up."
Abel planted his feet. Adjusted his grip on his wand. Let his breathing steady.
Bombarda Maxima at near-full power. Enough force to demolish a building. And he's still standing. The armor's tougher than I expected. But the damage is real. That chest plate won't take another hit like that.
"You have one chance to walk away," Abel said. His voice was calm. Even. The voice of someone who had killed before and would do it again if the math demanded it.
Obadiah's faceplate snapped shut.
"Make me."
He charged.
END CHAPTER 40