Part 3 - Chp 7
New York--or at least Tony’s corner of it--is on lockdown. There’s been plenty of response to that initial strike force to keep them contained, but it’s caused a media storm since Tony didn’t even show up to defend his own tower. The fact the tower is still off isn’t exactly making Tony happy either, even if he can’t personally show up at the moment.
“What did they do?” he grumbles, but there’s no one around to hear him. It’d been decided that Steve needs to rally the troops--he’s good at that sort of thing--and Loki has gone with him as a show of good faith. Jane and Bruce are sleeping--he thinks, he’s not about to poke Bruce to find out--while Thor is busy getting some help from back home, wherever that is.
Which means he’s bored and restless.
He starts poking at Jane’s possible teleporter. She doesn’t like when he calls it that, but considering what it does, it’s totally a teleporter. They’re supposed to be using it to show up in the middle of the coming force and lay waste--in theory catching them by surprise--but Tony’s not sure they're still going to do that; it’s a relic of the plan from before Thanos had realized that Loki wasn’t actually under the Tesseract’s control anymore.
Better to have it ready than not if they need it, especially since they don’t have the Tesseract.
Still, it won't hurt to take it on a test drive. Tony’s worked with Jane enough and helped put it back together--he knows how to adjust the coordinates. And it’s not like he has a suit or anything; a quick jaunt to the Tower, see if he can’t get it powered back up, grab the suit with the external battery if he can’t….
***
The Tower is dark, which he totally expected and has his own personal nightlight for.
It is also cold. His breath fogs the air, immediate goose bumps all over his arms and chill down his spine, and he really wants to know how the hell this is even possible considering that he knows for a fact New York is a miserable and humid ninety some odd Fahrenheit outside.
On the plus side, Jane’s teleporter works, even if he is having to walk down a zillion flights of stairs so he can get the suit and make life easier on him with repairs.
Also, he doesn’t want to be unarmoured any longer than he needs to be. Definitely not. It half feels like the darkness is watching him, which is frankly absurd. He feels half like a bird, head craning every which way to try and catch sight of everything around him, nearly pulling muscles at glimpses in his peripheral.
“Get it together, Tony,” he mutters at himself. He hasn’t ever been afraid of the dark, and he’s not starting now. He’s just unsettled, that’s all.
There’s a hiss--he thinks there’s a hiss--but there’s nothing at all behind him.
He hurries a bit faster.
***
Because he’s not an idiot lacking all common sense (who maybe had ended up locked out of his workshop once before because of this), he built in a way to get into the workshop if all power was down. He doesn’t have it marked on any schematics--way too high a risk of someone using it for the wrong reasons--but he knows where it is, and a bit of force later he’s successfully in his workshop again.
The only reason he’s breathing heavy is because it takes force to open that partition. That’s it.
(There is totally something in the dark with him.)
It’s not luck (it’s luck, and he knows it) that the suit powers up and slides on like the second skin it is. He immediately feels worlds better to not be quite so immediately edible; better still when he hears Jarvis in his ear.
“You should give warning before you cut power, sir,” Jarvis says, utterly disapproving.
“Good to hear you too,” Tony says. “Any idea what happened?”
“Unfortunately not.”
“Shame. Let’s get to work.”
The easiest thing to do is going to be to go outside and check the line to the arc reactor he’s got underwater--as much as it shouldn’t be possible, it’d be the easiest way to cut the power to the Tower if the backup ones were offline.
(It’s a bonus it’s going to get him out of this creepy darkness.)
Except, he realizes not too much later, he can’t get out. As much as he tries, doors that lead out just flat out don’t open.
“Jarvis, full power to repulsors,” he says--surely he can take out a window and get loose.
The blast richottes off the glass like it’s anything but, knocks over a clatter of way too loud metal, and then everything goes silent.
“That’s not good.”
“No, sir, it is not.” Jarvis pauses, then adds, “Perhaps the windows by the bar would work better?”
They don’t.
Maybe Thanos was only part of why Loki so shaken when he showed up to get them out of the tower.
***
“So let me get this straight,” Tony says, studying the readings that Jarvis is throwing up on the screen. “As far as you can tell, the world doesn’t exist outside of the Tower.”
“That is correct.” Jarvis sounds pretty displeased by this, not that Tony can blame him. If it’s true, that at least explains why everything inside is so strange.
“That doesn’t explain why I can’t break the windows.” Tony paces around the bar, staring at the windows. It looks like New York at night is just outside, which is frankly wrong, since it was day when he came in and supposedly there isn’t actually anything out there. “Any signs of the creepy shadow thing I keep seeing?”
“No, sir. To all appearances, you are the only living organism in the tower.”
Tony is pretty sure that Jarvis thinks he’s lost his marbles; he can’t say he’s not sure he hasn’t.
“Okay,” he says. “Let’s play ball. Let’s assume that the insides are all that exist. I’m going to bet…” he pauses, considering. This feels familiar. “I’m going to bet we’re going about this the wrong way and that this--at least right now--isn’t in real space.”
“Sir,” Jarvis says in this tone of voice that suggests he’s both seriously concerned for Tony and also tired of putting up with this nonsensical situation.
“Hear me out.” He pauses again. “Hear me out. We’re here, this isn’t real space. It’s a… metaphor.” He frowns, words on the tip of his tongue. He’s been somewhere like this before, but it doesn’t make sense and isn’t coming easily. “I’m going to do something stupid.”
“At last, something which makes sense.”
“Can it. Hey, big and scary! I know you’re out there crawling around the dark! Stop sulking!”
Nothing happens, which, okay, fair enough. It’s also not totally pitch black in here minus his reactor light, so it’s entirely possible the thing that’s been following him around isn’t actually here. At least not in this room.
“Let’s get somewhere darker,” Tony says, ignoring the way his stomach sinks.
(Down and down and down.)
***
“Are you serious? You didn’t see that?!”
Tony’s voice might be high, but he really doesn’t care at this point. He’s exhausted--mentally exhausted, bone weary chasing back and forth for what feels like hours now. The stairs feel like they don’t end, narrowing and widening almost sickeningly, all of which he knows shouldn’t be possible because he built the damn place. But it keeps happening because for all Jane’s teleporter latched onto this as the Tower, it isn’t.
Or maybe it is. May it's a metaphor for the tower. He doesn’t know, and the exhaustion and not-knowing are starting to morph into some serious levels of pissed off.
“Come out already,” he shouts, throwing a repulsor shot in a fit of temper.
For a moment, the glow lights up a creature vast and shadow and many-headed as it screams and recoils, foot after foot of coiled muscle undulating and drawing back, teeth easily as big as Tony’s forearm gleaming in the light and spit shining as it slides off them.
“Fuck,” Tony says then starts running.