Chapter 31
“Go back?!”
Tony repeated dumbly, his brain flatlining for a second there.
“Yes, go back to my present.” The man confirmed with a sharp snap like he was slapping Tony in the face with his voice. “My bosses need to know about what happened here.”
“Your bosses?” Tony murmured carefully, zooming in on that word. “Who sent you to us?”
“That’s none of your business.” He growled warningly, daring Tony to repeat that question. Then he sat on the closest chair he found, continuing a little more calmly, but not any less harshly. “You turned out to be smarter than we anticipated. You acted surprisingly and unpredictably skillfully. Clearly, we underestimated you too much.”
“Who is we?!” Tony asked again, his curiosity made him throw caution to the wind.
“But everything can be fixed!” The man continued, ignoring Tony’s question. “When I return to my time and tell my bosses about what happened, they will not make the same mistake when they send the other one!”
“The other one?” Tony didn’t like the sound of that at all.
“The one who will repeat this mission.” He answered with a shrug.
“You mean the one who will continue it instead of you?”
“No, the one who will repeat it from the start again, genius.” He shook his head with a smirk, before leaning forward towards Tony. “This is the perk of Time Travel. Everything can be returned to the beginning, before the moment things go wrong. I will go back to my time. Everyone will know what you did. They will know your reactions, the way you think when you face all this. Then they will send another one, to start the same mission again from the same starting point I did, but this time he will have more advantage. He will already know what you will do and stop it.” He leaned back in his seat, a look of satisfaction on his face. “Which means his defeat will be impossible.”
Tony eyed him silently for a few seconds, thinking about what he just said, taking it all in.
This was something bigger than just a personal vendetta against them.
“What exactly do you want from me?” Tony asked slowly, carefully, like he was dealing with a time bomb.
“You are the genius of this era. You are the one that designed SHIELD’s security system, right?” the man answered so fast like he was waiting for that question.
“Technically, yeah.” Tony swallowed, already hating what this was leading up to. “What? you want to get inside SHIELD?”
“Not all of SHIELD. I want to get inside the Electronic Examination room to be more specific.”
“Why?” That managed to surprise Tony a little but didn’t show it.
“Didn’t I tell you that you people are smarter and more resourceful than I anticipated?” he growled in pure anger and frustration, clinching his fists, and making Tony step back in case he wanted to throw a punch. “You managed to find my hideout, and destroyed all my devices and machines! And you captured my Time Ship! My only way to return to my time!” he dangerously furrowed his brows, before adding in a growl. “And I insist on getting back what’s mine.”
Tony was in a very tight spot here. He was in a room with a crazed, enraged future maniac. Charlie was unconscious on the floor, and behind him a room filled with mutants with rice-sized bombs injected in their arms. If he made any wrong move or said the wrong thing, things would get ugly very fast with a press of that maniac’s finger.
“Getting to that room will not be easy.” Tony tried to keep his tone level and was careful to not trigger the maniac. “You will need to go through at least four security doors.”
“All controlled by SHIELD’s computer system.” The man countered with a glare. “Which you can easily hack.”
Tony hesitated for a few seconds, rubbing his hands together in a nervous gesture to stop himself from calling out to one of his suits and ruining everything. “Why don’t you use that DNA-shapeshifting stuff and go past security?”
“That ability is only in the cyborgs, we made it able to make a perfect copy of any DNA, meanwhile we-“ he cut himself off, realizing that he was about to say too much, before glaring at Tony. “None of your business!”
He shot up to his feet in a sudden move and pointed at him warningly. “Get to work already! We don’t have much time!”
Tony glanced towards the room filled with unconscious mutants. “When are you going to release them?”
“The moment I activate my Time Ship.” He answered, straightening up to his full height, making him tower over Tony even more.
Tony swallowed past the huge lump in his throat, before murmuring in a choked-off voice. “All right.”
He pointed towards Charlie’s laptop, where she placed it at a desk in the corner of the room. Tony dragged his feet as he walked towards it. He sat in front of it silently for a few seconds, before letting out a breath and opening it to start working and get it over with.
At first, his fingers moved slowly and lazily, since he really, really didn’t want to do this, but soon he got really into it, entering the zone as his fingers flew over the keyboard. He entered SHIELD’s system and got past its firewalls and security measures without even trying really hard since he was the one who made it after all.
When he reached the security system, he turned to the maniac.
“How are you supposed to deceive the security system?” Tony raised an eyebrow at him, not going to offer any ideas. “It checks the Irises’ print, fingerprints, genetic code, and all that. They are all things that can’t be faked. What do you plan to do about that?”
“But they can be changed.” He countered with a shrug.
“What do you mean?”
He pointed towards the laptop. “We will use that to get all those prints from me, then you will put them in the security system, and replace it with the information of someone else that is allowed to enter freely towards the Examination room. So, when we go there and walk through security and check my prints, they will find that it matches someone authorized to be there, which will allow us to enter until we reach the examination room.”
Tony stared at him silently, hating the fact that he had the same idea as his. He didn’t say anything, he just returned his eyes to the screen and got to work.
Another ten minutes passed with Tony working nonstop before finally leaning back in his chair and turning to the man again.
“It’s done.” He muttered from between his clenched teeth. “You can go to SHIELD and will find the way open to you without any issue or trouble until you reach the Electronic Examination room.”
“I believe you mean we can go to SHIELD.” He snorted with a raised eyebrow. “There is no way I am going alone, Genius.”
“What?! what about my people here?!” Tony shot up from his chair, indignant.
“They will stay here. No harm will come to them. unless you betrayed me.” he raised the black ball in his hand, giving Tony a harsh, warning look. “You should know that this trigger has a five-kilometer radius range. Even when we get inside the Examination room, I will still be able to press it and blow them to bits.”
Tony clenched his fists, glaring hard at him, hoping it would somehow pulverize him and fix all his problems.
“Fine. I will go.” Tony gritted through his teeth, hating the entire situation he was in, hopeless and unable to do anything. Forced to do whatever that man wants, just to save the people he cared about.
Things really went very bad for him, the moment Steve left him alone at the beginning of all this. maybe if Steve was the one here now instead of him, he would have handled things a lot better.
Anyone else in their family would have handled things way better. He should have been the one to fall first by the fireballs, not him. maybe then, Charlie, Raven, and the children wouldn’t have suffered like this. won’t be in this danger like this.
“Then, let’s get going.” The man gripped his arm and started pulling him towards the door harshly, ignoring Tony’s pained wince. “Like I said, we don’t have much time.”
In the middle of all this, Tony couldn’t help but notice how cold that man’s hand was.
Almost abnormally cold.